“I have not lied to you. I told you the price was steep, but one well worth paying.”
“You want us to kill a child?” The Lord Mayor whimpered. “But why?”
“The plague will not pass on its own. It will lay in the grave all that it touches. To stop it will require a great power. And as power comes only through sacrifice, great power comes only through the greatest of loss.”
“We won’t do it,” said the woodcutter. “I don’t believe you can heal them, whatever imposture and parlor tricks you may possess.” He gestured at the sword of the Sheriff, still driven into the ground, the other man having no desire to touch it again. “And besides, no one would pay that price.”
The stranger stepped forward and stretched out his hand to touch the shoulder of the woodsman. The other man did not flinch. He would show that he was not afraid. But when the stranger touched his arm, he did know fear. The touch was not cold, precisely. Instead, the woodsmen felt empty, as if he had been gutted, everything inside of him ripped away.
“You have a son, do you not? A boy named James? From this moment he is healed. When you go home and see that what I say is true, let that be the answer to your doubt. But it is only temporary. The illness will return to him, unless you do as I say.”
“I can’t,” and the tears began to flow down the granite face of that man, “even for James. I can’t trade his life for the life of another.”
The stranger lifted his hand from the woodsman’s shoulder to touch his cheek, almost caressing him with his cold, bone-thin finger. “Simple creature. You pay that price every day. How many in your trade lay down their lives to build the houses and shops that make up your town? How many have been hanged from this very tree to keep others safe? How many soldiers die at your king’s command, for his glory or his treasure or his land?”
“But how can we choose?” said the Lord Mayor. “How can we even begin to pick one of our own?”
The stranger never looked at him, keeping his eyes instead upon the woodsman. “You are a devout man.”
“We are all devout men, my lord,” interrupted the Lord Mayor. The stranger ignored him.
“Do you remember the story of Jonah and the great fish?”
“Of course,” answered the woodsman.
“And when the storm beset the ship in which he hid from your god, how did his companions determine who was to blame?”
“They cast lots.”
“Yes, and when the lots fell upon Jonah, they threw him into the sea?”
“They did.”
“And did the storm abate?”
“It did.”
“Then that is your answer.” The sun had fallen, the moon taking its place. Even the wind had died away, and but for their voices, silence held sway. “Go home,” said the stranger, “check on your son. See that I speak the truth. Then make your choice.”
___
The woodsman returned to his home to find his wife in tears. Their only son had been made whole; it could only be called miraculous. The boy’s fever had broken just after sunset.
___
They gathered in the old church to cast the lots. I can see that you are surprised that they would so decide. Ah my friend, fear and wonder are powerful drugs, and the townspeople had both in abundance. Fear that their children would die. Wonder that the son of the woodsman had been cured. There was only one who objected, only one who spoke reason in the face of madness.
The woodsman went to the church that evening to plead with his friends and neighbors not to choose a path that could not be unwalked. But the stranger had done more than cure the woodsman’s son; he’d robbed him of the faith the people once had in him.
“You have already received the stranger’s blessing,” said one. “Your child lives, while ours stand on death’s doorstep. Why would you deny us what you enjoy?”
The woodsman’s pleas for them to hear reason were rebuffed, and soon words turned to shouts, arguments to threats.
The Sheriff stepped forward, his hand on the hilt of his sword. “You’ve said your piece, woodsman. Now get out.”
“He stays,” said a voice from the back, and that cold command chilled the blood of all present. The stranger stepped from the daylight beyond into the church. “For the pact must bind you all.”
“I won’t be a part of it,” said the woodsman. “I won’t be bound to this.”
The stranger chuckled and to all who heard, it sounded like a growl.
“Do you think you have a choice? What in this life led you to that conclusion? You are no island. You are bound to the decisions of the whole. You wish to disagree? The blood of untold women and children slaughtered for the crimes of their cities or their kings mocks your innocence. Stay, or go. It makes no matter. You will be bound.”
The woodsman fell silent, and the stranger turned to the congregation.
“Have you made your choice?”
“We have,” answered the Lord Mayor.
“And what have you decided?”
“We will do as you ask. Cure our children, and the life of one will be in your hands.”
The stranger held his arms high above his head. “So it has been spoken, so you are now bound.” Down his hands swung, meeting in one great crash.
Every man and woman in the assembly fell backwards as if buffeted by a mighty wind. Many cried out in pain. The woodsman clutched his hand, the agony as if he had grabbed a glowing brand. When he looked down at his palm, he knew why. His skin sizzled, and already, the red, seared flesh had begun to rise—and it formed an image. A ring, with a single point at the bottom of the circle. At its center, three spheres melded together, as if one globe but with three lobes. It was a sigil, one that the woodcutter doubted many had ever seen before. He knew not what it meant, only that it was of a dark and deadly purpose, and that all who gathered that day bore it. The smell of burning flesh hung heavy in the air.
“A spoken oath, sealed in flesh and fire. One you dare not break.”
The stranger reached inside his cloak and removed a leather satchel. He threw it at the feet of the Lord Mayor.
