The Everson Family were pleased to have their Baba’ba’ksum back—though the only indication of this was a subtle bow of the head Mother offered Edda as the latter handed off the pyramid prison to the hairless man with the septum ring.

It was dawn. It didn’t seem to Benno that enough time had passed for a full night to elapse, but he was too tired, and his thoughts too unkempt, to consider the implications. He stood on the Shenandoah’s bridge, sipping a whiskey, watching through the transparent walls as the rest of the crew gathered behind Edda on the lawn while she relayed some version of events to Mother that Benno assumed omitted the full extent of his role. The purple pyramid prison glinted in the early wisps of sunlight as the hairless man carried it up the wide staircase. Benno craned to catch one last glimpse of it before it disappeared inside the mansion’s entrance, and once it was gone, he was left with what he could only describe as a pang of homesickness.

When he was eight years old, Benno had attended his first sleepover. There were three other boys there, all from his class. He wasn’t particularly good friends with any of them, and why he was invited in the first place he couldn’t recall. The later it got—many hours after he was typically asleep—the more energized the other boys seemed to become. They talked and talked, louder and louder as the night grew longer and deeper—in the dimness of the strange bedroom with its unfamiliar smells and sharp-angled shadows—of things about which Benno knew nothing. Benno had abided this, despite his exhaustion, despite his conviction that something wasn’t right, that they shouldn’t be up, that this post-bedtime mania was creating something or releasing something that couldn’t be destroyed or re-contained. Until finally he couldn’t abide it any longer, and he’d broken into tears, halting the excited conversation. He remembers the other boys’ faces, frustrated and embarrassed. The boy whose house it was—the host—had quietly crawled into his own bed and turned off the lamp and said, “I think it’s time to go to sleep,” and the other boys had crawled into their sleeping bags in silence and soon they were all breathing steadily in the safe throes of REM. Except for Benno, who lay awake, alone, guilty and ashamed, wanting nothing more than to just go home.

“You can’t trust it,” Jason Rogers said from the mashed aperture of his mouth. “It’s all lies and tricks.”

“I don’t,” Benno said, staring out past Edda and Mother at the mansion’s dark entrance, willing something to emerge.

“Coulda fooled me.” Jason chuckled his slick, scabby chuckle, but it was brief and uncertain. “Just be a little patient, creep. Edda will get you where you’re going.”

“Aberd hunsa begda mest,” the Forrorian with the missing jaw suggested.

“Bagdum esh mest esh bagdum,” the headless Forrian waxed.

“Wait for the Gardens,” said a choir of voices, and when Benno turned slowly he found the bridge crowded with charred, faceless people, their clothes smokey and their skin rended, just making their way home from work or school, simply trying to live their lives.

He turned his back to them. Edda and the crew were returning to the vessel. Mother and the rest of the Family stood on the lawn, watching them depart. On the top of the wide stairs, just outside the mansion’s entrance, a woman with dark hair held a boy tightly in her arms. They both smiled at Benno, and gestured for him to come.

“No work tomorrow,” Edda announced as she entered the bridge. “We can celebrate properly tonight.”

“I’m getting wrecked!” Helen bellowed, angling both thumbs at herself as if to indicate who the one getting wrecked was.

“Put your smocks on!” Dante hollered. “We’re gonna paint the town!”

Isaac laughed and Hermann grinned and bobbed his head. Edda, her mouth locked in a satisfied grin, winked at her crew before setting a course back to the Inn.

Benno sat at the table and placed his hands on its flat surface in exactly the spot that the purple pyramid had been.

#

The crew gathered in the clubroom and started up the music. Edda reclined on the sofa and took long sips from a glass of red wine. Helen drank beer after beer, tossing each empty can over her shoulder into what should have been a growing pile. Hermann nursed a scotch on the rocks and Isaac bounced between a glass of IPA and a glass of vodka, making hardly a dent in either. Dante danced alone with a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black he had yet to open.

“That guy was fucked,” Dante called over the music, shuffling in a circle. “Like I don’t feel bad for him or anything cause he was a psycho, but still. His mother messed him up.”

