by Greg James
“The Night Gaunts are out early tonight.” Misia whispered, shivering but feeling safe as she leant against Byron’s breast. He enjoyed the feeling of her pressing into him like this. Smiling, he watched the Night Gaunt circle overhead, seemingly displaying its prey in warning and mockery to those below.
“Yes, an unlucky happenstance for the wanderer that one is bearing off,” he said, “you know, they say the cries we hear during the night here are not gulls of the sea but come from the insane mouths of the victims Night Gaunts carry back to their caves.”
“Don’t be horrid, Byron. Not after this afternoon and not about that poor man. You’re just saying this to scare me. I won’t sleep tonight if you go on.”
Byron wasn’t listening. He went on, feeling strong, his eyes following the winged demon-angel and its whimpering cargo as they swept away over the rooftops towards the ebony cliffs that rose to the north of Sevengraves, disappearing into the gathering haze of dusk. “They also say that when a Night Gaunt is tickling you with its infernal claws and its wicked tail barb that your bones sing and your throat is soon dried out from a kind of paralysis. Tears run and run. Some go into seizures. Others stop breathing altogether. Your eyes, well, they simply gape at the Night Gaunt, feeding it the terrible ecstasy that comes from when its fingers are playing upon your skin.”
Misia moved away from him. “I said stop it, Byron. It’s not funny what they do to people. I can see why your imagination got you into trouble before you came here to us.”
“My imagination?”
“Yes, your imagination. You couldn’t possibly know all those things about them. How it feels to be tortured by one. I was born here and I know of no-one alive who possesses such knowledge.”
“Oh no? Would you like to see my Night Gaunt then?”
*
The creature hung in the air, enclosed by the treated tube of glass that went from the ceiling to the floor of Byron’s attic studio. Every inch of the angle-less prison’s surface was inscribed with runes and sigils made only of curves, no corners or sharpness interfering with the Arabian flow of the strange design. All of designs had been painted on using an expensive gold-black tincture. It was a bizarre sight to see among the covered canvases and unglamorous spattered surfaces that make up a painter’s domain.
Misia’s heart missed a beat when the narrow featureless face of the Night Gaunt, a mask of midnight velvet, turned slowly in her direction. She felt eyes upon her that she could not see. The absence of said organs coupled with the acute internal sense of their definite presence made her hold very still; prey in the predator’s gaze. She felt as the man carried away must have felt before being swept up by long obsidian arms. A curious trembling began deep inside her; a stirring unfamiliar, from being in the presence of such a horror. Though the citizens of Sevengraves were witchy folk, they were not arrogantly so. Being born blessed by the Dark Design that underlies Creation leaves its mark. An intuitive understanding of how perilous it is to bind that which should never be bound.
“How did you do it? Catch one and live? Mother told me, grandmother too, that the Night Gaunts can no more be bound than a dream or nightmare.”
Byron, looking at ease, though his eyes, damp and nervous, were trained upon his supernatural captive, came up behind her and started stroking her rigid shoulders. He told her how it was done. “As you know, the Great Old Ones and their brethren come to us through the angles of Space and Time. To imprison them, all angles must be absent, only curvatures may be used. You see, a curve is a curve and may be moulded around so as to form itself into a circle complete. It is One and so can hold that which is of the Angles, which are Many. The sigils on the glass create a further magical barrier, all of them being drawn from the Book of Eibon.”
“Having this thing here though, it’s too dangerous, Byron.”
He smiled, drawing his arms down to firmly embrace her waist. This was good, she was scared, he felt his body warm and stir at the shaking in her voice. To cow a daughter of Sevengraves so; this was a sign of how much he had achieved by trapping a Night Gaunt. “It is only dangerous if the prison is disturbed, if angles are introduced, then yes, it would be loosed upon us. There is no telling what terrible things it might do.” He whispered these last words into her ear.
“How long have you had it prisoner, Byron?”
“Since just before I became established. You, my dear, are looking upon the muse of Byron James.”
