Bohemians of Sesqua Valley (17 page)

“Do not fawn before me. Explain your presence here.”

“Ah, first-born seed of shadow—favored above the million-favored ones, sorcerer extraordinaire! You are like some fallen angel, dwelling on paltry sorrow. Mortality has tainted you, you who have existed in this realm too long a time. Did you think that you could subsist among humanity for over a century and not be infected? They bequeath you their diseases; why, even your blood has altered in chemistry, and the heart to which it rushes has grown mellow and affectionate. You were once such an exquisite fiend, protecting your valley from measly humanity; and now you bring this child from outside, to study with you and become skilled at your magnificent art. We weep for thee.”

“We?”

“We from Outside.”

“The girl has purpose here?”

“Yes, we shall make use of her. But what of you, Simon Gregory Williams? How often must the shadowed sphere cry out for you before you return unto it absolutely?”

“Not long, perhaps.” The beast raised his snout and sniffed. “I smell providence—potent and compelling. Whatever has brought you here is soon to pass. Why do you smile like that?”

“It is you who have caught our attention, beast. Just as the outsiders initially settled in this place and awakened you in your realm of shadow and mist, so you have drawn us from Outside with your fervid chanting, your demented deviltry. You cannot bend dimension and not be a focus for our questing appetite. You have tugged, subconsciously perhaps, we have responded.”

Simon clasped his hands together and then rubbed them over his monstrous face. “So be it. I don’t want the girl harmed in any way.”

“She will be glorified.”

Simon nodded at the avatar of Shub-Niggurath, and then turned away as the goatish figure began again to dance.

VI

Edith York held the folded gown before her, an offering to the girl. “It was an eccentricity of my siblings to dress oft times for dinner. Victoria was partial to this frock. You’re as tall as she was, I think. Wear this tonight.” Monique took the dress and embraced it to her breast. She then set the gown upon the bed and removed her clothing. Naked, she sat before a bureau and closed her eyes as Edith brushed and anointed her hair. The oils used smelled of frankincense and myrrh. Edith paused in her grooming of the young woman, and when Monique opened again her eyes she caught the elder woman’s momentary emotion.

“Oh dear, how sad and lonely are the valley’s offspring this night. You ache to see Victoria again. And yet—I feel she isn’t far. It’s strange, I feel that way about the other poet as well. William Davis Manly.”

“You’re wiser than you know,” Edith told her, going to the bed and lifting the gown so that it fell open. The naked girl stepped to it and allowed Edith to help her into the dress. “We’re off, then—to the circle.”

“I’ll meet you there. I have one small errand to perform.” So saying, she left the house and entered woodland. She walked some distance and then stopped, perplexed, and she leaned against one tree and wrapped her arms around it. “Assist me, Sesqua Valley—guide me to his lair. The hour has come for his return.” The trees moved above her in the growing wind that pushed her farther along the path. Extending her arms, Monique clutched at the air that guided her, until she came at last to the hidden bungalow. She entered and found Simon, fully dressed, sitting within a circle of burning candles.

“How dare you infiltrate my lair. Be gone.”

Kneeling before him, the girl offered him her hand. “Come with me. Please, stand with me as I meet my fate.”

“I can sense the sensation of whatever happens to you here. The valley tells me everything.”

“Oh, come on, Simon,” she scolded. “You’ve taught me to embrace the madness of magick. Join with me now in its rich lunacy. Come, daemonic beast, and we shall howl as one.” She watched, as his sneer became an ugly smile, as his paw lifted so as to seize her proffered hand. Monique laughed happily as they rose together and he stepped out of his ring of scented candles. She sang an esoteric song that he had taught her and pranced about him on the path that took them to the place of ceremony.

