The Monster’s Corner: Stories Through Inhuman Eyes

BREEDING THE DEMONS by Nate Kenyon

FOWLER’S PINK, chubby face glistened, and he wore the hungry-dog look of a man waiting out his obsession.

“Been here long?” Ian said.

Fowler grunted and motioned for the photographs, his eyes glazed and mouth stained red from drink. He smelled of sweat and cheap cologne. Three Bloody Marys lay drained upon the nightclub table, and Fowler had loosened his tie.

Ian slipped into the booth and put his leather portfolio on the table, enjoying making the man wait a little. But Fowler would not be denied. He grabbed the portfolio and rifled through its contents, and his breathing quickened as his eyes devoured the pictures within.

Finally he sighed and straightened his head. He removed the photos and slipped them into a plain manila envelope, which he stuck inside his jacket. “You are a fucking genius,” he said.

“I had to give bribes. It’s expensive — ”

“Your business.” Fowler waved a sausage-fingered, jeweled hand. “Keep it to yourself.”

Ian shrugged. He had expected this. Fowler didn’t want to know how he did it, any more than the purchasers of a pornographic magazine wanted a detailed description of how the models were selected and positioned, lighted, and airbrushed. “When can I have the next set?”

“I need some time. And I can’t keep paying everyone off and expect to get away with it.”

“Well, come up with something else, then.” Fowler looked irritated that he had to offer advice. “I don’t have to tell you what happens if you just stop. I’m barely keeping them satisfied as it is.”

“I’ll get it done as soon as I can.”

“Have a new batch by the end of the week.”

“The end of the week? How the hell am I supposed to — ”

The envelope appeared as if from nowhere. It looked thick tonight; a good ten grand, if his eyes served him right. More than enough to put him back to work. At least for now.

“All right,” Ian said. “End of the week.”

Fowler hadn’t always been that way. Ian remembered a slimmer version, eager for nothing more than his next square meal. But he catered to a very eccentric group of customers, and their money was a powerful drug. And they were insatiable. If the eyes were windows to the soul, then Fowler had been blinded long ago. It would not be long before he crossed over completely and became like those he chose to serve.

Back at his studio apartment, Ian searched for his muse among the shadows that lined his walls. He had cleared most of the central space for his work. He had kept only a bed and two ragged chairs in one corner, and installed a slightly concave sheet-metal stage with a drain in the middle of the room.

The floor he kept bare and polished in case of spatters. The large, two-story-high warehouse windows let in plenty of light when he wanted it. But for the most part he kept the monstrous blinds drawn, preferring to work by candlelight, or the dark.

One of his two walk-in freezers still held a few loose ends, but nothing spoke to him as he stood within the drifting mist. It wouldn’t do to throw something together with spare parts. He had something in mind, but he needed to gather the right materials.

He stopped first at Anna’s place. She lived in a brownstone overlooking the river, and the stench of industrial waste wafted up through closed windows and doors and into kitchens and bedrooms and clung to the clothes hanging in closets. But tonight the air was clear, and Anna answered his knock in nothing but a nightshirt and the black silk underwear he’d bought her for her birthday three weeks before.

“Want a drink?” she asked him as he followed her smooth, bare legs into the kitchen. “I was just going to mix up something fun.”

“I’ll take anything wet.”

She took ice from the freezer, threw tequila and a sweet mix into a shaker, and poured liquid over misted glass. He heard a soft pop as an ice cube cracked, and took a sip through slightly tender lips.

“Business?”

“You don’t want to know.”

She shrugged. “You’re busy. My sister’s in town next week. Will you be too busy for that?” She leaned back against the counter. A slight arch in her spine outlined her nipples against the fabric of her shirt. He took a long, slow look, from blood-painted toes and shapely calves past round hips and tapered waist, up to a face that held a full Spanish mouth and almond-coffee eyes.

“God, you’re something. How did I get so lucky?”

“I’m not all that much. And don’t try to change the subject.”

“You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. I’m a frog and you’re a princess.” He took another mouthful and held it, set the glass on the counter, and pulled her shirt up to her shoulders. She shivered as he held an ice cube in his cheek and bent his head to trace a breast with his tongue, blowing frigid air gently across puckered flesh.

Later they lay in darkness across tangled sheets. Ian’s sweat trickled down into the hollow of his throat. The air smelled of sex. His lungs burned with every breath.

