A Bright House

It begins to feel like the paradox of a predetermined memory. A twist of the twist of fate has reopened the unclosing wound. Even the choice of a tree upon which to land has no feeling of a choice. The human within the predator body has already fallen into a nauseous cloud where identity and ego are obliterated. Ray Townes is either dead or is dying or is dreaming the tormented head-injury dream. As these large talons alight, he has become entirely weightless within this feathered physique but also feels the cold pressure of water upon him. Is he still back there, submerged? Or is this a new kind of submergence?

Perched and surrounded by so many noisy birds, feeling a heightened buzz from within as though the electromagnetic anomaly is still at work in his bloodstream, he seems to be pulled away from being fully present. Something, or someone, else here. Not Delsin. Not intimately familiar but somehow known. His attention is next drawn across the lake water to an eastern shore of what has been named Ward’s Island. Moonlight yellow accentuates the forested edge of it. An ugly concrete expanse of high breakwater and walking path fuses in purpose, and the lunar light feels baleful. There is a reason to be here, to be so fixated on the island, to feel such a horrible recollection and anxiety.

This is a shared body. It is the looped thought of recurrence. Townes is teetering, fading back, still able to “see” from the tree limb, an in-body out-of-body view. He waits to sense himself as the person he walked around inside for fifty two earth years, but that remains as elusive as romantic love ever was. There is a glimmer of the natural beauty of a woman’s face. Her reckless wavy hair. A kiss that may have been but a dream before waking back to reality’s hard surfaces. That kiss and its feelings carry a knife edge, and he fades back even further. A Cormorant suddenly lands within the same tree, breaking through this muddled mental asymmetry.

Now, as in the vantage point of a nightmare, he seems to be watching from a perspective just behind the Thunderbird. He feels nameless and never visible, floating on a night bed between worlds. The massive raptor turns its head to lock eyes with the much smaller Cormorant. Even this scene has a feeling of indescribable familiarity, as though from a memory of the many instances of becoming visible to the three dimensional realm in a manner that shocks its denizens. Thunderbird stares a golden godlike indifference into the other creature’s eyes, then slowly dramatically flexes its mighty wingspan. Thousands of other eyes watch and catalyze the mass reaction. This expanse of the bird sanctuary erupts into sudden movement as the populous gathering takes to air in urgent exodus.

A deep sense of foreboding, then. So intense as to have a taste. A hot coppery electrified blood taste. He floats in the body-less void of helpless watching, not able to know who he was or what he is now, and there is a waiting... The Thunderbird freezes to attention with its head slightly tilted down, staring across the water’s inky surface and moonlight flecked ripples. Two human figures emerge from the shadows of Ward’s Island forest. From this distance they are featureless other than one being taller than the other. As before when flying over the landscape of replayed battle, there is a fervent I don’t want to see. I don’t want to know. No matter what he wants, or doesn’t. Thunderbird lifts off soundlessly from the perch, and he is attached to this viewing angle as though astral magnetically; perhaps twenty feet behind and half that distance above. It rekindles vivid near-death experience memories, from where he cannot know. Out of body and witnessing what was once his soul’s location, always in transition, always recognizing the momentous truth at the last moment before departure.

Aloft in a noiseless place, he accompanies the visual of this giant bird as it flies across the water, over the eastern fringes of forest and open field. He is picking up a thick and fast increasing depth of emotion from the raptor. Its wings appear to move in slow motion. Broad strokes of exaggerated power, all of it moonlit, all of it a swoon of helplessness for Townes the dead or dying observer. Though he is without a body here, he somehow feels a confounding knot of dread where a stomach would be. There is also a jack-hammer heart somewhere within this maddening void. Thunderbird moves to the southern shoreline of Ward’s Island and then begins to circle atop silent air currents. Its beautiful frightening wings splay outward, stilled but for the angling, long tips spread apart. He remains there magically attached, moving in tandem and maintained distance, circling for what seems time melted down and reconfigured. God the alchemist.

