Chapter 3: Chapter Three: Sour Spirits

Desperately, Jonathan scurried backwards, away from the creature. There was a fear, primal, coursing through his veins, wrapping itself around his insides and squeezing until all he could do was get away. A rational part of his brain tried to take in his environment, looking for a way out, but his eyes kept drifting back to the vaguely translucent grey mass of limbs and teeth as its hands reached out in every direction. It grabbed seemingly aimlessly around itself, roaring as one of its hands, easily as big as Jonathan, seven-fingered, with two thumbs, wrapped around a trash can. It brought the bin to its mouth and it swallowed the thing whole, the sound of tearing and crunching metal ringing in Jonathan’s ears. 

He couldn’t help but imagine what he would sound like if he ended up in the creature’s mouth, and even through his blind panic he decided to make sure never to end up like that. He had to get away, but his body wasn’t responding the way it should, stumbling and falling in a desperate scramble to escape.

The monster also didn’t slow down, its dozen-and-then-some limbs pushing its body off the ground as it shambled towards him, and Jonathan knew the only way for him to go was all the way down the road, back through the iron gate, and the fear in his gut, the feeling that there was no way he’d be able to outrun something that big, wasn’t enough to keep him from trying to tear his eyes from the monster and make a break for it. He pulled himself backwards along the ground, scraping his elbows and knees across the dirty bricks, trying to get his feet underneath himself, and trying not to slip. 

Finally, he managed to get himself upright, and found it hard to even turn away. Abject terror almost felt like it forced him to face the creature, as if looking away would make it worse somehow, as if it would grow in size and hunger. He took a few stumbling steps and tried to turn his body away, but it was clearly too late. The thing had seen him, had realized he was trying to get away, and moved like a massive spider of grey limbs and massived hands over to him. Instead of trampling or eating him, as he expected, the creature passed him, stepping over him like he wasn’t there, and he threw himself on the ground and curled up, trying to make himself as small as possible.

He felt the wake in the air of the thing moving, and even in the foetal position he couldn’t stop staring. When it had just passed him, the monster turned around, pushing itself off the ground and even the walls, creating a web of limbs that would be impossible to pass. Jonathan came to a horrifying conclusion. The reason it hadn’t eaten or killed him yet was because it wanted to cut off his escape route. It wanted to play with its food. And he was closer than anyone else. 

Again the creature roared and advanced, but slower than the first time. At first, it had moved like it was recovering from whatever impact had caused it to suddenly appear. This, however, even to Jonathan’s fear-addled mind, was almost like a cat sneaking up on a red dot on the ground. Or in this particular case, the soon-to-be red smear on the ground that was about to be Jonathan. He began to crawl away again, and it was only because he slipped and fell on his hands that he realized that tears were running down his face. 

If he could get to the house, now that the way was clear, maybe it wouldn’t be able to get inside. The part of his brain that had been yelling in an almost primal frenzy pointed out hysterically that it could easily punch a hole through the walls if it wanted to. The rest of his brain was almost completely drowned out by the screaming. 

Jonathan finally managed to look away and pushed himself off the ground. Now that he couldn’t see the thing anymore, it was a lot easier to hope that the house was within reach, that he might make it, and he felt his feet begin to move. He began to pump his legs as fast as he could, trying to make good time, and made it almost five paces before something caught his leg and his chin hit the pavement with a hard crack. Momentarily dazed, it took him a moment to realize that he was caught in… he looked down, and immediately the sight of the creature filled him with fear and revulsion again, and he saw that one of its seven-fingered hands was wrapped around his leg and started to lift him off the ground. He screamed again as gravity and an eighteen karat run of bad luck turned the world upside down. 

His voice caught in his throat, however, as the monster’s face came into full view and its many mouths opened and closed threateningly. Grey tongues lolled behind grey teeth, churning and ready to turn him into paste. He started to beg, to everything he could think of, and found that he didn’t have a lot to beg to. His parents barely came to mind before he moved on. There had been religious talk at school, but he’d never really felt particularly keen on a life past the one he’d had if it was more of the same and he’d have been reunited with his family. What was left? The universe itself? He didn’t know what to pray to and who to beg, he realized as he was being lowered towards the creature’s maw. He’d never been so scared before and yet he was still clear-headed enough to know that, if he wasn’t about to be rescued, he’d rather skip the whole ‘life-flashing-before-his-eyes’ bit. He had never wanted the life he’d had. He wished, now more than ever, that he’d been born as someone else. It didn’t matter who. 

