Is that a curve or a dip or a hill? Or is it a blip in space, a vacuum, one of Betsy’s black holes?What can I do about it? If it’s an hallucination, maybe I’ll survive passing through it. If it’s the edge of the world, I’m flying off it.
Then, from the void, a car’s headlights blinded me. I yanked the handlebars frantically to avoid a head-on collision. The bike responded by slipping on loose gravel. I dug my shoes into the road to steady myself and hopefully slow the wild, careening spin-out. Pebbles spit and clacked across the road, I inhaled a mouthful of dust, and the auto roared within inches of clipping me.
“Damn.” It was a black Caddie with four-inch red glowing rockets projecting from its dragon-wing tail fins.
I raced past a few side roads, recognizing them as either too dangerous to attempt to turn onto, or noticing too late to judge if they had a chance to slow me down. I continued to hurtle down the mountain canyon road which swarmed with threats before and behind me.
Suddenly my choice was either a thick patch of branches and tree trunks clinging to a hillside or a sharp left downhill onto a wider road. To the right was uphill, but it looked like self-destruction to attempt what would have amounted to a U-turn. As I took the only route my momentum allowed me, I realized I wasn’t going to make the corner and would slam into the cliffside tangle of trees.
There were four screams all at the same time. One had to be my horrified last exclamation on the planet, another from either the tires or the final desperate attempt at braking, the third from a guy in a cowboy hat with a guitar slung over his back, who appeared in front of me right out of the shadows, then flung himself away from what must have been a terrifying apparition—a silent machine with a panicked rider heading straight at him. The fourth scream I never fully identified, believing it to be an echo of the universe itself mocking my birth, all my efforts of every moment I had ever lived, and my rather idiotic way to die as it said goodbye to me.
Despite the squall in my mind as I approached my life’s end, my attention focused on the long-haired guy in the cowboy hat, hoping with all I had left that he didn’t get crushed by my uncontrolled flight into oblivion. He scrambled and fell. I was slipping, skidding, with not a chance to right myself. My mind kicked into that mode where every thought and every action occurs, seemingly, in slow-motion. I took in unforgettable details as another odd twist in my life unfolded. The back tire rose off the ground, the front one jerked to a right angle while my left leg raked itself on the macadam. As my face flew by the man laying flat on his back, we exchanged immediate acknowledgement of the moment’s desperation. He had saved himself, and the bike was going to come crashing down just beyond him, but I recognized in the flash of his eyes that he knew I was going to be one bloody, mangled mess in less than a millisecond.
His concern for me came without thought, his action instinctual, his timing either perfectly calculated or perfect luck.
He kicked up with his feet, slamming them into the seat above the rear tire. The back half of the Honda rocked upwards, righting itself, the handlebars twisted sharply, and suddenly the bike pirouetted wildly on its front wheel. I was hanging on, trying not to fall over the front of the bars as it spun—once, twice—performing a dizzying one-wheeled circus stunt I had no control of. The back tire thudded down, and I realized in a most thankful, dumbfounded way that I was sitting safely on an upright bike. It was rolling backwards slowly and thumped into a bare patch of the rutted hillside.
I called out, “Hey, man, you all right?”
“Man, what kind of night creature are you? No lights, silent running.”
“No brakes is the biggest problem. You okay?”
“Yeah, you?”
“Your guitar?”
He pulled it off his back. “Damn, it didn’t make it.”
I saw car lights coming down the maddening section of road I had just survived. Sheoblask or Freddie’s mad assassins.
“Look, man, I owe you. You saved my ass.” I dug out my wallet and peeled out two hundred dollars. “Take this. Buy a new guitar. It’s enough, isn’t it?”
“Hey, man, I just did what I had to do.”
“That’s cool, but I want you to get a new guitar. You’ll never believe this, but I once broke one of Rolly Dixon’s back in New York.”
“No shit.” He laughed.
