*****
Three years ago today, I released a series of poems into the world. It was my best work, no doubt, and I understand it’s about to go into its fourth printing, accompanied by the unfinished fragment I never got around to titling. One of the nurses told me she liked it but I’m not much into the ladies these days.
I still write. I try, anyway. They give me paper and markers and sometimes I can even read what I’ve scratched on the pages. It took a few nights of screaming but now they let me leave the light on all the time, and sometimes the drugs even allow me a few hours of sleep before the dreams begin.
Astrid wanted to see what I have seen. Soul-Sucker-Six, they got a glimpse of it, but I was the one who was called the priest. I was the one who was given the visions, the sights, and I could have had so much more. I was given the darkness but I threw it away, poisoned it with light. I saw him, my muse, the dreamer of my words. I looked into his eyes even as he diminished from this plane and what I saw was my own judgment.
I will continue to translate the dreaming, continue to endure the horrors he shows me every night, continue for as long as my heart beats and the miserable light of my soul continues to burn.
It has been decided.
Slave Of Unkind Gods
by
Matthew Wilson
My ancestors were great kings who died on foreign fields, so it burns my blood to see how low my parents have dragged the name. Bad investments before I was born forced them to sell our ivy-covered castle and I was faced with the indignity of coming into this world in a second-hand car that broke down on the way to hospital.
The doctors wonder at my hatred of this world but I insist that initial stain on my greatness is as good place as any to start. Friends were a hard thing for me to make after that mysterious fire broke out and turned mom and dad to ash. I suppose fate deemed they’d served their purpose and the fact I’d escaped that terrible event without a scorch cemented in my quick mind that I was deemed for great things.
I was displeased when Aunt Agatha drew the short straw and took me in. My only previous contact with the old bird was a cheap Christmas card every year, but just like that, I was expected to obey any command she threw upon me, from cleaning the windows to making beds. She didn't let me near the kitchen stove or any fire source.
Cruel whispers about my parent’s deaths kept potential friends away but I found better ways to spend my time by sneaking in the adult section of the public library and discovered a like-minded individual to myself.
H. P. Lovecraft. Something of the town weirdo whose life was stained by sadness at a young age too. He shared the same awful night terrors as myself and discovered the only way to survive this madness was to accept the wicked things with wings that invaded his midnight dreams.
He’d painted such wonders that I’m sure the only way he could have transcribed them in such detail is to have seen them first hand, like a reporter of darker worlds than this. No man can have so fertile an imagination and it took another ten years before I found the secrets in the margins of his handwritten pages.
Somehow, these sacred manuscripts had disappeared from a large collection at the local archive when some careless guard left a window open after sneaking in a night cigarette break to ease his frustration of low wages.
Lovecraft wasn’t taken by so simple a disease as cancer. The demons that his words called forth infected him, rotting out his outsides, and it’s no wonder that on his death bed, the doctor took no chances and burned his final notebook filled with his penciled, garish writing.
I wouldn’t be so careless as to destroy something so sacred. My last aunt had the good fortune to die when I had need of essential ingredients to put in my potions as Lovecraft’s villains were used to. Agatha was old and the doctor listed her death as natural causes when I insisted she’d been having trouble breathing for weeks but was too strong willed to seek medical attention.
She loved too sweet tea despite her diabetes and other hazardous things like hindering my glorious work that was no good for her.
I told them she was quite religious and wished to meet her maker intact, so no autopsy was performed on the last of my kin. Being 18 now, I took sole possession on the old house when I found auntie's final will which blew all others out the water. The pain of her long drawn out days ensured her hand shook as she signed her name on the legal dotted line, so it hardly looked like her John Hancock at all.
The police still poked their nose in my business when my new home had the misfortune to burn down on the very night of my ownership. Damn those candles that caught the wind through an open window and bit the curtains, but I’d never heard of a midnight ceremony without them. All of Lovecraft’s documentation on dancing witches and summoning ceremonies mentioned them and I wasn’t one to break with tradition, but as this was the second suspicious fire in my short life, the authorities felt it important to butt in and take me away.
The patients in that rat hole knew nothing of genuine madness. They were philistines who would have eaten a first edition of Lovecraft rather than use the pages for wallpaper such as I to memorize the few too many million words he left an ungrateful world.
The doctor said I had a potent nihilistic attitude and megalomaniac complex toward my fellow men, but what the hell did he know? He was keeping me from my work and it was only through good fortune that all of my ingredients were permanently erased in the fire before the fire crew came and sifted through the ashes.
They called me careless for having so many candles in one room but if they’d discovered what I stored in those jars before they exploded, the newspapers would have called me worse than a simple fool. After much wrangling, the insurance money came through and, though it’s essential that a private man like myself has a roof to work under, what grated my gears was the fact that I no longer had any bait to entice the elder gods through whatever door that connected this world to the next.
Thank heaven for wicked people. Soulless no ones who walk without purpose, killing themselves with drugs and tobacco before filling the local morgues as Jane or John Doe. No one will miss them, no one will care. It is best to step into their addictive lives while they're young, before they completely rot up their insides with cheap booze.
