An Aversion to Ladders 7

THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, Part Four

Michael moved into the house in a perplexed state. The snowy television screen heralded the return of electricity to the residence, although his start in seeing it was checked on remembering Brae had incidentally switched on the TV that morning. The bluish glow threw a new, disquieted architecture up on the walls, one upwardly shifting in dark, rutted forms. He turned on the lamp by the sofa to reestablish equanimity, but the bulb was faulty and sputtered out under his fingertips. On stepping over to turn off the television, a tantalizingly brief image jumped across the screen. He tried to raise a better signal but, remarkably, the same visual snippet darted away with each click of the dial. Taking hold of the channel knob, he turned it slowly in hopes of lacing together a complete picture, but the incremental bursts were too short-lived to yield anything intelligible. Michael finally gave up and turned off the set, unwittingly plunging the whole house into darkness.

He moved toward the cloaked steps in a vague heading, and found in its bower a heaven big enough to take on incandescent feelings he had neither the will nor conceit to call exclusively his own. He pulled himself up along the banister, more by reverie than careful deliberation, and rounded the corner into his room. A second lamp was turned on at the night table, and the edge of the wavering bed rose to offer a soft landing. Indescribably tired, he removed the tuxedo and sat for a long time staring at his socked feet. He was shot-through with more emotion than he could bear, and between the dizzying alcohol and nameless woman, it was doubtful sleep would come simply because he welcomed it. A glance at his clock revealed a flashing twelve; it would need to be reset in a moment of greater sobriety than was presently had. He muddled around his bed a few seconds longer before peering out the drapes.

The view, like the previous night, was black but for the same beckon-of-a-window across the way. As he pondered the coincidence, he spied what must have been the same woman moving back and forth in front of her curtains. She resembled a blurry microorganism up until the moment she dropped, pointedly, into an austere chair. The occasion of happening upon her felt oddly scripted, like a performance had been delayed on his account. It was only with her reaching over to switch off a lamp that it dawned on the accidental voyeur she was nude. At the precise second her apartment went dark, the table light over Michael’s shoulder also blinked out. He skirted the bedposts to hit the rim of the lampshade, although shaking fingers turned up only a loose bulb in the socket.

The sleep medication was lying on the same table, as was his abandoned bottle of beer. After returning from the bathroom he took a pill with the remaining slug of alcohol. Nothing was left between him and begrudged sleep, so he turned out the light. His careening head had no thought but the pillow, yet on looking up through the darkness he spotted the red eye on the camcorder. Like the television downstairs, it had been inadvertently switched on when there was no electricity. He tried to crawl out of his sinkhole to deal with it, but only succeeded in knocking the beer bottle off the table. As the glass container rolled away over the floor, he could blearily see it, and even thought about retrieving it, but was already too mired in drowsiness to care. It was soon in the hallway and dropping down stairs, one step at a time. The descent stretched far beyond the point where the bottle should have hit bottom, and with each additional pop of glass on hollow wood the echo grew.

Feeling vertigo, the sleeper looked down at his feet for reassurance. They were carrying him along a narrow footpath between two shadowy buildings. He pushed out into a warm cerulean sky where the gothic architecture of Purcell College grounded him. Flowers were everywhere. Stargazer lilies, jeweled pansies, deep carmine mallows—all jutted out along the many winding brick paths that tied the campus together; fragrant lavender punctuated their headiness. Being unsure of his destination, the dreaming man walked unhurriedly to savor a rush of feeling. It was a romantic sentiment he had experienced little since his early twenties, one where every manifestation of natural beauty moved him profoundly.

A shadow soon set a chill at his back, and each time it lurched in his direction, he would turn to find only a spire blocking the Sun. Undeterred, he ambled on until the mysterious presence swooped down to set a riotous breeze loose in the trees. Branches heaved and leaves rustled, but the enlivened chorus could not mask the thump of a teetering gargoyle perched on a nearby ledge. Its eyes peered down indifferently, although Michael sensed another set of eyes, higher up, was more intensely focused on his movements. He tried as inconspicuously as possible to glimpse what was following him: to spy its image in one of the many windows on campus. But its shadow always molded itself to an expectation, like a low cloud. His gaze dropped to his feet on finally appreciating the queer leaf shadows covering the path. They were jagged, crescent-shaped slivers of light, and indicated en masse a solar eclipse was fast approaching. Something then caught his attention in a faraway window: a bird trapped in a classroom, or perhaps a hand beckoning him. By the time he reached the window ledge it had evaporated like a mirage. Still, the dark panes had more to yield, for a little girl was on the other side of the glass nestled down in the growing, womb-like shadow. The solar eclipse, nearing totality, had tugged the whole campus under its umbra. Michael turned in the last blink of daylight on seeing the wino materialized under an oak tree. The man was looking up into the sudden starry sky with a frightful expression.

He could see it.

The dreamer, wanting to see it too, reached down to pick up a rock and hurled it into the air…

T H U M P !

Chapter Seven, Section Two/ Back/ Contents Page