Welcome to Ashford Row
PARLOR TRICKS # 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
SMOKE & MIRRORS # 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
The Embrace
The pounding at the shop door arrived with such urgency that it shook dust from the door frame.
Arthur Mercer looked up from the velvet-lined case on his workbench. Inside rested an assortment of polished brass rings awaiting repair, each engraved with symbols so worn that only Arthur still remembered what they meant.
The pounding came again, a desperate thrumming that shook the old shop’s bones despite the firmly-paced CLOSED sign. Arthur crossed the shop with practiced calm to unlock the door, and a man stumbled inside, nearly collapsing at his feet. The man’s clothes were caked with dust and his sleeve hung in tatters. His breathing came in ragged bursts, and he repeatedly glanced over his shoulder as though expecting something to emerge from the street at any second. Arthur locked the door behind him.
“You have to help me,” blurted the man. “Please!”
Arthur guided him toward a chair. “Let’s start with your name.”
The man took a big breath and kept his eyes fixed on the broad storefront window. “Daniel. My name is Daniel.”
“What is pursuing you?”
“I don’t know.”
Arthur arched a brow.
“I swear, I don’t!”
Arthur studied him. The man showed no signs of intoxication. No symptoms of delirium. Simply terrified. “Very well,” said Arthur. “Describe what you’ve seen.”
Daniel opened his mouth, but before he could speak, a sound rolled through Ashford Row that caused the windows to hum and the glass display cases to rattle. The brass rings upon Arthur’s workbench sang softly against one another. The sound came again, long and wet, deep enough that it seemed to vibrate through the floorboards rather than the air.
Arthur slowly turned toward the front windows. “…Well. I assume that’s what is troubling you.”
The cry came a third time. Closer. Considerably closer. Arthur reached beneath the counter and withdrew an old leather case no larger than a doctor’s bag. “I had rather hoped today would remain uneventful,” he said, sighing as he opened it.
The shop exploded inward. Brick, timber, and glass burst across the room as something enormous forced its way through the front wall. Arthur caught only fragments of the behemoth. Pale flesh. A vast glossy eye. A tongue thicker than a man’s torso sliding blindly through the dust. The creature filled nearly the entire storefront.
Its skin looked almost translucent, stretched over swollen shapes that suggested organs not quite arranged correctly beneath it. Thick, underdeveloped limbs pushed awkwardly against the shattered floor, each movement clumsy enough to collapse another section of wall.
Its head was grotesquely oversized. Its mouth impossibly small. Its eyes searched everything and its tongue searched for more. The immense thing released another mournful cry. It reverberated through the shattered storefront until the display glass quivered in sympathy.
The tongue stretched toward Daniel. Arthur flicked a handful of playing cards into the air. Instead of falling, they remained suspended, splitting the way a prism splits light, first dozens, then hundreds. Each card slowly revolved, reflecting a different version of the ruined shop.
The tongue struck them. Immediately it hesitated. Every card seemed to present a different Daniel. Different distances. Different directions. The creature turned uncertainly, tasting impossible versions of reality.
Arthur nodded. “Excellent.” The delay lasted perhaps four seconds. Then the tongue resumed searching. Arthur frowned. “Marginally less excellent.” He seized an antique magician’s cabinet standing against the wall and pulled both doors open. He turned to Daniel and jerked his head. “Inside.”
Daniel blinked. “What?”
“Inside.”
The man obeyed. Arthur slammed the doors shut and the cabinet shuddered. The tongue chased the vibration and wrapped around it, pulling until the carpentry groaned, but nothing happened. The cabinet no longer occupied quite the same place as the room surrounding it. The creature tugged insistently at empty geography while Daniel remained somewhere just beyond ordinary space.
Arthur permitted himself the smallest smile, albeit short-lived as the cabinet promptly burst apart beneath several tons of inquisitive monster.
“…Unfortunate,” Arthur muttered.
A tremendous forelimb crashed through a shelf of crystal decanters. Arthur snatched one before it shattered, the last of a precious collection. The glass bottle bore no label and possessed no visible contents, but when he uncorked it and hurled it to shatter against the opposite wall, warm laughter filled the room. For one impossible instant the ruined shop felt occupied by hundreds of delighted theater patrons applauding an invisible performance. The sound of praise. The memory of being celebrated.
The creature froze. Its enormous eyes swung toward the lingering sensation. Its tongue reached eagerly into the empty air where the laughter lingered.
