by Marc Laidlaw
“If he spews, Edgar, you’re cleaning it up,” Mad-Dog said.
“Spewin’ sputum!” someone sang.
“How—how much did I take?”
“No way to tell,” said Edgar. “Kurtis makes it pretty strong.”
“Soaked a quarter sheet of blotter in there till it fell apart,” Kurtis said. “Hey, don’t kiss me with jizz in your mouth, baby. Think I’m a faggot, I wanna taste that? Fuckin’ rinse first.”
Mike swallowed and swallowed again, flexing his tongue, feeling the paper shreds coagulating in the deep folds of his mouth, behind the molars. Acid. LSD. What was it anyway? Was it the stuff that replaced bone tissue so you had to have constant doses to stay alive, or was that heroin? His knowledge of drugs came mainly from a film he’d seen during a school field trip to the Museum of Science and Industry in L.A. All he remembered of the movie was needles going into wormlike festering veins, followed by pictures of scary sugar cubes and whirling spirals with grinning skulls zooming past in a storm of black and white pills and capsules, against a background of insane laughter something like what Mad-Dog was doing now. He also remembered a skinny kid puking in a wastebasket, a miserable image which had obliterated any desire to experience the exciting, Halloween-like thrills of spirals and skulls. LSD was the hallucination drug, responsible for acid trips, psychedelic art, and hippies.
Psychedelic art, he thought. Wow . . . like the Yellow Submarine!
I might have a hallucination! I might see things that don’t exist, with my eyes wide open. Is it like dreaming when you’re awake?
I’m going to find out.
He could feel his heart pounding harder than ever, keeping time with the thoughts ripping through him. He listened carefully, straining his eyes in the dimness. There was very little to see so far. He supposed that almost anything might appear in the darkness, and it wouldn’t be as impressive as hallucinations in broad daylight. He hoped it would be something better than skulls and needles. He liked skulls well enough, and drew them all the time, but needles were another matter. Maybe he would see something he could draw or paint. He’d never done much in color, or with paint, but this could be the thing that sparked him. He could be the next Peter Max! A whole line of Day-Glo posters and notebooks and decals and lunchboxes unreeled before his eyes. Maybe he should ask Dusty to drive by his house so he could pick up a tablet and a pen. But it was too dark in here, and jostling. He couldn’t possibly draw. What was he thinking?
He wished again that Scott were here. This was the sort of thing they should have done together, in case it got too weird. He wasn’t sure exactly how much he trusted Edgar.
On the other hand, if Scott had been here, they might have talked each other out of drinking; together, they might have dared less. Then he probably never would have tried LSD. Scott’s ridicule of drugs was ceaseless. So maybe it was just as well he was on his own. It gave him a sense of freedom that swept aside his fears and anxieties. He couldn’t wait, now, to see what the night would bring.
Outside the van, he distinctly heard hooves galloping over cobblestones. It took him a few seconds to figure out that he had put his palms over his ears to blot out the voices around him. He lifted his hands and heard a gruff, urgent little voice: “How’s it feel, man? You losing it yet?”
“Shut up, Mad-Dog,” Edgar said. “What’re you trying to do, push him over the edge? Ignore him, Mike, it doesn’t come on that fast.”
“I think I feel something. I’m not sure.”
“Yeah? Maybe you’re hypersensitive. That’s good for the ESP, you know. That was fucking amazing tonight, you drawing that tire. Hey, guys, Mike and I had some telepathy going!”
“You told him about the risk of permanent damage, right?” Kurtis said.
“Lay off,” Edgar said.
“I mean, me, I don’t care. I don’t want kids, but if you were planning on it, well . . . I hope you like flippers.”
Mike realized, with a huge and superior amusement, that Kurtis was teasing him. He felt a stately warmth toward him—towards all of them. It seemed he could see them clearly in the dark, through a process of echolocation such as bats relied upon.
“Don’t tell him shit like that,” said Edgar, his guide and protector in this exotic new world.
“Fair warning, James, that’s all. I mean, some people don’t mind a little brain damage for the chance of seeing God.”
GOD
. . . god . . .
