Last Chants

by Lia Matera

  Arthur cupped his head in his hands. “Oh, no. No.”

  “Do you know him? Who is it? He scared the—”

  Arthur sat up. “You’re sure he was playing a pipe?”

  “Of course I’m sure. Some kind of reed instrument.”

  “Might it have been panpipes? Reeds cut to different lengths and lashed together? Did it have a rather high-pitched quality?”

  “Yes. Reedy, high. You’re right. It sounded like the Peruvian instrument.”

  “Panpipes,” he confirmed.

  “Only it wasn’t a Latin American tune. It was more of a . . . lament or something. He was sitting right on top of the rock with his legs dangling into it.”

  “I wonder.” Arthur looked pale and unkempt, none the better for his day inside a rock. “I wonder if he waited for me to leave.” His eyes filled with tears. “It would be too bad to have missed him by moments. After staying the day long.”

  “You were waiting for him?”

  “No, no. Not necessarily. But it would have been magnificent to encounter him.”

  I scooted my chair back a few inches. “I didn’t find it a bit magnificent.”

  “But you don’t know what a rare thing it is to see him, my dear.”

  “See who? Who is he?”

  “Pan.”

  “Pan who?”

  “Pan the demigod of Greek mythology. Billy stayed here in part because of the rumors.”

  I shook my head, hoping I was hallucinating this conversation. “What rumors?”

  “That Pan wasn’t killed, as the myths imply, but that he was banished here, cast deep into the sea. Diana couldn’t kill him, you see; that’s what we think. There’s been a rumor circulating for a few thousand years that Pan pulled the ocean floor up with him; that he spent the millennia quietly husbanding it, mourning Syrinx. Forsaking revenge as his firmament of gods and goddesses faded from universal consciousness. He was marooned here, in a sense, by the changes in our mythology. By Christianity.”

  “Are you crazy?” He couldn’t possibly be suggesting I’d encountered the demigod Pan. Could he?

  “Billy learned this is one of the few regions on the planet that fits the profile. It rose from the ocean bottom for no discernible reason, you see.”

  “You’re talking about a Greek myth?” If my tone didn’t tell him I thought this was ridiculous, I’m sure my face did. “Are we really discussing this?”

  “Not just Greek. Pan is the European emblem for the first shaman. Pan didn’t belong in Olympus, the world of the gods; he was half goat, you know. Nor was he fully of the earth, but he chose to work his magic here. The parallel to Kwakiutl myth is striking. And Billy felt a presence, a powerful shamanic impulse in this land. A shaman generally feels that on his own land, the place of his own generational roots. So he was mystified—until he heard the rumors.”

  “The rumors that Pan wasn’t dead?” I’d been thinking of Arthur as merely overeducated and eccentric. Now this.

  “Well, no. Those rumors date back to the Greek texts. I meant the rumors here, among the locals.”

  “That a demigod hangs around in these woods?”

  “Yes. There are many accounts of hearing his music, reports of sightings.”

  “You told me yourself a lot of homeless people moved up here when things got tough.” I felt like I was explaining reality to an overimaginative boy.

  “But the music and sightings go far back into the recorded history of the area. Costanoan Indian oral tradition also mentions it. According to Awaswas and Zayante legend—”

  “Arthur, there are probably kabillions of legends about the woods here. That always happens, right? People tell spooky stories over and over because they’re good stories?” Here I was explaining the origin of legends to the world’s foremost mythologist. “Maybe your work has kind of, I don’t know, opened your mind a little too much? It’s like lawyers who get so caught up they start believing law is the most glorious achievement of—”

  “No no no. The interesting thing about myths, Willa, is that they come from a universe within us, yet they connect us to experiences far outside our ordinary reality. It’s like the flying saucer mythology, you know. It used to be that people saw visions of nymphs and classical beings. Then, they saw elves and sprites and goblins. Later, they saw the Virgin Mary. Now, they see flying saucers.”

  It was my turn to cradle my head. “Are you saying they’re all equally imaginary or that they’re all equally real?”

