Clown Hell

Clown Hell
by
Bobby Derie

Bozolino slipped on the banana peel. Felt the heel of his big red shoe start to slide. Stared up into the lights of the big top. There was an art to falling, and already he knew something was wrong. A sharp pain hit right at the back of the skull. The lights of the big top burned bright white straight above him, but they seemed to be getting dim and farther away. Darkness crowded in on the edges of his vision.

And he fell.

Bozolino crashed into the gritty floor, sending up a small cloud of sawdust. Instinctively, he rolled with the impact, coming up with a flourish. The noise of the crowd was louder now as he blinked, tried to get his bearings. He could feel the other bodies moving around him, the frenetic energy of the circus. Sweat ran over the greasepaint circles over his eyes and mouth from the heat, but he instinctively avoided wiping at his face.

Then he heard the screams...

Reality clicked into sharp focus. Wide-eyed tumblers flipped and rolled in fields of broken glass, costumes shredded and bloody, driven on by white-faced, stilt-legged giants with black whips and smiles like two sets of gums stuff with razor blades. Jugglers traded knives, scalpels, broken bottles, and chainsaws in a frantic and deadly game of hot potato, arms and eyes on rhythmic autopilot as if the game was beyond their control, each of them bearing gaping wounds where they had missed a throw, blades still sticking out of them, harried by scarred white-faced midgets in black-striped jumpers that corralled the greaspainted mob, continually tossing new weapons into the mix.

Bozolino danced away from these maniacs, acrobatically scuttling away from the villainous whitefaces. He dodged knives and evaded slick patches of oil and broken glass, mad elephants covered in heavy gold brocade and lengths of rusty barbed wire that dug into the flesh of their legs, which caught at the costumes of anyone that got close and dragged them along, screaming, as the pachyderms smashed and stomped through the act, led along by thin whiteface drivers with bloodshot eyes limned in dark colors and black noses. In the madness and tumult he caught a glimpse of the edge of the ring and bolted for it, sidestepping a fleeing crush of brightly-colored flagellents being beaten along by another stilt-legged whiteface overseer, one hand occupied by an enormous dark brown lash, the other grasping the bell of an infernal horn that honked merrily as it chased after its prey.

The ring itself was a bare ledge of stone, pitted and scarred, but painted red with yellow stars, and higher than Bozolino had thought - ten feet high, and topped with a row of iron spikes on white old jesters in checkered rags groaned. Bozolino climbed with a will clambering up the wall like he was ascending a ladder. Propping himself between two dunce-capped fools, still alive and struggling despite the ropy guts spilling down from where they were impaled, he looked out...and saw the other Rings.

Brightly-painted cars crashed in roller-derby fashion, the overloaded vehicles spilling out their occupants with each impact, metal crumpling, glass smashing, leaving the ground behind them wet with brains. The air was a trapeze jungle without nets, tiny white-faced bastards cackling around in miniature messerschmitts, gunning down pale-faced men and women as they fought and tangled in the ropes. A single great melee of banana peels surrounded a lake of custard and foam, where painted bodies screamed and wallowed, the citric acid bleaching brightly-colored fabric and eating through the flesh beneath, the crowd struggling in waves to reach the shore, where there was no sure footing and each fall and slip sent them careening bloodily into one another, and then back into the pit. Stilt-legged whitefaces waded along the edges, throwing back anyone that got to close to escape with long, pointed hooks...

Bozolino lost track of how many Rings there were, could barely get a sense of the scale of this place. He felt that it was enclosed, like when he was in the big tent, but it was all too huge. Yet he could hear the roar as of a crowd, and he looked away from the Rings, to the poorly-lit spaces between.

It was a maze-like alley of small stages and venues, like all the seediest bits of the carnivals of the world crammed into one vast, endless twilight arcade, lit by torches and small strings of light. Sad-faced harlequins despondently went through tired gags and bits with stiff ritual, arms and legs puppeteered by long wires, the whitefaced marionettes leering down at them. Broken Pagliaccios sat numbly as snake-tongued women in long polka-dot gowns stitched them back together, both limbs and costumes, and freshened their paint, sometimes sewing two or more together to make garish freaks that were set on display for the punters to gawk at.

