JAZZ AGE CTHULHU

Copyright © 2014

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanicalmeans, including information storage and retrieval systems— except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its author.

Published by Innsmouth Free Press
Vancouver, BC Canada

http://innsmouthfreepress.com

Cover and interior layout: Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Cover illustration: Rodolfo Reyes

All stories original to this book.

ISBN paperback 978-1-927990-11-7

ISBN e-book 978-1-927990-12-4

INTRODUCTION

The novelette is a somewhat rāra avis these days, despite the proliferation of online magazines. One would think an unlimited amount of space would engender more of these works, but it has not been the case.

We are therefore glad to present to you, not one, but three brand new Lovecraftian novelettes, all set during the Roaring Twenties.

Get ready for all that jazz.

And all that Cthulhu.

DREAMS OF A THOUSAND YOUNG

JENNIFER BROZEK

The high-pitched noise pulled Helen from unquiet dreams of ancient ruins, a blackened sky, and … something. Her still-sleeping mind shied away from that something with a soft moan. Turning over, trying to drown out the faraway shrieking, pain shocked her awake. Helen hurt everywhere. Her arms. Her legs. Even her throat. More than that, she was naked—a thing unthinkable for a woman of her station, even in the privacy of her own bedroom.

Struggling to pull her befuddled mind together, she realized that the noise had not stopped. It was Pria, her maid who made such lovely tea. Her maid was screaming. Why? Helen blinked her eyes open, saw the blood-splattered body next to her on the bed, and added her own screams to the confusion.

It was the body of a dusky man she did not know, dressed in the garb of an Assamese noble. He wore a disheveled sherwani and trousers of fine cloth, no head garb, and no shoes. He would have been handsome if it were not for the open staring eyes and blood. His stomach was a mess of stab wounds. Helen shook her head in denial and confusion as she scooted away from the body. Her mind would not work. It was more than waking to this horror. It was clouded worse than a laudanum hangover.

Pria ran from the bedroom, screaming for help. Helen tumbled out of bed in an effort to escape the horror of a bloody body next to her. As she hit the floor in a tangle of silk sheets, the pain radiating out from Helen’s abused body reminded her that something awful had happened to her as well. Pulling the sheet—mercifully gore-free—to cover her nakedness, Helen searched her memory for clues to how she wound up in this predicament.

New whimpers of pain and fear escaped as she realized the last thing she remembered was tea … yesterday afternoon? At least she prayed it was only yesterday. The thought of losing more than one day was almost more than she could bear.

Fists clenching the silken sheets, Helen fought for control of herself, her emotions, her fear. She was Lady Helen Keeling, heiress to the Keeling silk empire, and she was not a trembling flower—despite the fact that she was trembling. Ignoring the bruises on her wrists and the way her legs protested, Helen stood. She turned from the bed, refusing to look at the body again, and found her night robe, hung properly. Then her coat, crumpled on the floor next to one of her gowns. Helen wanted the comfort, the armor, of well-made clothing, before she faced the pounding of running feet.

Bursting through the bedroom door with weapons drawn, Edward, the house steward, and Gopal, one of the house guards, charged in, looking for something, anything, to deal with. Instead, they found their mistress improbably dressed in a fur coat and tearstained face. Edward saw the scene and his expression hardened into something akin to hate mixed with dismay.

Then smoothing his face into something kinder, Edward approached her as one approached a terrified animal. “Lady Helen?”

His tone was so soft and so caring that it broke through Helen’s resolve to not be an hysterical woman. She threw herself into his arms, sobbing. “I don’t know what happened. I don’t know who he is. I don’t know what happened to me.” Her confession made, she held onto the gentleman who had been a friend and tutor for as long as she could remember.

“Get her some clothes. Remove the bed and replace it with another one. Send for Doctor Bannister.” Edward led her from the room as he gave orders to the milling servants. After a moment’s pause, he added, “Send a message to the Commissioner’s Office. Tell them there’s been a crime at the estate.”

Helen could feel the weighted looks that spoke volumes between Edward and those he gave the orders to. Get her some clothes—we must present a proper face in unpleasant circumstances. Remove the bed and replace it with another one —move the body to someplace more appropriate and see to it that Lady Helen has a proper place to sleep. Send for Doctor Bannister—let him know the unthinkable may have occurred and discretion is required. Send a message to the Commissioner’s Office—the forms must be followed but, again, discretion.

“And you, Pria. Stop sniveling. It’s unseemly.”

“Yes, khanasama.”

Helen looked up and saw Pria’s anguished face. It gave her something to focus on beyond her own pain. Pulling away from Edward, she reached for her maid and was surprised when Pria pulled back. “Shh. It’s all right. It’s going to be all right. I wasn’t ….” Helen paused. She wasn’t what? Hurt? Yes, she was. Fine? Most assuredly she was not. “I’m … I will be fine.”

Pria nodded and looped an arm around Helen’s waist—both supporting her and being supported. “Yes, malkin. I’m sorry I was frightened. That man ….”

“Shh, Pria, shh. It’s none of our concern for the moment.” Helen glanced up at Edward and was reassured by his nod of agreement. If Helen had learned nothing else, it was the value of trusting your head steward. She smiled, grateful, knowing Edward would take care of things for a time.

***

Despite being properly dressed, Helen couldn’t help but stare at the bruises on her arms. She pushed her sleeves up and looked at the deep, purple welts on her wrists that spoke of too-tight bonds or a panicked struggle. Higher up on her forearms, the outline of fingers were clear. Hands had clenched her arms. She held her left hand against the bruises, twisting her arm this way and that. It was clear that the hands clenching had come from the sides rather than from someone on top of her holding her down.

“I assure you, Doctor, I won’t harm Lady Helen. I am required by the Chief Commissioner to investigate this matter fully. I also assure you that I will use all proper discretion.”

Helen lifted her head at the sound of the stranger’s voice coming from the hallway. She pulled her sleeves down, covering the bruises, and smoothed the cotton fabric. She took two steps closer to the door that led from her sitting room into the hallway.

Doctor Bannister’s voice was as old and gruff as he was. “See that you do, Mister Sorin. Chief Commissioner Bell is one of my lodge companions. I have no qualms about twisting Belly’s ear if you’re at all unseemly.”

Through the cracked door, Helen could see the two of them in conference outside her room. Doctor Bannister was a portly old gentleman with flying white hair, a pressed suit, and a ruddy complexion. He was here at her father’s behest. Baron Edmund George Keeling would not stand for anyone but the family’s long-time physician to see to him or his family in this foreign land of dusky skin and strange religions. At this moment, Helen was more than grateful for her father’s provincial, insistent ways.

The young man next to him looked to be in his late twenties with brown hair, had a quick, perfunctory smile and the deep tan of an Englishman used to the Indian sun, ever present even in winter. His clothing spoke of a working man’s wage but worn in the style of someone of good breeding. It was an interesting contrast.

“I need to know what happened to her, sir.” Sorin lowered his voice as he spoke.

Bannister matched Sorin’s tone. “If you are asking if she was … violated … no. She appears to have been in a great struggle. But that is all.” Doctor Bannister’s voice was as prim as a schoolmarm and twice as hushed.

Sudden rage and fear blotted out what was said next. She had been violated. This was something she knew on an instinctive level. It had been more than a great struggle. There was a great yawning pit of blackness and despair in the center of her rage, one that was just out of reach, one that she recoiled from even as she struggled to understand it. Pain pulled her from the precipice and Helen realized she was clenching her arm, her fingernails digging deep into her flesh through the fabric of the blouse.

Then the doctor was knocking. Helen smoothed over her countenance and her blouse as best she could. She took a breath, put on a polite smile, and called, “Yes?”

“Helen, my dear.” Doctor Bannister poked his head in. “Are you feeling well enough to receive a visitor? You need not.”

“No, no. I’m well enough. We do what must be done.” Even as she spoke, Helen felt herself screaming inside. She did not want to speak to anyone.

Doctor Bannister entered with the man from the Commissioner’s Office on his heels. Helen turned to meet them with polite interest. “Lady Helen, this is Special Assistant John Sorin. Mister Sorin, this is Lady Helen Keeling.”

“Mister Sorin ….” She offered him her hand. He took it with a light touch, as if he were afraid of breaking her, and bowed over it.

“Lady Helen, I wish we were meeting in better circumstances.” John stepped back as he released her hand. “I’m afraid I am required to ask you some questions, if you don’t mind?”

She answered him with a gesture to sit in a chair and turned to Doctor Bannister. “Will you be joining us?” It was an unnecessary question. The doctor had settled into a comfortable lean against the sitting room sideboard.

John waited until Helen sat before he took his seat. He sat on the edge of the high-backed chair as if he were afraid of getting the furniture dirty. As Helen rang a discreet bell and waited, he pulled out a notepad and pencil.

“I’ve been told that you remember nothing of the last day, Lady Helen. What is the last thing you do remember?”

“The last thing I remember is having afternoon tea at the Purple Room.” Helen watched his hand, poised over the notepad. Though he continued to look at her, his hand wrote in an unfamiliar looping script. “I was with Elizabeth Atherton. We ….” Helen faltered. There was something about the conversation that made her pause. Much like her dream and her rage, there was something at the core of it that both enticed and repulsed her.

“Lady Helen?”

Helen shook her head and frowned. “We spoke of society gatherings here in Assam. Despite it being the 1920s, they remain stuffy, staid things.” This rang true, but there was something more. A flash of Lizzy’s wicked smile and promise to show her something amazing.

“And nothing more?”

“No. That’s all I remember. I don’t even know how many days ago that was.”

There was a polite knock on the door and Pria came in with tea service. She did not say anything, but, instead, went about the business of setting up and preparing the tea.

John gave the maid a speculative look. “Miss Sudhir, a moment of your time.”

Helen and Doctor Bannister exchanged a glance, but said nothing.

Pria stopped and turned to the Special Assistant. “Yes, sahib?” She smoothed over the apron of her formal house servant uniform and waited.

“Before this morning, when was the last time you saw your mistress?”

Helen nodded to her maid when Pria looked for instruction.

“Two nights ago. I helped her get ready for an evening out.”

“She didn’t come home that evening?” John did not write as he watched the maid.

Pria paused and glanced at Helen again.

“You may tell him what you know. Mister Sorin is a discreet man.” Helen’s heart hammered in her chest despite her outward calm. Two nights ago? Perhaps her maid knew what happened.

Pria bit her lip and then shook her head. “No, sahib.”

John’s hand began to write. “You didn’t find that unusual?”

“No, sahib. Lady Helen frequently stays out with her companions. Sometimes for days.”

Helen met John’s glance without a flinch. There was no question or judgment there that she could see.

“And the next time your saw her was this morning?”

“Yes, sahib.”

“What was your first thought?

Pria looked confused. “Pardon?”

“What did you first think when you walked into your mistress’s room and found it as you did?”

“I … I thought that Lady Helen was dead.”

John nodded and wrote more. “Thank you.” He turned his attention back to Helen. “My apologies, Lady. Sometimes, servants know more than anyone realizes.”

Helen smiled at Pria as she handed her a cup of tea. “I know.”

“Tea, sahib?”

John waved the maid away. “No, thank you.”

Doctor Bannister was already making his tea when Pria returned to the sideboard.

“Thank you, Pria. That will be all.” Helen watched her maid curtsy and leave in a hurry. “I do believe you made her nervous.”

“My apologies. But now we know how much time is missing from your memories. Two and a half days.” He paused and looked nonplused. “I must ask you a few more uncomfortable questions.”

“I understand.” John’s concern was starting to irritate her. All she wanted to do was get this over with.

“You have the bruises of a woman who had a great struggle. Do you know what happened?”

Helen shook her head. “It is disturbing to be harmed and know not the source.”

John nodded. “And the man in your bed. Do you know him?”

Again she shook her head. “No. As far as I’m aware, I’ve never seen him before this morning.”

He gave her a long, appraising look. “Is there anything about him that’s familiar? Clothing, jewelry?”

Helen met his gaze for a moment before looking down at her cup of tea. Despite the sickness in the pit of her stomach that just thinking about what she had seen invoked, she ran over her scant memories of the dead man. She shook her head. “From his dress, he’s an Assamese noble, but … beyond that, no. I think he would’ve been handsome alive.”

John closed his notepad. “There are other avenues of investigation I must pursue. If you remember anything, or can think of anything, please ring me.” He pulled a card out of a pocket and offered it to her.

Helen accepted it and put it on the table. “I will.”

“If I can find out what happened to you, Lady Helen, I will.” John stood and bowed to her. “Thank you for your time.”

Doctor Bannister escorted John out as Helen took a breath and tried to relax. She sipped her tea and smiled at its taste. Pria always knew how to make it for her. A thought came to her and she rang for the maid. Pria appeared almost immediately. She must have been waiting for her mistress’s call.

“Malkin? You called?” Pria curtsied.

“Was there anything you didn’t tell Mister Sorin about the last night you saw me?” Helen put her teacup down and regarded Pria with a keen eye.

Pria glanced over her shoulder, closed the sitting room door, and came over to her. “Yes, malkin.” She hesitated. “The party you were going to. You told me it would be filled with the unknown.”

“The unknown?” Helen tilted her head. She had no idea what that meant.

“Magicians, experts in the occult.” Pria’s voice was hushed and she looked scandalized.

Helen couldn’t help but smile. That did sound like something she would be very interested in. “Did I tell you where it was or who I was going with?”

Pria shook her head. “You were sworn to secrecy.”

“Really? Thank you.” Helen dismissed her. As Pria disappeared again, Helen pondered what sort of person would invite her to an occult party that would require secrecy. “Lizzy would.” She sipped her tea and decided it was time to visit with her best friend in this godforsaken country.

***

The Purple Room was not purple. It was a mixture of lavender, white and sage. If Helen were not aware she was abroad in India, she would not be able to tell she wasn’t in a posh restaurant in London. Every detail was designed to make the colonists and British visitors feel as if they were back in England. The music, the food, the décor, even the servant uniforms. It was one of Helen’s favorite places in Assam. Eventually, she would be allowed to return to her beloved Kensington. Until then, the Purple Room would have to do.

Elizabeth, a soft, plump heiress with dimples and a quick smile, sat across from her. “You are so wicked! You went to the party without me.”

Helen shook her head. “What party?”

“Don’t be coy. I know we’re both looking for appropriate suitors and Hemaraj Kumari is not it. Though he’s very handsome. You shouldn’t keep him to yourself.” She spooned clotted cream and jam onto a scone.

“Honestly, Lizzy, I haven’t faintest idea what you’re talking about.”

Elizabeth put down her scone and gave her a look that reminded her that no matter how soft Lizzy seemed, she was her mother’s daughter and just as shrewd.

Helen raised a hand. “I promise.”

Now Elizabeth looked concerned. “You really don’t know?”

Helen shook her head.

“Hemaraj visited a couple days ago and invited us to a private party. Promised that it would be something special. You demurred at first because you weren’t familiar with him, remember?” She tilted her head. “None of this is familiar?”

“No. Who is he?”

“Hemaraj’s family is one of the ruling nobles in the area. My father deals with his father in matters of business. They’re quite friendly. Hemaraj just returned from a trip to Egypt. This was one of his welcome home parties to display some of the treasures he’d found while there.”

“Treasures?” Helen furiously searched her memory for any hint of this conversation. But nothing came to mind. It was frustrating and made her feel that much more alone.

“Oh, yes. He’s a bit of an adventurer, tomb-delving and such. He found a marvelous treasure filled with gold jewelry and stone idols. My father brought an idol home yesterday. That’s how I found out you were there. Apparently, you made quite the impression on Hemaraj and his father.”

Helen stared at her friend, shaking her head. It was one thing to not really remember the night before because of overindulging on wine. It was another thing to remember nothing, to be bruised and battered, and to have your companion tell you about being at a party you didn’t remember. She opened her mouth to say so, but one of the wait staff, Sachio, stopped at her side and reached for an empty plate with a white-gloved hand.

A memory blossomed in her head. A handsome Assamese man in white and gold reached for her willing hand. His wrist was adorned with a heavy gold-cuff bracelet with an intricate design in thick swirls on it. In the center of the design was a large gem the color of fresh blood. Even as she accepted his hand, the bracelet made her shiver in fascination.

Helen flinched away from Sachio, pulling her hands into her lap.

The sudden movement caused the servant to freeze still. “My apologies, Lady Helen. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

She nodded, not trusting herself to speak. Elizabeth leaned to her. “Are you feeling well? You’ve gone pale—even for you.”

Helen shook her head and did not speak until Sachio moved away. “Something happened to me at that party. I don’t know why I didn’t call upon you to go with me. I don’t know why I can’t remember anything.” She bowed her head. “I wish you had been there. Then, at least, I would know what had happened.”

Elizabeth reached for her, then stopped as Helen drew away. “I’m sorry, I really don’t know what to do.”

“Neither do I.” Helen winced and let out a gasp as something turned over, sharp and painful in her lower abdomen.

“Helen?”

Helen shook her head. “Women troubles.” She gave Elizabeth a weak smile. “More tea should make things right.”

Elizabeth still looked concerned, but did not contradict her. The two of them enjoyed their repast in silence for a bit as Helen concentrated on convincing her body to relax while she looked around the Purple Room.

She had come here in hopes of nudging her memory and it had worked in part. As she let her eyes drift where they would, it seemed that people at several tables were watching her. At first, she thought it was her imagination. Then, as an English man at one table, then an Assamese woman at another, caught her eye and nodded, Helen was certain of it. She did not know either person. Though, they both seemed familiar somehow. Most likely, people of means that she had met at what passed for society parties here in Assam.

Still, it was unnerving. Both had been bold, as if there were a more intimate connection between than a casual meeting at a social gathering. Glancing around, Helen saw an unfamiliar servant quickly turn his head to look away from her.

Helen gave her companion a wan smile. “I’m sorry, Lizzy. I don’t feel well. I need to leave.” She stood without waiting for Elizabeth’s response.

Elizabeth stood and offered her arms. “I’ll call upon you in a couple of days.” As they embraced, Elizabeth murmured, “You’ll feel better soon. You’ll see.”

Helen pulled back from Elizabeth and searched her friend’s eyes. Lizzy had sounded so conspiratorial that, for a moment, Helen was certain that she knew what had happened and was, for some reason, hiding it. Helen dismissed the paranoid thought and nodded. “I’m sure I will.” She left Elizabeth at the table.

As she exited the dining room, George met her. After helping her into her coat, he took her hand in his and bowed over it. “Lady Helen, is everything well? Sachio said he startled you. I can remove him from the staff if he did.”

She shook her head. “It’s fine. Please, the Purple Room wouldn’t be the same without him. I was just lost in thought.”

“You’re certain?” The small man gazed at her, earnest and sincere.

Helen smiled at the Purple Room’s manager. She had no doubt that Sachio would be sacked—or at least removed from sight—if she asked for it. “I am. I just ... I don’t feel well. I need to go home.”

“Of course. Did you come by palanquin or motorcar?”

“Palanquin. My father’s business took the car out of the city today.”

George nodded. “Of course. I’ll have your people called to the front.” He bowed over her hand again. “Have a pleasant evening.”

“You, too.” Helen smiled, a genuine smile this time. George was a fixture at the Purple Room, with his balding pate and pressed suit. He knew how to make you feel better, even when you didn’t realize you’d felt poorly before. He was a good man and exactly the bit of normalcy she needed.

That normalcy disappeared as soon as she entered the lobby. The room was empty except for a black-clad nun with a white wimple. Nuns were a rarity in Assam and Helen had never seen one in the Purple Room before. This one stood as she entered. “Lady Helen.”

Helen fought the sudden urge to flee. “Yes?”

“My name is Sister Grace. I’m sorry to bother you, but we must speak.”

This was just a bit too much. “Perhaps another time. I’m not feeling well. I need to go home.”

“Lady Helen, this can’t wait. You’re in danger. I fear for your life and your immortal soul.” Grace spoke with calm clarity and no hint of hysteria. She kept her eyes on Helen.

“You cannot be serious.” Helen’s stomach sank at this strange turn of events.

“I am. I would not force my company upon you if weren’t required.”

“Fear for my life? Why?” Helen wondered if this nun knew what had happened to her and, if so, how? Nuns were not usually known for frequenting high society galas.

Grace glanced at the front door. “For one, your palanquin carriers are no longer yours.”

“What do you mean?”

“I watched them waylaid and stripped of their livery. There are only two reasons for such—to break into the home of a noble or to kidnap the person to be transported. In this case, you.”

Helen looked at the front door. Any moment, it would open and one of her carriers would enter. She shook her head. “I ….”

“I’ll show you. Trust me this far. Then you may choose to hear me out or not, as you will.” Grace offered a hand.

It was just too ludicrous not to be true. “Show me.” Helen gave her hand and trust to Grace for the moment. As she watched the nun, she wondered if Grace knew of her missing memories.

Grace flipped back one of the tapestries to reveal a hidden hallway. At Helen’s obvious surprise, Grace murmured, “Servants’ hallway.”

