“Ah! Dennington Cross.” His eyes darted from left to right as if searching for meaning. “Ninety, you say? Then it has spread. It has spread very far. Too far. Too far to be spread like . . . a fine . . .” His words tumbled into a mixture of tears and frightened laughter. “I’m sorry. It’s difficult. Very difficult to keep . . .”
“Keep what?” I said. “What happened to you?”
The old man’s face scrunched as he drew in a long breath. His attempt at an explanation came, it seemed, at great expense to his nerves. “They came. It . . . came.” He looked up into the starless sky. “Dear Lord, it came. They . . . came.”
“The beasts?” I said.
His eyes, wide like an animal’s, fixed upon mine. “The beasts?”
I nodded.
“The beasts are nothing,” he said, suddenly indignant at my suggestion. “Senseless demons. Nothing more. It’s not them you need to worry about, my friend. It’s . . . it . . . It is what you must guard against. The Nameless Beast. The Father of Lies. The Innominatum.” He stabbed his middle finger hard three times into his temple. “It gets inside. Says things. Not in words. No, not in words. That part is done. It gets in through words. Rides in on the words like a Trojan horse. Rides in like a disease. But, once it is inside, it speaks to you in memory, not in words. In desire. In guilt. It twists and turns and slides, changing your wants, changing your . . .”
He looked at Lucy, as if suddenly aware of her presence. “Dreams!” he shouted. Then very quietly: “Do you have dreams, little girl?”
Lucy frowned at him, and although her answer was bold, I felt her fingers tighten around my arm. “I should say it would be unnatural not to have dreams, sir.”
“Tarky!” he barked. “My name is Tarky. Not sir. My name is Tarky!”
I raised a palm and stepped forward to place myself as an obstacle between him and Lucy. “I think you should calm down, if that is at all possible. You’re not making much sense, I’m afraid.”
“I’m sorry. It’s very hard, you understand? Very hard to think. It’s the Nameless Beast.”
“The Nameless Beast?” I said. “You sound like you know something about what happened here. How did you come by this knowledge?”
“Same thing happened here as it did to us.”
“Us?”
“Yes.” Tarky pressed the heel of his hand hard into one eye and gritted his teeth. “We were taken too. You were next. Days and days after us. Days and days after Newton Fremming was taken.”
“Newton Fremming? Where the train accident happened? They cut off access to the village almost two weeks ago, but I had no idea it was under siege too—”
Tarky laughed. “Train wreck? Is that what they said? No! The whole village was taken by the demons. Taken, taken, taken. And I’m the last.” He crouched down and rocked back and forth on his knees, clutching his hair. “Only me left.”
“The last?” I felt suddenly cold. “What happened to everyone else?”
“Dead. Killed by the demons. Well, not all the demons. There was the behemoth. It sent me here.”
I shook my head and glanced at Lucy. I could feel her gentle tug on my arm, warning me to keep away from this man, and though I sensed he may have information of vital importance, my heart agreed with her.
Tarky pointed a quivering finger at Lucy. “You are not important. They will kill you.” His voice was singsong as he continued. “You should hide. Hide, hide, run and hide.”
Lucy whined and pulled harder on my arm.
“Now just a moment,” I said. “There is really no call for you to—”
“Listen! Listen to me,” he shouted.
I was about to insist that he get a grip of himself and keep his voice down, when something stirred in the mist to my left. “We need to find somewhere, and quickly.” My voice was low but urgent.
“No,” Lucy whispered. “I don’t like him.”
I wanted to explain to her that Tarky was only the way he was because terrible things had happened to him, and that once we had calmed him down, he might even be able to help us, but I was far more concerned with our exposed position. I glanced around us. There were several houses. Any one of them would serve as a temporary shelter. “Over there,” I said, and took Lucy’s hand to guide her toward the closest house.
Tarky followed, but there was no quieting him. Even as we entered through an open back door into a dark and abandoned home, he continued rambling about behemoths and demons in such violent and animated fashion, I rather feared we had hemmed ourselves into a waiting trap instead of securing a hiding place.
