His Castle Crumbles

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He wanders the halls of his castle.

Unease stalks him, leers at him from every corner as he walks laps through the squared-off corridors. A cocktail of worry, doubt, and dreadful anticipation boils in his mind, his eyes unable to avoid glancing at the ornate, ivory stucco and gilded pillars around him.

There are cracks in the walls. Faint fractures, minor blemishes upon the otherwise pristine stucco. Despite their negligible severity each one drives another nail of despair into his turbulent thoughts.

“Where are you?” he asks the rows of gilded pillars. “Why are you silent?”

He expects an answer. His ears stand alert, seeking those familiar, tiny whispers scratching at the masonry behind the stucco. His jaw clenches in hopeful anticipation for those heavy hands that so often come to rest on his shoulders, visible only in the corners of his eyes.

Instead there is only a brooding, unfamiliar quiet, punctuated by the soft tap of his leather soles upon the dense burgundy carpet. His senses stand on edge, amplified by a lack of something on the edge of tangibility: the darkness that exists within a well lit room, only revealed when the light is extinguished; the sounds and smells just beyond the boundaries of perception. Neither are quite akin to what he feels, but they’re the closest he can get to describing the presence of his Patron.

He walks onward, restarting the loop around his castle once more. The dark, webbed cracks eye him as if contemplating malice: he swears they are in different places each time he makes a full circle of the hallway. Shadows coalesce above him, peering from the vaulted ceiling and its soaring arches, their edges glinting with a knife’s sharpness. Static lurks in every crease of his luxurious, sea-blue robe, lashing out against his arms with every shuffling step he takes. The faint, woody sweet smell of sandalwood incense wafts past his nostrils, sourceless and omnipresent, tinged with an earthy hint of rot.

It’s not the first time it has been distant for a while, he tries to rationalize. The thought elicits a flinch at the corners of his lips, his mind dredging up memories of those weeks of profound silence: memories of the way the castle began to collapse whenever his Patron was distant. Often it would return as swift as it had left, the damage vanishing as though it had never occurred. But sometimes…

His eyes twitch, an instinctual response to the remembered rage and accusations dangled over his head, empty of reason, pushed upon his shoulders without an explanation of how to restore his Patron’s graces. How long had he spent in those moments before its shrine, tears searing his cheeks as he tried every plea and offering he could in hope of appeasing it.

Perhaps I’ve done something wrong. Perhaps the sacrifices are not enough?

Spurred onward by his worry, his thoughts wander back to his last offering. He turns over the details of the ritual in his mind, puzzling over the fuzzy images drawn from vaults in his memory he would prefer to not have to open.

I placed the incense as it instructed, he ruminates, going through his checklist, unaware of how many times he has repeated this exercise today. The brass bowl, the inscribed circlets, I remember placing them. The incantation…”

“Echlas, mnaig. Echlas, drothoag. Echlas, ehedran scraithe gnazh…”

The eager words spill from his tongue, pooling at his feet. Goosebumps ripple across his skin as his voice freezes the air around him, subtle Power casting its silent echo throughout his castle. “I did say it right, didn’t I?”

Again he waits: waits for the whispers in his footsteps, waits for half-seen lips in his peripheral to hum their affirmations into his ear. Again only silence answers, mocking quiet spat from the grinning fractures in the walls as they shed their jagged, chipping stucco teeth upon the burgundy carpet.

For a moment he contemplates visiting the altar room to take action, to broadcast his plea for contact from his Patron. “Not yet, give it time.” he whispers to himself.

His mind wades deeper into the mire of rumination. Each footfall against the thick weave of the burgundy carpet dredges up images of his last offering for him to sift through: the way fear and confusion danced across her face as the sedatives wore off. The way her scream echoed through the altar room as her hands took a mind of their own, tearing the flesh from her body piece by piece, casting it into the offering bowl until there was nothing left for her to give.

He shudders, a lance of guilt stabbing his side for the first time he could remember in recent history. I should have kept looking for a different one: she was too much like the first. Hollow discomfort blooms in his mind as he tries to remember more about the first. What was her name, again?

The balcony that oversees the courtyard comes into view as he rounds the corner, pulling him from his thoughts. A desire for a change of pace draws him to break his endless loop and step out into the night.

He leans against the railing, trying his best to ignore the chips and discoloration on the delicate marble latticework. The vast courtyard stretches out before him, its walls a tangle of sharp spires and twisting buttresses: flocks of grotesques occupy the ledges, their blurry, shapeless granite forms watching over the midnight gardens; rays of amber light shine from many rows of narrow windows; the peel of distant wind chimes sing, defying the absence of the wind, their whimsical melodies dancing in the night sky.

