Venera Dreams

by Claude Lalumiere

  The image presented a view of the island city Venera, where, even in the distant future, vegetation and architecture were oddly confused in unsettling shapes and configurations from the dreams and nightmares of deranged artists, where ethereal lights pulsed to the beat of the fantastical city-state’s heart.

  “A meeting was held in the capital of the Community of Venera, at the Eye’s Mind, the headquarters of the Veneran secret service, the Vermilion Eye. In attendance were: representing the High Aztec Empire, Emperor Ernesto Águila and his military advisor Paloma Moreno; from the Dynasty of the Pharaoh of the New Sun, the First Queen Fatima Isis and the Pharaoh’s official ambassador to Venera, Inira Suez; and, standing for Venera, the Avatar of Venera herself and Director Magus Amore of the Vermilion Eye.”

  In procession, the six of them entered a meeting room and sat at a table. Emperor Águila was a short white-haired man with an easy smile. His head was adorned with a bejewelled eagle crown; he was dressed in a sleeker version of a gentleman’s dinner jacket, but its colours were flamboyant, like the plumage of a brightly hued bird. Advisor Moreno sported military garb heavily laden with gold and effigies of eagles; her head was shaved bald and a dark band fit snuggly against the circumference of her skull and completely hid her eyes. Queen Isis and Ambassador Suez were distinguishable from each other by the number and size of the jewellery that adorned their otherwise entirely naked bodies, the First Queen being more copiously decorated than the ambassador; they resembled each other like sisters, or at least cousins. Magus Amore looked ancient beyond words, every inch of desiccated skin that peeked from his simple robe intricately tattooed, his hair so long I wondered if it had ever been cut. In a lotus position, the Avatar of Venera floated and rotated a few inches off the surface of the meeting table, having positioned herself at its centre. She shone brightly of vermilion, making it difficult to look directly at her or clearly distinguish her form.

  The narration ended, replaced by the sound from the meeting. The six dignitaries spoke in a cacophony of languages, none of which I could understand. At least an hour went by, if time meant anything in this dreamlike labyrinth. Unable to understand the proceedings I was witnessing, my attention wandered back to the throbbing of my wounded cheek.

  Just as I decided to leave, Le Nomade des Étoiles walked into the meeting room, looking in this far future exactly as young as he did in my era and still wearing the same uniform as when he’d reappeared during the Great Disasters and when he’d opposed the Ultimate. He addressed the dignitaries in a language that I assumed to be some future form of Veneran. They all continued to talk in their various foreign tongues. I presumed at this point that the Nomad was immortal and that his story would never end. The narrative had progressed so far beyond my own era that I could not see what useful intelligence I might glean from it. So I walked away, deeper into the tunnel, to once again find myself at a crossroads of ten paths.

  Again, I chose the tunnel to my immediate left.

  SISTER BLOOD

  The noise hurt my ears. This sixth tunnel was filled with phosphorescent spectral monsters: intangible screaming vampires, which I recognized as such by their fangs, talon-like fingernails, and leathery wings. They wisped through the air, passing through me and in and out of the vermilion-flecked walls. Although their physical shapes could not harm me, their screeches stabbed into my brain like sharp needles.

  I would not linger in this tunnel. I ran forward, expecting to soon exit at the next crossroads, but this tunnel went on farther than any of the previous ones. It became too hard to breathe; the muscles of my legs were sore, my stomach cramping. I collapsed on the ground and pressed my hands against my ears, which barely muffled the painful wails of the ghostly vampires.

  A vampire ghost huddled in front of me. I recognized her: the old crone who had attacked me and whom I had killed in self-defense.

  Unlike the others, she did not scream. Instead, softly, she spoke in a Russian accent. “I know who you are.”

  Not wanting to linger on the subject of my identity, I asked her: “And you — who are you?”

  “To the Vermilion Eye, I was Sister Blood. My human name ceased to matter a long time ago. Now you have destroyed me; no name matters anymore.”

