The salty water wet the hem of her sundress. “I was captured prey. But then, your hand, your wonderful hand, touched me and washed away terrible pains.”
“I didn’t want you to be suffering.”
The water was lapping around her knees. She took slow measured steps towards a wave rolling in. Bouncing up as it washed around her waist, she turned to me and smiled wistfully. She raised her arms slightly, turning them so her palms faced me. “The terror became easy to let go.”
I stared at her hands. Her wrists. I knew what she was asking. “Cassandra...”
“They touched my wrists, guiding me into the underwater passage.” She ran one hand slowly along her opposing forearm. “I’m surprised I don’t have scars there. But your touch is different. Gentle.”
“I can’t...”
“You can.”
“I barely know what it takes to survive in them. You don’t know how to move in and out.”
“The ultimate trip.” She shrugged. “Even being dragged, screaming for my life, it blew my mind when I realized I could breath underwater. Fish were swimming right through me. Take me back.”
“You’re freaking me out. Don’t you understand it’s dangerous?”
She turned away from me and pushed herself into deeper water. “Brr. C’mon, Deets. It wasn’t cold in the passageway. There must be one out here.”
“There’s training—”
Then I sensed the smooth ripple and the teeth and the need. A living—cutting and tearing—hunger. Close and fast. Millions of years honing the perfect attack.
A millisecond of hand gesture. Dog, star, nose, feathered-back. Another instant and my feet were no longer on the beach but sixty feet offshore, a criss-cross of waves colliding above me. With Cassandra’s wrist in my grasp, I pulled her underwater.
I don’t know what I’m doing.
I slipped her through the ethereal membrane of the god’s tunnel.
The shark cruised directly through the area Cassandra had been splashing in, water up to her chin. It spun around quickly with a whip of its tail, and passed right through my head in its now-frustrated search.
It’s not a demon. It’s a scary-big shark.
“He can’t see us,” I whispered.
“Or eat us. Far out.” Cassandra knelt down, watching the killer fish in fascination.
I didn’t know if I should let go of her wrist. Was I her guide? What if she slipped in and out of the tunnel? What if I did?
“Let’s move, hope we end up on shore.”
“Don’t be such a downer. Let’s go look for whales and octopuses.” She pulled, trying to loosen my grip on her arm.
I tightened my hold. “No wait, there’s rules. Natural patterns that guide you.”
“Well, I’m free. Let go.”
“No, it’s not really freedom—”
I was interrupted by a slight creaking sound that staggered and hesitated, then gathered itself into a long screeching rip. A drop of water hit my nose. I looked up to see a lightning pattern of cracks snap along the tunnel’s veil. Another drip hit my forehead, then three tapped my shoulder.
A web of splitting tunnel-skin, looking like light and water and color disintegrating, raced down the sides around us and beneath our feet. Something popped—it must have been a god substance rivet or binding—and an arc of salt water spat steadily onto my hand.
I let go of Cassandra.
More streams began to jet into our eyes and mouths. A ragged crack beneath my feet gave way for more ocean to enter the tunnel. It rippled ankle deep instantly. We were standing in a shallow concave dip where the water puddled before tracing a path further down the passage.
I’ve cracked another tunnel. The flood’s spreading.
Cassandra screamed, “We’re going to drown. How do I get out?”
“Pray for help. If it breaks completely open, get to the surface and swim to shore.”
I touched the splintering with my hand. A blue sputtering of light ran across my fingertips. Then I was reaching out through the tunnel into the physical ocean. Without causing further wreckage, I was able pull at the water as if it was putty instead of liquid. When I brought my hand back into the tunnel, I held a gel-like substance that swirled and bubbled. Instinctively, I began to smear it to the cracks above me. My hand thrummed, and a golden halo pulsed around each finger. The mass of pudding-like water adhered and molded itself to the tunnel’s spectral skin. From my fingertips, I could feel the tunnel’s breathing, its heart beating. It was alive, absorbing the water I offered and regenerating its wounded part.
