Beast (10 page)

but how am i going to find the cat. where do i go how can i possibly know anything here. when i can just see my hand how could i possibly walk without stumbling without becoming lost forever if i walk out there surely i can never come back surely i will never find my way back to this place. but what do i have here
anyway a broken window an empty matchbox a cold fire no food. the cloud is in the house now. i am going to walk and i am going to find it.

perhaps i have been standing here for an hour.

i can wait as long as i need to wait i can wait here the cloud moves around me as if it is exploring me sniffing me out becoming comfortable with my presence on these old stones. i feel like i have been standing on these old stones forever.

and there it is. i knew it would come there is the cry through the cloud there is the call on the moorland slopes. the sound of the cat high above me.

there it is again the long high keening of the creature. where is it coming from somewhere to the south i think. i wait perhaps another three minutes or four there it is again the long high call as soon as it begins i uproot myself from the stone and i walk towards it. i walk into the cloud until i am brought up against the drystone wall and i feel my way along to the right until i come to the wooden gate. i unlatch it and go through it i don’t bother to close it behind me it is too late for that. i walk down the track as fast as i can i can see enough of the track in front of me to keep moving. i hear the noise again it is still ahead of me but it is very distant. i come down to the stream and i splash
through it the water is icy on my ankles and my calves. i open my mouth i lie down in the stream and let it flow over me and let it flow through me until i am ice. i keep walking until the track turns left i know where i am the track here heads down to the valley but i’m not going that way i am sure the noise came from ahead of me from up on the tops. i strike out on a slight thin path through the heather if the cloud weren’t down i could follow this path easily in the cloud i can only see heather a few yards in front of me all around me a circle of heather pink and purple flowers with tiny droplets of water on them. my wet trousers push through the heather. everything is silent now i think i am still heading towards the sound but the cat never stays still it never stays anywhere it is never where you expect it to be. it is ridiculous to follow the sound it is ridiculous to look for it i could walk this way for ever but it is too late now to stay at home.

in a building she stands before me and there is cloud between us. well she says i suppose you must do what you need to. i know what you think i say i know how it sounds i know god is dead i know he has been killed with everything else. i know all the parts have been taken out and are lying around on the carpet and now we are all free to be unhappy alone i know there is
nothing holy now. perhaps i am circling it because it looks stupid to the people who take everything apart but i think there are things deep in some people which won’t be taken apart i think that none of the things which make us move in the world can be pictured. the thin track through the heather is taking me upwards now up onto the slopes that lead to the shoulders of the moor. it must be ten minutes twenty maybe thirty since i heard it i think i am still heading in a straight line. the cloud takes away everything you think you know about where you are. well you do what you must do she says you go if you must but if you do not come back soon we will learn to live without you and you will lose her and me you will lose both of us forever. i hate her sometimes she sees through me she gives me no room at all christ her love fills me with shame. christ’s trouble is that he’s all human. where are the bears running through his bloodstream where is the sky and the water in him. he’s all about the people you are god’s chosen make the earth yours subdue it until it squeals what is underneath this what is beneath the waters. a man clad in gold stands in a wood and stares at me while strange birds wheel all around him. if you stare into the cloud long enough you can see shapes faces times a silent hunt riding above you fingers and
claws the moving lips of lovers boats heading out to sea feathers and shells bees and blades vines and creepers growing from the sockets and the openings. it rises from the ground and sings to me and falls back under. i could walk this way forever.

i keep walking up my boots laced tight my feet and ankles cold and wet the heather rasping against my trousers at every step. i walk on and the silence and the stillness of this cloud and its closeness makes it all feel as if i am nowhere at all. i could walk this way forever i don’t suppose anybody else would ever see me at all.

