The Collected Short Fiction, page 169
Per her mother’s instructions, she knelt in the shadow of the third stone east of the tree. The stone’s petroglyphs had worn to the impression of a closed eye incised at a downward angle. She fashioned a spade from a shard of flint. She dug into the cold, dead earth until the edge thunked against something even harder and less yielding than rock. Her hands bled where the flint sliced through her fox-hide mittens, yet she continued to excavate until a swath of metal spread before her.
The carved eye in the monolith reacted to her efforts. It spiraled open and gazed upon Lochinvar with a beam of orange light. She cried out and scrambled backward. A mouth dissolved through the stone and issued a cloud of black, stinging gnats. The gnats hummed a song of small violence as they burrowed into her ears and eyes. She inhaled and the rest found their way inside.
A voice that sounded much like Mom’s strange metallic voice said, Genetic match verified. Omega protocol initiated. Dematerialization imminent. The earth crumbled and Lochinvar plunged into a pit. She watched the patch of sky shrink and vanish, leaving her to fall and fall as the gnats rearranged her from the inside. Her body dissolved, her thoughts scattered, and her various particles went down a funnel that elongated into the frigid depths of galactic space and unto the precarious verge of the Great Dark.
It got a lot worse before it got better. It never got better, not really.
Baron Need and the Soul Grinder
In some parts of the world, your kind are referred to as vampires. This is because humans prefer to sugarcoat bad news. Vampirism is an acceptable horror, romanticized as a metaphor for sexual repression. As usual, the truth is worse. Elsewhere, learned men whisper, Nosferatu. South, it’s Lamia or Vorvolakas. Tropical cultures fear the Penanggalan, and with justification—once that barbed tongue starts wriggling up the ass, it doesn’t stop until it has perforated the liver. Indeed, such creatures exist, and each is awful in its own special way. Some of these might be considered your ill-gotten offspring. However, none of them are quite as dreadful as you seven lords, subject of the original campfire legends and boogeymen tales.
Lords Dig, Clutch, and Dark haven’t shown themselves since the Interregnum. Possibly they were destroyed, although you remain skeptical. Dr. Slake dwells in the utter North in a cave carpeted with bones of men and beasts. He is feted by processions of rosy-cheeked lads and lasses sent by jarls desperate to protect their humble villages from slaughter. Mr. Speck inhabits the Royal Catacombs of the Imperial City and has done so before slaves heaved its founding stones into place. No shortage of effete, powdered twats that close to court—Mr. Speck dines in luxury. How he hasn’t withered from anemia from thin gruel is another question. Mr. Batten lurks high in the Andalusians upon a desolate crag. His is the guise of a leprous sphinx whose visage has eroded and cracked. He promises unwary travelers safe passage if they can answer a riddle. Like all of you, Mr. Batten is a dirty liar.
Your mind is far away with your scattered brethren as you cynically appraise the double dozen peasants chained to the floor of the dungeon. Tribute from several baronets, offal smokers who aren’t a spot on their haughty forefathers.
Water drips. Cold wind whistles through flues in chimney rock. Peasant eyes roll white with terror. The peasants stink of animal sweat and vintages of piss. They gibber and supplicate their gods, their saints, their ancestors. Nary a buxom, full-blooded maiden among these mongrels. Nor a village hero of steely thew and steelier resolve; not even a blacksmith’s son bulging with raw potential while innocent of his destiny. This collection is chaff; the beaks, assholes, and gristle that make up processed sausage peddled by back-alley hucksters. Flesh and blood are not all the same, as qualities of light and dark are not all the same. The inferiority of this tribute suggests a shift in the balance of power. A corrective action may become necessary if it’s not too late.
You pluck the least smelly and emaciated of the lot, lift her high, kicking and squirming, and decant her pulp into your up-tilted mouth. This semi-ripe milkmaid is your payment as trustee of the appetite of immortal darkness. You cast aside desiccated scraps. The rest of the mewling livestock is property of that greater self of which you exist as an anthropomorphic facsimile, a projection of false life. Predictably, the peasants are distressed by the milkmaid’s exsanguination. They emit a chorus of howls and redouble their prayers and imprecations. The ritual is as tedious as Time itself.
