She Dreamed of a House

She dreamed of a house
lonely in fields
its yawning dark windows
silence concealed.

She wept at a house
yearning to leave
but whispers were twisting
cold on the breeze.

She screamed in a house
smothered by walls
ensnared by the secrets
lost in the halls.

She died in a house
never alone
tormented in stillness
buried below.

I dreamed of a house.

A Reader Survey!!

Okay, since I've hit my twentieth post, I figure it's time to ask a couple of feedback questions (I aim to please here at The Clarity of Night).

1. Do you prefer posts written in story form (such as An Interlude in Grandview Cemetery) or confessional form (such as Forest Circles)? Is the current mix good, or would you like to see more of one kind or the other?

2. Do you like stories posted in serial form, or is that annoying?

3. What do you like best about this site?

4. What do you like least about this site?

5. What haven't you seen that you would like to see here?

Feel free to answer any or all of the above questions. Thanks for the input!

Forest Circles

The first time I was lost in the forest, I was seven years old. Snows had piled over a foot high, sapping my strength as I trudged. I don't remember much more than the emotions: first determination, then concern, then panic, then finally hysteria. Eventually, some guy found me.

The second time, I was closer to thirty. Of course, it took quite a while to discover I was lost. That's how it gets you. The false sense of direction leads you so deep that when you realize the truth, there's no way back.

Being much older and level-headed, the second time gave me an opportunity to reflect. As I tried to pick a straight path (which was forever foiled by boulder fields, downed trees, gullies), I understood my original fear had imprinted on my psyche. The way I attack the forest, ignore the paths, strike out on my own--I'm proving to myself I'm no longer afraid.

My rational self, navigating by the sun and tracing along interwoven ridges, was quite pleased with the insight. Perhaps the little gnawing in my stomach would disappear each time I prepare to plunge into a new forest.

I plodded on. I applied all the lessons (except bringing a compass, of course). I laid lines of sight, then was forced to correct, and correct, and correct around the obstacles. Then, just shy of an hour later, I arrived at a familiar point, very close to where I first realized I was lost. I had walked one large circle.

The seven-year-old fear flooded back. Two more hours of daylight left. After that, I would be swallowed by the kind of darkness only a forest knows.

Luckily, I found my way out an hour later with the help of some mountain bikers I flagged down on a firebreak road. My truck never looked so good.

So, it's true. Left without guidance, whether due to uneven gait, tilted perceptions, or a quirk of the brain, everyone will tend to wander in a circle. I know the size of my forest circle--what it encompasses, what it contains.

Do you know yours?

(Overcoming the fear, and buying a GPS, has its benefits. One autumn day, I stumbled upon the view pictured above on the top of Second Mountain, Pennsylvania)

An Interlude in Grandview Cemetery, Final Part

(A multi-part fictionalized account of the truth)

Jason crossed the narrow bridge of wall and eased onto the top of the old stone pillar. There, he sat, folding his legs beneath him. Far below, lights swept through the forest. He was seeing the same screeching curve he had traveled on the mountain road.

With his fear drained away, he embraced the solitude. His mind was perched on the fulcrum of sadness and exhilaration. In his isolation, he felt the power to determine who he wanted to be, the power to be different. He saw his place, his spirit, his purpose, his desires. He tapped his primal forces and began to understand them.

Time passed. More than he counted. At last, he arose, but before returning to the comfort of soil, he paused and breathed in the aura of melancholy which had gathered around him. It infused him and warmed him. It settled over his limbs, his heart, integrating, even feeding him. Only then, he withdrew.

Back in the moonlight, free from the conquered blackness, he stopped among the graves. Less with thought, more by instinct, he struck the back of his hand on one of the sandy headstones. The pain was a communion, a payment for what he took with him. He examined the new wound for a moment.

Satisfied, he continued on.

Now, so many years later, the small scars remain etched in his skin. Despite the noise and disorientation which might assail him, he can touch the talisman of those scars and slip back to that night under a cold moon. The bitter sweet spirit swirls around him once more, and the sensual touch of darkness reclaims him.

Back to Part VII
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cemetery

Down Into Endless Night

We found the abandoned mine when we were about fourteen years old--still riding bikes and exploring anywhere we could pedal. Tucked away in an unused stretch of an industrial park, the building lurked among overgrown trees. From the closest road, it could easily be missed.

We had been following trails through a modest patch of the western Pennsylvania forests, when we emerged at the rear of a crumbling building. Fascinated, we tossed the bikes and easily scaled the chain link fence. The cinder blocks sealing the window in the picture resulted from someone discovering us. However, during the first weeks we spent there, the doors and windows stood open. Inside, we explored the rusting machinery, the basket to transport the miners down, and boxes upon boxes of core samples. We even flipped on the circuit box and powered those few lights which harbored enough life to shine.

Dangerous, you say? Not a place for kids? Now, I wholly agree. But then, if it weren't for my unnatural, 14-year-old curiosity, my friend probably would have overlooked the cement pad out front and the huge metal door, 6 feet by 6 feet. I saw the hinges. I saw the handle. I saw the old winch still spooled with cable. A simple operation, really. I opened that mine shaft, which gauges on the cable car marked as over 400 feet deep. Our first glimpse was awe-inspiring. Straight down. Seemingly forever. And vanishing to a single point where all lines converged.

