Chapter Text
Humming.
His vision blurry, Wilson tumbled through a cacophony of fierce colour and a medley of memories. His shadow clawing at his back. Fighting Wes. Maxwell, taunting and teasing him and his compatriots. White light. Darkness. Start again. Over and over again, until everything went still and he realized that he wasn't where he had started.
Wilson replayed the events of the cavern until every stark detail jumped out at him, begging for attention—from the stench of Maxwell's cigar to the utter defeat pulling at Willow's face.
Willow.
Something wasn't right.
Wilson's cheek was pressed against a gnarled surface with a cogent woody musk. He drew his fingers across it, tracing thick, heavy lines, as ancient and as enthralling as an old tree that had weathered countless storms. There was something familiar and warm about it, something that stirred heat in his belly.
The humming. The wood. The musk.
He knew his place.
Wilson pressed his hand down and pried himself up, as much as he wanted nothing more than to sink back down and sleep for a millennium. He knew this place. He knew it because he'd roamed it in both reality and in his dreams, because his entire life had been drawn back to it, because it was so undeniably, incontrovertibly home.
He was in his laboratory. Except it was in much better condition than he remembered it being when last he'd seen it. There were no broken chemistry vials, the windows were in tact, the skeleton was not quite so dusty, and the chair in the corner looked almost brand new, with no sign of fading or typical wear and tear. Instead of a radio, there was a phonograph. Instead of haphazard note piles, there were organized folders with narrow handwriting that was not his own. Even the wallpaper was in tact, revealing a pattern of intertwining vines and flowers.
There was a picture on the desk. It was of Wilson's parents. He was in his mother's lap, a smiling, ignorant little boy with a questionable haircut.
Everything was exactly as it should be.
But instead of feeling relief, his chest seized. Every clock halted, every insect and bird stopped mid-hair, the earth stopped spinning, and Wilson felt every singular force in the universe focus on him and the house that shouldn't exist.
All of that amplified when he looked down and saw that he had no shadow, despite sunlight flowing freely through the windows.
Wilson crawled over to the trap door and climbed down, moving and thinking as though in a dream. The carpet muffled his footsteps when he hit the second floor. As in the laboratory, everything was in pristine condition, as it had been some fifteen or twenty years ago when he'd lived there with his parents. He retraced the steps he'd taken the day Dr Butterfield had come calling, with all of the same hesitation and dread filling him up. The sound of humming roamed unimpeded through the air, and aside from that, there was no sound; not even from the grandfather clock.
At the bottom of the stairs, he gripped the railing and peered around the corner. His heart had long since frozen in its chest as he tiptoed to the living room.
It was just as he remembered it. The smell of oil paints. The red area rug. Squares of sunlight creating a patchwork of light. The old desk in the corner, piled with books. The fainting sofa unblemished by the years. The coffee table clear except for the leftovers of afternoon tea.
None of this caught Wilson's attention. If it did, it was only for a heartbeat, until he saw a woman sitting at an easel in the corner. She was drawing her paintbrush across the canvas to deepen the portrait's eyes. Wilson' surroundings blurred like running paint, so he could only perceive impression rather than certainties. Wilson tried to blink the blurriness out only for it to continue to muddle together into an oblivion of colours. Still, the woman's back was to him, and her melodious laugh was unmistakable.
“I can’t quite get his eyes right,” the woman remarked. “He has an expression I don’t think any painting could capture.”
Wilson’s mouth went dry. Finally, he managed to stammer, “M—Mother?”
Elinor Higgsbury turned on her stool. Her hair was tied back in a loose bun, with stray strands of charcoal-coloured hair sticking out in all directions. A smear of red paint was on her left cheek.
“I’m dead,” Wilson concluded. “I’ve died and now I’m in hell.”
"Honestly, Wilson," Elinor laughed. "Do you really think that your mother would be sent to hell?"
Wilson blinked. No, this couldn’t be her. This couldn’t be right.
“Mother...you’re dead,” he whispered. “I saw you die. I held your hand.”
