The gurgling sucking noise came again, and between the pops and bubbles he could hear distinct words.
‘Me. This.’
‘You were never that. You were never a killer, never a murderer, never a…’ Dalip’s voice dried up. He realised the truth, and put out an arm to reach across in front of Mary, to push her behind him as he stepped back. ‘It doesn’t have to be this way. We all got a new start, every one of us. Even you. It doesn’t matter now what you did then. All that matters is what you do now.’
He could feel Mary press the hilt of the knife into the palm of his hand. His fingers closed around it.
Stanislav seemed to melt in front of them. The effort of keeping human form was no longer required. He slumped, the top of his head sinking and flattening, his legs turning to puddles of wax. Eyes popped out like bubbles, and the skin twisted and rose into ropes.
They were outside. The wind was tearing at them, and the sky was ablaze with ragged streaks of light. Inside, the transformation was almost complete. Stanislav swelled and undulated, but rather than follow them, he started back towards the stairs.
‘Hey,’ shouted Dalip. ‘Not that way. Look at us. Us.’
Stanislav ignored them, and continued his slow advance toward the staircase. The mass that was his torso divided, and divided again: the first of four legs of protoplasmic flesh felt its way to the top of the first step, dragging the body along after it.
‘We have to do something.’ Mary stood in the doorway and the debris on the floor rose up at her command. She flung it, piece by piece, at Stanislav’s back.
Such was the concentrated barrage that Dalip couldn’t get anywhere near, reduced to watching lengths of wood, bottles, and pans snap forward, accelerated into a blur and crash into the figure on the stairs.
Except it had little effect. Stanislav had no bones to break, no muscle to bruise. Everything seemed to bounce off him. Mary tried harder, putting extra effort into each missile, grunting with the effort.
Now that did get them noticed. Stanislav writhed, tentacles bursting out to bat the hurled objects aside. Eyes congregated, blinking wetly in the shine. Mary was throwing everything at him, and he took it all.
It couldn’t continue. She only had so much she could give. She sagged against the doorframe, skirt snapping and cracking like a sail at sea, and the few objects still in flight lost their momentum. They tumbled to the floor, rattling and rolling.
Stanislav stared at them, his many eyes reflecting the outline of the woman in the red dress. Then he came for them, faster than was conceivably possible, flooding towards the door in a wave.
Dalip stepped forward, arm extended, and the knife went straight in: up to the hilt, up to the wrist. Warm, cloying wetness engulfed his hand, and it was a shock. He remembered enough not to let go, but to turn the knife with a twist and drag it out sideways.
It would have been enough to kill any man◦– catastrophic injuries that would have bled out in seconds.
Stanislav was not a man, nor did he care about such calculations.
Dalip was punched harder than he’d ever been punched before. It was like being hit by a bus square in the chest, hard enough to break his ribs and stop his heart. He flew without the aid of wings, ending up on his back in the mud outside, gazing up uncomprehending at the flickering, churning sky.
He should, by rights, be lying still, waiting for the ambulance, reassured by strangers that everything was going to be okay and being asked if there was anyone he needed to call.
Instead he found himself getting to his feet, renewing his death grip on his knife, and taking the first unsteady step forward.
Mary had picked up a broken table leg. Holding it in a two-handed grip, she swung it over her shoulder as she retreated, almost unbalancing herself.
‘Dalip? Dalip?’
He could barely breathe to reply.
‘This isn’t working.’
‘If you’ve got something else we haven’t tried, don’t hold back.’
Stanislav was in the open with them, now fully visible in his pomp, crowned by an ever-moving halo of tentacles.
And then Dalip shouted to her: ‘We have to get him to follow us.’
‘Is that it?’
‘For now.’
‘Fuck,’ said Mary, and threw herself at the dark, seething mass, swinging as she came within what she hoped was range. The blow was blocked with such severity that it nearly broke her arms. She was wrenched off her feet, and she fell hard. Her wounds stretched and tore.
Dalip ducked under the flailing suckers as they tried to reel both him and her in. He grabbed her around the waist and pulled her backwards, out of reach for a moment.
‘Tell me we’ve got its attention.’
Stanislav surged towards them.
‘Run.’
They ran hand in hand, for no other reason but to help the other up if they fell. Dalip guided them towards the gatehouse. The gates were, as they always had been, open, but the arch tying the posts together had fallen into ruin.
And above them, the storm gathered itself, ready for its final onslaught.
He glanced behind as they reached the line of tumbled stone. Close, too close.
‘Climb,’ he said, and swung around.
Stanislav rose above him, and he held out the knife. As inadequate as it seemed, the tentacles reared away from it and tried to come at him from the sides. Dalip slashed at the air to keep them away, and gain time for Mary to get clear.
It was impossible to tell whether Stanislav was actually frightened of the knife, or whether he was simply playing. Dalip didn’t think he’d wounded him. But hurt him? Surprised him? Perhaps that.
The creature could simply fall on him, envelop him completely and tear him apart like he’d done to the guards. But it didn’t. Because some of its reactions were still human.
That insight might save him yet.
A block of dressed stone whirled past his ear. It was big, spinning, and not particularly fast, but Stanislav was too preoccupied to dodge it. It entered the central mass and disappeared. Then Stanislav was on the ground, surface churning as he tried to rid himself of this sudden cold, hard intrusion.
Dalip scrambled up the fallen arch to the top.
‘We can’t keep this up all night,’ said Mary.
There was blood coming from her mouth, and Dalip instinctively reached up to wipe it away.
She knocked his hand aside. ‘Bit my tongue, that’s all.’
They jumped down the other side. He was outside the crumbling castle’s walls for the first time, and looked back at his prison. He didn’t recognise it◦– it had seemed secure, and now it was a shambles of collapsed buildings and broken masonry.
Also, the rising tentacular creature lit by the burning sky.
‘I’ve got an idea.’
‘Is it really stupid?’ she asked.
‘Very.’
‘Okay,’ she said, and that was the last thing he heard her say for a while. The storm beat down at them with everything it had. The wind tore at them, strong enough to blast them with small sharp stones, and the lightning became a relentless static discharge above their heads.
Dalip raised his arm to protect his face and leant in hard, heading towards the flank of the mountain, to the edge of the bowl carved in it, and where it would be possible, perhaps, to climb to the summit.
After that, it was one foot in front of the other, the palms of his hands and the soles of his feet bleeding from each new cut as he reached up, pulled hard and dragged himself closer to the top. Mary, wearing the red dress, struggled, and he had to stop for her, wordlessly tell her to trust him, tell her that it would all be worth it in the end.