The writer dabbed at his mouth with a cloth napkin and frowned. “I had opened a Pandora’s box of self-revelation, and the bestial nature revealed was so unbearable that I knew it had to be destroyed. I’ve never had much self-esteem – but I had no idea that I was so grotesque, so cruel and lunatic.”
The old man’s watery blue eyes regarded the younger fellow with extreme seriousness. “Do not believe the disclosures of demonology. There is darkness – and there are qualities of light. We are composed of both.” His sudden coughing stopped his words, and he gulped the remainder of his tea. “Pardon me. I’ve not spoken at such length for quite some time. It becomes, at times, painful.”
“What did you mean, last night – that the beast had given you the gift of speech?”
“Exactly that.” The old man looked away, into memory. “I, too, was found, during an hour of desperation. I have always had a knock for alchemy, tied to my music, with which I expressed uncanny art. Simon wanted to hear me speak of secret things – he hungers for such things, ravenously. Thus he gave the gift of language – but he could not force me to speak.” The old man winked. “I would not spill my secrets into his ear. And so he conditioned his gift. I can talk – but to do so is a source of pain. My throat –”
“My god, and you’ve been speaking all this time. He’s a monster.”
“Do you know Wilde’s fable, about the man who had his sight restored?”
“Yes. Jesus walked through the city and watched a young man pursuing a harlot, his eyes on fire with lust. Christ asks the fellow, ‘Why do you behave in such a way?’ The young fellow replies that he was once blind, but that Christ restored his vision – so what else was he to look at except the lascivious beauty of women?”
“Exactement. Now, I could use my gift to curse my fate, or Simon; I could use it to utter chants that would split the cosmos. But that is not my style. I use it, mostly, to sing – such a wonderful use of voice.” They finished their meal and departed the cafe. “What are your plans, Sebastian?”
“I need to find Simon’s tower in the woods and discover my fate.”
“You will find that your fate, for the most part, is in your hands. If we are captives in this place, it is because our psyches are seduced by its marvels, and by the sensations with which those marvels taint us. I departed once – and found the world that was once mine so ugly, so loud and uncouth, compared to this secret place. As for the tower, walk with me to that spot of woodland there.” He pointed to a place where the woods grew thick, and to that place they walked, stopping before a narrow path that led into the growth of trees. “Follow that, and you will find the lair of the beast.”
Sebastian placed one foot onto the dirt, but something in the way the shadows moved in the dark places of the woods disconcerted him. He turned to look at his friend, only to have Jon-Eric some distance from him, limping along the wooden sidewalk as he clutched onto his cane. Summoning courage, the writer began to follow the path into the woodland. He was aware, vaguely, of things that moved behind distant trees, watching him. He walked, for what seemed a short while, until he came to a clearing in which the structure stood. It was a cylindrical tower of stone with conical roof, perhaps twenty-five feet in height. An arched opening led to circular stone steps spiraling upward. Cautiously, Sebastian climbed them, until he reached the large room in which Simon, sitting on a curious kind of throne, awaited him. The place was crowded with tables and shelves, and books were everywhere, as well as scrolls and parchments. Leaning his buttocks against a table’s edge, Sebastian faced the beast.
“What do you want of me?”
“Not much,” spoke the sardonic voice. “I wanted to stop you from destroying those spectacles, as I thought perhaps they might have something to reveal to me. But, no – they were constructed for mortal elucidation, not for a creature such as I.”
“They taught you something, I remember, some clue as to your relationship with humanity, or something. I remember it displeased you.” Simon sneered at him. “But what does any of this have to do with me? Why was I brought here?”
Angrily, the beast jumped to his feet. “Because of my mercy, you ungrateful worm. You think me a monster, and so I am; but I know my own kind, and there is more of you that is my kindred than you could ever understand. You’ve tasted alchemy. You’ve looked into the void. You’ve known the kiss of wonder. Doesn’t it enthrall you?! Speak of it to me – tell me what you saw.”
There was something seductive about Simon’s excitement as he spoke of supernatural things. He was filled with a fever that served as contagion, and the writer could feel his mind become diseased. “Give me the spectacles, and I’ll describe exactly what I see.”
Simon squinted his eyes suspiciously. “I think not. You’re up to something.”
Sebastian tried not to smile as he worked his own seduction. “I recall the void – how it seemed attendant to the vibrations of my brain. And the fire – but was it fire, that redness.” He looked momentarily at Simon, and saw the moisture that formed at the corners of the beast’s wide mouth. Sebastian momentarily studied the bestial face, its odd shape, the visage that seemed a blend of wolf and frog. But when he saw the shimmering of the outlandish silver eyes, he closed his own. He tried to speak with as hypnotic a voice as he could muster. “And then I saw – but what was it? It – it... No, I can’t quite see it, for it warped my memory by the power of its – its—”
The beast had stepped nearer as Sebastian spoke, and the human could feel its breath upon his face. He opened his eyes and shrugged. “Sorry, I just can’t recall. It did something to my memory, my mind. God, how I burn to remember and thus unravel its mystery. Ah well. I’m so tired. Excuse me, please, I think I’ll return to my room.”
“No.”
“I beg your pardon?”
Desire burned in Simon’s eyes. “I need to hear you speak your vision. The sound of human voice has elements that sometimes prove seductive to the Outer Ones. There are queer connections between your kind and those Old Ones, ties that bewilder me, but they exist nonetheless. They call to you with dreaming, from their sunken cities or their pits of cosmic void. They drink your lunacies and fears. They show you things they won’t reveal to me.” He handed the black spectacles to Sebastian. “Tell me what you see.”
