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A Discovery
Worth Discovering…
This vast room, with its circular
windows and arched doorways, had both of its double fireplaces consumed in a
roar and heaving fire; there within, sat a solitary figure. I felt the warmth
of it nearly knock me back into the hallway, though I entered softly as not to
disturb her so immediately. She was sitting in her long sofa; crossed about it
as if in a half-sit and laying position. Her head was dropped and steady as if
she were in full concentration. I could see an uneasy stare in her eyes and her
face nearly crumbled from its own weight. The fires glowed upon her profile and
cast the odd dances of a thousand shadows across her. A tear trickled from each
eye like two slightly-dripping faucets that would never really shut off. The
atmosphere was heavy and very stern. The silence pierced my hearing into a deaf
pause; but for the occasional cracks and sparks of warm fire breathing from the
fireplaces.
I sensed the dread of some shadow
illuminating within which cut the room off from every other room in the home. A
promiscuous ghost seemed to be present; some wreathing specter that was ready
to intercede on us both, and it having knowledge on what was to occur and pass
between us. I was hesitant and so reluctant to go any further. She made no
motion to me or to recognize my presence, though she knew very well I was near
her.
My heart pulsed into a steady and
loud beat, and it nearly felt as though she could hear its’ every pulse. I
couldn’t see directly what captivated her attention so. The back of this sofa
obstructed my view. But whatever it was, nothing would have moved her to pause
from it then. The moments in time were hard-stacked, and were crushing those
before it; and it felt so heavy and weighted to the occasion that nothing
before or in the future mattered, but for this single moment. The hard woods
creaked as I moved slowly forward.
She did not come to a stir.
Still she made no further motion but to stare
downward and drop her occasional tears to where she was looking on.
The heat from those fires made me
perspire less than what the occasion seemed to carry in our lives. I could see
the paintings on every wall appear to come into life with us. I stared about
them and I saw the life of those shadows play in their frames. The rugs below
grew into bright embers from the varying colors. And it seemed as though that
this full spectrum made a rainbow in the room.
Still, she kept to her silence.
There was a presence there unlike
any I had ever known before. It had its eyes peering upon our every move. The
hands in the grandfather clock’s face looked to halt on its time; etching out
the moment from its normal process. All was not well with sanity and nature
there. There was a curb in the straight and narrow line of reality; a single
bump in the road; a flash of lightening in the very midst of a clear day. I
could feel the thunder of something build with uncertainty. Something was
groping my sensibility; those laws of predictable nature somehow overturned
into an uneasy, reckless sense.
I could not pardon the scenery for
what it mistook. Nature had somehow bent itself into an angle; and an unwelcome
eye was now observing us through that invisible camouflage. I felt it; sensed
its every blink. There was a mind behind it; a thought. A lantern to ideas that
now was watching the ‘playing-out’ on our scene.
Shelly remained as she was; still,
silent; probing that unknown article embedded deep within this sofa. Not moving
with even a flinch; a pause; a stutter.
She was motionless; placid; iced by
some internal, frozen spell which kept her in its trance.
I moved closer; one step to a
pause.
There was a pin in that silence.
Her heart beat out in her
expression.
I watched; still, silent in my own
momentary grave.
She moved; a page turned. She was
reading her book. Surely she was finishing up Great Expectations. But her eyes;
they told something different. Something real; something unearthed; something
more raw than a drama placed in the boundaries of two covers. This was
emotional; intimate; all too revealing.
Her eyes told me the tale of her
thoughts.
I moved closer even still.
I felt like a ghost intruding;
fearing that I had no influence, but only to observe and watch the diadems in
her expressions evolve and change with every cursing moment which passed.
Still, she did not move to
recognize me.
I stepped almost within the smell
of her fragrance.
Something was here; as I, watching
and waiting.
Shelly was much more to the
observant than I; and by far, more sensitive to what spirit within had a cause
with us. I, even in my dullest and youthful senses, could feel the very marrow
in its ancient soul.
I finally moved to front her;
coming around the sofa, and so feeling the hot, melting warmth cross over the
right side of my face.
“Shelly?” I inquired…
