Beast (11 page)

after a while i begin to feel queasy. i have had enough but perhaps this has saved me i feel stronger i feel i could walk for days now i feel a new strength in me. it left me it came to me and left me but it still wants me because it’s calling me it fed me when i was hungry i have seen something that matters more than anybody could know and i must find it. i sit with my hands in my lap my hands stained purple the cloud embraces me. in all of the crawling i have lost my sense of direction i don’t know now which way to go still i know i
was heading up the hill so i will just keep heading up the hill and there will be something there for me.

when i was in the yard when the cat was circling me there was a smell it was a kind of waxy sharp smell and it moved with the sound and now i can smell it again. it is fainter but i smell it again here on the moor this is the smell of the cat it is as distinctive as the muscles around its shoulders there is such a power in this thing such silent power it is so pointed there is no waste about it. whatever it wants it gets this beast it is like a spear it goes right to the heart there is no turning away once you have seen this.

i stand up i orientate myself and i begin to walk up the heather hill again heather and cloud heather and cloud and my boots moving through them. suddenly i realise that my right boot has swung out into open air and my left boot follows before i can stop myself and now i am tumbling down into an emptiness that is eternal. i have come to the top of a cliff and i have fallen off or thrown myself off or thrown someone else off any of these would be fascinating. i turn over and around as i fall i had always thought that if i were to jump off a cliff i would be able to fly to control myself with my arms somehow to crash elegantly onto the rocks but no nothing works i flail and flap like i am
boneless down and down and i will be eaten and if you have never been eaten then what are you. i remember i thought about this a lot but all of the thinking was meaningless none of it meant anything you can think for three decades and your thoughts will be worse than useless because you have not touched this thing not really. you have to live in this dimension your hands must be calloused your heart scarred or what are you.

honestly it is so difficult to concentrate out here the mind plays tricks in this cloud. i could have been here for days or years or minutes it all seems to just roll together i am floating across it all i am on a boat and now i see some distant coastline but there are no gapless lines of trees along the shore there are no clouds of birds bursting from the green and screeching into the sky there are no monkeys murmuring from bank to bank nothing flows that way now. someone found this place centuries ago and built a city here and now it’s all neon and glass and contrails and rainbow slicks of diesel i am alone circling the world through oceans of plastic there is nothing left to find nothing to discover it’s all gone i came too late.

now i think the ground is beginning to level out i must be coming up to the shoulder of the moor i don’t know which part of the moor i am on i have no idea can
i still detect the waxy smell somewhere in the cloud i think i can or perhaps i’m imagining it. maybe i am imagining all of it. maybe i can smell the cat but i can’t hear it so how do i follow it how do i find it can cats see in cloud or are they like dogs do they need their sense of smell to find their prey. why did i use that word i will not be prey. if the cat wanted me for prey the cat could have had me so there must be something else happening here perhaps there is no cat at all if i told this story to somebody would they believe a word of it. somebody is sitting in front of me we are both sitting around a table and i am trying to explain what i have seen here. maybe they are a journalist or a doctor or some kind of cat investigator anyway they have a notebook i think this person is young maybe in their thirties and they have short brown hair and glasses. i think it is a man no it is a woman a man would scoff at me but a woman would listen she would have sympathy her hair is not short it is tied in a ponytail she is quite attractive she is beautiful actually. no this is a distraction this doesn’t matter the point is that i am explaining to somebody i am explaining to this woman what i have seen here i saw a cat in the distance you see i saw it twice and then i went looking for it. can i prove it can i prove what can i prove it was here that i saw it
do i have any photographs is there any evidence why would a cat be here. why would anybody listen to me has anybody ever listened to me i think she feels sorry for me she is making a big show of writing all this down but how do i know what she is writing i want to grab the notebook i want to rip it from her hands how do i know i can trust her how do i know what she thinks of me who is she going to give these notes to i haven’t seen her identification. just because she is beautiful doesn’t mean i can trust her.