Brawny Peloki wildmen in executioner hoods crank a windlass. A section of worked stone grinds upward. Petroglyphs realign as seals are broken. The siren song of infinite blackness pierces your mind. It begins instantly because it never ceases. Your miserable tumor of a heart quickens to be so near its Maker (unMaker?). Oh, the perverse irony to have birthed from such a devourer. You cover your ears—not to muffle the impending carnage, certainly not! Nay, you seek to block the call of the dark, to turn away the colloidal blots of memory of your previous unlife. Pleasurable agony suffuses you as the soundless song keens.
A wall of quartz reflects bits of lamplight, and at its heart a jagged crimson hole that could be plugged by a large man’s fist. The hole expands slightly as the Void inhales the scents of warmth and fear. A dozen smaller holes materialize as a helix orbiting the larger opening. Each emits music; each bubbles with the radiation of superheated infinity. The stomach acids of primal reality smoke as they carve channels into the crystal.
The celestial song ascends, becomes a shrill fluting that rises and rises to a prolonged shriek. This shriek encroaches the mortal spectrum and causes sphincters to loosen. Gravity shifts sideways and increases dramatically. One by one, villagers are wrenched free of their bonds (trailing shorn limbs and yolks of viscera) as if caught in the invisible coils of a cyclone. Bodies smack the wall and hang pinioned. Momentarily. The pull of the Void is irresistible. They are sucked into the crystal aperture, inch by skin-shucking, bone-crunching inch. Living meat fed through an abattoir grinder. Screams dwindle and cease. Leftover puddles go wicked into the black hole and leave the dungeon floor spotless as a licked platter. At last your servitors let crash down the warding gate. The men hang their heads. Sobs escape their hoods.
For once, it’s hard not to empathize with the puling mortals. This whole messy process would be so much damned easier if the notch between the mortal plane and the Great Dark was a smidgeon wider. Ironically, Mr. Speck presides over a chasm in the earth; Mr. Slake is projected from a pit wide enough to gulp an elephant. You? You are the apple of the eye of a knothole. Were it possible, you’d relocate in a trice. A certain volcano in Peru comes to mind ...
“Master?” Smirking Jaye stands upon the flagstone steps that curve upward into your castle proper. Smirking Jaye seems blandly ordinary except for his flat affect. However, under the fur-trimmed velvet gloves his hands are bare bone. His feet (knee-high boots) and penis (iron codpiece, also fur trimmed) are in a similar fleshless condition. Is he alive or living dead? He can hold his breath for an extended duration for whatever that’s worth. Similar to yours, his heart (which you once beheld after he suffered a grievous slash from some do-gooder’s axe) is not a muscle, but instead a prodigious tumor. He does not smile unless you catch him from the corner of your eye, albeit catching him is akin to tricking one’s own image in a mirror. Legend has it that only his victims see the real smile.
“Is it possible visitors have arrived unannounced? King Mingy’s envoys? There are two among them ... a Royal Dragoon and an upright beast of the Ur Blood? Sir Marion Hand and Rabbit Abbot? Should I fear the worst?” Your henchman (a man cursed with the inability to utter a declarative sentence) isn’t given to emotion, much less hyperbole.
You consider the unhappy ramifications of this surprise visit by the king’s agents. Concentration is difficult this close to the source of your greater self and its eternal song. The Void raves beyond the thin barrier, louder after its recent feeding. It cannot be propitiated. It cannot be sated. It seeks to wipe away your facsimile personality and send you on a mission of annihilation. You struggle to retain individuality and succeed by a gnat’s hair.
“Jaye.”
“Yes, Baron?”
“Did they bring the dog? I hate dogs, especially him.”
“No?”
“A stroke of luck. Break out the good china.”
The Metal Womb of a Terror Star
Snow melted and returned. An emperor and several kings shed the bonds of flesh and deliquesced into the soil. Several small wars were waged. Life went on as usual. Occasionally, an unkindness of ravens perched atop the hill and shat upon the standing stones. Many roosted among the limbs of the dread wave-a-bit tree which had tolerated the birds for millennia. None of the ravens were of the Ur lineage; they could not articulate what compelled them to gather. The Peloki and Malet peoples considered ravens spirit messengers and heralds of the Underworld. It is possible the unkindnesses waited for a special variety of death.
