HP Lovecraft's Magazine of Horror - Weird Tales

92 | 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
force, heavy and dark as vulcanite enveloped me, and I was
dying, sinking.
I fell, through atoms of time and space, still locked together
with my companion, a shuddering sickening descent through
centuries, through aeons, an eternity of falling, and then at last
a devastating impact on a hard surface.
As full faculties returned, so did my familiar ageing body,
and I lay stunned on an icy unforgiving pavement.
7hat the fuck?”
And then. If you’ve ever had that déja vu sensation,
that sickening, it’s happening again—when it’s
the most horrible in the world—well, this was it, only worse.
I was seeing things no sane person was meant to see, and
I’ve been in Haiti during the voodoo season. Speaking of which
that is where Lon and I first came together, and that’s another
pretty dark story, that I’ll tell another time . . .
This scene. This place. Jesus. I knew it, but from a long
time ago. I had always known it. I knew them all. I knew the
altar with its nasty little ornaments.
Fuck. The oorl had shown up, buzzing and gloating round
my path with its sickening chant as I stumbled round in that
weird half—dark. If my guys could have seen me . . . my yellow
bellied shaking . . . couldn’t help it. The thing was at my heels,
no time to lunge, to kill . . .
My heart, going like a trip hammer. This bloody chamber.
Dark as Satan’s arse but still candlelit enough to see.
And I knew it. I’d seen it before. I don’t know how, but I
had. The man with the ring. The goat.
Big bastard. Not a goat at all, but a man with a headdress
and yellow gleaming torturer’s eyes. Hairy, powerful, riding the
girl, curled horns bobbing above her bare butt . . .
The girl’s head hung down. One strange moment—did she
look vaguely familiar? but then all this looked familiar. I couldn’t
see much and it was only for a glancing instant and then she
didn’t look like anyone I knew . . .
And the thing. Just like he said, and like I knew. Living
stone. The stone mouth jutting, living, thirsty, hungry stone . . .
And the victim. Naked like the girl, hanging backwards over
the gape. Throat exposed, ready. Good looking young man, pretty
young man. Terrified bloodshot eyes watching his own death.
The ringed hand held a straight blade opening a tiny gash
in the man’s jugular, just a little, stealthily, like a doctor who
cared might, but with such a look of relish it nearly made me
heave. There was a noise too. Coming from the altar—a thrumming
excited chant. All the nasties gathered to sing the praise
of evil—of panic. PANIC! I raised my hands to my face.
Not my hands, though. Age-speckled, delicate, gentleman’s
hands. Never done an honest day’s work.
And I was whimpering in a corner. Sobbing.
Not my voice, that sobbing. Not my thundering heart.
I was slender and frail and my head was going crazy, with
thoughts.
Thoughts from some other bastard’s brain!
I’m reeling about. Clutching at myself. My face, streaming
with tears. (I’d last cried when I was seven—after a beating—
my bastard dad—never since).
And my heart was breaking.
Breaking, as I looked into the face of that seriously beautiful
young man.
Not my style. God. Not my way.
This was different.
My beloved hung there in sacrifice.
My son.
“Pierrot” I heard my voice quaver across the gap. He was
bleeding now, my son . . .
Then my brain exploded. A great alien intelligence crashed
through it.
My flesh, seed of these sparse ageing loins but long ago, in
a time hardly remembered . . . And these weren’t my thoughts,
nor my voice—even the way I spoke was not my idiom . . .
“Pierrot! I never meant any of this to happen. I swear. I never
meant to put you in danger. They said they were going to raise
the god, but HE was too strong” . . . my quaking old voice—
like from another life.
“Moi—I was too afraid—ah, mon fils—I pushed you—I
so longed for you to become an adept—to be more powerful
than HE . . . ”
The first garnet drop hit the stone mouth. It didn’t look
like stone now. It had become flesh. A pulsing grey gape. It
rose up—like some hideous trumpet-shaped blossom—
stretching, expanding on a long neck—
And then. Another voice. Deep inside me. A majestic
thunder.
You can stop it.
The voice. Roaring through my fragile aching body, my
delicate chest. I hurt from the giant sound.
MAKE IT STOP!!! Then—“Lightguard showed you.”
You took enough of his power in your time. More,
Goddamn it, then he ever knew. You felt it.
I’m feeling it now.
The roaring sank to a hiss—the voice of many serpents:
Use . . . use . . . usessss—
And I cried out loud: “Use what? for the love of God . . . ”
“Use the elemental.”
And I had taken two steps forward. Rather—I’d been
pushed forward. Something mighty sent me out of the corner.
It lifted my hands and streamed from my fingers like a power
surge—enough, you’d think, to light up Las Vegas.. . It raced
through me and jumped the gap.
The oorl was still chattering, biting the air, all red maw and
needle-teeth, relishing the ritual. A visible ray, crackling, lethal,
sped from me. It struck the oorl full on.
The thing disintegrated—flew apart in bloody shards like
some unspeakable exploding foetus. It left a stench—carrion
and brimstone. The air was thick with a flying red spray—its
essence.
And the force growing stronger in me—so fierce I thought
I’d break under it. Then came the ricochet—the power that
shook me struck the black ring on that murderer’s hand.
Three things happened.
Pierrot was invisibly seized, raised and lifted away. For an
instant he floated. An angel amazed, he was returned to earth.
The hand holding the razor shrivelled to bone.