“You mean that has been in there for ten years?” There was a catch in her voice.
“It has indeed. That creature feeds me the most elegant of nightmares, which I then execute to the best of my ability upon the canvases standing about us.”
At these words, Misia was sure she saw a subtle movement. A rippling, as of oil disturbed, passing across the face of the Night Gaunt. Then, it was still once more.
Byron moved away from her, busily pulling free the sheets that had previously been shielding his work. He dramatically threw out his arms as he cast the last covering aside. “See, my dear Misia, these are what so horrified the stuffed shirt critics of the modern world.”
A revel of vampires, drinking from dusty wine bottles, the crimson contents having been siphoned out of a headless and dismembered corpse, which was the centrepiece of their crypt’s banqueting table. A ghoulish seductress slithering into the bedchamber of a sleeping suitor, her eyes shining silver, her hair writhing with the life of the grave; spiders, worms, maggots and white lice. A tentacle-headed toad-thing squatting, enthroned in an oozing chamber of knobbly stone; the walls awash with aqueous ichor, decorated with angular glyphs whose shining emerald depths were cut into the low ceiling depicted. It bore no eyes, this thing, rather a number of glistening fleshy buds that hung loosely from squamous, suppurating hollows, entangled in a fleshy beard that was strung through with seaweed.
Misia felt strange surging sensations of attraction and repulsion as she stood before her lover’s abyssal works. Though, as much as they drew her attention, she found it difficult to avert her eyes completely from the fascinating visage of the Night Gaunt. For a thing she had feared all her young life, there was something bewitching about it, its velvet wings, the oddly smooth nothing-face, the singular substance of which it was made; she wondered how it would feel under her fingers, to stroke and caress. She felt sure it was watching her as intently as she was watching it. Was it wondering how it would feel for it to touch her?
As you might guess, this revelatory event occurred when autumn was first in the air, letting down her hair as leaves turned to maple, orange, gold and then brown. Twilights were becoming heady seas of churning burgundy fed by rich rivers of wine, sometimes shewing frostier sorbet shades, hinting at the coming cold of a Fimbulwinter. Misia’s fascination with the living source of her lover’s inspiration did not lessen over time. She would often peer into his studio when he was out, simply to behold the thing as it hung there, its black wings working the air, seemingly at peace.
One evening, Byron returned home early, catching her there, startling her out of the trance she had not known she was in. He wiped away a few unwelcome beads of sweat from his brow; seeing her standing like that, her eyes fixated, her pupils dilated, reminded him of the opium-eaters he used to share rooms with in the worst ends of London. “Misia, what are you doing in here alone?”
She stuttered, mumbled, her eyes casting about for a reason. She saw one, a covered painting, set away in a corner, isolated from its fellows by shadow. “I wondered about this painting, my love. You are always so secretive about it. Keeping it closeted away and always covered over with this drape. It is a shame to hide it and it does look odd when the others all stand proudly on show now.”
“You think so? Have you seen it? Looked upon it?”
“No, not yet.”
“Once you do, perhaps you will understand why I keep it secreted away.”
Byron drew away the drape with a characteristic flourish, revealing the vision beneath. Misia cried out
.
It was as beautifully realised as all of his other creations but it was truly awful to look upon. There was no element of dark fantasy or imagined horror in it. As monstrosity goes, what was there was all too real; a drab rendering of a dirty, windowless cell though the cell itself was not the subject. By the light of a guttering oil lamp, one could make out a face, a man gone mad. There was nothing romantic, melancholic or fantastic in that haunted visage. The eyes were lolling orbs, distending slowly from their sockets, wetly easing their way free from restricting orifices. One could almost see the sickening motion taking place. The mouth in the face was a cavern of disintegrating yellow teeth projecting from mottled gums as brown as old dog turds. The despair lined into the flesh of the man’s grey face was indecipherable in its intricacy. It was a black labyrinth indescribable that made the face seem a mere mask; a flaccid, punctured membrane stretching over emptiness, an echoing space, endlessly sad.
