No Light in August: Tales From Carcosa & the Borderland (Digital Horror Fiction Author Collection) (6 page)

The more I
saw, the more I wanted to look away, but couldn’t. The angels were beautiful,
but used-up like whores at the end of a tether. One hung in a leather harness
of the kind I’d seen before at a basement party in Soho. With its face hidden
behind a zip-up mask, I didn’t know if it was alive or dead.

Cassie
stepped in front of me and went to the angel. She ran her hands over its bare
legs and it shuddered, rattling the metal joints of the harness. Her hands
traced a path along its thighs, up along its body and to its head, where she
unzipped the mask.

Underneath,
the angel’s face was hot with the spiral of addiction. It shone under its skin
like a pale mask.

“What’s
wrong with it?”

“Nothing.”
Her eyes smiled behind her own mask. “It simply needs.”

Thoughts
crowded out my head, though their texture and feeling were familiar, yet
uncomfortable. They were thoughts we all have, in the deepest part of our
being. I wanted to do things to the angel, and I wanted Cassie to watch and
help me. The need I saw in its eyes was one of pure hunger, and it looked to me
to satisfy it.

Then
Cassie zipped the mask back in place, muffling its desperate cry behind the
dark material.

“I want to
leave,” I said, anger coming behind the desire. If I couldn’t take part in
this, I wanted out.

She took
my hand again, and for the first time, I felt something slip into the back of
my head. Not physically, but more under the skin and along the inside of my
skull. She’d probably been doing it the whole night — every time she held my
hand.

“You can’t
leave without me.”

“Then come
with me, take me out of here.”

Cassie
shook her head slowly. “The only way out is to continue.”

It didn’t
matter if she was telling the truth or not, the idea of going it alone wasn’t
something I wanted to contemplate.

We were in
a corridor, dark save for a line of lights overhead. They were held by cables
invisible against their poison glare — a line of sick suns to mark the way.

“Is this
the way to Carcosa?” I can’t say what made me ask it. The name tasted right,
but the thought to say it didn’t feel like my own. Something what Cassie said
before, about a King who gave them what they desired. I think it provided a way
inside, opened a door for other things to enter.

“One of
them,” was all she would say.

The
corridor opened into a circular chamber, illuminated by unnatural lights all
along the walls. The floor was curved slightly, making the chamber into a pit.
A black pit of stars, but the stars — the lights — weren’t really here. They
came from the deepest pit of all, the one inside us all. “The light here is
older than humanity,” Cassie said. She tapped the wall and it rang not like stone,
but like glass. “This is the hanging court.” She nodded her head up, and I
followed the gesture.

Empty
pairs of chains dangled from points along the wall. The windows, I supposed,
were evenly spaced apart. After what I’d seen getting here, I could imagine the
room’s purpose. Something blocked out a scatter of lights for a moment, just a
moment. It drifted slowly across them, following a path around width of the
pit. It was on the other side of the glass.

“Don’t
look,” Cassie said as she turned her head so she couldn’t, and I did the same.
“What is it?” My throat was dry and something was picking at the edges of my
hearing, a sound I couldn’t and didn’t want to identify.

“It
doesn’t have a name, none of them do. They’re older than that. Mostly they
sleep, but sometimes they wake up.”

I wanted
to turn, to look at it. I knew if I did, it would take everything from me. I
don’t know how I knew, I just did. It was a deeper, more animal kind of fear
than most people can understand.

“What do
they do when they wake up?” “They watch.”

I don’t
know how long we stood there waiting for it to pass us by. Cassie shifted her
feet and slowly turned her gaze around, and I knew it was safe to move.

Something
was different. The room was unchanged, but the light was altered, somehow other
than it was when we entered. I think it left something behind it, perhaps a
trace smeared on the glass walls. I didn’t think it had come so close to touch,
but then, I wasn’t looking and it’s possible it did.

My center
of gravity shifted in my stomach, pulling me gently to one side.

I’d left
the House behind. I was in Carcosa, nowhere else but Carcosa. Slipped in
through the door swinging open in my head, where the thoughts from before found
their way in first.

