A Midsummer's Nightmare

“Rubbish. Absolute, utter rubbish,” Seneca lamented with a distraught shake of his head as he glowered down at the sale catalogue for the evening’s auction. “Mothman, if you keep letting your selections go downhill like this, pretty soon there won’t be anything distinguishing this place from Orville’s Ostentatious Orifice of Offal, or whatever it is he calls it.”
Meremoth Mothman’s posture noticeably tightened at the comparison to his lowbrow competitor, Seneca’s comment evidently having struck a nerve. The sharp-boned, beak-nosed, hunchbacked man’s dark frock coat, long black hair, and red-tinted spectacles made it easy to guess where he had gotten his moniker. Anyone stumbling upon him in the woods after dark could easily have been forgiven for not immediately recognizing him as human. They would not be forgiven by him, but they could be forgiven.
“Bucklesby sells a random hodgepodge of forgeries and idolatries of questionable provenance and reliability to anyone who walks through his doors,” Mothman reminded him, a defensive edge cutting into his raspy, tinny voice. “I am a purveyor of nothing but genuine preternatural artifacts with well-documented attributes, and my showroom and auctions are by invitation only, available solely to carefully vetted occultists. You’ll find no monkey paws or mogwais here, Chamberlin.”
“Kindly excuse Seneca, Meremoth. He hasn’t been sleeping well and is none too pleased with how the Order’s situation with Emrys has been progressing,” Crowley politely defended his business partner, though the booming and monotone voice from his gramophone horn made it sound more like an order than a request.
The bobbing brain in the vat wheeled his clockwork contraption a little closer to Seneca, his otherworldly aura increasing slightly as he read the glossy pamphlet he was holding.
“Yes. I heard about your debacle at Pendragon Hill earlier this year,” Mothman said, unable to hide his schadenfreude, if indeed he was even trying to do so. “The three of you messed up so badly that the Grand Adderman is now relocating the entire quantity of Sigil Sand to Adderwood Manor just to try to salvage it? Is that right?”
“Nein, the purification went as well as it could have gone,” the pale, gaunt, and hairless revenant known as Raubritter insisted. “The Grand Adderman simply had unreasonably high standards for what ‘purified’ means. With such a ritual, some lingering residue of ectocosmic miasma is to be expected. Is basic thaumaturgical theory, yes?”
“It’s Ivy’s and Envy’s problem now, is what it is, and I’m not even sure what they’re trying to do with the Sand,” Seneca said dismissively.
“I do. They’re trying to fix your mess,” Mothman reminded him.
“Enough, both of you. We’re not here to fight over petty matters of personal accountability or existential threats; we’re here to fight over priceless forbidden treasures!” Crowley proclaimed. “Just a reminder, Mothman, that I’ll be making all my bids orally as it’s impractical for me to use a paddle.”
“Not a problem, Mr. Crowley. I’m always happy to accommodate the specific needs of my valued patrons,” Mothman nodded. “And in your case, I’m certain I’ll have no problem telling who the speaker is.”
“Frauleins! Frauleins!” Raubritter barked, rudely gesturing to a pair of young waitresses holding sterling hors d’oeuvres platters. They each politely excused themselves from the guests they were serving and moved across the room as quickly as they could without risking losing their cargo.
“Yes sir? Something from the bar? Or would you care to try some seafood hors d’oeuvres?” the blonde one asked with a painfully fake smile. “There’s baked clams, crab cakes, salmon puffs, prosciutto-wrapped shrimp, lobster stuffed mushroom caps, caviar on bruschetta –”
“Nein! Nein! Nein!” Raubritter cut her off with a swift chopping motion of his hand. “Due to elements of Rabbinical alchemy used in my transmogrification, I can partake of nothing Leviticus condemns as an abomination!”
“The… salmon and caviar are Kosher, sir,” the dark-haired waitress said tentatively, gently holding her platter out towards him. Raubritter responded with a cold stare through his tinted, hexagonal spectacles before turning to face his host.
“Meremoth, please to be explaining the Aryan and Oriental Frauleins here,” he demanded. “Why are you not using Pascal’s girls?”
