The Castle-Town Tragedy and Other Tales of Carnacki, the Ghost-finder

by Barrows, Brandon

  Putting the book aside, I examined next the sheaf of papers and found them to be reams of hand-drawn maps with annotations I presumed to be Malbrey’s, though done in a shaky, crabbed script quite unlike what I’d seen of his penmanship in the past. Like the book, these, too, were a mystery. They seemed to represent both various sections of the city—mainly along the river, reservoirs and the various parks—as well as some other city somehow superimposed upon the geography I knew by heart. For every quarter with a recognizable name, there was scrawled alongside it in a bilious yellow ink another—some of which I was at a loss as to how to even pronounce—as well as what I can only describe as gateways: strange, irregular little arches divided into two halves with some arcane symbol I did not recognize positioned as though bridging the two sections of the figures, with question marks alongside each.

  I sifted through these, searching for one of Chelsea in hopes of perhaps finding a clue as to where I’d been earlier. There wasn’t one, but I did find a depiction of Hyde Park which, while mostly unaltered, had written very prominently and in a script much stronger than the rest of the map’s labels, “LAKE HALI” overtop the Serpentine. I sighed as I leafed through the lunatic documents, lamenting how far Malbrey had fallen.

  I determined then that I must wait for and confront Malbrey directly. I knew he’d be furious at my intrusion on what he’d made his private demesne, perhaps even violently so, but, like Jones’s sharing of Malbrey’s family secrets, it couldn’t be helped. I settled down into the desk chair and flicked off the light, my revolver nestled comfortably in my fist.

  Perhaps extinguishing the light was a mistake, for the next I knew I awoke here, in bed, with no memory of returning. I am not accustomed to losing time nor finding myself in places I have not chosen to be and you will understand that the experience was quite distressing. The consternation I had felt the night before came back with a vengeance, but in the dawn’s light, I found it relatively simple to put myself at ease and reasoned that I must have been so tired from the evening’s exertions that I didn’t recall returning home.

  I headed to the office block and found Jones pacing in a tight little circle outside the entryway of the workspace, taking deep draws on a cigarette and mumbling to himself. He’d apparently not heard me arrive, but when I called his name he snapped like a soldier jumping to attention and looked at me with wild eyes.

  “What’s the trouble?” I asked, figuring there must be some new twist.

  He dropped the cigarette and ground the stub into the cobbles with his heel while shaking his head and waggling his hands in an expression of exasperation. “I can’t handle this anymore, Carnacki. I can’t!”

  I guided Jones inside for the sake of privacy, gently pushed him into a seat then asked, “What’s happened now?”

  Jones wouldn’t meet my gaze as he said, “I came in very early this morning—I have to get some work done or this magazine will be just a memory—around six o’clock, to find that the place just… I don’t know. It just wasn’t right. Damnation! I wish you could see through my eyes! How to describe it? It’s like I couldn’t look at anything without the sense that… that I wasn’t seeing all that was there—like the walls and spaces I’ve known for years were gone and in their place was some monstrous conglomeration of shapes that was merely pretending to form this office. It’s ridiculous, insane—I know! I tried to put it out of my mind and chalk it up to the stress of the situation and the early hour, but I swear—I will place my hand on a ruddy Bible, if you like—the instant I looked away or closed my eyes, these great mounds of Malbrey’s refuse were shifting and changing all of their own accord. It’s too weird, Carnacki. It’s too much madness for me and I know it’s Malbrey’s doing, somehow. He’s into something positively diabolical and I want no part of it. I’ve got to be done with this once and for all!”

  I knew exactly how Jones felt as I’d seen much the same the night before in that unknown section of the city to which I’d followed Malbrey. My own perceptions, I am willing to grant, can be faulty due to my long association with the weird and unusual and an admittedly-active imagination. With this terrified outpouring of Jones’s, however, I was fully-convinced that somehow, in some manner, Malbrey had tapped into the “Outer Circle”, the realm that exists beyond, beneath and between the sensible, utilitarian and safe world that we know. Malbrey’s meddling with forces he likely did not truly understand had spilled into the mind of another and that I could not abide.