In all the months Helen had visited the Purple Room, it never occurred to her to wonder what paths the servants and wait staff used. All she knew, or cared about for that matter, was that the well-trained staff was there when she desired them to be. Now, as she traveled down the narrow, darkened hallways, she wondered about the servants’ passageways and quarters in her father’s estate. How had she returned home without anyone seeing her, much less with a male companion?

Turning this way and that, the two women traversed the back hallways until they were at a door and then outside. Cool in the winter afternoon, but nothing like an English winter, Helen huddled into her coat and hung back. She did not like the looks of the alleyway. As she pushed her free hand deeper into her coat pocket, she felt a crumpled card within. While Helen didn’t remember putting it there, it was something to be investigated later. “Where are we going?”

“Around to the front where you can see for yourself that those men are not yours.” Grace pulled her towards the main street.

Helen reluctantly complied. If what the nun said was true, it would mean she was in danger and that this woman might know what happened during her missing days. What else it would mean, Helen could only guess at.

The two of them crept to the alleyway exit. Though Helen could not see Grace’s face because of the wimple, she could hear the woman well enough. “Look there, those four men with your palanquin. Are they yours?”

Helen peeked around the corner, looking. The livery was familiar, but the faces were not. They all had the same dusky skin and dark hair of the Assamese, but one was pockmarked and another had a distinct scar. That was not allowed in the Keeling household. To her father, the carriers were part of the household aesthetic. One did not ride a broken horse, drive a rusted motorcar, or have ugly carriers. It just wasn’t done in her father’s world.

A shrill whistle caught her attention and the attention of the carriers. As she looked across the street to a small bead shop, an elegant man in fine clothing pointed at her and Grace. For a moment, everyone stared at each other. Grace grabbed her hand and pulled her back into the alley. Then they were running. “Hurry!” Grace commanded, pulling Helen behind her.

Helen tried to hurry, but stumbled over another brief memory.

Again, she was with the handsome Assamese nobleman in white-and-gold. This time, as he gripped her hand tight, he pulled her along and she resisted him, but there was a crowd of people behind her, urging her on.

Helen knew she was terrified—like she was now. It made no sense. Her first memory was of willingly accepting the man’s hand. Now, she was afraid and fighting him? What had she gotten herself into? The more Helen reached for the memory, the quicker it faded and became elusive, a series of images punctuated by fear and the sense that something horrifying was watching.

She looked back and saw the men in her family’s livery chasing them. It was only by Grace’s quick wit and knowledge of the streets that they had not yet been caught. Helen allowed Grace to pull her into the market crowd and put people between them and their pursuers. Every time Helen looked back, Grace pulled her harder. It was clear that she had a destination in mind.

Unused to such activity, even spurred on by the adrenaline of fear, Helen gasped for every breath, her side aching, her throat burning. The nun, on the other hand, appeared to have the stamina of an ox and, by the death grip on Helen’s hand, the strength of one.

“Please,” Helen panted, “I can’t.” She pulled away from Grace.

“You can. You will.” Grace yanked her forward. “Your life depends on it. Not much farther.”

“Where?”

“Where their kind cannot follow.” She led the two of them around another corner and stopped.

Across the street stood a small church made from the white brick of the area. It gleamed in the sunlight and promised sanctuary … except for the two rough white men lounging on the church stairs. These men, possibly sailors, stood and looked ready for all comers.

“What do we do?” Helen glanced over her shoulder and saw that their pursuers had found them again.

“What we need to do.” Grace’s voice was brittle with promised violence.

Helen looked down and was shocked to see the nun had pulled a wicked looking dagger from her robes. “Sister?”

“You get into the church. They can’t follow there. It’s protected.” Grace let her hand go and walked forward to meet the enemy.

Then several things happened at once: Their pursuers caught up with them; Grace slashed the first man with her knife; and Special Assistant John Sorin burst on the scene, fists and blackjack flying. In what felt like hours, but couldn’t have been more than a few seconds, Grace became a whirling terror of flying blade and blood, clearing the way to the church stairs while John did everything possible to keep the would-be kidnappers off Helen. Every time one got a grubby paw on her, John attacked and pushed her forward towards the church.

When the odds shifted from six against three to three against three, there was another shrill whistle. Just like that, the fight was over and the enemy melted into the encircling crowd, shedding the formal livery as they went. Grace and John flanked Helen, watching them go.

“Come, let’s not give them another chance to get you.” Grace gestured towards the church.

John nodded and offered Helen his arm. She took it, but looked over her shoulder just before entering the church. There, in the shadows of a building, was the elegant dark-haired, dark-eyed man who had alerted the enemy to their presence. He turned away after they made eye contact.

Helen was certain she knew him, but had no idea why.

***

Inside the church, the sudden quiet dimness was startling as much as it was a relief. Helen took a breath before asking John, “What are you doing here? How did you know?” She also noticed that Grace had not hidden her deadly dagger, yet.

“I came to find you. Your steward told me you were at the Purple Room. I saw the carriers drop your palanquin and take off running down the alley. I saw flashes of you …” He turned to Grace. “... and saw your wimple. You’re known to the Commissioner’s Office. You and your accusations of growing occult evil. I thought, ‘Where would a nun go if she were running to safety?’ and took a direct path here. I’m glad my supposition was correct.”

“I’m known to you and your office, but you are not known to me.” Grace held the bloody dagger at her side with casual ease. She seemed prepared to do battle, even in this sacred place.

Helen saw that the nun was trembling. She stepped forward. “Mister Sorin, this is Sister Grace—whom I’ve just met—and Sister Grace, this is Special Assistant John Sorin. He is investigating ….” Helen faltered before finishing, “He is investigating a murder.”

When Grace did not move or speak, Helen shifted to her and gently took the dagger from the nun’s hand. “I don’t think we need this, anymore.”

Grace nodded. “Just so. We’re safe enough in here for now.” Without breaking eye contact with John, she addressed Helen. “You should find out what he wanted.”

“We know the identity of the murdered man. I came to name him to see if it helped with your memory loss.” John took out his notepad, paused, and looked around the nave of the small, but well-cared-for, church. “But I’m not certain this is the best place for this.”

“It is the only place for it. But let’s go to my cell.” Grace turned without waiting for assent.

John gestured for Helen to go before him. Helen knew whatever conversation was going to happen would be better conducted sitting down. It was only then that she realized that she still held Grace’s dagger. It disturbed her how good, natural, it felt in her hand.

Grace’s cell was small and cozy with stone walls, a bed, a chest of drawers, and a small table with two chairs. Helen returned the dagger to Grace, unwilling to keep the strangely comfortable weapon any longer. Grace gave it a perfunctory swipe with a dirty rag before hiding the blade beneath her robes again. She then sat on the bed, gesturing for Helen and John to sit on the two available chairs.

“I will begin.” Grace nodded to Helen. “I know you’re wondering who I am and why I chose to help you.”

“I was,” Helen agreed.

“Two nights ago, you went to a party thrown by Hemaraj Kumari at the Black Ram Club.” Grace paused as John’s head snapped towards her. “Something?”

He shook his head. “Not now. I apologize for interrupting.” His pencil moved in rapid swirls across the notepad page. When she did not immediately speak again, he gestured, “Please, go on. It seems you are part of this investigation, after all.”

“I’m not surprised. This is part of the evil I tried to warn the Commissioner of. He didn’t listen. Perhaps, now that Lady Helen’s life is at stake, you will.” Grace collected her thoughts. “This party that you attended was as purported for most of the attendees—a welcoming party to show off the Chote Malik’s found Egyptian treasure. However, for a select few, it was so much more. It was a ritual and you were its victim.”

Helen looked away. “I don’t remember any of this.”

“And yet, you have the marks of being bound to an altar.”

“I have the marks of a struggle, yes.” Helen pulled the sleeves of her coat down to hide the bruises that were peeking out. “But nothing says it was a ritual.”

“What does your memory tell you?”

“Nothing.”

Grace nodded. “And what does your heart tell you?”

Helen did not want to think about that. What Grace was saying made sense. Except it didn’t. Why would anyone use her in a ritual? She was not an innocent by any means. Didn’t a ritual need such? And a magician? She was saved from answering by John.

“Excuse me, sister, how do you know what you know?”

Grace gave him a suspicious glance. “I have my ways.”

John nodded. “Please, it’s important for my investigation. You wanted the Commissioner’s attention. You have it through me. Now I need some facts.”

Grace stared at him for a moment before getting up and going to her chest of drawers. She drew a small bag from its depths. “I will answer after you hold this.”

Tilting his head, curious, John held out a hand. The bag looked heavy for its size. “May I open it?”

Grace nodded. Helen saw that she had her hand under her robes again. No doubt, there was a dagger in them. She wondered at this test and hoped he did not fail. It would make things so much more difficult if she couldn’t trust the Commissioner’s agent.

Putting the notepad to the side, John dumped the bag’s contents onto the table. It proved to be a small coin of alien design. It was black iron with an open, five-pointed star on one side and runes on the other. John picked it up and turned it over in his hand. He looked at both sides with a furrowed brow. “What is this?”

“Protection from the evil we fight. Now that I know you are on the side of light, I may tell you. I know because I have contacts within the enemy’s lair, friends from before everything went wrong … and because I received a divine vision that Lady Helen was in danger.”

“A divine vision? Why me?” Helen hated everything happening around and to her, without the ability to control it.

“I don’t know, child. All I know is what is. They took you, used you in their ritual, and now you … and all of us … will suffer the consequences. This is what God has told me.”

“Unless?” Helen shook her head. “You wouldn’t go through all this if the situation were hopeless. Why help me? Why try to bring me to safety?”

John put the coin down and began writing again.

“Because my visions say that not all is lost. You are the key to stopping the Blackest of Rams from rising in this world. I—wait! Don’t touch that!”

Helen heard Grace’s warning as she picked up the foreign iron coin. By then, it was too late. Pain wracked her body, radiating outward from her lower abdomen.

***

Helen laughed as Hemaraj whispered in her ear. “You’ve been chosen, my sweet.”

“Chosen for what?”

He stood and offered her his hand. “To participate in our secret ritual. You please our high priest.”

“I please many people.” She glanced at the elegant Egyptian man standing off to the side before accepting Hemaraj’s hand. Around his wrist, the gold cuff winked its blood-red eye at her. She touched its swirls as he led her down the stairs. “Is this one of your finds?”

“It was the first … and the most important. Until now.”

The dream shifted to something darker, alien, frightening.

They stood before a doorway carved into the wall of the stone cellar. On the other side of the door was not another room. Instead, it was another realm: an impossible landscape filled with ancient ruins and a blackened sky, impossibly enclosed within a cave so large she couldn’t see the sides—and yet, she knew it was there. Framed within the door was a black stone altar surrounded by lit torches, fallen columns, and creatures that defied description. Helen wanted to look away, but the gleaming altar called to her. Even as she stepped backwards, the crowd of strangers—once thought of as peers and the nouveau riche—pressed forward.

Hemaraj gripped her hand tight. “It’s time, my sweet.”

“For what?” Helen pulled back from him even as he dragged her forward.

“To fulfill your destiny.”

“I won’t do it. You lied to me.” She flailed at the people around. “No. No!” Her struggles were in vain as Hemaraj pulled her through the mystical doorway into that other realm.

From a long way away, someone yelled her name over and over, even as she struggled against the people holding her. Helen felt the hands leave her body as darkness descended. For a moment, there was nothing. Then light. Then the realization that she was looking up at John as Grace stood at the head of the bed, praying.

“Can you let the coin go?” John touched her clenched hand.

Helen lifted her hand to him and opened it. There was a sucking sensation as he plucked it from her palm. He stood and put the coin on the table. She looked at her palm and saw the design of the coin burned into her flesh. Flexing her hand, she felt no pain. Just a raised white scar in the shape of the open, five-pointed star surrounded by a circle.

“God has seen fit to bless you with an intrinsic weapon against the dark. It is something that cannot be taken from you.” Grace smiled down at Helen as she made the sign of the cross over her.

“What is it?”

John sat back down. “Yes, what is it and what did it do to her?”

If Grace took offense at his accusatory tone, she made no sign of it. “That is known as an Elder Sign. It’s a powerful ward against those demonic beings that seek a way into this world.” She raised a hand to forestall his questions. “I’m knowledgeable, but I’m not all-knowing. Who they are, what they are, is a mystery. Those who worship them crave power and do these creatures’ will. There are cults dedicated to bringing them into this world. I have fought these demons before and banished them with that small coin.”

Helen sat up. “Mister Sorin, the dead man, was he Hemaraj Kumari?”

John nodded. “Yes and his family is … most upset.”

“Do they know about me?”

He nodded. “They’d like to speak with you.”

Helen shook her head, her heart sinking. The Kumari family was well-appointed in Assam. That meant they were noble, rich and powerful. “They would not believe what I’m now remembering. If they did, they would be part of this growing evil.”

“What do you remember?”

She looked up at Grace. Part of her didn’t want to tell anyone about what she’d seen … remembered. They would think she was crazy. And yet …. She ran a fingertip over her new scar. “Hemaraj invited me to a party. During the party, he brought me downstairs for a display of magic. Only, it was real magic. The magician was a man he brought back from Egypt with him. I think he was the man who signaled the men trying to kidnap me.” Helen looked down at the scar on her palm. “Deep within the cellar … you won’t believe me. I barely believe it.”

“Lady Helen, I promise, I will listen with an open mind.” John gave her an encouraging smile.

“There was a doorway that led to a place that should not exist. It … there was another world through it. A dark underground world. And they made me … forced me through to a black, gleaming altar.” Helen shook her head. “That’s all I know. Something awful happened. I can feel the memory of it waiting like a brigand in the night. I’m frightened.”

“K’n-yan.” Grace’s voice was soft in its horror. “You were taken to K’n-yan for the ritual. They’ve made you a portal of some kind. I knew you were to be an instrument, but I didn’t really know.”

“What does that mean?” John looked between the two women.

“It means two things: We must keep her safe and we must find out where this party was. There, we’ll need to seal the door between worlds.” Grace knelt next to Helen. “I know it’s horrible and frightening, but you must remember where you were. I’ll be here. Your memory cannot harm you.”

Helen tilted her head. Grace had just lied. Helen didn’t know how she knew, but her memory could harm her. It was an awful thought. She wanted to remember, to know, what had happened, but regaining her memory could harm her more. What was her mind protecting her from and why was Grace willing to risk it?

“I think I might be able to help with that.” John pulled a crumpled card from his inner jacket pocket. It was a small invitation card on white paper with black, embossed writing. “I wanted to show it to you to see if it helped with your memory. It was in Mister Kumari’s pocket.” He handed it to Helen.

Malik Amit Kumari invites you to a welcome home gala for

Chote Malik Hemaraj Kumari

At the Black Ram Club

Cocktails at 1900

Dinner served at 2000

RSVP

Helen did not recognize it but it did feel familiar. She patted her coat pocket and felt something within. The card she pulled out was a twin to the one already in her other hand. “I think we know where it happened.”

“We must be sure.” John stood. “I can’t call a raid on a place like the Black Ram Club without being sure. Lady Helen, would you be willing to go to the club with me to see if you remember more?”

Finally, it was something she could do beyond reacting. Helen nodded. “Yes. I need to know.”

Grace stood and shook her head. “This is a bad idea. She is the key. She shouldn’t go anywhere near that place.”

“Lady Helen, can you say with certainty that this … event … happened in the Black Ram? If you can, I’ll make preparations to have the Commissioner’s Office raid the building.”

Helen thought about it. She could not say for certain it was at the Black Ram Club. In her brief recollections, she did not know where she was. “No. I’m sorry. I don’t know. I could’ve arrived at the Black Ram and then left for another event. That’s not unusual.”

John nodded. “Then we need to go.”

Grace shook her head. “I cannot go with you. I must prepare for the forthcoming battle. Mister Sorin, you must not allow Lady Helen out of your protection, even for an instant.”

“I will do my duty, Sister.”

“There’s a phone in the front office if you wish to ring for a car.”

John’s face was neutral in its agreement. “That would be best.”

Grace left them in the front of the church after John made his call. Helen glanced at him. “What if I did kill Hemaraj?”

John was quiet for a long moment. “If you did—and I am not saying you did—I’m certain the Commissioner’s Office would find you justified in your actions based on the facts of the case.”

“What facts?”

“You were drugged and attacked, and killed Mister Kumari in the midst of an hallucination.”

“You think it was all an hallucination?” Helen smiled at the thought and knew it for the lie that it was.

“It doesn’t matter what I think. The facts are that something awful happened to you and a man died.”

Helen looked at him. “Is that the Commissioner’s Office speaking or you, Mister Sorin?”

“The Commissioner’s Office.”

“Because of who I am? Who my father is?”

“Yes.” He held up the invitation to the party. “Also, if anything you or Sister Grace has said is true … this evil—and I have reason to believe it just might be—I must deal with it.”

“Why you?”

He shrugged. “Who better than me? This is my duty.”

“And me?” Helen watched him with a keen eye.

“I will recommend that you return to London where such mystical things do not happen. This will be safer for you and bring some minor satisfaction to the Kumari family.” John met her gaze. “Do you wish to stay in Assam?”

Helen shook her head. “No. I’ve never liked this place. Father brought me here because … because he thought it would be better for the family.”

John tilted his head. “There. All will be satisfied in some way.”

“Even you?”

“Yes.” John waved to the motorcar with the Commissioner’s Office seal. Once he had Helen and himself settled, he nodded to the driver. “The Black Ram Club.”

***

The outside of the Black Ram Club glittered with black-and-gold adornments that spoke of a well-to-do establishment. With columns, silk awning, and a liveried doorman waiting, Helen thought it was an attractive building and the kind that she would willingly enter, but it was still unfamiliar. John escorted her from the car to the door.

The doorman, a large, handsome Assamese man, stood straighter as they approached. “I’m sorry, sahib, the club is closed.” He nodded politely to Helen. “Memsahib.”

“I’m aware. However, my companion believes she left something behind at the party two nights ago.”

Helen smiled at John. He told the truth in the technical sense. She did believe she had left her memory behind and they were here to retrieve it if they could. Helen nodded her agreement at the doorman.

After a moment’s consideration, the doorman nodded. “Of course. Please follow me.” He led them into an antechamber and spoke in a rapid dialect Helen did not know to a second man who disappeared. “I’ve called for the manager. If something was lost, he will know if one of the staff found it. Please wait here.” He bowed to them and returned to his post.

Helen sat in one of the nearby chairs, and looked at the plush burgundy drapery and tapestry rugs. She wondered if any of the wall hangings hid a servants’ hall. Again, it was beautiful, inviting and utterly unfamiliar.

“Anything?”

She shook her head. “I—” Helen stopped speaking at the appearance of a tall man with a full head of glossy black hair who was familiar.

A flash of memory saw this man greeting her as she entered with a room full of people in formalwear and jewels. He stopped and kissed her hand, murmuring a compliment to her. Behind him, watching, was the elegant Egyptian man.

“Good afternoon. I am Venkata Yuasa, the manager here. One of my people said that you lost something here?” He was a slender man with soft voice. His attention was on John.

“Yes, Lady Helen. She lost an earring at Mister Kumari’s gala.” John gestured to her.

Helen watched the manager’s polite solicitude morph into a surprise that was quickly covered by a false pleasure.

“Oh, yes, Lady Helen. So good to see you again.” Yuasa hurried to her with his hand out. “If you’ve lost something—”

The moment his fingers touched the scar on her palm, the manager froze with a look of shock and pain on his face. If Helen had not been sitting, she would’ve fallen. As it was, Venkata collapsed, foaming at the mouth. Helen’s mind folded in on itself. There was a moment of epiphany. It was too large, too horrible, to hold. She gasped as images assaulted her.

… Laughing and talking with friends and strangers alike.

… Hemaraj introducing her to the Egyptian man and his thoughtful smile.

… A small idol made from a green stone that felt slick and moist in her hand. The idol leered at her with promises of dark desires and pain.

… Walking down stairs, deep into the earth—Hemaraj before her and Venkata behind her.

… The otherworldly landscape, bound to the altar, watching the impossible sky and something above her. Something that was coming closer, reaching for her.

Helen cried out as she wrenched her mind from the nightmare images. She got up to flee and wound up in John’s arms. She buried her face in his chest. “He was there. He was part of it.” When she looked down to see what had happened to the manager, she saw he was still twitching on the ground and the second guard was there.

“Forgive him. He has fits from time to time. Please, come back later.” The man’s voice was polite, but his body was coiled for an attack.

John nodded. “Another time.”

From the corner of her eye, Helen saw one of the tapestries shift. Someone was there and watching. She did not want to know who it was. “Please, please. Take me home.”

“Of course.” John led her from the antechamber, supporting her as she struggled to keep her composure.

***

Grace and Pria met Helen in the parlor. Helen glanced askance at the two of them.

“She insisted on waiting, malkin.” The tone of her maid’s voice spoke volumes of her discontent at the nun’s presence.

