by Aaron French
The massive black cloud, now several thousand light-years across, altered its course. It turned toward an obscure part of the Universe, to an insignificant galaxy of one hundred billion stars. Around one of those stars a small insignificant world circled, home to that deranged mind which had called the Daemon-Sultan from his slumber.
A howling mad roar of triumph tore through the depths of intergalactic space, though no one, or no thing, heard. Deep within the huge pulsing cloud a monstrous bivalvular shell slightly parted. From inside, flickering tendrils of tentacles and feelers licked at the edge of the shell, expectant, hungry.
The great cloud of the Daemon-Sultan moved on, pulsing with its violet glow. Filaments of claw-like lightning several light-years in length continued to flick planets and stars out of existence as it passed, the howling mad laughter and cacophonous music filtering through atmospheres just moments before planets died. It was only a matter of time before the Daemon-Sultan would have the one who was bold enough to disturb his sleep.
***
Across the world astronomers gazed into space. There was a blackness there, deeper than the black of space itself, yet highlighted with a faint violet glow. The blackness was growing, pulsing, blue shifted, heading rapidly toward Earth from the vicinity of Sagittarius.
The astronomers wondered...
A cloud of dust and gas? Giving birth to stars?
Perhaps. But things didn’t fit. It moved, fast, like a star cloud wouldn’t. This was something new, something altogether beyond their range of experience.
Should we tell the people of Earth? Should we?
But they didn’t tell the people of Earth. They were too puzzled, too confused, and they didn’t know what to do.
What will happen when it gets here? If it doesn’t stop before then?
They didn’t know about that, either. They were scared. And so they watched, day after day, month after month, they watched. But they didn’t hear the voiced death cries of myriad star systems in mortal agony and terror as their lives were sucked into and beyond oblivion.
“Should we say something?” said one astronomer.
“Would it matter?” said another.
THREE
Months went by. Joyce had let herself go, deteriorating as the world deteriorated around her. She was haggard, ragged, stringy hair, nervous, unkempt. Madness glinted in her eyes. She’d had contact with the Daemon-Sultan for months now, and the Daemon-Sultan wouldn’t let her go. It had toyed with her thoughts, cackling in her mind day in and day out, tormenting her. She’d been reduced to babbling incoherently, frothing at the mouth, her eyes wide and blank. She’d chewed on her fingernails, eventually gnawing her fingertips to the bone. But she felt no pain, no fear. The Daemon-Sultan had taken care of that. And now she waited patiently, expectantly, for the embrace of her lord and master, the god she had awakened, the Daemon-Sultan, Azathoth.
Joyce wandered aimlessly about her darkened apartment, shadowed by the coming evening, the electricity having been cut off weeks before. She paused at the living room, glanced around at the fallen lamps, the scattered paper littering the floor, the half-eaten spoiled food scattered here and there. She cackled softly, for no apparent reason, then began to chew on her fingertips.
A sudden primal need surged through her. A single word forced its way to the surface through her spiraling madness—food. She paused, grinned, cackled again as she turned her eyes to the half-eaten, maggot-infested raw steak that lay on the floor near the dead television.
“Food?”
She repeated the thought at a whisper, tilting her head to one side, grinning.
She turned and stumbled into the kitchen, kicked garbage out of her path as she made her way to the refrigerator. The door hung open, darkness and decay within. Joyce bumped the door open further as she reached for the freezer and opened it. The kitchen was suddenly enveloped in a waft of death and decay.
Joyce paused, her eyes wide, as if deliberating. She cackled as she reached into the freezer and pulled out an opened package of raw hamburger meat, half eaten, brown with decay, and crawling with maggots.
