Dark Heart
I wince as my shoe sinks into the thick mud beneath my feet, and I try to ignore the sickly squelching sound it makes. I try not to think about how loud it sounds in my ears as I crouch low and try to stifle my breathing as I press myself flush to one of the overturned logs and ignore the stink of damp, rotting plant matter.
Thump-thump
My teeth dig into my lower lip as I force my eyes open, even though all I want to do is close them and pretend that I’m not here.
That I’m anywhere but here.
Thump-thump
Thump-thump
But I can’t.
I can’t afford to.
I turn and slowly move over to the other side of the log, crawling carefully so as not to make any noise. The fog is thick here, and it covers my movements, but the heartbeat is getting closer and louder every minute.
He’s coming.
I sink as low as I can, covering my mouth with my hands as I press myself into a crevice between a standing tree and the fallen log I’d just crossed, praying that my hair, knotted and mossy green, won’t show up so easily here as it has in other places.
“Please don’t see me…” I whisper the words like a prayer as the sound of heavy, thudding footfalls approach my hiding place.
His breathing is thick, dry, and labored like he’s wheezing through fibrous masses coiled in his lungs. The heartbeat is so loud now, it’s deafening in my ears, and I can barely hear myself think anymore, and the heartbeat is almost as loud as his footsteps.
‘Please don’t see me, please don’t see me, please don’t see me,’ the thought rings in my brain over and over as I huddle against the tree.
I’m small. I’m nobody.
I’m not here and you can’t see me… no one ever sees me.
‘Please don’t see me.’
His boot strikes the ground mere feet from me, and it’s all I can do not to scream as he stops. His breathing is grating on my ears, and the dark, hateful heartbeat is so loud it’s like someone has fit a cast iron pot over my head and taken to beating it with a wooden rod.
Thump-thump
Thump-thump
Thump-thump
Tears filter down my cheeks as I bite through my lip, tasting blood and praying he can’t smell it as I shiver in his presence. Any moment he’ll turn and see me… and any moment I’ll feel the bite of his horrible, notched steel blade as it carves into my back, and then I’ll run, staggering and screaming until he bears down on me again and-
His footsteps trail away, and the heartbeat with them, and only after they’ve vanished completely do I dare to turn my head.
The only sign that he was ever there was the set of deep, thickly treaded bootprints that had stopped less than two feet from where I had been huddled.
“Please don’t see me,” I mumble the words in a quiet mantra as I sneak slowly and quietly over to a generator, “p-please don’t see me…”
It’s a little ironic. All my life no one has ever seen me, and all I really wanted from life was to be seen, even just once. To be recognised as another human being, to be acknowledged for my efforts, maybe?
Stopping at one of the big, bulky generators inside one of the rotting wooden jungle gyms of slatted wood that were once structures, I hesitate. It’s cold and quiet, and I know what I have to do if I want to get out of here alive. I have to start the generator, but they’re noisy, they’re loud, and they stink of oil… and if He comes anywhere near He'll definitely hear it.
He would hear me.
But I had to do it… otherwise, He would find me. The crows would help Him if I tried to hide for too long, which was something I’d found out the hard way, so I gingerly peeled a single panel off of the side of the generator and set it on the ground, reached inside, and started to work.
It’s slow, and I’m clumsy, but I’m never bad enough to make the generator snap and spark like I’d seen others do when they went too quick and weren’t paying attention. I might be clumsy but I’m not stupid… I at least knew that I was clumsy and that if I went slowly I could compensate by doing things carefully.
The first cylinder fires up, at first slowly, then faster and with more confidence. I was a quarter of the way done… just a little bit more and-
SNAP!
Someone screams in the distance and I turn to see the bruise-red vision of their aura briefly sear itself into my retina before it fades.
Rusted metal teeth are hidden in the tall grass of the swamp tonight. I’ve sidestepped a few already, and soon they’ll be in his grasp.
Slow and careful.
Two cylinders going, I feel a little hopeful. This isn’t the first generator, it’s the third. Once I’ve finished this one it will only take two more to-
Hold that thought.
