The Goat-Towers of Ardit

The Goat-Towers of Ardit

by

Bobby Derie

It was dawn and the goats climbed the towers of the valley of Ardit, as they do today and may tomorrow. The goat-herders of Ardit were already awake and about their chores, but moved silent under the shadow of the mountain about their business, so all was the bleat of the goats of Ardit, the clink of their bells, and the snap of their hooves on pebble and stone.

That dawn as the goats climbed the towers of Ardit, the goat-herds went out in twos with their tribes of goats, as is custom, and Taml, daughter of Gamaz, went out with Daanl, daughter of Whenz. The two girls were young and fast to one another, and none in the towers of Ardit made note of what they did in the pastures, save the goats in the towers, but when they returned they were clinging one to another, and whispering in each other’s ears that which did not make them laugh, but blush and smile and turn their heads from one another, yet with hands clasped tight.

Zaalz of the Old Tower saw this and was wroth and sick of heart, for the solitary goat-herd was alone at the entrance to the valley of Ardit, and had long admired the clean pale skin of Taml, her strong teeth and swaying hips. The Old Tower pointed his curious forked crook at the two girls, and the village which had ignored what was not pointed out to them now could not ignore it.

There was Law in the valley of Ardit, and there were Customs. It was Custom that a man and a maid caught in the rut would marry, and it was Custom that a man or woman caught in lust with a member of the tribes would pay the price and marry the goat—and let it be said that no few men in the valley of Ardit had a goat-wife, and even the woman Agraml that lived alone had a goat-husband—but it was the Law that only male and female should marry.

So was a council called, and Taml and Daanl were there, still clasped one to another, and Gamaz and Whenz came, and all the men of the village, with their wives and goat-wives, save for Zaalz of the Old Tower, who had neither, and old Agraz who had outlived his wives and goat-wives, and Agraml who had a goat-husband, but otherwise lived alone. Bold Taml stood before the council and declared her love for Daanl, and shy Daanl could not speak, but clung to Taml and buried her face in her lover’s hair, and would not let her go. Zaalz sat alone, for rumor had it his tribe had bred with sheep, and was ill at the way Taml looked at Daanl, and how each clung to each other. Such looks were never given to Zaalz of the Old Tower.

The elders of Ardit spoke, one to another, and remembered when they too had been young and climbed the goat-towers as boys and girls, and come down as men and women, with only the tribes of Ardit as witnesses. Many felt for the young girls, and might have left it, but then Zaalz spoke up of Law and Custom, and the way of things that came before and would come after. Some there were in the crowd, young men and women, who dared not look at each other, but stared at the ground, and felt as if they too stood with Taml and Daanl before the elders of Ardit. The talk turned to old and rare Customs, for some few could recall when something of this like had happened before—when Daz had dressed as a girl to marry Gaz, and the two lived as man and wife—and ever did Zaalz turn the talk back to Taml and Daanl, and countered Custom with Custom, and returned always to the Law, whence the girls of Ardit could not be married to each other.

Now there rose old Agraz to address the elders, who was well-spoken and had raised many goat-towers by his own hand, and outlived three wives and more goat-wives, and had decided never to marry again. Agraz stood and looked at each in their eye, and few in the village could but look away, for Agraz was a great listener and carried the sins of many. The gaze lingered longer on some than others, and longest of all on Zaalz, who finally looked away. Then old Agraz said: “Let them marry the goat.”

To this Zaalz could say nothing, but kept his silence. For there was no Law that said the goats of Ardit could not have more than one wife.

It was dawn and the goats climbed the towers of the valley of Ardit, as they do today and may tomorrow. Taml and Daanl led their husband-goat out ahead of the tribe, and clasped their hands together, and Zaalz of the Old Tower watched and gripped his curious forked crook, but only turned away, sick at heart, back to his half-breed tribe.

