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The last time I saw Vic was about a week ago. I had been calling for two days, and with his recent changes in behavior, I was worried about him. Until recently, we had always been very close, and it was unlike him not to return my calls. I went to the townhouse he was renting during school. It was only a block off campus, and cheaper than rooming in the dormitory.

It was late, after dark, and the windows were dark. I pulled the chain for the bell, and I could hear it ringing clearly. I heard him padding slowly toward the door.

"Go away!" I head his voice, faintly from the other side of the door.

"Vic? It's me. Let me in."

"Go away, Bradley. It's not a good time."

Aside from his recent unusual behavior, rumors were circulating that he had been seen frequenting with a mechanic from Feral's. A raccoon. We knew he was a homosexual. That didn't really bother the family. But to be seen with a raccoon instead of someone of breeding was something that our father wouldn't stand for. Father was threatening to stop paying for Vic's schooling. Vic couldn't afford it on his own, and medicine had been something he had dreamed about practicing for years.

"It's that damn 'coon, isn't it? He's in there! Damn it, Vic. Let me in. I'll stand here all night if I have to."

"Fine. Get your ass in here, and stop screaming. You'll be bringing the neighbors out, and they hate a scene." He opened the door slowly. It was dark inside as I pushed my way in.

"Where is he?"

"There's no one here but me. You shouldn't even be here." His voice was weak.

"What? Dammit Vic, turn on a light. Father will pay for electricity." My concern was starting to turn to anger. "If there's no one here, what the hell's going on, Vic? You don't return calls, you don't go to class, wh--" I stopped short as he lit a candle.

"Don't really want to see myself right now. Beside, light..... it attracts things..."

He looked miserable, like he hadn't slept in a month. His eyes were wide, and bloodshot. There was a vague odor about him, like musk or mildew. The front and rear of his nightshirt were both stained, the back with shit, and the front with what was probably not just piss, but semen as well. There were brown stains near at the base of his nose, and in the fur of his ears. Looking back, I think it might have been blood. His breath stank like he had been eating cigarettes instead of just smoking them. He had an unlit cigarette hanging from his mouth, and he lit it from the candle. Instead of a healthy, athletic nineteen, he looked like a haggard seventy, and an inmate at some poorly funded sanitarium at that. I remember thinking, "My God, what's happening to him?" Maybe if I had paid more attention, or understood what he was about to say, I could have prevented whatever happened.

Vic walked slowly, almost painfully, toward the fireplace. His steps echoed in the hollow halls, his nails sending a clicking sound through the room. He set the candle on a small table, and sat down in one of the wing chairs in front of the fireplace. The grate was open, and a log was spilled partially onto the hearth. I would have been worried, but the embers were long dead. The air smelled, I don't know, damp, stale, wrong somehow. I sat down in the chair across from him.

He spoke, and had a frustration in his voice that I had rarely heard before. "You shouldn't be here, Bradley. You shouldn't have come."

"What's happening to you, Vic? You look like hell."

"They're coming for me. Didn't really seem like a bath mattered." He coughed, hacking, and spit some kind of dark mass on the floor. He didn't move to clean it up. I looked around the room, and saw similar spots on the wood.

"Is it tuberculosis? Do you need a doctor?"

He chuckled weakly. "No, it's not TB. No doctor can help me."

"Then what the hell is it, Vic?" I leaned forward and touched his knee. He started to pull back, then relaxed. "Talk to me."

"I'll talk, but you won't understand. Even if you do understand, you won't believe. I didn't. It all started with the book."

"What book?" He motioned across the room to a table. I stood, and picked up the candlestick. The flame flickered. I moved across the room to where he gestured.

The table was covered with dishes, half-eaten sandwiches, and coffee mugs half full and beginning to sprout mold. I wrinkled up my nose at the noisome odors which emanated from the surface. Amongst the clutter and filth was a small volume, no larger than a dime-store paperback. I moved to pick it up, and Vic let out a shriek which I didn't know could come from his small, almost withered frame.

"DON'T TOUCH IT! IT'S CURSED!" He leapt from his chair, and apparently turned too quickly for his state. He stumbled, and began to fall. I set the candle down too fast, spilling wax on the table and floor, and moved to catch him.

"No. I'm fine. Just don't touch the book. It's bad enough that you've seen it." I helped him back to his chair. I went to retrieve the candle, and noticed the book again. It seemed, warm, somehow. I shrugged it off, and, replacing the candle on its first table, sat again.

