The Night Market

by Rawlins, Zachary

  Yael wasn’t certain when the air grew frigid. It probably happened by degrees while the tunnel transformed into something more like a cave. She didn’t notice until she was shivering as she walked. The wind picked up, gusts of frigid air tearing through the tunnel with the sound of a jet-engine, deafening her and whipping her jacket and hair about wildly. Yael couldn’t hear anything besides the wind and the ghosts of the ancient voices it carried; nonetheless, she couldn’t shake the impression that there was a haunting melody embedded in the sound, emerging from unfathomable depths. She felt a self-destructive urge to run ahead blindly, as if she could somehow escape the wind. Yael was reminded of how she felt standing at the edge of a tall building or looking over the side of a bridge, the perverse impulse to jump. She knew if she lost her guide, if she let the darkness of the twisting tunnels swallow her, she would never re-emerge. But fear tempted her to run headlong despite that.

  Yael walked directly behind the cat, careful not to tread on him. Proximity made her feel a little better, but she still had to fight the impulse to pick up the cat and cuddle him to her chest.

  The surface of the cave was far from even and Yael’s flashlight had begun to dim. She found herself stumbling, scrambling on gravel or over unexpected obstacles to stay on her feet, often earning a derisive glare from the cat. The pebbles she kicked down the tunnel seemed to ricochet and echo forever down the narrow caverns. Her mask was suffocating and hot, but she wasn’t ready to show her face to the cat, not until she was sure of his intentions.

  When she stepped on the root, her first thought was to avoid rolling her ankle. It would be absurd, Yael thought bitterly, to have her quest derailed by a sprain. She didn’t notice that the root was moving until it had constricted around her ankle, tight as a cuff.

  Yael pulled frantically, tugging her leg with both arms, while the root tightened, cutting off the flow of blood to her foot.

  “Help!” Yael cried out, not caring that her voice sounded panicked and childish. “Mister Kitty! Please help me!”

  The root was not exactly a root. It was something organic, like a tentacle with the surface texture of stone or of an ancient shellfish. The segmented length grew up out of the ground like a plant, but moved with the cunning and persistence of a reptile. Now that she was caught, Yael could see others like it all around her, waving in the invisible air currents like seaweed.

  “Pulling won’t help,” the cat said grimly, while Yael bent down and tried to peel the increasingly painful constriction from her leg. “It will only get tighter. You need to relax.”

  Relaxing did not seem like a practical option. Yael opened her mouth to say as much, but instead yelped in pain as the root tightened another notch with a mechanical click, the new segment winding further up her leg, forcing her to bend at the knee.

  “Help me! Please!”

  “Not much for calming down, are we? There is a lesson in this, child. No one can be stronger than everything. There is always something, like the shoggoth here,” the cat lectured, nodding at the thing that was crushing Yael’s leg, “that is stronger than you. But you can always be smarter. Get ready to run.”

  The cat coiled his legs, then hopped on to the root that held her leg, prancing along the curled length of it, digging his claws in. For one awful moment, the root flexed and Yael cried out, certain that her leg would be crushed by the tremendous pressure. Then the root released with such violence that it whipped around her leg, bruising the flesh beneath the impenetrable cloth of her tights. The root arced through the tunnel, scraping the moss from the ceiling as it crashed down where the cat had been only moments before. Now he sat on an adjoining root, licking one paw and looking amused.

  “Being faster, of course – ”

  The cat leapt again, a shadow moving amongst shadows, a moment before the place where he sat was obliterated by another of roots, sending up a puff of the glowing blue moss.

  “ – is helpful as well. The point I wish to make, however – ”

  Three roots arched overhead and descended in sequence, shattering the ground and sending splinters of stone flying, one piece glancing off the side of Yael’s mask. The cat appeared to dart beneath them just before they hit the ground and then settled casually atop another.

