Though I felt inadequate in my ability to protect Teresa, her self-confidence comforted me. “I don’t know. Primitive aggression by buffoons always gets to me. Brings up some ugly stuff.”
“We’ll go back to the cabin and get stoned. Forget all about people like them.”
“They’re everywhere. What if they had kept bugging us? Do you think there is ever justification for violence?”
I bit into the red meat of my burger.
“I suppose to protect someone you love from serious harm.”
“So here’s a bizarre concept. Say you’re walking down the street in the 1920’s. Germany. You see this twerp with a goofy mustache, and suddenly Jesus appears next to you and hands you a gun.”
“What? Jesus wouldn’t do that.”
“Okay, then God, he’s not exactly a pacifist. He says, ‘Shoot that guy. If you don’t, he’s going to wipe out six million Jews.’ ”
“She.”
“What?”
“Maybe God’s female.”
“Oh, never thought of that. Could be some other gender we never even heard of, either. Anyway, would you yourself then be evil if you said, ‘This is nuts,’ and chose not to shoot Hitler?”
“What are—?”
“Five seconds. He, I mean she, only gave you five seconds to decide or the opportunity slips away. One potato, Two potato, Three potato, Four—”
“I shoot.”
“With all the horror that we now know of, we all do, don’t we?”
Teresa reached across the table for my hand. “This isn’t just about those two creeps, is it? Or philosophy. It’s about you feeling helpless, not able to find answers to all the strange happenings in your life.”
“If the phenomena surrounding me were just about Greg feeling better and Betsy recovering, then I wouldn’t be worrying, but Betsy’s head was smashed in and Richard arrested. I don’t like being on the periphery of violence and not knowing if I contributed to it while Amelia, Jenny, and Steel act all spooky.”
“You’re surrounded by some enigmatic characters, true, but remember, it was your choice to go to Boston. Look what happened—a miracle transpired.”
“My choice? It seemed all pre-ordained with Hank and the pandas right in place.”
“Maybe the universe is more perfect than you give it credit.”
Our hands slipped apart.
“Teresa, Shadow Creature is a living command. My fear is what if I’m manipulated into sacrificing everything I believe in.”
Chapter 40
We placed the cubes of LSD on our tongues around ten the next morning. Teresa sat quietly, waiting for the first effects of the trip. After about fifteen minutes, a pleasant “Oh” escaped from between her lips. Another hour passed, and she flopped onto her back on the mattress, dancing her fingers in the air before her eyes.
“Did you ever see how your hands get all bendy?”
Sometime later she still lay in wide-eyed wonder and exclaimed, “I mean, it’s like, wow.”
My thoughts were all clogged up, hung up on jellyfish and childhood sand piles and Hank the ghost. Visually, the trip hadn’t offered anything phantasmagorical, so I decided to sit on the back porch and look out over the valley.
My mind began to stir.
I became aware of a disturbance on the edge of the nearby woods. The air coalesced into human figures. A group of six half-naked Indians with tomahawks and painted faces glided silently across the meadow. Wary of the apparition, I willed myself to sink deeper into my chair. For a brief moment, I felt as if I had camouflaged myself, blending fully into my surroundings. As I did so, one of the hallucinatory warriors looked slyly at me with a wolfish, conspiratorial grin. The raiding party continued on to the forested area where the large rocks jutted out over the cliffside. A whooshing sound filled my ears, and the savage-looking troop disappeared.
Immediately afterwards, an overwhelming emptiness knocked me breathless, and I knew Teresa had left the cabin. In the room where she had been, her presence lingered as a rippling, jingling sound. Looking out the front door, I saw Teresa halfway across the meadow, plodding methodically to where the Indians had gone. She was dressed only in her underwear and a pair of knee-length rubber boots.
The drug high was kicking in fast and strong for both of us.
“Teresa,” I called. The sound of my voice bounced through the air towards her.
