The Lengthy-Briefness of Dark Acausal Dreams
She - Eulalia - had visited him again in those long sleepless hours of
his dreams when he lay fitfully in his bed as those late cold October
nights drifted causally toward another crescent-mooned Dawn.
The dream - redolent of the acausal - had been long as such dreams
often were in the normal world of that causal time that measured out
each human day, and which yet in its lengthy acausal duration only a
few moments of Earthly time had passed. So it was that Patterson awoke
from its strange lengthy-briefness to feel more exhausted than on his
previous day on Earth. She had come forth out of darkness as she always
did to softly, gently, and nakedly lay upon him as he lay in his
sweating nakedness within that large room of his otherwise deserted
London house. She had kissed him, as she always in the
lengthy-briefness of such nightly dreams kissed him: deeply, tongue
touching tongue, while he almost always against his will became
aroused, needing no hand - hers, or his - to guide his straining almost
painful erection into her clinging moist welcoming warmness that
brought such pleasure that he had to, vainly, fight against it. She
would move, then, slowly, upon him as his body surrended and he eagerly
embraced her: slowly moving until her, his, urgency of orgasm overcame
him and they became passionately, rabidly, enmeshed until he, drained,
was left, weak of relaxing body, to supinely lay as if drugged while
his, and her effusive, bodily fluids slowly seeped forth from her
vagina,
and her
kiss sucked his life, his very human essence,
away, to leave him as a corpse paler and gaunter than it
would have
been even if all the blood and plasma within had been somehow drained
away, but as a corpse that was somehow still mysteriously and
yearningly, longingly, half-alive.
But that night she was, so very slightly, so very disturbingly,
different in the first moment of that life-draining kiss when it was to
him as if she had somehow changed to be, to become - ever so fleetingly
- some-thing else, not quite human and certainly not the beautiful,
delectable, sensuous, exotic, voluptuous young women who enticed and
then so passionately in those dreams aroused him, and who increasingly
in his wakeing hours unwelcomely occupied both his emotions and his
thoughts.
Thus did he awake that cold almost frost-like morning to lay a long
time in his empty sweat-damp bed as, outside, in a London street,
people busied themselves with the beginning of their day, oblivious to
the darkness which had seeped through dimensions and which they were
and would be powerless before. Patterson's house had long ago been
emptied of his wife and children, leaving him in its secluded large
quietness to concentrate upon his cherished military career, and when -
irregularly - they did return to visit he was never quite sure whether
his pleasure at their company, their presence, outweighed his rather
gruff annoyance. For it never long before he and his former wife began
to quarrel.
Thus did he lay, that quiet morning, even more disturbed by Eulalia
than normal, trying to - and failing - to recall that briefest of brief
moments when she had changed to be, to become, some-thing, not quite
human. So he lay, still, suffused again, as he often had become in the
days of the last fastly passing week, with a memory, a feeling, of her
enticing, enwrapping, soft feminine warmth, and he had to use all his
strength of character, all the years of his military training and life,
to will such memories and such feelings away, and for a moment, a long
seemingly long-lasting moment, he was alternatively disgusted then
pleased then yearning then disgusted with himself as a sudden intense
sexual desire for her overcame him. Thus did he that cold morning in
that cold room leap up from his bed to undertake a series of demanding
physical exercises, and it was this - this hard routine of training -
that brought him back to be the man he was, an experienced Army officer
sworn to do his patriotic duty.
Yet he could not escape her presence, that day, for not only did she
linger on - enticing, bewitching - in his thoughts and memories and
feelings, she
was also the subject of an hours long meeting as he, Cheddon, Beldan
and their senior Civil Servant, gathered together again in that
windowless room of the low
ceiling in Whitehall.
They were discussing the events of only the week
before when Eulalia's primal Dark Entities had sallied forth, among
humans, bringing such terror and such a deadly carnage, when, quite
suddenly, all that Patterson could feel, all that subsumed his
thoughts, was a desire to be with her, again. He would reach out, and
touch her: feel the warmth of her face; touch the softness of her
breasts; smell again that haunting exotic perfume which so suffused
her...