After I insisted he be silent, we sat in a room without windows, where the light of my lamp would not be visible to the creatures outside. Lucy was still tucked into my side as we sat on a long sofa, but Tarky paced around the room, his footfalls heavy and creaking on the floorboards. There was blood splashed over his scuffed shoes, and I wondered what horrors he had witnessed.
“Won’t you sit down?” Lucy told him. “You’re making a terrible noise.”
I smiled at her. She was being very brave.
“Have you eaten?” I added.
He stopped then and clutched at his stomach. His face stretched into a twitching grimace, as if the realization of hunger was an omen of extreme danger. “No,” he said quietly, and it was the first pause I had seen in his mania. “It is leaving me.”
“Leaving you? What is leaving you?” I said.
He found an armchair opposite us and sank slowly into it, feeling the cloth on its frame as if the tactile experience was something that had been reclaimed. The lamplight softened the lines of his face and he observed us with a great sadness. “The Devil. The Nameless Beast,” he said. “It is distracted. It allows me brief moments like this when it needs to direct its attention to other urgent”—he paused, confused—“I have not felt hunger in days. It drives you. Pushes you until . . .”
“What is this beast you speak of? How do you know—?”
“No, don’t talk. You must listen. I do not know how much time is left to me, and there is too much to tell. There is a way to escape this place, but do not even think of doing so unless you have put an end to this cursed creature. It is an ancient thing filled with hate and lust and an insatiable hunger, and it has been feeding secretly on our kind for so very long. It reaches in, takes hold of your mind, and seduces you. It makes you go willingly to its children, the demons, to feed them.”
Tarky leaned forward in the chair, and I could see that he was already struggling to stay calm. His words were coming rapidly again and in increasing volume.
“Since you came,” he continued, “something has changed, I do not know what, but its prey no longer goes willingly. I have fought it and survived. It still lives in my mind. Lives in my mind. Lives in my mind.” He tapped hard at his temple again. “But I can resist. Do you feel it?”
“No.”
He nodded and I saw a brief smile turn the corners of his mouth. “If you do, when you do, be on your guard. You will feel it when it comes. You will have an hour, two at most, before you lose control. Be strong.” His eyes settled on Lucy. “Be strong.”
“She’s stronger than she looks,” I said, drawing her close.
He blurted out a laugh, but it was not a pleasant noise. “Strong? I saw children,” he said. “I saw them. Lots of them. They were the first. Weak minds. Trusting minds. Innocent minds. They walked out . . . of the houses and—” Tarky pressed his fists into his eyes and wept hard.
I did not know what to do. A part of me wanted to reach out, to console him, but a darker side of me was incensed by the way he had spoken without thought of how Lucy was feeling. I did nothing but hold Lucy, and we watched the tortured man as he rocked back and forth in his seat, unravelling before our eyes. His sobbing turned to wailing and then to unrestrained screams of remorse. I stood, wanting desperately to silence him. It seemed that this was much more than an expression of pain through the remembering of atrocities. By the way his fi
ngers curled and uncurled as he held them over his head, it appeared he was battling with the unnamable force he had told us about.
“It wants me now. It is winning now,” he cried. “The other. The Behemoth. It fights against its master, The Innominatum. It wants supremacy. Use it! Use it! That is how I was able to resist. It helped me, but the baton is passed now. To you. To you. To you. Kill the girl, for the sake of mercy.”
He got out of his chair and grasped my arm. “Do it now. They come!”
Tarky was screaming so loud that it hurt my ears. I could not process any of what he had said, and I had no evidence that it was anything more than the garbled fantasies of a man driven to insanity. But what I did know was that any creature close to the house would be very much aware of our presence by now.
Tarky set his sights on Lucy and I knew immediately his intent.
“No!” I intercepted him by grabbing his jacket while Lucy scrambled from the sofa, deftly running past him to hide behind the armchair. Tarky screamed all the louder at her escape. I had to silence him, and quickly.
