by James Cole
*****
Reefers Woods – September, 1969
(Thirty-nine years ago)
The Child
It was September and, as the summer wound down, so did the availability of the purple lotus flowers in the swamp. Fortuitously, with the boy’s help, Claire Wales had amassed a nice stash of the flowers and, for her, the summer of the lotus marched on. More mornings than not, she still afforded herself the luxury of the drink made from the special tea bags, the ones that lent a deep-purple hue to her mid-morning pick-me-up.
It was one such morning that Claire, having separated herself from her friends, was sitting in the shade of a willow tree down by the river. It was during times like this, when she was alone and the woods were still and quiet, that her little friend would make her appearances.
From the beginning, Claire recognized that the lotus, though primarily a euphoric, possessed hallucinogenic properties as well. During the summer, this hallucinogenic component had been largely insignificant, most often manifested as a glimpse of movement where there was none or where none was expected. It also seemed to present itself in her peripheral vision. Every time Claire turned to look directly at the disturbance, nothing ever was there.
Nothing, that is, until a few weeks back. At the time, she had been alone in the woods, tripping on the Unreal. Much like prior instances, she sensed an out-of-place movement in the bushes. This time, however, when she looked, something – or actually, someone – was there. Though largely hidden, Claire perceived a young child watching her from the shadows. When Claire shifted her position to get a better view, the child simply melted into the background like she had never been there at all. Even after two additional and equally brief appearances, Claire chalked the sightings up to just another strange but harmless upshot of the lotus experience.
As the stream of days trickled into October, the child’s visits became more frequent and of longer duration and Claire began to entertain a particularly intriguing possibility:
Might she be real?
To begin to believe in the child was a natural progression. It might have been easier to do so except for one caveat of which she constantly reminded herself:
Remember what else you saw.
Claire had glimpsed other apparitions in the woods, frightening images that she immediately pushed aside. As much as she longed to embrace the child as real, she did not want to lend any credibility to the existence of these other creatures. She feared that, if she allowed the child to become real in her mind, the others might spring to life as well. Besides, if the child were real, then the circumstances become even more mysterious, considering what Claire realized for the first time today:
She looks like me.
Today the child was a little less hidden, or it might have been how the light hit her face that revealed more details than before, but, whatever the reason, this was the first time Claire noticed that the child looked like she did as a little girl. In her lotus-amplified dreams that night, when the child made yet another appearance, Claire advanced it one step further. In her dream she thought:
I am the child. The child is me.
With that revelation, Claire awoke and sat straight up in bed. She wondered if the lotus juice were altering her mind permanently, and if so, was it necessarily a bad thing? The presumed answer to the latter question, at least tonight’s answer, was a resounding no, for it was at that instant that she hit upon a most intriguing idea. Why not include the child in the background of some of her paintings?
Even though it was the middle of the night, Claire dragged her easel from the corner and feverishly mixed some paint on her palette. In the flickering light of a kerosene lamp, she carefully blended a likeness of the child into the background foliage of one of her most recent compositions. The result so pleased her that she did the same to several of her other paintings. Claire had never thought her work good enough to put up for sale, but tonight she decided that it might be time to try.
Chapter 32
Wednesday, December 3
From his sock drawer it whispered his name; softly, no louder than the slight sound made by his bed covers as he tossed and turned.
Jeremy…
Every day Jeremy accessed the dresser for clean clothes to wear and every day he was reminded of what he had buried inside. When he thought of the Unreal tucked into the recess of the drawer, he could not help but think of the girl secreted away in the dark alcoves of his mind. It was she who had passed the Unreal to him at the ice cream shop and it was her voice – Monika’s voice – that whispered to him now.
Jeremy…
A stray impulse advised him to just get it over with, one way or the other. Having the Unreal in the condo only fed his desire for Monika, as his desire for her and it would always be tied together. He should take it or flush it – right here, right now.
Just take it.
Jeremy wanted to take it but at the same time he feared where it might lead him if he did. If he allowed himself to come under the influence of the Unreal, would he once again betray Jinni and seek out Monika?
Flush it.
If he did – and if he avoided Monika as he had promised – he would be flushing away his last opportunity to burn with the ecstasy of the Unreal. Even if he never freed the Unreal from its sock tomb, what would be the use of throwing it away? If only for future study, it had value. It would be foolish to toss it.
Save it, then.
Straddling the middle of that uneasy truce, Jeremy tried to settle down into sleep. He assured himself that, in time, he could learn to live in peace with the temptations it presented.
Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
Like a tiny tell-tale heart, the capsule was alive.
Go away, Jeremy pleaded. He cradled his pillow over his ears in an effort to block out the sound, but to no avail. The drumming originated not from inside the drawer but from inside his head. He knew this, but the knowledge was worthless. Jeremy tried to turn his twisted mind back toward the things that mattered; back toward that which is sane, back toward that which is real.
Do it for Jinni.
