Chapter 64

[The following chapter contains strong language. Reader caution is advised.]

Thursday 13th January 2000

The first days of the year 2000 have been relatively quaint… as futuristic as “the year 2000” sounds, naturally it’s not been any different so far. Getting back to school has underlined that even further, because now, it’s really hit me just how little has changed. All that celebration was more for what comes down the line, and these were simply the first tiny steps away from what had come before.

I hadn’t exactly thought otherwise – that everything would miraculously change and we’d all be riding hoverboards and carrying tiny computers on our wrists – but it actually sinking in made everything feel underwhelming.

We had a meeting with Lucy and the rest of Adam’s agents a couple of days into the new year, during which we heard a lot more detail (with a lot more certainty that it was accurate) on what had happened than what Lucy had told me previously. It sounded pretty terrifying, to so suddenly have your home invaded and to be driven out. In the end, we decided it would be best to inform the police that Melody had taken the country house, and accompanied them to it… only the place had completely vanished. Presumably some kind of shadow-trickery that we couldn’t penetrate with our weapons – and we tried, of course. There was no way the place could have literally vanished off the face of the Earth, so while we had something of a lead on her… she wasn’t going to make it easy for us.

Thursday morning, and as I sluggishly made my way through a corridor at school, I happened to pass Russell, something that never really happened that often, somehow. He seemed to not see me…

“Hey Russell…” I greeted him with a light wave as we crossed paths.

His response was something of a grunted “mhm”.

I turned, for a moment, watching his back as he walked off without breaking his stride. The niggling fear in the back of my head was suddenly, assuredly confirmed: he was ignoring me, probably upset that I’d managed to spend so little time with him in the past year or so.

You know me well enough by now that it shouldn’t surprise you to hear my guilt wouldn’t leave me for the rest of the school day. Admittedly, my mind started to drift away from it once school ended and the six of us headed back to Dakota’s… ironic, I guess, that my guilt over hanging out with my newer friends would escape my mind when hanging out with my newer friends…

Naturally we got homework out of the way first, but then Bao turned the PlayStation on and he and Kitty started playing a violent zombie video game, with the rest of us watching like it was some kind of spectator sport (though Zahid was trying not to get invested, his attention split between the TV and a magazine).

We got to enjoy maybe fifteen minutes of that before an unexpected knock on the front door managed to pierce straight through the laidback atmosphere.

“Did someone order pizza…?” Kendal quizzed the rest of us, genuinely struck by the possibility that she’d missed out on a pizza order being made.

“Who’s getting it?” Bao asked, his focus still entirely on the game, virtual trigger-finger working away to fend off zombie hordes.

“Me, I guess…”

Dakota got up from the sofa with a spring in her step, heading across to the hallway and out of sight. I tried to listen past the in-game gunfire and groaning to hear the imminent exchange at the front door.

“Ah, hello, sorry to bother you…” a man’s voice uttered with mannered politeness.

“Jehovah’s…?” Zahid suggested drearily.

“Shhh!” Kendal urged him, a finger to her lips. Dakota had apparently said something to the man in that time, as he continued on:

“Am I right in understanding that this is the current residence of Kitty Townsend…?”

If that sentence wasn’t enough to make my chest tighten, the sight of Kitty freezing up, silent panic taking hold of her, definitely was.

“That depends who’s asking…” Dakota replied to the man sternly.

“My name is James Croft… I’m a friend of the family.”

“The family she ran away from?”

Kitty stood up from her place on the floor, abandoning the controller and the game, and walked almost in a trance out to the hallway, all while James clarified:

“Yes, and I’m not sure how much she’s told you about it but…”

He trailed off when she entered the hallway. Seeing her must have derailed his train of thought.

“Hi, James…” I heard Kitty mutter softly.

“Kitty… you don’t know how glad I am to see you…” he greeted her warmly.

It was right around here that the rest of us got up and headed to the hallway too, curiosity clearly getting the better of all of us (and, at least on my part, a defensive instinct for Kitty’s sake).

James Croft was wearing a suit, which made me assume he had either come here straight from work or was a very formal dresser. Clean-shaven, neat hair, reliable face. Kitty took another step towards him.

