The building had clearly been the product of a prolonged effort amongst the town’s lunatics, surpassing most of its constructed peers in both scale and vision. Whatever the purpose intended for the structure, I was fairly certain the builders wouldn’t find its current inhabitant and his dark enterprise too far removed from the spirit of their collaboration, if not its specific design. The outline of the thing seemed organic and fluid against the much steadier darkness that was already falling thick and heavy from the sky. It gave the distinct impression of slow but purposeful movement. The windows were situated with no discernible logic, honeycombing the sides of the building like barnacles spread wide across a massive and deformed whale, allowing for only the dimmest glow of electric light to escape their unwashed purview. The entire place seemed to rise with some trouble into the sky, as if overburdened with swelling madness, having to stoop and bow in places to achieve its desired place alongside the waxing moon.
I was granted passage to the keep amicably enough, not having to contend with any clever traps or surprise attacks once I parted the tall doors and stepped inside. The darkness beyond the threshold was wild and untamed. Having once sheltered the city’s lunatics made it impetuous and brazen, daring the light to chase it into the house of madness where it could smother and snuff out the rays of the sun. It would serve me well.
The silence, on the other hand, was fledgling and timid. It had only been renewed recently, quite possibly in the wake of screams echoing from somewhere deep within the structure that madness wrought—one of the many consequences of having one’s skin removed. It too would serve me as well, if only out of fear.
I slipped into the gloom, happy for the comfort of unseen things. Soon I would stand before the skin-switcher in all his patchwork glory, though I again felt the impending regret that I would soon free the wretched world of an artist’s vision. Yet, something about coming so close to the end of the game made me more comfortable with the fact.
I reached a collection of rooms where blood had recently been spilled—carnage and combat had worked fresh scars into the worried walls. Wolves had clashed here, and I had great confidence as to who had arisen the victor. My mind filled in the bare spaces between the butchery with the great hunters. The shadows scribbled across the theatre of violence gave form to the desperate battle. The blood spatter and broken walls revealed a fierce duel that played out before me in such detail, it felt as though I were there. I heard the clash of steel and the crack of bone, I smelled the sweat and blood as it rained to the floor. I felt the rage and pain and bloodlust of two creatures gone mad by the beauty of violence.
My reverie nearly cost dearly as a bullet buried itself in the wall inches from my head. I returned to the darkness like a shadow rejoining the night. Another bullet found the wall. The hunter was firing blind. The gunshot served as my guide, and I followed it to my destination. My sisters tore a crimson smile across the hunter’s face so wide, it would have required two sets of teeth to fill it. My whirring siblings moved with red smiles to his belly, dancing quietly to the dying rhythms within his quivering body. I allowed the hunter-turned-art’s weight to gently wrest my work from my sister’s warm teeth, laying it upon the soft glistening pillow of worried bowels.
The hunter’s gun assured me he was not the skin-switcher. I was glad of it, for I had hoped for a better introduction. Clearly, I wasn’t the only one stalking Hide’s lair. The Shepherd was drawing us all together—hunters hunting hunters, hunting hunters.
The gunshot was like so much blood in shark-haunted waters. More opponents converged, moving through my carefully laid webs of silence. Someone tried to slink into the room, traveling within the wide shadows leaking from the hallway. I closed my hand around his throat, eliciting a wet pop as I hauled him from the floor and stuffed him into a small heating vent. I lifted myself into a nearby hole in the ceiling and crawled under the cracked skin of the structure, looking down into the hallway outside. The ruined hunter I abandoned to the heating vent was slowly expiring to the rasp of his own fading breath, and the wheezing had the pleasant effect of concentrating the attention of the other hunters. They were gathering like shadows at dusk, lurking the hidey holes about the hallway. I sought out the fat knot of electrical organs that supplied the hallway with its grubby effulgence. When the hunters discovered each other and began to emerge from the shadows, my sister severed the lights, and I retired from the ceiling to the blacked-out spaces beneath me.
