“Daniel, have you found the Yellow Sign? Has the King showed you the path? Have you seen the Lake of Hali and have you found the coins?”
Hearing Dad’s voice pulled me back from that black thing with the yellow face, but I remembered it rushing into me and filling me up fit to bursting. I looked down at my feet in this waking-dream, this memory settling on my mind, and my feet were bare but covered with blood and black cinders. I was in the woods, standing beside the small clearing where Dad’s Dodge had been found. I glanced around and saw the truck with the door open. The prow of the boat dipped into my field of vision again and I saw my hands covered to the wrists in blood and a thick ichor that could have been tar or entrails. I saw strands of flesh caught beneath my fingernails. I looked around again and I was standing in the kitchen of my old house, standing on a sheet of plastic, standing in a pool of the same dark stuff staining my hands. I opened my mouth to howl. The prow of the boat showed itself clearer and more solid and as it came dipping into my mind again, I saw the many colored robes of the King in Yellow standing on his mound of coins.
My fingers flexed spastically and even though I still could not move my hands, I felt something rigid in my left hand. My hand spasmed again and I realized that the stone was there. The King gave it back to me. It hadn’t been there thousand years ago, but it was back again now and I gripped it firmly, tracing the raised glyph with my thumb. I felt my tongue loosening, responding to me now, “Yes, father. I have found the Yellow Sign.”
In the space of a heartbeat and a few shallow breaths, I saw the robes swirl and rise off the mound of coins. It flowed with the wind and floated up beyond the prow of the boat and it came to me. Without a doubt it was the Yellow King. But, was the voice Dad or was it the King?
Time hiccuped and moved like a volcanic flow of molasses across my mind and I wanted to laugh and cry and moan, but the King just hovered there, his face hidden by his pale mask, a deep cowl obscuring his head. I wondered if beneath the hood he wore a golden crown and I felt another scream build in my chest and I knew I was mad.
Dr. Peterson would be so pissed. Here I thought I was responding to treatment. I was writing in my journal. Then I realized —was I writing now? Was I recording what I was really seeing? Am I an old man a million years from now telling myself a bedtime story?
I tried to blink and clear the visions from my head, but for a few moments more the King just hovered there in the space above my face like one of those horrible ghosts floating above Scrooge. “Please.” I begged, my eyes flooding over and I blinked again.
The light shifted and was no longer the blue-purple glow of the dark stars. The glow of proper light trickled in and the King was gone. I blinked a third time and only two dark stars remained. I watched them for a moment and they blinked at me. I tried tilting my head to see them better, but I remembered my head was still frozen in the mud. I did see the stars more clearly and they were set inside a grey silhouette standing by my feet where the prow of the Yellow King’s boat had been a moment before. The stars blinked again and they multiplied. There were four of them now, each pair set in a grey shape standing by my feet.
I blinked again and I saw my feet clearly. I was lying on a bed and at first the two silhouettes were Mom and Dad. Then they shifted again and they were Dad and Grandpa.
“What the fuck? Mom? Dad? Grandpop?” My voice hurt. “What is going on? Dad—” And as I spoke I realized they were all dead. I mean Grandpa died when I was like three or something, but I realized then that Mom hadn’t left and Dad hadn’t disappeared. They were all dead. My face felt wet and I guess I was crying then.
The grey silhouettes were rustling and I heard what echoed like an ambulance siren in the distance. I heard beeping and blooping and realized why I couldn’t move—and why I felt like I was churning and shifting.
The voice came back and I thought I peed myself again. The voice chimed in a chorus, and it came from the grey shapes with the stars for eyes. They asked in one clattering voice that I felt in the pit of my belly: “You Are He? You are He who ferries. Have you found the Yellow Sign?”
Suddenly my mind focused upon the artifact in my left hand and there was a warmth that spread up my arm, into my chest, and it encompassed all of me. The ringing chorus began again and I heard the name, “Charon” in the deliberate, delicate chant.