Anna twisted a strand of hair in long, slender fingers. “I saw ants in the kitchen today,” she said. “They were marching in a line from somewhere under the fridge, up and over the counter, and carrying some dried rice from a bowl I’d left out last night. Two of them started fighting, so I squished the bigger one with my thumb. And you know what the other one did? He grabbed the dead one by the head and dragged it back down to the floor and out of sight.”

“That’s gross.”

“I know.” She sighed. “I kept wondering what he was going to do with the body. Do they eat each other or something?”

“Knock it off, will you?”

“What are we doing, Ian? We’ve been seeing each other for three months now. I really like you. But you shut me out. I bring up something like my sister coming for a visit and you just fuck me to shut me up.”

“It isn’t like that at all.”

“You have secrets. Where were you tonight? I called your place, the place I’ve never even seen. I don’t want to stalk you. But you’re taking this mystery man thing too far. Maybe I’ll lose interest.” She slid a sweat-slick leg out from under his and wriggled up on one elbow to stare at him.

“It was nothing. I sold some more pictures, that’s all.”

“Really?” She hunched a little closer. “That’s great. Can I see them?”

“Nothing to see. They’re just environmental shots, boring stuff.” He stood in the dark and put on his shirt and pants. You wouldn’t understand. What an understatement. “Why don’t you make a lunch date with your sister and let me know the time? Call me tomorrow.”

Hours later he drove back across town, cemetery dirt clinging to his clothes and his new materials safely packed away in the rear of his van. He wondered how he slipped so easily between two worlds. A starving artist given an offer he couldn’t refuse? But it had been more than that. Years ago he had held several shows in little galleries in New York, mostly mixed-media exhibitions staged by old college friends, Warhol-style trash reshaped and resold, recycled. He had never had Warhol’s vision, and the public knew it. His true tendencies were darker and more disturbing.

Time after time they turned him away with little or no money in his pocket, and after a while even those few friends who remained stopped lending him space. For several months he wandered, mired in depression and faced with the failure of his life’s dream. He never doubted he had talent (or not for long, anyway), but it remained frustratingly coy. It spent less and less of its time with him, and he began to wonder if the struggle was worth it.

He took up work in a meat market, carving up legs of beef and lamb. There he met Fowler. Fowler introduced him to another world that existed between the seams of light and behind every dark alley and shadow. Fowler’s clients were the eyes staring at you from the depths of your closet. They were the chill winds lurking at automobile accidents and behind the gaze of serial killers and madmen. Ian didn’t think Fowler had understood what he was getting into at the time, any more than Ian had understood himself. But soon it was too late.

He took the old freight elevator from the back lot and lugged his stinking, soggy cargo through quiet corridors. He had to make several trips. It was late, and the building was all but deserted anyway; he had seen to that soon after he had moved in, renting the space around him whenever something opened up.

Once inside he lit several thick candles and began to pace the floor, seeking that elusive well of creativity. This would be his masterpiece. It would have to be entirely new. And it had to be raw. He would create something born from the butcher’s block, an assembly of everything foul and bloody the mind could imagine. They would be astonished, amazed, excited to a frenzy of lust. And they would pay with the almighty dollar.

Ian slipped his tools from their place on the wall. This section of the huge room resembled a medieval torture chamber, a look he had purposely cultivated for mood. Unfinished brick ran dark with water stains; edges of bone-scraping steel winked and smiled from hooks. Stravinsky’s Mavra playing softly in the background, he crouched on the giant metal basin and separated the limbs of the two recently buried corpses, a child and its mother, with blade and saw. He paid careful attention to the areas less preserved from lying in particular positions. Slime and clotted blood quickly covered his hands. He did not wear his gloves, for this would be a creation close to his heart, an intimate relation.

After he finished with them he went to his freezer for more parts. His mind danced with imaginative multiple-headed creatures, three legs and no eyes, muscle and bone outside of skin. But these were only previews of the climax of his talent. A kind of frenzy overtook him. He had the answer floating about in his head, not to hide the manipulations of the flesh, but to showcase them, emphasize every unnatural joint and union.

For this he took a coroner’s needle and thick black thread, working with slippery skin and mating it to bone. A woman’s breast became a truncated child’s limb, a fingerless hand punching its way through exposed ribs. Eyes without lids glared upward through a membrane of stomach lining. A layer of teeth planted themselves amid a pucker of flesh. Ian sliced and hammered holes, brought flesh together and ripped it apart with a violence he had previously held in check. Layer built upon layer, both intricate and roughly sculpted visions of death.

