The Macabre Tales of Young Edgar

Edgar wanted to scream. He wanted to run away, but he was rooted to the spot, both in the cave and in his mind.

The tentacles that bound him were of many kinds. They were the fat, leech-like appendages that had swarmed around a statue in a dream once, like maggots feeding off a corpse. They were the secrets that had squirmed behind portrait holes- the kind of bindings that could reach him anywhere. They were frozen ships' rigging, which numbed as well as tied. They were ropes attached to anchors that plunged deep into Vile Reef, or under the ice, and dragged him with them. They were vines in a jungle tangled with heat and madness.

Lastly, they were the fluorescent appendages of the jellyfish monster, whose gargantuan, fibrous pillar rose out of the lake like the stem of a brain. These tendrils snaked their way towards him over the rocks, slithering wetly.

Pulsing in excited shades of pink, blue and purple, they wrapped themselves around his ankles and coiled about his petrified body, as if to devour him.

Only, they hadn't reached him yet.

Edgar's silent scream punctured the illusion, and a second later, he was staring transfixed at the creature in the lake. Its tentacles were quivering over the rocks, but he was free.

He soon knew the reason for the shift in reality. The humming, Edgar noticed, had grown louder still. It was so deafening that he had become accustomed to it, hearing noise in place of silence. It emanated from the jellyfish's head, and shivered down its trunk. The monster was a mushroom of song, and the song was, somehow, changing the things he saw. Only the sheer intensity of his refusal had punctured its fabrication, and restored his ordinary view of time.

Edgar felt curiously light, and barely present, as if he were unconscious again. Of course, it must have been this mound of alien neurons which had spoken to him in his sleep. That meant one thing, however. It meant something which gave him a spark of hope, trapped though he was.

The monster could manipulate reality only insofar as it could manipulate him...

You are mistaken.

The voice spoke to him from inside his own skull. It did not need to penetrate his thoughts. It was simply a part of them, as though the words it spoke constituted a universal truth that had always existed.

You are not the first human to hear words of the Angler Fish, although you may be the last. There are other beings I command, too, for I lure many things. The kraken here is my servant. The Vile household belongs to me. Even the one you call Edmund, whom you trust, is loyal to my desires. My grasp on your world is less tenuous than subtle, for it is the shadow between truths where I exert the most influence.

Edgar struggled to make a reply. Try as he might, he could not harness his own thoughts before the creature interrupted them again.

I am centuries old, it said. Long have I waited for you. If you wish to see freedom, you must do as I command. You must do this, because you have no choice.

Before he could make another attempt at throwing off his mental possession, the Angler Fish continued:

You cannot understand how little free will you have. You think I can only reach you in your dreams? Pray, then, what am I doing now? How did you come to be here? Where do your desires come from, and your notions, when you are waking? My influence is infinite in this place, but, though you are a human, I still have use for you.

I know and control too much, you see. Thus, my ability to create -to truly create, rather than to draw conclusions- is limited. You are a creator, human. You create as few among your kind have ever done. I have seen you and lured you to me. It has been the work of decades.

Thus, you must create something for me. I cannot force your brain in this matter, little creator, but I can force your hand, as your kind says.

You have no choice.

You have no choice. Those words echoed in Edgar's mind even as the tendrils, or whatever their psychic equivalent was, withdrew with a sucking snap. His brain, and his volition, were his own again, or so he thought. Paranoia had descended to fill the void in his thoughts, so that he no longer knew which ones were his, and which had been planted by the demon.

This is what it is to go insane, he thought.

Then, No, he countered his own thinking. I do have a choice.

I do have a choice, Edgar asserted, oblivious to the fact that someone else had come to the same conclusion, not too long ago, nor very far away.

'I do have a choice,' he muttered aloud, as if by repeating the words, he could make them true.

He had a choice, and yet, what could he realistically do? Certainly, he could choose to submit himself, but that wasn't an option. From his frozen position, Edgar stared down at the froth churning at the foot of the rocky precipice. It was hypnotising, like a lure in itself. Of course, he considered, he could kill himself. Death would be easy, if he could just bring himself to fall over that ledge.

Yet, Edgar felt his body stiffen in protest at that prospect. He didn't want to die. If only there was somebody who could save him, he thought. If only he had someone who knew the way out of this underground maze...

His train of thought was derailed when a heavy object collided with his side, knocking the wind out of him.