The only
way out was as Cassie said; straight on. The House of Nothing was just what it
said it was, nothing, but that was a lie.

In
Carcosa, even nothing has meaning.

The door
Cassie brought me to was the way back. We weren’t alone when we reached it.
Linda was there waiting for us, and I wasn’t surprised to see her. It fitted
together. She’d brought me to the party, after all. She didn’t say a word when
I left with Cassie, and now I understood why.

At first,
I didn’t recognize her; then I saw the same mark, the same spiral I’d seen on
the angel in the harness.

She was
breathing hard, panting wetly like an animal. I think she had been waiting for
a long time.

This was
the only room I saw in the House that made sense, its proportions fitting to
the view from outside.

Cassie
handed me the knife.

“She wants
it, look at her.” She pointed, like how you might for a child. “She’s used up,
almost, and we need to bring another delight for us.”

I saw
something else in Linda — I saw acceptance in her eyes. She wanted this, needed
it as much as she needed whatever was burning her up. It and the result waiting
at the end of the blade were separate things, but somehow connected. Her lips
were moving in a silent flurry, so fast I almost couldn’t read them.

‘Not
dreaming, but in Carcosa. Not dead, but in Carcosa. Not in hell, but in
Carcosa.’

She
mouthed it over and over again. There was something crawling under my skin
then, I felt it tickle and wriggle along my forearms. My own need started there
in that room.

You can’t stop it.
There’s no way to get clean; you can only wash it off for a time, and even the
cleanest hands are washed in blood.

I woke
up on the shore of a lake, dressed in a stained yellow robe.

The night
it happened, Eric asked why I was breathing so heavily. I wasn’t. I don’t
remember much after that.

Our
photographs were now only my photographs because he wasn’t in them anymore. As
though whatever happened had happened in every time.

None of
our friends remembered him except me.

I kept the
room locked after that, afraid to go in. Sometimes I heard things, but I’m not
sure if it was just my mind playing tricks on me.

I cleared
what was left of him from the house. Strange that memories and pictures
changed, but his stuff was still about. I don’t pretend to understand it. I was
numb, so accepted it for what it was.

Who could
I tell? No one remembered him.

Tucked in
behind the papers was a small scrap, torn from what might have been an
envelope; one corner was covered with what I took for the sticky part you lick.
A sign was drawn on the bottom of one corner in bright yellow ink, though it
was a shade I think I’d never seen in life.

I tossed
the rest, but kept the scrap. It was tangible, personal. I felt as long as I
had it, then I had a piece of him to anchor my memories. I was terrified of
forgetting him like everyone else had. Somehow, keeping this held more
importance than anything else of his I still had.

As far as
I know, it’s still in my wallet.

When you
don’t sleep, the sound on life sort of gets turned down. I went to work, I went
home, figuring existence was some kind of life, even if it wasn’t.

I was
living in a structure, a support of routine and habit that was otherwise empty.
Even the Internet couldn’t help me — how could it? How do you search Google for
someone who never was? Except you know they were. You can remember their smell,
how they smiled in the morning; all the little things that make up a person.
Erased not like they never were, but simply
not,
except for you.

Sleeping
wasn’t something I really did after that; I only closed my eyes, but never fell
into it. It was like part of my brain was switched off.

After a
certain time, all TV becomes a wasteland. Filled with sound that tries to be
words, only the light provides any kind of comfort. Laptop perched on my lap, I
scrolled through pages without reading. It helped to keep my hands busy, even
if it made my eyes burn.

‘hey,’ a
chat balloon popped up in the bottom corner.

It wasn’t
a name I recognized: Lost1_0. I ignored it, but they weren’t up for that. ‘ur
not busy…u don’t have work tomorrow’

I sat up a
little. It might have been a guess, but it was true. ‘who is this?’ I wrote
back. ‘Eric’
Plenty of people have that name. Right?
‘how have u been?’

‘no’

‘no what?’

I thought
about closing the chat, blocking the name, but I didn’t think that would help.
My fingers rested on the keys. I was aware I might have finally lost it. I
thought I’d maybe fallen asleep finally and drifted into a deep lucid dream, or
that this was really happening.