He worked through the dawn and into the afternoon. The candles burned down to nubs. The only sign of time passing was a slight glow around his heavy blinds. He lost himself in a feverish, glittery delirium.

Finally, as night fell once again across the city beyond, he stood in aching silence and observed what had grown up out of his studio floor. Candlelight flickered upon the backs of the dead. Black thread like veins lay everywhere, up one seam and down another. Toothless mouths turned to wombs, gave birth to things unmentionable. Limbs reached up and clawed the sky in agony.

Ian retched into the drain as traces of old booze turned his insides out and left him shaking and sore. A hand wiped across his mouth left a foul-smelling, slippery trail. He stood and held the heaves in check. His camera was within easy reach. Ian fumbled for it, every pore tingling at the raw power of the thing, stomach lurching and rolling. He had never before had the feeling that he had captured what his mind had been striving to create; he had always felt empty, unfulfilled, as if somewhere along the line he had stumbled off track.

But this, this was perfect.

He took to the streets the following evening to work off the ache in his legs. He had slept like the dead for a full day and woke to a clear head. He had created something unimaginable. Pornography for the supernatural. Demons did not exactly orgasm, as he understood it. But the pictures set off an erotic reaction that was both frenzied and powerful. And the Taratcha always wanted more, however satiated they might seem at first. How he could create something that might satisfy them the next time around made his blood run cold.

Anna wouldn’t have understood any of it. He had kept her from his secret so far, but it was only a matter of time before she saw something.

Then there was the matter of his immortal soul. Ian had begun to sense the changes. Driving past the scene of a car accident, he would catch himself drooling a little, wanting to stop and run his fingers through pools of blood. The visits to the morgue were swiftly becoming less businesslike and more pleasurable, the sight of those lifeless, cold-blue limbs physically exciting him. Not such an unusual reaction, he reasoned, after so much effort and time spent in the company of such things, but nonetheless it was dangerous. He had never intended this to be his life’s work.

By full dark he found himself in an area of nightclubs and movie houses, neon lights blinking in and out. Twenty-four-hour peep shows beckoned from behind half-lidded windows. There were people of all sorts here, businessmen scurrying home in trench coats like roaches before the sun, hookers and transvestites, bikers, drug addicts with starved faces and bruises up their arms.

Sandwiched between a tattoo parlor and a sex-toy shop was a tiny wooden door with a sign above it that read GATEHOUSE. Ian ducked through into a narrow stairwell that smelled of urine and followed it down into dim silence. The stairs seemed to go down much farther than they should. The last time he’d been here was almost five years ago, when he’d first grappled with the details of his craft. The Gatehouse had likely saved his life then, and now with a little luck it would give him the key to saving himself again.

The place was like an oasis between worlds. Occult objects, books, and charms crammed the walls, alongside the latest scientific texts. Drugs of all kinds helped prepare the mind for new experiences. If you sat down at the table near the back and had your fortune read you might never get up again, for this fortune was real, and as so many customers had found, reality was often painfully blunt.

“So what is it this time?” The voice came seemingly out of nowhere. “Looking for demon repellent? A little soul patching? Or are you already too far gone for that?”

“Come out where I can see you, Frost.”

“Nervous, eh? Ah, you’re human yet.” A shadow flickered and a small, lithe form materialized from the back. It was difficult to say whether the wrinkled, hairless creature that came forward was female or male, or whether it had been hiding or simply appeared out of thin air. Ian chose to believe the latter, in both cases.

“I thought you would have come earlier,” Frost said. “I imagined you were dead. You’ve held up well, considering.” He stepped closer and peered into lan’s face. One clawlike finger reached up and traced the line of his jaw. “Though they’ve taken their toll on you, haven’t they?”

Ian nodded. “I want out.”

Frost chuckled. “We all say that.”

“I mean it. I’ve done it for the last time.”

“But you like it, don’t you? Or is that what you’re afraid of, that you’ll become like them?”

Frost had always had an unsettling ability to find the heart of the matter. He had his feet firmly placed in both worlds. Knowing someone had been there before was an odd comfort.

“Fowler’s lost already,” Ian said, surprised to find his voice shaking. “He wants me to keep going as much as they do. He gets off on it now. I can’t get rid of him.”

“You’re afraid he’ll come after you? Why don’t you just kill him?”

“I don’t kill people. And I’m not sure he wouldn’t just … come back.”

