XX
Sodomite
What then took place was an arduous muscle-burning task that demanded a physical effort from Adam far beyond any deed he had ever undertaken. Had he been working out in a gym, or taking part in a charity run, the extent of his exhaustion would have caused him to give in, but with Becky’s life in doubt he would die of a heart attack first. Unlike the night’s other tasks, this one proved uncomplicated and yet, on relating these strange events, we should probably recognise this as the most significant feat accomplished. Becky was not overweight and Adam far from weak, but adventure stories that end with heroes carrying stranded wenches away from peril do little credit to the fact that carrying another adult for a sufficient amount of time is a taxing experience, let alone carrying one up a mountain. Feeling revitalised by his otherworldly experiences was no doubt of great benefit, but his energy was wholly zapped long before he closed in on the doorway’s location.
By that point other concerns caused him more trepidation than pain, however, being conscious that nothing could be taken lightly in a place with secrets we are yet to comprehend. Should the figure of the Grey Man bar his way then begging on his knees for safe passage was his only option, while he also feared that the doorway might just have vanished. Unless Highlanders have walked past for centuries without reason to become curious then the way through was surely temporary, left open by the Grey Man until whatever purpose he had visited the Cairngorms for was complete.
Fortunately no giant awaited his arrival, however, nor the oppressive atmosphere that accompanied that being’s proximity, but relief would not wash over him until Becky’s life was saved and desperation did not lift until but a few strides from the doorway itself. The night had grown darker and the glistening of the doorway more difficult to spot. Indeed with no knowledge of that portal he would not have seen it at all but, by happy chance, he was able to step across the boundaries of our world once more to seek another miracle from the lady of the cave. If the Lady was as kind as she seemed and would acquiesce to such a request – and if Becky was not beyond help – then the risk and effort he had taken to save her life might yet be rewarded.
And so it was that Adam returned to that far-off realm he thought he would never see again, in this life or the next. Again he proved sketchy in the telling, resentful even at having to once more pick up on a subject he had yet to reconcile himself with. Hard to tell if one day he will come to terms with the experience, but that second time he went fearless, driven by the mission to save another’s life without lingering for a moment at the sight of that infinite (or so I find myself imagining it) maze. Instead he proceeded directly through the Malachite-marked doorway and hence to the jewel-rich cave, its fair lady and healing waters of the quality we are told King Arthur and his knights quested for and perished in search of.
Though describing little of the second meeting and all it entailed, he spoke more fluidly on his own feelings on arriving at the water’s edge knowing a second unreturned favour was required to save Becky. A person can aspire to replace the loss of an item or a way of life in some way, but the people we love are unique and irreplaceable. No man or woman has ever remained steely-eyed under such an anxiety.
‘I would not be scarred had I lost her,’ he told me, ‘but I would be a shell and I will always dwell in the relief that my fears did not come true.’
At first he was forced to abide an unbearable emptiness when the Lady did not turn up. A desperate impatience was on him and he had no recollection of how long she had taken to emerge previously, compounded by an awareness that he had no influence to demand anything from the beings that dwelt in that world. Each second was precious and he even considered whether the water would heal without the skill of a more ascendant being, or if he should suppose that his attempt had the Lady’s blessing. The Lady did appear, however, and commenced to treat the wound. The wait to find out whether Becky was already beyond even a miracle’s help proved the most agonizing experience of his life. Deep and life threatening as the wound was, the cleansing took much longer, colouring the well with her blood before it was fulfilled, but Adam’s greatest feat in carrying Becky up the mountain was not proven hopeless thanks to the abilities of someone and some place we are yet to understand. When lowering her into the water Becky had been close to death; pale and motionless. Only when her body responded to the urge to take a sudden deep breath did Adam allow self-forgiveness, for he blamed himself in that she had run to his protection only to end up at death’s door, the guilt from which would have dragged his soul deeper than the depths mankind had initially descended.
Becky’s knife wound closed and healed. All Adam cared about there and then was achieved, but the night was not through with revealing secrets.
After Becky was lifted from the water the Lady continued to study her unconscious figure, stroking fingers over head, limbs and torso as she had done to Adam almost imperceptibly. Just as previously the Lady had not been content to heal only forehead and knuckles, after gliding her hands over Becky’s middle Adam was bid to loosen the belt of his companion and expose her left hip. What he then discovered taught Adam how shame had kept him ignorant, stealing from him a clearer interpretation of the night and Clara’s ‘gathering’. This much became evident when, in doing the Lady’s bidding, he expected to find some wound he was unaware o, but what he found was in fact a very familiar mark.
