Night leads into morning
Dreams lead into waking
Winter leads to beckoning spring
All roads lead to shadow
All roads lead to shadow
Heaven waits in silence
Branches twist through carpeting snow
All roads leads to shadow
From "The Long Road" by The Conqueror Wyrms
Judy Mondavi looked off into the glistening lights in the distance.
Like stars they were, shooting stars that flew across the surface of the
sky. Headlights they might be, yet at the same time to her they were stars,
shooting stars, carrying the people behind them off into their destiny.
She smiled at the thought, realizing that it was at once innocent
and profound. We were all of us sailors tied to shooting stars, carrying us
off into the future.
That forest of moving light off in the distance was the highway,
she assumed. She could probably walk there in about an hour, and there was
no doubt she'd be able to thumb a ride there; this little stretch of road
she was on was starless, sailorless. In the past ten minutes she'd only
seen a half-dozen cars, all of which had sped past with a smug disdain for
her outstretched thumb. It was a bummer. She was pretty beat.
The last ride she'd caught had been pretty cool at first. The guy
was some sort of middle-aged businessman, maybe in sales or something. He
was one of those guys who seemed to put three inches onto his waist for
every inch that disappeared from his hairline; and since his hairline was
well into the negative numbers at that point... well, it wasn't pretty.
She was, though. She knew it, and chose her rides with care. The
guy had seemed fairly harmless; she thought she'd developed a sort of ESP
about that sort of thing. Family man and all that. But those could be the
worst; a creepy vibe had started to settle over the car by the time they
were halfway to Arkham, and all her alarm bells were ringing by the time
he'd made the turn onto this god-forsaken shortcut. He wasn't a psycho,
though, just trying to make some time... hell, it was a pretty loveless
world at times and in a way she couldn't blame him.
Not to the extent that she was gonna put up with his paws on her,
though. No freaking way.
She'd been lucky so far on this trip. She'd heard a lot of horror
stories on the road; people were saying that it wasn't like it used to be.
Hitching was getting dangerous, and there were a lot of predators on the
lookout for fieldmice with long legs and extended thumbs. Lots of girls
she'd talked with said they'd been raped, a couple of dudes had been
beat-up pretty bad. There'd even been a few stories about cats who'd just
up and disappeared - one minute they were on the highway with a backpack
and a cardboard sign, the next they were just plain gone. It was kinda
scary.
'Course she'd heard the other side from a few drivers; guys who'd
been mugged, or just creeped out by some spacey cat with too much face fur
and too much chemical enhancement. No, it wasn't like it used to be. It
was growing sour.
So she kept her ESP on high alert when she was hiking. If the vibe
was bad, she didn't get in the car. "Friendly"was the best vibe, "bored"
was okay, and even "horny" wasn't a problem if the driver seemed like the
type that would wait for an invitation. But she'd turned down lifts from a
lot of drivers - "pissed at the world", "way too religious", "frat boys on
a binge"... and more than a few "just plain scary".
Her ESP had been a little bit off with the last guy; she'd thought
he might be the type that likes to have a young girl in the car with him
for a bit, but never takes it further than that. But he definitely had
ideas. Yep, ideas galore. But her vibe reading had been sound after all, as
it turned out... when she'd asked him, politely as possible, to pull over
and let her out, he'd complied right away with only a little pouting. Phew!
Another getaway.
And now she was almost to Arkham. Whoopee!
Judy started off toward the moving train of horizontal stars. The
night was warm enough, considering that it was September; the slight
coolness in the breeze felt good against her bare legs, crisp and
stimulating. Her shawl, hand crocheted one night in a fit of
chemically-enhanced constructive energy, kept her upper body warm but still
gave her arms the flexibility to extend a querulous thumb, if and when a
car should meander by. She felt good.
She had come to Arkham following a dream. Like thousands of others
across the country, she had opened her eyes one day and felt a pull she
could only describe as a pull of movement, an urge to take to one's feet
and head to a place where the old rules didn't apply. A new world that was
forming somewhere beyond the horizon, a world of color and peace and
freedom seperate and distinct from the uptightness and Vietnammishness of
the straight world (where the pull of movement was upward, simply upward,
never forward, never toward).
She looked ahead, toward the point where the dim lights from myriad
stars uncounted merged imperceptably with the hard black of the faraway
ground. Look up, stars afar. Look down, solid ground. Off at the far end of
vision was the point where the earth touched sky, the horizon.
Back at home, back in the bread-fed mid-waisted wasted midwest, she
had always looked out at the horizon and seen a barrier, a fence at the
edge of the field of her understanding. That was the end of the Earth, go
too far you fall off, here there be tygers. It made her sad and restless,
but she'd never felt need nor want to challenge that distant wall between
earth and sky... until she awoke one day, one fine, drizzled, grizzled
midwestern morning and realized that the horizon wasn't a wall; it was a
doorway.
