Clifford Simak - Out of Their Minds

I was back on the plain again and I saw now that it was featureless, a lonely and eternal place, that its flatness was not marred by any hill or ridge or tree, that it ran on forever in its utter sameness and that the sky, like the plain, also was featureless, without a cloud or sun or star and it was hard to tell whether it might be day or night—it was too light for night and too dark for day. It was a deep dusk and I wondered whether it might be always like this, a place where it was never anything but dusk, reaching toward the night, but never getting there. As I stood there on the plain, I heard the baying coming from far away, a sound that was unmistakable, the very sound that I had heard when I had stepped out for a breath of air and had heard the pack go crying down the notch of Lonesome Hollow. Frightened by the sound, I turned slowly, trying to determine from what direction it might come, and in my slow turning I caught sight of a thing that stumbled its way along the far horizon, its blackness dimly outlined against the grayness of the sky. Dim, but not to be mistaken, not that long sinuous neck which terminated in the ugly, darting, seeking head, not that serrated backbone.

I ran, although there was no place to run, certainly no place that one could hide. And as I ran I knew what sort of place it was, a place that had existed forever and would exist forever, where nothing had ever happened or was about to happen. Now there was another sound, a steady, oncoming sound that could be heard in the silences which lay between the baying of the wolves—a flapping, plopping sound that had an undertone of rustling and at times a harsh, hard buzzing. I spun about and searched the surface of the plain and in a little time I saw them, a squadron of humping, wriggling rattlesnakes bearing down upon me. I turned and ran, the air pumping in my lungs, and as I ran I knew there was no use of running and no need. For this was a place where nothing had ever happened and where nothing would ever happen and because of this it was a place of perfect safety. I ran, I knew, from nothing but my fear. It was a safe place, but by that very token, a place of futility and of hopelessness. But nevertheless I ran, for I could not stop the running. I heard the baying of the wolves, no closer and no farther off than they had been at first, and the slap, slap of the hunching rattlesnakes keeping pace with me. My strength ran out and my breath ran out and I fell, then got up and ran again and fell again. Finally I fell and lay there, not caring any more, not caring what might happen, although I knew that in this place nothing at all could happen. I didn't try to get up. I just lay there and let the hopelessness and the futility and the blackness close in upon me.

But suddenly I became aware that something had gone wrong. There was no motor hum, no hiss of rubber on the pavement, no sense of motion. There was, instead, the sound of a quiet wind blowing and the scent of many blossoms.

"Wake up, Horton," Kathy's startled voice said. "Something happened, very, very strange."

I opened my eyes and struggled upward. I lifted both my fists and scrubbed at sleep-smudged eyes.

The car had stopped and we were no longer on the highway. We were on no road at all, but on a rutted cart track that went wandering down a hill, dodging boulders and trees and brightly flowering shrubs. Grass grew between the deep wheelmarks and a wildness and a silence hung over everything.

We seemed to be on top of a high ridge or a mountain. The lower slope was heavily forested, but here, on top, the trees were scattered, although their size made up for the fewness of them—most of them great oaks, their mighty branches scarred and twisted, their boles spotted with heavy coats of lichens.

"I was just driving along," said Kathy, shaken, "not going too fast, not as fast as the highway limit—fifty more than likely. And then I was off the road and the car was rolling to a stop, its engine killed. And that's impossible. It couldn't happen that way."

I still was half asleep. I rubbed my eyes again, not so much to get the sleep out of them as because there was something wrong about the place.

"There was no sense of deceleration," Kathy said. "No jolt. And how could one get off the highway? There's no way to leave the highway."

I'd seen those oaks somewhere before and I was trying to remember where I might have seen them—not the selfsame trees, of course, but others that were like them.

"Kathy," I asked, "where are we?"

"We must be on top of South Mountain. I'd just passed through Chambersburg."

"Yes," I said, remembering, "just short of Gettysburg." Although when I had asked the question, that had not been exactly what I'd meant.

"You don't realize what happened, Horton. We might have both been killed."

I shook my head. "Not killed. Not here."

"What do you mean?" she asked, irritated at me.

"Those oaks," I said. "Where have you seen those oaks before?"

"I've never seen.. **

"Yes, you have," I said. "You must have. When you were a kid. In a book about King Arthur, or maybe Robin Hood."

She gasped and reached her hand out to my arm. "Those old romantic, pastoral drawings..»

"That is right," I said. "All oak trees in this land, mo*. likely, are that kind of oaks, and all poplars tall an.. stately and all pine trees most triangular, as in a picture book."

Her hand tightened on my arm. "That other land. The place that friend of yours…"

"Perhaps," I said. "Perhaps."

For even knowing that it could be no other places that ii what Kathy said were true, we'd both be dead if it were not that other land, it still was a hard thing to accept.

"But I thought," said Kathy, "that it would be full o' ghosts and goblins and other horrid things."

"Horrid things," I said. "Yes, I'd think you'd find their here. But more than likely some good things as well."

For if this were actually the place my old friend had hypothesized, then it held all the legends and the myths, all the fairy tales that man had dreamed hard enough for them to become a part of him.

I opened the door of the car and stepped out

The sky was blue—perhaps a shade too blue—a deep, intense and still very gentle blue. The grass was slightly greener, it seemed to me, than grass had the right to be, and yet in that extra-greenness there was a sense of gladness, the kind of feeling an eight-year-old boy might have in walking barefoot through the soft, new grass of spring.

Standing there and looking at it, I realized that the place was entirely storybook. In some subtle way that I could sense, but could not really name, it was not the old and solid earth, but a bit too perfect to be any place on Earth. It looked the way that painted illustrations looked.

Kathy came around the car to stand beside me.

"It's so peaceful here," she said. "You really can't believe it."

A dog came pacing up the hill toward us—pacing, not trotting. He was a crazy-looking dog. His ears were long and he tried to hold them upright, but the upper half of them folded over and hung down. He was big and ungainly and he carried his whiplike tail straight up in the air like a car antenna. He was smooth-coated and had big feet and was unbelievably skinny. He held his angular head high and he was grinning, with a fine display of teeth, and the funny thing about it was that they were human instead of canine teeth.

He moved up close to us and then stopped and stretched his front paws out on the ground and put his chin down on them. His rear end was elevated and his tail went round and round, revolving in a circle. He was very glad to see us.

Far down the slope someone whistled sharply and impatiently. The dog sprang to his feet, swinging around in the direction from which the whistle had come. The whistle sounded again and with an apologetic backward look at us, the caricature of a dog went swarming down the hill. He ran awkwardly, his back feet reaching forward to overlap his front feet, and his tail, canted at an angle of forty-five degrees, swung furiously in a circle of overwhelming happiness.