"Er, Patterson?" Cheddon was saying.
"What?" Patterson said, somewhat annoyed at being disturbed from his
sexual reverie. Then, remembering - feeling again - who he was, he
said: "Say again?"
"I was remarking," Cheddon continued as the screen behind him glowed
with a paused image from filmed footage of a heap of corpses, "that the
alien theory is now the most plausible one."
"If that's what you want to believe," Patterson replied, somewhat
scathingly.
"What other possible explanation could there be?" Beldan asked.
"Trans-dimensional beings. From other dimensions." Patterson said
without quite knowing why he said it.
"That," chided Beldan, "is an even more implausible that the
supposition they are aliens from another star-system."
"Not necessarily," responded Cheddon. "It is a possibility I've
considered - "
"But discounted," said Beldan.
"Yes. At least for the moment. It's certainly a more plausible
hypothesis than what some of the loonies who've contacted the
government have come up with. Demons, indeed!" And he laughed, not
loud, but somewhat quietly, as a rather shy, awkward, ageing University
Professor might laugh at some absurd theory propounded by a new young
student
"The important and pressing issues," the senior Civil Servant said,
interrupting, and fiddling with his colourful silk tie-of-the-day, "are
what can we do in a practical way to counter them, and what, if any,
are their demands."
"Well," said Patterson, reverting to his role of Army officer, "our
conventional weapons such as firearms do not seem effective against
them, as was demonstrated in York. They seem to have the ability, by
whatever means, to transport themselves somewhere else, so that we
cannot, it seems, contain nor detain them. Twice, they have lured us a
specific locality, then escaped, in my opinion just to demonstrate that
they could escape, despite our best efforts, and to demonstrate that
they are prepared for whatever tactics we might use."
"So, just what do we do? What can we do?" Cheddon asked.
"What I said," Patterson replied, looking at the senior Civil Servant
"at the briefing with the PM last week."
"And for the benefit of the those two of us who were not there?"
Beldan asked, with a slight undertone of annoyance at having been
excluded from that meeting.
"We can do two things," Patterson replied. "First, we can ready and
deploy other weapons, apart from conventional firearms, such as
high-powered lasers, tazers, ultrasonics, or whatever else we have or
can speedily develop. We might find one type of weapon which is
effective. I have spent the last week building up a specialist team
which has acquired some of the weapons that might be useful."
"And second?" Beldan asked.
"Secondly, we can wait. It is my considered opinion that was has
occurred so far are only demonstrations. Demonstrations of what they
can
do. Nothing has happened for over a week. Why? Because, in my view and
that of some of my senior colleagues in the Armed Forces, they are
allowing us time to come to terms with the reality, which is of our
current ineffectiveness in dealing with and with tracing them, and in
seeing how much of the truth we - that is, the government - reveals to
the public, which so far has not been very much and is of the standard attacks
by terrorists Party political line."
"So you expect them to contact us, directly?" Beldan asked.
"Almost certainly," Patterson said. "And, if I am not mistaken, very
soon indeed."
"Saying what?" Cheddon asked.
"Giving us their demands."
"Which will be what, exactly?" Beldan asked.
"Well," the senior Civil Servant said, smiling somewhat nervously,
"we've had a team of analysts working on that for the past few days."
"And?" Beldan inquired.
"And - " Patterson interjected, "the upshot is we simply do not know,
but in all probability it will be for some kind of power, or for
resources, or possibly even for living-space."
"Lebensraum," Cheddon said. "Interesting!"
"So we just sit and wait, then?" Beldan said.
"It does seem so," the senior Civil Servant said.
"It is their move - her move - in this game that's being
played," replied Patterson, and almost smiled.
"I'd hardly call it a game," Cheddon sighed, "So many deaths..."
"It is to them," Patterson calmly said.
