The Last Ritual

by S. A. Sidor

  I had concluded he must be hiding from me, when I felt his hand touch my shoulder.

  “Ahh!”

  “Sorry, did I frighten you? I am enjoying a cup of herbal tea. Would you like some?”

  He offered his teacup for me to smell.

  It was pungent, musky. I couldn’t imagine drinking it.

  “No, thank you.”

  “As you wish.” He was dressed in a flowing silk kaftan of pale yellow. A medley of other colors had been splashed and dried across its surface over the years, so that it was like a modern Balthazarr canvas he wore. “Let’s sit and talk. Not for too long. I have work to do.”

  I joined him on a pair of oversized ottomans in the middle of the room. All the curtains had been taken down. I had a dizzying sense of pitching over the end of the building as I looked out. Rain slithering on the glass. Shapes in the clouds. Billowing, gray, opaque.

  “I’ll get right to it,” I said. “Where’s Nina?” JHB? Who else? Two places at once.

  “Ha! You’re asking me? I thought she was your girlfriend.”

  “Do you know?” An edginess slid into my voice. I sound crazy, I thought.

  “I’m sure she’ll come back to you when she is ready. But I see you are serious and in pain. I am sorry I cannot help you. How is your painting going? Doing anything interesting?”

  “I’ve had a productive few months.” My surge of pride bothered me.

  “Excellent. The Colony has been good to you, no?”

  “They don’t talk to me any more.”

  “Talk is not the only way to communicate. You are making art. That’s what’s important.”

  He sipped his horrible tea. I could smell it on his breath, like rotten flowers.

  “What is going on in Arkham?” I asked. “Why are you really here? Don’t lie to me.”

  “There are no lies. Only stories… pictures… our fantasies.”

  I shifted on my cushion. I could not find a comfortable position. My muscles ached. I had a new headache sprouting. “I know what happened at the Clover Club wasn’t simply a case of hypnotism. You did something… something real…”

  “We manufacture reality. Make it new every day on the assembly line of a shared consciousness. But truth is what I dream it is. There is no such thing as a fiction. My dreams are as real as their bricks. I am going to use my dreams to smash the windows of this world. Look around you. It is a dead universe we struggle to survive in, Alden. A graveyard only capable of breeding more graves. They will fill the earth with death. But not I. Balthazarr wants no part of their scheming. I am a destroyer and a creator. I annihilate death and replace it with my art.”

  He looked totally serene as he told me this. My spine was twisted, stiffening. “You are trying to break reality.” I mopped my forehead. The suite was humid as a greenhouse.

  “That’s one way of putting it. Ask yourself, whose reality? Not mine, I guarantee you that. Politicians, generals, and businessmen conceived this reality. I reject it. I demand a revolution. Artists, dreamers, and the so-called mad people will have their chance. Reality must be broken.” He finished his tea, placing the cup on the floor. He fluffed out his tunic.

  “Is that what your paintings do?”

  “Paintings? Yes, but they are so much more. Your thinking is too small. We must be big to triumph in these days of modern wonders. Live boldly.” He spread his arms out.

  “I’m a painter. I might even be a surrealist like you. ‘Live boldly’. What does that even mean?” I loosened my tie. My head throbbed. I felt the veins under my skin, netting my skull.

  “It is about time. Paintings, novels, sculpture, poetry, films… any work wrought by the mind and human hands. Once we conquer time, everything becomes meaningless. My life’s work is digging an escape tunnel out from this dimension, my reality prison cell. My knuckles are bloody from tunneling out of their sterile world. When I go out, I’m leaving the Gate open for whatever haunts the other dimension to come in. It is of no concern to me! Come with me, Alden. Let’s break out together. Everything is death except for dreams. We are artists. You work for my dreams. I work for yours. Together, we become the future. Our work will live for eternity. There isn’t much time left.”

  I took off my jacket and folded it across my knees. Outside the windows, the distant grayed buildings appeared to be warping. “The night of Preston’s party, when we were alone in Independence Park, you asked me if I thought you were crazy. I still don’t know how to answer that question.”

