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

hollowed him out, yet all of this happened to me. His
memories are all I have. Until I entered him, I didn’t exist.
    I remember
begging before the end, after they showed me what happened to the kid. I
remember how his eyes looked like they’d been turned to a dead TV channel. The
way he looked at me, or I should say the way the thing inside him looked at
Schrader; all full of hunger.
    I’m not
strictly a demon, but it’s the closest word you have — and it’s a million miles
away from what I really am.
    I am
Schrader. More accurately, I am the part of Schrader that exists beneath the
surface. All they did in that cave was drag me up, along with something
trailing behind.
    They did
the same to the kid, and when I opened my eyes for the first time, I recognized
a kindred. It smiled as I stood, and I smiled back before I opened its throat
with my hands.
    Schrader
wasn’t the sacrifice, it was — and I savored its realization as it bled out.
    Carcosa
and the others bowed their heads. I ignored them. They’d brought me up for
something beneath me, but I was locked in. They’d said and done all the right
things. We’re funny about that; like lawyers, we obsess over the fine print.
    I’m not
their patron, though, it’s something else.
    Believe me
when I say you don’t have a name for it. Truthfully, it doesn’t even notice you
exist, and why should it? Nothing else in the universe is aware of mankind.
    What
Carcosa and his friends siphon off for their perverse games isn’t noticeable,
and it attracts bottom feeders and carrion. The lowest of the low, for who or
what else would end up here on this plane of existence?
    Schrader’s
memories hold a multitude of sticky fantasies about Wade. Nothing I’ve not seen
or felt before a hundred times over. Taking them in again was nothing. Carcosa
and his folk drink up shit like that, though, and I gave them the usual demon
spiel about how he had such thoughts.
    None of
them in that cave truly understand what they’re doing. For them, it’s all about
satisfying a need. Shipping kids and unluckies across the border as fuel for
the grinder to bring up things like me.
    Sometimes
we give them things. Mostly, we do things none of your languages can describe
to the innocents they hand over to us. They watch and get off on it, enjoying
how we rip their minds apart and reduce them to nothing — much as what happened
to Schrader.
    “That’s
the last thing you remember?”
    Technically,
it’s the first thing I remember, but I nod. It’s what he would do, so it’s what
I do.
    There are
only a few people in the office at this hour, just her and me alone. Like all
paragons of supposed virtue, Schrader felt guilty about his ideas about Wade.
I’m not so restrained.
    I don’t think anyone
will hear her scream, but I’ll paralyze her vocal chords just to be sure. It’s
what I was born to do. I don’t think anyone can say they were born with such
clarity.
     

     

Doors
     
     
     
    I left the
door unlocked, so perhaps I invited what came. I was working then, but my
career had stalled for family. I think that’s something I resented, but I don’t
have enough of my sanity left to say for sure.
    Sadly,
about the clearest memory I have of that time is the night everything changed.
Despite giving up a lot of my career for the sake of family, I was still
working too much.
    Don’t know
how much — not like it matters anymore. I came home and dropped my keys on the
table by the door; I remember the rattle they made in the small metal dish my
wife had bought. The door closed behind me, but I didn’t lock it.
    There was
no reason to — and no reason not to. Nothing special behind it, I just didn’t.
I’m not sure if I was a forgetful husband.
    I can’t
see my wife’s face clearly anymore. Her eyes, nose, and mouth are wiped over;
smudges over a canvass in my memory. Her hair stands out — coppery and healthy,
spilling over her shoulders and framing her non-face.
    She moves
her