“I am he. I am come.” The words tumbled out of my mouth and the sirens flared up, overtaking the whispery choir. I blinked and the world became black once again.
~VIII~
The ambulance flew down Amboy Road clearing the lane of cars ahead of it with flashing lights and screaming sirens. As the bus reached the Richmond Valley Hospital Emergency Room and pulled into a spot, it was met by Daniel’s tired, worn, slightly annoyed looking Uncle. EMTs jumped out, ignoring the grumbling, grizzled man, and pulled out the stretcher containing a thrashing, moaning, screaming Daniel.
“What? You stop for fucking tacos? What take you so long? It’s bad enough you fuckers took so long to get to us in the first place, but now? It’s like 3 o’clock, damn it!” shouted an older man, the rough size and shape of a spark-plug, wearing some kind of rubberized overalls that made him look like Gumby’s evil twin. The EMTs motioned for the ER security staff to get him out of their way while they brought the kid into the ambulance bay. A stocky guard snapped into action, towering over the beleaguered grey-haired man, and in a quiet voice began deescalating what could have become an uncomfortable situation as the deranged Gumby began shouting the kid’s name while trying to bodily block the EMTs from rolling the stretcher inside the hospital.
The EMTs managed to wheel past the old coot and they were met with a youngish, blonde triage nurse, snapping gum with a bemused expression on her face.
“Thanks a bunch guys. It was quiet ‘til you rolled in. Thought we were going to have a loverly afternoon giving myself a pedicure and you have to go and bring us one who’s already blown his wad. Thanks Grivas. Mercy buckets Justini.” Nurse Rable gave the two EMTs flanking the stretcher a mock bow. Justini gave a snort as he scanned his thick pad of Patient Care Records to relay the necessary information about their patient as his partner Grivas rolled in their stretcher containing the writhing young man who seemed to be foaming at the mouth.
“Fucking believe this? We got stuck in traffic because there was some graduation or some fucking ballgame and the dipshits on Hylan don’t understand that they need to move when we have the fucking sirens on —like we do that just for what, fucking kicks? Then a redneck truck almost plows into us and the old fucker out there, the one Tony’s dealing with, thinks we’re out getting fucking tacos.” Justini, a broad shouldered, broad necked purposefully bald Italian, then started rattling off the information in a quick clipped tone as his partner rolled the stretcher into a backlog of other patients on stretchers, flanked by other EMTs.
His partner, Grivas, a stocky, olive-skinned woman, let out a slow whistle. “I thought you said it was quiet. Looks like Time fucking Square in here.”
Another EMT, Olivier, waiting beside one of five other patients, cleared his throat dramatically, “They’re on Code Bed.”
Grivas let out a few expletives in Spanish. No beds currently available in the ER. She looked around, shaking her head. The stretchers within the ambulance bay contained three elderly patients of undistinguishable gender all with oxygen masks, one overweight male who she later discovered had fallen down a flight of stairs, and another male, very intoxicated and very homeless, who was just filling up space.
“What you guys bring to the party, Grivas?” Olivier quipped, while Grivas grabbed a small strip of wall to lean against and Justini finished relaying their patient’s info to Nurse Rable.
“Damned if I know. This kid’s like ninety pounds soaking wet, screaming the whole fucking way and his damned grandfather or whoever the fuck Tony’s dealing with out there made a racial slur. Accused us of going for tacos instead of bring his kid here,” Grivas nodded toward a scene ju
st outside the floor-to-ceiling front windows separating the exterior, where the ambulances parked, and the interior of the Emergency Room. The thick-set security guard remained admirably calm while in conversation with a visibly upset grey-haired man.
“So, he don’t like beaners. I don’t blame him. Hey, you bring me any tacos, chica?” Olivier made a kissy face at Grivas and she wished he was standing close enough to slap. Instead he was a few feet away keeping an eye on one of the oxygen tanks while watching over the homeless drunk, whose stretcher was feet-to-feet with her own patient’s stretcher. She flipped Olivier the bird instead. The crass moron. “So tell me mister charisma, how long you been in this fine establishment?”
