I remembered building sand Zobes in a backyard sandbox in Princeton, talking to the old man who wondered if nothing was still nothing if it had existed as something before.
“If you’ve always been as you are, I guess not.”
“Come to the cabin across the river. There’s food and drink there.”
And he was gone. I stood alone, looking at my creation of melted rock, thinking of energies that shaped planets and souls, wondering if gods held their pain throughout eternity.
I hiked across the pasture trying to figure out how Shadow Creature, Doctor Steel, Santa Pigeon, Monkey Man, and Fish Man could simply disappear at times, like Pan just had.
What if I do? How would I know what to do if I just became a living void?
On the far side of the river, the machete blade stuck out of the mud. A border marker, it seemed, between the magical mushroom valley and the path that led to the world not in on the secret. Pan greeted me with a beer and a plate of cheese and oranges. His legs were human again. We conversed using a mixture of Spanish, hand signals, and telepathy.
“Rest.”
He gestured to an open window where the moon hung. He flipped his hand slightly, momentarily passing it before my view of the white globe in the sky. His fingers flexed across his palm and came away with a flute.
Stolen from the moon itself.
He raised the instrument to his lips.
The beginning notes felt like the gentle scattering of fertile seeds. Magic beans.
My stomach full, a beer in my hand, I lay in a hammock on the porch, listening to a melody that sang of clouds floating forever across blue skies, weaving paths and riddles that danced in a perfect plan. Peaceful as it was, it felt like a dream of important realizations that I had no understanding of.
During the night, I awoke and listened to a woman groaning and gasping as she climaxed. Then I heard a grunt repeating itself over and over, finally raising to a bellow. I knew I had just heard Pan fucking Mai and that the bottle of Zulia I reached for was bought by Charlie Little.
Well, no wonder she had to check me out. His is probably the size of that great white bull’s.
Next morning, I had river water and three mushrooms for breakfast.
I spent most of the day with the back of my head stuck to the tree where I had first rested the day before. The blood in my veins pulsed in rhythm with the flow of water circulating up from its roots. Sunshine shone down through its leaves, replacing my brain. My skin matched the texture of thick bark perfectly. I had become the lone tree in the pasture. Where was the woman who had swayed above me in that life as a tree in the Poconos?
Teresa.
With the thought of Teresa, I believed myself to be traveling along the upper branches of the tree, then dispersed into the air to hitch a ride on one of the clouds from Pan’s song. Moments later, I dropped onto the asphalt of Christopher Street, a block from Teresa’s store.
Walking towards Good Stuff, I saw Clyde, the guy I had met at the induction center, sitting on a bench in that little park near the Stonewall Inn, playing an acoustic guitar. An open instrument case lay in front of him revealing a few coins and dollar bills tossed in by the occasional passerby. Reaching into my pocket, I pulled out a stone of blackened lava. I could still feel the heat that had forged it. I was surprised to see it had the same shape as Santa Pigeon’s mysterious white feather. Remembering the Shadow Creature molding something over the fire that night up in Charlie Little’s cabin, I spoke aloud to myself, “It’s all so bewildering.”
Clyde looked up and recognized me. “Hey, man, where you been? Man, it’s great to see you.” He kept strumming, but his smile twisted to a rictus of doubt. A quizzical furrow creased his brow. “We thought you were dead.”
“No, I’m cool, man. Still hanging in on this side. Hey, give this to the woman who runs that store, will you?” I pointed across Christopher Street towards West 4th at the Good Stuff sign. I placed the rock on the velvet lining of his guitar case.
“Teresa? I’m hep. Man, she freaked at the news that you had disappeared in some jungle. You should give it to her yourself. I mean, you two had a thing once. Right, man?”
“I’m not sure how long I have here.” My words triggered a break in my contact with him. I felt I had stepped back into the world of Pan’s music and disappeared in front of Clyde, though I was still able to see him.
