by Noel Scanlon
I turned to the others. I do not know what they had heard or seen but they looked terrified.
I gathered them in a circle. In the circle I placed those personal objects which the guru had given to each devotee and which were specially sanctified. Then I had everybody join hands and we chanted some of the guru’s favourite prayers.
As our chanting rose up among the rafters, I could feel the coldness abate, then disappear. The gulls stopped shrieking. One large black-headed gull had got in and was flapping on the floor. I walked towards it, intending to release it outside but, as I approached, it flapped furiously as if in some extreme of terror.
Immediately I picked it up it collapsed limp and lifeless in my hand.
CHAPTER 8
Manju and Maya ran ahead of me back to the cottage. They made a pretty picture as they tripped along in their saris, bejewelled and adorned, their Indian chappals bouncing lightly over the island heath. After our terrifying experience in the church, I had expected them to be upset and frightened. But they didn’t seem to be. As they fetched the water buckets from the cottage and started up the hill they looked radiant and expectant.
I could not throw off our psychic experience so easily. I still had a feeling of threat and terror. I put some sods of turf on the fire in the open hearth. But still I felt cold. It was a coldness that was as much inside me as outside me.
I pulled the mailbag from under the bed and emptied its contents on to the kitchen table.
Identifying those letters which contained donations, I slit them open with a kitchen knife and locked the cheques in a box in my room.
I think I mentioned that our sect was given considerable publicity when we first landed in Europe. But I don’t think I mentioned that we maintained a small office in the city for the purpose of raising funds. This office was run by an Indian youth called Ranjit. The response to his fund-raising efforts varied but was always greater than I would have expected. People actually do contribute to religious causes. Even unorthodox ones like ours.
Apart from the contributions there was only one letter for the girls. It was addressed to Rosemary Brown and had been forwarded from India. It gave me a shock to see it. I looked at it closely, suspecting that it had been opened by the postmistress. I could always tell if it had by the little tears and pieces of cello-tape.
It was from Rosemary’s mother.
Darling,
Please write and let us know where you are wherever it is. I know your father has at times been a little harsh. But it was natural that he shouldn’t want his daughter living in an adobe hut in New Mexico. His own father as you know was quite poor and he feels that his wealth should be of benefit to his children, help them to do even better than he has done. Your decision to renounce his values and go to India upset him a great deal. It upset me too. We’ve heard of such terrible things happening to young people travelling between Mumbai and Kathmandu and the Condons have shown us such odd photographs of young people living ‘in the raw’ on the beaches of Malabar taking drugs and begging from the local people that we are terrified for your health. Have you had your injections for cholera? If not please do so even if you don’t communicate with us. I was interested to hear about this guru from whose ashram you last wrote, though, I’m afraid your father’s reaction was rather violent.......
There was a short note from Ranjit regarding various letters asking to join our commune. It may seem odd that anyone should want to join a religious community on a barren windswept island but in fact they made up the bulk of the mail. Ranjit had written comments on them and had selected one as a possibility. I think that Ranjit’s criterion was largely from a financial viewpoint and, indeed, he normally obtained fairly substantial donations from new recruits. I picked one of these letters up at random.
Dear Guru,
I am nineteen and have been meditating now for several years. My relationship with my parents has been difficult since I took up meditation. Last year I went to India where I heard that you were setting up a new community on a remote island.
I have thought a lot about it and decided that that is where I want to be. Life here is dull and dreary with materialism affecting everything. I no longer share any of the ambitions or drives of this corrupt society. I must get away and live a free life of the spirit.
I have money in my own right which I inherited from my grandfather who was a stockbroker and would be willing to help out financially. I would also be willing to do any work the community might require.
Please, please let me hear from you soon as I am suffering from depressions and cannot go on as I am. I have absolutely made up my mind about this so that if I don’t hear from you I won’t be responsible for what I do...
A little time before, a letter like this would have interested me. I might even have run off a comment to Ranjit. But not now. I was convinced that there were hostile psychic forces on the island and there could be no question of new recruits for the moment.
I tore up the usual protest mail and threw it on the fire. But not before perusing one or two out of curiosity.
Get off the Island and go back to wherever it is you came from with all your heathen followers that are polluting the atmosphere of this Christian land……….
This most Christian land indeed! The threatening letter was, like the others, locally postmarked and anonymous. I have always regarded the anonymous letter as being particularly cowardly.
I swept all the letters off the table and going into my room stuffed them into the letter box under my bed which was so crammed with letters already that it was difficult to get it closed again.
As I was down on my hands and knees performing this task, I saw something which made me stop and stiffen. Growing under the bed in the corner were more fungi!
I couldn’t help reflecting that fungi were the deadliest things living on the planet. They can spread their spoors by shooting them up into the air. Each day a fungi is capable of producing a million spoors.