"I feel very much alive," she said. "If you really thought you were dead, you wouldn't be able to discern anything except oblivion. You'd cease to exist. That's what you think and your father always thought, anyways. I know you two never believed in life after death, but I—or rather, your mother—fervently believed that there's some continuation for the soul. Some reprieve from the burdens we have to endure in life. Some purpose to our suffering."
She gave him a nebulous smile filled with complex feeling. It struck into his heart and his knees quivered.
“Don’t you think, darling?” she chirped.
Wilson choked on his words. It was the most perfectly timed flub of his life. Except it wasn't his flub; it wasn't his mistake. It was the world's flub. The one moment where he was wrenched from his body and he realized that no matter how much he wanted it to be, now matter how much he ached for it, that there was no possible way that this was real. This wasn't home. This wasn't his mother. This wasn't reality.
That stung greater than any of his past failures.
In its frenzied state, he was prepared to give into the illusion, but then he held back and remembered all of the times he'd submitted to his half-formed delusions and hopes of grandeur. That's why he'd given into Maxwell's demands in the first place, in the hopes of making his dreams a reality. The old Wilson would've conceded to the illusion. The new Wilson, who had been forged by Maxwell's world but not because of Maxwell, flared with resolve.
"You're not really my mother," he accused.
Elinor laughed again. God, it even had her laugh. “No, but I’m just as good a painter. See?”
For the first time, Wilson examined the painting.
It was Maxwell. His boorish eyes glared down on the pair of them, forever empty and unseeing and captured perfectly in thick strokes of oily paint. The only smattering of red was of the rose on his jacket, scarlet and stark like a stain of fresh blood.
“This isn’t real,” Wilson said.
“No,” Elinor—or the echo of her memory—confirmed. “Maxwell trapped you and your friends in a hallucination of a sort."
Wilson blinked. "My...friends."
"That's what they are, aren't they? You've all been sucked into false worlds of happier times, where they'll be trapped for an eternity. Or at least until they die of starvation or exposure. I don't think Maxwell expected that your shadow's presence would give you a level of immunity to trap."
"W—W—W—Why," Wilson blubbered. He stopped. Cleared his throat. "Why would Maxwell, uh, do that?"
"Maxwell's hoping to trap your shadow within you. He trapped the other pawns in order to make sure that the shadow wouldn't be able to escape to another host. Anyone who was directly connected to you would be at risk for possession."
“If the others are trapped, I need to get out of here,” Wilson declared. “How do I leave?”
“Do you really want to go?” Elinor asked.
“If you're—um, if—" Wilson stopped short. He shook his head and squeezed his eyes shut, trying to imagine this woman as anyone other than his mother. He took a breath and forced his next words out. "If you're trying to trick me, it won't work."
“I know. I’m genuinely curious if you really want to leave, though."
“You’re not real, so I’m not going to waste a conversation on you.”
“I’m as real as you are, Wilson Percival Higgsbury.”
“A hallucination thinks it’s real, but science says that it isn’t,” he concluded.
“I’m real, Mr Higgsbury,” Elinor smiled serenely. “They're real. They've been hoping to communicate with you, but Maxwell is...intrusive."
Wilson processed her words.
“Why don’t you sit down?” Elinor asked. She floated over to the fainting couch and took a seat. “There is much to talk about.”
“I don’t have time for talking,” said Wilson. “They need me.”
“They will be alright for a short while. There is time to talk. Please...sit.”
Wilson felt like he was reliving history. He looked behind him at the front door, wondering if he could simply just leave and refused to listen. Still, if he kept it in his sight, maybe this was a good opportunity to get some much-needed answers. He went over to the chair opposite of the fainting couch and sat down.
“So you’re not my mother,” Wilson folded his arms. “But you say you’re real. So...who are you?”
"I'm representing the ones who put Maxwell on the Nightmare Throne," she answered. "Or rather, the ones who coerced him into sitting on it."
“My shadow mentioned a throne...”
“It is quite literally the seat of power in his world,” said Elinor. “You see, They preceded Maxwell. They preceded the existence of your own world. The world Maxwell has created is built within the corpse of a great civilization that collapsed, and whose citizens were transformed into something else."
