Foundations of Fear

by David G. Hartwell

  The country was being patrolled night and day. A hundred keepers and working men were beating the woods and poking the bogs on the moors, but as yet not so much as a handkerchief had been found.

  Weigall did not believe for a moment that Wyatt Gifford was dead, and although it was impossible not to be affected by the general uneasiness, he was disposed to be more angry than frightened. At Cambridge Gifford had been an incorrigible practical joker, and by no means had outgrown the habit; it would be like him to cut across the country in his evening clothes, board a cattle train, and amuse himself touching up the picture of the sensation in West Riding.

  However, Weigall’s affection for his friend was too deep to companion with tranquility in the present state of doubt, and, instead of going to bed early with the other men, he determined to walk until ready for sleep. He went down to the river and followed the path through the woods. There was no moon, but the stars sprinkled their cold light upon the pretty belt of water flowing placidly past wood and ruin, between green masses of overhanging rocks or sloping banks tangled with tree and shrub, leaping occasionally over stones with the harsh notes of an angry scold, to recover its equanimity the moment the way was clear again.

  It was very dark in the depths where Weigall trod. He smiled as he recalled a remark of Gifford’s. “An English wood is like a good many other things in life—very promising at a distance, but a hollow mockery when you get within. You see daylight on both sides, and the sun freckles the very bracken. Our woods need the night to make them seem what they ought to be—what they once were, before our ancestors’ descendants demanded so much more money, in these so much more various days.”

  Weigall strolled along, smoking, and thinking of his friend, his pranks—many of which had done more credit to his imagination than this—and recalling conversations that had lasted the night through. Just before the end of the London season they had walked the streets one hot night after a party, discussing the various theories of the soul’s destiny. That afternoon they had met at the coffin of a college friend whose mind had been a blank for the past three years. Some months previously they had called at the asylum to see him. His expression had been senile, his face imprinted with the record of debauchery. In death the face was placid, intelligent, without ignoble lineation—the face of the man they had known at college. Weigall and Gifford had had no time to comment there, and the afternoon and evening were full; but, coming forth from the house of festivity together, they had reverted almost at once to the topic.

  “I cherish the theory,” Gifford had said, “that the soul sometimes lingers in the body after death. During madness, of course, it is an impotent prisoner, albeit a conscious one. Fancy its agony, and its horror! What more natural than that, when the life-spark goes out, the tortured soul should take possession of the vacant skull and triumph once more for a few hours while old friends look their last? It has had time to repent while compelled to crouch and behold the result of its work, and it has shrived itself into a state of comparative purity. If I had my way, I should stay inside my bones until the coffin had gone into its niche, that I might obviate for my poor old comrade the tragic impersonality of death. And I should like to see justice done to it, as it were—to see it lowered among its ancestors with the ceremony and solemnity that are its due. I am afraid that if I dissevered myself too quickly, I should yield to curiosity and hasten to investigate the mysteries of space.”

  “You believe in the soul as an independent entity, then—that it and the vital principle are not one and the same.”

  “Absolutely. The body and soul are twins, life comrades—sometimes friends, sometimes enemies, but always loyal in the last instance. Someday, when I am tired of the world, I shall go to India and become a mahatma, solely for the pleasure of receiving proof during life of this independent relationship.”

  “Suppose you were not sealed up properly, and returned after one of your astral flights to find your earthly part unfit for habitation? It is an experiment I don’t think I should care to try, unless even juggling with soul and flesh had palled.”

  “That would not be an uninteresting predicament. I should rather enjoy experimenting with broken machinery.”

  The high wild roar of water smote suddenly on Weigall’s ear and checked his memories. He left the wood and walked out on the huge slippery stones which nearly close the River Wharfe at this point, and watched the waters boil down into the narrow pass with their furious untiring energy. The black quiet of the woods rose high on either side. The stars seemed colder and whiter just above. On either hand the perspective of the river might have run into a rayless cavern. There was no lonelier spot in England, nor one which had the right to claim so many ghosts, if ghosts there were.

  Weigall was not a coward, but he recalled uncomfortably the tales of those that had been done to death in the Strid.

  “This striding-place is called the “Strid”,

  A name which it took of yore;

  A thousand years hath it borne the name,

  And it shall a thousand more.”

  Wordsworth’s Boy of Egremond had been disposed of by the practical Whitaker; but countless others, more venturesome than wise, had gone down into that narrow boiling course, never to appear in the still pool a few yards beyond. Below the great rocks which form the walls of the Strid was believed to be a natural vault, on to whose shelves the dead were drawn. The spot had an ugly fascination. Weigall stood, visioning skeletons, uncoffined and green, the home of the eyeless things which had devoured all that had covered and filled that rattling symbol of man’s mortality; then fell to wondering if anyone had attempted to leap the Strid of late. It was covered with slime; he had never seen it look so treacherous.

