Briefing for a Descent Into Hell (9 page)

I was terribly afraid of the coming night. I was afraid of the laughing murderesses and their songs. I knew that when the moon rose that night I would be helpless against its poisons. It tried to think of ways I could tie myself, bind myself, make myself immune from the Moon Light, but a
man cannot tie himself, or not with bonds that cannot be undone—can’t, that is, unless he kills himself. There is no way of making himself immune to the different person that may come to life in him at any moment—and who does not know the laws of being of his host. But I was already beginning to doubt that I knew who was stronger, which was host, what was myself and what a perverted offshoot.

Finally, I worked out that if I walked as fast as I could away from the city, and kept walking until the moon rose that night, then it would be too great a distance for me to get back to the forest before the sun rose in its turn and banished the witches and their feast. While I was myself, the sun’s child, I would have the will to walk away from what the night would lure me to. And so I did walk, at a fast steady pace, away to the South, skirting the river by going between the great chasm and the cliff’s edge, across the dry riverbed, and then on across the savannah, all through that long hot day, and when the moon rose I was twenty miles away in a higher, dryer air where there were few trees and those stunted and meagre. I looked back over the plain where I could see the herds of cattle grazing, but from this height and distance, they were small clusters of light moving on the moon-green of the grass. I could see, too, but far away, the tiny dark that was the edge of the forest where the women must be. The moon was three days from its full. I was in despair. I knew that I should rather go on walking all night straight on, straight on and away from the tug of that forest, but I did not. I turned around and walked straight back, down off this rare highland where the air was so pure and so fine, down, and by the time the moon lay at my left
hand, low over the mountains which I would have reached by now and understood had I not been waylaid by the ruined city, I was at the city’s outskirts, and I ran like a maniac through it, but skirting the centre of it, the square with its circle, because I did not want to see the reproach of that clean waiting landing-ground, and then I ran through the suburbs on the other side, and into the forest and there, exactly as I had seen them the night before, were the three women, the three half-grown boys, the baby, dead and festering on the pile of meat. But it was late, the moon was down, and the sun would soon rise. The women were about to move away. I had saved myself by walking so hard and fast in the opposite direction. They all went off into the trees without looking at me, and one of the boys leaped on a young steer he had tethered by its horns, and he went galloping on this crazed beast around the glade, kicking the embers of the fire, the piles of meat, the baby’s corpse, scattering them about. And then he rode off while the beast roared and screamed. And again the glade was empty and clean in a morning sunlight.

I went back to the square, thankful that I had saved myself. But I knew that I was too tired now to walk away for the second night running from the approaching feast. And I knew that there were still two nights of a strong moon before the Full Moon. And I lay down and slept by the square—and that night joined in the bloody banquet under the trees, and this time they had killed the half-grown steer, and all the glade stank of blood and guts and murder, and now I knew that I would never do this again, for I was filled with strength from my sleep of the day and from the
meat of the feast, and on that last day I walked twenty miles South as I had before, and turned around as the moon rose, as I had before—very nearly the full moon now—and I walked back through the night, not running, or wanting to go back to the forest, and I did not go back to the forest, for by the time I reached the city, it was too late. For the sun had come up out of a red sky over the ocean, and this was the day of the full moon. But I was tired. I was so very tired. I had not eaten that night, and I had walked forty miles. I washed myself carefully, using the largest of the water channels, sinking myself right down into it, so that the water came to my waist. I combed my beard and hair as well as I could with my fingers, and I watched the foulness run away from me with the water. And I drank and drank water as much as I could hold, hoping that its cleanliness would wash the insides of my body free of its loads of bloody meat that it could still feel from the night before last. And I lay down then to rest and wait. And, in the heat of that day, despite everything I could do, I fell asleep. I slept heavily and dreadfully, and my dreams were of that other life in a damp sunless country where my life was a weight of labour every hour, every minute, and when I woke it was long past moonrise, though I had meant to wake well before that Rising; and it was midnight. I had missed the descent of the Crystal, for it was here now. But I could not see it.

