The Dead Council

 

In the basement of the abandoned church at the edge of town there is an old card table, waiting in darkness for a game that is never played. Though its time in service of lunchbreak cribbage between groundskeepers is over if it ever began, on certain nights this table hosts a conference of much stranger custodians: the stewards of death itself. Tonight is such a night. Torrents of rain rage against a curtain of moonless black. Swimming into existence are the crooked figures of the Dead Council. These beings, whose natural state is a kind of rarefied will toward morbidity, find such manifestations distasteful and exhausting, and so do not bother with canniness of form. They are at once ethereal and wooden, something like enormous amoeba stuffed into the hollows of dead, vaguely human trees. Scaled necks are crowned by perfunctory heads which meld goat muzzles with the sallow asymmetries of moldered kings. Black tongues lined with blind eyes loll from supernumerary mouths, seeking and insensate. Though there is no need of speech between the monsters, their deliberations are not silent. Rather, their invisible intentions are like great columns of migrating bats, each one noiseless and perfectly choreographed with respect to itself, yet dissolving into a cacophony of flapping and tearing upon collision with another. A roaring din which has, at great peril to the spiritual constitution of the translator, been converted into something like human language. Older than names, the three counselors tonight instantiated are known by the rites of ancestral mysteries as RAN, NIM, and LEY.

 

NIM: Murmurations of the Dreamer upon each of you. We are returned with a new set of candidates. I suggest we give the situation a moment to resolve itself. The Grandfather has the rifle in his hands. It shouldn’t be long now.  

 

RAN: Not long at all! He’s already fired a shot. We are simply waiting for the Armadillo to bleed out. 

 

LEY: The Grandfather is stinking drunk, with the Girl pulling at his leg besides. He will have missed. We must deliver the verdict ourselves, and it must be a bold one: the Girl dies.

 

RAN: The Girl is the last choice! She has her youth, her health, her…

 

NIM: We need not start bickering just yet. When have the townsfolk, in their brief windows of self-determination, betrayed the temperaments etched into them by the waking Dreamer? Not yet, and not tonight. One among the candidates will die by the action of a machine already in motion. My guess is that it will be the grandfather. If necessary, we will make it so. I agree that the Girl is an absurd selection.

 

LEY: It’s the absurdity which makes her the perfect selection! Do you imagine that the Dreamer, in its scant hours of repose, yearns to awaken in a world trundling along the same worn path carved in the bedrock of eternity? We are given a provisional seat at the loom of fate, and we must weave in startling colors. Our intercession will be celebrated!

 

NIM: You know as well as I that the Dreamer metes neither reward nor punishment for decisions rendered. Our work is by necessity, not commission.

 

The work of the council may be described as insurance against an impossible deviation. It begins when the ancient star which sleeplessly dreams the town deigns to blink, which is to say its advent is nearly imperceptible. The Dreamer's blink may be observed only in the rare absence of a point of light in the black ocean of billions, an absence perennially unnoticed by the town’s nocturnal peripatetics. Equally difficult to apprehend is the psychic effect of the blink – the evaporation of reality’s yoke, a fleeting return of something called will or velle by distant forebears who even in deep centuries spoke only of a memory. That momentary freedom goes unnoticed because the townsfolk have trained themselves to move in the grooves traced by the Dreamer’s eye, unconsciously sidestepping an unnameable friction which rapidly wicks the mind. So it is that even when authorship of their being is relinquished, life (and death, which is the Dream’s true harvest) continues apace: the forgetful will leave the stove on, the aggrieved will hurtle down rain-slick roads, and the curious will knock on doors that ought be ignored. 

 

LEY: None have been rewarded because none have truly made a decision! Our kind has been content to simply wait and report like babbling crows. Do you see this spot of wear in the table's vinyl? It was made by a fist, one of the Dreamer’s miserable flesh-and-blood subjects banging protest against some trick of chance. Should our diffidence exceed theirs? We could write it quite naturally. The Grandfather will miss, and the Girl will run to the quivering Armadillo. He will take aim again, his drunkenness will combine with his truest, darkest wish to collapse the form of child and beast into the same bleary enemy, and his bullet will strike her heart. He will bury her in a familiar place. Do you deny that a part of him wants to kill her?

 

RAN: Want has nothing to do with it! Even the most well-crafted murder is not achieved by way of a homicidal wish. It takes careful action, rare discipline, overwhelming intention, blinding luck, a many-dotted constellation of finely-grained factors! Whom, tonight, are those factors arrayed against? The Armadillo! I need not explain the frequency with which catastrophe visits the lower beasts.

 

LEY: Bah, you are all catastrophe and no tragedy. Remind me to attend your lecture on the ecstasies of frogs crushed by fruit carts. 

