one of the paintings flew off the wall and crashed to the floor.
By the time he turned on the lamp, threw back the covers, and got out
of bed, Eduardo felt himself being lulled into a trancelike state
similar to the one that had gripped him a month earlier. If he fully
succumbed, he might blink and discover he’d left the house without
being aware of having taken a single step from the bed.
He snatched up the Discman, slipped the headphones over his ears, and
hit the Play button. The music of Wormheart assaulted him.
He suspected that the unearthly throbbing sound operated on a frequency
with a natural hypnotic influence. If so, the trancelike effect might
be countered by blocking the mesmeric sound with sufficient chaotic
noise.
He raised the volume of Wormheart until he could hear neither the bass
throbbing nor the underlying electronic oscillation. He was sure his
eardrums were in danger of bursting, however, with the heavy-metal band
in full shriek, he was able to shrug off the trance before he was
entirely enthralled.
He could still feel the waves of pressure surging over him and see the
effects on objects around him. As he had suspected, however, only the
sound itself elicited a lemming-like response, by blocking it, he was
safe.
After clipping the Discman to his belt, so he wouldn’t have to hold it,
he strapped on the hip holster with the .22 pistol. He retrieved the
shotgun from under the bed, slung it over his shoulder by its field
strap, grabbed the camcorder, and rushed downstairs, outside.
The night was chilly.
The quarter moon gleamed like a silver scimitar.
The light emanating from the cluster of trees and the ground at the
edge of the lower woods was already blood red, no amber in it
whatsoever.
Standing on the front porch, Eduardo taped the eerie luminosity from a
distance. He panned back and forth to get it in perspective to the
landscape.
Then he plunged down the porch steps, hurried across the brown lawn,
and raced into the field. He was afraid that the phenomenon was going
to be of shorter duration than it had been a month before, just as that
second occurrence had been noticeably shorter but more intense than the
first.
He stopped twice in the meadow to tape for a few seconds from different
distances. By the time he halted warily within ten yards of the
uncanny radiance, he wondered if the camcorder was getting anything or
was overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of light.
The heatless fire was fiercely bright, shining through from some other
place or time or dimension.
Pressure waves battered Eduardo. No longer like a crashing storm
surf.
Hard, punishing. Rocking him so forcefully he had to concentrate on
keeping his balance.
Again he was aware of something struggling to be free of constraint,
break loose of confinement, and burst full-born into the world.
The apocalyptic roar of Wormheart was the ideal accompaniment to the
moment, brutal as a sledgehammer yet thrilling, atonal yet compelling,
anthems to animal need, shattering the frustrations of human
limitations, liberating. It was the darkly gleeful music of
doomsday.
The throbbing and the electronic whine must have grown to match the
brilliance of the light and the power of the escalating pressure
waves.
He began to hear them again and was aware of being seduced.
He cranked up the volume on Wormheart.
The sugar and ponderosa pines, previously as still as trees on a
painted stage backdrop, suddenly began to thrash, though no wind had
risen. The air was filled with whirling needles.
The pressure waves grew so fierce that he was pushed backward,
stumbled, fell on his ass. He stopped recording, dropped the video
camera on the ground beside him.
The Discman, clipped to his belt, began to vibrate against his left
hip. A wail of Wormheart guitars escalated into a shrill electronic
shriek that replaced the music and was as painful as jamming nails into
his ears might have been.
Screaming in agony, he stripped off the headphones. Against his hip,
the vibrating Discman was smoking. He tore it loose, threw it to the
ground, scorching his fingers on the hot metal case.