Burnt Black Suns: A Collection of Weird Tales (30 page)

Out the window drifts of snow accumulated in the storm. The world conspired to trap him while his soul screamed for flight. He could not leave without the painting. It was clear his survival depended upon it.

Girder stepped into the hall, put his bag down quietly. He had packed everything he could carry, left behind what he could not. The house was quieter than he had ever known it; the air’s stillness lent a foreboding atmosphere that his intentions further cultured. He crept down the hall toward the Rasp’s room, the source of that dreadful buzzing. At the door he listened for eternity, waiting for an indication he’d been caught, but nothing came. He tried the knob, eyes narrow in the hope that the door was not locked.

The knob turned and a bolt slid back with a faint click.

Girder opened the door only enough to slip inside. The veils were drawn, blocking all but the thinnest sliver of light. Navigating the dark was difficult, so he clung close to the wall, moved around the room toward where he remembered the stack of paintings were. He almost stumbled over something lumpy lying across the floor but managed to right himself in time. He waited, but heard no sign that held been discovered. He was completely alone.

Girder moved with one arm stretched outward, feeling his way. The painting could be anywhere, and though he knew it was intact, it was also vulnerable. He felt it calling like a piece of him that had been lost or gone missing. Girder concentrated on the sensation in the blind dark and reached out a final time, groping desperately in the void. He was thus amazed when his fingers grazed rough canvas, ever so slightly, and he knew instinctively he had found what he had sought for so long.

Nothing else moved in the dark. He picked up the canvas and experienced the immediate connection with something long lost. The painting for which Rasp had paid could not be sold. Girder would sooner have sold his soul. Both he and it had to leave the house immediately.

Touching the wall, inching forward to where the door should be waiting, he found nothing. The wall seemed to stretch forever, without end. And yet he couldn’t even see the sliver of light from the hallway beneath the edge of the door. The only illumination in the room was from the reflection of the snowstorm, though Girder was not sure how it could be slipping in: there were no windows in the room.

Girder forced himself to remain calm and focus simply on finding the light switch. A brief flick would be long enough to get his bearings in the empty room. He put the painting down, ran his hands along the smooth walls, and limped onward. Was it indeed the room he’d been in earlier? It had to be. There was only one hallway between his room and Rasp’s, and it wasn’t possible to become lost so easily. And yet, nothing seemed familiar. Not the room’s size nor shape nor layout. Nothing but Girder’s mounting panic. He desperately wanted to escape the confines of the dark, his unintentional prison, and watched for the tinniest fragment of light.

There was no time in the dark. Minutes were days, and as the static of snow reached new heights outside, Girder’s fingers skittered over the walls, looking for the hidden switch. They found it quite by surprise, having almost given up the search, and Girder huddled close to it for fear he might become lost once more. A quick burst, he promised himself. A single quick burst of light to fix his environment, eliminate its oneiricism. Long enough to gauge his location, but not long enough to arouse suspicion. One burst would tell him everything. He counted down in his head, opened his eyes wide to take in as much information as possible, then flicked the lights on and off so rapidly he didn’t initially see anything at all. But his eyes were like instant photographs, and in the darkness a horrifying negative developed.

The room had shrunk, folding in on itself. Far smaller than he recalled, far smaller than could have been possible to navigate. Paintings were stacked everywhere, and as the image in his mind’s eye formed it was clear his painting, his masterpiece, was among them. But what horrified him was not the clutter or the impossible size of his surroundings; it was what stood at the room’s center—a large shadow around which Girder had circled while looking for the exit. It resolved slower than the rest of the items around it, yet Girder concentrated on that particular shadow the hardest, transfixed by his sense of dread. The thing was large, and at first indescribable. Only as features solidified from out of the darkness did Girder realize that what he stared at was Rasp, slumped in his wheelchair. Or at least what was left of Rasp.

The corpulent body sat motionless, dressed in the same encompassing purple robes, his lifeless arms on the wheelchairs handles, his feet on the tiny steps. Everything was as it should have been. Except his head. His head was gone, and only a hole remained.

