05 – i – Daniel King

“I don’t think we’re getting anywhere on this one,” Daniel said, snapping a book on ancient death cults closed. It joined the stack of dead-end books, leaving him with only one last book to skim through.

But he knew that if he didn’t find something relevant, their search would go nowhere, and he hated feeling helpless.

Bethany, leaning back on the rear two legs of her chair, absently balanced herself as she scrolled down her phone. “Maybe you should figure out what you’re looking for.”

“If I knew what I was looking for, I would have found it already,” Daniel grumbled as he picked up the final book written by Elias—the same man who had written on the Mother of Maggots and its cult. “I’ve gone over everything I could remember from what Erika told me. There’s just… nothing.”

“Didn’t you say that Anna tried all this already?”

“Yeah…” Daniel said, flipping through the chapters.

“What do you hope to find that she didn’t?”

Daniel paused, frowning at his sister, knowing she was probably right. “She was specifically looking into the Mother of Maggots. Erika thinks the maggot thing is just a front, or a subordinate, or an aspect of the actual threat, the thing The Fixer calls The Mummy. I’m trying to figure out exactly what we’re up against and what the cult might have missed while hiding. The Fixer destroyed a cult in China,” Daniel said, dragging over his composition notebook, “and then The Daughter blew herself up along with her own cult in Africa. There must be other facets of The Mummy, so I’m trying to find connections, and maybe uncover other cults of The Mummy.”

“To what end?” Bethany cocked her head to one side, her hazel eyes digging into him. “Say you find that future-telling mask among the masks these cultists have. Then what?”

“I… The Fixer said the mask was destroyed.”

Bethany ignored him. “We already know they’re linked; the how doesn’t matter.”

“Then what do you suggest?” Daniel growled, thumping a fist against the table. “At least I’m trying to help. Why did you bother coming?”

With an exaggerated roll of her eyes, Bethany dropped her chair down onto all four legs, swept a braid back over her shoulder, and gave him a smug grin. “I don’t care about old cults and destroyed villages. The Fixer can worry about tracking down links and finding new branches of the cult or whatever; we just have to worry about Chicago. We just have to worry about these tattoo people and these mask people, and then we can go back to fun things like introducing me to that witch you got to meet.”

Not a day had gone by since Daniel and Erika had met with The Warrior that his sister hadn’t brought it up. It had been over a month, and yet her envy was as strong as ever. He had long since regretted ever telling her, but he felt he had to tell someone about it, and going to his parents would have landed him in trouble for years. As it was, he was surprised he wasn’t housebound already, given what happened to Anna, Rick, and Sofia just because they had been near Erika.

With Erika off recovering somewhere only Rick knew about, Daniel hadn’t yet been forbidden from seeing her again. Maybe his mom convinced his dad he was old enough to decide—after all, he was seventeen.

“Easy to say,” Daniel huffed, frowning at the book on death cults once more. “But saying we need to worry about these people isn’t going to help us.”

“I’m saying that you’re looking in the wrong place.” Bethany plucked the old book from his hand and slotted her phone into its place. “You don’t need to look at China, or wherever this book is about; you need to look at Chicago. The cult is here, and has probably been for a while now, meaning our history is what matters. I bet The Fixer has already investigated local cults, legends, and whatever, and either found nothing or didn’t tell you, so that means we need to look outside books.”

Daniel did not like to admit that his sister was right, so he gave her little more than a glare and kept his mouth shut. He did, however, glance down at her phone, open to a news article, and skimmed the headline.

Lower West Side Museum Reopens with All Exhibits Intact

“Dad’ll kill us,” Daniel said, now understanding what she was getting at.

The museum where it all began had reopened after its sudden Halloween gas-leak closure. Erika claimed she smashed an old statue to block the maggot swarm, but headlines said all exhibits were intact. Either they fixed it, or they lied. Either way, the cult had cared about something there.

“I won’t tell if you won’t,” Bethany said with the corners of her lips twisting into a sneaky smile. “We just go, walk around like any other geek who goes to museums on weekends. Maybe everything has been cleaned up too much to learn anything real, but it has to be better than burying our noses in old, dusty books.”

Daniel looked for reasons to stay at the library. The first—danger, since the museum was tied to the cult—fell apart; it was open to the public, so it must be safe. If visitors kept vanishing or dying, someone would notice.

They could research local cults, but Bethany likely had a point: The Fixer probably started there. If The Fixer had visited the museum, he would have found the statue before Erika did.

That meant there might still be something to learn there.

Standing, angry at being convinced, Daniel looked to his sister. “Help me take these books back to the return cart, then we can go.”

