Land Under England

by Joseph O'Neill

  No. I must not sleep. I couldn’t risk it. Suppose he was sending me to sleep, using hypnotic suggestion even at that distance! I didn’t know his powers. I must push on … keep awake.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  The Man Behind

  I WENT DOWN the slope into the valley. It was a shallow one. I should soon be on the other slope.

  When I had gone down a little, I slipped behind a tree and waited. He would have to appear on the sky-line, on the ridge. Yes. There he was, creeping over it on his belly, tracking me down. He must still think that I had not seen him. I could send an arrow through him easily.

  I turned and went on.

  Yes, he had always been a thin soul, empty, bloodless, under all the little charming ways that had made you feel him so warm … not like my mother. He had needed sacrifices to keep him warm—my mother—myself— like all thin souls, he had to fill his emptiness with something, some idea, some stuffing for the emptiness … like the people below, the thin people of the darkness. They were right. They couldn’t have lived in that emptiness without some big thing stuffed into their souls.

  Sacrifices, too. It was strange how these thin, bloodless people were always rushing after sacrifices … blood-sacrifices, any sacrifices, of themselves, of others; mimicking the greatest, whose emotion for the sufferings of others was so great that they couldn’t endure it—so great that they must end it by the sacrifice, if necessary, of themselves and others to save all.

  But these little men had no emotion, except for themselves and the idea they had blown themselves out with, like the frog, to make themselves big. They wanted sacrifices only to justify themselves.

  Now he wanted a blood bath above on the earth, where men were still full of life, chaotic with the sunlight.

  Even John Sackett was thick with life, like my mother… even Edward, that silent man. John didn’t need to fill an emptiness with dreams and megalomanias and blood. If he had gone to the war, it wouldn’t have emptied him. It mightn’t even have deepened him, any more than it could deepen my mother. But the war hadn’t taken him away. He was too useful at home. And he was glad enough to stay at home. He didn’t want a war to fill his thick stupid soul.

  But there wouldn’t be any more sacrifices to fill the man behind me; no more pretences either. I knew it now. If necessary, I would kill him … rather than let him lead his monstrous crew back to the upper earth … better that one of us should come back to my mother than neither.

  Catchwords and sentimentalities were more of the stuffing that little men padded themselves out with. They wouldn’t fool me any longer. There was no confusion in my mind now. I had shaken him off my back at last. His waves of hatred could come after me, but they would find no resting- place, nor would his hypnotic tricks .. . neither the new ones he had got now, nor the old ones he had lost in the war.

  I was not going to be like that thrush I had seen on the rectory lawn one day—the first of May too—a busy speckled thrush, hopping about on the grass. There had been the stooping shadow and a cry… . Only one cry. Then hawk and thrush were resting quietly together for a moment on the lawn, the hawk’s talons through the back of the thrush. It was waiting under them, quietly, without any sound, flattened a little to the ground. My shout and my futile stone, that seemed to be weighted with slowness, had broken the tableau. They had gone up together, quietly and swiftly, the thrush still making no sound, so completely did the sharp talons possess her.

  That was the way he intended to bring me back, with talons completely through, this time-curved inside, hooking—and the wings beating above me. He would feed me to his megalomaniac dreams that were born of no pity for the people that lived and died in the darkness. Much he cared for them! No. He would not bring me back that way; dead perhaps, but not alive and hooked.

  I had come out on the other side of the valley, and was going up quickly, in spite of the trailers on the ground. The light from above was bright, and the fungus trees more frequent now. The mountain-side was as clear again as in brilliant moonlight.

  I switched round rapidly. Yes. He was there, running from one trunk to the other, imagining himself an Indian hunter. He had always played at things, and even now when he wasn’t playing, not playing in the slightest, the forms, in which he did things, remained.

  But there were other things, too, that weren’t playing. What was that shape following him, keeping behind trees too? It wasn’t a man or a shadow. A lassoing brute!