He jumped up, his guitar pick poised above the E string. “What the...? Man did anybody see that?” He looked up and down the street, back into the park, even leaned over slightly to check under the bench. Then he knelt down and gently touched the feather-shaped lava. He faced the sky, a smile entering his eyes. “Far out, man. Too much.” Still kneeling, he brought the pick down across the strings in a full strum that vibrated between the cement and brick walls surrounding him.
I traveled rapidly away, surrounded by clouds and flute music, high above an ocean, then found myself suddenly aware of the Andean valley.
I’m back again.
Scratching the top of my head in wonder of what I had just experienced, I detached myself from the tree with a slow sucking tug.
Chapter 31
By nightfall, I had eaten another six mushrooms and climbed to my perch next to Monkey Man. The mood clinging to the cliffs and seeping from the mossy rock felt like a secret about to be revealed.
Something’s coming tonight.
I nodded a greeting at the man with ape features and small horn-like nubs. He offered me a grumpy, mocking insult. Fish Man’s silvery face broke the surface of the pool below, his eyes flashing iridescently. I sensed he was measuring my ability to accept whatever was hanging in the air. Monkey Man’s movements at times exuded an aura of violence, and his grunting breaths sounded like someone in a constant battle, but his concentration was not directed at me.
Sitting near the two creatures felt, oddly, normal and safe. The moon rose. The Milky Way spun. The three of us waited.
A rotating disc of light sped up the boulder strewn canyon on my left, the area I hadn’t been able to explore because of collisions with the solid wall of air.
Monkey Man said, “Stay cool.”
A flash of purple and orange light careened down between the cliffs with a low rumble following in its wake. A concussion punched the air around me. Soon a line of beings made their way between the pines and rocks of the one valley trail that had been off limits to me. They were tall humanoid creatures with broad shoulders, large foreheads, and arms that drooped to their knees. Unkempt hair covered their bodies. Their clothing was tattered.
The lead creature paused for a few seconds where I knew the air wall to be. He passed through.
“What? How’d he do that?”
Monkey Man whispered, “Just watch.”
“What’s going on?”
“Refugees. They’ll adapt to living in the wild, wander on their own.”
“Where are they from?”
Monkey Man gave me a sly look. “Universe is an amazing place, huh, Deets?”
The creatures spread into the pasture, giants stretching and sniffing, twisting their necks in every direction to look over their new environment. Gradually I began to notice fewer and fewer of them, though I had not seen any disperse from the general pack they moved in.
“What’s happening to them?”
“Concentrate. Watch carefully.”
Then I saw it. They were fading away—no, blending, into the pasture. A foot would take on the appearance of the grass. Then a leg, a knee. A shoulder would become indistinguishable from a nearby bush or boulder. Another step and the foot’s camouflage appeared as cow dung, toes sprouting mushrooms.
Just a ripple of moonlight shimmering across the pasture betrayed the suspicion that large, shaggy, chameleon creatures moved towards the river.
“Man, are you kidding? How the hell
isn’t this general knowledge?”
Monkey Man laughed and pulled out a long fat cigar. He chomped off one end and swallowed it before lighting up. “Ha ha.”
Gauging that the group crossed the river in front of Pan’s cabin, I guessed they turned uphill, dispersing into the jungle. The dark flanks of the mountain hid any signs of the hairy giants trudging deeper into the wilderness.
I raised an arm in a farewell wave.
Monkey Man’s cigar was half-way gone when he blew a cloud of foul smoke and shared his thoughts, “It’s a lonely existence—living in seclusion, far from their home world.”
Home world?
“Are they from...?” I didn’t know how to phrase my astonishment.
Creatures from other dimensions, a shadow that appeared to be from beyond existence, dead spirits, a god turning me on to mushrooms—all had become my normalcy. Now what? “Another...planet?”
“Listen...” He shoved the cigar between his lips, working it over to a corner of his mouth.
A whispering, twisted twitter sprinkled across my thoughts.
