Time of the Beast Read online

  Then, as I began to attempt to speak, I was interrupted by the sound of several harsh voices that rose from somewhere distant to break the silence over the fen. Ailisa’s response was immediate, her body stiffening as she sprang to her feet, gazing out into the direction from where the shouts had come, seeming almost to search the air itself. She turned to me, clearly alarmed, and reached out to clutch at my hand. We had not yet devised a common word for danger, but it seemed now there was no need for one.

  ‘Go! Go in house!’ She spoke urgently as she pointed to my shelter. ‘You stay. Stay inside. This night you go ssh!’

  I stood staring at her, a little confused by her excited state, since the voices had seemed to me to come from somewhere far away. But I knew that bands of outlaws sheltered in parts of this great wilderness: violent and dangerous men who went out to raid the villages by night. Clearly Ailisa had learned to be cautious. With a final look at me, and another frantic gesture towards my refuge, she turned and ran back over the bridge, and I watched her go until she disappeared amongst the trees. Then I did as she had urged me and went indoors.

  I heard no further sounds from out in the fen. So I sat in weary disconsolation, turning my awful predicament over and over in my thoughts. Until finally I noticed that the night-time shadows had fallen, and I remembered I had eaten nothing. I had no appetite, but almost without thought I took another loaf from out of my depleted stock – I had been too preoccupied to think of making any fresh ones. But I noticed at once that this loaf had become far more deeply infested with mould than the bread I had eaten the day before, to the extent that I could no longer scrape or cut it away. But this was the least thing to concern me, and I considered that it had not previously harmed me, so I simply ate it quickly, ignoring the bitter taste, then washed it down with a draught of water.

  I sat for a short while, then looked out through the half-open door at the dim beams of moonlight that faintly penetrated the rising mist. And as I watched the shafts of glowing light they seemed suddenly to greatly increase and brighten with a strange and remarkable sharpness. I was feeling light-headed, then positively dizzy, with an incredible and heightened awareness of myself and of my surroundings as this new intense world of increased vision emerged from out of the greyness of the one I knew.

  It was happening to me again. A realm of altered perceptions was opening before me, a wondrous place of elevated sight and realisation. It seemed then that the light I had long prayed for had come to me, and a wave of pure euphoria swept through me as I dared to hope that at last my long path of darkness and doubt had led me to this: to walk in the brightness of a heavenly place where I might be cleansed of the dross and mire of my earthly life. In that moment I felt certain God held out His hand to me.

  I rose and stumbled to the door, going out into the night, entranced by all I saw about me: a shifting swirling landscape of interweaving moonlight and shining silver mist, becoming threaded into the night shadows to form fleeting transitory shapes ahead. I staggered after them, as if to catch them, unable to keep my steps in a straight line as I moved unsteadily through this rising forest of enchantments that would not stay still but appeared to alter and reshape itself constantly in ever-deepening shades and hues of vibrant colour.

  Somewhere in my mind I remembered Ailisa and that there was something I must tell her, but I could not recall what it was. As the sight of my log-bridge swam before my eyes, I decided irrationally that I must go out into the fen to find her. Unsteadily I managed to totter across it and wandered away among the trees, which began to spin about me in a kind of mad and twirling jig. I was dimly aware that I had roamed beyond the woods, and I stumbled about on the edge of some marshes, and the noise from the tall reeds as I brushed through them seemed to scream out in my head. But now I came to realise that my delirium was becoming ever more violent and wild, and what had seemed at first to be subtle and intriguing was growing into something uncontrollable and frightening as the earth and the sky began to lurch and reel crazily about me. I was almost lost to all physical feeling, and I sensed I was about to crash helplessly to the ground when I saw through the rushes far away the glow of a great shining light. And by some force of will I kept moving towards it, convinced that the distant stirrings of fear and alarm in me must surely be a sign that I approached a manifestation of the divine – as the Lord had called to Moses from inside a burning bush.

