CAPTURED BY THOUGHTS MALEVOLENT
As the followers of Brutar burst into the globular amphitheatre with
shouts of menace, a confusion--a chaos--a panic descended upon the
gathering. Everywhere the people were rising to flight; struggling
to escape, struggling with each other, aimlessly, unreasonably, with
scarce the steady thought to distinguish friend from foe. The stools
upon which we had been sitting were overturned; the floor around me,
and above me was grey with its surging occupants; they were floating
inward, struggling groups of them; the air soon was full of them, like
feathers tossed in a breeze. I could feel the breeze now--a turgid
motion of that imponderable, invisible fluid for which I have no other
name save air; a breeze caused by the fluttering things which were
ourselves.
It seemed--as the idea came to me from some dim recess of that other
mind which had been mine--it seemed an aimless struggle. I was
clutched by a dozen groping hands--pressed by half as many bodies. I
saw them--indistinguishable as they rocked against me; and felt them
dimly. I fought back, clutched at emptiness; or caught something solid.
Pushed it violently away, to see it float off, and feel myself drift
backward from the recoil of my blow, the physical futilely struggling
with its own tangibility.
A whirling gray shape, definitely outlined in the fashion of a burly
man, bore down upon me. It halted, gathered its poise and confronted
me. A length away, with empty space between us, it stood motionless.
Brutar! Recognition came to me; and I knew then that this was the shape
they had termed the first of the ghosts--that spectre we had seen on
the bank of the little creek in Vermont. Brutar--he who was leader of
these invaders we had come to check. The desire shot through me to
attack him now; to kill him.
I plunged; but as though I had leaped into some unseen entangling veil
I was halted; pushed backward until again I found myself facing him. He
had not moved. With folded arms he stood regarding me. I stared into
his eyes. They were glowing, smouldering torches. A wave of something
almost tangible was coming from them; and abruptly I knew that it was
his thoughts in a wave so ponderable I could not force my body against
it. I could feel it, this wave; feel these thoughts, malevolent,
commanding, compelling, as they beat against me.
He spoke. "You need not try to move. You cannot, except as I would have
you move."
The words seemed inherent to all the space about me; it was almost as
though the words themselves were ponderable; but it was the thought
of them--his thought of them--which like a net had me entangled. I
struggled, if not to advance, then to retreat. I could do neither. The
wave had coiled about me. Matter of a tangibility almost equal to that
of my own body, it held me enmeshed. Yielding as I fought with it, but
holding me as a delicate net will hold a struggling fish.
He spoke again. "Be still--both of you."
Both of us! I became aware that Bee was beside me. Floundering, swept
inward toward me, to grip me at last and cling.
"Bee! Bee, dear."
"Rob! It's you! I'm so glad. I tried--I can't get away. I'm
entangled--it's all around me. Both of us--we can't get away."
I had no coherent thought remaining, save relief that Bee was with me.
I tried to think that I must escape--must kill this Brutar. Like an
echo, as though I had shouted them aloud, the thoughts rebounded to
beat against my brain with a pain almost physical. I could not think
them again. A wall was around me reflecting them back--distorted,
agonized echoes, impotent to pass the barrier. And I thought, "I must
kill--I--I am glad Bee is with me. Everything is all right--Bee is with
me." And yielded, to stand there helplessly clinging to her.
Around us--beyond Brutar's entangling engulfing whirl of thought--I
perceived a dim vision of struggling shapes and confused sound. Far
away--very far away--far away in distance--in Space; and in Time as
well--Why of course--that struggle in the meeting house was in the
Past--We were there no longer, either in Space or Time--That struggle
in the meeting house had been, but it was not now.--
Bee was still clinging to me. Like submerged swimmers sucked away in an
undertow, we swirled within that enveloping thought-wave. Brutar was
near us. I could see him--see the grey hovering shape of him. Darkness
was everywhere. Solidity gone, save the press of those hostile thoughts
and the blessed tangibility of Bee within the hollow of my protecting
arm.
A chaos of moving darkness. Or was it that the darkness was immobile
and ourselves rushing through it? A chaos of things which I could not
see; thoughts which I tried to think, but could not. Thoughts rushing
past me; entities invisible, uncapturable.
For what length of Time or Space I do not know, Bee and I whirled
onward through that dark mental chaos--imprisoned, with our captor
leading us.