The Wall

There is a wall near my house. And when you brave the cold of the night and screaming sting of the wind, you can see it. It stands tall and wide, and mighty. There are stories of who built it. There is lore and legend of folk and history that intertwine and contradict. We believe what we hear, and we question what we believe. The stories spin the tales, and the rumors rip through our ears. The wind howls a distinct language of pain and love. Whispers of sanctity and sacrifice ring high in the buzzing of crickets violins.

There is no moon tonight, and the stars bless us with their presence. Hand in hand we skip, and hum the songs of our parents.

My fireplace runs low on wood, and from the glow of dying embers I find the absence of replenishable fuel. Stepping into the sting and the rule of the wind I find my axe and venture to some trees. The forest stands tall and mighty, and welcoming. The wall is close. The wind swings through the branches and the roots, and dances close to my ear. Like a sail I catch the wind and drift towards an old oak.

The moon is strong and blinding. Hand in hand, we kneel in the prayer of our grandparents.

The oak seems soft and welcoming to my axe, and I tear into its flesh. There is a moan in the way the wind has its way with the branches. Nature shakes and rattles around me, and I feel the eyes of animals. The owls shuffle in their nests and the rats climb through the debris of the oak. Leaves crumble under the weight of feet and legs, of torso and chest.

The moon is half empty and the fire digs deep into the wood. And we listen to our aunts and uncles tales. There is a touch of reality escaping as the night continues. My axe has succeeded in its murder, and I stand above a fallen elder. I make saplings from its body, and I gather the pile in my arms. I can hear the rattle of the wall from here. I trudge through the wilderness and head towards hom…

The wall. You can hear its call, its echo in the wake of the wind, its tender whisper. Twigs snap like bones beneath my shoes. The moon runs high and mighty, and wide and fierce in the night air.

In our beds we sleep, the creeping moon peering through our window. The moon shines brightly through the window, and if we woke up and looked. If we shed our sleeping baggage, and our eyes adjust. If we stare hard through the dusty old window, we may make contact, with whatever crept in the dark outside. We may notice the flicker of the moon, as a figure danced in its light. We may notice two other green lights dodging in between the fire flies.

I follow the trail of leaves, and brittle twigs, and I break the fingertips of the roots reaching out. The wall is near and calling in the emptiness of the air. The trail ends, and the baldness of the field before the wall seems like a sea. At the edge of the water I drop the fire wood, and I move towards the wall. The wall is tall and wide, and uneven in the way the rocks sit. There is a strange hollow sound as the wind flows through the holes in the wall. I approach the foot of the wall, and the moon gleams and grins. I’ve never been beyond the wall, and this intoxicating sense of adventure gets the better of me, and i decide to climb the wall.

We are woken by rattles and taps on the window.

The axe is left below at the foot of the wall. I begin my climb up the shaky wall. My fingers find the gaps in the wall, and my feet find holes. Hand over hand, foot over foot I ascend the wall. There is a stench in my nostril, and tear in my eye. I don’t notice it at first, and the moon lacks the ability to reveal.

We stand at the sides of our beds, and we fold our sheets. We can’t remember the songs, the tales, and we forget our prayers.

The wall is tall, and at this height I can see the tops of the trees. The wind can’t find me here, but the moon, good god, the moon is spectacular here. The wall exceeds any human construction. There is a stumble with my foot, and I lose my placing. I kick out a part of the wall trying to keep my balance. Something falls to the ground. I can’t see the ground so clearly, and I continue up the wall.

We step outside in our sleeping garments, bare feet gracing the ground. We follow its songs and whispers into the forest. We follow its promises and its footsteps to the field. We break the brittle twigs beneath. We cross the field. The figure turns and we feel the gaze of eyes examining us. We stare into the green blazing eyes. There is a grumble from its throat.

“We are building a fantastic thing.”

I can’t remember when I first started climbing. I pause in my climb. My hand rests on something soft, and I use the moon to examine the wall for the first time.

We can’t remember much of anything. We stand rigid in the moonlight, and we succumb to the touch. We can feel something run through the hair on our head, and the hand like object cups in affection. It pets softly. It moves slowly in its motion, and it hops closer to us.