I reached back out into the salty sea and hauled more handfuls in, using the living glue to patch the shattered tunnel around me. My initial panic had turned into the same concentration and excitement I experienced when creating a drawing—cleansing, inspirational, desirous.
After ten minutes, the dripping and cracking had ceased. Other than a rivulet that trickled away from the pool I had stood in, the god tunnel showed no signs of there ever having been any damage done to it. The tunnel appeared whole.
“You’re a god, aren’t you?” Cassandra’s eyes widened in anticipation of a positive response.
I don’t think so. No, I’m just me.
I smelled cigarette smoke and didn’t bother answering her. Steel’s laughter echoed around us. He sauntered casually towards us, dragging on his tobacco every few paces.
“Ha, ha. Cassandra, dear girl, what a gift he has.” He inspected the area I had repaired closely. “Now, Parker, what’s next? Your repair work is excellent. You could take over my job. But your energy cracked it, so leave now, and take your new little missy with you.”
“C’mon, Cassandra.” I took hold of her wrist.
Steel looked at me sternly. “Your jump into the tunnel and your restoration were performed instinctively. It was your initial unease once inside that contributed to the destructive energy pull on the tunnel. Remember it’s not just water or air on the other side.” He tapped the tunnel skin. “But Chaos is still out there, in an adjacent universe, hungry to take back and destroy what it lost. Don’t weaken.”
A realization came to me, plucked from, and transformed into certainty by his words and demeanor. “You’re still screwing around with my head. You said you didn’t need to test me anymore. You’d found what you needed. You set this up—Cassandra and the shark; risking her life. For what?”
“After your meeting with Uncle Stogie and his bosses, we moved on to a new phase. The rivalry between Pan and them is in a temporary truce, while repairing the tunnel has been sanctioned by all.”
“Uncle?”
“Uncle Stogie, who you know as the cabbie.”
“You mean this is all a family feud? Sheoblask? Stogie?”
He dismissed my comment with a wave of his cigarette. “This little excursion into the sea was necessary to get an idea of your technical abilities in the actual healing of a wrecked tunnel.”
“Stay away from me. Let me handle this. I don’t need you and your murder attempts as my teacher.”
“I can wonder what to do next, so can Cassandra here, and a million other tunnel hoppers, if they wish. But you can’t. You’re the balance chosen by the wounded Shadow God. In your other jumps, you acted decisively or innocently. Today, you let Cassandra delay you even though you understood the dangers. There should have been no discussion. You were the more experienced traveler. You should have followed your intuition. Now get out.”
“How did you know it would crack?”
“I knew sooner or later, a crisis would cause your energies to go haywire. Consider yourself to have received a valuable lesson.”
Fish Man appeared in the surf above us and gestured for me to accompany him. I told Cassandra to hold her breath, then slid her through the tunnel wall into the cold Pacific waters.
Steel was waiting on the beach
as Cassandra and I dragged ourselves from the water. Exhausted by the traumatic misadventure, we rolled onto our backs in the sand.
Steel flicked his ash, stared thoughtfully at Cassandra, then said to me, “When you first sensed the shark, what was it thinking?”
“Thinking? It wasn’t. It just had a purpose and was attuned to achieving it.”
“Remember—that’s the lesson. Perhaps your most important one.”
Chapter 38
Cassandra pointed out Mandrake’s Folly Two near a unique street that zigzagged back and forth down a hill between stores and apartments. She hopped off the bike to check the date of my opening and saw it had started about an hour before.
“Wow, just in time.”
After parking the Harley in an alley, the two of us trudged into the gallery, encrusted with salt and sand, plus grime collected from hours of bike riding. Cassandra was barefoot. I had my faithful, frayed companion that carried my colored pencils hiked over my shoulder. My stained T-shirt and Cassandra’s bedraggled green dress caught the attention of a group of patrons. They were torn between continuing to look at my drawing of a copse of trees, that upon deeper inspection turned out to be a camouflaged herd of cows, or ogle the nipple poking through Cassandra’s ripped and dirty clothing.
