The Womb of Time, page 11
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One by one, the guests of the Hidden Crown dismounted from the cart and went to follow the water on foot, spreading out in order to do so. Halsted took up a position on the left wing of the group, with Henry Vamplew to his right. The clouds, responding loyally to the historical cue, continued to gather and to turn the sky dark, as if they were hoarding their lightning and thunder for the vital moment.
Ridpath had gone further forward than anyone else, and he had taken something out of his pocket, which he was holding in readiness in his right hand and he leaned forward over the waves. Halsted observed that it was a trowel; evidently, the biologist anticipated doing a little digging.
As Crome had predicted, the waves were more animated today than they had been the day before, activated by some impulse that was far out to sea. Halsted heard Ridpath cursing softly, and saw that Henry Vamplew was watching the biologist with a puzzled expression on his face.
Halsted went further forward, letting the waves wash around his Wellington boots as they broke and fixing his eyes on the lacy surf that clung to the rubber surface. Almost there, he thought. A matter of minutes.
Beneath his feet, Halsted felt the wet mud left behind by the retreating waves stir palpably, and thought for a moment that strange creatures were stirring there, flexing their serpentine bodies and tentacular arms—but he told himself that it was merely the softness of the slush reacting to the combination of wave-flow and evaporation. He did not doubt that there were creatures buried beneath his rubber-clad feet, including lugworms, which really did have serpentine bodies and clusters of tentacles about their heads, but he did not expect them to show themselves, even if they became disoriented by the unusual reach of the exposed surface. He raised his gloved right hand to wipe away some moisture of mysterious provenance that was clinging to his cheek and his chin.
In 1821, Halsted thought, it would not have been the same mud on which De Quincey, the Reverend Wychelow and Stephen Paston stood. The sea-bed has shifted since then, and changed its topography. And in 2049, whoever stands here in my place will not be standing on the mud to which my feet are sticking, for that will have shifted in its turn. No one, in fact, has ever stood here before, as I am standing now, and no one ever will again. This land is my land, while it lasts.
He raised his arm and turned his wrist, in order to check the time. It seemed to him that the minutes should have flowed by, and that the critical moment of still water should be very imminent indeed.
It took him a few seconds to realize that the watch was not ticking and that the minute-hand was not advancing. His first thought, on making that observation, was not that the watch had stopped, but that time itself had been suspended, for his benefit, in order that he might make more of what and where he was.
There had been no perceptible wind before, but he felt a chill now. It’s cold outside time, he thought.
He looked up, but everything about him was frozen. Ridpath was still bending down in the shallows, but the blade of his trowel was suspended in mid-air. Henry Vamplew was standing a little behind them, with a puzzled expression on his petrified face. James Wychelow was standing on the very edge of the sea, with a wave half-broken over his boots. Martin Rylands seemed to be watching Wychelow, but his eyes were glassy, as if he had just glanced into the face of a gorgon. Giles Crome had his back to the sea, and he was reaching out a hairy hand as if to stroke the statue that Gwendolaine had become.
Quite remarkable, Halted thought—and then the terror struck, completely unexpectedly.
It was utterly overwhelming, and all the more horrific for being sourceless.
Halsted had always thought of fear as having a necessary object. He had always thought that one had to be afraid of something, that there was no such thing as pure terror. He had been wrong. There was pure terror, submerged somewhere in the miry depths of the human mind, and it could surface, in response to the appropriate chemical trigger. The trigger, in this case, appeared to be within him rather than without, but it was no less real for that.
There was, however, one tremendous advantage to the purity of the terror and its lack of any evident object. Instead of calling forth a reflexive surge of adrenalin, arming its victim for fight or flight, it remained curiously detached and disconnected: a phenomenon to be observed intellectually, rather than an emotion with savage physical consequences. It possessed Halsted’s flesh too thoroughly for the flesh itself to make any chemical or electrical adjustment, overwhelming the crude defenses with which flesh was physiologically equipped, but it did not render him mentally helpless, as might have been expected. It rendered him physically helpless, but even that paralysis seemed like a kind of release so far as his thought-processes were concerned. It enhanced their freedom rather than limiting or prohibiting it.