My hand fumbles on the softness of the wall. It feels familiar, and I try to gather my senses. The smell is strong, and the roots are still deep and clinging. I yank at the fur like object. There is a patch of hair in my hand, and there is numbness in my mind.

I can’t find my voice and I panic. I can’t scream, only gurgle my disgust.

Eyeless sockets glare at me. There is haste and destruction in my movement as I climb higher and away from the skull, but there is a common theme in my second pause on the wall, and with the moonlight I examine this wall, this stacked pyramid graveyard.

There is no solid rock, no brick or wooden fence post. There is nothing, but the soft fleshy sponge that I’ve come to know as a body. Human limbs, and torso, human heads, and legs make up the wall, and the wall smells of the decomposing. Bones sticking out from spaces between rotting flesh still carry pieces of flesh and hair. Maggots hang tight to the broken jaws and fingernails. I cling tight to the flesh of a nearby corpse; hand in hand I hang on. The smell has sunk into my mind, and I project my dinner towards the earth.

I can’t hear the splash of regurgitated stew from this high up. I can’t hear anything but the palpitations of my heart, as it tries to escape my chest. It wants nothing but to escape its encasement between my ribs. I want nothing more than to release my grip from the wall. I want nothing more than to let go and go tumbling and hurdling towards the ground, just to get free from this carrion pile. I contemplated my decent, my desire to fly. I stare into the sky and I see the stars, the wall seems to stretch towards them, wanting, hoping. I fade…

I’ve heard of a village to the east. In that village there are the old and the dying. Those unfortunate enough to conceive children in the village, or bring them to the village to raise, lose them when the moon is at its fullest. The parents sing the children songs of warning. They tell them tales of warning. They teach them prayers to ward off danger. The songs scatter in the wind, the tales disappear from the memory, and the prayers fall on deaf ears. No one listens to the old and dying. They’re crazy beggars in the street, peddlers with nothing but ole wise tales. They say, the crazy and the dying and the old, that there is a wall out in the wilderness…

…I awake and dark is lighter and hazy. I stare up and try to forget my current location. I can see smoke rising above the top of the wall. A black putrid smoke that drifts and tangles with the heavens. My strength returns, and taking limb and leg I take a faster pace up the wall. Bells and whistles pour out over the mountain in a screech imitating howl. The wind speaks and spreads across the wall. The higher you climb, the fresher the corpse. I start to find organs, and eyes popping five feet from its owner. I slip on some dripping blood, and accidentally kick in someone’s chest, which caves in and threatens to toss me from the mountain.

When the wind blows through the wall, in the little holes and gaps, the wind will find half corpses, and flow upwards. The wind would bellow through the pipes of the open mouthed and horror faced victims. A sudden gust of wind caused the current corpse to my left to gargle and hiss. They seemed to speak their tales and stories, their stories of horror and their pain, their contortion and suffering. They bend upwards to the heavens almost and in like a great chorus, the wind pushes through them and the bodies start to sing. I’m haunted by their voices as I reach the top.I manage to pull myself up and I stare into the welcoming fire.

Keeping low to the ground, I try to make out the figure perched behind it. Hind legs hunched and hairy, the figure resembles some sort of mythical faun. The creature sports two massive horns that seem to curl into a never ending circle. Its teeth are sharp, and its eyes a piercing, mesmerizing green. Its face was stout and thin, with sharp edges in the corners of its mouth and brows. The nose seemed moist and dripping, the mouth poured out some mixture of saliva and blood. The ears of this creature were thin and tall, and perked up when I had finally made it to the top. The creature appeared to show no interest in me at the moment, and it concentrated on what looked to be the left shoulder and arm of some unlucky child. The teeth ripped into the flesh like an axe to a tree. The bones snapped like brittle twigs. From my position I could see that I had arrived at the very top of the wall. It seemed to stretch forever in all directions. I tried to look down towards the ground, but mist and what seemed to be a fairly low cloud pushed past the wall through the holes and gaps of the wall.

I heard a shuffle, and I turned my gaze from the ground to the creature.The creature had taken an interest in me past the initial sense of smell and hearing. Its head cocked towards me, its eyes meeting mine. It chewed like a cow and its cud, grinding and crunching the pieces of the child. It made no hint of anger or contemplation. It stared past the fire, and I stared back, transfixed.

