The Feaster From The Stars (Blackwood and Harrington) (15 page)

Castaigne hesitated, and Blackwood noted that the blood seemed to have drained from the occultist’s face, while a dark and pensive frown crept across his brow.
What’s up with the fellow?
he wondered, glancing at Cuthbert Fforbes-Maclellan, who merely offered him a small shrug.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ Castaigne continued, ‘I beg your forgiveness, for this is not easy for me to talk about – and yet talk about it I must, to the only people in the country who will believe me, and who will take heed of the warning I bring tonight.’

A warning?
thought Blackwood.
A warning about Carcosa?

‘I am certain that you came to this gathering with the expectation of hearing of the new wonders I have encountered during my latest travels,’ the occultist said with a great sigh. ‘And while it is true that I
have
seen much to wonder at, I have seen a great deal more to make the heart tremble – the very
soul
, in fact!

‘To begin with, allow me to reacquaint you with Carcosa. It is a world which orbits not one sun, but two, in the group of stars known by astronomers on Earth as the Hyades. Its parent stars form a binary system known as Theta Tauri and are more than nine hundred trillion miles from Earth – an unthinkable distance, to be sure, but one which, as I hope to demonstrate to you this evening, is in reality as insignificant as the distance between each of you and your neighbours.

‘Theta Tauri are ancient stars, of far greater age than our own Sun, and Carcosa is therefore an equally ancient world. It is mentioned occasionally in some of the less reputable of humanity’s myth cycles, and has even made an appearance in modern literature. Those of you who are familiar with the work of that admirable curmudgeon Mr Ambrose Bierce will be aware that he could not resist penning a fragment, in which he hints at Carcosa actually being an ancient city on Earth, but that was only because even that great disliker of humanity could not bring himself to utter the truth: that Carcosa is in reality an entire world drifting through the dark depths of space, and that it contains secrets that no sane man or woman would do well to contemplate.’

Castaigne paused to pour himself a glass of water from a small jug which had been placed on the lectern for him. Blackwood leaned forward in his seat, fascinated. As he waited for the occultist to continue, he mused briefly that it was a shame Sophia could not be present, and then all thoughts of her and their unfortunate disagreement left him as Castaigne continued.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, I have come here this evening to tell you of the last journey I made to Carcosa and of what I learned there. It was just a few days ago that I made the usual preparations for the voyage and then lay upon my bed while my consciousness made ready to leave my physical body behind.

‘I closed my eyes, and almost immediately became aware once again of my surroundings, with the eyeless sight of the unfettered mind. I rose from my body towards the ceiling of my bedroom and then
through
it and upwards through the roof of my house and into the boundless sky above.

‘Unencumbered by physicality, my mind soared away from the Earth, leaving our beautiful blue-green world far behind and plunging into the star-strewn void of the Luminiferous Æther. According to the means by which I am able to induce my mental travels, I found the route to the Hyades with great swiftness and felicity and passed across the countless leagues of space as easily as one passes from one room of a house to another.

‘I watched the flight of the stars in rapture, for you may believe that one never gets used to the vastness and ineffable splendour of this universe of ours. Like fireflies in the darkest night they hurtled past me – or rather,
I
hurtled past
them
, on and on through the great Æther, overwhelmed by my contemplation of the vast spray of light which extended in every direction, on and on into eternity beyond eternity.

‘And then, presently, I came to my destination: the giant twin suns of Theta Tauri, smouldering baleful in the infinite night, seething and muttering in their unthinkable age, and there beside them, Carcosa, with its four strange moons, which do not behave as moons should.

‘I entered the atmosphere and descended towards the great Lake of Hali, vast and mysterious, whose surface is covered with the clouds which break like waves upon its shores, where stand the last of Carcosa’s cities, Alar, Hastur and Yhtill, and I watched the moons rise
in front of
the cities’ towers, for those moons are bound by no physical law which pertains to the ordered cosmos.

