One Thousand Dead Names - WINNER

[carnage_lee]

One Thousand Dead Names

For as long as I can remember I have had an indefatigable obsession with seeking out those things of which the gods would rather be kept secret. Even as a kid I suspected that anything really worth knowing about stayed hidden from the bulk of humanity’s grasp and I had never much cared for the ways of my peers and their self imposed limitations - realities shackled to mortgages, day jobs and dinner parties. So from an early age I had made it my life’s art to study the great magicians and mystics who have successfully found ways of bringing the arcane and fantastic to life; those who have lifted the veil between our dreams and waking reality, successfully creating ways for the miraculous and sublime to subsist in an otherwise unbearably limited and materialistic world. This was not without its pitfalls however, as my present down at heel situation was testament to, for the universe does not take kindly to those of us who set out to upset the natural order of things.

Fresh out of prison with not a pot to piss in, much less a roof over my head, I had been shunted off to the seaside courtesy of my local authority and was currently living in a ramshackle old bed and breakfast so typical of those forgotten small coastal towns speckled along the south of England. A neon sign, made up of bright red capital letters that had not worked properly since the seventies, rather incongruously named it the PALACE HOTEL. Now little more than a doss house for those on the scrub end of social security, its faded wallpaper and regency styling hinted at a grander past - glory days as distant and ephemeral as a Victorian séance.

That winter I had quickly settled in to a routine, my waking reality as regular and mundane as daytime TV and to those around me I quickly gained the reputation of a loner long since institutionalised from a life that oscillated between drink, the streets and prison. A bit strange, a bit quiet maybe but essentially a steady old lag, a creature of habit as readable and dependable as a grandfather clock. This was a condition I deliberately cultivated and I’m sure was in no small way reason why I took to the prison and itinerant lifestyle so well. For real sorcery exists in that vortex created by a truly receptive mind in a truly passive state; a delicate balance created from a life spent waiting for those brief flashes of magic to puncture the veil called living.

So there I was, calm as Buddha, patient as a priest in a routine that had passed more or less the same for the last 3 months. I would wake up, get breakfast then while away the afternoon in the local library or drop in before returning to my room to stay up until the small hours to study and write.

The drop in served as both a break from the oppressive confines of my damp cramped bed-sit and as brief respite from the cold wind that swept straight off the sea and rattled through every bone in my body. Occupying the ground floor of a nondescript municipal building built in the 1920’s, it was specifically a support project for homeless people with drug problems, of which I was neither, though most of my time served out of prison was spent living on the streets or in some sort of temporary accommodation and my normal demeanour was such that many assumed I was under the influence of one kind of mind altering substance or other.

In any case, coming here on a regular basis won brownie points with my probation officer and the coffee served was hot and strong and served in mugs thick enough to wrap both hands around. All I needed to do was to check in with my drugs counsellor every couple of weeks to discuss any problems I might be having and sign a few forms corroborating my attendance. The drop in area itself was similar to hundreds across the country, a no mans land made up of plastic chairs and Formica tables, the smell of damp clothes and desolation wrapping itself around intestinal green walls decorated with posters advising on the risks of sharing needles, drink driving and TB.

It was on one such afternoon that I found myself slouched in the corner nursing a coffee. There was a plate of cheese sandwiches in front of me, left over from a hepatitis awareness event that morning and I was trying to decide whether to finish them off or pop outside for a smoke. Just then a hooded figure sidled up beside me. Small dark eyes and a wispy moustache above a gold toothed smile glimpsed from the corner of my eye pegged him as Neil. Neil Whistly, or Whistle to his friends – of which there weren’t that many still alive, was a slightly built thirty something currently under care of the local mental health team and on a waiting list to enter detox. I was half surprised to see him here as Neil was always being banned by the drop in staff for misusing the phone and using the communal job search computer for looking up pornography and Taliban websites. Last I saw him he was being escorted out loudly proclaiming his innocence to all and sundry, shouting he didn’t need to come here anyway as he had a three week cruise lined up as a special guest of some minor royal he had met at a party the week before.

As is the common way with men of my ilk, I carry on staring straight ahead, pretending not to notice him while waiting for him to make the first move. I didn’t wait long.

“Alright Ray bro, how ya doing?”

A weighty pause. Neil was one of those fellows that, even when he wasn’t doing anything remotely dodgy, acted as if he was so that even the most mundane conversations became imbued with a sense of shiftiness- a nudge here, a wink there, long pauses and furtive glances. Others found it endearing, I just found it irritating.

“Not bad as it happens Neil, bit surprised to see you here, what happened to the romantic trip with princess?”