“All our mothers messed us up,” Helen said. “But we aren’t all out there killing people.”

“There are numerous studies on the relationship between psychopathy and the formative maternal bonding stage,” Hermann said.

“Imagine needing a study to show you that psychos have mommy issues.” Helen drained another beer.

“How about that blast?” Dante nae-naed. “I didn’t think we were making it out in time. I mean, you were cutting it close, Edda.”

Edda shrugged her blue eyebrows. “I’ve cut closer.”

“You done bigger booms than that, Isaac?”

Helen snorted. “Bigger booms.”

Isaac shrugged.

“Comparable,” Hermann said, already slurring. “Isaac’s largest recorded energy output was greater than today’s by only—”

“I can’t with the numbers right now, Doc.” Helen cracked a fresh can. “Math is drinking’s worst enemy.”

“Agreed.” Dante raised his unopened Johnnie Walker mid-grapevine. “Hey, let’s hear it for the MVP. My man, Benno.”

Everyone raised their drinks.

I can give you death…

I can give you death…

“Hey, where’s your drink?” Helen asked.

Benno looked up. “Huh?”

Helen tapped her beer. “You gonna drink with us?”

Benno cleared his throat, his train of thought lowering slowly into the swamp of his mind, and worked his face into an aloof grin. “You call that drinking?”

“Ho-ho!” Dante abandoned his dancing and hopped over the back of the sofa.

“I just drank twelve beers.” Helen pointed at the room’s empty corner.

“That’s amateur,” Benno wrinkled his nose. “I know you think you know how to drink, but where I come from…”

“This fucking guy.”

“I mean I thought we were getting wrecked tonight.” Benno crossed his arms.

“What do you suggest?” Hermann sat forward in his chair, one arms sliding off his armrest and landing in his lap.

Benno shook his head. “Maybe it’s a bad idea…”

“Shot for shot,” Helen said.

“I’m in,” Dante finally cracked open the lid of his Johnnie Walker. “Isaac?”

“I c-c-cuh…can try…”

“I’ll attempt this feat,” Hermann said. “Though I admit my tolerance is not what it once was, and keeping up with you young people might…”

“So you’re going to teach us how to drink properly?” Edda held her wine glass between two long fingers.

“Let’s fucking do this!” Helen rolled her shoulders and cracked her knuckles.

“What are ya’ll drinking?” Dante asked. “Want some Johnnie?”

Benno scoffed. “That’s barely even booze,” he said. “No, if you kids want to drink, then we’re going to drink.” He raised the Gemstoke to his lips. “Gemma. Double shots of Everclear for the crew.”

The shots manifested. Everyone took theirs and studied the glassy liquid.

Isaac sniffed it and coughed. “Wuh-wuh-wow…”

Benno raised his glass. “To a job well done,” he said.

I can give you death…

The crew raised their glasses and watched as Benno drank.

He smacked his lips. “Go on,” he said.

Everyone took their shots.

“Oh good grief,” Hermann sputtered.

Dante stuck out his tongue, his eyes wide. “Holy moly…”

Isaac scrunched up his face and swallowed hard.

Helen did her best to conceal her reaction, her eyes watering.

Edda took a slow breath and wiped her lips with the outside of her hand. “Well…”

Benno dropped his glass, then raised Gemma. “More.”

Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

#

It didn’t take as long as he’d thought it would: Edda sprawled across the sofa, one long arm dangling on the floor; Dante sat cross-legged in the corner, his head back against the wall and his mouth open; Helen lay in the fetal position at the base of a chair, her face squished against the carpet, saliva pooling; Isaac snored on his back, his foot twitching minutely; Hermann breathed slowly in his chair, his chin against his chest, his mouth folded into a grin.

Benno took a final shot just for himself, then stepped over Helen and out into the hallway. For a few minutes he wandered—gathering courage or just putting distance between himself and the others—before slowing to a stop.

