“Nostalgia Project”

Lloyd Anell saw them everywhere. Today, it was between the isles of the store. Hearing the giggling of children between shelves, parents chiding them to return to them, all he could think of was home. He would grip the handles of the cart even tighter. The wonders of the modern world were in front of him, where he could buy the sorts of things he needed, without scrutiny nor effort. That was what he kept his mind on. Why was he here. And yet…

As people would pass him in a crowded aisle, he would occasionally swear it was a face he recognized, or that he was side by side someone who would put a hand on his shoulder and tell him it would be alright. In moments like those, he would grimace, perhaps eliciting a strange look from someone watching his face, and grab the nearest item he was looking for. He didn’t have time for ghosts, not today, not ever. And yet, they haunted him, with the faces and names of those coincidental people around him. 

All he could do was grit his teeth, and keep pretending he was normal. Like he had been doing for well over a decade, drifting between states, even countries. Pretending to be normal. 

And yet, as he moved his cart through the checkout line, wheeled basket loaded up with innocuous products that just so happened to contain what he needed. The cashier spoke to him with curiosity in her tone, and he didn’t understand a word. He just nodded, smiled, and said he was sorry, to the woman who wore his mother’s face for an instant. 

———————————————————————————–

It had been an ordinary day, Lloyd had realized. Painfully ordinary, the type you pushed underfoot of more important childhood memories.

The storage closets were always just big enough for a proper game. Lloyd, his sister, and their cousin, darting between the towering shelves of ingredients. They ignored all of the closet’s contents, macabre and mundane. On their eye level wasn’t anything that would scare them.

Helena ducked behind a large box packed to the brim with styrofoam and other folded up cardboard, pressing herself against the wall. She only released a faint giggle, and a few tired breaths. 

He looked to his cousin, Markus, with a sly grin on his face, as the pair advanced together on Helena’s hiding spot. She hadn’t seen them, and thought that her efforts were foolproof. 

They were foiled at the last moment, when the door swung open. Markus’s mother, Adella was darkening the doorway, a stern expression on her face. She was quick to shoo the children out of the space, as the adults needed to access the ritual components soon enough. Lloyd knew why, and it occupied his mind.

———————————————————————————–

As the door shut behind Llyod, and the chill winter air was pushed back once more, he felt a sense of finality. He placed his bags by the door to the basement, for him to retrieve when he would descend. 

He walked straight for the kitchen, opening the fridge. The pale yellow glow of the light within casting his bag tainted and bony face. He fished out a wrapped slice of pizza, takeout from the night before, and sat at the table that quaked as he moved. This place hadn’t been worth much. But he’d bought it wholesale, for the equivalent of table scraps. He was lost in thought as he ate, trying to ignore the shadow that he was fairly certain he saw, even as slowly, and surely, these shadows grew in number. 

There were some days where he tried to convince himself none of it had been real. All of the wonder he’d seen in his youth was just a deluded nightmare. A way to cope. He’d eventually tossed out that way of thinking. If it were all false, if it had all been a deluded dream, then he may as well be the fool. He may as well have wasted twelve years, on the naive hope of magic having a place in this world. 

But if he was right…

When eventually he rose, it was his uncle’s grinning face that stood by the sink, hand in soapy water, before he walked through the specter and it was gone. He had work to do, down in the basement, where his project lay waiting.

No time for memories. And yet, they came for him all the same. 

———————————————————————————–

It had been later that day, the game of hide and seek in the component closet pushed out of mind, as many things tended to abandon the memory of a child. 

The kitchen was rife with activity and movement. Lloyd’s two sisters, and one of his brothers were milling about, helping with one thing or another, while the practical horde of his cousins were absent. His uncle Oswald was cleaning off dishes from the night’s meal, a practical storm of work. His arms were drenched up to his shoulders in the cleaning fluid and water, but he didn’t seem to mind. He tended to his task with a smile, laughing alongside the rest of the family. Behind him, the entire kitchen was alight, as various tiny servants moved in tandem. Each constructed from small portions of the supply downstairs, they were all pink as a newborn, and had four tiny hands which set about cleaning various parts of the kitchen. His siblings did whatever their small hands couldn’t. 

And yet ultimately, he sat alone at the table, a child trying to tune out the world, staring at the scraps of his plate and dreaming of places elsewhere. He was thinking of nothing more than what excitement tomorrow might bring, outside of the walls of the home he lived within. Even if the Lloyd of the present shouted and screamed in silence, to have any more conversation. To ask one more question. To embrace them one last time. 

