Whispers From The Abyss (12 page)

Henry sat alone on the balance beam, as he always did, eating his tuna salad sandwich on hoagie roll and watching the other boys from his class play “target practice” on the monkey bars. This is where they took rubber balls normally reserved for four-square and threw them at those foolhardy enough to think that they could get all the way across. When certain kids, like Scott or Vince, hit the tanbark a crooked little smile emerged on Henry’s face. If they went down face-first, which occasionally happened, the smile would reach both cheeks. But the smile would inevitably fade when Scott or Vince or one of the other troglodytes would throw one of those balls at his face, regardless of whether or not he made eye contact with them. The purpose of throwing the ball at Henry was to knock him off the beam. Because the big fish always ate the little fish, especially considering this little fish wasn’t a jock, didn’t wear what the other kids wore, and spent his waking hours reading science fiction novels. Of course, Henry could always sit somewhere else, but chose not to. Why should he move when he liked that spot?

Middle school was not very kind to Henry. His first two years seemed to be stepping stones for this, his final year at King’s County. No, he didn’t wear what the other kids wore; his mother picked out his clothes from K-Mart. He wasn’t a jock; it seemed like everyone else was. He knew when the other kids made fun of him behind his back. The teachers were indifferent. He’s pretty sure certain teachers made fun of him, too, but he had no discernible proof. And the one time he defended himself from the wrath of bullies like Scott and Vince he’s the one who was sent home. Not Scott. Or Vince. They were popular. They won basketball games. Their parents were also popular within the community and could sue the school. And from that day on things actually got worse.

Of course, having a name like Henry Aswad did not help matters, nor did it help when he used words like “discernible” in every day dialogue. So to the other kids he was a faggot, and to the teachers he was an upstart. Either way, Henry didn’t have it easy.

But things were going to change. Oh, yes.

Because one Saturday he went to his favorite haunt, Angell Street Books. Angell Street wasn’t like other bookstores, as they specialized in old books. Old hardbacks, and occasionally some real finds. Major Mars and Tom Swift. An original “Green Hornet” Big Little Book. He loved the musty smell of the place, regardless of what it did to his sinuses. The owners of the store were…well, strange to say the least: strange in appearance, strange in attitude, a “crackle” of sorts in their voices. Henry had noticed the vibe they gave to other customers, but not to him. Never to him.

That Saturday he was reaching for a hardback of Sabatini’s “The Sea Hawk” when he heard a “thwap” from behind him. A book had fallen from a high shelf, which was unusual in that he was the only person in the store that day, and the owners were in the other room. He picked up the book, and turned to the first page. He had never heard of the author, Harley Warren, and he thought he knew all of the major sci-fi writers. A very unusual book, written like a diary.

He brought it before the owners, who told him he would like that book. It would fit his personality to a tee.

That night he went to bed, crawled under the covers with his flashlight, opened the book, and turned to the first page. There was no title page, no publisher information, no nothing. It went right to the text. This is when Henry realized that what he had purchased really was a diary. A diary of a man who went into places he should never have gone, depicted sights and smells that would make most men sick to their stomach. And to Henry’s dismay…he smelled what
Warren had smelled. Bile and congealed blood absorbed into the pages, Henry thought. And though he had every reason to close the book, most notably the reason making his eyes water and stinging his mucous membranes, he just couldn’t stop turning the pages. He couldn’t stop reading. Wouldn’t stop reading.

A rustle outside of his private domain.

Mom? Dad?

A click of the flashlight.

Total darkness.

The stench was stronger now.

He slowly pulled back the comforter.

There it stood in the center of the room. A Great One pulled from his place in Morpheus’ shade. Drawn to Henry’s room. Drawn to Henry. About the size of his father, maybe a little taller. Not once was Henry frightened, not once did he want to cry for one of his parents; he simply sat cross-legged on his bed, spellbound by the magnificent creature that stood before him.

The Great One told Henry that he had heard him. Which was odd to Henry as he hadn’t called anyone. Nevertheless he kept his mouth shut, accepted it for what it was, and listened. Henry was a very good listener, the Great One noted. Henry didn’t respond. He listened intently to the behemoth’s every word. And it understood everything that Henry was going through, that there will always be those who feel the falsehood of power and push it at every turn. It makes them feel good. Henry wanted to feel good. Wanted that power. Real power. And the Great One offered it to him. Would teach him how to wield it. Henry would make a marvelous pupil. Together they will do great things. Terrible things. Henry smiled. He opened his mouth for the first time and said –

WHAM!