“An hour and a half,” Olivier replied with a thrust of his hands in the air in a poor attempt at a mea culpa gesture with an enormous grin on his face. Grivas, like the others who were now congregating around another EMT sharing the details of some clandestine escapade in hushed tones, didn’t really mind the back-log. It was a chance to bullshit with colleagues and take a breather. Hey, they were getting paid and it was a damned sight easier, at least for a little while, to take a breath here, minding their patients, rather than answering calls in the field. It wasn’t like they had control over the situation. Grivas noticed Justini wasn’t being too quick to come check on their suddenly quiet patient. Justini was pulling his Italian stallion routine, puffing his chest out and smiling is irritating come-hither smile at the blonde Nurse Rable as she printed out the patient’s bracelet.
“Rable sounds like Grable,” Grivas heard Justini make the same stupid crack to the blonde nurse that he always made. And she made the same tittering remark so that Grivas wondered how the woman had ever become a nurse, “Who’s Grable?” The response was part of a routine mating ritual that allowed Justini to display what he considered depth of range, promoted all the stupid mottos about dumb blondes, and made Grivas more than a little ticked off.
“Betty Grable. She made Marilyn Monroe look like a tater tot. Betty Grable was only the most popular pin-up Girl ever.”
“Hey Romeo,” Grivas hollered as the pair strolled down the hallway toward her. Justini ambled along with Nurse Rable as though the two were walking on a boardwalk watching the scenery. “You want to bring that over here and I don’t know, maybe Nurse Grable can get our kid’s vitals?”
“Shut up Grivas and get me some tacos,” Justini laughed as Nurse Rable brought the patient bracelet over to verify the information with the young man on the stretcher who had stopped squirming and seemed to be regaining some semblance of consciousness.
Amidst the din of the surrounding ER, Daniel opened his eyes. A woman in a nurse’s uniform leaned over him, asking his name and home address, while she placed a small strip of plastic over his wrist and then wound a blood pressure cuff over his arm. His eyes widened and he tried backing away from her, but when he discovered he had been retrained at both wrists and ankles and the restraints had been attached to a gurney he had been lying on, he began squirming again and hollering, “What happened to the boat? Where is the Yellow Sign? Where’s the King?”
“Elvis fan, huh?” Justini chuckled.
“Funny man,” Grivas muttered.
“So, what’s the story?” Rable asked Grivas, knowing when Justini had finished relaying the basic patient stats and started teasing her —and when she began playing into his little dance— she would not get any further information out of him. “Why didn’t you have PD just meet you here?”
“Ask Mr. Romance there. He wanted to be all macho for you, Nurse Grable.” Grivas laughed at the annoyed tick of Nurse Rable’s face and the deep flush of the woman’s cheeks. “The patient here and his grandfather—no,” Grivas glanced down at her notes and corrected herself, “his uncle were clamming on the bay off of Lemon Creek when they were hit by wake of a passing boat. The patient fell backward and hit his head. The uncle drove back to the dock and called 911 from the dock office. When we arrived on scene, the patient was unconscious, breathing, and mumbling a whole mess of stuff we didn’t understand. Much the same as he just said here—something about a ‘Yellow Sign,’ a weird boat, and some king or whatever. Then, on the way over, he was screaming more of the same, at very high volume, and repeating the name Karen over and over. His vitals were too normal for someone who had been unconscious, but then he sort of began to regain consciousness on the way here.”
“I’m thinking he needs to be EDP-ed,” Justini piped up, requesting to have Daniel examined as an Emotionally Disturbed Person.
Just then another nurse from a station a little down the hallway flagged down Rable, motioning that the blonde woman had a phone call that was urgent. “It’s pretty packed as you guys can see. Sit tight and we’ll see what we can do.”