“Because the Darling Twins have been worse than usual lately and Pascal’s not willing to let their staff work at any venue where they might show up,” Mothman explained.
“They’re not coming here tonight though, are they?” Crowley asked in alarm, wheeling back slightly and quickly checking to see where the exits were.
“They’re not invited, and I’m not auctioning off anything of theirs, but if they do show up you know the protocol,” Mothman replied.
“Never mind the Darlings, Crowley. Raubritter raises a good point,” Seneca interjected. “This is an exclusive event of the Ophion Occult Order, and Mothman was just going on about how carefully vetted his guests were. What about your staff, Meremoth? Where exactly did you pick up these two-bit strumpets?”
“No need to fret, Chamberlin. They’re locals,” Mothman assured him. “A few years back they stumbled into the Cuniculi and had an encounter with one of the Cryptoids down there; one of your experiments, Crowley, if I’m not mistaken.”
“What? That’s preposterous! I don’t toss my failed experiments into the Cuniculi like it’s some sort of public utility! The very idea is an egregious affront to my acumen as both an alchemist and Adderman!” Crowley shouted with deeply embellished indignation.
“Was it the cluster of ganglia wrapped in the prehensile nerve fibers?” Raubritter asked. The dark-haired girl responded with a squeamish nod, reluctant to even speak of the incident. “I’ve run into that Unmensch before as well. Most unpleasant, and quite obviously Crowley’s handiwork.”
“And why is that? Because it’s a brain monster, you automatically associate it with me?” Crowley demanded, shaking around furiously inside his vat. “I take supreme umbrage to these specious allegations against both myself and my prestigious body of work!”
“My apologies, Professor Crowley. I didn’t mean to impugn upon your person or profession,” Mothman huffed a half-hearted apology, shaking his head slightly in disdain. “As I was saying, the incident of course came to the attention of the Order. Since these girls recently came of age, I reached out to properly induct them across the Veil and offer them a position. You know better than any of us how hard it is to find good help that can be trusted around the occult, Seneca. If you know any daughters of ancient and arcane bloodlines who are also willing to work as cocktail waitresses, then kindly share their number.”
Seneca pursed his lips, but didn’t argue the point. He instead focused his gaze back upon the two girls, trying to put his finger on exactly what it was about them that he found so unsettling.
“What are your names, girls?” he asked.
“Halcyon, sir, and this is Emma,” the blonde girl replied.
“Halcyon? That’s a ludicrously pretentious name,” he scoffed.
“Seriously? My name’s pretentious?” she hissed softly through clenched teeth.
Seneca straightened his posture, looking like a cobra coiled to strike. All of his fellow Addermen took a step back, knowing that he had never been the type to tolerate insolence from a subordinate.
And Emma knew that Halcyon wasn’t one to tolerate disparagement from anyone.
“Everyone calls her Halcy, sir,” she said with a nervous laugh, stepping in between them to prevent the situation from escalating. “I apologize for her disrespectful comment, but we’re just new to this and still a little confused by your Order’s… distinctive customs. She just thought that her full name might fit in a bit better around here. But Mr. Mothman was right; we’re not daughters of ancient and arcane bloodlines, so Halcyon is probably a bit pretentious for day-to-day use. We’ll take care not to step out of line like that again; I promise.”
She hung her head contritely and gently jabbed Halcyon with her elbow, urging her to do the same.
“Sorry,” she muttered, averting her defiant gaze away from Chamberlin.
Seneca cast a questioning glance towards Mothman, who merely shrugged in response.
“If you want me to throw her out over that then you’re going to have to explain to my guests why we’re short-staffed this evening,” he said.
Groaning in resignation, Seneca swallowed his bile and let the insult slide.
“So then, Halcy, that incident in the Cuniculi was your only encounter with the paranormal before meeting Mothman here, was it?” he asked.
“Mm-hmm,” Halcyon hummed without opening her mouth.
“It’s the only one on record, and the only one they’ve ever spoken of in public, as far as we can tell,” Mothman replied. “Will that do, Seneca, or are you just dead set on keeping these girls from doing their jobs?”
Chamberlin continued to eye Halcyon suspiciously. He was certain she was lying, but without anything concrete to support his intuition, he could do nothing without causing a scene.