i walk and walk it is flat now i have found some sort of thin track across what must be the shoulder of the moor another narrow peat pathway through the bowing heather. i would say it must be an hour or so maybe since i heard any sounds the cloud is not changing it is not getting thicker or thinner i am used to it now i have acclimatised it’s fine but now something else is coming out of the cloud at me. ahead of me to my right a great tall shape and now another to my left there are two people walking towards me. they are heading right towards me walking straight at me one on my right and one on my left. now what are they doing here walking in this cloud walking straight at me through this cloud. they are coming for me they have found me. no they are not people no they are stones
standing stones i walk towards them until i am standing between them two great standing stones perhaps eight feet high and behind them dimly at the edge of the cloud two more. i walk from the first pair of stones to the second when i reach the second i can see two more just where the cloud thickens a stone row this is a stone row. i put one foot gently in front of the other and i walk up the avenue of stones i count the pairs as i go six seven eight eleven twelve thirteen the stones seem to shrink in size as the row goes on at the eighteenth pair they are shorter than me they are just about up to my waist. after that the row stops.

i keep walking there is nothing else but heather now the stone row just stopped it started and then it stopped why did it not lead anywhere why would you build something like that if it didn’t lead anywhere. the right thing to do would be to walk backwards at this point. i start to walk backwards i put one foot behind the other i do it very slowly because of the mist and the heather. it is an intriguing thing to do this first you feel your toes touch the ground then the balls of your feet at the front and finally your heels everything is the other way around you cannot see where you are headed though in the cloud you cannot see where you are headed when you walk forwards either so really
it is no different. i keep walking backwards and from behind me on either side the smallest pair of stones moves into view and begins to fade away in front of me into the cloud. eighteen times this happens the stones grow larger each time the sentinels appear from behind me and disappear before my eyes.

when i come to the last pair i keep walking i keep walking slowly backwards down the hill i come to a house and then a road i keep walking backwards i am in the lowlands now i walk through fields and through hedges and gateways there are people but they do not see me i am glad about that i keep walking over motorways and through towns and cities. i come to a town i walk down a street which seems familiar i continue to walk backwards down the pavement i look up at a window above a shop and i see two faces looking down on me a woman and a young girl. now what is that expression on their faces their hands are moving behind the glass. well i don’t know anything about that. i keep walking i pass a school there is a playground full of children circling around and around something like wild dogs i hide in a corner until they have gone in i find myself lying on a bed with a girl she is a child i am a child we are wondering what to do next what happens if i touch you here well if you touch me i can
touch you i suppose this is how it works that seems fair i think.

there seem to be birds scrabbling on the roof. i don’t know what this woman is saying to me a minute ago she was shouting at me now she is putting her arms around me no it is not my fault we agree on that it’s all fine really. if you keep walking backwards it emerges from behind you and then falls away again before you into the cloud and it is all fine really it is just like the wind blowing through and over you there is really no time to feel anything about it. i seem to be lying on the ground outside i don’t think i wanted to be lying here the ground is hard beneath me. i keep walking.

i move out of the town past giant metal sheds and down dirty roads i pass through a wooden gate and now rushes and reeds grow up around me from behind. i walk backwards through the rushes and the reeds and on both sides of me black water spreads out and around i keep walking though i do not know what i am walking on. forests of rushes and reeds and great black trees come from behind me and fall away there are sounds on all sides now there is an island in the water and men on horses gather around it. i keep walking backwards into a forest there are pigs in the forest i can hear them grunting around there is a group of men
one of them kneels on the floor now i am sure i have seen them before now what is this. a line of men on a hill falls back and down everything falls back and down you could keep walking this way forever everything grows green after a while and the sounds of the beasts are deeper and wilder. there is an ocean of stillness back here. i recommend walking backwards everybody should walk backwards at least some of the time.

