The King in Yellow Tales: Volume 1

by Joseph S. Pulver

  bloody, ropy untidiness with a blackthorn shillelagh, screaming NONE SHALL KNOW THE

  MINUTE, THE HOUR, until a gang of English labourers tear him to pieces and play foot-ball

  with his smiling head.

  :Three thousand miles gone, in old New York, at the Eighty-Seventh Precinct, every man jack in

  every holding cell falls under the fire of service pistols held, by things once cops that shoot each

  other too. Their fire is accurate and continuous. Their hands are, after all, still trained.

  :herdFEAR. Brownian movement. Neanderthalers into the sea.

  :Rivers of rats flow in streets.

  :Caged budgies ram themselves against the bars of their gilded cages.

  Crime.

  And there is no lifeboat…

  ~*~

  Trees, robust and green hours ago, drop their, now, yellow and brown leaves...

  Jungle foliage is sacked by a bitter darkening of autumnal frost...

  ~*~

  Everywhere: greyness… and—

  ~*~

  Warning bells find ears. Grief-stricken shoulders rattle. In Salzburg, a boy attuned to dark poetics and the abnormal hallucinations of dementia praecox, the son of Tobias and Maria Trakl, sees the black warwings of winter night… and cries…

  ~*~

  The new face of the Moon has changed all creatures. No longer gentle the tides roil. Oceanic waves and cold lake surge and boil. And ALL the creatures of the black deeps have now come to the surface, jumping, ROILING in the affray! And they rock and they rock, and roll in gestures wild, tear and bite each other—as if some new instinct has claimed anything that could calculate or intuit. Some insane death dance had overtaken everyone and everything...

  ~*~

  Shark and spermwhale, giant squid and pike, are attacked by schools of tiny fish attack, schools

  that were colorful or blue are now yellow, the identical yellow hue as the new face of the Moon. In the Serengeti a blackened sky of vultures descends on a small village. They tear at wall and roof, falling upon the hot blood cowering within...

  ~*~

  The King’s sigil, His Yellow Sign, the new face of the Moon, is flashing. Yellow rays beam toward

  Earth—

  Clocks

  and science stop.

  :Steam engines and the intensities and habits of Faith

  fail.

  :Pumps and pulleys and gears cease their motions.

  A hellstar-caterwauling covers the Earth. Windows and plates and crystal and every form of breakable everywhere shatter...

  Earth

  is beset

  by avalanches

  and

  shaken

  by earthquakes...

  In every forest, desert and field, bears and llama and beef creature are attacked by flocks of birds

  :some ten and ten and ten thousand thick,

  insects—beetle and ant and wasp shoulder to shoulder—mass

  (rising, flying, CASCADE—SEIZURE, buzzing)

  to

  consume tiger and rhino and kangaroo, coyote and rattler,

  and

  each other...

  And fear-driven, men tear men limb from limb...

  Hitched to frenzy, many, with gun and blade, or in the case lower creatures without tools, leap from the heights of despair or drown themselves, put an end to their own life.

  All is as the harsh mistress Luna commands…

  Even the beams and particles and coronal-ejected cloud of electrons, ions, and atoms, of the sun are modified by her—HIS!—influence—

  ~*~

  Still pinned to his bird’s-eye view of hell, Deniston, trembling with rage and other destabilizing

  emotions, is in tears.

  Behind him, as if from nowhere, Captain Castaigne, now, touched by a gnawing “mental code” ticking in his cortex, rattles his saber.

  “Major Alden Castaigne,” he croaks. “Knight of the Imperial Dynasty of America...”

  Deniston listens to the saber rattle, turns to see Castaigne’s arm come up stiffly and jerkily. Like a robot, he has time to think. There comes the sound of a cold, ill wind that heralds a very long winter.

  Exhausted and ruptured by the attrition of strange alterations, even the flow of his grief now frail, Michael Deniston understands there is no doorstep to farther along, no feel a whole lot better survives this landscape. Part of a line from Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy, ‘. . . we are furiously carried . . .’, floods his mind as he raises his hand to wipe his cheek.

  ~*~

  His troubled head rolls…

  Afterword

  On the Lake of Hali

  by Pete Rawlik

  I have this recurring dream; at least I think it’s mine.

