Hieroglyphs_of_Blood_and_Bone

by Michael Griffin

  Sadie was curious about the book, kept emphasizing the value of such a gift. She said it proved my value to the giver.

  I can't expect Sadie to provide answers.

  But the giver of the gift. Lily.

  If Lily came to me here, could I resist? I wish I had power over my impulses, but I don't. Though I might blame this on lust, the problem is wider. Michelle's hold on me had nothing to do with sex. Toward the end of our marriage, I forgot what little I ever knew of navigating desire. Emasculation weakened my resolve until I was incapable of action. Michelle's suffering must have exceeded my own. At least she managed to break loose our frozen stalemate.

  Maybe Lily did the same. I can't see the situation clearly enough to be sure.

  I want Karl to tell me about his book. I wonder if he knows where it came from. If he were here, I'd be direct, refuse to accept evasion or non-answers. But the way things look, I'm not sure Karl will return.

  I can't wait around. I shower, dress quickly.

  Outside, I run along the docks, up ramps. Through dense, chilling rain, to my car.

  I can't ask Karl. Only Lily knows. This time, it will be different.

  I'll face her calmly, won't fall into her bed, won't even let her close the door. That's what I should've done before, insisted she answer my questions. No matter what she tries, I won't allow any distractions, won't be turned sideways, spun around, or confused.

  This time will be different.

  Chapter 20

  I return to the field

  I race back, driving blind, to the place I never should have left.

  Now I realize, although I'm breaking my resolve to stay away, it's not my fault. I'm being influenced from outside. A storm grows, clouds thickening on the horizon. My car struggles against surging wind. All the world blurs, everything outside pulled out of shape, smeared by rain falling thick as oil. An invisible hand pushes me back, trying to prevent my return.

  Every aspect like a dream in which the very universe frustrates and impedes.

  I park beside River Road, outside Cayson's gate. Some part of me believes I may never return. I slip through the barrier and begin to run up the driveway. Trees moan and sway in the violent wind. Limbs crack and fall amid a sprinkle of blown needles. Though I come here seeking, already I understand I won't likely receive the concrete and straightforward answers I desire. The best I can hope is to receive vague and poetic hints of the same kind that left me dissatisfied before.

  So why do this? Why come here? Because it's all that's left.

  Even beneath a canopy of trees disintegrating in the storm, rain bites my face, stings my eyes. Summer is over. I should have remembered my jacket, but it's been months since I've worn one.

  Up the driveway, instead of splitting off where the first trail forks toward the river's more active upper section, I continue nearer Cayson's house, paralleling the riverside path. I want to run directly to Lily, would rather leave the shelter of forest, even amid this raging weather, than approach those older trees near the house, cut with lines dripping red. That area surrounding the big house still makes me nervous.

  Fatigue overcomes me and I slow to a walk, breathing hard, squinting against hammering rain. So tired. I have to overcome, try to run again. Walking won't bring me there fast enough. The cabin is still a quarter mile away.

  A deep boom resounds somewhere ahead, close enough to feel, though I see no source or cause. The ground rumbles as if from an explosion or lightning strike. My ears pop at the atmospheric shift. Terrified, I resume running, despite knowing I should run away from this, rather than toward it. Fear exhilarates, drives me onward with new urgency. I want to meet whatever my future may be. Leaves swirl, trees bob and heave, cracking. I fight against the surge of wet torrents more solid than wind. The world feels like it's falling apart.

  Everything appears changed. The gap between forest to my left and river to my right broadens. Ahead the land flattens. Not far now to the final ridge of thin trees, swaying wildly, some damaged. The final corner before Lily's field. Wild blackberry stalks form a barrier, tangled and probing into the ground through a tumble of old cracked and weathered stones from a long-ago time when the river was much higher.

  This is it, the final verge. This is where Lily waits.

  I stop, gasping with exertion and maybe fear. Rain trickles down my face, streams into my mouth and down my chin. I step forward once, cross the threshold of the invisible line extending from the sharp point where trees and brush come to an end.

