Death's Dance

A good joke always has a literal punchline.  I don't know what that means but I think it makes sense.  That's my life, I don't know what it means but I think it makes sense.  Man, it is hot outside.  It's unbearable.  I can deal with dry heat.  But it's humid today.  I showered over twenty minutes ago and I'm still wet.  That kind of hot.  I have a towel wrapped around my head like one those guys on CNN.  This godawful heat.  It was like this the day that Frank died.  The day I found the jewelry box.  That nasty little wooden cage of demons.  When you find it, something terrible happens.  Something that will turn and curdle in your mind for, well, forever. 
         The air was so thick that day, almost a physical burden, heavy on my seven year old shoulders.  Of course that didn't stop us from pounding through the day the way little boys do.  We took turns playing the good guys from our repitiore of action movies (when it came to The Terminator, we argued about who got to be the bad guy.) 
         But I can remember a nagging, stagnant dread following me through the thick haze.  I didn't understand the feeling I had that day, only being a child, quite innocent of dreadful things, (thanks to a wonderful Mom and Dad)  but no grown man is a virgin to dread, and as an adult I can look back at that day and understand the pressing awful feeling. 
         I had a dream the night before, the first that I can remember.  My little mind made it seem so real, and I can remember waking in the night, sweating and afraid, I couldn't cry out, I couldn't move.  The odd thing was, looking back, there were no monsters, or ghosts.  No demons, no witches.  There was only a dress. 
         I made my way through a deserted carnival.  One of the old ones with the novelty freaks to point and gawk at.  The ground was dry and dusty.  There were no bright colors, everything seemed to be dulled or muddled, like the world was an old photograph.  In the distance I could hear a man calling out for all the spectators that weren't there.  He called and I followed his voice.  And I came upon him, a clown with a top hat and a dirty cream colored button up shirt.  He spoke no more, but only gestered to his left side with both hands and a shrug, as if saying "Look, go ahead."  And there it was.  The "dress", a Japanese komono, blood red in that colorless world.  It writhed and danced before me, not like a flag in the wind, but as if a woman were in it, but there was no woman, only the dress in its graceful dance.  It was overwhelming, I can't tell you why.  But I froze and I couldn't take my eyes from the evil thing.  It loomed high over my little body, twirling, it's ends flapping a bit in the wind.  The more I stared, it seemed the wraith inside the dress was less woman and more reptile, like a thousand invisible serpents wriggling beneath the fabric. 
         That was all.  If there was anymore, I can't remember it now. 
         Frank and I were marching through the woods behind my families huge yellow house.  (It's only huge in my memories, I drove by it a few years ago and was amazed we all fit in it.)  We had our beebee guns with us on our march.  We were "hunting", like my dad.  We walked for a few miles taking pot shots at unussual leaves and twigs.
         Frank spotted it first.  A baby robin, just discovering it's wings, hopped out of its nest onto a thick branch.  It was smaller than the cans we lined up back at the house, but not much further away.  We had never killed anything before.  Dad always told us never to shoot at anything unless we planned on eating it.  It was one of his stipulations that convinced my mother to let me have the beebee gun.  It was very important to Dad never to hurt something in vain.  He was a hunter, but he wouldn't kill a woodchuck on the property, he always trapped and released.  Hell, he would stop traffic to let a turtle cross the road.  But even so, our little curious bodies tensed up, we looked at one another and then I took aim.  I squeezed the trigger slowly and let the blast of air surprise me just like I did when we shot the cans back at the house. 
         "Holy shit!" Frank screamed when he saw the feathers fly up and the bird fall down.  He covered his mouth and his eyes were so big, when he looked at me.  It was comical even then.  I stood for a moment. 
         "Well, lets go have a look at it." I said, all business, just like my dad was when he shot a deer the previous winter, the first time he let me sit in the blind with him.  We weren't ready for what we saw. 
