by Susan Cooper
I’ll say, Queston thought. He looked at the gaping women, and thought of porridge and cheap black cloth and dim light.
‘—But thanks to the wisdom of your present leaders, whose minds are open to our loving thoughts of illumination from this side, all can be well. Only patience is needed, to bring strength for the great task ahead. To live as you live now is a blessed beginning. And at last, out of these trials there must come true brotherhood and peace throughout the world, linking men and women of every caste, creed and colour in perfect love.’
The deep, slow voice tolled monotonously out; Queston listened intently, frowning. It was the old nebulous love doctrine of the trance teacher, but there was a difference: a hidden, deliberate thread of propaganda. Your leaders… your leaders… He stared thoughtfully at Warren.
The music faintly rose and fell, muttering with vague menace. A few explosive coughs echoed out; the women were growing restless.
Warren suddenly stood upright and stiff, clenching the back of his chair. His eyes opened wide, the whites gleaming, but his expression did not change.
‘I have someone… there is a man, his name is Frederick. He is tall, dark-haired, a lot of dark hair. He tosses it aside all the time—’ He jerked his head backwards. ‘He has a strong face, but gentle eyes… he moves down in this direction… is there anyone who recognizes him?’
The wide white eyes turned in their direction, and he flung out a pointing arm; Beth drew closer to Queston, and he slipped his arm round her. He watched Warren sceptically, feeling contempt at the rustle of excitement that quickened the air round them. On their left, a dozen rows ahead, a young woman rose to her feet: ‘I know him,’ she called. ‘It’s my husband.’ Her voice shook.
Warren’s gaze moved quickly to her. ‘Ah yes, he’s coming to stand beside you, my dear… he’s on your right hand… he’s running his hand down your hair…’
The girl had long fair hair, straggling loose over her shoulders. She said faintly: ‘O yes—he used to do that.’ She stood as if all her body was tingling, gazing at Warren in agonized hope. The heads craned closer to see her.
Warren stretched out his hand dramatically. ‘Your name is Joan, I think… ’ She nodded. ‘He brings you great love, he tells you not to grieve, that he is always at your side as he is now… I have a feeling of something cut off suddenly, I think he died young, in an accident… he tells you that he is very happy, that you must be happy as well, live in the place where you were together and he will often speak to you through those like our brother. Only you must stay contented in your home… ’ Warren let out a long breath and bent his head; the girl said tearfully: ‘O thank you, thank you.’ She sat down; but still upright, gazing, her face shining up at him. Queston quivered with distaste and rage.
But Warren was erect again, half-shouting, pointing away from them into the depths of a second chamber of the three armed hall.
‘The name Turville, I have a Turville—’
They heard a woman’s voice, faintly: ‘Yes. O yes.’
He called: ‘Your husband is here, he is a very erect gentleman, military… what is this I see… yes, he has a white moustache and it may be the light round his head, but I think he has white hair. He has only one arm… he can’t give it to me very well because he is not conversant with the manner of communication, but he sends you his love… there are many whom you know on the other side, there is great love towards you, I feel it. He tells you to be content with your life, he says he is helping you in a decision you have to make… peace to you…’
The women were tense now with eagerness; the whole crowd murmurous and excited; and Queston thought that the music was growing, filling the pauses, heightening the emotional, smouldering air. Warren had swung round again, the sweat gleaming on his forehead; he was speaking more quickly now, pointing down at the rows in front of him.
‘You, my dear, I have your father to come to you… a short elderly gentleman who passed over some years ago… I think he is your father—’
‘It’s him, yes—’ The voice was barely audible.
