“What, sir, if I may venture to ask, is the nature of that service?”
Rand answered only after a long and thoughtful interval.
“It may seem to you a rather odd answer, Dacre. I want to clear up in your mind, forever, the truth of what the religion we hold in common—the religion of our ancient Anglican Church here in England—teaches us about the souls in Paradise...”
THE GREAT CIRCLE
Originally published in Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror, June 1932.
Chapter 1
The transition from those hours-on-end of looking down on the dark-green jungle of virgin forest was startling in its abruptness. We had observed this one break in the monotonous terrain, of course, well before we were directly over it. Then Wilkes, the pilot, slowed and began to circle. I think he felt it, the element I have referred to as startling; for, even from the first—before we landed, I mean—there was something—an atmosphere—of strangeness about this vast circular space entirely bare of trees with the exception of the giant which crowned the very slight elevation at its exact center.
I know at any rate that I felt it; and Dr. Pelletier told me afterward that it had seemed to lay hold on him like a quite definite physical sensation. Wilkes did not circle very long. There was no need for it and I think he continued the process, as though looking for a landing place, as long as he did, on account of that eeriness rather than because of any necessity for prolonged observation.
At last, almost, I thought, as though reluctantly, he shut off his engine—“cut his gun” as airmen express it—and brought the plane down to an easy landing on the level greensward within a hundred yards of the great tree standing there in its majestic, lonely grandeur. The great circular space about it was like a billiard table, like an English deer park. The great tree looked, too, for all the world like an ash, itself an anomaly here in the unchartered wilderness of Quintana Roo.
We sat there in the plane and looked about us. On every side, for a radius of more than half a mile from the center where we were, the level grassy plain stretched away in every direction and down an almost imperceptible gradual slope to the horizon of dense forest which encircled it.
There was not a breath of air stirring. No blade of the fine short grass moved. The tree, dominating everything, its foliage equally motionless, drew our gaze. We all looked at it at the same time. It was Wilkes the pilot who spoke first, his outstretched arm indicating the tree.
“Might be a thousand years old!” said Wilkes, in a hushed voice. There was something about this place which made all of us, I think, lower our voices.
“Or even two thousand,” remarked Pelletier.
We had taken off, that morning in 192—, at ten o’clock, from Belize. It was now one o’clock in the afternoon. We had flown due north for the first eighty miles or so, first over the blue waters of landlocked Chetumal Bay, leaving Ambergris Cay on our right, and then Xkalok, the southeastern point of Quintana Roo; then over dry land, leaving the constricted northern point of the bay behind where parallel 19, north latitude, crosses the 88th meridian of longitude. Thence still due north until we had turned west at Santa Cruz de Bravo, and continued in that direction, glimpsing the hard, metallic luster of the noon sun on Lake Chinahaucanab, and then, veering southwest in the direction of Xkanba and skirting a tremendous wooden plateau on our left, we had been attracted, after cursory, down-looking views of innumerable architectural remains among the dense forestation, to our landing place by the abrupt conspicuousness of its treeless circularity.
That summarizes the geography of our flight. Our object, the general interest of the outlook rather than anything definitely scientific, was occasioned by Pelletier’s vacation, as per the regulations of the U.S. Navy, of whose Medical Corps he was one of the chief ornaments; from his duties as Chief of the Naval Hospital in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands. Pelletier wanted to get over to Central America for this vacation. He talked it over with me several times on the cool gallery of my house on Denmark Hill. Almost incidentally he asked me to accompany him. I think he knew that I would come along.
We started through San Juan, Puerto Rico, in which great port we found accommodation in the Bull Line’s Catherine with our friend Captain Rumberg, who is a Finn, as far as Santo Domingo City. From there we trekked across the lofty intervening mountains, with a guide and pack burros, into Haiti. At Port au Prince we secured accommodations as the sole passengers on a tramp going to Belize in British Honduras, which made only one stop, at Kingston, Jamaica.