  She moved swiftly, her ghostly fangs digging into my wounded cheek. Startled and terrified that I could feel this ghost’s touch, I sprang up and bolted deeper into the tunnel. This time, I was successful and found myself at the next nexus of tunnels.

  My cheek throbbed more painfully than ever. I reached up to probe the wound, and fresh blood stained my fingers.

  THE INTERNATIONAL MISTRESS OF MYSTERY

  The seventh tunnel was even longer than the sixth. I walked for what seemed like days — long, monotonous, unchanging days punctuated only by my need to relieve myself. My grey urine stank of decay.

  Although this tunnel was as dark as any other, I found that I could now see quite well. All my senses seemed sharper, as if they were now actively analysing my surroundings with predatory keenness.

  Eventually, I spotted a figure standing in the distance at the mouth of the tunnel, blocking the entrance to the next crossroads. No matter how far I walked, though, the figure grew no closer. I broke into a run — this time it did not exhaust me. I ran faster and faster, with uncommon strength and vigour.

  The distant figure still did not grow any closer.

  I ran faster and faster. Faster and faster. Faster … until my feet left the ground and I flew toward the figure. I batted my arms and leathery wings sprouted from my sides, shredding my clothes.

  Finally, I neared the figure. I stopped before we collided and landed on my feet in front of her — the International Mistress of Mystery. She held a simple unadorned wooded box to her chest.

  She said: “Is it really you, my boy? You’ve changed so much.” Her voice was sadder than I’d ever heard it, with not a trace of the impatient sternness that usually peppered her every inflection. She said: “I know who you are.” Sister Blood had said the same thing. Did they all know?

  I said: “I don’t know what’s real and what’s not anymore. Is it really you, Mistress? Or are you simply an illusion or a simulacrum?”

  She ignored me. Instead, she continued: “Within this box is everything there is to know about me.” She extended her arms and offered me the box. “Take it. Open it. Learn everything you’ve so yearned to uncover.”

  Her posture looked resigned and defeated, but her gaze — she looked directly into my eyes — was suffused with tenderness.

  Without warning, rage erupted within me. I moved faster than I believed I could. I slapped the box away; it shattered, empty, against the walls of the tunnel. I dug my fangs into the Mistress’s neck. I drank her. I drank all of her.

  BROTHER NOCTURNE

  I staggered, weeping, along the next tunnel.

  I became gradually aware of the repetitive sound of a walking stick striking the ground. A little boy of roughly eight to eleven years, judging by his height, walked at my side. He was dressed in a miniature version of Brother Nocturne’s costume.

  With his free hand he grabbed mine, and we walked together in companionable and oddly comforting silence.

  I avoided looking at, or acknowledging, what my hands had become.

  Soon, there appeared at our feet faint spectres of bloodied corpses; judging by their wounds, they’d been savaged by a blade of some sort. There were adults and children of various ages. After all I had witnessed and experienced so far in these tunnels, this gory apparition was not enough to evoke more than a mild curiosity. Somewhat perfunctorily, I asked my companion if he knew who these people had been.

  He replied with the voice a young British boy: “Yes. They were my family. Parents, siblings, uncles, aunts, cousins, grandparents. And the house staff. It happened at my mother’s birthday. I am the only survivor.”

  There was something dead and unforgiving his tone. I had no choice but to ask: “Did you kill them?”

 
“That’s what I told the police. They believed me. But, in truth, the only one who died at my hands was my twin brother. He left me no choice. I loved him more than anything or anyone in the world.” It was too easy to deduce what he carefully left unsaid.

  I asked one final question: “What was his name?”

  “Robert.” He volunteered more information. “Mine was William. But no longer. Now, I am only Brother Nocturne.”

  We stopped talking as we continued our walk, our hands still clasped. Eventually, the litter of corpses faded away.