  He shuddered and turned away, impelled, despite his manhood, to flee the spot. As he did so, something tossing in the foam below the fall—something as white, yet independent of it—caught his eye and arrested his step. Then he saw that it was describing a contrary motion to the rushing water—an upward backward motion. Weigall stood rigid, breathless; he fancied he heard the crackling of his hair. Was that a hand? It thrust itself still higher above the boiling foam, turned sidewise, and four frantic fingers were distinctly visible against the black rock beyond.

  Weigall’s superstitious terror left him. A man was there, struggling to free himself from the suction beneath the Strid, swept down, doubtless, but a moment before his arrival, perhaps as he stood with his back to the current.

  He stepped as close to the edge as he dared. The hand doubled as if in imprecation, shaking savagely in the face of that force which leaves its creatures to immutable law; then spread wide again, clutching, expanding, crying for help as audibly as the human voice.

  Weigall dashed to the nearest tree, dragged and twisted off a branch with his strong arms, and returned as swiftly to the Strid. The hand was in the same place, still gesticulating as wildly; the body was undoubtedly caught in the rocks below, perhaps already halfway along one of those hideous shelves. Weigall let himself down upon a lower rock, braced his shoulder against the mass beside him, then, leaning out over the water, thrust the branch into the hand. The fingers clutched it convulsively. Weigall tugged powerfully, his own feet dragged perilously near the edge. For a moment he produced no impression, then an arm shot above the waters.

  The blood sprang to Weigall’s head; he was choked with the impression that the Strid had him in her roaring hold, and he saw nothing. Then the mist cleared. The hand and arm were nearer, although the rest of the body was still concealed by the foam. Weigall peered out with distended eyes. The meagre light revealed in the cuffs links of a peculiar device. The fingers clutching the branch were as familiar.

  Weigall forgot the slippery stones, the terrible death if he stepped too far. He pulled with passionate will and muscle. Memories flung themselves into the hot light of his brain, trooping rapidly upon each other’s heels, as in the thought of the drowning. Most of the pleasures of his life, good and bad, were iden
tified in some way with this friend. Scenes of college days, of travel, where they had deliberately sought adventure and stood between one another and death upon more occasions than one, of hours of delightful companionship among the treasures of art, and others in the pursuit of pleasure, flashed like the changing particles of a kaleidoscope. Weigall had loved several women; but he would have flouted in these moments the thought that he had ever loved any woman as he loved Wyatt Gifford. There were so many charming women in the world, and in the thirty-two years of his life he had never known another man to whom he had cared to give his intimate friendship.

  He threw himself on his face. His wrists were cracking, the skin was torn from his hands. The fingers still gripped the stick. There was life in them yet.

  Suddenly something gave way. The hand swung about, tearing the branch from Weigall’s grasp. The body had been liberated and flung outward, though still submerged by the foam and spray.

  Weigall scrambled to his feet and sprang along the rocks, knowing that the danger from suction was over and that Gifford must be carried straight to the quiet pool. Gifford was a fish in the water and could live under it longer than most men. If he survived this, it would not be the first time that his pluck and science had saved him from drowning.

  Weigall reached the pool. A man in his evening clothes floated on it, his face turned towards a projecting rock over which his arm had fallen, upholding the body. The hand that had held the branch hung limply over the rock, its white reflection visible in the black water. Weigall plunged into the shallow pool, lifted Gifford in his arms and returned to the bank. He laid the body down and threw off his coat that he might be the freer to practise the methods of resuscitation. He was glad of the moment’s respite. The valiant life in the man might have been exhausted in that last struggle. He had not dared to look at his face, to put his ear to the heart. The hesitation lasted but a moment. There was no time to lose.

  He turned to his prostrate friend. As he did so, something strange and disagreeable smote his senses. For a half moment he did not appreciate its nature. Then his teeth clacked together, his feet, his outstretched arms pointed towards the woods. But he sprang to the side of the man and bent down and peered into his face. There was no face.

  Clive Barker

  In The Hills, The Cities

  Clive Barker, originally from Liverpool, now residing in Southern California, was the most exciting new horror writer to enter the horror field in the early 1980s. His six-volume The Books of Blood (1984–85) galvanized the attention of horror readers and instantly drew praise from Stephen King, Ramsey Campbell and Peter Straub, establishing Barker as their peer. He immediately turned to the novel form and produced a string of best-sellers, beginning with The Damnation Game (1985) and continuing today. He is one of the world’s best-known horror writers. His background was in theater, and he became at the same time a filmmaker of considerable popularity, specializing in the horror genre. His major influences are not the literature, but comics and films. His main preoccupations are with the religious and philosophical meanings of sex and violence. He writes quickly and strives for powerful effects over polish and structure—which he frequently achieves. Nowhere more so than in “In The Hills, The Cities.” If not his best story, it is certainly his most memorable to date. Barker creates a fantastic, mythic image that relates more closely to the stories of E. T. A. Hoffman than to more recent literature. It is also consistent with the direction his films and novels have taken in the last five years and so perhaps best represents Barker’s strengths.

