Burnt Black Suns: A Collection of Weird Tales

by Simon Strantzas

  I worked to keep the window between us while she took sideways steps, looking for an opening. The cables from the ceiling kept her grounded, but they also kept me from moving very far with any sort of protection. She was making a wet bray as she stalked toward me, and I knew I was running short of time—the howls of her pack were getting louder and louder—but I kept speaking quietly to her, kept tempting her forward. Each step she took left a bloodied footprint behind, and as she knocked computer equipment aside I prayed she didn’t do anything to damage it. When she was within six feet of me she stopped and went up onto her haunches. I could see that all the muscles in her body were so tightly tensed she was like a wound spring. She was getting ready to pounce, but all I could think about was how engorged her labia had become. I swallowed hard.

  I moved more by terrified reflex than anything else when she leapt. As soon as those muscles started to unfurl, time for me slowed to a crawl. I immediately stumbled backward, flailing my hands out in front of me. I managed through sheer luck to push the two-post rack over onto her, and as it fell she managed to leap into the portal and disappear from this world and into the next. The window continued to fall toward the floor and I braced for its impact, but it never came. Instead, the electric window hung a foot from the ground, its intact wires and cables breaking its fall. Then I heard wild howling and knew the pack had arrived.

  I reached up and started pulling any wire I could get my hands on, hoping to disconnect the window before those creatures could leap through. I could feel the cables giving handfuls at a time, but that sickening hum didn’t stop. I saw an arm appear from under the hanging window, an arm far larger and thicker than the one I’d seen on Thistle’s ghoul, and I knew I didn’t have a choice. I leapt over the fallen debris onto the back of the fallen two-post rack, adding my weight to it. The cables holding it up snapped immediately, and it and I crashed into the ground. The window shattered and I was thrown forward, hitting my head on the edge of one of the tables, knocking computer equipment to the ground. Everything went black for me then.

  When I awoke I knew two things: first, that I was still alive; second, that I wished I wasn’t. My head throbbed, and when I put my hand on it it came away covered in blood. I tried to stand, but the world was spinning way too fast and I had to sit again. At least, until the room slowed down. I looked around me at the destruction. A thick beastly arm lay cleanly severed at my feet amid broken glass and plastic. There was blood everywhere, some of it mine, and footprints across the concrete leading back to a broken door and some massacre beyond it. I’d made a clusterfuck of things again, and I had no idea how I was going to explain it away. Normally, I’d just leave, but there was no way my fingerprints weren’t all over the place, no doubt full of blood. My only solace was the knowledge that no one would be missing Dr. Thistle, which bought me a little time.

  I managed to crawl upstairs after a while and found a towel to hold against my bleeding head. The wound wasn’t as deep as I’d thought, and the crazy glue I found in one of the millions of boxes was enough to keep the wound shut without me having to go to the hospital for stitches. I crawled into the bathtub and turned on the cold water, then sat there for as long as I could, trying not to pass out. I didn’t think I had a concussion, but I wasn’t going to take the chance. I wasn’t crazy, despite what I kept telling myself.

  I’d had to do a lot of things in my life, but getting rid of a body was never one of them. I had a vague idea of what to do, and thankfully Dr. Thistle had all the tools I needed somewhere in his piles of clutter, but sawing through bone is a lot harder than it sounds. When I managed to get him down into enough manageable pieces, I put them and the severed arm into a black garbage bag and carried it over to a place I knew behind Greenwood Racetrack. It was the place you took things you wanted to forget about. Everybody knew that. Once I got back I cleaned the house as best I could and made some space for myself. I’d finally found a home. At least, for a little while. Until they shut the power off, at any rate.

  Beyond the Banks of the River Seine

  I have read all the books about that time, but they are all wrong. There is no one who knew Henri Etienne as I did, certainly no one in all Paris. We were both students at the Conservatoire, the finest musical school in all the world, where we had met in our first year and had become inseparable. The man people whisper of in the shadows of concert halls bears little resemblance to the boy I had once held dear. This is the way of things, I suppose. Few truly know those they idolize most. Perhaps, this is best.

  Henri and I were rivals over everything; two composers always at odds, albeit friendly odds. Or so it seemed to me. But I imagine it would, as I was his better in virtually every way. I do not mean for that to sound as vain as it must, but if this chapter—my final confessional—is to serve its purpose and cleanse my soul, then I must be completely honest. Compared to me, Henri was pale, destined for nothing more than performing in one of the small bars along the Left Bank where he might earn little more than enough to scrape by. It was not that he was unpracticed or undisciplined—he was the sort who put many long hours into honing and refining his craft—it was that his proficiency was never more than average, and his playing rote and unemotional. He was no better than the automaton I’d once seen at the Musée Grévin, one step above a music box with its carved wax fingers and clockwork piano. What I am trying to convey is that the boy was not in the same league as I, and that only made his company more charming to me.

