Bohemians of Sesqua Valley

by W. H. Pugmire

  “I am a keen occultist. I know that you prefer to keep the valley’s secrets to yourselves, and the mountain is indeed potent in shielding your dominion from most of the outside world; but there is another Outside realm, between the stars and beyond dimension, and in that place the valley is well known indeed.”

  Leonidas stepped a little nearer to the dark man and peered into the fellow’s black eyes. “Ah, you are from Outside. Quite so. Yes, I see the void reflected in your orbs. This is a singular visitation. Cyrus, show Mr. Scratch to the Yellow Room. Your privacy, sir, is assured.”

  “My humble thanks.” Basil bowed once more, and then followed Cyrus out of the room.

  Simon’s mouth curled into a snarl. “Pah! That fellow smells like a goat den. Most curious, this. We shall keep a sharp eye on this researcher of our homeland. Penetrate the shadowed realm? Preposterous!”

  “Calm yourself. His trick is obvious.”

  “What trick is that?”

  “Mr. Scratch was far too bold and outrageous in explaining his visit here. It was naught but theatrics, overly dramatic so as to conceal his authentic reason for invading Sesqua Valley. Oh, he is without doubt an occultist of some kind—but he is much more than he lets on. We shall go along with his charade, and we will study his every move until we blast his mystery. Don’t scowl so. This may prove quite entertaining.”

  “Were you one of us, you would not find it so. You like to see me squirm, Creighton. The idea of my authority being thwarted pleases your sick and fiendish mind.”

  The other fellow bowed. “Coming from the valley’s supreme fiend, that is a delicious compliment. But you’re mistaken. I have always supported you, however playful I may be at times, however wanton. True enough, I am and shall always be an outsider. But that is my lot wherever I have settled. I am quite singular, and my unnatural existence has had many dark moments. I have been condemned and hunted, thrown into prisons and pits, reviled and repulsed. It is only here that I have found the facility to exist as I am, in all my vileness; and that is why I have stayed here for eight decades, and will stay for eight more. The valley is now my home.”

  But Simon was too distracted to listen, abruptly turning from Leonidas and marching out of the mansion, into the light. The sky was clear except for some few beds of flocculent clouds that drifted over the valley. Simon raised his face to the sun and wondered why the day was already so hot; usually the weather in his valley was pleasant, not something one would be aware of because of extremities of coolness or warmth. He walked into town, stopping at the first building he came to and listening to the sound of laughter that came from inside. His curiosity aroused, Simon entered the artists’ work studio and observed a small group of women and men who were at work on various projects. Sneering, Simon approached a shirtless fellow who was seated at a tall table and working on a sculpture.

  “What is this, Meikle?”

  The young man did not bother to look at Simon as he spoke, but continued his labors. “Amun Ra, in his ram personification. I’ve succeeded in making the horns especially wicked, don’t you think?”

  Simon scrutinized the sinister goat-like countenance that the sculpture wore. “What a curious physiognomy you’ve given it. However did you envision such a visage?”

  “Oh, I copied it from the bust on the mountain. I made a lot of sketches, of course, but the real inspiration came from my dreams of the thing.”

  “Is this your sketchbook? Let me just glance through it.” Arthur aped nonchalance and returned to touching up his figurine as the beast studied pages on which the bust on Mount Selta had been sketched. Simon’s blood tickled in his inhuman veins. The sketched image was identical in every way to Manly’s goatish model. “Most peculiar.” He had not meant to speak the words aloud.

  “Why is that?”

  Simon shut the sketchbook and narrowed his eyes at the young artist. “I find it most peculiar that you outsiders invade the mountain’s exterior when you clearly understand that the area is proscribed. Your wanton behavior will not be tolerated.”

  “Sod you, Simon. You have no power over me.”

