by Rudy Rucker
The big disk shuddered, twisted from side to side—and abruptly flopped towards me, flattening me onto my back.
Fortunately the ground was soft, and the door didn’t weigh all that much. Even so, I found it hard to push the disk off me. It was as if something behind the door were pressing it against me—as if I were a rat trapped by a janitor with a garbage can lid.
I heard a slithering sound, shortly followed by a clatter from within the basement. Droog began sounding the alarm—his barks low, hoarse and frightened. I heard a woman’s clear, low voice, calmly soothing the dog. And then her footsteps hurried across the sandy back yard.
Finally the door’s pressure upon me lightened, and I scooted back into the sun. The woman who’d run off was nowhere to be seen. Peering into the basement, I saw a gleaming golden sarcophagus against the side wall, unmistakably an Egyptian relic, its surface filigreed with hieroglyphs.
Instantly I thought of Skeeves, and the stories of his having stolen a casket from a rich wastrel’s house in San Francisco. Was he hiding in this hard-to-find house?
The near end of the sarcophagus bore an idealized likeness of some pharaoh’s face, with the figure’s head-dress sweeping down the sides of the casket in tooled golden ridges. The basement also held a huge conical wad of gray-green material that fanned out from a pointed tip near the far wall. Perhaps it was a kind of plastic. A sheaf of the stuff was attached to the back of the door, highlighted all over with glints from the sun. The funky stuff tensed like a muscle, dragging the door back towards the wall—and closing it in my face. Very weird.
I heard a footstep on the porch above, and I looked up to see a well-built guy with sun-darkened skin and greenish blond hair. A surfer I’d seen around town a few times before. A jerk. His name was Header. His eyes were fixed on me, and his nose was bleeding bright red. Maybe Header was a coker. He raised a handkerchief to his face and made a noise.
In that very instant, a four-inch-long blue slug dropped down from the porch. The slug began worming around on the ground, eating dirt, growing with great speed. I had an odd, fleeting sensation then, as if an alien personality within the slug were rummaging through my mind. Was this how it felt to go mad?
The swollen blue slug kneaded its flesh against itself, growing lumps and taking on the shape of—a bull sea lion with large, golden eyes. Droog redoubled his barking, giving it everything he had.
Ignoring us, the odd sea lion wallowed out into the middle of the back yard and snuffled the air, perhaps tracking the woman who’d emerged before him.
Droog gave a despairing yelp, and was gone, off around the corner of the alley at the back of the yard.
“Hey!” yelled the guy on the deck above. “Old man!”
Two other grungy surf kids appeared from the house, a boy and a girl, these two a bit shadowy and hard to see. The boy was none other than the missing Ira—the surfer who’d stolen that scrap of metallic hydrogen from the physics lab. The girl was new to me.
“Who told you how to get here?” asked the girl, leaning over the railing of the porch to stare down at me. She had a halo of short-cropped dark hair, and her voice was a low purr. She was silhouetted against the sky.
“Do you know about Val?” I blurted, sensing some connection between this weird scene and my wife’s death. “Is this magic? Can you bring her back?”
“Val’s gone for good,” said Ira. “I’m sorry that happened. We’ve all had some hard times around this weird scene.”
The blue sea-lion-thing was back down on his belly, flopping towards me, his blubber shaking in waves. There was something odd and hypnotic about his golden eyes. Once again I had the feeling of something alien reaching into my mind.
“Tell your pet that I’m good people,” I called to Ira.
“That thing’s not our pet, asshole,” said Header, the big guy with the muscles. “Did you just open our basement door?”
“Maybe,” I jabbered. “I don’t know what’s going on. Did you bring that sea lion home from the ocean? And dye him blue?”
“Was Skeeves in the basement?” pressed Header. “Did he let you in?”
“I didn’t see anything at all,” I said, backing away from the blue sea lion. I didn’t want the unearthly creature to touch me. “Come here, Droog!” I added, my voice breaking. “Protect me!”
The girl on the porch laughed musically, and then she imitated my cry, even putting a break into her voice—as if she was sampling my sound.
