I stared up at the large printed image, its black and white details reflecting the light curiously, printed with modern ink and modern machinery, it hung on the wall of the living room of the country house, where the little boy could look at it, could look at it for hours straight, nobody would interrupt him, he was alone for hours on end every day, school would not start again until several weeks later, meanwhile he stayed with the grandparents, taking advantage of the summer warmth, going together on walks around the country house, leaving the boy the run around the house, listening to the tick tock of the grandfather clock, its bell resounding every hour, every wooden surface of the house vibrating with it, the boy looking up, feeling himself drift and drift and drift, although, when you are a boy, six years of age, and a dreamy one at that, one prone to noticing how the world around hums, aware at how the curtain of air is a sea that we swim, a perplexed boy, Grandmother did not much like the printed image, the boy’s parents thought it artistic, a collage of the weird, Grandmother was open to the changing seasons of art and social change, she had championed the second Viennese school when Hitler’s men had called them degenerate, when everyone around her liked Hitler’s project, she alone rode the rolling wave of cultural progress, and yet, this image was too much, a woman’s head on a composite of invertebrates, quite unidentifiable as a whole, though the idea was clear, the woman’s face and eyes betrayed some derangement, around her head a crown of lights, a halo, rather, a mollusk’s shell no her head, writings scrawled all over it, with all the agony of angels, it read, and more scribblings on emotional lamentation, she was not used to this, art was supposed to be dangerous, yes, threatening, of course, but only of the unfair, the cruel, but this, on the other hand, was cruel to every onlooker, what was the purpose of this?, she did not know, but she did not want to come across as close minded to her son, and his wife, whom she had endeavored so much to like, she had smiled with all her might when her daughter in law had brought the collage, she had even said thank you when her son hung it on her wall, on the wall of her living room, while the boy, unlike everyone else, was a spectator of the drama, not aware of the likes and dislikes of those involved, only noticed the strange movements and faces, the tones of voice, all of which puzzled him, he wasn’t much interested either, he just did not understand, and in the early half of the afternoons, for two weeks already, six more to go before his parents took him back to the city, he stood before that image in the living room, his grandparents both sleeping after the midday meal, upstairs in the bedroom, and when they later woke that afternoon Grandfather would play an LP of Keith Jarrett on the piano, playing the first book of Johann Sebastian Bach’s The Well Tempered Clavier, he would play the same record every day, a ritual offering of individuality and spontaneity in exchange of a sense of order, a little indulgence, too, and the boy did not mind, Grandfather was caring and showed him the most curious corners of the house and the woods, at those times Grandmother disappeared, recollecting her strength, even though he was a quiet boy, a well-behaved boy, but for the moment he was alone, alone before that image, the of the head of the woman on the body of a thing, a thing that was a composite of other things, monstruous, scary, yes, all of that, entrancing, too, he could not stop looking at it, it made him think of every kind of vermin he came across inside and outside the house, curious creatures, those the grandparents warned him against, to watch his hand, to watch out for the hornet and its nest, for the bee and its hive, not to disturb the latter but to let it be, and to avoid the former, to learn to go his own way, no need to go about killing every living thing he came across, not that this thought had crossed his mind, and the admonition rather shocked him, he who had not imagined such manner of human beings could exist, who killed for fun, little boys like him who went about torturing, maiming, and terminating life, he could not fathom it because he, on the contrary, felt everything was alive, felt the need to explain to his least favorite pair of short trousers that he was going to wear another, or to apologize to his shiny brown shoes for getting mud on them, he who saw in each large hardbound book in the grandparent’s large country house a personality, an enveloping presence surrounding the physical object, a presence that lived and breathed, if in a different manner than people, and damage of said objects elicited from the boy an empathic echo of pain, pain felt in the core of his being, felt as a slash down his torso, as when his father picked out a very old History of Lexington Kentucky, its spine broken, threads coming out, its pages starting to spill a little in disarray, the disarray of which represented a genuine stab of pain in the boy’s body, as he stretched out his hands, helping Grandfather carefully place the broken tome on the mantlepiece of the dining room where they had taken it, Grandfather understood the nature of this gesture and did not attempt to shoo the boy away, he welcomed the gesture, recognized in it an unspoken spiritual inheritance