How long has it been, Aleksander? he thought. How long since you have caressed a warmth, touched a softness, held a woman? How long can you go on this way? He shifted his weight uncomfortably, intimidated by the proximity of youth, by the unconscious brazenness of the half-exposed breasts that moved as she breathed and quivered when she coughed. His eyes moved back to the girl and he looked with longing at the white, unblemished throat framed by long, jet-black tresses.
His gaze drifted over to Sean. How can she like a thing like this? he wondered as he looked at the long blond hair, matted and dirty, and the unshaven face. How in God's name can she like a thing like this?
"Why you have hair like that?" he asked, only half realizing that he had spoken his thoughts aloud.
Sean stared dully at him for a moment. "Huh?"
"Why you have hair like that? You look like a bum. Why you don't get it cut?"
Sean laughed. "Are you serious?"
"Why you want to look disgusting like this? Why you don't want to look like decent people?"
"I want to look like a degenerate, just like all my friends do," Sean replied sarcastically.
"That kid who loves the birds and the fishes, he don't got long hair," Alex spat. "He got short hair, like man."
"Like a man! Are you for real?"
"Yeah, he got hair like a man, not like you!"
"Only till his shrink gets him out of the Navy reserve," Sean replied. "He couldn't beat the draft like the rest of us did, so he—"
"Who gonna hire you for a job looking like that?" Alex demanded. "You look like a bum. Who gonna hire you for a job?"
Sean shrugged. "Who wants a job? I got one now I don't want. I'll do like Russell says, just hang around and wait for the revolution. Then nobody'll have to work. We can just hang out all the time, getting stoned." Rebecca started to laugh, but then saw the concerned look on her brother's face and realized that the conversation was becoming volatile.
"You think you make a revolution?" Alex shouted. "You and your kind, you bums, you little shits?"
"Hey, we got twenty million people in this country who smoke dope, five million who do acid. We're gonna be the majority pretty soon."
"Yeah, you counted them all, Mr. Big Shot?"
"Don't be like obtuse, man," Sean replied, his voice dripping with condescension. "I mean, how many communists were there in Russia in 1917, you know?"
"You're a communist, too, you bum?"
"Russell's a communist. I'm an anarchist."
"You think you can make everybody like you, you little bastard, use drugs all the time and kill yourself with liquor?"
"Oh, right, Mr. Sobriety over here!"
"The children, they are good children. They don't use no drugs."
"Don't kid yourself, man. There's as much dope in high school as there is in college."
Clayton shook Sean's arm roughly. "Sean, cut it out. Let's go home."
"Yeah," Rebecca echoed, "let's go home."
Alex was fuming. "The children don't use drugs, not here they don't."
"Bullshit." Sean grinned. "There's grass growing on the roadside along Route 42."
"You think the children should use drugs? You think it's good the children use drugs?"
"I don't think it's any of your fucking business what I think."
"Sean, goddamn it!" Clayton said. "This is nuts! Stop arguing with him, and let's just split."
"You know what I think, you goddamn hippie?" Alex yelled. "You don't work for a living, you don't want to work for a living, you're disgusting! I think you're too damn lazy and selfish and stupid to overthrow anything, you goddamn dirty, stinking piece of shit!"
Sean rolled his eyes heavenward. "Oh, yeah, sure. Go ahead, be judgmental!"
"You take everything this country gives you and you waste it. You and your kind, you don't build up nothing, you just tear down."
"Yeah, great fucking country," Sean shouted back, "so long as you're white. The Vietnamese don't think it's such a great fucking country, neither do the Indians or the blacks—"
"You don't know shit about this country!"
"You don't know shit about nothing. You sound like my parents, for Christ's sake."
"Your parents, they know what a lousy bum you are? You know you break your mother's heart?"
"That's her problem. She got her life, I got mine."
"You goddamn kids, you got everything on earth just handed to you, you don't gotta struggle, you don't gotta suffer, you just waste money and live like filth."
Sean laughed. "Give me a break!"
"Yeah, yeah, I give you a break, I give you a break in your goddamn head, you bum!"
