"She's in the tent right now, changing clothes or something. I'm alone, believe me." I tried to speak with my eyes. Catching on, Darlene raced back into the tent. I saw her unbuttoning her blouse as she ran.
"Listen up, Callahan," the woman said. "I'm only gonna to say this once. Any mistakes, your friend is dead. You listening?"
I stopped moving. "Sure, I'm listening."
"I'm going to tell you where to go and what to do. You're gonna follow my directions, okay? Hey, and you will come alone."
"Alone."
"If you disobey us, your geek friend is gonna be burned alive tonight. You understand me?"
"I understand."
"Stay on the cell phone and talk to me all the way. Got that?"
"What was that? I lost you."
"I said stay on the phone, goddamn it."
"Okay."
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Darlene emerge from the side of the tent, struggling with clothing. She was disguising herself, donning a "hooker" costume; blonde wig, padded bra, and tight pants. She had already applied red lipstick. She looked like a completely different woman. I knew she would try to follow me.
"You there?"
"I'm here."
Darlene walked away from the tent. Her costume blended in with the eccentric crowd. She kept one hand inside her purse, clearly clutching her gun. She nodded and waited for me to move.
"Walk towards the parking area," the voice said.
I started moving and trusted that Darlene would follow from a safe distance. I did not look back. "I'm walking."
"Don't talk to anybody, just move."
"Right."
In fact, I barely noticed the people I passed. They were just colors and shapes in costumes. The air was coated with the sickly-sweet stench of marijuana. I pushed on, clearing a path with one arm while the other clutched the cell phone, moving against the flow of traffic. People were beginning to cluster around the effigy, eager to participate in the climactic moment. I stopped once, to allow an intimidating group of bikers go by. Not a good time to get in a brawl.
I pushed some more people out of the way and passed the spot where I'd had spoken to Agent Fields. I was at the edge of the camp. My mouth went dry at the thought of walking out into the darkness, unarmed and alone. I scanned the horizon as I moved; saw nothing but the indifferent stars and miles of parched, cracked earth.
"Hold it," the voice said.
On a hunch, I kept walking.
"I said hold it!"
"Sorry. I didn't hear you." I stopped. Well, they sure as hell can see me now.
I looked around again. There were several small orange fires bobbing and weaving at the outer rim of the camp. People were dancing naked and shooting water pistols at one another. Something warm and wet struck my face, then my right arm.
I heard a sound like dozens, and then hundreds, of tap shoes moving closer. A hard rain began to strike the parched earth, canvas tents, and the Plexiglas roofs of the portable toilets. The air rippled with static electricity as a low grumble of thunder rolled over the foothills and down onto the empty white plain. Another warm wind whipped the tents and tugged gently at my sweaty clothing.
"Callahan?"
"Yes."
A huge trident of lightning rippled the bluish skyline. Another bolt, shaped like a spider web, hit only seconds later. I felt primitive and totally alone, a man lost in the immensity of nature. The moment brought back a vivid memory of my childhood on the ranch; one evening I'd stood alone in an immense field of whooshing alfalfa, watching the approach of a violent storm. I wondered, as I had then, if I was about to die.
"What the hell is going on, lady?" Thunder rolled like sheets of tin. "Can you tell me what I'm waiting for?"
The phone was silent. Then I spotted a Highway Patrol car moving slowly among the parked vehicles to the North. Perhaps long accustomed to all the commotion, the officers inside watched the revelry with amusement. I saw a flash of white teeth within the car, and an extended arm pointing things out, as if to a less experienced partner. The two men seemed to enjoy the nudity.
"You still there?"
No answer. She must be right over there, near the police car, I thought. She is afraid to talk. I searched the vehicles and tried to fix her probable location in my mind. The last two lines of vehicles, perhaps? I stretched my hands in the air and casually pointed that direction as I brought them down again. Unfortunately, I had no way of knowing if Darlene had seen or understood that gesture.
Anyone hiding between those two rows of parked cars would have been able to see me as I crossed the camp and neared the toilets, except for one brief moment when a large van blocked the view. And that was when she'd told me to stop walking. I had continued on, and left her line of sight for a moment. That's what made her nervous.
