Deacon and Daiyu
Birth of a Black Pharaoh
[Preface. This story is based upon my ongoing Patreon project and an original character created by R. Hutchings used with permission. Enjoy a little Lovecrafty adventure.]
Deacon picked up the phone when it rang, he managed to swipe the little screen before it started wailing whatever weird shit Daiyu had it set to. “Hello?” The voice on the other end wasn’t familiar immediately, he had only spoken to the man one other time before. “This is Deacon Brodie, right?” “Yes sir it is, how is it I can help you this evenin?” Deacon put on the most silken good old boy drawl he could dredge up when he answered the phone, it tickled her. The other man chuckled, and Deacon recognized the voice.
“She still has you doing that man?” He smiled and shifted on the couch. “Yes sir. I know how to keep my sorceress happy.” Silence for a moment. “I take it she’s not there? I know how she feels about being called anything but a witch.” “No, she ain’t here man. You wanna talk to her?” There was a long pause before the other man spoke. “No, I need to talk to you. I need a favor, is deep.”
Deacon listened to the proposal, it sounded like the sort of pure insanity he used to get up to back home. “You mean to tell me; I shouldn’t put a stop to it. Are you sure? You know what could happen. I won’t be held responsible for it.” The other man sounded grim, resigned to something Deacon couldn’t know. “Yeah. I know. Just, you can’t tell her I know or that you talked to me. Just, let it happen. Do what you do.”
Afterwards, Deacon sat alone in their little house and brooded. He’d grown to like his life. His strange existence with the terrifying little witch. Unlike his previous life, she took him for what he was. The nights he breathed out the ichor of the abyss and raged she hung with him. When he lost his human mask, when he did what she called the demon face, she neither forbid it or took advantage of it. She had even, in the dark of the car in the middle of nowhere as they cuddled together in the back seat had sleepily confessed to envying his connection to the Pit.
He leaned back, hands upraised, and his eyes closed. He raised his palms, “hupadgh, n’ghft. Uln, ph’nglui mglw’nafh. Ph’nglui mglw’nafh.” his voice dragged through the air, pulling itself back down into whence it came and returning through the floor in vibrational waves. The tongue of his forbears and of himself through lifetimes came easily, even with his inadequate humanish throat. The house shuddered, nothing overly dramatic just a little shimmy. For years he’d fantasized about having himself a little sister.
He’d envied even the miserable half demon things tasked with holding the most eldritch akashic memories, even them. They were a miserable lot, chained together by blood and lust and bone but, even in their furious rage, he’d envied them their connections. The call meant; he had a chance to bring such a connection into the world for himself. Right onto the human plane.
He’d do it. His eyes rolled back in his head and his spine bent back at an awkward angle, words bubbled up from his depths, it was as close to a prayer as he could go.
“Goka ya, fahf hh’ Y’ ahmgr’luh. Give me, this which I seek.”
Perhaps it was too much time on earth and away from the pit. Since being given care of the sorceress, he’d felt all manner of things. Things beyond his most base needs to eat, fuck and destroy. He still did those things, he had someone to do them with was perhaps the difference.
Daiyu for her part was going through something. After her breakup with Nanita, nearly being murdered by an over amorous lycanthrope was as the kids say going through it. When she called Deacon to pick her up, she sounded tired. “You, okay?” She paused for a few seconds too long before answering, “yeah, I’m at that house. We gotta talk about this shit.”
She’d been off on a mission to the Spanghero estate. It was supposedly a haunting, some unquiet dead rattling the doors of another crumbling Antebellum monstrosity. The owner, a Mssr. Spanghero had contacted Daiyu through questionable channels and she’d agreed to have a look. Deacon had been against it, let the old racist die in his shitty old house. Daiyu had been intrigued.
The place wasn’t far away from their little house and Deacon pulled up the drive slowly, he had to admit that it was a pretty old bitch. As he slowed, golden light filtered itself as the sun set and he saw the Elder Sign bright upon the house and he nodded to himself. He pulled up and spotted Daiyu sitting in a porch swing, she was looking his way but not at him.
