Chapter 524

Seamus took another long drag from his cigarette, smoke curling out of him, mixing with the cold breath. It was December, cold and desolate, just like he felt inside, like his whole damned life.

The forest was old, even by Irish standards, even for being so close to the town of Howth. The trees were bare, black things against the moonlight, like twisted hands reaching out for something that was never going to come back.

It never did. He'd lived long enough to see that, at thirty-nine, all alone, drinking himself to sleep most nights, in between. He thought about the story he'd heard in the pub tonight, an old fairy tale about following lights in this forest, seeing the person you loved, at some unnamed price.

Something else he would never see again, lost to him, and his poor choices, one thing or another. He crushed the cigarette into the frosted grass and walked toward the woods.

There wasn't even a path anymore. Like it was abandoned, or forgotten. Not unlike Seamus, then. What was life, if not one letdown after another, the odd high to keep you coming back for the fall?

"What's to lose, Seamus?" he muttered to himself, pushing through low branches, heading toward the center, further from what little civilization there was, into nothing. "Follow the damn lights, see your one love? Worth a try," but it never was.

That much was sure in this sorry excuse for a world. Nothing's worth it. He heard things, then saw things, movements at the corner of his eye, but it could be anything.

A rabbit maybe, but there was something wrong about them, a hesitation in their movements, a delay in reaction to sounds, almost a second out of sync, the world was falling apart as much as he was. A breeze whipped through the trees, rustling leaves, stirring the grass, cold enough to chill his very bones.

A trick of the eye. He laughed without a hint of humor, a sound that was hollow in the dark. They never saw him for long. That was the point, to his way of seeing.

They all run eventually. Then came a glimmer, a glow between the trees ahead, a dull blue-white that pulsed slowly, like something that could keep you alive.

"The hell?" Seamus muttered. This was it, then. Or his imagination. What else? It was always his mind playing games on him, showing him what could never be again.

"Not a bad way to spend an hour, anyway." A man does a lot of stupid things. Seamus had spent more than a year, all in, to chase the past and ended in disaster.

Seamus pushed forward. It was almost in reach, getting closer. A faint, low noise filled the forest, like far-off music or the sea.

Seamus kept going, stepping into a small clearing where the light sat, pulsing gently on the forest floor. It seemed to throb in time with his own pulse.

It had found him. As always. How had no one mentioned that little detail? Not that he cared. Not that he ever had, but what now?

A moment in time, before it changes. That's what you think it will be, but what now? It wasn't a love yet. He wasn't a thing yet.

He felt the familiar pressure in his chest, that thing that was always just about to do something. This time he let it. He reached out, slow.

His fingers passed through it like it wasn't there at all. A tingle, an odd heat moved up his arm. A trick. He felt the blood pulsing in his arm faster and stronger than it should be, racing away from something.

"Right, you can stop," he said. The beat of his heart in his chest was a deep, irregular drum. It was beating hard enough, and quick enough to hurt.

Something in him, some piece that should have seen this for the nonsense it was, made him stand there and endure it. Just do what he was told for once, they'd all say.

"So that's how it is." Nothing answered. There were only trees, dark sky, a too-fast heart, and an arm going numb from some trick of light.

There had to be something he missed, but when you look for trouble, you always see it, eventually. It doesn't care how much it costs. No one ever does.

A cold gust blew up his collar, but his arm was hot to the elbow. He stepped forward, walking right through the light. It kept him going through the night.

He took a slow breath as it reached up, into him, coiling under his ribs, squeezing hard on something in his insides. A cry escaped his lips, halfway between a laugh and a scream.

Seamus reached down for his lighter but it burned him like an oven poker. "No damn smokes for me then. Fine."

He walked into the cold night. His skin burned but the pain made everything feel alive, at least. Like something was making a decision, to his left or to his right, as long as he wasn't the one to make it.

Like that day when she told him that his feelings meant nothing to her. He looked to the dark. At some point, you stop, she had told him. How wrong she was.

That was a few drinks ago. Or days. Either way, it did nothing to ease him. He laughed, a noise like broken glass in the black forest.

He'd stopped a long time ago, at least, trying to do what they said. It did nothing. A figure stepped out in front of him, making no noise.