Food was food. In her frame of mind Joyce didn’t know any better, any different. She left the freezer door hanging open, stumbled into the living room, and sat on the edge of a chair facing the dead television. She stared at the blank screen as she pulled at the raw hamburger with her fingers, stuffing the decaying maggot-infested meat into her mouth, drooling bits and pieces onto the floor between her feet. She cackled occasionally as if something on the blank television screen entertained her, or as if her blank eyes of madness saw something humorous that no one else could see. And there in her apartment, the world raging around her, Joyce waited out the night.
***
In the pre-dawn hours Joyce left her apartment. She left the door wide open—like the refrigerator door, and the freezer door. It didn’t matter. No one would enter. Not now, not ever. And more importantly, it didn’t matter because Joyce knew that she wouldn’t be coming back. She cackled and grinned. She was going away to meet the Daemon-Sultan.
“Coming for me,” she squeaked, her words slow, drawn out. “Nobody else, just me.” She felt so special as she stood amidst the destruction and peered at the night sky.
The air was alive with static electricity. Monstrous bolts of violet lightning erupted from the black churning cloud of the Daemon-Sultan, clawing through the sky from the blackness of space. The lightning illuminated the chaos and devastation that surrounded her with a soft ethereal glow. The cloud was perched on the edge of the Solar System, its violet light flashing within like the heat lightning of a building storm. Nearby, the smaller black churning heralds of pipers swayed in the stillness of space, still playing their daemonic tune.
Joyce cackled at the light show above, then hurried away into the dark, making her way out of town. She dodged steaming vents in yards, sidewalks, and roads. All about her the night was alive with madness—the ground splitting, houses crumbling, steam hissing from broken underground waterlines, sparks raining down from crackling broken power lines, erupting in fires. And people were running, killing, raping, mugging, howling their madness with a fierce insanity that had descended on them unaware, a soft subtle cackling that had crept into their thoughts from an unknown source. But even in their madness the people gave Joyce ample leeway as if they knew another destiny... or fate... awaited her.
As the Earth crumbled, Joyce left the town behind, still cackling, drooling saliva down her chin. She stumbled on through the shadowed woods. By dawn she’d made it to a small clearing where she would await the Daemon-Sultan.
In the center of the clearing was an oblong box, which Joyce had constructed in her madness. It was made of plywood, rectangular, roughly the size of a coffin. She had painted it black, and in silver around its sides she’d painted strange and horrific designs, pictures, and letters. Things befitting her madness.
Joyce grinned as she glanced into the sky, and then climbed atop the oblong box. She stood there, her arms spread, her hands raised to the sky. The wind kicked up. Her hair billowed out behind her. Static electricity crackled and hissed as the violet lightning continued to erupt from the cloud, jagged fingers of light snaking through space and into the atmosphere. The violet glow flashed inside the cloud. The strange mad music of the pipes rode the silent aether currents through space, then was given a voice of cacophony upon entering the Earth’s atmosphere.
Joyce cackled, caught her breath, and cackled again, finally erupting into a howling maniacal laughter. The violet glow above reflected in her wide eyes her madness, and her longing desire.
Yes, Joyce had always dreamed, but soon she would dream no more. Her moment had arrived. Her nightmare had become reality. She had reached out through time and space, and then beyond into an unknown place of odd planes and angles, to the slumbering Daemon-Sultan, Azathoth, the Creator of All Things. And now that nightmare, that churning cauldron of madness, the Daemon-Sultan Azathoth, stood on her doorste
p, hovering just beyond the Solar System, and Joyce stood exultant in her madness.
Suddenly, like so many star systems before, huge violet tendrils of lightning flickered across the Solar System, touching moons, planets, asteroids—Neptune, Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus, Ceres, Triton, Nereid, Io, Deimos, Phobos, Titan, Vesta, Europa, the Moon, and more—all gone in an instant as a whispering wind of madness rolled through space, ashes of the destroyed Solar System riding the wind like fallen tree leaves. And in a matter of seconds all that remained were the Sun and the Earth.