It was in those few seconds that my heart fell into darkness, for what I felt was not the human evil of others; it was my own. I could say that it was for Lucy’s protection that I did it, or as a mercy to him so that he would not fall foul of the creatures outside. I could even say that it was for personal preservation and thereby still maintain a trembling foothold on the plateaus of morality, but alas, it was none of these things that motivated me.
In those few fateful seconds, I hated Old Man Tarky. I hated him for endangering my life. I hated him for tantalizing me with explanations but delivering none. And I hated him for his weakness. For not keeping possession of his mind.
And, so help me, I killed him. I picked up the closest item to hand—the coal scuttle in the fireplace—and I smashed it hard and viciously into the side of his head.
He did not die instantly, but his silence was sudden. His body fell awkwardly across the armchair, and like a squatted fly, he moved one arm slowly to protect his head. I struck again, and I like to believe that second stroke was a mercy to end his suffering but am no longer sure I can trust my memory of that event. I remember only the rage of those few seconds and the crushing exhaustion and guilt that followed.
I placed the coal scuttle neatly back by the fireplace and retreated to the sofa, staring in silence at Tarky’s body. Earlier I had branded myself a coward. Now I was something worse. I did not know how to feel, so I allowed Lucy to do that for me. She crawled out from behind the armchair, paused only for a second to look at the old man, then settled beside me, taking my hand and squeezing it. She said nothing, but I know she believed I did what I did for her. How I wish that were true.
Moon Box Segment Translation 4
Seedling sown in patience dark
The archaeological diary of Edward Cephas Hargraven
4th September 1891
It took almost half a bottle of port to wheedle it out of him last night, but after significant chortling and teasing on his part through to the small hours, Haynes has finally spilled the beans. The fact that it was I who drank the other half was also a factor which influenced his declaration; he did not believe the liquor would allow me the privilege of remembering his words in the morning, and so he thought he could tease me for another day, the rascal. I confess to a mighty ache this morning, but the heaviness has not dulled my senses. I remember what he told me. How could I forget! It justifies our presence here and brings the proof of my theory yet closer.
Haynes confirmed two things. Firstly, that the skull had been broken in two places. The breaks were deliberate, made using a sharp-edged instrument like a chisel on either side in the exact same area: the styloid process. Movement of the jaw would have been very painful. Secondly, scarring from the same instrument was found on the vomer, suggesting removal of the subject’s tongue. Considering this together with the evidence found in the burial chamber, one must draw an obvious conclusion: these people (or at least a certain population of the community) were forbidden to communicate. They could not speak, and their hands had been removed to prevent them from writing. My work today will be to confirm that the same cranial damage is visible on the skulls of the bodies we found in the burial chamber.
5
It was some time before Lucy and I could summon the courage to leave for Weytonset. The creatures had not returned, and in the midst of this brief respite, my thoughts recoiled at my actions against Old Man Tarky. My weariness gave place to anger, frustration, and denial. I declared a silent ultimatum to God and to the enemy as we traversed the exposed road out of Dennington Cross: kill us and get it over with, or lead us to salvation. I confess to rash bravado on that journey. Petulant and foolish though this attitude was, we reached our neighboring town without incident. At least, I thought we did.
The signpost bearing the town’s name was there to welcome us, and the fog had diminished significantly. On either side of the road the moorland forests rose in dark bushy clumps, and the silence—ever unbearable for its sinister mystery—smothered us. There was still no movement of the cold air. I lowered my lamp, shaking my head at the pitch-black journey ahead. Without the mist there should at least have been some indication of civilization in the form of distant street lamps or perhaps even a farmyard pyre, but there was nothing; visibility was reduced to the vague illusion of memory imprinting its shapes upon my mind’s eye. I did not consider the ravings of Old Man Tarky then. I did not want to.
I looked up. The sky was equally black. Not simply the inky depths one is used to with the advent of a cloudy night and new moon, and not the darkness of closing one’s eyes. This was a devouring absence of light, terrifying to behold in so vast a canopy.
