Whitelodge 14.8

-14.8-

Harmon was sitting right next to him, but was not there. The man had only said a few distracted words of reassurance -- "Hold on, I'll be right back, she needs help" -- before pulling his presence out of Benny's mind altogether. It wasn't until he was gone that Benny was able to grasp how much Harmon's presence had helped him hold his own brain together; keeping his thoughts ordered had grown exponentially harder, proving how vital his friend's presence had been.

Now Benny was alone in his own head again, and increasingly unsure that he would be able to function for long. Thoughts seemed to skitter away from him, like marbles spilling across a table. In trying to gather up as many as he could, he was losing nearly all of them. The only thing that remained constant was the polished metal logo in his crabbed hand, its smooth surface and familiar shape grounding him.

He was dimly aware of some kind of commotion going on outside Harmon's small room: first a faint creaking of the upstairs floorboards, then shouting, followed by an erratic, violent series of bumps and bangs that traveled across the slanted ceiling of Harmon's room (even in his compromised state he could tell that something heavy had just been knocked down the stairs), ending in a series of upstairs thumps of a widely varied and pitched array. And, just when Benny thought it was all over, a horrific crunching crash seemed to explode just outside the door. It wasn't until Benny heard the scream, close, desperate, and male, that he decided he had to act.

There was no way he could make it all the way to the door without Carlos around to help prop him up, so he decided he would have to crawl. Using Harmon's currently-vacant body as a launching point, Benny started to artfully angle himself so that he could fall to the floor with as little damage as possible. It took every ounce of mental effort he had to do this, and he was mostly successful -- meaning that he ended up facing the door, with the Deertail sigil still firmly gripped in his hand, and Harmon still sitting upright on the cot. Benny counted this as a major victory.

He then began the process of dragging himself toward the door, which meant thrusting the logo forward, thunking it against the floor, and using its weight to pull himself in the direction he wanted to travel. If he had currently owned the capacity to think about it, Benny might have realized that the metal shape was not heavy or hook-shaped enough to really aid him, and that his progress was more due to his ability to envision its help than anything else. But through whatever means, the door drew closer.

He was almost there when he heard another crash, and a tinkle of glass. The sound seemed out of place to Benny; he couldn't imagine that after so many windows had been shattered that night, that there were any glass in the world left to break. It made him all the more obsessed with glancing outside to see what was happening, regardless of the possible danger, and what helped him levitate his free hand up to the knob, to grasp and turn.

The weight of his hanging body was enough to ease the door open a few inches, and his misaligned eyes struggled to make sense of what was happening mere feet from him. On the familiar floor of the lobby lay what seemed to be a huge black mass of pointed branches, and a man lay on his back atop them, facing the ceilng, supported and run through in places by them. He was making smaller versions of the scream that had galvanized Benny's trek across the floor, and he seemed to be simultaneously trying to get up and hold as still as possible.

Both of these goals were hard to attain, however, because the mass of branches was also shifting under him, as if they themselves were struggling to rise up off the floor. Benny only gradually became aware of a dark shape lying in their midst, and it physically hurt his mind when recognition of the thing snapped into focus. It was the dark figure with the crazily massed antlers; The Qoloni from Harmon's book. It had pursued him and Carlos into the very room in which he still lay. If he had the strength or the leverage to pull the door back closed in that moment, he would have. But in his current state, all he could do was watch.

There was a woman on the other side of the dark body lying on the floor. She was hunched over, as if she were in the process of trying to back away but couldn't quite do it. She kept scooting forward, darting her hands forward to snatch at the thing, and then retreating in reluctance. Meanwhile, the Qoloni was using one of its hands to ward her off, wagging its elongated fingers at her each time she came near. Benny had no idea why she was taunting the creature this way, until she managed to grab onto the thing that clearly was her goal.

It had been hidden from Benny's view because he was lying on the floor like the Qoloni was, but the woman managed to grab it without letting the dark thing touch her, and pulled the object up as she stepped back. It was immediately familiar to Benny, a gray stellation of metal that was almost as big as the span of her arms. She picked it up and, once she had gotten a safe distance from the dark rocking creature, examined it. Benny could see that where there had once been a mirror filling one side of the central portion of it, it had been shattered in the fall he had heard, and only jagged pieces remained around the edge. She appeared to be incredibly upset by this, knuckles whitening around the tines as she shook it in frustration. Then she was looking at the twitching Qoloni on the ground, beyond action and only watching as it struggled to lift itself off the ground, its grasping hand still reaching for the mirror, or maybe for her. It would succeed, Benny suddenly realized. It would lift itself up, the extra weight of the man stuck on its horns or not, and then it would get her.

There was a vague groaning sound from somewhere farther in the lobby. The woman's eyes flicked toward it, focusing on something beyond the imminent threat in front of her, and Benny saw them widen in surprise, and when she saw it the look on her face was so conflicted and genuine that Benny just had to see what she was reacting to. He turned his tortured eyes up to his hand, which was still wrapped in a death-like grip around the metal of the doorknob, and pulled. He managed to lift his upper body a little off the floor and a little forward, and when he lowered himself back down it levered the door a few more inches farther open. Now his eyes were almost level with the doorjamb, and he could see what -- or rather, who -- the young woman was reacting to.

A dark-skinned young man was stumbling toward her, apparently having been the one who loudly thumped down the stairs only moments before. Lit from behind by the broken lobby windows, he didn't look much better than Benny felt. He limped as he progressed slowly, but with purpose. How he had managed to get himself upright after a such a tumble, Benny couldn't imagine, but it was doubtful that he was going to be able to stay that way for long.

He walked cautiously, with gritted teeth, skirting around the bramble tangles of horns, arcing toward the woman who was still watching him with dropped jaw, mortal concern furrowing her forehead. The young man, for his part, was getting closer to the grasping hand of the Qoloni, although whether he realized this was not clear; He never looked away from the woman as he went to her.

He stopped before her, just as she swung the mirror in her hands to the side so he would not be in danger of its glittering points. Swaying, he stepped up to her and did not stop until his lips were pressed against hers. Benny noted that the young man's cheek had been split in his fall, and blood dripped off his chin. In that, Benny saw kinship, his own battered head hanging heavily from his neck as he lay there in the doorway.

