“We were tugged north and west, across a barren plain. I came to see, in the far distance at first, a black pyramid sitting like a bloated spider waiting for our approach to its lair.
“We descended into the luminescent glow inside the pyramid.”
Carnacki stopped and stood. It was time for another refill. This time Arkwright remained quiet, perhaps aware of his earlier faux pas. But Carnacki himself seemed keen to impart more information, and in a break from tradition, spoke as we were charging our glasses.
“’You chaps may remember the case of the Dark Island,’ he said. ‘It was there that I first encountered the black pyramid, and I am coming to believe that I am destined to travel there again, for it is a focal point, perhaps even the origin, of many of the mysteries I am sworn to try to pierce. Even as we were taken inside I felt, not fear, but a strange exhilaration at the thought that part of the mystery might be about to be revealed.’
“We looked down from a great height at first, but quickly descended towards what looked to be a huge empty space. As we got closer to the floor I saw a circle of a dozen bent and withered trees, and from closer still could see a dark form sat in each. Raffles stood in the centre of the circle. He looked up, saw us approaching, and smiled.
“‘Behold, my lords, the Opener of the Way,’ he shouted as we landed, softly, at his side.
“I looked up to see a dozen pairs of red eyes staring down at me. Their owners resembled the great white owls only in size. They were black as sin, with a stare so malevolent I was forced to avert my eyes.
“Nestor felt no such aversion.
“‘Greetings, gents,’ he said, jauntily. ‘You’ve got a nice day for it.’
“One of the black owls leaned forward, speaking to the sparrowhawk on Raffles’ shoulder.
“‘It is done?’
“‘Yes, my Lord. The way is open.’
“‘Then let it begin,’ the dark owl said, and let out a hoot that rang throughout the whole of the pyramid. The entire structure vibrated in sympathy, and started to hum. Black tendrils snaked across the floor and started to spin, first in small, discrete vortices, then joining and growing until a tall funnel of blackness rose up and way out of the pyramid itself.
“All of the dark owls hooted, loud and long.
“‘I believe now would be a good time, Guv’nor.’ Nestor said.
“I must have looked perplexed, for the little owl sighed deeply.
“‘You didn’t come all this way for the scenery, did you?’ he said. ‘It’s time for that special bit from Sigsand. You know, the bit at the end?’
“And this time, I did indeed know what was required. I raised my voice and began the last incantation for the Sigsand Mss.
“Now you chaps already know that I cannot reproduce such a powerful ritual here in this room, for to do so would seal the doom of us all. But back there, on the floor of the great pyramid, it started to have the desired effect. The vortex faltered and began to fall in on itself.
“The black parliament of owls hooted loudly, but somehow my own voice rose high and pure above them.
“‘We’ve got them on the run, Guv’nor,’ Nestor shouted. ‘Keep at them.’
“Soon we had two voices raised in the chant, my thicker, courser tones in counter point to Nestor’s higher pitch. As the incantation continued, so too did the dark owls’ ever more frantic hooting, but I felt in total control, never in any danger of faltering. Although I have never tried to memorize it, I chanted the incantation the whole way through to the end, and I did not miss a word or a beat. The black funnel sputtered, the wind fell, and suddenly the pyramid was once more quiet, and quite empty.
“‘One nil for the white team,’ Nestor shouted, then squawked as the sparrowhawk launched itself from Raffles’ shoulder, straight for the little owl. I felt a jolt as it hit Nestor, hard, and both birds flew from my own shoulder in a flurry of feathers. At the same time Raffles strode across towards me and aimed a right hook at my jaw. My old varsity training kicked in. I feinted left, went right and placed a perfect left jab on the point of his chin. He went down like a sack of potatoes.
“‘Remember when I said not yet, Guv’nor?’ Nestor shouted. He had his talons embedded in the sparrowhawk’s breast, having already torn the bird open at the throat. ‘Well now is yet.’
“This time I caught his meaning immediately. I shouted, my voice ringing through the vastness of the pyramid.
