The Feaster From The Stars (Blackwood and Harrington)

by Alan K Baker

  Taking a deep breath, she poured the powder into the water and gave it a stir. To her surprise, it dissolved almost immediately, imparting a murky grey colour to the liquid. Without hesitating, she drank the entire glass. It had a curious taste, a combination of sweetness and saltiness that was not entirely unpleasant, and which reminded her somewhat of Eno fruit salts.

  What should I do now? she wondered. Perhaps it would be best to lie down and wait for the…

  The room began to spin, slowly at first and then in a wild, nauseating gyre. Oh good grief! Sophia thought as she grasped the working top for support. The polished wood felt soft and mushy in her hands, and she realised that her senses were beginning to betray her under the unexpectedly sudden influence of the Taduki. What a fool she was! The ampoule might have contained a hundred doses, for all she knew, and she had swallowed the lot!

  The kitchen floor seemed to pitch and roll beneath her feet, as if it were the deck of a foundering ship. She sank to her knees, her breath coming in shallow little gasps, her stomach gurgling in protest at the alien substance which had been so unceremoniously poured into it.

  Sophia crawled on her hands and knees out of the kitchen, but as she watched, the corridor leading to the other rooms of the apartment warped and stretched away into an impossible distance, and her inner ears told her – quite unreliably, she felt – that she was clinging like a fly to the wall of an infinitely deep shaft. In panic, she thrust her fingers into her mouth as far as she could, trying to make herself vomit, but it was no use. It was as if her stomach were telling her that since she had seen fit to impose the filthy stuff upon it, she would now have to live with the consequences.

  The corridor was rotating faster and faster, and Sophia became aware of a sound: a high, keening wail that seemed to come to her from a very great distance, and then she realised that it was she who was wailing…

  …and then all was stillness and calm. Sophia was lying on her back. The corridor had stopped spinning and had returned to its proper horizontal orientation, and as she opened her eyes, she saw the gas lamps on the walls glowing warmly and reassuringly. The nausea had completely abated, and with it her fear. She took in a deep breath and slowly let it out and smiled. I’m alive, she thought. Splendid.

  Well, so much for Dr Castaigne’s Taduki drug. It was obviously quite useless – apart from as a means of torture! She got to her feet, amazed at how easily she was able to do so after such a ghastly and debilitating experience. In fact, she realised with great surprise, she felt positively wonderful – better than she had ever felt in her entire life: stronger, healthier, more vibrant, more alive.

  What a strange concoction, she thought. Why, I could easily imagine it becoming all the rage as a cure-all. Even better than laudanum…

  She turned back towards the kitchen, intending to pour another glass of water, for she was thirsty and had a peculiar tickle in the back of her throat. She stopped and put a hand to her mouth in shock.

  There, lying on the carpet, face up, her eyes closed, her face as immobile as if in deep sleep or death, was… she. In an instant, Sophia realised the truth: that the drug had worked, and the physical body of the person known as Sophia Harrington lay motionless upon the carpet, while the personality, the essence, the thing she called I had emerged intact, independent and capable of thought and movement. No wonder she had been able to get to her feet so effortlessly, for she was utterly unencumbered by gravity.

  My apologies, Dr Castaigne, she thought. I misjudged both you and this remarkable substance.

  She looked at her hands, felt her face and limbs and clothes, and was surprised to see that she appeared to be just as solid and material as before. Was that an illusion, some form of mental residue of her sense of physical self-identity? She guessed that it must be – although she would find out soon enough, for she intended to leave her apartment and head for the Underground without delay. There she would do a little investigating of her own. Perhaps she would be able to speak with some of the ghosts who inhabited the network and gain some information from them. Perhaps they would recognise her as one of their own – or at least something very close – and confide in her, telling her of the true nature of the disturbances which had been plaguing the railway network…

  She willed herself towards the front door, surprised anew at how easily movement was accomplished in this non-corporeal form. She could, of course, have simply flown out through the window and floated down to the street, but there was something about that idea which struck her as rather unseemly, and so she opted for the traditional method of doors and staircases.