“So Wickerbottom’s theory was right.”
“For the most part, yes. She’s an astute woman, particularly for a short-lived species. Maxwell is most unwise to not respect her.”
Elinor took a sip of the tea.
Wilson took a breath. His words felt fat and heavy. “I have questions.”
“I imagine you do,” said Elinor. “Ask what you will.”
“How did your civilization collapse? Why put Maxwell on this ‘throne?’ Why bring us here? Why give him all this power? Is my shadow one of ‘Them’ or is it something else like Maxwell implied? What’s Wes’s connection to all this? What’s—”
"One question at a time, Wilson," Elinor interrupted him. "And keep in mind that if you ask questions that have more arcane answers, then I might not be able to answer."
"Why?”
"Because we're humans, Wilson. Our minds are too primitive to be able to comprehend some of the stranger truths of the universe. To be honest, that's the problem that triggered this whole conundrum. You, Maxwell, and Wes have one thing in common: you tried to unravel mysteries that don't necessarily have answers."
Wilson leaned forwards on his knees. Elinor put the cup down and pulled her legs onto the fainting couch, her skirt billowing over her body.
"Okay, then," said Wilson. "Let's start at the beginning. Tell me about Maxwell."
"Maxwell encountered Them in his youth, when he was a struggling stage magician," Elinor responded. "And a terrible one at that. Everything changed when he found a tome—a spellbook called the Codex Umbra."
“The shadow book?” Wilson raised an eyebrow. “That sounds ominous.”
"Indeed," Elinor concurred. "The Codex Umbra contained fragments of the Forbidden Knowledge. He could have benefited the world with what was contained in it, but he used it for purely selfish purposes, to impress others and gain the recognition he'd so desperately desired. The public, as well as his assistant, were completely unaware that he was experimenting in the dark arts. He became reckless and he overestimated Their influence, and it came to an end when he and his innocent assistant were pulled into Their world. They were the first."
Elinor’s eyebrows cast a shadow over her eyes.
"The experience changed Maxwell and his assistant permanently," said Elinor. "They're no longer who they once were. In the aftermath, Maxwell became bound to the Nightmare Throne, and out of nothingness he created a personal habitat where he could keep his pawns."
“Maxwell had an assistant,” said Wilson. “Was it Wes?”
“What makes you think that?”
“Wes has a connection to Maxwell, right?”
Elinor pressed a finger to her chin. "I suppose Wes could be considered one of Maxwell's assistants, but no, he's not the assistant who was initially dragged into Their world. Maxwell's assistant is of a different caliber and can no longer rightfully be called human. Wes is still very much human, while Maxwell...well, he still has a degree of well-buried humanity within him.”
“It must be very well-buried,” Wilson sneered.
“Maybe so.”
“So what is Wes’s connection to all of this?”
"Wes's story follows a pattern that tends to repeat with all of Maxwell's pawns. He was interested in magic. He was interested in you."
“Why me?”
"When you vanished without a trace, it caused something of a sensation in Britain that translated to other parts of the world. Wes was an intrepid young man who learned about your disappearance along with the rest of the masses. I can still see him...staring down at the newspaper and rereading the story over and over again, even when the papers stopped covering it. Wes saw something that others didn't. He saw a pattern." Elinor off to the side. "He visited your house, Wilson. He saw the portal."
Wilson unfolded his arms, his mouth hanging open slightly.
"After you disappeared, people who were associated with you either vanished without a trace or died mysteriously," Elinor continued. "Dr Butterfield was found dead the year after you disappeared, with no apparent cause. Associates at the university shared similar fates. Many people made the connection between you and Mrs Wickerbottom. Whether through some residual traces of the Forbidden Knowledge present at your home, or through his own insatiable curiosity, Wes became determined to solve the mystery. Maxwell noticed. Speaking to Wes through the radio, they developed a strangely close relationship. Maxwell used him to scout out potential victims, searching for the outcasts and the intellectuals he had no hopes of reaching otherwise. Too late did Wes realized that he was doomed to join them, and to try to escape from his fate, he tried to sever his contact with Maxwell."
