Ch.162Act 2: Ch.10 – Long Live the King (14)

Strange music flowed from the speakers. A low humming mixed with singing. But it was impossible to tell whether it was one person making multiple voices or multiple people singing as one.

[Carcosa, Carcosa! Where clouds shatter along the broken spine of the whale!

The land where twin suns take turns mating with the lake. Only mist is scattered in pleasure. Not light, so it cannot illuminate; not shadow, so it cannot conceal! Only mist is born, only mist is seen, wandering fleetingly until collapsing from hunger for its own lust, a land that takes away!]

A high-pitched ringing sound echoed in my ears. The ground swayed, and my insides twisted with nausea. Aurora leaned against the wall, gasping for breath.

“Second floor, we need to get to the second floor. The broadcast control equipment is there. The performance hall microphone is connected to the building’s speakers, so to the second floor…”

Aurora fell to her knees. A shrill sound that was neither crying nor laughter pierced my ears. With trembling hands, she aimed at the speaker.

One shot. Then another. The first missed, but the second hit. The speaker immediately went silent.

“I feel sick. Like I’m going to throw up. What was that, what kind of song was that? Such a thing…”

Aurora’s face turned pale.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. It’s nothing… I’m fine. Really, I’m fine. Let’s go, we don’t have time for this.”

Aurora ran ahead, and I followed her. The second floor had marble tiles on both the floor and walls, which made the music from the speakers echo even more.

[Carcosa, Carcosa! Where one takes the bones of their mother and tears the flesh of their father!

When the black star rises, count the remaining breaths. Otherwise, the hungry and famished king will snatch the last citizen like an eagle! Without food, one cannot survive. But hunger will not cease until one devours their own flesh! Since one can give birth, offspring shall flourish! As falsehood multiplies falsehood, so shall you!]

“Shut up!”

Aurora blasted the speaker with her shotgun. Fragments flew everywhere. We stood together at the broadcasting room door, and on the count of three—one, two, three—we kicked the door open simultaneously.

Someone was sitting in front of the sound control equipment. A person covered in scales.

“Castenu?”

It was the theater director.

“This area is restricted to authorized personnel, yet you’ve managed to enter.”

He turned his head. The human face had long disappeared. His nose was flattened with nostrils fully visible, scales covered his face like protruding fingers, and his tongue was split in two.

His eyes were the distinctive vertically slit eyes of a reptile.

With a hiss, the creature opened its mouth. Green liquid dripped from its elongated fangs. When it hit the floor, it sizzled and emitted smoke.

Aurora blasted the creature’s stomach with her shotgun. But it lunged forward. Before its fangs could tear into Aurora’s leg, I kicked its head away.

“Hissssss!”

The shotgun blew its head off. With a thud, the scale-covered body collapsed. Aurora looked at the broadcasting equipment.

“Such expensive equipment, damn it.”

She picked up a chair and threw it at the equipment. Sparks flew, followed by black smoke. I unplugged the electrical cord and tackled Aurora.

“Get down!”

The headless body of Castenu twitched. It groped around where Aurora had been standing. Finding nothing, it flailed its arms. As if deeply aggrieved, it vomited black blood while its upper body trembled.

During its wandering, its hand touched the broadcasting equipment that was emitting black smoke. It shoved its severed neck into the center of the equipment. With a gurgling sound, blood and flesh grew into the broadcasting equipment. Like moss covering a dry rock, like new flesh sprouting from a torn wound!

[Carcosa! Carcosa!

!asocraC !asocraC

My voice is dying

gniyd si eciov yM

My tears are drying

gniyrd era sraet yM

I have lost my way back

kcab yaw ym tsol evah I

The King does not permit my return

nruter ym timrep ton seod gniK ehT

What is dream and what is not

ton si tahw dna maerd si tahW

Those who bear the yellow mark lose their dreams and wander even in reality

ytilaer ni neve rednaw dna smaerd rieht esol kram wolley eht raeb ohw esohT]

Two songs overlapped and echoed. Even with the electricity cut off, it continued to broadcast music. I barely managed to drag Aurora into the hallway.

And then I saw it. Blood spurting from the broken speaker wire fragments. Blood vessels sprouting like vines from the walls, connecting to the speaker pieces, machine parts and flesh molding together like human lips.

[카르코사 카르코사 ë‚´ 목소리는 죽는다 ë‚´ ëˆˆë¬¼ì€ ë§ˆë¥¸ë‹¤]

I fired my gun. The lips were smashed. From the smashed lips, another mouth sprouted. Like the heads of a Hydra, when one was cut down, another bloomed. I shook Aurora. She was trembling.

“Aurora, get up! We need to go down, we need to get away from here!”

“I, I, remember, I remember… when I was, when I was young, the basement, the basement…”

Aurora clenched her teeth. She balled her fist and struck her own face. She pounded the floor with a bang, bang. I lifted her up. She was surprisingly light.

“The basement. I heard it in the basement. That bastard, whose body… half of whose body was burning, the night he died! I heard that sound, in the basement, in our house basement.”

Aurora trembled. Yet she still gripped her gun tightly. We ran down to the lobby in one breath.

