The Strange Dark One

by W. H. Pugmire

  “It seems I must return to my true place, in the Dreamlands, where I command with one shadow of my brother’s thousand forms. But I will not rule alone. It is a realm that will welcome as rare a dreamer as yourself. Will you surrender your mortal soul and dwell with me, Philip?”

  There were tears in his eyes as he answered, “I will.”

  “Then take my hand, kind sir, and let us melt away from this mortal plane.”

  The face within the void of blackness smiled, and then the blackness bubbled and was gone. I watched as Philip took hold of Selene’s hand and was guided from us, into the shadow of the forest of dreams. I watched the darkness of that weird woods swallow them as it faded from view. The walls of the library formed again, and in that enchanted room I felt a pang of loneliness, for I had loved my friends. But I had a shadow-realm of my own, to which I must someday return. For I am a child of Sesqua Valley. And so I turned to my sinister brother, the lunatic who clutched his phantom toy, the music to which I began to danse.

  One Last Theft

  I.

  I stood in the place of Memory and Death and gazed in wonder at its new resident of bronze. One was immediately impressed by the sheer gigantism of the figure, its overwhelming bulk. Its creator had caught the exact description of the beast as the mad poet Alhazred had witnessed it in dream, a vision that found expression in the Necronomicon:

  “It was the winged Hound that serves as soul-symbol for the corpse-eating cult of ancient and inaccessible Leng. Its relation to the souls of the dead is not to be spoken of; for it serves the dread resurrected Magus who is not to be named; for He commands it by that vested power captured in queer properties of some jade amulet of yore and by the starry influence of its Graven Image. Beware the death of a resurrected Wizard: in His absolute annihilation there is no force that can contain the wanton potency of the Graven Thing, who waits for when the blood shall cover moonlight.”

  Could it be that I was standing before the graven Image spoken of in Al Azif? The mind would normally have boggled at such an idea; but the place wherein I stood was anything but “normal,” and in that silent burying ground in Sesqua Valley the Beast looked uncannily at home. Indeed, it seemed almost to signify the general history of unrest that was etched on the stones that marked this plot of graveyard ground, the doom that led these departed victims to this supernatural vale. One didn’t like to dwell on the remains that lay smothered beneath the sod, in this spot where the valley’s evil influence was insanely powerful. To stand too long on this demented soil was to taste too keenly the hunger of Sesqua Valley, to feel too deeply in one’s breast the beating of one diseased and deadly portion of the valley’s heart. I felt it tingle my feet and web within my veins – the insanity of this place; and yet I would not surrender my ground, for I was transfixed by the bronze beast and my phantasy that the artist had worked from some living model. The creature hunkered on hind legs that were a weird combination of human and dhole. Two extended forelegs seemed suspiciously anthropological, resembling arms despite their ending in bestial paws that were tipped with cruel claws. What remained of the weathered ancient face – for I sensed that the thing was incredibly old – wore an expression of ravenous appetite. The statue’s strangest aspect was its blemished eye – one sensed that this feature was not an accident of art.

  The moon had risen just beyond Mount Selta, and the twin peaks of that suggestive mountain sparkled in the glow of lunar light. Uncanny shadows sullied the black earth: the naked limbs of skeletal trees, the various markers and statues that huddled on the graveyard ground. I looked at the hazy shadow of the bronze beast as it crept in moving moonlight and touched my shoes. I felt a hunger all my own. Looking around, I found a piece of tombstone that had broken off a marker. Reaching for it, I held it up to starlight and felt its sudden heaviness tip my sense of balance. The blood in my arm seemed to burn beneath the flesh and my hand shook until I smashed the stone against the winged hound. The stone crumbled into bits in my hand and I watched the outré pattern that the bits of stone and dust formed on graveyard ground.

  “You were never very bright,” came a voice just behind the cemetery wall. I looked and saw him leaning against an oak, with moonlit incandescence glimmering in his silver eyes. “Simon wouldn’t appreciate your treatment of his new acquisition. I think it best you leave it be.” He pushed away from the tree and set his sepia hands on the low stone barrier that encircled the burying ground. “You were foolish to return to the valley, Wilkes.”