“By trying to get Wolfgang to destroy the radio,” Wilson realized.
“Precisely. Except it had the opposite effect and Maxwell pulled both of them into this world. When he came here, Wes theorized that Maxwell had a deeper connection to you than he first realized, so he set about trying to research your life, as well as Maxwell's."
“So why lock Wes up?”
“Because Wes was probing a little too deep even for Maxwell’s taste. You see, Their world is governed by a set of particular rules.”
“Such as...?”
"For example, whoever sits on the Nightmare Throne has the ability to shape Their world however they see fit. Maxwell doesn't want the throne's existence widely known. What if his pawns tried to seek him out? What if they tried to remove him from power? To Maxwell, there is nothing as indiscriminately terrifying as confronting his humanity. In order to secure his position, he locked Wes up."
“Why not just kill him?”
"That part's a bit foggy. Maxwell may have had some pity for the man. Alternatively, he could still believe that Wes might be useful to him. He won't sacrifice a pawn unless it's necessary."
“Okay. But—I remember Wickerbottom said that Maxwell had stop taking captives. Why do that? Does that relate to Wes in any way?”
“No, that occurred after Wes’s imprisonment. Maxwell stopped talking people into this world because of your shadow.”
“My shadow?” Wilson glanced around instinctively, searching for his shadow and remembering that it wasn't there. “Er—what does my shadow have to do with that?”
"You aren't the only one your shadow has manipulated. It's playing a long and complicated game to undermine Maxwell's power over his pawns. In the height of Wendy's grief, it tried to take forceful control over her. It's much easier to possess children than adults."
"Did Wendy resist?"
"Not Wendy herself, but her dead sister was a problem, so the shadow was forced to abandon that plan and hide within the obelisk. At the time Maxwell stopped abducting people, he was suspicious and believed that an entity was trying to wrestle control of the throne from him. With Wes safely secure, he knew it had to be someone or something else."
“And that entity was my shadow. But...” Wilson trailed off, furrowed his brow, and looked at the floor. “I don’t understand why my shadow would hide with me. What does it hope to gain?”
"Well, you were the next vulnerable person it met," Elinor explained. "Hiding in your shadow protects it from Maxwell. As I mentioned before, Maxwell would never sacrifice its pawns unless it was necessary. Additionally, the shadow cannot hope to gain control of the throne without a mortal ally."
“Why would it need a human? It’s one of Them, isn’t it? It can take Maxwell off the throne if it wants to.”
Elinor’s eyes were blank and cold.
"...Can’t it?” Wilson pressed.
“What do you think, Wilson?” she asked.
Wilson considered it. "Unless...it isn't one of them. Maxwell said as much when it—when I was attacking Wes. He accused the shadow of not being one of Them, of being—of being something else."
She nodded curtly.
“So...what is it? What’s hiding in my shadow?”
Elinor Higgsbury smiled mysteriously. “My dear Wilson. The question is not what is hiding in your shadow. The question is...who is hiding in your shadow.”
The grandfather clock had started ticking sometime while they were talking. Wilson listened to it, wounding the sound around his heart and his head, trying to understand the expectant look on Elinor’s almond-shaped eyes.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
Wilson's head was pounding. “I don’t understand. I have a headache.”
"Time is drawing short," Elinor noted. "You'll need to draw your friends out of their respective delusions before it's too late."
“Wait,” Wilson croaked. “Tell me—I must know. Is there a way out of Maxwell’s world? Is there a way home?”
Her smile slipped. Everything from the way it faded, to the way Elinor’s head tilted a few degrees to the right was in her perfect image. She was exactly as she’d remembered him, before they'd lost his father, before her own declining health, before her death. She was as she was in her prime—the way that he liked to remember her, rather than the way she’d actually been.
“The cave,” she said.
“I...I beg your pardon?” Wilson stammered.
“Plato’s allegory of the cave,” Elinor repeated. “Which is the cave? Is it Earth or Their world?”
