THE DESTRUCTION OF THE GHOSTS
There came presently a sudden change to this silent battle. For the
purely mental, abruptly was substituted a semblance of physical
struggle. The two mingled. In the Ego-world it would not have been
possible; but here in the Borderland, these bodies of half-material
substance abruptly found themselves capable of it. From physical
immobility there sprang movement. A panic at first; but Brutar quelled
it, organized it into a concerted rush. His mob, his fighters, began
pressing forward in a single direction. The Borderland slope lay well
beneath the ground level of the village overhead; but off to the left
there seemed an area in the outskirts of the town where the slope and
the ground of Earth reached a common level. And Brutar's people were
pressing that way.
They surged forward; were forced back--surging and rebounding as one
would press against a yielding but entangling net. Our lines, and
theirs, and the red tumult of conflict surged with them; bending, but
the whole scene holding its contour. And I saw that very slowly, with
each forward sweep and rebound they were gaining in their direction.
I heard Thone beside me addressing Will. "They will never make it.
They will be too late." He seemed to realize something. "Those people
up there in the town, Will--they must escape! Abandon the town! All of
them escape--now before it's too late!"
Will said, "If we could only communicate with them. Do you suppose we
could?" And Bee eagerly put in, "Let's try. Let Rob and me try. We will
go up there to the level."
They explained it all to me then. Horrible, sinister, shuddering
outcome! Grewsome! Of course, the Earth-people in the town must
escape....
Bee and I together took ourselves up the Borderland slope to the
outskirts of the village where the slope was level with the ground. We
were now half a mile beyond this spectral town which was thronged with
ghostly vehicles and ghostly people staring in wonderment down at the
battle scene.
* * * * *
We came to the common level, stood upon a spectral road with a few
wraiths of houses lining it. There seemed no people here--they were all
crowding the town to gaze at the struggling ghosts directly beneath
them there.
"No one is around here, Bee." But no sooner had I said it than we
saw, standing by a fence nearby, a ghost warily regarding us. A man
in uniform, a State trooper I thought. He appeared, standing there
alone, to have no desire to approach us. But I waved. And Bee waved.
We carefully advanced upon him--carefully, for fear of startling him
into flight. Gesturing, smiling with every effort to appear friendly.
He understood us at last; came to the middle of the road, and there we
joined him.
Fantastic meeting! Ghosts, all of us, standing there in a group,
gesturing. I put out my hand as a friend, and his came to meet it.
Touched it? Had a billion million miles of Space and Eons of Time been
between us we could hardly have been further apart!
But at last we made him understand. An ingenious fellow! He took
a shadowy paper and pencil from his pocket and wrote what he
thought we intended to convey to him; and we read it and nodded and
smiled--grimly, for this was grim business indeed--grim, horrible!
When at last he knew, astonishment, terror was upon him. And he was off
down the road at a run, waving his arms, shouting no doubt, screaming
to everyone his terrible warning....
We rejoined Thone upon the height overlooking the struggle. He
murmured, "I see you were successful. And just in time--this is almost
over now."
The battle lines still held. But what a change was come to our enemies!
There was no mistaking it now--their bodies were materializing. The
purple haze carrying the malignant influence of our fighters, was
forcing their bodies into the Earth-state!...
The town above us, warned by our messenger was emptying.
Vehicles--shadowy moving shapes of cars and wagons--were scurrying out
of it over all the roads. The houses were empty; the roads all thronged
with fugitives on foot. Empty-handed; and families trudging with what
little worldly goods they could carry in their arms. Wagons and cars
piled high with household furnishings hastily rescued. The lines of
pedestrians urged, lashed to greater haste by frightened officials. An
exodus from death into safety....
The end came suddenly, unexpectedly swiftly. Thousands of ghostly
bodies, there beneath the ground of the village abruptly leaping over
the last gap into material being. _In the ground_--the earth, the
rock--the very atoms of these foreign bodies intermingled, blended to
their essence with the atoms of the rock and soil. And suddenly leaping
into solidity....
The scene everywhere seemed to shudder. Its grey details slurred into
a blur, a formless chaos of power unleashed. A soundless rumble; a
sweep of tumbling movement. Upward, with a burst; an infinity of newly
created entities demanding space. Space! Demanding it; heaving upward
over the path of least resistance to find it....
As though, there in the bowels of the earth a pent-up volcano had
suddenly broken forth, the abandoned village heaved into the air; rose,
shattered apart, and fell in a tumbled waste. An earthquake, a very
cataclysm of nature outraged....
A shattered, tumbled mass of wreckage where a moment before there had
been a village.... Fire leaped to the last destruction.... Smoke rolled
up in great spiraling clouds....
And visible, down beneath the ruin, a ring of victorious shimmering
ghosts, standing awed and alone in the empty darkness....