“Very well. Off with you then,” he said with a dismissive wave of his right hand while using the left to snatch a salmon puff off of Halcyon’s platter.
The girls bowed politely, and resumed their rounds of distributing hor d’oeuvres and taking drink orders.
“Why’d you have to back-talk him?” Emma whispered as soon as they were out of earshot.
“It slipped; I’m sorry,” Halcyon apologized. “He’s just such an asshole. Strumpet means prostitute, right?”
“You could have ruined everything,” Emma reminded her. “Just hold in there until the auction starts.”
“I will. Don’t worry,” she promised.
Making sure that no one was watching, she pocketed one of the crab cakes, feeding it to the crimson-eyed black rats that were nesting in her dress.
“Almost showtime, little guys.”
***
“Welcome, my fellow Addermen, to tonight’s auction. I’m your host and auctioneer for this evening, Meremoth Mothman,” Mothman introduced himself from the podium, gleaming wooden gavel in hand.
Seated before him in leather back chairs too ornate for their purpose were roughly forty members of the Ophion Occult Order, most of them with numbered paddles in hand as they eagerly awaited their chance to bid on Mothman’s latest offerings.
“Our first lot for this evening is a Baphometic Crucifix, believed to have been created in the Black Forest region of Germany at some point during the Burning Times,” Mothman said as Halcyon and Emma carried out a large wooden crucifix which featured the goat-headed Baphomet suffering in place of Christ. “When hung upside-down in the presence of a sincere devotee of any of the Abrahamic faiths, but Catholics in particular, the figure of Baphomet will begin to weep human blood and generate shadowy apparitions to torment the poor papist. The blood is female, most likely belonging to the Baphometic Witch who created the blasphemous idol, and for thaumaturgical purposes is antithetical to Holy Water. This crucifix has had the honour of being kept both in the Vaults of the Vatican and in the reliquary of the Deathless Merchant of London. Using it for idolatry or invocation of Baphomet is at your own risk. The opening bid is four hundred thousand. Can I have four hundred thousand? I have four hundred thousand from #8. Thank you, Pandora. Can I have four hundred and twenty –”
“Four hundred and twenty thousand!”
“… four hundred and twenty thousand. Thank you, Professor Crowley. Can I have four hundred and forty thousand, please? Any bids for four hundred and forty thousand?”
“Seems impractical, no?” Raubritter mused as quietly as he could, leaning as far away from Crowley as possible. “Only yields a few drops of blood at a time, yes? And if you hang it upside down, it does not work as art, I think. Too confusing to look at. Just blasphemy for the sake of blasphemy. Senselessly provocative. And again, with the Rabbinical alchemy in my veins, satanic powers are best avoided. I will pass on this, I think.”
“Like I said; Rubbish. All of it,” Seneca replied, sneering slightly at his fellow patrons who seemed dead set on driving up the price of the ghoulish wall-hanging as close to a million dollars as it would go.
As everyone else’s focus was devoted to Mothman, Seneca’s gaze drifted back to Halcyon. He had never been one to tolerate sass from a servant, even one that wasn’t his, but there was still something else about her that was eating away at him. Glaring at her with contempt, he racked his brain trying to figure out what it was about her he instinctively despised so much.
She noticed him staring at her, and responded with a smug and sinister smirk before she began softly mouthing words at him.
“Red Ruck, run amok, crowned the Regent Red. Eyes aflame, soul untamed, come join me in my bed!”
Seneca didn’t bother to decipher what she was saying after the first two words. The Dream Demon Red Ruck was a thoughtform that had been torturing him in his sleep for nearly three years now, his punishment from the Ophion Occult Order for failing to contain Emrys. The instant Halcyon mouthed his name, Seneca knew why he had so immediately despised her.
She, and likely Emma as well, were followers of the Regent Red.
He nearly jolted straight out of his seat then, ready to unveil their secret and demand that Mothman throw them out for dabbling with forces well beyond their ken.
But the sickeningly familiar melody of a flute robbed him of all courage and froze his heart solid.
The auction house immediately fell silent, everyone turning every which way to locate the source of the intrusively whimsical sound, eventually spotting Red Ruck sitting in the rafters above Seneca.