And over that horizon, she had heard, there were worlds of people
who danced to different drummers, whole tribes of young, living, breathing,
thinking, feeling, caring people who dared to dream of a better world, who
dared even more to try to bring that world into being. In the cities people
with dreams of fire were gathering, forming enclaves of art and sanity
amidst the white noise static of the gray flannel hustle-bustle. In New
York, in San Francisco.
In Arkham.
She had a dream to move upward, forward, toward. And that dream,
she knew, must lead her to Arkham. Some of her friends, those anointed
enough to share her dreams with, at least, had asked her... why Arkham? Why
not San Fran, or the Village? She had simply shrugged. Those weren't the
places for her. Arkham. Arkham was the place. Her destiny was there. She
knew it.
Destiny. In Arkham.
The world was changing. It was, she hoped, changing into a better,
more beautiful being, like a butterfly stepping out of its chrysalis. But
it was changing, that was certain. And one other thing was also certain.
She had a part to play in its transformation.
She saw the ground ahead of her grow perceptibly brighter. A car
was coming. Waiting until the light was bright enough to cast a shadow out
before her, she turned and extended her thumb. The car slowed, and pulled
to the side of the rode ahead of her. She hustled over to the passenger
door, which the driver thoughtfully opened from inside.
"Hey, man," she said, leaning inside, "Goin' to Arkham?"
"You bet." The driver was young, early twenties. Better: long hair.
Best of
all: kind, playful eyes.
"Cool!" she answered as she slid in through the passenger door. The
car was a big, beat-up old green Chevy with a wide front seat. There was
thick smell of cigarette smoke in the car, and a half-empty pack of Luckies
on the dashboard. Judy didn't smoke, it was a heavy habit with a heavier
price tag - she knew people who smoked a dollar's worth every single day -
but she liked the smell of fresh smoke, it reminded her of nights around
the dinner table when she was a kid, before the whole family scene just
fell apart. Even better, underneath the cigarette smell was a hint of
sweeter smoke.
"Got any pot?" It couldn't hurt to ask.
"Whoa," the driver said, a slow, worried look spreading across his
face. "You shouldn't ask strangers stuff like that. There's dark times
about, and darker people."
Judy smiled. A cynic! How neat! "But not in this car, right?"
The worried look grew into a grin so subtly that the point when it
changed from one to the other was indetectable. "No, not in this car. Glove
compartment."
Judy pressed the button and the glove compartment popped open,
revealing a rat's nest of envelopes, scraps of paper, salt and ketchup
packets, movie ticket stubs and, tucked away in a corner, two fat,
tightly-rolled joints.
"I always try to keep some on hand in case company drops in," the
driver explained. "Company always does," he added.
"Aren't you worried about the cops?" she asked as she touched the
red end of the car's cigarette lighter to the end of the joint. She had
selected the smaller of the two - no need to be greedy. "Right in the glove
compartment - that's where you'd go for your registration."
The driver brushed the thought aside with a wave of his hand. "Nah.
This is a college town; cops know there's nothing gained by hassling kids
whose tuitions are what keeps the economy going."
"So you go to school here?"
"No."
Judy rolled her eyes. "Which means they have carte blanche to
hassle you!" She laughed as she said it.
"Ah, but I look like a college kid, that's the important thing.
Just look at me. What do my clothes say? Grad student. Lots of black,
scruffy but a bit intellectual... no, they aren't going to pull me over
unless I run over a cop's mom... which I wouldn't, by the way, I'm a fairly
competent driver."
"Mmm-hmmm. Well, there's a logic to what you say, I think. You're
not a student; what do you do, then?"
"I think a lot." He paused, then started to say something. Then he
closed his mouth.
Judy exhaled, then passed the joint to the driver. The smoke made
her feel light, and vibrant, and free. Then she turned around, and looked
in the back seat at an object that had caught her eye but not quite
registered a moment before. "A guitar! Are you in a band or something?"
The driver smiled. "Yes, I guess I am."
"Cool! Anybody I've heard of?"
"Not the Jefferson Airplane or anything like that. Sorry. We're
pretty well known in this area, though."
"What's the name of your band? Maybe I have heard of you. You never
know."
"Yeah, you never do," the driver said, and paused as he took a big
hit off of the joint, keeping the smoke in, then slowly exhaling it out
through his clenched teeth. "We're the Plasma Miasma."
"Groovy name," Judy said, with an appreciative nod.
The driver nodded as well. "Hey, they're a groovy bunch of guys.
I'm lucky to have gotten together with them; we've made some great records."
"You have records out?" Judy was becoming impressed.
"Sure, we even made the charts locally. Didn't knock the Beatles
off or anything, but that counts for something, y'know?"
"Yeah, that's pretty cool!" She took another deep toke off of the
joint and felt smooth. After a moment's silence while she exhaled and he
drove, she asked, "Do you think you'll ever make it nationally?"
