But without it, his remaining days were diminishing, and quickly. You could live on cash money for a time, but only brigands never converted it. Use enough bills, someone was going to come looking. Someone who did what he used to do. Without his electronic life sphere, in the technoworld, he was deaf, dumb, and blind. Anyone offline was suspect. He’d never get an honest job. He couldn’t even shield his biosignal against the brigands who would seek him out—and there were plenty: those he himself had tracked down and given over to johnlaw.
For doing what he was doing now.
Even his landlord, no saint, would turn him over if he used paper dollars too many times.
Eventually, someone would miss Callander, but for now, anyone who knew him would figure he’d taken an extended holiday with his cups.
Turner would have to keep getting by on blood money while he weighed his options.
It was fair fortune that saved him from having to shed his own blood yet again. A teenage boy—one of the disgusting, apelike mongrels from Third Ave.—came flying up the street on his powerblades, oblivious, as usual, to passersby on the stationary walkway. The kid was going too fast; they always went too fast. Too late he saw Turner stepping out of the shadows. He swerved to avoid the collision and then overcompensated. With a sickening thud-skid-crunch, he hit the brick siding of the nearest building, ricocheted, and went down hard some thirty feet from the park gate. Turner rushed to the sprawled body, grabbed hold of the kid’s jacket collar, and dragged the moaning, writhing twit through the open gate, where he knelt to examine the damage in the glow of the nearest streetlight.
He felt a violent twisting in his groin. The teenager’s dark, brutish face looked as if someone had taken a cheese grater to it. Blood oozed thickly from concrete-flayed skin, his bulging eyes glowing like supercharged cel-lamps beneath heavy brows. His lower lip quivered as air came and went in ragged gasps, his lungs clearly pierced by fragments of shattered ribs. Not much longer for the living. Then, to Turner’s surprise, the kid’s eyes briefly registered awareness and swiveled toward his. With a low curse, he ducked back into the shadows, fearing the boy might be trying to capture his last moments for posterity. But then the boy’s breathing hissed to a stop, and his dilated pupils remained black. No sign he might have activated his tecmate’s lens a final time.
Turner set to work and made almost two grand.
When he left the park, twenty minutes later, the body was gone.
The fat man’s shadow wormed its way under the iron fence and paced him until he turned the corner at Third to head back to his place.
Great. Just fucking great.
Barkeep wouldn’t even sell him a drink for paper dollars anymore. No one carried so much cash money and never converted it. Johnlaw would notice him soon, if not already.
He needed his goddamn tecmate.
Out in the street, the temperature had plummeted. Winter was on the way, and he didn’t even have a decent coat. He could afford a dozen coats, but buying one meant risking cash. Again.
Well, there were other bars. One of them, surely, would accept his paper payment.
But how long before he wouldn’t even be able to buy food?
“Looking for a drink, amigo?”
He stopped in mid-footfall. Coarse, distinct Fusion accent, more than a little familiar.
“You got money to pay, don’t you?”
Cuccillo.
No sooner had he turned to face his old quarry than he felt something in his head vibrate, and his vision blurred and went dark. Stun charge. His body gave way beneath him, but the impact on the concrete was just a gentle jarring, as if a careless pedestrian had bumped into him.
He dimly registered a pair of hands slipping under his arms, taking hold, and pulling his body into even deeper darkness, but his brain and his extremities no longer communicated. A vague fear began to pulse out of the void inside his head, but no clear images or memories came forth. No way to comprehend or resist what was happening to him.
Something was encircling his body—something warm and slick. Something alive, he thought. A brief flash of rational thought, and he realized he was being bound with organic constrictors: polymer cords that responded to specific individuals—meaning that only the person who wielded them could set him free. A blowtorch wouldn’t cut through the things. Sensation was beginning to return, and with it, roiling up from his guts, icy cold fear.
“I’ll pay you,” he muttered.
“Cash money, right? I don’t deal in cash, Señor Turner. Not anymore. You caught me that way, no? Gave me to johnlaw. A very bad time for me.”
