No Light in August: Tales From Carcosa & the Borderland (Digital Horror Fiction Author Collection)

by Digital Fiction

  She looked down at Janna, who was busy playing with a doll she’d picked up from under the table. I got the sense the old woman didn’t want her there, but kept her in case her English failed.

  I dug out my notebook and showed her the drawing I’d made of the carving from the table — the strange cross. When she saw it, she gave no reaction, but she stared, which was reaction enough.

  “You know what this is?” “Yes.”

  “Really, anything you can tell me will be useful.” Truthfully, I was more curious why it frightened her.

  “Witch’s foot, or broken cross, it is called by others.” “What does it mean? Was this a religious thing?”

  “No, no, nothing like that.” She stopped playing with Janna’s hair and laid the notebook on the table, making a show of pushing it slowly away with both hands. “Older.”

  “Someone there was up,” she said, pointing to the ceiling, and I realized her apartment was almost directly under the other one. “They were walking, but soft. I almost could not hear.”

  “A guest?”

  “Not one they wanted.”

  “Did you see him?” She crossed herself when I said it. “Do you know who it was?” “What it was…Kožkar,” she said, looking for the word with her eyes before reluctantly

  playing with Janna’s hair again to get her attention. She spoke something quickly, and the little girl pulled her attention away from the doll.

  “A man who takes the skin from animals,” she said, not affected in the same way as the old woman was. Cut free from her old home, it was only a word to her, but it clearly pained her grandmother to hear her describe it.

  “Can you write it?”

  She nodded and wrote it next to the drawing. I stood and offered her a smile before I left, but she was having none of it. Leaving Janna with her toy, the old woman followed me to the door and came so close it made me nervous for a moment.

  “Please to care, this is old, and do not to be seen by it. It follows.” She crossed herself again and touched my arm.

  I smiled at her; I know now it was the kind of smile one would give to a child or a demented person. At the time, I thought she was a bit of both.

  The medical examiner arrived as night came on, though there wasn’t much she could do except take the bodies away. Sam and I watched from the sidelines, smoking to give our hands something to do.

  Grace joined us a moment later, tapping out a cigarette of her own. I offered her a light and the three of us stood in silence, a small cloud of smoke wreathing us. The wind was picking up again; could have meant another storm, or nothing at all. None of us thought about it.

  “You helping out with this, Jim?” she asked.

  “Pretty much.” I’d known Grace since moving to this part of the country. She’d had a practice back east, or been involved in one, at any rate. It said something about people around here that they didn’t have much trouble with a woman holding a stethoscope. No troubles they’d give voice to, anyway.

  “Any other family I need to notify?” this to Sam.

  “A couple of cousins and an uncle.” He slipped his little black book from his pocket, tore out some pages, and handed them to her. “It’s all there.”

  Grace folded them and dropped her half-finished cigarette to the ground, crushing it out under one heel. “I don’t know what I’ll be able to tell you; it looks open and shut.”

  If Sam wanted to say anything about what I’d told him, he gave no sign.

  Grace smiled and walked to the waiting car, one of the few luxuries that came with her job, if you could call carting around the dead a luxury. I suppose you take what you can in life; part of me always wondered how people in her profession coped with what they did. It was a question for another time.

  We watched as the cars pulled away, one after another. Another car pulled up, one of Sam’s ever-dwindling number of deputies; most folks took whatever chance they could to head further west to California.

  The deputy climbed out and walked up to the porch, where he spoke quickly and softly into Sam’s ear. Despite being close to them both, I couldn’t catch what he said, but Sam’s face changed. It was doing a lot of that lately, going through unaccustomed forms.

  “What is it?”

  The deputy finished speaking and hopped down, making his way back to the Ford.

  “Steve Coleman’s house is empty,” he said, thumbing at the retreating car. “Deputy noticed the lights out and door open; when he went in, he found nothing, except some blood.”

  I didn’t know Coleman, though I’d heard his name a couple of times — I think maybe when Iris and I went to town, back before things got really bad and I couldn’t keep my hands from the bottle or from landing on her face.

  “You think he’s capable of something like this?”

  Sam rubbed his jaw. “I’d say not, but then, I wouldn’t have said Michael could do something of this sort either.”

  He was still thinking in a rational way about everything I’d told him. Sam thought it was some kind of mania, brought on by the dust darkening the sky like it was the End Times the preachers liked to shout about from the pulpit. It wasn’t impossible that two men could come to the same conclusion.

  I couldn’t hold it against Sam; it meant I would have to tell him more and see where that got us.

  It was just after ten. “We should head over and see what’s there to find,” Sam said as he

  unbuckled the holster on his belt and handed the revolver to me.

  I stared at it for what felt like a long time. “You don’t want to give me that.” “I think I do, Jim.”

  When had I last carried a gun, never mind used one? Time and drink made things crowd in a bit before I guessed it must have been more or less five years. Slowly, I raised my hand and took the gun from Sam. Its weight was both familiar and alien, and in no way reassuring. Sam giving me one meant something bad was growing in his mind, to trust a juicer with a gun on a night like this.

