HP Lovecraft's Magazine of Horror - Weird Tales

90 | H . P . L O V E C R A F T ’S M A G A Z IN E O F H O R R O R
“You have both heard from our emissary, the Soul
Wrecker. You have experienced displacement.”
He turned, neat and vulpine, and walked smartly towards
the jabbering altar, and, as he passed, touched lightly the great
jewelled globe, which flamed for an instant under his fingers.
He tapped the altar and the huge horns there lit up in a similar
manner. My heart turned over with horror. I remembered the
price of raising Pan . . .
The pulsing red lump sprang down and crabbed across the
floor towards us.
“And now for the next scene,” the man said.
I was as ever terrified, but my friend was enraged, cursing
and being talked down.
“You have been through displacement. Listen and know.
It is the will of those who live between the wells of the world.
Only when two of such disparity as yourselves come together
can we work. That is why you are so fine.”
The red canker had grown long fleshy legs and was moving
on us.
Our host began to speak more rapidly. “ . . . Only when
two like you come by chance to the same place. . . then can the
gap occur. And the gate be opened to those who strain to come
from the places below, and behind, and between. Now you
shall learn Despairing.”
Neither of us could stir. We were simply fixed to the
ground. The man was standing close to the great gemlike globe.
With the chameleon ring he rang it like a bell and it flared into
blinding light, while the ground beneath our feet began to tremble
once again; I threw out my arm and caught that of my companion.
We stood together desperately trying to keep a
foothold on a floor now crumbling and rocking and surging
into infinite chaos—the darkness returning, swirling round us
with a reek of pitch and sulfur—and the great jewelled globe
opening into glittering segments, the last image almost blinding
me as we clung together in one delirious whirl of terror . . .
there was a voice speaking far away, a darker darkness . . .
. . . bursting open, shards flying, a wind stinging my eyes
as I hurtled into an unknown dimension. A desert.
A sickly yellow sunset over a crest of hills. The voice echoing
in my brain: “Change of scene, gentlemen dear!”
Before me on a ridge stood six gigantic stone figures. In
place of their heads were transparent, monstrous eggs, each
containing a seething flux of movement. Within each shape was
a scene of carnage; torture, bloody warfare, axes and guns and
bombs, prisoners hooded and naked being dragged about by
sneering captors, mutilations like the worst Goyaesque images.
These were ovoid worlds of Armageddon; they were eternal.
They were prophetic.
I was lying where I had been thrown. Behind me sounded
a groan. My friend, (still unnamed) was bound to a solitary bare
tree. At first sight his bonds looked like fine hemp, and then I
saw they were energy impulses, running around his body in
dashes of green and red. His fine suit was torn. There was
blood on his face.
“And who shall be the saviour now?”
The voice, mocking. And no more.
* * *
&ear doesn’t have to disable you. You learn that fairly
fast, if you want to survive in my game. You’ve just got
to use the adrenalin.
Only thing was, I could get control of myself, but not
much else. Besides which—that—what can I call it? Thing
seems too complimentary—our Host maybe I should say—he
seemed to be able to make me do stuff I’d never normally do.
Maybe it was the same for my neighbour from upstairs.
I mean, how else did we drink that muck off the table?
Wine? Sure, it had the smell of wine, a nice little red from Chile,
perhaps. But it looked—I’d never have touched it. Only I did.
Picked it up, swallowed it—Christ. Alcohol Concern should
learn that trick. Aversion therapy that’d work. Thought I was
dead until the coldness came, and wiped all the burning away
like an Arctic rain. My friend from upstairs. Quick thinking. He
was no fool after all.
And I know what he thought when Mr. Universe came at
me next, with his dick stuck up so high it was practically up his
own nose. Thought I’d clock the bastard. Which I did. It was
only a test, mind you. Even I could see that. They—our
Host/s—were making sure we were exactly what we were.
Otherwise why launch that tart at the guy upstairs? I’d been surprised
he wasn’t sick all over her. Then again, he obviously
thought I’d take her on OK. But you were wrong there, pal. I
don’t like that type of brassy bitch shoves it in your face. Never
mentioned Alice, did I. She was my type. Little and slim, and a
smoke-cloud of dark hair. Soft and cool, and then looks up at
you with those eyes full of shadow and sex—and your blood sizzles.
So he was wrong about that. And anyway it was just a test.
But They were all pleased with us. We were turning out just fine.
Opposites. That’s what they wanted. Total opposites.
But now.
How to describe this.
There was another earthquake effect to start with ——
and the guy from upstairs and I grabbed each other, mostly
instinctively to keep from falling over. And then —
It wasn’t like the first time, the trip down the plug-hole.
This was more like when you wake up violently in some
unknown place, maybe where someone’s thrown you after a
beating.
I picked myself up cautiously, off a carpet.
Vomit-yellow sunset was oozing through windows draped
in heavy old lace. Velvet curtains partly drawn.
But in the rest of the room was a kind at blackness, lit by
candles that didn’t light it, somehow, gave no light, though they
were blazing up in crazy gusts. And then again, though there
wasn’t any light, you could see a lot pretty clearly.
It came to me. It was like a stage-set, or a movie-set.
And then I see the bloke from upstairs, over in a corner,
and he’s whimpering to himself, crying soft, like a kid scared
he’ll be overheard.
Something was happening too in the shadow beyond the
candles, some kind of flickering and thrashing about, grunts
that sounded like pain, and probably were, a woman’s moans .
. . But I didn’t go over to see.
I went up to my neighbour.
“Hey—”