Avalon Lake was a desolate place. To Tanya, it looked as if no one had set foot on its streets in two decades or more. It even smelled abandoned, for abandonment did have a scent—dust and dry grass, rust and decay. Though she and Vanessa walked softly, the crunch of gravel under their feet sounded much louder in the absence of any other sounds. There was no other foot traffic, no vehicle engines, not even any animals. The street was stuck in time, broken down and never rebuilt.
Vanessa saw their surroundings much differently. She believed she saw it for what it was. The dilapidated homes and disused cars, even the cracked pavement and the too-clear sky flickered and glitched in and out of existence. She heard whispers behind the faltering simulation. The voices spoke words she knew but couldn't translate. At intervals, she smelled the same smells of abandonment as Tanya, but also hints of cotton candy, burned plastic, and rusted blood. She tightened her hold on the crossbow.
They'd stepped through another slimy doorway, this one in a sewer channel outside Athena's apartment. Instinct prompted them to hold hands as they tumbled through the void, dreaming their own visions just as they now dreamed their own visions.
Vanessa pointed ahead at a church steeple standing crooked over all the other structures and said this was the way they should go. Tanya followed because she had no choice but to assume Vanessa knew. The last few days had been a whirlwind. From the appearance of Russell to Frank's disappearance to her mutation and attempted murder of her best friend, she felt as if the author of her life had developed a sudden cruel streak or had a mental breakdown. As she believed herself the author of her life, she had no choice except to believe she herself had gone nuts and Vanessa, a.k.a. @VV_in_Recovery, was her sponsor on her journey to sanity.
What remission looked like remained unclear.
"Wait," she said. She stopped walking and scanned their crumbling surroundings. Vanessa faced her, wearing a grave expression as if she dreaded whatever Tanya might say. "What are we going to find? What's doing all this?"
Vanessa's expression didn't change. She kept her gaze fixed on Tanya. For an instant, her lips moved but spoke no words. She pinched them shut and glanced around, lingering in each direction as if searching for something, likely more digital instructions or prompts. Finding nothing satisfactory, she sighed heavily and flexed her hands on the crossbow.
"You don't know, do you?" Tanya said.
Pink blossomed in Vanessa's cheeks. Her jaw tightened and untightened.
"Do you want to go back?" she asked.
Tanya looked behind her. Despite its liminal state, it could've been any main drag leading into a small town. She knew better only because she and Vanessa had passed through a barrier she could no longer see. A barrier that sealed off a wormhole that had carried them through uncharted space from the sewer channel outside Athena's apartment. If she headed back that way, would she slip through again? If she did, could she guarantee she'd make it back home?
"If I go back, things will still be fucked up, won't they?"
Vanessa shrugged. "Probably."
The words fucked up were loaded and could've meant anything, but she knew what she meant, and Vanessa knew. Their stories were intertwined now, inextricably linked. She couldn't explain why, but their bond felt deeper than any bond Tanya had experienced before, deeper than what she shared with her parents, deeper than her friendship with Athena. She couldn't go back, only forward and only with Vanessa.
"Then we should probably keep going."
Vanessa flashed the faintest of smiles. It was more a twitch of the lips than anything, yet Tanya could sense the relief in it. Even though she was armed, even though she was getting guidance by some unknown other, Vanessa didn't want to do this without Tanya. Before Tanya had reached out, her experience had been hers alone. It didn't matter how many Instagram followers she had or how kind her therapist was or how much she cuddled her dog. She had faced her horrors alone and hoped to prevent Tanya from doing the same.
They walked on; their footsteps made a steady, gritty cadence on the buckling, sun-damaged pavement. The air would've been warm for October were Tanya still in Pennsylvania. This was Texas, and there was no autumn.
For Vanessa, the landscape and buildings didn't stop glitching. More disturbing still, familiar sights from the amusement park superimposed themselves over the unstable surroundings. Dilapidated houses became disused concession carts. Broken-down cars became scattered Tilt-a-Whirl cups and rusted roller coaster skeletons. This happened for brief but recurrent flashes.
