Inspiration - 1. Chapter 1

Tim Thin watched the wind move as an inky wave through the midnight corn fields outside his bedroom window. The darkness was filled with the dry rasping of corn stock against corn stock, a cricket’s horse concerto. He sniffed at the air seeking a hint of where it came from, but all he detected was the aromas of farms; grain, dirt and fertilizer. Maybe, he imagined, the wind had originally blown out of the Sahara and caressed the face of the Sphinx or, perhaps it rose with the mist from the fecund jungles engulfing Angkor Wat. There were uncounted places it could have encountered as it traversed the globe, places that Tim could only visit via the shows that his parents begrudgingly allowed him to watch.

With a tweak of his imagination, the copse of trees in the middle of the corn field could be his Hundred Acre Wood, the town grain elevator, the ramparts of the fortified city of Dubrovnik. A distant combine is the Cutty Sark or the HMS Beagle breaking through the uncharted waters of maize. Turning away from the vistas of his imagination he looked at the room around him, a mundane place of yellowing wallpaper that he had tried to hide behind a few posters of cars and baseball players, neither of which the ten year old cared for, but it is what he was suppose to enjoy. Right?

A new movement outside caught his eye, turning off the dim bedside lamp he turned back to the vastness beyond the window. Amongst the trees of his quarter acre wood something swayed that was not a maple, oak or ash. He stretched his eyes open wide wishing for the remarkable eyes of a cat, all iris and pupil. There was a movement, a little like the undulation brought on by a high wind, but there was only the weak breeze. Squinting first out of one eye, then the other he sought more detail in the amber glow of the waning moon. It had straight lines.

Tim caught his breath and jumped back from the window as the something revealed itself and moaned. It moaned! In like amounts he was terrified and electrified with excitement. It had raised itself above the treetops. He could not tell exactly what it was, but it was tall. The thing was taller than the grain elevator or the water tower. At first glance you could mistake it for the old water tower, a fragile construction of steel and wood, a whisky barrel on spindly legs with a china man’s hat. A place that teenagers scaled to stare at the horizon, briefly wondering what was beyond the curve, never getting further than Toledo. The new steel water tower was nothing more than an inverted volumetric flask.

The sound was not the wail or thunderous clatter of one of the frequent trains that now mostly rocketed through town without slowing. It was a human moan or an inhuman cry, somewhere between the wanting wail of a baby and the sonorous call of a Humpback Whale. Tim leaned out the window straining his ears.

Helllooooo. He heard it. He knew he did, but did anyone else? There were no lights save for the half dozen street lamps on Main Street. It was too early even for the farmers to be up and there was nothing to keep restless teenagers up to the early hours of morning. He wanted to shout back: Hello! Yes! I hear you! Yes! I see you! Surely, he thought, his parents would hear him and tell him he was just dreaming and to go back to sleep.

He wasn’t dreaming and he would prove it. He didn’t stop to put on shoes or a jacket. He bolted downstairs and ran outside, making sure the door did not slam on the way out.

Despite the protestations of his mother, summer was a time without shoes and running across the parched grass, gravel road and through the field, his bare feet did not slow him down.

Hellloooo! It called again.

Hello! Hey it’s me! Tim called as he raced through the corn. He saw it, a dark shadow against the pinpoint lights of distant galaxies. The thing shuddered against the night.

It’s you?

It heard me! Tim was ecstatic with fear and wonder, but more wonder than fear.

It’s me, Tim!

It is you, Tim. The voice was low and resonated in his skull, more felt than heard.

Yeah, Tim breathed.

It swayed unsteadily in the light wind. Its legs looked like the struts that held up the old water tower, only broken then fixed with other boards that were attached trying to stabilized one gangly leg to another. The top tilted towards him and Tim thought it must be looking at him. He leaned his head back and almost fell on his butt trying to see what he could only think of as its body or head.