but are there any cats here. no i have not seen any and it is a cat i am searching for i remember that the cat found me and left me and i must look into its yellow eyes because there are secrets there and i need to learn them. it is all very well looking backwards but what i am looking for is not here. i walk forwards instead over we go now through the cloud and heather for ever and ever it feels like forever that i have been here. maybe the stone row is an arrow that points to the cat i haven’t heard the cat for a while i can’t smell it now i don’t think perhaps if i keep walking this way something will come. the ground begins to fall now to slope gently downwards the heather gives way to bracken here this is something new. and as i walk something else rises before me but it is not as tall as the stones and it is wider it is a low wall a low wall of earth. as i come up to it and look closer i can see that the earth is mounded
and moulded around large stones which are embedded deep in the ground.

i turn right and i begin to follow this low wall which nearly comes up to my waist. after a while there is a gap in the wall i walk through the gap the cloud is still everywhere i come to a small circle of stones with some other stones scattered and buried in the ground inside it. i keep exploring there is more than one the low earth wall makes a circle around these smaller circles of stone it is like an old encampment or a village or something there i was right the stone row was pointing to something it was pointing here to this place. people lived up here that earth wall was a dyke with sharpened sticks around it there were sentries at the gate these little stone circles were houses there were fires in the grates in winter and thatch on the roofs look i am sitting on a flat stone in the middle of one of these circles it was a table or a fireplace or a bed a woman is sitting at the edge of the bed she has wild hair and hunched shoulders she is speaking in tongues she can see that up on the ridges walks a man with a staff and a wide hat she can see that a wolf plays around his feet and a raven around his shoulders she sees through the shadows cast on his face she looks into his one eye and she keeps speaking to him or to herself she keeps muttering.

outside is the sound of children playing it is not cloudy the sun is shining there is no heather or bracken there are wheat fields there are grapevines everything is abundant blue birds sing in the air the water is clean there are men with spears their faces are tattooed there are mangoes growing on trees outside there are apricots the skin of the people is weathered brown. there are goats in the pens inside the outer wall there are dogs barking there are cats the cats are here to keep the mice away from the wheat the cats are here to keep the place clean the cats are here to eat what must be eaten. if you have never been eaten then what are you.

i am hungry again i don’t suppose there is anything to eat here there are no bilberries anyway i am sick of bilberries i never want to eat another berry. never mind hunger is just a feeling feelings come and go they are like worms inside you like birds passing over just watch them and they pass by. there is nothing to eat here and i cannot eat anyway until i have looked into its eyes it would bring me terrible bad luck to eat before i have looked into its eyes it would be an indulgence it would take me away. what i need is to empty myself. perhaps it has never looked into my eyes because i have failed because i am not empty.

now. there. hear that.

it is the cat again it is the scream of the cat it is coming from my left it is indistinct it is not close but i can hear it well enough i stand up i rise from the flat stone on which i was sitting and i turn to face the direction of the sound i stay precisely still until i hear it again. yes. it is some distance away but there it is calling me i begin to walk i cross two of the hut circles and when i come again to the embankment wall i shuffle myself over it and i keep walking through the bracken the bracken gives way to heather there are bilberries here but i will not stop there is no stopping now. i hear the cry again does it sound higher than it did before does it sound different i keep walking and the ground begins to slope downwards first gently and then steeply i lie down i put my arms by my side and i begin to roll down the slope i am rolling down the slope with my sister and we are both laughing. who can get to the bottom first she is older but i always win there is the smell of mown grass by the cricket pavilion in the park we get up together and we race to the water fountain she is older but i always win because i am faster. i drink for hours in the summer sun we will find our friends by the swings and dare each other to go right the way through the low tunnel where the stream goes under the railway line can you stand in the middle when the
train passes over without running listen to that sound there is the sound again it is nearer. now there are rocks there are outcrops of granite and i am having to scramble down them there are ferns growing between the rocks now and there is the sound of water there is distant water running between the rocks there is the cry of the cat it is closer now. the sound of the cat and the sound of water singing under stones.