POA ch015 — What is that?

“—and then, Dr. Zhang told me that if I wanted to do that kind of analysis, I’d have to code in R, and, I’ll be honest, I— Henry? What’s up?”

Upon realizing that you have overtaken his feet, Henry sighs. 

“I… think we need to go down there.” Resignation tugs at his voice. 

“Down… the alleyway?” Ash peers down it, trying to see.

Henry’s feet take a step forward.

“Yep,” Henry confirms.

Ash groans. “Why?!”

“Don’t ask me!” Henry complains. “Ask them!”

“They’re— you’re— ugh.” 

Henry takes another step forward, grinning. It’s easy to push down his trepidation, with Ash beside him.

The shape that Henry noticed in the alleyway looks like a person, crumpled to the ground. It is not moving.

Even though the sun is only just setting, this pathway is a relic of the time before cars and the buildings are close enough together that the minimal lingering sunlight doesn’t reach the ground between them. The houses huddle together, dark stoops and tiny walled-off front gardens with scraggly bushes and branches that, in the dim light, look like skeletal limbs. This street is small enough that there are no streetlights and no lit windows. It’s dark enough to obscure who, or what, is crumpled on the cobblestones. The top of the row of houses is illuminated by the lingering rays of the sun and the moon peeking through the clouds, but the bubbly warmth of the sunset does not reach Henry, Ash and the thing that lies before them. 

Every sense in Henry’s body suddenly jangles in alarm. Henry does not feel safe. He clasps Ash’s hand, squeezing it tightly.

“We should check it out,” Ash murmurs, uncharacteristically serious. “What if they need help?”

“’They’?”

“Yeah, I mean, it looks like a… a person, doesn’t it?”

That is true. The thing does appear to have a traditionally human shape. Legs, although they’re at odd angles, and something like arms, although they seem oddly… blunt.

Henry’s feet shuffle him closer to it. You want him to figure out what it is, but Henry’s skin is crawling with nerves. Something is not right here.

“I have to get closer,” Henry says.

“We should definitely make sure they’re okay,” Ash agrees, but their hand finds Henry’s bicep and clenches around it in a death grip. 

They approach cautiously. The sounds of the city are muted here, although the odd and incongruous burst of jovial laughter rises up from a far-off pub. This alleyway smells of piss and cigarettes and something metallic and horribly rancid that wrinkles Henry’s nose.

Henry and Ash approach with growing trepidation. Ash pulls out their phone and turns the torch on.

It is a person. Or, at least, most of one.

Henry’s eyes fall on the tangle of limbs and blood crumpled on the cobblestones and his stomach flips over. He gags, pressing his lips together and squinting his eyes shut. Ash isn’t faring much better. The light cast by Ash’s phone torch jitters as Ash fumbles it with a choked gasp.

Once he’s managed to compose himself, Henry’s eyes trail up the crumpled form. Legs contorted into what, in life, would be a horribly painful arrangement, folded beneath the torso. Blood is spattered all down the clothing, turning most of it thick and stiff and dark red. A small squeal of distress finally escapes Henry’s throat and his dinner threatens to make a reappearance when he reaches the hands.

Or, hand.

Because one is missing.

That would be the source of the blood. 

The arm ends in a jagged, hacked-off mess of viscera and flesh, lying against the ground. 

“Oh, my god,” Ash breathes. “Are they—”

The person is not breathing.

“How did— what happened, here?”

But Henry is still processing the missing hand when he sees its partner.

Compelled by you or by his own morbid curiosity, Henry kneels next to the corpse and reaches for the other hand.

“Wh-what are you doing?”

Henry prises the fingers apart, coated in blood. This hand, at least, appears to be intact. Henry maneuvers it with his own left hand, the tainted one. 

“There’s something in his hand,” Henry murmurs.

“I’m calling the police,” Ash says, and the torch clicks off as they dial.

In the dim light, Henry continues to pry the fingers open by feel. They are cold and clammy to the touch, sticky with blood but not yet stiff. Henry doesn’t know much about rigor mortis, but he knows this means the body has not been here a long time. What is it? What’s in his hand? 

