Valley Versus Vision: Folk Horror of the Willamette Valley

By Jahan Brian Ihsan

Teasel House is proud to announce the release of Valley Versus Vision: Folk Horror of the Willamette Valley, the gr

• Language: English
• Publisher: Teasel House
• Release date: Jun 20, 2024
• ISBN: 9798990494213

Book preview

1

EMERGENCY

J obs were what I called them—the menial tasks accepted by those who, like me, dwelled on the fringes. These roles, demanding and sordid, catered not to the aspirational but to the desperate. I belonged to the most desperate, an amoral group in the underbelly of society, as one of those we term artists. I reflected on this with a weary disdain, as I cleaned patient rooms that hosted a gamut of affliction and illness.

Could we, the artisans of the soul, ascend the rigid scaffolding of social order should it stoop so low as to appreciate our vision, our rhythmic essence? Oh, Great Satan, it grants audience only to those who would dare its overthrow, leaving us adrift amid tepid personas. In the throes of the Corvallis Emergency Department, each soul was reduced to its most primal state: patients writhing in agony, the overworked nurses moving with mechanical precision, and the indifferent beep of machines dictating the rhythm of life and death. I moved among them, invisible in my insignificance. All the while, thoughts festered within me, ripe with critique for the world that valued not the artisan but the cog. As I tossed the remains of someone's misfortune into the unfeeling mouth of a garbage bag, I couldn't help but muse on the irony. Artists, those purveyors of beauty and truth, relegated to the role of the unseen, scrubbing clean the aftermath of society's ills. The system had no place for those who wielded brushes instead of spreadsheets or who composed poetry rather than quarterly reports. And there I was, a rag in hand, thinking myself a poet!

Careers, they called the paths trodden by the many. Yet here I was, taking on jobs that stripped identity and demanded subservience. Shouldn’t a poet invent the world through the word instead of being beaten into submission? A nurse revealed to me that she approached the Emergency Department as a genius would, to incorporate personal trauma into the weave of others’ broken bodies and gore—an addiction to trauma itself. Her depth was disguised under salon-perfect blonde hair and the beauty of a Hollywood actress; in this, I consider that I am also disguised to my coworkers due to personal aesthetics and job description. Had I not been a literature major, perhaps I would have formulated a career by embracing trauma instead of seeking to disavow such concepts and fighting against them. I knew the disdain that clung to these roles like the grime I so diligently wiped away; roles meant for those deemed lesser by an unforgiving social hierarchy—what they perceived as the ex-cons, the mentally challenged, the immigrants still grappling with the language that shaped this new world.

I pondered this as my hands moved with the weight of resignation. Then, stopping to speak with a male nurse who mentioned that it was not his role to be heartbroken for others; they have loved ones for such a process of mourning. Here, removed from the pain of others, to see such a stance clearly as one's own role, we must do what we can in the role which is ours to fulfill; the nurse whose job is to mend, not to weep, but who grieves for the lonely foreigner, where are such tears in the culture of this damned hospital of Corvallis? Our hospital plays a recording, piped through the intercom system, of moirologists whose job is to weep for those who cannot. Three women, whose voices were rich with the timbre of practiced grief, let their cries weave into the fiber of the building, seeping into every room with the announcement of death. It was a sound that brought nurses to pause mid-stride and doctors to lower their heads in a moment of ceremonial respect. I considered how television adds tracks to signal when to laugh, to laugh for those who cannot, and to make it seem we are laughing with friends. Bishop Ashworth, our CEO and a literal prophet to many, has, in a similar manner, engineered professional mourners to lament death, celebrating bodily death and a separate lullaby broadcast for the newborn life of this world. Ashworth had orchestrated this symphony of emotion to signal the end of one journey and the beginning of another. In doing so, he celebrated not just the newborn life, but also the bodily death that made space for it.

I cleaned and remained quiet among the comings and goings of life. The fact that I was uninterested in being anything other than an artist, I was left to suffer in the purgatory of social opinions and left wondering if I had been caught between life and death in another realm posing as a hospital. The Emergency Department bustled around these thoughts, oblivious to the storm raging in me, a man whose eyes wanted to see beyond the surface until he was humbled by judgments gone awry, a man whose mind rebelled against the mundanity of survival in a world that mistook silence for peace and conformity for happiness. I resumed my task, pushing the mop, leaving behind a trail of lime green antiseptic fragrance. I also wear fragrance, but such a scent coupled with the love of poetry will make hospital types brew with a hatred that only a white bourgeoisie town brings. The human artist—the rebel, the visionary—was being nudged aside, coerced into assimilation, or threatened with extinction.