———————————————————————————–

Lloyd strode down the stairs into the basement, the darkness all around him being almost suffocating. Each stair creaked with faint noise that shot off into the dark. The food in his stomach was tenuous, a feeling of nervous horror starting to creep through his body. The bags were a heavy burden on his shoulders. He smelled what he had already left at the bottom, the sterile chemicals mixed with the less sterile, a repugnant mix. . 

He heard the chanting of twelve years ago, coming from the depths, like he had pressed his ear to the door to hear. When the others went to bed, he’d try and learn. And it was thanks to that learning, and the learning he’d slavishly devoted himself to for twelve long years, that he was here now. Both the science of the modern paradigm and the magic of an ancient one, knowing pieces of both. Far from the full picture, with worlds yet to be understood, and yet, as the world deteriorated around him, he knew he had to act.

He strode off the stairs, flicking a switch on the wall. The slightly too powerful bulb flooded the room with light. Ahead of him was the circle, drawn out neatly in chalk and charcoal. Piled within it were the materials, the regents with which he’d make his destiny. Or, almost. He had a few more steps. He reached into the bags, and laid out the other components he’d purchased in front of him. He hoped he’d read the handwriting correctly. Remembered the words correctly, for that matter. It had been a long, long time. 

He took a long moment to breathe in the chemical scent, piled high and compacted into such a narrow, small space. Beckoned by this, by the magic and arts, and the ghosts which stood waiting, watching with empty faces. He would not refuse the call, even if they didn’t speak a word to him. He began to speak, impersonating a man whose voice he hardly could remember.

“By the swirling chaos where our world lands, and by the fragment therein the Circle of Anell lays claim to, I, the claimant to it, demand it answer me-”

———————————————————————————–

It had been later that night. The traces of the family meal were gone, the laughing and chatter which had echoed between the halls of that old house depleted in favor of slumber…all but a few had embraced such. Blissfully unaware of the portent of doom that was about to be unleashed. 

Lloyd pressed his head to the side of the door, excitedly hearing the movement down below. Small body firmly pressed against the cold stone. His uncle, his mother, and his grandfather, all spoke in hushed tones on the floor below, each muttering about one component or another-fur from a werewolf or ectoplasm from a geist. Each of them is fetched by homunculi of various shapes and sizes. He really wanted to know how to make one. 

But really, knowing more of magic was all he really wanted. The wonder of the world, which held everything he dreamed of and more. He heard them talking of this ritual when they thought he was off with his cousins. A simple expansion of power, to allow for greater acts of magic in the future.  A living, breathing thing of magic, to act as its vessel. Whispers of lost glory and bygone days were all they seemed to talk about, when he and his generation weren’t listening. 

He heard his grandfather start to speak. 

“By the swirling chaos where our world lands, and by the fragment therein the Circle of Anell lays claim to, I, the claimant to it, demand it answer me, heed my call and bring sweet life to the vessels arrayed before us. Knit flesh and knit soul to bend to our edict, and see to it that this bond of magic never breaks.”

He could feel the pulse. That was something he was tuned to. It worked. 

Too well, he’d come to learn. Their family wasn’t the only one to know of magic.

———————————————————————————–

“-Heed my call and transmute the flesh before me. I speak the names Marian, Elaine, Viola, Adella, Helena and Myrtle. Victor, Cecil, Markus, Michael and Oswald. I have assembled you, the raw stuff of humanity, under the paradigm of technology that now governs this world. Thus, what I ask is to knit them, body and soul, back here, back to me, for no man, no implements, should be able to tear magic from this world.”

Lloyd finished speaking, and the mass of chemicals responded. Water, ammonia, lime, phosphorus, salt, and on and on. He’d done his research. He’d looked through his family’s journals and the Anell crest splattered in blood. He’d attended institutions of learning both mundane and mystical, even if there was no future there. He’d sought teachers, and been denied for his ambitions. He’d practiced this, and paid the price, time and time again. Small wounds, small pains. Long, slow sessions of study, from teachers of his own make, observed from the world. A small price to pay for his convictions. To mend the wound of the past, once and for all. To repurpose a ritual from bygone days. 

So it had to work. There was no world in which he failed. All around the circle, he could see them. Uncles, aunts, grandparents, cousins, siblings, family all standing, watching, each one drenched in blood, each one looking like the faces of the bodies seen, a long, long time ago. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to shut out the memories, they were just memories. Why couldn’t his mind’s eye look away?

