While I try to work out the ending of 'A Grim Tapestry' here is an alternate Short that i finished that had been gestating for a while.
I used to love the stars.
Not that I'm any kind of Astronomer you understand, nor would I even say that I am an avid enthusiast on matters celestial or even particularly well read upon the subject. Nonetheless, I used to love the stars in a very real and romantic way.
Often I would gaze into the night sky, wondering about those myriad pinpricks of light. Mysterious and unfathomable, all encompassing yet so, so far away. What wonders might they hold? Were they looking back at us? Some lifeform millions of years ago staring up at the cosmos much as I was? Of course due to the phenomenal distances involved they were most likely long dead (though I would not presume to guess at the longevity of an extraterrestrial, an existence of multiple millenia seemed at the time unlikely in the extreme) but this minor issue never stopped me from romanticising the night sky.
Now? Now I look at the stars with a cold dread. Now I know what looks back, looks back with a malign gaze, waiting. It has waited for those millennia, it’s malevolence unchecked. It waits for its time, for its summoning, its escape.
Would that I had remained blissfully, wistfully, ignorant.
It all started in the most innocuous of ways, a rogue email of all things. I worked at the time as an accountant for a small finance company, the kind of mundane 9-5 (at best) that you dread describing to relatives when they ask that obligatory question regarding your profession at family get-togethers. This wayward communication came from a sender unknown to me that disconcertingly did not accept replies, and was but a single enigmatic line.
Howard, It is time. 2:AM 20/11 St Leonard’s Bridge, ia ia! Praise Nyarlathotep!
My name is James Phillips and I had no inkling of what Nyarlathotep might be, though I found the structure of the word (etymology had always been an interest of mine) most intriguing, almost certainly of Egyptian origin. but St Leonard’s Bridge was no great distance away. I resolved to attend, clandestinely. My curiosity was piqued.
I failed to remember at the time that curiosity killed the cat.
So it was that I found myself crouching and shivering (why, oh why had I not dressed appropriately for November) in the shadows at the foot of the bridge on the north bank of the River Maloun shortly before 2am. Of course there was always the chance that the mysterious meeting was taking place on the south bank (I dismissed the possibility that they might be converging atop the bridge as even at this ungodly early hour there was traffic) but i considered a 50/50 chance of sating my curiosity worthy of my attendance, even in this winter chill.
The first attendee appeared at two minutes to the hour. Dressed remarkably formally (and to my chagrin much more sensibly than myself) he stood at one side of the foot of the bridge. He lit a cigarette, no, a cigar if the acrid smoke was anything to go by, no more than nine feet from my hiding place in the shadows. He was joined swiftly by two fellows, each approaching separately. They acknowledged each other with a fluid hand movement, fingers unfurling and folding as they moved their hands in a pattern I could not easily distinguish. The gesture was accompanied by a greeting and again I caught the word Nyarlothotep, the noun (for I had deduced it as such) sounding alien yet sonorous, though the rest of the uttered phrase was completely indistinguishable and in some forgeign guttural tongue.
A minute later they were joined by a well-to-do woman, dressed in an exquisite fur lined coat. The strange greeting was exchanged once again and once more when another woman and man turned up half a minute later.
I judged the hour of the meeting had come, indeed from the muffled conversation that was taking place it seemed that they were awaiting attendees yet. One of these would likely be the intended recipient for the missive I had intercepted. I had no way of knowing if Howard had received instruction of the rendezvous by any other means or if he would indeed be absent from proceedings.
There was one late attendee, chastised by the cigar puffing man who I judged to be the senior member of the group. The latecomer was younger and I established from the exchange that followed that this was not the intended recipient of the email. I strained my ears to hear what was being said.
“...short, we’ll have to proceed without. He had best be here next time though, our patron awaits, and he grows impatient. The appointed time approaches”
He took something from a wallet and stubbed the cigar out. Object and stump fell to the ground, and the man reached into his winter coat, withdrawing a small ornate dagger which gleamed despite the gloom, it seemed to glow unnaturally, as if the blade itself were a source of illumination. Moments later the luminescence dulled, and the group walked out of sight under the bridge, there was a flash and a low screeching howl like tortured wind rushing. Then silence.
I waited a moment and then stepped from the culvert in which I crouched. I cautiously stepped around, under the bridge…
Nothing.
