“Songs that the Hyades shall sing,
"Where flap the tatters of the King,
"Must die unheard in
"Dim Carcosa.”
(“Cassilda’s Song”, The King In Yellow – Act I, Scene 2)
I got back to my shabby little ramshackle apartment just as the sun was beginning to dip below the horizon, heralding the onrush of the shallows of the night. The sky was daubed with a blood-thick vermillion as I stuck my key into the door and pushed my way inside. As it clicked shut and locked behind me, I peeled off my overcoat and tossed it into a nearby corner to crumble listlessly over an errant pile of shoes who were currently making the spot their demesne.
Flipping on the light switch as I entered what passed for my living room. Slinging myself onto my couch, I relaxed into the cloying pleather of its cushions and exhaled a heavy breath. Grimacing wryly to myself, I held up the enigmatic quarto I’d been given at the pawn shop and let my gaze play idly over it. The cracked gilt title flashed at me in the dull glow of the dim-watted lamplight.
THE KING IN YELLOW.
I shrugged and dropped the weather-beaten tome onto the coffee table as I dragged myself up into a sitting position and hopped to my feet. In my desire and haste to just get home, I hadn’t given any thought to either lunch or dinner and my stomach was starting to take notice, giving raise to a series of grumbling protests. Making my way into the small kitchenette adjacent to the living room, I took a quick peek in the fridge. It didn’t take much of a survey to determine that no new abundance of victuals had seen fit to magically populate its barren recesses, so it looked like I was going to have to go out. Again.
I’d been out and about most of the day, pawning off that cavalry saber. Therefore I had no real inclination to go do any type of major grocery shopping by that time. I just wanted to relax, more than anything else. So as I pulled on my jacket – yet once again – and slipped out the door, I figured I’d just pop down to the mini-mart down round the corner from my complex and just grab a quick frozen something in a foil tray and a 2 liter bottle of anything and be back in time to catch old “King of Queens” reruns until primetime programming kicked on for the evening.
I was back home inside of twenty minutes. And this included the time it took to gracefully avoid a prolonged conversation about the state of the economy with our resident dowager busybody, Ms. Carmichael, down at the end of the hall. It was therefore with no small sense of relief that I quickly managed to get back into my apartment and throw the bolt.
I headed into the kitchen and set my bag down on the table. I ripped the TV dinner out of its box, poked a few holes in the plastic film covering with a fork, spun the dial on the oven to the requisite temp, and shoved it in. Ten minutes, more or less, and I’d be feasting on some of the best mediocre processed turkey with powdered potatoes and imitation gravy that money could buy. Or at least the two bucks I spent on it.
Snatching up the 2 liter of local store-brand cola, I padded into the living room and made my way over to the couch. Picking up the musty old quarto from its resting place on one of the cushions and moving it aside so that I could sit down, I lowered myself into the creaking pleather and kicked my feet up onto the nicked and tarnished coffee table and began casting around for the TV remote.
It was then that it occurred to me.
I hadn’t left the book on the couch.
Slowly my eyes slid over to where the antique folio lay, sitting next to me like some mocking blasphemy from bygone age.
I had put that thing on the table. I remembered tossing it there before I left.
So what was it doing on the couch?...
At that moment, a garish, insectoid buzzing sounded like a lurid alarm from the recesses of the kitchen. I nearly jumped off the couch and swore hotly to myself. A flood of relief then abruptly washed over my senses as I realized that it was just the oven timer going off. My gourmet frozen dinner was done. I chuckled ruefully to myself and wiped a palm down my face in a chiding chagrin, shaking my head at my foolishness.
Jumping at buzzers. How old are you again?
I crossed over quickly into the kitchen and turned off the timer. Killing the oven, I retrieved my dinner gingerly and took it back to the living room and dropped it onto the coffee table. Resuming my seat upon the couch, I peeled back the film from the tray – taking care not to burn my fingers on the escaping steam in the process – and sat back to let it cool before I dug into this sumptuous bachelor’s repast.
With a shrug I leaned over and picked up the quarto. I figured that I might as well take a look through my new acquisition while I was waiting for my supper to set so that I might eat it without scalding my tongue. Flipping it open to the creak of old bindings, I smoothed out the pages before me with a delicate hand as my eyes began to scan the work…
The typeset was old, hailing from back to the 19th Century from the apparent look of it. The publishing information confirmed this, giving a date of 1895 with a printer, Castaigne, of Paris. And yet, this edition was in English. I could find no details on this version, but from the style of the font-set used and the appearance of both the pages and ink, it could not have been too much later than the date given for the original publication.
My curiosity piqued, I carefully turned the page and began to read over the contents of the play.
The work was both vibrant and bizarre, yet a study of opposites. The subject and background matter…the people, places, and things involved…were of such a phantasmagoric and fantastic cast as to stagger the reason and task the imagination, and yet – at the same time – the unknown author used these things to treat of utter banalities, and the most prosaic of commonplaces. At least, that was the impression to be gathered from what I could understand of the First Act.
It told the tale of the ancient Dynasty of Carcosa – an enigmatic city whose towers were somehow to be seen behind the moon, and whose lakes of Demhe and Hali were in some manner strangely connected with the stars Aldebaran, Alar, Hastur, and the mystery of the Hyades. It spoke of the demoiselle Cassilda and her mother, the matriarch Camilla. It detailed the members of the imperial family, from Naotalba and Aldones to Uoht and Thale. And most importantly, it related the story of the Last King.
It spoke of a time to come, in some age undreamt of and undetermined – undescribed – when the people should know the son of Hastur, and the whole world bow to the black stars which hung in the sky over Carcosa. In which every prince and prelate, monarch and marquis, would receive the Yellow Sign – which no living human dare disregard. And the cities of men…their states…the whole land…would rise and tremble before the Pallid Mask.
And then the son in his triumphing would look out upon the lake of Hali, thin and blank, without a ripple of wind to stir it, and would see the towers of Carcosa behind the moon. Aldebaran, the Hyades, Alar, and Hastur would glide through the cloud rifts which would flutter and flap as they passed like the scalloped tatters of The King in Yellow which must hide Yhtill forever.
That – as breathtakingly obscure and inexplicable as it was – was the essence of the First Act. By the time I had finished with it, my forgotten dinner had long since grown cold and the hour had stretched far too late. It was nearly half past three.
I closed the covers of the quarto volume and rubbed wearily at my eyes. I’d try to decipher more of the curious play later, but for the present moment both body and brain longed for the nepenthic bliss of the oblivion of sleep.
I tossed the book lightly onto the coffee table and forced myself off the couch with a groan. Shuffling my way back to my closet of a bedroom, I didn’t even bother to get out of my clothes before falling face-first into the welcoming embrace of the mattress. Within the span of a few seconds, I was out for the count - slipping immediately into a cloying unconsciousness.
My dreams that night were of Carcosa, whose towers sat beside the lake of Hali, and whose spired minarets rose obscured behind a wan and gibbous moon….
(Finis Part 3)
