The Mythniks Saga

by Paul Neuhaus

  “The Great Gatsby?”

  “Yeah. It was his favorite book.”

  My ex- nodded with respect. “I wouldn’t have expected that. I guess Pan was deeper than I thought.”

  “He was.”

  “You’ve read it, right?”

  My head shrank down into my shoulders. “I never have. I meant to read his copy, but things got weird.”

  “You should read it. It’s really great.”

  We settled back into quiet for a while. I looked out at the sea of cars in front of us. If we could just get outside the city limits, things would open up. I found myself longing for desert vistas. I also wanted one of the kabobs from the Parthenon. I had to remind myself we weren’t going there for chow. A thought struck me, and I reached into my pocket and pulled out the canary yellow flier. I handed it to El.

  “This is where we’re going?” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Makes sense. This was a good catch. I’m glad you put this together. But we’re a day early.”

  “Oh, I know. I wanna get the jump on them. Maybe do a little scouting ahead of time.”

  “Right. Can I say something to you? And this is in no way a come-on or anything else designed to make you uncomfortable.”

  Uh-oh. What did that mean? “Um… I guess.”

  “You were always way smarter than me. Seriously, you could’ve been a detective. You’ve got a very clean, logical mind.”

  For no good reason, I decided to be challenging. Belligerence was one of “Power Dora’s defining characteristics. “By that do you mean ‘calculating’?”

  He shook his head. His expression was benign. “No. I don’t. Calculating implies intent. Evil intent. You’re not calculating. Addie was calculating. Calculating was her middle name.” He shifted in his seat, so he was facing me. “There’s something I’m concerned about. I’ll tell you what it is, and you can tell me whether I need to be worried?”

  I shrugged with my elbows since I had my hands on the wheels. “Shoot.”

  “Since my late ex-wife was a demigoddess, that makes my daughter a demigoddess. We all saw her do… crazy, powerful shit. Should I be worried about her being basically kidnapped by a cult? I mean, in her own way, she’s just as valuable a get as your pithos. Do you think they’re aware of what she can do? Do you think they’ll try and exploit her?”

  Oh, shit. Somehow, with everything else going on, I’d lost sight of the fact that Keri was partly divine. Turns out Elijah had a clean, logical mind himself. He was right, of course. He was right to be concerned. I stewed on the problem for a moment and decided not to sugarcoat it. “Yeah. I think maybe you oughta be worried about that. It also adds to the puzzle.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I think we’re dealing with an organization that, for whatever reason, is aware of Mythnik culture and history. If they sent Keri to raid my trailer—and I think they did—that means they probably know who and what Keri is.”

  Elijah gripped his stomach. El had always gripped his stomach when he was worried. He was a lousy poker player. “What do you think it means? What do you think they’ll do to her?”

  “So far, they haven’t done anything to her. Here’s my best guest: They’ll use her as one of their celebrities.”

  “Celebrities?”

  “Yeah. You know how the Church cultivates celebrity members. They’re great P.R. Show me a better get than a demigoddess.”

  “What good is a demigoddess in a world that doesn’t believe in demigoddesses? Wouldn’t they have to go public? Show the world Mythniks are real in order to utilize Keri in that way?”

  “The thought’d occurred to me. It’s a giant question mark we can’t answer right now.”

  My ex- took his hand off his stomach and we resumed looking at the parking lot beyond my windshield.

  It took us an hour just to get out of Los Angeles. L.A. is a city for the young. You can’t go anywhere without it taking at least double the time it should. I was fine, but Elijah was drowsy as we finally hit the highway. I wove around the other cars and cut the most unobstructed path I could between us and the cult meeting somewhere near Barstow. I found an eclectic radio station and turned up the volume. Back in the days when we were a couple, I was the one that drove the most. El knew talent when he saw it. He also knew I had a tendency to be a front seat driver, so his decision to take himself out of the equation was a good one. He also knew that, when I turned on the radio, it was quiet time. He knew it and Hope knew it too. With a smirk, he violated the longstanding rule by speaking over Van Halen. “We’re done talking now I see.”

  I played the false-innocence card. “We don’t have to be done talking. What did you wanna talk about?”

  “The obvious thing to talk about would be the fact you and I, once upon a time, had an absolutely perfect romantic relationship only I screwed it up and had to marry the other woman. After that, we spent fifteen years apart, but then we came back together when my wife got herself a giant sea monster and killed some bronies. But then she died—under circumstances which are still unclear.”

