Soliloquy for Pan

by Beech, Mark

  “Great is the power of opposites combined,” said Gordon. “Love himself, we know, is the child of plenty and poverty.”

  “Yes,” said the god; “and you have but to look at my body to understand what a strange union of spiritual opposites went to its begetting. Nor must you think me in the least ashamed of it, red and brown and mingled as it is. The moon—the naked moon herself—one thin, white curve of loveliness—O, you remember the tale:

  ‘Arcadia, night, a cloud, Pan, and the moon!’

  She scorned me not, she who scorned others. Have I not reason to be proud?”

  “Reason indeed,” said Gordon, “to dream on that night through an immortal life.”

  “And the Philosopher, too,” continued the god, “do you suppose that he did not know what he was saying when he chose me of all the gods to whom to address his prayer for beauty in the inward soul? And he added, ‘May the outward and the inward man be at one?’”

  “That was a prayer indeed!” said Gordon.

  “And he would not have addressed it to me,” said the god, “unless he had known that I possessed such unity of body and soul myself, and so could give it. So then, my dear fellow, when certain people make light of me and my worshippers, and call us low and brutish, I think upon the Moon and that Philosopher, and in those thoughts I find a consolation better than satire.

  “But the sun just stands at noon, and you know what the poet says:

  ‘Shepherd, tis not allowed when noon is high

  To pipe as shepherds, for there’s Pan to fear;

  He, wearied with his hunting—, turns to sleep,

  And if we rouse him—O, the bitter rage!’

  So, to maintain the poetic tradition, I must sleep now. It would never do to betray the poets, when they have said so many nice things about me. Therefore, farewell now, and, as the ghost says, remember me.”

  He put a hand on Gordon’s shoulder and was gone. Suddenly the air became still and heavy. The wind sighed, and sank. The sun himself seemed to halt and brood. The dogs barked no more in the valleys, and I did not hear the long, melancholy cry of the shepherds. Only a bee went on humming at a purple flower for a while, and then suddenly it ceased. I slept the sleep of the just even more sweetly than usual. When at last I woke, it must have been past two. The Greek was sitting beside the ponies again, playing with his beads. I looked for Gordon, but there was no trace of him, except that the grass where he had been was pressed down. When we got back to the little town, nobody had seen him, and I have never heard of him since.

  For a moment I thought he was possibly Apollo himself, reduced to the position of a latter-day man of culture. But he wore trousers, and even Pan had not come to that. Though, to be sure, there is no saying what a god might not come to under a County Council.

  This story is taken from Henry Nevinson’s The Plea of Pan, published in 1901. Nevinson is now best remembered as a war correspondent during the Boer War and World War I, though the extent of his political radicalism and romaticism remain less enthusiastically recorded: Nevinson wrote prorevolutionary articles in Russia in 1905, and pro-nationalist articles in India; he battled against forced labour in Angola, and lived with his family in Whitechapel “among bugs, fleas, old clothes, slippery cods’ heads and other garbage” in the name of social reform. He is also said to have ridden a white charger at the head of suffrage marches.

  His son was the artist C.R.W. Nevinson, similarly radical in his views, and fascinated by Great Pan (See Adrian Eckersley’s ‘The Rebirthing of Pan’, page 11 of this book).

  – Mark Beech

  Goskin Woods

  Charles Schneider

  Jimmy was a scrawny, creative lunatic of a boy with large, liquid eyes, whose borderline failure at physical education was balanced by high marks in art and literature. Some are born to sit and watch and clap, but a rare few are born with the ability to enchant and mesmerize, to fascinate, frighten, and thrill. And so it was that Jimmy discovered early on that he could scare the holy hell out of his classmates with words alone. Eddie Shacter, plump, red-haired and pasty-faced, was perhaps the nearest thing he had to a best friend.

  They were twelve years old.