Bethany scooped up an armful of books with a victorious grin and sauntered off to the book cart.

“I hope it isn’t too expensive,” Daniel muttered as he followed after his sister.

---

“Erika talked about a statue and a mural,” Daniel said as they walked along the sidewalk toward the museum. It was a squat, red-brick building with a decorative mosaic running along its top, but otherwise plain enough that hardly anyone would pay much attention to it. “But we probably shouldn’t bee-line to them, look only at them, then rush out, or it will be too obvious.”

“She also said one of the other statues was some woman with sharp, pointy nipples. I want to see that one.”

“What.”

Bethany held out her fingers from her chest. “Pointed nipples. It sounds funny.”

“I… don’t think I understand art.” Or women. Erika had made a big deal about that statue too, mentioning it at least three times in her retellings of the night at the museum.

“Some of the earliest figurines ever found are of naked people. It’s just a thing in art since the dawn of time, I guess,” Bethany said with a shrug.

“I didn’t know you were interested in archeology.”

Bethany rolled her eyes. “Miss me with that boring crap. I’m just interested in the things people dug up. Like, did you know COVID was because they dug up some giant woman from Iran and removed a golden eye prosthetic from her skull?”

“Ugh, now you sound like Dad,” Daniel groaned as he pulled open the museum door. Warmth thankfully greeted them—the car ride over hadn’t been heated very well, although he felt awkward stepping into the mildly hushed atmosphere.

As he paid admittance at the front desk, using the excuse that he was babysitting his sister despite the woman at the counter not having asked, he could only hope that she wouldn’t be too loud as they walked around.

Using the museum’s web page to navigate, they meandered through the various corridors and exhibits. Erika’s retelling included several mentions of odd, strange, or even disturbing artworks and statues, but this seemed limited to a single small section of the museum, which rotated works by local talent in an abstract category. Plenty of pieces elsewhere were more traditional paintings and sculptures, showcasing the heritage and culture of the various groups that made up Chicago.

They did find the nipple statue, which Bethany promptly snorted at.

Daniel wasn’t sure how many people normally visited the museum on weekends, but it was fairly quiet, with them passing only a dozen other people at various points in their meanderings. The grand reopening had been just the Friday before, so maybe it had been busier then?

He honestly wasn’t sure if he preferred the vacant hallways for the quiet and the lack of eyes on them, or if he would rather have a bustling crowd to get lost in.

“Come look at this one!”

Daniel turned away from a painting of either a vehicle or an extremely fat man made from metal—he honestly wasn’t sure which—to find Bethany pointing through another opening.

One central statue dominated the room beyond, a skeletal figure that loomed over the rest. Bits of sinew and flayed flesh clung to the iron skeleton, colored in various shades of meat-red. A varnish of lacquer glistened in the light, giving the flesh a realistic appearance, enough so to make Daniel grimace upon seeing it. A clean, white porcelain mask hid the upper half of its face, which was locked in a grimace with disturbingly accurate teeth.

Murals covered the room’s walls, positioned between the doorways, but the statue demanded all attention. It had to be the same one that Erika had seen, but it didn’t look like she described—that statue she saw had been fully metal and corpse-like. He supposed it made sense, given that she had destroyed it with her baseball bat. Was this their replacement?

His eyes were drawn up to the porcelain mask. According to Erika’s theory, the statue acted as some kind of server hub for all the cultists, possessing people via similar masks. Surely this was just a recreation; Daniel thought it would be the height of stupidity to just go back and put the statue right where their enemies knew it was. Unless, of course, there was something special about this location that necessitated the statue being here.

If that was the case, they should have kept the museum closed indefinitely.

“Gross looking, isn’t it?” Bethany said with a face. Despite her words, she was right up against the red velvet rope barrier around the statue, half leaning over.

Daniel grabbed her by the shoulder, pulling her back. “Don’t touch anything.”

“I’m not stupid,” she huffed, swatting his hand away. “So a statue, huh? Think we should knock it over? Just in case?”

“Absolutely not. Even if it isn’t some cursed statue, we’d get the cops called, and that can’t happen, or Dad will find out.” Daniel shook his head; that would be worse than getting cursed. “We just tell them that the museum reopened, how it might be a good idea to check it out, and they can decide what to do about it.”

With another huff, Bethany pulled out her phone and took a picture of the statue, then moved around to take a picture of the backside as well.

“The sign said no photography,” Daniel sighed.