It’s a good thing I’m not a people person after all, spending my time in search of better beings, or I would have been quite disheartened by the thief’s behavior coming in through my newly built window at the witching hour. Another John Doe who’d undertake any action to get his fix.
I dare say I could have promised the desperate fellow a small sum to execute my greatest enemy, and he would have gone through with it without question.
I don’t know if he was looking to steal some of auntie's soot-covered mementos saved from the flames or had undertaken a childish dare to come to such a macabre place as this, but he was no doubt amazed to see me sat at work by dim candlelight when decent fellows should be asleep.
Looking back, I suppose I could have called the police on the spot. The surgeons in bloodied clothes could have done as many autopsies on this poor fool as they liked and found all his cocaine riddled bits intact—then they would have agreed with my narrative of events that the deadbeat had fallen from the window and broke his neck in the outside bushes.
What a waste of a corpse it would be to throw the remains in the local crematorium or let it rot in the ground for grateful worms to nibble their purple gums upon. I was raised no fool and in such lean times as this, was taught not to waste things that fate threw at my feet.
The thunderstorms that tore the sky that night were front page news for every day the following week, pushing the death of the local mayor in a failed sex game to page three, but to my utter disappointment, there was no second coming of the elder gods. To my shame, I had failed and in those night terrors that followed, the long dead kings of my blood laughed at me, declaring me unworthy of their legacies.
The ingredients were soured with modern vices after all.
I had given so much of my life for so little reward. No history books would detail my greatness now and my lavish expenses keeping quiet two local gravediggers who blackmailed me to keep quiet the awful things they left on my doorstep drained the last of the inheritance that Aunt Agatha had left in her shaky handwriting. I was forced to become normal and get a job. Even sons of dead tyrants had to eat from time to time.
I was unused to human contact since my self-imposed hermitage, but thought I would be the one to slam my door in their faces when we inevitably came into contact. The light was low and my feet were aching after the long walk through town in search of employment when Cthulhu smiled on his listener this side of the door and turned me toward a newcomer to these parts.
Joe MCarron was a soft-hearted man with a need of a helping hand in his small business garage. He had initial low hopes of my weedy nature, bookworms go green-cheeked at the idea of heavy lifting, but the taxman was nipping at my ankles and I insisted I would work for half the wages if he only took a chance upon me.
Bizarrely for such a big figure, Joe had something of a high feminine voice that was prone to crescendo pitches when startled, which was frequently and easy of nature since he’d strained his back on lifting heavy equipment carelessly, hence the required assistant position.
Men such as I must wear a sociable mask at all times so as not to be chased out of these little towns by the pitchforks of jealous men, but I put as much effort into my new adventures as my last, ruining such delicate piano-worthy hands as this that dead gods put on this earth to move a pen and not beat up car engines.
Yet, no matter my dedication to earning my crust, my mind was forever on other worlds, endlessly obsessing on where I may have gone wrong before. I had read Lovecraft’s words until the blood vessels in my eyes had burst and the doctor told me it would cost half of the money I had just made just to fix my vision. A blind servant is worthless and I refused to be overlooked now after all my trials.
So this was the everyday troubles that auntie had warned me of. Troubling annoyances why I must put down the pen to keep my head above water…but there were other ways to make a living. I’d once had a bookcase dedicated to the greatest dead crime writers before my grumbling belly demanded that I pawn the hardbacks to afford rotten bread.
Joe didn’t like to come right out and accuse me of stealing the money from his desk – he had been bought up better than to be so uncivilized – but the elephant in the room weighed heavily upon me, crushing my chest with the unpleasant sensation of anxiety. My mind ticked through its usual plan of self-preservation and I disliked the idea of him bringing the police into my life for a third time. Maybe there was no such thing as coincidence.
Ah, you again. The town weirdo, no one gets away from us forever.
Things threatened to come to a head but I had no ill feelings toward Joe, whose only crime had been to show some mercy on me in so cruel a world. In the end, he got what many better men were deprived of – a painless end. I had warned him100 times not to work under these old cars with his bad back. His bracing tools were aged and failing, the engine of the old Nissan finally gave way and crushed his head as he worked alone that night.
No, officer. Joe must have been drunk when he told his friends down the pub that money was missing at work. Of course there was no reason to put a tape into the CCTV. Joe and I were the best of friends and there were no secrets between us. No recording footage of his final moments.
The doctors weren’t surprised there was no purple twitching brain to put back into his closed coffin affair. The force of pressure that had crushed his skull into the oily ground beneath the old car must have been something terrible.
It is true what they say that a leopard cannot change his spots. Cthulhu has tested my worth and, in my darkest hour, he has shown me that there will always be ingredients for his greatness. That is all other people are to me, a method to my means of contacting greater beings. The soon to be king of seven continents.
It is not so bad being in this insane asylum, though everyone says that they aren’t mad, only I speak the truth. Mother raised no liar. The governor was so kind as to let me have crayons instead of sharp pencils but it is enough to cover my walls in my messages of love to the silent gods who watch and wait for me to get the potion right.
