15: Substance

I stand on the porch of the prairie house and look out across the horizon. The red sky and gray fields insist that I am far from anything reasonable, but the breeze seems almost soothing. A single willow tree sways its branches over the creek, and a tire swing hangs from its bough. The ringing in my ears buzzes and churns.

I open my eyes, and find myself back in the abandoned subway car. I cross through the broken door and step down to the dirt floor, but stop again to blink.

I am in the house now, standing in a dining room with figures I know are not like anything I’ve yet met hidden under black veils. All are facing me. The table is set with silver plates of viscera and white-glowing slime.

My eyes open, and I continue walking towards the exit, wary of my own eyes. This is more manageable than the surgeons, the beasts, the machines, I tell myself. But seeing one of the veiled creatures reach for me when I tried moving with my eyes shut is enough to make me stop still every time I blink. A set of rails twists across the floor of the tunnel, and guides me to my next destination. I blink again.

I stand in the middle of the field, surrounded by the creatures, the sound of rustling leaves and buzzing insects almost natural. One of the veiled things kneels down and scoops up a stone, on which I see the fossil of a human hand. I open my eyes.

I am close to leaving now, the dented and crooked exit door shining dully in the red light I cast. I hurry forth, and stop short, believing myself ready for the next span.

I blink.

I am seated in a chair in the living room of the house, and almost a dozen of the creatures are gathered, dancing slowly and chattering with noises like dolphins. Their black dresses sway and billow, and their mummified gray hands crack and twitch erratically. One by one they come forth and kneel before me, holding out their hands. Without my bidding, my hand extends and rests within theirs, for them to clutch and mutter with religious fervor. Once everyone has supplicated, they heap ashes on me, and lay a glowing white crown in my lap. I hear a dancing song begin in the next room over, and I am forgotten as they flow out of the room. Only one remains with me, and kneels beside my chair. Its head leans against the arm rest, and I hear a woman sobbing through the veil as though from very far away. My hand acts on its own again, and rests on the top of her head. My heart throbs a familiar ache, and tears roll down from my eyes.

I open my eyes again, and find myself on the other side of the door. I turn and jostle the handle, gripped by the urge to return, only to find it locked. I reach a hand up, and find a black tear on my cheek. I turn away slowly, and face the chamber I have entered, each blink of my eyes only serving the same brief blur they always have. This is a hallway that feels unpleasantly familiar to me; a long tiled corridor with the sounds of bubbling water nearby. I stride slowly along, coming closer to the dim blue light, and enter a devoid office space, with cluttered cubicles and an empty fish tank casting its light and sound into the room. There are no windows. The floor is square tiles as a pool might have, and a painting rests on the far wall. To this I proceed.

The painting is a portrait of a man I feel I recognize, though I know not why. His hair is blond, his eyes are blue, and his chin is scruffy with hair. He wears a blue suit and tie, and might look unremarkable, were it not for the contorted expression on his face; he is facing slightly to the left, and around the edges of his face that are in shadow, the skin seems puffy and pink as if irritated. His eye that I can see is wide open, staring through me with abject horror, and his mouth hangs open in a scream. There is a small badge pinned to his lapel of a greek letter.

I leave this painting behind, and use the door to the next room. I find that I have somehow reentered the room from the front. I cross to the door again, and open it, finding another hallway. Disoriented, I enter cautiously, and follow a series of turns: Right, left, left, right, right, left, left, left, right, left, straight for a while, then left, left, right, and left. A door waits for me there, and I pass through it, only to find myself in the office again. I stand confounded, but am soon drawn to stand before the portrait again. The man’s face is considerably aged, and his mouth is closed, but his eye still shines with that terrific fear. I hesitantly go to the door and turn the handle again, now convinced that I am entering a new room again. Another hallway leads me to a set of steps that only go down a single floor before opening into another hallway. I take turns right, left, left, right, left, and left again to another door. I enter.

Again I stand in the office, but this time all the clutter from the desks has been knocked to the floor. A rubber duck, a picture frame, a folder organizer, a dozen keyboards, and more pencils than I care to count are among the refuse. I cross to the painting. The image now is of a withered and burnt corpse’s face pointing to the right, its cracked lips pulled into a grim smile. The eye stares at me with the same intensity, and is as blue as the man’s was. I turn away, and pass through the door again.

I find that I stand at the edge of a rocky cliff. The door behind me is set into a sheer face of obsidian that extends up for miles. A small path crosses back and forth in front of me clinging to the edge of the cliff and barely wide enough to even consider attempting. Beyond, is a decadent city.

