Gathered Dust and Others

by W. H. Pugmire

  XVI.

  He approached the Cyclopean building and drank its quality of bizarrerie, entranced by the wisps of thick mist with which the building was sheathed. Lifting his eyes, he peered through the eye-openings of his mask and studied the black tower at the building’s height, which had not been repaired from the storm damage that had resulted in the destruction of the church steeple. A back door, unlocked, led him into a spacious cellar that was crowded with many disfigured and discarded statues of what he supposed were saints. They were a motley assembly now, with hands pressed together in prayer beneath faces that had in many cases been shattered by some degree of violence. He climbed the worn wooden steps that took him upward, pushing aside the cobwebs with which the cellar was festooned. Reaching the ground floor, Koffen ignored the impulse to check out the nave and sanctuary and found the spiral staircase that took him up to what he imagined to be the bell tower. He absentmindedly noticed that this section of the building was free of grime and spider mesh, and he wondered why the temperature so increased as he climbed. Now and then he passed by murky windows, through which he glanced so as to view the hill on which he had an apartment from which, in twilight’s violet half-light, he could see the church and its ruined tower. He could see nothing now except a vague hint of blurring points of electric light in the distance.

  He reached at last the tower room, a space of fifteen square feet of five walls, and on each wall there was an austere lancet window, the glass of which was so sooty that he could not see through them. On a table near the entranceway he found an antique oil lamp that lacked its glass chimney, and it thrilled him, as he struck a match and touched its flame to the wick, to see that the old thing still functioned and contained fuel. In the middle of the room stood an irregularly angled stone pillar four feet in height, on which had been chiseled curious alien hieroglyphs. On this pillar rested an obsidian statuette of a figure that seemed attired in Egyptian fashion and donned a nemes headcloth such as was worn by Pharaohs. Peculiarly, the figurine had no face. He ran a finger against the smooth surface that lacked visage, and realized that he had left his scarlet gloves at the courtyard’s fountain.

  Koffen went to the place where a small bookcase leaned, set down his lantern and Miss Rableau’s book. He frowned at the titles of the tomes he found there on the leaning bookcase, weighty volumes that coated his naked hands with debris when he picked them up. Most of the titles, such as the Liber Ivonis and De Vermis Mysteriis defied his comprehension – but one, the Cultes des Goules, had sinister connotations. None of these or the other books on the shelves were in languages that he knew, and so, having retrieved his oil lamp and the woman’s book, he turned away from the nameless library and glanced at the high conical ceiling. He wondered why someone had fastened, to two crossbeams above the stone pillar, a series of seven spheres that hung over the figurine; and he did not like the way his eyes lost their focus as he peered at those iridescent globes that caught the refraction of the light from his lantern. Why was the air of the confined room so humid? He did not like the silence of the place, and so he opened The Stairway in the Crypt and found a page from which to read aloud. He could feel his warm breath hit the hide of his mask and return into his mouth; but his words arose, to the seven spheres of queer radiance, which began to hum as almost indiscernible threads of lightning shot between them.

  Thunder sounded outside the tower chamber, and with it came the smell of storm. He held his lantern’s glow to one of the tall, lean windows and frowned at the opaque soot with which that window was covered – for the view afforded if he could have looked through it would have been interesting. He touched a hand to the thick glass and shivered, for unlike the hot room the glass was frigid, unnaturally so. Inclining to the window, he blew his breath upon it and grimaced as the place his hot inhalation touched grew darker still. And then he saw the hazy semblance on that pane of murky glass – the smudge that took on form and became what he first mistook for the reflection of his feminine mask. But when the icon smiled, he sensed that it was other than his false veneer, and when it spoke his name he was certain. That sound was accompanied with another peal of thunder, and he bent momentarily so as to set lantern and book upon the clean floor of the haunted room.

