No Light in August: Tales From Carcosa & the Borderland (Digital Horror Fiction Author Collection) (5 page)

The
darkness moved, my eyes bringing it to oily life from fear. Was it only fear,
or something more?

I’d
brushed close to whatever this was once before, but I’d only convinced myself I
had.

Really,
I’d seen it only from a distance, arriving after the fact and wading into its
leftovers. I was no use here, and now Sam was dead — no mistake. He’d never
drop his gun any other way. Joviality aside, he was that kind of man.

A sound
like a boot dragged across the ground froze my guts and made my knees weak.
Outside, the wind picked up again, making loose wood rattle in the barn. I
didn’t want to end up trapped out here; without a mask or goggles, I’d be
blinded by the dust before drowning in it. The barn offered no protection, not
with Sam’s killer inside, and I didn’t think my gun would do much good.

Somehow, I
knew it wouldn’t.

Backing
out the door, I forced myself to turn my back on the barn and run back towards
the house. Risking a backwards glance, I saw the cloud advancing. It snuffed
out the stars as it came on. In the half-open door of the barn, I thought I saw
something move, but I didn’t stop.

The dust
came down as I closed the door behind me, removing everything outside in a
thick shroud. I could probably make it to the Ford, but the thought died as
soon as it came. The keys were with Sam and he was out there, with
it,
though
I suspected it would soon be in here with me.

Coleman,
or the Coleman-thing, would come. It wasn’t done tonight, no matter that it
wore the man’s flesh and had used it to kill his family. It recognized me, I
think, and despite the urgency of things, my mind drifted back to the old woman
and the last time I saw her.

The wall
being hit, all I could do was return to the apartment building and look around.
The blood stains were gone and the apartment was still empty, but it wouldn’t
be long before another immigrant family called it home.

I didn’t
turn on the light when I went in. I walked around the table, making sure to
step lightly. Had he gone clockwise or counter-clockwise? Who was the first to
die? Was that important?

Sitting in
the father’s seat, I spread my hands on the old worn surface of the table and
stared down its length.

The shape
of the crime suggested itself, but trying to touch its side was like being
blind in a dark room. The more I felt my way along, the more the shape changed
and became indefinable.

Motive was
what escaped me. From what I knew, there was no reason for these people to die,
and certainly not in the way they did. No motive, except to do it.
An
exercise in power?

Standing,
I left the apartment and made my way down the stairs. The little girl wasn’t
there, but the old woman was. She stood where Janna had been before and
beckoned me in much the same way.

Her home
was shrouded in gloom; thin black nets were draped over the lamps in mourning.
“Janna not come back from school,” she said. “Two days.”

“Did you
call the police?”

She shook
her head. “No result, no meaning to do it.”

She
understood me well enough, despite her broken English. “You not see the
Kožkar?”

“No…no, I
haven’t.”

“It saw
Janna, I think. Saw her and followed her.” She sat and tried to push herself as
far back into her chair as possible. “You only see it when is too late. Slips
in underneath, behind eyes, and then closes the way in so it can stay.”

I left her
there, understanding more than before, but also less. I was sad about the
little girl, but from what the old woman told me, it was already too late.
Behind the sadness came anger, tinged with frustration.

You might
ask why I accepted the old woman’s story. It was the ritual and order
underneath the apparent brutality. In the beginning, it looked like nothing
more than a crime of madness, but the more I turned it around and around in my
head, the more I saw through the theatrics.

The
arrangement of the bodies at the table, the broken cross symbol. It was the
eyes, their excision, and the lack of blood, which meant it happened before — a
while before — the other murders.

Everything
else was just dressing for the main act.

The lack
of eyes was the only injury the father had, and though bad, it wouldn’t have
killed him. He should’ve been alive, but it was as if he’d simply expired once
the deed was done. The acute angle of his neck had spoken to a boneless quality
to his body, as though he’d been cast off after being worn by something unused
to draping itself in human skin.

I couldn’t
tell any of this to my sergeant, or even to Iris.

Of course,
they found the girl a week later, by which time I was ready to quit and leave
the city. They put her missing eyes down to the fish in the river, though she
was otherwise whole.

In the
kitchen, I thought it over — what I knew and all the gaps that remained. None
of it made sense, and what I could grasp felt like simply fragments out of
context. Half-stories and symbols soaked in blood, all of it serving a purpose
beyond me.

It was out
there; it had always been out there. Something lurking at the edges of vision,
the feeling of something at your back, the sensation of sightless eyes watching
from shadows. I knew it was old, but I didn’t understand why it still bothered
with us.

A shadow
appeared at the door, outlined in the small window. Slowly, the handle turned
and the wind did the rest, pushing the door open and filling the kitchen with
flurries of black dust.