I scamper over to a locker and duck into as quickly as I dare, then pull it closed as hard as I can as I wait for the scream to come.
Do you know what agony sounds like? It sounds like a bleeding throat trying to scream but failing. It sounds like snapping ribs and bones breaking to splinters. It sounds like the rapid staccato breathing and the deafening roar of your own blood pumping in your ears as a monster that looks like a man, with a face pale and cold as death, pins you to a corner and stares down at you, and the last thing you hear is his slow, even breathing before he rams a knife into your guts.
Agony sounds like the weighted clangor of chains that hang from a cruel post as a warm body is slammed onto the butcher hook at their end.
She screams like an alarm klaxon, and I pressed my hands to my ears as I try to drown it out.
“Please don’t see me, please don’t see me, please don’t see me,” I chant over and over until the screaming ends.
I count to six, then push the door open and peek cautiously out and around, then emerge. I wait another moment to be sure there’s no heartbeat, then make my over to the generator.
He’ll be here soon to check on this generator unless he finds someone else to chase. It’s an ungracious thought, but I find myself praying that he runs across someone other than me before he gets here. If he does then I’ll be able to get this one finished and we’ll be one step closer to escape.
If he doesn’t then…
Well, maybe I’ll be able to hide from him again.
Maybe.
Three cylinders are going now, and I can feel the sweat dripping between my shoulders and down my back despite how cold and damp it is in the swamp.
Moment of truth… the fourth cylinder begins to chug, and I know I’m only seconds away. There’s still no heartbeat, but even if there was I’m too close now… I have to commit… I have to-
SNAP!
I feel a gutwrenching wave of relief as I hear someone caught by one of his traps. The other person is still hanging from the hook, but the moment my generator goes live I know it doesn’t matter.
He knows I’m here, but he also knows that I’ll be long gone before he would make it over here. He’s not going to give up certain prey for possible prey… he has one caught already and that’s all he cares about.
Bird in the hand, and all that.
The bruise of their aura tells me that the other person was caught far enough from the hooked one that I could risk it. It’s possible that there’s someone else going for them, but I don’t want to take that gamble…
Unhooking was a risky proposition at the best of times, but knowing he’s on the other side of the Trial Grounds and muscling another one of us onto a hook is about as ideal as situations get when it comes to rescuing someone else.
I sprint, trying to make it there as fast as I can, and knowing I’ll be seen if he so much as glances in my direction.
‘Please don’t see me, please don’t see me, please don’t see me,’ the chant echoes in my mind as the hook comes into sight, and with it a tired and sobbing Bon Bon is trying to grip the chain and take some of the weight of her body off the hook.
I get underneath her and heave.
She cries out, but between her efforts and mine, she drops free to the ground, panting and crying.
“It got Lyra, Wallie,” Bon Bon sobs. “It got her!”
Lyra… she probably-
A scream splits the air and I wince. Well, at least we know where she is now, I guess.
“She’s already been hooked once,” Bon Bon says quietly. “We have to get to her!”
“He’ll have trapped the area around her by the time we get there…” I said carefully, scanning the area around us. “A-and we’re almost out… we just need two more generators.”
As I finished the thought, another generator went live, and I tried to give her a cautious smile. “One more generator.”
“B-but… but by the time we finish it, Lyra will be…” Bon Bon looks distraught.
“S-she’ll be back at the campsite when we get there,” I try to sound encouraging, but Bon Bon’s face twists into an ugly scowl.
“Seriously?!” She spits the word as quietly and as venomously as possible. “You’ve been hooked and s-sacrificed, Wallie, you know what that… that thing does to you in the dark!”
“Sshhh!” I press my hands over her mouth. “Please be quiet.”
She slaps my hand away, still glaring through teary eyes.
“This is why you never had any friends, Wallflower,” Bon Bon shouldered past me towards where Lyra was hooked, and I watched her go.
If she moved fast she would get there before the second stage, the struggle against the creature’s claws and mandibles, elapsed, and it took Lyra away to the dark place.
But only if she moved fast.
And moving fast was a bad idea against the Trapper.
