Gathered Dust and Others (15 page)

“Well enough.  I also went to the ruins and explored there, but that place gave me the creeps so I didn’t look long.”  Reaching for the hand, I worked its ring, turning it until it loosened.  The mutant watched with suspicious eyes as I worked the hoop of metal from its frigid finger and moved it near his exploratory hand.  “This will be your payment,” I informed him.

He opened his hand with its palm upward, and into that palm I placed the hoop of gold.  “And what am I to perform, for so rare a treasure?”

I stood erect and filled my voice with force.  “Your art of conjoining.”

For the first time since I had entered Wormhead’s realm, he smiled.  “Wherever did you hear of that?”

I smiled too.  “I’ve heard whispers of your aid to the blind fool; it’s quite a local legend.”

“It was ages ago.  You know of the legend, but you’ve never heard the entire fable, I assume.”

Something chilly entered into his eyes that I did not like, and the radiance outside the window darkened just a little although I knew the skies were free of clouds.  “No, I haven’t.”

He took hold of the ring and slipped it onto one finger.  His red eyes seemed to smolder with inner inferno.  Below those eyes, his nose was almost nonexistent, and his lips were too small for teeth that stretched too widely, so that his mug resembled a death’s-head.   “Once upon a time,” he alleged, “there was a blind fool who bumped into the stalls of Gershom’s ghetto.  No one took pity on him because of his stupidity, and so he spent many hours in the small cathedral of St. Toad’s praying for a recovery of sight.  I attend St. Toad’s myself, to pray to Crawling Chaos in the arcane morning hour of three-o’clock, the time when dead gods listen to the supplications of doomed mortality.  I found him there, this wretch in rags, and led him to a font where I washed his blistered feet.  ‘Why do you pray for eyes?’ I asked him, and he replied, ‘So that I may weep.’  The answer was so beautifully idiotic that I deigned to respond with arcane craft.  Nearby there was a sculpture of the effeminate Christ, where I found, embedded in each outheld hand, a ruby of blood-red beauty.  With these tough talons, I worked the gems from out their pallid hands, and with these sage lips I uttered prayer of a different sort, and thus worked diabolic wonder.  The jewels, sunken into his pits that once held eyes, transfigured into living orbs that kept their gem-like splendor; and through those scarlet spheres he looked upon the world again, and went away to his little  ghetto residence.  And he looked upon the world of men, and its cruelty, and saw that those who hated him still did so, but now their odium was laced with envy, and fear of the mysterious, as well as with lust for the treasure of his ruby eyes.  He looked upon this world and did not weep, for such vileness brought water to his mouth alone and he spat his malcontent.  And thus he returned to St. Toad’s, where he found a ritual dagger with which to pluck out the crimson gems that were his eyes; and then he thrust that dagger into his wretched heart, and his trivial gasp of death rose as prayer to whatever saint might heed it.”

I watched him pick up the relic and kiss its palm.  “Now, do you still desire my enchantment?”

I did not hesitate.  “I do.”

“And whom am I to assist?”

“The poet of hounds.”

He mulled this over in his mind.  “He has not been long in Gershom.  Why has he exiled himself from the world of wretched humanity?”

“They scorned him for praying to the Outer Gods.  When it was discovered that he had penned potent psalms to they who dance in the spaces between stars, his writing hand was chopped off and burned upon an altar.”

Wormhead balanced the relic between two hands.  “You would have me, then, conjoin this to his wounded wrist.  I see.  Where is his abode?”

“He has a little hole in Poet’s Place.”

He rose.  “Let us away.”  One of his pygmies brought him a resplendent robe, and he knelt so that it could be fitted around his shoulders.  He stayed upon his knees as his two adorers squatted before him and placed pipes into misshapen mouths, and I shivered slightly at the eeriness of their windy canticle.  Wormhead listened for a little while, and then he raised a foot and smashed it into one piper’s head, and as the two homunculi groveled on the ground, the callous freak ascended and pointed to the relic.  I went to wrap it once more in plastic.  “No, do not efface it with that vile synthetic shroud.  There, that bit of black velvet that covers my crystal sphere – enclose it in that.”

I obeyed his command and then followed him from his dwelling, into daylight.  I must admit that I enjoyed the way people gawked at us as we strode down the walkways of Gershom.  Wormhead was a creature of legend that most people had whispered about but few had seen in flesh.  There was nothing arrogant in the manner of his stride, and yet he exuded a power of presence that made people move out of his way with awestruck fear shadowing their eyes.  Finally, we reached the derelict edifice that was called Poet’s Place, and I escorted the mutant inside and to the landing on which our quarry had a room.  We entered to find the poet weeping before a towering statue of Anubis.

