The Darrell Schweitzer Megapack: 25 Weird Tales of Fantasy and Horror

by Darrell Schweitzer

  The boy Jon beside me nudged me and gazed up at the lofty rafters.

  “Do you think this place is full of ghosts?”

  “No, lad,” said Ulrich from across the table. “Not ghosts.”

  But the conversation turned to the subject of ghosts, and several of our company told of ghosts, one, how a man had been slain on the way to the wars, but had not known it, his ghost going on, thinking himself alive, performing deeds of great valor, even returning home in triumph where he bought lands, begot sons, and lived in contentment for many years before discovering one day, by chance, that he was already dead.

  “Then how can any man know,” someone said, “if even his eyes and his memories deceive him?”

  “Even his dreams,” said Jehan, the French knight. “I have dreamed things, which have proven false, though I remember them as if I had lived them, as if somehow I dreamed the dreams of another man.”

  “Only Christ is eternal,” someone said, though it was not the priest. “All else is darkness and shadows.”

  It seemed, for an instant, that I was not in that room, seated at that table at all, but far away, in a hot, dry land, fighting the pagans in the name of Christ, only to return to Europe and be unable to find my way home, to be diverted north, into mountains in an unknown land, in the darkness and the cold where I lay still in a dream from which I could not awaken.

  And a voice spoke, in my mind, saying, “Chronophagos, the Eater of Time.”

  Then, somewhere in the depths of the castle, a deep bell tolled, and the feast was over. The lamps expired of their own accord, the flames sinking down into the marble, cupped hands.

  We arose, in the almost total darkness and made our way, as memory served, until each of us came to his own chamber, where a bed was prepared, save that Jon the squire (if so he was) shared a room with me, whether because there was no room for him otherwise, or because he so chose, I do not know.

  We two lay in the darkness for a time, in silence. I think I dozed off, and dreamt (dreaming within a dream or waking from one) of a young man who loved a maiden with a face like an angel. He composed, in his mind, the most exquisite lyrics in praise of her beauty, but, alas he could not write, nor had the skill to either sing or play any musical instrument, and the maiden was, in any case, above his station. So, while he might worship her from afar, she never knew of him at all. In both despair and hope, he turned from her, went off to the wars, hoping to win fame and wealth, whereby he might return and claim her.

  Soon his own delicate and pale hands were soiled with blood.

  And I wept for the innocence which had died, all the while unsure if this was my own youth I was recalling, or some other.

  Then a noise started me out of sleep. Jon beside me, clutched my arm.

  Very far away, in the depths of the castle, it seemed that stone ground upon stone, and something was walking upon stone, its tread heavy and harsh and shuffling.

  “What is it?” Jon whispered.

  “I think our souls are in great peril,” I said.

  We two arose from the bed, and drew out our swords, and stood on either side of the door throughout the night—Would the daylight never come? We heard screams and shouts. We heard the clash of arms. We heard Ulrich of the Bloody Axe cursing, and we heard his great axe strike like a hammer.

  But we did not go at once to the aid of our comrades, not, out of cowardice, I do not think, but because we somehow knew, as if recalling a dream, that it was not so, that we had not done so, that we had lived all this before, and our adventure did not end thus.

  The boy Jon was weeping when at last the door opened, and there was only darkness beyond it, and we both sensed that something stood there, waiting for us to venture out.

  Somehow, all I could see for the moment were his pale hands, floating in the darkness.

  II

  I saw my own hands, floating, like pale paper cut-outs on a black stream. I saw them through eyes other than my own, as if awakening into another man’s dream.

  My master and I stood on either side of the open doorway, swords drawn. Nothing happened. Nothing stirred. The whole castle was now utterly silent, but for a subtle wind issuing through the corridors and halls, like a deep and distant sighing.

  Like the soft breath of God, turning in his sleep. And I was greatly afraid then, for if God were asleep, no one could save us now from whatever danger we faced.

