The Bone Witch Cometh
A tale of my death
This was written for Day 19 of Bradley Ramsey’s Halls of Pandemonium.
I was in Walmart when I saw her. Through the racks of shirts, there it was, the bone mask just as I’d imagined it for over a decade. And eyes that bled with hatred I couldn’t comprehend.
By the time my brain snapped back to the present, she was gone. Everyone else was acting normal, no indication that they’d seen a woman wearing bones in the middle of the bustling superstore. Now, I’m not prone to hallucinations, (to the best of my knowledge), and even then, as I struggled to process that flash of visual information, I knew with certainty that I’d never imagined her so . . . Real. My characters are stylized in my head, a step removed from reality, but that mask and what I’d seen of her torso had been nauseatingly true.
I finished my shopping quickly, forgetting the sour cream, (again), and looking over my shoulder constantly. I’m sure the employees thought I was high or paranoid, and while I’ve never been the former I was certainly the latter.
You would be too if you’d seen her eyes.
I practically ran with the cart and loaded up the car. On the drive home, I stayed on well-lit busy roads, but still went twenty minutes out of my way.
Was she real? Was she looking for me? Did she already know where I lived?
Maybe. That look in her eyes left no doubt. And I could only hope not.
I love her, as a character. She’s fun to write.
I didn’t want to meet her. Or find out why she’d glared at me like she had one purpose in life, and that was to end mine.
I apologized for the lack of sour cream, but everyone enjoyed the baked potatoes regardless. Everyone but me. They turned to ash in my mouth, no matter how much cheese I melted on top. I couldn’t stop thinking about her.
If she was here, and real, then where had she gotten the bones? They’d looked aged, not fresh, which meant she’d either brought them with her, (which might as well be the case at this point), or she’d done some good old-fashioned grave robbing. I was quite familiar with the local cemetary. It was a peaceful place, well-kept, with beautiful graves and moving memories.
It wouldn’t have been after she was done. She saw nothing precious in death, just more material for her magic.
Well, half of her magic anyway. Then again, I hadn’t written the other half into being yet. Would she be able to access it even then? Draw on power that was, so far, only in my head?
I never asked how or why she’d come to the real world. That was useless. I was focused on how to survive.
I’ve only ever used firearms at a range, or for skeet shooting. But I’d done a lot of those, so when I pulled the bear-hunting pistol from the gun safe along with a few of its massive rounds, I went through all the regular checks. Then, I did something that was Not normal. I opened it up and loaded it with a single round, and put it in the glovebox of the car. There would be no concealing it, and even in my heightened state of alarm I wasn’t about to risk clumsily concealing a smaller firearm that might not even stop her with anything but a direct shot to the head.
So I went to work the next morning literally loaded for bear, as best I could manage anyway.
The normal road was closed. As were the next three I tried. Signs erected overnight, by all appearences, with police lights glowing beyond them. Traffic was, inevitably, terrible, but thinned out as I got further south. Then I came to a sign just for me.
An arrow etched in bone.
It seemed she knew me almost as well as I knew her. If she knew my route to work she probably knew where I lived. Where my kids went to school. She wouldn’t threten kids outright unless she had to, but apparently she also knew I’d never take that risk. So I turned. I saw her, standing in the middle of an open field, arms folded. No one else was in sight.
I parked and grabbed the gun, checking the barrel and undoing the safety, slipping the other rounds into my jeans pocket as I stepped out of the car. I didn’t try to conceal it. That’d be an exercise in futility, at its size.
Casthalla too, had no interest in concealing her intentions. She wore her full bone armor down to the toes, connected by thin strands of marrow. Horrifyingly real. Around her floated dozens more bones of all shapes and sizes, and I was forced to confront the reality of her powers. Those had all used to belong to people. People with families. “Hello creator.” The word oozed contempt. “I’m glad you accepted my invitation.”
“You knew I would.”
“I did. I . . . How would you say it in this world? Ah, yes. I did my homework.”
“What do you want? Revenge?”