“Yeah, well, maybe they should have hired a security guard,” Bethany said, absently looking around. She brought up her phone again and snapped a picture of one of the murals. “Erika mentioned these, too, but she didn’t say what was on them. Think the murals are important too?”

Daniel didn’t answer, looking over to the nearest, flashiest mural. Positioned at the attention-grabbing center, a gaunt figure raised its arms to a red sky. A large black circle blotted out the center of the sky—an eclipse, perhaps—while stars streaked above the circle. People had gathered around the gaunt figure; at first glance, they looked to have joined hands in celebration, but the longer Daniel stared, the more it felt like they were locked in some chaotic dance, each dragging his neighbor down in violent, pain-filled thrashings.

Bethany took a few pictures while Daniel moved to the next mural, one filled with ruined buildings and monuments. A plaque to the side titled the piece Upon These Works, but gave no further details, not even an artist’s name. Some of the ruined buildings looked vaguely familiar, but he really only recognized the Willis Tower. He was about to move on when he noticed some people drawn under the eaves of one of the buildings.

Four people, each with their bodies lined in thick, bar-like tattoos. Two were obviously women, two were less obviously men.

Daniel hadn’t been allowed near the man who attacked Rick’s van before the people in the black helicopter took everyone away, but he heard descriptions after the fact, and he had heard Erika talk about the naked woman often enough. They both bore tattoos matching those on these figures, and there were at least two more of them if these murals were at all accurate. That sent a chill down his spine, knowing that Erika believed the woman had survived getting her head chopped off and knowing the damage the man caused. If there were two more of roughly equivalent power…

A bad feeling started to scratch at the back of Daniel’s mind. They were still alone, a quick glance around confirmed, but he suddenly felt ill. “Beth, maybe we should go.”

“Hold on,” Bethany said, snapping pictures of another mural. The one she stood before was almost entirely blank, lacking the red sky of the others, with just a few scribbled stick figures on a white background. Compared to the dancers, the tattooed group, or the gaunt figure underneath the eclipse, the stick figures were tiny, barely recognizable as figures. The plaque labeled this work as Denial of Inevitability. Again, no artist or any other details were listed.

Daniel didn’t let her finish, taking her arm to drag her away despite her protests.

They made it a mere three steps, passing just outside the Semblance of Man’s room, before Daniel’s haste carried him straight into a woman hard enough to send him reeling. The woman, however, took only a single step backward, balancing perfectly on tall, stilted sandals. Daniel said something, hopefully an apology, but he was too busy gaping at her to really process the words coming out of his mouth.

She had no bar-like tattoos or mask, just an extravagant red-and-gold kimono, one worn far looser than was normal.

“Sorry,” Bethany said, now grasping hold of his arm. “My brother is an idiot. He doesn’t do good with horror and that statue spooked him bad.”

“Statue?” The woman’s sharp, golden eyes flicked away from Daniel to the room beyond. Without another word, she stepped past, sandals clacking against the tile.

Breathing a sigh of relief, Daniel took hold of his sister once again and hurried away, dragging her along as she stared over her shoulder.

“Did you see that?” Bethany asked, eyes all lit up. “She had her grippers out.”

“What.”

“Her feet, stupid. All sharp toenails, painted too. I wonder how much time she spends filing them like that,” Bethany said, finger tapping against her chin in thought.

“Why are you paying attention to her feet?”

“It’s like twenty degrees out. My feet would be cubes of ice if I were wearing sandals. She’s probably a monster girl, we should go talk—”

“No. Absolutely not. She might be some cultist who will kill us if we look at her wrong.”

“Oh, come on, you were interested too. I saw you staring at her chest.”

Daniel felt a heat rush to his ears as he shot his sister a glare. “I—I never—”

“I don’t know if you’re supposed to wear that outfit all open, but dayum, if I had bags that fat, I’d want to show them off too.”

“What are—” Daniel shook his head, sighing. “The internet has ruined your generation.”

“You’re two years older than me,” Bethany snapped.

“Come on,” he said, ignoring her as he followed the exit signs out of the museum’s maze. “We need to warn Erika and the others that there might be two more of those tattoo people running around.”

Bethany sobered up, giving Daniel a worried expression. “More of them? The people that trashed Rick’s van and sent them all to… well, wherever they are?”

“Yeah. If those paintings are even mildly accurate, anyway. I heard from Dad that Erika was supposed to be getting back soon. We should stop by, see if she has a minute to talk.”

With one last wistful look back, Bethany pulled her coat a little tighter as she followed Daniel out onto the city streets. “Damn cult, ruining everything,” she muttered, barely loud enough for him to hear.

“Agreed.”