  At my master’s word, we two rushed through the doorway, probing the darkness with our swords. Metal scraped on the stone walls.

  Then there was a faint light, almost a trick of the eye more than something actually seen. A hunched shape, moving away from us, a voice muttering the same phrase over and over again.

  “You! Stop!” my master said, barely above a whisper but loud enough in that echoing gloom.

  But the other did not stop, and when we cornered him, as the corridor turned sharply, there was an altercation, and I felt my blade sliding between ribs. Warm blood splashed over my hand. My master’s shoulder shoved against me as he too thrust with his sword; and then we held a dying man in our arms as we made our way, awkwardly down a flight of stairs in total darkness, into the feasting hall where we had dined earlier.

  A few embers smoldered in the fireplace, giving faint light.

  We laid him down on the hearth.

  He muttered the same phrase over and over again, in Greek, “Kyrie eleison…” Lord have mercy.

  It was Father Gregorias.

  I looked up at my master, with hopeless despair in my heart.

  “We have murdered a man of God!”

  “He was no more a man of God than you are!”

  “But, but …I don’t understand.”

  “I think I am beginning to,” my master said.

  I thought I was beginning to also. I thought I knew, or remembered, or dreamed, that the Castle of the Chronophagos, the Eater of Hours, Devourer of Time, was like an endless, dark labyrinth, from which no one who had entered there could ever escape, for once our days and hours, our lives have been taken by the Chronophagos, the Chronophagos may rehearse them over and over in memory like lines from an old song, or a half-forgotten prayer, while we must drift helplessly like paper cutouts on a black stream.

  III

  My only thought was to get away, from my crimes, from my various adventures, and if it suited me to be a man of God for a time, so be it. I had many names, more than I could remember, one of them Gregorias…but, no, Gregorias died on the hearth amid the ashes, his guts ripped out by those two oafs, the Breton knight and the pretty boy I thought to carry away, because Erec de whatever-the-hell had no idea what a pretty boy was good for, being, himself, despite his own long litany of black deeds, as innocent as a pale, new-borne babe.

  Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy. So I made my way out of the feasting hall, groping down another flight of stairs, past the marble alcoves shaped like hands, where candles had burned out, leaving the cold air stale with the scent of their burning.

  Would the daylight never come? Would this night never end?

  Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy.

  Outside in the courtyard, all the horses were gone except mine.

  So the bastards had run off. How chivalrous of them, to leave a horse for their old comrade, who knew their sins and could perhaps absolve them.

  Was Gregorias ever really a priest? Who could remember? Who gave a damn? Surely we were all damned.

  I rode, in the darkness, through that black and dripping forest, the only sounds being the wet thudding of my horse’s hooves, and then, after a time, there seemed to be no sound at all, only effortless, helpless motion, as I rode, and came to a turning-place, and turned, and turned again, and circled in the darkness, and came, once, face-to-face with all my companions on the muddy path, in the middle of the night that would not end, that would never end. I knew that much now, for I was beginning to understand, remembering how Gregorias had fled, and turned away from his companions who had betrayed hi
m, and fled again, turning every way, for hours without end, in darkness without end, until I found myself, again, inside the castle from which I had departed, as if I had never departed, and once more those two half-wits chased me down the corridor and slid their swords into me and carried me down onto the warm, filthy hearth to die.

  IV

  The priest was dead. Nevertheless, he sat at table with us as we feasted on cold meats. I remember him being there, with us, feasting, as no ghost could. Perhaps it was before he died. Perhaps even time was out of sequence, like pages in a book, misbound.

  I, having no name at all, sat beside Ulrich Bloody-Axe and considered my own course, whom I might take as an ally and allow to accompany me in my escape.

