For Vindsval, Blut Aus Nord’s many modes are the point. “Our albums are built around the control of contrasts — darkness and light continually feed one another, and the band’s entire discography is shaped by this mastery of contrast,” the French black metal band’s guitarist, vocalist, and principal songwriter told Echoes and Dust, later adding, “Contrast reveals, balance preserves: remove one and everything fades; remove the other and everything collapses.”
Since 1994, Blut Aus Nord has kept the balance across an ever-expanding oeuvre whose only continuity is its lack of one. Even the sequels and multi-part releases that deepen the lore of the Blut Aus Nord universe are never straight repeats. No, over 16 full-lengths and even more EPs, splits, and compilations, Vindsval, W.D. Feld (drums, electronics, keyboards), and, later, GhÖst (bass), have been many bands: ice-cold black metallers, Bathory believers, avant-garde explorers, industrial workers, Lovecraftian whisperers, and any other stylistic shift that may enter Vindsval’s mind. “I’ve learned over the years that, when it comes to my own musical creativity, the truth of today is rarely the truth of tomorrow,” is a quote of his that has accompanied recent PR transmissions.
And yet, Blut Aus Nord doesn’t tear everything down to start anew. From its debut release, 1995’s Ultima Thulée, the band has always been building. “I think that everything that makes Blut Aus Nord is already at the heart of Ultima Thulée which, even if it is a rather naive album in its expression, contains this feeling found on what was recorded by BaN since,” Vindsval said to Steel for Brains. “Each new album is a consequence of the above — a response, a reaction. So Ultima Thulée has had a considerable influence on the entire chain.”
The Blut Aus Nord chain continues to swing in new directions. For instance, Ethereal Horizons, its 2025 release, is no doubt built from the same stock as the gloriously atmospheric, guitar-lead-laden Memoria Vetusta albums and Hallucinogen, their spiritual successor. Still, the compositional surrealist mutation that took place on the preceding Disharmonium duology, where Vindsval used two fretless basses to create the discomforting sensation of writhing tentacles, plays its part as the action to Ethereal Horizons‘s reaction.
“After working on albums that extreme, I needed to rediscover the pleasure of playing more aerial melodies and those riffs so characteristic of Blut Aus Nord’s sound on its more melodic records,” Vindsval explained to Invisible Oranges. So, if Disharmonium is the dark, Ethereal Horizons, then, with its stargazing shred and gas-giant ambience, is the light. It’s another distinct link in the chain that grows stronger with every contrast. And as that chain grows longer, it forever alters Blut Aus Nord’s catenary.
That said, like life, Blut Aus Nord’s evolution isn’t purposeful or adheres to some grand design. “I was obviously very far from imagining the path Blut Aus Nord would take when I recorded the first Vlad demos on a small four-track tape recorder in my teenage bedroom,” Vindsval said in that same Invisible Oranges interview. “There was absolutely no ambition beyond expressing myself through art, and music in particular, and everything that has happened over these past 30 years was neither planned nor premeditated.”
Of course, how could one plan for the future when they’re so artistically restless? “We try to explore the music in a lot of different directions without limits; for this reason, each album is unique and cannot be compared to the others,” Vindsval told Occult Black Metal Zine. “I can’t describe to you the musical direction of our next works, just because I don’t know. We want to explore and try a lot of new things and new instruments: it can be more jazzy, more electronic, more brutal, technical, trip hop, doomy, etc. Never mind the form, only the feeling is important.”
The desire to preserve the feeling has led Vindsval down paths that diverge from the market-ready black metal mainstream, not just in sound, but in temperament, mainly because materialism and idolization aren’t sought. For example, despite keeping a prolific release pace that has necessitated the odd new-project outgrowths (The Eye, Ershetu, Forhist, etc.), he has “thr[own] away hundreds of hours of music” and pulled the plug on announced projects (RIP, Vjeshitza?). Likewise, he has refused to play live and closely guarded his and his compatriots’ anonymity. “From the beginning of this adventure, I decided to completely dehumanize the project,” he said in a Q&A with his label, Debemur Morti. “I did not want a line-up, no images, no egos, no identities, just an artistic proposal and the imagination of the artist. I never wanted to be an actor in the whole black metal circus with my own poses and attitudes. When I saw such groups in pictures, I knew I did not want to be like them.”
