“I do know you,” it said. Its voice was dry, cracked, and almost broken. “When was it?” I took a backward step, keeping the gun levelled at the thing’s chest.
“I remember staring up at you as you looked down at a table and a family ready for a meal they never got to enjoy.”
“What are you?” My finger twitched on the trigger. I could hear its voice in my head, somewhere deep beyond simple hearing.
“I think I did have a name, a long time ago. But I’ve collected so many, I can’t keep track of them all.”
It took a step and I fired, the shot deafening in the confines of the kitchen. The bullet struck it just below the collar, leaving a neat hole from which thick black blood began to ooze.
“I don’t actually care about any of you, or any of this,” it said, gesturing vaguely with its hands. “I just don’t know of anything else to do.”
I fired again, aiming lower for the stomach, which had the same result as the first shot.
It was sincere in what it said, I was sure of that. It cared about us in the same way as we might take care to notice a fly near our hand. Its existence, like our own in front of this thing’s, hung on a simple choice.
It made the same choice most of us would make — to bring the hand down and make an end of the tiny creature in front of us. It had been doing this for so long, it no longer needed a reason for it; I was trying to impose a fly’s logic on something far above it.
It didn’t so much as flinch when I shot it, and if anything, the bullets only seemed to draw it closer to me.
“You’re empty, you know, just like all of them. You fill yourselves with things, trying to call it purpose or love or family. None of it matters. Your lives are so short, you should feel happy something like me even notices you exist…nothing else does.”
Even lacking eyes, I caught something in its face. I could read its expression, god help me. I knew what it wanted, and then realized I was aiming the gun in the wrong direction. When I pressed the still-warm barrel under my chin, it stopped.
“You think it will solve anything if you do it? Go on, walk into oblivion. It’s a colder embrace than what I offer.”
In a better story, I would’ve said something about how I wasn’t afraid, which would have been a lie. I was afraid, but I was more terrified of letting the thing in front of me inside than of pulling the trigger.
It chanced a step forward, and I tightened my grip on the handle of the revolver.
It smiled. I think that did it, because it was a knowing kind of smile. I thought of Iris and of the thing wearing me, sightlessly seeking her out. I thought of Janna and what it might have done to her, what it made her do before the end, and I thought of the old woman all alone in her apartment.
This thing scoured life clean more than the dust raging outside ever could. Nothing grew behind it; its every step was like a sprinkling of salt on the ground. I wasn’t fool enough to think this would stop it, but I had to believe it would be something.
I pushed the steel into the soft flesh under my chin and felt a trickle of blood escape. “Go on.”
I felt my finger tighten on the trigger, but never heard the shot.
Part Two: Carcosa
A House of Nothing
The first time I saw the mask, I was in a dingy loft. I’d been invited to a party by a friend; everyone was wearing masks. Though unremarkable in every way, this one somehow stood out from the others.
Linda was the friend who invited me. Most of her friends were prostitutes, and a lot of them were working that night. Both male and female, it looked like everyone she knew who worked the streets was there. It was that kind of party.
The woman wearing the mask was taller than most, and though her face was hidden, the set of her shoulders and a dozen subtle gestures told me she might had been a he. Sitting at a table under the slope of the roof, I realized my cock was filled like a fire hose. I wondered if she would take the mask off and blow me.
She hadn’t even looked in my direction, but something about her — or the mask, maybe — drew me. It was a need like a burning addiction, the sort I imagined heroin addicts to have. Total and complete; the kind of need that consumes a life and tosses it away when it’s done.
I was conscious enough not to risk standing. Nothing worse than people eyeballing you when you’ve got a hard-on like that. Prostitutes aside, the set in attendance wouldn’t appreciate the vulgarity of it.
Instead, she came to me, though I don’t know how she did it. From where I sat, I had a view of most of the loft, and there was no way she could come from behind me. In the span of a blink, she was in the chair opposite me, though I didn’t remember there being one before.
“I don’t know you.” Her voice wasn’t cliché deep, but it wasn’t exactly feminine either. She sounded like someone who smoked a lot and gave up a few years before, but couldn’t escape the damage already done.
“Would you like to?” I asked. Under the table, I was still rigid. “You have an interesting face…your eyes, for example.”
No one ever said my face or eyes were interesting, so I went with it, if only to take my mind off the discomfort in my crotch. “What about my eyes?”
“Your soul is there, lingering around the edges where the iris meets the sclera. Anyone who knows how can see it.”
She reached over and laid one hand over mine. I expected to come when it happened — it was what should’ve happened, given the effect she was having on me. Instead, I went limp with something like relief.
The fingers were long and thin, attached to what seemed an over-large palm. It couldn’t be natural, I remember thinking; she must’ve had work done to it. Made sense given my supposition about a past when she wasn’t a woman.
“I know a place.”
“What’s wrong with the party here?” “I’ve seen it before, and so have you.” “You get that from my eyes?”
