The Night Market (20 page)

“You may be a passenger, Miss, but I am an employee of
the company. Therefore I am afforded the right to expel passengers from the
train at any given time,” the waiter snarled, rolling up his sleeves as he
advanced. “Perhaps I should leave you in the Waste? You would be more at home
there, I would imagine.”

Yael tried to time her dive to scramble around him for
the far door, but it didn’t work out as she had hoped. She felt a strong tug
between her shoulders and then he picked her up as if she were no more
troubling than any other refuse he was forced to discard.

The ground outside the door was moving too fast for
her to make out anything clearly, but the soil was the washed out grey sand of
the Waste. Yael grabbed frantically at the doorjamb, the waiter’s coat,
anything at all to keep herself inside. She could hear nothing beside the
thunder of the wind and the train as they struggled, Yael halfway out the door
of the Black Train, her fingers clutching at the doorframe while stray glasses
and utensils clattered to the ground several feet below and were lost, to the
wheels and to their rapid passage.

“Consider this a lesson,” the waiter said smugly,
kicking one of Yael’s hands from the door, “in remembering one’s place.”

“Aptly put.” A man with frighteningly pale skin and an
archaic suit rested one arm gently on the waiter’s shoulder. “With that in
mind, would you care to unhand my employer’s guest?”

The waiter froze, holding Yael halfway out of the
train, while the wind screamed through the partially opened door. The anger
drained from his expression like water down a drain, to be replaced with slowly
dawning horror.

“O-of course, sir.” The waiter set Yael gingerly down
on her feet. “Please convey my apologies to your employer. Had I only realized,
I would not have – had I not been deceived by her appearance – ”

“My employer cares nothing for your apology,” the man said
with surprising venom, offering his white-gloved hand to Yael. “But I’m certain
that there is another who is deserving of it.”

The waiter turned to Yael, his face a study in
mortification, sapped of any emotion other than raw panic, his skin glistening
with a patina of sweat.

“Miss,” the waiter began, dropping his head in a mock
bow, “if you would accept my apologies...”

“Acknowledged,” Yael snapped. “Not accepted.”

Yael allowed the man in the immaculate antique suit to
lead her through the dining car. The remainder of the diners in the car were
careful to avert their eyes.

“Thank you,” Yael said in a low voice, once they were at
the far door of the car. “I appreciate your intervention.”

“Think nothing of it.”

“No, really. If you hadn’t given him that story, I
don’t know what...”

The man looked back, not smiling, but his eyes sparkled
with suppressed amusement.

“What story is that, Miss Kaufman?”

Yael blushed as if she were the one caught in a lie.

“Well, you know, the one about me being a guest of
your boss...”

He shook his somber head. His voice was so soft that
she could have only heard him within the soundproofed confines of the
first-class cars, but there was a subdued mania to his demeanor. He reminded Yael
of the businessmen her father entertained until late at night with wine and
cigars, except that he appeared nervous and rather sickly.

“Miss Kaufman, I assure you that I was sent by my employer
with specific instructions to retrieve you. And, I should mention that he has
already informed me some time ago that you were to be considered his guest, at
any place that the two of you might be so... fortunate as to meet.”

Yael froze in mid-step.

“What? I don’t understand.”

The man patted her hand comfortingly.

“I assure you, Miss Kaufman, you have nothing to fear
from me. If you don’t mind me saying – it is my master that you should be
concerned with. He will, however, be able to explain the situation more capably
than I. Now, if you will follow me...”

Yael had to remind herself that she was on a train.
Only the swaying walls reminded her that she was moving. The space between the
cars was enclosed and virtually silent, and Yael dragged her feet as she passed
through bead curtains and ornate hangings. The smoke was overpowered by a heady
floral incense, the air so thick with it that Yael’s head swam. The glass in
the car was chemically treated, and the light coming through the windows recalled
for her the night in the Waste and its awful moon.

The car was a maze of interconnected chambers and corridors,
separated by cloth hangings that were reminiscent of silk, lined with tiny
bells or beads made of quartz and shaped bone. Behind curtains and tucked away
in alcoves, figures obscured by veils and wildly-colored robes chanted softly
in a language that Yael preferred not to recognize. The lamps bled a feeble
yellow light. Yael could not have found her way if not for the strange man’s
guidance.

“I forgot to ask your name, sir. You seem to already
know mine.”

“Indeed. Forgive my rudeness. My name is Hildred
Castaigne, Miss Kaufman. I have been aboard this train for a very long time.”

“Could you not simply leave at the next station?”

“I erred as a result of my ambition when I was a
younger man. I found myself in rather dire circumstances. With no obvious
relief in sight, I took the only assistance that was offered. The price, as it
turns out, was rather dear,” he said sadly, helping her around a protruding
machine of unidentifiable purpose. “If I may be so bold, Miss, you must be
careful.”

“I’m sorry?”

“You walk on a knife’s edge, Miss,” Hildred Castaigne
said, glancing back at her with an unreadable expression. “I do not blame you
for attempting to thwart the machinations of the King in Yellow – would that I
had been so wise in my youth – but I would warn you to choose your allies carefully.
Some help, Miss Kaufman, comes at too great a cost.”

There were a number of eyes in the darkness of the
chamber, glittering through a haze of sinuous and pungent smoke. Yael wondered
how much longer the car could possibly be.

“I am afraid I don’t understand. What is it you are
trying to tell me?”

“I know you, Miss Kaufman. I am familiar with the fate
to which your family is consigned to suffer. I admire your drive and
perseverance, your determination and independence. But you must be cautious –
it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a living god.”

