The Testament of Gideon Mack

by James Robertson

  There was a small rubber dinghy pulled up on the beach, with a wooden board across it as a seat and a paddle lying on one of its sides. Where we were going the roof dropped to about twelve feet. The cave seemed to go back a long way under this roof. This was where the orange light was coming from. There were two sources. One was a great fire crackling away at the base of a kind of natural chimney, which sucked away all the smoke. The other seemed to have a brighter glow but it was a long way back in the recesses of the cave. I know that sounds impossible, but that’s how it was. It was like the glow of the sun at dawn, just before it comes over the horizon. Distant but incredibly bright. Anyway, we were heading towards the nearer fire. We made pretty slow progress, but he showed no impatience. Every step reminded me of the dunts and blows I’d received in the river, although at the time I’d been mostly unaware of them. My right leg was the worst: I could put hardly any weight on it at all. When my right boot – and I can see this as clearly now as I did then, I still had both my boots on – when my right boot touched the ground it sent a bolt of pain shooting up my leg into my groin. I wasn’t thinking very coherently but I realised I’d done something serious – I have an old injury in that leg from running, but this was of a different order all together. I didn’t cry out, though. I was in shock. More than anything I was shocked that I was still alive.

  There was all this stuff set out near the fire. Some bits of furniture: a settee covered in big cushions and a couple of rugs, a white square plastic table like the kind people keep on their patios, two cast-iron chairs with round seats and floral designs to their backs and a set of wooden shelves with various items stacked on it – kitchen implements, plates, mugs, pans. And there were a lot of bottles, jars and tins too. Everything looked old-fashioned and battered and dirty. It was like a junkyard, or as if somebody had been put out on the street with all their possessions. I didn’t care. All I wanted to do was sit down and get a heat from that blazing red fire.

  He guided me towards one of the cast-iron chairs, placed my hands on its back and left me to rest there for a moment. He pulled the matching chair in by the fire, came back for me and helped me to sit down on it. ‘We’ll put you on the settee in a while,’ he said, ‘but the first thing is to get you warm. If you’ll allow me to undress you, your clothes will dry very quickly. I have no towel or other clothes, or I would offer them to you.’

  How could I object? I hadn’t said a word so far, but I was powerless to resist in any case. He began to undress me. I can’t describe the tenderness, the care with which he went about removing my sodden and torn clothes, unzipping and unbuttoning me, easing me out of my boots and socks, jacket, jumper, shirt, trousers and underpants as if I were his child. When I winced in pain he empathised – not in words but with little reciprocal noises – and proceeded even more gently. He wrung out each item and spread my clothes on the other iron chair, which he moved near the fire opposite me. There was a pile of logs and branches, some black, some bleached, some stripped of their bark, and he lifted a couple of chunky pieces and threw them to the back of the fire, sending a swarm of sparks up the chimney. My clothes were soon steaming away. I slumped where I was, feeling the heat roll over me and through me.

  At the front of the fire was a dip or hollow in the stone, full of hot embers, and over it was an iron grill on which pots could be placed, and a spit resting on two uprights, one at each side. The corpse of some small creature was skewered on this spit, giving off a wonderful smell, and the man of the cave turned it occasionally when he passed the fire. I’ve said he was very quiet and calm, yet he seemed not to be able to settle. He was constantly on the move, checking the fire, the clothes, the grilling carcase, going to the boat, then to the settee, sitting for a few seconds, then getting up and going back to the fire. The light of the flames picked up his movements and turned them into shadows flitting around the walls of the cave. This must have had a soporific effect on me, because I slipped in and out of sleep several times. Once I almost fell from the chair, and as I came awake and stopped myself I jarred my right leg. I cried out, and in a moment he was beside me.

  ‘It’s badly hurt,’ he said. He lightly touched my thigh. ‘The bone here seems to be sticking out.’

  ‘I think it may be broken,’ I said. It was the first time I’d spoken, and it brought on a fit of coughing. He went off and returned with a grimy glass and a dark, unlabelled bottle with a cork in it. He eased the cork out with a hollow pop.

