My head swam, and the walls of the hold melted and ran. The firebrand in my hand seemed to recede into a great distance until it was little more than a pinpoint of light in a blanket of darkness, and I was alone, in a vast cathedral of emptiness.
A tide took me, a swell that lifted and transported me, faster than thought, to the green twilight of ocean depths far distant.
I realized I was not alone. We floated, mere shadows now, scores—nay, tens of scores of us, in that cold silent sea. I was aware that other sailors were nearby, but I had no thought for aught but the rhythm, the dance. Far below us, cyclopean ruins shone dimly in a luminescent haze. Columns and rock faces tumbled in a non-Euclidean geometry that confused the eye and brooked no close inspection. And something deep in those ruins knew we were there.
We dreamed, of vast empty spaces, of giant clouds of gas that engulfed the stars, of blackness where there was nothing but endless dark, endless quiet. And while our slumbering god dreamed, we danced for him, there in the twilight, danced to the rhythm.
We were at peace.
A flaring pain jolted me back to sanity. I smelled burning skin, but took several seconds to note that it was my own hand that had seared. The coxswain, stout man that he is, had broken the hold on me by touching his firebrand to my skin.
I had no time to thank him, for the beast had encroached closer to me while I dreamed, and even now threatened to engulf me.
Once again I held the firebrand ahead of me, and with the aid of the coxswain I held the beast at bay, struggling to keep its grip from settling on my mind. Indeed, if the barrel of pitch had not been brought, I might have succumbed.
Burning the pitch enabled the recapture of the beast to proceed more rapidly. The heat from the flames threatened to set fire to the deck of the hold itself, but I refused to allow the men to put it out until we had driven the beast back into the casket.
I have ensured that the box is sealed completely, and it is now stored at the furthermost end of the hold. All I can do is keep the crew as far away from it as is possible on this small vessel.
That, and hope that in our dreams we do not fall again under its spell.
But it is hard. For every time I close my eyes I dream, of vast empty spaces, of giant clouds of gas that engulf the stars, of blackness where there is nothing but endless dark, endless quiet. And while my slumbering god dreams, I dance for him, there in the twilight, dance to the rhythm.
In dreams I am at peace.
From the journal of Father Fernando. 17th August 1535
Captain Santoro’s journal has at least given me a place to start. I already knew that strapado would not be an option for this particular miscreant. Nor would I be able to utilise the rack or the maiden. But fire would be more than sufficient for my purposes. It took little work to prepare the cell for Inquisition, as matters are already set up amply for the ordeal. I ensured that the lead casket was placed inside concentric circles of oil such that they could be lit immediately in the event of an attempt to escape. I also had a brazier full of coals at hand to my right side and three needle-pokers burning white hot in a small oven to my left.
Even before I opened the casket I felt the tickle in my mind but I pushed it away. My God is stronger than any heathen devil. I mouthed the Pater-Noster as I lifted the lid.
Once again the black ooze surged, and the tickle in my mind turned to an insistent probing. Memories rose unbidden in my thoughts; of summer days in warm meadows, of lessons learned in cold monastery halls, of penance paid for sins.
I was under questioning.
That I could not allow. I am master of this inquisition. Several wet mouths opened in the black ooze. Using a pair of pliers I plucked a hot coal from the brazier and as another mouth formed I let the coal drop inside.
The grip in my mind released immediately, replaced by a formless scream which quickly became a chant that echoed around the cell. I knew the words. I had read them in the captain’s journal.
Tekeli-Li. Tekeli-Li.
A long tendril reached from the lead box, coming towards me. I took a poker from the oven and with one smooth strike thrust it through the black material. The ooze retreated, shrinking back as far into the corner of the lead casket as it could get.
I leaned forward, a fresh poker in my hand.
“Are you guilty?” I asked, and stabbed down hard.
The Inquisition proper had begun.
From the journal of Juan Santoro, Captain of the Santa Angelo, 17th July 1535
Will this nightmare never end?
The beast, despite its incarceration, has steadily increased its hold on us since we forced it back into the casket. We cannot allow ourselves to sleep, for when we do we are trapped in its spell, lost in the dream somewhere above the cyclopean ruins.
In truth, the dream is seductive, even more so than drinking endless flagons of wine or constant inhalation of the weed that the natives smoke in the New World. Three of the crew have succumbed, falling into a deep slumber from which they cannot be awakened. They breathe, and their eyes are open, but I cannot get them to eat, and they are already close to starving. I fear they will be long lost afore we reach port.
Some days I almost feel like joining them. I am kept awake by a suffusion made from a roasted bean, a drink we discovered among the native tribes where we landed in the New World.
Would that were all we discovered.
Some of the crew have reported that the beast is also reaching into their minds during waking hours. Many of them have had the same compulsion—to go down into the hold and open the casket, releasing the thing to roam the decks. No one has yet given in to the demands, but it is another reason to make for port with all speed.
I know not how much longer we can hold.