  But Jones did not need to know all of that, so I did my best to comfort and calm him then asked if Malbrey was in the office.

  “I assume so,” he murmured. “I hadn’t the nerve to check on him this morning. He’d like as not have ignored me, anyway.”

  I nodded understanding, told him to wait there and went to the inner office door.

  “Malbrey!” I called, putting strength into my voice but keeping my tone as neutral as possible. “This has gone quite far enough.”

  In an instant, a shadow appeared on the other side of the door’s glass and with it a prickle in my spine. The outline was man-shaped, but some nightmarish bastardization of a man with neck and limbs too long and spindly and protrusions from the skull in the profile of a crown. Without conscious thought, I closed my eyes and whispered the Unknown Last Line of the Saaamaaa Ritual. When I opened them again a second later the thing was gone, replaced by a smaller, more-sane shape I took to be Malbrey.

  For long moments neither of us said a word. Then, in a voice so faint I was scarcely sure I heard it at first, Malbrey whispered through the door, “I’m disappointed in you, Carnacki.”

  “Malbrey—” I began, but was cut short.

  “No, Carnacki. No. You looked at the play and you saw nothing.”

  “Because there’s nothing to see, Malbrey,” I rebutted, straining to keep calm. Despite the door between us, only a foot or so separated us and being so close set my heart to thudding and “the creep” racing down my limbs. There could be no doubt now that my friend was gone, but could I bring him back? “You’re not in your right mind,” I continued. “Please, let us help you. I know that things have gone wrong for you lately, but they can be fixed. We want to help.”

  There came a low, soft sound—like a soggy sort of grunting noise—that I realized was Malbrey chuckling to himself. “You’re quite correct, Carnacki. I’m not in my right mind. I’m in his now. The King must reveal himself and he found you lacking. You’re lucky to have returned home after last night and luckier not to remember.” The shadow behind the glass disappeared, but not the voice. “Goodbye, Carnacki. This will be our last conversation.” He paused and then, in a gentler voice that sounded more like the man I knew, added, “Please convey my thanks to Jones.”

  “Thanks for what?” I asked, to no answer. I tried the door, but it would not budge—would not even rattle against the lock; the knob was frozen fast, as if glued in place.

  Dazed and shoulders slumped, I returned to Jones, who was understandably anxious, wringing his hands and fidgeting. Without preamble he demanded, “What did he say?”

  “He said to thank you.” Jones looked confused. “No, he didn’t say for what,” I added, answering his unasked question.

  “What do we do now, Carnacki?”

  I wasn’t sure and said so, then filled Jones in on what had happened the night before. I also told him of the blank book and the strangely dualistic maps. He hadn’t any more ideas on those than I, other than sheer madness.

  “As strange as Malbrey’s behavior is,” I said, thinking aloud. “I don’t believe he’s breaking any laws and he hasn’t made any dangerous moves, damage to his marriage and your business notwithstanding.” I cast a glance towards the back of the space, though the actual door to Malbrey’s sanctum was obscured by his heaps of “treasures”. “Though I’d desperately like to, without understanding what he’s gotten into, I’m not sure there’s anything we can do.”

  Then a remarkable thing happened: Jones all at once lost hi
s nervous demeanor and a sort of hardness came into his gaze. “You can’t give up, Carnacki. I won’t and I can’t allow you to, either.” He stood and then trod resolutely towards Malbrey’s lair, his hands balled at his side. I rose and followed.

  “Malbrey!” Jones shouted, much as I had but also pounding on the door. “You must cease this foolishness immediately!” His fists beat a tattoo in time with his words against the wooden frame, but succeeded in doing nothing more than rattling the glass. He tried the doorknob and learned what I already knew, but instead of giving up, it provoked in him a sort of rage and he began to alternate hands as he rained blows on the door and called out “Malbrey! Malbrey!” over and over.

  I pulled Jones away and he fairly shook with helpless frustration as he whispered, “We must help him, Carnacki. If not us, then who?”

