Ander - Part 6: Subchapter 158
158
Banno didn't merely step through the door. He unfolded himself through the door until his head was nearly brushing the ceiling. The fireplace cast his shadow along the wall; a misshapen abomination.
"You should be dead..." James whispered, but Banno didn't seem to hear him. That single, blood red eye was fixed on a point behind James's back, unblinking.
"Valery..." His voice was raspy and dry, little more than a death rattle. "I'm sorry I took so long, but I'm finally here. I'm here for you..."
"Lucas! Timothy!" James shouted, putting on his I-am-your-father-and-you-shall-obey-me voice. "Take your sister upstairs! Now!"
"But Dad -"
"NOW!"
Tim grabbed Valery by the hand and pulled her towards the stairs. "C'mon, Vee!"
"But Daddy!"
"C'mon!"
He had to almost forcefully drag her up those winding steps, her face contorted into a mask of abject misery and terror, streaked with fresh tears. She kept yelling for her daddy even as she disappeared around the first bend in the staircase, leaving only her screams and sobs to drift down from the floor above.
Luke, on the other hand, hadn't moved a muscle, and was still standing by James's side, his fingers slowly curling into shaking fists.
"Luke," James said, already knowing this would be a battle in itself. "Go upstairs."
"No, Dad. I'm sticking with you."
"Gods damn it, Luke! Do as I say!"
"What good will that do? You think we'd be any safer up there than down here?"
"Please, Luke! For the love of all the gods!"
Banno was completely ignoring them. He had his head tilted upwards and was following the muffled thuds of Tim and Valery's footfalls across the ceiling, a shredded smile permanently carved into his face and a red line of drool hanging from his bottom lip. It was as if nothing else existed for him, like a predator zeroing in on its prey. "Valery..."
There was something grotesque about him, a fractured split running through his face in more ways than just the physical, something beneath the surface. On one side there was a sense of vacuous tranquillity, as if he were enjoying every dampened cry and hitching, gasping breath descending from the rafters. But on the other there was a quietly simmering hatred, a boiling, festering fury. Something not quite seen, but rather felt, like a fever.
Banno took a step deeper into the room and every muscle in James's body went tense. He stepped in front of his wayward son, not knowing what else to do, but Banno didn't seem all that interested in them. At least not yet.
He bent down and slid Kiana off his shoulder, letting her drop down to the floor with a thump. There was something odd about the way he was handling her, too. Almost dainty. He reached out and delicately brushed a frosting of snow off her stomach, rubbing it in slow, deliberate circles.
This was wrong. This was wrong in ways James simply could not understand. He knew Kiana. He had built her crib with his own two hands just a few days after she was born, had watched Rufio and Bethany lay her down inside it for the first time, had watched her drift off to sleep chewing on her own tail. And now this monster's hand was going up and down across her exposed stomach, brushing away the snow, dragging subtle lines through the grain of her fur with those pitch black claws. It was worse than obscene. It was perverted. But the worst of it was that James did not know why. Banno wasn't actually doing anything to her, but it felt like what he was doing in reality and what he thought he was doing were two completely different things. It was like...
"You wait right here, little one..." Banno whispered, and then, incredibly, he bent down and kissed her stomach, leaving a foul smear of blood right above her navel. "This won't take too long."
And that was when James understood something. Or at least as close as he could come with a sane mind.
This was 'love'. Not real love, not like the love James felt for his family, but a sick, twisted idea of love Banno had concocted in his diseased head over years and years of insanity, lying awake at night, staring up at whatever the stars might look like on the other side of the mountain, trying to understand what the world was, why he was in it, and why everyone around him was so different. This was his way of trying to reach out and touch what came so naturally to everyone else, something 'real', something that wasn't merely an act or an illusion, even if he had to create it himself. Maybe there was no other 'real'. Only himself.
Like when he took his teeth to Valery's throat.
Just thinking about it made James feel sick to his stomach, but he knew he was right. This was the same thing.
This was an act of 'love'.
Before Banno could straighten up all the way, James darted in and grabbed something from among the wreckage of the overturned table, the only thing in this entire room within reach that could even remotely be used as a weapon. It was the bottle of brandy Jon had used on his wounds, still intact and gleaming in the firelight. He smashed it against the wall in a shower of brown glass slivers and held the broken bottle by the neck. Bitter-smelling drops of brandy ran down the sides and dripped from the jagged ring of teeth at the bottom.
Banno tilted his head at this display, his face frozen in that nauseating double-look of hollowness and anger, making it impossible to tell what he was really thinking, if he was surprised or amused or annoyed or just nothing.
