Chapter 12In the Darkness

"We came out of the Palace while the sun was still above the horizon. I was determined to reach the White Sphinx early the next morning, and before it got dark, I planned to push through the woods that had stopped me on my last trip."

My idea was to get as far as I could that night, then build a fire and sleep safely in its light. So, as we walked, I gathered any sticks or dried grass I saw, and soon my arms were full of it. Carrying all that stuff made our progress slower than I’d hoped, and besides, Weena was tired.

I was getting sleepy too, so it was completely dark when we reached the woods. Weena would have stopped at the edge of the wooded hill, afraid of the darkness ahead, but a weird feeling that something bad was about to happen - a warning I should have heeded - pushed me forward.

"I hadn't slept in a night and two days, and I was feverish and cranky. I could feel sleep coming on, and I felt like the Morlocks were coming too. "While we paused, hidden among the black bushes behind us, I saw three figures crouching in the dimness.

There was scrub and long grass everywhere, and I didn’t feel safe from them sneaking up on us. I figured the forest was less than a mile across. If we could get through it to the bare hillside, I thought, that would be a much safer place to rest.

I thought I could use my matches and camphor to keep our path lit through the woods. But it was clear that if I was going to light matches with my hands, I’d have to drop my firewood, so, a little reluctantly, I put it down. Then I had this idea to surprise our friends behind by lighting it.

"I would soon realize how stupid that was, but at the time, it seemed like a clever way to cover our retreat. "I don’t know if you’ve ever thought about how rare fire must be without people around and in a mild climate.

The sun’s heat is rarely strong enough to burn, even when it’s focused by dewdrops, like it sometimes is in more tropical areas. Lightning might blast and char things, but it rarely starts a big fire. Decaying plants might smolder with the heat of their breakdown, but that rarely creates flame.

"And in this world, the skill of making fire had been lost. The red tongues licking up my pile of wood were a completely new and strange thing to Weena. "She wanted to run to it and play with it. I’m sure she would have jumped into it if I hadn’t stopped her.

But I picked her up, and despite her struggling, boldly plunged into the woods. For a bit, the glow of my fire lit the path.

Looking back a while later, I could see through the crowded trees that the blaze had spread from my pile of sticks to some nearby bushes, and a curved line of fire was creeping up the grass of the hill. I laughed about that, and turned back to the dark trees ahead.

It was really black, and Weena clung to me tightly, but as my eyes got used to the darkness, there was still enough light for me to avoid the tree trunks. Above us, it was just black, except where a patch of distant blue sky shone down on us now and then.

"I didn’t light any of my matches because I had no free hands. I carried my little one on my left arm, and in my right hand, I held my iron bar."

For a while, all I could hear was the crunch of twigs under my feet, the soft whisper of the breeze, my own breathing, and the pulsing in my ears. Then, I realized there was a pattering sound behind me. I kept going, determined.

The pattering got louder, and then I recognized that weird sound and voices - the ones I’d heard in the Underworld. There were definitely several Morlocks, and they were closing in. In fact, in another minute, I felt a tug on my coat, then something grabbing my arm.

And Weena started shivering really hard, and just froze up. "It was time to light a match. But to do that, I had to put her down."

I did, and while I was digging in my pocket, a struggle started in the darkness around my knees - completely silent on her part, but with those same creepy cooing sounds from the Morlocks. Tiny hands were creeping over my coat and back, even touching my neck. Then, the match scratched and sputtered.

I held it up, and saw the pale backs of the Morlocks scattering through the trees. I quickly grabbed a chunk of camphor from my pocket and got ready to light it when the match went out. Then I looked at Weena.

She was lying there, clutching my feet and completely still, her face pressed against the ground. Suddenly scared, I bent down to her. She barely seemed to be breathing.

"I lit the camphor and dropped it to the ground, and as it split and flared up, pushing back the Morlocks and the shadows, I knelt down and lifted her. The woods behind us seemed full of the rustling and murmuring of a huge crowd! "She seemed to have passed out.

I carefully put her on my shoulder and started moving, and then a horrible thought hit me. While I was messing with my matches and Weena, I’d turned around a bunch of times, and now I had no idea which way to go. I might even be facing back towards the Palace of Green Porcelain.

I broke out in a cold sweat. I had to think fast about what to do. I decided to build a fire and camp out here. I put Weena, still motionless, down on a grassy mound, and while my first chunk of camphor was fading, I started quickly gathering sticks and leaves.

Here and there, out of the darkness, the Morlocks’ eyes glowed like red gems. "The camphor flickered and died. I lit a match, and as I did, two pale shapes that had been approaching Weena darted away."

One was so blinded by the light that he ran straight for me, and I felt his bones crunch under the punch of my fist. He let out a cry of shock, stumbled a bit, and fell down. I lit another piece of camphor and kept gathering wood for my bonfire.

Soon I noticed how dry some of the leaves were above me - it hadn't rained since I arrived on the Time Machine, which had been about a week. So, instead of searching among the trees for fallen branches, I started jumping up and pulling down limbs.

Really quickly, I had a smoky fire of green wood and dry sticks, and I could save my camphor. Then I turned to where Weena lay next to my iron club. I tried everything I could to wake her up, but she lay there like she was dead. I couldn’t even tell if she was breathing.

"Now, the smoke from the fire drifted towards me, and it must have made me really tired all of a sudden. Plus, the smell of camphor was everywhere. My fire wouldnn't need more wood for a while. I felt super drained after all that effort, so I sat down."

