“Are you coming back to my room or not?” he said.
She smiled coyly. “Where’re you staying?”
“The hotel at Twentieth and University.”
“Well . . . I guess I can make sure you get to your room safely.”
He gave a slight nod of his head. “Whatever you need to tell yourself, sweetheart.”
The pair proceeded down the crowded sidewalk and started to turn the corner, but something in Terrance’s periphery made him stop in his tracks.
He’d caught a glimpse of the satyr wading in the fountain back across the street.
Impossible!
He turned and stared, squinting.
The woman followed his line of sight, but failed to see anything unusual. “What is it?”
Terrance waved her off as if shooing away a fly. “Go to the hotel and . . . go on and wait on me . . . I’ll be along shortly.” He was drunk as he staggered to the curb.
“How can I go to the room and wait for you? I don’t know what room you’re staying in. I don’t even have a key.”
Terrance didn’t hear her, nor did he notice as she returned to the club. He stepped into the street, stumbling into traffic. Cars came to screeching halts. A horn blared and the driver stuck his head out the window, shouting at Terrance.
“Oh, you shouldn’t go through all that trouble to make me feel at home,” Terrance mumbled, unfazed. His sights were trained on the fountain, where the satyr was waving his staff and open book, like a television preacher delivering a sermon.
Terrance received a few more honks and a heap of curses, oblivious to the commotion, before coming to a standstill in front of the fountain. And this time he really saw it, the frogs spraying streams of water in the formation of a pentagram.
I’ll be damned.
The notion that his trumped up story was real did little to comfort him. Had he been sober he would have gotten on the first plane out of there. Instead he did something he would regret for the rest of his life.
He called out to the satyr.
“Bob?”
The dog jumped to its feet, barking at him ferociously, as the deer hopped from its back and stepped aside.
Terrance flinched and was about to run away when he realized the dog was confined to the fountain. He shifted his gaze and noticed all the other animals staring at him.
The satyr, as if interrupted, turned to Terrance, seeing him for the first time. An appalled look appeared on the ram-man’s carved face and as he raised his brow, the sound of bending metal cut the air.
“Who the hell is Bob?” the creature demanded.
“Oh, shit!” Terrance wheeled around and grabbed the first person who passed by.
“Hey!” the woman cried.
“Aye, man! What’s your problem?” the woman’s boyfriend asked as he moved to break Terrance’s hold.
“The satyr . . . it spoke to me!” Terrance said, his breath reeking of alcohol.
The boyfriend scowled, put an arm around his lady’s waist, and the couple hurried away.
Terrance turned to face the angry satyr once more. Then he spun again and yelled after the fleeing man and woman, “The satyr is not sitting on his stump! The thing is walking and . . . he talked to me! I swear!”
Another group of people walked by.
“There’s something wrong with this fountain!” Terrance screamed, alarming them. They hurried away just as quickly as the couple had.
“They cannot see what you see,” the satyr said. “And I do not rightly know how it is that you see the truth. Perhaps you have chosen to see what others prefer to ignore. The question is why?”
Terrance watched in awe as the satyr came wading toward him through the shallow water. He opened his mouth to speak, but the words refused to come out.
The satyr stopped at the inner edge of the jet-stream pentagram and stared quizzically at Terrance. “You’re that man who was out here taking photos earlier. I’m sure you’ve heard the saying, ‘Seek and ye shall find.’ ” The creature held open his arms as if inviting Terrance for a hug. “Well, apparently you have been searching for a devil, and now you have found one!”
“I wasn’t looking for a devil . . . not exactly,” Terrance stammered.
“Now that you have found me, is there anything you wish?”
He thought about the question, then slowly shook his head.
“No? You don’t wish for power? You have no desire to be granted that which the Heavens have denied you? Don’t you want to know the secrets of the universe?”
He shook his head again. However unreal all this seemed, he knew better than to ask anything from the Devil.