‘He says you have been strong, you understand the need to cope with the difficulties we have now, your strength is a great joy to him. He shows me some papers… he left his papers in bad order, and you dealt with them. He is proud of you, he sends you his love…’
‘Thank you—’ The voice broke, but the spell moved away from it; Warren had jerked suddenly, twice, a quiver running over all his heavy body and twitching his face into an idiot gape. He crouched slightly, clutching the chair. The music shrilled softly, a high note of strings, and down again. A woman near Queston moaned: ‘Peter. O Peter my love, come back—’ The luminous blue glow over the centre of the room, as he strained to see, suddenly cut at his eyes as if it drove into his head, and he blinked and ducked.
Then the voice was there. He saw Warren’s mouth moving, as he looked up, and he saw the sagging clefts of age in the man’s face, but the voice was the high clear tone of a small child’s.
‘Mummie. Mummie, it’s Colin. Mummie, you were cross with me, don’t be cross. I didn’t mean to run out, I didn’t know what would happen.’ In some part of the darkness, beyond the platform, a woman sobbed.
‘Don’t cry, Mummie,’ the child’s voice said. ‘I’m very happy. I’m always at home with you. You kept my toys for me… stay at home with me. I’m very happy… ’ The voice died with a gurgle; Warren doubled up as if he had been struck, and fell sideways over his chair, clasping its back with both arms, gasping, each long breath a moan: ‘Aaaaaah… aaaaaah… aaaaaah…’ Then his head jerked up again, and the eyes were wide and white, the pupils rolled up invisible; his face twitched and grimaced and seemed to change, the cheeks hollower, the nose and chin more pointed. He opened his mouth, and the voice that came was a man’s voice but not his own; thinner, rasping, with the Gloucestershire vowels clear and marked. And he spoke, Queston saw, to the big woman beside him where she had been sitting all the time, an indistinct black shape on the edge of the platform, outside the glow of the strange blue pool of light. The music, from its hidden source, reached an end just as he spoke, and the thin voice husked out electrifying in the sudden silence.
‘Daphne,’ it said. ‘Take care. It’s coming. Take care—’
They never knew if it would have said more. The big woman sprang to her feet, immensely appearing in the light. Her face was brilliant with a kind of ecstasy; as she leapt up, the music rang out into the air again, a new music, throbbing and darkly triumphant. Above it she cried out, taking Warren by the shoulders, staring out over the crowded hall: ‘Help him now—he needs the force of our minds and hearts and then he can tell us. The revelation can come to us, the Guild can know its purpose. Help him now, in the work for which he came, call on his gift—’
The women’s voices rose round her own, in a diffuse babel of shrieks and cries from every part of the triple hall; Queston heard Mary scream: ‘Come! Come! ’ and saw her oblivious of him or anyone near her, gazing up, her hands clenched, her face caught in a frenzied mask of hope and lust. Staring round him wildly he saw every face frozen in the same passion of eagerness, a fearful tide unleashed through the place as if a restraining cord had been cut. The air was hot, oppressive, the noise beat on him as if it were one with the heat. He saw Warren, half-standing half-conscious, jerking like a marionette.
Oakley said softly: ‘Christ! This isn’t in the book—what the hell are they up to?’
Then there was a weight suddenly against him, and Beth slumped into his arms. He glimpsed her white face, and struggled to keep her on her feet; Oakley moved forward swiftly to help. ‘Outside. Quick.’ They moved away down the long aisle, half-dragging her; every face and mind in the room was bent utterly on Warren, and no head turned as they struggled by. Queston was urgent for escape; quivering in the room he could feel something more than the great sexual tide unleashed in the panting crowd of women; something like the helpless knowledge of nightmare, in pursuit. He felt cool
air on his face as they reached the entrance to the room; Beth spluttered and moved, and they paused. He supported her as Oakley reached for the door. The fantastic noise of the women gripped him with revulsion; the baying of harpies, he thought. And then it changed.
The voice of the crowd took a long shuddering breath, a sound so horribly compelling that involuntarily they looked back. On the platform, in the shaft of blue light more weird and luminous now from their greater distance, Warren was writhing on the ground. The big woman was no longer there. Alone, the man’s body thrashed and arched, sweeping the chair from the platform with a crash; he uttered short, throaty cries, his limbs and trunk contorting and leaping in an obscene parody of physical love. The women were motionless now, taut and gasping, and a susurration from them like the blowing of dry leaves. In the air the music throbbed and wailed. Warren screamed shrilly: ‘No! No!’ in a way that Queston had heard before.
