The Book of Cthulhu 2

The Hands That Reek and Smoke

W. H. Pugmire

I.

Lisa came to me on that fateful night of revelation, her purple hair as wild as her intoxicated eyes. Her pixy face had lost is usual mirth. She was dead serious. “You must see Nyarlathotep,” she panted, refusing the chair that I had offered her, preferring to pace the wooden floor instead. One hand clutched a canvas that was covered with a sheet of cloth.

“It amazes me,” I answered, “that hair as short as yours can look so disarrayed.”

“Screw the hair,” she shot back, at the same time running a gloved hand through the unruly mess. “You’ve been moaning for months about your inability to write. I tell you, go see Nyarlathotep, and he will drench your dreams with wondrous vision.”

I blew air. “I doubt that the parlor tricks of some cult figure will inspire new work from my dead pen. No new Lord of Disillusion can save me. Stephen was here, too, yakking about this bloke of yours. Seems he’s arrived three months ago to set up in some building downtown. No, I have no need of tricks.”

“You know, it’s really stupid the way you allow your cynicism to keep you cooped up in this depressing little apartment. Things are happening, can’t you feel it?”

“I feel only this intolerable heat wave. Such appalling weather for mid-October. Autumn is my favorite time of year; it heralds absolutely the death of torturous summer, that wretched period when ugly human apes strip off their gaudy attire and shriek to cancerous sun. How you can wear such thick gloves when it’s so hot quite bewilders me.”

How oddly she smiled as she placed one hand before her face and gazed at it as if in rapture. As she did so I noticed two curious things. First, the gloves that encased her hands were not composed of cloth but rather of some fine mesh of metal. Second, with the movement of her hand there came a wave of smell, a scent not unlike the festering of dead lilies. I watched as she silently stared at her gloved hand, and something in her expression unnerved me. I jabbered on. “I’ve not been able to sleep because of this diabolic heat. When I am able to catch a few winks I have monstrous dreams, horrid visions that soak my sheets and shake me out of slumber.”

She looked at me with her serious face. “He will make you dream,” she sang. “You would find your muse again if you knelt before him.”

“Oh, please. You speak of this freak as if he were a god.”

“By god, he could be! He looks supernal, with his golden eyes and scarlet robes. I worship him.”

“Great Jesu, you’re worse than little Stephen. But, no. I fear I’m far too old and faded for such radical wonder as you hint of.”

She looked like she would spit at me. “You see, you do that all the time. Using your age as an excuse to be a boring little shut-in. You could be the poet you once were! He will show you the way!”

“Enough!” I shouted. “You’ve gone on long enough about bold new vision and great creative guts. Stop your mouth and show me this new thing that you’ve done, if that’s what you think will induce me to rush in fevered pitch to kiss this Narlywhosit’s hand. Show me,” I told her, indicating her canvas.

Lisa set the canvas onto the floor and let it lean against a chair. Deeply inhaling, she placed her hands together in a semblance of prayer. With the movement of her hands there came again the peculiar odor, one that did not inspire my lips to smile. Expecting her to remove the gloves, I frowned in perplexity when she did not. Pulling my desk chair out, she placed the covered canvas on it so that the sheeted work sat upright. Irritated with her theatrical manner, I yawned in feigned ennui. She took no notice of me, choosing rather to place her face into her gloved hands and rock to and fro as her mouth hummed an odd melody.

“First,” she whispered, “tell me what you know of Nyarlathotep.”

I spat air, annoyed. “Very well. What did little Stephen tell me? Let me rack my brain.” Delicately, I touched hand to brow. I, too, can be dramatic. “This Messiah with the preposterous name came to our city in middle or late June. He has rented the old lecture hall where the J. Duds used to hold meetings. It is claimed that this Nyarlathotep has crawled through the blackness of several centuries to our modern age, and thus we see proven that the more outlandish a cult leader’s claims the more anxious are fools to follow him. I’m told they do follow—in droves.”

I watched as Lisa stopped her swaying as she listened to my reply. She continued to clasp her face with those gloved hands, and I looked at their strange material, which queerly caught the light of my little room. “I’m told,” I continued, “that he won’t allow his image to be photographed or his voice to be recorded. Early on some friend of Stephen’s smuggled a recording device into a lecture, but when the tape was played back all they could hear was a weird variety of buzzing sounds. You remember Stephen’s pal, the boy who recently disappeared?”

“I remember,” her low voice answered.

Really, her odd attitude was too much. I spoke with more frivolity, in a voice that mocked. “It seems this darkie is a splendid showman and works a multiplicity of mechanical geegaws with which he spellbinds the rabble. Funny, how little Stevie shuddered when he mentioned these devices. Like you, he urged me to go and witness this fantastic creature. I declined then, as I do now. The only beast I choose to worship is myself.”

