Book of madness, p.1
Book of Madness, page 1
BOOK OF MADNESS
©2024 TIM WAGGONER
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Contents
Also by Tim Waggoner
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Thank you for reading Book Of Madness!
About the Author
Custodians of the Cosmos
The Atrocity Engine
Book of Madness
The Desolation War
Check out the entire series here! (Tap or scan)
One
“Hey, R—you got some Gaze for your girl?”
Randal Banks glanced at the emaciated woman who had approached him, and then took a quick look around to see if anyone else was close enough to overhear. It was nearly three a.m., but there were people out on the street—or things that looked like people—but no one was nearby, so he turned his attention back to his customer.
Although it was early May and technically spring, the temperature tonight was in the mid-thirties. The woman looked like a walking skeleton covered with the thinnest veneer of wrinkled skin, but despite the cold, she wore only a stained T-shirt and threadbare sweatpants. Her bare feet were black with dirt, or maybe from gangrene.
“I don’t know if I should sell you any, Jess. No offense, but you’re looking pretty rough.”
“You’re sweet to worry about me, but I’m good. Never felt better.”
Her voice was a dry rasp, and her breath could stun a water buffalo at twenty paces. Her teeth were gray and looked soft, as if shaped from small nubs of clay, and what remained of her dishwater-colored hair was matted and stringy. Jess had been a regular customer the last few weeks, but Randal had no idea what her last name was, or if Jess was even her real first name. He didn’t know how old she was, either. She looked like she was well over a hundred—which wasn’t impossible in this part of town—but she could’ve been thirty, or even younger. Darkgaze took a toll on a user’s mind and body, but his customers always came back for more. Until they couldn’t.
They stood on the north corner of Ironwood Street and Summit Avenue in an area of town that the residents simply referred to as Southside. This was the poorest section of Ash Creek, the buildings here old and badly in need of repair, the sidewalks and streets fissured with cracks, the air stale and sour. Economics alone didn’t account for the area’s rundown condition, though. Here, the boundary between what most people considered the real world and the realm of Shadow was as thin as tissue paper, allowing Corruption to leak through. The negative energy affected the environment, tainting everything—people included.
Holding his breath so he wouldn’t get a full dose of her stink, Randal leaned closer to examine Jess’s eyes. The left was a bit cloudy—cataract, probably—but the right was clear. The problem was, it had two pupils instead of one.
“As a self-employed businessman, it pains me to say this, but I think you should lay off Gaze for a while.”
Randal was in his thirties, a stout man of medium height, wearing an old, cracked black leather jacket, faded jeans, and a pair of cowboy boots, although he’d never been near livestock of any kind in his life. His head was covered with a wild thatch of brown hair, and he had a full beard of the same color. He had to fight to keep from shivering. He wished he’d worn a heavier jacket, or at least had brought a hat. He’d rather have worked during the day when it was warmer, but his clientele were almost exclusively night owls. Besides, he’d be too obvious in the daylight. Not that he was worried about cops catching him dealing. He could handle them well enough. But the last thing he needed was for a Maintenance patrol to drive by and spot him selling Darkgaze on the street.
Jess fastened her bird-claw hands on his jacket, as if she feared he might make a break for it.
“You know I can’t do that, Randal! I have to See!”
Revulsion filled him, and he shoved Tess backward, breaking her grip on his jacket. She stumbled and, for a second, he thought she would fall, but she managed to remain standing, although she had to struggle to do so. The effort cost her, and beads of yellow fluid emerged from her brow, a Corrupted substitute for sweat. The substance stank like fumes from an open sewer, and Randal had to breathe through his mouth to keep from gagging.
Chastened, Jess looked down at her blackened feet.
“Sorry,” she said, voice nearly a whisper. “I just need it so bad.”
Randal understood. It was his product that had made her this way, which meant that he was responsible for her condition—at least partially. And it wasn’t as if he possessed an overabundance of empathy. If he had, he wouldn’t make and sell this shit in the first place. So, if Jess wanted Darkgaze so much, who was he to deny her? He reached into his inner jacket pocket and brought out a small plastic vial filled with dark liquid. Jess’ twin-pupiled eye lit up when she saw it, and she lunged toward him, hands outstretched to take the drug from him. He was taller than Jess, and he raised his arm, lifting the vial over his head where she couldn’t get at it.
“Not so fast. I’ll give you three drops, but that’s all. It should be enough to keep you going for a while.”
Heavy users built up a tolerance to Darkgaze just like any other drug, and they needed increasingly large doses to get the same effect. But Darkgaze was dangerous even in small amounts. Take too much and it could kill you within seconds—if you were lucky. If you were unlucky . . . well, there were worse fates than death in Shadow. Much worse.
