Tragedy Of Crows: Chapter 1 (4) What was he supposed to do with a boring hunk of rock, anyway? If he scaled it, where was Hollywood? Where was the fun of hiding in the woods? Everyone could see him up there, too. He might see Maria, though, and who knew, it could be his last chance. Maybe, the dogs were out sniffing already. He rushed at the moonlit rock face never bothering to ask far more practical questions like “what is a mountain doing out here anyway?” or “where was this mountain the last time I was here?” Hazzard went forward. An incline presented itself gradually. He was using one arm to push against the ground, and then somehow, he was using both. The ground was in front of him. The horizon was gone. All there seemed to be was dirt and a rising path. A state of inebriation can account for Hazzard’s willingness to accept the mountain as somewhat normal. Below the mountain, stunned and frozen, the group stared upwards from the base of the thing. To them it was a “thing”, unrecognizable as a rock formation. Hazzard was used to being easily bored with his surroundings. He saw. He categorized the object under the chapter heading of “mountain” and continued sorting through other thoughts. The mountain was quite a sight, though… but not quite so much of a sight when it was spinning and blurry. Virgil arrived at the base of the mountain on schedule as always. Although he thought the mountain was a little much, he had respect for its earthly enormity coupled with a sense unconquerable Godliness. The mountain had a variety of interesting effects on the would-be tourists. The feistier poets always darted up the mountain, only to meet treacherous near-doom. Many others stood in awe of the great mountain, waiting in a huddle for the tour guide. On one curious occasion, a little boy in a boat caught a glimpse of the mountain, turned tail and paddled liked the dickens. Years later, someone had told Virgil that the little boy eventually became a rather influential poet. Apparently, the raw magnitude of supernatural energy in that enormous rock busted the boundaries of his mind, filling him with creative energy… or something to that affect. The more distant the memory seemed, however, the more the poet feared he was losing his touch. Thus, the older he got, the less he believed in the scrawls below his pen. Virgil liked the story, but after seeing the mountain so many times, he found it a little hard to believe in its magnificent powers. It was nothing more than a signal. To those ready for the journey, it was intended as a beacon. For those with a little too much pride and audacity from the onset, it was a slight test. Nothing major, though. Remember, it is just near-doom, and the only reason it is even that has to do with how skittish the living soul is when confronted with the supernatural. For the boy in the boat, there was a mountain in that area anyway. Add a hint of supernatural, and the poor sop wets his pre-pubescent, pre-poetical pants. With just a hint of danger, the living soul seems to always invent the rest of a great big heroic deal. Even his favorite tourist had extremely exaggerated his ordeal on the mountainside. Yes, there was, in fact, a leopard with mildly, impressive fangs. “What the hell…..” Hazzard said staring up at a large, lump of gray stone. A top sat a big spotted cat that glared past him at the group below. Yes, there was also that lion, too. Virgil thought that was definitely overkill. Who got passed the leopard anyway? Most people just frozen in place. Hazzard shook his head a little. “All right,” he shouted at the leopard. “You’re either not there or else I’m asleep. Either way, I’m going up this mountain so I can take a nap…” Yes, there was the occasional person who was dumb enough to try sneaking past the leopard, but once the fool reach the roaring lion, he’d certainly turn back. “Oh, shit, it’s a lion,” Hazzard said continuing up the mountain. “That settles it, then. I’m asleep, already.” Virgil kept a close eye on his group. The students were looking up at the mountain letting out confused screeches and swears as the mountain animals roared. The darkness had turned to storm, blackness folding into deep, angry clouds. There was a sprinkling of heavy raindrops. They were all turning kind of pale. Virgil knew it was almost time to present himself, but he decided to wait for the last animal. “What the hell are you supposed to be?” Hazzard said gripping at the mountainside. He had a good hold on the twigs and the mud. The she-wolf concerned herself with appearing famished and ravenous to the group below. This was difficult from so high up, so the she-wolf realized the benefits of making acrobatic leaps downward from ledge to ledge. The she-wolf was always the hardest worker of the three. Despite the wealth of symbolism no-doubt linked to each animal, Virgil thought they were chosen for more practical reasons. The leopard was meant to confuse. The lion was meant to humble. And for those too arrogant to be confused or humbled, the she-wolf was meant to present undeniable danger. The wolf had a realistic quality lacking in the lion and a ferocity lacking in the leopard. Once, a visually impaired poet had mistaken the leopard for a large cat. Another time, a poet swore up and down that the lion was merely a product of too much laudanum. The she-wolf was usually good at what she did. She knew this, too, and her ego caused her to demand two whole decades off from work. During the eighties and nineties, a few excellent prospects escaped the mountain explaining the whole thing as a bad acid trip. Since then, the she-wolf’s requests for vacation have been denied by the Department of Inspirational Admissions. The she-wolf’s elegant, yet terrifying decline scared the wits out of the group. Hazzard watched her shoot right past