  He rose and saw that the image on the window’s dusky glass watched him still. How enticing, her mesmeric mouth. How evocatively she murmured his name, like some bewitching lover. How inviting, the mirrored maw. How could he refrain from touching his lips to hers? Yet the moment he did so, he realized his error, as his mouth cemented to the ebon window, through which his essence was sucked into the void.

  XVII.

  I climbed the stony snow-enshrouded steps that led up the incline of Kingsport’s hillside burying ground. Frigid air stung my ears, but I did not mind; for in this quiet place I found solace and escape. I was alone in the place as I climbed to the apex and looked down upon the sleepy seaport town, over the roofs that huddled all around, and the small-paned windows that lit up, one by one, as twilight deepened into dusk. There was no moon, but the gulf of night was a blanket of sparkling stars. It was as I watched those stars that I noticed the dark ethereal form that crept across the sky. I caught my breath and felt afraid, for I had seen this shape in troubled dreaming – a daemon that spun like a hungry thing as it coiled nearer to my eyes and stole their light. I shut my eyes and tried to ease my breathing, and when I scanned the skies again I saw that the daemon had altered in shape and was beginning to break apart. It was a cloud above me, nothing more. And I knew in that instant that there were no deities of rarest air, that such things existed merely in the songs of poets, in the ranting of lunatics and fools. There was nothing but this plot of death, and its quietude, and the unyielding ground on which I stood, as implacable as mundane reality.

  The Boy with the Bloodstained Mouth

  I saw him in the smoky room, leaning against the pockmarked wall, indifferent to the noise and fumes. His thick dark glasses hid his eyes. I do not think he wore them for any reason of fashion; rather, I think they were meant to conceal his eyes. Oh, how I longed to gaze into those secret eyes. Ah, what revelations might there be revealed, in the eyes of a beautiful boy? He turned his face to mine, and I felt certain that he had noticed my fascinated attention. He smiled as he studied me. Flames of mad desire consumed my weary soul.

  I went to him.

  His hair was chaos, a mess of black and crimson rat tails that protruded from pale scalp.

  His mouth was stained with wet red blood.

  Oh, that crimson liquid! How it gleamed in the misty blue light of the place. It clutched my soul.

  My fingers caressed his brow, the flesh of which was like ice. He took my hand in his. Leaning to him, I kissed his lips.

  I kissed the boy with the bloodstained mouth. I felt nothing as our lips met, no rush of desire, no flame of ecstasy. And when I backed away, I gasped in confusion. His expression had not altered; but his mouth, clean and unstained, mocked me horribly.

  And when I licked my lips, I screamed with awful horror.

  The Woven Offspring

  My brother Alexander and I were not native-born of Sesqua Valley, but we had dwelt within her haunted shadow since infancy; we knew her well. My brother had always been a wild, unruly beast, much like his father before him. Before father’s early death, he and Alex would often visit the poisoned patch of land near Mount Selta, the place that feels too deeply the shadow of the twin-peaked mountain. After father’s suicide, my brother would vanish for days at a time, and I knew from the lingering shadows in his eyes that he had been to that site where diseased shadow crept into his pulsing heart and altered his sanity. I loved my brother dearly, but ours was a relationship built on pain.

  We watched our native-born friends leave the valley when they came of age, so as to journey to other places and learn the secrets of the world. I had no desire to leave the land, and I felt a sense of panic when, in his twenty-third year, Alexander announced that he would be leaving so
as to spend time away from home. He was gone for months, during which time I had no word from him. Although he was now a man, he acted so like a child, obstinate and with his mental cache of secrets. I was not, then, surprised when he suddenly returned to Sesqua Valley; but what startled me was that he was not alone, having brought with him a young man named Thomas. Despite his new friend’s youth, Thomas had about him an authentic and profound world-weariness. An aspect of pain haunted the lad’s beautiful face, and I knew the origin of the needle marks on his arms. To see those same marks on my brother’s arm caused me to tremble with subdued hysteria. I knew that I could say nothing, and when Alex begged for money, I gave it to him. He and Thomas would leave the valley for a day or two, and then return with more of the stuff that dulled their mental misery.

