Through Caverns Measureless to Man

by D G Rose

  We unloaded the sculptures into their giant glass-fronted freezer. There were already a few ice sculptures there. Not as good. Amy had real talent. While we’re setting up the sculpture, a gaggle of kids came along and knocked on the glass. Amy looked up and gave them a wave. One of the boys pressed his body against the glass and stuck out his tongue, leaving a sloppy wet mark.

  “You see that girl?” Amy asks. “The pudgy one, wearing the crop top? Whenever I see a girl, a heavy girl like that with her stomach exposed, I want to run after her and ask her who her therapist is.”

  I nod. “You want to see if he can up her meds?”

  “No! I want to schedule an appointment! I mean, how the fuck does she have the confidence to do that? I’d like that kind of confidence.” She went back to cleaning up the sculpture.

  After she was happy with the arrangement and had blown off the last few specks of straw we head back to the truck.

  Another bunch of kids pass in front of us, and I accidentally bump into one of them. A girl, maybe seventeen or eighteen, too young to drink at any rate. Here’s a funny thing: When you’re out in public, you can’t touch people, but, if you accidentally touch one of them, then it’s OK to touch them in apology. So, I put my hand on her arm. “Sorry.” I tell her.

  “It’s all right.” She shrugs my hand off. Maybe it’s not OK to touch people in apology. What do I know? “Hey Mister,” She continues, “ya got a quarter? I wanna buy a candy apple.” And she laughs like it’s the funniest thing in the world. And then it hits me. There it is. I mean this girl is nothing like Miranda. Heck, Miranda would be almost forty by now and this girl is just a kid with too much make up and a ring in her nose that she’s using to support the earphone cable from her cell phone so that the microphone is suspended close to her mouth, but she wants a quarter for a candy apple and all of a sudden I can barely stand, barely breathe.

  I reel back, but Amy catches me with a hand on my back. There it is again, that surprising strength. I reach into my pocket to pull out a quarter, the shiniest one I have (there were only two so it was slim pickings), and I give it to her and the gaggle wanders off, not even a thank you.

  “You all right?” Amy asks me, slowly removing her support from my back as I straighten up. “The fucking nerve of those kids!”

  “Yeah, yeah. I’m fine. Just felt a little dizzy there for a second.”

  “Ok, Princess.” She laughed. “Just let me know if you think you might puke and I’ll pull over.”

  We didn’t talk much on the way back. It was just five minutes. Amy pulled up in front of her house and we got out of the truck. I walked around to her side, which was closer to my house anyway, to say goodnight.

  She was fumbling in her bag, I think looking for her wallet to pay me and I was getting ready to refuse payment. The kind of thing I imagine that people do. A giant shadow crossed over our heads, close enough that we could feel the wind as it passed. We both ducked down, instinctively. “Whoa! What the fuck was that!?” Amy shouted in my ear.

  I looked up to see what it had been and I could just make out a gray-white shadow flying in a lazy circle over our heads, impossibly big. I looked over at Amy and she was watching it too, so we both watched as it circled a few more times, rising high, and then slowly spiraled down to settle on the roof of my house.

  “That’s the biggest fucking pelican I’ve ever seen!”

  “That’s not a pelican.” I told her. “That’s an albatross. Although it can’t be. There are no albatrosses on the gulf coast.” What can I say? I watch a lot of nature shows.

  “Well, it’s big! Whatever the hell it is!” Amy laughed.

  “Does my house look strange to you?” It looked strange to me. Almost like it was glowing. I don’t know if I mentioned that my house was pretty much a dump. It definitely does not normally glow.

  “Yeah, it does. Almost like it’s glowing.”

  “Right? I’m going to get a closer look.” I told her as if I was talking about something odd and dangerous, and not just about my own house.

  I approached the house slowly and cautiously, Amy following right behind me, rather than staying where she was, which is what I think, ‘I’m going to get a closer look’ implies. I mean it’s not really an invitation.