Blut Aus Nord isn’t like them. Blut Aus Nord isn’t like anything but Blut Aus Nord. And even then, there’s a good chance that the Blut Aus Nord of tomorrow won’t be like the Blut Aus Nord of today. Vindsval will keep chasing the feeling, the need to create. “It’s endless: the more you create, the more new ideas you have,” he told Echoes and Dust. “It’s a virtuous circle that must be maintained daily. I always have at least three or four projects on the back burner; some will never be completed, but that’s part of the process. I clearly won’t have enough time in a lifetime to bring to fruition everything I still have in mind — and everything I haven’t even imagined yet.”
The 13 songs ahead reveal what Vindsval has imagined so far and are the highlights of a discography unique in the 21st century for both its breadth, originality, and quality. In that way, these songs may be wildly different, but the contrast reveals, and the balance, as always, preserves itself. [SETH BUTTNAM]
THE CHOIR OF THE DEAD
[The Work Which Transforms God, 2003]“The Choir of the Dead” isn’t remarkable because of its black metalness. In fact, it may not even really be music at all. Hear me out.
Sure, there are blast beats and riffs, shrieks, etc., etc. But there is something indeed haunting about it in more than a simple sonic sense. Its dissonance surely plays a part, but there’s a tangible uneasiness to the song. Ever experienced a panic attack? You can’t explain it until you’ve experienced it. On a surface level, it’s the ultimate fright. No matter how irrational, those moments feel so real. “The Choir of the Dead” transforms The Work Which Transforms God from unease to ultimate terror. It seeps into your skin like scabies, yet the itch is strangely captivating. It leaves you willing to scrape and claw beneath the dermis until you reach the rawest levels of flesh and bone.
Nearly seven minutes of psychosis. And a song that inevitably influenced countless bands via atmosphere and abstract art. It’s peak BAN, no matter which way you slice it. [BLIZZARD OF JOZZSH]
DISCIPLE’S LIBRATION (LOST IN THE NINE WORLDS)
[Memoria Vetusta II: Dialogue with the Stars, 2009]Of the two Blut Aus Nord albums that are most frequently cited as Vindsval’s pinnacle achievements, namely The Work Which Transforms God and Memoria Vetusta II, the latter is the album that manages to recapture the childlike wonder of the project’s first two albums. I’d hate to insult Ultima Thulee and Memoria Vetusta I by calling Dialogue With The Stars an upgrade, but the energy that is applied to Vindsval’s much improved musical abilities is impressively identical to that of the first two albums. To capture such an equally palpable aura without getting carried away by showing off new skills is almost unheard of in metal, and it is proof that bifurcating the band’s “moods” or “modes” into groupings of albums was actually a most brilliant decision. “Disciple’s Libration,” upon its release, is one of the best instances of many Last Rites-ers being knocked so far out of our shoes that we’re all still stuck in the stratosphere waiting for mission control to summon us back down. The biggest addition to the band here is obviously Vindsval’s much upgraded lead work, and guitar playing abilities in general. There are a lot of great technical non-guitar aspects about the song and album that we could all go on forever discussing. And we have. And we will continue to do so until we die. But “Lost in the Nine Worlds” is more than proof that the ultimate blueprint for creating both moving and wholly original pieces of artwork starts with the inner child. Once that imagination is allowed to run wild, all of the skill and practice and grinding into something more professional can come much later. And if that same artist’s inner-child can defy the odds and elude all that attempt to suffocate its wildest hopes and dreams throughout the process some call “growing up,” then “Memoria Vetusta II” is an incredible snapshot of what can happen when a kid — now an adult — puts their dreams above all else. [KONRAD KANTOR]
THE FALL OPENS THE SKY
[Ethereal Horizons, 2025]2025’s Ethereal Horizons was the obvious next step in the evolution of the Memoria Vetusta albums and Hallucinogen, showing a familiar but just so transformed new face of Blut Aus Nord’s melodic, atmospheric side. But it’s also, according to Vindsval, somewhat indebted to 70s progressive rock, and you can hear hints of that in the layered and complex song structures throughout.