  “You’re right.” I said. “Though I must confess this thing confounds me. Listen, though, I think I have a plan.”

  That night, the pair of us—Jones and I—lay in wait for Malbrey in the mouth of an alleyway not far from the Bibliophile’s offices, just as I’d done the evening before. It was obvious that Malbrey was looking for something—or someone if this “King” of his was, indeed, real—and his maps were our only real clue. Jones was nervous at the thought of crawling through London’s back streets after sundown, but he never once hinted at backing out. I was proud of my friend and his resolve. You can understand why, I trust?

  Around eleven o’clock, Malbrey again crept forth, slinking through the shadows like the creature of the night that he had somehow become. Despite his stealth, however, it was not terribly difficult for us to follow, as the streets were almost entirely depopulated at that hour and the flashes of movement as he raced from each pocket of darkness to the next gave us ample means to track him so long as we did not stray too far behind.

  He lead us on a merry little chase, taking an even more circuitous path than previously, but still heading in the same general direction: into and then through Chelsea and up towards the Royal Parks. Something unusual happened as we passed into the restaurant and entertainment district, however—instead of the pairs or small groups of diners and theater-goers, the gaily-clad people we encountered marched down the street in a straight line, two-by-two abreast like some sort of parade. They chattered brightly, speaking of a play they’d just seen called Le Roi en Jaune. Surely this was no coincidence, but I couldn’t understand the significance as each person expounded on his or her favorite character: pretty Camilla, the ghastly Stranger or anguished Cassilda—that name again!—screaming in a street just like this one, “Not upon us, oh King! Not upon us!” The woman who recited these lines leered maniacally at Jones as she screeched them out, unsettling the poor fellow all the more.

  We hurried along so as not to lose Malbrey in the growing throng, which seemed endless, and turned a corner to find ourselves in an area that simply did not belong in London. Disappeared were the neatly-cobbled lanes and venerable buildings of brick and wood, replaced by intricate structures of rusting steel and glass the color of amber that seemed to pulse with a light wholly separate from that of the flickering braziers lining the hard-packed earthen streets, each of which bore signs with strange names like “Hastur” and “Haita” and “Hyades”. In many of these buildings, humanoid beings that I could not quite focus my gaze on stared out of apertures many stories above the ground, shouting words I didn’t understand at a sky that seemed weirdly dense and populated by black stars only a shade brighter than the firmament in which they hung. I shuddered violently and decided that I did not want to know what I looked upon or heard. Jones fared far worse, alternately covering his eyes and his ears, and I took his arm and lead him as one might lead the blind, for Malbrey could still be seen capering from darkened doorway to alleyway and we had little other choice but to continue on.

  At length, we came to a wide avenue of massive, concrete buildings equipped with immense smokestacks belching gouts of oily vapors heavenward and I was comforted to find a rational explanation at last to the odd sky that stretched above us, if not for the buildings themselves. Jones had regained a measure of his composure and looked this way and that, seeking our friend, before pointing and exclaiming, “There, Carnacki!” and racing off down a nearby intersection.

  I followed Jones following Malbrey, rushing to keep up, but was stopped dead in my tracks at the sight that lay before me as I rounded the corner.

  We had somehow found our way to Hyde Park, despite the bizarre detours, for the bandstand and Queen Elizabeth Gate were off in the distance to the north and east respectively. To the west lay the waters of the Serpentine, still recognizable through a dull, golden haze that saturated the area, and twinkling with lights in a panoply of colors—red, green, yellow, blue and others I have no names for—that formed submerged constellations like an earthbound sky. Beyond the lake was a city skyline that, like Malbrey’s mad maps, was superimposed upon the still-visible London I suddenly ached to return to and the outlines of both soaring towers and long, rambling structures could be seen, interspersed with tiny figures that seemed to be staring back. I could not return the gesture—did not want to—for like the vague beings I’d already seen that night, they and their dwellings fought against my eyes’ focus and I could not fight back for sanity’s sake.