The chair
tipped as I stood, bringing the gun up and cocking the hammer. It was less than
five feet from me, but I didn’t think the gun would do me any good.

It wore
Coleman’s body badly, despite what must have been ages of practice. His eyes
were gone, though the wounds were surprisingly clean. Dust poured from the
empty sockets as it stepped inside, actually bothering to close the door behind
itself.

I saw its
hands were misshapen, as if each finger had too many knuckles. The nails and
fingertips were stained black with what might have been dirt, but wasn’t. The
blood flaked off in places, revealing red-tinted skin beneath. It stopped and
stared at me, its mouth was pulled tight in a horrible approximation of a
smile.

“I do know
you,” it said. Its voice was dry, cracked, and almost broken. “When was it?” I
took a backward step, keeping the gun levelled at the thing’s chest.

“I
remember staring up at you as you looked down at a table and a family ready for
a meal they never got to enjoy.”

“What are
you?” My finger twitched on the trigger. I could hear its voice in my head,
somewhere deep beyond simple hearing.

“I think I
did have a name, a long time ago. But I’ve collected so many, I can’t keep
track of them all.”

It took a
step and I fired, the shot deafening in the confines of the kitchen. The bullet
struck it just below the collar, leaving a neat hole from which thick black
blood began to ooze.

“I don’t
actually care about any of you, or any of this,” it said, gesturing vaguely
with its hands. “I just don’t know of anything else to do.”

I fired
again, aiming lower for the stomach, which had the same result as the first
shot.

It was
sincere in what it said, I was sure of that. It cared about us in the same way
as we might take care to notice a fly near our hand. Its existence, like our
own in front of this thing’s, hung on a simple choice.

It made
the same choice most of us would make — to bring the hand down and make an end
of the tiny creature in front of us. It had been doing this for so long, it no
longer needed a reason for it; I was trying to impose a fly’s logic on
something far above it.

It didn’t
so much as flinch when I shot it, and if anything, the bullets only seemed to
draw it closer to me.

“You’re
empty, you know, just like all of them. You fill yourselves with things, trying
to call it purpose or love or family. None of it matters. Your lives are so
short, you should feel happy something like me even notices you exist…nothing
else does.”

Even
lacking eyes, I caught something in its face. I could read its expression, god
help me. I knew what it wanted, and then realized I was aiming the gun in the
wrong direction. When I pressed the still-warm barrel under my chin, it
stopped.

“You think
it will solve anything if you do it? Go on, walk into oblivion. It’s a colder
embrace than what I offer.”

In a
better story, I would’ve said something about how I wasn’t afraid, which would
have been a lie. I was afraid, but I was more terrified of letting the thing in
front of me inside than of pulling the trigger.

It chanced
a step forward, and I tightened my grip on the handle of the revolver.

It smiled.
I think that did it, because it was a knowing kind of smile. I thought of Iris
and of the thing wearing me, sightlessly seeking her out. I thought of Janna
and what it might have done to her, what it made her do before the end, and I
thought of the old woman all alone in her apartment.

This thing
scoured life clean more than the dust raging outside ever could. Nothing grew
behind it; its every step was like a sprinkling of salt on the ground. I wasn’t
fool enough to think this would stop it, but I had to believe it would be
something.

I pushed
the steel into the soft flesh under my chin and felt a trickle of blood escape.
“Go on.”

I felt my finger
tighten on the trigger, but never heard the shot.

The first
time I saw the mask, I was in a dingy loft. I’d been invited to a party by a
friend; everyone was wearing masks. Though unremarkable in every way, this one
somehow stood out from the others.

Linda was
the friend who invited me. Most of her friends were prostitutes, and a lot of
them were working that night. Both male and female, it looked like everyone she
knew who worked the streets was there. It was that kind of party.

The woman
wearing the mask was taller than most, and though her face was hidden, the set
of her shoulders and a dozen subtle gestures told me she might had been a he.
Sitting at a table under the slope of the roof, I realized my cock was filled
like a fire hose. I wondered if she would take the mask off and blow me.

She hadn’t
even looked in my direction, but something about her — or the mask, maybe —
drew me. It was a need like a burning addiction, the sort I imagined heroin
addicts to have. Total and complete; the kind of need that consumes a life and
tosses it away when it’s done.

I was
conscious enough not to risk standing. Nothing worse than people eyeballing you
when you’ve got a hard-on like that. Prostitutes aside, the set in attendance
wouldn’t appreciate the vulgarity of it.

Instead,
she came to me, though I don’t know how she did it. From where I sat, I had a
view of most of the loft, and there was no way she could come from behind me.
In the span of a blink, she was in the chair opposite me, though I didn’t
remember there being one before.

