wound up being oval shaped, about six feet across at its widest point. Eventually, with much sweat and cursing, the hole was so deep that it was difficult to climb into and get out of.
Once we were satisfied with our hole, we got to work on the trench. We started at the end of the trench that Jeremy and Michael had dug the night before and continued it under the fence. My arms and back were sore and aching. Despite our fatigue we continued until we had connected the trench to our bunker. It was after four in the morning when all the digging was done. We were dead tired and covered in dirt, but we looked at our work with pride. Jeremy had the idea to put an old rug and a couple of folding lawn chairs at the bottom of the hole before we covered it. The rug fit almost perfectly.
We started laying two by fours across the bunker and trench, being careful to dig them in a little so they’d be flush with the ground. We actually had more plywood than we needed and the whole network was soon covered over. We walked over the hole and made sure there weren’t any soft spots. It felt stable, and although it wasn’t likely that someone could walk over it without knowing it wasn’t solid ground, at least we were sure it wouldn’t cave in. We put a thick layer of dirt over the wood. When it was all covered there was still a huge pile of freshly dug soil, and it took us a long time to spread it out so it wouldn’t be too noticeable. We finally threw the vines and branches back over the thing, and by the time we had the yard looking like it hadn’t been completely violated, the sun was up. We threw our gear back over the fence and dragged our asses back over it too. We’d done a ridiculous amount of work and we were all exhausted and ready to sleep.
“Alright,” Michael said, “gimme a flashlight, I want to check this thing out.” We walked down the narrow dirt strip between Jeremy’s garage and the side wall of his yard. Michael lifted up a piece of wood that covered the entrance to our tunnel. “It’s too small for four people.” Michael said. “Me and Don will go first and check it out. When we come back you guys can go.”
Don and Michael turned on their flashlights and disappeared down the rat hole as we’d taken to calling it. Jeremy and I stood there and smoked. We hardly spoke as we waited for them to emerge. At that point the only thing I could think about was sleep. After a few minutes I sat down on the ground with my back against the garage, and Jeremy did the same. I finished my cigarette and I was nodding off when Don and Michael popped out of the hole laughing and smelling of herb smoke. “We found another use for the bunker.” Don said. “A hot-box. There’s a half a joint on the chair for you guys. I’m going home, I gotta get some sleep.”
“Me too.” Michael said. “It turned out really good. Check it out.” He handed me the flashlight.
After they left I dropped into the hole and began to make my way down the narrow trench with Jeremy close behind. It was longer than I thought it would be. The air felt thick and I wondered if we should’ve put ventilation holes somewhere. I could see the light from the other flashlight at the end of the tunnel and when I got to the chamber it was thick with smoke. I hopped down into the narrow bunker and marveled at what we’d created. Jeremy bumped into me as he hopped down, and we both stood there in the smoky den we’d dug for ourselves. Maybe it was lack of sleep, but it seemed like we’d crawled into a dream. We didn’t belong down there, it was worm territory.
“WOW.” Jeremy said. “This is cool as hell.”
“Yeah, I never saw anything like this.” I said, picking up the half-smoked joint. “I’m beat though. Digging is fuckin’ hard.”
“Tell me about it, my back is killing me right now.” He said. We sat on the folding chairs facing each other. I could’ve slept right there. I lit the joint and we passed it back and forth, each getting a couple of good hits before we were burning our fingers on the roach. He put it out on his shoe and dropped what was left on the rug. “We should do an escape route too.” He said. “We could dig it out that way and come up near the house. That way if we’re ever really trying to get away from someone and they see us go down here, we don’t have to leave the same way we came in.”
“Yeah, good idea. We should do two. That way if someone follows us down here they won’t know which one we used. We’d have a fifty-fifty chance of ditching them.” I said. “Schrodinger’s rat hole.”
It was around seven thirty when I finally got home and Kate was up puttering around in her bathrobe. She must’ve thought I was in my bedroom because I startled her when I opened the front door. “Oh Nicky! Jesus, you scared me. Look at you, you’re caked in dirt.”
“Yeah, I been digging all night. I’m beat.” I said.
