THE DEVIL YOU KNOW

THE DEVIL YOU KNOW

“There’s a blind spot. I’m sure of it. I’ve checked it out several times. We could be out of here before anybody even realises...”

“What’s with you, Cathal? This constant talk of escape? We have everything we need, right here, man”.

The two brothers were walking back to their home at the end of another day’s toil in the fields of their commune; another day, similar in every way to all others. No stress, no strain, no angst of any kind. Peaceful labour that exercised the body sufficiently to make their evening meal something to really look forward to; the thought of dreamless repose, free of worries, concern of any kind, the end reward for their daily contribution.

There were no radios, TVs, newspapers, books and, therefore, no constant, negative reminders of how better off others were, how one had to aspire to this or that. All removed, at a simple stroke, along with machines of any kind, all unnecessary to sustain life and all of which added to the detritus and contamination that had been destroying the planet.

Religion had been debunked; the worshipping of false idols banned. People, now, had only one artefact to believe in, to devote themselves to: their commune. Just theirs alone; the goings on in other communes was not their concern.

There were no leaders, no hierarchy inside each zone. Life was simple now and it had been this way ever since the war to end all wars. Communes kept to their designated acreage, sufficient to encourage expansion, to allow exploration, combining hills and streams, mountains and rivers, along with forests and, wherever feasible, beaches. But travel outside of one’s own specific communal zone was strictly prohibited. Even the weather was carefully controlled with just enough rain and sunshine as was needed to allow sufficient conditions for the growth of crops; the fear of drought or flooding long since removed.

“Aren’t you curious, Patrick? Just a little?”

“No. I’m happy, man. Content. We want for nothing. I just don’t get how you always want more. You’re never satisfied”.

“This can’t be all there is to life. There has to be more and I just want to know what it is. Is that so bad?”

“You’re talking about the so called Enlightenment Zone; the place that archives all of history. It’s just a rumour, man. Stupid, ignorant hearsay created by people like yourself, dissatisfied with a good and peaceful life. Even if it does exist, how do you know that it wouldn’t be something so awful that you couldn’t stand it. Are you prepared to give your life for a myth?"

For as long as he could remember, this desire for knowledge had consumed Cathal and he could not understand why others did not feel the same. Surely, he thought, this was the very essence of what mankind should strive for, a thirst for information, a hunger for improvement. His brother continued.

“It’s what got humanity into trouble in the first place. Everybody fighting to outdo everybody else. Consumerism is wrong, man. It amounts to nothing more than greed, envy, lust...”

“If you could only hear yourself, Patrick, droning on about how good we have it”.

“But Im right, Cathal. We want for nothing, man. You don’t know what horrors lie out there and why would you want to risk what you have here?”

Cathal did not answer his brother but, silently, he thought: Because I can’t help it. Because, if this is all there is to life, I would rather die. This...this monotonous sameness is unbearable to me.

In his short life, Cathal had explored the acreage of his communal zone in every direction, walking far and wide on his allotted days of rest, over and over. To travel to the extremities of East, West and South, before any barrier was reached, was a day’s strenuous hike but, for many years, when Cathal had struck North, he had never managed to reach the edge of his commune until, one eventful day, when his work roster had dictated that the rest period at the end of one week ran consecutively with that of the next, Cathal had stocked up on food and water and prepared to spend the night outside, determined to make the most of this opportunity and locate the Northern limit.

Such adventurism filled him with a sense of achievement; an excitement that he could not properly articulate. The combination of two rest days was something that occurred only once each quarter but, Cathal was certain that he had discovered a path that led down into a gully that was not as heavily fortified as every other barrier he had ever encountered. Thrilled with this find, he determined to use the very next opportunity to escape this place and, at the very least, satisfy his curiosity. Perhaps he would just find another commune exactly like his own but, even that thought was intoxicating as there was no communication or knowledge sharing allowed between the different zones. Fenced in like this, though only Cathal felt it, they were trapped, prisoners in all but name.

The time had finally arrived when Cathal had forty-eight hours in which to attempt his crossing into the unknown and, having trekked the trail he now knew so well, Cathal slid down the embankment that led to the gully he had identified many months previously. Here, only a chainlink fence separated his communal zone from whatever lay on the opposite side; all other perimeters having consisted of double steel barriers covered entirely in barbed wire. Somehow this particular spot had not been as reinforced and Cathal had brought a spade with him, hoping to burrow underneath the wire; a long shot but, from previous test runs, he was confident that it could be achieved.

Despite only fencing separating him from whatever lay beyond and, though there was still plenty of daylight, nothing could be seen of the other side except a dark mist that seemed to stretch forever in all directions yet not encroach on the communal zone; a mystery that Cathal could not explain as he began digging enthusiastically.

