by Khurt Khave
The PFH beneficiaries still said nothing, though. They all smiled, a few waved or nodded, but not a sound passed the lips of any of the three dozen or so now standing at the entrances to their cubicles. As if anticipating Lenny's question, Gleam volunteered, “We encourage silence here in the sanctuary. It cuts down on distractions from the work of recovery our members do and lessens greatly the contagion of negative behavior. The members you see here are only in the earliest stages of becoming recovered. They are still vulnerable. The face of God within has not yet been firmly rooted.” A few of the smiling, begoggled cubicle dwellers nodded slowly in accord with their mentor.
“Face of God within?” Lenny inquired.
“We here at Partners for Hope are dedicated to making a gift of God's countenance to all of our wards to replace the harmful things within them they bring to us. Where the face of God flourishes, there is room for nothing else. That is true recovery!” gushed Gleam. Lenny waited for a hallelujah that never came.
“Terry mentioned that you guys work a lot like AA. Twelve steps, sponsors?”
“The process is a little different for everyone, but nothing that formal. It always starts by accepting the face of God, though. Until a man takes the face within, there can be no progress, only delusion,” puffed Gleam, his chest visibly pumping like bellows. “We say that the face of God without is the threshold of new birth, the face of God within is the door, and the binding together of man and God the storeroom of treasures beyond.” Watching Gleam labor through so many words made Lenny think, amused, that PFH could use shorter catchphrases.
A feeling of self-consciousness began to create a tingle in Lenny's neck. While the goggles hid them, he felt as if every eye in every silent face was inspecting him. The wordless scrutiny had quickly turned unnerving, so Lenny asked Gleam, “Could I ask these guys a couple of questions? Like, what they do when they're not here, how they spend their time?”
“Oh no, mister Balcerzak, silence is the rule,” Gleam began, “but I can gladly answer you. New members don't leave the hall. They eat and sleep in the cells. It is important in the beginning that they stay away from bad influences outside. We see to all needs right here.”
“How long do they stay here?” Lenny was having a hard time imagining himself living in a doorless cubicle for even a week, not to mention keeping his mouth shut the whole time.
“That depends,” Gleam answered, “on how long it takes the face of God to take full hold.”
“And then what?”
“Then they go to the next stage, to meet God and learn their purposes.” Gleam's response both piqued Lenny's interest and raised an alarm. The idea of having a purpose was a tempting contrast to the absence he felt in his life with neither work nor spouse. Coincidentally, the idea that one could meet God in this life seemed wrong. He hadn't been more than a lapsed Catholic, but what he could remember of the faith stressed that meeting God was for the sainted and the dead. Unemployed factory workers simply weren't eligible for divine visitation in Lenny's cosmos.
Gleam interrupted Lenny's musing after a few seconds, “The big question is, are you ready to see the face of God, my friend?” A broad, beneficent smile beamed from Gleam's partially hidden face. The grin without eyes seemed cold to Lenny, somehow like sharks would smile had they the wherewithal.
With a wave of his hand, tall, priestly Gleam sent the cubicle dwellers back behind the beige walls. None of them offered a farewell to Lenny. He did his best to look Gleam in the eye. “If I say yes, what happens?”
Gleam's grin became overextended, creasing his cheeks with dimple that looked as if they might reach his unseen ears. “Then, Mr. Balcerzak, I will take your hand, walk you to the altar, and plant the face of God within you.” Lenny was unsure. He turned away from Gleam, rubbed his thumb back and forth over his fingertips, stared up at the rose-colored lights. Could this ambitious offer be for something real? Surely, “the face of God” was a metaphor.
Haltingly, cautiously, Lenny consented.
“Wonderful!” Gleam beamed and extended his hand, “Let us begin! Take my hand and walk with me.”