“Take those shoes off, you’re getting dirt everywhere.” She said. I took them off and told her I’d clean it up later. I shut my bedroom door and closed the blinds but the room was still filled with morning light. I stripped naked and got into bed, not caring about the dirt that got in with me.
I woke up sometime in the afternoon and went directly to the bathroom to take a shower. I watched the muddy water go down the drain. When I scrubbed my head I could feel the grit on my scalp. I used a large amount of Kate’s shampoo, and washed my body with the washcloth which was soon covered in dirt as well. I had to keep rinsing it.
I put on some clean pants and a T-shirt and stuffed my sheets in the washing machine. I took my notebook and a pen and sat in the living room. I didn’t feel like skating because every muscle in my body was sore. After drawing a shape at random and looking at it for a long time, I couldn’t decide what it wanted to be. I thought I’d put on some music for inspiration, so I got my Suicidal Tendencies tape and put it in Kate’s stereo. Really aggressive music makes me feel calm. I was looking at my shape when I heard the sound of a skateboard coming down the hill, so I went to see who it was. From my front porch I saw Don rolling down the middle of the street. He was all slouchy and bobbing his head a little, like he was listening to a rhythm only he could hear. He saw me on the porch and took a curved line up my driveway and picked up his skate. “Yo Nick.” He said. “You’re just the man I wanted to see.” We slapped hands. There was still dirt under his fingernails.
“What do you want to see me for?” I asked.
“I was gonna ask you something. You’re mom’s not home is she?”
“No she’s at work. You can come in, but you gotta take those shoes off. Those things are dirty as fuck.” I said.
He kicked them off and left them where they landed on the porch. I opened the door and let him in. “What are you listening to?” He asked as he dropped his skate on the carpet.
“Suicidal Tendencies.” I said. We sat on the couch and I wished I’d put my notebook away. It was sitting on the coffee table and I saw him eyeing it. I was glad I hadn’t gotten any farther than the initial shape. “You like them?”
“Yeah, they’re alright. I pretty much only heard that one song they play on the radio. The all I wanted was a Pepsi song. It’s pretty good.” He said. He looked around the room as if he was sizing it up. “I came by ‘cause I was wondering if you got any of that weed left.”
“Yeah, I got a bunch. Why, you wanna get high?”
“Nah, I was actually wondering if I could buy some from you. Sheck’s dry and I gotta replace some I borrowed from my mom’s stash before she finds out.” He explained.
“Oh yeah? You think she won’t be able to tell the difference?”
“No, I do it all the time. Either she doesn’t notice or she doesn’t care. Either way I’m cool you know? Can you help me out?”
“How much?”
“Like a couple of buds or something. A dub sack.” He said. “I got a twenty.”
“Nah… You can have it for free.” I said, feeling rich.
“Really? That’s cool man, thanks.”
“But you gotta do me one favor though.”
“Like what?”
“Take me to that house party you’re playing tomorrow night.” I said.
“Are you serious? Dude, you don’t want to go to that party. It’s some rich
fucking college geeks who’re trying to get all their friends from high school back together. It’s gonna be a bunch of assholes drinking beer and seeing how many underage girls they can fuck now. It’s way out on the west side, in some mansion. You know, preppy meatheads and shit. They’d hate you.”
“How do you know? I’m likable motherfucker.”
“Well, you’d probably hate them.” He said pulling a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket.
“Don’t light that in here. My mom’s very sensitive to smoke. She could have another seizure.” I said, lying for no reason.
“Are you serious? She has seizures?”
“Yeah, the last time she had one she almost ripped her ear off on the mantle when she fell. Luckily it was only part-way off and the doctor was able to sew it back on. Any strong smell could set it off again, especially smoke. She even has the toaster set to light, ‘cause she’s afraid that if she burns her toast she’ll go into hyperbarric shock again.” I said.
“That’s fucked up. I never heard of that.” He said.
“I’ll get you that weed man, hang on.” I went and got the unopened newspaper fold from my backpack in the closet. I set it on the coffee table in front of Don and went to the kitchen for a piece of tin foil to put it in. I came back and put three big buds in the tinfoil. “Is that enough?” I asked.
