The Risen

He’s on the night train, worried because there’s no one else on the train with him. He goes to a window and is amazed to see the moon is quite green, and the train has come out of a narrow stone tunnel and is crossing over the sea. He wonders how it knows where to go, presuming it must be following tracks under the water, old roads of remote antiquity, ruined, but still partially intact on the floor of the sea. He feels a sense of relief being able to imagine the structure, the pattern of the ruined city beneath the sea.

The train is passing a narrow peninsula of land, and on sudden impulse he pulls the communication cord and the train grinds to a halt. He grabs his briefcase and jumps down, not wanting to be caught for pulling the cord. But he finds himself in a very old station, the walls of which are made of columns which seem to be real trees. Surely he’s reading it wrongly; it’s a forest? Yes, he knows now! He’s in a clearing surrounded by tall, closely planted trees. Suddenly he notices a solitary tree in the centre of the clearing stripped of most of its branches. The whole of the top of the tree has been sliced off, perhaps struck by lightning, and he senses it is used for some bizarre purpose. He starts to feel uneasy, hearing a sound like an amplified heartbeat, slow and rhythmic, and voices singing some kind of native chant. The moon suddenly rises above the top of the trees and illuminates the clearing. Something is about to begin... where is she?

The leaves on the trees have signs on them, hieroglyphic fragments of a sacred language or maybe some kind of computer code. He looks more carefully at them and sees they are changing constantly. On each leaf is an eye. He looks at other trees, and every single leaf has an eye on it... watching him, knowing him, seeking him out... like thousands of peacock feathers. He starts to panic. He’s being watched, not so much by people but by nature herself, as if he, the scientist, has ceased to be the observer; he is now under observation. The sensation of knowing that every object in the world around him is aware of his presence fills him with a terrible anguish, a feeling of dread and guilt, because he knows it’s something he’s never noticed before, never acknowledged, that the world of objects might be aware of us, in their way, as we are of them, in our way... and he might be as lonely... wanting to be loved.

But he senses danger. If he can remain as motionless as the tree, the lightning-struck tree, his presence might not be detected. He tries to think that he is the tree, but suddenly he knows it’s too late to try such a ploy, the voices are getting louder. He hears the leaves rustling as if from a huge wind. Suddenly he’s gripped roughly from behind and before he can see who has pinioned him, someone wraps a blindfold round his eyes, tightly, and he feels nauseated, because he knows the blindfold is an old bandage covered with blood, and he’s disgusted because it isn’t his own blood.

The chanting and drumbeats have become deafening. He is to be the victim of a sacrificial rite. He struggles to escape but the harder he struggles, the more the arms pull tighter until he knows he must stop or he’ll not be able to breathe. He senses that his fate will be the revenge of the eyes on the leaves; so he decides to go limp, to make them think he is already dead. But then he hears a girl’s voice, very sweet and reassuring: ‘Don’t worry, Matthew, in the beginning was the image... try to imagine a bird, not a word!’ It is a trick, aimed at distracting him from the truth! He knows he must escape, physically, in his body. But then he realises it might have been Meritaten speaking; he hadn’t immediately recognised her voice...

He is even more afraid now, and struggles harder against the invisible arms holding him. He must find Meritaten and ask her if she had given him a secret message. She must tell him the code. He calls her name. Suddenly a rope around his stomach, holding him, snaps, and unexpectedly he is free.

He runs as fast as he can, stumbles into some bushes where he tries to hide, only to discover next to him a body on the ground, covered with a white sheet. On it are strange signs, similar to the ones on the leaves. He can tell from its shape the body has no head. He too is petrified with fear, knowing the head has become stone, and the same process will soon happen to him...

There’s a faint green light in the distance. He senses he can escape through the trees if he goes towards it, so he pushes through them until he hears the sound of a distant train. Is it his? He reaches the edge of another clearing, but to his dismay, sees it is the same clearing as before, and he can hear the voices nearby. He’s come full circle. Spreading the leaves in front of him he sees a grey stone sarcophagus in the centre of the clearing and on it, the body he saw previously, but the sheet has been pulled back, revealing a body cocooned with white bandages. Two women stand next to the sarcophagus, one at each end, dressed elegantly, their faces heavily painted and radiantly beautiful. They are caressing the body, massaging it, preparing it for embalming. They seem happy, moving sensually, as if it is the start of a long slow dance, and he wants to be the body under the sheet, to feel their hands caressing his own tense, terrified body. The erotic purpose in their gentle movements is tangible and painful; must he be prepared to die before he can enjoy those pleasures, submit and become a victim of their power before he can enjoy the full extent of the initiation? He tries to move forward but can’t.

He is still a prisoner, he must not forget, and the fear takes hold again. Perhaps he can think his way out of the predicament by solving a riddle. There’s only one girl; he’s seeing two girls by mistake. He must focus his mind to resolve the problem. The girl on the left is the real and only girl. He can touch her with his right hand. But as he splits, she is separating into two quite distinct parts, slipping out of his control. It’s vitally important to bring the two ‘apparent’ images of the girls into one, but however hard he tries to force his mind to effect the resolution, the girls remain as two girls. This is a serious failure in the test. Once he could do it. The hands still grip him...