The punters themselves were dark shades, dressed in drab clothes washed of color which marked them out immediately from the bright clowns. Their faces were full of spite, who shouted abuse in between laughing at the paint-faced torture, and whitefaced-midgets moved among them, stirring up the rabble and directing their attention, but always keeping them back and away from the "performers"...except at the games, as Bozolino saw. A million variations of each old trick, none of which demanded a crowd; calliope-tunes chirping out old melodies as the punters laid in with wooden balls and air guns, trying to knock a bound clown down, or dunk them into a tank in which dark, slithering things moved; hammers rose and fell, with the loudness of the scream causing a little plungers to rise, trying to ring a bell. On cast-iron altars set over flaming pits, screaming Ronald McDonalds were churned in giant meat-grinders, the twitching meat pooling on the huge grills as the Punters clammored for the feast.

A bright heat fell on Bozolino, and he looked back to see the spotlight on him. A great figure with the tall hat of a ringmaster like a black halo towered over him, the details lost by the spotlight, but he thought he could make out the shadow of wings...

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The Road to Shaddach-Mel

The Road to Shaddach-Mel
by
Bobby Derie

We took the Old Bridge to Shaddach-Mel, Quyvern, Lost-Man-Souls, and I. We had set out early, by sunlight and moonlight, to see the roads that could only be tread then, and we feared nothing, for we had our Stone Swords to guard us, dreaming their deep dreams.

Quyvern took lead at the foot of the Old Bridge, the tangle of runestones known as the Salt Stair, where every step is shaped with carven serpents of dull white crystal, that look poised to strike. As we ascended the air grew warm and smelled of tin, for the metal forest burning off somewhere to the north. We whispered unholy blessings to each serpent as we passed, the naughty old spell-song of the Serpent Empire, whose hissing troops' marching would be accompanied by unhallowed references to hemi-penes and giving it to her up her egg-slit.

At the top of the stair began the Old Bridge proper. Once the aqueduct for the Godwater, its one end lay somewhere in the uplands where Sea-Turned-the-River, and ran east and south down to Shaddach-Mel. We passed in single file along the upper edge, for the ghost of waters still live in the deep v-shaped cleft of the Old Bridge, and a journeyer might drown in those old memories, even with a Stone Sword.

So we walked, clutching our cloak's filter-sleeves tight around our faces whenever we passed through a blue-tinged cloud, and so going traveled through the ruins of Armach, Kale of the Seven Statues, and great bowl-like Vascoigne that was carved, level by level, into the great strip-mine where once a mountain had stood. There, looking into the toxic pool at the center of the dead city we encounter an eye-harvester.

This one was bald, with a hook-like nose and wisp of pale ginger beard, with skin dyed the color of old paper, grey and brown, with hints of marbled blues and reds. His eyes watched the dipping form of the hawk, as it fetched something from the harsh black waters with its talons. The bird returned, depositing its catch into his waiting hands, and with a small sharpened spoon the hook-nosed figured began gouging the eyes from the six-limbed fish.

Quyvern nodded a greeting to the man, just as the eye-harvester popped the three blue-black orbs into his mouth. The sorcerer, for his part, only answered with a series of quavering tones, his own eyes going wide and dark, pupils dilating as he saw what the fish had seen, during its life in the caustic waters, tainted by generations of mine-tailings. None of the three knew what life was like in those darksome depths, what strange creatures might find home in a water that burned the skin off hands that bathed in it, and would never satisfy any natural thirst, burning straight through the inferior flesh of humans.

"It is summer," the eye-harvester spoke in a hoarse whisper, his own pupils shrunk down to pin-pricks, "Summer fumed in her palace; wavering back and forth on the polished marble, chasing the days before her, stirring up warm, wet storms flash with lightning and ring'd with thunder in her passage. On her fingers were heavy rings that blazed each with the heat of a different hour of a different day: here was a dry blazing sun from the desert, set in a ring of bone, and here was the warm, wet siesta-weather of the coast, where dogs lie panting in the shade, on a ring of polished jet, and here too was the pale summer sun that melts the last of the arctic frost, and lays bare the wet mud from which the moss which the caribou licks, set in polished jade. Always she rushed, seldom to linger anywhere, bare feet beating on the white marble, and ever with a purpose. There was a small shadow ahead of her, and this shadow she chased where'er so it would go. And sometimes she turned one ring on this shadow, and sometimes another, so that the shadow would bake or broil, stultify or dry, and where'er she went, she could never escape the untiring gaze of Summer..."

