The Night Market (5 page)

“Don’t look, Yael,” Tobi warned belatedly. “They are
all long dead. There is nothing here to worry you, because they are well beyond
worry.”

Tobi coaxed her back to her feet and onward, growing
increasingly nervous as time went on. He urged Yael along faster, hurrying
ahead to survey the terrain and pick out directions, then watching behind them
with a still alertness, one ear twitching occasionally. The wind took on an
oddly personal intensity, fingers of cold working their way through her
windbreaker and sending shivers up her spine. Despite the wide-open plain they
appeared to occupy, the wind whistled as if it were coming from a deep and
narrow place.

“Move faster if you would ever leave this place,” Tobi
urged, his eyes flicking from one side to the other. “Run, Yael. Run until you reach
the staircase, then climb. Do not look back. Do you understand me? We are far
from where I would have taken you, had I any choice in the matter. You will
emerge in the Waste, but there is nothing for it. I see that you are strong.
You remind me of the little girl I lost, long ago. I believe you will survive.”

Yael’s eyes instinctively wandered back toward the
source of the whistling and the cold wind, but Tobi leapt in front of her, hair
standing on edge, back arched and claws extended.

“Do you understand, Yael? Run and then climb. Do not
look back. You will meet others who can take you the rest of the way. Explain
to them that you are under the protection of the cats of Ulthar, that they will
be rewarded for guiding you to the Nameless City and the Night Market. The
journey will not be short or easy, but I suspect you already know that. Come
here.”

Yael stepped forward, her throat tight and her heart
pounding in her ears.

“Hold out your arm, child. You may close your eyes if
you wish.”

She did not. Nor did she flinch. The cats claws were
like razors, the pain severe and abrupt. It was over in two passes, a smear of
blood and a stinging, shallow wound.

“Show them that, should your passage be challenged.
Find the Night Market. Be well, Yael, until we meet again. Now, go and do not
look back!”

Yael hesitated a moment longer, because she was
certain that she saw fear in the cat’s eyes. She did not want to leave him to
stand alone against whatever whistled in the darkness. But then she realized
that the worry was most likely for her. Yael remembered the fearless way the
cat had fought the shoggoth, his effortless victory. Yael decided the best
thing she could do for Tobi was to trust him, so she bent, gave Tobi one
terrific squeeze and then ran.

The ground was fluid and treacherous underfoot, but
cruel and jagged when she fell, scratching her knees and the palms of her
hands. Yael ran blindly, her flashlight flickering on and off in her hand,
waving too wildly to be of any use. It didn’t seem to matter that much. Yael
had no path to follow and no sense of direction to guide her except her own
blind fear.

The wind felt like ice and the air it carried was thick
and polluted, even through the nanomesh filter of her mask. Like cold fingers,
it crept indecently beneath her clothes and left her feeling chilled and
unclean. The whistling would not stop and her eardrums ached with the endless
vibration. The pitch and volume were such that Yael wanted to press her hands
over her ears, but she couldn’t. She was too busy running headlong into the
dark.

She tripped and went tumbling into a pile of something
that shattered on impact with the sound of brittle leaves. Yael closed her eyes
and stood up, brushing her windbreaker as she ran. She did not look down again
until she was far from the pile of bones.

Her flashlight showed the scene around her in flashes,
like lightening, motivated by her fear. The piles of bones were everywhere. Some
were more than piles. They were foothills, even mountains that stretched off as
far as her light could reach; a skeletal geography of chilling dimensions. Yael
kept as clear of the bones as possible, but they still crackled underfoot and made
the going treacherous, so that she had to slow even as the terrible whistling
grew nearer and the darkness seemed to take on a tangible form.

Yael felt things stick to her and pull like spider
webs attached to her skin and hair, but where she shone her flashlight, there
was nothing. The wind was so powerful that the hood of her jacket flapped
wildly and she had the distinct sensation that something was tugging at her
hair.

