More than fear drove him now. Curiosity, and some faint feeling akin to rage arose and jostled his homesickness. Another step, then two blurring to four—A bewildered rat in a maze. Running over bridges and soft earth. Fogbound and tortured, and still running. Terraces and patches of weeds were ignored as he pushed passed. Unrecognizable whispers and wooden croaks like strange haiku from things with no names were all about him. Another bolt of rapid steps. Atmospheres of possible sprang up like civilizations only to fall into ruin.
He pulled up and stood firm. He made fists at his sides. He clamped his eyes and mouth shut and shook himself. Schizophrenia? Juju? Or perhaps some fever that stung reason like spirituous drink? What clutching distortion sent its roots spreading like beams from a lighthouse? How long would he remain a slave to this torment?
He moved on. Things that should have happened long ago and stayed still as the surface of a morning lake were beside him. There were faint impressions of melting snow cascading and an empire of glazed-eyed gypsies celebrating with seven loud songs about hot red blood and predatory violence overwhelming screeched arias.
He remembered a madness rich in racking tears. How many riots of crashing waves had it lashed him with? He ran desperately, his hair and the edges of his coat autumn leaves in November winds. Then he saw the moons; heavy twins of lusterless pearl low in the sky. They stood before him and shone. He felt they shone their sad greeting only for him. They reflected the reminders like intrigues that filled the empty monastery he become. His forgetfulness fell away.
For a time he just stood there.
Soon the stars came out; black stars. The sound of muted waves crashing came to him and he ran again. Home. He must be home. But in which shadow did it lie. Home, the need of it was everything. It was a hungry worm in his belly.
He ran and the white moons stayed with him. He stopped. His running seemed endless and pointless. Tired, he sat, his back to a metropolitan sprawl, kettle-black and lying like a cluttered yard of potbellied baseburners with sky-wounding towers like chimney stacks capped with crooked-peaked witches hats. The wind, soft and flecked with the strangled clamors of distant objects, moved and still he sat—hard as an inscription set in a grave marker—yet he was on fire and felt light. He let his breathing fill him.
“Home is where the heart is. And yours was broken only by distance.”
Again the assiduous enemy and his eyes like sharp medieval arsenals. He stared at him.
“You wonder if I’m truth.”
He knew the voice, and those eyes, though now—like his own—set behind a mask. His stalker’s garb had changed, filthy greatcoat for tattered yellow robes, but it was the same pursuer nonetheless.
“I know you are turmoil,” he said without rising from his rocky seat on the shore.
“Ah.” The tone was as sticks beating the grass.
Their gaze was long. One expecting, the other as difficult to known as a new language.
“For a moment you yearned for brightness and motion. You were pulled away by a song. We turned and you were gone,” the figure in yellow said.
“Gone where?” In a moment of confusion he couldn’t recollect the other-where.
“Chasing shadows in the other world.”
And as it was said he remembered the day and the invitation of the dim music as it lingered, and how his feet had stretched, following the waning echo. But he no longer cared.
“Camilla, who was also lost for a time, has returned. Shall we—”
“No,” he replied, gazing up at the black stars suspended like ripe plums. He listened to the waves break upon the ageless shore. “The dynasty can wait. I’ll just sit here awhile.”
The robed figure in the pallid mask nodded and walked off.
Thale did not turn. He closed his eyes and listened to the sound of the waves which came in crashing repetitions like heartbeats.
Last Year In Carcosa
(Cold days biting . . .)
(Having inherited the hunger of the cold stars the moons dip low. One moon whispers, “When this moment is over.”, the other—a twin phantom of truth, whispers, “This will play on . . . and on—on and on . . .”)
(A man and a woman seated at a table on a high balcony, overlooking an empty beach. The air is dead calm—dry as ashes, the sky a corridor of walking clouds. There is a gun and a pale rose on the table. The rose has shed a single petal . . . She glances at the strange clouds as they ride off . . .)