  He crossed his legs comfortably, as if delivering a lecture at Esalen. “They all provide sensory proof that the establishment—science, now; the church, in earlier eras—can’t explain everything. We simultaneously dread this and hope so. Today, for example, we have thousands upon thousands of reported UFO sightings each year. But if they are appearing so frequently, why do they always leave us with empty hands and blank film?”

  My patience was stretched thin. But it did feel good to be safely inside, debating something as academic as UFO sightings. “Okay—why?”

  “If you’re not willing to dismiss thousands of contactees as liars, you’re only left with one explanation. Not objects traveling impossibly fast through space—they couldn’t always get away in the click of a shutter—but rather objects manifesting and de-manifesting out of another dimension.”

  “Oh.” I couldn’t keep all my scorn out of that syllable.

  “We’re probably dealing with an other-dimensional phenomenon that can manifest literally as anything—elves when that’s what we are prepared to see, the Virgin Mary when that comports with our mythology, spaceships after all the nineteen-fifties movies. It pops out at us from its own dimension as whatever we expect to see, as our currently appropriate embodiment of other-worldliness. It thumbs its nose at the prevailing orthodoxy, prying open our minds as best it can.”

  “That’s what you think Pan is?”

  “Here, yes. There’s a tradition of believing him to be here. There’s a tradition of sighting him and hearing his music.”

  “But I didn’t know about the tradition. So why would I see him?” I shook my head. “He was real. And he wasn’t a demigod.”

  “Of course he was real. And it’s irrelevant that you didn’t know about the tradition. The other-dimensional, whatever it may be, is in the habit of taking material form here as Pan; not as the Virgin or as a UFO or as the Loch Ness monster. In these woods, when it appears, it appears as Pan. It’s been doing so as long as anyone remembers.”

  “Arthur, local legends aside, there’s a naked man running around these woods. Maybe the police don’t know about him and haven’t questioned him.” I leaned forward in my chair, watching his haggard face. “And he’s obviously wigged out, or he’d wear clothes at night. He might be crazy enough to have killed Billy.”

  Arthur slumped, rubbing his knees as if they ached. And well they might, after a day inside a damp rock. “It could certainly have been a person you saw out there. It’s not impossible that someone would be naked in the woods, playing pipes. But I offer this thought: Why is it more difficult to believe in something people have been seeing and describing for hundreds of years?”

  “Because I personally have never seen a UFO,” I pointed out. “Or an elf, or the Virgin Mary.”

  “You’ve never seen the wind or a magnetic wave or an electron, either. You have only indirect evidence and the word of those you consider better informed than yourself.”

  “Well, I did see this man. And he didn’t have—”

  “Goat legs? But you didn’t see his legs, did you? They were dangling into the rock. That’s what you told me.”

  “He was definitely a man.” It was a measure of how tired I was, no doubt, that “Pan’s” broadness and hairiness should suddenly strike me as beastlike.

  “And another thing: your reaction to him, Willa. Judging from how you looked when you got here, I’d say you panicked.”

  “I thought he was chasing me.”

  “But that’s the
very essence of the word, you see. Pan, panic. He gives rise to it. That surge of terror when one encounters him in the woods: That’s the origin of the word.”

  “Arthur, somebody got killed out there. It was dark and spooky. It doesn’t take a demigod to make someone panic in those circumstances.”

  “And the music? Was it something a man would play?”

  “Yes.” But it was unlike anything I’d heard before.

  “It’s rare, you know, not to hit a false note on panpipes. They can be quite squeaky if you’re not adept.”

  “Let’s change the subject.” I’d lost my adrenaline. I was getting cranky. “Why did you stay out at the rock all day? That might not be a good idea. People could be going there to check it out now that it’s been in the papers.”

  He nodded, looking away like a bad child.

  “Tell me.”

  “I came to briefly and saw a woman staring down at me.”

  “Who?”

  “Nelson’s wife. Thea or Terry, I believe.”

  “Toni. I met her.” I touched my nose, feeling for swelling. She hadn’t mentioned seeing Arthur, not to me. But she might tell her husband. She might tell the police. “Damn. Did she say anything?”

