Author's Notes: The song in this chapter is "Sally's Song" from The Nightmare Before Christmas.
23- In Excelsis Deo
"Daniel answered, 'May the king live forever! My God sent his angel, and he shut the mouths of the lions.'" - Daniel 6:21-22
Francine couldn't feel herself anymore. The numbness that came with the discovery of concealed camaraderie was overwhelmed with a new sort of emptiness- the void of overwhelming dread. Indeed, the half-man had returned in its full splendor, sliding through the crowd of toys, its remnants disappearing only seconds after detaching again and again from the stub where its legs should be. In and out of eternity, the being splashed before her very eyes.
It splashed right for her, hungry with desire; it sensed blood.
Not only that, there was…something else. A shifting motion stroked her vision from the corner of the gallery. And as she saw it wasn't only onebeast that cursed these halls after all, she finally screamed. There was no way for the woman to escape. Her palms gripped the bars that lined the platform, hair falling over her face as she leaned her entire torso over, a desperate measurement of height. No, she'd break her legs if she jumped from all the way up here, and broken wood of the collapsed staircase waited below like pointed spears.
A sound came to her left, and Francine spotted in full view that the first damned creature was dragging itself along the staircase- the only uninterrupted staircase down. Cheeks grimaced forcefully and pinched her eyes so tight that it was a grin; as she sobbed, it almost sounded like a laugh was scratching her throat. This was insanity. And just as she decided to do the insane as well, she heard someone. Soon it would propose something that was even madder than what she had in mind.
Thank goodness she had a guardian angel after all.
"My dear…" Thick like velvet, a voice lingered through the walls behind her back and placed itself squarely, resolutely upon her shoulders. "Please…there's no need to hurt yourself."
Francine hardly balanced over the edge of the railing now, hair swaying all around her like branches of a willow tree as she faced the certainly unfeeling, uncaringly solid floor far below. She heard the groans, the roars of spirits waiting to devour her. To her horror, the second monster on the floor below had chosen to be more direct; it seemed to move closer-
Oh of course, it was moving to position itself where she'd surely fall and break to pieces, as if it could swallow her whole like a mere bit of popcorn it tossed in the air for its own amusement. Past the bellows of the unholy, she caught the siren's call again.
"You only need to do as I have after all this time- what you and I are both capable of, unlike these horrid, horrid slugs." A little bit of that second person slipped in again, frantic with disturbance, but it seemed unimportant to consider now compared to inevitable death. "It's so simple. It's ridiculous how utterly stupid they are!"
They certainly didn't seem to be as they came for her life.
Francine hugged the wooden bar tight into her entire body, legs wrapping around the vertical beams as she was desperate not to fall- desperate to not let go into either direction, even as the one she was currently in did her no service. For certain, the one below would kill her, but the one to her left was moaning- moaning just as loudly for her demise as it came closer…and closer…and cl-
"Please! Help me, PLEASE! Oh, oh GOD!- " and she only thereafter screeched meaningless, terrorized howls to someone that waited beyond reality.
The mortal had finally called upon divine intervention, a cry clawing through the shrouds of agony. And finally, it touched the heart of its beholder. One could almost hear the smirk in their next testament.
"My little cherub," they began in a giggle heavy with amusement, "you need to sing."
The sound of the searchers was strained out of her ears in disbelief.
"…I need to wha- AAH! "
And she felt once again a cold, unnatural touch grip her ankle, just as there was the moment she arrived in the studio. What- what was it doing?! Oh, shit. Oh SHIT! It wasn't just yanking her down with its inexplicably cold arms- it was-…
A screech echoed again as its ink warped around her skin and bone, uncontained by humanly limits, attempting to make what has hers become its.
Suddenly a strong, reflexive kick came crashing down, and it was utterly regretful. The hand that enveloped her was subsequently torn apart, drips of black scattering all around like a gunshot spraying murky blood. A crime scene blew around her body and covered her in speckles of bitter, reeking death. Coughs came naturally, too, not just to catch her breath but to reject the taste of ink that flew into her open mouth. Briefly she squinted her eyes, and surely, she must have missed some dark, incredible instant of deviltry in doing so; when they opened, the half-man was merely staring up at where their flesh used to join, beholding what was left of its arm.
She caught the last split second where it finished reforming, good as new.
Yet another scream was accompanied by yet another tickled laugh behind the wall.
"We won't be able to meet if you don't listen to me." The sugary one then rose once more. "Sing!" And they drew out the last word slow and smooth in demonstration.
Abruptly, the oily thing changed before it could try to gnaw at her again.
It's "head" lifted, and it turned in each and every direction; the searchers would never cease their namesake, but this time it was a draw to something besides the intoxicating whiffs of mortality the woman hauled throughout the entrails of the studio. The one that nipped her feet sensed something, and it captivated its very being at the drop of a pin. Initially she feared what this authority may be, and a tense moment of silence stirred between them. Eventually, she understood what to do, and she immediately grew to be resentful for its total denial of reality.
Not that she had much choice.
The sound from her lips quivered as her very soul did. Words subdued all in the chamber- so small and quiet, and yet the only ones heard. The only ones that mattered, it seemed, to the searchers.
One of Francine's eyes managed to push past her fear, and she witnessed the beast before her slacken. Indeed, she glimpsed in the horizon of her sight, too, that the one below had stopped raising its arms to the heavens- to its prey- and was now merely a drop on the floor in the presence of something beyond its comprehension.
