Paul Kingsnorth - Beast

outside everything is clearer even in the cloud. that was a strange thing for me to do climbing into old buildings like that i am hunting here i am on a hunt what would i be doing in a building like that i was asking for it it serves me right really. i go into the garden and sit down on one of the picnic benches which creaks beneath me it is covered in beige and green lichens there is a rectangular green plastic ashtray in the middle of the table in which wet cigarette butts float in a pool of dark brown water i pick one up and sniff it i inhale the smell of the tobacco it is delicious. i wish i had a lighter here i wish i had some matches i would love a cigarette i am rolling a cigarette at a bus stop golden virginia i only buy small packs because i’m not really a smoker i take out a green paper and a pinch of tobacco and i pull the tobacco apart and spread it out evenly and then i begin to roll the paper between my fingers and thumbs i never use filters. i lick the edges delicately and glue the cigarette down i love this ritual i take a yellow plastic lighter from my coat pocket and i spark up and the first breath is always the best is really the only one worth having it lifts me up and i fly.

i see that there will be a time yes a time will come again not for lifetimes but it will come. the woods will be flooded as they were and hung with moss and we will take boats through them flat wooden boats and there will be no-one full enough to believe that any of the real things of the world could be counted or named. we will hear again the sound of the oars through the water and the sound that evil makes when it plays at being good and coming up from the ground we will be only what we were naked as in the old dance on the plains before we toppled the king and fell with him. down we fell down to where it first began but even here he can see us he can always see us there is no escape from him. hide in the mountain and he will find you hide in the forest and he will find you hide in the grave and he will find you. he will find you and pull you apart you will be torn into parts and those parts buried and a season will pass before a flower will grow from the soil you were sunk in. and that flower will become you born again complete but not the same and you will sit up on your bed in the tent on the fringe of the brown wood rubbing your crown three white hairs in your shock of black and a limp where there was none and you will ask of whoever is there or no-one at all you will ask lover what has happened to me?

there. the noise again. the cat again. there.

i think it is closer now perhaps it is coming from the same direction as before it is hard for me to tell now that the road and my expedition into this building have disorientated me but i stand up when i hear the noise and drop the cigarette butt and i turn around because it is coming from behind me. it is still there. yes it is closer it sounds throatier when it was circling me in the yard the noise was so loud i could hear its breath in my mind i could see its mouth open the pink wetness in there.

it is important that i pull myself together. this is not a game i have work to do. now i face the source of the sound and i begin again to walk towards it. i decide i will not walk around any obstacle in my way instead i will walk over it i will not be distracted i climb over three picnic tables and then reach the back wall of the garden which is stone. i climb up the stone wall and vault over it onto heather moorland. the call comes again it is straight ahead now you see this is the way to do things a straight line to the goal i keep walking i plough through the heather though there is no path i clamber over small rocks and some large ones i am heading uphill. the call comes again still straight ahead i laugh and i begin running slowly i bounce through the heather i keep bouncing like this until my right foot lands in a trench i didn’t see and then i twist and fall heavily onto the ground. it’s fine i’m not hurt i lie on the ground with my face pressed up against the heather there is the sound again but now it seems further away. just inches away from my head is a rock as big as my fist i was lucky. she is standing looking over the garden in the sun i come up behind her with the rock in my hand and i hit the back of her skull hard with it twice her head cracks and she falls to the ground then i take the child and hold it under the water until it stops kicking. i love you she says i love you too i say because you have to say that. then she puts her arms around me and we go back inside the house for dinner.

it was further away that time this is not good enough. i get up and i keep walking in the direction of the sound but i must have been walking for twenty minutes or so now and i have not heard it again. it seems to come in waves in clusters it rises and falls like the tides in the sea.

then i see something i’m sure i see something i’m sure i see a movement to my right it is so hard to tell the cloud is so thick i hold out my hand and still i can only just see my fingers but i’m sure something passed me it moved past me in the opposite direction to the one i am walking in. it went behind me.

i wonder if it would eat me. it must eat something up here where did it come from where would a creature like this come from you hear stories don’t you nobody really knows anything. perhaps it would eat me perhaps that is what i am walking towards it feels as if that would be a fine ending. it springs from behind in the cloud i barely hear a thing i have no chance to move their jaws are so strong they go for the neck one bite one snap and that’s it they are perfect creatures it would be a fine ending. all things become other things scales become tails feathers become hair legs become fins leaves become rocks why run from the change death brings. do i want the same thing forever my own cold soul clinging on in the cloud wrinkling drying up fearing the churning that wants me and will come. better to stand and wait as you should and welcome it. people are strange i don’t understand them.

drop away drop away see how i run.

well i may not have seen anything. the cloud still seems to move around me as if it is alive as i walk i feel again how hungry i am if you get this hungry you begin to see things i’m sure i wish i had something to eat perhaps there are bilberries here i have seen bilberries growing around the heather. yes. i drop to my hands and knees and i start looking for berries i can’t see any i crawl steadily all around me in all directions i don’t know where i just keep looking now this is why i was brought here you see there are bilberries here there are dozens of the tiny little round blue berries hiding under the heather. i pick them slowly and steadily with my right hand until my left palm is full of them and then i cram them into my mouth the taste is stunning it is bitter and stunning and free. i keep crawling and i keep picking perhaps six or eight handfuls of these things there is nothing else in my life right now but bilberries i could live forever on bilberries their beauty is so strong.

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.