  In the corridor outside her apartment, she encountered her neighbour Mr Gardner, who was returning home after another late night at his office. Instinctively, she bid him good evening, but he did not answer, did not even glance in her direction.

  So it is true, then, Sophia thought. The form I perceive is nothing more than an illusion, a psychic memory of what I was. No, she corrected herself, of what I still am… back there in my chambers.

  She watched Mr Gardner enter his apartment and then drifted down the stairs to the ground floor, through the front door and out into the street. She took a deep breath of the night air, but it did not feel cold; in fact, it did not feel like anything at all, and she realised that the need to breathe was but another memory of her physical existence.

  As she stood at the head of the short staircase leading from the front door down to the street, Sophia took in the scene. A few people were hurrying past, hunched against the evening’s chill in their overcoats, while the occasional hansom or four-wheeler clattered along the cobbled road, the horses’ breath issuing like steam from their flaring nostrils.

  I no longer feel a part of this world, Sophia thought, and she was surprised at the sudden upwelling of sadness which greeted the realisation. I am in an in-between state: neither of this world, nor the one to come. I am alone. She looked up at the stars shining brightly above the city. Father… where are you? She closed her eyes and felt tears upon her cheeks. She reached up and touched one and looked at the liquid on her fingertip… but that too was only a memory of the form she had left behind.

  At that moment, she felt a sudden breeze upon her face,and looked around in confusion. She had thought herself incapable of feeling the atmosphere of the physical world, and yet…

  There it was again, stronger this time, bitingly cold, making her skin tingle. It grew rapidly in intensity, making her sway, so that she tried to take hold of the stone banister at her side to steady herself. But of course it was no use: her hand moved as easily through the stone as if it were made of smoke.

  She tried to keep her balance as the breeze grew stronger, rapidly becoming a wind that howled like a wild animal and snatched her from her feet. She cried out in sudden terror as she was propelled from the staircase up into the air. Whirling upwards, Sophia caught glimpses of the street below, of the carriages and pedestrians, none of whom were affected by the great, invisible tornado that had her in its clutches. Instinctively, she cried out to them, but they did not even glance up at her.

  A terrible memory flashed into her awareness, of a night ten years ago in the distant wilderness of eastern Canada, of a hunting trip with her father, Lord Percival Harrington; a memory of an eighteen-year-old girl roused from her slumber by the desperate cries of her father as he was lifted into the cold, merciless night air by the horrifying entity known to the people of that region as the Wendigo, the Walker on the Wind, never to be seen again.

  Her father’s cries had haunted Sophia ever since, and now, as she hurtled upwards into the night sky above London, she thought that the Wendigo had returned to claim her, perhaps drawn by the new supernatural state which she had so recklessly induced in herself.

  Sophia watched helplessly as the streets of Kensington whirled away from her, diminishing rapidly in the distance. Then London itself became little more than a luminous tracery, surrounded by the lights of the outlying towns, scattered across the
dark countryside of the South East. She expected to be carried across the globe, perhaps to the Canadian hunting grounds of the Wendigo, there to suffer the same fate as that which had befallen her father…

  But her terrified assumption was in error, for Sophia continued her upward flight, until she saw the outline of the British Isles and realised, as her fear increased a hundredfold, that the howling wind was carrying her into outer space…

  The Earth became lost in the immensity of the star-scattered Æther, and then the Sun diminished to but one amongst the countless millions of diamond-bright pinpoints which surrounded her.

  Once again, Sophia’s instincts came to the fore, and she tried to draw breath, knowing full well that there was no air out here, that the rarefied substance of which the Luminiferous Æther was composed would not feed her lungs. Only after several horrible moments of mad thrashing was she reminded that in her present non-corporeal state, she had no need of air.