“Hello, o-officer? Yes, I’d like to report— my friend and I, we’ve just found a b-body, I think? Yes, it’s on this little close just off Nelson street. No, I—”

“Ow!” Henry hisses as his fingers meet something sharp. He yanks his hand back and peers at the edge of his thumb.

A thin nick of dark blood pools on his fingertip, where the shiny black surface of his skin has sliced open. 

“What happened?” Ash calls from behind him. Over the phone, unintelligible murmurs grow more urgent the longer Ash pauses.

“I’m fine,” Henry insists, “just cut myself. It’s not bleeding.” Much.

“Yes, no, we didn’t—” Ash continues into the phone, keeping one eye on Henry. 

Henry turns back to the body. He tentatively maneuvers his fingers between the dead man’s and manages to free the object: a small knife with a serrated edge, like a steak knife.

This is when the dots connect. Henry looks at the knife, looks at the hacked-off edge where a hand used to be, and then—

And then Henry looks past the slack pale face of the corpse, and sees that, a few paces behind where the body has fallen, there’s a smaller lump, barely visible in the dim light.

The missing hand lies innocently amongst the cobblestones, fingers curled. A fat rat stands over it, clasping one of the fingers between sharp teeth.

Henry shrieks and points. 

“What? What?” Ash says, and rushes over to him. “Police are on their way. Oh, god.”

“He cut— H-he cut—” Henry gulps. “He cut his own hand off, Ash.”

“Oh, shit.” 

Ash turns away. They can’t bear to stay anywhere near this dead man on the ground, with his blank, pale face.

Henry can’t turn away. As he looks, really looks, at the face, he realizes he knows this man. Henry saw him earlier today, leaving his check-up at Pembroke Lab.

This man is— was— one of Seonjae’s patients.

Christ, what was his name? Henry wonders, mind going staticky with panic and horror. 

Mr. Richardson.

“Mr. Richardson,” Henry whispers.

And then Mr. Richardson’s eyes snap open.

…

Henry shrieks and leaps backwards, frantically crawling away from the corpse. His hands stick to the bloodied cobblestones with each motion. 

“Wh—” Ash begins. 

The corpse sits up and fixes them with its lifeless stare. Ash has one moment of blinking owlishly at it in confusion. Then they throw themself backwards, too, nearly toppling over from the weight of their cello. Their shoulders heaving with fast sharp inhales, their brown eyes wide.

Mr. Richardson’s eyes are all dark, not a hint of the whites. Pitch black and shiny, like the carapace of a beetle. His shoulders do not heave. His skin is pale, bloodless, standing out starkly against the backdrop of the tattoos that crawl up his arm. No vestige of life radiates from him, no spark, no sense of a person. He is simply animated, an empty marionette.

Mr. Richardson, Henry thinks frantically. But, really, he has no name, not anymore. Not since he hacked his own hand off and bled to death. 

Somewhere, distantly, Henry hears sirens. 

We should do something, Henry thinks. Until the police get here. 

Henry and Ash hold each other a few paces away from the thing that was once Mr. Richardson. As they watch, something tugs the corpse’s lips into a dead grin. It smiles, showing its white teeth, shiny like pearls in the meager moonlight and last stray vestiges of sun.

Henry and Ash wait, breaths caught in their throats. Henry’s mind is pinging with panic, adrenaline zinging down his veins. 

The thing (that is not alive and has no name) keeps smiling. The lips tug open wider, wider, wider even than one might think possible, until the muscles on one side of the face fail, and the grin falls into a lopsided half-smile.

Then, all at once, the muscles of the face are released. 

The smile drops. 

And then the thing lunges.

…

Henry’s feet pound against the pavement.

“Go! Go! Go!” Henry shouts, and Ash is right behind him, tilting forward, falling more than running, wobbly from the weight of their cello. Their hand finds Henry’s and they are pulling him along, pounding faster and with wider strides away from the thing that chases them.