Henry was pulled back to reality, or what passed for it, by a four-square ball launched at his face. Scott. Shocker. He pulled himself up off the ground as shit-for-brains approached.

“You’re a little faggot, aren’t you? Come on, say it…SAY IT!”

And from somewhere deep in the pit of Henry’s stomach came a voice he had never heard before. Low. Deep. Raspy to the Nth degree. Like bone crunching under a stone wheel. And his eyes…they looked more bloodshot than they had ever been. The voice crawled from his diaphragm to his lips, and what emerged was a simple…

“You’ll be first.”

After a moment Scott took a step back. Was he…actually scared?

Yes, he was backing off, very slowly…then rebounded to save face with his friends. “…You are such a freak…” And with that he turned back to resume his game. Albeit a little shaken, maybe for the first time ever.

Yeah, Henry thought. There will be time. Time for all of them. Scott, Vince, Amy, even Ms. Delhaney. But there’s still much to learn, things that cannot be taught in any classroom. He will take it all in before he lets it all out.

Scott will go first. And it will be very bloody. Because he will be a marvelous pupil.

Munch.

Munch.

Munch.

Mmm…Good sandwich.

Look how it rises godlike from the loamy soil. Here, in the primeval realms of the ancient forest: magnificent, enormous, sky-bound sprout; camouflaged among the towering elms and pines. One must seek it to locate it. But none are seekers here. No human being would set foot in this wild region.

Only myself. And I only out of devotion.

The deepest, lime-colored shades of green, rainbowed with reds and oranges. And a spiral of black weaving through it. Great, fibrous chords of chitinous flesh, interlocking like latticework with flat, purple leaves. Such a beauty. How it grows. This mighty fungus.

Soon my Stalk will provide the bridge between worlds.
Causeway
, Sky God calls it. Then I will ascend, straight upward and not in a roundabout way. I will gain the heights of Heaven. My devotion will pour itself outward unto Sky God as He accepts me into His bosom, enveloping me so that He and I can become one, merge...

All thanks to my Stalk.

*     *     *

If not for the disreputable myth which circulates these rural lands, I would’ve never gone looking for the witch’s rumored shop deep in the woods—much less found it—much less ventured inside to peruse the dusty shelves.

That old vile creature to whom I am indebted, to whom I owe my monitoring of my Stalk, watched me from behind her morose wood counter. Filigrees of herbs and vines covered the wall at her rear; glass globes; trinkets, likewise glass, clung to bent nails; animal skulls and taxidermy, gazing with intervals of hollow eyes.

I found her loathsome, not only due to her appearance, but because she also smelled a tad fecal. It was like being around a slimy, rabid, rodent: the last thing you want is for the verminous being to come near you.

The witch was clothed in a soiled mound of foul rags, more mold than cotton, shawls that enwrapped serpent-like about her. Hair like a wild bush. Grizzled face concealed in a veil. Ocular damnation peering out from wrinkled flesh.

Her voice: the sound of dying angels. She suggested various items that she thought might interest me. Vials, herb formulas: things meant to poison people. I told her I wasn’t interested in such things.

“Then why have you come?” she asked.

“Curiosity,” I replied.

She
hmmed
. “A seeker, eh? What do you seek?”

I thought about this; shrugged. “I’m not sure, but since I was a child I’ve always asked the question
Why? Why
is your shop hidden in the woods? Why do you exist?”

Cackling, she replied, “Those are topics for another time. What you seek presently lies on a shelf in the back, behind the hand mirrors.”

She pointed and I followed her finger to the object lying on the shelf: a silent black pouch tied by a drawstring, with unusual gold symbols sewn into the fabric. I picked it up. Weighty.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Inside lies your answer. Go ahead. Open it.”

I did. A handful of fossilized mushroom buttons lay at the bottom. They clinked together, a sound like knocking gems. Smell of stale mold wafted toward my face: a reek like rotting flesh. I pulled the drawstring, grimacing.