But she kept her feet on the ground. She kept her eyes focused ahead. She stayed mindful of her weapon. Most importantly, she ignored the niggling voice that told her this had all been a trap. The appearance of Restless Void and the guided journey to Tanya had all been to bring them here, to Avalon Lake, toward some fate worse than anything that could've happened anywhere else.
They stayed the course with the church's crooked steeple guiding the way. Every side street looked as empty and apocalyptic as the main thoroughfare. Something bad had happened here, Tanya decided. It had been so horrible that it spilled beyond its borders, infecting the streets of surrounding towns and spreading until it had come to her in the form of Russell.
And she had let it kiss her, sealing her fate.
When they reached the church, both women stopped to take in the sight. Each visible wall had been grown over by vines. Most windows had been boarded over but one that was missing most of its glass. The shards that remained glistened among bundles of foliage that had clung to the frame and grown toward the church's dark insides. The marquee had fallen over and lay barely visible between clusters of unruly grass.
Tanya was not a religious person. Still, Avalon Lake belonged to a bygone era, a time when towns were built around churches. Seeing the church in such a state confirmed what she suspected upon entering the town limits: Avalon Lake's very heart was corrupted and mostly destroyed. Perhaps Vanessa's arrows carried the power to restore it and everything else, the way one dart had restored Tanya's arm.
For Vanessa, the wreckage of the church stirred different emotions. While her parents didn't raise her religious, her father had grown up Catholic. Before he died, if he had really died, he still had memorabilia from that time in his life stuffed away in storage. She'd seen the outfit he'd worn to his First Communion. His Catholic Bible, complete with the deuterocanonical books, sat on the shelf in his study. Until she was eight or nine, her parents still used an Advent calendar in the weeks leading up to Christmas.
Though this wasn't a proper Catholic church, its decay brought about an uncanny feeling. It didn't glitch the way everything else did, and that old fear of thresholds reared its ugly head. Her feet would take no further steps.
Tanya could tell something was wrong. "What is it?"
But Vanessa would not answer; she only stared at the vine-covered structure.
"Vanessa," Tanya said, injecting all the firmness she could muster.
The other woman's brow twitched and furrowed. Tanya got the dreadful notion Vanessa's brain might short out if it hadn't already. What would she do if the other woman lost it and left her here in this strange town? Could she pick up the crossbow and carry on with the mission? She didn't even know what the mission was.
"Vanessa, please," she said. "Please stay with me."
Vanessa's brow furrowed again. This time it remained that way. She then asked something that made Tanya's blood feel as though someone had injected her with liquid nitrogen.
"What year is this?"
It seemed an easy question to answer. Tanya knew what year it was, or she at least knew what year it was when she left her traumatized friend before slipping through with Vanessa. They could be anywhere in time now, anywhere in space.
The surge of fear went as soon as it came. A steely resolve replaced it.
"It doesn't matter," she said. "We just have to go into that church and kill whatever's waiting for us inside." Vanessa seemingly broke from her trance and faced her. She didn't look convinced. "Right?"
She nodded quickly. It reminded Tanya of a time her mother had taken a bad fall down the hill outside her house. Tanya had rushed to her side and asked if she was okay. She had rushed to reassure her daughter. Tanya had gotten the impression she had hoped to convince herself as well. She'd nodded the way Vanessa did now.
"Okay," Tanya said. She still wasn't sure Vanessa had mentally recovered from what feelings the sight of the church stirred. She only knew they needed to keep going. "Then, let's go."
Vanessa didn't move, but in Tanya's periphery, something else did. Two figures emerged from either side of the church. Tanya recognized them both. Now, it was her turn to freeze.
Russell and Frank met at the front of the church and faced the women head-on. Russell, the man no one could remember but her. Frank, her best friend's missing partner. They stood shoulder to shoulder, dressed casually in jeans and T-shirts. Nothing about either's face told her anything was out of the ordinary. Simply their presence was strange.
"What the fuck are they doing here?" Tanya said.
"You know these two?"
Tanya nodded. Even though it was out of Vanessa's line of sight, her assent was understood.