With an abrupt series of wriggles, the sculptured blue sea lion circled past me and disappeared along the littered pathway that I’d used to get back here in the first place. Perhaps he was making a break for the sea.
Thoroughly freaked, I took off across the back yard and down the alley like Droog had done. With every step I took, more of the alley became visible. I found Droog resting in a spot of sun on the sidewalk of Cedar Street. He gave me an innocent, unconcerned look. I stood there for a couple of minutes, catching my breath.
What had just happened? I’d opened some kind of giant plastic door beneath the house. A woman had run away, I’d seen a gold sarcophagus in the basement, and Header had had sneezed a blue sea lion out of his nose. None of it made sense.
Not to mention the fact that, as of yesterday, the whipped-to-shit green Victorian house hadn’t been on Yucca Street at all. Nor had I ever seen this place during all the months that I’d been a mailman walking from door to door.
I paused on Cedar Street, thinking things over. Maybe, just maybe, that tunnel under the house could lead to Val. Ira hadn’t exactly said no. Maybe I’d found a new level of reality beneath the workaday world. But maybe I was losing my mind. My heart was beating like a triphammer. I couldn’t take any more just now.
Santa Cruz looked normal from where I was standing, and I knew where I was. That was good. I wanted things to stay still for a few minutes. I could find the ghost house again later. And keep on looking for Val.
But right now I wanted some slack.
5: Brain Event
Droog and I walked half a block along Cedar Street and cut down a side street to Pacific Avenue. And here was Mahalo Gelato, my favorite ice-cream parlor. A Hawaiian-themed place, managed by a plump woman who invariably wore overalls. Her name was Mercedes. I put the leash on the dog and tied him to a bicycle rack. I took some comfort from these ordinary things.
The parlor was an airy place with soft steel guitar music playing. They had fully forty flavors of gelato, made with fresh cream and fruit every day. An unfamiliar clerk stood behind the counter—a tan, medium-sized woman with a goofy smile and brunette hair in a messy, recently made ponytail. She was in the process of tying on her apron. Though her eyes were worldly-wise, she looked to be about thirty. Perfect for me.
“I’m here because of you,” she said, looking right into my eyes, which felt way spacier than anything I was ready for. Sensing my unease, the woman giggled. “I began this employment one minute ago, following a two minute interview.”
“You were right to sign on,” I said, hoping to steer the conversation back towards normal. “I’m a regular here. Jim Oster.”
“Weena Wesson,” said the woman, miming a curtsy. “I’m tickled to be back.”
“Back from where?” I had to ask.
“Let’s not delve into that as yet.” She wrinkled her nose in a smile—or maybe she was sniffing at me across the counter.
It had already crossed my mind that this Weena might be the unseen woman who’d run out from that tunnel under the green Victorian. But—had that scene been real? It didn’t fit with any other part of my life. Better to focus on the now. On the ice cream.
“I’m here for a medium cup,” I said. “With a scoop of pineapple and scoop of coconut.”
“This treat will reconfigure your existence,” said Weena assuredly.
“Sell it, Weena,” interjected Mercedes the manager lady. “You go, girl.” She thought Weena was cute too.
“And you’re familiar with this man
?” said Weena to Mercedes. “He’s an upright citizen?” She had an odd, old-fashioned way of talking.
“You’re wild,” Mercedes told Weena with a laugh. She liked kidding around.
“For sure I need to be reconfigured,” I remarked. “I’m in a deep rut. Deeper than the Grand Canyon.” Gathering my courage, I decided to test Weena. “Just now I thought I saw a ghost house with a magic door and an Egyptian coffin and a big, creepy sea lion. Some woman I didn’t see came through the door.”
Weena twinkled at me, but didn’t say anything. Moving with awkward grace, she dug out two exceedingly large scoops of ice cream. And then, with a quick gesture, she scattered sprinkles onto the scoops—twinkling, colorful specks. I didn’t quite see where she got the sprinkles from.
Normally I’m a purist when it comes to ice cream—that is, I don’t like chunks of candy junking it up, and I don’t like glop on top.