She turned and waved both her arms above her head, reaching for the blue, laughing. One of her nipples sprouted a green leaf. When I caught up to her, she said we had become trees. She looked to the sky. I looked to my feet. Then I bent over, and she swung her legs around my neck to sit piggy-back style on my shoulders. We entered into the woods, one of the Tree Clan, settling among a group of walnut and spruce. Rooted to the earth, my mind sought dirt and water while Teresa swayed gently above me, her armlike branches outstretched. She was humming a song to the heavens, and her skin had turned green. Layers of bark formed around me year by year as ages passed.
A chipmunk ran across my shoes. Three birds bounced and twittered nearby, discussing the odd tree in their territory.
The sun shone on us, a breeze stirred through our leaves, reminding us of the summer showers and winter chills our tribe of evergreens and oaks and maples had lived through. I remembered I was a human when I recognized the fire and light on the back of my neck to be Teresa’s cunt heat enveloping me. She was in tune with what I sensed and nudged me playfully with her legs.
Giggling, she held onto my ears, steering me among the trees, away from the ledge. Passing under a tree branch, she gripped it, made some funny monkey sounds, then swung loose from my shoulders and slipped down into my arms. I removed my clothes and pulled off her boots and underwear.
She led me unerringly to a small hollow where a patch of moss spread alongside a trickle of water. She laid herself onto the silky, soft growth, and I dropped to my knees between her legs. Her skin emerged as a pattern of spotted feline fur as I moved my hand across it.
She moaned and purred when I entered her.
Blue light flashed from my body. Two horns jutted out from my head, horns which Teresa gripped and stroked. Tiny yellow translucent flowers on vines spun from her legs and rippled around the two of us. Wild, sweet juices sprung forth with each kiss and caress, smearing us in a wonderful stickiness.
Locked together, uninhibited, hallucinating, we grunted, whimpered, and roared. Our bodies rocked, gouts of flame spouted. Secrets released themselves from our souls. Soothing, clinging, demanding, giving—our inner cries of pain and joy melted together as one. We saw, felt, and accepted the terror and beauty within each other, allowing it to become our existence.
When we climaxed, a supernova of color collided with earth, filling the sky, shimmering on the ground around us. The air rippled and spun thin, weblike threads of silver delicately across our bodies. Tambourine leaves jangled blissfully for eons through the forest.
The universe settled into our hearts.
Afterwards, as we pulled our bodies apart from each other, there was a great sucking and tearing sound. Thirsty, we scooped the fresh water that dribbled into our den and drank. A bird’s whisper of wings sounded overhead, and fox pups yipped nearby. Teresa smelled like earth and wood, moss and honeysuckle, pine and sparkling air. We were part human, part wild beast, the trees and rocks woven permanently into our consciousness. Then, as we lay still, we shared the oddest sensation—my breath entered her lungs and hers went deep into mine, each inhalation keeping one another alive.
We were to be together forever.
When we left, I looked back and saw a shadowed outline of our bodies in the moss. We had lived and died there, become spirit.
Back at the cabin we sat around, both of us deep into thought or hallucination, sometimes together, sometimes in different rooms or close by outside, saying lit
tle, laughing or expressing amazement at some tripped-out realization once in a while. We calmly accepted moments of discomforting self-discovery along with the foolish or fun.
The valley below had darkened, and the drug was tapering off when Teresa said, “You don’t have any clothes on.”
“Hmm, you’re right. Amazing, either do you.”
She pulled on a pair of jeans and a flannel shirt. “Maybe we should light a fire.”
“Okay. Sounds good.”
As I was lighting a thin stack of kindling, Teresa stood on the porch. “Deets, listen. They’re whispering about us.” I cocked my head and understood she was referring to the nearby trees. A pine murmured appreciatively. I heard a large oak wonder aloud to its neighbors in regards to my pile of clothes.
“I left my pants and stuff up there.”
Teresa laughed lightly. “Were you wearing any?”
“My wallet is there. I think I’ll go get it.”
“Who’s going to steal it? A chipmunk who needs your driver’s license? A rabbit who wants some quick cash? Get it tomorrow.”