  I’m on the wharf; it’s made of stone, the waves crashing against it, the wind whipping through my hair and around my coat. Above an immense castle looms, all towers and parapets, stretching into the foggy sky. Two suns smolder beyond the haze, but do little more than cast shadows through the gloom. Some birds float on the cold wind, calling with voices that are disturbingly human. At the end of the quay is a small boat, her paint long since gone, the hull that queer, grey, metallic color that wood seems to get after years of exposure to salt water. Her captain is a dour man, though given his occupation, and the malaise that comes with it, such an attitude can be expected. He sits on the boat waiting for me, watching me; he has a hungry and eager look about him. The castle is Carcosa, the waters are the Lake of Hali, and I’m waiting for the man who’s in charge.

  The man with the walrus mustache and the tattered brimmed hat comes out of the castle from some door I cannot see. He moves down the weathered coquina stairs that lead to the wharf, to the lake. The shell rock masonry looks pink, at least to me, the walrus, JP, says its yellow, but he suffers from a sort of visual impairment, he sees yellow everywhere. As he reaches the water the stairs give way to the quay of the same material that juts into the lake. The surface is slick with oil and grease; rainbows of chemical waste undulate as the waves move across the surface and crash against the side of the wharf and castle. JP sniffs and says “Smells like shite.” I chuckle and nod; mostly because JP himself reeks so strongly of nicotine and tea that I’m surprised he can smell anything else.

  As we walk down the quay we attract the attention of a flock of ragged and worn gulls. The foul creatures swarm around us, screeching for attention. They are a whirlwind of feathers, and JP casually flips them off as he cups his hands around a match and lights another cigarette. His image as a tough guy sustained.

  “You do realize you're dreaming?” I remind him. “You’re asleep back at home, in Burrlin.” I entertain the possibility that this is not my dream, but his.

  He takes a long drag and blows smoke into the breeze coming in off the ocean. “Do you have a point, or ya just flapping your gums?”

  I point to the cigarette, “You don’t need that here.”

  He takes another long drag. “The craving is purely psychological.” The smoke billows out of his mouth. “I’ll make a deal with you. You quit drinking and I’ll quit smoking.”

  I snort and toss my head back at the ridiculous suggestion. As I do, I catch a glint of light reflecting back from one of the upper parapets. The ghost of Karl Edward Wagner, a cigarette in one hand and glass of bourbon in the other, stares out of the window. JP is haunted by the man, by his memory, by what he did in such a short period of time. How with so little he contributed so much, to Carcosa, and the Weird.

  The boat captain, Grayce, stumbles down the walkway to meet us. “Gentlemen,” he says, knowing full well we are nothing of the sort. “Are you prepared to make proper compensation?” He hands me a knife and I slice my palm with a quick deep cut, and then turn away. There are lapping noises, and his tongue is rough, but the ordeal is over quickly and when he is finished he hands me a square of cloth to wrap around the wound.

  JP and I find seats in the stern; fight
ing chairs adorned with stirrups, leather straps, and corroded buckles. The captain casts the lines free and pushes us away. Once in the cockpit he curses as the engine grinds and struggles to sputter to life. With a cough of black oily smoke we jerk forward, maneuver away from the quay and find our heading. We head west, away from the castle, idling around rocks and shoals. Schools of pale thin fish dance in our wake and are joined by a pair of dorado, all green fins, flashing gold sides and wide jaws full of teeth. They all break off as we pass through the inlet and enter the Lake of Hali. The turbulent, roiling waters are dark and full of silt. Gulls continue their screeching, trying to get our attention, trying to distract us. We won’t be distracted. We have a destination and a course, we only needed the boat, and a man to steer her. The birds can squawk all they want; they won’t dissuade us from our journey. We clear the breakwater and move out into the great lake. The surface is calm and still, glassy like a mirror, it reflects back the sky and the weak suns above.

  Captain Grayce consults his compass and his charts and calls both I and JP to his side. “Are you sure about this Messrs.? Where you want to go, the maps say there is nothing there.”

