Kumbaya, Space Hippie

by Paul Neuhaus

  “Good. Because it doesn’t.”

  He snapped the radio back on and “Panama” was still playing. He laid his forehead against his window and looked out his window for a long time.

  A few times, I thought I saw something behind us. A dark blot in the sky far away. A few times, I thought it might be a piece of dirt or bird shit on the back window. When we stopped for gas, I put my hand over my eyes and scanned the cloudless skies.

  “What’re you looking for?” El said.

  I put my hand down, heard the nozzle click and replaced it into the pump. “Nothing, I guess. I thought I saw something behind us when we were on the road. It must’ve been my imagination.”

  Wiener turned his own eyes toward the sky. “What’d it look like?”

  “It was too far away. A speck.”

  He lowered his own hand. “I don’t see anything now, but you’re not exactly the my-eyes-were-playing-tricks-on-me type. Let’s keep a lookout.”

  Finally, after four exhausting hours, we reached the Parthenon. The place was exactly as I’d remembered it (I’d stopped at it many times throughout the years), but there were more people there than I’d ever seen there before. The restaurant itself was nothing more than a drive-in with a fake mountain. Waitresses in togas and roller-skates ran not only burgers but kabobs and baklava out to waiting automobiles. Next to and behind the Parthenon was a lot of open land. That’s where the Conclave of Universal Consciousness was obviously going to take place. Bleachers were being assembled. A stage was already in place. Towers with lights. It looked like a miniature Woodstock in the making. The main difference being there was a giant inflatable Bloop hovering over the site.

  I parked the car in the gravel next to the road. El and I got out and surveyed the scene. “Fucking-A,” he said. “These guys aren’t fooling around.”

  “No, they’re not. This thing cost a lot of money—and they don’t usually do live events. At least not public live events. You can see some of the private ones on YouTube. The ones meant just for the faithful. They’re creepy. Little wonder why they do them away from more rational eyes. The question is what’s brought them out into the open like this. It’s out of character.”

  He looked down at me. “Do you think they’re gonna pull some kind of stunt?”

  My attention had been drawn away by the sound of large vehicles to our right. Entering the service lot next to the outdoor venue were trucks from all the major cable news stations. CNN. FOX. MSNBC. I tapped El on the shoulder and showed him the arriving journalists. “I do think they’re gonna pull some kind of stunt. Otherwise, why invite those guys?”

  He shook his head. “Given that I know you, and that knowing you means the world is weirder than I thought it was before we met, I’m nervous.”

  I started back toward the driver’s side door and said to him. “Don’t ignore your instincts. Get in. I’m hungry.”

  After a meal of kabobs and grape leaves, we found a shitty motel nearby and checked in. I didn’t bother hanging a sheet between the two beds. Elijah wasn’t exactly the type to lay his hands on a woman uninvited. At least he wasn’t when we’d been together. If that’d changed in the interim, I’d deal with it. That was a nice thing about Elijah—I could kick his ass. I think he knew that.

  “I wish I’d known we were going to stay the night,” Wiener said. “I’d’ve brought a change of clothes. A toothbrush. My mouth tastes like tzatziki.”

  “Somehow, you’ll survive. I hope you haven’t lost sight of the reason we’re here.”

  He seemed offended. “Oh, fuck no. This is one hundred percent about Keri—despite my earlier admission of undying love. Which, about that— “

  I raised a finger and raised my voice. “Ah ah! You were complaining about your right to get to say what you wanted to say. What about my right not to hear what you wanted to say?”

  From her place next to the television, Hope said, “You guys’re giving me a headache. If you’re wondering if all this banter is cute then I’ve got a spoiler alert: It’s not. Either get back together or kill each other. Whatever you do, just shut up about it.”

  Hope wasn’t usually so direct. We must’ve really gotten on her nerves.

  “I didn’t even know you had a head, Hope,” El said. “Aren’t you just like a spirit or something?”

  I interjected. “She does have a head. When she’s not a disembodied, talking emotion, she looks like a little girl. The prettiest little girl imaginable.”