  He shook his head. “She looked in at me, then went away.”

  “Do you think she recognized you?”

  “My impression is that we were both in other worlds. That we registered each other’s presence without squandering much consciousness on the encounter.”

  I rose, crossing to the sink to pour myself some water. Damn Arthur and his unsquandered consciousness. I needed a straight answer.

  “So you think she looked at you without necessarily realizing who you were?” I was trying to hope.

  “I think she was as far away as I was.”

  “Which was where?”

  “I was journeying.”

  I was almost afraid to ask. “Journeying where?”

  “To the lower and upper worlds.”

  It was all I could do not to walk over and slap him. I’d had about as much mumbo jumbo as I could handle. I came pre-saturated from living with my parents.

  “You know about shamanism, Willa?”

  “Not really.” Shamanism had few political overtones. Otherwise, no doubt, it would have been as much a part of my upbringing as Trotskyism.

  “It’s a surprisingly direct route to another dimension.”

  I didn’t respond.

  “Perhaps another night, when you’re not so . . . tired, I’ll attempt to take you, shall I?” His tone was cordial, conversational.

  “Take me where, Arthur?”

  “On a journey. It’s not difficult, you know. Most people never try it, they simply pooh-pooh it. It’s ironic to live in a culture that scorns a personal experience of the supernatural while believing in the Eucharist.”

  “Well, I don’t believe in that, either.”

  I turned toward the sink, rinsed my glass, then splashed water on my face.

  When I finished toweling my face, Arthur said, “I had a remarkable revelation when I was in Bowl Rock, Willa. I felt an iciness in my abdomen as if I’d been hollowed out. I had an impression of Billy . . . ” He blinked away tears. “I would say disemboweled rather than shot. If I didn’t know otherwise.”

  Until this afternoon, I hadn’t known Billy Seawuit had been stabbed. And theoretically, Arthur hadn’t known.

  Either he’d lied to me about his level of complicity or he’d found some other-dimensional informant.

  I could believe his hocus-pocus, or I could believe he’d lied to me.

  “The people at Cyberdelics told me Seawuit was disemboweled, not shot.”

  Arthur’s face crumpled. He began to shake.

  Overloaded and confused, I left him alone. I went into the bathroom and stood under a hot shower.

  Perhaps if I made it through the night without seeing a UFO or the Loch Ness monster, the rest of this would seem manageable again tomorrow.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I awakened to the smell of fresh coffee and the sound of clattering dishes. For a few seconds, I willed myself to ignore my grieving bones and the perfume of sleeping-bag filth. I tried to believe I was at my parents’ house, about to be pampered with espresso and their latest health-food chaff.

  I sat up, knowing that I wasn’t home, but taking cheer in imminent caffeine. I looked around, expecting to find Arthur. Instead, I saw Edward Hershey crouched before a cupboard, frying pan in hand.

  He cast me a quick, over-the-shoulder glance. “Up and at ’em,” he said in his deep, I’m-a-jock voice.

  “What time is it?”

  “Seven A.M.”

  I made a sound indicating how I felt about seven A.M.

  He snickered. “I gather the years didn’t turn you into a morning person.”

  “Where’s Arthur?”

  He turned to face me, still crouching. “What did you do to your hair? Scared the crap out of me—I come in here and find a brunette in my cabin.”

  “I ran into someone I’d met before.” I felt silly saying so, but, “I’m in disguise.”

  “Will it wash out?”

  “Forget my hair.”

  He grinned. “Okay, Natasha. So you don’t know where Arthur is?”

  “No.”

  “But he was here last night?” He waved the frying pan toward the other sleeping bag, unrolled and still rumpled.

  “Yes.” I climbed creakily out of mine. Had I really spent my youth gypsying around to demonstrations? I must have had more yielding bones. “He spent all day yesterday out at the rock where Billy Seawuit died. Edward?”

  Edward rose from his crouch.

  “Edward, how did Seawuit die?”

  He averted his eyes. “The news said he was shot.”

  “Did the police put out a call for information? Ask people to phone in with tips?”