Then the huge bivalular shell appeared as it floated forward out of the black cloud. The great shell slowly opened, a long tendril-like tentacle writhing forth. The tentacle crossed what had been the Solar System, approached Earth, writhed through the atmosphere, and found Joyce standing atop her wooden box in the clearing.
Gasping for breath, the wide-eyed Joyce continued her maniacal wailing laughter as filaments extended from the tip of the great tentacle. The filaments wrapped around her and lifted her off the ground. She howled madly with delight as the tentacle retracted, and with an envelop of protective air surrounding her, she was taken up into the shell.
Then a violet bolt of lightning several thousand miles across flickered through space. It seemed to hover for an instant above the Earth, and then it reached and touched down. The Earth heaved, sighed, and died. The mad voices of humanity were stilled in an instant.
A moment later the Sun was gone. Then Azathoth moved on, fanned out across space and time, and beyond. Everything in his path was destroyed. Matter dissolved into energy, and then the energy dissipated until nothing remained, until the Universe was no more.
In the end, the churning cloud of Azathoth passed through a gate into the realm of odd planes and angles, returning whence it came. The violet flashes of light became less bright, less frequent. The great bivalvular shell closed, and the Daemon-Sultan, Azathoth, drifted off to sleep once more after having feasted on the maddening terror, agony, and flesh of his prize.
Somewhere outside of space and time... in the dark... at a place of strange and unfathomable angles and planes, Azathoth, the Daemon-Sultan, once again rested on his throne, slumbering. All about him the mad pipers played their blasphemous tune, while in his dreams a new Universe was taking shape.
About the author: Ran has written in a variety of forms and formats for years. He prefers horror, but has also written science fiction, fantasy, and historical drama. Two of his short horror stories were recommended for Bram Stoker awards in 2000.
The Shadow of the Unknown v. 2.0
Special Bonus Features
The Courtier
Mike Lester
Omnibus Exclusive
In those quiet moments between sleeping and waking, he dreams of a city, towers reflecting across the still surface of a fathomless lake, black stars burning in the night sky. Nothing moves. The only presence is the silent dark towers and himself, regarding them from the opposite shore. He does not know this place, does not know its name, yet it is familiar, at once comforting and dreadful. The feeling covers his half-conscious mind like a veil. The longer he stares at the silent monoliths, the more the dread fills his heart. And then, distant at first, comes the peal of a horn, a single note thrown into the night, its pitch growing more and more pronounced, louder, as if announcing a greater presence. A coronation.
And then he wakes. Always here. Always this same point in the dream, when the trumpet reaches its apex. A gentle flapping of wings eases him into consciousness; a couple of mourning doves have steadily been building a nest outside his window. He stares through the early-morning light at the large canvas on the other side of his room, at his waking memory of those dark towers, half-finished in oils.
***
A lovely, blue sunny-sky day. Mason Park is filled with life teeming on the green. He buys a hot dog from a friendly, homely girl and settles in on a nearby bench. The living move all around him, people coming and going, some purposeful and in a hurry, others taking their time, walking along the shaded tree-lined path. Boys sail toy boats in the circular fountain here in the heart of the park, and far off, behind the trees, someone is flying a kite.
He bites into his hot dog. Mustard drips from the bun and stains his shirt, yellow on white. He tries to wipe it off, but this only spreads the bright stain around more, making it worse. He tries licking his finger and rubbing at the stain, achieving nothing.
Then he sees her.
She sits at the shore of the pond, under a tree, the canopy of leaves shading her from the sun. She is writing something, writing earnestly, hunched over her journal, pen moving across the paper with a life of its own. The movement of her hands, the intensity of her concentration is hypnotic. It is impossible to look away. He finishes his hot dog and watches her write. He watches her for one hour and seventeen minutes.
***
In the days before he was able to sit in the park and watch a pretty girl pour her soul onto paper, before he could clear his mind with paint on canvas, he wore a bright yellow jumpsuit with a numbered patch sewn onto the left breast. 655322.