As Halsted’s terror took on its own shape, for want of any provided referent, it did so in a bizarrely cerebral fashion, as if it required a similar purity and detachment from his imagination as that imagination lent it form, the impression of substance, and a name. It was the kind of shock that might have rendered some men mad, but Halsted evidently had too flexible an imagination to have his sense of self shattered by that sort of revelation.
The terror’s name—its true name—was Cthulhu. Halsted had not invoked Cthulhu by pronouncing the name, but he had been an element and an instrument of its invocation, and perhaps a necessary one.
He knew that Cthulhu was dead, of course—dead and asleep in “his” house at R’lyeh, according to the Necronomicon—but that did not make any difference to its active presence here, within its victim rather than without…at least at first.
Time had been suspended, so further movement should have been impossible, but Halsted was now in a realm, or a state of mind, in which possibility was very flexible indeed. He was in a state of being in which his body and mind could reach out in unison, by means of some long-suppressed sixth sense, to apprehend spatial dimensions other than the familiar three, and feel the presence of mass and substance that was not merely invisible and exotic but gravitationally impotent: the fugitive mass of ghosts and demons.
He had always imagined ghosts to be diaphanously frail, and demons to be creatures on the same scale as human beings, but he realized now that that had been a defensive measure of his mind: a triumphant pretence of censorship. Pure terror, whose fugitive echoes sometimes took the form of ghosts and demons as the seeing mind sought to shape and comprehend it, was not diminishable in that way if it were given freer rein and more absolute reign.
Whatever Cthulhu was, which made it more than any mere ghost or demon, although it had aspects of both, it was certainly huge. It was not merely huge on the scale of Dunwich’s Waste Land, or even on the scale of the world’s oceans, or the distance between Earth and the Moon, but truly vast. It was so vast and so enduring that it forced the human mind to come to terms with scales of measurement that were usually reduced to subjective ungraspability for self-protective reasons: the distances between the stars and the span of geological time. Some minds might not have been able to cope with that, but Halsted was an educated man, not brittle in his beliefs, and he had made sufficient conscious effort to come to terms with the theoretical revelations of modern science to flex beneath the pressure rather than snapping.
Cthulhu had shape, too, in spite of its appalling magnitude, and that shape really did have tentacles, and wings, although the tentacles were not designed to grip vulgar Earthly matter, nor the wings to beat in vulgar Earthly air. This form was not merely the accidental donation of the human imagination, but was at least partly inherent in the shape of pure human terror—an inherited shape, passed down through countless generations from some mysterious point of origin, now reduced to myth but not disabled in consequence.
Cthulhu still seemed to be expanding, as the universe itself was nowadays said to be expanding, even though time was suspended and such expansion should not have been conceivable. Cthulhu was now incredibly huge—so vast, in its potential if not its immediate presence, as to be able to move between the stars without overmuch effort, provided that they were right.
At the moment—the particular Earthly moment that presently hung in taut suspense—the stars were not right, in the very particular fashion that would allow the effortless movement of entities like Cthulhu, but they had been right before, in the past as measured on the geological scale, and the inexorable progression of their cycles and conjunctions would ensure that they would be right again some day. And then…
Who knew? Who could possibly begin to imagine? Terror, and the sixth sense it had awakened, had its limitations.
Our ancestors could sense this once, Halsted contrived to think, in spite of his terror, albeit fleetingly. We still can, momentarily, from time to time, for the palimpsests of the brain, the species and organic matter itself can never be entirely wiped clean, no matter how many times complex bodies reproduce themselves by means of single cells that compress and confuse their entire heritage, in order to make progress. The entire history of the universe always remains…palpable, if not precisely legible. This can always be felt, sometimes so glancingly as to seem no more than the flicker of a moth’s wing, and sometimes so brutally as to seem like a red-hot sword plunged into one’s breast. Far more often than not, it dispels all thought and defies all memory—but this is a special occasion, when time has stopped and even pure terror is reduced to a phenomenon, from which thought is insulated even though the flesh is not. This is a once-in-a-lifetime privilege, for which I must be grateful, and to the memory of which I must cling as best I can.
