by Emby Press
The ghost’s eyes were hollow pits in hat colourless face, completely black like those of some ghastly doll. As the spirit took shape, the empty eyes focused on Byron. He could read the murderous determination within those eyes.
Hashimoto continued to chant and pray, but the onryo took no notice of the monk. Instead, its bony hand closed about the hilt of the katana sheathed beneath its sash – the spectral double of the sword lying inside the octagon. The ghost advanced towards Byron, moving with slow deliberate steps despite the fact it had no visible feet to propel it across the floor.
Byron retreated before the approaching ghost. He had seen the carnage it could work with its sword. Ghostly or not, the blade could cleave through flesh and bone. As he was forced back by the onryo, Nakadai’s face betrayed the slightest hint of emotion, a curling of the mouth that bespoke a withering disdain. Faced with the inevitability of death, a samurai expected to die with dignity. The onryo expected its victims to show the same decorum.
The ghost expressed its disgust in a burst of motion that hurled it towards Byron. The spectral katana sprang from its sheath, flickering towards the investigator in a ghoulish flash. The blade swept towards him, cutting so close that Byron could feel its arctic chill across his skin.
Before the blow could land, just as Nakadai was drawing the blade, Byron drew the silver reliquary from his pocket and hurled its contents full into the face of his attacker. A cloud of dust flew at the onryo, shimmering as it came into contact with the ghost. Gold sparks crackled around the phantom samurai. Nakadai recoiled, thrown back as though dragged by a team of horses. Patches of emptiness, holes in the onryo’s ectoplasmic essence showed where the powder had struck it. As Byron watched, the holes grew, creating larger gaps in Nakadai’s apparition. Part of the onryo’s cheek faded away, one shoulder vanished entirely, half of an eye disappeared.
The powder represented a contribution to man’s arsenal against occult forces by no less a personage than the infamous French sorcerer Cagliostro. The materials and rites required to fabricate it were both noxious and repulsive, but its efficacy was unmatched against spirits and demons of the lower orders.
Byron expected Nakadai to fade away completely as the onryo’s substance fractured, but he had underestimated the awful sense of duty that had ruled the samurai in life and which now drove his ghost in death. Even with its essence broken by Cagliostro’s powder, the ghost came rushing back to the attack. Its body didn’t need cohesion to obey the demands of its murderous will. Even without a shoulder to support it, Nakadai’s arm raised the katana, ready to cut down the mortal who had dared defy it.
Byron crossed his arms before himself, twisting his fingers into the almost boneless gestures of the Fifth Canticle of the Templars, wondering if a samurai would acknowledge the wrathful authority of Baphomet over its diseased spirit. Before the question could be put to the test, however, the onryo’s form became rigid. The terrible, detached malignance in Nakadai’s eyes faded, leaving them truly empty. What was left of the ghost’s face slackened, slipping into a terrible lethargy. The sword arm fell, dropping away from the spectre to flop against the floor.
Beyond the apparition, Byron could see Hashimoto at his prayers. Moonkiller remained within the octagon, but now a strange brilliance shone across it. While he watched, he saw the light rising from the sword grow still brighter.
No, Byron corrected himself, the light wasn’t rising from the katana. It was seeping down into it, drawn from some higher plane and funnelled down into the cursed blade by Hashimoto’s chanting. As more and more of the light was drawn into the katana, a more profound dissolution claimed the onryo. Where the powder had simply picked away at the ghost’s essence, now a more complete evaporation took place. Wisps of dark smoke boiled away from the frozen samurai, rising upwards towards the roof before disintegrating utterly. First the trunk and torso, then the head and remaining shoulder. Finally even the disembodied arm and the spectral katana faded away, vanquished back beyond the kimon gate and the lands of the dead.
Uncurling his fingers, Byron slumped to the floor. Confronting Nakadai’s ghost had taxed both his courage and his strength. His old war wounds throbbed painfully, his heart hammered against his ribs as though trying to push its way free of his body. He felt sickness bubbling in his belly and what pulsed through his veins seemed more like ice than blood. But he was alive, and for the moment that was enough.
