I understood little of this. Only that William had also been the victim of these two creatures, and that from William they had drawn the knowledge of others to be sought out, to be deceived and lured here, as many had been lured before. Others who were old and strong enough to serve their purpose – whatever that might be. But my own purpose was lost, swallowed up in this bleak revelation of insanity. Helena had warned me long ago that revenants were prone to madness, which grew with the passing ages. I saw now in this ancient Priest all that we might truly become. Yet for all his great power I did not believe him to be the Master-Revenant. He was simply a monster among monsters: a deranged killer of his own unnatural kind. Except that his victims did not die, but were condemned here to become his children in an idiot and soulless half-life.
My head was bursting now with surging waves of energy which rose up from about the altar. And at once, in what seemed like a single movement, the Priest-Revenant and Niall tore themselves away from Elizabeth, their faces almost as mirror images of fury. The Priest fell back, bizarrely shrunken and seemingly exhausted, while Niall, his flesh vivid with new colour, cried out:
“There is nothing in this one! Only fear and darkness. Only emptiness. She does not serve!”
He struck out at the inert form that was Elizabeth, sweeping her from the altar so she crashed to the ground. She crawled there, turning her head to gaze for a moment at me. At first I believed that her look was one of reproach. But then she gave a piercing cry, and I saw that in her eyes was simply nothing. They bulged without thought or reason. Already the skin grew shrivelled, discoloured. In a way similar to William, and those others, those undead. She gave another shrill cry, and crawled away blindly, scrambling into the shadows.
I looked on, numb with shock. My greatest evil had been to bestow the power of the Revenant upon Elizabeth, for whose dark birth Helena had died. But finally it was I, with all my ruthless desires and self-deception, who had led both of them to destruction. I had been the true evil from the start. From this despised truth I had sought refuge in torment and despair, and a brooding semblance of conscience, and in the twisted fantasy of a Master-Revenant who might offer me hope of redemption; when really I knew that long ago I had abandoned my soul to darkness. And all my sufferings were but the illusory pains of a phantom soul. Only the terms I had made for my own damnation.
With supreme effort I gathered myself and began to rise, and as my hand scrabbled across the ground it closed upon a jagged lump of stone, which I gripped and held as tightly as I could. Niall was standing close by, and he grinned as he watched me, blood still drooling from his lips. He expected me to run, to attempt to escape, but my last words to Elizabeth had been the truth: there was nowhere left in the world to run. I glanced over at the Priest, lying up against the side of the altar, as motionless as the stone itself, his eyes fixed dreamily upon me. Then I saw something else, lying upon the altar, glinting faintly. It was Elizabeth’s silver crucifix, torn from about her neck during the struggle. And the sight of it seemed instantly to focus every lost part of myself into a swelling of pure rage.
Beyond myself I sprang out at Niall, with a speed he could not elude, clenching the rock in my hand as I smashed at him, again and again, battering his head and face while he fell back and sought to fight me. Then I held his collar, pulling him close, striking still as his face became a mangled eruption of blood.
Then he dropped to the ground at my feet, and I was held from behind, my arms gripped by hands that were immensely strong. The head of the Priest was resting upon my shoulder, and he lifted me effortlessly, while I struggled to fight him, determined now that I should not become one of those ravaged things that crawled in the shadows, but that I would fight until he tore me to pieces.
Such was my fury that in spite of his strength he fought hard to hold me, but then his hand was on the back of my head, forcing me down towards the fallen body of Niall, who raised his arms to clasp me as my face was pressed to the gashed and bloody mask of his. I was conscious at once of the taste of human blood, still faintly warm, pulling me irresistibly downward as I felt now the bite of the Priest in the back of my neck. And in those fleeting moments before I was utterly lost, I truly felt myself human again. I felt the very quickening of death.
I was drifting now, carried upon strange and relentless tides, my thoughts and senses drawn rapidly into the blood vortex, spinning deeper into the darkness beyond, while my body grew pained and weak. All physical sensations were quickly lost as my mind was swept onward into the death-visions. Now I felt them, the minds of the others joined to my own, clinging to my wild and expanding perceptions, and our thoughts seemed as one. Then I understood. This was all madness, but not simply madness. Now I knew its purpose.
I knew then that as we are joined in death to a human soul, and that soul to us, so we may know the feelings of mortal death, which is denied us and so truly our deepest desire. And as time passes we may journey ever farther in our growing strength into the forbidden realm, and each death is different: beautiful, terrible and unique. But the human heart is weak and soon lost to us. It gives us but the first moments of death.