Our selection from Ethereal Horizons, “The Fall Opens the Sky,” shows how far this mode of Blut Aus Nord is from the nightmarish, Lovecraftian sounds that inhabit so many of their albums. This song, by comparison, is wonderfully escapist and enchanting in its melodies, even when the drums are blasting with furious intent (which is frequently). It conveys both an immeasurably vast space and comforting closeness, expressing this duality through chilling cascading tremolo harmonies, Viking metal chanting, and a soft middle section that communicates a proggy pastoral quality rarely heard in Blut Aus Nord’s music. It’s almost an Opeth-like song structure and approach in this way, not remotely hiding the influences but molding them through the artistry of one of metal’s most unique visionaries.
When the song delivers one of those incredible Blut Aus Nord resolutions, it almost sounds comforting, reassuring. What it’s reassuring us of isn’t entirely clear, but the lyrics speak of a “void that triumphs over fear.” Perhaps it’s just trying to reassure us that Vindsval clearly still has plenty left to say. [ZACH DUVALL]
FORHIST
[Memoria Vetusta III: Saturnian Poetry, 2014]Over the course of his 30-year career as the creative force behind Blut Aus Nord, Vindsval has proved adept at so many different stylistic approaches within the confines of black metal that it’s often tempting to treat his discography as a sorting exercise: “Okay, this album is an industrial one, this album is a melodic one, this album is the blackened goth one,” and so on. There’s nothing wrong with that kind of exercise, but for me it obscures a more fundamental aspect of Blut Aus Nord’s music, which is that it seems singularly focused on surrender.
Vindsval’s music, no matter if it’s plumbing the depths of nightmarish caverns or stretching its wings triumphantly skyward, seems always to be engaged in the project of enmeshing the listener in a movement of surrender. In part, this is accomplished through the music’s atmosphere – the way in which each album seems to generate a fully-realized world that one can almost touch – and in part, it is accomplished through the fact that, although Blut Aus Nord’s music is birthed from the riff, it is raised and nurtured and sustained from the rhythm.
So, on Memoria Vetusta III’s knockout-blow classic “Forhist,” Vindsval’s torrential outpouring of overlapping, melodic lead lines atop Thorns’s stridently confident drum pattern exalts in exhorting the listener to that state of ecstatic surrender. The melodies are triumphant and unadornedly beautiful, and yet they never quite follow typical shapes. The song has a roughly three-part structure which actually turns out to be more like a six-part structure which might actually turn out to be a structure of thirty parts, or perhaps just of one.
Gorgeous and confounding motifs are crammed so closely together it can be overwhelming to focus on, which is why it’s best to imagine yourself adrift at sea, lashed by waves whose provenance you cannot name and yet whose unpredictable motion nevertheless feels like protection, like the promise of safe harbor. Scientists and sages and scryers alike are still trying to determine exactly how the band can land, at the 7:26 mark, at one of the most perfect moments in the history of recorded music. But me? I’m willing just to surrender. [DAN OBSTKRIEG]
ON THE PATH OF WOLF… TOWARDS DWARFHILL
[Memoria Vetusta I: Fathers of the Icy Age, 1996]Before their descent into ultimate avant-garde-ness, BAN held their own during the mid-late second wave of black metal. They maintained that rawness, but were fearless enough to stray from straight true kvlt status. Just peep that sweet solo at the two-minute mark of “On the Path of Wolf…” In all fairness, it does seem a bit odd to overlay the frigid rhythm guitar tone, but…man, it’s memorable.
All in all, here, BAN showcase just how little they care about sticking to a traditional sound. That makes all the more sense later down the road, but it was evident early on. While Memoria Vetusta I – Fathers of the Icy Age is more straight-forward in terms of black metal, “On the Path of Wolf…” is masterful in its layering and bits of melody…as chaotic as they may be. The choir vocals, which tend to be a staple for the band, are well-done here, too.
Side note: I do advise listening to this track while playing D&D. Much of MVI fits that mold as well, which just adds that much more significance to the journeying track listing. “On the Path of Wolf…Towards Dwarfhill” is a crucial part of that journey. Top of the list? Nah. But a damn worthy inclusion. [BLIZZARD OF JOZZSH]
OUR BLESSED FROZEN CELLS
[The Work Which Transforms God, 2003]Anyone sufficiently obsessed with music has played some variation of “the amnesia game,” a time-passer where you call out foundational musical moments you wish you could experience again for the first time. There’s a sneakily great one buried amid “Our Blessed Frozen Cells,” track number 7 on The Work Which Transforms God.