there is the sound again ahead of me and to my left and still far away i wonder if it is further now. i begin to walk faster one foot in front of the other up the tiny track through the heather and i keep walking and then suddenly the track ends and i step out onto a road. it is solid asphalt it stretches to my left and to my right off into the cloud there are no markings on the road and there is no traffic. i step out onto the centre of the road where now which way now. i decide to walk to the left i walk along the edge of the road and the sensation of the solidity the managed flatness under my feet is strange to me. i can’t hear the cat. i wonder what to do i keep walking will i find the track to the house again now in this cloud how will i find it. then in front of me
i see something rising in front of me on the other side of the road something is looming out of the cloud. i keep walking slowly towards it. it is a great rectangular shape as i move closer i can make out windows chimneys outbuildings.

it is a grey stone building it has an empty stretch of asphalt to its left with giant concrete cubes blocking the entranceway. there are grey metal shutters all over the windows with small round holes in them and the door is barred and padlocked i walk up to the door and rest my hand on the cold metal i make my way all around the building to the back following the walls with my hands in the cloud. there are some old sheds there and a barn with an arched doorway and a small garden with picnic tables. everything is weedy and overgrown. someone has forced the metal shutters off one of the ground floor windows here i’m able to push open the window and put my head inside. it smells of must and feathers shall i should i yes it is impossible not to accept this invitation.

i squeeze my way through the half open window into the inside of the building. i drop to the floor in a pile of pigeon shit there are spiders in the corners it is a tiny dank room i have landed in but there is a door to a bigger one. i walk through the door there are
tables and chairs and a bar with handpumps there are old barrels lying in the corners it is dark but hundreds of pinpricks of light are coming in through the grey metal shutters on the windows they are like eyes the pinpricks of light are like yellow eyes looking at me from the outside. i should not be in here i can’t look at the eyes i can’t look at the shafts of light coming through they are like lasers they come through the windows and they land on me and each one burns me like acid. no this is terrible it should not be like this nobody told me about this. i need to find a place where the eyes of light will not land on me i run and crouch down behind the bar where it is dark there are plastic ashtrays scattered around on the floor and transparent pipes that come down from the pumps on the bar and disappear into the floorboards there is a brown plastic crate of empty beer bottles beside me. the light can’t get me here the eyes cannot see me. but it is too much for me to be in here how will i get away from this place if i stand up the eyes will see me but then i wanted the eyes to see me that was what i wanted wasn’t it it is so confusing in the cloud. i decide to make a break for it i hold my breath and then i scuttle on my hands and knees like a giant cockroach from the bar into the back room where the shafts of light from the metal shutters 
cannot come i almost trip over my own hands i think i feel one of them touching my skin on the way but it’s fine. i am fine. i reach the small dank room and i run now to the window and i force myself back up and out through the crack into the curling cloud.

outside everything is clearer even in the cloud. that was a strange thing for me to do climbing into old buildings like that i am hunting here i am on a hunt what would i be doing in a building like that i was asking for it it serves me right really. i go into the garden and sit down on one of the picnic benches which creaks beneath me it is covered in beige and green lichens there is a rectangular green plastic ashtray in the middle of the table in which wet cigarette butts float in a pool of dark brown water i pick one up and sniff it i inhale the smell of the tobacco it is delicious. i wish i had a lighter here i wish i had some matches i would love a cigarette i am rolling a cigarette at a bus stop golden virginia i only buy small packs because i’m not really a smoker i take out a green paper and a pinch of tobacco and i pull the tobacco apart and spread it out evenly and then i begin to roll the paper between my fingers and thumbs i never use filters. i lick the edges delicately and glue the cigarette down i love this ritual i take a yellow plastic lighter from my coat pocket and i
spark up and the first breath is always the best is really the only one worth having it lifts me up and i fly.