Ruck was a muscular, horned demon of large but not superhuman stature, spun out of dark and wispy shadows, the only colour he possessed being a pair of red embers glowing menacingly in his eye sockets. Many of the attending guests recognized him by reputation, but most still seemed surprised and bewildered at his uninvoked presence in the waking world.
“Ah! It, ah, seems we have a late-comer to the auction. Welcome, Regent! Welcome!” Mothman said with a nervous laugh, stepping out from the podium and tentatively approaching the rafter where Ruck sat. “My apologies for not having extended an invitation. I had no idea you were interested in such temporal affairs. You are of course welcome to attend! If Your Regency would see it fit to come down to our level, we’ll find you a proper seat.”
Ruck ceased playing his flute, and looked down at Mothman with a wide and menacing smile.
“Come down? But then I’d land right on poor old Seneca’s head, wouldn’t I?” he asked, flexing the talons on his feet.
“You… you have no right to be here!” Seneca shouted, forcing his trembling form from his seat and stumbling back towards the stage. “You have no right to walk the waking world! None, you hear me! You Egregore, you tulpa, you made up thing! Begone, back to the noosphere that birthed you, or I will exorcise you into the mind of a brain-dead invalid for the rest of their natural life!”
Ruck glared at him stoically for a moment, before turning his head back towards Mothman.
“Are you going to let him speak that way to your ‘welcomed guest’, Meremoth?” he asked.
“Yes, that’s hardly any way to speak to a Regent, Mister Chamberlin,” Halcyon agreed. “Are you saying that a brain in a vat and an undead Kosher Nazi have more of a right to be here than Ruck does?”
“I am not Nazi, I am Prussian!” Raubritter objected. “And I am not Kosher, I am cursed!”
“You! You did this! You summoned him here!” Seneca spat. “Mothman, I saw her mutter his name! She lied! She’s one of his followers! They both are!”
“Excuse me? You just said that Ruck was made up,” Halcyon retorted. “He’s my imaginary boyfriend; who lives in Canada. I was under no obligation to mention him to anybody.”
In a rage, Seneca lunged at her, hand poised to backhand her across the face. Unflinching, Halcyon manifested a scourge made of the same shadowy dream nether as Ruck himself, and mercilessly whipped all seven lashes across his face. The force and shock of the blow were enough to send Seneca tumbling to the floor. In a panic, he reached up and felt his stinging cheek.
The scourge was real enough to draw blood, it seemed.
Before he could get up, Ruck leapt down upon him from the rafter and pinned him down with his clawed foot, the weight of his netherous form making it difficult to breathe.
“If you ever, ever, try to harm either of them again, you will not wake up from your next nightmare with me!” he growled, knocking the top hat off his head. “That goes for everyone here and everyone else in the Order! These girls are my disciples and under my protection! Is that understood?”
“Regent, I assure you that no one here other than Chamberlin has done anything unbecoming of an Adderman against either of these girls,” Mothman insisted, his hands raised in a position of surrender. “I’d be happy to escort him out of here myself for his brutish attack on Miss Halcyon, if you could see fit to remove your foot from his chest.”
Ruck chuckled softly, and replied with a sadistic shake of his head.
“Alas, my issues with this coward tonight go beyond his indiscretions against my fearsome Halcy,” he announced. “He’s tried to have me murdered, for no other reason than carrying out his justly decreed punishment. He’s gone and offered me up to Emrys as a sacrifice!”
“Goddammit, Samantha!” Seneca cursed under his breath.
“Now don’t go blaming the Hedge Witch for her lack of discretion,” Ruck chastised him. “She’s been posting accounts of her escapades on that antiquated forum for years; nobody reads them, least of all me. No, Seneca, I saw in your heart what you intended to do long before you ever spoke a word of your plan aloud, and you were a fool to think I hadn’t. For once in your pathetic life, take responsibility for your own failure! You failed to overcome your own fears, and instead sought to rid yourself of them! I am here tonight to show you, in front of dozens of witnesses so that there can be no doubt to the reality of it, that you are not safe from me in the waking world! That the nightmare doesn’t end when you wake up!”
