She crossed into the planet. The air here was fetid and damp, curling through the sky in pylons of invisible mist, wet winds. It was thick in her mouth and thick in her lungs, and no matter what she did she smelled molds and spores as she crossed further along the ground, away from the tiny, distant opening of nothingness that was the stage.

The two black stars above, empty voids with a ring around them that distorted the darkling brown-yellow sky, sat high amidst the soaring black towers of the encroaching alien cityscape. Every star in the sky was black; freckles on the skin, seeds in the meat of the fruit, flickings of dark acrylic on a canary canvas. They twinkled.

As she crept forward, the desert beneath her shoes padded down soundlessly. Although she didn’t bend down and examine, she couldn’t tell if the world was cloaked in a blanket of yellow dust, or yellow snow. It looked like neither, but both, too. She traveled over it, stomping it down, leaving footsteps in her wake as she approached the towers and buildings and streets.

They mocked the layout of Earth’s cities. They mimicked the scale, the roads, the buildings, but had fallen into such an alien disfigurement that it somehow also looked like nothing real at all. Buildings had no doors, no windows, and resembled spiraling cones or wild, misshapen limbs. She gripped her copy of the book, walking around these outskirts buildings. They hummed low, emitting electro-magnetic disturbance… like flesh-minds of a semi-organic, antediluvian server room. She dare not touch one.

The further into the city she got, the stranger things became. She had wondered where the citizens of this place could possibly be, and nearly jumped out of her skin when she saw one. A sheep—wool a lemony hue, eye sockets softened over with fur and skin—crawled out of a soggy hole in the cracked sandstone street, heaving without opening its mouth. And then another. And another. And as she backed away from the hole, heading down another intersection of city blocks, she witnessed sheep after sheep after sheep, crowding in hordes.

She turned and jogged away. For they were starting to get so numerous that their collective smell, and the sight of them all herded in a great pile, drove up her anxieties.

But the further she explored, the further from sanity this golden world traveled. Buildings melted down to the streets in droplets and splatters, painting black on the yellow roads. She saw more sheep, some of them small enough to fit in the palm of her hand, others so big they had gotten stuck between buildings—and could only watch with their eyeless faces as she walked on by. Some had long since died, leaving gargantuan skeletons lodged in place, skulls having long since fallen from the neck of their spine. It was here in which she saw that the sheep truly did have sockets for their eyes. But the circumstances of their birth prevented them from seeing.

The inclines, slopes, hills and cliffs twisted into a layout of unreality. She walked up one and could see herself in the distance, traveling down another. But when she looked back around, the place she’d come from had changed into unrecognizability. Buildings here crowded and grew from one another like tumors, covered in breathing, hole-filled fungi—some buildings were squat and round, or tall and thin, or squat and thin, or tall and round—be it mosque, church, shrine or temple. Keep or castle, house or home. It blended together, doors and windows finally appearing, but not keeping to any one culture or theme or style or system. But all of it, all of it, boiled and baked into a toxic mix of black and brown and gold and yellow.

She started to feel a deep sense of dread. As she stood on a hill, she could see that the city continued to spiral miles and miles and miles away. Every step seemed to make no progress.

Soon, she began to run. And perhaps she was making progress, for now she saw the buildings and landscape collide and mix in real time. The broken mirror fragments of a terrible dream, the false computing of a digital glitch. They flickered far away from her, and came back in a blink, warping into horrible impossibilities, tangled non-Euclidean geometry that pooled into dizzying densities. They phased into her, causing a great deal of panic—but then zapped away, pulled into unearthly shapes by an unknown force. She hadn’t felt their touch.

Why had she come here? Why had she stepped onto that stage?

Why—

She turned a corner, and was met with a face.

She fell on her rear in a burst of fright, as buildings and towers collided soundlessly in the void around. But here, down this alley, were people. Naked, skin yellow, merged into the walls, and…

The face she’d seen was a man’s. His face was strained, mouth pried open—tiny versions of himself were crawling out of it, crawling down his body, and biting holes into his legs, his arms, his belly—burrowing back inside.

Past him was a woman. Lying on her shoulders, lower body up in the air with her legs spread uncomfortably far. A head appeared, slowly bulging from her birth canal. Then fingers, which stretched out beside the head, then a hand, then an adult arm. This new woman opened her mouth, as if to scream. She was a mirror image of her “mother.”

She climbed through, tearing the first girl in two from the groin up—it was slow. Arduous. But inside this body there were no bones or flesh. Only spongy, yellow holes, opening and closing en masse. A breathing honeycomb.

The shreds left behind melted down, and seeped into the ground. The woman newly birthed put her rear end to the wall, opened her legs, and the process began again.

