In the Court of the Yellow King (24 page)

The small man opened the door to the townhouse and went inside.

James stared at the door, wondering what he was going to do next, and why the hell he had come here. Beyond the initial mystery of the footage shot in a Sarajevo asylum, there was a deeper puzzle to solve. He had only just glimpsed its edges, but he wasn’t sure if he wanted to dig any deeper. He had no doubt now that the film existed – it was not a myth. There was no evidence to support his belief, only the certainty that he felt inside. He had not been so certain about anything for a long time. If he was honest with himself, he’d be forced to admit that for the first time in years he actually felt alive.

There was something going on here. Something that might lead to the creation of a project that people would talk about for years to come. And wasn’t that the whole point of all this: to make his mark and force people to notice him?

He left some money on the table and left the café, crossing the street to the townhouse. He climbed the steps and knocked rapidly on the door. Only then did he regret being so impulsive. He had no idea what to say, what to do, when the door opened.

Just as he was about to flee, the door did open. The small man stood there smiling. Without the fedora hat, he looked even more like the image in the photograph. In fact, he had barely aged at all.

“Hello,” said James, feeling heat in his cheeks. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry, James,” said the man in a cultured European accent. “I have been waiting for you.” He pulled the door wider, brushing back shadows, stepped aside, and motioned for James to enter.

“Do you not think I monitor that website, the one with the article?” Lenz moved quickly and lightly across the cluttered room. His economical gait suggested that he floated rather than walked. He’d taken off his jacket to reveal a sturdy torso wrapped in a white long-sleeved shirt. His arms were wide, as if he worked out regularly with heavy weights.

“But how did you know my name?” James was sitting in a large armchair with a glass of whisky in his hand. He watched Lenz as he fussed with a pile of books on a low table, arranging them into a neat stack.

“Nobody has sent anything to that email address in years so it was flagged immediately. I simply did a little research and discovered that you were indeed a fellow filmmaker.” He smiled. His teeth were short, stunted. They weren’t very clean.

“So...” James put down his glass on the floor at his feet. “You’re all of them. Tommy Urine, Werner Lenz, Phantomas Ulner. They’re all you.”

“Yes, that is correct.” His clipped accent gave him a sinister air, but James wasn’t afraid. Not of this tiny man.

“I’m not sure I understand any of this. Why the different identities? Who are you hiding from?”

Lenz sat down on a small dining chair against the wall – one that was probably meant for a child. He crossed his legs and smoothed his trousers with a small, dainty hand. “I’m sorry for the... secrecy. The obfuscation. Sarajevo was a strange time. A dark time. There were many evils abroad. When I made my... my little film... I was a different man, under the influence of all that evil. I’ve tried to keep the darkness at bay ever since.”

“What happened back then?” James moved forward in his chair. “Don’t lie to me. I know you filmed something... something that you shouldn’t have?”

Lenz stared into James’ eyes. His face was stiff, like that of a doll. “What I filmed was... in all honestly, I still do not know what I filmed. We only got a short piece of footage, a few minutes, before trouble outside the institution disturbed our shoot. What I saw through the camera’s lens in that time was confusing: a soft billowing of something yellow, a thin, bony hand, someone very thin running towards the camera. Then darkness.”

James glanced around the room. He had the feeling that it contained more than the little man’s possessions. Somewhere in here, there hid memories and he wanted to access them, to dust them off and bring them out into the light. “Come on, man. This sounds like something from the Twilight Zone.”

“Ah, yes,” said Lenz. “That was one of my favourites. I did enjoy those American shows.”

James felt tired. The travelling was catching up with him. He rubbed at his eyes with his hands; they felt dry and itchy. He yawned. “I’m sorry... I didn’t realise how exhausted I was.”

Lenz was smiling. His grubby teeth looked ugly, but his eyes were kind. “I know. And I’m sorry.” He stood, took off his shirt, and pushed out his chest to show the tattoo: The Pallid Mask. Now that he saw it in the flesh, James could make out the colour. It was yellow.

“What is this?” He tried to get to his feet, stumbled, went down on his knees.

“The oldest trick in the book, my friend.” The tattoo seemed to be speaking, not the little man upon whose chest it had been inked. “I lured you here, drugged you, and now I am preparing to use you for my own means.”

James felt like screaming but his mouth was sealed shut. He couldn’t believe he had been so stupid.

When he awoke he was strapped into an upright framework of steel tubes, like scaffolding built for a hanging. He was naked. He tried to blink but nothing happened. Then, taking in his surroundings, he realised that there was a long mirror on the basement wall opposite his position.

