The walls were built of large blocks of sandstone. I had visited several Neolithic tombs, in Carnac, in Orkney, and on Salisbury Plain. This gave the same sense of age, of a time long past. What I hadn't expected, what was completely different, was the overwhelming feeling that this place was in use. The walls ran damp and there was a salt tang in the air, but there was no sign of moss or lichen on the walls, only the damp, glistening stone.
I pressed on. By shining the light downwards, I could see the barefoot prints which Sandra had made on her descent. I had no choice but to follow.
The path kept going down, deeper and deeper, and the air was getting colder and damper. I judged that I must be under the sea by now and the thought of all that water above added an extra worry line to my already furrowed brow. At least the passage hadn't diverged.
I was so busy concentrating on the way ahead that I stumbled when my foot didn't meet the expected step and the path leveled out.
I was in some sort of chamber. It was hexagonal in shape, about ten yards across, and there was an entrance in every wall. My feet were wet. That was what I was thinking. It's funny how your mind gives you something else to think about at times of stress.
The thing I was trying to ignore was lying on a slab in the centre of the room. The slab was a pale green marble of a kind I had never seen and she was lying on it with her knees raised in the air as if on an operating table.
Between her legs something moved-something grey and green and warty and hideous. It slithered and crawled, and I could see that it was inside her, was copulating with her.
I think I went slightly mad then. I remember grasping the slimy body, almost dropping it as its small wizened face turned towards me, a face lined with age and infinitely deep in its evil. Even as I looked, the life went out of the eyes and the puny head bent in death, one last smile playing on its lips.
I remember dashing the body again and again against the wall but I don't remember tearing it and mashing it. I must have done it, though, for when I moved towards my wife I had the slimy remains of it all over my free hand and its juices coated my feet and ankles.
She was alive. I thanked God for that as I cradled her in my arms. She seemed to be in a stupor, but when I stood her upright, I found that she was able to walk.
I dragged her unyielding body along, grateful that she seemed to be capable of walking. I had one last look around the chamber before we headed for the stairs. The pieces of the creature I had dismembered were bubbling and frothing in a puddle of bloody ooze.
I fled.
After only twenty or so steps, I felt her stiffen beside me and then she began to pull me back as she tried to go down once more.
I am not proud of my next action. I hit her hard across the chin and she fell into my arms. I carried her up the stairs. Quite how I managed it without dropping the torch I am not too sure, and how long it took us I will never know.
Finally we emerged into the cold night air. I laid her on the grass beyond the railings and tried to tumble the rocks over the passage. I had just covered the entrance when the screaming began.
'The baby. Oh God. It's coming. It's coming.'
I don't remember much of the next half hour, only fragments-driving like a maniac as she sobbed quietly behind me, the sudden light in the deer's eyes just before the car hit it dead on, smashing the car's headlights into a million tinkling fragments.
I remember the small twinkling lights in the black distance as I just managed to avoid the cliff edge and, finally, the iron gate on the path which I almost fell over as the doctor came towards me and I collapsed into a faint.
I have a vague memory of being put in an armchair and practically force-fed whiskey as my wife was carried upstairs and the doctor called for some help, but my legs wouldn't move and my arms were heavy and sleep called me back again.
I dreamed hot lurid fantasies of violence and fire, of rape and bloodletting, and of a cold black fury which carried all before it. I woke from screams into screams.
My legs pushed me out of the chair and towards the door long before my brain was fully awake and I was halfway up the stairs before I recognised the voice behind the screaming. I reached the door just as the screams stopped.
Early morning sunlight was streaming into the room, lighting a scene which will be forever etched into my memory.
The doctor is standing off to one side, his left hand covering his mouth, his right clutching his chest as if to keep his heart in.
An old woman is lying across the bed in a dead faint, her grey wisps of hair mingled with the blood from my wife's legs.
My wife is lying there, throat muscles straining, mouth open in a long soundless scream which refuses to come, her gaze fixed on the shape writhing on the carpet, ignoring the blood flowing from her, ignoring the woman across her legs, all else immaterial to her pain at the sight of our child. And there on the floor lies our future, burning golden in the first rays of the sun, being cleansed in the purifying light of the new day, my son.
The last thing I see before darkness takes me away for a long time is the face, the small wizened features and the age-old eyes, the red mouth which squeals at me as I bring my foot down, hard, and all the members of my family scream in unison.
DO YOU KNOW ME YET?
It all started with a story. You know the one I mean, don't you, Doctor?
Of course you do. You know everything. You smile and nod and write down little words on your paper and then go home at the end of the day, safe in the knowledge that I'm the crazy one and you're normal.
But let me tell you something. These walls work both ways. They not only keep people in, they keep you 'normal' people out. Except you have a key, don't you? You can come and go anytime you want. Just like my ideas. They come and go anytime I want.
I know what you just wrote. 'Episodic paranoia?' With a question mark. Where's your smile now, doctor? Try to hide it under that bald head of yours, it won't do any good. I can read thoughts. That's why I'm here. That's why they put me here.
Except they're the crazy ones. See, they can read thoughts, too. Only they do it better than me. And the world calls them 'leading lights' and 'visionaries,' the critics rave about how they 'stare unflinchingly into the darkness.' The editors fight over them, make fools of themselves in their rush to outbid each other. Agents snap like sharks in a bloody sea, hoping to get a piece.
Sorry. I'm getting angry, and my last doctor told me that getting angry is not the path to healing. And I want to be cured. I really do. I want to get outside again. They won't let me have any pencils or pens or other sharp objects, and it's really hard to write novels with crayons. Plus editors won't look at handwritten manuscripts.
Tell about how it started? Again? How many years did you go to school to earn a piece of paper that empowers you to judge me? Ten years of college, just like I thought. Seems like you'd need a good memory to get through all those classes.
But I'll do it. Because I'm a storyteller, and you're the audience. Even if I can read your thoughts and know that you don't believe a word of what I say. At least you're honest, and by that, I mean you don't lie to my face. Not like them.
It started way back then, with my story about the girl with psychokinesis. You don't believe in psychokinesis. But that's okay. It's not what you believe that matters. It's what I believe, and what I know.
I wrote that story in the early 1970's. Well, actually, I didn't get to write it. But I thought about it almost