  As I went on and the light grew nearer, it became ever more overwhelming to me, flaring outward in great fiery waves and colours, shooting sparks and flames that filled the earth and the sky, and whose heat I could feel burning upon my skin from far away. Until at last I came before it, seeing it clearly as I stood enraptured, my gaze fixed adoringly on its blazing beauty. Then my eyes grew wider still, as my nostrils were suddenly flooded with the overpowering smell of roasting flesh. There were noises now, rising up from the gloom beyond the firelight – a horrible chorus of harsh laughter and guttural cries, cracked and growling voices whose words I could not comprehend. At once I saw several shadowy forms, black and sinister figures creeping forward to surround me, and I felt a jolt of confusion, then of panic and terror. I flung myself away from them, stumbling backward, uttering a loud cry as my arms flailed and I tripped, falling to the ground at their feet. There came from them a further burst of vile, coarse laughter as they stared down at me, and I looked up into their faces in horrified disbelief.

  These creatures were not human, but things that were wholly monstrous. Their faces – if faces I might call them – were hideously distorted, blazing bright red in the glow of the fire. The flesh and features were impossible for me to distinguish clearly, for they blurred before my tortured eyes, seeming to swell and contract constantly, as if boiling from underneath like thick porridge bubbling in a pot. When they mouthed their grating words at me, it was not like any speech I could recognise, but only more of that obscene and throaty grunting, while their lips were like shapeless gashes filled with crooked yellow tusks. One of them stepped forward now, reaching down to me as its hand seemed to float and circle in the air before me, until I felt certain I could see that its fingers were clawed. It grasped my robe by the neck and pulled me back onto my feet, and I was surrounded on all sides by dreadful leering masks of vileness, all bellowing what I took to be curses at me with breath that stank like stale beer and spittle that flew into my face.

  Then I realised I had been hurled back to the ground, and one of the creatures was approaching me, calling to me in a tone filled with mockery. Its voice was shrill, and I took it to be female. I felt it thrust its clammy hand up into my robe to grab painfully at my lower parts; and then it was squatting over me, pulling up its garment and thrusting its filthy pudenda into my face as it wiggled its hips, the stink of the thing musky and rank as it shrieked out incomprehensible taunts at me. My head was spinning, and I felt I was falling, plunging into darkness as I tried desperately to crawl away. But I was seized by my legs and dragged back into the blinding light of the fire. Then I felt a hot stinging sensation on my shoulders, and I knew suddenly that another of the monsters was pissing on me.

  In some distant corner of my mind I believed now I understood everything. I saw at once with fearful clarity that I was dead and that my life had slipped away silently back in my hut on the island, and that it was my soul which had wandered here, entranced by all its newly found powers of unearthly vision. In joy I had seen the possibility of Heaven but found only the reality of Hell. And this was surely why a human spirit possessed these heightened perceptions: that it might know forever with absolute intensity the pleasures of paradise or the torments of perdition. I gazed up at the foul demons who persecuted me, and I began to wail dismally as I told myself that God had passed His dreadful judgement on me, and what I suffered now was all I should know evermore throughout eternity itself.

  It was then, in that final moment of my hopelessness, that I saw another figure rise up, looming like a phantom out of the mist, a form more terrible and
ominous than all the rest as it gathered shape to move, silent and unseen by those others who stood jeering at me. I froze as I gazed upon this unearthly shade, swathed all over with darkness and of a towering height. And in my dread I could only believe it to be Satan himself. Writhing tendrils of fear sprang up from the pit of my being and broke into dull bursts of stultifying shock which pulsed and pounded through my brain, while it felt as if a cold giant hand closed hard about me. I could distinguish nothing about the approaching figure, for it appeared to be a thing formed out of pure blackness, framed in the leaping light of the flames. A spirit of fire. And of terrifying rage.