“I see.” Frost stood almost a head shorter than Ian, his skull moist and gleaming under the yellow light. There was no way of telling his age. His ears were curiously withered, and his face looked like a half-eaten apple. “He might at that. Unless you catch him.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve heard of the tribes in South America that are afraid of cameras? Do you know why? They believe the camera has the ability to trap the soul. Not entirely true. But it can trap other things.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Taratcha are creatures of the night. They live off fear, the inability to see what might be coming. If you are able to photograph one, it will remain caught on film.”

“Forever?”

“Until such time as you choose to look at the prints.” Frost smiled. “They can get very angry at a trick like that. I’ll leave the details up to you. But it seems to me that it could be the answer you’re looking for.”

“Thank you, Frost.”

“There’s the matter of payment? Even otherworldly advice isn’t free.”

Ian handed over a wad of bills and turned to leave. Frost caught him at the door. “Ever wonder where things like that come from?”

“What do you mean?”

“Demons. Taratcha. The sort that you might call your customers.”

“I assumed they were once like us. In Fowler’s case, he’s a greedy bastard. I always thought he would change completely, given the time.”

“It’s something to think about.”

“Are there other things I should be thinking about?”

Frost shrugged. “I won’t tell you everything, that wouldn’t be fair. But I will tell you this: Be true to yourself. And be careful, Ian Quinn. They’re closer than you think.”

Closer than you think. Frost’s words followed him home. Had he made an unforgivable error in judgment? Was getting rid of Fowler not the answer after all?

As he stepped around the corner near his building, a shape slipped from the shadows into the light of a streetlamp. “If I didn’t know any better I’d think you were avoiding me,” Anna said. She wore a white tank top and jeans that clung to her curves. She’d put her black hair up, loose strands curling down to kiss her neck. “I’ve been calling your cell and getting voice mail.”

“I turned it off,” Ian said. “Needed some sleep. And the landlord’s been looking for rent and I’d rather not talk to him.”

“You want to know how I found you. I knew you lived in this neighborhood and drove around a couple of blocks until I saw your van. It needs a wash.” She wrinkled her nose. “You need a wash.”

“Water’s off.” He shrugged. “What can I say, I’m a little behind …”

“Why don’t you come back to my place. I can cook you something nice, get you cleaned up.”

“I really should get some work done.”

“We need to talk, Ian.” She crossed her arms over her breasts and did not step any closer. “Come with me, please. I need to know what’s going on.”

Back at her apartment Anna busied herself in the kitchen while Ian stood under white-hot needles of spray, washing what felt like months of grime from his skin. He hung his head under the water and breathed slowly through his mouth. Something floated and spun in the circling pattern of drain water. He waited until the water finally turned from light gray to clear, and then he stepped onto a fluffy sage green bath mat and toweled himself until his flesh stung.

He dressed in one of Anna’s oversized T-shirts and sweatpants and went into the living room while she worked in the kitchen. He took a photo album from the bookshelf, sat on the couch, and flipped through its pages. Here stood Anna as a girl with a smiling man and woman, in front of a Tudor with well-trimmed shrubs; Anna in a softball uniform; vacations with white sand beaches and cruise ships the size of small continents; a series shot against a lush mountain backdrop with another woman with similar features. They wore backpacks with sleeping bags strapped to the sides. Each shot perfectly captured a smile or look, a gesture or a thought held in someone’s expression.

The smell of food made his mouth water. In the kitchen, Anna had placed a full plate of chops, rice, and beans on the wooden farmer’s table. She watched him rip into the meal with a half-formed smile on her face. “It’s almost morning, but I thought you needed something meaty. At least someone will eat my cooking.”

“Right now, I’ll eat anything.”

She elbowed him in the ribs and tucked one foot under her in the chair. “So where were you coming from tonight?”

“I had to take some photos of the waterfront for a client. They’re going to rebuild.”

“You didn’t have a camera.”

“Yeah, well.” He shrugged. “I was scouting the location.”

“Are you seeing someone else, Ian?”

“Of course not.”

“Then why won’t you tell me the truth?”

“It’s none of your business, Anna.”

“When I’ve been sleeping with someone for a while I kind of expect things to move forward. I like you, Ian, you’re funny, sweet, sensitive. But I don’t like your secrets.”

“I’ve got a dark side.”

“I want to see that, too.”

“You’ve got to understand something about me. My work, it’s like another woman I’m in love with. I can’t just let her go, and I can’t share her with you. The two of you wouldn’t mix.”