“Where am I?”
“Away,” came Cuccillo’s voice. “Just far enough away.”
He heard a harsh, whining, grinding sound.
Some kind of powered blade.
“What do you want?”
“Want? I want your blood, what the fuck you think I want?”
A shadow fell over him, and the older man’s features materialized in his field of vision. Grizzled and scarred. Brilliant turquoise eyes. Broken teeth. A hard face. An abused face. Cuccillo had suffered in prison.
He, Jack Turner, was responsible.
“You chose your way,” Turner said with a groan. “Just did my job.”
“Not much of a line of work, you ask me.”
Something slid into view—something long, narrow, gleaming, and quivering. Carving blade. Cuccillo lowered it toward his face.
“Wait. No, wait.”
“Sorry, amigo, no time to parley. Say adios.”
“Wait. Wait!”
Not a chance. Terror swept up from deep inside, overwhelming him, swallowing him, because Cuccillo meant every word he said.
“Eh?” Cuccillo paused, and Turner saw the older man’s head turn to glance behind him.
Another shadow fell over both of them, and suddenly Cuccillo was screaming. The whine of the blade dulled, and something hot and wet gushed over Turner’s face and neck. Then came the sounds of scuffling, and his tormentor’s silhouette swept out of his field of vision. Now he could see only a dull, featureless ceiling. Cuccillo’s agonized voice became a shrill, ringing dirge of horror and hopelessness. Turner felt as if he were floating in a river of hot blood.
Abruptly, the screams ceased, and the warm bonds encircling his body fell away. Maybe because Cuccillo was dead, he didn’t know. His muscles remained frozen, and he could barely turn his head to take in his surroundings.
All he saw was a pair of leather-booted feet.
“Up with you!”
The fat man, his voice jovial.
“Up, I say. You have an appointment.”
“What?”
“An appointment! Up! Up we go.”
He felt his body rising from the floor, though he knew, he knew, that no human hands were lifting him.
It was dark, and he couldn’t see a thing—certainly not the gold behemoth—but he knew he was in the park. He could smell it, feel it. He didn’t know how he’d gotten here. Last he remembered, Cuccillo had been about to carve him into bits, and then the fat man had intervened.
The bastard had saved his life.
He was standing upright, but he didn’t know how. His muscles felt like jelly. He was still covered in blood. Cuccillo’s blood.
“Prepare, you!”
His eyes reflexively turned toward the voice but could make out only shadows.
“Who are you?”
“My name is John Hanger. Well, for the past few centuries. Before that, I had other names.”
“Before?”
“Before, I was a king. Now, I am merely a caretaker. A custodian. But it pays well. In years, as you may see.”
“What you want with me?”
“Me? Nothing. But you have a role to play—as do I—in the long, long story that has led me here.”
“A role?”
“Enough! Enough of the tiresome questions. You’re here because you are an outsider. The human system has rejected you. I hav
e facilitated your part in this story because I was required to. More than that you don’t need to know.” The big man chuckled. “Amigo.” The voice was closer now.
“I would like to leave.”
“You will. Soon enough.”
“Now.”
He felt warm breath at the back of his neck, but before he could turn around, a pair of strong hands grasped him by the shoulders and shoved him forward. He nearly toppled, but Hanger’s iron grip kept him upright. He could see a glimmer of golden light in the murky darkness ahead, and Hanger was propelling him toward it.
The beast seemed bigger, more sentient than ever. Its burnished surfaces oozed molten heat, casting a pool of hot red light on the pavement around it. The thorn-like quills covering its body had grown longer, more profuse—potentially lethal to one who stumbled into them. Hanger’s hands were still thrusting him forward, toward the multitudes of little spears, and his bemusement shifted toward alarm. He tried to dig his heels in against the force at his back, to no avail.
“Wait. What are you doing?” “Your appointment, sir.” Hanger’s voice lilted in mock deference.
Then he was free of the powerful grip, but his momentum was carrying him forward, straight toward the outstretched, taloned, quilled arms of the golden behemoth. No! He was going to be impaled on those hellish-looking spines!