“I think I understand,” the satyr said. “Your search is derived from pure curiosity.”
“Like I said, I wasn’t exactly looking for you. I just . . . I think I should be—”
“Wait! Before you go, may I ask you one question?”
“Okay.” Terrance’s heart beat rapidly.
“Much obliged,” the creature said, his eerie smile sending chills down Terrance’s spine. “How is it that you enjoy the pleasures I provide while not bearing my mark?”
Terrance quickly shook his head. “I didn’t . . . I . . .”
“Oh yes, you have. You are clearly intoxicated by the beverages I supply to this area. And I assume you have been enjoying the pleasurable company of my beautiful women?”
“Well . . .”
“You see, Five Points South is like an exclusive club, and in order to enjoy the benefits, you must have the stamp of admission. That way everyone knows you have paid the price and you can come and go as you please. Free to partake of anything your heart desires.”
Terrance was no Bible scholar, but he knew that to accept the mark of the beast (any beast) was to sentence one’s soul to eternal damnation. Living his life in ignorance was one thing, but to know he’d be going to Hell when he died was quite another.
“Well,” he began hesitantly. “I guess I’ll be going.”
“Leaving so soon?”
With his clawed hand holding the book, the satyr indicated the scene behind Terrance. “Why, the party is just getting started.”
Terrance took a step back and then turned around. It had already been dark when he exited the club, but the street seemed even darker now. And though the stygian blackness was enough to unnerve any man, it was not the catalyst for the large urine stain developing in the crotch of his pants. What had really sent him spiraling was all the people. Walking along the sidewalks, going in and out of the club, or eating outdoors at the bistros, they talked and laughed and went about their business as if there was nothing out of the ordinary. They did all this with a red cloven hoof print glowing on their foreheads.
“You see? They have all been marked and they don’t have a care in the world. They are content because I take care of my children. You can be like them, if you would only accept my mark.”
Terrance trembled as he slowly turned to face the looming satyr. “The mark of the beast,” he muttered in disbelief. “I thought I was coming to get a good story, but this is more than I bargained for.”
“THE MARK OF THE BEAST?” the satyr bellowed.
The animals cringed. All except for the dog who bared its teeth and growled.
“EVIL? You know what? I had you pegged all wrong. I thought, surely he can’t be a pious man. He’s drunk off his ass, there’s no way he could belong to that group of imbeciles.”
The satyr looked over his shoulder and glared at the Methodist church. The demonic creature spat. “The mark of the beast,” he reiterated with a bit more calm. “Evil. That sounds like Christian talk.”
Terrance didn’t know what to say. He was afraid that any amount of talking would only worsen his predicament.
“Are you one of those Methodists, boy? No, wait, let me guess. Baptist, Catholic, Pentecostal? Maybe one of those ‘refuse to take a side’ Non-Denominationalists? No? How about Jewish, Jehovah’s Witness, Muslim, Buddhist? I don
’t give a rat’s ass what you cling to! None of them are kosher with me! Not a one!”
The satyr’s mood shifted gears as he looked to the other animals sharing his fountain. “We have us a God-fearing man here, boys. What do you think we ought to do with him?”
Terrance’s frightened eyes went from the shrinking deer to the barking dog. His gaze darted to the lion cub, which stalked around on its pedestal, rumbling, then leapt over to the hare. The only animal not paying him any attention was the turtle that swam around in the pool.
Doesn’t he get a vote? Terrance found himself wondering.
Above him, the owl hooted, and when Terrance’s head snapped upward, it stared down at him with huge eyes.
“It seems the majority has spoken,” the satyr said. “You either give me your soul, or you give me your life. The choice is yours.”
“That’s not much of a choice,” Terrance said. Tears had started down his face. “Now I see . . . I see why they call you The Storyteller. That’s just another way of saying The Liar or The Deceiver. No matter what choice I make, I’m dead.”
The satyr fixed Terrance with a horrifying scowl. “Is that your final answer?”