"They must have followed us," Vanessa said.
And yet, they'd emerged on the opposite side of the church.
In horror stories, when faced with something so seemingly impossible, characters tended to rationalize that they must be dreaming. Tanya made no such rationalizations. The presence of these two guys in this town that wasn't supposed to exist was simply another impossibility in a line of impossibilities. There were also too many sensory details other than sight, which also convinced her this was no dream. None of this, however, made it any easier to accept.
Again, she thought of the author of her life developing a sudden cruel streak or having a mental breakdown. But she was the author of her life, wasn't she? In the presence of these two men, she was no longer so sure.
"Vanessa," she breathed. The other woman raised the crossbow and leveled it at Frank. "No, wait!"
Vanessa squeezed the trigger. The arrow stuck.
"Shit," Vanessa said and went to check the weapon.
Footsteps ran up on them from the side. Someone wearing a pumpkin mask was upon Vanessa, wielding a rusty pipe. Tanya saw him first and screamed. Vanessa turned toward the assailant too late to stop him. The pipe collided with the crossbow, knocking it from her hands. She reached for it, but the attacker shoulder-checked her and sent her spilling to her butt. He raised the pipe to deliver another blow, this one potentially fatal.
But he didn't move. Bludgeoning Vanessa wasn't part of the plan.
Russell and Frank looked on, straight-up smiling.
Tanya glanced at the crossbow and tried to gauge how quickly she could grab it. If she could get it working again and use it. Before she could decide anything, someone grabbed her from behind, hugging her arms to her sides and cinching her ribcage. Her attacker's breaths were ragged and heavy in her ear. It felt like he also wore a mask.
"Let me go!" she yelled and writhed against the constricting restraints.
A quick scan of their surroundings showed more masked people were standing around them. They'd come so quietly but now overwhelmed Tanya and Vanessa. There were at least eight of them, counting Russell and Frank.
On the pavement, Vanessa stared up at the assailant standing over her. The mask's triangular eyes were black and opaque. She could see no slits for human eyes to look through. It was as if those holes were his eyes, the black half-moon his actual mouth. Every inclination told her to scoot and scramble away from him, but no matter how quickly she acted, that pipe would catch her somewhere. The subsequent pain would stop her long enough for the fucker to do some real damage.
We're so fucked, she thought but didn't say. Verbalizing it would make it manifest.
Tanya ceased squirming and glared at Russell.
"What the fuck?" she said. "Why?"
Russell and Frank exchanged glances. They smiled at one another, then turned back to Tanya and Vanessa.
"Why not?" Russell said.
"Oh my God," Tanya said. "Fuck you! That's such bullshit."
Vanessa had no such denial. She'd been through all this before. Bad shit didn't need a reason to happen. People only convinced themselves it did, the way she'd convinced herself her experience in the amusement park had something to do with her dead father. She had no idea why that had happened or why this was happening. It simply had and it simply was. She and Tanya would either survive or they wouldn't. Given their circumstances, she suspected the latter.
Russell stretched out his left hand toward Frank. Frank clasped it. Their connection made a sound part flesh-on-flesh and part electrical surge. Their knuckles cracked as their fingers twisted around one another. Skin took on the appearance of hot, melting wax as the hands fused together. Two were becoming one. Both men grinned as their arms looped, bringing their torsos closer. Ribs became teeth in a vertical mouth. Heads mashed themselves into one head, a bulbous, nightmarish thing with displaced eyes and grinning mouths. The legs that met in the center braided together and snapped backwards, changing into a thick, ropey tail. The fingernails on the outside hands snapped off as claws replaced them.
Neither Russell nor Frank remained. This was a new entity entirely, made of recycled material. A hungry demigod that had led Tanya and Vanessa to Avalon Lake to simply be devoured. The sight of the monstrosity awakened new fighting energy in both women.
Tanya writhed against the restraining arms, kicking and screaming.
Vanessa lunged herself at the pipe-wielding pumpkin man. She caught him off-guard, tackling him to the pavement and loosening his grip on the weapon.