  I hadn’t told him Keri had been the one that killed Addie. I wasn’t about to bring it up then, so I let him blaze ahead. “After that, with the decks cleared, you told me you weren’t interested in me anymore, and I did the adult thing: I accepted it and gave you your space. But then, when Keri went missing, I saw you’d fallen back into the hermit lifestyle you had between the time I had to break it off and the whole Addie with the sea monster thing. But, again, since I’m doing the adult thing, I didn’t ask you about it. Those are all things we could talk about, but we have an understanding, so we can’t.”

  I gripped the wheel a little tighter. This was exactly the scenario I didn’t want to be in. I got a quick flash of vertigo then tamped it back down. “You know, if we have an understanding about not bringing something up but you bring it up by way of talking about how the understanding works, it’s still bringing it up. That’s called being passive aggressive.”

  He folded his arms in front of his chest. “Right. Which is what you are.”

  I’d had enough of David Lee Roth, so I shut off the radio all together. “Which is what I am? How am I passive aggressive?”

  His eyes flicked to the left then came forward again. He was clearly flashing on the definition of “passive aggressive”. Was he in the right to call me that? He wasn’t sure. “Okay,” he said. “Maybe not passive aggressive, but something. When you shut down a conversation that involves two people without giving the other person a vote, that’s—well, I don’t know what it is exactly, but it’s not good.”

  I shook my head vigorously. “No. Uh uh. If Addie hadn’t died, we wouldn’t’ve been in that room together, poised to have a talk we had no business having. Your wife dying wasn’t a good enough reason to wake sleeping dogs.”

  “You lost me. What better reason would there have been than having Addie finally out of the picture?”

  “Because it assumes I was just waiting around for Addie to keel over. It assumes that, as soon as she dropped dead, I’d just step over her body and into your life. It assumes, I had nothing better to do than wait for your sorry ass.”

  “But you didn’t have anything better to do! Fifteen years alone in a trailer kind of bears me out!”

  I cut the wheel hard, pulling the Firebird onto the right roadside. “Get out,” I said.

  He realized he’d gone too far. “‘Get out?’ I can’t get out. What about Keri?”

  Our eyes were locked for a long time. Mine shot daggers. His reluctantly absorbed them. I put the car in gear again and merged with traffic.

  Elijah sighed. “Alright. That was out of line. And I’m not just saying that because I don’t wanna get dumped by the side of the road. Here’s the thing that I wanted to say before I got pissy and said what I shouldn’t have: You took away my agency.”

  “I took away your agency? What’re you some kind of crazy, left-wing college professor? Speak plain
ly.”

  He gripped his stomach again. “All I meant was you took away my turn. I deserved the right to say what I wanted to say, and you robbed me of that. I don’t mean you had to go along with whatever shit came out of my mouth, but you did owe me the chance to say it. It would’ve been… the civil thing to do.”

  I nodded vigorously. “You’re right. It would’ve been the civil thing to do. You know what else is a civil thing to do?”

  He cut me off since he knew exactly what I was going to say. “Not tripping and winding up with your dick in a waitress’ vagina?”

  “Correct.”

  His voice grew quieter. “Dora, I was miserable too. The entire time. The whole fifteen years. Doesn’t that count for something?”

  “No. Not at all. It counts for nothing. Whether you were unhappy, or you were so ecstatic you could shit, it doesn’t factor in. It doesn’t take away from the fact you made a choice. In retrospect, it might seem to you it was the wrong choice and you paid the price for it, but that doesn’t entitle you to anything. You’re looking at it like you did your time in jail and now you want society to greet you again with open arms. Society isn’t obligated to say, ‘Get in here, you! Give us a hug!’ Society can totally say, ‘Look, we still don’t trust you because you murdered all those nuns, so don’t expect to be invited to the… ice cream socials.’”

  “You’re Society in this scenario?”

  “I am Society. Yes.”

  “Let me say something—for myself without you saying it for me: I was not looking at it like I’d done my time in jail and I was owed something. I wanted to have the talk because I still loved you. I never stopped loving you even while I was putting up with my weird, belligerent wife. I wanted to tell you that, I never got the chance, and I was pissed. But I never thought me telling you would fix everything. Not at all.”

  “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.”