Terrance wiped away his tears and began to back away slowly.
It can’t harm me, he assured himself. It wants me to believe it has that, but it can’t even pass beyond the pentagram. None of them can.
“I guess that is your final answer.”
As soon as he heard these words, Terrance turned to run but stopped short. The crowd of people stood before him, stretching as far as he could see.
With pitch-black soulless eyes, the horde glared at Terrance, the hoof print on their foreheads pulsing red.
Terrance screamed. The sound had the same effect as a starting pistol, signaling the possessed mob to rush him. His bloodcurdling shriek rent the sky.
***
A few hours later, when the sun took its rightful place above the world, the lifeless body was found by a couple of sanitation workers going about their morning routine. The man was face down in The Storyteller fountain, floating among empty alcohol containers and a few used condoms.
The artwork itself appeared undamaged. Five bronze frogs sat on their pedestals, with their faces turned up, each sending streams of water that met in the middle of the pool. The hare rode its nemesis, and the lion cub sat on its hind legs, and the dog lay with the deer atop its back.
Overseeing them all was the satyr. The metal creature had reclaimed his seat on the bronze stump. One hand still clutched the nine-foot staff with the owl perched at the top, and in his other hand was the open book.
The only thing out of place was the drowned tourist.
According to both the police and coroner’s reports, Terrance had consumed too much alcohol and passed out in the fountain. With his face submerged in water, it had only been a matter of time before he drowned. The anchorperson on every local news station would announce that it was a tragic accident, ignorant of the fact that Terrance had died on his quest for witchcraft and devilry.
To Dance Among Your Puppets
By W. H. Pugmire
The masked hermaphrodite reclined on the chaise longue in his bedchamber and admired the fauns and satyrs that he had painted on the ceiling. His papier-mâché mask, which his own hands had fashioned, aped Le Stryge, except that the artist had given the daemon but a single horn. He had, since youth, been attracted to grotesque, fantastic things. Indeed, it had seemed like a kind of birthright: for his mother had read to him from Greek mythology since his infancy, and by the time he turned seven he was a genuine pagan, intoxicated with the beauty of Grecian things, one who built altars to Pan and Persephone. He had watched the dancing dryads and satyrs in the woods at dusk, and had mimicked that dancing when alone in starlit fields.
His mother, slightly mad, had hinted strange things about his own relationship with the creatures of myth, at times bending to kiss him just above his double sex. Before she had lost her leg, she used to climb with him in times of twilight to the attic, her special realm. Her artistic gifts, which she had bequeathed to her delicate offspring, had been put to particular use in the attic, the ceiling of which had been studded with tiny points of phosphorescence that caught and held light once the source of radiance had been extinguished, and thus after the attic lights had been switched off it appeared that the ceiling was covered with a multitude of tiny stars. Between the slanting walls of the peaked roof, his mother had fastened crude wooden rails, from which she hanged a series of the puppets that were her source of livelihood, except that these puppets in the attic were quite different from the beautiful and harmless creations sold to the public; for these puppets represented the creatures that had captivated her lunatic mind, her replications of Cerberus and Charybdis, of Medusa and Lamia. When she opened the three attic windows and allowed the night wind to rush into the attic room, she would dance with the wind-tossed figures, sometimes tilting so as to kiss the wings of Sphinx or hoof of goatish Pan.
The masked hermaphrodite remembered that distant time when his mère had first insisted he follow her up the ladder to the trapdoor that opened into the attic space. Dusk had fallen, and she had carried a candle with her. He watched as she pushed open the trapdoor with the back of her shoulders, and as he crept into the dusky place the woman scampered so as to light other candles. He studied the incredible creatures that hanged on their strings and began to move as his mother pulled open the room’s small windows. And then the woman reached toward a ball of twine that rested on an antique table, and he marveled at how whitely his mother’s teeth gleamed as they tore into the twine so as to produce four strips of lengthy cord which she dangled in the air as she tiptoed toward him. He wanted to please her (she was his only love), and so he joined in her madcap laughter as she tied the ends of cord to his ankles and his wrists. She tugged in time to her tapping feet, and he moved as her living marionette. How heavily she breathed as she helped him to pirouette. He laughed and looked up at her as his cords began to tangle, and the luminosity of her eyes astounded him, they looked so like the eyes of a Grecian goddess.
