It's been a long day at work. My voice is hoarse from asking people if they want their fries "waffle or wild" for ten hours and my brain is obliterated from the assault of asinine responses. My girlfriend, Samantha, texted me that we would have two dinner guests.
I did not expect them to be cops.
She looks tired, curlers bundling her hair back. She's stripped down to a graphic-tee shirt and cargo shorts, and our simple fold-out table is festooned with open boxes of Chinese food and chopsticks still tucked in their packages. The cops look up at me, smiling amicably. I growl. Like a dog.
"ESTHER!" Sammy squeezes my shoulders as she laughs, harsh and clipped. "These officers want your help!"
"No." Sammy and I don't see eye to eye on everything. One of those topics concerns working with the police. As an amateur reporter, Sammy finds it brings her closer to the "happenings." I find that I don't trust them.
One cop clears his throat. "We're aware that your family dabbles in the occult, Ms. Jung, and we know that you two ladies have access to the underground in ways that we don't. We need help."
"Occult!" I'm about to launch into a tirade when her breath touches my ear.
"Please, Esther! It might even be dangerous!"
I look at her. Not at the cops. Just at her. "Fine."
***
I can see it now. If this were a movie, the scene would jump cut to here. Me, kneeling over a body I have no business touching, a knife plunged in the chest. The eyes glassed over. I use vague words to describe her because my brain has smeared it into something distant.
The cops will pay for my therapy; they made that clear to me when I first saw the woman dead on the library floor in the "classic literature" section.
Her hands are wrapped around the knife, a scrap of paper between her fingers. Worst, I knew her. Just an acquaintance, but a club regular. All of the victims are club regulars.
"I cannot forget Carcosa." That's all the scrap reads.
"Carcosa?" The word shivers on my tongue. So familiar. I've heard murmurings of it, tiny whispers from the 'dark academics' that like congregating in the back of the club on the floor. Like nerds at a school dance. The victim was one of them.
"It's a reference to the 'King in Yellow.'" A cop offers, and that shiver turns to a cold wind. It slices me in half.
The King in Yellow. The academics never shut up about that book. A collection of short stories written in 1895, a direct influence on Lovecraft, all centering around a play that would drive the reader mad if their eyes even skittered over the second act. The academics insisted they would find the play and the Yellow Sign that would draw the King from the shores of Carcosa.
"Do any other murders reference 'The King in Yellow?'"
"They all do."
I swallow dryly. "What do they say?"
A cop produces a file of photocopies of torn scraps.
"The gate below opened and shut, and I crept shaking to my door and bolted it, but I knew no bolts, no locks, could keep that creature out who was coming for the Yellow Sign. And now I heard him moving very softly along the hall.
Now he was at the door, and the bolts rotted at his touch. Now he had entered. With eyes starting from my head I peered into the darkness, but when he came into the room I did not see him.
It was only when I felt him envelop me in his cold soft grasp that I cried out and struggled with deadly fury, but my hands were useless and he tore the onyx clasp from my coat and struck me full in the face. Then, as I fell, I heard Tessie's soft cry and her spirit fled: and even while falling I longed to follow her, for I knew that the King in Yellow had opened his tattered mantle and there was only God to cry to now."
"Holy shit." I didn't even read the next one. "They did it. They found their king."
"Esther, this is no time for superstition."
I remember one of the academics, with his thick frames and wispy mustache. He flirted, offering me the address that I saved to get him to go away. It's a stretch, but perhaps he's the King.
I take to my motorcycle, the police following with lights flashing and sirens squealing. Maybe they think I'm fleeing. Doesn't matter. I'm faster.
He lives in a nice white bungalow. I kick the door down screaming.
"You murdering bastard!"
But he's dead. Freshly dead, with a cardboard crown resting on his head. His face smashed into the floor. Blood everywhere. The image makes me think of the poetry he quoted from the book at me in a lame attempt at flirting.
Song of my soul, my voice is dead,
Die thou, unsung, as tears unshed
Shall dry and die in
Lost Carcosa.
A book is at his feet, open. I know not to look at it. His fireplace is crackling, and I know what I must do. I lift the book, my head twisted away from it toward the cops bursting through the door.
"FREEZE! That's evidence!"
Something is moving in the roof. I can hear the feet. The academics were right; the play is real. But before I can reach the fireplace, large hands are on my wrists, pulling them behind me, wrenching the book from me. I scream. "DON'T LOOK! DON'T LOOK AT THE YELLOW SIGN!" But they don't listen. I'm thrown against the wall, handcuffed. I can't even break my fall.
The cops laugh for what feels like ages. I can't stop screaming.
"Songs that the Hyades shall sing,
Where flap the tatters of the King,
Must die unheard in
Dim Carcosa."
I open my eyes, only for a second, and I think I see those black stars hanging above Carcosa.
But it's only the shredded, blood-soaked uniforms of the cops.
YOU ARE READING
Esther Jung Takes on the World
ActionEsther's grandmother shows her several possible futures. In each, she sees a mystery girl. Sometimes they're best friends. Sometimes they're more than that. Sometimes they destroy each other. *** My entries for #adventureinaction
