HP Lovecraft's Magazine of Horror - Weird Tales

No response. He wasn’t seeing me or hearing me. He was
staring into the flicker-thrash over there, listening to the noises.
Then he spoke. He did it in French, like the other time.
“Pierrot—I can’t help you. I didn’t know. But yes, I did—I
knew—no, I never did know—not this—Pierrot—I must run
away. I must run away and live, for I can’t save you —”
“Hang on, mate.” Again no response. So then I try some
French too, only mine has an African accent. “What is happening
here? Tell me.”
“They’re killing him, to slowly raise, drop by drop of
blood—it falls into the stone mouth of a thing that squats
open-jawed below him! He calls up the horned one—Listen!
The woman is part of it, and soon Pierrot too —”
Almost against my will I stared into the busy void beyond
the candles. I couldn’t make out a thing. Was I going over
there?
Then, I find I can’t move. It isn’t like the magic stuff
before. It’s—it’s just plain fucking terror. I’ve been afraid, I
said, you learn to use it. Now—I can’t. I’m like some boy of fifteen
who hasn’t learned yet . . . like I was back then. And I’m
like—like him—the guy with his actor’s voice, and he’s a coward,
and he can only preserve himself, he runs away—and
leaves his friends behind. Maybe leaves his lover behind, this
Pierrot, maybe that was what Pierrot was—and this one just ran
out and left him . . . But something else is happening now —
Jesus Christ—what —
What—?
9ou are dead, monsieur. Tu est mort. Oorl oorl oorl . . . ”
The voice of the elemental cackling through small
red teeth—it came flapping, scudding along the desert
floor, unspeakable, at my heels like an obscene pet.
And a storm blowing me, a hot wind jerking me about and
my own voice howling, a long drawn out “Ayiiiiie! What do I do?”
“Sauve qui peut!”
Howling in the blind hot sand I was lifted and hurled
across the gap to where the other stood clamped by racing
stinging bonds of pure energy . . . into a changed landscape.
Dense stands of trees now, palm, bamboo, banana, fringing
a jungle clearing where I was gripped again by the fierce
wind. I was lifted and thrust right through the raging circle of
energies that held that drooping other body, and the bonds
gripped me too and thrust me close against him, closer than a
lover. He raised his head. We looked into one another’s eyes.
And I saw,— as if his eyes were the viewfinder of a camera—a
vile yet fateful and familiar scene. The upper room in Paris
filled the lens of his eye like a camera image . . . and time was
turned back and the force seized me once more and whirled me
so that my back was against the tree. Now it was I who stood
alone, bound, but now with robust lines of sturdy hemp. And
not only they had changed. I looked down at my body. I had
become that comely, yellow-haired man!
The years flowed from me and a vigour which I had not
experienced even in my green days surged in me and I pulled
against the bonds with my strong tanned hands gilded with
down, my hands yet not mine, and I sucked air through the
lungs of youth and felt a fierce young heartbeat under where
the hemp lines were painfully stretched. And for the tiniest
moment I knew joy, even my genitals pulsing with ardour, but
with that youth-pleasure came pain. Blood poured from my left
thigh where flies congregated around a recent bullet wound.
A moan jerked me alert. Across the clearing, similarly
bound to a bamboo tree hung a young black man naked except
for a loincloth. His head hung low as if he had been tortured.
On the periphery of the clearing were men, bearded,
grimy, in tattered combat fatigues. They were armed with pistols,
and also with AKSUs—the assault rifles, shortened AK-
47s usually fired in confined spaces. How I had this knowledge
I had no idea—but have it I did.
One man had an ancient camcorder which he sporadically
and inefficiently waved in our direction. Somehow I knew these
men were rebels, that some coup had taken place but by what
faction and within what nation there was no clue. They stood
and jeered at us. One jabbed the captive black man in the belly
with the point of a machete.
This act galvanised me. I felt a great anger pouring through
this young body like a forest fire. The roar of rage which came
from my mouth jarred every cell. My blood seemed literally to
boil. The rebels turned from their captive to stare at me. The
pain in my leg was a goad. A cataclysmic knowledge told me
that the black man must not be harmed further. The next second
I had burst through my bonds like Samson in the temple.
I had become a colossus.
I rushed at the enemy. Blood spurted from my wound. It
seemed to lighten me. I was spurred, a bull under the shafts of
the picadors . . . I was fired at—bullets wildly aimed and missing
the mark—the mob were suddenly panicked, their eyes
white, the stutter of their weapons mingling with the screech of
birds flying out of the vegetation . . .
I had a young tree in my fist. I had torn it bodily out of the
ground. Samson-like, I wielded and thrashed it in mighty
sweeps. I killed at least three of the gang—I spattered their
brains and entrails—my roaring shook me, shook the jungle,
the earth, I wrought carnage among men I had never known
and the sight of whom made me a wild beast.
And now, somehow outside this raging potent young
body, I saw its rampant force as at a distance. And above everything,
above all the blood-hunger, I felt a burning love. Love
such as I have never felt. The love that soldiers feel, shoulder
to shoulder in comradeship and more than that—I saw my
blood brother, my precious friend with whom I had faced
death many times in a history that spawned this burning boiling
wave and made me scream aloud through my fury:
“Lon! Lon! Hang in there . . . !” then , “Run, you bastards!”
The life of that man hanging almost Christlike across the
glade meant more than my own. It was that which had made
me for one supranormal moment, an agent of the gods.
The mob were in flight, and several lay mangled on the
ground. I sprang across the clearing and seized the black man
in my arms. As if under some unearthly fire his bonds burned
and shrivelled and freed him; we stood raging heart against raging
heart.
It was then my valour failed. My consciousness swirled and
eddied and faded. Blackness filled my head and eyes. Some
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