“I’d like to stay and smoke a joint to celebrate our survival, but I’ve got a good reason to be continuing my crazy-ass flight.”
He followed my hurried looks at the approaching headlights. I slapped the money into his hand.
“It’s clean. Sold some of my art for it. I’d keep out of sight of that car if I were you. They’re after me, but they’re deranged, man. Me, I gotta take my chances on speed and gravity, and hopefully the kicking feet of strangers if needed. Thanks, man.”
“It’s like a straight drop down to the Pacific. You sure, man?”
“No choice. So far, tonight, I’ve been charmed. I’ll ditch into a soft clump of grass or something if it gets too hairy.”
“You’re freaking me out. Why not hide, then cut across the hills on foot?”
Turning downhill, the bike began to roll. “Hey, sing a song with the mermaids and fish for me if I don’t make it.”
He shook his head in dismay. “Man, if you can fly, better remember how to.” He flipped the broken neck of the guitar off to the side. “Good luck, and thanks for the bread.”
I gave him a farewell wave. He stood still, his head swaying back and forth slightly, his expression solemn. He finally lifted his hand to say goodbye to someone he thought for sure was a dead man.
The bike tires began to thrum with speed. A hint of ocean salt washed across my face with promises of purity and rebirth.
Thank the gods for that guy being there, or I’d be a smear on the road.
Lights from a car appearing behind me illuminated the asphalt ahead of me. Concentrating on surviving kept me from worrying who was tailing me. A straightaway suddenly veered at a sharp angle and then into a horseshoe curve.
The options for survival looked slim again.
It wasn’t going to be possible to take the corner or slow myself down.
I didn’t try to maneuver the turn, jam on the broken metal brake, or force the soles of my shoes into the surface of the road. There was nowhere for me to go but over the edge. I shot across the gravel shoulder and with a terrible hope and a fierce momentum, I willed the bike to fly, desperate for it to soar high and glide softly to the beaches that lay far down the valley.
It didn’t, but neither did the machine plummet straight earthward or smash into the innumerable branches or boulders that shadowed the road. Instead, the bike sailed forward in a gradual descent above a mass of tangled, impenetrable darkness.
I could see a winding ribbon of concrete ahead but quickly calculated I wasn’t going to reach it on the trajectory I was on.
A loud crack sounded from somewhere inside me. Blue light raced up from my right hand, spread across my chest, and spiked out into thin tendrils around my head. I felt the same energy surge into the metal frame of the Honda and course the length of the bike. A comet trail of sparks shot out the tail pipe. This extra jolt propelled the bike forward just enough to knick the top of a guard rail and crash down on the opposite arm of the horseshoe. I lost control of the steering, crossing the road in a wild weave, then careened past a pile of rocks on the far shoulder and flew up a gently sloping, but rugged hill of cactus, palmetto fans, and sage.
The bike bounced over clumps of brush and through stiff-stemmed bushes, the front wheel twisting and bucking. Hoping to hold on until the terrain brought me to a stop or the machine fell to pieces, I ducked small limbs and thin leaves that stabbed and sliced at me.
Hug myself inward, tightly. Lean forward, no, backward. What’s that on the left? Swing right. Now. Dodge that—almost killed me. Crap, bike
won’t obey.
The front tire leaped upwards unexpectedly. The chassis shuddered and thumped, not slowing, rolling forward way too fast. A mass of scraggly bush ripped at my shoulder, jabbed at my knee.
Then, in a sudden full-on assault, a low, fat branch with long, thick thorns appeared directly across my path.
The whump across my chest knocked me off the bike. The Honda rolled on, hit a rut, and finally clattered into the wasted wreck it had been insisting on being since I first sat on it.
There must be holes in my chest. All my air’s leaking out.
I gasped and gulped, saw a thousand stars wobbling in the sky. Finally, my breathing steadied.
Wiping away blood from my forehead, I began to inspect which parts of me were intact and how deeply impaled by cactus spears I was. My hand recoiled when instead I felt a hairy arm pinning me down.