“I don’t
know you.” Her voice wasn’t cliché deep, but it wasn’t exactly feminine either.
She sounded like someone who smoked a lot and gave up a few years before, but
couldn’t escape the damage already done.

“Would you
like to?” I asked. Under the table, I was still rigid. “You have an interesting
face…your eyes, for example.”

No one
ever said my face or eyes were interesting, so I went with it, if only to take
my mind off the discomfort in my crotch. “What about my eyes?”

“Your soul
is there, lingering around the edges where the iris meets the sclera. Anyone
who knows how can see it.”

She
reached over and laid one hand over mine. I expected to come when it happened —
it was what should’ve happened, given the effect she was having on me. Instead,
I went limp with something like relief.

The
fingers were long and thin, attached to what seemed an over-large palm. It
couldn’t be natural, I remember thinking; she must’ve had work done to it. Made
sense given my supposition about a past when she wasn’t a woman.

“I know a
place.”

“What’s
wrong with the party here?” “I’ve seen it before, and so have you.” “You get
that from my eyes?”

She didn’t
offer an answer, but gently lifted my hand off the table instead. “C’mon,
you’ll like it in the end. Everyone who goes does, they can’t help it.”

I stood,
letting her lead me. “Where are we going?” “It’s called the House of Nothing.”

“Never
heard of it.”

“Because
you’re not speaking to the right people with the right words.”

I could
more or less see her eyes through the holes in the mask. I got the impression
she was smiling, but I’m not sure.

Saying my
goodbyes to Linda, I let her take me out of the loft to wherever this house
was. I didn’t care where exactly we were going or what she wanted to show me,
it just felt important to keep hold of her. Almost like if I let go, she would
drift away.

Seen from
outside, the house was unremarkable. It fit with the direction the night was
taking. Just a simple brownstone on an average street, the name of which I
didn’t catch.

I couldn’t
orientate myself. None of the familiar landmarks of the city were visible, and
we didn’t pass any on our way there. The route she took me on wound through
alleys and backstreets, empty save for the occasional drunk or beggar asleep
here and there. They never stirred as we passed, despite the echo of our
footsteps ringing from the dripping walls.

All the
time we walked, she never took the mask off or bothered to speak to me. Asking
her about the place seemed pointless, and I got the impression that if I did,
her answer would be silence.

Climbing
the steps, she lifted an antique-looking brass knocker and tapped it twice.
“When we’re inside, they’ll lock the door behind us. House rules,” she
explained without turning.

“Then how
do we get out?” “There’s only the one way.”

Unease
crept into my stomach, coupled with a dose of rationality.
Who is she?
I
didn’t have a name or a face, and I wasn’t sure if Linda or anyone at the party
was in much of a state to notice if I left with her or not. What was behind the
door?

She
squeezed my hand, almost as if she could feel something transmitted from me
through our shared grip. I conceded it was possible she could; it was that kind
of night. Yet it was nothing of the sort.

The door
opened, letting faint purplish light spill out across us. A small man with a
rattish face peered at us through the crack. The light mixed with a haze of
smoke, backlighting the little man so he looked like an imp.

“Cassie,”
he said in something that was almost a hiss, but was more probably spoken
through a mind-fog of drugs.

The way he
stood and swayed slightly suggested as much, but I couldn’t catch the familiar
smells from inside — not the oily heaviness of hash or the rank sweat of
over-pilled bodies. Instead, what wafted out was sweet, almost spicy and tangy.
It caught in the back of my throat and almost kicked me in the head.

“Fuck,” I
coughed. The sound drew his eye. “Who’s your friend?”

“Someone I
wanted to bring.” She didn’t bother giving my name. “House rules say one guest
is allowed.”

“They do,”
he said, and I felt rather than saw him peering at me. “He looks an interesting

sort.”

He stepped
back, pulling the door open as he did. Cassie gripped my hand and pulled me

inside.
She glanced over her shoulder at me.

I caught
reflected streetlight in her eyes, the suggestion of a smile and something else
I didn’t recognize. Maybe fear or mania, but I doubt it now. I think it was
glee — so childlike, and not something I saw in adults, which made it hard to
be sure when I saw it in her. Clarity only came with hindsight, though I’m
still not sure how much of what I saw in the House was real and what was
illusion.

Could’ve
been all of it. Could’ve been none of it. I’ve yet to decide which one is more
comforting.

A high,
narrow hall led inside from the door. The walls were unpainted, but looked
stained from years of smoke. Other marks were there, which were hard to make
out in the light. I saw a spatter of what could’ve been blood or maybe an old
spray of red wine from a long-ago party.

There were
openings without doors. One at the end of the hall was the source of most of
the smoke. I caught glimpses of people through it, but only impressions of
shadows.

Tightly
coiled dub with overwhelming bass lines and what sounded like dozens of
reverberating drum patterns pulsed from the room. Clipped vocal samples were
woven into it, almost like screams from outside in the street.