  “Fair enough. That is how you choose to interpret me. I am too busy to be a critic.”

  “What comes next? What is your best reasonable alternative?”

  The question bored Balthazarr. “If reason gave us this, what good is reason? Don’t you want to see something new? Even if it’s nothing? I have no plan. Perhaps we shall try chaos. If there is no order, then everyone has the power of a god. Do you want that too?”

  “I’ve heard enough.” I got up, nearly losing my balance. I caught myself teetering.

  “You have everything you need to decide. I hope you make a wise choice.”

  Without answering him, or saying goodbye, I turned and left the suite. The elevator operator was waiting for me at the end of the hallway. His empty smile stretched wide like a mask. His blank eyes never blinking. I left the hotel, but the feeling of vertigo and the aroma of Balthazarr’s tea lingered.

  Chapter Thirty

  Preston called me the next day. He had decided to join his parents down at their winter home in West Palm Beach. They built a place there during the war, when the Mediterranean became inhospitably treacherous. The Florida land boom was over; real estate prices were dropping, but the Fairmonts had enough cash and diversity in their investments to ride things out. Preston had planned to travel south for some sun and leisure after his bachelor party, but I was stunned when I heard him say he’d left town by train the very next day. Doubly surprising was the news that Minnie left with him. Why hadn’t they sent any word to me?

  “Oakesy, we need to tell you something. It’s terribly embarrassing. Shameful, really.”

  “What is it?”

  “We’ve called off the wedding,” he said. His voice was jarring. A hoarse croak.

  “Called it off. I’ve only just learned the date was changed. Why on earth…?” It was beyond belief. I’d come home from Europe. For this! If not for them, Nina might still be…

  “I’d rather not go into particulars. Father advised me to cool things off. Let’s say it’s postponed. Less grim, don’t you think?” Preston sounded so far away. Not the other end of the country, the end of the galaxy.

  I gazed out my window, combing my fingers though my hair. The Miskatonic ran fast with runoff. There were things floating in the water. Bloated, mottled. Rolling like fat barrels.

  “Is anyone sick?” I asked. My mouth felt dry. I licked my lips, papery and cracked.

  “No.” Preston echoed as if he’d fallen down a deep well. “I can’t talk much longer.”

  “Did you know Nina’s gone missing? Since the night of your bachelor party…”

  “Not Nina too.” He gasped. His words bounced off the walls of that murky well. I heard a deep, gravelly voice in the background. His father? Or someone else? A cacophony of other voices suddenly interrupted us, talking all at once.

  “Preston? Preston are you there?” I pressed the handset hard to my ear.

  “Get away.” That’s what I thought I heard him say. I can’t be certain. Not of what I heard or who said it. Too much static on the line, then the connection was cut off. Dead. I hung up.

  The following morning two letters arrived in my mailbox. One was from Preston and Minnie, their apologies and a notice of the cancellation of their ceremony.

  The other was an invitation.

  The honor of your presence is requested


  at Juan Hugo Balthazarr’s Masquerade

  In the Main Room

  At the Silver Gate Hotel

  Masks are required

  Midnight, March 27th, 1926

  The date and location were identical to Preston and Minnie’s aborted wedding.

  The time was later, of course.

  •••

  The days leading up to Balthazarr’s masquerade ball passed in a blur. From Oakwood, I received a delivery: my tuxedo and a note from Ro wishing me good times. New Colony was a hive of activity. Colonists who had shunned me in the months since Nina’s departure now showed a renewed camaraderie and friendliness in the hallways and walking on the grounds. I wrapped up my finished paintings for storage, and Roland was kind enough to pick them up and take them to the house for me, in case anything unexpected happened. I told him I was worried about a leaking roof. He knew better but didn’t ask questions. I wasn’t sure what was going to happen. I wanted my work salvaged in any case. I worked too hard to lose it all.

