In the Court of the Yellow King (23 page)

Once again, there was pounding. Not in his head, that was a constant, but at his door. Frank had heard that a lot lately, and all the times before he had ignored it, but this time he didn’t. This time he knew who was knocking, his last caller had told him. “Come in,” he said.

The apartment door slowly opened, pushing over a pile of unread mail and official red-stamped notices that had been slipped through his mail slot. Matthew from the hotline walked in. “Frank, are you...” he began, before the stench hit him full force, causing his nose to wrinkle, eyes to water behind his glasses, and his hand to come up to his face in an impromptu mask. “Damn, what’s that smell?”

Matthew’s other hand went for the light switch on the wall, and after clicking it up and down few times, he muttered to himself, “Oh yeah, right,” before shouting, “Frank, you in here?” and peering into the apartment’s gloom.

“I’m over here,” Frank said, watching the lanky silhouette slowly find its way towards him through the gray waste of his cluttered hallway.

“What happened here? I ran into your landlord downstairs and she’s pissed. She said you haven’t paid your rent in over two months, your neighbors are complaining about the smell, and you won’t answer your door. She said that your lights and water were shut off weeks back because you haven’t paid those either, and she wants you gone. She’s even called the cops to come and evict you, only with all the craziness happening out there, they haven’t had time....” Matthew trailed off as his eyes finally adjusted to the gloom and he saw Frank, sitting at his desk, in front of his laptop, with his headset pulled over his greasy, matted hair. “Wow, Frank, you look like crap. Sorry, but that’s the truth. What happened to you, and why you just sitting here in the dark?”

Frank smiled through a weeks-old, food-specked beard as his lips dragged over dry, rank teeth, “Just talking to people on the hotline. You know, listening and helping.”

“Uh-huh. Frank, you know the hotline has been shut down for weeks, right? The police are taking all the suicide calls now. Besides, like the lady said downstairs, you don’t have any power, so how can you—”

“They’re still calling, they’re still dying. That never stops... never stops....” Frank whispered as the husk took another step closer, a look of some sort on its cadaverous face. Was that concern? Repulsion? It didn’t matter. Emotions, like everything else in life, were utterly meaningless.

“Frank, I’m worried about you. I think all this... whatever the hell is going on, got to you. It’s alright, buddy. A lot of the volunteers have had it rough during this. Hell, before the cops killed the hotline, I was pretty much running it by myself. So you’re not alone, and I don’t want to see you... get hurt. That’s why I came over, and I’m glad I did. So come on, and let me get you out of here and I can help you.”

Matthew placed his cold, dead hand on Frank’s shoulder. His withered lips curled back into an unrecognizable expression to Frank. It was familiar, yet alien. The sunken, hollow eyes above it remained flat, lifeless.

“No, Matthew, let me help you.” Frank said, and in his muddled memory, the voice of the caller came back to him, explaining its plan as it had the first time, and every night since.
Th
ere is something you
can do, if you’re no
t ready to face the
ultimate truth to ev
erything, if you’re s
till afraid, or if yo
u’re feeling benevol
ent. You can always h
elp others, all the p
oor fools that don’t
see the truth behin
d the life that’s be
en pulled over their
eyes. All the people
walking around that
don’t already know
that they’re corpses
. You can save them f
rom the slow, painful
decay of life. You c
an spare them the sa
gging of flesh, the d
ulling of the senses
, the weakening of bo
nes, the failing memo
ries, the uncontrolla
ble bowels and bladd
er, and the loss of a
ll that they loved. S
ave them from all th
e little deaths that
need to pile up aro
und most people befo
re they finally give
in to the truth of
things. In helping ot
hers bypass those in
dignities, you might
fool yourself with m
oments of pleasure i
n your own, so-called
life. Many people do
, more and more every
day. And after all, y
ou’ve tried your own
death and found it
unpalatable, or perha
ps you were just too
much a coward to fa
ce what’s waiting at
the end? Maybe sampl
ing someone else’s d
eath would taste swe
eter to you and give
you the courage tha
t you’re obviously l
acking.

