#ellic

~*~

It wasn’t a long walk - seven minutes by Nic’s watch. Still, that was a third of his shift. He’d never known twenty-two minutes could fly by so quickly until he started this job. Ellis said very little, leading Nic down a winding series of trails that were vaguely familiar in the way every trail in these woods was familiar. The shades of dirt and trees, the shape of the land, were as recognizable to Nic as the quality of light in a Rembrandt.

“Where are we going?” he finally asked, when the quiet and the briskness of Ellis’ pace had worn through his last nerve. He'd turned on his voice recorder as soon as they left the facility, but so far it had mostly recorded dead air and a few birdsongs. 

“Just up ahead,” Ellis replied without looking back. 

“But what is it?”

“You’ll see.”

That was hardly a satisfactory answer, but, as it turned out, it was an accurate one. Nic knew what was coming before he even saw the clearing. Between one step and the next, he knew. His whole body seized. His muscles clenched like the hard involuntary shudder of incipient hypothermia. His feet dragged, slowed, and stopped. The Blur rushed up on him, snatching him under its thick cotton cloud before he could even consider fighting it. Distantly, through a high-pitched haze, he watched Ellis turn around. 

Ellis didn’t seem surprised he’d stopped. He regarded Nic with a calm, curious expression. “Nic? What’s wrong?” 

“I don't want to,” Nic heard himself say. His voice was low, firm. “I don't want to do this.”

Ellis took a step toward him. “What don't you want to do?”

“I don't want to see.”

Ellis watched him without speaking. It was unbearable, the inescapability of his gaze. Nic’s fists clenched. His heart began to pound. He thought about turning and running with an urgency so visceral his breath caught. If he was fast, if he was smart about it, he could get back to the facility before Ellis could stop him. He could get back to the road. He could run all the way back to his car, he could -

“It's alright,” Ellis said. “There's nothing here that can harm you.”

Nic shook his head. His chest hurt like his heart was going to burst through it. “You don't know that.”

Ellis came closer. He took his hands out of his jacket pockets. “Nic, what do you think I'm about to show you? What do you think is out here?”

Tears stung the back of Nic’s eyes. His mouth filled with the taste of salt.  “I don't know,” he whispered.

Another step. “Are you sure about that?”

Nic shut his eyes. “I don’t want to know.”

“I think it's important that you do.” Ellis touched Nic’s wrist. “May I?” 

Nic tried to say No, but when he opened his mouth, nothing came out. His throat had shut tight.

Ellis drew him forward with a warm, unyielding grip. “I'm right here with you,” he said. “I won't let anything happen.”

That was bullshit, of course. Even if Ellis had been trustworthy, he didn’t understand what the Blur was capable of, what Tanis could do. He just didn’t understand. But Nic obeyed the tug of his hand anyway. He followed, blind. 

It was only around the next corner. Nic nearly walked into Ellis’ back when he stopped, then stood as still as he could, holding his breath. If he didn’t move, it wouldn’t see him. It wouldn’t catch him. 

“Nic?” Ellis’ voice was very quiet. “Open your eyes.”

He didn’t want to. But he did as he was told. 

Ellis was standing between Nic and the clearing, but Nic could see it over his shoulder. He could see the corpses, the piles of fur and feathers, the guts and the bones. He could smell rot. And, as if that seeing and smelling was an inoculation, an exorcism, the Blur receded. It drew away like a wave sucked back down a long beach. Nic was left standing cold and sick in the woods with dead animals at his feet and Cameron Ellis next to him, alone in his own mind. 

“I didn't do this,” he said, before Ellis could speak. “I didn't.”

Ellis took a moment to respond. His hand, still on Nic’s, tightened. His thumb touched the bone of Nic’s wrist. “I’m afraid evidence suggests otherwise.”

The smell roiled in the back of Nic throat, churning his stomach. He turned his head to gag, but nothing came up except some sour spit. He breathed fast and ragged until he thought he could speak again. “What evidence?” he asked. It emerged as a croak. 

“The test results for the blood swabbed from you on Friday,” said Ellis. “It's all animal. Birds and small mammals, some reptiles. The scraping from under your nails contained fur and feather keratin.” 

Ellis’ soft words permitted no misunderstanding, even though Nic very badly wanted to misunderstand. He chanced another glance over Ellis’ shoulder. It was no less horrific this time, but he forced himself to keep looking, to comprehend what he was seeing. The eviscerated birds dangling from branches, the heaps of sticky flesh among the roots. Flashes of white bone, piles of feathers, torn flesh and fur. The flies. The flies were buzzing so loud. 

“I couldn't do this,” he said. Even to himself, it sounded more like a question, a plea for agreement. “How could anyone do this?”

Ellis didn’t reply. He was looking at Nic, not the carnage around them. 

Nic swallowed, twice and then three times. He began to shiver. “You don't think I did this. You can't think that.”

“I think…” said Ellis, measuring his words, “that you were not in your right mind when you were involved in what happened here. Whatever that was.” There was nothing judgmental in his gaze, only concern. Nic wanted to shrivel beneath the weight of it, recoil like something delicate and wet withdrawing from the sun, scalded by perception. “Do you remember anything at all?”

Nic shook his head. “No. No, I -” He trailed off, distracted again, aghast. “How would someone do this?” He felt like a broken record, the needle of his mind trapped in this one deep, gouged groove. “How would someone even catch…” There were crows, sparrows, squirrels. He saw the dull stretch of something spotted and leathery, a frog or salamander skin. A rabbit’s head, attached to the stump of its spine by a thin string of flesh. Was that the bloody, disembodied leg of a wolf, or was it... 

His voice cracked. “How would I even catch all these animals?”