“Now your god decides. Inside are circles of marble, one for every family in this town. All are white, save one. He who draws the black sphere, from him shall the sacrifice come.”
The stranger turned and made his way to the door of the church. “Where are you going?” cried the Lord Mayor.
“The rest is for you to do,” he said without turning. “I go to prepare myself. Tonight I cure your children. Tomorrow I collect my price.”
Into the dying light the stranger disappeared.
The lots were cast. It was the son of the Lord Mayor that was chosen.
___
That night, the people of Old’ham huddled behind closed doors, clutching their sick children close, praying that the oath they had taken would yield fruit.
It began sometime after midnight. A single sound shattered the perfect stillness of that evening. Some said they heard a child’s cry. Others, the shriek of a bird. Still more, the moan of the dying. And others, the wail of an injured beast.
But whatever they heard at first, all agreed about what followed—the sound of piping.
Discordant, yet melodic. Soothing, yet daemonic. A single flute, the music of which did not bring joy. Rather, it seemed to bore into the minds of those who heard it, to steal their happiness and replace it with pain, taking some of their very sanity with it.
And yet as the sound passed, so too did the suffering. In its place came joy, for as the pipe played, the children were healed, one by one. By the time the last note died away, the town had been restored.
The people poured into the streets. They sang, and they danced, and they drank wine. Many things were done beneath the moon that I will not speak of here. But the sun rose, as it must on every night. And when it did, it rose on a day of reckoning.
The stranger came forth. He walked down streets that still echoed with the revelry of the night before. He met no one on h
is way to the church to collect his prize. He strode up the steps and pushed open the doors.
It was deserted, or at least, that’s how it appeared. In an instant, a half-dozen men surrounded him, their swords drawn. The Lord Mayor stepped from behind a pillar, his countenance that of man who has played another for a fool. But to the Lord Mayor’s annoyance, the fool still did not seem to comprehend that he had been played.
“Did you bring the boy?” the stranger asked.
The men chuckled, secure behind the points of their blades.
“Why no, my friend,” said the Lord Mayor. “No, I think a new deal is in order. You get to keep your life, and all debts are paid.”
“So you mean to break the bargain, then?”
The Lord Mayor took a step forward, drawing his own sword. “Did you not hear me? Your payment is your life. Oh, you had the others fooled, with your trickery and your black magic. But we know how to deal with witches in this town, especially the ones that poison the well and then claim to have the cure. You turn and you go, and if we ever hear of the like of you in these parts again, I will personally ride out and have your head.”
The stranger took a step back and into the morning sun. “By your own word, then.”
There was a flash of light and smoke, and when the swordsmen opened their eyes again, the stranger was gone.
What came that night became the stuff of legend.
Darkness fell hard and fast, and there were few who thought that it did not come several hours before its appointed time. The moon, a full half the evening before, never rose that night. Ebon night held sway, and silence joined it, the kind that breaks men’s minds. But what followed made those who heard it wish that the maddening silence had never been shattered.
It was the sound of piping. But not one pipe. Nay, it was thousands. Drums had joined it. Deep, throbbing drums that pounded into the mind and chased away all thought. A dry wind began to blow, to whip through the streets and rap upon the doors. A chorus of screams was added to the cacophony. Those howls of pain were no illusion, however; they were very much of this earth.
Hell had come to Old’ham, the Devil seeking his due.
In his home in the forests, the woodsman heard all. His family huddled in fear, but he took up his sword. They begged him not to go, but when the woodsman looked to the mark upon his hand, he knew that he had a duty to stop whatever the townspeople had so foolishly started. He rushed into the darkness to the fate that awaited him.
By the time he reached the church, the roar of satanic song and the pitiful cries of the dying and those who wished they were dead had become an almost solid wall of sound. But when he turned the corner and ran into the High Street, it was then that his sanity almost slipped.
A great beast filled the city street. Or at least, that is how he perceived it. One moment, it was a monster, unlike anything he had ever seen before, with whip-like arms that buzzed and slapped against the earth in great thunderous strikes. Then it was a column of smoke and fire that roared and burned and spat out noxious fumes. Then it was a dragon, a great black dragon with the arms and wings of a bat. Then it was a swirling vortex of wind and dust that ripped apart all in its path. But whatever form it took, the piping never ceased, nor did the beating of the drums.
As he watched, the form, whatever form it was at the moment, continued its slow march towards him. A door would swing open or a wall would be torn down, the inhabitants therein vomited out into the streets screaming and gibbering and clawing at the ground. Before him they were sliced in half by a crashing, caber-like arm; snapped up by the jaws of an enormous maw, ripped apart by a whirlwind, or turned to ash by toxic vapors. The end was always the same; they all died. All of them—men, women, and children.
The woodsman dropped his sword. He stepped forward. “You want a sacrifice!” he screamed. “Take me.”
The swirling chaos before him halted. Then it seemed to part, and out stepped the stranger. His amber cloak billowed like smoke, and in his hand he held a small flute.
“Woodsman, you would offer yourself as a sacrifice?”
The woodsman hesitated but for a moment. He closed his eyes and uttered a prayer to God—both the one that he worshiped, and those to whom his ancestors bowed before beyond the veil.