You are small. The comment rumbled from it. The body of it looked like the outhouse at his grandmother’s farm, made of wood panels, some mismatched, with a door like opening that was now leaning in his direction and a roof of verdigris copper.

Defiantly and with the naïve courage only a ten year old can possess he said: I’m growing! We had to buy new shoes for me twice this year!

Shoes. You are not like me.

That made Tim stop and wonder for the first time and asked, What are you?

There was a long pause before an answer came.

Searcher. Wanderer.

What are you searching for?

There was another long wait where it creaked like the old apple tree in a high wind. For others like me. The top twisted and Tim looked in the direction it moved. He could just make out the spider form of the old water tower.

That is just the old water tower, Tim said.

Not like me. He did not know if it was a question or a statement. The voice was something so much more felt in the hard bones at the top of his head than the tiny ones in his ears. Tim did not know what to say.

For a hands span of time they stood unmoving amidst the drying husks of corn and occasional lightening bug, one other worldly and lost and one, bare feet planted in the reality of dust and flesh and not yet realizing he was lost too.

With a groan of cold steel bending Tim’s Wanderer lifted a leg and stepped away. Afraid that this really was a dream he ran after it.

Where are you going?

Slowing, but not stopping it rumbled in response, Onward.

But where? He asked. Out loud he did not ask, what about me?

It made a sound, a kind of growling sound that reminded Tim of himself when he fought down the tears so that no one could see him cry. Something that that hid weakness.

I will see.

It picked up its legs and walked leagues as if it had magic boots or they could stretch a mile long. The Wanderer was gone before Tim could even think to run after it or yell; Take me! It became less than a silhouette, another indistinguishable shadow on an invisible horizon.

Tim did not know how long he stood there. He did not cry, because he did not yet have a reason. Instead he slowly strolled home. Once there he sat at the window and watched the sky lighten to azure and fire. If he didn’t go to sleep, then there was no doubt that it wasn’t a dream.

Tim may have just been a boy, but he was not a fool and kept his nighttime escapade a secret, though he often stayed up all night watching and listening for any hit of the Wanderer. Every once in a while he would hear a chick that was not a cricket or a groan that he did not think was a train and he would strain to catch that mournful hellloooo carried on the blurring wings of a dragonfly. A few times he wondered at some dark distant smudge that he did not remember seeing before, but he was never sure.

Eventually he stopped staying up waiting, especially after the window shut to keep the chilling air and wet out. If he was up, unable to sleep because it was too hot or too cold or his brain was coming up with new worries with which he could torment himself and he heard something, he learned to dismiss it as a car traveling on a remote dirt road or a dog or thunder.

In his fourteenth year he lay on his bed lazily tossing a baseball from one hand to the other, staring at a new poster at the foot of his bed. It had been a gift from his father when he was made starting pitcher. It showed a pitcher poised with his arm back and one foot held high as he prepared to release a fastball. The players jaw was set firmly and Tim’s eyes traced the outline of his features and the contours his body. Stop it! He commanded himself and let the ball fly towards the poster impacting it with a dull thunk and dimpling the center of the paper. The ball fell back to him and he deftly caught it, because that is what you do when you are a teenage boy in the land of corn and beets, you learn how to throw and catch a ball.

The breeze carried the perfumes of fall through his open window; dry grain, moist soil and the occasional whiff of wood smoke. The leaves of the trees had exchanged the light banter of summer for a scratchy dissonance as they faded from supple green to hardened ochres and rusts, but still clinging to branches as the wind once resplendent with mysterious origins tugged at them. Tim thought about the wind; a low pressure system is moving in and it is going to get a lot colder.

He got up to close the window, shutting out the aromas that tickled at his sinuses.

Helllloooo?

He stopped with his hands on the sash as the dream returned.

Yes! He wanted to scream, but you don’t do that to a dream.

Helllloooo? It was a low sound that vibrated his molars.

