Chapter 4: The Third Face

Chapter 4: The Third Face

The world came back to Reg in jagged, painful shards. The scrape of a car tire down the street. The distant, indifferent chatter of a passerby. The sharp, coppery scent of blood. His own breath hitched in his throat, a ragged, painful sound. The monstrous, all-consuming rage had evaporated as if it had never been, leaving behind a hollow, shivering cold that seeped deep into his bones.

He was standing over Toeless. The kid was curled on the filthy sidewalk, one hand pressed to the side of his head, his thin shoulders trembling. Blood, dark and shockingly real, matted his hair and traced a path down his temple.

“Toeless…” Reg’s voice was a choked whisper. The name felt like broken glass in his mouth.

He dropped to his knees, the hard concrete jarring his bones. The statuette, still clutched in his hand, felt slick and obscene. He wanted to hurl it into the street, to watch it shatter under the wheels of a passing bus, but some primal fear kept his fingers locked around it. He couldn't let it go. Not yet.

“Don’t… don’t touch me,” Toeless mumbled, flinching away as Reg reached out. The fear in the kid’s eyes was a physical blow. It was the same terrified look that was now permanently etched onto the second face of the effigy. He wasn't just afraid of what Reg had done; he was afraid of Reg.

Guilt, hot and acidic, flooded the cold void the rage had left behind. “I’m sorry,” Reg rasped, the words feeling pitifully inadequate. “Kid, I’m so sorry. I… it wasn’t me.”

It was a weak excuse, and he knew it. But it was also the terrifying truth. The fury had felt like a parasite, a separate entity that had latched onto his soul and used his body as a puppet. He remembered the urge to smash the kid’s head in, the pure, black satisfaction in the thought, and a wave of nausea rolled through him.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a grimy handkerchief, the closest thing he had to a bandage. “Let me see,” he said, his voice softer now, pleading.

Toeless hesitated for a long moment, his eyes searching Reg’s, looking for any trace of the monster that had just attacked him. Seeing only shame and desperation, he slowly lowered his hand. The cut wasn't deep, but it was ugly, a weeping gash against the pale, bruised skin. Reg gently dabbed at the blood, his movements clumsy but careful.

“It just… came over me,” Reg tried to explain, his voice low and strained. “Like in the alley, when the guard showed up. That anger… it wasn't mine. The stone… it makes it worse. It feeds it.”

Toeless didn't answer. He just watched, his breathing shallow. The trust between them, the one solid thing in their chaotic world, was fractured.

Reg sat back on his heels, his gaze falling to the cursed object in his other hand. He had to look. He had to know if anything else had changed. With a sense of profound dread, he turned it over, his thumb brushing past his own snarling face, past Toeless’s screaming effigy. He rotated it to the third face.

The face of sorrow.

Except it wasn't a generic mask of grief anymore.

Reg’s heart stopped. His breath seized in his lungs. The face staring up at him from the milky crystal was Maggie’s.

It was her, down to the last detail. The hard lines etched around her mouth, the tight pull of her skin over her cheekbones, the slight droop of her left eyelid. But the expression was one of horrific, soul-deep despair. It wasn't the bitter scorn she had shown them; it was a sorrow so profound it looked like it had been carved by the weight of a thousand years. It was the face of a woman who had seen the end of everything and found nothing there. The face of a woman utterly, irrevocably alone.

“Oh, God,” Reg breathed, the words escaping in a puff of white in the cooling air.

“What is it?” Toeless asked, pushing himself into a sitting position, wincing as he moved.

Without a word, Reg held out the statuette. Toeless leaned in, his eyes widening in disbelief and dawning horror.

“Maggie…” he whispered. “But… how? When?”

Reg’s mind raced, connecting the terrible dots. “When she threw us out. Her anger… her contempt. It must have marked her. The stone copied her, just like it copied us.”

They looked at each other, the same terrifying conclusion reflecting in their eyes. This wasn't a passive object. It was a predator. It latched onto strong emotions—rage, terror, scornful despair—and claimed its victims. It had taken Reg’s face. It had taken Toeless’s. And now, it had taken Maggie’s. They were links in a chain, and the old woman was the next one to be pulled under.

“We have to… we have to do something,” Toeless said, his voice barely audible. “She was… she was awful to us, but…”

“But nobody deserves this,” Reg finished for him, a grim certainty settling in his gut. He couldn't leave her to whatever fate this thing had in store. His own guilt was a raw, open wound; he couldn't add Maggie’s destruction to that burden. “We have to warn her.”

The sun had long since set, painting the sky in bruised shades of purple and orange before surrendering to the inky black of night. They had waited, huddled in a different alley, letting Toeless recover and their own shattered nerves settle. Now, they stood across the street from Maggie’s shop. The bustling daytime crowds were gone, replaced by the occasional late-night straggler and the whisper of trash blowing across the pavement.

The shop was dark. The steel shutters were pulled down, a solid wall of corrugated metal. A single, flickering streetlamp cast long, distorted shadows that danced and writhed like living things. The alley beside the shop, a familiar shortcut, now looked like a gaping maw leading into utter darkness.

“She’s not there,” Toeless said, his voice tight with unease. “She’s gone home.”

“Maybe,” Reg said, though he didn’t believe it. A cold knot of dread was tightening in his stomach. “There’s a light on in the back apartment. I’ve seen it before. She lives upstairs.”

They crossed the street, their footsteps echoing unnervingly in the quiet. They slipped into the alley. The air here was colder, the stench of overflowing dumpsters thick and cloying. Reg’s eyes scanned the darkness, every flicker of movement, every scuttling rat setting his teeth on edge.

He looked at the shop’s grimy back window, which offered a reflection of the alley behind them. For a split second, he saw something move in the distorted glass. A figure, tall and hunched, its limbs too long, its face a mask of snarling rage. His rage. It was there and then it was gone, a phantom in the reflection. He blinked, his heart hammering against his ribs. It was just a trick of the light, the warped glass. It had to be.

“Did you see that?” Toeless whispered, grabbing Reg’s arm. His face was pale as bone.

“See what?” Reg asked, though he knew.

“In that puddle,” Toeless pointed with a trembling finger at a slick of stagnant water near the dumpster. “I saw… me. But I was all twisted. Like… like a skeleton screaming.”

The visions were a shared hallucination, then. Or worse. They were hauntings. The effigy wasn’t just marking them; it was showing them glimpses of what they were becoming. The monstrous apparitions lurking in the shadows were their own futures.

Shaking off the terror, Reg forced himself to focus. The shop. Maggie. He moved to the back door, a heavy, steel-plated thing. He put his ear against it, listening.

Nothing.

The silence was absolute. Not the peaceful quiet of an empty building, but a dead, heavy silence. A held-breath silence. There were no sounds from the apartment upstairs, no hum of a refrigerator, no muffled television. It was the most terrifying sound he had ever heard.

He tried the handle. It was locked, solid as the brick wall around it. He knocked, his knuckles rapping sharply against the cold metal. The sound was swallowed by the alley, by the oppressive quiet.

He knocked again, harder this time. “Maggie! Maggie, open up! We need to talk to you!”

Only the silence answered. Eerie. Unnatural.

Reg looked at Toeless, his own fear mirrored in the kid's wide eyes. They weren't just outside a closed pawnshop anymore. They were standing on the threshold of a tomb. Something was terribly wrong inside, and the cold stone in Reg's pocket felt like it was humming with a terrible, triumphant satisfaction.