The air was sucked from Girder’s lungs; replaced with ice. He closed his eyes, but in the darkness it did not matter, the image remained burned on his retina, developing further instead of fading. Girder could see things he had not initially: the tiny undone clasps that ran up the front of Rasp’s robes; the cauterized hole of a neck, red and puckered. Without Rasp’s head, bobbing as he spoke, his body appeared artificial, a mere costume. But if that were the case, what did it disguise? And, more frighteningly, what had happened to whatever wore it?

Girder heard that wet sound again, like something dragged across the floor, so near it would be upon him at any moment. He reached down to retrieve the painting at his feet and prayed he could escape without turning on the light. He couldn’t bear to see Rasp’s body again. But without that second look, relying only on his quickly fading memories, he misjudged his dash and grazed something that could only have been the headless body. There was no sound from the heavy mass beyond a heavy sigh, but something fell behind Girder, hitting the floor with a sound like hollow wood, and Girder knew there was no time left for him. He groped for his final painting, finding it where he imagined the doorknob to be. The wet sound recurred louder and faster, and he scrambled out and into the dark hallway.

He ran blindly, unsure of where he was going. The hallway looked different in the night—corners where there shouldn’t have been, solid walls that ought to have been doors. And with each crooked step rattling in his head, with each breath wheezing in his ears, he heard the wet sound, rasping as if it too were breathless.

The painting under his arm made flight difficult, but it did not occur to Girder to drop it, to throw it aside. Everything he was, everything he had become since suffering under his father’s fists was in it, and he would let no one steal it from him. He held the canvas tight, pushed it against the air that tried to knock it loose, to slow him down. Even when that scrambling wetness was overhead, echoing in his ears from above, he couldn’t think of releasing the painting. From somewhere there was a hiss through ravaged flesh, a final rally before the deadliest blow, and Girder’s bent leg finally faltered—a part of his soul already surrendering to his end.

But the hands that thrust out for him, dragged him into the light, were not from beyond. They were long-fingered and multicolored, and attached to narrow arms of similar complexion. Girder saw little else as he was flung sideways, the canvas slipping from his numb fingers as he tumbled over tangled limbs and onto the hard floor. The air filled with screeching, desperation denied, and Girder’s tearing eyes stung from exertion. He could not comprehend what was happening, his head swimming, delirious from impossibilities. All connection to reality slipped away, and it was only the solid smack of a flat hand against his face that focused him. But when the truth solidified, he felt no better off.

Nadir stumbled from the door, his eyes red and rheumy, his thick black hair twisted. He had stripped down to his undershirt, and for the first time Girder saw the intricate tattoos that stretched all the way from wrists to shoulders, interrupted only by the length of plastic tubing tied around one arm.

“You’re safe here, for now,” Nadir slurred, then picked up his glass of liquor from a table covered with needles and spoons and slumped into his only chair. Above his head and on every wall painted artwork hovered like unfamiliar cherubs.

“What’s happening?” was all Girder’s terror would allow him to say.

“What’s happening?”
Nadir mocked. “What do you think is happening? Rasp wants what’s his. That’s all he ever wants.”

“I don’t understand. What is he?”

Nadir staggered, tried to refill his tumbler from the dark glass bottle of bourbon on his table, but most of it merely spilled past. Nadir was oblivious to his failure.

“You ruined everything. You had no right. No right.” He coughed violently, then took another gulp of his drink before pointing at the paintings above. “You should never have come here. I should have stopped you, I should have made you leave, or killed you when you didn’t. I should have reached my fingers around your throat and
squeezed!”
Nadir’s eyes bulged as he said it, his fist clenched so tight it paled, and Girder scrambled to his knees. The storm on Nadir’s face passed instantly, and he slid down into his chair. “Everything is ruined. Everything. I remember what it was like, I remember the joy and freedom, before I gave myself over. I believed it all because I was nearly as blind as you. It cost me everything. So long now I’d forgotten. Then you come in here—” Nadir’s eyes flared again, the bleariness replaced by something worse as they focused on Girder—“you come here and knocked on the door and demanded it all for yourself. You walk by my work, even here, in my own private inch of this circus, and you ignore it, laugh at it, diminish it, and think you’re something more than you are. You’re so desperate for it that the trap isn’t even baited before you walk into it. You come and chaos comes with you.”

