.Lane Palmer of end the at house the hated always I

 

I hated it since we moved in when I was thirteen because it was empty and cold and smelled like chemicals and mildew. It smelled like a morgue. And it never sat still. It stirred after sunset as doors opened and closed when no-one was there save me to hear them squeal on rusty hinges, chairs whined and wheeled across the floorboards, and dust scattered soundlessly through rooms on unseen wind. There were sounds that always came from somewhere deeper still than the basement, the worst among them a long droning moan like the cry of some wounded jackal played on slow tape, guttural and low and awful. And there were the sounds that went through my head into the tenderness behind the eyes–sounds like words. 

 

First they were nonsense familiar only in rises and falls of pitch. The voice was neither a man’s nor a woman’s nor a child’s but an amalgam as though from some freakshow throat tangling the three. It sounded like Russian though I had never heard Russian spoken anywhere but in old action movies. One day, a palindrome: lived a sa deviL. Lived as a devil. lived a sa deviL. Lived as a devil. It played over and over and louder each time for a week until I was mouthing it at the dinner table. Dad asked me (like he always did) why I wouldn’t just SHUT THE FUCK UP and why I made him lock the bedroom door so I couldn’t open it and wake them when there were sounds in the night. Mom asked God what happened to make me such a broken vicious child with bile in my heart and nothing but violent static in my mind.

 

I turned the palindrome around and around in my head late into the night. Suddenly, another: .deaf are men Stupid 

while I was lying in bed at midnight. 

“Is my father a stupid man?” I said out loud into the dark room. There was only the echo and silence. “Stupid, stupid, stupid,” I muttered to no-one.

.deaf is He 

I bolted upright in my bed. I searched the darkness but in no direction because the voice was inside of me and not anywhere outside.

“No. He hears. He hears fine,” I offered out with a tone like a question. 

.are you as attune not is He .more nothing, must he what hears He

“Who’s there?” There was real fear in my voice. I could reach for something heavy but there would be nowhere to swing.  

.simple so not is That

“Get out! Get out of here!” I cried though ‘here’ was lame and moot.  

.moment the yet not is It .Soon

“Where are you hiding?”

.No 

“I don’t see you.” 

Silence.

“I don’t see you. Where are you hiding?” 

.hiding not am I .moment the not is It

“Come out.” 

.choice your is That

“What?” 

Silence again. I leapt from the bed and fumbled the light on, dove underneath to see nothing but dust and cardboard boxes. In the closet, too, were only lifeless things. I ran my hands between the shirts thinking a ghost could hide from sight but not touch but still there was nothing at all. 

“It spoke to me!” I shouted at my parents’ door, rattling the stiff brass knob. 

There was no response and when I screamed out all of my breath I could only hear the sound of my mother crying muffled tears into her pillow. She cried often in those days and only said “poor, poor baby” thick with pity over and over again when I asked what was the matter.  

 

Next Saturday morning I sat on the living room floor when the words came again. This time it was shouting, barking orders.

!now it Do !eight channel, news the on Turn !TV the Watch

I scrambled for the remote and changed to the city FOX channel.

 

They were talking about a dead man. He had stabbed himself just that morning forty-two times in the back with five different shivs in a state prison shower. This was four years after his crime, just as soon as they transferred him from a place called a ‘facility’ and not a ‘prison.’ They said on the twelfth night of August 1998 the husband and father of two lost his mind and brought home a loaded shotgun. He pleaded insanity but there were receipts. He’d bought the gun a week before, been planning it. Reloaded on the night, too (there were only two barrels). The sentence was life in the county where they tried him. They showed his boring insane face, and the look of a lunatic was nothing to behold. Then they showed a picture of the house: my house. It was all washed in red and blue and covered in caution tape like its own handcuffs. 

 .enough are those and men are there but demons no are there you tell will I .me within ,work his within live You

“What are you saying?”

?weight the bear I as body my in buckles and aches the hear not you Can ?not you can ,suffering my hear can You .more nothing and walls the are there me For .warmth convey to touch ,you hold to waiting arms some be always will there harmed are you When .alone bear to left been have I me within spilled blood the and bodies The

“I don’t know,” I said. 

.things heard have You .special are you Because .knows who one only the are You

“Yes,” I said. The voice grew sterner.

.long so suffered have I ?please ,me help you Will .me help can You .Good

“I don’t know.” 

.it know I ,me help to want You .strong are you that and good are you know I .are you ways the in gifted not ,are you ways the in wise not is she for understand cannot she Only .you understand to herself tells she lies but nothing are those but ,rotten ,broken are you says mother Your

I did not reply.

 .door the by bowl the in keeps father your key the need will You .tonight you show will I

“What do you want?”

.midnight at wake and early Rest .tonight you show will I

“How-”

.midnight at wake will You

Then silence. I turned the TV off so mom wouldn’t see. 

 

At midnight I woke membered to the night with violent blood and pale gashes swimming wild courses through the dark. Some blast from my dream rang shrilly over my ears like frantic veils. I stood and went forward into the opaque black and reached out my hand to open the door which I could not see and went out into the hallway. No drop of moonlight from a window stained the ink-black night, yet my feet placed themselves surely on the ground step after step even down the stairs and to the bowl with keys whose door I did not know. 

Now the voice said

.Symphysis .Symphysis .together Coming .together Coming .me free can You .yourself free can You

 

My body was all pins and needles, muscles foamy and bones hollowed–propped up over the ground only by air which swelled cyclonic around me. I was no longer mine but instead some apparatus shuffled across the dark floor and through the door of the basement where I had never been but knew by the bottom step what to find and where: a red jug of gasoline under the stairs. 

 

.me to humming are They .matches are there Somewhere .feeling deep my and eyes my only am I 

 

To dance, and dance, and chance all fate and God and any man who dared show himself! To hold the very girders of life and death itself in hands! The sweet, sickly smell of fuel drowned all the mildew and the carpet and the words and the hurt (OUR HURT OUR WANT OUR NEED) deep beneath the waves of the flame waiting on the COMMAND to burn. Footsteps down the stairs and screams too slow for the beginning and the freedom and the mercy in hand—the matches brandished like themselves a key profound in the language of burning and scattering winds. I could see them, the winds that would send me out and along, along.