Lateral Hymn

Lateral Hymn


I turn anyway.

The shard bites, tooth to notch, and the throat shudders like it hates learning a new word. Water climbs my shins, my thighs, cold as a promise I never made. Hands at my ankles work with farm patience—doing a job. I kick; they don’t let go. On the bricks by my cheek, phosphor letters wake: LANE • SISTER • MERCY • AUX • BRIDLE. Someone wrote prayer like plumbing.

“On none,” the porch voice says behind my ear.

I torque the shard before the hour can count me. Iron screams soft. The lateral lock turns a quarter. The wellmouth above takes a breath through other lungs. Pressure goes sideways; the ground quits being a throat and pretends to be a road. The hands lose me and return, stubborn as winter.

“Caleb,” I say into stone. “Two then one.”

From left: knock knock—knock. Rowan answers wrong on purpose, three thuds like a boot. Good. Make the hour guess.

The water warms. Not creek—machine. A hum comes through stone like teeth grinding: corporate boxes learning a hymn. The lock pushes back, polite and steady.

“Hold,” I tell metal. It remembers a hundred years of no.

I brace both feet on ribbed brick and twist. The square knot on my wrist digs bone. The lock gives another eighth, stalls against a stop etched SMALL TOWN COURTESY. Someone carved manners into the kill switch.

Above: boots arguing—the lieutenant’s radio bullying weather, the caretaker moving men like metronomes, the mask’s lacquer jaw cracking, the woman’s calm like a clause.

I shove past courtesy. Something snaps. The water drops an inch. Brick trembles like a horse taking bit.

The hands at my ankles quit pretending. They lace bone to bone and pull with office patience.

“Let go,” I tell the hour. “Or drown with me.”

It prefers neat.

I drag to a niche: red thread, copper spools, a tin with a Polaroid of twelve-year-old me under the wind bell, the ringless man blurred. A caption in careful anger: KEEP THE HOUR. I pocket the tin and keep turning.

The tunnel widens into a junction with three throats. One breathes orchard, one grid, one temple smoke. All three want the song.

Caleb’s knuckles find me through stone: two then one, faster. He’s buying seconds with lungs.

I choose orchard. The grid whines. Temple coughs ash. The orchard takes me like it recognizes its daughter and hopes I came to apologize.

“Not today,” I say, turning harder.

Iron on bone scrapes ahead. A figure walks down the lock wearing a coat of water and patience. Applewood mask. Copper stitches at the jaw. Not the courtyard mask—older. Office in Sunday clothes.

He doesn’t hurry. He lifts a hand: give me the tooth; I’ll decide who breathes.

I wedge the shard crosswise and ask brick for a word older than office. It gives me friction and a crack.

Above, the well speaks in the town’s voice—long vowel. The crowd answers with something like prayer and not.

He stops two arm lengths away. The lacquer flakes where a mouth wants. Under it, jaw that never learned to smile.

“I won’t count for you,” I say.

He drops his hand. The water rises to my belly. The lock threatens to spit the shard.

“Cass.” Caleb, close now through a seam by my shoulder. “If you’re turning, turn all the way. If not, run.”

I turn. Teeth find each other after a year of grinding. The orchard lurches. The grid gasps. Temple light goes small. The office man steps aside.

Cold belts my waist. The tunnel shakes itself straight. A door I can’t see opens with old manners.

I go through because the hour thinks I won’t.

Up top, the hour stutters.

Caleb feels it. The board with her name drops, rises, shivers. He rides the lash. Rowan is a rope and a wrong whistle. The lieutenant’s orders translate into weather.

The woman with the governor’s smile snaps at armored men. “Take the mouth. Shoot anyone who speaks into it.”

The caretaker spreads pulpits. “Hold,” he says, because words keep him from choosing.

Wayne grins blood. “She’s under you,” he tells the ground. “You always wanted that.”

“Shut up,” Caleb says.

The well cage slides like a lid learning shame. Water lifts a white forearm banded by old red. It doesn’t reach. It tests air.

Rowan ties copper square with his teeth. Alden hauls a camera kid onto a flatbed. “Read,” he says. The kid reads names. The town hears its own.

The armored men step to the rim.

Caleb knocks twice, then once, pry bar on the barn wall. The sound travels like instruction. Boards tense. The well answers with quiet.

“Again,” Rowan says.

They knock wrong. The field loses count and improvises. The mask tilts, listening for the old song and finding new.

The woman lifts her loudhailer. “Emergency—”

The orchard eats the word. Sound hits the circle and doesn’t come back. She lowers the horn and looks at the caretaker like he forgot to warn her about gravity.

“Ma’am,” the lieutenant says softly.

The caretaker smiles the way calm is glued on. Inside his eyes, something skids.

“Heave!” Rowan yells. Troopers commit. The board with Cass’s name holds. The well sulks.

Then the ground makes an example. A row nobody loves opens. Nails giggle. A work coat vanishes to the elbows. The orchard eats clean. The choir looks away and then back to prove it isn’t afraid.

Caleb smashes an induction loop. The case breaks like an egg. The machine dies. The woman points. “Detain.”

No one moves. They’re watching the well.

Water takes a deeper breath.

It speaks his name.

“Caleb,” it says, porch winter, their mother’s voice that wasn’t kind and never wrong.

He drops the bar like it bit. Rowan grips his arm. “Do not.”

He already did. He steps to the ring.

Rifles rise. The caretaker doesn’t. The mask cocks his head like a clock waiting on a coin.

Caleb steps onto the circle.

The well goes quiet the way a field goes quiet when wind finally picks a direction.

“Cass,” he says into dark, not a shout or a prayer. Just a name shaped like a key.

The ring lifts a white hand to his, bone to bone, polite as a vow.

He takes it. The hour takes him back.

The rim slips. Rowan grabs belt. Troopers stack. The lieutenant swears an oath not for microphones. The woman looks down like a surveyor.

The well pulls once. Twice.

Rowan loses purchase.

Caleb hangs at the shoulder, held by people and by principle.

“Let go,” Wayne says, laughing because he can’t help it. “Let go and we’ll finally see the hour’s handwriting.”

“Shut up,” the camera kid says, and keeps reading names into wind.

The barn ticks. The press door inhales. The orchard shifts toward a decision.

Caleb meets Rowan’s eyes, then my father’s, out of shells and full of stubborn. He sets his jaw like a fence line.

“On none,” he says.

He lets go.

The circle opens and swallows him like a seed. Wind stops. Every board lifts a nail. I hear one laugh, then nothing.