Languidly, the masked one pushed himself out of the bed and found the footwear that he had fashioned from bits of wood and leather, the outlandish espadrilles that resembled cloven hooves. He had used some of the cord from the attic to construct the soles and found the shoes easy to walk in despite their width. He stood for a moment to listen to the heavy evening wind that had awakened him from dreaming, the wind that reminded him of how long it had been since he had visited the shadowed attic. Stepping into the darkened hallway, he drifted to the ladder and clutched its frame. A mere silhouette in deeper darkness, he lifted his feet off the floor and began to ascend the ladder, until his masked head touched the trap door. One frail hand pushed above him and felt the movement of wood, and a smell of neglected things rushed to him. He pulled himself up into the familiar space and reached for the pull cord that activated electric light. Long fluorescent tubes hummed and blinked on, but their glare was far too brilliant and he quickly pulled the cord again. One thousand white points shone on the peaked ceiling, one thousand new-born stars; and beneath them hanged diminutive creatures of Grecian myth, the creations of his mother, his stillborn silent siblings.
The wind sounded outside the windows of the room, those windows that seemed alive with swaying nebulous shapes. His eyesight had adjusted to the darkness, and so he crept to the windows and opened them. Ah, the fragrant wind! It hastened past him, into the room of puppets, those creatures that began to sway and jostle. Laughing, he hopped into the madness of movement, spinning around, around, while the figures knocked against his head. He whirled in the wind until vertigo oppressed him, sending him to the floor in a heavy fall that split the surface of his mask. His monstrous countenance fell from him, and the myriad points of light fell on his beauteous face. Wearily, he shut his eyes and called a woman’s name. How strange, to hear his own name echoed so manifestly on the wind.
&
nbsp; The hermaphrodite opened his pale eyes and saw how the sky above him was like a funnel in which a multitude of stars revolved. Swimming among the stars he beheld an artificial fraternal horde. Puppets no longer, they moved their sentient arms and beckoned him. And then she appeared, out of darkness, into starlight. Her beauteous eyes were those of a goddess, as he had always suspected them to be. Her enchanting hands moved with significant motion, and he felt his wrists and ankles lift. He paid no attention as his hooves and clothing fell from him, revealing the glory of his double gender. He rose, into the funnel of shifting starlight, toward the hungry mouth that ached to kiss him once again.
The Briggs’ Hill Path
By Josh Reynolds
It was 1921. The image in Harley Warren’s hands was carved from a strange dark wood and polished to a soft gleam. His fingers traced the contours of wooden hips and thighs, exploring crevices and curved protuberances, grasping the shape of the thing. The wood felt alternately rough and smooth beneath his fingertips. A thrill passed through him.
“What is that?”
Warren looked up from the image, blinking in momentary confusion. He smiled a moment later, placing the image down on his desk. “Back so soon, Carter?”
“Regrettably so; I wasn’t able to find any of the items you asked for. I say again, what is that?” Randolph Carter said, gesturing.
The two men were a study in contrasts. Carter was tall and lantern-jawed, with a goggle-eyed New England face. He dressed primly, in an almost archaic fashion.
Warren, on the other hand, was dressed in an open opium-smoker’s robe and silk Ottoman trousers. He had handsome wide features that nonetheless could be disturbing in the wrong light, and a mane of too-long honey-colored hair.
“What is what?” he said, sitting back in his chair.
“That. That!” Carter’s gesture became sharper. Warren looked down at the image in his hands as if surprised to see it there.
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