There had been two funerals, one for each of them. Benno did not remember whose idea this had been, or why it had been done this way. In retrospect it seemed unnecessary. At the time of the accident, their lives had yet to fully untangle—mother and young son—and their deaths, while not totally simultaneous, had felt singular. At least to Benno. He remembered very little from the days following the accident. There was a hospital—a wash of gray and slow beeps—and a morgue—a carving of gray and deep silence—and the pervading odor of antiseptic and latex. Then there was the dark misery of the funerals, back to back, either one day after the other or several. The shock and the alcohol mutilated time. Benno hadn’t known then why he was still there—not that he knew now either. But back then he hadn’t known yet that he couldn’t leave, that he couldn’t follow them. He decided somewhere in that wash of gray that his survival was a mistake. He had two concrete memories from then: one of standing over a small casket staring at a nondescript section of its polished surface and realizing with a horrid curdling that he would never again smell his son’s hair, and another of standing over a larger casket staring at the far wall and deciding he was going to kill himself. He couldn’t imagine then it could get any worse.

I can give you death…

Maybe. Maybe not.

Maybe.

Maybe not.

Benno’s hand trembled as he raised the Gemstoke to his lips.

Maybe.

#

The pink neon sign blinked. It was nighttime again, confirming Benno’s suspicion that time behaved differently Realm to Realm. He hurried across the lawn, his head down, dew gathering on the toes of his sneakers. The mansion’s door was open, and after jogging up the steps Benno paused at its threshold. Was he expected? Was his whole plan found out? Was this some kind of test that he was unequivocally failing?

The enormous gears churned overhead, casting wafts of iron, glistening dark red in the dim, flickering light. The cavernous room was empty, and Benno dashed across it and into the elevator. He turned slowly, surveying the elevator's rutted walls. There were no buttons, no levers, nothing with which to operate it. He would have to find another way down. He started back out, but then the iron gate slammed shut over the entrance and the elevator moaned and lurched downward.

“Here’s how I see it,” Jason Rogers said, tapping his boot on the elevator’s stone floor to shake free a smattering of ice. “Either you’re running to your death, or everyone else’s. Now if the last seven years are any indication—and I’m proof they are—I’d say the latter is as close to a sure thing as you’ll find in the wild. But that’s just the input of one person you killed. One of a few who I’d bet would agree with me.”

The odor of dead plants and stale water assailed Benno as the elevator thudded to the end of its descent. He kept his eyes forward as he marched down the corridor, his shoes sloshing in the slimy puddles. He ignored the first enclosure, a dark figure with inscrutable dimensions staring out at him. He ignored the second, where the massive newt clung to the wall, its tail glowing faintly, its many eyes reflecting a strange facsimile of Benno. He ignored the third, in which a person standing on their hands scurried into the shadowy recesses of their cell at the sound of Benno’s footfalls.

He stopped at the fourth enclosure. It was dark beyond the bars, and at first he worried the Everson Family had not yet returned its inhabitant, that they were keeping it elsewhere. But then his eyes adjusted, and the fleshy organ floating by the cell’s back wall took shape, its empty eye sockets somehow darker than the rest of the darkness.

“How.” Benno said, not a question but a demand.

The Baba’ba’ksum drifted forward an inch, its grotesque snout wrinkling.

Let me out, it croaked. And I will show you.

Benno shook his head. “Either convince me you have something I need, or I walk away.”

The Baba’ba’ksum quivered along the slick ceiling. You have no compunction to freeing me after all you went through to bring me back here?

“The floating colon asks a good question,” Jason said, leaning on the bars.

“I’m out of patience for compunction,” Benno said. “I’m out of patience for all of this. The only things I ever cared about are gone. Nothing matters to me in this or any Realm. So I have no compunction to freeing you, as long as what you’re offering is real.”

The Baba’ba’ksum wedged its snout between the enclosure’s rusted bars. Look, it hissed, angling its snout down the corridor.

Benno turned. Past the additional enclosures—in which Benno could only assume were housed other abominable creatures—at the far end of the damp, dark corridor, barely visible in the gathered dark, was a door. A simple wooden door, painted white, with a brass knob and an old, brass keyhole.

In there…

“What?” Benno asked. “What’s in there?”

