Black Yoga Screaming Chamber

[Grimm]

“Okay, Mr. Dillinger. I’ll let you get settled before we begin.”

“Thank you.”

Phinehas Dillinger steps in and makes his way to a bench jutting out from the back wall. He sits down, adjusts, then nods. The attendant shuts the door, plunging the room into a complete and utter darkness. A total absence of light. A total absence of sound. Not even the hum of an HVAC system, though, at least at the moment, the room feels oddly comfortable. Phinehas leans back against the wall, feels the foam tiles give a little, and takes a deep breath. Burnt plastic? Or is his mind already creating sensations to fill the void? No matter. Phinehas brings his breath down to a steady level and listens to the rush of blood in his ears. Though it makes no difference in the pitch black, he closes his eyes.

And then, faint but building steady, the screams begin.

The attendant pumps them in, recordings of all the screams collected over the years, layered atop one another into something of a scream mantra. Screams out of frustration. Joy. A scream to forget. Some as a reset button. Others to free the mind, to expunge trials and tribulations. Screams for no reason at all. All of them at once. All of them separate but not. There beneath them lies a drone. An undertone that stirs a memory. A low-pitched rumble from…a goat standing on an outcrop. A goat as black as the room, with eyes of flax fixed upon him. Overseeing his work as he digs hole after hole in the Hanging Fields. There, in the shadow of the church, where he piles shovelful after shovelful of sand and clay. With the odor of freshly turned earth and the river filling his nostrils. Taking breaks to wipe the sweat from his eyes, to stretch his shoulders, to watch the flicker of burning bushes marking the boundaries of the field. And then, after a bellow from the goat, he resumes driving the spade into the earth over and over until the hole reaches its appropriate dimensions. And under a low Hangtown sun moving on to the next.

A higher pitched scream breaks his reverie. Phinehas sits in the room once more, listening, and, once he accepts his current lot, detects some more familiar than others. Screams he is personally responsible for, even the silent ones. Especially the silent ones, from when they were unable or unwilling to scream. Those that had fought to appear strong fooled no one. There had been no masking just how excruciating the encounter with Grimm had been. It was there, laid out for all to see. Heads driven into the mat. Gristle liquefying under a headbutt onslaught. Broken glass drug across the back, faces rammed into explosive-laced turnbuckles, bones Snapped. Crackled. Popped. The shock had often silenced them, but the screams were there in some form.

Oh, they were there, those screams from the things Grimm had done. And if one listened very carefully, there were hints of screams from the things he will do. Against Seromine. Against Gabriel. And who is to say whether Horatio will let bygones be bygones. Perhaps some of his screams fill the room, as well.

Seromine, overcome by his disordered and selfish passions. Seromine: vulture, liar, thief. Perhaps this will be the night he acquires the kind of humility that comes only after a personal experience of one’s own wretchedness. Then again, perhaps he won’t. The devil can quote scripture according to his purpose. Everyone knows that. Twisted words taken out of context. And where has it gotten him? A failed uprising. An empty church. A pile of ashes in a dying orchard. And one sad, broken man left behind as the single disciple. They each serve as fellow testaments to their own shame and disgrace.

Gabriel clings to the false doctrine. Confused as to who he is, and what his place is within the great wide world. Even now, after all that has happened, he reaches out for something, anything, to fill that hole running right through the center of him. Those silent screams are exquisite. Living a Legacy will be good for him, in that if nothing else his match against Seromine will be an exercise in free will. Will he revolt against the charade? Will he purge himself of Seromine’s influence? Only he can decide that. But it will make for an interesting pay per view, that much is sure.

As is the fact Grimm will outlast them all, no matter the outcome.

Phinehas blinks in the dark. The mantra builds to a force that physically massages him. Each wave a mini-universe within the stereo field. It grows, and he pictures things. Crop circle schematics. Petroglyphs, hieroglyphs, a pharaoh’s glittering death mask. Signs and wonders of the ancient of days. Stronger, thicker, buffeting screams, and Phinehas’s person is on the verge of being torn asunder. The Lord of Misrule - the Hangtown Horror - cannot withstand it.

Phinehas abandons himself to madness. But then…a peace that surpasses all understanding. He sits on the porch at the end of All Souls Hollow. An easy, steady rocking as he watches the seasons pass. He holds a Bible in his lap – one that no doubt had been mangled to suite Seromine’s agenda. Phinehas finds it surprising Seromine and Destiny didn’t suffer burns or an incurable pox or any number of other mystical afflictions upon laying hands on it, but it remains a Bible none the less. As it is, Phinehas glories in his own infirmities. His strength is made perfect in weakness.

He sits, looking down at the hay field and fallen leaves and drifts of snow and dandelions, and reads through his own book. The Book of the Black Hand, etched on his bones by a gilded pen. An archive, a creation, a prophecy of all things to all people. Grimm serves as a living document, and as such there is nothing he has not seen or felt before. Their delusions of grandeur, their sweeping proclamations, the perversions, the abuse of power and position – none of it caught him off guard. As such, he can recite those stories to himself whenever and wherever he likes, though not under the guise of entertainment or satisfaction. Those aren’t the right words. Duty is more like it. Emerging from the Dillinger line out of necessity, under the hollow’s fathomless wisdom. Grimm-as-book contains his own record of Chronicles leading to Lamentations. They’d all had their share. There would be more.

Hatred had become mere sport. But violence remains his sacrament. He fingers axes and rosaries and prays upon his bones. He watches over all as a staring fury. And when things rise from the creek, he moves on.

The hill noises revert to calming screams. The octaves level out. Phinehas picks sonic grit from his teeth.

A red light above the door signals time is almost up. And so Phinehas adds his own scream to the universal sound. Because in Hangtown, the cosmic monochord, the great om that even now still reverberates out from the moment of creation, is a scream.

~~~~~~~~~

“There, now. Feeling better?”