His body had been shaved clean of hair and strange symbols and shapes were daubed on his flesh. The bald, bloody, shivering man hanging by his wrists from an inverted cruciform structure was himself. He was unable to blink because his eyelids had been sliced off. There was no pain. He was too drugged-up to feel anything at all.

Puzzled, he stared at his own haggard face and tried to see some kind of light in the panicked eyes.

“I really am sorry.” Lenz stepped into view. He was naked and sporting an erection that was disproportionate to his body size. He, too, was bloodied, and James knew exactly whose blood it was, where it had come from; his veins longed for its return. “But I cannot have anyone trying to get their hands on the film.”

Lenz smiled: yellow baby-teeth in a tiny skull. “I went back there after the asylum was bombed, you know. The camera was still intact. Do you want to know what was inside when I opened it up?”

James could only shake his head.
No. No, no, no....

“No film... not that. It was gone. Instead, there was a roll of faded yellow material, like a ribbon, and written upon it in delicate black lines was a set of instructions. A map, if you will: a map to Carcosa, the land that only exists within the imagination of a long-dead writer of weird fictions. I’ve spent years trying to translate what was etched onto that strip of cloth, copied it onto the flesh of so many sacrifices in an attempt to access the roads and territories on the map so that I might journey there and meet the Yellow King. I have risked so much, but nothing has worked. So I continue to try, but only when an opportunity presents itself. I grow too weary to seek out fools like you. These days I wait for them to come to me instead.”

James shook his head again. He wept red tears into a gaping yellow abyss.

“An opportunity just like this one, dear friend...” Lenz raised his hand, showing James the knife. The odd double-handle was made of what looked like bone – a small human arm, to be exact: the radius and ulna still attached together, or perhaps fused in the intense heat of something like a bomb blast. The long, thin blade was a dull yellow.

“Perhaps this time,” said Lenz, advancing. “Perhaps this time, it will work.” He didn’t sound convinced.

The little man stopped in front of James, cocking his head to one side. He seemed to drift, his mind going elsewhere for a moment. “The atrocities I’ve committed, the lives I have wasted... so much blood I have spilled, in fact, that sacrificing you will barely even register on my conscience. Like a fart in a wind tunnel. I wish that I could grant your end more of a sense of occasion and make it signify something better than a banal rite in an underground room. I really do. But I cannot. It means nothing to me... unless this time something happens, of course... something
numinous
.”

Lenz snapped back into the moment, focusing on James.

“Truth be told, I very much doubt that it will. I commit these acts now more out of habit than the hope of something happening.” He blinked, as if caught in a moment of self-realisation. “
Habit
... and it is such a tough one to break.”

Lenz’s shadow elongated, mocking the dimensions of his body. It crawled along the walls, old and sleek and monstrous.

James stared at his own face in the mirror. He barely recognised himself. Then, as his diminutive murderer moved in swiftly with the blade, he stopped seeing himself altogether and focused only on the slight billow of yellow he saw momentarily reflected in the grubby glass.

Berlin, 2004

Th
e city is too danger
ous. He can no longer
stay here. He packs
up his suitcase and
waits for the taxi t
o come and take him
to the airport.

The Y
ellow Film is locked
away somewhere safe
.

The map to Carcosa,
those teasing instru
ctions whose meaning
remains tantalising
ly out of reach, is h
eld in a safe deposi
t box in a bank in Z
urich. But he does no
t need to go there. T
he strange words and
symbols are engrave
d upon his soul. He s
ees them whenever he
closes his eyes; he
dreams about them on
the few occasions h
e is able to sleep. H
e has written them o
ut time and time aga
in on the shaved and
purified skin of hi
s victims.

He walks o
utside and sits down
on the sidewalk. The
taxi will not be lo
ng, and then he can l
eave this place. He l
istens intently but
cannot hear anyone t
alking in the dark. T
he basement cell wil
l never be found. The
bodies shall not be
uncovered. With that
last one, he could h
ave sworn that he sa
w something: a billow
ing movement, a flash
of yellow, like some
thing caught in his
retina, as he dug int
o the wet cavities a
nd exposed their int
ernal secrets.

Perhap
s he did.

Or perhaps
not.

Maybe next time
things will become c
learer and he will f
inally be given acce
ss to the place wher
e he belongs, the cit
y that he no longer
believes exists outs
ide of an old book o
f stories that he on
ce tried to put onto
film.

But even this
realisation isn’t en
ough to break the ha
bit of a lifetime.

Th
e taxi pulls up at t
he kerb. Without even
a backward glance, t
he small man with ma
ny names climbs insi
de and waits to be t
aken somewhere else.