Then his back arched up from the ground in a great leaping curve impossible for any conscious man; he slumped back again to lie inert, and from his throat they heard a voice, harsh, tremendous, inhuman. It snarled out, booming in every corner of the hollowed underground hall; it was not real, Queston thought in disbelief; no voice could contain that force, the cold, mocking triumph, the viciousness, the size. Not Warren’s voice, or any man’s.
‘You bloody fools,’ it said, in a thundering, icy laughter. ‘You stupid, bloody fools. What do you think you—what do you think—’ It ran off into gibberish, and then exploded into a series of appalling disjointed obscenities, laughing all the while; and all the while Warren, from whose unconscious throat it came, lay motionless on the floor.
Then it howled like an animal, and the sense was back again. ‘Stupid. Stupid. You think you call. You dare to call. You shall see what you call you shall see what you call you shall see what you call—’
The words thumped evenly out, over and over again, like a faulty gramophone, in the relentless huge snarl. Queston pulled himself into movement; it was like shaking off a heavy restraining hand. He saw Beth and the journalist listening, staring, with the old look of abject attentiveness that always so horrified him.
‘Quick,’ he said. ‘Quick.’
They went together out of the door, pushing it shut behind them; but the cacophony still followed them along the echoing corridor towards the surface, until they stood between the great open doors at the entrance, breathing the cool night.
Then they heard a new sound. A long, low rumbling came from inside the shelter; a deep ominous note that made them scramble instinctively away, up the long ramp, running against the thrust of the slope, with all the time the noise growing and growling, and muffling a faint sound of screams from within so that afterwards Queston wondered if he had heard them at all. When they were clear they stood gasping, in an open street looking back to the lamplit entrance of the shelter, with the bulk of the cathedral rearing up over it blacker than the black sky.
And in that moment Queston was instantly back in another place, another time, under hot sun and a white sky. He looked at the entrance, through the heavy doors, and he saw a small cloud of dust puff out of its mouth like smoke from a gun barrel. And hang, drifting. Then the ground shivered under their feet, and the long subterranean roar burst out after the dust, and it seemed impossible that the drifting mist should not be scattered by the noise. But still it hung in the air while they saw, terribly, the long dark stretch of grass above the shelter gently slip and slump and fall to leave a great gaping pit. It was not possible, and they watched without belief.
But Oakley was looking farther; straining to see into the darkness beyond. Suddenly he swung round and grabbed at them to pull them away.
‘Get out, quick! Along the wall, in the open. The cathedral’s going!’
They ran desperately through streets, round corners, flinching once as a chimney pot crashed to the ground a second after they passed. Lights were flicking on in some of the houses, and children’s voices calling in fear. Round the third corner Oakley stumbled to a halt, in the open paved stretch where two roads met at the city gate. The roar behind them had grown, following, and as they paused there, panting for breath, they saw incredulously the towering bulk of the cathedral sway and lurch against the dim dark sky.
The thundering grew to a high screaming note as if the earth itself had split, and among shell-fire crashes of falling brick the great tower slowly toppled over and down, burying the streets where they had stood moments before. At the same time the city wall, twenty yards from their feet cracked and shuddered and keeled over outwards as if it were paper blown by the wind. The street-lamps flickered and went out. They felt again the gentle, awful ripple of the earth beneath them, and in the faint light left by the moon Queston saw the long black arm of an open fissure, running out from the cathedral close to the wall. It opened narrow jaws as he watched, and then closed; and the road buckled and bulged over the place where it had been. Falling masonry still rumbled and crashed unseen in the town.
He heard Beth’s voice beside him, high with fear.
‘Where can we go?’
