Bones of The Moon

by Jonathan Carroll

  The ominous part was that they were right much of the time and only had to point in a number of directions to prove it.

  But I had been blessed or lucky enough to know that great things did exist and were constantly available, only you had to wrestle them away from life because it held these treasures close to its chest and gave them up only after you had proved yourself a worthy opponent.

  Not that I had to fight for many of the prizes that were mine, but being one of the lucky ones had only made me more aware of how important it was to appreciate them every minute. And how important it was to go to the wall protecting them when bad came around, looking for trouble.

  Pepsi jumped out of the boat and splashed up the shore, where he hugged each animal and told them in a rush about our night on the sea and run-in with Mr. DeFazio. I joined them and waited until he was finished before speaking.

  «Who _is_ Jack Chili, Mr. Tracy?»

  Pepsi was hugging Martio for the tenth time and seemed very much the little boy again. The camel was smiling happily and watching us.

  «He's a man with wings. He's a bird with fins. I can't tell you what you'll see when you see him, Cullen, because he's different for everyone. When I was young and saw him for the first time, he was a book with the same word on every page.»

  «Why is he called Jack Chili?»

  «That's only one of his names. What's interesting is, you'll have your own name for him when you see him.»

  «What does he do? Why is everyone afraid of him?»

  «They're afraid of him because he hates everything that isn't his. He lives in a beautiful valley and causes trouble everywhere. You don't remember him at all, Cullen?»

  «No, nothing.»

  «Maybe that's better. Would you like to go to sleep now? We can take our time; you two must be exhausted.»

  All four of us curled up together on the damp beach, Pepsi and I sandwiched in on either side by the animals. I lay against Martio's warm stomach and watched the pure pearl of the morning sky above us. I felt sleepy, but wanted to stay awake a little longer so I could savor the calmness of the moment and the giant softness of my animal bed. I tried to match my breathing with Martio's, but his was so long and slow that I quickly fell out of rhythm. There were still so many questions to ask, but they could wait until later when our minds weren't so completely tired and full of recent memories. When I slept, I dreamed of a giant black fountain pen writing words across the sky: wrords that made no sense, but were very beautiful nonetheless.

  When we awoke, the sea was completely gone. Even Pepsi was surprised by its disappearance. In its place was an immense meadow full of wild flowers and crazy-colored butterflies. It was very warm and sunny.

  A picnic was laid out nearby and one look at what was there told me how hungry I was. The animals were nowhere around, but for the moment eating was more important than their whereabouts. Both Pepsi and I pounced on the food and ate everything up.

  A sign of our having grown accustomed to the wonders of Rondua was the fact that neither of us bothered to say anything about the transformation of the Sea of Brynn into a field of brilliantly colored flowers. It was just different now and there was no reason to expect an explanation.

  In a much smaller way, it reminded me of how I had finally grown used to Europe's ways after having lived there for a year. People washed the steps of their houses in Europe. You had to buy matches for your cigarettes, and it was against the law to walk your dog during the day in Russia. Where did these things come from? Who knows? It all just _was_ and you got used to it.

  Granted, in Rondua everything was bigger and wilder, but it really wasn't that different.

  We sat for an hour feeling warm and comfortably fat. Expecting the animals to return at any time, we didn't think anything had happened until the first negnug appeared. They moved so quietly through the high soft grass that neither of us knew they were there until one ran under Pepsi's bent knee.

  «Come immediately! Come immediately or it will be too late!»

  As black as coal and with fur as smooth as a house cat's, the little animal looked like a miniature anteater with a nose like a funnel and two bright raisin-small eyes.

  But what shocked me most was that I _remembered_ them! As a girl, I had drawn pictures of negnugs and had even given them their name after careful, seven-year-old consideration. I drew pictures of them all the time – negnugs driving cars, in bed with plaid pillows and foot warmers, riding on a ferris wheel. My mother saved these drawings because she thought they were so cute and imaginative. She gave me some of them when I was in college; I even remembered in what drawer of the desk I kept them at home.

  «Don't think about that! Think about now, Cullen. Come immediately!»

  Through the mental fog of almost twenty years, I recognized the high, silly, urgent voice I had originally imagined a negnug would have.

  A second one appeared at its side and then a third. They were very upset about something and all three began jumping up and down when neither Pepsi nor I moved.

  Pepsi was smiling. «What are they saying, Mom? Do you understand them?»

  Shock number two! _I_ could understand them, but he couldn't. He was clearly delighted by their presence, but had no idea of what they were talking about.

  «Come! Come! It's Mr. Tracy. He's hurt! He might die! Hurry up!»

  We were running with them, but it was plain the negnugs were capable of going ten times faster although they were holding back their speed for our sake. Pepsi and I had started out holding hands and running together, but soon he broke the clasp and sprinted ahead.

  «I must go faster, Mom! You catch up!»

  After ten minutes, the heavy meal we'd just eaten began to weigh me down. Then a sharp, painful stitch rose up in my side and I slowed to a worried jog, but even that was hard to do. Luckily it was only a few minutes more before I saw the big black body lying on its side, so out of place in that pretty field of flowers.

