The Lord Came at Twilight

by Daniel Mills

  The Lord Came at Twilight

  By Daniel Mills

  All stories © 2014 by Daniel Mills.

  Introduction © 2014 by Simon Strantzas.

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  First edition published by Dark Renaissance Books, 2014.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  TWILIGHT'S TRUE LORD: an introduction

  THE HOLLOW

  MS FOUND IN A CHICAGO HOTEL ROOM

  DUST FROM A DARK FLOWER

  THE PHOTOGRAPHER’S TALE

  WHISTLER’S GORE

  THE WAYSIDE VOICES

  JOHN BLAKE

  THE FALLING DARK

  LOUISA

  THE TEMPEST GLASS

  HOUSE OF THE CARYATIDS

  WHISPERERS

  THE NAKED GODDESS

  THE LORD CAME AT TWILIGHT

  PUBLICATION CREDITS

  TWILIGHT'S TRUE LORD: an introduction

  I discovered Daniel Mills.

  I mean that, selfishly, in the traditional sense of discovering talent. I like to believe I was the first to read Daniel's fiction, and it was due to my championing of it that he has managed to stack up the accolades he has thus far. Of course, in reality, my discovery of Daniel's work was in the more pedestrian sense, where I simply stumbled blindly onto something that was already becoming established on its own. After all, one of Daniel's first published pieces of fiction was alongside one of mine in the third volume of Tartarus Press's fantastic Strange Tales series, and by the time I read it and was suitably impressed, Daniel had already sold his first novel, Revenants, to Chômu Press. In other words, Daniel never needed any help from me. He was doing quite fine earning all those accolades on his own.

  But from where should such a talent emerge? One of the blessed aspects of the last decade has been the rise of technology, which has allowed small operations to more easily publish and distribute high quality books than ever before. It was only natural then that some of these publishers would start with the public domain, and bring back into the light some of the unjustly forgotten books and writers of the ghostly and weird. True, we already had writers like Poe, M. R. James, and Henry James in our bookstores, but now they were joined by some of the sometimes lesser known writers like Machen, LeFanu, Chambers, Burrage, Wharton, Marsh, de la Mare, and so forth. Writers who built and added to the foundations of the genre, writers to whose work all the Horror writers that followed owe a huge debt whether they were aware of it or not. These reprints provided striking counter-programming to what was happening in mass-market horror — namely, a continuous dissolve into non-relevance. In some way, the last great revolution in horror was its rediscovery of its past.

  I can't say for certain when Daniel Mills discovered these old masters, but it's clear he has learned their lessons well. He is not the first author whose work recalls an earlier time — there are plenty of Jamesian pastiches available nowadays — but unlike that aping style that finds itself confined almost exclusively to an ever-dwindling group of readers interested solely in what James called "a pleasant terror", Daniel has discovered the true power of the past — as a tool to describe and illuminate the present. It's here he joins the ranks of an increasing number of contemporary horror writers like John Langan, Richard Gavin, Joseph Pulver, and Reggie Oliver, all of whom are able to re-contextualize what's come before in new and exciting ways. Where Daniel differs from these writers is his investment in the milieu of the past, of New England, yet even using these historical settings he has somehow managed to meld them with the present to produce a unique kind of old school hybrid, done with a startling amount of sophistication and skill. Take for example the horrific images deep beneath the meeting house burying ground in "Dust from a Dark Flower". Or the existential angst our protagonist in "MS Found in a Chicago Hotel Room" suffers due to his trip to New York. Or the implications of the title story's dark finale and what it says about us all. These are Campbellian ideas, Ligottian ideas, infused into tales that owe their machinery to the Bensons or Wakefield. Or, and most especially, to the old man himself, Howard Phillips Lovecraft.