So it was that they sat there, in that windowless room of the low
ceiling, in silence for many moments, each enwrapped in and with their
own feelings and thoughts, and so it was with only polite words between
them that that meeting ended to leave Patterson, Beldan and Cheddon to
be ferried in a vehicle, escorted by armed guards, back to their
sanctuary in the basements of some large secret government city
building where they each returned to their tasks as a warmless Sun rose
above the streets and buildings of that city and into a cloudless sky.
Patterson was in the small room of inward corridor-looking windows
which had become his office and communications centre when Eulalia
appeared, to sit calmly on one end of his desk as he busied himself at
another with reading, on the screen of one of his communications
consoles, the technical specifications of some ultrasonic device. He
knew she was there, but he pretended not to notice and so did not turn
around.
"Some privacy, I think," and, as Eulalia - resplendent in a long
flowing dress as if for some formal Ball - moved her left hand ever so
slightly, the inward-window blinds came down, quietly, quickly, to
close to leave them secluded in the bright artificial light of that
room, and she smiled at him as he rose from his chair to stand before
her.
"You have arrived here to present us with your demands," he said, as an
honourable Army officer might to an unforgiving ruthless enemy.
"To offer you a position, an opportunity. Destiny," she softly replied,
standing in
front of him and touching his face with her hand.
He tried to raise his arm to push her hand away but it would not obey
the command of his thought, and it seemed as if she was about to kiss
him when she suddenly, and gracefully, stepped back.
"What you so desire can be yours, but only if you desire it freely,"
she said. "And it would be no night-time dream."
Her quixotic perfume seemed to envelope him, heightening the desire
that then subsumed him with its lengthy-briefness, but he resisted
sufficiently enough to be able to say, "Why?"
"Why must you freely desire or why the opportunity?" she teased.
"What opportunity?" and even as he said the words it was as if, somehow
and in some strange un-human way, he had known her for years; as if she
was his wife, come to visit unexpectedly but pleasingly at work; the
wife so desired and dreamed of during those bachelor years of early
Army life and even, to his hidden shame, through a decade of that one
quarrelling now broken marriage when he, his career assured, rapidly
earned promotion by virtue of talent, skill, and personal character.
He tried then to tell himself that she was not human - she was the
enemy, his foe - but she came forward and touched his face again,
gently, with her warm hand, and, enwrapped in impossible desire, he
kissed her. She was warm, soft, yielding - human - pressing her
breasts, her thighs, her public area, against him until he was ripping
away her dress to reveal her nakedness and eagerly, almost
stumblingly, removing his own lower garments. They were on the floor,
then, rabidly enmeshed together for almost one half of one Earthly
causal hour until his whole body spasmed in an intense orgasm of
ecstasy to leave him drained, with
relaxing sweaty body,
to feel her strangely effusive bodily fluid, now mixed with his, slowly
warmly seeping forth from her warm sensuous vagina.
He seemed to sleep, briefly, then, and when he awoke he so expected to
find
her gone, or it all a dream. He had fallen asleep at his console,
perhaps. Or it was a dream within a dream and he would awake, in his
bed in the secluded large quietness of his large London house, bereft
now of children and of wife. But Eulalia was there, naked, in his arms,
bubbled in acausal Time, as outside beyond his working office, human
life, all Earthly-dwelling life, lived, frozen, until her own
distant-close Mistress freed it from
that stopped, paused, moment of that lengthy-briefness which marked the
causal passing of that measuring meddling noisey Earth-dwelling
species, Homo Hubris.
But Patterson did not know this, and lay with her allowing her body
warmth to warm him. For he was still alive, warm, healthy and fit and
strong of body,
and she had not sucked the life from within him as in those nightmares
of his nights. So he touched her, feeling every softness, every contour
of her warm lascivious sensuous female human body.
Thus did she then explain to him - thought to thought without a need
for human spoken words - as they lay, nestled, there together,
touching, and
thus did he feel and know until the Earthly-time for her momentary
leaving arrived when
he, she, together stood, to dress, and he thought he saw some sadness
in her eyes.