  Between the altered lake and myself stood Jones, his back to me, and further on Malbrey, hurrying towards what I knew, impossible as it was, must be his “Lake Hali”. Jones called to his partner. I was too far to hear the words but Malbrey turned to face him and I gasped, then invoked the Eighth Sign of Saaamaaa before I realized the words had passed my lips, and when I did, I was doubtful of whatever protection it could provide.

  I’d been disturbed by the changes in Malbrey when I’d seen him last, but now you could have knocked me over with a feather. The man was simply… wrong. Outlined against the queerly-shifting light from the lake, Malbrey’s profile resembled less a human being than some profane farce. He seemed to have grown both taller and far narrower—like a badly-assembled scarecrow, but constructed of many more bones than a man’s body should be able to contain. I can’t and won’t say more. I don’t like thinking about it and I don’t want you men speculating on the matter.

  At any rate, Jones approached Malbrey and I made to join him but was waved off. The two conversed, though I couldn’t hear the words over a sudden gust of fetid air coming from across the lake, pushing the xanthous haze that filled the area out of the strange land to which Malbrey sought entrance. It was obvious that Jones grew increasingly distraught, while Malbrey remained impassive.

  Finally, Jones reached for our friend and Malbrey took action at last, physically rebuffing the proffered hand and shouting in a voice so loud I could at last hear clearly, “For the sake of the friendship we once shared, you must go! Now! I’d rather not see you hurt!” The voice was harsh, grating to the ears, but it contained a hint of something I’d like to think was concern. Was the man Malbrey had been still somewhere within the blasphemous thing he’d become? We will never know, for whether the words were warning or threat he did not explain, but simply turned on his heel and began to march towards the lakeshore.

  Jones made to follow and I moved to support him, thinking to drag Malbrey back if need be, when again I was stopped in my tracks at what I saw. From out of the lake rose a figure, partially obscured by that aberrant fog, but impossibly tall—taller even than Malbrey had become—and swaying like some sinuous serpent as it took each deliberate step forward, its head bowed as if deep in thought. In the glimpses the swirling, golden mists allowed me, I saw it wore a garment of yellow tatters and at that moment I knew, without being told, that it was Malbrey’s King in Yellow. Who, what, else could it possibly be?

  Jones, too, halted then and cast a look in my direction before turning back and pointing an accusing finger at the newcomer, once more merely a strange shape in the lake’s effluvium. Neither Jones nor the thing spoke a word, however, and Malbrey contin
ued on towards the being’s outstretched, beckoning hand.

  Though I broke then from my trance, I was completely lost as to what action to take for the first time in a very long while. I drew my revolver from my coat pocket, even knowing it’d be useless, just to take some decisive action. At this, or perhaps just by coincidence, the mists parted and the King finally raised its head to us, but revealed nothing more of its identity. It was not a face that stared out at us three, but a bone-white mask of porcelain or some such, featureless other than slits for mouth and eyes. Despite the distance, I could feel the blazing power emanating from those eyeholes and it still makes me shudder. The thing lifted a painfully-thin hand towards Malbrey and whispered in a voice that somehow rang clearly in my skull, “Carcosa.”

  At this word, the constellations beneath the black lake began to swirl and the waters themselves to churn violently. The light from the submerged stars grew exponentially brighter and I was forced to shield my eyes with a hand, though not before I saw Malbrey accept the King’s own outstretched hand and Jones rushing madly towards them. I started to follow Jones to give whatever aid I could, but there came then a burst of light like a thousand flash bulbs going off at once and even through my coat-sleeve—having thrown up my arm in the nick of time—I was temporarily blinded.

  Long minutes passed and, still sightless, I sat down on the damp grass to reorder myself and calm my racing heart and ragged breathing. Eventually, my vision returned to normal and when it did, so, too, had the world around me. Gone was the vague city, the weird lights, the unearthly lake; it was just Hyde Park again and I was alone. At this, I raged in helpless frustration—I tore at the grass, my hair, my clothing—but what was done was done. Jones had needed my aid and I’d been less than useless.