Descent into Hell, Charles Williams [top 100 books to read TXT] 📗

somewhere at some time he had thought he knew similar forms and

they had had names. These had no names, and whether they were or

were not anything, and whether that anything was desirable or

hateful he did not know. He had now no consciousness of himself

as such, for the magical mirrors of Gomorrah had been broken, and

the city itself had been blasted, and he was out beyond it in the

blankness of a living oblivion, tormented by oblivion. The shapes

stretched out beyond him, all half turned away, all rigid and

silent. He was sitting at the end, looking up an avenue of

nothingness, and the little flames licked his soul, but they did

not now come from without, for they were the power, and the only

power, his dead past had on him; the life, and the only life, of

his soul. There was, at the end of the grand avenue, a bobbing

shape of black and white that hovered there and closed it. As he

saw it there came on him a suspense; he waited for something to

happen. The silence lasted; nothing happened. In that pause

expectancy faded. Presently then the shape went out and he was

drawn, steadily, everlastingly, inward and down through the

bottomless circles of the void.

THE END