I stopped on the crest of a knoll and got out of the car. Off to the
right lay the beginnings of a vast swampy tract of wilderness, green
and steaming in the early morning air. I had never known of it before,
had no idea of its name or nature, and yet I knew I had been heading
for it ever since I left the museum. Somewhere in its somber depths I
would find the voice that was calling to me.
I looked back the way I had come. I could see for miles. There was
nothing moving on the road but I had the feeling that pursuit was on
its way; there was a prickling at the nape of my neck that could not be
denied. Getting into the car again, I ran it to the edge of the knoll
opposite to the marsh. Stepping out, dragging my Gladstone after me, I
put my shoulder to the car's side and shoved it over. It hurtled down
and crashed into a tree at the bottom. Far beyond it, still shrouded
in the morning mists, was a town. My followers might presume I had
made for it. A primitive stratagem, the car, like the hat in the
alley--primitive, but perhaps effective.
It was wonderful in the swamp. A cool, damp efflux of greenness
emanated from the soggy earth, the watery pools and stretches of
quagmire, the moss-dripping trees and hummocks of sharp-speared coarse
grass. I hung my coat over my arm, swung along lithely, reveling in the
_green_ feel of things and in my own newfound brawn that made the heavy
Gladstone a feather in my hand. Unerringly my feet chose the swiftest,
safest path. I was a beast, with the simple pleasures of a beast,
hunted or not. And always before me sounded the strange and powerful
calling that drew me on and on, a far-wandering wolf returning to his
all-but-forgotten lair.
I had been in the marshland for about half an hour when I heard the
dogs. So far away as to be little more than a whisper in the brain,
their baying chilled my happiness in an instant. Dogs were old
implacable enemies....
I was running through a fen. Miry bog sucked at my naked feet,
stale-smelling sweat covered me, my face was lashed by the thorned
branches of a legion of trees that sprang from the rich muck of the
morass. Hounds gave tongue in a continuous chorus of hate, seemingly
all about me. I ran and ran. Now I could hear the thick shouts of men,
in a language that was foreign to me, though it had almost as many
gutturals and slurrings as my own speech.
I was of a very ancient race in these parts (wherever they were). My
people were classed as vermin, along with the dire wolf and the gray
ape and the last surviving remnants of the hyena tribe. Man hunted us
with his dogs, great vicious brutes with saber fangs.
* * * * *
I burst through a screen of hanging moss and fell into a spongy patch
of swamp. I struggled, miring myself worse than ever. Then the dogs
were upon me, screeching their delight. Men followed them and ringed
the quagmire. Great satisfaction was on their faces as the boldest of
the dogs leaped forward to gash my upthrown arm.
"Haah," exulted their leader, and spat at me. "_Pict_...."
I shook away the horrible and haunting remembrance. I heard the hounds
of the twentieth century, perhaps a little closer than before.
So I had been a Pict! One of the aboriginal British men (or manlike
beings) who are supposed eventually to have bred and merged with Aryan
invaders and thereafter with the Scots. Was this the most ancient of
my racial memories--or were they recollections of former incarnations
of myself, my own individual soul? Whichever they were, and I knew they
were one or the other, was this the eldest of them? Or would my waxing
memory bring forth still earlier pictures?
If the Picts were subhuman, or even utterly nonhuman, and their uncanny
blood had come through the incredible cycle of the centuries to rise
anew in my veins, wouldn't that explain my war with the genus homo?
Surely it would!
I dropped the suitcase for a moment, standing quiet to hear the dogs.
Then I smacked fist into palm and laughed, a grim snarling bark of
merriment. "Pict!" I said aloud. "Pict, by the gods!"
And then, ages after the Picts, the strain had risen again and my
comrades and I had fought mankind in our bitter, blind, malignant
fashion--to be superstitiously regarded as evil spirits, the undead of
the vampire myth.
And, come to think of it, we were probably the origin of the grisly
werewolf illusion, too.
My chest swelled with a strange elated arrogance. This was the reason
I hated the humans, calling them _men_ in the accents of loathing. I
and my people were not of humanity; we were all those harried, despised
and feared creatures in human or nearhuman form, all who had fled down
the years and turned at bay and torn the throats from our would-be
butchers. Sometimes we must have mated with them, infusing our dark
strain into their pale stock. But blood ran in our veins and thoughts
coursed in our brains which were as alien to man as the blood and the
thoughts of tigers. But it is a proud if lonely thing to be a tiger....