L.A. Mental

by Neil Mcmahon

  That came as almost as much of a shock as the jolt in the pool.

  “Are you serious?” I said incredulously. “Why? How?”

  Her shoulders lifted in a slow shrug. “I can’t really explain it. But there’s this vague sort of feeling—it’s not really even a rumor—that if you interfere with Parallax, it can come back on you.”

  Leaving aside how preposterous that sounded, I hadn’t interfered with them, and I started to say so.

  Although I had refused to extend their lease.

  Then it occurred to me that there might be another level to this. Had Paul been covertly funneling money to Parallax, and I’d cut off that supply? With Cynthia Trask involved, I sure wouldn’t have a hard time believing that.

  And then came a thought that was far more hair-raising still. Threatening Paul’s money was exactly what Nick had done. Soon afterward, he’d suffered the mental torment that nearly killed him, followed by the unexplained brain aneurysm that had pretty much finished the job.

  But that was beyond preposterous—it was f lat insane.

  “Lisa, I’m sorry, but that sounds like voodoo,” I said.

  She came over to me and put her cool hands on my shoulders, massaging them soothingly.

  “I know exactly what you mean, and I’m not saying I’m right,” she said. “Look, I think you should talk to Gunnar. If there’s anybody who might understand about this, it’s him. I could call him right now.”

  I didn’t want to talk to Kelso. I didn’t want to admit the faintest shred of possibility that there might be something to this. But I didn’t want Lisa to feel that I was just dismissing her. And I didn’t see how it could hurt.

  After a minute, I nodded. “Okay. And thanks, darlin’.”

  “It’ll probably take me a minute to get him. You relax.”

  That was not in the cards. It was a toss-up as to which was worse—the worry that I was slipping into serious mental impairment, or feeling like an utter fool for even agreeing to discuss this thing.

  Talk about cognitive dissonance.

  Lisa was gone maybe five minutes before she came back and handed me a phone.

  “Hello, Tom,” Kelso said in his calm voice. “I’m sorry you’re having difficulties. I’ll gladly try to help.”

  “That’s very kind of you, Dr. Kelso. But right off the top, I have to admit I’m very skeptical about the Gatekeepers and all that.”

  “Understood. But perhaps it gives you some insight into my own feelings as a young physicist at the Planck Institute, when I first started looking into these matters.”

  “I can hardly imagine,” I said. That much was true.

  “Let me put the situation in a slightly different light. It is not like a personal vendetta. The Gatekeepers channel energy in particular patterns for particular purposes. If that flow gets disrupted, it hampers them in achieving their aims. These particular powers don’t wish us harm—quite the contrary. But the stakes are high, and if they must be ruthless to solve a problem, so be it.”

  Well, that did sound a little less wacko—but all the more disturbing.

  “Ruthless, like—getting rid of the problem’s cause?” I said.

  “That would be a last resort—only if that cause was unreasonably stubborn. I don’t know the details of your situation, Tom, just the little that Lisa told me. But my sense is that it could be smoothed over quite easily—and, in the long run, to your advantage.”

  “What would you advise me to do?”

  “Have you thought about our conversation last week?”

  I hesitated. Where was this going?

  “Sorry, not as much as I’ve wanted to,” I said. “Things have been really hectic.”

  “I’d suggest you find the time without delay, and examine closely what was said. Then let’s talk again.”

  The phone clicked off, leaving me standing there in disbelief. Last week’s conversation with Kelso had seemed pretty far-out at the time. But it was nothing compared to the one I’d had just now.

  Thirty-Four

  I spent the rest of the evening warily braced for another of those searing blasts to my head. It was like knowing there was somebody right behind you who might clobber you with a blackjack at any second. Lisa and I talked about the situation and about Parallax in general, but everything about both seemed hazy; there wasn’t much tangible to get hold of to try to approach this logically. We gave up on it and went to bed early, and for a while, everything left my mind except her.