  Even as I remembered riding in that forest, away from the castle, around and around in the darkness, until all paths inevitably led back to the castle, and we, like doomed men, dismounted and filed one by one up the stairs, past the marble hands with their smoldering candles, into the feasting-hall, where Father Gregorias sat with us and dismissed all talk of ghosts, discoursing instead about the Chronophagos, which, he said, was a remote cousin to the medusae, but far older, a thing made of living stone, out of the stone flesh of which this castle and the surrounding forest had grown, like hair from the head of a man who lies alive but sleeping in the ground for countless centuries; a thing older than Satan, about whom Satan had much to say; some monstrosity that fell from the unimaginably remote depths of the sky long before the birth of Adam; that which lay dreaming and waited until the stars moved in their courses to announce the world’s last night, when it would be so gorged with dreams and with the stolen lives and memories of men that it would awaken to break the Earth apart in its hands as a man might crush an eggshell.

  That’s what Gregorias said, and he was dead.

  Later, Ulrich and I rose from troubled sleep and made our way out into the corridor, into the darkness, where we battled stone giants, ancient warriors turned to stone yet still alive, the days of their lives having been devoured by the Chronophagos. Now they were mere dreams given form by the sleeping monster, and we battled them, breaking our swords and our axes upon them, until stone hands seized us by our throats, crushing the life out of us both.

  Father Gregorias, awakening suddenly from some half-remembered nightmare, sat up on the ash-strewn hearth. He put his hand to his throat, remembering it crushed, and to his gut, where the sword went in.

  He, who was dead, remembered us.

  Christ have mercy.

  But we were not godly men, any of the company of twelve.

  V

  …and I awoke, to tear the world to pieces.

  The boy Jon, he of the almost luminous, pale hands and face was beside me. We heard shouting in the corridor outside, the sound of metal striking on stone, curses, cries of pain.

  “If we were brave men,” I said, “we would go out and assist our comrades, and die alongside them rather than hide from combat.”

  “But the world has enough heroes already,” said Jon.

  And I remembered all that he was going to say, as if we were rehearsing a litany we already knew.

  “If we were godly men,” I said, “we would pray to Christ for forgiveness for our many sins, for his power alone may lead us out of the darkness into which we, like all men, have fallen.”

  “Father Gregorias said the same thing at table.”

  “Yes, he did.”

  “Did you believe it?”

  We knelt, holding our swords before us like crosses, as men who dedicate themselves to the Crusade often do, and we prayed that all our sins might be washed away in the blood of our foes, that we might emerge triumphant for the glory of God, but as we prayed, Jon wept, and it was then that some answer came to me, enlightenment from within my own memory.

  I saw him as a child, still, and innocent. I remembered him as a child, barefoot, muddy, playing at his mother’s feet in some dank hovel like a tomb. I was that child too. He and I were the same, which meant that his sins and mine were shared, and I saw that his sins were not very great. Not yet.

  It was a strange feeling, something I, in all my tens of thousands of years of sleeping in the earth, had never before experienced.

  We rose, swords in hand, and went out the door, into the darkness.

  Someone shuffled away from us, muttering a Greek phrase over and over. Jon would have pursued. I caught him by the shoulder and said, “No, wait.”

  “Wait?”

  “Put your sword away,” I said, and, bewildered, he sheathed it. “Jon, I want you to leave this place. You alone shall escape and tell our tale. No more fighting for you.”

  “I cannot desert you, Lord,” he said.

  “Don’t call me that. I release you from whatever oaths may bind you. Go!”

  “How is it possible? You know it is not.”

  “If I create a diversion, the Chronophagos will not notice when you get away. If but a single morsel falls from his table.”

  “I would stay with you, my master. It is what a true knight would do.”

  I took him by both his shoulders, turned him around, and shoved him away from me, into the corridor down which Father Gregorias had fled. “If I’m your master, then I command you. Obey for once. It’s what a true knight would do. Go! Save yourself, boy, because I wish it. Go!”

  I think that long ago, before things went so terribly wrong, when we two dedicated ourselves to God and God’s holy Crusade and were filled with high-sounding ideals like flies buzzing inside our heads, I had thought to be as a father to him.

