Beast (5 page)

I sat on the cracked chair and breathed deeply until I was calmer. The giant worm was still in there but I tried to let him be. I took the jerry can and went out of the door into the yard. It was as warm and white and silent as it had been for weeks. I went through the gate and down the bank of the combe to the pool where I collected my water. The pool was clear and still and I filled the can from the little trickle of water which became a waterfall when the rains came. I was surprised at how low the stream was.

I went back into the house sat down and drank four or five cups of water. I wasn’t hungry but I thought I should eat. There were a couple of crusts of stale bread next to the sprouting potatoes. I couldn’t be bothered
to get the stove going to cook the potatoes so I just ate the bread. I nearly gagged on it. It didn’t do anything about the itch. I still wanted to explode and take everything here with me. I still had no idea why.

But I had work to do. It didn’t matter how I felt I had work to do. I packed a couple of the books into the rucksack I filled the water bottle I put on my boots and I walked out into the heat. I followed the same path I had followed the day before up the stream and onto the moor over and down again towards the lane. The day before I had turned inward as I walked. I had felt every step I took I had experienced my own motion the warm air upon me everything that I was. Today I had no interest in myself. My only interest now was in the land around me. Still nothing moved still I heard no birds. If anything moved at all then I would see it instantly. But I saw nothing all the way to the church.

Of course there was nothing in the lane. I knew as soon as I arrived that I was wasting my time and I was angry with myself for coming. I had seen an animal. Why would I see it in the same place twice? I stalked up and down the lane impatiently looking for signs but I found nothing. I couldn’t find the prints I had seen yesterday. I was hot and angry. I took out my water bottle and drank some of it. I breathed deeply again.
My chest rose and fell but the itch clung on like a tick.

I kept going. As I had crossed the moor I had made a plan. I would be systematic about this. I was going to find this thing. I walked down the lane for a further half-mile looking for tracks. Then I climbed painfully over one of the hedge banks and followed it up again on the other side of the hedge looking for marks or shit or black hairs or anything at all. I did the same with the hedge on the other side of the lane. Nothing. I fanned out over the fields then and I walked each field on both sides of the lane. At my slow pace it must have taken me a couple of hours to scan the area around the spot where I had seen the thing. I walked around all the fields over the scrub and the sparse heather around the bent trees over the grasses and the plantain. Nothing. No prints no shit no hairs. No sound no sound at all anywhere.

I wanted to go into the church. I wanted to be entombed by the cold stone to get out of this heat to sit in an empty pew and ease myself. I wondered if I could work the anger and irritation out of me and have the old stale air of that place carry it away through the stained glass and out into the whiteness. I wanted to go in but I stayed outside. I had come here to watch. I sat down with my back against the trunk of the ancient
yew in the churchyard. From there I could see out onto the lane to the place where I had seen it and for some way on either side. If it came back here I would not miss it.

The yew must have been centuries old it was hollow at the centre and the wood I was leaning on had been twisted and gnarled by the ages. Its green needles were thick above me its berries scarlet. I drank more water. I said nothing to myself or to the tree or to anyone I could dream of or think about. I just sat and watched the lane and the hedges and the fields and nothing happened for hours or what I thought must have been hours. I had no watch and so time was nothing not even a concept time was nothing and nothing happened. When you sit like this you realise that nothing has its own energy that it moves that nothing can
happen
like an event or an episode. Nothingness extends itself emptiness moves and when you stare into it things happen to you. I sat with my back against the yew and I looked across the churchyard wall over to the lane. Inside me the worm was still coiling though it was moving more sluggishly since I had settled down.