The hand was cold to Lenny's touch and the skin dry but smooth, like thin leather. The moment that hand closed around his, Lenny felt a sense of calm, of relief. His relaxation was so profound that his rubbery legs well might have given way if not for his escort's support. Together, he and Gleam strode smoothly down the passage between the cubicles, across the sanctuary, and ultimately to the steps before the plain altar. Here, Lenny knew without question, he was to kneel. Gleam still clasped Lenny's hand in his own. With his unencumbered hand, he gestured and wrote upon the air, all the while intoning “Iä Iä Iä! G'llh-ya Tsathoggua! Hratt uddak!” Out of the corner of his eye, Lenny thought he could make out a glittering circle inscribed with characters hovering motionless above the altar. Then it faded and Gleam tugged his arm. Lenny rose to his feet and accompanied his guide up the steps. The feeling of relief and release that flowed through Lenny's every nerve fiber was the most pleasurable sensation he had ever experienced. He was calm, undistracted by the cares that had occupied him, unquestioning. For the first time in more than four decades, Lenny Balcerzak was absolutely at peace.
The rite in which he participated recalled the proceedings of the holiday masses he had attended years ago. Like the priests who led those services, Gleam told him when to stand, when to kneel, when to repeat words that meant nothing to Lenny, and finally to place his hands upon the altar. It was only then that Gleam let go of Lenny's hand. The top of the altar felt cold, so cold that were he not in a profoundly passive trance, he would have reflexively yanked his hands away. Instead, he merely accepted the burning cold sensation. All, he knew, was as it should be.
The feeling of contentment did not cease when Gleam walked around the bare altar and retrieved a syringe. Lenny remained in place as the needle entered one of the conspicuous blood vessels in the back of his left hand. The sensation of the smooth jab rang through his feeling of calm like the ring of some sweet sounding bell in the distance. Lenny grinned and watched passively as the plunger pushed black content into his body and Gleam exclaimed, “Iä Tsathoggua! Ayaa g'llh-ya! G'noth ykagga ha!” From every cubicle came a joyous response, “Iä Iä Iä! G'noth ykagga ha Tsathoggua!” Gleam motioned for Lenny to regain his feet and he did so without hesitation.
“Now the face of God is within you. May it take root in every cell, every thought, every act! Trh'ro ttak sif heptaparttak zn'okh! Ra'ttah ttak Tsathoggua! Iä Iä Iä!” Gleam led and Lenny followed him to an untenanted cubicle. Lenny lay down upon a cot therein and closed his eyes. Gleam took leave and Lenny took to slumber.
He awoke. There were no cues by which to estimate the duration of his sleep or time of day. There were only pinkish light, soft music, and cubicle walls. Lenny sat up and felt an unfamiliar sensation in his head. He was certain that something cold was in there. A slight pressure had built up behind his eyes, as well. The feeling was not of pain so much as discomfort. The ease he had experienced earlier was gone. Now he had questions about what he'd gone through at Gleam's side. Perhaps his fellow inmates could break their silence long enough to offer the information he desired.
Lenny stood, took a step, and was seized by nauseating vertigo. The rigidity of his legs gave way. He fell on all fours, the dull walls of his cell whirling about him. Lenny knew a similar condition; he was prone to mornings like this after too many rounds of hard liquor. He hadn't been drinking in the preceding hours, though, so why now? It must be that shot Gleam had injected into his hand. His determination to question whoever might occupy the next nook grew. He tried to brace himself against a wall and shimmy his back up, but the dizziness overcame him at once and he slumped back to the floor. The apprehension of something dangerously wrong accelerated his racing pulse further and triggered something akin to a freezing migraine, the growing strain against the backs of his eyeballs threatening to fire them like cannon balls from their sockets. A moment ago he h
ad wanted answers. Now he needed help and it wouldn't wait.
Overcome by suspicion that he was dying, Lenny called out to anyone who might be listening. No one responded to the rough squawking that was as all he could force from his throat. Adding to his panic, he realized that it was getting difficult to breathe. Some force had control of his chest. It was the volition of that unseen entity governing his respiration. Never had Lenny felt so sure that he was at death's door. He needed medical attention at once if he was to have any chance of surviving whatever poison had entered his blood, his brain, his lungs. Unable to walk, or even to crawl, Lenny dragged himself out of his cell and crossed the short distance to the entrance of the next one. It felt like traversing a mile.