  That we two had once loved one another, as brothers, as comrades, even as we loved and dedicated ourselves to God was the incomprehensible mystery at the heart of all mysteries.

  We had fallen so very far into the darkness. Now he alone had a chance to get out. My parting gift to him, and to God.

  When he had gone, or when I had at least managed to lose him in the darkness, I ventured forth, sword in hand, groping my away into the very heart of the castle, drawn by my own mounting instinct of dread, turning again and again in the direction I feared most. I remember doing battle with warriors of stone. I remember many deaths, including my own, my several deaths, my thousand deaths, the deaths of more than a dozen rogue knights and hangers-on, but of actual heroes, the oldest of whom fought alongside Achilles. Even then the Chronophagos lay ancient and dreaming in the earth, having fallen from the stars.

  I remember how it ended, how I emerged, like one awakening from a dream, into a vast chamber in the heart of the castle, deep down, I think, in the core of the Earth, which is like a sphere within a sphere within a sphere. I passed through realms of stone and ice and fire, and suffered many torments and many deaths, yet, sword in hand, I came to a great hall, which was also a cavern, made of black ice, yet lurid with heatless fires. There, seated at table were numerous men, Ulrich Bloody-Axe and Jehan the French knight and Father Gregorias, and so many more, even those who had marched to battle alongside Achilles. I searched among their company, and was relieved at last to discover that the boy Jon, who had been my squire and companion in my adventures, was not there. I sat down among strangers, whose dreams and memories I already shared.

  Then she who presided over the feast bade us eat and drink, and we did so.

  At the head of the table, upon a dais, was set a throne, whereon sat a queen, clad all in white, her exquisite face pale like a luminous paper cutout adrift on a black stream, her eyes grey, her hair, it seemed, stirring slightly of its own accord like the serpent-hair of the ancient medusae.

  I rose from my place, sword in hand.

  I leapt boldly onto the dais. No one made to stop me, even as I seized her by the living, wriggling hair.

  “Are you the Chronophagos?” I demanded.

  She smiled at me, revealing nothing. In her eyes there was no expression at all.

  I struck off her head, and her body collapsed like a thing of dust and crumpled paper, and I held my sword in one hand, nothi
ng in the other.

  I felt the blade pass though my own neck, then. Some ruffian had struck off my head while asking ridiculous questions.

  “Come and I will show you,” someone said.

  I beheld another dais at the other end of the table, and another throne, on which sat an ancient king, his face more lined and weary with age that it is possible to describe or imagine, his tattered, dusty robes like cerements, his crown of gold so pale it was almost the color of bone.

  Only his eyes were alive, with a kind of fire.

  I made my way through the company of the feasting heroes, through them, as child might pass a stick through the swirling mass of darker mud he has stirred up from the bottom of a still pool.

  He heard their thousand voices, like a whispering tide.

  I remembered them all.

  I descended into another void, the space within space, the core within core, into the earth where a great stone thing lay dreaming, its form shaped only by human fancies into something describable at all, something with serpentine hair or the face of a king or a queen or the knight called Ulrich Bloody Axe, but not like that at all. Not really.

  Its vast mouth gaped wide. My guide and I floated within like inhaled motes of dust. We walked through long, dark, winding corridors, through a labyrinth I knew would never end. We came to a feasting hall, and I, who had been called Erec of Brittany and Ulrich and Father Gregorias, and who had marched to war with Achilles and who reigned now, in darkness, as an ancient and weary king, I sat down on my throne and watched the ghosts of warriors feasting, and listened as a company of twelve knights arrived at my gate, having lost their way.

  I closed my eyes, and contemplated the incomprehensible stone face which had fallen from the stars and lay in the earth. It opened its eyes, and they were mine, and I looked out through all my memories and accumulated, stolen dreams, and understood that I was the Chronophagos.

  I felt one small satisfaction, that Jon was not there.