Midnight Theatre: Tales of Terror by Greg Chapman

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  The Noctuary (novella excerpt)

  Day does not exist for me anymore. There is only night. And I wait for him—I dread his arrival.

  There is no denying it; I am lost in madness or fear, or both. The words I write make no sense to me. My soul tells me I must abide by the rules of the night; that the darkness has been made

  flesh and is opening its arms to receive the dead and the demonic.

  I awoke at 6:00 p.m. and stepped onto the patio of my apartment to find the sun’s last light turning the sky the shade of blood. The streetlights are just pinpricks in the black. People on the streets are stalked by their shadows. They are unbeknownst to the spectacle, but I can see it all. I am defying all the laws of reality. These words are in my head and on the page at the same time, but I can no longer feel my hands writing them. My soul is talking

  and I am simply transcribing it onto invisible paper.

  I walk back into my bedroom and immediately go down to the basement to sit at my desk, where my notebook rests open and waiting. The words I’ve written on its pages look like another language from a different angle. I am trying to understand what it says when I hear that voice.

  “Hello Simon,” it says from the night.

  I look to my left, but all there is to see is night. I know he is in the room, but my senses cannot locate him.

  “You will find no trace of me, Simon, but I am all around you. I must reveal myself to you.”

  All of a sudden the darkness parts like a curtain and a tall, robed figure steps out, bathed in a dull light. As my eyes adjust, I glimpse the being before me. The figure is at least eight feet tall.

  Beneath the scorched lace of its endless robe I can see a bone-thin body wrapped tightly in pale grey skin. Then I see its face; two orb-like eyes centred in a glistening, hairless head. Strange hieroglyphs are scattered about the face, ancient scars carved into the flesh. As I gape in horror the thing beckons me with outstretched hands. Its fingers look sharp and menacing. As it glides closer I finally see they are not fingers at all, but rather the pointed ends of ancient quills. Bloody ink spills from each tip onto my lounge room floor.

  “My God, what are you?” I hear myself say.

  The thing smiles, revealing a toothless mouth, moist with the same foul ink.

  “I am no god, Simon. I am no devil. I am purely an inspiration to lost souls. Only the privileged can bear my countenance.”

  I sit rigid in my chair as the creature hovers around me, observing me with its hollow eyes. I don’t want to look away from it, but the entrance from whence it came lures my gaze. Beyond

  the curtain of night I can make out a corridor with walls made of parchment, stained and marked with every written language on Earth and others I could never comprehend. The sound of scratching, multiplied a billion times over, echoes throughout the corridor and out into my home.

  Abruptly the creature blocks my view and with a wave of his spindly hand the curtain is drawn. The room plunges back into darkness.

  “No, Simon, not for you—not yet.”

  I look back to where the creature is standing, but the darkness has blotted him out. All I hear is his voice.

  “First you must master your words in this world before you can

  write them in mine.”

  “You’re Meknok—the thing in my dreams,” I say, stuttering from fear.

  “I am.”

  “ Why are you here? How can you hear my thoughts? How can you be real?”

  “I am your thoughts, Simon. You conjured me with your dark dreams.”

  “Is Meknok saying that I created him?”

  “I exist to feed on minds such as yours. I was drawn to your soul, by its despair. Your words have lost their meaning, so I have come to give them purpose.”

  Meknok was referring to my writing, but it made no sense. I have been unable to write.

  “You need to return to the prose you once prospered in.” Meknok explains.

  ‘Once prospered in’? All I had written before were short stories; tales of horror. They were hardly literature.

  Meknok’s snarl shakes the darkness and his eyes shine with fury.

  “Blasphemy! You dare to insult the word? It lies within all of your kind, but only a few can make it tangible.”

  He steps toward me, pointing his long quills in my face.

  “There is no finer art than the prose that terrifies! Fear is primal! It is the first and final emotion and has been since the light first broke through the darkness. The word was the origin

  of your species—the very first symbols were written in my hand!”

  His quills seem to bleed in response to his tirade. Raging further, he grips me and I feel his talons plunge into my arms. His ink floods into me.

  “I was there in the cave! I guided the Neanderthals’ hands as they wrote of victory and death! And for millions of years since, death has lived on through my scribes!”

  Meknok releases me from his grip and I fall, screaming in pain as his essence courses around my veins. It throbs through me and I seize and writhe like a cut snake. My mind is plagued with snapshots of shadows eating corpses and blood smeared across pages made from stretched flesh. It feels like it will never end. Then I smell Meknok’s rotten breath.

  “Perhaps you are not worthy? Am I wasting my time with you?”

  I can’t speak. All I can do is tremble with terror.

  “Must I take you deeper into darkness? How should I inspire you? What should I show you that will make you understand the journey ahead?”

  In my mind I see myself back at my desk, looking at the notebook. I write one word and I stare at it.

  Sleep.

  Then I am falling; falling down into the word, into its blackness— closer, closer. Down. Down, until the letters are nothing but a gateway to the night.

  Tonight has ended.

  A new night is coming.