“Oh.” My head began to swim. The rest of my body felt numb. I picked up my spoon, tried to lift a piece of fish to my mouth. “Oh, uh, where’s my fork? London? I think I’ll go for a walk.”
My mother protested, “Deets, it’s getting dark. Don’t go far.”
My father grunted. “Let him be. He survived for two months in a jungle. He knows what he’s doing.” He turned an encouraging smile in my direction. If ever I nearly saw a wetness in his eye, it happened at that moment.
“I need to be by myself for awhile. I wanted to see her, that’s all.” But it wasn’t. I hurt, couldn’t think, could barely focus visually. Standing up from my chair, I stumbled a bit, my body not adjusting to the whirling in my head.
Piddles bounced up from beneath the table, bumped her head purposefully against my knee. “Piddles, c’mon girl. Wanna go out?”
Stephanie ran her hand down my arm and squeezed gently. I appreciated her attempt to comfort me and managed a meager smile. “Thanks, Sis.”
Fireflies flickered in the deep woods. I watched, feeling the fascination I always felt at witnessing that insect produce light.
What am I thinking? London? I haven’t seen her in more than a year and a half, almost two. When did we break up? December of ‘66. Then that wonderful night and day together, in when? I guess it must have been November ‘67. She could be married, have kids. God, I’ve got kids. Four hundred years old. I’m surely a great-great, whatever, grandfather. Four hundred years of great-greats. I’m probably related to everyone in that village.
The lightning bugs twinkled crazily, on and off, here, there, closer, higher. I couldn’t guess where or when the next one would flicker.
I thought I had given up on her, but maybe I can’t. Dreaming of being with her steered me through a lot of tough situations.
London. I’ve got money. I could fly there.
And find her, how? What was the name of that English guy or his band?
Man... What am I going to do with my life now?
I’ve been locked up too long. Take these meds. Here, try this pill. Everything getting dull? That’s great then. You’ll follow along easier now.
Hey, Doc, you should have seen your face when I told you about Monkey Man and Fish Man.
Remembering those two and how they had watched out for me, I wondered whether I’d ever see them again, or for that matter, any of the bunch. The immortals, the gods—not one of them had even dropped by to say thanks.
Strange group of characters. Mysteries all. Different standards. Not a peep. Wonder if all went well with them—afterwards.
About a dozen fireflies swarmed briefly near my hand.
I wonder how it all plays out now. Am I dismissed?
Hopefully I am. It blew me apart. But, well, I don’t know, the power and revelations were incredible.
The fireflies broke up their party and blinked on and off in a scattering of directions.
It’s like my hand ran low on batteries. I’ll concentrate on my drawing. That’s what I need to do.
And Teresa?
So she went off to London... while I went back to the beginning of time. What good came of it all? The privileged god tunnelers, the ordained ones, get to jump through time again. Big deal, really.
And I get a stay in the crazy house and lose Teresa.
But what a blessing to love Shadow Creature. God of nothing, of Zobes, of healing. I really relied on that dark secret. If it hadn’t been in eternal pain, I would’ve talked my way out of fixing that tunnel.
It would have meant refusing to heal, but letting it live on.
What would have been the truer act of love? And what was our relationship anyway? It called itself a way. I had followed a treasure map, spread out over billions of years.
Isn’t love strange?
Hmm, London. No, I don’t feel like hunting and searching anymore. I’ll always miss you, Teresa, but I think I need to draw right now.
I flipped my fingers through their ritual for the first time since I had left the portal barrier out west. Nothing. No sparkle. No tingle. No power.
The fireflies had all disappeared.
It saddened me.
Chapter 52
I was released two weeks later in early August and took up my parents’ offer to live in the studio building. I had turned out two drawings while committed and had six from my journey up the West Coast, so I took a bus over to New York to visit Daisy at the HooDoo.
She was thrilled to see me, practically orgasmic at the drawings, offering to frame, mount, and hang them.
