صدای جانور

CHAPTER FIVETEEN

Voice of the Beast

From where I am now, the rivers are silver snakes. The fields are green squares and the trees are like small flowers. Below me, your world is just a map. I see the sheep - they are the size of stones on a beach.

They are dirty and grey against the snow that still lies in the fields. The woods on the side of the hill are black as the night. A thin line of smoke rises from a house at the bottom of the hill, My hill.

Two women come out of the house. They look like toy people. They get into their toy car and I hear it start, It sounds like an angry fly.

Shall I call to them? Just for fun? Just to see, even from here, if she is still afraid? I can see very well, you know. I have the eyes of a bird that kills.

So what happened to me, you may ask?

Do you remember what I said? No, probably not. I’ll tell you again.

‘There is nothing you can do to escape from us. You may think you can kill us with your silver bullets. But you cannot.’

Well, yes, OK, the farmer did hit me with his silver bullet. Then my body became a stone - one of the stones that the farmer passed, in fact, as he searched for me.

If you think this sounds impossible, look carefully at the large stones that sit on hills in wild places. Look for the eyes and faces of the stones. Ask yourself what lies locked inside them.

I returned for a short time to the world of darkness and the undead. But as I have told you, I will always need the blood of living things. I will always need to move into your world. I cannot stay away. Bad luck for you.

‘We just move from one body to another, from one place to another.’

This time, I’m tired. You cannot possibly understand how tired it makes me, time after time, having to find a new hiding place. So, no, I will not go again around the earth. I will stay here among these woods and fields.

Now I am one of the red kites that fly over the Welsh hills. One of those birds that look for animals to kill and eat. This is good. From where I am I can see everything.

It is true that my plan did not work as I wanted. She was stronger than I thought. She escaped from me when I thought she was mine. I made a mistake. My plan was not careful enough.

But there is something she does not yet know. And I will wait now for that something to happen.

Wait? What does that mean? That time passes? You people, I feel sorry for you. You talk of beginnings and endings. But the beginning and the end of the world are beyond your understanding. You are too stupid. Don’t you know that the beginning is still happening?

Those sounds that come from beyond the stars, that your scientists pick up on their radios - they think those sounds will show them how the world began. Actually, they are the last sounds of a timeless, lazy laugh. Your world is a great and terrible joke.

And those strange animals that people talk of- the Loch Ness Monster in Scotland, the Yeti in the Himalayas, the Mono Grande in Brazil, the Chupacabras in Mexico, the Volkodlak in Central Europe - what are they? They are children of the darkness. They are part of the joke. They carry messages from the joker.

Sorry, I am forgetting. What was I going to say? You are waiting to know, aren’t you? All right then, because you ask, I’ll tell you.

She will have a child soon. When she looks through her camera at her baby, she will see that I am the father. For the camera does not lie, but shows the world as it really is. With her camera, she sees things that her eyes cannot see.

And I promise by my own father, Lykaon, who killed a child and gave it to the god, Zeus, to eat, that I will return to take what is mine.