It was between Kingston and Belize that the idea of this air voyage occurred to Pelletier. The idea of looking down comfortably upon the Maya remains, those cities buried in impenetrable jungles, grew upon him and he waxed eloquent out of what proved an encyclopedic fund of knowledge of Maya history. I learned more about these antiquities than I had acquired in my entire life previously! One aspect of that rather mysterious history, it seemed, had intrigued Pelletier. This was the abrupt and unaccountable disappearance of what he called the earlier of major civilization. The superior race which had built the innumerable temples, palaces and other elaborate and ornate structures now slowly decaying in the jungles of the Yucatan Peninsula, had been, apparently, wiped out in a very brief period. They had, it seemed, merely disappeared. Science, said Pelletier, had been unable to account for this catastrophe. I had, of course, read of it before, but Pelletier’s enthusiasm made it vastly intriguing.
Our two-men-and-hired-pilot expedition into this unexplored region of vast architectural ruins and endless forestation had landed, as though by the merest chance, here in a section presenting topographical features such as no previous explorers had reported upon! We were, perhaps, two hours by air, from Belize and civilization—two months, at least, had we been traveling afoot through the thick jungles, however well equipped with food, guides, and the machetes which all previous adventurers into the Yucatan jungles report as the first essential for such travel.
Pelletier, with those small verbal creakings and gruntings which invariably punctuate the shifting of position in his case, was the first to move. He heaved his ungainly bulk laboriously out of the plane and stood on the grassy level ground looking up at Wilkes and me. The sun beat down pitilessly on the three of us. His first remark was entirely practical.
“Let’s get into the shade of that tree, and eat,” said Dr. Pelletier.
Ten minutes later we had the lunch basket unpacked, the lunch spread out, and were starting in to eat, there in the heart of Quintana Roo. And, to all appearances, we might have been sitting down picnicking in Kent, or Connecticut!
I remember, with a vivid clarity which is burned indelibly into my mind, Wilkes reaching for a tongue sandwich, when the wind came.
Abruptly, without any warning, it came, a sudden, violent gust out of nowhere, like an unexpected blow from behind, upsetting our peaceful little session there, sociably, on the grass in the quiet shade of the ancient tree which looked like an English ash. It shredded to filaments the paper napkin I was holding. It caused the squat mustard bottle to land twenty feet way. It sucked dry the brine out of the saucerful of stuffed olives. It sent Pelletier lumbering after a rapidly rolling pith sun helmet. And it carried the pilot Wilkes’ somewhat soiled and grimy Shantung silk jacket—which he had doubled up and was using to sit on, and had released by virtue of half rising to reach for that tongue sandwich—and blew it, fluttering, folding and unfolding, arms now stiffly extended, now rolled up into a close ball, up, off the ground, and then, in a curve upward and flattened out and into the tree’s lower branches, and then straight up among these, out of our sight.
Having accomplished all these things, and scattered items of lunch broadcast, the sudden wind died a natural death, and everything was precisely as it had been before, save for the disorganization of our lunch—and save, too, for us!
I will not attempt to depart from the strict truth: we were, all of us, quite definitely startled. Wilkes swore picturesquely at the disappearance of
his jacket, and continued to reach, with a kind of baffled ineptitude which was quite definitely comic, after the now scattered tongue sandwiches. Pelletier, returning with the rescued sun helmet, wore a vastly puzzled expression on his heavy face, much like an injured child who does not know quite what has happened to him. As for me, I daresay I presented an equally absurd appearance. That gust had caught me as I was pouring limeade from a quart thermos into three of those half-pint paper cups which are so difficult to manage as soon as filled. I found myself now gazing ruefully at the plate of cold sliced ham, inundated with the cup’s contents.
Pelletier sat down again in the place he had vacated a moment before, turned to me, and remarked:
“Now where did that come from?”
I shook my head. I had no answer to that. I was wondering myself. It was Wilkes who answered, Wilkes goaded to a high pitch of annoyance over the jacket, Wilkes unaware of the singular appropriateness of his reply.
“Right out of the corner of hell!” said Wilkes, rather sourly, as he rose to walk over to that enormous trunk and to look up into the branches, seeking vainly for some glimpse of Shantung silk with motor grease on it.