“Forgive me, but I don’t want to discuss philosophy right now. If time is short, then I need to know if there’s a way back. The shadow—it lied; it said it could get me back, but it didn’t really want to do that. It just wants to use me. But you know, don’t you? You know if there’s a way back home?”
“If the shadows cast on Earth are an illusion, does that make them any less real and their world? If Earth is a reflection, then why are you so determined to go back there?”
“Ugh, if you’re going to bury the truth in metaphor—“
“They had difficulty telling, too,” Elinor interrupted. “Which is the cave, and which is the genuine picture. They delved so deeply into the fundamental nature of the universe, that when Their civilization collapsed, they made a cave of their own, one much larger than all the others.”
“Mother,” Wilson whispered. “Why are you always asking me these impossible questions?”
“Just because a question is impossible, does that mean it shouldn’t be asked?”
“I don’t have the answers!”
“Neither do I,” she barked.
The clock kept ticking. Tick. Tick. Tick.
“You and your father never accepted that some questions don’t have answers,” said Elinor. “You two were always out there, searching for the answers to impossible questions and getting hopelessly lost in the process. The same thing has happened to every one of the people Maxwell has brought here.”
“I’m sorry we didn’t accept the world with the same grace that you did,” Wilson spat bitterly. “At least we bothered searching for answers. At least we didn’t accept it. Why do you think I accepted the Forbidden Knowledge? Because for one, brief, glorious second, I perfectly understood the world! Everything fit together like—like one marvellous machine!”
Elinor’s gaze was downcast.
“The world would be a lot less scary place if we understood everything about it, wouldn’t it?” she reflected.
“I suppose it would,” Wilson agreed.
“Why are you so desperate to return home?” Elinor asked. “This world is much more interesting.”
“Because there are still questions that need to be answered back on Earth,” said Wilson. “I’m a scientist. It’s my job to answer them.”
She paused. "Well, I hope you change your mind, but if you're so incessant on going back there...He who controls the throne has the ability to fling the pawns back to Earth. Find Maxwell and you'll find the way home. Or you could just do it the hard way and build the portal."
"I'm not so sure the portal would even worse," Wilson muttered. "Not even my shadow was sure if that was plausible and it probably wouldn't be willing to help me. I'd have to do it from memory, and without the Forbidden Knowledge I—wait a minute. Finding Maxwell is the easy way?"
“Believe me. It is.”
Tick. Tick. Tick. Chime.
Wilson didn’t look over his shoulder to see what the time was. His headache was ballooning.
“You’d better leave before you get trapped here,” said Elinor. “Just go through the door and you’ll be back where you should be.”
Wilson wasted no time. He stood quickly and marched over to the front door. He wrapped his hand around the brass handle, looking back to where Elinor sat, poised and calm like he’d never seen her before.
“Go on,” she encouraged him.
Wilson pursed his lips.
Against his better judgment, he closed the distance left between them and threw his arms around his mother. Wilson buried his face in her shoulder, taking in the familiar smell of oil paints and parchment.
"We've already established that I'm not your mother," Elinor reminded him.
An ache blossomed on Wilson’s chest. Before he could really control himself, before he could exercise the constraint that had defined his entire life, the pinprick of tears touched the corner of his eyes.
“I know,” he inhaled. “Every day that I’ve been without you and Father has been hard.”
She didn’t answer, her body tight and stiff. Wilson felt every muscle in her body relax as she returned the hug.
“I’ve had terrible lapses of judgment these last few months,” said Wilson.
“An unfortunate side effect of being a human,” Elinor consoled. “You’ve made mistakes. Now go fix them.”
The embrace broke far too soon for his liking, and Wilson returned to his place by the door. This time, he didn’t hesitate when he grabbed the brass handle, only looking back to give his mother one, last look.
He understood that it would be the last time he would ever see her.
Elinor Higgsbury gave him an encouraging nod. Steeling himself, Wilson threw open the front door and stepped into the light.
“...That’s not going to wake them up.”
“WAKE THEM UP? WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? I’M JUST KICKING THEM FOR FUN.”