———————————————————————————–

The morning after listening at the door, he had regretted everything. The burden of knowledge rattled in his head. He wondered if the other participants in the previous night’s ritual had regretted the same. They set off a beacon, which led these people to them. Brought death on them. This was a conclusion the Lloyd of the present had. Too much ambition. Too little obfuscation. Pride and prowess were a potent mix. 

The Lloyd of the past had held no thoughts to this. Not to a cause. Only fear. Terror. Despair. 

Lloyd ran, as fast as his small legs could carry him, as he heard sounds like thunder, faster than it had any right to be, roaring behind him. He had seen guns before. But none like this. 

Screaming. Screams he recognized. It was like being slapped, again and again. 

What had they done to deserve this?

His back felt heavy and wet, and he didn’t hear his older cousin following him anymore. He squeezed his eyes shut, and refused to think about the blood he’d seen in the living room, the men in black with their guns and blades. 

His mother had said that the 20th century was no age of magic. That some men simply wanted to live amongst machines and blood. And their champions trampled through his home, destroying everything they saw. 

He heard shouting behind him, indistinct in the backdrop of death, as he dove into an open bedroom, roughly landing on hardwood, as he scrambled under a bed, panting, and trying not to think about the smell on him. 

It was the type of smell that came with an expired homunculus. But hotter. Fresher. Nauseating. 

In the doorway, he saw someone. Walking down the hall, his mother. She spoke words of power, all too familiar. He didn’t know them all, but he knew enough. At her side, where was once nothing, was…

He saw himself. Down to the clothes he had just been wearing. Pristine, but not too pristine, marked by bruises and blood. This simulacrum newborn looked towards his mother, for a small moment. 

She managed to look at him once before the hail of iron and lead turned her body into splatters of flesh and bone. 

He watched himself die, the duplicate Lloyd conjured by his mother torn apart by gunfire with only seconds on this earth.

He crawled beneath the floorboards, and waited for it to all go away, until he could no longer hear the thunder nor the boots striking floor. Until there was no more screaming. 

———————————————————————————–

Lloyd shook the thunder from his ears as he turned towards what he had wrought. The transmutation was near instant, the chemical volume of eleven humans knitting together into human beings. They would have been around the same size and shape as each of them when they had died. He didn’t have exact measurements. But he had taken guesses. A wrong height or weight was fixable. A missing lung or hand…less so. 

He forced his eyes open, to stop himself from seeing the bullets tear through flesh of those he loved. From seeing himself die again. He wouldn’t revisit the past, not now, not on the cusp of his victory. He was going to mend this wound. He was going to see them again. 

Each human shape began to take form, all simultaneously, all being wrought together by the Anell circle, Anell magic, and Anell will. 

The masses of flesh stood there for a moment, amongst the confines of the circle. Their features, still swirling and molding beneath a thin membrane of skin, a web of paper white film on top of it. He could make out five men, six women. As he’d expected. As he’d planned/

He swore one of them smiled at him. He was ready, ready to dive into the circle, ready to embrace the family he had lost those years ago, to men who hated the magic of the world. 

And that’s when it went wrong. Maybe some magical wire had crossed, maybe the paradigm of mankind wasn’t compatible with these arts, or perhaps he’d said the words wrong, after all these years. 

Magic was limitless, or so he’d been told. Which meant the potential for grandeur and good was only matched by the depths of despair and failure one could reach. 

It didn’t matter, philosophically speaking. Because it all came undone in an instant. 

Magic crushing in on itself, as thin tendrils of unknown make lashed between each other. A weight at the center of this web then pulled them all together, mashed into a writhing pile of limbs, films bursting and snapping, revealing the bodies, exactly as he’d designed. As he remembered.

And he’d remembered wrong. 

His eyes widened in horror, as he saw what he had done. He watched as his younger cousins and siblings folded in atop his older uncles, aunts, and parents. His grandfather’s face pushed out of the mire, to stare at him blankly, lips moving as if to speak a whisper that he couldn’t hear anymore. And then, it was gone, slinking back into the mass of limbs, organs and protruding muscles. Over and over again, as he stared at the mass, which was slowly becoming more homogenous, excess and unneeded parts being expelled to the borders. Slowly, all traces of his family were gone, save for small features. An uncle’s hands. A cousin’s eye. A sister’s smile. A mother’s heart. A grandfather’s mind.

This writhing beast reached out with magic that belonged to it, just as much as it belonged to Lloyd. Perhaps, in some small way, his folly had succeeded. 

The ghosts were gone, now. But if they weren’t, they would have seen him turn and run. Run far, far away from the magic that had no place in the 20th century.