It is an idling train engine out past town, he made himself reason. He scanned the silhouettes of the horizon. There are the trees, there is the old water tower and there is the empty grain elevator starting to list to one side. The sliver of a moon was still high and the Milky Way lived up to its name, spilling an opalescent cascade through the blue-black void.

Hello! he whispered into the pumpkin scented draft.

He cocked an ear to the stars. Nothing.

There was a groan like an oak that had stood rooted for centuries and finally decided to detach itself from the rock and soil to take a stroll, seeking out what all the birds kept talking about. It was so loud that he expected lights to flare in the windows of every house in town. Nothing. He let out the breath he was holding.

There it was! A water tower that was not a water tower.

Don’t go, Tim prayed as he stumbled down the stairs and out into the stubble of the field. He felt every stone and rigid, bent piece of leftover straw jab into the soles of his feet, but he ignored the pain.

There it was, like before, but different. These legs looked almost like string. They did not look substantial enough to hold it up and some did not even touch the ground. The top seemed heavier too, the tower from some derelict factory or robber barons castle.

Hey! Tim shouted and waved his arms, forgetting that he was already fourteen and becoming a responsible young man.

Hey! It rumbled to a stop, it’s filamentous legs waivering.

You’re different, Tim said.

I am the same.

You’re not the same one I saw last time, Tim explained, though he reasoned to himself that it could have been the same, newly emerged from some chrysalis.

Which way did he go? For a subsonic murmur, the voice sounded panicked Tim thought.

He paused as he relived the night that he had carelessly let slip away: To the west I think.

The top of it spun towards the setting moon. Some of the legs that did not quite touch the ground flung out like a jellyfish’s fringe of cable.

Wait! Tim screamed.

It hesitated. Why?

Why? Why was he asking, no begging for it to wait? He knew why.

Take me with you, he pleaded.

No.

Why not? He could feel the tears burning his cheeks the words claw at his throat. Running to it he reached out for one of the many free hanging appendages.

Because, the dark cable like tentacle twitched away, You – are you.

Tim stood planted to the spot, his toes digging like roots into the turned soil his hand held high and out stretched to an impossible thing retreating into the west.

But . . . I don’t want to be me, he whispered to no one. His arm fell to his side and the baseball he was unknowingly clutching in his other hand fell to the dirt. A neighbor’s rooster called forth the morning as Tim remained standing in the field, his mind blank. An anemic sun started to broach the eastern horizon and Tim turned to it wanting to scream. Instead he scooped up the baseball and trudged back home. He decided he would go back to his room, crawl into bed and when he awoke it could all be a dream. Exhaustion overtook him that morning, but each night after as he hovered on the edge of sleep he listened for the sound that was not what you should hear.

The abandoned grain elevator collapsed after a winter storm the year that Tim turned sixteen. It groaned and struggled against a night of ice, wind and snow, finally succumbing to gravity as Tim ate a breakfast of oatmeal served with brown sugar and dried apples from the old and propped up tree at the side of the house. The layer upon layer of snow muffled its demise to a cough of frigid air.

The town put up a fence around the old water tower fearing the same thing would happen to it. Teenagers still scaled its legs to make out in the moon light above the town. It was less known that before its surrender to winter the grain elevator was used for some of these awkward couplings during inclement weather. Tim Thin discovered this in the fall with his friend Stewart when they found an old mattress and the discarded remains of a dozen or so condemns as they defied parents and clambered about the tilting tower. Poking around the dusty corners they also uncovered a half-full bottle of whiskey which they took with them to the top.

Sitting, with legs dangling over the precipice of where grain once sluiced down to waiting trains, their nostrils replete with the moldering aroma of sour corn they filled their mouths with bitter spirits. Inexperienced, both coughed and choked after the first sip, but it did not take long for it to warm their faces and limps in the cool autumn air.