The Baba’ba’ksum wriggled. Death…

Benno started toward the door.

Wait. The Baba’ba’ksum wedged its snout further through the bars. He will not answer to you. But I am his friend. And I am your friend. And so I will make friends of you both.

Benno peered into the dark pits of the Baba’ba’ksum’s eyes, deep like two graves, then shook his head and wiped his face. “You are not my friend,” he said.

The Baba’ba’ksum nodded slowly.

“What do you want in exchange?”

Freedom.

“Think about Helen and Isaac and Hermann and Dante,” Jason said, his swollen mouth inches from Benno’s ear. “Even that bitch Edda. Who do you think this bloated skin tag is coming after first if you let it out of here?”

“Fuck them.”

The Baba’ba’ksum’s empty eyes narrowed.

Jason nodded. “Then think about Asher.”

Benno clenched his teeth. “You don’t care about Asher.”

“But I’m not me,” Jason said.

Benno looked up at the Baba’ba’ksum. “Freedom to do what?”

The Baba’ba’ksum’s gangly mouth peeled into a crooked smile, revealing its bank of jagged, rotten teeth.

Jason tsked, a wet sound from his macerated mouth. “If you thought the train was bad, wait til you see what this thing has in store.”

Benno sneered.

“Turn around,” Jason said. “Go back to Edda. Give her time. Wait and see. If the Gardens is real…”

It’s not… The Baba’ba’ksum interrupted.

Benno peered into the two black holes of its eyes.

The Scattered King’s Daughter is a liar. All of his daughters are liars. It is what they are. It is in their nature.

“That might be true,” Jason leaned toward Benno. “But just because she’s a liar, doesn’t mean this thing isn’t also.”

Look… the Baba’ba’ksum hissed. Just look…

Benno turned toward the white door. Two pairs of eyes trembled from the shadows.

They are there… Let me take you to them…

Benno took hold of the rusted handle affixed to the enclosure’s outside panel. It was stiff, and he wrestled with it until, with a moan and a whine, it started to give.

The Baba’ba’ksum’s smile widened, flakes of putrid skin breaking from its cracked lips like drool, its gaping eye sockets watching the latch slide from its well.

“Sucks it’s you,” said a voice that was not Jason’s.

Benno whipped around, releasing the handle. The latch clanked back into place.

A little girl, no older than eight, wearing a dress imprinted with stars and covered from head to toe in tattoos, stood in the corridor, looking up at Benno from under her black bangs.

“Who are you?!” Benno growled, his voice echoing through the damp corridor.

“Aw, fuck tits,” the girl said, and all at once Benno remembered her.

He clenched his jaw. “Get out of here.”

Rose sighed. “Anyone else I could just bonk over the head, or inject with a sedative and drag out of here. But you…” She shook her head. “There’s nothing I can do. I mean, there’s something I can do, and I’m gonna do it, but it’s going to cause a lot of trouble for us. A lot of trouble for Edda.”

“This is none of your business.” Benno’s hand returned to the handle. “Go back to the Inn and forget about me.”

“It is my business, though.” Rose took a careful step forward. She held one hand behind her back, concealing something. It didn’t matter. There was nothing she or anyone else could do to stop Benno.

The handle groaned.

“Whatever this thing told you, it’s not true.” Rose took another step. “All it wants is out of its cage. And if it can, it will use you to go out and hurt people. I know you don’t want that.”

Benno strained, the latch grinding. “This is the only way.”

“There’s another way.”

“What? The Gardens? It isn’t real. It’s a lie Edda tells her crew to keep them motivated. She’s a liar.”

“It is real,” Rose said. “I know it’s real.”

Benno looked down at her, his weight compressing the handle, the latch mere centimeters from the edge of its well. “How?”

Rose lowered her eyes.

“On the Shenandoah,” Benno said. “When we were in Middle Forest, I made a joke. I didn’t think much of it at the time. I asked what you all did before I showed up, how you got anything done. And everyone clammed up. Everyone got weird. And there was something else. Something Edda said to Mother. Just like the last one.” Rose cracked her neck.

