8. Visions

Henry Grey has always felt the approach of a storm as a heaviness of the mind, a metallic taste in the mouth. His spaniel, Emily, would prowl the cottage, barking to be allowed out then freezing on the threshold, retreating back inside with a whimper. He would remain at the door, feeling the expectation in the air. They were days when earth and sky seemed closer together, when his bones felt the tug of the ground. The pressure in his head would only ease at the breaking of the storm, at the release that lightning brought, and with it would come an exhilaration; he would be unable to sit still, would stride out onto the moors, ignoring his housekeeper's tearful premonitions that he would surely be struck by lightning and burned to a crisp. In Germany they sometimes call the stag beetle hausbrenner, house-burner, believing that the beetles carry coals in their powerful jaws, and cause houses to be struck by lightning, an image he had always rather liked. The European plowman beetle was thought to cause thunder by the beating of its wings. As he walked out, there was a part of him that wanted to call the thunder and lightning down, dare it to strike him.

He feels the same now, while his fellow passengers cower in their cabins. A current across his skin, as if every follicle were charged, a breathless excitement that races through his veins at each crack of thunder, each flash of light.

Through his cabin wall he can hear the drone of a repeated prayer. Yuri Petrovich, on his knees, no doubt. The sound is maddening, a discord just on the edge of hearing.

Finally he can bear it no longer. He needs to be moving. He picks up his notebook and pen and flings himself out of his cabin, without really thinking where he is going. A crash of thunder and it feels as though the train is being rocked by angry hands. No, he thinks, no. We are safe in the hands of God. He places his own on the window-sill then snatches them away as a shock runs through them. "Dear Lord." The words spring unbidden to his lips. "Dear Lord, have mercy upon us, keep us safe. Dear Lord, be near me."

Movement outside. Creatures rising from the earth, their carapaces sleek and brown. A class of giant centipede? No, they are not moving on legs, yet it is certainly chitinous, that casing, and from beneath it the creatures appear to be emitting a substance like smoke. He presses his hands to the window, willing the glass and the iron away. They are following the train, moving through the earth as though it were water, moving in a way he has never seen, and he thinks—They are mimicking. He must get it down. Sketches, notes. If they have been observed before, then he is sure they have never been described in print. He runs through classifications in his mind, trying to keep the creatures in sight, but the train is speeding up, as if they are trying to outrun the storm, and he can see them only in glimpses. Another violent shake of the carriage makes him stumble, and the lights flicker. There, count their numbers, watch the way they move, keep your mind on the work. Have they been called up by the storm? Or are they the house-burners of the Wastelands, calling lightning down onto the train? Segmented bodies, he says to himself. Invertebrate. The lights in the carriage go out the moment he enters, but in the lightning flash he sees it. A figure surrounded by light, like a marble angel in a churchyard, as grave and as calm and as still. Ghostly. Just another passenger, goes the rational part of his brain, only elevated by the storm into something supernatural. But this is no human figure, not even the storm can hide that, and he is compelled to reach out a hand to it, he fights against the urge to fall to his knees in reverence.

And then a distant crash, like earth opening and metal and wood splintering all at once, and a shudder goes through the train that sends him to his knees after all. He feels the train's brakes as though his bones are being squeezed, as though there is a pull on his own sinews. Slower and slower, and it will tear the train apart, this agonizing pressure, tear it apart and all of them inside it, and he thinks—At the end we are granted a vision. And he is grateful.