by Hopen, David
“Yeah,” Oliver said, “your books are too damn long.”
“Not what I meant,” Amir said, rolling his eyes. “But really, you’ve got nothing? You’ve exhausted all your weird, little biblical folklores?”
“Sorry,” Evan said. “Don’t think I can help.”
“Wow,” Amir said, “guess rehab really kills those Kabbalistic impulses, huh?”
Evan reached for another cupcake. “Well, all but one, really.”
Far-off trees respired with the wind. I looked up, readied myself to see stars. I’d Googled the basics two nights before. Find Sirius by sloping left through Orion. Free-fall slightly rightward, about the equivalent of three fists, and find Canopus. “Which would that be?” I asked.
“Levitating?” Amir said. “Or maybe stopping the sun?”
Evan leaned closer to the fire. “You’ve all heard of vision quests?”
I stared blankly. “As in, Native American rituals?”
“Yes.”
A look of disquiet dripped through Amir’s face. “What about them?”
“I shouldn’t say,” Evan said. “You’ll call me crazy.”
Noah did his best to provide a reassuring half-smile. “We already do.”
“Well,” Evan said, “let’s just say I’m fairly confident that I’ve gathered enough empirical and theoretical data suggesting they might just work.”
Amir snorted. “You’re joking.”
“It’s nothing radical, really,” Evan said. “Most cultures believe we benefit by losing ourselves, just for a short while. And we do it all the time, don’t we? On Yom Kippur, we fast, we don’t shower, we wear white. Why? To leave behind our human body, to pretend we’re something else. On Purim, we drink and dress up to do the same. Plato calls it telestic frenzy, Euripides calls it a Dionysian Mystery, Islam calls it Sufism, Hindus call it avadhuta, Shamanism calls it a trance state. But at its root? All this stuff’s the same.”
“And the point,” Amir asked, probing his charcoaled marshmallow, its white interior webbing his fingers, “of losing ourselves?”
“To see God, of course,” Evan said.
“Come on,” Amir said, “let’s not start with that weird stuff again, okay? We’ve had a nice respite from it, haven’t we?”
Blind fear woke suddenly in my chest. “Why’d you bring us here?”
“Eden,” Evan said, unblinking, unapologetic, “you know I can’t do it alone.”
“Can’t do what alone?” Ignored, Amir gave me a stern look. “What’s he talking about, Ari?”
I stared directly into the fire. “This isn’t some apology retreat,” I said. “It’s a trap. Another experiment.”
“Okay, hold up,” Noah said, seeing the way Amir was winding up. “Let’s just—let’s calm down, yeah? Because honestly—who cares?” He smiled, pulled at his long hair. “I mean, he flew us in first class to a mountain. If the weirdo wants to pretend this is some cultic ritual, I say why not? Indulge him. What difference does it make to us?”
I watched as Evan finished another cupcake, chewing with almost surgical intensity. “The cupcakes,” I said. “Where are they from?”
Noah paused. “Wait, what?”
“Enough with the cupcakes!” Amir said. “They’re not even that good.”
“No, for real, I’m serious,” I said. “Who brought them?”
No answer.
“He—he drugged us,” I said softly, mostly to myself, feeling suddenly as if I might vomit. “He’s going to try and—”
“Eden,” Evan said calmly, warningly. “No need to talk ourselves into hysteria.”
Amir dropped his cupcake to the ground. “Someone tell me what he’s talking about.”
Oliver scooped the fallen cupcake and, tearing off the dirtied side, took a greedy bite. “These puppies are laced, aren’t they?”
“Ah, okay,” Noah said, breaking into a relieved grin, glancing at Evan, “so you sprinkled, what, weed into the cupcakes? Dick move, I’ll admit, but a stupid prank. No real harm, right?”
“It isn’t weed,” I said, “is it?”
Amir extracted marshmallow bits from his palms. “What’d you just say?”
Evan cleared his throat. “If we’re to do this properly, the best method to shed the self is through an artificial catalyst.”
Now Noah stood, drawing himself to full height, digging his sneakers into the earth. “Evan?”
Evan stared off at what little remained of daylight. “I really do advise we stay calm and do our best to think positively.”
“Know what?” Amir said, rolling up his sleeves. “I’ve just decided I’m going to punch you in the face again.”