  I reached into my jacket pocket and produced an envelope. “I have an invitation, Adam, to the African Masked Ball. It would have been rude of me to ignore such kindness.”

  “I don’t believe you. No one would be that idiotic.”

  “Come and see for yourself,” I answered as I waved the envelope in the air, knowing that he wouldn’t step into the cemetery, one of the few places that were shunned by Sesqua Valley’s silver-eyed denizens. Adam’s kind felt too deeply the influence of tainted ground. It made his kind act crazy.

  He said, “I suggest that you come here, for I can tell by the foam on your mouth that you’re not well. Best remove yourself from the Hungry Place, Stefan. Can’t you feel it, the peckish earth that would divide and draw you down? It’s been some time since that place has tasted new death. What a festival it would make of you.”

  I wanted to resist his words, but I did begin to feel uneasy; and when I wiped my mouth, my hand came away wet with drool. Perhaps it was the suggestive tone of his devil’s voice, but I did imagine that I could feel the dirt subtly move beneath my feet. I leapt across the ground until I was on the other side of the wall, where I panted as Adam Webster approached and snatched the envelope from my hand.

  “From Thaddaeus – I should have known,” he said, sneering. “He was always foolish when it came to you.”

  “Forget that and tell me about the winged hound. Where did Simon find it?”

  “I discovered it, in Arkham. Simon has a dislike of that town, but he became intrigued when I told him of the statue. He had it transported to the valley.”

  “And does he eat faces in its honor? I know what it represents.”

  Adam spat. “I’ve no time for your foppery. You are not wise to return, after your last encounter with Simon.” He stepped nearer, and I could smell the valley’s fragrance on his flesh. “Do you still wear his mark?” His soft large hand smoothed my hair and caressed my throat; it fingered the scar on the back of my neck. “Ah, I see that you do.” Laughing softly, he returned my invitation. “You won’t be able to cause your old trouble, not with that emblem etched into your flesh. But mark me, Wilkes, we will be ever wary.” He patted my face and walked away.

  “To hell with you,” I muttered, feeling slightly feverish. It was then my turn to smile. Yes, I was in the mood to cause a little trouble. I went to where my suitcase sat and began my walk to the building that housed the valley’s curio shop. I was in need of a fix, and I knew where I could satisfy the craving. A bell sounded as I opened the door, and I sighed happily at the sight that greeted me, the spacious room crammed with artifacts, with ancient tomes and occult ornaments. Walking down one aisle, I found a wondrous necklace of black pearls, the twin to one that I had stolen from a shop in shadowed Innsmouth. I took it up and admired the perfection of the small lustrous spheres.

  “I am carefully observing you, Stefan,” spoke a quiet voice.

  “Of course you are, Leonidas.” I turned to gaze into the dark deep-set eyes that gleamed within their too-pale façade. “I’m in need of opiate. What have you?”

  “You are incorrigible.”

  “I am indeed. Drugs?”

  He smiled, showing small serrated teeth, and then he swiftly turned and vanished through a doorway. Taking advantage of his absence, I went to a tall cedar bookcase and scanned the rows of elder lore, looking for anything I could not live without. I was reaching for a decrepit edition of De Vermis Mysteriis when his voice whispered just behind me. “I know ex
actly what volumes are in my library, so do not think of trying to pilfer that enchanting copy.”

  I laughed. “You freaks are so quick to your conclusions. You know, when I took that scroll from the tower I had every intention of returning it. I just needed to borrow it, for an experiment. As for this copy of Prinn, I’m just going to look over his references to daemons of the Congo, in preparation for Simon’s thing. I seem to recall some legend of the Crawling Chaos haunting Africa near the region of some river. I first thought the river would be the Nile, flowing as it does through both Egypt and Africa; and yet Prinn writes in this passage, look you, that Nyarlathotep is worshipped as Ahtu in the Congo. Hmm, I don’t suppose you have a copy of the Dhole Chants, Leonidas?”

