Darker Than Weird: Fourteen Tales of Horror

Anno Domini Azathoth

Late in the Year of Our Lord 1781 word reached the King of Spain that an uprising of Quechan Indians had destroyed two respected missions in the Arizona territory. Many priests and colonists were slaughtered. The loss of these missions closed the Anza Trail where it crossed the Colorado River, isolating the region from New Spain for years. Yet in truth it was not the wholesome Quechan Indians who assaulted the people of these missions — who marched their captives into the scorching desert toward torture and death.

To King Charles III, lost in the treacherous maze of his European ambitions, this tiny sliver of the New World was no great loss. The Crown of Spain had lost its interest in Spanish territories north of the Rio Grande, despite the numbers of settlements, soldiers, and missions that lay scattered across those untamed lands. Another power was rising in the Arizona territory, one far more ancient and vast than any earthly monarch. It came like a raging tide of blood and fire to drown both the Mission Puerto de Purísima Concepción and the Mission San Pedro y San Pablo de Bicuñer.

I, Father Francisco Gonzalez y Rivera, know the truth behind those three terrible days of slaughter. It haunts me like the ghosts who wail in the night outside my little cave. In order to pacify the restless spirits of my missionary brothers, and to rid myself of the awful secrets I have kept across lonely years, I will set down on these pages the truth of what occurred in the sweltering month of July in the Year of Our Lord 1781.

Having done this, I will carry this manuscript to the nearest mission and place it in the hands of a Holy Father who yet retains his faith in the Jesu Christi. It was this all-consuming faith that drew me across the world to spread its light in the dark places. Yet the darkness itself — and the dreadful reality which lies at the heart of it — has stolen that faith from me, as it has stolen my health, and the greater part of my mind.

I will not die a hermit confined in this squalid cave, beholden to the crippling terror of my revelations. Instead I must do as the Revelator of old: I will inscribe the truth in black ink on yellow parchment. And when I have entrusted this knowledge to one who carries the strength of the Nazarene in his heart — for he will need such strength to endure these revelations — I will free myself from this frail body with blade, or pistol, or the swift tug of a hempen rope about my neck.

I do not expect that my words will reach Charles III, or that he would deign to read them if they should be carried across the great sea to his throne. No, I need only one living mind, one soul, one fellow human being to share this terrible truth with me. I cannot die until someone else knows what I have discovered.

I am aware that this makes me a selfish man. Perhaps a wicked man.

Nevertheless, I must write as John the Apostle did before me.

I know that I am damned by what I reveal, as you who read this account must also be.

Read on then, if you fear not damnation. Or pass these pages to someone more brave — or more foolhardy — than yourself.

The first time I saw Walking Ghost, I thought he was about to kill me.

It was early evening and a purple twilight crept out of the desert with an army of night-colored clouds behind it. Walking across the courtyard between blossoming cacti, I fancied that the World of Man stood on the threshold of a great and abiding darkness. The deep night and its unseen terrors have always made me uneasy.

I was kindling the tall candles in the chapel of the Mission Puerto de Purísima Concepción when the heavy wooden door banged open. Walking Ghost stood in the doorway, dark against the dying sunlight. He looked so very different from the humble Quechan folk who lived in the vicinity of the mission and attended its daily services, that I did not recognize him as one of their own.

Taller than most men he stood, a tuft of white feathers dangling from his braids of black hair. His skin was brown as the desert, his face painted in striped crimson with coal-dark pigments about the eyes and lips. I had never seen such a display as this among the Quechan, but I later learned that these were the colors of war. Beneath its war paint the face of Walking Ghost was grim, his eyes tightened by a strange mixture of anger and remorse.

About his neck hung several bead necklaces, and his only garb was a traditional loincloth of woven bark fibers. His muscled chest, legs, and arms were bare, streaked here and there with more paint in obscure sigils. A long metal knife hung at his waist, and his right fist clutched an axe with a head of sharpened stone. The sight of this ready weapon made me clutch the crucifix at my throat and prepare for a death that might be either swift or lingering. I whispered a quick prayer that it be the former.

Beyond Walking Ghost a band of anxious braves stood in the courtyard, painted and armed as he was. At once I knew they were waiting for him, their chosen war chief.

I greeted Walking Ghost with my open palms raised and trembling.

“Welcome, friend, to the Mission Puerto de Purísima Concepción.” My throat was dry, my words unsteady. “I am Father Rivera. Have you come to learn the Word of Christ?”

Walking Ghost entered the chapel. When he shook his head, I saw that he understood my words. To my surprise he sank to one knee before me and reached to take my hand. Afraid to deny him, I let him do so.

“I am called Walking Ghost,” he said. “I speak your Spanish. Father Gonzalez taught me when I was a boy.”

Father Octavio Gonzalez had died two years ago, victim of a nameless disease caught among the northern villages. He had gone forth to spread the Word and returned with the spite of the Devil in his blood. He had run the mission for many years before I was summoned to replace him, arriving just in time to witness his death. Several of his followers had abandoned the mission when he passed. Now there was only myself and five lesser priests, all of whom were absent from the place on this day. We had enjoyed great success in converting the Quechan people along the river valley.

“Father Gonzalez was a good man,” I said, making the sign of the cross.

“I learned of your Jesus in this place,” said Walking Ghost. “I learned the stories of his great wisdom and strong magic. This is why I have returned.”

“I do not understand,” I said. “Do you wish to make a confession?”

Walking Ghost shook his head, white feathers and black braids bobbing. I sensed a great urgency about him, something I had not noticed until now. My fear had subsided, allowing my perception to increase. He was troubled. Grieving. And his grief had turned to rage.