With a grunt the creature tossed the bits of body to the side, and stood. Towering an easy ten feet the creature circled the fire towards me. I told my legs to move. I told my heart to slow done, but nothing happened, nothing moved but the creature. It moved with this knowledge, and dominance. It seemed to chuckle. It hunched down in front of me, and I could make out every detail of its shedding skin, its molting fur. I could smell the breath of a million souls cry out each time the creature exhaled. It sucked at the air with a horrible sound that resembled suction cups. It ate at my oxygen, and measured by existence with each sniff of its nose. Blood and saliva dripped on my shoes, and I could feel the thick liquids creep into my shoes, and fill between my toes. I-

I couldn’t find myself in my head. I saw all this from some outer body experience. I screamed at myself to run, and jump, but nothing I could do would budge me. The creature stopped chewing for a second, and started to open its long and wretched jaw. Its head moved forward and it started to encircle my left hand. The creature was slow and deliberate with each move it made, and the beast enclosed on my hand. I could feel the stinging pain dig slow and deep into my hand. I screamed, and I awoke…

I ripped my hand from the beast’s mouth and I turned. With hand leaking and spilling I peered over the side of the great wall. With a deep breath I stepped off the edge.

I fell fast, the howl of the beast behind me. My right hand shot out and I grabbed a familiar skeletal hand. With one hand and two legs I moved back down the wall. I wasn’t sure if the beast was following me or not, but the howl of the creature mixed with the chorus of a million corpse and i quickened my descent.

An eternity passed before I felt the hard solid comfort of the ground. I fell to the ground clutching my left hand. The creature howled again. Two green lights danced down the side of the wall in a crawl. With great speed I grabbed my axe. Lifting it above my head I swung at the wall with as much strength as I could muster. The axe sunk into the flesh and tore it with each attack. I hacked at the wall as the creature quickened its pace.

I was unable to make a dent into the wall, and the creature, within ten feet leaped to the ground. It stood in the empty field, and trapped me with my back to the wall. It seemed to growl and suck at the words in its throat.

“We are building a fantastic thing.”

It started to crawl on all fours towards me, and I backed up to the wall. I could feel the softness of the wall, and the sting of the creatures glare as it made its way towards me. I swung at the beast, with eyes closed and hoping.

I prayed in the moment I closed my eyes, I hummed and remembered a short tale I once heard.

There was a thunk in the darkness of my subconscious, as something like an axe dug into something like a tree. The axe was sharp and mighty, and it dug at the tree like it was flesh. I felt the wind push me to the ground, and as I impacted with the earth I let go of the axe and my eyes shot open.

The beast lumbered past me with a great intensity of pain and distress. It bounded and stumbled towards the wall, and it met with a great force. The graveyard welcomed the host of the wall with open arms, and it sunk deep into its belly. The wall began to sing of shaky songs and rocked back and forward with a lack of balance. Bodies, and limps, and corpse and crypt started to fall from above. The limp bodies sounded wet as they collided and impacted with the ground, and shattered. Among the crashing of the wall, I could make out the form of the hurt beast.

It stared at me, and started to walk towards me, limping. The axe stuck out of its leg, and a thick dark liquid dripped out. It started to walk towards me, limping, among the scattered and the falling bodies.

In the night sky, the moon sat and illuminated the falling of the wall. It buckled under its weight, and tumbled downwards

I ran back to the entrance of the forest and watched the wind tear the wall apart, and bring it crashing down.  The beast tried to escape the falling of his monument, but the constant weight of bodies kept him from getting free, and soon I lost track of his hunched and wounded figure.

The fire of the beast fell and spread among the fallen wall. It engulfed the rot and flesh, and the living beast, and in a magnificent blaze it devoured all there was of the wall. The smoke floated high and dark into the moon, and tangled with the heavens.

In the ring of the cricket’s violin, and the sting of the screaming wind, I walked through the forest. I walked from the wall, I walked from the wall that stands large and burning and mighty. There are stories of who destroyed it. There is lore and legend of folk of history that intertwine and contradict. We believe what we hear, and we keep to ourselves the truth. The wind howls a distinct language of pain, and howling beasts. It whispers of sanctity and sacrifice in the silence, and begs to be heard.

I open the door. I take one last look. And I close it.