Historical Lovecraft: Tales of Horror Through Time (6 page)

Alter S. Reiss
is a field archaeologist and scientific editor who lives in Jerusalem, Israel, with his wife Naomi and their son Uriel. His stories have appeared in
Abyss & Apex
,
Daily Science Fiction
, and elsewhere.

The author speaks:
I’ve excavated at two important Philistine sites: Ashkelon and Tel es-Safi, which is identified as Gath of the Philistines. “The Chronicle of Aliyat son of Aliyat” is informed by my experiences there and my interest in early texts. I’ve taken some liberties with the history. The earthquake of 760 BCE is generally thought to have happened before the leprosy of Uzziah of Judah, for instance, and is generally considered to have been a matter of geology, rather than theology.

MIDDLE AGES

SILENTLY, WITHOUT CEASE

Daniel Mills 

H
e opens his eyes, roused by the twitch of a curtain, the rustle of fabric on the tiled floor. The sound is deafening, magnified by the silence of the chamber. It slashes through the haze of dream and fever, restoring him to the agonies of his failing body. The room is dark. He cannot tell the hour.

The curtains withdraw from the doorway, admitting a veiled shape, the scents of saffron and jasmine.
Theodora
. He closes his eyes as the Empress glides across the chamber. Her slippers make no din, her approach discernible only by a faint increase in the strength of her perfume. Her steps carry her to the side of Justinian’s sickbed, where she stands for a time, saying nothing.

He pretends to sleep. Her shadow covers him like another blanket, darkening the space beneath his eyelids. She has brought no candle and, for this, he is grateful. He cannot bear to be seen. In these last hours, his mind resembles a twilit desert, a night sky lit solely by the shimmering specks of his fading vision. His time is not long. The carbuncle in his groin is the size of a closed fist, its crown beginning to darken with the soft threads of infection.

She leans in across him. Her veil slides down over his nose and forehead, his blackened lips. Easing his head from the pillow, she cradles it against her breast, holding him close though he has begged her to stay away. The smell of saffron fills his sinuses, erasing the odours of fever and incense, the powders they burn to ward off the miasma. He exhales.

She will not leave him. He raised her out of the brothel and she has stood beside him through his reign, even when the City itself rose against him. Days of torment, days of fire – rioters besieged the Imperial Palace. He wanted to run, to take to the water and escape the roaring mob, but she would not go with him. She told him she would gladly die there. Her robes, she said, would make a fine burial shroud. What, then, could he do but stand and fight beside her? Tens of thousands had died on his command, slaughtered within the confines of the Hippodrome, but what small sacrifice that had been when Theodora had lived.

Now she rules the City in his absence, though they will soon be separated, banished to their respective sufferings, the loneliness of the grave. He holds no hope of Heaven. Alone with the night, he has even prayed, entrusting his soul to the hands of the dark, since no god will come near. The Horsemen are abroad, the Last Days upon him, as they are upon his city.

The plague is now in its second year. It came from the south, from Egypt, appearing in the most distant provinces during the previous spring. From there, it spread from village to village, from city to port city, receding as the cold set in, only to reappear on the fringes of his empire with the warmth of spring. In April, the first cases were reported in the harbour of the City.

The physicians despair. They have never seen its like. First, chills. The victim takes ill and descends into delirium. A few cough up blood and succumb to a swift end, but the others are not so fortunate. Too weak to rise, they can only wait for the carbuncles to appear: egg-sized, sprouting like mushrooms from the groin and armpits. In time, the buboes blacken and crumble, and the infection seeps into the bloodstream, where it pours like fire through the body’s channels, driving the victim to a screaming death. Many curse God with their final breaths, mouths open and foaming, even as the darkness swirls like oil into their eyes.

The sickness spares few. Those who survive its ravages are those with lumps that rupture and suppurate, but Justinian doubts their life is worth the price of future suffering. For the survivors are inevitably scarred – cripples with ruined faces and muscles that twitch constantly, so that they sometimes cannot stand.

Within days of its appearance in Constantinople, the sickness had spread to all quarters and Justinian determined to take action against it. One of his advisors – a man of unusual ideas and temperament, who disdained astrology and the advice of physicians – recommended that the city gates be shut, halting all traffic. Justinian assented. Later, he bid his men collect the bodies of the fallen and bury them outside of the city. When the pits overflowed – and the labourers fell lifeless in the graves they had dug – he ordered the dead to be dissolved.