  With the voice of the adult Brother Nocturne, my childlike companion broke the silence. “Now, this current situation has become far messier and bloodier than I’d expected, although I suspect Scheherazade knew exactly how this would turn out. Even I can’t always follow the layers of machinations behind her plans for Venera.”

  I said: “Aren’t you going to fight me?”

  “Why should I do that? Either I kill you or you kill me. Or maybe we both wound each other gravely. What’s gained with any of that? Nothing. You’ve already killed two agents of the Vermilion Eye.”

  “So that was the real Mistress and not an illusion? Despite everything, I truly loved her. She meant more to me than anyone.”

  Brother Nocturne answered swiftly, his tone dismissive. “We all tell ourselves the stories we need to believe. Regardless, I want no further casualties. You need to speak with Scheherazade. You need to hear which story she has in mind for you.” At the mention of her name, I realized that I could still hear, in the back of my mind, a faint echo of her melody.

  He let go of my hand. I looked at him. He waved goodbye with his walking stick as he vanished into the shadows. I had not moved but I was now standing at the next crossroads. There was an explosion, and the entrance to the tunnel behind me collapsed, sealing off that path. Instead of the customary ten tunnels, this junction offered only two remaining doorways.

  REFLECTIONS

  I did not want to continue, to choose either of the two offered paths. I was weary and bereft, unsure, despite what Brother Nocturne had claimed, if anything I had experienced and learned was real and true. Was my journey through this labyrinth some cruel confinement of lies and illusion, a trap I had not anticipated and had naively fallen into?

  I sat on the ground with my eyes closed. If I waited long enough, if I refused to go on and play this game, the Vermilion Eye would come to me on my own terms, to whatever extent I was still able to determine my own fate.

  But Scheherazade’s song nagged at me, spurred me to action, despite my resolve. I struggled against the impulse to get up and resume my journey through these tunnels of the mind. There were only two paths left. I presumed one was a tunnel through my own memories, and the prospect of being forced to confront myself felt unbearably odious. The other path no doubt led to Scheherazade herself — a prospect even more unsettling than facing myself, though I did not understand why the idea of this diminutive woman provoked such anxiety in me.

  I waited with all my will. I waited until I could tolerate it no longer, until Scheherazade’s relentless song left me no choice but to stand and walk into the next tunnel.

  One step was in darkness, the next in nearly blinding brightness.

  Mirrors. All around me were mirrors. As my eyes adjusted, I tried but could not locate the source of the intense light. I avoided looking at the image that was reflected from an infinity of angles. The image of who I had become. Of what I had become.

  There are those vampires who may ambulate among the human population; yes, they all look gruesome to some extent, but not all are so bestial at a casual glance. I had not transformed into one of those vampires.

  My clothes were in tatters, revealing that my entire body was now covered in dark grey fur. My features had become ratlike, with only the faintest resemblance to the human face I’d once borne. My ears were like those of a giant bat’s. My canine teeth had grown into three-inchlong fangs. Leathery wings sprouted from the sides of my torso, attached to my hands, which ended in six-inch-long gnarly fingernails.

  The reflected images changed from showing the one thing — my new monstrous self — to depicting a mosaic of scenes from my past. My bland unexceptional childhood as the son of an unambitious government clerk and a doting mother in London. My first meeting with the Mistress, when she solved the brutal murder of my younger sister at the hands of a police inspector. My recruitment at the service of the Invisible Fingers, in the Paris catacombs, in the midst of my third adventure with the Mistress, “The Seduction of the Romanian Beauty” (from The Continental Cases of the International Mistress of Mystery). The riches the Invisible Fingers had promised me! But those paled beyond my sense of indignant self-righteousness. The Mistress, to whom I had freely given my complete devotion, had lied to me, the Parisian representative of the Invisible Fingers revealed. She was not loyal to the United Kingdom; she secretly served the nefarious nation of Venera as an agent of the Vermilion Eye. The Invisible Fingers — a cabal of private businessmen from Great Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, and Italy — sought to counter and halt the insidious operations of the Vermilion Eye inside the borders of unsuspecting nations. I knew very little about the workings of the world, but I knew I wanted to avenge this betrayal. I began to doubt the veracity of anything she had ever told me, including the identity of my sister’s killer. Continue to play your role as the Mistress’s assistant, I was told. And report to us. You will play an essential role in safeguarding Europe.

