Melmoth came for him again, his loping strides setting the dry dust of the arena billowing. This time St. Cyprian met him and they locked fingers, arms extended. Melmoth had been correct and Warren as well, earlier; it was nothing more than a gavotte, a dance of cosmic proportion. It was a ritual, a joust of opposing forces, openers and closers, one hand pulling and the other pushing. There was no hurry in the outer minds and no urgency, simply malevolent patience.
In the weird light, he saw Melmoth’s face shift, young to old, his features grimacing their way through history, and his clothing changed and rustled, Edwardian to Victorian to Georgian to Regency to Restoration to Puritan-black and finally to Elizabethan, with fraying ruffles and patches on the elbows.
Stars spun and dust rose and fell as the sun sank and bobbed. St. Cyprian’s muscles burned with fatigue and sweat inundated his clothes and dripped from his face, stinging his eyes. His arms trembled and his knees felt close to giving out. Melmoth grinned wildly as St. Cyprian’s foot began to slide and there seemed to be an enormous weight shoving against the latter, as if he were back in the Drones Club, holding the billiards’ room door closed against a particularly large crowd of raucous sportsmen.
An ache thrummed through his palms, crawling along his wrists and elbows into his shoulders, burning them. His breath whistled in and out of his clenched teeth. Melmoth’s shoulders rolled and his elbows bent straight as he slowly, but inexorably pushed St. Cyprian back.
He was losing. The thought shuddered through him and he knew that only a moment more and he was done. Melmoth was simply too strong, even without the legions of Hell at his back. He cast his mind back desperately, looking for something, anything that Carnacki might have taught him before Ypres, before a Hunnish bullet had plucked him from one world to the next. It came to him in a moment of clarity.
St. Cyprian lifted his foot and brought it down on Melmoth’s instep. Fragile bones popped and the sorcerer jerked back with a surprised howl. His fingers slid from St. Cyprian’s and the pressure retreated with them. St. Cyprian moved forward smoothly, like Captain Drummond, DSO, MC had taught him that night in Marseille, his fist moving like a piston across Melmoth’s jaw.
Melmoth staggered back and then, slowly, toppled backwards. Dust blossomed around him and then the scene wavered and broke like a reflection in a basin of water. St. Cyprian crouched over him, rubbing his aching hand. He had the impression of a vast sigh and then, nothing.
He looked around. The others looked back at him, bedraggled and hollow-eyed. Outside the filthy windows, the sun was rising. “What-” he began. His voice was a hoarse rasp. “What happened?”
“You bloody cheated is what happened,” Melmoth grated, struggling up into a sitting position. He spat blood and looked around, squint-eyed. “It seems to have done the trick, though.”
“We’ve won,” Silence said as Gallowglass hauled St. Cyprian to his feet.
“You cheated,” Melmoth said again, petulantly.
“Complain to the judges’ committee,” St. Cyprian said.
Melmoth grunted and pulled his legs under him and stood. “You’ve won,” he said grudgingly, looking at the ring of hard faces around him as he eeled past them and into the hall beyond. “My staff is broken and my spells undone, to misquote Prospero. Until next time, gentles all,” he said, as he turned and hurried towards the door. Gallowglass made to stop him, but St. Cyprian stopped her.
“Let him go,” he said. He looked at Silence. “That’s part of the tradition as well, isn’t it?”
“When the play is done, the actors depart the stage, no matter their part,” Silence said, smiling slightly. He looked around. “That includes us, my friends. The veils are still thin here, and there are lurking things which none of us are in any shape to confront.”
They left the house, stepping out into the cool morning air. The Crossley was waiting for them, looking the worse for wear in the full light of day. St. Cyprian looked up as the others filed out ahead of him, where the stars faded with the growing light of the new day. He thought again of those immense faces, and of the crushing, brooding patience, like the inexorable weight of stones and he shivered slightly.
The Door would open one day.
“But not today,” St. Cyprian murmured and closed the door firmly behind him.