“I’ll run an ad announcing a mini back-in-New York show. I already know a crowd of people anxious about what you’ve been doing and wondering where you were.”
“Really?”
“This work is almost miraculous. Masterful. These two, they’re smaller than your usual pieces. And oh my, how exciting, there’s a shift in style too.”
“Yeah, well, that’s crayon. I’ve been in the hospital again, Daisy. I did them there. It was either Crayola or poster paints.” I shrugged, attempted to smile, but instead, a half-apologetic grimace begged for understanding. “Y’know, dragging up stuff going on inside me.”
“Oh, Deets, I hadn’t heard.” She wrapped me in her arms. “You’re too tender for this world.”
The moment was sweet with acceptance.
When we let go of each other, my smile finally cracked through with gratitude. Briefly, I hoped a dead demon, an unknown son, and a flaming bird-woman could be similarly touched by the compassion I felt in Daisy’s embrace.
She guided me gently towards the door. “Let’s go grab a bite and catch up.”
Daisy didn’t have recent news of Teresa, other than the store being sold when her sister married. She hadn’t displayed any of her watercolors in the gallery in over a year, around the same time she left for London when Dan joined a band on tour in England.
After lunch, I wandered around, running into a few acquaintances, making my way over to Teresa’s apartment building. The store looked the same, but I found I had no interest in it anymore.
I spent a long time sitting on the bench where Santa Pigeon had led Greg and me—where the purple pigeon had revealed the carved white feather that now, four years later, dangled from my neck.
I found it here. Greg started to freak here.
And my thoughts reluctantly turned to Monster Alley. I wished there was someone or some force that would warn me away, but despite cursing every step I took, I made my way block by block towards the portal area.
All the months in the hospital, examining my motivations and the ways of immortals, gods, and demons, had left me with a twitching emptiness. I had stood at the beginning of creation yet was powerless to understand the reasoning of the realm I had operated in these past few years. I could relate my experience and observations visually in my art, but the quest’s constant threat of trauma, its miraculous discoveries, and the magical dreams that stirred me on remained puzzles. My obsessive desire to understand the alley’s mysteries had never quelled. No matter that I had completed the quest the formula on the wall drew me into, I had lost too much. I needed to see or hear something my efforts had changed for the positive. Something that could erase away my faults and pains, could convince me the violences were worth the prices paid, and forgive my battered heart and cracked spirit.
As soon as the alley and Mister Pigeon’s building came into view, a mixture of regret and relief flooded my senses. I was thankful the trials begun here were over, but to me, the mansion was now the eternal tomb of Shadow Creature, my trusted mentor.
The area belonged to the gods. No one approached or entered without their consent. Tossing concerns of their oversight aside, I stepped into the alley. I had earned the right to sift through the debris the quest had left in my soul.
Monster Alle
y tingled with a vitality I hadn’t noticed when I had first explored it. The formula’s images, so familiar to me since I had pieced the time portal door back together, appeared to be unchanged, except for one confusing element. My magic symbol had been surrounded by triangles and half-circles, still in their same place, but where my feathered-dog and star should have been, there were now countless intricate swirls of indecipherable cloud-like formations. Sometimes, I thought I could make out the dog and star, but as if blown by a current of another mystery, it shifted to a different shape, perhaps a cow, maybe a hand, now a dancing flame.
It’s gone. What is this? Is this a new symbol for me? How can I ever learn it?
The ever-changing shapes reminded me of those strange tentacled energies I saw in the heavens on the other side of time. My place in the formula had become a series of incomprehensible flowing grooves in the brick. After shaping itself, it would dissolve to nothing and reappear as a completely different tangle of lines.
