The Nameless Dark: A Collection, page 19
“Upon receiving my assignment and arriving here, I spent some time alone among the rocks, discovering the promised doorway that I shall soon revisit for the final time…”
Max rifled through the notebooks and tapes around him, noticing dates that went back several hundred years. This was not just a broadcast booth, Max realized, but a library, a repository of arcane and antiquated knowledge off the scale of human imagination.
Stunned by the implications of what loomed around him, Max then noticed a line of several dozen framed photographs on the wall, of different people manning the microphone, sitting in that heavy chair, moving back through the ages, from color pictures to black and white to muddy sepia tone. Two dozen men and women of varying ages, races, and obvious social standing, all sitting in the same pose in front of the same microphone with the same grim expression and slightly unbalanced gleam in their eyes.
The most recent speaker continued his taped oration, as Max moved in closer and squinted at the last photo to the right, which showed a man not much older than him, staring haughtily into the camera of an unknown photographer, the instruments of transmission glowing behind him. “I felt as though I had passed into a pinhole poked through realty, taking me outside linear time and into the seething void… Grimes Point is a wrinkle in the fabric of this brittle plane, a carefully plotted and placed dimensional distortion allowing access to and from the Place of the Beginning, and the measureless vistas of the Continuing Chaos—a place forgotten or shunned throughout the course of human history. But a place that was also sought out, by those brave seekers who heeded not the fear… This is just one outpost, numbered six, and is one of many, where others like me continue the work to rebuild that which was stolen from us, a primal birthright ripped from our molecular memory. They took from us our knowledge, our book, but we will rebuild it, and again teach the truth through the written word, through the electronic ether, through the television and the radio waves… We seek to swing the wrong back to the right, through darkness and light, and ready the awaiting flock...”
The fly-spattered light bulbs flickered, and Max looked up, noticing perplexing lines and curves etched into the ceiling, surrounding what appeared to be several intricate, overlapping star maps. But, the maps didn’t feature any of the known constellations, or none with which Max was familiar.
“I speak of what was whispered to me, through the sounds of the desert, of elder mathematics—the language of all creation, the root and the key of what we know as eldritch magic. That which sank R’lyeh, raised Atlantis, and built the sacred pyramids and other abandoned monuments to the Outer Gods across our crowded sphere…”
Max sank slowly into the stout broadcast chair and gazed wide eyed around the room, as if a sudden realization clicked in his head, giving confirmation to something he had always surmised but didn’t dare believe, and rarely ventured to dream. West, ever west... Out into the Pacific… Fate or drown. Fate or drown…
Max’s eyes bulged as he listened with every atom of his being, taking in the words as the voice went on to tell of the Outer Gods, who will come and take away those who know how to ask. About how he and others throughout history and prehistory and the dawn of sentient life were mere chroniclers of these impossibly old entities and their epic machinations, from drawings in the primordial clay, to paintings in caves, to those driven mad compiling the Dread Book, to now—transmitting the stories and knowledge into the atmosphere, then out past the charged particles of our finite space. All the same. All working in the same service. Those who chronicle and spread these revealed truths are members of the enlightened few, and are assured a place of exaltation beyond the stars, spared the coming reclamation of this tiny blue rock by the errant overseers who have seeded all of the living worlds in the dimensions of their influence.
The workers at Outpost Six at Grimes Point are the newest members of these few, collecting information imparted in purposely small, disassociated segments to keep the recorder sane for as long as humanly possible. These are the further writers of the Book of Knowledge, continuing the work of Alhazred, von Junzt, The Scribe of Eibon… Mason, Curwen, Carter, and Ward…these are the chroniclers of the Higher Wisdoms to prepare the Earth for the promised coming and the transformation, when the Old Masters return home to check on their children, their forgotten Petri dish prepped and left in a far flung corner of nowhere...
“This is what the desert told me,” the voice continued, “and what I and others have recorded for decades, centuries, eons before our poorly-made vessels became too full and started to crack…”
Sitting in the chair with his eyes staring straight ahead while his mind began to venture several dimensions away, Max didn’t see the bathroom just off the broadcast room, where a bloody razor and clumps of hastily shaved body hair clogged the sink. Max didn’t see the trail of blood that led out the smashed back door, over the dusty yard, past the unnatural mounds and monoliths surrounding the property, and into the sand of the endless desert. Max didn’t see the speaker of the voice, just hours before he arrived, standing on the brink of Grimes Point, and flinging himself down onto the curiously arranged rocks below. Max also didn’t see the body of the man disappear into the void before it hit the craggy bottom, warping away to a swirling, unnamable infinitum of places unknowable, where he would join the roiling mass of omnipotent chaos that probed for a way back into our tiny plane of existence, settling in the meantime for psychic missives sent from the Beyond. Measured portions of the ultimate truth transmitted to our time, place, and space in hopes of teaching one of us the correct formula to open up the dimensional gaps dotting our universe just wide enough for something substantial to come through, to return to a place unvisited in a billion years, but never, ever forgotten.