Cassie took
me through one opening into another room, and I started to realize the House
was bigger on the inside. The angles and shape of the rooms I glimpsed didn’t
match what I had seen from the outside.

My head
wasn’t swimming, but it didn’t mean whatever was in the smoke wasn’t going to
it.

When I
bumped against a wall or crossed a floor as she led me deeper and deeper into
the House, I realized at least this much wasn’t an illusion.

The House
felt too old, some of the rooms more so. There was a definite layering to the
place. Rooms we entered from the hall felt younger somehow, and each subsequent
one we passed through seemed more aged than the last. It was as though the
House had grown from a single core and we were making our way towards its old
heart.

Through
the haze and low lighting, I saw more bodies. Some were lying prone, while
others writhed on top of each other. Their movements suggested something
snakelike or reptilian, and they took no notice of us.

Underneath
the smoke, I caught the smell of sweat and something I can only describe as
sex.

Something
raw and musky, mingling with the drug smoke to create a heady fug in the air,
though it wasn’t entirely unpleasant and even stirred my crotch despite Cassie
still holding my hand. As if sensing it, she gripped my hand tighter and pulled
me after her. I stumbled and bumped into someone emerging from the haze to my
right.

He’d moved
so effortlessly that I didn’t see him until it was too late. I jerked back to
avoid him, yanking hard on Cassie’s arm and causing her to stumble in a half
turn.

The face
peering at me was old, had once been beautiful; enough of the features remained
to tell me as much. Once aquiline and narrow, almost elfin, whatever had been
done to him was systematic in its approach. The scarification and alteration
was too linear and ordered to suggest anything other than someone performing
surgery, or making art in a way, I suppose.

Before I
could say anything, Cassie hauled me towards her, while gently pushing the
scarred man out of the way with her free hand. He never said a word, but kept
looking at me the whole time with an expression I couldn’t discern.

It wasn’t
anger that I’d knocked into him. There was more pity in it, but I didn’t have
time to wonder why he would look at me like that. Cassie led me on, deeper into
the House.

The rooms
we passed through grew more and more ancient-looking, the walls like old stone
now warped and cracked with age. Mold grew in black curtains from the corners
on down, visible by freestanding halogen lamps that cut through the haze and
darkness.

There were
no people in this part of the House. It didn’t feel empty so much as abandoned,
the kind of place people only came when there was a reason to go.

“Thought
we were going to join the party,” I said, nodding my head back the way we’d come.

“The real
party is in here.”

The door
was like any other door, though in truth, it was a sign in its own right. I
realized we’d passed dozens on the way, scrawled on the walls in faded graffiti
that must have been lurid once. Crazy geometry told me we were no longer close
to any street in the city, despite never having ascended or descended a level.
There was no way the House could be so big, but I walked its length and I think
it really was.

I stepped
in front of Cassie and opened the door.

When I
crossed the threshold, pulling Cassie behind me, my ears popped and I felt like
I’d jumped off the ledge of a building. My stomach jumped to my chest, the way
it does when you drop from the summit of a rollercoaster. It only lasted a
second, but a second can last forever under the right circumstances.

The room
inside was normal, for lack of a better word. Normal in size and proportion,
given what I had seen of the front of the House from outside; it could’ve
fitted correctly.

Any sense
of normality to it ended there, though.

The walls
were smeared in faded black paint, the kind you still see in nightclubs
sometimes

— the ones
that haven’t tarted themselves up, at least. It was lit with black light, with
so many strips it was more than enough to see by.

My eyes
adjusted, and my head and stomach settled themselves. That was when I saw them.

Through
the empty light, I saw figures moving. At first, I thought it was much the same
as the rest of the House. People screwing, taking drugs, or some combination
thereof; only that wasn’t it.

Not
exactly.

Three of
them were closer, two standing around a third.

Its hands
were behind its back, and I understood it was tied at the wrists. The more my
eyes adjusted, the more I saw what grew out of its shoulder blades. They were
wings.

“We summon
them,” Cassie said almost in my ear. “The King gives us what we desire.”

It was an
angel and the two people with it were doing things to it, things I was grateful
I couldn’t exactly see in detail. It was moaning in something that could’ve
been pleasure or pain, or more likely a combination of both.

Cassie
took my hand again and led me forward.

Most of
what I saw was happening in the corners of the room where the shadows grew, or
else along the walls that were only half in light. I saw then that there’s an
art to cruelty, though few realize it. As the dominated suffer, so must the
dominant, and giving and taking can be the same thing. Both sides lose
something.

That was
how it was in the House of Nothing. The angels submitted to men and women with
cruel smiles. Their bodies became canvasses of expressions of a darker kind.