In the sky, nine stars were descending towards the valley. They swirled and made humming sounds as they swooped close to the ground. One by one, the sparkling lights formed into humanoids with black and red mottled skin. Chittering in a strange tongue, they crouched around a cow patty, plucking up mushrooms that glowed briefly against the night when the stem was lifted from the manure. In the brief illumination I thought I recognized the features of each individual. It hit me—they all somewhat resembled Filomena.
Stay cool.
Just before popping the fungus into their mouths, each of them would utter what sounded like a brief reverential acknowledgement of the mushroom. They stood, and from their demeanor, it appeared they were familiar with the valley. Chanting softly, they marched in file across the pastureland. I glanced at Monkey Man for his reaction when their eyes began to glow red and, despite my misgivings, took comfort he wasn’t upset at the sight of them.
His mouth contorted into a strange otherworld monkey smile, and he flashed me the peace sign.
“Don’t panic, it makes it easier to recognize them and follow their route.”
Every once in a while, I’d see a brief pulse of fluorescence on the ground and knew another mushroom had been picked. The Filomena-like crew crossed the river and followed the main path that led down to civilization.
“It’s getting pretty crowded in these mountains.”
He grunted, blew smoke at me. “It’s early yet.”
“What’s going on? What am I seeing? Man, like… you, Pan, and Fish Man sure play out all mysterious. Just like Pigeon and Steel. You’d think by now someone would just explain to me who they are and why I’m being surrounded by you guys who seem to just jump in and out, all around, back and forth, up and down, disappearing and then reappearing.”
“How was New York today?”
With his question, I realized I had actually physically materialized three thousand miles away, flipped across Clyde’s path, and left him elated with the witnessing of the impossible. And Monkey Man knew all about it.
“New York. It seemed normal, reaching there without even thinking about it.”
“Maybe it’s a game of the gods. And you’re an instrument of their whim.”
“Hmm.” I looked across my shoulder to see if there really was a Monkey Man smoking a cigar and talking to me about the mysteries that bedeviled me.
Game of the gods? Pan’s settled in his cabin, playing tunes, humping Mai, frolicking with the wildlife. Magic is swirling all around. Miracles guided me here. Is someone finally letting me in on what’s happening?
“So okay, Monkey Man, what else?”
A fishtail slapped the surface of the pool below.
“For now, enjoy the valley’s hospitality.” He pulled on his cigar, then nodded his head southwards and raised his furry brows.
I followed his eyes to watch a section of the sky fill with color as a purple streak of light disintegrated into a dozen popping sparks. The discharges regrouped in a tight formation and steered themselves over Pan’s mountain and then began settling towards the valley floor. As they touched down onto the grass, diverse hominids appeared in their place. They were lying face-up in a circle on the grass, their shoulders touching, their hands intertwined. Slowly, they sat up, rubbing their eyes, rotating their heads as if working out kinks in their necks, stretching and blowing out deep exhaustive breaths. A collective murmuring of male and female voices, plus animal grunts, squeaks, and other assorted sounds drifted up to where I sat.
The group lounged where they had landed. Some slept, others fed themselves on nearby mushrooms. Catching the distinct whiff of marijuana, I watched the glow of a joint being passed around.
Clouds moved in, blocking the moonlight and dimming their features, but as a gray dawn cleared away the night, I began to notice major differences between the travelers. Most of the new arrivals had appearances or mannerisms that resembled different animals. The tallest, a male, appeared to have two twitching antennae on his head and more than two arms. Otherwise, he looked human. The smallest guy, pock-marked and bug-eyed, had buck teeth and a slight hop to his gait. His eyes were so far apart they almost sat on either side of his head. There was a woman who wore a tiger-striped blouse and flowered dress. Her eyes shown green. She licked at the back of her hands, then adjusted an orange and black tail protruding from beneath her skirt.
A bear-like Neanderthal man wore a shiny gold-flecked pair of coveralls.
This is quite a crew. Incredible.