“Three nights ago a Maricopa war party raided my village,” said Walking Ghost. “Many men were killed, and two women.” He paused, drawing a deep breath. His eyes turned from my own to regard the tomahawk in his clenching fist. “Several children were stolen. One of them was my daughter Laughing Rain. Another was Bright Star, the son of my brother.”

The anger seethed from his dusky skin like invisible heat. It was difficult for Walking Ghost to put these memories into words and relive the pain of them. There are those among the Spanish who believe the native peoples of this land do not share the same emotions as Europeans, but I have seen that they are every bit as human as the whites who steal their land and make them slaves. They feel as we feel, they know love and pain, joy and sorrow. They love their children no less than any Spanish mother or father does, and they know too often the horrible agony of losing them. I have counseled many Quechan whose children died of fever or acts of violence.

“I am sorry for your loss, my son.” The words seemed hollow, even in my own ears.

Walking Ghost looked into my face again. “War is our tradition,” he said, without a trace of pride. “We raid the villages of our enemies as they raid ours, and we steal their women and children when we can. Since the time of my father’s fathers it has been so. When I was younger, Father Gonzalez told me this was an evil practice, and I believed him. Yet how does one stop the waters of a river that has been flowing for ages?”

I had no answer to this wise query.

“Often a ransom is paid, and the children are returned to their own tribe,” said Walking Ghost.

“And when there is no ransom?”

“The children are adopted by the new tribe. The one that stole them. Yet such children are little more than slaves until they grow old enough to fight as men or give birth as women. It is not a good life for those raised in this way. Some choose death for themselves. Sometimes they earn death through defiance.”

I began to understand the presence of the eager braves outside the chapel.

“We have no ransom to pay,” said Walking Ghost. “So we walk the war path to take back our stolen children. We have fasted for two days, eaten the sacred herbs, and prepared ourselves for the spilling of blood.”

“And you come now to ask the church’s blessing?” I frowned at Walking Ghost’s hopeful face. “I am sorry, my son, but I cannot—”

“Magic,” said Walking Ghost. “The Maricopa’s numbers are great, and they would rather kill the children than let us recapture them. We need a strong magic. I ask for the magic of the Christ. Give me this magic, Father. I will use it to bring back our children. If you do this, I will dedicate myself to the service of your Jesus, and my children will also serve him. We will … convert.”

This last word was difficult for him to speak. I balked at the pitiful irony of his request. What magic had I to give? I shook my head and dared to lay my hand on his brawny shoulder.

“I am sorry. I can give you no magic to help your war. The Glory of Christ is a doctrine of peace. He teaches us to turn the other cheek, to love our enemies, to spurn the ways of violence.”

Walking Ghost stood up and his anger erupted. “Your Spanish soldiers have slaughtered our people for generations! Made slaves of them! Turned their minds from the Old Ways and made them tillers of the soil. Your guns and your spears have pierced our hearts and driven us away from the river. You speak of peace, but you practice war like us. You are no better.”

I stood silent for a moment, wondering if he would split my skull with his hatchet. “Walking Ghost,” I said, “do you see guns or spears in this place? We are not soldiers here, but simple men of Christ. All I can give you are my prayers and my blessing.”

To my surprise Walking Ghost kneeled again, bowing his head.

I performed a simple blessing, speaking the appropriate phrases in Latin, which he must have taken as some kind of mystical spell. Perhaps this was what he wanted all along.

“Go with God, my son,” I said.

Like a spark blown on a current of wind, Walking Ghost fled the chapel. A chorus of hooting, howling braves greeted his return to the war party. Then came the thunder of horses’ hooves as the warriors raced away from the mission to seek the village of the Maricopa.

In the hot, dry days that followed I heard nothing of Walking Ghost and his war party. Yet I kept them in my prayers as I had promised, even when a new crisis arose to command my attention. Father Juan Espinoza had failed to return to the mission for eight weeks.

Ignoring the warnings of the local natives, Father Espinoza had determined to carry the Word of Christ to a distant and shunned tribe known as the Azothi. Their remote village, according to the few Quechan who would speak of it, lay deep inside a vast territory of sand dunes. No water or game was to be found in that hellish swathe of desert that resembled the great Sahara more than any of the North American territories.

The Quechan called the Azothi the “Lost Tribe,” an appellation that I misunderstand as referring to their physical separation from the other tribes. From time to time bands of these dune-dwellers would venture into the more populous realms to trade silver nuggets for corn, melons, and iron implements. Such a contingent of Azothi had visited the mission a week previous to Father Espinoza’s departure, although they would not set foot inside the chapel.

Each of the Azothi tribesmen bore a singular deformity of some kind. The first was a one-armed, emaciated wretch whose lank hair was greased with animal fat and heavy with mangy feathers. The bones of his ribs protruded from his chest at revolting angles, stretching his skin to the point where it seemed ready to burst at any moment. His eyes were rimmed with red as if he had been crying tears of blood, and his spear was thickly hung with dried scalps.

The second of the Azothi was a hunchback. His head was bald, a condition I had never before seen among the natives, and his face was an unwholesome ruin. There were no lips at all covering his misshapen teeth, which protruded in several directions from inflamed gums. One of his eyes had been torn out, leaving a raw wound adrip with pus. This hideous fellow carried a Spanish musket, obviously stolen from some murdered soldier.

The third strange one bore the useless stumps of three extra limbs jutting from his back, and he walked with a sideways gait akin to the locomotion of a crab. Half of his otherwise normal face was mangled, the piteous remains of a terrible burning, perhaps done intentionally to increase his fearsomeness. A necklace of ears hung about his neck, along with several talismans crafted of human bones. He carried axe and spear, both heavy with scalps.