‘I swept across the surface of Hali, not daring to contemplate what lay beneath, towards Yhtill, the largest city, while above me the stars shone blackly in the dead grey sky and the mad moons circled, at once far away and near. I rode the cloud waves as they surged towards Yhtill’s vast ramparts, which are featureless and windowless, for no one who lives in the last cities of Carcosa ever looks willingly upon the Lake of Hali.

‘And as I flew on, I noted a curious difference in the quality of the lake’s surface. It roiled and bubbled in a way I had never seen before, as though some great and powerful disturbance were occurring far below in its profoundest depths. That roiling and bubbling terrified me, and I increased the speed of my flight so that I might leave the lake and its secrets behind as quickly as possible.

‘As the cloud waves broke upon the ancient stone walls, I flew over them and down into the streets of Yhtill, where I wandered among the cheerless, ragged people, unseen, my existence unsuspected, and I listened to what they said, as I have always done in the past. I have visited Carcosa on many occasions, and over time have managed to learn a great deal of their language, but it was not their words which first alerted me to the fact that something was amiss: it was the expressions on their faces. Every man, woman and child I encountered in the streets of Yhtill looked…
terrified
.

‘For many hours I wandered amongst the people of Yhtill, through the city’s winding streets, into houses and to the tops of its windowless towers, eavesdropping on conversations, trying to uncover some clue to the cause of this new terror which had augmented their general despair. Eventually, I discovered it. “The time of his emergence is approaching,” they said. “He is preparing to come out of the lake, and when he does, our final doom will be upon us. The lake can no longer contain him. It knows that he is preparing to leave his castle and wishes to be rid of him. He will emerge soon, and all who look upon him will die!”

‘For many hours I lingered in Yhtill, listening to the words of its people, and from their conversations I was able to piece together the facts about the King in Yellow and the final doom which now hovers like a carrion bird over the ruined world of Carcosa. Indeed, that doom is not theirs alone, but ours also, for when the King in Yellow emerges from the Lake of Hali, the Earth will fall beneath his power just as surely as Carcosa!’

Sophia drew in her breath and tightened her grip on the razor as the bathroom door began to swing open.

And then, without warning, there was a great whirring and flapping, and something began to bang loudly and repeatedly against one of the tall sash windows in the suite’s sitting room. Sophia heard it clearly and nearly dropped the razor in her surprise.

‘What the devil’s that?’ cried one of the intruders.

Sophia could hear the window rattling in its frame under the onslaught. So loud was the banging that she thought it must surely shatter.

‘What
is
that?’ the man repeated.

‘I don’t know, and I don’t
want
to know,’ his accomplice replied. ‘Hang this. Come on, let’s get out of here!’

‘But…’

‘Come
on!
’

As the great flapping and whirring continued, the intruders fled the suite, slamming the door behind them. As soon as they had done so, the mysterious cacophony ceased as abruptly as it had begun.

Sophia could feel her heart thumping in her chest in counterpoint to her laboured panting. Even in her terror and confusion, however, she realised that the noise must have been noticed, that at this very moment people were almost certainly rushing to investigate.

She dropped the razor in the sink, threw open the bathroom door and rushed into the sitting room. Sparing only the briefest glance at the windows, which were now still and silent, she moved swiftly to the suite’s outer door, opened it a crack, and peered into the corridor outside.

It was empty, but she could hear voices approaching, and so she slipped out and headed quickly for the nearest stairwell. As she walked, she thrust a hand in her pocket, to make certain that the ampoule containing the Taduki drug was still there…

Blackwood regarded Simon Castaigne, taking in his drawn features, his wild eyes and furrowed brow, and tried to decide whether the man was raving mad. He was reluctant to consider him so, for he had seen the effects produced on weak minds which had delved too deeply into the mysteries of the occult, and he had little doubt that Castaigne’s mental faculties were both powerful and entirely intact.