  “Whoa,” El replied. “I gotta say: I’m not surprised,” he said. “Out of the two of you, I’ve always preferred Hope.”

  “Well, duh,” Hope replied.

  I stretched, trying to exorcise some of the foulness out of my mood. “Tomorrow’s gonna be a busy day,” I said. “Let’s get some shuteye.” I powered down the TV and reached for the lamp on my nightstand. Hope protested.

  “But that was Three Days of the Condor,” she said, meaning the television program. “Robert Redford in a spy movie. C’mon. Just to the next commercial…”

  “Nuh-uh. I know you: You’ll keep saying ‘next commercial’ and ‘next commercial’ and, next thing you know, we’ll’ve rolled over into The Ipcress File.”

  “Ooo, The Ipcress File. Can’t you just leave the volume real low?”

  “No! Now go to sleep. Or whatever it is you do in that jug of yours.” I turned off the light and laid my head down on my pillow.

  After a moment sitting in the darkness, El said, “She’s grouchy.”

  “I know, right?” Hope replied.

  At a little after four, my eyes popped open. Something was scratching at the window. I looked over to the right of my bed and could see nothing since we’d drawn the curtain the night before. We were on the fifth floor and had no balcony.

  “What is that?” El hissed from out of the darkness.

  I was surprised he’d awaked before me. Usually, I was the one with heightened senses. I listened again. It was a persistent scratching at regular intervals. There was no wind noise from outside, so it was probably not a tree limb. Besides, I didn’t remember seeing a tree near the window. I threw the covers off of me and dropped my legs over the side of the bed. “There’s only one way to find out,” I said. “Be ready.”

  “Ready for what?”

  “Anything.” I stood and placed my hand into the seam between the two curtains. I pushed the right curtain back and two things happened at once. The light of the moon flooded our room, and the source of the scratching was revealed. It was a woman about four and half feet tall. She had long powerful legs that ended in birdlike feet. On her back were black-feathered wings. Her face seemed to be forever frozen in an expression of angry judgement. She wore no clothes and, right at her waistline, there was a transition from regular, alabaster skin to the sort of scaly hide found on bird legs. Her cute, upturned breasts shone in the moonlight bringing out in the viewer a weird mix of arousal and revulsion. With her left hand, she continued to scratch at the glass even though I was looking right at her. She smiled at me through the glass, daring me to make a move.

  El spoke over my right shoulder. “Christ,” he said. “What the fuck is that?”

  “It’s an Arae,” I replied. “Cousin of the Erinyes. The Furies.”

  “What’s it doing here?”

  “An Arae is the spirit of a curse. It’s brought to life when someone curses someone else. The curser is almost always dead. The idea is to give the dead justice versus the living. Offhand, I’d say it’s here because one or more of the people in this room had a whammy put on them.”

  “So, which one of us do you think is cursed then?” Elijah asked, scratching his chest under his shirt.

  “Probably me. Considering who I think the curser might be, it could’ve been either one of us, but I think I did more to undermine her than you did.”

  “Addie?”

  “You got it on the first guess.”

  “Great. Even though she’s dead, she’s trying to start a catfight
by proxy. This shit never ends.”

  I closed the curtain. The scratching continued from outside. “Try and ignore it. It can’t do anything unless it catches us out in the open and at night. Arae only act under cover of darkness.”

  El and I each got back into our respective beds. “You seem kind of blasé about it,” he said.

  I shrugged my shoulders even though he couldn’t see me. “Nothing surprises me anymore,” I replied.

  After a long pause—during which we could still hear the scratching—El said. “If I kill that thing, will you take me back?”

  “Don’t let its size fool you. That little bird bitch could tear off your head and shit down your neck.”

  “Still, if I could— “

  “Go back to sleep!”

