The Night of the Triffids (2 page)

    That dread of the dark. When the silhouette on the wall can become a cruel, nameless beast that is waiting to pounce and rip at your throat… and that creak of a floorboard - it heralds the arrival of a madman coming through the door, wielding a bloody axe…

    At that moment I realized: those fears don't disappear with age, they merely hibernate. They only need the right environment and back they come, loping like phantom hounds from the recesses of your mind…

    
And the reason I can't see, and the reason I can hear people moving about as if it's broad daylight is because…

    A deep shiver ran through me as the words came slowly yet inexorably from somewhere deep inside my head. I cannot see because:
I am blind.

    As a newly blind man I had none of the self-assurance of one of the old Blind who'd lost their sight when the strange green lights had flooded the night sky three decades ago.

    Instead, I must have made a pathetic, shambling figure as I crossed the bedroom, my hands stretched out in front of me. All I could hear now was the loud pounding of my heart.

    'Mr Hartlow… can you hear me?'

    No response.

    'Mr Hartlow… Mr
Hartlow
!'

    No reply.

    I moved through the door onto the landing, still engulfed by that all-encompassing darkness. Now there was soft carpet beneath my bare feet. I shuffled forward. My fingertips pressed against the rough textures of wood-chip wallpaper, then there was the cool hardness of a door frame, followed by the door itself.

    I opened it, calling, 'Mr Hartlow? Are you there?'

    There was no answering reply. My terrified breathing, which overlaid the
thump-thump-thump
of my heart, was far too loud to allow me to hear any subtler sounds that might be stirring the air.

    I struggled on, opening doors. Calling.

    By now I was becoming disorientated, not even sure in which direction my own room lay.

    
So this is what it is like to be blind,
I told myself. A world of endless night.

    An ominous thought struck me.

    Had those mysterious green lights that had blinded more than ninety per cent of the population all those years ago returned to the skies? That strange cosmic firework display that had entranced so many people on the same night that my father, Bill Masen, had lain in a hospital bed, his eyes bandaged after triffid poison had sprayed ito his face?

    I cast my mind back.

    I'd gone to bed after a pleasant evening listening to a piano recital on Island Radio and chatting with my host, Mr Hartlow. He'd poured me a glass or two of his excellent parsnip brandy to speed me on my way, so to speak. For the life of me, I couldn't recall seeing anything amiss with the night sky.

    Perhaps, however, one didn't even have to see the green lights (if they
were
responsible for my lamentably sightless condition). Maybe they had flitted across the sky during the day, unseen by people going about their work across the island. Was it possible that an
invisible
radiation they emitted was responsible for burning out the optic nerve?

    
Ouch.

    I had just found the stairs by stepping off the end of one. My foot slipped down at least three more before I managed to grab the banister rail. Although I'd stopped myself from pitching forward and breaking my neck, my ankle had taken a painful wrench.

    Yet, in a way, that jab of pain along the arch of my foot did my nerves some good. It encouraged me to stop my imagination roaming restlessly, and fruitlessly, over what might or might not have happened to me, to stop wallowing in self-pity, and to damn well do
something.

    When I reached the level floor below I stopped and listened, the stone slabs of the kitchen chillingly cold beneath my feet.

    No. I could hear nothing.

    Limping slightly from the sprain, I moved across the kitchen, hands outstretched to detect obstructions (and all the time irrationally expecting my fingers to touch the soft hollows and contours of a living human face). I stubbed a toe on a stool leg and for a few seconds the pain made me lose interest in pretty much everything else, provoking from my lips a few words that I would never have uttered in the presence of my mother, unshockable though she was.

    Again I reached a wall. Tentatively, as if the wall might suddenly sprout sharp-toothed mouths to snap at my fingertips (my blindness had certainly unleashed a hundred irrational fancies!) I moved slowly along it. First, I reached a curtained window (the Blind still draw curtains through habit); quickly I tugged open the curtain, vainly hoping light would cascade dazzlingly into the room.

    I sighed.

    Darkness - still darkness.

    I moved on, touching pans hanging from hooks, a row of knives, bunches of dried herbs. Somewhere a clock ticked with a ponderous, doom-laden rhythm.

    Tick… tock… tick… tock…

    An insufferable noise that I hated - again irrationally - with a passion.

    Tick… tock…

    If I should happen to lay my hands on the clock I would smash the damnable thing against the floor.

    'Mr Hartlow?' Then I added, rather illogically, 'Can you hear me?' Because if he had heard, he would have answered, surely.

    Tick… tock…

    'Mr Hartlow?'

    Tick… tock… tick…

    As I reached a doorway my hand brushed against an electric light switch. In a small village like this there would of course, be no electricity. Electricity, after all, was a precious commodity reserved for workshops, hospitals, clinics, communications - and for laboratories like my father's. Nevertheless, I gripped the switch eagerly. The thing obviously hadn't been used for decades; metal contacts grated across an accumulation of grit as it clicked downward.

    No light.

    With the rational part of my mind I had expected none. But a tormenting voice inside my head sang out loud and clear that light - lots and lots of lovely brilliant light - had cascaded from the bulb to flood the kitchen.
But you can't see it, because you really are blind, David Masen… sightless as any three blind mice… three blind mice running after the farmer's wife…

    
Stop that,
I told myself sharply, fighting down the wave of panic rolling dangerously through me.
Stop that at once.

    Once more I fumbled my way across the walls. Now there were worktops.

    A sink. Cooker.

    More cupboards, with plates from-

    I stopped.

    A cooker?

    Quickly, I groped back through the cloaking darkness until I found the burners and the iron stands on which to set the pans. There I could feel the round gas-control knobs, hard beneath my anxious, searching fingers.

