Four Weird Tales

by Algernon Blackwood

  VIII

  But it was not until the end of the week, when Vance approached him withpurpose in his eyes and manner, that Henriot knew his fears unfounded,and caught himself trembling with sudden anticipation--because theinvitation, so desired yet so dreaded, was actually at hand. Firmlydetermined to keep caution uppermost, yet he went unresistingly to asecluded corner by the palms where they could talk in privacy. Forprudence is of the mind, but desire is of the soul, and while his brainof to-day whispered wariness, voices in his heart of long ago shoutedcommands that he knew he must obey with joy.

  It was evening and the stars were out. Helouan, with her fairytwinkling lights, lay silent against the Desert edge. The sand was atthe flood. The period of the Encroaching of the Desert was at hand, andthe deeps were all astir with movement. But in the windless air was agreat peace. A calm of infinite stillness breathed everywhere. The flowof Time, before it rushed away backwards, stopped somewhere between thedust of stars and Desert. The mystery of sand touched every street withits unutterable softness.

  And Vance began without the smallest circumlocution. His voice was low,in keeping with the scene, but the words dropped with a sharpdistinctness into the other's heart like grains of sand that pricked theskin before they smothered him. Caution they smothered instantly;resistance too.

  "I have a message for you from my aunt," he said, as though he broughtan invitation to a picnic. Henriot sat in shadow, but his companion'sface was in a patch of light that followed them from the windows of thecentral hall. There was a shining in the light blue eyes that betrayedthe excitement his quiet manner concealed. "We are going--the day afterto-morrow--to spend the night in the Desert; she wondered if, perhaps,you would care to join us?"

  "For your experiment?" asked Henriot bluntly.

  Vance smiled with his lips, holding his eyes steady, though unable tosuppress the gleam that flashed in them and was gone so swiftly. Therewas a hint of shrugging his shoulders.

  "It is the Night of Power--in the old Egyptian Calendar, you know," heanswered with assumed lightness almost, "the final moment ofLeyel-el-Sud, the period of Black Nights when the Desert was held toencroach with--with various possibilities of a supernatural order. Shewishes to revive a certain practice of the old Egyptians. There _may_ becurious results. At any rate, the occasion is a picturesque one--betterthan this cheap imitation of London life." And he indicated the lights,the signs of people in the hall dressed for gaieties and dances, thehotel orchestra that played after dinner.

  Henriot at the moment answered nothing, so great was the rush ofconflicting emotions that came he knew not whence. Vance went calmly on.He spoke with a simple frankness that was meant to be disarming. Henriotnever took his eyes off him. The two men stared steadily at one another.

  "She wants to know if you will come and help too--in a certain wayonly: not in the experiment itself precisely, but by watching merelyand--" He hesitated an instant, half lowering his eyes.

  "Drawing the picture," Henriot helped him deliberately.

  "Drawing what you see, yes," Vance replied, the voice turned graver inspite of himself. "She wants--she hopes to catch the outlines ofanything that happens--"

  "Comes."

  "Exactly. Determine the shape of anything that comes. You may rememberyour conversation of the other night with her. She is very certain ofsuccess."

  This was direct enough at any rate. It was as formal as an invitation toa dinner, and as guileless. The thing he thought he wanted lay withinhis reach. He had merely to say yes. He did say yes; but first he lookedabout him instinctively, as for guidance. He looked at the starstwinkling high above the distant Libyan Plateau; at the long arms of theDesert, gleaming weirdly white in the moonlight, and reaching towardshim down every opening between the houses; at the heavy mass of theMokattam Hills, guarding the Arabian Wilderness with strange, peakedbarriers, their sand-carved ridges dark and still above the Wadi Hof.

  These questionings attracted no response. The Desert watched him, but itdid not answer. There was only the shrill whistling cry of the lizards,and the sing-song of a white-robed Arab gliding down the sandy street.And through these sounds he heard his own voice answer: "I willcome--yes. But how can I help? Tell me what you propose--your plan?"

  And the face of Vance, seen plainly in the electric glare, betrayed hissatisfaction. The opposing things in the fellow's mind of darknessfought visibly in his eyes and skin. The sordid motive, planning adreadful act, leaped to his face, and with it a flash of this otheryearning that sought unearthly knowledge, perhaps believed it too. Nowonder there was conflict written on his features.

  Then all expression vanished again; he leaned forward, lowering hisvoice.

  "You remember our conversation about there being types of life too vastto manifest in a single body, and my aunt's belief that these were knownto certain of the older religious systems of the world?"

  "Perfectly."

  "Her experiment, then, is to bring one of these great Powers back--wepossess the sympathetic ritual that can rouse some among them toactivity--and win it down into the sphere of our minds, our mindsheightened, you see, by ceremonial to that stage of clairvoyant visionwhich can perceive them."

  "And then?" They might have been discussing the building of a house, sonaturally followed answer upon question. But the whole body of meaningin the old Egyptian symbolism rushed over him with a force that shookhis heart. Memory came so marvellously with it.

  "If the Power floods down into our minds with sufficient strength foractual form, to note the outline of such form, and from your drawingmodel it later in permanent substance. Then we should have means ofevoking it at will, for we should have its natural Body--the form itbuilt itself, its signature, image, pattern. A starting-point, you see,for more--leading, she hopes, to a complete reconstruction."

  "It might take actual shape--assume a bodily form visible to the eye?"repeated Henriot, amazed as before that doubt and laughter did not breakthrough his mind.