He considers the gardens, continents of green skirted by weaving marble paths and elegant sapphire fountains. Relief fills him to see them in their usual pristine condition. His eyes rest on the soothing contours of the manicured trees, their fat twisted trunks slithering into canopies of dark green, unmoving leaves. The flowers catch his gaze. On a whim he commands them to put on a display, fireworks of violet and amethyst sparkling in series among the well manicured grass and trained hedges, fluttering into the air with the grace of lunar moths. His vision climbs to follow the colorful lights, savoring the reprieve from his anxiety that comes from watching them dance into the night sky. The void above draws his attention. Within its endless darkness hang countless planets, motionless, silent, their geography illuminated by lightless, dead stars.

Unbridled awe warms his body as he stares into space, a weightless sense of wonder undiluted by the many times he has witnessed this view. For the first time this night his mind unwinds, anxiety loosening its vicious grip. How far you have come from being an underpaid, overworked accountant from Queens. That hell of grating, syncopated phones and furious tapping of keyboards manifests in his mind’s eye: that nightmare of morgue-white, soulless cubicles and desiccated air tainted with carpet cleaning fluid; that dead jungle he dragged himself to endure every week, returning home with only enough to keep some food in his belly and a roof over his head.

A smile crosses his lips, his Patron’s first whisper echoing in his memory. I’m here, it had said, a clear, kind voice, almost imperceptible against the hum of the city night as he lay in bed, staring at the ceiling. He remembers that spark of surprised joy, the immediate flush of ecstasy from a lover’s touch. He had so often cried out to be heard, to receive the affirmation that something bigger than he was there, was listening: but never had he expected it to answer.

His eyes trace the dead worlds above him as his thoughts wander among the memories of his Patron’s gifts and boons: the castle in which he now stood; the vast bookshelves of tomes and object of Power that lay in his study, an arsenal of knowledge and magic at his beck and call. Whether it comes back with anger or not, it always returns with bountiful gifts, he reminds himself.

A new excitement bubbles up within his mind, excitement for what wonders his Patron will bring him. “I promise when you’re back to offer a grand sacrifice,” he says into the calm air, hoping vocalizing his thoughts might call its attention and bring it back sooner. Having his fill for the splendor of the gardens he turns back to his castle, his step lighter, his shoulders less burdened.

But the feeling of relief is short.

Something is different when he steps foot within the halls.

The air is heavier. It weighs upon his shoulders, tightens around his throat. His eyes dart around the corridor. The cracks in the walls have expanded, growing from spiderweb-fine fractures to thick, dark gouges in the stucco that reveal bone-white stones and bloody mortar. His nostrils wince at a cold, ill breeze wafting past his face, carrying with it unpleasant, all too familiar smells: stale tobacco, dusty black mold clinging to the feet of plastic shower curtains, muted floral tones of cheap laundry detergent on moth chewed clothing. Sounds creep into his ears, the faint scraping and tapping of fingernails clawing at gritty cement from behind the ivory stucco and gilded pillars.

“Is that you?” he asks.

A wordless, silent roar of unquenchable rage boils down the hall, a scream of liquid hatred that crushes against his body.

And then utter emptiness. An emptiness that defies the boundaries of the material world around him, that renders the air hollow, that sucks the soul from the spectrum of color. He shivers, sweat freezing on his brow, the distillate of his fear and anxiety rushing through him as realization dawns upon him.

His Patron has abandoned him.

His castle crumbles.

“No! Wait! Come back and tell me what I must do, I beg you,” he yells, the sound of his voice dying on the stale air. He runs, offers rushing through his mind, a laundry list of pleas: more sacrifice, more prayer, more adoration. Anything it wants. The crunch of stucco under his feet jars his bones with every step, the burgundy carpet spotted with a heavy snow of ivory flakes.

WIthin a moment the grand hall is before him, the imposing, hewn oak double doors to the altar room at the far end. His eyes catch the once opulent chandeliers as he rushes forward, their usual inner light extinguished. The cold on his brow turns to nausea, a sickening, clammy pall draped over his body that presses heavier upon him with each step, his mind once more cast into churning over every mistake.

He reaches the heavy doors, pulling them open, coughing at the rust and termite dust that invades his nostrils. An involuntary gasp of surprise flies from his tongue as the altar room comes into view. When before the Patron had held its anger over him, when the castle around him had begun to wither, the altar room alone had remained flawless. But now ruins stand before him: the once graceful rib cage of arches holding up the ceiling now glares at him from the shadows with countless, deep pockmarks, their faces aged with thick beards of sickly moss; massive tapestries, woven pieces of art commissioned at the whim of his patron, hang ragged, picked apart by moths, dotted with dark, pustulent scabs; the intricate mosaic floor hosts corpulent, misshapen hands of fungi, growing and dying before his eyes, tracing their fingers through a mist of spores.

And in the center stands the altar, his Patron’s shapeless likeness carved in amber: flawless still, but now lifeless. The final, white hot nail driving home his abandonment.

The ground trembles. Panic biting at his heels he flees the altar, mold and soft chunks of pitted marble raining down upon his shoulders, the hewn oak doors closing behind him with a solemn thud. He looks back on instinct, his chest heaving, his eyes darting across the wall where the door should be. Sickening recognition strikes him as his eyes catch the small details of that wall: the familiar tear in the drab wallpaper, the scratches and dents in the drywall, the stains from spilled liquor and tobacco smoke.