that had skipped a generation, landing safe and soundly on him, their only grandson, and now that tome, from whom the grandfather had read at length, leaving impressions on the boy’s mind never to be erased by sermon nor correction, stood proudly, like a battered old soldier, on one of the shelves in the studio, on the shelf standing against the wall at a right angle with the wall with the large glass window, a window that let in the early morning light, a window that let in the dim light of the afternoon reflected from the greenery of the garden and the forest beyond it, inside the studio, there, where the boy looked at the book on the shelf, and then at the light coming in from the window, and there he notices his hands, his smallish white hands, he thinks of the places underground, of the ruins, that his grandfather has spoken of, not too seriously, but rather with mirth, with a sense of melancholy for the hidden things of this world, but most joyfully for the gift of sharing these things with his grandson, that sense of truth resounded in the boy’s heart, who now stood in the studio, reflecting on the opening of the half broken tome, now set squarely on the self, and somehow the addition of the collage artwork that his parents have brought into this house has changed things, something has come inside the house, it is in the eyes of the woman with the body of a composite invertebrate, it spills out, and all those who look upon that picture give it life, carry its seed, and the boy can feel it, he can feel something dark and strange, quite alive, coming through and out from him, he feels it all around him, and when he thinks back at the stories from the book, the stories that his grandfather has shared with him as one passes on a great inheritance, the seed of initiation, and those stories no longer seem like curiosities of a bygone era, and it seems to the boy that those places, those ruins, those passages under the mountains, are out there, in the forest expanses outside the country house, and the thought terrifies him, it fascinates him, but it also terrifies him, he cannot stop thinking about it, wanting to go outside and find something, though he does not know what, and he is also scared, so he sits on the couch in the living room, swinging his legs, looking at his short trousers, his gray socks inside his shiny brown shoes, the gray little jacket on his still small body, and as he inspects himself, always so aware of his relative physicality, the ticking of the grandfather clock, clear in the still air of the country house, brings him back to the comfortable warmth of the room, his eyes trace the red carpet with black and golden embroidery, wide winged birds, horses, and other things besides, but his eyes rise and look through the window of the living room, he knows what it is he wants, he does not have the language to express it, he has not developed the reasoning faculties to evaluate it, to weigh it rationally, to reject it, he only knows truth, he feels it in his chest as a growing feeling of encompassing blessedness, he recognized the coming of truth by the release of constriction in his limbs, the unmistakable quality of the invisible part of him growing much larger than usual, and this happened often when he was with his grandparents, and especially in the country house, when walking in the forests surrounding it, up the mountain path, out and away from the city, away from the dead word of the teacher, away from the drawings and toys that filled the minds of the other boys, things for which he cared not, things that distracted him from what was real, and what was real called out to him from outside the country house, and so he did, not knowing whether he was running in fear from the picture of the woman with the composite body of an invertebrate, the visage had amplified a calling already extant within him, a voice inside that echoed into the trees outside, up the sloping path, a gentle walk, now blood drenched, for the first thing he found was a dead bird, a large white and blue and black bird, a dead bird that was not there that morning, of that he was sure, he had been there that morning and there was no dead bird, otherwise he would have told grandfather, and they would have both taken care of the carcass, they would have taken it away so that the path and all it represented to them remained clean, yet here it was, before the boy, as an omen, or rather as a confirmation, a confirmation of the new paradigm of existence signaled by the picture Mother had brought, the picture Father had given to his grandparents, who had not much liked it but still accepted it, an illogical sequence of events culminating in the triggering of the boy’s mind, one could say the work had carried out its purpose, if it had been destroyed the moment the boy stepped out of the house, it would have made no difference in the world, the door was now open inside the boy, a hunger was growing inside him, an appetite for the unknown, one that has led to the downfall of many who arrive at power and fall to the temptations, distractions and curiosities and addictions, the measure of the soul, not forever, but at least now, and so the boy decided to leave the body of the dead bird where it lay, not with a light heart, thinking he would have to tell Grandfather when he was back, for he hoped to be back soon, before he and Grandmother