  It promised to be a wonderful day: his class would pile into a bus and drive to a nearby state park. He loved nothing better than a field trip to Goskin Woods. Generations of Boy Scouts had ornamented its quaint pathways with signs that identified some of its trees and plants. Here the city kids could actually commune with nature and visit the adjacent museum. This pinesmelling building had antiquated displays of leaves, dried insects and examples of raccoon taxidermy. Often, a creaky 16mm educational film played on a loop in a tiny room with benches. Little, polished pebbles in transparent pencil tubes were sold on the gift shop shelf.

  It was easy to get lost, once the actual nature hike began. Mr. Thrush had warned “stick together.” Jimmy and Eddie did just that, but they also wandered off from the main body of the class and soon were lost. It really was Jimmy’s fault.

  “C’mere... for just a minute.”

  Eddie balked. “We’ll get in trouble.”

  “Since when did you say ‘no’ to adventure? check this out. I found something...”

  “What? The class is, like, two hundred yards ahead of us... we better...”

  “We’ll catch up fast. You have to look...”

  It was difficult to resist so convincing and excited a friend as Jimmy.

  The woods were dense and wild, and most of the class had run amok. Jimmy and Eddie soon found themselves completely lost.

  “I hear there are things out here,” Jimmy whispered to his friend. “Bad things.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I am saying we better get back soon before it comes. It thirsts!”

  “Stop it,” hissed Eddie.

  “Stop what?” Jimmy asked innocently.

  “You’re trying to scare me.”

  “I am scaring you,” Jimmy said gloatingly. He was well aware of his ability to manipulate his friend’s fears, and exulted in each of Eddie’s goosebumps.

  They walked in silence for a while, but eventually Jimmy could hold off no longer.

  “Shhh. Did you hear that? I though I heard something... but too heavy to be human... was like large hooves stepping on twigs... like a goat or something... like...”

  He took a whiff.

  “Can you smell it? Ewww? Stinks. Like a... dead... I dunno... a dead animal, a RAM or something... like..”

  “I told you to stop trying to scare me!”

  Jimmy giggled, like the brat that he was. “I’m sorry,” he said insincerely. “I can’t help it! You are, just, so great to frighten!”

  A faroff rumbling sound began to roll closer just as a faint drizzle began to fall upon the two boys.

  “Great! Now we are totally in trouble. We’re lost and its raining!”

  “Relax! There is nothing we can do about it until we find them. Why can’t you just decide to enjoy the fact that we are lost and it’s gonna storm? Woo Hoo!”

  The two miserable children walked together in silence for a short distance before Jimmy started to tease his companion some more. “I hear that the Goat Men come out when it rains. Their sense of smell is increased a hundred times. They come out to sniff, sniff, sniff with their foul goatish noses. They sniff for children. They prefer little girls who are tending the sheep but they’ll make do with anything, anything, I hear. First they scare you till your hair turns white and you go insane, then they stomp you with their hooves into bloody jelly. It sounds just like that lightning just now when your bones crack crack CRACK!”

  “Stop it! Who told you that?”

  “You know Mr. Weaver the clean-up man? Just before we got on the bus he called me over and asked me, ‘Mr, Thrush’s class really goin’ up to Goskin’ Woods today? After all that years back? How quick they forget. Hmmm hmmm.’ Then he started singing something like...

  “‘Don’t forget,

  lo
ok away,

  if you see a

  Goat-Man today

  Look Away or

  You’ll go blind

  Don’t look inside

  Goat-Man’s mind

  If two go in,

  Be friend or kin,

  But one returns

  From Goat-Man’s den’”

  “He did not! Why would he do that? He should get fired instantly.”

  “Maybe he will, but I swear he did. He spoke fast and said ‘When I was a boy my Nana used to sing, Don’t forget, look away...’”

  “Shut up! It is some sort of old dumb nursery rhyme. He was just being a creep.”

  “I know. Isn’t it cool, the idea of something out here like a real live centaur or...

  “Shut up!”

  “...minotaur or... Who says they have to be all dead and gone? You know that is why they call it Goskin Woods, right? It’s short for Goat-Skin Woods. They changed it long ago, in the Nineteenth Century when these kids were murdered...”

  “I told you to...”