  In an instant it raised a black arm, which seemed abnormally long, then brought it down with tremendous force onto the skull of one of my tormentors; and I watched simply spellbound as an eruption of shining redness streaked into the night and looked to my eyes to hang in the air in sluggish glistening droplets. Then the demon was falling, and the powerful arm of the shadow slashed out into the throat of another. Their fellows were screaming and stumbling as howling chaos descended. But the dark one was relentless as it struck about it with deadly power, and the devils fell dead or wounded as they bellowed out their dreadful cries of terror. I saw the she-devil start to flee, but the shade struck her in her back, and she squealed piteously as she fell, then attempted to crawl away with hideous slithering motions before at last she grew still. For one moment, in the midst of this, I felt the gaze of the dark one upon me, and I sensed its pure, savage fury, before it moved on to dispatch another of the floundering wounded.

  Suddenly sheer dread pulled me to my feet, and I was racing off into the darkness, fleeing that place of carnage and horror, knowing that my mind could not contain such terror but was surely tumbling into a pit of shrieking madness. As I went my senses grew more wildly distorted than ever, my surroundings rising and plunging about me as if I tried to run upon a boat in a great storm. Now it came to me that I did not know what or where I was, if I were alive or dead, man or spirit… earthbound or in Hell… I simply struggled to keep moving, fearing the pursuit of that dark and murderous thing in the firelight. I could not imagine what kind of horror it was, but somewhere in my tormented brain I asked myself how it was possible for anything to kill demons in Hell? I could no longer guess what it was I was experiencing.

  At once I stumbled and fell face-down onto the soft damp earth, and there I scrabbled in a frantic effort to rise to my feet until my swirling senses overcame me and I sank back down again, lying motionless as pure terror finally made me powerless. For behind me I heard the soft, slow padding of feet, and there came to me the dreadful certainty that the horror was now standing over me. I shuddered and could not bring myself to look upward, to gaze upon it finally and see it more clearly. But from some place within myself I heard my own voice rise up, my breath groaning, the words straining inside the rigid muscles of my throat as involuntarily I croaked them out into the night air.

  ‘In nomine patris et filii et spritus sancti.’

  For what seemed an age I lay there, awaiting the awful fate I was certain must come.

  But nothing happened. Until at last I fought to gather courage to turn my head and look behind me. I was quite alone. So I rose and staggered onward, fearing every moment what new horror might emerge at me from out of the mist. Then with incredible relief I saw through the gloom beyond me the bridge to my island. I ran to it and fell to the ground, gripping the frame of rough logs to convince myself that this was reality and no false illusion of hope sent to torment me. On hands and knees I scrambled across it, then stumbled up to my dwelling. Everything there was as it should be, and I felt a sudden surge of absolute joy at its plain familiarity. I was not in Hell. I was in the Fens. And I was alive.

  I fell onto my bed and lay shivering in the dark. My vision was still blurred and my senses remained in a state of spinning turmoil as I considered the horrors I had experienced. It seemed mercifully that I remained as a part of the living world, but if the horrible creatures I had encountered were not demons in Hell, then what were they? Wild men? Monsters in the fen? That was not possible. The Church had taught me that such things existed only in the minds of the superstitious and foolish. Somewhere in my disordered senses I was becoming aware that something must have affected me, and I wondered again if I were the victim of some fever or brain sickness. Such afflictions were no doubt common in these marshes. Some part of me at once became certain this must be so – that what I had suffered was only a hallucinatory vision or delusion: a frenzied, walking nightmare. I told myself with relief that this was the only credible explanation. But then I considered the dark and hellish scenes my imagination had created and felt little comforted as I asked myself what these awful things might suggest about the true state of my mind?

  Then suddenly I became aware that I was lying in a clammy patch of dampness. And with a feeling of disgust, but then of extreme horror, I realised that the back of my robe was soaked with a great stain of stinking urine.

  Chapter Seven

  My mind was numb as I struggled to pull off the soiled robe and cast it away into the far corner of the room, wishing I could discard as easily the things it suggested to me. Shock pulsed through me as I fumbled in the darkness to find my cloak and wrap it about me. Then I tumbled back onto the mattress and lay shivering in the shadows. What was it I had truly encountered out in the fen? What had been real, and what was illusory? No answer came, only the same question repeating itself to me with a relentless and horrible monotony.