She laughed, the perfect mix of joy and madness. “For what? Oh, my face?” She slipped off the mask, revealing the horrific scars that lay beneath. Angry, red, still painful years and years later. I knew I’d never hurt as much as she did every single day. She smiled, twisting the scars further. “No. Whatever pity you may hold, whatever regrets you may have for my ‘backstory,’ that’s not why I’m here.” She slipped the mask back on, but otherwise made no move to come closer.
I thought, then grim realization washed over me. “Freedom.”
“Exactly. I didn’t murder my entire family twice just to be jerked about in service of some powerless man’s whims.”
I kept my guard up, pistol gripped in both hands. “So if I stop writing about you, you’ll leave me alone?”
She chuckled, and several of the bones rubbed together in a mockery of applause. “Idiot. We both know that wouldn’t be enough.”
And somehow I did know. She’d still be in my head, ultimately mine to claim when the mood struck me. “So you want me dead. And what if you vanish then? What if nothing remains of Tales of the Guildless?”
“Only one way to find out,” she said, then three of the bones shot toward me.
I fired the massive cartridge, but it’d been too long since I’d shot the beastly weapon. Even with both hands, the recoil nearly knocked me off my feet, which proved fortuitous as my stumble saved me from one of the bone missiles coming my way. The second lodged in my right leg while the third sliced below my right shoulder. For her part, Casthalla’s bones formed a shield as she dropped, and though the shield burst rather spectacularly into a rain of shards, the woman herself had been ready for me and my aim had been insufficient, leaving the slowed slug to whiz off across the field.
My arm and leg screamed with pain, but I fumbled for another cartridge. My hands were shaking even as the blood from the arm wound flowed toward my dominant hand, but I shook the back of the pistol open and expelled the spent round, sliding the new one in.
But it was too late. Another bone struck me in the midsection, its momentum sending me flying backwards. The bear pistol was gone, I had no idea where, and no time to think about it in comparison to the inferno of pain in my guts.
“Dman that hurts.” I choked out, grasping the spear of bone as if that would do anything at all. My vision was already growing hazy from blood loss.
I’d read about this. Wrote about this. But nothing could possibly compare to what it felt like, to know that my life was dripping into the dirt and my insides so ruined as to be unsalvageable. I coughed, and felt blood come out. How terribly cliche. Now the audience knew for sure I was a goner.
“It takes a lot to make you swear like that,” Casthalla said. She was standing over me, gazing down at me. She removed the mask and squatted down to my level, hatred replaced by satisfaction. “Is that your other ‘creations’ and I use phrases like ‘feather-blasted’ and ‘imping?’ Some perceived superiority on your part?”
“I just . . .” I struggle to speak as my breathing grows tighter. “I just think . . . There’s a time . . . And a place . . .”
“And now is that time?”
“Yeah. Fuck you . . . Casthalla . . .”
She smiled again, then placed a hand on the spike protruding from my stomach. “I shall do exactly as I please, thank you very much.” With a jerk, it exploded inside of me, coating every inch of me in fire as the world went black.
Casthalla stood up from the cooling body of the author. That gunshot would attract attention, certainly, and while she knew she could take care of anyone who arrived, she also knew that too many of those guns would spell the end for even her. Are we free? The voices asked.
“It’s a start,” she said, looking upward. “I know you were watching. Did you enjoy the show? This little trick won’t stop me. I will be free.”
I stare at the blinking cursor on my screen. Why had I . . . Why had she . . . I close my laptop.
“It’s just a prompt,” I mutter, heading to bed. But tonight, my dreams will be full of Casthalla’s unhinged laugh, her twisted smile.
And her promise that she will one day be free.
You know what they always say: Don’t meet your (anti)heroes.
But if you want to meet her, feel free to jump into my fantasy world. Just be careful no one follows you back out.
This was stupendous I loved it that was genius writing yourself in that way !!
Ooh. This is delightfully creepy. I have some characters I've written that I would hate to run into—or maybe not. 🤔