Great. Now I know where you are, but so what?
The Highway Patrol car eased its way down the line, honking occasionally. People good-naturedly scrambled out of the way. It slowly vanished into the gloom, red taillights winking out as it turned the corner.
Her voice came again. "Start walking."
"Where to?"
I thought I saw Darlene Hernandez, but wasn't positive. She might have been at the edge of a campfire, dancing around and acting bombed out of her mind. She did not appear to be watching me, but I prayed she was staying alert.
"I said where do you want me to go?"
"Go about fifty feet to your right. There's another campfire. See it?"
A group of people had ensconced themselves on a slight rise, where they had a full view of the ten-story Burning Man. When it went up in flames, they would be occupying some prime real estate. The group seemed oddly subdued; I moved closer. They were high on something very sedating, perhaps heroin, or even a downer like Oxycontin.
"Sit by the fire," the woman said. The phone hissed and cracked.
I sat down just at the edge of the camp, behind a teenage boy with waist length hair, who was strumming a battered acoustic guitar. I crossed my legs and kept the cell phone tucked under my chin. My neck had begun to ache. A pretty redhead in a one-piece swimming suit offered me a beer. I shook my head, although I found myself absurdly tempted. I'm probably as good as dead anyway. What difference would it make?
"What now?"
"Just stay put."
The air was humid from rain, and it was still quite hot. A woman came dancing along. She was spraying cold water into people's faces, using a plastic spray-starch bottle. She looked a bit like the woman I had seen with Jerry, but she wasn't wearing sunglasses and was dressed a bit differently, and she passed so rapidly I could tell. She sprayed the mist, hit me square in the face, and moved on to the next person. I rubbed my eyes and let her go by.
People started drumming again and all around me folks began to pound on things. The guitar player flipped his instrument over and slapped the back of it in perfect syncopation. I felt my whole body vibrating with the undulating, almost sexual rhythm. I drifted for a moment, lost in the sound as my mind counted the beats. Jesus, what's the matter with you? Pay attention!
"Hello?"
There was no answer. I tried to remain calm, but it was hard not to think about Mary, about whether or not Darlene had picked up my trail, about what might have happened to Jerry. So I listened to the music again. It was haunting and rich in texture and seemed to empty the mind in ghostly waves that receded and returned. I literally felt myself dissolving into that rhythm.
Something is wrong with me. Something is wrong with me . . .
I watched the fire, feeling like I had a target stapled to the back of my shirt. A terrible dread seized me. I imagined myself in the scope of a sniper's rifle, and only seconds away from certain death. Stop it! Against my will, I pictured how my head would explode outward, pieces of skull landing in the campfire as my blood sprayed the festival participants. Stop it! Something is wrong with me. My eyes filled with tears. I imagined how ugly I would look on the cold, hard autopsy table
. I heard the ghastly growl of the bone saw as it approached my scalp. How sad.
What the hell? Have I been drugged?
I stood up and shook like a wet dog, grabbed some bottled water from a nearby cooler, splashed it over my face and into my eyes. It burned and my eyes flowed with tears. So I splashed them again. I swallowed the rest of the bottle without pausing for a breath.
Hold on, hold on. Where the hell is Darlene?
A bearded old man sprinkled some powdered chemicals into the blaze. I instantly forgot who I was, what I'd been doing. I dropped the plastic bottle and watched all the beautiful, bright colors dancing in those blossoming flames. The wondrous sight overpowered the sounds around me, and suddenly the whole world went abruptly, entirely silent. I sank to my knees again and started to cry. So beautiful.
Someone was moving near the outer edge of the group. I looked, but couldn't see the person clearly. I thought it might be a man, tall with sinewy muscles and bottomless eyes. This man had leathery skin, flesh gone dark from years of hard labor in the burning heat of the desert sun. Was that a cowboy hat? Yes. And he wore a weather-beaten old brown cowboy hat.
It was my stepfather, Danny Bell.
