Trickster

And then, at the very moment when he was ready to avert his gaze, so as not to torment himself further with this spectacle, it happened.

At first he did not understand what exactly had occurred. It was not a sound, not a rustle, not a creak. It was something that existed at the very boundary of perception, something that could be felt rather than heard. A faint, barely perceptible change in the pressure of the air, a vague vibration emanating from the figure of Pierrot. Kazimir froze, straining with every fiber of his soul to catch and define this strange sensation. It intensified, becoming ever more distinct, and soon he could no longer deny its nature. It was a whisper.

But what a whisper! It was not composed of words, carried within it neither meaning, nor logic, nor even a semblance of human speech. It was a stream — pure, undiluted, primordial stream of feeling. And this feeling was fear. Not the ordinary fear of a living being before pain or death, but a universal fear, the fear of matter itself, suddenly having acquired pitiful rudiments of consciousness in the face of the incomprehensible fact of its own existence. In this whisper there were no thoughts; in it was only an abyss, the mute despair of a creature suddenly aware of its abandonment in the world, its unfreedom, its nature as a thing created to be controlled. And through this fear, as through thick, black syrup, other shades emerged: the pain of threads biting into wood, the longing for non-being, for that blessed state when it was merely a piece of wood, deprived even of this wretched semblance of life, and an inexpressible, all-consuming sorrow, so deep that it seemed older than the oldest mountains.

Kazimir did not breathe. All the blood drained from his face, leaving it cold and numb, like a marble mask. His mind, always standing guard over the laws of reality, rebelled. He furiously denied what was happening, attributing it to hallucination born of nervous exhaustion, overwork, the effect of spoiled wine. «This is delirium,» he repeated to himself, «the product of disordered nerves, nothing more.» But the more stubbornly he denied it, the more distinct the whisper became. It did not sound in the ears; it arose directly in the consciousness, filling it as water fills a sponge. It flowed in a continuous, monotonous stream, and in its lifeless, tonality-deprived quality was that very horrifying sincerity which cannot be feigned.

Slowly, with difficulty overcoming the torpor that had seized his entire body, Kazimir raised his gaze from Pierrot and cast it over the whole workshop. And then a new, spine-chilling horror seized him, compared to which his former fears seemed like child’s play.

He was not alone.

He felt it with every nerve, every pore of his skin. The space of the attic, formerly empty and lifeless, was now filled, overflowing with an invisible presence. He saw no one but his dolls, yet he felt dozens of gazes upon him. These gazes were heavy, intent, devoid of all expression save that very mute, bottomless horror which Pierrot’s whisper exuded. They came from everywhere: from the shelves, from the dark corners, from beneath the pile of rags where his supplies were kept. Every marionette, every doll, every carved visage, even those that had been disassembled and lay in boxes — all of them looked at him. He did not see their glass eyes turning, for those eyes were motionless, but he knew with absolute, doubt-free certainty that their attention, dark and concentrated, now belonged wholly to him.

He tried to cry out, but from his throat came only a strangled, hoarse sound, like a death rattle. He tried to rise, but his legs would not obey, they had become soft and cottony, like those of a rag doll. The paralysis of horror shackled his limbs. He could only sit and absorb this multiple, silent gaze, feeling how his own will, his «I,» dissolved in this ocean of alien, wooden consciousness. Pierrot’s whisper continued to pour into his mind, and now he began to distinguish in it new, still more dreadful notes — not merely fear, but also a question. A dull, hopeless, infinitely sorrowful question, addressed to him, to its creator, to its lord and tormentor. A question: wherefore? Wherefore had he torn them from sweet non-being, wherefore condemned them to these eternal, joyless dances, to a life without will, without hope, without purpose?