Grace nodded. “I did. Where is Mister Sorin?”

“Back at the Commissioner’s Office. He has some things to do there. He said he would return this evening to watch over me.” Helen handed her coat to Pria.

“I knew he wouldn’t protect you as he should. It’s why I’m here now.” Grace waited until Pria left the room to add, “I don’t trust that one. There’s something about her. I can’t put my finger on it.”

Helen shook her head. “She’s been a good maid. I appreciate her company. I assume you will also spend the night?”

Grace nodded. “I will.”

“I’ll have a room prepared for you.”

“No need. I will stay on the couch in your room.”

Helen stopped and looked at her. “How do you know I have a couch there?”

“All women of means have a couch in their sitting rooms. Even if you don’t, I’ll sleep on the floor. It would not be the first time. My duty to protect this world is focused on you.” Grace was as implacable as she was serene.

Too tired to protest, Helen nodded. “As you will.” She hurried up to her suite to hide from the world. This day had taken its toll.

Edward was waiting outside her door. “Lady Helen?”

She looked at his face, saw the concern there, and smile wanly. “Yes?”

“Might I have a word?”

Helen nodded. “Of course. Though, how did you know you where I was coming?” She walked into her sitting room with its library, craft table, and couch area.

“It’s my job as Head Steward to know where you are and what your wants are.” He closed the door behind them. “Also, it is my job to deliver things to you. Doctor Bannister left this.” He showed her a small brown bottle. “He thought it would sooth your nerves.”

Laudanum. She must remember to thank the old man when she saw him next. This was exactly what she needed. “Thank you.”

“One spoonful every four hours as needed.”

“I remember. Would you have Pria bring me some of my special tea?”

“Of course, Lady Helen.” Edward bowed and left the room.

Helen did not wait for the tea to take the laudanum. She needed some serenity now. Between the laudanum and the tea she usually only drank towards the end of the month, she would be certain to relax. The sweet taste of the syrup did not stop her from grimacing at the cramps in her abdomen.

As she cupped her tummy, the cramps immediately subsided. The sudden lack of tension and pain was remarkable. Helen looked at the white-raised scar in her palm and wondered if the ward against evil included the evils of a woman’s burden. The thought made her smile, though not for long. It was the scar that had also laid Venkata low. She pondered this, wondering how many other people would react when they touched her hand.

“Perhaps only the evil ones. Still it would be inconvenient for one of father’s business partners to suddenly fall over in a fit.” With the laudanum already starting to work its magic, Helen smiled at the thought of several stuffy old men collapsing and foaming at the mouth.

Helen spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening in an opium haze, so relaxed that Pria forced her to eat because it looked as though she ‘needed’ it. Grace sided with the maid, choosing to eat with Helen to ensure she fortified herself for what was to come.

John returned to the house shortly after they had finished their meal. Helen was so exhausted that she barely followed the forms of propriety before she excused herself for the evening. Her last thought, as sleep claimed her, was to hope Grace did not wake her when she entered the bedroom suite.

***

Helen stood in the ruins of an alien city and felt she was home. She didn’t know why. She knew the broken buildings around her were not of her native world and she didn’t care. This was still home. A man grasped her by wrist and pulled her towards a doorway. His grip hurt, but the pain was familiar and welcome. Just as he was. They stepped through the doorway from one realm into another.

Now they stood in her bedroom—once familiar but now aberrant—it was no longer her home. She pulled away from him, looking for the doorway into that other world. Again, the dark-eyed man gripped her wrist. This time, it was a light touch, caressing, as he drew her towards the foot of her bed. She allowed it to happen.

With the practiced movements of a man used to undressing a woman, he pulled her coat off her shoulders and let it puddle on the floor at her feet. Then, he slid his hands up over her sides, taking her dress with it until she allowed him to pull it off over her head. This mere mortal of a man acted as if he owned her, she who was the portal to the next age. She could not let this insult stand without retribution.

Naked as she would never have been in front of this man had it been any other circumstance, she stepped to him, tilting her head up for a kiss. As he complied, gripping her behind the neck, she pulled his ceremonial dagger from his belt and stabbed him in the stomach as many times as she could before he lost his grip on her and fell backward onto her bed. She watched him choke, gasping for breath, as he bled out on the duvet.

Helen opened her eyes and realized that the choking noise was coming from the next room. It wasn’t a dream. She fought her way out of the bed. Everything was harder that it should be. Her head was fuzzy, her limbs heavy. She felt drugged. Stumbling to the doorway between her bedchamber and dressing room, Helen blinked at the figures within. It took a moment to realize what was happening.

Pria was strangling Grace.

The smaller Indian woman had a knee planted between the nun’s shoulder blades and she was pulling backwards with all her might. The horrible choking sounds from Grace had lapsed into a deadly silence.

“No!” Helen rushed the pair of them, knocking Pria off of the supine woman. Pria rolled to the side and bounced up, light on her feet. Grace didn’t move. Helen pulled the braided cord from Grace’s neck. “Please, please be well. Please.” She shook Grace’s shoulder. There was no response.

Pria laughed; it was the sound of madness. “That traitor won’t be helping you, anymore. I knew her for what she was as soon as she entered. She didn’t remember me, but I remembered her.” Her mirth shifted to anger. “I should kill you where you kneel for what you did to Hemaraj. It was his right to watch you and you murdered him.”

Helen shook her head. “I didn’t.” But she knew she had. The dream-memory had shown her the truth. She could still remember the rightness of the blade plunging into flesh. She stood and backed away. “Get away from me.”

“Oh, yes, malkin. Right away, malkin. As you wish, malkin.” Pria’s normally soft, polite voice was filled with sarcasm and malice. “Oh, wait. My takur, my true master, wants you brought to him. That’s what will happen.”

“You can’t. You won’t. Mister Sorin will stop you.” Helen took another step backwards towards the door to the hallway.

“Mister Sorin is dead.” Pria rushed her, knocking her into the wall. Stronger than she looked, Pria grabbed Helen by the hair and slammed her head against it.

Helen cried out and grabbed Pria’s arms. Pria screamed in pain, jerking back. Helen realized the hand with the scar had burned the maid. With instinct born from desperation, Helen pressed her scarred palm against Pria’s forehead. With a scream of agony, Pria’s body bucked twice and she dropped to the ground.

For a moment, Helen was afraid to move. Then she nudged her former maid with a foot. Pria lay still. Feeling safe enough for the moment, Helen hurried back to Grace’s side and turned her over. It was harder that she thought it would be. Suddenly, Helen understood what the term ‘dead weight’ really meant. Grace was truly dead. From her bulging eyes, protruding tongue, and the livid rope mark dug deep into her neck, there was no denying it.

Helen felt through the nun’s robes until she found the hidden dagger and sheath. She removed it, putting it to the side. Then she looked for the small silk pouch that held the warding coin. Helen had just found it when John crashed through her sitting room door. Helen brandished the sheathed dagger before she realized who it was.

“Mister Sorin! Thank goodness. She told me … I thought you were dead.” Helen put the dagger down. “Pria killed Grace. She was supposed to take me to her master. I don’t know who that is, but I have my suspicions.”

“What happened?” He stepped over to Pria’s body and hunkered down.

“This.” Helen showed him her scarred palm. Then she picked up the dagger and the coin. “It killed her. I pressed it to her forehead. How did you survive?”

“One of the house guards, Gopal, was a bit too interested in having me drink some tea. I pretended to drink and poured it out when he wasn’t looking. I assumed it was drugged, pretended to sleep.” John stood and came to her. “We fought. I won.”

Close up, she could see he was bruised and there was a small cut above one eye. “I’m glad, but what now?”

“Do you want to end this tonight?”

She nodded, not certain of her thoughts, but did not want to sit back to do nothing. “Do you think we can?” Helen offered him the dagger and the coin.

He took the coin and let her keep the blade. “I do.”

“How?”

“We let you be taken.”

***

It was a good, if terrifying, plan. John, dressed as Gopal, carried an “unconscious” Helen out to the waiting motorcar. He carefully put her in the backseat and climbed in next to her. He tapped the roof of the car, but said nothing, keeping his face in shadows. As expected, the car drove to the Black Ram Club and parked in the alleyway behind it. As soon as it stopped, John leaned forward and gave the driver a sharp crack on the back of the head with his blackjack.

John helped Helen out of the car. She felt less drugged and more frightened, but refused to let it show. The alleyway behind the Black Ram Club was surprisingly clean and clear of debris. Even the ever-present homeless that camped in such alleys were absent. A terrifying detail if you thought about it too closely. What had happened to them?

“Are you certain you know what we’re doing?” Helen looked around, shivered, and huddled deeper into her coat.

“I am. No one at the Commissioner’s Office will believe the supernatural aspects of this case. If we can, at least, close that doorway with these …” He held up the coin and her hand. “... then we have a fighting chance to convince the office that it was a sham cult and you were the victim. The Kumari family is powerful, but the Commissioner’s Office is more powerful and more interested in protecting the Keeling family.”

She nodded. “Closing the door should stop whatever evil Grace saw from rising.” Helen grabbed his arm as he turned towards the backdoor. “But what if it doesn’t?”

“Then we find another way.”

***

The back door was not locked and they did not expect it to be. It opened on a long hallway with opened and closed doors on both sides. They passed a storeroom on the left and the large, dark kitchen to the right. Ignoring the closed doors, they headed toward the feeble light at the end of the hall.

“I think it’s the grand ballroom. I recognize the furniture.” Helen leaned into John, feeling as if her voice echoed in the night’s stillness.

John nodded, his blackjack at the ready as he crept along. They both froze at the sound of movement ahead. It sounded as if someone shifted. There was no sense of alarm, but there was the sense of expectation. Whoever was ahead was waiting for Gopal and his prize.

As they passed the closed door on the left, Helen’s abdomen twisted in a sharp, sudden pain. Something angry and clawed was attacking her from within. She gasped and stumbled against the door, unable to help herself as she went to her knees. John turned. “Lady Helen?”

“Gopal? Pria?” Two figures appeared in the hallway entrance. When they saw John standing over Helen, they stopped. “Gopal, where’s Pria?”

Helen looked up at John and they both knew his disguise would not last. She nodded to him, not sure what permission she was giving, but giving it nonetheless. When she looked at the two men again, she realized that neither man was Assamese but British. Her fury at this made the pain in her abdomen grow and she placed her scarred palm on her stomach. The pain receded, but did not disappear as before.

“Stay here.” John turned from her and charged the men, who had pulled weapons from their belts. He yelled as he barreled one of them over and struck out at the other.

Grabbing the door handle for leverage to stand, Helen found the door unlocked. On unsteady feet, braced against the doorframe, she opened the door, uncertain of what she would find. Unsurprised to find the Egyptian man standing there, she put her hand on Grace’s unsheathed dagger in her coat pocket.

“You’ve returned to me.” His voice was soft and silky, enticing. He offered her his hand.

His name came to her. “Ardeth Fehr.” She raised her scarred palm to him and was dismayed when he did not flinch away.

Instead, he grasped her hand and kissed the back of it. “Such do not harm a man like me.” He pulled her into the room. “You need not fear me. I’m your one true ally now.”

The room was filled with gold jewelry, stone jars, and statues. The treasure pulled Helen’s attention from the man before her. Something in here called to her. She retrieved her hand and looked around. All of it was familiar. She had seen this treasure before. She knew she must have seen this room the night of the gala.

Her memory hinted at Hemaraj leading her around the room, telling her about each item. This gold goblet with the swirled patterned was used in a rebirth ceremony. That jar was filled with sacred unguents. This plate depicted a dedication ceremony to … Helen looked at the black swirling mass on the edge of the plate. It was not just decoration. It was … something.

“I think you are looking for this.” Ardeth came up behind her. “Iä! Shub-Niggurath.”

The alien words shook Helen to her core. They resonated within. Her stirring belly quieted. Turning, Helen saw the object Ardeth held out to her and knew he was right. It was an idol made from a green stone. She had not known what it was she was looking for until then. She took it in her scarred hand. It felt slick and moist as her mind opened up to her.

***

Hemaraj pulled her through that impossible doorway into that other realm. Helen still fought again the knowledge that not only was magic real, she was about to be part of a ritual. Hands grabbed her from all sides, pulling and pushing her forward, across the broken ground to the center of the ruins. At the altar, despite her struggles and screams, Helen was stripped of her things. Nails scratched her skin as strangers pulled her out of her clothing. Her dress and coat were puddled at her feet as the rest disappeared into the crowd of pale and dusky faces.

Then she was lifted up and placed on the altar. Hands held her down, gripping her arms and legs tight, while shackles captured her pinioned wrists and ankles. Even her neck was bound. All the while, the high priest watched with a smile and a gleam of madness.

When the hands disappeared and the crowd stepped back, Helen stopped screaming, but did not cease her struggles until Ardeth came forward to stand at her feet. He raised his hands to pray towards the cave heights, that black sky marbled with violet and green. The alien words that came out of his mouth turned her stomach as she cringed from them. There was something about the sounds that should never be spoken by a human mouth or heard by a human ear.

He paused in his prayer and the crowd of worshippers—for they could be nothing else—shouted, “Iä! Iä! Shub-Niggurath!”

“Iä! Shub-Niggurath! She comes. She comes!” Ardeth was foaming at the mouth as he pointed skyward.

Helen looked up and didn’t have the mind or will to scream, though she wanted to. The sky above her uncurled huge, glistening, black tentacles as a dozen yellow eyes opened to look into her soul. The tentacles quested for her and she closed her eyes to the sight of such size. It was too big to hold in her mind. Then a tentacle touched her and the universes opened.

She understood everything, knew what was needed of her, and gave herself body and soul to the task. She was the portal. She would birth the warriors of a new age. There was a war in the heavens of this other realm and it was time to turn the tide. It was a relief to finally know her place in this universe.

***

Her hand was empty, the idol gone. Ardeth stood before her. “You remember. You understand now.” He put his hand on her belly. “You know your importance. You know what you’ll bring into—”

The nun’s dagger was out and flashing across his throat before he finished his sentence. The blade flashed again and Helen stabbed his unworthy heart. This man, this pathetic creature, who had needed to find a woman to do what he could not do, dared to touch her. She stabbed him again, then stepped back and watched as he clutched his throat, gasping for air.

John crashed through the door, his eyes wild, blood smeared across his lips and chin. He looked around the room and saw the dying Egyptian. “Lady Helen? Are you well?”

Helen nodded. She was better than she could remember feeling in all her life. She understood so much more and had to smile at this poor, dumb man’s lot in life. The look of concern was as endearing as it was pathetic. She crossed the room to him. “He attacked me.”

“He’s dead now.”

John opened his arms to her and she leaned into them. The warmth of his body comforted her even as she clenched the dagger tight. Smiling, she wondered how she could have ever been afraid of such a beautiful, deadly tool. It felt so right in her hand. How could it be anything other than it was. Just like her.

Looking up at John, she reached a hand around his neck and lifted her lips to his.

“Lady Helen!” John protested, but she shushed him before kissing him. She waited until he gave in to her power, gave himself over to her and the kiss, to stab him again and again. He had tried so hard. It was the only gift she could give him. The same thing she had given Hemaraj. Only this time, it was a gift instead of a reprimand. The gift of death and a kiss before the war came to this world.

Helen stepped back as John crumpled to his knees, clutching his stomach. She watched the life leave his eyes as he toppled over next to the unworthy one before she turned to the wall with the hidden door. It swung open at her touch. Waiting there was one of the otherworld children.

The dark young was taller than a man. Although it had three cloven hooves, it stood steady on the stairs. Its myriad of black tentacles wavered, grasping the walls as its slavering mouths gnashed the alien air. A single tentacle quested for her. Helen stroked it as it came near, soothing it despite the scent of blood covering her.

“Shhhh. I’ve come back. It’s time to go home.”

The dark young moved back and down the stairs as she stepped forward. Its tentacles caressed her as she came close. Together, they descended the stairs into the rest of her life.

THE LESSER KEYS

ORRIN GREY

OPENING BARS

Jasper deWitt arrived in Kansas City at half-past-three on a Friday. He stepped off the train in Union Station and tried not to gawk around like an out-of-town rube at all the marble and chandeliers. It wasn’t that they didn’t have buildings like this in Chicago—they had plenty—but in spite of knowing better, Jasper had still been expecting a cow town, not the Paris of the Plains, as they were calling it. A taxi took him from Union Station to the boarding house just off 18th and Vine where he’d be staying.

He didn’t have much with him, just one suitcase and a few hundred dollars in folding money secreted in various places about his person; a little in his left shoe, a little pinned to the inside of his cuff, a little tucked into the lining of his bowler hat.

The boarding house was big and white, and the front was full of windows.

It had the kind of porch that you sit out on in the summer, and complain about the heat and the bugs. His room, when the lady showed it to him, backed right up against the railroad tracks, but that was okay. It just reminded him of home. And from the street out front, he could see the lights of the jazz district, so he figured he’d have at least a few good nights. Really, everything looked pretty good. Deceptively good. Standing out in front of the house after dropping off his suitcase and making sure that he looked presentable in the dressing mirror, he had to remind himself of the Sword of Damocles dangling over his head.

It wasn’t that the memory was stale. Just a couple of days ago, he’d been back in Chicago, standing in Gerald Tyson’s big office above the club, shuffling his feet on Gerald Tyson’s expensive rug and drinking Gerald Tyson’s expensive Scotch, being told by that very man in no uncertain terms just what his fate would be if he failed in the job he was being assigned.

“I want that band for my club,” Tyson was saying in his thick, phlegmy voice. “But I can’t get any traction by way of the usual channels, you understand? That town’s a goddamn quagmire. They don’t know how to play ball proper. So, what you’re gonna do for me is, you’re gonna go down there and you’re gonna find those boys and you’re gonna explain to ‘em that I’m givin’ ‘em a real good offer. I’ll double whatever they’re getting now, but I don’t want any entanglements, is that clear? They’re mine, exclusive. You make ‘em understand that’s best for everyone and you bring ‘em back with you. And Jasper? Don’t make me send anyone else.”

Of course he was talking about the Lesser Keys. It seemed like they were all anybody was talking about. Just another jazz ensemble in a sea of jazz ensembles? Maybe, but the word was they were setting Kansas City on fire—and that in spite of the fact that they’d only play at one place, a roadhouse on the outskirts called Solomon King’s Mine. They were supposed to be good, damn good, but privately, Jasper didn’t think that’s what Gerald Tyson wanted them for. Privately, though he’d never say it to the big man’s face, nor to anyone else who might ever breathe a word of it in that direction, Jasper thought that Gerald Tyson just couldn’t handle the thought of anyone having something nice that he couldn’t have. He was going to take the Lesser Keys away from Solomon King to prove that he could.

Before leaving Chicago, Jasper had asked around to learn what he could about Solomon King and the Lesser Keys. It hadn’t been a lot. Solomon King ran his roadhouse and was supposed to have some sway in the politics of the city, though no one could say how much or what kind. Jasper figured he was looking at another Gerald Tyson, more or less. But he’d also learned that Tyson wasn’t wrong about the city being a quagmire, something altogether different from Chicago. While the gangsters there owned the politicians, in Kansas City, the line between the two seemed even more blurred. The way Jasper heard it, the whole place was in the pocket of this “Boss Tom” character, who made men like Tyson seem petty tyrants by comparison. Jasper wasn’t sure how much stock to put into those rumors, but he planned to keep a low profile in the city as best he could, just to be safe. He’d already had enough of powerful white men to last him a lifetime.

Tyson hadn’t given him a concrete deadline, but he’d also made no bones about the fact that there was a time limit on this job. Still, Jasper was, if nothing else, a man who knew his work and he knew in his gut that this wasn’t going to be as simple a matter as Tyson made it out. Whatever the secrets of the Lesser Keys were, prying them away was going to take more finesse than marching in with a better payday and that finesse would require that he know his footing a little better. So, that Friday night, he didn’t go to Solomon King’s Mine. He struck out walking from the front of the boarding house with the intention of sampling the finest night life that Kansas City had to offer. In his experience, that was how you took the measure of a city, and learned what was up from what was down. Jasper had a feeling that he was going to need to know up from down pretty thoroughly before this job was over.

***

Caroline Bloom’s driver deposited her at the front doors of the Muehlbach Hotel at seven o’clock. The hotel was supposed to be the finest in Kansas City, though that wasn’t really what had drawn her there. She was told that it already had its very own ghost, a lady in blue who had maybe once been a singer at the Gaiety Theatre across the street. No one seemed to know what her fate had been, but the word went that most of the staff had seen her wandering the halls at one time or another.

Caroline had always been fascinated by spook stories, places where murders had been committed, anything that made her blood run a little cold. “Morbid,” is what her mother had called it when she was still alive, as well as “unladylike” and, at times, even less flattering things. Which made it doubly unfair that Jonathon was the one who had gotten into this trouble. Running off halfway across the country with some movie starlet, joining a secret society. These were the kinds of things Caroline longed to do. But because she’d had the misfortune to be born a lady, she had to play at responsibility while Jonathon’s rakish proclivities—while frowned upon—were at least tolerated. It was just what indolent young men did, she was told again and again. Once his wild oats were sown, he’d settle down.

