Preface: Falling
Mia Lannigan’s eyes flew open and she looked around the confined space of the small jetliner. Her speckled green eyes scanned her surroundings, scrutinizing every inch. Her long red hair fell damp against her face and she felt cold, wet and muddled.
Had she been out in the rain?
Her arms and legs ached; as if she had been running, or playing a bit too much football. To her left, she could just peer out one of the small windows, where rain pounded onto its surface. Though she couldn’t hear it, she knew that loud claps of thunder accompanied the random, sparse flashes of lightning that cut across the dark sky.
Why was she on this plane? Why was her mouth dry with fear, and why were her hands cuffed in her lap? Mia, of course, knew that there must be answers to all of these questions, but she simply couldn’t remember them.
Despite her confusion, Mia found the fog clouding her mind was rapidly dissipating. She looked ahead, to the front of the cabin where a strikingly lean man stood in a sharp black suit. She knew, somehow, that she had seen this man before. She knew she didn’t much like him.
The man in the suit leered, his cold eyes never leaving her. If Mia knew anything she knew she didn’t want to be here.
The vague drub of a door closing was a welcome relief from the constant hum of the plane’s engines. Mia turned to look behind her, as best she could. She was met by the sight of another man, dressed in a black uniform, ambling towards her. He carried a large jar with a great amount of clear liquid in it, which swished tranquilly as he approached. Immediately, Mia noticed there was something wrong with the man. His skin was a sickly green and there were two large metal rods extruding from the flesh of his temples. His eyes were, to Mia, the worst. Wrinkled, rotting and unmoving, they told her what was awry. She couldn’t explain it, and she didn’t want to believe it, but there was no doubt; this man was dead.
He came to stand directly beside Mia, holding out the container a little more. A pale, wrinkled head swivelled in the jar to look at Mia, smiling wickedly as it did so.
’Zubject fourteen!’ the head exclaimed in a harsh, overpowering German accent. ‘Vat good fortune zat our friend Zlimethorn could lead us to you!’ he smiled, nodding to the man in the sharp suit, who still stared at Mia.
He took a pedantic step towards her and the disembodied head.
’I don’t want to impose on you Baron, but this needs to be done quickly... Mia has been missing for quite a while, and when a thirteen year old girl goes missing, people tend to start looking promptly... Fanatically, even.’ He smiled again and shrugged. ‘Besides... my services are needed elsewhere. I’ll get the information from her and we can all go away happy...’
’Ve shall cut ze head open at vunce!’ the Baron agreed, sticking his nose high in the air, or rather, the gooey liquid in which it somehow... lived.
’Of course, Baron, of course,’ the slick dressed man said, stepping up beside the head in a jar. He bent down, reaching towards Mia, long claws slowly drifting through the flesh of his fingertips.
He inched closer, his cold eyes locking with Mia’s. His stare unwavering: His smile, revolting.
As his claws drew closer to her forehead, she held no illusions as to what was about to happen.
Mia could taste the fear as it overwhelmed her, freezing her to her seat. Thoughts were pounding in her head, she was screaming inside, but unable to vocalize her terror. If she stayed where she was, these men were going to kill her!
’You are ze most important piece of ze puzzle, Mia Lannigan!’ the Baron smiled. ‘Yes! Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!’ he cackled, as he was carried toward the front of the plane.
The slick dressed man moved closer to Mia, his eyes ever vicious.
’Soon you vill have purpose, Mia!’ the Baron called. ’Soon you vill help remake all of creation!’
Mia’s heart pounded like a jackhammer, her breath came in sharp short bursts. She looked around frantically for any hope of reprieve, any hope of escape! Realization came over her like an arctic wind. She knew, in that moment, that no one would save her. She was doomed to die at the hands of madmen if she didn’t do something to free herself from this hell; this horrible nightmare.
A hand wrapped around her throat and Mia conjured all of the courage within herself. She brought her shackled hands up, striking the man’s wrists. He reeled backward and stumbled. Before the man could react, Mia swung her legs out, twisting on the chair so that she faced him directly. Frantically, she kicked, both her feet connecting with his shins. Without losing momentum, she swung her hands up, the shackles colliding with the man’s face.
Mia clambered to her feet before she registered the meaty crunch that had accompanied her attack. The man fell, clutching his nose as blood streamed through his fingers, spitting curses as he did. Mia bolted for the back of the plane, trying to get as far away from the man – and that head in the jar – as she could. Mia stumbled, her legs burning.
The bodiless head was screaming after her, ’Stop her! Kill her if you must, but stop her quickly! She is ze vun who knows!’
Mia faltered as she reached the stark white door to the back of the plane. She groped for the latch, her hand slipping. She looked back, wheezing, unable to steady herself. That sharp dressed man was climbing to his feet, blood still sluicing from his nose. His eyes flared as he sprinted towards her. Mia lost her strength and she slipped. She managed to grab hold of the door, barely holding herself up. She wrenched it open and hurried through, moving as fast as she could to close it.
A hand reached inside before she attained success. The man was screaming and thrashing against it. He bellowed in words and phrases that she couldn’t understand; the door opening more and more against the force of his assault.
Mia desperately pushed against the onslaught of the raving man. She looked to the hand that frenziedly reached for her and saw it shift and quiver. The skin split and fell away revealing something that she did not recognize as human. It was red and deformed with long black claws for fingertips.
A horrible feeling clawed its way through Mia, ripping back her hope in large swathes as she realized that this nightmare wouldn’t end. She knew she would die unless she could stop this monster from bursting through the door. But how?