“T-Bone is gonna stick you,” his cellmate said one day as he lay on his bunk reading. He was a young kid in for assault, but the whispers around the yard were that he raped and killed a lady. “I’d watch my back if I were you.”
“T will do what he wants whether I watch my back or not.”
“Yeah well, forewarned is forearmed and shit, right? I mean isn’t that what they always say?”
“Yep. That’s what they say.”
They sure as hell did.
It was close to three weeks after that when T-Bone finally caught him alone in the laundry. He’d been folding warm, freshly pressed shirts when the shiv rammed through his side, cracking his ribs as it sliced through flesh. After the initial shock, before he really knew what was happening, there was a moment when time seemed to stop.
This is it. This is the way it ends.
The thought was cut off. Adrenaline kicked in. He reached behind his back for the handle of T-Bone’s knife, prying his fingers away and replacing them with his own, gripping tight, knuckles white. Unthinking, feeling nothing, he pulled the blade from his side and swung it wide, slashing a silver arc under the dull fluorescent laundry lights. The blade seemed to slice through pure nothingness, cutting only dead space, but when T staggered back two steps, stumbled, hands raised to his reddening throat, he knew what he’d done. What he’d achieved.
T-Bone’s eyes bulged, huge, white, pupils dilated in panic. He tried to speak, gurgling only defiant nonsense, the blooming red cascade seeming to erupt with the effort.
“Is this what you were looking for? This what you wanted you ghetto wannabe motherfucker?” He gripped the collar of T's shirt, easing him to the floor. He throttled T-Bone, already a corpse, as if trying to wake him.
It took less than a minute before the guards were on him.
***
After a while she finished writing, closed her journal, and snapped the cover shut. She slid the book back into her bag and pulled her sunglasses down from her forehead. Stretching, she stood. The golden sun shone through her hair like rays of amber-colored glass.
He stood too, stretching as well. It was contagious, he thought, like yawning. He watched her sling her bag over her shoulder and stroll off down the tree-lined path, passing the great circular fountain and the boys with their toy boats, her head tilted back slightly, facing up to the sun and the trees she was passing under, lost in thoughts of her own.
He followed, lost in thoughts of his own as well.
***
Solitary.
The shrieks and commotion of the cell block were replaced with silence, punctuated only by the hum of the lights and the occasional slamming of steel doors. He sat in his windowless cell thinking of nothing. Time seemed to stop here. Days and nights passed unnoticed.
So it was a shock when a voice came to him several nights, or was it weeks, later. He couldn’t
even really be sure it was night, he only knew he was tired. His internal clock was the only way of gauging time. He had just lain back on his cot and was feeling sleep begin to fall over him, when the voice spoke. It seemed to come through the walls, muffled, smothered and obscure. Somehow the words came right through to him, cut through the haze of emerging sleep like T’s knife through flesh. But what they said made no sense.
Have you found the sign?
He had no idea what this meant. Yet he knew the words were directed at him, spoken by someone nearby, someone unseen. They seemed to slide under the door like a mist, vapors drifting through the solid walls.
He listened again for the longest time, unmoving, afraid to make a sound lest he should miss something or disturb the dark. But nothing came. Just that single, solitary sentence, spoken calmly again and again in his mind.
When he finally drifted off into sleep he dreamed of the city and the lake and the black starry night for the first time.
***
She is humming now. He is close enough to hear that. The sunlight falls through the leaves, soft shadows sway in the breeze, shimmering along the path. The birds fill the air with their song. He thinks that if he wants to, he could get close enough to touch her. And what then?
He has no time to think of this. At a break in the trees, the buildings along 45th loom tall and silent, like giants peering down into the park. He thinks of black towers on the far shore of a dark lake. Carcosa, he thinks. The city. That is its name. And when he thinks this, a voice calls out in the day, distant, back the way he had come. It is a child’s voice, perhaps one of the boys with the toy boats at the fountain.
