Indeed the soldiers stoking the cannon and covering their ears now as they made the shot were but an illusion for those true legions weeping on their knees, and a hulk of a giant wielding an ax was but a phantom for those who stared at him in recognition and stupification, seeing in him themselves.

"I cannot... I cannot look!"

Monstrous images of murder, torture, flashed before me so hot they burnt my face.

Phantoms were dragged to their deaths in pots of boiling pitch, solders sank on their knees, eyes wide, a prince of some lost Persian kingdom screamed and leapt into the air, his arms out, his black eyes full of reflected fire.

The wails, the whispers, took on the urgency of protest, and question, and discovery.

All around were particular voices if only one had the courage to hear, to pick the themes fine as steel thread from the raging dirge.

"Yes, yes, and I thought, and I knew…"

"... my darlings, my little ones ..."

"... into your arms, because you didn't, you never . .."

"... and I all the time I thought and you .. ." "Love you, love you, love you, yes, and always ...and no, you didn't know. You didn't know, you didn't know."

"...and always thought that it was what I should, but I knew, I felt..."

"... the courage to turn and say that it wasn't. .."

"We didn't know! We didn't know."

It was blended finally into that one incessant cry.

We Did Not Know!

Before me the wall of a mosque rose, crowded with those screaming and covering their heads as the plaster came down upon them, the roar of the artillery deafening.

Phantoms all.

We didn't know, we didn't know, the voices of the souls wailed. The Helpful Dead gathered on their knees, tears streaming down their faces ... "Yes, we understand, you understand."

"And that year, just to go home then and be with ..."

"Yes.. ."

I fell forward, my foot striking a rock, and pitching me into the middle of a swarm of soldiers on their hands and knees, weeping as they clutched at one another and the wraithlike phantoms of the conquered, the slain, the starved, all rocking and crying together in one voice.

There came a chain of explosions, each more violent than the one before, such as only the modern world can make. The sky was light as day if day could be colorless and merciless and then dissolve into flickering darkness.

Darkness Visible.

"Help, help me out of this," I cried, but they didn't seem to hear or notice my screams, and when I looked for Memnoch, I saw only a pair of elevator doors slide open suddenly, and before me loomed a great modern room full of elaborate chandeliers and buffed floors and carpets without end. The hard polished glitter of our machine-made world. Roger came running towards me.

Roger, in all his dandified finery of purple silk jacket and tightly tailored pants, of perfumed hair, and manicured hands.