But my attention quickly turned to another part of the alley. A hideous odor suddenly walloped my nose, overwhelming me. That sensation was followed by the shrill screams and harsh cries of torture and slaughter sounding in my ears. Then whirring, buzzing, farting sounds erupted from the nearby trash dumpster. A filthy human head snacking on a putrid finger bone grinned at me from out of the assorted rotten food, wet bags, and mix of untouchable gunk. A spout of brown liquid spat out from beneath a tangle of oily rags and broken bits of egg that were stuck to a patch of hair belonging to another head that remained half-buried. The dumpster vibrated with great slurping sounds. Upheavals of garbage moved steadily and mole-like, punctuated by a hand, or leg, or human ass bursting up through the sludge and disappearing back under.
Beelzebub.
It coughed a diseased sound that I made out to be speech. “They won’t know you.”
I had bested it once with help from Pan and Steel. Edging my way towards the street, hoping to stall time before it attacked, I surprised myself by answering, “Who?”
“Pan and his snobby family. The gods. All of them. You’re nothing. A dud. They’ll sense me and be here soon. They’ll wonder who you are.”
“They know me.”
“Not any more. I still know who you are, ran into you a time, maybe two. I was never part of this perfect creation, remember? But them—the divine of your existence—they’ll draw a blank on you. You forget where you went already? You traveled to a place that preceded the gods coming forth. Because of that neat trick, they’ll have no idea who you are. Oh, I listen. I know. You, that shadow ruin, and I could have ripped this concept of theirs to shreds. But no, your species is suckered into believing that your existence is worth it. Not that shadow, though. It wanted out. But the damn useless, whining nothing went back to being part of those archaic, cowardly tunnels.” The talking part of the Chaos creature snorted, then hacked up some bloody bile before biting off and swallowing a section of a knuckle bone. “Ha. Here comes your old buddy. I don’t want no trouble. Just poking around. Gotta head back home.”
“How did you get through to this universe?” I feared I was still ripping open the tunnels and was going to get caught up in another crisis involving the gods.
“Oh, gods and rocks, people and poison, you all dream. Dreams have holes. I come and go as I please. Always have.”
It disintegrated into the garbage.
Suddenly Doctor Steel was standing a few feet away from me, his perpetual sneer and predator chill dominating our encounter immediately.
“Identify yourself,” he rasped drily.
He truly didn’t know me.
I stared at him, contemplating this unexpected consequence of fixing the tunnel. Had I absorbed some essence of Shadow Creature, who apparently, no one but Chaos and I had been able to see?
Or was it that even truth changed. My truth still included the time before the healing of the tunnel. It appeared Doctor Steel’s truth had been created since.
I knew he would never let me step away without some kind of problem developing.
Oh hell, I don’t want to go through all this tunnel drama. I should never have come here. Dealing with Beelzebub and now this sadistic immortal just can’t be my life anymore.
He’d spy on me; or kidnap me and hole me up in the Tennessee mountains or the Andes for interrogation; or use his favorite technique of sending thugs after me so he could read the energies I drew to myself. Or maybe he’d just kill me.
I had to break free before I was encircled by his schemes again.
“Me? Who am I? There’s no reason for you to know. You don’t know me, but I know you, Pan, Pigeon, Amelia, Jenny, even your mother and that crazy, cigar chomping god-uncle of yours. That evil, foul-smelling Beelzebub was just here. I don’t have anything to do with your eternal problems, so leave me out of this never-ending battle you’re in. I came from beyond creation where some kind of nothing existed. I got curious and wandered in here. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m just looking around. I don’t mean any harm, so don’t get all snake-eyed or shoot that tongue out at me.” I walked back to the spot of charred cement. Beelzebub told the truth. I’ll never understand all this. Now I’m unrecognizable to the immortals?
I had to get away from Steel. His expression hadn’t changed as he continued to appraise me.
“That’s not good enough. I’ve met enigmas and liars before. Which are you?”