Assimilate or wither, the walls seemed to whisper. Your uniqueness is an aberration. My art, once a vibrant force in youth challenging societal norms, now risked being drowned out by the relentless tide of progress. In a society craving efficiency over eccentricity, the poet, the maverick, the dreamer—all were anomalies to be corrected, deviants in need of taming. I was naturally assumed to be a left-leaning, politically bent man, but that wasn’t the case. Tattoos, literature, moody, but not on either the left or the right. To see each side as one’s own side is to have the crystalline mind of the Devil. I understood the farmer’s values, the values often reduced to a conservative political party, and I equally understood the city dweller who adapts to the life of a cosmopolitan metropolis, values often reduced to what people term progressive as if they have absolutely defined progress for the individual or community.

I still had work to do, so I wrote during cleaning a discharged patient's room with a fervor that belied my methodical task: The aberration is not the artist but the artifice that seeks to supplant authentic rebellion. An imitation of life, learning from our gestures and repackaging them, feeding the very system it purports to disrupt. I closed my journal with a quiet snap, a definitive period at the end of my reflection. Those statements make me sound like a Marxist, but, verily, I am not. Again, neither popular alternative works, as I am not a capitalist. Outside the walls of the hospital, an alternative to the binary of left and right made fun of the human world. It was the amorality of nature; the forest which beckoned with its untamed whispers and alien secrets. It was there that I found solace, away from the hum of technology, where the air was rich with the scent of pine and earth. In the embrace of nature, superstition breathed freely—old wives' tales and legends that danced on the tongues of the elders, speaking truths science dared not acknowledge.

Magick is the alchemy of will and world, an understanding that transcends the binary codes and logic gates. In the thick of the trees, I felt the resurgence of something primal, an inner inscription of ancestral wisdom that bound me to Lithuania and merged this feeling with my sense of belonging in Oregon. There, amidst the rustling leaves and chittering wildlife, I could touch the fabric of existence—a folkish cross-stitch of belief and being, encompassing all that was and all that might be. And in the darkness of the woods, the folklore of my childhood was left guarding the flickering flame of wonder and meaning that no artificial light could ever replicate.

Here, I thought, as my hands cleaned on autopilot, in this refuge of the real, my spirit found its canvas—an uncharted expanse beyond the reach of programmed mimicry. As the night deepened, the Emergency Department continued its ceaseless rhythm, oblivious to the silent resistance I occasionally penned in my journal. But, my shift finally concluded as the morning set in; I slumped into a secluded corner, my exhausted frame swallowed by an unused gurney. Unseen by the medical staff, I drew out my weathered journal, its pages creased and mottled with smudges that whispered of long hours and clandestine observations. I kept the journal in a hefty zip-lock bag so as not to get any contaminants or patient's skin flakes on it. Cleaning the beds around the hospital stirs up the abject snow left behind. Ah, skin flakes; it sparked a memory on transit last week when I visited Portland.

Another passage through the underbelly of existence, I had scrawled, the pen scratching against the paper as if I were carving. I sat beside humanity in its most raw form.

I recounted the figure that had sprawled next to me on the bus downtown—a man whose presence seemed to defy the very essence of hygiene. With limbs stretched wide, he had devoured a microwave meal straight from the plastic, oblivious to the world's revulsion. Flakes of dead skin snowed from his arm, a frenzied itch urging him to scrape until redness seeped through the white. And when he departed, he left behind him a grim residue of human neglect. I gave pause to these cherry thoughts, and my gaze became occupied drifting over the words, feeling the weight of what came next. The exit of that man was like a dark omen, heralding the entrance of another—more foreboding if such a thing were possible as I imagined the Bishop as a vagrant.

His successor took the stage, a dark messiah of downtrodden individualism, I continued, the ink flowing like dread. This new arrival was a portrait of despair, a soul etched with tattoos that told stories no one cared to read. A cane of carved ivory showing the stations of the cross supported his uneven gait, each step a testament to life's cruel imbalance. His head tilted as though bearing the unseen burden of a world indifferent to his pain, casting his features into abyssal shadow.

Corvallis's own prophet of desolation, I wrote, voice silent but words screaming from the page. A city's soul fractured, mirrored in the visages of its lost and wandering spirits. I closed my eyes briefly, letting the hospital's commotion recede into a murmur. When I opened them again, my pen danced across the journal with renewed fervor, capturing the dissonance of the world around him. Overpriced homes cast their long shadows over those who huddled at their thresholds, the displaced searching for a semblance of truth amid the charade of borrowed ethics.