His exhausted eyes sinking toward the floor, Benny noticed that the arm of the Qoloni had crept dangerously close to the couple. It seemed to be reaching for the now-forgotten mirror at the woman's side...

Benny thumped the metal logo in his hand against the floor, hard. Twice, then twice more. The couple broke off their kiss and looked his way. The man found Benny's gaze quickly, but the woman first noted the creature's extended reach and started to back away from it. On the floor, the Qoloni began to sit up, the man impaled on its horns crying out anew as his weight redistributed and he began to be turned upside-down. The dark thing's torso was rising up from the ground, hinging upright like Nosferatu rising from his sarcophagus in the hold of a doomed cargo ship.

Benny did the only thing he could, with the only weapon he had. He lifted his hand as quickly as he could and hurled the Deertail logo in the direction of the young man, who was looking at him. Benny watched, fascinated, as the thing he had clung so tightly to flew out of his grasp so easily, spinning end over end as it sailed away, flinging off random sparks of midnight illumination. The young man reached for it and, as if by the collected will of the two men at either end of its journey, snatched it out of the air.

Then he was diving on the dark horror, slashing down at it like a divining rod, the fork at the top of the triangular piece of metal catching on the ends of a few of its horns. The young man let the weight of his downward thrust carry him to his knees right next to it, pinning that side of the creature's horn rack back down to the floor. He looked right into its eyeless face as he did, his and the monster's countenances not more than a foot apart.

This tilting motion brought renewed screams of pain and rage from the man stuck on the Qoloni's horns, who had been in the process of being crucified upside down as its body rose from the floor. Now with the additional twisting of its head under the weight of the logo, he was pivoted atop it and thrown off, landing gracelessly in a rubberized heap near the creature.

Meanwhile, the woman holding the broken mirror was dealing with the grasping arm, swatting at it with the frame. On the third or fourth attempt, some shard lodged in the corner must have snagged the Qoloni's skin, because its arm became attached, stuck fast as the reflective material began to draw it in. Encouraged, the woman began pushing forward as if the mirror frame were a shield, trying to bring more of the Qoloni in contact with it.

Benny reached his now-empty hands out toward the couple; they had stalled the thing for a moment, but he knew there was no way they could stop it. It was eventually going to turn its horns the other way, and overpower the weight of the metal logo, or it was going to snatch its hand back from the mirror and slash at them both with it. And he had already expended every last ounce of energy with the actions he had taken so far; he couldn't even turn his head to look away. One person already lay broken and bleeding across the floor in front of him, and two more would soon follow...

Then a downrushing of air came, a blur of motion falling vertically down onto the struggling mass, accompanied by a howl of rage so loud and pained that Benny wished he had the strength to clap his hands over his ears. The blur solidified as soon as it hit the floor, transforming into a hulk of dark security outfit rooted to the ground by two battered work boots, topped with a feral rictus of flashing teeth.

Whitelodge 14.7

-14.7-

Kerren kept heading deeper, toward where she sensed some essential remnant of Glenda still was, but it got progressively harder the further she pushed into the denser medium of the brain stem. It had no physical analog, of course, but mentally it felt like trying to dig down through snow that kept getting heavier and slushier. To maintain contact, she kept repeating the fading woman's name:

Glenda?

Yes? came the response each time, as if by rote, the only reasonable response when a person's name is called.

I'm here. It's Kerren. And Dale is here. Do you remember Dale? He's with you.

For once, he response sounded puzzled, as if struggling to fit the disparate information together. I remember Dale, Glenda finally answered. His eyes are beautiful. I like the way they look at me.

Kerren tried to keep her composure. There was so little time left, and she entered Glenda's mind with no clear plan of how to utilize it. He's holding you now, Kerren said. He hasn't stopped holding you since you were hurt. It wasn't exactly true, but she didn't see the point in trying to explain.

I remember the hurt, Glenda answered, and the pain in the memory was evident. I didn't like that. It's what is taking me away.

Kerren found she wanted to reach out to her, for once realizing the few deficiencies in communicating without bodies. I know, was all she could say. And I'm so sorry.

But the hurt is over, Glenda said. Feeling better. Feeling... less.

Kerren had to get to what she had come for. Dale, she said flatly. I need your help with Dale. He won't leave you, but we need him. He has to come back to us. You have to let him.

Dale? Glenda asked, as if he were being mentioned for the first time. I know Dale.

Yes, Kerren repeated, trying not to let her panic show. Every second, she could feel the connection continuing to deteriorate, becoming ever harder to maintain. We need Dale's help, but he won't leave you. Can you help me tell him that it's okay to let you go? She hadn't realized how hard the words would hit her until they were out.

A long pause, and then Glenda replied, fainter than ever, Okay. But first...

For a moment, Kerren was worried she had lost her forever, but then more came floating back along the weakest of mental tethers. My boys.

That was right. Someone had mentioned that Glenda had three sons at home. Yes? Kerren asked, fully aware that if she had corporeal form, she would have been unable to physically speak the words through sobs. What do you want to tell them?

Tell them... Glenda began, and seemed to really be making mighty effort to think about it before saying, They're so good. They're my best things. But they need to help each other. They fight too much. Less fighting. Then they will be okay. Tell them. Please.

I will, Glenda. I will.

And Dale, the desk clerk went on without prompting. Tell Dale. Thank him, for loving me back. But he's a helper. He has to help. I don't want to be the one to stop him.

Okay, Glenda. I will tell him. Thank you.

The spellbinding weight of this responsibility suddenly felt like too much, and Kerren wondered if she would be able to bear it when she drifted back to her frail, injured body. How would ever be able to convey to Dale what she saw when Glenda spoke about him, the multi-faceted fireworks of love, desire, and friendship that erupted from the woman's dying consciousness? And beyond that, how could she ever tell three young, grieving boys about the all-encompassing glow of warm maternal awe of their existences that she saw when their mother spoke her last words of them? Was this the sort of thing that could ever be communicated, or was being inside someone's mind the only way to know? Kerren wondered if what Harmon had taught her could be given to just anyone, or if there were some kind of special connection that had to be present.