Hashimoto rose from the floor, his prayers at an end. The monk stood over the octagon and this time did not hesitate to take the katana in his hand. He walked to where Byron lay and proffered the sword to him.
“Buddha be praised, my ritual has cleansed the sword,” Hashimoto said. “Nakadai’s spirit will no longer disturb the land of the living. He has gone on to such rewards as may await one as unenlightened as he.”
The monk smiled at the relief that came upon Byron’s features. “You should take Moonkiller. Keep it as a reminder that good can triumph against even the most persistent evil.”
Taking the sword from Hashimoto, Byron tried to match the monk’s smile. “A memento,” he said.
“Indeed,” Hashimoto agreed. “A memento morbid.”
THE AVATAR OF DARKNESS
Robert M. Price
I am called Akbar Singh. I stand well over six feet in height. I wear a mighty beard, beginning to go grey, and my forehead is half-hidden by the turban common to the men of my race, the dagger-bearing Sikhs. Among them I am undistinguished, but I do stand out as an oddity among the run of Americans. So does the man I serve, Dr. Anton Zarnack, a reclusive scholar and investigator specializing in the lore, and sometimes the practice, of the occult arts. He is a man of indeterminate age, a slim build, and smooth black hair accented by a jagged bolt of silver white descending from the dark heavens of his hair to the point of his widow’s peak. Zarnack is some variety of Eurasian, though, despite my intimate familiarity with all things Oriental, I have never been able to pin down his precise ethnicity. Nor dare I ask him. For some reason, I somehow fear I would regret knowing the answer. I have the honor of being his man-servant, his cook, his bodyguard, and chauffer. As such, I have lived a life far more fascinating, stimulating, and dangerous that most men throughout history. It is something I relish deeply. One never knows what astonishment each new day may bring.
My master and I dwell in an expansive apartment hidden deceptively among a row of run-down buildings called China Alley on River Street close to the piers of Harrisonville, New Jersey, though we occasionally repair to an almost identical lair across the country in sunny California. Both are crammed with strange artifacts and antiquities that would be the envy of most museums. Both contain a central study and library in which Zarnack’s book- and curio-laden desk sits like the nucleus of a cell. Behind it looms up a great stone fireplace, over which a blood-red, fire-drooling Tibetan mask with tusked maw looks down, as if to guard my master, with three unblinking, bulging eyes. It represents Yama, King of Death, known in ancient Lemuria as Yamath, Lord of Flame.
An overstuffed leather armchair sits facing the desk, awaiting some new client. The local police (as well as law enforcement agencies much farther distant) occasionally refer to Dr. Zarnack certain cases that baffle them, cases seemingly involving inexplicable motives and methods. Other times, clients drop in without direction from the police, having learned of Zarnack via peculiar channels of their own. Today’s visitor was a bit of both. His name was Robert Blake, a native of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, though he had just arrived by train from Providence, Rhode Island. Zarnack had read much about his strange experiences in an abandoned church building on Federal Hill. As far as the newspapers reported, young Mister Blake had perished in connection with a queer lightning blast amid a spectacular thunderstorm. Exactly what had (supposedly) killed the man remained unclear, since the window before which his body was found sitting had not been shattered. What now appeared less clear still was how he had, seemingly, returned to walk once more among the living.
I met Blake at the door and showed him into Zarnack’s study. My employer rose and reached over his desk to offer a polite handshake (though his habit was to avoid physical contact whenever possible). I imagined I caught a note of reluctance in Blake’s response, though I made nothing of it at the time.
“Mr. Blake! Your adventures in the old Free Will Baptist Church are known to me and interest me greatly. I see you are a fortunate young man! I had heard you were dead! I should very much like to learn why and how you are not. Please sit down. Akbar Singh, will you kindly fetch us some tea? Mr. Blake, it is a kind of tea not familiar in these parts, and I believe you will enjoy it as I do.”
I left for the kitchen, which was still near enough for me to hear most of the two men’s conversation.
“Dr. Zarnack, thank you for your time and expertise. As for my brush with eternity, I can say only that when I emerged from my coma, which was so profound as to fool the coroners, they were quite as amazed as I myself. They had no answers for me, nor I for them. But my curiosity does not lie in that direction. I am satisfied just to be alive.” At this Zarnack nodded with a sympathetic smile.