The devil’s postman called at many doors looking for people like Adam and Becky who had a role to play, however slight, in that on-going battle between good and evil. Gladly Adam, who always felt he had to believe there was purpose governing his life, accepted that he had misread his own role in events.
Rather than Becky’s story resulting in a realigning of his focus to destroying her foe instead of his own, as he had believed, it turned out they were comrades in arms all along. Had he known they bore the same accursed mark he would have approached the challenges of the night quite differently. Clarity through commonality taught him more than a year’s worth of textbooks. The sight of that same mark upon Becky’s skin – as the Lady of the Cave worked to dull its sharpness – at last told him what the demons obsessed with tearing their lives apart were. Pawns sent to waylay them from a higher purpose; a shared purpose, to be fulfilled on a night dark forces had targeted to come forth and make an attempt on the life of a child.
Becky’s demons had been her own to fight – not his, but parasitic forces deployed were fringe matters only to the central cause: the fate of Alice. They were the outside help charged to arrive in the Cairngorms on that night and save her – a night that had seen their own demons also drawn unwittingly into the battle. That they might also be defeated was desirable but inconsequential.
Many strands and influences were at work, therefore, but I feel we reach a clearer assessment on the nature of fate in following this story. In renewed light its mysteries are revealed as fluid and malleable, tied to a contest or a cause that cannot be denied by time, place and circumstance, while not being tied to a particular outcome or doom. Further to this, it seems evident that the calibre of our individual actions has far more impact upon furthering our lives than the understanding of them. Approach the game of life with intensity and luck will swing our way, even if we are unclear of the story we consider ourselves involved in.
My summation is that the demons sent to impede them were gifted with no more insight into events than they. Certain forces of darkness had long planned an attempt on Alice’s life that night, but without knowing the identities of the knights chosen to be sent against them. If we are to blame Lucifer for the curses they bore – and why not? – then one might reflect that the Devil had spread himself too thinly.
The Lady of the Cave gave him one last piece of information before bidding him on his way, telling him that, because the wound was deep, Becky would remain asleep for a while as her body regained its strength. His limbs would have to ache for a good deal longer therefore but, uplifted by seeing her life saved, he left to face the
cold and snow. Once again taking his leave of the Lady with a show of gratitude he hoped was well expressed, he took the doorway back to his own world, returning with a miracle more precious to him than any Grail or sacred land.
‘But the bastard was there,’ he told me, and here I had to check myself and demand to know what he was talking about.
The Stevens was dead, I claimed he had led me to believe, but he reminded me that he had only seen him lying motionless in the snow and had no time to make sure the fall had been fatal. Adam could not believe it either and was unprepared for the attack again, as well as being physically exhausted.
On carrying Becky back through doorway Planet Earth he found himself face to face with the deranged countenance of that injured fiend. Bloodshot eyes and a desperate expression, like abject hunger, stained features that needed little pressure to crack anyway. Even the slightest façade of sanity he failed to achieve anymore, his obsession still driven by rage but blended with the bitterness of failure. Unfortunately whatever physical hurt he had sustained did not impact seriously on his mobility and Adam was not poised for any attempt at defence when Stevens seized him by the throat and pushed him back through the doorway.
All of them fell through in fact and so it was that three children of mankind were transported to that place between worlds and a second set of eyes looked out at that unmapped maze and its lilac horizon. If both were unworthy then one of them was certainly undeserving and I wonder what might become of such precious knowledge of the universe being in the hands of such an individual. All kinds of connotations for humanity might result, but for this story it is not our place to speculate so I will focus only on the conflict at hand and what transpired.
As vulnerable as he then was, had their conflict not taken place beyond the doorway then Adam will readily admit that the outcome might have been a dreadful conclusion. Terrain would have its say however and Stevens’ already troubled psyche faced a plethora of hurdles in such a place. Set upon a brutal act and no other purpose, he had followed Adam’s footprints only to find they disappeared as if by magic. As tempting as it might be to mischaracterise him as a bigger fool than he actually was, it remains difficult to imagine he reached any solid conclusions on a destination that would baffle mankind’s greatest minds.