We passed him warily, and continued on the road to Shaddach-Mel.

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They Know In Their Hearts

They Know In Their Hearts

By Bobby Derie

You only get to discover Lovecraft once—in a worn paperback with tanned leaves, or the severe little hardback with faded golden letters down the spine on the library shelf, or in the soft pages of an old magazine in your dad’s office, or lurking in some plain and unglamorous archive on the internet. Though you may encounter him again in a thousand different forms, there is never again the sense of discovery, of coming across the unknown. Only the familiarity of revisiting someone you have already met, and the ritual of re-reading what you had once read.

As a lad, I fell into Lovecraft through my father’s old paperbacks. Filled notebook pages with names and the titles of books real and imaginary, building a library of the mind and tracing the borders and milestones of Lovecraft Country. It was what I did, back then, as we moved from one post to the next, our little family out of sync with the schedules of other folk. The military is not always kind to families; school years and curricula varied from one place to another. Always the new kids. Holidays often saw my brother and I visiting our grandparents in Massachusetts, to hear strange yet familiar accents and drive down winding lanes past dry stone walls, to play in the snow beneath looming evergreens, to smell wood-smoke on the air, and hold our breath as we passed cemeteries. Far and away from the decrepit villages and archaic towns that Lovecraft promised, but a constant to cling to, no matter where we were stationed.

Adulthood brings new perspective, and while I carried my appreciation for Lovecraft into manhood, exposure to Lovecraft’s letters and the critical literature surrounding the man and his work—and just greater exposure to literature in literature—changed the way I read his work. Unthinking praise gave way to more considered analysis: the architecture of the stories, the way he structured the plot, language, and characters, is now more apparent to me; his influences and precursors are now more obvious, the events of his life and thought reflected more clearly on the page. It wasn’t quite a rediscovery of Lovecraft, but it was a very different way of looking at and understanding the man and his work. It’s no wonder I got out the notebook again, though these days I look for very different things.

I still go through my Yuletide ritual reread of “The Festival,” which smacks of the kind of ghost-story that M. R. James would have whispered before a blazing log to attentive younger relatives. In an age when holidays are often anything but holy, and the rest of the world teeters between saccharine sentiment and crass commercialism, it brings a smile to my face to read of that pilgrimage to old Kingsport, the strange relations and queer books with odd and exciting titles. I could be back in my grandfather’s library in New England, watching the snow fall on the lichen-covered stones outside, if only for a little while.

“The Cats of Ulthar” is another story dear to my heart, and one that I tend to push on the cat-lovers in my life. Friends and cousins devoted to their four-footed furry fiends, who hardly have time or interest to read indulge me every now and again, probably not sure what to expect. “Cats” is like “The Festival” in the respect that it’s a liminal tale, on the edge of Lovecraft’s Mythos, skirting the longer and more involved stories—and yet, oddly central too. There is no need to read The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath to understand or appreciate “Cats,” or vice versa, but I have always held that “Cats” is a better tale, more complete and satisfying in itself. “Cats,” like “The Festival,” stands alone, yet is a part of a greater fabric.

My most well-thumbed edition of Lovecraft has a rectangle of onionskin tucked in near the spine, at the beginning of “The Picture in the House.” The opening paragraph is as pure a distillation of Lovecraft as you’ll find anywhere, seemingly effortless yet beautifully suggestive and leading at the same time. It assumes a conclusion that some might—and have—fought over. Yet the sentiment is pure, and the underlying message of local horrors resonates to anyone familiar with that habit of those who have stayed too long in one place, to glamourize and fetishize the strange and exotic. Why else do we spend hours in libraries, reading of dead kings in their finery, or the lost wonders of civilizations that succumbed to war and famine, flood and earthquake, degeneration and neglect? Why else do we thrill at the lush prose of Clark Ashton Smith, or the vivid impulse of Robert E. Howard, the quiet glory of Arthur Machen and the timeless enchantment of Lord Dunsany, except for the shadows of something else on otherwise small and drab lives?

