Dark Tales Of Lost Civilizations (5 page)

Cha Né faltered.

He could still taste the acid tang of what he’d done to Henry Johnson, of intelligence ground down to violent madness. What if this one were different? What if he could be reasoned with? Turned back? Could be saved?

Even as Cha Né thought it, the avatar scented his reluctance—the instance of weakness it had anticipated. In that moment, it lunged. The viscous web of its consciousness clutched at Cha Né, a cloud that howled around, within him. He felt his form fracture. He felt the drag of his body, the empty shell still squatting in the invented world.

He’d come too far, too deep. He couldn’t remember the path back.

Broken, leaking light, Cha Né lay buoyed upon the liquid ground. The avatar didn’t concern itself with him. It continued its creep to the Endless Gate, its milky eye still diverted, but its claws now clicking steadily again.

Cha Né’s senses were failing. He saw the world as through a crust of ice. Yet he could still feel the umbilical cord of consciousness between himself and Montague Evans. He concentrated, focusing upon a last, hopeless transmission. He pressed through insect-thoughts, through drone-thoughts, into the screaming red of human mind below.

Even then, they had no language in common. They were so different. Could emotion bridge that gap? Could despair? “Free it in this world and you free it in our world. Montague Evans, listen to me . . . it will devour
everything
. . . “

Then the link was broken, melting into translucent dusts. If the avatar, or the mind of the man encased in it, had understood, it showed no sign. The thing continued its warped motion, until it stood before the undulating black of the gate. The surface bent in dreadful curves as the avatar reached for the hieroglyphs of the pillar. The darkness throbbed, rolled out like storm clouds. Soon the creeping thing could no longer be seen amidst the pulsing ebon swell. But where it had been, something else was emerging—condensing.

Cha Né couldn’t move. He couldn’t look away. He could only lie still, watching.

It had been imprisoned for countless moons—for time beyond time.

It must be ravenous.

Day 29

My dreams last night were awful beyond imagination.

I’m sure of this. Yet, I can’t remember—or only the most indistinct details. A black and vacuous gateway. A strange, bright being, which spoke to me perhaps. Terror. Joy.

My memory is like a tattered cloth. Better to remember nothing than these half-grasped horrors, these flash-bulb grotesques that seem to be the shattered memories of a stranger.

Of the many things that petrify me this morning, this is the worst—this terrible sense of dislocation. I feel I’ve witnessed something dreadful. Maybe I even played a part in it. But that part is a void inside me. It belongs to someone—to something—else.

We’ve arrived at the village of the Shanopei. They would be unknown to the world were it not for Henry Johnson. Their evil superstitions would never have left this sheltered cove. Yet Johnson came, as I have come. Those superstitions have spread, as typhoid spreads.

This is what I sought. Now that I’m here, I can’t but question my motives, and their repercussions. I told myself it was the correlations between my work and Johnson’s that drew me. These are the reasons I offered my companions. Half-truths at best. It wasn’t Johnson’s theories that brought me but his madness. No, not even that. Those revolting horrors, the cancer in his mind, the darkness that finally devoured his sanity . . . that was my lure. I opened my mind to the blackest dreams. Now I think those things may consume me.

The village of the Shanopei is gone. Only gutted remains survive, scorched in impossibly arbitrary fashion. There are no bodies, though the paraphernalia of life suggests the recent presence of people. There is nothing alive here. We can’t even hear the singing of birds.

This was not the work of men. There are no tracks. It’s as if some force fell on the village, and desolated it, and was gone.

I fear it hasn’t gone far.

The sky is crimson and purple and black, as though blood were bruising behind it. It’s cold, so cold that the ground is hard, though yesterday we sweltered beneath tropical sun. The waters of the lake are viscous, swirling outward from the center. They give the impression of appalling depths. Tendrils of fog rise from the water to gather about our feet. There’s a carrion scent in the air, a murmuring that is something like music. The sky is without color. The cliffs, through the mist, are crystalline.

I’m hallucinating. But the others claim they see the same. I can make out the bay, the canoes tethered there, the ravaged village, the river tumbling through mud flats into translucent water. Another scene lies on . . . over . . .
through
that one. At first, I could distinguish them. Now they seem to coexist.

The others want to retreat back toward the plateau. They insist I stop writing and go with them. I wish I could. I’m frozen, by awe and fear, and by the need to leave some record in the face of what I fear.

I remember Henry Johnson, tethered deep in the bowels of the asylum. The word he’d been calling incessantly since his arrival—and they told me his throat was cracked and torn by then, that it was a miracle he could make any noise at all—I believe that word was a name.
Astasoth
. I’ve known its meaning, I think, all along. I could have understood. I chose not to.
The imprisoned one
.

I’ll leave this journal here. If I don’t survive, perhaps it will. I hope it’s never discovered. I hope it’s lost forever. I can’t tell anymore what’s real, what’s delirium. The lake is obsidian, bubbling and frothing, flailing the shore with fluid tendrils. Beyond the beach, a well leads further down than I can see.

Something is rising.

I can’t see. The fog devours everything. I hope it isn’t real, that I’m insane. I’ll follow my companions, to the path that leads up the cliff side. What else can I do? This wasn’t my fault. A record—a record, at least. In the face of it. What else?

I hope this journal won’t be found. I hope I’m mad. Let me die in the jungle, and rot, and never be remembered. Let me die mad and forgotten!

I fear I’m sane. I fear . . .

I know. Astasoth is free.

And it has other plans for me than death.

