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Here’s Marshie

Lore knew what it was like to be called ugly. When she hit it big on the game scene, they were already judging her—she wasn’t hot enough, she was too much the cyberpunk tomboy, too much the uppity half-a-dyke, her tits were too big, her face was too “severe”—her only value to those shit-heel online mutants was how fuckable she was to them, but aye, there was the rub, because if she was too fuckable, or even fuckable at all, that’d be a whole different problem. Hell, they called her a slut already, as if she’d fucked and sucked her way into the industry. Truth was, they didn’t want her in this space at all, not as anything other than some bouncy booth babe. A model, a toy, a poseable sex doll. Anything else just meant she was intruding.

Anything else meant she was stealing opportunities from lesser men .

It was in this way she understood—and hated—the girl, Marshie.

Marshie, you stupid thing. Putting all of yourself in some stupid boy’s hands so that he could either lift you up or break you down .

That’s what was going through her head as she read the girl’s diary. She started to tell Owen what she was reading, even though he looked shell-shocked enough that she wasn’t even sure he was paying attention. Staring as he was at the computer screen. And Hamish and Nick were just fighting again, and it was hard to tune them out—

“This is your fault,” Hamish said to Nick.

“My fault. My fault?”

“You just couldn’t leave well enough alone, man. Matty went up those stairs and we didn’t have to follow, but what do you do? Spend the next thirty years chasing his ghost, trying to find a way for us to join him in Hell. Stupid parents always asking, If your friend jumped off a cliff, would you jump off a cliff, too? but I guess it isn’t that stupid of a question because your answer would be yeah, shit yeah, and if I can’t jump off that cliff just find me a new one to jump off of, and I’ll trick my other friends into jumping right alongside of me. ”

Nick sneered as he brought his voice low, almost to a growl. “Weak. Weak . That’s what you are, Hamish Moore. W-E-A-K weak. Weak like watered-down liquor, like decaf coffee. Everything you were is gone now, isn’t it? You’re in your diet soda era, a fading photograph of who you once were. I can’t even see you in there. You changed that day. We all did. And that is what this was about. Fixing it. Finding not just Matty but…”

His voice died in his mouth.

Hamish leaned in, baring his teeth. “You didn’t fix shit, bro . This doesn’t feel fixed to me. This feels fucked. Extra fucked. And you—” Hamish seemed to notice Nick was barely listening. Instead, he was looking down. Toward the floor.

Toward Hamish’s feet.

Lore looked over, still reading aloud from the diary. “She said she’s gonna kill herself and even talked about how she’s gonna do it, she’s gonna end it all, and then—these brown spots, I think they’re blood—” But as she was talking about blood, so were Nick and Hamish.

“What?” Hamish asked, sounding irritated.

“You’re…bleeding,” Nick said.

“What? I’m—”

Sure enough, she saw a pool of blood spreading out from between Ham’s feet. The blinking Christmas lights danced in the red-black puddle, like fairies trapped in syrup.

“Wait, what the fuck?” Lore said.

Hamish, half panicking, said, “I—I don’t think that’s from me.”

A hand shot out from under the bed, grabbing Hamish’s ankle.

Hamish screamed as he yanked his leg free and nearly fell over as he pivoted hard in a clumsy leap off the bed.

The hand, messy with red, smacked at the carpet, leaving bloody handprints across the floor. The fingers grabbed at the fibers and were joined by a second hand that did the same. They gripped and pulled —

Nick was yelling now, too, screaming, “Jesus fucking fuck!” as he backpedaled off the bed. Owen jumped out of the chair, pressing himself into the corner of the room, watching transfixed as a young woman dragged herself out from under the bed. All parts of her slick with gore, the blood a fresh wet mask, a second skin, crimson in the lights but thick with strings of black clot. T-shirt and pajama pants soaked through, too. She rose to her feet, shaking. Blood dripping.

Lore felt sick. Scared. But also—in awe.

The girl looked around at them, head low, shoulders hunched. The look of a kennel-kept dog, starving and wary.

Still smiling. Eyes big.

Lore stepped forward. Owen hissed at her, tried to get her to stay back.

But she couldn’t do that.

“Are you…Marshie?” Lore asked.

The girl opened her mouth and choked out an incomprehensible reply. As she did, a vent in her throat opened like a steamed envelope, and fresh blood oozed. So did slashes up the length of the undersides of her arm. Owen failed to stifle a bleat. Black ichor splashed over the girl’s teeth and lips as she tried—and failed—to speak.

But she’s still smiling, Lore realized.

To the others, Lore said: “Maybe—maybe we can talk to her. Maybe she’s trying to tell us something.”

But the way the girl tilted her head this way and that—Lore wasn’t so sure. Her eyes flashed with what Lore could only describe as joyful hate .

She loathed them.

Lore then remembered the message sliced into the wallpaper.

“Hey!” Nick barked at her. “ Hey . We’re looking for someone—”

But the girl fixed her gaze on Hamish, like a nail in drywall.

“ Youuuu, ” she said, the word clearer after a fresh push of black blood from over the dam of teeth and lip.

“M-me,” Hamish said.

“ Llllllooook. Liiiiiikkkkke. Himmm. ” Her smile broadened. Eyes wider. A fat glob of coagulated blood danced on her tongue, like a breath mint juggled around her mouth.

“Him?” Nick repeated.

“Him…who?” Hamish asked her.

“ Ggggggraaaaaady, ” the girl said, with nearly a swoon.

“Grady,” Lore said. “That’s the boy she liked.”

Hamish forced a smile. “Okay. Okay. So she liked him.” To the bloody girl: “You liked Grady? That’s good. You, you like me, then. Maybe—maybe you can help us. We’re looking for—”

The girl said in a wheezing, whimpering, breathless croak: “ I loved him. ”

“That’s—that’s great. That’s sweet. Our friend, Matty—”

The girl’s smile sank. Her stare narrowed.

Darkly, she said:

“ But he…didn’t love me .”

“I’m—I’m so sorry—”

“ So I ddddddid this .”

She held up her arms. The slices down the undersides looked like fish gills. Lore thought she could see bundles of artery and raw muscle in there.

Pulsating.

“I don’t like this,” Hamish said to the others. “What do I—”

The girl moaned a terrible sound, a despairing, hateful sound, and her fingers were sharp, now, sharp like broken bone, and she moved fast, so fast, the whole of her body summoned to Hamish as if she were not walking or running but rather floating forward on the bent curls of her toes—

Hamish ducked and lurched forward, the girl’s sharp fingers cutting the air above him—he scrambled forward, first on the floor, then over the edge of the bed, toward the bedroom door. Lore wanted to stay, in a way. Wanted to talk to the girl. But she knew it was smarter to go. Nick was following Hamish through the doorway, and Lore trailed after even as the girl moaned and wept, blood spattering on the carpet, on the walls.

In the next room, Hamish crashed forward into the dining room table, the plates of cake sliding toward the edge. The words gabbled out of him: “ Closethedoorclosethedoor —”

Lore turned to do just that.

But it was then she realized.

Owen hadn’t come through with them.