She had eyes so blue they seemed to glow a little in the moonlight. Her skin looked impossibly, utterly perfect. Seamus found himself talking to fill the emptiness of the moment, to prevent the next.

It made it all the easier for her to move on, a ghost from the past that just wanted more, from the future, as he saw it. But it wasn't her. It couldn't be her.

No one looked like this. Nothing good did. "I didn't know it was going to be like that," Seamus heard himself saying. His stomach felt hollow and his chest ached, but that's normal for Seamus these days, normal these past three months since she left.

She laughed, and for the first time ever it didn't make him sick, though she always did. Maybe it wasn't her. It just looked a lot like her.

Enough, perhaps. More than anyone had, enough for Seamus. Then the pain became unbearable. His heartbeat changed, again and again, his entire body shook, a pressure so strong was growing, like some beast coming awake in his chest.

Seamus reached up to clutch at himself, found his hands weren't quite his hands anymore, not completely. The woman who might as well have been his love stared back at him, saying nothing, as Seamus began to see black, dark figures on the side.

"Is that how it happens? It makes you see things and…what? Makes them worse, before they end?" She stood in front of him, a slight smile playing on perfect lips, the cold blue eyes staring out.

How many men had stood there? Or did no one follow this light but Seamus? They all have something wrong with them, somewhere inside, all those who end like Seamus, the past that he never could change.

"Can you hear me? Do you get what's…happening?" Seamus fell to his knees, heaving. His arm was freezing and boiling hot all at once.

Then she stepped back into the forest, never leaving his sight, a woman just watching him. Just doing as they say. Letting Seamus endure.

They say, that women always end up walking away from men. Even so, even knowing that. A hand moved in his peripheral vision, black, scaly, fingers too long and thin to be human.

Seamus tried to pull it away, found his fingers weren't there anymore. "What have I done?" A figure stepped up next to the woman. More.

They moved like they were a second off, slow on their reactions, moving before he knew, just as it felt with his heart, like things just went too fast in the wrong way, things happened too quickly or took too long to respond, like it wasn't moving along with him. And another hand appeared on the end of his left arm.

One was no longer his. They were surrounding him. All was falling apart. It never lasted for Seamus. It never would, he'd always be on his own.

The forest told him so. He tried to scream again as that beast woke up and grew. Something wet slid across his face, and the back of his hand burned as if someone was sticking hot needles through the veins.

Seamus managed a whisper, hoping for a word or an answer. "Was she...was it...you?" No answer, of course. The pain made him delirious, but he still managed to take notice of what was in front of him.

Seamus collapsed, writhing in pain on the hard ground, eyes losing sight in moments of blackout, and the woman never stopped watching him, staring into him, like the pain was making him change, at some cellular level. The dark figures around her weren't.

They had black holes where their eyes should have been and pale skin that seemed to move by itself, like it was on him. How many had endured this? How long did they take?

What happens after, was something he'd not known. Seamus reached toward the dark figures. Seamus saw two arms coming from inside him, rising from his chest.

He managed a weak gurgle, still looking up at the woman that the light chose to present, but still just a projection, just enough. As Seamus' pain and sight began to fade in and out.

How long would this go for? As she kept staring, as something just took and took until there was no more Seamus, until there was no room. It came together all at once, a puzzle with pieces made of pain, an idea of what his body should be, something about her.

Seamus realized, as more dark limbs grew from his body, he had seen something like them before, in the first moment of darkness. And then, just like that, he had found what the lights took, to pay for showing your heart's desire, but he paid too late.

Then the arms kept growing, coming from him as he lost the rest of himself, black blood coming up and out in violent spasms as he started to go limp. The woman stood watching, not moving at all as more of those too-long, too-thin arms pushed out of him, dark figures gathering around her.

She smiled, that faint, empty expression that gave nothing. It would be this, something with no emotion and some illusion. How wrong she had been to keep her feelings.

He finally made it, through to the very end. Whatever else happened, whatever else they said or didn't say, that, he would always have that, to have seen, even for a little while, and not one bit mattered, then as he was going in and out of pain, that even with that she still was gone, as the black forms finally overtook what he once had been, one arm coming up from where his heart should have been.

Whatever his new parts were, this price, this horror was hers too.