Lenny managed to raise his head enough to see that his neighbor in the adjacent cubicle was lying prone on his or her cot, head oriented toward the gap in the beige walls. His vision was becoming blurry as his migraine throbbed more powerfully, but Lenny could see the now-familiar head wrap and he wondered why he hadn't been issued one. He told himself it didn't matter, must focus now on waking the denizen and getting help. He reached up a hand and grabbed the corner of the cot. He pulled himself up until his face was level with that of the sleeper. Lenny tried to speak; he only issued croaks. He would have to jostle the insensate one awake.
From his position and deficient strength, it was all Lenny could do to reach the inmate's head. His hand lit on the wrapped headscarf even as it occurred in the recess of his mind somewhere behind the agony that it was strange to wear this item to bed. Summoning every bit of will remaining him, Lenny desperately shook that head from side to side. The effort was enough to displace the wrap and shift the attached glasses well off alignment with the slumberer's eyes.
The person on the cot—Lenny couldn't discern gender—awoke! Nausea, cold, and pain were briefly lessened by hope. He'd done it! Surely, it would be only minutes before an ambulance arrived to save his life. As the person on the cot rose and turned toward Lenny, the headdress remained where his head had been. Lenny saw his face and hope fled.
The thing still resembled the man in which it dwelt but his face was horrific in its present configuration. Blank eyes protruded beneath a pulsing brow, the eyeballs held in place by stubby black stalks that directed them independently as the monstrosity looked Lenny over. It had not a hair on its head; throbbing fingers of something black, rubbery, slippery, protruded from raw round holes in the abomination's scalp. Numerous thin tendrils wriggled like viscous worms from his ears, these having largely fused with the head. The nightmare inhabitant reached a leathery hand and seized Lenny by the hair, smashing his face into the floor. There was for Lenny a moment of exploding white, then the mercy of insensibility.
Mercy does not last forever. For Lenny, it lasted mere minutes. He awoke to searing pain in the bridge of his nose and the feel of warmth dribbling down each cheek. He knew his nose was broken and when he tried to put a hand to the source of his agony, he learned from shocks of pain that his arms, too, had been broken at the elbows. His legs lacked sensation altogether; if they moved at all, Lenny couldn't tell. Eyes still squeezed shut, he became aware of the insipid, droning music piped into the sanctuary. Lenny knew no help would come for him and resolved to keep his eyes closed. He would have rather been blind than once again face the obscenity that had done him the favor of removing his awareness for a few minutes.
“Open your eyes, Leonard,” came Gleam's slow, breathy voice through the blackness and anguish and agony, “Open your eyes and you will know glory.” Lenny felt a hand on his chest. Tears trickled from the corners of his eyes as he closed them tighter in an attempt to resist the command. Whatever was in his chest coiled itself tighter around his ribs, forcing his breath out in an involuntary gasp. His resistance ebbed. As he slowly opened his eyes to the red-pink light of the sanctuary the pressure in his ribcage relented. He sucked in air and looked at what was bent above him, its face, if that term can be used loosely, inches from his own.
Lenny knew it was Gleam absent his headdress. The whole to of his head, from his cheekbones up, was a squirming mass of long black fingers appearing from and disappearing again into a pulpy jet mass without definition. “I will show you now! Iä Tsathoggua! Obeisance to the lord of N'kai!” Gleam peeled away the skin of his lower face; his head abandoned its shape but for a mouth from which rocketed uncountable ebon threads that wriggled toward Lenny's bruised, bleeding countenance.
A scream welled up from somewhere within him as Lenny felt icy snakes stretch behind his eyes and down his neck. He screamed until those frigid serpents filled his throat from within. Then his screams were replaced with rasping coughs and choking, then with silence.
The hole that had once been the mouth in Gleam's deliquescing, roiling head explained coldly, “Every man screams when first he sees the face of God within. You will pass.” Then the threads stretched down from the black perversion even as Lenny's eyes were forced out of their sockets and streamers of black emerged from his ears.
Terry Jewell was leaving a visit to check on the welfare of a child in an apartment on Hammond Street late one afternoon when he thought he recognized his friend. Not having heard from Lenny in some weeks, Terry crossed the street. The head cover and glasses made it difficult to be certain that it was him, but Jewell chanced it and walked over with a smile to the fore edge of the filthy sideyard whereon the figure stood. “Lenny? It is you! Long time no see, buddy! How'd Partnership for Hope work out for ya?”