  Yes, I said it. Lovecraft. The name that unleashes more trouble than one hundred Necronomicons. I think the old man would have loved Daniel's work because Daniel manages to utilize the setting of historical New England, and yet unlike Lovecraft, does so to reflect and describe the emotional turmoils of his characters. And that may be the most striking of Daniel's talents (alongside his expert and subtle use of language to evoke both mood and setting) — Daniel's characters feel unique, distinct, lived-in. They feel alive, which makes the horrors they face all the worse. Even temporal distance offers us no protection.

  There are plenty of horrors waiting for you in the pages of this book. But along with the horrors you'll notice how carefully Daniel crafts his atmosphere, how delicately he weaves his narratives together. Daniel's characters are not always the bravest or the strongest, and he often foregoes the presumption that good Horror fiction ought to end with some sort of victory or closure. Instead, Daniel's denouements are often clear only in hindsight, his themes revealing themselves upon reflection. Like all great works of literary fiction, his stories hand you everything you need to decode them, but it's up to you to do the actual work.

  So here we are, finally, at twilight. Look up from this book and at your smudged sitting room window. See the dust of years accumulated on the sill. Look closer at that dusty blanket and notice the four thin lines dragging toward the glass, as though someone had very recently reached in and used that dusty sill as leverage, as a hold to pull its tremendous weight in from beyond. That thing which is past, which is the horror of New England, the threat both misty and ancient. There's a man outside watching you, isn't there? A tall bearded man, thin, smiling as you slowly step away from your window, hoping — praying — he hasn't seen you. But he has. Daniel Mills has. And now he's moving toward you, that horrible lord of twilight. I would suggest locking your doors if it weren't already too late. You already hold his incursion in your trembling hands. Best look back to this book and read his missives while you are still able. After all, it is only a matter of time until he steps inside.

  Simon Strantzas

  August 15th, 2013

  Toronto, Canada

  THE HOLLOW

  I know them, these hills. Their shadowed slopes. Their ridgelines toothed with broken stone. When I was a boy, the logging camps stretched for miles, separated from each other by swathes of thorn and bramble. Villages grew up from the scrub: transient places, often nameless. I spent my childhood in such a hamlet. I live there still. The camps are abandoned, the townsfolk long gone, but the land has not forgotten.

  Two miles to the north, the ridgeline curls back against itself, forming a hollow. The edges are close and shaded, dark with hemlock, while the basin is flat and circular, strewn with dead leaves. An oak tree stands at the center, ancient as the oceans, spreading from bud and branch to fill the natural amphitheater.

  I was a boy of eight when Father told me of the hollow. We sat together in his library, as we called it, though it was only a narrow space beneath the eaves in which his books were shelved. The hollow, he said, marked the very footprint of God, a remnant of those early days when He walked with man in Eden.

  I have often thought, he continued, that we are even now in the Garden, and that the oak tree bears upon its branches the very Fruit of Life. Un-tasted once, it begs us now to eat of it, to know the Life Eternal.

  This was shortly before he deserted us, slipping from the house while we were abed. He
did not take his books, not even the battered volume of Milton’s poetry which he prized above all, so that we thought for a time that he intended to return to us.

  In his absence, Mother changed. The beatings became more frequent, their causes more obscure: a broken glass, a sullen look. Mornings, she wept and paced the house, cursing, praying. In the afternoon, she took down her cloak and went to the camps, while I shirked my chores to prowl the barren scrublands, those manmade fields of deadfall and brush.

  In July, I found the hollow for myself. I had struck north from the village, as I often did, and walked until I reached the camp road, down which I turned and made my way. After half-a-mile, I heard voices from the path ahead and concealed myself among the brambles. I watched them pass: two men with my mother in-between, the three linked arm-in-arm and laughing.

  I fled. I scrabbled up rock ledges and pelted down hare paths, unable to outrun the resentment that raged inside of me. I ran until my breath failed me and I came to the hollow.

  At first, I took the oak tree for a vision, a mirage, for it seemed to me a thing woven from pure heat. I wiped the sweat from my face, but the tree remained. It was larger than any I had encountered, its trunk malformed, bark mottled, amber and ash.