The driver smiled. "Oh, I dunno. Fire - that's our keyboard player,
he founded the band, Fire Brisbane - "
"Cool name."
"Yeah, it's 'cause he lit his arm on fire once in Chemistry. See,
we had these little burners, pretty much just glass jars filled with
alcohol, topped off and with a wick sticking out. Fire was talking about
some project of his - he gets very animated when he gets wound up - and he
spilled some alcohol on the table. Not really paying attention, he leans in
it, gets it all over his arm, then, he was making a point, you have to
remember that, he stretches his arms out with a big flourish..." the driver
extended his arm, so that it was in front of Judy's face. She giggled.
"So he's got his arm out, and he's making this speech," the driver
continued, "But what he doesn't know is that he's managed to put the arm
right over Jimmy Millgrove's burner. The arm with all the alcohol on it.
Whoom! Up it goes!"
"Oh my god!" Judy said, then giggled some more. She could see the
image in her head, the arm ablaze, and it seemed very, very funny. She
couldn't say why. Actually, it was pretty horrible, actually.
"But that's not the best part," the diver went on, becoming more
animated, and miming the events as best he could while still managing to
drive. "You have to know Fire, but once he gets going on something, he
doesn't stop. He reached over with his other hand and beat out the flames -
and never even paused in what he was saying!"
"Wasn't he burned?"
"No! It happened so quick that the alcohol formed like a shield
around his flesh; he put the fire out before the alcohol had all burned
away, and the flames never even touched his skin! Pretty wild, huh?"
"I'll say. Anyway, that's why he's called Fire."
"Wow." Pause. "What are you called?"
"Oh! Man, I forgot! Manners! Wow." He reached out his left hand,
continuing to steer with his right. "John Symonds."
Judy took his hand and shook it. "Pleased to meet you. Judy Mondavi."
"Likewise." There was a pause as he took the joint back from her.
"So, like I was saying, Fire is the one who really wants to make the big
time. Danny, Wild Willie, they really don't care, they're happy being the
big fish in Arkham Puddle."
"What about you? Don't you want to be a 'rock star'?"
"Ahh, sometimes I think so, sometimes I don't know. I mean, it's a
great job; I make enough so that I can afford food, and beer, and books,
and reefer; all the things that make life worth living. What do I really
need beyond that?"
Judy smiled. "Well, there's love."
John Symonds scoffed. "Hey, don't get me started, okay?"
"What, there's no one in your life? No one who makes your world
complete?"
John looked over at her. God, she was pretty. Was she coming on to
him?
"Not yet." He smiled and passed her the joint.
She smiled as she took it. "Well, you should look into that." He
was handsome, there was no denying it. A musician, too, and a successful
one! Not something that comes along every day. She looked at him as he
drove, admiring his profile, his determined chin, his walrussy mustache,
his intelligent brow.
"Yeah, I suppose I should. Still, it's hard to meet people in my
line of work." He grinned as he said it, realizing how absurd it sounded.
The laugh leapt up in her throat and almost made her lose the smoke
that she was so carefully holding in. Finally it burst through her nose
into a fit of giggles. "Oh, come on! You must have girls lined up outside
the dressing room!"
John shook his head ruefully. "Yeah, well, that's there, all right,
even at the level we're at. But, man, those people are vampires, you know?
Vampires. Brrr." He shuddered.
"What, they turn into bats? 'Zey vant to drink your blud'?" She
leaned toward him in a mock pounce, with fangs extended and fingers
contorted into ragged claws.
John leaned away in slow motion. "Man, that's not far off. But it's
more of a metaphysical draining. They want part of you, part of your
spirit, part of your soul. And they don't even realize it."
Judy settled back and passed him the joint. "You've got a
screwed-up world-view, my friend."
"Walk a mile in my shoes. Better yet, stand on stage and look out
over the faces in the dark, pale, rapt, staring up at you with hungry,
hungry eyes. Insatiable eyes. They want something from you, they don't know
what it is. Want."
"Let me guess. You like to take acid when you play, right?" Judy
thought about a trip she'd been on, where all the faces around her became
the faces of bird creatures, wild eyed, horrible and hilarious. She'd
stayed away from acid for a whole month after that.
John grinned a guilty grin. "Yeah. One night I looked out and it
was like I was playing in front of a room filled with kids from those tacky
posters, you know, the ones with the big, sad eyes?"
"God! I can imagine! Those things are scary enough when you're
straight!"
"Tell me about it! Anyway, the Night of the Big Scary Sad-Eyed Acid
Waifs cured me of any attraction to the stage-door contingent. Just
something that got under my skin, you dig?"
"Gotcha."
John took a toke, and passed the rapidly-dwindling joint back to
Judy while he allowed the smoke to expand in his lungs, filling his
aureoles and saturating his bloodstream with sweet cannabinoids. For the
moment there seemed to be nothing to say, but it wasn't an uncomfortable
silence.