After the first three minutes and change of “Cells” does the work of establishing one of the key compositional modes BaN will employ throughout the subsequent two decades — that being black metal by way of Godflesh — we fall briefly into an eerie institutional drone of freezing winds and distant moans. The near-silence is broken when the moment hits at 4:13, a barely audible pick slide that doesn’t so much erupt as it does wilt into a recursive seven-note guitar lead. It’s beautiful and sad at once; put another way, it’s the sound of sadness swallowing beauty. The economy of Vindsval’s playing foregrounds the crepuscular melody, allowing it to draw the listener deep into the twilight as the mere notion of the player fades into the background. It’s a moment of pure musical immersion. I’ll never be able to experience the moment of that pick slide for the first time ever again, but now I greet it like an old friend, and deepen my relationship to it with each successive listen.
A few months ago, amid my annual binge of Blut Aus Nord’s discography, I posed a question to a pair of fellow travelers: “What would BaN’s reputation be if Vindsval stopped making music after the first three albums?” For the non-obsessives, that trio includes 1995’s Ultima Thulée, 1996’s Memoria Vetusta I: Fathers of the Icy Age, and 2001’s The Mystical Beast of Rebellion. What I’m really asking is, “How would we listen to Blut Aus Nord had we never heard a song like ‘Our Blessed Frozen Cells?’” BaN’s discography is consistently compelling, if not occasionally frustrating, from front to back. But moments like that pivotal one on “Cells” have the power not only to recontextualize everything that came before, but set a new standard for everything that came after. For better or worse, you simply cannot ever unhear it. [DAVID FONSECA]
THE ABYSS BETWEEN THE STARS
[Lovecraftian Echoes, 2022]Vindsval sure was in nightmare mode a few years back. The Disharmonium albums each delved deeper into the cosmic horrors hiding just under the surface of much of the Blut Aus Nord oeuvre. But those albums didn’t quite win over our voters. Instead, it was the compilation Lovecraftian Echoes – quietly released between the Disharmoniums – that most tickled our ears. The reason for this is not hard to understand. Lovecraftian Echoes is a set of thoroughly nightmarish songs intent on expanding upon the feel of The Work Which Transforms God, so it’s understandable that it appealed greatly to a certain corner of hardcore Blut Aus Nord fans.
The song of choice was obvious. Although Lovecraftian Echoes was not written as a cohesive album, “The Abyss Between the Stars” still feels like a bit of a centerpiece, displaying a heightened intensity compared to the nauseating warble that often defines much of the release. Not that it doesn’t have plenty of that reality-warping mode, it does, but from the moment it blasts its way into existence, it’s clear that this track has a touch more violence than much of its surroundings. Like so much Blut Aus Nord, the song pulls a shapeshifting trick, employing subtle shifts instead of breakneck changes, while that feeling of being hunted by unknowable monstrosities builds gradually. It all culminates in a horrifying motif that first shows its face at about the 3:40 mark, with riffs pulling upwards and then letting go, as if some unknown terror is teasing its prey. And yes, this is extremely fun for us. [ZACH DUVALL]
SYBELIUS
[Hallucinogen, 2019]When a band has been around for 30 years and puts out 16 albums, there are bound to be some duds, or at least some that are met with rather mixed receptions. The 2010s were a period rife with these for Blut Aus Nord. The decade started with the 777 trilogy, which was lauded by many at the time for its ambition, but continued to land with pretty mixed results by the time it concluded, and years later, some of the shine has worn off for many. That was followed by Memoria Vetusta III: Saturnian Poetry, which felt like a strong edition to that series, while Deus Salutis Meæ was mostly met with negativity. With four albums tied to different series and one standalone that was a disappointment, Hallucinogen felt like a breath of fresh air, even amidst the discography as a whole. The album has a lightness, brightness, and spaciness that still stands out today; “Sybelius” is a perfect encapsulation of what makes it so wonderful.