As he had hoped and suspected, after thirty minutes of gouging out the earth, Cathal had created a tunnel under the fence that was big enough to allow him to squeeze through. Reaching back for his rucksack and spade, he was startled to find that he could not pull them after him; an invisible force held them back and, try as he might, he could not succeed.

Annoyed and frustrated, nevertheless, he had no choice other than to surrender his belongings and stood up, for the first time in his life, outside his communal zone, without food or water. He felt naked, exposed, especially as the mist now enshrouded him, damp and cold. Briefly, he felt a surge of fear and considered scrambling back under the fence to the safety of the familiar but he was made of stronger stuff, he knew. This was something that he just had to do so, with a deep breath, he turned and pushed into the darkness and, immediately, felt himself falling, plunging into an unseen crevasse in the soft earth.

It was a trench, he realised, and, amazingly, the mist did not infiltrate to this lower level, hanging like a canopy above him, awaiting his return. With the absence of mist, the darkness, too, hovered above him and Cathal found that he was able to

see.

There were wooden ladders posted at stages along the trench, allowing access, obviously, out of this pit. The trench, it seemed, stretched on and on, meandering serpent like into the distance. Preferring this to the oblivion that lay overhead, Cathal began to walk the trench in a westerly direction, his feet splashing in and out of mud and puddles, occasionally making contact with metal objects that, upon inspection, proved to be some type of headgear. Sometimes, he would encounter notes, pinned to the ladders by sharp objects that resembled kitchen knives only much larger and sturdier looking.

He tried to understand what the notes meant but had never been taught how to read or write, there being no need for literacy within the commune. Often, there would be some personal item attached to a rung, also; a ring or a watch. He was most fascinated by the sharp objects and, several times, attempted to lever one free of its embedded state but no amount of pulling proved successful.

It was as he rounded his first bend in the trench that he came upon the bodies; or what remained of them, skeletal fingers protruding from jacket sleeves, vacant- eyed skulls gaping, open- mouthed, at the mist above.

There were hundreds; rats running in and out of tattered uniforms foraging forlornly, for any last remaining morsel of flesh, gnawing, now, on bones. Cathal stepped back involuntarily, repulsed by this sight, realising, belatedly, that he had stumbled upon a trench of war; the war to end all wars, he whispered, the one he had heard spoken of so often in his youth without having been told anything in detail.

Instinctively, he clambered for a ladder, eager to escape this abyss but time and weather had eroded much of the timber and it took him a number of attempts before he was able to find one secure enough to allow him purchase sufficient to hoist himself over the parapet of this entrenchment, rats now clinging to the hem of his muddied pants.

As he scrambled into the sludge above, the mist, once again, enshrouding him, he found that, by lying, face close to the earth, he could see ahead, a passageway where the mist did not touch the ground as if it was afraid of being absorbed, swallowed up. In this way, by crawling forwards, he was able to progress slowly, encountering barbed wire obstacles that required circumnavigation, and shell holes into which he had to drop, usually coming face to face with more skeletal remains. On and on this

no man’s land stretched and his progress was slow and tortuous. Sometimes the rotting uniforms were of a different hue but there was no escaping the fact that all had suffered agonising deaths and, he realised, the death toll must have been in the hundreds of thousands.

After what seemed like an eternity, crawling beneath the awning of darkness, cold and damp that pressed down upon him from above, his face, hands and clothing covered in slime and mud, Cathal, finally, sensed, rather than saw, a lightening of the dimness up ahead and, though he was exhausted from his efforts, he increased his pace. As he did so, inch by inch, the mist appeared to hang back a little more until, finally, as he realised that there was no longer a ceiling of gloom above him, he was able to stand erect, once more, and a feeling of total relief swept over him, his aching muscles relieved of their cramped confinement, the mist seemingly unable to penetrate this area.

In front of him, brightly illuminated, was another obstacle; this time, a wall, a shimmering iridescence that, though it offered a welcome illumination appeared as impenetrable as the mist had been though, this time, instead of forming a roof above him, it presented as a curtain extending as far as he could see in either direction. Hesitatingly, he stuck out a hand and touched the wall, the limb, to his great surprise, easily passing through and disappearing into the void, out of sight. Alarmed, he pulled it back and examined it closely finding it unharmed, unchanged. This is it then, he thought, his heart hammering within his chest. This is the final boundary, that line of demarcation beyond which all might be revealed. It was time for him to pass through to the Enlightenment Zone where all of the secrets of mankind were rumoured to have been stored. Was he truly prepared to take this step into the unknown? Yes!