These three pilgrims stood outside the mission gate, observing our humble adobe structure with bizarre amusement. Father Espinoza went out to welcome them inside, but still they refused to enter. Instead, the hunchback handed to Father Espinoza a curious green stone marked with an unidentified sigil. I watched from the courtyard through the open gate as the three Azothi shambled away. They seemed to be laughing, though I could not see any possible source for their humor.

Father Espinoza stood for a long time at the threshold, staring at the egg-sized stone and its obscure glyph. Eventually one of our brother-priests stirred him from his reverie, and he came dazedly inside to take his evening meal with us. However, the green stone continued to fascinate Father Espinoza throughout the next week. He carried it with him incessantly, even during our morning and afternoon services. One of the brothers told me that he had even taken to sleeping with the stone on his pillow. I decided to speak with him about this obsession, but Espinoza himself distracted me from such a course with the announcement that he would seek out the Azothi in the land of dunes.

“I must convert these poor wretches,” he said. “It is my duty under Heaven.”

We applauded the bravery of his intentions, and I approved his request against my better judgment. I knew he would defy me if I forbade him to travel among the dunes. The Azothi had cast some kind of glamour over his soul, and he felt bound to them by a morbid fascination. He would not be able to rest until he made the effort of saving them from a heathen fate.

Father Espinoza left the mission with two mules, both heavily burdened with tin pots, casks of bright beads, and other gifts for the Azothi, as well as a good supply of water gourds and dried foods to sustain him on the journey. A single Quechan youth had agreed to guide him through the dunes, though I do not know what Father Espinoza used to bribe this fellow. Most of the Quechan would barely acknowledge the Azothi, let alone go to seek them where dusty death waited among the hot sands. Taking with them the blessings and faith of the mission, Espinoza and his guide departed at sunrise.

Two months later Father Espinoza was still missing. Yet his guide had returned two days ago on the back of a scrawny mule. Both boy and animal were half-dead from thirst, and had nearly starved to death among the dunes. The boy lay in a deep fever, raving in his native language about something that had terrified him. I tended to him myself, cooling his brow with a damp cloth and praying over his sickly body. I hoped he would not expire before telling us the fate of Father Espinoza. Missionary work was ever dangerous, and the valiant priest might be dead. I had had sent him into that forbidden waste. The responsibility of it lay upon my soul, a yoke of guilt that weighed me down.

The Quechan boy, whose name was Quick Eye, revived a bit on the third evening of his convalescence. I fed him broth with a wooden spoon. He shivered in the close air, and responded to my questions with minimal answers.

“Where is Father Espinoza?” I asked him.

“He is … with them…” said Quick Eye. He would not say the name of the Azothi.

“Is he alive? Healthy or wounded? Does he suffer?”

“Alive…” said Quick Eye. His face twitched in uncomfortable spasms. “He lives…”

“Why did he not return with you?”

“He is one of them now,” whispered Quick Eye.

I was confused. “What do you mean?”

“A piper at the gates of … the night that lasts forever…”

“Do you mean he chose to remain among the Azothi?” I asked.

Quick Eye knocked the bowl of soup off its table and clutched the collar of my robe. His eyes were filled with panic, his nose and mouth dribbling across his chin.

“It lies at the Center!” he panted. “The Center of All! It eats the stars and vomits up devils to serve its madness. They will open the Gate… Not even the Jesus can save us, Father! Not even the Jesus!”

I could get no further sense from Quick Eye that night, so I left him to his sickbed.

“I must go into the Land of the Azothi and find Father Espinoza,” I told my brother-priests. “It is my responsibility alone.”

They prayed for me, but they did not argue.

In the morning Quick Eye had regained his senses enough to draw me a crude map, yet he refused to accompany me on the journey. I could not fault him for this. The Azothi had abused him to the point of near-insanity, and the dunes had nearly killed him. Even now the heathens might be doing worse to poor Espinoza. I knelt before the great crucifix and prayed before setting out with my own pair of mules. Unlike Espinoza, I rode on the back of a sturdy pony, my two beasts of burden tied behind it.

Crossing the river valley, I entered the brown and cracked floor of the desert. My broad-brimmed hat protected me from the sun but not from the oppressive heat. I passed through scattered villages, meeting fewer and fewer friendly faces as I drove westward. At length I reached the badlands where only the lizard, wolf, and rattlesnake keep their homes. The gnawed bones of men and horses lay in the shadows of leaning boulders. I crossed a dry riverbed filled with flat, black stones. Spiny saguaros here stood taller than Spanish trees, gnarled and twisted into grotesque forms that reminded me of the three misshapen Azothi.

After several days I reached the border of the Azothi territory: A sea of rolling dunes where the wind swept eternally among swirling clouds of sand. I abandoned the pony, for the sand was too deep for its hooves. The mules fared better, though it was slow going. The blue sky mocked me with its crystalline purity, while I sweated and marched and rubbed sand from my eyes, nose, and mouth. At night the cold descended and I wrapped myself in blankets, warmed by brushfires until the wind and sand smothered them.

I lost track of days among the dunes, for each one flowed into the next, an unbroken stream of scorching torment. My faith gave me strength (for it was still mighty in those days). I navigated that sea of sand by rock formations rising like the ruins of primeval towers. These crude obelisks and Quick Eye’s map led me to a great, sandy basin. There the huts of the Azothi sat like clusters of white mushrooms about a broad, black pit.

It must be a deep well, I thought. The only source of water in this forsaken domain. That is how they can live in such a place of death.

