Ancient Echoes

by Robert Holdstock

  Go into the church, Jack.

  ‘Oh God! Huge, absolutely huge arched dome, light everywhere from windows, dust and rocks and broken pews, and chickens everywhere, running everywhere, enormous statues everywhere … gleaming white.’

  Take control. Find a visual source and take control.

  ‘Woman in armour, holding spear and sword … Joan of Arc … de Triumph … white stone armour …’

  Bring me in.

  ‘Come on in, Angela …’ Find a source for Steve. You need to hear him.

  ‘Lovely Jesus. On the Cross. All pained and twisted. That’s my Steve, you bastard … Come on down from that bloody tree, Mr Brightman …’

  Jack. Get a grip.

  ‘Get a grip on Angela, you got a grip on her … caused me pain … no pain to you … never commit for more than a year … pain in the head, the thorns, the hands … come on down, you bastard, come and join the dream dream Jeannie …’

  M.I.D.A.C.S. TRANSMISSION, TEST 6 /Dispatches

  I kept hearing rock songs, like Jean Jeannie, that old David Bowie number … no, I know it wasn’t called that, but you know the one I mean … and echoes of Heavy Metal. The church was just like that Cathedral in Reims, in France – acid-rain scoured statues of the apostles, the saints etcetera in columns beside the big, oak doors. But the Cathedral was embedded in an immense cliff of red sandstone, as if it were growing from the cliff. When you told me to go into the place, the church itself seemed to squeeze towards me, like something growing, something organic. The steps were wide and white marble, and I think I recognize the influence of that George Pal film, The Time Machine: a sense of running into desertion and decay. The inside of the church was straight out of Turner, but I can’t remember the painting. We saw it at the Royal Academy once, wrecked pews, broken statues, all those chickens and the fabulous shafts of light catching dust which was almost motionless in the air … Ewenny Priory! That’s the one. Ewenny Priory, all ruins and light and dust. Perhaps this symbolizes the decay of my religious belief? Am I supposed to speculate about these things in the Hinterland?

  I approached the altar space, aware of a big crucifix, with the figure of Christ, loin cloth, crown of thorns, dark beard, eyes closed; but in a side chapel there was a brilliant white statue of Joan of Arc. Her hair was long and curled. She had armoured greaves on her legs, and an impressive breastplate, shaped for what I can only assume was a fairly impressive bosom below. Lots of chain mail, and a spear and sword, and her armoured foot stamping on the snarling head of a dragon.

  When you said to put Angela in the statue it was quite incredible: Joan creaked, twisted and looked around, then came down off the plinth, walking in jerky motion at first, then more smoothly. How very silly! But it seemed real at the time. I’ve watched so many films, so I suppose I could describe the movement as Ray Harryhausen segueing effortlessly into Terminator 2, you know, that effect, what do they call it? Morphic something? Not Resonance, that’s different. Morphing, that’s it. The smooth special effects you get.

  Joan became splashed with colour, especially round the face, and walked over to me, crouching down, a stone woman with Angela’s features but huge, hugely built, a marble, marvellous giantess.

  Then the Christ detached itself from the Cross. I’m sorry Steve … I wasn’t an control, and still resent you. Obvious statement. Funny that I can articulate it here and now, but I didn’t mean to subject you to so much blood. The unconscious works in mysterious ways. Funny, though, you were hitching up your loin cloth at the front like you do with your jeans, always checking everything’s in place, and it was held together with studs and turned faded denim blue as I thought of it.

  So I had Christ and Joan of Arc, crouching in front of me, really earnestly, talking to me – your voices – and that’s when I started to laugh.

  (Sorry about that.)

  Are you getting all this? It feels strange; I’m writing furiously, sitting just outside the church, on the steps in fact, and the sun is low, and red, and everything here is very still and deserted, like the end of the world. I seem to be writing on a heavy parchment, and the pen is a fountain pen, something I never used at school, but it feels good, so maybe this is the fulfilment of an unrealized dream.

  So many unrealized dreams, so much to fulfil if Natalie’s to be safe.

