Black Wings of Cthulhu, Volume 3

by S. T. Joshi

  no tongue of smoke

  … around another.

  Dull. Absent map or landmark.

  Edge-eaten light, scarce and weak in the atrocity of negation’s great black fist…

  Wretched, fantasy and any glace toward sequencing’s desires flaked away, peeled, some form of bereavement the infecting reality. Situations of poor fact, loud as the notices of any persistent organization. Dingy houses, sentenced to the indifference of slow rot, soften by suffering, always on the one side of the street. The emptiness and vacant lots on the opposite side and where the sporadic, weak light touched the barren lots showed no signs of ever being animated by any sort of construction. There were piles of garbage bags in front of almost every house. I wondered how a place so dead-looking could produce so much rubbish.

  Wasn’t a single house with a light on. No flicker of a TV to wet deserted with its translucent spill, not one red or blue LED light winking through a curtain. Lampposts, many leaning, every third house or so, but not even half of them were on. Many cities have found the need to be restrictive in tight economic times but this, carved by caustic, was something different.

  Like all this blackness has outlawed light.

  My confused readied the array of questions on perception’s chessboard; they were ascending, ready to open—

  Wild-mouth voices. Chunk of poison.

  Grabbed my hand. Pulled me aside before we were stained by light. Leaned in. Murmured, “Nightcrows. Bad.”

  “What?”

  “Ssssh. Nightcrows. The black hand of the gallows grasps.”

  Handmade infernos. Crows casting gauntlet voices. Porch… a shout defending her neighbor from a homeless drunk full of an ex’s feud… “You don’t want to step on this stoop.”… Ex-very, sour: “Go anyoldwhere I want. No ratpit crack-whore tell mes ca’ints.”… kicked up to damage, no-speed-limit teeth ready for meat… not close enough to push but pushing anyway… then blind-guns drawn… one screamed lovin’ you—one barked never even asked me once—a sing-sing harmonize of four bullets seeking—goodbye heart—goodbye heartache—fuck you—fuck you back… energy transferred… scene changed its tongue, two cigarettes lying on the ground burning but no fingers to play their game… one flat against the wall blasted in immeasurable, fear can’t load her scream. She’s bleeding from her belly—still hungry, still struggling with hate—Gulp, no now to gather. The dark doorway is cold, silent. It does not want her back.

  She took me back a block, headed a different way.

  “Bad. All they kiss.”

  “Where are we?”

  Pulled up. Wheeled. “In it. Come. Hurry.”

  “What city is this?”

  “They called it Kingsport.”

  “Called? What about now?”

  “Bad.”

  Right about that.

  She was moving. I found fast to match her, wasn’t lingering in this mausoleum… Her and her new-found shadow, moving away from the salt and damp that had laced the air, rats wheeling—

  Alley.

  Then a street.

  No session of earthly hands.

  No bus—no trucks going by—not one person here to bite into with hi—no survival kit—

  NO

  —clean and prepared

  —no takebacks

  —make-up, or crowds sculpted with blue eyes, or street-wide gates with portraits that aren’t afraid of their own meadowlark

  —window-shopping, voyaging into the fruit of carved suggestions

  —pantheon-dazzle capturing endless seams up the back of her legs

  No

  No

  No

  Another alley. Dead. No so blue paradise shore—no bar with pink baby rose-tricks carving thrush and velvet for reckless—

  Another street.

  Night leaning on everything—kicking ass, murderer embracing every step of time.

  Stumbled once. This much darkness is a drug, dosed relentlessly can’t keep your grasp on hard and real.

  Dogged her to get to arrived.

  The clock I heard earlier made another announcement. She froze. Her eyes reflected the fear that had gripped my stomach when I faced the thieves.

  “Are you OK?”

  Looked at me. Glared. Showed me stained teeth. Face screamed, are you mad?

  “The dogs of the Cabal walk. Hurry.”

  She was off. I kept pace.

  “The Cabal you mentioned—what is it?”

  “His congregation… We must get to the watchtower.”

  “Where?”

  “Away.