He put his hands up -- or was it down? He was dangling from his leg after all -- to protect himself, a useless gesture that didn’t help with the terror at all, but it was all he could think of. For one last time, Jonathan screamed. 

Then there came a pink haze over his eyes. He wondered if this was normal. The fear ebbed away a little bit. Only a little. The thing wasn’t any less terrifying for being pink, but there was something between him and it now. That’s when Jonathan realized that the pink wasn’t him. There was an actual pink barrier around him. He looked up and saw that he was in a slowly-closing pink bubble. When it touched the creature, it roared again -- and dropped him. He fell directly towards the monster’s open mouths and…

He bounced off. Like a beach ball being dropped on someone’s head, with a gentle ‘boing’, the pink sphere that had formed around him bounced away, and he realized in utter stupefaction that he was sort of hovering in the middle of it, not touching the walls. He bounced again, off the ground and off the walls, until his errant ping-pong-ball mode of transport came to a sudden but altogether gentle rest in the middle of the road, where it went ‘pop’ and disappeared. 

He was trying to make sense of what had happened when he noticed he was lying directly next to Charlie, who looked… different. Her cheery disposition was almost gone. She was covered in dirt, although tears had cleaned some streaks of grime off her face. But most importantly was how she’d held herself. Sure, she’d been bubbly and upbeat before, but now her back was straight and she was whispering to herself, drawing arcane symbols in the air, holding something in one hand he couldn’t quite make out. It seemed to be roughly the size of an apple, and glowed a soft pinkish gold. 

The creature began to approach them again, and when his eyes found it, the fear was back again, like a hand of ice grabbing his heart and trying to tug it up into his throat. He found himself freezing up, since fleeing hadn’t worked. Charlie, however, stood her ground, and even stopped her arcane movements to gently touch his shoulder with her free hand, as if to reassure him that everything was going to be okay, something he doubted severely. The thing bearing down on them was easily the size of a small house. It raised one of its many hands and brought it down on them. 

The movement was so fast that Jonathan almost didn’t have the time to do screaming about it, but it never finished. Instead of being swatted like an errant fly, the hand stopped a few feet above him, and he suddenly realized that the pink bubble was around them again, that the thing Charlie was holding was glowing a lot brighter now, and once again it became a little easier to think. The monster roared and began to lean on the sphere, and Jonathan could only barely hear Charlie groan over the sound of the stone pavement cracking underneath them. They were being pushed into the ground by the monster’s sheer weight. 

“Charlie?” Jonathan whispered. He didn’t know what to do. Was there anything he could do to help? Was Charlie going to die helping him? Was he supposed to do anything? Thoughts bounced around his head as he was trying to make sense of the situation. Suddenly, a voice sounded from between them, as if there was a third person in the bubble with them. 

“Incoming,” it said. The voice sounded rough, like someone who had been smoking cigarettes and gargling glass since childhood. In one word, there had been a weary rasping that lingered in the air, a voice like sandpaper. But the relief on Charlie’s face was easily visible, and he could see her almost relax, before she held up the thing in her hand again and the ball around them deepened in colour. Jonathan was almost about to ask something, when there was a noise like a whipcrack, and then something that sounded like a train being slapped with a building. There was a flash of bright, yellow light, and Jonathan realized something had hit the creature from above. It stumbled backwards and crashed into a wall before pushing itself upright again. 

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In the road in front of them stood a lone figure, wrapped in yellow light. Whoever that was had just saved them, and Jonathan felt himself utter a small victorious squeak. Charlie’s arms dropped by her side. She suddenly looked very tired, but the smile on her face was more than a little encouraging. They might actually make it out of here, Jonathan realized, before immediately being proven wrong by the creature lashing out at the figure in yellow, smacking it like a volleyball. The person bounced off a wall, recovered in mid-air and gently drifted towards Jonathan and Charlie.