  I look at JP and he looks at me and nods. I give him a look and he silently prods me on. “We were in the library; we found a book, an old atlas that described a small island, little more than a sandbar with a few trees, there, where your charts say there is nothing. We want to be sure. We want to know, one way or the other.”

  Grayce nods. “This lost island, does it have a name?”

  I close my eyes and sigh. “In the atlas the spot is marked as the Island of Nightmares.”

  “The Island of Nightmares,” his look was one of resigned incredulity. “So of course you two want to go there. Find a spot and make yourself comfortable, this will take some time.”

  It took longer than any of us thought it would. JP takes the time to talk about his latest project. I tell him about mine. He suggests that I steal a trick from Ginsburg, and another from Brautigan. I mention Caspary and Kersh, but he just smiles. “Use the tools you have, but always make room for more.”

  The suns were low on the horizon when we sighted the sandy slash tufted with a small cluster of green. There were wispy traces of smoke rising from the far end so we sailed for that, and found the island to be an arc, and therefore a kind of natural harbor. With great care we idled in, watching for rocks and shallows. Even so the soft put-put-put of our engine was enough to awaken the man who sat on the beach with a fishing pole. He wore a straw hat, a sun-faded shirt, and tattered shorts. His skin was bronzed and even from a distance you could tell his hair and beard had been unkempt for years.

  Grayce beaches the boat on a damp spit of sand and sends us on our way. He has no interest in coming with us; it was not his adventure but ours. Not his dream, but hopefully mine. We slog through the shallow water our bare feet digging into the cool sand, our shoes held against our chests. JP curses as a rogue wave crashes in and sends a jet of spray up our backs. All around us minnows dart through rippling pools and shorebirds scavenge through detritus for anything marginally edible. When we finally reach dry land, and leave the cool, moist sand behind for the hot powder it becomes once backed in the sun, the man on the beach has wandered down to greet us. He has drinks in his hand, mojitos in green glasses filled with ice. We don’t refuse.

  “You two are far off any beaten track, and a good ways out of the shipping lanes. What brings you here to my little refuge?”

  I smile. “We are dreamers, not great dreamers, not adepts, but dreamers none the less. We found an old atlas in the library at Carcosa, on the Lake of Hali, it shows this island, the Island of Nightmares. No other maps or charts show such a place. We felt obliged to come.”

  The castaway, for what else could I call him, shook his head. “The Atlasueno, the map book of dreams, it is a foul volume. I thought it destroyed five maybe six times, but it seems that dreamers simply keep imagining it back into existence.” He lets out a deep sigh. “What was it you were looking for when you found the book?”

  I chuckle and both JP and the castaway gave me a sly look. “We needed something to break up the monotony. We are dreamers, decadent dreamers, but our dreams have become commonplace and trivial. The world is more amoral, and more fantastically macabre than even we had dreamed possible. It seems that we have spun our tales of decadence too well. The world has embraced our malevolent oeuvre, and left us behind. We have become irrelevant, even the greatest of us, have become tired and tried. We sit on his thrones amidst the other great and self-indulgent like alabaster sphinxes, slathered in rouge and finery, waiting for someone who thinks he is more talented to come forth and pique our interest. We have waited for years now. Can you imagine? We didn’t wander through the library searching through its books because it was important; we did it because we were bored.”

  “You should have stayed at home.” The Castaway stares at me with those deep-set eyes and whispers through pursed lips. “There is something to be said for boredom, it at least means that you have the opportunity to do something, to become something greater than you currently are. Being bored means you are still alive.”

  JP reaches into his coat pocket and pulls out a pack of cigarettes. He taps one into position and smoothly lifts the pack to his mouth. The lone cigarette flares up and begins to smolder. He takes a deep drag and then cups his hand around the glowing stick and takes it down to his side. As he speaks his breath is visible smog, “Then why did you leave? Why did you abandon the throne?”

  In an instant the demeanor of the castaway changes, but if it was because I suddenly knew who he was, or because some spell had been broken, I wasn’t sure, the raggedy castaway was gone and in his place was the King, a Fisher King for sure, but nonetheless our King.