  Odd: as I wrote that last I was feeling concern for Natalie. Is that important? My external world feelings are still strong in this Midax state. Which makes me remember that I’m to look for the aperture, and Greensleeves, but everything is so silent, glowing like red dusk, red twilight, yes! I think the way through is close, don’t know why I say this, why it feels like it feels, but behind me, the way through is close.

  Am I in a Midax state? It’s hot, I could do with a drink, and I’m sitting on hard steps below a ruined church, looking at other temples, like Roman temples, basking in end-of-the-world red sunlight.

  Back to what happened: the two statues quite quickly became ‘certainties’ of each of you; they still looked like Christ and Joan, but your own characters started to belong to them.

  You asked me to define Midax again – Mostly-Isolated/ Defined-Autonomous-Central-Self – and Christ in his blue loin cloth said, ‘That’s good. That’s very good. You have a fifty percent split; that’s the best yet. When we can isolate your Central Self at 80 you’ll get the instruction to locate one of the access channels between the Hinterland and the Midax Deep. You’ll go in after Greenface, then, but you’ll be on your own. So keep writing, keep practising control.’

  And I said, ‘I want to come out. I want to make love. I want to see what’s behind the armour.’

  The statue started laughing. It said, ‘Randy bastard. About time too!’ and I said, ‘But I’m going inside … and I may be gone some time …’

  So then you asked me to imprint the church, and the carved cliff, with its windows and entrances, and try to mark a route back when the Midax state dissolved. I’d like to come out, now. The statue is walking up the steps. Christ is still crouching, watching me, wiping the blood from his eyes. It’s getting brighter, like a car’s headlight, a glare, a glare, blinding … glare …

  DISPATCH ENDS

  * * *

  ‘Excellent! Jack. Excellent! You went well beyond normal LD control.’

  LD? Oh, right. Lucid Dream …

  Jack sat up, realizing that his right wrist was aching. Someone was massaging the muscles, flexing the fingers. Angela’s face, smiling, came into focus. His arm was still strapped to the ‘scribble-pad’; he looked at the ferocious scrawl from the pen attachment and realized it made no sense at all. ‘Can you read that?’

  ‘Of course. It’s no worse than a doctor’s prescription.’

  ‘It’s just straight lines.’

  Brightmore was fussing with the headpiece and laughed. ‘If you look closely you’ll see little bumps and twitches. We use Direct Computer Interpretation–’

  ‘DCI?’

  ‘DCI. Yeah. It prints out the text almost as it comes from the pen. It makes assessments where it’s unsure, that’s why we get you to repeat so much of what we say. Gives us a direct comparison.’

  ‘A DC?’

  Angela laughed as she worked the blood supply back into fingers that were now tingling. ‘Not everything comes down to acronyms.’

  He thought, RSI for sure, if I keep this up. He flexed the fingers. ‘How fast was I writing?’

  ‘Faster than you’d believe possible.’

  ‘FBP?’

  ‘Shut up. Idiot.’ Amused, she leaned over and kissed him. ‘Bet you feel like an LSP, though …’

  It took a second ‘A long slow pint? Yes. I was thinking of beer for most of the transmission. The church was hot, the sun was hot, it made me feel very thirsty.’

  Brightmore was fascinated by that statement and made a long note, nodding as he typed at the console.

  ‘So what’s that in capital letters?’ Jack asked after a moment.

  ‘Rats!’ Th
e New Zealander said. He was frantically backspacing to correct an error.

  ‘Rats?’

  Brightmore glanced over his shoulder, grinning. ‘Real Appetite Triggered. Somehow.’

  He had tried to understand the neurology and psychometry of Midax, but found that he could not mentally articulate the central concept: that his Central Self, the apparent existence of his own point of view, could be partly condensed and given identity and direction. And that once this was done, he would effectively be able to treat his dreams as a virtual reality experience, not just manipulating them, but existing in them, able to interact as if in real space and time.

  Like the unfortunate policeman in Wendy Cope’s parody of The Pirates of Penzance, he would be able to patrol his own unconscious, to confront his own nightmares.