A tower was set aside for this purpose. The floors were chopped out with axes and the bodies of the fallen hefted into this makeshift silo from above. Lye was poured down into the hole so that the corpses liquefied and ran together, the resulting stench like the fumes of Hell, a noxious cloud to hang over the city like a pall, a shroud for the empire whose end it presaged.

Theodora stirs behind him. She murmurs a brief prayer before lowering his head to the pillow. Gently, so gently. His brow burns in the absence of her touch. She steps away – pauses – then turns back to the sickbed. She touches her lips to his forehead.

He does not open his eyes. He cannot look at her – not even when she unbends herself and retreats toward the curtains, lingering long enough only to wish him farewell.

“Rest, my love,” she whispers. “Soon, your suffering will be at an end.”

Then she is gone. Her footsteps withdraw down the corridor, the last hints of her perfume smothered by the odours of incense.

The room is empty. He is alone.

Again, the curtains rustle.

The shadows wink into existence, followed by the inevitable onrush of agony – throbbing buboes, the blinding heat of fever. There is someone in the room.

His eyes roll to the corners, seeking out the far side of the chamber. He dare not rotate his neck. The carbuncle at his throat has grown so large and inflamed that even the slightest motion can cause him to lose consciousness. A ripple moves through the curtains, stirring them as with a faint breeze, though the air remains stagnant, stifling.

“Yes?” he croaks, unable to lift his voice above a whisper.

No response.

The curtains part slightly, causing the shadows beyond to shift, curling inward, splintering to jagged pieces. A visible darkness leaches into the room, eddying like smoke from the part in the curtains, darker than the deepest shadow. It traverses the chamber, advancing silently, without cease, approaching the bedside with the inexorable slowness of a world-circling ocean, the tides that swallow even the mountains, given time.

At the foot of the bed, the darkness takes on definite form, coalescing into the outline of a thin figure: hairless, attired in rags, taller than the tallest of warriors. It inclines its head as though in deference. A voice seeps from it, a murmur like the creak of cedars in a storm.

“Your Majesty,” it says.

“You have come at last,” Justinian whispers. He is resigned, relieved. For days, he has awaited this final visitor to his sickbed.

“It is true that I have come,” it says. “And that my visit has been long-delayed. But I fear I am not whom you imagine.”

“Not ... Death?”

It shakes its head. “I am but one face of the dark, Your Majesty. The small death that is always with you: the end that you carry, as do all men, like a secret in your body. One that can never be confided or shared – not even with a woman.”

“Who, then ...?”

“I am a newcomer to your realm,” it says. “For centuries, I dwelt in Egypt, among the pyramids and shifting sands. Some called me a pharaoh. I was vested with power, resplendent in terror, but my hunger was ... insatiable.

“Your present agony is considerable. I know this. Nevertheless, you cannot know what it is like to bear a hunger for a thousand years, a yearning that can never be sated. And so, I journeyed north, arriving in your lands last spring.”

Comprehension dawns. “You are the Fourth Horseman? Pestilence?”

The darkness shrugs, or seems to. One shoulder detaches itself for a moment, hanging in the air like a wisp of smoke before rejoining its body.

“It is true that some have called me that. To others, I am simply the Black Man. To you, I must appear a thing of shadow, as death does to all who fear its coming. In truth, I am corporeal by nature – indeed, no different than yourself. While you are made of blood and bone, my body is formed from a million rats, a billion insects – all gathered together in me, concentrated into a shadow deeper than any shade.

“This April, I stowed away on a ship bound for your city. When it arrived, I waited for nightfall and then slipped down the galley ropes into the harbour. Since then, my labours have been tireless. But my hunger has not faded and I grow … so ...
weary
.”

Here, its voice cracks – a cedar splitting, sheared by a heavy wind.

Silence falls.

“I do not understand,” Justinian manages. “If it is my time… then please, take me and be done with it. Prolong my suffering no longer.”

The darkness sighs. “Again, you misunderstand my purpose in coming here,” it says. “I come to you, not as a king – though some have called me such – but as a supplicant.”

To Justinian’s surprise, the figure folds in on itself, buckling inward from the legs so that it is suddenly kneeling, its featureless skull rising above the piled blankets. “Your Majesty, I come here to beg – to ask of you a favour and to offer a proposition.”

