Night of Light

He walked over to Mary and turned her over.

A cry from the darkness made him jump. He whirled, his gun ready, but saw no one. “Skelder?” he called.

For answer he got another terrible cry, more like an animal’s than a man’s.

The street ran straight for a hundred yards ahead of him, then turned at a right angle. On the corner was a tall building, each of whose six stories overhung the one beneath, making it look like a telescope whose small end was stuck in the ground. Out of its shadows dashed Ralloux, his face twisted in agony. Seeing Carmody, he slowed to a walk.

“Stand to one side, John!” he cried. “You don’ t have to be in it, even if I do. Get out of it! I will take your place! I want to be in it! There’s room for only one, and that space is reserved for me!”

“What the hell are you talking about?” growled Carmody. Warily, he kept his automatic pointed at the monk. No telling what maneuver this chaotic talk was supposed to cover up.

“Hell! I am talking about Hell. Don’t you see that flame, feel it? It burns me when I am in it, and it burns others when I am not in it. Stand to one side, John, and let me relieve you of its pain. It will hold still long enough to consume me entirely, then, as I begin to adjust myself to it, it runs off and I must chase it down, because it settles around some other tortured soul and will not leave him unless I offer to dive into it again. And I do, no matter what the pain.”

“You really are crazy,” said Carmody. “You—“

And then he was screaming, had flung away his gun, was beating at his clothes, was rolling on the ground.

Just as suddenly as it had come, it was gone. He sat up, shaking, sobbing uncontrollably.

“God, I thought I was on fire!”

Ralloux had stepped forward onto the space occupied by Carmody and was standing there with his fists clenched and his eyes roaming desperately as if looking for some escape from his invisible prison. But seeing Carmody walking toward him, he fixed his gaze upon him and said, “Carmody, nobody deserves this, no matter how wicked! Not even you.”

“That’s nice,” replied Carmody, but there was little of the old mocking tone in his voice. He knew now what the monk was suffering from. It was the how that bothered him. How could Ralloux project a subjective hallucination into another person, and make that person feel it as intensely as he did? The only thing he could think of was that the sun’s curious action developed enormously in certain persons their ESP powers, or, if he discounted that, that it could transmit the neural activities of one person to another without direct contact. No mystery in that, certainly; it was within the known limitations of the universe. Radio transmitted sound, in a ma

No, not helpless; he could kill the authors of the emotions, the generators and broadcasters of this power.

“Carmody,” shouted Ralloux, seemingly trying by the loudness of his voice to deafen the pain of the fire, “Carmody, you must understand that I do not have to stand in this flame. No, the flame does not follow me, I follow it and will not allow it to escape. I want to be in Hell.

“But you must not understand by that that I have lost my faith, have rejected my religion, and therefore have been flung headlong into the place where the flames are. No, I believe even more firmly in the teachings of the Church than before! I ca

“Believing absolutely every iota of the Creed, I still refuse to go to my rightful place among the blessed, if such a place was ever reserved for me! No, Carmody, I range myself among the eternally damned, as a protest against divine injustice. If a fraction only are to be spared, or even if things were reversed, and ninety-nine point nine nine nine to the ninety-ninth place souls were to be saved, and one solitary soul were to have Hell all to itself, I should renounce Heaven and stand in the flames with that piteous soul, and I should say, ‘Brother, you are not alone, for I am here with you to eternity or until God relents.’ But you would not hear one word of blasphemy from me, nor one word of pleading for mercy. I should stand and burn until that one soul were freed of its torment and could go to join the ninety-nine point nine nine nine to the ninety-ninth place. I...”

“Raving mad,” said Carmody, but he was not so sure. Though Ralloux’s face was contorted in agony, the look of dissonance, the splitting effect, as of two warring forces, was gone. He now appeared, though in pain, to be at one with himself. Whatever it was that had seemed to tear him apart from within was gone.

Carmody could not think of what it was that could cause the cleavage to vanish, especially now when, under the circumstances, he would have thought it’d be even more stressed. Shrugging, he turned to walk back toward the car. Ralloux yelled something else, something warning yet at the same time entreating. The next second, Carmody felt that terrible searing heat at his back; his clothes seemed to smoke and his flesh gave a silent scream.

He whirled, firing his gun in the general direction of the monk, unable to see him because of the glare of flame.

Suddenly, the dazzling light and the scorching heat were whisked away. Carmody blinked, readjusting his eyes to the dim purple, looking for Ralloux’s body, thinking that the hallucination must have died with the projector of it. But there was only one corpse, Mary’s.

Down the street, something black-looking slipped around the corner. A scream drifted back. Ralloux in hot pursuit of his torture and justification.

“Let him go,” said Carmody, “as long as he takes the flame with him.” But, he thought, it was the flame that was dragging the monk after it.

Now that Mary was dead, it was time to determine for himself something about which he’d wondered very much.

It took him a little while. He had to get out of the car’s toolbox a hammer and a dull chisel-like instrument that was probably used to pry the hub cap and the tire from the wheel. With these he managed to split her skull open. Putting the tools down, he picked up the flashlight and on his knees bent over close to the open cranium, holding his coat over him to give some cover for the beam. He pressed the light’s button, shining it straight into the hole, his face close as possible to the brain. It was not, he knew, that he would be able to distinguish between a man’s brain, his, and a woman’s brain, Mary’s. But he was curious to see if she did have a brain or if, perhaps, there was just a large knot of nerves, a nexus for the telepathic orders that he gave it. If her life and her behavior were somehow dependent upon the workings of his own unconscious, then...

The light sprang into being.

There was no brain that he could see. Just what it was he had no time then to determine, only time to see a coiled shape, glittering red eyes, a gaping white-fanged mouth, and then a blur as it struck.

He fell back, the light falling from his hand and rolling away, its beam shining out into the night. He didn’t care or even think about it, for his face had begun puffing up at once. It was like a balloon, swelling as if air were being pumped into it at a very fast rate. And at the same time, an intense pain spread from it, ran down his neck and into his veins. Fire invaded his body, spreading through him as if his blood were turning into molten silver.