 

NIM: All right, I can see the dam has broken on this discussion. Just as well. Better to have a pass-time while we wait for human nature to make our choice for us. (To LEY) We are in agreement that somewhere in the Grandfather’s being gambols murderous intent. But if a gemmule of spite were death’s necessary and sufficient condition, we would be considering three thousand candidates, not three.

 

The council enters the world tethered by the invisible Midnight Cords to the subset of townsfolk whom circumstance has rendered ripest, one of which must be severed before the night is up. Given their usual mode as a diffuse ortgeist, they arrive with perfect knowledge of each candidate’s heart and actions up to the moment of their instantiation, after which they may only speculate and deliberate before the eventual severance, consecrated by the Severance Psalm. That separation may be relied upon to occur on its own as the natural course of things leads one or another of the candidates to their grave; in the unprecedented event that it does not, the council reserves the power to sever a candidate’s cord by unanimous vote. According to an old pact between the Dreamer and the blazing Emperor of Daylight Sol, the Council’s judgement must be arrived at before dawn. This stipulation has proven so irrelevant, so easy to abide, that it has been long forgotten not only by the Council but by the Dreamer itself, together with the consequences incurred by its breach. A semblance of the dreariness and peculiarity of the Council’s task might be gained by imagining a watchman stationed on a vaulted platform in the center of a lake during a rainstorm, told to ensure that one among a particular set of falling raindrops makes its full descent to the surface of the lake. He may record and calculate with soaked and trembling fingers each raindrop’s arc until it passes his platform, after which he is blind to its progress until the sound of water striking water fills him with the sense that his wearisome assignment is as asinine as it is effortless.

 

Tonight’s cords emanate from a cruel old man, a frightened little girl, and the unlucky armadillo which has wandered onto their porch amid the pounding rain. The Grandfather has spotted the hated pest from the kitchen window while rummaging for another beer; he has thundered a command to the Girl to fetch his rifle before the creature ruins his garden; the Girl has pretended to be asleep, as she has learned to do through so many of his tirades; the Grandfather has roared a promise of punishment and grabbed the rifle himself, nearly tumbling into the downpour as he throws open the door to the yard; the Girl has run bawling to his side, clawing with her small hands and begging him not to hurt the thing; the Armadillo has rooted and pawed at the bare soil, finding nothing to sustain and certainly nothing to ruin. 

 

LEY: Ah, but the Grandfather has more than desire. He has experience. Have you forgotten that he killed the Girl’s brother? Strangled the babe and buried it near the creek. 

 

NIM: That is a point in favor of the Grandfather’s death, not the Girl’s. It multiplies the paths to his grave. He thinks he’s hidden it well, but half the town suspects and the girl is sure. She feels his loathing in the smooth plane of the floorboards, sanded by his guilty shuffle. Tastes it in rust-flecked gruel. Tonight she may smother him in his sleep. Or a burst of righteous invective, perhaps owing to a concerned neighbor or his own shamed heart, will retrain the rifle upon its owner. 

 

RAN: Each of you is imagining that a single pebble can divert the course of a river. The contributing factors must be considered in aggregate, and if historical resentments are being summoned, we must acknowledge that whatever tensions simmer between the Girl and the Grandfather are dwarfed by collective bloodlust for the Armadillo’s kind. Do you recall the naturalist who came with his charts and instruments, looking to make an assay of the town’s strange soil? The vermin were so inimical to his work that he made an open call for their extermination, remunerated at a nickel a head. And the townsfolk leapt at the chance to eradicate the beasts, whom they blame - 

 

LEY: Naively.

 

RAN: - whom they blame, correctly or not, for their ravaged honeydew and withered zinnias. The old warehouses filled to bursting with armadillo corpses as the townsfolks’ appetites outpaced their satisfaction, and the naturalist completed his assessment to find excellent, if singular, soil; perhaps a dusty agricultural journal languishes in a university library denoting its rare fraction of labile carbon. The point is, even if the Armadillo escapes the Grandfather, it will likely be scurrying to another death. History and the beckon of its brethren exert a powerful gravity.

 

NIM: Gravity is a function of mass, not quantity. Even if a thousand generations are calling on the Armadillo to join them, their chorus is not as massive as the one produced by the Grandfather’s crimes. He lives inside his invitation to death; it domes his sky and cradles his steps, magnified by time.

 

At the mention of time, the Council bristles. Their discomfort is growing. Each tries to recall the tactile difference between tension and slack as they grope in their way at the Midnight Cords, searching for some clue to the night’s progression. Even pugnacious LEY had expected her arguments would be rendered mere sport by time’s passing. Yet none of the candidates has died. Realizing the judgement may in fact come to a vote, she adds solemnity and a veneration of reliable process to her rhetorical armory.

