Black Goat Blues

by Levi Black

  I just stopped in to see what condition my condition was in.

  The only way out is through.

  “Stay close,” I growl.

  And, one foot in front of the other, we follow the creepy Hound of Carcosa to the creepy patchwork house in the middle of the creepy fucking forest.

  36

  THE INSIDE OF the house is no less creepy than the outside.

  Crossing the threshold puts us inside a foyer straight out of a Gothic cathedral, complete with a fountain in the center that bubbles something too thick to be water, even though it’s clear. The syrupish fluid rolls over the marble scallops, dripping and drizzling into the wide, oval pool of the fountain well. I glance over and things swim in the fluid, long, thin things that look like eels except they have vestigial arms and legs that trail beside them uselessly. One of them turns and wriggles upward, grape-sized head breaking the surface with a low gah-loop! sound. It shakes its too-human face to clear it of the viscous liquid, micromouth moving as it spits globs of the stuff free until I can hear its voice like the subsonic mewling of an injured bat. The weight of the fluid drags at it until it slips back under the surface and begins swimming in circles again.

  Ashtoreth bumps me with her arm.

  Mylendor is farther ahead, not looking back.

  Moving away from the grotesquery of the fountain, I follow her, my boots squeaking slightly on the mosaic tile of the foyer. We step onto a thick shag carpet from the seventies as we walk into a hallway that only goes for perhaps nine yards before breaking into stairs and landings that lead off to nowhere.

  Javier’s voice comes up from behind me. “This place is freaky deaky.”

  “It will get deakier,” Ashtoreth says gravely. “Welcome to the ways of my kind.”

  Winnie makes a noise in his chest. It sounds like skinhound for “shut up.”

  We pass by candelabras flickering next to incandescent bulbs that barely glow, the glass of them looking hand blown, thick in some areas, soap-bubble thin in others, the squiggly wire of them glowing dull orange like coals in an abandoned brazier on a forgotten altar somewhere, and I get the impression they are old, far older than I.

  We pass by a flickering sign for a beer brand that boasts clear mountain water as an ingredient.

  My boots sound off on wood planks as the flooring under them transitions again.

  A window set in a brick wall opens on my left, making me spin and jerk away. The coat feels my tension and reacts like a cat, flaring around me in a swirl of inky darkness.

  Winnie’s claws click-clack on the wood as he lunges in front of me, skinless hackles raised.

  The window has a wooden sill with a flowerpot. Gingham curtains hang on the inside of it, parted just enough that I can see inside is a narrow room that holds an antique billiards table without enough room for anyone to actually play the game, even though the balls are racked and ready. The side walls touch the edge of the table, the back wall farther away and blank as a piece of paper.

  There is no door I can see.

  There is also no one who could have opened the window.

  Fuck this crazy-quilt house. Everything is such a mix and match that it’s setting every nerve I have on edge.

  Mylendor chuckles ahead of me.

  It makes me want to smash in the back of her head.

  I start walking.

  Something is off. Not just the crazy building we are in. Not just the dealing with otherworldly beings.

  Something’s off in me.

  I look at it as we draw near a pair of doors at the end of this branch of the hallway. They are ancient timbers of dense wood going petrified, bound with iron I can smell in the back of my sinuses as we draw closer and closer. They belong on a castle of some proto-Norse warlord in some timeflung version of history.

  But what is wrong with me?

  This entire situation has me on edge, wound tight as if I’ve been laced into myself. I’m not aware, I’m hyper-aware, to the point of paranoia, my body reacting to my mind. Now that I’ve noticed it, I can feel how close my thoughts are to tumbling into panic, falling into the pure white noise of chaos where I can’t think, can’t plan, can’t do anything but react.

  Panic is an animal state, the wild mewling of a newborn mammal with its fur still slick to its body and just enough foresight to know that it is nothing more and nothing less than meat for the eating.

  Scratching from the inside, scrabbling along the seams and the joints of my mind, working to wiggle even the tip of a talon between the folds and grooves of my brain, panic tries to get at me.

