“What about this cow shit? How does it know where to go?”
“C’mon, Deets, get yourself together. There are mushroom spores in them. You think the mushroom doesn’t have a destination in mind?”
“This is Pan’s plan you’re helping him with, isn’t it? Sending magic mushrooms out across the universe, into different dimensions, other times. Why?”
“Earth is Pan’s favorite planet. It’s his domain. Ages ago, other gods took it upon themselves to interfere in his way of ruling by destroying his paradise, developing unnecessary life forms, and just totally messing up his world. He’s retaliating against the gods who fouled his world. He wants mortals to share in the divine feast of the mushroom and gain the tunnel knowledge of the gods. He figures if enough learn to tunnel jump, it’ll disturb the holy province of the gods he’s feuding with. They wrecked his peace, so he’ll wreck theirs. If there are other arcane reasons, I’m not aware of them.”
“The bringer of truth. Ha, ha, cool. Far out. Here, help yourself, you freaks in the Paleozoic on Arcturus.” I placed more cow shit in the box, wiggled out my spell, and sat back, watching an explosion of purple spin up and away.
After hours of seeding the universe with mushroom spores, I slept on a couch while Nando worked on, lights flashing and echoes of low thunder surrounding my dreams. When I awoke, Pan’s piles were gone.
Looking through the simple, but many-roomed house, I came across a disturbingly ominous steel door—exactly like the one on the ground floor inside the mansion in New York City. Running my hand over the smooth surface, I closed my eyes and leaned my forehead against it, supplicating whatever mystery it held to whisper its secrets to me. The world held silent for a long time until I heard the faint piping of a flute. The melody carried an unmistakeable message—the Valley of Monsters was telling me it was time to leave.
Chapter 33
“Hey, give that to Charlie next time he brings you beer.” I pointed at the machete still stuck in the mud of the river bank. “Thanks for everything.”
Pan stood on his porch, goat-legged, and nodded a farewell to me.
Choking up on my gratitude for the haven he had provided, I whispered, “Not sure what’s next or why, but I’ll put in a good word for you whenever I can.”
He put his flute to his mouth. Within the notes that followed me down the river path, I felt my soul still sitting under the tree back in the pasture of Monster Valley.
Living among the mushrooms, not only had I lost my knapsack with the camera, the Polaroids, a bunch of cigarettes, and my sketch pad in it, I hadn’t been able to find my boots. I walked barefoot closer and closer to civilization, passing stone walls, more cow pastures, and lone houses. Eventually small clusters of dwellings appeared. Chickens crossed my path, pigs snorted behind wooden pens, the occasional human peeked out from a doorway—ducking back when I made eye contact.
The same superstitions as Mai. Or had they heard of the stranger learning magic in the shaman’s valley?
After a full day’s hike, I stood by a crashing cascade of water looking out onto a valley dotted with houses. A gray ribbon of highway hugged the mountainside opposite me. A blue and white bus was chugging its way along the winding road, beginning its climb out of the valley.
When I took my first step onto the pavement, it seemed like I passed through another invisible wall to arrive back into the world. The psychic difference after living in the jungles and mushroom highlands for almost three months was palpable. Looking south, my psilocybin sight revealed a cacophony of human emotions, cast as threats and prayers, rising into the air. Shards of broken light stuck up from the earth. The valley creaked its protest.
That mess of humanity to the south must be a city. Merida. Looks like poison, but maybe I can find Cecilia and bum some money off of her. Either that or hitch back to Caracas. That would be in this other direction if I remember the map right.
I started to walk towards the hallucinatory disturbance emanating from down the valley.
Maybe this is what Pan’s pissed about. Damn, civilization’s going to wear me down. So what now? Don’t know what I’m about anymore, but this is one of the roads I started out to try and reach, so here I am. Man, what a detour…
Rounding a hairpin curve, in the midst of wondering what came next, I focused on a black dot approaching from far down the road. It didn’t take long for it to shape itself into the mystery Cadillac from the stream encounter with Filomena. Just as I made out two red glowing eyes behind the smoked glass, a military truck coming from the opposite direction rumbled up alongside me.