Ri linn dioladh na beatha, Ri linn bruchdadh na falluis, Ri linn iobar na creadha, Ri linn dortadh na fala.
“The last thing I saw before a blinding flash took everything away was the twelve black owls swoop down on Raffles’ prone body. There was a burst of red as his throat opened.
“Then I was once again lost in blackness.”
“I blinked, and when I opened my eyes I was back in London, standing in the centre of the wooded grove in the Tudor square. Dawn was just breaking over the rooftops. Twelve great white owls sat above me, all hooting gently.
“‘Say thank you,’Nestorsaid in my ear.
“I bowed at the waist.
“‘Thank you, my Lords,’ I said. The hooting got louder. It seemed I had said the right thing.
“The leader of the Parliament spoke.
“‘It seems our go-between chose wisely,’ he said. ‘We are pleased to welcome you into the ranks of Closers. We will call when you are required.’
“And with that the Owl Parliament took wing, and were once again quickly lost to sight over the rooftops.
“Nestor danced a little jig on my shoulder, flew to the ground and coughed up another pellet. He tore it to shreds with his talons.
“‘Tastes of sparrowhawk,’ he said, and spat. ‘But it tells me one thing. You won’t be needed until there’s a Blue moon on All Hallows. You’ll be playing the Great Game the next time, and I’ll be long gone by then, Guv’nor. But I’m sure whoever they send for you will do you just fine.’
“He looked up at me, and I’ll swear he winked.
“‘Now let’s get you home.’
“‘Before we part,’ I said. ‘There’s one more thing. I’m right in thinking that the place I needed to go was the Black Pyramid? You intended all along that we should be taken there?’
“Nestor danced another jig.
“‘Ask me no questions, and I’ll tell you no lies,’ he said, and winked again. I could get nothing else out of him.”
Carnacki stopped, and looked around the room at us.
“And there you have it, gentlemen. My Halloween story, such as it is.”
“Dashed peculiar, that’s what it is, if you ask me,” Arkwright said. “Although you were right about one thing, Carnacki. I am very happy to hear of the fate of that bounder Raffles.”
As for myself, I only had one question for our host.
“The Great Game, Carnacki. Did you discover what that is?”
Carnacki laughed.
“No. And I suspect I won’t until the time comes when I am called to stand in front of the Owl Parliament again. But I have checked the almanac. The next blue moon on All Hallows is indeed not due until nineteen twenty-five. I can only hope that we are all still here so that I may have another tale to relate.
“Now, out you go,” he said, and shepherded us out into the night.
An owl hooted as I walked along the embankment. I looked up to see a small bird on a branch above me.
It winked, and danced a little jig before flying off, never to be seen again.
William says: Roger Zelazny has been a constant source of joy in my life for more than forty years. I have read him avidly, consuming everything he wrote in wonder at his imagination, style and wit. A Night in the Lonesome October enchanted me as much as anything by Bradbury, entertained me as much as anything by Conan Doyle. So when the chance came to be part of this tribute issue I could not wait to make my contribution. I’ve taken several liberties with RZs vision, but I’m sure he’d approve of the spirit in which I’ve introduced
new characters to the ongoing tale. I only hope I have done it justice.
William Meikle is a Scottish writer with fifteen novels published in the genre press and over 250 short story credits in thirteen countries. His work appears in many professional magazines and anthologies and he has recent short story sales to NATURE Futures, Penumbra and Daily Science Fiction among others. He now lives in a remote corner of Newfoundland with icebergs, whales and bald eagles for company. In the winters he gets warm vicariously through the lives of others in cyberspace, so please check him out at http://www.williammeikle.com/ .
Story illustration by Nick Gucker.
Return to the table of contents
Twenty to Life in the Lonesome October
by Evan Dicken
The Nords had someone cornered on the landing. I could hear them roughing him up as I made my way to the prison library. Laughter echoed down the stairwell, twisted by the strange acoustics into the yips of wolves tussling over a fresh kill.