  I panic and I lose control.

  Sensei Laura’s voice pours into my head. Lose control, lose yourself, lose your battle. Panic equals destruction at the hands of your enemy.

  I stop walking.

  Everyone around me stops.

  “Charlie, you okay?” Javier asks.

  Close my eyes. Shut out the world around me. Go inside. Fall. Breathe in through the nose, out through the mouth. Connect my tongue to the roof of my mouth to make a circuit for my ki, my life energy. Pull my thoughts into a small ball and wind them together. Control. I breathe.

  In through the nose.

  The stillness of a peaceful lake.

  Out through the mouth.

  The solidness of a stone.

  In through the nose.

  I am the mountain.

  Out through the mouth.

  I am the wind.

  In through the nose.

  I am water.

  Out through the mouth.

  I open my eyes.

  Everything feels slightly fuzzy, dissociated and separate from me, as if I’m looking at everything through a slight barrier. I’m back inside myself.

  I am Charlotte Tristan Moore, Wielder of Oathbreaker, Coatwearer of Iniquity, Hunter of Nyarlathotep, Bringer of Justice to the Gods Themselves.

  I am ready.

  Mylendor chuckles again. “I certainly hope so, mon ami.” Her hands grasp the iron rings bolted to the ancient wood that serve as handles and she begins to pull them apart.

  “For you enter into the court of the King in Yellow.”

  37

  ASHTORETH’S VOICE IS harsh and throaty, like she’s being strangled. “Oh Jesus, not him. Not the King in Yellow.”

  I turn to her, not believing my ears. “Did you just invoke Jesus? Like Jesus Jesus?”

  “Shut up, Charlie,” she hisses. “This is bad; this is really, truly terrible.”

  “You just invoked our Lord and Savior; I get that it’s serious.”

  Her eyes are wide, white showing all around the dark irises. The blood has drained from her face and her skin has gone paler and pasty. “Your sarcasm will not serve you here.”

  Mylendor smiles and, even though it looks perfectly pleasant, it’s feral and feels like the corners of her mouth stretch too far back and reveal too many teeth. “Little Ishtar, do not be so concerned. The King in Yellow may very well find her … amusing.”

  “That is my fear,” Ashtoreth snaps. “And do not call me by that name.”

  Mylendor’s smile disappears. “I do not call things. I fetch them, take them in my teeth, and carry them where I want them to be.”

  “Where your master wants them, you mean.”

  “The difference is the same.” Mylendor shrugs. “Ishtar is the softest name I have for you. Would you rather I use one of the other names you held here in court?”

  “You’ve been here before?” Javier asks before I can.

  Ashtoreth looks between me and Javier, off in the distance, not meeting anyone’s eyes. “I have been subject under the Yellow Sign. It was long ago.” Her eyes flutter shut and she shudders, just slightly. “The court moves, in time and space. I wasn’t sure this is where we would end up until just a moment ago.” She shudders. “I hoped against hope that Mylendor had changed masters.”

  “Never,” Mylendor hisses.

  I ignore her, still facing Ashtoreth. “A little warning wo
uld have been nice.”

  Her eyes are now sad and slightly shimmery along the bottom edges. “You would not have heeded it. You are on a mission.”

  That is true.

  “If I’d known it was going to be this dangerous I would have sent you back.” I mean it.

  “I am with you.” Her mouth is a hard line, but I can still see that glimmer deep in her eyes, that haunted shine that flits behind them when you’ve gone through something so traumatic it marks you forever.

  Forever.

  I guess that would mean something more to an immortal love goddess than it does to me. To me, things feel like forever; to her, they actually are forever.

  I recognize the look; this place, this setting, this thing we are about to do, is bringing back memories of something that left a tattoo on her mind; it has scarred her psyche and she has been changed by it. I recognize that look because if I stare in the mirror too long I see it in my own eyes.

  Something here hurt her in a way that will haunt her.