That was until he opened his bleeding mouth and said: "You can't keep her from me."
"Go to hell!" James shot a quick glance at his son, at the way his muzzle was wrinkling back into a snarl, at his exposed fangs and shaking fists, and knew instantly that there would be no point in debating this any further. He was going to fight, and there was nothing James could do or say to dissuade him.
But at the very least, he might be able to keep him away from the front line.
"Come on, Luke," James said, slowly backing up, holding the bottle out in front of him like a dagger. "To the stairs."
For a moment it looked like he was going to argue again, but then his eyes cleared as he realised what his old man was trying to do.
That ugly old staircase had been an affront to James's carpentry sensibilities for years. Even before he became a woodworker, back when he was just a kid, he knew that it was no good, and whatever architect had loosed such an aberration on the valley deserved no less than to be drug down the road by a gang of ill-tempered ponies. It was far too narrow, for one thing. Two Foxes could barely pass each other by on the way up or down. Maybe that wouldn't have been so bad if you could see beforehand if someone was using it, but it was mostly enclosed, and the spiral was so tight that you couldn't even see the other person until you bumped noses. It was, without a doubt, one of the stupidest, most impractical, hideously flawed staircases he had ever seen in his entire life.
It was also the best bottleneck he could have asked for, and if he made it through this night alive, he planned to track down that architect and shake his hand.
Luke climbed a few steps backwards, feeling for the risers with his heels and James followed suit, never taking his eyes off Banno's demented half-smile. He felt bad about leaving Kiana down on the floor like that, but there was no way for him to reach her. He didn't even know if she was alive or not.
Banno approached them slowly, cautiously, and James tracked his every movement with the bottle. "If you take one more step, I swear to the gods I will take this and slit your throat from ear to hear, you crazy bastard!" he yelled, hoping he sounded braver than he actually felt. "You hear that, you maniac!? One more step and I kill you!"
Banno stopped, but James got the distinct impression it wasn't because he had asked so nicely. There was something off about his face, the way he was tilting it to the side like a confused child. Coupled with the bloody hole where his right eye should have been, it created a jarring image.
"I _can't_die..." Banno took a small step forward, putting his massive body in line with the fireplace, and his shadow oozed across the floor like a pool of tar. "Call her, James. Call Valery."
"If you talk about my daughter one more time I swear I will -"
"Make her like you? Hollow? Dead? Flavourless? I know you can't understand me, but I'll ask just the same. If you really are capable of loving her, like she must want you to love her... if you really are special enough to come back, then please..."
James's hand stopped shaking. He was so floored, so flabbergasted, so outright astounded by the words coming out of Banno's mutilated mouth that, for just a moment, he couldn't even remember to be scared.
Blood dribbled from Banno's empty eye socket, perhaps the only tears he was capable of shedding. "If you love her, let her come to me... let me touch her... let me feel her... let me taste her... let me make her..." his tongue snaked out from between his bloody lips and slid across his jagged teeth, "... real."
"Back up, Luke," James said, gesturing wildly behind his back. "Back up now."
They retreated three steps higher up, just far enough for the staircase to begin curving around. From here, James could still see Kiana, lying motionless on the floor with a fine smattering of snow slowly accumulating in her fur, but more importantly, this high up he could actually face Banno eye to eye. It wasn't much, but it would have to do. He could eke out no bigger advantage than this.
Banno seemed to understand this, because he slowly shook his head, looking more disappointed than anything else.
"I knew it," he said, coming closer. "You don't really love her at all. Just like I am incapable of dying, you are incapable of feeling love. You are incapable of feeling anything." As he walked, lurching along on the blood-soaked stump where his right leg ended, he pushed his shadow ahead of himself like a pall, gradually devouring the light, piece by piece.
James stood his ground, clutching the bottleneck with both hands.
Trying to defend a bottleneck with a bottle, that's a new one, he thought crazily, feeling the light tickle of laughter in the pit of his stomach. Was he going insane? Probably.
Luke patted him on the shoulder. "I'm here, Dad. I'm right here."
James was grateful to not be alone in this narrow space, but at the same time he really wished Luke had just gone with his brother and sister. It was as if the boy had never truly stopped running, had never stopped looking over his shoulder at every bush and tree and creeping shadow. And the worst of it was, he had been right to do so.
After all James had done, after he had struggled so hard to get here, the endless days trudging through the blinding snow with his daughter on his back, the freezing nights he had spent staring at Emily's picture, willing the pain in his chest to go away just so his kids wouldn't wake up in the morning to find their father lying dead by the ashes of their campfire - had all of that been for nothing? Did it all really come down to this pathetic piece of broken glass in his hands?