Lisa’s hands fell from her face. “What a lonely veneration yours must be. You’re so full of empty talk. But I remember a dim and distant time when you spoke beautifully, when you penned exquisite verse.”

I sighed sadly. “Dim and distant indeed.”

“Look, Hyrum, I know what it’s like to lose energy and vision—it sucks. But you can regain yours. As I have recovered and cultivated mine. Look at how Nyarlathotep has inspired me!”

Summarily, she pulled the sheet from the canvas. I shouted in shock and outrage. Lisa’s wonderful work had always been delightfully inventive and filled with color, in the tradition of Gorky. I was thus expecting a work of multi-hued genius. Instead, I was confronted with a vile composition of filthy soot and fuzzy ink and wash, with here and there a bruise of blue and purple. The scene was a gargantuan ruins set deep within a riotous growth of jungle. Standing among the debris of antiquity was a shrouded figure that wore no face, yet by its stance seemed haughty and implacable. The entire scene unnerved me. I knew not the origin of the ruins, for they were nothing I had known in history or art. Oh, yes, it was original, this vision, but not one that I could embrace or applaud. I hated it absolutely, and yet I could not turn my eyes away. The image beguiled as much as it appalled. My senses were stunned by the aspect of age that Lisa had been able to evoke. But what a horrid medium for she who had once been so clever with color! Quavering with emotion, I turned to the witch.

“This is your new achievement?” Oh, how I wailed. “This sorry depiction of a dead and haunted past?”

How oddly she smiled. “My dear Hyrum, this is a vision of the dead and haunted future.”

I gagged with choked fury. My emotions seethed. “Really, this is too utterly nauseating. Please, do cover the wretched thing. I’m sorry to be so blunt, but you have shocked me.” She made no movement, and although I turned my face away, my eyes slid inexorably to the painted surface. “And what in the blessed name of all the gods is that supposed to be? You’ve not given the silly creature a face!”

“The faceless god wears no visage.”

I could not refrain from shuddering. Muttering profanely, I reached for the sheet of cloth and tossed it over the canvas; yet even as I did so my eyes ached to look again upon the painted surface. My companion smiled in eerie triumph. I rose and paced the wooded floor. “I simply do not understand why you should surrender your wonderful sense of vibrant color and sensuous line to replace them with ink and wash and whatever the hell else this new medium is. The thing lacks life. It is naught but a concoction of blur and blotch. What did you use, an old bath sponge?”

Ye gods, her peculiar smile! “I used my fingers.” She grabbed hold of me and stopped my movement. One gloved hand stroked my cheek. Great Saturn, what was that monstrous stench? It was a stink of decay, yet tainted with some fragrance the likes of which I had never inhaled. It revolted and enthralled, like her painting. “I used these fingers that he has kissed.” One metallic finger smoothed my eye. I watched as she slowly removed the glove that touched my face. Horrified at the nefarious sight, I cried and fell into the nearest chair. I cowered from her hand. But, oh, I longed to feel its touch upon my brow. The pale mists of smoke that spilled from the tiny wounds and bruises were the origin of the unholy stench. She bent to me, and I pretended to cover my eyes. What could have caused such mutation in hands that had once been so lovely? How could fingers become so disfigured? What could cause them to become so flattened, their tips so erased?

She removed the other glove. “These hands that he has sanctified.”

“No…no…” Yet even as I whimpered I reached for one of her smoky hands and brought it to my lips. It tasted of nightmare. The nauseating smoke plunged into my nostrils and found my brain, which it teased ruthlessly with esoteric shape and shadow. I curled my nails into her transformed flesh. Lisa hissed with pain and drew her hands away. With cloudy sight I saw her indistinctly. I beheld the fuming appendages that bled from where I had clutched them, saw them slide into their outré gloves. I watched as they reached for the sheeted painting.

“New vision requires radical treatment. This is the sacrosanct gift with which I have been blessed. Perhaps you lack backbone and prefer to sit here and quiver in your impotent existence. So be it. But, oh, I remember a time when your world was filled with magnificent language and stunning vision. You could find that world anew.” Her words were like needles in my brain. Weakly, I tried to rise from the chair, only to slip from it to the floor. Blinking streaming liquid from my eyes, I crawled to where she stood. My fingers found her shoes. I reached for but could not find her hands, the palsied flesh of which I ached to kiss.

Cool breath bathed my ear. “You must see Nyarlathotep. He is wonderful, and dreadful. He will show you prophecies of the cold bleak abysses between the stars, where dead gods fumble in dream-infested slumber. The great ones were. They are. They shall be.”

A hot tongue licked my lobe. I listened as she sucked in breath, then jolted as she uttered unearthly howling. Instantly afterward, I was alone.

II.