And then Kazimir at last comprehended the whole monstrous, inexpressible truth. The ritual had not failed. It had been crowned with success, a success so horrifying and complete that its consequences surpassed the most fervent imagination. He had not summoned a demon from the netherworld; he had no need of one. He had accomplished something immeasurably more terrible. He, in his blind, selfish despair, by the power of his perverted will, his unanchored spirit, had created life. He had breathed it into dead matter, into cold wood and glass. But this life was monstrous, defective, deprived of all that makes existence bearable — deprived of joy, of light, of freedom. He had created not servants and not worshippers. He had created a host of suffering beings, thinking only in categories of pain and fear, creatures imprisoned in their mute bodies, and the only thing that now connected them to the world was their creator — he, Kazimir. They were bound to him by invisible threads of compassion, hatred, and that bottomless, universal anguish which now filled the workshop, making the air thick and difficult to breathe.

He slowly, with inhuman effort, turned his head, and his gaze met the empty eye sockets of Columbine. And in their glassy depths, in the way the dim light refracted within them, he saw the same mute despair, the same unanswered supplication. Harlequin, frozen in his foolish leap, seemed to radiate waves of panicked, word-inexpressible horror before that eternal carnival which had become his lot. The entire workshop, all this congregation of silent actors, had transformed into one great, living, suffering organism, and the heart of this organism was he, Kazimir.

Pierrot’s whisper suddenly ceased. In its place came silence, but this silence was a thousand times more terrible than any sound. It was the silence of tense, unbearable expectation. They waited. Waited for what he, their god and creator, their executioner and puppeteer, would now do. Waited for an answer to their silent, all-encompassing question.

And Kazimir, gazing into these multiple eyes full of mute horror, understood that he had no answer. There was only spine-chilling fear, shame, and the awareness that he had committed the irreparable. The doors of his personal hell, which he had so diligently tried to open, had finally swung wide. But he found behind them neither power nor glory. He discovered only an abyss, and now he was destined to gaze into it forever, while the abyss, embodied in his own creations, gazed back.

Chapter 2. The First Stolen Soul

The unbearable silence that reigned in his chambers after the last echo of the bell, having counted the midnight hour, had melted in the stale air, was by no means emptiness, but a thick, viscous substance, filled with the beating of his own heart — loathsome, dull, like the blows of a shovel against damp earth. Kazimir, unable to close his inflamed eyelids, lay upon a bed that resembled a funeral bier more than a couch for rest, and listened to this silence until a rising, inexorable hum began to stand in his ears, like the hum of subterranean waters undermining the foundation of the universe. The room, illuminated by the sinister, flickering light of a single candle, whose flame struggled with the advancing darkness like a death agony with eternal oblivion, was full of specters born of the very matter of this decay: heavy, dark tapestries, upon which scenes of former hunts and feasts had rotted and merged into vague, frightening outlines; dust, lazily swirling in flakes in the streams of deadened moonlight that pierced through the high, narrow window like a ray penetrating a tomb; and everywhere — his silent offspring, marionettes, frozen in strange, absurd poses, their glass eyes seeming to absorb this half-darkness and reflect it back, multiplied dozens of times. But through the obsession, through the hum in his ears and the heavy beating of his heart, for several nights running another sound had been creeping in — barely perceptible, like the rustle of rats behind the wall paneling, or perhaps the whispering of worms gnawing at a coffin board.

At first he waved it away, attributing this obsession to exhaustion of strength and disorder of nerves, brought to an extreme degree of morbid sensitivity. But this sound did not abate; on the contrary, it grew stronger, acquiring vague outlines, transforming from an indistinct rustle into a semblance of a whisper. This whisper was devoid of anything human; it was like the scrape of an old pen upon parchment or the whistle of wind in the crack of an abandoned tomb. And so, on this night, when the moon itself, hiding behind the torn shrouds of clouds, seemed ashamed to illuminate with its spectral light this place of sorrow and madness, Kazimir, holding his breath and feeling cold sweat stream down his temples, began to distinguish words in it.