Henry can hear its footsteps behind them. They start slow and irregular, like a toddler’s, but are quickly gaining speed. Henry risks a glance backwards, needing to know that what he is seeing is real.

It is.

Henry’s head twists around to stare at the thing that follows them, dead and quickly gaining momentum.

The thing tugs its mouth into a grin again. The eyes remain lifeless, two rotted black pearls. 

Henry’s foot catches on an uneven cobblestone. He stumbles, flailing, and Ash’s grip tightens.

“Come on, come on, come on, come on, come on,” Ash chants, gasping each word out around their panicked intake of breath. Henry catches his balance. He and Ash reach out for a broken streetlight and swing themselves around a corner. Behind them, the thing careens bodily into a parked car, setting off the car alarm and leaving a smear of blood across the window. It doesn’t slow down in the slightest, and continues running right along. 

The thing lets out a terrible sound. A whining, rusty sort of noise, foreign words pressed out through dead vocal cords.

Ash yanks him around another corner, and they continue to pound down the street. They’re heading to a more public area of Jericho. Henry needs to see other people, needs to know that they are not alone, needs to find somewhere to hide, somewhere he’ll be safe. 

The thing behind them groans again; Henry registers this over the pounding of his heart. The sound comes out more animalistic than before. A muttering howl that could almost be the chattering of a monkey, or, perhaps—

It makes the noise again, and Henry throws another glance over his shoulder.

He now recognizes the sound as something shockingly, horrifyingly human.

Whatever it is that is puppeting the dead Mr. Richardson’s corpse, it has learned how to laugh.

Ash and Henry whip around another corner. This is the final stretch. Up ahead, they can see pedestrians passing happily, safely, casually along the busier road. Henry’s legs threaten to give out, his muscles screaming at him.

“I— I can’t—” Henry gasps out, heart hammering in his chest, threatening to tear right through his ribs.

“Almost at Walton Street,” Ash wheezes back. “There’ll be others there. Police coming. I’ve got you.”

The thing chasing them has figured out how to run and is galloping, gaining speed. It wheezes something out. 

“H—” 

Ten meters to the corner. Ten meters, and they’ll be safe, once again bathed in the warm glow of streetlights, the bubbling laughter of Sunday night in a human world, a world without monsters and walking corpses.

Behind them, so close Henry can almost smell him, the thing still advances.  Dead fingers scrabble at the nape of Henry’s neck. 

The thing speaks, the most horrible noise yet. 

“H-Henry,” it wheezes.

…

Wham!

Henry and Ash shoot out onto Walton Street like people possessed and immediately slam into a pedestrian. There’s blood on Henry’s hands and both of them are sweating, panting and terrified, but he scrabbles at the shirt of the slight woman they’ve just run over.

“It’s coming,” Henry pants.

“We have to—” Ash wheezes.

“Naomi?” They both yelp simultaneously. 

It is Naomi: Looking tired but normal, her violin slung across her shoulder. 

“What is wrong with you lot? How the fuck did you get here?”

“Naomi,” Henry gasps, smacking his lips as he tries to catch his breath. Another pedestrian walks by them and sneers before turning back to the phone in his hand.

Out here, on a more populated street, the urgency does not feel so great. There are sounds of cars and bikes and pubs and groups of undergrads burbling all around them, and the golden light of street lamps fends off the dark.

Henry and Ash whip around. They stare down the smaller, dimmer residential streets they just sprinted through.

There is nothing there.

Henry twitches.

“What is going on?” Naomi demands. “Is that— Henry, is that blood?”

“Not mine,” Henry says.

“Not mine either,” Ash adds.

“That is… somehow more concerning.” 

A police car screeches down Walton Street and turns, heading for the side street where Ash had called in the corpse. Well, it will be gone now. Henry wonders what the police will make of it. A prank call from a couple of kids? 

“What in the name of fuck is going on?” Naomi demands, louder and shriller.

“We found a—” Henry stammers.

“There was a—” Ash begins, talking over him.

