Bohemians of Sesqua Valley (24 page)

April heard the sound of wind in the distant woodland, and she walked to the small-paned window and opened it so as to smell the storm; but the nighted valley was still, the remote trees unmoving. And yet she heard the sound of rising wind within the woodland, a sound that called to her and beckoned. She left her room and walked down the stairs, to where the lights had been extinguished. The air was cool as she stepped outside, and although there was no moon she could see swarms of stars in the sky. From beneath her feet she sensed a slight pounding, a rhythm that matched her heartbeat. She moved along the area of grass behind the house that led to the trees, and she stood amazed at the sound that came from within the dense growth of forest; for she could hear it now unmistakably, a rushing tempest from some hidden place within the woods, an alarming sound that chilled her soul; and beneath the song of tempest she could hear a word uttered by some unearthly tongue: “Ygnaiih! Ygnaiih!” It was an utterance that iced her blood, for this was a word that her grandfather had shouted during his worst nightmares. April placed one foot into the forest, and all was suddenly stilled. She did not seem to notice how the stars formed curiously above her, creating symbols in the sky. She listened for any sound, and when at last she heard it, she began to quake emotionally. What she heard was the frail calling of her name, in her grandfather’s voice. There was no urgency in the sound—it was calm and caring, and coaxing. It summoned, and she followed, into the woodland, along the rough path toward the dweller in darkness, the shadow thing that writhed and howled, although how it could do so was unfathomable since it wore no face. It was tall and lean, with two long extensions that might have been flailing arms, similar to those on the totem that leaned against the ancient church. Two black forms boiled on the ground before it, small shapeless things that held ivory flutes that pierced amorphous mouths. Daemonic music echoed and reechoed in the enclosing forest as the dark thing surged with shaping and raised its facelessness to the stars that circled above the trees forming trails of illumination similar to the patterns she had seen on the black window that hung inside Simon Gregory Williams’ edifice of art. Her eyes felt very odd as they watched the moving stars and reflected their alchemy. God, her eyes felt as if they were being pulled from their sockets, toward the sky. She cried out as something took hold of her hand. Another hand, soft and trembling, momentarily sheltered her eyes, and then a mouth was pressed against her ear. “Run,” Cyrus urged her, “run with me!”

VIII

When she opened her eyes, April saw Adam sitting next to her as she lay in bed. He moved to help her to a sitting position, and then he reached for a tea cup that sat on a bedside stand. “Wait a minute,” she told him. “The last time you offered me a drink I came to regret it. Damn, what was in that hooch you gave me in the club? I’ve never hallucinated like that before. I can’t tell what was memory and what was dream.”

“Drink this. It will soothe your brain. Perhaps I should have used precaution in offering you our special valley poteen. As you said, it packs a punch. This will have an opposite effect.” She took the cup and sniffed at its herbal contents, and then she sipped the hot liquid, which was sweet and smooth. She drank some more and leaned her head back onto the pillow.

“How many bookshops are in this town?”

“This one only. Although Leonidas sells some few rare tomes in his museum.”

“So you wouldn’t feel threatened if someone opened another shop in town?”

“Ah, you have been charmed by Sesqua Valley. But can you leave your lifelong home and settle here?”

She blew air out of her mouth and frowned. “It hasn’t been the same since Grandfather’s death. It’s weird, but those last two years with him had a real effect. He spoke of so many strange things, and so effectively that I could feel them in my mind. We sometimes discussed those books that I have brought you, and he knew their contents intimately. I couldn’t read them, of course, not knowing anything but English. But listening to him talk about them and their legends was like being a child who listened to fairy tales told by some enchanting adult—told with such passion and—longing—that I entered into the imaginary world completely, especially in dream. I haven’t had those dreams since Grandfather’s death, but I seem to be having them again, since coming here. They are disturbing yet beguiling, and they remind me of Grandfather. I feel him, somehow, here, or some kind of influence spawned by the things he whispered to me near his end of life. It’s difficult to express because it sounds so damn—supernatural. I’ve been enchanted, yes. You wouldn’t feel that I was crowding in on your business?”