Josh says: Zelazny’s A Night in the Lonesome October is a murderer’s row of horror staples–all the Big Names and most of the little ones (the mad monk, the diabolical druid, the vicious vicar…) in what might as well be a never-to-be-filmed monster rally movie; I think that’s what most appealed to me and what I most wanted to capture in my own story…with famous and not-so-famous faces gathering for a ‘High Noon’-style showdown on the most sinister night of the year…
Josh Reynolds is a professional freelance writer of understated wit and cherubic good looks. His short fiction has appeared in such anthologies as Horror for the Holidays and Specters in Coal Dust. You can find out more about him at joshuamreynolds.wordpress.com and, if you enjoyed The Gotterdammerung Gavotte and would like to read more about the adventures of the Royal Occultist, why not check out royaloccultist.wordpress.com .
Story illustration by Stjepan Lukac.
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Big D, Little D
by Edward Morris
NOVEMBER 1
THE FEAST OF ALL SAINTS
He was a bat, and his name was Needle,and when he came back home to the little bat-bed I made for him long ago with Mama’s help,he was barely recognizable as anything but a drowned rat with wings.
He didn’t talk long. Needle died. My familiar winged in through my open window at night, and expired by sunrise. I howled, and tore at my face with my own claws. But not for long.
It was a far, circuitous way Needle flew, ensorcellment or none. Far, through the Gate before it was closed, and sideways, zig-zag, whiplash through the mirror in my little room, the one that never exactly stays in place.
The journey was too much for him. I buried him in consecrated earth, and howled a dirge for him that Mama had taught me, from the Old Country. From England. Where I was, in return, very, very swiftly bound. Let that cocaine-crazed fop pick on someone his own size, no poor rodent who gave his life for the Family…
Do you know what it is like to be forever seventeen? The immediacy things gain, the sharpness, the hunger in dark places, the longing of the soul?
It feels like it’s always been like this. Especially after my wings sprouted, and the other changes began, the very agonies of Blake’s Dragon Christ in this high, lonely castle where only physicians doctors are defrocked monks in the blackest of black robes.
Black as the smoke of the fires on Sire’s lands, the heads on pikes, the mad old days he used to whisper in my ear when talking, talking, talking me to sleep, spinning webs of story when I was really this young and ‘Papa’, dear Papa, was my only consistent companion besides Needle, and all my familiars that came before Needle. My dearest pets, the latest one of whom went away off to War and lay down his life for their stupid Game.
In the world where England lies, the Illusion-World, I care nothing for the workings of the Unpronounceables, never did. The King in Yellow, the Goat With A Thousand Young, That Which Is Not Dead… Bullshit. Authority. Don’t need their Authority, those which are merely fantastically old men to me, muttering in their nacreous beards about the head-games they inflict upon the young and even such as me, the doubly-young, the doubly cursed.
I care nothing for their Game. Only Family. Only to preserve our Family upon the earth. And a slap to one of us is a slap to all.
Damn YOU, murdering bastard, DAMN You and your pig-headed human adherence to what you think is Order! If I really were this young, I might join that foolish Game, but not this year. I have no desire to give away all my power, with favors hanging from me like chains by the time I lurch and flap to the Finish line.
Your English poet John Milton tells us that it is better to reign in Hell th
an serve in Heaven.
There is only one piece I will take, Sherlock Holmes.
I will take you.
I will miss this place. Here on Papa’s holdings in the Middle-World, the Dream-world,on the River Skai, it is easier to live, plainly and simply. Matters of realpolitik are not so complicated. Being a half-blood prince means something here. People respect me.
In the Waking-world,on my own father’s lands in the Carpathians, I would be hunted down and dismembered. Or I would become a common immigrant anywhere I landed, an outsider among their century and those who are still fully people.
So thinking, I sprinkle the powder and close my eyes. I have the address written on my left hand. 221B Baker St.
The galvanic charge grows in my teeth, and the air smells suddenly of lightning and the sea. The Game, as the English say, is afoot.
I permit the green baize door in front of me to open with a cold breath. Papa told me I would know the night I fully ascended to my power. I never imagined it would come with this much additional agony. I suck it up, choke back the sweet taste of blood, and fold my wings.