There was an enormous thunderclap, so loud it shook the building like a small earthquake. The lights went out, replaced by a dull crimson radiance that bathed the room from all sides without any apparent source. The rats that Halcyon and Emma had kept safely tucked away until then came scampering out, though already cloaked in their netherous dream forms so as not to be recognized. They instead resembled beaked bats or membrane-winged crows, climbing along their mistresses like baby dragons.
As some of the guests made for the door, Halcyon sent a pair of flying rats to cut them off with a single pointed command. Crossing the room in a heartbeat, they slammed into the opened doors and forced them shut. Though they crashed to the ground, they righted themselves in an instant, and as the fear in the room rapidly grew, so did they.
Now the size of dogs, more of the nightmare creatures formed a perimeter around the room. Circling the crowd as they flew through the air, the swarm herded the guests into the center, hissing and snapping at any who tried to escape.
“How – how are you doing this?” Seneca stammered in terrified disbelief. “How are you bringing your nightmare creations into the waking world?”
“You don’t need to know how, Seneca. You only need to know that I can,” Ruck smiled.
Raising his clenched fist into the air, he imploded the glass of the windows inwards, revealing a forest of charred trees and crimson fog on the other side.
“Regent, please! I accept that Seneca has done you wrong and you have a right to visit your penance upon him, but I implore you to have mercy upon us and my property!” Mothman pleaded, wiping shards of glass off his coat.
“Very well. I suppose I’ve made my point,” Ruck conceded, lifting his foot off of Seneca. He began to scramble back up, but before he could get to his feet a pair of the winged creatures swooped down and snatched him up in their talons, pulling him screaming through the broken window and into the forest beyond.
Halcyon and Emma hopped onto two other members of the swarm as they all gave chase, with Ruck himself bringing up the rear.
“Be sure you pay both of them for the full night, you hear me Mothman?” he shouted over his shoulder as he vanished out the window. “I’m sure you’ll agree that such a pittance isn’t worth losing any sleep over!”
The rats carrying Seneca flew him up to the highest tree in the forest and unceremoniously tossed him into it. He desperately wrapped his limbs around its crown as it swayed back and forth with the force of his impact, clinging for dear life as it threatened to toss him off. The entire swarm besieged him now, cawing like they had come across a feast of fresh carrion, and were only waiting for the wolves to join them.
Sure enough, Seneca heard the familiar howling from his nightmares in the distance. He tried to see how close they were, but the red mist made it impossible. It made little difference, as they would be there all too soon.
“Ruck! Ruck! I’m sorry! I’m sorry I offered you to Emrys!” he cried out. “End this, and we can work something out. I’ll get you anything you want! Anything I –”
“Stop begging!” Ruck shouted into his face as he perched onto the opposite side of the crown. “Stop bargaining! Even with your life actually on the line, you’re still too pathetic to fight back!”
“How am I supposed to fight off dream forms in the waking world!” Seneca demanded.
“Halcyon did it!” Ruck shouted back. “A mortal girl not even one-tenth your age, with none of your skill or knowledge of the occult, fended off and then tamed the creatures that hunt you now! You have no excuse, Seneca! I weary of your cowardice. This is your last chance, you hear me? If you do not fend off the wolves this time, it’s your real body that will be torn to shreds. You fight, or you die.”
With one hand, Ruck grabbed Seneca by the shirt and tore him from the tree, tossing him to the ground. One of the flying creatures caught him by his jacket and slowed him down just enough so that he didn’t break anything on impact. As he slowly raised his head, a sword landed upright mere inches from his face.
“Your ceremonial serpentine sabre. You really should carry it on you rather than leaving it down in your ritual chamber,” Ruck chastised him. “These are dangerous times for the Order. You never know when you might need to defend yourself.”
Seneca jumped to his feet and pulled the sword from the earth. Screaming, he swung it wildly as he charged towards Ruck, who effortlessly vanished into thin air before he was able to make contact. The seven demon-winged ravens above him broke out into a cacophony of cawing, the nearby wolves howling in return, so close now that Seneca could hear them crashing through the thicket.