Noah put a hand on Amir’s shoulder. “No one’s punching anyone. All right? But Ev, you’re going to have to come clean. Let’s just, you know, let’s talk it out civilly.”
Evan gave a regretful smile. “We were having such a lovely time.”
“Ev,” Noah warned. “For real. We’re all your boys, but you have to cut the shit.”
Evan didn’t bother standing from his spot near the fire. “There are acid hits in the cupcakes.”
Amir put his head in his hands. “You’re such a piece of . . . please tell me you’re lying? Please tell me this is a bad dream or—”
“Had I told you the truth,” Evan said, matter-of-factly, as if he were merely explaining the most reasonable thing in the world, “none of you would be here.”
Oliver shrugged. “I would’ve.”
“I understand you’re angry,” Evan said calmly, “but I’m afraid it was necessary.”
“Necessary?” Amir started at Evan, but Noah, in an effortless motion, seized him by the arm and restrained him.
“When does it hit?” My voice felt funny now. Did I always sound like this?
Evan massaged his leg. “Can’t be sure. Fifteen minutes. An hour. Three hours. Who knows?”
“Okay, here’s what we’ll do,” Amir said, running a hand through his beard, “we should vomit. Like, right now, before it’s too late. We’ll do it together. On three.”
“It’s already too late,” Evan said, checking his wristwatch. “But feel free to try.”
“Call me crazy, but I don’t see the big deal,” Oliver said. “I’ve been meaning to get around to LSD for some time now.” For effect, he ate the last cupcake.
“This isn’t a fucking joke, Oliver,” Amir said. “This is—well, this is illegal!”
Oliver scoffed. “Suddenly you’re concerned with what’s legal?”
Amir wretched, spat, kicked at the ground. “You don’t go around slipping people acid! What if something goes wrong? We’re in the middle of nowhere, for God’s sake.”
Noah sat again, flexing his fingers in thought. “Oh, God,” he said quietly. “Oh fuck.”
A long pause ensued, during which I became conscious of a sort of viscous horror leaking its way through our circle. I looked at the faces of the four people around me. A year ago I didn’t know they existed.
“Amir, aren’t you at least curious?” Evan said. “Don’t you want to see if I’ve been right?”
Instinctively, I touched my healed arm.
“If you were right?” Amir said. “Right about what? That we should’ve listened to Ari and realized you’re off your rocker? That you never should’ve been allowed out of rehab?”
“Everything.” He faced Amir. “Listen. I’m offering you the chance to put aside the entire world, just for a bit, and gain infinitely more. What do you have to lose? You’re going to MIT. Your whole life, you’ve done everything to make your mother happy, your grandfather proud, your father regret leaving. You have everything coming your way, and soon you’ll be working your ass off for a decade straight, with no end in sight. Just once, right now, don’t you want to do something that—that has the power to frighten you?” He turned to Noah. “Noah Harris, athletic phenom of Zion Hills. Discipline, restraint, devotion for, what, fifteen long years to earn the scholarship your father
decided you’d have to win before you were even born? Aren’t you just exhausted of it all? And you, Eden, constantly battling yourself, still too scared to let out what you really are, even when you want it just as badly as I do? We’re in these . . . these cages our whole damn lives. Don’t we want to be free, even once, for a few hours at the very end of childhood? Don’t you want to be absorbed in something so much fucking greater?”
Oliver licked the last of the frosting from his thumb. “Guess I’m chopped liver? Where’s my pump-up speech?”
“So that’s what you’re running from?” Amir said, waving his marshmallow stick. “Responsibility? Facing all the shit, good and bad, we need to go through? You’re just—you’re weak, Ev. Weak and angry and lost. You can’t handle life anymore, but know what? The rest of us are doing just fine. You think you live in this, I don’t know, this exceptional moral world of secluded pain and wisdom, when the truth is you’re just a sad, broken flameout.”
It appeared my hand was shaking, even though the panic I felt was almost nonrepresentational, as if my body had at first failed to recognize that what was happening around me was real.
“Ev,” Noah said, kindly, firmly, “everyone here is already absorbed in something greater, even if you don’t realize it. And that kind of happiness or value or whatever you want to call it isn’t something you get by being drugged into a stupor.”
“It’s not about that,” Evan said. “It’s about theia mania.”
