Trollheart

VI: Eyes to see

I'm looking at the black photograph again. I no longer fear it. It does not want to suck me down into its depths any more, I know that now. It is happy to see me. The fact that I am ascribing feelings to a photograph does not strike me as odd. In fact, nothing strikes me as odd now. I am at peace, finally one with my brothers and sisters. I am no longer an enemy, or a confused outsider. I run my thumb along the edge of the black square and feel a pleasant, if slightly painful buzz. The words still march down the face of the paper in rows. They are always the same three words, repeated line after line and column after column and page after page, but they no longer frighten me, or repulse me.

I know now.

I know.

“Any word yet, Benny?”

The newsagent pauses in the middle of taking a big bite out of a cheese sandwich, shrugs and smiles. “Not yet, Rob. But don't you worry,” he says, seeing my look of slight disappointment. “He is coming. You can bet your life on it.”

I nod, smile, take my pack of gum (I haven't touched a cigarette for so long now it seems like I never smoked) and bid him a good day, exiting the shop. Outside, the March sun is blasting down as powerfully as if it were the height of June. There's a pleasant cool breeze in the air, a breeze that gently caresses the branches of the trees and sets them swaying like graceful dancers. I pop a stick of gum in my mouth and begin to chew, my newspaper tucked under my arm. Fiona Hutchinson goes by on her bike, waves.

“He is coming!” she trills as she sails by, and I stifle a yawn myself, imitating her. I feel so tired these last few days.

“He is coming.” I return her salute and continue on down the road. I pass a few other people I know, a few I don't recognise, and am pleased to note that young Harry Mills, who had been struck down so cruelly by leukemia at only age fifteen last summer, is up and about and walking the streets. He looks quite well for a dead boy, but then, what is death to Him? And who can stay in their grave when He is coming? Everyone wants to be part of this; it's almost a carnival atmosphere. The day is surely drawing near.

He is coming.

Speaking of carnivals, I now take regular trips down the hill road to where the fairground still stands, broken-down and alone. But it doesn’t seem sad to me anymore. It’s more like it’s waiting, as we all are, waiting for Him to come. There’s a crackle of excitement about The Devil’s Playground now, a healthy glow, which I originally took - when I was sick - to be dark and evil. Of course it isn’t. How could anything connected with Him be evil? I see now no hazy otherness, as I did when I was sick, when I was wrong, before I knew. I don't see it but I know somehow it's there. The cops wave to me, their faces smiling. They all know me, and I've been visiting this place so often now I'm almost a fixture. They joke you can set your watch by me. I wave back.

He is coming.

On the way back up the hill I meet Marian Farrell. Part of her head is missing, but that's only to be expected when your husband puts the barrel of a .38 snub nose against your temple and pulls the trigger while you sleep. She's arm-in-arm with him, Peter looking quite well; if you don't look too closely you can't even see the thin angry red line, almost faded now, running from one side of his neck to the other. Suicide is such a messy business. But Marian doesn't mind, nor does she hold a grudge against the man she shared her bed with for fifteen years, and who slew her in her sleep one hot August night, then cut his own throat. Bills were mounting up, and when you've lost your job and there's another little one on the way, well, what's a man to do?
Anyway, there's no point in bearing grudges. None of them will matter soon.

He is coming.

I think about what I like to call “the time before my eyes were opened” less and less now, but when I do I struggle with what actually happened. Did I really see my cigarette bleed? Did I nearly choke on smoke? Mister Bennnet: well, that was real enough. Nobody would deny that, with the dead rising and walking among us every day. Some stay around, some seem to hear the call of their graves and head back after a few days, to be replaced by others who have passed on. I think I saw my wife once, but it has been over nine years now and if it was her, well, let’s just say the grave has not spared her. Initially, I was disappointed, but then I thought what does it matter? What does anything matter?

He is coming.

The dead walk but they don’t speak. They don’t see, they don’t interact with us. I’m not sure they’re even aware they’re dead. They just shuffle up and down the streets, silently, like sentinels, or guards, awaiting His coming. We’ve got used to them now. People just step out of their way. You have to, as otherwise they’ll just walk right into you, and that is not a pleasant experience, I can tell you.

When I consider it now, I believe Mr. Bennnett led me to Saint Jeremy's, showed me the path and then, with that icy, dead, direct stare stripped away all the falsehoods and irrelevancies that had driven my life and informed my actions, and showed me how it really was. I should thank him for that, but when you've been crushed to a pulp, and lost your head - literally - well, let's just say it's harder for some corpses to leave the cold embrace of the soil.

The men in black remain at my house. How did I ever think it was my house? How arrogant: it's not my house. It's not their house. Like everything, it is His house. Everything we have belongs to Him, and there is nothing we would not do for Him. We know – we all know – that we will quite likely be required to give our lives for Him. We are happy to do it. We want to do it. We chafe, we champ at the bit to do it. We wish He was here now, so that we could offer Him our lives and hope that He would accept the paltry gift, but we console ourselves by reminding each other that the day is nearly here.

He is coming.

The men in my house knew, they knew as soon as I returned home that night, and they all took off their shades, and I was able to share in what they had known for so very long. Perhaps they were aching to show it to me, to reveal the truth, but could not. Or maybe they didn't care. Either way, as soon as they realised I was one of them now, they opened up to me and I wondered why I had ever feared them, hated them, wished they would go. I have even forgiven them for the destruction of my garden. After all, what does it matter? Soon, everything will be destroyed, to be built anew. All we have known, all we have clung to in our stupid blindness all our lives, all we have believed and all we have held dear and important will tumble down in the dust to the sound of echoing, mocking laughter. Much of it may be ours.

He is coming.

But my friends are never far these days. I've stopped listening to Springsteen – stopped listening to music entirely. What is the point now that I know what I know? Keith and I still meet up but we spend most of our time discussing how He is coming, and when He might be here. Once, soon after my eyes were opened, Keith suggested that we should go see Bruce in New York, but I pointed out the very real danger that we had to consider: what if, while we were away, He came? We both started trembling violently at the thought, the pure horror of missing the momentous day, and the subject of leaving was never brought up again.

I don't feel like a pariah anymore. I don't feel the eyes watching me, the paranoia, the fear. I smile and tell everyone I meet that He is coming. And He is. I can feel it. It's the thing we're all waiting for. It's what those cops down at the bottom of the hill are preparing for. It fills me with the darkest, coldest terror to think of it, but a wild, exultant anticipation too. I know that once He comes, everything will change. Things will never again be the same. I hear whispers more and more these days, a real air of expectation and excitement is building up in the streets, in the houses, in the pubs and in the schools. You can feel it in the factories, in the shops, on the street corners and in every car or truck that passes by on the road. Preparations have become more intense down at the abandoned carnival, and only yesterday a whole slew of new officers arrived.

Something is about to happen.

I find myself of late thinking again of cockroaches, and how they are likely to be the only survivors left on this world.

We are all cockroaches now.

He is coming.

I hope He gets here soon.

I anxiously await His arrival, as do we all.

Don’t you?

Of course you do.

How could you not?

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018