by Joel Arnold
And the sounds still echoed here, absorbed into the earth, the sky, the gravestones, the stone building. Absorbed for years, and finally wrung out into Andy's ears, the years coming back, screaming at his skull, his brain, a thousand flies, buzzing, droning inside his head forever.
Andy knelt in front of Natalie and stared into her eyes. The glare of the headlights reflected off of them, and Andy thought he could still see a hint of blue. In this darkness, in this death, a faint glimmer of blue.
He picked Natalie up, wrapped his arms around her, dragged her in front of the headlights of the car. They washed a swath of gravestones and trees in their converging cones of light. They washed over Andy as he held Natalie, bathing them both in an imagined warmth.
Andy began to dance, a slow dance, tears popping from his eyes, glistening in the light beam, disappearing as they dropped. He held Natalie close to him. Swaying back and forth, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, back and forth, leading Natalie to the music of the wind, of the whispering clouds above. The couple cast shadows on the trees beyond, two marionettes turning round and round, swaying back and forth. Andy danced a slow dance with Natalie until he shuddered uncontrollably. The sobs came in spasms, and he let Natalie down as gently as he could, resting her against her mother's gravestone.
He looked through his tear filled eyes, looked up at the thickening clouds, the thickening darkness, and let out one long, terrible howl. It started from deep inside his gut and traveled through his entire body before it raged out into the open night air. Then there was only the wind.
And that glint of steel, reflecting the moonlight, taunting him, tainting him, beckoning him to touch it. It called out, its voice rising above the hum of the flies, above the years gone by, called out to Andy to take it in hand, caress it, feel it. And he knew what it was.
He knew what it was.
Finally.
A drum. Evelyn's drum. Sitting in the corner of the empty mausoleum, its sides being eaten by rust.
Andy looked at the shadows surrounding him. Opaque. Still. The night silent except for the drone and rumble he heard, no - felt. Felt from deep within the earth.
A rumbling.
It was the movement of the flies. It was the movement of the soil, the dirt, being transformed, processed, recycled. It was the cat in the corner of his mind, still present, swinging headless from that branch.
It was Natalie, her shadow splayed on the trees. Andy thought he could see a rope stretched taught around the shadow Natalie's neck. It strained against the bark, swinging, cutting a groove into the wood, rumbling, the strands, the fibers of the rope, catching onto the bark like gears in a machine, making it vibrate, making it hum, sending shivers through the trunk into the ground.
Making it rumble.
Andy entered the stone building through the window opening above the door held shut with rust. He entered carefully, avoiding the glass that had penetrated his hands only a few days before. How long ago? Days seemed like minutes seemed like hours seemed like years.
He crawled through the window hole and stepped down onto a crumbling brick floor. Glass crunched under his shoes. Everything was dark except for a slice of building illuminated by light from the moon, which came and went as clouds played in front of it. Andy stared down at the drum. Its edge caught a sliver of moonlight and reflected it into his eyes. Its glare bathed his retinas in a soft, hypnotic glow. He reached out mesmerized and touched it -
Cold - so cold.
Andy's breath frozen. Rising in a mist.
He reached out and touched the cold rusting sides of the drum. He traced his hands along the cylindrical shape. He felt the harness and picked it up. The harness had been eaten away by time, but it held together. Andy put the harness over his shoulder. The drum hung suspended over his belly.
Sticks.
On the crumbling brick floor. Sticks.
Pointed at his feet in an arrow.
He picked them up. Their hardness felt good in his hands. The splinters didn't matter. Splinters were only skin deep. It was their solidity that mattered, and they were solid enough to hold, to enclose his fists around and squeeze.
So natural.
So balanced.
So good.
Andy hit the head of the drum, expecting it to break, to crumble into dust.
It didn't. It was still intact.
The impact of the stick on the drum felt like an explosion as the sound violently reverberated off the stone walls of the mausoleum. The flies fell silent. Silent, as if they were never there.
He hit the drum again, this time with the other hand. It felt good. The noise took hold of his eardrums and shook them.
He hit the drum again. A large splinter lodged itself under the nail of his index finger. He didn't feel it. He only felt that solidity, that firmness.
He hit the drum again.
And again.
Alternating left hand and right hand.
Sporadically at first, but soon they found their own rhythm.
So natural.
So balanced.
A rhythm.
Andy's hands took over, run by the clock inside his brain.
The clock inside the earth. Beneath his feet. Forever rumbling.
BAM. His hands moved faster.
BAM. BAM.
BAM.
Soon, the separate hits of the drum blurred into one another, the echoes of the building pulling the sounds together into a thunder.
BAM. BAM. BAM. BAM. BAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAMAMAMAMAMAMMMMMMMMMM.
Andy didn't even notice the snow. Not until he heard Aunt Mae screaming.
