Bohemians of Sesqua Valley

by W. H. Pugmire

  “My kind cannot trespass on mountain ground.”

  Monique observed her new acquaintance as she sipped from her tea cup. “But you’re different from the others. Your features are more caprine than wolf-like. And your eyes, although silver, are tainted with a yellow element that the others lack.”

  “You’re very observant. Yes, I have issued from a different pocket of shadow than most of the other children. I was a child when I arrived, and adopted by the York household. I think Simon set it all up, although I have never inquired. I tend to avoid that unpleasant beast.”

  Politely, Monique laughed, and then quickly changed the subject. “There was one piece of your work that particularly intrigued me. Leonidas said it represented an entity called Shub-Niggurath. It’s piqued my curiosity.”

  Edith raised her eyebrows in surprise. “Certainly one who studies unclean sprites with the beast of Sesqua Valley is aware of the Outer Gods. No? Has he never mentioned his passion for Nyarlathotep? Remarkable. What then is the nature of your studies with Simon?”

  Monique set down her empty cup and leaned back onto the comfortable settee, setting the chapbook beside her on the cushion. “We study the elementals that are especial to the valley, and he has conjured some of the local imps to partake in our rituals, the strange dark folk and the frogs with human infant faces. He feels that my art has a rare potency that may enable me to summon creatures from secret pockets in the valley, fiends with which Simon is unfamiliar.”

  “And have you?”

  “I felt a presence in the woodland that affected me curiously. Strangely, I experienced the exact same sensation when I was studying your sculpture.”

  “Ah, that is splendid. You have tasted the aura of the Black Goat of the Wood with a Thousand Young that lurks within our woodland. My sister experienced that eidolon as well.” Edith motioned to a corner of the room where a life-size statue stood, the quality of which was so stunning that Monique could not resist rising and going to inspect the figure’s workmanship. “Of course, you know of Victoria’s passion for that particular Outer God from having read her poems. If, indeed, you have acquainted yourself with her work.”

  There was a pregnant pause, and then Monique couldn’t help but snicker. “Damn, you’ve found me out. But of course you would. I’m not here because of Victoria. I spent the past few weeks learning more about you from the locals, and then an acquaintance gave me her extra copy of the chapbook. I’m here because of your sculpture of Shub-Niggurath and its spell over me. It’s triggered some uncanny instinct inside my soul.”

  “Then you are here because of Victoria, in ways you may be unable to imagine. There are no accidents in Sesqua Valley, Miss Lambert. I advise you to read my sister’s poetry and let it instruct your dreaming.”

  The young woman gazed at the statue. “She had an almost regal beauty.”

  Edith nodded. “She was majestic in every way.”

  Monique turned to her. “Are you entirely reclusive? I could come and visit, if you like, and help alleviate loneliness.”

  For the first time, the ancient woman smiled. “One is never alone in Sesqua Valley, child. Especially my kind. I am visited by evening mist, wherein I hear the pleas of my shadow kindred to return to the realm of origin. I shall probably be returning before long. Not that I have much to do with those of the common swirl, being the fruit of unconventional pocket.”

  “It’s so captivating when your kind speaks of the realm from which you came to our mortal clime, although none of you seem to have any clear memory of that other region.”

  “Oh, I remember it—every bit.”

  “Is it entirely different—from here?”

  “As dream differs from the waking world. Don’t forget to take your chapbook, dear. You are quite lovely. Perhaps you’ll come again and sit for me.”

  “I’d be honored, Miss York.” She went and took the chapbook from the elder creature’s hand and quietly exited the house. The day was mildly warm and bright, with a slight breeze that felt comforting as it played with her strands of glossy hair. Removing her shoes, Monique walked past the center of Sesqua Town and stopped to lean against the mammoth sculpture of a sphinx, the stone of which was comfortably warm against her bare arms. Opening the chapbook, she squinted as the bright light of day was reflecting from its pages onto her eyes. Blinking, she began to consume poetry.

  “What do you have there, Lambert?” asked a familiar voice.