  Forever.

  I turn to Mylendor. “From now on, you address her as Ashtoreth or not at all. She is my friend and under my protection.”

  “If you say so.” Mylendor sniffs in dismissal.

  Not good enough.

  I step closer. “Mark my words, if you or anyone inside this place offers her harm or even insult you will answer to me.”

  Mylendor smiles her feral smile. “Bold words, mon ami, bold words indeed. The King in Yellow will truly find you entertaining. It should be a lovely evening of fun and frolic.” She turns and walks inside as if expecting us to follow. The doorway is full of shadow and she appears to fade with each step.

  Ashtoreth reaches out and touches my chest. The coat rustles around me. Her hand is wide on my sternum, thumb resting under my breast, but it isn’t even slightly sexual or possessive. “Thank you, Charlie. No one has ever claimed me … like that.” Between the words me and like the haunted glimmer flares bright and her lower lip curves down with sadness. “When you cannot keep your word I will forgive you offering me up.”

  Before I can say anything she turns and steps past me.

  The Mark on my right hand begins to burn and a prayer I don’t believe in, that I can keep her safe, passes through my mind.

  38

  THE DARKNESS AROUND us begins to dissolve against some feeble, fetid, dull glow that lacks the clarity and sharpness to be called light. It is simply not darkness. The floor under my feet switches to cobblestones so tightly packed together they are smooth and seamless. The skinhound’s nails click and clack on them as we follow the path. We are not in a room that I can discern; whatever the borders of this place are, they are not close enough for me to see, and I have the feeling that if I were to try to walk toward them they would run from me, ever out of sight.

  It looks like we are in a room that looms far out of sight, like a hangar or some similar place, but it feels like we could be outside.

  The air is slightly crisp over the back of my throat and tastes of October, All Hallows’ Eve and Samhain and Día de los Muertos, that Thin Time betwixt equinox and solstice when the world is all witchery and full of pagan potential.

  I loved Halloween as a kid.

  Trick or treating, wearing costumes, sticky stomach from too much candy, the Headless Horseman, and ghost stories before bed. Loved it. The entire thing.

  Tyler Woods’s party was a Halloween party.

  One more thing stolen from that night.

  Goddammit.

  And since the Man in Black walked through my door and dragged me into this world of weird gods and monster shit I don’t think I’ll ever enjoy Halloween again.

  Something pulls at my eye as we walk after Mylendor, and Javier says, “What was that?”

  I turn and find that the not darkness is moving, shapes forming as things begin closing behind and beside us.

  The skinhound makes a noise like water being strained through garbage.

  I stop and everyone stops around me, close this time. I don’t reach for the sword in the coat even though I want to.

  The shapes keep shuffling closer until I see they are hunched humans, each of them wearing a tattered dun-coloured coat that wraps tightly around their frames, sleeves to waists across their chests, long, flat ribbons of fabric pulled taut between their legs and spun around their thighs and torsos.

  Straitjackets. They are all wearing a weird version of a straitjacket.

  They shamble close enough that I can now make out faces. The same dull-eyed, institutionalized look carries through one and all. The same wet oatmeal tone to their skin regardless of race, the same ribbons of drug-thickened spittle hanging off their chins, the same slack-eyed stare that makes their bottom eyelids roll and hang forward as if wires pull on them. I can smell the waft of Thorazine in their sweat and the concerted whoof of their halcyon breath.

  My mind tries to throw itself back, to spin me into a full-blown body memory of my time in Beacon Hill.

  After that night, after the trial, after life was supposed to go back to normal, things got dark. I lost my way inside myself for a bit. I was destructive and angry, ignoring my therapist’s treatment, lashing out. My parents didn’t know what to do, so they sent me to Beacon Hill.

  It worked.

  Not because that place did anything to help me. That place was hell on earth. They ascribed to a regimen of heavy psychotropic drugs and harsh “aversion” therapy to cure deeply disturbed patients. I watched as the other patients either spent their time in a walking coma, so chemically straitjacketed that they weren’t even human, or were “corrected” for negative behaviors with shock therapy, water therapy (the military calls it waterboarding), and even receiving blows from the rubber batons carried by every sadistic orderly.

