The Last King of Carcosa

In the 1895th year since its founding, my kingdom of Carcosa had its last festival in tribute to Hastur. The harvest had been generous, and it was only right to pay respects. All took part in the parade as we hauled about an effigy of Hastur. Afterwards the people dispersed to enjoy the activities.

And of all that had been arranged, I could have never guessed the importance of the foreign theater troupe that had been invited. I did not see their play. Many did. From what I heard of it after had been a ghastly performance, though none could say what made it so.

I only became invested in it when death arrived in my kingdom. I don’t know how I knew the troupe was the cause, I just did. It was as irrefutable as the rising sun or the ebb and flow of the tide. No matter how many I sent out, none could find those despicable harbingers.

The bites death took grew larger and larger until it was shoveling great handfuls of my subjects into its greedy, gaping maw. And it continued until the swollen grub of death lay claim to my sons, my daughters, and finally my wife. Only then, with its hunger sated, did it return below, leaving me as king of nothing.

My wife was buried in the garden, under her favorite tree. No sooner was the deed done than was I gripped by madness. I wept and trembled and clawed through the earth to tear her from her eternal rest. I cradled her body close to mine and stroked her cheek, feeling for the warmth that was no longer there.

The madness passed, and I returned her to the earth. My body seized up with the first handful of dirt. I looked away and did not look back until the deed was completed once more. It was my final act as king.

I went into town and found the streets decrepit; the rot of death, having not been satisfied with my people, had seeped into roads and shops and homes and the land itself. Bodies lay everywhere, as there were none left to bury them. I closed the eyes of those I passed. And when I turned to make my way home, that’s when I saw him.

I saw the man in the pallid mask.

I ran towards them, stumbling. But as I approached and saw how its yellow robes flowed about in a wind that only they felt, I knew it was not human. Silence. It didn’t move. It was there, in front of me, and then it wasn’t. And then it was some twenty feet away on a street corner.

I took a step towards it. Then another. And another. The silence remained unbroken by my halting footsteps. When I was five feet away, it moved again, this time down the street. Again I approached and again it moved. This continued.

After the fifth time we repeated this dance, it brought me inside a bookstore. It led me through a maze of bookshelves that stretched far beyond the building it was contained in. Further and further in I followed, until we had reached the destination.

In a clearing, as if the books themselves had given it a wide berth, was a tome on a lectern, behind which the ghost in yellow stood. My eyes locked onto that ancient book. Still there was silence. One foot forward, then the other.

My hand came to rest on it. I looked up, and the specter was gone. I knew it to be for good. Tome clutched to my chest, I turned around. The maze that would’ve confounded my exit was no more, and the exit was not but three feet away.

After I made it back to my room, I looked over the tome more carefully. The covers and spine were made of the blackened scraps of animal skin held together with haphazard stitches. I opened the volume to a random page; the yellowed paper felt like it would crumble.

There, in that wretched book, were details of a foul ritual that would recall spirits from beyond the veil. I threw it across the room. How could I commit such a violation against nature? What sort of person did that ghost think I was? Did it think me weak?

Weariness. I retired at once. But there was no restful sleep for me. My wife and children begged to return. I yelled, told them dead is dead, and there was nothing that could undo what had been done. Their pleas became beratement. They called me selfish, evil, cruel.

I awoke. In the darkness I thought I saw that pallid mask at the foot of my bed. I rubbed my eyes, and the vision was gone. It was just the nightmare. I rolled over, and drifted back into a dreamless sleep.

The first thing that struck me when I awoke was the emptiness of my bed. I touched my face where my wife would place her hand every morning. I got up. I did not dress, as it did not matter when I was attending an audience of no one, and I went to the dining hall.

Another pang of emptiness. The table was not set; the chairs were empty. I made a simple breakfast and ate. Only the scraping of fork on plate stayed the silence. The dishes were left in the sink, and I left the castle.

