Cassilda's Song: Tales Inspired by Robert W. Chambers King in Yellow Mythos Read online

  Also from Chaosium

  Lovecraftian Fiction

  The Antarktos Cycle

  Arkham Tales

  Atomic Age Cthulhu (Coming Soon)

  The Book of Eibon

  Cthulhu’s Dark Cults

  Eldritch Chrome

  Frontier Cthulhu

  The Hastur Cycle

  The Innsmouth Cycle

  The Ithaqua Cycle

  The Klarkash-Ton Cycle

  Madness on the Orient Express (New)

  The Necronomicon

  The Nyarlathotep Cycle

  Steampunk Cthulhu

  The Strange Cases of Rudolph Pearson by William Jones

  Tales out of Innsmouth

  The Tsathoggua Cycle

  Twice Upon an Apocalypse (Coming Soon)

  The Xothic Legend Cycle

  The Yith Cycle

  Weird Fiction Collections

  The Complete Pegana by Lord Dunsany

  Eldritch Evolutions by Lois Gresh

  Mysteries of the Worm by Robert Bloch

  The Terror & Other Stories by Arthur Machen

  The Three Impostors & Other Stories by Arthur Machen

  The White People & Other Stories by Arthur Machen

  The Yellow Sign and Other Stories by Robert W. Chambers

  Science Fiction

  A Long Way Home

  Extreme Planets

  Horror

  Edge of Sundown (Coming Soon)

  Once Upon an Apocalypse

  Undead & Unbound

  Occult Texts

  The Book of Dyzan

  Cassilda’s Song

  Edited by Joseph S. Pulver, Sr.

  Cover and Interior Design by Nicholas Nacario

  The Yellow Sign created by Kevin Ross

  Cassilda’s Song is published by Chaosium Inc.

  This book is copyright © 2015 by Chaosium Inc.; all rights reserved

  All stories are original to this collection.

  All material © 2015 by Chaosium Inc. and the authors.

  Cover Illustration © 2015 Steve Santiago.

  Cover model photographed by Marcus J. Ranum.

  Similarities between characters in this book and persons living or

  dead are strictly coincidental.

  ISBN 978-1-56882-082-8 (e-book)

  www.chaosium.com.

  CONTENTS

  Introduction by Joseph S. Pulver, Sr.

  Black Stars on Canvas, a Reproduction in Acrylic by Damien Angelica Walters

  She Will Be Raised a Queen by E. Catherine Tobler

  Yella by Nicole Cushing

  Yellow Bird by Lynda E. Rucker

  Exposure by Helen Marshall

  Just Beyond Her Dreaming by Mercedes M. Yardley

  In the Quad of Project 327 by Chesya Burke

  Stones, Maybe by Ursula Pflug

  Les Fleurs du Mal by Allyson Bird

  While The Black Stars Burn by Lucy A. Snyder

  Old Tsah-Hov by Anya Martin

  The Neurastheniac by Selena Chambers

  Dancing the Mask by Ann K. Schwader

  Family by Maura McHugh

  Pro Patria! by Nadia Bulkin

  Her Beginning is Her End is Her Beginning by E. Catherine Tobler and Damien Angelica Walters

  Grave-Worms by Molly Tanzer

  Strange is the Night by S.P. Miskowski

  Author Biographies

  UNMASKED FIRE

  BY JOSEPH S. PULVER, SR.

  Along the shore the cloud waves break,

  The twin suns sink beneath the lake,

  The shadows lengthen

  In Carcosa.

  Strange is the night where black stars rise,

  And strange moons circle through the skies

  But stranger still is

  Lost Carcosa.

  Songs that the Hyades shall sing,

  Where flap the tatters of the King,

  Must die unheard in

  Dim Carcosa.

  Song of my soul, my voice is dead;

  Die thou, unsung, as tears unshed

  Shall dry and die in

  Lost Carcosa.

  Cassilda’s Song in “The King in Yellow” Act 1, Scene 2.

  The black stars are up.

  Upon the shore of madness, the cloud waves break.

  The thunder of her song rises.

