No Light in August: Tales From Carcosa & the Borderland (Digital Horror Fiction Author Collection) (12 page)

directing
Lucia to where it needed her to go.

We’re
coming down hard. I’ve already vomited twice and Jake is curled up against the
wall, trying very hard not to throw up.

Billy has
Lucia in his arms. He wipes her face and I see the tips of his fingers come
away red, but I’m not sure about that. So much of what I saw I’m not sure
about; I never will be.

“Isn’t
it beautiful?” Billy nods at the painting behind him. His skin is pale and
waxy, slicked with drug sweat and sickness.

“If you
say so.” I swallow, tasting something acidy that slips back down my throat.
“She’s not the only one. They can all see; everyone by the lake. They saw you;
look for

them
because they’ll look for you.”

“What
the fuck?” Hawking, I gob onto the floor.

“Don’t
be afraid of them,” he says, then turns Lucia’s face towards me. She’s smiling
as if she’d never screamed a few moments ago.

Then it’s my turn
to scream. Despite the lack of blood, her face is disfigured. It’s not her own.

Mora was
known throughout the four villages, and some said even beyond. In that time, no
one spoke of the fifth village; that would come later.

At
seventeen, she had secured both her reputation and the honor of her village by
standing between Noran and Bakal, two headmen who almost brought the river
delta to war. The elders agreed this was an act worthy of the founder of their
village, who was said to have braved the fury of the spirits — lying exposed
between the howling madness of these beings for a day and a night.

That was
many years ago, perhaps ten or more, and her fame had only grown since then.

Still, she
was a woman. Despite her achievements, her sex would and did always count
against her in all matters.

Men wanted
her, and though she refused many times, eventually she took Ligmon as her
husband. He was Noran’s son, and it was agreed this was a good match. It would
hold the peace of the delta, perhaps forever — the chance of which became more
likely if they had children, which they did.

Three sons
and two daughters were given to them by the spirits, and for a time, all was
well in the delta.

Still in
those times, no one spoke of the fifth village, but the very absence of its
mention did not mean it was not always present in the minds of the people.
Stories were often told, and Mora herself recited them to her children on
nights when they would not go to bed.

She told
them of the villagers and how they had unearthed
something
— something
from the village that was there before their own. How they had prayed to it and
how, before long, the village itself was swallowed by the thing they had
called.

She
whispered, half smiling — all the better to scare her children — about the
children given to the village by the others.

“Long
after the people were no more, the lights were sometimes seen,” she said,
mimicking an old woman’s voice. “And the people became fearful and offered some
of their own children to appease what walked abroad at night. Three were given,
and the lights stopped.” She leaned in close, hands rising into claws to either
side of her head. “Though it is said they are lonely and crave more brothers
and sisters, a mother even, and hunger for what they were denied!”

The
children shrieked, but recovered quickly. “Where is it?” her daughter asked.

Mora did
not answer, but she knew. Stories or not, they all knew.

It lay on
the other side of the red forest, so called because of the unusual color of the
trees there. Some of the more adventurous children, those who dared each other
to wander the forest’s edge, said they could sometimes see lights twinkling
through the trees.

One day, a
man walked into the village; he was one of the whites from the far west beyond
the delta. Mora knew of them, had even met one when she was a girl and her
father took her to where the river flowed down out of the hills.

His
appearance was bad. His clothes were torn to pieces; at first, the villagers
thought perhaps he had been attacked by one of the big cats often seen in the
long grass.

Mora was
the first one to go to him, and the look in his eyes told her no cat had done
this.

She knew
fear and perhaps a flicker of madness when she saw it. It was the same as the
look in those who sometimes died of fever; their last days filled with raving
and waking dreams they couldn’t escape.

At first,
he didn’t seem to see her, until she reached out and touched his arm. He looked
at her, blinked, and something that was almost a smile creased his face. He
said something in what Mora recognized as the white’s language. She knew some
of the words, but nothing he said made sense.

She shook
her head, but the man kept smiling. He uttered more words, each in different
tongues, until she recognized a dialect she understood. It wasn’t her own, but
came from the people over the hills, who were said to have many dealings with
the whites.

“What
happened to you?”

He reached
for her with both hands as the first tears ran down his dirt-streaked cheeks.
“So much,” he muttered, then his eyes rolled up into his head and he fell to
the ground.

Ligmon
came into the hut where they put the man. Two of the elders, a man and woman
who knew something about medicine, tended him. Mora watched from the side,
curious about what would become of him.

“Someone
should go over the hills and find some of his people,” Ligmon said. “They will
want to know about him.”

“Seta
should go; he’s the fastest.”

“He is. I
will tell him.” He turned to leave, but stopped when he saw that Mora remained
where she was. “You want to stay? The elders will see to him.”

“I want to
be here if he wakes up.” “Why?”

Mora
couldn’t say why, but something in the man’s voice and that look in his eyes
made her want to hear anything he said. It was part of her nature, and while
Ligmon knew better than to argue with nature, this was different.

“You will
only get in the way,” he told her, regretting his words, but not showing it.
“His people will want to know what happened to him.”

Ligmon
thought about it and left the hut to find Seta. Mora went closer to the pallet
the man lay on while the elders burned herbs in bowls around about him,
creating a cover of smoke to hold the man’s soul to his body.

“Can you
say what did this?”

“His
wounds are not bad,” the first elder said, grinding more herbs between her
hands over a smoking bowl.

“It is his
mind and spirit that are most afflicted,” said the second.