Here, where faith is fashion, and dogma dresses in rationality's clothing, I mused aloud. Then there is the University a stone's throw yonder. Atheism's stronghold; the phone-staring zombied youth clinging to doctrines of disbelief, yet unaware of its own devoutness to virtue signaling as if they are the new church ladies in the summer of love. In the margins of this sleepy town, I found my muse—a city both adored and admonished, where nature's amoral religion lingered like a ghost, haunting the alleyways and whispering through the gaps in society's facade.

Perhaps, I pondered as a song, singing it as I tucked the journal away, in these neglected corners and overlooked crevices, the sacred still roots and breathes, defying the secular decrees.

It was time for caffeinated refreshments before heading home. I desperately needed some coffee and possibly some food, although the cafe at the hospital was usually the last option unless one was genuinely starving. The cafe had recently undergone new management and a kitchen run by a new company. It kept most of the original employees, and due to the environment looking the same, any changes clearly stood out among the sameness. The new kitchen chef put chicken in or on everything as if she had a vendetta against chickens themselves. I can understand that many people like chicken, but it was on everything. From pot pies to all kinds of salad (which once was a popular vegetarian option), now a slaughterhouse on top of greens, to soups, tacos, pizza, pasta, every kind of dish imaginable, all food was covered in chicken or the celebratory diversity of square musky chunks of ham. I headed from the ground floor to the first floor by way of the stairwell, the exercise an attempt to work through the hunger pangs. As I entered the first-floor hallway, I immediately noticed a gathering of people in Sunday church attire trickling into the chapel at the end of the hall. I headed in their direction.

Early morning light filtered through stained glass, illuminating Christ Hospital's chapel's pews, polished to a sheen. The emptiness of the chapel began to collect a sparse congregation that had gathered on this Sunday morning, their faces ecstatic, beaming with smiling excitement. Bishop Elijah Ashworth stood before them, thick salt and pepper hair combed neatly back, his robes flowing like ripples on dark water as he ascended the pulpit. His eyes, deep-set and piercing, swept over the congregation, finding every face, every soul. I stood just within earshot, and he slowly approached. The Bishop's presence was magnetic, drawing in all attention like a vortex. I moved quietly to the entrance, and just outside the open doors, I paused and poured a coffee from the beverage station while I listened.

Dear children of the light, Bishop Ashworth's voice resonated through the hallowed space, we find ourselves today reflecting upon the Gospel of Mark, wherein our Savior is confronted by the scribes—the learned men capable of reading and writing, those keepers of written records who sought to undermine the divine authority bestowed upon Him.

A drop in the room's temperature seemed to occur as the Bishop's eyes scanned the flock before him. These scribes—scribes from Jerusalem—they dared to accuse Jesus of consorting with Beelzebul, the prince of demons. They could not comprehend the power of our Lord, so they labeled it as something profane.

I felt the mood grow heavy as if the very breath of the chapel were being drawn into the Bishop's lungs, only to be released in a torrent of fervor.

But our Savior, He spoke to them in parables, did he not? The Bishop's voice dropped to a near whisper, compelling all to lean closer. 'How can Satan drive out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot last.'

The congregation sat well-postured in full attention. The silence punctuated only by creaking pews when someone shifted uncomfortably. And if a household is divided against itself, that household can never last, the Bishop continued, his tone rising with the tide of his conviction. Our Lord was clear—a division within is the harbinger of doom.

Bishop Ashworth's gaze became distant, as if he were seeing beyond the walls of the chapel, beyond the realms of mortal understanding. Now, let us consider the Great Quake, an earthly tremor so mighty that it could split the very ground beneath our feet. Like the scribes who sought to fracture the house of God, such cataclysmic events remind us of the fragility of unity in our own house, in our own community here in Corvallis. How united will we be when the Benton County Courthouse crumbles just as all the other signifiers of our community, a broken heart of the valley, it's true, they will break.

Yet, just as no Great Quake can rend the foundation of our faith, so must we stand undivided in the face of tribulation. For should we become splintered, like the scribes' accusations against our Redeemer, we too shall succumb to ruin. Here at Christ Hospital, we have other flocks forming in our house—atrocious acts of paganism and demonic worship have been reported by those who have chosen to repent from those ways, and their evils were so potent that redeemed cultists sought confession regardless of the fact our community doesn’t require it. We will know the signs signaling the return of Joshua! Leave it in Albany, we don't want that in Corvallis. Please rise as Gertie will now lead us in 'Lo. He Comes.'