  4

  The Conclave of Universal Consciousness

  We were awakened by the sound of the Conclave of Universal Consciousness, which apparently got into full swing just as the sun was rising. I stood up and went right to the window. I threw back the curtains to not only let in some light but to confirm for myself that the Arae was no longer there. She wasn’t. I picked up a pillow and threw it at Elijah. He was startled awake. I’d triggered his fight or flight mechanism, and he looked around for something to either attack or flee from. “If you’re going to take a shower,” I said. “Take it fast. We’re gonna hit the ground running.” I pointed into the air to indicate the sounds of revelry coming from the nearby Parthenon. “They’re already underway.”

  Wiener got out of bed, mumbling about a toothbrush.

  “Use your finger and some shampoo.”

  “Ew.” But he made no further comment as he went into the bathroom, closed the door, and turned on the shower.

  “What’s your plan?” Hope said.

  “What do you mean, what’s my plan? My plan, first and foremost, is to find Keri and get her out of here. On a secondary level, it’s to observe. If I see any weirdness, I’ll take it in and act accordingly. Or not, if it’s too big to handle.”

  “Okay. Simple and to the point.”

  “I don’t guess you can help us find Keri…” Hope had the ability to track Mythniks, but they had to have evil leanings for it to work.

  “Nah,” she replied. “Keri wasn’t evil before, and she’s certainly not evil now. More than anything, she’s confused. They’ve got her drugged and cooperative. Exploited people actually rank higher than good people on my good versus bad scale.”

  “That makes sense. We’ll have to eyeball it then.”

  “Good luck. If the noise is any indication, the place is already crawling with space hippies.”

  El came out of the bathroom, pulling his shirt over his still-wet torso. He hadn’t bothered doing anything with his hair. Mostly because he didn’t have a comb. “Your turn,” he said.

  I went past him into the steamy restroom. He’d left the water running, so I checked the temperature, got naked and jumped in. I washed as best I could with the tiny bar of soap then jumped out. I keep my hair pretty short, so there wasn’t much to do in that department. I put my pants and my t-shirt back on and went back into the main room. “Okay,” I said. “We’re gonna stop at the 7-11 to get whatever food we can get then we’re gonna walk over there. I can’t imagine there’ll be any parking. This sounds like a real hootenanny.”

  El smiled. “‘Hootenanny’? Did you come from Greece by way of the Ozarks?”

  “Did you become the mayor of Idiot Town by way of being a straight-up dumbass?”

  “Good one,” Hope said sarcastically as I put her into her harness and put my arms through the straps.

  When we got outside, my eyes had only a little ways to go to adjust. The clouds above us were thick and the light was gray.

  “This looks like it could be some serious rain,” Elijah said behind me. “We could have a Woodstock situation on our hands.” He was referring to the heavy rains and mud that’d troubled that long-ago rock festival.

  I went over to the Firebird and popped the trunk to take stock of my armory. The options weren’t good. There was no way I was getting through security with something as obvious as a gladius. The swords were smaller than your average blade, but they were still conspicuous. Seeing no better option, I chose my brass knuckles (with their “peekaboo” engraving), and my pepper spray. I put the knuckles into my left pocket and started to put the spray into my right.

  “Hey,” Wiener said. “What about me? I don’t wanna go into this crazy cult meeting with nothing for protection.”

  I sighed and handed him the pepper spray. “Be really careful with that. I can’t help thinking you’re gonna end up spraying me before the day is through.”

  “On accident or on purpose?” Hope chimed in.

  “Could go either way,” El said with a grin.

  Just what I needed: Tag-team needling from my ex-boyfriend and a girl in jug.

  We walked to the 7-11 two doors down and got awful coffee and prepackaged pastries oozing with sweetness. We stood eating our breakfast and looking down the street to the Conclave. The affair was much bigger than anything I’d pictured in my head before going out there. It wasn’t Woodstock, but it was definitely a smaller, creepier cousin to Woodstock.

  “Do you think we’ll need tickets or passes or anything?” Elijah said around his Honeybun.

  “No, that flier was left on my door. They must’ve wanted every Tom, Dick and Larry to come.”

  “Or,” he replied. “They wanted you to come so they stuck the flier on your door.”