Clayton grabbed Sean by the arm and pulled him to his feet. "That does it. Come on, we're leaving."
Sean pulled his arm free of Clayton's grasp and shouted at Alex, "Who the fuck do you think you are, you old asshole? What makes you think you're so fucking great?"
"You don't talk to me like that!"
"I'll talk to you any way I fucking want to talk to you, you horny old bastard. You're just jealous, that's all. You're too old to do what I'm doing, and it eats you up inside."
Alex slammed his fists down on the table and screamed, "You shut up!"
Sean saw the sensitivity, and he attacked it with the grim determination of a boxer who has just seen a cut open on his opponent's eye. "You're getting old, man, too old to get the girls, to old to have any fun. You've been working so long that you've forgotten how to live. You ain't pissed at me because of what I'm doing, you're pissed at life because you ain't doing it, too."
"You filthy bum!" Alex screamed, tears welling up in his eyes. "You goddamn filthy bum!"
Clayton shouted in Sean's ear, "Jesus Christ, Brenner, what the hell's the matter with you? Let's go, goddamn it!"
"Work, work, work, Alex." Sean smiled cruelly. "Your whole fucking life, all you ever did was work. You sit here in this broken-down old bar in this little crack-in-the-plaster town and you make believe you're a businessman, but you're nothing but a failure, a fraud."
"Shut up!"
"You're old and you're useless, Alex, and you're on the way out. Life has passed you right by, old man. Look!" and he made a quick sweeping gesture with his hand. "There it goes!"
Alex grabbed Sean by the hair and drew back his fist, screaming, "I break you in half, you bastard!"
Sean knocked Alex's hand away and Clayton began to drag him toward the door. "Becky," he said curtly. "Go start the jeep."
She ran outside without stopping to gather any of the clothes that were strewn about the floor. As Clayton dragged him from the room, Sean was yelling, "Hey, hey, old man, fuck you, old man, hey, fuck you, old man!"
Alex screamed unintelligibly and grabbed the knife he had been using to slice the lemons. He ran toward the door, crying, "You filthy bastard! I cut you in half, you goddamn bum, I kill you!"
Clayton pushed Sean outside and then shut the door, holding tightly onto the knob to keep Alex from pulling it open. "Get in the back of the jeep," he ordered Sean, "and tell Becky to get out of the driver's seat." Sean hesitated, and Clayton shouted, "Goddamn it, Brenner, do what I say or I'll beat the shit out of you myself!" As Sean complied Clayton pushed the door open, knocking Alex to the floor inside, and then ran for the jeep. He jumped into the driver's seat and began to drive wildly up the road.
Chapter Twelve
January 4, 1969
Her eyes felt heavy, much heavier than they should have upon awakening from a night's sleep. She stretched and yawned, reaching up behind her to where the brass bedstead should have been. She felt only roughly hewn wood. Realizing that something was odd, she opened her eyes and saw that she was not in her bedroom. She sat up in bed and gasped.
Dorcas looked around frantically, not knowing at first where she was, and then recognizing the bedroom where she had visited with elderly, ailing Edith Sweet so often during her childhood. I'm in the old Sweet house. What on earth am I doing in . . . ?
Then she remembered, and she shrieked.
No sound answered her cry, no footsteps hurried toward the door in response. The only movements were the shadows made by the old curtains as the cold sun of winter dawn streamed in through the windows, and the only sound she heard was the whistle of the wind as it blew through the naked branches of the trees.
"What happened?" she wondered aloud. "I was in the cave . . . I saw Mr. Schilder . . . Vernon . . ." She shuddered at the memory and threw the blanket from her as she jumped out of the bed. She was still dressed as she had been the previous day, and she found her jacket hanging on a hook beside the bedroom door. She donned it hurriedly and ran from the house.
She was just about to run into the woods and make her way back toward the River Road when she stopped abruptly and stared into the cumulative thickness of the trees in front of her. What if he's waiting for me in there?
That's stupid, she argued with herself. Vernon doesn't mean you any harm. He could have killed you last night in the cave if he wanted to. She looked back at the house. He must have carried me here and put me to bed, took my jacket off, and covered me with a blanket.
