Release date: July 20, 2021
Subgenre: Steampunk Mystery
About The Sightless City:
Kidnapping.
Enslavement.
Murder.
Those are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to actions some will take to protect their interests in æther-oil, the coveted substance that fuels the city of Huile.
As both veteran and private investigator, Marcel Talwar knows this firsthand, and he likes to think he'd never participate in such things. However, that naïve idea comes to a crashing end when he takes on a new case that quickly shatters his world view.
A trail of evidence points to someone in Marcel's inner circle who's using him as a pawn to conduct grisly experiments-experiments that could lead to genocide.
Now, Marcel is more determined than ever to discover who's pulling the strings to this sinister plot. But the further he gets, the larger the target on his back becomes, and it's not long before Marcel has to ask himself how much and how many he's willing to sacrifice to get to the truth.
Enslavement.
Murder.
Those are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to actions some will take to protect their interests in æther-oil, the coveted substance that fuels the city of Huile.
As both veteran and private investigator, Marcel Talwar knows this firsthand, and he likes to think he'd never participate in such things. However, that naïve idea comes to a crashing end when he takes on a new case that quickly shatters his world view.
A trail of evidence points to someone in Marcel's inner circle who's using him as a pawn to conduct grisly experiments-experiments that could lead to genocide.
Now, Marcel is more determined than ever to discover who's pulling the strings to this sinister plot. But the further he gets, the larger the target on his back becomes, and it's not long before Marcel has to ask himself how much and how many he's willing to sacrifice to get to the truth.
Excerpt:
There was the scent of smoke, the taste of blood in his mouth, an ache throbbing inside his head like a mad prisoner pounding on jail cell walls. Marcel tried to blink, his lids heavy, his vision blurred. Two questions formed slowly in the morass of his mind: where was he, and why did everything hurt?
He leaned on his shoulder. It protested in pain, but it held. He was able to push forward with one leg. His other was limp and heavy, like it was made of metal.
It took Marcel a second to remember that was indeed the reason why. Unfortunately the cogleg refused to move, and as Marcel’s vision cleared he could see the issue. A burnt metal shaft stuck out of his artificial shin, æther-oil dripping down its length.
He noticed a wet spot on his left arm and felt around to discover a small gash. It was painful to touch, but he could still move his arm well enough. He pushed himself a few paces, glancing around, suddenly aware of the smoke, the gunshots, the screams. Nearby lay a large smoldering wreck, some sort of large, treaded vehicle, giant drill bits melted into the asphalt. Beyond the smoking aura, shadowed forms ran to and fro, slashing and firing.
As the world was just starting to coalescence, his memories suddenly crashed in on him.
The charging machine. Verus’s face behind the windshield. Sylvaine jumping out in front. The explosion.
A figure crawled out of the wreckage, knocking back the smoke around him, snarling. It was Verus, though he looked taller than Marcel remembered, fiercer.
The foreman’s one good eye met Marcel’s.
“Talwar,” he snarled. “You rat! You traitorous, taur-fucking… you lying sack of… you shit-brained…” He sputtered, seemingly unable to summon a proper insult, instead starting one, then another, before shaking his head in a confused rage.
Marcel disattached his broken limb and pushed himself over. He patted the floor around him looking for a dropped rifle, or pistol, or his hammer, or anything.
Nothing.
A sudden movement caught Marcel’s gaze. Verus reached up towards his eyepatch, grabbed it in a fist, and tore it off.
Marcel had seen many injuries during his brief military career, amputated limbs, bullet wounds, blade gashes, and even missing eyes. What Verus had resembled none of these. There was no eye behind the patch, nor a glass eye to fill the hole, no healed flesh for where an eye should have been, nor even an open wound.
Verus stared out with an eye socket of nothingness, an empty void where an eye should rightly have been.
The world around him seemed to freeze still as Marcel stared into that abyss. It was massive, too large to fit in the man’s head, a hole open to a darkness wide as the night sky. No, much, much larger than the sky. It was a tenebrous, sprawling cavern of a material that was clearly nothing, yet just as it clearly was gas and liquid simultaneously. It was a bright crimson and a dark black and possessed no color, cold and motionless, as it swirled in frantic burning spirals, shuddering and slithering and perfectly still. Verus’s eye was a window to elsewhere, the furthest elsewhere Marcel could ever have imagined, an empty world of dread. All that Marcel hated, all that he feared, seemed to lie beyond that eye, not distinctly, but as an infinite potentiality, a haze of unbounded malevolence. Everything was lost in that void, whatever might exist beyond that marble sized hole melted away, was too insignificant to consider. He stared at it for seconds and years, a lifetime of no time at all, an endless instant. Some voice, in some distant and lost world that he had once called his mind cried out for him to move, to run, to find a gun, to do something.