He focused on the ceiling fan above his bed and its slow-twirling blades. If he could not remove this wanton craving from himself, perhaps he could remove himself from it.
My mind has wings.
In his mind, Jeremy manufactured a mountain meadow. Rays of the yellow sun warmed his face. Water gurgled from a nearby stream. Far away, a hawk cried out. Brightly colored wildflowers decorated the landscape and pearly bouquets of clouds adorned the sky. The sweet fragrance of flowers rode piggy back on the breeze. Jinni was there and they sat together on the ground, their feet bare upon a soft carpet of clover. He watched as her hands tied together a necklace of flowers with unhurried grace.
A gift for you, she whispered, and gently placed it around his neck.
All was bliss inside his daydream.
As Jeremy admired the daisy-chain necklace he thought how the flowers were familiar to him, although he didn’t immediately know how so.
In the distance, but not so far away as before, the hawk cried out: Har!
These flowers, so familiar.
Again, the hawk cried out, closer this time: Har! Har!
Oh my gosh. All at once Jeremy recognized those flowers. They were purple, identical to the purple bloom in the hair of the melancholy child in Claire’s painting.
Har! Har!
The proximity of the hawk’s shriek startled Jeremy. He turned to see it on the ground right behind him.
Jerrrr-re-my, it cried in its sing-song voice.
“Bug off, you.” Jeremy was getting ticked off. “This is my daydream.”
The ornery bird held its ground. Come with me! it demanded. The hawk sounded like Monika.
“Leave me alone,” Jeremy pleaded. “I made a promise to Jinni.”
Jeremy turned back toward Jinni but she was gone. When he looked again, he found that the appearance of the hawk had changed. Its feathers had been re
placed by hair – silky human hair, black as night.
Don’t you want me?
“Yes.” The affirmation spewed spontaneously from his lips, muting what he meant to say, overriding any utterances of reason.
That shook Jeremy from his reverie. He had lost control of his daydream somewhere along the way. He must have been falling asleep and dreams, as a rule, don’t follow the dreamer’s script. Thankfully, Jeremy found himself back in his bed, back in reality. But after a few minutes, just when he started to relax a bit, the original distraction returned.
Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
In frustration Jeremy stripped the bed of its covers and pillow. He stomped out his bedroom door, slamming it shut in his wake, and relocated to the couch in the living room.
What, he wondered, had happened to him that a figment of his imagination could chase him from his bed? What of the other symptoms of an unstable mind, the voices in his head and the ultra-vivid dreams? What of the amazing disappearing children in the woods?
“God help me,” he muttered.
*****
Reefers Woods – November, 1969
(Thirty-nine years ago)
The Longing
During the latter stages of the autumn of ‘69, the blue-eyed boy had begun spending some nights at the commune. From what Claire could gather, he was troubled by his home life, and when he had asked if he could stay over one night, she had reluctantly agreed. Allowing a minor to stay with them invited trouble with the law, especially without proper permission. But he had begged and said that his uncle, or whomever it was he stayed with, didn’t care one way or the other. Claire certainly never meant for it to become a regular occurrence, but by the time November rolled around, the boy slept at the commune more nights than not.
Meanwhile, as the hippies’ supply of lotus flowers dwindled away, so too did the idyllic peace and harmony fade. While Claire had her personal cache of lotus to quell her need, she did not share, nor did she dare tell anyone else of it. In the beginning, she, too, tried giving it up, just to see what might happen, but it didn’t take long to acknowledge that mistake. Almost immediately, she began to feel grumpy, mean and mad. Nothing satisfied. Every day was defined by a growing, unappeasable want. Sleep ran from her. After only 13 days, her disgruntlement intensified to the point that she felt as if life were not worth living.
One dose of the lotus relieved her suffering, but her friends’ ordeal worsened. Claire bore witness to the rising melancholy, angst and paranoia of the other commune members. Short of giving up some of her lotus, which was out of the question, she could do nothing but stand helplessly by. Except for the young boy who, to her knowledge, had never eaten of the lotus blooms, each of the other members lived out his or her own version of unrequited desire.
Claire had hoped that, in time, their harrowing symptoms would lessen, but indeed, they did not. Yet no one would leave the commune lest they miss out on the upcoming lotus season, still months away. They seemed intent to ride out the storm, come hell or high water.
Hell came.
Chapter 33
Thursday, December 4
It was Thursday afternoon, less than 24 hours since Jeremy first conceived of a foray to Reefers Woods to look for Claire’s purple lotus. While in the process of programming coordinates into his GPS unit, the phone rang.
“Do you have your television on?” Tavalin’s tone carried a burden of ill omens.
“What is it?” asked Jeremy as he punched the buttons that summoned the talking heads of CNN.
“It’s bad,” replied Tavalin. “Brace yourself.”
Jeremy looked and listened in disbelief at the prime-time news report. The anchor, an attractive brunette and one whom Jeremy had seen and admired before, was talking about the murder case. In the upper right quadrant of the screen beside her flowing hair was a still image of Jeremy’s face. She was speaking of him.
