The phantom snarled, revealing two ghastly rows of crooked fangs.
“I knew Clyde would be more use to us dead than alive,” a masked man said. He gestured to the guy with the book. “Dispatch this stupid cunt once and for all, boss.”
Gone was the incompetence, the bumbling idiocy. These guys had stepped it up a notch. They knew what they were doing now.
Book Man read. The others chanted, those same gurgling demon-sounds, the mystery and power behind it all frightening and awful.
The reader broke into English. “Sister Folly, send this enemy to suffer in the realm of the shadow ones and return our devil doll in her place. We command you to overtake this man so he may do our bidding.”
Capillary networks of red webbing spread over the smoke being, stitching its amorphous shape into a body with contours and edges, form. Humanoid, but a few feet taller than the tallest man. Skin as red and glistening as a newborn mouse coated spindly arms and legs. Head bald, ears pointed, eyes pits of ink. The demonic, demented creature from her apartment vision descended upon Brian and knelt on his chest. It aimed knifelike claws at his mark.
“No!” Helen’s scream was impotent, too late. She snapped into nothing.
Singing cicadas and croaking frogs woke her up from dreamless unconsciousness. She opened her eyes to gunmetal dusk. The soles of her shoes sank into sucking mud.
To her left, willow trees’ drooping foliage wept into glinting, placid water, thick roots carving cubbyholes in the dirt. Helen walked along a soggy, untrodden path, bayou night air rich with brackish odors. A Chinese lantern of a yellow moon, full and bright and presenting its leaping rabbit, hung high in the sky.
Several feet ahead, faint rustling sounds fluttered.
“Welcome to your new home. It’s awful, but you sort of get used to it. Not me, though. That’s why we’re gonna trade places.” Helen’s own voice spoke, and she turned in the sound’s direction. The double leaned against a hefty tree trunk, a slinky evening gown the color of spun gold twinkling in the moonlight. Of course. The Golden Phase was underway. Not for long, though.
Helen pulled the clear crystal out of her pocket and pointed it at the clone. Energy poured from it, a glitter cloud made up of winking shades of honey and amber and vanilla ice cream laved in caramel. The heavenly light, humming and pleasant, oozed from the stone and hung in the air.
The double stepped closer. She poked the crystal with the tip of a finger, and the beautiful energy turned gray and fell to the dank ground as particles of ash. “My realm, my rules. I caught the song dedicated to you. Your boyfriend was quite the poet.”
Helen’s eyes watered at the stench of death breath. “Is.”
“Nah. He’s done. And so are you.” A mean hand grabbed Helen’s hair and bashed her head into the nearby tree.
Dazed and hurting, she blinked, fighting for consciousness.
The other woman dragged her a few feet and trudged into the swamp, pulling Helen behind by the hair. She fought in vain, cold water seeping up to her knees, her thighs. Something taut swam past, brushing her hip. She screamed.
“Atta girl. Get scared. This place is scary as fuck.” The clone shoved her down.
Helen’s head plunged under water. She rebelled against its fetid flavor, gagging and struggling until her lungs hurt. The double pulled her up, and she gasped, her world an upside-down of misery.
“It’s always nighttime and always wet. There are venomous snakes and alligators and giant leeches and nowhere warm and dry to sleep.”
“I can help you,” Helen stammered, spitting out silt and algae. This miserable place was some self-created hell born of negative energy, she bet, and if granted a moment to concentrate she had an idea for how to transform it.
Changing base elements into refined ones was the essence of alchemy, and she could do it. Heal her own energy as she switched from Left to Right for good and elevate the clone’s in the process. She clutched the crystal as tight as she could.
“God, you’re dense. You’re helping me by taking my place so I can go up and party with the dime store Satanists as they execute their Golden Phase.”
Helen went back under and up again, dead leaves and soaked hair sticking to her face, her scalp in agony from the hard pull.
In the dark pit of despair, Helen felt the crystal, pure and good and tingling, in her palm. She knew its love, in her, along with Brian’s. Helen focused everything she had, every ounce of her being, on the love in her heart.
A column of energy, soft white and shot through with golden slivers, charged through her body and burst from the crown of her head. In her, with her, and all around her. Pure love, expansive love, love for people and animals and everything that ever was or could be. She visualized a habitat of kindness, a place where intentions were kind and happiness reigned and no living thing had to suffer ever again. “I’ve got your Golden Phase right here.”
The clone morphed into the monster up in the secret room, all claws and teeth, leathery red skin. “Don’t you fucking dare! You will not interfere with the sacrifice. You will not.”
An image from childhood registered in Helen’s brain. The monster before her resembled the one Little Helen had imagined lived in her closet.
The thing about monsters. Helen’s mother’s voice spoke in her head, kind and clear and soothing. She pictured the woman, savored one of the few good memories of her from the time before she’d snapped.
Helen was four, perhaps, trembling under the covers and terrified of the dark.
Dolores sat on the bed, maternal and loving, looming large as a giantess and projecting comfort. In that rare moment, her unreliable and unstable mother