But there was no Marcel left to hear it, just an endless nothing.
“Down!”
A bulk smashed into Marcel’s side, and the void snapped away. Marcel blinked, unused to colors and depth.
“Do not look into his eye,” Kayip yelled, from on top of him. “It is demoncraft.” The monk’s face was bruised and bloodied, mask dented slightly. He held Marcel down with one arm, and lifted his sword up with another.
He leaned on his shoulder. It protested in pain, but it held. He was able to push forward with one leg. His other was limp and heavy, like it was made of metal.
It took Marcel a second to remember that was indeed the reason why. Unfortunately the cogleg refused to move, and as Marcel’s vision cleared he could see the issue. A burnt metal shaft stuck out of his artificial shin, æther-oil dripping down its length.
He noticed a wet spot on his left arm and felt around to discover a small gash. It was painful to touch, but he could still move his arm well enough. He pushed himself a few paces, glancing around, suddenly aware of the smoke, the gunshots, the screams. Nearby lay a large smoldering wreck, some sort of large, treaded vehicle, giant drill bits melted into the asphalt. Beyond the smoking aura, shadowed forms ran to and fro, slashing and firing.
As the world was just starting to coalescence, his memories suddenly crashed in on him.
The charging machine. Verus’s face behind the windshield. Sylvaine jumping out in front. The explosion.
A figure crawled out of the wreckage, knocking back the smoke around him, snarling. It was Verus, though he looked taller than Marcel remembered, fiercer.
The foreman’s one good eye met Marcel’s.
“Talwar,” he snarled. “You rat! You traitorous, taur-fucking… you lying sack of… you shit-brained…” He sputtered, seemingly unable to summon a proper insult, instead starting one, then another, before shaking his head in a confused rage.
Marcel disattached his broken limb and pushed himself over. He patted the floor around him looking for a dropped rifle, or pistol, or his hammer, or anything.
Nothing.
A sudden movement caught Marcel’s gaze. Verus reached up towards his eyepatch, grabbed it in a fist, and tore it off.
Marcel had seen many injuries during his brief military career, amputated limbs, bullet wounds, blade gashes, and even missing eyes. What Verus had resembled none of these. There was no eye behind the patch, nor a glass eye to fill the hole, no healed flesh for where an eye should have been, nor even an open wound.
Verus stared out with an eye socket of nothingness, an empty void where an eye should rightly have been.
The world around him seemed to freeze still as Marcel stared into that abyss. It was massive, too large to fit in the man’s head, a hole open to a darkness wide as the night sky. No, much, much larger than the sky. It was a tenebrous, sprawling cavern of a material that was clearly nothing, yet just as it clearly was gas and liquid simultaneously. It was a bright crimson and a dark black and possessed no color, cold and motionless, as it swirled in frantic burning spirals, shuddering and slithering and perfectly still. Verus’s eye was a window to elsewhere, the furthest elsewhere Marcel could ever have imagined, an empty world of dread. All that Marcel hated, all that he feared, seemed to lie beyond that eye, not distinctly, but as an infinite potentiality, a haze of unbounded malevolence. Everything was lost in that void, whatever might exist beyond that marble sized hole melted away, was too insignificant to consider. He stared at it for seconds and years, a lifetime of no time at all, an endless instant. Some voice, in some distant and lost world that he had once called his mind cried out for him to move, to run, to find a gun, to do something.
But there was no Marcel left to hear it, just an endless nothing.
“Down!”
A bulk smashed into Marcel’s side, and the void snapped away. Marcel blinked, unused to colors and depth.
“Do not look into his eye,” Kayip yelled, from on top of him. “It is demoncraft.” The monk’s face was bruised and bloodied, mask dented slightly. He held Marcel down with one arm, and lifted his sword up with another.
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About Noah Lemelson:
Noah Lemelson is a short story writer and novelist who lives in LA with his wife and cat. Lover of Science Fiction, Fantasy, New Weird, and Punk. He received his BA in Biology from the University of Chicago in 2014 and received his MFA in Creative Writing from the California Institute of the Arts in 2020. He has had several of his short stories published in both print and online magazines, such as Allegory, Space Squid and the Outsider’s Within Horror Anthology.
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