Bone Pattern

Their Eyes Upon Me- September 19, 2014

I stepped out my door and into that other city yesterday.  I expected my low porch and peeling iron railing, overhung with now bloomless rose bushes.  Before I opened my door, daylight shone through the window in it.  But it opened onto a dark hallway.  Stones arching over my head.  Far away to my right, the afternoon glowed still.  I stood in my doorway for a moment, felt the cool air of the vault around me.  Then I was out and stepping down the corridor, listening to the way my footsteps echoed.  I didn't worry then about how I would get home.

The hall emptied out into a broad stone staircase, bordered in iron.  A heavy wooden door stood open, and let me leave.  Many steps dropped away below me.  They spilled out into a courtyard, shadowed by the walls of the building surrounding. A little tiered fountain stood among weeds in the center of the space.  Dry now.  Several broken windows winked at me in the sunlight.  Others were still whole, but grimed, stained with water.

I ran down the stairs and turned back to look up at the grey stone building, with its black slate roof.  Those windows marched along its face, regular as clockwork, except for the broken ones. The staircase flew away, free of the wall, to drop into the courtyard like a waterfall. A large house.  Perhaps a manor, even.  Insects sang in the cool shadow of its stones.  The building loomed over me, leaned around and wrapped the arms of its other wings around me and the empty fountain.  Like someone enclosing a sleeping cat they wish to embrace but do not wish to disturb.  The building drowsed, and I was very awake in that moment.  I turned to go.  To leave through its gate and walk the streets of this unknown city again.

As I turned to leave, something moved in the street beyond the gate.  The one note song of the insects fell silent.

I stopped, watching the courtyard.  Not much moves in this deep city.  

Again, a dark shape passed before the archway.  

I turned and fled.  Back behind the sheltering steps of the staircase.  I crouched in the weedy, cobwebbed darkness and listened to footsteps approaching.  Soft soled shoes that made little noise as they came for met.  They passed aboved my head, and went quiet in the building.  Peaking from my hiding place, I caught a flash of movement and nothing more.

The door still stood open.

I crept back up the stairs and into that long dim hall.  No sign now of the windowed door into my apartment.  No sign of the dark-clad shape.  I might have turned again to leave if a floorboard had not moaned above my head.

Down the hall, then.  Into the gloom and away from the light.  One door opened to my left, but it was not mine.  Another on my right.  The corridor forked before me, splitting into a T.  I took the left path and was rewarded with another staircase, leading to upper floors.

An open door before me, with light pouring from it to pool on the worn boards I walked upon.  Quiet as I could, I crept up next to it and peered inside.  A plump woman clad in sweater and leggings sat in that room filled up with light.  Her back was to me, but a hundred pairs of eyes stared down at me.  I stood pinned by eyes of glass or paint or embroidery.  The room was filled with dolls.  Grey skin, and pale, and deep shades of brown.  Some of the lay sleeping, curled like kittens into baskets.  Others stared me down from shelves, there eyes imperious atop long, slender necks. They lounged, sensuous and warm, wrapped around each other.  Cloth hands touched cloth faces.  All were frozen, trapped in stillness in a silent sunny room.

Their make sat before a broad table, a basket laden with bread, several bottles, a tin box, a colletion of apples beside her.  Her groceries ignored, she sat before a long body.  I could see pointed toes, fingers curling on an outflung arm.  Skin textured like chainmail, strong and protective.  The body shifted beneath her hands, pushed along the table.  It swelled beneath her hands.

I must have made a noise then.  The woman turned.  

Showed me a face worn and plain.  Contract to the inhuman loveliness on the shelves.

"Who are you?" she said.

And I told her.

I stepped into the room, trying to look friendly and harmless.  The dolls did not believe me.

"Do you live here?" I asked her.

Her eyes strayed back to the limp body of the doll.

"This is my home," she said at last. "I-"

 But I interrupted. "These dolls are beautiful."

"I do make them.  I really can't talk to you now."  She tried to turn away again, distracted.

Was it my imagination or did the figure on the table shift?  

I realized I was in her home, uninvited.  I took a step back.

"Okay," I said.  "I'm sorry.  Please, just take me card.  I would love to talk to you, when you are able."

But she had already turned away.

I knelt to place my card in the center of her floor.  It has my shallow address.  Perhaps she will find me.

And after a time I found my way home.

I can still feel their eyes upon me.