Where flap the tatters of the King

by Various

  “Look at that!” Kathryn pointed to the quarter-sized drops of blood left in the Lennon actor’s wake. “Gruesome. I can’t wait to see what they did with Kurt Cobain...”

  Finley shuddered. “Good special effects, that’s for sure.”

  The singing swelled, the upraised voices echoing like thunder. “Have you seen the Yellow Sign? Have you found the Yellow Sign? Let the red dawn surmise what we shall do, when this blue starlight dies and all is through. Have you seen the Yellow Sign? Have you found the Yellow Sign?”

  They repeated the chorus two more times. On the last note, the candles were extinguished and the lights on the stage grew brighter.

  The first part of the play concerned the intrigue of the royal court. The aging Queen was pestered and plied by her children: Cassilda, Alar, Camilla, Thale, Uoht, and Aldones, all claimants for the throne to Yhtill. They vied for the crown, so that the dynasty would continue, each one claiming to be to be the rightful successor. Despite their efforts, the Queen declined to give the crown away. Mama Cass began to sing, and Finley’s skin prickled.

  “Along the shore the cloud waves break. The twin suns sink behind the lake. The shadows lengthen, in Carcosa. Strange is the night where black stars rise, and strange moons circle through the skies. But stranger still is lost Carcosa. Songs that the Hyades shall sing, where flap the tatters of the King, must die unheard in dim Carcosa. Song of my soul, my voice is dead, die though, unsung, as tears unshed shall dry and die in lost Carcosa.”

  The crowd applauded, enraptured with her performance. Then the Cobain character appeared on stage, his face hidden beneath a pallid mask. When he turned his back to the audience, the crowd gasped. Hair and skull were gone, offering a glimpse of gray matter.

  Finley had trouble following the plot after that.

  Cobain’s character, the Phantom of Truth, pronounced doom upon the Queen and her subjects. The threat apparently came from a non-existent city that would appear on the other side of the lake. Reacting to this news, the Queen ordered him tortured.

  Though Kathryn seemed enraptured, Finley grew restless as it continued. He found it incoherent to the point of absurdity. One moment, a character professed their love for another. The next, they discussed a race of people who lacked anuses, and could consume only milk, evacuating their waste through vomiting. The characters rambled on, and Finley slipped into a half conscious state—his mind adrift with other matters but the actor’s lines droned on in the back of his head.

  “There are so many things which are impossible to explain! Why should certain chords of music make me think of the brown and golden tints of autumn foliage?”

  “Let the red dawn surmise...”

  “Aldebaran and the Hyades have aligned, my Queen!”

  “What we shall do...”

  “Sleep now, the blessed sleep, and be not troubled by these ill omens.”

  “When this blue starlight dies...”

  “The City of Carcosa has appeared on the other side of Lake Hali!”

  “And all is through...”

  He wasn’t sure how long he stayed like that; head drooping and eyes half shut. Kathryn’s light laughter and the chuckles coming from the rest of the audience startled him awake again. He checked his watch; then glanced around at the other patrons. Immediately, his attention focused on a couple behind them. The woman’s head was in her lover’s lap, bobbing up and down in the darkness. Before he could tell Kathryn, he noticed another display; this one in their own row. A man at the end was lovingly biting another man’s ear, hard enough to draw blood. His partner licked his lips in ecstasy.

  “Kathryn—” he whispered.

  She shushed him and focused on the play, her face rapt with attention. Her cheeks were flushed, and Finley noticed that her nipples stood out hard against her blouse. Without a word, her hand fell into his lap and began to stroke him through his pants. Despite the bizarre mood permeating the theatre, he felt himself harden.

  Just then, there was a commotion at the back of the theatre, as another actor entered. The crowd turned as the actors pointed with mock cries of shock and dismay. He wore a gilded robe with scarlet fringes, and a clasp of black onyx, on which was inlaid a curious symbol of gold. Though his face was hidden beneath a pallid mask identical to the one Cobain was wearing, there was no mistaking the trademark swagger. He swept down the aisle, pausing as the crowd burst into spontaneous applause.