  “The poetry of Victoria Elizabeth York.”

  “Ah, yes, a very curious case,” Simon Gregory Williams replied. “She vanished from the valley after an intriguing supernatural manifestation. Quite curious indeed. Her brother died a few years ago. Edith—now she’s rather interesting. She slipped into this mortal realm from an infant pocket of shadow and came to us in the form of a child. She’s not like others.”

  “Her eyes are different—slightly.”

  Simon raised an eyebrow. “You’ve encountered her?”

  Monique nodded. “I’ve just come from visiting her. She wants me to sit for her, for a work of sculpture, I think.”

  “You little nymph, how quite remarkable. Well, you’re as much an oddity as she is, thus it shouldn’t surprise one that you would find common ground.” He looked at the chapbook and frowned. “I lack that in my collection at the tower. You will donate it, of course.”

  “Perhaps. What is this part here, these two lines in Greek?”

  “Let me see,” he demanded, holding out his hand and clutching the offered booklet. “Hmm, yes; it’s an antique chant to the Black Goat of the Wood with a Thousand Young.” Monique jumped at the sudden sound of Simon’s loud voice declaiming old Greek, and the sun lit his silver eyes with greater intensity. It was always thus when he participated in some arcane rite, when his malformed mouth spoke magick. There was such vibrancy in his tone, and authority. It was at moments such as this that Monique knew she was dealing with a wizard of monumental potency. How strange that the sun seemed to darken at the continued sound of his chanting. A bestial thing howled from some distant place, and she detected an edge of cruelty in the sound—malice laced with unwholesome appetite. Simon, soaking it all in, grinned wickedly as he came to the end of his chanting. “Oh, that was fun. Whatever did we evoke, I wonder?”

  “We evoked poetry—sublime poetry. Did you know her?”

  “Victoria York? Not well. She and her brother were brought to the valley by mistake, by their foolish parents. They were very young, the children, and the boy was pathetic and spineless. He was an outsider to his very last day. They planted him yonder, in the Hungry Place. The mother was a child of shadow who had a sickening desire to remain mortal and so she left the valley and married. But she could not stay away, and eventually they came here to live. He lasted longer than any of us expected he would, but eventually he went mad and deserted the family.”

  “And the mother?”

  “Returned to shadow long ago. As for her eldest daughter—Victoria’s fate has remained an enigma, and little hunchbacked Edith has remained entirely reclusive, until obviously overpowered by your charms.”

  The young woman pushed away from the sphinx and shielded her eyes. “I’m in need of shade. Wander the woodland with me, Simon, and help me to memorize those Greek lines from Miss York’s poem. I like the way they sounded. I like their potency.”

  “Yes, they shimmer with influence, those words. How charming to see them work on you. You have disappointed me with being so unadventurous. Daemonology is a fascinating study, but a study of animism is mere theology unless put into some kind of practice. The best way to research and analyze devils is to evoke them, to feel their presence on one’s eyes, to drink their poison with one’s nostrils. That is the path toward which I have been guiding you.”

  “Yes, you have, and your seduction has had its effect. Come on, I need to get out of this sunlight.”

  She moved away without looking to see if Simon followed, and walked the distance until coming to a woo
dland path, onto which she stepped. The effect was instantaneous: the light that filtered through the trees and touched her eyes felt softer, and the air lost some of its cloying sweetness.

  “You needn’t tramp so vigorously. One would think you were applying for some military, the way you march.”

  “I’ve always liked this,” she said, stopping so as to touch a three-foot tall sculpture of a night-gaunt. “Is it true, Simon, that the woodland of Sesqua Valley connects with the woods of Dreamland, and that the gaunts filter thus into our realm?”

  “The woodland here is pregnant with pockets to other realms, with which the wise do not tamper. I live in such a zone, which is why it is impossible for others to locate.”

  “You lived there with the poet, Manly, until his strange disappearance. Take me there.”

  “Don’t be absurd. I never allow mortals into my home.”

  Monique leaned toward him and smoothed his cheek with the back of her hand. “I am no ordinary mortal.”