The word echoed in the van. He could hear the creak of every spring, the rattle of every bolt in the metal shell that carried them; and all the parts picked up the word god and repeated it over and over again endlessly, each in its own peculiar, particular voice.
Suddenly Mad-Dog shouted, even louder than the inanimate choir, “Stop the van! Stop it!”
“He’s gonna blow, Dusty!”
They lurched forward as the brakes screamed. The door flew open. Mike watched with remote amusement as Mad-Dog threw himself toward a storefront with a thorny hedge whose waxy pointed leaves glowed and crawled under the streetlights. Mad-Dog pushed his face into the thorns and proceeded to vomit with exquisite grace, as if he were a dancer, one arm thrust out behind him, the fingers curling like the fresh baby creepers of a newborn plant. Mad-Dog growled and barked and shook his head, flinging ropes of saliva. Everyone laughed. It all took forever. Mike gulped huge drafts of fresh air. In the new light, he saw into the corner where Kurtis sat with his arms around a dark-haired girl; he didn’t know her name but her face was familiar from the Alt-School. Mad-Dog heaved again and curled up on the pavement like a pillbug.
Dusty said, “Someone go check he’s not choking on his tongue or something.”
“Yeah, Mad-Dog! Do a Jimi!”
Edgar stepped out onto the street. Mike felt suddenly afraid for him. Here it was solid, cagelike, secure; but beyond the safe black confines of the van, anything might happen. As Edgar approached Mad-Dog, Mike’s vague nagging feeling of dread grew stronger, more definite. He felt certain that he would soon see it clearly.
The storefront pulsed with light. He saw with a delayed shock of understanding that the window above the hedge was not a window at all but an aquarium. Inside the tank, gray mannequins were swimming. They twitched toward Edgar in the cold glare of the streetlight, burlap fingers raking the dingy broth for sustenance. They would soon move directly into the light. Any moment now, he would see their faces.
“Edgar!” he screamed.
Edgar stooped over Mad-Dog, whispering. As he turned around, blindly nodding toward the sound of his name, Mike saw that Edgar’s face had vanished. The eyeless, mouthless head had the texture of stretched canvas, but somehow it managed to grin. Mike struggled to free himself from the press of bodies.
“Open your eyes,” said a girl.
He hadn’t known they were shut. He blinked and light streamed in. He saw Edgar helping Mad-Dog to his feet on the sidewalk. The window was only a dress-shop window. The mannequins were simply and elegantly mannequins. They could never be anything else.
He looked over at the girl beside him. Deep brown eyes; a round white face with high cheekbones; pale hair pulled back from her high forehead, held in a bandanna tied off like a gypsy kerchief. His heart leaped with love, as if he had known her—desired her—forever.
“You’re okay,” she said.
Then the door slammed shut again, and the van took off.
It wasn’t as dark in the van now. The air was full of lingering shapes—tumbling emeralds, complicated jewels, intricate pieces like interlocking light-flecks in a kaleidoscope. Leafy vines dripped down from a rainforest canopy. His body felt as if it were made of wind, fit with wings to carry him over the streets. But at the same time, he was one of a pack of wolves, all of them chattering and growling wolf-talk in a dark den. Wolf-monkeys. Was there any such thing? There was now. Somehow he had landed among them; he was a changeling among adopted siblings. Best of all, he had a beautiful sister he adored, one who loved him compl
etely. Even now she was licking his throat, purring against him, clasping his paws with her own.
“Hey,” Howard said, his voice slurred and blurry. “The dark, it’s something you get used to when you’re staring at the door like I’m a little kid and the light in the palace is coming from so far away. . . . ”
“Man, Howie,” Kurtis said. “That is really deep.”
And Howard began to weep piteously. “You got no right, asshole! I was talking to Craig!”