I stumbled from the dunes into the shallow valley at their heart. The ever-present howling of the wind was soon replaced by a strange music. Coming closer to the village I saw smoke rising from a great bonfire, burning fiercely in the middle of the day. The famished mules trailed behind as I walked into the village, as if they sensed something unnatural there.

My exhaustion was smothered by curiosity as I moved between the concentric rows of huts. I saw none of the deformed folk, but the music was clearer now, the sound of blaring wooden flutes and wild drums. It swirled and cascaded about the rising plume of black smoke. There was no discernible pattern to the sounds, only a twisting melody that rose and fell and rose again without pause or refrain.

No one had come forth to greet or accost me, and I saw now it was because the entire population of the village was gathered at the ceremony of the bonfire. At the edge of the open well the tall fire burned, and a hundred Azothi danced about the blaze in a circle of sweat and crazed activity. Many villagers held pipes to their lips, blowing discordant melodies that careened and blended into a screeching mass of noise. The drummers sat outside the circle, banging with hands and sticks against their rawhide instruments.

I saw now the true nature of the Azothi. Like the trio who had visited the mission, they were all horribly deformed. Yet the three who had shown themselves to the outside world were the least monstrous of them all.

An aged native capered madly, tendrils of veiny skin hanging like serpents from every part of his body, flapping and pulsing to the rush of his hot blood. Another man bore six arms instead of two, each one twisted and atrophied into little more than crooked claws. Naked backs and chests were ripe with pustulating sores. Several enraptured faces had been stripped of flesh in part or whole in ritual mutilations, noses hacked away leaving two jagged holes. Obscene cheekbones sprouted from red muscle, yellow teeth clacking wildly. Eyeballs bulged and rolled in the maimed faces of these living skulls, both males and females.

A legless and armless girl writhed like a snake upon the shoulders of a hunched and faceless youth. An impossible tongue fell like a red tentacle from her mouth, licking at the faceless one’s head, which was little more than a fleshy ovoid with a central cavity that could not be called a mouth. Canine teeth gnashed inside this orifice, and a blind tongue shot out to entwine itself with that of his limbless bride.

On stunted legs they ambled and danced about the flames, some with swollen lips wrapped about the ends of curling flutes, impervious to the waves of heat rolling from the blaze. The ugliness and diversity of their mangled bodies cannot be overstated. If I had any food left in my belly, I would have expelled it immediately, but I could only wretch and heave pointlessly as the ceremony continued. I fell to my knees, clutching at my seizing stomach. Yet I could not tear my eyes away from the grotesque tribe and their hideous rites.

A wrinkled gnome who was all head, arms, and legs without any torso ambled among the dancers. A lopsided flutist with jagged bones protruding from his torn and bleeding flesh played as feverishly as the rest of them. Some crawled on hands and knees, more like dogs or malformed coyotes than men, licking and snuffling at the ankles of their fellow celebrants. Indescribable acts of carnality were also part of the lurid festivities, and the howls of ecstasy were indistinguishable from cries of pain and torment.

The number and variety of the lost tribe’s deformities is beyond my capacity to set down on these pages. To describe even these few memories brings a fresh pang of the nausea and revolt that overcame me then. This was a ceremony that no white man was ever meant to see. I had invaded their forbidden land, intruded on their malign remoteness. Witnessing their depravity firsthand was the penance I paid now for this crime. Recalling the tale of Walking Ghost’s stolen children, I wondered how many of these Azothi were stolen from the tribes of their true parents, adopted and mutilated in ceremonies like this one.

I noticed then a singular figure crouching on a pile of rocks before the flames. I would have seen him at once if the dancers had not commanded my attention with their noisome antics. He sat in a place of honor, Lord of the Flame, and yet he was only a boy. The oddly shaped stones of his perch, I was now certain, were human skulls. The boy watched the dancers and waved his arms frantically, tongue exposed, eyes squinted in his tiny head. He leaped and capered upon the skull-throne like a hairless simian, his expression one of sheer idiocy. He could not have been more than nine years old.

This boy-chief wore a strand of green stones about his scrawny neck. His forehead bulged above dim, unblinking eyes. His fingers were overlong and his feet were twisted inward, so that he would have to use his arms to walk in an ape-like manner. Yet he could leap and clap and howl with disturbing ease, and this he did while his people performed their grotesque ritual for him. From each of the boy-chief’s shoulder blades rose a curving bone spur, as if there might one day be a set of bat-like wings sprouting there. The flesh of his back was extended by these spurs, yet like so many of his people the skin looked drawn, tight, and ready to burst.

I recognized the green stones about his neck. One such stone had captured the soul of Father Espinoza and led him to this place.

I screamed, loud enough to be heard among the wild cacophony of pipes and drums. I could not prevent it, for I had spotted Father Espinoza among the revelers, dancing naked with a crooked flute in his mouth. His flesh was newly pocked with ritual scarring, and the green stone hung about his neck on a leather thong. His beard and hair had been shaved completely, but I knew him. It was this shock of recognition that caused me to cry out. I might have invoked the holy name of Jesus, or it might have only been a wail of astonishment and pain. I do not remember this detail.

A mass of bloodshot eyes and hideous faces turned toward me now. The chaos of drumming and fluting fell apart, diminishing until the only sound was the crackling of the great bonfire. Even the idiot boy-chief was silent. He too stared in my direction, jutting chin and saurian eyes evoking a mockery of human arrogance.

The transformed Espinoza spoke my name aloud, and I fainted.

I awoke some hours later to the smell of roasting meat. My mind was an empty vessel, my memories temporarily stolen by some force that I cannot name. Some might call it the Grace of God, but I no longer believe in such ideas.