‘how?’ I
couldn’t think of anything else to write, but I didn’t want to close the chat.
I couldn’t.

‘ur not
making sense’ He was writing like nothing had happened. He could’ve been
messaging from work, for all I knew.

‘where hav
you been? WTF happened?’

I stared
at the screen, watching as ellipses popped up and vanished. He was typing and
deleting, looking for the right words or else writing a long block of text.

‘it was
time to go,’ he wrote. Keeping it simple was sometimes his way. Eric was never
good at long explanations; you had to tease it out of him, a bit at a time.

‘why?’

‘it’s
complica8d it was just time’ I could almost hear his voice as I read. ‘miss you:(…where
are you?’)

‘hard to
explain, will try, but need to show u…there’s a lake. the clouds don’t change
here, like it’s always twilight.’

He wasn’t
being evasive — Eric was never like that. He was describing exactly what he
could in the way he would.

‘there are
black stars and sometimes I can c 2 moons, I think.’ ‘what is it? where is it?’

‘carcosa’

The name
was both familiar and unknown, like maybe I’d heard it somewhere before, but
I’d forgotten where and when.

‘we’re
lost here’

‘no one
remembers you’

‘except u’
‘why?’

‘it was
what was supposed to happen’

I could
see where this was going. ‘I’m supposed to go with u?’

‘there are
doors and keepers waiting behind them. they take ppl who r willing, even if
they don’t know it…I hoped maybe you were…’

I
remembered the piece of paper with the yellow sign, the runic shape drawn on
it. It came from an envelope — an invitation.

‘u never
told me’

‘I didn’t
know how’

‘what
happened that night?’ I’d wanted to know, but as soon as I hit enter, I
realized I really didn’t. I remembered hearing the heavy breathing; sometimes,
I still thought I heard it. Wet and animal-like, it wasn’t a sound a person
could make.

‘I don’t
have words 4 it…u have to experience it’ ‘k’

‘I need u
here, we need u here’

My hands
drifted away from the keys and I don’t know how long I stared at the screen.
For the longest time, I’d had to live with this in isolation. Now Eric was
talking to me from some other place he’d gone to, hoping I would join him.

I wanted
to ask why he’d left, why he didn’t tell me about any of this. Find out
whatever he’d gotten himself into. I thought we’d been together long enough
that there was nothing we couldn’t tell each other.

Maybe you
can never really know another person, but he was all I wanted. There was a
literal space he’d left behind him, and I was the only one who noticed it — the
only one who felt it and didn’t want it to be there anymore.

‘what do I
have 2 do?’

Outside
our old room, I stood in front of the door and tried not to stop myself from
shaking. Twice I reached for the handle, but I couldn’t touch it. It felt like
it was expanding and contracting, as if the room itself was breathing in
anticipation of being entered. There was something almost sexual about it — a
gradual building of anticipation.

On the
third attempt, I grabbed the handle and turned it slowly. It creaked in the
same old way, and the door opened a little stiffly from lack of use.

Inside was
unchanged, but the air was stale and cold. It reminded me of the church I went
to as a child, and there was the same kind of reverence lying in wait. This was
a sacred place, but I know now God wasn’t looking in. I think he never did, or
never could. There are things older than he is, and more patient.

Turning
the lights on did nothing to dispel the feeling.

My breath
misted a little as I closed the door. Naked, I climbed into the bed, which was
so cold as to feel damp and clammy against my skin. Reaching over, I flicked
the switch by the table and killed the lights.

In
darkness, time and sight have no meaning. You lie there with your eyes open,
but after a while, you’re not sure if they are anymore. You have to blink to
remind yourself.

Slowly, I
started to drift off, but the sensation of falling or standing on the edge of a
precipice kept me from going fully under. I heard a sound like heavy breathing
and closed my eyes.

Flashes of
memories are all I have. Images without context or concrete definition, but I
remember two things more clearly than the others. Falling, or I should say
sinking, down into water deeper than the earth. As dark as the room had been,
this was darker still.