  “Them. They seek to fill the frame. When the song ends they will rebuild their pyramids… When they are no longer quartered in the blue domes and they leave the pain of their meditations and inherit the treasure… Every thought will be a galaxy.”

  Crazy and scary, eyes not a searchlight but in motion like that, maybe she was on drugs? Emaciated, sores, those eyes, could be on crack—they looked like that on TV. I should have just changed the tire and left. I would have been far away from here, wherever the hell here is, an hour ago. On my way to safe.

  With Clea.

  “Where’s the phone?”

  “I’m taking you now.”

  Wanted to say about fucking time.

  Maze without a sign to read. Over ground that had never known level. Leaving the existence that had lunch, had measurable distance and order and theory. Leaving everything incandescent.

  Wanted a bar, not this dumb guide dog. Phone with a voice on the other end and a drink. Wanted to be in a room with shapes my eyes had watched before.

  Foundry of dust and null.

  “Are we close?”

  “Soon.”

  Panting. I stopped. “Wait. Just a minute… Catch my breath.”

  Her expression mirrored the deathbed face of a doctor.

  “What are we running from?”

  “Tolone.”

  Didn’t get to fit in, what?

  “When they first came out of The Curve it was easy they hunted humans… Men… No one can say what became of the women… Then they took what was tossed out, used what they could… But the larder is empty so they pursue.”

  “Are you saying someone, thing, killed everyone here?”

  “Neas. The brute glamour of his specter-touch. His flock thirsts… Comes like fog to cancel, bag what they exorcise from nerves and blood.”

  “I don’t understand what you’re trying to explain.”

  “Neas. He is the dreadful—his sour net blames… Mortal leaves. His jackals hunt for him now.”

  “But the men who robbed me, and the drunks on the porch, they were men, people.”

  “Robbers were wanderers, they come here sometime. Take what scraps they can. There are some people here. Few. They hide. Those took the drug, the drink, they did not think. Tainted and unclean. Better dead the way they did.”

  Shot is a better way to die? My expression must have said it.

  “Better go that way. Neas’s jackals take all.”

  “Dead is dead.”

  “No. Neas won’t let you go.”

  “Your soul you mean?”

  Reached up, pressed the callused tip of her pointer finger to my forehead. Tapped it several times. “The spark that dreams. Neas keeps that. Eats all till all is empty.”

  Went from hot fantasy to hell to surreal blasted by madness. Swelled with the cause and effect of wild fear, my mistakes or fate was plucking everything I’d hung from the limbs of pleasurable and sane.

  “Is he a man?”

  “Is Neas. His face is different for every taken.”

  “Every one taken?”

  Nodded yes.

  “And you have a haven from this destroyer?”

  “The watchtower.”

  “Are we close?”

  “There.”

  Dried out and ashy, three stories of pieced-together cement, brick, and wood leaning toward the frail display of a streetlamp that hadn’t yet forgotten to shine. Roof tha
t hadn’t lost all its solid. Not a house. Industrial once? Barb-wire fencing edging the roof, did the barrier imply military? Still, there was no lookout. No arch or decoration. Three small windows covered in heavy wire-mesh on the third floor. Dense shadows cutting across the base couldn’t see a door to the place.

  Staring at the structure it hit me, she was homeless and this was a gathering place where the dispossessed had banded together, their cave to keep out the plague of brutality that scavenged and terrorized by night. A flash of old werewolf and vampire movies from my early teens, standing before that thing I worried being dropped in a box of negligence-unto-death and worse that was not the solution to getting out of this hell.

  Couldn’t see any wires running from the lamp pole to the building, yet she’d said she had a phone…

  Sure didn’t like the look of the place, its façade was certainly unwelcoming. Rock and a hard place. Wasn’t keen on going in there. Place looked wrong, but out here had already showed me its teeth.

  “We go in.”

  Not a C’mon from her.

  Followed. Found the patchwork metal-skin of a door. I was going to need to bend down to get in. So consumed by her eyes and face hadn’t noticed before how slight she was. Bent. Old people are sometimes hunched as they walk. Her, something different. More than just bent…

  Scrunched up her face, made a short series of oddly clustered growling sounds in the back of her throat and the door opened. A stunted man barked, “In. In.” Tugged my sleeve.