###

The American Guild of Occult Detectives

The American Guild of Occult Detectives

by

Bobby Derie

The instructions on the back of the invitation led to a secluded neighborhood of Washington, D.C., one of those tree-shrouded lanes with narrow, snaky alleys claimed by vines, and where here and there one could still glimpse crumbling red-brown bricks that might date back to the founding of the city. A small bronze plaque on the door proclaimed the correct address, which looked much like a mason’s hall—all red-brick, two stories high, though with sunken windows that bespoke a large basement, a short flight of steps leading up to a pillared entranceway, and above all a domed bronze cupola with a film of light green verdigris. A tug of the old-fashioned pull-cord gave vent to a deep, resonant gong from somewhere in the depths of the building.

“The devil comes for you!” squawked a voice as the door opened. A swarthy, dark-skinned man stepped forward, a wicked grin upon his face, a small loop of raw gold through one ear, with the grandfather of all parrots perched on one tall, bony shoulder. He examined the invitation carefully, then bowed at the neck and moved aside to allow ingress. He introduced himself as Old Bill, and though he bore a vest and tie, the man looked a rogue through and through. There was a loping ease to his movements, a wiry strength and hard calluses in his grip that spoke of hard labors besides housework, and the dark tan that spoke of long years at sea.

“Welcome, to the American Guild of Occult Detectives. Right this way, detective.” he said, leading the way down a long hallway festooned with framed photographs. Old Bill’s feet followed an old track worn in the wine-colored carpet. “Know you much of the history of this institution? No? Then let Old Bill tell yer.”

“Master Carter—that’s him, there.” Old Bill pointed to one of the photographs, of a pale, long-faced man dressed in a turban, dated 1928. “Was Guild Secretary in the Twennies, and liked to claim the association dated back to a meeting between Dr. Abraham van Helsing and Dr. Martin Hesselius in the late 1870s. If ‘t were so, there’s no record of it, an’ the old Judge told me once the guild formed in December 1910 by Prof. Armitage, Inspector Legrasse, and the Judge himself—though he weren’t yet a judge then. Now the Judge and Armitage had met previously in 1890 on some business, and kept up a limited correspondence by letters; the three met together at a law enforcement conference, and formed the association when they realized their mutual interests. The Guild remained mostly an informal affair, with each man recruiting their acquaintances in the occupation.”

Here Old Bill stopped to pick out different luminaries—the kind-eyed professor from Massachusetts, the playboy from New York, the rough mountain man with a guitar at his back, a pair of slightly theatric men dressed in outlandish Oriental garb, the striking Southern gentleman dressed in white with a string tie, a young Native American woman at his arm; the reporter in a seersucker suit and ratty hat, and a few more scattered across feet of hallway and decades of time. The pictures told the tale as well as Old Bill did—pictures of a few individuals gave way to group shots, first three or four together, and then up to eight or nine crowding in the picture, with formal placards denoting the meeting and the year.

Old Bill pointed out a smudge in the upper right corner of the photograph from 1919. “Apologies about that one, detective—first time I’d ever used one of them picture-makers before.” The houseman held up his thumb by comparison, and the trace of an old scar on it could just be seen on the shadow at the edge of the photograph—then continued on the tour.

“The Guild remained fairly informal, with meetings held annually at the Judge’s mansion, which usually involved retellings of their adventures for the year and the sharing of notes on the occult and the means to combat them. Mr. Carter, upon admittance in 1920, formalized the Guild with a charter that prescribed a binding oath, communal properties, and other procedures, and he led the purchase of this property in the fall of that year.” Old Bill continued on, leading from the Hallway into a great round-tabled meeting room, each chair an unbacked wooden seat at a table marked out like a great zodiac. Quilts hung on the wall were in a European castle might have hung tapestries—old, strange designs from the Pennsylvania Dutch and Native Americans, like the Witch Blazing Star.

