Deborah looked much better at dinner. Though she still did little talking, her features were more animated, she had good color – she's been spending time berry-picking in the woods, she says – amp; she seemed energetic amp; cheerful. Sarr, by contrast, was moody again. He picked at his food (beef stew, amp; like the pork at lunch, actually quite poor, though I was too polite to say anything) amp; kept asking her why she didn't eat more. When she brought out the blueberry pie he flatly declined to have any. 'How do I know the berries aren't poison?' he demanded. Both Deborah amp; I were scandalized that he'd even think such a thing, amp; I could see that, after all her work, the poor girl was very upset, so I had a huge extra slice. Deborah ate a lot too, no doubt just to show Sarr up.
Sometimes I stay with them amp; talk, but didn't want to hang around tonight; can't get used to the changes in Sarr. He barely said a civil thing all evening. One exception, though: he told me he'd found out, in answer to my question, that there never were any McKinneys. Seems McKinney's Neck is actually taken from some old Indian word.
Felt like rain when I came back out here; clouds massing in the night sky amp; the woods echoing with thunder. Little Absolom Troet seemed to smile at me from his photo when I turned on the light, as if glad to have me back.
Still no rain. Read most of John Christopher's The Possessors. Pretty effective, drawing horror from the most fundamental question of human relations: How can we know that the person next to us is as human as we are? Then played a little game with myself for most of the evening, until I Jesus! I just had one hell of a shock. While writing the above I heard a soft tapping, like nervous fingers drumming on a table, amp; discovered an enormous spider, biggest of the summer, crawling only a few inches from my ankle. It must have been living behind the bureau next to this table.
When you can hear a spider walk across the floor, you know it's time to keep your socks on! If only I could find the damned bug spray. Had to kill the thing by swatting it with my shoe, amp; think I'll just leave the shoe there on the floor until tomorrow morning, covering the grisly crushed remains. Don't feel like seeing what's underneath tonight, or checking to see if the shoe's still moving… Must get more insecticide.
Oh, yeah, that game – the What if Game. The one Carol says Rosie taught her. For some reason I've been playing it ever since I got her letter. It's catching. (Vain attempt to enlarge the realm of the possible? Heighten my own sensitivity? Or merely work myself into an icy sweat?) I invent the most unlikely situations, then try to think of them as real. Really real. E. g., what if this glorified chicken coop I live in is sinking into quicksand? (Maybe not so unlikely.) What if the Poroths are getting tired of me? What if, as Poe was said to fear, I woke up inside my own coffin?
What if Carol, right this minute, is falling in love with another man? What if her visit here this weekend proves an unmitigated disaster?
What if I never see New York again?
What if some stories in the horror books aren't fiction? If Machen told the truth? If there are White People out there, malevolent little faces grinning in the moonlight? Whispers in the grass? Poisonous things in the woods? Unsuspected evil in the world?
Enough of this foolishness. Time for bed.
Adrift – afloat – adream – he was spinning down the river on a narrow wooden raft, speeding toward the falls. He heard them ahead, a monstrous cataract of mist and white smoke and a rumbling deeper than thunder. He was almost upon them now, the raft was tilting forward, he felt it rock frenziedly as the raging current caught it.
And suddenly the raft tipped over and flipped him out of bed. He landed on the floor.
And the floor itself was moving.
Two miles down the road and a mile nearer town, Ham Stoudemire fought his way to the window and peered out, muttering snatches of prayer. His jaw fell. Outside in the moonlight the cornfield was rising, the land tilting as if from giant limbs beneath a patchwork quilt. 'Dear Lord,' he gasped, 'is it the Final Judgment?'
Adam Verdock had been sleeping on a cot beside his wife's bed. He dreamed his daughter Minna was shaking him, and felt a sudden half-formed hope, he was to say afterward, that she had good news of Lise. But Minna was nowhere about when he awoke, and Lise's eyes were closed, and he felt himself tossed around the little bedroom -'like a terrier shaking a rat' was how he'd put it later. And still his wife's eyes failed to open.
Deborah's eyes were open. Sarr awakened with a start to find her shoved roughly against him in the bed. He heard the sound of glass breaking somewhere below. The walls of the house were bending and creaking like the masts of a ship in a storm. 'Honey,' he said, 'come on, we've got to get out!'
She stared at him glassy-eyed; perhaps she was dreaming with her eyes open. She seemed not to hear.
'Honey,' he said, voice rising now, 'come on, 'tis another quake.' He lifted her from the bed, the two of them in their nightgowns, and started toward the stairs.
Shem Fenchel, dead drunk, slept through it all.
In the darkness of the woods, by the tiny mud-packed altar at the margins of the swamp, the thundering vibrations tore the forest floor and threw up great jagged chunks of rock. Part of the ground trembled and gave way, swallowing up all that remained of the fire-blackened cottonwood and the tiny mound of mud. Animals fled the area in terror. Trees still standing bent as from a violent storm. With an awesome cracking sound the earth split, bulged, and lifted, as if from some immense form pressing upward from beneath, straining toward the moon.
Gradually the trembling subsided, the land settling back upon itself. Ham Stoudemire saw his field grow still, the giant asleep again beneath its coverlet. Sarr, carrying Deborah's stiff form down the stairs, felt the tremors stop; Freirs picked himself nervously from the floor. They walked out to the yard and stood with relief upon the firm ground, and the two men talked until the rain came.
And in the forest a gigantic shape, furred with foliage and humped like the back of some huge animal, stood upreared against the stars.
The next morning, in the drizzle, they picked up the pieces. Bert and Amelia Steegler walked up and down the aisles of their store sweeping up the broken shards of bottles. A grieving Adam Verdock roamed through the countryside rounding up his cattle, which had kicked down their already damaged stalls. Old Bethuel Reid, summoning his courage, brandished a rake and chased the snakes that swarmed over his land into the forest.
And young Raymond Trudel, while searching the swampy region of the woods for an escaped hog, came upon the scene of the worst devastation and went running back to his family's farm, screaming in terror about the monstrous hill that had risen in McKinney's Neck during the night.
Book Ten: The Scarlet Ceremony
There are the White Ceremonies, and the Green Ceremonies and the Scarlet Ceremonies. The Scarlet Ceremonies are the best.
Machen, The White People
July Twenty-eighth
Rain spatters the sidewalk; the morning sun glows dimly behind a veil of cloud. Poised between the twin spires of a cathedral, the gibbous moon, just three days short of full, is a blob of smoke against the greying sky. As he wanders through the city, peering from beneath his black umbrella as he catalogues all that will be gone, the Old One perceives the moon's true meaning:
It is a portent of imminent completion.
The two initial Ceremonies are behind him, the woman has been tested and found ready, the Dhol lives clothed in human form… Yet a single step remains now, one last transformation, and the final act, the Voola'teine, can be performed.