Across the alley, a little boy took his head with both hands and twisted it around—around—around—until it snapped off, revealing a stick-like spine from a wet, leathery neck stump. The head crumbled to sand in his hands. But on his exposed spine, a new head began to form. Inflating, like a balloon. She crossed into the alley and watched, as little pea-like eyes formed on his tiny yellow face. A slit for a mouth took shape below them, and two holes for nostrils took shape above that, all of it quickly expanding into his head once more.

These people went on and on and on. Vomiting themselves, defecating themselves, urinating themselves, conceiving themselves, birthing themselves, building themselves, destroying themselves. As she walked, they no longer adhered to the walls of the alley building… they had become the walls, stretching endlessly to the sky in a pulsating, yellow mass of limb and torso, head and hand. The further they were from where she stood, the more they looked like banana slugs in a writhing blanket. The closer, the more they looked like decomposed, alien mannequins.

The alley twisted and turned, but the bodies closed in, narrowing her path. They had started making noises, gasps and moans. She began to feel them brushing against her, and as they repeated their grotesque patterns they could only stare. As if she could save them somehow. But… but…

What is my name?

She had forgotten.

In this midst of this monstrous gale, a sweeping night terror… she’d well and truly forgotten.

So she didn’t know why she kept walking, over this unearthly dust and snow. She just put one foot in front of the other, and didn’t look back.

Eventually she saw a large space of land beyond the alley. As she moved closer, she could see something dark, too. Like a body of water, and buildings surrounding it.

When she finally poked through, she came to a lake, sitting in the middle of the city. Flanked on all of its sides with buildings and alleys, exactly the same as the one in which she’d traveled. Groupings of writhing yellow bodies in masses. To the clouds.

The lake’s shore held a cemetery, all around it. Gravestones and crosses, mausoleums, small churchyards and churches too. Acid-yellow dust devils; just tiny vortexes, appeared frequently. Spinning the sandy ground into the air, and then vanishing as soon as they’d appeared. The mounds of soil atop many a grave were either raised or moving. Things wanted to get out.

One of the graves near her burst open. A yellow hand rose from the debris of the mound, and out crawled a man. Nude as all the rest, eyeing her—yet he dragged himself. For a clone of he, fused by the belly and fit to burst from the very base of the crawling man’s spine, grew with fungal rapidity. Weighing the crawling man down.

When this new man was fully born, the older one fell to the dust below, merging with it. Then this man began the cycle too, crawling as another attempted birth from his tailbone.

As he made his way forward, she watched it all happen again.

The creature—now on its third life—merged with the bodies on the walls.

She clutched her book, and walked toward the lake. The two suns blazed above it, casting down tiny sliver shadows of noon. Yet somehow these shadows lengthened, reflecting a wanton confusion and indecisiveness and fear. Flickering with the rabid energy of unborn thoughts.

The lake was endlessly black. As she approached the shore, she could see the coastline drop off almost instantly after merging with the water, in a deep dark hole of nothingness. It looked hardly different from the twin stars above.

For a while, she knew not what to do. She stayed near the shore, watching as yellow people emerged from their tombs and became one with the very cityscape. As she wandered, she peeked into these empty tombs…

…and found light peeking back. Light that led to homes and houses, streets and roads… all unlike this Dim Carcosa. For they were not yellow, nor caught in a dreamlike world of anti-logic. These roads were pavement, these houses wood. Trees and seas and cows and plows, cars and oceans and bustling commotions. The yellow she could see was only the blonde of someone’s hair, or the yellow of a school bus, or wherever the color naturally needed to be. For there was also gray, and red, and blue, green orange purple pink brown black white—

And she remembered her name. She remembered it, looking into these hundreds of empty graves, down at the world she’d left behind, all just to dance the monster mash in this play of madness. The snippets of Earth she could see were sometimes far in the past, horse drawn buggies instead of buses—swords instead of rifles—bonnets and top hats instead of baseball caps and plastic sunglasses—she saw no visions of anytime after her own.

Then, she heard them.

The many horrors of Windle Rock had followed her.

She dare not turn around, but their growling and breathing spilled from each alley behind. Maimed yellow bodies fell to the ground beside her as beings too big to fit through these alleys pushed through, knocking brainless victims off the sides of the buildings.

What do I do? What do I do?

Abby looked around. The lake was large…

She ran. Between headstones, over graves, behind a mausoleum, past a gargoyle monument.

“How you doin’?” the gargoyle said to her. “Name’s Guy.”

She screamed, and kept going. He was trying to talk to her, but she soon heard him screaming as she sped off, the horrors hot on her trail. She heard the cracking of stone… and she assumed she heard him fall into an open grave, screaming, screaming…

She saw no way out. Go down an alley and back into the ever-changing city, and then what?

Then, she realized, she was holding—

She opened her book. Her book—The King in Yellow.

First page, the title, the author—written in a language she did not understand, and unlike any Earthen language she’d even seen.