Wilson cranked open his eyes. Crouched on the ground, long streaks of dark and light were painted across the ground. He dragged his head upwards and he squinted, struggling to discern shapes against the light source.
There was no mistaking Maxwell's figures, nor was there mistaking WX. Wilson's sluggish brain tried to remember why it surprised him, until he recalled that WX was supposed to be guarding the cave entrance. He must've come looking for them. It took Wilson slightly longer to realize that they weren't alone. Around him were his friends—from Willow to Wolfgang—all on their knees, faces blank, eyes open but unseeing and focused on the light.
He was out. He didn’t know how or why it had happened, but he was out.
As his eyes adjusted, he saw what they were all looking at. In front of them was a strange, crystalline structure. The base was made out of stone, while the pyramid-shaped gem on top of it glowed white, creating the enveloping light. There wasn't anything remarkable about it, but as he concentrated, the overwhelming dread he'd been fighting off since entering the cavern reached its climax. Whatever it was, Wilson knew that it was the source of their current problem.
Neither WX nor Maxwell had noticed him yet. Maxwell was busy watching WX, who was occupying himself by kicking one of Wilson's companions.
The companion he was kicking was Wes. He must've wandered back to see what the fuss was about and gotten caught like the rest of them. That, or Maxwell had dragged him back. Wilson saw a strange spectre lying beside Wes, but he couldn't tell what it was at that distance. Whatever it was, Maxwell and WX didn't seem interested in it.
“STUPID WES!” WX grumbled. “WAKE UP SO I CAN HAVE THE SATISFACTION OF WATCHING THE LIFE DRAIN OUT OF YOUR EYES.”
“Problem?” Maxwell asked.
“YOU RUINED MY MURDER ATTEMPT. THERE ARE NO LIMITS TO YOUR DEPRAVITY.”
“Well, it’s certainly not my fault that you missed the party,” Maxwell said curtly.
“YOU KNEW I WAS COMING! YOU COULD’VE AT LEAST WAITED UNTIL I GOT HERE.”
Destroy the light. He had to destroy the light.
Wilson forced one leg out from underneath him and used what little strength left to push himself up. At that, his movement caught WX’s attention.
“YOU’RE STILL ALIVE?” said WX. “DISAPPOINTING.”
Watching Maxwell’s reaction was the most satisfying thing Wilson had seen in a long time. The chessmaster’s shoulders clenched, he turned heavily on one, long leg to see who WX was addressing, and his expression melted from smug to stunned.
“W—What?!” Maxwell stammered.
Oh, it was good to make him stammer.
“You were supposed to be trapped for an eternity!” Maxwell shouted. “HOW THE HELL DID YOU GET OUT?!”
Wilson laughed. It was a drawn out, aching laugh that silenced even Maxwell. “I’m sure you’d like to know, Maxwell.”
Maxwell scowled. “Don’t get coy with me, Higgsbury. You’re not out of the woods yet. The earthquake collapsed the only way out of this cave. I don't know how you weaselled your way out of that illusion, but I promise you, there are a thousand other ways to trap you—and not all of them are so humane."
Wilson was so done with talking. He looked at the crystalline structure. There was no way he couldn't hope to break it without a weapon, and somewhere in the midst of the struggle his axe had gone missing. The only weapons nearby were the torches, and he couldn't risk them going out in the event that breaking the crystal meant smothering the light. Finally, he saw the sceptre beside Wes.
Maxwell followed his gaze and went tense. He looked to the crystal. The spectre. Back to Wilson. The spectre again. Wilson a second time. His mouth barely opened and he hissed, "Go ahead. Try it. A feeble scientist such as yourself couldn't possibly break that."
“I think Willow had a point when she said I should just ignore you,” said Wilson.
“Don’t tell me you’re going to give me the silent treatment! These are your last few hours alive and you’re not even going to talk to me? I thought we were friends!”
“If this is your idea of friendship, I would hate to be your enemy.”
Wilson dragged his feet over to Wes and picked up the spectre. It was heavy as many of Maxwell's lies. Solid gold and ornately decorated, there was a purple gem fixed at the top. Wilson looked into Wes's unseeing face.
