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31 March 2008
39. What Kind of Kidman Is This Anyway?
Something moved behind me but I kept on walking.
There was trepidation in me but anger still, and the two took turns at leaning forward then stumbling back, again and again - this staggering inner dance fuelling my physical progress in a dilapidated fashion.
I didn’t have the energy for climbing the Clansman, even the mild foothills were too much for my wasted lungs. I opted instead for the perimeter of Mordan House and its land. First of all it was the gravel that I walked on, and then off down the driveway, then onto a dirt-track with old puddles that skirted round to the back of the house alongside the wall that framed the entire rear of the building. The wall was taller than me and edged with a grass verge. It was also old and misshapen, weeds decked it, and bushes on both sides entangled with the weeds giving it a wild and forlorn appearance.
From time to time I would hear the bushes rustle and this heightened my unease. I had ‘Villette’ with me and clutched it tightly in my left hand, up close against my breast. A quick glance round, a quickening of pace even, before a settling back of mood and temperament as other thoughts took the place of all disquiet.
The main preoccupation was Kidman. How could I have liked her so much! How could I have been such a fan of hers for years! How could I have wanted to be like her! This endlessly posturing freakshow! This empty, yet endless, spectacle!
“Posturing freakshow! Empty spectacle!”
The sound of her voice was behind me yet seemed slightly elevated, and I half-expected to see her hovering in the air like a dead astronaut. But when I looked round, there she was standing on top of the wall, towering above me. I’m not sure what it was that made her appear so frightening and formidable: maybe it was her posture and the way she stood aloft the high wall with such confidence and stature – or maybe it was the blood-red look of anger that shot from her eyes, along her nose and painfully across and into me. Perhaps the tone in her voice – alive and pointed, visceral, unlike anything I’d heard from her before. Whatever it was – one, some or all of these things – I found myself stepping back from her.
“How dare you! How dare you say such things about me! Me! Who am I to you anyway? Tell me! Who am I? Who am I to you, you empty piece of shit!”
I continued to step back as I was scared to turn my back on her. She started to move along the wall, however, in pursuit of me; walking like a lioness, confident and proud, almost floating in her long dress. The trees behind her waved in the breeze as if echoing her anger, and the darkened windows of Mordan House stared on like an attentive, agreeing audience. I felt alone, even nature turned against me.
“Kidman! That’s all I am to you! Kidman! A concept of your making and that you cling to no matter what! And then you tell me that you despise the concept that you yourself created! What is there that’s real about your idea of me that has not been created by you! Strong Kidman! Resilient Kidman! Warm-hearted, generous Kidman! What you demand from me, every day of my life, is to be the empty concept that you want me to be, that you believe you need me to be! I can never get away from it! I struggle to just be Nicole because of your Kidman? The last thing you want is Nicole! You could never handle Nicole! It would be too complicated, too layered, too contradictory! Kidman is all you can handle and then you throw it back at me! You make me into a flat two-dimensional notion and then you slam the book shut on that notion and rubbish it, trash it! Why? Because you can’t be it! You can’t be what you made, what you dream of, so you hurl insults at someone who was never that notion in the first place! Rubbish me? Trash me? I’m not even in the equation! I’m not even here!”
I turned away finally, my head down, my steps fast. Yet I could still hear her words as she progressed along the wall, her voice resounding across the air and through the trees. But we were nearing the end of the wall, she would have to stop at the end or come down to my level. I hastened my steps.
“Who are you without me? I know who I am without you! I’m me! Free of your definition, your straight-jacket, your clumsy, tired, empty, vacuous concept that endlessly tries to drag me out of reality and into your void – your attempts to make me as empty and lifeless and superficial as you are! Without you, I might actually just be me!”
Then she began to call out in a different way, and not to me. To someone else.
“Dead astronaut! Take her! She’s just a curse to me! Take her!”
Walk, Stephanie, walk! Don’t turn around. For God’s sake, Kidman, stop following, stop talking. Leave me alone! My heart raced, my throat was tight like there were fingers inside seizing and constricting.
“Dead astronaut! Take her!”
I could hear her, yet I could now hear my feet again on the ground. I could hear birds, rustling of leaves and branches. Kidman was not all I could hear. But this was not the relief that I had hoped. The moving of the dense branches worried me. I looked up and round as I hurried on, wondering if I might see the astronaut. Had she summoned him? Was he on his way to grab me? Bushes seemed to amble like muscular horrors, tree trunks leaned down and over me with dark menace, the sounds of birds were cackles, delighting in the onset of terror.
Before I knew it, I came out of the woods and found myself … at the front of Mordan House. The clouds were white with just a touch of grey and the house looked characterless, moodless - just another big old building. And I found that my breathing was free and easy, my lungs open and without any discomfort or rasp, or frailty in my muscles. I stood still, closed my eyes for a second and tried to compose myself.
That night, as I sat and tried to knit, with soft music in the background to try and gee-up my mood, all I could hear through the sweeps of orchestral strings and the little clicks of the knitting needles, was Kidman, somewhere upstairs, sobbing loudly and uncontrollably.
And for the first time since she’d tumbled out, or down, or whatever it was, I quite liked her. She was just like me, full of depth and illusion, full to the brim with stuff of life and stuff of death. Just another person full of empty concepts, and with a heart within it all that beat against the limiting parameters of every superficial notion, loudly and uncontrollably. More often than not, in sobs.
Want to read more? Read the whole story by clicking on the first blog called Prelude and start clicking forwards using the tabs above the title.
08:20 Posted in Part Two: Getting Some Answers | Permalink | Comments (6) | Email this | Tags: haunted house, ghost story, horror story, astronaut, space, nicole kidman, journal
Comments
that kidman will do yer box right in. who is she. what is she. why the frig is she? i dun get her. you try dammit, you try. um goin ta bed wid a headayk. dats me dat is.
Posted by: sid09786 | 10 April 2008
Don't do it! Don't do it! That Kidman is the dark side! Don't you know yet? She's unnatural! I've heard she's able to lick her own arse and she can pick her nose with her chin! Don't start to like her whatever you do!
Posted by: selina_grook_hickytown_usa | 10 April 2008
Sweet Jeez! What's the matter with you people! You lost da hickory in da head?
Oh, now, who said that once before?
Steph Fey
Posted by: Steph Fey | 10 April 2008
Dat me, sweet baby-baby. id da chicken man. rooster man, da man who can. oh an baby i do! yeah yeah i do for you! an all da udder ladies. you comin round ta me? you comin round to da chicken? hee hee!
Posted by: Not Chicken George | 10 April 2008
ignorin me. dat da plan? yeah i get it.
Posted by: Not Chicken George | 10 April 2008
"Hell is othr people." Sartre. That lines right for evryone. Maybe suprstars especialy, eh? Do they understand that fame's one-dimensonal when they wish for it? Maybe they do, but one dimension is better than none huh!
Posted by: Bella | 10 April 2008