Page 67 (1/2)

"Prove your point to me, Memnoch You have to do that!" I called

The steps were getting louder Oh, he was up to his finest tricks

"Remember, you have to make me see it from your point of view! That's what you promised!"

A as collecting, but froreat metropolis seemed empty, frozen, my tomb The snoirled and thickened before the cathedral The towers faded

I heard his voice right beside ht, in now "

Chapter 10

10

WE WERE in the ind and the as a tunnel, but between us there fell a silence in which I could hear my own breath

Memnoch was so close to me, his arm locked around me, that I could see his dark face in profile, and feel the ainst the side of my own face

He was not the Ordinary Man now, but indeed the granite angel, the wings rising out of ainst the force of the wind

As we rose, steadily, without the slightest reference to any sort of gravity, two things became apparent to me at once The first was that ere surrounded by thousands upon thousands of "'individual souls I say souls! What did I see? I saw shapes in the ind, some co me, everywhere, were distinct spiritual entities or individuals, and very faintly I heard their voices¡ªwhispers, cries, and howls¡ª with the wind

The sound couldn't hurt me now, as it had in the prior apparitions, nevertheless I heard this throng as we shot upwards, turning as if on an axis, the tunnel narrowing suddenly so that the souls seeain

The second thing which I instantly realized was that the darkness was fading or being drained utterly froht and even translucent; so were his shapeless unis of the dark Devil were now the legs of a large man In sum, the entire turbid and s crystalline and reflective, but which felt pliant and warm and alive

Words came back to me, snatches of scripture, of visions and prophetic claims and poetry; but there was no time to evaluate, to analyze, to seal into memory

Memnoch spoke to me in a voice that h I heard the familiar accentless speech of the Ordinary Man