At Fear's Altar PDF
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AT FEAR’S ALTAR HIPPOCAMPUS PRESS LIBRARY OF FICTION Edith Miniter, Dead Houses and Other Works (2008) Jonathan Thomas, Midnight Call and Other Stories (2008) Ramsey Campbell, Inconsequential Tales (2008) Joseph Pulver, Blood Will Have Its Season (2009) Michael Aronovitz, Seven Deadly Pleasures (2009) Donald R. Burleson, Wait for the Thunder (2010) Jonathan Thomas, Tempting Providence and Other Stories (2010) W. H. Pugmire, Uncommon Places: A Collection of Exquisites (2012) Peter Cannon, Forever Azathoth: Parodies and Pastiches (2012) At Fear’s Altar Richard Gavin Hippocampus Press ——————— New York Copyright © 2012 by Richard Gavin Published by Hippocampus Press P.O. Box 641, New York, NY 10156. http://www.hippocampuspress.com All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publisher. Cover art and frontispiece © 2012 by Harry O. Morris. Cover design by Barbara Briggs Silbert. Hippocampus Press logo designed by Anastasia Damianakos. First Digital Edition, 2013 Kindle edition: 978-1-61498-075-9 EPUB Edition: 978-1-61498-076-6 This book is dedicated to Clive Barker, and to the memory of Algernon Blackwood Contents Prologue: A Gate of Nerves Chapel in the Reeds The Abject Faint Baying from Afar The Unbound A Pallid Devil, Bearing Cypress King Him The Plain Only Enuma Elish The Word-Made Flesh Annexation Darksome Leaves The Eldritch Faith Acknowledgments About the Author Prologue: A Gate of Nerves A s if to spite the eatery’s fluorescent-on-chrome brightness, Ken and I took to discussing horrors, both real and imaginary. My lifelong devotion to Gothic literature gave me an advantage when discussing classic shudder tales, but Ken had me trumped when it came to real horror. His roots reached back to rural Japan where his and his family’s concept of hardship utterly eclipsed whatever small discomforts I had known, growing up as I did in the comfort-lush suburbs of Ontario. The only approximation I had to offer was my girlhood encounter with what I believed to be a ghost. (Real or imagined, I still cannot classify the occurrence.) Ken welcomed my confession with a passion that bordered on lust. My account of it was delivered in a disjointed, awkward fashion; a symptom of my embarrassment over the whole thing. I suppose I was hoping for, perhaps even expecting, a helping of empathy. But Ken was stoic. He reached across the table and snatched one of the tofu cubes from the salty black puddle on my plate. He chewed it savagely, and I wondered if he was pretending that this morsel was somehow my childhood fear made solid. Evidently my trauma was quite succulent. Some silent time passed before Ken finally slapped the table with enough force to turn the heads of the café’s other patrons. “I know just what you need! There’s a gathering this Friday night. It will do you a world of good.” I rolled my eyes. “Please. Being sardined inside some frat house or the campus pub, inhaling everyone else’s beer breath and pheromones? Thanks but no. I’d rather have a root canal. Besides, I’m exhausted from mid-terms. I don’t think I could even fake being the merry girl for the night.” “It’s not that kind of party. It’s very low-key. And very exclusive.” “Won’t I stand out then?” Ken shook his head. “You’d be my guest.” He surprised me by reaching Ken shook his head. “You’d be my guest.” He surprised me by reaching across the table and giving my hand a reassuring squeeze. His touch shot sparks down my spine. I tried not to let my emotions get the better of me, keenly aware as I was of Ken’s reputation on campus as being something of a rake. “Trust me on this, Cara. Think of the weekend as a retreat. Imagine how great it will feel to skip town on Friday morning and go to the country for a couple of days; no classes, nobody knocking on your door, no phone calls.” “Okay.” I could feel my cheeks rouging. “I admit that does sound pretty good.” I shirked my Friday morning Japanese Religion tutorial in order to meet Ken in front of the library at seven-thirty. “Have I over-packed?” I asked when I noticed that Ken was loading my bags into an otherwise empty trunk. “It’s fine,” he assured me, “just fine.” His hatchback was small and its cab smelled of strange flowers or perfume, but I was glad to be riding in it once I saw the campus shrinking in the rearview mirror. We chatted enthusiastically for the first part of the trip. Ken told me about his being born in Osaka and how he family relocated to Canada with his grandmother and his parents when he was three. When our drive passed the three-hour mark I posed the question so often asked by children to their keepers: “Are we nearly there?” “We’re closer than we were three hours ago,” Ken said, grinning. “So what kind of gathering is this? Should I pick up some wine or something along the way to bring with me?” “That’s not necessary.” “Who all is going to be there?” “My family. And to get back to your first question; we still have a fair ways to go.” ——— “I’m curious,” Ken uttered, breaking my trance of listening to the hum of the tires as they moved us over country roads. “That experience you told me about the other day . . . had you ever had anything like that happen before?” “No. No, just that one time.” “And nothing since you moved out to go to school?” I bit my lip. “Cara? Did something else happen after you moved?” “Yes. Two days ago.” I heard Ken’s breath pushing out in a sharp, almost bestial sigh. “What I heard Ken’s breath pushing out in a sharp, almost bestial sigh. “What happened?” “I sensed the thing again.” “Where? Where?” “In my dorm hall. While I was in the shower. It was bunched up in the top corner of the stall.” “And it was the same thing you saw when you were thirteen?” “Twelve,” I corrected him, “and yes, it was nearly the same.” “What was different about it?” “It seemed . . . I don’t know, more anxious than before. And . . .” “And?” “It was a lot bigger than I remembered it being.” We reached our destination in the late afternoon; a pale, time-bullied fishing village, all but depleted of its residents. Dwellings merely peppered the landscape; cottages primarily, all brittle-looking and hollow as autumn husks. A finger-like pier pointed across grey waters. All was antiquated, corroding, half- silted out of this world and into another. “There’s a general store just around the bend,” Ken informed me. “We can pick up some provisions there.” We bought clipfish, a bottle of white wine, bread, sugar, and tea; then Ken drove us further into the hamlet. He parked before a droopy bungalow that looked as though it would topple if I looked at it the wrong way. The pagoda-style roof was bowed and bristled with ivy and freckly weeds. The glass front was cracked and partially boarded. There were no other vehicles in sight. “I thought you said this was a party.” “It is.” “So where is everybody?” “Don’t worry. Why don’t I cook us some dinner? Come on.” The air from the estuary was pungent with marine decay. It was also damp and musty, a wet fur smell. The encroaching evening cast steel-blue light across the bungalow’s door of gouged wood. The instant Ken exposed the interior I knew I did not want to enter. The staleness of long-trapped air and the abundance of cobweb strands that billowed out of the open doorframe like curtain fringe, like stray hairs—it was eerie. I could sense the thickened atmosphere that only places in a state of neglect exude; the kind that tweaks our reptile brains, tells us that although this site may be void of occupants, it is still somehow teeming with presence.
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