Meanwhile, unimpeded by earthly laws of physics, Lochinvar’s body and conscious mind hung suspended within the black ice of a glacier transported from the southern pole of a deserted planet that orbited a star so distant from Earth it could not be seen by telescope. Her subconscious flickered in orbit around the aforementioned star. She did not comprehend the paradox. The voice of the Overmind (as the disembodied intelligence that inhabited surrounding shadows referred to itself) soothed her. A peculiar form of education commenced, delivered by this spectral presence of a long-extinct species. Mother’s secrets, and the secrets of the civilization Mother and her kind served, were revealed via an intravenous drip directly into young Lochinvar’s brain.
One day her subconscious beamed home from the galactic rim and thus reunited mind, body, and soul. Her animating pattern was downloaded into a specially designed and semi-indestructible body. On her left shoulder, the tattoo of a shrike imprinted a storehouse of fragmented lore that might improve her lot among troglodytes or see her burned as a witch. Armor and weapons appropriate to the milieu were provided. Before Lochinvar exited the steel womb beneath the hill by the nameless river, the Overmind warned her not to return. Defense protocols were in effect.
Your pattern has developed to maximal saturation. Employ your knowledge in the service of great and terrible deeds, the Overmind said.
“I don’t feel as if I know anything,” Lochinvar said.
Relatively speaking, this is also true.
“Am I a changeling?”
No longer. Now you are real girl again, more or less. Gravity reversed and lifted the real girl toward the surface of the world. Goodbye, Lochinvar. Wreak havoc—here, and in every possible universe.
Last Supper at Castle Blood
Supper is a disaster. On the scale of Pompeii or Krakatoa or Atlantis or the last act of a Shakespeare play.
The King’s agents station their entourage outside in the bailey. These two, the Ur beast and the knight, are not interested in foie gras nor your impressive array of summer wines. They have come because they are concerned with rumors of rape and plunder and darker deeds that waft from your barony. Peasants are missing by the wagon-load. Whole villages lie deserted but for the rats.
The blondie dragoon’s eyes narrow and his smile sharpens. He observes your unnatural height and frightful countenance (which you oh so subtly manipulate as the lamps flicker; you are a distorted mirror of those around the banquet table). He is such a cocky bastard in his snow-white plate mail and velvet cape. So handsome it hurts. No doubt he has left many a deflowered maiden and a passel of bastards scattered across the land.
Rabbit Abbot strokes his whiskers. Wisely, he doesn’t touch his goblet or plate. He nonchalantly asks if you happened to receive a local woman named Elizabeth Lochinvar—wife to Esteban Lochinvar, a hunter and flautist extraordinaire.
Apparently, Rabbit Abbot and the lady were comrades and had, some years prior, served as frumentarii in the Imperial Ministry of Vigilance. Later, she retired to civilian life while he became Superior of Speculatores, lately emeritus. The rabbit wears a gold tabard over his silky black fur. The tabard denotes his special status as King Mingy’s favorite envoy. He weighs twenty stone if a pebble, primarily muscle, and his eyes are dark as honey glazed with the blue tint of age. He has no need to carry a blade. His incisors are wicked sharp, as are the claws of his hind legs. Like most Ur beasts, Rabbit Abbot presents a serious threat to any who provoke his ire. You provoke his ire. It’s a challenge and it’s fun!
“Lord Abbot, Master of the Empress’s hunters—”
“Those were the good old days, Baron. Today I speak as an ambassador to the King.”
“Forgive me. Protocol, precedence—”
“Some might consider it a demotion. I view it as a working retirement. Again I ask: an informant claims your man,” Rabbit Abbot wrinkled his nose in distaste, “went to her home and made a wreck of the place. She and her daughter are missing and the husband’s bones lie upon the ruins of their abode. I pray you to explain.”
“Of course, my lord. You are fond of the pleasure automaton.”
“Automaton?” Rabbit Abbot’s nose twitches. He’s a shrewd one; mill wheels are grinding in his febrile brain. Evidently the Lochinvar woman’s true nature was a mystery to even her boon companions. Were his life expectancy to exceed the next few minutes he would doubtless catch on to the whole truth.
“No matter. It happens.” You shrug. “In your capacity as bedeviler of ingrates and criminals, you ran legions of scofflaws to ground. Killed many of them. Listened to their cries for mercy and then heated the irons. You took pleasure in this thing, yes?”