Then time’s suspension ended, and he was hurled back into his spatio-temporal cell. That was when the terror ceased to be pure, and became brutal.
As the terror flowed away, like a retreating tide, it freed the mechanisms of response incorporated in his flesh that had been suspended along with time, and was transformed into tremulous panic. That was when the blind but furious fear, no longer purified, smashed into his skull as if to rip him apart, and make life impossible. Although the fury of that physiological reaction lasted for the tiniest fraction of a second, and then began to ebb away, the shock was enough to make Halsted collapse, inert and utterly helpless, into the glutinous and avid mud—which immediately sucked him into its noxious bosom.
He was not completely immersed, for the tide had now retreated to its limit, and the mud it had exposed for the first time in a hundred and fourteen years was only fluid to a depth of a few inches. Because he was so completely paralyzed, though, that might have been enough to kill him, even if the mud had not been alive with wriggling shapes, if help had not been at hand—but help was at hand, and the wriggling shapes were only intent on escape, not aggression.
Daintily gloved hands grabbed Halsted’s arms, and lifted him up. They held him just long enough for him to draw breath safely, to open his eyes and look into…an opaque veil.
He could not see the woman’s face at all, although he imagined that her eyes were bright, and tender.
“Anabel?” he stammered.
“No,” she said, as if she were surprised to hear him speak. “That’s not my name. Here’s your friend.” And with that, she passed him over, like a mere parcel, into the grip of Henry Vamplew, who continued to support him as best his weak and aged muscles could.
The woman passed on. As Halsted turned his aching head to follow her progress, he saw that Graham Ridpath had fallen face forwards into the water, but that Giles Crome and Martin Rylands had run to him and picked him up in a matter of seconds, so that he too was able to gulp down air and not foul mud. The biologist had dropped his trowel, though, and no one paused to pick it up.
James Wychelow was staring out to sea, with a rapt expression on his face, as if he were able to see a vision of the Holy Grail, and was quite content to see it, without being able to reach out and touch or take possession of it. It was not until Henry Vamplew had called out to him several times, begging for help, that the plump antiquarian finally lumbered along the sand to lend assistance in supporting Halsted.
Before he arrived, Halsted found his voice and had time to murmur in Vamplew’s ear: “Panic is a myth—but there is something here that is real.”
He had time too, to hear the resident’s whispered reply, which was: “I know. Wray believed it too, and Paston, I suppose—but they never solved the puzzle. We failed too, and Walter’s chance has gone now. I thought it would be me that would be struck down, if anyone was hurt—for I’ve surely earned that privilege, if no other. I’m truly sorry.”
Chapter Nine
The Fierce Chemistry of Dreams
There was not enough room in the adapted cockle-cart for either of the stricken men to be laid out full length on the floor, but by the time he and Ridpath had been carried back to it, Halsted had regained control of his limbs. He felt as though he had been run over by a Ford truck, although the pain, like the terror that had preceded and given birth to it, seemed so disconnected from any object as to be merely a phenomenon, observable without overmuch reaction.
When they reached the cart, Halsted had already begun to operate his own arms and legs again. He was able to stand, to clamber over the side and to sit down, huddled into a corner of the bench, just behind the driver’s station.
Ridpath was not so fortunate. He had to be lifted into the cart, and placed in a sitting position in the other corner, his limbs arranged for him as if he were some kind of articulated doll, and then wedged in place in the most ungainly manner. Much of this work was done by Giles Crome, but the hotelier had then to return to his own station, leaving Martin Rylands to hold the luckless biologist in position as best he could. Ridpath had not yet recovered the power of speech, and was drooling from the corner of his slack mouth, but he was alive, and he was capable of meeting Halsted’s inquisitive eyes in a manner that suggested intelligence as well as consciousness.