“Joseph,” I called, and he turned to gaze at us with liquid eyes.  Wormhead did not hesitate but walked directly to the poet and lifted the amulet that the fellow wore around his neck.  It was a strangely crafted trinket – a small amulet fashioned of dark jade that had been carved into the likeness of what might have been a crouching winged hound, or a sphinx with a semi-canine countenance.  I did not like the malevolent expression that was evoked by the curve of the creature’s cruel mouth, with its overexposure of teeth – and then I noticed the subtle similarity between the amulet’s maw and Wormhead’s too-wide smirk.

“Why do you need a second hand to be a poet?  You have a mouth, and can warble your verses to the wind.”

The poet moved that mouth only.  “It would be good to write again, to know the ritual of pen and paper, to see the words form before me as solid language.  But that is not the reason I want a hand, my lord.  I need a second hand so that I may pray in proper fashion, palm against palm.”  He lifted his two arms, touched wrist to wrist; and I could almost see the hand that had been lost pressed against the one that yet remained.

“Ah,” the fiend hissed.  “Then I shall assist you.  You know the prayer to Shub-Niggurath, with which to conjure forth her pool of vintage spillage?”

“For that we need a hermaphrodite’s blood.”

“How convenient, then, that we are attended by such a creature,” Wormhead sang, pointing to myself.  “On your knees before me, poet.  Let us work this wonder.”  The small man bent before us, hand and stump pressed upon the wooden floor.  How oddly Wormhead seemed to rise, as if an extension of inches had been added to his height.  His lifted talons to the ceiling and spoke an ancient tongue.  I watched, as coils of brightness churned within his eyes.  I saw those serpents of light spill from his eyes and copulate, thus forming a swirling pool of radiance.  The alchemist stopped his vocal noise and turned to peer into my eyes, and then he grinned and brought one hand to my mouth, and I cried in protest as his sharp talon split the tissue of my lips.  My hot blood oozed into and over my mouth.  How nastily Wormhead chortled.  “Spit into the pool, thou freak of nature,” he mocked. 

Hatefully, I spat into the churning ectoplasm and watched the pale pool turn to deepest crimson.  Wormhead motioned to the poet and reached for the handless wrist, which Joseph dipped into the enchanted pool.  Then the mutant held his hand before me.  I unwrapped the relic and offered it to the devil, then pressed the velvet cloth to my mouth so as to stop my spillage.  How gracefully Wormhead dipped the relic into the pool and touched it to the poet’s wounded wrist.

“Wash,” Wormhead commanded.

I could not help but watch, enchanted, as the obsidian hand softened and stitched itself into the poet’s flesh as he washed within the spectral stuff.  At last the pool evaporated into the atmosphere of the dusky room.  Joseph moved his midnight hand and raised it to meet Wormhead’s mouth, with which the mage kissed the ebon palm.  The poet shuddered and then reached for Wormhead’s hand on which the monster wore the ring of white gold, the ring to which the poet touched his lips.  And then Joseph pressed his hands together – one white, one black – and uttered a Tindolic prayer, which was answered by some distant baying sound. 

Wormhead leered at me and spoke my name.  I dropped the velvet cloth and pressed my bloodstained mouth to the ring upon his hand; and then, bowing my head, I pressed my palms together.

Bloom of Sacrifice

I.

The figure of obsidian stone wept into the pool of squalid water.  The beast of Sesqua Valley pointed to the center of the pool.  “There.  You see the cluster of flowers that float before the statue?  No, do not tremble.  If anyone should be afraid it is I.  We children of the valley are not welcome on this mountainous region.  For me to bring you here is an act of defiance for which I may dearly pay.  Still, I revel in disobedience, and I’ll swallow my fate.  Be not afraid.  The water knows that you are here on a mission of merciful love for your brother.  It will hold you above its surface.”

This weird information did little to calm my nerves.  This mountain pool, the odd valley, and Simon Gregory Williams especially disturbed me profoundly.  I
was
afraid.  Looking into the water, I saw vague and murky figures, shadows or specters I could not say.  Simon scowled at these phantasms and spat into the water.  I watched the water ripple and darken as the ghostly figures drifted downward and disappeared.

“Now.  You must swim to where the flowers float just beneath the Faceless God.  As you enter the pool you must pulsate with the adoration you feel for Thomas.  Focus on your resolution to assist him, no matter the sacrifice.”