  And so she waited, for there was nothing else she could do.

  She waited, while the strange wind blew her soundlessly across space, a lonely being composed entirely of confusion and terror, whose mind was a wide, staring eye that watched the stars flashing past against the black backdrop of infinity.

  Where am I going? Where am I going?

  The question repeated itself over and over in her mind, as the stars approached and receded, revealing themselves to be of different colours – red, blue, yellow, white – and dark orphan planets, worlds which might once have belonged to solar systems, but which now wandered alone, perhaps as the result of some ancient catastrophe, turned beneath her, revealing their wrinkled, blackened surfaces.

  On the shrivelled, icebound face of one such world, she thought she could discern the outlines of buildings, vast and strange and fallen into aeon-long ruin, before the wind carried her onwards into the gulfs ahead, and on another, she glimpsed something which made her scream silently and frantically turn her head away.

  As she continued past the stars, Sophia realised where she was going… or rather, she realised that she had known all along, ever since leaving the Earth’s atmosphere. The Taduki drug was indeed working, and she now suspected that the strange wind which was blowing her from star to star was not really a wind at all, but the drug’s method of working upon her psychic awareness, and guiding her towards her destination.

  Towards Carcosa.

  But how can that be possible? she wondered. The universe is vast beyond comprehension. How can the drug guide me to one particular place amongst countless other places? Perhaps Taduki can be made to guide the mind to any place one chooses… perhaps it is something to do with the proportion of ingredients – whatever they may be.

  That explanation seemed to Sophia as good as any other, and at any rate, it was the only one of which she could conceive. Chemistry, after all, had never been her strong point – still less chemistry based on arcane occult principles.

  The stars continued to flash past, trillions of miles falling in her wake as quickly as footfalls during a brisk walk… until a brace of stars drifted into the centre of her field of vision and grew steadily until they seemed to fill the sky: vast, red orbs, seething violently in the eternal night. Around the red stars, hundreds of others clustered, and it seemed to Sophia that they were so near, she would only have to reach out in order to touch them.

  The Hyades.

  As she approached the giant red stars, Sophia became aware of a much smaller sphere, dwarfed utterly by its parents, a tiny fleck of dust against the fiery crimson, and it was towards this that she felt herself being guided.

  Carcosa, she thought, the word conjuring images of strange mystery and nameless terror. How many human beings have made this journey, besides Dr Castaigne and myself? How many would choose to?

  As she descended towards the dark surface of the alien world, she marvelled at the desolation, at the almost total lack of vegetation and water. This was a dying planet, a place that had been…

  Consumed.

  The word sprang suddenly to her mind, but she knew that it was the right one.

  Yes, consumed by… something.

  Dying Carcosa turned beneath her, and as it revolved, a great misshapen patch of white emerged from the horizon, glowing faintly in the light from the red suns. It appeared to be composed of slowly moving clouds, and as she watched, Sophia thought of the first line of Cassilda’s song, which Blackwood had read to her just a few days ago, on the other side of space:

  Along the shore the cloud waves break…

  This, she knew, was the Lake of Hali.

  She drew closer and saw three great cities spaced around the shore. What were their names? Yhtill, yes, that was one… and… Alar… and Hastur. Were these the last three cities on the face of Carcosa, the last outposts of a race which must once have spread across the entirety of their world?

  Sophia drifted above the lake and watched the cloud waves breaking upon the distant shores, against the great stone ramparts of the last three cities, beyond which great windowless towers rose into the sky, as if seeking to flee their own imminent ruin. She watched Carcosa’s four moons hovering above the roiling clouds of Hali, against a backdrop of stars which shone impossibly with rays of darkness, and she gasped as she saw the moons moving in front of the cities’ towers.

  Strange is the night where black stars rise,

  And strange moons circle through the skies…

  As she watched these marvels, Sophia gradually became aware that she no longer seemed to be under the control of the Taduki drug; she could move of her own volition, and in whichever direction her will decided upon. It has fulfilled its function, she thought. It has brought me here, and now it’s up to me where I go.