  Ah, what cruelty curled the beast’s malformed mouth. “Do I not?” Arthur watched as Simon’s eyes darkened with menace, and he felt his flesh prickle as the beast began to whisper phrases in a most peculiar language. The atmosphere in the room grew chilly and creepy, and the other artists stopped in their labors and observed the valley’s first-born shadow-spawn in fascination and fear. They watched, unmoving, as Arthur picked up a mallet from his table and began to smash his work of art violently, until it was merely a small pile of wreckage. Simon smiled at the rubble and then gently took the mallet from Arthur’s hand, kissed the implement and playfully tapped its leaden head against the young man’s brow. Then he tossed the tool onto the table and made his exit from the studio.

  IV

  Their bodies were intertwined within the circle of stones, their ritual of sex magick just reaching its climax. Together they screamed, and then they laughed and rested on their backs. Monique’s hand played through the mass of hair that decorated Arthur’s chest. “Is your beast soothed, my dear?” she queried.

  The young man sneered. “Don’t use that word. Damn him and his arrogance. It was one of my finest pieces. He knows that art is sacred here. I’ve never seen him so nasty.” He paused and studied the girl’s expression. “What?”

  She frowned at him, as if to say she did not understand his implication. “You have a knowing look in your eyes.”

  She shook her head. “It’s nothing. I think, perhaps, his fury is linked to the enigma of another local artist—the enigmatic William Davis Manly.”

  “Manly was a poet. There’s a statue of him in the cemetery where outsiders are buried.”

  “He sculpted as well. I think he did the bust that we found on Selta.”

  Arthur shook his head. “The shadow-spawn don’t go near the mountain.”

  “Simon’s been there, twice; and William Davis Manly was no ordinary child of shadow. Maybe that’s why so few people mention him. Perhaps he was banned in some way, banished from the valley.”

  “They’d hardly pay tribute to him with a statue, if that were so. Why do you laugh like that?”

  “This is Sesqua Valley. Its denizens aren’t going to make sense, Arthur.”

  But he wasn’t listening to her, and she saw his face grow stern as he gazed past her, into the woodland. Monique turned to look into the moonlit timberland, and she saw the suggestion of a figure that was studying them, the silver eyes of which caught moonbeams. The humans did not move as the shadowed one stepped toward them.

  “Your magick is ripe. I could scent the sex far off, and it inspired a pang of sorrow in the fact that I have never partaken of such primitive pleasure. I’ve come to sketch you, Monique.” Edith showed them the sketchbook that she carried in one hand, and they observed the bulky shoulder bag that had been packed with artistic implements. “No, don’t hunt for your clothes—you are charming just as you are.” Without hesitation, the Sesquan set her things on the ground and began to remove her clothing. The humans watched, entranced, never having seen a child of shadow nude. “I am not, as I suggested to you, my dear, like others of the shadowed realm. I have more in common with the strange dark folk. You will notice that my feet are partially hoofed, and the fur covering my breasts and loins is sleek and black. My kind almost never follow Simon into this mortal realm when he tempts us with his reed and sorcery. We prefer the mountain in her primitive dream-state, as majestic Khroyd’hon. We mingle with the dreams of slumbering Cthulhu, and howl in mockery with Nyarlathotep. We inhale the airy exhalation of that which is worshiped as Shub-Niggurath. Ia! The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young!”

  As she spoke the ground beneath them began to pulse, and some dweller on the mountain bayed at moonlight. The entranced couple saw the mauve mist that began to issue from distant trees and collected as a miasmal entity that oozed toward them. They listened to Edith’
s murmured song, to the fantastic language of her litany, and watched as she picked up her sketchbook and drew a pencil from her bag. Edith’s strange song turned coarse and became a cackle as she seemed to welcome the nude prancing figure who danced toward them out of the mist. The small dusky man with goatish facial features clapped his petite hands as he continued the song that Edith had been warbling. His voice was high and contained a quality of buzzing, and the frenzy of his clapping was so infectious that the mortals could not resist but rise and join him in satanic frolic.

  * * *

  The beast of Sesqua Valley brought the weighty mug to his mouth and drank, while in that liquid that corresponded to mortal blood he could feel the uncanny rhythm that was the valley’s heartbeat. The lounge in which he lingered was not overfull, yet each of its few inhabitants could not help but study Simon with surreptitious glances, each of them alert to the sensations in the air and underfoot. The valley came alive, eerily, when potent alchemy was practiced within its confines; and this kind of activity strangely affected those shadow children who had escape the realm of their origin so as to dwell for one little season among mortals. A youngish creature who had been sitting in a dusky corner got to his feet and sauntered to Simon’s table, then sat down opposite the beast.