“How did you find me…?”

“With a lot of difficulty,” he remarked with a sigh of relief.

Dakota turned to Kitty, and moved closer, in a manner which felt inherently maternal.

“Is he good?” she asked in hushed tone; Kitty nodded, lightly but confidently, and with that, Dakota returned to James.

“Would you like to come in…?” she offered, a little more warmly though still firm enough to make clear that she was in charge.

“That would be lovely,” the man smiled, rubbing his hands together to fight back the January chill while stepping through the doorway.

The rest of us shared bemused glances. It felt unusual to have a complete stranger enter the house, and even though this was somebody Kitty knew – and gave a vote of confidence in – she spoke so little of what her life was like before I met her that I still didn’t feel all that comfortable with him. Actually, being someone from Kitty’s clearly-bitter past was probably why I felt on-edge, because even if he wasn’t a bad person, he still played some part in her history.

As Kendal crumpled her lips at me in uncertainty, the colour of the wall behind her seemed to fade away… no, not just the wall, but everything around her, around all of us. Neutral grey descended upon us, and with such an abrupt change to the world, it came as no surprise to me that James was now frozen to the spot two steps away from the front door.

“Did anybody else feel like this was coming…?” Bao asked nervously, moving back and away from James a little.

If he expected something to happen to James – for him to turn into a monster, perhaps – then he was surprisingly off the mark.

Through the open doorway slithered something only vaguely humanoid, rotting roots coiled and tangled into the oversized upper body of a man and a nest of writhing tendrils for a lower-half. Its face was the most human aspect of it, clearly-defined if exaggerated. And while the rest of us merely summoned forth our weapons, Kitty immediately ran back into the living room.

“Kiiiiittyyyy…” the entity growled after her, ignoring the rest of us entirely as we suited up. It – he – drifted forwards, only to halt as Dakota’s spear pointed directly at his chest.

“Excuse me… I need to see my daughter…” he spoke, glaring down at her with an insidious grin on his face.

A monster from Kitty’s mind. A father without humanity.

“Give me one good reason-” Dakota began, but a surge of vines knocked her against the wall and restrained her before she could say anything else. The plant-father gave her a look of smug superiority.

A pink arrow shot straight through the vines stretching from his body to Dakota’s, severing them, letting Dakota slide down the wall and return her feet to the ground. Kendal took aim at the monster himself, but he moved forward with surprising speed, catching her off-guard and then dodging the arrow that she fired in haste.

Zahid swung with his axe – from what I could see in the rush of action, the edge of the blade was multiplied like the crossing strokes of an asterisk – but our enemy’s body unfurled and expanded, neatly avoiding the blow.

And right then, another figure of the same general build entered the house, female this time.

“And I guess you’re Mammy Townsend?” Dakota hissed at the second intruder before launching a spiralling guillotine of green right at her. Like her monstrous partner, the plant-mother dodged effortlessly, though Dakota just about managed to launch a second projectile in the entity’s path, landing a glancing blow.

“I’ll go check on Kitty!” Kendal shouted out to the rest of us. “Keep working on holding these freaks back!”

She dashed back to the living room, closing the door behind her for good measure.

“You take the mum, I’ll take the dad,” I instructed Bao – it only made sense, considering which ones we were closer to.

“Was just thinking that!” he nodded.

With that, I moved over to help Zahid in battle with the plant-father, who had unravelled himself to the extent that he was just a mass of ever-shifting vines with a human-like head. I slashed straight for him, but he dodged my arc of blue.

“You can’t keep us from her…” escaped his cracked lips, with such composure even as he evaded our attacks.

“Got any constructs up your sleeve?” Zahid asked me. “Cos I’m fresh out of ideas.”

“D’you think some kind of Lokon-fire would work?” I suggested.

The plant-father promptly pushed both of us back with surprising force, throwing us against the end of the hallway and the thankfully-closed downstairs toilet door.