  I gave him the side-eye. “Let’s not get paranoid. Although, I can’t say for sure you’re wrong.”

  The two of us threw our crumpled plastic wraps and our half-drunk coffees into the trash and started hoofing it for the event.

  As we walked, I said to El, “Hope and I talked about it while you were in the shower… There’s some weirdness going on here. Some weirdness I’d like to get to the bottom of, but it’s way, way down the priority ladder compared to Keri. If we see Keri and we can get to her, we’re snagging her and bailing. No sightseeing, no detective work, no nothing.”

  “You’re preaching to the choir. I was never interested in anything but getting my daughter back.”

  “We might have to kidnap her, so don’t hesitate. Some of her fellow culties might try and interfere. If they do, don’t hold back. You might have to jack some jaws before the day is done.”

  He sighed. “You’re the only one set up to jack jaws. You’ve got brass knuckles. All I got was this stupid spray.”

  “Don’t mock the spray. That spray’s strong enough to knock Cerberus on his ass.”

  “Are you saying that from experience?”

  “Kind of.” The incident with Cerberus and the pepper spray hadn’t gone quite like I’d planned it. But I wasn’t going to tell him that.

  By then we’d arrived at the edge of the Conclave. The festival started at the highway and touched the restaurant on its other side. It stretched away from the road almost as far as the eye could see. I scanned the outskirts of the growing crowd. All of them looked like vacant-eyed throwbacks. All of them had the same haircut. On my right, a CNN reporter I recognized was passing me, she and her cameraman. I grabbed her elbow. “Hey, can I ask? What’re you guys doing at a weird, hippie cult thing?”

  The reporter smiled. Clearly, she wasn’t happy to be there. “I goes where they tell me,” she replied.

  “Why do you think they sent you here?”

  She shrugged. “CoR’s public relations called and said something was going down here today. Something big. Something newsworthy.”

  “And it never occurred to your bosses it might be a line of bullshit?”

  “Oh, I’m sure it occurred to them. Either way we win. If all I get is some b-roll of nutbags, it still lets us say to our audience, ‘Hey, look at the freaks’. If something big does go down, it’s win-win.”

  I returned her earlier smile. “I appreciate your candor,” I said. I let go of her elbo
w and she ran off to do her news lady stuff.

  El and I forded the crowd and started looking around. Fortunately, we were both tall and could take in a lot as we craned our necks here and there. I found the scene depressingly stereotypical. A lot of the guys were shirtless and wore beads. Many carried acoustic guitars. Nearly all of them had unkempt beards. The girls generally wore fringy or crocheted tops and dirty jeans. The vast majority had flowers in their hair. It really was like stepping back in time to 1968. The label “space hippies” wasn’t unwarranted. At least the “hippie” part. I nearly gagged when, in my peripheral vision, I saw a dude playing hackysack.

  “God,” Elijah muttered. “Look at these fools. With their costumes and their… affectedness. It’s pathetic.”

  That made me laugh out loud for the first time in a good while.

  “What?” he said, genuinely not getting it.

  I was still holding my gut.

  “What?” he said again, this time with a tad more irritation.

  I finally reined in the laughter enough to speak. “You dress up as a cartoon horse and go to places with other people dressed as cartoon horses.”

  My ex-boyfriend flushed crimson. “That’s different,” he said, without conviction. Even he knew he’d painted himself into a corner.

  “Just keep telling yourself that, Sparkle-mane.”

  In two rows down the sides of the event, there were tall towers for lights and sound. Kids hung from these towers just as they had at Woodstock. The fact the organizers had put such an elaborate system in place said to me there’d be music. I said a silent prayer to Zeus I’d be finished and gone by the time that music began. I had a feeling it would sound very much like nineties alternative band The Spin Doctors. During the height of their fame, if someone had locked me in a room for two hours with Spin Doctors music, I would've emerged as the perfect assassin. (If any members of the Spin Doctors are reading this, I would say, “sorry”, but fuck you. You know what you did.)