  Scheherazade’s song prompted a host of self-examining questions. I rebelled against this intrusion into my psyche. I lashed out, jumped into the air, and flew into the mosaic of mirrors.

  THE STORY CONTINUES

  I was back in the meeting room where the ten of us — myself, the Mistress, Brigadier Fox, Brother Nocturne, Sister Blood, Le Nomade des Étoiles, Eule-Königin, Sweet Honey, the Snow Fairy, and Scheherazade — had initially gathered.

  I sat in the same seat I’d occupied at the outset of this strange journey. However, I was not the man I had been; I had truly become a vampire. My flesh was lacerated by shards of broken glass, with blood oozing onto my fur. I remembered how fragile we vampires were, surprised that the collision with the mirrors had not damaged me more severely. Already my wounds were healing. Fragile, yes, but ever so resilient.

  Most of the agents were no longer here. Next to me lay the corpse of the Mistress, her head twisted unnaturally, showing the wounds my fangs had inflicted on her throat. Across the table, sat the headless remains of Sister Blood. That left only one other agent of the Vermilion Eye here with me: Scheherazade.

  Her song had ended. The silence was both soothing and oppressive.

  Scheherazade sipped more of the vermilion wine, looking at me impassively.

  Finally I said: “Who are you?”

  She said: “I am the story, and the teller of story.”

  What did that mean? Sensing that it was a futile avenue of inquiry, I said: “What now?”

  She inclined her head toward the entrance to the room. The door was open. She stood up and held her hand to me.

  I rubbed my palms to get rid of any lingering shards, then I broke off the ends of my ridiculously long fingernails. I rose and took hold of Scheherazade’s tiny hand. Her grip was astonishingly strong, like that of a burly workman. Its touch was cool, like the hands of women often are, but it also pulsed with a feverish heat that left me dizzy.

  Hand in hand, we climbed the stairs. We encountered no-one. During our ascent, my sense of unease increased. I did not feel safe in the company of Scheherazade, even though I physically towered over her childlike body, yet I dared not take back my hand. We reached the roof of the Eye’s Mind. It was nighttime, and all around us Venera shone with ethereal beauty, seductive, alluring. Scheherazade also shone with that same seductive and alluring beauty. Yet, despite that glamour, both the city and this woman — both of them at once too real and too unreal — filled me with dread.
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  I would not fight or attack Scheherazade. I suspected that my will was no longer my own in this matter. My fate was in her hands. I no longer knew which cause I believed in, if any. The Vermilion Eye. The Invisible Fingers. The British Empire. What was the purpose of the existence of such impersonal entities? What good could come of such enterprises? With the Mistress, I had led a life of adventure and, yes, of love — however odd and uncomfortable the Mistress’s expression of love might have been. That was the only truth that mattered to me now.

  Scheherazade addressed me in that language of hers that seemed to transcend all languages. I hunched low, to look her in the face. “Your story here is ended. There is another story awaiting you. But it is not here, not in Venera.”

  She kissed me, licking my lips and my fangs. This intimate contact was not sensual but threatening. Into my ear she whispered a brief melody — a set of coded instructions my conscious mind was not meant to understand? — then let go of my hand.

  I leapt into the sky and flapped my wings. Was I fleeing or following the path Scheherazade had decided for me? Was there a difference? I flew away from Venera, across the Mediterranean, having no idea what would come next.

  THE SURREALIST LANTERNS

  (JUNE 1982)

  1. OCTAHEDRON: AIR