“Hm!” remarked Pelletier, as he bit, reflectively, into one of the sandwiches. I said nothing. I was trying at the moment to divide what was left of the cold limeade evenly among three half-pint paper cups.
Chapter 2
It was nearly a full hour later, after we had eaten heartily and cleared up the remains of the lunch, and smoked, that Wilkes prepared to climb the tree. I know because I looked at my watch. It was two fourteen—another fact burned into my brain. I was estimating when, starting then, we should get back to Belize, where I had a dinner engagement at seven. I thought about five or five fifteen.
“The damned thing is up there somewhere,” said Wilkes, looking up into the branches and leaves. “It certainly hasn’t come down. I suppose I’ll have to go up after it!”
I gave him a pair of hands up, his foot on them and a quick heave, a lower limb deftly caught, an overhand pull; and then our Belize pilot was climbing like a cat up into the great tree’s heart after his elusive and badly soiled garment.
The repacked lunch basket had to be put in the plane, some hundred yards away from the tree. I attended to that while Pelletier busied himself with his notebook, sitting cross-legged in the shade.
I sauntered back after disposing of the lunch basket. I glanced over at the tree, expecting to see Wilkes descending about then with the rescued jacket. He was still up there, however. There was nothing to take note of except a slight—a very slight—movement of the leaves, which, looking up the tree and seeing, I remarked as unusual because not a single breath of air was stirring anywhere. I recall thinking, whimsically, that it was as though the great tree were laughing at us, very quietly and softly, over the trouble it was making for Wilkes.
I sat down beside Pelletier, and he began to speak, perhaps for the third or fourth time, about that strange clap of wind. That had made a very powerful impression on Pelletier, it seemed. After this comment Pelletier paused, frowned, looked at his watch and then at the tree, and remarked: “Where is that fellow? He’s been up there ten minutes!”
We walked over to the tree’s foot and looked up among the branches. The great tree stood there inscrutable, a faint movement barely perceptible among its leaves. I remembered that imagined note of derision which this delicate movement had suggested to me, and I smiled to myself.
Pelletier shouted up the tree: “Wilkes! Wilkes—can’t you find the coat?”
Then again: “Wilkes! Wilkes—we’ve got to get started back pretty soon!”
But there was no answer from Wilkes, only that almost imperceptible movement of the leaves, as though there were a little breeze up there; as though indeed the tree were quietly laughing at us. And there was something—something remotely sinister, derisive, like a sneer, in that small, dry, rustling chuckle.
Pelletier and I looked at each other, and there was no smile in the eyes of either one of us.
We sat down on the grass then as though by agreement. Again we looked at each other. I seemed to feel the tree’s derision; more openly now, less like a delicate hint, a nuance. It seemed to me quite open now, like a slap in the face! Here indeed was an unprecedented predicament. We were all ready to depart, and we had no pilot. Our pilot had merely performed a commonplace act. He had climbed a tree.
But he had not come down—that was all.
It seemed simple to state it to oneself that way, as I did, to myself. And yet, the implications of that simple statement involved—well, what did they involve? The thing, barring an accident: Wilkes having fallen into a decay-cavity or something of the sort; or a joke: Wilkes hiding from us like a child among the upper branches—barring those explanations for his continued absence up there and his refusal to answer when called to, the thing was—well, impossible.
Wilkes was a grown man. It was inconceivable that he should be hiding from us up there. If caught, somehow, and so deterred from descending, at least he could have replied to Pelletier’s hail, explained his possible predicament. He had, too, gone far up into the tree. I had seen him go up agilely after my initial helping hand. He was, indeed, well up and going higher, far above the lower trunk area of possible decay-cavities, when I had left him to put the lunch basket back in the plane. He had been up nearly twenty minutes now, and had not come down. We could not see him. A slightly cold sensation up and down my spine came like a presage, a warning. There seemed—it was borne in abruptly upon me—something sinister here, something menacing, deadly. I looked over at Pelletier to see if anything of this feeling might be reflected in his expression, and as I looked, he spoke.