Tim watched Stewart with an intensity he did not know he possessed. Stewart’s long and supple lashes shielded his blue-grey eyes as, like so many before him, he took in the vista of weather beaten homes, barns and tiring soil from the highest vantage point in the county, unaware of the scrutiny he was receiving. He tipped back the bottle to carmine lips and drew a hand across them to wipe away any extra before handing it back to Tim. Taking the whiskey, Tim took a long swig and fought the urge to cough again at the fire in his throat. Both of them were loose limbed, at that stage of growth where arms and legs outpaced everything else in the race to escape childhood.

Ever seen or heard anything strange at night? Tim asked, his tongue thick, but his brain feeling light and quick as he scanned the landscape for even a trace of dreams.

Like what? Stewart was looking out without seeing at a land turning from red and yellow to an unforgiving gray.

I don’t know, like weird moaning and strange things very late at night?

You mean like ghosts? Just once. Tim’s ears pricked up. It was like a wild animal was attacking another. It was scary. This is not what he was expecting to hear.

I crept downstairs, following the sound, I thought somebody had left the television on, but that wasn’t it. A devilish lopsided grin turned Stewart’s lips up one side, revealing a flash of white teeth. My folks were doing it on the sofa.

Gross! Tim shoved his friend playfully.

Yeah, kinda, but kinda hot too.

No way!

Stewart shrugged and took another long drink.

So nothing strange out in the fields? Tim cautiously pressed.

Nah, this is Ohio, nothing strange here. Why? Are you seeing aliens making crop circles?

Nah, just wishing I guess. Tim left everything else he wanted to share unspoken.

The first time Tim could sleep with the window open after that winter he sat in front of it late into the night. The perfume of newness, buds opening on trees and leaves escaping seed and soil filled his nostrils as he imagined floating up into the heavens. He would ride the great currents to the cloud bound slopes of Everest or the dried bones of the Great Rift Valley.

Hello, he whispered into the almost still night, an invitation, a plea to be carried even past the boundaries of the stratosphere to where solar winds broke on the shores of time.

A grinding of metal and a snapping of wood brought Tim back to his bedroom and he watched it happen. First it tilted and then it looked as if it was taking a hesitant first step. A train whistle rent the darkness and the rumble of a mile long coal train drowned out the rest of the sound as the old wooden water tower yielded to rot and gravity, falling without anyone else noticing. The train passed on and on and on leaving behind, first no sound at all, then just the sound of crickets.

Tim could smell the dust raised by the collapsed tower mixed with the stench of tons of anthracite. He was going to whisper another word into the air when movement caught his eye.

It started as a shifting in the gloom, followed by a piece detaching itself from the edge of night, a shadow obliterating stars as it moved. He held his breath as he saw it approach, growing large, but he did not call out.

A stirring by the remains of the grain elevator drew his attention as another seemed to unfold itself from the rubble, a tin and wood shack rising on rickety spider legs. In the distant one a faint glow like a candle waivered. A light flickered on in what could have been a window or an eye in the one just rising. Eventually they stood side by side, not touching, but intimately aware of each other. They stumbled cautiously over the tracks to where the remains of the water tower lay.

This time Tim did not run out into the night, but remained in the window watching the two ambulatory edifices carefully pick through the splintered remnants of the tower. The only sound was the continued music of the crickets. There was no wind to rattle still bare branches nor were there any crops in the fields to sway to the infinite concerto of the night. In the gloom there were just things that logic said did not exist, something normally only caught out of the corner of the eye and easily dismissed. Without logic Tim knew this was the last time he would see them in the wild.

Turning away from the window as they turned toward the west he ripped the poster from the wall by the foot of his bed. By the dim light of his bedside lamp he lay it face down on the floor and pulled a long ignored box of crayons from beneath the bed. With feverish abandon, he ground broad strokes of waxy color into the paper giving new flesh to wraiths. Timber legs, steel struts, weathered cupolas, and aged siding took form and hovered in a paper landscape of gold, umber and ruby.