Despite my size I can be quiet as a cold front, but stealth would’ve been useless with so many of them crowding the stairs, so I didn’t bother.
“I thought trolls couldn’t come out in the day?” The lead Nord turned to face me, heavy, tattooed arms crossed in front of his chest. He was a head taller than the rest, with a thick slab of a face that looked heavy enough to crack granite. Ravens and lightning bolts peeked from under the long sleeves of his prison issue, hinting at the profane tapestry inked on his pale flesh. His head was shaved, but he wore a blonde beard, plaited with glass beads and tiny, rune etched stones. The name on his shirt read “Donar, T.”
Not wanting to antagonize him, I said nothing. The Nords were a new gang, one of the half-dozen who had transferred into C Block at the beginning of the month. Unlike the Aryans they’d displaced, they hadn’t shown any interest in running drugs or scrip. They did share the brotherhood’s love of easy violence, and while I wasn’t afraid, I didn’t want to give myself away, not with the full moon so close.
Donar regarded me from the top of the stairs. “I know you’re not gen pop.”
“I don’t want any trouble.”
“Then turn around.”
“Can’t.” I forced my cracked and blackened lips into an apologetic frown. “I’m the librarian, and this is the only way now that the yard is closed.”
The yard wasn’t exactly closed, just full of the type of people with whom I didn’t want to associate, people like the Nords. This year, the usual autumn gales had blown more than just leaves into Newgate prison. Strange things prowled the corridors–some human, some animal, and some I’d rather not consider.
They’d come for the door.
As little as a century ago the game would have been a heady mix from both sides, but millennia of having their best and brightest annihilated by sorcerous backlash had drained the opener’s talent pool down to the dregs. The outcome of the ceremony had become such a foregone conclusion that most of the old time closers didn’t even show up, leaving the field to really nasty ones, like the Nords.
“What’s your game, troll?” They were all watching me, eyes like cut gems in the harsh light of the fluorescent bulbs.
“No game, just want to get to work.”
“Have it your way. We’ll find out soon enough whose side you’re on.” Donar stepped aside to reveal the pathetic twist of a man who sprawled in the stairwell beyond. The Nords had beaten him pretty bad. One of his eyes was swelled shut, while the other bulged from an orbit that looked much too small to contain it. Around the spreading stain of new bruises his skin was a rubbery, greyish blue.
I had to step over the man to reach the next flight of stairs. He pawed at my leg as I passed, fingers leaving clammy stains on my prison blues. His lips worked as I passed, but all that emerged from the wreckage of his mouth was a labored croak. I wanted to help him, I really did, but if I offered so much as a friendly smile, the Nords would swarm me like flies on rotten meat. I’d had enough experience with mobs to know when I was overmatched.
“Make sure to shut the door behind you.” I could hear the sneer in Donar’s voice. The others laughed as if he’d doled out some great witticism.
I didn’t stick around to hear the punch line.
The Newgate Library was a forest of steel shelves crowded around battered, wooden reading tables etched with the overlapping scrawl of generations of inmates. It could have been any prison repository, if not for my “special collection.”
It had taken me years to find the books, and even longer to get them into the library, slipped in among donations and anonymous bequests. I’m hideous to behold, but over the phone, well, I sounded almost human.
To look at the Newgate book repository, no one would think that the works of Paracelsus, Crowley, Alhazred, and a score of others lurked in the shadowed recesses of the deep stacks. The world had forgotten about them, about me, but I hadn’t forgotten the world. No, I bided my time, studying, readying myself for–
“Von Junzt.” Anxiety tinged a raspy, feminine voice.
I jerked up from a dog-eared copy of Bruno’s Sigillus Sigillorum. The woman who stood before me was short, with a narrow head, flat nose, and long, stringy hair that overflowed the cowl of her bulky, purple robe.
“I’m sorry?” My stomach fluttered. This was the first time a woman had addressed me with anything but a scream. I’d seen other women in Newgate as of late, around the yard and in the halls. No one else seemed to notice, especially the guards. They went about their rounds like sleepwalkers, blinded by arcane fiat.