Thus it was in that hot October that I ventured forth one night in pursuit of Nyarlathotep. As I crept along the silent sidewalks, I passed certain individuals who looked at me queerly and askance. I sensed that they had been to see this foreigner from an alien land. How anxious they seemed to speak to me, and yet how timid and hesitant they looked, peering at me in silence as I passed them by. I came at last to the lecture hall and gaped at the throngs of lingering rabble. They leaned against the building and sat on the curbing; they congregated near the threshold that led to a narrow stairway. One man was especially fidgety. I watched as he snatched at his hair and muttered lowly. I watched as he rushed into an alley and disappeared from view, and I shivered at the sound of anguished howling that issued from that alley. The noise sent a quiver of emotion through the crowd.

Pushing through the horde at the threshold I climbed the silent stairway. From somewhere above I could hear low fluted music. I walked down a dimly lit hallway that led to the double doors of a lecture room wherein I would confront the alien. The piping of discordant music came from behind the closed doors, and my old flesh prickled at its sound. Shutting my eyes, I leaned my forehead against one of the doors, pushing it open. With eyes still shut, I stumbled into the room. I could smell the candlelight. My eyelids opened.

He stood on a slightly raised platform, the shrouded one. Swarthy, slender, sinister, he was robed in scarlet silk. On a table beside him was a device similar to a child’s magic lantern. Its diseased illumination cast obscene shapes that moved along the walls. My attention was caught by the nebulous form that squatted at the feet of Nyarlathotep, the thing that held in clumsy paw an apparatus of tinted ivory or pale gold. It was from this instrument that the fluted music emerged. Yet the more I tried to scrutinize the gadget, the more it seemed to subtly fluctuate in form, reshaping with a sensual movement that ached my skull. I listened to what sounded like whipping wings, as the music melted into silence. My heavy eyes demanded closure, and shutting them I saw upon their lids a multitude of spinning shapes that caused a vertigo that weakened my knees. I crashed onto the floor.

Weakly, I raised my agonizing head. He stood before me—grim, austere, merciless. My hungry mouth kissed his chilly feet. The room was still and silent, and I looked about but could not see the thing that had played the music of the spheres. Boldly, I clung to Nyarlathotep’s garment and pulled myself to my feet. Swirling light and blackness played upon his regal visage. Fantastically, he smiled; and as he did so his face slipped, as though he wore some tight-fitting mask that had momentarily lost its hold. He lifted a hand, and I saw upon his palm a living symbol. Tilting to it, I licked the pulsing insignia. It was sharp and ripped the tongue that touched it. As I swallowed blood, the daemon moved his hand away, then thrashed that hand against my forehead. Splinters of bubbling ice pierced my brain.

I was inside Lisa’s painting. The awful heat that had so plagued our autumn season weighed heavily in dead air. To breathe was to burn. He stood before me still, the black alien, in shapes that did and undid his being. I looked beyond him at the mammoth buildings, the ruins of distant time. It was a time over which Nyarlathotep was Lord Supreme. But how could he exist in future epoch? How had he escaped the nip of Death?

“That cannot die which stands outside time.”

Behind him I detected throngs of writhing black gargoyles that mindlessly pranced beneath a dying sun. Why did I ache to join in their frolic? Oh, how his liquid mark burned upon my brow. Scorching wind arose and pushed into my eyes, burning wind that blinded.

A large rough hand poked at my face. Rubbing torment from my eyes, I beheld the young man who gaped at me in desperation. I watched his mouth twitch in an effort to talk, but which was unable to function. I saw him pound with fists at his head, as if to knock some profane vision from his brain. I saw the blackness that crept into his eyes as he raised his head and wailed in lunacy.

I escaped, fleeing the place and running until I came to the street where Lisa lived with her epileptic mother. My brain buzzed with semi-vision, with a prophecy of disaster that I ached to share with she who understood. And I overflowed with lust to see again her painting. Not pausing to knock, I boldly entered the quiet house. A lamp burned with pallid light next to a sofa on which I saw the twitching form. The elderly woman did not look at me as she spoke.

“She’s quiet now, perhaps we don’t want to disturb her. Yes, quiet, quiet. No more howling now. What a funny sound. But she’s quiet now. You don’t need to stay.”

I left the creature to her confusion and walked the cluttered hallway to Lisa’s studio. I could smell incense, could smell that other fragrance of my friend’s altered state. Stopping before the studio door, I leaned my head upon it, pushing it open. Her lifeless form lay on the floor, its arms sprawled over a canvas. An overwhelming stench emanated from the stubs that had once been hands, those nubs that stank and smoked. I knelt beside her and saw that her terrible eyes wore a wild expression. I looked at the image on canvas, that image composed of a filament of transfigured flesh. I saw the hooded thing composed of soot. From deep within the folds of its hood I could discern the shifting features of his many forms. Yet even as I watched his image faded and was gone.

I raised my shivering face. I closed my liquid eyes. I stretched my mouth with noise.

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