Paper Tigers (25 page)

She dropped to her knees and scrambled forward in a lunging crawl. Her hand tightened around the handle of the knife. From behind, he wrapped his arm around her and ripped the knife away.

“You little fool.”

The clock chimed again. And buried within the sound, the voices swelled thick and fearful. All of them trapped inside, trapped because they believed his lies, too.

She pushed away and lurched to her feet, backing up until the door pressed hard into her spine, trapped by the wall on her right and

the tiger

George on her left. He tossed the knife over his shoulder, his shadow flitting across the wall. She lifted her hand. Waved it back and forth. Yes, his shadow moved, but only his. Hers had vanished.

No, oh no.

He clapped his hands together and laughed. “And now you see.” He winked. “Or not.”

The clock chimed.

She raised her hand higher. The edges of her flesh blurred, a halo replacing the real; her body, the same, all the way to her toes.

“Without your pain, you are nothing,” he said.

“That's not true.”

He laughed again, but more blood seeped from his wound and he staggered on his feet. A tiny movement, but there nonetheless. He grabbed her arm. Pins and needles exploded beneath her skin.

“Tell me,” he said, as he brought his face close to hers. “What has it felt like here, all alone? You could've had so much more. Thomas was quite fond of you. He was hoping you'd come back.”

“It. Wasn't. Real.”

“Perhaps not, but it would've felt real. That's more than you feel here, yes?”

Thomas's face flashed in her mind, and then his features melted into Jonathan's. The last time she'd ever seen him—a glimpse in the doorway at the hospital. The hint of a dream, a promise, through the drug-thick haze; a touch of something good despite the hurt. But when she woke, he was gone. Gone because she was ugly, and no one, no one, no one would ever want to be with her again. And all she had were her scars and the tiny diamond ring and the pity.

She swallowed hard. Shoved the memory away.

The rip in George's shirt revealed the gash on his chest. The blood stopped flowing, and then dripped up, back into the wound. The edges of the skin knitted back together, leaving smooth, scarless skin.

“I knew there was more. I will miss that when you're gone,” he said. “Such agony and torment you have suffered. I wish I could've been there.” He smiled. “Tell me, when you burned, did the flames kiss your skin like a lover?”

She sagged back and—

chime

—the light shifted. Her skin tingled. The walls flickered and changed from plaster and paint to elegance, freshly polished wood, and a gleaming black piano. The scents of brandy and perfume clung to the air. Candle flames danced on the walls.

A party waiting for the guest of honor, but all of it hazy, and within the haze, the suggestion of human shapes moving toward her. The echo of voices raised in fear.

She stumbled forward, her arms outstretched. Both arms translucent and not quite there. A shimmer in the air, a ghost girl.

The light wavered and traces of the ruin hiding below glimmered: a flash of peeling wallpaper, splintered floorboards, a wisp
of cobweb. Emptiness and time. A grey palette of forgotten days and disembodies voices. Calling. Crying.

Images flickered. Rot and ruin, glamour and shine, and the shapes winked in and out between the two. And—

chime

—back to her house. Back to George. She stood in the archway between her living room and dining room and blinked away the disorientation. She'd moved in the paper world, not the real, yet somehow the two were tethered together. Because of George? Or because of her?

A pale haze hung in the air, leaching the color from the walls. The edges of her furniture now matched the edges of her body. Smeared and indistinct. There, but fading away.

And her legs were missing from the knee down. She let out a wail, her voice paper-thin. The rest of her was still blurred at the edges, but past the knee, the blur turned to a waver in the air. She took a step. Pins and needles danced beneath her skin again, and the wood beneath her feet felt insubstantial. Wrong.

George stepped toward her, his smile wide and predatory. “Do you understand now?” he said. His shape held tight to the sharp and defined. He laughed and—

chime

—the haze had lightened. Brightened. The edges still murky and dim, but at the center, vibrant and defined. And she was back in Pennington House. But she wasn't alone. Thomas, Rachel, Josephine, Elizabeth, Eleanor, Edmund, Madeline, all of them with their arms outstretched, mouths open, and eyes wide.

