“Seven.”
“Two to one? Shit, if that was news from Vietnam, they’d call it a victory,” Maliq said.
“You got any more of that acid, Terry?” Lonnie asked.
“Yeah.”
“Where’d you get that from?” Connie asked. “I never figured you for a chemist or a dealer.”
“Pharmacy student I know. I can hook you up. Not as good as the professor’s stash though.”
“You tried that?” Maliq asked. Could he be the other FBI asset? He was from Hartford. He came right around the time the Panthers killed that guy, too. Shit, if he was an informant, it would get back to them that he had lied. He’d have to tell his handler. No. He could say he was just showing off to impress the Mill crowd.
“Yeah, just the one time,” he said. “I’d like to get some more though.”
“I bet that can be arranged,” Lonnie said.
“I wish we could get more going on campus,” Connie said. “All the action is in the streets around here. My dad’s in Berkeley. They’re on the front line out there. Fucking Cleveland, man.”
“Your old man’s protesting?” Maliq said. “That’s cool. Mine’s too worried about keeping his job. Says I should just keep my head down and make sure I don’t get kicked out of school and lose my draft exemption.”
“Yeah, my pop’s pretty square too,” Terry said. “He doesn’t do anything but watch ball games and photography.”
“Photography?” Lonnie said. His eyes narrowed. “He let you touch his cameras and shit?”
“No. He says there’s chemicals. Plus the equipment is expensive.”
“Dig it. All these old guys, locked down so tight? Photography clubs? They’re taking pictures of naked ladies. All those old guys, pretending to be so upstanding. Bunch of old panty sniffers, man. Every last one of them.”
“Hey, you better watch what you’re saying about my dad,” Terry said, anger surging suddenly in his chest.
“I’m just saying, they’re all pervs like everybody else.”
“Maybe like you Lonnie,” Connie said. She touched Terry’s arm, just a pat. Just enough to keep him from getting up and saying the next thing that would lead to a fight.
***
“Pop, you home?” Terry called. “Mom?” The house was empty and still, except the curtains blowing slightly and the sound of the television on in the living room. Almost two o’clock. His dad must have run out to the store before the game. He’d have to be quick.
His dad had built a small darkroom in the back of the garage. There was a latch on the inside of the door to keep people from walking in when he was developing film, but that was all. He relied on his authority in the home to keep people out of his private domain otherwise. Terry closed the door behind him and pulled the chain for the work light. The space was cramped, and smelled of cigarettes and Aqua Velva, with an underlying funk of vinegar and spoiled eggs. Pictures from last Christmas hung on lines over the wooden work bench. Terry, his mother and sister. The white aluminum tree with red balls and garland. “It’ll last forever,” his dad pleaded when his mom saw it for the first time. She had been so embarrassed by it when her friends and family came to visit.
He searched efficiently, moved through the boxes and cans of materials. Envelopes of negatives, and files of developed pictures. Family events and holidays. His uncle with his new Cadillac from a few years ago. Some experiments with nature shots: birds at the feeder and sunlight shining through icicles. A file of correspondence sent to photography magazine contests, consisting almost entirely of submission forms and rejection letters. There was no hint of Lonnie’s accusation. The closest thing was a few pictures of his mother in a modest one-piece from their trip to Hawaii when he was little.
He closed the darkroom up quietly and returned to the house, through the kitchen and into the living room. His dad was in his lounger with the game on.
“Hey, sport. Didn’t hear you come in.”
“No, I was in the garage.”
“Did you--ah, dammit, he sure got all of that one.”
Terry looked up to see Yastrzemski trotting around second while Ellings looked on. His stomach churned and the hair on his head bristled. His dad shook his head.
“Two-nothing to start the game. Well, we were third in the whole League last year. They’ll right the ship. With the new divisions they got, it’ll be even easier to make the playoffs. Hey, you alright? You look a little sick.”
“Yeah, Pop.” He said. “I’m o.k. Everything’s fine.”