  It worked because my three days in there showed me how bad things could get if I didn’t start taking my pain seriously and work on my therapy. My parents came to check on me before Beacon Hill said they could and saw the fear in my eyes. They pulled me out immediately and took me home.

  I was supposed to get my first shot of some kind of drug cocktail that night because I had refused to take the pills they gave me. The director had sat with me that morning in her beige office with the dying ficus in the corner that smelled like a drying corpse and explained that if I didn’t swallow the pills she had in her hand then that night the orderlies on duty would strap me to a gurney and they would inject me with a dose that would ensure that I could “relax and begin to heal.”

  I thank God that I wasn’t left, strapped to a gurney, drugged out of my mind, and in the care of those sadists.

  I should return there, when all of this is over, if I live through this thing, and teach that staff the same lesson Tyler and his crew learned not long ago when I accidentally wished me and Daniel with them and my magick and the hate in my heart killed them all.

  The thought runs up my spine in a dark thrill, galloping fast and hard into my brain. It feels so good. Delicious. I immediately shut it down, clamping on to it and shunting it to its own corner of my mind lest my power kick in and I find myself in the cafeteria of Beacon Hill.

  “They aren’t the dangerous things here.”

  Ashtoreth’s voice pulls me out. I have to blink, but I’m back in the moment. We start walking again, the shambling mass stumbling in behind us. The cobblestones take us to a courtyard that opens to feel weirdly enclosed even though I cannot see a roof or walls.

  But I do see the throne.

  39

  THE THRONE LOOMS into the soft not dark, taller than me by three times and leaning precariously. At first I think it’s made of crystal, each facet cut from the next with a weird gleam on its edge that has no light source to create it, but on closer look it appears to be plastic. Hard and shiny and segmented, layers and layers of it against one another.

  High at the crest of it sits a man.

  Man might be presumptuous; it feels masculine but doesn’t feel human in any way, like Asht
oreth feels feminine. He slumps in the seat of the throne covered in what looks to be a blanket or a poncho in some material the colour of wolf urine. We stop far enough back that I can look up at him without causing pain in my neck.

  “Who is that?” I whisper to Ashtoreth.

  Mylendor appears, stepping from the darkness, the movement everything like a cat. “You stand before the Yellow Sign of Hastur the Rambler, he who drinks men’s minds and sups their souls. Show your respect at your own peril.”

  “Never mind.” I don’t whisper this time.

  At the calling of his name the man leans forward, shifting. The entire throne sways toward us, bending with a wide hiss of stridulation that sounds like a ragged bow drawn across a broken fiddle, catgut snagging on snarled wire and splintered wood. His legs splay out and his feet touch the earth in front of me and I see that the throne is made of layer upon layer of translucent rounded triangles segmented by seams of fibrous material the colour of the cotton in a smoked cigarette filter. They rustle and rub, drawing my eye to them, past the man-thing attached to them, to their cicada shape and form as they rise and fold and rise and fold and rise and fold into themselves in some infinite origami of reduction. Wings. They are wings, insectual and diaphanous, a wasp, a hornet, a stinging winging thing that can inject venom into you over and over and over again until your bloodstream fills with the stuff and it begins to dissolve your muscles and makes your tendons pull and contract as they stiffen and draw in a rictus that snaps the very bones they are attached to.

  The wings fold away, disappearing from sight as his poncho shifts over them. Not a throne at all. A perch provided by his own wings.

  Once they slip-slide out of sight I can look up at his face. It’s an upside-down triangle, chin to a point and eyes wide across a short snout of a nose that squats over a mouth too full and sensuous to make sense on that face. His hair falls over in a sweep of darkness with an undefined edge, as if his head simply fades away into the not darkness. He doesn’t blink for a long moment as he looks down at me.