Four Weird Tales

by Algernon Blackwood

  X

  The entire range of Henriot's experience, read, imagined, dreamed, thenfainted into unreality before the sheer wonder of what he saw. In thebrief interval it takes to snap the fingers the climax was thus sohurriedly upon him. And, through it all, he was clearly aware of thepair of little human figures, man and woman, standing erect andcommanding at the centre--knew, too, that she directed and controlled,while he in some secondary fashion supported her--and ever watched. Butboth were dim, dropped somewhere into a lesser scale. It was theknowledge of their presence, however, that alone enabled him to keep hispowers in hand at all. But for these two _human_ beings there withinpossible reach, he must have closed his eyes and swooned.

  For a tempest that seemed to toss loose stars about the sky swept roundabout him, pouring up the pillared avenue in front of the procession. Ablast of giant energy, of liberty, came through. Forwards and backwards,circling spirally about him like a whirlwind, came this revival of Lifethat sought to dip itself once more in matter and in form. It came tothe accurate out-line of its form they had traced for it. He held hismind steady enough to realise that it was akin to what men call a"descent" of some "spiritual movement" that wakens a body of believersinto faith--a race, an entire nation; only that he experienced it inthis brief, concentrated form before it has scattered down into tenthousand hearts. Here he knew its source and essence, behind the veil.Crudely, unmanageable as yet, he felt it, rushing loose behindappearances. There was this amazing impact of a twisting, swinging forcethat stormed down as though it would bend and coil the very ribs of theold stubborn hills. It sought to warm them with the stress of its ownirresistible life-stream, to beat them into shape, and make pliabletheir obstinate resistance. Through all things the impulse poured andspread, like fire at white heat.

  Yet nothing visible came as yet, no alteration in the actual landscape,no sign of change in things familiar to his eyes, while impetus thusfought against inertia. He perceived nothing form-al. Calm and untouchedhimself, he lay outside the circle of evocation, watching, waiting,scarcely daring to breathe, yet well aware that any minute the scenewould transfer itself from memory that was subjective to matter that wasobjective.

  And then, in a flash, the bridge was built, and the transfer wasaccomplished. How or where he did not see, he could not tell. It wasthere before he knew it--there before his normal, earthly sight. He sawit, as he saw the hands he was holding stupidly up to shield his face.For this terrific release of force long held back, long stored up,latent for centuries, came pouring down the empty Wadi bed prepared forits reception. Through stones and sand and boulders it came in animpetuous hurricane of power. The liberation of its life appalled him.All that was free, untied, responded instantly like chaff; loose objectsfled towards it; there was a yielding in the hills and precipices; andeven in the mass of Desert which provided their foundation. The hingesof the Sand went creaking in the night. It shaped for itself a bodilyoutline.

  Yet, most strangely, nothing definitely moved. How could he express theviolent contradiction? For the immobility was apparent only--a sham, acounterfeit; while behind it the essential _being_ of these things didrush and shift and alter. He saw the two things side by side: the outerimmobility the senses commonly agree upon, _and_ this amazing flying-outof their inner, invisible substance towards the vortex of attractinglife that sucked them in. For stubborn matter turned docile before thestress of this returning life, taught somewhere to be plastic. It wasbeing moulded into an approach to bodily outline. A mobile elasticityinvaded rigid substance. The two officiating human beings, safe at thestationary centre, and himself, just outside the circle of operation,alone remained untouched and unaffected. But a few feet in anydirection, for any one of them, meant--instantaneous death. They wouldbe absorbed into the vortex, mere corpuscles pressed into the service ofthis sphere of action of a mighty Body....

  How these perceptions reached him with such conviction, Henriot couldnever say. He knew it, because he _felt_ it. Something fell about himfrom the sky that already paled towards the dawn. The stars themselves,it seemed, contributed some part of the terrific, flowing impulse thatconquered matter and shaped itself this physical expression.

  Then, before he was able to fashion any preconceived idea of whatvisible form this potent life might assume, he was aware of furtherchange. It came at the briefest possible interval after thebeginning--this certainty that, to and fro about him, as yet howeverindeterminate, passed Magnitudes that were stupendous as the desert.There was beauty in them too, though a terrible beauty hardly of thisearth at all. A fragment of old Egypt had returned--a little portion ofthat vast Body of Belief that once was Egypt. Evoked by the worship ofone human heart, passionately sincere, the Ka of Egypt stepped back tovisit the material it once informed--the Sand.

  Yet only a portion came. Henriot clearly realised that. It stretchedforth an arm. Finding no mass of worshippers through whom it mightexpress itself completely, it pressed inanimate matter thus into itsservice.

  Here was the beginning the woman had spoken of--little opening clue.Entire reconstruction lay perhaps beyond.

  And Henriot next realised that these Magnitudes in which thisgroup-energy sought to clothe itself as visible form, were curiouslyfamiliar. It was not a new thing that he would see. Booming softly asthey dropped downwards through the sky, with a motion the size of themrendered delusive, they trooped up the Avenue towards the central pointthat summoned them. He realised the giant flock of them--descent offearful beauty--outlining a type of life denied to the world for ages,countless as this sand that blew against his skin. Careering over thewaste of Desert moved the army of dark Splendours, that dwarfed anyorganic structure called a body men have ever known. He recognised them,cold in him of death, though the outlines reared higher than thepyramids, and towered up to hide whole groups of stars. Yes, herecognised them in their partial revelation, though he never saw themonstrous host complete. But, one of them, he realised, posing itseternal riddle to the sands, had of old been glimpsed sufficiently toseize its form in stone,--yet poorly seized, as a doll may stand for thedignity of a human being or a child's toy represent an engine that drawstrains....