Underneath the perfume and hair oil, there was a trace of rot. She backed out into the foyer, and they followed, a slow-moving hint of color and shape. Pale pink drops fell from the stumps of Rachel's arms. Madeline lurched, her body twisted. Thomas fell to the floor and pulled himself toward her, his muscles straining.

Their edges were pale, but solid in the center of limbs, torso, and face. Her own limbs were the same. Turning to real? A small hand touched hers and—

chime

—the real world stole her back. In her dining room now. Yet the colors had faded even more, were fading still, as though someone had turned on a tap to wash them away. The murky air turned her steps heavy and slow and when she looked down, she saw that her legs were gone and her upper body floated above empty space.

“Bring me back!” she cried, her voice muted and dull.

A chimera of not quite real and not quite missing, caught between the paper and real. And when the clock stopped, which would claim her as its own?

“Go away, Monstergirl,” George said, and—

chime

—the world exploded with color. Dark wood shimmered. Wallpaper sparkled from the glow of a hundred candles. Glass-covered sconces glittered. And the prisoners of Pennington House advanced.

A river of red ran from Rachel's severed arms, splashing to the floor. Her dress trailed through the gore, and left a fan shaped spread of blood behind. Josephine, a flesh covered bag of bones, clung to one of Edmund's arms; on his other, Eleanor with her head bent in an unnatural direction. Madeline thumped and thudded, her body malformed. A ruined paper doll. Thomas's useless legs dragged behind him. Pitiful monsters dressed in their Sunday best. Mary stood off to the side, the bruises around her neck a mottled purple. Their mouths worked with cries of pain and moans of torment. Their eyes aware, alive and suffering.

The candles went out with a hiss. Wallpaper bubbled and peeled; curtains sagged at the windows; floorboards splintered and warped. A crack spiderwebbed across the lens of Edmund's monocle. Seams split with quick pops of thread, silk moldered, and lace frayed at the edges.

The flesh beneath it all turned grey.

Cheeks hollowed. Fingers curled in. The cries turned liquid, and the stink of putrescence mixed with the mold and mildew. Flakes of skin dislodged, spiraling to the floor in a macabre snowfall. Rachel's stumps oozed thick yellow-green pus. A white shard of bone poked through Eleanor's neck with a brittle crack.

Mary raised one rotting hand. “Help us, please.”

Alison gagged and took a step back.

“Please,” Thomas said. His fingertips grazed the skin of her ankles; she shuddered at the slick touch. Her perfect skin gleamed pale in the darkening light—

chime

—and she stood in the doorway of her kitchen, amidst a fog. A dull blur replaced walls and floor. Flashes of color sparked here and there—the metallic glint of the faucet in her sink, the white edge of the refrigerator.

And she was gone from the waist down. Light peeked through the gauze of what remained. She stepped forward, felt nothing, and stifled a cry. She had to put an end to it all; George was too dangerous to allow free. She couldn't let him use or hurt anyone else.

But how? There was so little of her left.

She blinked away tears. Hard. No tears. No pity. She had to kill the tiger. It was the only way she'd ever be free, and she had to end it before it was too late—

chime

—and into Pennington House once more, a world of vibrant color and defined shapes. A world of ruin with motionless corpses strewn across the floor. Twisted bones and human wreckage. A small body lay in the corner, half-skin, half-bone. Alison ran, the floor firm and real beneath her feet, bent down, and caressed the right cheek, which still wore a patch of greying skin.

“I'm so sorry,” she said.

“Alison,” Mary managed from between cracked lips.

Beneath Alison's hand, Mary's skin warmed and changed from grey to pale. Turning whole, turning to real. Alison touched Mary's arm, and the skin reknitted like a film run in reverse, the damage undone. Decay unmade. Tears sparkled in the little girl's eyes as she held out her hands, turning them over, her eyes twin spheres of surprise and disbelief.

With her free hand, Alison touched the nearest body. The skeletal remains fell apart with a clatter of bone on wood. She touched another. It, too, collapsed.

