Carillon

~

Aden had been taken along to someone’s stately house, one of the few that
loomed over Upper Arrow Lake, secluded in the deep woods. When Kay steered his way
firm and keen at the front door, she pulled slowly at his hand without
a pause in the motion. There were no questions, and he let her lead as
he was brought through labyrinthine dark hallways with distorted
walls, vast mirrors and windows turning into fun house mirrors from
chemical and thrill that not only warped his countenance, but the very
time propelling the night, oscillating wildly.

At arrival, the idea she had for him was too palpable, too cosmically
forward to be shaken off, and so in all the heavy silence stirring his
imagination, Aden reeled, only in heart, then fell back into step. He was
not only planted in a wooded mansion on the brink of a new year (in a
house that tilted and swayed like on ships) he was found by himself,
taken everywhere, gliding- he had settled into a featherweight gait
where he roamed back-alleys into new realms, placed side by side
where connected.

Then a dream emerged down mahogany flights; steps up to heaven, halls
to hell, and a once-world held in a comforting shell (because now
hollers, moans, whistles and blows had tidal waved the gathering.)
They had surpassed midnight's threshold, and an illusory line had been
drawn through '97 and '98 in all. Every catcall was distinct when
someone hailed, which meant Aden could catch voices from up three
stories, resonating from the property's boundaries. He laughed.
Someone dove into the lake. One drunken mishap made a shelf fall, and
books cascaded.

Someone crept up toward Aden spinning a colorful hand windmill on axis
with a finger. “We say goodbye and hello every single Eve, that's what
we do, don't we?” Kay spoke. “That's what everyone's gotta hear. I don't
know which one is more fitting now, cast in this light.”
“Haven't you realized we're always doing that? Saying goodbye while
we're saying hello?“
“Like 'Aloha'.”” Kay smiled.
“The terms coexist always, so it's perfect; because we're not lying to
each other tonight. Sing or something, aren't you entertained?.” Aden
offered.
“That's okay, really, I'm fine. There aren't any birds out until
morning, you'll have to wait to be sung to-- maybe then you'll last
longer here. That's what waiting does to you... you last forever...”
Kay dropped down on the couch beside Aden.
“Sure, and I'll be waiting forever. For those song birds.” Aden grimaced
on vodka and fought a smile down. “I'm cooler than I thought I'd be
with the way things are back home, you know what? Thought I wouldn't
agree with everything so fucking quiet and cold again. I forgot about
the good parts, Kay, like yesterday- Eliza and I foraged the back
woods again 'cause the house got small- I managed up the tree house
five acres off. Remember that fortress? So damn high up it was, Kay, I
don't know how I used to climb that way. The porch fell off,” A
added, grinning. “there are planks in the stream and Eliza said they
looked like the 'skeletal remains of our childhood'. It's not an
indestructible fortress after all I guess. My castle fell into the
sea.” he said, mocking a sorrowful expression.

“Surprise surprise, A, that tree house has been exposed to the elements--
I do remember though, I was always beat up by that tree. ...'cause I
fell into the creek once when Cyan was there and broke bones and
always got burnt by your campfires, remember? 'Member? You must have
gotten me maladjusted to fire pits and staying warm, should I really
have to rescue flames when I'm eight?” Kay slid on these words just like
she did when climbing up wet bark to look out of Aden's old tree house
raptly, with a foot sometimes slipping into nothing but a free-fall.
Castlegar had four valleys that thus came clear, not one snaking
street fell out of sight, no landmark absent from the town's panorama
they couldn't all title with belonging eyes.

“Every twenty minutes, that's right. That won't be forgotten if we end
up out in those woods tonight. Like hell.”
He feigned shivers convincingly and moved smoothly backward, steps
magnetic, into decadently draped red curtains and spoke, grinning smug
and lessening all tensions as he leaned back. “I'm sorry I belong to a
different town now.”
“And that's why the tree house was so high,” K paused, sipping on a
bottle of peach schnapps. She left the comment ignored
“Built to be, built to see, built to get high.” A could easily speak
this overheard, even while people shuffled up and out amongst them
from 'top the staircase. He had a draw. When a house had a staircase
A found that it worked to be seen.
K's face was reminiscing, peering up, she had always given her
friend's words the keenest of attention, and A long ago picked up on
what meant of her preying eyes when they became that fixed and
penetrating, like the sharpest hook delve into a lake, where she
hastened to catch the devil in everyone's details. He'd not understood
what made the habit a part of her. Her focus came so certain, as if
channeled through her camera's lens to capture a rare shot, while she
leaned close enough to A to avoid straining her soft speech K, stiller
than well water, felt that they were much too apart.