As we stood on the edge, I remember thinking I was staring into the mouth of death. One slip would have bounced me off those concrete walls and committed me, no longer recognizably human, to the watery depths. Yet, I perched over the shaft with my head on the half-open door. I dropped huge stones straight into the abyss, and we watched them. Never wavering, they simply shrunk smaller and smaller, until the endless night finally enveloped them. Soundlessly. We never heard them hit. I wish we did.

I felt the profoundness of death that summer, and I taunted it. I don't go looking anymore. It can stay locked in the forever cold.

I just hope it doesn't remember me.

Or hold a grudge.

Among Trees

And he burned with the sting of surrender.

Never lost.

Never lost.

But undeniably alone.

An Interlude in Grandview Cemetery, Part VII

(A multi-part fictionalized account of the truth)

Anticipation coiled around Jason's neck. With each step, he slowed a bit more. The knowledge he was going bump into something blindly was building like a palpable force in front of him. His hand trembled with the desire to pull back. If it didn't come soon, he was going to have to--

His fingers stubbed against stone.

He froze.

Lichen-covered stone. Rough and cool. Jason rested his hand on the top of the old retaining wall. It stood barely more than waist height. He filled his chest with a huge, full breath, then tried to exhale his uneasiness.

Walking his fingers over the shelf, Jason inched along. The soles of his shoes rasped against flakes of stone and eroded mortar. Then, he felt the structure branch outward into the open air. He had arrived.

Jason planted two secure handholds, then hoisted himself up. The forest, listening to Jason's progress, heard the scrape of his jeans as he cleared the top and stood. Then, silently, Jason eased out onto the spur, where a swath of wall swept from the roadway and soared over the falling mountainside below. Around him, the night settled, and silence returned.

At one time, the buttress helped to hold the road bed, but Jason's eyes saw only a narrow walkway to a secret, protected place--a small stone platform hovering in the emptiness. In truth, the height was uncomfortable, even dangerous. But in the dark, the edge of stone felt as cataclysmic as the teetering end of the Earth itself.

On to the Final Part
Back to Part VI
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cemetery

"...not because they are easy, but because they are hard"

On September 12, 1962, President Kennedy spoke at Rice University in Houston. The focus of his presentation was the nation's space program and his decision to send a manned mission to the moon.

When the speech turned to the reasons for choosing such a path, he said:

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win....

I was not alive when President Kennedy said these words. In fact, I had no knowledge of this particular speech until I saw a brief clip of it on TV. However, the sentiment struck me squarely between the eyes. We choose to do things not because they are easy, but because they are hard? Wow. My mind was blown.

The reason for my reaction was the complete evaporation of this spirit in my lifetime. Things today are only described as "hard," when "easy" didn't work out so well:

--Nothing's ever easy is it?
--The devil's in the details.
--You didn't think this was going to be easy, did you?
--Dang, it wasn't supposed to be like this.

What happened to the sense of accomplishment gained from succeeding in a hard task, one which carries a substantial risk of failure? What happened to choosing the difficult, but correct path? These sentiments are mere curiosities today.

But I, for one, refuse to let them die.

And not because it's easy.

Piano Sonata for the Dead

I'm not the world's best piano player. Far from it, in fact (actually, I'm decent at the bagpipes, if you care to know). But sometimes, I can play inspired.

Sometimes I play Beethoven's Sonata Pathetique--the adagio cantabile movement. I play while looking at the portrait of a family ancestor hanging above the piano. Sitting there in her Victorian dress, she reminds me of Glenn Close. Her eyes are warm, but I know she is sad. She was ill and never married, and I can see a kind of longing in her face.

I play her the adagio cantabile, one of most beautiful melodies ever written, and in my mind, she hears me.

And smiles.

piano
sonata

An Interlude in Grandview Cemetery, Part VI

(A multi-part fictionalized account of the truth)

Behind Jason, the patch of milky light receded. He didn't glance back at the open air, however. Ahead, the darkness swelled like a living presence, and the air turned stagnant.

Jason forced a steady pace. He fought the urge to stop. He fought the fear that something might stand in his path, that someone might be walking with him, beside him, behind him. Endless terrors battered at the fringes of his imagination, but he fought them all.

And he walked. Disconnected from everyone. Everything. His disembodied mind floated in blackness. He was the crunch of gravel. He was the force of the Earth pressing up through his legs. The narrow road tunneled deep into Jason's awareness.

Suddenly, branches scraped Jason shoulder. He cringed and stumbled backward. He had missed the curve and veered into the forest. Jason's almost hypnotic self control was shattered. For a moment, he didn't dare a move in any direction.

Jason squeezed his eyes shut and willed the thumping in his chest to slow.

Only a mistake, he told himself. A simple mistake. He reoriented his imagined position and let his eyes open once more to the nothingness.