‘Outside. Nothing’s worse than this. Where’s Oakley?’
‘Here.’
‘Come on then. Carefully. Watch where you tread.’
They scrambled over the fallen wall and out on to the road, with the recklessness of despair. For a hundred yards the way was clear, and they did not turn to look at the wailing chaos behind their backs.
Then Queston sensed that some obstruction lay ahead. He called out in warning, stopped, and reached for Beth; but it was too late. The blinding white of a spotlight flashed into his eyes, and there were suddenly dark running, shouting figures all around. Hands seized him; he heard Beth scream, and struggled fiercely, lashing out with his feet. One heel connected hard with bone; a man gave an agonized, gulping gasp, and he felt savage satisfaction bubble within him.
Then there was the crash of a blow on the back of his head, brilliant light behind his eyes; and the darkness came in.
Part Four
Darkness, and the noise of silence; an utter confusion, as if he hung between heaven and earth and outside time. And then he was awake. He was lying on a bed, with blankets rough against his chin. The back of his head ached; his mouth was stale. He tried to open his eyes, and found that they were already open. Panic rushed into him, and he remembered the earthquake, and he knew that it had come again while he slept, and buried him alive.
He jerked the bedclothes away, wincing at a quick pain in his upper arm; swung his legs off the bed and found his feet on the crisp fur of carpet. With the darkness driving in on him, he felt for a wall behind the bed-head with his left hand; touched one, followed it round, cursing as he crashed against an invisible chair. Short walls, a small room. A window—he saw a faint chink of light as he gripped the sill, and felt relief surge in over the creeping fear that he was blind. But the window was shuttered outside the glass, and would not open. Round farther to the right, along the wall—and in the next wall, a door. He gripped the handle, knew that his knees were unsteady, did not know whether the shaking came from fear or sleep. He opened the door.
The glare of daylight struck at his eyes, and as he blinked and staggered senses and memory came fully back in a rush: Gloucester, the medium possessed by a voice; the women, thunder, and shrieking… and Beth. He called out suddenly: ‘Beth!’
He came forward into the room, and saw that he was wearing pyjamas. He felt his chin, and it was smooth. He looked round, puzzled. The room was large. No one was there. It held a heavy sideboard, three easy chairs, vast and sagging; a table, chairs, a lamp. Windows in the far wall, and through them bare treetops and a blue sky; he crossed the room quickly and saw below him a wide sanded road bordered by a line of great trees, silent, empty, and beyond it a wide green field. He turned back again.
‘Beth?’
There were two other doors; he tried one, and it was locked. Panic began to rise again. He ran to the other door,
opposite the room where he had slept, and heard a small noise from inside. In quick hope he turned the handle; and the light followed him into another tiny dark bedroom as cramped and shuttered as the first; and he saw the fair head of the journalist Oakley snoring in slack-mouthed sleep on the pillow.
He wanted desperately to find Beth, to know that she was safe.
‘Oakley!’
The man still snored: a throbbing, animal sound. Ques-ton pulled back the bedclothes and shook him by the shoulder. Oakley gurgled, groaned, and jerked away suddenly clutching at his arm. ‘Ow! ’ He opened his eyes, and gazed resentfully at Queston. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he said. ‘Don’t do that.’
Queston looked at him thoughtfully. ‘Funny—’ He rolled up his own sleeve and went back into the brightness of the big room to study his arm. Where the flesh was tender there was a faint redness, and a minute dark spot.
Queston padded after him in dark-blue pyjamas; he lurched unsteadily, and clutched at the wall. ‘Someone’s given us a jab. Pretty ham-fisted, too. How long have we been out? Where the hell are we, anyway? ’ He shambled over to the window and stood looking out. ‘High up.’ The American accent gave his voice a laconic flatness. He scratched his head, and yawned.
‘It reminds me of something—’ Queston stared round the room, frowning, then shrugged. ‘D’you know Gloucester well?’