Tears welled up in her eyes, but she squeezed them back, forcing herself to think, to hope. Desperately, she tried to steady her breathing against the terror that threatened to overcome her.
’Flesh and blood and life; I will strip all of these from you. Come back Mia, and die for a purpose! I’ll rip and tare and cut you! You’re secrets will die with you!’ the vicious creature brayed from beyond the door.
Mia’s head felt light as she forced herself, once more, to focus. Her eyes fell on the emergency hatch on the wall, not more than a pace or two from her. It was that door that led outside, to rain and night and sky. It was out there that she would be free from this nightmare. Mia knew she wasn’t thinking with complete sanity at the moment, but she also knew that she did not want to be ripped to shreds by a monster.
Outside, perhaps they were flying low, perhaps there was ocean beneath them. Outside, there was at least a sliver of hope. Even if it was false. Within the plane, there was only the promise of a gruesome death.
What was she thinking?
Moving more on instinct, rather than thought or plan, she jumped free of the door and careened into the plane’s emergency exit. She hadn’t even moved the handle of the door before the creature had burst into the back of the plane. It moved towards her as she pulled against the handle to no avail.
He slowed as he neared her, glowering down in triumph. Mia took in every horrible detail as she wrenched on the handle uselessly. Red, with a long gaunt face, black horns protruding from its head, the beast laughed, ‘Nothing can save you, Mia!’
She screamed as it lunged for her. She pulled back with all of her might on the emergency release, slipping as she did, slipping as it fell and the door of the plane, in a flash, jerked open. Out, into the rain and the night and the sky. Her hand desperately clung to the door as it was ripped free of the plane. She was whipped about, falling and twisting at a sickening speed. Mia could see the red monster trying to retreat, but his footing faltered as she clung to the falling door, the wind ripping at her.
It was no use, she was flung away from the door as easily as if it had been a hand swatting away a fly.
All that could be heard was wind. Horrible, deafening wind. Mia saw the red creature tumbling through the sky away from her, the slightest whimper could be heard coming from it. She looked away, not wanting to believe he was any more real than her decent through the rain and the sky.
Mia did, however, look down.
So far down...
There was no water, as she had foolishly hoped, and even if there had been, she knew they were travelling both too high and too fast for her to have had any chance of survival.
Instead of water, a sea of lights shone brightly beneath her. She moved faster and faster towards those lights, and they grew apart as she did, the city below taking on form.
She hurtled towards a dark part of the city, and as she descended, she saw cars, streets, trees and other things take shape. She noticed, in passing, that she was about to fall onto a large car parked, in, of all places, a parking lot, at a park.
The situation was surreal, but her fear wasn’t. She felt ashamed that her last thoughts were jumbled and of no significance. There was no more time left though, and her thoughts were a useless epitaph. She took one last deep breath...
Her back struck down first, hitting the hood of the gold car. She felt bones shattering as she came to a sudden stop. Every synapse, every nerve in Mia was firing frantically. The pain wasn’t explainable. Choking on the little air she did breathe, Mia trembled uncontrollably, the sight as frightening as the sensation. The concussion of her impact with the hood of the large gold car was thunderous. Her body had cratered in the hood and likely made the car little more than an over-expensive paperweight.
Mia didn’t know how, but she was still... a little... alive. At least she thought she was...
There had been a man sitting in the car. He was, of course, out of the vehicle now. She could see, just out of the corner of her eyes, the man walking about his car in shock, horrified, at the sight of it. She didn’t even know if the man had noticed her. He was carrying on quite a bit for just a car, Mia thought, in a state of extreme pain. He had, after all, only lost his car!
Mia, on the other hand, had lost so much more.
The man came into Mia’s blurred field of vision. He was looking at her with concern, terror shadowing his features. Mia was, in an odd sort of way, happy that she had not been forgotten. Given her circumstance, she found it best to look at the positive, and not the negative.
’Oh, well that’s horrifying!’ Mia heard the man say.
She tried to nod in agreement, but could not move, no matter how she tried. She was sure that all of her limbs were at impossible angles. Not that she could expect less from landing on a car from such height.
The man was speaking again, his face close to Mia’s. So much so, that even with her blurred vision she was able to make him out.
’Righto… Stay there,’ he said stupidly, in a smooth Irish accent. ‘I’ve got to get you somewhere that I can treat you... so just... stay there!’
If she had been able to speak, Mia thought she would have told the man she couldn’t move even if she had wanted to. The man gave her an uneasy smile, something she was sure told of her grave situation.
Mia wasn’t certain if it was just another truth in a horrible night, or the fact that she was delusional from loss of blood, blunt force trauma, and the overall fact that she was dying... but the man who spoke to her, the one that promised to help her, had a Jack O’ Lantern for a head.
The man gave her a quick thumbs-up, and moved out of sight again. Mia wasn’t sure she had seen the man correctly, but after seeing a disembodied head, she supposed that a man with a pumpkin on his head wasn’t any more unusual.
Mia heard the engine of the car beneath her roar to life. Shocked, she soon felt the car start to move forward. Was this man actually moving her to safety by simply driving around the city with her mangled body crushed into his hood?
All thoughts of such things began to fade from Mia’s mind. She felt so very tired, and she knew that she could not fight this feeling.
Her body crushed, broken, and bleeding out, she gave into the darkness that consumed her. She let go, and drifted away...
Mia Lannigan, on the hood of the Pumpkin-Headed man’s car, died...