  He must’ve thought it would take a bad, or perhaps broken, man to deal with what was walking around.

  Looking at a Czechoslovak dictionary gave me the word, but nothing connected with what the old woman told me. No one else wanted the case, and I couldn’t dump it. The wall loomed in front of me, one I felt I couldn’t climb no matter how hard I tried. There was nothing to purchase here — no handholds to grip, no steps where I could plant my feet.

  The symbol got me precious little more. I skimmed books from a library and only found the names it went by, but giving a name to something doesn’t always ground it in place. The broken cross, or witch’s foot — I read that when constructed in life, it was used to crucify people.

  “A religious slant…might be,” the sergeant offered. “You know what folk from the old countries are like.”

  “Maybe.” I tried to feel it out, but it didn’t fit. Nothing about the family suggested anything other than quiet people trying to make a living in a foreign country, but I wasn’t about to tell him that.

  What I couldn’t figure out was the man the old woman spoke about. It was clear the father pulled the trigger, but the eyes were a mystery. The only solution that presented itself was that whoever had been in the room took them after the fact.

  The whole thing put me in mind of a preacher, only I couldn’t imagine what he might have said to make the man murder his family. It was something other, something that felt dark and old, like a kind of psychosis I’d never understand.

  Old and dark. It made me think about the cross and what the old woman said. Something older; irreligious perhaps, so it seemed the preacher comparison didn’t fit.

  I smoked and drank coffee in the station for most of the night, pouring over what I found and what I could remember from the scene and the old woman. I cursed myself for not writing it down, but I was tired and my mind was only halfway into it.

  Iris was waiting for me at home. She’d look like she was asleep in bed, but she never managed if I wasn’t there. Glancin
g at my watch and the notes on my desk, I knew there was no way of getting home anytime soon.

  I never claimed to be a good detective. I was steady, with moments of insight that got me a reputation. Most of it was undeserved; anyone can have insight if they try hard enough to understand the other person. Most of the men I worked with preferred using their fists rather than their heads; they thought I was odd, not that I was above raising my hands.

  Drink was only just presenting itself as a way out of the more horrible aspects from that part of the job, though it didn’t really take anything away. A crutch supports you, and drink takes more and more of your weight if you let it, until there is no way you can stand on your own.

  It crept up on me, sliding under my arm; by the time I noticed, it was too late.

  The house looked desolate, there’s no other word for it. As we pulled up, light from the car’s lamps reflected from the darkened windows. The night air was still and unmoving, as though it was holding its breath as we passed through the front door.

  The scene matched what the deputy had told Sam, except for the blood. I wouldn’t have used the word ‘some’ to describe it. There was more here than any single person could lose, but the furniture was upright. Whatever happened, only the blood gave any indication of the violence that must have surely happened here.

  “Jesus,” Sam said, looking hard at what lay before us, perhaps unable to take it in. Both of us knew violence, but nothing like this; it was on a different level. It felt older, barbaric — and not at all impersonal.

  I thought of that family and a case file somewhere in the archive still unsolved. The wall I’d never been able to climb and the dead now unremembered, save by a few. At the time, I didn’t realize what it took from me. The infection set in, poisoning and burning me up from the inside, until it left me standing in a dark house with a man out of his depth. I wondered if I was either.

  It wasn’t hard to imagine what might have happened here, even if I didn’t want to.

  “No drag marks,” I said as I pointed to the dust-covered floor. “No boot prints, except ours.” “Same thing in your last case?”

  “No, this is different.” And it was the same, too, but I didn’t need to say it.

  “Why would he come here?”

  “It’s not a he.” The truth I’d never wanted to acknowledge.

  Back then, the idea was fanciful, and I put the old woman’s words out of my mind. When I looked into the empty eyes of those dead men, it never occurred to me that something could be staring back.

  “This is old, and do not to be seen by it. It follows.” Her warning came too late, and I had finally begun to understand why things went the way they did with me. You might think it’s just bullshit and a drunkard’s rationality, and you might be right. You’ll just have to take my word for it and decide for yourself.

  “Someone’s out there,” Sam said, looking through the kitchen and out the windows.

  He drew his gun and backed out the way we came while I jogged towards the back door. I don’t remember pulling the gun; it was just there in my hand where it was empty before. From the back step, I saw Sam following a figure heading towards Coleman’s small barn at the back of the property.

  The clouds gusted overhead, a warning sign that could mean more dust on the way.

  Moonlight revealed enough to tell me he was chasing a man. There was something strange about the way he was running, as though he didn’t quite understand how to shift his body in such a way.

  I ran after Sam, but couldn’t make it to him in time. He was already well inside by the time I reached the barn door.

  There was no light inside, just a darkness as black as pitch; the kind that swallows men whole if they give it the chance. Like the gun in my hand, it felt familiar in so many ways, though the feeling came from within even as I stepped into it.

  My foot caught something, and it clattered away towards the back of the barn with a metallic rattle. Sam’s gun; even if I couldn’t see it, I knew. Stopping, I raised my own weapon and panned it slowly left and right. My own breathing seemed to drown out the wind picking up outside.