Frank’s hand swept up in an arc, the kitchen knife he held in it was filthy but sharp, and it cut through the dull cloth of Matthew’s shirt, and the gray flesh behind it, with ease. A gout of dark fluid gushed out and something uncoiled from the dead man’s stomach, and in that briefest of moments, Frank saw red. Bright, hot, glorious red, a single flash of something he had almost forgotten. Likewise, it made him do a forgotten thing, a mirror of what had been on Matthew’s face before shock and pain had replaced it, Frank smiled.

In a span of a few blinks, Frank’s twitchy rictus was already starting to fade as the lanky shadow in front of him gasped and shrunk back. The beautiful red flash was gone, it had only been a tiny spark of color in a world of gray, but it was enough for Frank. Now only the cold sludge that dripped from Matthew’s guts and pooled on the floor beneath him remained. Luckily for Frank, he knew how to make that flash return.

The frightened husk turned and shambled for the door to the apartment, his glasses falling from his face and feet slipping over the weeks’ worth of cans and wrappers on the ground, with Frank rising, chasing, and slashing behind him. Flash after beautiful, red flash filled Frank’s eyes as the knife swooped through the air. He heard a weird thing as he continued with his wet work, not the screams of the dead man before him who stubbornly clung to the lie of life, but another long forgotten thing; laughter.
Is that me?
Frank thought with something approaching joy as his blade now descended in powerful, white-knuckled thrusts.

Then, all too quickly, it was over. The empty shell lay at his feet, silent and unmoving. Sticky, gray fluid was everywhere, and no matter how many times Frank’s knife plunged into the shapeless mass, the beautiful sparks of light did not return, nor did the feelings they had elicited. Once more Frank was cold and his world colorless. Not even the fading thought that he had saved his friend from the cruel lie of life brought him any... what was the word again? Oh yes; joy. But just like the spark, Frank also knew how he could find that again.

But first, he had to be careful. As dull and lifeless as this world was, he still had to be cautious in it. Those who were slaves to the lie clung to their delusions and punished anyone that tried to show them the truth. So Frank went to the door of his apartment and looking into the hallway to see if anyone had heard him. However, instead of the gray hall of his apartment building, Frank saw the dark tunnel that had haunted his dreams for so long. And like all the times previous, far down at one end of the tunnel there was a cold, tawny light seeping in, and a tall figure dressed in tattered yellow robes with a golden crown on his head. The Lord of Carcosa was no longer beckoning him to come forth, instead he inclined his regal head ever so slightly in a nod of approval, and Frank knew that behind the pallid mask that the monarch wore, the King in Yellow was smiling at him.

And that caused Frank to smile back.

Sarajevo, 1993

The city is a warzone. There is
n’t much time. He mus
t retrieve what it i
s he came back for a
nd then go. If he sta
ys here too long, he
will be discovered, a
nd he will pay for w
hat he has done. Ther
e are forces at work
here that even he c
annot understand.

He
walks across the bom
bed-out ruins of the
building and stands
at its centre, stari
ng up at the sky. The
clouds are low and
black, obscuring the
moonlight. Directly a
bove him, the atmosph
ere seems charged wi
th energy: a slow-spi
nning vortex, perhaps
created by the bomb
blast, has created a
vague whirlpool in
the sky.

He smiles.

Th
en he picks up the c
amera and inspects i
t. The case is damage
d, but the apparatus
itself seems to be o
kay. The film, it appe
ars, is safe inside.

S
till smiling, he make
s his way to the out
er perimeter of the
bomb site, where a je
ep is waiting with i
ts engine running. Th
e driver does not lo
ok at him; the man is
silent; his face doe
s not move beneath h
is balaclava mask.

He
sets down the camer
a on the rear seat a
nd climbs into the j
eep, resting one hand
over the camera as
he puts on his seat
belt. Glancing one la
st time at the bombe
d-out wreckage, he no
ds. The jeep pulls aw
ay, wheel-spinning in
the dirt.