The troop carrier slowed and came to a stop. Three guys in dark olive green uniforms jumped out and approached me. One raised a machine gun in my direction. Another, who wore silver bars on his shoulders, was pointing at me, blustering nastily. Instinctively raising my hands above my head, I creased my eyebrows questioningly, and mouthed, “Who, me?”
The officer spoke fast and authoritatively, obviously demanding something from me. I finally made out the word identificación.
“No hablo. Yo Americano.”
He sniffed at me, made some comment to his comrades, and they all laughed. Then the guy with the gun swung his weapon in the universally understood command of “Get in the truck.”
At that moment, the black Cadillac cruised slowly past. Being chased by a jaguar had felt less menacing than the threat I sensed emanating from inside that car. The shark-finned El Dorado accelerated and twisted around a corner, out of sight, promising its terror for another day.
I felt the nudge of the machine gun barrel push me forward.
Man, what a welcome committee. Do I even have a choice about my life? I should’ve left by the window box portal. Wish somebody would’ve given me comprehensive lessons.
I climbed into the back of the military vehicle and sat with the officer and his gunman until we pulled past a chain-link fence into a large gravel parking lot. They escorted me into a building, down a dirty hall, and into a room with a few vinyl-covered metal chairs and a large desk in it. Left alone, I sat on a chair with foam rubber clumps poking out between patches of duct tape.
I still had one pack of untouched Kools in my jacket. Realizing I hadn’t smoked... Wow, man, since I met Pan... I stuck a cigarette in my mouth and patted myself down for matches. My fingers discovered the photograph of the blood-specked face of drunken Charlie Little instead. Flipping its edges, speculating on the chances Teresa ever had of seeing it, I wondered about my odds of survival now that I was outside the wild lands and already off to a rough start back in the world.
The officer reappeared. On his command, I followed him through a series of more hallways and around corners until he stopped at, then knocked on, a scarred wooden door with a nameplate that read Coronel Perez.
The colonel was a large man with muscle gone to fat, a finely trimmed mustache, and black sagging pouches under his eyes. He shuffled through some papers while talking to me. I didn’t know how to respond to his inquisitive pauses and just shrugged silently. He pushed his papers aside impatiently and grew angry, raising his voice.
I was already weary of dealing with humans again. “No hablo Español. Yo Americano.”
The colonel looked sharply at my escort and snapped out a question. The officer answered without hesitation. A brisk conversation followed—with the word ‘Americano’ being mentioned frequently. Perez turned his attention back to me, staring hard.
He frowned, then rattled off more Spanish at me.
I shaped my hand like a puppet talking, opening and closing it while shaking my head negatively and saying, “No hablo Español.”
I reached for a book a matches on his desk. He slammed his hand down next to it. Withdrawing my arm slowly, I gave him a “you bastard” look. There was no telepathy between us, but we both understood each other’s attitude. The colonel stood and walked around the desk,
exerting his authority. He leaned in close to me but backed away suddenly, waving his hand exaggeratedly in front of his nose and making gargling sounds of disgust. He pointed at my shredded, filthy pants and dirt-encrusted bare feet. His expression screwed up as if he had stepped in dog excrement. He continued on in a voice that thundered with incredulous revulsion as he pantomimed the length and fullness of my beard, my hair, and the dishevelment of my ripped jacket and patchwork T-shirt.
I looked down at my shirt and couldn’t remember what color it had been when Johnny and I had driven away from Cecilia’s farm. It was brown and yellow and rusty red from mud ground into bloody, sweaty spots. And that grime was impregnated with green and sickly-gray streaks and spatters of plant juice and insect soiling. I touched a smear, black and hard with what could have been goo from Johnny’s brain.
I leaned forward in defiance. This jerk has no right. Johnny’s blood is on this shirt. I grabbed the matches from his desk and lit my cigarette, took a drag, and—Christ, what is this poison?—spit up on his shoe.
Man, stinking mapanare venom would taste better than this...