  The darkness moved, my eyes bringing it to oily life from fear. Was it only fear, or something more?

  I’d brushed close to whatever this was once before, but I’d only convinced myself I had.

  Really, I’d seen it only from a distance, arriving after the fact and wading into its leftovers. I was no use here, and now Sam was dead — no mistake. He’d never drop his gun any other way. Joviality aside, he was that kind of man.

  A sound like a boot dragged across the ground froze my guts and made my knees weak. Outside, the wind picked up again, making loose wood rattle in the barn. I didn’t want to end up trapped out here; without a mask or goggles, I’d be blinded by the dust before drowning in it. The barn offered no protection, not with Sam’s killer inside, and I didn’t think my gun would do much good.

  Somehow, I knew it wouldn’t.

  Backing out the door, I forced myself to turn my back on the barn and run back towards the house. Risking a backwards glance, I saw the cloud advancing. It snuffed out the stars as it came on. In the half-open door of the barn, I thought I saw something move, but I didn’t stop.

  The dust came down as I closed the door behind me, removing everything outside in a thick shroud. I could probably make it to the Ford, but the thought died as soon as it came. The keys were with Sam and he was out there, with it, though I suspected it would soon be in here with me.

  Coleman, or the Coleman-thing, would come. It wasn’t done tonight, no matter that it wore the man’s flesh and had used it to kill his family. It recognized me, I think, and despite the urgency of things, my mind drifted back to the old woman and the last time I saw her.

  The wall being hit, all I could do was return to the apartment building and look around. The blood stains were gone and the apartment was still empty, but it wouldn’t be long before another immigrant family called it home.

  I didn’t turn on the light when I went in. I walked around the table, making sure to step lightly. Had he gone clockwise or counter-clockwise? Who was the first to die? Was that important?

  Sitting in the father’s seat, I spread my hands on the old worn surface of the table and stared down its length.

  The shape of the crime suggested itself, but trying to touch its side was like being blind in a dark room. The more I felt my way along, the more the shape changed and became indefinable.

  Motive was what escaped me. From what I knew, there was no reason for these people to die, and certainly not in the way they did. No motive, except to do it. An exercise in power?

  Standing, I left the apartment and made my way down the stairs. The little girl wasn’t there, but the old woman was. She stood where Janna had been before and beckoned me in much the same way.

  Her home was shrouded in gloom; thin black nets were draped over the lamps in mourning. “Janna not come back from school,” she said. “Two days.”

  “Did you call the police?”

  She shook her head. “No result, no meaning to do it.”

  She understood me well enough, despite her broken English. “You not see the Kožkar?”

  “No…no, I haven’t.”

  “It saw Janna, I think. Saw her and followed her.” She sat and tried to push herself as far back into her chair as possible. “You only see it when is too late. Slips in underneath, behind eyes, and then closes the way in so it can stay.”

  I left her there, understanding more than before, but also less. I was sad about the little girl, but from what the old woman told me, it was already too late. Behind the sadness came anger, tinged with frustration.

  You might ask why I accepted the old woman’s story. It was the ritual and order underneath the apparent brutality. In the beginning, it looked like nothing more than a crime of madness, but the more I turned it around and around in my head, the more I saw through the theatrics.

  The arrangement of the bod
ies at the table, the broken cross symbol. It was the eyes, their excision, and the lack of blood, which meant it happened before — a while before — the other murders.

  Everything else was just dressing for the main act.

  The lack of eyes was the only injury the father had, and though bad, it wouldn’t have killed him. He should’ve been alive, but it was as if he’d simply expired once the deed was done. The acute angle of his neck had spoken to a boneless quality to his body, as though he’d been cast off after being worn by something unused to draping itself in human skin.

  I couldn’t tell any of this to my sergeant, or even to Iris.

  Of course, they found the girl a week later, by which time I was ready to quit and leave the city. They put her missing eyes down to the fish in the river, though she was otherwise whole.

  In the kitchen, I thought it over — what I knew and all the gaps that remained. None of it made sense, and what I could grasp felt like simply fragments out of context. Half-stories and symbols soaked in blood, all of it serving a purpose beyond me.

  It was out there; it had always been out there. Something lurking at the edges of vision, the feeling of something at your back, the sensation of sightless eyes watching from shadows. I knew it was old, but I didn’t understand why it still bothered with us.

  A shadow appeared at the door, outlined in the small window. Slowly, the handle turned and the wind did the rest, pushing the door open and filling the kitchen with flurries of black dust.

  The chair tipped as I stood, bringing the gun up and cocking the hammer. It was less than five feet from me, but I didn’t think the gun would do me any good.

  It wore Coleman’s body badly, despite what must have been ages of practice. His eyes were gone, though the wounds were surprisingly clean. Dust poured from the empty sockets as it stepped inside, actually bothering to close the door behind itself.

  I saw its hands were misshapen, as if each finger had too many knuckles. The nails and fingertips were stained black with what might have been dirt, but wasn’t. The blood flaked off in places, revealing red-tinted skin beneath. It stopped and stared at me, its mouth was pulled tight in a horrible approximation of a smile.