“Now, there are some as suggest that the American Guild, like the later United States government paranormal investigation organizations, was based on or inspired by parallel groups in Britain—the Sevens, them folks at the Chinese Laundry, the Qs—and it’s certain there were other folks that ran their own circles, but it’s important to remember that this was the American Guild. Honorary membership was extended to certain foreign occult detectives, particularly if they visited or operated on American soil. Mssrs. Carnacki and de Grandin were honored associates. Efforts to draw the ellusive and pre-eminent Holmes and Houdini into the association failed. An honorary membership was extended to Simon Iff due to his prowess and reputation during his visit to America, but was quickly rescinded after his affiliation with some of the darker members of the occult underground became apparent, such as the sorcerer Rowley Thorne, cultists, survivors of pre-human races, and members of the degenerate Whateley and Marsh families. Those were dark times.” Here Old Bill stooped and grabbed at the rug, and the great parrot roared a “Xuthulla!” and took off. The houseman peeled back the fabric to reveal circles of black coal in the wooden slats of the floor. “That was ’44, when the Arkham sect tried to get in.”

“Now, Mr. Klaw died in ’25—not unexpected, given his age—the Judge and some other individual guild members took steps to obtain part of his estate, which included an occult library and modest collection of arcane artifacts. This caused a bit of dispute, as Klaw had willed them to his “successor”—Master Carter—who had studied long on dreams with the old man. This began a series of internal disputes about how such matters should be handled in the future, particularly whether certain items ought to be destroyed or retained for use by the guild at large. The death of Armitage several years later exacerbated the quiet conflict, as John and the Judge used their fortunes to purchase the bulk of the collection before the others had the opportunity. When Carter disappeared in ’29—and was finally announced dead—the disputation of his effects was a subject of considerable quarrel.” Now Old Bill fetched at his belt for an old-fashioned set of long iron keys, which he applied to a set of doors at the far end of the chamber with the table.

“The Judge established a communal library and museum for the Guild to hold the personal collections and affects of members in trust for the Guild as a whole, in the care of the Guild secretary—formerly Master Carter, though with his absence it fell to his successor, Dr. Silence—and the Judge himself willed his library and collection to the Guild upon his death to cement the pledge. This dispute had the effect of changing the concept of the Guild and its membership considerably: where once it had been a source of camaraderie and allies, now it was a center of arcane scholarship and power.”

Old Bill threw open the doors, revealing a vast space full of the occult treasures of the ages. The great parrot perched atop a golden Egyptian death-mask, and upon a far wall above a fireplace were a pair of strange, thing silver blades. Old filing cabinets painted in military olive drab took up nearly a whole wall, and one corner was given over entirely to a maze of high, heavy wooden bookshelves groaning with volumes in cracked leather bindings, some stacked on the floor for lack of space. There was a large table given over to chemical apparatus, and every manner of skull and skeleton seemed to hang from the ceiling. To each curious dagger, statuette, skull and soiled page was attached a small tag and bit of card. Old Bill looked over the collection and smiled.

“The Guild did not maintain relations with other occult organizations, such as the American branch of the Freemasons. While individual members enjoyed links with certain government bodies, the Guild as a whole did not—and thus avoided the fate of some of its British counterparts. For while the majority of British occult detectives began and remained independent, a number of individuals became associated directly with the crown and eventually established or became government departments, reaching its height during and immediately after World War II. The bulk of these departments degenerated, sapped of personnel and resources, and finally closed—or went underground. The Guild maintained its distance from the government expressly to avoid this fate, although in doing so many of its members felt they had missed out on important opportunities, such as the FBI raid on Innsmouth in 1936, and collaborative efforts with British paranormal groups against the German occult war apparatus in the 1940s.” Old Bill moved over to the fireplace, and began feeling under the lip—with a soft click, the floor of the fireplace fell away, revealing a narrow, steep set of stairs leading down, lit by soft electric bulbs.