“Friedrich von Junzt. I was told you had a copy of Unaussprechlichen Kulten.”
My tongue was unresponsive as rubber, my stomach full of fluttering moths. “I-I’m afraid you may have been misinformed.”
The smell of mildew and spoiled fish intensified to an eye-watering miasma as a dozen robed figures shambled from behind the stacks. The woman shot a nervous glance at the group, swallowed, then turned back. “Please, I know you have a copy of Kulten.”
An image rose from the churning mists of my earliest memory, colored in the faded, bleeding sepia of an old photograph. It was of a man dressed much like this woman, standing in front of an enormous bonfire, arms outstretched as he spoke words so caustic they seemed to melt the very air.
There had been others around the blaze, shadowy shapes I couldn’t make out, their heads and bodies shifting like the tides. I remembered a brush of soft fur on my hands, the whisper of breath in a tiny body–a cat, perhaps.
I tried to dig deeper, but the memory was worn smooth by time, and it slipped from my grasp, replaced by a far more familiar image.
Breath whistled beneath my fingers as I squeezed and squeezed. Small hands beat against my chest, a terrified look in her eyes, in all of their eyes. I drowned in a sea of night dark rage, my heart laid bare by a father’s betrayal. Where the last memory was smooth, this one was cut glass, a thousand facets, each refracting the light of another, very different bonfire–a pyre, really–one that should have been mine.
“The book,” The woman said, snapping me from my bitter ruminations. Her jaw tightened in an expression of desperation verging on panic.
Indecision stilled my lips. The only thing that had kept me safe thus far was that the Nords didn’t know I was opener. I thought about what they had done to the man in the stairwell, what they would do if they caught this woman.
“Second shelf from the bottom.” I pointed at the rear wall, to a pool of languid shadow that never dispersed, no how many times I replaced the overhead bulbs.
The others swarmed away, sliding around each other like eels. The woman’s expression wavered between surprise and relief before settling into a tentative smile.
“Thank you. I thought we were alone.”
Such was the hot flush that seized me that I found myself unable to offer any reply beyond a foolish grin. I imagine it was a hideous sight, but the woman seemed amused rather than repulsed. Her laugh was the throaty gurgle of seawat
er beneath a pier.
Risk be damned, it felt good to help someone.
One of the others lifted a cracked, leather bound tome above his head with a triumphant croak. The woman’s eyes flicked to the group, then back to me, never blinking. Her smile fled, as did the warm flutter in my stomach.
“Priscilla. Come. Now,” the robed man rasped.
She flinched at the call.
“Wait,” I said, anything to keep her here. “You’ll have to sign the book out. There’s a one week return policy on–”
A sudden rustling drew my attention to the window. A large, black raven perched on the sill beyond the bars. It tilted its head to regard me with one glittering eye, then pushed off into the air with a hiss of feathers. I’d been found out.
Even worse, when I looked back for Priscilla, the library was empty.
The Nords were waiting back at my cell. Books lay scattered across the floor, spines broken and pages splayed like the wings of dead moths. My pillows and mattress had been eviscerated, their innards turning the cell into an abattoir of foam and feathers.
Four Nords grabbed my arms, sweaty hands hot on my flesh.
“Where is it?” Donar asked.
“Where is wh–?” My head snapped back as Donar’s hammer smashed into my face. There wasn’t much pain, but the blow loosened some of my teeth.
“I heard about your little meeting in the library. Told you we’d find out whose side you’re on.” He raised the claw hammer for another strike.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The words came out muffled by my split lip.
“The wand!” Flecks of spittle sprayed across my face. “Tell me where it is, troll, or by Ymir’s balls I’ll–”
A scream drowned out the rest of Donar’s words. One of the Nords reeled back from the toilet, his arm severed just below the elbow. He slumped against the wall, howls tapering off as shock set in. Two of the other Nords rushed him from the cell.
Lovecraft eZine Megapack - 2012 Page 55