=[]=

David Tallerman
’s horror, fantasy, and science fiction short stories have appeared in around forty markets, including
Lightspeed, Bull Spec, Redstone Science Fiction,
and John Joseph Adams’s zombie best-of
The Living Dead.
Amongst other projects, David has published poetry in
Chiaroscuro
and comic scripts through the award-winning British
Futurequake Press
, while a short he co-wrote won numerous awards in the 2011
Two Days Later
horror film contest. David’s first novel, comic fantasy adventure
Giant Thief
, came out in February 2012 from UK publisher
Angry Robot
; its first sequel,
Crown Thief
, is due toward the end of the year. David can be found online at http://davidtallerman.net and http://davidtallerman.blogspot.com.

Mark Lee Pearson

=[]=

Writing from Japan, Mark Lee Pearson brings an intriguing contribution to this collection. He explores the lore of an islander people through the eyes of a girl, Izanami, as she ages and the world changes around her.
To Run a Stick Through a Fish
is one of the shortest stories in this anthology, yet the author is able to fill it with an immense diversity of life and emotion. For the noble Ainu race, heritage is to be cherished, whether through family, magic, or by “knowing a dog.”

=[]=

Izanami was named after the divine mother of the Ainu race, and she kept her naval string in a small cedar box, which she concealed in a raccoon skin cloak.

Her Grandmother, Huchi, who had the gift of tongues and tattooed lips, told Izanami that the divine mother had been born of a goddess and a dog. The goddess came sailing north on a celestial ship from the lands of the gods, and when the vessel hit rocks she was marooned on the island of Shizunai. There she was stranded and alone with only her gold, silver, brocade, and jewels for company until a dog befriended her. The dog led her to a cave and ravished her and ten months later the goddess gave birth to the divine mother, Izanami. Thus began the Ainu race.

“Hapi, was my father a dog?” Izanami asked her mother one evening as they harvested elderberries from the mountainside. She was twelve and curious to hear about her own origins.

“Yes, he was a dog,” said Hapi. “But nothing like the dog in Grandmother Huchi’s tale. That dog didn’t disappear. He didn’t leave his mistress’s side. He remained faithful, continued to provide her with food and love, and they had many children together.”

Izunami had more questions. She wanted to know if her father was still alive and, if he was, where was he, but Hapi cut her off, denying any claim to divinity. She told Izunami to forget her father since he was a disgrace to the Ainu people and to the name of dogs. Then she plucked a succulent elderberry from a bush and popped it into Izanami’s mouth.

Izanami’s Grandfather, Ekashi, was the greatest fisherman in Ezo and a speaker of rains. He maintained that the Wajin in the south, who sought to erase the Ainu race from existence, had fabricated the origin story to that end. For what woman in her right mind would admit to being known by a dog?

Huchi insisted that every Ainu woman admitted at one time or another of being known by a dog; it was an affirmation of the female’s role in her society.

On the night of Izanami’s thirteenth birthday, Hapi disappeared. The local fishermen combed the coast; the hunters searched the forest and mountainside, but to no avail. They called upon a Saaghalian magician to divine her whereabouts. The magician was short and hairy and wore straw sandals and a robe, which reeked of wet bark. He sat alone for a long while in her mother’s darkened room. When he emerged he said she had died and her body would never be found. Izanami beat him out of the house with her fists, and Grandmother Huchi cursed the cannibalistic dog under her breath, but nothing could foil the truth of the magician’s prediction. Hapi’s body was never found and the smell of wet bark never faded from the house.

Izanami went to live with her grandparents, Huchi and Ekashi, in a hole in the ground. Huchi continued to relate to her the suspect stories of her ancestors. She told tales of the famine and how the Ainu people had once feasted upon their brothers’ flesh to stay alive. Izanami balked at the thought. She wondered if Huchi had ever ingested the flesh of her brothers and sisters, but she dared not to ask.

Ekashi taught Izanami vigilance, invisibility, and how to produce fish from a handful of sand. He also showed her how to summon the rains. She ran a stick through the fish her grandfather caught and pushed it in the ground with its mouth facing the sky. They prayed to the skulls of a pair of raccoons, and he presented her with the raccoon skin cloak her mother had worn. He threw seawater over her and they danced upon the beach until the sun rose and when they caught sight of the cumulus clouds that had appeared on the horizon they shrieked and wept tears of elation.

The following year was dry too, so they traveled to Peneshiri to cut the birch tree with a knife. On the way home a pair of hungry bandits brandishing fishhooks and spears ambushed them. Izanami watched Ekashi slay the two men with his fish knife.

One night when Izanami was fourteen, a local boy followed her home. He was the son of a hunter and his body was covered in downy hair and he moved with the stealth of a pine marten. That night on the edge of the forest, Izanami discovered what it meant for a man to be a dog. It was not as she had imagined.

In Huchi’s tale, the male deity, Izanazi, inquired of the female deity, Izanami, whether anything had formed within her body before making an advance. The female deity, Izanami, had coyly replied,
yes my body has a place completely formed, and it is called the source of femineity
. The pine marten had made no such inquiry of her. He threw down his jeweled spear and ripped the crystal mountain from the muddy quagmire of her youth by instinct alone.

Two days later the pine marten disappeared while on a hunting trip in the mountains and she persuaded the Saaghalian magician to divine his whereabouts. The short, hairy magician arrived, still carrying the reek of wet bark, which brought back memories of her mother. She left him alone in the place where she had known the dog the night previous and when he emerged from the undergrowth he said the boy had been chased down and eaten by a bear and his body would never be found.

Izanami resolved to kill the bear in revenge. She set out that night and tracked it across the lowlands and through the mountainous terrain for eight months, until she became exhausted and was forced to give up, crawl into a cave, and lie down on a bed of rushes.