Jess stopped trying to snatch the vial from him and took a step back. She looked as if he’d just told her that her puppy had died.
“Three drops? That’s it?” Then her eyes narrowed. “How much?”
“Fifty,” he said. “And before you complain, you know that’s half of what I’d normally charge you.”
Jess scowled, but she reached into her shirt, pulled several wadded and soiled bills from her bra, and held them out to Randal. He almost told her to keep her money, but a man had to make a living, didn’t he? He took the bills and stuffed them into his pants pocket. He didn’t bother counting them. He didn’t want to touch the disgusting things any more than he had to. If Jess was short, she could owe him.
She opened her mouth wide, displaying her nubby clay teeth, and stuck out a mottled tongue covered with semi-transparent wriggling shapes. Randal grimaced. He hated phase-worms. If he’d known she was infested with the fucking things, he never would’ve accepted money from her.
He removed the vial’s black plastic lid, held it over her tongue—trying to ignore the phase-worms—and tipped it sideways. Darkgaze was thick, and the drops came out slowly, One, two, three . . . It didn’t take long. It never did.
Jess gasped and her eyes widened. The cataract over her left eye cleared, and she slowly looked around, her dry, cracked lips stretching into a grin. Randal smiled as he screwed the lid back onto the vial then tucked it away in his pocket. Jess had gotten her wish, and it had only cost her fifty bucks, as well as several more years off her lifespan. She could See.
The majority of humans couldn’t see into Shadow unless they were unlucky enough to wander into a place where the barrier between it and the real world was nonexistent, causing an Overlay between the two realms. Such places were extremely rare. But some people were born with an affinity for Shadow, often because one or both of their parents had been exposed to Corruption, and their children were born with the Eye, the ability to perceive what was hidden to almost everyone else. Randal had the Eye and, because of this. he knew exactly what Jess was seeing.
The broken asphalt of the street had been replaced by a smooth, glossy obsidian surface. This was the Onyx Route, a road in Shadow that led to the extradimensional Nightway. The streetlights lining both sides of the road were long twisted spinal columns atop which crouched giant fireflies, abdomens glowing a sickly yellow-green. The cars that passed before them were a mix of older and newer models, the oldest an honest-to-god Model T, the newest something that looked like a silver rocket on gleaming metal wheels. Other vehicles were more exotic—red, raw constructions of muscle, sinew and bone, or huge nightmarish creatures with surgically implanted mechanical parts. The businesses in the neighborhood were no longer the normal ones for the Southside, such as liquor stores, vape shops, and massage parlors. These had been replaced by establishments with sinister, evocative names such as Blighthouse, the Labyrinth of Desire, and Spectertainment. The people were equally strange. There were those who looked human, of course, like Randal, but they were outnumbered by figures that seemed to have emerged from the most fevered of dreams. A group of monks garbed in hooded crimson robes, a giggling clown wearing lengths of intestines as if they were scarves, a two-dimensional woman who was only visible when you looked at her from a certain angle, a pair of adolescents with sharp teeth and feral eyes, each carrying small dead dogs that they periodically raised to their mouths and took bites of . . .
Despite the toll Darkgaze took on his customers, Randal always experienced a deep sense of satisfaction when they beheld Shadow in all its dark glory. He opened their minds to another level of reality, expanded their awareness of the possibilities Existence offered. Surely, that was worth the price they paid—in money as well as in health and sanity. That’s what he told himself, anyway.
Jess spoke, her tone hushed, almost reverent.
“It’s so . . .” She trailed off, unable to complete the thought.
“It is, isn’t it?” Randal said.
“I wish I could always see this way. Did you know I used to be a lawyer?”
The abrupt change of subject surprised Randal.
“You were?”
She nodded. “I had an office here on the Southside. I never made much money, of course, but I wanted to be where people really needed legal help, someplace where I could do good, you know?” She made a hacking sound then and spit several phase-worms onto the sidewalk. The transparent wriggling things sank into the concrete and disappeared.
Randal had to fight to keep from vomiting. Jess continued.
“One of my clients wanted me to represent her in a divorce. The problem was, her husband was hiding in a place called Shadow, and she didn’t know where to find him.”
Jess was more lucid now, her thoughts ordered and coherent. Randal knew this was due to her getting a fix of Darkgaze. Once the dose ran its course, she’d become scattered and half-crazed again.
“I’d heard rumors about Shadow over the years. I figured it was a bar or something, so I hit the street and did a little digging.”
“And found more than you bargained for,” Randal said.