***
“Some girl Connie called,” his sister yelled from the doorway as he ran out to Lonnie and Maliq in Lonnie’s pickup.
“If she calls again, tell her I’ll call her back.”
“Ain’t you going to mass with me an’ mom?”
He gave her a disgusted look and got in to laughter and the Rolling Stones.
He’d never seen the Mill in daylight. Trash and weeds choked the parking lot and riverbank. Rainbow slicks sparkled between shoals of clotted sludge in the river beyond. There were a lot of cars. Not as many as on a weekend night, but there were a lot of people inside. Their feet crunched on broken glass as they walked across the broken asphalt toward the dim space within.
The sun filtered through the skylights and high windows well above the floor. Dust motes whorled in hazy columns that played upon the uneven concrete. It looked as though most of the trash from the night before had been swept out the back, or at least to the corners where oil-stained machinery mounts still protruded from the floor.
“There any beer?” he asked. Lonnie shook his head.
The Mill crowd shifted about on the floor, groups forming and dispersing, talking angrily about the war and the government. “The problem is escalation, man,” Maliq said. “Nixon’s gonna nuke Hanoi, and then the Russians will retaliate. If we don’t take steps to control and prevent the propagation of this shit, there will be more and more violence. We’ve got to take control from the warmongers and capitalists. By any means necessary, man.” It seemed to Terry that only the more intense personalities had come, and the room was agitated by the time Professor Baloq appeared.
His voice was a quiet murmuration at first, but it slowly picked up in volume an intensity as he preached against Nixon and the war, against the bankers and factory owners. Terry had heard it all before. Rage and fear and demands for change that led only to snipers and bombings and riots. They were going to burn the country to the ground. He’d heard more than enough when Baloq shifted into a rant about expanded consciousness and ancient wisdom, spewing an inchoate mix of Eastern mysticism, astrology, and other mythologies that Terry had never heard of.
“But the words themselves are empty, my friends,” Baloq shouted. “It is only in the lived communal consciousness of experience with the alien Other that we realize our place within the cosmos. And that time, my friends, is now.” He held a sheaf of brown blotter paper aloft. “You have all had a taste. Today, we throw the gates of perception open.”
Terry began to back away, but Lonnie and Maliq pressed him from the sides.
“You need this, brother,” Maliq said.
“We’re gonna be shipping this all over, man,” Lonnie said. “Gonna force everybody’s eyes wide open.”
“You guys go ahead. This is too intense for me.”
“Bullshit,” Lonnie said. “Unless you’re still with the pigs, man. There’s always that option, isn’t there, Terry?”
“What? Fuck you, man.”
But they had his arms tightly and there were too many others around him to fight. Dozens of them glaring at him now. They’d beat him, maybe try and force him to confess. Or worse.
“Everyone calm down,” Baloq said, coming toward them. Terry could see the yellow symbols on the blotter squirming. “Terry is one of us. Remember that it is an essential truth of all revolutions that most people must be dragged kicking and screaming into the fight. Try not to think about it, son. If you do, if you resist, you’ll d
rown. If you don’t, you won’t.”
“Always whining about wanting to get to what’s true,” Lonnie said. “You want to know the real world? Trip to this.” Lonnie held his mouth open painfully. He tried to turn his face away, but Baloq forced squares of brown blotter inside. It took seconds for the ceiling to open up and the void to enter his head again.
All around him, the Mill crowd were changing. Some stood like wax statues, their bodies twisted in strange poses, black tears oozing from their eyes. Others staggered or rolled on the floor. A man in a tuxedo with slick black hair produced bouquets and snakes of rainbow scarves on a stage while a woman in a dress stood beside him and looked on at the growing mounds of silk at his feet. He saw Connie reaching for him before she was shoved away and then he was running naked down the road from the village, screaming, his back burning while a photographer snapped photos.