“He didn’t like the sound of that…” Zahid grunted as the two of us tried to recover ourselves quickly. Ahead of us, the father was moving towards the living room door, Dakota and Bao were having barely any more luck than us in combat with the mother, and a third figure – also female, but a little smaller than the others – slipped past James’ frozen form, grinning viciously.

I sprinted for the door, hoping to intercept the plant-father, but only reaching it once it already had the door open. All I could do was stab my sword into the doorframe, hoping to block its path with my sword. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the creature slipped beneath the sword instead: I willed a plane of blue to develop past the flat of the blade, flooding the doorway as he moved through it. There was no escaping that, and part of his body was sliced away, eliciting a primal scream of agony.

For all of two seconds, I tried to decide whether to follow the father into the living room or to stay out in the hallway. Although Kendal and Kitty were both inside the living room, Kitty didn’t seem prepared to fight, meaning it would be Kendal alone against the monster… but then, he was injured now, and perhaps an easier foe. And if I did decide to help Kendal fight, I’d be leaving Dakota, Bao and Zahid to fight the mother and sister alone – three vs. two, when two vs. one was already a challenge.

But all that said… Kendal was the last line of defence. And now she had company, she could probably do with a little assistance… especially if either of the other two managed to slip past the first line.

All of that – in much simpler, unarticulated form – rushed through my head before I withdrew the blue partition, dug the half-inch of blade back out of the doorway, and leapt through, slamming the door shut behind me.

What was once Dakota’s living room was now an empty grey expanse, seemingly endless. Kendal was already firing upon the plant-father, whose attempts to avoid her arrows were much less successful now.

“Nice work slicing him!” she said enthusiastically while doing her best to riddle him with pink arrows.

“Sorry I couldn’t do more,” I countered, stabbing the monster while he was down for good measure.

“Kitty… I’m here for you…” the plant-father called out, stretching a hand out towards her…

I noticed her for the first time, curled up a short distance away, greyed out.

“Did you really think you could leave us…? We’ll always be with you, Kitty…” the monster told “his” daughter with a disgusting shade of pride.

The door behind me opened again, the plant-sister darting through at speed and heading right for Kitty with such certainty that it was like she already knew exactly where the girl was.

“Hey, Shitty!” she yelled. “We’re baaaack! Stop acting like a baby! Oh, wait, that’s what you do best!”

Kitty remained as she was, but shook, quaked.

“Leave her alone!” Kendal snapped at the monster, turning her bow towards her and firing ferociously. The plant-sister, faster even than her parents, managed to evade every last arrow. Changing tack, my friend instead launched a single, larger arrow right at Kitty; it expanded into a protective bubble as it reached her, sealing her off from everybody else.

Seeing this, the plant-sister turned to Kendal, scowling.

“Who do you think you are? She’s my sister, I can treat her how I want!”

“Someone close the-!”

Dakota’s voice from the hallway was immediately followed by the plant-mother, a little worse for wear even beyond the rotting state of her body, heading through the still-open door. I took a swipe for her as she passed, extending my blade enough to clip her, but to little effect. Dakota, Bao and Zahid all hurried through after her, all briefly taken aback by the new form of the room, and then all returning their attention to the monsters.

“Come on, you stupid girl,” the plant-mother urged “her” child, “get up and stop playing superheroes. You’re thirteen.”

“Almost fourteen!” the monster of a sister reminded her mother snidely. “But she still acts like a little kid, it’s pathetic.”

“Kitty, ignore them, they’re not even real!” Bao called out to her.

“They’re real to her…” Zahid observed solemnly.

“I know, but…”

Bao moved closer to Kitty in her bubble, tense.

“Your family isn’t here anymore! Whatever they used to say doesn’t matter now!”

“Shut up, boy,” the plant-father snarled, crawling forward as little more than a mess of vines with a head. “She’s family. She’s ours.”

Kendal proceeded to kick his head with every ounce of her football skills, sending it flying independent of the rest of his body, across the expanse.

“You hear that?” the mother asked Kitty, her hands on the bubble. “You are ours. No matter how far you run, your heart always belongs to us.”

Within that half-sphere of pink, Kitty’s head rose from her knees.

“When have you ever cared about me…?” she asked through her teeth.