Castaigne took another sip of water, his hand trembling very slightly, and continued, ‘Who or what is the King in Yellow? Let me be completely honest with you, my friends: he is the very embodiment of evil, its distillation and personification. Where his origin lies, I cannot say; perhaps it lies in the ultimate, uncharted gulfs of the Æther, or perhaps it lies beyond the bounds of our universe, in a dimension whose very existence is unknown and unsuspected by Earthly science. What I do know, from my many visits to Carcosa, is that he came to that unhappy world in the distant past, a blight from the nethermost reaches of space and time, a living nightmare from the ultimate Æther which infected the world with its hideous alienness.

‘For centuries, the King in Yellow has ruled over Carcosa, feeding on his living subjects in atrocious and unfathomable ways, his form undiscernable save for the seething mass of tattered yellow in which he clothes himself, his true face forever hidden behind the terrible mask he wears.

‘And throughout those long centuries, Carcosa has writhed beneath the Yellow Sign; the stars have turned black in the sky, and its moons have gone insane; its parent suns have withered, while the Hyades sing mournfully in the infinite night.

‘Thus in ages long past did Queen Cassilda compose her singular lines:

Along the shore the cloud waves break,

The twin suns sink beneath the lake,

The shadows lengthen

In Carcosa.

Strange is the night where black stars rise,

And strange moons circle through the skies

But stranger still is

Lost Carcosa.

Songs that the Hyades shall sing,

Where flap the tatters of the King,

Must die unheard in

Dim Carcosa.

Song of my soul, my voice is dead;

Die thou, unsung, as tears unshed

Shall dry and die in

Lost Carcosa.

‘Strange lines indeed, and I believe that a similarly strange and terrible fate awaits the Earth, once the King in Yellow has emerged from his castle at the bottom of the Lake of Hali. If that is allowed to happen, then he will travel to the Earth, and our world and Carcosa will become twins in despair and doom!’

A loud murmur of shock and consternation spread through the audience. Cuthbert Fforbes-Maclellan rose to his feet and said, ‘But how do you know this, Dr Castaigne? And why does the King in Yellow have our own world in his sights?’

Castaigne’s gaze fell upon the Worshipful Master as he replied, ‘I know because I have watched the cloud waves roil upon the waters of Hali, indicating a great disturbance in the depths of the lake. And I have heard the people of Carcosa affrightedly whispering that the King in Yellow is about to emerge, releasing himself from his vast and horrible castle on the lakebed.’

‘And what about the Earth?’ said Fforbes-Maclellan. ‘What interest could such a creature have in our world?’

‘For a detailed answer to
that
question, Worshipful Master,’ replied Castaigne, ‘you would have to ask Mr Charles Exeter.’

Another murmur spread through the audience, but this one was louder, more confused and, Blackwood noted, more indignant.

‘Charles Exeter?’ repeated Fforbes-Maclellan. ‘The railway magnate?’

‘The same,’ Castaigne nodded. ‘I have been paying close attention to Mr Exeter’s activities for some time now… ever since I was alerted to his existence by an acquaintance of mine, who is a collector and dealer in antiquarian books. My acquaintance told me that Mr Exeter had purchased from him a fantastically rare book written in the sixteenth century by the great mathematician and occultist Dr John Dee. The book’s full title is
A True and Faithful Relation of What Passed for Some Considerable Time Between Dr John Dee and the Planetary Angels of the Distant World of Carcosa
; however, it is more commonly known as the
Carcosa Fragments
.’

In spite of his own surprise, Blackwood couldn’t help but smile at the uproar this latest revelation caused amongst Castaigne’s audience. The man certainly knew how to work a crowd, and if he were telling the truth, then his theatricality was more than justified. He was undoubtedly correct when he described the
Carcosa Fragments
as ‘fantastically rare’: it was a record of the astral visions described by Dee’s assistant, the scryer Edward Kelley, who claimed to have visited the distant world in non-corporeal form and conversed with Carcosa’s Planetary Angels, beings which were comparable to the faeries of Earth.