  The drizzling mist had stopped, and the air was hot—hot and clammy. I still felt sleepy, heavy with sleep, but I was fighting it off.

  He wouldn’t find it as easy as he had thought, especially now that there were three of us.

  Yes. The lassoer was stalking him. Should I shout back and warn him?

  My mouth was dry, so dry that I could hardly make a sound. I stopped and pointed backward.

  The man had stopped too. At least, I couldn’t see him. He was probably behind a tree, watching me, or perhaps watching the great spider. The latter had stopped too, partly hidden behind a tree. We had all stopped.

  Ah! That was the whizz of an arrow! I ducked behind a tree, but it was not meant for me. An arrow was quivering in the tree behind which the lassoer had been standing. But he was there no longer, vanished—

  A shadow was sweeping through the trees away to the left…. Now it was gone… .

  My father was evidently armed too. That made it easier. I had forgotten that he would be armed. He could shoot as well as I could. Better. … It was he who had trained me to shoot with the bow in the old days.

  I was thirsty, very thirsty. There was no water, though the ground was damp, but I could chew the pulpy trailers of that ground growth I used to chew so much, when I was looking for my father out in the barren lands. I never thought, then, that he would be looking for me and I trying to get away from him.

  The trailing stuff was good—a little sticky but good … food as well as drink … perhaps some sort of stimulant too. It was rich and juicy, almost like a soft plum, but without any sweetness.

  I didn’t want to sleep now. The movement of my feet was freer. It eased me, liberated me, to swing upwards with that free easy movement.

  I felt more confident in every way. He was armed. So was I. We could deal with each other on equal terms, when it came to that. If he had been trying to send me to sleep, he had failed. I was fresher and stronger now than when I started. He would have to follow me up to the upper earth, if he continued to trail me. Either that or fight.

  The steamy heat had gone. It was cooler up here. The air was clean, coming down from above too … a little stream of air coming down, making the trees whisper.

  Ah! Another lassoer, rather near this time. If I hadn’t been climbing with such a swing, like a man that knows his own business, it might have tried to stop me, but, when it saw me so sure and paying no heed, it had let me pass—as a wicked dog does, bluffed, impressed by the confidence of the other animal. If I had felt defeated, it would have come on….

  Yes. He was behind still. That patch of open ground had given him away, as I thought it would. Perhaps the lassoer had seen him hunting me down and was tracking us both.

  I was not circumscribed by him now. He was only behind me, a line, not a sphere encompassing me, as he had always been before. The line was still dragging at me to come back, but it was getting thin, frayed. The drag was feeble. My reach had gone a long way beyond him….

  They had said, below, that rhythms were bad for people when one man’s rhythm was forcing the pace of another. They had stopped that. There were some good things they had done. My rhythm had gone wrong, because his rhythm had forced itself on me, during all that long time when he had mattered.

  He used to make the paper-boats for me, and sail them, first on the tub we had sunk in the ground for the ducklings, afterwards on the puddles in the road. That was the time when he mattered—when his paper-boats raced down the rocky little streamlet on the side of the road, racketing al
ong, while I ran after them, yelling and shouting. But his face was alive then .. . with little currents in it, and bits of breezes and spots of sunlight, when he was in a merry mood.

  It was a pity—this thing that had happened to him …. all the living things dead in him, even before he came down. It was heart-breaking almost, if you allowed yourself to think about it, even though he wasn’t worth so much, inside it all.

  If he had suffered anything when he was young—been hurt or left there alone—he might have grown something inside him. But that charm of his never gave him a chance. If it hadn’t ended in madness, it would have ended in worse—futility, more charm, a fading away in the end.

  I was beginning to get tired again. A giddiness was coming into my head—a dizziness that was making me stagger. If this went on, I should have to kill him after all—to put aside the prejudices men are shaped by, and kill him. Anything else would be madness—suicide, and worse.