A blast of cigar smoke and banana breath hit my nostrils.
A half-human, half-ape face appeared inches from mine.
“What? Monkey Man?”
“Next time some cowboy tells you to dump a bike without brakes or lights, you should listen to him.”
“Shish kebab, man. Thanks for saving me from being skewered. I thought maybe you were still hanging out in Monster Valley.”
“I was traveling, keeping an eye out for Sheoblask, spotted you crawling towards your art in that maniac’s bedroom. I don’t suppose you’ve figured you were tunnel-jumping on a minor tributary at that moment. You kept drifting in and out, and I knew you’d need help sooner or later. Look, you’re getting closer to the tunnel collapse. We’re all starting to sense you tuning in to it. Don’t get killed on us now.”
The car that had been following me stopped on the road below. A door opened and closed.
“You all right up there?” A concerned voice called out.
“I’ll be leaving now.” Monkey Man flashed me the peace sign and blew a cloud of foul cigar pollution in my face. I winced, waved a hand to clear the air. He was gone.
The figure asking me if I was alive as he approached didn’t have the malevolence of Sheoblask or one of Cranston’s killers.
He knelt by my side as I sat up and bent my limbs, testing them.
“It doesn’t feel like I have any major injuries. Just beat to shit.”
“Good, man. A bit unbelievable, but good.” He looked over to where the mangled bike lay. “I don’t see the rear wheel. It must have rolled away. I’m surprised that the whole thing didn’t crack in half when you landed.”
“Freaking crazy flight.”
Neither of us spoke for a few minutes while I smoked a Kool, and he poked around at the bike. Finally, he broached the obvious subject—the nature of the traffic incident he had just witnessed.
“So, what happened? You were in my headlights when you took off. I mean, you didn’t just shoot out over the edge, you flapped your wings and flew.”
“I didn’t have any brakes, couldn’t take the corner, just decided to put my faith in whatever was supposed to happen.”
“Okay. You’re one blessed freak. That’s easily three-hundred feet across that ravine. I thought you had some kind of rocket propulsion the way the bike lit up, but that machine doesn’t even look like it has a functional motor, even before you crash-landed.”
“Yeah, strange stuff happens sometimes.”
“You tripping?”
“Out of my skull.”
“C’mon man, I’ll give you a ride out of here. Breathe some ocean air.”
Chapter 25
The mouth of the canyon opened onto a coastal highway and a beach where white-capped waves rolled in from a forever view of black. Somewhere out in that nothingness, stars sank effortlessly into the sea.
We pulled into a diner’s parking lot. I grabbed my knapsack off the front seat and opened the door. The overhead light came on.
“That a sketch pad? You an artist?”
“Yeah. I hope my work survived that spill.”
“Spill? Ha, ha. Man that was jumping without a parachute, not a spill. You hungry? Why don’t we go have a drink or a sandwich inside while you check out the condition of your art?”
“Far out, man.”
“Hey, man, you got a cactus pear growing out of your beard.” He laughed.
His comment reminded me of when I terrified Mai and her son in the wilds of Venezuela. “Man, superstitions can sure be different.”
“How you mean?”
“People and the way they greet walking-talking vegetation.”
“Ha, ha. Yeah.”
Hearing his laughter, a deep sadness sunk into my bones. I shut the door behind me, leaned my back against it, and felt the exhaustion of despair. Looking back up the walls of the canyon, I longed to hear a jaguar’s grunt and see the lights of Pico de Tigre twinkling and blinking.
My dreams were still in another’s heart, three thousand miles away, and would be until Pan let go of the tug-of-war he had placed between Teresa and myself. Was he holding her for ransom or for safekeeping?
“My name’s Ray. You?”
“Deets.” Deets of Monster Valley.
I slid the sketch pad across the booth’s table. “Here, I drew these while trapped in some snow cloud for the winter. I’ve got to make a phone call.”