“Yeah, that’s actually more than I need. I’ll have some left over.” He said. I folded it up and handed it to him.
“So you gonna take me to this gig or what?” I asked. “If I don’t meet some girls soon I’m going to turn Chinese from all the jerking off.”
“Yeah I’ll take you man. But I’ll tell you right now, it’s gonna suck. I seriously doubt they’re even gonna like our music, they just thought it sounded cool to say there was a punk band playing. They hired a DJ too, so it’ll be us versus the latest top forty shit. They’re a bunch of posers. The guy who’s throwing it thinks he’s some kind of criminal mastermind because he sells dime bags to all his college buddies. He wanted to pay us in weed. We were like pay us in money and we’ll buy our own weed. Kid Karl’s girlfriend’s friend got us the gig. If I didn’t have to play, I wouldn’t go.”
“Yeah, but there’ll be girls there.”
“Yeah, there’ll be girls there. Sean’s little sister Anna goes to school out there now. She might actually be at this party. After all that shit went down, her parents took her out of PHS and started sending her there. I guess they thought she needed a fresh start where no one knew her brother. It’s a private school with the name of a cigarette. Marlboro I think.”
“Who’s this?” I asked.
“You remember Sean and them, from up the block?”
“No.”
“Maybe you never met him.” He said. “I only knew him through Scott. He was the one that went crazy on that voodoo shit and wound up in the looney-bin. I forget what they called it… Disappearing-ghost I think. Or disintegrating. Yeah, the disintegrating-ghost. It was on TV and everything. They made a big deal out of it. Didn’t you hear about that?”
“No,” I said, “they believed in ghosts?”
“Nah, it was like a religious thing.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“Well it started off just fucking with this kid, Sean. He was real gullible, he’d believe almost anything you’d tell him. He was friends with this guy Mike, and they used to hang out with Scott’s brother. They were three or four years older than us. Mike loved to tell Sean all kinds of shit to get him going. One time he told him that Barry wanted to kick his ass just so he could watch him try to dodge Barry everyday. Remember Barry?”
“The football player?”
“Yeah. So of course Sean started trying to dodge Barry everyday, which was hard because they were in the same homeroom. Sean started ditching homeroom all the time so he wouldn’t run into Barry, and if he saw him in the hall or the cafeteria he would run to the bathroom and hide -it went on for months. Finally the school called his house and told his mom that he’d been missing homeroom and Sean told her that this guy Barry wanted to kill him. His mom flipped out and went to the principal and Barry got suspended over it. Of course after that Barry really did want to kick his ass. They did lots of stuff like that. We used to tell him these beautiful girls liked him and that he should go over and ask one of them out. We’d be laughing our asses off ‘cause he’d just walk up to them and make the biggest fool of himself.”
“That’s not nice. You’re a bad person.” I said.
“Yeah, I know. But that was nothing compared to what Mike did. Sean and his family was super religious, you know? Sean thought he’d go to hell if he drank coffee. They were Amish or some shit. One day Mike wants us to help him pull off this elaborate prank on Sean. He said he was bringing him over to Scott’s house the next day, and he needed our help. Well, he explained it, and we thought it was pretty funny or whatever, so we agreed, but what we didn’t know was that Mike dosed Sean about an hour before he brought him over. He put a hit of Donald Duck acid in some Bubblicious.”
“Donald Duck is the best.” I said.
“Yeah, tell me about it. Mike brings him over and we’re all just hanging out, playing video games or whatever, and Sean’s being real quiet, just sitting there chewing his gum. After awhile Mike scratches his right arm, which was the signal, and we all started to throw some gibberish into our conversations. Not so much that it was obvious, just a nonsense word here and there. I wouldn’t have done that shit if I knew Sean was tripping, I swear to god. He’s just sitting there with this strange look on his face, and he started doing these weird little twitches. We were pretending we didn’t notice, but really we were just trying not to crack up. So that went on for awhile, and then Mike gives us the second signal and we switch to all gibberish. That’s when it got fucked up. I couldn’t tell if Sean was laughing or crying. He was making these weird sort of heaving snorting sounds. We went on speaking in nothing but gibberish for fifteen or twenty minutes and then Mike gave the third signal, he clapped loud three times, and we all froze completely still. He went over to Sean and whispered something in his ear, I don’t know what he said but Sean did this long moan, like he was terrified. Mike pulled Sean up off the couch and they left together. We thought that shit was hilarious. We didn’t know he was dosed. I still feel guilty about it, but we didn’t realize what we’d done until much later. At the time, we just thought it was some funny shit.”