His thoughts became less clear after that, disrupted by strange intrusions and synesthesias, while the stars churned in his mind. Later, or maybe earlier, he saw students standing slack-jawed and comatose, black tears running down their faces in torrents to pool upon the floor, soaking through their sneakers, running over the tops inside. Maliq was lying on his side, moaning. Gut and chest wriggling, squirming. Something trying to get out. Bloody froth bubbled from his mouth. Strange tubular creatures with fan-like wings moved across snow-blown basalt as Terry watched a golf ball fly away from him, far across the lunar landscape and into oblivion.
Then Connie was there again, helping him to his feet, and his FBI handler appeared in the middle of the Mill floor, chanting something that made him nauseated and afraid. Agent Fallon made a strange gesture with his hand and Baloq’s arm shriveled, curled, and blackened. Two balls of fire fell from the starry rift in the ceiling and flew around the room at the Agent’s direction. The fireballs scattered the crew across the floor of the Mill, and one picked up Lonnie and carried him high in the air while he shrieked and burned. His legs kicked as he turned to ash and the charred stumps clad in western boots and smoking denim cuffs fell to the floor. Terry tried to scream, but he could only choke out words in languages he did not know while urine ran down his legs.
In the lot outside the Mill, cars pulled away spraying rocks and ground glass. The fiery motes screamed from the building, passing over the river before returning to the sky again. Within moments, the oozing river was on fire, pungent black smoke roiling from the sickly orange flames. Connie was yelling at him but he could not hear her.
***
He woke up in the hospital. Connie - he never found out her real name - had called the Bureau when she realized he was in trouble. Their handler informed him by telephone that the Cuyahoga had been ignited by sparks from a passing train and that the Mill investigation was closed. Baloq had been taken to Lima State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.
“Sir, I saw you-“
“Son, you were under the influence of an unusually powerful psychedelic. You don’t know what you saw or didn’t see. You’ll be monitored for residual symptoms, including so-called ‘flashbacks,’ but our experts tell me that you should not experience any permanent effects. I can tell you that, thanks in no small part to your efforts, we have neutralized a significant threat to our national security.”
***
His mother came by that evening, fussed at the nurses and frowned at his hair. She sat in the chair by his bed in silence for a long time.
“I’m leaving your father,” she said, when she finally spoke.
“I didn’t know you two were having problems,” he said.
“Then you haven’t been paying very much attention,” she said.
She left a short time later. He lay in the bed, staring at the ceiling, listening to the evening sounds on the ward. Outside his room, a small television set sat in the hallway. Ed Sullivan introduced Fantasio, who began his scarf routine. He couldn’t see the set, but he knew what color the scarves were. Tears formed in the corners of his eyes and he sobbed silently while the audience applauded.
***
A week later he was home. His mother and sister were at his aunt’s house in Evanston. He sat on the floor in the upstairs hallway and listened to his handler on the phone. Connie had been reassigned. They wouldn’t tell him where.
“You’ve received the package.”
“Tickets to ‘An Aquarian Exposition’ in August,” Terry said. “Wallkill, New York.”
“It’s been moved to Bethel. Zoning issues. The organizers are planning for 600 toilets for 50,000 people and they’ll have twice that many. Fucking hippies will be rolling in their own filth. We’ll wire you cash. You received the other materials necessary for this operation?”
Terry looked at the sheets of blotter paper clipped neatly to the poster and tickets.
“The brown acid,” he said.
“Not on the phone, son. You know better than that.”
“Yes, sir.”
He hung up the phone, hid the envelope in his dresser, and walked downstairs. His dad was in the living room watching the ball game. Terry grabbed a pair of beers from the fridge and joined him.
“Good timing, sport,” his dad said, setting down his empty bottle. It tipped and rolled with a clatter against another.
“Who’s winning?”
“Tribe’s up on the Senators, seven - two. Tiant’s pitching a gem. Hey, you want to go see the Independence Day fireworks up on the lake tomorrow night? Gonna be a nice show.”
“Sure.”
Terry fiddled with his beer, tried to keep his hands from shaking.
“Say, Pop? Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
Williams was sending Shellenbeck out to face the Indians in the bottom of the 8th. Droplets shook from the bottle to spot the floor. He tried to clear his throat.