As Cathal placed one foot through the soft, shining veil in front of him, a myriad of pigments and tints waving before his eyes, he felt a powerful suction draw the rest of his body into the vacuum.

Instinctively, he tried to resist but to no avail. Finding himself fully beyond the wall, he had to shield his eyes, so intense was the brightness in this place but, before he could gather his thoughts, the thundering of hooves could be heard bearing down upon him and, automatically, he cowered in fear. Into his head came the absolute knowledge that he was present at the Battle of Balaclava witnessing the famed Charge of the Light Brigade when five hundred brave British cavalry hurled themselves foolishly at the might of the Russian army and were cut down by canon and gun fire from three sides, blood and flesh splattering in all directions, the screeching of horses as they fell, haunting and shocking.

Instantly, the picture changed and he found himself standing beside Napoleon Bonaparte, saw, firsthand, his exultation, his supreme joy at witnessing his tactics work to perfection at the Battle of Austerlitz; the knowledge, spreading far and wide, that here was the greatest living, military strategist of his age. The scene shifting, even as Cathal struggled to absorb all; now, he perceived a lonely, dying man, stood on the edge of a precipice overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, unable to escape the memories, the nightmares of his worst defeat at Waterloo, his body racked with despair both from the errors he had made and the arsenic that was slowly poisoning him.

In a flash, he was confronted with a colourless scene, a multiplicity of black and white images of a nation, watching in awe, the grainy, distorted images of an American setting foot on the Moon, vicariously rejoicing in the confirmation of America’s greatness, altering within seconds to the sight of a man in an open-topped vehicle being hit by a bullet, the redness of the blood violently intruding upon the 8mm film; shifting to the devastating images of an entire nation mourning the loss of their President.

Through all of these visions, though he had never seen or heard of the things he was witnessing, somehow, he understood every single detail of each scene, his brain being assaulted from all sides by a plethora of information, confused though it was at the fast shifting pageants.

Constant throughout were the colours, flooding his mind in a never ending kaleidoscopic, impressionistic form: the khaki of soldiers trembling in trenches, much like the ones he had recently passed through, their faces covered in grotesque masks to protect them from invisible gases. The pink and white striped, thin clothing worn by men, women and children herded together as they walked compliantly into the mass graves that awaited them. The blackness of the hair of those Japanese at Nagasaki as they ran screaming from the havoc wreaked upon them. Always though, predominant above all else, were the many, differing shades of crimson that littered each canvas; the blood that signalled the destruction of life.

On and on this went in no particular order. Awful spectacles: the Ku Klux Klan, the rise of Hitler, the Irish Potato Famine, dependence on drugs, political corruption, intertwined with moments of innocent, potent joy: the flowering of bulbs in spring, sweet scents filling the air, the cries of newborns introduced into the world, the taste of fresh honey on the palate, reunions of those parted after so long. Tears of happiness interspersed with exhilarating laughter. The purchase of a new car, a new house. Glimpses, though fleeting, of permissible pleasure morphing into the need for more; greed, lust, power, the new driving force.

Not only did he observe, he felt also; the heat, the iciness, one moment shivering with cold, the next sweltering. He heard the cries of pain, every distinct scream. He experienced every emotion, the sorrow, grief, despair that mankind could be reduced to as well as the generosity, the delight in giving, the sympathy and care that distinguished man from beast.

Above all else was the music: operatic arias that spoke of lost love, joyous melodies, pop, upbeat jazz, contagious beats of rock, hip-hop, rap, each affixing itself to a specific tableau, assailing Cathal from every conceivable angle and direction.

No sooner did he feel his heart swell with pride at discerning an image of humanity, beautiful to behold, than it was replaced with one that filled him with despair. Contrasts, comparisons, highs and lows, one after another, never-ending; a maelstrom of vicissitudes that made up human life.

The old man tilled the soil gently, content to do his bit for the commune though not much was expected of him at his age. He would finish earlier than most and go and tend the grave of his beloved brother, Cathal. He had never been the same upon returning from his northern exploration, unable to talk, only his hair, having turned fully white, and his eyes, expressing a deeply felt melancholy, offering an indication of his ordeal and confirming that he had witnessed something beyond the pale.

Alongside, others worked industriously, happily and, as he made his way from the field, he overheard a heated conversation between two friends, reminding him of the talks he and Cathal had once had.

One of the young men was talking about the world that must exist outside of this place and his desire to find it. The other was attempting to dissuade him. So, thought Patrick, it never ends.

He thought, for a brief second, to go over and explain how, years before, his brother had once felt that same hungry urge to discover what lay outside this zone and had regretted it. But something stopped him. They will learn in their own good time, he thought. They will learn!