They were nearing the city now. From their perspective at the
moment, which was at a fairly high elevation, descending into the valley
formed by the Miskatonic river, Judy could look down and almost make out
the very spot where the farm country that they had been driving through
metamorphosized into suburbs and then, impossibly quickly, into city. She
looked over at John Symonds and quickly made a decision.
"Well?" She asked.
"Well what?" he answered, laughing. Did she think she had asked him
a question?
"Well, aren't you going to pull over somewhere?" And she smiled
devilishly.
John Symonds' eyes widened, then he grinned widely. "Why, are we
out of gas?" he asked, playfully, but he was already looking for a deserted
side road as he said it.
The trees that lined the road formed a rapidly rolling staccato
timber wall, broken only by the occasional stone-walled field. But up
ahead, the moonlight revealed a gap in the trees; a dirt road that
disappeared into the darkness, swallowed by woods and night. During the day
it doubtlessly gave some farmer access to the back end of his fields; John
could visualize a battered old Ford pickup jostling its way through the
underbrush, its bay loaded with pitchforks, spades, and other assorted
tools of the trade. By night, however, it seemed a gateway, a passage into
a netherworld of magic and passion.
He pulled the Chevy to the side of the road. The passage into the
woods was illuminated by its head lights, two tan wheel-tracks lined by
green, with a raised hump of grass between them. The grass was high; the
road wasn't used very often. He looked at Judy. She smiled and nodded. He
turned onto the road, and the Chevy slipped away from the world of tarmac
and into the shadowed trees.
The dirt tracks were rutted and lined with roots, and the car's
tires tossed and joustled its occupants as it moved along. The moon blinked
down on them from between the overhanging tree limbs, a cold white watching
ghost. Flashes of peripheral movement flickered around them, just beyond
the grasp of the their headlights, as their passage startled small
creatures into flight.
"It's like we stepped into another world," Judy said in an awed
whisper, stating the obvious. Then she giggled.
John giggled too. "Yeah, I think I saw a hobbit."
"Me too!" she agreed. "He was disguised as a squirrel!"
"Yep, that's the one." He looked ahead into the darkness as best he
could. "I think there's a clearing ahead. Could be a nice spot."
Judy smiled. "Whatever."
In a moment they had passed through another seeming doorway in the
trees and now were at the high edge of an enormous field of pumpkins, which
sloped out before them, spreading off for what seemed in the magical
moonlight to be miles. That was an illusion, of course; it was possible to
make out the edge of the highway in the not-so-distant distance, and off
beyond that the lights of Arkham, like flickerless fireflies lining the
darkness' rim.
John switched the headlights off as soon as they left the woods;
there was enough illumination from the moon to see the dirt tracks in front
of the car, and there was certainly no need to announce their presence to
anyone who might be glancing out from one of the houses that stood down at
the far edge of the field. Nothing would harsh their buzz quicker than a
visit from Arkham's finest and fuzziest.
"Wow," Judy said. "This is pretty incredible. It looks like the
surface of another planet."
"Yeah. Pretty wild. I'm going to pull us over up there. Looks like
a good spot, we'll be able to see the whole field."
"Cool."
There was a place at the very pinnacle of the sloping field where
the woods were indented a little; probably where the farmer turned his
truck around. John backed the Chevy into the slot, and turned off the
motor. They sat for a moment in silence, looking out over the moon-changed
landscape, the twining vines and bulbous fruit rendered unearthly by the
painterly hands of the night goddess. It was beautiful.
A nightbird called out off to their right, and John turned to look
at Judy. The moonlight barely reached the inside of the car; Judy's face
was shadowed, with only a soft white glow along the edge of her cheek and a
glint reflecting from her eyes giving her features any illumination. She
was humming to herself almost inaudibly, seemingly singing along with the
nighttime trill of crickets and peepers and cicadas, oh my.
"Do you want to fire up the other joint?" he asked, his voice
seeming inappropriately loud, even though he spoke in tones barely a
whisker above a whisper.
"Maybe after," she said, and he heard the smile he couldn't see as
she slid closer to him in the darkness. The night singers outside raised
their pitch to a crescendo. He reached out.
Woe unto man, cursed and chased as he is from the breath of the Gods! Woe
to him who can but glimpse and gasp at wisps of truth, cloaked in minor
chords and blinks and shadows, sights of flicker figures shifting edgily at
the periphery of reason! Woe to him to whom truths are furtive blinks,
wretched gasps and minor chords! Woe, I speak thee of woe, woe, woe!
Whoa, whoa, whoa, came a ghost-echo from the recesses of John's mind, a
song he had heard once, not the melody, not the lead but the backup singers.
Not the song, he didn't hear the song, he heard the backup singers crying
"whoa" in three-part swoon-edged croon. Whoa, whoa, whoa, they cried inside
his mind, an insane inane reefer-fed nonsensical chorus. He smiled as his
lips drew nearer to Judy's.
He put his right hand on her left leg. Her lips parted.