  When I came home to my mother, and told her that I had killed him, what would she say? I wouldn’t tell the others. “Man sentenced to be hanged for the murder of his father.” “Parricide under the earth.” “Murderer confesses.” I could hear the cries.

  No, they wouldn’t have that. Nobody would know but she and I, and she would understand. I couldn’t conceal it from her. She would know that I had done it, if I tried to hide it. But she would understand.

  Better that one of us should come back to her than neither. Better that one of us should come back than both, the way he intended us to come! She and all those others seized and murdered in their sleep … murdered in their minds or in their bodies.

  This dizziness was getting worse. I was almost blinded with it. If it got much worse, I should be at his mercy.

  It was time to end this. Yes. He was there, behind that big fungus tree, waiting. Well, I was coming back to him. He wouldn’t have to wait long… .

  Ah! He was running back—running quickly, too! No way out that way.

  Now he had stopped, and was watching me standing looking at him.

  Yes. Even shooting him down wouldn’t be so easy, unless I could hide from him and lie in ambush. But it had to be done somehow. I must get back to a world where there were familiar people, normal people like John Sackett and the foreman at the works, Carter—yes, that was the name, Ned Carter—and the parson up at Julian’s Pond, who had come to tell us that my father was gone, and that girl that John Sackett wanted me to marry, the girl with the short nose and nice, thick, yellow hair and blue eyes—very blue and bright.

  She had given me tea once, alone, and the face had looked so warm. She had life in her, though she hadn’t got through to me then. She hadn’t tried to make me love her, like other girls who wanted to catch me with my own feelings, tangling my feet up in a net of them. She had seemed concerned with her own—a most stable sort of person.

  They had all been sure that her love had centred on me, from the first day I came to Sackett’s, long ago during the war, when I was only a boy at school—as far ago as that. I was blind then to everybody but this man who was behind me.

  If I could go to her now. Perhaps she was having afternoon tea. It was strange to think that. Tea with hot scones, like those she had made for me, that day, because the others made them heavy. If that could only repeat itself—in a few days, a week, up above these walls that shut me down for eternity … me who had been born up there above, not down below, like those others.

  My mind was wandering. I must pull myself together, get back to the upper earth. How could I ever have left the sunlight, no matter what he dreamed? One “out-by” farmhouse—“Hope-Alone” or “Seldom-Seen” or “Back-o’-the-Sunset”—was worth all his kingdoms. One gable, with its life inside it, warm and thick, or a sail on the sea, or the smell of tar, or the first green finger of the larch that grew over the Pond… .

  Perhaps it was winter now, and the firelight would be glancing over the walls of the breakfast-room. The circle of days and months was still there.

  I would be willing to come back to the darkness to die, if I could get a day up there … one day from morning till night—with firelight and the sound of voices. I hadn’t said “goodbye” when I was leaving. I hadn’t understood anything. If I could say “good-bye,” especially if the nests were in the trees … the little rookery at the back of the house…. I could say “good-bye” in the evening, when the rooks were saying “good-bye” to the day. I could say it with them.

  I would come down into the darkness again, if I must, into this ebb without any flow. I would not appeal to God against the darkness, nor to men. This trap of anguish would be bearable for a while afterwards. I could live with Eternity, if I could say “good-bye” to Time.

  Even an hour, if I couldn’t have a day—an hour in the early morning, or before sunset—it could matter little to anyone to give me that. Then Time could remain in the distance, up above, for ever.

  Ah! I was walking with my hands stretched out—out and upwards. I pulled them down with an effort. They felt as if they were nailed above me. I was giving way.

  I must deal with the man behind before I gave way.

  There were rocks now appearing through the trees. The mountain-side was coming through. At the turning of that rock I should be out of sight for a few minutes. I could hide … wait for him there.

