by Dean Koontz
The mists hung all about me and shrouded the path I had walked up on. It was cold and wet and left glistening droplets on my skin. I went naked, though, for cold could not harm me and was not a discomfort. It was merely a quantity now, much like light or darkness. I accepted it and watched the dew bead on the hairs on my arms and legs, like pearls in the shimmering gloom.
I looked out from the peak in all directions. At times, the curtains of gray would part, present a flash of some strange scenery. It was as if all parts of the world were equally near at hand from this summit-but a mile at most. I saw green fields and a silver river cutting through them like the winding body of a python. I saw a cold white plain where there was snow and where slabs of ice jutted upwards like broken teeth. I saw what seemed to be stretches of impenetrable jungle, black flowers blooming on the dark green foliage. I saw endless miles of sand, burnt white beneath a relentless sun, columns of the dried earth stirred upwards into the sky and winding erratically across the barren landscape. There was a land of broken ebony mountains where sunlight was reflected from polished Stygian surfaces and came back brown.
It was clear that I would have to explore all these places if I were ever to find the way out-if there happened to be a way out. I rose from the earth and left the four stone pillars, began the trek down the mountainside once more.
I was a third of the way down when the dark-winged creatures descended through the fog, swept by me, cutting the air with a sharp and unpleasant whine. I looked down where they had disappeared through the lowest layers of the mist. As I watched, they reappeared, rising gracefully toward me. There was a smooth coating of black down over their large, batlike bodies, giving them a warm, smooth, gentle look. Set in each of their faces were two wide eyes, deep brown things which looked back at me with an almost unbearable melancholy.
They settled onto the trail before me, their wings curling in on themselves, rolling into closed scrolls on their backs.
Distorted, many-fingered hands reached on tiny arms from the point where their shoulders and wings connected: useless arms.
"Where do you go?" the largest creature asked me.
"To all the lands," I said.
"They are wide. And many."
"I have time."
"That is true."
"Where do you come from?" I asked. I knew they were creatures fashioned by Child's mind, just as he peopled all the landscapes with animals of eerie forms. I was intrigued by their seeming intelligence.
"We are from-from the place where he is trapped."
"Where Child is trapped?" I asked,
"Yes," the smaller one said.
"Why doesn't Child come himself? Why must he take the form of birds?"
"He is trapped. He wants out, but there is no way but except through the dumb animals of his landscapes. He can reach into us and make us more than we once were and thus monitor this land through others' eyes."
"Can you take me to where Child is trapped?" I asked.
"We don't know."
"He can tell you."
"He doesn't know either," the smaller one said.
"Yet both of you are Child," I said. "In essence, you are your master." The wind buffeted us, but we did not mind it "I suppose," the larger bird said. "But there's really very little we can do about it. We can help him as he wishes. But he can only impart his general intelligence and psychic power to us. He cannot fully acquire us and speak through us in the direct manner he might wish."
The smaller bird stepped forward and bent conspiratorially. "You are aware, of course, that he is mad. And being mad, he has become separated from total control of this inner world of his. It remains, and he keeps it functioning.
But he does not share the harmony of it any longer."
"I understand," I said. "But why did you come to me?"
"We live in the mountains," the larger one said. "While you were here, it was our duty to speak with you about your journey."
"Speak," I said. It was raining slightly, a warm rain.
"We don't know what to say," the large bird said. "We have his general urgency in mind. We understand that he wishes us to say something to you concerning your idea to travel. But we cannot say exactly what he feels about it.
We think, ourselves, that he wants you to continue, that he wants us to urge you on. Perhaps he feels that you will find the place where he dwells and will liberate him."
"Possibly," I said.
"We know the place is dark. It is cold and there are things crawling on a blue floor, crawling all around him so that he does not have a moment's peace. That is the sum of our impression."
"I will watch for it," I said. "Now, I must be going."
Without a word, they leaped over the chasm, fell through the mists until their wings buoyed them up, then soared, beyond me, and were gone, making chattering noises like dice rattled on a felt table.
I went down, past the entrance to the inside of the mountain out of which I had come earlier. I walked for another day and reached the tree-shrouded floor of the valley, where the air smelled of pine and of flowers.
Waiting for me there was a creature much like a wolf, with a hugely swollen head and a mouth full of long teeth.
Eyes like chips of iron, gray and unperturbed.
"I'll guide you through the valley," it said, scratching paws in the earth. "I know it, and I can give you a look at every hole there is."
"Fine," I said.
"First, you must change yourself. Assume my form so that we can go more easily."
I had forgotten that the gossamer body analogue which I had assumed for my journey through Child's mental landscape was not the only shell I could use to contain my psychic energy. There was nothing essential about a humanoid form, for that psychic energy could take any form that I wished. Gently, I released the surface tension of the current, permitted my human body to shimmer and dissipate. I flowed, settled, grew lower and sleeker until I was a double for the wolf that waited for me.
I snuffled, scratched at the earth with razored claws and saw the dirt runnel before me. In this new body, I had a sense of power which I had never experienced before, a new perspective on the world about me. It seemed as if, I had been born to lycanthropy.
