Абрахам Меррит - Creep, Shadow!

After all, wasn't that why I had come there?

De Keradel said: "We drink to that!"

He dismissed the servants, unlocked a closet and took from it a decanter half-filled with a green liqueur. The stopper was clamped and difficult to withdraw. He poured three small glasses and quickly clamped the stopper down. I raised my glass.

He checked me: "Wait!"

There were little bubbles rising through the green drink; like atoms of diamonds; like splintered sun rays shot back by crystals bottoming still shallows. They rose more and more quickly, and suddenly the green drink fumed; then became quiescent, pellucid.

De Keradel lifted his glass: "Carnac, you join us of your own will?"

The Demoiselle said, her glass close to mine: "It is of your own will you join us, Alain de Carnac?"

I answered: "Of my own will."

We touched glasses and drank.

That was a strange drink. It tingled through brain and nerve, and immediately there was born of it an extraordinary sense of freedom; swift sloughing of inhibitions; a blowing away of old ideas as though they had crumbled to dust and, like dust, had been puffed from the surface of consciousness. As though I were a serpent which had, abruptly, shed an outworn skin. Memories grew dim, faded away, readjusted themselves. I had an indescribable sense of liberation… I could do anything, since, like God, there existed for me neither good nor evil. Whatever I willed to do that I could do, since there was neither evil nor good but only my will…

De Keradel said: "You are one with us."

The Demoiselle whispered: "You are one with us, Alain."

Her eyes were closed, or seemed to be; the long lashes low upon her cheeks. Yet I thought that beneath them I saw a glint of purple flame. And de Keradel's hands covered his eyes, as though to shield them, but between his fingers I thought I saw them gleaming. He said:

"Carnac – you have not asked me what is this Gatherer – this Being I would evoke in Its completeness. Is it because you know?"

"No," I answered; and would have followed by saying that I did not care except that suddenly I knew I did care; that of all things that was what I thirsted to know. He said:

"A brilliant Englishman once formulated perfectly the materialistic credo. He said that the existence of man is an accident; his story a brief and transitory episode in the life of the meanest of planets. He pointed out that of the combination of causes which first converted a dead organic compound into the living progenitors of humanity, science as yet knows nothing. Nor would it matter if science did know. The wet-nurses of famine, disease, and mutual slaughter had gradually evolved creatures with consciousness and intelligence enough to know that they were insignificant. The history of the past was that of blood and tears, stupid acquiescence, helpless blunderings, wild revolt, and empty aspirations. And at last, the energies of our system will decay, the sun be dimmed, the inert and tideless earth be barren. Man will go down into the pit, and all his thoughts will perish. Matter will know itself no longer. Everything will be as though it never had been. And nothing will be either better or worse for all the labor, devotion, pity, love, and suffering of man."

I said, the God-like sense of power stronger within me: "It is not true."

"It is partly true," he answered. "What is not true is that life is an accident. What we call accident is only a happening of whose causes we are ignorant. Life must have come from life. Not necessarily such life as we know – but from some Thing, acting deliberately, whose essence was – and is – life. It is true that pain, agony, sorrow, hate, and discord are the foundations of humanity. It is true that famine, disease, and slaughter have been our nurses. Yet it is equally true that there are such things as peace, happiness, pity, perception of beauty, wisdom… although these may be only of the thickness of the film on the surface of a woodland pool which mirrors its flowered rim – yet, these things do exist… peace and beauty, happiness and wisdom. They are."

"And therefore – " de Keradel's hands were still over his eyes, but through the masking fingers I felt his gaze sharpen upon me, penetrate me " – therefore I hold that these desirable things must be in That which breathed life into the primeval slime. It must be so, since that which is created cannot possess attributes other than those possessed by what creates it."

Of course, I knew all that. Why should he waste effort to convince me of the obvious. I said, tolerantly: "It is self-evident."

He said: "And therefore it must also be self-evident that since it was the dark, the malevolent, the cruel side of this – Being – which created us, our only approach to It, our only path to Its other self, must be through agony and suffering, cruelty and malevolence."

He paused, then said, violently:

"Is it not what every religion has taught? That man can approach his Creator only through suffering and sorrow? Sacrifice… Crucifixion!"

I answered: "It is true. The baptism of blood. The purification through tears. Rebirth through sorrow."

The Demoiselle murmured: "Chords that must be struck before we may attain the supreme harmonies."

There was a mocking note to that; I turned to her quickly. She had not opened her eyes, but I caught the derisive curving of her lips.

De Keradel said: "The sacrifices are ready."

I said: "Then let us sacrifice!"

De Keradel dropped his hands. The pupils of his eyes were phosphorescent, his face seemed to retreat until nothing could be seen but those two orbs of pale blue fire. The Demoiselle raised her eyes, and they were two deep pools of violet flame, her face a blur beyond them. I did not think that strange – then.

There was a mirror at the back of the sideboard. I looked into it and my own eyes were shining with the same feral fires, golden, my face a blurred setting from which yellow gleaming eyes stared back at me…

Nor did that seem as strange, either – not then.

De Keradel repeated: "The sacrifices are ready."

I said, rising: "Let us use them!"

We went out of the dining room and up the stairs. The inhuman exaltation did not wane; it grew stronger; more ruthless. Life was to be taken, but what was the life of one or the lives of many if they were rungs of a ladder up which I could climb out of the pit into the sun? Force recognition from That which had lived before life… command It… the Creator?

With de Keradel's hand upon my arm I passed into my room. He bade me strip and bathe, and left me, I stripped, and my hand touched something hanging to my left armpit. It was a holster in which was an automatic. I had forgotten who had given it to me, but whoever it was had told me it was important… most important; not to be lost nor given up… essential. I laughed. This toy essential to one about to summon the Creator of life? I tossed it into a corner of the room…

De Keradel was beside me and I wondered vaguely why I had not seen him come into the room. I had bathed, and was stark naked. He was wrapping a breechclout of white cotton around my loins. He laced sandals on my feet, and he drew my arms through the sleeves of a robe of thick fine cotton. He stood back, and I saw that he was clothed in the same white robes. There was a broad belt either of black metal or ancient wood around his middle. There was a similar cincture around his breast. They were inlaid with symbolings in silver… but who ever saw silver shift and change outline… melt from this rune into another… as these did? Around his forehead was a black chaplet of oak leaves, and from his belt swung a long black knife, a black maul, a black and oval bowl, and a black ewer…