by S. A. Sidor
I made a gambit to play along with the ritual for now.
“Unmask yourself, Alden,” Balthazarr said.
I obeyed.
Pain licked my fingertips. The mask was on fire. I dropped it to the floor and watched the paper curl and whiten to ash.
Nina’s wrists were crossed under the sleeves of her robe. When she drew them apart, I saw she held the cycloptic cane Balthazarr had used to orchestrate the ritual at the Clover Club. She raised the diabolic stick into the air.
“Balthazarr! Yuyu-Va’bdaa!” she cried.
“Nina! Yuyu-Va’bdaa!” Balthazarr replied.
“Balthazarr! Nina! Yuyu-Va’bdaa!” the kneeling supplicants repeated.
“Ebuma chtenff! Gnaiih goka gotha gof’nn!” Nina said, slamming the tip of the wooden ritualistic instrument into the floor. The outer boundaries of the ballroom drifted away. The candles became pinpricks of starlight. A darkness enshrouded us. Slowly, a pale greenish hue tainted the surrounding air.
No, Nina, no…
How was this woman my Nina?
She always ran ahead, I thought. Sometimes ahead, there is a trap.
Balthazarr pointed at me. I was pulled into the circle as if a rope were cinched around my body, and I could not resist its urgent tugging. Balthazarr wore his robe from Spain; the mirrors and shards of broken glass glittered, a galaxy in motion, breaking down, tumbling into oblivion.
“Where do I stand?” I asked him. My will was slipping. The puppet master pulled my strings. I was determined to fight him. But it was so much easier not to fight…
Balthazarr pointed to a glyph drawn on the marble, a cup with an oval balanced inside. “You are the final sacrifice,” he said to me. “The First Key.”
“And what is she?” I asked.
“I am the Bride,” Nina answered. “The Second Key.”
“Whose bride?” I asked.
Neither of them said a word.
A roar came from not far off. Its volume grew stronger until my eardrums ached.
The same roar I’d heard in the Clover Club. The fire-breather, the voice of a dragon flying through space to consume our human race. To swallow us like a moistened crumb.
Nina raised the cyclops stick. Its lidless eye glowed, an orb containing galaxies.
“This is the ritual. I am the Sorcerer,” Balthazarr said. “We are at the dawning of a new sun, never witnessed before by impotent human eyes, a sun that burns without light, that consumes all. I, the Twister of the Coil, open the Gate! Do you see it? Do you see?”
“We see!” the supplicants answered.
Our circle tilted on its axis – a disk floating free in outer space. The masqueraders clung to their own geometric platform as it lifted and fell, crest to trough, again and again, riding on a cosmic sea. Mirages materialized in the zone above us. Each vision a tableau of one of Arkham’s recent ritual murders. Dr Silva swinging from a lamppost, her pockets stuffed with witchweed. Udo Ganz unzipped of his tattooed skin. The Galinka sisters kicking their dancers’ legs as they burned on a pyre. The tramp bleeding outside a boxcar. Dunphy clutching a gargoyle horn as he plummeted toward the ground. Clark’s naked, headless corpse splayed beneath a telescope pointed at the stars…
Somewhere outside of linear time, the murders were still happening, would always be happening in a continuous, never-ending loop.
They flashed like lighthouse signals to Yuyu-Va’bdaa as it navigated the cosmos.
I saw the murders for what they were: impersonal, cold as a mechanism, tumblers in a lock, but also lights, like candles, stationed along a dark path.
They led to the Gate and they opened it, too.
Smoke-like tendrils began to form out of Balthazarr’s body. An array gathered around his head and as they solidified, they fashioned themselves into a spiked crown. From his hand sprung a long, three-pronged fork with which he stirred the air.
“Beholder from Beyond, God of Dimensions Unimagined, Lord and Servant of None and Nothing, I call to you! Take this Man as a final sacrifice of the last ritual. This Woman is your eternal Bride. Falling Star, Fall Here! Un-Sun, be born! Yuyu-Va’bdaa, come to us!”
“Be born!” the worshippers called out, even as turbulence rocked their platform and tossed numbers of them screaming into the ether. “Come to us! Yuyu-Va’bdaa!”