These words were fragments, scraps, torn from the context of another’s death agony. «A knife… cold…» — it rustled somewhere at the very head of the bed, making him shudder and convulsively clutch at the blanket, damp with sweat. «…I don’t want to… mother…» — came from the corner where the shadow of the cabinet with dolls cast upon the wall outlines like a hanged man upon a gallows. And then, clearer and more distinct, full of inexpressible anguish and horror: «…a coin… my coin… in the wall… by the fountain of the Blind Karl…»

Kazimir’s heart, which a moment before had been beating as if trying to break free from the cage of his chest, stopped. A certain new, hitherto unknown feeling began to stir in its depths, like a reptile awakening from winter hibernation. Cynical, greedy curiosity. He lay motionless, listening to this voice from non-being, and gradually, with horrifying clarity, began to comprehend its nature. This was not a product of his reason; it was an alien consciousness, a soul stuck in the threshold of eternity and having found a chink in his own spirit, grown thin to transparency. The power that had been revealed to him on the night of Pierrot’s creation was not merely the power of animating soulless matter; it was a key unlocking the door to the world of shadows, and now something had seeped through this door.

Gathering all his will, suppressing the shudder that strove to break out in convulsive trembling, Kazimir mentally, without moving his lips, addressed this whisper, this clot of alien memory and pain.

«Who are you?» — he asked in the silence of his consciousness, and his words sounded like the stroke of a gong.

The whisper fell silent, as if caught unawares. Then, after a pause so agonizing that it seemed to Kazimir the room itself held its breath, came the answer — weak, full of bewilderment and fear:

«I… I don’t know… It’s all dark… so cold…»

«Remember!» — Kazimir commanded mentally, and in his mental voice there sounded steel, born of the suddenly flaring excitement of a hunter who has scented his prey. «You spoke of a knife. Of a coin. Remember!»

Just as a ray of light, penetrating a dark cellar, snatches from the gloom clumps of cobwebs and piles of rubbish, so his will, his persistence began to rummage in this disintegrating consciousness. And fragments of memory, alien, moments lived by someone else, began to surface before his inner eye with frightening, painful clarity. He felt upon his own skin — the damp coolness of a stone pavement, the rough fabric of a worn camisole, the sticky fear constricting his throat. A narrow, dark alley, stinking of slops and sin. A sudden shadow attacking him from behind. A sharp, burning pain in his back, blow after blow, swift and merciless. And the last thing he saw before darkness swallowed him — was the greedy, fury-disfigured face of the robber bending over him, and the gleam of that very coin, torn from his clenching palm.

«Leo…» — whispered the consciousness, and in this whisper was all the bitterness of the final, deathbed realization. «My name was Leo…»

And then Kazimir understood everything. This was the spirit of that very young thief who had been stabbed several days ago in a neighboring alley — an incident about which the whole district gossiped, but which had aroused in Kazimir’s soul nothing but fleeting contempt for the dirty life and equally dirty death of the inhabitants of the city’s bottom. Now this dirty death had become his possession, his trophy. He felt not a drop of pity, not a shadow of compassion for this torn soul wandering in pitch-black darkness. On the contrary, a feverish, intoxicating excitement seized him. He had acquired not merely a voice; he had acquired a servant, a witness, a source of information from the world lying on the other side of being.

«The coin, Leo,» — he insisted, his mental voice sounding imperious and cold. «You said — by the fountain of the Blind Karl. Where exactly? Speak!»

And the spirit, obedient to his will, whispered again, and in its whisper was heard a strange submission, a newfound hope that the fulfillment of this command would bring it peace. It described a crack in the old stone masonry, a drainpipe red with rust, the loose mortar between the bricks, where he, in anticipation of pursuit or sudden reprisal, had hidden his only treasure, obtained by unrighteous means but never spent. It described this with touching, almost childlike thoroughness, and Kazimir, lying in his bed with eyes wide open, burning with feverish gleam, listened to it, and upon his lips, dry and cracked, appeared a smile — the first in many months, a smile devoid of all warmth, the smile of a sphinx gazing upon mysteries buried in the sands of time. He was not merely hearing a voice from the world of shadows; he was conversing with it. He was interrogating death and receiving answers. And in this spine-chilling conversation a new Kazimir was being born — not a victim of circumstance and melancholy, but a puppeteer whose fingers henceforth could pull not only the strings of marionettes, but also the finest, invisible threads that bind the world of the living to the kingdom of eternal darkness.