It was a cruel joke.
Banno was almost at the foot of the stairs now. James might have been able to try for a flying leap at his head, but even breathing was a kind of torture, exacerbated by his pounding heartbeat. The bandages around his chest kept pulling tight, reminding him that he was very lucky to be alive, and that he was in no condition to go around fighting Wolves twice his size. Hell, even climbing these few steps had awakened the deep, stinging throb where the poker had driven itself into his flesh.
Banno smiled and his left cheek simply parted, connected by nothing more than a few slimy lines of blood and drool. It was the cut James himself had carved into the monster's face, but it was so much wider now, he could actually see the jaw muscles moving up and down as he talked; crimson ropes of meat sliding over bone. "You thought you could keep us apart, but she was too clever for you. She blew me a little kiss, and I caught it." His tongue peeked out and slicked his lips, moving from one side to the other, as if he was imagining actually eating a kiss from his daughter.
James jabbed the broken bottle at Banno's face, but the brute simply leaned back and the jagged tips sliced through nothing but empty air. James nearly overbalanced and had to slam his hand against the curving wall to keep himself from falling forward. If that happened, Banno would be on him in a heartbeat, chewing through the back of his neck like a piece of gristle, and Luke would be next. Then Tim...
Then Valery.
Banno put his dripping stump on top of the first step, his gimlet gaze boring a dripping red hole straight through the shadows, and James knew this was it. There would be no more talking, no more running, no more hiding. All that was left was to fight. All that was left was to keep his promise, to keep his children safe.
Emily...
James screamed at the top of his lungs and launched himself off the stairs, shoving the bottle at Banno's face with all the strength he could muster. He felt something tear inside his chest, but it was already too late to think of that. If he could get one good hit in, if he could tear out his throat, or gouge out that blood-filled eye, maybe it would be enough. Maybe it would -
Banno moved so fast he couldn't even piece together what had happened until it was all over. One moment he was still in the air, thrusting the broken bottle as hard as he could, and the next his vision was taken up completely by the black shadow that was Banno's arm, his claws covered in a thin crust of dried blood. They struck him right across the muzzle and swatted him down against the stairs like he was nothing more than a lowly insect. The sharp edges of the stairs dug into his shoulder blades and the small of his back in a double strike that sent paroxysms of pain throughout his entire body.
James tried to scream, but his throat was already filling up with the bitter taste of blood. His chest was on fire.
"Daaad!"
Gritting his teeth, he opened his eyes to a terrible sight. Banno was still standing tall, despite the slivers of broken glass embedded in the right side of his face. In fact, he didn't even seem to be aware of them at all.
"Fake..." he whispered, reaching for James's throat with claws now saturated in a fresh layer of blood on top of the old clumps of coagulated gore, wet and dripping.
"Get the hell away from my Dad!"
"Lu -" The name of his firstborn son turned into a gargling cough in James's throat, flooding his mouth and nose with the hot stench of blood. So when Luke leapt at Banno with nothing but his bare hands, there was nothing James could do to stop him.
Banno simply grabbed the boy by the wrist and lifted him off the stairs as if he weighed nothing at all. Just a squirming little Fox, kicking and thrashing like a bee caught in a web.
Luke!
James tried to sit up, but it felt like he was sucking a knife through his chest with every shallow breath. There was something wrong with him. Something _seriously_wrong. He could feel the blood running down across his stomach, sticking his clothes to his body, but he couldn't even lift his head enough to check how bad it actually was.
"Fake..." Banno whispered, blood pouring down the fresh new cuts in his face. The glass tinkled and crackled as his jaw moved up and down, gleaming in the firelight.
"Fake!?" Luke shouted, furiously pounding on Banno's arm. "I'll show you fake!" And then, to James's horror, he craned his head back, exposing his neck. "C'mon, I dare you! Nice juicy throat! Or is it too fake for you!? C'mon!"
"Luke, no!" James sat up one excruciating inch at a time. There was blood pouring down his forehead and over his eyes, making him see the world through a stinging, brownish red filter.
Banno leaned closer, his nostrils flaring while Luke struggled against his grip, trying desperately to free his hand. The monster opened its jagged maw and went straight for Luke's throat, straight for the soft, white stripe of fur running beneath his chin, where all the vital veins were pulsating just beneath the skin.
Noooo!!
And that's when Luke pulled the kitchen knife from his front pocket.
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