  BOOM!

  Jimmy shook his fist at the storming sky theatrically, all the while relishing his friend’s growing panic.

  “If there is real evil, if there are real old gods, if there are demons and ghosts that are hungry and need a young, fresh mind and body to cling to and live in—then take me, curse me, possess me now! Now! Right here and right now! I believe in you with all my soul, whatever you were or could become, and may my mind and bones and marrow age and grow to serve as your humble scribe and slave forever, until long after my mortal death!”

  Eddie’s mouth fell open. It looked just like a black letter “O.”

  “Did you just make that up?”

  Eddie nodded, ignoring the rain upon his face, reborn as a diabolical enfant terrible.

  “You’re crazy. What if it were real? All this stuff. Animal men? If these things are real, then you just ruined your life! You are cursed for sure!”

  Jimmy spoke, “Yes... or maybe I just blessed myself with what you think is a curse. If I can see what others can not see even if it blinds me with real terror, and I have to clear the veins of phantoms away from my eyes for every last moment of my life, I call that a victory.”

  Eddie looked up at Jimmy with a glimmer of future wisdom.

  “But then you’ll be alone all of your life. I mean, I know we all are, but you will be really, truly alone. I just know it.”

  Jimmy gave Eddie the finger and stomped his sneakers petulantly.

  “What do you know, you’re just a kid?”

  “We’re both twelve.”

  “My life is not going to be boring. I’d rather it be a nightmare filled with real ghosts and demons, than, than...”

  “Than what?” Eddie said, looking up from his glasses as he carefully wiped the rain from his nose.

  “Than be like you and the rest are going to grow up to be, with a family and a job and class reunions and fitting in. Blah blah blah blah.”

  “Well, let’s wait and see what happens.”

  The storm grew more intense and the boys were pelted with unexpected hail. As they crested a hill, they saw a crude structure a hundred feet ahead. As they ran through the grey storm, Eddie began to sob. They were just kids, after all. Was some kind of reentrance to the park? How far had they strayed?

  As they approached the shack, three grey figures rounded a corner, raggedy, snaggle-toothed and caught in the midst of something. They were wearing curious, antiquated garments—robes of some sort—whose exact nature was obscured by the rain.

  The boys must have strayed far from the park to find themselves in this dark hollow.

  Both parties were so shocked to see the other, that they collectively let out a shriek.

  “KEEP RUNNING! STORM A’COMIN’! MIND THE CAVE! RUN THAT WAY BACK!” screamed the forest people to the little boys. They pointed pale, white-robed arms in a direction that seemed to offer the promise of safety.

  The boys ran blindly and breathlessly through cutting scratching thickets, following the direction which the Strange Men had indicated.

  The hail pelted down as hard as old coins.

  “Oww.” shrieked Eddie. It really hurt. The rain was so thick that the sprinting boys could barely see the path ahead. A black gaping pit in a hillside stood out from the wet grey.

  “A cave!” Eddie pointed toward the darkly inviting maw in the land.

  Jimmy walked steadily away. “No way, man. You heard those people. They said stay away from it. They would know... probably a mountain lion or...”

  “Your goat-man?”

  “Ha hah ha.”

  “We’ll get killed by a lightning bolt, Jimmy! Just for a minute to dry off!”

  The cave appeared quite inviting. The wet, muddy entrance yielded to a small, dry room-like chamber. It was sort of cozy, and branched out into other channels. Footprints of sneakers indicated recent hikers.

  “Check it out! They left us something!”

  It was Eddie who spotted the pile of carefully stacked stones forming a kind of altar. A corked bottle of wine sitting in an obvious spot, with freshly cut flower blossoms scattered at the base.

  “Someone must have known we were coming!”

  “It was obviously left to be found, maybe as a gift. Look at the way it’s corked and put there. Hey. Check out those words or, are they... pictures?”

  Someone had etched some symbols into the dusty cave floor.

  “What language is that?”

  “I have no idea. Weird.”

  “Cool. So...?”

  Jimmy retrieved and uncorked the wine bottle. He smelled the contents and winced.

