by Ian Grey (Vampire: The Masquerade | The Mythos Project | Fiction)
"Bear in mind closely that I did not see any actual visual horror at the end..."
- H.P. Lovecraft, "The Whisperer in Darkness"
Inside the padded cell shadows crawled. A single light hung from the ceiling, its glow fighting to be seen in the ever shifting darkness. Occasionally ebony tendrils would slide up to probe the fixture - not to break it, but to tease and play with it in a parody of eroticism that was almost hypnotic.
Bishop Lang stepped back & closed the peep-hole on the darkness. Like a startled octopus in an aquarium... he thought.
"How long has he been like this?" he said, turning to face the young Tzimice Priest-in-Training acting as nurse & caretaker.
The fresh faced ivory beauty betrayed its original gender with a strong tenor voice. "Only for the last day or so, your Excellency. As you know he's been Catatonic for much of the last year, only becoming lucid enough to feed and give a few hints as to the nature of his... condition." Lang noticed the slight hesitation, and smiled inwardly. Madness you mean... yes, wise of you not to use that word in relation to any of the Lasombra, no matter how true. The childe was learning some wisdom from its experiences here at least. "It was the late Priscus Esther's wish that he be cared for until he could be more properly be debriefed."
Yet another in a long line of confusing details leading to your demise, my dear Esther... He shook his head, thanked the caretaker and took his leave. A few minutes later he was above ground, the Mercy Funeral Home that served to hide the temple behind him. Normally he embraced the darkness, but the nature of the thing he'd witnessed within the cell oddly left him wanting the comfort of the lit city above.
"Gather your wits, my little Nightingale..." Lang whispered to the closed door, "I have many questions for you, and I will have answers..."
After a bit of hunting (a lithe & slightly anorexic blond with a forgettable name) he returned to his haven. Few suspected the slum-side chapel of Rev. Lang of masking the Jersey Barrens Temple of the Sabbat. No one who suspected lived long enough to act on their suspicions.
Closing the oak door behind him he strode past the pews, pausing only briefly to kneel and cross himself before the altar, a whispered prayer given up to God and Cain. Standing again, he turned and headed back to his study. After clearing enough space on a desk laden with musty papers and yellowed books he turned briefly to rifle through a number of transcripts. Finding what he sought, he settled down to review his evidence, both fact and speculation, on the strange case of Priscus Esther and young Nightingale...
Esther Shade. She had been a ghoul in the service of a Toreador Elder when Grenada finally fell to both Christianity and the Lasombra reformation in the 15th century. Switching sides, she embraced the invading Lasombra and was embraced in turn. In the centuries since, she had fought, lied, cheated, betrayed and slept her way up to the exalted position of Priscus. To support herself in recent nights she'd taken to making snuff-films; not because she needed the money, but because she enjoyed the work. Her most recent service to the Sabbat had taken her from the killing fields of New York to the contested Anarch territories in California, where she met up with Nightingale's pack.
Nightingale's history was far shorter, though no less colorful, given the short span of years which he had had to shine. A random recruit, Nightingale took his name from his evident gift for the Discipline of Obtenebration and the style of using it for which he became known. At one point in his career he and his pack had actually managed to seize control of a local TV station and commit bloody mayhem live from the newsroom. Given that it was Hallowe'en, the incident had been swept under the rug as a prank, but it had the local Camarilla sweating for some nights afterward.
After the death and diablerie of Symmachus the Pack somehow lost a month's time to the aftereffects of a faerie curse originally placed on the ancient Brujah. Because of this encounter, they discovered Symmachus had been pursuing two other elders, both of an obscure bloodline, and immediately gave chase. According to Esther's letters, they had tracked the two ancients back to New York, losing them in a firefight at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.
It was in this battle that Nightingale had fallen into the catatonic state that had claimed him for much of the past year.
Esther was not actually present at this incident, arriving just in time to pick up the pieces. Once the pack was in hiding at her haven, she made a brief jaunt to stash Nightingale at the Mercy Mortuary Home before returning to the Big Apple.
And her death.
From what Lang had since been able to piece together, the Camarilla never knew of her Manhattan hideaway, a large house by the waterfront funded by her disturbed film hobby. Her servants told of an invisible assault during the day, the sounds of automatic gunfire in the cellars, replaced by screams. No remains, outside of some bloodstains & a fine layer of ash, were found...
It wasn't until the following week Lang received the call; there had been another change. Nightingale had regained his "composure".
Lang peered through the peep-hole but could see only darkness. "I thought you said he'd recovered?' he growled.
The young fiend cleared its somewhat dry throat before it spoke, "Only in that he's demonstrably out of the coma. He's been whispering, your Excellency, speaking and muttering in hushed tones. We believed you would want to know..."
Lang stopped the apology with a gesture. "Quite right... Open the door, I wish to hear what he has to say."
"Your Excellency? Wouldn't it be best if some bodyguards were present?" the aide spoke up.