At the end of the hedge where it curled around the corner of the lane and disappeared out of my sight
was a tree. It must have been fairly young it had a thin trunk and its slender angular branches hung over the lane. There were no leaves on it so it was hard for me to tell what it was. Maybe a beech maybe an oak. If you sit looking at anything for long enough then everything else fades from your vision and all you have is what you are staring at. I was staring at a small knot above the biggest branch on this tree. Its trunk was black and it was bare in the white heat and suddenly I saw what terrible things trees are. They sprout up from the Earth they reach out in all directions they reach out for you they will smother you they will never stop growing and dividing and colonising. They are so fecund there is no stopping them. Chop them down burn them they always come back up they stretch to the sky these thin green fingers they are indescribable. They are just waiting there waiting everywhere for us to fall and then they will come back and they will grow over everything they will suck it all in and take it up to the sky in their thin fingers. Their roots will wrap around all that we were and our lives will rot down in their litter and theirs will be a silent Earth of roots and leaves and thin grasping and there will be no place for us in their world at all.

Then I remembered a man who would go out every morning and look at his trees. I didn’t know who he was or where I remembered this from but it felt like a memory and it came to me as I stared across at this tree in the lane. He was an old man he wore a tweed jacket and a flat cap and he planted trees. Perhaps they were fruit trees. I remembered that this man whenever I passed he would be in his garden walking slowly between the trees shuffling between them and inspecting them looking at every leaf turning the blossoms over smelling them sometimes. What goes on in the head of a man who looks at trees like that? He did it for years perhaps he had always done it perhaps he is still there doing it now. What went on in the head of someone who could do that same circuit every day for years forever? Why couldn’t I do that? Who was he that I was not? Today the thought of his circuit the thought of his silent circuit of the trees filled me with horror. How much I hated trees how much I feared things that grew. I was surrounded by trees surrounded by things that grew surrounded by this horrifying green abundance and it all wanted to swallow me and it was so silent so slow it spoke no language I could understand. How I hated it how I hated it and how I wanted to run.

I stopped looking at the tree. I found myself back in the churchyard leaning against the yew but now the church seemed to loom behind me like some presence. Now that I was aware of it I couldn’t put it beyond me I wanted to turn to look at it to make sure it wasn’t moving towards me coming to claim me. Now the church felt like a threat. What if God was a tyrant? The Bible’s God is a tyrant he destroys worlds because people won’t obey him he flies into rages and floods everything he burns down cities he slaughters children he hands down rules which must be obeyed by all and for eternity. He sent his son to die for us and he demands our gratitude for this though we never asked for it he demands that we gather in squat stone buildings and sing his praises if he is not to flood and burn us again. God the Father of all the men who feared their fathers over the centuries all the men who built up his church and who feared their fathers and whose sons feared them.

And outside the church where they go to worship God is god humming in the air god who is the air the unmeasurable and strange thing. This god who is not in books and did not live or die and is not a father or a mother and will not be obeyed and will not be denied. god who is the molecules and the air and the trees
this forcing light this strange light roaring out. Before words before language before thought before speaking everyone must have been able to see this clear white light. Now it is all clouded. But you can make the cloud fall away or it can fall without you and then you can see again what is underneath the trees the soil the ideas the opinions what was always underneath them. The light has nothing for you it makes you no promises. It is in the small things it is in the tiny things we walk over and past the tiny things that run the world and we never see them because we believe we are running it ourselves and we are walking past to lay our claim on it first. The beetles the bacteria the earthworms the centipedes the viruses the mycelium the seeds lying dormant in the soil waiting for us to burn ourselves out. For the meek shall inherit the earth.

I was a stranger here I could see it now I was a foreigner an invader an immigrant and they were turning on me. The trees the hedges the beetles the things that live in the soil they were turning on me hissing at me they wanted me out they wanted me gone. The anger inside me had shifted and now it felt like a fear like a great anxiety. I felt all alone in the world I knew there was nothing here for me nothing at all. A bottle of water a walking stick a pair of boots was all I had between me
and the trees the grass the gods and the gravestones and they all wanted me gone they were coming for me. This was their world and they would take it back they would take it back from me soon there would be no lane here no church no paths I could see the future and in it was nothing but trees nothing but the things living in the trees and in the soil a great silent green orchestra spread across the whole of the world. I had walked out too far. I had walked to this lonely place and now I was surrounded and they would eat me.