A full white moonlight lay evenly over the empty city, and over the square floor of stone on whose edge I was sitting, dreadfully heavy with sleep and foreboding. The circle in the square was still clean and faintly glowing with
colour, though some leaves had blown over it during the last few days’ neglect. That the Crystal was present, there, quite close, a few yards from me, was evident to me because … I knew it was. As I looked it was as if the light there lay more heavily—no, not that, it was not a heaviness, a weight, but more of an intensity. Just there, in the centre, it was hard to see quite through to the buildings on the other side—not impossible, no, but they quivered and hung in the air like stones in the quiver of air that comes off sizzling sand or rock. And more than by sight, it was through my ears that I knew, for they sang and keened so shrilly that I had to keep shaking my head to clear away the sound. It was almost too fine and high a sound to bear. If I had been a dog I would have howled and run away. And the effort of staring in was almost too much for me. My eyes tried to close, because whatever it was that I could not quite see, but was there, belonged to a level of existence that my eyes were not evolved enough to see. And more than that, my whole body, and the level of life in it, was suffering. Beating out from that central point came waves of a finer substance, from a finer level of existence, which assaulted me, because I was not tuned to them. And I remembered how as I stood on the deck of the ship and watched the shining crystal shape, the disc, that was at the same time in an unimaginably fast movement and stationary, a visible flat spiralling, and how when I saw it come in towards me and then envelop me, it was as if my whole being had suffered a wrenching away from its own proper level. I felt this again now. I was feeling sick and low and shaken, strained out of myself with the effort of seeing what I could not
really see, and hearing what I could have heard with different ears, so that I had to hear it now as an intolerable shrill note. I got to my feet with difficulty and staggered in towards the centre. As I came closer the noise got shriller, my eyes pulsed and burned, and all my body felt blasted and empty. I knew that what I was doing was futile. I knew I had missed my opportunity—for the second time, for the first had been on the deck of the old ship when the Crystal had taken my friends but left me behind. But although I knew this was an empty attempt, because it had none of the quiet ease of confidence, which is in itself a sign or condition of success, I had to make it. Emptiness was in me and all about me. Pulling my eyes away from that central compulsion, to rest them, I looked about the quiet roofless houses lying there, and saw first of all, their quality of peaceful trust, a waiting. An emptiness very different from my frantic hunger. But they were turned inwards, to the centre; it was a city which had found its core, its resting place, in that whirl of intensity which laid claims on it and shot it through and through with its own fine substance, as a thought can take over a man and change everything about him. (Oh, for bad as well as for good, as I had learned so recently.) Looking at the houses, and then glancing in at the whirling presence in the centre, and glancing away again, for respite, I managed to come within fifteen yards of the thing—and could not come closer. Again I stood and looked from very near at a wall or sheet of shining substance in which creatures were imprisoned by their nature, as I was imprisoned in the air I had to breathe. From so very close, and by not looking direct, but out of the side of my eyes, as star watchers
observe stars in, paradoxically, a more delicate and finer vision, I could see it pulsing there, a shape of light; and (almost seen, more sensed, known, recognised) the creatures that belonged to that state in nature. Like the shadows of flames running liquid on a wall of fire, like the reflection of broken water on a fall of water, inside that pulsing light I could see, from the side of my eye, the crystallisations of the substance which were its functions, its reason for being, its creatures. There they were, beings divided away from me as fish in a wall of water are divided from the man six inches away in air, but they were known to me, I knew them, I felt that I ought to slide in there, somehow, in some way, by thinking differently, by breathing that fast spinning vibration—but I could not go nearer, and I knew it was because I had let myself be drawn into the forest with the blood-drinking women, and because I had slept like a dog in the hot sun. I tried to force myself in to the place, although the laws of my density held me back. I felt too ill even to stand. In a last effort of will, which I knew was wrong and useless, I collapsed, and fainted, my eyes blazing light as they were extinguished by dark. And when I woke up again it was morning, the hot sunlight lay everywhere about me, and I knew that the Crystal was gone. The square and the circle inside it were empty. I had been sick and my nose had been bleeding. I lay in blood and the smell of vomit. Where I had been lying smelled vile. And as I sat up, to stare inwards at my terrible loss, I knew again what I had known on the deck of the ship, when all my friends had vanished away with the shining visitor. I had been left behind. I had not been taken. I had failed most dreadfully and through my
own fault. I had had nothing to do but wait quietly for the moment of the full moon, and keep myself light and alert and wakeful. But I had not done it.