  His sister, Elyse, was a different beast altogether. Never in all my years before or since have I laid eyes on a woman so near perfection that even the Almighty himself might be expected to cast a second glance. Elyse was a dream, an angel. And I wanted nothing as much as I did her. Wanted to feel her heat against me. Wanted to show her the sort of passion only a man on the verge of success might be able to provide. And yet, despite all my wooing, she remained resolute against me. I was not an ugly man—my mirror assured me of that—and I was not without means, so her dismissals were very much a surprise. They were illogical, based I was sure on no more than the whims of a woman, and they only made me want her more. I knew she must love me, and that it could only be for her brother’s sake that she refused to admit it.

  What charmed me most about Henri was his drive, his perseverance to best me at something, anything. He would take quite a ribbing from me in class and with friends, always second to my performances. Perhaps we were rough on him, kept his nerves raw, but it was only from love. I enjoyed having him with me. He could always be counted on for a humorous glower when I dared play the keys of his wounded pride. It seemed to motivate him, though, something for which he should have thanked me. Though perhaps not in retrospect.

  Because of our friendly rivalry, he would pore over every task, practice it incessantly, fixate on achieving the truer performance. Where I might play adagio, he would play presto. A quartet I had written would be countered with a minuet from him. Each work of mine was responded to, each with a fury of playing hitherto unknown to any of us who knew him. Henri’s hands would tremble before every performance, and even my laughter was not enough to calm him. “You mustn’t goad Henri, Valise,” his sister would plead, to which I would only laugh further. “It’s all in good fun,” I’d say, and her sweet porcelain face would twist, and then she would invariably spit at me. Is it any wonder I was so smitten? We would watch Henri play, and while the rest of the room focused on his dancing fingers I could not bear it. It pained me to see them drawing such lifeless notes from the ivory. Instead, I studied his face and the flop of hair that would slide over his brow moments into his performance; or at his flushed skin, sweated with concentration before reaching a boil as he wordlessly realized that what he was playing was a failure. In these instances, he would inevitably look to me and Elyse, and each time he did so I saw defeat had already claimed him. He would not stop playing, but it is a given that once doubt infects a performer’s mind, it spreads like a cancer. Inevitably, he would stumble, in an
increasingly tumultuous cascade of errors, ending in muted, polite applause. Often I would find him after these performances weeping discreetly. Forever soft as a lamb was my good old Henri.

  At the end of the day, though, my friendship with him was more important to me than anything else save my own career and, perhaps, his sister’s hand, and I did all I could to guide him by my example, providing him a bar by which he might measure himself. Once, while we celebrated too much the sale of one of my compositions, he drunkenly confessed that were he ever to best me, and were he to do so in front of Elyse, he might die a happy man. I treated it as the jest it surely was—with a laugh hearty enough to fill both our mouths. His glower did not falter, which only charmed me further. His sister, however, treated it with far more weight. “We can no longer do this. Please, leave us to our misery,” she said one day as I stood across from her in the October courtyard, but she knew I could do no such thing. Henri was my dearest friend, and she my future betrothed. They would have me in their life until the end of it came.

  No one was more surprised than I when Henri decided to write a concerto. I asked him about it only once, and he replied, “I finally want to show the school what I am capable of.” I shook my head. “You needn’t prove anything to them, the ignoramuses. Don’t feel as though you must compete. What’s that M. Ouillé says in our orchestration class? One must know one’s limits.” It seemed as though he were compounding injury, the way he begged for comparison against me. Only the year before I’d had my own piece performed at the Elysée Montmartre, receiving raves and exaltations from all quarters. Candidly, I was told word of the composition made it as far as the préfet of the Conservatoire, François Chautemps, and he requested a copy of the sheet music so that he might inspect my craft. There was no way to be sure this was true, of course, but it did not seem so out of reach, especially then. I hoped my success might inspire Henri to do more.

  Not long afterward I found myself circling Montparnasse, looking for a woman whose name I’ve long forgotten and instead noticing Henri moving along in a vacant haze. I called to him, though it didn’t seem at the time he heard me. Instead, he slipped into a small paper shop on the corner that until then I had thought was closed and unoccupied. It seemed reasonable, given how dusty the volumes in the window were, and the number of dead flies that lay among them, half-consumed by dermestids. I followed Henri inside, my lady friend forgotten, and was confronted by claustrophobic walls of ancient bound theatrical scripts and other ephemera. I did not find Henri immediately. Only a small Indian who stood behind the counter, his head wrapped in frayed scarves. His eyes looked yellow and wide as they stared at me, his lower lip curled in a rictal frown. He pointed a skeletal finger at me but said nothing. It was enough to unnerve me, and I wished to leave but could not. I had to find Henri. I would not abandon him.

  But it turned out I did not need to. He appeared from the warren of stacks, his eyes swimming with joy—or if not joy, then something else, something more powerful. I knew immediately the forecast was dire. He accidentally dropped the bound script he held upon seeing me, then sputtered and stumbled as though caught doing something improper. I looked down, as did he, at what he had dropped, but neither of us spoke, as though in tacit agreement we should pay it as little heed as possible.

  “What do you want, Valise? Why are you following me?”

  “Following you? I wasn’t doing anything of the sort. You know very well I lunch in the Dôme. I merely saw you while waiting for a friend of mine.”