  I step into the open, fully revealed, seeking too much to articulate.

  Instead, I find nothing. The cabin is gone. No trace of Lily's presence, no discernible sign she's ever been here. The field is transformed, all shapes and proportions are wrong. Grass once lush green is now sparse, bleakly yellowish, the ground muddy. Perimeter trees have shifted back, relocated. The field no longer sags in the middle, as if beneath the weight of Lily's A-frame. That low center point is not only vacant, but somehow rests higher, raised to the level of the ground where I stand.

  I look around confused, trying to believe I've found the wrong field. Maybe there are different places that look similar. This must be a mistake.

  "Lily?" My voice thin, feeble.

  I scan the field and surrounding forest, knowing I can't be wrong, but hoping. What have I missed?

  In the center, in the place where Lily's house always stood, all that remains is a rectangular footprint of bare, wet soil surrounded by grass. This is the spot where Lily was always waiting for me. I wish I could have understood her better, been more receptive to what she was trying to give. If I could have read the book, grasped its messages, I might have been able to accept what she offered. Now it's too late. Too late to understand, and too late to find her.

  I kneel. This bare rectangle, imprint of what I came expecting to find. The only hint of what's missing, virginal ground protected from seasons of long years beneath the foundation of a home, somehow vanished. This spot might be twenty feet by ten. What do I expect scrutiny to reveal? Some fossil record or organic trace? A final message left behind?

  Michelle should've been lesson enough. What I pursue is never what I hope for. Why should I be shocked, finding Lily gone? From the beginning, from that first day I walked by, I've guessed wrong about everything. Every certainty, always mistaken. Lily herself. Her room, her books and art. All lost.

  I study the ground, looking for footprints, indentations, anything to indicate where I slept beside her. It seems like months, years ago. What is this place, equidistant between trees behind and river ahead?

  The raindrops dance in puddles, seep into the earth, return to the river. I touch the bare ground and look straight up. Clouds above, impenetrable gray. I have no sense what's beyond, what shape the sky makes above this weather. The clouds give rain to pierce my eyes, to wash away stains. In this ground I find no remnant of any past structure, nothing dissolved or burned or rotted with age. No fragments, no ash. Maybe a smell of burning, mostly washed clean by tireless rain. As I crawl nearer the edge of the rectangle, just before the grass perimeter I see black upright shapes, hints of living matter. Slippery mushrooms, dead phallic tongues reaching toward an indifferent sky. As I reach to pluck one of the mushrooms, I see other organic materials, detritus mixed with soil, an infinity of detail I can only discern once I move closer. My eyes reach, and adjust. Shards of dark substance, previously invisible heaps of crushed bone, tangles of shredded hair. The soil here is mostly blood. The closer I look, the deeper I go, the more details I discover.

  My vision wasn't prepared, before. Now I see.

  A hollow shape, crumbling burnt umber wax, some lesser shape escaped from within. At the center of the vacancy stand dark needles like upright fish bones intermingled with bits of blood-slick leaf. The rib cage or shell of some vague thing once alive, impossible to identify, so long dead it's transformed into something else, like petrified wood. A human-shaped carapace, implication of skin hollowed and broke
n. A shell someone might wear and discard once cracked, hard outside yet inside sticky with microscopic life. Tiny shapes, flesh-soft, pulpy fragments within an amniotic membrane.

  Look closer.

  An infantile form tears free, a shroud imprinted with phantom words still echoing. All the language that ever came to mind, gone, carried away. A womb wrecked and abandoned. A shell, once a woman. Is this all she was, the body she wore and left behind? When I touched Lily, this is what she was made of. When I kissed, tasted, penetrated, slept beside her, was Lily only a shell, a blank screen on which I projected my own image? Not tangible, only apparently solid, and only pleasurable to touch because I made her that way? Never fully real?

  Blood and sticks, dirt and leaves. A skeleton built of bones long dead.