“That’s cold blooded.” I said
“Yeah I know, but it turned out to be just the beginning. Mike laid this whole religious head trip on him. He explained it to me last summer. He told Sean that god had come to him in a vision and revealed the secrets of existence. Basically it was that there’s two types of people in the world, the ones who pull god apart and the ones who pull him back together. God was this ghost who was disintegrating you know? And we were all ghost particles, that’s what our soul was, a little piece of god. He had this whole thing figured out. Some people would go back into god when they died and some would just float away. So it’s like god is this disintegrating ghost, and each one of us was also disintegrating too, and only the people who could hold themselves together could help god stay together. I think that was it. It was more complicated. God was purifying himself through the world or something. Eventually it developed to the point where they thought the soul-disintegration thing was contagious, like a disease. So they had to avoid certain people you know? And they had these elaborate rituals too. The whole thing was so stupid.”
“So what happened, did Sean just go crazy with it?” I asked.
“They both did, that’s the bizarre thing. At first Mike was just fucking with him you know? He was trying some mind control shit. He wanted to turn Sean into his slave or something, but eventually he started believing it himself. Sean bought the whole thing so completely that it actually rubbed off on Mike. I talked to Mike about it and he told me he didn’t know where the idea came from. He said he just started t
alking shit and the disintegrating-ghost thing was what came out of his mouth. He actually thought god was communicating through his bullshit, you know? They got deep into it man, it was spooky. They were like a two person cult. They used to stay together all the time and they started drawing this symbol everywhere that was supposed to hold the ghost together and keep it from disintegrating. It looked like a house on fire. Like a kid’s drawing of a house with flames coming up. They drew it all over school. They drew it so much that the principal even made an announcement that if the people drawing the symbol were caught, they’d be expelled. Of course Mike and Sean took that as some kind of proof that they were right. They thought the powers that be were trying to silence them. They used to draw that symbol real big on their chests with a permanent marker every morning. This went on for almost a year, and Mike had complete control over Sean. Then, one night, Sean’s dad heard this big commotion in Anna’s room. He went to see what was wrong, and Sean’s in there strangling his sister. Luckily she was thrashing around and she knocked over her nightstand. They took her to the hospital and of course the doctors got the police involved. Sean explained the whole thing to a police psychologist and his parents decided to charge Mike in court. When it hit the papers they made Mike out to be the suburban Charlie Manson or something, but they couldn’t make any of the charges stick.”
“Why was he trying to kill his sister?”
“She was a disintegrater.” He said.
“Did you have to testify?”
“No, I guess he never told anyone about the whole gibberish thing, cause no one asked us anything about it, and the papers didn’t mention it. After the trial Mike got expelled, Sean went to an asylum or somewhere and Anna went to the cigarette school. She’ll probably be at this party.”
“Is she pretty?” I asked.
16
Kid Karl was packing his kit into his mother’s Volkswagen when Don and I got to his place. His girlfriend Alice and her friend from the other night were hanging out, watching him. He seemed surprised that I was there, but he made a point of welcoming me. I thought he was doing it for Alice’s benefit. Maybe they’d had a fight about her friend coming, and he was glad that now he had an annoying third party that she had to accept. After we moved Don’s gear from the basement to the back of the car, we all piled in with three of us squeezed into the back seat. Alice’s friend slid over to the window so we had to sit girl-boy-boy.
Alice’s friend had her window part way down because she was smoking, and when we got on the freeway wind whipped into the car loudly. Alice turned the
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