“And what kind of sacrifice would that be?”

The beast observed me with his slanted silver eyes.  Horribly, he smiled.  “I cannot say.”

I shut my eyes and conjured forth an image of my brother on his deathbed.  I saw him surrounded by candlelight and bouquets.  I saw the movement of his mouth as he quietly begged that I help him die.  I beheld the lesions on his limbs that he tried to hide with heavy robe.  Dull anger and exquisite heartache fumbled deep inside my soul.  I wept into the turbid pool.  When at last I rubbed my weary eyes, I saw again the distant forms within the water’s depths, the figures that seemed to beckon.  I removed my clothes and slipped into the water.  It was as thick and warm as newly-shed blood.  Pushing myself deeper into it, I watched the ripples the surged from me and then returned like a hungry thing.  I raised my arms and saw the liquid that sheathed them sink into my tingling flesh, not one drop returning to the pool.  With no attempt of my own, I floated toward the statue.  I saw the weird dark liquid that shimmered blackly on the surface that should have been a face, an oleaginous substance that fell into the pool.  I stopped just before a cluster of dry flowers, horrid dead things that I did not want to touch.  Dreadfully, the nearest flower lifted itself and crept to my palm.  I raised the desiccated thing to my face and gagged at its stench.  Repulsed, I crushed the lifeless floret, then gasped as pain shot through my hand, my arm – then found my numbing brain.  A drop of mortal blood fell into the water and sank into the waiting mouth of some lingering phantasm.  Vision beclouded, and senses transfigured.  I felt as weightless as a whispered word. 

Mountain floor chilled my nakedness.  I was as dry as the thing I grasped in my aching hand.  I scanned the cavern, but the beast of Sesqua Valley had vacated the place.  Alone, I tipped toward the pool and gazed into the haunted water.  I saw my forlorn reflection sink into the squalid depths, until it disappeared.

II.

A faceless god mocked me in some cosmic place.  It sang to me with voices that issued from where a mouth should have been.  Wings of black leather spread over twin bodies, and I saw the place where those naked forms were joined at the waist.  Daemonic aether rushed around me, haunted by the movement of heavy wings, wings that beat in time to the creature’s ancient song.  My quivering mouth opened and I cursed the spectral air with hateful song.  I sang for centuries, accompanied by the creature joined to my hip.  His hand clutched my breast, just above my heartbeat.  His moist lips pressed against my own.  His curling tongue sank into my throat.  My aching phallus stretched toward cosmic nothingness like some thorny vine on which a dewy blossom glistened at its tip.  I ripped it from me and gave it to my love.  He crushed it to his face and sucked with famished mouth its nectar.  With single thrust, he slashed its silver thorns across the flesh that made us one.  We stained the cosmos with our blood, and in that crimson flow I watched my brother float from me. 

Sobbing, I awakened.  I heard the sound of eerie music, and saw the form that held a flute to its wide mouth.  It pranced toward me, this beast.  Taking the instrument from its mouth, it placed a wide hand upon my brow.  “You have such potent dreams, Jeremy.  I’ve packed your clothing, and arranged a ride to your home early this morning.  You will take good care of this.”  Simon handed me a small box composed of teak.  I opened the lid and saw the dry floret on its bed of velvet.  From some distant place, I heard the sound of baying.  Pushing out of bed, I staggered to a window and peered at Sesqua Valley.  Even in darkness I could make out the titanic silhouette of the white twin-peaked mountain.  I placed my hand upon the chilly pane of glass, and my soul froze.  There was no image of the hand that touched the glass.  Breathing hard, I bent nearer to the window, as the beast played mocking melody on his damnable flute.  I studied the window, and saw the room behind me, the flickering candlelight with which it was illumed.  There was no image of myself.

I understood my sacrifice.

What stays with me now is the memory of silence that existed on that magic mountain.  It is a memory that calls to me in dream, and I know that I will one day return unto that haunted vale.  I have other memories as well, memories of pain and sorrow.  I recall the scent of many flowers, the fragrance of magnolia incense, the smoke of which caused Thomas to cough.  I remember the way he would laugh at me as I scolded him about that incense.  We gazed at each other as I sat beside him on his deathbed.  Oh, his brilliant eyes!  His face and frame had altered, ravaged by his disease; but his eyes were as magnificent as ever, and therein lived the brother that I loved.  Yet even they had been tainted.  In youth we had played a game wherein we would stare into each other’s eyes, so as to catch our identical reflections.  The memory of that game chilled me now.  I knew what I would not see were I to look into his eyes for all eternity.