Chapter 41
Taylor would have liked to say an epic battle was fought and won, but the truth was somewhat more anticlimactic than that.
Her prepared spiders caught the moment when the serpent slithered out from behind the statue, a hole in the side opening up in the stone to allow it through. The serpent was enormous, deadly and smelly.
“What will you do now?” Tom gloated.
Taylor didn’t have an answer for him. At least not in words.
She’d been feeding information to Aragog, helping him navigate the dark ceiling. Information which he decided to use.
Aragog jumped down without being prompted or nudged. He didn’t just let go, but launched himself like a house-sized cannonball toward the snake. The impact felt like it should have shaken the whole room. Both monsters rolled into the darkness beyond the flickering green light.
At the same time, Taylor swarmed the room with all the bugs she’d brought and the ones she collected down here. Strangely enough, most of the bugs living in the depths had adapted to living near the Horror. If they weren’t blind and perceived the world through different senses, they had ways to shut down their vision.
She used those, swarming the snake’s head, crawling into its eyes, biting and tearing, filling its mouth and trying to choke the thing alive.
Her normal bugs created a wall of chittering death between her and Tom. She sent some of the bugs to bite and crawl on him, but the memory, aside from being spooked by the amount of bugs, wasn’t harmed.
She didn’t escape unharmed.
Her bugs died in droves before she managed to destroy the snake’s eyes. Taylor grunted, ignoring the blood seeping out of her nose, eyes and ears.
“What is this? What are you?” Tom looked around frantically. He tried going towards Ginny’s wand, but Taylor had her bugs carry it away from him.
Even Arabelle did her part. The spider jumped at Riddle’s face, pincers somehow managing to briefly stun the ghost.
“Get off me!” Tom yelled, flinging the spider away.
The Horror, now surrounded, blind and hurt, changed size, transforming into a noodle-sized snake. Taylor’s power did that thing it sometimes did, like it had just found a new toy. It had started to see the Horror not as a snake, but as a worm which she had full control over. Her power latched onto the Horror like a vice and the snake was hers, utterly and completely.
But not everything had worked like she had planned.
Hidden by the wall of bugs, Taylor tried to spirit Ginny away with her pixies, but Tom somehow sensed that.
“Stop!” he growled.
The man changed into some ghostly image of himself, shooting straight toward where Luna was helping move Ginny away.
In a split second, not even knowing why she did it, Taylor flung herself between Riddle and her friends.
The ghostly man crashed through her body. There was a brief moment of agony, and a horrifying laugh echoed inside her head. Taylor blacked out before she hit the ground.
Taylor blinked open her eyes.
She was in a place she’d never seen before. It was a place without end, shrouded in grey. Grey fog in the distance, grey stone beneath her bare feet. Grey sounds echoing in the corners of this world that didn’t exist. Grey winds rushing through her hair.
In front of her was Brunette-Taylor.
Her alter ego was clad in the black silk-bodysuit, insectoid mask covering her face, and yellow eyes staring from behind a mane of brown curls. Her movements reminded Taylor more of an insect than a person. Parts of her body didn’t move at all. They felt and looked like cracked TV static stones. What that was even meant Taylor had no idea.
The third person in this place was the strangest of them all.
It was like a person, cracked and split into seven different pieces, all rotting and decaying. Some of the pieces were close by, while others were far away. Each piece held a fragment of a person and it was like seeing a man changing into a monster. The first shard, Tom Riddle, was the one who looked the most human. The only difference was the red-flecked eyes.
In each shard after, the person became more deformed and monstrous.
“What have you done to me?” Riddle asked, trying to move, but his feet were stuck to the grey floor.
Taylor was curious too.
Brunette-Taylor flickered, like a static image in an old TV. When her form solidified again, she was grabbing Tom’s shard.
“Unhand me!” he cried out.
Brunette-Taylor’s mask opened like an insect maw. She bit down on the shard’s head, and slurped it like one does noodles, gross noise and all. The two nearby shards shuddered, but the faraway ones didn’t even seem to notice one of them was no more.
Taylor watched all that in fascinated horror.
Brunette-Taylor flickered again, showing up next to Taylor. Her maw was still open and there were bits of Tom sliding out of her mouth like melted, gooey chocolate. Still, Taylor didn’t feel afraid. She knew she should be, but she wasn’t.
She opened her arms, and like a kitten, Brunette-Taylor draped over her, pressing her face against hers and rubbing it up and down, like a, well, affectionate cat.
“Hullo,” Taylor tried. She didn’t think this person in front of her was the same girl from her dreams.
Brunette-Taylor stopped, her face snapping in a direction where there was nothing to see. She looked back at Taylor. A slimy forked tongue extended out, licking Taylor’s face and leaving her covered in goo. Brunette-Taylor then shoved her away…
…and Taylor was lying on the ground of the Chamber of Secrets, gasping for breath.
“Mother!” Arabelle was crawling all over Taylor, clicking desperately.
It took Taylor a moment to centre her thoughts. Whatever had happened, it seemed important, even if she didn’t know why yet.
She stilled her bugs, which had been buzzing angrily and swarming near her, and sent them back into the darkness. Taylor tried to look around, but had to pry her eyes open. The blood had clotted and made it difficult to see. Not far from where she had fallen, she saw Luna draped over a crying, desperate Ginny.
Dee and Dum, leading her troupe of pixies, had positioned themselves around the duo as if to protect them.
Taylor didn’t remember ordering them to do that.
