CHAPTER 29
THE NARROW ROAD IN FRONT OF them was red earth free of traffic, except for them. Gaylord could hear the sound of the car wheels and feel the vibration against his closed lids. He shivered at his thoughts. He was lying bound, stretched out on the red earth, his body naked, and slashed like that of some person being sacrificed. Around him danced vicious creatures, carrying sharp thin twigs, slapping and cutting into his torn flesh. Still they continued, jabbing red hot pieces of smoking steel; touching his heart with the first lunge. He saw them far above, coming at him from a sea of blood, dazzled and remote under its red carpet that now covered him. He was cut off from everyone; was being punished. There were laws against desires and loves he longed for, and his love had been forbidden long before it began. This was no dream. He had never felt more sharply aware in all his life. He was almost afraid to open his eyes, and on opening them he cried again silently; the note of despair poignantly within him, because it was only a dream. All his life, as much as he could remember now, seemed to be a time of dreams. He had never seen things clearly, or understood them. The blankness seemed a living, formless thing, like three-dimensional shadows in his brain. He had no idea, or cared less, where they were or what was going to happen. He only knew that he was lost and death would have been welcome. How strange it was that the mind could change in so short a distance, from a bright welcoming hue to this dark, restless, puzzled state. The pain, humiliation inside kept rolling over and over him so that he was almost choked with the feel of it. Blake was his friend, his dearest one. Why had all this happened? What was the reason? There was something more behind all this, something insidious; the nearest thing to evil that he had ever known; but what was it? Whom could he ask? There was no one. No one to whom he