I looked around, trying to find any clue of what had happened to the group. The waters were still, they had not been disturbed, the ground was soft but the footprints were indistinct and hard to see. The brickwork foot of the bridge was unblemished, there was no door, no hole, just bricks and mortar. No, there was something. Like glittering gossamer, lines spread across the surface, there was something on the wall. I stepped forward, traced the lines, they were warm. With a growing sense of trepidation I pressed against the brickwork with my palm. To my horror my hand disappeared into the brickwork. My path seemed clear. Ahead, through this portal, assuming a portal it was and I would not become subsumed by the brickwork, or retreat, abandon the quest, return to my job and try to forget.
The latter seemed impossible, but would that i had remembered the adage about the meddlesome moggy’s mortality I would have tried anyway.
I steeled myself and pushed my body through.
I wish that I could describe the sensation of my passage. I remember it vividly yet I lack the words to adequately describe it. The tactile sense was one of cloying molasses that I had to claw myself through, presumably my quarry had not experienced this? It seemed a most inconvenient form of ingress. No, I suspected that perhaps the way was becoming impassable, the material reasserting itself into its solid state even as I tried to force my way through.
But the sensation. That i cannot describe, not to any degree of accuracy.
I felt I was being squashed and stretched at the same time, intense hunger and thirst gripped me with the most tremendous headache and burden of suffocation. Yet even this description does no justice to the horror of the feeling I experienced. I knew at this moment that I had made the most grievous of mistakes.
Then I was through. I fell to my knees as reality asserted itself once more, gasping for air. Looking shakily behind me I could see only stone, though it was dark green of hue and rippled strangely. Hesitantly i reached out to touch it but it was indeed, just stone. Unyielding rock. There was a burning sensation in my pocket and I pulled out my phone only to drop it almost immediately. It was hot to the touch, and quite dead. After prodding at it a few times it became clear that the device would never function again, so I left it where it lay.
I got to my feet and turned back to the path ahead of me. My mind reeled as bizarre alien geometry assaulted my senses. The view ahead of me was almost impossible to assimilate. Monolithic edifices clashed with an eerie violet sky across which lurid green lightning lashed incessantly. There was no thunder though, Which was all the more disconcerting given that my ears were now bombarded by the most hideous screeching. The wail of a non present wind, banshees screaming and howling. I brought my hands up to my ears but it made no difference. Was this horrifying din being projected straight into my mind, into my very soul?
The path led downward, rough carved steps in the earth (though I was utterly convinced that I was no longer actually on Earth) that disappeared into the ground some twenty feet below me. As I proceeded down the steps I looked back at from whence I had come. I could now see a foreboding temple, hewn from the very rock face, again in that strange dark green stone that seemed to absorb all light.
Was it the very temple that was screaming? It was so hard to tell.
Shuddering, I turned around once more and continued down the steps, into the hole in the ground. Suddenly I was in absolute darkness, for although I could see light some distance below me, the surrounding stone reflected nothing. It was like being surrounded by pure void. At least that abominable howling had ceased.
I stumbled through the unearthly blackness as quickly as I could, practically falling through the portal in the floor, except It seemed that the black hole now existed below and behind me, not above. The disorientation was compounded by the stillness in fact everything was absolutely and horribly silent, such that I thought I had gone deaf till I heard my own involuntary gasp. The sky was a pale grey, deathly pallid and featureless. Stark and foreboding. It hurt my eyes and I felt my gorge rise.
Fighting the nausea, ahead of me, I could see the group that I pursued. They were some hundreds of metres away moving slowly to yet another colossal temple set in a rock face that seemed to cover the entire horizon, in fact, as i scanned the gargantuan cliff before me i saw that it didn’t actually end, instead it blended into the pale sky as if through a gradient. I averted my eyes from the psyche shattering sight and focussed instead on where I needed to go.
The traversal across the foreboding plain to the temple was blessedly uneventful, if relentlessly oppressive to the extreme. The unnatural stillness was most discomforting, and I found myself almost wishing for the ungodly screaming to come back, anything to break the smothering deathly stillness. Nonetheless I doggedly continued, step after step, one foot in front of the other again and again till finally, I was at the entrance to the temple. Hopefully this was my final destination, I surely couldn’t handle another journey like the one I had just undertaken. Without pausing for a moment, I entered the temple.