him. The sight did not frighten him much. He had to keep one eye closed to see the sight clearly, anyway. The speed at which she moved, however, made him very sick. He tried to follow her flopping leaps from rock to rock. That strange feeling was building in his mouth, like a big ball of spit was rolling around on the back of his tongue. Locking his teeth together, he fought to hold onto his liquor. These feelings happened often on the walk back from downtown to the dorms. Usually, Hazzard made it back to his room, slept face up, and hoped that gravity would keep everything where it belonged. Other times, he ended up pulling the trigger behind a park bench or in someone’s front yard beside the mailbox. Once, he threw up on stairs by the main entrance to the college. All these occasions had one thing in common. He was awake every time. Logic would then suggest that Hazzard was still awake. Therefore, a leopard, a lion, and a she-wolf had charged by him. It didn’t seem right to find such diverse wildlife on the mountain. Come to think of it, what was a mountain doing in that part of New York State? Hazzard would have passed out right there, but a vague curiosity held him. While the mountain didn’t exactly burst the confines of his mind or rouse him into a greater consciousness of his soul, it did freak him out enough to cause a dizzy spell. Stillness was no longer a certainty. His arms seemed to be fluttering, casting shadows like a storm of scattering crows. He tried to focus on something solid in his environment like a single twig, just one stone to hold as a reference point. Nothing seemed solid in the blur. Memories flashed in random sweeps confusing all senses. Summer heat upon his face was there and gone. The sound of half a bass guitar line from a Rush song popped, jangled, and defused. Coconut sensations, something she wore and the way it affected him, suntan lotion, maybe, he remembered. Where was she, though? And below him, the snarling she-wolf howled through a wreck of saliva soaked teeth. And above him the storm was striking up an incongruous chorus of rumbling. Spiking through the middle of it, a high-pitched sound sliced to against his ears. She had screamed, and knocked the dizziness straight out of him, but his hands started shaking loosening his grip. Hazzard’s combat boots kicked up dry leave and stones. Those leaves and stones seemed to travel upward towards his knees. His knees buckled. The buckle of his belt scraped ground. The ground raked at his chest and hands. And soon after Hazzard realized he was falling. Of course, this realization came a half second before his back hit a tree at the base of the mountain. When things came back into focus, he was somewhere to the side of where he had started his climbing. Lying on his chest, scraped by twigs and rocks, he decided to stay put, rest a while, and wait until someone came to pick him up. He still wasn’t entirely convinced that the animals he had seen were real. No sense tempting fictitious animals, anyway. He might do better to stay put, sleep it off, and let someone more sober handle the whole ordeal. To his own surprise, he did not fall asleep. He was lying face down, and he was sure he was going to throw up. The jarring of his crash had sent his stomach for a whirl. Turning over onto his back, hoping to keep everything down, he saw the dark sky again. He heard the howling, and he remembered Maria’s cry. Hazzard popped up from the crowd expecting something foul and disastrous, something like the end of a Lovecraft story where a single vile sight drives a man insane. It was nothing like that, however. Instead, the group was standing in a half circle, and a strange, aged man in the center was speaking. The mountain was empty, and the creatures had retreated. No lions, leopards, or she-wolves remained in sight. Only a subtle windstorm with a very slight rain remained from the previous sensory assault. Hazzard figured he was sobering up, and so he thought it safe to rejoin the others. He fell over twice on his way, once to his knees and one time on his left side. Bouncing back quickly, he felt his left foot lagging behind. It was twisted, a little, and he knew he’d probably feel it in the morning. The morning was a long way off, though. Hazzard could tell that by the state of the sky, and the complete silence of the group when he passed out in the center of their circle. *** “No, No, No, No, No,” he said pacing about the office. Every time he turned, his wings would kick up a slight wind that tossed around a few papers from her desk. She quickly stretched her arms across the desk to scoop them up before they fell. “What? What is it?” she asked. “It’s a mistake, a real mistake,” he said holding his head in one hand and an invoice in the other. “I never thought… I never thought…” “What?” she asked standing up. She hated standing up at work. Her swivel chair pressed against the wall and locked her knees beneath her desk. It took some minor gymnastics to get out of the seat. Try doing that with a cup of coffee. The office wasn’t big enough for her to spread her wings in. She didn’t mind, as long as she didn’t have to squeeze out from behind the desk more than twice a day. This fellow was becoming a bit of a nuisance. “This thing, this file,” he said. “What does it mean?” Finally, he had stopped in the corner to look the paper over slowly. She pulled one foot from behind the desk, nearly flopped over the desk, before the other foot slapped out to aid her balance. “It’s just another application for a standard tour,” she said throwing her hair out of her eyes. Two locks curled in front cutting through the center of her eyes. When she was sitting down, they hooked out in front enough so she could see, but when she stood up, they fell over her eyes and onto her cheeks. She pulled them back