Bohemians of Sesqua Valley (10 page)

I remove my hand from where it touches stone and step unto the threshold, through which I shall enter another realm. One oaken door on partial hinge invites me as I glance at the charred and splintered remnants of its companion on the ground, perhaps the victim of some lightning bolt. I smile at the lingering smell of destruction, and when at last I laugh my voice seems not mine own, and my lips are strangely shaped in alien form. I lick those lips and cross the threshold, into a nameless place, turning corners until I enter the vaulted chamber of some hall, where spectral starlight taints seven stained glass windows. How queerly the dim figures depicted on those windows shift on their smooth surface, where starlight and obscurity conjoin. I smell the smoke before I see it; but this is not the fragrance of ignited annihilation but rather plumes of adoration, coiling from altars where perfume of patchouli mingles with myrrh. But stay—what is that shape behind the veil of smoke, the black emanation that, drifting to me, parts the hazy curtain with its claw? I watch the hand snake through smoke and summon me with esoteric motion, that hand for which I reach and clasp—that hot hand! I see that hand lift mine toward a phantom’s face and sigh as the smoldering mouth moves against my skin. I lean nearer and kiss the eidolon.

The being backs away, behind its curtain of perfumed smoke, to where it is encircled by seven shrouded figures that are stained by shadow and starlight. Their alabaster faces remind me of the material with which my diadem has been constructed, and I laugh softly as they open shattered mouths and moan a liturgical chant in adoration of Crawling Chaos. My hands lift to the headdress of white gold and remove it from where it weighs upon my peak. I reach through fog and crown the eidolon with the relic I have unearthed from haunted soil, as a stream of faces beneath the tiara grin at me, mockingly. The haunter of the dark spreads its arms unto its shining faces, where eyes awaken as sparks that reflect on the shimmering flesh of seven adorers. I feel a fire on mine own eyes as they begin to cinder and melt; but before I lose sight absolutely the phantom filters to me and kisses my dissolving eyes, transforming those orbs of jelly into diamonds through which I peer into unknown dimension.

II

The bell tolled once, and so the lady stirred in her cathedra and raised her heavy head to the vaulted ceiling, where winged images among the broken shadows returned her somber gaze. Her cathedra was spacious and well-lined, its scarlet velvet cushions extremely soft, and on the ivory of its frame were fastened exquisite designs of constellations that made her dizzy when peered at in prolongment. She had no interest in those designs now, for the moan of wind issued from upper regions, among seven stained glass windows kissed by outré starlight. The lady listened to the airy sound and glanced through the haze of smoke and broken shadow that swirled about her, watching it lift to the arched and wounded window through which lonely windsong whistled. There she noticed the place where the window had been violated and its shrouded figure had lost one hand. Lifting like the smoke she rose out of the throne and floated on the floor of cracked stone toward the ruined wall into which the wounded window had been fitted; and there, on the unyielding surface of the floor, she saw the perfect pallid hand of glass, its semi-translucent white form seeming to her fanciful eyes like some murdered dove. Bending, she took up the delicate relic and traced its outline with one finger, and then she touched its smooth surface to her mouth and kissed its palm. Noticing that the alabaster fingers pointed to the crevice in the wall, she raised her fingers to the shrouded figure of the upper window and made to it an esoteric sign, and then she whistled as she squeezed her lithe form through the crevice in the wall, moving until she stood on churchyard ground. Her legs navigated her among the tombstones, beneath chill starlight, as trees bent above her in gathering wind. When she came to the spot where the earth had been disrupted she stopped and peered at the place where something had been exhumed, where the soil had been carelessly packed into place but not smoothed. There was no slab here to mark what might have been beneath, and so she moved one foot and with the tip of her toe drew a tomblike shape. Chittering, she dropped to her knees and etched her name within the shape with one finger of the hand of glass.