  “Thank you. Thank you very much.”

  He bowed to the audience, and then took the stage in three quick strides.

  “Behold, the Yellow Sign upon his breast!” cried the Queen. “It is the King of Carcosa, and he seeks the Phantom of Truth!”

  Hendrix, Lennon, and Vicious entered the audience, each with a burlap bag slung over their shoulders.

  “Masks!” they called. “Everyone receive your masks! No pushing. There’s plenty for everyone!”

  Finley pushed Kathryn’s hand away in alarm. They were passing out knives—real knives rather than stage props. The lights glinted off the serrated blades.

  “Kathryn, we—”

  His statement was cut short as her mouth covered his. Greedily, she sucked at his tongue, her body suddenly filling his lap. The scene replayed itself throughout the theatre. Men and women, men and men, women and women. Couples, threesomes, and more. Clothes were discarded, and naked, glistening bodies entwined around each other in the seats and on the floor. All the while, the dead rock stars waded through the crowd, dispensing knives.

  “Kathryn, stop it!” He pushed her away. “Something is really fucked up here.”

  “Have you found it, Roger? Have you seen the Yellow Sign?”

  “What?”

  She slapped him. Hard. Then, grinning, she slapped him again.

  “Now, you slap me,” she urged. “Come on, Roger. You said you wanted to do something different. Make me wet. Hit me!”

  “No!”

  “Coward! Pussy! You limp dick mother-fucker! Do it, or I’ll find someone else here who will!”

  “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  It’s like she’s hypnotized or something! All of them are! What the hell happened while I was asleep?

  On stage, what appeared to be a masked ball scene was underway.

  “You have questioned him to no avail!” Elvis’ voice rang out through the hall, echoing over the mingled cries of pain and ecstasy. He was addressing the actors, but at the same time, the audience as well. “Time to unmask. All must show their true faces! All! Except for myself. For indeed, I wear no mask at all!”

  As one, the crowd picked up their knives and began to flay the skin from their faces. Some laughed as they did it. Others helped the person sitting next to them. Finley turned, just as Kathryn slid the blade through one cheek. A loose flap of skin hung down past her chin.

  “Kathryn, don’t!”

  He grabbed for the knife and she jerked it away. Before he could move, she slashed at his hands. Blood welled in his palm as he dodged another slice. Then he slapped her, leaving a bloody handprint on her cheek.

  “That’s it baby!” she shrieked. “Let me finish taking my mask off, and then I’ll help you with yours.”

  “All unmask!” Elvis boomed again, and Finley turned to the stage, unable to look away. The King removed the Pallid Mask concealing his face, and what he revealed wasn’t Elvis. It wasn’t even human. Beneath the mask was a head like that of a puffy grave worm. It lolled obscenely, surveying the crowd, then gave a strange, warbling cry.

  Kathryn’s skin landed on the floor with a wet sound.

  The thing on stage turned toward Finley, and then he saw.

  He saw it. He found it.

  Roger Finley screamed.

  “Excuse me?” The bum shuffled forward.

  “Just ignore him, Marianne. If we give him money, he’ll hound us the whole way to the harbor.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Thomas,” the woman scolded her husband. “The poor fellow looks half starved. An
d he’s articulate for a street person!”

  The bum shuffled eagerly from foot to foot while she reached within her purse and pulled out a five-dollar bill. She placed it in his outstretched hand.

  “Here you go. Please see to it that you get a hot meal, now. No alcohol or drugs.”

  “Thank you. Much obliged. Since you folks were so kind, let me help you out.”

  “We don’t need any help, thank you very much.” The husband stiffened, wary of the homeless man’s advances.

  “Just wanted to give you a tip. If you like the theatre, you should take your wife to see Yellow.”