She didn’t offer an answer, but gently lifted my hand off the table instead. “C’mon, you’ll like it in the end. Everyone who goes does, they can’t help it.”
I stood, letting her lead me. “Where are we going?” “It’s called the House of Nothing.”
“Never heard of it.”
“Because you’re not speaking to the right people with the right words.”
I could more or less see her eyes through the holes in the mask. I got the impression she was smiling, but I’m not sure.
Saying my goodbyes to Linda, I let her take me out of the loft to wherever this house was. I didn’t care where exactly we were going or what she wanted to show me, it just felt important to keep hold of her. Almost like if I let go, she would drift away.
Seen from outside, the house was unremarkable. It fit with the direction the night was taking. Just a simple brownstone on an average street, the name of which I didn’t catch.
I couldn’t orientate myself. None of the familiar landmarks of the city were visible, and we didn’t pass any on our way there. The route she took me on wound through alleys and backstreets, empty save for the occasional drunk or beggar asleep here and there. They never stirred as we passed, despite the echo of our footsteps ringing from the dripping walls.
All the time we walked, she never took the mask off or bothered to speak to me. Asking her about the place seemed pointless, and I got the impression that if I did, her answer would be silence.
Climbing the steps, she lifted an antique-looking brass knocker and tapped it twice. “When we’re inside, they’ll lock the door behind us. House rules,” she explained without turning.
“Then how do we get out?” “There’s only the one way.”
Unease crept into my stomach, coupled with a dose of rationality. Who is she? I didn’t have a name or a face, and I wasn’t sure if Linda or anyone at the party was in much of a state to notice if I left with her or not. What was behind the door?
She squeezed my hand, almost as if she could feel something transmitted from me through our shared grip. I conceded it was
possible she could; it was that kind of night. Yet it was nothing of the sort.
The door opened, letting faint purplish light spill out across us. A small man with a rattish face peered at us through the crack. The light mixed with a haze of smoke, backlighting the little man so he looked like an imp.
“Cassie,” he said in something that was almost a hiss, but was more probably spoken through a mind-fog of drugs.
The way he stood and swayed slightly suggested as much, but I couldn’t catch the familiar smells from inside — not the oily heaviness of hash or the rank sweat of over-pilled bodies. Instead, what wafted out was sweet, almost spicy and tangy. It caught in the back of my throat and almost kicked me in the head.
“Fuck,” I coughed. The sound drew his eye. “Who’s your friend?”
“Someone I wanted to bring.” She didn’t bother giving my name. “House rules say one guest is allowed.”
“They do,” he said, and I felt rather than saw him peering at me. “He looks an interesting
sort.”
He stepped back, pulling the door open as he did. Cassie gripped my hand and pulled me
inside. She glanced over her shoulder at me.
I caught reflected streetlight in her eyes, the suggestion of a smile and something else I didn’t recognize. Maybe fear or mania, but I doubt it now. I think it was glee — so childlike, and not something I saw in adults, which made it hard to be sure when I saw it in her. Clarity only came with hindsight, though I’m still not sure how much of what I saw in the House was real and what was illusion.
Could’ve been all of it. Could’ve been none of it. I’ve yet to decide which one is more comforting.
A high, narrow hall led inside from the door. The walls were unpainted, but looked stained from years of smoke. Other marks were there, which were hard to make out in the light. I saw a spatter of what could’ve been blood or maybe an old spray of red wine from a long-ago party.
There were openings without doors. One at the end of the hall was the source of most of the smoke. I caught glimpses of people through it, but only impressions of shadows.
Tightly coiled dub with overwhelming bass lines and what sounded like dozens of reverberating drum patterns pulsed from the room. Clipped vocal samples were woven into it, almost like screams from outside in the street.
Cassie took me through one opening into another room, and I started to realize the House was bigger on the inside. The angles and shape of the rooms I glimpsed didn’t match what I had seen from the outside.
My head wasn’t swimming, but it didn’t mean whatever was in the smoke wasn’t going to it.
When I bumped against a wall or crossed a floor as she led me deeper and deeper into the House, I realized at least this much wasn’t an illusion.
The House felt too old, some of the rooms more so. There was a definite layering to the place. Rooms we entered from the hall felt younger somehow, and each subsequent one we passed through seemed more aged than the last. It was as though the House had grown from a single core and we were making our way towards its old heart.
Through the haze and low lighting, I saw more bodies. Some were lying prone, while others writhed on top of each other. Their movements suggested something snakelike or reptilian, and they took no notice of us.
Underneath the smoke, I caught the smell of sweat and something I can only describe as sex.
Something raw and musky, mingling with the drug smoke to create a heady fug in the air, though it wasn’t entirely unpleasant and even stirred my crotch despite Cassie still holding my hand. As if sensing it, she gripped my hand tighter and pulled me after her. I stumbled and bumped into someone emerging from the haze to my right.
He’d moved so effortlessly that I didn’t see him until it was too late. I jerked back to avoid him, yanking hard on Cassie’s arm and causing her to stumble in a half turn.