It surged between them like a gurgle of black liquid electricity. It moved
up from the touch of finger on flesh and leapt between them through waiting
lips, jumping between them with the will of something that wants and wants
and wants, that breathes and feeds but isn't passion, no, it wasn't passion
at all.
It was horror.
John's lips brushed against Judy's and suddenly he was in another world,
another place... a room lit by flames but never less dark for all of it.
Candles rimmed the walls, showing off the decorative instincts of the two
men in the room with him. Circumscribed stars, painted letters, statues of
impossible beasts.
Knives.
John stood and whirled around. Things were moving fast; the room he was in
was dematerializing as stood in it. He was ensconced in a vision,
hallucinating really, but in some strange way a part of the hallucination, a
participant in an unreality, and he knew in the instant that it began that
he had to see what the vision had to show him, that he had to know, to see,
to know.
He saw. He knew.
He recoiled back against the driver's door and the vision faded, leaving
just the darkness. He could see that Judy had recoiled as well, and sensed
instantly that she had experienced much the same reality-shift as he had. In
the half light of the descending moon she looked at him with horror and
fear, and the tricks of the light made it seem as though her fear-rimmed eye
looked out from a face that had been peeled to the bone. He yelled and
reached for the dome light. Judy shrieked when he made the sudden lunge. The
switch seemed to dance away from his fingertips, and for a moment it seemed
as though he was racing for his sanity with a dark entity that was waiting
to envelop his mind in moments unless chased away by light. The very
irrationality of the fancy rendered it all the more imminent.
The light from the dim bulb filled the car, chasing away shadows and black
ghosts and revealing two very real, very young, and very terrified human
beings.
"What the hell just happened?" Judy gasped through clenched teeth.
"I don't know," John said. "God, you saw it too?"
"I saw you clawing at the walls of a padded room! You'd gone insane, and
for a moment I could see inside of your mind... it was... teeming with
monsters, like bugs under a rock squirming to escape the light... you
screamed..." She shook her head to clear her mind.
"I saw..." but he trailed off, not willing to finish the statement.
Judy didn't seem to have heard him in any case. "Was it real? Was I seeing
the future? Was I seeing into your head? What the hell happened!?!" She
began to hyperventilate, and John could sense that she was starting to
panic. He needed to be calm. But how could he be? After that? How?
The future... that was how it had felt, wasn't it? He had been in fugue
states before, while on acid, or meditating; once or twice he'd even got the
feeling that he had stepped outside of time, that he was free-floating in a
timeless state of mind, where anything he focused on might be as it existed
in the past, or as it would be in the future. It was a fleeting sense, and
wholly self-contained, independent of outside influences - but that was how
it had felt, dammit! He had slipped out of time again, and this time been
given... been granted... a vision.
A true vision?
"What are you waiting for?" Judy practically shrieked, without raising her
voice above a whisper. "Start the car! Let's get the hell out of here!"
He shook his head, too swiftly, too emphatically. It seemed more like a
tremor than a denial, more like a dog breaking the neck of a squirrel than a
sane man calling for a moment of peace, of reflection. "No... wait... let's
sort this out..."
"Sort out what? My God, I just freaked out! I just slipped out of reality!
Let's get out of here! Let's get OUT of HERE!"
"No, wait, catch your breath. It's over. We're safe."
"Is it? Are we? How do you know? How do you KNOW?"
"I DON"T KNOW!" No, that was wrong, he shouldn't have done that, he needed
to keep things calm, needed to keep things sorted out. But how could he keep
things calm with his mind running at such an insane speed, his heart racing,
and time itself shifting in and out of focus like that? Breathe, breathe. "I
don't know. Let's just sort it out."
"Let go of me." Her voice was dark now. Calm, but dark.
When did he grab her arm?
"I..."
"Let go of me!" The fist came out of nowhere and struck him on the cheek
below his eye. An inch to the left and it might have broken his nose. As it
was the punch propelled his head backward into the driver's side window with
enough force to stun him momentarily, though not quite enough to break the
glass. The sound of the window against his head, a dull thungg! that sent a
bell-like wave of tone and pain through his skull, would stay with him for
days.
His grip released, though the sudden pain had cleared his mind enough for
him to know that he had grabbed her arm to prevent her from fleeing the car,
something he had subconsciously sensed that he must do at all costs, yet an
action that had proved the catalyst for the very event that he needed to
prevent.
The passenger door slammed shut.
"Stop! Stop!" He fumbled behind him for the door handle. Turned the window
crank a half-turn. Finally grabbed the door handle, tugged weakly. The latch
opened with a chunkk; John spilled backward onto the ground.
He scrabbled to his feet. The dome light was distracting; he shut the car
door. "Stop! Come back! It isn't safe!"
The dome light had taken the darkness out of his eyes; momentarily, he was
blind in the moonlight. The field stretched out below him, the forest stood
like a black wall behind him. A white blur moved briefly at the edge of the
wall, a dozen yards away, then vanished. She was running into the trees.