And so she kept on, unknowing when to stop nor what would happen once she did- if her scratchy refrain even held them at bay at all. It was all so ridiculous...so gravely ridiculous as it churned the blood in her veins. Only a few lines into this song- this passion of worry- the voice from beyond returned, and it beckoned in the smoother of its two hums, "There's one of my Little Miracle Stations in the front of the room- hide there. GO!" It was a command harsh in either impatience or concern, and for now just as the voices were indistinguishable, so were these two emotions.
Francine found herself unquestionably abiding by this savior, unhinging her body from the wooden railing and still engaging in this hymn upon her tongue; her feet joined the floor so terribly close to the swarming flesh of the monster she'd been coached to enrapture. She pondered desperately what the thing would do once she inched away, if she even found the power to do so within muscles rigid with adrenaline and unease. There were no eyes in its constantly collapsing sockets, and yet its gaze stung like wasps at her every move.
…It let her pass.
The song lined the border of the stairs like flowing cloth as it wistfully led her to the trenches of perdition; the voice in the wall had passed the reigns of these creatures to her own throat so it may live on to scream another day. Despite how she shook- how many notes she missed as squeaks and gasps of agony fell in tandem with the drum of searchers' watching and shifting, entirely disinclined to chase as before- it was still remarkable to all who listened.
And it was truly to all who listened.
Roughened wood stroked into her left palm as Francine breezed slowly over the rail at her side, beginning to descend into the lounge haunted by the many faces of Bendy, circling the liquified ghosts that pierced her with their mesmerization to make way to a box against the wall, a label etched across its door. Such appreciation wasn't a compliment when one dreaded being eaten alive at any moment, however.
What was this melody? The being above had never heard it before, but they could still feel its nadirs with intensity, and they gradually became…moved. How sad was it that this was the song that came to the human most naturally- that in her great distress and foreboding, it only spoke of how alone she was in the gutters of her heart. And just like that, their plans for her became so much more meaningful in this moment.
Something was in the wind, tragedy at hand, and she couldn't stand by him…whoever "he" was. It made the one behind the shelves sicken with sudden, unexpected grief…with understanding. They had felt this before, too- overcame it every waking moment so they may become better, stronger, more beautiful…and yet could still claim this ache this like it was yesterday. Was it yesterday? Oh, how delightfully disgusting it can be to not know where the paths carved by immortality lie.
Regardless, the sounder from beyond the toymaker's gears lamented as Francine did, that never ending craving, grieving, begging for another soul to come for their own so they may suffer together.
"Maybe it won't be that way for long," was the inner musings of a life perpetually lost to the depths of their own quarantine.
Mellowed groans eventually wavered and fell out of existence like raindrops down a sewer drain. Hesitantly, she pressed her eyes towards the slit of radiance that fell into the Little Miracle Station, and at the sight ahead every ounce of her began to tilt to the sides of the box in release; a magically dreary tune she memorized long, long ago finally faded after a few full iterations of its verses, staining her tongue with a hue of nostalgia. Remarkable- utterly remarkable it was like this…that this was all that occurred. Everything that happened was unbelievable, from start to end, and it left Francine exasperated with shock as she lay there in the dark haven.
Her eyes closed with weariness, and similar as when she first came to this giant room, a muffled voice arrived in her ears. She then remembered how this all began. Truth be told, she was unnerved to her core; within this world of impossibilities, what was before her was its own contradiction. The way Sammy described things to her, this…- They…-
The person up ahead…shouldn't exist.
Unanimously, words of velvet and nectar rang once more, not only beckoning Francine but reminding them both of their promise, and that was enough. Yes, she had firmly decided they will finally meet, and so the door creaked open to release the woman to the hell of angels.
The row of shelves had separated, pearly gates yellowed with rot. What sat ahead was an engulfing shade tinted by grey boxes; their glow trickled to the edges of this tiny room and revealed very little, but it was enough. In generosity towards her anxious soul, maybe it contained only what she could handle at once. The visage of another cartoon raised their hand on the screens, asking the woman to join the song drifting in and out of faded stereos. Straight in front of her, their personification balanced the large frame between them. Tall and towering as they stood upon a pedestal crafted by decades of refinement, the one behind a shattered window looked down upon the mortal somehow in both casual condescendence and unadulterated mercy.
Francine saw that she and them had pulled their jaws back in unanimous mystification, but the shadows couldn't hide that theirs was jagged with unfathomable bumps and ripping muscle. It made her flinch back, but the being didn't respond in inevitable pain, what she must have imagined the agony would be to have your face torn like that; they merely looked…disappointed, sad as they witness someone with the wholeness they desired and deserved look upon all their life's effort like an undeserving wretch.
As the vocalists basked in each other's preposterous glory, there somehow came a simple politeness that seemed to have escaped she and Sammy before.
"Who… who are you!?"
Only one of their eyes crinkled properly in response, upper lid lowering in tenderness. The other gaped like an open sore, oozing tar into the shredded wounds of their left cheek, hollowed with trial and error. It was unfeeling, and yet it filled Francine with an unbearable emotion.
"My poor dear," a choir of two emerged from black lips parted down the middle with gory perfection, smiling slightly at one end and unable to cease scowling with the other. The woman finally understood that it wasn't the broken glass separating she from them that sliced what she saw into pieces.
"I'm Alice Angel!"