“It’s right around the corner, that way.” She pointed to their left. “Or—wait, it’s that way.”
One of the men opened the back door. Joy hid behind Ed, who pulled her by the arm to hide behind a tree. The bald man looked around for a long time, then spoke quietly to his companion. Then he stepped out onto the patio and began walking slowly toward them.
“Somebody there?” the man called.
Ed crept deeper into the narrow hedgerow that separated the Guru’s yard from the neighbor’s. The ground was covered with dry undergrowth, and it was impossible for two people to move quietly. His right leg was starting to throb painfully in time with his racing heart.
“Come on out of there!” said Arthur’s man. Judging that there was no more point to sneaking, Ed grabbed Joy’s hand and took off running. They burst out of the trees and stopped themselves just short of falling into the neighbor’s swimming pool. Ed turned to face their pursuer. The man emerged from the hedgerow a moment later, smiling when he saw Ed.
“We been looking for you,” he said, cracking his knuckles for effect. He was as big as a gorilla and almost as hairy. “And your little girlfriend, too,” he added, leering at Joy. He stepped toward them, chuckling deep in his throat as another huge, dark shape materialized out of the trees silently behind him. This second person had a full head of hair. A towering, gravity-defying afro.
A sharp smack echoed through the stillness of the suburban neighborhood as Rayfield slapped Arthur’s man across the side of his head with his open palm, sending the bald man flailing sideways until he flopped to the ground. Rayfield was on top of him in an instant. Two more juicy thwacks, and the man didn’t move again.
“Nice to see you, Rayfield,” said Ed.
Rayfield got up and dusted himself off. “I’m glad I found you, Ed. And, uh...”
“Joy,” whispered Joy, craning her neck to gaze into Rayfield’s eyes with an expression of utter astonishment. “Hi.”
Rayfield reached down and shook her hand gently. “I’m Rayfield.” He stared into her eyes with a silly, crooked smile on his face until Ed cleared his throat self-consciously.
“There’s another one with him,” said Ed.
“Oh,” Rayfield said, blinking. “Right. I was supposed to wait in case you came back. And you came back!” He grinned and patted Ed on the shoulder.
“What happened? Why did you guys leave?”
Rayfield looked across the pool toward the neighbor’s house. “There was screams next door, and other noises. Somebody kept yelling, ‘Don’t kill me! Don’t kill me!’ Then they got real quiet, like somebody killed them even though they told ’em not to. Lou said it was Arthur’s people come to kill us, so we got out of there quick as we could. Then Lou and Geoffrey went to Terry’s house, and Lou told me to wait for you until it got light.”
“Did you go over there? Try to help?”
“Hell no. I been hidin’ in the bushes.”
There was a sharp bang from the direction of the Guru’s house, and they all turned to peer through the trees. They could just barely make out the back of the house, where the other man had stepped out onto the back patio, letting the door slam shut.
“We better go,” Rayfield whispered.
“I have a car,” whispered Joy.
They ducked low and tiptoed around the side of the neighbor’s house. The second man apparently hadn’t seen them; he was calling quietly for his friend as they snuck across the lawn and down the long, steep driveway. When they got to the street, Rayfield and Ed both looked at Joy.
“She’s around here somewhere,” she said, turning her head to look up and down the street with a trace of concern starting to show on her face. “Perla was supposed to wait for me.”
“Which way, dammit?” Ed snapped. He was growing impatient and had no interest in waiting for Arthur’s man to find them.
Joy hugged herself and moaned softly.
“Give her a minute, Ed,” Rayfield said sternly. “She been through a lot tonight.”
“She has?”
“Wait!” Joy exclaimed, pointing down the street toward a nearby intersection. “It’s around that corner! I―”
She was interrupted by a cry from a hundred yards down the street, where the second bald man had walked around to the front of the Guru’s house. “They’re over here!” He began running toward them, his pale, hairless scalp bobbing like a sweaty balloon. Two more men appeared in the doorway of the house. Rayfield instinctively stepped in front of Ed and Joy, nudging them behind him with his massive arms.
