Chapter 9: A Message from the Patron

Chapter 9: A Message from the Patron

Months crawled by, each day a new layer of grey ash settling over the raw, burning memory of Beasts O’ Field Court. The world had moved on, but the three of them were stuck, frozen in the sickly yellow light of that impossible porch. Liam had thrown himself into his garage, the familiar logic of engines and machinery a bulwark against the illogical horror that haunted his nights. Chloe had withdrawn completely, a ghost in her own life, deferring her semester at the university.

And Elara… Elara had stopped filming.

Her camera, once an extension of her own eye, now felt like a malevolent object. Sometimes, when she looked through the viewfinder, she saw things—a flicker of bruised purple in the corner of the frame, a brief, impossible distortion in the geometry of a room. The camera had seen the truth, and now it refused to lie. It sat on her desk, gathering dust, a silent monument to a thesis film that would never be made.

She lived in a state of frayed, exhausted vigilance. Every creak of her apartment building, every shadow that moved too quickly in her peripheral vision, sent a jolt of ice through her veins. The world no longer felt solid. It felt like a stage set, flimsy and temporary, and she was constantly waiting for the backdrop to tear open and reveal the churning chaos behind it.

She was staring at the water stain on her ceiling—a habit she’d picked up in the sheriff’s station—when the air in the room changed. It wasn’t a sound or a movement. It was a sudden drop in pressure, a thickening of the atmosphere, as if all the oxygen had been replaced by something older and heavier.

She wasn’t alone.

Elara’s head snapped towards the door. Standing by her cluttered bookshelf, as if she had been there all along, was the Patron.

She looked exactly as she had that first night, an ageless, immaculate figure in a perfectly tailored dark suit. Not a single dark hair was out of place. But the polite, eccentric mask was gone. The woman who stood in her apartment now was not playing a role. The amusement in her eyes was no longer just a quirk; it was ancient, cosmic, and utterly devoid of anything resembling human empathy. It was the look of a scientist observing a particularly interesting mold bloom in a petri dish. The power radiating from her was a palpable force, pressing down on Elara, making it hard to breathe.

“Ms. Vance,” the Patron said, her voice the same smooth, calm tone as before, yet it seemed to resonate not in the air, but directly inside Elara’s skull. “I trust you’ve been well.”

Elara’s heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic, trapped bird. Her hand instinctively came up, her thumb and forefinger forming a frame, a desperate, reflexive attempt to put a lens between herself and this impossible reality.

“What do you want?” Elara’s voice was a ragged whisper.

The Patron’s lips curved into a smile that did not touch her glittering eyes. “To settle our account, of course. A deal is a deal.”

She placed a sleek, black briefcase on Elara’s cluttered coffee table, right beside a stack of overdue library books on film theory. The metallic click of the latches echoed in the silent room like gunshots. She opened it. Inside, neat stacks of hundred-dollar bills sat, pristine and perfect. It was another twenty thousand dollars. The rest of their payment.

“I believe this fulfills our contract,” the Patron said, her tone light, as if discussing catering for a party.

Elara stared at the money, then back at the woman’s serene face. The rage, which had been simmering under her fear for months, finally boiled over.

“Our contract?” she spat. “You sent us there to die. You fed my friend to… to whatever that thing was.”

The Patron’s smile didn’t waver. In fact, it seemed to grow warmer, more genuine, which was somehow the most terrifying thing of all.

“Oh, no, Ms. Vance. You misunderstand completely,” she said, her voice laced with the condescending patience of a teacher explaining a simple concept to a child. “I sent you there to perform. And the performance was a breathtaking success. Truly. I’ve been staging these little productions for a very, very long time, and yours was a standout. A masterpiece of raw, authentic emotion.”

She began to pace the small room, her movements fluid and predatory. “Liam’s stoic, pragmatic denial in the face of the impossible? A fascinating portrait of humanity’s stubborn adherence to a reality that is, shall we say, negotiable. Chloe’s grief? So pure, so wonderfully tragic. Your own artistic terror, trying to capture the sublime even as it was breaking your mind? Exquisite.”

She paused, turning to face Elara, her eyes glittering. “But Kian… ah, Kian. He was the triumph. The finale.”

“You murdered him,” Elara choked out.

“Murdered?” The Patron laughed, a soft, chiming sound that held no humor. “My dear girl, you saw it with your own eyes. He wasn't a victim. He was a success. He was the only one of you who truly understood the material. He didn’t just read the lines; he listened to the silence between them. He got the joke.”

She leaned in, her voice dropping to an intimate, conspiratorial whisper. “That door wasn’t an exit. It was an entrance. Kian Thorne wasn't destroyed. He was hired. He’s moved on to a much grander stage, a much more demanding audience. He has become part of a far greater work of art. It’s what he always wanted, wasn’t it? To be part of something timeless, something true.”

The words hit Elara with the force of a physical blow. The world tilted, the floor seeming to drop away beneath her. Kian wasn’t a martyr. He wasn’t a victim. In the horrifying, alien cosmology of the Patron, he was a prodigy who had just graduated. He hadn’t been eaten by the monster. He had joined the troupe.

Elara’s mind flashed back to the churning, bruised void in the doorway, and for the first time, she felt not terror, but a profound, soul-deep nausea. That was Kian’s new stage. That was his 'truth'.

The Patron straightened up, her business apparently concluded. She gestured to the briefcase. “The money is yours. A bonus, for a truly unforgettable show.”

She walked towards the door, then paused, her hand on the knob, and looked back at Elara, who was frozen in place, her mind reeling.

“A piece of professional advice, Ms. Vance, from one artist to another,” the Patron said, her smile returning, sharp and predatory. “Your friend made the classic mistake of thinking the performance ever ends. It doesn’t. The curtain never truly falls. So whatever you do…”

Her eyes seemed to pierce through Elara, seeing every fear, every scar, every broken piece of her.

“…never stop being part of the show.”

Elara blinked, and in that split second, the Patron was gone. The door was closed and locked. The air in the room was thin and normal again. The only evidence she had ever been there was the black briefcase on the table, open and overflowing with blood money.

The Patron’s final words hung in the air, no longer advice, but a sentence. A life sentence. It wasn't a warning. It was an instruction. And as Elara stared at the obscene amount of cash that had cost her friend his soul, she understood. This wasn’t an ending. It was an intermission.