Did Vernon do it or did Mr. Schilder do it? Did I really see what I thought I saw? Did I see Mr. Schilder lying dead in the cave? Did I see Vernon . . . did I see him . . . change?
What in God's name is going on?
"The cave," she whispered. "Mr. Patanjali . . ."
Without further consideration or hesitation she turned around and ran in the opposite direction, back into the woods behind the house, toward the foot of Clayton Saunders's mountain.
It took her a half hour to find the mouth of the cave. It seemed to be covered with brush much thicker than it had been last evening, though she admitted that it had not been easy to see in the gloom of the forest dusk. She cleared away enough of the brush to allow her to enter, and then, taking a deep breath, walked into the cave.
It was empty. No dead body, no dying yogi, no lantern, no goblin. She began to tremble. It didn't happen. I imagined it, I hallucinated it. I'm losing my grip again. They're gonna put me away again, lock me up, give me those injections again. . . .
And then the dim sunlight that managed to make its way into the cave glinted on the floor. She knelt down and touched the glimmer. It was blood. It might have been Schilder's, it might have been Ashvarinda's, there was no way for her to know. But it was most definitely blood.
"It was real," she whispered. "It was all real. They were here. I saw it all, just like I remember it."
She was torn between ecstasy at having her sanity reaffirmed and confused fear at the nature of the memory that had just been validated. "I don't understand this," she said to the empty rock walls. "What the hell is going on?"
A distant voice cried, "Dorcas!" and she froze and listened. Again she heard "Dorcas!" followed by another voice crying, "Dork! Where are you?"
She ran out of the cave and called out, "Peter! Lydia! Here I am! Here I am!"
She saw Peter Geerson descending the steep incline of the mountainside awkwardly, skidding his right foot to slow his movement. Her sister Lydia was behind him, her years of life in the country affording her enough experience with this type of terrain to allow her a more graceful descent. "Dorcas!" Peter said when he reached her. "What the hell happened to you?" She had not even had the chance to respond before he grabbed her and hugged her tightly, and then kissed her on the mouth.
She felt short of breath. "Peter, what a nice hello!"
He was slightly embarrassed at his own impetuosity, and he cleared his throat before saying, "I was so worried about you."
"Where'd you go, Dork?" Lydia asked as she came up beside them, the concern in her face slowly changing to annoyance now that her sister had been found. "We've been looking for you the whole damn night!"
"It's a long story," she replied, not wanting Peter to take his arms away. Over and above the attraction she felt for this boy, she needed very badly to be held just then.
But he unwrapped his arms and took her by the hand. "You can tell us on the way back to the car, which I hope is still parked on the roadside, or Russell's gonna kill me." He began to lead her into the woods, but then, remembering that he would never be able to find the road, stepped aside so that the two girls could precede him.
"So what happened to you?" Lydia asked. "The last we saw of you, you were going off with Old Man Schilder."
"That wasn't Old Man Schilder," Dorcas said. "It was Vernon Sweet."
Both Peter and Lydia laughed as Peter said, "Look, Dorcas, Schilder and Grogo don't exactly look alike, you know? I mean, I think I would have noticed if he was wearing an Old Man Schilder mask or something."
"You won't believe me," Dorcas said, "but this is what happened. . . ."
They listened in silence as Dorcas told them her story, omitting no detail and sharing with them her reactions upon awakening. By the time they were in Russell's Beetle, both Peter and Lydia were urging Dorcas to go and speak with the psychiatrist who had worked with her while she was in the hospital, and by the time they were driving down Beckskill's main street, Dorcas was in tears.
Lydia stopped browbeating her sister long enough to say, "Peter, look there, parked in front of Joanne's."
Peter slowed down and saw Clayton Saunder's jeep among the few other cars in front of Beckskill's small restaurant, Joanne's Ham and Eggery. "Good," he said, turning the car into the parking lot. "Maybe Becky can talk some sense into you."