  Swallowed. Dim. Warm air. A short hallway. No hangings no adornments, not a stick of furniture… Down black staircases. Cracked, spilt old stairs, corner missing here… Kicking up dust. Pushing aside high cobwebs my companions eased right under…

  Dragged forward to another set… wood gave way to stone

  and dirt…

  Dank air. Never liked the cellar as a kid, this smelled like it. Made my chest tighten. I shivered.

  Another staircase… less stone… impacted dirt

  narrowing…

  Called herself Alice and she was taking me down the rabbit hole…

  Last stair produced a very short corridor, maybe better called a tunnel…

  A large doorway into a large room. Three mounds of chest-high candle wax with burning candles stuck on the top near the center of the room. Mostly dim to dark. The stench in the room was overpowering.

  My capacities degraded by the inadequate lighting and a slight dizziness and numbing which I believed was caused by the root, I couldn’t see the corners but the rest of the room was barren.

  The doorman led us to a group of perhaps twelve, each raggedy-clothed approximations of one another excepting the slight curve of hips and unremarkable bulges of breast in several, standing by a wall laced with roots and imbedded stones. Nothing casual about the faces that put eyes to me. My breath was about to birth an earthquake, they gave me the creeps. Alice ticked her head toward me. Exchanges in a language I couldn’t fathom passed among them.

  Didn’t like them, didn’t like here.

  “Excuse me; you said you had a phone. Is it upstairs?”

  The man who had opened the door openly laughed at me before turning to Alice.

  “He sheds his last season. Prepare the harvest feast.”

  Some further murmuring in a language I didn’t know.

  A woman, “Sweet enough, yes.”

  Hands on me. “Will fit Neas.”

  “Give to Neas then receive.” Widened eyes. Doorman licked his lips. Seen kids look at candy like that.

  Staring. “Every drop.” Fingers pressed to its lower lip. Fingers aren’t dirty. Not dirt and grime, reddish in this light, old blood under fingernails.

  Teeth, pulled back the lips of its hungry grotesque mouth, teeth you’d see on a thing that snarls. Teeth—fangs that never took part in tentatively, made for slashing flesh.

  EAT OR BE EATEN

  Had it in my head. Live gets consumed. Everything gets eaten. Things get harvested to be eaten.

  Light-headed. Her root must be a drug. Everything came slow. That was a boon twenty minutes ago.

  Eyes measuring me.

  The grinning face nearest me sniffing me. Grubby, and it sniffed me?

  Faces of dead things, the gravitation of shadows not welcome in the days of flesh. They moved, what was beneath the surface moved, but the skin layered over muscle and bone was slow to follow. Hide of lesions and pockmarks didn’t seem to want to heed the cadence of muscle.

  Lepers?

  Nerve damage and infections did that. Made their eyes like that too. Must have.

  Had too.

  Alice turned her head. Part of her face didn’t adhere to the motion. Her face wasn’t her face. It was a covering, curtain hiding a pit. A mask.

  Her leathery hand peeled it off.

  Take dead, partly rotted, and a bone structure that was fifth cousin to something canine that was her face. Noticed her teeth too, sharp, could snap bone I’d bet.

  Saw the meathook.

  Her drug-root didn’t filter my thoughts. Lightning pulsations of fear walloped me. Graveyard hell. Scenes of sharp assassins that don’t bargain, some jungle of teeth offered my heart no quarter. Cut me, carve me, encase Neas in my husk—

  Eat what’s left.

  Hurt, cloudy, perhaps from the root she’d given me, but I got it. Wasn’t going to let their plans for history take away my time, twisted from the grip that thought to yank me from breathing.

  Slash-shaped voice hissed, “The purification.”

  Saw a knife—artifact of hidden ages, nothing faded or weak in its resolve.

  RAN

  No little by little, ran hard—arm, fist, gritty thoughts. Tongues that had trouble balancing human speech pursued me. Kept a firm grip on my pen. Wasn’t much, but it might puncture unsavory and widen any chance of getting out if I needed it.