She supposed she owed him a little, though, for finally doing something shocking enough that Mr. Benedict, who handled their finances, had sent her west to track him down, bring him home. Mr. Benedict had wanted to hire a private detective to do the job, but Caroline had eventually won out. “I know Jonathon better than anyone,” she’d told him, more than once before he finally got it through his white-haired old head, “and I’m the only one who’s going to convince him to come home without being dragged.”

Now she was here, on the not-quite-completely-tamed-yet frontier, embarking on at least a little bit of an adventure. While it wasn’t exactly running off with a starlet and joining a cult, it was better than nothing. When she finally tracked Jonathon down, she’d have to thank him for that, right after she socked him in the jaw for running off without telling her.

All this ran through her head as she watched the porters unloading her bags from the car and carrying them into the hotel’s sparkling lobby. Chandeliers drenched the surroundings in golden light and glinted off the checkered tiles of the lobby floor. Outside, night was falling, draping the tall buildings in shadowy cloaks, and the lights were coming on up and down the street as the clubs and dance halls came to life. She had some leads on how to find Jonathon, contacts in the city that had known her father, places to start looking. But she hoped he’d prove more elusive than he had in the past, when he’d disappeared on smaller indiscretions closer to home. She hoped it would take her some time to track him down. It wasn’t as if she’d never been to the big city, or that Kansas City was anywhere near the size of the places she’d gone back home, but it felt somehow different. Less tame, as if the city were just a veneer laid over a sleeping beast to make it look domestic. She knew that the night sky out here would be vast and dark and empty in a way that she’d never seen before. She could feel it in her gut, even though the sun wasn’t yet quite gone. In the spaces between the buildings, the blue of the sky was deepening, the way the ocean did as the land dropped away. When the last light was gone, it would be like being in a cave that went on forever. She hoped she would be here long enough to make that feeling last, at least a little while.

And if she were very lucky, maybe she would even see a ghost.

***

Solomon King stood at the top of the stairs with his arms clasped behind his back. He rocked forward onto his toes, enjoying the feeling that he was about to overbalance, to plunge down into the darkness below. Then he rocked back onto his heels.

Behind him, he could hear the music coming from the main room. Not the Lesser Keys playing, not yet. Just some other band, some boys he paid to entertain the customers. Not bad musicians. They were full of the passion that only comes when you’re playing to live, when playing’s all you’ve got to live for. But still just men making noises that could only aspire to be music and nothing more. He tuned them out.

He closed his eyes, as he always did at the top of the stairs, and he visualized the room below him. The basement of the house, what he had actually bought the building for. The vast, dark catacomb there, cut into solid rock, connected into a natural cave system that ran out into the surrounding hills. The wooden struts and braces, erected to help support the cavern, to keep the weight of the house above, with all its many revelers and guests, from crashing down into the caves below. The pentagrams, triangles, and Solomonic seals cut carefully into the floor of the chamber, ready to be poured full of sand or salt or blood, as needed. The sigils, painstakingly painted onto the walls, each stroke potentially a matter of life or death. The black pool at the back of the cavern, darker and deeper than water could ever be.

The room was perfect. In it, he had already perfected—already set into motion—his great machine, the one that would finally do what no one in the debased and cowardly Golden Dawn had achieved, in spite of their grand claims, nor the Rosy Cross who had left them behind, nor the Order of Kings, here in this city, whom he had finally surpassed as well, who were taking votes even now whether or not to cast him out. He knew of their machinations, knew that they moved against him in their offices and chambers, in their meeting halls in the city proper. His daemons advised him so and he knew the truth of their words. He had peered into the hearts of these men who thought themselves his betters because their skin was whiter, their money greener. The fools believed that enough corporeal power, enough offices, enough titles, enough land and money could make them great men. There was more power in the silver ring on his finger than in all of their boardrooms and bank accounts combined and they knew it, in their weak, fearful hearts. They knew it at night, when they lay down to sleep next to their wives or mistresses. They knew real power when they saw it and it made them afraid, so they plotted against him now. They believed they had used him and that now they could cast him aside. At least, that’s what they wanted to believe.His father had believed it, as well, and it had cost him dearly. Solomon King smiled, turning the silver ring on his finger.

In the past, the machinations of the Order of Kings would have enraged him, but he found that he barely cared. Their schemes were already too late, though they didn’t yet realize it. His own machine was now in operation, one much greater than the so-called “Pendergast Machine” that ran this frontier Babylon. They had used his knowledge to strike deals with devils for mortal gain, but he would show them yet the pettiness of their greed. He would show them what a real devil was capable of.

Behind him, the sound of horns and pianos slowly died away, to be replaced by the ocean roar of applause, the susurrus of voices from distant rooms. He kept his eyes closed as that sound died away, replaced with a waiting hush, and then the first silver notes of Magda’s song. He always had her sing before the Lesser Keys, the warmup, the oil that would lubricate the machine. As her words rang in the air like clear bells, Solomon King smiled a private smile in the dark at the thought of the music that his creation was about to make.

PROGRESSION

For his first few nights in town, Jasper deWitt went to what seemed like every speakeasy, dance hall, ballroom, and night club in town that would let in colored patrons, except Solomon King’s. He walked down 14th street, where the whores tapped nickels against their windows at patrons as they passed. If Gerald Tyson could see him, Jasper knew the big man would be fuming so hot that steam would be coming out of his ears, but there was a reason Tyson had sent him and this was a job that Jasper knew how to do. Before he could get any good leads on talking that outfit out from under King’s thumb, he was going to have to get the lay of the land. That meant spending time — and more than a little of his folding money — reconnoitering. Not his fault if the majority of that time and money had to be spent in establishments of loose moral virtue.

On Monday night, he finally hired a car to drive him out to Solomon King’s, but he didn’t go in. Even on a Monday, the lot was full of cars and they were parked along the road to either side. Seemed like it was a pretty happening place, which supported what Jasper had already heard. Solomon King’s, in spite of its relatively out-of-the-way location, was the most popular night spot in Kansas City, and it had everything to do with the Lesser Keys.

Nobody who had heard them could say what was so special about them. He’d met with an old horn player who could hold forth about every kind of music a man could blow and the old musician had just gotten a faraway look in his eyes when he tried to talk about the Lesser Keys. “When they play,” he said, “it ain’t like music at all. I cain’t rightly say what it is, but I ain’t heard nothin’ like it in all my born days.”

Whatever it was that the Lesser Keys had, the word was that it brought in everyone who was anyone and a lot of people who weren’t. Though King’s was always packed, he didn’t seem like he was too exclusive. The richest and whitest folks in town rubbed elbows there with petty crooks and street musicians. King seemed to believe in a policy of inclusiveness. If there was any rhyme or reason to who he let in and who he turned away, Jasper couldn’t see it and nobody else could illuminate it for him.

That Monday night, Jasper watched the windows spill their embers of light out through the cracks in the shutters, he listened to the hum of the music he could feel as much as hear and he looked to try to figure out what it was he was looking for.

When the last song that had been thrumming through the night died out, a crystal birdsong that was only audible to Jasper as an echo, like a memory, he turned to the driver to tell him to take them back, but then he stopped. Something had changed out there in the dark. The air was suddenly alive, charged like with a summer storm. Jasper realized that his knuckles had whitened on the dash, his fingernails digging into the upholstery. And then the music started back up.

He still couldn’t really hear it, not at this distance, but he could feel the difference, just as he had felt the charge in the air that preceded them, and he knew that it was the Lesser Keys. Jasper deWitt wasn’t an educated man, and he’d never done anything with his life besides the kind of work he was doing now, but when he was a boy, his mother had been deeply religious, and she had taken him to church every Sunday morning. Nothing that the preacher had ever said had gotten through to Jasper, but the music did. The hymns, at their best, could do something more than reach inside a man. He knew that even as a boy. They carried something in them that was more powerful than words and notes, something that could change you, could put you in touch with things that were bigger than you, things that could maybe change everything, at least for a few seconds. His mother called it Jesus, but he wasn’t so sure. All he was sure about was that the music was special, powerful, and he felt something in it that he never felt anywhere else.

All his life, he knew music. He spent as much time around it as he could. The darkest and most disappointing hours of his life were when he realized that he had no talent for it himself. But he understood it in his gut and he knew when it was good, when it could move a person. He knew what band playing what song would get them out on the dance floor and which one would make them drink, which would make them tell their friends the next day. It was how he’d ended up working for Gerald Tyson and it was the only thing in a long and mostly wasted life that he’d ever been particularly good at. But in all those years, he’d never heard another song that did what the best of those hymns of his youth had done.

Never, ‘til now. Even the few straggling notes, dying out in the night air, even the thrum that he could feel running through the car, even that was enough for him to know that what he was listening to was something more than music. If the hymns of his youth had been a peek through the keyhole into another room, this was the door thrown wide open. No wonder Solomon King kept them under his thumb.

When Jasper finally told the driver to take him home, he had to say it three times before the other man snapped out of his reverie and obeyed.

***

Caroline Bloom stood in Herbert Powell’s office, being told for the third time that the Order of Kings was a fraternal order and one that he couldn’t get her even a visit with, not under any circumstances. “It’s not as if I have any sway with them, anyway, Miss Bloom,” he said, his bushy eyebrows and mustache making his face seem almost comically expressive. He looked as if he would have been at home curating a museum or lecturing a university class, not standing in an office full of dark wood and leather-bound books, with a map of the city on the wall behind him. “I’ve never been a member, and I’ve only been to a few meetings as a guest.”

“Uncle Herb,” Caroline replied, “if you don’t start calling me Carol, or at least Caroline, I’m going to come pull your mustache like I did when I was a girl.”

The old man smiled, his small eyes twinkling, “I’m sure you would, too. You’ve never done what you were told, ever since you were a little girl.”

The office was on the top floor of Powell, Wilford & Lome. The view over downtown from the big windows was commanding, but it seemed the old man hardly even looked. He hadn’t seen Caroline since she was 14, when he’d still lived back east and gone hunting with her father. She wondered if it was eerie to see the transformation from girl into woman.

“What I can’t understand,” he was saying, “is why you wouldn’t let Mr. Benedict hire someone to take care of this. Or even if you had to come out, why you can’t get a local man. I have people in the city who handle these sorts of things for me. I’d be happy to put them at your disposal.”

“As I told Mr. Benedict,” Caroline said, “it’s not just a matter of finding him. You know Jonathon—he’s as stubborn as a mule when someone tells him he can’t have his way and technically, there’s not much that could be done about him. I’ve got to be the one to find him, so that I can convince him to come home under his own steam. Or at least not give all of both our inheritances to some cockamamie cult.”

“The Order of Kings is a lot more than just a cult,” Powell said, shaking his head sadly, “at least here. Many of the most prominent men in town are members in good standing.”

“So, what do they do?”

“The usual things, for the most part, I imagine. Ritual trappings wrapped around business dealings and excuses for drunken parties, just as with every society I’ve ever known of, secret or otherwise. There’s some inner circle, of course, and lots of talk about magic and hocus-pocus, but I’m sure they’re just jumped-up Masons when you strip all that away. And you’re certain that Jonathon got initiated?”

“That’s what he said in his letter.” Caroline passed the folded papers over to the old attorney. “I haven’t actually spoken to him.”

“Hm,” Powell muttered into his mustache, reading over the three typed pages that Jonathon had sent from Kansas City back to Boston a month ago. “This does sound serious. He talks as if he’s thinking of marrying this girl.”

“From what I can find out, she doesn’t sound like the marrying type,” Caroline replied. “What do you know about her?”

“I saw one of her films, I think. Beyond that, just that she sings down at Solomon King’s sometimes. It’s a roadhouse, outside of town. A little rough, but very popular, even with some of the gentry. Now that you mention it, most of the members of the Order have been there at one time or another. It might not be the worst place to start looking for your brother. But,” he added hastily, “I wouldn’t want you going out there unescorted!”

“Don’t worry about me, Uncle Herb,” Caroline gave him a peck on the cheek. “I’m sure I can find some gentleman to chaperone my trip.”

***

Solomon King dreamed of darkness and fire and blood. He remembered his own birth, which he was told most men didn’t, and that only went to reaffirm what he had always known—that he was different than other men.

Though he looked to all eyes like a fit man in his early fifties, he estimated his own age at nearer a century. He had been born on a plantation, a slave, the bastard son of his master and one of the house slaves. One of his earliest memories was of watching his father kill his mother and use her skin in a ceremony. It was his introduction to magic, and he never looked back.

His father’s wife was barren and the man needed a son. “My own blood,” he said, “will make the rituals stronger.” He hadn’t been wrong.

He’d given Solomon his name, raised him, taught him everything that he knew. Together, they opened up black abysses and called forth things that would blast a man’s sanity, leave him gibbering and white-haired in a corner. Together, they had done unspeakable things. But always, he treated Solomon as a slave, never an equal, so, he underestimated his offspring. When Solomon finally grew strong enough to overpower him, to cut the silver ring from his finger and feed his heart to the very devils they had called to do his bidding, he swore to his dying bastard of a father that he would never kneel before another man as long as he lived.

Even as he said those words, though, he had still been young, foolish. He hadn’t yet understood the depths of the powers that existed in the world and beyond it, in the spaces between the stars. When he first came to Kansas City, the Order of Kings had sought to deny him his initiation into their number, but his powers had been too great to be denied, even then. As one of them, he had learned new arts and his powers had grown, but they had never ceased to think of him as something less than they were, just a tool to be used, as his father had. He knew it was only a matter of time before they demanded that he kneel.

But he saw farther than the other members of the Order. They sought to call up daemons to provision their earthly lives, to grant them material power and material pleasures. They were men of small appetites, small ambitions. The devils they called upon existed on the fringes of things, on the edges of awareness, in the corner of the mind’s eye. But there were things that dwelt in the gulfs beyond these, things so titanic in power that they could only exist in small parts at a time, could only brush up against the spheres which marked the outer limits of man’s knowledge. Solomon King knew that these things, too, could be conjured, summoned, and bound. It simply required a larger circle than any that had ever been drawn before, forged of sterner stuff than chalk and salt and blood.

BRIDGE

Lying in his bed in the boarding house that night, listening to the background hum of the trains and the music from the dance halls a few blocks away, Jasper deWitt could still hear the music of the Lesser Keys resonating in his skull. More than that, he could still see the images that the music had conjured for him when he closed his eyes. Not the comforting glow of the hymns he remembered from his childhood, but a flickering darkness against the backs of his eyelids. He felt as if fireworks were going off in his brain and he saw shapes etched in green flame, like complicated letters he’d never seen before. More than that, he saw figures, things that were not men nor beasts but something in-between. While his mother had taken him to church, his grandmother had told him stories about things left over from some other belief system. These things he saw now seemed more like something from there. If he were back in his mother’s church, she’d tell him they were devils, and that he had to turn his back on them, tell them to get behind, but he didn’t want to turn his back, not just yet.

In the dark places behind his eyes, which seemed darker now, he saw men with the heads of beasts and beasts with the heads of men. A raven wielding a sword of fire rode on a lion, a horse with human hands walked on its hind legs, an old man bearing a staff topped with serpents rode a crocodile. The things moved in the flickering light like marionettes, like the images he’d seen in the moving picture theatres. Somewhere in the back, a figure watched him with round, golden eyes from beneath a golden crown. He felt those eyes peering into his soul before he opened his own and stared once again at the ceiling of the boarding house.

Jasper didn’t know what kind of music he’d heard that night. He could hardly remember the tune, at the same time that it continued to throb in his bones. It wasn’t ragtime or blues; it wasn’t anything he’d ever heard before. But he knew one thing, as he lay there in the boarding house listening to the echo of it resounding in the chambers of his heart: His job had just changed. He wouldn’t be bringing these boys back to Gerald Tyson. He’d been a jumped-up errand boy all his life, and he’d never once aspired to much more than that, but hearing the Lesser Keys play had reminded him that he’d had dreams when he was a boy, had loved music more than he loved breathing. He made an oath to himself, that night, that he was going to find their secret if it was the last thing he ever did. He honestly didn’t know if they were playing the music of God or the Devil or something in-between, but whatever they were doing, and however they did it, he knew that it was a miracle, and he’d be damned if he was going to turn that over to a man like Gerald Tyson.

***

Caroline Bloom had no intention of finding an escort to take her to Solomon King’s. She had no doubt that there would be plenty of men there willing to take a few lumps for a decently pretty, unattached girl if the need arose and she knew how to take care of herself. The Colt in her purse was the only chaperone she needed. Her daddy had made a fortune manufacturing guns. He’d taught her how to shoot a pistol since she was big enough to hold one. She didn’t stop practicing after he died. By now, she could out-shoot any man she’d ever met.

The place itself just looked like a big, wood-frame house. It leaned a little bit, like it was worn out. She was sure that if she saw it in the daytime, the paint would be peeling. It sat back from the road, screened mostly by scraggly trees. There was a hand-painted sign and a mailbox on the dirt road. The sign said, “Solomon King’s,” not the full name of the place. She guessed people just knew that part. Also painted on the sign was a symbol, almost like a signature or a scrawl but sort of circular. She didn’t know what it was.

In front of the house was a graveled-in drive, big and filled with cars. Cars were parked alongside the road, too, for maybe half-a-mile in both directions, and she could hear the music coming out of the building before she even got out of the car. Obviously, this was a happening place.

She got out and sent her driver back to the hotel. She could call him if she needed to, but she figured she’d have no trouble getting a ride home. She said for him to come back at dawn, if he hadn’t heard from her.

Inside, Solomon King’s Mine didn’t look a whole lot more impressive than it had from without. The lights were turned down low. The main room housed a bar along one wall, and a bunch of tables fitted out with checkered tablecloths and candles that made it look like an Italian diner. Saloon-style swinging doors let into a back kitchen from which the sounds of pots and pans could be heard on the rare occasion when the music and the noise of the patrons died down enough. There was a stage on the far side of the big room, near the stairs that led up to the second story, with a sign above it done in lights that said, “The Lesser Keys,” though it wasn’t illuminated when she came in. An outfit consisting of a pianist, a few horn players, and a fellow on the banjo were playing when she entered. A space in front of the stage had been cleared of tables and people were dancing.

Segregation obviously wasn’t in force here, though the tables still tended to be split up by color. Nobody seemed to get preferential treatment. The men at the best tables were as likely to be black jazz musicians as they were mustachioed white men in double-breasted suits. A few brief chats with men who came up to buy her a drink confirmed what she suspected, that what mattered most in Solomon King’s was who had that man’s favor and that favor could seemingly go to anyone who was of use to him, black or white, rich or poor.

Unfortunately, she didn’t see Jonathon in the crowd, nor anyone who looked like the actress he’d run off with, Magda Whatsername. She took a seat at the bar and ordered a drink, content for the time being to wait. She was just raising her glass to her lips when she heard the sound of sirens cutting dully through the din.

***

Solomon King knew that the police were coming. His enemies in the Order had finally pried the ponderous political machine of Kansas City into action against him. Even now, the distant sirens were approaching. He knew that in the club above, there would be chaos soon. He didn’t need the daemons to show it to him. He could see it if he closed his eyes. The place would explode; the boards would come tumbling down around his patrons. Blood would spill on warped floorboards. He saw men and women trampled in a rush to the exits; he saw the police cars pulling up. There was plenty in the roadhouse that he could be arrested for, now that the protections of Boss Tom’s minions were no longer with him. Plenty of legal indiscretions, even if they didn’t venture down into the caverns and see what he had wrought there. But he didn’t panic. In the dim, flickering light of the basement, he even smiled, because he knew that they were too late. They had waited too long to act and now their time was past.

Without rush, savoring the moment, he walked up the basement stairs and into the room where the Lesser Keys waited. The daemons had warned him not to send Magda out first, not this time. He knew that he didn’t need to, that the time for reliance on her was past. He walked around, to each one in turn, and he whispered his instructions in their ears. From their cases, they drew their instruments, smooth and sure. In the main room, the last band’s final number drew to a close. In the relative quiet that followed the applause, the sound of sirens could be heard, a faint baying from afar. Heads cocked, ears pricked, but before anyone could make a move, Solomon King pushed open the door and the Lesser Keys took the stage one last time.

TURNAROUND

There was a growing edge of panic in the air of Solomon King’s Mine as the sound of the sirens drew gradually nearer, but all of it ceased when the lights above the stage burst into life. The growing susurrus of voices hushed and an eerie silence settled on the whole house. Everyone in the place strained to listen. The silence seemed to spread outward from the still figures on the little stage until it filled the room, blotting out the distant wailing from outside.