At night, I watch the whistling guards pass my cell on their rounds and wander if they're smokers, if they have not been so selfish to poison their bodies with fatty foods. The living, if obese, keys to unlocking such a cruel gateway between themselves and my kind master.
Sometimes, the governor brings men to my little cell to study my own writings as others have appreciated Lovecraft. Some have won awards for their essays written on the workings of a madman’s mind they have gathered from my dedication to his pen.
Most of it goes over their cue-ball heads, but they will see my power when Cthulhu comes and bends back these bars, showing these fools there is no escape from what Lovecraft predicted so long ago. Tonight I will sing the beauty of unkind gods that wait for sweet servants such as I to open the door, and welcome them with open tentacles.
Names
by
James Victor
It is Monday morning and the plague pits are filling nicely. The body collectors will not work on a Sunday as they honour the Sabbath, so naturally the work piles up - by the gates of the overflow cemeteries, on the streets, in your bed. Come Monday morning, the whole city is a relay of corpses, from bedroom to doorstep, from doorstep to cemetery gate, from the gates to the ground. The gravediggers dump corpses by the wheelbarrow load. They wear bird beak masks stuffed with dried flowers to protect them from the bad air and they mutter the names of the gods, both forwards and backwards, to ward off the pestilence. Flea bites mar their bare arms.
According to the Plague Act, the bodies are to be buried with their feet facing east so they can see the rising sun. Or the return of the messiah. Or something. In reality, they face whichever direction the wheelbarrow leaves them. The Plague Act wants the corpses carefully layered for dignity's sake, but reality is not so bothered. The air is sweet with death and lime.
Hrag Ratham dangles, naked and filthy and alive, in a rusty gibbet over the largest plague pit. He feels like a human divining talisman, seeking something on a grisly map. He is scrawny, his knees are pressed against his chest and he is being sentenced to death.
“Hrag Ratham! Look at me when I sentence you!” bellows Judge Orlok. He bangs his desk so hard his gavel almost breaks. He has had his best desk and gavel brought out to the plague pits. In fact, he has brought a functioning court out here, or at least the minimum number of people required to fulfil the duties of a court. They stand around with long leather noses drooping, scratching themselves. Hrag says nothing.
“Or is it that you are looking at your own dark works, hmmm?” Orlok indicates the plague pits from his pedestal. It is a pedestal that he has requisitioned from a nearby house, and it is not clear what function it served before it was found by the judge's men. He has his gavel in one hand, a scented handkerchief in the other. Can he smell it through his mask? Or does the scent itself drive off evil humours? Hrag doesn't know. “Can one such as you even know remorse for their crimes? Or is it pride, hmmmm?”
Judge Orlok is a dramatic man. Who else would think to hold the trial of the plaguebringer over an open plague pit? Artists will certainly commit the scene to canvas. They will take great care to show Orlok's ramrod straight back, his child's nightmare of a mask. They will show his entourage, similarly dressed but sitting on stools with rough paper and quills. They will show the pits, the ruined houses, the bored gravediggers. They will show Hrag Ratham, Black Hrag the Dreaded, brought low, sulking in his tiny cage. But will they show the dry-eyed little girl staring from that far window? Will they show the smokestacks from the illegal body burnings down Hatterside? Will they show the man who is still moving and groaning down there in that pit, ignored by all and sundry?
Whatever t
hey choose to show, it will be from their imaginations. Because, naturally, holding court in a plague pit is a wonderful gesture but it doesn't draw much of a crowd.
“Hrag Ratham, son of Vern Ratham, sailor, you are guilty of witchcraft, dark magic, knowing the names of demons, speaking the names of demons, copulation with a succubus, unclean words and actions and petty theft. Do you have anything to say for yourself?”
Hrag says nothing. He holds a small hope like a crippled kitten that someone will speak up. Someone will say that if he knows the names of demons, why doesn't he speak them? Why doesn't he call them now to save him and devour his tormentors like a pack of spectral dogs? Alas, they either know too little or too much about demons to voice such an opinion. A gravedigger whistles tunelessly as he almost works, leaning on his shovel.
“I sentence you to death, dismemberment, disparagement and defenestration. Now get out of my sight!”
Hrag's gibbet swings gently in the breeze. The voice in the plague pit disappears under a brace of bodies.
*****
Prisoners sweat and so do prison walls. Are there any other similarities? Not that Hrag can think of. The walls can't be broken, the prisoners certainly can. And if the walls were to be broken, someone would care enough to fix them. If the prisoners break, Hrag somehow doubted anything much would be done. Perhaps another inmate would shed a tear. Or take his bread.
Hrag tries to lick the moisture from the walls. He gets a wet beard, nothing more.
The cell is dark and low. Too low to stand in, too dark to see exactly how big the rats are. There is straw cast sparsely across the floor and there is rust on the cell door. Hrag wishes for a bit more straw and a lot more rust. But he would settle for fewer bars in the door. Or a rope and a strong beam.
The sound of jangling keys approaches. Then footsteps. Then the door creaks open.
The Idolaters of Cthulhu Page 5