I coughed and hacked and gobbed up more saliva while the colonel protested his disgust. His subordinate dragged a waste basket from behind the desk and stuck it in front of me. My eyes watered, I wiped away drool, and I raggedly slobbered out a few sticky strands of clear liquid into the army-green trash basket.
Finally coming around, I leaned back, blew out a breath, and stubbed out the cigarette. “Mucho, uh, time, uh, no cigarillo.”
The colonel was back behind his desk, hunched over, rubbing furiously at his shoes. He tossed a wadded-up Kleenex on the desk and barked gruffly. The other officer picked up the Kleenex, dropped it in the basket, and snapped sharply to attention.
The colonel glared and fumed on. Not interested in his anger, I let my eyes wander to a calendar on the wall. After admiring the tits of a naked, dark-haired beauty sucking on a straw sticking out of a coconut, my attention became riveted on the month that hung below the photograph. August. And from the x’d out dates and the one remaining red-circled weekend, it was late August.
I got up and walked over to the picture of the thirsty woman, ignoring the protests of the younger officer and the bullfrog grunts of Coronel Perez.
I pointed at the last row of dates on the calendar. “Augusto?”
“Si.” Perez followed that affirmation with incomprehensible words, tinged with incredulous laughter. But then his ridicule quieted. He frowned with doubtful curiosity. His chin pushed forward, directing me to continue. We had communicated.
On the wall behind the colonel’s desk was a map of Venezuela. I motioned for permission to approach it and was granted a suspicious nod of consent.
Pointing to myself, then positioning my index finger and thumb as if painting, I said, “Artista.”
Pretending I was driving a car, I pointed to the eastern side of the Andes. Then—aiming an invisible rifle, adding explosion sounds from my mouth, imitating a helicopter’s twirling blades, accentuated with lots of “pow, pow” gunfire—I traced my hand up a random section of the mountains that looked to be a general approximation of where I thought I had been.
My mistake, and I saw it right away, was when I mentioned the word comunista.
The colonel stood over me and glowered, interrupting my story with a multitude of questions. He lacked the imagination or had too much dignity to make gun popping sounds, but his curiosity about my knowledge of the battle I had fled from months ago was of primary interest to him.
He gestured for me to continue my story.
I ran a finger across the brown area of the peaks and back down through green vegetation. After placing my hands against one cheek like I was sleeping angelically, then pretending to feast and drink, I reached into my jacket pocket to show the colonel a picture of my host, Charlie. I caught myself and pulled out the pack of cigarettes instead.
No use in having the army knowing about Teresa’s dad.
I offered Perez a Kool. He frowned, flipped his eyes down at his shoes, then wagged his jowls from side to side to decline.
A flurry of orders were issued, the upshot being I spent the next six days in a cell staring at piss-stained walls, crapping in a hole, eating undercooked rice and black beans for breakfast and dinner, and began smoking again. My stomach was a mass of bloated pain, my head felt like the cement I was surrounded in, and I fought back a desire to weave my magical creature symbol to see if it whisked me away into the god tunnels.
An interpreter, whose English was worse than my Spanish, managed to understand the rudiments of my heavily edited version of survival in the jungle and crossing of the sierra. When I asked him why I was being held prisoner, he just shrugged and mumbled it was necessary until Coronel Perez wished differently.
I became repelled by my odor. The aroma that seemed natural in the wilds no longer smelled normal or tolerable. Shit-stained pants and pissing myself for a month in the jungle had permeated into the fabric. My stink was indistinguishable from the prison cell’s foul air.
Laying on the thick slab of a metal bed that jutted from the wall, I wondered about telepathy. It no longer felt easy. The region’s mental airwaves were a chaotic shambles, far from the clarity of the mushroom valley’s inhabitants. I would pick up odd phrases of thought and have no idea where they came from. A husband drinking and thinking of the girl next door was answered by a taxi driver whistling while driving, then interrupted by a deer sipping from a stream. Communications were fuzzy with no context.
To escape the racket in my brain, I concentrated on reviewing the puzzle placed upon me by Pan and his gang.
Now that interdimensional portals had been explained to me...
