Meanwhile, from every direction comes the screams of the rising, as the hungry tendrils work them aloft in determined, far-too-intimate spasms – licking and swallowing them upwards. The brightness grows, symphonic in its rhythms and crescendos. And the only melody to accompany the light show is the human cries and the sound of bone being compressed until it shatters.
My fear awakens the tendrils holding me and I rise, like so many others.
No.
A contraction tears my shirt away and the brutal rasping of the tendrils rips the skin off my back. I feel blood welling, running, absorbed.
NO.
Not yet.
I close my eyes to shut it all out. Squeezing away the realities around me.
Remember. Finish it.
That day. That one whole day of resplendent, heavenly light and then… and then what? I must have—
***
—fallen asleep.
One moment I was surrounded by a shimmer of golden particles, every neuron and every nerve incandescent with arousal and freedom; the approach of an orgasm so total it would surely elevate me into a pure enlightened existence, away from my body, away from the Hushed dead-end that my life had become.
I remember a sense of being drawn out through my cock. As though I’d spurted my consciousness – or perhaps my soul – through my urethra with that final ejaculation of the day.
Instead, I must have lost consciousness.
I woke in silver gloom, the golden resplendence gone. I was naked. The woman’s limbs were wrapped over me, cradling me in a cold embrace. I could feel neither her breath nor her heartbeat. The only illumination came from the moon, doing its best to penetrate windows that could not have been washed in years. The dust was so thick on the panes it resembled frost.
I must have been drugged or insensible. It took many minutes of lying, unmoving in that frigid grip, before my mind focused enough to realise that it was dark.
Night.
I had not returned to Compton House. To my family. The shame of it and the fear of what might happen if Tara and Jake tried to look for me after nightfall sent a hot rush to my face, to every extremity. My mind and body anchored themselves and I awoke fully. As that warmth flowed through me, the woman’s chilly hold tightened. I was pressed into the mattress by it. I made as though to remove her arm and found myself not embraced at all but bound. It was not arms that held me but cool wrappings, like flattened vines. They were alive. They drew the warmth out of my skin, fattening a little as my energy passed into them before being drained away.
The bed was comfortable and, although the touch of the living bandages was cold, I remained in a kind of torpor. I was at rest, peaceful in the woman’s bed. Whatever restrained my limbs wasn’t actually hurting me. I was still tired after an entire day of physical abandon. I wanted to sleep. Surely in the morning, I would have more strength. Then I would be able to break free of these bonds. I’d be able to see them properly and decide how best to escape. For now, the best thing to do was reserve my energy, rest up, ready for a better opportunity. I relaxed. My pulse settled down. I closed my eyes again.
Some part of me, buried under tons of subliminal propaganda, screamed, like a voice from across the hills.
Wake up! This is what they want. If you fall asleep now, there won’t be a tomorrow.
That was my voice. I recognised it. It was a voice from a long time ago, my voice from before the Hush. From back in the days when I cared about my family enough not to abandon them. From a time when I would do anything to protect them. I knew then that whatever the Hush was, it had begun to affect my mind. It wasn’t just that mad sense of freedom brought on by knowing that everything in the world had stopped like a broken clock, and knowing there was no one out there who could fix it. This was something else. Something to do with the fungus in this bedroom and the dust in the air.
The moment I had those thoughts, the snake-like things that held me tightened.
They can hear my fucking thoughts.
I came back to my body, to my own mind. Insane with anger at myself and at whatever intelligence had imprisoned me, I began to thrash and tear at my bonds. They were weak at that moment. I can only imagine how strong they might have become by the morning, once they’d sucked the will – and heaven knew what else – out of me. The strapping broke apart easily, snapping like soft roots. I leapt from the bed, only to find I was standing barefoot on a writhing woven mesh of similar growth.
