Welcome back to Eldritch Girl…
Katy faces the consequences of her actions and some unwelcome revelations about the List and her destiny.
CWs: gore, maggot-adjacent infestation, body horror [assimilation/distortion and parasite-adjacent], emesis, panic attack, eldritch horror
Chapter 8
Ricky was still very, very dead. He’d been too cocky. What if she had killed him for good? What if it was different because it was her, regardless of if she’d Changed?
It was unreal, like a dream. She wasn’t angry anymore, but she didn’t know what she did feel. Numbness seeped through her chest, leaving her light-headed. It was a dream. She was a good person, she had friends, she wasn’t a monster, she had never hurt anyone before. It was the Beast, the Beast inside her, the Beast that made her do it. Except she wasn’t the Beast yet, and Ricky wasn’t moving.
“I didn’t do it,” she lied, reassuring herself. “It wasn’t me. I didn’t do that.”
She couldn’t have done that. She couldn’t even kill squirrels properly.
He was going to get up, though, wasn’t he?
That was a bloody big hole in his head.
Wes stumbled up behind her, his hand pressing her back. She leaned into it. “He’s going to get up, isn’t he? That’s… supposed to happen, right?”
“I bloody hope so.” Wes patted her back and rubbed her shoulder. “Fuck me, what a mess. Nice one.”
“What did I do?” Katy turned frightened eyes to her big brother, almost forgetting his own betrayal. “I thought he’d get out of the way, I thought it was…” She looked at her hands. “I really killed him, didn’t I?”
Wes put an arm around her shoulders, but she barely registered it. “He told me to, I didn’t…” She didn’t know what she was saying, nothing made any sense. “He’s going to get up, isn’t he?”
How could he get up?
How could it be a trick? She’d never seen him do it before, his Mike Myers routine or whatever this was, and Wes seemed less sure of himself.
~ C. M. Rosens, Thirteenth, pp. 236-7
Well, shit… xD
This midpoint is one of my favourite scenes because it pulls a few things together and makes Katy face up to her destiny properly.
It’s also the part that takes us through the portal for the first time, and we see what the Pendle Stone actually does and what the Outside looks like (at least, a part of it). That’s pretty enjoyable.
C. M. Rosens 