Brilliant white basilicas and domes span a stretch so profound that I cease attempting to fathom it after the second attempt. Grand balconies and arched bridges space the buildings out, and occasional pillars of brilliant white with golden filigree massive enough to be seen from afar stretch up into the gloom. I see, with a sinking dread, hundreds of the angels flitting about, landing on railings and spires and balconies as though they were but insects in a flower garden. I grit my teeth, and resolve to risk the cliff path down towards the metropolis.

The path is unforgiving, and I find myself crouching down to compensate for my balance and avoid the jagged side of the cliff above me. Each turn makes me dizzy with vertigo, and invites me to try to sit and rest, but I am more compelled to reach the bottom as soon as possible. Coming lower, I am able to make out sections of the city close to the base of the cliff, and see robed people milling about in orderly lines like ants, harassed occasionally by the angels, or by smaller, darker things that I sometimes see zipping about. Towards the bottom of the path, small red plants sprout from between the rocks, with small round leaves and many stems. The trail ends in an alley between two domed buildings, and I make my way into one of the marching lines of the robed figures. The street is paved in ivory, and the mortar appears porous, almost akin to marrow. I watch as black insects as big as my chest fly overhead, segmented iron legs and steel needle mouths trailing. Shot as my nerves are, I keep my head down and hope that they do not select me to pounce upon, as they do to random others, stabbing their proboscises into necks and chests and drinking with a terrible sloshing, slurping noise over the sheer silence of the writhing victim. When the fly is done, it rises up with its smudged plastic wings and buzzes lazily away, leaving a cottony corpse wrapped in red fabrics behind. I continue to march, but notice that these corpses are collected by different individuals, thin and shuddering golems of black bandages draped with white cloaks, that occasionally rush out into the street from within the buildings, snatch up a body, and drag it back inside. The hood of one of the bodies falls back, and I see only white fluff for its head, with black beady eyes and a cleft mouth with needle-like teeth.

I shuffle on, glancing out over the edges of the bridges I cross, soaking in the shining city of lifeless marching. Below I see more of the black rock that made up the cliff, with acrid, smoking green rivers and waterfalls emptying into caves. I risk a look over my shoulder, and see that the cliff I descended is more like a prolonged Stalactite, narrow at the base and widening upwards towards another cavern roof so far above that it is obscured by foggy white skies. I almost do not notice when the march comes to an end in a courtyard in the shadow of one of the grand white pillars, on which I now see millions of small window-like alcoves, in which the angels seem to nest. I look to my right and see an angel squatting on the edge of a rooftop, looking directly at me with its eyeless grimace. I freeze, and glance about, now noticing many of the other rooftops are populated with multiple angels, all of which have their gaze trained on me. Some of the robed creatures seem to notice this, and turn towards me silently, their beady black eyes blinking in bursts. I look to the pillar, and see a moderate double door in it connected to the balcony by a thin bridge- a door too small for the angels, I hope. I leap into motion, dashing for the door, pushing through the witless fluff things and initiating the beat of dozens of wings behind me. I hear them shriek and scream as they shoot through the air after me, and I feel a ringed scythe slice the air above my head as I pull the door open and duck inside.

I expect the banging and shoving of many angels against the door, but all is still. I take several steps back, and turn, almost falling over the edge of a narrow spiraling ramp that clings to the walls of the pillar. Faced with another descent so soon, I crouch down in the passage between the door and the inside of the pillar. I close my eyes, and breath slowly, testing to see if sleep might take me once more. I sit back against the polymer wall, and sink into unconsciousness, exhausted.

I dream of something I do not remember. I stand in a small grove at night, and hold a shovel. My hands are black with dirt, and my brow is damp with sweat. I stand over a hole approximately two feet deep and six feet long. My chest feels tight with grief, and my eyes water. From a mound to my left, I shovel dirt into the hole, until it is full, then carefully lay clumps of grass on top. My work done, I shoulder the shovel and murmur something under my breath, a poem whose words I cannot recite anymore. I linger long, and the horizon begins to turn orange before I turn away and walk away from the silent grove, through the woods and to a dark road. I open the trunk of a car that waits there, and throw the shovel in. The sound of the trunk slamming shut wakes me from the dream.

I sit up and attempt to orient myself. I recall the events of the past days, or what I gauge to be days with limited reference. With apprehension, I approach the ramp, and stare down into the darkness, tracing the narrowing spiral with a lazy motion, watching it form an iris of white on black. An itch settles in the back of my mind, an urge I’ve felt before and now more than ever in the face of ever-mounting horrors. I sway slightly as the want to fall and tumble into the pit washes over me, to trust that my fall will end painlessly. I feel a voice that speaks not in words but sensations, urging me on, closer. I make a connection, recalling the hypnotic sway of the vine in the chasm, and pull back, resolving to descend naturally. And so, as I have become accustomed to do as of late, I make my way deeper.