  As far as the Midax research group was concerned, under the patronizing and bullying Steven Brightmore, he was a gift from the gods. The whole project had been centred on dreaming, and in particular on a way to locate and explore the channels that connected the conscious and the unconscious mind, which passed through the region currently referred to as the pre-conscious.

  The pre-conscious was a focus of argument and counterargument, a region, or a pattern in the brain of primates, whose nature and complexity were hotly contested.

  The Midax group, by working on isolating and making autonomous a fragment of the dreamer’s own consciousness, hoped to go – indeed already had gone – deeper into the wild world that fed nightmares.

  Jack was a natural, and perhaps had been so all his life; there was some debate about whether his easy ability to isolate his CS existed by nature, or had been induced by the haunting influence of the bull-runners. This, and other questions, might become clearer after the first journey inwards.

  That said, several of the Midax team, aware of his claimed experiences with emerging ghosts, both human and stonewalled, were dubious, despite Angela’s persuasive discussion and description. It made no difference, however, since Jack was the perfect test subject.

  Bizarre though his quest would be, if he could locate Greenface – whoever, whatever the entity was – and persuade her back to a world she feared, he would be triumphant. If not, the experience would still have been useful to the Midax team, and only his time would have been wasted.

  This had been the sixth test transmission from the more superficial LD state and Brightmore wanted to run two more such experiments, to satisfy himself that he could produce a sufficiently autonomous ‘Ident’ of Jack Chatwin that it would survive the deep-coma state that would accompany the Midax voyage itself.

  Jack couldn’t sleep that night following his encounter with Jesus and Joan; the images were so real, the experience had been disorientating and wonderful. The more he thought of the cliffs, the temples, the distorted façade of the cathedral, the more he was drawn back there.

  He prowled the house and the garden aware always of the glow of light from Exburgh, sometimes aware of a shadow on the town, the shadow of a city.

  He wanted to go to the gate, to the cave, to call Greyface and challenge him to be patient. But a part of him felt that Greyface already knew he was going inwards, and that the encounter would be no more than humiliating, unless it were to be frightening. He was constantly aware of the shade of Natalie, lost in the labyrinth of the suicide gate, hidden below and within the town.

  At four in the morning he heard her laugh out loud. She was still in her room and he ran up the stairs from the kitchen, opening the door and watching as the girl jumped up and down on the bed.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  The girl laughed hysterically and flopped over onto her back, bouncing on the covers and then lying still. She was hugely amused, squirming away from her father as he went over and tried to put his arm around her. ‘Have you heard any funny stories this evening?’

  She nodded. She was backed against the wall, her hands in front of her mouth, restraining infantile and incomprehensible amusement. From the bed, Jack asked, ‘Is he here? Is he nearby?’

  A shake of her head, but then the words, ‘He’ll be watching you.’

  ‘Will he? That’s nice. How will he be doing that?’

  ‘Don’t know. He’ll be watching you. And me. Flesh and shadow. He said: flesh and shadow. We’re all in the same dance.’

  Giggling.

  ‘Dancing, dancing,’ she said, and ran to the window, banging on the glass, banging at the night, at the light of the stars, banging on the window and shouting, ‘Dancing! Dancing! All in the same dance!’

  Jack eased her away just as Angela appeared in the doorway (‘What’s going on?’) and came over to sit on the girl’s bed, stroking the young brow, the soft hair, murmuring, soothing, calming.

  Natalie started to drift into sleep, but as her eyes seemed almost closed for the night they suddenly opened, engaging Jack.

  ‘All in the same dance, Daddy,’ she whispered. ‘Don’t forget. All in the same dance. Fetch her back to him. That’s what he always says: fetch her back to him.’

  Jack kissed her on the brow and she curled up, comfortable.

  ‘Tell him …’ he whispered. ‘Tell him, if you see him again … Tell him I’m doing my best. I’m doing my best. Tell him to leave us alone.’

  Natalie giggled again, then yawned and stuck a thumb firmly in her mouth, curling up below the duvet, feigning sleep as she sought happy dreams.

