The Machine In The Garden


Once, during a very dreary year
I went and stayed with my great uncle
The drizzling depression outside my window
Paled in comparison to the stories I'd heard

Of my uncle's home, where the sun shined all day
And the courtyard of his castle was leafy and springy
And a siamese cat named Lenore prowled his estate
And I realize : The streets of my city are dark and ugly
And I need to thrust myself into the will of nature for once

So on an especially miserable day
I packed my bags with a few choice possessions
And boarded the train to the mountains of Germany
I sigh in relief as it pulls into the station of Schreunburg
The small town that my kinsmen have resided as Barons over

His castle was larger than I remember
Darker, too... I didn't recall the twisting spires stabbing
At the sky so forcefully, nor the hidden corners
emanating such fearful enigma...

Great Uncle Olivur embraced me as I passed through the great
Vaulted front gate, but there was a coldness in his touch
And a stiffness in his eyes
As he told me about the events of the last ten
Hellish years of torture he'd encountered.

"My dear nephew," He said, his rich voice full of emotion.
The man was well over eighty-five, and this was uncommon in
A man his age.
"The only one who has come to visit me for Eons back to back.

"I cann't tell you how diffe'cult a time I 'ave had...
My home is no longer my own.
I share it with the demons of the mind
And the vampires of the heart
And the beasts of the wind
And the machine in the garden."

I thought surely he was japing me
But as I took a closer look at his face
I saw something hideously disturbing
Like that of a child with recurring nightmares
Of terrible proportion who fears her bed
Or perhaps of an abused dog who cringed whenever she saw a long
strip of leather or rope...

Truly this place housed evil
An evil that rose and swelled in fury and power
I could feel the howling of the nephilim behind locked doors
And the snarling of a leviathan underfoot

It swirled, black and pestilous, in a coarse cloud
About our eyes and throats
We swallowed in and saw through it and only if we looked
With a passion, would we catch a visable glimpse of it

The rooms and corners of the fortress
Were uninteresting to me, seeming to possess mere death
But the courtyard, for two weeks I kept myself from there
Out of fear, or anticipation, or possibly dementia
One bright afternoon I decided I had waited long enough
So I made good to fling wide the massive oak doors

I was hit immediately with a musty forest odor
That numbed my senses and dulled my mind
For a moment, in the utter naturality of it
I could see nothing

As I recovered, Lenore wound her way past my ankles
And out down the paths of the large ante-garden
Her golden eyes fell on me as she rounded the corner
But I was too enraptured by the sheer creation of it all
I failed to notice.

There were vines draping over tree branches like adders
In Eden... Ivy snaked through the cracks in the decrepit,
Crumbling walls and benches... The garden had obviously been
Shut for at least a hundred years, if not more.
No one had been in this beautiful place for generations.

A stone tablet stood at chest-height a few paces in front of me
I approached it, overwhelmed...
The Latin inscription was too worn to make out
But I had failed to take Latin at school anyways

However, the tablet was not indescript
There were four iron rings attached to it's four corners
Though they were corrupted
Beyond whatever usefulness they had originally served
And cut into the surface of the grey granite plateau
Lie at least twenty four deep slits
The entire artifact was a mystery to me

From behind me came a noise
A coughing noise, short and sharp, that caught my curiosity
I turned, and cried out in surprise
What I saw turned my first discovery
Into a memory of forgotten past

It was difficult to say how large it was
Because it was rusted grey and red
And masqued in a cloak of thick ivy and moss
It lurked the shadowy corridor, unmoving

But regardless of what it looked like
It was what it RADIATED that made it the devil's right arm
A sneering, mocking stream of nonsense
That actually made sense in comparison to the universe

Unaware of my own actions
I reached out and began to tear the ivy ropes from the machinery
Lenore sat upon my shoulder, unnoticed
As I brought the monster back to life

Only when I had torn every green strand
From the base and body, did I stop and think
Fear coursed through my body, and deathly anticipation
But it was gradually brushed away by a more immediate
And definite sense of determination

The Machine had an arm
And that arm had one claw
And that one claw, did I lever
Until it locked in a confident position

And then, I grasped the arm, and pulled towards me
And Lenore hissed, and her paws dug into my neck
But I hardly noticed, because the Machine in the garden
Was living and breathing once again
Spewing forth horrible screaming and lurching and groaning

Reeling, my shocked palms pressed against my eyes
And my fingers locked rigid in my ears
For what seemed like hours I lay there in a stasis of fear
Visions of grinding gears boring into my skull
Of steam, black bile, collecting about me as an aura

Gradually, morbidity waned as do the tides of solstice
Slowly, my hands fell from my face, dead leaves from an oak
And rose from the cacaphony a sweeter melody, I'd never heard
More revelant than a thousand nightingales singing praise

I goggled in wonderment, for such a thing was unheard to me
From an evil machine that vomited torture and horror and pain
To a channeller-familiar of the orchestra of dreams
It emitted the same sounds, loud and harsh
But now they had organized themselves, hypnotically

The theme of the music surfaced
And had not changed, but had changed all the more
For it was still about death, but not a death of the damned
This was the peaceful rest of eternity
The trumpets that sounded when one took their last gasp on earth
The fanfare of those who are saying
Goodbye and hello at the very same time...

Lulled into passivity, I approached the Machine
Slowly, carefully, but sure now that I had truly nothing to fear
The large bolted panel on the front contained lettering
The prose of some ancient industrial force
Outlining the workings of the Machine
In three ways from hell

From a pace away, I stopped, gazing at the wild abandon
Of the Machine's reckless glory
Steam encircled the garden, puffed and swirled round my head
Even encased in rust, the gears worked like new

This was not a thing to be feared, this Machine in the garden...
This was a thing to respected, a thing with a beautiful soul

Snapping from my reverie, I was startled by a noise of more gears
That faintly growled from the opposite direction I was facing
Looking back, and then hastily shuddered
And fell to the ground in a swoon
As four clamps snapped up securely into place
As would a regiment at attention
And twenty four blood-covered, demonsharp blades
sprung up like the leering teeth of Beelzebub





AUTHOR: Coyote