The lady’s attention was caught by an arresting cry. She saw the dark creature that balanced on one tombstone and regarded her with jadeite eyes, the wee kitten that did not flee as she approached and clutched it with one hand; and she laughed as it climbed upon her bosom and found its way onto one shoulder, where it roosted so as to purr into her ear, a vibration of sound that leaked into her head and moved behind her eyes, eyes that then beheld the distant archway made of hoary stone. Swiftly, the wee puss leapt from her shoulder to the earth and darted toward the archway, where it stopped and mewed as if to coax her to the spot. She stirred beneath stars and mist and moved to the enticing beast, following it through the archway into another place. The ground she walked on was so soft that it seemed almost as if she walked on cloud, and in the spaces above her the stars looked larger than usual. She fancied that she could feel the kiss of icy stardust on her eyes and mouth. The lady followed the small black beast until she noticed another being, pale and still, in one distant area—a statue of a shrouded figure whereon one raised arm had lost its marble hand. A bell tolled then, a blurred unfocused sound that crept toward her like some sightless freak, and at the vibration of that clamor the wee kitten scampered toward the archway through which they had just passed. She did not heed the beast’s behavior, nor did she notice how the statue’s solid form softened infinitesimally and shuddered when touched by vibrating air. The lady saw only the outstretched arm that lacked a hand, and thus she flowed to it and tried to fasten the hand of glass onto the place where the statue’s limb ended abruptly; but she pressed too violently against the figure’s smooth white marble, and her delicate hand of glass broke into three pieces. One sharp tip pricked her finger and she watched the dark liquid that, spilling from her, stained the shattered hand. Dizziness oppressed our lady and she dropped the pieces of sacrosanct glass onto the soft earth as, from the archway beyond, a little kitten cried.

Our lady stumbled to the archway, and through it, beneath the sky that blackened with breaking storm; and as the rain began to pounce upon her she pirouetted to one ancient tree and bent so as to scoop up the kitten and shelter it in her warm limbs beneath the spread of leaves and branches. She listened to the soothing rainfall and grew drowsy, and leaning her back against the tree she lowered to a sitting position as the deluge and its lullaby coaxed her toward slumber. In soggy dreams she saw seven shrouded figures that moved in ceremony around her, and she could sense the vibrations of their chanted song on the air before their hooded faces; but the sound that awoke her was one single peal that issued from the cracked bell of the ruined edifice. Our lady rubbed her eyes and let her hands fall to her lap, where they touched the stiff dead thing of fur that nestled there. And it confused her when, gradually, she heard an apparition of sound, a ghostly mewing from some nearby place; and she pondered, as she lifted her face and glanced toward the ancient archway, why the wee puss was there, however insubstantially. Our lady watched as the playful sprite ran in circles for some moments and then rushed through the archway, to the feet of one shrouded figure that motioned with an arm that lacked a hand. And so our lady lifted out of her drowsy husk of flesh, which stayed in place against the tree that sheltered it; and she drifted to the archway, and through it, to the ones awaiting her.

III

I found the bottle as I walked along the shore and was surprised by its chilliness as I plucked it from the waves. The object intrigued me with its black-green sheen and queer metallic stopper, which had been shaped so as to resemble a macabre siren’s portrait. I held the thing up to the misty sky, where the sun was a whitish ghost behind crawling clouds, and thought it unusual that I could almost see through the murky glass and detect the thing inside the bottle; and this made me smile, because as a child I had been entranced by tales of treasure maps secreted inside flasks that were tossed into the sea. Using my strength, I pulled the stopper from the bottle’s neck, but I was clumsy and the stopper fell out of my hand into the waves wherein I stood. I watched it move beneath those waves for a few seconds and wondered why it seemed to mutate with growth and move its mouth as if in speech. Loquacious bubbles floated to the surface as the stopper became lost in shifting sand.

What an unwholesome stench escaped from the murky bottle, like some festering remnant of discarded flesh. I peered through the neck and saw the bleached scroll inside, then turned the flagon over and shook it vigorously as I walked beyond the waves, to shore. The object inside refused to budge, and so I pressed the container’s opening against my lips and blew my living aether within, but the stench inside the thing pushed at me with renewed nastiness and I had to take my face away. I tilted the bottle and tapped its opening against my palm, and after much effort one end of the scroll dislodged and peeked out. I pinched it with my fingers and frowned, for the nasty thing was unpleasant to my touch. Parchment should not be so spongy, unless perhaps this scroll had somehow been tainted by sea water. I unrolled the cylinder and was startled to find that it was not a written record at all but rather a sordid mask, its only openings being the places where a face would own a pair of eyes. I dropped the flask onto the sand and held the mask up to the whitish sun so as to judge its texture; but suddenly my arms began to ache, grew heavy, and without warning they lowered so that the mask covered my face, to which it clung. How curious one’s imagination can be, for I half-fancied that I could detect the texture of the mask stitch itself into my flesh. How unfathomable, the way the night tide air tasted as it filtered through the place that ensconced my mouth. The stars looked especially bright, and this confused me because I had not realized that night had fallen—surely there had been muted daylight moments before, when I had first discovered the bottle while wading through the waves. What a curiosity the mortal world can be.