The curve meant he was close. Stretching out an unseeing hand, he prepared himself. Then, he started again, bearing right.

Soon, he should touch it. A ruined wall of neglected stone.

On to Part VII
Back to Part V
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cemetery

An Interlude in Grandview Cemetery, Part V

(A multi-part fictionalized account of the truth)

Jason passed through layers of the cemetery as he walked, and the years peeled away. Polished marble stones darkened, becoming coarse, as he returned to the 1940's and 30's. Then, he crossed over the turn of the century, and the stone turned sandy and white. Jason slowed. He loved the Victorian engravings, even the ones weathered so smooth he could no longer read them.

Despite stopping a few times to trace the lettering with his fingers, Jason soon arrived at the darkened windows of the old records building. Such an oddity. The narrow brick walls defied customary proportions. Jason's mind strained to picture thousands upon thousands of interment records squeezed under such a tiny roof.

But the true purpose of his visit lay nearby. The abandoned carriage road. Remnants of broken pavement and loose stone emerged from the absolute dark of the forest. Jason glanced down. The lane faded to grass before reaching the sweeping curve of the modern road where he stood. If not for those couple of yards, the connection would have been made. Only a couple of steps, really.

The past was not buried in Grandview. It lived on, close enough to touch. With a few brave strides off the road, you could meet it on its own terms.

Jason strode forward onto the lane, then the stone, then the splintered pavement, and was swallowed the blackness. The stars snuffed out, and he was utterly alone.

On to Part VI
Back to Part IV
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cemetery

Cries in the Night

A hushed reverie blanketed the forest Saturday night. Overhead, the indigo continued to drain to black, and the warmth drifted away into the starlit heavens.

We crowded the campfire to fight the chill. Staring into the primordial depths of the flames, our faces shimmered in the wavering light. We didn't speak. We wandered in our own thoughts.

Then, suddenly, tearing across the expanse in the silence, a single cry. A coyote, the alpha animal, wailing into the night. A chill of my own feathered up my arms to the back of my neck.

As the voice trailed, another picked up, a companion of the first. Then another. Then another. Howls. Barks. Yips. A pack whipped into frenzy. I pictured them in some dark glade on the other mountainside. A chorus of pagan voices--when rivals to humans could speak without cages and fences, without alarm systems and streetlights, and without extermination.

Then, the pack silenced itself and probably padded on. Quiet returned, but the night was far less empty. They were out there--listening, playing, hunting.

Rationally, I knew that what I had heard was easily explained zoologically. It was probably a gathering time, perhaps time to mate. But part of me buried farther down, not rational, knew that something in those voices was meant for me.

I understood it, heeded it, and tipped my hat to my newly discovered rivals in the night.

P.S. I believe the pack may have been on the mountain on the left. The foreground is northeastern Pennsylvania (Wayne County) and the background is New York (Delaware County). In the valley in between lies the West Branch of the Delaware River. Eastern Coyotes are only recently retaking their place in the forests and fields of Pennsylvania.

An Interlude in Grandview Cemetery, Part IV

(A multi-part fictionalized account of the truth)

Overhead, night clouds glided east and skimmed over the illumination of the half-moon. Jason walked with practiced silence though the headstones, which were glowing with soft, cold light. Even a listener in the ground below might not have heard Jason pass.

Strangely, the oldest part of the cemetery did not lay along the original wall by the street. Instead, the venerable graves rested closest to an older entrance, one which had fallen from use long ago. Over on Jason's left, along the forest edge, an oddly small building stood near the mouth of that decayed road, and a void in the trees marked its plunge into absolute blackness.

Jason stared at the void like an enemy. He would battle it soon. And the blindness. And the fear. For the moment, though, he dared to release himself into the stillness, and he reveled in it.
On to Part V
Back to Part III
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cemetery

Novels

EARTHTIDE

Excerpt: Beyond the black rocks of the jetty, the bell of a channel buoy clanged in the late night silence. Nami raised her open hands. She felt the tickle of gravitation on her fingertips. In her mind, she pushed, and a colossal surge radiated from her. Not just in the shallow surf at her feet, but swelling under the boat lights a mile from shore. The wave swayed fish clinging to sunken subway cars. It raced toward the ledge of the continental shelf. Nami stumbled backwards, terrified, as she felt the force rolling through the depths of the Atlantic and fanning toward the coasts of Europe and Africa.

Unhappy in a grinding legal career and marriage on the edge of bitterness, Nami Sarin awakes to find herself floating against the ceiling over her bed. Profound powers over the Earth's elements are emerging in her. As she struggles to understand the scope of her transformation, she dreams of Urlich Johns, a suicidal man who boards a plane to Alaska to die in the remote rain forests. Each of them senses a massive force of destruction enveloping the world. One chooses to run, and one chooses to fight, but both must stand to prevent the downfall of the human species. Nami flies to Alaska where cataclysmic storms are converging on Ulrich. She cannot allow him to die. Her strength and his knowledge must combine to battle an ancient force which is returning after epochs to restart the cycle of evolution. (Thriller/magical realism. Work in Progress.)