“Canevin, did you notice that this deforested area is circular?”
I nodded.
“Does that suggest anything to you?”
I paused, took thought. It suggested several things, in the light of my recent, my current, feeling about this place centered about its great tree. It was, for one thing, apparently an unique formation in the topography of this peninsula. The circularity suggested an area set off from the rest, and by design—somebody’s design. The “ring” idea next came uppermost in my mind. The ring plays a large part in the occult, the preternatural: the elves’ ring; dancing rings (they were grassy places, too); the Norman cromlechs; Stonehenge; the Druidical rites; protective rings, beyond the perimeter of which the Powers of Evil, beleaguering, might not penetrate...I looked up from these thoughts again at Pelletier.
“Good God, Pelletier! Yes—do you imagine...?”
Pelletier waved one of his big, awkward-looking hands, those hands which so often skirted death, defeated death, at his operating table.
“It’s significant,” he muttered, and nodded his head several times. Then: “That gust of wind, Canevin—remember? It was that which took Wilkes’ coat up there, made him climb after it; and now—well, where is he?”
I shook my head slowly. There seemed no answer to Pelletier’s question. Then: “What is it, Pelletier?”
Pelletier replied, as was usual with him, only after some additional reflection and with a certain deliberateness. He was measuring every word, it seemed.
“Every indication, so far, points to—an air-elemental.”
“An air-elemental?” The term, with whatever idea or spiritual entity, or vague, unusual superstition underlay its possible meaning, was familiar to me, but who—except Pelletier, whose range of knowledge I certainly had never plumbed—would think of such a thing in this connection?
“What is an air-elemental?” I asked him, hoping for some higher information.
Pelletier waved his hand in a gesture common to him.
“It would be a little difficult to make it clear, right off the bat, so to speak, Canevin,” said he, a heavy frown engendered by his own inability to express what might be in that strange, full mind of his, corrugating his broad forehead. “And even if I had it at my tongue’s end,” he conti
nued, “it would take an unconscionable time.” He paused and looked at me, smiling wryly.
“I’ll tell you, Canevin, all about them, if we ever get the chance.” Then, as I nodded, necessarily acquiescing in this unsatisfactory explanation, he added: “That is what little, what very little, I, or, indeed, anybody, knows about them!”
And with that I had, perforce, to be satisfied.
It seemed to my taunted senses, attuned now to this suggested atmosphere of menace which I was beginning to sense all about us, that an intensified rustle came from the tree’s leaves. An involuntary shudder ran over my body. From that moment, quite definitely, I felt it: the certain, unmistakable knowledge that we three stood alone, encircled, hemmed in, by something; something vast, powerful beyond all comprehension, like the incalculable power of a god, or a demigod; something elemental and, I felt, old with a hoary antiquity; something established here from beyond the ken of humanity; something utterly inhuman, overwhelmingly hostile, inimical, to us. I felt that we were on Its ground, and that It had, so far, merely shown us, contemptuously, the outer edge of Its malice and of Its power. It had, quietly, unobtrusively, taken Wilkes. Now, biding Its time.
It was watching, as though amused; certain of Its malignant, Its overwhelming, power; watching us, waiting for Its own good time to close in on us…
I stood up, to break the strain, and walked a few steps toward the edge of the tree’s nearly circular shade. From there I looked down that gentle slope across the motionless short grass through the shimmering heat waves of that airless afternoon to the tree-horizon.
What was that? I shaded my hands and strained my vision through those pulsating heat waves which intervened; then, astonished, incredulous, I ran over to the plane and reached in over the side and brought out the high-powered Lomb-Zeiss binoculars which Bishop Dunn at Belize had loaned me the evening before. I put them to my eyes without waiting to go back into the shade near Pelletier. I wanted to test, to verify, what I thought I had seen down there at the edge of the encircling forest; to assure myself at the same time that I was still sane.
The Golden Age of Weird Fiction MEGAPACK™, Vol. 1: Henry S. Whitehead Page 17
