I thought back to the Frenchman, and the word he had mumbled, the word that had sounded like dragon.
–
–
While born in Toronto, Ontario, Bruce Durham has lived most of his life in neighboring Mississauga. He spent over 30 of those years in the CATV industry in a variety of capacities, most recently as a consultant. Though he has been described as ‘older than dirt’, the reality is that he’s 56 and has been happily married for 27 years. His award-winning short story, The Marsh God, has been adapted into a graphic novel — view the Youtube video trailer here.
Illustration by mimulux.
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NOTE: Images contained in this Lovecraft eZine are Copyright ©2006-2012 art-by-mimulux. All rights reserved. All the images contained in this Lovecraft eZine may not be reproduced, copied, edited, published, transmitted, borrowed, duplicated, printed, downloaded, or uploaded in any way without my express written permission. These images do not belong to the public domain. All stories in Lovecraft eZine may not be reproduced, copied, edited, published, transmitted, borrowed, duplicated, printed, downloaded, or uploaded in any way without the express written permission of the editor.
Some Distant Baying Sound
by W.H. Pugmire
(This is a sequel to H.P. Lovecraft’s The Hound, and will appear in W.H. Pugmire’s upcoming book, The Strange Dark One — Tales of Nyarlathotep.)
(Dedicated to my chums at TLO – W.H. Pugmire)
I.
Madness rides the star-wind – that chilly disturbance that titters and howls just outside my skull. It is cold and dry, like some cosmic mistral from Southern heaven; and it knows my name, for I hear it chittering again, again, “Christina, Christina.” But I shall not heed it. The revolver is sleek and cold in my mouth. I have only to pull the trigger, and I shall be free of the nightmare that has plagued me since the death of St. John. How can I help but think of him at this hour of my final doom, of his mangled corpse interred by my unholy hands in our neglected garden? Oh, I remember the kiss of moonlight on my liquid eyes as I mumbled over his pit of death one last sad satanic ritual that he had loved in life. The memory of those words comes to me now, with such aching force that I remove the pistol from my mouth and speak, soft and low, the arcane language. Ah, the esoteric words that slip as sighs and weeping from my tongue. How heavy his revolver is in my hand – too heavy. I set it on the floor and touch my fingers to my eyes.
I hear it in the distance – the baying, as if of some gigantic hound. Looking at the revolver, it is suddenly an ugly, tedious thing. Cursing, I kick it from me. No, that will not be my ignominious end. Fie on such a death. Let it come and do its will – why should I deny the renting flesh, the spilt blood, such as my friend had offered it? As I look about our chamber of horrors, I see one of St. John’s diabolic paintings, his personal rendition of Jean Delville’s Satan’s Treasures. I remember what he said to me, my companion, as he hoisted the work to its place upon the wall.
“You’ll note, Christina, that I have darkened the red pigment of her hair, so as to compliment your own. Also, I’ve added some swirls of purple, to represent this wine on which we have become drunk tonight. For we are Satan’s dearest treasures, Christina, and once we have had our fill of wine we shall slink into dark night and find fresh pleasure in the grave of that newly-buried child. We shall bring him here and teach him new ways in which to frolic.”
No, I will not cry in terror. I will not desecrate this place with coward’s blood. I can feel my strength return – and with it I taste new resolve. Unsteadily, I rise on numbing legs and stagger to the corner where stands St. John’s greatest creation, the thing he worked on – fiendishly – after our return from Holland. He had had the huge slab of jadeite shipped from Asia, where it had been a portion of a wall of a desecrated and demolished temple. St. John had worked on it like a madman, and when at last I was allowed to view it I gasped in wonder at his gigantic replication of the small amulet that we had pilfered from a corpse in a daemonic Holland churchyard. And when I had touched my hand to the creature’s adamantine surface, to its queer coloring of greenish-white and reddish-brown, I felt a sense of delectable terror as I had never known before.