Caroline Bloom sat forward on her barstool, her hand straying unconsciously to the handle of the pistol in her purse. Jasper deWitt stopped leaning against the wall near the exit and turned his eyes to the stage, the matchstick that he’d been absently chewing dropping from his lips. Solomon King stood in the shadowy doorway behind the stage and watched as the ripple spread out across the club’s patrons. As one, like puppets all being drawn up by a single cord, the Lesser Keys raised their instruments to their lips, readied their strings for plucking, laid their fingers on the keys of the piano. Solomon King drew a line through the air with his hand and the first note was played. After that, everything changed.

***

No official police report was ever filed about the raid on Solomon King’s. Of those officers who survived the night, few ever spoke of it except when they had indulged in too much drink, or when they were confessing their sins to their priests, but none of them ever forgot it. How when their cars pulled up to the front doors, there was a flash of green light from behind every window, and when they kicked the doors down, it was as if the shadows inside the roadhouse had come to life. Unnatural things, figures with the heads of beasts, naked men astride crocodiles, things with too many limbs, all dragging the club’s patrons into the darkness in the corners. And everyone standing, staring, unable to move, hardly struggling as the terrible things laid hand or claw or hoof on them. And on the stage, the band playing on, limned in a green corposant.

The officers were part of the Pendergast machine and they came knowing that the raid wasn’t normal police business. The first ones through the door were armed with Tommy guns. When they saw what waited for them on the other side, most of them hesitated only a moment before opening fire. There wasn’t time for the music to enter them, to stop them and still them, before their bullets started ripping into the crowd.

Darnell Kent was one of the first officers to step into Solomon King’s that night. The next morning, he was dragged out of the charred wreckage of the roadhouse, badly burnt but still alive. What hair was left on his head had gone from red to completely white. He never spoke again, not about what he saw that night, nor about anything else. And even if he had, he wouldn’t have had the words to describe it. Somehow, the press and chaos of the interior of the roadhouse brought him closer to the stage than any other officer. Amid the hail of bullets and the roaring of flames from knocked-over oil lamps, he found himself staring up at the Lesser Keys, who still played in the midst of the chaos. Who played on, even though he had seen bullets tear into them, even though bullets punched through them even as he watched.

He heard their music then, over the roar and the clatter, and the world seemed to freeze, to slow down. He looked up past them, past the green fire that surrounded them, past the ceiling and the rooms on the second floor, past the roof of the house and the clouds overhead, past the night sky and the stars, into something deeper and darker and older than any cave. In the flashes of the muzzle blasts, in the flicker of the flames, he saw something moving there in that darkness and every thought he had ever had, every word he had ever known, fled his mind forever.

***

When the Lesser Keys began playing, it was as if a switch flipped. For most of the patrons of Solomon King’s Mine, time stopped. They could see individual motes of dust caught in the air, wisps of flame rising from the lamps. They felt as if they could see the notes of the music rising up around the players. Each of them was touched by the music in a way that they had never been touched before. They turned their eyes to the stage, mesmerized.

For Caroline Bloom and Jasper deWitt, the effect was different. A switch still flipped, but the result wasn’t a light going out but one coming on. In that moment, Jasper saw his entire life captured in a prism, a hundred tiny moments in which he had stayed his hand, done what he was told, been afraid. Caroline Bloom saw a hundred paths unwalked, a hundred lives set aside, a hundred desires unpursued. Each remembered, suddenly, why they had really come to Solomon King’s that night, not the reasons they would have given if they had been asked, but the real reason that had driven them. Each one of them turned eyes to the stage, not blind but newly opened, and they saw through the darkness and the smoke, and they learned the secret.

Jonathon Bloom stood on that stage, in white tuxedo and black bowtie. He had always been an indifferent trumpet player, but now he played with a sound that was beyond any human sound and Caroline saw that it was because he was beyond anything human. His eyes were glassy, his features gray. He was dead, though he walked and stood and played on. Stone dead, as was every man on that stage. Their fingers plucked the strings, danced across the keys. Their lungs worked like bellows to push air through the brass pipes. But they weren’t people, anymore; they were themselves an instrument, being played by unseen hands.

When the officers burst through the door, when the chatter of the Tommy guns began, Caroline and Jasper were already moving, already pushing past the frozen patrons toward the shadowy doorway behind the stage. They heard the doors come down, heard the gunfire start, heard the crackle of flames. They saw out of the corners of their eyes the hands coming out of the shadows, the devils come finally to drag the sinners down. But they both knew without having the words that something worse was waiting, so they didn’t turn back.

***

When the music started, Solomon King turned away from the stage and headed back to the basement stairs. His work up here was done, but there was still more to do. In the cavernous basement, all the noise from above was drowned, muffled. There was only a kind of echoing silence, the sound, he believed, of outer space, or something even further away. The music of the spheres. A humming that filled his bones, that reverberated through the rock itself, that reverberated through this whole miserable world and far beyond it into the dark. A hum that kept him from hearing the footsteps of the two figures that pursued him.

Jasper and Caroline met at the top of the basement stairs and they didn’t say a word to each other. One glance told them both that the other knew enough. Neither of them could really say why they walked down those stairs side-by-side. It was the end result of a lifetime of turning around, for one reason or another. Because they were afraid, because it was expected. At the head of those stairs, each one of them realized that they had a choice to make, that whatever lay at the bottom would change them forever, and they each chose to walk down.

If Solomon King had consulted the daemons that he had at his beck and call, they could have told him the names and the histories of the man and woman who faced him when he turned around. They could have looked into their hearts and told him what it was that brought them there that night. They could have shown him Jasper, sitting in the church and hearing something more than God in the music. They could have shown him Caroline, huddled around a candle reading ghost stories in bed. But Solomon King didn’t ask. He knew his enemies, or thought he did. When he saw the man and woman come down the stairs, the lady with a gun in her hand, he believed that the Order had sent agents to stop him.

“You’re too late,” he said, raising his arms in welcome. “You were born too late. My father made me the man I am today more than a hundred years ago and I unmade him. He taught me everything he knew and I fed his heart to the Devil. Do you think I’m afraid of your gun? Your masters are greedy tyrants who seek to insulate themselves with worldly power. I have seen farther than all of them. No bullet can kill me now.”

Caroline raised the gun, but she didn’t pull the trigger. Somehow, she knew that he wasn’t wrong. She could feel the heat draining out of the room, in spite of the fire from up above. She could feel the thrum of buried engines, feel the world turning, feel it hurtling through empty space. She knew that something was happening here that was bigger and stronger than bullets and guns, but still, she held it, because she had learned over the years to put her trust in steel and in her own aim, and because she didn’t know what else to do.

“The ring on his finger,” a voice said in Jasper’s ear. He didn’t have to turn his head to look to know that it was no human voice. In the sound of the words, he could see the face of an enormous owl, a crown on its head. “He took it from a man who took it from one of us. Without it, he’ll have no command over us.”

Jasper remembered his mother’s stories about the Devil, he remembered the preacher’s talk of fire and brimstone, but he also knew that there were worse things than devils in this world, and more than one way to damn yourself. “The ring,” he said to the woman beside him and she raised the gun without questioning him. Solomon King laughed. She pulled the trigger and two of his fingers were suddenly gone from his hand. A silver ring struck the cave floor with the sound of a bell, bounced once, and rolled into the oily black pool at the back of the room.

There was no more preamble. From every dark line etched in the floor, from every fold of shadow, figures stepped as if from doorways. A winged thing with the head of a deer, a naked woman astride a camel, a hunter surrounded by horns. They enveloped Solomon King like a flock of crows descending on carrion and then the cave was empty.

CLOSING TIME

Stories don’t ever have endings, not really. They never come together in a way that ties up everything; they never resolve. No wedding, no kiss, not even death ever stops things in their tracks completely. There’s no iris out, as in the moving picture theaters. Things just go on and some things never make sense. Some questions are never answered.

Solomon King’s Mine burned down that night. Dozens of bodies were found in the wreckage. Some were identified; some never were. Nine police officers died in the blaze and no one ever knew how many patrons. In the aftermath, a special detachment explored the catacombs that were found beneath the building. There, they uncovered all manner of strange things that were never reported, including a room full of oblong cabinets, in which reposed the preserved bodies of various well-known and influential individuals, among them Magda Gilman. The county coroner determined that most of the bodies had been dead for years, in spite of the fact that many of the individuals had been seen in recent months, out and about, and that Magda Gilman had been heard to perform in Solomon King’s Mine the night before. All the bodies were cremated and the reports disappeared.

Caroline Bloom and Jasper deWitt wandered out of a cave entrance nearly three miles away at half-past-four the following afternoon. They were never connected in any official way with the events at Solomon King’s Mine and neither one of them ever spoke of it, not even to one another. They never revealed what they talked about during their walk through the caves, but it was obvious that some kind of deep connection had been forged in a very short time. They left Kansas City together that night, in Caroline Bloom’s sedan. When Caroline returned home, she waited the requisite amount of time and then had her brother declared dead in absentia. She hired Jasper as her personal valet, though it was known among those close to her that he rarely did much in the way of work and that he often advised her in matters of business. She provided him a house of his own near the Bloom estate. He lived there for the rest of this life.

At first, he spent a lot of sleepless nights worrying about Gerald Tyson’s wrath, but that wrath never came. What Jasper didn’t know was that, on the very night that Solomon King’s burned down, Gerald Tyson awoke from a dream in a cold sweat. He dismissed his bodyguards, then killed his mistress with a shotgun and slit his own wrists. He left no explanation behind.

Jasper deWitt’s life improved in Caroline Bloom’s employ, but he never slept well again. He married eventually, had children and grandchildren, and got to watch them all grow up. He lived to be a very old man. But sometimes at night, he would dream. In his dreams, he would rise from his bed and look out the window. On the hilltop outside, he would see the figure of a huge owl with legs like a stork, and on its head was perched a crown. It stared at him with familiar golden eyes. When he walked out to meet it, he heard its voice in his ear again, as he had that night in the cave. It told him things that he was pretty sure people weren’t meant to know and he profited by them, but at the end of each dream, it would always say the same words to him. Though his life was rich and long, those words would never leave him.

“You will never be rid of us now.”

  

POMPTINIA SUM

A. D. CAHILL

I remember stones cracking, a hiss of cool air, choking yellow dust, and a sliver of blue sky. I remember a young soldier, emaciated, bone-white from fear. Crusted blood under his twisted Farina helmet. His eyes, dark hollows. His sweat, a sickly, hospital sweat. A shadow from another enshrouded him.

Gagging. “Holy Mother, the stench. How long?”

Couldn’t he see? But no, not length. He meant how much time. Fool. Meaningless question.

The other’s voice, deep, rustic, a voice with calluses. “Tell it we found it in the war. Call it a him. Give it wants. Give it desires. Wrap them around its emptiness.”

Whispers in my ear. “Battle of Cerna Bend.”

Thoughts. Buried under a forgotten farmhouse blasted to nothing in no-man’s land.

Hands on me.

Whispers. “Empty One. You are Leiano. Take what is yours. Grow. Blackshirts follow.”

Now there is dust again. Dust and a sliver of blue sky.

Diario Di Leiano

It is that time again, to don a new guise and move to the next feast. Mussolini spoils my exploits. There was a time when I could toss a few lire to some street urchins and have the prime minister himself followed, learn his schedule, gain entry to his apartment, and avail myself of his wife’s jewelry. Or, if I already had sufficient wealth, I could use it to avail myself of his wife. Every wife is someone else’s mistress. It’s the only way for the math to work. Yet, there are no more urchins. There are no more homeless, on the streets, anyway. The church is now a country unto itself. A deplorable state for a man such as myself, who makes a living off a wealthy man’s scraps. And where have all the wealthy gone? Young Blackshirts clubbed them into submission. The life is sucked from the country and replaced with the hard machinery of timetables, correctness, an all-must-be-thus and just-so-ness, which destroys everything succulent. I thought I might try England for a change, or France. What a time to be in Paris. But there are rumors of wondrous islands in the south. Places where old money lies in heaps guarded by wine-besotted sheep. The ocean is not the bulwark it once was. So, without coin, I’ll go south to the island, Pomptinia.

***

The ferry left from Naples. Naples, a glorious storm of chaos. A knife glint in a crooked alley. A maze of colorful laundry crisscrossing the air between sooty tenements. Dogs howling, people singing, dancing, drinking, fighting, fucking. But the jackboots marched there, too. No room for a man like me. But beyond the bay in the Tyrrhenian Sea—Pomptinia, a haven from poverty and Mussolini alike. The place called to me like no other.

A quick drubbing of bald head behind the taxi stand and according to my ticket and the contents of my new valise, I am one Professor Francesco di Milano. How easy to slough off the sobriquet Leiano and wriggle into the new skin. I am, after all, a chancer and I have never held fast to anything so ephemeral as a name. Aside from clothes, the valise contained a guidebook on local flora, a magnifying glass, and several works from classical antiquity. I now have a reservation at the Typhon, a fine sea-side hotel in the island’s largest town. I wiped the blood from my cane with a monogrammed handkerchief, then tossed the silk cloth off the pier. A pity to lose such a fine thing, but then again, you can’t miss what was never yours. Now let us see what kind of professor I shall be.

WE DO NOT TAKE THINGS LIGHTLY AT THE CASTLE

The ferry plowed the waters, slow and steady like oxen tilling the soil. It would be almost evening when they would arrive. The chancer hoped he wouldn’t miss dinner. He bought an espresso and the day’s Giornale del Sud at the bar, where he had a panoramic view of the deck and the metallic sea beyond. Heavy clouds rolled in from the Mediterranean. There would be rain. An inauspicious beginning: Non annuit coeptis. But of course, he made his own luck just as he made himself. God doesn’t concern himself with us. The proof lay in Cerna Bend. The usual headlines; saber rattling to the east, union unrest settled with fist and club, and any woman with thirteen or more children would win a Magna Mater award. The award didn’t come with any remuneration—presumably, thirteen children were their own reward. There was a little blurb about Pomptinia entitled: CARNIVAL, WHERE THE TEMPEST HOLDS NO SWAY.

The chancer was skimming the article when three deck hands in crisp blue uniforms came up from the lower deck. The first lifted a thin red rope blocking the crew staircase from the passengers. The other two struggled past with a water bucket and mops, slopping suds as they jostled each other. The first left the others behind, leaned back against the bar, and lighted a cigarette. He wrapped his knuckles on the bar and the bartender poured him a jigger of gin. He took a deep drag before downing the gin.

“Do it right this time, Marco. By God, if you leave a spot again, I swear I’ll ram that mop so far up your ass, the Roman whores will be able to see your shriveled, goat-shit balls dangling all the way from St. Peter’s.”

He took another puff. “The captain’s been gnawing at my sack like Satan’s own crabs since that Latium cow tourist broke her ankle.”

He wrapped the bar again and a second gin appeared. He watched while they scrubbed, drinking and idly twisting a gold ring on his finger. When they were finished, he inspected their work. He cuffed one in the back of the head.

“Dry it now, you bastards of bastards.”

He gave the chancer a wink. “You have to keep a tight rein on these idiots or they’ll run roughshod over you every time.”

In a few minutes, the tyrant and his hapless minions were done and gone, leaving in their wake fading curses and the bucket’s metallic clatter.

The chancer smoothed his hair and took stock. A few thousand lire left. Di Milano hadn’t been carrying enough on his person for an extended stay. For the valise, he thought he might get enough for one, perhaps two nights at the Typhon. If Professor di Milano had more baggage, it was either somewhere on the docks, soon to be in the hands of the port authority, or it was already on board.

He bought a bottle of icebox-chilled limoncello and tucked it in the deep pocket of his jacket. He creased the newspaper and tore strips from it, folding them into a thick rectangle. After wrapping a thousand note around the rectangle, he clipped the entire wad in his money clip. Two hours before arrival, he stepped over the rope, descended the stairs, and wandered through the ship looking for the prey with the golden ring.

In the smoky breakroom, the chancer found a low-stakes crap game—five men all laughing and, more importantly, drinking heavily. All were lean with wiry muscles, calloused hands, and, except for the shooter, wearing sweat-stained undershirts. Boiler men or some other functionaries of the ship’s underbelly. The shooter wore deckhand blues. Crouching, he rolled dice onto the floor from an empty peach tin. And—ah, yes—he was indeed the petty tyrant from the bar. A pile of cash and coins lay at his knees, but the chancer’s eyes were drawn to the golden glint on the shooter’s finger.

He watched the ebb and flow for a few minutes. Four to one, but the one always won, didn’t he? When the tyrant focused on the dice, the others rolled their eyes or made gagging gestures with their fingers in their mouths. One with a bit missing from his left earlobe feigned shooting himself in the head when the tyrant rolled yet another seven. Jealousy stokes anger’s flames in the brow-beaten. The chancer knocked on the metal bulkhead.

“Hey, I thought there was a real party somewhere.”

The five looked up from their game. The tyrant paused, the dice rattling in the tin. He unconsciously scooped the mound of wrinkled bills closer to his feet. “Passengers upstairs, Signore.”

“Professor, actually, but let it pass.”

He hyper-articulated his words, hamming up a northern accent. He crouched and clapped the tyrant’s back. “This is a new world, amico. Aren’t we all Italians here?”

“Your accent stinks of Florence, Professor.”

Ah, you speak and give yourself away. “Well, we can’t all be as articulate as Calabrian pig-fuckers.”

The others laughed. The tyrant pushed the chancer’s arm away, rose, and grabbed at his lapels, sending the dice skittering across the floor. “I’m from Pomptinia, you saint-sodomizing, whore-pounding—”

The chancer stepped back. “Peace.”

He pulled the limoncello from his coat, grinning his best I’m-just-shitting-you grin. “It would be a shame to waste this on only myself.”

Shot glasses appeared as if God had answered a prayer. He poured glass after glass, filling the cabin with the fragrance of the sweet lemon liqueur. He always poured to the four first, shorting the tyrant, just enough for him to notice. When the bottle was down to its last few yellow drops, and the smiles warm and soft all around, the chancer hitched a thumb at the tyrant.

“Is your man here always so lucky?”

The man with the missing earlobe said, “Madonna, Giovanni never loses. We check the dice now before we play. They’re always fine. For us—crappy.”

“You just don’t have the knack,” Giovanni said.

“Bah, we haven’t sold our souls.”

Giovanni’s slack gaze turned steely for a moment. The others stiffened. “What are you doing here, anyway, Professor?”

“Now that is a most profound question. To answer, I must first know who I am, where I am, and exactly why, given all the information there is to know in the universe, this being, this ‘me,’ is here. But, the banal reason is that I intended to win that cash for myself.”

He gestured at Giovanni’s winnings with an empty glass.

“Why not let him shoot?” Earlobe scooped the dice into the tin. “It’s a hundred to—”

“I mean to make a wager.”

The chancer waved the cup away, then pointed at Giovanni. “With you.”

“Oh, ho, ho,” Earlobe said. “He’s got it in for you, Giovanni. Can you handle it?”

Bless alcohol and this man. He does my work for me. A trickle of sweat ran down Giovanni’s forehead, past his eye, down his cheek. “What’s the bet?”

“The entire sum of money in front of you. If I lose, I’ll pay you an equal amount. You can double your winnings in a stroke.”

He pulled the money clip from his pocket, flashed it, and returned it. One of the men whistled. “Those were thousands, Giovanni.”

“What’s the game?”

“No game. If I can answer one question about you, you pay. I can tell you exactly where you got that ring.”

Giovanni held up his right hand.

“This ring?”

“That ring.”

“It’s one of a kind.”

“Is it, indeed? May I see it?”

“A Florentine fool and his money ....”

Giovanni gave him the ring—a golden millipede swallowing itself like Ouroboros. Along its spine ran the inscription: OMNIA QUAE CALCO SUM EGOMET. I am all I tread upon. The translation came effortlessly. Now where had he learned Latin?

“So, you accept?”

He tossed the ring back to Giovanni, who slipped it on his finger.

“By all the saints screwing in Heaven, I do.”

Everything now depended on that golden, lemon nectar and the resentment Giovanni garnered with every petty insult and cruel blow. The chancer closed his eyes, mimicking the parlor room channelers so popular among the credulous bourgeoisie. Then he let a smile spread across his face, warm as butter. “You got that ring on the ring finger of your right hand.”

Pause. Breath. Four heartbeats of silence followed, then the crew erupted in laughter. The chancer scooped the money from the floor as the other the crew clapped him on the back. “Ha. He got you there, Giovanni.”

Giovanni grabbed the chancer’s wrist. “That was bullshit.”

“Come on, Giovanni. He answered the question,” Earlobe said. “He outsmarted you, is all.”

Giovanni let go of the chancer’s wrist. He leaned over, bringing his lips to the chancer’s ear. “Easy now, Giovanni,” Earlobe said.

Spittle flecks flew from Giovanni’s mouth hitting the chancer’s ear. “We don’t take things lightly at the castle.”

The chancer daubed his ear with a handkerchief. “I don’t expect that you do. Good day, gentlemen.”

As he left, he dropped a 500 hundred note just where Earlobe could see it.

***

I remember the priest, a spider in his lair, a lure, a broken man. Layers of the onion. Peel them back. What do you find at the core?

ARE YOU HERE FOR CARNIVAL?