“What?” another long lidded pause “oh that, kind of fell apart Ray, it was ok for a bit but she wouldn’t leave me alone, came obsessed like bro, I just had to abandon ship if you know what I mean.”

Though I suspected that at least half this tale was complete bollocks, it wasn’t as far fetched as it sounded; for despite being a complete headcase, or maybe because of it, total strangers seemed to warm to Neil instantly, especially women, and he was always being invited to weekends away at lavish destinations and impromptu celebrations. Of course none of these fair weathered friendships lasted as few mortals had the stamina to withstand his brand of chaos too long. I basically quite like Neil and suspected he had once been a Shaman of immeasurable power. A childhood spent smoking skunk evolving into an adolescence snowballing heroin and crack will do strange things to a brain however so, although I was more than happy to engage in the odd spot of chit chat, I kept my distance, treating him as I would a Goetic demon, firm but fair, polite but under no illusions that we would ever be on anything but the most cordial of terms.

“Sorry to hear that, better luck next time”

“Yeah you an’ me both bro, you an’ me both; anyway, I need to speak to you Ray, got something you might be interested in.” Another pregnant pause coupled with a shifty sidelong peek across the table. Saying nothing I stir my coffee, my eyes fixed straight ahead, focused on the AIDS awareness poster on the far wall.

“Bumped in to a friend of yours, from the Swamp, says you an’ him were banged up there together.”

Her Majesty’s Prison Swimdon, or the Swamp as it was not so affectionately known, was a vast sprawling Victorian shithole of a prison built on marshland just outside the Isle of Shipney. Infested by rats, demons and lowlifes (and that’s just the screws for starters) I had a spent an eventful few months in there a while back courtesy of an ABH and attempt to supply charge pinned on me by Dover police. The experience had practically left me for dead, but that’s another story. I carry on staring ahead, nonchalantly sipping my coffee.

“Italian geezer; says his name Mike an’ that he ‘as something you’d wanna see.”

Michael Busento. I vaguely remembered him. We had shared a cell together at Swimdon. He specialised in commercial burglaries and was in for a string of hits on some out of town supermarket warehouses. A quiet, alright kind of a guy with a shared interest in the occult and who had even assisted me in a couple of exorcisms if I remember. However his real forte was cooking. Mike’s Banoffee pie was the stuff of legend at Swimdon – the delicacies he could create with a few mouldy biscuits and a tin of condensed milk - now that was real magic.

“Well he’s in some trouble bro, says you were both into some strange stuff together there an’ you might be able to help.”

I switch off while Neil continues his story, going on about a friend of a friend at a party somewhere in London, needing drugs and driving to some anonymous estate to score, turning up in some crack house only to bump into Mike, slumped in the corner, somewhere in nowhere. Life is littered by broken lives and fallen friends with hapless ghouls like Neil flickering between them, sticking his nose in. I have heard this story a thousand times, the names and places change but the ending is always depressingly similar.

“He’s in a bad way bro and it’s written all over his skin, he says they’re like a key to the gateways, seventh heaven like.”

At the mention of gateways my ears prick up. This could be the paranoiac ramblings of a strung out crack head or …. it could be worse, much worse.

“What’s written? What words?”

“Well not so much words as symbols, all over ‘im like the proverbial rash – says you would know about it – somethin’ about starting the gate. Says you would be able to stop it, says he’s dying and only you can close it”.

By now my coffee’s gone cold and I need a cigarette. I lean across the table to pick at a sandwich, more for something to do as any appetite I might have had has long gone. My gut is telling me to walk away from this; whatever mess Mike’s got himself into was his problem not mine and there were other places I’d rather be than some god forsaken crack house in South London. Lots of places.

“I’m not hiking all the way up to London over some half arsed story about an ex con with a rash. Go tell him to buy some Savlon or something.”
“I know bro I know, that’s what I thought, if he wants your help bad enough he can ask for it himself, only he’s too fucked to move. It’s a messed up situation and getting bad for business. But look.” He sneaks another sly stare over his shoulder as he digs into his pocket for his phone. “I’ve got pictures.”

I lean over and take a quick look at the photos on his phone and I’m hooked – a sliver of excitement stirs in my stomach and starts snaking its way up my spine. Though most of the pictures are blurred and dark I recognise the sigils instantly.

“Beneath Earths core, to dream and wait,
The Seventh call at Saturn’s gate.”

“What bro?”

I wasn’t aware I had spoken out loud. “It’s poetry, from Yemen. Looks like Mike’s found himself some new friends and the Old Ones might be coming to South London to play, poor bastard.”