Moments la
ter, something in the
bomb-debris stirs. A
shattered piece of
concrete shifts, a sh
ard of glass breaks,
what looks like a th
in yellow-skinned ha
nd emerges from the
rubble and clenches
into a fist against
the night.

or James Fontaine, it started with pictures of other people’s tattoos on the Internet.

He was planning to make a documentary about tattoos inspired by films. Portraits of characters, actors, inked text from film quotes... whatever he could find. It was a vague idea, admittedly, and one that he was starting to think might not have much mileage. And when the hell had he ever taken a personal project to completion, anyway? It seemed like he spent his whole time researching and never actually creating anything of value, just the dull work projects he took on to pay the bills.

But then he found a photo of the tattoo titled “The Pallid Mask” and something inside him shifted, like a lever moving or a switch clicking gently into place to set off a chain of mechanical events towards an unknown purpose.

It was a single jpeg image, used as part of a brief blog article written a long time ago about a short film made over two decades in the past. There was a photograph at the end of the piece, and it showed a small man – was he a dwarf, or a midget? – with a disturbing, almost featureless yellow face tattooed across the skin of his chest. The tiny man was naked, pictured from the waist up, and standing in the time-honoured bodybuilder pose, flexing his guns. The camera lens must have been focused explicitly on the tattoo because the detail showed up so well while the man’s face was blurred by shadow. The inked image depicted a torn and tattered face wreathed in smoke, the flesh peeling away to reveal nothing but more smoke beneath. The eyes were blank. The mouth was just a gaping hole.

There was something powerful about the image. James was unable to look away. The caption under the photograph said “Tommy Urine, actor/inmate.”

“What the hell kind of name is that?” It was amusing but for some reason he didn’t feel like laughing. He dragged his attention away from the tattoo and began to read the article.

In 1993, during the Bosnian War, an underground filmmaker calling himself Phantomas Ulna apparently used the inmates from a Bosnian asylum to create a short film called “The King in Yellow,” which was an adaptation of a fictional play invented in a book of short stories by the cult author Robert W. Chambers.

Ulna (whose real name is not a matter of public record) used his (probably bribed) connections in the war-torn city of Sarajevo to gain access to an unnamed mental institution and the patients kept there. Over one weekend, he shot a reel of footage that came to be known as “The Yellow Film.” The footage has never been seen, and has in fact taken on an air of legend Phantomas Ulna was never heard of again – many people say that he vanished, or was killed as he made his way across the city after leaving the asylum (which was bombed a few hours later). Nobody involved in the filming has ever come forward to tell of what actually happened over the course of that weekend. It is rumoured that everyone who appeared in the film died in the blast or disappeared into the chaos of the city, but it is impossible to substantiate these claims. This is not a very well documented case, and even on the Internet it’s difficult to find any further information.

I suppose we’ll never know the truth – or see anything of – “The Yellow Film.” My guess is that it probably never existed in the first place, and the story is simply one of many fictions to come out of a besieged city during a time of great and violent conflict. The photograph shown below is possibly a fake, but the anonymous person who sent it to me claims that it is the only surviving still from the supposed Sarajevo shoot.

The part of James that always believed he could actually complete a project came out of hiding, sniffing at the air like a dog catching the scent of something tasty. There was something about this story that caught his attention. He scanned the blog for contact details, and found an email address:
[email protected]

James typed out a brief query requesting more information about the Sarajevo shoot (as it was called in the article), and fired off the email. Almost immediately, it was bounced back by the server. No known email address. Typical. If he was honest, though, he had not expected the email address to be current. This seemed to be the only entry on the blog, and it had been uploaded five years ago according to the date in the header. The Internet was full of stuff like this: dead websites, gathering cyber-dust and not viewed by anyone since they’d first appeared online. Behind the popular websites and billion-user social forums, there was an information graveyard; a virtual space filled with decaying ideas and interests into which hardly anybody ventured.

James went to his bookshelves. He had a copy of that Chambers book, had read it a few years ago. It took him a few minutes to find the book, but when he did he pulled it off the shelf and flicked through the pages. It was just a collection of short horror stories – and a good one, as he recalled. No matter how entertaining the stories were, there was nothing here that could lead him to the film.