“The odor of God,” she murmured.

I was appalled by her comment, yet didn’t deign to respond. “What are they for?” I asked.

“To lay in the earth in a secret place where no humans ever trod. If you know of no such place, then do not take them.”

I thought of the ancient forests surrounding my countryside homestead. I nodded. “I know a place.”

“Good. Bring them here and pay.”

The price was everything in my wallet—more than I would have expected. I felt angry but I’d been entranced somehow: the allure of the mushroom buttons was like a drug.

“Once you plant them, it will grow,” she said.

“What will?”

“The Stalk. You must nurture it, water it. Give it love. Then you can climb it.”

I turned back from the door, brows knit. “Climb it where?”

“To Sky God. To the Owner of the Mystery of Creation.”

These words fell into me, permeating the world of my thoughts, almost like an infection. I saw disturbing imaginative forms: toadstool levitation; fungal mediumistic trance states; quivering vegetus limbs; and a giant amphibious monstrosity, with eyes like the bottom of a well.

I shivered all over, my skin a flower of gooseflesh. My whole life I’d suffered from night terrors. Now I was having them in the middle of the day.

The witch grinned. “You’re getting it,” she said. “He will come to you. Bury the buttons in the earth. Love them. Pray. And ascend.”

The door opened of its own accord, revealing the dense woods outside and the unfurling carpet of vines leading to the threshold. I stepped out, reborn, onto that blanket of fibrous green shoots. I felt free, transcended, like I was stepping into another dimension, one where my life was not so meaningless and dull; where I had a purpose.

The sky opened overhead.

*     *     *

Later, I hiked into the ancient forest, found a spot, and dug the buttons into the earth. My father, who once owned and tended the farmland on which I live, who is now buried on that same land, grew perennials behind our house when I was a child. Mother died when I was young, and Father said perennials had been her favorite; he continued to plant them each season as a way of keeping her memory alive.

He used the same rusty watering can right up until the end. I used it that day to water my fossilized buttons. The Stalk sprang up within several hours; when I came back it reached almost to my ankles.

From that day on I began sitting with the Stalk, admiring its otherworldly beauty and alien colors. As it grew, I grew: infatuated. A feeling of love—of filial, almost parental love—fostered within me. It felt like budding roses. I imagined I could hear the Stalk’s voice inside my head and glimpse the invisible movement of the forest spirits who had flocked to see it: the fairies, sprites, and gnomes.

Soon I was praying to it, falling on my knees in the soil, bowing my head. I told the Stalk I was grateful, devoted to it; that, above all things, I valued it most.

Sometimes I’d cry. Still do on those mornings when I awake in my sleeping bag after spending the night beside the Stalk, while the sunrays are streaming in through the branches and the Stalk looks like a miniature angel, like a heavenly being descended to earth.

As the months passed I ardently traveled into the forest each day, watering can in hand, to nurture, and to praise, my budding bridge between worlds; and I soon turned my attention toward the sky, where something like a permanent black cloud had formed, where weird designs became visible through the cumuli.

I dreamed. Soaring disembodied through star-strewn spaces, past the rolling planets and farther out into the cosmos, where I was contacted by Sky God for the first time.

I could recall snatches of our meetings, but nothing of what He said to me. Although His voice continued to resonate in my ears upon waking.

For a while I tried recreating the dreams with pen and paper. I still have those crude illustrations, shut away in my bottom dresser drawer. Large, looming, green toadstool platform, the size of a circular spacecraft covered in warts, spores, and patches. I saw Sky God adorning this organic vehicle, riding it like a magic carpet.

He was amphibious, yet somehow amorphous; sharply contoured, and yet blurry. I surely saw skittering tentacle-like legumes blossoming out to all sides, the petals of a horrid flower. The god Himself, though, un-vegetus; amphibious. The abstract outline of a giant frog, purple in color, bespeckled with glittering lights, and eyes of the blackest depths.

Sky God wavered his arms and uttered bizarre sounds I couldn’t understand—shnee,
shnee, shnaw, shnee... shneu...

*     *     *

I began wondering
why
my baby, my Stalk, was that alone—a stalk. I was unable to comprehend the absence of a fleshy round cap, likewise a furled tulipesque bulb. There was only this fat chitinous column.