“As rumors of the Guild library leaked it became a target for the forces of darkness. Thieves, sorcerers, and monsters. Guild business took more time and effort from private investigations, and with each breach the gentlemen and ladies of the Guild had to erect and rely on stronger and stranger defenses, utilizing their dark treasures to protect themselves. Guild membership, never extensive, became more exclusive and slowly dwindled from WWII onwards as certain government agencies were established to quietly handle some of the larger threats. Efforts were made to recruit Guild members for these organizations, but occult detectives are a highly individualistic lot and resist being shackled by needless bureaucracy, even the most well-meaning.” Old Bill went on as he climbed down the stairwell, words echoing a little. “Several novitiates in occult detection made efforts to ‘buy’ their way into the guild with tomes and artifacts of power—an’ with the old Judge gone, and many of his friends, I’m sorry to say some of them were accepted, at least until their intentions became clear.”

The cellar beneath resembled some ancient temple, though of what culture it was hard to say. There was a great square full of clean sand which had been swept clean, and on the four cardinal pillars were carved strange hieroglyphs. The walls sloped inwards towards a ceiling that was not level with the ground, and from each corner glared a curious disembodied stone head with a Hebrew character carved on its head. Vast conduits of wires were visible along the edges of the room, and all over the ceiling. The walls, save for the one with the stairwell, were covered with thick curtains. There was the whiff of ozone and old herbs, the buzz of old bulbs and a slight moaning.

“Now, the old Masters are all gone in their graves. Thunstone and Zarnak in ’88, and Master Spektor just a few years ago, and there’s only been Old Bill to collect their things and file them away.” Old Bill said, hunched over a great lever jutting out from one of the columns. “Oh, there are still occult detectives in America—Mr. Boy, formerly with the Bureau, and McDonald in Los Angeles now—but they’re not exactly the traditional types, and they have their own way of things. There are still mysteries in the night, old things that awaken in the darkness when called, and needs be put down again. That is why I’ve invited you here, detective. To join the ranks of the American Guild of Occult Detectives, and continue its mission.”

Old Bill threw the switch, and the curtain immediately across from the stairwell whisked aside on electromechanical tracks. Electric pentacles blazed in the darkness, row on row of them, light streaming up from the floor and down from the ceiling, with only a narrow, dark path between them, and in the center of each pentacle was a figure. Each prison was unique, though based on the general design of the luminous, baroque circles that glowed an eerie blue. One corpse-thing with a club foot and dried skin was surrounded by crosses of different wood, and strands of garlic, but it opened its eyes and hissed as Old Bill passed. Another held a book, a thickish tome surrounded by squiggly lines that seemed to twist under some optical illusion, and looked otherwise empty—but as Old Bill neared, the light darkened on one corner of the star, and something like a tremendous face seemed to press at an invisible boundary towards the old servant—and Old Bill smiled back at it, and walked on to a small door, set in a wall that was far older than the rest of the house.

“Now detective, before we go any further, it’s time for your interview.” Old Bill said, and reached once more for his keys, opened the door, and turned on the light. It was a small room lit by a dim bulb, with a single card table, on which rested an old, primitive-looking telephonic device—little more than a few blocks of wood with wires and a speaking-tube—and a chair. “Necrophone, for speaking with the dead. Was scavenged from Tesla, after that business with Houdini and Mr. Fort.” Old Bill explained. “An’ it’s the easiest way for the Judge to interview potential candidates these days. No messing about with candles or whatnot. Well, I’ll leave you to it.” Old Bill sketched a bow and retreated, closing the door behind him.

A croaky, whispering voice came from the speaker, monotone and buzzing. “Let us review some of your cases…”

###

Zippergirl

Zippergirl

by

Bobby Derie

“Hey, check it. Zippergirl.”

It was a college party, and she wasn’t showing off. I picked up her seams, followed them until they disappeared into low-cut ripped jeans and a t-shirt, and where the outline of tabs were visible on her breasts, where the nipples should be. She smiled and laughed with her friends, eyes peering out from a horizontal flesh-seam edged with metal teeth, tabs jingling on the right side of her face. Wondered if that meant she was right-handed or left. She noticed me, looking at her. We stole glances, eyes catching as we maneuvered from conversation to hello, edging closer to each other. When there was a body’s length between us she sauntered over, green glass bottle in hand, girlfriends forgotten. Tiny metal teeth grazed my cheek as she stood up to whisper in my ear.