  "We are on the earth," was the reply, spoken unnecessarily low since noliving thing was within earshot, "we are in physical conditions, are wenot? Even a human soul we do not recognise unless we see it in abody--parents provide the outline, the signature, the sigil of thereturning soul. This," and he tapped himself upon the breast, "is thephysical signature of that type of life we call a soul. Unless there islife of a certain strength behind it, no body forms. And, without abody, we are helpless to control or manage it--deal with it in any way.We could not know it, though being possibly _aware_ of it."

  "To be aware, you mean, is not sufficient?" For he noticed the italicsVance made use of.

  "Too vague, of no value for future use," was the reply. "But once obtainthe form, and we have the natural symbol of that particular Power. And asymbol is more than image, it is a direct and concentrated expression ofthe life it typifies--possibly terrific."

  "It may be a body, then, this symbol you speak of."

  "Accurate vehicle of manifestation; but 'body' seems the simplest word."

  Vance answered very slowly and deliberately, as though weighing how muchhe would tell. His language was admirably evasive. Few perhaps wouldhave detected the profound significance the curious words he next usedunquestionably concealed. Henriot's mind rejected them, but his heartaccepted. For the ancient soul in him was listening and aware.

  "Life, using matter to express itself in bodily shape, first traces ageometrical pattern. From the lowest form in crystals, upwards to morecomplicated patterns in the higher organisations--there is always firstthis geometrical pattern as skeleton. For geometry lies at the root ofall possible phenomena; and is the mind's interpretation of a livingmovement towards shape that shall express it." He brought his eyescloser to the other, lowering his voice again. "Hence," he said softly,"the signs in all the old magical systems--skeleton forms into which thePowers evoked descended; outlines those Powers automatically built upwhen using matter to express themselves. Such signs are material symbolsof their bodiless existe
nce. They attract the life they represent andinterpret. Obtain the correct, true symbol, and the Power correspondingto it can approach--once roused and made aware. It has, you see, aready-made mould into which it can come down."

  "Once roused and made aware?" repeated Henriot questioningly, while thisman went stammering the letters of a language that he himself had usedtoo long ago to recapture fully.

  "Because they have left the world. They sleep, unmanifested. Their formsare no longer known to men. No forms exist on earth to-day that couldcontain them. But they may be awakened," he added darkly. "They arebound to answer to the summons, if such summons be accurately made."

  "Evocation?" whispered Henriot, more distressed than he cared to admit.

  Vance nodded. Leaning still closer, to his companion's face, he thrusthis lips forward, speaking eagerly, earnestly, yet somehow at the sametime, horribly: "And we want--my aunt would ask--your draughtsman'sskill, or at any rate your memory afterwards, to establish the outlineof anything that comes."

  He waited for the answer, still keeping his face uncomfortably close.

  Henriot drew back a little. But his mind was fully made up now. He hadknown from the beginning that he would consent, for the desire in himwas stronger than all the caution in the world. The Past inexorably drewhim into the circle of these other lives, and the little human dreadVance woke in him seemed just then insignificant by comparison. It wasmerely of To-day.

  "You two," he said, trying to bring judgment into it, "engaged inevocation, will be in a state of clairvoyant vision. Granted. But shallI, as an outsider, observing with unexcited mind, see anything, knowanything, be aware of anything at all, let alone the drawing of it?"

  "Unless," the reply came instantly with decision, "the descent of Poweris strong enough to take actual material shape, the experiment is afailure. Anybody can induce subjective vision. Such fantasies have novalue though. They are born of an overwrought imagination." And then headded quickly, as though to clinch the matter before caution andhesitation could take effect: "You must watch from the heights above. Weshall be in the valley--the Wadi Hof is the place. You must not be tooclose--"

  "Why not too close?" asked Henriot, springing forward like a flashbefore he could prevent the sudden impulse.

  With a quickness equal to his own, Vance answered. There was no faintestsign that he was surprised. His self-control was perfect. Only the glarepassed darkly through his eyes and went back again into the sombre soulthat bore it.

  "For your own safety," he answered low. "The Power, the type of life,she would waken is stupendous. And if roused enough to be attracted bythe patterned symbol into which she would decoy it down, it will takeactual, physical expression. But how? Where is the Body of Worshippersthrough whom it can manifest? There is none. It will, therefore, pressinanimate matter into the service. The terrific impulse to form itself ameans of expression will force all loose matter at hand towardsit--sand, stones, all it can compel to yield--everything must rush intothe sphere of action in which it operates. Alone, we at the centre, andyou, upon the outer fringe, will be safe. Only--you must not come tooclose."

  But Henriot was no longer listening. His soul had turned to ice. Forhere, in this unguarded moment, the cloven hoof had plainly shownitself. In that suggestion of a particular kind of danger Vance hadlifted a corner of the curtain behind which crouched his horribleintention. Vance desired a witness of the extraordinary experiment, buthe desired this witness, not merely for the purpose of sketchingpossible shapes that might present themselves to excited vision. Hedesired a witness for another reason too. Why had Vance put that ideainto his mind, this idea of so peculiar danger? It might well have losthim the very assistance he seemed so anxious to obtain.

  Henriot could not fathom it quite. Only one thing was clear to him. He,Henriot, was not the only one in danger.

  They talked for long after that--far into the night. The lights wentout, and the armed patrol, pacing to and fro outside the iron railingsthat kept the desert back, eyed them curiously. But the only other thinghe gathered of importance was the ledge upon the cliff-top where he wasto stand and watch; that he was expected to reach there before sunsetand wait till the moon concealed all glimmer in the western sky,and--that the woman, who had been engaged for days in secret preparationof soul and body for the awful rite, would not be visible again until hesaw her in the depths of the black valley far below, busy with this manupon audacious, ancient purposes.