Page 67 of Enthralled

Time to release shame.

To release fear.

To release guilt.

Time to release . . .me.

I get to my feet, the child cradled in my arms. Red mist parts around me, and I see that I’m no longer in the pretty front parlor of our old family home. No, we’re back in the coal cellar. But this time it isn’t Oscar I hold and comfort in the dark. It’s my own small, trembling, frightened self. I turn to the cellar steps, begin to climb. The mist coils around me, trying to hold me back, but it has lost its power over me now that I know my Noswraith’s true name.

Not Emma.

Clara.

White light pours through the doorway above, warming my face, warming my soul. I climb higher, still murmuring words of encouragement to the child. Just as I reach the topmost step, the figure in my arms melts into my chest, into my heart. I feel her enter and become one with me again. I feel the wholeness inside me where a piece has been missing. This is powerful magic—the magic of pure creativity rejoining my soul.

The Noswraith is gone. Healed. Whole.

With a shout akin to laughter, I burst through the open door and stagger out into the white light. In that moment I’m more powerful than I’ve ever been, powerful enough to vanquish all foes. But the light around me is blinding, and I cannot see where I have come. I put up a hand, shading my face.

Worthless.

A long black shadow falls across me. I gasp. Fear jolts through every limb as I whirl about and look up, up, up.

Up into the leering face of the Hollow Man.

He came back.

Of course he came back. Because chopping off his head couldn’t bind him. Not for long. No Noswraith is bound for long. Time is a meaningless concept to beings such as they. Words and ink and stitched spines, what do such things matter to nightmares? They will wait them out and escape to the ravaged minds of mortals, filling them with their malice, their hatred, their horror.

All the glory of my victory vanishes in an instant, overwhelmed by the sheer vastness of this darkness before me. The same darkness which haunted me and my brother since before memory—the great power, unstoppable, almost deified in its might. There is no escape. There is no hiding. There is nothing to be done but to love, to adore, to bow one’s head, to accept the suffering that must come upon beings as worthless as we.

Worthless.

Shameful.

Guilty.

Pathetic.

The multitudinous voices echo in my soul. I bow my head, kneeling and broken, succumbed before him. I close my eyes, squeeze them shut, expecting any moment for the death blow to fall, for the Hollow Man to swallow me up in his echoing emptiness. But as I crouch there, I press my hands to my heart and . . . and there’s something there that was missing before. That piece of my power which had gone out from me for a while, but which is now restored.

The child hidden safe and close in my soul.

Suddenly I remember. I remember what Vervain taught me. I remember what George Godswin revealed. I remember what I just experienced for myself and now hold as truth in the very core of my being. I remember.

And I look up into that awful face.

“Oscar?” I say.

The Hollow Man rears back as though struck. Shadows ripple from his eyes, pour from his broken chest, pulsing like blood. He is hideous and fantastic, a true nightmare made flesh, and yet . . . and yet . . . I recognize him. He isn’t Edgar. He never was. No more than the Eyeless Woman was Emma. Our parents are dead and gone and lost. These, their haunting phantoms, are the images our own hearts created. They belong to us.

“Oscar,” I say again, “Oscar, my dearest.” I hold out my arms.

The Hollow Man, massive as a mountain, giant and twisted, roars. He lunges at me, his broken cavern chest gaping to gulp me down. But I close my eyes, refuse to see what my mind is trying to make me see. Instead I focus on the truth, reach out with both arms, and catch him in my embrace. He is unbound by time and space, an impossibly huge monstrosity of churning shadow. Yet I hold him, writhing, squirming, struggling to get free. I hold him, press him to my heart, even as he bites and claws my flesh. I hold on fast.

But this time I know I cannot hold on forever.

“Let go of him, Oscar,” I say, speaking into a head of dark, curly hair while the wraith contorts in my grasp and rips at my soul. “Let go of this shadow. He needn’t haunt you anymore.” The being in my arms shakes its head, desperate to break my hold. But I won’t relent. Though Oscar is dead, I embrace the last living vestiges of him, this hideous creature born from his heart. I embrace it because itisOscar. The last, final, horrible truth of my brother’s existence. And I will say my piece and it won’t be too late.

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