  And he knelt there on his narrow ledge, the world of men forgotten. Thepower that caught him was too great a thing for wonder or for fear; heeven felt no awe. Sensation of any kind that can be named or realisedleft him utterly. He forgot himself. He merely watched. The glory numbedhim. Block and pencil, as the reason of his presence there at all, nolonger existed....

  Yet one small link remained that held him to some kind of consciousnessof earthly things: he never lost sight of this--that, being just outsidethe circle of evocation, he was safe, and that the man and woman, beingstationary in its untouched centre, were also safe. But--that a movementof six inches in any direction meant for any one of them instant death.

  What was it, then, that suddenly strengthened this solitary link so thatthe chain tautened and he felt the pull of it? Henriot could not say. Hecame back with the rush of a descending drop to the realisation--dimly,vaguely, as from great distance--that he was with these two, now at thismoment, in the Wadi Hof, and that the cold of dawn was in the air abouthim. The chill breath of the Desert made him shiver.

  But at first, so deeply had his soul been dipped in this fragment ofancient worship, he could remember nothing more. Somewhere lay a littlespot of streets and houses; its name escaped him. He had once beenthere; there were many people, but insignificant people. Who were they?And what had he to do with them? All recent memories had been drowned inthe tide that flooded him from an immeasurable Past.

  And who were they--these two beings, standing on the white floor of sandbelow him? For a long time he could not recover their names. Yet heremembered them; and, thus robbed of association that names bring, hesaw them for an instant naked, and knew that one of them was evil. Oneof them was vile. Blackness touched the picture there. The man, his namestill out of reach, was sinister, impure and dark at the heart. And forthis reason the evocat
ion had been partial only. The admixture of anevil motive was the flaw that marred complete success.

  The names then flashed upon him--Lady Statham--RichardVance.

  Vance! With a horrid drop from splendour into something meanand sordid, Henriot felt the pain of it. The motive of the man wasso insignificant, his purpose so atrocious. More and more, with thename, came back--his first repugnance, fear, suspicion. And humanterror caught him. He shrieked. But, as in nightmare, no sound escapedhis lips. He tried to move; a wild desire to interfere, to protect,to prevent, flung him forward--close to the dizzy edge of thegulf below. But his muscles refused obedience to the will. Theparalysis of common fear rooted him to the rocks.

  But the sudden change of focus instantly destroyed the picture;and so vehement was the fall from glory into meanness, that it dislocatedthe machinery of clairvoyant vision. The inner perceptionclouded and grew dark. Outer and inner mingled in violent, inextricableconfusion. The wrench seemed almost physical. It happenedall at once, retreat and continuation for a moment somehow combined.And, if he did not definitely see the awful thing, at least hewas aware that it had come to pass. He knew it as positively asthough his eye were glued against a magnifying lens in the stillnessof some laboratory. He witnessed it.

  The supreme moment of evocation was close. Life, through thatawful sandy vortex, whirled and raged. Loose particles showeredand pelted, caught by the draught of vehement life that moulded thesubstance of the Desert into imperial outline--when, suddenly, shotthe little evil thing across that marred and blasted it.

  Into the whirlpool flew forward a particle of material that was ahuman being. And the Group-Soul caught and used it.

  The actual accomplishment Henriot did not claim to see. He wasa witness, but a witness who could give no evidence. Whether thewoman was pushed of set intention, or whether some detail ofsound and pattern was falsely used to effect the terrible result, hewas helpless to determine. He pretends no itemised account. Shewent. In one second, with appalling swiftness, she disappeared,swallowed out of space and time within that awful maw--one littlecorpuscle among a million through which the Life, now stalking theDesert wastes, moulded itself a troop-like Body. Sand took her.

  There followed emptiness--a hush of unutterable silence, stillness,peace. Movement and sound instantly retired whence theycame. The avenues of Memory closed; the Splendours all wentdown into their sandy tombs....

  * * * * *

  The moon had sunk into the Libyan wilderness; the eastern sky wasred. The dawn drew out that wondrous sweetness of the Desert,which is as sister to the sweetness that the moonlight brings. TheDesert settled back to sleep, huge, unfathomable, charged to thebrim with life that watches, waits, and yet conceals itself behindthe ruins of apparent desolation. And the Wadi, empty at his feet,filled slowly with the gentle little winds that bring the sunrise.

  Then, across the pale glimmering of sand, Henriot saw a figuremoving. It came quickly towards him, yet unsteadily, and with ahurry that was ugly. Vance was on the way to fetch him. And thehorror of the man's approach struck him like a hammer in the face.He closed his eyes, sinking back to hide.

  But, before he swooned, there reached him the clatter of themurderer's tread as he began to climb over the splintered rocks, andthe faint echo of his voice, calling him by name--falsely and inpretence--for help.

  THE END

  [Transcriber's Note: In chapter IX of the story Sand, theword "indescriable" was corrected to "indescribable."]