  I walked until I reached the oak. There were shapes in the bark—eyes, suggestions of eyes—half-shapes layered one on top of the other until they blurred into abstraction like words on a palimpsest. I placed my palm against the bark. With eyes closed, I imagined the sap running like blood beneath the surface, blossoming into knots of brown-gray flesh which curled together like unclothed bodies. My mother’s breasts. The men twined round her.

  A wind came from the south. The oak tree rustled and flared out in answer, its foliage erupting into the momentary kaleidoscope of green on white, leaf-top and leaf-bottom. An open mouth: the lips puffed and dark and grossly swollen. I heard a voice, tinny and pleading.

  Pull me out, a man said. Pull me out.

  Mother came home at dusk. She found me in the library, where I cowered amidst my father’s books, quivering. Seeing my fright, she took me in her arms and pressed me to her chest. I smelled the sweat on her, moonshine and musk. She stroked my hair.

  I told her of the oak tree and the hollow. I did not want to upset her and so I did not mention the voice I had heard. Nonetheless it was clear to me that my words pained her, somehow, and she was quiet for some time before she spoke.

  Your father knew that place.

  My father?

  He went there the day he left us.

  She said nothing more, but in her silence, I glimpsed the gulfs of her sorrow—the escape for which she likewise yearned—and understood that she would leave me, too, as Father had done.

  The weeks drifted past. Summertime stretched and cooled, evaporating with the first frost. The camps moved east, and Mother went with them, taking only her cash-purse and cloak.

  Alone, I lived on crabapples and tubers and berries gathered by the creek. I took to thieving, raiding the houses of the other villagers and returning home with canned meats or jars of fruit, which I cached beneath the boards in the common room.

  It could not last. The townsfolk grew suspicious. The minister came to the door, but I hid from him and would not withdraw the bolt. He returned the next day with the sheriff. They forced their way inside, but I was already gone.

  Years passed—years in which I avoided town and hollow alike and roamed these hills like an animal. I slept in caves, or in clearings, where I covered myself with rushes and watched the stars appear: dim as the lights of distant towns and equally remote. They were like fragments of memory, the past I had abandoned—scattered like so many leaves beneath the oak tree.

  For ten summers or more, I haunted the eastern camps and the roads between, subsisting on theft and forage. One night in autumn, I remember, I drew too near the light of a campfire, and a man fired a pistol in my direction. The shot went wide. A woman screamed—out of fear, I thought—but then she was laughing and singing and I recognized her voice.

  Mother. She stood, swaying, and circled the fire with dancing steps, thin as the shadow which followed after her, which remained even after she had passed from view.

  The last of the camps closed in the spring. The men departed with a grave and uncharacteristic dignity, proceeding like mourners with axes hefted over their shoulders. My mother must have already moved on, for she was not among them, and I found no evidence of her amidst the ruins they left. Axe-handles. Saw-pits. A still with its barrels smashed. Strangest of all was the large steam engine that had powered a band-saw. By summer’s end, it came to resemble a marooned locomotive, tossed by storms and washed up miles from the nearest track.

  Winter came—the worst I have experienced in my seventy years. It snowed for weeks, months. I removed the blades from the steam engine and used it for shelter, huddling inside on nights the winds blew frigid and drove the drifting powder. When I could, I trapped small game: squirrels, rabbits. Otherwise I fished in the creek, smashing the ice with my axe to afford myself an opening.

  Day after day, I held the fishing lines between my chapped hands and watched the skin on my fingers turn red, then black. During the course of that winter, I lost two toes to frostbite and hacked off a third when it showed signs of rot.

  In spring, the snow melted into puddles and streams, forming rivers of muck that swept clear the hillsides and buried the rabbits in the ground. Toadstools grew up from their submerged warrens: blood-red, glistening. There was nothing else to eat and so I gorged myself on grubs and fungi until sickness overcame me and I tumbled over the rim of fever.