Sebastian took hold of the spectacles and felt a sudden desire to do as he was told. Instead, he continued with his act, pressing the closed frames to his forehead as he pushed his back to the stone wall. “I’m afraid. That hungry void – what if it swallows me?”
Simon’s sardonic smile was a hideous thing to see. The beast turned to return to his throne. “This is infantile. Muster up some backbone and – ” But then he turned, and roared, for Sebastian had taken flight down the stone steps, seeking escape. Howling indignation, the beast rushed down the circular steps and out into the woodland. Sebastian stood a ways away, the hand that held the spectacles touching the brick of the round tower.
“I swear I’ll smash these devil’s tools if you come near me! They won’t do you much good then, beast,” the mortal spat. “Now, you’re going to return me and my belongings to my home and never bloody haunt me again. You hear me?”
“What a fool you are. Do you think that you can defy me?” Something changed in Simon’s entire being, as if a mask had been forced away, thus revealing the thing beneath. The silver eyes altered and shone like liquid alabaster fire. The face became, if possible, more horrifically bestial, wearing a dangerous wildness that was terrifying to behold.
And then the atmosphere was altered by a quiet sound. Someone was singing, softly, somewhere in the woodland near them. Jon-Eric le Seuil hobbled along a path that took him to the edge of the clearing. One hand clutched at his walking stick, the other held his violin and bow. Stopping, he let go of the stick and watched it fall to earth, and then he cocked his head and grinned. As Sebastian studied the satyr-like face with its pale blue eyes, he sensed that there was something uncommon, perhaps unear
thly, in the elderly gentleman’s being; that he was a creature who knew how to converse with things of alien dimension, perhaps because le Seuil, or a portion of his psyche, had been born in such a realm. He looked, now, as daemonic as the Beast of Sesqua Valley.
“What the devil are you doing here, old man?” Simon growled.
Jon-Eric le Seuil brought his frail hand to his throat and massaged it, as if in an attempt to coax language to his lips. His voice, when he spoke, was barely audible. “I’ve come to bequeath the music of the spheres, to feed you what you ache to taste. My spark of mortal art will blossom in the air and bloom unerringly. I will hold nothing back. They will touch the One beyond the stars who listens for such lullaby.”
Simon snorted. “I have no time for human games. Heed well the one who gave you the gift of speech.”
“I do,” le Seuil answered. “And I give you now a rarer gift.” He shrugged, smiling, and began to sing. The sound of his voice was like nothing that Sebastian had ever heard – it caused his heart to pace at faster rate and made him imagine that Time itself stopped to listen to the sound. The floor of Sesqua Valley began to pulse with frantic beat, and from some place atop the twin-peaked mountain things bayed as they had never bayed before. Sebastian’s mortal soul was touched by such a wave of fear that he fell to his knees, moaning. Jon-Eric positioned his violin and began to weave music, a sound that mutated the sky. Sebastian watched a spot of darkness that opened in the cosmos above them, a thing that began to heave and billow. Slowly, inexorably, the entire sky became opaque, exactly as Sebastian had witnessed in vision when he had placed the second pair of spectacles over his eyes. A thread of blackness detached itself from the sky and floated toward them, a small thick patch of blackness absolute that attached itself to Simon’s monstrous face, causing him to howl and whine. “I cannot see! Tear this thing from me, I cannot see!” He clawed at his face in an attempt to tear the thing from him, but it stayed in place irrevocably. He screamed again, and as if in answer to his ferocious sound something in the black sky howled, with a high keen sound that seemed to burst Sebastian’s ears. He startled as the lenses of the spectacles held in his hand shattered and fell in tiny shards to earth.
The withered violinist seemed to shrink as he watched the void that pulsed above them. He saw it, the majestic eidolon that rose from its forming bed of crimson aether, the being that was blacker than the dead cosmos, a crawling chaos that flowed from the depths of darkness and kissed the violinist’s eyes. Sebastian moaned as those pale blue eyes grew black and glassy, as if in death; and yet the violinist played and played, unseeing. His music soared toward the wailing in dark heaven, touched a place therein that cracked and split. The crimson aether that contaminated the pure blackness of the sky formed itself into a sentient robe worn on a faceless thing that wore a triple crown. The being uttered the musician’s name, and Jon-Eric wailed, in delight or dismay Sebastian could not ascertain. The old man flung his instrument from him as he fell onto the ground, where he writhed like an epileptic invalid. Sebastian crawled to him and took the old man’s flailing hand, but was violently pushed away by the beast. Sebastian, looking up, saw that the cloud that had enveloped Simon’s face had dissipated.
There was foam in Simon’s mouth as he clutched the violinist’s head and raised it. “Tell me what you saw. Tell me! I gave you the gift of tongue, use it now and tell me what you envisioned!”
Jon-Eric le Seuil gasped and choked. What had once been his eyes were now two obsidian discs, like unto the lenses of the spectacles that had been the work of a lunatic sorcerer. The old man opened his mouth as if in an attempt to speak one final word – but only rancid air spilled from the lips that split, and then those lips curled in secret satisfaction. At last those dark spools, his eyes, cracked and shattered, their particles disintegrating into the eye pits of what was now a lifeless head.
Table of Contents
The Strange Dark One
Immortal Remains
Past the Gates of Deepest Dreaming
One Last Theft
The Hands That Reek and Smoke
The Audient Void
Some Bacchante of Irem
To See Beyond
Table of Contents
The Strange Dark One
Immortal Remains
Past the Gates of Deepest Dreaming
One Last Theft
The Hands That Reek and Smoke
The Audient Void
Some Bacchante of Irem
To See Beyond
The Strange Dark One Page 15