Terror-stricken though he was, he retained enough presence of mind to know that Ruck didn’t have the ability to cast living nightmares into the waking world unaided. The ravens above him, and the wolves closing in around him must have some type of physical body to support their dream forms. There must be some type of living creature hidden beneath the nether, and that was what he was actually fighting.
More importantly, that was something he could actually fight.
Holding the base of his blade up to his mouth, he exhaled upon the cold steel, and then rapidly sketched a crude sigil in his condensed breath. The enchantment was meant to compel the blade to seek for the heart of his enemy, wherever it may be. When he lowered his sword, he saw the first of the wolves standing before him. It was a meter high at the shoulder, but the raised ground it stood upon put it at eye level with Seneca, making it seem far bigger. It snarled at him, baring a mouthful of shadowy black fangs before pouncing, ready to tear out his throat.
Seneca did not withdraw, but instead bolted forward, plunging the sabre straight into the wolf’s gaping maw and down its vacuous gullet. He felt the blade veer slightly off course of its own accord, impaling something soft and squishy. The wolf yelped in pain before instantly falling slack, the bright red glow of its eyes snuffing out like candles.
At first, Seneca thought that he must have pierced the wolf’s heart, but as he watched the nightmare form dissipate, what he found skewered at the end of his sword was a large, black rat; still squirming and squealing with life in spite of the blade running through it.
“No!” he heard Halcyon shout from above.
The rest of the wolf pack skidded to a stop, suddenly reluctant to come any closer, while the ravens shrieked in outrage at the maiming.
“Rats?” Seneca murmured incredulously, holding the struggling rat up to his face in morbid curiosity, utterly bewildered as to how it was still alive. “They’re all just rats?”
Laughing in triumph, Seneca pressed his advantage. Charging forward with his sword and his victim held out on full display, the rest of the pack abandoned their dream forms as well, taking advantage of the cover the clouds of nether gave them to scurry out of sight into the undergrowth.
“Satisfied, Ruck?” Seneca screamed to the trees around him. “You and your minions might be indestructible in a dream world of your own making, but once you set foot in the real world you are Regent of nothing, you hear me? Nothing! Your girls and your rats are subject to the same natural laws and physical limits as anyone else, and I’ll not hesitate to do to them what I’ve done to this blighter here if you ever try something like this again!”
Heedless of his threat, Halcyon leapt down from her mount, her scourge raised in heated anger as she moved to strike.
“No!” Ruck shouted, materializing behind her and holding her back. “It’s over! Seneca, it’s over. You’ve met my terms; you’ve won. Congratulations. Hand the rat over to Halcy, and we’ll be on our way.”
Seneca laughed cruelly, for he realized that he had just stumbled upon a powerful bargaining chip with the Red Regent, one he wasn’t about ­­let go to waste.
“It’s all over, Ruck! You want this furball back? Then swear on the River Styx to never again haunt my dreams; to never enter my mind, abduct me to your realm, or attack me in the waking world.”
“I… I swear on the River Styx, that if you return that rat to us, the Nightmare Realm and its subjects will never trouble you again,” Ruck sighed.
“You swear on the River Styx to forsake your duty to the Grand Adderman in releasing me from my punishment without his assent?” Seneca asked in delight as he gently pulled the writhing rat off of his sword. “That’s almost as good as feeding you to Emrys, Ruck, and if it means I’m rid of you, I’ll gladly take it.”
He tossed the rat towards Halcyon, who dropped the scourge and caught the rat like it was a cherished kitten. Cradling it to her chest, she spun around and ran away from Seneca as fast as she could, with Emma dropping to the ground and chasing after her. As they vanished from sight, the vision of the Nightmare Realm began to dissipate as well, revealing the reality of Midsummer in Sombermorey that Seneca knew it to be.
Ruck, through sheer force of will, retained his presence for a bit longer, snarling and shaking his head at Seneca until eventually vanishing as well.
Exhaling with relief that his ordeal was finally over, Seneca pulled out a neckerchief and wiped the blade of his sabre clean, intending to have it analyzed to see precisely what Ruck had done to those rats.
But that could wait. For the first night in a long time, Seneca was finally going to get a good night’s sleep.
Category:Dreams/Sleep
Category:The Vesper's Bell