  He carried a silver platter on which were two small glasses and what looked to be a bottle of absinthe. When I looked closely at the bottle I noticed something floating inside it that might have been a small monkey’s paw, or the hand of some unfortunate infant. “I do not have a copy of that particular title,” he said as he set the platter onto a table. “Simon has it in the tower – ah, but you cannot enter there, wearing as you do Simon’s mark.”

  I closed the copy of Prinn and returned it to its place on the shelf. “So what’s the juice, wormwood? I need something a bit more potent than booze.

  Didn’t you used to have some killer black Russian? Or am I wasting my time here?”

  He tutted. “How impatient is the addict. Cool your mania, Stefan.” I watched him reach for a small ivory box, which he opened and from which he removed a small hypodermic syringe. His smooth movement proved slightly hypnotic, and my eyes felt odd as they watched him place the syringe’s needle into a large artery that pulsed in his short neck. The ampoule filled with black solution. Turning his crafty eyes to me, he pointed the needle into one of the glasses and let fall a few dark drops. Returning the hypodermic to its box, his hand, which so resembled a pale white spider, reached for the bottle and poured its liqueur into each glass; and then he set down the bottle, produced a packet of white powder and sprinkled some of its contents into a glass, which he offered me. I held the chilly glass and examined the liquid as Leonidas picked up a long thin piece of bone with which to stir the concoction. “Drink,” he commanded. “The atrocious nausea will quickly subside, and then vision will be yours – and sensation. The Faceless God is well known throughout the Dark Continent, that place where your human ancestry had its infancy. His shadow creeps through Haiti and Kenya, through murkier regions unknown and unnamed. Imbibe, sirrah, and behold the Beast.”

  I closed my eyes and drank. Never had I tasted a bitterer brew, and my stomach protested violently. I fought the urge to gag as my flesh began to twist and freeze. With what difficulty I breathed! I wanted to open my eyes and retain my sense of balance, for the world seemed to be spinning; but my eyes would not obey command, and the tears that seeped from them were like pebbles of ice rolling down my fevered face. I felt a petrified wind push into my mouth and then realized that it was the frigid exhalation of the devil whose mouth touched mine. I did not wince as his fangs pierced my lip, as my blood spilled onto the tongue that relished it.

  When I finally opened my eyes I saw that I no longer stood among the clutter of a curio shop. Rather, I stood precipitously upon a precipice. The absolute absence of light did not prevent vision: an alien tableau stretched before me, one that seemed eerily familiar, like some landscape frequented in dream. A passage from Al Azif came to me, wherein the poet had beheld the surface of Iukkoth, that world beyond known planets that rotated in parallel angle to our own. Beneath an extraterrestrial gale I heard other howlings, the calling of they for whom I served as avatar. Oh, they shrieked and clicked and whimpered, wanting so to recall the signals that would rightly form dead starlight. Beneath me were my servitors, who changed their color as they called mine ancient name. I spread my magnificent hands over them, those winged fungi, as they held to me the crystalline artifact that fiendishly reflected my facelessness upon its shining trapezium. And then this vision altered and transformed into a rain of dark sand that solidified into a starless void. Two black orbs blinked at me, spheres that were set deeply into a pale daemonic face.

  Smiling, Leonidas held his glass as if to toast my departed vision; he then put his glass to his stained mouth and drank, silently. “I have never understood your obsession with the Faceless God.”

  I clasped my hand to my damp forehead and massaged my flesh. “Is he a god, Leonidas? The legends concerning Nyarlathotep are multitude and contradictory, as legends are wont to be. Of all the Great Old Ones, he most beguiles me. To think of him in the male gender is in itself a curious convenience. He – It – is pure alien, like unto Yog-Sothoth, a creature from incomprehensible dimension. How can I not be beguiled!”

  He shrugged. “You’ll have to seek your occult understanding elsewhere, for there are matters to which I must attend, and I dislike the way things vanish when you are left alone in this room. I bid you good evening.”