I walked toward and into the city, into a portion of it that I had never known. How ancient and acrid the air seemed as it brushed my faux mouth, against which I pressed my hot tongue as I babbled incomprehensibly to darkness. An elderly light fell from tilted street lamps to the dusty street as infants with mature faces seeped from a decrepit building’s doorway and encircled me, returning my gibberish. They danced around me and called me by some strange name, and then these imps scattered as a tall black woman encased inside a tight yellow gown stalked to me beneath the myriad stars. Rising tempest played with her length of burgundy-colored hair.

Genuflecting before me, the woman took my hand and licked it. “We were not expecting you so soon,” she murmured. “Indeed, we had sensed that you had been mislaid between dimensions and unable to come and herald the end of mortal time.” She raised her face and gazed at him with alchemical eyes. “Of all your many masks, this is the most grotesque.”

I slipped my hand out of her own. “I’m sorry, miss, but you have me confused with another.”

At this she scowled and writhed with rising. “An imposture? How very vile. We do not take kindly to such trickery, for we are weary with waiting, waiting. How you’ve come to impersonate His aura I cannot comprehend, for this mask is authentic in its way. Let me scald it with my wrath.”

She raised a hand and made some kind of sign unto the stars, and then she sliced one talon through her lip. I beheld the blood that bubbled from the wound as the creature leaned toward me and pressed her mouth against mine own. I drank her unholy elixir as she spoke an alien and unfathomable language that leaked into my mouth as swallowed bile. I watched her back away from me, not understanding the shadow that encased her, that hard unyielding surface of gloom. Starlight extinguished and the air stifled all about me. I walked toward the surface of rigid shadow and collided with a barrier of smooth glass. I leaned against that incomprehensible wall as the floor on which I trembled began to tip and threaten sane balance. Aware of sudden presence, I looked upward through the lean neck of the container in which I insanely found myself. A dark feminine face peered at me from above, and then its mammoth mouth moved with evocation as it weaved a wicked language into my rancid atmosphere. I watched, helplessly, as that siren orifice wrapped over my container’s opening and sucked.

IV

I glanced at the cinders in your burnished eyes and sensed the acidic wretchedness that burned the brain of a forgotten goddess. Those embers in your eyes were gold and orange, yet dull of hue like the mauve and ruddy porphyry with which your sarcophagus had been constructed. Had it always existed, your dwelling of anticipated death? Or did you have it built when, in vision, you beheld the end of your apprehensive adoration? It cannot be an edifice erected for One of Eternal Glory, for it is a place that reeks of extinction and expired dreams. There had been violation here, I sensed, for in your bowl that once held precious gems there was naught but dust and filigree of web. Your mouth was dry, no longer nourished by rich liquid sacrifice.

Your whispered legend had been discovered in one rare and ancient tome that I had located in a hushed shop in Innsmouth. That seaport reminded me of your legend, a thing of past magnificence and potency that was now mostly dormant yet contained a promise of resuscitated splendor. The air of Innsmouth reeked almost as sourly as the dead air of your catacomb; but whereas your sphere was one of utter silence, Innsmouth seemed never at rest—there was constant sound and movement. My eyes were always returning to the sea and its restlessness, to its waves that wrecked themselves on rocks and against rotting piers. My eyes were entranced by an agitation in the black clouds that crawled in the darkened sky, those clouds that shaped themselves suggestively. My ears could hear the sharp cry of gulls that soared above the agitated water, and I thought that I could detect, just below that ordinary noise, an unnatural ululation that might have been but a tissue of entranced hallucination. I stood in that Innsmouth shop, among fossilized memories, and touched the cool pages of an elder volume; and I was allowed to purchase that book, and I wrapped it inside my coat as I stalked the quays beneath the winged gulls and wisps of black clouds.