GraceFall [ONC 2024]

8

The old woman's voice had lost its harsh croak, becoming deeper, mesmerising. A fluid tone that rose and fell in a hypnotic blend of sounds. Betty had tried to stand, but fell back into the embrace of the high-backed chair. Her mind swam with memories she had no recollection of. She felt like vomiting, but wanted air more than anything.

It wasn't right. That wasn't how any of it had happened. Once again, she rose to her feet, swaying, the old woman becoming two, then three, then a million old women, each slightly different from the other and not all of them old, yet each, indisputably, the same woman. Betty stumbled, her hand coming to rest upon an old, tarnished, doorknob. The door to the back room. Without thinking, Betty turned it, opening the door.

"I need to get out of here." Betty saw her own hand replicate into a million hands, her eyes losing focus. "What have you done to me?"

"Now, I wouldn't recommend going through that door. It's not ..." The old woman wagged a finger, a million fingers, but Betty ignored her protests. "... and she went through the door. Kids today!"

-+-

Above Faraday City ...

The sense of the woman had led here. The cape fluttered and whipped about him, but did not entangle him. He felt fresh and powerful. Everything felt new and ready for discovery and he had not felt this free in so long. From here, he could see the entirety of the city stretching out before him and he knew he could destroy it all with a thought.

That would give him no sport, however. Anyone could destroy these little things, these fragile buildings with their infestations of yet more fragile humans. He wanted to wield a scalpel, not a hammer. But first, he needed to find that woman. Betty Burns. She had importance, significance, and he had followed the sudden bloom of her unfettered thoughts to here, only for them to disappear once more.

Only, this time, it felt different. Before, there always remained a sense of hiding about her, that she had enough psychic strength, whether knowingly or ignorant, to shield her mind from any attempts to read her. Now, she had simply ... gone. He searched the entirety of the planet, looking for that gap, that telltale emptiness that screamed of a hidden mind, but felt only those other psychics that he had sensed before. Their lack of imprints were as recognisable as genetic coding, even though he could not read them.

This was a different thing entirely. And he sensed something else, too. A massive presence. A being with psychic power that may even rival his own, but not only psychic power. Magic. He had encountered magic in the past. No, not him. Regardless, he had no defence against this uniquely human power. The kind of power that could bend reality, as he could bend the minds of others. A power gifted, reticently, from even greater creatures that he had never met, but feared their strength, as all should.

He had to show care as he proceeded. Betty Burns could not hide forever and she alone stood between him and his ultimate goal.

Phaross would have his day and would never feel encumbered by the fool, Psycona, ever again!

-+-

Somewhere ... Somewhen ... else ...

The dizziness cleared as she fell into the back room and it took only a few seconds, perhaps longer, to realise that she had, finally, lost her mind. She turned back, reaching for the door, but found only more of that madness behind her. Madness, and the old woman. Except she didn't look so old now. No longer stooped. No longer grey-haired, dry and frizzy. Her nose far less pronounced, or hooked. No lines upon her face. Taller, too, but Betty suspected she now wore heels.

Long, raven hair fell against the woman's back, complimenting a dark complexion and equally dark eyes. In fact, almost everything about the woman had a dark tinge to it, from the long, black, velvet dress, to the jewellery on her hands and around her neck. All except for one ring. A glittering silver ring with the most beautiful blue stone at the top that promised eternity as Betty looked at it.

"What the hell just happened?" Betty spun on her heels, trying to make sense of what she saw, but that proved a futile gesture. "This is like MC Escher had a really bad meal and puked in a geometrically confusing construction."

"This is the Crooked Place. I call it home." The old, not-so-old, woman swept past Betty toward a toad that opened a door in its eye. "It's the only place where you'll be safe until we unlock your psychic powers. Safe from him."

"From who?" Betty did not want to step through that toad-door, but it seemed okay with it. Happy, even. "Psycona?"

"No. But, yes, after a fashion. But really, no." Madame Misstery led Betty into a room, through the toad, that resembled the one in the shop. If they had constructed the room in the shop using entrails. "Inadvertently, you have sparked a ... transformation. One that could spell disaster for the entire world. You saucy flirt, you."

Madame Misstery made a disturbing, cheeky tap of the finger upon the tip of Betty's nose and offered her a seat upon a grinning chair made of purple saliva, to which Betty demurred. She had no intention of sitting anywhere in this place. Standing was already a sickening prospect, but she had no other option. She could close her eyes, but doubted that would help at all. Nor would copious showers in pure anti-bacterial soap ever make her forget.

"I don't understand." Betty backed away into something and she really didn't want to know what that 'something' was. It giggled. "If you think you're making sense, you may have to reassess your definition. Just speak plainly!"

"The one you know as 'Psycona' is, as you suspected, an alien. His story is long and exceedingly tragic, and I won't relate that right now. It's quite saddening, really." Madame Misstery drank from a cup made from lewd thoughts and smacked her lips in almost surprised satisfaction. "What is more relevant right now is that you have opened up a side of Psycona he had thought lost, impossible with a human, and that disconnect, along with his ego and certain psychological problems that he should really have seen a therapist for, have led to a fracture in his mind. And, I believe you are probably the only one that can heal him before he does something his healthy mind would regret to the end of his days. I'm talking the complete destruction of Earth, by the way, if that wasn't clear."

"I don't know what to say about that." Betty needed to sit down. Not able to find any seat that didn't writhe, or leer at her, she crouched on her heels instead. "You've drugged me. That's the only way to explain any of this. I'm drugged. I'm having the wildest trip ever and a fourteen-eyed slug is offering me a martini! Oh, god!"

She covered her eyes with her hands, trying to push the images of the Crooked Place from her mind, but it didn't help. It wasn't only the Crooked Place that concerned her. What Madame Misstery had said about Psycona had made no sense at all. She had spoken to him, perhaps, a dozen times over the course of her reporting career and he had never said more than a few, curt words before flying away.

Except the other day. That day, he had carried her away, showing her a glimpse of the kind of experiences supers have every day. Flying! And then he had stood there, awkward and tongue-tied as she had hit him with a series of questions and giving him no time to think about the answers. That was the best way to get to the truth, though. It wasn't personal. Not always. He had acted strangely, however. Perhaps, on some level, Madame Misstery was right?

Perhaps she had broken something in Psycona? Though how Madame Misstery expected her to fix Psycona, Betty couldn't imagine.