An infant silence was born into the spaces left behind by the din of our violence, revealing a gory chimera, spread wide and red upon the floor, made from the severed forms of a dozen victims. I moved beyond the coagulating hallway, covered in the paints and clays of my craft, hoping to discover even greater bounties of murder and men.
I was additionally excited over the discovery I’d made while piecing together my latest art piece. I realized not a one of them were Wolves. These crazed knife-wielders and gunfighters were something altogether different and equally wonderful—White Wigs, or just Wigs, as I’d heard them called. They were of course the unfortunate survivors of attempts to recover memories of the Great Darkness using hypnosis. Generally, such persons died during the process, the strain of recalling such unmitigated madness causing their hair to turn winter white and producing a facial expression that outlined a fear incapable of being halted by human heads. Yet there had been cases, however infrequently, of individuals surviving the hypnotical process, if not the general aesthetic changes that were so often associated with it. These persons were invariably raving lunatics, loudly expressing the side effects of senselessness as they ran naked and bleached through the world. To find one such creature was rare, but to find so many as had attacked me—and working together, besides—was completely unheard of. Yet Willard was likely a Mecca for the mad, so my incredulity quickly faded, leaving behind only the hope of encountering more of the fascinating, whited creatures.
I slowed my pace through the structure, hoping to give the renewed darkness time to return my spent vigor. My enthusiasm for the coming event was undiminished despite the recent excitement, but my body was weary from its work. When I saw light in a distant hallway, I knew the moment of our meeting was almost upon me. I drew up to the lit spaces, wrapped in a thick plume of shadow and silence, and beheld an amazing gallery of beasts.
These were not the low creatures of the earth, but the great loping princes of the hunt—wolves, cougars, even a lion. I wondered if I would be dressed in such finery. They were all in cages lining the walls of what seemed an antechamber to a much larger room. The perfume of death swelled thickly from the spaces beyond the showroom. I entered the final chamber, relishing each moment.
The room contained wonders piled atop wonders—hunters dressed in the skins of predatory beasts, and beasts dressed in the skins of hunters. They were all displayed atop crumbling tables in the middle of the massive room. Each was backlit by rusty spotlights, which threw wicked shadows upon the walls, revealing dream and dreamer connected through an umbilicus of shadow stretching between them, inextricably binding the two beings—perhaps even drawing them closer together. I approached the center of the display, where loomed a great monster dressed in the leathers of several hunters. Curious about the creature that warranted such honor, I reached out to examine it.
I felt pain before I felt stupidity. The monster was none other than Mister Hide, and he greeted me with a long blade to my abdomen. Thankfully, I had instinctively turned, denying the blade access to any favored organs, but the impact forced my eager sisters from my grasp. I seized another blade bound for my throat with a naked hand, and the monstrous Wolf lifted me high off the ground by his knives—I could only imagine the wonderful shadow we cast upon the wall.
The hunter’s enormous strength rivaled my own, but I was filled with restless dream and would not be dressed in beasts, no matter how high the honor. I forced the blade in my hand into my shoulder and reached back to
revive my father. My dark benefactor roared to life, descending deeply into the patchwork hunter’s shoulder. Hide fell to his knees, releasing me from his blades, and I returned to the ground. We drew up in front of each other, two monsters from a glorious nightmare, and for a brief moment the call of a ravening dream remitted its claim upon us. We could barely remember the strange stars that led us to this twisted city of madness, but the hunger beyond the world was soon renewed, and the distance between us shrank.
I returned my father to his rest. Not to be outdone by the hunter’s earlier display of strength, I seized my quarry about his neck as we grappled, and stole him from the earth. I heaved him into his display of skin-changers, many of whom were modeled with their blades held out in front of their stiffened corpses. The hunter slammed into the waiting wall of knives, his recent victims marshaling one final attack from beyond the grave. The terrible Wolf rose from the pile of monsters, hurling one of the demonic mannequins at me. I easily weathered the half-hearted attack, but Hide was already recovering from my assault.