“Pffft!” the sister smirked. “Nobody cares about you. You belong to us.”

The bubble abruptly filled with an explosion of purple, and it appeared to shudder and dissipate under the forces it was incapable of containing. The unmistakable form of Nightmare arose, all spindly and intimidating; their head rolled atop their neck to view the plant-family, mother and daughter taking horrified steps back.

“No, no, you see…” that affected American accent began, “I don’t belong to a single soul on this planet, least of all scum like you…”

“Kitty…” I spoke up, more than a little concerned for where this was about to lead. Nightmare simply raised a finger up to me, gesturing for me to wait.

“What the hell are you…?” the plant-mother asked, earnestly shocked. “You’re not my daughter…!”

“Oh, you finally get it!”

Oily tendrils burst forth, grabbing the simulacra of their mother and their sister and raising them to the empty sky.

“I’m not yours, you disgusting, black-souled husks. And you will never hurt me again.”

They slammed the two into the ground repeatedly, forcefully, gleefully, but without making a sound – not a laugh, not a word.

“We never raised a monster like you…” the plant-father’s head spoke, his neck having unfurled into a handful of vines with which he was crawling forward like a landbound octopus.

“Hey there, old man!” Nightmare grinned brightly. “Yes you did!”

The head lunged for them, but he never reached his target: sharp tendrils pierced right through, and both the head and the pieces of body smudged away.

“Now, I know you’re not real,” our transformed friend addressed their – her – would-be family. “You’re not really them, and if I’m very, very lucky, I’ll never see them again. I know you’re twisted memories from the back of my mind, and somewhere, Harmony is laughing her ass off at all of this.”

Their purple appendages tightened around the pair, beginning to burn through them like acid.

“I know this doesn’t mean anything, but my god, does it feel good to finally say this…”

The outer layers of Nightmare began to dissolve away just like all those months ago, fizzling off evenly to unveil Kitty within. However it was that she’d managed to transform into Nightmare, she was in her Painter clothing now, in full colour, her Lokon claw in-hand with the tendrils stemming from the weapon’s twin blades.

“I hate you. And I’m done with you,” Kitty Townsend told the warped image of her mother and sister, before letting her constructed appendages slice all the way through. The two monsters cried out in fear and in pain for the brief moment before their bodies, like the father before them, proceeded to erase themselves.

“Are you okay now…?” Dakota immediately asked, moving towards the younger girl.

“I’m not sure…” Kitty murmured back. “I think so.”

“Good…” Dakota cooed, hugging Kitty all the same. “Now, let’s go back to the hallway quickly…”

A little shaken, we all returned to the hallway, dispelling our costumes and sending our weapons back upstairs, resuming as close to our positions as we could recall (it never seemed to make much difference to anyone else if we weren’t exactly where we had been). Colour returned to the world, and James came to life once more, pushing the door closed behind him.

“Would you like some tea?” Dakota asked our guest politely as he removed his shoes.

“That would be lovely, thank you,” he nodded with a smile.

“Hey,” Bao nudged my arm, “d’you think I can still play Resident Evil?”

…

“I knew. I knew what was happening with her…” James admitted to us a little while later. “I was never really sure what to do… and I tried, I tried talking with them but they wouldn’t listen to me…”

“The scummiest scumbags…” Kendal insisted with her brow furrowed.

“They’re not horrible through and through, but I can’t fathom why they…”

The man mulled over his words.

“They would fight a lot. Preoccupied with themselves. There were affairs… But they weren’t…”

“I’m sorry, but you’re not exactly painting a good picture of them,” I grumbled.

“Just… please, don’t tell them where I am…” Kitty asked him, staring at him with pleading eyes.

“Are you happy here? Are you safe? Because if you are, then I’ll never say a word,” he assured her. “You’re better off away from them, but more than that, you need to be in a good place.”

“She is,” Dakota spoke up, a warm smile resting on her face. “We’re all here for her.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” James told her with a similar smile. “She deserves so much more than what she had to deal with.”

I looked at Kitty after he said that. Though her eyes were downcast and she seemed a little sheepish, she too was smiling, softly.