I take a deep breath; I need time to think but not here, not now. Out of the corner of my eye I spot my counsellor making her way across the room toward me, a concerned frown creasing her face, no doubt triggered by my sitting here with Neil huddled over his mobile. I reach into my pocket and take out my St Christopher medal. With a practiced flick of my thumb I send it spiralling into the air forming a graceful arc of metal that shimmers as it butterflies down into the centre of my palm. It’s heads. I make up my mind.

“Look Neil, we can’t get into it here, how’s about you find a car and show me the rat hole where Mike’s strung out, if I think its something I can help with then I’ll do my best to move him on and I might even pay you for your trouble. First though, I need to sod off home for a bit, I’ll call later.”

He just grins, his teeth glinting mischievously against the yellowed fluorescent lighting. I doubt he has any idea what this is about but he’s as happy as Larry and enjoying the intrigue. I get up to go, then, remembering my last trip with him, I turn round again.

“Oh and another thing, make sure the motors legit, absolutely no drugs till all this is over and you’re completely out of my sight and most important of all - tonight I’m the one whose driving.”

A few hours later and I’m back in my room and getting ready to go. I’ve arranged to meet Neil within the next half hour and despite being a chaotic bastard in many ways, I know he’ll be there. I have just enough time to look through a few things and take down some notes. Someone in my position doesn’t get to own a lot of books but I have friends in useful and unusual places so information is seldom a problem. I gather up some photocopied pages of the Necronomicon and the book of Soyga, scanned for me by an old acquaintance from the British Library and hastily scribble some names and symbols in the margins. I grab some tobacco, galangal root, my bloodstone, an Obsidian crystal I had borrowed from a mate of mine earlier that evening and some incense. A quick shower and change of clothes and I’m ready to go.

Leaving the hotel I spot Neil on the corner, leaning against an old Citroen that looked as if it had just been reprieved from the local scrap heap, though knowing him it probably had. The drive into London is uneventful and despite having to listen to Neil prattling on about his latest escapade with a cross dressing Nubian diplomat he had met at a party at the American embassy, I enjoy being behind the wheel again.

Before long we’re driving through the back streets of Battersea through some sprawling, hideous council estate round the back of Clapham Junction. I’m circling the car around an endless parade of depressingly identical grubby streets while Neil’s leaning out the window trying to remember which slab of concrete housed our particular den. The crap car and our lost expressions must have given us away as out of towners and it’s not long before some local kids, grown bored with watching our meanderings, come to our aid and direct us to a block called Wilmarth House. We’re led up to the 14th floor in a lift that reeks of old men and piss. Neil’s uncharacteristically quiet, incessantly running his hands through his hair and biting his lower lip, mannerisms I recognise as the nervous tic of a junkie getting ready to score. The journey up seems to take forever and though I’m trying to clear my thoughts and prepare myself, all I can feel is a puddle of something suspiciously sticky, yet too badly illuminated for me to make out, slopped around my feet. I make a mental note to myself that if I ever got out of this place in one piece, I would treat myself to a new pair of shoes.

Eventually the lift shambles to a halt and through sliding aluminium doors we’re greeted by an innocuous corridor of grey concrete, punctuated by even greyer wooden doors. Neil springs out and practically runs down to the far entrance which, judging from the two bodies slumped outside and the broken front window, I guessed was where Mike was holed up. I shuffle up behind him, my feet leaving wet sticky imprints on the dusty floor.

I didn’t catch who opened the door and I didn’t want to, I wasn’t here to make small talk after all and I figured that whoever needed to know would have been informed of my visit. Without waiting for an invite I walk straight in to a narrow dark corridor, through a filthy living room, past what might have been a kitchen to the back of the flat. Experience has taught me to keep moving to the back; where there is drugs there will invariably be demons of one sort or another and in holes like this there is always a back bedroom where the dealers can keep the worst hidden from punters and police alike. I wasn’t wrong.

I push open a door left hanging from its hinges and step into a dank cesspool of a room. The first thing to hit me is the stink. The whole place smelled bad but this was worse, much worse, a rank odour of decay that pervades the whole room and settles on my psyche like asphalt. The windows along the far wall have been boarded up and the only light comes from a small candle on an upturned crate, its nervous flickering casting skittering shadows against the walls. It takes a while for my eyes to adjust to the gloom but eventually I just make out someone lying on a filthy mattress on the floor to my right. I move in for a better look and I’m dimly aware Neil’s followed me in and is standing behind me.

