John says not to worry, but he can talk that way—his story is going great guns; he put in a herculean stint of typing today and just now rolled into bed after a couple of quick drinks.
I took his advice yesterday, spent most of the day outdoors, practicing snowshoeing, chopping wood, et cetera. But it didn’t make me feel a bit keener this morning.
I don’t think I should have congratulated myself on getting over my “mental binge.” It was really my creative energy. Without it, I’m no good at all. It’s as if I had been “listening” for my story and contact had been suddenly broken off. I remember having the same experience with some of my earlier writing. You ring and ring, but the other end of the line has gone dead.
I don’t think the drinking helps either. We had another bottle session last night—good fun, but it dulls the mind, at least mine. And I don’t believe John would have stopped at a couple even this evening, if I hadn’t begged off.
I think John is worried about me in a friendly way-considers me a mild neurotic case and dutifully plies me with the more vigorous animal activities, such as snowshoeing and boozing. I catch a clinical look in his eyes, and then there’s the way he boosts the “healthy, practical outlook” in our conversations, steers them away from morbid topics.
Of course I’m somewhat neurotic. Every creative artist is. And I did get a bit up in the air when we had our carbon monoxide scare—but so did he! Why the devil should he try to inhibit my imagination? He must know how important it is to me, how crucial, that I finish this story.
Mustn’t force myself, though. That’s the worst thing. I ought to turn in, but I don’t feel a bit sleepy. John’s snoring—damn him!
I think I’ll fish around on the radio—keep it turned low. I’d like to catch another of those scientific programs—they stimulate my imagination. Wonder where they come from? John brought a couple of papers and I looked through the radio sections, but couldn’t find the station.
Jan. 14: I’d give a good deal to know just what’s happening here. More odd humpy patterns this morning—there’s been another cold snap—and they weren’t altogether in the frost. But first there was that crazy dual sleepwalking session. There may be something in John’s monoxide theory—at any rate some theory is needed.
Late last night I awoke sitting up, still fully clothed, with John shaking me. There was a frozen, purposeful look on his face, but his eyes were closed. It was a few moments before I could make him stop pushing at me. At first he was confused, almost antagonistic, but after a while he woke up completely and told me that he had been having a fearful nightmare.
It began, he said, with an unpleasant moaning, wailing sound that had been torturing his ears for hours. Then he seemed to wake up and see the room, but it was changed—it was filled with violet sparks that showered and fell and rose again, ceaselessly. He felt an extreme chill, as of interstellar space. He was seized by the fear that something horrible was trying to get into the cabin. He felt that somehow I was letting it in, unknowingly, and that he must get to me and make me stop, but his limbs were held down as if by huge weights. He remembers making an agonizing, protracted effort.
For my part, I must have fallen asleep at the radio. It was turned on low, but not tuned to any station.
The sources of his nightmare are pretty obvious: the violet auroral beam, the “nightmarish” (prescient!) static of a few evenings ago, the monoxide fear, his partially concealed worry about me, and finally the rather heavy drinking we’ve both been doing. In fact, the whole business is nothing so terribly out of the way, except for the tracks—and how, or why, they should tie in with the sleepwalking session I haven’t the ghost of an idea.
They were the same pattern as before, but much thicker—great ridgy welts of ice. And I had the odd illusion that they exuded a cold more intense than that of the rest of the frost. When we had scraped them away—a difficult job—we saw that the glass reproduced the pattern more distinctly and in a more pronounced hue. But strangest of all, we have traced what certainly seems to be a faint continuation on the inner windowsill, where the tracks take the form of a cracking and disintegration of the paint—it flakes off at a touch and the flakes, faintly lavender, crumble to powder. We also think we’ve found another continuation on the back of the chair by the window, though that is problematic.
What can have produced them is completely beyond us. Conceivably one of us might have “faked” them in some bizarre sleepwalking state, but how?—there’s no object in the cabin that could produce that sinuous, chainy pattern with hairlike border. And even if there were, how could we possibly use it to produce a ridged pattern? Or is it possible that John is engineering an elaborate practical joke—no, it couldn’t be anything like that!
We carefully inspected the other windows, including the one in the storeroom, but found no similar patterns.
John is planning to remove the pane eventually and submit it to a physicist for examination. He is very worked up about the thing. I can’t quite make him out. He almost seems frightened. A few minutes ago he vaguely suggested something about our going into Terrestrial and rooming there for a few days.
But that would be ridiculous. I’m sure there’s nothing inexplicable about this business. Even the matter of the tracks must have some very simple explanation that we would see at once if we were trained physicists.
I, for one, am going to forget all about it. My mind’s come alive on the story again and I’m itching to write. Nothing must get in the way.
After supper: I feel strangely nervous, although my writing is going well again, thank God! I think I’ve licked the snag! I still don’t see how I’m going to get my monsters to the Earth, but I have the inward conviction that the right method will suddenly pop into my mind when the time comes. Irrational, but the feeling is strong enough to satisfy me completely.
Meanwhile I’m writing the sections immediately before and after the first monster’s arrival on Earth—creeping up on the event from both sides! The latter section is particularly effective. I show the monster floundering around in the snow (he naturally chooses to arrive in a cold region, since that would be the least unlike the climate of his own planet). I picture his temporary bewilderment at Earth’s radiation storms, his awkward but swift movements, his hurried search for a suitable hiding place. An ignorant oaf glimpses him or his tracks, tells what he has seen, is laughed at for a superstitious fool. Perhaps, though, the monster is forced to kill someone….
Odd that I should see all that so clearly and still be completely blind as to the section immediately preceding. But I’m convinced I’ll know tomorrow!
John picked up the last pages, put them down after a moment. “Too damned realistic!” he observed.
I should be pleased, and yet now that I’m written out for the day I suddenly find myself apprehensive and—yes—frightened. My tired, overactive mind persists in playing around in a morbid way with the events of last night. I tell myself I’m just frightening myself with my story, “pretending” that it’s true—as an author will—and carrying the pretense a little too far.
But I’m very much afraid that there’s more to it than that—some actual thing or influence that we don’t understand.
For instance, on rereading my previous entries in this diary, I find that I have omitted several important points—as if my unconscious mind were deliberately trying to suppress them.