She was saying, “…we have breaking news in the brutal mutilation and murder of June Song, the case that has, for the past ten days, gripped the nation. Jeremy Spires, a coworker of the deceased, has been identified by a reliable source as a person of interest in the case. No charges have been filed and no other details have been released. Though we don’t yet know much about Mr. Spires, we do have an acquaintance of his on the telephone…”
“Hello?” asked the pretty anchor. “Can the caller hear me?”
The caller was a classmate of Jeremy’s whose name he scarcely recognized, certainly not someone who had any intimate knowledge to pass along to all the inquiring minds. About all the anchor could pull from the conversation was that Jeremy always sat on the back row and that he mostly kept to himself. Though they did not say it, Jeremy was waiting on them to refer to him as a loner, that term that always seemed to apply to serial-killer types with no prior arrest records.
“Are you still there?”
Jeremy recoiled at the sound of Tavalin’s voice. He had forgotten that he still held the phone to his ear.
“I’m here,” replied Jeremy flatly. He felt dead and utterly devoid of emotion.
“What are we going to do?” asked Tavalin.
“We?” asked Jeremy. “They didn’t mention your name too, did they?”
“No, but I’ve got to believe it’s only a matter of time before I get sucked into this too. We already told the cops we spent most of the evening and night together.”
Jeremy wanted to tell Tavalin not to be worried if only to shut him up, but to do that Jeremy would have to pretend not to be worried himself. “You’re probably right,” he said.
“Jeremy?”
“Hang on...” Jeremy was trying to hear what the eye-catching anchor was saying about him now. As he watched, she no longer struck him as bubbly and insightful, as she once did; he now saw her true colors. She was a gossip and an instigator, and Jeremy could hardly stand to look at her and her perpetually glossy lips.
“Can I ask you a question?” asked Tavalin hesitantly.
“What?” asked Jeremy, still not paying full attention to his friend.
“You didn’t do it, did you?”
The newscast cut to commercial.
“Do what?” asked Jeremy.
“Kill June.”
“Tell me you’re not serious.”
“Not really.” Tavalin waited a few seconds before qualifying the remark. “I was just checking to be sure.”
As the top of the hour rolled around, the newscast replayed the worst part of the coverage, Jeremy’s face. The three o’clock anchor’s lead-in was, “What does this man, Jeremy Spires, know about the gruesome death of June Song? That seems to be the question everyone is asking…”
“I’ve got to get out of here,” Jeremy said, as he killed the power to the television set. “Let’s go to Cooter’s.”
“When?”
“Right now.”
*****
Jeremy set out for the bar on foot. He desperately needed a reprieve and hoped that, for starters, the mile-long walk would help burn off the energy of his pent-up anxiety, but he could not easily release from his mind the spectacle just witnessed. It mattered little that, technically, the term suspect was never used in reference to his standing with the police. Based on the news report, millions of viewers would undoubtedly judge him as guilty. Jeremy was afraid that he had become, for all intents and purposes, the presumed mutilator-killer in the highly publicized ritual murder of June Song.
As Jeremy walked self-consciously through the Square, he read his name on the lips of the passer-bys, and every gaze that met his eyes harbored knowing looks and accusations. Sidewalk traffic gave him wide berth. Who wouldn’t shrink away and shield their children from him, the infamous hometown murderer and mutilator?
While perhaps the downtown scene was not quite as portentous as he imagined, Jeremy feared that his future could unfold exactly as he imagined. Even Tavalin had felt compelled to ask if he were the one who killed June. If Tavalin, his closest ally besides Jinni, had been
swayed so easily by that juggernaut of influence, the media, what chance did Jeremy have among the minions of society?
Though the walk over did little to relieve Jeremy’s worries, he could try to smother them inside the smoky atmosphere of Cooter’s or drown them inside the golden amber of a cold draught beer – or two or three.
Cooter’s Pool Hall served the indigenous population. It stood defiantly as the last bastion of the common drinking man in a town that catered to the educated, the artsy and the upper middle class. The décor, if one could use a word like that for a place like Cooter’s, was bare-bones. Lighted beer signs hung from the walls, attached to their respective electrical cords like neon dogs on dust-laden leashes. On the cheap linoleum floor stood an array of pool tables, as precisely aligned as the members of a marching military band. Illumination for each green-felt playing surface was provided by fluorescent lights encased in low-hanging King Cobra Premium Malt Beer housings. Out of the old, beat-up juke box in the corner blared an endless stream of tunes by the Allman Brothers, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and Stevie Ray Vaughn.
Jeremy was already well into the first pitcher of beer by the time Tavalin walked in, his head on a swivel.
Tavalin greeted Jeremy with the question, “What are you going to do?”
“Nothing, other than play pool and drink this beer.” Jeremy desperately wanted to escape the news of the afternoon, not rehash it.