  Henri twitched, his eyes dancing around the room and refusing to meet my gaze. It was clear he did not want me to ask about the script that lay between us.

  “What book is that?” I asked.

  He tensed, as though he feared I might swoop down and snatch it from him. Had I been closer, I might have.

  “It’s nothing at all,” he stammered.

  “Nothing, is it?” I leaned closer, daunting him. He winced, his eyes spinning into his head, and if I knew my unblinking stare would bore into his psyche given time, I was robbed of it by the Indian. I had not heard him approach, yet there he stood behind Henri. At first, yellow eyes were all I saw, giant and menacing, and then the pit of my stomach rebelled. Though his expression did not change, it felt as though he were snarling at me. I stepped away from Henri, hoping to keep some distance between myself and the strange man. Henri, for the most part, remained in whatever half-trance I had found him in. I tried desperately to break it.

  “Come, Henri. I haven’t eaten. Join me.”

  “I’m a bit—”

  “Nonsense,” I swallowed, my gorge rising. “Join me at the Dôme. I’ll arrange for us a table on the patio.” Where the air is fresher, I neglected to add.

  Neither I nor Henri looked at the Indian, but it was clear Henri wanted to and only my presence stopped him. I made the mistake of letting my eyes drift to the script, lying face down upon the ground. I barely had time to notice the strange symbol printed on its lower right corner before Henri’s demeanor sharpened and his wits returned. Without hesitation, he bent down and picked up the book, then held it tight to his chest as though to hide it.

  “Just let me take care of this. I’ll join you in a moment.”

  “Please, allow me,” I said, graciously drawing my wallet from my pocket. I wanted to hurry him, but also see the play he had chosen. Part of me also hoped he might mention my offer to his sister. He would not accept any money, however.

  “I do not need your charity, Valise. Please wait for me at the café.”

  I looked at the yellow-eyed Indian and acquiesced, eager to be out of his presence. I retreated to Le Dôme and ordered a tea as I awaited my friend’s arrival. It was unclear how long I sat there with my cigarettes burning, watching the warped door of that hidden paper shop. But I never saw Henri emerge, and I was forced eventually to lunch alone.

  Henri more or less vanished from my life thereafter. On occasion I’d see him dashing madly across campus, always too far to catch, and I heard the whispers about him that were even then slowly spreading across campus, incredulous whispers I at once put out of mind. It was a lonely existence without Henri. Certainly, I had others to spend my time with—a gifted musician never suffers from the lack—but none were as dear to me as my friend Henri, none inspired in me the same amount of pride and love for all their foibles.

  After the first few weeks he was gone I found an excuse to visit the small flat he and Elyse shared, all in the hope that I might be invited in to see whether those rumors I refused to believe were true. Elyse answered the door when I knocked, but though she did not open the door all the way, still I could see Henri haunting the background, a frail gaunt specter, eyes ringed dark and full of fire. Elyse smiled that smile which melted my heart and made me forget all others, but when I tried to step past her, let alone speak a word to the passing Henri, she raised a delicate hand to my chest. It was clear from her face that all she sought was comfort. I had no choice but to put my feelings for Henri aside and console her.

  She led me to the kitchen, far away from the room Henri was in. I imagined it was to ensure he could not hear what she had to say.

  “All he does is write,” she said. “Always working on his strange music. I wish he would stop, Valise. I hear him late into the night whispering, whispering. Sometimes I worry it’s no longer his voice I hear but my own. Sometimes it’s no voice I recognize at all. Maybe he’ll listen to you. Maybe you can break him of his obsession. I want my brother back.” She broke down and cried on my chest, and I closed my eyelids and soaked in her sorrow. It was good, finally, to be once more needed, and I would do all I could for her.

  “Henri!” I bellowed, storming into his room. I paused only long enough that I might grasp how disorganized and chaotic it was. “We must speak at once.”

  My gaunt friend stepped from behind his cluttered desk. His face was drained of color, but I vowed not to let his appearance dissuade me.

  “You must cease this, my friend
. It is consuming you. I have never known you to be full of health, but this . . .” I waved my hand over his willowed frame. He merely attempted a pale imitation of a smile.

  “It means nothing. None of it does. I am enraptured by this project.”

  “What do you mean? What project?”

  Here, his smile faltered.

  “I cannot tell you.”

  I sputtered. “Why on earth not?”

  He would not look at me, and behind me Elyse could not. Suddenly I wondered if I had been played for a fool. Had anything Elyse told me been true? I could be sure of only one thing: that I’d had enough of their shenanigans. I wanted nothing more than to be gone, but despite the betrayal my insatiable curiosity had not been allayed. I spotted amid the clutter a familiar jaundiced volume, open and overturned. Even across the room it filled me with ill.

  “What is that?” I ordered, but Henri stepped between me and it before I could get closer. He seemed strangely out of breath.

  “It’s not yours. Valise, please leave.”

  “I will do no such a thing. I demand you tell me what you are working on.”

  He sighed and looked to where I expected his sister to be. But when I turned I found she had vanished.

  “There is no one left to prove yourself to. Please leave. I must finish my writing. I feel I am so very close.”