“Yes,” he said. “I am ready.”
There was a rumble that shook the earth. It came from the stranger. He was laughing. “Do you not see?” he said, sweeping his arm behind him as if to encompass the entire town. “Do you still not understand? What is the sacrifice of one, when I can have hundreds? You offer yourself now. But these, they offered themselves before. They swore the oath that you rejected. A blood bond, to make full the debt they owed if it were not paid—with interest accrued.”
“But I am bound as well,” the woodsman said, almost begging. “Take me instead.”
“What does your life mean to me? I have lived a thousand of your lifetimes. Do you think I care for you, or this accursed place? Their blood gives me power, and one day, when it runs like rivers, when the power is enough, then I will use it to change the very course of the stars in the sky. And when they are right, all will bow before their true masters.”
The woodsman looked down to the sword that still lay in the dust. The stranger began to laugh again.
“You are a fool. But I must say, bravery such as this I have rarely seen from your kind. Go back to your family. Tell them you love them. And then send them away, your wife and your child. This I give to you, but you must give me something in return. I will come for you. When I finish here.”
Then he turned and stepped back into the storm.
The woodsman ran home. He hugged his wife and child tight, and then he told them to run, to flee to the next town and then the one beyond that and not to stop until they reached a place where no one had ever heard of Old Bethlehem. They did not protest. They knew that death was on their doorstep. They knew that this was their only chance. I hope that wherever they fled, they lived out their lives in peace and joy.
The stranger came to the house of the woodsman. The roof did not fly away. The wall did not collapse. Instead, there was merely a knock on the door.
The woodsman opened it.
The stranger stood before him.
“To you,” he said, “I grant my pardon, be it on one condition. Here you will stay, and you will spread to all those who pass by my story. You will tell them what came to be in this town, so that all may fear the name of Nyarlathotep, the Piper in Yellow!”
___
You see, my friend, I am the man who spoke with death that day, all those centuries ago. And this mark upon my hand is the sigil of my mission—and my curse.
You seem confused? Oh you’ve never heard of the story of the piper? Well, I suppose the details change in the retelling, and there are many who stray within these borders and then go on to their homes or to far horizons who no doubt soften the edges, for the sake perhaps of their own sanity.
And of course, there’s the name of the town itself. For I told you that, whatever its fathers may have wished, Bethlehem never really stuck. So it bears many names, in tales and in song. But there is one that is most prominent. One that seems to fit Lil’ham more than most. A strange thing really, for it is not only a corruption but an inversion.
Most people have never heard of Bethlehem or New Bedlam or Lil’ham.
No, in the story that gets retold the most, the story that most people have heard, the town went by another name—
Hamelin.
They get details wrong in the telling.
The kiss does not transform him. The scales do not wash off from his body, the smell of brine clings to his clothes. The teeth remain, pointed and sharp, like the maw of a dangerous tropical fish or a shark. Tiny little teeth, white, serrated, in his smiling mouth.
Other bits are correct: My father did sell me to a monster to pay off a debt. It was quite natural, he had already sold my sisters to others; told them to put roses in their hair an
d some rouge, to lift their skirts when a gentleman paid the coin.
I was the youngest, so he saved me for last. He had me mend shirts and take in the washing. Hard work. No time for games or merriment. I called him “Sir” because that was the proper way a daughter spoke to her father. I spoke to his shoes, to the ground, not to him, my voice a whisper in the hovel we called a house. Sometimes he’d take my chin in his hands and tilt it up and he’d say “What a pretty mouth you have, so very pretty, like a rosebud.” Or he’d say “What pretty hair, so thick and long.” Or “Hush, my pretty.”
My pretty, he called me. My beauty. My girl.
My. That’s what I was. His pretty, pretty girl. ‘Til the day when he came back home, pleased with himself and he said now I’d be someone else’s pretty pretty one.
He said “Here now, beautiful, it’s your turn. I’ve found a gentleman who would appreciate your company.”
I said “ No, sir, please no.”
He slapped me, but not so hard I would bruise.
I went into the old quarters of the city, to a house of weathered stone and iron and coloured window panes. A house surrounded by a tall wall of stone, thick with ivy. A house of high ceilings and great chandeliers. And in the middle of this house – not a castle, they also get that wrong – sat a beast of slim, long limbs. Sat in the shadows, in the damp.
The beast my father pledged me to is the colour of moonlight, with skin that is almost translucent in some places. Pale thing from abyssal depths. When he sits still he could pass for a statue of the purest ivory. An ivory carving of an impossibility.
He showers me with gold. Gold chains, bracelets, rings. Some of them bear strange, geometrical designs of marine creatures. Carvings of people that look like fish and frogs that look like people. I run my fingers upon them and wonder where they came from and I ask him, and he answers, and he speaks in his soft, silvery voice.
Jewels spill through my fingers. The jewels of old wreckages lost at sea, rubies like blood, smoky black pearls and playful amethysts. The crown that belonged to a Spanish princess and went to rest upon a bed of algae now adorns my head.
A Mythos Grimmly Page 34