If she screamed, then there was no shame to it because
there was no one to hear. Yael stumbled on, terrified, trying to put form to
the darkness around her. Images of childhood fear and misfortune flashed
through her mind in a hypnagogic flurry, a swirl of skulls, swastikas and
leering faces. Wherever she put her feet, bones rolled and snapped beneath. There
was a pinpoint of bright pain in her scalp as one hair was torn from her head
and then another. Something caught one of her legs and she fell and tumbled
free, scraping her knees and almost losing her duffel.

Yael gritted her teeth and struggled back to her feet,
not sure if the flashlight made things better or worse. She wasn’t certain that
she wanted to see what was in front of her in the charnel valley, or the bones
that surrounded her. Tobi’s admonishment not to look back was unnecessary. Yael
was too occupied with fleeing to risk a look over her shoulder. She tried to
keep the thin circle of light from her small flashlight focused on the ground
immediately in front of her, but she needed her arms for running and dragging
the duffel, so the best she could manage was an occasional glance. She tripped
again and again, bruising her legs and battering her duffel, bringing tears to
her eyes. Each time, Yael rose shakily, the maddening whistling now just behind
her, weirdly mixed with the frightful yowling of an enraged cat.

The staircase met her, shin first. Yael cried out and
grabbed at her leg, dropping her duffel. She felt another tug at her hair,
another obscene caress from the frigid wind, then she gathered her things and
ran frantically up the stairs in the darkness, her flashlight dropped in her
haste, one hand gripping the rail of the spiral staircase tightly. The stairs
were slightly too far apart, and Yael had to strain to reach the next stair,
her shaky legs protesting each step. Mad with fear, she ignored the lactic acid
building in her legs, the darkness, her lost flashlight. All she knew was the
whistling and the hope that it was receding.

Yael was further up the stairway than she would have
believed possible, the whistling only a terrifying echo, when she collided with
the man in glasses, sending them both sprawling.

“This is unexpected,” the man said, holding up a gas
lantern and peering at her through antique spectacles. “Rather rude, in
addition.”

“Well, I am sorry,” Yael retorted crossly, dropping
her duffel in exhaustion, and then collapsing on top of it. She hardly had the
strength to peel off her mask, so desperate to catch her breath that she didn’t
worry about what might be in the air. “You will have to forgive my recklessness
in fleeing a horrible monster.”

“Rather rude,” he affirmed. “Also, a girl. This is
well out of the ordinary.”

“You’re telling me. What was making that whistling
sound? Is Tobi alright?”

“Whistling?” The man blinked slowly behind his thick,
round glasses, and Yael started to suspect that he had a disease or derangement
of some sort. “Tobi? What are you talking about?”

Yael shook her head dismissively, leaning over the
blackened metal railing of the spiral stair to look out on the invisible Vale
of P’nath, silent and still, searching vainly for a sign of the cat. Nothing
was forthcoming.

“Where I was raised, it was considered polite to
introduce oneself. That is the traditional way to begin a conversation.”

Yael glared back at the pock-marked man, whom she had
decided that she did not like.

“You could start by telling me yours, then.”

“A child should introduce herself to her elder.”

“A lady reserves the right to give her name at all.”

Yael folded her arms across her chest and they glared
briefly at one another. It was no surprise that he broke first. She was
prepared to stand there all day on principle, after all.

“My name is Robert Genner of the Greater Wisconsin
Necropolis,” he admitted, as if there were something criminal about it. “And my
business is my own.”

“My name is Yael Kaufman of Roanoke,” she replied
neutrally, offering her gloved hand so that her sleeve slid back to reveal Tobi’s
scratches. “And I have business to conduct at the Night Market.”

“Oh? Well, child, you are far from your destination,
I’m afraid. Far from the Nameless City. Not particularly close to anywhere,”
Robert Genner said, concluding with a nasty laugh at her predicament. “The
staircase you are climbing leads to the Waste. It is not a place for a soft
little girl.”