Nadir stood and downed the rest of his bourbon. He looked at Girder, but it was clear he didn’t see him. Those blood-shot watering eyes looked right through to someplace cold and dark. He sniffled, and Girder pawed for his painting and dragged it closer. A ripple appeared on Nadir’s face, beginning around the edges of his swollen eyes and moving outward. Skin and meat and teeth trembled, a swell of emotion that was focused on the fallen Girder. The artist’s fear returned, pulling the cloak of colors over his eyes, and before he went blind he scrambled to his feet, painting hugged close. Even behind that returning veil, Nadir’s shaking fury made him appear twelve feet tall.

“Why didn’t you leave when you had the chance? Why didn’t you save yourself as I couldn’t? Why did you have to upset and awaken it?”

“What is it?” Girder pleaded. “What is it?”

But Nadir did not answer. Instead, he threw his empty tumbler at the floor and lunged at Girder, long fingers like painted claws, eyes rolled up in glassy hate. Girder stepped back and instinctively reacted, swinging the painting in his hands as hard as he could. Canvas split and frame cracked. All Girder had was destroyed in an uncontrolled instant, and Nadir fell to the ground, wailing, cursing. Then a wave of convulsions took hold, and while his neck muscles spasmed, he spewed foul liquid over the floor, wave after wave, but did not take his hate-filled eyes from Girder. Instead, he crawled forward, reaching for the terrified artist. Girder could not think, only react. He stepped back, still brandishing a piece of shattered wooden frame, and hit the weakened Nadir with it until splinters flew and Nadir’s body slumped. Once the convulsions ceased, the veil of colors dropped from Girder’s eyes. He let go of the bloody piece of wood, and it splattered on the floor. Girder knew he had to escape, but when he reached the door his slick hands were unable to twist the knob. He was trapped. Then, beneath his touch, the door vibrated; a pounding that echoed the rush of blood in his ears. It was the sound of something trying to get inside the room.

Girder heard the sickly slurp as he backed away, the drooling suck of ravenousness, and the door visibly rattled with each blow. His head raced with terrified thoughts of all Nadir had warned.

“It’s gone!” he pleaded. “It’s gone! I don’t have it! There’s nothing here for you!”

But the pounding did not stop. The wooden doorframe split; the air crackled, full of pungency. Girder rushed around the room, around the incapacitated Nadir, looking for some weapon to protect himself from Rasp or whatever it was that was coming through the door. All he found was a slim dull knife, one he could barely hold in his tired, bloodied hands.

The banging, that ugly noise intensified, interspersed with the door being clawed. Girder noticed the doorframe separate from the wall with each succeeding blow, pulling away and opening the entrance that much further. Girder hunkered behind a fallen piece of furniture and waited, thin dull knife dancing in his trembling hand. Unexpectedly, he imagined his father kneeling in his place.

What came though the torn opening on that final blow was nothing Girder was prepared for. It had the face and head of Elias Rasp, but contorted and stretched, the skin like vellum, the eyes dead and staring wide. But the head was supported by the blackest flesh, wrinkled and covered in a bloody sheen. Its conical body, nearly three foot long, twisted as it reached its tail, an appendage that flicked spasmodically while hundreds of long spindly legs carried the creature scurrying toward Nadir’s unmoving body. And the torn and broken remnants of the painting he still wore. A trail of greasiness followed after, but the thing with Rasp’s face was not slowed by it. Unencumbered by its previous corpulent body, it moved with precision, black tongue hanging limply from a dislocated jaw. The knife slipped from Girder’s hand, his fear too great to control himself.

The thing stopped a few feet short of Nadir’s body, its oversized head cocking too far, and rolled its cataracted eye. Girder stared, transfixed, as the thing perched on Nadir’s face and spun its head in the other direction, jaw to its back, eyes moving skyward, and from the grey skin on the rear of the presumable skull a thin spongy gland pushed out. It then gathered its legs to itself and hunkered to feed.