  Half-starved, desperately weak, I descended the hill, crawling hand over elbow through squelching mud until I came to the old road. Eventually, I reached the town, the village in which I was born. Only three buildings were standing: the grange and the schoolroom, the house my father built. All deserted.

  My past took shape before me. Names returned, and faces, disgorged by the recent floodwaters, so that I thought of bones, laid to rest in graves digged too shallow. In the same way, my past had fixed itself in the ground—bound to these hills, alive within them—and I shook with dread and awe for the hold they held upon me, and upon all the dead.

  I entered my father’s house. My gaze lit on shattered glass, furniture speckled with decay. The snows had drifted against the eastern wall, causing it to buckle, but the western wall held fast. His library remained intact, books preserved upon the shelves.

  In the common room, I pulled up the old floorboard and thrust my hand inside. From the hole, I withdrew two tins of salt-pork, which I broke open with my axe.

  I was ravenous. I sucked the juices from inside each tin and cut my tongue when I licked out the bottom. Nauseated, I crawled beneath the library eaves. Stars floated out of the darkness, filling my vision like the final descent of the Angel.

  When I woke, the fever had passed. Too weak to brave the hills, I slept in the bed I had shared with my mother and banked high the fire with wood from the schoolhouse—the desk at which I had sat, into which I had scratched my name.

  I regained my strength. At night, I read by the light of the hearth, poring over my father’s books, his copies of Milton and Blake. By day I foraged for food and firewood, occasionally venturing into the northern woods. It was on one such trip that I found the hollow once more.

  Time had left it unaltered. The massive oak still dominated the rocky basin, shading out all but the hardiest shrubs and grasses. Yellow weeds crept like snakes along the ground. High above, the leaves sparkled and sighed and seemed to whisper, while the gray bark teemed with faces, naked bodies in the thrall of lust, or ecstasy.

  I forced myself to approach, threading the basin’s perimeter until I reached the far side of the tree, where the ground bore the marks of some long ago disturbance. The soil, dry and barren, had subsided into a rectangular depression, eight feet by three. An old grave.

  Damp soil. Molded leaves.

  Your fa
ther knew that place.

  The oak stirred. Leaf upon leaf, it produced a scratching murmur, a voice so soft I could not discern any words—if there were, in fact, words to make out—for surely there were none for the emptiness my father now inhabited.

  I did not disturb the grave. I returned home to an empty house, an abandoned village. I grew old. From time to time, the breeze carried smoke from house-fires to the south, and I was grateful for my isolation and the shame it spared me, the guilt none but myself could understand.

  And then this morning I heard the ravens and saw them circling. Carrion birds: black as storms though the sky was clear. I went to find their prey. Taking my axe, I climbed uphill along the old logging road, traversing the grade from west to east until a murder of crows materialized, flapping and squawking overhead. They scented blood, decay, the rot on which they fed themselves. I followed. Their cries led me from the road and across the wildwood until I reached the place wherein their echoes began—and ended.

  The hollow. The tree was even larger than I remembered, its leaves long and barbed and autumn-red, layered so densely as to blot out the light and kill the weeds that had thrived beneath it, exposing the cratered earth.

  An object hung from a low branch. The body of a young woman. She swayed, gently, her bare feet downturned. She must have scaled the trunk and shimmied out onto the low-hanging limb before securing the rope and leaping to her death.

  She had not been there long. The birds had eaten her eyes, but the remainder of her body was intact. The ruined face: blackened skin, swollen lips. Her dress was plain but cut from fine cloth, so that I knew her to be of good stock. Almost certainly she was a refugee from the towns to the south, though I could not but wonder why she had taken flight.

  The oak hissed and spat and shook down its crimson leaves. I severed the rope. The girl fell against me, stiff with the cold. She weighed little more than a child—and she was young, scarcely older than I was when first my mother left me. A sadness stole over me then, the knowledge of lives unlived: her life, mine.