The obsession that had flared within him like fire upon a funeral pyre brooked no delay. Barely had the first rays of the morning sun, pale and sickly, like light seeping through the thickness of grave earth, touched the windowsill, when Kazimir, who had not closed his eyes and had found no rest, tore himself from his couch. The traces of the exhausting night — crimson shadows beneath his eyes, a nervous tic twitching the corner of his mouth — only emphasized the feverish energy radiating from his entire emaciated figure. He did not waste time on washing or a meager repast; his only food now was the poisonous nectar of acquired power, his only drink the chilling rapture of merging with another’s suffering. The whisper of Leo’s spirit did not fall silent with the coming of day; it became quieter, but more intent, weaving itself into the very fabric of his consciousness, like an obsessive melody that sounds without pause in an emptied hall.

His gaze, heavy and piercing, fell upon Pierrot. The doll, his first and most perfect creation, stood in the corner, its pose unnaturally graceful and therefore all the more sinister. The white face with its frozen mask of grief now seemed to him not merely an artifact of human hands, but a vessel, an altar, a portal. If he had managed to hear a soul whispering in non-being, then could he not force it to manifest itself in this world? Could he not, like a conductor directing an obedient orchestra, force soulless matter to dance to music that sounds from beyond the threshold of death?

This thought, so monstrous and seductive, possessed him wholly. Seizing the doll with almost brutal resolve, he seated it on a chair in the middle of the workshop, at the very center of the circle illuminated by the slanting, dusty rays of morning. He himself stepped back several paces, feeling icy shivers of anticipation run down his spine. He did not intend to touch the strings; no, that would be an old, pitiful trick. Now he required something more — pure will, interwoven with the echo of another’s agony.

He closed his eyes, plunging into that sinister silence that reigned in his own skull, and began to search. To search for that very voice, that little ball of alien consciousness that had become entangled in the web of his mind. And he found it easily, as if it had not thought to hide — a weak little whisper, full of fear and bewilderment, like the weeping of a child abandoned in the dark.

«Leo,» — Kazimir pronounced mentally, and this name sounded not as an address, but as an incantation, as a command. «I am here. I am your anchor. Come to me. Come to this body, to this form that I have prepared for you.»

The only answer was an intensified whisper, full of horror: «I cannot… It’s dark… Cold…»

«You can!» — Kazimir cried out mentally, and his will, compressed into a tight, white-hot sphere, rushed toward the doll. «Remember what it means to move! Remember your fingers, your muscles! I give the body form, and you — the memory of movement! Act!»

He concentrated his entire being, all his psychic energy, upon Pierrot’s hand lying on its knee. He imagined how nerves and tendons, which did not exist in wood and plaster, should have filled with life, how an electric current should have passed through them, making the fingers twitch. This process was agonizing, exhausting; he felt sweat streaming down his temples in rivulets, felt the alarm bell pounding in his temples, heralding the rupture of blood vessels. He was not merely commanding; he was forcing an alien will, an alien residual consciousness, into a soulless shell, he was violating matter itself, forcing it to pretend to be alive.

And suddenly — he saw. Pierrot’s finger, long, elegant, made of polished wood, twitched. It was not a smooth, meaningful movement, but a sharp, convulsive shudder, exactly like a death agony, the convulsion of life parting from the body. This spectacle was so repulsive and unnatural that Kazimir’s breath caught. But it was success. The first, unseen fruit of his infernal labor.

«Yes!» — he hissed aloud, and his voice broke into a rasp. «The hand! Raise the hand!»

He again plunged into a state of concentration, interlacing his will with Leo’s memories of movement. And the doll obeyed. Its right hand separated from its knee and rose into the air. This movement was sharp, jerky, mechanical, and at the same time terrible; it resembled not the dance of a marionette, but the final flail of a drowning man’s limb, about to vanish beneath the water. The hand hung in the air, its fingers convulsively clenched into a palm facing down.

An intoxicating dizziness seized Kazimir. He was not merely controlling the doll; he was feeling it. He felt another’s pain, another’s fear, the desperate resistance of non-being, which he was overcoming by the brute force of his spirit. It was a merging with another’s agony, and this sensation was as sweet as it was perverse, like a gulp of the strongest poison that burns the entrails but grants unprecedented visions.

