Even if they knew, they wouldn’t understand.
The poetry, you see, was when he moved.
139
He
When I wrote the first version of this story, “jaws” were something that took up space between your neck and nose. While the story has undergone considerable rewriting to bring it to its current state, the central figure hasn’t changed a bit.
In fact, there’s even a nonverbal reference to Him in that notorious novel and movie named after that thing which takes up space between . . . you remember. Our hero, the police chief, is thumbing through several books on sharks. One picture shows a black-and-white photo of four scientists standing together, within one of His jaws.
So while I loved the book and the movie, after researching this story I had to be a bit disappointed in the minnowish size of Mr. Bencbley s main character.
He came out of the abyss and out of the eons, and He didn’t belong. His kind had passed from the world long ago, and it was better thus for the world, for They were of all Nature’s creations the most terrible.
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He
But still He survived, last of His kind, a relic of the time when They had ruled most of this world. He was old, now, terribly old, but with His kind it showed little. He’d stayed to Himself, haunting the hidden kingdom of darkness and pressure. But now, again, something impelled Him upward, something inside the superb engine of Himself drove Him toward the light, something neither He nor anyone could understand.
Two men died. The reason was basic.
The rain had worked itself out and the sun was shining by the time Poplar reached the station. The building was as unspectacular as the simple sign set into the white stucco.