Les Femmes Grotesques by Victoria Dalpe

Author:Victoria Dalpe [Dalpe, Victoria]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: CLASH Books

When she woke, the sky was orange and purple with dawn.

She stretched and stood, noting that the blood boundary was gone and the salt circle was now a black ring, burnt into the floor.

Emeline timidly crossed the line and waited. She could not sense the Mara anywhere. It had worked! She was finally alone. Truly alone.

It was on her second step outside of the circle that she felt it. Her insides were off somehow. The movement in her limbs, the air in her lungs, the taste in her mouth: all foreign and strange.

She rushed to the vanity mirror, brought herself nose to nose with her own reflection.

Her eyes had changed color. No longer pale brown, they were black as ink. She pulled back her lips and saw her teeth, blunt, regular, as was her tongue. All looked normal.

But those eyes. Those were NOT her eyes. As she stared into them, her skin tingled. Then itched. A sound began, inside her head, like a swarm of insects. Inside and out, her body revolted against her.

Emeline fled the horror of the mirror. Raced down the twisting stairs. Burst into her aunt’s bedroom. The old woman was awake, propped up in bed. Emeline didn’t have to say anything; Bernadette saw her eyes.

“What have you done?” she whispered, fearful, unsympathetic.

“I thought it would vanish. I thought the ritual was supposed to make it go away—”

“What ritual?”

Emeline’s breath was short, her insides twisted into knots of pain and fear. “The Ritual of Absorption. I found a rare book, one from a bookshop—and I used it.”

Bernadette frowned, her face falling. “A bookshop? You fool. You poor, young fool. I told you there was no cure. That book was nothing but false hope and evil. That is why I got rid of it all those years ago. To stop my damned father from doing that ritual. And you found it. I should have burnt it, it’s no cure.”

Emeline’s dark eyes stretched wide. “What have I done?”

Bernadette laughed humorlessly. “The Mara is pure spiritual emptiness. That can’t be destroyed. You can’t smother a black hole, nor fill it in.” The old woman spat the words, her voice caught between anger and sadness. “The void remains, girl. The hole always hungers. You didn’t defeat it, you absorbed it into yourself.”

“What does that mean?” Emeline’s question was whispered in a voice that she no longer recognized as her own. Her head swarmed, her skin crawled, her heart thumped fast and hard.

Emeline fell into her aunt’s arms, squeezing the fragile old body tight. She sobbed.

Whatever it meant, it was happening.

Awareness bloomed inside of Emeline. And with it, an appetite stirred. An indescribable emptiness awoke in her. The black hole, the hunger that was never sated. The Mara, now inside her, now a part of her, flared to life. It pushed her. She could sense the life force inside her aunt. She began to salivate.

Her aunt was old. She was weak. She could not fight.

Emeline pressed her mouth to her struggling aunt’s. Sucking, starving, desperate.

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