I jumped to my feet and screamed in terror, but the towering figure moved closer, like a buzzard circling road kill. The rain stopped abruptly, and then resumed again, as if orchestrated to coordinate with the drumming. I looked around for help, but no one seemed to know what I was seeing, or to care. Somehow man who had been dead for nearly twenty years had decided to attend the party, and they hadn't even noticed.
But how can this be happening? It's not happening. I've been drugged.
. . . I wasn't standing, wasn't screaming. I was still sitting down. I had only thought about standing and screaming. But weren't thought and action essentially the same thing; merely a host of electromagnetic impulses, shaping themselves to move in a particular direction? Perhaps I had only thought of seeing Danny Bell, then, and my mind had done the rest . . .
Drugged. I've been drugged . . . LSD?
. . . But if I didn't look, I would also never have to know. Did an event actually exist if it was not personally acknowledged? Couldn't the mind just re-shape electronic impulses so that a terrible event could be reversed? If I wanted Mary to be alive, then why couldn't that be so? An exciting concept . . .
. . . Yes. I was sure of it. Mary could be sleeping in my guest bedroom again, or on the couch talking to Peanut and none of this would have ever happened. All I had to do was be certain that these things were not true, and they would immediately not be true. Somehow I knew that this concept was valid, even the eternal wisdom behind all things. He's not really there! I swallowed my fear and looked up . . .
Danny Bell was standing directly over me.
And I was little Mick Callahan again, small and shrieking in terror. I had no control over my thoughts, voice, or limbs. I kicked and thrashed about on the ground, all alone. Virtually no one noticed, and those few that did laughed at me; amused by how high I was. Can't last forever, a few hours tops. Got to hang on. I shut my eyes and willed Danny Bell to be gone. I opened them again, and Bell was still there. I groaned.
"You're not real, Daddy Danny." My voice sounded foreign.
He reached down, grabbed my shirt, and dragged me to my feet. He slapped me across the face. "Hello? You home, motherfucker?"
Danny Bell, sneering. He spat on me, or was that another raindrop? Yes. Rain. The storm had started up again. So had the wind, it was sighing like a soprano in my ears; it was starting to carry me away. I was soaking wet; bone tired and very cold.
Hallucinogenic, sprayed in my eyes. It will pass soon. Hang on.
"Say something," Danny Bell said. He was smiling. His teeth were long and had been filed to sharp points. He licked his lips like a cannibal approaching the stew pot. "Aren't you glad to see me, Mick?"
I tried to speak, but my tongue had never weighed this much before. I felt myself sliding away, sliding away going way down into a foul-smelling blackness . . .
Some time passed; seconds or hours, I wasn't sure. Then a painfully bright light bulb hung in space just above me, and I magically flew through the air. I landed on my side, on something hard. I smelled dust.
The light winked out again.
For just a moment, I thought I saw myself as a little boy, standing right there as solid as could be, in a pair of torn and dirty blue jeans, except this little boy wasn't me and he was saying something in Spanish, over and over . . .
Something that sounded like Meester, por favor, por favor!
TWENTY
"Are you thirsty?" Hal asked gently. He was naked, except for a white hospital gown sprinkled with dark blood. He turned away, bare buttocks hanging out, and turned back. One lone light bulb swung in black space above him, making his whole head shine. Glitter flew up and away from that mane of silver hair, glowing like sparklers on the Fourth of July. Hal was kneeling at my side. He held up a canteen and unscrewed the top. He offered me a drink of water.
"Yeah, I'm parched," I said. "What the hell are you doing here?" I took the canteen and drank greedily.
Hal chuckled and took off part of his head. I squirmed backwards and bumped into someone's knees, turned and saw a pretty little Hispanic boy, maybe nine or ten years old, with black hair and eyes. I did not recognize him at first. The little boy was visibly terrified. I shook my head, desperate to clear the cobwebs.
"Hello," I said. "You look at lot like Loco."
The boy nodded vigorously, as if desperate to communicate something. "Olla, olla."
Where am I? I turned around again. What I'd thought was Hal was a brunette in her twenties. She was holding a wig she had been wearing and had just removed. I rubbed my eyes. They still burned. I brought myself back into focus.
"Did you spray my eyes with LSD?"