Jess nodded. “I didn’t have the Eye, but even so, I could see a little here in the Overlay. I was horrified but also intrigued, you know? I started talking to people, and when I learned there was this guy who sold a drug that allowed anyone to see fully into Shadow . . . You know the rest.”
He didn’t, but he could guess. One hit of Darkgaze and she was addicted. She abandoned her law practice and whatever family and friends she had, and began spending all her time in the Overlay, looking to score enough cash to buy her next dose. He had no idea what she did to earn money. Maybe she offered legal advice or worked as a prostitute. But the denizens of Shadow had many varied needs, and there was more than one way to sell yourself in the Overlay. She could’ve rented her body to an incorporeal being who wanted to experience the joys of the flesh for a time, or she could’ve sold portions of her lifespan—anywhere from minutes to years. Whatever she’d done, it was most likely the reason for her current condition and, as bad as she looked, Randal doubted she survive much longer. Hell, there was a good chance she’d be dead before sunrise.
At least she got one last good look, he thought.
People—well, beings—had walked past them as they talked, but none had done more than give them a quick glance. Minding one’s business was a primary survival skill in Shadow. Randal had registered the pedestrians’ presence, but otherwise ignored them. But now someone approaching drew his full attention. A tall man wearing a suit walked toward them. His outfit had once been white, but time had turned it a dingy yellow, and the surface was marred by stains that Randal couldn’t—and didn’t want to—identify. The ensemble’s finishing touch was a black bolo tie cinched by a metal clasp in the shape of a rattlesnake head. The man was cadaverously thin, a skeleton covered with dry, leathery hide. His fine hair was bone white, and his eyes were orbs of impenetrable darkness encircled by swirling multicolored rings.
Randal’s mouth went dry, and he felt a nearly overwhelming urge to run. During his time, he’d seen many strange and horrible things in Shadow, but he’d never seen anything like this man. It wasn’t merely his appearance, although that was bad enough. He exuded an aura of emptiness, as if he were a vast space pulling at everything around itself, desperate to be filled. Randal stood frozen, unable to do more than watch as the foul black-eyed thing in the shape of a man drew closer.
Jess was so entranced with the sights of Shadow that, at first, she didn’t notice the man heading toward them. But something caught her attention—a flash of movement, the scuff of a shoe on pavement—and she turned her head in his direction.
“Oh, my,” she whispered.
The man walked up to them, stopped, and smiled. As cold as it had been before, it now felt as if a gust of arctic wind wafted over them, and Randal and Jess shivered uncontrollably. Desiccated lips pulled back from jagged, yellowed teeth as the man favored them with a hideous mockery of a smile.
“Good evening, sir, madam. Lovely night, isn’t it?”
His voice was the sound of a knife scraping bone.
Randal couldn’t have replied to the man if he’d wanted to. He had no control over his body. Jess appeared to be similarly immobilized, but she managed to open her mouth partway. No sound emerged, however.
The man’s thin, snow-white brows rose in surprise, and his rictus grin widened.
“Phase-worms!”
He reached toward Jess’s mouth with his right hand, fingers thin as insect legs, nails long, cracked, and yellowed. With a motion as quick as a striking cobra, he plucked a phase-worm from her tongue, then held it up to his shadow eyes to examine.
“A most healthy specimen,” he pronounced, then popped the transparent parasite into his own mouth and chewed. “And delicious, too!”
Randal’s stomach gave a twist and hot bile splashed the back of his throat.
The black-eyed man raised his hand again, only this time he touched Jess’s cheek.
“Thank you, my dear. I hope you have a wonderful rest of the night.” He turned to Randal. “You, too, my friend. Say hello to your mother for me.”
He lowered his hand and resumed his walk down the sidewalk.
The cold the man had brought with him began to dissipate, and mobility returned to Randal’s body. Jess’s too.
“What the fuck was that?” Jess said.
“I have no idea.” And what was that comment about his mother supposed to mean? No way that creepy sonofabitch could know her. She hadn’t left home for years.
They watched the man walk to the corner, turn, and then disappear behind a building. Randal was contemplating given Jess an extra drop of Darkgaze on the house to steady her nerves. If the shit worked on him, he would’ve gulped down the entire vial. He turned to her to make his offer, but before he could speak, he saw a black splotch on her cheek where the man had touched her—and it looked like it was growing.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“I’m a little shook up, but I think I’ll be okay.”
“No, I mean . . .” Randal touched his cheek and then pointed to hers.
Jess frowned then reached up to touch her face. She took in a sudden breath then jerked her hand away, as if she’d been burned.