Deafened
by the volume of water, I could still hear. There was a sound like the beating
of huge wings. Sometimes it was far away; other times, it was right behind me.

After that,
there was nothing.

I woke up
on the shore of a lake, dressed in a stained yellow robe. Despite the memory of
being in water, I was dry. From where I was, I saw across the lake itself. Mist
shrouded most of the far banks, but here and there, I could see fires burning.
By their light, the outlines of decaying and ruined buildings were just
visible.

Barely
glimpsed figures suggested themselves between the ruins, but they vanished
before I could get a good look.

“Hi,” Eric
said as he came up without making a sound.

I think he
was simply there because he needed to be. He was the same as I remembered and wore
something like the robe I was dressed in. Without thinking, I hugged him and
pressed my nose into his neck. He was warm and alive. Questions fell away, and
I stepped back to look at his face.

The only
difference I noticed up close was a slight darkening and sunken look around his
eyes.

“What is
this?”

“Carcosa,
I told you.”

He seemed
to think the name would tell me everything. It rattled around in the back of my
head, a form with meaning always slipping out of reach.

“C’mon,
they’re waiting,” he said as he turned and started walking along the shore.
“They?”

“The
others. You’ll see.”

One of the
buildings, though rotting and spotted with niter, was more or less in one
piece. Eric led me to it, pointing out landmarks that meant nothing to me at
that time.

I didn’t
think so much of Carcosa. If it was supposed to be a sanctuary or something, it
looked to have seen better days. The people too didn’t look to be in such a
good way.

As we
walked along the lakeshore, Eric stopped to talk to someone and dropped behind
me.

When I
turned, I was confronted by a woman with hatchet features all but cutting her
face in half. I could see she’d been attractive once, but all the fat and maybe
vitality were gone from her. Except for her eyes, which were bright and showed
no signs of hunger.

“You’re
the new arrival,” she said rather than asked. “Nice to meet you.”

“The King
said you would come, and Eric too.” “Do you know Eric?”

“Only by
way of the King, it’s how it is around here. Those who get close to the King
have to give him something, or promise to.”

“What did
Eric give him?”

“He hasn’t
given it yet, as far as anyone knows.” “Why are you all here?”

She half
turned her face away and looked out across the lake. I thought maybe I’d lost
her to a daydream, but she turned back a moment later.

“To live.”

So it
is a sanctuary
. I couldn’t imagine
what they were running from to come here and to be forgotten. “What are you
hiding from?”

“Life.
Here, life forgets us, but the King needs things to keep us hidden. Nothing
worth having is easily bought.”

“All of
you give something to the King?”

She
nodded. “It’s the law. In return, he gives us all the same boon.”

It was an
old word, and it took me a moment to understand her meaning. “What kind of
things do you give?”

She
shrugged. “Sometimes big things, sometimes small. They have to be important and
come from within. Sometimes the King puts them to use for Carcosa…other times,
he discards them after a while.”

Eric
appeared beside me again and the woman nodded. She didn’t say another word, but
just walked away. I should’ve asked Eric about her and what she’d said, but
being near him again made me forget it.

All that
mattered was that Eric was here — it didn’t matter where
here
was as
long as I was with him.

The first
floor of the building was taken up by lines of mismatched benches arranged like
pews. There were maybe thirty or more people there, and they looked at us each
in turn as we came in. Nothing unified them — not age or race or sex — but they
all had dark rings around their eyes, some more than others.

An aisle
of sorts led between the arranged seats to a raised platform. A figure wearing
yellow robes, bigger than but as tattered as everyone else’s, stood waiting
there. For all that he looked like a beggar, his clothes suggested something
regal.

I followed
Eric towards him, trying to avoid the stares of the others as we passed. Doubt
started to tie itself into a knot in my stomach. For the first time, I
seriously wondered where I was and why Eric had come here.

I think I
knew he’d promised them something, but couldn’t figure out what exactly. By the
time I did, there was nothing I could do.

The yellow
King – for lack of a better name - opened his arms a little and smiled. Only
the lower half of his face was visible, the upper part was hidden behind a
hook-beaked mask the color of black iron.