He’s right there. Sitting across the room, staring out the window. Lost in thought. I move too fast to determine the thin man’s reaction,whether we’re alone, anything..There’s no time. No time, except to strike.
“My name is Felix Dracul,” I tell the Great Detective, “You killed my Sire. Prepare to die. Very slowly— UHHHK—”
Dr. Watson’s wooden letter-opener from the Far East pierces my back, yet distracts not the lunge as I unhinge my jaw and lurch forward to circumnavigate Holmes’ throat. Papa, I will avenge you. I—
(then flames, and smoke, and words no more)
For Roger and Trent.
Edward says: “Big D, Little D” was written specifically for this issue.When Mike asked me if I had anything to contribute,I didn’t…for one reason. I heard the audio recording of A Night in the Lonesome October, and couldn’t finish it because it made me weep. I don’t know when it was recorded,but it sounded like it was close to the end for Roger. He was whispery,and struggling for breath. All the worse because it was such a great story. But when Mike approached me about the tribute,I bit the bullet and read the whole book.And I am so glad I did. ”Big D, Little D” is an hypothetical epilogue to the work. Without giving away the joke outright, I will say that A Night in the Lonesome October spoke to one particular archetype that’s very, very dear to my heart, and I answered it the only way I could. I dedicated it to the two Zelaznys who have imparted the incalculable, but there is another dedication between the lines. One who had wings. Like a bat… <3
Edward Morris bio: I am a 2011 nominee for the Pushcart Prize in Literature, also nominated for the 2009 Rhysling Award and the 2005 British Science Fiction Award. Presently, I am Online Weekly Fiction editor for PHANTASMAGORIUM magazine. My short fiction has appeared most recently in Joseph Pulver’s A SEASON IN CARCOSA, Trent Zelazny’s MIRAGES and (forthcoming) the Red Penny Papers’ SUPERPOW! anthology. My science-fiction/horror series THERE WAS A CROOKED MAN, rebooted in serial form, will be out next year from Mercury Retrograde Press (Joseph Pulver, ed.; Nick Gucker to draw).
More about Edward Morris here.
Story illustration by Dominic Black.
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The Blackbird Whistling, or Just After
by Orrin Grey
We lost. It’s over. That’s it, nothing more to say. The end of everything.
The fire’s burning blue now, shot through with tongues of green. And soon there’ll be worse things. Fissures will open up in the ground, full of nameless darkness. The rains will start; first blood, then frogs. The moon will devour the sun, the mechanism of the heavens will break down and one by one the stars will be ground out. The earth will crawl away from the sea. The sea will swallow the earth. All the lost and forgotten things will come out of caves and closets, dark forests and locked rooms. Men will turn into beasts. And that will only be the beginning.
Already the light of the fire is starting to fail, but if you look hard through the gloom you can still see them there on the other side. Our enemies. The shadow man in his tophat and tails, the somnambulant giant standing behind him. The damp one in overcoat and false beard, his breathing ragged, his fingers webbed. The shape huddled in faded robes, its face a golden mask, its hands bent claws.
I remember you asking, earlier in the game, when we still didn’t know for sure who was who, why anyone would be on the other side. Do you remember it? We stood on a bridge, the moon in the water, the trees slowly shedding their leaves. I was just falling in love with you, falling moment by moment, as you do only when you’re first falling in love, and we had just learned for certain that we were on the same side. “Why would they do it?” you asked, looking down at the water, then up at me. “What do they think they’ll gain?”
I don’t know what I said to you then, but I’ve given it a lot of thought since, and I wonder. I wonder if maybe they’re not the bad guys we think of them as. If maybe there are no good guys or bad guys. If they really believe, in their hearts—or what serves them as hearts—that they’re right. That this is what’s best for the world.