  Dim tight corridors… Up stairs, managing to keep my footing in the shadows… We hadn’t turned much getting to the room, was almost easy getting back to the door…

  Unguarded. Me, dazed, if not drugged, and injured, they may have felt I wasn’t going anywhere but on the plate, that didn’t slow me.

  Was out. Running down the middle of the street. If there were any people here I wanted to find one… Yelled for help.

  Running. Belonging to the language of an animal, pain in my chest didn’t limit my attempt at faster…

  Kept running.

  Turned a corner. Broadsided. Saw the reflective bottom of a highway sign up the hill.

  Boston 41

  Up it—possessed, empowered—hungry for neon, clawing for height, hoping, reaching for spans of trees and a road with lights and a face saying hi leading to buildings with the shape of human and a crash of stories—

  Stumbled. Twisted the tender ankle.

  Pulled back. The way down—astronomer who lost the contract to his survival kit, grabbing for somewhere in reality. Freefall heat. Banged back to black…

  Standing, transferring hellish amounts of pain—

  Not steady.

  Not getting back up the hill now.

  Hide. Rest the ankle.

  Lock myself in some house until I can escape. They hunt at night. I’ll hide until the glory-flight of lemon sun rises and punctures the glaze of their endgaming.

  Got in a house. Dragged my ass upstairs. Small room, window on the street. Reconfigured the back of the peeling door with the measured specifics of dresser and chair and a wall mirror that held no color. Looked at the pen in my hand wished I had a deadbolt and a gun.

  Sneaking glances out the window. Ears straining at the dimension below for the incandescent knock of voices. LISTENING. Impatient. No curve of mercury utterances searching…

  I can see the way out.

  Pause from the gel of scared. Sagging, but orbiting a dim hope.

  HIGHWAY

  from my window.

  Car lights just flashed. Headed to Boston… Where I should be.

  CLEA
>
  —seams of her borealis-ladder going all the way up, sitting on my lap. Lightly laughing heat in my ear. Promising—“I’m not wearing any panties.” Red velvet lipstick frolicking with my dream—

  Not Icarus… Lights, return to gold, the tug of that galaxy—her feathery laugh full-on… Where there’s one another will come… Has too…

  Will. Will.

  Ankle feels better. Maybe? Grasp purposeful with human muscle… I think I may be able to reach… it

  stirred by a turbulent desire—

  lonely street…

  Kingsport.

  black wings block my view

  Choiceless, the only horizon allowed to sight. The thing’s twice the size of a man—parts of it look like scaly meat, but the wings… They’re enormous, nearly the size of a small house, a peacock fan of pulsing-black full array. A garbled thunder, voice of the hunter—the thing she’d called, Neas? “It is not ripe.” Controlled flutter down its length, something like an arm with a hand-thing pointing at me in the window.

  Not… ripe?

  Jackal-pack shivering. As frightened as I was. Maybe more. Heads down. Cringing. Muffled yelps and whines.

  Alice Magg on her knees, forehead pressed to the pavement.

  “Return it to the nest.” Sounds dry and like its mouth is full of something.

  The Neas-thing rose. Just lifted like Superman in that movie. No effort. Wings didn’t flutter, didn’t do a damn thing. Shades darker than night it slowly faded into the black starless sky.

  She peered up at my window. Tears born of fear. Snarled at me. Hate in her cat’s eyes. I’ve been out in cold, blizzard-force winds on the Maine shore. Nothing like this. Terror’s cold is deeper, its bite halves, halves again, shatters.

  In me. In her.

  Thought I’d shatter first.

  Clawed hand reached up. Its curse slowly closed, you couldn’t have fit atomic particles in it. I got the message. She barked, stormed away. Pack of toxins in tow.

  Sun arise.

  Up the hill—steep at the top, I crawled. Got a ride. Almost jumped out in front of the damn car to stop it…

  I was back in Providence before dark.

  Alive. Roiling with stupid half-formed thoughts on how to stay that way.

  Back in my apartment—no nest now. Can’t snub out my panic, desperation on high alert. Locked and chained the doors. Checked twice, jammed dining room chairs under the knobs. Doors didn’t have legs now. Checked every window twice. Left all the lights on.