"Good guess. I just watered down the nine, though. Nice shit, huh?" The girl poured the rest of the canteen over my head and stepped back. "Wake up, Callahan. It's payback time."
I looked around. Suddenly it registered who the boy was.
"Hey, you are Manuel! Loco?"
"Si," Loco replied. "Si, Meester Mick." He seemed relieved to be recognized. I patted his hand and looked around.
We were in the back of an empty motor home or a large van of some kind. A metal side door opened and Jerry flew in. He bounced off the back wall with a clang and landed near Loco then fell limp and rolled to a stop. Jerry was talking to himself, but the words were inaudible.
"Oh boy, oh boy," someone said. I looked up. A man that looked exactly like Donny Boy stepped through the door and stood above us. In fact, I marveled at the vividness of the hallucination. Danny Boy's frame seemed even beefier than it had months before, as if he had deliberately gained weight. Oh, and his head was shaved. He had taken to wearing a nose ring. He also had a new tattoo on his forearm that looked oddly familiar. The hallucination kicked me. Hard.
"Hey, asshole, don't you remember me?"
My mouth dropped open. "You're real?"
"Oh, that's right, you're still high," Donny Boy said. "How did you like your little trip? We thought it was the least we could do."
I gaped stupidly. After the mess up in Dry Wells, the cops went looking for Donny Boy where I'd left tied him up, but he'd never been found. He was alive—and now he'd come after me. Donny Boy kicked Jerry. He glared at the girl. "Goddamn it, Frisco, ain't he up and around yet? What did you put in that shit?"
Frisco. His girlfriend from Dry Wells. They never caught her, either.
The woman picked up a pump shotgun and covered us. Suddenly it hit me where I'd seen her before. Frisco had followed us and been spotted several times; first back at my gym, then in an alley the night I'd first faced Fancy. Hell, I'd even sat near her at an AA meeting and nearly recognized her again at the festival. She had changed her hair color with wigs, worn glasses and different clothes each time, but it had always been Frisco.
So we were right. Mary mu
st have been a part of it from the beginning.
Donny Boy squatted down on his powerful haunches. He grabbed me by the hair and yanked. "You got things figured out, yet?"
I licked dry lips. "I think so, not sure."
"Shit, I gave you too much credit. I thought you'd start wondering when your maid's boy got snatched."
"I only got that part just now."
"You're a dumb shit."
"Yeah." I felt like I was about to pass out again. "I guess you're right." Donny Boy slapped my face. It hurt.
"Stay with me," Donny said. "Mary was one of us. She never really left. Shit, she called me soon as she ran out of money. She sorely needed her drugs, that girl."
I shook my head, stalling for time. "I don't understand . . ."
"Like Frisco said, it's payback time, dude. We've been tracking you for months, closing in one step at a time."
"But why drag me all the way out here?"
"Why? Shit, can you think of a better place for a junkie to die? I hate you, Callahan. You blew our drug operation wide open. You kicked my ass and left me for dead. You killed my friend Bobby Sewell. You took away my first chance to be a fucking millionaire."
"I didn't kill anybody."
Donny ignored me. "I swore I'd pay you back if it took me the rest of my natural life. Taking your maid's kid here was my first move. I expected you to come after him. But shit, all you did was offer a couple grand as a reward and talk it up on your show. What a pussy."
"Sorry to disappoint you."
Donny grinned and flexed his muscles. "Poor Mary, she never did like the kiddy porn thing, so I just kept her high. She seemed okay with hooking for Fancy and calling to set you up. She didn't really get cold feet until you got her clean. Then she stopped cooperating, so we had to go in and get her back. I really had to hurt her to get her to call you that last time, to get you to follow her here. She actually thought she was in love with you, man. Can you imagine that?"
"You're a sick bastard."
"So, we had to teach her a lesson. Hell, I taught her real good, too, didn't I, Callahan?"
I kicked at the big man's crotch, but I was still weak, off balance, and confused. Donny Boy punched me and I went down tasting blood. I wiped my mouth as Donny whispered oh boy, oh boy again.
Eye of the Burning Man: A Mick Callahan Novel (The Mick Callahan Series) Page 21