I stood up and looked about me at a city which seemed as if it had changed, though I could not say how it had. There was a new feeling about it, its peace and silence had gone. It had a look of frivolity, a sort of drunkenness. If a town, or a building, or a shape of stone could be said to giggle, then it was that: a silly silent giggling, an infantility, a coarseness. It was like that moment when the women turned towards me in the firelight under the trees, and showed their faces smeared with blood, but they were laughing and smiling, as if nothing much was happening to them, or to me.

I dragged myself off towards the river, to bathe and become fresh again. But I stopped. For on to the square of stone stepped a—but I did not know what it was. I thought at first, that this must be a man, for he stood as tall as one, and had the shoulders and the arms and legs of one, though strained and distorted in their shape. But his head … was it some kind of monkey, who shambled on to the square of stone, and then in right to the very centre? Here he squatted down and looked about him. But the body was covered all over with a fine close hide, shining brown, like the hide of a dog, and the head was like a dog’s, with sharp cocked ears and dog’s muzzle. Yet there was a ratlike look about it. The creature had a rat’s long scaly tail. I was afraid. It was bigger and much stronger than I was. I thought it might come over and attack me. But I walked towards it and it looked at me without concern. I was thinking then
that I should attack and kill it, for I found it disgusting and ugly, as it squatted there, exactly where last night the Crystal had lain shining and vibrating. I thought that if I killed it then the city would have to be cleaned again. I came close to it. The creature looked idly at me and away, it moved about, scratched for fleas, sniffed the air with its sharp dog’s or rat’s nose. I understood that it probably did not see me, or, if it did, that I was of no interest to it whatsoever.

I stayed where I was. So did the creature. I hated everything about it, it was a creature alien to me in every way. Yet I was thinking that someone standing a hundred yards away might say, at a casual glance, that it and I were of a similar species, for I stood nearly as tall as it did, and I had a head growing where this dog-rat had one, and roughly similar arms and legs. Coming closer this observer would see that I was hairless whereas this animal had a hide … well, not quite hairless. I now had thick curling brown hair to my shoulders, and a deep curling brown beard to my waist and thick dark hair on my chest and from my navel to my crotch. Dark brown hair on skin burned brown by wind and sun. I was covered and decent! Whereas this beast … but I felt too disgusted with it to stay there matching myself point by point, and I walked away off the square, and as I did so the creature gave a high squeaky call, and it was answered by other calls, half bark, half rat’s high shrilling, and on to the stone square came running and scampering and shambling, a dozen or so of these creatures. They were all males. They had the genitals of a big dog, large globular testicles and penises like rods, for they all seemed in a state of sexual excitement. Later I saw that this was more or less permanent
with them. Then they stood upright, they looked as close-haired dogs look when made to stand on their hindlegs, the lower part of the belly all genital. They stood in a group right in the centre and faced outwards. They were on their hindlegs. They had sticks or stones in their hands, and were keeping some sort of a watch. Then I saw others moving in from the avenues in troops. I ran out, to the very edge of the escarpment, where I flung myself down and lay looking out over the land that lowered itself through the deep old forests to the blue ocean. I lay there, with the sun beating down from overhead, and knew that I had to wait another month until the moon again came to the full, and that the city, in which I had lived quite alone, was now full of these hideous dog-rats. I could hear their barking and whistling and scuffling all over the city.