Something hard dug into her waist; she pulled out the matchbox and held it in one hand while she gave Mary's arm a gentle squeeze with the other. “Everything will be okay,” she said, choking out each word.

“Please don't leave me here alone.”

Alison's apology caught in her throat, and all she could do was slowly shake her head.

“Don't let him hurt you, too,” Mary said.

As soon Alison took her hand away, the grey began to creep in again—

chime

—and she was back in her own house, in her kitchen. Everything was soft, wavering like a photograph left too long in the sun. And she, too, was nearly gone, her arms the only thing left. She turned the matchbox over in her hand.

Fire destroys everything.

The lighter fluid…

It wouldn't be enough. She turned toward the stove. Her arms shimmered translucent from the elbows up, but her fingers still held their shapes. And the knobs on the stove felt real beneath her fingers. Real enough. She turned them all.

Mary's pained voice drifted in the air. “Alison, please…”

She stepped through the table, through the wall, while the gas hissed its sulfurous rotten egg stink. George stood in the dining room, running his hands along the spines of the photo albums. Where he touched, the colors bloomed into life. He frowned over his shoulder. “I thought you'd left already. Not much longer, from the look of it.”

Her arms vanished above the wrist, leaving disembodied hands glistening in the hazy gloom..

“Not much longer for either one of us. You said you wanted to know what it felt like to burn, remember?” she said, her voice a breathy ripple in the air.

Triumph built inside her chest, and then the matchbox spiraled to the floor, landing with a quiet rattle. Her hands were gone. All of her, gone. George burst into peals of laughter and turned away. She shrieked; he didn't even flinch.

But I'm still here. I
am.
Please, it can't end this way. I need to make it right.

Another voice, spoke, a voice in triplicate:
That may be true, but what are you prepared to give up?

Anything. Everything.

Something tugged deep in her chest, a firework of heat and something stronger, something larger. She tipped back her head, felt herself cleave in two—a sensation of unzipping, of undoing. When it ceased, she was staring at a mirror copy of herself. The copy split into three, three women wearing her face, scars and all, draped in long robes of red, yellow, and purple. Narrow strands of ribbon were tied from their wrists to the air where hers should be.

Although their faces were hers, there were subtle differences: Red's mouth was set into a tight line, her eyes flashing. Yellow's shoulders were slumped, but her face was hard, purposeful. Purple was weeping, her hands clenched into fists, yet her back was straight.

They spoke again as one: “Will you finally let us go for good? Will you let go?”

Yes.

“It is done,” a voice said. “Done,” said another. “Done,” a third.

Icy hands touched hers, untied the ribbons. Pain coursed through her body, ebbed slowly as the women stepped away, no longer Muses of Disfigurement, never muses, but Horsewomen of a Private Apocalypse, pieces of her she no longer needed.

Untethered, Alison saw them for who, what, they truly were: Red had pointed teeth and her fingers didn't end in fingernails but in talons; Yellow carried a length of rope in one hand fashioned into a noose, a long strip of fabric in the other; Purple held a scalpel in her hand. Their smiles were radiant and horrible, their eyes alight with the sheen of madness. They were the true Monstergirls.

George's head snapped around, his face contorting at the sight of the women, his eyes awash in shock.

“End it,” Red said, her words whips as she pressed the matchbox into Alison's hand. “End him.”

“I'm sorry, Mom,” Alison said. “I love you.”

She struck a match. The tiny flame danced alone for a split second, a tiny scrap of golden light, and in that moment, he saw her again.

“What have you done?” he shouted.

The tiger,
her
tiger, made of heat and destruction, exploded from its cage.

George's mouth opened in a circle, then the beast engulfed his limbs, and inside the flames, the women writhed round him like a tornado. He howled in pain and fury and they laughed in response, the sound of a hundred prowling hyenas, of a thousand madmen locked in windowless cells.

“Now you can't hurt anyone anymore,” Alison said, giving him her back. She didn't need to watch it happen. She didn't want to see.

Something hit the floor with a heavy thump and a grunt. She heard the sizzle of flesh, smelled the stink of smoldering skin. There was a wet tear, a choking scream, a sound like teeth crunching into bone.