Free No Light in August: Tales From Carcosa & the Borderland (Digital Horror Fiction Author Collection) by Digital Fiction Page A

lack of a better name - opened his arms a little and smiled. Only
the lower half of his face was visible, the upper part was hidden behind a
hook-beaked mask the color of black iron.
    “Eric,” he
said and kissed him lightly on both cheeks before turning to me. “Welcome,
we’ve been waiting for you.”
    He
repeated the gesture on me. I tried not to flinch as his face brushed against
mine. It was cold and greasy, almost like a corpse. I caught something salty
and spicy coming off him, and I shivered inwardly. It wasn’t a smell I recognized,
but it put me in mind of something only half alive.
    Gently he
led me forward and pressed down on my shoulder, forcing me, however softly, to
kneel. A woman came around from behind me, carrying an object wrapped in cloth.
She handed it to the yellow King, who unwrapped it carefully as Eric took a
place just behind him.
    It was a
mask, but not one made from plaster — rather from some sort of heavy ceramic.
He held it up to what light came in through the windows. I could see flecks of
what I thought was rust dotted along its edge, near a series of small holes.
    He handed
it to Eric. The woman who’d carried it moved around behind me and gripped my
shoulders. She gradually applied pressure and pinned me in place. Eric smiled
down at me, but it wasn’t out of love. It was lopsided now, almost manic.
    I
understood what was coming next and I realized what he’d promised them — what
he had to deliver so we could both be together, here in this place, no matter
the shape we were both in. Love is a kind of death — the giving of one soul
willingly to another. The obliteration of self and the act of creating
something other from two wholes, so giving becomes a kind of sacrifice, one to
another.
    Eric kept
smiling his crazy smile as he moved the mask towards my face. There was a bit
where the mouth was, so I wouldn’t be able to speak once it was on. I knew what
the holes were for, and what I’d thought was rust wasn’t.
    He was
still smiling when something small and cold pricked against the side of my head
and what could only have been a hammer connected with it.
    The bit
reduced my screams to choked gobbles and sobs, and when the hammer stopped,
they filled in the eyes.
     
    I’ve
watched the young couple living in my house, though I haven’t looked with my
eyes. I don’t need them to see anymore. Able to reach out from the lakeshore,
except it’s not a lake I’m standing next to, I can feel she is more open than
he is. All it takes is time.
    Carcosa is beyond
death, and time is all we have.
     

     

One of
the women wore a necklace of scalpels and syringes around her neck.
     

Borderland
     
     
     
    After the
fire, they found rooms in the house that were absent from the original plans.
Although the dead were badly burned, the investigators identified both male and
female among them. The oldest was nineteen. The way they’d been found — the
rooms they were kept in — suggested the reason they were there.
    Wade
handed me a thick file. She was agent in charge for this part of the border.
    “There are
three dozen reports in there,” she said. “As many missing person cases as we
can fit to what we have.”
    I was
surprised they got that many and told her so.
    “A coyote
turned state’s evidence,” she said, passing another folder over. “Unrelated
case, but what she told us fits.”
    “King.
Carcosa and Qassilda…you think they’re involved?”
    “Beyond
owning the building, we can’t prove they knew about anything that went on
inside that place.”
    That
place . Everyone knew about “that
place” and enough of the details about what went on inside. The rest could be
filled in, which was worse than bare fact.
    It was
hard to credit King, Carcosa, and Qassilda with not knowing about any of it.
    Officially,
the three were partners in the law firm that carried their names, but reality
was murkier.
    This side
of the border, there wasn’t much they didn’t have