Tanya doubled forward, then used her momentum to push herself backwards onto her captor. She felt and heard the wind rush out of him, but he wouldn't let her go. In a panic, she rolled and wound up facedown. Gravel bit into his arms, and he slid them out from around her torso. She scrambled to try and reach her feet, but he grabbed a fistful of hair and slammed her forehead onto the street. Pain burst across her face and throbbed deep into her skull. Riding the wave of agony, unconsciousness threatened to pull her under.
"No!" she screamed and tried to press herself to her hands and knees.
Vanessa had her assailant pinned. Like a rabid beast, she bent and bit into his wrist on the hand holding the weapon. She clamped down so hard with her jaw that she drew blood, and he cried out. His fingers unfurled, and the pipe rolled from his grasp. She crawled to reach for it. He grunted with rage and pain as he clambered to beat her there.
She reached it first.
And swung.
The blow clipped him and set him off balance. She stood to deliver a more decisive blow, but something hit her hard in the midsection and sent her sprawling. The pipe flew from her grasp, and the air rushed from her lungs. One of the others had tackled her good, catching her in the gut with his shoulder. She lay on her back, facing the sky, eyes watering, clouds glitching.
Tanya didn't reach her hands and knees. The man on her back drove his knee into her spine, keeping her pinned facedown. She groaned in pain and frustration, but the fight was fading from her. The monster that had once been both Russell and Frank advanced on her, its ribs for teeth wetly gnashing.
Where first she'd rejected the notion that this could be a dream, she now grasped for that highly unlikely possibility in the face of abject terror. If this wasn't a nightmare, that meant she was about to die, and that couldn't happen. She was young. She had aspirations. Big plans for the future. People who cared for her. Of course, plenty of people could die with their whole lives ahead of them, but not like this and not her.
Oh, God, no!
A loud, splintering bang reverberated through the air and silenced her panic. It froze the moment as if this were a mere video game and the player had hit pause.
The door of the church had blown off its hinges and flipped down the front steps. It was split in parts, with most of the cracks surrounding an impact point. A hulking shadow stood in its frame, standing over seven feet tall and sculpted with muscles. Two red, angular slits glowed in the center of its face. The shape stepped out of the church.
Neither Tanya nor Vanessa knew whether to fear this thing or feel relieved. It, too, was undeniably a monster: partly flesh and partly synthetic, a Goliath amalgamation of man and machine. It descended the steps. One foot further demolished the ruined door. The other stepped completely over it.
The Russell-Frank thing turned to regard it. All the masked assailants did the same. No one seemed to know if this new player was ally or foe.
The biomechanical figure raised its right fist and pointed it toward the man who had Tanya pinned. There was a flash of red light. Something splashed over Tanya's back, completely dousing her hair and clothes. A pulse followed on the heels of the warm soaking.
The two halves of her attacker tumbled to either side of her. Whatever projectile the mech fired had split him from the top of his masked head to between his legs.
Tanya pushed herself to her knees, realizing the substance covering her was blood. She looked from each half of her neutralized attacker to her frightening savior. Her lips trembled, but she couldn't decide if she should scream in horror or cry with relief.
The monster that had been Russell and Frank vocalized something in a gurgling tongue. The remaining seven attackers—some wielding blunt weapons, others unarmed—rushed the imposing newcomer.
The first to reach him wore a vintage hockey mask, like Jason Voorhees, and carried a bat with rusty railroad spikes jutting from it. He swung the weapon at the mech's chest. A metallic hand blocked the blow and easily yanked the weapon from Jason's grasp. It rammed the thin end of the bat through him, and he slumped to his knees, then crumpled into a fetal position, bleeding out all over the surrounding pavement.
Two more masked assailants ran up on the mech. A steel boot crushed the face of one. A fist punched through the chest of the other.
The other four stopped their advancement and exchanged glances. The mech waited, fists balled at its sides, one of them dripping gore. There was a violent patience to the way it stood. The remaining masked men saw this for the losing battle it was, turned tail and ran the opposite direction.
