Copyright © 2025 by Brittany Noelle
CASSIDY
ICE SPLINTERS AND CRACKS through where skull meets spine. White light blinds me, pain burning so cold I can’t feel it at first. Then my senses melt. My fingers and legs jerk and contort around each joint. The truth of it is clear as two become one, the Englishman’s thoughts stabbing into my own.
He’d been searching. For me, or at least someone like me, a Golden. Someone with power, and stupid enough to touch bare skin to the vessel. To allow the transfer of soul to human host. I want to scream, the full body freeze spreading along each bone, threatening to shatter them. Thoughts meld, control shifts. We are top-heavy, both fighting for control of my body.
The teens race through the house, searching for escape, but there isn’t one. I see the dark voice’s plan in our shared mind-space.
He’s not letting anyone out of here alive.
From the floor, my body releases a groan as long, icicle claws protrude and extend from under my fingernails. Cool power ripples through my blood. The Englishman taps into my being like an infusion, siphoning my soul like a leech. Using it for his own bidding. He is finally free and bodied and stretching his limits, unlike he has for a century. I read these facts as easy as my own thoughts. I am his anchor in this world. My body gives him form, weight, a way to exist rather than be trapped in that planchette like he has been for dozens of years.
The teens abandon their try for escape upstairs. Some try the basement and call nine-one-one. Others cry into their hands.
Of them all, Tall Tom hurries to me. Or who he thinks is me. A caring fool. “Cassidy, c’mon. Get up.”
But I am Cassidy no longer. I am reduced to a witness. Seeing through my eyes, but numb to any bodily connection.
And Tall Tom is fragile. A swipe of an ice blade claw over his thin throat is enough to topple him. Too fast to be real. But it’s all real, all saturated colors and stark fear.
I want to gasp, scream, sob. Release the horror from my mind. But I have no control. I can only watch as Tom’s flesh catches flame, his eyes go glassy.
As he dies, bleeding out, a silvery ribbon of light rises from his lips, a soft glowing sprite. No concrete or precise form. A diamond, then a snake, then a coiling screw. It slithers in the air, unaffected by the physics of the fire or gathering smoke. The Englishman uses my mouth and opens wide, consuming the shapeshifting ribbon in a single inhale. It is metallic, warm, like a melting candy on the tongue. I want to vomit, but can’t.
Then our shared mind-space cracks and expands. Consuming the strange silvery light brings the Englishman’s soul into sharper focus inside me, organizes his thoughts into sentences rather than vague ideas and notions.
He calls the silvery sprite a soul. And he’s counting. He needs more.
The other teens have sense, leaving me to burn. But just as swift as Tom, musketeer Rick goes down with a single claw swipe to the ribs. Another silver ribbon eases into my mouth without my consent. Solidifies inside. Sparks more trains of thought, bandaging broken memories into scenes from a life I never lived. My mind’s eye stutters and struggles against the images: a nineteenth century ship docked for departure, a clear-eyed young woman with a violet tucked behind her ear, candlelight spilling over rolled parchment and dripping ink pages.
In reality, Richelle screams, shuffling away from her fallen boyfriend. She tries to run on her princess heels, but the new demon speed infecting my body catches her wigged hair, then the real strands, before whipping her back into my arms. This time, the Englishman grips his victim from behind, choking her, soaking in her screams. Something about it pleases him and sickens me further. Richelle’s silver ribbon soul pulses and swirls in the air, trying to escape, until the demon snatches it with my lips, sucking it in like a grotesque spaghetti noodle.
The power soothes his blood lust. He pauses, counting the three ribbons, the three souls, wondering if that will be enough.
My body twitches from the influx of strength. The silvery bits of the fallen morph inside, combusting and glowing like coals. Human souls. Power to be harnessed. Horns push through the top of my skull. My spine elongates, pops, and snaps. Razor-like protrusions poke through the skin, slicing through my costume, my precious yellow sweater, until my entire spine becomes icy spikes.
I am no longer me. I am a monster forged in ice and hatred.
The rest of the partygoers scramble away, but none faster than Viking-boy. They run into the kitchen, cowering out of sight. Perhaps a fourth soul, the Englishman ponders. Yes. Just in case.
A pounding knock comes from the front door. Shouts. The iced-over knob doesn’t give. The Englishman’s influence on the house remains strong. The power from the souls only allows him more reign. But I sense it can’t last forever. The prison he has created for us has taken a lot of energy. This is a suicide mission, a last attempt to join the human realm, to find a body. To get back to his actual mission.
The truth splinters through me and I wonder which thoughts are mine and which are his. Find Mr. Mountain. A mantra, a gut-clenching need. Find Mr. Mountain. Find Mr. Mountain—
From the left, a metal spatula swings high. A silly human act of aggression.
The Englishman catches it easily with my hand. Pulls it from Chloe. The power channeling through my body is unreal. The momentum brings her right into his grasp. He presses my thumb to her throat. The Englishman swims in the fearful waves of her ocean blue eyes.
The front door cracks, a gunshot splitting through the doorknob.
“What a pitifully broken thing,” my mouth says. Not my words, not my sardonic chuckle.
Chloe’s eyes widen. “Cass… please, don’t… please, please…”
I can’t control anything but have to stop him. Have to try anything. I push brain waves outward. Let her go. I’m confined to the mind now, only able to speak in energies, in flows I’ve only read, but never spoken. The runes, the language of souls. They aren’t smooth, but the message lands.
Outside, the Englishman pauses. Chloe gasps for breath as he frees her throat. He uses my lips to smile, amused. “Oh, think you can beat me, little Cassidy?”
The Englishman jerks my leg backwards, right into the flames. The pain is immediate and sharp. I falter, mentally screaming. Still, I push. This is my body. My mind.
“Not… anymore.” The Englishman’s grunt betrays his flickering strength. Teeth gritting, he pins Chloe to the carpet. Strength faltering. Our connection is brittle. The Englishman’s influence stretches inside of me, but I can hear his thoughts. He needs me. Otherwise, he is nothing. This is his only chance at completing his mission. I have a chance to stop him.
You’re leaving. Now! I shout from within.
“Oh, no you don’t, you bloody pest.”
The front door smashes open, releasing smoke into the night air.
The Englishman tightens his supernatural grip on my body as much as he can. We roll upright; we snarl down into Chloe’s face. Goodbye! I scream with no mouth, picturing the spirit board, the planchette sliding to the bottom letters. Goodbye, goodbye, GOODBYE!
He struggles against me, against Chloe’s kicks, but laughs victoriously with my lips. “Nice try, Cass.”
NO!
One elbow to Chloe’s chin halts her fighting. Long claws slide into her gut, slice every organ he can reach. He rips her open with my own hands, navel to throat.
She chokes, blood pooling in her mouth, spilling over her paled, purple-painted lips. Tearing away her bravado act, tearing away the person she used to be. My punk-rock anchor, sinking, fading.
Leaning over her, my lips whisper, raspy and victorious, “Thanks for the party, friend.”