  The air smelled of lilacs, although I had never seen lilacs in Rondua. Pepsi was down on his knees next to Mr. Tracy, chanting something I had never heard before. I saw that one of the dog's hind legs was gone, although the ragged stump looked as if it had already been cleanly closed and cauterized.

  Mr. Tracy's eye was open, but was as empty of life as I'd ever seen. The whole picture was dreadful and alarming, but a moment later I remembered something from deep in my past that saved everything.

  Rushing forward, I shoved Pepsi aside and took his place. Then I reached into the boy's bag and took out the fourth Bone of the Moon, Slee.

  «Get his mouth open! I've got to put this one in there.»

  Pepsi and I pulled the dog's cold jaws apart and finally wide enough to shove the fourth Bone in. There was a loud clacking sound when we let go and the mouth snapped shut again. That was an awful sound: a dead sound.

  The negnugs squealed and ran around as if they'd gone mad. I took my hands away and waited; it was one of the only times I had ever known exactly what to do in Rondua.

  Some time passed and then Mr. Tracy blinked slowly. Something in him returned from very far away.

  I felt as if I were suddenly lighter. I knew what had happened – my last memory of magic was gone now. I'd carried it with me since returning to Rondua without knowing it.

  But now a tremendous wave of memory crashed over me, telling me everything I had forgotten for so long. When I was a child in Rondua, pursuing the fifth Bone, I had used Slee wrongly. As a result, all of the creatures who had accompanied me on that long and dangerous trip died unnecessarily. At the last second I had panicked and saved myself without thought for the others. I had used the magic of one of the Bones thoughtlessly, selfishly. . . .

  Fear's greatest weapon is its ability to blind one to anything. In its presence, we forget there are others to consider, things to save besides ourselves. That was my great irreparable mistake the first time I had been in Rondua. It was that panic and that selfishness that had kept me from winning th
e fifth Bone of the Moon.

  When he spoke, Mr. Tracy's words came out tiredly and with the greatest difficulty. «I was so wrong. I trusted him . . . completely!» His eye stared straight at me, full of sad wonder.

  «Who? What are you talking about, Mr. Tracy?»

  Pepsi spoke from behind me. «Martio. Martio is Jack Chili, Mom. He was fooling us the whole time. Now he knows everything.»

  4

  Dear Mrs. James,

  Dr. Lavery keeps asking me why I chose an axe to hurt my mother and sister with. He said it might help me to understand what I'd done better if I think about just that part of it for a while. He also said if I couldn't tell him directly, then I should try to tell you in one of my letters, so I will do that.

  Death is really interesting to me. I think about it a lot and I have read many books on the subject. I don't know if there is a heaven or a hell, but I _do_ think we go someplace special after it's all over.

  I read this book, _Shogun_, all about Japan and its samurai warriors. I think those men had it all figured out. The way they saw it, if you lived the right kind of life – full of courage and boldness – then dying honorably was the only thing that mattered. There were men in that book who actually _asked_ to be able to die for their leader. If they were granted permission by the leader (and not all of them were, believe me!), then they thought they were very lucky and went right out and killed themselves. My mother and sister were both very good women and I felt that if they died at that time in their lives, then they would most assuredly be allowed to go wherever it is good people go after they're dead. Granted, my sister played her stereo much too loud and my mother wasn't always the kindest person on earth to me, but those things were not important in the long run. They were good women – both of them – who had reached a special level where, if they died just when they did, they'd be allowed to move right on. I kept hoping before I took action that they would die on an airplane they took to my uncle's house in Florida, but it didn't happen unfortunately. They survived the trip, so it was up to me to see that they made it safely through to the other side – which is exactly what I did.

  Why did I use that axe? I don't know. Maybe because my father kept it around from the time when we had a house out in the country. Do you know the town of Dobbs Ferry, New York? That's where it was. Those years out there were the best I ever had in my life. My sister and I were young and we liked each other very much.

  I don't know why. . . . Oh, this is stupid, isn't it? I started out trying to explain to you about the axe and now where am I? Stupid. Really stupid! Dr. Lavery asks me all the time if I'm sorry I did it. Sure, I'm sorry, but on the other hand I very seriously feel that they died at just the right time – just like those lucky samurai warriors in _Shogun_. That's why I did them a kind of special favor. To me, that takes away a lot of the wrong.

  Did this letter bore you?

  Yours very sincerely,

  Alvin Williams

  «Dr. Lavery?»

  «Yes, Mrs. James?»

  «Dr. Lavery, did you see the last letter Alvin Williams wrote to me?»

  «Yes, I did. I'm sorry I didn't get to you before it did. I had it down on my calendar to call; it was wrong of me not to do it.»

  «But why didn't you intercept it, Doctor? Why did you let it go through?»

  «Because Alvin is very protective of his correspondence with you, Mrs. James. He reads me all of your letters and is always very worried if you don't answer his questions.»