  He pointed at a nearby poster. The couple thanked him and walked away, but not before stopping to read the poster for themselves.

  Roger Finley pocketed the five dollars, and watched them disappear into Fell’s Point, in search of the Yellow Sign. He wondered if they would find it, and if so, what they would see.

  Carcosa Story about Hali (fragment)

  Lin Carter

  I. Now, it came to pass late in the first year of the Terror that They That Reign from Betelgeuze spake in his dreams to Their Servant, the necromancer Hali, yea, even him that was called Hali the Wise; and he rose up and departed him hence from the Immemorial City and did wander for some certain time in the wilderness, beneath the twin suns and the strange moons that illume the skies of that world of Carcosa that is in the Hyades, and whereof the scribe doth write. And, in sooth, now that the grave did give up its sheeted dead, to stalk and gibber through the streets, it beseemed wise for a necromancer like Hali to make himself scarce.

  II. And these things had come to pass in the days that followed hard upon the heels of the appearance of that Apparition that arose up from out of the Nothingness that was before Time and that is beyond Space, and that smote Fear into the hearts of all those that did dwell in the beshadowed ways of the Immemorial City; the which befell in the early years of the reign of that Aldones, even he that was the Last King of the Immemorial City, at least until the Coming-Thither of the King in Yellow, as had been aforetime foretold by that very Apparition of the Phantom of Truth.

  III. In the fullness of time did it occur to one Elhalyn, a priest of the Elder Gods in the Immemorial City, that Hali the Wise had writ in his Testament much that foreshadowed the Curse that now smote the City of Aldones, in that he had writ of the shades and permutations of that state that “By death is wrought greater change than hath been shewn, whereas in general the spirit that removed cometh back upon occasion and is sometimes seen of those in the flesh (appearing in the form of the body it bore), yet hath it happened that the veritable body without the spirit hath wal ked. And it is attested of those encountering them who have lived to speak thereon that a lich so raised up hath no natural affection, nor remembrance thereof, but only hate. Also, it is known that some spirits which in life were benign become by death evil altogether.”

  IV. Thus writ Hali the Wise, and these words brought the priest Elhalyn to the attention of the King Aldones, for it beseemed to this priest of the Elder Gods that if this necromancer was so deeply learned in the Mysteries of Death, he might well know the cause of the curse that now plagued the very streets of the Immemorial City, where the dead walked and raved, and the living fled therefrom in fear. For it is not meet or seemly that the living and the dead shouldst commingle, since that each belongeth to a different sphere; and to these sentiments agreed, and right full-heartedly, the King, Aldones, gave as his fiat that the priest Elhalyn shouldst seek out the necromancer Hali in whatever far and fabulous bourne he now had taken as his home.

  V. Now, for a time did the sage Hali wander in this wilderness, the which wast not habited by men such as he, but only by the shy and furtive Yoogs, the which be but rarely glimpsed by mortal eyes, and then but dimly and from afar; and these quaint and curious creatures, the Yoogs, be of much interest in that they perambulate about upon three legs instead of two, and in a mode and manner most novel and intriguing; and there were, as well, in these parts the loathly and abominable Nests of the Byakhee, the which were wont to roost in peaks adjacent to these regions. But of the Byakhee the Scribe writeth naught, by reason of the grisly Ways thereof, the which be not quite Wholesome to discuss.

  VI. Now, the Black Lake on whose bleak shores the sage soon reared his hut or hovel was in no wise like unto the other lakes to be found upon this world of Carcosa in the Hyades; for the waters thereof were dark as death and cold as the bitter spaces between the stars, and naught that was composed of simple flesh lived or could live in the gloomy and fetid Deeps thereof. And it is said that a cold and clammy mist drifted ever above the bitter waters of the Black Lake, as a shroud clings to a moldering corpse. And this mist swayed to and fro with the wheeling of the black stars and the strange moons of Carcosa, and they in the Immemorial City knew this as the “cloud waves.”