  16

  On the wall above Brightmore’s wide-screen AppleMac were lines from T. S. Eliot:

  Between the idea

  And the reality

  Between the motion

  And the act

  Falls the Shadow

  For Thine is the Kingdom

  ‘And that’s where you’re going, Jack. Into the Shadow. Although we call it by different names. The Hinterland … the French prefer lnterland. In the US they still call it the pre-conscious, but that’s too broad for the Kingdom.’ He glanced round. ‘And thine is the Kingdom! It’s a place of your own making, exclusive to you in many ways, but inclusive of much that we all have in common. Look …’

  On the screen he had drawn concentric arcs to create three bands, like a rainbow, labelling the outer zone Conscious, the inner Unconscious and the central Pre-conscious.

  ‘This is only a schematic, you understand. The layers don’t really exist …’

  ‘Thank you.’ Infuriating man! ‘I’d got the idea …’

  ‘Nothing gets between conscious and unconscious without passing the pre-conscious. Easy? The pre-conscious is riddled with wormholes, but they’re very selective. So when you dream: images and fears, moods, emotions – and the energetic psychic manifestation Carl Gustav Jung labelled archetypes, all of them flow up to the pre-conscious, and partly penetrate to awareness, the more so in lucid dreaming. The important thing to understand – and this is only the beginning of our understanding – is that as they transit the pre-conscious, so they create Form! Shape! And Story!’

  ‘F.S.S., in fact.’

  ‘Precisely. Form. Shape. Story. But all of a transient nature, quickly decaying. What gets through gets used. What stays in the pre-conscious is fragile and normally fades in nanoseconds.’

  ‘So would this be where writers get their inspiration from? The Deep Well?’

  ‘The innovative ones, certainly. Yes. Of course!’ Brightmore was at the keyboard, tapping out a detailed note to himself, intrigued by the thought. Writers, any artist prepared to let deep images surface over time rather than forcing ideas to a deadline; writers prepared to touch a little deeper, rather than just scouring conscious memory … Yes. This is the well of inspiration.’

  He moved the pointer on the screen to the outer band denoting ‘conscious’. The reverse is true of memory passing – for the sake of understanding I’ll say down – into the unconscious. As this passes the pre-conscious – you’ve already accessed the Hinterland, one skin of the beast, if you like – so it creates Form, Shape, Image. Creature, Story … that per
sists! And persists for the rest of your life.’

  ‘So it’s permanent,’ Jack said irritably.

  ‘Exactly!’

  ‘Undying.’

  ‘Undying,’ Brightmore agreed.

  ‘A land full of unfit heroes.’

  ‘A kingdom all thine own. How’s your quantum theory?’

  ‘Always bad,’ Jack said. ‘Sufficient to get a degree, but I’m long out of touch.’

  Brightmore wrote the words ‘Fields of potential’ along the narrow band that depicted the Hinterland.

  ‘Fields of potential?’

  ‘Fields of potential. Are you familiar with this thinking?’

  ‘Remind me.’

  ‘Like the Universe we inhabit – before it took on shape, at the Big Bang – the pre-conscious is unstructured, unformed but packed with potential; it only hardens into the illusion of Memory! Event! and Story! when it’s observed by the conscious mind. That observation sets up a persistent structure, a fixed image, a fixed world, if you like.

  ‘Now: where it meets these fixed structures on the way up, the normally fast-decaying seepage from the Unconscious can then inhabit the Hinterland on a more permanent basis.’

  ‘Worlds in collision …’

  ‘Worlds in collision. Exactly. And that, Jack, is precisely what you are going to encounter when you journey to the Shadow: a world substantially drawn from your conscious experience, which we call Received Image Representation, mixed and made muddlesome by ancient echoes from the Unconscious, the limbic system in particular. The Saurian mind, as some of our American colleagues delight in calling it.’

  ‘You mean I’ll see dinosaurs?’

  After an uneasy moment, Brightmore smiled. ‘It’s a sort of joke, you see.’

  ‘Really? I didn’t get it.’ Jack cast a despairing glance at Angela, who shrugged, amused. Stop being sarcastic.