“Who was he?” Misia whispered, not daring to raise her voice because of the effect left upon her by the harrowing portrait.
“Samuel Brown. He was the bait for the thing over there. Poor sad fool. His gift was for poetry whereas mine was for painting. In my heart, I had hoped he would pen sonnet sequences and odes to accompany my art as it toured the galleries of England, Europe and the rest of the world. We all have our ridiculous hopes and dreams. It was not to be as you can see. We are the puppets of many-fingered Azathoth; we hang, blind and kicking, in His resplendent Void. Our ever-fraying strings dancing to a tune that, all our lives long, we rarely ever hear. I think Samuel heard his tune after the Night Gaunt had done its work on his skin. I think he hears it still, a wordless song sounding between the screams that echo in the place wherein his spoiled body now rests.”
“He does still live then?”
“If you can call being kept in Bedlam a life, yes.”
“How can you keep the Night Gaunt after it did that to him?”
“How can I? I’ll tell you, I keep it because of what it did.” He said, turning, voice darkening as he strode over to the glass prison, “You will stay here until I die. Giving me every last drop of the inspiration I need. You took my friend’s mind and you wish to take mine too but you never ever will, understand?”
The mouthless Night Gaunt hung there, doing nothing, making no gesture of comprehension.
Byron went on, “You know it’s actually an erroneous statement that Night Gaunts tickle their victims to death, though the sensation is undoubtedly similar, to begin with. No, there is a purpose to such seemingly playful evil. They are creatures born of the Angles and on the exterior of the human body, there are some intricate sets of natural angles. Such as those worn upon the soles of the feet and the palms of the hands. What a Night Gaunt does is use those angles, manipulating them, opening us up as a locksmith might open a door.”
“And what constitutes a door is merely a matter of perception.” Misia said, “it’s from one of the old books we used in school.”
Byron nodded, “Exactly right, every Angle is a doorway. An aspect of Yog-Sothoth, the Animate Gate. These things are simply doing as all servitors of the Great Old Ones do. Using us as a means of bringing closer the time when Yog-Sothoth opens wide and the cosmos is consumed by chaos. These vile things unpick the seams of your being and then leave you mad and changed forever. Lost inside yourself. That’s what you did to Samuel, didn’t you?” he was screaming now, “Bastard beast!”
Byron stormed out, leaving Misia, even though she reached out for his sleeve. She could see the tears pouring from his eyes as he went. A hole opened up inside her, empty, wintery with cold and whistling. She hung her head. Her eyes flickered over to the thing behind the glass. She saw its tapering black fingertips were pressing against the inner wall of its prison. She went to it. Matching her fingertips to its own. Noticing they were placed in the small spaces where the glass was not inscribed with the gold-black tincture. She felt her heart miss a beat, then another. Sudden ecstatic shivers, exquisite with morbid sensations, swept through her, bringing her to her knees. The shivers left a rotten electricity to hang, pungent, in the air. Her fair skin was sore, aching profoundly. Her soul, it was hungry for more. Misia gasped out loud. There was a sound in her head, a velveteen voice composed of a thousand ancient layered tones.
It made her a wordless promise if she did its bidding.
*
Misia came to with a start, a dream?
It could have been. She hoped it was.
There was a scratching at her window.
It couldn’t be, she thought, staying in bed, staring at the ceiling, concentrating on its cracks, its dry rotting patches. Thinking not of the dream, not of curves and angles, not of how it would feel to have a Night Gaunt tracing them out on her skin. The scratching went on, persisting, becoming a screed, abominable, insistent. Oh, she could feel them, those imaginary fingernails marking their weaving way. Closing her eyes, ignoring it, wishing it away, only made it become worse. The wicked sensations, they kept on worming their way through. She got out of bed.
She went to the window, tearing away the curtains.
There was something there in the moonlight.