  I busied myself with a final piece that I planned to unveil at the ball. It was something I’d never attempted before, an arts and crafts project. Glue, paper, an elastic string.

  The day before the party I happened to see Balthazarr mixing with Colonists on the front lawn of the mansion. His piercing gaze locked on me as soon as I exited the building.

  I walked right up to him.

  He extricated himself from his conversation. The crowd moved off to give us privacy.

  “I got your reply. I am immensely pleased you are attending my event,” he said.

  “I had a chance to think about what you said to me that day at your penthouse. Well, I’ve made up my mind. I’m following you.”

  “Excellent, excellent. See you at the Silver Gate.”

  I don’t think he believed me. But that didn’t matter.

  •••

  The night of the ball, I put on my tux and took out my arts and crafts project to study it one last time. It was a full-face mask. I’d made it myself from papier mâché, glue, and paint. I put the mask on and checked my reflection in the mirror. It wasn’t perfect, but it suited my purpose. I thought about writing a letter to Mother and Father. You know, if things didn’t work out. But what would I possibly say? Would they believe me? In the end I decided against it. What would last, would last. All else was destined to be forgotten, lost in time.

  One final thing.

  I opened the drawer of my dresser. I moved aside my undershirts. I still had the gun I’d lifted off the tough guy in the hallway, the man Balthazarr tossed in the river. I wasn’t sure if he was dead or alive, that bully who went for a swim into the icy, onyx Miskatonic. What we saw dripping on the banks that night might’ve been him, or it might’ve easily been a monster made of nets and rats. Either way, I had his gun. I checked the bullets. Then I tucked it into the small of my back and covered it with my jacket.

  I was ready.

  I drove the Rolls-Royce to the hotel, parked it out front where everyone could see me.

  The Silver Gate was a real beauty. That night she looked white and shiny like an ocean liner, or a huge stone cliff covered with snow and ice. Maybe, from a certain angle, she looked like a wedding cake covered in diamonds. She sparkled to beat the band.

  Outside, the night air was fresh and clean. It would be a good night for sleeping.

  Inside, they’d filled the lobby with roses. Explosions of red everywhere you turned.

  I saw Colonists loitering in the lobby, smoking. They already had their masks on.

  “Hiya, Alden! Where’s your mask?”

  I held up a paper bag. “Got it right here. See you inside.”

  Balthazarr’s ball was in the Silver Gate’s main room. I hadn’t felt anything unusual the other times I entered the hotel. But I felt something now. A low, steady vibration humming from the structure itself, as if it were a tuning fork. I wondered how long ago the wheels of this scheme started turning, because Balthazarr and his Colonists weren’t acting alone in this. They were in the final phase of a long-range plan. This was the last ritual in a string of others. Was it global? Who knew how far the tendrils reached? But whatever entity they had been calling to across dimensions, sending out their blood-soaked signals… Whatever they called it… Yuyu-Va’badaa or the Un-Sun… the Falling Star… that shapeless void careening through space and time had been drawing nearer to Earth, and tonight, finally, they hoped it would arrive in glory. The Gate would open. They didn’t even try to hide it. The Silver Gate. I bet they had a good laugh at that. Hiding in plain sight, biding their time. As patient as they were deadly.

  The doors to the main room were shut. Masked sentinels guarded them.

  “You need to put on your mask,” one said to me. It was Portia’s voice, our downstairs neighbor, the sculptress who replaced Courtland Dunphy. Did she know how they killed him?

  I removed my mask from the paper bag and put it on.

  Portia drew in a sharp breath.

  “Can you dispose of this for me?” I asked.

  She took the bag but said nothing.

  I opened the doors and went inside.

  I could see why they wanted to keep outsiders from seeing the ballroom. They had removed all the tables and chairs. There was no bar, no banquet. Only the gleaming marble floor. From the ceiling hung lit chandeliers; tall black candles in wrought iron stands stood around the perimeter of the room, their wicks unburnt. The floor itself was the real stunner. Elaborate glyphs covered every available inch of tile. It must’ve taken them hours to create it, I thought. A small army of artists at work, following a mathematically precise occult diagram that was magnificently intricate. What was the purpose of this design?