“Whoa, Jesus…”

“Shut it Neil, I need some quiet. If you want to stay go stand by the door, just don’t let anyone in.”

I turn on my pocket torch and crouch down beside Mike. He’s wearing nothing but a pair of stained boxer shorts and his thin huddled frame is shivering uncontrollably. The poor sod is barely recognisable; his face stretched taut, pallid and grey like cheap concrete, lightly covered by a thin slimy sheen of perspiration. He’s breathing strained and heavy in short dirty rasps, and it’s obvious he’s in a lot of pain. As I peer closer I can see why. From the neck down his skin is covered with what at first look like scratch marks, deep ones, forming vivid red criss cross patterns similar to those I’ve seen on the arms of self harmers in prison. Only these appeared to be moving; a mini army of slithering crimson worms crawling just under his skin, tracing infernal designs I recognise from Magicks terrible and arcane. I’m sat there, hunched down on my haunches, barely able to breathe, yet despite the horror of the situation I am mesmerised, my mind hypnotised by the strange hieroglyphs twisting and writhing along Mike’s body. The shadows cast by the candle become dark and heavy, taking on a life of their own, as the fetid air hangs close and thick, dulling my senses. A faint whimper beside me brings me back.

“Ray..mond….is that …..you?”

I look up from those unholy stigmata and try to smile. “The one and only mate, long time no hear eh? Looks like you’ve got yourself into a bit of a pickle.”

“He..lp me …… I….” suddenly Mike doubles up; a great hacking cough rips through his emaciated frame as foul smelling spittle sprays the air around us.

“Look mate, don’t try to say too much, it’s alright, we’ve all wanted to fuck the world over at some point. What I need from you is to tell me what you were summoning.”

“Thought… I could…. the key….. I…” He sighs and tries to sit up but his body gives up, his skin so tight and paper thin I swear I can hear it tearing as he moves. I could see he was getting worse, blood red runic sigils were now snaking their way up his neck, tracing his jugular like fat hungry slugs. We didn’t have long.

“I need the name Mike, now. Or we’re all fucked.” Behind me I could sense Neil shifting nervously.

“C’mon Mike the name, without it I can’t send them back, if they break through totally, well Christ knows what might happen.”

“Yog… Soth… I …ah…AH...” More gut wrenching spasms as his body heaves and jerks its way into oblivion. There was no point trying to get much more from him in this state but I’ve heard enough for starters. Lighting some incense I pop a lump of galangal in my mouth and start to chew, the sour bitter root stinging my taste buds, providing a welcome break from the sickly cloying sweetness wafting from Mike’s body. I get up and begin to draw a circle round the bed with some chalk but the floor’s too sticky so I give up and decide to trace one with my bloodstone instead. I reach into my pocket for my notes and take one last look at my hastily scribbled incantations. I’ve never been one for languages so I write out a few of the more elaborate phrases on the back of my hand for easy reference later. With the preliminaries out the way I stand over Mike holding out the Obsidian in my left hand, gazing into the inky black depths of the crystal while I start the call.

As I begin to intone the sacred words, sounds conceived thousands of years ago for purposes long lost to any civilised society, an immense pressure starts to build in my head and what I can only describe as the weight of the world begins to close in around me.

My senses blur and I start to feel as well as hear strange sounds that scutter and whisper around me, alien buzzings and clatterings that vibrate through my skin to freeze my bones and curdle my blood; creating a blasphemous accompaniment to the ritual and making any coherent thought on my part increasingly tortuous. A thick fetid stench of fish and sulphur crawls up my nose and slides down the back of my throat to nestle in the pit of my stomach. Vague amorphous shapes dance around my peripheral vision, as the air around me gathers and shifts, disturbing my balance.

“IA’KA SHUB NIGGURATH. YOG AI’IK SOTHOTH.”

I’m barking out the words, my eyes fixed firmly on the crystal, as to look away now would risk falling into an abyss deeper and madder than any hell imagined in this world or another. The pressure continues to build - up and up - an encephalitic nightmare, my brain too big for my skull and about ready to explode.

“IA’KA SHUB NIGGURATH! YOG AI’IK SOTHOTH!”

A last ditch cry and finally I’m there, the noise has gone and the pressure’s dissipated – I’ve broken through and still just about able to string a sentence together. The squalid, slimy little room has disappeared and I’m suspended in a vast cavernous chamber carved from alien stone that’s simultaneously static and rock solid yet somehow pulsing and alive. There’s a brief pause before I sense a huge weight shifting and uncoiling, displacing the atmosphere around me, marking the presence of something monstrous and awesome awakening itself from the depths of this particular infinity - but I daren’t look up. Streams of electrical energy pour in through the limbic part of my brain weaving intricate patterns I am only barely able to register; a communion of minds with an intelligence that’s clearly not human. By now I’m half catatonic and only dimly aware of who or what I am. This is the best bit, being alive and nothing all at the same time.