«The map,» — he whispered, addressing the voice in his head. «You spoke of a place. Show me. Show me on the map.»

Gasping from the strain, he approached the table, where upon a rough sheet of paper he had sketched in charcoal from memory a plan of the district around the fountain of the Blind Karl. He laid the map upon the floor before the doll.

«Lead us, Leo,» — Kazimir pronounced, and in his voice there sounded now not merely authority, but a certain reverence before the sacrilege he was committing. «Indicate where your treasure lies.»

He concentrated again, pouring all his energy and all the residual consciousness of the thief into the motionless figure of Pierrot. The doll trembled all over, as if a current had been passed through it; its joints creaked, and its head fell upon its breast with a dreadful, death-imitating hopelessness. But its right hand, that very one which had been raised, twitched again. It did not descend smoothly, but crashed downward, and its index finger struck the parchment with a dry thud. Kazimir, holding his breath, brought his face closer, disfigured by a grimace of tense triumph. The trembling tip of the finger pointed to a tiny square drawn in charcoal — the base of an old drainpipe by the wall behind the fountain.

In that instant the connection broke. Pierrot’s hand fell limply, and the doll itself froze in its former, dead pose, as if nothing had happened. The whisper in Kazimir’s head fell silent, replaced by a dull, deafening hum of exhaustion. But in his soul a fire raged. He leaned back, sitting on the floor among wood shavings, glue, and scraps of rope, and burst into quiet, faltering, hysterical laughter. He had done it. He had made the shadow dance. He had made death point him the way. And in this horrifying, blasphemous act he had tasted true, absolute power — the power of a puppeteer pulling strings that stretched into the very abyss.

The obsession that led him was precise and merciless, like the blade of the knife that had cut short the life of the unfortunate Leo. Kazimir, delaying not a moment, threw over his shoulders a worn cloak, the color of damp earth upon a fresh grave, and slipped out of his tomb into a gloomy, inhospitable day. The sky was drawn over with a solid, leaden shroud of clouds, from which occasionally drizzled a fine, importunate rain-dust, settling upon the faces of passersby like cold dew upon gravestones. He moved through the streets, seeing and hearing nothing around him; the hum of the city was to him no more than the distant noise of a subterranean stream, and the silhouettes of people — merely shadows flickering in the threshold of eternal darkness. All his spirit, all his will were concentrated upon a single point in space — upon that place marked by the trembling finger of his dreadful intermediary.

The fountain of the Blind Karl, long since dried up and transformed into a monument to its own oblivion, appeared before him — a dismal structure of cracked stone, where the visage of the saint, whose eyes had been forever chipped away by time, presented a spectacle as pitiful as it was prophetic. The air here was saturated with the smell of rot and human refuse. Kazimir, without looking around, his heart frozen in anticipation of either the greatest triumph or final descent into madness, walked around the fountain and fixed his gaze upon the rough stone masonry of the rear wall. And he saw it — that very drainpipe described by the whisper from non-being, red with rust, and beneath it — a gaping, wound-like crack in the joints between the stones.

Like a hunter creeping up on his prey, he dropped to his knees, paying no heed to the sticky mud seeping through the fabric of his garments. His long, pale fingers, accustomed to the most delicate work with threads and wooden joints, with unexpected strength dug into the loose mortar that had yielded to damp and time. He rummaged in it with the feverish haste of a gravedigger hurrying to conceal evidence of a crime. Dust and crumbs of stone packed beneath his nails, but he felt nothing save a rising, intoxicating heat in his chest. And at last, when it seemed the wall itself was about to exhaust his patience, the tips of his fingers encountered something hard, small, cold.

He froze, and for a moment the whole world contracted to this tiny object lost in the stone mass. He slowly, with almost reverent care, drew it out. It was a coin. A single, ancient coin, worn at the edges. It was dirty, covered with oxides and dust, and therefore seemed almost black. No value, of course, did it carry within itself; its pitiful metallic gleam, barely showing through the grime, could not illuminate even a step in the pitch-black darkness of his existence. But in that moment when he clenched it in his palm, feeling its cold, inexorable reality, it seemed to him more precious than all the treasures of all the monarchs of the world.