I walked about for twenty minutes before it ceased its appeal, as I had no desire to walk amongst the dead. I had no desire for anything. At the castle, I could at least settle in a forgotten corner and pass the days.

And pass the days did. I found refuge in bed and books. My nights were haunted by the recurring nightmare and that pallid mask, and I began finding that wretched tome beside me when I woke up.

The one thing I can recall with certainty from this time is when, in a fit, I attempted to end the ceaseless haunting. I placed the book into a fireplace and lit it. The flames engulfed it, and yet, even after an hour it remained.

I doused the fire and picked it up. Even the water failed to damage it. I hurled it out the tower window. That night, I had a nightmare about being burned at the stake. Although I knew it to be a dream, the pain of my flesh being scorched made me believe it real, until I awoke, unharmed, the tome beside me. That was the only time I tried to destroy it.

My sleep got worse and worse. I lost track of whether days or weeks had passed. I spent more and more of my waking hours at the grave in the garden. I broke. I gave in. I submitted. I retrieved the tome from my room and set about performing the ritual described within.

I shall not recall the specifics. I shall only say that while it was I who went through the motions it was not I who performed those vile rites, nor was I the one who defiled my wife’s grave for the things necessary.

When it was done, my wife was standing before me. She smiled. I took her hand in mine, and fell to my knees. It had not been a trick; she had been returned to me. I stared at the ground, watching my tears splatter against the ground.

My wife placed her hand under my chin and had me look up at her. She wiped away the tears. I saw she was crying too, so I rose to my feet, and wiped her tears away just as she had done for me. I felt the warmth in her cheeks I thought lost.

An obsession consumed me. How could I be satisfied with only my wife? I would bring my children back. But why stop there? The servants, the farmers, the shopkeeps. They would all return. But then how could I deny any of them lives without their loved ones when I enjoyed that luxury?

Time passed in a haze. My wife and children attended to my needs as I repeated the ritual. Over and over and over again. I do not know if days or weeks had passed before I finished my work. All I know is that after all was said and done, I slept as I had not slept since that festival for Hastur.

The nightmares stopped. I no longer found the tome near me when I awoke, only my wife. I went with her down to the dining hall and saw my children waiting for me. We had a great feast to celebrate the joy of reclaiming what had been lost.

Life returned to normal. Farmers tended their fields, butchers kept livestock, merchants peddled goods, and it was as if the calamity that had ruined Carcosa had never happened. I submerged myself in this second chance that had broken my languished reality. The demon in yellow plagued me no more.

And so the years passed, until we had a festival to celebrate Hastur, something that had not been done since the rebirth. I had no desire to see another harbinger of our destruction, but they had not abandoned us and had kept the fields fertile and given us an extraordinary harvest this year. It felt right to pay respects and ask forgiveness.

We held it in the courtyard. Wine flowed from casks, two wild boars roasted on great firepits, and a sculpted effigy of Hastur was the centerpiece. Everyone stopped to give thanks, some several times. I had the best of the harvest placed at the foot of the effigy in offering.

Then came the entertainment. Theater troupes were banned from this. The first to take their place on the stage that had been built atop empty barrels was a jester. They raised their arms up and a silence fell upon the revelry.

All looked at them. From behind their back they produced a mask. They put it on and time froze for all but me and that jester, though I could not move. When their hand fell from the mask, it was not the jester standing there but the ghost in yellow robes that had led me to that book of rites.

It gave a mocking bow and then pointed at one of my subjects. A pinprick of deep crimson light flew from the back of their head, and raced down an invisible path upwards through the air. After it hit its peak, it raced down towards me and struck me in the same place it had emerged.

Now I could see the spider silk thread the light had travelled along. The demon pointed at another person, then another, and another. Three more lights repeated the journey of the first, and I saw three more of those pathways.