    Gas. Yes -
yes
.

    I fumbled for a lighter that must, I thought, be close by.

    After a few moments' fruitless search I began cursing - an equally fruitless occupation.

    I realized too that there must be candles and lamps nearby. Not for Mr Hartlow's use, of course, but for any sighted guests he might entertain.

    But, for me, these might as well have been hidden on the dark side of the Moon as I groped sightlessly through what seemed to be endless racks of plates, cutlery and vegetables in baskets. A candle might have been right there in front of me, only I couldn't, for the life of me, find it.

    As it was, my characteristic impatience rescued my ailing sanity.

    I found the cooker again.

    Or rather, I located it - by blindly putting my hand in the hot bacon grease in the frying pan. I turned the knobs at the front of the cooker, instantly hearing the methane as it hissed odourlessly from the burners.

    Right, this was crude… but if it worked… well, that would be just tickety-boo by me.

    I reached out again to the worktops. My fingers found a pan - one that was satisfyingly heavy - and picked it up. Then, with the gas hissing from the cooker vents, I brought the pan down hard against the iron stands.

    The impact clanged mightily.

    I struck the top of the cooker again.

    And again the metallic clang rang loud in my ears.

    Then, at the third attempt - this time swinging downwards with all my might, shattering the wooden pan handle - my plan worked.

    The two metal surfaces crashing together produced a single spark.

    With a loud pop, followed by a
whoosh,
a ball of flame blossomed under my nose.

    I reeled back from the smarting rush of heat, the smell of singeing telling me that I'd been too slow to save my eyebrows.

    But I didn't care. I didn't care the tiniest bit. Because something wonderful had happened.

    I could see.

    I saw in perfect detail that brief blossom of orange and yellow fire. Within a moment it had died back to four discs of blue flame where the gas jets burned from their vents.

    They were anything but bright. Yet they cast a faint bluish light across the kitchen, revealing the stairs, table, radio - and here were Mr Hartlow's pipe and tobacco pouch on a shelf by the window.

    And, more importantly, I could see on the wall the clock from which issued those lugubrious ticks and tocks. For a second I thought my eyes really were playing tricks.

    The clock, if it was right, told me it was ten minutes past nine o'clock.

    I looked outside.

    That was the moment when I realized that either I had in some way gone spectacularly mad and was imagining all this - or that it really was the end of the world. For all I could see beyond the window was absolute darkness. That tormenting voice of unreason wasted no time before murmuring: 'You're right, David Masen. The sun is dead. And this is the beginning of everlasting night.'

    

    

    

    WHAT should have been giddy relief at being able to see again gave way immediately to a sheer, stunned perplexity.

    This was a May morning after nine o'clock. The village and surrounding fields should be awash with daylight. Instead there was only that velvet black. So, where had the sun gone?

    The idea that it had simply just not risen hurtled across my brain. Could it be that during the night some disaster of cosmic proportions had knocked the Earth from its orbit? Or that the Earth had stopped revolving and from now on would present the same face to the sun in the same way that the Moon eternally presented only one side to the Earth?

    But that was too fantastic. A disaster of those proportions, such as a comet plunging into our planet at thousands of miles an hour, would have caused tidal waves, earthquakes, continent-shattering explosions.

    But here on the Isle of Wight everything was quiet, peaceful as a summer's morning should be.

    My mind was a confused whirl. Because I remembered waking to hear people starting their working day as if nothing was amiss. But why had they gone about their business as if everything was normal? As if the world hadn't gone topsy-turvy? And hadn't been left in total darkness?

    The resoundingly simple answer to that, I realized, was that Bytewater was a community of the blind. How could they know there was no light? After all, darkness doesn't impress itself against your skin; it can't be smelled, can't be tasted. If a man is blind there's no way he can tell the difference between light and dark. Unless, that is, he's standing in sunlight strong enough to warm his skin. Instead he must rely on the chiming of clocks and the word of the sighted.

    So the Blind of Bytewater had simply woken into total darkness, then unwittingly started the day, believing it to be like any other.

    After staring through the window out into the dark for a full three minutes I shook my head. I had to do something; I couldn't wait in the simple hope that the sun would suddenly return in a blaze of glory. The first obvious move was to put some clothes on.

    Now, there was no difficulty at all in finding a candle. And that light - that beautiful, wonderful light! - a miracle in the darkness, lit my way back to the bedroom.

    Once dressed, I made a quick recce of the house. No Mr Hartlow to be seen. Perhaps he'd gone to feed his rabbits. He must have thought me an Idle Jack for snoozing away the morning while others worked.

    Exchanging the candle for a brighter oil lantern, I left the cottage, carefully closing the door behind me, mindful that my host wouldn't thank me for letting every cat in the neighbourhood into his kitchen. Once I'd done that, I set off along the road that led inland.

    The lamp cast a yellow smudge in front of me; nothing more than a speck of light in this all-encompassing darkness. But I remember thinking then that this postponement of the dawn could be nothing more than a freakish pall of cloud that had temporarily blotted out the sun, and that it should pass soon enough.

    I paused every so often to raise the lamp, looking for one of the Blind who might be tending his or her cattle in a field, still oblivious to the dark.

    I saw no one.

    At the edge of the road were the white-painted guide rails that the Blind villagers would follow. The rails were made of wood and ran at waist height. Here and there, signs in Braille directed the Blind to turn right or left to reach a particular cottage, the inn, or the Mother House. The Blind would always keep the guide rail to their left, so avoiding colliding head-on with a neighbour. But, in fact, they were so well adapted to their condition that they moved briskly around their territories with hardly as much as a fingertip brush of the rail.