He ran toward the blur, nearly careening into the car's trunk in the
process. Pushing away from the taillights for a smidgen of extra momentum,
he moved forward in a blur himself. He had to stop her; he knew that. If
there was one truth which the horrible vision had shown him, that was it.
Roots and ruts reached out to his feet; he stumbled onward. "Judy! Wait! I'
m not going to hurt you!" Beside him, the trees seemed haunted, with gnarled
and gnomish faces staring out at him from between the undergrowth, mocking
his progress. He reached the spot where Judy had vanished into the trees.
A white plastic garbage bag dangled from a tree limb, moving listlessly in
the wind. He turned his head away, and the bag became a white blur. He
turned further, and it became a ghost.
He looked across the field. The pumpkins stretched on into infinity, and as
he stared they began to undulate on their vines, revolving slowly under the
autumn moon. The stars began moving, too, and the moon had a cold pumpkin
face, looking down on him, watching.
"Judy!" He called, futilely. Then, hopelessly: "I'm not going to hurt you."
"I'm not going to hurt you..."
The breeze picked up and carried John's voice off across the field. From
where Judy crouched, it was hard to even hear it over the rustling of tree
limbs, the restless whisper of vegetation.
"Like hell you aren't," she thought to herself.
Reasoning that running pell-mell into a dark forest might result in a
broken leg or worse, she had ducked into a clump of bushes a small ways into
the trees. From there she had a reasonably good view of the car, and John
was making enough noise that she'd have ample warning if he drew too near.
Moreover, as her eyes grew more accustomed to the darkness, she was able to
study her surroundings, and believed that, worse came to worse, she'd be
able to slip away almost unheard.
She hoped it wouldn't come to that.
She was still trying to get her mind around what had just happened. The
reefer haze wasn't making her thought patterns any clearer, of course, but
she was miles straighter now than she had been only a few minutes before.
Her heart was kicking against her chest like a frightened rabbit, her pulse
ticking like a half-second stopwatch. She'd stepped out of her mind for a
second, and it was terrifying.
She heard John's footsteps, moving away up the field.
It was like nothing that had ever happened to her. Not even on acid. She
shuddered. God! What she had seen! She tried to recreate it in her mind, but
it was ephemeral even at the time it occurred, and barely a smoke-wisp in
her memory now. It had been vivid and real when it happened, but all it had
left in its wake were ghosts.
Such ghosts, though!
She shouldn't dwell on it now, she knew. She had to get away, first, get
somewhere safe, then mull it all over, sort it out. It might even seem funny
then.
It wasn't funny now.
She couldn't keep her mind away from it. It was like her consciousness had
an invisible wall between what was real and currently happening and what was
past and over with, and the ghosts were pressed up against the wall, pushing
outward. They swelled up against her will, and overwhelmed her.
It had been madness. She had seen madness. Raw, trembling, raging, brutal
insanity. It had been John's face, but the face was lined, the long hair
grayed and wild. And the eyes. The eyes. They had it, the eyes. The red
fire, the burning, the fever, the frenzy. It was John, and he was insane.
Dangerously insane.
In the dream, in the ghost-glimpse, in the vision she had been in a room
with him, and he was looking at her, and he was not seeing her. The room was
dark, the walls padded, the buttons that bolted the padding to the wall
splayed out in a neat diagonal array. John sat in a chair, and he stayed in
the chair, but the straps on his arms never stopped twisting.
It was John, it was the future, and John was insane.
In that dream, in that vision, in that brief step out of time she had stood
a yard away from John Symonds insane and looked deeply into those twitching,
shifting soul-scraped eyes. Looked, and been drawn into them.
And she imploded into them, and she saw what John Symonds saw, and his
madness threatened to drag her away.
They were real, they were living, they were hiding inside John Symonds'
mind. Dozens of them, thousands, fanged and small, white and writhing.
John Symonds' mind was alive with monsters.
She hadn't sensed it, though, not at all. Her magic trouble-smelling ESP
sense had failed her. Maybe it was fooled by insanity. Or maybe he had one
of those "split personalities", where his left hand didn't know what his
right hand was doing, or where there was another someone lurking within his
mind, dreaming of blood and murder while the other John Symonds, poor
deluded fool, toodled his way through life unsuspecting, never able to quite
explain the strange bloodstains on his pants, the muddy footprints leading
to his bed.
She giggled silently. That was "The Wolfman" she was flashing on. She
doubted that John Symonds was a werewolf.
But then the smile faded. Maybe not literally a werewolf, but maybe the
sort of person who had the beast inside him. And not the normal sort of
primal beast that we all have within us, that makes us yell out when we've
been cut off in traffic and bark at each other before we've had our first
coffee of the day. No, maybe John Symonds had a super-beast within, a
killer, a prowler, a red-eyed thing with teeth that drool for soft white
neck.