  «Well, I'm very sorry, Doctor, but I don't want to do this anymore. This last letter scared the hell out of me and I don't want that to happen again. I've been shaking all morning. Would you please tell him to stop writing to me? Because even if he keeps it up, I'm not going to write back to him. I don't ever want to see a letter like that again.»

  «I fully understand, Mrs. James. I'll tell Alvin this afternoon.»

  There was a pause and then I asked the inevitable: «What will it do to him if I stop writing, Doctor?»

  «Naturally it will upset him. Mrs. James; you're one of his only links to the outside world now. If that is suddenly broken, he'll be scared and angry. That's understandable. He won't know what he's done wrong, yet he's being punished for it by someone he cares so much about.»

  «Oh great! You make me feel guilty.»

  «Guilt is relative, Mrs. James. I understand why you're upset, but there's really no reason to feel guilty. We have a variety of therapies available to us that we can use in cases like Alvin's. The correspondence with you was simply one part of one of them.»

  «What do you mean?»

  «We've been trying to reconnect him with the real world, Mrs. James. We give him books to read, encourage him to plan for a future, let him have an outside friend he can write to in as normal a way as possible. Now, if that plan worked and he responded, first we would try to bring him back to our world, as it were. Once there, we'd hopefully be able to show him what he'd done wrong on a real-life scale. Right now, the great problem we're having with Alvin is that he honestly doesn't yet understand the enormity of his act. If we were successful, then we would begin to try reintegrating him into the system he so violently broke out of through his . . . aggressive acts.»

  I bit the inside of my lips while he spoke.

  «All of it makes sense, Doctor, and obviously you know best about these things, but this letter scared the hell out of me, you know? All of his letters do. Each time one arrives and I realize who it's from, it sets me back at least a couple of days. It makes me jumpy and . . . grumpy. . . . Do you know what I mean? Do you understand?»

  «I understand completely, Mrs. James. You have every right to ask that they stop.»

  «Well, is he getting any better? Have you seen any signs of progress?»

  «That's another relative term. Off the record, he's still very much the same disturbed young man he was when he came in, but we're certainly working on it.»

  «Doctor, am I being a big rat by doing this?»

  Luckily he laughed, which made me feel a little better. «Absolutely not! In fact, your wanting to stop the correspondence might be an effective device for us. Alvin will certainly be upset and he'll want to know your reasons for doing it. But perhaps with some hedging here and there, what I tell him will make him better understand the fact that if he really _does_ want to become a member of society again, he'll have to come to grips with the fact that most people are made very nervous when they come into contact with someone who's done what he has. Yes, I think it might be the right time to talk with him about this. Your act will be just the right thing to trigger the discussion. You've given me another angle, Mrs. James. I hadn't thought of using it before, but it makes perfect sense to me now.»

  «This may be a dumb question, Doctor, but what _is_ going to happen to him?»

  «It's not a dumb question at all. Sooner or later he will realize what he has done and why he did it. Or else he'll stay in the Institute for the rest of his life, confused and resentful of the fact that we're holding him here against his will. It could go either way.»

  «He _really_ doesn't understand what he's done?»

  «From all indications so far? No. He's recently been going through a phase that is very common for patients like Alvin: he's convinced he's some kind of god! He feels he took those lives because they belonged to him in the first place. Do you remember his references to the novel _Shogun_? Well, Alvin envisions himself as some kind of supreme shogun these days. He sees himself as the most powerful, most fearsome, wisest leader around. That's why he liked that book so much: he turned its plot and ideas around this way and that, and ended up making them fit his own patterns. He's extremely good at doing that. Do you know what he's been doing the last couple of days? Studying Japanese!

  «Not long ago, you'll remember, he wanted to be a veterinarian. When you think about it, it's very much the same thing. The only difference is, a vet controls life and death in animals. God, _or_ a Japanese shogun, controls those things
in human beings.»

  I ended my pen-pal days with Alvin Williams, but that didn't stop me from thinking about him. At funny times of the day, pictures and questions would run across my mind; what kind of clothes did he wear in the Institute? What did _he_ dream about at night? Did he listen to music? Did he ever finish reading _Shogun_?

  Since I hadn't seen him for so long, his plain unmemorable face and ways slipped quickly out of my memory's clear focus. But I remembered the way he described those storm clouds that day – as if they were having a fistfight. I remembered his dirty eyeglasses and the way he walked slowly down the stairs with Loopy, their little old dog who couldn't move too fast. I don't know how to say this, but there was a part of me that wished Alvin well, despite what I had done to push him away from my life.

  «Hello, Cullen? This is Weber.»

  «Weber. How _are_ you?»

  «Fine! Listen, I'm on my way to California; I'm at the airport right now. I've been trying to get you for a couple of days. Cullen, I've got to tell you – the dreams? The Rondua dreams? They're better. You can't believe what a change there's been. Ever since we went out, they've become the most amazing things. It's beautiful!»

  «What do you mean, Weber? Are you still having dreams there? Are you still having those nightmares?»