Simon gazed at the sight before him, surprised that there were only two others participating. Edith was crouched within the circle of stone, while the one who called himself Basil Scratch moved around the stones in danse, a garland on his dome. Watching his movement seemed to enliven the lethargic beast, and Simon reached into an inner pocket of his jacket and produced a pipe. His music was an eldritch sound, and it delighted the goatish man. Nodding his head in time to his tune, Simon reached into the pocket again and produced a second flute, which he tossed to Scratch; and then he moved into the danse, leaping and stomping on the ground as Edith’s silver eyes sparkled with excitement. The small woman reached out to Monique, who joined her within the circle as the valley’s floor began to pulse to the influence of song and transforming alchemy. And then song and movement stopped, replaced by the noise of Edith’s harsh voice raised in chanting. Monique peered into the darkness of the woodland as she sensed the approaching mist, the swirling brume that crept toward them like some fantastic sentient entity. The young girl watched, entranced, as an outline formed within the mist, a figure that caused Edith to cry out. The being floated there, in the whirling miasma—an eidolon that was, in every way, a replication of the statue that Edith York had sculpted of her transformed sister, she who had been strangely wed to an essence of Shub-Niggurath. Monique did not move as Basil Scratch reached into the circle and offered Edith his hand, which the child of the valley grasped. The black goat tugged the elder woman to the mist, and that which had been Victoria York enfolded her shadow-sister within her arms.

The dark man turned and tossed his flute to Simon; and then he raised his hands above his head and made strange signs to aether. Opening his human mouth, he began to utter an alien litany, and as his droning voice buzzed he began to shed his human façade, transmuting into a thing of black vileness, a gelatinous patch of ichor that stained the valley’s air, the stench of which caused Monique to gag. It stretched, this noisome thing, and became gigantic; and then it split open and released a gas-like monster that spread over the place of ritual. Monique gawked at the shapeless mass, in which she could discern globes that were half-formed faces that seemed to cry out to her. An atrocious wisp of the horrific Outer God unwrapped itself from its bulk and filtered to the circle in which the young outsider knelt. Monique beheld the ghost-like visage therein, the mouth of which called her name. Lifting her head to the spectral tissue, Monique pushed her face into its hazy substance and kissed the ethereal countenance. The filmy thing pushed into the human tissue and sank into pores, nostrils, gasping mouth. Monique felt this aspect of the thousand young plant itself as seed within her. The obsidian patch of poison that was the black goat of the woods, no longer emmense but shrunken and resembling a spillage of shimmering tar, oozed toward the gas-like entity and embedded itself into it, where it pulsed like some filthy heart. The others watched as the Outer God folded into itself and vanished above the valley’s brumal bank.

The valley pulsed as never before, its grotesque buried heart grown wild. Snouted things atop Mount Selta howled awfully, joined by Edith and Simon. The elder woman reached out to the beast, and he stepped toward her and partially into the mauve mist.

“Come with us now, first-born beast. It is the time for your perpetual return. Come dwell with us forever in our home of mist and shadow, beneath the crimson peaks of Khroyd’hon. You often visit there for brief seasons, and bring forth the others who ache to taste a time of mortality; but they can do that now without your guidance. Come, follow us.”

Simon reached beyond Edith, deeper into the mist, with both hands and mind. He scanned, supernaturally, the realm of shadow; but the one he sought did not dwell there. Ruefully, he winked at Edith; then, turning away from mist and shadow, Simon Gregory Williams stepped toward the circle of stones, held out his hand to the young woman who wept there, and guided her back to Sesqua Town.

A Quest of Dream

I

I 
ascended the wide stone steps that led to Adam Webster’s bookstore and stopped to smell the red frangipani. Moonlight beamed through the trees that surrounded the large house, and I paused so as to light an opium-tainted cigarette. I sucked, and then I sighed and lifted my eyes so as to watch Luna through the thin blue wreaths of smoke that curled fantastically before me. The tree that spread before me offered its fragrant flowers, and for a moment I fancied that these were blooms of blood before me. Ah, blood and moonlight, smoke and perfumed air. I was surrounded by enchantment. The moon was then veiled by clouds, and I passed through new-born darkness, up the wooden steps that took me to the large canopied porch. I sucked, and then extinguished my cigarette in a tall vase filled with sand and bits of bone. Adam stood before a hearth in the large bookshop that had been constructed by removing walls and turning separate rooms into one spacious chamber. Scented candles provided the sole source of light, the mellow illumination that felt so comfortable on my eyes. Sighing happily, I sank into an armchair and crossed one leg over the other.