But I didn’t question it. I accepted that my knowledge of such things, of such worlds, was limited. I did not need to know everything in order to carry out my monitoring task. However, the answer to this fungal conundrum soon revealed itself to me.

*     *     *

I had gone into the forest to do my watering for the day. The Stalk, much to my satisfaction, had reached the height of a full grown human. I sprinkled water around the base, whispering devoted words of praise, cultivating my usual supplicatory feeling...

...when the air around me seemed to thicken, to congeal; the sky darkened and opened up, parting the roiling black cloud formation. I glanced overhead. I dropped my watering can, falling to my knees in awe.

Sky God had come.

I watched in dire anticipation, my body a clamped, soppy sponge. Contorting, perspiring, wringing itself into new shapes. The air seemed so thick it nearly choked me.

The circular shape descended through the canopy. I had seen all this before: in dreams. I knew what rode that levitating toadstool down to the physical plane. And I awaited its arrival eagerly.

Flailing, tapering appendages became visible over the side of the toadstool, whose bottom alone made itself visible. The fibrous texture was like smooth wax, covered in multiplying spores and warts. Here and there strange embedded gems glistened like diamonds.

I heard Him then. His terrible gibbering. Noises that a child would make. Yet these noises were coated with fluid, creating something guttural and liquidy.

Shnee, shnee, shnaw. Shnee... Shneu...

I humbled myself further, driving my knees into the soil. I am devoted to You, only You, I told the descending toadstool.
Whose shoe’s latchet I am not worthy to unloose... You who comes after me is preferred before me!

The toadstool hovered over the trees, angling itself forward slightly, giving me a full view of Sky God riding his moldering throne. Stringy clouds darted past his head—like spirits. He was indeed amphibious: here, as in my dreams; great mighty froggish face, with eyes that seemed able to swallow the world.

Could he see me down here, prostrate on the forest floor?

The toadstool angled itself more, gliding down, until it was over the tip of my towering Stalk. Sky God’s words echoed throughout the forest—

Shnaw... Shnee... Shneu...

As toadstool attached itself to Stalk, I released a redemptive cry. A profound sense of joy swept over my heart. I finally knew the answer: I’d been granted true wisdom.

Two met and, with a mulching sound, merged together—stalk and cap—forming the most beautiful soaring mushroom I had even seen. Such grandeur! Such art! I could hardly contain the emotions wellspringing within me.

Sky God rose from His fleshy throne, vines and legume-limbs unfurling around Him. His huge, bent, webbed feet clutched the mushroom cap in a deadly vice, allowing Him to gain the edge, where he stood almost diagonally.

He raised his stumpy purple arms, with hands and rounded fingers. He gestured and spoke in his strange tongue. He looked absurdly like an orator—like some great political leader in the pulpit of His theocracy.

Shnee, shnaw, shnee... Shneu...

More diamond-shiny gems glistened all over His body. And His mouth was a wide empty cavern, toothless, housing a coiling/uncoiling tongue the size of a prehistoric serpent.

Sky God orated for many hours, as I remained fixed in my devoted position. I came under a trance and lost all sense of time. When I finally regained control of myself, the forest was dark and moon and stars illuminated the sky.

The Amphibious One who rode out of the Heavens on a toadstool chariot was nowhere to be found. Sky God had returned whence He came. My Stalk was no longer a large mushroom but simply that—a stalk.

Saddened, but simultaneously relieved, I collected my watering can, sprinkled a few more blessed drops around the base, and headed back to the house.

*     *     *

But now the question must be asked—

How much longer can I wait, crying alone in the wilderness?

Nothing is certain. True, I have been granted a cosmic vision, but am I a mystic?

Are we, Sky God and I, like this—(middle finger wrapped around index)?

I cannot say. For I have not seen Him again since that day His fleshy chariot descended to the physical world. Now he only visits me in dreams...

But that is something.

At least I have not been forsaken.

*     *     *

And so I worship it. My baby. My reason for living.

My Stalk.

One day it will reach the Heavens. Then my precious Stalk will provide a bridge between worlds;
a causeway
. Then I will ascend, straight upward. Not in a roundabout way, for the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.