The first two minutes fire off ringing guitar notes and a propulsive rhythm that would’ve easily fit on the first two Opeth albums. Throw in some Moonsorrow Scandinavian campfire chorals and moments of the song start to feel damn near soulful. The next stretch of the song is downright a band jamming and rocking out to the point that you could imagine the band members playing it on stage with huge smiles on their faces, which I’m fairly confident is illegal for a French black metal band. There’s an unusual simplicity at play underneath the guitars that are continuing to wail and stretch. Naturally, it can’t all be fun and games, so the song does spend a brief stretch slashing and slicing throats with a sword dance of more traditional black metal, but it closes once again by wailing to the sky for forgiveness.
Blut Aus Nord is no stranger to creating hypnotic music, but Hallucinogen flipped it from the ugly industrial dirges of its past into a beautiful exploration of the sky, often as pretty, eerie, and endlessly fascinating as the cover that adorns it. [SPENCER HOTZ]
EPITOME X
[777 – The Desanctification, 2011]Are you familiar with the phenomenon wherein you’re catching up with the pals you spent your formative years with, and instead of actually doing anything you just sit around remembering the stuff you did before? At times, being a millennial-aged metalhead feels kind of like that, except, crucially, you weren’t around for the formation of those core memories. Yes, of course, I feel like I’ve put in a decent amount of time familiarizing myself with metal’s foundational albums — but when these bull sessions inevitably redound to “you had to be there,” I can only concede that I wasn’t.
Of course, heavy metal continues to expand its borders, but, with so much prime real estate colonized decades ago, it can sometimes feel like the day-to-day of metal fandom is an exercise in recognizing commendable acts of inversion, iteration and esoteria. And then so what I find so consistently satisfying about Blut Aus Nord’s best work is how it generates new foundational memories by squatting on territory that by all rights should have been claimed ages ago.
Consider the main riff that arrives at 2:13 of “Epitome X.” There are, of course, a near-infinite number of parts you can work up on six-string guitar, but it can often feel like Tony Iommi wrote most of the intuitively fantastic ones 50 years ago, and now we’re all chasing Super Locrian Diminished up our own keisters to stave off decline. But not Vindsval, who asserts “why play many notes when few notes do trick?” Listening to the main riff here, which is built around some simple minor-third hammer-ons, is the musical equivalent of finding a 22-pound Butterball turkey ferreted away in the furthest corner of the grocer’s frozen section the night before Thanksgiving. “How did nobody else see this? How is it still just … here?” But here it is. A core memory hiding in plain sight. [DAVID FONSECA]
THE FALL: CHAPTER VI
[The Mystical Beast of Rebellion, 2001]ABSOLUTE PEAK BLUT AUS NORD!
Hands down, my favorite BAN track is “The Fall: Chapter VI” off The Mystical Beast of Rebellion. It perfectly encapsulates everything I love about the band—controlled chaos. More precisely, it’s a beautiful blend of dissonant and avant-garde black metal. It features some of their most primal necro vocals, with moments of respite that linger just long enough to leave you salivating. And the dissonance remains as addictive as ever.
Don’t even get me started on that haunting outro.
When you pause and reflect on what they’ve carved into this piece, it’s truly mind-blowing. While much of the tail end consists of the repeating riff, it enables you to transcend into a hypnotic trance of sorts. But the front half is just utterly ruthless. It’s an unusual dynamic that, in theory, could have been overshadowed by the countless similarities we’ve encountered in other bands’ songs over the years, yet it still holds a special place among my favorite BAN tracks and black metal tracks in general. [BLIZZARD OF JOZZSH]
…THE MEDITANT (DIALOGUE WITH THE STARS)
[Memoria Vetusta II: Dialogue with the Stars, 2009]It begins simply, with beautiful, chiming clean guitars before the first of many gorgeous motifs comes in, helping to give the song a deeply narrative quality. From there, “…the Meditant (Dialogue with the Stars)” is like an onion, slowly peeling away its layers to reveal the full musical story within. Everything shifts gradually as a subtle intensity builds, with each section providing both a reflection of what came before and preview of what is to come. It’s a deft bit of songwriting, never fully repeating itself, while a set of leads do double duty in carrying things along and ensorcelling the listener. The solo at about 3:43 is particularly stunning. Like much of the song, it displays a bit of restraint, never going into shred mode, but rather working with its accompaniment to give the song the first of its multiple peaks.