  Cassilda is an avalanche.

  From the breast of experience, from the shadows and tatters of the mind wounded, come the laughter and the tears now grasped by the fallen leaves of Trakl’s autumn. Cassilda’s complicated sisters, unwilling to be hidden away and boarded up, sound the thunder. Hot and colorful, in full view and shaded by the aroma of discord, they stand before you unmasked.

  No mere True Detective fans, they have gone back to (fallen literary titan) Robert W. Chambers’ 1895 weird fiction collection, The King in Yellow (‘…a series of vaguely connected short stories having as a background a monstrous and suppressed book whose perusal brings fright, madness and spectral tragedy, really achieves notable heights of cosmic fear.’—H. P. Lovecraft), in search of heart and soul, device and detail, and returned transformed by the cosmic horrors lurking behind the Yellow Sign. Within the four core King in Yellow tales, “The Repairer of Reputations”, “The Mask”, “The Court of the Dragon”, and “The Yellow Sign”, Cassilda’s daughters found spectral tragedy, dread, madness, and ‘dark hints’ into the anti-prudence yearnings of the Other Victorians, and steeped in and empowered by Chambers’ timeless renderings, they allowed the unsettling, dark menace of his decadence to soar.

  The 1895 release of Chambers’ best-remembered work of weird fiction was salted with nihilism and ennui, and ripe with derangement, haunting beauty, and eerie torments. Poe’s influence was present in the core tales and one could easily argue Chambers may have been influenced by the French Decadents and the disquieting transfigurations of the Symbolists. All this and more can be said of the works collected in this anthology. Carcosa, accursed and ancient, and cloud-misted Lake of Hali are here. The Hyades sing and the cloud waves break in these tales. The authority of Bierce’s cosmic horror is here. The talismantic Yellow Sign, and the titular ‘hidden’ King, and The Imperial Dynasty of America, will influence and alter you, as they have the accounts by these writers. Cassilda and other unreliable narrators, government-sponsored Lethal Chambers, and the many mysteries of the mythical Play, are boldly represented in these tributes to Chambers.

  Of Chambers’ female characters, Frederic Tabor Cooper said, “They are all of them what men like to think women to be, rather than the actual women themselves.” Not so here, for the Sisters of the Yellow Sign have brought their talents (and important, dynamic talents they are—many women are at the heart of the Weird Renaissance we are currently delighting in) and visions to center stage. Come. Delight! Not content to be seamstresses and cleaning ladies and set dressers, the contributors to Cassilda’s Song have claimed the canon and are now the lead actors; they have created the sets and stages and written the dialogue. They control the productions.

  There are no pretenders here. The Daughters of the Yellow Sign, each a titan of unmasked fire in their own right, have parted the curtains. From Hali’s deeps and Carcosa’s gloomy balconies and Styx-black towers, come their lamentations and rage and the consequences of intrigues and follies born in Oblivion. Run into their embrace. Their carriages wait to take you from shadowed rooms and cobblestones to The Plac
e Where the Black Stars Hang.

  Have you seen the Yellow Sign? The Daughters of Carcosa know its message, every wound and poison, and are about to reveal its gravity to you.

  Have your covert desires ridden the currents of the River of Night’s Dreaming? They are about to.

  Cassilda is burning, threatening… The knots and scars of her plans and schemes, her choices, the path to the doorsteps cracked by the clock and the rain, are full of memories and fear. She cries your name. Come, the thunder rises. There is a song of beauty, of power—a cascade of heartthrobbing passions, in the air.

  Upon the shore of madness, Cassilda walks—UNMASKED!

  Joe Pulver

  Berlin

  May 2015

  BLACK STARS ON CANVAS, A REPRODUCTION IN ACRYLIC

  BY DAMIEN ANGELICA WALTERS

  This is how it begins: a rumor, a whisper, a story. The stuff of urban legends, a tale told between glasses of absinthe, fragrant curls of smoke from clove cigarettes, tangled legs; the words never spoken too loud or too sure.

