The jungle presence by Dick Heine. I believe that if I had been less
fatigued mentally and physically, I should have escaped in some degree the agony of
that terrible night, the night that shall never be forgotten. While I linger
in the flesh, the berman sun had finished its gorching course of the day
and was sinking behind a dust and haze horizon, painting the sky and leaving
very little breeze to cool the tired men and beasts whose day was done.
The quiet of the evening fell upon me as I walked toward my bungalow through
the lanes of thirsty green. I had worked hard that day. The company's
warehouse men would have his hands full to handle the large number of boxes I
had shipped. I rested outside half an hour before going in for a bath
and clean white cloathes. Then, refreshed and cool, I ate the light
supper my Chinese boy Lun Ku had prepared for me. The moon had risen
when I went to the veranda to sit in smoke. I propped my feet
up and faced the wide grove and lawn. The jagged edge of a large
palm leaf hung over the face of the moon, cutting the yellow disk into
triangles. I sat quietly for an hour and enjoyed pipe after pipe. As
I was thinking of retiring, I felt a hot breeze coming from the grove.
The air was hot, oppressive, beyond anything I had ever experienced.
At evening, at once I became uneasy. The nicotine had made me restless,
and a sinking, apprehensive feeling came over me. Then came the hint
of the presence, the evil presence. The realization that I was being watched
filled me with horrid dread. The thought of impending danger, an indescribable something
about me that sought to do me hurt made my heart quake with fear,
a man shaking, sickened, terrorized with fear. The very shame of it
cut me to the quick. I leapt to my feet and dashed into the
house. My forehead was wet with sweat, and my cheeks were pale.
I drank some liquor and paced the room. After three quarters of an hour,
I managed to brace up my nerves a little. I would not yield
to the evil will of the presence without and so determined that I would not
be driven from my own veranda by an imaginary danger. I returned to the
porch and stood by the roof post. The hot wave still veiled, and
I felt my nervousness returning. Then, as I looked into the moonlit grove,
I heard a sigh very near me, but in front, behind,
or where, I could not tell, only near. A moment later,
there came to my nostrils a peculiar smell, a foul scent from the far
hung tangles of rotting vegetation. I stood still and thought I saw in the
air before my face two little green sparks of light, shining with a brilliance
of polished diamonds. My strength came. I had seen something material and feared
no longer. The sweat cooled, I passed my hands before my face,
and the lights were gone. I felt that I had met and conquered a
foe, half material and perhaps half illusion. I could retire and sleep in
peace. Lun Ku slept in the rear of the bungalow and had gone to
bed when I went in the second time. My room was in front,
with a window opening to the porch. I found the room cooler with the
windows closed, as it barred the hot breeze for fifteen minutes. I deliberated
with myself about the needle. I ended by using it. I shot it
home pitilessly, and my pierced muscle quivered under the thrust. There were many
little marks on my arms. I felt ashamed. But the sleep, the
RESTful oblivion, could anything be sweeter? Before the drug had begun to work,
I fastened the room up tight and lay down. It was close,
of course, But why should I mind that I should sleep? My breath
came deep and long, falling through spain, weightless and devoid of reason.
A million miles that's not far to fall ten times a million miles I fell.
I fell the stars and planets but sparks of light, and I myself
only a small golden pin head. What is myself? The river was deep,
the grass was green. I am taller than he is. His mouth
is funny, his eyes are green, They are diamonds. What makes him
move his head? So he wheezes? He sighs. That's old, mother
Hubbard. That spider works, sand, salt water, blue rainbow colors?
What senseless? And falling through space? What is space? It all happened
in a fraction of a second. Crazy nothings distractions of a tortured brain.
Was I dreaming? Am I dreaming? Am I dreaming? Something seems awfully
heavy? Hot, oppressive, magnetic. It's not heavy near my face.
It has no weight on my face, but down on my legs. The
weight is terrible. What makes it so heavy? The coverings are not pulled
over me? Spending months in a moment, decades in a second. I
broke the spell and became conscious. This state constituted only a few perceptions.
My eyes were closed. I was myself resting where I always rested, in
space. For I am space, the beginning and the ending of space.
I was somewhere. There was an evil presence. The hot presence there hovered
over me, the hint of danger, not now, but in. If
I knew what the danger was, I might resist. The weight of the
hint bored down upon my upper body, a spiritual weight with a crushing force.
The heavy material weight on my abdomen and legs was nothing compared to it.
The greater the power of evil, the heavier was its atmosphere. I
had thought that this idea of crushing weight had been part of the dream,
but consciousness proved it to be real. I began to be more aware of
my body. My hands were folded across my chest and suffered from the pressure.
My eyes would not open. There seemed to be a power above me
that kept them closed, and I did not want to open them. I
felt that when they did open. I felt that when they did open,
I would lose the poise of my high strung nerves. The sweat steeped from
my skin. My forehead felt as if the most powerful magnet in existence were
trying to draw out my brains. If I opened my eyes, the magnet
would get in its work. Then it occurred to me that perhaps I had
seemingly died, been buried, alive, come to life again, and that
the heaviness torturing me was the foul air of the coffin. I had no
record of time. Suddenly I felt the veil of weight beginning to lift.
My eyelids twitched they would open. Unable to resist, I opened my eyes
wide. Apparently I was in my room. The moonlight came in wan swords
through the slits and the blinds. There was barely enough light to make objects
perceptible. I heard a faint sigh, though somewhat louder than the one I
had heard on the veranda. Then there came the jungle odor, that putrid
breath from distant wilds. Turning my eyes upward, I perceived the cause of
my terror. There, with its expanded neck and devilish head, poised in
a curve within six inches of my face, its eyes staring straight into the
depth of mine, its body coiled on my lower limbs, was the horror
of creation, the giant cobra di Capello. Somehow, a strange calm came
over me, and I looked away from the snake. Then I closed my
eyes and accepted darkness and death. It seemed that I waited hours for the
blow. If I made a movement, perhaps it would come. I decided
to end the agony by moving. Just as I felt the muscles respond for
the movement of my legs, I changed my mind. What little reason I
had left, I would try thought. I thought of Coo. If he
were asleep, I could not wake him by sound, but perhaps I could
by thought. I turned on the full current. Coo Coo, Coo,
Coo coo A hundred times. I thought his name and blessed his yellow skin.
After what seemed an interminable period, I heard a light footfall somewhere.
I opened my eyes. A silent flash streamed toward me from the other side
of the room, near the hall door. The snake lifted its coils from
my lower limbs, its oppressive magnetism from my upper body, and with a
mighty leap, collected its length in a writhing mass upon the bedroom floor.
Coo had risked my life by piercing the snake's head with a silence bullet,
just a fraction of a second before it was to have struck. The leap
from the bed was aided by the tense muscles prepared for the blow at me.
I sprang from the bed and switched on the light. Loon. Coup
stood with pistol trained on the now harmless head, and the reptile's reflex action
thrashed its tail about the floor. How did you know, Cou, I
asked, Hot breeze died down, night, cool off me feelum dwarf and
wakey. Hear something in hall? See snaky haunt? Long time for gun?
Then shoot? And Ku smiled calm and collected, as is ever his
kind. I looked into the mirror to attest the agony I had suffered.
I saw that my eyebrows stood straight out from the skin, and my forehead
was speed with little beads of sweated blood. The End of the Jungle Presence
by Dick Heine