  “Yeah, I think they did. What are you driving at, Willa?”

  “I think Seawuit might have been stabbed, not shot. Did the news reports mention a particular caliber of weapon?” I surveyed the stove for coffee. Seeing a pot, I stepped straight over to it.

  “It may have.” He watched me pour coffee into one of three cups he’d set on the counter. “What’s up?”

  “The person who handed Arthur a gun, he must have heard Seawuit was shot. But maybe that’s not true; maybe the cops just want to weed out false tips.”

  “Maybe they do.” Edward sounded noncommittal. “But bullets can be traced. It wouldn’t do any good for someone to hand Arthur any old gun. Everybody knows that. Every guy, anyway.” I watched his chest expand as if he meant to pound it, Tarzan-like. “So why are you asking about Seawuit getting cut? What did you hear?”

  “Do you know the people at Cyberdelics?” When he shook his head, I explained, “Seawuit was working on a project with them. They told me he was slashed. Pretty much disemboweled.”

  Edward scowled. “How did they know that?”

  “I assume the police told them.”

  He crossed his arms over his chest. He was unshaven this morning, in a flannel shirt and jeans jacket: the Marlboro Man. “But you haven’t had confirmation.”

  “Well, maybe in a way. Although Arthur can be pretty out-there.” I sipped coffee, surprised to find it strong enough. “He spent the day inside the rock where Seawuit died. And he came back here convinced Seawuit was disemboweled, not shot.”

  “Convinced by what?” Edward’s tone was guarded, if not outright suspicious. “Blood patterns on the rock?”

  “No.” I felt a throbbing in my temples. “No. In fact, when I looked inside the rock, it seemed like the stains were behind where Seawuit’s head would have been.”

  “So the blood stains suggest a shot in the head. Why would Arthur think he got disemboweled?”

  “He had a vision.”

  Edward squinted. “A vision? Like Elvis at Lourdes or something? That kind of vision?”

  “Basically. He didn’t ‘see�
�� the murder. But he felt, I forget how he put it, a hollowness in his abdomen. It made him think Seawuit was disemboweled.”

  Edward put down the frying pan and poured himself a cup of coffee. “If Arthur knew that, he didn’t find out from any vision. You know where he was before you saw him in the city?”

  “No.”

  A surprised glance. “All this time, you never asked?”

  “I’ve had a few things on my mind!” I hated being made to feel like a dummy—especially since it happened fairly often. “Besides, I knew you guys discussed it.” When I came out of the shower Monday night, Edward was putting away his notebook.

  “Yesterday evening, for instance. You two sat here for hours and it never came up?”

  “Let’s just say we were covering other ground.” I finished the coffee and poured another cup. I was almost awake enough to shower. “I’ve known Arthur since I was a teenager. If you’re thinking something sinister, forget it. There’s just no way.”

  “I wouldn’t take too much for granted if I were you.” Edward looked as cynical as years of private detection would make a person. “For one thing, I happen to know Seawuit was disemboweled. Or at least, cut deep and long.” He mimicked stabbing in and pulling down. “Enough for . . . some organ spillage, shall we say?”

  “Please. No details.” Not at seven in the morning. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why so damn cagey?”

  “I wanted to know how you found out first.”

  “Why? You know I didn’t kill him.”

  “But I don’t know Arthur didn’t.” He raised a hand to shush me. “I’m supposed to believe he learned about it from sitting in a rock?”

  I wanted to defend Arthur, but there wasn’t much I could say to that. “Okay, so who told you?”

  “I am a private eye. I do know how to get hold of police records.”

  “How long have you known?”

  “I checked yesterday morning.”

  I must have glowered ferociously; Edward made a cross of his index fingers, stepping back. “What was I supposed to do—send you a carrier pigeon?”

  “So,” I said grudgingly, “where was Arthur last weekend?”

  “He was here—early Saturday, anyway. He and Seawuit did some kind of dawn ritual thing together. Arthur had a rental car; says Seawuit loaded his trunk up; was going to meet him in San Francisco midweek.”