Night Visions
considerably less than total recall
Kramer stood in the middle of a fairly level piece of ground and watched a group of Druid-like figures, walking in single file, disappear over a low rise. Kramer followed. A soft chant, drifting on the breeze, floated by and Kramer felt good.
The sky was unusually bright and a vivid blue, almost metallic. The air was full of birds, wheeling and diving in the sunlight, large eagle-like birds. Or pteradactyls. Or robins, their shapes appeared to changed as Kramer watched.
He was now at the top of the rise and saw before him a vast purple plain of heather, stretching into the distance. In the dead centre and surrounded by a great throng he could just make out the unmistakeable double concentric rigs that were Stonehenge.
Though not quite.
The stones stood erect, their great lintels perched on top, but were they stone? Again Kramer had trouble deciding. One moment solid granite, the next, unreal, almost liquid, and then more like some gigantic Legoland. Pieces of brightly coloured plastic pressed together thirty feet high. Was this 1500 BC or 1995. Bronze age or new age. 21st century schizoid man.
Kramer moved forward, but the stones, no matter how fast he walked or even ran, always appeared the same distance away. Although Kramer saw them from diffent angles, from high above even, they were always just out of reach.
Then Kramer heard the screeching. Looking up he saw the birds, once benign they now looked evil, eagle-like and mechanical. Each had pin-point eyes. Narrow laser beams, piercing the sky. They swooped down, screaming, and attacked. The figures fled in a blind panic, disappearing into the distance, leaving Kramer very much alone.
The sun fell out of the sky with great haste, to be replaced by an equally bright moon, only now several times bigger than normal. It's craters and seas more prominent but making no face that Kramer could see. Then the sun again, then the moon. Days flashing by in an instance. The stones were ageing, cracks had appeared and their once sharp edges were now crumbling and flaking, turning to dust. Ashes to ashes. Kramer was in their centre. He took a step forward. The ground vibrated as he did, then rippled outwards like a small earthquake with Kramer as the epicentre. The stones toppled and fell, sending up vast clouds of dust and debris, obscuring Kramers view. Then the earth erupted, molten magma spewing high into the atmosphere. Kramer, now on sheer cliff top, watched in awe. It was Krakatoa, Mount St. Helens and Santorini all rolled into one. Armageddon on Salisbury Plain.
To his left Kramer saw a whale leap out of the lava flow. Moby Dick with Ahab still lashed to his back by the harpoon ropes. Ahab, who didn't beckon him to follow, but juggled instead. Juggled with large fuzzy dice, each face bearing the number 27 made up of tiny sequins, each one sewn on by himself.
To his right the British Grand Prix was in mid-race. Fangio vying for the lead with a fur-coated Doris Day, the Deadwood Stage a poor third.
Behind him, the Woodstock Festival. Jimi Hendrix playing "I do like to be beside the seaside" on a childs toy piano was centre stage and Marlon Brando, slim and in his prime, was riding by on a camel, stepping in perfect time to the music.
Tick, tock, tick, tock.
Time passes.
The coal black, sloe black night of Dylan Thomas.
Night and the city.
Night of the hunter.
Night without end.
Amen.
Goodnight Irene, I'll see you in my dreams.
Bogue swirled into the void.