“Simon’s vanished,” I informed him. “He was going to teach me the Ninth Diagram. I’m rather annoyed.”

“He’s in Prague,” Adam informed me, his back to me as he fiddled with some tiny figurines that sat upon the hearth.

“Something’s disturbed him. He was behaving so irrationally the last time we met. Rather disconcerting, to see the beast so thrown off balance.” The fellow continued to ignore me. “So, what do you have for me?”

“Ah,” he replied, pointing a finger upward as he walked to a bookshelf and removed a title bound in green cloth. “It’s nothing special, but knowing your penchant for Wilde titles I thought you’d enjoy it.” He moved to me and I took the book. The Harlot’s House and Other Poems by Oscar Wilde, with “Interpretations” by the artist, John Vassos. I loved old editions of Wilde, and this 1929 title was in perfect shape. I opened to the title piece and read aloud:

“Then, turning to my love, I said,

‘The dead are dancing with the dead,

The dust is whirling with the dust.’”

My recitation was followed by suggestive silence, and as I looked up I saw that the child of shadow was frowning at me. He said, “Wilde was called a corrupter of youth. This is something you share with him. You’ve been influencing Cyrus to dream. This must stop.”

I made a rude noise with my lips. “Don’t be a bore, Adam. Cyrus overflows with curiosity. He’s hungry for new sensations. I taught him the art of concocting an absinthe cocktail the other day, and how happily intoxicated we were, nude and dancing beneath the autumnal moon. It was deliciously Greek. What have you against dreaming? You live in Sesqua Valley, where dreams are enhanced outlandishly. I have only to gaze for a length of time at the white mountain before falling into slumber to experience the most fantastic visions.”

“It is dangerous for us to dream, Jonas. To dream in this valley is to open portals. Simon has explained this to you.”

I squeezed my face so as to make an appalling expression. “The valley itself is a portal. It sucks one in, and twists one’s psyche, and blasts one’s brain. It gathers us, the valley does—we freaks of the world, and teaches us new ways in which to mutate. Ah, sweet intoxicating vale, poisonous and potent. We shut our eyes to your enchanted light, and in dream we follow your moonlit paths. As Wilde once said, so wisely, ‘A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight.’ The moon over Sesqua is ripe for dreamers.”

“Then dream on your own, Jonas. Do not coax my shadow-kindred to follow you. Cyrus is especially susceptible to mortal influence.”

I rose out of the chair and winked at Adam’s ugly face. “Thanks for the book, mate.” Exiting the shop, I walked down the steps and onto the road that led to town. The moon had undressed herself of clouds, and her naked brilliance touched my eyes with wonder. Opening the book again, I whispered the title poem’s opening lines:

“We caught the tread of dancing feet,

We loitered down the moonlit street,

And stopped beneath the harlot’s house.”

I walked onto the planks of wood that are the sidewalk of Sesqua Town and stopped before one tall building so that I could listen to the noise that issued from its top floor. There were no blinds before the windows, no ghostly silhouettes; but there were moving shadows, and the tread of dancing feet. Silently, I passed the building’s threshold and loiter up the flight of stairs that took me to the floor from which the curious din issued. Cautiously, I walked to where double doors parted and watched the unfathomable dancers as they moved as one within the silent room. I thought immediately of lines by Keats:

“Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard

Are sweeter…”

I realized, as I peeped furtively into the room, that I had never before seen so many of the children of the valley gathered in one place; and my curiosity was so compelled that I failed to notice when someone moved behind me, until she pressed one hand upon my shoulder. By some strange instinct, the occupants of the room sensed intrusion and ceased their movement. A horde of silver eyes gazed at me. The female at my side linked her arm with mine and escorted me into the room.