Chapter 24 – Monsters

Jessica knelt on the floor, hands bound by knotted cords. Heart bound by icy despair. Everything had the surreality that comes in the depths of terror.

She could feel The Butcher behind her, his rank breath wafted past her periodically. She cried out for Jonathon to come save her, but she knew he wouldn't come. He lived in a mansion now, far from here, with The Lady.

The other man in front of her, the one called Snakes, moved toward her slowly with a wicked grin. As he approached, his movements became more and more fluid, more serpentine, his form changing with his agonizingly slow progress until before her was not a man but a large, gray serpent, fangs dripping with venom and mouth opening… opening… impossibly wide.

Almost blocked from view by the gaping maw, she could see the figure of Myria, her friend, materialize from nothingness, and her heart gave a strange lurch. She should be happy, Myria was here to save her, but instead she felt only more fear.

Her breath caught in her throat, icy talons tightening around her heart, as she watch Myria smile broadly, showing impossibly pointed teeth, and nod encouragement to the creature that had been Snakes not long before.

As hopelessness gripped her anew, Jessica tried to close her eyes, and found that she could still see through closed lids, as that wide-open mouth descended toward her.

YOU. WILL NOT. TOUCH. HER.

Jessica's eyes snapped open, and before her she saw… redemption.

A young woman, dressed in a dark cloak with hair writhing and eyes flashing with wrath, stood before them wielding, a spear? She faced the serpent, the grey-coloured shape of The Butcher, and the form of Myria LeJean, all of whom recoiled from her. The woman turned to Jessica, and spoke again.

WAKE UP JESSICA. NOW.

Jessica's eyes snapped open, and before her she saw… madness.

She was lying in her own bed, sweat-drenched with her bedclothes in a tangle. Standing next to her, one hand lightly touching her arm and palpably radiating fury and hatred, stood Susan Sto Helit. In her right hand she held a fireplace poker and was facing… three dark shadows, clad in greyness and shrinking back in the face of Susan's wrath.

You cannot touch us.

"Want to bet? See this?" She waved the poker around like a swashbuckler wielding a cutlass. "This kills monsters, I have it on good authority and ironclad belief. Want to give it a test?"

You would not dare!

"According to my grandfather, and Madame Frout, there is practically nothing I won't dare. Now get out and don't come back." She hissed.

The creatures drew back further. We are not breaking the rules.

Susan gave a low chuckle. "Frankly, I don't care about your rules. From now on, we're going to play by my rules. If I see you again, I will hunt every single one of your pathetic incarnations down, and I will teach you what it means to live in fear."

We do not live, therefore we cannot fear. One spoke, and immediately received a stick in the eye with a sharp poker… or at least where an eye would have been. With a trailing wail, it popped like a soap bubble into a grey mist, which dissipated immediately. The second jerked back. Ok ok! You win! Please don't hurt me! Oh sh- and it too exploded into an ephemeral cloud, upon which the third followed suit in apparent sympathy.[1]

"And just to make it clear DON'T COME NEAR HER AGAIN." Susan spoke in a strange voice that ran like lightning up and down the spine and seemed to penetrate the walls. "There, that should be sufficient." She shook her shoulders and worked her jaw for a moment before turning to regard Jessica on the bed. "So, how do you feel?"

"Um… I feel, like I've gone mad actually."

"Well that should pass. Apart from that, how do you feel?"

Jessica considered. "Better I think. Lighter somehow?" Her stomach growled. "And apparently hungry?" She laughed a bit, and smiled as the corner of Susan's mouth turned up in amusement. "Yes, I do feel better. What were those? Where they real? Or just in my head?"

Susan considered. "Both actually." She carefully leaned the poker against the bedframe, and smoothed her skirts before sitting on the edge of the mattress. "They are called Auditors."

"Are they nightmares?"

Susan shook her head. "Not usually. Usually they don't bother with individual humans. They actually do serve a purpose in the universe, though I'm not sure what exactly. Unfortunately they absolutely despise humans, and try to do something about it from time to time." She tapped the poker and smirked. "And sometimes, whether they mean to or not, doing so turns them very definitely into something you would consider monstrous, and I have just the medicine for that affliction."

Jessica looked at the poker with some doubt, but then again, she had seen all three of them shrink in fear from it. Oh well. She shook her head again. "Why are they torturing me? Why me?"