Then, it pointed at me. The back of my head tingled as I saw threads, as countless as the stars above, become known to me. It waited. I wished for all to become unfrozen so they could all pile on that thing and rid me of it.

The pathways all pulsed with a faint blue light. Had it not been for the demon keeping me frozen I would’ve thrown up. The powers that had told me the play was to blame gave me another epiphany. The pathways were not just forming; they had always been, the result of those vile rites. And they were to control.

Time resumed.

There was no demon, just an empty stage, and an audience looking to me to pick the first performer. I picked at random with a shaking hand. Everyone looked at the performance as I looked away.

I felt the back of my head, though I could not feel the paths I knew existed. My breathing shallowed. Everyone was acting normal, but not because they wanted to. I ran away. Through the doors. Up the stairs. To the highest tower.

It was no use. The curtain had been pulled back on the great magic trick, and I would never again know peace. Even as I cowered in a wardrobe, I felt the impulses shoot out in waves, maintaining normalcy, and keeping everyone away from me.

What part of me had I given to that horrid thing? How long had it been leeching my existence? Was my time up? Was I no longer useful? Was that why it now revealed the horrid truth to me? Had this whole thing been its abominable scheme?

Why me?

I could not breathe. My heart exhausted itself in a furious labor. Would my wife comforting me actually help? I crushed my head in my hands. Was my wife doing what she would actually do? My children? My subjects?

The book. I ran down the stairs. I flung my clothes from my wardrobe. Emptied the night stand. Crawled under the bed. Nothing. How cruel that demon to force it upon me and then tear it away when I needed it.

I slumped against my bed. The tingling of the back of my head grew into an incessant burning. None disturbed me as I crawled under the blankets. I drifted in and out of consciousness until the morning. My wife was next to me.

She did not speak. No one did. Were the people I lived with the real ones? Or was it just part of the trick? A false promise? No answers came to me. I clung to this wretched existence of lies, this home without warmth.

Some days my wife moved with all the grace I had married her for, and others she moved like an animal in human skin. Some days I was greeted as a hero, others I found all stared at me with judgement. Some days I was surrounded by my family and some I was abandoned.

I don’t remember how many months this went on, only how it ended. As I presided over one of the many lifeless revelries that had taken place, the answer that I had been searching for came to me.

I had lost.

Whatever that thing that had unleashed death upon Carcosa had gotten what it had wanted. What was done could not be undone. I did not fear or loathe or shrink away from the false kingdom I had created any longer.

I laughed for the first time since the death of my kingdom. I had been given years of extra time with my wife, my children, my kingdom. Didn’t that make me the winner, even in a small way? Was the peace I had not real despite the truth? The specter in yellow had inflicted a great cruelty upon me, but I still had my own will.

It was that epiphany that led to a last festival, a grand farewell. It was a subdued affair. As the twin suns began to set, I smiled at my wife and everyone shared a moment of silent understanding. I rose, everyone rose, and then all departed for their homes to make preparations.

It was time for my final act as king.

I felt for the connections at the back of my head, and for the first and only time I sent a conscious command to everyone. Gather. My wife left my side and I looked out the window. People were leaving their homes and joining the ever growing mass.

The procession made its way to the lake of Hali, the countless pinpricks of light from their candles an ethereal trail that all followed. They waited for me at the shore. I approached and they started a quiet rendition of Cassilda’s song before marching forward.

One by one they disappeared beneath the gentle waves and one by one I bade them farewell. The lake remained a perfect mirror to the sky above with its strange moons; its surface refusing to be disturbed by the procession of spirits.

As the last one left I fell to my hands and knees. Tears rolled off my face and into the lake, where they joined the others below. I remained in this state for hours. When the tears stopped I picked up the pieces of my self and stood back up. I stared out over the lake.

On the opposite shore stood that ghost that had led me to that tome and exposed the price. Every detail of its pallid mask was illuminated by the moonlight. It stared at me and me at it. Then, it beckoned, and I obliged.