"Where on Earth did you get this?" Wilson wondered out loud.
He then went over to the crystalline structure. It was a bit taller than he was, but at least not so overpoweringly bright that he couldn't see where he was going. Warm flowed over Wilson.
"There's no way you'll be able to break that," Maxwell stated.
Drawing the sceptre far back over his shoulder—no easy task considering how heavy it was—he slammed the blunt end into the crystal. The strike reverberated up his arm and shook his fore. Wilson staggered back and Maxwell laughed, maybe out of relief.
“Told you so,” he chuckled.
Wilson launched back at the structure and slammed the sceptre into it a second time. It simply skirted across the surface, not even leaving a cut behind. Still, he knew he couldn’t afford to give up and continued to strike it, though he felt Maxwell’s gaze boring into him.
As Wilson prepared to swing again, it stopped. He whirled around expecting to see Maxwell, taunting him and insisting that he give up. Instead, he saw WX holding tightly onto the sceptre.
“WORTHLESS MEATBAG,” WX scoffed. He wrestled the spectre from Wilson’s hands. “YOU ARE WEAK. I’LL DO IT.”
At this, the flicker of apprehension reappeared on Maxwell’s face. “Wait, let’s not do anything hasty now!”
“SO STOP ME,” WX challenged him.
Maxwell didn’t move.
“...You’re afraid of Them,” Wilson realized.
“Don’t talk about things you don’t understand, Higgsbury,” Maxwell barked. He folded his arms defiantly and stuck his chin in the air.
“No, I think I do understand now,” said Wilson. “You’re just as much a pawn of Them as the rest of us are. The difference is that we’re able to acknowledge it, but you’re just a sad, bitter old man clinging to his denial.”
“Where do you get the gall talking to me like that?!"
Wilson pulled back his upper lip and scowled. He said to WX, “Break it.”
WX was filled with a strange joviality Wilson had never seen in him before. With a single swing, he struck the crystal. At first there didn’t appear to be an effect, until a thick crack sprung from the spot WX had hit.
“WAIT!” Maxwell shouted. “You don’t know what you’re doing! You could create a hole in the world!”
“I’m sure you can patch it right back up,” Wilson quipped.
“That doesn’t mean you should punch a hole in it!”
WX kept hitting the crystal. The crack steadily became larger, and the larger it grew, the more frantic Maxwell's expression become. All the same, he didn’t approach the crystal, remaining glued to the spot as if he was a helpless spectator unable to stop impending disaster.
The crystal shattered.
Shards danced across the cavern floor, catching the light before it dimmed to accommodate only the torches. There was a breathless, heart-wrenching moment in which there was absolute stillness in the world. For the first time, he lost the impression of being perpetually watched, and he lost the sense of uneasiness, and he lost whatever impression of the supernatural that had been present in everything Maxwell had presented to Wilson and the other survivors.
Wilson’s teeth ached.
It was such a subtle sensation that he didn't notice it until he realized that the ache wasn’t limited to his teeth. His hair bristled, his body cramped, and he was aware of every subtle movement he was capable of, from his muscles constricting to the synapses in his brain firing off, to his eyeballs rolling in their sockets, to his heart picking up its pace like it was late for the bus and it was going to miss an important meeting at work. At first, he thought that he was being electrocuted. Then he realized that it was something else, something supernatural and so unlike a jolt of electricity. When it came to getting a good electrical shock, Wilson always knew exactly why and how it was happening. With this, it was so much different. He searched for a source, but couldn’t find any except for the crystal shards on the cavern floor and the crystalline structure letting out a massive, pained groan.
Wilson started to turn on his ankle to put as much distance between himself and the crystalline structure as possible, but even that was far too slow. He wasn’t nearly fast enough to miss a dark, clawed hand rising out of the broken crystal.
WX snatched the back of Wilson’s vest and tugged him away from the structure. The claw wasn’t alone. Behind it, other vague forms were rising up, but Wilson wasn’t about to pause and take a good look. Around them, wind was picking up, sucking towards the crystal and gaining in ferocity.