I turned and ran towards a generator, and was delighted to find it already half-finished. If Bon Bon had just listened to me we could have had it done in no time, but now I had to do it myself.
Selfish bitch.
I scowl, the thought is a bad one but it's true. Bon Bon is going to get caught, and then Flash will probably get caught trying to save Bon Bon, and if I don't manage to open a gate before then, then we would all be in the dark place. If Bon Bon had just listened to me…
But no one ever listens to me.
Just like they never saw me.
I wipe at the tears on my cheeks, smearing caked mud across them as I work at the generator, and I’m barely finishing the third cylinder when I hear the sound I was expecting this entire time.
SNAP!
Bon Bon screams, and crows fly as if in triumph, darkening the skies.
Just a little bit longer… I just need them to distract him a little bit longer and I’ll be able to make it. It’s the last one, and I’m sure Flash is doing his stupid white knight thing and waiting in the wings to get one of them free, maybe Lyra, while the Trapper is hooking his fresh prey.
I glance over my shoulder over and over, trying to gauge how long it will take the Trapper to get Bon Bon to a hook before-
I hear another voice cry out in pain, male this time… Flash! The Trapper must have found him, he must have left Bon Bon slugged on the floor, crawling like a worm in the mud while he chased down his new prey.
I’d never make it to Lyra in time, she’s moments from death so there’s no point. No, I’m better off finishing this generator, then maybe…
Maybe at least one of us will get out.
Why couldn’t Bon Bon have just listened to me?!
The generator roars to life just as Flash goes down under the Trapper’s blade, but I ignore his scream. I run as fast as I can to the nearest door. The thing in the dark place, it lights up the doors to our eyes for a moment, but only for a moment, and I try to memorise where both of them are in case I need to run to the other one.
Hopefully, I won’t.
I’m barely halfway to it when I hear Flash get hooked, he must’ve fallen right near one of the monster's horrible posts.
'I’m sorry Flash,’ I try not to think of him writhing in pain on the hook.
He's always so nice, so... so he'll understand.
I pull down the lever and try to listen past the mechanical growl of the door. Why hasn’t the Trapper hooked Lyra yet? Did he lose track of her? Maybe Lyra crawled somewhere inconvenient… well, if he was looking for her then it would give me more time at least.
Thump-thump
Thump-thump
Thump-thump
My breath catches in my throat. He’s moving in my direction, and fast. I glance over my shoulder and immediately see his imposing bulk powering towards me, agitation clear in his movements as Bon Bon wriggles uselessly in his iron grasp.
I’m almost done though! The door is almost open!
The door snaps and crackles as all the fuses go live and the door slowly cranks open, and as it does I watch the Trapper turn, almost like he’d been waiting for just that moment, and shifts his grip on Bon Bon while he aims for a hook.
It doesn’t matter, I can’t save them, so I run for the exit. At least I can make it out… at least one us can-
As Bon Bon screams, bars of black, fog-forged iron slam up in front of me like a set of furious jaws and I plow face-first into them.
I stumble and drop backwards, staring up in disbelief at the shut path in front of me.
It was barred. The shadows and Fog congealed into a barrier that locked me inside of the Trial with him, and the realisation strikes me right on the heels of that thought. He was waiting. He knew. Bon Bon was a sacrifice to that thing in the dark so it would lock the gates again.
“That’s not fair,” I sob as I sit up and stare at the sealed exit, “I… I made it…”
The heartbeat thuds and hammers behind me, and his heavy, rasping breathing fills my ears. It’s so close that I can feel the cold fury bleeding off of him, and taste the splinters of coal that always seem to hang around his obscenely muscular body.
I don’t turn around, I just raise my hands up and cover my face like a child playing hide-and-go-seek.
“Please don’t see me,” I chant the mantra quietly as tears trickle down my cheeks. “Please don’t see me, please don’t see me, please don’t see me.”
His breathing began to ease, and for a brief moment, I dare to hope that he might have left… why? I have no idea, but maybe… just maybe…
I turned my head, peeking through my fingers.