“It isn’t just the sun and moon that have vanished,” I said. “There is not one solitary star in the heavens.”
“Where did they go?” Lucy asked.
“I cannot say, but their disappearance is contrary to all the laws of nature. Stars do not simply go out in such number.”
“So why aren’t they shining? Is that why it is so cold?”
“I don’t know.”
Still clutching my hand, her face ghostlike from the light of my lowered lamp, Lucy stopped. “My mother told me that darkness cannot put out light.”
I crouched to meet Lucy’s gaze. “Does it frighten you?”
She looked up at the missing sky, then back into my eyes. “If you’re not frightened, then I’m not.”
Fear was creeping through me like cancer, and I hoped more than anything she could not see it in my smile. “I’m not frightened.”
“Good,” she said. “Then I think we should forget about it for now and move on, don’t you?”
Her words warmed me and took the falseness from my smile, but it was all I could do to maintain it as I faced the road into Weytonset. Each step into the darkness brought with it another measure of dread. Holding the lamp ahead of us was futile and I felt like a blind man without a stick, bobbing my head this way and that, hoping in vain that a new angle might produce at least some hint of edge or shape in the dark. But there was nothing. The throbbing of my head injury grew, and with its insistence came a welling of exasperation at the thought that our last chance of escape or rescue was being siphoned away into this all-consuming night-world. I could not say if it was the disorientation from the vacuum ahead, or the pain, that was producing nausea, but I was losing my grip on consciousness yet again. I stood still for a moment to fight it.
“Alexander? What is it?”
“Nothing.”
“You’ve stopped.”
“Yes.”
“What is it?”
Hearing the tremble in her reply, I chided myself. My answers were curt as I contended with my malady. “I think I should go ahead first. If I encounter something, you may need to run, and I would not want to hinder you.”
“But I want to stay with—”
“You will be staying with me. Just a few steps behin
d; that’s all.”
She was silent for a moment, and her mouth wrinkled into a pout, but she agreed.
“Here,” I said, handing her the lamp. “You can hold this. It’s useless to me, but you will be able to see me better from behind, and my shadow will provide me with some frame of reference for a few steps ahead at least.”
“Thank you.”
I squeezed her shoulder, then turned to face the dark again. My shadow stretched ahead on the cobbled road and I remained focused on it as I made my way slowly forward.
We carried on in this fashion for near on thirty minutes and I knew that we would be reaching Marigold Farm soon. It was the first residence one encountered on the road to town, and I had spent many a weekend there with my family, enjoying tea with the Wilkinson household. But as I allowed my hope to build at the thought of meeting familiar faces, a peculiarity occurred.
The cobbles of the road ahead were gone and there was only blackened dirt. It was impossible to see what was on the ground. Though the lamp still illuminated the next few yards ahead, the darkness seemed to engulf first the shadow of my head, then—as I edged forward—the shoulders. Farther still, the light stopped at my shadow’s waist and for the first time I began to see something other than the lamplight or my shadow on the ground.
There were soft, blurred shapes, like pale rods of light, where the top of my shadow should have been. Believing it to be a visual disturbance brought on by my head trauma, I focused on this mirage for almost a full minute, blinking and rubbing my eyes, trying to make sense of what I was seeing. The shapes seemed distant, luminous.
“Stay there,” I told Lucy, and I edged still farther forward. More lit pillars came into view, and now my shadow had vanished from the knees up. Still I could make no sense of what I was seeing. And then, all at once, the completely obscure became the completely obvious as I tried to place my foot where the darkness swallowed my shadow. My shoe found empty space and I slipped, scraping my calves as I skidded down an almost vertical stony bank. Panicking, I arched my back and tried to arrest my descent with my elbows. I twisted around quickly to grasp the edge, and with stone ripping my fingernails, I barely managed to stop. My arms quivered as I pulled myself up, and my eyes drew level with the ledge so that I was able to peep over it.
Dark Seed Page 4
