Becoming Douglas

It happened almost instantaneously: he wasn’t, and then he was.

Before the Librarian spoke, the thing he had been swelled to fill the clearing. Its perception lapped against the outer tree trunks in fuzzy waves, focus and detail strengthening as its attention drew closer to the ritual circle itself. Within that clearing, it knew every blade of grass, saw every ant that scuttled intently over the masonry, knew which sand grains shifted position under her sensible loafers. She couldn’t see it of course, not directly, just the sense of a shadow out of the corner of her eyes. But it could see her, and if it had not hesitated at the intrusion perhaps it would not have lost everything.

The Librarian’s appearance did not match what it had come to expect from these encounters. In place of a military uniform or ceremonial robes, a brown cardigan draped over her shoulders, and the notebooks she carried bore cardboard and flimsy metal spirals for spines instead of durable leather binding. Her mind, however… it troubled the unnamed thing. Usually intruders felt of bravado mixed with light apprehension. Sometimes there was no bravado, and they started out with the terror these confrontations invariably devolved into. The Librarian felt hard. Cold. The unnamed thing probed with metaphorical tendrils for some purchase, a way to prise her mind open to get at the thoughts within, but her defenses had been woven tightly. 

Not that it mattered. Of course it would not be destroyed or banished by this human, because no one had done so yet. Scholars from across the globe staggered home as broken men, their bodyguards catatonic or dead after the struggle. If the world’s so-called experts in the occult hadn’t been able to subdue it, this nobody in a cardigan didn’t stand a chance.

The Librarian took a seat on one of the stone benches right outside the circle. She glanced around one last time, brown face pinched thoughtfully behind her bifocals, then opened the topmost notebook.

“First record of appearance,” she read aloud, voice dry as old bone. “Ritual circle at ___ coordinates outside of ___, ___ has been in use for various arcane purposes for at least 600 years. On April 16, 1984, Rachel Bernwitz reported a shadow playing at the edges of her vision during an attempt to commune with a 'higher plane'. Figure seemed roughly humanoid, but whenever she turned to focus on it the shadow vanished."

What was the old woman playing at? The presence stretched curiously towards her with a fiber of thought, leaving its message at the threshold of her mind’s locked door. Perhaps she would let that much through.

An interesting tactic… Do you seek to cast me out with a scolding? I know of guilt, of course, but it is not something I have been troubled with yet.

The woman looked up, not towards the shadow in her periphery, but the empty air in the midst of the circle. "I'm not scolding you," she said mildly. "I'm simply recounting your history. Do you mind?"

That was odd. Accepting the message hadn’t left any sort of opening into the woman’s mind. Nevertheless the thing snickered, leaving the silence unbroken. Of course there was nothing to fear from a single old woman. Have it your way, chronicler.

A breeze blew towards the Librarian, but she only pulled her sweater closer and kept reading. "Five more people experienced a similar encounter during a coven meeting on July 2 of the same year. On July 15 a hiker named Fenton Wagoner went missing for 14 hours when exploring the woods nearby. He was found at half past eleven that night lying unconscious at the edge of the circle. When Wagoner awoke, he had no recollection of what had happened. Do you remember these encounters?”

The wind swirled, agitated. Why do you expect me to answer your questions?

She smiled placidly. “I don’t, not really. Still, it never hurts to ask.” Her head bent again over the notebook, and she went on.

It was the strangest exorcism attempt it had ever experienced: no prayers to old gods, no manipulation of magical energies, no demands to know its name. The Librarian spoke its encounters with the attitude of one reading a mildly interesting book out loud. Visual manifestations turned to whispered secrets turned to hospitalizations. 1987 brought the first of 23 separate attempts to contain or dislodge it from the circle-- all failures, most ending tragically. She came to the last in 2017, when a comatose Theresa van der Pol had to be carried to a hospital by a bodyguard it had struck deaf, then calmly closed the notebook and set it on the stone beside her.

“I talked to van der Pol, you know. She'd arrived with seven guards, all well practiced in combat against supernatural threats, but only her rescuer managed to leave this place."

I'm surprised she remembered that much, the thing scoffed. Her last moments with me were very unpleasant.

"Mmm, her account of what happened was borderline nonsensical: something about an arcane tumor, and how 'the flow was wrong.' She said that last part several times." The Librarian had the audacity to smile. "She didn't think you were a sentient presence to hear her explain it, though clearly you proved her wrong. What did you do with the other poor bodyguards anyways?"

It didn't like the way she spoke, as though they were on friendly terms. Obviously they're dead. What is the purpose of this?

"That's a shame. Still, no point dwelling on the past." The old woman leaned forward, dark eyes focused. "That's my research thus far. Anything you wish to set me straight on?”

The wind stopped suddenly. The thing pressed against her smooth mind with prickles of irritation, looking for any purchase it could use to get the upper hand. Still she didn’t give way.

Is that why you came? To compile a report? You’ve read about what this place is, about what I’ve done, yet you speak to me as though I am just another resource for you to consult at your leisure. It’s curious.