A skinny, naked woman whose back had a covering of green and black scales stirred from sleep and pushed away an orange-bearded young man’s head buried between her legs. She pulled on a pair of jeans, ran her fingers through her hair and started towards the invisible wall. She waited as the others roused themselves. Still stumbling from sleep, the group assembled in a line along the enigmatic section of impenetrable air.
They began to move their hands, and I could see small dark bubbles appear in the air where they touched the wall. Little by little, patterns were forming, floating before the group. Tiger woman swiped at an area with her fingernails causing lines and circles to materialize. I saw geometrical symbols jiggle into shape when a large blubbery-looking man wearing bathing trunks weaved both his hands.
A woman with blue feathers poking out from beneath her blouse painstakingly worked on a series of symbols. I could make out a pictograph of a bird surrounded by letters, parallel squiggles, and decimal-pointed numbers. The wall began to ripple, and she stepped past it, into the space on the other side. Others, finishing their scrawls and scribbles, began to filter through scattered sections of the wall.
I jumped up, whispering to the universe, “Oh wow, that’s the formula. That’s part of the equation in Monster Alley. Man, what’s happening?”
It came to me after I had scrambled down the cliff. My feet touched the grass, and I yelled out, “Holy cow manure, this is Monster Valley.”
Pawing at the air, confounded by its solidity, I ran alongside the mysterious wall, calling to the group of travelers disappearing between the tumble of boulders and beneath the pines on the other side, “What are the rules? What are the rules?”
The gold-suited Neanderthal turned and looked back at me, a puzzled expression on his face changing slowly into a mischievous grin. He then saluted me informally with a tip of his hand to his pronounced brow ridge before continuing on with his fellow travelers, all unapproachable. The squiggles in the air faded.
Enthused and bewildered by my revelation, for the next half-hour I leaned my face close to the invisible blockade with both hands flat against it, looking for clues to gain entry. I began to hear, from up the canyon, a low, intense hum that vibrated the wall slightly. The sound rose in pitch until I heard a muffled clap. Suddenly, a series of purple shots
of light rocketed over the trees, zig-zagged sharply, accelerated, and, in a blink, disappeared. Almost simultaneously, streaks of red lightning danced up from the ground and raced along the granite cliffs in the sealed-off area. Despite the wall blocking the brunt of the terrifying force, the surging energy still rattled me physically. I was knocked off balance, but my right hand, as if glued to the wall, pushed back with a determination to cross through the Monster Valley obstacle.
Holy Cow, Jesus, and Pan, that’s it—creatures coming and going—there’s some kind of teleportation device up there.
Chapter 32
I spent the next few days prodding, poking, and pounding the air that blocked my passage into the mysterious canyon. I coaxed the wall soothingly, reasoned with it, sang it a melody, cursed it. Once, I charged full force at it and bounced backwards, resulting in a sore shoulder. I thought I could outmaneuver the barrier by climbing past the waterfall for a few hours then descending towards the canyon gorge. As I clawed my way down, I slammed my head on a tree limb, slipped on loose shale, and crashed uncontrollably down a steep slant before smacking into the maddening solid nothingness. Digging at the soil, I discovered an underground route met the same obstacle. Stones thrown high and hard made cracking sounds but always landed back at my feet.
The earth spun; the sun rose, peaked, and sank; the moon went through its stages; rain came; fog clung. I remembered Pan telling me that first day that I would never leave the valley.
I slept most nights wrapped up in Charlie’s burned sleeping bag under the tree or on Pan’s porch listening to his music. Food appeared for me in the ancient god’s house—goat cheese, different fruits, crackers, bread, sometimes a vegetable paella. I drank river water, cow milk, and beer. And, of course, mushrooms were plentiful, popping up daily.
Strange and astounding creatures were seen or heard, humorous or shattering thoughts visited, plants communed with. Water and air and dirt replaced blood and skin. Music drifted everywhere. I could feel the universe dancing, the world mourning, people praying, miracles responding, dreams slipping into existence.
Magic (The Remarkable Adventures of Deets Parker Book 2) Page 20