Nando. We got along pretty good. Learned a lot in his presence. I wonder what the chances of bumping into a time traveling Neanderthal again are? I still can’t figure Monkey Man and Fish Man. What are they? Half-animal, half-human. They must watch or follow me. Maybe from the god tunnels? Is that possible? Pigeon Man, despite his clues, might as well be invisible for as much as I hear from him, and Doctor Steel’s threatening and cruel, but his sometimes polite and complimentary banter confuses me. Those two, Santa and Steel, if I have any say, along with the other enigmatic inhabitants of the house at Monster Alley, have to be my next contacts in trying to unravel whatever it is I’m being steered towards.
Pan’s obvious somehow. He has a good excuse for anything by being a god. Far out concept—seeding the universe with knowledge meant only for the gods.
Except—where do I fit? If I ever make it out of here, I have a feeling the Monster Alley players aren’t done playing with me.
Who were those sky travelers—spinning lights appearing as humanoids with animal characteristics; giant, shaggy chameleons; and that group of Filomena look-alikes? Are they part of Pan’s plan—mortals who travel the tunnels of the gods? And man, that Beelzebub’s just too much to even exist. Crazy evil incarnate.
The art on the ceramic window boxes has got me totally perplexed. Why Monkey Man and Fish Man flying in the sky? Wish I had asked Nando to explain.
And man, what’s with the black Cadillac reappearing? Not good.
Do I tell my friends about this? Teresa, I hope you accept me like your dream self did. You know enough of the puzzles I face to deserve to hear the newest discoveries. I know you’d be fascinated with the mysteries and could give me a fresh perspective on what they may mean.
Teresa, I met a god. Maybe it was his hoof print I saw in the window box back in New York. Whatever else is awaiting me, my main mission now is to deliver your dad’s photograph to you.
I hope you still care for me. Whether you know it or not, you helped me across these mountains.
Chapter 34
The cell door crashed open. Two men stepped into the room, their faces immediately registering displeasure.
; “Oh, it’s rank in here.”
“I can’t breath.”
They spoke in English.
One wore a light khaki uniform and a military officer’s cap. The other had on a charcoal gray business suit with a blue tie.
The soldier spoke, “Mister Parker, Deets Parker?”
“Yup.”
“I’m Colonel Robertson of the US Army. This is Mister William Thames from the American embassy.”
“Okay?” I answered suspiciously, not trusting a soldier on principle and immediately provoked by the sneer on the guy from the embassy.
“The air’s pretty bad in here. Do they ever clean the cell?”
“No, but I smell just as bad. I’ve been living in the wild for months.”
The two of them exchanged glances.
“Okay, we’ll take care of some of your immediate needs. We’re here to talk with you, but let’s get you cleaned up first.” Robertson turned to his partner. “Bill, you go into town and find a complete outfit for Mister Parker. I’ve got to run some things by the commandant here.” He flashed a smile and a wink at me. “Have to get clearance for you to take a shower.”
I didn’t believe that was all he and the colonel would talk about.
Why was I being held by the military, and why did an American officer want to talk to me?
Thames leered at me. “What size pants do you wear?”
Thirty-four, but I’ve lost a lot of weight.”
“Get him a thirty-two, plus a new belt to replace that rope he’s using. And Bill, make it informal, Mister Parker doesn’t look like a coat and tie man.”
“Yeah, like there’s a Brooks Brothers in town. What about shoes?”
“Get him alpargatas, probably a bit smaller than your feet.”
Robertson and Thames might have seemed helpful, but they hadn’t promised anything besides a set of clothes, a shower, and a desire to talk to me. No “glad you’re safe, we’ll get you home on the next plane. We notified your parents that you were alive.” Something wrong was brewing. I had witnessed a murder, been kidnapped by revolutionaries, and heard Charlie’s insane accusations of a CIA drug connection. I didn’t trust that Robertson and Thames were visiting me for humanitarian reasons. After they left on their respective missions, I removed the Polaroid picture of Charlie from my jacket and, determined it was for Teresa’s eyes only, folded the plastic-like material to weaken it and form creases I could rip along. It took some doing, but I cropped it down to a size suitable to stuff into my pack of cigarettes.
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