Susan grew quiet for a moment, considering her words carefully. "Myria was… instrumental in stopping one of their recent efforts, and I believe they blame her for its failure. Since they can't get at her, they seem to be taking it out on your family. You're probably the most susceptible right now." She frowned. "But I suspect they would have moved on to Jonathon or your father once they had…" She trailed off.

"I see." Jessica's eyes unfocused, and she spoke very slowly, drawing out each word. "Susan? Those things. And... Myria." She reached out and grasped Susan's cloak. "She was one of them, wasn't she? Please, you have to tell me."

Susan sighed. This could make it easier, or more difficult, depending on how Jessica took it. "Yes. She was."

"But she is nothing like those… things. I could feel their hatred for me. Myria was never like that, even when she came to rescue me and turned into… she didn't turn into that. She was just empty."

"That's right. Myria may have been like that at first; I don't know because I didn't see her in the early stages. But that was different. The Auditors you just saw took on forms in your mind, not physical bodies." She smiled wickedly. "They learned a very sharp and painful lesson about what happens to Auditors that try to get 'physical'. Living is quite addictive. I doubt they will ever try taking on physical bodies again" She stood up. "Now, what do you say we feed our own addiction a bit. I could use a bite to eat myself." She paused and deliberately snapped her fingers, and Jessica felt something change.

"What was that?"

"Ah, just a little… something I undid so we could have that snack. It's really not important. Shall we?"

"Wait… will those… Auditors… come back?"

Susan smiled with her teeth. "I very seriously doubt that Jessica. I believe I have put the fear of me into them."

A strange sound, unfamiliar to his ears, awoke Jonathon Knäcke not long after midnight. Filtered through the closed door of his bedroom, the sheer oddness of it was enough to bring him out of a sound sleep.

Not that he slept heavily these days. Far too often, the sound of Jessica's screams or sobs broke the rest of the entire household. Or worse, the sickening thud when she awoke in a dazed and weakened condition and fell trying to flee her room.

He shook his head groggily, trying to identify what had brought him out of sleep, and realized why it was so unfamiliar.

It was the silver sound of his cousin's laughter, followed by a low murmur.

Rubbing his unruly hair, he sat and checked the time on his bedside clock. It wasn't very accurate; he had to adjust the time every other day, but it was enough to make sure he woke early enough to receive deliveries in the mornings. He stared at it in disbelief. Just after 1:30 in the morning. Was she hallucinating now? Gods how much more of this can we take? He thought muzzily as he pulled himself semi-erect and staggered through the doorway prepared for the worst.

What he found before him defied reality. At the small table in common room was his cousin, still far too thin, but clear-eyed and with a healthy blush as she giggled at something the other occupant had said. She was sipping tea and nibbling on a biscuit, and caught his eye almost immediately.

"Oh! Good morning Jonny! Did we wake you?"

If it hadn't been so damnably wonderful to see her actually snarky, he would have snarled at her. As it was… "Uh, yeah I guess you did. What are you doing up? You look… you look great." Then he noticed the hair coloring of the other visitor, who had her back to him. "Miss Susan! What are you doing here?"

"Hmph. Is that what you call courtesy Mr. Knäcke? And here I came all this way to have a nice morning tea with your cousin." She turned her head slightly, and he could see her smirking and a wicked gleam in her eye. "Jessica was just telling me the most fascinating story about your name." Jessica's face flamed, but she looked at Jonathon defiantly.

Oh gods…

"Well… I… But…"

"Oh dear, we seem to have overcome your cousin, Jessica." She turned more fully to Jonathon. "I really do apologize Jonathon, I did not intend to wake you so early. I did have something to discuss with you, but honestly, it can wait until a more reasonable hour. I only came early because I felt I owed Jessica some explanation and assistance."

"And I, for one, am very glad you did Susan." Jessica interjected. "But," and she gave a large and exaggerated yawn, "I really am tired. In fact, I think I'll go back to bed and leave you to it." She nodded at Jonathon, who started forward to help her but stopped when he realized she was already out of the chair and making her way back to her room. Not quite steadily, but definitely not in need of his help. "Good night cousin."

"Er… good night Jessie."

He stood looking at the door for a few seconds more, trying to come to terms with the change in her, then looked at Susan, who was sitting again with her back to him. Somehow she was managing to exude a quiet smugness, and he found it a bit infuriating.