  If I can't read the book, or understand the woman who gave it, how can I hope to know why she chose me?

  I don't understand myself well enough to guess.

  She gave the book, took it away. Gave herself to me, drew me back one last time. Now this.

  I need to get away. Never come back. After this, no more. Nothing remains for me here but decaying bits, a mixture of things dead and nameless. I stand, try to wipe my hands clean of black mud, at once gritty and slick. Take a single step, then stop. Which way? There's still the river, the canyon. With all this rain, the pool won't be transparent, the way I remember.

  I feel no desire to return home, no identifiable impetus of any kind. I only know I can't stay here.

  Instead, I turn to face the wall of trees. No trails are visible, but there's room to explore, among the trees between Cayson's place and the road. Maybe I'll find the way Lily came and went. Some pathway or clearing, even a place to park a car. Then before I leave, I'll stop by Cayson's house, one final time. I'll keep a discreet distance. For some reason, I feel like someone might finally be home.

  Into the forest.

  High-stepping to avoid the tangle of ferns and vines underfoot, I lurch deeper, toward where I imagine River Road must be. There's no way to measure distance or direction here, with no milestones but a million identical trees. I walk a long time, trying to follow a straight line, but find no road. Nothing but featureless forest in undifferentiated repetition, as if the same trees and moss and ferns have reproduced to take over the world. Rain no longer falls, or if it does, I can't feel it here, but wind still presses against me, insistent. Wind shoves aside one season for the next, one phase of life for another. Wind moves over the world's surface, making sounds through trees so suggestive of space and dimension, I believe I could close my eyes and identify the relative locations and sizes of every trunk and branch all around me. I close my eyes, keep walking. Try to trace where Lily might have gone, imagine the line she took. Envision her passage, feel what drove her. Did she hide a car on some driveway or fire lane hidden among the trees?

  A shape intrudes, heard rather than seen. The wind moves not only through trees, but another form. I can feel the presence, somebody walking through the forest alongside me. Someone else, searching.

  I open my eyes, see movement to my left, in the corner of my vision. Wood cracks underfoot, then running steps sound. I spin, ready to flee or chase, but my eyes find no confirmation of what I heard. Sounds of movement, but nothing to see. Wind rises, a smell of burning leaves. I veer left, thinking to cut directly back to my car, and hurry through trees. Time to get the hell out of here. Run.

  Instead of finding the road or my car, I encounter something else. Another house. I emerge from the trees, see the whole place revealed. Not Cayson's white-painted modern wood construction, but something much older. The gray stone facade is wet, blotchy with black fungus and white lichen. A circle of uneven paving stones surrounds what must have been a double entry door, surmounted by stone ornamentation, strange pagan or gothic shape patterns, and an open-mouthed stone face textured like tree bark and stained green with moss. The doors have been blocked shut by a rough masonry of coarse lime plaster holding together brown and grey river rock. On the ground to the left of the paving stones is a circular arrangement, an ornamental labyrinth of black gravel built up with small white standing stones.

  I find this place terrifying, so unlike Cayson's conventional home nearby. Old as a castle, suggestive of a far distant place and an earlier time. At once fascinated and afraid, I approach, veering left to avoid the labyrinth. It might be forty feet in diameter, with barrier walls low enough to step over and walk straight across, but its careful arrangement seems meaningful, as if it bears some kind of ceremonial significance. It's something I'd rather avoid.

  At the left front corner of the house, finally able to see around the side, I'm surprised to see the stone facade giving way to modern wood siding, painted white, and a wooden deck on the second story. I realize what I'm seeing, the connection between two very different places. This isn't a second house in Cayson's forest. It's the other side of the same house. I've only ever approached from the driveway or on the way back from Lily's field. This isn't a home with a front and a rear, but within a single structure, two entirely different aspects. A newer façade greets those coming up the driveway or from the river, while an older face looks out into the trees.

  I take shelter beneath the upper deck, hiding from rain and cold wind, trying to decide what comes next.

