CHAPTER X
CAPTURED BY THOUGHTS MALEVOLENT
As the followers of Brutar burst into the globular amphitheatre with shouts of menace, a confusion—a chaos—a panic descended upon the gathering. Everywhere the people were rising to flight; struggling to escape, struggling with each other, aimlessly, unreasonably, with scarce the steady thought to distinguish friend from foe. The stools upon which we had been sitting were overturned; the floor around me, and above me was grey with its surging occupants; they were floating inward, struggling groups of them; the air soon was full of them, like feathers tossed in a breeze. I could feel the breeze now—a turgid motion of that imponderable, invisible fluid for which I have no other name save air; a breeze caused by the fluttering things which were ourselves.
It seemed—as the idea came to me from some dim recess of that other mind which had been mine—it seemed an aimless struggle. I was clutched by a dozen groping hands—pressed by half as many bodies. I saw them—indistinguishable as they rocked against me; and felt them dimly. I fought back, clutched at emptiness; or caught something solid. Pushed it violently away, to see it float off, and feel myself drift backward from the recoil of my blow, the physical futilely struggling with its own tangibility.
A whirling gray shape, definitely outlined in the fashion of a burly man, bore down upon me. It halted, gathered its poise and confronted me. A length away, with empty space between us, it stood motionless. Brutar! Recognition came to me; and I knew then that this was the shape they had termed the first of the ghosts—that spectre we had seen on the bank of the little creek in Vermont. Brutar—he who was leader of these invaders we had come to check. The desire shot through me to attack him now; to kill him.
I plunged; but as though I had leaped into some unseen entangling veil I was halted; pushed backward until again I found myself facing him. He had not moved. With folded arms he stood regarding me. I stared into his eyes. They were glowing, smouldering torches. A wave of something almost tangible was coming from them; and abruptly I knew that it was his thoughts in a wave so ponderable I could not force my body against it. I could feel it, this wave; feel these thoughts, malevolent, commanding, compelling, as they beat against me.
He spoke. "You need not try to move. You cannot, except as I would have you move."
The words seemed inherent to all the space about me; it was almost as though the words themselves were ponderable; but it was the thought of them—his thought of them—which like a net had me entangled. I struggled, if not to advance, then to retreat. I could do neither. The wave had coiled about me. Matter of a tangibility almost equal to that of my own body, it held me enmeshed. Yielding as I fought with it, but holding me as a delicate net will hold a struggling fish.
He spoke again. "Be still—both of you."
Both of us! I became aware that Bee was beside me. Floundering, swept inward toward me, to grip me at last and cling.
"Bee! Bee, dear."
"Rob! It's you! I'm so glad. I tried—I can't get away. I'm entangled—it's all around me. Both of us—we can't get away."
I had no coherent thought remaining, save relief that Bee was with me. I tried to think that I must escape—must kill this Brutar. Like an echo, as though I had shouted them aloud, the thoughts rebounded to beat against my brain with a pain almost physical. I could not think them again. A wall was around me reflecting them back—distorted, agonized echoes, impotent to pass the barrier. And I thought, "I must kill—I—I am glad Bee is with me. Everything is all right—Bee is with me." And yielded, to stand there helplessly clinging to her.
Around us—beyond Brutar's entangling engulfing whirl of thought—I perceived a dim vision of struggling shapes and confused sound. Far away—very far away—far away in distance—in Space; and in Time as well—Why of course—that struggle in the meeting house was in the Past—We were there no longer, either in Space or Time—That struggle in the meeting house had been, but it was not now.—
Bee was still clinging to me. Like submerged swimmers sucked away in an undertow, we swirled within that enveloping thought-wave. Brutar was near us. I could see him—see the grey hovering shape of him. Darkness was everywhere. Solidity gone, save the press of those hostile thoughts and the blessed tangibility of Bee within the hollow of my protecting arm.
A chaos of moving darkness. Or was it that the darkness was immobile and ourselves rushing through it? A chaos of things which I could not see; thoughts which I tried to think, but could not. Thoughts rushing past me; entities invisible, uncapturable.
For what length of Time or Space I do not know, Bee and I whirled onward through that dark mental chaos—imprisoned, with our captor leading us.