THE MAN: Spring, and all?
THE WOMAN: Then . . . Perhaps. (She turns her face to the beach and its blankness.)
THE MAN: Some may remember it differently.
THE WOMAN: The slamming door and the ebbing footsteps?
THE MAN: That too.
THE WOMAN: And the Brother?
THE MAN (frowning): Turned around . . . Lost to some meadow of winter.
THE WOMAN (regret disturbing the shipwrecked ghosts her tears so often see): Today walking in the footsteps of to-morrow.
THE MAN (frigid, stern): And Forever.
(The woman looks at the gun. The man covers it with a pale linen napkin. It resembles a mound of windblown snow. She shivers, as if someone has placed a knife to her will. The clouds, touched by her October breath, push confused birds toward the spreading shadows of the lowlands.)
THE WOMAN: So the mess, and this Game of Truth, end?
THE MAN (who the inhabitants, on the day they remove their masks, will call The Golden Lion—the Last King, worn and almost a reflection, smiles dimly—glacially): Except for the shadows love leaves in its wake.
(The woman turns away and looks out over the empty beach. There is a long silence.
She sighs, turns to face a mask cold as the empty black stars. The man picks up the gun . . .)
(The gun cares not for time . . . or reasons . . . or worlds, or dreams that could.)
THE MAN (standing at the railing, alone): Desire is the future.
~*~
A gun in the mirror.
A gun in the mirror of a mirror . . .
A gun in the mirror of a mirror of a mirror . . .
Each mirror is an island. A parade of scars.
Each mirror is a face—a secret or a remembrance, a tomb. Each face a mask.
A soulless mask.
The gun has no soul.
But the eyes looking in the mirror, looking for the gun . . . There’s a soul in them . . .
And it’s a dark one.
And it dreams of blood.
And the rhythms and canvasses of The Past . . .
U: “Desire is the future.”
The mirror . . .
sees.
U: “Desire is the future.”
The mirror . . .
Sees—
the thin lies that loved her.
“Desire is the future.” (He whispered it Then. He whispers it Now.)
The mirror sees—
something has changed since last year.
U sees it too. Sees far away . . . And a face in the cold dark (hatching from days he left in time covered over by shifting sand). A soft face trying to hold on to dreams that would not heed the swollen cries of the scavenger-wing blackbirds. But it’s the same face. The same soul. Same eyes—angelic eyes. And he remembers holding on to the time. It was so simple . . .
Walking the corridors. Again. Like last time . . . and . . .
And the galleries . . . Long . . . Silent . . . disguised in a grey stillness they tug . . .
Chilled. Black mirrors. Doorways. To other eras, eras filled with detached voices, whispers in ink . . . Endless gloomy doorways to silent rooms.
Empty space reflected in empty mirrors, silent entropic coves . . .
Silent corridors. Shadowed halls . . . where no one walks . . . deserted corridors . . . portraits of dead men from eras gone by . . .
(old bonds broken by falsehoods)
(doubts) (faces turned, taken down)
There . . . in things the shadows imply . . .
&
nbsp; —Now
a hand . . . Eyes . . . That face . . . (Did it forget?)
The voice (whispering of different times) (of frozen gestures) (hollow sounds)
. . . of kings and queens, princes—frozen, and princesses, and the impossible . . .
Columns. And shadows. In the gloom.
(and whispers) (of roles)
(and days of silence) (and the Garden of Day After Day when dark men walked in cinders of yesterday)
(and the eyes that turn away from the mirrors) (and the pillars that are only visible at twilight)
And the tall, dim figure in the painting . . .
Watching her from a distance . . . Watching her watch something unmoving in the whiteness . . .
She watched him, wondered what became of him.
Did he marry?
Did he find a way to be free of Today?
. . . or is he the same as ever?
The same as when he came down the stairs . . .
The stairs she sees in the mirrors.
Did he remember?
Were his hands still waiting?