  ‘Drink some of this,’ he said. He poured a small measure of what looked like water into the glass and held it to my mouth. The vapours coming from the liquid nipped my lips. It certainly wasn’t water. I took a mouthful and swallowed. It sizzled its way down my throat, and a great heat spread across my chest. I didn’t think it would stop the cough, but it did. I drank the rest of the glass and asked him what it was.

  ‘It is of my own making,’ he said. ‘Be careful, it’s powerful. Water might be safer, but I think you’ve had enough water for one day.’

  His voice was soft and neutral and had no obvious accent – as if he had lived in different parts of the world for long periods and his tongue had lost whatever mark of his origins it might once have had. I wondered if he might have been raised by Highland parents in some isolated part of Canada or New Zealand. That was the kind of indefinable voice he had. It was so unremarkable that it was remarkable.

  WW: I’m surprised you even noticed.

  GM: I was still in a daze, but I was getting inquisitive about him. He asked me if I was hungry, and I said I was, and he lifted the spit from the fire and slid the meat from it with a fork, on to a plate. I saw him take a knife to it, slicing it, and tearing what he couldn’t slice. Then he brought the plateful of cut meat over to me, and told me to eat.

  It was like barbecued chicken but with a stronger flavour. I ate several bits with my fingers while he hovered and flitted around. I suddenly thought I might be eating his only food and offered the plate to him. He said he didn’t need it: it was for me. I said it was good and asked what it was. Rabbit, he said. ‘I was fishing earlier and I caught a rabbit.’ And then he excused himself and went down to the beach again, pushed his boat out into the pool and paddled a few yards towards a dark object that was floating in the water. He nudged it back into the beach with the paddle. It was the limb of a tree. It was six feet long and must have weighed more than he did, but he carried it back to the pile of wood beside the fire and threw it down without any apparent difficulty. He didn’t break sweat, nor did he spoil the neatness of his dress. Although he didn’t look it, he was clearly immensely strong.

  ‘Supplies,’ he said. ‘Firewood, fish, fowl and beast come to me that way. A sheep, once in a while. A dog or two. A man, like yourself, very seldom. Not by that route.’

  I wondered if he ate the sheep, the dogs. I wondered if he ate people; if he intended to eat me.

  I asked him about the furnishings of his kitchen-cum-living room, how they had got there. ‘Built on site,’ he said. ‘Or dragged and floated from the other end of the river.’

  This excited me. Was there a way out if you followed the river? There was, he said.

  I said, ‘And you can show me how to get out?’

  He said, ‘No, but I can help you when the time comes.’

  I asked what he meant by this. He said when I left him it would be by the river and he would put me into it. I didn’t like the sound of that at all and I said so. He said I would have no choice.

  I persisted in questioning him: ‘If you dragged all that stuff here by some route, surely it can’t be too difficult to get out the same way.’ For the first time his calmness deserted him. He glared at me angrily. ‘I didn’t drag anything anywhere,’ he said. ‘Do I look like someone who drags things around? Do I?’

  I did my best to placate him, assuring him I was grateful for all he had done for me. I thought I’d fallen into the hands of a madman. Who else would make their dwelling in such a place? He went to check the state of my c
lothes. ‘These are dry,’ he said. ‘We can get you dressed again.’

  Between us we slowly covered up my nakedness, but my trousers wouldn’t go back on over my swollen and crooked right leg, so he put these aside. My boots, too, were still steaming in front of the fire, but he eased my socks on to keep my feet warm. He helped me over to the settee, arranged me on it with my head resting on some cushions at one end, and covered my legs with a rug. Then he went to the chair I had just vacated, turned it so that its back was towards me, and straddled it. He sat with his chin in his hand, peering at me as if he didn’t know what to do with me. He said nothing, so I began to question him again.

  ‘Where am I?’ I asked. ‘And who are you?’