“We could really use that ride,” Ed complained, fully aware that he was whining.
“It’s okay,” said Rayfield. “I think I can handle three.”
The end of his sentence was mostly drowned out by a mechanical roar that shook the very bowels of the earth. With a screech of rubber on pavement, a great vehicle rounded the corner, teetering on two wheels as it made its turn. For one tense moment, it appeared as though it would tip over, and Ed was sure all would be lost. Somehow, though, it righted itself, came down heavily on its other two wheels, and sped directly toward where they stood at the edge of the street. Ed stared into its oncoming headlights like a doomed animal, knowing his end had finally come, but it swerved at the last instant and squealed to a stop beside them.
The Volkswagen microbus was the most magnificent motor vehicle Ed had ever seen. It was painted blue, but its color was difficult to discern because every square inch of it, other than the windows and Colorado license plates, was covered in stickers. There were stickers displaying peace signs and flowers, stickers of Scooby-Doo and his gang, stickers of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and the Archies. On the front of the van, where the manufacturer’s nameplate should have been, a cannon molded out of aluminum foil jutted out of the front of the van like a figurehead, its two foil caisson wheels faintly reflecting the headlights.
Joy opened the side door and hopped lightly inside. Ed and Rayfield clambered in behind her. Rayfield bumped his head hard enough to rock the whole vehicle, and muttered a quiet “Dang it!” as he pulled the door shut. He had to fold himself nearly into a ball to fit in the back with Ed. Joy had climbed up front to the passenger seat. Ed sat on the floor in the back, rubbing his sore leg, and rested his head against the side wall as the van took off with another piercing squeal. A little black dog with a squished-in face was sitting between the front seats, panting and looking at Ed with an amused expression. It barked once, sniffed Ed’s foot, and put its head down between its paws.
“Wow!” exclaimed the driver, a pretty, red-haired and freckled woman who kept turning around to look at Ed instead of the road. “That’s him?”
“That’s him!” said Joy.
The driver looked at a piece of paper taped to the dashboard, then back at Ed. “Huh.”
“Perla didn’t believe me,” Joy explained. She had to shout over the roar of the engine as Perla accelerated onto the freeway.
“I still don’t,” said Perla.
“But it’s him,” Joy insisted.
Ed leaned forward to get a look at the paper on the dashboard. It was a pencil drawing of a face that appeared to be his own. “Did you draw that?” he asked Joy.
“I drew all of them,” she replied, pointing toward the back of the van.
Ed looked around and gasped in amazement. There were similar sketches taped all over the interior walls of the van. They showed Ed at different ages, doing ordinary things—riding a bike as a child, working in the lab, watching television. One of them depicted him waving a fist at the gnome. Another one—Ed jumped to his feet when he saw it, banged his head hard on the roof of the bus, and sat back down hard. The dog jumped up at the same time, barking short, excited barks.
“Quiet, Buns,” Perla said.
“Where did these pictures come from?” Ed asked.
“I drew them,” Joy repeated impatiently.
“She dreams about you,” said Perla. “For what? More than a year now?
” Joy nodded. “That’s how we found that house. We drove all the way from Denver to find that house. Joy knew where to find it.”
“What about this one?” Ed pointed to the drawing that had caught his attention, one that showed him at the center of a vast, dark space. Tiny gaps in the scribbled graphite dotted the void all around him like little white lights.
“I don’t know what that one is,” said Joy. “But I’ve had that dream a lot.”
“Sorry to interrupt,” interrupted Perla, “but do you guys know where we can hide out from these shiny-headed creeps?”
“I thought we got away,” said Joy. “Didn’t we?”
“They always find me,” said Ed.
Rayfield had been peering out the rear window while they talked. “Somebody followin’ us,” he declared.
Perla glanced in her mirror. “The brown car, yeah. He’s trying to be sneaky by hanging back.”
“Can you get rid of ’em? We got to go to our friend’s house. Over in Benedict Canyon.”