I lay on a pile of dirty hides inside one of the domed teepees. The desert heat was lessened by the shade of this squalid dwelling, yet still sweat drenched my body. My first recognition was my own nakedness. The savages had removed my threadbare robe, leaving me only a loincloth not much different from the traditional Quechan garb. A second realization came to me then, as the shame of undress quickened my pulse: I was not alone in the hut.

The bald hunchback who had visited the mission sat over me, watching with his single watery eye. Uneven teeth protruded from his ruin of a mouth, and the puckered flesh of his empty eye socket had blossomed into a swollen mass. As I looked upon his nightmare visage the memories of my ordeal came flooding back. Fear stole my breath away as my empty stomach growled. I had not eaten for several days. My lips were parched and inflamed from my time among the dunes, my face chapped and red. The hunchback handed me a gourd full of water.

I took the vessel and drank its contents, sloshing the cool liquid down my throat. Never had I been so grateful for the simple gift of freshwater. I thanked Christ silently that these heathen grotesques were civilized enough to offer me this refreshment at least. Yet still I was afraid. The smell of the hunchback’s unwashed body filled the hut. I recalled the horrid ceremony and the idiot-child who was the chieftain of this unholy settlement.

The hunchback spoke to me in crude Spanish. I was too hungry, scared, and exhausted to be surprised by his linguistic ability. “Why you come here?” The words were further distorted by his misshapen teeth and lack of any true lips, but somehow he formed the words.

I told him my name and station. “I came here to find Father Espinoza.”

The hunchback nodded. “You find him.”

“Yes.” I forced myself to sit upright. “Where is he? Where is Espinoza?”

“We bring to you,” said the hunchback. “At feast. Tonight.”

I realized that the only light in the teepee came from a small fire of twigs and grass. Outside the entry flap gleamed a sliver of starry sky. I had lain unconscious all day and well past dusk. Suddenly I remembered the two mules. I had little doubt that the feast my caregiver spoke of would include the cooked flesh of those poor, undernourished beasts of burden. The Azothi had likely slaughtered them and taken the simple gifts that I had brought. At the moment I was so hungry I did not even mind the thought of dining on tough, greasy muleflesh. I had done so twice before this, in the season of drought when there was no other provender. The Arizona territory is a cruel and unforgiving land, and missionaries are above all else survivors. They must endure the harshest of deprivations in the name of the church and its teachings. Such suffering, they say, is good for a man’s soul.

“Come,” grunted the hunchback. He motioned me to follow him, then led me out of the hut into the greater village. I walked unsteadily, ashamed of my near-naked body, yet the few shambling natives who moved between the domiciles paid little attention to me. The hunchback took me to the largest of all the domed teepees, where a stream of white smoke poured from the roof-hole toward the blinking stars. Near the great well the bonfire burned low, and the scent of the roasting mules lay heavy upon the night air.

Inside the big dome — a reeking sweat lodge — some dozen male Azothi squatted in a ring about a dancing flame. Among their number were the other two who had visited the mission, the half-faced man and the one with the malformed rib cage. I will not describe in detail the various deformities of the other men in this council, for I have revealed too many of these horrors already. I trembled in the heat and stink of the lodge, afraid and repulsed, yet determined. I asked the Lord to help me endure this audience. Even such wretches were worthy of the Word of Christ, who walked among the lepers and the damned. Perhaps these miserable oddities of existence needed salvation more than any other tribe I had yet encountered. I hoped Father Espinoza would attend the sweat council as well, and explain his part in the strange behavior I had witnessed.

They placed me in a position of honor, and the hunchback translated my words as I spoke to them of the Messiah and his message of peace for humanity. The monstrous tribesmen listened intently, silent as stone. At times their eyes turned to regard one another in unspoken agreement or mutual wonderment. They listened as if they had heard all of this before. I realized then that neither myself nor Father Espinoza was the first missionary to visit these wretches.

I told them the story of Virgin Birth, the miracles of the Christ, his death and resurrection. I invited them to visit the Mission Puerto de Purísima Concepción to discover the glory of my god, which was also their god. They only need accept him into their lives to be transformed, to be filled with the joy of Heaven and the blessings of the One True God.

When I had finished my sermon, I gave a solemn prayer for their village, while they watched in detached curiosity. I raised my head, having finished the benediction, and was shocked by their reaction. They howled and beat at the earthen floor with their malformed hands. It took a moment for me to understand that they were laughing at my sermon and prayer. Some of them rolled on the floor, clutching distended bellies. Others wept as they guffawed and shook.

Apparently I had greatly entertained them with my religious storytelling.

I endured the laughter with a stoic calm, but eventually found myself laughing along with them. Their mirth was an infectious disease to which I had no resistance. The hilarity ended when a hideous crone brought into the lodge a large clay bowl full of steaming meat. She placed the meal at the center of the congregation and departed. The Azothi insisted that I have the first piece. I was ravenously hungry, so I did not refuse. The bones had been removed and the meat was greasy yet tender. Not at all like the bitter, stringy meat of the mules I had eaten during the year of drought. Seeing my enjoyment the Azothi council joined me in the meal. In no time at all we had scraped the big bowl clean. The meat had been seasoned with some unidentifiable spice. Perhaps that was the reason for its succulent flavor, or perhaps it was simply my own state of extreme hunger. Even rancid fare will taste palatable to a starved man.

As my hunchbacked translator chewed a final mouthful, his one eye turned to regard me. I noticed then that the entire council was observing me in the same curious way. Perhaps they wanted another story of Jesus and his miracles. I considered telling a parable.