The face peering at me was old, had once been beautiful; enough of the features remained to tell me as much. Once aquiline and narrow, almost elfin, whatever had been done to him was systematic in its approach. The scarification and alteration was too linear and ordered to suggest anything other than someone performing surgery, or making art in a way, I suppose.
Before I could say anything, Cassie hauled me towards her, while gently pushing the scarred man out of the way with her free hand. He never said a word, but kept looking at me the whole time with an expression I couldn’t discern.
It wasn’t anger that I’d knocked into him. There was more pity in it, but I didn’t have time to wonder why he would look at me like that. Cassie led me on, deeper into the House.
The rooms we passed through grew more and more ancient-looking, the walls like old stone now warped and cracked with age. Mold grew in black curtains from the corners on down, visible by freestanding halogen lamps that cut through the haze and darkness.
There were no people in this part of the House. It didn’t feel empty so much as abandoned, the kind of place people only came when there was a reason to go.
“Thought we were going to join the party,” I said, nodding my head back the way we’d come.
“The real party is in here.”
The door was like any other door, though in truth, it was a sign in its own right. I realized we’d passed dozens on the way, scrawled on the walls in faded graffiti that must have been lurid once. Crazy geometry told me we were no longer close to any street in the city, despite never having ascended or descended a level. There was no way the House could be so big, but I walked its length and I think it really was.
I stepped in front of Cassie and opened the door.
When I crossed the threshold, pulling Cassie behind me, my ears popped and I felt like I’d jumped off the ledge of a building. My stomach jumped to my chest, the way it does when you drop from the summit of a rollercoaster. It only lasted a second, but a second can last forever under the right circumstances.
The room inside was normal, for lack of a better word. Normal in size and proportion, given what I had seen of the front of the House from outside; it could’ve fitted correctly.
Any sense of normality to it ended there, though.
The walls were smeared in faded black paint, the kind you still see in nightclubs sometimes
— the ones that haven’t tarted themselves up, at least. It was lit with black light, with so many strips it was more than enough to see by.
My eyes adjusted, and my head and stomach settled themselves. That was when I saw them.
Through the empty light, I saw figures moving. At first, I thought it was much the same as the rest of the House. People screwing, taking drugs, or some combination thereof; only that wasn’t it.
Not exactly.
Three of them were closer, two standing around a third.
Its hands were behind its back, and I understood it was tied at the wrists. The more my eyes adjusted, the more I saw what grew out of its shoulder blades. They were wings.
“We summon them,” Cassie said almost in my ear. “The King gives us what we desire.”
It was an angel and the two people with it were doing things to it, things I was grateful I couldn’t exactly see in detail. It was moaning in something that could’ve been pleasure or pain, or more likely a combination of both.
Cassie took my hand again and led me forward.
Most of what I saw was happening in the corners of the room where the shadows grew, or else along the walls that were only half in light. I saw then that there’s an art to cruelty, though few realize it. As the dominated suffer, so must the dominant, and giving and taking can be the same thing. Both sides lose something.
That was how it was in the House of Nothing. The angels submitted to men and women with cruel smiles. Their bodies became canvasses of expressions of a darker kind.
The more I saw, the more I wanted to look away, but couldn’t. The angels were beautiful, but used-up like whores at the end of a tether. One hung in a leather harness of the kind I’d seen before at a ba
sement party in Soho. With its face hidden behind a zip-up mask, I didn’t know if it was alive or dead.
Cassie stepped in front of me and went to the angel. She ran her hands over its bare legs and it shuddered, rattling the metal joints of the harness. Her hands traced a path along its thighs, up along its body and to its head, where she unzipped the mask.
Underneath, the angel’s face was hot with the spiral of addiction. It shone under its skin like a pale mask.
“What’s wrong with it?”
“Nothing.” Her eyes smiled behind her own mask. “It simply needs.”
Thoughts crowded out my head, though their texture and feeling were familiar, yet uncomfortable. They were thoughts we all have, in the deepest part of our being. I wanted to do things to the angel, and I wanted Cassie to watch and help me. The need I saw in its eyes was one of pure hunger, and it looked to me to satisfy it.
Then Cassie zipped the mask back in place, muffling its desperate cry behind the dark material.
“I want to leave,” I said, anger coming behind the desire. If I couldn’t take part in this, I wanted out.
She took my hand again, and for the first time, I felt something slip into the back of my head. Not physically, but more under the skin and along the inside of my skull. She’d probably been doing it the whole night — every time she held my hand.
“You can’t leave without me.”
“Then come with me, take me out of here.”
Cassie shook her head slowly. “The only way out is to continue.”
It didn’t matter if she was telling the truth or not, the idea of going it alone wasn’t something I wanted to contemplate.
We were in a corridor, dark save for a line of lights overhead. They were held by cables invisible against their poison glare — a line of sick suns to mark the way.
No Light in August: Tales From Carcosa & the Borderland (Digital Horror Fiction Author Collection) Page 5