I stomped the tender shoots under my soles and the whole room shuddered, rattling the grimy window in its frame. By the scant moonlight, I saw ripples all around the edges of the room, down near the floor where the fungus had been growing. They knew they were weak, easily damaged, and they contracted from me, back towards the edge of the room. I saw my clothes, revealed by the receding tide of vines, and I dressed quickly. With my sturdy walking boots on, some sense of strength returned.
A tapestry of the same sentient creeper had formed over the door.
I tore it open, snapping every shoot and sending a contraction through the whole house. Any satisfaction in that was short-lived. I stepped into the corridor to find it was a living tunnel, the roots or vines twisting like anguished snakes on every surface.
I hesitated.
There was a window behind me, in the wall forming the end of the corridor. Perhaps it would be quicker to break it and jump. I was on the top floor. What did that make the drop: twenty-five, thirty feet? I thought I could manage it, but how far would I get with a twisted knee or broken ankle? The creepers were weak enough to snap with my hands. Surely I could get past them into the lower floors. And the way they writhed and recoiled at the touch of my boots or fingers, they seemed almost terrified of me. The ones in the hallway, when I let my eyes linger on a patch for long enough, writhed away from my gaze but had nowhere to go.
Even so, I didn’t stride down that weed-lined passage. I crept, half-crouched, so that my unprotected back was as far from the ceiling as possible. Under the soles of my boots, the vines collapsed like papery reeds and retracted. Reaching the stairs, I found the growth thicker, but the woven mass of vine seemed to fear me, tried to shrink away. Suddenly confident, I descended the stairs three at a time, stomping the stuff to pulp under my boots and trying not to touch the walls with my hands.
Fighting against every instinct to run, to flee and not stop until I was far away across the fields, I stopped on the landing at the top of the last flight of stairs.
The woman stood a few feet away in the passage, silhouetted and naked in the moonlight. But there was another light source too, one I couldn’t immediately place, and this light cast her in pale green, making her very skin seem waxy and foliate. She was beautiful and lascivious beyond my ability to comprehend. She held one hand out to me and smiled. In her eyes there was lavender iridescence, occasionally flashing to green ocean algae. There was knowing there, too, as though she were reminiscing upon what we had already shared. Her other hand caressed her neck, descended, forced the tissue of her breast upward so that she could reach the nipple with her tongue. Down to her ripe convex belly, her palm appreciating her own fertility before her fingers, with a will of their own, pressed down through her abundant pubes to pinch, punish and breach her labia.
I watched, unable to move, barely breathing, my cock pointing to her the way a compass finds north. From the periphery of my vision I noticed the change in the weed that covered every surface. Its fear had diminished. Its hesitance around me had been replaced with a stealthy boldness. It was gathering, reaching out to me. The woman began to sway and gyrate in front of me, manipulating pleasure from herself in the harshest manner, but my eyes were drawn downwards to the floor where there was a strange movement. Her feet possessed tiny pale roots of their own; twining and embracing the serpentine growth that obscured the dirty, worn carpet. There was a union there between her and whatever life animated the vines.
I backed away, misjudged my steps and stumbled backwards down the sta
irs.
The growth cushioned my fall to an extent but it still hurt when I smacked the back of my head on the wall. I couldn’t have been dazed for more than a few seconds but, while I was, everything around me – the seething, whispering walls; the rainforest midnight gloom; and the woman standing a few feet away at the top of the stairs, nipping her clitoris so tightly between her work-hardened fingers that she had begun to bleed – all of that seemed perfectly normal. Without moving her feet, the woman approached, sliding over the living floor, transported by its movements.
I stood up. My elbow and left hip hurt but I hadn’t broken anything. I backed away again, this time more carefully. I noticed the spot on the wall where my head had made contact and on the floor where my body had lain. Those places were bald of growth, as though my touch caused some revulsion in the vines, making them shrink away. The woman followed me, shudders of agonised pleasure vibrating her belly and hips, making her eyes widen and roll. Her mouth opened and her tongue came forward to kiss and lick the air. The reek of mould and rotting vegetation rolled off her skin. I turned, leapt down the final steps, and sprinted along the downstairs passage towards the front door. The vines receded at my touch. The three figures in the hallway did not.