  I sprang behind it. I was completely out of sight. That tree with its thick heavy leaves … that was the place for me. He wouldn’t suspect that I was up there.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  I Find My Father

  WHEN I GOT into the tree above the rock, I saw him at once. He was creeping stealthily from tree to tree, dropping on to the ground where there was no cover, slinking from trunk to trunk. I was giddy—my head reeling. Still I should be able to drop him with an arrow, when he came near enough. I could hardly miss him in the open spaces near me.

  I put an arrow to the string. My hand was trembling. I tried to hold it firm. No, I could not do it.

  I would let him pass and take another road. If he didn’t see me, I might stay on in the tree—sleep off this dizziness… .

  Suddenly I was wide awake, clear in my head. Right under me a lassoer was standing, watching him … not merely standing watching … drawing back behind a rock. It was waiting.

  When the man came, I knew what would happen. The lasso would shoot out like the arms of a polyp. The man would be down before he could draw a weapon. His arms would be pinned to his body … his body dragged along the ground at a gallop. He would disappear into a cave in the rock, and there be murdered slowly—his blood sucked out, until he died. Perhaps, a painless death … but certainly death. I should be freed of him. I should have some chance of reaching the upper earth, seeing the light, hearing the voices of men. Then I heard myself shouting—yelling out to him to beware. He stopped, staring towards me. At the same moment the lasso came through the air. He sprang aside. It was round his body, but his arm was free. I could see him feeling for a weapon. Then I was climbing down the tree, falling, tumbling down to his rescue. As I sprang down, I kept yelling out, to scare the lassoer.

  The man was down. He was being dragged off.

  As I reached the ground I heard a loud snarling. It was he. He was up again—a knife in his hands. He had cut the lasso and was rushing at the lassoer. It was standing waiting for him, whirling another lasso. His snarling seemed to be affecting it. For a moment it hesitated, as if held back by the man’s rage. The next moment its lasso flew. But it was too late. The pace of the man was too quick. As the lasso fell, the man sprang aside. Then he was upon the creature, plunging his knife into its chest, its head, its body, with snarls of rage. The lassoer fell, screaming.

  I turned and ran. The man was a maniac. The thwarting of his plans had driven him completely insane.

  As I ran, I could hear the screams of the lassoer dying away into a gurgle. From all sides, whistling cries began in answer.

  I stopped. Things were galloping all round me, towards t
he melee. Above their cries, the yells of the man rose in answer. I looked back. He was the centre of a ring of lassoers … closing in on him. Now he was rushing at them.

  I found myself running back towards them, yelling wildly. As I ran, I loosed an arrow from the string to which I had been holding it taut. Some of the lassoers had turned round to face this new enemy. One of these, struck by my arrow, began to scream and rear up. For a moment, a row of monstrous faces was staring at me. Then, just as I was on them, they broke and fled.

  I stopped. The brutes were flying in a mass in front of me. Others were rushing towards the sides. The man was running after the lassoers in front. As I looked, he stood for a moment, loosed his bow from his shoulder, and flung it on the ground. Then he rushed forward after the main body.

  He was silent now. So were they. Presently they had all vanished in the dimness of distance.

  I stood staring at the place where they had disappeared. Then I turned and hurried away in the opposite direction. I had no doubt now about the man. What little was left of his mind was unhinged. Whether that was caused by the shock of his conflict with me, or of his rage at the thwarting of his plans by the lassoers, the remnant of his reason was certainly gone. No sane man could have acted as he did towards the brutes that had attacked him. His hatred of me had been converted, by their sudden attack, into an insane hatred of them, that had frightened even their ferocious minds, when it was loosed upon them. That storm of hatred had demoralised them. That was the reason of their flight. I had now some vision of the torrent of hatred that would be let loose on me if he came back and caught me.

  I hurried on. Suddenly, behind me, the silence was torn by a yell that rose and fell and rose again in a long howling crescendo. Then it was drowned by a tumult of hooting and whistling.

  I stopped. The yell rose again, over the din of the other sounds. I began to run in the direction of the cries. The man’s voice died away. The hooting ceased. They had closed with him.