  As we stepped up onto the porch it grew wondrous cold (which, at the time, struck me as an odd way to express it, I mean it was probably the first time in my life that I had even thought the word “wondrous”). Amy put her hand on one of the porch columns. “Ice.” She said. And who was I to argue? I mean she was the expert. Although houses encased in ice, in November, in South Louisiana, are rare, to say the least.

  Just then the albatross flew off and the door flew open. The girl from the fair stood in the doorway, a mostly eaten candy apple in her hand and her mouth sticky with red. “You got any napkins in the house? I can’t find any.” And under her arm, tucked in a way that screamed ownership, was the box.

  “That’s my box!” I shouted, as if this, not the house encased in ice or the house-breaking girl, or even the albatross, was the important event of the moment. I snatched at the box, but she danced away.

  From her new position, just inside the house, she pulled the box from under her arm and held it out at arm’s length, and moved it slowly back and forth as if looking for focus. “Is your name Miranda? Funny, because to me, you don’t look like a Miranda.”

  While I struggled in the crushing grip of her logic, Amy calmly stepped forward and grabbed the box and passed it to me. I don’t know why it was so easy for her.

  “You know what?” The girl said, “Keep it. There’s no time. In case you haven’t noticed, the Spirit from the Land of Mist and Snow is on his way. And if he’s coming, the Person from Porlock can’t be far behind. And we don’t want to be here when they get here.”

  Now that I had the box back, I was thinking more clearly, or at least I think I was thinking more clearly, although nothing the girl had just said, let alone her presence in my house, made any sense.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I turned to Amy. “Amy, do you have any idea what she’s talking about?”

  Amy just shook her head.

  The girl stepped forward, back out of the doorway, and knocked on an ice-encased column. “The Spirit from the Land of Mist and Snow is coming!” She almost shouted. “So we have to get out of here. I don’t know how to make it any clearer than that.” She reached forward and grabbed my free hand above the wrist and pulled me into the house. Amy followed, although none of this seemed to have anything to do with her. I was suddenly self-conscious about how messy the house was.

  The girl closed the door and made an impatient gesture. “Let’s go!”

  “You just pulled us inside and closed the door, now you want to go?” Amy asked her.

  The girl wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and addressed us like idiots. “Spirit, bad. Person from Porlock, worse. Both coming here. We have to go.”

  But, back in my own house, even being embarrassed about the cleanliness, I was feeling more in control. “Who the heck are you and why are you in my house?”

  “There’s no time!” She said, in non-answer to my questions.

  But I set my jaw in my determined face and she must have seen it, because she gave a heavy sigh. She checked her watch, paused for a moment as if calculating and then said, “Fine! You can call me Christabel. Why don’t we all have a seat and talk? But, you know, fast.” Christabel balanced herself on the arm of an old armchair and motioned for us to take seats. I looked at Amy and we both shrugged. It’s not like things were going to get weirder if we sat down. Amy took a seat beside me on the couch and we faced the girl like a couple of kids waiting for a story.

  She waved a hand at the box now settled on my lap. “Miranda sent me to get the box, but I was unavoidably delayed, so I didn’t get here yesterday.” Then she just shut up, like that had explained everything.

  Of co
urse, I asked the only reasonable question possible. “Miranda?”

  She nodded slowly. “Yes, Miranda. You do know Miranda, don’t you? You have her box, after all.”

  “So…” I started putting things slowly together. “Miranda’s not dead?”

  The girl, Christabel, broke out in a big laugh. “Dead? Of course not! What makes you think she’s dead?”

  “Well… You know, she disappeared and she’s been missing for more than thirty years. So, well, you know, we just assumed.” I explained, although I didn’t feel like I should be doing the explaining.

  Amy chimed in. “Yeah, it’s a known fact. Everyone says so.”

  I was comforted by her support. Like it was Amy and me against this girl.

  Christabel rocked back a bit on the arm of the chair. “Well, everyone is wrong. I, myself, have seen her recently and she looked pretty damned alive to me.”

