Harbinger

Nobody believed in me. That was their first mistake. Nobody believed you could see faces in the hot dust that rose in the wake of rusty trucks and children’s bikes as they clattered past rotting fences. No one paid any mind to the change in the tune of the windchime on their grandmother’s porch, a subtle shift when the wind started blowing in a troubling direction. Not anymore.

I gave them signs, I always have and always will. I am not ungracious, nor do I revel in pain. Tragedy does not feed me, like those forgotten books on the last library shelves say, the ones the lunatics wrote back when people could believe in something outside themselves, outside what they could see or touch. I owed those lunatics, as they were called, owed them for caring enough for their fellow man to sacrifice their respectability. They were always just earnest enough to elicit a pause and a prick of fear in a select few, causing them to head into their shelters a few minutes earlier. Any change, even if not caused directly by me, I have gratitude for. Again, I am not ungracious. I do not feed on fear.

My Friend does.

That is the sad truth of the matter, some divine retribution raining down on me since time out of mind. This plane of earth, level, stretching on in interminable heat, is my land. The land of determined fields, and child’s games, and cool ponds in the shimmering air. The land of clouds that turn sickly green, bruises I inflict when I alight. I am sent down to it to save this place, show it mercy, and with every step I take I drag the chain of My Friend closer. I cannot help it. I cannot break him off from myself. He gnaws at my heels, a glutton for splinters, and terror, and loss.

You must learn to tell us apart.

I was the cool wind on the back of Michael’s neck in the midst of the midday sun. I made him cold with fear, and he blamed it on his old bones. I was the dream of Cassandra on her last night of school. Aptly, tragically named girl. She knew me, she called me an old bird with a bloodied neck. Children do not have the right words to describe me, but they are unafraid to say them, and that is what counts. She was close enough. Her mother handed her a sack and sent her out the door, half of the story the girl told obscured by the television set and a rival conversation about trout, of all things. Wasted time. The chain I carry feels heaviest after I give a child a nightmare. It always ends the same way. But I will give a thousand nightmares if it means they live to see another dawn. I am not swayed into defeat. My Friend's whispers, like his gales, cannot move me.

With Beck, I dared to revert to my older ways. She was wise enough to question what she saw out of the diner window, and scalding coffee poured onto the table, then the sticky floor, as I made my home on the power line. Her burly customer swore and stamped as she blinked out of her trance, her arm half lifted to point to me. Then she lowered it, and on the way to fetch some towels discreetly threw away three bottles hidden under the back sink. I could not help but wonder if she would have trusted her eyes if not for these.

Hodge called his psychiatrist, and that was the end of that. I was, again, a bloodied old bird.

I saw dozens more of these people, interrupting their lives as boldly as I am allowed. The closer My Friend gets, the harder I try. One hundred years ago, the sight of me could herd these people out of reach of the coming disaster. Back when people were not afraid to look. Back when they would point, and pray, and discuss, and act. Back when respect was given to things beyond what they fully understood. Now they have their inventions, and man’s inventions cannot predict the will of a beast. I do not revel in death. I do not seek death for the ignorant.

My Friend does.

This is how you will know My Friend. He appears when I have done all the work I can do. He is the bruised green darkness seeping through the shoddy workmanship of my best efforts. He is the greed of gods. You will see his eye peer down from heaven when it looks more like hell, and his eye seeks to feed. He cannot bear to be watched, and consumes under a violent coat made from spinning, thrashing darkness. His fingers are the most remarkable thing. He has no hands, as you would understand them, only fingers he can change at whim. From clumsy, wedge-shaped spades that rake Michael’s house, and wife, and his own aching body away in one swipe, leaving weeping wounds in the soil like a bear. To delicate, spidery whips that seek out Cassandra and her tossing braids–

Cassandra wakes her mother and father. She hears the cry of My Friend, familiar to her from the nightmare. She has a spirit like mine, and she will not yield her will to theirs, not on a night like this. My Friend turns their home into ribbons and dust. But they, safe underground, live.

The years wear on, and the people I reveal myself to are more and more often cast into the mouth of the twisting, hungry dog at my back. But like Cassandra, I do not yield to his will. As long as my eternal dance continues, I pluck souls from his mouth. As you can see, standing on My Friend’s cleaned plate, a family who listened emerges from the rubble, and this time the story ends differently.

My Friend only consumes. I open the door of the trap and wait for the prey to flee to safety.

There will be no divorce between me and this flat plane of earth. I will return again and again, before the claw marks are carved into your cars, before you are pinned by a thousand spears made from your bedroom walls. When I do, look for me. If you do not believe me, you will believe My Friend. You know now he follows in my footsteps, he is tied to me, and I cannot sever that bond. Learn to see the world as it truly is. Learn to see me and so learn how to evade My Friend. Or, keep your eyes down, and trust in ordinary things. I am not ungracious. I cannot help what you have become. But I will always return.

Watch. Listen.