“Sh, shush,” said his wolf-girl sweetheart, and then she tore away from him, a painful separation that left him rocking in the rocking dark. As he heard her whispering to Howard, a vast and vicious rage began to grow inside him, or else revealed its immensity for the first time. It was as if he had merely peeled away a tiny shred of the protective leaden outer coating, allowing an evil radioactivity to seep out. Her voice, so gentle, seemed the essence of femininity, calm, comforting. Anger burned through him and destroyed itself, leaving ashes, desperation, loneliness. How could he rage against such beauty? Deserted, he would crumple here and die. He would make not a sound of protest or complaint. He would die gladly having kissed her only once—but he had never kissed her except in a dream, and his misery knew no limits. It filled the empty reaches his rage had eaten into him for eons.
It was a form of resurrection when her fine cool hands returned. “He’s been having a hard time,” she confided. “I guess his best friend died recently.”
“Mine too,” Mike whispered, not knowing himself exactly what he meant, but she squeezed him anyway and it was as though she had never left—as if she had been faithful forever. Her embrace promised a secret world of pleasure leading out of this world like a flower-stalk soaring up from the mundane worm-tunneled soil and blooming elsewhere, in a diamond realm. He didn’t know or care if his eyes were closed or open now. He reached for her and felt her flow into him, as though they had been twinned together always, one body, one soul.
And yet, there was something new here. They might have been soulmates for eternity, but one crucial connection had never been made. It was a purely physical thing—unbearably so. He became suddenly and painfully aware of his dick, an adamant wand shoved into a pocket, gouging him insistently, bringing him down from the dizzy heights. His balls ached from the nearness of fulfillment, release.
Had she felt it, he suddenly wondered, nudging or prodding her? How could she not have? And who was she anyway? He didn’t care, as long as It could finally happen. His rite of manhood; his initiation. Had it come to him finally, here and now? If so, he was willing to accept it even in the crowded van, where it was dark enough to forget everything else.
Then she drew away from him.
“Where are you going?”
“Goin’ nowhere, man,” someone answered—but not her.
“Where—?” He reached for her, but she was gone. He had repelled her for some reason, so she had left him. just like that. And not for just any reason. His dick had done it. Beyond his control, like an outright enemy—traitor!—it had reared up and threatened or disgusted her.
“Don’t be scared,” she whispered in his ear. “I’m here, love.”
But how could she be here when he couldn’t feel her? She had been beside him, and now she was gone. Arms he thought he’d put around her were wrapped instead around himself.
He gulped at rational thought like a dolphin breaching for air, and then the descent began, the depth-sounding.
As the darkness grew impenetrable, he feared to move, feared his body might betray him in some mortal fashion. Spiders crept across him, furry tarantulas and chitinous shiny black widows taking delicate eight-legged steps, brushing his flesh daintily, extruding their hollow curved fangs to pierce him, poison him, and suck him dry. If he moved they would sense him in the web. He was trapped already, wrapped in sticky silk, doomed in the end like any other insect. If he could only stay still, prolong it—
But no. His body hummed like a piano wire, taut with repressed screaming. He hurled himself at the stretched-out moon that hung mockingly in the sky, a pale parallelogram. The air filled with shouting; birds and bats seized him in their wings, trying to drag him down, but he clawed his way through them, fighting to get at the light. Spiral galaxies, bright nebulae, exploding stars—all went streaming through the light, which from certain angles resembled a windshield. He had to get out, more than ever now that the spiders had started calling him by name.
Tenacious vermin, they dragged him back, threw him down on their carpeted web and sat upon him. Gulliver among invisible Lilliputians, prone on the floor of a rumbling cave.
A flash of light caught his attention, trapped his soul. Hanging in space like Macbeth’s dagger, blood dripping from a serrated edge, he saw it take on form:
His key.
The lost, surrendered, stolen key.
Emotions and images streamed from the key. It was the radiant star that lit up every dread. He had kept his terror locked away for centuries—all his guilts and insecurities, his nightmares and doubts; and not only his alone, but those of all men. Every monster they had chased into the night and shut out beyond the fortress door was fighting for possession of that key. He had locked that door himself, as had Beowulf, and with this very key. But it was his no longer. The monsters needn’t roar and pound at the gate. They owned the key, and no one but Mike knew it. They were free to come and go as they wished. When they wished.
Soon, they whispered. Very soon.