Yet to join with one of our own kind! To infuse that one with blood and life even while that life is drawn away. To form this great circle, and link with a heart so strong that it will not die … clinging to the mind of that damned and powerful being while driving it deep into the death-quest, filled with fear and knowledge of its own immortal destruction. The truth of it was upon me now. This was a journey into Hell.
I felt now that I was flung crazily along black and dismal pathways, while around me the memories of my life were summoned into form to torment me. I saw myself a child again, and the people of my childhood for whom I felt now a love that could only dishonour them. I saw the dream which had been the start of it all, and Helena … my Helena … beautiful and sad … but then mutilated and destroyed, her cold eyes weeping tears of blood. I saw Elizabeth, human again, so alone and so alluring. And then her brother, holding up his cross and cursing me, his face twisted with hate. And beyond it all the cries of the dead who shrieked for vengeance.
Yet what I knew now was how it had always been. Hurtling lost along this grim labyrinth, lured onward by something that lurked ahead, just beyond the grasp of my senses. The evil that had lived in me, whose power my life had served. I had sacrificed my human self to it, and these long years sought to justify this with lies and deceit. Now I was closing on it, and soon I would reach its lair. And whatever it was, a devil from Hell or a horror from some pit of my own being, my mind could not survive its coming. For its power was my own, freed from all thought or control, wholly pure in its malevolence. The power of Death. It would wither and crush the life in me, reclaiming all it had given, leaving me empty, blasting me into corruption, insanity and annihilation as it had everything I had ever known and touched. It would show me the final truth of myself.
But beyond these things I was still aware of those others, those revenants, who clung to me and fed from the very essence of myself; their minds and senses holding to mine, vile and intrusive as they fed ravenously from every thought and memory I possessed; driving me onward into realms of madness and horror beyond imagining. I felt their great heart beats bursting and exploding against me, and my being was again filled with overpowering rage! Then distantly I was finding strength and awareness of my body to fight them: to struggle and strike and tear at them, while these physical actions seemed like a remote and disjointed dream. And it felt that we were rolling, locked together, battling frantically as we sprawled into the dark recesses of some deep distant place; and I was tearing myself free from them, hurling and kicking them back as I slid and tumbled over ragged ground. Then the ground fell sharply and I was sliding downward, and I grabbed at the rocks to halt myself. While I could see nothing at all, there came upon me now the vivid sense and mental image that I clung precariously to the tip of a great crag, which loomed incredibly above a vast and hellish abyss. So re
al and immense was this image that my head was spinning and I pressed myself hard down against the ground, clutching at it frantically or I should fall and be lost. But even as I held it the stone was crumbling, breaking up beneath me, and I was scrabbling, slipping down towards the Pit.
I knew now the reality of Hell. A dreadful closing of the mind to the world beyond. To be confined to the inner madhouse where all our guilt and fear are chained shrieking alongside us in a pit of eternal self-loathing …
Then in my turmoil there broke from inside me a frail, childlike voice I barely knew. A voice from long ago. Not the cry of a doomed unholy thing, but of a man. A mortal soul in mortal dread whose heart was not hopeless and dead. I cried out to God.
Something rose in an instant above me, and my senses reeled as I saw it grow. At first a baleful, yellowish light that permeated and billowed within the intense dark, gathering shape until I saw manifested the withered talon of a hand which reached out to claim me. It emerged now from the blackness, and yet truly it was the blackness, for it advanced like a fog that swirled and shifted to find form, then opened like a winding sheet which unravelled and fell to expose the face.
It stood, an obscene hybrid of man and devil, its visage so wasted it was skull-like, framed in dark matted hair and beard, with eyes that seemed no more than empty sockets but for a watery gleam deep within. It was beyond anything I might have conceived, its horror so alien, so absolute that it bore the mark of every unspeakable blasphemy and iniquity that had ever been. Its breath was hoarse and grunting as the white, almost transparent flesh about the mouth seemed creased into a snarl of feral rage, yellow teeth bared in bloodless lips as it looked ready to tear the soul from this heretic who had come to question and defy its power. My strength was gone, my mind slipping away, awareness hanging by a thread. Now my grip was lost and I was falling, dropping down into the dark certainty of that hellish abyss. But the claw-like hand closed about my wrist and I was raised up into a loathsome embrace, clinging to that dreadful form beneath a tattered robe as skeletal arms entwined and held me. And beyond my disgust there came with its touch the awful thrill of some secret and half-known desire.