He removed the cup from her hands and took them in his own. “Come with me. Come.” Adam pulled her out of bed and led her down the carpeted stairs to the large and crowded room of books, then to a set of two wooden panels set into one wall. She listened to the sound of wood moving against wood as he slid the paneled door away from the other, to its place within the wall, then followed him into another spacious room that contained some few pieces of furniture and nothing else.

“Now, if I remember it correctly, your Grandfather’s bookstore was a small affair, and its contents could quite easily fit into this space, unless you’ve expanded.”

“No, I haven’t. Oh, I love how old everything smells in here. Isn’t it delicious? Do you really suggest that we combine our shops? But where would I live? I got rid of most of my furniture when I moved into the bookstore, I like living with Grandfather’s few things.”

“There’s a second room upstairs that would serve admirably as living quarters, and you can keep the small room as boudoir. It would be pleasant to have another bookish soul living here. If you are certain you want to dwell within the valley.”

“I feel quite certain, which is weird because I’m not usually so compulsive. Perhaps coming here and dwelling on alternative possibilities has shown me how boring my life has been. Yes, I am quite certain. It’s early, isn’t it? I should probably start for Wisconsin today. I’m impatient to set everything in motion. I’ll walk to town and fetch my car. Thank you, Adam.”

He escorted her from the room and watched her rush upstairs to fetch some items and then run down them again and out of the house. When he went again into the dark vacant room he found Cyrus seated in one of the overstuffed chairs. “You reek of star-stuff,” Adam said, scowling. “Did you gaze upon him?”

“I tried not to.”

“Pah! You are not very wise for a child of valley shadow. Simon has lectured you on looking upon the Crawling Chaos in any of its daemonic manifestations. It’s alluring enough when it apes human form, but...” He stopped and knelt next to the boy. “Let me see your eyes, Cyrus. Yes, they are tainted with particles of darkness and nightmare. What have you been doing?”

“I’ve been studying the window from the Providence church, the window that was composed of satanic sand and situated by a cult into a New England church.” He peered at Adam’s worried face and began to laugh. “I can understand why even our great beast, Simon Gregory Williams, venerates Nyarlathotep. He—it—is awesome. Simon told me once that there is a place in the woods where our realm touches and combines with the realm of dream. Adam, do you dream? Because I never have. When I sleep it’s like my essence returns in some way to the realm of mist and shadow of which we are a part, the place that Simon has led us from so that we can entertain a season of mortality in this physical semblance. Simon says that there are many dreamworlds, not all composed of human slumber. Do you dream, Adam?”

“It is not our nature to do so, Cyrus. ‘We are such stuff as dreams are made on.’”

“Simon dreams.”

“Because he is decayed from spending over a century in this mortal existence.”

“But it was Simon who discovered the way to bring us here, for a season. It was Simon who sensed those human souls who entered the valley and thought to claim it, despite the warnings of the aboriginal tribes who knew to shun this valley and its sprites. Maybe it can be Simon who could teach me to find the place where the forests meet and conjoin, so that I can taste the realm of dream.”

“You talk dangerous nonsense. You’ve been infected.”

“By the Dark One? Yes, he has touched my eyes. I did look upon him in his daemonic form, and it was riveting. He’s come for her, hasn’t he?”

“She is linked to him through her grandfather, who became tainted in a place called Rick’s Lake. Her coming here was no accident, nor her summoning of the haunter of the dark. Her fate is sealed, and he will have her.”

“And take her where? Where does he dwell?”

“In any place he likes, in all of Time and Space, in the dimensions between the stars.” He saw the way the boy’s eyes shimmered. “But we won’t dwell on such things. We abide, Cyrus, and then we enjoy this taste of mortality, for a little while.”