Mae's face was framed in the small opening, her mouth wide open. Her screams sounded far away, drowned out by the thunder Andy created. Her tongue flailed inside her mouth. Spittle dripped down her chin. Her gray hair was backlit by a soft light, a soft reflection of the moonlight shining off of snowflakes.
Andy continued to pound, not wanting to hear the screams.
He continued to pound, feeling comforted by the rhythm, the reverberation.
Mae's eyes were so wide, Andy could almost see himself grinning in them.
He continued to pound.
BAMBAMBAMBAMBAM.
Each strike of the stick on the drum head was executed with all the strength he could manage.
BAM.
His entire body, his entire life going into each stroke.
BAM.
Mae's screams drowning in the rhythm.
BAM.
The snow falling in a tempo of its own.
BAM.
The stones in the mausoleum shaking, bits of them coming loose.
BAM.
Finally, Andy's right hand struck the head of the drum and broke through. The skin of the head made a loud snap. His arms kept moving, but the pounding ceased, and the only sound now was -
"ANDYANDYANDY - GOD, ANDY! NO, OH MY GOD, ANDY, ANDY!"
- Aunt Mae screaming.
Andy's hands slowed down, finally coming to a halt. He looked down at the drum. At the sticks. At his hands.
The head of the drum was ripped in four sections. The sticks he held were worn down, their tips broken splinters on the floor.
And his hands. His hands.
The skin on his thumb and index finger of each hand was gone - peeled away. Slivers of wood protruded from his bleeding hands, and blood dripped onto the drum, onto the floor, soaking into what was left of the sticks.
"Andy!"
Mae's screaming died down into a whisper, then to silence. Her mouth continued moving until her eyes connected with Andy's. Tears streamed down her face.
"My god, Andy. What are you doing? What have you done?"
He looked down at his raw, bleeding hands and held them up to his face. The remains of the sticks were still clutched in them. He winced, started to comprehend that these were his own hands. His own blood.
"Oh god, Andy. What have you done?"
He dropped the sticks to the ground, then lift
ed the harness off his shoulder. Its leather bit into his wounds as he held it. He let the drum drop to the ground, where it cracked into two symmetrical pieces.
"Andy. Oh my god, Andy," Mae whispered.
He held his arms out to her, through the window opening, and she grabbed them gently at the wrists. She helped him through the hole. As he collapsed to his knees, he wrapped his arms around Mae's thighs, hugging them. He felt tears and snowflakes fall upon his head as blood trickled from his hands, down the back of Mae's slacks. He began to cry along with Mae.
Mae gently massaged his head, her hands trembling. "What have we done, Andy?" she asked. She knelt down in front of him, her eyes level with his. "You've got to leave," she said. "You have to get out of here."
Mae's features blurred through Andy's tears, through the snowflakes, her head surrounded by the moon's haze.
"I can't go," he said, choking on the words. "I'm dead."
"You're not dead, Andy. You're still here."
"But Natalie," he said, glancing over his shoulder. "Mom. Hector."
"I know, I know."
"But Mae - the police will come."
Mae squeezed the hair on top of Andy's head. "I'll take care of it. Don't you worry." Her voice wavered in the air. "Don't you worry about a thing. We're still family, Andy. Remember? We're family," Mae said. "Don't you worry about a thing."
FORTY-FOUR
The new windshield began accumulating snow. Andy whisked it off with a flick of the wipers. It was six in the morning, still a few hours before dawn.
The snow picked up, coming down in bigger flakes, the wind blowing it into whirling, zigzag patterns across the road. Empty fields flashed by in the outer edges of the headlights. Fields empty except for dirt and accumulating snow.
Empty.
Andy watched as Mae dug a large hole in the tulip garden. He wasn't much help because of his hands, and even discounting that, all he could do was sit and only appear to be watching, dazed and shivering. The snow was still light at the time, and the dirt in the tulip garden was easy to dig in, or so Mae had said, but she stopped often to rest.
She worked as her sweat and tears fell, mixed on the ground with flakes of snow. She worked until even her gloved hands bled. And she kept digging.
When the hole was large enough, Hector was pushed in first, then Natalie, then Edna, her face white and stark in the moonlight, drained of blood and her haunting energy. They were buried sandwiched together, and Mae set the remains of Holden on top. She covered the bodies with dirt, and the tulip bulbs they had planted earlier fell out in the shovelfuls, some dropping to the side of the shallow garden grave and rolling toward Andy, who stared at them as if they were diamonds. Finally, he got up and moved dirt into the hole with his shoes.
Mae sat down and rested next to Andy when they were done. They let the snow fall on their uncovered heads and faces, not feeling the light licks of cold, not feeling anything but a welcome numbness.
Andy's vision became increasingly blurred by the swirling snow. It danced and played hypnotically in the car's headlights. Andy bit his lip to keep from succumbing to sleep. Six in the morning and he was barely awake.