“I’ll take that as a ‘no’,” she replied dryly. She pulled off her glasses and wiped them on her shirt front. “You don’t have many real conversations, do you? We could talk, if you like. It doesn’t have to escalate just yet.”

What is there to talk about? You came here to get rid of me, one way or another.

“You’d rather I got on with it then?”

It laughed in ringing silence again. As though you haven’t already started. I am not like you physical beings. I have no need for conversation or negotiations, and offerings of such will not get me to lower my guard. The prying extensions of its consciousness increased their pressure against the Librarian’s psyche. Her eyes creased at the edges. Around the circle, pebbles and clumps of dislodged earth rose slowly from the ground as though lifted by invisible strings.

The question is whether this is an amusement or an insult, to approach me in such a way. I haven’t decided yet.

The librarian eyed a bit of stone floating past her face that looked unnervingly like a petrified ear. She let out a long breath. “Then we’ll do it your way,” she replied before replacing her glasses. “No one knows exactly what you are. Those who came before me made all sorts of assumptions based on manifestations from other sites, and they turned out to be entirely wrong. They thought you were a ghost, or a demon, or the lingering influence of some interdimensional creature. Van der Pol was, I believe, the closest to the truth."

It increased the pressure. You’re wearing on my patience, old woman.

The Librarian grimaced. It knew it was hurting her, but the lack of any other results finally convinced the thing that its favored tactic wasn’t going to work. Time for something else. A swell of invisible power built up in its core, air almost thrumming with the frustration it wished to unleash on this human.

The Librarian smoothly pulled a hand mirror from under one of her notebooks. She didn’t have time to raise it, but as it came into view the creature’s attack veered off at a right angle into a twisted oak tree. As it slammed into the trunk, the bark sloughed off in long wriggling strips like worms emerging from topsoil.

"My my, I have annoyed you." It was difficult to tell if the hitch in her voice was pain or a chuckle. Of course she would have been prepared for physical assault. It pushed back the panic threatening to overtake its mind.

This is your last chance. Leave.

"No need. You see… I figured it out." The Librarian took a ragged breath and closed her eyes. The tree continued falling to pieces. “The trouble… the trouble is that you aren’t anything yet. I think you formed from the accumulated magical detritus of this place, and though you have a mind many other things about you have not been so concretely determined. This makes it easy for you to avoid most of our bindings-- but you may be susceptible to other tactics.”

The oak erupted in sickly blue flames that crept across the grass towards her seat. The rocks suspended in midair swirled in a vortex of anger, rapidly gaining speed until the stone ear shattered against the invisible barrier directly in front of her face.

The Librarian opened her eyes. Her next words snapped through the circle like the crack of a whip.

“Some of the magic that composes you was used by fae to open portals here from their plane of existence. Because of this, you will share one of their weaknesses: you will not be able to lie, and thus you will also have to fulfill your promises.”

The tendrils pressed against the woman's mind withdrew at once. Nothing in the circle had changed visibly, but the thing felt a creeping horror as something in itself shifted. Somehow, impossibly, what she said had become true.

“Some of your magic was used in summoning rituals by various covens," she shouted over the roar of the fire now stretching around her bubble of protection. "This means anyone who wishes to summon you needs only speak your name with intent beside a circle of their own, and you will appear within it.”

This made no sense. It didn’t have a name, it didn’t have a form, but her words clamped down on the thing in the circle like fetters. It swelled out in unfocused desperation, slamming against her mind like waves against a rock as the grass in the circle withered and died. The rest of the rocks shot out in all directions like shrapnel. 

You can’t do this! This isn’t how it goes! I’ve felled everyone who stood against me, and you’re nobody! An old meddler with no sense! I’ll destroy you!

The Librarian laughed, and it knew it had lost by the ring of triumph in her voice. Her eyes shone with a hard determination it had never seen in a human’s face.

“You will not because I know what you are: pure potential, something that holds power only because it remains unknown and unnamed. You are unfinished, Douglas, and I am finishing you.”

And all at once it felt a weight drag itself to the earth in a pained heap. It couldn’t see the full circle anymore, just the ground pressed down beneath its face. Fingers curled clumsily in the prickly brown grass as knees hurt from their awkward position pressed against a torso that wouldn’t yield. The wind blew, and goosebumps erupted over exposed skin.

It- he was Douglas.

Douglas stared in horror at the back of those dirt-stained hands. Flesh and veins snaking beneath skin like humans had, even if the tint held too much grey in it, but then something in his chest was burning and he forgot about those. Without thinking he took his first gasp of air, then pressed it out, in, out. Blood rushed in his ears. Something warm and wet ran down his face.

“N-no… don’t…” Whatever he had intended to say died in the strangling grasp of a sob.

He didn’t know how long he sat like that, sending water too dark to be tears dripping down over his arms, but when the shadow loomed over him he knew it was the Librarian. His breath caught in his throat. His trunk fell sideways into the small sharp rock shards interspersed with grass, and Douglas stared helplessly up at the woman who had beaten him, standing framed against a dying blue fire. What would she do? He didn’t have any protection now, no way to lash out and drive her off. He didn’t even have clothes to hide in.