“You might want to hang onto something back there.” Perla downshifted and the van lurched forward. The dog, Buns, clawed at the floor to keep itself from sliding around the inside of the vehicle. Ed, who had failed to hold onto anything, tumbled on top of Rayfield, who laughed deeply at Ed’s flailing attempts to regain his balance before helping him right himself.
The next several minutes were some of the most terrifying moments of Ed’s life. Perla kept the accelerator on the floor and wove through the traffic like a madwoman, then swerved on screaming tires to get off at an exit at the last possible instant. She zigzagged through side streets, got back on the freeway again, got off again, and cut through a gas station at high speed. The sudden, veering turns kept throwing Ed back and forth painfully against the walls of the van, while Rayfield laughed harder and harder at Ed’s difficulties.
At last, once Perla was satisfied that they had left the brown car behind, she slowed to a somewhat more reasonable speed and followed Rayfield’s directions to Terry Melcher’s house. This took almost two hours, because Rayfield had seldom gone to the house before and had never paid attention to how to get there. Ed chimed in occasionally to try to help, but his knowledge of that part of town was poor. When they did finally find the right street, they were all hot and hungry and irritable. It didn’t help matters when they learned that everyone in the house had been murdered the day before.
“You can’t drive up there,” a police officer told them through Perla’s window after he had stopped them at the iron gate that closed off Terry’s driveway. “Crime scene.”
Ed could see two squad cars from the Sheriff’s Office in the driveway. Policemen were walking up and down the driveway, talking to each other and pointing out pieces of evidence that had been ground into the dirt by the dozens of officers who had already walked there.
“What happened?” Ed asked, leaning forward to try to get a look at the house.
“Somebody broke in and killed everyone on the premises,” said the policeman with a shrug. Then he gave Perla a suspicious look. “What’s your business here? Did you know these people?”
Ed turned to look at Rayfield, who was staring back at him with a look of confused horror. Arthur, Ed mouthed to him.
“No,” Perla said to the policeman, smiling abashedly. “We’re lost. How do you get to Santa Monica from here?”
The officer regarded her stonily for a long, uncomfortable moment. “You can’t be here,” he said.
“Okay.” Perla put the van in reverse.
“And ma’am, you shouldn’t be driving around with all those stickers on your vehicle,” the officer said before she started to move. “I could cite you for that.”
“Oh, it’s okay,” Perla said, pointing to Joy. “It’s her car.” Then she turned the car around and sped away before the policeman could say anything more.
* * *
“It’s Arthur,” said Ed. He took a dejected sip of his Coke. “He knew I’d be at the Guru’s house, so he sent his men there. And he knew I’d go to Terry’s after that, so...” He trailed off, chewing the end of his straw. He could see Buns outside; the dog sat panting and looking in at them from his spot in the shade. Joy had reluctantly tied him up out front when the waitress had pointed angrily at the NO PETS sign on the door.
Rayfield had regained some of his composure since they’d left Terry’s house. He was now stuffing himself with hamburgers at a frightening rate.
“Who is this Arthur person?” said Perla.
“Arthur’s scary,” said Joy.
“You seen him?” Rayfield asked her.
Perla rolled her eyes. “No, she’s dreamed about him.”
“Stop rolling your eyes,” said Joy. “Yes, I’ve seen him.”
“Is he a real person,” Perla said, “or is he like that gnome?”
“The gnome’s a real person,” Ed explained. “He killed my wife.”
Perla looked at him levelly. “A gnome killed your wife?”
“Forget it.”
Rayfield stuffed the last bite of his second or third hamburger into his mouth. “Do you think Lou and Geoffrey were in there?” he said, spraying bits of hamburger at Ed as he spoke. Joy handed Rayfield a napkin.
Even though he couldn’t recall the last time he’d eaten, the smell of food was making Ed nauseous. He picked up a French fry, examined it like a forensic specimen, and put it back down again. “Why Terry? He seemed like a nice guy. I can’t understand how Arthur could do this to him.”
“Terry was always respectful to me,” said Rayfield, nodding sadly. He took a fry from Ed’s plate and gobbled it down.
Perla gestured with an onion ring. “How can you be sure it was Arthur that killed your friend?” Nibbling at it, she made a face and dropped it back on her plate. “Could be coincidence.”