And It that feeds—the beast behind her—screamed horrid, sending a shattering skyquake into the air of Dim Carcosa.

It doesn’t like this book, she knew. But why?

She turned the page, nearly stepping into an open grave. And read:

Along the shore the cloud waves break,

The twin suns sink behind 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.

This doesn’t help me at all!

Or… does it?

For then, she turned the page.

Into the dark the ripples bleak,

The sounds all quiet that we seek,

Drowning black in Deep Carcosa.

And up above the strange suns rise,

And with strange aeons, death may die,

An ode to breath in Dark Carcosa.

Wait a minute…

The leaders seek to lead the sheep,

And sink beneath the coral reef,

Of pond and pool in Dim Carcosa.

For hath be that the wake has found,

In freezing currents underground,

Shepherds soak in—

She didn’t read the last two words. She knew what needed to be done.

Stopping with a quick jut, the horrors catching up—she dove into the Lake of Hali, and sunk. For no matter how hard she tried to swim, there was no resistance against her limbs and body—as if she was not submerged at all. And she sunk so quickly it was like falling, feeling no traits of water, not even the need to hold her breath.

She tumbled abound, into the blackness of the lake. She did pass a coral-reef of sorts. Just skulls and antlers and hands and bones, all clumped into the shape of an undersea forest.

But soon, she had come to the end of the lake. The bottom. And—

Bursting through it, as if truly breaking water, she bounded up into the heavens. Toward the black suns, the yellow cosmos, the black stars. This time it faded into a view of space she could almost plead familiar. Saturn and Jupiter and other planets that should be nowhere near that close to one another swam into view, beside a pink one with ten rings, a green one with oceans and two crisscrossing rings, moons and moons and moons, and behind it all a black hole of violent proportions.

She stood on nothing. Yes, this was the vacuum of space, but she was not floating or weightless. Her platform, her floor, whatever it was… it could not be seen. And like the Lake of Hali, wherein behind the double stars rise, she need not breathe.

A shape emerged from the cosmos ahead. Small at first… it grew into a large throne. And from it came a wave of eldritch… soul, almost. The same aura emitting from the It that feeds, except… wiser. Smarter. Less imbued with hunger and menace, but somehow far more dangerous. Opposing the power of It that feeds, in a way. Like a nemesis, but a brother all the same.

Sitting on this throne was a vaguely humanoid being, dressed in the tatters of a flowing, yellow cloak. It was hooded, darkness obscuring its would-be face. A pendant hung from its neck, bearing, a triple loop. Exactly the same as the Yellow Sign, which she had seen before coming here… and the same as on the cover of her book.

Atop this figure’s hooded head was a crown of thorns, but the brambles pointed up, and all of them so sharp and so tall they could be as long as a man’s arm, and more than perfect for stabbing one. The figure had no legs or arms of its own, and when it spoke, it spoke in a hundred voices.

You finally came, it said.

Abby stood silently—

And then, around her, she saw.

Hundreds of people.

Thousands.

People she’d never met, never knew.

A girl of middle school age, with a tattered white hoodie, dishwater blonde hair, plastic headphones around her neck, and a sword. A young woman closer to Abby’s age, short black hair, dressed in a striped sweater. A dark haired, dark eyed woman in a blue, wizard-like dress, a full-moon hairpin stuck in her bun. A man in black overalls and a black trench coat, wearing a frightening metal mask that covered his entire face—large steel canisters bolted to a sling around his back. Steam hissed away in wisps, spewing from his grille and nozzle mouth.

More of them. A blonde woman with golden eyes, in a toga of sorts, bearing anklets and bracelets and a necklace of a coppery gold chain—

A man in a blue and yellow jester costume—

And more, and more, and more—

She saw so many historical figures it was hard to keep track. Napoleon. Lincoln. Churchill. Khan. An Egyptian pharaoh, a Roman emperor, an African warlord, a Native American chief. A president, a prime minister, a governor, a shepherd. Cavemen and hunter-gatherers, politicians and soldiers.

And more, and more, and more.

She viewed these people in an eyeblink. For it took but two, and they were gone. Yet somehow Abby knew.

All of these people had, at one point, come to see The King in Yellow.

Was it that they, too, crossed through Carcosa?

The King in Yellow stood from his throne. He hovered across the boundless cosmic floor, toward her. He stopped, looked at her hand.

You kept my book safe… Might I have it back, young spawn?

She handed it to him.

He took it with no arms. For the book simply floated up between them, and slowly burrowed into the many folds of his cloak. He faced her again. Even up close, she could not see his face in that shrouding darkness.

Shall we dance? He asked.

“You called to me,” she said.

He did not reply.

“You showed me your sign. But—but before that—you showed me… everything. All those plays, in the theater—”

Was that me? Or was that you?

