The Eldritch Coffees of Sam

I'll try to gather my thoughts about me before my mind falls into the brief mercy of slumber. Mine is a tale of Sam, the fabled Barista of the Blasted Heath, who turns out endless lattes to the tuneless intonations of an unseen piper, and the horror that befell me when I visited his lair.
It seems so far in the distant past that I was a callow, foolish youth, yet reason tells me it was a mere three years ago. I was born in a wooded area, dotted with dappled meadows and farmhouses whose inhabitants spoke only in whispers of the dark things that lay beyond the edge of the forest. Despite their warnings, the elders could not quiet my infernal curiosity, the dark desires that burned within my heart to investigate - perhaps conquer! - the fabled, foresaken Heath.

One day only a week after I had turned twenty-one I set out on one of my usual rambling journeys near the edge of the wood. I had not yet developed the courage, or foolhardiness, which would cause me to venture out onto the Heath itself. Instead I stood on the rich soil of the wood and gazed onto the Heath, simultaneously repelled by its desolation and drawn in by its otherworldly strangeness. Suddenly the cheerful sound of the meadowlarks died away, and I could here only an infernal hissing moan. Later, I would learn that it was the sound of what Sam called, in his swarthy Slavic accent, a milk-steaming machine. Upon first hearing it, I was stricken dumb by the nameless terror.

The sound gave way all too swiftly to the second sensation of that weird afternoon, my first contact with the aroma of fresh-roasted Sumatra. The deathly-black beans had been harvested under the uncaring sun of far-off islands, and brought to my very doorstep on creaking barques manned by lean, hunted sailors. It was my good fortune, that day, to be unable to see the gaunt, stooped figure of Sam himself, for the grey haze of caffeine vapors were too thick for my poor eyes to penetrate.

My fortune did not last. How, O how was I to resist the call of the latte, of the mocha, of the espresso? Not even at night, far from the Heath, wrapped in my too-thin blanket, could I free myself from the heady fumes of Sam's bar. The hiss of the steaming machine rubbed my nerves raw and kept my eyes open like a doorless cellar. I tried to console myself with liquor, with light music, with nonsensical poetry, but nothing could free my mind from this steaming black prison. I returned again and again, against my better judgement and the urgent words of the elders, trying to catch a glimpse of the author of these horrors - and yet fearing that I might.

It is hard to believe now, but at the time I was not aware of my fate. How could I not have known that dabbling with the weirdness of the Heath would lead me to ruin? Now, not even knowing the answer could console me. After many months of coy wanderings on early afternoons, once during a particularly sleepless night the idea struck me to visit the Heath once again.

It was a moonless night. I brought with me an electrical torch, thinking that if I encountered anything threatening I could simply extinguish the torch and thus disappear. My feet took me along the paths I had followed so many times, never once tripping or stumbling. In the dead of night, the boundary of the woods did not appear to be so forbidding. I took my first few steps onto the Heath, and breathed a sigh of relief when nothing molested me.

Such a naive sigh! As if a few steps out of the security of my forest proved anything about my ability to defend myself in that cheerless, insane place! With this callow vigor flowing through my poor veins, I proceeded further on the heath with my torch in my pocket. At first, the ground felt fairly normal, but as I proceeded my feet began to sink into the peat. Still, I was not deterred. The wind had abandoned its usual crass icyness, and died down to a mere breath. I walked on with a childlike determination on my brow.

Tonight, I would see the bar of Sam. It mattered not if it were occupied. I wanted to feel the grounds in my hand - to touch a cup which had held the unspeakable liquid so many times over the countless years. If I could do this, I reasoned, I could return to sleep, and normalcy, and some shred of sanity.

I saw the bar. It was an old-fashioned tumble-down shack of the kind a peat-cutter might rest his old bones in. Still, I knew it was the epicenter of the horrors. I moved toward it, steadfast, and woefully ignorant. The door was not locked. Curse that doorknob! Curse that hand that had left it unlocked!

What happened next I cannot and must not remember. I only know that they found me at the edge of the wood three days later, deathly mute and almost dead of exposure, with my pockets full of coffee grounds and a milk-moustache upon my quivering visage. Dr. Zann pronounced me beyond his power to help, and prayed that I should recover of my own inner strength.

Have I made such a recovery? I do not know. I can walk and speak and, sometimes, eat. I can write these words. But it is a rare night that passes without some dream of the hissing machine, or the smell (dare I say - the taste?) of that beverage, leaving me bolt-upright and damp on my bed. My cat Little Pancho shuns me after dark now; I can no longer rely on his lazy form to comfort my tired shins. My days are spent in fear that I will yet again cross paths with the dreaded Sam and his dark tonics.