  She briefly considered exploring the cities and moving amongst their people, but then she looked down at the cloud waves swirling upon the waters of Hali directly beneath her and felt an irresistible urge to descend into the heart of Carcosa’s mystery. She knew how reckless it was, how unutterably dangerous, but she could not help herself. She recalled the delicious feeling she had experienced when she broke into Castaigne’s hotel room. This was a thousand times more intense – a million times! The temptation was maddening, the sense of transgression like a powerful intoxicant pounding through her veins.

  Whatever is in there will not see me, she told herself. I will see it, but in this astral form I will remain invisible to it.

  She descended towards the milk-white clouds which swirled and bubbled upon the surface of the lake. The red-tinged sky with its black stars and mad moons disappeared, and all around her was whiteness, blank and featureless. She had no idea how thick the layer of cloud was, nor how long it would take her to reach what lay beneath.

  Down, she thought. Down… down.

  And then the whiteness was transformed into murky darkness, broken only by the occasional dull glint of a stream of ugly, misshapen bubbles rising slowly towards the surface. Sophia continued her descent, heading towards the lakebed and whatever lay there.

  Gradually, she became aware of movement in the water around her: great dark shapes that flitted on the very edge of perception. Whether they were the natural inhabitants of the lake or something far from natural, she had no idea, for she had nothing with which to compare this experience. Her fear, however, was mitigated somewhat by the conviction that her presence remained undetected; in fact, there was a powerful dreamlike quality to all this, as if she were not really here at all, as if she had merely to will herself awake in order to find herself back once more in her Kensington home.

  And so she continued her descent through the thick, dark waters of the Lake of Hali on the planet Carcosa…

  Initially, Sophia couldn’t quite decide what she was looking at, for the shapes emerged only dimly at first, gradually resolving themselves out of the surrounding gloom into vast slabs of stone which rose at improbable angles from the black mud of the lakebed. It looked like a castle… but it was like no castle Sophia had ever s
een or imagined. For one thing, its size was beyond all logic or earthly reasoning: it stretched into the distance, wall beyond wall, tower beyond tower, rampart upon rampart, all warped and twisted in ways which left Sophia dumbfounded, appalled and terror-stricken.

  At first, she had wondered whether it might be a natural formation, something akin to the vast coral reefs of Earth’s oceans, but she had been quickly disabused of that notion when she saw what was undoubtedly stonework: massive, primordial masonry and lightless windows.

  She also had the impression (although she could not fathom the reason) that the castle had not always looked like this, that its walls had once been regular and perpendicular – that it had once been sane. But sanity had long ago fled this place, and whatever had usurped it had deformed and distorted everything Sophia could see, as if the very laws of physics had been undermined, perverted, destroyed.

  Sophia decided that she had seen quite enough of this place. She would return to the surface immediately and explore the cities until the drug took her home, for she had already begun to suspect that once it began to leave her physical system back on Earth, she would automatically return – at least, that was what she fervently hoped.

  She willed herself upwards towards the surface of Hali, but she had not gone more than a few feet when she felt something pulling at her, as if she were a swimmer who had caught her foot in a rock or a strand of seaweed on the ocean floor. She willed herself upwards again… and again she was halted and pulled back down towards the warped and twisted castle.

  Panic flooded her awareness as she realised that the unseen force was dragging her towards a vast doorway which yawned like a misshapen mouth in one of the higher walls. She struggled frantically and uselessly as the force pulled her inside the castle, along miles of twisting corridors whose walls glistened with the pulsations of nameless things, and then down wide, broken staircases which plunged into fathomless darkness. Through networks of crumbling corridors and high-ceilinged, dungeon-like chambers she was dragged, like a tiny fish that had been snared by the tendril of some atrocious cave-dwelling predator.