Picking up the phone, he dialled a number.

The voice that answered was grumpy, still half asleep: “Yeah.”

“Burke. It’s me, Fontaine.”

“Oh... hi. Bit early, isn’t it?”

He glanced at his watch. It was almost noon. Being of a nocturnal bent, Burke often slept in till teatime. “Sorry, man. I need some info.”

The voice was now wide awake: “Hit me.”

“Obscure European film director. Goes under the unlikely name of Phantomas Ulna. Apparently he made a short movie in Sarajevo, during the war.”

“What war?” If it wasn’t a film or a video game, Burke had no idea.

“Doesn’t matter. 1993. The film was called “The King in Yellow”. He made it using mental asylum inmates.”

“Wow... I’ve never heard of this. That name, though – the director. No way is that real. Give me a minute.” The phone went silent, just dead air whispering in his ear.

“Okay, I’m back.”

“That was quick.”

“You know me. Always quick on the draw. Okay... Phantomas Ulna. It’s the name of a character in a German TV drama. Made in 1974, directed by someone called Werner Lenz. He was a schoolteacher. Never made another film after that. Interestingly, he spent some time in Sarajevo in the 1990s, teaching media studies in several colleges and Universities.”

“Interesting.”

“It’s all I have. Give me a few days and I’ll have a snoop around, but none of that other stuff rings any bells. Is it an urban myth? Like the Nazi demon footage from Dachau?”

“I’m starting to think so.”

“Lenz is still alive, btw. He lives in Berlin. I can’t get a phone number or an email address. These old guys, a lot of them never use the Internet. I have a physical address, though, if that’s any good.”

“Okay. Give it to me. You never know....”

“You never know,” repeated Burke. Then he dictated the address.

That was how, three days later, James found himself standing on a quiet, affluent street in the Pankow district of Berlin. He wasn’t quite sure why he’d been so proactive, but coming here directly, to try and speak with Werner Lenz, had seemed like the best thing to do under the circumstances. He had not been on holiday for years, had some money sitting in the bank, and wasn’t due to start any work for at least three weeks when the budget came through for a series of government safety films he was contracted to shoot and edit.

But at a deeper level, he knew that he wanted to pursue this because it represented something that he had not faced in a long time. He wanted to make something that was his own – a project that nobody else could do, and only he could see through. Something about this mysterious footage had woken something within him. Call it passion, call it desire. Whatever it was, he had not believed in anything so completely since his college days, when he had considered himself a fledgling artist.

He walked along the footpath and stopped outside the house that matched the address he’d been given. It was a modest two-storey townhouse, with wooden shutters at the windows and well-tended planting beds flanking the concrete steps that led up to the front door.

Now that he was here, James began to doubt his actions and feel exposed. He glanced along the street, but nobody seemed to be paying him any attention. Not the elderly woman carrying her shopping bags, nor the middle-aged jogger moving in the opposite direction. He looked again at the door, unsure of what to do next.

There was a café across the street – a low-key place that provided a good vantage point from which he might watch the house. He crossed the street and went inside, sat at a table by the window but not
in
the window: he wanted to watch without being seen. The waitress spoke good English, and recognised him as a tourist, so he ordered a pot of coffee and waited.

He did not have to wait long.

After thirty or forty minutes, a small white Fiat pulled up at the kerb outside the townhouse. There was a short pause, and then the driver’s door opened. The man who stepped out onto the kerb was small and broad. He was wearing a knee-length overcoat and a crumpled fedora hat, but still James recognised him from the photograph on the website. This was a man who had allegedly appeared in the footage shot that weekend in Sarajevo; it was also the man who made a film featuring a character called Phantomas Ulmer, which was also the alleged name of the man who had filmed the adaptation of
The King in Yellow
.

A thrill of something that might have been excitement, or possibly terror, made its way through James’s body. He put down his coffee cup but gripped it tightly, trying to cease the shaking of his hands.