Diario Di Leiano

What a fool thing to say: We don’t take things lightly at the castle. And so, another petty tyrant falls and I have means to stay on the island for quite some time. Long enough, at least, to find another meal. What a place! Where one can make a living from the deckhands, think of the feast forthcoming. I salivate.

We disembarked and I saw Oz: a crescent bay where blue waters lapped the sand, three and four-story buildings painted in peach and soft yellows captured the setting sun, while up the mountain where sheep dotted terraced farms, brick walls of Roman ruins protruded from the ground, the broken bones of a splendid corpse. I strode through narrow streets and triangular piazzas, catching snatches of music from gramophones and street musicians, breathing in the heavy ocean air.

With my newfound resources, I dined al fresco under the shadow of the Castle Aragonese—an ancient fortress and medieval nunnery perched atop a massive, sea-split butte erupting from the sea. A causeway connects the butte to Pomptinia. My hotel lay across the causeway, opposite the castle. I planned on finishing my delightful meal early so I could sort out my room, but no sooner had I paid the waiter when I saw that cur Giovanni scuttle across the causeway. Although the sky threatened rain, I had an hour or so to explore before any real chance of getting wet. And explore is what I did, for I saw an interesting church on my perambulation, which I would much rather see than Giovanni. A strange church this Lacrima: an ancient domed, cruciform structure hewn from the greenish tufa unique to the Tyrrhenian. A terrace in the steep slope that runs down to the seaside shops formed the Lacrima’s foundation. The church’s red brick dome was topped with a listing cross on the verge of toppling into the street. This decrepitude didn’t make it strange, only forlorn. It was its place near the sea, the open doors inviting the waters hither to rest deep within the apse.

Entering it was entering a dream: The priest is cancrine and aged, a human barnacle clinging to the stones of the Lacrima. When I enter, he looks up from whatever he was doing at the altar, eyes gleaming in the candlelight. He scuttles down the aisle, both arms outstretched, grinning like a street vendor.

“Ah, you have come.”

He hugs me and kisses both my cheeks. His breath reeks of stale sacrament. I push him away, gently.

“Father, I think you mistake me.”

He rests his hands on my shoulders.

“No, I think not. You’re here for carnival.”

He looks troubled for a moment then releases me. “But no matter. All are welcome here.”

His response unnerves me. His senility, perhaps, for what is more unnerving than the loss of self?

“Professor Francesco di Milano, at your service. I was just strolling when I came up the church. I find it—”

“Alluring.”

I intended to say ‘interesting,’ but alluring was the exact word. He sits in a pew and gestures for me to join him. He takes a silver flask from his pocket and unscrews the cap. His expression becomes conspiratorial again.

“For some people, the right people, Professore, there are places on this island which are most alluring. This church, a few gardens, the castle.”

He proffers the flask. I decline. He shrugs and takes a deep swallow. There is something repulsive about this crabbed priest. His casual decadence despoils the island’s beauty, as if he believes he were fit for a grander parish than the most beautiful place on earth. “The eyes want always more,” he says, winking at me as if he’s about to slip a pornographic photo from a Psalter. Oh, yes, we’re such good chums you know what I’m thinking.

I don’t play his game.

“The Lacrima is short for something? Tears of Mary, or Christ, perhaps?”

“Oh, dear, no. What do they have to cry about, at peace among the Heavenly Host?” He pulls from the flask again, long and deep. “Many great beings have tears, Professor. Many great things know woe. Quo maior venter, eo fames.”

The greater the belly, the greater the hunger. My palms sweat. My hands tremble at my sides. I want to smash this little man. He fills me with cockroach loathing and terror. His sour-wine stink. His leer.

“There you are, John. Have you forgotten our date?” A sweet voice calls from the entrance. Saved by the bella. She is tall, thin, her features hidden in shadow by the light from the doors. The wind carries her jasmine perfume.

“Kate,” I say, “you found me at last. I must take my leave, father.”

He chuckles. “As you wish, John Professore Francesco di Milano.”

But then he looks sad, confused. His voice cracks.

“I don’t know you, do I? Are you here for carnival?”

I shake my head. He mutters, “My eyes are a vessel.”

I move to the entrance, but the woman is gone, leaving the faintest trace of honey in the air. I leave the priest to his bibulous natterings.

***

Outside, the bruised sky matched the white-capped sea. The wind flung warm sea spray over the causeway as I crossed. The hotel rose up the crag, rectangular buildings each five or six stories tall set inside the rocks like ancient pueblos of the American west. Walkways, catwalks and stairs connected the buildings. I was too exhausted to admire the cunning design, wanting only sleep as I walked up the whitewashed steps leading to the lobby. Yet, I needed to consider the next phase for improving my impoverishment. I forced myself to make a brief appearance in the main hall before retiring. On the balcony, I smoked a pipe I found in my jacket. Small talk with small minds. Pomptinia Porto lay dark now, but lamps, like a thousand yellow eyes, revealed the contours of buildings. Hmm. Strange turn of phrase, that. Some things just pop into the mind.

***

The rains came in that night, hot and sooty. The street hissed under the downpour. Downstairs, the drummer kicked a 5/4 rhythm and the saxophonist floated over the beat. The rain drowned out the other instruments, so I constructed the melody from the lacuna like an epigrapher musing over a burnt papyrus, creating a story from shredded passages. So it was I took stock and planned my mark.

I am now Professor—a title that admits me to the upper echelons without requiring I wear anything fancier than outdated suits to dinner and comical safari outfits as I roam the island “examining” the flora and fauna. I have dropped hints as to the exact nature of my profession, leaving the questions to be answered, for now, by my audience’s imagination. Is he a botanist, a philologist, a chemist? Certainly not an engineer. I want them to think me intelligent, but impractical, and somewhat bemused by life. An unimportant thinker—competent but harmless. Tomorrow will come the dinner invitations, the polite social tentacles reaching out to test me. Am I important? Should I be known? Who exactly is this Professore in Room 2B? But tonight is for sleeping. Let Nyx soothe my cares into slumber.

YOU HAVE TAKEN MY MEAL

The chancer closed the diary and turned the light down. He lay in bed for a time, but couldn’t sleep. He walked to the window, drawn by the rain and the rush of the rising waves. What a storm. The beach was engulfed. Waves exploded against the quay in spume. And beyond all this, rising against the horizon, stood the black weight of Castle Aragonese. In that fortress a single light shown. The chancer watched that light, hypnotized by its winking. Someone paced the room, periodically blocking the light. But really, how could he see a person from here? The fierce storm, the distance—at least a quarter mile—the darkness. Yet, his eyes saw the shadow eclipse the light in the window. He didn’t drink much. Bad for business. He could nurse a whiskey sour for an hour and make it seem like he was keeping up with the boys. But now he thirsted.

There was a complimentary—Ha! Nothing in this world is complementary—bottle of table wine on the nightstand. He popped the cork and filled a glass. For a time, he listened to the party below and considered going back to the diary, but he returned to the window. And there—yes, there—that vexing light and the figure crossing it.

Now he paced the room and wondered if his own movements were seen, in turn, by the figure above. Would it, too, wonder why it could see with such clarity? Did its pacing create a cryptic communication: flash, dark, long flash? He drank from the bottle now. What was he doing here, the whole country about to explode? He felt coerced, railroaded by Mussolini; by Fate; by the empty, cackling throng of humanity; by all those trillions of atoms, and, as Lucretius put, their capricious swerves. But there were riches here, too. Fat poltroons to be feasted on, where Mussolini’s tentacles didn’t reach, yet. The bottle empty. His mouth sour. Back at the window, the light still shone. Then dimmed. The figure had stopped and now stood at the window. Again, the chancer felt seen in turn. Before the castle, the lightning flashed once and the Aragonese crag shone pale as the moon. In that moment, the figure leapt from the window and fell into the ocean below.

Jigsaw images: the marble stairs, the open door, the wind and rain pelting his face, sloughing off his jacket and shoes, the sand sucking at his feet, sea water in his mouth. The water lifted him toward the crag as he paddled. His arms burned even through the gauze of alcohol. Beneath the window, he treaded water, thrashing whenever the swell brought him too close to the rocks. There was nothing there. Fool. Idiot. His strength ebbed as the ocean cold seeped in his bones.

There.

A dark X floating on the surface. He swam for it. The waves pushed him back. He swam again, swearing, spluttering, straining. He grabbed for it. The body lay face down, clothed in a black dress that spread in diaphanous fillets. He turned it over. A woman’s face, soft and bronze. Her eyes were closed. Her lips dark and sealed. A nun’s habit concealed her hair. He slid his arms under her shoulders and kicked towards the causeway. The water flung them into a narrow niche between two granite slabs. He wedged her upright, his own back pressed against a slab. Her flesh rubbery but still warm. He spat salt water and squeezed her jaw to pry open her lips. He sucked in a deep breath and put his lips to hers. His mouth closed on bone and rotten gums. The cloying, sweet stench of rancid meat filled his lungs. Her flesh melted away. The nun’s eyes were black holes filled with squirming worms. A bloated maggot wriggled into his mouth. He jerked back, tearing his lower lip on her teeth and bashing his head into the rock. Acidic vomit gushed from his mouth and nose. White prickles. Endless nausea. And as the chancer’s mind slumped into unconsciousness, a voice as deep as the Adriatic trench vibrated his bones: YOU HAVE TAKEN MY MEAL.

Diario Di Leiano

Whatever befell me last night has caused me great embarrassment. I must now play the bumbler—that type of professor. The innkeeper found me clutching the side of the causeway, mumbling in fevered delirium. I convalesced the whole day and my fever broke this evening. At least I’m blessed with physical fortitude. Fortunately, I kept the exact nature of my delusion to myself. The staff and, perhaps, the guests only know I attempted to rescue someone I thought was drowning. The hallucinations of bone and rot are for me alone. They look on me as a bibulous buffoon, but, and this is most important, a courageous buffoon. Something that I can play to my advantage. So now, I am the professor, the drunk, the selfless do-gooder. A mixture that excites both pity and (a little) admiration.

I am not, of course, and never have been a do-gooder. It bothers me equally that I should have such a hallucination and that I would heed it. I might save a friend but a suicidal stranger? No. That is not my wont. I could blame the wine. But I know the vision came before Bacchus. No matter. Now that I have my role, I can proceed in fleecing these golden lambs. I shall make a meal of them.

WINK. WINK. A SECOND CHANCER

In this hall of fetid corpses, I learned one thing. No one is what they seem.

***

The dining hall had ten round tables, a long bar, a dance floor, and a raised stage where a quintet warmed up. Lazy ceiling fans stirred the smoke rising from the barflies. The men at the tables, all older and rich as Croesus, wore dark suits and hats. The ones who pretended coolness wore pinstripes or jazz suits. The women wore evening gowns in dark-greens or black. Younger men hung around the bar and had the look of muscle, or maybe they were just the locals. They nursed wine and eyed the tables with watchful disdain. The chancer noted a few movers in industry, mostly Italian but, here and there, Germans, French and English. The English were a good mark with their love of antiquities, especially ones not their own. Yet, he felt a pull toward playing the botanist, his first opportunity. And then there was the art professor. Everyone loved, or loved to hate, the artist. Pleasure rippled along his spine. The world lay wide open. A few looked up to him when he entered. Ah, the story has spread. A Belgian diplomat stood when he arrived and clapped.

“The flounder hero,” he said, then smiled. “Come, a drink.”

The chancer let himself redden with good-natured embarrassment. He walked toward the man, planning to play the kind, bewildered Don Quixote. Well, I couldn’t be sure what I saw. But if I were right and someone were drowning, well, what choice did I have? Anyone would have done the same.

A woman in a black wrap, with her arm draped around a squat, heavy-set man in a wide, light suit, stepped in his path. She whispered something in the man’s ear and giggled. Her hair was black, short, American flapper style. Her almond-shaped eyes enhanced with liner. Around her neck, a choker with a teardrop amethyst, which her index finger caressed as she laughed. It niggled him that he hadn’t noticed them before. He must be more diligent. The fat man was ripe for plucking.

She unwrapped her arm from the shoulder of the pork-faced man. She offered it with a bend at the wrist. The chancer held it by the fingers. For a moment, he forgot he played the bungling professor and gave her a most alluring smile and bow of the head.

“Charmed, I’m sure, Miss—”

“Hey, Vick, the flounder is short two fingers of hooch,” she called to the bartender, before facing the chancer. “Rocks or neat, honey? You look like a neat sort of fellow.”

She winked. “Neat, Vick.”

She snapped her fingers and the bartender poured a single malt. “Now that I’m buying you a drink, how about a real moniker? Unless you want to be Dudley Flounder, or the indelible Mr. Shrimp, or … Sir Ravenous Shark?”

“The humble Francesco di Milano at your service, but truly, like everyone, I am no one.”

“You’re a real charmer, aren’t you?” She kissed her companion on a jowly cheek and in false sotto voce, said, “Run along now, Matteo, and keep our seats warm.”

The man frowned at the chancer, but obeyed nonetheless. As he walked away, her fingers drew a wallet from the man’s coat, slipping it into a pearl-studded clutch so smoothly the chancer wasn’t sure if he was meant to see it.

She nodded towards the bar. “All right, Like Everyone. Let’s see if you know how to treat a lady.”

The five-piece lit into Jumping Jelly Jazz. There was fine scotch in his hand, trouble with a Mona Lisa smile in front of him, and a world away, the Blackshirts roamed. Life was interesting. Let there be revelry.

Diario Di Leiano

Her name is Katarina Kullak, but she prefers Kate, for it is less “stuffy.”

When I saw her, I thought her Cleopatra. Is she the Kate I named in the Lacrima? Vincenzo, Kate’s “Vick,” poured a deliciously strong whiskey, but I exhibited self-control while plotting my next move. One was sufficient and no one noticed when I refreshed my glass with just enough water so the casual observer would think I drank a second or third round. One must keep up with the Joneses. Kate, however, is not a casual observer. She is far too astute, for at one point, she leaned over and said, “Have you sold Houdini that bottomless glass trick?”

Indeed, who is this Kate? In a crowd, she speaks like a gold-digger; to me, like one professional to another. But I overheard her speaking flawless French to an ambassador from Brussels. With me, always English. This is strange since I have spoken nothing but Italian to anyone on the island—with native fluency, I might add. Who knows? Perhaps I am Italian. Kate is overfamiliar, presumptuous and flirtatious, yet she cannot see through to the real me. How can she know what doesn’t exist? No, she has constructed an identity for me that matches my purposes—that is, she knows I’m a chancer. From this, she has cobbled together the persona for herself she presumes I most want to see, that of comrade in arms. Look, I, too, am a clever fleecer, therefore we must be friends. Wink. Wink.

For now, let that presumption play out. She has informed Colonel Matteo Balistreri that I am a botanist from Pisa. The audacity! She susses out one of my possible personas and clothes me with it before I can say otherwise. I, of course, wouldn’t have it and told the colonel she was mistaken. I am, in fact, a professor of classical antiquity with an interest in botany. This is difficult. Now I must brush up on the local lore, for Kate promised the guests I would give an impromptu lecture on Pomptinia’s Greek settlements. I am not stupid. I read the brochure about the island on the ferry. I said I would gladly speak about Nestor’s Cup, which a shepherd found in the Lacco Ameno community on the south side of the island. Kate stuck her lower lip out and frowned. Just for a moment. Only I saw it. She thought she could catch me out so easily. The Colonel was delighted, as I knew he would be, for Homer was the only poet who, “understood the glory of war.”

I agreed and mentioned, in an offhand way, the trouble the department was having with funding an expedition to Troy. He said we would talk after my lecture. Let the man dream of Achilles; I am Jason. Tomorrow, the three of us—myself, the drunken Colonel Balistreri, and Kate—will explore the Pithecusaeian Gardens and look for the rare, golden Puppet Cornel blooming this time of year. I shall apply some gentle persuasion. Ah, the prestige of sponsorship, dear Colonel. Isn’t it true great men leave their legacy in art and science? After a successful expedition to Troy, why not a wing in the Pisa academy with the name Balistreri? Has quite a ring, doesn’t it?

I pray I sleep well tonight. The rain patters the cobblestones and a gentle breeze lifts the curtains, but when I close my eyes, I see that horrid skull, taste those rotten lips, hear that awful voice. Life away from the mainland rapidly becomes strange.

THE PUPPET CORNEL

In the morning, Kate walked over to the chancer’s table while he sipped coffee. She was dressed for hiking in a white shirt and Jodhpurs that were tucked into knee-high boots. She looked over her shoulder, scanning the dining room before glaring at him. A busboy in perpetual Quasimodo stoop moved from table to table, raking in dishes.

“Listen. I’ve been buttering up that colonel for a week. You lay off your poor professor shtick or find a different mark.”

“Funny, but I remember you introducing me to him.”

“Yes, indeedy, I was staking my claim and showing you that I was smart. I thought you were, too. I even gave you an out. That ambassador from Brussels is a flower fanatic. I handed him to you with the botanist play.”

“No matter. There must be plenty of meat on the Colonel’s bones. Besides, do you think a broken chalice with a nearly forgotten Greek’s name trumps the flesh of the here and now?”

“The Flesh? Do you think I’m going to rut with that pig?” She lowered her face within an inch of the chancer’s. “Do you think I’m going to screw him, you bastard? I’m his goddamn long-lost third cousin.”

Last night, she’d giggled, laughed, touched her hair, and let her fingers trace her décolletage. He never got the idea she was playing the relative card with Matteo. “Ah, that is a problem. The relative versus the hobby. You should have gone with a closer relative—perhaps a niece—or you should have just gone for the pants.”

He savored an orange slice for a moment. “Third cousin ... not much pull, I’m afraid. A few good meals. A little money for school. You could visit him in Rome, maybe?”

“Maybe I could have his chums in Rome break your legs and leave you in a ditch.”

There was something about that phrase, “chums in Rome,” that sent prickles along his arms. He’d come to get away from Rome, from the malignant growth of men like the Colonel Balistreri. Memories of his life there were already just a dream and the Blackshirts never came to Pomptinia.

She was all smiles, looking over the chancer’s shoulder. “Matteo, we were just finishing breakfast.”

The Colonel heaved into view and plunked himself at the table. “I’m famished.”

He ordered kippers, coffee and a basket of cornetti, and didn’t speak until he wiped his face with his napkin. “Before you engage in any great foray, make sure you are well-fortified. We have quite a climb ahead of us to get to the gardens.”

He stood and dusted the crumbs from his trousers. “I took the liberty of ordering the kitchen to prepare us a lunch we can take. Shall we? I can’t wait to hear about the Cup of Nestor from an expert. I’ve been thinking about it all morning. Do you mind talking shop, Professor?”

“I welcome the opportunity, Colonel.”

“Splendid. Kate, be a dear and get the basket from the kitchen, would you?”

The chancer grinned at Kate—toodaloo. She clenched her teeth and stomped off.

“What’s eating her, Professor?”

“I haven’t the foggiest.”

The busboy arrived and began clearing the chancer’s plate. The man turned to him and winked. The tyrant Giovanni.

“Everything to your liking?” he asked the Colonel.

“The espresso was a bit overdone, but the kippers—”

“Everything was fine, young man. Now leave us until we are finished,” the chancer said.

“Until you’re finished, then,” Giovanni said and strode off without another word.

The chancer hid his hands under the table. They were shaking.

***

The day was still young when the chancer, Kate and the Colonel left the hotel for the gardens. They walked along narrow roads with high stone shoulders that dripped purple wisteria flowers. They climbed past terraced vineyards until Porto dwindled to a cluster of white-washed boxes along a sparkling blue sea. The Castle Aragonese rose in the sea on its island.

A few switchbacks below them, two men in gray suits and matching fedoras wended up the trail. One was ox-sized, the other lean and smoking. They had the look of authority from the mainland. One thing was for sure—farmers they were not. They took a branch off the main trail that led to a two-story farm house.

“Good eating at those farms. For a few notes, you can dine on braised rabbit, or, if you’re lucky, wild boar,” the Colonel said. His stomach growled.

“Don’t worry, fellas. I have you covered.”

Kate patted the wicker basket. “I had the kitchen add a little something special for my boys.”

A gate in a crumbling stone wall marked the opening to the garden. On either side of the gate, bronze statues of Pan played silent flutes. The garden was with thick with foliage and the scent of lemons. Several dirt paths twisted into the bushes. Birds filled the air with their calls, rustling the leaves as they flew from tree to tree. Kate picked a path at random and disappeared down its shadowy gullet.

The chancer and the Colonel struggled to catch her. They chased her shadow, swatting at branches whose nettles clung to their clothes and stung their flesh. Poison left swollen welts on their hands and cheeks. “Kate. Wait for us,” the chancer said. No answer. They took another fork. Then another. Each path narrower, veins to capillaries. His pulse throbbed in the welts.

“Kate.”