Hello? Kerren had assumed that she had heard the last she would from Glenda.

Yes? she replied, barely able to see the final flicker that had been Glenda's light sliding away, far below her. She gave one last push, and just managed to hear a final phrase as it died out entirely.

Tell him, it's not his fault.

Suddenly, Kerren found herself surrounded by more nothing than she had in her entire life. There was not even the slightest glimmer left, nothing but structures that served only to outline the voids that lay within them. Glenda's mind suddenly seemed like a haunted place, and Kerren wanted to be out of there as soon as she could manage.

Come on, child, Harmon said from somewhere nearby, as if he had been there the entire time. His inner voice was resonant with new understanding. I'll lead you back out.

Whitelodge 14.5 & 14.6

-14.5-

Carlos didn't expect the mirror to fall off the wall, so its impact on the table jarred it out of his reach. He tried to lean forward, to get his hands back on its tines, but he couldn't move much with the way he had forced himself up against the wall, so that Kelly could lean on him. He felt the tips of his fingers graze it, but then the force that he and Kelly had been imparting into it made it start to roll. It made a strange, clock-like ticking sound as it started to walk itself across the tabletop, each tine tapping on the wood in turn.

Kelly, who had managed to keep partial hold of part of the heavy mirror, was trying to keep the metal object from getting away by twisting it to the side. Its march-like steps faltered and its heavy weight tilted, threatening to tip the whole thing off the side of the table and onto the hallway floor. Carlos was more desperate than ever to keep it from doing this, not knowing whether the carpet on the floor was enough to keep the glass from breaking and making this whole endeavor worthless.

He was still mostly pinned to the wall, though. Kelly was bracing herself against him, trying to counterbalance the tipping weight of the mirror. Her hip ground against his stomach, forcing the air out of his lungs. He grunted, and this might have been the distraction that made her finally lose her battle with gravity, and swivel the mirror off the table. It swung at the end of her arms like an overweighted pendulum, and he heard the tines rip through the fabric of the floor before she lost her grip entirely, and after she snatched her hands back, clearly fearing for their safety, the whole thing continued to roll farther out into the hallway, drunkenly wobbling like a huge, demented coin that's hasn't decided its heads-or-tails fate yet.

This motion sent reflected light bouncing off the walls, the mirror becoming a tiny lighthouse scanning all the dark corners of the hallway. Carlos found his eyes turning to the Qoloni, who was still on the other side of Bruce. The author had stepped in between the thing the three remaining occupants of the hallway; Carlos couldn't see where Manoj had gotten off to.

Bruce was still launching a verbal tirade at the thing. "I will send you back to the forest!" the author was saying firmly. "Now that I have been there, walked its paths and seen its secrets, I know how to put you back there! I've learned the true ending to your story, the one I should have seen from the beginning!" The writer's words broke off here, however, because his attention was being drawn toward the same place the Qoloni's was -- the large mirror slowly wobbling its way across the carpet past his feet.

The rolling object broke whatever stalemate Bruce had been able to broker with his creation; he no longer had the Qoloni's attention, nor the words to hold it at bay. The pair fell into fascinated silence as they watched the mirror's progress. Carlos noticed that while Kelly was reaching after it, she was not pulling away from him or the wall to pursue it, as if she were afraid to step too far toward the horned creature.

Carlos caught movement in the monumental rack of horns itself, realized that he was seeing a magnification of the Qoloni's act of glancing back and forth from Bruce to the mirror, as if calculating something. He dully wondered why the thing should have any interest in the rolling thing, and then it struck him, the thought springing into his mind as if it had been spoken aloud.

It knows what we want to do with that mirror. It knows we are going to try to get it in there.

For the third time that night, Carlos felt utterly helpless. The first had been when Benny had been buried under the snow that had piled in through the kitchen window, a microcosm of the avalanche outside. The second was when they had been pinned inside Harmon's tiny room, the Qoloni trying to press its way through the door, and Carlos sure that it would only be a matter of an instant before it broke through and devoured them both. In one case, he had been able to act, to do something to turn the situation away from tragedy, and in the other, he had no choice but to sit and wait. In the surreal vividness of this present moment, he didn't know whether he was seeing a new example of the first moment, or the second.

Without realizing it, he started to push away from the wall, throwing both himself and Kelly out into the center of the passage, chasing after the mirror. She stumbled along with him, her feet seeming to take up the pursuit before the rest of her was aware she wanted to. At the same time, a marked tilt in the overhanging cloud of antlers betrayed the Qoloni's sudden movement, and suddenly everyone in the hallway was watching the mirror's progress.

Carlos didn't know if the thing knew the supposed power this rolling object had over its existence, but when its hands reached out its intentions became clear; it was going after the mirror too. The thought of seeing anyone trapped and speared by that mass of thorny chitin was unbearable to him, so he used Kelly as a speed assist, pushing her to the side as he launched his feet forward. She spun off in a less effectual direction, and Carlos was just about to try to wedge his fingers into the spinning tines when the mirror hesitated, then swiveled and changed direction. Its motion was maddeningly random under the dictates of gravity and invisible texture changes in the carpet. This time, it headed straight for the Qoloni.

Carlos almost fell over trying to match his trajectory to the mirror's, but managed to keep his feet barely under his center of gravity and swerved close after it. His stretching fingers were just anticipating the buzz of the spinning tines against them -- and then the mirror changed again, coming to a sudden, absolute halt and springing up into the air.

Carlos fell forward, having put too much stock in the idea that the mirror would soon be taking a bit of his weight, and his stomach and groin simultaneously hit the carpeted floor with a loud smack. His head came down hard, landing on his right temple, and the strength immediately left his arms. His eyes insensibly registered what was happening, as the Qoloni straightened up, two of its horns wedged in between the mirror's radiating tines.

It lifted the flat object up into the air, exposing it to more light from the lobby. It appeared to be trying to look up at it, fascinated by its shine, but this only caused its horns -- and the mirror imprisoned by them -- to tilt farther up, causing its head to tip back even more. Carlos abstractly marveled at how the thing seemed to be unconscious of its own body, as if it were still figuring out how it worked.

