Norton, Andre - Anthology (10 page)

 
          
 
I felt a faint chill and could not help
thinking of the thing we had seen as a kind of monster. It had swirled toward
us from a cloud as if about to attack. Large, dark, moving quickly, it had
seemed incredibly strong and dangerous. In a way I could not quite understand, it
had seemed ugly and evil. What did it eat?
Birds?
Mice?
Insects?

 
          
 
"Why hasn't someone else seen it?" I
wondered aloud. "If someone had, there would have been an article in the
newspaper."

 
          
 
"There may be good reasons for it never
having been seen before," Ronald answered, frowning. "If it is
nocturnal, as you've guessed, then it would sleep during the daytime. At night
it may hide in clouds even when it is active. It would be almost impossible for
anyone on the ground to see it. And as for anyone in a plane seeing it—at the
speed planes fly . . ."

 
          
 
We looked at each other. Ronald smiled but it
was a grim sort of smile. "We may be stumbling upon a creature as rare as
the Abominable Snowman in
Tibet
."

 
          
 
Or even
more rare
, I
thought. This thing had never even been reported. Considering its size and the
fact that it lived in the clouds, it was more unique than ghosts, witches,
demons, and other supernatural phenomena people have been talking about for
centuries.

 
          
 
"Does the creature scare you?" asked
Ronald, watching me carefully.
"Uh . . . not
exactly."
Putting my thoughts into words was difficult. The thing
in the sky was an unknown element. We did not know how dangerous it was.
Almost everything in life—traveling in a car, train, or
plane—involved danger of one kind or another.
Why, a person had to be
careful just crossing a street! If you were too cautious in life, you would
never go anywhere. I tried to explain, "It, uh, doesn't bother me enough
to keep me from flying."

 
          
 
"Good!" Ronald slapped me on the
back. "Now, for more ordinary things. . . . What do you want for
breakfast?"

            
"Scrambled
eggs.
After we eat, can we fly again?" Through the window I could
see the morning sunlight, and the idea of flying in the daytime sounded
exciting. We'd be able to see for miles!

 
          
 
Ronald laughed. "I'm afraid we can't.
Suppose someone saw us? How could we ever explain?"

 
          
 
But we did fly again that night. We did not
see the cloud creature and had to return when it began to rain. As we went down
the stairs from the roof, one of the elderly tenants, seeing us in our soaking
wet clothes, must have thought we were out of our minds.

 
          
 
On the following night, the sky was cloudless
and bright with moonlight. "We'll have to be quick," Ronald
explained. "We can wait until after
midnight
and then rise as high as possible before
someone sees us. After we've reached a certain height, we won't have to worry.
No one will be able to see us after we're a few thousand feet up."

 
          
 
Shortly after
midnight
, we soared into the moonlit sky. Despite
our speed, we heard a shout from the street below. I saw a man and woman
pointing. They rapidly became tiny dots, but I could imagine them telling
others what they had seen. Ronald said we should land before the news spread.
As a precaution, we came down among trees in a park several blocks away and
walked back to the apartment.

 
          
 
The weather was so clear that we had to wait
several days before we could fly again. During that time, Ronald gave me a
knife-light identical to the one he carried. He demonstrated how to snap the
sheath on my belt. "We may never need these, but it is best to have some
protection," he said.

 
          
 
To avoid the risk of ascending repeatedly from
the same place, we took a bus to another section of the city,
then
rose into the cloud-filled sky. It was a dark night and
there was little chance that we would be seen, so we hovered beneath the
clouds, drifting with the wind, making minor adjustments in our course as if we
were sailboats upon a dark but peaceful sea. The city lay stretched out beneath
us, much different in appearance than on previous nights. Now, with the stars
and moon almost completely obscured by the seemingly endless layer of clouds,
the city resembled a forest of soft black velvet studded with gleaming and
glittering jewels.

 
          
 
But the beauty of that voyage ended, for we
saw the night creature following—several hundred feet behind and above—lurking
under cover of a cloud.

 
          
 
"Take my hand," Ronald said.
"Let's see if we can lose it."

 
          
 
He rose higher, into the clouds, and I soon
understood why he wanted to hold hands. It would have been easy to become
separated in the darkness. I had learned that clouds were much like thick fogs,
and though Ronald had said that the power of levitation was permanent and would
soon feel as natural as walking, tonight I felt as if we were running.