This pattern of circling is abruptly broken. Down into a steep dive and deceleration, to a copious tree canopy. Thunderbird lands within the boughs. All remains utterly silent as the perspective for Townes the viewer shifts to an angle now higher above this chosen tree. He floats outside its perimeter and can see once again the human figures below. He sees them and simultaneously experiences the emotions that must be erupting from the other dream watcher as it stares downward from its perch. This pure channeling of another’s reaction is quickly replaced by visceral shock when a man and woman beneath the tree become visible in detail. It lights him up inside in a bolt of terrified new confusion. He remembers this. He recognizes them. He sees himself down there, suddenly peering up into the moonlight to stare at the dark shape within the shadowed upper branches and early Spring leaves. He wishes to look at the woman, as the pull of recognition and even longing is strong, but it is only this awful twist of looking down at himself that holds the moment.

Immediately his focus is drawn back to the thing in the tree. There is an energy so darkly explosive, so emotionally overwrought... the two people begin to walk away and he wants to follow, to know more, but cannot. This seems not to be his dream. Is he so close to death now, submerged in the watery grave, that his mind is telling a story? Is this Ray’s memory of their time on the island, when she wept and trusted him as he held her? If this is his life, where is the ability to act? Thunderbird thrusts itself up and out of the treetop. It is an explosive silent force, no longer fluid or slow motion but a frenzied inertia of what seems to meld helpless rage and unmitigated terror. The astral eyes of Townes are bidden helplessly to continue following. No longer a powerfully flying creature of legend, the Thunderbird moves awkwardly and urgently through this quaking dream consciousness or otherworld dimension-path, and he is locked to it from above and behind. The physical sensation is of being pulled. It feels ever similar but anti to the earlier push when time and place was shifted with a half moon becoming full.

Locked together, one unaware of its watcher, these two sentient perspectives fly at high speed across the island’s width. Over a narrow expanse of lake. Above the bright lights of a city that is home to this among many tales. It is a short flight that remains entirely visual. Not a sound here. Like dream-viewing an antique film clip that has never happened or will always happen. Looped and potent. Meant. The mind of Townes will submit to the ride, for helplessness begets helplessness. If he is dying or has indeed passed through a portal from one life into the next, an act of mental will seems of little use. Stopping the earlier flight plummet had sapped him of what little he had left. Soon there will be some manner of a choice. He knows this in the root of his soul. Possibly the spoken-of light. Glowing human figures and loved ones there to welcome him to this latest and truest form of birth. He will accept this mad looping ride and observe carefully...

as Thunderbird follows its own guiding impetus

how it crashes through the night air as if magnetically compelled

From above like this, he at first doesn’t recognize the property visually but has “known” from the raptor’s frantic lift-off what the destination would unfailingly be. The ensuing sequence unfolds at an increased perceptive tempo, almost like film being sped up into hyper-real impact. It remains strangely soundless and at this point the eyes of Townes are only seeing. Emotions have left the realm of it. Down like a dart to the old shed behind the house on Bright street. He sees its eyes briefly when the big body comes to a halt on the roofline. Liquid moonlit expression inscrutability. To describe it as rage, or fear, or some combination of the two, would be to use a mere fraction of all words available. It was pure emoting on the raptor’s face, now the beak working with those savage talons to rip at the weathered wooden exterior of the shed. It doesn’t take long to gain access, but he cannot follow this time. The hovering is cocoon-like, and even the earlier sensations of bobbing in place have vanished. Sounds return as if from a vast distance. From within the shed below, a series of anguished noises accent violent smashing, wings beating the stale air inside, talons ripping.

Mercifully, all of this begins to fade out as a new and stronger pull is felt. This not visible astral body is being summoned back. His view of the shed alters as he drifts up from its roof, still hearing the violence within and then the punctuation of glass breaking. A billion synaptic ingredients add up in full submission to what he has just witnessed and learned, even as darkness drops its latest cloak down over him. Jenny of Bright street could not possibly guess that the damage she was about to come home to had been inflicted by the heartbroken spirit of an entity once named Scott.