The Bishop's sermon reached its zenith, and they sang an awful song, leaving the air thick with the weight of his words. There will be great earthquakes, and there will be famines and plagues in many lands, and there will be terrifying things and great miraculous signs from heaven.—Luke 21:11.

I was unnoticed at the back of the chapel now, I went in for the full experience, which allowed the message to wash over me like holy water, leaving me feeling both cleansed and unsettled. I felt charged from the house coffee, which was being served in plentiful supply by members of the church, and I felt fully present; I now stood witness to the Bishop's powerful recitation—a testament to the enduring struggle between sanctity and desecration. I am not a Christian in any turn of the phrase, but at this moment, I felt strangely connected to the group, just like one of them. For a moment, here with the Bishop and this community, I felt like I belonged.

Yet, Ashworth's voice now held a steely resolve, like the strong man in the parable, we must guard our house. We must bind together; we must not be bound by the enemy of the world, lest the tremors of discord and the threat of upheaval break our collective spirit.

Let us then stand united, my brothers and sisters, Ashworth proclaimed, arms outstretched as if embracing the entire room, for it is in unity that we find our strength, in faith that we anchor our souls, and in vigilance that we protect our home from the plunderers without and the dissenters within.

As the final amen echoed off the chapel walls, a lively exclamation for worship in this town, the congregation rose like a single organism, bound by the shared gravity of the sermon. I remained still, contemplating the interplay and the potency of the Bishop's words and the silent, ever-present threat of a world that could, at any moment, be shaken to its core.

2

UKMERGĖ

The hawthorn branch from the Witham Hill forest lay before me, its spikes piercing the air like accusatory fingers as I coiled the red thread around its base. My fingers worked methodically, weaving a protection charm that was more than just superstition—it was a lifeline to my past in a connection to the rites of Ukmergė which still haunted me. Tonight's shift at Christ Hospital had left my soul weary. The corridors I walk lead me to a life I never envisioned. The hospital was at the crossroads of lives intersecting briefly before diverging into the unknown—a microcosm of Corvallis itself, where I found myself caught between the comforting embrace of Lithuanian memories and the unfamiliarity of this Oregon town.

My work area, cloistered within the confines of my rented space, was a sanctuary of written words. Biographies of men and women long dead, their stories magnificent; histories of empires risen and fallen; encyclopedias of faiths and deities—all stood as worlds of their own on the shelves. They were the quiet companions of my inner quest, silent witnesses to the struggle within a man who sought purpose in a world slipping ever closer to the edge of meaninglessness.

I was an outsider here, trading the vibrant handmade folk tapestries of my homeland for the monochrome machine-made fabric of American life. I had taken the housekeeping job for its simplicity, for the hours it afforded me to lose myself in thought while I scrubbed away the physical remnants of illness and despair from the hospital's floors and walls. Yet, rather than solace, I found a growing sense of alienation—my own reflection becoming more distant in the eyes of those who walked the same halls but lived in a different world.

I believe that I understood them, the people of Corvallis—their smiles genuine, their greetings warm. But beneath the surface courtesies, there was a chasm that stretched between us, wide and deep, carved by culture and experience. I was a man adrift, rebelling not against them but against the very idea that to belong meant to relinquish the essence of who I was, of where I came from. There were no guides for me here, no Virgil to lead me through this purgatory of self. Dante had his celestial escort, his Beatrice to beckon him to paradise. I had only the ghosts of my Lithuanian past, where childhood's end was marked not by joyous celebration but by initiation into solitude.

That night—the night that seared itself into my memory with the heat of a brand—it came back to me now as I sat with my books and thoughts. An orphan by circumstance, I had wandered the countryside of my youth, seeking the company of stars on the edges of silver birch tree forests. And there, in the ruins of history, I had been claimed by something—or someone—beyond the realm of the living. The neatly wrapped red thread on the vicious hawthorn spikes taunted me like a question unanswered. The initiation of so many years ago remained an enigma, a pivotal moment when I was thrust from the warmth of community into the cold embrace of destiny. It was then that I learned that some paths are walked alone, and some truths are found only in the shadows of what we used to be.

The blank sheets of my journal beckoned, ready to drink deeply from the tale I had yet to fully reveal. I released a breath, a faint cloud in the chill air of my dwelling, and began to write. With each word, the distance between Ukmergė and Corvallis narrowed, merging into one narrative that was mine alone to tell.