“An amplified ice for Jim Oster,” said Weena, handing my serving across the counter. She smiling so sweetly that I wasn’t going to bitch about the sprinkles. And never mind that her eyes were calculating and hard.
I paid Mercedes, then ate my gelato rapidly and greedily at one of the sidewalk tables outside the store. The memories of the magic door and the blue sea lion were already fading.
The surf punks had just brought a sea lion home and dyed it for a goof. And Skeeves was living in their basement with his stolen gold sarcophagus. With a bunch of plastic. The sea lion was probably back in the ocean by now. Why get all bent out of shape? Why keep imagining I’d find a way back to Val?
The ice cream was great, and the sprinkles weren’t bad either. They were very high quality, faceted like miniscule gems, and carrying the intense flavor accents of essential oils. I identified cinnamon, spearmint, clove, eucalyptus, violet, and bergamot. For a moment I almost thought the sprinkles were slowly crawling across my ice cream—but surely that was slippage from the melting. A remarkable treat.
I was filled with well-being, in tune with the world. I watched the Santa Cruzans go trucking on by. Bums, students, hipsters, bumpkins, and bossy bohemians—I felt as if I could empathize with each and every one them, as if I could hear bits of the ongoing thoughts in their minds. Or maybe the thoughts were coming from somewhere else. It was almost as if the sprinkles themselves had been full of voices.
I considered going inside to talk with Weena some more, but now she was busy with other customers. And there was, after all, no huge rush to get to know her better. I came to this ice cream parlor nearly every day. I could flirt more with Weena tomorrow. As if sensing my thoughts, she flashed a warm smile at me through the window-glass and tapped her wrist as if she were wearing a watch. She was miming that she’d see me later.
As I got to my feet, I thought once more of the blue slug that had taken on the form of a sea lion. Try as I might, I couldn’t push that particular image away. I decided to try getting another look at the dark green Victorian house.
Droog and I found the same alley we’d followed from the back yard of the house to Cedar Street. But when we walked down this alley, I saw only a vacant lot where the surf punks’ house had been. Wow.
We picked our way through the empty lot. It was scattered with cans and rags, and overgrown with dried brown weeds. The roots twined around little chunks of rubble from a house that had been bulldozed years before. Thick overgrown eucalyptus trees ringed the property. Had I only imagined the old Vic?
“What do you think, Droogie?” I asked, hunkering down beside him in the litter of narrow eucalyptus leaves. “Where’d they go?” I felt close empathy with my old pal. He wanted to lie down in the shade.
We took the most direct route back to my house and then I vegged out on my dusty Goodwill couch, reading a paperback fantasy novel.
It was a peaceful summer afternoon, with the sunlight lying across the roof and yard like heavy velvet.
After awhile I began having the feeling that I could read the pages of the book without actually looking at them. But I was having trouble making sense of what I read. Thinking I needed a nap, I laid down my book and curled up on my side. I dropped off to sleep.
The next thing I knew, I was lying on the living room floor, very confused. It was dark outside. I felt like I’d been—gone. I ached all over, in every muscle and joint. My tongue was bleeding. Something very bad was happening to me.
I crawled across the room to where my cell phone sat with my keys. I didn’t trust myself to walk. It took all my concentration to dial 911. And then everything went black again.
I awoke in a hospital room. It was still night. A nurse was standing over me, a woman with a calm, sympathetic face. She had short dark hair, dyed blonde. Smallish breasts and nice wide hips. It’s funny how, even on his death-bed, a man can still focus on women that way. We’re incorrigible.
The nurse said I’d had two seizures. They weren’t sure why. The doctors had scanned my brain and it looked normal. Maybe I’d be okay. They had me on an IV drip with painkillers and an anti-seizure drug. I needed to rest.
I slept fitfully. In the morning I was able to think a little. I could hardly believe I was in the hospital. Yesterday I’d been fine. And then I’d had that odd experience with the abandoned house. Maybe that’s when my brain had started screwing up.