There was no breath in Carlos' lungs now, and answers to the question of whether he could still move his legs were slow in coming. He was able to see Kelly's feet as she bounded over him, returning from the detour he had sent her on. She ran straight to the Qoloni and jumped up, reaching for the raised mirror, arms held apart to catch onto either side of it, looking very much like a gymnast about to launch into an uneven bar routine. She landed precisely where she intended, gripping tines on each side and swinging her legs up underneath her.

The resulting kick she effected would have taken off the Qoloni's head, if it were any kind of physically sane material. Instead, both of her bare feet plunged into the massed darkness of its face, the fleshy color of them immediately spreading across its surface and nudging the creature backward. From his vantage point on the floor, Carlos could see how the thing's stance faltered and it began to stagger backward toward the railing it had initially sprung up over.

He could also see the way Kelly's arms tensed, and he coudl tell that her original intention had been to push off of the thing's face, throwing herself and the mirror backwards, away from the swaying spikes. Having grappled with the creature himself, however, Carlos knew that this tactic, which would have worked with a real foe, was doomed to fail. Kelly was not able to give herself any backward propulsion off the thing's blank countenance. Instead, she swung listlessly with it as it stumbled back.

A howling shape vaulted at the Qoloni from the darkness, coming in at a low angle to intersect the thing's middle. Carlos recognized it as the way that he himself had chosen to assault the thing, and at almost the exact same moment saw that the attacker was the only person who had witnessed him do it -- Bruce.

The author rammed his shoulder into the Qoloni, with apparently no other motive than to knock it over. If he had, he no doubt would have realized how close his creation was getting to the railing. Carlos knew exactly what the author was feeling on impact: that slippery buzzing feeling against the skin, the utterly alien feeling of one's own flesh changing shape, stretching, flattening at the molecular level while utterly retaining its integrity, the mind cringing with anticipated pain that never comes.

The trio of them -- the Qoloni, Bruce, and Kelly still swinging from the captive mirror -- took one step too many back toward the railing, and then the whole top-heavy conglomeration was tipping even further back, Carlos powerless to move but watching every centimeter being lost to momentum and gravity. He saw the tipping point passed, witnessed the way the Qoloni's legs passed seamlessly through the slats of the railing, and the way Bruce's came up hard against them, sending the author that would not let go of his prey flipping up. He also saw Kelly try to bring her flailing feet down on the railing, for anything to prevent her from going over the edge with the black thing, but finally being able to bring them down on nothing at all.

The three of them went over/through the railing and disappeared from sight. Immobilized on the floor, Carlos saw it all.

-14.6-

When Bruce grabbed the creature he had brought into this world, he could feel its sense of betrayal. The way its skin, the vibrating pieces of horrible thoughts stitched together, buzzed in a way that almost seemed like a language. The tighter he grabbed it, the clearer the message became... This is what you brought me here to be, it said. Why are you trying to stop me?

The author made no attempt to answer, only knew that he had to prevent this blasphemous creation from hurting anyone else. Bruce was keenly aware that he had done more physical damage to the inhabitants of the Deertail Lodge that night than even this dark antagonist, and wanted it to stop. If that meant he had to do all he could to throw his Qoloni back into the fictional world it came from, then he was going to figure out a way to do just that.

Watching first Carlos and then Kelly fail in their attempts to gain control of the mirror, Bruce had felt he now been forced into a singular course of action, one where the words that served him every day were no longer sufficient. He had seen Carlos physically attack the thing as a delay tactic, and it had saved his own life. Now, he had to do the same for the others. What he had not prepared for was the utter revulsion he felt at being so close to the creature, to feel its distored reality against his hands, shoulder, and face; more importantly, to feel the way it changed *him*. It was warping him, taking him out of rational three-dimensional space and pulling him with peculiar, dark gravity into becoming more like itself. He could feel his body changing, yielding more than he thought possible --

His legs and hip hit wood. He had managed to push the creature through the slats of the balcony railing and out the other side, and now its unfathomable weight was pulling him into the dimly-lit void on the other side. At the last instant, he tried to pull back, to let go of his creation and let it fall on its own... but his hands were sunk too deeply into its weird flesh. They had too far to come back from the amorphous state they clung to. He was carried forward with it, helpless.

Although the lower half of his body had stopped, the top part refused. The Qoloni continued moving out and downward, and Bruce felt his entire body pivoting, his feet leaving the ground and being flung up behind him. He was dimly aware of Kelly next to him, her arms outstretched and clinging to the mirror, riding the plunging beast through the air right next to him. Bruce went upside down, feeling as if he were plummeting upward, spinning through the cool air of the lobby, feeling it against his face--

Then the spearing pain. Both legs were neatly impaled in various places with the horns of the thing he had designed. When it hit the floor, the Qoloni fell on its back, with Bruce's body most of the way through the process of flipping up over its head. It took him several seconds of stunned agony to realize that there were horns sticking into his back too, though not as deeply. He was basically looking up at the lobby ceiling, inverted, suspended about three feet above his personal Frankenstein's monster, on the rack of its razor-sharp horns.

Had he heard a crashing somewhere nearby? Through the horrific pain, he wondered if the mirror had survived the fall along with himself, the Qoloni, and Kelly. Was it still intact, and would it still serve its intended purpose even if it wasn't? Then the Qoloni began to stir, and Bruce couldn't help but let loose a scream as the slight movement threatened to rip his legs in half. He could feel the grooved antlers scraping against bone in multiple places. It continued to try to right itself, to rise from where it had fallen. Blood pounded in Bruce's head, just as much from the agony as the fact that his flayed legs were now above his head.

From out of the corner of his inverted eye, Bruce caught some motion. It was Kelly, standing upright far above him, apparently hardly the worse for wear after swinging down to the lobby floor along with the tangled mass of man, mirror, and beast. She was had adjusted her grip on the spiked metal frame, trying to wrench it from where it was stuck -- like Bruce himself -- on the Qoloni's antlers. It was this tugging that was causing him such unbearable pain. His scream did not seem to deter her, because it seemed that she had almost gotten the mirror loose.