The man
stirred quietly for a moment, his head moving quickly from side to side and his
hands clenching and unclenching as though he was trying to grab hold of
something. The elders wafted more of the sickly smelling smoke over him, but
this did little to still his body. His head moved faster and faster, until his
back arched and his mouth opened without sound escaping.

Something
fell from the pocket of his ruined clothes, landing on the dirt floor with a
dull
chunk
. The second elder looked for it and held it up to the light.
When the first saw it, she made a sign to the spirits and waved the smoke about
even more fiercely.

“What is
it?” Mora felt their fear, but did not understand it.

Hanging on
a leather thong was a small stone, of the kind the elders would carve to ward
something off or else call something to them. Mora had not seen one in a long
time, not since she was a child, for they were made only rarely. The skill
needed was great, and the stones needed were hard to find.

She did
not recognize the symbol carved onto its face.

They did
not answer, but the second elder clasped it in both hands and held it close to
the burning embers in one of the bowls. So near did he hold it that his hands
began to blister with the heat.

“It is
better if you go,” he told her. “There is more we must do.”

Feeling
she would get no more from them, Mora left the hut without a backwards glance,
though she found it hard to push the symbol on the stone from her mind.

Seta
returned early the next morning. He was reckoned the fastest man in the village
and had won many contests to prove it, but even he could not have made the
journey in so short a time.

He went to
Mora before seeing anyone else, and for a moment, she did not recognize him.

The look
on his face was not one she remembered seeing before. “What is it?”

Seta
caught his breath. “It is better if you see, but first, I must eat and take
water.”

She
offered him her table and he went to it, but turned before sitting. For a
moment, the odd look crossed his face again.

“You
should bring your sword.”

Mora was
not as young as she had been and struggled to keep up with Seta as they jogged
across the delta. The going was slower in the long grass; neither was eager to
meet one of the big cats.

“Where are
we going?” Mora saw he was not leading her towards the hills, but to the edge
of the red forest.

“You will
see,” he said and pointed ahead. Dark shapes were circling near the trees, more
than boded well.

The birds
had picked at the bodies, but Mora could see none of them had died well. What
was more disturbing were the ones they found tangled up in the fat roots of
some of the trees, as if the trees themselves had grown hungry at the feast
laid before them.

They were
all whites, and Mora recognized their dress. Her father had called them
soldiers, one of the few words in the white’s language she knew.

“They go
on into the forest, but I don’t know how many.”

Mora could
not remember ever being this close to the red forest. No one came here; there
was no reason to do so. You had to be mad to want to go there in the first
place, but Seta had overcome his fears and come as close as any. Now she had to
as well.

“I don’t
know how they died,” she told him. As badly pecked at as the bodies were, she
could see no sign of how they had met their end. No tracks and no other dead;
whoever killed them must have been skilled indeed to leave none of their own
dead or sign of their passing.

A thought
came to her and she passed under the shade of the first trees.

“Mora!”
Seta hissed, but as brave as he was, he would come no closer to stop her.

The air
was still and close under the branches, but the bodies had no smell in spite of
how rotten they were.       Mora paid them no mind, but looked at the ground
instead, searching for disturbances. She found nothing. It did not make sense,
but then, a great deal about the last two days did not make sense.

She found
Seta shifting anxiously from foot to foot when she passed back the way she had
come.

“What did
you see?”

“Nothing,”
she said, then looked at the bodies again. “I’ve never seen men killed in this
way,

nor so
many whites.”

“Should I
carry on to the hills?”

Mora shook
her head slowly. “No, not yet.” “We go back?”

“We go
back,” she agreed, then knelt and looked at the closest man. He was young, not
much older than her eldest son. His youth still hung about him, no matter that
the birds had taken his eyes. “I think we will find more answers from the
living.”

The two
elders still tended the white man and now he was awake, if only a little. Mora
came into the hut and watched them for a time, not sure about what to say.
Night had fallen, but torches were lit inside so they could perform their work.

“Has he
said anything?”

“Not yet,”
said the first elder.

“We think
he was waiting, perhaps for you,” said the second.

Mora went
to the pallet and the two elders gave her room to sit alone with him, but did
not leave the hut. “Do you remember me?” she asked, using the dialect she knew
he more or less understood.

His eyes
opened slowly and found hers. “Yes, I remember.”

“We found
the others near the edge of the forest.” “Then you know.” It was not a
question.

“What
happened?”

“We passed
through an empty village and camped near it before crossing the forest. It was
a strange place, do you know it?”

Of course
Mora did, but did not say so, only nodded so he would continue.

“In the
night, we heard nothing. No birds or animals; it was as quiet as any place I
have known, like a
grave.
”

She did
not understand this last word; he had slipped into his own tongue. He tried to
explain the word and she finally took the meaning.

“When we
went into the forest, things started to happen.” His hands began to tremble.
“First, one man and then another went missing, just gone in the moment of a
blink. I felt as if someone was breathing on my neck, but when I turned, there
was nothing.”

“You saw
nothing?”

“Only felt
it. Even the trees seemed to be looking at us, or something in them we could
not see. The air was so still and close, like it was trying to slow us.”

She
thought again of the quiet under the branches and agreed it was so.

“I don’t
know when we started to die. I think it was after we saw the dark man.” He did
not appear to mean dark of skin, but that he was in shadow when they saw him.
“Made of it, I thought. I did not see him clearly, but he was tall…I don’t
remember…only the screams and the lights,” he choked out, then turned away and
held his hands together under his chin, muttering words in his own language.