chest. “Sad baby child!”
Dawn wished Nursie would stop pretending to be human because it just croaked up the smell of blood and death. When she wept, the monster’s maternal instincts came closer to the surface.
“She no cry now,” said Nursie shortly after re-growing her skin. “Ist sad kid, no?” And the thing pulled Dawn up into the crook of her neck cooing and rubbing her back with an oversized hand while she swayed rhythmically and hummed a long forgotten song.
Impossibly, Dawn smelled a floral perfume in amongst the stench of body odor, rotten milk and blood. It reminded her of an expression Mr. Jay used when they came upon a group of old dead women masking their condition with lots of cosmetics. “An overabundance of toiletries,” he said, pinching his nose impishly after they passed. “Heavy on the toilet!” The thought of him brought a tortured smile to her lips and more tears. That only encouraged more consolation from Nursie.
“Nursie hates to see she sad-First-mother child weeps,” the monster consoled, pausing at a wide iron door and working a heavy handle to open it. The rusted plate slid back to reveal a dark opening from which a foul stench wafted. It was rot and feces-damp and mildew-and only made Dawn think of dark things and death.
The forever girl broke from her sorrow long enough to notice that Nursie had shed her human skin once again, and was proceeding with a powerful shuffling gait; her claw-like feet gripping the floor. As they entered the new darkness an orange illumination came up like lit shadows and gave Dawn an unwelcome look at her captor’s blood-slicked cheeks and a shadowy first vision of her new confines.
The room was enormous but narrow, like it was wedged in the gargantuan cleft or valley between two mountainous stone walls. The floor was made of fibrous webbing that gave a jouncing platform for the monster to cross.
“Home and the heart,” chortled Nursie as she held Dawn close to her neck with one hand and started to climb long woven sheets of fibrous material into the upper shadows. “Casa e cuore.”
She hummed and chuckled as she gained greater height and Dawn was sickened by the need to cling tightly to Nursie’s ugly neck.
“Poor bambino, fussing,” Nursie croaked as she climbed pausing at intervals to check on her burden and give a reassuring pat. “First madre loves Nursie, si?”
Against the pitch black, Dawn could see the gigantic cavern was a patchwork of fibers and woven platforms. The whole construction swayed and rocked under Nursie’s weight. The action caused much movement and swaying, and it was then that the dim light glinted on something that made Dawn cry out.
Glistening shapes were woven into the structure for support, for handgrips and foot rungs, small things easily overlooked at first. Except that the webbing bound some together, and articulated them, gave them the semblance of life. Bones, and parts of skeletons bound together by fabric and fiber-small, all children, were bound up in the webbing, the flesh missing-in places dried and wriggling with the Change’s weird reanimation.
Dawn wept anew and pressed her eyes into Nursie’s neck. There were thousands of bones all around, hanging and dangling throughout the structures. Beneath them far below, Dawn chanced a look and saw a wriggling mat of the yellowed bones and skeletonized bodies, twitching and moving from wall to wall in a nightmarish scene.
“Der, there,” consoled Nursie. “Erste Mutter need milk, yah?” And the monster surmounted a broad platform. She muttered something and from a couple of points in the air over them, a red illumination grew to give light.
“She-em der cold?” Nursie asked, holding Dawn out-swinging her by the armpits. “Or ist she-em hunger-yah? She hungry!”
Nursie’s monstrous eyes looked down at her long, slick chest and one claw-like hand ran over the nipples there-ugly yellow milk sprayed from each gorged teat it touched.
Dawn followed the gesture and her stomach turned at the sight of the apple-sized spigots of flesh.
“Or she needs slaap?” Nursie whispered, gesturing down and to her left, “Sleep like ragazzi.”
Dawn followed the look and screamed when she saw the boys Nursie took from the Dormitory. Both were asleep-or drugged-and tangled or bound in the fibrous cord that comprised Nursie’s home. Their bondage did not horrify Dawn so much as their condition. One of the boy’s legs had been chewed down to the bone. Living muscle, naked, curled and flexed as the boy slept. The other’s stomach was distended and moved like it was full of giant worms.
“No!” she screamed, and started pushing and slapping at the monstrosity that held her. Her little fists beat quietly against the massive face and chest. But the action only excited the monster, as murky milk started spurting from the monstrous nipples.
“Fussy! Fussy mother…” Nursie cooed and chuckled. “Special ragazza, this girl.” And she squatted then reclined against the fibrous material. She rolled on her side. The dribbling nipples sprayed the dank air. “Drink! Drink!” With a powerful hand, she grabbed Dawn and turned her face toward the teats. “Den slaap and dream. She-em eat?”
Dawn fought and struggled against the monster’s powerful hands-the milk sprayed toward her face and she strained to keep her mouth away.
And then a voice cut the scene: “Lillake!”
Nursie’s eyes burned fiercely, and her long neck swept up like a serpent’s.
“Let her go!” the voice continued, and Dawn’s heart leapt because she knew it was Mr. Jay! She knew the voice so well, had been praying to hear it for so long.
Nursie roared and lurched to her full height, claws embedded in the fabric of her nest. She clutched Dawn to her reeking chest. “Nein. It Nursie’s time!” The monster held Dawn up and shook her. “E tempo di Lillake!”
The forever girl was surprised to feel a quickening of the creature’s pulse and a quiver develop in her limbs.
“It is not my job to do this, Lillake,” Mr. Jay said. He was standing about forty feet away at the edge of the large woven platform. “I have resisted.” His voice was tinged with irony or sadness. “But in this case, you make the exception a pleasure.” He raised a hand.
Nursie bellowed, her teeth clashing in the air, and charged Mr. Jay, swinging Dawn like a hammer. The forever girl screamed as blood rushed to her head, as she swept toward the magician.
Mr. Jay spoke a word and Nursie screamed.
Suddenly Dawn was tumbling across the woven floor toward a dark opening in the fabric and a long drop into shadow. But then small hands were on her, warm hands and strong, caught her before she fell. They pulled her up. A pair of brown-haired boys stood there-identical to look upon-beside them was the little boy with the helmet and deadly hand she’d first seen at the hideout. But fear and tension made liars of their bravery-and their eyes kept returning to the scene.
Mr. Jay confronted Nursie-he held his walking stick high and it gave off a clean white flame that blinded the monster. She halted her charge to throw sharp claws up to hide her eyes.
In the clean new light Nursie was grotesque and pitiful despite her killing power. The veins pulsed under her thin and leprous skin, and the tumorous muscle slid underneath it like serpents.
“No Mago!” she bellowed, her voice weakening. “E tempo di Lillake.”
“It’s not your time,” the magician said, and the monster charged. “It’s over for all of us.”
He easily dodged her slashing jaws, stepping in to slap her forehead.
“Get out!” he commanded and the monster screamed.
Nursie suddenly glowed with a harsh hot inner light that etched the shape of her guts and bones. She took two steps back, but there was a harsh cracking sound as her burning spine and thighbones snapped. The power within her ignited-and Nursie burst into a pillar of flame.
Mr. Jay turned from it as the fire spread outward and started to consume the platform under them. It roared up the fabrics and burned toward the structure’s moorings on the walls-the monstrous fibers flashing to cinders.
Mr. Jay ran to Dawn. She jumped into his arms. Her heart shivered as he pulled her close, and then he laughed.
“No time for reunions,” he chuckled and kissed her cheek. He looked back at the burning webbing and bones and then he turned to the forever children. Without a word, they ran, scrambling and scurrying down the burning fibrous ladders and platforms and left the roaring fire to consume the monstrous evidence.