Bruce tried to speak, no longer caring if she got the mirror free or not, only wanting for the ripping feeling deep in the muscles of his legs to *stop*. But he could only let out a guttural exhalation, conveying nothing. His eyes filled with tears of pain and horror. He wondered if Glenda felt had anything akin to this after he accidentally stabbed her. And yes, he did consider it an accident, because Dale had been his intended target. Action with intent and action without were defined with perfect, separate clarity in his pinwheeling mind. The only thing the two actions had in common was that he wished his only experience with them had stayed in the pages of his books, not out here where there were consequences... so many consequences.

Tears spilled up his forehead, catching in his eyebrows. His throat gasped for air, but there seemed to be none left around him, as if the plunge off the balcony had thrown him out into airless space. He tried to lift his hand, to wave it and get Kelly's attention, so she could help him, but found his arm stuck, similarly impaled in a way that he hadn't even noticed yet. Thus, he had no means of warning Kelly that the Qoloni was, just outside her peripheral vision, reaching up from where it lay on the floor and extending its dark fingers toward her...

The mirror finally came loose, and Kelly stumbled to the side, unwittingly bringing herself even closer to the rising black arm. A smile spread across her face, but as she began to turn toward Bruce, it fell away just as quickly as it came. He was only marginally aware that he was seeing her reaction to the state he had fallen into. The mirror in her hands lowered in her distraction.

Two things happened in rapid succession. He saw the tips of two of the Qoloni's fingers touch the surface of the mirror in its feeble attempt to grab it. When they did, they immediately extended, as if being forcibly pulled through the mirror to some unseen point far beyond. It was an effect that Bruce had considered when writing his story, but never put in the book: while the Qoloni was able to reshape physical objects, mirrors were the only thing that would reshape its own body, drawing it in as dirty water swirls down a drain.

Secondly, the thing felt what was happening too, and yanked its hand away. It was just able to retract its fingers from the powerful pull of the mirror, and doing so seemed to cause some kind of drag on the mirror itself. It shifted in Kelly's grip, and her distraction tipped it almost out of her hand. She felt the change just in time, and stepped back, but when the Qoloni's fingers left the surface of the mirror completely, the resistance was gone and she suddenly was pulling too hard. She overcompensated and lost her grip entirely, the mirror spilling out of her grip. It fell, and when it landed face-down on the wooden area of floor they had come to rest on, a loud, crystalline crack filled the otherwise silent lobby.

Whitelodge 14.3 & 14.4

-14.3-

The door clicked shut behind the hallway expedition, and utter silence fell. The only sound that remained was that of Dale's nearby breathing, heavy, mournful, and slow. He should have gone with them, she knew. As much as she admired his unwavering sense of duty, he should have concerned himself just as much with the living. She wished she could tell him this, to help him to move on.

Perhaps she could help, in her own way. While she was being wound inside the rug, Kerren had enough forethought in her pain-dazed state to lift up one hand and rest it on her collarbone. In the time since her binding, she had been worrying that wrist back and forth as her tolerance for pain would allow, trying to gain some kind of control, even if it were merely the ability to slip her arm back and forth inside of her constraints. She now could feel the cool air outside the winding rug on her fingertips, and knew that she had been making progress. It might be the time to see if she could push it free. But even then she still would need help.

Kerren had known that her mother had fond memories of the Deertail Lodge -- hadn't she been the one to suggest that Kerren and Sheryl spend their conciliatory anniversary trip there? -- but she had no idea that Sarah had made such an impression on the people who frequented and worked there. To hear it from Bruce, any man she came across back then was suddenly struck with artistic inspiration. Kerren had always suspected that her mother had a kind of special energy around her... hadn't she spent many insecure adolescent days wondering if any of it was ever going to rub off on her?

Now, it seemed like that collective inspiration Sarah had created here had gathered somehow, been collected and... what? Brought a supernatural creature from a book to life? She would hardly known what to make of that, even if she hadn't been currently immobilized an in pain, injured in an avalanche. The surreality of it all, she supposed, was the very thing that made her not reject the idea that Harmon was capable of telepathically communicating with her.

With this in mind, she now called on Harmon to help her; she could feel that he had not fully retreated from her mind after he spoke through her lips. He had left some kind of door open a crack, and through this she put out a mental entreaty for him to return. What she had in mind was going to take not only physical strength, but mental as well. Perhaps he could lend her some.

She found him lurking inside her prefrontal cortex, present but distracted. There was something else going on that he was focused on, but she needed him, and thought of increasingly more surreal mental pictures until the random flashing of her synapses got his attention. When it did, she found it easy to transmit her request on pure thought.

The response came faster than she expected, and the sheer volume of information he was able to pass to her in the span of half a second made her breath catch.

Out in the exterior world, Kerren's fingers finally managed to slip across her collarbone and out of the binding rug. From there, she could swing her arm up and out with less resistance than she expected. What she didn't expect was the pain the motion caused in her broken legs, as if the slight change in the way her body was balanced on the stabilizing board was enough to irritate them. She bit her cheeks to keep from crying out, and extended her freed hand toward Dale and Glenda.

The security guard didn't see what she was doing until Kerren's hand came to rest on the top of Glenda's head. His eyes flicked up from staring at the deceased woman's face, and found Kerren's. She tried to whisper something that sounded approximately like "It's okay," and then closed her own eyes in concentration. He looked wary, but otherwise didn't object.

With Harmon's guidance from downstairs, it wasn't too difficult to enter. The method seemed obvious once he told her how it was done, but she knew that she wouldn't be able to do it without his assistance. At least, not without more practice.

Having never been inside another's mind before, Kerren didn't know what to expect. Even so, she knew that was she was seeing was a once stunningly beautiful system gone horribly wrong, distorted beyond repair. Glenda's mind, devoid of flowing oxygen-rich blood for so long, had totally collapsed in on itself in places. Sections the size of cities had gone dark and withered, and in other places arching voids stretched out for light-years. Kerren had never experienced such an overwhelming physical sense of loss, of a place once filled with truth and beauty, now irretrievably stolen forever.