He’s still there, standing silent as the grave over me and staring down. His cold, empty eyes meet mine through that grinning, carven mask of his, and I let out a small, shivering sob.
“Please don’t see me.”
He moves so fast.
So much faster than anything human-sized has any right to move, and certainly nothing that stands better than two meters tall and weighs in heavier than two grown men put together.
His fist, gritty and calloused, grips my throat and he heaves me into the air. At the same moment, he throws down one his beloved bear traps with his other hand and slams it open with his foot.
No… no, no, no, no!
He tightens his grip on my throat and I hear something crackle unpleasantly inside as I choke for air.
The Trapper turns and hangs me over the trap he’s laid, but pauses, as if thinking. I stare at his face, masked as it is, and silently beg him to let me go. To just… just pretend he didn’t see me.
Everyone always pretends they don’t see me!
NO ONE SEES ME!
A single, thick, coal-gritted finger rises to brush across my face almost gently and pushes a stray bit of hair from my eyes.
“SIS… TER…”
What?
Then he moves, jerking me backwards and up, and I have a brief, horrible glimpse of the open jaws of the bear trap racing towards me as he hammers me down into their cold, steel grip.
The last thing I hear is the snapping of metal teeth.
Please don’t see me, please don’t see me, please don’t see me.
I’m floating in the dark place, and it’s so, so cold. There’s nothing here, nothing but me and… and It. The thing in the dark that’s always waiting, and always watching, and I know it’s there. I can feel it moving in the shadows, I can hear the clicking of its horrible body, and in a moment of clarity, I realise I’m thankful it’s so dark.
I don’t think I could stay sane if it was light enough to see whatever was there with me.
Daughter… hunter… we see you...
P-Please… just let me go… please…
Invisible… invisible…
“I know…” I sob, slurring my words as the cloying miasma of the fog seeps into my brain. “I’m always invisible… n-no one ever sees me… I d-don’t m-matter… I never have.”
We see. Always see.
“J-Just do it…”
The darkness is silent, and the thing inside of that darkness only moreso, until I feel its claws begin to wrap around me. It’s about to start… the ripping, the tearing, and the eating… and I brace myself.
But the pain doesn’t come. Neither does the feeling of ‘Not’ that follows.
You-See.
“W-What?” I sniffle, opening my eyes and looking around to find the horrible, spiderlike claws of the thing surrounding me.
You-See. You see them.
I… I did see them. I watched all of them, all the time. It was all I could do because there was never anything else to do. I was just the Wallflower, the girl in the corner that no one ever thinks about.
Will you-Won’t you?
“Will I… What?”
Will you be mine?
I swallow thickly.
“Your… your what?” I ask quietly.
Pain blossoms in my back as one of its scorpion-stinger appendages jabs me, and I let out a cry, but it’s not the all-consuming agony of the other times I was sacrificed. Why, it’s barely even a love-tap by the thing in the dark’s standards.
I feel something flow through me, something noxious and intoxicating, like tainted liquor, and suddenly fog is billowing around me. Black ink slips silently over my hands and body, tightening into comfortable, and terribly dark layers of cloth.
And from my open hands, a pool of white bleeds outwards until it fills my palms, then slowly forms into a face.
A pale white face, with its eyes as nothing more than crude dark pools that are open wide in horror, and its empty mouth stretched in a silent scream.
My Ghost.
I run my fingers over the smooth contours of the mask, feeling a faint smile find its way onto my face for the first time in a long, long time.
Will you-Won’t you?
Turning the mask over in my hands, I raise it up with one hand, and with the other I reach back and tug the hood of my new outfit over my head, concealing my hair, and press the mask over my face.
Will you be mine?
“I will,” I say, and my voice comes out strange and twisted from beneath the mask. “Just… can I ask you one thing?”
Ask.
I smile underneath the mask, and take a deep breath. The fog rushes into my lungs, then pours out of me, suffusing the air around my body, and sinking into skin, my bones, my tongue, my eyes…
And my Heart.
The heartbeat stills to a deathly silence as I draw out a smooth, silver blade with a handle of polished white bone.
“Please don’t see me.”