Paul Kingsnorth - Beast

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.