“I know you are a writer and painter of some renown, Mr. Blake. Have your delvings in the Federal Hill church provided new inspiration for you since your recovery?”
As if he had not given any thought to these once-absorbing interests for a long time, Blake thought a moment and replied. “Painting? Stories… ah, no, I’m afraid I have little interest in these things, having found the truth so much stranger than fiction. But the fantastic does interest me, the fantastic facts. But I’m flattered that you know my work. Now, as to the reason of my visit.
“I knew of your interest in my visits to the old Starry Wisdom Church, as they called it, before I arrived here. The Providence police told me of your involvement in the aftermath. You see, after my discharge from the hospital, I decided to face my fears, beard them in their lair as it were. I returned to the old building and retraced my steps, I suppose to find some evidence that my previous visits were more than dreams or hallucination, as my physician and certain reporters suggested. And, no, I had not imagined everything. As I stumbled around in the shadowed basement, then went upstairs to the sanctuary, and finally up into the claustrophobic steeple, everything rushed back to me in such fulsome detail that I could not doubt I had actually been there before. There were my own footprints in the caked dust! In fact, things corresponded so closely to my memories that it was all the more conspicuous when two details did not.”
Zarnack followed Blake’s words with close attention, but one could see he knew where Blake was heading, waiting for him to get there. One could also pick up a subtle but rising hint of accusation in Blake’s tone.
“The first was the absence of a shelf of mouldering old volumes which I had seen on my first visit but not taken the time to peruse. The second thing missing was a remarkable asymmetrical jewel mounted in an ornate metal box. This piece had been sitting on a table in a sort of séance room (I gather the church had gone over to Spiritualism). I imagine the thing was a crystal ball. In any case, it was now nowhere to be seen.
“I exited the church, somehow irritated, feeling as if my own property had been stolen, though of course I had no claim on either the books or the jewel case. I decided to stop in at the police precinct to report the loss of the items, for whatever good it might do. The first thing the police sergeant asked me, of course, was whether these things belonged to me, and, if so, why I had taken them and then left them in the church, where I had no business prowling anyway!
“I can tell you, I was rightly embarrassed! What had I been thinking? I apologized and turned to leave. Just then, another officer came up to me, tugged on my sleeve, and accompanied me out onto the steps.
“He said something like, ‘Hey, Mack, I don’t know if it’s yer business er no, but there can’t be no harm in me tellin’ ye what I knows. I was doin’ me rounds a night or two after the big storm when I spots this nice-dressed fella lettin’ himsilf inta the old church through one o’ the basement windas. So, I figures, I’ll wait till he comes back out the way he went in. And he does the very thing. An’ after him comes a big, bearded bull ev a man carryin’ a cardboard box full a’ dusty old books, covers fallin’ right offa ’em. What a fella might want with them I don’t rightly know. So I walks right up to ’em and says, “What’re you boys doin’ here? Those yer books? Cause I don’t think so. The smaller man was all polite and hands me this here card, I got it right here. It says Zarnack, Occult Investigator. I never did hear such a name. Dunno why, but I just laughed n’ let ’em go. Later I didn’t know why I did, seein’ as how it coulda got me in trouble. But it didn’t. Nobody woulda cared anyway.’
“I pressed the garrulous constable for more information, and he said, ‘Sure ’n there is one more thing. A couple weeks later I seen the same pair in a rowboat on the river. The big man was sittin’ at the oars, pausin’ at his task, while t’ othern took something out of a paper bag and pitched it inta the water. Then they went back t’ the shore. I waited fer ’em, and they came right up t’ me, smilin’, sayin’ they’d rid the earth o’ something too dangerous t’ be on it anymore—like I’d know what th’ hell he was talkin’ about. A prank, I’m guessin’. Well, there y’ have it, such as it is.’
“Dr. Zarnack, if you knew enough about the Shining Trapezohedron to know the danger it poses, you must have known that submerging it at the river bottom was the last thing to do to prevent that danger. Once cut off from the light, the object summons awful forces. What I want to know is, what did you really do with that accursed relic? Where is it?”
