In the Court of the Yellow King by Tim Curran, Cody Goodfellow, Gary McMahon, C.J. Henderson, William Meikle, T.E. Grau, Laurel Halbany, Christine Morgan, Edward Morris Read Free Book Online

ever hear this one on Ed Sullivan, or out there in Hollywood where they’ll want him to be in those filthy pictures, instead of the ones we want to make.
    What? Were we starting one? Oh, that old film can on yon shelf. It’s only fifteen minutes of film. Yes, directed by that Edward D. Wood, Jr. Sacrilege that he even wrote THE KING IN YELLOW on that film can in grease-pencil. We don’t speak that morphadite’s name in this house. That is one movie that I will never allow Elvis to make, no matter what the Colonel or that horrible Peter Lorre person ever tell me on the telephone. But Elvis says we keep that reel, so we keep it. At the new place, I expect it will go in the safe.
    If my boy starts letting the fame corrupt his ability to... well, to channel, to be the voice of the King, the Colonel says a two-year hitch in the Army will clear that right up, like it did for him. (Always want to ask him which army, but it’s none of my affair.) Not only that, it will space out record-releases. There will be time.
    There will be time, for these new things. These subliminal messages the psychoanalysts back on your side of the hills are on about, and the back-masking, the multi-track recording, the stereophonic effects to let millions of people receive the Yellow Sign, as it was in Aegyptos, the school of Greece, and is now at the dawn of... this.
    Do you want to see what the King of Rock and Roll is capable of, when he comes through in my boy as votary? It will secure the happiness of the whole world! Look. He comes. Now you see why I arranged the candles the way I did.
    He comes, the way we perform when we have church at home. Behold, the diadem of the Castaigne upon his fevered brow. Behold, his silken vestments. Yes, that’s the same letter on Grand-mamma’s brooch, Mr. Freed. It means ‘CROCUS REX’.
    What?
    Well, what do you mean, ‘mask?’ Elvis ain’t wearing one. That’s just... you see, the crown, and then... Oh, hush. Cassilda, I hear you creeping. You sit and hush, too, and none of your jill-flirting. The Colonel will put a stop to you two again. It’s not Biblical.
    Now hush, and listen.
    Incredibly, the girl began to hum. “Not upon us, King,” she breathed, in a Marilyn Monroe impersonation that raised both my gorge and the hair on the back of my neck simultaneously. “Oh, not upon us....”
    “This is one they don’t get on the a irwaves. ‘Cassilda’s S ong’...”
    A gospel organ seemed to break a low G-chord somewhere. A dazzling goldenrod-colored light filled the living-room, shadowing Elvis in my eyes. He played a four-chord run to tune, to test the edge of the first crooning breath that held something I seemed to have heard before, something indefinable, like the theme of an Arthurian lay, or some quaint verse I’d seen in an old manuscript.
    “Be of good chee r, the sullen month w ill die,
    And a young moon requite us by and by,
    Look how the old one, meagre, bent, and wan,
    With age and Fast, is fainting fr om the sky....”
    The knot in my own disk-jockey throat sounded like a pine knot booming in a fireplace when I tried to swallow it.
    “Crimson n or yellow roses nor
    The savour of the mo unting sea
    Are worth the perfume I adore
    That clings to thee .
    The languid-headed lilies tire,
    The chan geless waters weary me....”
    Cassilda was singing harmony, in a breathy whisper that sounded like Sarah Carter. Maiden and Crone faded from their respective loveseats, and even the spackled ceiling fell away. I raised my seared eyes and saw black stars hanging in a soup of hurricane sky, and the wet winds from the lake of Halì dampened down my very breath, every other voice but His, singing to three moons over a lost city called Carcosa.
    “I ache with passi on’s ire
    For thine a nd thee.
    There are bu t these things in th e world–-
    Thy mouth of fire,
    Thy breasts, th y hands, thy hair upc urled
    And my desire.”
    The King’s voice, and Cassilda’s, rose and fell through that