[Do I detect a whiff
of Tash in this passage from Charles Williams?]
Her voice failed;
she heard herself making grotesque noises in her throat, and suddenly over him
there fell the ominous shadow... only for a few seconds, then it passed on, and
he emerged from it, and his face was towards her, but now it had changed. Now it was like a vile corpse, and yet still
it was uttering things: it croaked at her in answer to her own croakings,
strange and meaningless words… croak, croak, croak. He was coming towards her, and she was trying
to run away; and now the blackness had fallen on them both, and the horrid
presence of that other filthy being had swept down. She shrieked and stumbled and fell and it
caught her.
Something touched
her face: something swept her arm; something enveloped and weighed against her
heart. Her eyes were shut; she had no
power to look again. Her brain was
dazed; she had no power to think. Her
mouth was panting horribly; and from it, wrenched by a physical power from a physical
consciousness, there came one last and feeble and continuous effort to call
Anthony. "An... An... A... A... A..."
she was saying, and the effort became mere gasps as she shook and shrank. There was something which could save her - something
if that something would come. She lay in
a heap and the great flap of great wings beat over her, and she felt them
pressing her, and something had hurt her head.
"A... A... A..." she went on moaning, and claws pressed the
back of her neck, dreadful, horrible claws.
The smell was working within her… and the wings lifted and again caught
her. She was on her face on the marshy
ground, and she was being forced over. As
well as she could she hid herself, but it was all in vain. There was nothing round her but a hideous and
vile corruption, nothing, nothing except a vibration that went rhythmically
through her, as if-almost from somewhere within her-a horse were galloping. And then she heard her name.
Charles
Williams
The Place of the Lion (1931)
Chapter
Eleven : The Conversion Of Damaris Tighe
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1 comment:
My guess is that they were both drawing from similar sources rather than from each other. The whole idea of Death personified as a smokey, chilling creature is pretty common in classical lit and mythology, I'd say.
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