I drew my pistol and, pointing it squarely at Balthazarr, I pulled the trigger.
The trigger did not move. The weapon scorched my hand. I smelled hot metal and my burning flesh. Balthazarr’s piercing eyes transformed into pits of swirling kaleidoscopic colors. The pistol glowed orange. Furnace-hot. My skin sizzled. The gun turning to liquid.
I screamed.
“Fool! I offered you the opportunity of a lifetime. Beyond any lifetime!” Balthazarr flicked his wrist, and the molten metal scattered. A glob landed on my cheek, searing into my cheekbone. A thick tentacle of ectoplasmic fog snapped out of the Surrealist’s ribcage and looped around my throat, strangling me. A vile energy passed through him, entangling me.
As I choked, my fingers dug into the viscous substance.
“Chaos is the new order!” he shouted. “Lose your sanity! Abandon old logic. Yuyu-Va’bdaa shatters time. There is no future. No past. Now is All! See it! We are with Yuyu!”
Stars exploded in my eyes.
Not real stars, but the blood vessels in my head. I was dying. My body crushed. I would not follow Balthazarr. No one would. After the Gate opened, it would be death.
Only death.
In the dimming light of my receding consciousness, I reached out to feel the sleeve of Nina’s robe. I could not see, but I could feel. Was that her hand touching mine? Yes! But she could not hold onto me. Nor I hold fast to her. Our fingers lost their grip. Soon our sanity would follow. I clutched the material of her robe in my fist. Then it too pulled away from me.
Gone, she’s gone.
I am too.
Nina did not make a sound. The silence was worse. I called and called, “Nina!”
No reply came.
Only a whirling of winds greater than any earthly storm. And the roar of Yuyu.
My vision zeroed down to a tight tunnel.
In that tunnel with me was the face of Balthazarr, huge and triumphant, victorious. His grimacing mouth fell open. The noose around my neck slackened. Blood rushed into my starved brain. I struggled to see what was happening in front of me. Balthazarr spun his arms wildly, striking out at nothing. A flash of quick movement. A tall woman, the woman I knew.
Nina backed away from him.
He clutched at his neck. The tendrils looping from his body evaporated.
The handle of Nina’s Frosolone stiletto protruded from the hood of his robe. She had stabbed him sideways, slicing through meat and bone. The slender blade transected his spinal cord. Strings cut, the Spaniard crumpled. His face transformed to a mask of total disbelief.
But what of her? Was it too late? My heart flooded with sudden hope of our survival.
“Nina!” My words lost amid a constant roar.
The void – arrested at the threshold!
The Gate split open. It was, and is, impossible to describe. Call it a dilation between dimensions. A tearing of the veil between our reality and an otherness. An evanescent portal.
It started to close. To seal itself like a cosmic wound clotted with stars.
Full of stars.
I strained with every muscle fiber to reach her. She took a step toward me, but a powerful funnel of air was sucking inward – a cosmic inhalation drawing everything to the Gate and the lightless immensity perching on the brink of universes. Balthazarr tumbled, flipping end over end, into the vanishing gap. Nina watched him go. She had saved me. She held out her hand for me to take. “Now, Alden.” Fear seized me instead. Controlling me. Thoughts of the Gate and what lay beyond it: an
unbounded chasm. Endless nothingness.
So, I am ashamed to admit I hesitated. A fraction of a second. No more.
Then I lunged for her. But it was too late. I was too late.
I watched the Gate take her.
It closed.
•••
Back inside, the ballroom was chaos. The room was dark. I crawled on the floor, over bodies, dead and dying. The candles had fallen over, most of them extinguishing themselves.
But not every candle.
I found the doors. Locked. I smashed at the padlocks with my fists. I was too weak, my hands too soft. My eyes had trouble seeing things. I turned to the chasm of the ballroom, the moans of the injured, the giggling gibberish of those driven utterly insane by what they had witnessed. I groped for an iron candle stand. I ripped a burning candle from its holder and threw it at the wall. Taking the stand, I smashed open the lock. The doors flung wide.