i see that there will be a time yes a time will come again not for lifetimes but it will come. the woods will be flooded as they were and hung with moss and we will take boats through them flat wooden boats and there will be no-one full enough to believe that any of the real things of the world could be counted or named. we will hear again the sound of the oars through the water and the sound that evil makes when it plays at being good and coming up from the ground we will be only what we were naked as in the old dance on the plains before we toppled the king and fell with him. down we fell down to where it first began but even here he can see us he can always see us there is no escape from him. hide in the mountain and he will find you hide in the forest and he will find you hide in the grave and he will find you. he will find you and pull you apart you will be torn into parts and those parts buried and a season will pass before a flower will grow from the soil you were sunk in. and that flower will become you born again complete but not the same and you will sit up on your bed in the tent on the fringe of the brown wood rubbing your crown three white hairs in your shock of black and a limp where there was
none and you will ask of whoever is there or no-one at all you will ask lover what has happened to me?

there. the noise again. the cat again. there.

i think it is closer now perhaps it is coming from the same direction as before it is hard for me to tell now that the road and my expedition into this building have disorientated me but i stand up when i hear the noise and drop the cigarette butt and i turn around because it is coming from behind me. it is still there. yes it is closer it sounds throatier when it was circling me in the yard the noise was so loud i could hear its breath in my mind i could see its mouth open the pink wetness in there.

it is important that i pull myself together. this is not a game i have work to do. now i face the source of the sound and i begin again to walk towards it. i decide i will not walk around any obstacle in my way instead i will walk over it i will not be distracted i climb over three picnic tables and then reach the back wall of the garden which is stone. i climb up the stone wall and vault over it onto heather moorland. the call comes again it is straight ahead now you see this is the way to do things a straight line to the goal i keep walking i plough through the heather though there is no path i clamber over small rocks and some large ones i am
heading uphill. the call comes again still straight ahead i laugh and i begin running slowly i bounce through the heather i keep bouncing like this until my right foot lands in a trench i didn’t see and then i twist and fall heavily onto the ground. it’s fine i’m not hurt i lie on the ground with my face pressed up against the heather there is the sound again but now it seems further away. just inches away from my head is a rock as big as my fist i was lucky. she is standing looking over the garden in the sun i come up behind her with the rock in my hand and i hit the back of her skull hard with it twice her head cracks and she falls to the ground then i take the child and hold it under the water until it stops kicking. i love you she says i love you too i say because you have to say that. then she puts her arms around me and we go back inside the house for dinner.

it was further away that time this is not good enough. i get up and i keep walking in the direction of the sound but i must have been walking for twenty minutes or so now and i have not heard it again. it seems to come in waves in clusters it rises and falls like the tides in the sea.

then i see something i’m sure i see something i’m sure i see a movement to my right it is so hard to tell the cloud is so thick i hold out my hand and still i can
only just see my fingers but i’m sure something passed me it moved past me in the opposite direction to the one i am walking in. it went behind me.

i wonder if it would eat me. it must eat something up here where did it come from where would a creature like this come from you hear stories don’t you nobody really knows anything. perhaps it would eat me perhaps that is what i am walking towards it feels as if that would be a fine ending. it springs from behind in the cloud i barely hear a thing i have no chance to move their jaws are so strong they go for the neck one bite one snap and that’s it they are perfect creatures it would be a fine ending. all things become other things scales become tails feathers become hair legs become fins leaves become rocks why run from the change death brings. do i want the same thing forever my own cold soul clinging on in the cloud wrinkling drying up fearing the churning that wants me and will come. better to stand and wait as you should and welcome it. people are strange i don’t understand them.

drop away drop away see how i run.

well i may not have seen anything. the cloud still seems to move around me as if it is alive as i walk i feel again how hungry i am if you get this hungry you begin to see things i’m sure i wish i had something to
eat perhaps there are bilberries here i have seen bilberries growing around the heather. yes. i drop to my hands and knees and i start looking for berries i can’t see any i crawl steadily all around me in all directions i don’t know where i just keep looking now this is why i was brought here you see there are bilberries here there are dozens of the tiny little round blue berries hiding under the heather. i pick them slowly and steadily with my right hand until my left palm is full of them and then i cram them into my mouth the taste is stunning it is bitter and stunning and free. i keep crawling and i keep picking perhaps six or eight handfuls of these things there is nothing else in my life right now but bilberries i could live forever on bilberries their beauty is so strong.