  “You’ve been looking so pensive for weeks. What ails you, Simon?”

  “Enigmas that should not subsist,” the beast replied before he was fully aware of speaking. Something had indeed affected him. He took another sip of brew and licked his twisted mouth. “The valley is pregnant with ritual, Cyrus. I should locate the source and join in the lunacy—and yet I am lethargic.”

  Cyrus grinned as the bartender brought him a glass of Sesqua brew, from which he drank heartily. “There’s something unique about whatever’s happening tonight. The air smells as it never has before, and the moonlight is peculiar. Do you understand any of it?”

  “I am apathetic.”

  Cyrus blew air out of his mouth in frustration. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  The beast shut his eyes and raised his head a little higher, in an aspect of listening. “I hear the shadow summoning my return. My stay has been overlong.”

  Some figures arose to their feet in shock. Not knowing what to do, the younger creature took Simon’s hand and petted it. “You are the first-born spawn of shadow. You were the first to awaken when the outsiders initially invaded this valley, and you were responsible for their disposal. You are our diabolic lord and master. You can’t abandon us now.”

  Something in the beast seemed to awaken. He removed his hand from kinship’s grasp and sneered. “Can I not?” He glared at the other onlookers. “Do you think I would never leave you and return to the realm of origin?”

  “But you do return to it. We’ve seen you dance into the mist and watched it swallow you.”

  “Ah, you have been spying on me. Yes, I have returned to mist and shadow, but in my mortal frame. To fully return and be as once we were one must completely discard this husk of mortality and its contents. Pah, how little you perceive.”

  Cyrus banged the table with an angry fist. “Because you have drawn a mental veil over us, so that we cannot recall our homeland. We see glimpses of it merely, ghosts of memories.” His sudden anger cooled when he noticed the look of sorrow that re-entered Simon’s fantastic eyes. “What’s wrong, beast?”

  Simon’s voice, when at last he spoke, was barely a whisper. “I thought if I waited long enough he would return to me, from wherever it is he has vanished to. More and more, however, I am reminded that I know too little, that I have no answers. Did he go away at all, or is he here in some form, in some secret plain of which we are ignorant? He understood the valley far better than anyone. He was keenly attuned to her tastes, her mysteries and madness. Perhaps he hasn’t left us at all—not really. He just doesn’t need us—me.”

  With that, Simon stopped speaking. Sadly, he reached into his jacket pocket and produced a lean black flute. His music, when he played, was so heart-breaking that the others could not abide it, and thus they departed. Cyrus stayed at the table for as long as he could endure the sound; but the noise was so wretchedly poignant that he, too, had to rise and leave. Simon played on and on, and Sesqua Valley’s heart, far beneath the earth and shaking the valley floor with her daemonic pounding, seemed almost to break in pity of the beast.

  V

  She climbed up the winding stone steps, her hands outstretched and running their fingers over the dry brick with which the cyclopean tower had been constructed; and it amazed, as it always did, the way the atmosphere altered the nearer she got to the circular room at top in which Simon Gregory Williams kept his collection of arcane tomes, esoteric scrolls, and other occult matter. The air changed its fragrance as her eyes saw the glow of reflected light that began to hit the walls that surrounded her, and then she stepped into that light and thought that Simon had lit three-hundred candles, the room was so illuminated. Monique looked around for the room’s occupant, hearing his voice before locating where he sat beneath a long table.

  “Be gone. I’ve no appetite for your vituperative mortality this day.”

  “I have never abused you,” the young outsider answered.

  “Your very existence is an assault. I am sick of humanity. Be gone.”

  She knelt beside the table and reached out to him. “What ails thee, beast?”

  “Nay, do not touch me with your healing trickery. Save that for your fellow humans. You were up to something last night. The valley reeked of your flesh, your liquid and your marrow.”