“Look, Doctor Steel, the universe or time or perception—whatever this is—goes round and round. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s trying to get itself started. Maybe it just wears out. But I’m guessing something that existed before may get discarded the next time around. I’m from one of those lost periods. Okay? I’m no concern of yours. I don’t even know how to use your tunnels and would rather walk anyway.”
He pulled out one of his German brown cigarettes, lit it, licked at an exhalation of smoke with his viper tongue.
“So you know me? Are we friends or enemies?” He arched an eyebrow and curled a lip mockingly.
His father was a god, he had been alive for thousands of years, he jumped through time, traveled to distant stars. His uncle Sheoblask was from a different dimension. Uncle Stogie had built the tunnels. My story hadn’t fazed him.
“To my mind, once we were enemies. You, it was your way of helping.”
His eyes glinted with razor-like perception. “These predicaments crop up once in a while.”
“My part was played out long ago. I’m just going to disappear.”
“Your presence today has been duly noted.”
Chapter 53
So the god crew knew about me now. The visit to the alley to ease my curiosity and gather news in hopes that I wouldn’t have to always wonder about Doctor Steel or Sheoblask or any of them had left me disheartened. I had gained some understanding of the upshot of the tunnel repair, but I felt uneasy with the thought of Pan’s gang interfering in my life again. I wondered if Piddles remembered the time before the healing of the broken god tunnel. Had the fates of mortal witnesses like Cassandra and Tuma remained what I believed them to be? Did Audrey and Teresa, who I had confided in, have different memories than I did of my stories about the alley and the gods?
Still so many mysteries.
I had to convince myself there were reasons to live other than the quest that had consumed me.
Riding in a van to a music festival up at Woodstock with Chang and Clyde, all the while smoking joints, enjoying the scenery, laughing, letting the radio rhythms take me away, and scanning the hundreds of freaks hitching rides north, I became excited at the thought of life turning back to friends and music and getting high and talking about rebellion.
I felt like I had been absent from reality. The hospital and the search on the West Coast had been my world for over a year. Chang and Clyde had exchanged expressions of disbelief that had turned to laughter when they men
tioned the upcoming trial of Abbie Hoffman and the Chicago Seven, and I didn’t know what they were talking about.
“Man, where you been? Lost in another jungle? The Democratic Convention riots happened a year ago.”
“Ha, ha. No, man, knowing Deets, he was whisked away by spacemen. Dude can fly. I’ll never forget that day.”
Clyde was referring to the time I had jumped to New York and asked him to give Teresa the black feather. I didn’t feel like talking about it. After blabbing about myself with Doctor Chambers for ten months and being just one week out on release, I didn’t need to visit the subject at that moment.
“I guess I kind of, y’know, dropped out. I camped in the woods for a while, was on the road, and then got stuck in a nut house for most of this year.”
“Man, you missed the tuning up of the revolution. We’ll show the establishment how to survive on love and music. C’mon, move back to the Village, man.”
I took a toke and nodded, wondering if I’d ever really fit anywhere. The jungle, the beginning of time, Monster Alley? Maybe drawing my dreams back in the Village, getting laid, and staying stoned was my best next step.
Just as I began to entertain thoughts of life normalizing, it didn’t. On that trip to Woodstock, I realized something was frighteningly wrong with me. Uncontrollably wrong.
The van sat in a traffic jam that stretched on, past corn fields and pastures. The multicolored and chrome ribbon could be seen stalled as it passed over the top of a small rise about a mile away. We had picked up two women with their thumbs out, and they giggled about how much faster progress walking had been than driving. With the women squeezed next to me, teasing my mind with their legs and tits and smell and laughter, I realized that Chang’s van used to be Teresa’s.
“Yeah, man, I bought it when she split to England.”
Memories spilled out. Strawberry wine by a campfire near the water in Rhode Island. Her yelling about a fantastic fuck as we drove over the Delaware. Her anger and pain of the Poconos attack and the humiliation of the trial.
Miracles (The Remarkable Adventures of Deets Parker Book 3) Page 34