  He scratched the back of his head and smiled. ‘One at a time,’ he said. ‘There’s no rush. Where do you think you are?’

  ‘I assume,’ I said, ‘that I’m below ground, somewhere between the Black Jaws and where the Keldo Water comes out at the other end.’

  ‘Well, then,’ he said, ‘that is where you are.’

  I said, ‘But that can’t be right. This place can’t be there. It’s too big.’

  ‘The earth is full of cavities and cells,’ he said. ‘Some large, some small. How can you say this is too big to be where it is? You know how you came here. Do you disbelieve what your own eyes see?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘It’s not that long since I thought I must be dead. Maybe I am dead.’

  ‘Do you feel dead?’ he said.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Not any more.’

  ‘If you were dead, how could we be conversing?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. I returned to the subject of the cave. ‘Why doesn’t everyone know about this? It should be as famous as Loch Ness or Ben Nevis.’

  ‘There is no tourist route to here,’ he said.

  ‘But it’s not possible that somewhere like this could be unknown.’

  ‘Just because you think something not possible does not make it so.’

  ‘Who are you?’ I asked again. ‘How are you here? How can you live here?’

  He held up a finger. ‘One at a time,’ he said again. ‘You see for yourself how I live. How am I here? I know my way around, above and below the earth. As to who I am, well, I am the one who has plucked you, a stranger, from the river. Wasn’t that good of me? So let me ask you who you are.’

  His voice was still smooth and easy, but he was being evasive. I responded with directness.

  ‘I am Gideon Mack,’ I said, ‘minister of the Old Kirk at Monimaskit.’

  He laughed. ‘You sound like one of the old school,’ he said. ‘Very sure of yourself. I’ve had some right battles with the old school. Un homme avec Dieu est toujours dans la majorité, isn’t that right? But you’re not so sure of yourself, are you, Gideon Mack? Yes, I know of you. I know about your good works, and your bad ones. I know your secrets. There isn’t much I don’t know about you.’

  That was what he said. How could I hear such words and not feel menaced by them? Yet he still had the calm, kind tone to his voice – the menace was there for just a second, then it was gone. But it was enough to frighten me a little. For the first time I wondered not if he were a madman, but if he were a man at all.

  WW: Not human, you mean?

  GM: Not human, or more than human. How did he know about me, if he really did? Why did he live in that place? I was still coming to terms with the fact that I hadn’t been killed by the river. All my physical senses told me I was alive, but maybe I wasn’t. And if I wasn’t, then what about him? Also, Bill, there’s been something else in my life this year, something I’ve not talked to you about. This isn’t easy to explain in a hurry, and I don’t want to get distracted just now, but there’s a stone in Keldo Woods, a standing stone that was never there before. I know this won’t make any sense, but it just seems to have appeared out of nothing. And I’m the only one who’s seen it. I’ll tell you about it later, now’s not the time. But if I can see and touch a stone that isn’t there, in a place I know to be real, then how can I say what’s real and what’s imagined deep under the earth? That’s what was going through my head, and because of that I began to think that this man, this being in the cave, might have something to do with it.

  WW: With what? You’ve lost me, Gideon.

  GM: With the stone in the woods. I was being confronted with things that were impossible, supernatural if you like, and this man – maybe – was at the heart of them. That’s what I thought.

  WW: But you’re a man of faith. You believe in God, ergo you believe in the supernatural. Don’t you?

  GM: I’m a man of doubt. I always have been. I don’t know what I believe. But I’ve always accepted what my senses told me. Now suddenly they were telling me things I couldn’t accept. Can you understand why I was confused?

  WW: Okay. Go on.

  GM: I asked him how he knew anything about me, what secrets of mine he could possibly know. He shrugged. ‘There are windows on the world,’ he said. ‘Don’t you think we don’t look through them from time to time?’

  ‘Who?’ I said. ‘Who do you mean when you say “we”?’

  ‘Who do you think I mean?’ he said.

  I was getting tired of this. ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Who are you? Give me a straight answer to a straight question, won’t you?’