Grivas watched the young man on the stretcher fidget and stare at a point above him, as though he was reading something about six inches directly above his face. He wasn’t watching the ceiling but concentrating on something. She noticed his pupils kept dilating and constricting, and she leaned in a bit to see if there were any tell-tale red streaks that could mean a cranial hemorrhage.
She patted the boy’s right hand and she noticed he fidgeted his left hand again. She checked to make sure he wasn’t palming a knife or a crack pipe or something, but it was empty. There was a weird mark on the palm of his hand that reminded her of that Nazi’s burn from Raider’s of the Lost Ark. But on the kid it looked old, like it had been there for years.
“That’s from the Ark of the Covenant,” the boy was watching her.
“What now? You had a pretty bad spill on your uncle’s boat. Do you know where you are?” She jumped back a little. It wasn’t possible that he knew what she was thinking.
“It’s from the Ark and hasn’t been burned, but gifted me by the King. The spirits came out of the fire and spoke through me. Jonathan threw the Ark in the fire and the Yellow King chose me.” He laughed, his voice relatively calm. “Do you know where the boat is? I have the sign. I was told it was the right alignment for me.”
Grivas exchanged confused looks with a silent Justini and Olivier who shrugged his shoulders again with an affectatious gesture and said to her in a low tone, “Why don’t you ask him if he’s the Zuul the Keymaster or needs to see the Gozer Gatekeeper.”
“A real knee-slapper, Olivier you twit,” Grivas mumbled. “Vinz Clortho is the damned Keymaster, Zuul is the Katekeeper, and Gozer is the fucking god. Get it straight, man.”
The boy turned his head and attention away from the bickering EMTs around him to the homeless man whose stretcher had been moved closer to make room for yet another in the queue.
The drunk homeless man had been staring at Daniel while fingering a mangy grizzled beard that fell to his midsection. He looked like a deranged outcast from ZZ Top. As Daniel’s bright, fevered green eyes met the old man’s watery yellow ones, the old man coughed. “You know young man, you look like an undertaker.” He coughed again, his chest rattling and a stench of decades of smoke rose from the man’s lungs in a miasma. The drunk blinked slowly at Daniel and finally laughed, “I’m not ready to go yet.”
Daniel smiled and, despite the smell, opened his hand, displaying the black stone. Without hesitation or forethought he replied, “Well then, let me give you my card for when you are ready.”
The drunk exclaimed in a loud guffaw as the surrounding staff, the on looking EMTs all collectively tensed as though waiting for a wave to break. “Son,” the drunk laughed again. “It’s your turn now I see,” tipping his head in acknowledgment of the artifact in Daniel’s hand. “You didn’t find the Yellow Sign, it found you.”
~IX~
“There was a flash of white and a puddle of red and I think I was in the bathroom… or the kitchen. But not at Uncle Tim’s. I don’t know where I was,” Daniel tried shifting but the weight was at his wrists and ankles again.
“You know where you were, Daniel, please tell me,” the smooth tones of Dr. Peterson’s voice sounded like he was
far away, but the man spoke in an even, almost brusque way that made Daniel more than a little anxious.
“I told you. It might have been a kitchen. I don’t know where I was. Can’t you understand that?” Daniel felt a scream forming at the back of his throat, twisting in his chest like a snake wanting to escape. He wormed around on something flat and hard and unyielding. “I’m in my coffin and you’re asking me about where the kitchen from my dreams was? You should be the one buried, not me.” Daniel counted the quiet spaces between when he spoke and when the scream poked around in his chest, sort of like the time between thunder and lightening. He was trying to see how far off the storm really was.
“You’ve been doing well with your mural. Why don’t you put some of those images down in your journal, too? Why don’t you start sketching your dreams, as well? I’d like to see the kitchen and that boat you told me about.”
Daniel tried to move his head to see where the good doctor was, to see why the man seemed so far away. He seemed above Daniel somehow and not in the same room. Almost as though Dr. Peterson was speaking through an intercom, but without the flat crackle.
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