 

LEY: Listen here. One of you has a fetish for statistical probability, the other for parabolic narrative. I believe I can satisfy both. 

 

By the same art with which she instantiated herself, LEY wills a small wooden bowl filled with a shifting, nacreous liquid onto the card table. 

 

LEY: Let us immerse our keenest eyes into the divining pool. If it reveals to any of us a possible future in which the Girl does not die, I will rescind my position and cast my vote for whichever candidate is chosen between the two of you.

 

RAN: Hmm, a curious proposition. The divining pool is powerful, but its visions are not proofs. They are colored by the will of the viewer. 

 

LEY: Is that a problem? If the pool shows you a scene of the Girl’s death, it is either because such scenes are manifold and probable, or you are in secret agreement with me that a striking and dramatic judgement is preferable. I happen to be confident that both explanations are true.

 

RAN: I - 

 

NIM: Very well. The feeling is unfamiliar, but we may be running out of time. I agree to your proposal; we each receive a vision, and if the outcome is invariant, our vote is sealed and we sever the Girl’s cord.

 

RAN: Wait! A single vision each is far too small a sample. Even if the likelihood of the Girl’s death is vanishingly small, the pool may show us three such scenes by chance.

 

NIM: Fine. Two rounds of visions. May we begin?

 

LEY: I have no objections. Six visions, then a sealed vote.

 

RAN: All right. Six visions and a sealed vote.

 

NIM: It is decided.

 

NIM places an eye-lined tendril onto the card table. A few moments of graceless floundering, and then the appendage finds the bowl and immerses its tip in the iridescent fluid.

 

NIM: The bullet strikes nothing vital; the Armadillo scampers away to nurse its wounds; the Grandfather passes out in his armchair, consumed by drunken stupor; The Girl believes she has an opportunity; she grabs his rifle and quietly fishes the rounds from the nightstand drawer; he hears her fussing with the bolt and awakens; he strangles her as he did the boy.

 

Satisfied, NIM’s tendril retracts and the turn is passed to LEY.

 

LEY: The bullet misses and the Girl bolts into the night alone; the Grandfather gives no chase, but the Girl does not make it far; she slips on a mossy stone and spills into the creek; as she thrashes to the surface, she is caught in the back of the head by a branch rushing downstream; she is knocked unconscious and drowns.

 

Rain lashes the cracked basement window. Somewhere nearby, muddied feet beat a desperate escape.

 

RAN: The Armadillo escapes and the night proceeds as so many have; anger and fear, shouting and fists, and finally the Grandfather’s leonine snore; the Girl coaxes herself to sleep, but the night terrors are stronger tonight; too strong; her heart bursts in her sleep.

 

A rolling tumble. Small hands lay down their precious charge. Wounded but alive. If she can only find somewhere dry to bed him. Searching fingers meet jagged glass, and a yelp is swallowed by the night. A mixture of pain and celebration as she realizes she has stumbled into a window well.

 

NIM: The Grandfather’s rifle jams, proof to him of some unspecified betrayal by the Girl; he storms inside, and locks the door behind himself; the Girl is stranded in the rain; she scales the rotted trestle outside her bedroom window; the trestle snaps; she plummets to her death.

 

The hollow crash of old glass. The Girl worms her way through the window frame, cradling the Armadillo to her chest. A wince as she drops to the basement floor, then a silent gasp as her gaze is drawn to the soft silver glow in the center of the room, and the monsters it illuminates.

 

LEY: The Armadillo collapses at the sound of the Grandfather’s rifle; it is not dead, but the Girl believes it so; her thoughts are consumed by her brother; the compounded heartbreak is too much to bear; she reaches behind the tattered summer dress in her closet for the bottle of pills she lifted from Mrs. Lutzman’s purse during communion at Sunday mass; she intends to become the opposite of our master, a dreamless sleeper; she succeeds.

 

The creatures seem to pay her no mind. She keeps her eyes locked on them as she moves along the perimeter of the basement. At length she finds a thick loomed rug of the type that populates her earliest memories, scenes of old women in flea markets boasting and gossiping. She lays the Armadillo upon it and checks his wounds. His breathing is shallow and erratic. She scans the basement for anything of use, finding only stacked chairs and dusty crystalware, all the mundanities a migrant congregation forgets. Yet she can perceive all of it a bit more clearly than when she entered, whether because the night is beginning to lose its grip or the bowl of glowing liquid is shining brighter.