One of the girls now starts to dance wildly and seems to be shedding very thin white veils that float in the air before they fall to the ground and the more she dances, the more she seems to be changing colour... all the colours of the rainbow... until she is mostly red. The white veils are covering a scarlet dress that seems to be painted directly onto her naked body, it is so thin, so transparent, and he can see she is caressing herself, her sex, with her middle finger, on which the nail is painted deep crimson. On it is a small sign he cannot make out, something resembling an eye. Swaying, dancing, writhing with pleasure as she touches herself, she violently pulls off the white sheet still partially covering the body, flings it into the air with an ecstatic flourish; but the gesture causes the leaves to panic. There is the terrible hard-edged sound of the north wind, and the branches are buffeted so hard a branch breaks off and falls on the ground near Matthew; it’s not made of wood but crystals; the eyes on the leaves are slowly closing. The trees are struggling harder and harder to tear themselves out by their roots, from apparent rage; he is terrified. Is it his fault?

The other girl, still partially veiled in white, seems to be swept suddenly into the air by the wind and her white veils become wings. In slow motion she alights on top of the body on the stone, and seems to be making love to it, while the other is trying to shield the pair from the terrible wind. Suddenly a tree nearby splits as if struck by lightning and a piercing moonbeam of intense green light penetrates the clearing, illuminating it so brightly he’s almost blinded. The second girl has loosened her hair and it cascades about her like a silver cloak. She too is dancing wildly now, protecting the lovers by drawing the light towards her by the blatant eroticism of her dancing...

Matthew seems free to move now and is alone... but he has become so sexually aroused, he needs desperately to see what is happening between the woman and the body, as if by seeing he can choose to become part of it; or distance himself from it. The two bodies are like two snakes, the one in bandages sloughing off its skin in an erotic metamorphosis. He can see wings emerging, as if to hide where the bodies are touching... and despite knowing he ought to remain hidden, he stands up and shouts out, from excitement, a meaningless jumble of part-words that make no sense at all. But it is a terrible mistake to expose his presence, witnessing the secret scene. He is not an initiate, but a thief of their coveted, secret knowledge.

Someone clasps him from behind again and this time he’s blindfolded and dragged roughly into the clearing. He feels himself being tied to a tree, and he’s sure it’s the tree that stands alone near the cusp of the concave shape of the clearing. He clings to the image of the geometry in his mind, imagining that if he can see the exact shape of the clearing, as if seen from above, he can escape his fate. But the precise image eludes him. His mind is not functioning correctly, as if a switch, on a branch line, has not been activated. The mistake is not trying to see the one scene from two points of view, but if he could stay with the view from one side he would be safe. With both points of view he must rise above them to avoid being split by them... and it is beyond him.

So there’s no escape. He tries to relax his body, bending his head low, going down on his knees, bringing them close to his chest, waiting for the blow that will kill him. Can’t she save him? Where is she, the young girl he could have loved? He hears the sound of wood and stone splintering as if a steel drill had broken into the small railway carriage he is trapped in again... the door with the two copper handles splintering... imagining he is escaping...

...and he woke up, shouting out her name, ‘Mer... it... aten!’

THE RISEN, A HOLOGRAPHIC NOVEL BY PETER WHITEHEAD:

Three experiments that changed the world... A physicist splits a pyramid-shaped diamond with a jade-green X-ray laser beam. The author, a psycho-pharmacologist, splits his mind with a pyramidine crystal of the smart drug Tiresiamine. A miniature robot penetrates the long narrow shaft above the Queen’s chamber in the Great Pyramid at Giza and reaches the door to the undiscovered hidden temple of initiation. The optic fibre, its laser-beam video-eye, pushes through the flaw at the bottom of the stone portcullis into the chamber, undisturbed for four thousand years. The insight of the falcon-headed man restored.

The shaman reborn.

Three stone pyramids rendered translucent. Is it a mere coincidence that these three events occur during a full lunar eclipse, and, in the mind of Amenhotep (as much a reader of this text as anyone) are one? Three different people in three different places and times, each on his quest for ultimate truth, trapped in the same hypertext and simultaneous instant, proving that on the meta/physical internets of consciousness, time like space is structured holographically. What can holographic time be, other than endless reincarnation?

Or are these holographic dreams merely the perverse sexual fantasies of the insatiable Miss Rosetta Stone as she surfs the internets of myth, magic and madness, in her search for the ultimate sexual trip?

‘A cinematic vision flash-frozen into language, The Risen redefines the occult novel as something millennial, apocalyptic, unafraid to speak of sex or drugs or the extremities of reason that are central to the magical experience. Cracking with unique energies and luminous ideas, The Risen whispers from its crystalline heart in a voice as new as quanta; ancient as the sphinx.’ - Alan Moore

The Risen can be obtained by mail order from Hathor Publishing at Shepherds’ Cottage, Pytchley, Nr. Kettering, Northants., NN14 1EX. The hardback edition is £14.99, the paperback £9.99. Hardback editions of two other books, Nora and... (£12.95) and Pulp Election: The Booker Prize Fix (£12.99) can also be ordered. All three hardbacks can be purchased for £30.00 as a special offer to readers of The Edge. Prices include postage & packing; cheques, etc, should be made payable to ‘Hathor Publishing’.

An extract from Tonite Let’s All Make Love in London, Peter Whitehead’s newest novel, appears in The Edge #2 (new series).