“The Picture in the House” is only seven and a half pages in this edition, and I have read it many times, careful always to put the marker back in its place. It is perhaps not the best story that Lovecraft ever wrote—“The Colour Out of Space” or “The Shadow over Innsmouth” would vie for that; and it is less popular than “The Dunwich Horror” or “The Rats in the Walls.” The ending is pure pulp, the final line dashed as the levinbolt strikes, which critics have their fun with, and the nameless narrator takes back seat to pure exposition more often than not. Yet it is so direct and excellent in its hinting, without ever showing; it is what the milk man shudders at when he sees the dawn, and the Pain of the Goat cast in gold, and the wide-eyed stare of another woman wearing the face of Ligeia. It was, for my younger self, the perfect introduction to Lovecraft. Even today, I can turn back to it with a smile, and picture in my mind that terrible butcher’s shop of the Anziques, and hear that old Massachusetts accent speak of victuals with such terrible relish.

You only get to discover Lovecraft once—but better than never having discovered him at all.

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Jack's Dreams

Jack's Dreams
by
Bobby Derie

Jack fell through a fluid abyss, a vast warm darkness, carried along by an irresistible current. He could feel the wriggling things swarming around him, flagellating tails zigzagging back and forth, propelling them ever along the incredible channel. It was all so damn familiar. Like a past life regression.

Scale struck him suddenly, zooming out of himself. He saw the surging surf of pale wrigglers, began to comprehend the tremendous tidal action that causes the vast liquids to move in their strange fluid dynamics. Caught a glimpse of the massive phallus, grinding along at the pace of centuries, its spiked barbels scraping the exposed sensory ridges of the universal passage. It was coitus on the scale of continental drift. Giants fucking, giants the size of planets, ancient and terrible things with their own gravity, flesh indistinguishable on the local scale from smooth, living stone.

Jack's sense of perception expanded again, on another dimension. Time shifted into strange blurs, the thrusting of millenniums the back-and-forth rutting of continents colliding and receding. The fluid grew warmer, the listless riggers split, multiplied, attacked and fed on one another. Some clustered around the volcanic vents where microvaginal tears released unfiltered bloody nutrients into the clear, briny stew that was the aether of this weirdly organic universe. They competed, multiplied. The first six-tailed flagellant thing spread out a webbed hand and grabbed a stony, flint-like skin scale, and used it to strike down another. The things warbled, voices fluctuating throughout the liquid medium faded into strange, dull reverb-lased chanting in Jack's ears.

Civilizations rose and fell in time with the massive thrusts, the creatures stirring to rebuild after each epoch crushed their cities.Time slowed, the thrusts were shorter and shorter, and Jack felt with the expectancy of a sun watching a planet pup a moon that a titanic event was to occur...and then the invaders came.

Things of a different order, hostile and terrible, congeries of spherical jellyfish, alien as a man to a sponge. Their very chemistry was different, antithetical; they brought with them a more acidic flush that slowly mixed and dispersed into the general fluid. Where it stretched, the towers of the webbed-fingered things crumbled and fell; their children hatched brown and stillborn, the older ones, ageless and terrible, fell on their childer with an all-consuming hunger and lust, until they rose up against their elders with weapons that unleashed primeval forces of gravity and electromagnetism. Cancerous explosions marked the membrane of the colliding cultures...and still others gravitated toward each other in strange alliances.

Iridescent domes rose alongside the phallic spires, tubular aqueducts married the fluids into a joint environment. Webbed fingers crushed into grasping tentacles in love, not war, and from this union came forth hybrid nations, against which the old guards of both races recoiled. The terrible cycle ticked on, the orgasm-quakes of the Great Mother tumbling down structures indiscriminately, and all the creatures great and small continued in their endless struggle...yet Jack could discern a general flow, a movement in the direction away from one terrible origin to the other, a communion and exchange of genetic information, as the tiny creatures, a part and yet apart from their god-like parents, went about their intended purpose...

#

Jack awoke, unable to move for a moment. At his feet, a one-eyed cat licked greedily at a blood-stained toe, the band-aid holding on only by dint of a sticky adhesive as sandpaper scraped into the gory wound. As he rose and swore, fingers clutching at the cyclopean feline, he could already feel the sudden revelation passing into the gray fuzz of morning.

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