The End of the Dream

Chapter 20

Mark's body fell limply to its knees.

He still wore a wide, hateful grin, like some kind of leering death mask. His one remaining eye rolled back until only the white of it showed—the axe had cleaved through the socket of the other and popped it out.

You could see the brain matter exposed and oozing inside his skull. It moved. Something beneath Mark's skin moved as well. Dress pants and the red velvet blazer concealed most of his body, but it was clear to see on his face; the skin buckled and bugled, something squirming beneath it until it split open. Flesh tore like tissue paper, and a creature somewhere between snake and parasite emerged. More wound their way out of his open skull, from the empty remnant of his eye socket, slinking from the sleeves and collar of his shirt.

Staggering, Mark got back up to his feet. "Rude," he said. A snake fell from his mouth.

Although alive and standing once more, Mark was in no state to keep fighting. His movements were jerky and clumsy, as though his body were no more than a sack of meat that the snakes were inelegantly attempting to pilot.

With a gesture that bent his elbow backwards with unsettlingly boneless fluidity, Mark beckoned the monster of the Manor over.

You immediately took a step back, settling into a defensive stance and bracing yourself. Wilford did likewise, his gun raising.

The monster didn't come for you, though. It joined Mark.

A hand and several snakes stroked its fleshy, rotten flank. Then the snakes lunged, fangs sinking in and tearing away a huge chunk of it. Black ichor oozed, dripping out and dissipating in equal parts, leaving a vile fog hanging in the air.

Still wearing the horrid death mask grin, Mark shoved the monster's flesh into his mouth.

Your stomach turned.

Viscera and rotten fluids spilled down his chin. The snakes kept biting, tearing, devouring. Mark convulsed.

"Oh, what the fuck," you muttered, horrified.

Dark fell back to join you and Wilford. His lips were turned up in disgust. "He's absorbing the creature's power."

You stared. "That sounds bad. Very bad. Shouldn't we try to stop him?"

An abrupt gunshot rang out next to your ear, startling you. The bullet never hit. As the monster of the Manor disintegrated, at a far faster rate than it would from being physically torn apart along, its energy released. That thick, black, sickly smog enveloped Mark, obscuring him and the monster from view.

Two more gunshots fired. The coalesced cloud dissolved the bullets before they even got close.

"I do not think we can intervene at this stage," Dark surmised.

Wilford shrugged. "It was worth a shot."

The smog roiled. Shapes within buckled and twisted and contorted. The sounds were even worse; the crack of bone and chitin, the sickening squelch of flesh tearing apart and reforming. Maybe it was for the best that the worst of the details were obscured.

You could do nothing but wait, hackles raised. The crystal's power danced at your fingertips like blue lightning. Dark's axe was raised, Wilford's gun cocked. Whatever the fuck came out of that cloud, you needed to take it down fast.

A few meagre weapons weren't going to do much, you immediately realised. Because the monstrosity that emerged was as tall as three houses stacked together.

Mark's death mask smile remained fixed in place, single remaining eye wide and lurid. That was about all the remained of him with any human resemblance.