"Vic, you have me concerned. Angry, and concerned. What's going on?"

"The book is evil. It's old, and evil. You felt the warmth from it, just now, just by looking at it, didn't you?"

"No," I lied. "I didn't feel anything."

He gave that weak chuckle again. "Come on, Bradley. I've known you longer than anyone else. I can see that look in your eye, and your ears twitch when you lie." He was right. And my ears were twitching.

"Okay, so I felt something from it. What of it?"

"I felt it too. In the library about two months ago. I was looking for books for my Biology Thesis, when I found it. It seems to feed on curiosity. I thought I was crazy, and just shrugged it off. I pulled it down and looked at it. It was innocuous enough, and, thumbing through it, I noticed it was in German. I figured that it was some kind of German primer text, maybe the Ring Cycle or something from Homer simply mis-shelved. I've taken enough German, but wasn't in the mood for reading of that kind. I thought I put it back on the shelf, but when I got home, it was in my coat pocket."

"You stole it?!" That was out of character for Vic.

"Apparently. I poured a cup of coffee, and started to read, but hadn't gotten more than half a sentence done when Lamont showed up."

"Who?"

"Lamont. The mechanic from Feral's." Apparently he noticed the disdain in my eyes, because he quickly stated, "Like you haven't had a casual fuck every now and again. I know about Danny."

I felt my hackles rise, and felt my cheeks flush with anger. I needed to change the subject away from my college roommate and get him back on track. "Okay, so what? My sex life isn't up for debate here."

"True, but get off your high horse, big brother. Neither is mine. Shall I continue?"

"Please," I replied with a snort.

"Lamont left a few hours later, and, feeling satisfied, I forgot about the book. That is, until later that night. I had gone to bed, (Lamont never stays. The neighbors talk enough as it is. I don't need any more words getting back to Father) and was almost asleep, when I heard a banging. I looked at the window. It wasn't raining, in fact it was clear. I turned on the bedside lamp, and went downstairs. I didn't need to turn the lights on in the parlor. The book was on the table, and it was glowing. It was fucking glowing, Bradley!" His eyes widened, and he strained forward, emphasizing his point.

I looked at the book. It wasn't glowing now. It was simply sitting there, and looking warm. For some reason, I just wanted to get up and touch it. I shivered, and looked down. I was standing, and was about a foot from my chair. Vic was holding my arm tightly enough that my paw was actually starting to get cold from lack of blood.

"You need to either sit or leave, big brother. Under no circumstances am I letting you get any nearer to that thing."

I backed up, and he released my arm as I sat. "I'm sorry, Vic. I don't know what came over me." I shook my head, confused.

"I do." He nodded, solemnly. "It has that effect. It's called 'König im Gelb', and although it's a play, it's not one of your standard classics, but I'll get to that. May I continue?" I nodded. "The book was glowing, bright enough to light the room. I approached cautiously, and the luminescence continued and actually grew. I reached out to touch the book, the light went out, and there was suddenly a burning pain on my palm, and I jerked it back. I screamed as the pain snaked its way up my arm and into my shoulder. My pulse quickened; I felt some sort of primal urge. I howled loud enough to wake the neighbors (Mrs. McCready told me the next day that she was banging on the wall, and yelling that I needed to keep my heathen ways to myself. I never heard her). Suddenly there was pain in my head. I thought I was having a stroke. My mouth was dry, and full of a horrible, coppery taste. Suddenly, there was blackness.

"I woke up with a yelp. I was in my own bed, entangled in the sheets, and covered in sweat. I was sitting in a puddle of my own urine, but I was more concerned with my paw. I looked at the paw, the arm. There was a large bruise on my wrist, but I figured that I simply banged it off the headboard. Nothing more than a bad dream, you know. I got up, took a shower, and changed the sheets. Other than a little soreness at the wrist, everything seemed fine. I looked at the book on the table when I went downstairs. It was a small, ordinary book. Surely I had imagined it, a night terror. I picked it up, and read a few pages.

"König im Gelb means 'the King in Yellow'. It deals with a royal family, a masquerade, and the disastrous arrival of the King." Vic did something then that I rarely heard him do: he began to sing, and the words were beautiful and melancholy:

"Along the shore the cloud waves break,

"The twin suns sink beneath the lake,

"The shadows lengthen

"In Carcosa.