  “Nay, do not touch me, nymph.”

  “It’s what I do, Simon. It is my one trait of alchemy. I touch—and seduce.”

  “You will remove your hand this instant. No, do not cover my eyes, Monique.”

  Her laughter was a gay sound. “Ha, that’s the first time you’ve called me that. You see, you are already under my spell. Show me your abode, beast of the valley.”

  “Come then, and follow me.”

  She watched him walk a narrower path than the trail she had been following, and she wondered at the sudden sense of uncanny fear that gave her pause. Then he vanished from sight, and the idea of being alone where she stood aroused mild panic, and so she rushed after the beast, through the weird woods. When again she saw him, Simon had stopped to fondle the yellow flowers of the spreading branches of a tree.

  “What a lovely laburnum,” Monique said as she joined Simon and fondled one of the hanging blooms. “Oh dear, the fragrance is rather heady—quite similar to the air of the valley. It catches in one’s throat.”

  “So beautiful,” Simon intoned as he held the yellow flowers, “and so poisonous. I have a recorder made of laburnum wood, beautifully carved and with an amazing tone. I use it when I want to summon something particularly noxious.”

  Monique blinked as she gazed about them. “The light is different here, weirdly diffused.”

  “Everything is different here, nymph; we are near to the vicinity of the shadowed realm, to its barrier of dream. Manly wanted to remain close to home, and so he built his cabin in close proximity to the wraithlike rim. Come along, we’re almost there.”

  They followed the narrow pathway together, side by side, and then she saw the little cabin in its charming setting. Monique could not suppress a gasp of joy as her eyes drank in the beauty of the scene, the remarkable loveliness of the tall trees that hanged their branches high above the small residence, the gorgeous beds of unfamiliar and fragrant flowers that surrounded the wooden structure.

  “Welcome to my demesne,” the beast uttered.

  The young woman fell onto the soft ground and sighed at how warm and wonderful the earth felt upon which she knelt. Like one intoxicated, she clawed into the soil and brought handfuls of it to her face and hair, rubbing the substance onto her flesh. She looked around and espied the object near to her, the sight of which made her cry out in amazement. Crawling on hands and knees to the bust, she embraced it, kissed it. “You have an amazing talent. There is a weird kind of sentience to your work, as if this were not a creation of stone at all but rather the fossilization of a once-living thing.”

  “That is none of mine. My brother had the artistic hand.”

  “Your brother? William Davis Manly? What a remarkable fellow he must have been. And I’ve seen the brother to this bust, on the mountain.”

  “Whatever are you talking about?”

  “There’s an identical replication of this work half-way up the mountain. Surely you’ve seen it.”

  “We children of shadow never trespass onto the surface of Khroyd’hon.”

  She stared at him, confused. “That is the dream name for Selta. No, I’ve never seen this other thing. But whatever it is, it’s not the work of William.”

  “I tell you they’re identical, in every way. Obviously the work of the same artist. Manly visited Mount Selta, undoubtedly. Why can’t you walk on the mountain?”

  “We do not. There are zones in the valley that disturbed us if we enter them. I’ve walked on the mountain twice, in aid of magick, and twice I have severely regretted it. I shall not repeat the error.” He watched as she petted the sculpted work, and something in the way she fondled it annoyed him. “But come, you wanted to see inside our home. Rise to your feet and follow me.”

  The woman did as she was commanded and entered into the cabin with her host. The rooms were small and cluttered with fantastic debris. One wall was completely covered with over one-hundred flutes, all of curious design, which rested on fittings that had been fastened to the wall. Stepping into the bedroom, Monique sensed a powerful and morbid sorrow in the atmosphere, and using her arcane inclinations she deciphered that this was the place where the beast wept. She could smell his spilled tears on the pillow as she sat upon the bed. “More than brother.”

  “What’s that you say?” Simon sat next to her, and his face wore an expression she had never seen it bear before. He did not protest as Monique took his hand and touched it to the pillow.