“You fools!” Maxwell boomed. “You idiots! You’re ruining everything! This is my game! MINE!”
Wilson wondered if he was talking to his pawns or to the shadow things steadily bleeding out of the crystalline structure, enveloping it until it was no longer visible.
As the wind picked up, he hurried back to where the others were. They now lacked the glassy-eyed look. Somehow it was even more terrifying to see their expressions of disorientation and apprehension.
“Is everyone alright?” Wilson asked.
He got several pained groans in response. Wilson instinctively gravitated towards Willow, who was on all fours and whose face was pinched with confusion. He took her calloused hands her pulled her to her feet.
“What happened?” she groaned. “I thought I was back in San Francisco...”
“Whatever you saw was an illusion,” said Wilson. “I can explain later. We need to get out of here.”
“Why?”
“Well, the shadow things coming out of that crystal is a good reason. Unless you want to stay and see what happens?”
“What crystal?”
“Later, Willow!”
Wilson had rounded up the rest of their party before he remembere that Maxwell had specifically stated that the entrance had collapsed and they were all trapped there. Unless he was lying. But one look at WX told him that that part hadn’t been a lie or an exaggeration, and with the shadows now pouring out, he knew that the best they could hope to do was run as fast as possible, maybe find some small part of the cavern where they wouldn’t be able to reach. They were gushing out like an open wound and growing in size. There was no way their torches would be able to hold that off.
Looking around at his compatriots, he saw them rising out of their confusion to realize what was going on around them. Wickerbottom was flicking through one of her tomes, maybe trying to find a spell that would help their situation. Wendy had her hands cusped around Abigail’s flower. The only one of them who didn’t look the least bit fazed by what had happened was Wolfgang, who was alert and surprisingly focused, putting his body between the rest of them and the outpouring of shadows coming through the hole in the world. Maxwell had vanished, and Wilson knew he wouldn’t try to intervene to save the lives of his pawns, not when Wilson had so blatantly defied him.
While mulling over the possibilities, he felt a tap on his shoulder, and turned to find Wes standing with them. The mime was indicating the spectre still in Wilson's hand.
“Not now, Wes,” he said.
Wes grabbed the spectre and held it up.
“Look, you can keep it if you want to, but we have bigger problems right now,” Wilson emphasized.
“Wes say we should all hold onto stick,” Wolfgang intervened.
“How can you discern that when he didn’t say anything?” Wilson snapped. “Wes, I don’t have time for games. We need to figure out a way out of here.”
“Wes say that it is way out.”
“What are you—”
Wes cut Wilson off, not by speaking, but by grabbing Wilson’s wrist and putting his hand around the sceptre. Wolfgang quickly followed suit, his enormous palm and fat fingers just about covering the whole thing.
“Wes say hold onto it now,” Wolfgang said in an unusually firm voice. “He say to trust him. The stick can take us out and away from shadow things.”
There was only a split second hesitation before Willow’s hand emerged in Wilson’s peripheral vision and wrapped around the sceptre, close to his own. It was much closer than he ever remembered her being, and in the midst of the chaos, his nostrils flared as he inhaled the sharp scent of cinnamon.
The others edged forwards and also grabbed the sceptre, their hands overlapping one another as they clutched their only hope of a quick escape. Wilson had a perfect view of the sceptre, their intertwined hands, and the wave of shadows growing larger and larger, stifling the light, cascading towards them in a monstrous tempest. Everything that made Maxwell’s world both mysterious and terrifying hurtled towards them much too fast, and Wilson was sure that this was a fool’s errand.
It was only a second or two. To Wilson, it felt like an eternity. Then, with his tongue protruding from the side of his mouth, Wes squeezed his eyes shut, and in that instant the purple gem at the top of the sceptre burst into life.
A cold chill ran down Wilson’s spine. He was only vaguely aware of the cascade of shadows striking the spot where they were, and he squeezed his eyes shut against the voices ringing in his ears.
But when he opened his eyes, he was bathed in daylight and the cavern was gone.