The Pit, Pt. 4

I shuddered a little recalling that scene in the light of the flames, that display of my mentor’s magical prowess, and suddenly came back to my senses that I had fallen far past the threshold of knowledge for the pit. This was their world that I was immersed in — The Shadows move, he had said — and well beyond the point of safety. As I saw one or two of the dweller things swimming up — too close now — I reeled myself up, slowly. But instinctively, I raised my right hand up as I did so. I never remembered what happened, but there was a flash, like a tungsten filament that has flared, but the footage has been removed from the strip, and around it the reel had been run in reverse. A pulse of orange, like burning sodium, shot out into the darkness, skipping like a stone, and flashed into the night, like a flare shot out upon the sea, like a particle in its chamber.

That scared them off, and gave me time to carefully ascend and return the dimensions to twenty feet.

(“See?” he had said, looking back toward me from the shadows with a serious frown.)

Now I had learned something — something I only realized when I was back up at the point of safety, and it occurred to me: why does the experience of wonder (or terror) happen mainly in hindsight? For just a brief moment, and what can we do to sustain it?

There had been a kind of boundary that I had crossed down there — a shelf, if you will. The quality of the Darkness had been different, at just about eighty feet, four times the known distance.

I extended my wings, wings of black feathers, just as a precaution this time. They beat gently, and regularly, hardly disturbing the air. Marduk, my mentor, had been seraphic; His wings had been grander, and white as down snow.

(With the eyes that twinkled with the fury of the flames, and Wrath. Why had he perished suddenly, and badly?)

By shelf, I mean that it was as if, by analogy, the type of rock had suddenly changed, from limestone to calcium, but of the darkness itself. I saw it, ringed around me for a split second as I shot out the flare. And I think, peripherally, there may have been a recess, but I’m not sure. Perhaps that is where they live.

But looking up the portal was starting to close. Ah! The sudden drop had been too much for the Tenebre, and now it was destabilized. This didn’t give me much time to complete my work.

With the rapidly closing hole I set my mind upon parceling the space. What I had come down here to do was somehow figure out a way to get that boom up and around the edge of hole. But very quickly I saw that it was closing and so I considered how much time it would take. I knew that pretty soon it would seal up. The cylinder did not narrow as the portal closed; rather, it remained stable and static in its radius. It was not until the hole completely sealed that it was believed cylinder dissipated and who knew what then? An eternal fall into the dead of night? I ascended, flapping my black wings in the diminishing light that reflected off the onyx feathers. I reached the right index finger of my right hand above me to reach through the hole toward the light. The things were circulating at the boundary of the glass: I could see the rainbow ring of the Tenebrae and now the hole was about as wide as the length of my body and growing smaller and smaller so that maybe only two or three of me could fit through now; a look down, that seemingly lasted forever, to the green eyes, that translucent Green in darkness, like some phantom orb glimpsed beneath the frothy whorls of the wake by one looking over starboard side, in the Indian Ocean, in the dead of night, some sea monster perhaps to which only the above bore witness, that kept pace impossibly, and one mesmerized by its vacant stare.

Quickly I was above and outside the hole suspended by the invisible filigree of the apparatus — of the crystal, infinitesimal geometries, and also my wings. I held fast to the wand as Fujita came running.

“All right did something go wrong?”

“I told you to stay back the house! Quickly help me get the boom inside before it shuts completely so we can see if the test has been effective!”

I landed back on solid ground gently. He nodded, understood, got the boom and together we wrestled with it. It was cumbersome like, and metallic with the instruments on the one end. Working together, we inserted it into the darkness as the aperture closed, now only the length of the elf who won off the eels from the river the thing in the rocks!

“It’s got it! Just bit further and then I sit up up hoist it up! I said up up!”

“I’m afraid to break it!” he bellowed.

“Don’t be afraid, it’s our only shot!

It would be our only opportunity to get it into the realm above the rim, as I had mentioned, because it was believed that, as it closed up, the fabric of the equatorial dropped off fast — it became hyperbolic, crushing out the possibility for movement, yet still allowing the boom to take its measurements.

“Is it recording? Did you connect it yes?” I shouted.

“Yes I did!” his eyes were narrowed with concentration; a strange wind had come up and whirled around the portal.

“Good! Good! Now quickly we’ve got to pull it out. That’s got enough data, now, it’s less than that elf’s length, and sealing quickly! We’ve got to pull it through! Let me do it! Just, just like — ”

“Oh it’s fine I can — ”

“No, no let go— ”

“I’ll do it!”

“Stop quibbling!” I said to the young man.