With a hiss Lang turned suddenly on the younger Kindred, his fangs bared and his eyes black with rage. The target of his attention visibly cringed under the weight of that gaze. His voice barely audible, Lang spoke: "I am a Bishop of the Sabbat, a survivor of more crusades than you have hairs on your silly little head. Do you suggest I should cower from a weak little tick as if I were a child hiding behind his mother's skirts?"
Ignoring the Tzimice's groveling attempts at apology, Lang refocused the angry beast within on the door. Digging fingers into the edges he wrenched it open, the lock popping free with a sharp crack. Wisps of shadow drifted out like smoke, eating at the light in the hall like a hungry thing.
"Come in," a chillingly soft voice came out to greet him, "please..."
Nightingale's voice was an instrument of music in and of itself, or so the Bishop had been told by a number of those who'd met him. Now it was a still note, echoing out of the darkness. The bravado of Bishop Lang's beast wilted, becoming a thing of fear instead of courage. Ha! he challenged it, I am Lasombra. I have no need to fear any darkness! Holding the thought like a rallying cry, he stepped into the cell and was quickly engulfed in shadow.
"Welcome..." the voice purred, "I don't suppose you have a cigarette, by any chance?"
Lang fished about in his pockets for lighter and smokes. Like many he knew, Lang played the game of tempering the beast's fear of fire with his smoking habit in little ways. The Fire Dance required small steps to prepare, and constant reinforcement. After a while the habit became just another mindless craving, the thrill having left decades ago.
Not so apparently for his host. Having handed his offerings out into the darkness, Lang saw the spark of the lighter and the glow of the cigarette as his companion in the darkness inhaled. Lang could not help but admire the young vampire's control of the shadows in the blackened room. Although he could no longer see either the door or the single hanging light-fixture above, the glow of the cigarette illuminated his mouth and reflected in his eyes. Even the smoke drifting up could be dimly seen, dancing in an imperceptible breeze.
"Ahhh..." Nightingale sighed contentedly, "thank you, your Excellency. I've had an itch for that for a long time now". The dim face smiled at him and winked.
"I have questions," Lang growled, more impatient and ill at ease than he cared to admit to himself, "and it is long past time for answers. I am Bishop Lang, your confessor in this matter."
"What of my Pack? Thomas, Kalia, my other brothers and sisters?" Nightingale asked, impassively.
"All dead or missing, as is the Priscus Esther. The details of how and why are still a mystery to us-- do you think you can..." Lang paused and took a breath, "...shed some light on any of this?"
The Cheshire-like lips smirked a little. "They were all still very active when I saw them last..." he said soothingly, "but I'll tell you what I may."
A small shaft of light escaped the hidden lamp above to land squarely against the wall, almost like a spotlight for some great yet secret show, as the quiet voice began its story.
"As you may already know, we had tracked down Symmachus to a queer little cottage in the Oakland hills region. A sleepy Methuselah drunk on the invincibility of his years, he would have likely killed us all had he not been cursed by the faeries. This curse caused the sun to rise as time became distorted. Soon, each day went by in the span of a minute and we were forced to take shelter in that strange house along with our quarry..."
The point of light on the wall began to flicker.
"Imagine the sun was a strobe-light flashing, on and off, on and off, just outside your door. Symmachus couldn't. He barely had the strength to kick the door shut before falling to the floor looking the part of an overcooked burger. Yet he lived, still."
The light on the wall shrank, pulsing slowly.
"We had tracked him there hoping to get the drop on him, and had been thrashed soundly. Now that he was down we were more than ready to take back the advantage, falling upon him, ripping and tearing into his burnt flesh as we raced for his heart's blood."
The pulsing light was quickly devoured by claw-like shadows.
"Stranded in that horrible old house we set about exploring, eventually coming to basement and the charnel pit that held one final inhabitant. But I'm getting ahead of myself... The house itself was odd, seemingly larger within than without. An extensive library with a focus on the occult was the joy of our pack's pet Thaumaturge. The gallery too was both extensive and exquisite, though the portraits seemed to follow one with their gaze." As he spoke, hundreds of glowing eyes opened to stare at Lang, then closed and vanished a moment later.
"As I had begun to say, it was not until we found the pit in the basement that we realized we were not the sole inhabitants of the house. At the bottom of the pit lay a festering layer of corpses, one of which still moved. Like some bizarre parody of our own creation rites, the stranger dragged himself out of the mess of bodies and climbed up from the pit in a frenzy. We easily overcame him, weak as he was, and calmed him through the blood of the Vaulderie. Esther was of the opinion he could prove invaluable in solving the puzzle in which we now found ourselves trapped."
On the wall shadow-puppets played out the scene. The figure ascending the pit, attacking and being subdued by others, being bound, and their ascension upstairs. Always behind him followed the shadows, eating up the light behind him.