Somewhere deep, deep in the recesses, there were still a few tiny surviving glimmers of light, and Kerren instinctively pursued them, moving-but-not-moving in that way that Harmon had passed to her in mere milliseconds, but had been unable to fully prepare her for. She swung past entire lobes of thought that had dwindled to almost nothing. The only way she could handle the sorrow was to distance herself with a little humor; she recognized the areas of Glenda's brain as she passed them and mentally listed their statuses like a sci-fi battle damage report. Language: gone. High-function capability: gone. Comprehension: barely active. Life support systems: obliterated. Even as she tried to distance herself from the devastation, it almost made her want to turn back. She had to push on, though, if there was going to be any light left by the time she reached deeply enough into Glenda's cerebellum, which seemed to be the only partly active place left.

There. She could just make out the brightest patch remaining, although it was fading even as she approached. The light was retreating farther and farther as usable tissue continued to die off, back toward Glenda's brain stem. Once it got that far back, Kerren knew there would be no more communication. It felt like diving after a person who was sinking in the ocean, desperately chasing her as she disappeared down into the dark.

Glenda...

The response was barely a flicker, but whether it was in recognition or just some dissolving mental process, she couldn't tell.

Glenda, it's Kerren. Are you still here?

The flicker came again, and this time there was also a word.

Yes.

-14.4-

Kelly's mouth dropped open when she saw Manoj fall out of sight, but no sound came out of it. Her first instinct was to run after him, as if there were any possibility of her reaching him in time, but the ponderous mass of the Qoloni's thorny antlers -- the very thing that had knocked him back and down -- stood between them. Her felt her heart turn cold when she heard the first sound of his body hitting the stairs; in the strange silence that accompanied the thing's attack, she clearly heard the air being forced out of her boyfriend's lungs as a horrible series of meaty tumbling sounds began.

The creature, for its part, didn't even seem to notice that it had swept one of its foes off the field of battle. It was still reacting to the heavy weight that had hit its body, the fat, cylindrical object seeming to flatten and slip around its form, emerging unchanged from the other side. Kelly had to force herself not to be fascinated by this process, garishly backlit by the light coming up from the lobby below, where she could hear Manoj's body continuously bumping, as if it would never come to rest.

Sound came finally, a furious and animalistic howl that she only dimly realized was hers. With it came the extension of her arms, the sudden claws at the ends grasping for the tiny things she had brought with her and set down on the table's edge -- a chunky red napkin holder and a heavy spray bottle of cleaning solution. She turned and threw, adding them to the barrage. She wished she could have landed a solid hit right in what passed for the dark thing's face, but the bottle was oddly weighted and errantly flipped end over end, right past its shoulder. The napkin holder, however, was more true to the mark. It hit the Qoloni squarely in the center of its chest, its bulk immediately spreading across the thing's entire torso.

Once it its chest had been coated, the creature belatedly started to recoil, backing up toward the balcony railing that it had just vaulted over, and Kelly couldn't help but watch as the spreading, flattened shape of the holder opened up like a donut, the flat plastic red shooting out from the darkening center like ripples on a pond. She intuitively realized that an instant after it escaped her view, the holder would emerge, completely re-integrated, from the center of the thing's back, and sail out high over the lobby. The Qoloni was like the physical embodiment of a funhouse mirror.

The mirror! She had a mission to fulfill, no matter how badly she wanted to pelt the creature back over the railing with her revenge. Her head whipped around, and saw that Carlos had not deviated from their original plan; he was already reaching up and starting to rock the big round mirror back and forth on the wall, sweeping a pale searchlight of reflection across the hallway over and over again. She reached up to join him, the end table thumping painfully against her hip, and tried to catch a few of the wobbling sunburst tines in motion, so she could add her force to getting the thing down from the wall. She didn't notice until together they began seesawing the mirror back and forth that her eyes were clouded with tears.

Unfortunately, she had been right about the mirror; the avalanche had loosened it from its mounting, but it was still somehow attached to the wall. It could rock wildly back and forth, but doing so was only bumping its edges against the wall and doing no work toward prying the mount loose. Still, the only thing she could think to do was keep at it, and yell across the table to Carlos: "Harder!"

As if in response, from behind her Kelly heard Sheryl scream "Take this, fucker!" and produce twin grunts of effort as she hurled her own handheld missiles. From the Qoloni there was no reaction; it remained perfectly silent, whether the projectiles ended up hitting their mark or not. Kelly was sure that she would feel the razor tips of the thing's bewildering antlers pushing their way between her ribs any second, and at the same time was just as certain that she and Carlos were only going to succeed in crushing their fingers between the edges of the mirror and the wall, if they kept with their current process.

She let go, and ran around to his side of the table, wiping at her eyes with the sleeve of the sweaty ski jacket she had kept on. She had to get this to work, if for no other reason than finding out what happened to Manoj. Fortunately, Carlos seemed to know what she was coming to do because he nodded, lifted his grip higher on the tines at the mirror's edge, and pressed his side hard against the wall, making room for her to stand next to him.

As she moved next to him and placed her own hands on the same side of the mirror, she heard shuffling on the carpet nearby. Things had been oddly quiet since Sheryl's triumphant yell, but now her feet -- and Bruce's, since he was the only other person left in the hallway -- were scuffling. Kelly wanted to turn to look, but understood that knowing what was going on would only make her lose focus. She began to push against the mirror steadily, trying to lever it away from the wall, and Carlos immediately followed suit. Their combined effort made an immediate improvement in how far they could push its edge, and Kelly hoped that this would be enough to finally snap whatever the mirror's back-mounting was made of. She heard Carlos start to audibly groan with effort next to her.

Meanwhile, a new sound erupted in the sound-deadened hallway. "Stop!" Bruce's voice sounded even and strangely in control. "You will harm none here! Get back!" Silence fell again, during which Kelly distinctly heard a dim, dull crack from somewhere deep within the wall.

Bruce continued. "As your creator, I banish you! You are a sloppy, nonsensical excuse for a villain, the mere product of too many pills and a hard publishing deadline." He grew calmer as his admonishments picked up steam. "If your intention here tonight is solely to harm, then there is no one but I that you wish to harm here. So why do you hesitate? Turn your hellish horns upon me!" Kelly wouldn't have imagined such flowery phrases coming from someone who she had only seen so far as a jittery psychotic, but she could also tell that he was starting to channel his authorly voice.