Yael noticed the tremors, constant tiny twitches that
consumed the man’s autonomic nervous system, and shuddered with instinctual
disgust.

“And for you, Eater-of-the-Dead?” Yael asked firmly,
withdrawing her hand. “Now I understand why this plain is filled with bones.
Clearly your kind is far from starving.”

“How could we not prosper? When the world above treats
us with such benevolence, showering us with gifts of food so vast that all the
ghouls of the world and more could be sustained. Why, you must love us, for why
else would you kill each other with such regularity and then put the bodies,
barely cold, in the ground, sealed inside wooden boxes?”

It took an effort not to strike at the creature. If
she had been back at her home, Yael would have called for one of the zeppelins
or a roaming Public Safety Officer to deal with the abomination. Yael was
enraged to think of the creatures pillaging cemeteries from below while guards
and walls sat futilely above, but she was in a different place now. She could
not afford to pass judgment, not when she was in such obvious need herself.

“If you are so grateful to my kind, then help me,”
Yael said, through gritted teeth, unable to look away from the saliva dribbling
down Robert Genner’s chin. “How far is it to the surface? And is there a way to
cross the Waste?”

Robert Genner froze as if she had pinned him with a
light brighter than the meager glow of his feeble lantern. He smacked his lips
wetly as he hesitated, searching for a way out of his own words. Fortunately
for Yael, he was incapable of doing so.

“It is not far to the surface, no more than a few
hours’ climb,” Robert Genner said, apparently oblivious to Yael wincing. “As
for the Waste, there are many ways to cross it, provided you have wealth,
advanced weaponry and weaponized rituals. There are other ways still, for those
with tremendous stealth and guile, or merciless cruelty.”

“And for me?”

Yael didn’t like the way Robert Genner looked at her.

“Can’t see what you look like under all that,” he
said, gesturing at her heavy clothes. “But your face is pretty enough. There
are caravans that cross the Waste on occasion. You could... attach yourself to
one of the groups. It would be safer.”

“If I understand your implication correctly, then I
may have to demand restitution,” Yael said frankly, slipping her spray can from
the bag on her belt into the palm of her hand, where it rested, cool and
reassuring. “Have I understood you correctly?”

Robert Genner backed away, his arms crossed in front
of his face as if he were accustomed to being hit. Yael felt a twinge of guilt,
though she hadn’t touched him.

“No, no, you misunderstand! I meant only – or rather,
I was describing, in general terms, a route taken by
some
, I certainly
never meant to imply that
you
...”

“Fair enough,” Yael said, forcing herself to relax,
making sure the spray can was pointed toward the ground. “Are there other ways
across the Waste, Genner? I don’t want to stay here longer than I have to.”

“And I don’t want you to stay,” Robert Genner
grumbled, rubbing his stubbly chin. “There might be a way. It is no safer than
any other, mind you, and may even be worse, but it requires no special
attributes, nor would it compromise your virtue. But it is not... safe.”

“I am tired of this, creature. Just tell me so that I
might be on my way.”

“You see, Yael Kaufman, you are not the first girl –
woman – I have encountered today. There is another, a blonde dressed in red
with a dog. She was camped by the entrance when I came down here a few hours
ago. She might still be there. Though, I must warn you,” Robert Genner said,
with what looked like concern on his malformed face, “I think she may be mad.”

A landscape empty of desire, choked with sterility.
Implied consent. Her eyes like a burned-out monitor. Waking in the middle of
the night in an unfamiliar place, the gradual recognition of lost time, a
private and individual mystery.

There was no one
there.

Yael stood at the mouth of the cave that led to the
spiral staircase, on the edge of the Waste, her hands on her knees and her
calves burning with exhaustion. The last several hundred steps had been brutal.
She had only climbed them through force of will. Stopping would have meant
talking to the ghoul again. Going back was impossible. There was only up, only
further to go. On some level Yael had known it would be that way from the
moment she climbed out of the window of her parent’s house.