second occurrence had been noticeably shorter but more intense than the
first.
He stopped twice in the meadow to tape for a few seconds from different
distances. By the time he halted warily within ten yards of the
uncanny radiance, he wondered if the camcorder was getting anything or
was overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of light.
The heatless fire was fiercely bright, shining through from some other
place or time or dimension.
Pressure waves battered Eduardo. No longer like a crashing storm
surf.
Hard, punishing. Rocking him so forcefully he had to concentrate on
keeping his balance.
Again he was aware of something struggling to be free of constraint,
break loose of confinement, and burst full-born into the world.
The apocalyptic roar of Wormheart was the ideal accompaniment to the
moment, brutal as a sledgehammer yet thrilling, atonal yet compelling,
anthems to animal need, shattering the frustrations of human
limitations, liberating. It was the darkly gleeful music of
doomsday.
The throbbing and the electronic whine must have grown to match the
brilliance of the light and the power of the escalating pressure
waves.
He began to hear them again and was aware of being seduced.
He cranked up the volume on Wormheart.
The sugar and ponderosa pines, previously as still as trees on a
painted stage backdrop, suddenly began to thrash, though no wind had
risen. The air was filled with whirling needles.
The pressure waves grew so fierce that he was pushed backward,
stumbled, fell on his ass. He stopped recording, dropped the video
camera on the ground beside him.
The Discman, clipped to his belt, began to vibrate against his left
hip. A wail of Wormheart guitars escalated into a shrill electronic
shriek that replaced the music and was as painful as jamming nails into
his ears might have been.
Screaming in agony, he stripped off the headphones. Against his hip,
the vibrating Discman was smoking. He tore it loose, threw it to the
ground, scorching his fingers on the hot metal case.
The metronomic throbbing surrounded him, as if he were adrift inside
the beating heart of a leviathan.
Resisting the urge to walk into the light and become part of it
forever, Eduardo struggled to his feet. Shrugged the shotgun off his
shoulder, Blinding light forcing him to squint, serial shock waves
knocking the breath out of him, evergreen boughs churning, a trembling
in the earth, the electronic oscillation like the high-pitched squeal
of a surgeon's bone saw, and the whole night throbbing, the sky and the
earth throbbing as something pushed repeatedly and relentlessly at the
fabric of reality, throbbing, throbbing-Whoooosh.
The new sound was like--but enormously louder than--the gasp of a
vacuum-packed can of coffee or peanuts being opened, air rushing to
fill a void.
