again.
She paused and looked back just long enough to be sure that Jim was
following her, for he seemed in something of a daze.
Hurrying down the stairs, she heard more lines of Poe’s poem
reverberating in her mind: Hear the loud alarum bells Brazen bells!
What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells She had never been
the kind of woman to whom sprang lines of Verdee appropriate to the
moment. She couldn’t recall quoting a line of poetry or even reading
any other than Louise Tarvohl’s treacle!-since college.
When she reached the window, she scrubbed frantically at another pane
with the palm of her hand, to give them a better view of the spectacle
below. She saw that the light was blood-red again and dimmer, as if
whatever had been rising through the water was now sinking again.
Oh, the bells, bells, bells! What a tale their terror tells It seemed
crazy to be mentally reciting poetry in the midst of these wondrous and
frightening events, but she had never been under such stress before.
Maybe this was the way the mind worked-giddily dredging up
long-forgotten knowledge-when you were about to meet a higher power.
Because that’s just what she felt was about to happen, an encounter with
a higher power, perhaps God but most likely not. She didn’t really
think God lived in a pond, although any minister or priest would
probably tell her that God lived everywhere, in all things. God was
like the eight-hundred-pound gorilla who could live anywhere he wanted.
Just as Jim reached her, the ringing stopped, and the crimson light in
the pond quickly faded. He squeezed in beside her and put his face to
the glass.
They waited.
Two seconds ticked by. Two more.
“No,” she said. “Damn it, I wanted you to see.”
But the ringing did not resume, and the pond remained dark out there in
the steadily dimming twilight. Night would be upon them within a few
minutes.
“What was it?” Jim asked, leaning back from the window.
“Like something in a Spielberg film,” she said excitedly, “rising up out
of the water, from deep under the pond, light throbbing in time with the
bells. I think that’s where the ringing originates, from the thing in
the pond, and somehow it’s transmitted through the walls of the mill.”
“Spielberg film?” He looked puzzled.
She tried to explain: “Wonderful and terrifying, awesome and strange,
scary and damned exciting all at once.”
“You mean like in Close Encounters? Are you talking a starship or
something?”
“Yes. No. I’m not sure. I don’t know. Maybe something weirder than
that.”
“Weirder than a starship?”
Her wonder, and even her fear, subsided in favor of frustration.
She was not accustomed to finding herself at a complete loss for words
to describe things that she had felt or seen. But with this man and the
incomparable experiences in which he became entangled, even her
sophisticated vocabulary and talent for supple phrase-making failed her
miserably.
“Shit, yes!” she said at last. “Weirder than a starship. At least
weirder than the way they show them in the movies.”
“Come on,” he said, ascending the stairs again, “let’s get back up
there.” When she lingered at the window, he returned to her and took
her hand. “It isn’t over yet. I think it’s just beginning. And the
place for us to be is the upper room. I know it’s the place. Come on,
Holly.”
They sat on the inflatable-mattress sleeping bags again.
The lantern cast a pearly-silver glow, whitewashing the yellow-beige
blocks of limestone. In the baglike wicks inside the glass chimney of
the lamp, the gas burned with a faint hiss, so it seemed as if
whispering voices were rising through the floorboards of that high room.
Jim was poised at the apex of his emotional roller coaster, full of
childlike delight and anticipation, and this time Holly was right there
with him.
The light in the pond had terrified her, but it had also touched her in
other ways, sparking deep psychological responses on a primitive
sub-subconscious level, igniting fuses of wonder and hope which were
fizzing-burning unquenchably toward some much-desired explosion of
faith, emotional catharsis.