Zarnack slowly smiled, then replied. “Mr. Blake, I notice you did not ask about the books my assistant hauled out of the church. They, too, posed a terrible danger, perhaps even greater than the stone. Rest assured, books and stone alike are in my safekeeping. Look around you, sir: this room is a veritable armory, though few of these items have the appearance of conventional weapons. Do you think the Trapezohedron would be in safer hands with you?”
“No, sir, I do not. Not at all. And as for the books, I don’t even want to know what is in them. I know too much as it is! Burn the damn things for all I care. I’m surprised you haven’t already—if you haven’t already. But the stone, that’s different. I have looked into its depths, too deeply and too long. If you have read the scribbles in my diary—ah! I see you have that, too! You must have some idea of the visions that torment me!”
Zarnack stood to his feet, rounded the desk, and stooped beside the sobbing young artist, for indeed he did know.
“My friend, is this why you sought my help? To be rid of the dreams and shadows which plague you?”
Blake nodded. Then he added, haltingly, “Is it possible that looking into the heart of the Shining Trapezohedron, under your guidance, might perhaps sever the link between myself and the blasphemous entity it summons? I seem to recall something about that in the little I did read from Prinn’s De Vermis Mysteriis. The memory, if memory it was, resurfaced in a nightmare two weeks ago. That is why I was so desperate to find the stone. I’m willing to chance it, even if it really kills me this time. In any case, I place myself in your hands, Doctor.”
Blake began to sag in his chair, and Zarnack and I each took an arm and deposited his sleeping form on an adjacent sofa.
“The tea works well, does it not, Akbar Singh?”
I smiled, then asked my master, “What next?”
“I think I know what is really afoot here, old friend. We must hasten to prepare the Pnakotic Pentacle.”
It was not long before the two of us had taken the still sleeping form of Robert Blake to a room set aside for operations like that which we hoped soon to perform. We traced certain obscure designs upon the stone floor, others along the bare walls. Candles prescribed for the purpose in The Book of Eibon, rendered from the fat of beasts thought extinct, gave off unspeakable odors. Zarnack and I donned the appropriate vestments, then plac
ed the supine Blake into the middle of the Pentacle. About this time he began to stir.
Anton Zarnack picked up the strangely wrought box containing the fabled Trapezohedron and locked the stone into position atop something like a camera tripod. He checked the angles of certain facets of the gem relative to the base line of the floor. Then I handed him an electric lantern, which he arranged upon another tripod, adjusting its height so that its projected rays, escaping the lantern only through a narrow slit, might strike the ancient talisman just so.
Zarnack lit the lamp, warning me not to look. There would be terrible images, like those to be seen by anyone so foolish, as Blake had been, to gaze into the depths of the Shining Trapezohedron. I gathered that we dared not allow Blake to look again into the crystalline eye, lest his madness only increase in severity. But seeing the revelations at one remove might lessen their effect upon him. At least that was my surmise. My master did not always inform me of his plans in detail, and I was just as glad that he didn’t. But what happened next did surprise me.
As Blake sat up unsteadily, rubbing his eyes and trying to shake off the drugged slumbers we had induced, Zarnack gave me a sidewise glance, as if to warn me to be ready for anything, and I had to wonder why he had not seen fit to bind Blake tightly. Sure enough, when the man opened his eyes and beheld again some of the horrors that had haunted him since that fateful day he trespassed into the steepled pinnacle of the Starry Wisdom Church, he commenced to writhe and to scream. But he did not make to flee either the Pentacle or the room. I realized the chalked lines with their odd curves and angles must be keeping him at bay, much as the Yezidis of Mesopotamia are rumored to be unable to step over the boundary of a circle once they have stepped into it.
“Good God, Zarnack!” I gasped. “What is it he is seeing?” I knew better than to disobey my master’s command and kept my eyes closed tightly. The sights did not seem to be disturbing Anton Zarnack, which did not surprise me. Whatever scarlet images danced on the screen of the walls, I knew he had seen much worse.