awoke later in the afternoon, before Grandfather placed the record of the famous jazz pianist playing the music of the famous baroque composer, the boy had been made to understand that that this is what this type of music was called, and he knew other things besides, like the fact that when Bach had written said music the piano on which Keith Jarret played, for so he was told the man in the recording was called, did not yet exist, had yet to be invented and designed and built, and yet the music was so wonderful, for one day Keith Jarrett said to himself, there is room for another piano interpretation of this great music, and there was no end to the delight Grandfather found in listening to it, nor an end to the delight the boy found in the quiet emotion that emanated from the grandfather, which in the boy’s mind created a link inextricable from the music itself, and for these he longed as he walked up the path, even as he felt his legs move, his covered feet stepping on the dry ground, for it had not rained in a while, as far as the boy was concerned, and there was no damage done to the shoes, not to the extent he felt he owed them an apology, right now the shoes were on task just like him, they were on a mission with him, he stops midway uphill, realizing he does not know where to go, though he did a moment ago, it was as if the scent had vanished, the scent of the ineffable, he feels a sharpness through his skull, it shoots out of his left ear, the discomfort bids him turn his head, he does so unquestioning, and on a boulder far from the marked path sat a girl, a cowl covers her eyes, but the boy can see her grin, her thin pale lips betraying the soul of a little witch, and all the boy can think of is how beautiful she is, she lifts her head and tilts her head back enough that he can see her eyes, she looks at him, he looks at her, she continues to swing her legs against the boulder on which she sits, he does not move, she purses her libs and does not smile, the boy feels his fingers, his hands come together, he continues to stare, the girl tilts her head, still staring at him, she is older than him, he can feel it now, she might be seven or eight years old, she jumps off the boulder and walks in his direction, you gotta get off the path, she screams, and he thinks he has already turned left, he has already gone somewhat off the path, it was seeing her that made him stop, he wants her to come to him, so that he does not have to go so far off, she just stares at him, and he just stares back at her, she turns around, and goes away, half jumping, half running, she goes off in her yellowish dirty white cowl and dress, and his heart sinks inside of him, he turns and looks at the path up the mountain, a feeling of emptiness inside him, and he turns and looks at the boulder, the boulder to the left of the path uphill, the path he always takes, he looks at the boulder where the girl was, where he can still see her, in his mind, and he sees the empty spot where she was but a moment ago, his heart racing with longing, he looks up at the path, the path he walks every day with his grandparents, he could keep looking up that way, staring at rocks and trees and birds, he would find some curious insect here, another one while turning over a rock, and the sky would be beautiful as always, and the treetops in the distance too, and the cooling air, cool enough to need an overcoat which Grandmother never failed to bring for him, would be their signal to return home, though in this case he would need to return earlier than that, he knew he would find all of those things, but he would not find that which he sought, his mind was clinging to what was safe, and in that clinging he felt a constriction, in taking that refuge he felt the door to an imaginary prison cell close before him, he knew the way out was walking to the left of the path, out towards the great boulders, those boulders that had always been there since he could remember, those boulders that now looked so funny, placed there as if by a giant, or as if by some act of magic, fallen from the sky at a time when strange things happened all the time, but they were there now, looking odd, feeling out of place, though now, for him, a necessary part of the landscape, made all the more important by the appearance of the girl, he steps out through the bushes, they scratch his legs, cling to his clothes, but he is now out on the other side, stumbling down a small slope, and walking to the boulders ahead, and in a moment he has reached them, he has reached the boulder where the girl with the yellowish white cowl was sitting, where she beckoned him without using words, where, he felt, he had disappointed her, and now he was here, she was not, and now that he was here, he felt stronger, realizing there was not much to it, now that he was here, and she was not, he had a reason to keep looking, while he did not know what would have happened had he caught up to her, now he had to seek her out, he looked around and saw a stream close by, it was the first time he saw it, it was only a little stream, a very little stream, that was not visible from the uphill path he and his parents took every day, it was so close to the path but he had never seen it, it was quite something to behold, the boy was captivated by the reflection of the afternoon light on its moving waters, how transparent and clean