Yael pulled Hildred to a stop in the hallway, going up
on her tiptoes to kiss the nervous man’s cheek.

“You have to
give
someone power over you, Mr. Castaigne.”

He looked startled, then his face broke into an
enormous grin.

“Perhaps you are right, Miss Kaufman.”

He led her through another chamber, even more crowded
with silent, veiled creatures. The air was dense and humid, the smoke parted
and rolled around them like water. Someone was playing a flute – or something
vaguely like a flute – in a flight of wild and unfamiliar scales, dissonant and
jarring. At the end of the room, there was an alcove with two paintings on
opposite walls and a door nestled between, polished old wood and peeling blue
paint.

On one wall there was a monstrous print by Francisco Goya
depicting an artist with his head buried in his arms, assailed by a frightful
assembly of winged things.

On the other, there was an indescribably hideous
figure study by Richard Upton Pickman: a monstrous thing crowned with
tentacles, gnawing on the remainder of a human carcass clutched in one
malformed limb. The very appearance of the sketch was so blasphemous that Yael
shuddered and averted her eyes. Hildred glanced over at the object of her revulsion.

“A fearful thing indeed, to find oneself in the
clutches of a living god...”

Yael touched her chest where the key rested, cold
silver against her breastbone.

“God does
not
have tentacles, Mr. Castaigne.”

Against all expectations, Hildred Castaigne smiled at
her. He opened his mouth as if he had something to say, but Yael was deafened
by a ringing in her ears as the door in front of them suddenly slid open.

Yael felt compelled to follow the crimson carpet
forward, her eyes fixated on the intricate and disquieting designs woven into
it. Her gaze drifted naturally to the red cushions and engraved ivory of the
elaborate couch at the end of the room, where a boy with perfect hazelnut skin
and impossible emerald eyes smiled languidly and beckoned to her.

Yael sat across a low table on a moderately
comfortable divan, moving fast so he wouldn’t see her legs shake. There was
something terrifying about the boy, despite his fragile and almost feminine
appearance.

“After all this time, it is good to finally meet you, Miss
Kaufman. Do you know me?”

Without a name until a name is given, an empty room is
sacred, a broken window is an altar. Casus Belli. The way she smiled before she
was gone, her place in the bed still warm, the pillow smelling vaguely of her
hair. Wind ruffling the feathers of a corpse of a bird on a grey beach in
Virginia.

It was not the voice
of a human – truthfully, it wasn’t a voice at all. It was a mockery of human
speech, a cunning and spiteful imitation, at once familiar and horrifyingly
wrong. The sound set her teeth on edge, made her press her knees together and
curl her feet with tension.

A lifetime of aversion made it difficult to speak his
name, but Yael fought through it.

“Nyarlathotep.”

His smile was positively joyous.

“Excellent. I am pleased to meet you in person. Your
doomed and remarkable family has long been an interest of mine.”

“And I’ve been afraid of you since I was a child,”
Yael said frankly, her eyes watering as if she were staring into a bright light.
“But now that I see you, that seems rather ridiculous.”

The boy’s laughter was gleeful and spontaneous, but it
filled Yael with unutterable anxiety. She felt vaguely queasy, as if he had
done something lewd or disgusting.

“You are as spirited as I have heard, Miss Kaufman. What
you see before you, however, is only an avatar. My true form, regrettably,
cannot enter the atmosphere at this time. It remains in orbit,” Nyarlathotep
said agreeably. There was something Egyptian in the lines of his nose and his
cheekbones, most evident when he smiled. “Perhaps one day you will have an
opportunity to encounter me as I truly am. I doubt you would find it a
disappointment.”

“I have already seen more of you than I care to,” Yael
muttered, her voice hardly more than a whisper. “Why did you wish to speak to
me?”

“So very polite! How admirable. I wish to speak to you
primarily out of curiosity. After all, I was well-acquainted with your brother.
He dreamed some truly astounding things. Such a frightful imagination! Still,
perhaps certain of his dreams were best left unrealized. Don’t you agree?”

Yael dug her fingernails into the yielding fabric of
the divan. She didn’t want to ask the question that was already bubbling up
inevitably behind her lips.

“Did you take him?”

The boy laughed at her, making a dismissive gesture
with his slim, immaculately manicured hands. Yael’s eyes watered and her
stomach complained, her anger diluted by waves of disorientation and anxiety.

“Now, Miss Kaufman. I did nothing of the sort. Your world
and your peculiar family, as you well know, are the domain of the King in
Yellow. Your family’s misfortune has little to do with me. While I’m certain
that he would have been offended by the notion, in his own unique way your
brother served my purposes.”

Yael grimaced at the thought, clutching the divan in a
desperate attempt to keep herself upright as the room twisted and spun around
her. Her stomach clenched and her whole body broke out in frigid sweat, her
skin tingling and a pins-and-needles sensation in her feet.

“Chaos.”

That laugh again. Like the whine of a drill against
the interior of a molar.

“Of course. That is my nature, Yael.”

She managed to glare through her splitting headache.

“Don’t you dare say my name.”

He laughed his horrid laugh, then filled two cups
hardly largely than thimbles with a pungent tea, pushing one in her direction
as a conciliatory gesture.

“As you wish, Miss Kaufman. I meant no harm. I have no
ill will toward you. On the contrary, I wish to offer you my assistance on your
journey. Please, drink. I assure you, the sickness will fade.”

Nyarlathotep picked up his absurdly delicate tea cup
and gestured for Yael to do the same. Risking falling over, Yael folded her
arms across her chest, hoping that she looked steadier than she felt.

“You first.”

His laughter hurt her sinuses and made her eyes water,
as acrid as burning plastic.