Read Online Gathered Dust and Others by W. H. Pugmire - Free Book Online Page B

alone in the golden chandelier light.  The doors leading outside had been left open by the mad crowd, and the night wind that rushed through those doors pushed the smell of blood and death through the room, to me.  I shut my eyes to the macabre image in the mirror.  I felt the cold lips that kissed my neck; I felt them press against my ear and breathe into that organ a soft exhalation that smelled of the fragrance that had slipped from my mouth when I had stood before the mausoleum and bade my brother peace.  Turning, I faced the ungodly thing and touched a hand to where its head was split.  Its face was sticky with coagulated blood, and I pressed the little bit of brain that peeped through where the skull had cracked after the figure’s violent fall.  A stream of blood spilled from where my finger had pierced into the dome, and as the thing bent to kiss my breast, it baptized my bosom with blood.  I felt the carrion tongue that lapped the spill of wine that stained my flesh.  The shattered face rose before my own, and although the maw that was its mouth moved, no exhalation floated from it.  There was only the uttered lonesome gagging, a hungry sound.  I bent to that mouth and kissed it, and breathed my hot living air into it.  The dry dead hand that wrapped around my wrist tugged as I was led out of the edifice, into night, toward the moonlight mausoleum where I would lie with kindred.

Yon Baleful God
    How pale the sapphire of the central night,
    Wherein the stars turn grey.
    –Clark Ashton Smith
     
    I sat within a moonlit glade on a summer’s night.  The air was very still, and the starlight over Sesqua Valley seemed sad and pale.   I was staring into that melancholy light when, from out of woodland shadow, a figure limped toward me.  I took in his lean disheveled form, the shock of unruly hair, the emaciated face.  How odd that the moon’s glow played strangely on one of his eyes.  He knelt in front of me and bent his mouth to mine.  The taste of his kiss was familiar.  I pulled him to the ground and made love to his throat, his mouth – his chilly cheek.  Lifting my head, I looked more closely at the pale dead eye that had replaced his socket’s living orb.
    “What’s this?” 
    “It’s something I had fashioned in Prague.  Oh, Adam, I have found the lair of the forgotten god!  I discovered the place where innocence was slaughtered in his name.  I found the place where uncanny gems were offered to his mystery.  I took one such gem and had it shaped so as to replace the eye that I have sacrificed in his name.  There it is, snug in my socket, the jewel that he loved to look at, the surface of which caught his reflection in flickering torch light.  His shadow became a living stain that adhered to the gemstone I had purloined.  Look closely at that ornament, my love, and see the wonder that it adds unto me.  Gaze deeply into its surface, Adam, and you will see him.”
    I touched the stiff and chilly flesh that was nearest to the artificial eye.  I leaned nearer to that flesh and kissed it with my hot mouth.  My lips touched the jewel’s smooth surface.  When I lifted my head and gazed steadfastly at that pale orb, I saw within it a swirling shadow that slowly took on form.  I saw the visage that pierced that shadow with its majesty, that broke through and gazed at me with inhuman eyes.  My lover raised his mouth to my ear and whispered one unholy name.
    “Tsathoggua.”
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    That night, in bed, he spoke of forgotten deities, gods formed in chaos beyond the known dimensions; things that pulsed in alien spaces between the stars.  I listened, enthralled.  We had spoken often of such things.  I had shown him books and sculptures, bas-reliefs and tiaras on which were depicted the likenesses of unimaginable things.  He wore himself out with talking that night.  The pain in his injured leg began to throb.  I held him in my arms and sang him to sleep.  His head pressed