Scrabbling under the bed, I tore them away from the wall and ran to fling them on the fire. I had an odd sensation while handling these fungi. I had the feeling that they were actively resisting being plucked and, as I held them, they seemed to be alive. They gave me a stinging or tingly feeling that ran up my arm.
However they fizzled out fast enough in the flames.
I looked out the window at the hill. It looked normal enough. I saw the scut of a rabbit, a moving ball of white. The rabbit was moving slowly, lethargically, as if ill or disorientated. And there was something odd. When we had first come to the island, it had been overrun with rabbits. Had we been meat-eaters we would have had had a more than sufficient supply. Then, suddenly, most of the rabbits had disappeared. This was only the second one I had seen for ages.
The Indian girls were well on their way back, carrying their plastic buckets gracefully on their heads, treading delicately through the rushes and around the prickly gorse that gave a splash of colour to the heath. This was the time of year when there was normally little or no growth. But the clumps of gorse had actually expanded and the rushes which should have been dying away came almost up to the girls’ waists. Why was the vegetation of the island behaving in such an unusual way?
I felt cold and depressed. The island, which was to have been the centre of a growing community, no longer seemed to me to be a friendly or welcoming place.
Manju and Maya came in. They looked at me quickly as if they shared some secret. They took their places by the hearth and gazed into the fire from under their long black lashes. They were followed shortly by Chris.
“The water-pipe is blocked again,” she said with that sensible, down-to-earth air, which always dragged me from the world I inhabit into her more practical world. Though I am not very adept with my hands I had cleared the pipe which carried our water on one occasion and no doubt Chris saw this as something I was able to do, a special male province.
“I’ll have a look at it,” I promised.
“I wish y
ou would,” Chris said. “It’s a long walk to the spring for water.”
I stood in the middle of the room staring at her.
“I just came over for some stores,” she said briskly.
I took the store-room key from my pocket.
Chris began to read from a list, “Lentils, chick peas, soya beans, blackstrap molasses ...”
As she began to collect what she needed she said, “I want to make Enika a special meal. She hasn’t been feeling well.”
“Oh,” I said, “what’s wrong with her?” After Rosemary’s unfortunate demise I was ultra-sensitive to any suggestion of illness.
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” Chris said. “Enika was never a very chatty person as you know but recently she’s more or less withdrawn completely.”
“Maybe she’s just meditating,” I suggested.
“No. Ordinary meditation is healthy. What’s happening to Enika is definitely unhealthy.”
I had never seen Chris so worried-looking.
She went on, “I don’t know how to put this but I have the strong feeling that Enika has really turned against me.”
“How?” I asked. “In what way?”
“Well, we used to be pretty good friends. Now she’ll hardly talk to me at all. But the worst thing is, I catch her looking at me — well — hostilely. ”
“Have you any idea why?”
“I’ve thought about it a lot,” Chris said, “but I haven’t come up with the answer. Not yet anyway. But it’s almost as if she’s undergoing some sort of personality change.”
I felt a stab of apprehension.
CHAPTER 9
I walked along the shoreline drawn towards the scene of the recent cremation. I was obsessively drawn in that direction. And this was something new, something I didn’t like at all. Up until now I had lived on the island, I think we had all lived on the island, observing a strict regime, a rigid routine from which I had derived, and I think we all had derived, a certain calm and peace of mind. I didn’t at all like the way in which my behaviour patterns were being altered but, at the same time, I didn’t seem to be able to do anything about it.
Down on the beach Ursula was collecting periwinkles and limpets. One of our staple foods was the shellfish to be found on the shoreline. I called out to her but she didn’t hear me. The wind was getting up. On the island you get periods of extreme calm when you can hear distant sounds and, alternating with this, storm force winds when it is difficult to hear anything at all.
The air was blown moistly on to my skin by the freshening breeze. I walked on salty sea-shore grass and crunched over clumps of blue sea asters which were springy underfoot.
You cannot live on an island for any length of time without being aware of the crowded life on the shoreline where the boundary line between land and sea is changing with every tide. Even I could not help being aware that the area between the tide-lines was crowded with plants and shellfish. The periwinkles Ursula was gathering grazed the inter-tidal rocks. The limpets pressed their cones against the rocks’ surfaces, living off the algae. This was the life you could see, but I knew there was much more hidden in the fissures and crevices and deep in the sand beneath my feet in burrows and tubes and passageways. I could feel it all breathing and moving beneath my feet.
Seagulls, spotting me on the shoreline, appeared out of the sky drifting low overhead, squawking and wheeling and diving. I have never particularly liked seagulls, which have always struck me as being in some way predatory and this feeling was accentuated now by my recent experience in the church. A flock of gulls was standing on the marram grass near the site of the funeral pyre and I ran forward to shoo them away. I had covered the cremation area with a pile of rocks to mark it and to give it protection.