  But by 2:00 a.m. I was wide-awake, and I could tell I was going to stay that way. There was no point in tossing around and disturbing her, so I eased out of bed, got my clothes, and made coffee in the kitchen. Then I went to sit outside on the deck again.

  L.A. looked just the same at this hour of the night as it did in the evenings, an endless spread of lights with the freeways like shooting streams of lava. Rome might be the Eternal City, but this was the one that never slowed down.

  Again, I thought back through my talk with Kelso at the Lodge last week.

  The crux was that the male lead in his movie—a soldier who’d fallen into a bizarre, dangerous alternative universe where he adventured trying to rescue an elusive woman—ended up facing a major choice. He could leave and move on to a place of safety and comfort. Or he could stay, with greatly enhanced power—as one of the masters who fought for control of that world—but also greatly enhanced risk.

  Was he pointing at a parallel between my situation and the soldier’s? The risky path of power would be to accept his teachings and get drawn into Parallax. Instead, I’d done nothing—a tacit retreat into my familiar world and ideas.

  Now the message seemed to be that I needed to reconsider and make a definite move one way or the other. Except that if my place of supposed safety and comfort was going to be haunted by ugly brain shocks and vicious hostility from anyone I might encounter, even animals, it wasn’t much of a choice.

  With his offer of help, was he implying that he could actually contact the Gatekeepers—intercede like a saint or prophet, call them off? Could it conceivably be true—and even explain why I’d been left in peace this evening? Had he arranged a sort of cease-fire while I thought it over?

  But that was only looking at it within the context of Kelso’s paradigm. I hadn’t completely given up on skepticism and reason. As I turned it all around now, alone and more clear-minded than I’d been earlier, my thoughts kept stopping at Nick. There were two similarities between our situations. The first one, tenuous, was his description of worms in his brain. The second was much more definite, and it came down to one of the oldest adages in the book.

  Follow the money trail. Nick and I had both threatened Paul’s wealth, and it was a damned easy jump to think that the Gatekeepers’ energy patterns we’d disrupted involved cash flow into Parallax coffers.

  Was the almighty dollar really that almighty? The masterful powers that controlled human destiny so venal that they would pitilessly hound and destroy somebody who threatened their earthly bank accounts?

  Or was there something at work on a less cosmic scale?

  I still couldn’t begin to explain all the weirdness, but it was a place to start.

  I made a decision then, although not the one that Kelso was angling for—to drive up to the Lodge, right now, and do some covert surveillance. I’d get there long before anyone else was stirring, and I could easily hide my vehicle and look around without being spotted. I didn’t have any particular object in mind—no actual reason even to think there might be anything suspicious going on. But on Saturday, there wouldn’t be any filming; the only people around would probably be Parallax insiders, and it would be interesting to see who they were and what they did. And if nothing else, just spending some time looking things over would help me order my thoughts.

  I hesitated about waking Lisa, but I couldn’t see just leaving her a note, and I selfishly wanted to inhale her warmth again. I knelt down by her side of the bed and stroked her hair.


  “Sweetie, I’m going to take off,” I said.

  “Oh, sure, just fuck me and leave me,” she murmured drowsily. Then her eyes opened. “You’re what?”

  “I’m restless, and I’ve got something in my head. I’m better off dealing with it than just bouncing off the walls here.”

  The room was dim, but I could see anxiety come into her face. “You sure you know what you’re doing?” she said.

  “No.”

  There was a long pause. “Okay, but give me a good-night kiss,” she said.

  Forty minutes later, I got dressed once more and made my way out into the bright L.A. darkness.

  PART FOUR

  Thirty-Five

  The sky was getting light as I drove the last stretch of gravel road to the Lodge, although this mountain terrain would stay in shadow for another good hour. I took it slow with my headlights out, stopping every couple of minutes to listen. The only sounds were the forest waking up—the sweet liquid trill of meadowlarks, the raucous croak of crows and scolding squirrels.