He stopped the car and they entered the old-fashioned family restaurant to find Clayton, Sean, and Rebecca sitting in a booth, drinking coffee. Sean was hanging his head sullenly as Clayton, laughing softly, reminded him in great detail of his antics of a few hours before. Rebecca looked up and saw them approaching, and she smiled weakly. "Hey, look who's here! Sorry we weren't at Alex's to meet you guys, but—"
"We never went to Alex's," Peter interrupted. "We only found Dorcas a little while ago."
"Hi, Dork," Rebecca said. "Where the hell'd you go, anyway?"
Lydia slid into the seat next to Clayton and Peter gently led Dorcas to sit beside her. He seated himself opposite with Sean and Rebecca and said, "She doesn't want to go home, and she won't go back to the hospital. I don't know what to do with her."
"I'm not crazy, Peter," Dorcas said. Her voice was subdued and even, but her lips were quivering and her eyes were red with tears.
"Like, what's happening?" Sean asked, hoping that attention would now be diverted from him.
Clayton refused to allow it. "You know what this asshole did last night? He nearly got us killed by old Alex Sonovbitch."
Peter grinned. "How'd he do that?"
"He and Alex got into the stupidest argument I've ever heard. The old guy chased us out with a fucking machete!"
"He started it," Sean muttered. "And it wasn't a machete. It was just a kitchen knife."
"Oh, that's okay then." Clayton nodded. "The way I remembered it, it was something dangerous. But just an ordinary old kitchen knife . . . well!"
"Fuck you, Clay," Sean muttered.
"Forget these two idiots," Rebecca said. "Dork, what happened to you? Where'd you go?"
Peter sighed. "Dorcas, tell them what you told us." She recited her tale once again and concluded by saying, "And I guess I fainted after a while. The last thing I remember is just screaming and screaming, and the next thing I knew I was lying in bed in the Sweet house. My jacket was hung on a hook, and there wasn't anybody else there. I went back into the cave, and all I found was blood on the ground." She looked at Peter. "I'm not nuts, Peter. I know what I saw. And last time, last month, when everybody thought I was having another nervous breakdown, I wasn't. I really did see Vernon. He isn't dead. Mr. Patanjali isn't dead." She reached over and took a sip of Rebecca's beer. "But Vernon must have moved him. He must have moved everything, even poor Mr. Schilder." Tears began to well up in her eyes and to roll down her cheeks. "Nobody's gonna believe me. Daddy's gonna put me away again. . . ."
"Dork"—Clayton yawned—"let me get this straight. You're saying that Grogo ate Old Man Schilder's brain and then turned into Old Man Schilder, just so he could trick you into following him into a cave so a half-dead yogi could teach you a prayer. Is that about the size of it?"
His incredulity angered her, and she glowered at him through her tears. "That's right."
Clayton nodded earnestly. "Well, it certainly makes sense to me!"
"Shut up, Clay," Rebecca said, and then reached out to take Dorcas's hand. "Look, Dork, you gotta know deep down inside that none of this happened. Grogo—"
"Vernon," she said softly.
"—killed your sister, and so he's like some sort of a nightmare for you and you keep hallucinating about him. That's all this is, honest."
"Of course, Dork" Sean muttered. "That fucking little freak is dead. It'd take one hell of a seance for him to tell anybody anything."
"A seance!" Clayton shouted, his eyes widening with sudden interest. "What a far-out idea! We could have a seance! We can get everybody together, I mean like everybody, from New Paltz, from Long Island, from the City, I mean like everybody we know. We all drop acid and then go to Grogo's house and have a fucking seance. It'd be so far fucking out!"
"Damn it, Clay," Peter repeated, "this is serious, okay?"
"You think I'm kidding? A goblin's ghost, a seance, and LSD. It's great!"
Neither Dorcas nor anyone else paid any attention to him. "You saw Mr. Schilder take me into the woods," she pointed out. "You all saw it."
"Yeah, sure," Rebecca countered, "and so he probably took you aside and told you not to hang around with us—"
"Goddamn hippie bums," Sean agreed.
"—and then he went on his way, and you wandered of and had, I don't know, a seizure or something." She squeezed her hand harder. "Dork, think about what you've just told us. I mean, it's like ridiculous, you know?"
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