Amir threw his stick in Evan’s direction. He missed. The stick landed at Evan’s feet. “What’d you just say?”
“Divine madness,” Evan said. “That’s what I want.”
“Fuck you,” Amir said. “Because we don’t.”
Evan smiled sadly. “I’m afraid it’s coming anyway.”
* * *
LIGHT RAIN CAME, WENT. NOBODY spoke much. To pass time we wandered along a trail—through dogwood blossoms, through stunted oak trees, through the range’s famous blue haze—until we arrived at a plunging ravine.
“Well,” Amir said, eyeing the rocks below, “this seems like a dangerous place to hang out before an acid trip.”
Noah shuddered at the sight of the cliff’s edge. “Can we please get back to camp?”
I heard rustling in nearby shrubbery. “Is it happening now?”
“No,” Evan said.
“How will we know?” I asked.
“You’ll know,” Evan said.
The noise grew louder, guttural, almost like braying.
“Okay, anyone hear that?” Amir asked. “Or am I hallucinating?”
“Nah,” Noah said. “I heard it, too.”
Evan limped toward the brushwood.
“Careful,” Amir said. “What’d the driver say about bobcats?”
“Bears,” Noah corrected.
“Whatever,” Amir said. “Could be feral.”
“Nope,” Evan called from the bushes, “it’s just a goat.”
“A goat?”
“Someone give me a hand.” Nobody stepped forward, so Evan scooped it up himself and stumbled back through the undergrowth, limping it toward the edge. It was only a baby. White, miniature horns had begun to surface on the crown of its head.
My palms tingled, my tongue felt thick against the roof of my mouth. I rolled my head, attempting to snap out of it. “What’re you doing?”
“It’s a sign,” Evan said.
Noah began blinking manic patterns. “Of what?”
“Before Yom Kippur,” Evan said, “the Kohen Gadol had a tradition.”
“Jesus,” Amir said. “Don’t say it.”
“One for God, one for Azazel,” Evan said.
“So where’s the second goat?” Noah asked.
Evan pointed to himself. The goat whined, struggling to break free. “Anyone have a quarter?”
Half-formed waves of pain thickened unevenly across my forehead. “What’re you talking about?”
“Heads, I take the dive,” Evan said. “Tails, it’s our friend.”
“Right,” Amir said, “you’ll throw yourself off?”
“One of us has to do it.” Evan pointed to the sky. “He’ll decide.”
“Even joking about that is revolting,” Amir said, unable to stop himself from wringing his hands. “Something is seriously wrong with you.”
“Talk to the Kohen Gadol, not me,” Evan said. “Eden, have a quarter or not?”
Obediently, realizing I was in the gradual process of wafting infinitely far away from myself, I fumbled in my pocket for a coin. “A dime,” I said.
“Perfect,” Evan said. “Flip it. I’ve got my hands full.”
I was sweating feverishly. Sunset began, the fading light hurting my eyes. I took the coin, tossed it over my head. It landed a few yards behind us.
“Nice arm,” Noah said.
Amir retrieved it. “Tails. Lucky you. You’re saved.”
Evan’s lips were moving but he wasn’t saying anything.
Noah touched Evan’s chest. “You talking to yourself?”
Evan tightened his hold on the goat. “I—I’m not quite sure, actually.”
Amir gestured behind us. “And what the hell’s with him?” At the foot of the shrubbery, walking long, perfect circles, was Oliver, face white as a sheet. “Has he said a word in the last hour?”
Noah approached cautiously. “You okay, man?”
No answer. Oliver continued tracing the circles.
“Think it’s hitting,” I announced again.
“Stop saying that,” Evan said.
Amir studied his hands with a look of incomprehension, as if discovering new appendages. “You really think so? I don’t know.”
Beams of light danced in my vision. “Yes.”
“I’m not sure I like this,” Noah said thinly.
“Evan,” Amir said suddenly. We’d forgotten he was still holding the goat, which was now thrashing its head side to side, trying its best to gore its captor. “Let it go. Seriously.”
Evan blinked in confusion. “I’m sorry.”
A treacherous crack above. On cue: the rain.
“Shit!” Amir yelled, suddenly in a panic. “Motherfucking shit!”