  It wasn’t a map of any known universe.

  I don’t know what it was, to be honest. A symbol, or series of interlocking symbols, drawn on the floor is my best guess. In some places, the lines were poured in powders – rusty auburns, gray-speckled blacks, and bone whites. Brushstrokes of gold, silver, and red traced angles and spirals. At the center was a perfect circle. Within it, a falling star, the same symbol I’d seen before, dripped in wax at South Church and carved into Dunphy’s apartment door.

  Here, it appeared to be burned on the marble.

  If a visitor wandered into this room by mistake and didn’t look down, or notice the lack of furniture and refreshments, they might’ve thought it was just a bizarrely themed party. The attendees gathered in small conversational groups, smoking cigarettes, gossiping, killing time until things got swinging. I was the most shocking part of the night so far.

  It was my mask.

  Many of the masked chose to hide their eyes only, but I wore a full-face disguise.

  I’d done my best to get the features right, but the dead giveaway was my long, forked beard. I used hair clippings from a barbershop. Oh, I was too short and slim to be mistaken for the actual Balthazarr. But at a distance, especially in profile, a quick glance might lead someone to think I was the sorcerer, the Twister of the Coil. It was disrespectful, my mocking their leader. At worst, the mask was blasphemous.

  Balthazarr hadn’t made an appearance yet. That was who they were all waiting for.

  Well, one of the things they were waiting for, anyway.

  The chandeliers dimmed. The candles were lit. Music – a thin, eerie wailing of strings from an instrument I could not identify, and whose player remained concealed – began. Ah, the show is starting. I made a path to the middle, on the rim of the circle. The crowd parted before me. The sentinels entered, securing the doors behind them with chains and padlocks. A group of busy Colonists passed out robes. The masqueraders cloaked up.

  Someone handed me a robe. The garment was celestial blue.

  “I expected black,” I said.

  No one responded to my remark. I slipped the robe on.

 
; Juan Hugo Balthazarr knew how to make an entrance. Not from the background or some curtained wing off stage. No. He simply arrived inside the circle. Perhaps we were all hypnotized already. He glided among us, a moving blind spot. I don’t know how he did it.

  He was not the focus of my attention.

  Because Balthazarr did not arrive alone.

  Nina stood at his side.

  I could not breathe. My torso experienced a temporary paralysis. Worrying I might lose consciousness and sabotage my mission, I struck my fist against my chest. Slowly, I inhaled. Had she succumbed to the allure of this cult? She was too good, too strong. But there was no denying her standing there assisting Balthazarr. His companion in this sorcerous rite.

  Wisps of fragrant smoke floated in the room, scribbling up from bronze censers.

  Balthazarr raised his hands overhead.

  “New Colonists, allies, and benefactors… Welcome to the end of the world!”

  The crowd cheered.

  “This is a new day, the last day. We call to the Un-Sun, the Falling Star. We open the Gate for Yuyu-Va’bdaa. The old ways of reason, order, and logic are no more. We hunger for chaos and thirst for insanity, so that we may lose the burden of our servitude and be free from the dungeon of laws, rules, and commandments. Lies are true. We are our own gods.”

  The masked congregants fell to their knees.

  All except for me.

  I stood there, wearing Balthazarr’s face.

  My plan was to shoot him, to empty my pistol into his chest. An artistic statement as well as an assassination. What was more surreal than Balthazarr killing Balthazarr? But I hadn’t expected Nina to be there. I was willing to take a chance with my personal escape from the scene. Her survival was another matter. Through the eyeholes of my mask I tried to make sense of her. She didn’t seem to recognize me. How would she? All the people wore robes, and no part of my true face showed. Nina wasn’t looking at anyone, just staring straight out. Her pupils were dilated. Entranced, that much I judged for certain, perhaps they’d drugged her. When did they catch her that night? How? It didn’t matter, not now.