they looked, he would have drunk, had Grandfather not warned him against it, in general, in the mountain, no matter how nice a spring or a pool look, the best advice is not to go drinking, for you do not know what strange denizens inhabit it, where the water has been, not today, not in the dark world in which we live, even this stream, marvelous as it appeared, with its round white stones all about, like miniature versions of the great boulder on which the girl had been perched, the great boulder now beside him, he climbed up on it and sat there, on the same spot the girl had been, and surveyed the landscape, from this vantage point he could see his grandparents’ country house, he could make out the short distance between its eves and the beginning of the forest line, where the uphill path began, soon he realized this was getting him nowhere, he was only getting distracted, fascinating as those distraction were, they were not going to take him to the girl, so he slid down the side of the boulder, slid down the smooth rounded side of it, smoothed by erosion, our geologists say, Grandfather had told him all about it, how what he would be taught in school was only a story among many, not confirmed, but believed to give comfort to people who could not stand not having an answer, he would tell him such things while on long walks, when the boy would ask incessantly for the reason of one thing or the other, and the grandparents had no problem admitting they did not know, and the boy would question why they did not know, and if they did not know, why it was they did not want to know, why did they not seem as eager as he to understand every little thing around them, to which Grandmother once stopped, while on the other side of the mountain, to ask her about the greatest mystery he could see around, after thinking for a moment, the boy asked what was below the mountain, to which the Grandmother responded that there was a cave, a cave larger than a building, a cave with red brown walls, a pool of lifeless water, and a great spider the size of a bus, the boy tried to find signs of hilarity in her face, she would have a twinkle in her eye when he joked, and he looked for it now, for comfort, the twinkle was nowhere to be found, she looked straight at the mountain, down the sloping side, Grandfather said nothing but looked straight ahead, they all kept on walking, their footsteps crunching dust and small rocks underfoot, the only noise to be heard, along with some bird calls, a little rustling far off, and the boy kept listening to those steps, and neither Grandmother nor Grandfather spoke, and the more they did not speak, the more the boy felt that Grandmother had revealed a great and dark truth, and he felt terror, he felt the nerve endings on his limbs perk up, but he also felt relief, relief to know, to have been given a reason, to know the story of a place, do you believe me, Grandmother asked, of course, the boy answered, for he understood what others did not, it had not been taken away from him, he could still listen with his heart, and know that something is true, and he knew what had been told him was true because when he was told it, the earth groaned, the forest itself became still and listened, and despite his fear of the terrible thing that he now knew to be at the roots of the mountain, he felt as if his world had expanded, his very being was more free, and to him that was truth, and this sense the Grandfather and the Grandmother knew, and they had quietly observed him and nourished this in him, when they visited the city, and especially these two last summers, when the parents, their son and daughter-in-law, would leave the boy with them, and yet they had not understood the meaning or purpose of the picture, the picture that now hung from the wall in their living room, they had accepted it, not knowing why, for it shocked their conscious prejudices so much, this ugly thing, this aberration, this afront to everything natural and beautiful, and yet they knew better than to reject it, they had discussed, alone the two of them, how they each felt about the picture, how they might have to find a way of removing it, but for now, they would allow it there, in full view of anyone who entered the living room, there where the boy would imbibe its essence to the last drop, they did not think much of it, they just let it be, they did not want to think too much about it, it disturbed them, they wanted to take their mind off it, so they let it be, they let it be and they let the boy be with it, not on purpose, they just wanted to look away, to take their mind away from anything related with the picture, and now here was the boy, following the scent of whatever he had picked up from the picture, the picture with the laughing head of a deranged woman attached to the composite body of an invertebrate creature, now here he was walking around one of the larger formations of the mountain, so that when we went around it the uphill path from the country house could no longer be seen, it could no longer be seen, and from that uphill path he would no longer be seen, nor even less from the country house, but he still had time, the boy thought, he still had time to figure out who this girl is, or at least to see what is around the corner, and then go back to the country house, to the ticking clock, to the large leatherbound tomes, to the red