"Let's go," I said.
The wolf turned and loped away between the thick trees, his big paws scattering dry, brown pine needles which carpeted the forest floor. They rained over me as I hurried to follow his example.
As I ran, my breath steamed in the cold air, and my massive lungs heaved within my chest at the strenuous pace we set.
The ground flashed under me. Flimsy brush parted before me and closed, quivering, behind. To either side, small animals ran, chittering and whimpering with their fear. It was a completely structured reality, and it had made me the king of beasts in this part of the woods. I felt a burgeoning excitement at my omnipotence and my superiority over these lesser creatures. And while I savored this heady attitude, I never once realized the danger that was reaching cold fingers around me.
I enjoyed the muscular rhythm I had never known either as a man or spirit, closed the gap on the wolf, reached it by the time we broke through the pines into a grassy field. We ran side by side, easy, smoothly, sure of ourselves.
The journey had begun in earnest
III
We prowled the depths of the woods, sniffing through the underbrush for the scent of Child, the odor of his mental essence. There were times when I forgot everything but my powerful shoulders, my claws and my teeth, the keen powers of my black nostrils.
We rooted through the dark cavelets along the valley walls which opened on the floor of the forest, seeking into their darkest recesses, where our eyes refused to be totally blinded. We overturned old, rotting lop in the woods, seeking burrows through which the entrance to Child's prison might be found. We padded through the foaming cascade of a waterfall which issued from the valley rim a thousand feet above, searching the subterranean chambers beyond that wet curtain, finding n
othing. If there was a place with a blue floor where Child lay encircled by undescribed creatures of a malignant nature, it was nowhere within this valley. Neither was there a doorway into the conscious mind, no exit from this place where I found myself trapped. The journey was not to have a swift conclusion.
For some reason, I was glad for the extension. There was a strong reluctance to part with the form I had taken, to return to the world and be, again, a man.
It was snowing outside as the wolf led me across the last expanse of open fields before the impenetrable wall of mist which separated this part of the analogue world from the next. Big white flakes clung to our coats and frosted us, kicked up in clouds as we pranced forward toward the distant veil of fog.
We were sidetracked by the scampering of a covey of quail-like animals off to our left. My lupine friend broke into a wild, breathtaking run, teeth bared ferociously, lips drawn back, slobber falling from his wide mouth.
I followed, feeling the wind and snow and scenting the flesh of small creatures.
I saw him leap: muscles taut. I saw him land: a spring's coils jammed together.
The air reverberated with the dying squeal of his prey.
In that instant, as the agony of death pierced the air and the pride of a successful hunt shook me, I was more wolf than man, and the danger began to grow more imminent.
I stepped next to him and snuffled at his catch, watched him rend the flesh. Blood fountained up as an artery was struck, spurted crimson across his dark snout, stained his teeth, dotted the snow around us. It steamed in the cold air, this blood, and it had a smell uniquely its own.
I howled.
We tore at the animal together, and he kept his eyes on me for a long while, cold gray eyes that did not disclose the thoughts behind them. When we were done, our noses red and the snow around us sodden, I did not feel disgusted, but rather invigorated.
We turned back to our original pursuit and gained the shifting walls of mists through which I would have to pass.
"I want to return," I growled.
"So?" His breath reeked.
"May I return?"
"For what purpose?"
"To join your pack."
"That is most unwise. That is foolish, and you know it, and you must journey. Be gone."
Then he turned and loped away, head hunched between his rugged shoulders, eating up yards in a single bounding leap.
Looking up at the even gray of the sky, I felt a hollow longing within me, and I pawed the snow away from the earth, dug the ground into a crosshatch of runnels. I wiped my bloodied snout in the snow and lapped the stained whiteness. I wanted to remain here forever, without regard to my true heritage and nature, to bound after the disappearing wolf and follow him to his pack. In the night hours, there would be deep dens in hidden caves to sleep in warmth and to climb upon some sleek and lovely female with gray eyes and a shiny black snout. During the daylight hours, there would be prowling in the fields and in the sparsely treed grounds before the thickness of the forests themselves. There would be blood and camaraderie, running together, killing together, defying the leaden skies with my fellows...
Yet there was some nagging reason why I should go beyond the mists to the next segment of this landscape, though I could not remember what it was. I stepped through the mists, tensed, but found no danger, only cool wetness. I growled deep in my throat and broke through to the other side.
The journey continued.
In the new section of the subconscious universe, there was a taste of Ireland: stony ground, rolling hills so low that one could be seen beyond the other, the smell of the sea, flat areas of land marshy with the backwash of the tidelands. Waiting for me by a column of limestone that stood like a proscenium pillar without benefit of its stage, was a centaur. His head was ringed with golden curls which fell to his shoulders and framed a face of striking masculinity: broad forehead above deep black eyes that spoke of perserverance and a strong will, high aristocratic cheekbones, a proud Roman nose, a blocky chin. His shoulders were brawny, his arms rippling with muscles that seemed to possess a will and intent of their own. From the middle of his flat belly on down, he was a black stallion of formidable proportions, the lines of a thoroughbred in his long legs.