Arthur’s frown shifted into something more amused. “…Interesting.”
The applause faded, and the creature immediately cried again. Louder this time. Almost frantic.
Arthur dragged Daniel free from the remains of the cabinet just before another section collapsed. “I have questions.”
“Now?” shrieked Daniel, his eyes darting back and forth as the bulbous thing groped about.
“Especially now.” Another crash shook the place. “What have you done recently?”
“I’ve been running!”
“Before that.”
“Work.”
“What kind of work?”
“Accounting.”
Arthur looked disappointed. “I was hoping for something more occult.”
The creature lurched after them, smashing through display from sheer bulk. Its swollen body caught on doorframes. Shelves splintered beneath its weight. Every attempt to move gracefully ended with another portion of the shop collapsing around it.
As violent as it had arrived, it never struck at Daniel. It reached. Always reached. The tongue brushed his shoulder, his sleeve, his hair. Every contact was startlingly gentle considering the creature’s size. Its limbs, however, were catastrophic as they lurched about. Arthur ducked beneath a falling beam.
“When did you last see your family?”
Daniel hesitated. “I… I’ve been busy.”
“How busy?”
“I work.”
“So you mentioned.”
Another desperate cry shook dust from the ceiling. Arthur stopped moving and listened. The sound repeated. Distress. He turned slowly toward the towering thing. Its enormous eyes remained fixed upon Daniel, its tongue stretched toward him again. Searching.
“…You’re frightened,” said Arthur.
Daniel nodded vigorously.
“Not you.” Arthur’s response was rather curt. He kept watching the creature. “You.”
Another tremendous cry came from the creature. The panic in its cries increased. Its tongue reached out as the colossal thing hobbled around with heartbreaking eagerness, demolishing another wall in the process.
“I don’t believe it wishes to devour you,” Arthur murmured.
“Excuse me?”
Daniel’s exclamation would have been louder, but he was scrambling to avoid the tongue swinging his way.
Arthur watched the creature stumble clumsily over a collapsed bookshelf, accidentally crushing what remained of his front counter. “…I believe,” he said with visible irritation, “that it wishes to be held.”
Daniel looked as though Arthur had lost his mind. “It’s thirty feet tall!”
The creature whimpered. Arthur walked toward a solitary theater seat resting in the corner of the shop, one of the few pieces of furniture still intact. He set it in the center of the destruction. “Sit.”
Daniel didn’t move. “It’ll kill me.”
“If you continue running, almost certainly.” Another crash. “If you stop…” Arthur glanced toward the creature. “…it may discover it no longer needs to chase.”
Every instinct screamed at Daniel to flee. He lowered himself into the chair, slowly, tensely perched. The creature approached with soft cries which turned into uncertain little sounds as it drew close. Its tongue reached forward and rested lightly against Daniel’s shoulder. Then its enormous forehead settled carefully against his chest. The building groaned, then became silent.
Daniel closed his eyes. With trembling hands, he placed one palm against the creature’s smooth skin. With an encouraging nod from Arthur, he began to stroke its head. “There, there.”
The creature released a soft, contented sigh unlike the cries that had shaken the street. For the first time since its arrival, it sounded peaceful.
The impossible body shivered. The swelling began to recede. Its limbs straightened. Its grotesque proportions softened. The vast searching tongue withdrew. Minute by minute the creature diminished until only something no larger than a child remained, curled quietly beside the chair. For the first time, it smiled. Then it dissolved into a faint shimmer of dust that drifted lazily through the afternoon light.
Arthur surveyed the devastation. Half his shop no longer possessed walls. Shelves lay scattered across the street. Playing cards fluttered gently through the settling dust. One brass ring rolled past his shoe before disappearing through a crack in the floor. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “…Well.” He sighed. “I shall spend the remainder of the day putting everything back where it belongs.”
Daniel looked around the wreckage. “I’m so sorry.”
Arthur waved the apology away. “Ashford Row will have forgotten all of this by breakfast.” He stooped to retrieve one of the scattered brass rings, polishing the dust from it with his sleeve. “The walls will stand again. The windows won’t remember they were ever broken. My shelves shall politely return to their corners.” He glanced at what had once been his front entrance. “I, however, shall still have to remember where everything belonged.”
For the first time since arriving, Daniel laughed. The sound of someone pausing long enough to find joy.
Arthur looked up. “There we are.” He slipped the ring into his pocket. “Now we’re making progress.”
A surprisingly different story today. You never cease to amaze me.