         We both stood over the bird, looking down.  It looked so pitiful, so scared.  It wasn't dead.  The shot had tore it's guts out, one of it's little legs was hanging off by some pink meat.  It was trying to get up, its beak opening and closing.  It was gulping air in huge swallows that were bubbling out it's open thorax.  I couldn't look any more.  Frank was crying, and I realized I was too.  He turned and ran.
         "I'm telling your daddy!"  He yelped in between sobs. 
         I thought of chasing after him for a moment, but I stopped.  The bird wasn't dead.  Of all the things my Dad tried to get through to me, that day at least one thing did.  Never let an animal suffer.  I didn't want to do it, but it had become my duty.  This little bird was lying, bleeding in the dirt, and now I had to finish it off.  I crushed it with a fist sized rock.  He would suffer no more.   
         I walked back alone, the long trek, shoulders sunk with the beebee gun dangling.  I hated it just then.  I hated my beebee gun, and if I didn't hate getting whooped more I would have thrown it into the river that ran along the south eastern corner of our property. 
         Somewhere along the trail, in the haze that made the day seem like my dream, I heard a noise.  It was so wrong in the woods, it was like being in the middle of the ocean and hearing a dog bark.  I froze.  My first instinct was fear.
ting, tang, ting, dee, dee, ting
         It was music.  It was some kind of music.  I forgot about Frank.  I forgot about the bird and the whooping I would get.  All I could think of was finding the source of that music.  I listened and walked, listened and changed direction, listened and walked.  That was the first time I saw it.  A corner of it jutted out from the earth like the end of a tiny ship sinking to the will of earthworms.  A small corner of gold paint flashed from the soil.  I fell on my knees and dug it out with my hands like a little animal.  I ripped and thrashed at the earth around it until it was like a loose baby tooth, and I ripped it from its earthen mantle.  I brushed as much dirt from it as I could, the music playing all the while, a tune I never had heard and haven't heard from any other source to this day.  The haze became so heavy then, my heart raced, my head felt like it would implode.  My body became a gooseflesh pelt.  My eyes were watering and the air seemed to be thrumming like some angry giant bee were flapping its wings by my head.  The jewelry box sat on its wooden legs before me.  It was huge the first time I saw it.  It was all black, but the gold face with a small mural of a Japanese village winding up through the mountains into the haze.  The music played on and I unclasped the vertical door in it's center that spanned one third it's width and its total height and I slowly opened it.  And the world went black. 
         I awoke in a hospital room, my mom and dad standing over me with some strange faces.  The doctor waved something under my nostrils.  I was wet, freezing, feverish.  I was shaking, I was so afraid.  What had I seen?  I couldn't remember, I didn't know what had happened, everything seemed so fuzzy, hazy like the air.  I was crying, I was sobbing.  So was my mother.  I had been out for three days.
         "I'm sorry I kilt it Daddy!  I'm s-s-s-soooo sor-r-r-r-ry!"  I choked out.
         He gave me an odd look.  Something seemed to be hurting him.  His brow wrinkled in worry, and he shot my mother a pleading glance. 
         "It's okay champ."  He said oblivious to what I was talking about.
         "Look buddy, we need to tell you something very difficult.  Something very grown up." 
         
         I have been trying to make sense of what they told me next for most of my life.  They gave me the PG version of course, seven year old me not being able to begin to comprehend the truth.  I can remember thinking of that baby robin.  That poor pitiful baby robin. 
         They said it was a mountain lion.  That's all they could guess to create such an awesome and terrible scene of gore.  The fact was, a lion had never been spotted in that region.  No one saw the one that got Frank either, they just guessed it to be a lion.  Only a lion could be so...could tear someone apart like that.  That bird with its tummy tore open writhed in pain for a moment.  I have often wondered how long Frank did.
         Later, I remembered that awful, humid, hazy day.  I remembered the jewelry box.  I remembered pulling the door in the center up and seeing her.  The lady made of invisible serpents.  Only she was a little wooden lady wearing a blood red komono, twirling around, dancing deaths dance.