And she did feel like a true fire starter, she had built the night on
shaky grounds and lit a match on the driest prairie, so reckless.
Everything would burn down if she felt the wrong thing, or endured his
departure the way she had endured scalding her fingers while nursing
his bonfire flames back to life, years burnt out now, for warding off
autumn's chill. The truth was you don't forget that kind of thing.

So it must have been the clock tower responsible, for all this lost
time, A mused, and imagined, in his mind's eye- he could see it now
out of fog where a chrome dial was held high against an always mild
sky. It owned black roman numerals set perfectly under a glass dome,
a-lit at night, where within encircled the symmetrical icon of an
amaranth, six petals split the hours, on one of three black spires of
the church erect in town. The clock tower seemed to have eyes on A
since he was raised by the dawn. It was a reminder to him throughout
younger youth of the bells, they rang out a dead tradition that had
reached his bedroom window, still held onto by Castlegar, now an elder
memory the rings were reigned by the chronic tempo of two vast hands
pointed sharp-- like the ends of the wrought iron gates at the
entrance that night-- those of which A postulated only God could
adjust the hands of; and so was this time that spun them into that
wild exodus.

As the night wore on, there became burnished surfaces, everywhere he
looked the night was ablaze, and revealed polished oak floors, grand
vases without life inside, strewn Christmas lights of every color
snaking up tall walls. Somehow the woodland outskirts of east
Castlegar had become someone’s discotheque. The light was too loud, so
he left K with her pin wheel, said he'd be back, and took to a
balcony. His old Arrows adorned the moonlight like a loose prayer,
culminating lackadaisically on the lake’s central surface. A thought
that the Moon was just a testament to the Sun, borrowing light,
extracting it’s glory, nevertheless it bestowed it’s undeserved pride
down upon him, a full photosphere, but just an illusion. He thought of
envy.
He infiltrated the peripheral bedrooms and parlors of the night’s
assemblage, those subject to disuse, and found a spiral flight down to
a wine cellar, and the rest was hazy. Shadows greeted and kissed, and
he might have been flying- or falling- he wasn't sure. K ebbed in and
out of his line of sight, dancing, A treated her figure like a target
and aimed to never miss missing.

No noise, no thought, no brash liquor lingered inside his head at a
standstill. He felt that storm hit him hard, escalating into a high
pressure that pulsed and ached at his temple from within- now so deep
in, like a thousand tons of water falling per second, like the
weight of Mills Falls, something that never up until now seemed like a
threat.

Swaying, he met a dark winding road that crossed paths with his own,
and thought there were things he hadn't known, that she was the
quietest hope. K and A were both truly out of bounds now, and like
always before, they caught the truth right at the verge of it's way
off the road.

There came up a thunderous pulse resonating interior, shaking his very
bones, chilling the marrow, it pounded inharmonious against the
rhythm of a song he wanted to savor. He asked somebody what was
issuing out of the speakers. Go away, It said: it’s weary, it’s burnt,
jaded but working its way up slowly and steadily to a brazen
resignment, and hollow acceptance. It had a restraint he couldn’t
attest to, but a vibe all too alluring. It said Leave me here, leave
me to dourly permeate the backdrop. He saw a frail someone atop the
third-story steps gripping with cadaverous hands incarnadine ethanol;
a glass appeared their refuge. He made them a friend, he knew who they
were once. His stranger for the second time had dark eyes, those that
he chose often did.

“I can leave any way I want to.””

A steady outpouring of attendees appeased the remnants of his
sentience. He couldn’t lucidly slip out the entry way, start up the
car and say goodbye to old friends, one note told him to stay still--
maybe so the hunter's wouldn't catch him, or maybe because A wasn't
supposed to wake up to hear the birds where they perched. Kay flooded
into his mind, an anchor harboring him at Winslow Diesco's estate, and
so he faded, and an ominous, smooth beat diminished him, so
tranquilly. The last sparks died out. Go away.