The key dangled before his eyes, but out of reach. The hand that held it poised unseen. He shut his eyes and saw it still, glimmering like a piece of the moon. It lay in his palm, beside a knife—a switchblade. He admired the way the moonlight caught its edges. Like the knife blade, it was silver. And like the knife, it was a weapon.
He was moving through a thicket, crouching low, with the key held out ahead of him like a lantern, or a magnet pulling him along. He smelled sagebrush, sharp and resinous; he heard footsteps all around him and saw the shadows of companions from the corners of his eyes. Abruptly the branches fell away and the key lit up with the full force of the moon. He stood on a hillside, craning up at a tall narrow house, sliding glass windows and wooden decks precariously stacked. He had never seen it from quite this angle, by moonlight, but he knew it was his house. Not a light was on anywhere inside it.
Terror and panic caught him in full flood, bearing him away through ears, eyes, and mouth. He was swept toward the key, and reached out as if to tear it from himself, to steal it from his other hand. But the tide of fear swirled him past and the key went rushing away, dwindling into darkness behind him. The currents swept him in the opposite direction. He gave up struggling, stopped swimming, let himself float facedown, sucking at the black waters, hoping he would drown.
Instead he washed up on a barren shore. Someone was dragging him into faint light.
Edgar spoke to him cautiously. “Mike . . . you okay?”
He opened his eyes, seeing red sparks pulling into distance. Taillights. Dusty’s van was driving away down a dark street. He looked up at the moon, then down at the earth. He was sitting on Edgar’s front steps.
“Yeah . . . you look pretty high.”
Mike’s mouth felt like a new instrument, not yet broken in. “Wha’ happen?”
“Nothing. And everything.” Edgar’s grin was wide and knowing. “Know what I mean?”
He felt a sudden conviction that Edgar had been part of his visions, that Edgar had seen the key and understood the nature of the creatures that controlled it. Even as he thought this, Edgar nodded and put a hand on his shoulder.
“Riiiiight. No fear, okay? Let’s get up. I want to try something while the acid’s still fresh. We’re past the main rush, but we’ll be flying for a good long while yet. I should warn you, you might be feeling the effects for a few days, since this is your first time. We’ll drink some beer later to bring us down; I’ve got B-12 in the house. For now, though, do you feel up to another ESP experiment?”
Mike rose and stretched, not answering yet. His body felt soft, elastic, as if strong water currents were rushing along his limbs. He took a deep breath and felt it spreading through his cells; he could feel carbon molecules snagging on the oxygen before he exhaled.
“This—I mean, everything you felt and knew and saw . . . that’s what ESP really is,” Edgar said, leading them back behind the house. “That’s what I keep trying to say. It’s weird . . . subtle . . . not like a regular voice talking, like I am now. It’s people thinking the same things at the same time, so you can never say one of them thought it and the other picked up on it. It’s more, both of them pick up on it simultaneously, right? Mutual arising, the Buddhists call it. Everybody creates reality at the same time, you know?”
Mike nodded. It made visceral, instinctive sense to him at the moment. He could almost see Edgar’s words forming illustrations in the air.
He felt very close to Edgar, who had been with him at the darkest time in the van. Guide and guardian, he remembered suddenly.
“Who . . . who was that girl?” he asked as they went around to the back of the house.
“You mean Kurtis’s girlfriend?”
“No, the other one.”
“Up with Dusty, you mean? That’s his old lady, Nancy.”
“No, the other one.”
“What other one?”
“The third one. She was . . . you know . . . with me.”
Edgar looked at him strangely. “There wasn’t any third one. It was just you.”
Mike gaped at him. “But I—” How could he describe it? Words were unreliable. “I had my arms around her. I looked right in her eyes. She touched me and . . . and kissed my face . . .”
“No way,” Edgar said with awe in his voice.
“She was there. She had blond hair in, you know, in a scarf. She was so beautiful. You had to have seen her.”
His heart ached with the memory of her beauty, but Edgar only shook his head. “I’m telling you, Mike, there wasn’t any third girl, and none of the other two went near you.” He pulled in close, secretively whispering. “You know—you know who it must have been? Man, I can’t believe it.”