  Neveah doesn’t remember the first time she heard it, which probably says more about her state of intoxication at the time rather than her memory. She only knows that she’s heard it enough to decree it nothing more than wishful thinking, even if it is a good story.

  What artist hasn’t dreamed of a patron’s notice? A patron who can change the shape of your life from one shitty bartending job after another, from galleries of splintered wood floors and the smell of mildew not quite concealed by the heavy aromas of patchouli and body odor, to long days spent in front of an easel with no worry that the electricity will cut off, to bright spotlights, champagne in crystal flutes, pearl necklaces, and fat checkbooks carried by those who need art for their summer houses, their mistresses’ cottages, their ski chalets.

  But a patron who requires an audition, the details of which are never spoken, only alluded to with vague mentions of stars, suns, and masks, is a fairy tale of impossibility. Still, or because of it, the tale is told, and told, and told.

  Some of the rumors add that the audition is not just for a patron, but for perfection. Walk through a good artist, come out a great; enter a great, exit a genius.

  Neveah finds that even harder to believe, thinks the whole thing is like the game she played as a child—telephone—where the final message ends up bearing no resemblance to the one at the beginning.

  This is also how it begins: an invitation slipped beneath the door, heavy card stock, a blank envelope containing neither name nor address, an embossed symbol at the center of the enclosed card, a symbol done in brush strokes of yellow—a hideous, bilious yellow that inexplicably sets Neveah’s teeth on the verge of grinding molars into enameled dust. A yellow that hurts her eyes if she focuses on it too long, which is ridiculous because it’s just a color, but it’s a color full of wrong. Her fingers tremble and her heart flutters bird-quick in the bone cage of her ribs.

  One word on the back of card, in small, simple lettering: unmask.

  The air rushes from Neveah’s lungs with a whoosh and she presses the flat of her palm against the wall to stay upright. She traces the symbol with her thumb, reads the word again, sinks to the floor with her back against the wall.

  An invitation with no address, no indication of when or how or what isn’t an invitation at all, but she knows it is. Knows in her gut it isn’t a joke, but a cipher. Something to be untangled. Fitting, albeit frustrating. The most appreciated successes are the most hard won.

  She closes her eyes, tries to remember everything she’s heard, but when you hear something enough, you stop listening. The only thing she remembers for certain is that everyone calls the patron the Yellow King, but she’s never heard his real name mentioned. Not surprising, though, that a patron would hide their identity to keep every artist in town from knocking at their door, playing sycophant and darling in hope of notice. Once or twice she thinks she heard that the auditions are held in Carcosa, which she assumes is the name of his house or more likely, since it has a name, his estate, but how can she count on any of it to be true when up until now she’s thought it all a pretty bedtime story?

  A false beginning: a glass of wine, a sketch pad, a sharpened pencil, the invitation. A symbol, a color, and a word aren’t much to go on, but the answer to the puzzle has to be buried somewhere inside, has to be part of the audition.

  Neveah first holds the card up to her brightest light, looking through the symbol, hoping to see words perhaps hidden within. She sees nothing, which doesn’t surprise her; it wouldn’t possibly be that easy, and she’s embarrassed that she even tried.

  She forces herself to stare at the symbol, fighting a strange instinct to turn away and a slippery, squirming sensation in her belly. Tries to commit the curves and lines to memory, but when she looks away the image escapes. Yet she feels it there, pricking at the back of her mind but refusing to come forward.

  Strange, this.

  Strange, this entire process.

  She takes up her pencil and begins to sketch while casting frequent glances from card to paper. When she finishes, the symbol on her sketch pad is not the same as that on the card, not even close, which doesn’t make sense. She tries again on a fresh sheet of paper, and again, the same result, as if the symbol itself resists replication.

  Her head aching, she tosses her pencil aside. How in the hell do you begin when you don’t know where to start or with what? It’s illogical and cruel and setting her up for failure.

  Another beginning: a blank canvas, a palette, tubes of yellow paint, her studio—the spare bedroom in her tiny rented townhouse in a neighborhood occupied by other starving artists of varying talents and successes, struggling actors, models with achingly long, thin limbs; a steady rush of bodies always on the move, but with that curious bonhomie created by a common drive, desire, and often a touch of madness, sweet like honey on the tongue.