How disturbing to think that I’d been to death’s door and back. I hadn’t seen any white light or spiral tunnel or dead relatives while I’d been out—none of that cool, trippy stuff. Saddest of all—I hadn’t seen Val. I’d been nowhere and I’d seen nothing. It just felt like I’d had a couple of time-sequences snipped out of my life. Discouraging.
There was something else disappointing me. No friends. Somehow I’d always imagined that if I had a major health crisis, some of the people I’d lost touch with would magically appear to comfort me. But that that wasn’t panning out. Nobody at all was visiting me. I didn’t have any relatives left. And my friends were hopeless flakes. As for Dick and Diane, my asshole landlords—surely they’d seen the ambulance taking me away. But they were probably hoping that I’d die or move into a nursing home. Then they could up the rent.
I was in the hospital for three days, having tests and being observed. When I wasn’t thinking about death, I was obsessing about that strange scene at the crumbling green Victorian house, trying to figure out what it meant. Had it been a warning vision sent from beyond?
On the second day in the hospital, I asked my nice nurse with the big hips to wheel me to the ward’s walled patio. She wore her skirt full-cut, it swayed enticingly as she walked. The tag on her shirt said her name was Alice.
I sat on the patio watching the clouds change shapes in the high summer sun. The leaves of a potted palm tree rocked chaotically in the gentle airs, with the fronds clearly outlined against the marbled heavens. It struck me, in a deep kind of way, that the world would keep right on running if I died. An obvious fact, yes, and I knew it in a theoretical way from seeing Val pass away. But, now that it was personal, it seemed horrible.
“I feel like death is stalking me,” I told nurse Alice as she wheeled me back to my room. “My wife died last August. Her name was Val. We thought she was pregnant, but it was cancer.”
“I remember that case,” said Alice after a pause. “I was on duty that day.”
“They incinerated Val and the baby,” I said, my voice catching. “I never got to say good-bye.”
“The hospital’s public safety precautions can be a little zealous,” said Alice in a calming tone. “But sometimes it’s for the best.”
“I don’t know what to think anymore,” I said, wanting to prolong our chat. “I feel like anything at all can fall apart. From one moment to the next.”
“You’re going to be okay, Jim,” said Alice, patting my shoulder. “You’re a strong man. You’re recuperating very fast.”
By the morning of the third day, they’d decided that my seizures could have been an isolated fluke. I wasn’t very eager to be leave the hospital. I f
elt safe in there. But they said that I should go home that afternoon and taper off the antiseizure drugs on my own. And we’d see what happened next.
Lunch came and went as I lay there worrying. And then, just before it was time for me to check out, nurse Alice led a woman into my room.
“She says she’s your new wife!” said Alice, her kind lips parting in an innocent smile. “I didn’t know.”
For a crazy instant I thought Alice was bringing the dead Val back to me. But, no, my guest was a tall, well-formed young woman with her curly brown hair in a ponytail. A woman with aged, knowing eyes. She looked familiar, but I couldn’t quite—
“Weena Wesson?” said the woman. She mimed eating ice cream with a spoon. Of course. The new clerk from Mahalo Gelato. The woman who’d possibly come from the basement of that crumbling Victorian house.
“How did you know I was here?” I challenged Weena, suspicious and afraid.
“Pull yourself together, Mr. Oster,” said nurse Alice reprovingly. “Be glad you have a partner who cares for you.”
6: Weena Wesson
Weena called a cab and rode with me to my house. I was reasonably glad to have her along. She was, after all, an attractive woman. But...
“Wife?” I said.
“I had to say that so they’d let me in,” said Weena. “I’m quite the intriguer.” She gave me a sly look. “Or perhaps you did marry me, but you forgot?”
I let this one slide. “It’s weird to be outside again,” I remarked, happy to be in the back seat next to her, our thighs touching, the two of us watching the world scroll by. “I was only in the hospital for those three days, but I feel like everything’s changed. I never really understood deep down that I myself am going to die. Not even after losing my wife, Val.”
“Did you glimpse the afterworld?” asked Weena. “During your apoplectic attack?”