Matteo began wheezing, stopped in front of the chancer, and leaned over with his hands on his knees. “Kate!” His shout sent unseen animals skittering through the woods. The Colonel faced him. The man’s head was swelling. The skin on his face blistered then split into a raw red mass that splattered to the earth like wet cottage cheese. In his mouth his tongue blackened, grew, wriggled. His jaw cracked away. The freed tongue fell on the ground, rolling a moment before worming its way into the foliage. The chancer closed his eyes. Spider webs, brittle glass snowflakes, cartwheeled across a dark red sea. “You’re melting, Professor.”

Icy razor blades shredded his guts, clawed up his throat, down his bowls, ripping toward his anus. He writhed. Hands clawed. Toes gouged the earth. Face against the ground, biting the black dirt, swallowed by the underbrush.

In the shade of a flowering oleander, four succulent, golden petals spread, opening, closing like a starfish. The Puppet Cornel. He was vomiting.

Heavy hands grabbed his shoulders.

THE FAIRY MOST GREEN

A soldier. His Commander. A marble table. Espresso.

“God, is it really a person?”

“We’ve taught it so much. Yes. Why not?”

“Why not? Because … Because underneath it’s … I remember that stench.”

“It doesn’t smell, anymore. It looks quite handsome for bait.”

“Jesus, it looks just like a person.”

“Just like everyone else on the island. Watch it drink. Damn, it’s still using that appendage.”

It was the best espresso I ever tasted.

Diario Di Leiano

I awoke with an oceanic thirst, my body sweat-glued to the mattress; no water could fill this void. I downed warm water from the washbasin, drenching my chest, feeling the tissue in my mouth unglue and grow plump. Yesterday’s jaunt seemed as brittle as events I don’t recall from childhood, but were told until they became real. No, that’s just so you can understand. I have no memories from childhood; told to me or otherwise. Aside from the thirst, I felt fine, refreshed, my body hale, except for a bruise or two. Poison. Refuge of the weak, the cowardly, but also the intelligent. We must have been poisoned. The list of suspects is small: Kate, who has her mark, and Giovanni, who nurses his wounded pride. Did we eat the lunch? I can’t recall. Perhaps poison also explains my hallucination of the falling nun. Poisoned from the beginning. If that’s the case, the list of suspects narrows to one. One more thing, who carried us home? I need to put events together.

***

Kate has absconded with my colonel; I waited at the breakfast table for them in vain. As my espresso grew cold, I overheard the Belgian delegate remarking that the Colonel and his cousin—he sneered the word—were off on a tour of taverne that dot the shores of the nearby islands. I greeted the man on my way out.

Bonjour, good fellow. Yes, that was a fine rag we heard last night. I am quite recovered from my swim, thank you. Yes, I’ll be more careful and lay off the booze. I agree it is unbecoming. Excuse me, did you drop your wallet? Let me pick that up for you.

I left for the docks at once. On the way out, I passed a prominent notice: LECTURE TONIGHT. THE MYTHS OF ANCIENT POMPTINIA BY PROFESSORE FRANCESCO DI MILANO.

Curse Kate.

***

So many eyes. One mind.

***

It is strange, this feeling of pursuit; the eyes of the islanders upon me at every turn. The shepherd’s bovine gaze idly watching me stroll past his flock, the leers of some workers fixing a trellis that came down in the storm. Shopkeepers and stall vendors, too, all stared. I am new, a tourist, and presumably wealthy as the other denizens of the hotel, but this was an intrusion on my well-being. Where does the discomfort come from, me or them? I must still be worried about that pesky Giovanni, the horrors I witnessed. Giovanni. Did he poison me? My mind was on fire. I should take the money I have and leave on the next ferry. But—there is always a but; must I be of two minds about everything? If only there were two, it is more a myriad of choices that ensnare me—but there is the fat score.

The money for the non-existent Classics department—enough for an expedition, for a building! O, Colonel Balistreri, sirens come in every form, even nobodies from nowhere.

The boatman accepted franks readily. I unfolded bills from a roll slowly, dangling each one a moment between my thumb and fingers before handing it to the salivating swain. Thus, a lady removes her garments, enticing and promising more. He rented me a power boat. I told him I was interested in the quaint taverns fishermen use. He gave me directions to the closest one, the Sunken Grotto. I passed him another bill, wicked flirt that I am.

By the by, did you happen to rent to a short, middle-aged man and a young woman? Yes, she is lovely, isn’t she? And their boat? Hera. Fitting, indeed, isn’t it? And now, one more of these lovelies for you. Call it papier mâché, to seal your lips.

***

The engine buzzed and belched its oily stink. The prow lifted over the gentle waves and the dock shrank away like a fall in a dream. He approached a bone-colored, round-topped island that mushroomed from the shallows. A rickety pier, like a skeletal tongue, led to a small grotto. Inside stood a tavern with a short bar and four tables behind a knee-high railing. The wind wafted the scent of grilled sardines and garlic across the shimmering blue water. Already, there were boats gently bobbing in the waters at the pier—a fisherman’s day is done early; a rich man’s feast begins at dawn. He didn’t see the Hera. He swung the boat for another pass. There. Huddled at a small table, Kate and the Colonel with—what?— Giovanni and the priest.

He brought the boat in hard, smacking against the pier and cracking a board in a rowboat. In a bound, he was on the pier, shoving past a bald waiter, tipping a tray of gnocchi. He stood before them, gripping the table, shaking it, spilling water glasses. The colonel looked up, calamari dangling from his mouth. The chancer’s pulse throbbed in his ears. He released the table. Clenched his fists. The priest hunched over, fearful. Then he straightened, wearing a mask of practiced indifference. Kate rose, holding a glass of prosecco with strawberries, losing not a single drop. A cigarette drooped from her lips.

“Well who wudda thunk that a bloodhound could drive a boat?” She sipped the prosecco.

“Sleep well?” Giovanni asked.

The priest cackled.

“How long have you been together? What are you playing at?” The chancer’s cheeks burned.

The priest said, “Just chatting about the carnival. We were—”

Kate waved him to be quiet.

“Playing at? Together?” She grinned. “Brother, we’ve been together a long, long time.”

She dropped her glass. It shattered into a thousand stars. Then she pushed past the chancer. She flicked her cigarette into the water and leapt onto the railing. She turned back, smiled. “Viva il carnevale, Leiano.”

She stood for moment, arms stretched above her head, then dove into the sea. The chancer threw off his coat. He was at the railing looking down, but Kate was far out in water, a nearly invisible dot on the horizon trailing foam in a long, inverted V.

***

Colonel Balistreri was slapping him. “Get him some water, damn it.”

More slapping. “Professor, are you all right?”

He was slumped in a chair, face clammy with cold sweat. The bald waiter with a sauce-stained apron stood by Balistreri, shaking his head. A gaunt waitress cleaned broken dishes scattered around an overturned table. Someone handed him a grappa. It stripped the lining from his esophagus like turpentine stripping paint.

“How did she swim like that?”

“Who?” Balistreri ruffled his hair like he was a boy. “It’s all right, now.”

“Kate.”

“Kate? I haven’t seen her since the party.”

“You mean our walk.”

“We never went for a walk. You canceled as I recall.” He pursed his lips. “At least, I think you did.”

The gentle slap, slap of waves echoed through the grotto.

His breathing eased. His heart slowed. The chancer saw the concern in the Colonel’s face. He’d seen the look before. He’d given it a thousand times. It meant, “Pity” and “I want to keep away from you.”

It meant, “You’ll never see a dime if you don’t pull yourself together.”

Confession time. And now he’d have to play the alcoholic.

“Sorry, Colonel. As you can see, I have a problem. Bacchus, I’m afraid, has cursed me, like many scholars, poets, and artists with his divine attention.”

The man frowned, his jowls drooping. It wasn’t enough. Colonel Balistreri was used to many a drop, many a cigar. He wallowed in the gentle-but-perpetual buzz of the affluent.

“And … and the fairy most green.”

“I’m beginning to think that Pisa is not a safe place for my legacy, Professor.”

“I assure you, it is. Don’t let my peccadilloes dissuade you from the good you will bring to our country. The more we know of Rome, the quicker we can return to her glory.”

The Colonel’s face softened, gazing in reverie, some glorious battle from the days of Caesar. “I’m sympathetic, but ….”

“No. I understand. You have seen me at my worst. You deserve to see me at my best. Don’t decide until after my lecture this evening.”

Agree, you swollen ass. Agree.

Balistreri nodded.

***

As he left the Sunken Grotto, the weight of the witnesses’ eyes prickled at his nape. Yet another scandal for the Professor. Was it the third? No, the second? The second, if his journey to the garden had been a fever dream. So, was it last night he’d tried to rescue the drowning nun? He drove past a motorboat heading to the grotto. Two men in suits were aboard. The same two he’d seen on the switchback road on his way to the garden. The thin one watched him as he passed. How many days had he been here?

THE INTELLIGENT ORDER OF ALL EXISTENCE

Same soldiers. Same table.

“Damn thing’ll need looking after. At least ‘til feeding time.”

“Send the Stone to keep an eye on our investment. And someone else too. Someone who can say more than three words.”

“At least ‘til feeding time.”

Diario Di Leiano

The museum’s grimy hopper windows shed dim light through dust-mote air. Nestor’s Cup resides in a dingy glass case that serves also as a sepulcher for swollen bottle flies. The cup is the most pristine piece amongst potsherds and wood scraps that may or may not be handles, oars, or ship pieces. The immaculate vacuum was disturbed only by myself and the curator, Monte Pecoraro, who wore a uniform one size too small, though pressed and flawless. He opened the case for a pack of Lucky Strikes. There is a feeling one can get for an object’s value only through tactile examination. My fingers traced the Greek inscription, searching for its maker: a sailor who watched Troy burn, or a third-century peasant driven by wishful thinking, or a chancer. Even ancient objects have no core. Monte expected something from me. I ran my finger around the odd, grooved lip, playing my role: nodding, umming, occasionally tisking until I allowed a smile to spread across my face. It was hard not to wrinkle my nose. The jar—or the cabinet, maybe—had a feculent odor. A dead mouse somewhere nearby.

“See here.”

I pointed to a hairline crack along the length of a running, black figure. “This is genuine. We can never know if Nestor drank from this vessel, but, by God, it’s as old as Achilles. And so, Monte, let me ask what you know about the cup’s history. I’ve always found insightful locals often know more than what I’ve read in moldy old manuscripts.”

Monte, beaming with pride, clapped my back and offered me one of my own cigarettes. He spoke of Typhon cast into the Tyrrhenian by Zeus, of brave Ulysses, of the Roman Republic when Marius fled here from the bloody Sulla, of Tiberius’s pleasure palace on nearby Capri. Here, he studied my face and I detected the man’s resentment for the new authority in Rome. He spat the name ‘Tiberius.’ I committed everything to memory, excising the obvious tripe. I decided to press the advantage.

“When I publish, you can rest assured, Monte, that you’ll get the credit for showing me the exact crack on the cup that proves its origin.”

There was no reason for this display, but one must immerse oneself in the role. Kate might stop by, just to see if I’d been here. Monte frowned a little, and pulled on his cigarette. “You are a genuine fellow, Professor. How long will you be staying with us?”

“Oh, quite some time, perhaps much of the August holiday. The carnival beckons.”

“No. Spend your time in Naples. Pomptinia is too hot and everything will be closed in a few days.”

“The island agrees with me. A man can say whatever he wishes here, without the Blackshirts taking notes. I can breathe. This is the best place in all the world: sun, water, carnival.”

I took a chance on the man’s sympathies for the opportunity to flatter his home. Flatter the land; flatter the man. But Monte shook his head. “There is not much here. After a few days of sun and water, you’ll want to return to the mainland.”

“Well, perhaps you’re right.”

I know when not to push an issue. Bend and agree is a commandment in the trade.

He placed his hand on mine, a surprisingly intimate gesture. “Professor, this island has eyes, too. A thousand hungry eyes.”

He removed his hand, laughed a little. “Just don’t get involved in any local dramas.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t dream of it.”

A thousand hungry eyes, a phrase that brought that decayed face filled with worms to mind. However, what could he mean by it but that the locals envy the tourists? I won’t begrudge them their envy of those swollen ticks that live in the hotel. I’m here for the same reason. Still, something about that phrase sounded a warning deep in my guts. I set the cup back in its case—ugh, the smell—and noticed a black-and-white print on the adjacent wall: Pomptinia in the style of Piranesi’s Roman etchings. Gone were the 20th century buildings—whole neighborhoods vanished. The cozy communities near the sea, various ruins dotting the idyllic landscape, only the Lacrima and the castle remained. People wandered the countryside, so cunningly etched that with the aid of magnifying glass, I was sure to see their faces. The print included various Renaissance flourishes: in the corners Zephyr, Notus, Boreas, and Eurus drawn as puffy-cheeked clouds blowing across the island. Finally, under the water in the bay, lay a massive, sleeping face with chalky-gray lips, pursed and swollen charcoal cheeks. Words cleverly written in the foam read: SUPER FRONTEM EX FRONTE. Upon its brow, from its brow.

I pointed to the picture. “Is this Typhon?”

Monte frowned at the drawing. “We have some inferior works here. You must understand, Professor, how hard it is to fill an entire museum for the glorification of Nestor’s cup. This is a poor example of l’art pour l’art, I’m afraid.

“The artist lived here many years ago, before tourism was our life. He wandered the mountain, explored the ruins. He lodged at the Lacrima and even went to the Castle Aragonese, where the convent was opened to him. He had connections, some son of an official in Naples. He made etchings and prints of all the major sites of Italy. A morbid man. After making some handful of drawings, he climbed to the castle and threw himself off the cliff.”

The guard made a falling motion with this hand. “Splash. Gone. Finito.”

“Still, he was of no mean talent.”

“Squandered potential wasted on trivial subjects and fantasies.”

“What is the title of the work?”

“Pomptinia Sum. It was the last in a series called Emanations From The Intelligent Order Of All Existence.”

I am Pomptinia. Strange. Even an inanimate object knows itself better than I do, claiming with such boldness who it is. Then again, it was a label imposed by the artist and so are we all defined, by others.

“Could I buy this trivial work from the collection? On behalf of the University, of course.”

The guard looked taken aback. “Buy? Are you suggesting walking away with it?”

“Not without permission, remuneration befitting the work’s value, and the imposition placed on yourself.”

“If I open my palm and you drop in some coins, you can take whatever you wish, except for the cup and that print.”

“You said it was insignificant.”

“It is, but it does not belong to me.”

“Neither does anything else here.”

He held up his hand to stay my objection. “It belongs to the priest of Lacrima and he, for one, would notice its absence. Take it up with him.”

Now I was plagued with revulsion and longing. The priest, his loathsome, clammy aspect, his broken mind. But the print was his. I wanted to snatch it away immediately. To take something valuable from him would be a deep, luxurious pleasure, like denying last rites to the man who murdered your wife. I shivered. My desire must have shown. “I can let him know you are interested, Professor. But I doubt you’ll hear from him.”

“Let’s hope not,” I said under my breath. I ignored the curator’s raised eyebrow. Some things must remain a mystery.

***

The stifling air wraps me in wet wool. Through the slit, I see her profile, her slender neck, the glint of amethyst. She flips her hair and smiles at me, lifts her hand and waggles her fingers: Toodaloo. The smile widens, spreads across her cheeks until it reaches her ears. It splits into hundreds of pointed teeth dripping saliva. The fingers waggle again: Toodaloo.

A BONE TATTOO

Diario Di Leiano

Those who work for a higher purpose are often deluded, for they chase empty ideals. “Purpose” is an illusion and “higher” is its shadow. For this reality has no purpose other than what we ourselves decided. Since there is no “we ourselves,” our desires are phantoms. And yet, there are things I want. Oh, yes, so many things.

***

Success. His lecture went as well as he could have hoped. He spouted everything Monte had told him, adding a few choice quotes from the dog-eared copy of Horace the real professor had been carrying. If that insufferable Belgian hadn’t asked him about the Odyssey’s third book, he wouldn’t have sweated at all. But he avoided the question, deriding the fool.

Odyssey? Third Book? Sir, only the insipid read Homer in books, since that artificial convention hails from the Byzantines.

Laughter. Sporadic applause. See how we love to join in mockery, even if we don’t understand the context. The chastened Belgian reddened, his question unanswered. Donations would soon flow in. He already had two checks. And after what the Colonel had given him, by God, now he could finally live. Every nerve buzzed in electric anticipation. After dinner, as dancing started, the chancer left the ballroom.

He’d stuffed a small cushion under his vest to emulate fullness. It was always good to let the revelry ensue for an hour or two before making more requests; alcohol unlocks the purse strings. In the meantime, he’d walk the promenade and survey the sea. As he followed the walkway’s gentle curve, the castle appeared, as he knew it would. And perhaps, if he looked closely at his motives, the real reason he’d chosen to leave the festivities was to get another glimpse of the fortress. If he looked at it long enough, he’d realize it was just stone. Brick and stone. Phantoms didn’t leap from the parapets; voices didn’t threaten from the sea.

Returning to the scene of trauma. How pedestrian.

A man, hunched against the wind, his coat drawn over his face, walked towards him. He nodded a greeting as the man passed. The man’s fist shot out, caught him in the guts. He doubled over, retching, stomach clenched. From above, a jeer. “We don’t take things lightly at the castle.”

Fire in his ribs. Again. White-hot fire. Again. Again. He rolled on his back. This time, Giovanni’s boot only glanced him. He twisted and kicked his heel into the man’s shin. A shock went from his foot up his shin into his thigh, like kicking steel. With a snick, a silver line sprouted in Giovanni’s hand. “And now we make an end.”

Arms wrapped Giovanni in a full nelson, forcing his head down. Four men. One with a blackjack clubbed the back of Giovanni’s head. Giovanni reared back, smashed the nose of the man holding him. The blackjack went up and down with methodic, mechanical rhythm. The others added fists and feet to the bone tattoo. A flailing Giovanni was finally held, a man to an arm, and dragged into the shadows cursing, spluttering. “You’ve taken our meal.”

One of the two remaining men reached out a calloused hand. The chancer took it, groaning, playing up the need for aid.

I’m a beaten, middle-aged man.

A lit cigarette was shoved into his hand. He made sure it shook.

The chancer couldn’t place these men, but then realized he’d seen them from afar: once on the trail to the garden, once passing by on a boat. But those things surely hadn’t really happened. The men wore twin pinstripes. One had a rectangular, Jack Dempsey build. The other was thinner and smoked. His cigarette’s glow danced like an addled firefly when he spoke. “Don’t worry about that bastard communist. They’re all communist bastards here.”

The chancer rubbed his ribs, bruised certainly, but he’d had much, much worse.”Thank you, gentlemen. I’d better get back to my room.”

“Just a second, friend,” said the smoker. The smoker held out his hand. The chancer shook it. “Ernesto Albani. The Titan is Signore Petrus.”

The chancer let the odd name pass. “Professor Francesco di Milano. What can I do for you, gentlemen?”

“You got it backwards. It’s what we can do for you.”

Ernesto nodded to his partner. Petrus moved behind the chancer. Instinct kicked in and he sidled a step to his left. Petrus followed so naturally, the professional shadow. They continued the step dance until the chancer led them to the balcony’s railing. He played the game well, let himself appear to be bullied onto the overlook.

Ernesto held out both hands, fingers spread wide. We’re all friends here.

“We can tell you’re an outsider and it’s a shame, being an outsider in your own country. Illustrious men, such as yourselves, should be able to walk around without being molested by half-barbarous peasants, don’t you think?”

Illustrious.

Was that ironic?

Did you watch me on the ferry from Naples? See me on the docks?

If someone mentioned certain events preceding his boarding the ferry, someone might have a precipitous fall. Someone other than he.

“Petrus and me, we’re real Italians, if you know what I mean. Mind my asking if you’ve been to Rome recently?”

Ah, that sort of question. Relief. He leaned toward the smoker, using his superior height. Now he was the intimidator. “I witnessed a parade. I didn’t wear a shirt, but I waved a flag. I’m a patriot, sirs. As is Mussolini. And I don’t care who knows it.”

The last was a tad too thick, but it proved efficacious. The tension eased from their postures. “We think alike. Great minds and all that.”

“We saw you talking to that guy on the boat.”

Ernesto hitched a thumb towards the black shadows where his thugs had dragged Giovanni. He opened his jacket and pulled out a wrinkled, communist flyer.

“You know he hands this manure out all around Naples?”

The flyer showed Pomptinia’s mountain, Castle Aragonese foremost. Escape Hardship. Breath Free in Fellowship. There is always a Feast in the Castle.

“We can’t have this populist garbage,” Ernesto said.

The chancer nodded without commenting on Mussolini’s own populism. As Horace wrote: Change the name and the story is yours.

“We can’t have havens within havens, places where the rules don’t apply,” Ernesto said.

“Agreed. One Italy.”

“Exactly. So, why is it that on this island, people thumb their noses at the rest, sitting in decadence while their brethren suffer? No more. We are here to do something about that.”

“Pave the way,” said Petrus with a voice five fathoms deep.

