I am Abel Kluge.
The man-thing walked in a small circle around Evan, its glinting eyes studying him with calculation, a shark’s stare.
“You’re dead.” His mind tilted toward the drop-off of insanity.
Yes and no. You see, there is a purpose to everything, a reason. You are here because of it. So was your son. Every living thing provides a rung in the ladder that climbs beyond what we know.
“What are you talking about?”
Souls, Evan—or I should say time, for that is all a soul is, time. A soul is time for life, energy for living, a drop in the ever-flowing well.
“Where’s my son?” Evan said. Anger rose within him, a fury at whatever this was—hallucination or reality, he didn’t know. All he wanted was to find Shaun.
The Abel-shape ignored the question and continued its circle around him. Evan saw the rear of its head shift and warp before coming back into definition. The thing stopped and faced him again. In a split second its face broke, peeling back and reabsorbing its flesh, until long, brown hair sprouted and dropped past its shoulders. Its frame shrunk and took on curves Evan knew well.
Selena stood before him.
As if hearing his thoughts, it spoke in the same ratcheting voice that grated against his eardrums.
You know her as Selena, but her name used to be Allison. Allison Kaufman.
Evan stood stock-still, letting its words sink into him. Selena, or what hid beneath her guise, smiled at him, revealing a broken and jagged grin that righted itself instantly. Then the shape became Abel again, the skin flowing like magma until the features solidified once more.
“I don’t understand,” Evan whispered.
The Abel-thing sprang at him.
It leapt across the distance between them as though teleporting, and had both of its soggy hands around Evan’s throat before he could react. Its flesh was like a fish fillet—wet, cold, and pliant—but moved and crawled without releasing him from its hold. He opened his mouth to scream, to cry out in revulsion, and the thing holding him leaned in, touching its now-flowing forehead against his.
A rush of colors and images poured into his mind, a river of life he had only moments to discern before it plunged past. He saw Abel dancing with a woman who could only be his wife in a magnificent ballroom, and they twirl until the scene becomes a workshop in which Abel toils over a bench, gears and sprockets stacked in canted piles, assembling a small timepiece. Kluge House rising from the ground, with dozens of workers lifting, nailing, setting its structure. Selena, her eyes as well as her smile unmistakable, so seductive, before him first on a front stoop, then on a bed, her body bare, writhing beneath him. A young woman bearing a great likeness to Cecil Fenz scrubbing a floor as Abel and Selena walk by, both landing a kick to her ribs, sending her sprawling. Speckles of blood on a mirror, Abel’s reflection gazing at the mess, his eyes far away. A dark basement full of tools swaying on their hooks, Abel assembling a large frame—the clock. Abel’s hand carving ideograms in the wood, his mouth open and chanting, sweat running in streams down his face. Abel doubling up, hacking out a blob of red and black tissue onto the workbench, his eyes bulging. The master bedroom of Kluge House, Selena lying on a settee, barely breathing, her eyes staring. Abel coughing as he chants again, cutting his wrist on the edge of the clock’s swinging pendulum, his eyes alight with fever and madness. Larissa crouching in the corner of the room, her delicate hands covering her head and face from the sight. Abel dropping to his knees before the clock, his arms outstretched in supplication as the darkness within the encasement bleeds into the room. Tendrils reaching, wrapping around Abel’s wrists and waist and then yanking him into the clock’s dark belly. A shock wave of ichor shooting out in every direction, blazing a shadow against the wall. The key exploding free of its hole, burying itself in the picture across the room as the frame bubbles and welds in place. Selena convulsing and twisting in the clock’s oily embrace before spewing blood over her lips, her form slackening. Larissa’s open mouth screaming as the wave meets her, engulfs her, drives her body against the wall and then to the floor, where she lies dead, her eyes half open. The clock smoldering, vapors of heat coiling from its top as the pendulum swings, the hands running backward.
Evan broke free of the thing’s hold, shoving as hard as he could with his muscles as well as his mind, a coiling, mental tension released. He tumbled and fell onto his back, his mouth open and gasping. He had wet himself, but couldn’t summon the energy to care. The thing that used to look like Abel remained where it was, its face no longer bearing any features. Evan sat up and scrambled away from it.
“You caught it from her, didn’t you? Tuberculosis.” Evan gasped. “The doctors you called weren’t only for her, they were for you. And when you knew you were going to die, you built this ... this thing and cursed it somehow.” He gestured to the darkness around them.
As if in reply, a ripple flowed through Abel’s entire form, a wave of skin rolling and settling.
My time was cut short unfairly, and unlike other pitiful mortal men, I didn’t succumb to my fate, I raged against it. You are correct, I built this, and it welcomed me into its womb, just as the ancient rites handed down through my bloodlines said it would. And yes, my beautiful achievement did need power. The ones that lay around us misunderstood my masterpiece for something it was not. It drew those that had regrets. It gave them hope that they could change their fates, and I waited, luring them closer until I could absorb their energy.
Evan’s mouth opened and then shut.
“You killed them all. Your wife and Allison, all the others—to fuel it.”
The list of names and faces scrolled through his mind—Jason’s grandmother and grandfather, Bob, Becky, Becky’s father.