“Are you sure you can do it? You — ”

“Just let me do it! I’ve got my balance — ”

And just at that moment — it was like blinking and I could have sworn I had gotten it out, but I wasn’t sure if I had seen it come out I had seen the hole close over it but I could not be sure if I had actually pulled it out. It was like in a video game where an object or character is not where it’s supposed to be, it gets awkwardly stuck in between boundaries. Some of the faces that make it up vanish, or a man or body vanishes through a hole and all of the faces and planes in virtual reality suddenly vanish or are truncated, and *blink* it is there shivering —

***************************************************

Open my eyes. Such was the meditative trance that allowed me to access the world of pure forms. I sit up from where I have been laying in the center of my room. What time is it? I had been sleeping for a couple hours — that feeling you get when you nap at irregular times, but it was actually the right move and you feel refreshed though foggy.

I looked at my watch. 8 p.m. it was dark out and there was a breeze coming in through the open window. Light breeze, cool air. I hoped that I had been able to get the boom from out of the hole in time. That way nothing would have interfered with it sealing up. I was fairly certain that I had, but it was somewhat troubling.

I went downstairs into the kitchen and began making some toast and tomato soup and I washed my hands in the sink in front of the bay window, which was dark now. The light was on and the light over the stove, too. Well this had been another excellent session and such was the progression of dream yoga, that I had discovered that other lifetime, that other existence, repeatedly made contact and found my teacher Marduk and my student Fujita — in the realm of pure forms, where light and Shadow operated in the balance of the game black and white.

I could smell the dish detergent that I used as soap to wash my hands. It made me ill. I Saw my reflection briefly in the dark glass and then the metal of the sink and then I froze. There was a tremendous Shadow presence lurking in the recesses of the hallway behind me, near the door to the vestibule that was the laundry room. Again that feeling like only registering a Fall seconds after it has happened, as a surge that went through your entire body. In the recognition that something huge like a Shadow Bear was there. And like a bear, this thing was potentially very dangerous. If it had stayed in the Dreamworld then I could have dealt with it but here it was a different story. Those are the brotherhood of The Shadow, its blind, mechanical, extreme negativity was condemned to burn itself out somehow. It manifested in this plane and came through as if by a dream, like the Spirit whisked away by the whispers on the verge of wakefulness, those times, those Bardos, in which one was more susceptible to demonic contamination and influence.

I was able to back away (it was as if it were looming behind me as I faced the black window over the sink, a kind of gigantic shade cast on the basement door), passing backwards-ish between the folding card table that we used as the kitchen table (the one covered with a vibrant poinsettia patterns under plastic, with two wrought iron cravats with a tea kettle design), quickly made as if I remembered to look for something in the fridge, only half-looked (maybe a Kool Aid, some lettuce? a piece of chee — ) no i was good. And then shut the fridge door completely, hung right then quickly left out of the kitchen and went directly up the dark stairway, then, believing myself potentially free, not looking, hooked around the stairs to the right, past the bath, and into my room.

Inside, I quickly drew a circle in some chalk on the center of the floor and created a pentagram inside of it. I arranged five candles on each of the points and struck a match, lit them. Then consulted the cards. I could hear it stalking up the hallway, but the door was locked, not that this would normally stop them, but I was now in the circle. I said the magic word, “Vecchio,” and like that a wind came through the open window, making the candles flicker and I could hear it scratching on the other side.

Was it always like this? I wondered.

This universe that was all in a rage, nothing but an eternal Raging, I pondered. A fury, a maelstrom; my heart like a stone outcropping being lashed by the tide, one half of a whole, clinging to consciousness while the seas of time eroded. Cold, relentless, spray.

Or massive waves crashing down, beating down upon land. And then all rivers falling in a wide, gaping open space — the heavens are those raging waters, and the stars all the mist emerging from the pit. That’s all reality is, a raging against the Void.

I can sleep well tonight because the spell worked. As soon as I had uttered the incantation the thing behind the door in the hall beyond fell silent.

The thing about it was that if the shade had gotten hold of me — I’ll put it this way: if you’re in the wilderness and you encounter a bobcat or mountain lion it’s best to make yourself appear as fearsome and large as possible. You should raise your bag or your jacket behind your head, raise your arms up and start screaming and throwing things. But if you encounter bear you should make yourself as small as possible. This is as it was with The Shadow, a kind of monstrous Juggernaut from beyond, so to speak, and so if it had gotten to me in the brief span of my passage through the hallway then the only thing to do would be to crouch down, ball oneself up, hope they would not attack the vitals. I can only imagine the sound of teeth scraping across the skull, like nails being raked across slate, a cacophony of a screeching nails.

Now I remembered:

When I dropped, I realized what I had to do and told the boy to leave.

Then, taking a deep breath and using as intuition the technique that my mother had shewn me, without thinking swung myself upside down — and now the whole a portal to the familiar world lay beneath me and above me The Vault of Emptiness. Indeed I saw the staring eyes, whereby I knew they might attack, but they did not; and instead received, descending from on high, from ‘above’, almost imperceptible at first, the slow-moving spirit ball, like bright White-hot tungsten element, star descending into my outstretched —