I had to leave. I had not seen what I came for but I didn’t want to not now. It was ridiculous it was impossible it was nothing. I raised my stiff body up and I began to walk back up the lane towards the farm. I carried myself across the moor as fast as I could but it was not fast I leaned on my stick and my rhythm was awkward and all across the moor I felt there were things in the heather surrounding me coming for me I was being watched some great force was just behind me shadowing me stalking me and I couldn’t turn and look back. I just kept walking with this fear this anxiety inside me I didn’t know what it was but I walked I had to walk and I didn’t look back.

It was some time in the afternoon when I got back home. The first thing I did was to light a fire. It was
still hot but I wanted a fire. I needed something else in the room with me I needed some other life something else that moved I needed a friend out here alone surrounded. I needed a friend and in the dancing of the flames and the warmth of their movement I had something at least that understood me and that I could speak to.

The next morning was different. I awoke to a sense of trying to hold on. In my sleep I had been moving and trying to hold onto things and there was one more thing to hold onto and I knew that I had to hold onto this because if I couldn’t I would fall and then it was over. I wanted it to be over I wanted to fall because then the struggle would stop and the struggle was so tiring everything was so tiring. But I had to grab onto this thing it was my last chance that was the compulsion I wanted to fall but I had to hang on and I was flying then and I woke.

I lay there staring at the gaps in the roof and remembering. Everything that had happened yesterday seemed ridiculous. It was clearly ridiculous. The fire was out and the room was warm and outside the window was the whiteness the stillness and the silence and what had been happening? There was no fear now and the fear I had felt yesterday seemed so far away
that it was as if someone else had felt it. It was nothing to me. Trees and a church it was nothing to me and there was nothing to feel about it. This morning I felt calm and level and inside my mind I saw a whiteness that matched the colour outside the window. I levered myself out of bed and in my movements as I crossed the room and pulled on my clothes there was a stillness as well. I wasn’t thinking and everything was like crystal. Here I was and out I would go again and that was the way things were and what was there to be afraid of what was there to feel about anything at all?

I sat at the table and poured a mug of water from the jerry can and drank it slowly. This would be my routine now. I would rise when I woke and dress myself and sit and drink a mug of water and look out of the window at the whiteness and everything would be still. And then I would slowly put on my boots and take my stick and pack my small bag and walk out and I would cross the moor and go to the lane and wait for as long as I needed to. I had all time if time was even passing. This would be my routine until I saw it again. What did I want to see and why? I sat and I drank my water and this wasn’t clear to me but it didn’t seem to matter. Not very much seemed to matter. There was
an emptiness all around me and in me. I was sure I cared about a lot of things but I couldn’t think what they were. What was the great work of my life I wondered and was it underway?

It was a quiet day. Every day was a quiet day now. I walked steadily down the track across the stream up and over the moor. I reached the lane with no expectations. All was still. Today I didn’t enter the churchyard instead I sat outside with my back against the stone wall on the grass verge by the track. I took out my bottle of water and I placed it between my legs in front of me. I put my rucksack on the ground next to me and I folded my hands on my lap and I waited.

Everything was benign. I remembered the fear I had felt yesterday. I looked across at the same tree I had been looking at then but I couldn’t imagine how it had stirred those feelings in me. The huge whiteness of the sky curled over me like a dome and seemed to sit with me. Nothing would happen here I knew that now I had known that as soon as I had sat down. Nothing would happen here even I would not happen here. I would only sit in the whiteness with nothing around me. But I felt like I was happy to do that all day and maybe all year. It was so still. Nothing flowed through me or around me. Life was nothing and this was how it
should be I felt as if this was how it should always have been. I would just sit here.