In my mind’s eye, I saw the wolf-like Indian kneeling by my clothes. He looked at me and with one finger, drew a circle in the air.
A signal, a message. I remembered Hank.
Who was this hallucination?
“No, I’ll be back.”
“Get my undies too.”
The field around the cabin was mucky with rivulets of spring thaw running downhill, seeking a way over the cliff. The cold, wet mud felt good on my feet as I slopped my way through the grass. Unsure of exactly what my mission was, I stood at the wood’s edge and listened. A rustle of leaves led me closer to the rocky ledge, and a creak of wood guided me to my blue jeans, shirt, shoes, and Teresa’s big rubber boots. I couldn’t find her underwear but remembered removing them at the same time I had undressed. Thinking she may have carried them to where we made love, I threaded my way deeper into the woods, past thickets and gnarled roots, trying to follow the path back to the mossy bed.
Not able to retrace the trail, I came to believe it only existed in some place and time specifically created for Teresa and me and our love-making.
The sun was about to disappear behind the ridge to the west. Hearing a motor rumbling and roaring off to my right, I realized I had drifted away from the familiar valley overlook. A grinding of gears ruined the soft sounds of the forest and added to my growing discomfort of not knowing where I was. After hurriedly putting on my clothes, I floundered in the gloom towards the engine sounds to investigate, wary of visitors entering our secluded realm.
I heard a slight metallic thud. Then another. Two doors closing.
Stepping around a large tree, my radar completely failed me, and my foot plowed through a jumble of leaves piled loosely atop a tangle of thin roots. There being nothing solid beneath, I fell, tumbling a few feet down an embankment, coming to a stop against a group of thorny stems.
A thin, whiny male voice said, “Did you hear that?”
Another man answered assuredly, “Probably a coon. I shot me a couple a few months back just up this side of the creek here. Got me a buck once near where we’re going. Twelve point.”
Spears from a prickly bush had ripped my cheek and forehead, scratched an eyelid. Not trusting the voices, I lay still in quiet agony, twisting my head slightly towards the strangers. In the darkening gray twilight I could make out the shape of a pickup truck on a small bridge. The path up out of the gully looked to be the same one that led towards the meadow surrounding Daisy’s cabin.
I was tangled in brambles a few feet above the gurgling stream, near where the trail switched direction to climb the steep bank. Despite a blurry wetness in one eye, I recognized the two creeps who had harassed Teresa and me the day before.
I had lost my way and found the entrance to hell.
Chapter 41
“If they’re not here, we’ll backtrack and take the truck and follow the other paths until we find them. It’s better than hiking along the ridge in the dark. Their goddamn European bus was the only vehicle in the lot, and it was parked at this entrance, so most likely they’re here. Only four cabins on this set of trails.”
“She’s one sweet-looking pussy. What do we do with queer boy?” the skinny guy squawked.
“You can screw him up the ass if you want.” The barrel-chested man with the crew cut laughed.
“Shit, I’ll stick this up him first.” He slung a rifle in front of him.
Crew Cut pushed and pulled a lever on his own gun. The clacking sound it made and his next words were the most terrifying I had ever heard in my life.
“So this is the plan. We fuck her here, mess dickhead up to shit’s end, dump what’s left of him and the van into the pit up by Grassy Lake, then take her to the old camp for a few days until she’s fucked useless.”
“Yeah, let’s do it. That city-boy faggot is going to get it tonight.” He slapped the stock of his weapon.
They were climbing the incline towards me, bodies hunched over as they carefully watched their footing. I held my breath and a prayer as they passed within a few yards of the bush I lay entangled in.
“I bet you the whore does it with me without a fight.” Crew Cut belched and tossed a beer can. It landed above me and rolled down until it bounced against my leg.
“Shit, I want her to kick and squirm. It’s always better if they’re hurting. Y’know what I mean?”
They turned the switchback of the trail, trudging upwards until they entered the level area of wooded pine that stood at the entrance of the meadow.