I charged, driving my shoulder into his stomach. Taking him from his feet, I smashed him through tables, benches, man-monsters, and four-legged beast-men. His back crashed hard against the stone wall, jarring his knives from his hands. Before I could complement my attack, the hunter knotted his fists and rained them down upon my back. I brought my own fist swinging upward, cracking Hide’s jaw and throwing his bulk to the side.
We staggered away from each other, smiles on our bloodied faces from such a marvelous battle. Yet before we could renew our enjoyment for the sport of Wolves, sounds of chaos filled the air. In moments, dozens of White Wigs flooded the chamber.
Laughably unbalanced, they proceeded to cartwheel and roll and skip a thick circle around us. Hide and I glanced at each other, each thinking the other responsible for the intrusion. Suddenly, the horde of pale lunatics parted, making way for a creature of markedly higher pedigree. He was stately for a madman, even poetic. There was an almost biblical quality to his presence—authority mixed with fear and wonder, all of it balanced upon the sharpened edge of a single ridiculous idea.
I was immediately glad of the white-haired creature’s arrival, whose otherworldly feel was much compounded by his strange attire. He wore a straitjacket repurposed into a serviceable coat, and in his right hand he held a long butterfly net. All of it he topped off with a tiny tinfoil crown, glittering despite the wayward lighting.
The madman drew himself up and addressed the chamber. “This silly contest of Wolves is hereby disbanded by my decree, the Lord of Lollipops, and the divine right of the Talking Vegetables Who Haveth No Names, and by the authority of several other really important folks, all of whom have names that begin with extremely big, blood-dripping capital letters. With this royal broccoli-mation set forth, we will now proceed to the turning inside-out of you two gentlemen until you mostly resemble a fat red wad of half-chewed taffy.” He tapped the butt of his butterfly net on the ground solemnly. “Sound good?”
Hide and I glanced at each other again, this time in amazement. Before either of us could answer, the lunatic began again. “I’m just joshing you, my great big friends. But we do have to take you to see someone really special, someone who will change the world, one person at a time. Will you gentlemen please follow me?”
We were immediately seized upon by the nearby Wigs. Neither of us resisted their efforts, as we were now more curious than alarmed. We allowed the throng to usher us into the darkness, the Lord of Lollipops in the lead. My fellow Wolf smiled—for the moment, at least, we were a team.
Stark points of pallidity marched through the secret places of the lurching structure, revealing passages quite possibly unknown to even its latest renter and my current ally against the White Wigs, Mister Hide. He floated head and shoulders above the milling lunatics, his bust a chiseled ode to strength and discipline as it glided upon the tussled mass of white clouds. The master skinner must have been in his purest glory, surrounded as he was by so many appropriately upholstered individuals. Occasionally smirking at me, my fellow Wolf seemed content to see this next chapter in our contest to some measure of conclusion, barring some overt attempt on his or my life, of course. Neither of us would tolerate the creatures attempting to steal our respective thunder—he and I would be felled only by the other, no exceptions.
The passage widened, revealing a large multi-roomed laboratory—a highly articulate complex filled with dated scientific standards, admitting to atrocities most commonly found in the old Wasting Houses. Most notably, forced human experimentation. Counting lunatics for guinea pigs had always been a staple of simple human depravity, and while science had enjoyed some success at covering up its sadism beneath the laundered linens of modernism, its motives were no less primitive for the sophistication of the attempt.
The rooms continued to bloom in the widening darkness, extolling the vices and devices of unbridled scientific debauchery—technologies born of poisoned curiosity, assembled in the shadow of morality, where wickedness pretends at progress. However, a more recent calculi of scientism embellished the erudite aesthetic, a darkened intent even fouler than those currently informing the vintage deprivations behind the rusted machines. A strange assemblage of newer apparatuses hummed in an out of older counterparts—the glint of microchips decorated steam-powered cuckoo clocks, server banks with their whirring fans and sprouts of wiring sat housed in old metal computing cabinets, and robotic arms of shining metal replaced the older stock of untoward utensils. All of the stuff occupied the very deepest regions of the cave of science, as if the superior depth were a metaphor for their cavernous range of deadly effects.