He understood, then, as she had hoped he would understand just as his
intense passionate lustful desire for her was slowly, then, so slowly
changing, transmuting, being transmuted to be, become, something else
as
she knew - hoped - it would, despite a part of his human nature still
distantly valiantly fighting against her. For he was her
chosen, and it was for him now to be alone - bereft of her, his
longing and his dreams - to make the choice he alone must freely make.
Outside, clouds fastly skudded by cold north-easterly winds came to
cover the Sun to send down, quickly amid a growing dark, a brief but
powerful storm of hail before two peels of thunder drowned out the
noises that Homo Hubris and their machines made, there, in that
ancient, and capital, English city whose river flowed as it flowed over
where those hunters of humans rested, and waited, ready, in their lairs.
^^^
There was much that Rezare - she of the long greying hair and still
lithesome body - wanted to do, as her group gathered around her in
their protective drawn circle there on that low mound of muddied grass
where a few almost forgotten almost overgrown ancient small standing
stones rested, broken, or fallen, just before the covering of deciduous
trees gave way to an ancient well. There was no Moon, as she desired -
no warmth from a warm Summer's night - but the urgency of the matter
had brought them together to be there at that hour as she, their
Rounwytha, had urged. There was a darkness growing, seeping, into the
land, the people, the very landscape that she loved - reaching out with
its demon dreams and its succubitic love to entrap, ensnare, entice -
and although she did not, as yet, know its source, she felt, knew, that
her wyrdful-rouning must oppose it.
Thus did she and her group - six men, three woman, all far younger than
she - wait in their white clean robes for the rouning to begin, and
thus did she, as Rounwytha, lisp, in almost silence, old words of her
craft while a slight wind brought coldness, and sound by leaves fallen,
befeallen.
But the more she tried, the more tired she became, as if she - her very
life, her essence - was being somehow strangely sucked away; as if the
very trees themselves, around her, were reaching out to her venting
slowly forth from branch and buried root a longing for her to leave
them alone. She did not understand this - for were they not: her
friends? Were they not the folk of the wood, the very wood itself, who
once, many times, had spoken to her with wordless words on starry
moonless moonlit nights while she listened and learnt and which each
year her Mother-Earth so lovingly in Spring simbellicly renewed?
So she tried again, lisping forth again those ancient words. But the
very earth beneath her, the living soil of Earth, then seemed to be
seeping forth into her, colding her feet, her body, her head, as if
seeking, asking, her to go, peacefully in peace. She did not understand
this - for was this soil not her growthful friend which each year every
year she nurtured forth in garden and gardens to grow ginningly the
food that fed her and kept her fit, hearty, well? It was as if they -
her friends of soil, wood, forest, and fieldful hill - sensed, knew,
what she knew, and as if they welcomed that - were welcoming that: that
so slow subtle un-human change which had so disturbed her both in
daylight and in dreams.
Thus did she, sensitive, hyelding, try again to no avail, and thus did
she, they - her covenful group, and at her bidding - leave, each in
their own way by their own means, until she, by hillfull fields, was
back alone in her cold small cottage only warm by that large wood-fire
she lit and in front of which she sat, worn armchair rested, while her
seal-point Siamese cat kept her company and nothing came to disturb the
silence and worried sanctity of her mood. She fell asleep there - as
the fire dimmed and fell, and hunger failed to wake her - to dream she
was back alone by that ancient sacred hidden well where roots seeped
forth from trees nearby to grasp her and earth, soil-ly earth,
worm-ridden, opened to encase her in her tomb.
It was the scent, the quixotic, suffusive scent which awoke her, and
the warm soft hands of some unseen presumed female presence which
warmed her as she sat, quite still but unfearful in that colding dark.
There were lips kissing hers: warm, soft, gentle lips which touched her
own of dryness, unkissed for more than fifteen years. A touch which
warmly, slowly, gently, caressed her - touching face, neck, body, the
naked thighs beneath her robe-covered dress. And then it all was gone,
all gone, to leave her, colourful of cheek with her legs apart, parted
as an almost yearning straining hope touched her while that warm
strange touch had caressed her thighs to move within an inch of where a
sudden longing wetness seeped out to wet her greying pubic hairs.