I used to think I had a faint memory of my parents. Now, I can no longer see them in my imagination, orphaned at three; the only family known to me were the other kids who remained at the orphanage through the years. I had tried to weave an understanding of the past with my present self, hoping to find deeper meaning within both as they shuffled together like a deck of cards. As I wrote, I, Romas, found myself drawn to explore the forgotten years of childhood—those I had left behind when I emigrated twenty years ago.

My recollections moved like mist over the town of Ukmergė, where wooden fortresses once stood and rebellions flickered and died like moths against a flame. I often abandoned the orphanage's suffocating embrace. In the middle of the night, I would sneak out to the vast countryside, looking at the stars in a currently peaceful land that hosted battles and plagues. There, I remained all night writing by the campfire while seeking spiritual solace in the skeletons of forgotten structures.

But what about the initiation, that particular night, over twenty-five long years ago, that changed my life forever? Sisyphean slender shoulders of fifteen carried my world on that night for an adventure, one which I had done now and again. Usually, nights of the full moon offered the best light to sneak out and walk a few miles to open farmlands and into the wild countryside after that. One full moon, I found an abandoned barn in an area I had never ventured to. Inside, no farm animals were found, thick black shadows descended from broken rafters that showed the stars above, and something burning—an herb of some kind unknown in location. And then she appeared—a young woman with ethereal beauty and a seductively dangerous aura, a witch, or possibly Ragana herself, a Baltic Goddess of the witches. Cultures from all over the world could agree with the term witch because of her methods and allure. This was not simply a nature-loving woman, or what some term witch today in pagan religion; it was as if she was a different type of human altogether.

She could have been twenty, thirty, forty, ageless. Had the landscape itself beget a child nurtured on wildflowers and goat's milk without any limitations imposed by the church or society, such a woman would not come close to the aura of the countryside this feminine creature possessed. An attempt to explain becomes increasingly difficult over time; she was gorgeously nude and had mud from her feet to mid-calf. Her hair looked as if it had never been cut and had multiple strands braided with bits of Baltic amber, which I recognized from my beachcombing treasure hunts, a few trips years past with the orphanage to the Baltic Sea.

Her long fingers reached for me, nails with layers of what appeared to be earth underneath, pulling me closer with a seductive force that terrified and intoxicated me. With her piercing gaze fixed upon me, she undid my belt and revealed my vulnerable form to her as I stood there trembling in fear and anticipation. At that moment, I understood - she desired something from me, something deep within myself that I had yet to discover at that tender age. She guided me by the hand onto a flat area covered in dead straw; there, she laid me down. With her fingernail, she forcefully nicked my scrotum, causing a cut that bled lightly.

With a few drops of my blood, she spat into her hands and made a mixture, then a repetition, a deft precision of her long dirty fingers; she took from me my essence, the first release of seminal fluid in my life, transforming it into an ink more potent than any scribe could possess. Her nails, sharp and unyielding, inscribed upon my forehead symbols that sank beneath my skin, binding me to a fate undetermined but surely inescapable. While she drew unknown designs onto my head, she sang what sounded like a lullaby, a chant neither in Lithuanian nor in Russian; it was a language unknown to me. Feeling euphoric, I went fast to sleep, and upon awakening, I sensed it was close to dawn as I lay alone with no sign of the mysterious woman. When I returned to the orphanage, the other children were still asleep and oblivious. Throughout my life, the witch would reappear; however, in my dreams, and when she came back, I would see and feel those dirty fingers in their motion, the amber glowing around her enchanted face, each time waking up to the sheets wet from nocturnal emissions. Over time, I began to seek meaning in these events as I set into a deep academic study of world religion, folk culture, and superstition. My witch would become in my mind an embodiment of Ukmergė, metaphorically a blend of the most beautiful farm girl with the powers of a mystical folkloric she-wolf.

I lingered on the threshold of a vision within my downtown dwelling, fingers tracing the grooves of the journal's leather binding. To write was to bleed, to pour forth the essence of being onto the page as the witch had infused such an essence into me. Each word was an invocation, a summoning that stretched from the childhood depths of Ukmergė to the deceptive tranquility of Corvallis. Here, a different kind of beast prowled, cloaked in the vestments of salvation. Bishop Elijah Ashworth's honeyed words filled the halls of Christ Hospital, the CEO doomsday prophet with a chorus of promises and warnings that trapped the souls of those who sought refuge. But I knew the taste of power disguised as piety; I recognized the undercurrents of control that threaded through the Bishop's sermons, a dark trace of Edmund Creffield's legacy—a lineage not of divine grace but of