As I lifted the stones away, I could see that the result of the cremation was perfectly satisfactory. The large pile of wood had burned to ashes. I had witnessed scores of cremations in India but this was my first experience in Europe and I had feared that the fire would not generate enough heat. I was pleased to see that it had been a good cremation after all. The girls had taken away the ewer with the ashes but I had expected some calcined bones to remain. But there were none. That was that then.
On death the soul is locked up in the skull and must be released as only then can the subtle body begin to form. It would take ten days now for this to happen. On the first day, the head would be formed; on the second, the neck; on the third, the heart; on the fourth, the back; on the fifth the navel; on the sixth, the sexual organs, and so on.
As I knelt down rearranging the stones I felt a movement behind me and I had the odd sensation that someone was regarding me. I whirled around. And I saw, floating just above the ground, Rosemary’s head or rather a bloodless apparition of her subtle body at its then state of formation.
The apparition appeared only for a moment and then, in its place, appeared a large black-backed seagull. The gull rose into the air and circled, flapping its wings slowly.
I began to walk along the beach under the shadow of the hill which towered blackly to my right, its reflection waving in the water. I used to enjoy this exercise, strolling along picking up the odd-shaped stones and fossils that abound, examining the flotsam that is constantly thrown up by storms. But today I didn’t bother about such things.
I walked compulsively though I didn’t know where the compulsion sprang from.
What was happening? Why had Rosemary come back to haunt me? I walked faster as if to get away from it all. Or perhaps I just thought that by walking I would aid the processes of my mind. I felt that I, and possibly the whole community, was coming under some alien influence.
I was being watched.
At first the island had seemed ideal. It was as physically beautiful as you could wish, a place surely conducive to the spiritual development that was our goal, and, being an island, it was so cut off that there was no likelihood of our being bothered by the curious or interfering. Or so I thought. But I was no longer sure. I was no longer sure of anything.
The sense of being watched intensified. But who or what was watching me?
I plodded on towards the cathedral rocks. These were cliffs at the end of the beach, striated and indented with deep fissures, domed like a cathedral at a point where the sea heaves dark blue and emerald green until it springs futilely against the cliffs.
Gradually my ability to walk lessened, my legs slowed down. I knew what was watching me. It was something on the hill.
The hill was the island’s main physical feature. Early on I had taken to looking out at it each morning, noting how it changed its mood, sometimes light, sometimes dark.
I struggled on in slow motion drawn by the hill but willing myself not to look at it. But as I walked along that wild lonely beach I was increasingly aware of its silent, waiting presence.
To say that this presence was the hill is perhaps an exaggeration. It was more something connected with the hill. This something was stirring watchfully. It was imposing increasingly on my consciousness.
I could not stand it any longer. I had to look.
The hill that day looked quite impressive for a hill a little over two thousand feet high. Its summit was rocky. Blue patches shone wetly on gaunt flanks that had centuries ago been swept clean and bare. But the new expanding vegetation ran up for quite a distance. It looked oddly lush and virile.
My gaze was drawn, or, as I felt it at the time, sucked, to a certain point and this point was the Stone Man. I had the feeling that there was a shift as if something already there, but only vaguely apprehended, was sliding into focus.
I felt for the first time that the Stone Man standing outside the Druidic circle of Standing Stones with its pagan altar and megalithic tomb, was standing guard over them.
I had felt vibes from the Stone Man before. But, now, for the first time, I perceived him, in some strange way, as the power centre, the focal point of the hill.
My eyes slid to the east where the la
nd graduated into the Black Bog, a place I had never entered. One didn’t need to enter the Black Bog to know that it was a piece of land as out of sympathy with man as anyone could imagine. Augustus John had told me that animals and even men had, from time to time, been lost there, sucked down into the bog when they had strayed from the barely defined paths. What had sucked them down? Was it one of the island’s forbidden places?
My gaze was compellingly drawn back to the Stone Man. And here I had a very odd feeling. I felt the Stone Man stir. I felt some ancient form of life, some disembodied power that had long been buried within the hill awake in him. I was well aware of the extraordinary powers that the Celts have always attributed to stone. But this in no way prepared me for the dark menacing presence that looked down at me now from what seemed to have become, as it were, the eyes of the hill.
The power radiating from the Stone Man intensified until its vibrations filled the air waves and hummed in my head. A deep rumbling sound went on for some moments and I recognized this rumbling as the noise I had heard when out in the currach.
Suddenly the Stone Man moved.
I could not believe my eyes. Surely it was an optical illusion. I wanted desperately to be assured that it was but, as I watched, one of the banks of mist that constantly roll over the island moved in and shrouded the hill.
I stood staring for some time but all that was visible were the lower slopes which glistened and rippled in the dull, grey, filtered light.
I waited for the mist to clear but it was obviously down for the day. In the end, I gave up and began to walk back towards my cottage, only vaguely aware of being lashed by a sudden shower of rain driven by a rising wind that had suddenly sprung up.
I glanced behind me. The hill still had its head in the clouds and there was no sign of the Stone Man.