For pleasure?
For the secrets of shame and destruction to dissipate?
Did he remember the dance? The thunder?
Did he turn?
See it coming . . .
Did he know?
About her mistake . . .
Did he guess?
(Then . . . the sound of her laugh . . . it sounded far away)
(everything in the mirror sounded so far away) (and deserted . . .)
(the long corridors)
(the chairs)
(the game of silence) (cold, love and fault)
(the gloom)
(cold) (tears—shame—fear—the act bent with fury)
(always seemed so cold)
(it did not leave one alone)
(like a persistent question)
(—please)
(—please)
(—please) (the mirrors flooded with desire)(like the corners of a dry page stained with disappointment)
Mirrors . . . filled with shadow moths with phoenix wings bending to embrace the blind midnight stillness held in the jet trenches . . .
Mirrors that slowly erase . . .
Mirrors that take your breath away.
Mirrors of afternoon.
And twilight.
And the dreamer in high heels that whispered, “Time . . . Time . . . time poisoned . . .”
Mirrors of flesh and blood.
Mirrors leaning . . .
Mirrors hatching shadows . . .
. . . watching it all . . .
in mirrors flooded with desire . . .
Desire . . .
It was so simple Then . . . simple as the lines twilight paints over the place Day will never come back to . . .
Back Then. On the Other Side.
U sees
Then
and Now.
Feels (almost) the same.
Something’s wrong.
Something.
Wrong.
Wrong as his hand, as the broken glass, as the blood.
U sees the gun.
Feels something’s wrong. The lines. The shadows. The mess that was made. Torn up—(“It all went so badly.”) The way the lines sit on the page.
But you play the hand you’re dealt.
Win.
Lose.
Or wrong.
Wrong—
. . . The corridors . . . (something cruel—something cool, that word, “Nonetheless.”—something beautiful . . . so far to fall) . . . The shadows—the flock of abyss-dark shades spreading. The kaleidoscope of merciless centuries in the mirrors . . . The doors opening—in the same room again . . . The plague. The choices—a hundred silent autumns on her lips . . . The sigh, the crash . . . the line and the wheel (and what it all came down to) . . . what the voices carried . . . guilt spilled, dispersed . . . The shadows. The weariness—the angry face in the mirror, its vanities bullets . . . The corridors . . . Rowing in the dragon’s fire. . . the stillness of the long corridors . . . All the dead days and dead months, lying in the everlasting shadows of another here . . . the narrow light on the beach. The balcony . . . The final sunset (without a tear).
“Wrong?”
Maybe you get kissed.
Maybe you get dead.
That’s the dance. Then.
Now.
All these mirrors. But not a single clock. It’s as if time has stopped, took the easy way out, filled the mirrors with ghosts.
Was it Monday?
Was it New York? (Couldn’t have been Paris. All he could recall of Paris was the cold and the rain.) (Wasn’t Mykonos.) (Not barren, dusty Cairo with its rose.) Or Marienbad—the mind, picking at the scabs, pushed around by illusion and deadly acts?
(Strange, dark clouds—Autumn’s vagabond clouds pushed along by fear.)
(The labyrinths and what the weak lanterns etched.)
(The jealousy.)
Maybe someone said he was a hero.
Him?
At that moment?
Some savior? The Last King? Him?
It all felt so alien.
Then.
. . . History flashing in the mirror . . . Her open mouth, her open arms in the mirror . . . shining black shadows—smooth and deep—a state of asphyxia, waiting in the mirror . . . the mirror watching night and secrets at the door, watching small variations meet, fade, in the twilight of far away . . .
Now.
Not the song. They didn’t turn away from it. Couldn’t.
Not the feel of her skin. How it turned him around.
Not what they’d done in her room—He sees it distinctly.
Not wrong.
The endless dark hall . . .
The stairs (facing southeast)—37. Long and slow, going up, leaving today for tomorrow. The hollow sounds.