"Miss Susan, what in the name of Io are you doing here, in our bakery, in our rooms, in the middle of the night?"

"Sit down Jonathon." She ordered without turning around. "This will be a bit in the telling, and you don't look like you are fully awake yet. I don't want you falling and waking the entire household thinking it was Jessica."

Grumbling, Jonathon worked his way across the rough wooden floor and into the chair facing her. Elbows propped on the table, he put his face in his hands and stared at it. "Ok. I'm sitting down. Now will you explain what you are doing here? And why Jessica seems to have recovered overnight?"

"It would be my pleasure. Attend."

And she did. More than he imagined was possible, she explained. It took several hours to cover everything. He went from inconvenienced and bewildered with unfocused eyes pointed at the table, to trying to focus on Susan, to wide-awake and feeling like he was drinking from a waterfall as he tried to absorb everything she told him. About Jessica and why she had not been getting better but probably would now. About the Auditors and what they were and had tried to do to reality. About Myria. How she had come to be. What she had been. What she was now.

What she was capable of.

"Do you mean this? That she is that dangerous?"

"Jonathon, Myria was nearly godlike in potential ability. All the Auditors are, you understand. It is only the absolute aversion to 'breaking the rules' and a lack of real emotion that makes them, at least normally, nothing more than a nuisance.

"But Myria is not an Auditor."

"No, she was becoming human. And strangely, with becoming human her psyche self-imposed limits on what she could do. I watched when she fought the other Auditors, she could have dissolved them with a thought, but the human form doesn't just provide substance, it forces the mind into a particular form as well. She wouldn't do those things, because her body told her that humans couldn't do those things."

Jonathon shook his head. "But I don't understand. What you are saying is that this makes her somehow more dangerous now."

"Yes, that is the problem. Now she, I suspect, no longer believes herself to be human. But she is not an Auditor either. I don't know what she is. Imagine something with that kind of power, but without the innate fear of breaking the rules." The corners of her eyes tightened. "I don't even know if she still has humanity left in her, but I do know this, she has been hurt. She has been hurt very badly. Do you know what a wounded animal does when it has been hurt? It finds a quiet place, it could be a cave or a hole, and waits to live or die." She paused and considered her next words. "And anything that comes near it, whether to help or hurt, risks being attacked itself."

Jonathon was quiet, his face giving away nothing.

"Jonathon, what I am trying to tell you is, Myria is probably the most dangerous creature on the Disc right now, and I have to do something about her."

"You? Why you?"

Susan sighed. "Because my grandfather[2] will probably have to be involved, and that is a long story which I am not prepared to go into. And because I played a significant role in all of this happening. I bear some of the responsibility. But I can't do it by myself." She regarded him intently. "We have talked about this twice now. It is time for you to make a decision."

"Why, Susan? Why does this depend on me? It's my fault that-"

"That is enough. You cannot bear the blame for everything that has happened. You could not have predicted how everything would play out. And to answer your question, whether you like it or not you are still Myria's anchor to humanity. She will probably deny it, and I understand it is a difficult burden for you to bear. Whether or not you still care for her, unless you make the effort, I doubt there is any hope in dragging 'Lady Myria LeJean' back from wherever and whatever she is right now."

Jonathon began to shake, his head making small back and forth movements. "I can't Susan… I can't… I..." He took a shuddering breath. "What… what happens if I can't do this?"

"Then I'm afraid you will leave me little other choice. Myria cannot be left in her current state. It's either the two of us go and bring her back to humanity, or…" She did not explain the significance of that further, but it sounded very final.

"I don't know what I should do." Jonathon said quietly after a minute. "I'm afraid."

"I understand Jonathon, but the fact is, you need to decide. It isn't fair that this should be on your shoulders, but it is. You can go back to your life now, and watch your cousin regain her health and see your family recover their footing. That is the safe thing to do, but you will have to live with what that decision means for your friend."

Susan stood up, carefully pushing the chair back underneath the small table. "Or, you can take the risk and come with me. And together, maybe, just maybe, we can drag Myria back from wherever it is she has fled. Or maybe we will make things worse."

"Either way, it is time Jonathon…time to decide."

[1] Another reason why Auditors will never rule the universe. Get them a little overexcited and they start thinking in terms of "me", and next thing you know they've self-destructed. Kind of like swamp dragons.

[2] Susan's grandfather, in case you have forgotten, is the anthropomorphic personification of Death.