“The lobby…”

Neither Aurora nor I could continue speaking. The corridor that had connected the casino and theater, through which we had just run, was gone. In its place was a solid wall. The door to the grand theater had disappeared, and even the door through which the actors had exited after the press conference was gone.

As if they had never existed in the first place.

“Crayfield…”

No. I need to trust him now. He’s not a man who would be swept away so futilely. He must do his part, and I must do mine. I must protect Aurora.

A mocking voice echoed again from the second floor.

I flung open the theater door. Thankfully, that at least was intact.

Fog poured into the theater as if a freezer door had been opened.

The fog was much taller than me. Faint screams, horses neighing, gunshots, fighting sounds, cars crashing, and glass breaking could all be heard simultaneously. Unable to see what was on the road, I hastily laid her down right next to the theater door.

Aurora clutched my arm and sobbed.

“A covenant, he called it a covenant. He said we had to sacrifice the most superior child as a living offering. Only then would the god in the sky bless us and bring prosperity, and my brother knew this from a very young age.”

Someone approached us with a growl. Hoping not to hit them, I fired above their head. They quickly disappeared again. Aurora continued, stammering.

“I, I overheard it. Father and… a creepy old man, having a conversation. Through a crack in the door… in the middle of the night… while running away from my brother who was trying to hit me… The old man said that’s what the noble Pollard family should do. That they needed to appease the gods. Otherwise… something more terrible would happen.”

“Why? Why do such a thing? What kind of wealth and glory do they gain from it?”

The answer came from behind us.

“Immortality.”

Silence fell. All I could see was fog.

“That voice… that voice…! Ah, yes. That voice. It was that voice…”

Aurora lamented. The fog surged toward us. Something was pushing through the fog. Fire sparked in her eyes.

“I won’t be fooled twice.”

Aurora reached out to me. I pulled her up. We stood together. Though obscured by fog, it was an open area, so we returned to the theater lobby. We locked the door and hid behind the information desk. Aurora reloaded her shotgun.

Click. Click. Creeeeak.

Absurdly, the door opened far too easily. I peered through the gap in the furniture. Arthur Black Market was standing there. In his left hand, he held a heavy-looking cane, and in his right, a long black knife. Its color was deep purple.

Black Market began slowly.

“Immortality, I said. Young sacrifice. No, not a sacrifice. You should consider it a blessing.”

Arthur Black Market cast no shadow. Despite the bright lights in the lobby. Even the fog did not gather around him.

Click. Click. Leaning on his cane, he walked into the hall. As if he wanted to enjoy a game of hide-and-seek where he already knew the answer.

“It’s truly strange. Traditions become bizarrely distorted as they pass through generations. The essence is forgotten, and only empty formalities remain. Knowing what to do but not why… I couldn’t entrust the future to such weak descendants.”

The footsteps multiplied. Of course, he wasn’t alone. Women in maid uniforms, butlers in suspenders.

But their faces were smashed. Eyes on the forehead and chin, mouth below the upper eye, nose where the left ear should be, and both ears side by side on the right cheek. Even that wasn’t consistent. It was as if something not human had forcibly tried to wear a human mask and ended up mangling it.

“A child naturally comes from its parents, so it’s only right that parents take back the child’s body. Shouldn’t they get their due for raising you? Your young father knew this principle from a very early age. But he has not yet received grace. Because he hasn’t been baptized. Come in, young but rough child.”

The fog parted to make way. Giovanni Savio entered, gripping a cane. The burly men in white gloves who had entered our office were holding his arms, though it wasn’t clear if they were supporting him or restraining him.

Their faces were also distorted. Black Market handed him a dagger.

“Though you are young, I believe you can handle this much.”

Giovanni looked down at the long blade in his hand.

“Obsidian?”

His voice was cracked, angry, and dry.

“Yes. With that, take your daughter’s body. Stay until your son takes his rightful place, then ascend to the throne. The Sleeping One will make you thus.”

“There’s no altar, no palace…”

Giovanni smiled.

“But there is a sacrifice and an executioner. What kind of magic is this?”

“That’s why I say you are young.”

Black Market murmured in a low voice.

“A child doesn’t ask whose land they tread upon. To a child, the whole world is theirs. To grow older is to know whose land belongs to whom… which means one is ready to possess and rule territory.”

“Ah. Then whose land is this island?”

“This is not land. Do you see this place as merely an island?”

Black’s cane pointed in our direction. Without a sound, the desk we were hiding behind was flung far away. Aurora and I simultaneously aimed at Black Market. But no one was surprised. Only the servants with grotesquely distorted faces looked at us with interest, drooling and crying.

“If not an island, is it a continent?”

“It’s a peak.”

Black tapped the ground twice with his cane.

“This is the highest peak, the most sacred altar. I won’t laugh at your ignorance twice, but after baptism, you too must mature. That is what it means to be reborn.”

I remember. The day I first met Abasina, that vast empty space beneath the southern cemetery. Where corpses and phonographs moved to the melody of a violin… where bizarre statues were carved into the wall.

“Pollard Island is the highest peak of R’lyeh. Since ancient times, it has been a great land and the most sacred altar. All deaths on this island will become valuable sacrifices, which is what kills even death itself. The palace sleeps in the deepest place, and where we stand is the altar. Now, child. Now we have the altar, the palace, the sacrifice, and the executioner.”