Max didn’t see these things, because he was sitting at the microphone—his new post at Outpost Six—taking in The Words in preparation for continuing The Work. The voice in the darkness had sliced open the forbidden fruit and offered a taste to Max. He took a reluctant bite, and was now changed forever—a doomed man enslaved by this terrible growing wisdom, joining all those curious souls who had been drawn to this place before him.
“So,” the speaker in the picture, the speaker who dove into Grimes Point and into the boundless, structured abyss just hours earlier, concluded in his strange, hollow voice. “I leave this sacred burden to you who have found your way to this humble temple of the Outer Gods, the true rulers of this universe and many others, who have revealed themselves to those who were forced to forget... They are there, and They are waiting, watching, and whispering… Tend to your task with seriousness, and be mindful in your work, for the destruction and rebirth of all we know demands rigorous attention and strict vigilance…” The speaker’s voice began to give, but he mustered enough strength to continue, if only to breathlessly croak: “Fare thee well… and worry not… for understanding beyond measure is nigh! A replacement draws forth, even now! Signing off…and bid this forgotten place goodbye…knowing that you are already on the doorstep…and the cycle…continues...”
The voice gave out and the transmission ended.
In the dead silence of the tiny shack, the noises of the desert began to creep in, as well as those softer, more terrible sounds that lurk underneath the normal nighttime din.
Max was listening.
Mr. Lupus
A straight razor scraped across soapy flesh, taking with it stubborn gray whiskers and leaving behind a slug trail of scarlet. Blood shot to the surface and dotted the patch of new skin. It was thin and bright. Certain fluids quickened while the rest of the machine slowed.
“Blast,” the old man muttered, rinsing the blade under the faucet and holding a towel to his cheek. He fussed over the metal with his fingers, wiping off the blood and making sure it was sucked down the rusted drain in a spiral of water, taking it to God knows where, but hopefully far down river.
He blinked into the mirror as he worked, noticing the sag of his eyes that were once a dark, commanding brown but were now gauzy hazel, tinted with the jaundice of misspent age. His hair was wild, shooting sidewise in wisps of silvery white. A bird cackled strangely from the landing outside the bathroom window, and his mind drifted to thoughts of blood oranges and tropical flowers. The playful laughter of his wife as she reclined naked on a white chair set incongruously in the middle of a primal Malaysian jungle, unsullied by cartographers and the grim industrialists pulling their strings. How pale she looked amid all that exotic darkness, how like an untamed thing born out of the dripping milk of the moon. She was never like that, but here she was. Like that. And so was he. Naked. Savage. Adam and Eve, prancing through a hidden shard of unwritten Eden. They were to live forever there, together, before he lost her to the woods.
The man returned the cutting edge to his face and paused. He gazed at the entirety of his face, features he hadn’t recognized for decades, and then moved the blade to his neck, lining it up with dozens of light scars running across his throat. He paused there for what felt like a second lifetime.
He set down the razor on the sink top and the old man shuffled into the hall, twisting off the electric light as he left. Fluttering wings beat against the bathroom window.
In a stuffy bedroom that smelled just as it looked, he sat heavily on the bed indented on only one side of the mattress and pulled up bright green stockings over sagging calves. He felt ridiculous, as he always did this time of year. A clown hawking treasures to monsters. Pearls before little pink piglets. The man slipped into stiff spat boots, purchased new for the season, buttoned them up tight, and rose to his feet. He stretched out his arms inside the garish peddler’s frock and etched on a toothy smile. “Ta-da!”
Heavy heels clomped down the staircase, slowing as they made their way to the bottom. Casting aside a velvet drape, the old man emerged into a show room packed from floor to high ceiling with toys and novelties of every stripe, size, and level of handicraft. He moved through the store on the groove worn into the old floorboards, passing by hundreds of frozen eyes. Beautifully grotesque marionettes from the Carpathians and wind up monkeys from Siam held sentinel over animal skin drums from the Congo, music boxes from London, muslin dollies from Appalachia, popguns from Texas... He’d been all over the world finding his premium toys, and never came back empty handed, even when he brought back nothing to sell. He was a collector of souvenirs, after all.
The old man walked to the draped front window display arranged like a diorama of a centuries-old town populated by carolers, holiday revelers, and jumping dogs frozen in mid leap. A train track snaked through colonial homes with cramped windows and peaked gambrel roofs. The entire scene was dusted with artificial snow that appeared so realistic one often wondered if pools of water collected on the floor underneath. He flipped a toggle switch and the scene came alive. Singers swayed, dogs leapt, and a festive locomotive piloted by a rotund, waving, red-clad figure chugged around the town, emitting tiny puffs of ultra fine powder that served as smoke.
The man checked his pocket watch, took a deep breath, and pulled back the heavy blue curtains cloaking the display from the outside world. As suspected, he was greeted by two dozen fat little faces bunched together like eggs in a carton pressed against the glass. The fog of their hot, quick breath froze in pale circles. He could hear the oohs and excited squeals from inside, and his blood jumped just a little. He hated children, yet loved them all the same. Especially the ones with negligent parents, and there were so many these days. The unbathed ones with uncombed hair and hidden bruises, who appreciated the attention afforded them during a private tour of the stock room because daddy died in the Moncrief mines or just ran off into the night in search of different flesh, leaving mommy with only the cup to keep her company. Male or female, fair or homely, complicit or “difficult”—it didn’t matter. They all kept him fed, as every child ended up in his toy store eventually. It was the only one in town.
