The Psychic Legacy

Chapter 31: Free

I had awoken in darkness so many times, I was surprised to find myself in the light. This was not the wide emptiness of the shadow world like I had expected. This was a fresh and bright world filled with green and blue.

This was the garden behind Polly's house.

Only it was no longer the run-down, overgrown mess that I knew. Here—wherever here was—the garden was in perfect condition. The flowers were blooming, the topiaries were perfectly trimmed, and the fountain was flowing freely. And on marble edge of the fountain sat...

Lillian.

This was not the Lillian to which I had grown familiar. This version looked more like the Lillian I had first met in Luc's old apartment—beautiful, but off. There was some tweak of her face that unsettled me like some deep primitive intuition was warning me that whatever stood before me was wrong. Unnatural.

Dangerous.

Unlike the Lillian I'd met in real life, this one didn't speak. It just smiled at me.

"What do you want?" I asked and then started at the sound of my own voice. I had expected this weird empty space to be soundless, like talking inside my own head.

The form of Lillian shifted, effortlessly morphing into...

Luc.

Was that an answer?

Or some trick to try and lure me in?

The Malix's facsimile of Luc smiled, too. His green eyes shone like emeralds under direct sunlight. He was wearing one of his crisp white shirts over a pair of well-worn jeans. His black hair was perfectly tousled, though I noticed it was shorter than I knew it. If I could look past the strangeness of this copy, too, I might've been happy to run into his arms.

He stood up from his seat at the edge of the fountain and took a step towards me.

I took a step back. "What do you want?" I asked again.

The fake Luc kept walking towards me. I scrambled backwards, wondering where I could run.

Nowhere. Unlike the garden in real life, this one had no gap in the hedges. It was walled in from every side.

In a second, the fake Luc was right in front of me, towering over me. The stranger took hold of my shoulders and leaned in, close to my face. Up close, the wrong-ness was all the more apparent. It was like his skin was a suit that didn't quite fit whatever was underneath.

It leaned closer. I tried to angle away, but there was no escaping it.

Then, the Malix shifted forms again. The figure shrank, staggering back. Brown hair lopped into an uneven cut, dark circles under their eyes. It was me. Me, but wrong. It was like looking into a funhouse mirror.

What the hell was it trying to tell me?

As if it had heard my question, a strange voice croaked out of my imposter's mouth. "I waaant him."

I remembered what Lillian had said about its mutation. How, when it consumed her, her desires got twisted into its own. How it shifted from wanting to attack Luc to obsession.

It wanted Luc... because Lillian had wanted Luc.

"Then why do you need me?" I sputtered.

"Heee... wiiill... looove... usss..." my creepy doppelganger said.

A cold realization took hold. I understood, then. Somehow, in its weird, monstrous logic, it thought that if it became me, then it would get what it really wanted.