A low, promising creaking sound began, closer behind the mirror this time. She and Carlos dug their feet even harder into the plush carpet, and the mirror's edge came out another half-inch farther from the wall.

"What is it that you're waiting for? An invitation?" Bruce antagonized his monster. "Here!" He must have thrown one of the small objects he carried, because the thin sound of rushing air followed, then the strange effect of that sound being pulled out of existence. An instant later, the sound was back, farther away. Sheryl could only imagine that Bruce's thrown object had done much the same that her own had.

Before Bruce could throw his next projectile, a final snap came from the back of the mirror, and it fell with a thud onto the hard top of the end table underneath it. Carlos's fingers lost their grip on it, but hers did not.

Whitelodge 14.1 & 14.2

-14.1-

The five of them stood in a tight knot around the doorknob, waiting. Sheryl looked pensively from one to the other, feeling how tightly their collective muscles were wound, how thick the air felt. They had no idea what was on the other side of the door, or if their plan had even the slightest chance to work.

She had laid down on the floor next to Kerren as the others were starting to scour the shelves for things they could throw at the Qoloni, hoping they might had a similar effect to what Carlos claimed. He had said that the heavy crystal vases had halted it temporarily, as its strange qualities of mass distortion affected its movement. Could the objects they were pulling out -- wrapped cakes of soap, spare bundles of cutlery, even a small paint can or two -- do the same? Did weight or size matter when it came to that thing? Apparently, not even Bruce knew the answers.

Sheryl tried to keep in her mind the resolute look that Kerren had given her as they lay side by side on the hard wood floor, pressing their foreheads together intimately. It was only because of this positioning that Sheryl could tell that Kerren was speaking to her amid the clamor of preparation: "Let me out. I can help." The words were thready, and still bore a rasp that made her not quite sound like herself, but Sheryl smiled at hearing her wife's true voice again.

"There's no time," she replied. "I didn't really think about how we were going to get you out of the rug when I was figuring out how to get you in." If they had more time, or a sharp enough cutting instrument, she might have given it a try.

Kerren thought about this, then nodded slowly, rubbing her skin against Sheryl's. "We're just going to get that mirror from the hallway, and then come right back," Sheryl repeated, hoping that it would give either one of them a bit more courage. "We've got ammunition. Kelly and Carlos are in charge of getting it down off the wall and carrying it back. I'm backup for them, really. That's all."

Kerren accepted this wordlessly as well, and then Manoj was calling to her to take her place with them by the door. Sheryl kissed Kerren once, as strongly as she dared, and then hopped up off the floor. They looked for one more moment into one another's eyes, and Sheryl turned to follow the others. On the way out, she ran her hand lightly across Dale's shoulders. He was sitting on the floor now, close to Kerren, still holding Glenda. He had turned her body against his, so her head leaned against his shoulder. It would have been an endearing pose, if Sheryl didn't know the tragic reality of what she was looking at. At this point, he was too deep into his grief to help, and Sheryl wondered just how long he was prepared to carry his love's burden. To the time when they lost this battle, and the two of them were reunited somewhere beyond?

The others -- Carlos, Manoj, Bruce, and Kelly -- were already in place, their tiny missiles clutched in their hands. On her way over to them, Sheryl scooped up a few of the extra randomly-strewn objects off the floor that had been deemed appropriate. She ended up with a heavy glass salt shaker and a tightly-rolled bath towel, bound with a thin rubber band.

She took her spot, and the quintet waited to see who was going to be the one to turn the doorknob. No one seemed eager to give themselves a free hand to open it, however. In a moment of exasperation, Sheryl lifted the towel to her mouth, snagged the rubber band with an incisor, and yanked. The rubber snapped audibly, and she felt the loose, whipping ends of the broken band feebly lash her gums. The towel loosened in her hand, and she shook it out before flipping it back over her shoulder like a short-order cook and grabbing for the cold metal knob.

She wrenched it to the side, and opened the door onto the dark hallway. Because of how the others were arranged around her, she only had to open it partway to see that the length of it was empty, although they could only see a little past halfway, where the faint light coming up from the lobby threw the shadow of the balcony railing against the wall.

"Can you see it?" Carlos whispered, but there was no need. Square in the middle of the lit section of corridor, facing the top of the lobby stairs, was the long end-table Carlos had snatched the vases from, and above it hung the circular mirror. It was perhaps three feet in diameter, judging by the amount of gray lobby light it reflected up onto the ceiling above it. They could also see the starburst frame around it, consisting of dozens of long wavy metal tines that radiated out from it for at least another foot.

"It looks heavy," Bruce muttered.

"I bet it is," Kelly said. "All that metal and glass. It'll take both of us to get it down, if it isn't fastened too solidly."

"It's not," Carlos insisted. "I almost knocked it down when I bumped it before."

"Just because it was loosened by the avalanche doesn't mean it'll be easy to pull off the wall," Kelly noted. "It's you and me, right, Carlos?"

The cook nodded. The roles were clear. The two of them would retrieve the mirror, and the other three would be ready to hurl projectiles to drive back -- or at least stall -- the stalking Qoloni if it turned up. Sheryl noticed how Manoj shifted one of his objects, a small paint can, into the crook of his arm in order to squeeze Kelly's wrist. She leaned against him momentarily, and Sheryl suddenly wished that Kerren hadn't been hurt, and they could storm out into the hallway together Butch-and-Sundance style, like this couple was about to.

"Ready?" Kelly said, then took three quick breaths and slipped through the doorway without a sound. Carlos followed as quickly as he could, with significantly less grace. Sheryl choked down the fear that was rising in her throat and followed, trying to slip through sideways like the decidedly more athletic woman did.

After the hard surfaces of the supply closet, the plush environs of the hallway was incredibly quiet. Sheryl was suddenly aware of the sound of her breath, strove to minimize it. They had all left behind whatever footwear had protected them in the snow; their bare footfalls were all but perfectly silent. As a group, they crept forward.