“Let’s get out of here.” Noah’s eyes moved unnaturally from left to right and back, his golden hair slicked with rain. “We need, um, to go back down the—the path to the tent. Before it hits.” He put an arm around Oliver’s shoulders, trying to stop him from continuing his orbit.
“Evan!” Amir pulled at Evan’s shirt, rain falling harder. “We need to get out of here!”
Evan was shaking. The goat, crying out, squirmed violently, nearly broke free, causing Evan to bend and regain his hold. “It’s—I have to do this. We have to pay tribute to enter.”
“What the fuck are you—”
Evan hurled the goat from the ravine. An infinite fall: the goat screaming, a small cloud of gravel pitching up. Quivering, I approached the edge, trying to peer down at the remains, and then rain turned to ice, the full weight of nightfall crashing upon my back, Amir’s screams morphing into something else, something far-off and inhuman. I staggered; Noah grabbed me before I stumbled off the edge, my vision dimming. And then, the mountains reappearing, throbbing in Technicolor: electric violets, sparks of vermillion, great bursts of azure. The world rearranged itself, dissolving in sliding lights, a bright rumble rupturing my eardrums, days lengthening, collapsing, life screeching on without us.
* * *
RABBI GLICK HAD A FAVORITE teaching: Torah unfolds thematically, not chronologically. This is useful in relaying what follows. What I saw that night didn’t happen linearly, logically, within neat divisions of time. When I dream about it—frequently, always accompanied by night sweats—I do so as I experienced it, in fragments of memories: the smell of fire, endless rain, blood in my mouth, the crunch of wood. Then I wake, leaving one nightmare for the next.
When the whirling stopped I found myself in a place of pure marble. “Where am I?” I called ou
t. Echoes rang around me. Marble floor stretched on for as far as I could make out, a diagonal pattern of gleaming black and white stones, with a row of wooden reading desks, evenly spaced, extending into the distance. No walls, no ceiling.
Evan stepped from the shadows, older, more ragged, clothing torn. He wore a crown of leaves in his hair. Faint spots of red decorated each of his hands. “We’re here.”
Intense light. Spangles in my field of vision. I blinked rapidly. They didn’t subside. “Where’s here?”
“The center of the earth,” Evan said, hurrying ahead and disappearing from sight.
I turned, finding the others. Noah, in purple robes, stood tall, glowing, his hair dramatically longer and tied into a knot. Amir, bathed in white light, sat on the floor, cheeks in his palm, beard slightly thicker.
“And Oliver?” I asked.
Noah pointed behind me. Oliver, drenched in color, glasses cracked in two, his normally heavily gelled hair entirely disheveled, was staring into a silver mirror—ten feet high, dust-laden, ornately framed. At the top of the frame was a phrase carved in black lettering: PREPARE YOURSELF IN THE ANTECHAMBER, SO THAT YOU MAY ENTER THE BANQUET HALL. At the bottom of the frame, in sapphire, was an odd symbol—a backward, inverted comma hovering above the squiggle of a regular comma. Hebrew letters, I realized: two yuds, one right side up, the other upside down, or perhaps an aleph whose base had been erased, disembodying its top and bottom?
I put my hand to his shoulder. He didn’t stir. “Oliver?” I peered into the mirror. There was no reflection, yet on he gazed.
“He won’t answer,” Amir explained. “Hasn’t spoken in hours.”
“Hours?” The kaleidoscopic colors were making it difficult to concentrate. I felt a deep searing in my chest. “We’ve been here for hours?”
“Days, more like it,” Noah said. “I think I’ve been here for days.”
The burning traveled to my throat, drying the words in my mouth. “Water,” I said, fighting through a coughing fit. “Is there any water?”
Evan rematerialized before me. “Don’t ask for water here,” he said hurriedly. “Now follow me. We should move quickly while we can.”
We were trudging through a great rain, lightning fracturing the deep-black sky, a tower in the distance, animals in my peripheral vision, moving two by two. I was Scipio, lost and small amid the spheres, looking down at Carthage from on high, the universe star-filled and splendid. We walked for ages, beating against the wind, time expanding around us. Evan, walking with a staff, and even so routinely stumbling, led us through a forest, until we arrived at a clearing in the woods. A small circle of trees flanked the mouth of a cave. Evan turned to face us. “In here.”