  From the small ground-level deck on which I stood before when I looked in through the kitchen window, stairs angle up. The top deck wraps around the newer half of the house. Instinctively I keep toward this side, which is more familiar, like my own house. It seems like a place I could live. I'm less comfortable with the strange, old world aspect. Even seeing it, I have a hard time imagining this as a single, connected structure.

  I climb the stairs, thinking to check the upper windows, get a sense of what's inside. Once long ago, I peeked into the kitchen downstairs, and dismissed what I saw without bothering to look closely. I had no idea this facade concealed any secrets. I wonder what might be hidden inside.

  The deck doesn't reach as far as the stone side, which has no true windows, just a few slits filled-in with ornamental colored glass, cracked and distorted. The white painted side has many windows upstairs. I try to open every one, but find them all locked. If I found a way, I'd climb inside. I want to get in, but don't want to break the glass. Rain and weather blowing through the house could destroy it.

  I descend to the lower deck and again check the patio door. I tug the handle, pull hard, hoping the latch might give. At the moment I consciously wonder whether I'm willing to break the glass, the latch cracks and the door slides open.

  Inside, the place is warm and dry. Shelter. The floors are pale hardwood, the walls dark green. There's no furniture, just open floors and featureless walls. The only illumination is what enters through windows. At the room's far end, a hallway opens off to the left. I'm tempted to explore, but instead sit on the floor, leaning against the wall.

  It's wonderful, sitting still for a change. Something about the emptiness and quiet of this place reminds me of my house, the one I bought with Michelle. Those days before we moved in, everything a blank slate. Pure potential. I can't remember the last time my mind was so peaceful. I'll rest a while, warm up, clear my head, then make some kind of plan. It won't hurt anything to close my eyes, just for a second.

  I jump alert, eyes wide. Was I falling asleep? The idea frightens me. I'm vulnerable, intruding here. Someone might come along, catch me.

  But I want to stay. Nobody has visited here, not in a long time. I could hide forever. Nobody will ever come.

  I rise, knees creaking, back stiff. It's almost dark. I must've slept. This room is so familiar, exactly like my old living room. That's Michelle's now, decorated with things I helped pay for. There must be other rooms, things to see. Maybe it's not all empty. Time to explore. If I'm ever going to look around, I'd better do it while I can see a little.

  I edge toward the corner hallway. Coming out of the dark, I see a glow. In the hall, a dim illumination sprays fr
om the first doorway to the right. A spill of dim orange, like a dying fire. On a wall shelf, some convoluted shape, like a tangled root turning in upon itself. The walls are changing color, gold and brown, textured like a pattern of webbing or honeycomb reaching up to the ceiling where textures meet in a seam.

  This inner door is half open, marked by an ornament of silver metal and white opal. A central white sphere, a full moon between two crescents facing away from center. Within the room a candle flickers. My shadow leaps and jitters on the wall beside me. Just inside, on a glass table with a single chair of raw dark wood, stands a sphere of glossy black shot through with seams of white, like a crystal ball of opaque mineral. The far wall is decorated with three red painted symbols, which remind me of Lily's art. The outer two are the icons on the cover of my book, and Karl's. The third, central image is something I know I've seen. I don't remember where.

  What is this place? It's so unlike the entry room, or the kitchen I saw previously. This realization, that I've entered a part of the structure unlike any place I've seen before, outside the boundaries of my understanding, this is the beginning of fear.

  I shouldn't be here. Not my place. I feel an urge to run and at the same time fear I'll be unable to leave.

  A sound behind, footsteps. I spin, realize the sound comes not from nearby, not inside, but outside the house.

  Rustling of damp leaves.

  I return to the entry room, go to the sliding door and stand where I can't be seen through the glass. Everything is dark, but I want to be cautious. Outside, the world is night, an idea that terrifies me. Now that it's dark, I remember what's just outside this door. That particular tree, hollow inside, its bark cut and decorated red. Hung with ornaments, bone and sinew.