Maybe, maybe. Another voice inside her told her something else, that maybe
the ESP worked after all, and John Symonds wasn't insane at all. What she
had seen, what she thought she had seen, what she felt with all her many
fevered synapses to be the truth was that she had been given a glimpse of
the future, of John Symonds' future. He was insane, no doubt.... but in the
future. Not now. Not necessarily now. He might be as sane as pancakes now.
But why take the risk?
No, Judy realized that she had to slip away as silently and secretly as she
could. Insane, not insane, not even slightly close to sane, it was all
irrelevant. Judy didn't feel safe around him any more, and the sooner and
the further she was away the better.
Where was he? She listened.
There was no voice calling out any more, no soft pleas, no invocations. Had
he given up? Or was he creeping through the underbrush silently like a wolf,
creeping up on her, creeping, creeping...
A car door slammed and she jumped, startled. He was in the car. Good. He
wouldn't be able to hear her as well if she tried to slip off. Slowly she
stepped backward, stepping over a fallen tree limb. Her feet made only the
slightest crackle as she stepped amidst the pine needles and fallen leaves.
Good.
Moving through the woods with stealth wasn't all that difficult if one had
patience. She had learned that playing hide-and-go-seek in the small bit of
forest that had abutted her childhood home. You had to be quiet, of course,
but one or two rustles in the underbrush weren't suspicious enough to even
register with the seeker's radar. The hunter was looking for patterns, steps
in a series that speak through his ears and into his mind, telling him that
something is on the move. She supposed the reasons why this might be dated
back to prehistory, when the hunte/gatherer guy first learned to sort sounds
by "type". One rustle meant a twig fell off of a tree, two rustles meant
"pay attention, it might be food" but didn't trigger the "attack" reflex.
Three rustles, now, that was a pattern, that meant something moving,
something eatable.
So the trick was not to make a pattern. Move slowly but not rhythmically.
Be something falling, not something eatable.
Her first step barely registered a rustle, and she felt emboldened to take
a second. This footfall was a definite crackle, soft but undeniable. She
paused a moment, listening for any sound of movement from the car. Nothing
but silence, so she stepped again, more silently. And again.
Whoops! A branch. A crack that seemed to split the woods like a rifle-shot.
She had been reckless.She held her breath, standing dead-still.
Nothing.
She exhaled, and stepped more carefully forward. There was no sound but a
soft crustle of pine needles. A soft breeze picked up, and the leaves on the
trees shifted and stirred. She took advantage of the moment of sound to
shift forward a few steps more.
There still was no sound from the direction of the car.
She wondered what John was doing. Had he passed out? Was he having another
toke (no - she would see the glow)? Was he looking under the seat for a
carving knife? She had no idea, and having no idea her reefer-enhanced mind
seemed to come up with every gruesome possibility.
And maybe he wasn't in the car at all.
That stopped her breath, and (it seemed) her heart. She stood there
momentarily breathless, momentarily heartless. But then she heard it, still
beating, louder and still louder until it seemed to shudder her entire body
with every panicked throb. For a second she worried that John would be able
to hear it, it was so loud, but she quickly realized that her impression of
its volume was confused by the pot and the proximity of her eardrums to
major blood vessels. He wouldn't be able to hear her heart, not at all -
Unless he was close enough to smell her.
What if the entire time she had been focused on sneaking away silently he
had been steadily creeping up on her, equally silently? After all, he knew
this area, not her. What if he had managed to ease his way between the trees
and float deer-soft over branches and deadfall, over brambles and prickers,
to a spot practically beside her, where he was even now standing noiseless
and grinning, waiting for just the right moment to reach out and say,
"Hello, Judy." He could be there, in the shadows. Right now, he could be
there.
The panic was growing. She knew it, and knew she had to put a stop to it
before a chance breaking of a branch caused her to run screaming into the
darkness, where she could easily trip and just as easily be overtaken. Even
without any sudden noise to trigger it she felt as though she was just a
millisecond away from just such a terrified, suicidal flight into the trees.
She had to calm down. She had to!
She listened, as best she could, over the sound of her frantic heartbeat
and equally frantic breathing, listened for any sound that might give away
John's position. But there wasn't one. He might as well be a ghost in the
forest, he might as well be a shadow. He might well be right beside her,
ready to reach out -
Suddenly the woods were flooded with light.
She crouched instinctively. John had switched on the car's headlights, and
the effect was sudden blindness. Everything around her was cast in relief,
like a lightning strike or strobe light frozen in time. It seemed to take an
eternity for her eyes to accustom themselves to the sudden influx of input,
an eternity of blinking insanity, of flash-frozen strobe monsters formed in
an instant's mind-creation from branch and bark, from fern and foliage;
leaf-owls pouncing, trunk-dragons leering.
