Chapter 7: Amaranthine
Nowhere
Scully gave up walking and sat down on the floor. Blackness still stretched out in all directions around her. She felt as if she had been walking for hours. The events in Mulder’s bedroom felt like a fast fading dream. The sensation was difficult to comprehend, being in your body but being somewhere else. It would have been a strange enough sensation at the best of times but it had made sex an extremely weird experience. Scully was actually quite disappointed because she had wanted her first time with Mulder – she’d always been sure that it *would* happen – to be in much different circumstances. In fact, lately she’d actually found herself contemplating marriage fantasies. Maybe it was only to be expected that sex between them wouldn’t be ordinary but Scully hadn’t been expecting a party line.
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Mulder’s Bathroom
Mulder strode into the room and straight up to the mirror.
“I want the truth.” He stated flatly as he regarded the female countenance in the mirror. “Your brother says you’re not dead.”
Elizabeth dipped her head.
“I was..I hoped that I was.” She looked up at him. “It was a demon Mulder and it was trapped in the Nowhere Place.” She laughed. “It still is in a way.” Mulder sat down against the bathtub and listened.
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Warren Wood
Hampshire, UK
July 1996
Elizabeth Szabo pulled her coat more firmly around herself. Although it was mid-July, the tall sheltering trees kept the woods several degrees cooler than the rapeseed fields beyond it’s boundaries. Lynda, Paul and Dave walked ahead of Elizabeth, with Danni and Andy following behind her. They were all carrying boxes of candles and full length mirrors draped in heavy velvet curtains. No one said a word. The night inside the wood was eerie in the fractured moonlight. In the distance there was the faint rumble of traffic from the motorway beyond the fields. The cow-parsley was waist deep under the canopy and Elizabeth walked carefully, mindful of the many hidden holes dotted about the woodland floor. An owl hooted but it was impossible to place the direction of the sound. Her friends walked with a singularity of purpose towards the one cleared area of the woods; an area they referred to as the lake. It wasn’t a lake really, more a large carved out section of ground which filled with several inches of water when it rained. The bottom was reasonably even and the sides sloped gently downwards. Watching the others co-ordinate their movements without talking Elizabeth began to grow more afraid. They appeared distant and alien to her.
They placed the mirrors – still draped in velvet – against the banks of the lake, facing inwards. They left a space for the mirror that Elizabeth carried and looked up at her expectantly. She swallowed as she looked at them. The top lighting made their eye sockets seem like empty hollows beneath their eyebrows. She passed the mirror to Paul and he placed it into position. Elizabeth did not join in as they began to rip open the boxes of candles and set them into the soft earth around the mirrors.
“Look guys,” Elizabeth began nervously and they stopped to look at her blankly. “I’m not sure about this. I think I’m gonna go home.” She set off to do just that but Danni’s soft voice stopped her.
“You can’t do that Elizabeth.”
“We need you.” Dave added as he stepped into her path. The wind blowing through the wood grew in strength and whistled around her. It’s voice was a low rumble in the night. Elizabeth tried to move past Dave but he grabbed her arms and stopped her. She was so stunned by this behaviour from a friend that she didn’t struggle until he began pushing her towards the circle of mirrors they had created.
Danni’s lips moved as she went about lighting the candles. The orange light they produced should have been comforting in the darkness of the woodland but instead Elizabeth wanted to run from the glowing circle. Dave pushed Elizabeth down into the lake and she stumbled on the rough twig and rock strewn floor. The others stood behind the mirrors above her and Elizabeth realised that the low sound she had assumed to be the wind was coming from them as they chanted softly. The candle flames wavered in the chill night. The chanting grew louder as her friends stared down at her. Danni was chanting loudest of all as she grasped the velvet covering one of the mirrors. Elizabeth’s eyes met hers and Danni breathed outwards towards her steadily. Her breath was foul and a blue smoke came from out of her mouth and danced around Elizabeth. She ripped the cloth away, leaving Elizabeth staring into the mirror. Her breathing grew laboured and her heart rate sky-rocketed. There was nothing there; no reflection just dead space extending into infinity. Each of her friends repeated the ritual; breathing out a variety of colours of smoke, all of which hung in the air and danced around the candle flames. They came to the last mirror and Elizabeth turned – spellbound – to face it. The icy nothingness of the dead space surrounding her on all sides, through the mirrors, chilled her blood but her heart was pounding so fast that she thought it would explode outwards through her chest and lie pumping blood into the wet soil as her body died. She hoped it would happen because she was sure that what was going to happen would be much worse.
The circle of friends lined up behind the last mirror and their chants were deafening inside her mind. Lynda stepped forward first and placed her hands together in a mockery of prayer. She began rubbing her palms together and smoke began to rise from them, then she raised them up into the sky with the palms facing towards Elizabeth. She gasped as she saw two red eyes blinking at her from her friend’s flesh. Lynda screwed up her fists and screamed. Elizabeth was transfixed as Lynda fell away from the group and ran into the woods.
Paul stepped forward next and rubbed his hands together as Lynda had. Then he turned his back on her and ripped his T-shirt off his body. His screaming began at the same moment that Elizabeth screamed. The instant the hands began to appear from within the flesh of his back. They reached towards Elizabeth and she screamed but she could not move from the spot where she stood. Then he ran off into the night.
When Dave stepped towards her Elizabeth began to cry. She didn’t want to face anymore, she didn’t want to see her friends bodies ripped apart in this way. He rubbed his palms together, they began to smoke but he raised his eyes to Elizabeth. As he stared into her eyes Elizabeth became aware of his eyeballs being eaten away by tiny mouths; rows of teeth with no gums or bones to hold them. The flesh of them fell away and liquid trickled down his cheeks. With an expression of pure horror, Dave raised his hands to his eyes and screamed. Then, he too, turned and ran.
