Page 108 of An Invocation of Monsters

Only this was a Void meadow, of course. The flowers wriggled, chiming strange songs as we passed them.

“Here is as good as anywhere,” I said heavily, and Kiraxis chose a flat patch of ground to begin digging.

It went fast, as he had four arms to work with and used his claws like shovels, and I forced myself to help Toth lower her into the grave.

Her flesh was cold in death, making my skin crawl, but I felt I had to do it.

We scooped dirt back into the grave, patting it down over her. There was no marker, but perhaps that was best as well.

When it was done, I sat back on my heels, staring at the patch of naked ground. “I feel I should… I don’t know, give her last words or something.”

That was what Juno would do. She was sensitive to death, and she would not hide a body without at least saying something.

Finally I sighed. “I don’t know what to say. I didn’t know her. But… she seemed happy in the pictures, when she was with my mother. I hope she gets to see her again somewhere, if there’s a Heaven out there.”

And why not? If the Void existed, maybe there was yet another dimension beyond it where souls could meet again.

Maybe there were a million dimensions, a never-ending loop of them.

I stood up and brushed off my hands, but I felt grimy and weary.

My next move was clear. One of the two remaining Wendigo Society founders was responsible for this.

I had no doubt I would never manage to force a confession from them, but maybe, if I questioned often enough, one of them would slip up.

Nobody deserved a fate like this one. It was sickening.

I let my monsters lead me away from the meadow.

“I think I’d like to go back to Earth for a minute,” I said, my hand pressed against my stomach. “I want to wash this off and just… think for a minute.”

They both agreed, bringing me back to the door that led beneath my bed. I kissed them both before I climbed up, but I didn’t want to touch them for too long with my grave-stained hands.

Burying her had made me feel weirdly complicit in her death, even though I wasn’t the one who’d warped her.

I climbed through the door to a mess. The creature—Tasha—had torn it up in her effort to catch me.

I slid under the shattered edge of the bed, where her claws had ripped huge gouges in the wood, and through a thicket of dead flowers and torn pages.

I gathered them slowly, putting them in messy piles on the coffee table. She’d torn up the Deepwater text, and had knocked over my mother’s old ganja box, crushing the stale buds underfoot.

A bunch of photos had been ripped out of the album and torn in half. I tried to put the pieces together: photos of the Void, my baby picture, and—

I examined them more closely.

She’d torn up every single photo where Joseph was present. In some of them, she’d punched a claw right through his face.

The chill that was beginning to feel omnipresent washed through me, and I gave up on the cleaning and went to the bathroom, cranking the shower as hot as it would go.

As I washed and scrubbed grave dirt from under my fingernails, I began to feel a little better.

She would never hunt me again, and now she was buried and hopefully at peace.

Well… maybe not. Toth had torn her mind and soul free, and sent it into the endless warp of space and time.

But he’d also spoken to her in a pitying voice when he did so. “I see what they did to you,” he’d said.

I hoped he’d seen that it was not her fault, and had sent her somewhere pleasant.

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