But her eyes did focus, and the night-predators faded into the background,
transformed, once again stumps and branches, once again prosaic. And she saw
that the headlights were not pointed directly at her, leaving her standing
stranded like a fearstruck deer; instead, they were directed off into the
woods to her left. She was snugly ensconced in shadow, unseeable, unvisible.
But not safe. Oh, no, not safe at all.
The good news was that the light gave her a chance to get a solid look at
the terrain around her, and an even better look at a future that might have
been... she had been but one misstep from crashing into a deadfall of
tangled branches, a mistake that at best would have alerted John instantly
to her whereabouts, that at worst would have seen her lying still in a
twisted bone-broken heap.
She looked around, and silently plotted the best escape route. Off to her
right, a nearly-clear passage between two old trees, leading down a slight
slope and meeting up with what looked to be a footpath, or at least a
deer-trail. If she could reach that...
"Judy!"
She couldn't see John but the sound of the car door opening told her where
he was, and the querulousness in his tone told her that he hadn't seen her.
Good. Now, if she could just avoid him...
A rustling in the woods. From the direction of the car. John was coming in!
"Judy!" His voice seemed far off. The headlights in the darkened woods made
the car seem more imminent than it actually was. "Judy! Are you in there?"
She didn't move, didn't breathe.
"Judy, come on. Be cool. What happened in the car, I know it freaked you
out, it freaked me out, but you've got to be cool with it... put your mind
to it, think about what you saw. Maybe something that made me look like I'm
dangerous, I don't know. I'm not. I'm not!"
Oh, well then, Judy thought, I'm glad we've cleared that up.
John paused for a moment, as if unsure of what to say next. When he did
speak it was in a softer voice, and had more impact because of it. "Listen,
Judy, I don't know if you an hear me, but I hope you can. I don't know what
you saw, exactly, hell, I'm not sure exactly what I saw myself... but I am
sure of one thing. You're in danger. I don't know who, or when, or why...
but it's bad, I know that. I don't know if I can help you, don't know if I
can protect you, but know this: I will try."
He paused for another moment. "Can you hear me?"
Judy was silent.
"Judy?"
Judy breathed, and waited silently, hidden by the night, and the shadows,
and the dark.
There was a sound, a rustle, a moving of booted heels across dead leaves
and bracken. John was moving through the forest.
Away from Judy.
She breathed as much of a sigh of relief as she dared. He hadn't been that
far away; a move in her direction could have been disastrous. Now, all she
had to do was stay still for a few more minutes, then creep away while John
was too far away to hear, or at least too far away to catch up if he did
hear her.
"Ow! Goddam it!" John had apparently encountered a branch. Pity he hadn't
kept a flashlight in the car.
John's exclamation seemed distant enough that Judy felt safe in attempting
a motion toward the footpath. She edged forward, just a little, tentatively
testing the ground before her with an outstretched toe. The ground gave, the
leaves shifted, but the sound was negligible. She put her weight onto the
outstretched foot and began to move slowly forward.
All the while John moved away into the woods.
Judy felt like laughing. It was almost as if someone or something were
watching over her... she could feel it, there was no doubt, she was going to
get away! Whatever darkness had claimed her momentarily back in the car had
lost its hold over her. A wave of light, of sanctity, of light-headed
wholeness was washing over her; she felt protected, invincible. The powers
that be, the gods, the Good Book God who sits bearded on his upstairs throne
had decided to spare her; they had a purpose for her life.
She smiled and took the few short steps that placed her safely on the
footpath.
Aware that she might be developing a case of overconfidence, Judy stood
still for a moment and tried to gauge where John might be. Her fear was that
the moments when she had felt the most protected were actually the ones
where she was the most vulnerable; that the metaphysics of the situation had
lulled her into a fake security, one that would be dashed by a cold hand on
her shoulder and a knife to her throat. But John continued to thrash further
and further afield, stomping through the branches calling her name, a tone
of ever-increasing desperation creeping into his voice.
Listening to him Judy felt a pang of regret. Suppose she had misread the
situation? Suppose he was... no, no, the scene she had glimpsed in the car
came rushing back to her in three-dimensional technicolor fury. John, the
padded cell, the mad, murderous eyes filled with unseen demons... There was
a horror show in that man's mind. She was well to be as far away as...
Something was watching her.
Up in a tree. On a branch. Not too high off the ground. She caught a
glimpse of glinting eyes. Looking down, reflecting in the moonlight. Owl?
She shivered, though owls didn't make her nervous.
She looked for a moment longer, and her eyes gradually made out a shape.
A cat.
A gray cat. She didn't know how she knew the color, in the dark all cats
are gray... but there it was, it was a gray cat, sitting on a branch
watching her. Not smiling, not blinking, just looking down quietly. Gray
cat, no grin. Twitching its tail, as if watching a mouse-hole, waiting with
all the time in the world.
Suddenly Judy didn't feel very invincible.
Without a look back nor an inordinate amount of care to be silent she ran
down the footpath, running off toward the road, off toward civilization,
away from the shadows.