Men. Burly men. Naked and stinking like the woman.
I thought they were hairy at first, then the hairs began to move. With the moonlight behind them, I could only see their outlines but it was enough. Each silhouette was blurred by waving, reaching cilia. I slid to a halt a few feet from the front door, near the telephone table, and risked a glance back down the corridor. The woman was there. It was no longer possible to see the kitchen door – my other exit – behind her, covered with tangled fibres and growth. She seemed to levitate towards me, her connection with the growth working like a conveyor belt. In front of me the men – presumably her husband and two sons – split up. The boys – huge farm lads – slid to each wall whilst their father used his hair-like tendrils to rise to the ceiling. He hung there by his feet, his arms outstretched towards me. Whilst the vines might have been averse to touching me, their human slave-hands were eager to make contact, reaching to embrace me, their heads cocked in entreaty as if inviting me to reciprocate.
True, no one was watching anymore, but whatever it was they wanted to share with me, I didn’t want it. I’d experienced enough already. My own eyes still watched. My own eyes had seen. There was plenty of room for shame in this new world and I was leaking it from every guilt-greasy pore.
I dived headlong towards the front door and the three men closed in like a living trap, arriving first and barring the way. They thought they knew where I was going – I’d suspected they would – but I never made contact with them. At least not there. I hit the ground and scrambled for the door to my right. A fine webbing of thin growth parted at the mere suggestion of my touch and I sprint-crawled over the dirt crusted floor until I could use the wall to help me stand. The cloakroom was almost free of the creeping, slithering growth that choked the rest of the house. In the moonlight something glimmered in a corner beside the humps of dirty coats and rainwear that hung from the racks of clothes hooks. I grabbed for it, feeling relief and a burgeoning rage. The simple act of holding a weapon in my hand transformed my shame into vengeful fury.
I turned.
The father stood at the door. His tiny tendrils swayed as though to some invisible, watery current. Behind him stood his sons. I held the fork out towards them, flashes of clean steel showing through the adhering mud. I approached the door. To my surprise and disappointment, the farmer backed away. I slammed the door on him and grabbed the fork’s brother; the shovel. I wedged it under the door handle and looked around. There was a large window, one of the downstairs ‘eyes’ on either side of the front door. I was about to smash it when I noticed the latch. There was no lock. All I had to do was unhook it and push. The window swung open and I climbed through. No one followed me out of the house. I could see easily as I ran to the gate and passed through it; the moon illuminated everything. But, glancing back at the farmhouse as I ran between the cowsheds, I saw that it radiated its own light. A greenish glow, sometimes tinged with auras of pale purple.
I ran the way I thought I’d come, but everything looked uniform in the moonlight and I must have lost my way a little. I ended up getting into the fields by climbing over a low stone wall instead of using the gate I’d arrived through. But the upward gradient, and the dark outline of a familiar stand of trees, suggested I was heading in vaguely the right direction.
I would have made it to Compton House more quickly if the landscape hadn’t… altered.
In the fields, the ground gave way underfoot like a foam mattress. Again and again I checked to see if I had strayed into a marsh but there were no wetlands in these hills. The ground wasn’t waterlogged either; the grass and whatever was below it had somehow softened. It made running difficult and I couldn’t shake the irrational sense that at any moment the yielding surface might breach under my weight and I’d be sucked down into the earth.
The moon gave enough light to navigate by and I was thankful for that. It stopped me running into the looming obstacles that had appeared all over the fields. They were mounds – like giant molehills – but they weren’t made of excavated earth. They were pale and bulbous in that mercurial light; suede-skinned, I’d have said, though I considered myself fortunate not to have touched a single one of them. Their surfaces appeared to tremble like partially-filled hot water bottles. Whenever I came close enough to have to dodge between them, they leaned in towards me like huge misshapen skulls nodding as I passed.