Ah, there it is again – the distant sound. It comes from some unfathomable realm, a dimension between sanity and madness. It comes to claim me as its own. I shall abide. But I won’t face it alone. Rather, I will slink into our neglected garden of poisoned things, where I will dig into the earth to where my dead friend rests, negated but not forsaken. I will bring him here, to recline before the beast of his creation. I will hold his mangled thews, his bloodstained bones, his ravaged cranium, in my lithe arms. I will press my lips to that which remains of his mouth and breathe into him the rituals that he loved. Together, we shall await the ravage of that which calls of promised and inescapable destruction.
II.
I tore into the night and slashed with fingernails into the sod, until I found the sordid remains of my beloved friend. Thick fog from the moor had accumulated around our ancient manor-house, and as I pulled my friend from his unhallowed plot I could hear a chittering sound. A flock of bats swooped out of the brumous air and flapped above me, darting now and then as if in an attempt to pluck my friend from my embrace. I shrieked to them that he was mine alone. Defiantly, I held him to the shape that formed – gradually, inexorably – behind the blanket of fog, a gigantic and nebulous form that flapped its condor wings and bayed to darkness. With madness burning in my fevered brain, I spoke a passage that St. John had taught me from the Necronomicon; and perhaps it was my rich lunacy that gave the words more than usual potency, for the winged shape broke apart and disintegrated in the sky. The bats that had swooped above me, snatching at my hair, were gone. With unnatural strength I carried St. John’s corpse into our secret haunt and placed his broken form before his magnificent statue. I burned strangely scented candles to that statue and spoke verses of Baudelaire that St. John had taught me in the original French. Unhappily, I scanned the place, which once had been so filled with macabre plunder, the booty that St. John and I had looted from the unholy places of the globe. In sorrow and rage I had destroyed the bulk of our most prized possessions.
The scent of yellow candles infiltrated my nostrils as I leaned against St. John’s diabolic statue, and I thought that I could detect fragrant coils spill into my nose, my mouth, and curl about my brain. The candles that were burning on the upper ledges behind the statue suddenly flared, throwing shadows on the ground before me. I lifted to my knees and saw my shadow conjoined with that of the gigantic jade hound, so that my silhouette looked to have spouted daemonical wings. Wickedly, I stretched my throat and raised my mouth – and the baying that issued from my mouth contained a familiar ring. Easily, I raised my cloudy body from the floor and filtered through the smoky air toward the large frame that contained a full-length mirror. I peered into that surface of polished glass and saw the eidolon within it, the creature that wore my sombre dress that was covered with death’s debris. My long dark hair flailed wildly around my bleached and cavern-eyed face. Between my heaving breasts I saw an amulet of curious and exotic design, its green jade shining in the subtle glow of candlelight. I looked at the base of that amulet, at the inscription around it in characters which neither St. John nor I could identify. We knew that this amulet had been hinted at in the copy of the Necronomicon that had been procured for us by an American acquaintance, and which we had studied with keen attention; but we could not find any detail about that queer inscription. We needed the assistance of one whose mind contained a copious wealth of arcane wisdom. I turned to St. John.
“You were preparing to visit such a one – where?”
He rose from where he lay and came to me, and I shivered as he smooth his fingers through my hair. “In America – a valley of spectral shadow, where dwells our wizard who aided us once before. No, don’t frown – his manner is of no consequence. He is filled with self
-love, but we can tolerate again his airs. I know that you have studied diligently, Christina, but your little brain has such difficulty with language.” He smiled so sweetly as he voiced this critique that I could not be angry at his words, and I shut my eyes as his fingers smoothed the bone that was my skull.
From some place outside there came the sound of distant baying. I opened my eyes and knew that I had dreamed. Violent wind howled outside our home. The candles had burned low and extinguished. Leaning against the jade statue, I pulled my friend’s remains tighter into my embrace. With one hand, I ran my sensitive fingers along the statue’s base, whereon St. John had etched the enigmatic inscription which was, he felt certain, a passage that contain the secrets beyond the grave. The alchemy of those secrets would help me to raise my friend from death’s destructive assault. I knew what I had to do. I would journey to America, to the Sesqua Valley, and seek the wisdom of the Beast.
III.