It was a man who looked like… well, he looked like someone in his late thirties whose life had made him look like he was in his late forties. Adversity, experience and hardship had given him a face like it had been carved out of stone, a jaw made of steel, and two sharp eyes under a heavy brow, like he was staring into the sun. He was dressed in an old suit, the tie long gone missing and the top few buttons undone. Jonathan thought he could see several tattoos peek up out of the shirt. Whoever this was, a useless part of Jonathan’s brain told him, he probably didn’t like puns. 

“Bugger,” the man said. “Big ‘un.” Then he looked at Charlie and Jonathan and frowned, which was quite the achievement as the man’s default expression consisted mostly of frown already. “You’re still ‘ere.”

“Well…” Charlie stammered, clearly exhausted. “I thought… with you here…” She was interrupted by a grunt from the man and her mouth clamped shut. 

“Best I can do is slow it down, Ferman. You oughta be runnin’.” He turned his eyes on the creature again, raised his hands, and the yellow glow came over him again. It had probably prevented him from being hit too hard when the creature had slapped him away, but he was clearly out of breath. “Git,” he finally added, and started to walk towards the creature with determination. If he wasn’t going to be able to stop it, why was he going to fight, Jonathan asked himself. Wouldn’t that be suicide? Not that the man seemed to care. “Oy!” he yelled, as if he didn’t already have the creature’s full attention, “You! Big man!” 

The monster advanced on him, and again lowered a hand at him. The man rolled out of the way, but was clipped by one of the creature’s many fingers and thrown aside. Immediately he got back up, and Jonathan saw him wipe the corner of his mouth. This wasn’t going to go well. He started to slowly take steps back as the man kept running up to the creature and, occasionally, threw a punch that somehow staggered the creature. It clearly wasn’t enough though.

Charlie took him by the arm and started to drag him towards the house, when a shadow fell over them. He looked up, terrified for a moment that there was going to be another one. What he saw instead made him freeze in place, not out of fear, but out of sheer awe. 

There was a woman there, in the middle of the air, dressed in a gorgeous black dress with purple and gold accents. She looked to be in her late thirties as well, but, aside from a large scar on her face -- lines like a roadmap going to a star on her cheek -- she looked like she’d been sculpted rather than hewn. Her hair was up in a bun, her mouth was a thin line, and everything about her projected authority. 

Her hand was on the shoulder of a girl hovering besides her, only a few years older than Jonathan, Eighteen, maybe. She was dressed in a hoodie and what appeared to be a Sex Pistols t-shirt. But her hair stood upright, almost like she was underwater, and she seemed to hold a wand in her hand. Its tip glowed and drew lines in the air that left trails where it moved. What looked like a fox but… white, and a lot fluffier, danced around the girl, growling at the creature while it twirled in mid-air. 

The girl raised the hand with the wand in it, and the woman calmly spoke. “Vigours!” she said, raising her voice only slightly. “We’ve got it from here.” Despite the fact that Charlie could barely hear her over the sound of the fighting, the man in yellow light -- Vigours? -- turned his head and, with a roll and a jump, got out of the creature’s grasp and began running towards them, the monster hot on his heels.

The girl looked up at the woman, who nodded once. An almost invisible line, like someone had drawn a reflective nylon thread, shot out from the tip of the wand and touched the creature as it ran towards them all. Where it touched the creature, it was suddenly pushed apart, like pushing a hand through clay. The monster expanded rapidly in every direction, a giant hole in the middle, and then with a horrible sound like someone dropping a car-sized tomato from the fifth floor, it exploded. 

Jonathan stood stunned, chunks of grey mass slapping down around him which, he absent-mindedly noted, evaporated into thin air after just a few seconds. The man in yellow hadn’t even looked at the creature dying. 

“Bit late, yeah?” he chided his rescuers. 

“Sorry, Vigours,” the woman said. “Took us a moment to find Leah.”

“Hrm,” Vigours grunted. “Who’s this then?” he asked, and nodded at Jonathan. 

“Aa,” Jonathan said, all of the emotions catching up to him at once and hitting him, ironically, like a truck. He fainted.