“Very well, thanks,” breathed the black monstrosity that vibrated the vocal cords once possessed by an unemployed factory worker named Lenny Balcerzak. “I know the face of God now and I will reveal Him to all who need His glory.” Lenny did not acknowledge the hand that Terry reached toward him.
“Glad to hear it. I knew PFH would help you out. Maybe you and me will work together on a case sometime,” Terry chirped.
“Oh, yes. There is a junkie or alcoholic in every Worcester alley. One day, we will cure them all.”
Terry bade his friend goodbye and hurried back to his office. Lenny strolled down Hammond toward Southbridge Street, handing out pamphlets to the addicted and homeless.
Brian H. Seitzman is a resident of the haunted city of Worcester, Massachusetts where he shares his home with a hedgehog and an anthropologist. His background is in the physical sciences, but he began reading the works of H.P. Lovecraft at age 8 and has never been quite right. When not writing, he can be found in the woods foraging for fungi.
The Black Metal of Derek Zann Aaron Besson
The members of Bleak Cathedral lounged around their mess of a practice room. Posters of various black metal bands hung in various states of falling off the walls, and the dingy carpet was covered in ashtrays long past overflowing alongside a multitude of empty beer bottles. Dez and Hogg sank into the dirty, stained couch, nursing their current beers in a half-interested fashion while Viktor noodled a sloppy riff on his guitar. He looked up at the clock high on the wall. It read 5:10. The guy was late.
“Is this asshole showing up, or what?” growled Hogg, absentmindedly twirling a drumstick as he downed the last of his beer. “I'm not wasting my time here if I don't have to.”
Viktor felt exactly the way Hogg did, but he hated the drummer's whining. “Cool down, we'll give the guy five more minutes, then bail. He's the first serious call we've gotten since we put the Craigslist ad up, and what the hell do you have that's so important?” Viktor knew the answer was absolutely nothing, and Hogg's eye roll affirmed it. All the same, every second passing was pissing Viktor off more.
A couple more minutes passed when the practice room door opened, revealing a lanky guy with long, tangled, black hair in his early twenties wearing a spiked leather jacket and a Darkthrone t-shirt. Over his shoulder was a black leather backpack, and he carried a guitar case covered in band stickers that Viktor only recognized maybe a third of. The newcomer gave a slow gaze over the wreckage of the practice room, and then looked at Vikto
r with stern, black eyes, “Is this the Bleak Cathedral tryouts?” he asked, deep voice crisp with an accent that Viktor couldn't place.
Viktor gave an exaggerated sigh and glared at the guy for a long moment, “Maybe,” he said with a snort. “Showing up ass-late isn't a particularly good sign of professionalism, so we were thinking of bailing.”
The man gave another assessing look around the room and then squared his gaze back on Viktor, “It's good to see a band so focused on professionalism,” remarked the newcomer sardonically. Even though he knew he was part of the problem, Dez snorted with laughter. Viktor shot him a baleful look and then turned back, “Yeah, anyway, it's been a busy day,” Viktor lied. “So who are you?”
The stranger put down his bag and guitar case then strode closer to the band. “I'm Derek, Derek Zann,” he said with a slight nod. “I was doing vocals for Impure Solace and Necromonger before I went overseas for a couple years. I moved back to San Francisco a couple of months ago and have been looking for the right band to work with. I saw your ad and wanted to see what you guys were about.”
“Overseas, huh?” asked Dez. “Where'd you go?” Viktor knew that Dez was crazy for the European black metal scene, probably the biggest fanboy of all of them. The question didn't surprise him.
Derek leveled his stare on Dez, “Here and there. Germany, France, little parts of the Ukraine. Mostly I was trying to reconnect with old family there. I checked out the scene a lot while I was around.”
Dez grinned eagerly, “Bet there's some crazy shit over there, huh?” Derek gave a thin smile that bordered on creepy, “You have no idea.” “Alright,” Viktor cut in. “Never heard of either of those bands, but
you’re here so let's give you a shot.” The band grudgingly got up and walked over to their setup then started plugging in and getting prepped. Viktor nodded to the mic stand, “You know what you wanna do?”