"Strange is the night where black stars rise,

"And strange moons circle through the skies

"But stranger still is

"Lost Carcosa.

"Songs that the Hyades shall sing,

"Where flap the tatters of the King,

"Must die unheard in

"Dim Carcosa.

"Song of my soul, my voice is dead;

"Die thou, unsung, as tears unshed

"Shall dry and die in

"Lost Carcosa."

His bleary eyes were full of tears. "I thought it was so beautiful." He started to cry briefly, and then pulled himself together. "I read the whole damn thing. It was beautiful and terrible. Sort of like Poe's "Red Death". Terrible things happen to people when the see the face behind the king's mask.

"It was a disturbing read, but beautiful. After reading the book, I noticed I had been sitting in my chair, naked, for about four hours. I had actually cum all over my leg at some point, and didn't remember touching myself. I showered again, and chalked it up to just some kind of weird, over-aroused seepage."

"I ate, went to class, and really forgot about the whole thing. During the next couple of days, I kept seeing the King in my dreams, this tall, gaunt figure made of tattered yellow gauze, taller than a room, beckoning me. More than once, I saw him start to take off his mask, to show me the face beneath, and I'd wake up screaming. I was starting to get tired, and extremely irritable. I wasn't sleeping worth a damn. About a week and a half after reading the book, Lamont showed up. We fought (I started a petty fight about him being gone so long, he apologized, but he had other obligations, you know the drill.) Needless to say, the fight ended up in some of the best sex I've ever had."

I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. Thinking about your brother having sex is almost as bad as thinking about your parents having sex.

"That is, until the end when he asked me about the tattoo on my right shoulder blade."

"When did you get a tattoo?"

"I didn't. But there it was, plain as day." He dropped the corner of his nightshirt to reveal some sort of primitive tattoo. It was a bizarre combination of some sort of triskellion and an octopus. I couldn't look for long; it had the same warmth as the book. He covered it quickly.

"Lamont joked that if I wanted a tattoo, he knew someone who would gladly put his name on my ass. I laughed back, thinking that he was joking. He rolled over and pulled the hand mirror from my night stand, and sent me into the bathroom. The pain in my arm and shoulder. The blackness. The glowing book. It had somehow burned a tattoo into my shoulder through my arm. I wasn't sure how to react."

"What did you do?"

"I went back into the room, and tried to play it off, told him that I had meant it to be a surprise. He knew I was lying." Vic put his frail hand up to his eyes, as if trying to rub them white. "He always knows when I'm lying. I couldn't shrug it off, and told him about the book. He laughed at me for a minute as he pulled his pants on. I knew how crazy I sounded. He stopped laughing when he looked into my eyes. Believe me or not, he stopped laughing.

"He asked me a pretty standard set of questions: 'What was I taking? Had I been sleeping? Was I ill?' I wasn't sure how to react to them. It was nice to see he cared, but you know me, Bradley. I don't like showing weakness to anyone. I just passed the questions off, and told him that I was alarmed, but other than that, I was fine. Then he did something that, under other circumstances, would have seemed reasonable: he asked to see the book. I told him where it was, and he left the room.

"I don't know how long passed in reality, but, when he left the room, I blacked out. When I came to, I was on top of him, naked, sitting on his throat. His face was a bloody mess, and I could see his eyes beginning to swell. I had come on his face, and was engorged, my knot hanging wildly in the light. He was crying and screaming for me to stop, but I had him pinned to the floor.

"I started crying, fell off to the side, and told him to leave. I didn't apologize. He rolled over, and coughed blood up on the floor. 'What the fuck!?" He screamed at me. 'I touch your book, and you try to fuckin' kill me? What's gotten into you?'"

"'Just get the hell out of here, Lamont. Just go.'" I was crying at that point. I just got up and left the room.

"'Vic?'" I could hear the pain in his voice.

"'Just get the hell out!" I screamed at him, and acted like a lunatic.

"I don't know what this is about, but please let me help you...." His voice trailed off. I heard his footfalls as he approached behind me, and felt a hand touch my shoulder. It took everything I could muster to do what I did next. I turned and hit him, square in the jaw. "Just fucking go! I'll kill you if you don't. Get the hell out of here." The pain in his eyes was more from his heart than from his jaw, and he turned, defeated, and walked from the house. I screamed at the top of my lungs. I think the neighbors heard my howls, because they came knocking about twenty minutes later. I didn't answer the door.

* * *