Andy rubbed his hands together as he walked towards the rim of the pit; ‘lake’ no longer described it. Smoke drifted upwards through the air. He met her eyes, although she didn’t want to look, and began unbuttoning his shirt. He finished and the shirt hung loose on his scrawny frame but Elizabeth was still held by his eyes. Then he moved his hands into the air in front of him and she transferred her attention to them. He brought them down and began to feed his hands into the ravenous mouth in the centre of his chest. Sharp teeth ripped away his fingers and reduced his hands to bloody stumps. Elizabeth tried to close her eyes and block it out but they wouldn’t shut. Andy screamed and ran out of the light leaving a trail of blood as he went.
Elizabeth’s eyes moved to the remaining member of the circle, Danni. She had stood chanting, distant from the others, and now her chants were the only things which filled the night. Suddenly she stopped and pinned Elizabeth with her gaze. Danni began to speak but the words were foreign to Elizabeth’s ears. They sounded evil; full of intensity and almost as if they had a life of their own. The mirrors started to shake and Elizabeth spun around in shock, watching as they began to mist over with condensation. The flames of the many candles danced in the unnatural wind which was rising in the centre of the circle. Danni’s speech was approaching a crescendo and it seemed that the earth itself would open up before them. Then she stopped abruptly and dragged the final piece of cloth away. Danni shrieked and fell to the floor. The cloth falling over her.
Elizabeth stared at the figure in the looking glass unable to speak, unable to scream at the horror of it. The demon’s countenance almost defied description. It resembled an angel that had been drenched with acid; horned, winged, with golden clumps of matted hair clinging to hard knots of scarred flesh. It regarded Elizabeth steadily with it’s golden eyes. She could feel it’s presence around her and she knew what it wanted. It wanted her body minus her soul. She could feel it attempting to push her spirit from the place where it resided within her. She could feel herself – as spirit – moving away from the flesh which contained it.
“No-o-o-o-o-o-!!!!!!” She shrieked and broke away from that intense gaze. She turned and fell on a jutting rock. The demon began to move out of the mirror towards her and Elizabeth fought for calm. Without thinking she grasped the rock and aimed it at the glass between her and the demon. The mirror shattered, sending fragments in all directions. The demon howled into two dimensions of reality but was heard in neither. Elizabeth could feel part of her spirit being pulled towards the reality on the other side of the mirror and reacted without thought for the consequences. She hurled her body at another of the mirrors, which shattered spectacularly, ripping her flesh to shreds. But she was still alive. The candles guttered momentarily as the wind exploded in the circle. Elizabeth moved again – using her body, using rocks – and smashed the remaining mirrors. Her blood splashed onto the earth. She could feel the demon in the wind and she could feel herself being sucked into that nowhere and nothing place. A part of her separated from the rest and flew into that other place, becoming a part of the demon to replace the section she had ripped when she had broken the first mirror. Simultaneously she felt the other part of the demon fuse itself onto her spirit in the real world. Her blood flew in the wind around her and began to be sucked back into her body, mingled with whatever of the demon’s spirit they caught. The cuts sealed, trapping them into each other. The candles died. The wind stopped. The night was silent again.
Elizabeth’s body stood up from where she had fallen. The sensation it felt was strange and the imperatives it felt were unusual to it. The part which was Elizabeth’s main thought was to find the first man she had ever loved. The part which was the demon wanted to be free of this division of thought. It needed a body to possess on it’s own. Somehow the imperatives became tangled. The new creature left the place of it’s unholy birth to accomplish both aims.
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Nowhere
Scully looked at the woman walking towards her. It looked like Elizabeth but it’s eyes glowed gold with an evil intensity and it’s flesh was twisted with scars.
“Who are you?” Scully asked the person.
“I will be you.” It told her.
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Mulder’s Bathroom
“Apparantly all your friends returned to their homes without any knowledge of where they’d been.” Mulder repeated to Elizabeth what her brother had told him. “Only Danielle Rickard..”
“Danni.” Elizabeth acknowledged.
“..remembered anything at all about that night. She saw you get up and leave, that’s why your brother doesn’t believe that you died.”
“Poor Danni. None of this was her fault.” Elizabeth sighed.
“It seems that Alex believed Danielle’s story but the police ‘investigated’” There was a trace of mockery in Mulder’s tone. “your friends stories and came to conclusion that she manipulated your friends into killing you. The others got harassed by the press but it died down quickly and they’re all recovering.”
“That’s good. I’m glad they’re okay but it doesn’t help my situation.” Elizabeth commented.
“What exactly *is* your situation?” Mulder asked.
“Trapped in mirrors apparently.” Elizabeth complained. “I’m not sure what it’s done. This must be some trick I don’t understand. I feel connected to it in the nowhere place and in this world but I can’t seem to effect it’s actions.”
“What about Scully?” He tried to keep his level of concern about her to himself but he didn’t know everything about Elizabeth’s connection to the demon. “What does it have planned for her?”
“It wants her body.”
Even in his concern Mulder’s sense of humour attempted to rise and he squashed it down. Yesterday – even a few hours ago – the joke that entered his mind might have been funny but today it just wasn’t. He tried to get his mind off the thought of smooth alabaster skin and back onto trying to save her soul.
“And how’s it going to accomplish that?”
“It’s already been trying..” Elizabeth broke off at the sound of a piercing scream from the living room. Mulder’s eyes met the image in the mirror.
“Scully!” He called even as he began running.