“Espinoza,” said the hunchback. Drool and grease dripped from his malformed mouth.

“Father Espinoza?” Finally I would get to speak with the man I had come to rescue from this strange place. “Where is he?”

The hunchback gestured to his unpleasant mouth. I failed to understand.

His bony finger extended then toward my own lips.

“Espinoza,” he said again.

A congregation of glimmering eyes stared at me from nightmare faces.

Panic rose in my bloated belly. A sharp pain lanced my gut. I yelped and ran from the sweat lodge into the crooked lanes of the village. Three huts away I saw what I most dreaded to see in that moment: My two scrawny mules, unharmed and tethered to a post.

It was not these beasts the Azothi had roasted.

I fell into the sand howling and vomiting, writhing and cursing, having entirely lost my senses. What a great and terrible sin I had committed without even knowing it. I might have seized a knife from a passing native and ended my own life then, so great was my anguish. But the Azothi council rushed from the sweat lodge and grabbed me by the arms. Their grip was incontestable. They hauled me toward the great, black pit that I had taken for a well, and forced me to stare down into the darkness of it. I could not see the bottom, nor could I smell any scent of water rising from its depths.

Someone forced my head back, and the hunchback came forward with a smaller bowl. He lifted it over my mouth, which the others forced open, and poured a thick black potion down my throat. I tried to spit it back at them, but someone kicked me in the gut, forcing me to swallow the noxious fluid. I fell forward onto my belly, my head hanging over the very lip of the pit, and the Azothi moved away from me.

Whatever drug they had mixed in the bowl took effect immediately. The living world receded from my perception. I stared into the yawning void of the pit, and that abyss swelled to become the cosmos entire. Stars gleamed and swirled in the dark gulf. I floated among them now, my frail body forgotten. I was nothing but a simple mote of awareness suspended in the Great Nothingness that surrounds and encloses our tiny world.

I saw other worlds hanging in the depths of eternity, spinning like minute jewels about flaring alien suns. I understood the pit now. It represented that Great Nothingness that confines and sustains all of creation. The secret mysteries of the cosmos, the blasphemous truths hidden from a humanity that wraps itself in veils of ignorance and illusion. I saw the boiling depths of Eternity and the swirling night of Infinity, the awful immensity of existence itself, the Ultimate Secret of creation.

And there, at the shuddering heart of All That Is, I glimpsed the vast singularity of seething, ever-changing unflesh that churns without end at the nexus of all possible realities. The amorphous, bubbling god-thing that reigns supreme by virtue of its mindless and limitless power. The bloated and monstrous King of All Creation, the core of the rotting universe.

The blind idiot-god, the daemon sultan whose ageless name I heard whispered and echoing in the corridors of supernal night.

Azathoth.

About this centrifugal mass of celestial chaos I witnessed a writhing procession of devils and demons, piping eternally the Song of Creation and Destruction, beating madly on drums that are the husks of shattered worlds, and I knew these terrible beings were the Angels of Azathoth, who was the true and oblivious master of all conceivable worlds and times.

Now I understood the horrid ceremony of the Azothi, who worshipped this One True God, and I knew the significance of the idiot-boy who was their chieftain, a living avatar of their insane deity.

I saw yet another vision as I lay squirming at the edge of the pit: The Azothi themselves studying the patterns of stars in the desert sky, spilling the blood of women and children into the great pit, raising their hideous hands and faces toward the swollen moon. The mindless core of existence writhing and pulsing, squeezing bits of its limitless confusion into the mortal world.

Azathoth, reaching across the threshold of the void, breaking open the Gates of Eternal Night, sending colossal tendrils forth in bottomless, questing hunger to invade and consume mankind, leaving the Azothi to watch over the corruption and decay of their dying world. The daemon sultan would save its faithful ones for last, and while mankind fell to chaos and red ruin, the grotesque children of Azathoth, they who opened the Way for his infernal presence, would rule as senseless tyrants and feast on the flesh of the innocent.

They were the Pipers at the Gates of Eternal Night. They would fling open those gates when the stars were right, and Azathoth would pour forth upon the earth like the ancient Flood.

They would feed the world to their mad god, and help him devour it.

I regained my senses lying next to the pit. The thrashing of my body had turned my face from the deep darkness toward the glittering stars. I looked upon the face of the night and I knew. This was the terrible season the Azothi had long awaited. These now were the patterns of constellations they held necessary to bring their mindless god into the world. First they would drive the Spanish conquerors from the surrounding lands, then their conquest of the world itself would begin.

Someone pulled me to my feet. It was the imbecile child who was chief of the tribe. He smiled at me, blinking, and put a green stone into my palm. It was the very same stone Father Espinoza had carried, the one that had bewitched him, drawn him here to be slaughtered and devoured by the Azothi. And myself.

The child spoke to me then in perfect Spanish, and his deep voice was that of a man.

“Rejoice, Father,” he said. “In thirteen days the Gates will open.”

I shoved him, meaning only to push him away from me, but he tumbled backward into the black pit. He did not scream as he fell, but plummeted silent as a stone into the void.

I ran, clutching the green stone in my fist as if it were the last drop of my sanity.

I raced howling into the dunes, and the Azothi did not care to stop me.

How I escaped death among the dunes a second time I do not know. Perhaps some charm of the Azothi’s unholy magic led me from that place. It could be that the green stone I clutched was enchanted with some protective spell, or curse. Perhaps my survival was simple dumb luck. Yet some time later I staggered, nearly dead, from the killing sands. My singed flesh was pealing, my tongue swollen from extreme thirst, and I had not slept for days on end. I remember only running through terrible heat, as if the entire world was burning about me. I ran with mindless, moronic glee, desperate to escape the Land of the Azothi.