The Russell-Frank thing stood its ground and gurgled something at the mech. The mech didn't move, only stared with its glowing red eyes. Each combatant waited for the other to make the first move. Tanya and Vanessa drew closer to each other. Vanessa wrapped her arms around Tanya, unconcerned with the copious amount of blood dripping from her companion.
Both women knew they should run, but both women needed to watch.
The monster attacked first. It charged forward, seemingly intending to attack the mech head-on. The mech bent its knees and squared its shoulders, bracing for impact. The monster feinted an attack from the right, then spun, swinging its tail—now tipped with a barb like a scorpion's stinger.
The mech caught the tail in one of its massive hands. It gave the tail a hard yank and pulled the monster in close. With its free hand, the mech threw a punch. Its fist connected with the Russell-Frank thing's grotesque excuse for a head. The blow sent the monster reeling and might have knocked it down had the mech not kept hold of its tail. The Russell-Frank thing's legs wobbled. Its vertical mouth shrieked and gurgled like an animal caught in a rusty trap. The mech clamped its other hand around the tail.
Sensing its peril, the Russell-Frank thing bent its knees and tried to plant its feet. The mech gave the tail another hard pull. The Russell-Frank's feet stuttered. One of its ankles rolled. The momentum made it lose its footing. The mech gave another pull, lifting the Russell-Frank off its feet. The mech swung its opponent in a wild arc, then let go.
The Russell-Frank sailed through the air and crashed into the wall of the church. The impact came with an explosion of bricks and dust. The debris and rubble clattered and thudded against the surrounding earth. Tanya or Vanessa or both women gasped. The mech looked through the dust to see where its opponent lay. Its broad chest rose and fell with an impossible intake of breath—parts of it were undoubtedly still organic. Neither woman could tell if the Russell-Frank had been vanquished, but neither woman could yet move.
We should go, Tanya thought. We should leave.
Vanessa had no such thoughts. She looked everywhere for what Tanya had called her weird wall words, but none materialized.
Several seconds passed. Maybe thirty. Maybe even a full minute.
The partially organic mech turned toward the women. They held each other tighter and stared at the thing that had saved them but could just as easily have destroyed them.
Behind it, the pile of bricks burst apart. The Russell-Frank rose from the scattered debris. Its vertical mouth opened wide. Saliva glistened on the tips of its broken rib teeth. It let out a raspy screech and lunged for the mech's turned back. When only a few feet away, it leapt, claws spread, barbed tail stabbing the air.
In a motion too fluid for a being its size, the mech spun and raised its arm. There was another flash of red, followed by two more. The accompanying pulses vibrated the air in the split second before the Russell-Frank rained down in pieces, though none of the pieces resembled Russell or Frank. Instead, they were smoking pieces of seared meat, three hunks in all, and very dead. Thankfully, horrifically dead.
The mech lowered its smoking arm and faced Tanya and Vanessa. They watched it, and it watched them. No one moved except to breathe, and barely even then.
"Who are you?" Tanya asked. Something about getting soaked in the masked man's blood emboldened her. Nothing else that could happen would be worse than what she'd already endured. "Huh? Who the fuck are you?"
The mech took a step toward them. Vanessa pulled Tanya back. Tanya held her ground.
"Who the fuck are you?" she asked again. This time her voice trembled, but it lost none of its power.
The mech took another step forward.
"Tanya, please," Vanessa whispered.
"Tell us."
The mech raised its hands and pressed its fingers to either side of its shimmering breastplate. With a whir and a whine, the plate flipped open like an airplane tray table. Beneath it lay a television monitor. The picture was simply a blue screen, like what used to happen when someone put a tape in a VCR but with no text. Bars of static split the blue void, and an image appeared in its place.
It was the face of a man, floating in darkness, his features lit by an unseen source.
It was a face Tanya recognized.
"Uncle Bentley?" she said.
Vanessa loosened her grip on Tanya and exhaled. On that breath rode the words, "I have so many questions."
Tanya looked at Vanessa and back to the man behind the TV screen. He smiled, and she hoped her long-lost, long-thought-dead uncle was simply glad to see her.