The song could frankly have ended at that point and still been a stunner, but it’s in how Vindsval weaves the latter minutes that it truly gains its legendary status. The tune hits reset. More of those clean, chiming guitars return, and then restraint is thrown out the window. The harmonized leads at 6:30 release all the emotion that had to that point built up but been kept in check. From that point on, the song maintains its intensity but continues to provide reflections of previous motifs before another section of clean guitars closes things out. It’s the type of songwriting sleight of hand that befuddles all but the true masters.
Even more than all that, “…the Meditant (Dialogue with the Stars)” is the de facto title track and centerpiece on what might be the greatest atmospheric black metal album of all time. It’s a masterstroke within a masterstroke, effortlessly bearing the weight of this brilliant album while becoming a singular moment not just on this record, but within the entire Blut Aus Nord catalog. [ZACH DUVALL]
THE LAST JOURNEY OF RINGHORN
[Ultima Thulée, 1995]Does the Dunning-Kruger effect apply to a child’s imagination? Can any adult possibly tell some fifteen year old kid that they are not yet “good enough” at imagining something? Where does the hubris lie in this situation? With the one imagining, or those judging a piece of imaginative artwork? After well over 20 years of studying Ultima Thulee — practically to a level of worship — it’s this fan’s opinion that all of Vindsval’s musicial limitations up to this point in his teenage life were absolutely pivotal in providing the world with such a display of pure, untainted, and otherworldly piece of artwork. Limitations often force more avenues of creativity to appear in places that they’d normally not be needed, and of all of the debut album’s tracks, “The Last Journey of Ringhorn” contains its widest array of soundscapes that demonstrate this point. There are Blut Aus Nord fans that appreciate Ultima Thulee for what it is: A humble beginning of a lifetime of one man’s vision that would evolve and progress over time. There are also Blut Aus Nord fans that appreciate Ultima Thulee for what it is: The most pure version of the band that would ever be captured. Could all the world’s collective knowledge, skill, technical prowess, and creativity come up with a better soundtrack for Baldr’s final journey of his legendary ship, Hringhorni? I think the answer to that question is hidden somewhere in Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s Le Petit Prince. [KONRAD KANTOR]
MORT CHAPTER VIII
[MoRT, 2006]In the eighth room of the hotel on Aylesbury Avenue in downtown Greyport, a hum comes from beneath the floorboards. Last night, it awakened me from a queer dream in which I was walking through a fog that swallowed all sound except for an uncanny snapping and swishing, like a thousand bullwhips being cracked in the distance.
In the morning, I bundled myself in the two coats that, thankfully, my editor insisted I bring as armor against the meteorological mystery that is Greyport’s eternal fall. One by one, I descended the unnecessarily steep stairs to the hotel’s ground floor. Mrs. West, the owner, stood like a statue at the front desk, speaking to a man in uniform whom I immediately recognized as a Massachusetts State Police officer. “Haven’t seen him in weeks,” I overheard Mrs. West say with a raw-throated rasp that I’ve come to regard as the Greyport accent.
As I approached, the policeman turned to me and held up a picture of a gentleman with a gaunt face and thinning hair atop a wide head, whose eyes were unusually bright, as if the camera flash came from them. “Seen him, miss?” I shook my head. “His family filed a missing persons. Said he was heading into town on business.” The policeman turned back to Mrs. West. “What room did you say?” “Eight,” she snarled.
After making future arrangements to look around the hotel, the policeman left, leaving me the object of Mrs. West’s ire, that famous Greyport uncordiality that’s as stiff as the coastal breeze. I explained the hum to her before she stopped me with a raised hand. “I’ll send someone up,” she growled, “but it’s all in your mind, dear.” A fury behind her eyes told me not to linger.