He reacted the only way he could: by pitching himself sideways, forcing himself to fall. But he came down hard on his right arm, which bent backward with a horrible popping sound, and an electric bolt of agony arced up to his shoulder. He cried out in shock, finding himself only an inch from a face full of sharp golden quills. He pulled himself backward, gritting his teeth against the pain in his arm and shoulder. For a long, nightmarish moment, he expected John Hanger to reach down and finish what he had begun, but the big man appeared to have accomplished his intended chore. He stood back with arms crossed, the brilliant eyes beneath the brim of his fedora studying him with what Turner took to be satisfaction.
“You piece of shit,” he growled. “You busted my fucking arm!”
Hanger said nothing, just stared at him, eyes inhumanly bright. Turner felt a peculiar, warm sensation at the back of his neck, like a strong, suctioning current of air, and a second later, something wet hit him in the eye. He wiped it away and snarled another curse, anger surging up and burning away his fear—until he glanced back and saw what was actually happening.
The still-wet blood that covered his body—Cuccillo’s blood—was running off his clothes and skin, slithering like crimson worms toward the feet of the golden monster. As they made contact with the metal, the streams of liquid turned inky black and melted into the gleaming metal flesh, sending up curls of smoke that smelled like burning tar.
John Hanger’s voice wrapped around him like a giant snake. “You are an outsider, Mr. Turner, cut off from the world of men. You have felt yourself falling away, becoming more and more isolated. You have tasted hopelessness. You have become a void crying out to be filled. Thus, you are the chosen vessel.”
Something touched his right wrist, and he jerked it away, sending a new bolt of agony through his fractured arm. Before he could even turn his head, a new, piercing pain in his spine drew a scream from his lips. Then he saw it—one of the long, talon-tipped arms, moving of its own accord, reaching for him, some of the long quills dripping blood. His blood. The damned thing was animate, alive, clearly intending to rip him to shreds.
His eyes rolled toward John Hanger’s. “Please. Make it stop. You can stop this thing. I know you can.”
“Why stop it now? It called to you, and you came. Time and again.”
“What do you mean?”
“Dollars. Locate dollars. Dollars!”
Now something slammed into his back, the impact forcing the air from his lungs, and only after the shock of the blow began to subside did he realize that a hellish number of the spines had penetrated his flesh.
They were moving.
Burrowing into his body, deeper, deeper, and deeper.
All of Cuccino’s blood was gone, consumed by the thing. It was now after his blood.
Somehow, his body was rising from the ground. He saw John Hanger’s shadowed face, the bright eyes gazing at him, first from below, then at eye level, and then from above. Was the thing lifting him?
No. He was standing upright.
Before his eyes, his crooked right arm was straightening, painlessly. In fact, he felt no pain—nothing—anywhere, despite his awareness of the spines penetrating his body, passing through his ribs, into his chest cavity. If anything, there was a vague heat surrounding him, like the warmth of a sunlamp.
Something was taking shape in his vision, something behind…or beyond…the fat man’s silhouette. Shapeless it was; a black hole in the night, shifting, swirling, seething. His eyes rolled upward, and he saw stars. There had never been stars in the New York night. No; these were not the stars he would have known in his pitiful human lifetime. These were stars from some other place, some other space, far beyond any dimension he could have imagined.
How did he know these things? What was he seeing?
He looked down and saw his old clothes falling away in shreds. His skin was black. Pure, unblemished, onyx black. His right arm, no longer broken, rose smoothly before him, and he regarded his hand. Long, narrow fingers, slightly sharpened nails. Perfectly sculpted. All perfectly black.
He turned to regard the golden beast. The thing had melted into a diminutive, unidentifiable husk and lay cooling in the mosaic of shadows. As withered as the remains of his old human soul.
He gazed around him, and saw the park, the streets, the buildings; the city. He saw through it all, into space, and through space itself, into its darkest corners, and he recognized the things that lurked out there. He knew them, and felt them, and could commune with them.