From the journal of Father Fernando. 25th August 1535
It has taken more than a week, and sorely tested the Inquisitor General’s patience, but finally, after I have burned away more than nine-tenths of its matter, it has weakened. I have found that the mind-grip works both ways. If I concentrate hard I can catch glimpses of what the beast is thinking, and feel its fear.
I have put it to the inquisition, and it has answered me.
As shocking as it seems, the beast has no conception of our Lord. Indeed, it seems never to have encountered a single Christian, despite the fact that it is possibly the oldest living thing on the face of the earth. That revelation came as something of a shock to me. The creature has memories going back to a time when ice covered the face of the earth. Its first encounter with man shows a savage race clothed in furs with only rudimentary speech, and I am at a loss to know how such a thing can be reconciled from what I know from my study of the biblical texts. I must seek guidance from the Inquisitor General, for my thoughts are troubled and dark.
This beast I have under my ministrations is devious and subtle. It works constantly at me, testing my belief with scenes of lust and debauchery; maidens in states of undress displaying themselves wantonly for my pleasure, hot blood flowing to feed my growth. I have to see these things, and endure, for in the seeing I also learn more about the beast’s drives and passions, which are mightily strong.
I had almost come to believe that this might be the most ancient of evils, the great deceiver himself. But the thing has memories even older than the time of ice, memories of a time when it was but a servant of something vast and strange... memories of a creator that I do not recognise as being anything resembling my Lord. I am at a loss to know what to think of this new information and must question the beast further.
I have learned one other thing. The creators gave it a name, a moniker by which it recognises itself. It is known as Shoggoth.
From the journal of Juan Santoro, Captain of the Santa Angelo, 14th August 1535
We will make port on the morrow. It matters little, for the dream is with us now in every waking hour, and no distance from the beast will make any difference. It has passed on to us so completely that we will never be free from
it. Nor would we wish anything other. Indeed, I am not the only one who has found himself standing over the lead casket just to be closer to the blessed drifting peace it offers.
There is no pain in the dream, no fear, no hunger, just the sweet forever of the dead god beneath.
I have talked to the crew. We will do our duty and take our captive to the castle. But we will no longer work for the Church after this task is done. I intend to set sail again as soon as night falls. There is a spot in the South Seas where a dead god lies dreaming.
We will find him, and join him there.
From the journal of Father Fernando. 25th August 1535
I wish now that I had read Santoro’s journal a mere hour sooner, for them I might have been able to prevent the Santa Angelo slipping out of port under cover of night, and I might have been able to question the crew as to the nature of the malady that so sore afflicted them.
For I too have been dreaming.
I am not alone. We float, mere shadows, scores... nay, tens of scores of us, in a cold silent sea. I am aware that others are near to me, but I have no thought for aught but the rhythm, the dance. Far below me, cyclopean ruins shine dimly in a luminescent haze. Columns and rock faces tumble in a non-Euclidean geometry that confuses the eye and brooks no close inspection.
And something deep in those ruins knows I am there.
But it is of no matter. The beast is now in my thrall, and its secrets shall be mine before the day is out. They will have to be, for I fear I have been lax in my inquisitions. Even as I have been burning my will into the beast’s flesh, so it has been leaving its mark on me. This morning at my ablutions I discovered a fleck of blackness betwixt thumb and finger that no amount of scraping will shift. It has now covered most of my left hand, forcing me to wear a glove lest it is discovered. For if the Inquisitor General were to find out I am tainted, my questioning would be brought to an abrupt end, and that I cannot allow.
The beast will reveal its secrets.
I will begin again as soon as the irons are hot.
By order of the Inquisitor General, 28th August 1535
It is our command that on this day of our Lord the twenty and eighth of August that such parts of Father Juan Fernando that can be safely transported shall be taken to the place of the auto-de-fe and burned at the stake alongside the blasphemy which has afflicted him with its heresy.
It is further commanded that if the Santa Angelo is found in Spanish waters it should be set aflame and sunk with all hands and that no man is to touch any part of it under pain of himself being subjected to ordeal by fire.
Any persons found spreading the sedition of the Dreaming God shall be subjected to the full force of the Inquisition.
Let this be the end of the matter.
The Lord wills it.
THE SCOTSMAN’S FIDDLE
The Scotsman came over the pass in the Spring of ‘89, our first visitor after the hardest winter on record. Tommy Jeffries saw him first, when he had just crossed the Eastbrig over the Powell. By the time the wagon started on the last slope up to the eastern reaches I, along with most of the town, had come out to watch his progress up the valley, wondering about the occupants. Talk ranged from a new family out of Boston, to dynamite for the new mine-workings, to the Haberdasher that many of the women of town had long looked for.
When he pulled into what passed for our main street, he proved to be both more, and less than had been hoped for. A tall stocky man with a full black beard and hair flowing in a swathe over his shoulders stood up at the reins. He started his spiel as soon as he brought his wagon to a halt, his thick accent immediately apparent.
“Duncan Campbell is my name,” he said. “And I am here to fix what ails you.”