Towards the top of the hill between the dairy farm and our valley, the bulbs thinned out and when I ran down the other side, grateful for the advantage gravity lent my legs, the slope was clear. I was relieved for a moment; I’d chosen well in bringing Tara and Jake to Compton Hill. It was protected somehow from the worst effects of the Hush, even though that was more through luck than planning. But we were away from the populations too and, until today, that had kept us safe.
Or had it?
Tara, Jake and I, we were all affected by the Hush. Until I ran down that slope towards Compton House I’d thought that it was purely psychological, a response to the extreme and unusual circumstances. Jake, with his fantasies of being overcome by something; Tara’s fastidious cleaning regime and otherwise complete withdrawal from any acknowledgement of the world outside; my own sudden detachment from the moral framework I’d adhered to all my life. Why had it taken this long for me to see that it was not only the world that had changed? How could I have made any excuses for the way we’d been behaving?
I panicked then, having had enough time to think things through. I’d abandoned my family for the sake of an illicit liaison; left them alone when they most needed me. As exciting as it had seemed at the time, it was no more than a thrill, was it? The kind of thing I’d have done with Tara if she’d loved me enough, if we’d trusted each other enough.
Wasn’t it? Wasn’t that what it was?
And now I’d left them alone. Abandoned them. At night. In the Hush. What the fuck was wrong with me?
The strength to run faster came from somewhere. The fear, the guilt, perhaps, lending me Hermes’ winged feet. I flew down that hill, avoiding the natural humps and dips that could have easily snapped my ankles.
Breathless and hot in the cool of the night, I came to the gate. Pushed through.
At the threshold of the front door, with my hand outstretched, I hesitated; if all was well within, what was my story? How would I account for my absence?
A lie, of course. Another lie tossed on the heap of untruths that our marriage had become.
Easy enough.
I only tested the door at first – with the stealthy fingers of an adolescent sneaking in after midnight – and was surprised to find it unlocked. Had Tara left it open deliberately? Perhaps she’d gone to bed merely thinking that I was later than usual. Maybe she’d fallen asleep. I pushed the
door open. It made no sound other than the whisper of its draught excluder over the stone floor. I stood in the hallway and listened for a long time before moving further into the house. All I could hear was my breathing and my heartbeat – both rapid, both unsteady.
There in the hallway I felt like an intruder. My body stiffened with the effort of standing still. I had to move forward. The moon scattered enough light for me to see by and the hallway and rooms to either side seemed as they had when I’d left. There were no signs of disturbance. Nothing seemed out of place – it was all as tidy as Tara liked to keep it. I reached the living room and the bottom of the stairs and my pulse and respiration finally began to slow.
I’d have some explaining to do in the morning, if Tara didn’t wake up when I slipped into bed beside her. The thought of getting some sleep before I defended my ‘lateness’ was suddenly very enticing. The tension began to ease from my muscles and with it the spent hormones of excitement and terror. I climbed the stairs like a weary soldier – battle-weary. I grinned in the scant glimmer of moonlight. Yes, that would be the centre of my lie. I had been seized by the Stricken and it had taken all day and much of the night to fight my way out.
I checked on Jake as I passed his room but his bed was empty, still made. That gave me pause until I realised that, without me there, he’d probably gone straight to bed with Tara. Why wait until the nightmares brought him crying to our room later in the night?
There was a good chance that Jake would rouse if he heard a noise now and I considered sleeping in his bed to save myself from having to make explanations to him in the middle of the night. My guilt over what I’d done sent me onwards, however. Quite suddenly, I wanted very badly to share the warm security of a bed with my family, even if my wife despised me, even if I had betrayed them both. The soft comfort of the marriage bed was a siren song and it drew me up the hall.
The Veil (Testaments I and II) Page 12