The door. Opening, on visions, on shadows hand in hand. Just them alone, far from the world.
The sighs.
(That golden age.)
(Summer.) (The moons, a prince and a princess, each wearing a yellow veil, filling the blank window panes.)
(Summer, held fast in his clenched fist.) (Every ounce and secret and feat, even the air—right from the first page.)
. . . Her sighs—stirring when she trembled, his sighs—stirring as he trembled, then fierce, clear. Delivered from the air of different cultures.
Not wrong.
The reflections . . .
Not wrong.
The echoes . . . of Infinity. Stretched out, a sea of night. The urges of imagination—Lips open. No limitations.
The garden of flesh . . . the path . . . beauty you could smell . . . (Even in the Garden of Dead Moths—that lawn of dead verses spilled from a mouth slammed shut) . . . Night on his tongue . . .
Not wrong.
Then . . .
. . . (walking the Hall of Mirrors—endless—endless. Standing at the door to her bedroom . . . Desire, the unspoken agitation, in his hands, pouring from his heart . . . the moment formed of purpose . . . drop by drop the toil of divided thoughts . . .)
Now.
Wrong?
Vivian?/Delphine?/Clarissa? U remembers hers eyes. The gentle feel of her skin, every gesture—every second of the event (her skin of stars leaning). How she was of a mind to . . . The shadows cut by another reality.
The mess . . . (her secret heart—touched by lies—crossed the room) . . . What was erased in the dimness . . .
(Then—) Vivian? (once crossed the room . . .)
(Then—) Delphine? (once crossed the room . . .)
(Then—) Clarissa? (once crossed the room . . .)
Different names in different times . . . A million twilights ago . . . there were sticks in the grass . . . roses with blackthorns—blooming, their little mouths of color sweet fruit, a waving jungle—showing their contours to the morning . . . Four hundred nights ago . . . the dry thirst of the raven dying in the fragments and silent smok
e . . .
But surely the same place. Surely That Place . . .
Paris?
Last year? . . . (the canvas . . . the pearl-handled . . .)
The moment she turned away at the ancient gate . . . The terrible murmur, soft as the desolate contours of the coffin’s dark lining . . . The emptiness of his fingers, hollow inquisitors . . .
How the moons came down and dropped their tattered light on the dark street of ash.
Last night? (by the window . . .)
Or a night a year ago? (on the stairs . . .)
Or a hundred years ago? (in the mirror . . .)
Some lost Then. (blood inscribed on the pages . . .)
So close . . . (close enough to see the trouble in her face)
So far away . . . (all the walls . . . and dark doors . . . locked doors . . . and unfinished visions . . . the velvet work . . . the shame.)
The curled shadows of ghosts spilled by the blade of destiny’s sword . . . And cold, blue hands . . .
“It was so simple. All . . . So simple,” Whispered, grainy, tilted. (His lie . . . dripping with ill shadows—The crowd of lies, the crystallized regrets.) (His eyes stung and drifting along the dry streets of Eternity.)
But this is Now—This time. (Then, distant and steady, frozen . . . the flowers motionless)
Ripe.
Open. With light. And space.
Time
that’s not torn up.
Not filled with shadows—witchlike things of fangs and tortures slipped from eyes rattling with infinity . . .
NOW.
TODAY.
A day not to forget. (not to)
Like the last day. (forget)
The day (the last day) she was here. (no one notices the last day) Laughing. Her eyes flashing in the bedroom.
Her lips were red. Her eyes dark and worldly filled with rigid phrases. There was no ring on her finger . . .
Her mouth open.
(the grave . . . motionless . . .)
Speaking.
Something. A trick or a door.
(a fog of ashes . . .)
“Not”
(grey . . .)
“that we could.”
(almost mean. sticking . . .)
“Did.”
(blunt . . .)
“Then.”
(cruel . . . struck.)
The King in Yellow Tales: Volume 1 Page 8