The man moved to an easel next to the window and flipped a placard from 5 to 4 Days ‘Til Christmas.” High-pitched cheers erupted from outside. He gritted his teeth and worked through the half dozen locks securing the front entrance. The massive oak door swung inward and he stepped grandly into the threshold, hands on hips, frigid morning air rushing past his viridian leggings to rob the coal in the basement. Above him hung a large wooden sign proclaiming Leopold’s Curios & Novelties in proper Prussian lettering painted a bright, cheery yellow. Plumage.
“Good morning, Mr. Leopold,” said a rosy cheeked woman holding her child by the collar of his jacket. His feet clattered for a propelling grip on the icy sidewalk. Mr. Leopold uttered a few convivial words while looking past her, to the dingy faced child standing all alone, playing hooky from school with thoughts of spending the day inside the warmth of Leopold’s Curios & Novelties. The old man smiled his first genuine smile of the day.
Up and down the street, a chorus of bells arose from all corners of the mercantile district, buoying the rim of the rising sun as it attempted to push back the unnatural darkness billowing from a thousand smokestacks that had held sway over the sky for as far back as anyone could remember. These weren’t the heavy peals of a pendulous clapper banging against a thousand pounds of grim, church sanctioned copper. This was the light ting of brass bells brought to life by the wave of a hand—the unmistakable sound of Christmas on the street.
Men in crisp red jackets with white piping appeared at every other street corner, smiling under their military style hats, ringing their bells and nodding politely to passersby. The metallic jangle rose, sank and overlapped, sometimes finding a rhythm inside each other, creating the impression of a tinkling chorus, a movement in the barren yet beautiful symphony written for the sprawling city that so very much needed it, as all cities do, no matter feast or famine.
This was a time of famine.
But Christmas knows no want, especially here under the watchful eye of the Moncriefs, and so lush holiday decorations hung from every street post, power line and storefront, framing the morning thoroughfares already packed with dead-eyed commuters and hopeful shoppers. Most were heading to unremarkable jobs in one of the endless industrialized office complexes standing sentry over the river’s edge downtown. But some were clutching shopping bags and tiny mittened hands.
Lording over it all were three tall buildings, blocking the eastern view of the Fenris Mountains beyond the bend in the sluggish runnel. The center structure rose just above the other two, as if standing on its toes. These were the Moncrief Towers, which gave life and death to everything crawling down below.
The bells continued to chime, and the ants continued their march.
In the skylight suite of the middle tower, just below the layer of smog gifted to the city by his family, James Moncrief looked out the tinted glass window at the urban sprawl below, holding an unlit cigar in his left hand. His large blue eyes swam atop dark circles that perpetually seemed on the edge of tears. He heard no bells up this high, only expensive silence. On the walls around him hung the mounted heads of two-dozen wild and monstrous animals from various remote outposts of untamed wilderness. Elephant and rhino and a long necked giraffe that stretched up to the mosaic of constellations on the ceiling. A stuffed polar bear stood guard in one corner. A massive red wolf, captured mid lunge just before total extinction, bared its teeth in a murderous snarl next to carved double doors.
Behind him, a marginally pretty but utterly forgettable woman pulled up her stockings and hid the rips under her cheap, tight fitting dress, absently arranging her hair like a chastised little girl. The pale skin of her face was flushed, more so out of the slow creep of modesty than amorous exertion. It hadn’t lasted long enough for that.
“Button me up, yeah?” she asked, her accent giving away a waft of the docks.
James said nothing. He could sense the bad fabric covering something cheaper within. He was disgusted for her, and doubly for himself and his venal weakness that continually brought him to such gutter depths this high up. The woman was about to say something when he spoke. He didn’t want to hear her voice again.
“Ms. Talmidge will see to you.”
As if on cue, the double doors opened, and a no-nonsense woman who seemed to live her life under a tight bun and neutral colors strode inside. Ms. Talmidge beckoned to the young woman with the harried manner of a school marm attending to a student and smoothed out the wrinkles on her jacket, licking her finger to dab at an opaque stain.
The woman smiled shyly at Ms. Talmidge, then addressed James without looking at him. “Give me a lift home?”
He hadn’t moved from the window. “Mr. Barrows will take you where you need to go.”
Ms. Talmidge shot a raised eyebrow at James’ back. If he felt it, which he always did, he showed no sign.
“Come on, dearie. We’ll take you out the back.”
“The back,” the girl murmured, pulling her collar tighter around the red finger marks on her neck. “Like a delivery of bread.”
“Or discarded seafood,” James said, putting the dead cigar into his mouth.
Ms. Talmidge handed the young woman her hat that was two seasons behind trend, fluffing up the goose feathers painted to look like ostrich. “How about we put on a smile, then?”
The woman took the hat and forced a sad grin, turning to the shadow in the window. “Goodbye, Mr. Moncrief,” she mumbled, searching for something else to say. “Thank you.”