One of the women hooted, “Oh dear, Deets, can’t you ever show up at an opening without drama?”
“Daisy? What are you doing here?”
She turned to the people she had been with. “This is the wonderful young artist whose work is being portrayed here tonight. This is Deets Parker, looking like he just swam across the Pacific to get here. Oh my.”
Mandrake arched an eyebrow. “Next show, please ask me to set you up with my stylist. I’m not asking who you went to, but don’t ever return to them.”
The crowd was a mix of well-groomed, hiply-dressed people who oozed money, some working artist-poet types, and a contingent of conservative suit and tie traditional business executives and their spouses. One of the attendees held a tambourine. I recognized him as a famous poet I had met on a few occasions back in New York.
“Hello, Allen, remember me?”
“Deets. Sure. Good show.”
He praised the technical skills and color use in my drawings. When he commented on the visionary quality of my work, I answered, “I don’t know if it’s everything you say it is, but it’s what I saw. Well, what I saw, edited by my emotional reaction that I associated with the moment. Y’know, man, like the cows under the trees. They just appeared where a second before they hadn’t been.”
He responded, “Yeah, I dig it. Reminds me of two weeks of getting my mind blown in Mexico recently.” He paused in front of a drawing. “Man, I’m fascinated by your various renditions of Pan.”
We gabbed about the New York scene, anti-war protests, and hallucinatory realities while drifting from drawing to drawing. When he told me a story about a friend on Christopher Street, I couldn’t focus on his words and turned to double-check the faces, especially the blonde pretty ones, in the room one more time.
“Talking about old friends, from the streets and bars back home
Are the protests growing larger, did you finish that epic poem?
Do you remember the store on that corner, where I used to spend my time?
Does the sparkle in her eyes still cause those bells to chime?”
Mandrake told me to stay until the end of the event to await a special guest who had requested a private viewing. By ten, the doors were closed, and Mandrake and his manager, Jason, were relaying the sales tally to me. Seven sold. Cassandra, Daisy, and I sipped wine until a knock came on the door.
He sauntered in with a woman on each arm. He wore his trademark silky, flowing shirt and looked stoned into oblivion.
“Rolly, man, how’ve you been?”
“World’s treating me good. I heard you were dead, man. Celebrated the night I heard you resurrected.”
“Hey, you here on a gig?”
“Just passing through. Back to London soon. Daisy set this reunion up for us. Let’s take a look at what your crazy mind’s been up to.”
We strolled around the gallery, pausing to look at my illustrations, telling stories about our experiences since we last saw each other, and reminiscing about life in the Village.
“Hey, man, I got a plane waiting to fly me to Seattle. Want to come along for a party?”
I shook my head side to side. “No, I’ve been through some heavy shit. Just need to lay low for awhile.”
He raised his eyebrows invitingly at Cassandra.
“Sure, sounds like a groove.”
I pulled out my water-logged wallet and handed her two wet fifties. “In case you get stuck or want to buy some new clothes.”
Rolly laughed. “Thoughtful dude. Don’t worry. She’s in good hands.”
He bought a drawing of Pan playing the flute beneath a quarter moon, laid a hand on my shoulder as he said goodbye, and said he’d be in contact with me about an album cover he had in mind.
“Be cool, Rolly.”
“Don’t go dying on me no more, man.” He grasped my arm. “If I don’t see you again in this world, meet me in the next one and, man, we’ll really levitate.”
I gave him a weary half-smile, and he walked out the door with three women.
Daisy and I had a late dinner, got a bit tipsy, and walked to her hotel.
“I’m worried about your hand. When was the last time you drew?”
“A little yesterday, but seriously, uh, maybe six weeks. It’s getting better.”