By now almost everyone from the town who wasn’t down the mine had gathered to hear him. The scenes painted on his wagon told us more—the town had its first ever Travelling Show, all the way from Scotland. There were pictures of rivers and valleys; painted warriors running through heather and tall stone castles on rocky shores. He saw us looking.
“Behold,” he said, his voice booming. “The same rocks you have here underfoot have travelled through the very earth all the way from the homeland. In aeons past we all came from the same place. Indeed, many of you here have even more recent good Scots blood in you. I can make that blood sing for you. I can bring you home.”
He drew something from the folds of his coat. All of us present could instantly recognize it—a fiddle, nut brown and faded with great age. A second movement produced a long stringed bow.
The Scotsman took hold of the instrument and raised it to his neck. Before starting he looked out over us. The small crowd went quiet. When he spoke, it was barely more than a whisper, but it carried to each of us, as clearly as if he were a preacher on the pulpit.
“Breathes there the man with soul so dead, who never to himself hath said, this is my own, my native land?”
He started to play. I was expecting Leather Britches or Wind and Rain. What I got was something else entirely. I did not find out until later that each and every person present shared my experience.
His bow moved across the strings, setting up a drone—and beneath us the old rocks sang in recognition. As his tune began, the stones started to dance. I felt it first through the soles of my feet, but soon my whole frame shook, vibrating in time with his rhythm. My head swam, and it seemed as if the very walls of the town buildings melted and ran. The wagon receded into a great distance until it was little more than a pinpoint of light in a blanket of darkness, and I was alone, in a vast cathedral of emptiness where nothing existed save the dark and the dance from the fiddle.
Shapes moved in the dark, wispy shadows with no substance, shadows that capered and whirled as the dance grew ever more frenetic. I smelled fresh flowers, and was buffeted, as if by a strong, surging wind, but as the beat grew ever stronger I cared little. I gave myself to it, lost in the dance, lost in the dark.
I know not how long I wandered, there in the space between. I forgot myself, forgot my friends, in a place where only the dance mattered.
I have never felt more complete.
When the dance stopped it was as if my heart had been torn from its root and I felt bereft, felt the loss as keenly as I had the death of my mother three years before. Tears coursed down my cheeks. As I wiped them away I heard sobbing from the women nearby.
I blinked and looked to the wagon—but it was no longer in front of us. A large tent that hadn’t been there before was pitched beside the church. The Scotsman stood at the entrance in front of a chalkboard. It read: For one night only. Entry 25c. There was no explanation as to what we might be paying for, but I knew that we would all be there that evening.
And evening was closer than we thought. The morning shift was already making its way up out of the mine, faces and hands grey with grime, eyes deep set in their skulls with long ingrained tiredness. They found a crowd of townsfolk looking around in bewilderment.
We had been gone for nearly two hours.
That fact alone was enough to queer Malone the mine owner against the newcomer—six men were late for the afternoon shift and Malone docked them a whole day’s pay. I do believe the Irishman might have tried to ban us all from attending that night’s show for fear that it might disrupt the next morning’s work. But, powerful as he was, and tight as his grip was on the town, the pull of that fiddle was stronger still. By the time we gathered in front of the tent at sundown we were all present—not just those who had heard the Scotsman play, but everyone else in the town as well. They had seen the effect on the rest of us, and even Malone was there, standing across the street and observing proceedings with a critical eye.
A box had been provided to collect our money at the entrance and we shuffled in. The tent somehow seemed much larger inside than its exterior suggested. Rows of pews, like church seats, sat in front of a small raised stage. I did have a fleeting thought that there was no possible way all of this had come up the hill in
the wagon we had seen, but all other thoughts were secondary to the anticipation. I was going to hear the fiddle again, and I could hardly contain my excitement. I could see by the eyes of those around me that they were of the same mind.
An audible sigh of disappointment ran through the crowd as the Scotsman stepped up on stage without the fiddle in his hands. A hood obscured his features, and his face sat in deep shadow as he walked to the front of the stage and stood above us.
“I am the Dubh Sithe,” he shouted. “And we are gathered tonight to open the way... with music.”
From far off came the sound of a solo fiddle.
“... with magic... “
He spread his arms wide, clenched his fists, and when he opened them again two crimson birds, each the size of a large gull, rose from his palms and fluttered away towards the roof of the tent.
“But mostly... with blood.”
He snapped the fingers of his right hand, and the red birds burst as if they had been shot. An arc of blood sprayed towards the front row of seats. Even as the audience cowered away, he waved his hand, and instead of being drenched, softly falling rose-petals showered around us like red snow.
He dropped the cape, revealing the garb of a kilted highlander in battle-ready dress beneath. We clapped and yelled in appreciation as he drew a long sword from its scabbard and began a series of stylized, almost balletic, moves across the stage.
“I have come far to be here with you, my brothers of old,” he said. “From miles across the sea your pain and suffering has been heard. The rocks speak to their brethren, even as you hew and cut. You are not alone. Scotsmen are never alone. Not when we have the auld tunes.”
Samurai and Other Stories Page 6