"Tall and gangly yet beautiful in an inhuman way, the childe who called himself Devlin Black seemed to have bones more suitable for a bird than a man. Once well groomed hair now disordered with the grime of the dead, eyes like amber... ultimately words fail me... let me just say that he somehow seemed a fitting inhabitant for that odd place. As we were taking him in and initiating him in the rites of our pack, the childe told us his story. Devlin clamed to have been turned only recently by two ancients, infernalists of the obscure Baali line. Symmachus had interrupted them when he arrived with designs to mete out justice left hanging since the fall of Carthage. We had missed them only by moments it seemed, arresting his pursuit in our rather final fashion."
Nightingale paused in his telling to take another puff from his cigarette. The burning embers seemed to split and stare like a pair of eyes, watching...
"Devlin impressed upon Esther the need to pursue these ancient demonologists, and where she went we followed. Devlin believed the pair were traveling to New York, where they would be making arrangements to continue on to the Middle East. Using some bizarre variant of Thaumaturgy involving non-Euclidian geometry he sketched a door in chalk and blood. Telling us to follow he then stepped into it and whether he was pulled apart or simply faded from view I couldn't tell...but we followed..."
On the wall the shadow puppets stepped into the silhouette of a door, dropping from sight one by one, be replaced by ever more bizarre creatures of alien symmetry swimming quickly about the room, which now filled with stars.
"In the space between the gates of Devlin's making, madness... replaced reality. I found myself falling (or was it flying?) down a well of black light, a host of distorted, indescribable things surrounding me. It wasn't until I looked at my limbs and saw that my own shape had changed that I realized these monsters were my own pack mates similarly transformed. Like victims of some fiend's overactive play with Vicissitude, we were thrown down a nightmare ride in amusement-park hell, ending only when after an infinity we collapsed through a pinprick in time and space. We were in Central Park, returned to our natural shapes, tormented only by the vague memories of our journey." The distorted play of light and shadow collapsed to a singular point of light on the wall, then expanded to a simple shadow-puppet stage, complete with trees and the puppets of Nightingale's play.
"After a few misadventures dodging Ventrue watchdogs and other such sideline entanglements, we tracked our quarry to the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Our surprise assault fell to pieces though, when we stormed into Pandora's trap. The room she waited for us in was filled with gas, a fact we discovered only just as she snapped her fingers and set off a purplish fireball that consumed the room and all within. Somehow immune to the fires that lapped about her naked body, she stood there like some beautiful angel of death, laughingly calling to us to join her in the purifying flame. The Beast within us forcing us to flee our pack scattered, though a few such as I were summoned back by her force of will and would have likely died in the flames..."
...One by one, shadow-puppets began seemingly to catch fire and burn...
"...had not the stranger interfered. The concussive force of a few well-lobbed grenades knocked the ancient into Torpor, freeing myself and his Excellency Thomas Moon, the only other member of our pack who had neither died nor escaped from her summoning. Sidestepping the fire we quickly snatched our prize, wrapping her in blankets to smother the flames still about her body. Our savior, an albino kindred Thomas knew and called Benson by name, kept pace with us as he argued our claim on Pandora's blood. Thus we were all quite distracted when Pandora's companion, the ever young Del Hevil popped out of nowhere to end the dispute..."
The gloom deepened. Nightingale's features disappeared, as did his cigarette, the shadow puppets and their stage...all was dark and still.
"He reached out his hand and grasped the edge of space, and then ripped a hole in it... like this..." and as Nightingale spoke Lang saw a hand, somehow darker than the murky room in which they stood, grab a corner of shadow stuff, and pull...and rip...
...a gaping hole opened across the width of the room between them. A cold wind blew out of it, chilling Lang to the bone. Within that ragged maw was an even darker abyss, a void of infinite depth... Things moved in that void. Massive, huge, inhuman things. A hundred eyes stared dim and gleaming. Tentacles writhed like branches of an immense tree in a strong wind.
Nightingale began whistling, and beautiful as it was there was horror in it as well. In the vast distance the mad piping of alien flutes twittered as if in answer...incessant and insane... echoes to soothe an idiot god, to lead the never ending dance that was its lullaby. The music continued to grow in volume as other voices joined in song. The inhuman chorus of hideous gods writhed in their eternal dance about the demon-god, the emanations of their parody of courtly entertainments crawling into the back of what little still remained of Lang's shriveling sanity.
A voice whispered in his ear, dim, like the buzzing of a fly.
"Nightingale saw this and went mad. I observed his agony and took it, along with the spark that was his soul... devoured it like a ripe plum. Then I filled his body with a little black spark of my own, to wear like a mask as I bring forth messages from the court you see before you to this poor excuse of a cult you call the Sabbat. Go, join them now, give praise to Azathoth, daemon-sultan, teach them of their true master.
"Tell them Nyarlathotep sent you."
Lang could not tear his gaze away.
Something moved and writhed to his side and took one final drag from the cigarette before flicking it into the abyss.
