The third story in the Fear series
THE WHEN THEY GO
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I have but one reply to the last point:
The universe does not die. The universe shall endure for hundreds, billions, trillions of thousands of years after we are extinct — we are but dust, man.
Hail. I am Juan. I sat a tedious sitting — the very sitting many of you have sat. I sat with my workmates while they celebrated our colleague Lucia's birthday. They laughed, they raised goblets of wine, and they spoke of those tiresome, repeated concerns. All of them wore the mask of goodness; they spoke of peace in the world and insisted they abhorred racism and despised murderers. Ugh. I grew drowsy at that dull conversation and thought to myself: you all possess a dark soul like mine. Know this: the worst sort of killing is that which is done for a reason — especially when that reason seems plausible — and above all, when one succeeds in persuading others thereof and claims it is the purest of evils. The vilest of crimes is the killing for sheer rapture, particularly when the killer is proud and confesses it. Yes, I kill without reason. But tonight, as I walked home through narrow dark alleys in the tranquil night where naught but the lamp-posts' lights remained, my mind shifted. I resolved at last to begin. Whom shall I slay? I shall slay the superficial and the trivial. I believed that this would grant me a greater rapture.
On the eve of Tuesday at the seventh hour of night, Juan sat upon the couch in his flat, half-asleep, supping from a bottle of beer and thinking what he would do on the morrow. Yet no thought came; he sought not to act, neither to dream, nor to aspire or to strive. He simply knew not what to do. He took his last draught of the beer and gave a small, faint laugh.
He told himself: I will not start a plan. Every day I think to become a slayer, yet I know not how to begin; all are merely words that end in nothing. I know not what benefit I shall reap from killing. Perhaps I thirst for blood, yet I care not to slay any soul. I do not care for men; I believe neither in Good nor Evil; I love none and hate none. As Juan moved to cast the bottle upon the floor, three masked men burst into his dwelling. One bore a pistol and the others held clubs, and they leveled the pistol at Juan and bade him not to stir. Juan answered, still sipping from the bottle, asking them to depart.
The girl fired a warning shot into the floor to frighten him. Juan stood, and she told him: "Thou art not master of this place." "Do you know? I shall make thee master, that I may prove you common folk are cowards who cannot slay a worm." Perchance the girl deemed that humankind had lost the instinct of preying in their refinement. She cast the pistol to Juan and said, "If thou wouldst have us depart, force us hence." Juan seized the pistol and discharged six bullets into the heads of her companions, slaying them.
The girl was struck dumb by what befell and her eye trembled. Juan then faced her and said: "My miscalculation, miss — I possess no feelings, no ambition, no apathy, no passion." He seized the corpse of her comrade, plucked its eye from its socket with his hands, and devoured both eyes, chewing them slowly whilst he said to her: "Perchance they were alive ere I shot them, but I am the shooter; who was dead?" He gazed upon the spray of blood within the flat with a cold look and said to her: "Is it not beautiful? The scent of human blood."
Some time thereafter I became a psychiatrist and resolved to treat the people and hearken to their maladies, whilst in truth I would manipulate them. That night I sat in my clinic in utmost tedium, after the last of my patients had departed. The night was stormful, rent with lightning. I mused that I would have been a philosopher or a scholar rather than a mere psychiatrist; yet my absolute intellect in sundry sciences and in psychology had procured this post for me. Despite all this I felt no distinction: I treated my patients because they were but ordinary sick folk. No singular genius had yet crossed my path who might pose a challenge worthy of my manipulation, nor any purpose to stir my interest. All was dull in my life. At that moment I rose from my chair and moved with soft footsteps toward the window, and I saw a green comet fall from the heavens. The comet lit the place and brought forth an explosion vast enough to shatter edifices afar — indeed the force of the blast reached here and broke some glass. Thereupon I felt a terror I had never known. The fog and the darkness in the room thickened in a ghastly fashion, and I felt as though that darkness were a person. Then came forth a hand from the dark — a giant hand bristling with talons — and it throttled me. Instantaneously I felt that I fainted or fell into a dream.
In that dream I beheld a vast company of cowboys of the Old West who were butchers: they slaughtered a Mexican family, flayed the hides from their heads, and ate their eyes whilst laughing. They ravished the mangled corpses of children; wherever they rode, they wrought the same. I saw them change from human semblance to monsters — creatures nearer to the living dead, lich-like, as in dark fantasy — or men upon whom appeared tentacles like those of an octopus. This transpired for a time, then they returned to their human shapes. Whenever they entered a village they murdered, raped, and dismembered the children, and they stole the holy books from every city in the world, defiling and altering the conception of the deity therein, shaping Him into a shadow — a black Shade garbed in a cloak. This dream was the most dreadful thing I had beheld. They rode astride fine steeds and traversed the world thus; I reckon the year to be about 1850 of the Christian reckoning, and with them there was a man
He wore a cloak and journeyed with them. He committed no crime; he merely walked, observed, and smiled. Then I awoke from that dream. The hand of darkness released me, yet the darkness spread throughout the room and did not depart. I felt that the gloom began to enter into me, fortifying every atom of fear and malice in my being. A dread voice spoke — I heard no articulate sound nor saw aught but the dark — yet it was a voice beyond my power to frame; it was the most terrifying thing my blood-stained life had ever heard. It said:
"Perchance they may contain thy mental gifts, but they shall not contain the cosmic force I shall bestow upon thee. I will give thee one single drop from this tear of mine. This one drop shall suffice to make thee a true wielder of the Cosmic Power; yet thou shalt never transcend the superhuman. I care not whether thou usest thy power for any aim, whether thou becomest a slayer or a ruined thing. Take heed only that all shall fear the Shadow."
Thereupon the darkness and that terrible voice departed, and I awoke in my clinic at dawn, for Nurse Jessica had roused me. I took myself to believe that all I had passed through that night was but the worst nightmare of my life; yet upon waking I