  ‘Oh, surely,’ he said, ‘we are beyond straight questions and answers, you and I. This is not an examination in a classroom, is it? This is a conversation between equals.’

  I didn’t say anything for a minute. I felt that I was coming awake all of a sudden, and that I had to be on my best, most alert form. It was as if I hadn’t realised that I was in danger. Not immediate physical danger like when I’d been in the river, a different kind of danger. Like when you’re in a bar in a town you don’t know, you sense that you’re vulnerable, do you know what I mean? I live a very protected existence here, Bill, it’s years since I’ve felt like that, but I did. I felt vulnerable.

  ‘You have me at a disadvantage,’ I said. ‘Wherever I am, I’m on your territory, not mine. I nearly died back there. I’m injured. I don’t know how to get out of here. No, I don’t think that we are equals just now.’

  This threw him into a kind of sulk. It was clear that he did not like to be contradicted. ‘Suit yourself,’ he said. ‘I have business to attend to.’ He flung another couple of logs on the fire and fetched the dark bottle from the table. He put it on the ground beside me. ‘That’ll keep you going while I’m away. Perhaps when I return you’ll be in a better humour.’ And he headed deeper into the cave and in a moment was lost in the shadows.

  I’d been beginning to mistrust and dislike his company but I liked being alone a lot less. I almost shouted after him not to leave me. But he was gone and I was on my own, lying on that absurd settee in the glow of the fire, with the Keldo thundering in the background at the other end of the pool.

  I dozed again. When I woke I had a terrible thirst. Even if I could have dragged myself to the water’s edge I don’t think I could have persuaded myself to drink a drop of that thick black river. The only other drink to hand was in the bottle. I resisted for as long as I could, but I kept thinking of the healing effect it had had before. Eventually I reached for it, took out the cork and let some of the liquid burn its way down my throat. I waited. Then I drank some more. I could not stop taking swallows of it. It eased the throbbing pain in my right leg, which had been becoming unbearable. The more I drank, the better I felt. I lay there in a kind of stupor.

  I had no idea what time of day or night it was: there was no day or night in that place. I woke once and he was back again, building up the fire. Then he disappeared. At another point I came to with a start, drenched in sweat and shaking with cold. I was in the grip of a fever. I heard myself groan. I tried to turn on the settee, but had not the strength. Then he was there again, crouched beside me. ‘That’s it, Gideon,’ he whispered, and the whisper was a horrible hiss in my ear, ‘sweat it out
, sweat it out. Here, let me help you.’ I felt him lift me away from the back of the settee, and then a huge weight pressed on my shoulder and I knew he was climbing over me. He was thin and bony but I tell you he was heavier than three men, and harder too. He squeezed himself in behind me. I cried out, ‘What are you doing?’ but he only held me tighter. ‘We’ll sweat it out of you together,’ he said, and I felt his arms going around my chest like iron bands. I struggled, but it was useless, I lay there in his grip and the sweat poured from me, and all I could hear was the crackling of the fire and his breath in my ear.

  I don’t know how long we were like that, but then I felt something against my buttocks, like a cold iron bar it was, rigid, I could feel it pulsing against my naked skin – remember, I was without my trousers – and I thought, is this what this is about, that I’m to be impaled on the penis of some deranged cave-dwelling monster and then flung back in the river? And there was absolutely nothing I could do.

  WW: For God’s sake, Gideon. He raped you?

  GM: No, nothing happened. Don’t look at me like that! I swear nothing happened. He seemed to fall asleep, and I felt the erection ease although his hold on me did not, and at some point I must have slept too.

  I didn’t feel him leave me but when I woke he was away over by the fire. I watched him boiling water, making tea in a pot. He must have taken the water from the pool, but when he brought me over a mug I took it nonetheless. He helped me to sit up and I saw that in spite of the activities of the night – if it was the night – he was as immaculate and clean-looking as ever.

  He asked if I was feeling better. I said I was. My head was thick from the alcohol, but I was no longer feverish.