  Neveah mixes Cadmium Yellow, Yellow Ochre, Naples Yellow, a touch of Burnt Sienna, a tiny speck of Olive Green. She blends, holds the palette next to the invitation, adds more Yellow Ochre. Blends again. Winces at the color. The ugliness, the sense of wrongness. It calls to mind hospital hallways, bile, subcutaneous fat, bilirubin, gonorrhea discharge, Pantone 379.

  When finally she’s lost count of how many colors she’s added or how much, the color on her palette appears a near perfect match, but on the canvas, not so.

  She scrapes the palette clean, mixes again. The same resulting mismatch which is absurd because she’s always had an eye for color. Give her any painting by any artist and she can replicate the colors or come so close that the naked eye sees no deviation.

  Here though, the mismatch is obvious. Her canvas doesn’t have that same effect on her gaze, doesn’t make her cringe. It’s ugly, to be sure, but the wrong kind of ugly. She hurls a tube of paint across the room and stands with her hands on her hips and her lower lip held tight between her teeth.

  In the beginning was the word: six letters, two syllables. Unmask, the word like a totem on her tongue. And what is unmasking? Peeling off a façade, revealing the real. Isn’t that what art is, though, when it comes down to it? A version of real that lives within the artist.

  And how does an artist unmask, but by painting. She grins, rubs her palms together, but it seems like a far too easy solution, and it doesn’t give her any indication of the specifics of the audition. Then again, she’s never met the Yellow King. Maybe this is the audition: will she focus her efforts on the card or will she simply paint?

  Clever, maddening, or an obvious and wrong path? She pulls her hair into a loose ponytail. Only one way to find out.

  She prepares her favorite colors: Rose Madder for passion, Manganese Violet mixed with Flake White for longing, Viridian with veins of Mars Black for tangled thoughts, Payne’s Grey for despair, a touch of Cerulean for hope. With a blank canvas in front of her, her palette tucked in the crook of her arm, and a brush in hand, she closes her eyes, finds the piece in her mind that wants to
be made real.

  The studio fills with the sound of bristles on canvas as Neveah slips into that curious fog of paint and brush, the emotions bubbling up and taking shape. After a time, she scrapes away the Cerulean and the Violet on her palette, squeezes more Grey, Black, and Viridian.

  The painting is unlike anything she’s done before. It’s a landscape, but one in ruin, with crumbling buildings, cobblestone streets, and improbably, a hazy sky filled with black stars and a sun. It’s ugly and gives a sensation of desolation, but it feels right.

  As she turns to set aside her palette, she catches movement from the corner of her eye. There, near the edge of the canvas, a hint of yellow. One glance at the palette assures her she didn’t use any yellow, but it’s there, the same ugly shade as on the invitation.

  The studio fills with the sound of fabric rustling over cobbles. Neveah’s brush clatters to the floor; she turns her hands palms up. A sense of dislocation rushes over her and her ears go thick and muffled. In that strange baffling, the rustling noise is louder and moving closer. Inside her, deep inside, she feels something opening, a doorway leading out? In? To?

  She feels silk brush against her skin, pulling her in (where?), wrapping her in warmth like the afterglow of a perfect orgasm. An exquisite sensation of spiraling into perfection. Her back arches, her lips part. Time bifurcates—she is standing in her studio, she is floating weightless elsewhere—and then fades. She drifts, sinking down and down and—

  The door slams shut, sound turns back to right, and she staggers back, panting. Although the room isn’t cold, she shivers, and beads of sweat dot her brow, the small of her back, between her breasts.

  “Hello?” she says, her voice a thready whisper, but if someone else was near, they’re gone now.

  She touches a hand to her clammy chest, but the sensation of opening is long gone, too, replaced with a hard knot of hollow. She tries to summon the doorway, the sensation, back, but it refuses, yet she feels as if she’s made progress and it feels like a beginning at least. She hopes it’s the right one.