  It wasn’t until the first week of the Yugoslavian trip that Mick discovered what a political bigot he’d chosen as a lover. Certainly, he’d been warned. One of the queens at the Baths had told him Judd was to the Right of Attila the Hun, but the man had been one of Judd’s ex-affairs, and Mick had presumed there was more spite than perception in the character assassination.

  If only he’d listened. Then he wouldn’t be driving along an interminable road in a Volkswagen that suddenly seemed the size of a coffin, listening to Judd’s views on Soviet expansionism. Jesus, he was so boring. He didn’t converse, he lectured, and endlessly. In Italy the sermon had been on the way the Communists had exploited the peasant vote. Now, in Yugoslavia, Judd had really warmed to this theme, and Mick was just about ready to take a hammer to his self-opinionated head.

  It wasn’t that he disagreed with everything Judd said. Some of the arguments (the ones Mick understood) seemed quite sensible. But then, what did he know? He was a dance teacher. Judd was a journalist, a professional pundit. He felt, like most journalists Mick had encountered, that he was obliged to have an opinion on everything under the sun. Especially politics; that was the best trough to wallow in. You could get your snout, eyes, head and front hooves in that mess of muck and have a fine old time splashing around. It was an inexhaustible subject to devour, a swill with a little of everything in it, because everything, according to Judd, was political. The arts were political. Sex was political. Religion, commerce, gardening, eating, diinking and farting—all political.

  Jesus, it was mind blowingly boring; killingly, love-deadeningly boring.

  Worse still, Judd didn’t seem to notice how bored Mick had become, or if he noticed, he didn’t care, he just rambled on, his arguments getting windier and windier, his sentences lengthening with every mile they drove.

  Judd, Mick had decided, was a selfish bastard, and as soon as their honeymoon was over he’d part with the guy.

  It was not until their trip, that endless, motiveless caravan through the graveyards of mid-European culture, that Judd realized what a political lightweight he had in Mick. The guy showed precious little interest in the economics or the politics of the countries they passed through. He registered indifference to the full facts behind the Italian situation, and yawned, yes, yawned when he tried (and failed) to debate the Russian threat to world peace. He had to face the bitter truth: Mick was a queen; there was no other word for him; all right, perhaps he didn’t mince or wear jewelry to excess, but he was a queen nevertheless, happy to wallow in a dreamworld of early Renaissance frescoes and Yugoslavian icons. The complexities, the contradictions, even the agonies that made those cultures blossom and wither were just tiresome to him. His mind was no deeper than his looks; he was a well-groomed nobody.

  Some honeymoon.

  The road south from Belgrade to Novi Pazar was, by Yugoslavian standards, a good one. There were fewer potholes than on many of the roads they’d travelled, and it was relatively straight. The town of Novi Pazar lay in the valley of the River Raska, south of the city named after the river. It wasn’t an area particularly popular with the tourists. Despite the good road it was still inaccessible, and lacked sophisticated amenities; but Mick was determined to see the monastery at Sopocani, to the west of the town and after some bitter argument, he’d won.

  The journey had proved uninspiring. On either side of the road the cultivated fields looked parched and dusty. The summer had been unusually hot, and droughts were affecting many of the villages. Crops had failed, and livestock had been prematurely slaughtered to prevent them dying of malnutrition. There was a defeated look about the few faces they glimpsed at the roadside. Even the children had dour expressions; brows as heavy as the stale heat that hung over the valley.

  Now, with the cards on the table after a row at Belgrade, they drove in silence most of the time; but the straight road, like most straight roads, invited dispute. When the driving was easy, the mind rooted for something to keep it engaged. What better than a fight?

  “Why the hell do you want to see this damn monastery?” Judd demanded.

  It was an unmistakable invitation.

  “We’ve come all this way . . .” Mick tried to keep the tone conversational. He wasn’t in the mood for an argument.

  “More fucking Virgins, is it?”

  Keeping his voice as even as he could, Mick picked up the Guide and read aloud from it: “. . . there, some of the greatest wor
ks of Serbian painting can still be seen and enjoyed, including what many commentators agree to be the enduring masterpiece of the Raska school: ‘The Dormition of the Virgin.’ ”

  Silence.

  Then Judd: “I’m up to here with churches.”

  “It’s a masterpiece.”

  “They’re all masterpieces according to that bloody book.”

  Mick felt his control slipping.

  “Two and a half hours at most—”

  “I told you, I don’t want to see another church; the smell of the places makes me sick. Stale incense, old sweat and lies . . .”

  “It’s a short detour; then we can get back on to the road and you can give me another lecture on farming subsidies in the Sandzak.”

  “I’m just trying to get some decent conversation going instead of this endless tripe about Serbian fucking masterpieces—”

  “Stop the car!”

  “What?”

  “Stop the car!”

  Judd pulled the Volkswagen into the side of the road. Mick got out.

  The road was hot, but there was a slight breeze. He took a deep breath, and wandered into the middle of the road. Empty of traffic and of pedestrians in both directions. In every direction, empty. The hills shimmered in the heat off the fields. There were wild poppies growing in the ditches. Mick crossed the road, squatted on his haunches and picked one.