Back in the parking lot, I stepped into a telephone booth and held the receiver to my ear. A choir of hollow humming and high pitched whines bounced in staccato over a low continuous electronic moan. Wires vibrated, voices from Canada to Mexico collided and hiccuped, imparting knowledge I had no interest in. A man in Oregon was talking to a friend heading to Alpha Centauri, a woman in Iowa was filing her toenails near her phone, and after I dialed some numbers and pushed coins into the slot, a man’s grumble came through the earpiece. I asked if Teresa was there, and he told me, “Fuck off, it’s three o’clock in the morning.”
“Tell her it’s Deets.”
“Goddamn moron.”
The hollow buzz returned, and I stuffed more coins and spun out more numbers. Another man answered.
“There a party going on? It’s Deets. I need to talk to Teresa.”
“Sorry, Bozo, you’ll never get her here.”
“Where can I find her?”
“Ha, ha, I don’t know. You got the wrong number.”
And he hung up.
I looked up through the glass at the stars sparkling overhead.
The sky just spins so easily. All those stars following a perfect plan, a formula of simplicity. Just one speck of thought controls them all. Ah, yes, the operator knows all.
I dialed the O, managed to rattle off the correct address, plunked in nickels, dimes, and quarters as instructed, and heard Teresa answer groggily.
“Hello.”
“Teresa.”
After a long silence, she responded in a voice that choked her words. “Tell me this isn’t a dream.”
“It probably is somewhere.”
In a voice filled with tears, she asked, “Where are you?”
“Near the ocean in a glass booth.”
“California?”
“Yeah. What a trip.”
“Why are you calling me after all this time? It’s been five months. I thought you were dead again. They found my car in the Ohio River.”
I heard a slamming sound echo through the line and knew she had switched off her tears.
“I called because I’m finding it hard to move through time or whatever this is, without you.”
“Deets, you sound out of it. Is this how it’s going to be? Every few months I’ll believe you’re dead, then you reappear? I drove to where they found my car near that collapsed bridge with your dad. Have you told your parents you’re alive? You disappeared five months ago, and you didn’t think anyone would want to know you’re still alive?”
“I was trapped in a mansion where Doctor Steel and Amelia told me why Pan and his gang are in contact with me and what I need to do. It never stopped snowing, and I couldn’t find a phone, just food and art materials, so I got a lot of drawing done. Just got out a week or so ago. I don’t even know if the place was on earth. Didn’t seem like it.”
“What do you want from me anymore? You’re involved in a nightmare that you know I have to protect myself from.” She paused and I heard the rattle of paper. “I got a letter from your sister Stephanie. My god, she says she can’t stop crying. Your little sister, Deets, has been grieving for you for five months. You’re a better person than to let that continue.”
“I’ll call her. Oh man.” I started to sweat. Teresa was boiling my brain with shame. People I loved had been hurting while I watched snow fall and drew strange images on paper.
“I...I...There’s a battle between some gods.” I stammered out a brief story of the tunnel of the gods being destroyed that ended with me saying, “... so they think I can complete this quest by fixing it somehow.”
The operator interrupted and asked me to deposit three more quarters.
I fumbled in panic through my pockets. “That’s all the change I have. What kind of world is this where you have to pay to talk to someone?”
I felt Teresa’s sigh as it blew through the line and out the phone. “You don’t know how often I’ve wished you were just crazy and all these adventures, with gods and demons and all your other supernatural buddies or enemies or whoever they are, were all in your tripped-out head. Then maybe we’d have a chance, but as long as your being toyed with for their divine purposes, I don’t see how my feelings even count.”
“Brenda tried to kill me again.”
“You’re with her again? Are you crazy?”
“No, I hitched a ride from Arizona and went to crash at a house, and there she was, ready to bury me again. She lives in some scary-ass harem controlled by some fruitcake psycho.”
Miracles (The Remarkable Adventures of Deets Parker Book 3) Page 15