Thus did she, ashamed, gather up her strength to slowly say the words
of some protective ancient incantation there in that cold small cottage
where her seal-point Siamese cat kept her company and where nothing
human came to disturb the silence and worried sanctity of her now
wytanic mood.
^^^
Patterson and his small cabal of Cheddon and Beldan - awaiting the
arrival of the senior Civil Servant - had been in one of Beldan's
rather large and well-equipped brightly-lit laboratories in the
well-guarded basements of that large city of London
and government building, when he, perhaps, pre-emptively, had with
vague-ish terms explained to them about Eulalia's visit where he said
she had given her demands.
Thus they had listened, in silence, as he himself, still vaguely
perfumed with Eulalia's scent - with each vague utterance of each vague
often obscuring spoken word - formed, from each idea, each image, each
future-deed precisely, wordlessly, livingly, almost lovingly impinged
by her upon within his mind, his being, a bond with and to her, thus
becoming more aware with each passing of each Earthy causal second of
his choice, more assured of his choice, of the correctness of that now
freely-chosen choice, bringing thus to him in those moments of his
speaking a clear vision of Destiny and an intimation of how his life
hitherto had fitted him for such a role as lived within him now,
burgeoning, strongly growing with each silent felt remembrance of
Eulalia's breath: of her scent, softness, warmth, touch, sharing -
blissfully shared but one short causal Earthly hour before.
It was not that he forgot or had forgotten or even was about to negate
the loyalty, the feelings, that bound him through oaths pastly-made to
be a loyal liege and thus to do his duty to his land, his country, and
the government that still idealistically at least derived its own
presumptive authority from one such similar oath. Rather, he understood
his new duty as but an extension of - the fulfilment of - such things,
restoring what required to be restored and bringing-into-being that,
only that, which only could be built by such a means as he through such
a Destiny would bring. And it was only when the senior Civil Servant
arrived to seat himself between Cheddon and Beldan that he exchanged
his vague words of description for the reality he felt now so joyously
so fittingly living within himself, for she - Eulalia - would be with
him again, naked in his arms for all of the coming night, as the Sun
descended to bring a Wintry cold darkness over those lands of England
that he, the long-serving patriotic professional soldier, loved.
"As I explained to Cheddon and Beldan here," Patterson began, standing,
and looking directly at the senior Civil Servant, "she was, somehow and
by some means, here just over an hour ago - "
"Beam me up, Scotty..." Cheddon quipped, with an appalling attempt at a
Scottish accent.
Patterson ignored him. "The demands given are quite simple. In return
for certain small concessions, and subject to certain conditions and
assurances, the attacks will cease; the entities - not of them - that
wrought all those deaths will be withdrawn, and we will be given
certain technical assistance to develop new technologies which will be
to the great advantage of Britain, to the government, to our people,
and to our standing in the world." He paused, as a professional
politician might pause for effect while delivering a speech. Then,
quite calmly, he said: "I am to act as her - as their - liaison. As her
- as their - representative."
Cheddon and the senior Civil Servant looked at each other, somewhat
surprised, while Beldan only smiled.
"What exactly," the senior Civil Servant said, "are these concessions
and conditions?"
"The main condition," Patterson confidently continued, "is that of
absolute and binding secrecy. No one - outside of the few of us who
already know - can know either the truth of what has occurred, or of
her, of their, involvement with us, current and future.
"The concessions relate to us providing them a secure area where they
can live, in secret, and in us allowing some of them - a few of them -
to dwell among us, undetected, with a few of those few to be given
certain positions, within the government and our Armed Forces. In
return for which - as I said - they will provide us with technical
assistance to develop new technologies which will be to our great
advantage."
"Why?" Cheddon, inquired."What do they really want?"
"A place to live - among us, in human form. To guide us; to help us
develop what we need to develop, in terms of science and technology, so
that we might spread out from this planet to be, to live, among the
stars, and thus evolve as we have the potential to evolve. We, this
country, our government, have been given this opportunity."