Not the end at all, as we see it, but a new beginning. A chance at something better. Not for us. For us it’ll be horrible. And for them, as well. You asked what they hoped to gain. Maybe nothing. Maybe they’re the heroes here. Selfless martyrs. Maybe they know they’ll die screaming, just like we will. Maybe they go to it willingly, even fight for it, to make way for a better world. Not for us, and not for themselves, but for someone else, someone not yet born or made. Someone nothing like us, nothing like anything we’d recognize.
Or maybe that’s just what I tell myself now, as the fire dies away, to make what’s coming seem more bearable.
Are you crying? Before, I’d have kissed away your tears, but tonight I suppose you’ve earned them. If it’s not okay to cry for this, then what was crying made for? It’s probably what we should all be doing. Crying, or praying, if we think there’s anything left to pray to. We should probably be doing anything but talking like this, talking on and on pointlessly, more pointlessly now than ever before.
The others have all gone, I think. Slipped out sometime during my soliloquy. Gone to whatever it is they plan to do with their last moments, in their victory or their defeat. Only you and I are left.
The fire’s almost dead now. It’ll be dark soon. A kind of dark this world has never seen. I don’t know what will happen then. I don’t know how long we’ll have. So kiss me, just once more, before the last of the light is gone.
Orrin says: It would be disingenuous to say that Roger Zelazny made me want to become a writer; I already wanted to be one before I ever encountered his work. But Zelazny certainly changed the way I thought about writing, and reading him made me want to become a better writer than I ever had before. And while I came first to Zelazny’s Amber series, A Night in the Lonesome October is the book of his that’s geared most directly for me, and it just might have the distinction of being my favorite novel of all time. So when I saw that the Lovecraft eZine was doing a Night in the Lonesome October-themed issue, I knew I’d have to do something. As I tried to come up with something appropriate, I thought about a story that was set in the last waning moments after the “bad guys” won the game. Zelazny plumbed the figures of great Victorian and Gothic horror and mystery tales for his cast of characters, so for my brief, brief description of the assembled Openers, I decided to update the tropes a little bit and try to draw some villains more from the era of the pulps.
Orrin Grey is a skeleton who likes monsters. He pens tales of the uncanny, macabre, and supernatural, as well as nonfiction pieces about horror movies, comics, and weird fiction. Never Bet the Devil & Other Warnings, his first collection of supernatural tales, is due out any moment now from Evileye Books, and he’s currently co-editing an anthology of fungus-related stories for Innsmouth Free Press.
Story illustra
tion by Steve Santiago.
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Fallen Books and Other Subtle Clues in Zelazny’s
“A Night in the Lonesome October”
by Dr. Christopher S. Kovacs
An essay by Dr. Christopher S. Kovacs. About the essay, in his own words:
Part of the enjoyment of A Night in the Lonesome October comes from recognizing obvious characters and puzzling over the identities of the elusive ones. When I wrote about the origins of this novel in Zelazny’s biography, I took the opportunity to identify the characters I was certain about. Then upon re-reading the novel last year, I became determined to identify everyone. When I stumbled upon the connection to Virginia Woolf (a writer whose works Zelazny admired), I knew that I had a new essay to write. I also wanted it to be accessible to readers who’d enjoy this kind of thing, and so it appeared in The New York Review of Science Fiction. But the identity game may never end. Only Zelazny knew for certain who was who (or did he?), and a NYRSF reader quickly pointed out a better inspiration for the raven Tekela than what I’d proposed. Some readers may dispute my conclusions and others may not want help unmasking the characters. But for those who do want a Who’s Who in A Night in the Lonesome October, here’s a newly revised and accessible version. And what better place for it than an issue of Lovecraft eZine that is offered in tribute to the novel and the author?
And he proceeded to tell me the story of how a number of the proper people are attracted to the proper place in the proper year on a night in the lonesome October when the moon shines full on Halloween and the way may be opened for the return of the Elder Gods to Earth, and of how some of these people would assist in the opening of the way for them while others would strive to keep the way closed. For ages, the closers have won, often just barely, and there were stories of a shadowy man, half-mad, a killer, a wanderer, and his dog, who always showed up to attempt the closing.
Lovecraft eZine Megapack - 2012 - Issues 10 through 20 Page 63