The trees were making this low, sleepy sound that I didn’t understand. I just seemed to doze off and wake up. But it was totally dark, and the Morlocks had their hands all over me. Shoving off their clingy fingers, I quickly reached in my pocket for the matches, and - they were gone!

Then they grabbed and squeezed me again. In a second, I knew what had happened. I’d fallen asleep, and my fire had gone out, and a wave of despair washed over me. The forest smelled like burning wood. I was grabbed by the neck, by the hair, by the arms, and pulled down.

It was indescribably awful in the darkness to feel all those soft creatures piled on me. I felt like I was stuck in a huge spider’s web. I was overpowered, and I went down. I felt tiny teeth nipping at my neck. I rolled over, and as I did, my hand bumped against my iron lever. It gave me strength.

"I struggled up, shaking the human rats off me, and, holding the bar short, I pushed where I thought their faces might be. I could feel the soft give of flesh and bone under my blows, and for a moment, I was free. "This crazy, intense feeling that often comes with a tough fight came over me.

I knew that both I and Weena were lost, but I decided the Morlocks were going to pay for their dinner. I stood with my back against a tree, swinging the iron bar in front of me. The whole forest was full of their noises and cries. A minute passed.

Their voices seemed to get higher and more excited, and their movements got faster. But none of them got close enough. I stood glaring into the darkness. Then suddenly, there was hope. What if the Morlocks were scared? And right after that, something really weird happened.

The darkness started to glow. Very faintly, I started to see the Morlocks around me - three battered at my feet - and then I recognized, with total shock, that the others were running, in a nonstop stream, from behind me, and away through the forest in front. And their backs looked red.

As I stood there with my mouth open, I saw a little red spark drift across a gap of starlight between the branches and disappear. And that’s when I understood the smell of burning wood, the sleepy murmur that was now growing into a roaring gust of wind, the red glow, and the Morlocks’ flight.

"Stepping out from behind my tree and looking back, I saw, through the dark trunks of the closer trees, the flames of the burning forest. It was my own fire chasing after me. Then I looked for Weena, but she was gone."

The hissing and crackling behind me, the loud boom as each fresh tree burst into flames, didn’t leave much time to think. My iron bar still gripped, I followed in the Morlocks’ path. It was a close call.

Once the flames crept forward so quickly on my right as I ran that I was outflanked and had to run to the left. But finally, I made it to a small open space, and as I did, a Morlock stumbled towards me, past me, and straight into the fire!

"And now I was about to see the most messed-up and terrifying thing, I think, of everything I’d seen in that future world. The whole place was super bright, like daylight, because of the firelight reflecting everywhere. In the middle was a small hill, topped with a burned-over hawthorn tree."

Beyond that was another section of the burning forest, with flickering flames licking out, completely surrounding the area with a wall of fire. On the hillside were maybe thirty or forty Morlocks, blinded by the light and heat, stumbling around and bumping into each other in their confusion.

At first, I didn’t realize they were blind, and I started swinging my bar at them, totally freaking out, killing one and seriously hurting several more as they approached.

But when I saw one of them reaching around under the hawthorn against the red sky and heard their moans, I knew they were totally helpless and miserable in the glare, so I stopped hitting them.

"But every now and then, one would just come straight at me, sending a jolt of pure terror that made me dodge quickly. One time, the flames died down a bit, and I was worried the creepy creatures would soon be able to see me."

I was thinking about starting a fight by taking out a few of them before that happened, but the fire flared up again, and I stopped myself. I walked around the hill among them, avoiding them, looking for any sign of Weena. But Weena was gone.

"Finally, I sat down on the top of the hill and watched this bizarre, unbelievable group of blind things grope around and make weird noises to each other as the firelight beat down on them."

The smoke twisted and spiraled across the sky, and through the few gaps in that red haze - distant as if they belonged to another universe - shone the tiny stars. Two or three Morlocks bumped into me, and I pushed them away with punches, shaking like crazy as I did.

"For most of that night, I was convinced it was a nightmare. I pinched myself and screamed in a desperate attempt to wake up. I pounded the ground with my hands, stood up, sat back down, and wandered around, only to sit down again. Then I’d rub my eyes and pray to God to let me wake up."

Three times I saw Morlocks lower their heads in what looked like agony and rush into the flames.

"But, at last, above the dying red of the fire, above the swirling clouds of black smoke and the whitened and blackened tree stumps, and the dwindling number of these shadowy creatures, came the white light of day. "I searched again for any sign of Weena, but there was nothing.

It was obvious that they’d left her poor little body in the forest. I can’t even describe how relieved I felt that she’d escaped the awful fate she seemed destined for. As I thought about that, I almost felt like starting a massacre of the helpless freaks around me, but I held myself back.

The hillock, like I said, was like an island in the forest. From the top, I could now make out, through the smoky haze, the Palace of Green Porcelain, and from there, I could get my bearings for the White Sphinx.

And so, leaving the few remaining of these cursed souls still wandering around and moaning as the day got brighter, I tied some grass around my feet and limped across the smoking ashes and among the black stems that still pulsed internally with fire, toward the hiding place of the Time Machine.

I walked slowly, because I was almost exhausted, as well as lame, and I felt a deep sadness over the horrible death of little Weena. It felt like an overwhelming tragedy. Now, in this familiar room, it’s more like the grief of a dream than a real loss.

But that morning it left me completely alone again - terribly alone. I started thinking about this house of mine, about the fireplace, about some of you, and with those thoughts came a longing that was painful.

"But as I walked over the still-warm ashes under the bright morning sky, I made a discovery. I still had a few matches in my jeans pocket. The box must’ve spilled them before it went missing."