When he walked up, her head didn’t turn but her eyes, her big pretty black eyes moved to watch him approach. That was not her gaze entirely, he stood at hand and waited for the spirit to speak. “Ana Harrani Sa Alaktasa La Tarat.” He raised his eyebrows, “Sumerian? Really? Must we?” The eyes that were not her eyes rolled mightily. “As you wish creature.”
Deacon had been called worse, he stood with his hands held behind his back, his manner his usual insouciance, a small smile hanging on his full mouth. “Now, do you belong to this place or are we going to have an exorcism?” Not Daiyu laughed, her very own gravelly merry cackle, complete with dimples on show. “You know why you’re here. You have been warned. Now is the time. You brought us, a fine Black Pharoah.”
Deacon’s show of ease didn’t crack but, inside he felt the coil of fear. “I won’t take her home.” Not Daiyu giggled, “oh no, she is not for the domain of your brother. Our little sorceress, our conduit, our Black Pharoah is for this world. She will appear as the daughter of the Kingdom of Kush, we tire of the accursed White Man.” Deacon rolled his eyes, he hadn’t missed the loathsome, gibbering fools. “I see. Now, if you don’t mind, we need to get to work if it is to be done before dawn.”
“If you fuck us, we will take her and give her to your brother. You remember how he loves such fine, dark flesh.” Daiyu turned away, blinked and then stood. “Shit man, I’m hungry as fuck. The cute maid lady left us some food. Let’s eat. I gotta tell you about the shit I saw earlier.”
They settled down to still steaming bowls of gumbo, Deacon pecked at the food delicious as it was. He had a long night of work ahead. “D, I gotta ask you something and I want you to think very hard before you answer me. All right?” She nodded and he watched her eyes. They were right, it was a good time for it. After Nanita and the shapeshifter problem, there was a tenebrous darkness in her, something that reached out of her soul and into a darkness few would ever see and remain sane.
“What would you say about a sojourn to my home?” She raised an eyebrow, “you know how I feel about leaving this plane of reality. I ain’t walking the veils with you D. Nah. You remember what happened last time, we almost got lost.” He smiled, shook his head. “Not that. Something else. How you feel when I say, Ana Harrani Sa Alaktasa La Tarat?” He watched her face; any sign of fear and he would figure something else out.
“Darkness, that isn’t from the pit, I feel good. I feel-” her eyes tracked back and forth; he did love to watch her work. The way her brain handled magics of all sorts, even those that only quickened something in her astonished him. “We will be, be transcendental siblings. Darkness and and, and-” her lips moved, trying to shape the word. Deacon’s face remained stony, she had to come to it herself.
When her hand shot out and wrapped around his wrist, her little fingers burned his skin with cold. He could feel it in her, she called it to them. Around them, the aged manse shivered and gibbered, every resident spirit fleeing before the storm. “Yes, say it little sister.” Deacon’s eyes bled to flat avian black, his thin human skin tore and ichor black as the Outer Gods Eyes, ran across her fingers as if it were magnetized.
Stygian power ran between them, thick as the ichor covering her left hand. Her eyes were wide as she tasted and heard the squamous darkness. Power like he hadn’t tasted in the years since he’d left home surged, lightbulbs popped and the house began to fill with darkness from beyond the world. Her other hand wrapped around his other wrist, her fingers dug into the soft human suit and Deacon howled in pleasure and terror.
“I am the Crawling Chaos. I am the Howler in the Darkness. I am the Dark One. I am the Black Pharoah.” Deacon’s voice rose to match hers; she was so beautiful with her dark effulgence. “Tell me your name sister.” Their eyes met, her face split in her trademark dimpled, gap toothed grin, “I am Nyarlathotep.”
Together they howled into the clamorous night they’d brought down upon the old house.
“C’ ah thee ahf’ tharanak n’ghft. Beware the noise of our night. Beware. “