“You want me to unzip you?”

The bathroom was cramped and dark, the sounds of the party came through the walls and up through the floor, the only light what shone around the door frame. Her mouth tasted of Rolling Rock and pennies. She had her elbows up on his shoulders, they broke off to stare at each other. The zippers made a mask of her face, a caricature: the bald head with the almost-hidden central seam, the wide open gap above her nose where the eyes poked out, the crude gash of a mouth. Her lips were painted mouth within mouth, teeth within teeth, as she smiled and undid my fly. There was a gentle scrape along my length, then a line of hard metal things pressed into the flesh at the base of my crotch, and I didn’t know if they belonged to her teeth or mine. I placed my hands on the head, eyes closed. It was soft, like a padded leather cushion. My right hand followed that seam down, down to the side of her neck, and found the catch. She paused as I slowly unzipped her, hair spilling out. She looked up at me, on her knees, hair unbound, the zipper marking the point of her widow’s peak.

“I didn’t say you could unzip me.”

The zipper grafts were fragile, seams of synthetic bio-friendly synthetics woven into the skin, chained together with metal or plastic. Skin was elastic, but it needed time to stretch and accommodate. Too much force could cause them to rip or tear, and then infection might set in. Scarring. I asked her questions, let her talk about it. The culture, the people. Care maintenance. How she had to keep clean, what had happened to people that didn’t take care of it. The real perverts, the ones that gave the scene the bad name. We flirted. I asked about her first, and she showed me, on her shoulder blade: a secret pocket to hide a tattoo from the light, so it wouldn’t fade. We talked for hours; weeks and months went by. She let me sit with her through the next procedure. The fold had been prepared months in advanced, a prosthetic stretching the flesh across her belly. I held her hand as the artist made the incision, inserted the weave. He had a hand-held sewing machine that punched the thread in on each side, tested the action of the zipper.

“I wanted you to see how it was done.”

Sometimes she would dance for me, a complicated little burlesque, shedding clothes one zip at a time. She wasn’t truly naked or exposed, even without clothes. She could walk down the street topless, zipper-decent, offending nipples and vagina hidden away from the world. I learned she liked to be explored. To have hands run over the hard teeth and ridges of skin along the seams. She gasped when I pressed the tabs that hid her nipples and labia, grinding the buttons into the softe, shadowed flesh. Sometimes she wanted to be unzipped slowly, one tooth at a time. Then I would pull it open fast and she would squeak at the sudden exposure of hidden flesh. She shuddered when I explored those pockets of flesh, with probing tongue or finger. At times I would crush her toward me, arms wrapped around her, hands and all buried in her, my tongue fucking the zippocket on the side of her head to lick at her ear, and she would moan.

“So full…”

She started getting me into the harder stuff, a little at a time. Little zippers along each finger could be closed, leaving her only with grasping paws. An industrial double seam down her legs, to close them from the world, and I would have to take her bent over, from behind. Sometimes she liked it with her mouth and eyes and ears zipped off too, cut off from the world except for those sensations here and there where I touched it, penetrated her, zipped and unzipped her. There were special seams along her thigh that exposed living muscle, where every painful touch was like fucking a fresh wound, and we grew bolder, more elaborate. Sometimes I would lie awake at night and stare at her swelling belly, thinking how far she was along. Eyeing the great zipper that went along the ridge of muscle there, in front of the womb, huge flat metal teeth forming a mechanical highway down to the huge triangular tab hanging down over her crotch. One night as she slept I grasped it, toyed with it, pulled a little. The first couple teeth separated, and I felt something dark and wet by the hole. Her hand found mine, on the zipper, each finger edged with coiled plastic teeth.

“Don’t…”

###

The Yezidi Contract I

The Yezidi Contract

by

Bobby Derie

“Goodman,” my boss said “are you a Satanist?”