carpet with gold and black embroidery, full of heraldic symbols, magical beasts, as the boy knew them, no less magical than the girl with the yellowish white cowl, the girl he now saw a distance away from him, closer than she had been when she was on the boulder and he on the uphill path, she was there, wielding a tree branch, thick tree branch, before a hole in the ground, on the side of the mountain, she stepped back and looked at the boy, we have to kill it, she said, the boy had no idea what she was talking about, he continued to look, and moved sideways to get a better look at the hole, the girl continued to wield, and moved forward with a decisive strike, and the creature she struck, it made the boy’s skin crawl and his blood drain to his limbs, for it was a large black scorpion, larger than any he had ever seen, a black scorpion the size of a small dog, it moved forward trying to clutch at the girl with his pincers, it moved forward trying to stab the girl with its stinger, the girl then threw the tree branch in her hand at the black scorpion, the monster retreated, giving the girl enough time to lift a stone, heavy for her, heavy enough to crush a scorpion, even one such as this, and with a circular movement of her body she let the stone fly, the black scorpion, even though he was the size of a small dog, behaved bewildered and frenetic, like most creatures of its kind do in such situations, trying to inject their venom into their assailants, from a sting close to their anus, but the girl was smarter, stronger and faster, yes, even than a scorpion the size of a small dog, the only one the boy had ever seen, and which now lay squashed under the stone the girl had thrown, its entrails spilling green, its tail ending in a sting still twitching, the boy said nothing, she approached him, stopped short of touching him, hi, she said, hi, he said, we have to go into the mountain, down that hole, the boy felt something inside him sink, he remembered all too well what Grandmother had told him was down there, he liked knowing it, he was not too sure he wanted to see it with his own eyes, why, the boy asks the girl, because we have to, she says, don’t you want to see all the wondrous things in the underground for yourself?, she continued, and he did, he did not answer straight away, but he did, he did want to see all the wondrous things in the underground for himself, don’t you want to know the truth, she said, and he did, who are you, he said, instantly regretting it, she came to him as part of the magic of the forest, an inhabitant of the mountain, but maybe she was not, maybe she was just a girl, a girl with parents and grandparents with a country house nearby, not that he had seen them, but they could be somewhere around and he just had not seen them, I am a friend, the girl said, and you want to see what is down there, I know you do, but, he said, I know there is a giant spider, I am afraid, I do not wish her to eat me, what are you talking about?, the girl said, there is no giant spider, but the boy trusted the words of his Grandmother more than he did the forest girl’s, I have been down there and there is no giant spider, said the girl, the boy looked into the bright green eyes under long eyelashes, he wanted to be with her forever, in that moment, I’ll go first and you follow me, okay?, he knew the moment she went into the hole would be his chance to run back, to run back around the mountain side, over the spring, up the slope, back into the path, down the path, and through the back door of the country house, and he waited for that moment, seeing the girl get down, seeing her put her feet into the hole first, and as he saw her, he thought how she had not pushed him to go in first, she was going in first, she was also more concerned about getting herself in the hole than in checking whether he was going with her, he looked over the way he had come, and he looked back at the girl, he contemplated both options, he felt himself carrying out both options and weighed them, running away the moment she went into the hole, gripping his fears, felt like something slimy moving inside him, a bitter taste in his mouth, disappointment, weakness, he stopped and thought, he stopped and felt, he looked at her, her body now entirely inside the hole, her face looking back up at him, her eyes as bright as clear pools reflecting moonlight, her smile, let’s go, she said, disappearing, one moment she was there, the moment she had slid entirely out of view, and then he heard her voice, your turn!, the boy hesitated, then sat on the floor, placed his feet on the mouth of the hole, and crawled down into the mountain, the same mountain where Grandmother told him a giant spider lived, the same mountain the girl said had no giant spiders inside it, she had said it so vehemently and moved so intently to go in herself that the boy did not question her intentions nor her integrity, now he was following her, now he had slid down a hole into the side of the mountain, a hole through which he was not sure he could crawl back up, he was beyond the point of no return…
‘Angel of…’ is the first in a series of six collages by [x] and Elytron Frass, a series Yperion Press has been authorized to take as parting points for a narrative.
[x] and Elytron Frass have also done an additional series of exclusive collages for their collaborative hybrid novella, DEAR§.