“There was someone else…” Benno eased up slightly on the handle. “Before me. There was someone else, wasn’t there? Someone who couldn’t get hurt. Who couldn’t die.”

Rose swallowed. “Yeah,” she said, then shook her head at the floor for a few seconds before looking Benno in the eyes. “Annabel. She was with us for years. Just through and through one of the best people I’ve ever met. And fucking hard. I watched her walk off bullets, fire, electricity—you name it. Not a scratch…” Rose chewed her lip. “She died trying to enter the Gardens. The one time Edda managed to find it. I watched Annabel die. Ripped to pieces from the inside out… That’s how I know it’s real.”

For a moment, the only sound was the slow drip of water from the corridor’s ceiling.

“Then who got in?” Benno asked finally, his grip on the handle unwavering. “Edda said someone had done it before, one person. Who was it?”

“Edda’s father,” Rose said. “Horus. The Scattered King.”

The Baba’ba’ksum’s flaky tongue lapped at the space beyond the bars.

“What did he wish for?” Benno asked.

Rose shook her head. “I honestly don’t know. It was a long time before I was born."

Benno nodded at the wet ground, then straightened up. “Well I’m not waiting around for Edda to finish her chore list. And if I’m gonna die trying to get into the Gardens anyway…” He pressed down on the rusty handle.

“You stupid…” Rose shook her head. “I don’t know how this is gonna play out in the long run, but I promise you’ll regret it.”

Benno ignored her. The latch clacked free and the heavy metal gate began to grind, slowly, open.

Freedom… The Baba’ba’ksum pressed itself against the widening crack between the gate and rock, its gnarled snout pulsing with hungry anticipation.

Rose tented a little hand briefly over her eyes. “This is gonna be such a big fucking problem for us…” She looked up and shrugged. “Out of the shit frying pan, into the shit fire.”

She withdrew her hand from her back. Benno didn’t bother checking what she held. What was she going to do? Stab him? Shoot him? He dug his sneakers into the silted ground and shoved the gate wider.

The Baba’ba’ksum’s rotten face wedged through the crack. Freedom…

Rose tossed something. It glinted in the torchlight as it tumbled through the air. Benno clocked it in his periphery just as it struck the Baba’ba’ksum’s head.

There was a flash of light and an explosion of heat.

Benno flinched and shielded his eyes, releasing the gate, which slammed shut as the Baba’ba’ksum burst into a blanket of thick, yellow flames.

Screeeeeeeeeee! it shrieked in Benno’s ears. Screeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

It thudded to the ground, thrashing and writhing in the dense fire. It rolled from one end of the enclosure to the other, then toward the back wall, where it twisted and bulged.

Screeeee… it whimpered, before, with a crackling hiss of air, it went silent and still.

Benno watched it burn, his eyes contracting against the harsh firelight. A cold, empty weight he hadn’t noticed, which lingered in his hands and feet, passed up his arms and legs and settled in his chest, and as the Baba’ba’ksum’s lifeless body crumbled into ash, the cold weight dissolved into Benno’s breath, and exited his body through his mouth, and he was left only with the familiar longing and interminable sadness inherent to his normal self.

“Are you back with us?” Rose asked, one cursory eyebrow raised.

Benno wiped his eyes. “I thought that thing was indestructible,” he said. “It survived a nuclear blast.”

“With a host, it’s pretty close.” Rose adjusted her bangs. “And it almost had you there. I don’t know what I would’ve done if it had attached. But alone, it’s not much tougher than most animals.”

The flames waned quickly into a smoldering orange glow.

“I’m sorry,” Benno said.

“Yeah.” Rose tapped one tattooed finger on her chin. “Me too.”

“I know it was lying to me. I know it was trying to use me. But I just… I just want so badly to…” Benno took a slow breath and gazed down the corridor at the white wooden door. “What do you think is in there?”

Rose peered past Benno toward the end of the hallway, and her brow furrowed. “I don’t know what the Baba’ba’ksum told you, but it wasn’t true. Oh and also? Benno? We need to get the fuck out of here. Like now.”