* * *

April pulled away from the center of town and found herself driving toward the spot where the ancient church had been erected by Simon Williams so as to house his relics in honor of Nyarlathotep. Parking, she gazed at the stone structure, at the spirals of mist that rose from the ground on which it had been constructed from imported stones. She saw the totem that had figured in her delirium, the thing she was now certain had been imported from its place near the lodge at Rick’s Lake. How peculiar it was, to seem like some part of a puzzle that was slowly, inexorably, being fitted together. The ground was rocky where she had parked, and she took her time after getting out of the car and stepping to the place where the yellow grass began to grow. She walked past the various stone figures that tilted on that grass and then up the incline to the church, stopping before the totem and touching its cool smoothness with her hot human hand. She could feel the wave of heat that pushed at her from the arched threshold, though which she finally passed.

He stood before the black window, one hand touching its surface. She did not hesitate but walked to and up the altar, stopping very near to him. “How did you know my grandfather?”

“Are you musical, Miss Dorgan?” He raised his other hand, in which he held an exquisite thing that had been created out of what looked like white gold. She had never seen anything more beauteous. He offered it to her. The flute was chilly to the touch. Bringing it to her face, she smoothed its texture against her skin, and then she placed it at her mouth. No music sounded.

“I can’t seem to play it.”

“So I see. Pity, you have such a tender soul. What a treasure you would have been, numbered with me and mine. What do you see when you look upon this surface?”

April gazed at the blackness of the hanging window, at the thick opacity within which were whorls of electric life. “I see a haunted heaven—and beyond.”

“You see the Audient Void, a place that waits and listens, that hungers. It has touched you as it touched your grandsire, and it will taint your dreams for all your mortal days. It could have been yours, intimately—but you are not the one. You don’t pine for it. Sweet dreams, Miss Dorgan.”

She felt herself float toward the ground, her mind spinning like the shapes on the black window. She dreamed of nameless things, and in those dreams her grandfather called her name. And then another called her name as hands shook her roughly.

“Where is he?” Adam shouted at her.

Groggily, she pushed herself up to a sitting position. “He was here.”

“Where is Cyrus?”

Before she could answer the ground beneath them began to pound, as if some preternatural heart pulsed in some deep place of the earth. From atop the twin-peaked mountain, things wailed to starlight. Cursing, Adam rushed from her, out of the edifice and into night, where he growled at the stars that moved above him and formed sigils in the sky. As April staggered from the church she saw those stars die out one by one as some thick gloom engulfed the heavens. Something in Adam’s agonized shrieking tormented her, and she rushed after him as he ran into the woodland. She found him kneeling in one spot, clawing into the earth and yowling at the figure who stood, tall and erect and supernal, some little ways away. The Dark One, wrapped in fabrics red as sunset flame, wore his triple crown of white gold. His unholy hands caressed the head of the one who slumped at his feet, the figure that was sheathed in living shadow that seemed to feast upon the mortal tissue of temporary flesh. April watched as that flesh bubbled and reshaped itself. She saw the young face in the head that finally raised its eyes to look at them—its silver eyes.

“You cannot claim him!” Adam screamed. “He is spawn of shadow, and to shadow he will return.” The strange dark one smiled at them, mockingly. He brought forward his other hand, in which he held a flute composed of the same stuff with which his diadem had been fashioned. The wretched thing at his feet took hold of the flute with shifting hands and brought it to his amorphous mouth. Eldritch music haunted the valley woodland, accompanied by Adam’s wails of outrage as he rose and tried to rush forward. The Dark One held up a hand, and April felt the invisible force that plummeted Adam, and crippled him. She saw the whorls of spinning illumination that formed above the daemon and then shot to Adam’s face, and she smelled the rank aroma of Adam’s percolating eyes. She crawled to him and took him in her arms as the child that had been claimed by Crawling Chaos continued to play his summoning, and she saw the wondrous realm that he brought forth with enchanted music, the forest of dreamland that crept toward the child and his new Master, claiming them. She wept as she watched the dreamland forest melt from view, as the blind thing in her embrace howled idiotically to heaven.