Certainly Adam believed their foe knew nothing of it and sought to use the bewilderment to his advantage in the struggle that ensued. His first task was to make sure Becky’s comatose body was not harmed or sent falling into the void. How the attack resulted in its subsequent scenario he could not remember for sure, losing sight of his attacker during the grappling process and even of which way up the world was, but at some point he was able to ensure Becky landed safely beside the Malachite doorway. Alas no secondary intent could be attempted as he then soon lost his balance and fell, after first staggering farther along the cloud-like pathway. Clumsy as it was, he too avoided oblivion and, he realised, had become detached from Stevens’ grip. Here he did well to act quickly. If Stevens had time to get above him there would have been no fighting back but, facing his foe again, he at last recognised an expression he could share an affinity with: confusion. Finding acceptance for an alternative reality is a slow process, but Adam knew he only had a small window in which to act all the same, knowing his foe would be stronger than him for not having carried another human being up the mountain. Rather than besting him in a fistfight, some alternative chance needed to be drawn upon. Little strength remained in his muscles to perform some wrestling contest and throw Stevens into the void, unless he was to jump off with him, but there was somewhere else he could take him without committing suicide. Possibly the last aggressively physical act he had left in him, there was no time to hypothesise about what lay beyond as he took hold of Stevens’ by the collar, clenched his fists with an iron will and powered his hamstrings with all force and speed possible towards the darkness of the Sodomite doorway. Like two rag dolls in a witless dance they went. Stevens showed resistance but, ignorant of exactly what Adam had in mind, failed to stop their momentum taking them beyond the precipice and Clara’s warning.
A reckless choice that could see the end of both of them, but Adam was unwilling to compromise on the destruction of their foe this time even if it meant legions of gloating ghouls ready for slaughter (for it was some kind of Hell he feared). Saving Becky at all costs was the objective, even if she woke alone to what she would falsely interpret as her first view of an afterlife.
As for Adam, demonic torment he was already familiar with might await and so he gave his life and soul for Becky, if both were required. Even in poetry the soul often remains free from bargaining, but I am unable to say whether faith or desperation drove him. If we were blessed with the wisdom to judge such deeds I suspect the world would be a far simpler place and I would not have to relate this story… but dwelling in common ignorance as we do I will proceed.
Landing hurt but the pain proved to be a relief, the shock of which providing the only confirmation they had not entered a non-physical paradigm as nothing could be made out of what lay beneath them. Touch alone was enough to tell them their bodies had met with cold, hard stone, as one might expect from the floor of a medieval castle, but it was too dark for Adam to attest for sure.
The second time his senses had been challenged to take in the sight of another realm, this time there was even less, if any chance at all, to assess what kind of realm lay beyond that doorway. Still in a fight, survival proved more seductive than curiosity and at that time – we can be certain – he cared not. Scant description did he bring back with him, but little more would have been possible anyway considering that pitch blackness wrapped them in its folds, devoid of starlight or the glitter of sparkling gemstone that granted him such a thrilling memory of the Lady’s realm.
It also transpired that arriving in that place of darkness saw Stevens recover his focus. Returning to their feet the scuffle continued, but our scientist was overpowered on this occasion, thrown against a wall that his foe heard rather than saw, following which came several punches to the head and a sharp kick to the chest. In truth only the latter was keenly felt, as numb as Adam already was from exhaustion, but he had little else regardless to prevent himself ending up face down on the cold ground until his attacker let up – the strange circumstances of their second meeting meant this came about sooner than he would otherwise have expected.
As much as we might then have compelled him to take a better look around, at the time he was just grateful to be able to raise himself up without sensing any broken bones or concussion. Shadow and disorientation are not the best tools with which to decipher a view of an alien world, but certainly the doorway led to no place of welcome this time. A still, crypt-like air led Adam to believe he was underground once more, however, as did the wall and floor he’d had contact with, for which only a species of craft, as ourselves, could have been responsible. His best guess remains that the doorway had spat him out into the lowest depths of some fortress or palace, but this guess can only serve as conjecture as with any speculation as to whether he had entered a ruin, or a structure of great use and importance.
Other than the wall, Adam’s only other observations were due to a gentler shadow, no doubt emanating from some light source very far above, that was apparent some distance along the wall as shown by a ledge he supposed led up to higher levels. For those slightest of rays he was very grateful, otherwise they would have fought in a nothingness from which there would be no return. The other observation – less easy to explain – was that the opposing wall to the one he had been thrown against seemed to wave between different shades. Like a pair of curtains, he described them, but without the confirmation of touch again we can only suppose this to be a truth. Great curtains they must have been if so, descending from a height beyond vision into what seemed a cold and featureless interior, or else of some architecture we are ignorant to that the light failed to illuminate.
