The Crows (Pagham-on-Sea #1)

by C.M. Rosens

Fairwood had completely accepted him. The Pendle Stone was attached to the house, as much a part of it as all the other bits cobbled together, all of it adding layers of life and personality, all of it now one cohesive whole. His energies flowed through it, and he was now a part of her, a part of them both, though it was getting hard to see where Fairwood ended and Carrie Rickard began.

Ricky sank to his knees in rapturous delight, head lifted to the ceiling, letting her speak in all her voices, her rooms, her whispers. He choked on joy. This was all he had wanted, all he had ever wanted, ever since she’d called to him through the trees and then wouldn’t let him

(It wasn’t personal, it was never personal.)

Her footsteps made him smile. She would be the first to see him Change. That felt fair, somehow.

(Oh, she was doing it again, stroking his head, the decadence, that delicious, edible feeling, flowing through him, corrupting like sepsis.)

(His, or hers? Was there a difference? Can’t tell, can’t see, can’t feel anymore.)

(What’s that? Never seen that expression before. She worried, or what?) (...they call it ‘concern.’) (You in here too? Bloody hell, head’s getting crowded, head’s bursting.)

That was a conscious thought too far. The pressure-pain shot into his skull, breaking over his brain beneath the bone. Thought evaporated. Skin split. Nerves screamed, wrenched apart. Synapse flares dotted his blank-eyed vision, turned in on himself, inside-out, ripped open. Things crunched into place.

i mean, really, same especially for migraines

He threw off his old name with his old skin, both too small for him now.

setting his monstrous be...

opened its third eye, saw the glory of the wyrd as plainly as the dancing constellati...

He couldn’t see Fairwood’s wyrd: perhaps things were different for houses, even sentient ones. He looked instead for its essence, such a small thing, and there it was: a fragile, coal-dark glow, gleami...

He drew it into himself, absorbing it through the angles of his new existence. He had waited so long to answer the siren-call that drew him there. He had overcome the cruel curse that kept him from it, an...

Caroline Rickard was glowing like an ember, rivers of energy passing through her in the full spectrum of reds and oranges, vermillion bleeding into gilded tanger...

He saw into the threads of her wyrd, weaving before his eyes, speeding towards the infinite.

He saw what was coming, where it ended, where the final thread was cut, and as it crystallised in his mind so did something else, a forbidden thought, a deep, taboo desire. He wanted to change it.

you really are kind of a good boi, aren't ya? in your own way

His beautiful, living, rippling skin shrank around him and bled out human dermis. Raw pink patches of new skin constricted, cling-film tight, dripping gelatinous residue as it leaked from the inside out. The world spun away, the kitchen solidified, reality returned to its usual number of dimensions. His limbs bound themselves to the usual number. He was naked and alone, shivering in the enormity of the universe.

“Oh my God. How – how can you be that? Where did... There were coils with fucking faces in... where... Je-sus.” She stopped. “Do you – want to put your clothes back on?”

He handed her the old skin and she stood holding it in both hands as if she’d never seen a human shed before.

(Ah, his old skin would go well with the waste bags he’d saved when she was in that coma... two ingredients to something exciting that he’d find a good use for.)

“Beautiful?” Carrie spat the word out like a rotten grape, her voice shaking. “My God, Ricky that was horrific.”

beautiful & horrific are, really, the same thing really

“Really.” She let out a shaky breath, took a step towards him, and tentatively held out her arms. He eyed her, askance, but remembered on the lawn where she had held him, flung herself at him without a weapon or a curse, pressed herself into his chest and gripped his neck like a noose. This seemed less violent, and at least it was an offer this time.

caro is a weirdly supportive bean

(...You did that. You frightened her.) Even Fairwood sounded like him now. He accepted the admonishment and frowned.

Beauty could be frightening.

She was heron-slender, vixen-light. His mother would love to have her for her own, her own daughter-that-never-was, sit her in the chair in front of the dressing mirror and nail her hands to it when she fidgeted, and brush her hair for hours and hours until all the gold in it was spun cobweb-fine and she wasted away into beautiful bones. But she’d be dead soon, anyway.

(Who’ll do this when she’s dead? One week left, I can’t change her wyrd, it can’t be changed.)

The palm flat, splayed, unarmed, a star in the middle of his spine.

Her breath caressed his chin. He could drink it.

(Careful with her, she’s all flesh and fibre, not brick and stone.) (She’s so close, Hell’s bells and buckets of blood, she’s so close, what do I do?)

Carrie gave him a smile of steel, kissed him once on the cheek like his never-sister as if to prove she wasn’t afraid after all, and gave his head a final stroke. The chaste, firm brush of her lips set his face on fire.

Nothing eldritch, nothing – weird, nothing... involving tentacles?”

i love how just--accepting she is of ricky

“I’ve got a ghost to worry about, mate, and a dead ex-boyfriend, can we not split hairs about your anatomy until after it’s properly sunk in?”

misliking the flickering thing demanding their attention.

into a blindingly white corridor where she had half-expected to encounter a human centipede or something worse,

this all gets more naked lunch all the time, i swear

One truth kept haunting her, dragging her into a spiral of guilt: her life was better without Phil in it.

isn't that the fucking truth

Then, on Wednesday, at three in the morning, as Fairwood breathed rhythmically in the deep hush of the night, Carrie’s phone rang.

the most absurd time of not-time

oh God what now why’s it dark what’s happening

There was a moment of silence that stretched beyond the small glow of her lamp into the haunted shadows, falling away into a void of wordless guilt.

I’m changing, she thought. I’m different, somehow.

“Cut that out,” she ordered, trembling. “It’s three in the morning, stop it.” There was a heavy, pregnant silence. It was not the silence of an empty room. “I’m not looking under the bed,” Carrie said. “Forget it. Go haunt the attic or something.”

Ricky was standing in the doorway, tendrils forming frond-like antlers over his head.

Carrie tried to swallow, recalling the Thing that had burgeoned through Ricky Porter’s human skin in her kitchen, the creature of pulsing sapwood in eel-slick skin, peppered with round, scavenging mouths and all-seeing entomic eyes.

insect-like, relating to insects

Good God, he’s fit. Of course he was. Moving bodies was hard work. She filed the observation away, unexpected spark of libido dying a quick death.

Carrie paused, then clicked off her lamp with bad grace. She lay rigid in the dark, next to the man, monster, Eldritch Thing that had killed her ex-boyfriend, dug out his spleen and kidneys, sliced him up while still alive and conscious. (Got rid of him.)

“God, you smell like a massacre in a pet-shop.”

and she’d probably wake up with all her organs.

Her inner voice tried to make itself heard, but Ricky’s energy was overpowering it. (This is fine, everything’s normal, it’s fine.)

Eventually, they found a mutually least-awkward position with him on his back holding her into his bony chest, and Carrie wondered if he would consume her in the night, open up along his seam and absorb her whole. He gave her a small squeeze, as if testing her, trying to see if she was real, or really there. She felt like a living teddy-bear.

Ricky made a little gruff noise of assent, cracked and dry, the sound an oak would make if it could purr.

Fairwood had entered her dreams again in a form it knew she liked, her soothing protector, chasing away ghosts and shadows.