Her Night Gaunt, hanging in the air, patiently waiting. Its wings sweeping back and forth, the onyx membranes vibrating silently. A prisoner for so long, yearning, pining, now here it was, let out, set free, calling to her to let it in.
your screams will be exquisite
your madness, we shall imbibe it, drink it,
it will be darker and sweeter than the finest wine
Somewhere inside her mind, she could hear the glass of its prison as it shattered, the sound of canvases being torn into fluttering pieces. Then, the last cries of its gaoler. She remembered her fingertips upon the glass; glimpsing the palms of her hands, how the soft, creased angles there were burning with light. The atramentous beast then flowed into her, guiding her feet, walking her to Byron’s bedchamber.
Byron was dead. She saw it happen. She made it happen. His body coming undone at the seams as she sank possessed fingers into him, tearing him apart then scattering him across the bedroom as cascading streamers of bloodless blight; each one becoming a twitching new-born fluke before it fell bonelessly to the ground. He was dead yet she did not want to cry. She felt no remorse, no wincing in her heart at his passing. She was sure she smiled as he was slain.
Misia was not in her bedroom, no, she was borne aloft. The night wind was coolly whipping her nightgown around her bare legs. She was being borne to those beetling cliffs – the Night Gaunts' nest – to the north of Sevengraves. Her bedroom was the dream. The window, a matter of perception. Misia watched spindly, spider-leg fingers dragging their terrible tips up and then down the thin glass of her bedroom window. So fragile, the glass, that imaginary barrier. So sensitive was she, a daughter of Sevengraves. How it would feel? What was to be done to her, to the soft, sane spaces inside her? How would it be to go mad in such a way? Oh, how would it feel? What will I become? She thought on it no more.
She opened the window.
The Hives
The district was a filthy, rotten place. Decay hung over it as did the grey and clouded sky, a funeral pall drawn over an aged face that was steadily collapsing in upon itself. The ancient terraces were red brick and crumbling mortar. Windows and doors were covered over with broken boards, tattered sheets and corrugated iron. Few lights burned in the windows of those houses that seemed occupied. The city's bus drivers loathed stopping in the place after darkness descended. Night seemed to take on a tangible quality here; becoming a living, flowing tide washing over everything within the district’s boundaries. After ten o’ clock, even on a summer evening, all light here would appear to have been drowned, made extinct by the suffocating dark.
Adam Melton came to the district because it was cheap. A student coming into his second year at university, having made no true friends during his first, he needed somewhere that would allow him to survive on his meagre bud
get. Though when he alighted from the bus, he remembered the look in the driver's eyes and the words he said, “You sure you want to get off here?”
Adam nodded to the thick-set man behind the wheel. The driver had the build of a bouncer or enforcer but the ruddiness of his face had noticeably ebbed away since his vehicle crossed over into the district. Such paleness showing itself on such an imposing figure made Adam doubt his decision for a moment as the bus doors hissed shut and the scarlet single-decker rumbled off - the only colour visible against the gabled skyline. Its indicator lights, red-yellow, yellow-red, winking away until they were swallowed by the dark. But it's dead cheap, he thought, doesn't matter what the area is like. Beggars can't be choosers. Got to make the best of things. That's what Mum always says.
Letting out a long sigh, he drew a folded print-out from his pocket and held it up, squinting in the dim light. There were streetlights arraigned along both sides of the street but none of them seemed to be working. His eyes adjusted and he saw the houses not as houses but as heads that had become black hollow hives; their doorways and windows as gaping eyes and fractured mouths, whistling old sorrows and droning their despair. Stop it, he thought, and turned his attention back to his map. The line he had scrawled on it in red pen now visible to him.
“Should be on Ashton Road.” He muttered.
Looking around, he saw the remains of a black-and-white street sign. Like everything else here, it appeared to have been eaten away and gnawed down to almost nothing by some wasting process. But the arches and straight lines of a handful of letters were clear enough through the rust and blistered paint for him to deduce this was Ashton Road.