No one had been entirely sure that Bruce should come out there with them. The danger of him turning into a liability if the creature should show up was a real one, but leaving him behind would also include someone else staying to keep him restrained -- he was intent on facing his creation, and Dale was otherwise occupied keeping watch over Glenda and Kerren.

Without planning it, the group fanned out across the entire width of the hall, Manoj along the wall that would end at the stairway, Sheryl and Bruce in the middle, and Kelly and Carlos heading for the spot where the mirror hung. They all held their projectiles cocked at shoulder height, ready to throw them at the first sign of anything otherworldly. Sheryl focused on the very end of the hall, past the mirror and into the darkness beyond. Something told her that if the thing were going to come, that was where it would be from.

She crouched slightly, trying to keep her head perfectly level as she stepped down the hallway, keeping her center of balance squarely between her feet. Her senses felt sharper than she could ever remember them being; she swore she could hear the tendons in her companions' feet as the muscles flexed and shifted weight.

Her thought that the thing would come from the far end of the hallway was proven wrong. She momentarily looked away from Kelly and Carlos, who had started to head for opposite sides of the end table, flanking the round sun-mirror that hung over it. Because of that, she only perceived a dimming of the wash of gray light that invaded the upper hallway from the lobby. The thing leapt up over the railing, making it appear that it had come up directly from the lobby floor fifteen feet below, dragging along with it the chilled air that the large broken window had allowed to flood in.

It rose up like a horrible, giant bird, horns and arms spread in greeting, blocking the light. -14.2-

Manoj hesitated. Not for long, perhaps at most three seconds. His progress down the hall had been even with everyone else's until the moment he passed the open door, but he could not resist the pull of his curiosity and he looked in. It was the room where they had found the oddly humped, empty coverlet on the bed, and he had realized they were the only souls left in the Deertail Lodge.

Beyond, the view out the large patio glass was unchanged. It was this he was most interested in, to see if anything had changed about the frozen world beyond this small, toroidally-looped section of the mountain. From this distance, it looked like nothing had.

It was this hesitation, however, that put him at a safer distance than anyone else when the thing appeared. The horns came first, rocking forward as the Qoloni leaped up from the lobby below, silently arcing up and over the railing that ran from the top of the stairs to the wall opposite. Manoj had fallen a good eight feet behind everyone else, and thus was the only one who didn't have to turn their heads as the dark shape rose into view.

Even before it cleared the balcony railing and landed lightly on the floor, missiles were already on the way to meet it. Manoj watched them arcing through the air, noting that they had probably come from Sheryl and Bruce, because Carlos and Kelly were in the process of setting their tiny burdens down on the end table, needing free hands to lower the mirror from the wall.

Manoj felt an electric burn of fear shoot through his body at the sight of the thing's shadow, falling across Kelly. She was intent on putting down her mini-weapons and focused on the mirror on the wall opposite, so she didn't react right away. When her head whipped around -- her shortish hair flipping outward with the moment -- it appeared to Manoj to move in slow-motion, as if everything were suddenly underwater. His inability to breathe perpetuated the illusion. He was sure that she was not going to have time to grab her missiles and throw them in her own defense.

He prepared to throw his own projectiles -- he had opted for objects with extra weight when he had picked a small can of paint and a wooden rolling pin -- and took a few extra steps forward to catch up with the others. He hadn't counted on how that heaviness would affect his feet, though, and found himself stumbling forward as he tried to fling them. He stepped out into the light as the paint can left his right hand, and while it was an accurate throw, he was getting too close to the horned thing for his comfort. He tried to get his feet back under himself, to pull up short -- and then the can hit its target.

It wasn't the first thing to hit the Qoloni, but it was the largest, and Manoj was fascinated by what happened when it did. Instead of impacting the thing's shoulder and knocking it away, the can seemed to instantly liquefy, wrapping itself into a flat shape that slid across the thing's shoulder blade and disappeared around its back.

Manoj had precisely one instant to remember Carlos's description of what would happen to objects that came into contact with the thing; because it could not interact with material objects, anything touching it would appear to change its shape, but be unaffected in terms of weight and momentum. And true to form, the Qoloni was wrenched to the side, wheeling it around toward Manoj's direction. One of Sheryl's missiles -- a salt shaker -- hit it in the face, and made it turn even more sharply.

That turn, coupled with the forced downward tilt of the Qoloni's head, caused its horns to swing down and back the way it had come, and Manoj realized too late that he had stepped out between their crazy branch-like network and the top step of the lobby stairs. The curved backs of those forward-pointed antlers were coming at him, looking decidedly more solid than the body of the Qoloni itself.

At the moment of collision, his mind split in two. At the same time that he felt space distorting where they touched him, bending his body around their humped shapes, he also felt an insistent push from within them, as if he and they were opposing magnets being forced toward each other. If he had been properly balanced, he might have been able to withstand their repulsive power, but in this case, he had no way to get his feet back under himself, and stepped backward.

His eyes caught Kelly's as his foot came down on nothing. It dropped farther than he thought it would, onto the penultimate step of the lobby stairs, before coming to a stop. But it was too late by then; his momentum wasn't allowing him to stop, and he had to draw back his other foot and try to get it down on a lower step. The horns were still against him, pushing him farther back, and Kelly's shocked, horrified expression was suddenly eclipsed by the top of the first step as Manoj tipped back and fell even farther below the level of the second floor.

He reached out for the banister, being the only thing within grabbing distance of his pinwheeling left arm, and found his hand already wrapped around a thick piece of wood -- the rolling pin, which he had neglected to hurl at the Qoloni when he had the chance. Even if there had been time to release it and take hold of the banister rail instead, he wouldn't have been able to convince his hand to let go of the only thing that was secure about his position. He realized this as his body tipped back, and back, beyond horizontal, until the wide windows at the front of the lobby were starting to enter his field of vision from above...

His falling body hit the stairs in six places, hard: twice on his legs, three along his spine, once on the back of his head. More light than he had seen since re-entering the lodge exploded in his skull, and then he was tumbling down the rest of the long flight, which seemed to stretch out to infinity, pummeling him at every point on the way down.