Justinian closes his eyes. The room spins, the ceiling descending. He doubts himself, doubts everything. When he opens his eyes, the darkness has not stirred. It kneels before him with head bowed, a subject awaiting his decree.

“What ... favour ... can I grant you?” Justinian whispers. “You, who have such power over me. Over whom no emperor can rule.”

”I am dying,” it says. “You have defeated me – or nearly so. My hunger grows even as my strength fails me. It is true that men die in the streets every day, but you have trapped me here in this city. There are other nations to which I have longed to travel, empires I have read about that I shall never see. I shall die here, Your Majesty – but I will not die alone.”

”No,” Justinian agrees. All down his body, the buboes throb – pulsing, poisonous – aching to spread their fire through his blood.

“Your time is indeed near,” it says. “In a matter of hours, you will cough your last breath and pass beyond the veil to whatever lies beyond. Can you not picture it? You will lie here some time before they find you. Naturally, they will call for the Empress: the wife you have loved so dearly, whom you raised from a harlot to be your equal. And she will mourn you. She will kiss your cooling lips and lie beside you through the night. And this –”

The darkness sighs again, its breath like the rustling of distant branches. Its tone communicates genuine regret, a sadness deeper than any Justinian has ever known.

“And this will be her final mistake.”

The last words hang in the air between them, joining with the smoke that curls from the braziers, further obscuring the figure at the foot of the bed.

Justinian struggles to raise himself onto his elbows. The agony is too great. His mind clouds over, permitting one thought, one word, a name.

He asks, “Is there nothing to be done?”

“Indeed, Your Majesty – there is always something. I come to you on bended knee, but with my hand extended.” A protuberance emerges from its body, thrusting forward and unfurling to reveal five elongated fingers. “We are both dying men,” it says. “Dying kings, after our own fashion. But we need not die. And neither must your empress.”

“What are you proposing?”

“Give me dominion over your empire,” it says. “Make of me an ally and I shall be a friend – the truest that you have ever known. The sickness that eats at you shall be healed. The Empress, too, will live to die, but it shall be in her time.”

“Go on.”

“The plague pits are nearly full. Let them overflow. And for those who die in the streets – alone, unloved and unknown – I ask only that you allow them to go unburied. Let them rot. Let the air grow clotted and foul. In the ensuing chaos, let but one wagon go free of the city walls. I shall be upon it.”

“What, then? What will you do?”

The darkness spreads its hands, its long fingers streaming like candle flames. “I will feed,” it says. “I am … hungry. So hungry.”

Justinian clenches his eyes shut. The future presents itself to him with the clarity of revelation, a vision birthed from the fires of nightmare. From Thrace to Nicomedia, the pestilence will spread, a poison in the blood of Empire, laying waste to one city then another, leading the East to desolation and ruin. His wars, so carefully planned, will come to nothing. The West will revert to its Gothic barbarism and the dream of Rome will die forever, never to be resurrected.

He opens his mouth to speak.

The darkness holds up its hand. “Please,” it says. “You must think this over. Carefully.”

Carefully
.

His mind spins as in the orgies of dance. In the smoke of that stifling chamber, he recalls his first sight of Theodora: the sweat that beaded on her brow, the shape of her body as she whirled in the glow of a dozen candles, light following shadow across her churning hips. The flash from her brown eyes, as sharp as polished flints. The squalour of her surroundings. Some men stood and cheered, crying out for more. Others stood ashamed, watching from the shadows of the overhang as she spun with the light, changing shape, taking on one face then another before disappearing into the dark at dance’s end.

He attempts to swallow. His throat is too dry.

He can only nod. “Let it be done,” he croaks.

The smoke wavers, rippled by a sudden wind. The darkness unfolds itself, standing to its full height so that its head nearly scrapes the stone ceiling.

A square of parchment is pressed into Justinian’s hand. It is a writ of passage, permitting the bearer to pass through the city gates. The darkness produces Justinian’s signet ring and holds it out for him to take. The metal scorches his fingertips. He presses the ring to the wax, marking the document with his seal before collapsing, exhausted, onto his back.

“You have made a wise choice,” the darkness whispers. “And I think you will find me the worthiest of allies. I may gorge myself on the fruits of your land, but in eight centuries, I will return to savage your enemies, to avenge your name on the destroyers of your city.”