Taking heed, I left in hopes of finally getting an interview with any of the almost abusively taciturn Greyportians. Blessed with a per-word rate that would even get Faulkner to cover a school board meeting, the Derry Herald ferried me down the coast to investigate the phenomenon of the Kingsmen Cannery, a new seafood company exporting the local delicacy, a zoologist-baffling cousin of the cuttlefish, throughout the Northeast. The tin, which is emblazoned with a name only the locals can pronounce, contains hundreds of tiny tentacles that wriggle on fork prongs as if they were still alive, and have caused a stir among gourmands due to a purported psychotropic effect. However, the case that created a buzz, tripling Kingsmen’s sales and subsequently turning the company into the biggest employer in the North Shore, was that of a man who rose from a restaurant table, screamed about a deafening noise imperceptible to his fellow diners, and then stumbled out into the middle of the street. The bus driver who hit him has been in a non-verbal stupor since. Subterranean sanitation workers finally found the man’s head three blocks away after it tumbled into a sewer catch basin. The eyes were missing, and there were small stress fractures across the circumference of the skull, almost as if something was trying to pull it apart.
With nothing to show for my shoe-leather reporting other than barked noes and dead eyes, I returned to the hotel in a daze. Something about the Greyport air, that fetid stench of salt water and old iron, along with the constricting cold, felt asphyxiating, forcing me to take dizzyingly deep inhales. When I finally regulated my breathing, I was already at the top of the hotel stairs. I didn’t dwell on the how because down the hall, I could see that my room’s door was ajar. Quite unlike me, I walked toward it, relishing the unknown, desperately wanting something to be behind it. Before I reached it with my hand outstretched, the door was ripped open, and someone spilled out, putting the full force of their shoulder into my chest, knocking me to the floor. As I fell, I caught the briefest look at a familiar face. “Excuse me, officer,” I said to the rug I landed on. But when I righted myself, I didn’t see a Massachusetts State Police uniform, but a blue boilersuit, as its wearer clumsily bounced between the hall’s walls.
Flustered, I entered my room and surveyed the scene. Nothing out of order, and my bags were exactly where I left them. I tentatively shed my two coats on the bed, and then I saw it: a tool belt splayed on the floor. Of course, I thought, the person Mrs. West said she’d send up. Relieved, I picked up the phone. “Yes,” Mrs. West hissed. “Hi, sorry to bother you,” I said, already regretting my faux conciliatory tone, “but the man you sent to fix the hum left his tools here.” There was silence on the line that lasted a little too long. “Dear. There’s no hum. He’ll get them in the morning.” “Mrs. West,” I said quickly, “who was the man who rented this room before me?” “Some importer,” she answered even quicker, “wanted a deal with Kingsmen.” She slammed down the receiver, leaving me with the rapid beep of the off-hook tone as I stared at the wall.
That night, I had the same dream — the walking, the snapping, the swishing — but the fog wasn’t as heavy, allowing me to make out shadows, as if I was looking through a window barely obscured by diaphanous curtains. On all sides of me, freakishly long appendages waved and undulated like streamers in the wind. Then, they started testing the fog wall, probing, like hungry tapeworms leaving a starving host. I couldn’t scream. It wasn’t because of the swallowed sound. It wasn’t because I was so petrified. It was because I wasn’t scared. I welcomed their intrusions, hoping they’d finally make contact. As the rhizoid masses slithered ever closer, I could hear a new noise under the snapping and swishing: a whisper, speaking a language I had never heard before. “Goka ya ymg’ n’gha,” it hissed. Yes, I thought.
The vibrations shook me awake. The hum oscillated from one side of the room to the other, shivering with a slow vibrato, like an infernal choir stretched into oblivion. I yelled, but I couldn’t hear myself over the din. The air in the room seemed to pressurize, and it felt like my head was placed in a tightening vice. I rolled out of bed and fell to the floor. Every board rattled, ready to spit out the nails that held them in place. Now a roar, the hum grew even louder. The pain was excruciating. I wiped the tears from my eyes and looked down at my hands — black, as if stained with ink. I started dry-heaving, finally expelling a torrent of viscous fluid that was tinged with blood. Instead of pooling at my hands and knees, it traveled like little rivulets toward one of the floorboards, staining it crimson. I looked around frantically for anything to stop the continually escalating hum. The tools. I crawled toward the toolbelt and grabbed a hammer. I stuck the claw under the red floorboard and put all my weight on the handle.
As soon as the board was pried, the hum stopped. Silence. I looked down at the gap where the board was: nothing, a black I had never perceived before, the blackest of blacks, a total void. Unconsciously, I dropped the hammer into the gap, and like tossing a rock into a mineshaft to gauge its depth, I waited for the echo of its inevitable landing. No sound came. I lay on my chest so I could put my ear to the hole, and, across its threshold, saw my jagged breath. And then, out of the corner of my eye, there was a pinprick of light. I swiveled to get a better look. It shimmered. Before I could squint and focus, something grabbed my face and pulled me into the abyss.