“How do you know? Maybe that could be fun. You should try me, you might be surprised.” She took a deep breath as if gathering courage. “You know what I think? You’re scared of a boring life. Wife, kids, house in the suburbs. You think it’s death. You think you can’t have that and still do what you do. Maybe you need the darkness, depression moves you, am I right? If you were happy, you’d lose your hold on that creative muse. But what good is it to shut yourself off from everyone who loves you, just because you’re afraid of what might happen?”

“It isn’t like that.”

“No? You tell me, then. I’m in love with you, Ian. I’m willing to take the next step. I’d like to meet that other woman. But I can’t be in a relationship like this, not anymore. You let me know if you ever decide to let me in.”

He had left the blinds in his apartment closed. But when he opened the door they had been pulled back, bright early morning sunlight streaming down onto the stinking flesh on his sheet-metal stage. A moment later, Fowler came strolling out from the little kitchen alcove, eyes hidden behind dark glasses. “Magnificent,” he breathed. His jowls trembled with something like lust. “You’ve topped yourself yet again. I didn’t think you had it in you.”

“You son of a bitch,” Ian said. “If any of them followed you here — ”

“Get real.” Fowler swept a hand toward the window. “It’s light out, or haven’t you noticed? Tends to hurt my eyes, and it makes them scream. If they want to know where you live, they’ll find you without any help from me.”

Ian grabbed his camera from the table. He fixed Fowler through the sticky lens, found the image of the man with his palms up, gesturing. “Hey — ”

Click. The flash popped and whined; bright light painted the interior of the room. Fowler winced. “Jesus Christ, will you cut it out? Hurts my eyes …”

Click. Pop. Another wince and a muttered breath. Ian let the camera drop to his chest. Fowler was still there.

“What the hell did you do that for?”

“You looked good standing next to it.”

“Yeah. Well, don’t do it again.” Fowler’s eyes momentarily glowed red through the dark lenses and then faded. “You ain’t so cute either, you know that? You ought to look in the mirror once in a while.” He moved to the door. “Get me those prints.” He stole one more glance back at the creation lying still upon the bloodied silver platform, the longing plain in his face. Ian imagined him caressing its gory flanks, leaning down to touch his lips to slippery flesh. And then he was gone.

Ian pounded a fist into his palm. Fowler was not yet a Taratcha, and would not be as easy to trap as Frost had suggested. He would have to find another way.

Late that night the solution came to him. Like most solutions born of desperation, this one came upon him by chance.

He had long since gone to bed, but sleep wouldn’t come at first. He couldn’t yet bring himself to disassemble his masterwork. And so it sat, alone on its altar like the remains of blood worship. Ian had begun to think of it as more than his Art, a testimony to all he had accomplished, a showcase of his talent. More than that, it was his child; and as frightened as he was with that thought, he no longer had the strength within himself to be disgusted by it.

He did not know when he slept or when exactly he awakened, but for a moment the flitting shadow shapes and crawling, tentacled dream creatures remained with him. The huge loft sat black and silent as a tomb. He lay there blinking up into the dark until his bladder forced him out of bed.

When he flicked on the bathroom light he almost screamed at the image glaring back at him through the mirror. Heavy brows overshadowed sunken, bruised eyes with a spark of red at their centers. He flicked the light off again and stood blinking in the dark. Fowler was right. He hadn’t noticed how far it had progressed. But it was a reversible transformation. It had to be.

Something nagged at his mind. It was all too easy to think of the Taratcha as simply evil given form and substance, part of an ongoing underworld war, a system of checks and balances between lightness and dark. But that alone did not give them definition. It did not make them real. Now, with the image of his own face floating like a ghost in the blackness that surrounded him, he began to understand their true essence. Creatures born from a collective unconscious. Trace memory of a human race too savage to bear the light. The monster under the bed, the spark behind a pedophile’s eyes. The stuffing of a madman’s brain. They were human creations, weren’t they? And what better place for the birth of a demon than within the dark heart of an artiste?

He was almost too late. When he heard movement behind him he whirled, aware of a dim, reddish glow that wholly human eyes would never have registered. The bathroom door hung open, and from beyond it came the sound of something sliding across a slick surface.

Padding silently on bare feet he slipped around the door frame, and kept to the wall as he felt his way around the circumference of the room. His camera hung with the rest of his tools. With one motion he turned, stepped forward, and brought it to his eyes. Only then did he look at what it was he had created.