Aragog had fallen at the far end of the Chamber. He was hurt and having trouble moving. Taylor knew he’d been bitten by the Horror, but most of the injuries she could feel in the giant spider were self-inflicted from his cannonball entrance.
Taylor wanted to attend to the big spider, but Ginny was her priority. She got up, ignoring the pain in her head, and scooped up Arabelle. She gently petted the spider.
“Thank you,” she whispered and Arabelle clicked happily.
When she got to her friends, Ginny was blubbering about how she’d hurt people and how she was the one who opened the Chamber. Her face was a blotchy mess of snot and tears.
Taylor tried to join in the hug, pulling both Luna and Ginny closer, but when Ginny saw her bloodied face, she started crying even more.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Taylor said, trying to sound firm, like her mum always did. “A memory of Voldemort was possessing you through the diary.”
Ginny gasped like Taylor had struck her. “You-know-who?” Her sobs turned to wails. “They’re going to send me to Azkaban!”
Nothing that Taylor did or said helped Ginny calm down.
Luna whispered into the redhead’s ear and slowly, Ginny stopped crying.
“I think we should take her away from here,” Luna said, looking around.
Taylor nodded. “I’ll check on Aragog.”
She did just that. Taylor gently placed Arabelle on top of Luna’s head, then hobbled into the darkness. On the way there, she scooped up the noodle-sized Horror. The thing was as pitiful as it could get. It had lost both eyes to her bugs, had several acromantula bites along its sinuous body and could barely breathe through all the squashed bugs inside it. Taylor wasn’t even sure it would survive.
“Queen,” Aragog said once she was close enough to hear. “You haven’t killed it yet.”
Taylor shook her head, wiping away blood from her face. “It’s mine now,” she said, dangling the Horror by the tail. “If it survives, it won’t be able to escape my grasp.”
Aragog chuckled. “A fitting end.”
“Taylor,” Taylor said. “My name is Taylor.”
Aragog tried to stand, but his legs gave out and he flopped back down with a wet thud. Several of his legs were broken and bleeding, and Aragog had numerous bite marks along his torso.
“It will take a few days to brew a new potion,” Taylor said, glancing at the dying spider. “But I’ll get you out.”
“Take my body back to the hollow,” he said with a rasp. “My brood will be happy to feast on my flesh.”
He stopped moving and was no more.
Taylor’s throat felt full and her face hot. She hadn’t intended for him to get hurt. Her plan had been to face the brunt of the attack, swarming the Horror with bugs and leaving Aragog to finish it. She hadn’t even had the chance to start when Aragog threw himself at the Horror.
She leaned forward, hugging the big lump. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
Taylor grabbed everything she could from the Chamber, not knowing when she’d have the chance to come back. Her bugs gathered the diary and Ginny’s wand. She collected Harry’s cloak. Her pixies pried out the glowy emeralds from the serpent’s eyes at the door, and a quick sweep with her bugs revealed a room that seemed to have been a laboratory of some kind. It was hidden behind a wall with no visible way to get through. What interested Taylor the most was the bookshelf at the far wall of the hidden room. It looked preserved and untouched by time.
“How do we leave?” Luna asked, still hugging Ginny.
“With help,” Taylor said.
She tried to lead them back toward the pipe, but her legs wobbled and Luna and Ginny had to prop Taylor up for the rest of the way. Taylor didn’t forget to collect pieces of shed skin on their way back. Dee and Dum leading the troupe of pixies were already waiting by the pipe.
The blue pixies drew Ginny’s attention so Taylor made introductions.
“That one is Dee, and this one is Dum.” Taylor looked at the rest of the pixies. “I don’t have a name for the others yet.”
“How are you doing this?” Ginny asked.
Taylor shook her head. “I’ll tell you later.” Maybe, she added in her head.
She divided the pixies in groups, each flying one girl up the pipe. The blue menaces were stronger than they looked.
The trip up was a lot more boring than the trip down, but at least Luna seemed to be enjoying herself, because she was giggling while petting and whispering to Arabelle.
Maybe a quarter of an hour later, the three girls were crawling out of the pipe.
The castle above was a mess. It was past dawn and a lot of students were already up and panicking. The news they were to go home didn’t make things easier.
The pixies took her spoils, except the diary, wand and cloak, and hid them inside her nest. Taylor would split them with Luna later. Dee carried the Horror out of the castle, leaving it stranded inside an abandoned tower.
She looked at the wall, considering what to do. She pointed her wand and whispered Reparo, closing the hole shut.
“If you can, don’t tell them where the Chamber is,” she said to her friends.
“Why?” Ginny asked, now back to sniffling.
“Aragog’s body is in there. I need to go back and take him to his nest. He asked for that, but I can’t do it if someone else takes his body first.”
“Aragog?” Ginny asked.
“A giant spider. He was very nice,” Luna said with a quiver in her voice, petting Arabelle.
“What do I say?” Ginny asked, looking down.
“Just tell them you don’t remember where the Chamber is.”
Ginny nodded.
Taylor helped both up, then led them towards a professor she hoped wouldn’t be like the others.
The group gathered attention. Students pointed and whispered. They were covered in slime and dirt, and blood, in Taylor’s case. Ginny, presumably, had been taken by the heir and should be missing.
Taylor ignored everyone, pulling her friends until they barged into Flitwick’s office.
“Professor! Professor!” she called out as soon as she was inside the room.
“What is it?” Flitwick came running from the back room only to stop dead in his tracks.
“We found Ginny!” Luna declared.
“To the hospital wing!” Flitwick squeaked, rushing over to where Taylor was.