From what seems a great distance I hear screaming. Instinct tells me it’s Mike, suffering beyond belief no doubt, as creatures unimagined for centuries start to rend and claw their way through his being. Right now it’s what little life he has left in his pitiful existence that’s keeping them from tearing a hole through our meagre excuse for a universe. Sending them back and keeping them back is a delicate business. Timing is everything.

With a vast effort I grab the Obsidian with both hands, raise it above my head and hurl it into the void in front of me. I sense rather than see it smash with an almighty crash that reverberates through my body and is accompanied by a cacophonous roar of pure fury. A great rush of wind torpedoes around me as I’m hurled through a pitch black void, desperately trying to keep focus; still screaming half remembered syllables from a long forgotten language in time to the beating of my heart. Whether its fear or the pleasure of the hunt, I’m on a rush and right smack bang in the middle of exactly where I want to be – chasing those precious milliseconds of mayhem which ride you like madness and for which your whole life has been worth living, where suddenly everything makes perfect sense and every synapse of your brain becomes alive, humming and vibrating to the rhythm of Gods bloodstained and ancient.

Dawn breaks calm and steady but I don’t notice, instead I’m rudely awakened by an officer of the law standing over me in a room trashed beyond repair. There’s blood on the walls and what looks like what’s left of Mike forming an oozing pulpy mass on the floor beside me. The flat is a hive of activity with police rounding up suspects, searching for drugs and corroborating witness statements. The kickback from last night’s ritual is hitting me hard, my body and mind slipped out of sync and I’m only barely able to answer questions thrown at me by the investigating officer with a few mumbled, incoherent ramblings. As I’m cuffed, led downstairs and loaded into the police van, whispered snatches of conversation wind their way into my torpid consciousness; rumours of rival gangs and deals gone wrong, of crazed addicts driven insane by paranoia and sleepless nights spent binging on bad drugs. Neil is nowhere to be seen.

Waking up next to dead body during a police raid on crack house is not good for a man with my previous and it’s not long before I’m back where I started, remanded into custody for breaching my licence while the CPS decide whether or not to charge me for worse. I’m back in one of the larger London prisons and all in all it’s not a bad gaff for a man like me to hole up in for awhile. I’ve been here a few times before and I know the routine and more importantly the routine knows me. The screws here remember me as a reliable sort who won’t make trouble so it’s not long before I’m whisked through induction with a fresh change of clothes and some spare tobacco to see me through till tomorrow’s canteen. I’ve even got my old cell back, up on the fours landing on E wing. A single cell on a quiet wing where I know I won’t be disturbed. I’m still coming down from the night before and I need time to take stock and write.

“Doe not call up Any that you can not put down” Wise words indeed but impossible for those of us too curious or too reckless to stay within the bounds of traditional occult propriety. Some gateways are created through dreams, some traced in stone, and some are carved in flesh. I guess Mike drew the short straw, poor bastard, but at least he died trying. For what matters is that we are able to create doors, to conjure passageways through which the Gods can see and be seen, allowing them to seep into our consciousness and invade our dreams. For any age that seeks to exist without this psychic safety valve is an age balanced on a lethal and explosive precipice. Not all magick is learnt from books dusty and antiquated. The best Grimoires are alive; continually growing and mutating, absorbing knowledge in an alchemical process of exchange with their mages far, far away from the static stereotype of ancient tomes languishing in libraries, mouldy and forgotten. The truly dangerous and infernal just aren’t beholden to the same boundaries and limitations set by the narrow minded and afraid and, like a moth to a flame, these are the things that attract me, leading me to my art.

In the distance through my cell door I can hear the sounds of the prison as she settles in for the night. The muffled shouts and clanging keys that signal the end of evening association and herald the advent of at least two hours of reasonable quiet and solitude without interruption before lights are off. I sigh contentedly as the old familiar rhythm of prison settles around me, predictable as the tides, timeless as the sea. Reaching for my biro I begin my letter:


Ms Jean Rosemary Boyle
86 Clark Street
Arkham, Massachusetts

My Dear Rosie,

I trust this letter finds you well. It’s been a while, I know. As continued from my last correspondence, a little something for your collection. Enjoy.

With all my love

Ray

One Thousand Dead Names
Chapter 749 – Michael Busento and the Seventh Celestial Gateway………