  “Yuck. You ever drink wine before?”

  “Not really,” said Eddie. “My dad gave me an olive from one of his drinks once. It was okay. You?”

  Jimmy shook his head. “No, but someone sure seems to want us to try it.” Jimmy shrugged and grinned. “Down the hatch!”

  Jimmy took a hesitant pull from the bottle, and winced.

  “Your turn,” he said to Eddie, placing the bottle firmly in his friend’s hands. “Drink it!”

  Eddie felt pressured but delayed, for a beat. He felt something deep within, that was suddenly, forcefully urging him. He grabbed the bottle and took a long, deep pull from it. He couldn’t stop.

  “Whoa, whoa, slow down,” Jimmy urged. “Leave some of that wine for...” But the wine was all gone.

  Eddie dropped the spent bottle to the cave floor, as a sardonic smile began to overwhelm his face. The wine still dripped from his lips and chin, in the shadowy cave. His eyes grew a watery, blood red. The fear seemed to have vanished, and something unfamiliar had replaced it.

  “Yes, Jimmy, Yes. I see. Do you see it?” Eddie asked what would be a small sacrifice. “It is coming! No! It is already here! You knew! How could you have known?”

  Jimmy tried to reply but he had no throat remaining with which to do so.

  Strange shadows elongated upon the cave wall and a crimson light flared out of the darkest channels.

  After a good forty five minutes, Eddie, just Eddie, burst out from the edge of the woods.

  “There he is!” screamed out Molly Iverson, the first student who spotted him.

  A relieved Mr. Thrush stood by a Sheriffs car that was parked near the school bus, talking agitatedly with the deputies.

  He grew more distraught as he saw that Eddie’s clothes, and some of his skin, were shredded, but he was alive. The horribly cut and bruised boy was covered from head to toe in a mixture of mud, leaves, blood and some unidentified offal. An intense, painful-looking grimace was etched into his face. His toothy mouth was frozen as if it were a photograph. His eyes looked decades older than his twelve years.

  He didn’t stop laughing for four days.

  When they asked Eddie where his schoolmate was, the boy appeared to be clueless. He said that he had no idea what had happened to Jimmy.

  “It began to storm bad, and we got separated,” he
cried. “He was my best friend. We played monster games at recess.”

  “We still have time to find him. You have to show us exactly where you boys were.”

  “I’ll try. We have to find the men and the cave.”

  No one had been known to inhabit the State Park since the last Native Americans were starved there, except for squatters, and the Rangers were fairly vigilant in keeping them out. But there were so many grottos and hidden groves that a small city of vagrants might have existed there, unknown, for many years.

  Eddie led the grown-ups, including the very interested law, along the path that he and Eddie had wandered along, or as close to it as he could now find, but nowhere did they find any sign of a shack.

  “Are you sure there were men in a house? Are you sure it was in this park? Highway 79 crosses over into some rural, but inhabited, areas.”

  “I saw what I saw. They were in the park. They were... busy.”

  Subsequent searches yielded nothing, for many months. Years later the search and the case were closed. Jimmy’s family was haunted by the uncertainty of his fate. The tragedy and mystery overshadowed the childhoods of his classmates. “Whatever happened to Jimmy K.?” As Eddie aged, a silent finger of blame stretched across the decades. It was the reason he avoided class reunions.

  A decade later, a young boy’s bones were found in those woods, at the mouth of a previously uncharted cave, along with evidence of a most unnatural death. Samples were obtained. Old accusations were dusted off and the case was reopened. More samples were authenticated. It was Jimmy K. Samples of gnawed bones. Samples of Eddie’s dental records were requested. This resulted in what many felt was a long overdue, and lengthy, incarceration in a place for the mentally unsound.

  Upon his release, decades later, now grey and bent, Eddie was sighted several times in the vicinity of Goskin Woods, before completely disappearing forever. Rumors of a hastily scrawled manuscript revealing missing pieces of this mystery, and of authorities destroying said hysteric document, are unfounded.