  When I got to the cutoff point, I put the Cruiser in four-wheel drive and left the road, jouncing carefully overland for another half mile and parking behind a screen of pines. I loaded a small knapsack with the basics—bottled water and some convenience-store food I’d bought along the way, and my father’s Bausch & Lomb Zephyr hunting binoculars.

  Then I took off on foot, hiking up the mountainside behind the cliffs to the north of our land. It was about a two-mile walk; I’d been all over this turf as a kid and knew the way precisely. But it was mostly steep, and there was no real trail, so I had to pick my way through patches of thick brush and deadfall; even in the early-morning cool, I was sweating long before I got to the top. From there the going was easy—mostly flat, open granite. I brushed off my clothes carefully in case of ticks, helped myself to a generous drink of water, and walked the last quarter mile to the cliff edge.

  I hadn’t shaken off that feeling that there was something behind my back—that at any second I might get hit with another brain shock that would run me off the road while I was driving or poleax me in this back country where no one would find me; or even that the mysterious influence would provoke some genuinely dangerous wild critter and I’d become the target of its fury. But I’d been fine since the episode in Lisa’s pool.

  The thought that maybe Kelso really had put in the fix with the Gatekeepers was almost more unsettling than the attacks themselves.

  I found a good vantage point where I could see without being seen, and hunkered down prone. Everything of interest was within a half mile, and with the fine old binoculars, I could read a license plate at that distance.

  The place looked about the same as last time I’d been here, except that it mostly seemed dead. The chain-link-fenced movie set with its bizarre minicity was empty and locked up tight, with no employee vehicles parked there. The security kiosk was also empty, and I recalled that there hadn’t been a guard here last Saturday either. Then, it was understandable—there were plenty of people around. But now it seemed odd; even out here in the boonies, the set was vulnerable to theft and vandalism.

  But then I saw that there were two vehicles parked outside the log Lodge building—a black Hummer and a vintage Porsche. It looked like somebody had spent the night, which suggested that they were high up in the Parallax food chain.

  The Lodge was as still as the film set; it was just past 6:00 a.m., so probably nobody would be stirring for a while. I settled in to wait.

  But within a few minutes I saw movement, and not just stirring but purposeful action. A third vehicle came driving out from behind the Lodge—a big Chevy Yukon SUV, with the driver’s craggy profile clear through the open window.

  Gunnar Kelso.

  I got the sense that he had a relaxed air of anticipation, like a man heading off for a day of fishing. But he only went as far as the film set’s main gate, and got out of the vehicle to open it.

  Why would he drive such a short distance? He and I had walked it last time, and he seemed both physically and temperamentally the kind of man who’d prefer that.

  He pulled the SUV through the gate, locked it behind him, and continued on through the compound to the city set, skirting the perimeter and stopping at the far end—an area that was well hidden from casual view. When he got to a low, windowless hovel made of faux stone—like the other buildings on the fringes, it looked like it had no real purpose, but was just there as background—he backed up to the entrance.

  He went in through the building’s rough wooden door, disappearing from my view. I couldn’t see much of the interior—my angle wasn’t good, and the valley floor was still dim with early-morning shadows—but from what I could glimpse, the place looked empty. What the hell was he doing in a dingy little space like that?

  When he reappeared a minute later, he started unloading large cardboard boxes from the SUV and carrying them inside. The cartons looked new, still sealed, and I was able to glimpse the letters ARE on a couple of them, along with a distinctive logo of a missile rising from a launchpad against the backdrop of an American flag.

  I knew that logo—everyone who’d studied science did. ARE stood for America Rising Electronics, a company that had its roots in the early space age and now was a major global supplier of laboratory equipment and electronic components.

  What the hell was that stuff doing in a dingy little space like that?

  I rose into a crouch and edged my way along the cliff until I got to another vantage point that gave me a better view inside.