After taking an actor’s bow to the applause of lunatics and tipping his tiny tin crown, the Prince of Wigs welcomed Hide and me to the “Womb of Wildest and Darkest Rediscovery.” The spectacle was so wonderfully ridiculous that I nearly missed the figure standing atop the length of twisting stairs behind the crowned madman. The individual wore a pristine black apron overtop a neatly pressed suit—the type an alienist of yore might have been seen wearing while wandering the foggy streets of London. He also wore an impenetrable black veil over his face, its blackness broken only by a gleaming monocle anchored by a thin length of silver attached to a lapel.
Continuing in the same preposterous tone and manner as before, the royal wig proceeded to introduce the figure atop the stairs. “Allow me to introduce to you a man who will replace the secret stars to their rightful owners, return voice to the silent stones, and once again allow madness to replace mathematics. I give you the great and glorious Doctor Coldglow!” Again the lunatics yelped and hooted their approval. I clapped heartily, as I found the entire show quite pleasing. Also, I’m no admirer of mathematics—numbers are exasperating and off-putting.
In the fashion of a carnival barker, Doctor Coldglow assumed the spotlight with great aplomb, his voice flourishing like the dawn, its thriving and trilling tones adding a touch of brilliance to the frail track lighting. Augmenting his sweeping gestures, the doctor brandished a long black cane capped with a bulb of cleanest silver. He wielded the instrument like a conductor’s baton, cultivating the sonic posture of his voice with a deftness that bespoke timeless practice.
I stood riveted to the Doctor’s radiant words. “You have come to this place by no miscalculation of fate nor the amateurism of chance, that feckless brother to chaos who would keep his worthless wits. Nay, you come by this hatchery of hallowed hoopla by nothing less than the chanceless, fateless mystery of madness. Unheeded yet instructed, paradoxically prodded into place, you two have arrived at precisely the perfect point—to be made into ivory-headed gods of the impossibly possible.
“Recall if you dare, those dark beautiful days that lie trapped behind layers of forgetful firmament. Take off your funeral skins and march back into the mouth of that living madness, where wonders and glory combine with awe to create perpetual bliss—the perfect ignorance
. Become ancient children wincing at the wonder of it all, guaranteed never to understand, but only to skip stones into endless seas and run forever into a perpetually melting twilight.
“Please, step right up and take your places among the intrepid explorers of the Great Darkness, that time when men flew to the moon on wings of wishes and wax, and the night stole into the vaults of forever.”
I climbed the stairs almost unconsciously, snatched into the orbit of the greatest mystery ever to set a riddle upon the dead earth. My new view high above the crowd included an expansive upper area, the floor and walls of which were a rusty steel web of interlocking catwalks and exposed joists, all of it supporting a massive dome carved from dirty white marble. Peering through the grated floor afforded me a look at those who had failed to survive their brush with the darkened past—dozens of white-haired corpses lay piled into the subterranean darkness, falling only a few feet shy of the crisscrossing catwalks. How the Wigs had managed to diminish the smell was no less a mystery than the Great Darkness itself.
Forming the nucleus of the sprawling house of machinery sat a lone examination chair, large and leather and made for reclining. The contraption would have been right at home in the alien headquarters of any 1950s science fiction movie, where the hokum of past notions of the future enjoyed a lengthy and well-deserved heyday. But here in the tangled innards of a Wasting House-turned-tannery, it was a rarified work of art.
“My, aren’t you the eager beaver, my fine gigantic friend!” Doctor Coldglow’s dark cane swept my attention to the comfortable looking chair, its silver top like the glowing tip of a deep-sea predator’s organic lure. “Why, just sit down right there and let the machine steal you away!” There was no danger here, merely the opportunity of a lifetime—the second such opportunity I’d been presented so far. I made my way to the chair, eager to start my journey.
The Red Son Page 32
