Written by Aletheia Fitch

The Castle

            He barred the windows and double checked the tripwire. Still it came in, undetected, through the roof. It slipped through the shingles, crawling with what could have been a million legs if it weren’t so grotesquely large.

            The castle was many-storied, with towers upon towers. Roger’s room was on the first floor, and the creature followed the passages, a slimy sound like saliva trailing after it. Roger’s bedroom was as it should be. He put his desk out of his mind, forgetting all of the letters and papers that he was responsible. He focused only on the fireplace with its steady flames and felt safe as he laid himself down, pulling a threadbare blanket over himself. It took a matter of minutes for his breathing to even out as he drifted away from the room, dreaming of the memories of the days before. The door began to creak open, but he slept deeply, unstirring. Legs scuttled like a million fingers as it shoved itself through the doorway, oozing through with the speed of honey dripping…dripping…dripping from a spoon.

            A shadow loomed over his head, entering his dreams.

The Dream

            He sat at his desk, just like any day. The moonlight was cold and glinted on the rich inky stamp sitting by his hand. He flipped through crisp papers, perfectly white and fresh, still smelling strongly of wood. He paused to read the letter. It blurred in front of his eyes, indistinct in the dream, but he knew what it said.

            It’s to the King, he thought. The letters he sorted were always to the King. The page darkened. In the dream as he read, the letter-writer spoke to the King with a deep guttural tone.

            Your Majesty, your daughter, Lucy, has been forsaking her duties. She is refusing to follow her orders, and resists the transformation. The words of the man floated in and out of Roger’s mind, and a great weight fell upon his chest. The transformation…he didn’t want to think about it. He wasn’t supposed to know, and he didn’t want to. The letter from the King, the one he must not read, sat near his hand. He broke its seal. The voice of the King spoke in his head as he read.

            Roger Usher knows of the transformation. He must not live to tell.

            As he dreamed, the moonlight began to fade, and a large shadow inched inevitably towards him. He heard the sound of scuttling saliva…smelled sulfur. Repulsion built up through his stomach, welling in his throat.

            Roger’s mind screamed to get away, his heart pounding like a church bell in his chest. He ran; a smooth, paceless run that only a dream could have, and the room around him melted…The sun flew across the sky to the golden hour that day, as he stood in her tower. He stopped, looking around and seeing the beautiful golden curls and doe-like eyes of Lucy. His Lucy.

            “Roger,” she said now in the dream as she had said yesterday, trying to get his attention. “Are you dreaming?”
            “No,” he found himself saying, playing along with the memory. “I’m here, Lucy.”

Lucy’s eyes lit up as he said her name. She sat on a small couch, her ornate room pristinely clean, as it always was. She held out her arms to Roger, and he obliged, sitting next to her as they held each other. “My father would be furious if he knew,” she muttered.

“He won’t know,” Roger assured her, reliving the adrenaline rush of having her in his arms, feeling that she was his to protect, his to take care of. Something smelled odd, like eggs. He held her tighter, breathing in her vanilla perfume.
            “You should address me more formally,” she said, her smile dancing across her face, small dimples developing. “In case anyone ever saw us.”
            “No one will see us,” Roger said, because he had said it yesterday. He waited expectantly for the line he knew would come next: I love you, Roger…

            “You are dreaming, though,” she said. Roger frowned, shifting slightly. Why didn’t she follow the memory?
            “You truly are a dream,” he said, hoping she would pick up where she left off…

            “This is a dream, Roger, and you need to wake up,” she said, looking intently into his eyes.

            “I’m not dreaming,” Roger insisted, frustration beginning to well up. A slimy scuttling sound grew steadily louder, steadily closer. “Stop it, stop this.”
            “You have to listen to me, or you will die.”
            “No, Lucy wouldn’t say that, Lucy would never…”

            Lucy sighed, an unusual desperation in her doe-like eyes. She held him by the shoulders, shaking him. “Lucy wouldn’t say that? Stop hiding, Roger. Stop hiding from the truth.”
            “No, stop,” Roger said, feeling himself weak and powerless.

            “Remember, Roger? Remember?” Lucy grabbed him with rough hands and dragged him into another memory, still yesterday…yesterday night.

            “No, go back…go back!” Roger tried to turn away from the memory, travel back to the afternoon, but Lucy controlled the dream now. He couldn’t turn away. Lucy forced him to stay, and he traveled forward in time once more, reliving the night before the dream.

            He’d thought that she journaled during that hour, that’s why she wanted to be alone…

            As she entered the room, the door creaked closed…and she blinked, her eyes pooling up. Roger thought it was tears, and moved to help her, but froze as it turned inky black…her face drowning in a thick ink, pouring out from her eyes, then her ears, then her nose….

It enveloped her completely, and her spine began to sharpen, cracking as it shot out of her back, extending far past its limits. Her mouth opened wide, her entire head expanding as something like a wave in the ocean developed across her skin, flowing slowly like a pattern of fur…as she expanded, Roger’s head spun, nauseous, realizing what they were – legs, thousands of finger-like legs on her head, her arms, her…did she have a head or arms anymore? She disappeared into an inky mass of flowing legs, and her very presence cast shadows throughout the room.

Roger plugged his ears, squeezing his eyes shut, but Lucy’s voice, now changed to a voice both shrieking and deep in decibel, spoke through his mind…

            “Wake up, Roger…”

            He refused. He ran, the shadow behind him falling back as he glided across his memories, but his legs moved as though a thick liquid surrounded them, making them slow and jerky instead of the smooth jog he had managed before.

Nevertheless, he ran far enough to move to a different memory, one not so long ago, not so far away. It was earlier that very evening.

In the memory, Roger’s repulsion circled through his veins, his heartbeat drumming like a galloping horse. Roger’s room took form around him, his desk and chair and tattered blanket exactly where they were last night. He grabbed his chair for support, his legs weak, his mind swirling with horror and disgust.

            Roger’s eyes fell on the pokers sitting by the fireplace. Without hesitation, he gathered them up, fashioning crude bars over all of his windows. A length of twine used for letter-tying was now a tripwire, attached to a bell to alert him of entry to the room through any windows.

He was safe, he knew it. He had to be safe. None would ever get in through his windows, no matter its monstrous size or whatever horrors it contained. He could sleep in peace.

The Castle

The dream began to fade as he slipped into a deep sleep, his breaths coming slower and slower. Roger’s eyes barely flinched, remaining placid and peaceful as it towered over him, stretching the room itself with its largeness. Try as she might, Lucy couldn’t wake him up.

Lucy chased him through his dreams, asking him, pulling him, speaking to him. He had to wake up. He had to. She needed him to wake up, because she couldn’t stop herself much longer. She fought, pushing and pulling against her very skin, her screams only heard by herself, her sobs invisible to the onlooker. None of it changed anything. Inside of her, something pushed to kill, an instinct she tried to subdue, but there was only so much she could do – why wouldn’t he just wake up?

Her tearstained eyes glossed over, and she lost control, lost her ability to move.

Roger didn’t wake, and he did not see the beating heart, the thousand legs, the pulsing mound, its many eyes—or no eyes?—fixed directly on him. He did not see it…until he did. Terror seized him with many-fingered clawed hands, grasping his head, snapping his mind…and neck.