Free Herald of the Hidden by Mark Valentine Page A

settled on my flesh. The insects clustered with thickening layers over my eyes and around my mouth, until my whole head must have been a mask of moths. I tore at them, detaching whole chunks, but merely drawing them onto my hands—and others took their place on my face.
    For how long we fought against the glimmering swarm, it is difficult to tell; it may have been only four or five minutes. I buried my head in the dust and the earth. I recall pressing my face with almost grateful force into the rich soil, and the deep, ripe smell that filled my nostrils. But this evasive action alone did not account for our deliverance; for, as if sated on our fear and desperation, the flock rose again and danced off down the Hill, leaving only a few of their kind behind. We scrambled to our feet. I may have uttered a few disgusted oaths by way of relieving my revulsed feelings. But Ralph scarcely paused. He dashed forward through the thicket, filled with a new urgency.
    I followed Ralph as rapidly as I could, blundering through the undergrowth heedlessly, until I saw with relief the clearing at the hill’s summit visible through the last trees of the spinney. With a surge I made for the arc of light that denoted the wood’s end—but as I staggered closer, Ralph stepped out from the shadows, and motioned me to the side. I stared out into the glade.
    The spare, stooped figure of Frederick Bentley stood in the centre of the open space. He was swaying slightly. And he was the fulcrum of a giant white spiral, weaving with bewildering speed in pulsating eddies around him. The first impression was of a swirling mist, whose whirling wisps were caught in some freak gale. But soon shapes emerged too; bones, boulders, bleached tree trunks, pale forms that hinted at animal or even human features. As I watched, I caught glimpses of misshapen faces, mouths ajar, eyes wild, heads lolling. All were spinning in a seething mass around the focal point of the entranced victim. And the maelstrom seemed to get madder and madder, so that I felt sick to see it, and lurched forward. There was a plaintive, thin singing in my ears and I knew that I, too, must join the throng. Through blurred vision I saw the surging circle of lunatic, cavorting creatures rise like a wave over my head, and then suddenly I was amongst them, and my skin seemed to pucker into the pit of my stomach as I was swept into the squirming mummery. I felt guttural grunts heaving from my tongue in a sordid gibbering, and my limbs lurched and leapt like things possessed, and I knew I was losing control of my faculties. All I wanted was to be a part of the amorphous mass; and I felt a fierce, ardent kinship with the frenzied beings around me; bizarre beasts, semi-human figures, sentient manifestations of plant and mineral forms, and some which seemed mockeries of all creation. But something in me summoned up a spasm of resistance. I urged together what rags and scraps of reason were still mine, and flung myself, using the impetus of the giddying orbit, out of and beyond its sway; on all fours I tried to crawl away from its gravitational influence. It was not until I had scrambled to the comparative sanctuary of the trees that, clinging to the trunk of an ash, I was able to turn and face again the white tumult. I saw then that it was shuddering and faltering and disgorging objects like some giant serpent seized by convulsions. And the reason became clear; it had been deprived of its axis. Frederick Bentley was no longer there. A trail of glistening slime stretched from the eye of the spiral upwards to the taut sky, and gradually I saw that it was winding itself away, dissolving into the higher air. Through the empty darkness, I observed Ralph Tyler hunched over a prostrate form. I made my way hesitantly towards him. Frederick Bentley lay sprawled awkwardly.
    ‘Suffering from shock,’ Ralph commented, as I drew near, ‘But otherwise unharmed. Let’s get him home.’
    We stayed at the house in