"I still don't get it," Cheddon said.
"It seems to me," Beldan replied, "that it is quite simple. They have a
need, a desire, to dwell here, on Earth, and so are offering to come to
an agreement, and arrangement, with us which is beneficial to both
sides."
Patterson looked at her strangely, as if there was, in that moment,
something he felt he knew about her, but the feeling of such a knowing
soon passed, and, instead, he said, to Cheddon, "That indeed is the
gist of the matter. They want to aid us in the development of Space -
and other technologies - so that they also can, with us, move back out
toward the stars."
"I see," Beldan said, smiling at him. "So, it is logical to assume that
these alien beings, or whatever we might call them, are somehow stuck
here, for some reason as yet unknown to us, on this planet in our
sector of this Galaxy, and require our assistance in order to resume
their Space-faring ways."
This was not what Patterson knew - not what Eulalia had shown him - but
it would be, it would have to be, for the present, the best cover-story
to use among those who already knew of her, and of her companions,
existence.
"Can they be trusted, though?" Cheddon asked, interrupting Patterson's
reverie.
"Any agreement," Patterson answered, "is a matter of trust. In my
considered opinion, yes, she - they - can be trusted."
"Maybe. Perhaps. Possibly. For the moment. Possibly not. And if we
don't agree to their terms and conditions?" Cheddon asked.
"Then," Patterson said, "the attacks will resume; those entities will
wreck more havoc and death; and other countries will be targeted."
"Not much of a choice, then," said Beldan.
"What," inquired the senior Civil Servant of Patterson, fiddling - as
had become his habit - with his colourful silk tie, "in your
professional opinion and that of your colleagues, are the possibilities
of us succeeding now, or in the immediate future, in defeating this
person and her forces?"
"As I explained to the PM recently, the consensus is - and I concur -
that the possibility is remote. That it is, currently and in the
immediate future, an unfeasible objective. We have neither the
resources nor the means to achieve such an objective. Unless and until
we can develop a means to track them, unless we can develop some weapon
or weapons which are effective against them, our options, from a
military point of view, are severely limited and currently ineffective.
There is also a consensus that it would take some years for us to
develop the capabilities we need to even be on a par with them."
"I see," the senior Civil Servant said.
"During which time, no doubt," Beldan added, "there would be hundreds
of thousands of deaths, maybe millions, world-wide - and a great deal
of devastation and destruction."
"What about the weapons you've been looking at recently?" asked Cheddon.
"They may or may not have some limited effect.
"Shouldn't we try them out?" Cheddon asked
"We - my tactical team and I - have been ready to do so if a situation
arose where such weapons might be deployed. But - " and he paused,
again. "My information is that such weapons as we currently possess
will not be effective."
"What information?" Cheddon inquired.
"I was directly informed..."
"By Eulalia?" interrupted Cheddon, guessing.
"Yes."
"And you believed her?" Cheddon said, surprised.
"I have - had - no reason to doubt the veracity of her information.
Indeed, she offered to give us a demonstration."
"I see," the senior Civil Servant said.
"We should put it to the test," Cheddon added.
"I accepted her offer and have already made the arrangements." He
checked his wristwatch. "If you will follow me, we should be in
position at exactly the right time."
So he led them out from that brightly-lit well-equipped laboratory
through a skein of corridors, passing many an armed and uniformed
guard, to the large underground car-park that served their needs and
that of the other occupants of those well-guarded government basements
of that large city of London
building. In one corner of that dismal grey underground area a tactical
squad of soldiers waited in a semi-circle, holding a variety of
weapons, regular, strange, and improvised, and - as Patterson's quartet
joined them - three women, all dressed in
black, young and dark of hair with bright red lipstick upon their lips,
suddenly materialized at the point which was the centre of that
semi-circle of soldiers. The women were carrying guns which seemed to
resemble standard Earth-manufactured semi-automatic pistols which they
raised and pointed at the soldiers who also raised their own assortment
of weapons but who did not fire. But the women simply smiled, and shot
three soldiers dead.