  “ – is that you don’t want your enemy – ”

  There was a confusion of roots and impacts, the tunnel shuddering and filling with dust. One root after another collided with the ground in attempts to crush the cat, each on top of the last. The cat was like a whirlwind moving between them, jumping from one root to the other as if they were holding still, as if he were leaping from branch to branch in a tree. By the time he emerged from the scrum, wiping unhappily at the dust on his coat, the roots were left tangled hopelessly into a flexing, creaking bundle.

  “ – to decide the terms of battle for you. Not if you expect to win. See what I mean?”

  The cat sauntered off before Yael could make a reply. She had to hurry after to avoid being left behind, careful to stay clear off the dark roots that protruded from various odd corners of the tunnel.

  The walls widened and the ceiling rose until they were walking in an underground cavern rather than a tunnel. Yael was pleased by the space, but she was starting to wonder if they would ever start climbing to the surface.

  “Say, um, Mister Kitty?”

  “Yes, child?”

  “I forgot to ask your name. That was very rude, as you are doing me a huge favor by leading me out of these tunnels. My name is Yael Kaufman. I am very pleased to meet you.”

  The cat stopped to look back at her. She couldn’t read a cat’s expression, so she had no idea what he was thinking. But Yael preferred to err on the side of politeness, so she followed this up with a small curtsy, the one her stepmother had instructed her to use with strangers whose social status was unknown.

  “Pleased to meet you, Yael. My name is Tobi.”

  Again, the mask saved her. Though Tobi looked at her with obvious suspicion, the gas mask’s constriction made her giggling sound more like a cough fit than anything else.

  “Is there a problem?” The question was innocent enough, but the gleam in Tobi’s eyes was anything but. “Was there something you found amusing, perhaps?”

  “No, not at all,” Yael reassured the cat. “It gets stuffy inside this mask, that’s all.”

  “You won’t need it, soon,” Tobi said archly, leading her on through the branching tunnels. “Perhaps what you found humorous was my name? You wouldn’t be the first.”

  “Only because...” Yael stumbled, searching for words. “Because you are such a brave cat. I thought that a fierce warrior like you would have a name that... well, you know.”

  By chance, Yael said exactly the right thing. Tobi warmed up immediately.

  “Indeed I do. Other cats have often suggested as much to me, that I take on a proper feline name that reflects my strengths. But I... the cats of Ulthar, you see, come from all sort of places. Some of them were born on those strange streets, and they learn to hunt when the moon is waning and the Toads must return to their ships. Others are feral and come in from the dying wild. Some, like myself, were originally part of a human family.”

  The ground was rough and progress was difficult, but they were slowly climbing upward, so Yael was encouraged. At the mention of Tobi’s family, she pushed her tired legs a little harder, eager to hear the rest of his story.

  “I... I loved my family. There is no shame in admitting that. I enjoyed my time with them. I was well cared for, and in turn I looked after them as best I could. When I lost them all, even Sarah, as little as she was, I thought that my heart would break. I went wandering, desperate to forget, to find something to occupy my thoughts before grief consumed them. That is how I found Ulthar and the Nameless City, and I found myself again, too, in moonlight hunts, in stalking the most horrible prey. For a time I considered changing my name. I don’t want to forget about my family, though, or the time that I spent with them. I don’
t want to forget the way it felt to be petted, to fall asleep in a lap, to eat the scraps Sarah smuggled from the dinner table. My name represents the things I wish to hold on to.”

  Yael honestly thought she might cry.

  “Mr. Kitty – I mean Tobi – could I pet you?”

  The cat’s glare was furious.

  “Of course not.”

  “Ah.”

  “Come on,” Tobi urged, hurrying ahead on its silent feet. “We are near the Vale of P’nath, where these tunnels intersect with the Underworld. This isn’t a safe place for either of us.”

  Yael thought that perhaps Tobi was mad at her for saying the wrong thing. He was deliberately staying one step ahead no matter how she hurried. Then she kicked something with the toe of her rain boots, something white and hollow that clattered into the darkness and Yael found that she could go faster. The luminous moss had grown over everything here and the air was thick with vibrant spores like static fireflies, hanging in the stale air of the cavern. Yael was glad to have her mask on. She didn’t like the idea of getting those in her lungs.