It dragged itself slowly along, tiny child arms waggling, grasping with bony fingers at the place he had been. Seams of black thread joined and divided an endless expanse of puckered flesh, opening and closing like a thousand tiny mouths. Ends of bone poked out like porcupine quills. Eyes like white-fisted tumors bulged and rolled under skin stretched tight as a bruise. A snail’s trail of dark fluid marked its path from the metal stage to the floor.

A demon’s first steps. Laughter was Ian’s first thought; this thing, searching blindly for him, its creator, whatever purpose that drove it held deep inside its bloated depths and hidden from view. What would it do if it found him? Was this patricide? Or would it welcome him with open arms?

His second thought was less defined. As the creature turned and sought him with some blind sense and a voice like a thousand shrieks filled his head, he centered the frame and pushed the trigger. White light painted the room like a flare. The shrieks reached a sudden raging crescendo as the newborn demon disappeared, and he had the fleeting sense of a forest of waving limbs, frozen in time. For a moment the doorway opened itself to him as through the camera’s window he glimpsed an army of impossible creatures writhing like a mound of earthworms within a tightfisted cavern of dripping stone. Then he remembered nothing, aware only of a strange feeling of loss, his own voice repeating the same phrase over and over like the words to a forgotten ritual in the sudden silence of the loft.

I’m sorry. I didn’t know.

Fowler waited for him in their regular booth. He looked up as Ian approached, and this time he could not hide the hunger in his eyes.

“Jesus, you take your goddamned time,” Fowler said. His voice buzzed like a radio losing its signal. Or was it something more? The sound of a man slipping between the cracks?

“Sorry. It won’t happen again, believe me.”

Fowler seemed appeased by Ian’s attitude. But he paused when the leather portfolio slid across the moistened table, something in Ian’s own eyes making him uncertain. He sensed a change here, a new confidence and strength that made him curious. Then the hunger seemed to overwhelm everything else. Fowler’s fingers touched the fold, opened it. “Wait,” Ian said. “I don’t want you to look at them yet.”

“Why the hell not?”

“Trust me on this. Take the portfolio and bring it back to me later. You’ll want to be alone.”

Fowler’s chubby hand shot out and grabbed Ian’s forearm. The grip held a little bit of desperation in it. Fowler’s fingers tightened, digging. “Ever see what the Taratcha do to a man? They’re not happy with killing you. They want you to live with the pain.”

Ian resisted the overpowering urge to shrug off the touch the way you might shrug off a bug. “I get it.”

“If you’re planning to cut out on me, think again. One word from me and you’re gone. Anybody you love, gone. Get that?”

“Whatever you say.”

“You know, I didn’t take to your new look at first. But I gotta tell you, it’s an acquired taste. Keep your chin up, as they say.”

Ian remained at the table for a long time after Fowler had gone. He did not touch the thick envelope that had been left for him. He ordered a drink, then another, gathering his courage.

The feeling of loss had remained with him for the rest of that night and into the morning. He had seen something in the thing, as gruesome as it was. Some spark of recognition, some kind of empathy.

The Art was the only thing he had ever truly been good at, and yet a part of him had always been ashamed. In his younger years he had frequently been asked where the darker sides of his talent came from, and when he tried in vain to answer he would often be faced with a look of pity or even guarded mistrust. What are you hiding, they seemed to be saying. His only reply was that he did not know.

The dim light in the bar hurt his eyes. Ian walked to the empty bathroom, hit the switch, and stood in the dark, bent over the sink and holding the cool porcelain with both hands. Finally he looked up. The mirror over the sink revealed a face that burned with its own light. He looked inward through his mind’s eye and saw a sea of writhing shapes, breeding and dividing. He imagined Fowler’s trembling fingers as they slipped open the leather flap, drew out the photographs, brought them close to his face: one photo, in particular, that had trapped his newborn son.

If you are able to photograph one, it will remain caught on film, Frost had said, until such time as you choose to look at the prints. They can get very angry at a trick like that. He imagined the explosion of flesh as his offspring, his spawn, did the work it had been born to do, erupting from the photograph and turning its rage upon Fowler, whose death would give Ian at least a chance to start anew.

His thoughts returned to Anna, and what she had said to him the last time they had spoken. You let me know if you ever decide to let me in. He dug his cell phone out of his pocket and switched it on. He didn’t know if he could survive when these two worlds collided, but he had to stop hiding. It was time to find out whether his two loves could coexist.

It took only a moment for Anna to answer.