behind her ears. Uriel watched the entire process trying to memorize it. Halfway through the attempt, his consciousness returned to the document in his hand. “Tour… tour…,” he said. “Yes, a tour, for the prospective poets and scholars who have…” she said turning back to her desk to rearrange her paperwork. “But, how did this happen?” he asked. “How did what happen?” she replied. “It’s probably just a typo, right?” Shaking began in her left arm after completing that thought. Angels didn’t make typos. They didn’t even use the word. It was an outlandish, foolish, dismissive suggestion and she knew it. She had said it to shut him up, to get back to filing. She had put that thing away almost a month ago. She sorted through the files as usual, processed forms, and checked the field values that pertained to her leg of the administrative process. She carefully categorized the prospective tour recipients based on such criteria as age, sex, sin, religious belief, poetical strengths, weakness, etc. etc. And while preparing a minor level tour through Hell for some American students who weren’t even bilingual, she just happened to notice a scheduling conflict. She didn’t notice it by an incorrect entry or a mistake in mathematics. A much more complex system dictated the recordation of information in those files. Where only ink marks are important in tax forms and social security papers on earth, in heaven a deep sense of faith is used in the translation of every fact. This is almost too confusing to describe to a human being, but the whole thing is actually so efficient that angels are often baffled by the consistent screw-ups of earthly systems. It’s terribly efficient, usually. She trusted that, but for a second or so, she felt a conflict. Eventually, she considered how small she was in the greater scheme of things, how little she knew about the workings in higher offices, and she decided to let it go. She concentrated on her work with new vigor. She figured that problems were not problems. Recognition of such things was not her responsibility. Everything was taken care of. The plan of eternity was flawless. Above all, she was doing a great job. Everyone surely was. And then, he came in. “What are you doing here?” she asked him again. “This,” he said crinkling the document in his hand. “This is me.” “Excuse me?” she asked clearing off a space to sit upon her desk. “How can a data form be you? You don’t work here in the records department, do you?” “No,” he replied. “I’m a watcher… I…um… watch.” “Really,” she said folding her arms. His expression changed. He was staring, she was certain of it. This was far worse than asking her to get out from behind the desk, but the annoyance was similar. It was an exposure of some kind, being dragged up from a station or a process, being force to stand idly for some sort of judgment. That couldn’t be it, though. His eyes were yellowish, dumbly bobbing. He seemed sick, but that wasn’t a word for angels. The only similar word was “hurt”. Yes, that was it, entirely. The creature before her was hurt, and he held the letter out beside him like the end of a sword pulled from some invisible wound in his chest. “I used to work here,” he stated. “In the records hall, I mean. And I thought I might have… but no, I know I must have… and…” “Hey,” she said hopping down from the desk. “Are you all right? Did you hurt yourself in battle, maybe? That’s got to be it, right? No angel would carry on like this, unless they fell down or got exhausted somehow.” This wasn’t true. This angel was not a big, brave sword-wielding warrior. He was nothing like the others had told her about Michael. This creature shivering in her office had no kingly posture, no gentle grace, no wild, blue eyes in pulsation with the electric love of God. This guy was a wimp, probably chosen to be a watcher for his lack of competence in fighting. Where was his sword? Michael had a brilliant sword, sharp enough to cut time in half and strong enough to knock hunks off a star. This creature before her had nothing of note, just a red lump of hair, two yellowish eyes, and a thick, purplish bottom lip. She had never seen Michael before, though. She had only heard his sound in the greater song. Looking upon him, she could actually see a piece of heavenly music calling through an instrument of God. That did not amuse her. He was part of the ‘it’… the ‘it’ that surrounded her everyday. It was in the paper work, it was in the music of the spheres. It was in all of heaven. Yet, the yellow eyes were shimmering as if perception was an open drain hole. She felt the suction of it, not just upon her, but also over every sensation of heaven. He was deconstructing it, soaking it in, and his sounds, his contributions to great music did not match. He was taking in far more than he showed. She felt sounds, sights, essence of her, circling and falling into the yellow of his eyes… into emptiness, silent secrecy. And she unfolded her arms, and her wings rose slightly. He became conscious of the paper again, and he turned away. “I’m fine,” he said. “I just need to know everything you know about this.” “All right,” she said hopping down from the desk. “I processed a form for a standard tour of hell and heaven, and I found a name on the ‘presence’ field that didn’t line up with the ‘pick-up’ stub.” “huh?” he said. “The ‘presence’ field tells me what life energy is present at the time of the occurrence. The life energy required for an event must be specific and exact, as I’m sure you know, since you worked in records before. Thus, if a life energy signature is off, an event is scheduled incorrectly,” she said. The lock of hair on the left side flopped back over her face drawing a line down the middle of her deep green eye. “But, that can’t happen,” he stated.
Copyright © 2001 Scott W. Hazzard |