“It was him,” said Ed. He told Perla and Joy about Arthur and his army of thugs, haltingly at first. When he had trouble remembering details, Rayfield filled in the gaps. This explanation led to other topics, and Ed found himself telling them about Doris, Rat and the Guru, and the visit he’d paid to Terry after the Guru had died.
“You should eat something, Ed,” said Joy. “You’re getting skinny.”
Perla was chewing thoughtfully. “So,” she said after swallowing, “He killed this Terry person. He tried to kill Rayfield but missed, got the wrong house. And he got your new little girlfriend to break up with you and run off.”
“Not my girlfriend.”
“Whatever she is.”
“And he had the Guru killed, too,” said Joy.
Rayfield was shaking his head. “No, Rat killed the Guru. Arthur wadn’t there.”
“Rat was working for Arthur,” Ed muttered. “I’m sure of it.”
“Ain’t no way,” said Rayfield. “Not Rat.”
“Arthur’s trying to isolate me so I have nowhere to turn but to him.” Ed tried a bite of hamburger, but it was cold and overcooked. “This is terrible,” he muttered once he was able to get it down.
“Yeah,” said Rayfield, nodding his head solemnly. “Sure is.”
“Ed,” Perla put in, “I don’t mean to be critical, but all your explanations come back to you. Isn’t it possible this Arthur person didn’t do all these things? Or if he did, that he had other reasons than just to make you do what he wants? It sounds like he knew some of these people long before you ever came along.”
Joy was frowning. “What about the gray-haired man with the big teeth? Is he on your side, or does he want to kill you too?”
“He doesn’t want to kill me. He wants to kill Jim Morrison.”
Rayfield cleared his throat. “Is that the FBI man? The Guru used to talk about him. Something having to do with the Blake book. The guv’mint wants to kill all the prophets, ’cause of something Blake wrote. The Guru said that Kajdas man was working for Urizen.”
“Prophets?” said Joy. “Like the boy with the Indians?”
Ed shrugged. “I don’t know how t
hat boy figures into it.”
“He was in the dream. The one with all the lights. Maybe we should go to that place and see if he’s there.”
Perla rolled her eyes again.
“Doesn’t matter,” said Ed. “If I knew where that place was, I’d go there. But I don’t know. Sarah and I already tried to find it. We sort of gave up. I was taken away right after that.”
“Who’s Sarah?” asked Rayfield.
“What’s so important about this place you’re talking about?” said Perla.
Joy brightened at her question. “It’s very important! There’s a boy there, and he’s part of the whole thing. It’s Ed’s job to prevent Orc and Urizen from destroying the world, and saving that boy is part of it.”
“What about Doris?” Rayfield said.
“Yes,” Ed said, speaking loudly to get his point across all the more effectively, “the place is important, but we don’t know where it is.”
“I know where it is,” Joy put in happily.
“I have to go water the plants,” Perla said, and left the table.
“Sarah is Doris,” Ed explained to Rayfield.
“I said I know where it is!” Joy shouted. Every head in the restaurant turned toward her. “I know where the dream place is,” she whispered, leaning closer to Ed and Rayfield. “You saw the city from above when you were flying over it, right? I went to the library and found the city in an atlas. It took about ten minutes.” She smiled sweetly in response to Ed’s open-mouthed stare. “Well, it did.”
They said no more until Perla came back to the table. “Disgusting in there,” she muttered, wiping her hands on a paper napkin dipped in a glass of water.
To everyone’s surprise, Rayfield stood up suddenly and clapped a hand on Ed’s shoulder. “I don’t know about y’all,” he announced, “but I need to go somewhere. With Geoffrey and Lou―” He frowned and shook his head at the floor, then continued, “Joy says this place Ed dreamed about is important. I say we go there. Right now.” He looked from Ed to Perla, who was still scowling at her hands and scrubbing with her napkin at invisible contaminations. “If Perla wants to take her car, we can go with her.”
Forest of the Mind (The Book of Terwilliger 1) Page 42