I collapsed somewhere along the trail to the mission. Walking Ghost and his Quechan brothers found me there, though I do not remember it. They carried me back to the mission, where I awakened a day later, still half-starved, my face obscure behind a madman’s tangled beard. Yet my body had been washed and dressed in a clean robe. For a moment I thought the entire ordeal had been only a dream, and I had awakened from it into the comfort of my own sleeping cell in the Mission Puerto de Purísima Concepción.

Walking Ghost sat patiently at the side of my bed, and for a moment I saw the face of the hunchbacked Azothi. I started away from him, but he grabbed my arm and spoke gentle words.

“Be calm, Father,” he said. “You know me. Look at my face. You know me.”

Then I recognized him. I raised a hand and found that my fist was still clenched. I opened it painfully to see the green stone lying in my dirty palm. The strange glyphs carved into its substance pained my eyes.

“It is true,” I said.

“What is true, Father?” Walking Ghost asked. His war paint was gone. His face was young and handsome. He wore the simple shirt of a Quechan farmer with breaches of soft leather. I stared at him, but could not explain myself. So I listened, trembling, as Walking Ghost told me his story.

“The magic of the Christ is strong,” said the warrior, smiling. “Stronger than the magic of the Maricopa. Thanks to your medicine, Father, we took back our stolen children. We killed many Maricopa warriors, yet we lost no men of our own. My daughter is safe now with my wife, and my brother’s son with his true father. So I must keep my promise. I will walk the war path no more. I will lay down my knife and axe to plant the corn and squash. I will accept the Word of Christ, as will my children. We will live in peace here in the river valley.”

“No,” I said. “No, you must not.” Walking Ghost looked at me with disbelief. “The Gates will open soon! The Azothi are coming — they need sacrifices! Go and tell the Fathers! We must fight! We must kill them, keep their god behind the stars! Thirteen days! Only thirteen days!”

I must have been screaming, for the sound of my voice brought my brother priests running into the room. Waking Ghost regarded me with awe and horror. I strove to resist the hands of my brothers on my body — I remembered the grasping claws of the Azothi — yet I was too weak and famished. They overpowered me easily, and persuaded Walking Ghost to leave me in peace.

Then the Fathers tied me to the bed, so insistent was I that they listen to me. I told them all that I had seen, but they did not understand. I warned them that the Azothi would come for them soon. How many days had passed since the idiot-boy placed the green stone in my hand? I told them that the people of the river valley would be slaughtered, that everyone here would be sacrificed, yet they only shook their heads and told me I was “sick.” They prayed for me, but they would not heed my words.

I understand now why they considered me insane. How could anyone believe what I had seen? Father Espinoza could not verify my story. Even if he had not been cooked and devoured, it appeared that he had actually converted to the faith of the Azothi. Perhaps, he too, had only been a misguided madman. I screamed and wailed and insisted that my brothers listen to me.

“You are all going to die!” I bellowed.

They locked me in my cell. Eventually I ceased raving and fell asleep.

I dreamed of the ultimate chaos boiling at the heart of Eternity and woke up screaming the name of Azathoth.

So it began: First the news came that savages had attacked the Mission San Pedro y San Pablo de Bicuñer. The chapel was burned to the ground, the surrounding field set aflame, and all the priests slaughtered. The women and children of the nearby pueblo were taken as captives. This came as no surprise to those who knew the ways of the warring tribes.

When Father Ramirez whispered to me of these terrible events, I knew that the Azothi would neither adopt nor ransom their captives. They would torture them, spill their blood and bones into the great pit in the name of Azathoth. Only blood and pain could open the Gates of Eternal Night. I had seen it in my vision.

Father Ramirez indulged me by listening patiently. Yet he would not untie my restraints, and he did not believe me. He prayed once more for my lost sanity, asked Christ to bestow me his infinite mercy. This only enraged me more, and I spouted blasphemies.

“We are next!” I told him. “They will come for us!”

Two days after the slaughter of the Mission San Pedro y San Pablo de Bicuñer, the Azothi descended upon our own mission. They came in the night, setting fires and slitting throats. The black coyotes of the desert came with them, tearing out the throats of men and lapping at their blood. I lay helpless in my cell, weeping while the slaughter proceeded outside the adobe walls. I smelled burning wood, then burning flesh.

The cries of women and children drifted to my ears, and Father Ramirez came rushing into my cell. He locked the door after him but it splintered open. An Azothi rushed in with a flint-headed spear and impaled him through the belly. Ramirez fell across my bed and his blood stained my new robe.

I thought the Azothi spearman would kill me too, but instead the one-eyed hunchback entered my cell. He laughed upon seeing my helpless state, then raised his bloodstained knife and cut my bonds.

“Come,” he said through broken teeth. His companion grabbed my wrists and dragged me out of the cell into the courtyard. There I was forced to my knees among a crowd of wailing women and children. The Azothi strolled about the burning mission grounds like gruesome warlords, cherishing their victory.

They mutilated the bodies of my brother priests, hanging them from the walls with strands of their own entrails. Yet they refused to kill me, even when I begged for death. They tied rawhide thongs about my wrists, as if I were one of the women. They led me away from the burning mission as if I were no more important than any of their captives. The crying of the women echoed the despair in my own soul. I knew what awaited us at the heart of the unholy wasteland.

Once again I endured the hellish crossing of the dunes, this time with my wrists bound and in the company of thirty-six women and forty-eight children taken from the peaceful Quechan river valley. I would have prayed for death then, yet I no longer possessed the faith to do even that. I had seen the reality behind the myth of a Supreme Being, and it was not my god. It was the god of these monstrous freaks. They had stolen my faith, my sanity, and my mission.