  He was our King, and he was laughing. “Do they still call me King? Is that how they remember me? Ha! I was never the King in Yellow! Do you think I could have born that crown? Do you think any man could? We are fit to wear the Pallid Mask, but that is but a modicum of the King’s power, a jigger of his might. Surely my name told you everything you needed to know about me? I wasn’t your King; I was simply the Chamberlain. I never expected my weird tales to amount to much.”

  “But they have done so. More than you could possibly know.” JP was almost pleading. “Your words, your world reach across the globe. They‘ve been translated into a dozen languages. Hordes of writers have flocked to your standard and taken up their pens to contribute their sensibilities to your own. You are famous, somewhat infamous. You’ve helped shape the world, and its dreams.”

  “Not dreams,” I sneer, “Nightmares. Understand this Chamberlain, your work, this thing you’ve built, for a while it lived in the shadow of something else, but no longer. It has emerged, blossomed, taken the world by sudden storm. This man,” I gesture towards JP, “he is your prophet. He is fascinated, obsessed with you and your creations. He is a dreamer, but more than that. He has come to live in your shadow, to dwell there, to revel in the ennui, and despair, and madness that is to be found there. He is a dark star, shining a pale gray illumination, attracting the broken and sickly things that cannot stand the true light. To ask him what he is, what he thinks of himself is to be perplexed. He claims to not be a poet, but he does not create in prose, not as we know it. The people, the things, the worlds he imagines are not built on pages following the laws that men have set down for words, for punctuation, for sentence structure, for paragraphs. If he is no poet, then he cannot claim to be a writer either. He is a sculptor, but his medium is the page, the text, the grammatical symbols and rules themselves.” I take a sip of the mojito. “He is Weird Fiction’s E.E. Cummings.”

  JP is looking at me like I’ve overstepped my bounds, like I’ve embarrassed him. I take another sip of my drink. “It’s my dream; I can say what I want.”

  The Chamberlain smiles, it is a wicked smile, pregnant with secrets about to be born. He opens his mouth and I close my eyes in fear, terrified
of what might be lurking within, of what might come pouring out. I turn to run, to grab JP and flee back across the beach. But JP is gone, not even a wisp of smoke, or a touch of nicotine remains. Then the island is gone, and with it the boat and her captain. I stand in a shallow sea, the moon and the stars reflecting back from the dark surface. I’m not sure where the Lake of Hali ends and the sky begins.

  Only the Chamberlain remains, whispering, caressing my tympanic membranes. “Would you be him?” My auditory canal fills with blood. “Would you have written Nightmare’s Disciple? Could you have been so bold to break the rules before anyone else? What of the caffeine-fueled, pyromaniacal road trip that is The Orphan Palace? Must the beats all be addicted to weed, or heroin, or alcohol? Can they take their inspiration from the flames? If you were there, could you have confirmed that Blood Will Have its Season, that Portraits of Ruin would have been painted, that SIN and ashes might have filled our eyes?”

  I’m crying now, because I’m close to the truth, I know it without being told. There is no need to tell me. I want it to stop, as if it did, that would make a difference. It is not my dream anymore, I suspect it never was.

  “Why do you dream these dreams? You weren’t even in A Season in Carcosa. He asked everyone else, but not you. An anthology of tales concerning the Yellow King filled with the best and the darkest, but not you. Still you dream this dream. What of Grimscribe’s Puppets? He left you out of that as well. Do you think that Shirley Jackson would have graced it if you had been included?”

  There was blood in my tears. “Old projects. Conceived and finalized before I had made my mark. Before I had put pen to page. Before he knew me.”

  That wicked smile again. “Keep telling yourself that, maybe someday you’ll believe it Mister Pike.” He uses my secret name. “Let me tell you the truth.” He comes close. I can feel his hot breath on my skin. His voice is low and melodic as his whispers reverberate against my skull, his words curling around the base of my brain.

  I scream, and wake screaming from the dream, from the nightmare. I stumble from the bed, cold sweat dripping from my head and back. There’s a pool of it still marinating the sheets. I sit at my desk and gag down the last swig out of a forgotten pint glass of lager. My hands are shaking. My eyes wild, my pupils dilated. I can see everything in such relief now. Now that I know the truth, now that the Chamberlain has removed all the veils and let me see beyond the Pallid Mask.