CHAPTER IV
THE RETURN
The hours seemed very long. A singular desire for silence had fallen upon us. For myself, and it is my thought that the same emotion lay upon Bee, there were a myriad questions upon which idly I would have spoken. Yet of themselves so horrible, so fearsome seemed their import that to voice them would have been frightening beyond endurance.
Thus, we did not speak; save that at first I comforted Bee, clumsily as best I could, until at last she was calmer, smiling at me bravely, suggesting perhaps that I would sleep while she remained on watch.
The clock ticked off its measured passing of the minutes. An hour. Then midnight. The window shade was flapping again with the night wind outside. I rose to close the sash, but Bee checked me.
"He might want to come in that way. You understand, Rob—"
Memory came to me of the half-materialized spectre of that Kansas farmhouse, that apparition so ponderable of substance that it must perforce escape by the opened window. I turned back to my chair.
"Of course, Bee. I had forgotten."
We spoke in hushed tones, as though unseen presences not to be disturbed were around us. Another hour. Throughout it all with half-closed eyes I lay back at physical ease in my chair, regarding the white walls of our little room so empty. We still kept the single dull light; dull, but it was enough to illuminate the solid floor, that starkly empty mattress, the white ceiling, the four walls, closed door at my side, the two windows, one of gently flapping shade. And as musingly I stared the sense of how constricted was my vision grew upon me. I could see a few feet to one blank wall or another, or to the ceiling above, the floor below, but no farther. Yet a while ago, following the retreat of those white apparitions, my sight had penetrated beyond the narrow confines of this room into distances illimitable. And to me then came a vague conception of the vast mystery that lay unseen about us, unseen until peopled by things visible to which our sight might cling.
The realm of unthought things! Yet now I was struggling to think them. The realm of things unseen. Yet I had seen of them some little part. The wonder came to me then, were not perchance, unthought things non-existent until some mind had thought them, thus to bring them into being?
Two o'clock. Then three. Five hours. He had said he might return in five hours. I stirred in my chair, and at once Bee moved to regard me.
"He will be coming, soon," I said softly. "It is five hours, Bee."
"Yes, he will be coming soon," she answered.
Coming soon! Again I strove with tired eyes to strain my vision through those solid walls. He would be coming soon; I would see him, far in the distance which his very presence would open up to me.
And then I saw him! Straight before us. Beyond the wall, with unfathomable distances of emptiness around him. It might have been our light gleaming upon an unnoticed protuberance of the rough plaster of the wall, so small was it; but it was not, for it moved, grew larger, probably coming toward us.
Bee saw it. "He's there! See him, Rob!" Relief in her tone, so full to make it almost tearful; but apprehension as well, for to her as to me came the knowledge that it might not be he.
Breathless we watched; waited; and the white luminosity came forward. Larger, taking form until we both could swear it was the figure of a man. Lower now, beneath the level of our floor. It came, stopped before us almost within the confines of the room.
We were on our feet. Was it Wilton Grant? Was this his tall, spare figure—this luminous, elusive white shape at which I gaped? Did I see his shaggy hair? Was that his brief woven garment? I prayed that my imagination might not be tricking me.
Bee's agonized call rang out. "Will! Is this you, Will?"
We stood together; she clung to me. The figure advanced, stood now quite within our walls. No longer wholly spectral, a cast of green had come to it; a first faint semblance of solidity. It stood motionless; drooping, as though tired and spent. Was it Wilton Grant? It moved again. It advanced, sank into the floor as though sitting down—sitting almost in the center of the mattress, though a foot beneath it. Significant posture! It had come to the mattress from whence it had departed. It was Wilton Grant!
We bent down. Bee was on her knees. Now we could see details, clearly now beyond all possibility of error. Will's drawn face, haggard, with the luminosity every moment fading from it, the lines of opaque human flesh progressively taking form.
He was sitting upright, his hands bracing him against that unseen level below us. Then one of his hands came up, queerly as though he were dragging it, and rested on the higher level of the mattress. His eyes, still strangely luminous, were imploring us. And then his voice; a gasp; and a tone thin as air.
"Raise—me! Lift—me up!"
Bee's cry was a horror of self-reproach, and I knew then that she must have neglected the instructions he had given her. We touched him; gripped him gently. Beneath my fingers his half-ponderable flesh seemed to melt so that I scarce dared press against it. We raised him. There was little weight to resist us; but as we held him, the weight grew. Progressively more rapidly; and within my fingers I could feel solidity coming.
Again he gasped, and now in a voice of human-labored accents. "Put me—down. Now—try it, Bee."
We lowered him. The mattress held him. At once he sank back to full length, exhausted, distressed—but uninjured. Bee gave him a restorative to drink. He took it gratefully; and now, quite of human aspect once more, he lay quiet, resting.
Bee's arms went down to him. "Will, you must go to sleep now—then you can tell us—"
"Sleep!" He sat up so abruptly it was startling; more strength had already come to him than I had realized. "Sleep!" He mocked the word; his gaze with feverish intensity alternated between us.
"Bee—Rob, this is no time for talk.... No, I'm all right—quite recovered. Listen to me, both of you. What I have been through—seen, felt—you could never understand unless you experienced it. No time for talk—I must go back!"
A wildness had come to him, but I could see that he was wholly rational for all that; a wildness, born of the ordeal through which he had passed.
"I must go back, at once. The danger impending to our world here—is real—far worse than we had feared. Impending momentarily—I had feared it—but now I know. And I must go back. With you—I want you two with me. You'll go, Bee. Rob, will you go? Will you, Rob?"
A sudden calmness had fallen upon Bee. "I'll go of course," she said quietly.
"Yes, of course. And you, Rob? Will you go with us? We need you."
Would I go? Into the unnameable, the shadows of unthought, unseen realms, to encounter—what? A rush of human fear surged over me; a trembling; a revulsion; a desire to escape, to ward off this horror crowded thus upon me. Would I go? I heard my own voice say strangely:
"Why—why yes, Will, I'll go."
Go! Leave this world!
And my voice was telling them calmly that I would go!