All I had left was my life, and they would take that too in good time.

The stars were ripe for the great bloodletting.

For three grueling days the deformed ones led us through the waste, allowing us barely enough water to stay alive. The cries of hungry children filled the hours. When the sun went down we were allowed to rest, after marching all day beneath the burning sun. Every one of the captives, including myself, fell immediately to sleep. Yet often one of us would awaken from terrible nightmares, only to fall unconscious once again. I remember waking several times to the low chanting of the Azothi, who stood about us in a circle with their bulging eyes turned to the stars. Even this cruel trek of deprivation and misery was part of the coming sacrifice. The greatest of their ceremonies had already begun.

On the fourth day we reached their village, where the great pit yawned open to receive us. They fed us well then on dried strips of meat. I chose to continue my starvation, yet I did not have the heart to tell the ravenous women or their little ones the nature of the flesh upon which they were fed. I kept the dreadful truth to myself, and emptied my mind of what was to come.

The Azothi arranged their captives about the lip of the pit, forming a circle. They waited for sundown. When the first shadows of night crawled from the desert, they would begin the torture and slaughter of their victims, one by one until the great circle of blood was complete, and all our bodies had been cast into the void of the pit.

I watched the sun sinking behind the dunes, glad that I would not live to see the shape of the world that was to come. A world where the Children of Azathoth would reign supreme over seas of blood and empires of bleached bone. The women and children, their bellies stuffed full of unwholesome meat, fell to sleep about the pit, while the Azothi sharpened the stone blades of their knives. I saw the hunchback mark me with his evil eye. He would take my life himself, but not before he had squeezed enough pain and anguish from me to satisfy the great ritual.

As the last rays of sunlight died between the dunes, and the first stars of evening awoke in the sky, the Azothi began their chanting. The most hideous and blood-eager among them stalked toward the captives with naked knives displayed.

A black-feathered shaft appeared in the throat of the hunchback. A second arrow fell out of the twilight and caught him full in the breast. The knife fell from his gnarled fingers. A rain of arrows fell now among the Azothi, raising cries of pain and alarm. The chanting was broken by howling war cries. Shadowy forms darted from behind the huts to pounce on the grotesque worshippers. Axes bit deep into malformed flesh, shattering brittle bones.

The sounds of battle aroused the women and children about the pit. A great band of painted Quechan braves descended upon the village. I heard the thunder of a Spanish musket, followed by several more. Bare-breasted warriors came running toward the pit, cutting through the Azothi with knife, spear, and hatchet. They offered no mercy to their deformed foes.

I watched with little excitement as the Quechan slaughtered the lost tribe. The moon rose full and red as blood above the horizon. Several Azothi corpses were tossed into the pit, and the Quechan began to free the captives of their bonds.

A plumed and painted warrior crept to my side and sliced the thongs that bound my wrists. Only when I looked into his pigment-smeared face did I recognize Walking Ghost. The naked stars glimmered in his black eyes.

“You are free, Father,” he said. I must have grunted, or said nothing at all. He picked me up and tossed me over his broad shoulder. In this way Walking Ghost carried me away from the black pit and out of the burning village, while his war-brothers set fire to every last teepee.

We fled the heat of rising flames into the cool embrace of the desert night. The joyous cries of families reunited came to my ears, but beneath them I heard still the sonorous chanting of the Azothi. I feared that I would hear that chant forever after in the low sighing of the winds, in the babble of rushing waters, in the voices of men and women and children who had never seen beyond the Gates of Eternal Night.

I recall very little of what followed. I must have slept for the entire journey out of the dunes. Yet when I awoke, I lay in the camp of Walking Ghost, who had returned with the rescued captives to the river valley. He sat next to me, along with several of his loyal braves. They had not yet removed the war paint from their bodies, and their faces looked strange and monstrous.

“Here, Father,” said Walking Ghost. “Drink this.”

“No!” I knocked the bowl of river water from his hands as if it were poison. “No! Get away from me! Stay away!”

“Father!” Walking Ghost came after me as I shuffled away from his campfire. “I broke my vow of peace to save these people. To save you. What should I do now? Will the Christ forgive me?”

I had no answer for him. I ran from Walking Ghost as if he were the Devil himself. Perhaps my dead brother-priests were right all along — I had been driven mad and would never be sane again. I ran into the land of the brush and cactus, where my only company was the mute serpents and quiet lizards. There I found a shallow cave to shield me from the bite of the sun. I lay there for days, rising only to seek a stream for water and to break open a cactus with a piece flint. I pulled the spines out and ate the vegetable flesh. Never again would I suffer the touch of meat on my tongue. I have no idea what became of the green stone and its disturbing sigils.

Several years I have lived alone in this cave. My nightmares have all but faded, yet my memory remains. Sometimes the peaceful Quechan bring me corn and beans to eat. They consider me a holy man, but I never give them blessings. I have come to understand that, to them, simply being in my presence is blessing enough.

They cannot know that I am cursed.

Doomed to know the truth of the horror that lies at the Center of Creation.

Now comes the time that I must leave my little cave. I will carry this testament to the nearest mission, where the truth has some small chance of being acknowledged, and perhaps preserved. In this way I hope for some small measure of redemption before I cast aside the burden of mortality.

I can only hope that my eternal spirit, set free of its confining flesh, does not plummet into that great void where the ultimate chaos waits to devour all that exists.

I pray to the god whom I no longer serve that death is, after all, an escape.

Yet I fear that it is only a doorway, a passage to some new and more hideous realm.