  Goddamn if there wasn’t a trapdoor in the floor—a section of planks a few feet square that he’d lifted up and set aside. It concealed a pit dug in the earth, a vertical tunnel with a ladder inside. Kelso was climbing down it carefully, carrying one of the cardboard boxes. Was this an elaborate hiding place? It seemed that he could have come up with something that was a lot less trouble.

  He apparently reached the ladder’s bottom, about eight feet down, then ducked and stepped forward, once again disappearing—this time into what should have been solid earth. With his body no longer blocking my view, I finally got a relatively clear look. He’d gone through a small doorway cut into the side of the tunnel shaft and shored up with timbers. The doorway’s other side was edged with corrugated aluminum. Beyond it there appeared to be a good-size space aglow with fluorescent light and glinting with metal equipment.

  I lowered the binoculars, rubbed my eyes, and looked again. But there was no doubt—it was a fucking trailer, a fairly large one, buried under the film set.

  So that explained Kelso’s air of anticipation, and also why there were no security or other personnel around. He had himself a weekend hobby—building a secret underground lab. He must have had the excavation dug and the trailer lowered into place before the set construction began. Then the buildings had covered it up; no one would ever dream it was there.

  All of which brought home forcefully another, very disturbing, implication—Kelso didn’t have any intentions of vacating this place anytime soon. Not only had he gone to a lot of trouble and expense for this setup, he was still moving equipment in, not out.

  After he carried the other two boxes down to his underground lair, he drove the SUV back to the Lodge, parked it there, and returned, this time on foot—and careful to close both the main security gate and the building door behind him. No doubt he didn’t want to leave it there where it would advertise his presence, in case someone showed up unexpectedly.

  I remembered Lisa saying that Kelso kept up his physics work in the form of constructing mathematical models and such. There wasn’t any sense that he was involved in actual laboratory-type research anymore, although it was understandable that he’d still have an interest in it and maybe want to dabble.

  But you didn’t bury an entire trailer just to dabble.

  Thirty-Six

  Things stayed quiet for close to two more hours. Sunlight started driving the shadows from the forest and warming the granite
slabs around me. I broke out a store-bought sandwich made of stuff that was imaginatively called egg salad and ate it for breakfast. Kelso remained submerged in his bunker.

  Then I caught another glimpse of movement, this time inside the Lodge building—somebody walking past one of the upstairs windows, probably on the way from a bedroom to the bathroom at the end of the hall. It happened fast, and I couldn’t tell anything else about whoever it was. But I figured the situation justified voyeurism, so I changed position again, this time for a view through the bathroom window. Since it was on the second story and this place was so isolated, nobody had ever bothered to put a curtain on it.

  As I focused the binoculars, it was immediately clear that the person was female; I was seeing her in profile as she stepped into the shower. Her face was turned away, but she had a trim figure and jaw-length auburn hair.

  Cynthia Trask, was my first thought.

  That might mean that Paul was with her—although it wouldn’t have surprised me if she and Kelso had a quiet affair going on; it seemed clear that they went back a long time.

  I had no interest in watching a peep show; I lowered the glasses and just kept an eye on the window, figuring I’d scope in again after she got dressed. But within a minute, someone else came walking into the bathroom, and it looked like he or she also wasn’t wearing anything but skin. Obviously, this wasn’t Kelso. I raised the glasses again.

  It wasn’t Paul, either. I was looking at Dustin Sperry, the Velvet Glove director—the guy who’d been with Lisa when I’d first met her. And he was getting into the shower with Cynthia.

  Well, well, well. Gunnar Kelso wasn’t the only one who had a private weekend hobby up here. I wondered briefly if Paul knew about this, but I didn’t really care, and it wouldn’t matter, anyway. It seemed clear that Cynthia did as she pleased, and Paul had better like it whether he liked it or not.

  Eventually, Cynthia and Sperry came out onto the porch wearing fluffy bathrobes and enjoyed their morning coffee. I got the same sense from her that I’d gotten when I left last weekend and saw her sitting in the gazebo—that she felt like the mistress of the estate.