Ghosts by Gaslight - Jack Dann [195]
“The price you’ve paid seems steep as hell, codger.”
Scobie nodded. He remained quiet for a while. At last he said, “Come, boy. You must come with me now. He’s waiting for us. He whispered to me from the dark, made a pact with me he’d take one of us in return for Arlen. I promised you to him, God help me. It’s a vile oath and I’m ashamed.”
“Oh, Scobie.” Luke Honey’s belly twisted and churned. “You know how these things turn out. You poor, damned fool.”
“Please. Don’t make me beg you, Mr. Honey. Don’t make me. Do what’s right for that innocent boy. I know the Lord’s in your heart.”
Luke Honey reached for Scobie’s arm and patted it. “You’re right about one thing. God help you.”
They went. There was a clearing, its bed layered with muck and spoiled leaves. Unholy symbols were gouged into the trees, brands so old they’d fossilized. It was a killing ground of antiquity, and Scobie had prepared it well. He’d improvised several torches to light the shallow basin with a ghastly, reddish glare.
Scobie took several steps and uttered an inarticulate cry, a glottal exclamation held over from his ancestors. He half turned to beckon, and his face was transformed by shock when Luke Honey smashed the butt of his rifle into his hip and sent him stumbling into the middle of the clearing.
Luke Honey’s eyes blurred with grief, and Michael’s shade materialized there, his trusting smile disintegrating into bewilderment, then inertness. The cruelness of the memory drained Luke Honey of his fear. He said with dispassion, “My hell is to testify. Don’t you understand? He doesn’t want me. He took me years ago.”
Brush snapped. The stag shambled forth from the outer darkness. It loomed above Scobie, its fur rank and steaming. Black blood oozed from gashes along its flanks. Beneath a great jagged crown of antlers, its eyes were black, its teeth yellow and broken. Scobie fell to his knees, palms raised in supplication. The stag nuzzled his matted hair and its long tongue lapped at the muddy tears and the streaks of drying blood upon the man’s upturned face. Its muzzle unhinged. The teeth closed and there was a sound like a ripe cabbage cracking apart.
Luke Honey slumped against the bole of an oak, the rifle a dead, useless weight across his knees, and watched.
Afterword to “Blackwood’s Baby”
Raised in a wilderness setting, I have an affinity for the natural horrors of Algernon Blackwood and Cormac McCarthy, both of whom were direct influences upon “Blackwood’s Baby.” Bram Stoker’s seminal Dracula, especially its adventure and gothic horror elements, served as further inspiration in addition to my enduring fascination with all things occult. “Blackwood’s Baby” is loosely related to “Catch Hell,” published in Ellen Datlow’s Lovecraft Unbound, which also features the Black Ram Lodge and environs. Further stories and a novel will be set in Ransom Hollow.
—LAIRD BARRON
Paul Park
Paul Park has written ten novels and numerous short stories in a variety of genres. His most recent major work is the Roumania Quartet, made up of A Princess of Roumania, The Tourmaline, The White Tyger, and The Hidden World; upcoming is a revised book version of his novella Ghosts Doing the Orange Dance, with additional sections by John Crowley and Elizabeth Hand. Park lives in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, with his wife and two children.
PAUL PARK
Mysteries of the Old Quarter
(Newly excerpted and translated from the journals and correspondence of Dr. Philippe Delorme, among other sources)
1. “THE RAIN AGAINST THE CASEMENT . . .”
. . . I write this from my hotel room, which constitutes the majority of what I have seen so far, here in what was once the greatest city of New France. Outside, the narrow road is full of water, fog, and sodden filth. I have heard rumors of another, more modern metropolis on the other side of Canal Street, broad boulevards