“—body, and then we—”

“A body?!” Naomi yelps. “Christ, I leave you two alone for half an hour…”

“—not dead, or maybe it was—”

“—chased us, but we—”

“—and now it’s gone!” Henry finishes, and Ash falls silent, too, as they glance around again to see whether that same mutilated, unliving form is about to pounce on them.

But there is still nothing there. Whatever happened to poor Mr. Richardson, it’s gone now.

Gone, but for how long? Henry thinks. 

“Right,” Naomi says faintly. “Right. Okay. Erm, why don’t we all just head back home, and then you can tell me the whole story from the beginning again.”

…

Henry finds himself in the Pembroke Lab waiting room again the following day, for his scheduled check-up appointment.

It’s like I basically live here now, Henry thinks with no small amount of annoyance. Gosh, had it really only been a week since the operation?

Henry is wearing Ash’s lightest pair of gloves, soft green pleather. They’re a little too large for Henry and rather more eye-catching than he’d like, but he hasn’t decided yet whether to reveal this new… symptom to Seonjae (if his appointment is even with Seonjae — he certainly isn’t going to tell Pembroke).

Henry waits fifteen minutes beyond his scheduled time, and then thirty minutes. He starts glancing over at Deborah, engrossed in her romance novel. He hums quietly to himself, a little tune he’s been composing in his head. Though he’s trying not to think about it, he keeps replaying the events of last night in his mind.

Mr. Richardson had been one of Pembroke’s patients. Henry had seen the man earlier that day, at his check-up. The man had already looked rough, Henry recalled. He was injured, and his wounds had seemed self-inflicted. Strangely enough, it reminds Henry of something. Something from ages ago — a horror movie he saw, maybe? 

But what had possessed him to cut his own hand off? Henry wonders, looking down at his gloved hands with worry brewing in his gut.

What, indeed.

Henry tries not to think about you, about the very real beings currently possessing him.

I hope you’re kind, Henry thinks at you. I hope you’re kind, and you don’t make me saw my own hand off.

Henry finds himself staring at the clock ticking on the wall. Another fifteen minutes has passed, Dr. Pembroke and Seonjae must be running incredibly behind. If it takes much longer, he’ll be late to his advising appointment with Asma, his thesis advisor.

Perhaps it wasn’t you, Henry realizes. Perhaps Richardson did it… to escape you.

But then Henry remembers Richardson’s unseeing, pitch-black eyes.

Well, if he did, it didn’t work, Henry adds. Looks like he ended up a puppet anyway.

The revelation sinks into Henry’s stomach like a stone.

“Henry Choix!” Dr. Pembroke’s voice rings out in the waiting room and makes Henry jump.

“Coming!” Henry calls back. He gathers himself and goes to meet her.

They walk through the corridors of Pembroke’s lab, and it feels eerily silent. Henry glances in some of the other open offices, but doesn’t see Seonjae anywhere.

“Seonjae in today?” Henry risks the question.

“She’s taking a sick day,” Pembroke replies stiffly. “For her ‘mental health.’”

Henry swallows.

“Ah.”

“I hope that will be acceptable,” Pembroke says icily.

“No, yeah, that’s fine,” Henry quickly reassures her.

“The weather is rather warm for gloves,” Pembroke says. “Do feel free to remove them.”

“No, thank you, I’m trying a new— um. Fashion. Thing.”

“Suit yourself.”

Pembroke leads Henry into one of the many little examination rooms. She runs through the typical checks that Henry remembers from last time. When she asks to check his oxygen, he offers her his right, unchanged hand. He answers all of her questions in the affirmative, trying to be as bland and uninteresting as possible. He does not trust her.

Pembroke takes her time marking down his answers, eyeing him over her spectacles as though waiting for him to crack. Eventually, though, she has no more questions to ask him, and she hands him his form and sends him on his way. He hands the form to Deborah, and lingers for a moment on the door that leads to Wilkins’ Resonance Room, below, and then exits the building. 

He’s late to his meeting with Asma. He starts to walk briskly down the street, heading for her office building. It’s a ten minute walk from Pembroke Lab.