  “Then where is she!?” I demanded. “It’s been thirty darn year! Mom’s dead! Dad’s dead! I’ve been waiting here in this old house just, you know, f’n waiting! So, if she’s so alive, why the heck isn’t she here!? This is her home! Not some….some… Post Office!” Yeah, that last one fell flat, but I was getting hysterical.

  Christabel checked her watch.

  “What is it with you and that watch?” Amy broke in. “You got an appointment?”

  “Why do you even wear a watch?” I asked, relieved, for the moment, to find us on a neutral topic. “Don’t you use the clock on your phone?”

  Christabel licked at a spot of candy apple on the corner of her mouth. “Fashion, old man.”

  Then she took on a softer look. “Her parents are dead? I.. I… ‘um, I’m sure she’ll be sorry to hear that. I know she always planned on seeing them again.”

  “So, if she’s not dead, where is she?” Amy asked. And I was glad that she had asked it. I was glad that she was involving herself in this whole thing because I was beginning to feel like it wasn’t something I could handle alone.

  Whatever softness I’d seen in Christabel had passed. “Xanadu.” She replied, like it was an answer.

  Amy scoffed. “What? The crappy 1980’s movie with Annie Lennox? What the fuck does that mean?”

  “It wasn’t Annie Lennox, it was Olivia Newton John.” I correct her, feeling strangely ashamed because, of course, Annie Lennox was much cooler than Olivia Newton John, even if Olivia Newton John was the right answer.

  “No. Xanadu, you know, like in the poem: In Xanadu did Kubla Khan / A stately pleasure-dome decree.” She recited.

  Amy nudged me in the side with her elbow. “A pleasure dome. Sounds OK to me!” I put my hand on her arm to quiet her.

  “Take me to her.” I almost beg. “Can you do that?”

  Christabel checked her watch again. “That’s the plan, Bucko. You and me and the box makes three.”

  “I’m coming too!” Added Amy. Which seemed completely out of line. I mean this was obviously a private family matter. What made her think it was appropriate to try and just join in like that? Maybe it was just the weirdness of the whole thing. Like, maybe situational politeness is off the table once the house is encased in ice and Christabel has broken in.

  But, Christabel shot her down. “Sorry, chica, my orders say, one box and one Nicky. Nothing in there about the girlfriend.”

  “She’s, uh, not my girlfriend.” I started to explain.

  “I can be.” Amy cut me off. “If it’ll get me a ticket to wherever you’re going. Long lost sister found alive after thirty years, living on some exotic movie set! Count me in!”

  Christabel gave a shrug. “You’re counted out.” She was checking her watch again when the ceiling collapsed and a giant ice-rimed (another vocabulary word mysteriously working its way into my thoughts) hand reached in feeling blindly about.

  “We gotta go! Now!” Christabel, grabbed me by the arm with one hand and, thinking for a second, as if unsure, finally, took Amy’s arm with her other.

  There was a sound like someone was screaming and I wished they would be quiet so that I could concentrate on the monstrous arm that was making even more of a mess of my living room. Then I realized that I was the one screaming and that there was no hope that the screaming would stop anytime soon.

  Christabel jerked my arm but rather than head for the door, she turned to the wall below the stairs and looked at it intently for a moment. Apparently, not liking what she saw, she turned away and stared for a second at another wall and then a third. “Ok, follow me.” And she walked into the wall. She dropped my hand and grabbed her nose, a bright trickle of blood seeped out from between her fingers.

  “Damn!”

  All the while the giant hand went to and fro and we had to keep moving to avoid being crushed or grabbed. I looked up just as the hand pulled back and a part of a face appeared in the hole in the ceiling. It reminded me of that abominable snowman from one of those old Christmas programs on TV, only real, and so, instead of being kind of cute, it was kind of terrifying and I felt a tiny trickle of pee escape me.

  Christabel grabbed us again and seeing something that she liked on the wall just below the giant grasping hand, she pulled us forward again. She walked straight into the wall again, but this time, instead of getting bloodied, she got… Well, I don’t know how to describe it except that she got two-dimensional and squeezed into a crack in the wall. I watched as my hand, then my forearm, flattened out and followed her through the crack. About the time my elbow passed through the wall, my sanity began to unravel like a seam.