 

All at once, revelation cracks over her mind like an egg. Whatever is in that bowl will be the salve that rescues her new friend; that rescues them both. The bizarre nightmares which gather around it, though no great comfort, are almost quaint when measured against certain terrors she has faced and survived. Her Grandfather’s red flannel with the missing fourth button and the horrible tuft of hair that pokes out in its place. A melting popsicle offered by a pitying neighbor who sends her on her way and draws the blinds even before she can read the joke printed on its stick. With a duty of care outstripping her fear, she gingerly advances toward the card table. The monsters remain silently transfixed. There is no reaction to her approach, no reaction even as she stands tip-toed to place her hands on the bowl. 

 

RAN: I am well enough convinced. I will relate this final vision briefly, and then we may cut the Girl’s cord. The Girl throws herself in front of the Armadillo, prepared to die together with - 

 

The vision explodes into a field of pure white as the Girl yanks the bowl from the table. RAN thrashes in impotent confusion.

 

RAN: What is the meaning of this!? The vision is gone!

 

NIM: Quickly, your eyes! Attune them to the present!

 

LEY: Gah, what a hateful, blinkered thing a body is! Which is the configuration for reducing perception to a pinprick?

 

As when they entered the world, the Council shifts and flickers in maladroit pursuit of sighted forms. Their bodies append and amputate, crest and collapse, rendering themselves misshapen palimpsests of clawed bats and mad sages, hog snouts and heretical beetles sketched in sealed demonologies. NIM succeeds first.

 

NIM: The Girl, The Girl is here! And she has stolen the divining pool!

 

LEY: She has seen us! There can be no question, no hesitation! We must destroy her now!

 

RAN: Quickly, begin the Severance Psalm!

 

As she dashes back to the Armadillo with the bowl in hand, the Girl clamps her eyes tight to keep from looking back at the apocalyptic roaring of the nightmares. Its cavernous clamor is shaking her skull, but the crisp honeydew smell of the silvery sloshing liquid works a stabilizing magic. With harried grace she drops to her knees before the Armadillo, offers the bowl, crooks his head to help him drink.

 

NIM, LEY, RAN (Together):    Let strangled roots mulch peopled skies

                                               Where Elders dream of Death’s demise

                                               May smothered flame now fresh alight

                                               Ceaseless succor, endless night

                                               

                                                Immortal counselors, whom shall it be?

                                                It is the Girl!

                                                It is the Girl!

                                                It - 

 

It is too late. Dawn’s light enters through the window and the terms of the pact with Sol make themselves known. The effervescent dreamstuff of the Council’s bodies begins a conversion into coarse marble. From swirling base to chimerical head, the counselors are petrified where they stand. A final crashing scream as the last droplets of the future they so hotly contested are lapped up by a convalescent armadillo from the palms of a kind young girl. Already his wounds are closing. He curls himself up on the sun-dappled carpet as the girl stands and turns to look at the fresh silence. She cannot decide whether she is surprised to find the nightmares are not nightmares, but three ugly and harmless statues.

 

The Grandfather shuffles into Sunday service with his head bowed, the way he walks everywhere these days. A fog of condemnation has settled upon the world. It is redoubled during the passing of the peace, when his hand is neither proffered nor asked for. It swirls and eddies in the quick glares of teenaged acolytes whose rhythmic steps sing accusation in a secret language. It is preserved by a constellation of rumors connected in unnamable ways. Liah Jackson swears she’s seen virga hanging over Redmeadow Lake at sunset every night for a month now. A zinnia with colors like you’ve never seen popped up in Dave Romero’s garden. A few folks near the edge of town say they’ve glimpsed something that looks just like that poor missing girl making off with their best vegetables in the night. This last rumor has a gang of preening youths laughing and crowing at the Grandfather in the church parking lot. One has the temerity to block his timid gait and ask him plainly: has the Girl had made a bandit’s hideout of the abandoned church?

 

The quavering Grandfather answers truthfully that he does not know. What he declines to add is that he has looked. He does not say that he mounted a furious search the morning she ran off, his rifle still loaded and set on a new target. He does not say that from creek to clearing to tall and sticky meadow, each new stone he overturned offered only enraging emptiness. At last he found himself at the edge of town, much further than he thought her legs could carry her. His sickened soul leapt when he found the broken basement window outside the old church, believing he’d hit paydirt. He lay prone to peek through the window and saw the sight which rent his mind: gargoyles of maddening constitution, simultaneously the formless impressions of a thousand beasts and yet unequivocally corporeal. A cabal of unworldly nightmares of the kind it is damnation merely to witness. 

 

The Grandfather does not say that his dreams, once so pleasantly voided by ethanol, have been visited by those creatures every night since. He does not say that the smothering fog to which he knows he will soon succumb issues from their illimitable mouths. Cowed by shame and fear, the old man does not say that if she has secreted herself in the old church, she dwells in the guardianship of demons.