The journey across the ocean was long and unpleasant, but when at last I entered the confines of Sesqua Valley I felt queerly calm. I settled into my rooms and went to wander the nearest section of wooded territory. A full moon shed its light onto a magnificent twin-peaked mountain of white stone, a titan of rock that stood like sentinel over the quiet valley. As I breathed in the valley air I could taste a kind of sweetness in its substance. Hearing a noise that sounded like distant wind-call, I walked toward it, following a track of trodden earth beneath the trees, my path illuminated by a Jacob’s ladder of moonbeams that reached through the still tops of extremely high trees. The path began to wind downward, and as I followed it the ethereal noise began to transform and take on a semi-human aspect. I saw distant flames in the depths below, in an open area that contained a stage-like platform, on which braziers burned in the night. Before the stage a series of levels rose upward on a steep hill, and on these there sat a crowd of onlookers. It was from this audience that the zephyr of chanted noise issued, a sound the likes of which I had never heard. How can I describe the effect it had on me, the way it touched me like a cloud of invisible aether and encase my being? Spellbound, I gazed at the altar on the platform, on which a figure reclined, draped in a scarlet gown. I watched, entranced, as small dark creatures danced around the altar. A curious sensation of pounding came from some place beneath my feet, as if some titan’s heart pulsed below me in the depths of earth. Strange mauve mist began to form among the trees nearest the stage; it became a brumous wall of fog that enshrouded the stage and its occupants. The queer choir of audience raised their pitch of sound, and then the mist slowly dissipated, revealing another figure standing on the stage, a tall lean fellow whose bestial countenance was partially concealed by his wide hat. I smiled as I recognized the one whose service I sought.
The beast of Sesqua Valley held his hands to the moon and made unto that globe of lifeless dust strange signals with his tapered taloned fingers. A pallid shaft of moonlight fell onto his moving hand, and he seemed to catch that wan light and spill it over the figure that reclined on the altar. Deftly, that figure moved from off the slab of stone and began to writhe her limbs in a perversion of dance. And then she stopped, as a congregation of bats suddenly fell from darkness, diving at the flaming tapers. The woman on the stage waved her arms in an attempt to sweep the creatures from the air around her; and then she looked toward me and raised her arm, pointing. The chanting ceased as the audience turned their silver eyes to me. I trembled where I stood, penetrated by those inhuman eyes; and then I felt fingers moving through my hair. The woman in scarlet stood beside me. Alabaster eyes gleamed within her bestial face, the flesh of which resembled dark antique oak. Her breath fanned my face, and with it came a sweet and cloying fragrance that I had detected earlier in the valley air. A figure loomed behind her, and the beast smiled at me.
“Ah – Christina Sturhman. What an enchanting surprise. Where is your handsome young companion?”
“St. John is dead,” I answered. And then, for the first time, the sadness of that extinction hit me with full force, and I began to sob. The other woman reached out and brushed my tears with soft inhuman hands. Her animal mouth touched mine, and as I drank that kiss I felt around me a movement in the air; and in my ears I heard the flapping of tiny wings, a sound that finally rose over us and vanished above the trees.
IV.
They led me out of the woods and to a small house near to the edge of woodland. Simon Gregory Williams sat with me on a small sofa and listened to my tale as the strange woman worked in the kitchen. Finally she joined us and offered me a glass of cloudy liquid which at first I took to be absinthe; but its taste was sweet instead of bitter, with a mellifluousness that reminded me of the valley’s aether. Its effect was immediate, and the chaos in my brain subsided. The room was dimly lit with some few lamps, and I suspected that Sesqua Valley had not been quick to attain electric light.
“I wish you had kept that amulet,” Simon said beside me, having listened to my reason for arrival in his land. “As you say, it sounds very like the soul-symbol of the corpse-eating cult in Central Asia. What it would be doing around the throat of a wizard’s corpse in Holland is beyond conjecture.” He studied me with an oblique glance, took my nearly-empty glass from my hand and drained its remnant of murky liquid. “Your people are from Holland, are they not?”
I licked my lips. “My very distant ancestors were Dutch Jews, yes. But the culture is alien to me in all its ways. My people have lived in Britain for close to a century.”