“The Creator says we should take pride in our accomplishments and pleasure in our deeds.”
You hunker upon your throne at the head of the table, having endeavored to keep a dozen well-trained and heavily armed guards between you and him. You permit your genteel smile to widen into a grin. Such a relief to let the façade crumble. Mind reading isn’t your gift, although surface fears and desires are yours to breathe in as a wolfhound winds its prey. You whiff a particular memory and your expression imitates the exuberant malice of a trapper who’d snared baby Rabbit Abbot once upon a time and left the scar of a wire snare embedded in his hind leg.
“Exactly, Lord Abbot. The Creator says so. What does Satan say? Recall, if you will, the squeals of craven victims and then imagine those sounds escaping from the lips of your lady friend as I subjected her to scarcely conceivable indignities. Imagine my delight in grinding her bones for my snuff box.” The pièce de résistance to your speech is the moment you produce said snuff box, a crimson lacquered affair with the initials BN, pop the hinge, and snort corpse dust.
One of your servants wallops a gong and it’s on.
On cue, Smirking Jaye slithers from behind a tastefully erotic Roman tapestry and loops a garrote over the dragoon’s neck. Possibly Smirking Jaye falters—he received permanent injuries from his encounter with the aforementioned Lochinvar woman. Also, Sir Hand has a reputation for world-beater skill in battle—single-combat champion at the King’s Tourney five years running. He performs as advertised. His plated mail gauntlet catches and snaps the wire in a reflexive convulsion. He reaches over his shoulder, grasps Smirking Jaye by the forearm, and flings him across the feast hall.
Sir Hand draws his blade and grins. “Come on then, fuckers.” He doesn’t wait for the guards to accept his invitation, but begins chopping them to ribbons at once. Snicker-snack. Marksmen lurk on the balcony. Crossbow bolts zing around the dragoon. Three quarrels stick into his armor. Other bolts glance aside harmlessly except for a scratch on his fair brow. Now he’s angry.
Rabbit Abbot springs onto the upper deck. His levitation is as effortless as that of the mystics of the Far East who sleep upon beds of nails when not breathing fire and massacring their foes in battle. The marksmen hunch to reload. Slow going, alas. Rabbit Abbot sweeps past; he snips their heads with jaws like hedge clippers trimming a row of daisies. Then he drops from the balcony and is among your guards and it isn’t any prettier. He swipes with his claws, front and back. Faces and limbs are scratched off entirely.
A horn sounds. The front gate crashes inward. The King’s men-at-arms rush through the gap, swords whetted for slaughter.
What your enemies do not comprehend is that your valiant doomed guards are not here to prevail. Nay, the cannon fodder is present only to provide you with a repast of gore and fleeing life essence. You are the extension of the rift in the cellar. Muffled by tons of stone, it shrills for sustenance. Its need is your need. You inhale deeply. Streamers and gouts of blood redirect from wounds and sluice through the air into your enormous funnel of a maw. Your belly distends and your reach lengthens. Your laughter changes. Your disfigured shadow falls over these puny vermin as they struggle in extremis. All heads turn to regard your awesome aspect.
For a while you even think you might win.
The Old Homestead
Lochinvar had not seen the home of her youth since she’d fled its destruction forty winters ago. Scant traces of the cabin remained. An overgrown pile of rocks marked the family hearth where the Lochinvars once gathered to drink cocoa and sing yuletide carols. She glimpsed her mother, nude and pale as ice, leaning against a hemlock. Lochinvar emitted an uncharacteristic scream and clapped her gauntlet over her mouth in chagrin. Mantooth trotted over and sniffed. Finding nothing of interest, he gave his mistress a puzzled whine.
Hand swigged from a wineskin, as he did every few minutes without appreciable result.
“Miss Lochinvar, how is it you don’t look a day over sweet sixteen?”
She removed her winged helm and wiped away sweat. “I get lots of beauty sleep.” Lochinvar hadn’t known the disgraced knight long, except by reputation and her mental reconstruction of the massacre at Baron Need’s castle. Mother had not spoken of him or Rabbit Abbot. Indeed, until the day of her husband’s murder, Mrs. Lochinvar successfully hid the existence of her former life as a spy and provocateur.