  CHAPTER 7 - I thought we’d take the scenic route.

  I found myself sitting on a hard uneven floor. It was dark, maybe not as dark as night, but pretty dark. I looked up at a starless sky.

  “Whooo! Hoo! That was fucking awesome!” Amy whooped. “I’ve got friends you could sell that to for a thousand dollars a gram!”

  I pulled myself to my feet, using a nearby rock for support but I stumbled once I took a step.

  “First day on your new legs?” Christabel asked me, which is a thing that I used to say to Miranda in that moment just after waking when you can’t walk steady, and more than anything it made me feel like, somehow, there was something good waiting at the end of this strange trip.

  Amy looked at Christabel. “Well, looks like I’m along for the ride!”

  Christabel nodded. “As far as it goes. As far as you go.”

  I looked around at the bleak landscape, barren of even scrub vegetation. Nothing but rocks and gravel and sand as far as I could see in any direction. “This is Xanadu?” I asked. “Why would anyone build a pleasure dome here, stately or otherwise?”

  Christabel spread her arms and turned around as if to show us the whole place. “These are the Caverns Measureless to Man!” She announced. I guess she saw the blank looks on our faces. “Doesn’t anyone read late 18th Century – early 19th Century English Romantic poetry anymore?”

  I shrugged. “I’m a high school dropout. I don’t think you get to late 18th Century – early 19th Century English Romantic poetry until college, if ever. ”

  “Art school.” Added Amy.

  “Well, the Caverns are kind of on the outskirts of Xanadu, more like a suburb.”

  I looked behind us. “Is that monster thing going to follow us?”

  Christabel shook her head. “It’s not a monster, it’s a spirit. Specifically, the Spirit from the Land of Mist and Snow. And yes, it’s likely to follow us.”

  “Well, let’s get moving then!” I’d seen its face and I didn’t want to see it again. With an effort, I keep all the pee inside me.

  She looked at Amy and me with a critical eye. “Y’all aren’t very well prepared for a journey like this.” Then with a tilt of her head, “Well, let just make the best of it!” She pulled something from a pocket and shook it out. It looked like a dog collar and leash. “Here put this on.” She held it out to me.

  “What is it?” I asked suspiciously.
<
br />   “It’s just a harness so that you don’t have to carry the box all the time. We've got a long trip and you’re going to get tired of holding it.”

  “You.” Amy interrupted, “on the other hand, seem strangely well prepared.”

  Christabel shrugged. “Not really. I knew I would be picking up Nicky and the box and that he wouldn’t want to carry it all the way to Xanadu.”

  Somehow being in this featureless, gloomy place seemed to lift Christabel’s spirits. She was almost giddy. She started off walking at a quick pace. “Come on now!” She called back over her shoulder. “And bring the box.”

  What choice did we have but to follow? Amy and I caught up with Christabel and we trudged along. She didn’t seem to have any doubt about the route, although I couldn’t tell one twilight direction from another.

  “So…” Amy began, not unkindly, “You scream just like a little girl.”

  “Well,” I laughed, “I come from a long line of cowards.” When I saw her surprised look, I added, “I mean, everybody does. Nobody comes from a long line of heroes. A short line of heroes is the best anybody can manage.” Amy just nodded and turned her attention to Christabel.

  Amy and Christabel chatted along like old friends, any hint of their former animosity forgotten. I followed behind, the box bumping gently on my back, lost in my own thoughts. Miranda was alive? A genuine monster had torn a hole in my roof. Where the heck were we? And where were we going? And what would it be like to see Miranda again? And most importantly and strangely; Miranda was alive?

  I wanted to stop Christabel, ask her what the heck was going on, I wanted answers. But, somehow I felt embarrassed, like I should already know, like to break into their conversation with my questions and fears and doubts would be unthinkably rude.

  “So, not the girlfriend?” This personal question pulled me out of my thoughts. Christabel looked at Amy. “Lesbian?”