Tis a writer’s duty to seek as clear a picture
as possible, of course, but at the time Adam was not the ablest witness. As with many deliberations, subsequent curiosities depend much upon the imagination to fill in the gaps. The night had given him enough in the way of discovery to keep him occupied for a lifetime, but events had gone beyond such trivial matters as mankind’s learning. Only by expelling Stevens in some way could life be salvaged and for this the way needed to be fraught with danger; the peril he had feared from Clara’s warning was invited to come forth. The wisdom of the stones he no longer questioned, but his interpretation of them might still be lacking and only pure luck would ensure it was Stevens and not himself that suffered. Regardless of his chances, however, he had rolled the dice and fate was now before them.
No immediate danger emerged from the darkness, other than the villain he had taken there with him, but all bad things come to those who wait. Although before it did an odd eventuality transpired in that Stevens spoke to him.
‘What is this place?’ he asked. Temporarily aggression had overcome perplexity and enabled him to focus on beating Adam down, but if such an experience proved mind-blowing to a person of Adam’s intellect then its effect must have been staggering to a man whose sanity was already in severe doubt. So it was that even the psychopath Stevens was able to transcend the barriers between himself and the inconsequential enemy whose throat he should have slit earlier that day rather than using a police truncheon. Few mindsets are so overpowering as total and utter confusion, within which the value of a shared experience can result in the unlikeliest of comrades. Rarely has this been demonstrated better than with Stevens’ momentary discarding of hostilities.
Adam had discarded nothing, however, replying, ‘For you? Hell.’
These words were said without any clear indication they held any weight, but fortunately – for time was indeed of the essence, considering he had no cards left to play – events then moved very quickly.
Through many an age of our Earth mankind has looked to the heavens and prayed for holy intervention. Perversely it was unholy intervention that arrived at Adam’s time of need, arriving with an atmospheric shift that turned out to be familiar. A chord of terror had been struck and was felt before any physical movement was seen or heard; something ethereal was present, skilled in the same set of pipes as the Hag that had haunted him for so many years, but striking a deeper and altogether more magnificent tune.
Ben Macdui’s fearsome reputation might have had little effect on Stevens’ pursuit of Becky but, though his criminality was of a distinctive Western world flavour, it might nevertheless be presumptuous to suppose ancient instincts were completely eradicated from his makeup. Adam himself believed that Stevens reacted to that same ominous note, even if in a delayed fashion.
Overpowering that note had been, when Adam first felt it upon the mountainside, but beyond the Sodomite doorway all barriers to the senses were absent, lending rawness to the terror that no longer allowed any vain attempt to pretend paranoia or the imagination was to blame. Not Hell as we have envisioned, unless its fires have been put out and demonic hordes dispersed, but Clara’s warning was potent because of the presence of one demon whose reputation precedes him; the Grey Man had arrived and found intruders who had dared the journey to his realm.
Humans have occasionally fallen under his terror upon Ben Macdui, as the accounts show, but there were no games of fear to play in the beyond.
From behind the curtains or else some shadow he had become aware of them. If they possessed the reaction times of mice they could have scampered away immediately, but humans make for poor vermin and they were soon within an arm’s reach, one kneeling and catching his breath, the other standing bewildered as an undiscovered species that has not learnt to fly from the gun.
Stevens was slow to sense danger approach and slower to notice the being that towered over him at twice Goliath’s height. Adam thought he saw a glance dart upwards, or perhaps he just imagined it to be so, but I cannot say for sure why it seems important to know whether the villain saw his doom coming. What we can be sure of is that the Grey Man lifted Stevens’ body up as we might a bottle of water. Lifted him high into the air where Adam saw him struggle; arms and legs flailed but no cries came forth through the disbelief that would accompany him to whatever destination his soul was set.
Adam himself wasted no more time to witness the final act, retreating without hesitation through the doorway that luckily his aim for was accurate. He knew that the problem of Stevens was dealt with; that the life was being crushed out of Becky’s pursuer and, even if any soul remained in the universe that valued his existence, that no help would find him in that death beyond the confines of our world.
Not Far From Aviemore Page 20