“Let’s hope so. There’s loose blister skin still, and it looks too raw for six weeks. Are you coming back to New York for your next show?”
“We’ll see.”
“Where are you staying?”
“Nowhere, at the moment.”
“C’mon up and shower. My room’s a double.”
We drank and talked long into the night. She let me know Mandrake and her weren’t squabbling over exclusively representing me. She showed me some new brochures for the HooDoo. Teresa was listed as a featured artist.
“Does the sparkle in her eyes still cause those bells to chime?”
In the morning, I drove around aimlessly on the motorcycle for a while, and despite Steel’s admonition to move decisively, I had no idea how to proceed in the tunnel quest. Finally, knowing a considerable amount of time could pass before I picked up on any signs, I asked the gallery’s manager to help me find a place to stay.
That afternoon, I was living in a back room of Mandrake’s Folly Two in San Francisco. Mattress on the floor, running water.
Twenty of my pieces sold in the month long show. After Mandrake’s percentage, I had enough to live a basic lifestyle, nothing fancy, for a few years. I moved into a large studio apartment with a sleeping loft.
People are digging my work. I’m making it. If only the damn gods would leave me alone or let me just get whatever has to be done over with.
Though I glimpsed and now recognized god passages regularly, I didn’t step into any. Wracking my brain with worry about demons, gods, and immortals wore me to a frazzle each day. One evening as I lit up a joint, a blast of clean light as crisp and clear as a halo washed out the inside of my head. In a flash of understanding, the answer of exactly how to find the ruined tunnel was imprinted into my newly cleansed mind.
Follow the direction the tunnel rumblings in the sky are headed in.
Yes, I was positive of it.
I figured it made as much sense to sit comfortably in one place as to ride around wasting gas on the roadways as I waited for the next push by the universe, so I wandered around the city, began to sketch again, smoked grass with strangers in the parks, stuck flowers in my hair, and with all the good music in town, I’d go to two or three concerts a week.
There were a
nti-war protests where I yelled and marched and chanted. A cruise on the Harley across the Golden Gate, enjoying the air, the view, exploring redwoods, meeting with people, and getting stoned would keep my trepidation of more encounters with monsters and gods at bay for a while. Drawing a little each day and observing people and places for inspiration gave me hopes that my life would resume its artistic direction.
Life seemed as normal as it had ever been, before ghosts and gods and Monster Alley.
I wrote my parents and Stephanie, sent Ham photos of my work, checked with the hired investigator in L.A., but couldn’t unearth what I needed within myself to contact Teresa.
I love you, Teresa. Despite everything that seems contrary to it, I know we’re soul mates.
I’ll stay in San Francisco, waiting for the next signal to search for the blasted-out god tunnels. As inconceivable as it sounds, maybe it would be best to try and forget you. Be good to yourself.
So, over the summer, I watched people tripping out as they danced naked and blew water bubbles, and I went to a few happenings. But I never got too close with any one person. The kidnaping and subsequent impulsive risk-taking of Cassandra wanting to tunnel-jump had shaken me, and despite easy temptations and everyday opportunities, I stayed away from involving myself sexually with women.
I’ve got to keep it light. Not sleep with her. Just talk, share a joint, a joke, our astrological signs. Listen to a mystical story and compare revelations. But I can’t delve too deep with her, or I’ll end up lying about my experiences and she’ll sense the deception.
I can’t reveal what truths I know. There have been deaths and demons and dangers. Christ, I can tear apart the Tunnel of the Gods.
This isn’t like L.A. and the healings. I’ve stepped into another frontier. The battle on the beach, the deal the gods had made—it’s shifted my outlook. I’m in limbo, waiting.
My secrets keep me separated from the care-free lovers, the truth seekers, the partiers—as they revel and play and joke and philosophize, dreaming of revolution.
“Yeah, I heard someone say to the sun
That I could love everyone
Miracles (The Remarkable Adventures of Deets Parker Book 3) Page 25