Our hostess took the glass from Simon’s grasp. I watched as she ran her hand over his lips and brought its fingers to her mouth. “And what is this thing that followed you across the ocean, this thing that howls and rends?”
“I think it’s a lingering familiar of the wizard from whose corpse St. John and I stole the amulet. Although its master is long-dead, yet his agent exists in some plain between reality and phantasy. You know, Simon, that these shadow-creatures are borne of dimensions that may be opened with words of alchemy. St. John was seeking such a dimension. He thought that we might be able to summon forth an agent with which we could combat whatever it was that plagued us.”
“Hmm,” the beast uttered, nodding his large head. “And you imagine that this inscription that was around the base of the jade amulet may have been a key to such a spectral demesne. Yes. We shall have to go to your rooms in the morning and you will show me your copy of this unfathomable inscription. But for now – how very weary you are, my dear. Why, you cannot easily move your weighty limbs.” As he spoke, my entire body felt incomprehensibly heavy, weighed with packed mortality. “Not to worry. Marceline’s bed is near and spacious. She will welcome you as bedfellow for what remains of the nocturnal tide. Come, let’s get these heavy clothes off you and send you to bed.”
Simon’s eyes shimmered beneath his hat’s brim, and he grinned as he lifted my arms. I shivered at the woman’s velvet touch as she helped my arms out of their sleeves. Golden lamplight bathed my breasts as the beasts eased me out of my garments. As Marceline began to remove her scarlet gown, Simon pulled a flute from an inner pocket of his jacket. The music that he played was soft, low and exotic. It was the equal to the woman’s kisses on my lips, my throat, my breasts. A wind began to moan from some distant place in the valley, and from somewhere atop the twin-peaked mountain snouts were raised in song. We heard it then, above the other sounds, an eldritch baying near to the curtained bedroom window. Simon stopped his playing and stood dead still with a talon to his lips. We listened, as something scratched at the window pane, as something chortled and cursed in the Dutch language.
We saw the dark shape that wavered behind the curtained pane, its nebulous form silhouetted in rich moonlight. In the corner of my eye I could detect Simon’s hand raised toward that window and moving so as to form an elder sign. I could hear his hot breathing as he whispered a potent passage that I recognized from the Necronomicon. Suddenly, Marceline’s silver eyes were peering closely into mine. Before my eyes I beheld a
curtain of translucent haze, like unto the cloudy liquid that they had given me to drink. Marceline’s breasts pressed against my own as she guided me to her bed. She straddled me as I squirmed on her cool sheets and laid her velvet paws on my head. As she smoothed my dome, I heard again the sound of Simon’s flute, and its lullaby coaxed my eyes to close.
I entered into dark dreaming. The hoary blackness in which I dreamed was suddenly pierced by yellow moonglow as the lid of my coffin was lifted. St. John looked down at me with an expression of ecstasy shining in his beautiful eyes. I could hear the gentle moaning of the night-wind that moved his hanging hair. He looked at the amulet that lay upon my chest, and his handsome face was overwhelmed with wonder, with that look of daemonic delight that expressed his keenest ghoulish joy. Excitedly, he took up my amulet and placed its length of silver chain around his throat. I lifted my skeletal hand so as to touch the jade figure that represented the monster that had murdered me, the beast to which my damned soul was now strangely conjoined. Clutching at that figure of a winged hound, I pulled St. John’s face to mine so that I could press his hot living breath into my wide fleshless grin. But then there came, from above us, a wild chattering and whirling, and I watched the flurry of bats that swooped over the figure of my friend. From somewhere near there came the sound of awful baying, as if of some gigantic hound. A shadow spread above us, blacker than nightmare; it reached for my friend and dragged him from my embrace. I howled his name as the entity swallowed him away.
I groaned. Her soft hand covered my mouth, and as I gazed into her silver eyes I felt rare bewitchment enter my soul. Marceline’s lips, moving down my throat, were hot. Her mouth around my nipples sucked reality away.
Lovecraft eZine Megapack - 2011 Page 6