  Thomas had been a victim of the world’s cruelty, but my brother’s “suffering” was not authentic. His madness gave him no pain; he was merely playing a part so as to impress his beautiful lover. But Thomas was not fooled; he had lived too long among the genuine victims of heartless society. The young man loved my brother, I suppose, and was certainly amused by him. However, his real passion was for heroin. He would sometimes show me a lump of the dirty substance, trying to tempt me to join their ecstasy of habit. I was never enticed. The sight of that dry and filthy poison turned my stomach. I found Thomas, one evening, sitting alone on one of the stone benches in our back garden. His shockingly beauteous grey eyes were glazed, and I knew that he was, as he phrased it, “smacked out.” He was gazing unblinkingly at the silver moon. The long sleeves of his black shirt hid the scars on his arms. I sat next to him.

  “I love how the moon looks over this valley, Alma.” His low voice spoke in whispered words. “Over the city the moon looks so dead and ugly, kind of mocking. I hate it, hate how it watches me and sneers. But here, damn, it’s awesome; so silver and majestic. Look at how those soft beams drift to the mountain, at how the white stone seems to drink them in. So cool.” Without thinking I ran my fingers through his thick hair. He took my hand and brought it to his mouth. I trembled at his tender kiss. “Your brother’s crazy, Alma.”

  “I know.”

  He shrugged. “It’s cool. I like crazy. I like Alex, but he’s into some weird shit. He’s giving me an education. Funny, though, I can’t seem to shake off this weird feeling of doom.” He tried to laugh, as if making a joke, until he saw my expression. I took his hand and touched it to my mouth, kissing the stains on his fingers.

  “Not to worry, Thomas. I’ll look after the both of you.” Yet even as I spoke the words I shivered with chilly uncertainty. I, too, had a sense of foreboding.

  A few weeks later the disaster struck. I heard from my bedroom window someone weeping in the garden. Looking out, I saw Alexander lamenting over the body of his friend. I fled my room and rushed to my brother’s aid, but he pushed me away violently. I sank to bended knee and stared at the vomit on which the boy had choked to death, his face now resting in its squalid pool. My bones began to shake as Alexander wailed in woe.

  We buried Thomas in the burying ground where outsiders to the valley are interred. Alex seemed lost and more unhinged than ever, and I realized for the first time how much his love for the city lad had meant to him. He began to spend much time in the old brick tower which serves as athenaeum for Simon Gregory William’s extraordinary collection of arcane lore. It was a place that Alex had visited with father when our mad sire lived. Against better judgment, I stepped one moonless night through the tower’s threshold and climbed the worn stone steps to its spacious circular room. I could hear my brother’s uttered chanting. I found him sitting in a circle of candlelight, a book of magick in his lap. I watched as he sliced with ritual knife the flesh of his palm, etching into the ripped flesh an alchemical signal that he copied from a chart in the book before him. Quietly, I hunkered to the floor and shuddered at the expression on his face, at his twitching lips, at the heavy glaze of his eyes.

  “What are you doing, brother?”

  “Hush! Can you hear it?” He waved his bloody hand toward the woodland that surrounded the timeworn edifice. “The trees breathe uneasily tonight.” He held his hand to me and chuckled. “We’re in luck. The Old Ones smile on us, granting boon. Say his name with me, girl. Thomas, Thomas, Thomas.” I rose on shaky limbs and vacated the place. Leaning against a heavy tree, I wept in darkness as valley wind rose in power. Beneath the noise of storm I thought I detected father’s mocking laughter.