  “We were engaged in ritual with the black goat of the woods.”

  “We?”

  “I name no names.”

  “You’ve been cavorting with that Scratch creature, have you? Charming. And does he designate himself the Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young? And have you any comprehension what that means?”

  “He’s an avatar for Shub-Niggurath. Edith says his being here is a fabulous portent.” She paused, studied him and scowled. “Must you be such a pouty little child? You lured me to this vale to teach me wonders. You should be happy that such marvelous episodes are recurring and instructing me. Is it the idea of Manly that has you so miserable? Come, then, let’s engage in ceremony and summon him. I’ll bet you’ve never actually tried.”

  Simon backed away from her, out from under the table and to his throne. Reaching for his seat of power, he hauled himself up and climbed into it. “You are woefully ignorant if you think I would engage in such a ritual with an interloper who has yet to comprehend the ways of Sesqua Valley. I thought, when I encountered you, that you had possibilities and would aid the valley with your properties, which are still so in embryo; but now I see that you are quite dull-witted, and I discharge you as my pupil. Be gone.”

  Standing, Monique pushed a pile of books on the table so as to make a place where she could sit with her back to the beast. Gracefully, she raised her arms and began to make strange shadows on the wall. “You were inspired to bring me here, beast, by the valley, and by the Outer God.”

  “Outer God? Is this the rot that Scratch has fed you? Do you fancy that your fate is wed to this demesne? I brought you here, and now I dismiss you. What, you’ll not leave. Then I shall. Good day, wench.” He waited and watched, and then he stomped the ground. “Is my authority completely invalid? Have I lost my rule as Supreme Beast of this valley? I will not tolerate this disrespect another instant. I am the first-born of shadow. I am the one who lures the children from mist and shadow into the light of mortal day. Do you sit there and smile at me and defy my authority? Be gone!”

  Timidly, Monique crawled to where Simon sat. Tenderly, she removed his shoes and kissed his feet. The young woman kept her head bowed low as she spoke. “You found me in my lonesome place, and lured me to this fantastic realm. You saw something within me that I could never have discovered on my own. Together, we located a talent, which you have helped me to nurture. But there is more to my
being here than you initially realized, a fate that I have half-embraced although I don’t know what it is or what it means. The valley has worked through you to bring me to my destiny. Sesqua has bequeathed its awesome power and authority to you, its first-born son. I do not understand my affinity with the Outer God, but I will kiss that providence because you were supernaturally guided to lure me here. Defy you? I adore you!”

  The beast narrowed his eyes at the crouched figure before him; and then he tilted forward and placed a warm hand onto her head. “Arise, mortal, and tell me of this avatar, this black goat of the woods.”

  “Well, I don’t understand much of what he told me, such as his being aware of Sesqua Valley because its woodland is conjoined at one point to the forest of the dreamlands. I can see in your eyes that you fathom what that indicates. Perhaps one day you will explain it to me, as you have explained so much, as you have molded the way I think, even the way I speak, as though I am your puppet. He did not explain the nature of the Outer Gods or they he calls the Great Old Ones. At one point he hinted that these gods and Old Ones know of this valley because of you, because you have studied the arcane tomes and spoken their formulae aloud. If I understood him correctly, you have memorized each extant edition of something he pronounced oddly—it was like he was buzzing the title instead of articulating it.”

  “Al Azif.”

  “Yes—you say it exactly as he did, as if there’s more than one voice proclaiming it. The vibrations of your chanting from the book have transcended dimension. The scent of your language has been picked up by Outer Gods such as Shub-Niggurath and Nyarlathotep, and brought this valley and its mysteries to their notice. They dwell at times, these outer ones, in pockets of shadowed dimension in the woodland that even you cannot detect, and they watch you. At times their influence is seduced by your power as a wizard, and they leak into the dreaming of we who dwell here—mortals and shadow-kindred. Your bringing me here was not chance, not accident; you were guided by an Outer God, to whom you will offer me with all of your majestic potency. I am to be a vessel for one of the thousand young.”