Abby pursed her lips. “The last is me. I’m the last play. The last story.”

The last Horror of Windle Rock, said the King in Yellow.

Abby struggled to find words. “They hunted me down. All of those… those monsters. And horrible things. So many of them.” She felt frustrated tears blink into the corners of her eyes. “Why me?”

The King slowly backed up, toward his throne. Why not you?

“Why not? Why not? Because—because I already have tons of stuff to deal with! I have student loan debt, and car insurance, and a phone bill, and—and—”

The King in Yellow watched her, sitting again on his throne.

“—and I shouldn’t have to deal with monsters, and terrifying thought experiments, and specters, and phantoms, and—”

Unfortunately, young spawn, he interrupted, they are there. They exist. And they do not care about your demons.

She fell to the nothingness floor, and bashed her fists against it. “I wish they didn’t exist. I wish they didn’t.”

The King in Yellow stood in place.

“They just… they’ll keep coming, won’t they?”

You have dealt with one, said The King.

“ISN’T THAT ENOUGH?!” She stood. “There’s dozens! Hundreds! Thousands, probably! Why should I have to deal with them all? I… I can’t.”

The King in Yellow made no physical expression, or response.

Abby’s head felt fit to burst. What was she supposed to do? She was just one person. All the monsters, the horrors, they far outnumbered her. Though she’d beaten one, it seemed that ten more had come out of the woodwork. Would that trend continue? Would it compound? If she beat another, would she then suffer ten times again…?

And what would it take? A man could be beaten with a stapler. But a reality altering A.I.…? Or a reality altering demon…?

Why had she seen all those people?

“Did everyone who… came to you before,” Abby asked, “did they… have monsters… too?”

The King in Yellow took some time before responding. Some of them, he finally said. Others were monsters themselves. For as often as the moon can be seen in the sky, it takes a monster to be a shepherd.

A shepherd.

A leader.

“Getting rid of the man was pointless,” Abby whined. “Because the Basilisk, or the Glider, or any number of other things still exist. And they could win. They could be the one that kills me.”

You are very right, young spawn, said The King in Yellow. And more monsters will keep coming. They won’t ever be gone forever. But a shepherd keeps herding, regardless of wolves outside the fence. And they slay each wolf that dare hop it…

“How?”

How do they keep going? How does someone who rises above monsters and herds their sheep keep fighting in the face of endless suffering?

But in asking such a question, Abby knew.

The answer was simple. It took courage. It took strength, and stamina. A leader was someone who sacrificed everything to change the world around them, even if they fell, or failed. Which led Abby to only one conclusion:

“I don’t want to be a leader,” she said. “I don’t want to deal with these problems. I don’t want to be a part of it. I want… someone else to deal with it all…”

The King in Yellow stood. Then let it be so.

The sky around them quaked. Each of the planets and stars began to spin. Abby looked around, then down—

And she could see past the Lake of Hali. In Carcosa’s many open graves, to times long since passed, or only yesterday.

It that Feeds fell into one of the open graves first.

Abby watched in horror—as if she was back in the theater—

Those children were eaten, pulled from their concrete rooms. And then, the doctors, the cultists—they fell victim too.

Then it was the souls of the ship—

And she watched them eating their poisoned meals, choking, vomiting, soiling themselves in a mass of anguish and panic, blowing up like balloons, dying like birds out of the sky.

And then the dark revenant fell into a grave, down into an Irish wood—

A helpless little girl awaited its hunger.

The King in Yellow watched a twisted, hateful shadow fall into the bedroom of an old man—

The blue-faced monstrosity found its way into the dog-owner’s house, through the garage doggy door, then the laundry room—

“Stop!” she shouted. “Stop!”

But you wanted this, said The King in Yellow. They will be dealt with by someone else.

The horde of fish men fell into a grave as one writhing ball, down from the sky above the sea. Like a comet. Their collective forehead anglers glowed a horribly sickly, horribly wan, purplish white.

“Stop this! I didn’t mean it! I take it back!”

Oh, but young spawn, you have already made your decision, said The King in Yellow, and this is the price of looking away.

Like a swarm of birds, of bats, the final horror of Windle Rock gathered in the cosmos around them, and flew down into the final open grave. Winged horrors, thousands of them… so numerous they blocked all light…

And in that last burst, she realized something about one of the many horrors her friend had told her about. A horror that could traverse time itself, heading back into the past, and harming innocent people simply because they knew…

She pondered something. Just for a moment. The “nature of a monster,” and what it meant to be one.

And then Abby watched the winged horrors gyrate, flying down in a wobbling vortex. She could do no more. For they went through, and…

…

Over Windle Rock, the waters roiled with lush froth, sea foam of green and white and murky brown lapping up against the stone face of Captain Claiken’s lighthouse island…