  “Manly was more than brother to you. Your sorrow, your aching loneliness—my god, how you work to conceal that aspect of your psyche from everyone. You play at being cruel and monstrous, a masquerade that you have mastered. But it’s mostly nothing more than a fiendish mask, a toy of personality with which you torment others. So as to shield the torment of your soul.”

  “I have no soul, nymph.”

  “Oh, Simon,” she answered, placing one hand on his brow and the other at his chest, “you have more than most.”

  “Nay, do not touch…” But he could not continue, for she had discovered his secret, and now she touched it with her witchery, which he had enhanced through his instructing her in alchemy. He shuddered and shut his eyes, and soon the hands that touched him became, in fantasy, the hands of another, of one whom he had loved and lost.

  Hours passed, and the wan moon lifted itself over the twin peaks of the white mountain. A nude figure emerged from the cabin and stretched in the pallid beams that filtered through branches onto ground. The young woman saw how one beam fell directly onto the goatish bust, the sight of which entranced her. She saw the small creatures that had surrounded that bust and were singing to it, the small frogs with faces of human infants. Going to them, she knelt before the sculpture, allowed the wee creatures to kiss her hands as she joined in their song. There came, from beneath the ground on which she knelt, a growing pounding, as if some gigantic heart beneath her had awakened with preternatural life. Monique listened as the freakish amphibians began to chant, in thin high voices, to something in the woodland, some thing with which Monique had linked to, subconsciously. She listened to the strange and potent ululations that issued from the infant faces, listened until she had learned their language enough so that she could clearly speak it. Her voice, strong and clear, sang to the deity of woodland.

  III

  The small dark man emerged from the woodland and walked the road that led to Sesqua Town. Dressed in a suit of simple design, he held an undersized suitcase in one hand and a tote bag in the other. The morning sun shone in his dark eyes, those eyes that twinkled with humor as they glanced at the surrounding sights. He smiled at the quaint sight of the little business area, with its old establishments and sidewalks of wooden planks, and then turned to walk up a rising road that took him to a stately mansion of mammoth proportions. Climbing the steps of the porch, he found the front door open; and so he stepped through the threshold and entered a broad hallway, where interesting figures sat on antique walnut hall tables, and where fascinating paintings han
ged on the walls. He stopped before one large painting and drank in its curious scene.

  “Fantastic, isn’t it?” The dark man turned to acknowledge the youthful figure at his side. “It’s an original Pickman. There’s no signature, but the style is unmistakable, and he did other renditions of the same scene. Are you here to see the shop?”

  “No, I’ve come to rent a room.”

  “Ah, then I’ll introduce you to Leonidas. He’s just here in the show room.” He walked toward the double doors that, when opened, revealed a very large room that was crammed with antiques and curios. Two figures sat on an antique English oak settee made in 1780 and examined a large tome that rested on a beautiful hand-carved mahogany coffee table with white marble top. The taller of the two wrinkled his nose as if at an unpleasant odor as they took their eyes from the volume and regarded the dark man. “This fellow would like a room.”

  Leonidas Creighton, arising and stepping to the stranger, was in his usual attire of black suit and caped black overcoat. His smooth white hair fell past his ears and just above his shoulders. Had he smiled, he would have revealed twin rows of serrated teeth; but Leonidas did not smile, for something in the nature of the outsider disconcerted him. “How long will you be staying?”

  “That is undetermined.” The dark man’s voice was low and contained an undertone of buzzing that was quite peculiar; but the sound of it reminded Simon Gregory Williams of something he had encountered while investigating the mythic woodlands of Vermont, and he rose from the sofa and joined the others.

  “I am Simon Williams,” he said, bowing slightly, “and I welcome you to Sesqua Valley. Pray, what brings you to our little outpost?”

  The dark man returned Simon’s courteous bow. “Basil Scratch, your servant. I’ve come to dream visions of Khroyd’hon and enter, psychically, the valley’s shadowed realm. Merely as an experiment, of course.”

  “You are quite informed about our realm,” Simon responded, in a low voice that was laced with menace.