  VII. And it was whispered by men that these cloud waves hid forever from the sight of men a Monstrous Thing that had fallen upon Carcosa from the stars uncounted and uncountable aeons before this time, and that this Thing yet lived albeit in a state of somnolence, from the which it woke betimes, ravening with hungers unspeakable. And the sages said that this Dweller in the Depths was of the very spawn of Azathoth and half-brother even to Dread Cthulhu, the Lord of the Great Abyss, and that the Thing in the Lake had mated with the Black Ewe with a Thousand Young, aye, even Shub-Niggurath; and upon that hellish and cloud-like Entity had begotten the Twin Abominations, even Nug and Yeb. And it was deemed unprudent to utter upon the lips of men the Name of the Thing in the Lake, wherefore was it known as The Unspeakable.

  VIII. When, in the fullness of time, the priest Elhalyn had sought out the hovel wherein dwelt the necromancer, and had made converse with Hali the Wise upon that matter the which had roused all of Carcosa, and they spake of the Dead that had risen to wander abroad and to ravish the living (even the living that they themselves had loved and cherished when they had been on live), Hali mused and at length spake thusly, from the profundities of his wisdom: “Know, O Hal Elhalyn, for that there be divers sorts of death—some wherein the body remaineth, and in some it vanisheth quite away with the spirit.”

  IX. And sayeth yet further: “Now, this commonly occureth only in solitude (such being the will of the Elder Gods), and, none seeing the end thereof, we say the man is lost, or gone upon a long journey— which indeed he hath; but sometimes it hath happened in full sight of many, as abundant testimony sheweth. In one kind of death the spirit also dieth, and this it hath been known to do whilst yet the body wast in vigor for many years. Sometimes, as it is veritably attested, it dieth with the body, but after a season is raised up again in that place where the body dids't decay.” Thus spoke the necromancer Hali to the priest Elhalyn.

  X. Now, at length it came out in their converse that those of the Dead whose like had been seen to stalk and raven through the very streets of the Immemorial City were even those the which had been given over unto the Thing in the Lake in sacrifice thereunto, that it was given unto Hali the Wise to ponder greatly thereat. For such as he, that knew the many forms and shapes of death, was greatly puzzled and baffled at this manifestation of a law of the dead hitherto unbeknownst, even to a necromancer such as he.

  XI. Long had Hali the Wise known of the abominable custom of binding and of hurling into the bitter depths of the Black Lake certain victims, such as were designated to feed the hunger of Him That Slept Beneath, and long had Hali the necromancer loathed and abominated this custom. And now that it was revealed unto him that those of the dead who rose to walk again the beshadowed streets of the Immemorial City were even the same as them that had been fed to the Thing in the Lake, he had great cause to think and to ponder.

  XII. For well wast it known to such as Hali the Wise that the Thing that had been of old hurled into the Black Lake was even Hastur— Hastur the Unspeakable, Him Who Is Not to Be Named—Great Prince of the Old Ones, prince and rebel against the Elder Gods. Not chained in the depths of the Black Lake
wast Hastur in these days, but hiding therein, wary and fearful of discovery by Those whom he hadst betrayed and fled therefrom. And very great and powerful was Hastur the Unspeakable, greater than any mere mortal man...

  XIII. And that very night, under the blaze of black stars and beneath the leprous glimmer of strange moons, did the Elder Gods whisper in his dreams unto Their Servant, even the necromancer Hali. But whereof wast spoken the Scribe knoweth not, and therefore he writeth not. But, upon the morrow, it is said that the necromancer sought out the shale of the rocky cliffs and found thereamongst a certain grey- green stone, whose name the Scribe knoweth not; and that from this stone, with patient labor, did the necromancer cut certain signs and sigils. Five-pointed stars were these, with blunted tips, and in the very midst thereof were cutten shapes like lozenges, open at both ends, containing Shapes like unto Towers of Flame.

  XIV…