It was Monday morning, and far too damn early in the week and the morning for this shit. Mephistopheles “Topher” MacCain was the kind of boss you dread to get: promoted above his competence but not above his ambition. He didn’t have the credentials to move up unless it was into a warm pair of dead man’s shoes, but he defended his power and position with all the blind rage and canniness of a rabid mother wolverine. Every conversation became a contest of wills, every idle comment or correction perceived as a personal attack, and every probing query into my personal life designed by some misguided corporate self-help grimoire to eek some measurable greater fraction of productivity out of me.

“My grandfather was a supplicant at the Temple of Set. Dad was a lapsed LaVeyan. He saw my brother and I through our first degree and all, but he never cared for the Schrecks and after that it was basically a Samhain and Imbolc thing.” I said.

MacCain gave me a look that would have better fit a judas goat. It was a practiced idiot glare that gave absolutely no hint as to whether anything you had said was absorbed. The guys in Marketing mistook it for Topher paying strict attention; the guys in Engineering even thought it might denote comprehension. I knew better. When MacCain gave people that look, he was picking apart their statements for ammo—and this time I was downrange.

“So you don’t have any strong personal beliefs in the Left Hand Path?” he asked.

That was a trap, and I knew it, but the dangling promise of getting fired lingered, so I opted for honesty.

“I think I’ve seen a little too much of it to take seriously.” I answered with a shrug. “I mean, I took a couple history courses in college, and you get to really see how Satanism was derived from the earlier, polytheistic religions—daevas from Mazdaism, Jewish angelology, the demonization of Pan—and then the whole—excuse my language—Christ cult thing in Rome. I mean the inverted cross and pentacle, Black Masses, the antipope, that stuff was never about the devil, really—it was all politics and rebellion, a deliberate subversion of Pauline beliefs. Even most of the popular mythology of the Satyr-like devil and fiery hell and all was built outside of the core texts, it’s all folklore—at least, the stuff that wasn’t made up like most of the new cults these days, all those Hollywood Satanism with their satin robes and orgies. Evangelicals knocking on my door, asking if I’ve found Lucifer yet.”

I was half-parroting my final essay from The Satanic Bible and the Literature of the Occult—one of those mandatory liberal arts classes that state universities like to foist on unsuspecting undergrads, though I hadn’t really minded. It had given me an excuse to poke through some of dad’s old books and talk with him on the subject. With any luck, the boss wouldn’t want to get into any of the metaphysics or—Buel protect me!—recruit me for something. I wouldn’t be able to take it. Whenever Ahriman’s Witnesses showed up at the door, I laid into them with enough Christ-filled profanity it would make an unwed mother cover her unbaptized bastard’s ears.

“Well, Goodman, the reason I ask is that we have a new, very important client, and if our proposal succeeds we will need to meet some very stringent staffing requirements as we put the documentation together.” MacCain said. “I’m an Antimason myself, though I joined the coven when I married my wife. But what we really need to make sure of is that we don’t have any atheists—the client was very stringent about that—or secret Paulines.”

“Why in Hades does that make a difference?” I said, and immediately regretted it as his eyes narrowed and nostrils flared. “I mean, freedom of religion and all that.”

“The government can respect freedom of religion all it wants.” the boss replied “But this is a business. Now I want you to drop whatever you’re doing and start reviewing the materials for this job. Don’t lose anything either, those are originals.”

Little piggy sausage fingers thrust a stack of crap six inches thick in my general direction, and I accepted the dead tree and humped it back to my cubicle. A gentle elbow sent my inbox into the trashcan, clearing just enough room for me to set down the load and spread it out. The top pile were thick, heavy, off-white sheets, like spongy sandpaper—vellum, maybe—and covered in a neat scrawl of computer-printed Arabic, or something similar. Underneath it, an industrial clip holding on for dear life, was regular paper, in English, with a sticky note attached that read “Yezidi Contract.”

###