assailed her by creeping up on her when she least expected it or flinging itself abruptly at her from one side.
She had no leisure to think of anything but the present moment, in the midst of all these terrors, but if she had she would have realized the darkness had already had its victory. She was already a little dead. Whether she ever got out of here again or whether she didn’t she would never be the same. Fright had pushed her permanently back into some atavistic past, lived long ago
And meantime the bilious planet, like everything else in the place, seemed bent on pursuing her. It slowly climbed the sky after her, clearing itself as it went. From angry orange to a sulphurous yellow, and from that to white, the bleached white of a skull, eye sockets faintly discernible, inclining downward to look at her from the sky.
A period of trancelike inanition followed for a short while; she was conscious of still stumbling on, but her mind was a little hazy. Even terror had become a little blunted, lost some of its sharp edge, though it was still with her. She was experiencing a sort of hang-over of the mental faculties, brought on by shock and overstimulation.
And then suddenly a little sound came to her, roused her, brought her back to whiplike alertness again. A little sound of life, the first she’d heard since this horrendous solitude had begun. The first besides her own screams and footfalls; the first objective one coming from outside her own travail. The sweetest thing she’d ever heard; sweeter than the sweetest note of music ever struck, lovelier than the loveliest birdcall ever trilled. A little discord, a thing between a squeak and a, grunt, faint, far-off, ugly, awkward, gauche, but, oh, how welcome. The distant honk of a car horn sounded in passage.
The outside world, the world of the living, was someplace near here, closer at hand than she’d suspected. She stood there straining her ears, forcing them beyond their powers of attunement, to try to catch it again. It wouldn’t come again. Just once, and then no more. She held her breath, she even quieted one of the stirring strips of torn garment banging from her, so that there wouldn’t be the slightest sound about her that might cause her to lose it. But no, it wouldn’t come again.
She didn’t know which way to go, for she hadn’t been quick enough to catch which way it had seemed to come from. If she moved incautiously she was afraid she might be going farther away instead of nearer to it, end up by losing it altogether. It hadn’t come from behind her, that was the one thing she was sure of.
Since her ears couldn’t aid her, or were given no second opportunity to, she tried to force her eyes to do service in their stead. But the darkness seemed to lie impartially around her in all the three remaining directions— No, wait; didn’t there seem to be an evenness to it, over there, on her right, as though there were a surface backing it instead of it continuing to an unconfined depth? Didn’t those motelike flicks of moonlight peering through the leaves over there seem upright against something, instead of lying flat upon the ground?
She struck out suddenly, all hopes of recovering the original position at which she’d heard the telltale sound gladly cast away on the single chance of being right about it. Through grass, and over lumpy rises at times that, though they might well have been graves, were robbed of all power to terrify her now, for this was life itself that was beckoning to her through their midst. They could have yawned open under her feet and she would have still leaped across them from lip to lip, the quicker to get where she was going.
And there it was at last, something upright looming there ahead of her, coming closer, gliding toward her with her running, striking at last against the flats of her hands, outstretched to it in appeal, with a roughness of masonry, a scratchy prickiness of mortar, that was more caressing to the
She had no leisure to think of anything but the present moment, in the midst of all these terrors, but if she had she would have realized the darkness had already had its victory. She was already a little dead. Whether she ever got out of here again or whether she didn’t she would never be the same. Fright had pushed her permanently back into some atavistic past, lived long ago
And meantime the bilious planet, like everything else in the place, seemed bent on pursuing her. It slowly climbed the sky after her, clearing itself as it went. From angry orange to a sulphurous yellow, and from that to white, the bleached white of a skull, eye sockets faintly discernible, inclining downward to look at her from the sky.
A period of trancelike inanition followed for a short while; she was conscious of still stumbling on, but her mind was a little hazy. Even terror had become a little blunted, lost some of its sharp edge, though it was still with her. She was experiencing a sort of hang-over of the mental faculties, brought on by shock and overstimulation.
And then suddenly a little sound came to her, roused her, brought her back to whiplike alertness again. A little sound of life, the first she’d heard since this horrendous solitude had begun. The first besides her own screams and footfalls; the first objective one coming from outside her own travail. The sweetest thing she’d ever heard; sweeter than the sweetest note of music ever struck, lovelier than the loveliest birdcall ever trilled. A little discord, a thing between a squeak and a, grunt, faint, far-off, ugly, awkward, gauche, but, oh, how welcome. The distant honk of a car horn sounded in passage.
The outside world, the world of the living, was someplace near here, closer at hand than she’d suspected. She stood there straining her ears, forcing them beyond their powers of attunement, to try to catch it again. It wouldn’t come again. Just once, and then no more. She held her breath, she even quieted one of the stirring strips of torn garment banging from her, so that there wouldn’t be the slightest sound about her that might cause her to lose it. But no, it wouldn’t come again.
She didn’t know which way to go, for she hadn’t been quick enough to catch which way it had seemed to come from. If she moved incautiously she was afraid she might be going farther away instead of nearer to it, end up by losing it altogether. It hadn’t come from behind her, that was the one thing she was sure of.
Since her ears couldn’t aid her, or were given no second opportunity to, she tried to force her eyes to do service in their stead. But the darkness seemed to lie impartially around her in all the three remaining directions— No, wait; didn’t there seem to be an evenness to it, over there, on her right, as though there were a surface backing it instead of it continuing to an unconfined depth? Didn’t those motelike flicks of moonlight peering through the leaves over there seem upright against something, instead of lying flat upon the ground?
She struck out suddenly, all hopes of recovering the original position at which she’d heard the telltale sound gladly cast away on the single chance of being right about it. Through grass, and over lumpy rises at times that, though they might well have been graves, were robbed of all power to terrify her now, for this was life itself that was beckoning to her through their midst. They could have yawned open under her feet and she would have still leaped across them from lip to lip, the quicker to get where she was going.
And there it was at last, something upright looming there ahead of her, coming closer, gliding toward her with her running, striking at last against the flats of her hands, outstretched to it in appeal, with a roughness of masonry, a scratchy prickiness of mortar, that was more caressing to the
Similar Books