  The path they followed was invisible to her. The walls of the cavern had fallen away, out of sight in the darkness, further than her feeble flashlight could illuminate. They walked along broken ground, volcanic rocks, grotesque outcroppings of stone that reminded her of dreams from before she learned to speak, dreams of things forgotten until that very moment.

  They rounded one such stone monument, so ornate that it was hard for Yael to say whether it was grotesquely carved or formed by impossibly varied natural forces, then she stopped in her tracks unintentionally. The pebbles beneath her feet rolled and she fell down on her tailbone without warning.

  “Don’t look, Yael,” Tobi warned belatedly. “They are all long dead. There is nothing here to worry you, because they are well beyond worry.”

  Tobi coaxed her back to her feet and onward, growing increasingly nervous as time went on. He urged Yael along faster, hurrying ahead to survey the terrain and pick out directions, then watching behind them with a still alertness, one ear twitching occasionally. The wind took on an oddly personal intensity, fingers of cold working their way through her windbreaker and sending shivers up her spine. Despite the wide-open plain they appeared to occupy, the wind whistled as if it were coming from a deep and narrow place.

  “Move faster if you would ever leave this place,” Tobi urged, his eyes flicking from one side to the other. “Run, Yael. Run until you reach the staircase, then climb. Do not look back. Do you understand me? We are far from where I would have taken you, had I any choice in the matter. You will emerge in the Waste, but there is nothing for it. I see that you are strong. You remind me of the little girl I lost, long ago. I believe you will survive.”

  Yael’s eyes instinctively wandered back toward the source of the whistling and the cold wind, but Tobi leapt in front of her, hair standing on edge, back arched and claws extended.

  “Do you understand, Yael? Run and then climb. Do not look back. You will meet others who can take you the rest of the way. Explain to them that you are under the protection of the cats of Ulthar, that they will be rewarded for guiding you to the Nameless City and the Night Market. The journey will not be short or easy, but I suspect you already know that. Come here.”

  Yael stepped forward, her throat tight and her heart pounding in her ears.

  “Hold out your arm, child. You may close your eyes if you wish.”

  She did not. Nor did she flinch. The cats claws were like razors, the pain severe and abrupt. It was over in two passes, a smear of blood and a stinging, shallow wound.

  “Show them that, should your passage be challenged. Find the Night Market. Be well, Yael, until we meet again. Now, go and do not look back!”

  Yael hesitated a moment longer, because she was certain that she saw fear in the cat’s eyes. She did not want to leave him to stand alone against whatever whistled in the darkness. But then she realized that the worry was most likely for her. Yael remembered the fearless way the cat had fought the shoggoth, his effortless victory. Yael decided the best thing she could do for Tobi was to trust him, so she bent, gave Tobi one terrific squeeze and then ran.

  The ground was fluid and treacherous underfoot, but cruel and jagged when she fell, scratching her knees and the palms of her hands. Yael ran blindly, her flashlight flickering on and off in her hand, waving too wildly to be of any use. It didn’t seem to matter that much. Yael had no path to follow and no sense of direction to guide her except her own blind fear.

  The wind felt like ice and the air it carried was thick and polluted, even through the nanomesh filter of her mask. Like cold fingers, it crept indecently beneath her clothes and left her feeling chilled and unclean. The whistling would not stop and her eardrums ached with the endless vibration. The pitch and volume were such that Yael wanted to press her hands over her ears, but she couldn’t. She was too busy running headlong into the dark.

  She tripped and went tumbling into a pile of something that shattered on impact with the sound of brittle leaves. Yael closed her eyes and stood up, brushing her windbreaker as she ran. She did not look down again until she was far from the pile of bones.

  Her flashlight showed the scene around her in flashes, like lightening, motivated by her fear. The piles of bones were everywhere. Some were more than piles. They were foothills, even mountains that stretched off as far as her light could reach; a skeletal geography of chilling dimensions. Yael kept as clear of the bones as possible, but they still crackled underfoot and made the going treacherous, so that she had to slow even as the terrible whistling grew nearer and the darkness seemed to take on a tangible form.