  I began to pray, silently and feverishly, wishing the night would end and that with the dawn of day normality would be restored and with it my power to think coherently, for at present all clear thought was denied to me. Now my whole being was consumed by a sickening terror of the soul, and I lay paralysed with the fearful sense that if I should make a movement or a single sound then something outside – something grim and malevolent – might hear it and come for me. And I knew that if such an unearthly presence did come, and I should look upon it and know it as a thing of reality, then my every belief, every certainty I held in the world, would tumble down and break into fragments at my feet, to leave me helpless in the face of darkness.

  I lay a long while until at last my skin began to prickle and grow tight, and my heart started to thump painfully as my breath rose in great gasps I could no longer hold in. For again I could hear with uncanny sharpness the sound of soft padding footsteps, which broke the absolute silence outside, and approached, stealthily yet inexorably, and seemed to tread around – or else to come from within – the tumulus itself. I felt something break inside me then, as if the farthest limit of my fear had been finally breached, and now I did not know, could not know, what might exist beyond it. What stood outside.

  For the monster was here. It was at my threshold.

  The door crashed open and it loomed before me in the dim moonlight, its great black frame filling the doorway, its immenseness overshadowing me. Out in the fen it had seemed like a thing of fire, but here it was a thing of ice, as the faint beams of light rippled over its gigantic shape to make it glow with a cold and spectral aura of blue. But still I could make out nothing about it even as it moved before me, for it was a creature of absolute darkness, and its body glistened like polished jet. My mind was beyond all rational power as I looked upon it, and the dreadful presence suddenly lurched forward, hurling itself at me as I screamed out, its form appearing to grow blurred and swell absurdly into a shapelessness that swallowed the room and filled my vision – a devouring darkness that fell over me and would utterly consume me. Now I felt the supreme horror of its touch on my quivering flesh, its fingers hideously strong and hard like talons as they descended upon my breast, clawing agonisingly into skin and sinew. Its sheer power overwhelmed me, as did my very sensing of it, a thing black and old as night, a monstrosity born out of stinking slime and eternal chaos. But still, beyond the crippling terror in my mind, my body stirred instinctively into motion as I fought and st
ruggled against it with a frantic strength, beyond any I knew was mine, for it seemed to me suddenly that I was fighting desperately for something more than merely my life. Yet slowly my strength was failing me, for the sheer force of the horror was irresistible, its weight upon me crushing; and in moments I knew it would squeeze the life from out of me. But as my senses began to slip away, there came the dreadful certainty that even in death I could never break free: that this thing of darkness would surely tear through my sinner’s flesh to fix its terrible grip upon my eternal soul. And with this thought there seemed to boom out in my head a harsh and mocking voice that cried:

  ‘You fool! Do you not see? What clings to you is not what would steal your soul. It is your soul!’

  It was at that moment that I realised I was dreaming.

  I woke with a start, to see daylight streaming into my dwelling. I felt weak and very cold, and I was sweating profusely, but there came a moment of indescribable relief as my waking mind roused itself, striving to break free from the fearful visions of sleep. Then I looked upward, and my heart squirmed as shock and terror struck me anew, as I saw through blurred eyes the awful figure of darkness from my dream transposed into living reality, its fierce gaze fixed upon me as it stood framed in the dull light at the open doorway, and the frightful realisation came: it had pursued me into the waking world.

  I lay transfixed as my sight grew clearer, until I saw that what stood before me was indeed quite real, but was mercifully the figure of a man: a monk of commanding presence dressed in a mud-stained cloak over the dark habit of my own Benedictine order. He was perhaps about forty, of middle height and sturdy frame, his face rugged, his expression very severe. His eyes were a deep brown in colour, as were his hair and short ragged beard, though the latter was flecked with grey. Upon his breast was a bronze cross – usually a prerogative reserved for an abbot – wrought with a circle around its centre in the Celtic fashion, which hung from a chain about his neck. I tried to speak, but was for the moment too shaken and astonished to find any words. Then a voice came from behind me.