His castle crumbles.

He runs from the grand hall, navigating the darkening halls to the study. A faint hope lingers that perhaps something may be salvaged in the wreckage. But the garden has claimed the study as its own, the shelves consumed by broad, smooth, twisted trunks pulsing with some mockery of a heartbeat. His hands float to grasp his hair, his mind seized by a dull burning sensation of loss, his ears flood with the tear of paper and the crunch of metal as the trees constrict his collection of tomes and artifacts. “No, no no no no,” he pants, his breath in time with his footsteps, the slap of his soles against failing marble interjected with soft crunches and squeals of fat grass and mushrooms under his heels.

“What did I do wrong? I followed every instruction! Why are you doing this?”

His castle crumbles.

The study collapses into a tangle of groaning roots. He abandons it to its fate, stumbling once more through those old, familiar hallways. Where the hallway should turn before him there is now only an endless corridor of crumbling stucco and tarnished pillars. Arms push through the cracks in the stucco in the dozens, their long fingers digging into the walls, ripping away the plaster, wrestling the stone blocks from their mortar before retreating back into the walls. Paralyzed he stares as piece by piece they disassemble his castle. An end to the hall comes into view, an all too familiar surface of torn wallpaper and dented drywall approaching at a breakneck pace.

“Please, no, please! Just tell me what you want!” he sobs, tears burning against his cheeks, the last of the carpet pulled out from under his feet, the last of the gold pillars melting before his eyes.

“Tell me what you want! Tell me what you want!”

It is not silence that answers him, but the angry rattle of a train passing; the screams of ambulances, banshees in the night; the stench of cigarette smoke fused into old paint and floorboards rotted by alcohol; the flicker of the singular lightbulb above him, signaling its inevitable failure.

He stares at the old, empty, one room apartment: the pathetic space where his castle once stood. His eyes catch the chalk circle surrounding him on the irregular wood floor. His gaze travels across the intricate rows of characters within its circumference, settling upon the dusty, rotten remains of his first offering. Elizabeth. Her name was Elizabeth. He grasps at the roots that strangle the dusty corpse, one last echo of the Power that had once run through them vibrating across his skin before they slink back into the floorboards. In his hands the corpse disintegrates, the simple gold band he had once slipped on her finger the only thing to remain.

Hot lines draw themselves upon his cheeks, a tickle in his throat precurses a scream of grief. The departure of his shock takes the strength from his legs. He falls to his knees, his body collapsing into pitiful sobs that fall upon all too many unlistening, uncaring ears.

No, something does listen, an instinct tells him. In the furthest corners of his hearing something whispers, a voice slithering just within the cries of a nearby infant and the shouts of couples within inches of violence. A glint of recognition tugs at his spine.

“Are you there?” he asks, the words stinging his throat between sobs.

I’m here.

“Please. Tell me what you want.”

No words prick at his ears in reply: only the soft flap of something wet falling upon solid ground. The damp sound bores into his skull, its meaning all too clear. He blinks, and before him is the brass bowl, the engraved circlets. A fog of incense smoke caresses his knees.

Flesh. Flesh for his castle.

His hand shakes, climbing upward to press against his jaw. How many times has he witnessed what he now performs upon himself? His mind recoils with anticipation for the pain, his fingers finding purchase around his cheek, nails pinching at the skin. He feels the warmth of his Patron fill his hands, imbue them with strength. With a scream he pulls, his efforts rewarded by the wet snap of muscle and burning nerves and the shock of frigid air against his exposed tongue. In shock he considers the squirming chunk of his own skin and flesh gripped in his hand before raising it aloft, an offering to his Patron. Delight, relief returns, despite the pain, his gift of flesh flutters from his grasp, transfigured into a scrap of familiar, burgundy carpet.

More.

With a viscous stab of pain and a sucking pop he tears his eyes from his sockets and tosses them onto the floor. In a moment of vertigo his disembodied vision spins and turns to face his body, the voice demanding that he watch as he tears off handfuls of flesh. Despite the pain a laugh of joy escapes the holes in his cheeks as each offering replaces a fragment of carpet, a ruddy brick, a glinting sheet of fresh stucco.

More.

Pain and ecstasy melt together, his body piece by piece losing feeling as his fingers rip the skin and meat from his bones. A burning cold racks his chest, morbid fascination numbing his mind, realizing that it is the first time his lungs have felt fresh air on the outside. Piece by piece by peace he rebuilds his castle, till his fingers rake against bone, till his abdominal muscles are torn away and he feels himself relieved of the weight of his organs, his eyes entombed by an avalanche of his innards.

All, he is told, and all he gives, till he is nothing but a pain maddened brain entombed within a ragged, crimson pile of bones, his skeletal hands slipping against the slick surface of his ribcage, compelled to complete their task by a will beyond his own as they pick at the last scraps of flesh.

His final howls echo through the lonely halls of his castle, painting the stucco walls and gilded pillars with his agony.

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