  He took the glass from me, then stood and waited, speaking not another word. I stared at him and was suddenly repulsed, for he was a grotesque thing. To study him too closely was to taste utter repugnance, to drink in his malign and dangerous essence. I pressed my lips together and felt the places thereon that had been bitten into, those tiny punctures that were a testimony of his feeding. Sickened and slightly horrified, I turned from his monstrous eyes and exited his domain.

  The moon had risen higher above the twin-peaked mountain, and I gazed steadfastly at its hazy sphere. The air tasted sweet and cloying, as was the nature of Sesqua’s aether, and in the distant woodland I could hear wind rustling through the trees – at least I think it was the wind, although no breeze assailed the place where I was standing. Hesitantly, I entered the dark woods, and the sound of tempest instantly ceased. Silently, I climbed the sloping ground toward the place where stood the mammoth stone tower that rose before me like some cyclopean erection. I saw the figure that leaned against the structure’s arched entrance, the fiend who watched with mercury orbs. Even in silhouette he was unmistakable. His attire was of another, an earlier, era, for he abhorred what he called “the sartorial inelegance” of the modern age. His hat was pulled over his brow, its brim extending just above the fantastic eyes. Although exceedingly lean, he exuded an aura of massive strength, which one could detect in the broadness of his masculine shoulders. But it was the face that, seen clearly and up-close, commanded one’s uneasy attention, the long and cadaverous façade that was but nominally humanoid. Like all of the weird native children born within the shadowland of Sesqua Valley, he oozed bestiality, an animal as electrifying as he was foreboding.

  “Good evening, Wilkes. How curious to find you in this place. Certainly you weren’t plotting to try and enter the tower. You know that it is verboten to they who wear my mark.” His voice seemed to trigger the scar that his talons had etched into my neck, that symbol that began to itch, to burn.

  “I need to see one particular thing, and I won’t be dissuaded. With or without your permission, I’m entering. Stand aside.”

  “Well,” he playfully intoned, “you’ve developed a bit of backbone since last our paths crossed. Fancy.” Emitting a low harsh chortle, he moved from the entrance and took a thin black flute from a pocket inside his jacket. Summoning courage, I stumbled past him and walked through the threshold, and then began to climb the winding stone steps, while behind me I could hear the high-pitched noise of Simon’s eerie music. I had expected excruciating pain, but at first nothing happened. Then, as I passed one of the small square windows cut into the stone wall, I happened to glance out – and saw the cloud of sentient mauve shadow that crept toward the tower. I imagined that I could hear the ancient stone with which the edifice had been constructed begin to breathe; and as I looked at one moonlit patch of wall, I thought that I could detect beads of perspiration thereon, drops that dripped as tiny streams onto the rugged stone on which I stood. Pushing away from the window, I
tried to rush up the steps, but festering terror gripped my brain. Then came the spasms of sharp pain, at the back of my neck, then throughout all flesh. An oozing ichor began to seep through the small square windows, covering my face and spilling into nose and mouth. Frantically, I wiped it away from my eyes, and looking down at me was the first-born beast of Sesqua Valley; and through the film of blackness I saw him in all of his unearthly inhumanity. My yelps were a sickening sound, and they increased as he grabbed the collar of my jacket and dragged me up the remaining steps, until we reached the wide circular wooden floor of the tower room. Simon mounted my body and clamped one heavy paw over my mouth, muting my terror. His other hand found the mark on my neck, whereon his fingers worked. Fear calmed, and wretched pain subsided. Heaving, panting, I pushed him from me and touched my hand to the back of my neck. There was no etched wound – he had released me.

  “Your pluck touches me, Wilkes. Now, tell me truly, why have you returned?” Unable to speak, I slipped my hand into a pocket and produced my now-wrinkled invitation, which had been damaged when I tore it from Adam Webster’s hand. Simon glanced at it momentarily and then began to tear it into tiny bits. “How sad. Poor Thaddaeus was ever the fool over pretty youths like you. Human sexuality is too absurd.”