The brown eyes looked down at him with nothing he could read. Somehow it didn’t surprise Douglas that he could still feel her mind like a block of ice in her skull, though it yielded nothing. What did surprise him was the plain tote bag she held in her hands. He hadn’t noticed it when she entered his clearing, somehow, but now she held it up, half-opened, and watched him with rapt attention.

She was trying to make a decision.

Douglas pushed himself upright, quickly wiping his nose on the back of his arm. “Yuh. Y-you…” Words clung inside his throat. He coughed with a grimace, straining his memory for what he had gathered of how humans worked. Was he human now? What was he?

“Douglas?” she asked.

He felt the muscles of his new face spasm with sudden anger. “I-it. That. Seems. To be acc. Acc-ur-ate.” The voice- his voice came out in awkward jerks, an unpleasant grating sound like every other human voice he’d ever heard. Heat flowed under the skin of his cheeks, and he dropped his gaze bitterly. Being physical was the worst thing that could happen to anyone. “You. Wanted. This.”

“Hmm.” Her gaze dropped to the bag as she reached inside. Douglas made an undignified noise of alarm and threw himself backward, crawling for the circle’s edge.

“Don’t be ridiculous, I’m getting you a blanket,” she snapped. Sure enough, her lined hand pulled a length of dark green fabric from the bag. “I finished it on the ride here.”

He glowered back at her. “Why. Should I trust. You?” The words came more easily now. It was probably a good thing that he didn’t have to learn everything from nothing like actual children. Eavesdropped memories of tiny misshapen humans spasming with their first words and tottering around on too-fat legs danced in the back of his brain, and the heat in his face increased. That wasn’t him, surely. He glanced down over his own limbs to make sure.

“You ought to trust me because you have little in the way of options.” The Librarian looked around at the surrounding woods, silent except for the occasional rustle of wind through the browned leaves. “Do you know what hunger is yet?”

“I’ll manage.” But Douglas didn’t continue crawling towards the trees between which the darkness yawned like open graves. Could… could he die now?

“No you won’t.” Her mouth thinned to a fine line, creases deepening in consternation, and she marched purposefully over to him. Surprisingly strong fingers closed around his wrist. “Can you stand?”

He scowled but didn’t pull away. “I haven’t tried, have I?”

“Then let’s try. Here.” She tugged at his arm gently, and legs straightened beneath the column of unfolding muscle and bone that was his body. The world swayed, or he did, something was moving, but she held him firm. After a moment he managed to balance. She waited for a few more seconds, eyes fixed on his legs. Then she released his wrist.

“Good. Now try to step forward.”

Looking down at his feet was a mistake. Douglas’s head swam with how horribly far he was from the ground, and his knees shook with the effort of holding himself aloft. He swallowed-- a horrible sensation-- then leaned forward. One leg kicked out, only just catching his weight. Her hand found him again as he doubled over.

“I had it,” he growled. It didn’t sound very threatening, a fact he tried to ignore.

The Librarian’s expression didn’t change. “This is your first time walking. I don’t expect you to have anything together yet.”

“What did you expect?” he shot back at her. His fingers tightened around her withered arm as she led him forward another tottering step. She narrowed her eyes.

“I expected to successfully remove the presence haunting this place.”

“And once you’d made me manifest, what then? Did you plan to…”

He trailed off, and his gaze moved back to that mysterious tote bag tucked under her arm. There was no reason to feel uneasy about it, yet the weight still making its bottom sag drew his attention and twisted his new stomach in knots. She made no move to suggest she noticed his discomfort.

“I planned to handle the situation,” she said levelly. “Now, since you’re standing on your own…” The Librarian extricated her arm and threw the blanket over his shoulders. He grasped its front with one hand, weight pressing down comfortingly against his frame.

“What. What does ‘handling the situation’ entail?”

“I’ll tell the people who hired me that you’re gone before driving us back to the hotel. We can work something out from there, I’m sure.” Her glasses flashed as she looked him over with a critical eye. “Though we are going to have to get you some clothes before I take you out of the car. And do something about your eyes, for that matter.”

His brow furrowed. “What’s wrong with my eyes? I was under the impression that I looked like. Like a human.” Douglas spat out the word like a curse.

The Librarian stared long and hard into his face. Her own seemed more lined from up close like this, though it remained unreadable. Finally she reached into her bag with a sigh. The flinch that took his body almost made him fall over, but she only drew out the mirror from before. Up close, it was clearly a regular dollar-store mirror, though the pale blue backing had symbols he vaguely recognized scratched lightly into the plastic. She thrust its handle into his hand before he could protest. “See for yourself.”

Well, it didn’t feel magical now. He cautiously held it up, and Douglas saw his face for the first time. Most of it was only remarkable because it was his own: grey-tinged, perhaps, but skull shaped and topped off with mouse-brown hair, ears and nose and mouth all in the expected positions. The eyes, however, were missing. He reached up to one unnaturally black socket, pressing in through his own field of vision. Nothing there at all.

“I see.” He frowned. It didn’t seem right, somehow, but he doubted anything he saw in his reflection would have made him happy. He pulled the blanket tighter around his shoulders, mirror slipping through shaking fingers.

It was something he would just have to get used to.