Speaker 1: 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