Teresa will have the fire going and lamps lit. They’ll see that any second.
These guys want to kill us.
The ravine burst into a chaotic screech of chirping. Peeper frogs. I made a quick decision. My only decision. Hoping the frog sound would cover for me, I wrestled with the embankment of thorns. I pulled myself from the stickers, disregarding each puncture or scratch.
No plan, no time to think.
Suddenly, on the trail, I saw the hallucinatory Indian standing before me. He pointed to the truck and slashed his tomahawk. It came up bloody. I froze, wondering if I should pay attention to my crazies, but then I saw a small leather pouch hanging on a chord around his neck. Looped to the drawstring was a white feather.
He stared at me ruthlessly.
From far off in the mountain night, I heard the mournful howl of a dog.
The combination of the vision and dog crying sliced mercilessly through me, peeling away all I believed myself to be. I became the totality of a single clear thought—you may have to do something you never wanted to do tonight—as I turned and descended back towards the bridge.
I ran to the truck, needing a weapon.
In the pickup’s bed, I quickly dismissed an old tire, a can of gas, an empty tool box. Rummaging blindly in the dark, I found a three-foot length of heavy chain and then—there it was—my hand grasped and lifted out a round bar of heavy metal. A tire iron.
A harsh, abrasive rasp from the direction of the parking lot caught me off guard. Facing the source of the unexpected sound, I knew immediately the danger I was in. A cigarette glowed, moving slowly down the path towards me. Doctor Steel. His laughter sounded like his throat was flaking apart with rust.
“Ha. Chief Muckywuck and a little doggie. And look at you, all geared out for war.” He snorted derisively, dragged on his cigarette. “You’re in quite a mess this time.” He stopped about thirty feet from me.
I needed to hear what he had to say, to understand his riddles, but I tore myself away, running from the bridge and climbing the trail, the chain clanking in one hand, the tire iron screaming its possibilities in the other.
Doctor Steel raised his voice, and it felt like he was thrusting hot slivers into my back. “You’re playing the heavies this time. The kid on the
bus was a good move, but he’s not material for tonight. Shame, I thought you’d last longer.”
Racing past the switchback, I felt a coil of terror yank my head around to face Steel. A crackle of sparks spat forth as he shot the slithering rocket of his forked tongue out about ten feet. The air between us splintered with blasts of formidable orange light. My retinas held the burn of the powerful flashes, temporarily blinding me, and when my vision returned, I could no longer see Steel, only a bruise in the night where he had stood.
Life or death. Hurry. Get to Teresa.
As I ran, I became attuned to details that would help me survive, expose my enemy’s false moves, or take advantage of their weaknesses. The night sky, air current, sounds ahead, my silhouette, my pace—all were critical. My blood raced, but the world around me slowed as my mind feverishly dissected every thought. For now, my best chance of surprise was to stay behind the murderers. They would assume I was in the cabin, but when they found Teresa alone, I would have to act swiftly.
Try to reason with them?
No.
Attack.
They have rifles. Move in close. Ambush fast. Disable them, make sure Teresa is safe from harm, keep alert, protect myself. Intercept any fucking passes. Kill if that’s what needs to be done.
Kill.
I could feel the pagan Indian warrior’s eyes flicking, his nostrils flaring, ears sharpening. His energy had become mine, intense now with a precise insanity to cut and pierce anyone in my path. I moved quickly, silently, already streaked with blood from my skirmish in the brambles. Then, as if from a dark, shattering cry inside me, I surged into the nightmare of a black hound, teeth gleaming, saliva frothing and streaming with the savagery of the charge.
Feeling the rhythm of the chain’s fluidity, adjusting my grip on the tire iron, I had become an agent of destruction.
Save Teresa.
I checked my pace as I left the pines and entered the meadow. Edging cautiously forward under the open sky, every star my witness, I thanked their cold light for revealing two lumps moving together across the field. They hadn’t reached Teresa yet.
Mayhem (The Remarkable Adventures of Deets Parker Book 1) Page 20