“Alden! Is that you?”
Calvin caught me as I pitched forward. Behind me, the wall where I threw the candle started to burn, a wavering curtain of flame. “We need to get out of here now,” he said.
“Nina.”
“Where is she?”
He pulled me upright.
I bolted back inside the ballroom, yelling her name, the smoke thick and poisonous.
The Silver Gate feeding itself, and everyone still inside, to the inferno.
Chapter Thirty-One
Van Nortwick put down his pencil and massaged his tired hand. He reached for the last bottle of ginger ale and tilted it against his lips, but found it empty.
“That’s quite a story, Mr Oakes.” He was going to write it up. It would make the paper. But he wasn’t sure how much of it he believed.
“We’re out of cigarettes, Andy. I think that means it’s time to stop.”
The painter leaned against the dresser. He’d left the sofa hours ago, complaining that his bad leg felt stiff. He paced around the hotel room as he talked, settling back on the window ledge or propping himself up on the furniture, like he was doing now.
“You never told me what happened to your leg,” Van Nortwick said.
“Ceiling collapse. Not in the ballroom but the lobby. A beam hit me. I thought that might be the end, but I managed to wriggle free. A fracture, they said at the hospital. But I limped outside. That’s when the fireman tackled me. My jacket was burning. I mentioned this to you already. Don’t want to start repeating myself. Anyway, I’m healed up. My body is.”
The reporter picked up his pencil again, tapping it on his notepad.
“Preston Fairmont and Minnie Devane…?” Van Nortwick’s pencil stirred.
“They went traveling for a while. Sent me postcards from around the world. Preston felt guilty for leaving town, but he needed to escape. He saved himself. And Minnie too. I don’t blame him.” Alden pushed off the dresser, walked to the window. “I saw it in the papers that his father died. I can only imagine the pressure Preston’s under now.” Gray rain fell steadily.
“Well, thank you for your time. You’ve certainly given me a lot to digest.”
Alden turned to him, smiling thinly.
“You think I made it up.”
Van Nortwick shrugged. “It’s not my place to judge. I gather facts, write them down in neat columns the way my editor likes. It’s up to our readers to decide what they think.”
Alden nodded. “Care to try an experiment?”
The reporter paused, considering the offer.
“For the benefit of your readers, of course. It’ll be easy,” Alden said.
“Sure, Mr Oakes. You’ve been generous with me. I can do that.”
The artist looked at the window again. Then, as if he’d come to a decision, he swiveled around and positioned himself in front of the hotel room’s only mirror. “Come stand behind me, Andy, over my shoulder here, and look into the glass.”
Skeptically, Van Nortwick rose and joined Alden at the mirror.
“How’s this?” he said.
“Perfect,” Alden said. “Now, concentrate on our reflections.”
Van Nortwick did his best, focusing on the room as it was doubled in the glass.
After a long minute, Alden met his gaze. “Well, see anything? Besides the two of us.”
Van Nortwick stared hard. Then, shaking his head, he stepped to one side.
“Sorry, Mr Oakes,” he said.
“That’s fine. I’ll give you credit for trying. Good luck with your story.” Alden started packing his gin, shaker, and glasses into his red crocodile suitcase. When he finished, he drew out the necklace he wore. Van Nortwick saw there were two keys on the necklace. Alden locked the case. The reporter prepared to go. At the door, they exchanged goodbyes.
“Have fun at the gala,” Van Nortwick said, stepping out of the suite into the hall.
They shook hands. The reporter startled for a moment at the rough scar tissue. How had he been burned? In an accident of some sort? Or it might be self-inflicted, he thought.
Probably the hotel blaze. He was lucky to have survived.
Alden was smiling wanly as he shut the door.
•••
Have fun at the gala. How stupid can I possibly be? Van Nortwick chastised himself as he rode down in the elevator with the creepy old operator outfitted like an organ grinder’s monkey. Alden Oakes might be as crazy as people said. But after a tragedy like the Silver Gate fire, who wouldn’t be traumatized? He didn’t need to be told to have fun reliving the experience. Stupid.