The events that had occurred earlier swirled in Andy's mind just as the snow swirled outside of the moving car. Swirled and danced in a white static overload. It was too much to think about. His mind couldn't catch hold of any one thought, any one feeling. Instead, it all swirled and mixed together in his mind.
He jerked out of his trance as the car began to fishtail. He banged his hand against the steering wheel, feeling a sharp jolt of pain. He'd forgotten about his hand, raw and sore, but the pain jolted him awake, and he turned the steering wheel into the fishtail, and quickly straightened out.
He was headed home. To Cathy.
Cathy. He shook his head. She was the only tangible thing now. The only real thing he could tune his mind onto and distract himself from the mesmerizing swirl of pain and shit inside his mind.
Back in Milwaukee. Maybe just think about Cathy and Milwaukee and forget about everything else. That was the easiest, wasn't it? Forget his mother, forget Mae. Natalie. And that goddamn drum.
Cathy. Cathy. Cathy. Just Cathy and let the pain fade away into nothingness, let the bliss of numbness overtake the body, the mind.
Swirling snow. Hypnotic. A white sheet. A white wall. It was as if all the stars in heaven were falling to earth, dancing and leaping about in a play for Andy's attention.
All the stars in heaven competing for Andy's mind, and they were winning, they were winning, except two lights in the distance seemed to be the strongest. Two pinholes of moving light seemed to beat out the interplay of the snow stars, two beads of light that seemed so far away.
Only they weren't far away at all.
Andy realized all too soon that the pinholes of light were right in front of him. And they weren't headlights, either.
He slammed on the brakes and slid. The buck leaped up from the side of the road, leaped up in a magnificent arc, its eyes on fire, its tail flailing, its hooves held suspended by a great mass of muscle.
It flew in slow motion toward the new windshield, as the car glided on the freshly iced surface of the road.
The buck's antlers suddenly became visible, reflecting the snow, and its eyes grew rapidly in front of Andy, until he suddenly felt the explosion.
It was the explosion of the brand new windshield shattering under the force and mass of the giant buck. Its antlers flew through, passing Andy's head by only inches as the car slid off the road into a ditch and came to an abrupt stop.
Everything was still once more.
Andy tried catching his breath, vaguely aware that he might be going into shock. He tried to slow his breathing, tried to hold his breath and stop the great lungfuls of air he gulped in rapidly, too rapidly. He closed his eyes, then opened them and slowly turned his head to look at the buck.
Its antlers were still intact, and its head lolled in an arc to face Andy. Its eyes had exploded in the sockets on impact with the car. Its snout was pushed back into its head, blood spilling onto the back of the seat. Its teeth were rearranged haphazardly in a terrible grin, and one fell off into Andy's lap as he shut his eyes once again.
Everything was still. Everything was still.
The wind, the chill, began to bite into Andy's skin. He noticed drops of blood falling into his lap. Glass from the windshield peppered his face.
His ears began to buzz.
After catching her breath again, Mae got up and told Andy to wait there a moment. Andy didn't hear her, but wasn't going to move anyway. Mae disappeared inside her house. Andy reached out to touch a tulip bulb that had rolled over to his foot.
Mae came out carrying a shoebox. She handed it to Andy, and he balanced it on his wrists.
"Tulips, Andy," she said. "We have to replace the others. Put them down into the dirt about six or seven inches. I trust there's enough dirt for that. And I trust you'll use the same creativity as before?"
They started planting the tulips.
"This soil has taken too much from me," Mae said. "Too much."
Andy felt the heft of the bulb on his wrists, then tossed it into the air and let Mae bury it where it landed.
"Aren't tulips wonderful, Andy?" Mae asked. "You plant them in the fall, and they stay buried over the winter, dormant, frozen in the ground. When it thaws, they creep back up through the soil. Only more brilliant and vivid than before."
Andy tossed another bulb in the air, watching it fall onto the patch of freshly dug soil along with the snow.
"It's all a cycle," Mae said. "It's all a rhythm."
About the author:
Joel Arnold’s work has appeared in over five-dozen publications, ranging from Weird Tales and Gothic.Net to American Road Magazine and Cat Fancy. He’s the recipient of a Minnesota State Arts Board 2010 Artists Initiative Grant, and has participated in the Carol Connolly Speculations reading series. He lives in the aptly named Savage, Minnesota
with his wife and two kids. He’d love to hear from you at [email protected]. You can check out his blog at http://joelarnold.livejournal.com.
If you enjoyed Death Rhythm, check out his newest novel, Northwoods Deep, as well as his short story collections Fetal Position & Other Stories, Bedtime Stories for the Apocalypse, and Bait & Other Stories. These short story collections are also available in one massive collection, Fetal Bait Apocalypse; 3 Collections in 1.