“I think he might have had a stroke,” Rylands said to Henry Vamplew, choosing that addressee because Wychelow still gave the impression of being away with the fairies.
“It’s possible,” Vamplew agreed, as he sat down beside Halsted and attempted an elementary medical examination, “but unlikely. Whatever happened to Dr. Ridpath happened to Dr. Halsted too. It would be a remarkable coincidence, don’t you think, if they had both suffered cerebral hemorrhages at the exact moment that the tide reached its once-in-a-century limit?”
“Remarkable,” Rylands conceded, “but not impossible.”
“This has never happened before,” Giles Crome said, speaking over his shoulder as he brought Gwendolaine round and set off for the shore. “I’ve been bringing people down to the tide-line for more than twenty years, ever since my father handed the work on, but I’ve never seen anything of this sort—not once. I’ve never lost a single passenger out here on the mud. I have seen people get stuck, and occasionally suffer falls, but I’ve never seen anyone collapse like that. People do sometimes die, or disappear, if they come out here alone—especially if they’re crazy enough to do it after dark—but guests and residents of the Old Forge die in their beds, if they die at all.”
“No one’s blaming you, Mr. Crome,” Vamplew assured him, “and no one has died. Dr. Halsted has almost recovered already, and Dr. Ridpath will surely recover too, given time.”
“What did happen?” Rylands demanded, looking Halsted directly in the face.
“A fainting fit,” Halsted told him, having no better explanation to offer. “Maybe a delayed effect of the bad cockle, maybe just an overexcited imagination. How do you feel?”
“I did feel a little queasy for a moment, back there,” Rylands admitted. “My stomach’s bad—I think I’ve definitely eaten something that disagreed with me. I had a bad night, didn’t I?” He seemed uncertain, as he asked the question, as to why he was addressing it to Halsted.
“You did have a nightmare,” Halsted confirmed. “What about you, Mr. Vamplew? Did you feel anything when the tide reached low water?”
“I felt something,” the resident confirmed, “but I can’t describe it. It’s possible, I suppose, that there’s something noxious in the mud, released after long storage because that was the first time that particular expanse had been exposed to the air for some considerable time.”
“If that’s the case,” Rylands said, grimly, “it’s perhaps as well that it won’t be exposed again any time soon. Is that why Ridpath brought a trowel, do you think?” Unceremoniously, the Cambridge man reached out to pat down the other side-pockets of the stricken biologist’s jacket. “There’s some kind of specimen-jar in this one,” he announced, blithely.
“I expect that he only intended to collect a souvenir,” Vamplew opined. “You might have done the same had you thought of it, as I might have done myself.”
“I hope so,” Rylands retorted. “At any rate, if he did expect to bring something back to Porton Down that might interest his paymasters, he missed his chance. Now they’ll have to wait another 114 years to check it out.”
“Is that really possible?” Halsted wondered, aloud, trying to give the impression that it was mere speculation, although he hoped that Henry Vamplew might actually have an answer. “Could there be noxious vapors built up in the mud, which are harmlessly discharged by normal tides, but emerge in a sudden rush from sectors that are only exposed once in a blue moon?”
“Who can tell?” Vamplew replied, as evasive as ever. “I omitted to bring any specimen bottles myself, though—and I forgot my umbrella too.” As he pronounced the last phrase he pulled the brim of his hat down, because raindrops had just begun to fall with sudden rapidity. There was a flash of lightning out to sea, and a distant rumble of thunder.
“Too late!” cried Rylands, making a theatrical gesture with his one free hand. “You missed your cue! The tide has already turned—the moment has gone forever.” He lowered his voice and looked at Halsted in a mock-conspiratorial fashion. “Literary weather never misses its cue,” he said, “and is never so disobliging as to lack symbolic meaning. Real storms, alas, simply can’t be trusted to follow the script.”