Thus did the nine remaining soldiers fire or operate their weapons as
the women stood, smiling and un-humanly still, making no attempt to
shoot or even target their own hand-held guns. For five minutes they
stood until Patterson gave orders for his men to cease their firing. No
one spoke, or moved - except the three women, who unharmed came forward
to kiss each still living speechless unmoving soldier on the cheek
before those strange but attractive women turned, waved at Patterson,
and were gone.
"I see your point," Cheddon said, unnecessarily, to him.
^^^
It was not long before his suspicious, his doubts, grew. Not even the
senior Civil Servant would listen to him when he hinted certain things.
Certainly, Beldan was distant, disengaging, unapproachful, and so
Cheddon carried on, in his own well-equipped, if dimly lit, laboratory
in those well-guarded government basements of that large city of London
building. Carried on, almost but not quite as normal. What could he
say, do? So he busied himself with the new work that Patterson said was
of vital and national import. Waiting, unsure; with only doubts,
suspicious, unvoiced, unheard, almost always strange, unformed.
No longer the hunt for some enemy foe. No longer the sense, the
knowing, the thrill, of being part of some elite, secret, well-armed,
powerful, government team. Instead: he felt cheated, betrayed, perhaps
even soiled. As if the deal they had made somehow besmirched,
dishonoured, and shamed him. He did not understand why this was so,
only that it felt so. Perhaps it was that he had betrayed the dead -
the ones, the thousands, they had killed. Perhaps he had even betrayed
himself. Perhaps it was fear of being taken, made-to-be like them. Or
perhaps a feeling of being somehow their minion, their slave: as if he,
humans, were powerless, weak, inferior, now before them. He did not
know, and so he carried on: he, one of those chosen to closely guard
their, and his governments, secret, doing - as the consummate talented
professional he was - his newly given governmental duties outstandingly
well, while secretly, furtively, working on some way to detect, defend
against, them.
The day was bright, if cold, with a frost that the warmless middle
November Sun did not nor would that day remove, and Rezare - she of the
long greying hair, the lithesome body - sat in her old worn armchair by
her warming large wood-fire reading from an antiquarian folio book, her
seal-point Siamese cat asleep beside her in a wicker-basket. There was
no sound, except the slight occasional wind-rapping of small bare
Willow tendrils that hung down seepingly against her sitting room
window from the overgrown tree in her Cottage garden, and she might
have been at peace - happy, contended; contended, happy, warm - had not
her dreams, her knowing, the very words of the book, disturbed her. For
the words of that Diary, that Journal, flowingly, cursively, inscribed
by hand, were of a Rounwytha before her who had through visions and
dreams seen a certain uncertain dark future: sinister times where
strange shapeshifting succubitic beings ventured forth to bring
sadness, madness, terror, and awe; where They - though unnamed - use
for their own ends human beings, establishing thus a Dark, sinister,
Imperium upon Earth.
Thus did Rezare read what another of her kind had written, less than
seventy years before:
"I, with the help of an old dear friend, have been able to
find only scattered references, such as:
They require Earth as a Gate, a physical staging
place, from whence they can go forth to dominate that life which exists
among the stars, and because they desire again our human bodies - for,
being formless as they are, eternal, they cannot feel as we feel;
cannot love as we love; cannot feel the joy that we feel. For Aeons
after Aeons they have lived formless and unfeeling and dreaming as such
beings do. Once, long ago now, before we knew ourselves, before words
came forth to be written, some of Them seeped to be among us, taking,
as legend says, human shape human. Some stayed, most returned. Perhaps
it was that the tales of those returning, tales of our life - of their
time of physical form - enchanted Them as they lived where They lived,
formless, ageless, waiting: waiting, but, for what? So They, some of
Them, contrived Their return - to guide us, legend says, to change
us... Their wait was long, perhaps too long, for the stars, the very
cosmos had to be aligned aright, with Theirs, for Them to come forth
again from Their sleepless dwelling to be among us, to be with us, once
again. To have the feeling, the corporeal being, They so craved.
and also this one:
Falcifer is the name They have chosen. Working in
secret, even now
They are planning his coming. He is the Spawn of Chaos, the leader of
those Dark Gods...