“Well, what’s the matter?”
“What’s the worst thing you saw over there? In Korea, I mean.”
His dad shifted in his chair, stared at the television.
“I killed a baby.”
“By accident? Shooting at some Viet- I mean, North Koreans and the kid got in the way. Right?”His voice shook, and he could barely get the words out. “No,” he said quietly, and paused to take a sip from his beer. “It wasn’t like that at all.”
Down through Black Abysses
Pete Rawlik
“. . . to Cyclopean and many-columned Y’ha-nthlei, and in that lair of the Deep Ones we shall dwell amidst wonder and glory forever.”
Are those the words my cousin wrote? Was he that naïve? Was I? It all seems so long ago, but in truth it has been only days, weeks at the most. They said I was a lunatic, all those years ago, and my father and grandfather shut me up in that Canton madhouse. But Uncle Douglas and Grandmother knew the truth and it cost both of them their lives. Only my cousin Robert was strong enough to discover the facts and embrace them. He engineered my escape and planned for both of us to go east to Innsmouth and then into the sea where our great-great grandmother Pth’thya-l’yi was waiting, calling us to the sub-aqueous metropolis of Y’ha-nthlei, calling us home.
We were fools.
I haven’t much time to write this. I can hear them outside. I’ve taken refuge on the second floor of an abandoned warehouse that overlooks the Innsmouth waterfront. I write these words on pages I found in a long forgotten desk. When I am done, I shall secure them into an abandoned mason jar and throw it into the harbor. It is perhaps the only way to tell my story and assure that it reaches the outside world. The world must know the truth, my cousin Robert must be stopped, before he too reaches Innsmouth and undertakes the journey to Y’ha-nthlei.
Robert had a plan, but I, who had been locked away for years, could no longer wait. The voice of my ancestor was so loud, so insistent, so demanding. I stole his car, his money, his supplies and I made my way to Innsmouth without him. I could have gone anywhere really. I could have slipped into Lake Erie or the Ohio River, or any of a dozen waterways and then made my way to the At
lantic. Yet somehow all these options seemed wrong. I was drawn by something to the Manuxet. Some ancestral memory or impulse made it impossible to go anywhere else but the headwater of that dark river. Like some strange salmon I had no choice but to follow the path that my breeding had laid out for me, no matter how maddening, dangerous or ridiculous it seemed. I stopped only for fuel, rolling down the window only enough to slip the attendant the required payment, I collected no change. Never did I let my crude disguise of a hat and muffler slip. I relieved myself in the woods along deserted and desolate back roads, always with the motor running. I subsisted on the rations of dried foodstuffs and bottled drink that my dear cousin had assembled for the two of us. I followed the course Robert had laid out for us, passing through Erie and then wilds of western New York, before coming into Massachusetts and crossing the Round Mountains to pick up the Aylesbury Pike toward Arkham. I was careful to turn east and skirt Bolton before finally stopping the car at the headwaters of the Manuxet which steals water from the Miskatonic through a vast marshy land.
It was there, at the end of the land leg of my journey and the beginning of the waterborne that I let my guard down and was suddenly endangered. As I stood there in the stream, in a godforsaken marsh, in the morning hours, a man suddenly appeared in my field of vision. His uniform identified him as a soldier; one I supposed of those that Robert had told me had been deployed to occupy Innsmouth. He was alone, with a gun slung over his shoulder. That he surprised me goes without saying, but I think it was he who was the most startled, for he seemed surprised simply by my presence. I was naked, half submersed in the cold spring water of the creek, my gills flexing in the cold air, a strange crested fin running down my back. Without a word he raised his rifle and took aim, I panicked and leapt through the air more out of reflex than conscious thought. In an instant I was on him, his throat was slit, and the claws of my right hand were warm with blood and gore. I left him there on the road to die; his hand clutching his throat his eyes wide in fear of the knowledge that he was close to dead, his mouth gasping for air and instead gurgling bubbles of blood.
A Lonely and Curious Country Page 5