 
          
 
Occasionally glancing over my shoulder, I
could see the night creature on our trail. It came relentlessly in
pursuit—dark, ominous tendrils outstretched as if to seize our bodies. I
wondered how it had been created—where it had come from.
An
alien from another world?
There were so many reports of UFOs that it
might be a visitor from another planet, a strange form of life.
A mutation?
Everyone talked about the danger of mutations
from atomic test explosions. Was this some sort of monster that had been
created by man? Or—was it possible that creatures such as this had existed
since the beginning of time, few in number, always hiding, keeping their
existence a carefully guarded secret?

 
          
 
I followed Ronald, and though we raced through
the clouds, I knew he was not afraid. He wanted only to see if we could outrun
our mysterious opponent. Finally we reached the apartment building and
descended.

 
          
 
The next night was my last one in the city
until next year. In the morning I would be on a train headed for home. I
suppose that is why I hated to leave the sky that night, and why, when Ronald
said we should return, I held back moments longer, studying the panorama of
crystal-clear stars. Above the smog of the city, galaxies were like handfuls of
diamond dust sprinkled across the black ocean of outer space.

 
          
 
As I began to descend, I saw Ronald had
already

dropped
hundreds of feet and was very close to the
layer of clouds that hid the city so far beneath our feet. The creature leaped
from the darkness as a lion would leap upon its prey. Ronald saw the attack at
the last moment and drew his knife-light. I watched in horror as they
struggled—Ronald slashing with the thin bright beam and the monster engulfing
him with dark tentacles. They fell beyond view.

 
          
 
Drawing my knife-light, I hurried to help,
gliding down into the billowy mass that was so much like an impenetrable fog. .
. . "Ronald!"

           
 
Turning this way and that, I still could not
see. The wind whistled in my ears. I had never imagined a wind passing through
clouds. It drowned my voice and made Ronald's impossible to hear. Blinded and
frustrated, turning around and around, struggling to see through this strange
murky jungle, I kept sliding until I fell from the mass of cloud, and the city
lay sprawled beneath me in its glittering array of neon-speckled shadows.

 
          
 
Ronald appeared nearby and I rushed to his
side. "Are you all right?"

 
          
 
"Fine."
He
sheathed his knife-light. I wanted to ask how the fight with the night creature
had gone, but the wind had increased in tempo, whipping around us so we nearly
had to shout to be heard. Ronald signaled that he and I should return to the
apartment to talk.

 
          
 
As I had a cup of hot chocolate and he drank
coffee, my uncle said the fight had been a strange one—much like fighting the
wind. "And," he added with a smile, "it isn't anything to be
afraid of."

 
          
 
A few months after I returned home, we
received the news that Uncle Ronald had died in an explosion at his workshop. I
felt sadder than I ever had before. We had been so close—in some ways closer
than brothers—and now he was gone. For days I felt lost, hardly able to eat,
wanting only to be alone. I could not help but wonder if the night creature had
somehow been responsible. And it was strange to know that I was the only human
able to levitate . . . that the actual secret of levitation had died with
Ronald. It was very lonely.

 
          
 
I flew three or four nights a week, setting an
alarm clock and placing it beneath my pillow, awaking, dressing, slipping
through the bedroom window, and soaring into the sky at two in the morning
while the town slept.
As winter in the star-filled sea.
On Christmas Eve I hovered thousands of feet in the air as a fluffy snow fell.
My small home town had turned white, spotted with the bright pyramids of
outdoor Christmas trees.

 
          
 
The creature attacked when I least expected.
Its dark tentacles twisted around my throat and chest. My ears were filled with
an eerie shrieking as it became more and more difficult to breathe. My whole
body was soon caught in the crushing grip and I struggled to draw the
knife-light Ronald had given me—slashing, stabbing with the bright beam. It
isn't anything to be afraid of, Ronald had said. I swung the beam in a wide
circle. . . .

 
          
 
As the suffocating tentacles disappeared, I
looked in every direction.

 
          
 
The night creature had vanished.

 
          
 
Real?
It had been
real. I had felt it, seen it, fought with it