  Afterward, Alexander began to sit in the garden at evenings, knitting needles in hand, a ball of yellow yarn in his lap. I could hear his whispered mantra carried to me on the wind. Occasionally he would dig with one needle into the symbol carved on his palm, and then hold that palm to heaven and bring a strand of dark hair to it. I watched as he drenched the hair with his gore. I listened as he spoke his lover’s name. Finally, one evening, I went out to the garden and observed his ritual. I was surprised by his kind smile. The ball of yarn lay next to him on the bench, and in his hand he held a thick strand of human hair. Seeing me stare at that hair, he giggled. “It’s amazing what a little corpse hair can accomplish.” Leaning to me, he thrust the hair beneath my nostrils. “It smells of him, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes.” He took it from me and picked up the thing he had been making, his doll of yellow yarn. I saw the strands of bloodstained hair that had been twined into the tiny thing. “I’m weaving a conjuration of memory, sister. I’ll share it with you once it’s completed. You loved him too, I know.”

  I stared into his moonlit eyes and did not recognize the one before me. Seeming to sense my distress, his eyes grew wild. Suddenly, he held one of the knitting needles threateningly before my eye. A low growl issued from some deep place in his throat. And then his body convulsed and contorted. Madly, he stabbed the needle into his stained palm. Gasping, crying, he held that hand to starlight and chanted again and again his dead one’s name. I saw the moon’s refracted light darkened in my brother’s eyes, and so I raised my eyes to heaven and watched the purple clouds that formed before that satellite of dust, as Alexander’s chanting seemed to echo in the gulf of night. And then I heard my brother’s cry, and looked on him with horror as he jabbed the needle’s point into his neck, savagely, repeatedly, until he dangled on his knees like some frail puppet. I tried to catch him as he tilted in death, but horror had weakened me and so I let him fall to earth as his blood bedewed my garments.

  I could not moan or move, and so I sat in heavy silence until I heard, faintly, one peculiar whisper of sound. I sensed weird movement on the earth, next to one of my brother’s hands – the hand that had held his woven representation. It moved there, in the unearthly mixture of light and darkness that fell from the muttering sky; and then one mauve moonbeam fell upon it, and I crept nearer so as to watch and smell it, the little idol of yarn and blood and dead man’s hair. I watched it raise one tiny arm toward the sky, weakly, as it trembled like some hatchling fallen from a nest. The words that were repeated, vaguely, in the sky seemed to form like images within my mind, and I could feel them spill from my brain to my mouth. Reaching for the needle, I pulled it from its place deep within my brother’s neck. I touched that needle’s point to nose and mouth, so as to savor carnage. I plunged that needle, at last, into the thing of yarn that writhed before me on the earth, and I laughed as it shuddered with increase of sentience.

  Yes, my brother, I had loved the city lad; and so I removed the needle from the woven thing and lifted the nameless eikon with my smooth and bloodstained hands. I brought it to my mouth and breathed hot living aether onto it. And I will tend to it, my brother, as you might have done in saner moments had you not perished. I will nourish it with blood and magick, and care for it for all my numbered midnights.

  The Tangled Muse

  I.

  Sebastian Melmoth lounged on his divan as Max Romp peered at him and sketched impressions onto a pad. The smoke from Sebastian’s opium-tainted cigarette
rose in whorls that shaped themselves suggestively before his large face; and as he studied their cryptic designs his mouth curled as if to suggest some secret amusement in his mind, and then his breath of laughter pushed the haze away.

  “I confess that I’m a bit anxious about your portrait, Max. Your caricatures are so cruelly honest, so offensively true-to-life. They show a distinct want of imaginative exaggeration. You hold your mirror up too close to Nature.”

  Ada Artemis stood beside a bronze statue of Bast and admired its inlaid blue-glass eyes. Her eyes were of a clear and almost-colorless grey; Sebastian had often complained that such eyes contained no secrets, that nothing could be hidden within such pellucid organs. A woman of few words, she silently watched the scene before her as her hand stroked the surface of the goddess.

  Max set down his pen and pad and went to a table on which there was a decorative decanter of sherry. Carefully, he filled a delicate glass with the wine and sipped, and then he walked to where a full-length portrait of a beautiful young man sat on an upright easel. “The same can’t be said for this, Sebastian. No one could really be that beautiful. Where did you find it?”