When I opened my eyes, uncurled myself, and sat up, darkness reigned except for that pinprick of light. Little by little, the light came nearer until, finally, a figure stood before me. A man, nude, his skin blotched with hundreds of fresh bruises, and his arms and legs branching in bizarre directions as if they had been broken in many places and healed incorrectly. The top of his head was on fire, a silent blue flame that rose like horripilated hairs. His nose had long ago burned off, and his eye sockets were covered over with scar tissue. Still, I could make out enough of his visage. I had seen his picture. It was the missing importer.
“Come,” he whispered gently while turning around. He took one step, and a path lit up, extending far into the ether. Still unconvinced that anything was under me, I arose wearily and followed.
As we walked, a night’s sky unlike anything I’ve ever seen opened above us: brilliant, with billions of stars scattered like spilled diamonds, and these gaseous masses swirling into massive holes, their colors consumed and annihilated. Below us was a bird’s-eye view of my hotel room. But not just my room, no, a boundless number of rooms placed side-by-side like frames in a movie reel. In the first, there I was, sitting in a circle of my extracted teeth while forcing my arm ever deeper into my mouth. A different horror transpired in the next and the next and the next, an endless slideshow of killing and dying in ways one could barely conceive. I tried to banish these illimitable parallel mes to the periphery, but one room stood out. In it, I was sitting on the edge of the bed. The walls were bowed, as if I exerted some strange gravity. That me looked up through the path and peered deep into my eyes. Hers glowed.
The importer stopped. “Here,” he said, before taking one more step and disappearing. Feeling the same fortitude as I did in the hotel hall, I impulsively stepped forward. Woosh. The sky? Gone. Path, gone. Rooms, gone. The importer, though, was still there. He leaned down to me, making me flinch as I expected to get licked by the flames, but I couldn’t feel them. “Time,” he whispered into my ear. He took a step back and opened his hands. Two orbs levitated from each palm — his eyes. They reached a height just above his head and flashed on like lamps, providing just enough light to see that I was in a room. A dungeon, maybe. Although the space was freezing, the stone walls were sweating, dripping condensation, and appeared to breathe in and out. A thick smell of rusted metal and rotting fish pervaded the space. The importer dropped his hands to his side and smiled. His skin peeled off his face, falling to his feet. Then his skull cracked open like a blooming flower, revealing the source of the flame: his charred brain was like a struck match’s head. Suddenly, it was snuffed, and what remained of the gnarled body collapsed. His eyes, though, hovered in place, gleaming like two full moons.
Although the importer was gone, I knew I wasn’t alone. I turned around, and although I couldn’t quite see it, I felt it. Its size was impossible to comprehend, and even attempting to measure its enormity was like pulling my atoms apart. I must have hallucinated a surrogate to stand in its place: Illuminated by the importer’s eyes was the barest outline of enormous tentacles curling in and around each other, an infinite ouroboros of slick limbs. When it knew it was perceived, I felt my stomach drop as an invisible power picked me off my feet, stretching out my arms and legs as if they were points on a pentagram. Blood rushed to my ears, filling my woozy head with the crash of a wave that never receded.
It spoke to me. It didn’t make a sound, but I could feel its words in my body, as if it conveyed its message through my bloodstream. “Goka ya ymg’ n’gha, ng Y’ ‘ll ymg’ mgah’n’ghft lw’nafh,” it said, over and over. Every beat of my heart revealed more of its meaning. “Give me ymg’ n’gha, and I’ll ymg’ mgah’n’ghft lw’nafh.” I felt my sternum crack. My ribcage swung open like a gate, ripping through my skin and tearing through my nightgown. I looked down at my now-exposed insides as strands of fibrous, alien tissue moved like roots throughout the cavity. They snapped and swished, soon wrapping around my heart, slowing its rhythm and calming me as they settled in and became me.
Heartbeat. “Give me your death, and I’ll show you life.” “…yes,” I gasped. And then it opened its eye. [SETH BUTTNAM]