  Yael felt things stick to her and pull like spider webs attached to her skin and hair, but where she shone her flashlight, there was nothing. The wind was so powerful that the hood of her jacket flapped wildly and she had the distinct sensation that something was tugging at her hair.

  If she screamed, then there was no shame to it because there was no one to hear. Yael stumbled on, terrified, trying to put form to the darkness around her. Images of childhood fear and misfortune flashed through her mind in a hypnagogic flurry, a swirl of skulls, swastikas and leering faces. Wherever she put her feet, bones rolled and snapped beneath. There was a pinpoint of bright pain in her scalp as one hair was torn from her head and then another. Something caught one of her legs and she fell and tumbled free, scraping her knees and almost losing her duffel.

  Yael gritted her teeth and struggled back to her feet, not sure if the flashlight made things better or worse. She wasn’t certain that she wanted to see what was in front of her in the charnel valley, or the bones that surrounded her. Tobi’s admonishment not to look back was unnecessary. Yael was too occupied with fleeing to risk a look over her shoulder. She tried to keep the thin circle of light from her small flashlight focused on the ground immediately in front of her, but she needed her arms for running and dragging the duffel, so the best she could manage was an occasional glance. She tripped again and again, bruising her legs and battering her duffel, bringing tears to her eyes. Each time, Yael rose shakily, the maddening whistling now just behind her, weirdly mixed with the frightful yowling of an enraged cat.

  The staircase met her, shin first. Yael cried out and grabbed at her leg, dropping her duffel. She felt another tug at her hair, another obscene caress from the frigid wind, then she gathered her things and ran frantically up the stairs in the darkness, her flashlight dropped in her haste, one hand gripping the rail of the spiral staircase tightly. The stairs were slightly too far apart, and Yael had to strain to reach the next stair, her shaky legs protesting each step. Mad with fear, she ignored the lactic acid building in her legs, the darkness, her lost flashlight. All she knew was the whistling and the hope that it was receding.

  Yael was further up the stairway than she would have believed possible, the whistling only a terrifying echo, when she collided with the man in glasses, sending them both sprawling.

>   “This is unexpected,” the man said, holding up a gas lantern and peering at her through antique spectacles. “Rather rude, in addition.”

  “Well, I am sorry,” Yael retorted crossly, dropping her duffel in exhaustion, and then collapsing on top of it. She hardly had the strength to peel off her mask, so desperate to catch her breath that she didn’t worry about what might be in the air. “You will have to forgive my recklessness in fleeing a horrible monster.”

  “Rather rude,” he affirmed. “Also, a girl. This is well out of the ordinary.”

  “You’re telling me. What was making that whistling sound? Is Tobi alright?”

  “Whistling?” The man blinked slowly behind his thick, round glasses, and Yael started to suspect that he had a disease or derangement of some sort. “Tobi? What are you talking about?”

  Yael shook her head dismissively, leaning over the blackened metal railing of the spiral stair to look out on the invisible Vale of P’nath, silent and still, searching vainly for a sign of the cat. Nothing was forthcoming.

  “Where I was raised, it was considered polite to introduce oneself. That is the traditional way to begin a conversation.”

  Yael glared back at the pock-marked man, whom she had decided that she did not like.

  “You could start by telling me yours, then.”

  “A child should introduce herself to her elder.”

  “A lady reserves the right to give her name at all.”

  Yael folded her arms across her chest and they glared briefly at one another. It was no surprise that he broke first. She was prepared to stand there all day on principle, after all.

  “My name is Robert Genner of the Greater Wisconsin Necropolis,” he admitted, as if there were something criminal about it. “And my business is my own.”

  “My name is Yael Kaufman of Roanoke,” she replied neutrally, offering her gloved hand so that her sleeve slid back to reveal Tobi’s scratches. “And I have business to conduct at the Night Market.”