He, who had lost the use of his tecmate, was now their tecmate, their link to this world, which they had once inhabited and ruled. He was their harbinger. Their messenger.
He had come again.
Soon, they would come again.
He lifted one foot and stamped it on the ground. The concrete cracked, and the crack spread and wound its way toward the insignificant figure standing before him in the darkness. It stopped just short of the fat man’s feet.
John Hanger. The ancient human, who had once borne the name Balak. The old king who had worshipped him. Now a custodian.
Hanger served a purpose. He had brought him the blood he needed. He could be useful.
The custodian bowed his head, his eyes no longer brilliant.
“At your service,” he said, and held up a crimson robe to clothe his master.
Nyarlathotep took it, dressed himself, and then lifted his head to the sky. From his onyx lips a long howl gushed forth, and all over the city, windows shook. A few streetlights went out. Some people screamed, not knowing. Soon enough they would know.
He straightened himself and stepped into the night, his little minion behind him.
Stephen Mark Rainey is author of the novels Balak, The Lebo Coven, Dark Shadows: Dreams of the Dark (with Elizabeth Massie), The Nightmare Frontier, and Blue Devil Island; over 90 published short stories; five short-fiction collections, including Other Gods and The Gaki and Other Hungry Spirits from Dark Regions Press; and several audio dramas based on the Dark Shadows TV series, which feature many of the original cast members from the hit ABC TV series. For ten years, Mark edited Deathrealm Magazine, which won numerous awards for its superlative horror fiction, art, and poetry; and he has edited several anthologies, including Song of Cthulhu for Chaosium and Evermore (with James Robert Smith) for Arkham House. Mark lives in Greensboro, NC, and is an avid geocacher. Visit his website at http://www.stephenmarkrainey.com/.
Story illustration by Nick Gucker.
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Scale Hall
by Simon Kurt Unsworth
DAD,
I’m sorry for writing t
o you like this, that I couldn’t ring, but I don’t know what else to do. You’re not any more likely to believe me than anyone else, I don’t suppose, but you’re my dad and I love you and I want you to know what’s happening and I know I can trust you. Christ, it seems like madness, now I come to write it. Sitting here in the bright sunlight, in my garden, watching my son play in his paddling pool, it seems beyond madness, not even an insanity but a preposterousness, a thing of fantasy, but it is not. I only have to watch Ben to understand that, to watch the way that, every few minutes, he stops playing and looks towards the garden gate, looks beyond it at something I cannot see, and I am reminded of the truth of these words.
There is another world below this one, a world inhabited by ghosts and demons and all the things that we have lost that we should not find again. I have heard it described as Hell, this other place, and I used to think that this was nothing more than a metaphor for human frailty, a kind of poetry to make sense of the world, but I know now that it is not. That world beneath us exists, is real, and we are protected from it by a skin that we walk upon every moment, unknowingly stepping over things we cannot hope to understand, intelligences and lusts and desires that are as alien to us as the emotions of bees or the love of snakes. When we walk across the surface of this other world, we are protected from falling through to it by luck and the lightness of our step and the strength of the skin where we step; most of the time, it is strong, stretching and reshaping itself to accommodate our footfalls. I think that, sometimes, it wears thin, and in these worn places, we might get brief visions of the things that exist below us, see ghosts and monsters peering up from their sunless caverns, hear frantic breath echoing from that other place. We may even feel their touch in the prickle of our own skin and the clench of our bellies, but they are harmless, these things that appear, mere nightmares and dreams and pictures.
In other places, though, the skin can rupture.
Where there are ruptures, the things that live below can escape upwards, can send questing tendrils into this world and draw back what they catch. These ruptures never truly heal, they merely scab over, crusted and dark and weeping; around these open wounds the nightmares can become real, the dreams grow flesh, and pieces of our world be caught and taken into the lost places beneath our feet. People can be caught, can be lost. It has happened here in Scale Hall. It will happen again.
Lovecraft eZine Megapack - 2012 Page 18