It spoke. Or so it seemed, though its voice was but a whisper of thought that flowed and merged with my own.
“Your deliverance lies here,” it said. “Let go your fear, which is death within life. For I am the true redeemer! I am the Master. Upon whom the evils of the world were cast. Who died yet was raised up from the tomb. I am resurrection and life, and who follows me shall never die …”
A noise welled up in me, a cry against this final impossible insanity, but no words found form, for it seemed my throat was filled, my mouth overflowing, and that I was drowning in a torrent of blood!
“… and who eats of my body and drinks of my blood shall find eternal life. For the blood of my covenant will cleanse him of all sins!”
The words were simple and clear, yet so perverse, so profane, that I might not dare imagine them. Yet as I stared at its face, resting near to mine, I saw that the shrunken eyes shone with a sheer passion.
Deliverance! Yes. What it gave might be truly that. Deliverance from inner darkness, guilt and sin. For what are these things but the shadow of human death? And where death itself might die, so too might the child of death which is the knowledge of evil. The Master stood at the gateway to a dark Eden; to a pure and perfect innocence so profound it was beyond recognition of depravity or wickedness, finally blind to its own monstrosity. Yet it was still worse. It was to impose our own face upon the image of God. And to make the damned into the blessed.
So I hung there, my senses drifting down into that bleak vision of the Pit, and clung tighter in dread to my terrible saviour. Until the figure rose above me and I saw its hands reach out to clasp my head.
“Know me now!” it cried, its face wild with exultation. “I am … Absolution!”
My sight blurred as I watched the figure sink back, fading like a dream until its face was transformed into another that was ravaged and drained almost beyond recognition or life. It was the face of Niall, and I flung his shrunken frame back where it fell limp and still; then staggered to my feet, looking dazedly back into the depths of the cavern where the torch light dwindled away. Beside me, laying sprawled in a stupor deeper than my own, was the Priest, his great strength dissipated and gone. Yet his eyes gleamed and he sighed as he raised his arms to me in a trembling motion of triumph and embrace.
I stared at him aghast for several moments before I turned and fled that accursed place.
* * *
Since that time I have wandered alone, growing more aware how deeply I am affected. I do not know what I truly confronted in that cave in Ireland. Perhaps it is better I do not. Yet from my very concept of the Master-Revenant – who dwells deep inside us all – I know now that I can be reconciled to my existence; drawing from him what I need to justify and placate myself. Why walk in Hell amongst the lost, seeking truth, when truth may be whatever I wish to make it? But I no longer carry Hell within me. I see it beyond me. There are times now when the human creatures who swarm about me as I walk in the world are made transparent to me in their thoughts and preoccupations. Faces filled with rage, greed, hate, fear: with darkness in its every form. Then I ask myself: for what other reason can I exist as I do, but as an angel of divine retribution, feeling nothing as I prowl through perdition? And at these times I am no longer certain whether what I have is damnation or divinity. That long threatened madness moves to possess me. To crush my last will to resist and make me one like all the others – the cold and self-serving monster who alone can keep me from suffering. I no longer fear that madness, nor feel its shadow on me, and that is how I know it must triumph. Yet while I still have reason enough left to see these things, there remains one last alternative.
I have returned now to my house in Cornwall. There is nothing for me here any more, but still we suit each other well: two ruined things haunted by shades of the past. It is fitting that we should lay our ghosts together. One thought preys upon my mind. When William died here, might it secretly have been by Niall’s hand? Perhaps Niall knew some sure way to do it, to end an immortal life and remove the obstacle to his plans that William had become. If not, might William have survived? And in what form? I must leave nothing to chance. I must find the strength to destroy a monster. To destroy him totally.
Fire purifies, it is said. I pray it may be so. And now … I have written enough.
Copyright
Published in the UK by Dedalus Limited,
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Publishing History
First published by Dedalus in 1983
Revised edition in 2001, reprinted in 2003
First ebook edition in 2012
The Revenants copyright © Geoffrey Farrington 1983/ 2001
The right of Geoffrey Farrington to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
Printed in Finland by Bookwell
Typeset by Refine Catch
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A C.I
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The Revenants Page 19
