Now the danger was past, he had to make an effort to prevent a delayed reaction of fear and relief. He sat down on the ground and stared after them. In the distance, to the north-west, he could see the pinnacles of red rock on the horizon. Directly south of these lay the burrow. The spiders were drifting directly towards it. And Niall had no possible doubt that this was their objective.
He was flooded with anguish, a sense of being totally overwhelmed by events. He was, after all, little more than a child; his whole life had been spent under the protection of his family. Now, quite suddenly, it seemed that his world had been shattered. The first reaction was a reversion to childhood, a sense of helplessness that threatened to drown him in terror and self-pity. Then something of his new-found manhood reasserted itself. At the same time, he realised it might still be possible to warn his family. Crossing his legs and bowing his head, he sent out an urgent thought message to his mother. He continued to do this for several minutes, until his concentration wavered and he felt mentally exhausted. He tried again, trying to force his mind to be calm, but his sense of urgency made this impossible. He was totally unable to relax into the receptive state of timelessness in which he could establish contact.
It was a long time before he was able to fight off the feeling of weakness induced by dejection. But the increasing heat made him aware that it would be pointless to sit there any longer. Once he began to walk back in the direction of the burrow, he felt better. He also experienced a certain grim pride in the fact that he was indifferent to the heat. He noted the weariness of his body, the sweat that ran down his sides, with a sense of detachment, as if experiencing someone else’s discomfort.
When he came within sight of the organ-pipe cacti, he felt a glow of hope; everything looked normal enough. But while still a hundred yards from the burrow, he knew something was wrong. The large stone and the thorny bush that normally concealed the entrance had been dragged aside; the bush lay ten feet away. Now, suddenly, his misery became so acute that it seemed to burst his chest; it was as sharp as physical pain. He shouted as he ran the last few yards, and his own voice shocked him into a sense of reality.
The body of a man lay upward across the threshold. He could tell it was a man because the naked breast was exposed. For a moment he experienced relief, for the black, swollen face was that of a stranger. Then he recognised the bracelet on the upper arm and knew he was looking at the body of his father. The combination of spider poison and heat had already started the process of decay.
Three oil lamps were still burning. On their last day in the burrow, they had evidently decided that they could afford the extravagance. Baskets containing food and water had been neatly arranged against the wall, and the roll of cloth Niall had brought back from Dira was tied in a bundle. There was no sign of a struggle. The spears stood in their usual place near the door, and a bowl of ant porridge lay, half eaten, on Runa’s bed. If it had not been for the decaying corpse across the threshold, Niall could have believed that the family had gone outside for a moment.
He took an oil lamp and searched the rest of the burrow. There was no one there; even the ants had gone.
He had ceased to feel any emotion. The weight of reality seemed to crush his feelings. Even the corpse of his father seemed too real to arouse a response.
He sat on his bed, staring blankly into space, trying to adjust to this new and empty reality. Then his eyes fell on the bowl of porridge, reminding him that Runa and Mara were probably still alive. This stirred him out of his apathy. He went outside and examined the ground. It was dry and hard, but to his trained eye, the few marks on its dusty surface left no doubt of the direction the spiders had taken. They were headed north-west, towards the sea.
Back in the burrow, he nerved himself to move the corpse, pulling it by its clothing onto his father’s bed. The face was now so bloated that it looked like a monstrous statue, the teeth showing yellow between the black lips. Niall kept his eyes averted from it. He covered Ulf’s body with the cloth from Dira — out of a desire not to look at it rather than any feeling of respect. Then he packed food from the baskets into one of the panniers. He also packed his telescopic spear.
At this point he had no definite plan of action — only a desire to escape his sense of inner desolation by forcing himself to move. If his father’s body had not been there, filling the air with an increasingly nauseating stench of decay, he might have stayed in the burrow indefinitely.
As he left, he dragged the stone across the doorway, then spent half an hour sealing it with smaller rocks. The sun was now directly overhead, but he was indifferent to the heat. His intention was to make sure that the burrow should remain impenetrable to insects. The place that had been their home for the past ten years was now Ulf’s tomb. He wanted his father to sleep undisturbed until his children could return and give him a warrior’s burial.
About the Author
Colin Wilson is one of the most prolific, versatile and popular writers at work today. He was born in Leicester in 1931, and left school at sixteen. After he had spent years working in a wool warehouse, a laboratory, a plastics factory and a coffee bar, his first book The Outsider was published in 1956. It received outstanding critical acclaim and was an immediate bestseller.
Since then he has written many books on philosophy, the occult, crime and sexual deviance, plus a host of successful novels which have won him an international reputation. His work has been translated into Spanish, French, Swedish, Dutch, Japanese, German, Italian, Portuguese, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish and Hebrew.