“Stick with us, Signore. The Blackshirts are coming. Tomorrow’s ferry will be filled with sympathizers. In the meantime, we want you to help us—”

“—pave the way,” said the chancer.

Ernesto patted his cheek. “A quick study. So, go. Hobnob. Make sure the guests feel the same as us.”

“As we.”

“What?”

“Nothing. I’ll help. I can already tell you the Belgian diplomat will be a problem.”

“Done,” said Ermesto, who nodded at Petrus. Petrus the Glacier nodded in turn. And so, it was done. “One more thing, amico. I’ve been authorized to tell you a secret.”

“What’s that, then?”

“Me and Petrus. We’ve known you. We’ve known you forever.”

WE ARE ALL UNDER CONTROL

I remember a gray-haired man in a crisp black uniform with golden epaulettes. He held by the tail a bloated, dripping monkfish, its gray flesh clammy and rubbery. Its angle dangled like a limp phallus.

“Look at this. It feeds by deceit.”

The man flicked the angle.

“It draws you in. Beauty, people, sun, trees—they are angles. It has angled for people long before a blind man named the wine-dark sea.”

He drops it on the concrete. Its rotten body busts, spilling guts. Stench.

“It is empty, without mind, forever hungry for minds to give it thoughts. Emptiness is a toxin it cannot consume.”

He kicks the fish with a polished black boot, splattering me with gore.

“It’s just like you … only older.”

I wanted to ask why the fish had so many fingers.

Diario Di Leiano

And now I am a spy. Glorious days to be so many things and still unmoving within, a tornado. And speaking of tornados, there was quite a commotion in the dining hall the next morning. Kate and I were breakfasting. Yes, Kate, sitting next to me as if the last two days never happened. She has not once mentioned the garden or the grotto. I dropped hints but not even an eyebrow raised. Either they are my own nightmares, probably, or—but what of it? I’ll be leaving tomorrow with enough money to ride out the coming storm. I was enjoying a buttered croissant with the most delightful espresso when someone from the kitchen staff burst into the room and ran from waiter to waiter, whispering to each one. My waiter, who had just returned with a full creamer, dropped his tray when he heard the news and shouted, “Bastards!” He ran from the room, along with the rest of the staff. The guests followed. I gathered a few lire—nothing to speak of—from the empty tables before following.

In the piazza, tied to a metal stake hammered through the cobblestones, slumped Giovanni. His hair was slick with castor oil. Face bruised. Nose broken. Eye black. Two men were already at his side, one cutting the bonds with a fish knife, the other holding his head, trying to soothe him. Giovanni groaned and shook his head, slowly, like a man in disbelief, spreading a greasy sea anemone across the chest of the man helping him. Then he bucked. His dislodged benefactor stood back. Giovanni groaned again. His head lurched back, spattering the piazza with fat drops of oil. Then, with a great retch, the man vomited oil. A seemingly endless stream poured from his guts, darkening his brown trousers to black. And in this vile eructation writhed hundreds of glistening, creamy maggots. The Belgian swore. “Barbarians.”

He was pale. Sweat silvered his forehead. “I found this in my pocket.” He held a sheet of hotel stationary: LOOK TO THE PIAZZA. THUS TO ALL ENEMIES. The Fascists, I told him. It was a message for those who were inimical toward Mussolini’s control.

Kate’s response was cryptic but perhaps true: We are all under control.

I won’t stay for carnival.

MY GOD, AM I THAT ALONE?

I’m in a cell, but once, I was in a car, blindfolded. The road jolted. The Engine whined. Talking:

“We cannot go there, yet.”

“We go where we want.”

“Not yet. It protects. It owns.”

“We try my way first.”

“And after they die, then we try mine.”

Someone patted my hand.

***

Diario Di Leiano

The day passed as days do. I wasn’t in the mood to fleece and flense. Those Roman thugs saved me from a beating by Giovanni, but if anyone saw, if they told anyone, I would be marked as a Blackshirt. But the thugs were bringing friends. Order was coming to Pomptinia. It was time to leave. I made the rounds.

Wonderful lecture. I can’t believe you’re leaving before carnival. A true pleasure. I wish we could do more.

I gathered my cash, collected checks, and handed out a Pisian address from those who had promised to forward the money. I had my valise sent to the docks. I avoided Kate and the Colonel. Kate for fear. The Colonel for that deliciousness a seducer feels after a conquest, as he slinks from the bedroom, never to see his lover again. I felt nothing towards Giovanni, but something in his treatment aroused general pity. No, not pity, the petty tyrant got what he deserved. Even some Pomptinians said as much. Am I not the man I was just a few days ago? Why should I care? I wanted solitude, to be alone with my many and burgeoning selves until they quieted and left me with just me. I stood at the coastline watching for the ferry. The sea was high. The port authorities said the ferry would be late. I walked the island’s circumference, followed only by the castle’s windows. I needed to watch the water, to will the ferry here by my desire.

That evening, I dined in a splendid dockside trattoria, while the shadows played across the sea. The water’s depth, the deep cobalt of the volcanic rock under the sea, the sinking sun’s bloody light on the waves—these all caused the illusion of an inky stain spreading under the water, a negative of cream poured in coffee. On the horizon, a thin tendril of smoke rose from the approaching ferry.

The fish was lightly fried and served with zucchini flowers stuffed with mozzarella. I deboned the fish and savored each morsel, letting the salty flesh dissolve on my tongue. It is not wrong to live for pleasure, I thought, and renewed my vow to increase my coffers. I would reach into everyone I met, and take and take and take. Hunger is a jealous god. It comes for us every day, again and again until we eat no more. Every role we play, every action we undertake, all done to appease this bloated, unholy beast. I held a morsel of fish on my fork. The golden oil glistened on the perfect crust. The rewards for appeasing this god were great.

I ordered another bottle of wine. I said I do not drink much, but to every rule an exception. For every job, a night off. Tomorrow, new lands to plunder. Glasses clinked, people laughed, accordions played. I sank into the luxurious buzz of the conversations around me, the bliss of white noise and solitary company. The ferry approached like an old peddler trudging forever uphill. More Blackshirts coming, true, but doubtless, there would also be new guests with deliciously full pockets during carnival. Warmth flushed my cheeks. Should I stay? I could stay. I could grow. Out with the old, in with the new. Bring forth the fattened calf.

The ferry made its lazy turn to back into the docks. As it left the blue waters and crossed the ink-stain blot, the entire boat shuddered. A metallic clang. Fire shot from the smokestacks. The music played on. Shattering glass. Twisting steel’s banshee groan. The food was served.

Black, tendril-like fingers folded the boat, stern to aft, crumpling it like trash.

Laughter. Under the water, lights from the ship flickered for a moment then went out. The hand was gone. Gulls screeched. I won’t speak of the four-limbed sticks thrashing in that stain before they disappeared into a gaping maw. No one saw this? Another layer from my onionskin pulled back. A hand, a grotesque tangle of tree-roots pulled a boat into the sea. I was the only one who saw it. Impossible.

“My God!” I shouted, “My God!”

A few people turned to look at me, then went back to their dinner, shaking their heads.

It’s that mad professor. What does he see in the ocean now?

I threw some lire on the table. Someone must have seen this. The others at the hotel. The guests. I am not alone. I am not alone. Then a blessing. As I left, I saw an old fisherman on the pier cross himself. But that was all. Did he really see it, too, or was he warding off my reaction? My God, am I that alone?

***

I fell at once into the doorman.

“The ferry. The ferry is gone.”

He sniffed my breath, put his arms on my shoulders with the gentle touch reserved for children.

“The weather was bad, Professor. The ferry won’t arrive until tomorrow. Or perhaps after the carnival, if the sea continues her rough play. Come, we still have your room.”

The sea was calm.

“No, I saw it. The hand. The mouth.”

He led me to the bar and poured a grappa.

“Drink this. You’ve been out all day, Professor.”

“All day.”

I echoed his words as if they explained everything. All problems, hallucinations, the pitiful cries of the four-limbed sticks, were the products of being out “all day.”

I took the drink to my room. Sleep. Nightmares.

CARNIVAL

Diario Di Leiano

On the desk, next to the customary water pitcher, lay a three-foot-long cardboard tube and a magnifying glass. I opened the tube and a sheet of paper slid out. There was also a scroll, rolled and bound with a red thread. The paper read: Before the hour of contemplation, you should know certain things. Thus, the experience is enhanced, the feast is well-seasoned.

There wasn’t a signature, but I knew the author. I unrolled the scroll, pinning the corners down with a few books. Pomptinia Sum.

The print fascinated me as before: the quay, the town, the ivy growing over the crumbling ruins, the minuscule people. I saw hints of sublime detail. The morning light shone golden over the professor’s magnifying glass, illuminating the ever-falling dust motes in the air above it. I didn’t want to take it. Oh, how I wanted to take it. A voice, a force deep within—without?—urged me to pick up the glass. I am no saint, but I know the calling: Tolle! Vide! So, I took and I looked. Under the glass, I could see the veins in the ivy leaves, the crumbling holes in the mortar, and the look on each and every person’s face, but the impossible artistic skill was second to my disquiet. I live by my guts, for in my head, I am no one. My guts tightened. I recognized some faces. I’d seen them in town, or on my perambulations around the island. Not relatives, not descendants, the same faces. From the feet of these modern persons from centuries ago, roots—no wider than a hair’s breadth even under the glass—sank into the ground. These tangled, ganglion roots entwined everything on Pomptinia and led inexorably to the sea beneath the castle. More figures. By the church, the priest. And Kate, too, wearing a rustic, loose-sleeved blouse. In a window of the hotel, back turned, sat a figure on this very floor, in this very room. A chill ran through me, but the figure didn’t turn and who knows truly the back of one’s own head. Hallucinations. Visions. Madness. I shall stay outside today, near the sea to wait for the ferry. I will be the first aboard. Until then, in numbers, there is safety from madness.

***

The first day of carnival and the piazza before the Lacrima exploded with color and sound. Strings of red-and-yellow flags hanging in loose parabolas between the buildings coruscated in the sunlight. Children lapped dripping gelato, while their parents munched suppli, fresh and hot. The citizens pushed the fruit stands and fish stalls to the side for the street performers. Harlequins juggled. A fire breather blasted dragon breath into the sky. I made my way from pocket to pocket, sidling closer to a Punch and Judy show. I bought hot, sugar-dusted pecans served in a paper cone, redistributing the new wealth as best I could. The puppet show was the typical proto-vaudevillian farce of gleeful, stick-smacking violence appreciated by children and dictators alike. To one side of the puppet booth stood a line of four players dressed as nuns, their downcast faces veiled with white cloth. Oversized stage manacles linked their legs together. A cardboard sign read: LE SUORE TRISTI. The red letters still dripped. Some carnivalesque farce, but I didn’t recognize the motif.

I watched, transfixed, until someone jostled my shoulder. My hands patted my pockets—it takes one to know one—and I saw the loathsome priest standing at my side. He’d crawled from his church like a snail leaving its shell.

“The oldest entertainment,” he said, nodding towards the puppets as Judy slapped Punch across the face with a paddle.

“I think you’re barred from the oldest entertainment, Father.”

“Before Venus, there is Bacchus. And before the needs of the stomach, something must die, even if the stomach consumes itself.”

He licked his fingers and helped himself to some pecans, spreading the top layer with his saliva. I pulled the cone away spilling the pecans. Vertigo touched me. I felt sick and profoundly cold. “You look pale, John Professore Francisco. Come sit in the church.”

He put his hand on my arm. A visceral repulsion sent bile into my throat.

“I think I’ll watch the show.”

His words wormed into my brain. I couldn’t shake the nausea. Punch and Judy bobbed up and down, and I wondered about the hands that thrust into their guts, held them aloft, lent them life’s verisimilitude. The hands that led to one head, one brain, divided against itself for its own entertainment. And the thought grew. Thousands of hands stretched on the puppeteer’s wriggling arms, finding their way under the cobble stones and thrust up into the children, their parents, the priest. Everyone on the island, sprouting, lifeless rags jiggled by one ancient mind putting on a show.

A final blow. Punch collapsed. The curtains swished shut. Punch and Judy reappeared. A great round of applause—puppets cheering for their own performance. The puppeteer revealed himself and took a bow. Giovanni. He marked me with his eyes.

“And now let the sad nuns ascend the castle,” he said, sweeping his arm towards the players.

“Oh, goody,” the priest whispered, “Let’s get some fruit.”

The vertigo consumed me. Something in my vision twists. No sooner has he spoken than the air erupts with apples, lemons and bananas. Children and adults pelt the players, who crouch and twist as best they can to take the blows on their backs. Now and then, an egg cracks against them. The crowd cheers. Giovanni produces his paddle from the puppet show and smacks the nuns. Muffled cries rise from behind the veils as the superfluity shuffles towards the causeway. A rock hits a player. She stumbles, clutching her head, where a wet stain spreads across the habit.

“Got her.”

The priest grins. “A perfect shot.”

The priest lifts to throw again, clenching a jagged brick. I stay his arm, but the old man is surprisingly strong and he shakes free. His body goes rigid, as if iron rods underlie his bones, then he shoves me. I sprawl back, arms windmilling, until I crash into some farmers behind us. My chest burns where his palm struck me. The farmers cast me aside and I lie gasping on the ground mouthing “why” until sweet air floods my lungs.

“Tenderizer,” he says over his shoulder and throws the brick.

The crowd fires more stones. Giovanni keeps the chain gang moving, goading them with paddle blows as the missiles bounce around them.

I follow behind, grimacing as white fire lances across my ribs. When it reaches the causeway, the mob stops. The players, clothing torn and bloodied, are prodded along until they reach the other side and disappear into the waiting gate of the castle’s lowest staircase. The people disperse; their rigid features slacken. They wander away in twos or threes, plodding back to the piazza like somnambulists. The storm has passed. The priest crouches on the shoreline. He holds his head in his hands, lowers them, and looks in my direction. He weeps freely.

***

The hotel is chaos. I’m not the only one scuffed and bruised. The Belgian holds a napkin with crushed ice over a purple eye. An Englishman’s arm hangs in a makeshift sling, swollen fingers dangling like dead sausage. The staff urges everyone back to their rooms while the Colonel shouts for them to send for the Neapolitan Carabinieri. The Roman thugs themselves are nowhere to be found. And Kate, Kate has attached herself to the Colonel, rubbing his shoulders, soothing him, schmoozing him. It seems so staged, every actor in place, a tableau of horror, just for me. I retreat to my room. Pomptinia Sum is conspicuous by its absence from the nightstand. My mind has fallen apart. I contemplate the morning events. Why did I stop the priest? What had I truly witnessed? The players are nothing to me. I presume they chose to take part in the pageant. Indeed, for all I know, it is an honor to play the sad nun. But the guests. They were attacked, too. Plan B. I shall remain in this room until the ferry comes.

There is shouting from below. Running upstairs. Footsteps approach.

***

The chancer clutched his cane and stood to the side of the door. The handle jiggled once. Then, with a great crack, the door burst open.

The chancer smacked the first face he saw across the nose. Four others stepped over their writhing comrade. His cane rose and fell, rammed guts, burst an eye, but they had his arms in moments. He kicked and flailed until a heavy-set gunsel worked his ribs and head over with a club. Giovanni’s face leered over his. “Well-seasoned. The castle awaits.”

SOMEONE AT LAST

The room is rectangular. The walls are a yellowish stone with brown splotches the color of tobacco-stained teeth. A stone bench projecting from the wall wraps around the room. Every foot and a half, there is a hole in the bench, beneath which rests a jar. The jars’ rims cup the holes like the mouths of hungry eels. Above each jar slumps a carnival nun. An iron door seals the room. A narrow slit in the wall admits a shaft of yellow sunlight that falls across the slack nuns. Dark, inkblot stains turn a crusty brown on the white veils. I, too, sit on the bench, immobile. Beneath me, there must be a jar. On the third day of entombment, I am astounded at the noise of the flies. I spend the morning trying to tease out the buzz from a single fly. It is like teasing out a single thought from the endless stream that makes up the mind.

***

A shadow crosses the shaft of light. In the slit, the priest appears, grinning. His face beaded with sweat. His eyes bulge.

“And here you will be cured of your delusions.”

The face shifts and bits of other faces appear and fade beneath the skin, outlines pressed in latex. Faces of the islanders; faces I know.

“And once cured ....”

He licks his lips. “You’re going to be a tasty treat. No, you’ll be the main course. Those others are just an aperitif.”

He grows silent and is content to leer at me with his bulbous eyes and lurid grin.

***

The light softens. The room is sweltering, a sauna heat. My sweat runs down my back, into the crevice of my buttocks and finally drips into the jar. All my liquid makes its way there, the air too humid to take any more moisture into itself. My face is scratchy with salt crystals. Across from me, the others shrink, sluicing drop by drop into the jars. The light grows dark, returns in molten gold, recedes into its little death, returns.

***

Flies.

***

A habit falls away to reveal the lolling head of Petrus. His tongue protrudes, thick and black.

***

At twilight, the room shudders. Things snake beneath the floor, reach under the jars, slide them aside. There is a succulent noise. The room shakes; the walls tilt like a storm-tossed ship’s. The corpses across from me dance in their seats, arms rise and fall, legs kick out, heads twist and cock, puppets to whatever thing lifts them from below. Another moist slurp. The corpses fall slack. The jars slide back. The room settles. I was victim to a perverse, mistaken point of view. The room never shook.

***

I am finally stripped away, the core of the onion. I remember only a general and his words to Mussolini: “A nothing man such as this will do nicely.”

***

Hands drag us to the cliff. Below, the water roils. Beneath the whitecaps, a great maw opens and the roaring ocean falls past a billion hungry teeth, one for every star. Behold the face of a Titan, of God. The sluice jars are emptied like slop buckets into the ravenous emptiness. Tongues lap the water. “Down you go.”

The other bodies are tipped into the sea and the great island feeds.

“And now the pièce de résistance.”

Weightless bliss, then cement. The maw closes. The beast feeds. But I am the void. In me, there is no sustenance. I am a poison. Minds are grist for the puppet procession, but I was reconstituted from my grave, empty and ravenous. The ocean heaves. I am spat out on the rocks, a gob of phlegm. I slide down towards the sea where a great thing starves and dies. Perhaps there is room for me now to grow. For a time, the island is free. For a time. A ship approaches, thronging with soldiers. At last, they may come. Blackshirts.

THE AUTHORS

Jennifer Brozek is an award winning editor, game designer, and author.

Winner of the Australian Shadows Award for best edited publication, Jennifer has edited fourteen anthologies, with more on the way. Author of In a Gilded Light, The Lady of Seeking in the City of Waiting, Industry Talk, and the Karen Wilson Chronicles, she has more than sixty published short stories and is the Creative Director of Apocalypse Ink Productions.

Jennifer also is a freelance author for numerous RPG companies. Winner of both the Origins and the ENnie award, her contributions to RPG sourcebooks include Dragonlance, Colonial Gothic, Shadowrun, Serenity, Savage Worlds, and White Wolf SAS. Jennifer is the author of the YA Battletech novel, The Nellus Academy Incident. She has also written for the AAA MMO Aion and the award winning videogame, Shadowrun Returns.

When she is not writing her heart out, she is gallivanting around the Pacific Northwest in its wonderfully mercurial weather. Jennifer is an active member of SFWA, HWA, and IAMTW. Read more about her at www.jenniferbrozek.com or follow her on Twitter at @JenniferBrozek.

***

Orrin Grey is a writer, editor, amateur film scholar, and monster expert who was born on the night before Halloween. His infatuation with monsters informs most of what he does, from his fiction—which has been collected in Never Bet the Devil & Other Warnings and Painted Monsters & Other Strange Beasts (coming in 2015 from Word Horde)—to his nonfiction work covering subjects ranging from monster comics to the films of John Carpenter. He also co-edited Fungi, an anthology of weird fungal stories with Silvia Moreno-Garcia, and regularly writes licensed work for Privateer Press, makers of Warmachine and Hordes.

Orrin lives in the Kansas City area, which has shown up in several of his stories, though never as heavily as in “The Lesser Keys.” He had a lot of fun researching the history of the “Paris of the Plains” and if you see him at a convention sometime, ask him about the bits that didn’t make it into the story. In the meantime, you can find him online at orringrey.com.

***

A.D. Cahill knows enough about everything to annoy his friends but not enough about one thing to get a job. Did he get a BS in English because he loves science or because he wanted to say he had a BS in English? Yes. He’s lived under the northern lights where the crystal moon hangs like golden frost on the outré black. He’s watched the Abashiri ice flows carry seals to Hokkaido’s shores. He’s delved the mysteries of ancient Pithecusae and other Mediterranean isles. He’s taught English in Japan, Norwegian in Iowa, and Latin in Florida. His work has appeared in Dog Oil Press, Innsmouth Free Press and Future Lovecraft. Stop by adcahill.com or find him on Facebook.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Dreams of a Thousand Young

The Lesser Keys

Pomptinia Sum

The Authors