Free Gateways to Abomination by Matthew Bartlett Page A

Slippery Symphony.

     
    p haraoh
     
    The boy stood at the edge of the playground, his thumb worrying the corner of his mouth, the fingers of his other hand squeezed into the diamond-shaped hole of the chain link fence, his red hair tousled by the wind. Like that he stood for some time and then quite suddenly and for no discernible reason turned and ran, kicking up dirt clouds, like the devil was chasing him. He nearly collided with Mrs. Haggerty, who was standing by the swing-set in a stance expressly designed to stave off disorder. Aside her, three girls swung up high, swooped down, and up again, laughing, their little feet kicking at the clouds.
    "The pharaoh has a dust on his head," the boy announced.
    Mrs. Haggerty bent and put her hand on top of the boy's head and rearranged his hair. "Stanley," she said. "Do you know what a pharaoh IS?"
    Stanley knew this one. "A bird!" he squawked, in that childish way that sounded like "a bowed."
    "Is the bird hurt, Stanley?" she said, emphasizing the "r" sounds in the third, and then for good measure the fourth, word.
    One shrieking boy chased another between them and she grabbed the chaser by his sweatshirt hood. "That kind of laughter swiftly turns to tears," she said in practiced sing-song, letting him go, then, again, to Stanley, "Is the bird hurt?"
    "No, he's over there!"
    Stanley turned and pointed, and Mrs. Haggerty stood and put a horizontal hand to her brow to block the afternoon sunlight. Beyond the chain link fence, at the edge of the woods, a man in a bird mask stood. He was wearing a matted overcoat and large boots, his hands concealed in long grey gloves. She adjusted her hand slightly and gasped. The mask was startlingly realistic. Layered brown and black feathers, a wide yellow-white beak that ended in a sloped point, piercing round green eyes. The man's head twitched in the mask, looking all about, like a few frames had been edited out of the film. As the boy had indicated, a long tendril of dust lay across the top of the head, down over one eye, its end floating dreamily in the air.
    As she watched, the man turned and strode into the woods, struggling not at all with the tangled underbrush. Mrs. Haggerty felt a chill. Stanley tugged at her sleeve. "The pharaoh said it's all ending," he said.
    "Wh..." Mrs. Haggerty started. Not at what Stanley had said, but at the silence. The playground was empty. She looked and the children were all walking into the woods, their colorful clothes fading as they entered the darkness. Red dust fell from the treetops and the birds in the woods began to screech as though panicked.
    A cloud smothered the sun and the shadow slid over the swing-set, the see-saw, the spring riders, the slides and climbers, until all was shaded and dark. The trees shook.
    Mrs. Haggerty turned to run to the school and the bird man was there, behind her, right behind her. He raised his arms and opened his beak and the sound was that of the end of the world and her voice rose to meet its timbre and it was a shrieking duet of death.
    You're listening to WXXT. Now, the Swift River Sallies with their stirring rendition of "Shall We Gather at the River."

     
    g reat uncle eltweed
     
    When the call comes, it's never at a convenient time. In this instance, it was at 4 p.m. on a rainswept Saturday in late November. My great uncle, having lived to the improbable age of 102, had apparently finally worn down the staff at Brookside Willow Pavilions with his increasingly loud and incoherent and doleful jeremiads, and the Board of Directors had voted to unceremoniously "release" him. I argued on the phone, employing every cliché (where is he supposed to go, you can't do this, etc.) and inventing some new ones.
    But I understood from the start the effect on people my uncle could have, even when well. After all, as long as I'd known him, his ideologies and religious affiliations changed like the New England weather, and each change came with an oft-repeated speech. The