Van Nortwick lingered in the lobby. It wasn’t that Oakes hadn’t given him enough for a good story. Just the opposite. He’d given too much. How was he going to turn all that talk into a clever bit of journalism? Van Nortwick bought a pack of cigarettes from the hotel newsstand. He was watching the rain, hoping it would let up so he wouldn’t get completely soaked walking back to the Arkham Advertiser offices, when he spotted Alden emerging from the elevator. The artist had a small satchel over his shoulder. He headed straight back toward the event rooms.
Van Nortwick followed him.
He was going into the newly renovated ballroom, the heart of the tragedy, and the location of tonight’s party. Van Nortwick waited for as long as it took him to finish his smoke, then he crushed out the butt in a standing ashtray and went inside.
The room was mostly dark. He searched for the painter but found no trace of him.
“Back here,” Alden said.
In a far corner of the great room, the painter sat cross-legged on the floor. His satchel was open, and a small array of paint jars and brushes were arranged beside him.
He was painting on the wall. The outline of the image was the size of a person.
“Start at the bottom and work your way up. That’s how I’m doing it.” Alden smiled.
“Some people would call that vandalism,” Van Nortwick said.
“Everyone’s a critic. But you’re right about one thing. No one will be happy if they catch me doing this. I’ll be quick, though. I’ve been practicing.” He’d moved into a crouch, then up on his knees. His brushstrokes were fast and sure. It was a person he was painting.
“It’s a woman.”
“It’s Nina,” Alden said.
“Portrait of a Lady?”
“Portrait of a Lady in Another Dimension. Will you hand me the red, please?”
Van Nortwick passed him the paint.
“And that brush there. Don’t worry, you’re not my accomplice. I take full responsibility.”
“I suppose an Alden Oakes original is worth a lot of money these days.”
“The hotel couldn’t afford me if I charged them.” Alden was standing, leaning forward. He’d almost finished the painting of the woman, of Nina. Full of motion, stylized. She wasn’t wearing a robe but a red dress. Her head was tipped back
slightly, chin up, the hint of knowing smile barely perceptible on her lips. “I see Balthazarr in reflections, but he is not alone. Nina is there, too. I don’t know if they are even aware of each other. They never interact. I think their spectral figures are like a double exposure, two overlapping images combined in the same photograph. I’ve studied the images. Balthazarr’s paintings. Others I’ve found in my research that I’m sure are connected to their rituals. I’ve painted them over and over. Balthazarr’s way isn’t the only way to open a gate, you see.”
Van Nortwick didn’t see now, just as he hadn’t when he looked deeply into the mirror over Alden’s shoulder, but he wasn’t going to interfere.
“Why did she have the blade with her, if she was a believer and follower of Balthazarr? Think about it, Andy.” Alden put the final touches on his portrait. “She was still my Nina. I don’t know who took her the night I went to Preston’s party. It was either the Colonists, or maybe Juan Hugo himself. If Nina was right, he could project himself in two places at once. It doesn’t matter now. The past is past, they say. I’m not sure I totally agree.”
“You want to bring her back?”
“Not exactly. You’d better stand back over there. I can’t predict everything that might happen next.”
Andy started to move away to where the painter had directed him.
“Wait! I forgot something.” Alden slipped the necklace from around his collar. “The gold one opens my gin case. It’s yours. Here’s my room key so you can fetch it afterward.” He fished the hotel key out of his pocket.
Van Nortwick looked at the pair of keys on the necklace.
“What’s this other key for?”
“Get back a bit farther. Farther. There. That should do it.” Alden pushed his art supplies away from the portrait. He looked at Van Nortwick. “I failed Nina. As the Gate pulled her through, I hesitated. I lacked courage.” A haggard smile, resolved, etched in pain.
He reached into his satchel and pulled out a pair of thick iron shackles.
“Houdini’s handcuffs,” Van Nortwick said. What did the artist have in mind?
Some magic trick of his own design? He hoped the result wouldn’t be too awkward. Or sad. That would be even worse. To watch a fragile mind breaking in front of you. If that happened, Van Nortwick decided, right then and there, he wouldn’t put it in his story.