But in my dreams this Falcifer of theirs is a woman who has as her
Vindex a man, a human, and by whom she bears a half-human child who, as
her, needs the vital force, the living essence, of human beings to
live, survive. I never see her face, clearly. But her smell is ever so
indicative and strong, almost animal, feral like, in its intensity; but
more than an odour; more than a perfume. Even now in the bright sun of
this lovely hot July day I catch myself smelling this strange
fragrance, unlike any flower I have ever known, unlike any perfume I
have ever smelt, or blended, unlike the smell of any magical potion I
have ever made.
She and her kind are beyond the words of the books of our kind; beyond
the words of all our human books, magical; otherwise. Missing pages
from our history, our past, for some of them have been here among us
for millennia. Waiting. Some perhaps in dreams have glimpsed them or
been touched by them, as I. Many have known them, over the centuries,
and died because of it.....
Through her chosen one she schemes, plots, then rules, growing in
Earthly influence, power. I do not know why, but sometimes I seem to
see great factories; a new Empire; a country, a nation, triumphant,
over others, only this time ruler of the skies, where machines rise to
unearthly heights. War; deaths; suffering. So many, so terrible. More
than those terrible years - that war - we lived through and vowed to
never live through again... But the dreams have gone, not returned.
Again I do not know why the dreams have stopped, or why they began. I
am only glad, so very glad, they have stopped and not returned....."
Slowly, Rezare placed the book aside. She also did not know how or why
her own so similar dreams had begun; but hers had not stopped, becoming
with each night more vivid, intense, as if the land around - the living
hillfull fields, the trees, the streams, copses, sheltering welcoming
woods, the birds, animals, the very soil itself - had somehow in some
way changed with, through, because of understanding. Gone now their
welcoming of such un-earthly darkness; gone now their beckoning desire
for her to leave peacefully and in peace. Instead: only a desire, an
urgent desire, through wordless words - through that very belonging
with-them that she treasured, loved, felt, knew - for her to help them,
she as daughter, perhaps, of their life-giving Earth-Mother. Perhaps it
was then the trees, the streams, the birds, animals, those sheltering
welcoming well-known woods, the very soil itself, who spoke to her by
dreams, bringing such a seeing, such a knowing, such detail, as no
Rounwytha before her had ever possessed, so that to her even the
wind-rapping of those small bare Willow tendrils upon her draughtful
window were as words, informing her of why and of what she must do.
There will be snow tonight, she knew, a journey to take her, alone, to
a city where her visions and those voices said would be a young man, to
help her.
"How did you find me?" Cheddon asked, as Rezare waited outside in that
snowy darkful cold which had come to claim his city.
"It does not matter," she said. "What matters is what we can do to
fight those alien shapeshifting beings and she who has so beshrewed he
who leads that team you are still a part of."
Startled, surprised - intrigued - Cheddon let her into his warm
bachelor fourth-floor modern Apartment whose large windows gave fine
Thames river and city of London views. Then, outside, in the darkness,
it was as if suddenly that city, that England, had drifted back into a
far far quieter more distant ancient time: for, for just one
lengthy-briefness of just three measured Earthly minutes, there was a
silence, a stillness, a steeply plunging Arctic coldness, that made
machines, people, stutter, to bring them briefly to a halt; to cut for
one moment of Earthly lengthy-briefness that flow of electrical energy
that brought forth light and brightness to human streets and homes.
Thus did Rezare - she of long greying hair, lithesome body, and
sensitive, hyelding - involuntarily shiver, until Cheddon, with
youthful momentary desperation of comfort, saught her hand to let her
warming fingers, her comforting warm embrace, renew remind and
unexpectedly arouse him as that strange seeping cold enclosing
lengthy-briefness of un-human blackness passed their brief causal-world
by.
^^^
Anton Long
Order of Nine Angles
119 Year of Fayen