Unlike the previous passageway I had traversed, this one was practically luminous. Strange, carvings and shapes writhed and coiled on the walls, all emitting an unearthly light that seemed to be of no colour yet all colours. They hurt my eyes.. My footsteps seemed deafening in the corridor, and I adopted a crouch lest I be detected. Another doorway loomed ahead, massive and thankfully open. I stopped at the threshold. Below me in a large arena, stood the assembly.
They stood in a circle, each facing outwards. The ornate dagger was passed round the group and as each took the weapon they slashed across their palm before passing the blade on. Presently all seven present had bled themselves, clenching their cut hands into fists. Without another word they all opened and threw their hands into the air, blood showering above them, but rather than obeying the laws of gravity and falling, the blood kept travelling up, up, till it was beyond my sight in the darkness of the roof of the arena.
Then there was a cracking as of the unending of the world.
Suddenly there were stars visible. Our stars, though they were out strangely out of position, the constellations were nonetheless visible, familiar, reassuring.
There was nothing reassuring about what happened next.
First came the chanting, low and subdued before rising in both volume and intensity.
Ia Ia, Nyarlathotep fhtagn.. Ia Ia, Nyarlathotep fhtagn.. Ia Ia, Nyarlathotep fhtagn..Ia Ia, Nyarlathotep fhtagn..Ia Ia, Nyarlathotep fhtagn..Ia Ia, Nyarlathotep fhtagn..!!!!
Then, to my absolute and total horror, the stars started to go out. A darkness spread across the starscape in the ceiling, snuffing out the light. The light from the passageway behind me also failed, till all around was cloying darkness. In pure terror i gazed, rapt, at where the stars had once been. Something was coalescing, becoming form in the darkness, though I could barely differentiate between it and the void. Writhing tentacles snaked down from that ungodly abyss. They seemed insubstantial, almost as if made of smoke. That smoke coiled and hissed, its tips entering the circle of cultists, (for what other label could i apply to them?) a tendril penetrating each of their chests. Upon contact each member of the conclave ceased their chants and arched backwards, throwing their heads back, their eyes blazing a cerulean inferno. I barely noticed this peripherally, as my own gaze was fixed above. Three malevolent eyes appeared in the middle of the shape that had blotted out the very stars. A malign intelligence glittered within, utterly unhuman but identifiably self aware. A horrible unknowable sentience, as unfathomable as the very cosmos itself.
Then it spoke.
Though I did not comprehend its speech, I nonetheless felt its intent in my mind. I felt my sanity unravel at its words and screwed my eyes shut. The words echoed in my brain regardless. Not just the horrific entity's speech but the response from the assembly. It was not sound though, not really. It was an atmosphere, a sensation of understanding through feeling rather than comprehension through any other sense. At the same time I became aware of a very low but insistent keening in the back of my mind.
It was impatient, I sensed, it had been trapped for too long, at the edge of space. It yearned to escape, to be set free upon the Earth, the descendants of those that had imprisoned it. It desired madness, chaos, bedlam. The cultists were but a fraction of a multitude, all over the earth. All sowing discord, dissension, division. They controlled the media, the governments, the tech giants, it was all part of some great incredible plan. Pandemic, panic and pandemonium would be the shattering of it’s chains. Unknowable, unfathomable, indeterminable, it was aeons old, and its time was nigh. It was… inevitable.
Even worse, it knew I was there. I felt it.
I ran, I fled headlong back through the now dark tunnel, back across the pale plain, down into the black void that somehow became an ascent to a screaming purple sky. All the time, my mind continued to fracture, the keening in my mind grew louder and louder till the two sounds were a crescendo in duet. I babbled inanely, insanely, incessantly, though there were none around to hear me. I was about half way up the steps back to the starting temple when I mercifully lost consciousness, the screaming still echoing in my ears.
I awoke bedraggled, drenched on the bank of the Maloun. I was taken into care, my mind in ruins, unable to say anything but “the stars”. My torment was internal, eternal. My mind reeled with all I had experienced, a kaleidoscopic slideshow of cosmic horror playing over and over again. But I was unable to express any of it. I couldn’t write it, I couldn't say it. Only “the stars” over and over. I could hear, cogitate, comprehend, but my body was a shell and I was trapped in it.
So it was in a cruel twist of fate that after the evening pills are shoved down my throat I am wheeled by well meaning orderlies out under the starry skies. There to stare, in wide eyed horror at the unkind cosmos till slumber takes me and my dreams are ravaged by thoughts of that horrific monstrosity that awaits out there to consume us all.
In the stars that I used to love.