"My name is Kasostrous, and you may call me Kas," he said.
"Call me Simeon," I growled, my voice a tangled hiss of barely understandable guttural syllables.
"You must now acquire the form of the centaur," Kas said, leaving the limestone thrust and ambling toward me.
His hooves clacked on the stony ground, sent sparks up once or twice. His long, flashing length of tail whipped in the breeze, tossed from side to side with lazy power.
"I like wolfhood," I said, pawing the ground, my nails whispering on the dew-damp rock. I continued to stroke, sharpening them for later kills.
"You like it too well," Kas said. "That is the trouble."
"What's that supposed to mean?" I asked, staring up at him with my flint eyes, hoping to strike terror in him. I failed.
"You have fallen into the danger of identifying too closely with the analogue you permit your psychic energy to assume. Though such energy is malleable, the surface tension can grow stronger with time, sap the will to return to any other analogue, any other shape. Too long a time as a wolf, and you will find yourself trapped not only in the form, but in the character of the creature."
"Nonsense." But the word was said without conviction and in such a guttural rumble that it only reinforced what Kas said.
"You disprove your own words."
"I'm an esper," I said.
"So?"
"I understand these things."
"You do not grasp the difference of this subconscious universe," he said. "There is a certain thing about it which will trap you-you especially, given your past and your mental condition."
I pawed the earth. "Help me grasp it," I said at last, doubtful. I did not want to have to believe what he was saying. I only wanted to be free to run and tear flesh and mount the sleek females in the dark shadows of the dens.
"Child's mental landscape is peopled only with creatures from legends and mythology. He read extensively in those areas from the moment he could understand language, and he viewed hundreds of senso-tapes on the subject. It interested him, because he thought he might find a purpose even stronger than the one which was connected with the Christian mythos: the Second Coming which he believed was himself."
"But this wolf does not take the form of a mythological creature," I argued with my wolf-mouth.
"There is a Tibetan legend which tells of monks transformed to wolves. They were men who loved luxury and betrayed the true intentions of their religion. They indulged in women and in drink, in jewels and in food, and all that was pretty and satisfying to the senses. Their god came to them after they had defiled mere children in a brothel contaminated with all manners of evil. In the disguise of demons, their god offered them immortality for their souls. It was a test to see if they were completely depraved, or whether there was still some minim of decency within them. But all nine of the monks eagerly grasped the straw of endless life at the sacrifice of nirvana, of eternal life on another plane. And so he gave them immortality and crushed their souls. But he gave them immortality as wolves, as vicious reeking creatures hated and feared by all, creatures who could no longer know a woman's form but must run in dank dens, creatures unable to make or appreciate the taste of wine or of a succulently prepared roast."
"And you want me now to be a centaur."
"Yes. The oftener you change, the less chance you have to be absorbed by any one particular mythical prototype.
And you, seeking some purpose beyond your human one, are ripe for such an end as threatens you now."
"I can withstand the pressure."
"You can't," Kas said. He shook golden curls but of his eyes. "You especially. All your life, just like Child, you have relied heavily upon a mythological ill-logic to justify your existence."
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br /> "Christian mythos," I corrected, wondering why I was still trying to defend it.
"These are of the same level of value as the Christian one. One will snare you as easily as the other. In all of them, you will find the same simplicity and attractive lack of complication as you found in Christianity's legends.
And you will never leave this place."
I thought, for the first time, of Melinda. I had been forcing her and everything else out of my mind, refusing to acknowledge her no-nonsense interviews in that other world, her quick wit, and her supple and willing body.
Now they all rose and crowded into my consciousness at the same moment, almost overwhelming me.
In time, as we stood there on the rolling earth under the flat sky, listening to the sea, Kas said, "Will you?"
"What?"
"Change?"
"I guess... guess so."
"Soon, then."
I hesitated.
"Soon."
And I changed.
Together, we started off across the hilly land, galloping under the steel blue of looming thunderhead clouds. My own golden hair streamed behind me. My tail rode straight out behind, fluttering in the fingers of the seatinged air.
If anything, this was better than the form of a wolf, carried more of a sense of freedom and delight.
Child was not to be found here, either. We searched everywhere, including the flat white beach where the surf curled. We trotted through the shushing foam of the sea, kicking up shells and sending crabs in frantic flight. We left our hoofprints in the sucking mud of the moors, in the rich black earth of the grasslands, in the sand by the ocean.
Sure-footed, we climbed the few small peaks and surveyed this sector of the world, looked for caves and came back down again. In time, when it was apparent there was no blue-floored room and no exit to Child's conscious mind, we reached the curtain of mist to another climate, another segment of the fractured reality that constituted Child's mind.
I was forced to say goodbye to Kas the centaur, though I longed to stay here and enjoy the horseman form a while longer. He lectured me about disassociating from my centaur form upon leaving this plane, and I listened and made my promises.