The 37th mandala : a novel

by Laidlaw, Marc

  "I always consoled myself with one thought," Derek whispered. "Every text promises that the devoted student shall one day find his master. Until then I tried to behave as if my master was with me unseen."

  "You were quite correct: That brings the invisible teachers, and it is they who guided us together."

  "I'm afraid I'm not worthy of... of your instruction, Elias."

  "These are matters of great significance, it is true. But it is not me who will judge your worth. Prove your sincerity and the rest will follow."

  "What do you want me to do?"

  "You are already doing it," Eli said, and Derek realized that he had been staring Eli in the eyes, unblinking, since the moment he'd raised his head.

  Eli said, "I see you in a field, among hills."

  "What do you mean, you see me?"

  This was too much like hypnosis. He had lost track of himself, and it frightened him. He wasn't supposed to lose control like this. He hadn't yet been sucked into Eli's web; he'd always managed to stay detached with his tape recorder spinning. It was not spinning now.

  "You are very young, Derek."

  "A young soul, you mean?" That was it: Break the spell.

  "No, a young man." Eli smiled, as if to say that what he was doing couldn't be so easily interrupted. This was like nothing in Derek's experience; he hadn't the resources to defend himself against it. No ... it was like his first overwhelming memory, his first day in this house, when he'd remembered the fever-dream of the evil chimes. But instead of fading, instead of his taking control of it, it was strengthening now and taking control of him.

  "You are standing in a field of thorns, crying very hard. You are in the shadow of something huge."

  "This is all very ominous," Derek said, "but what do you mean, really?" If this was part of Eli's purification, it was all nonsense. Yes, that was the way to see it. He struggled to free himself from seeing what Eli described, but it was not easy.

  "I see what it is now. It's a freeway."

  Derek grew very still. No, he can't be.... But he also saw it. Remembered it.

  "It ends here, Derek. Right where you are, in midair over you. That is your shadow, my boy. The shadow over your soul."

  "I don't know what you're talking about."

  "This thing must be faced. You must approach it with courage and nobility. I see now why otherwise you seem to be so fearless. There is only one thing you fear: facing this. Anything else is easy by comparison; but anything else will be futile and meaningless to you, until you have done this. You must be pure in order to receive initiation...."

  "You've lost me, Elias," he tried to say, but Eli was gone. He had been staring at him, but now it was hot yellow sky he saw, burning out from beyond the shade of the unfinished freeway.

  He crouched in the dried weeds, plucking golden foxtails from his socks. Somewhere near was the hum of bees, rising and falling as they made their way through the sagebrush hills. The land was so hot it seemed to crackle like fire all around him. But here in the shade it was cool, with his back to the cement columns towering so high and still above him, where the freeway broke off in midair.

  He finally saw May, a small figure in a plain blue dress, coming up the hill toward him, picking her way over rocks and avoiding the sprawling growths of cactus. Behind her, the trailer park blurred in the heat, its smallest details vanishing, except for sharp glints of reflected sunlight. Beyond the trailer rows, the sun flashed on crawling cars, the old two-lane highway clogged six hours a day. Someday the new freeway would carry all the cars at top speed, but it had languished uncompleted since before Mrs. Crowe had moved them here to Glenrock, a developing community southeast of L.A., where tracts were springing up in the fertile flats that had once been orange groves, and where Derek could still smell blossoms from the few remaining orchards on warm nights when the wind was right. The huge concrete snake hugged the hillside to the north, but here it rose high into the air as if anticipating some obstacle yet to come—and sheared off abruptly. Sometimes Derek dreamed that it reared up higher still, swaying toward the trailer park, dipping its head like Tyrannosaurus Rex, coming down to root him out of the thin aluminum shell, to feed....

  May spotted him now and paused to wave. He waved back, made sure she was still coming, then went around to the far side of the column where he had dropped his backpack and canteen. He had already spread a beach towel in the shade; now he got out his hypnosis handbook and opened it to his favorite induction, the one that started with the subject floating like a cloud in a wide blue sky. Eventually they got so you could pinch them and they wouldn't feel a thing. Derek had never tried putting pins in the hypnotized subject's flesh, but some books said you could do that too. He was afraid to try.

  May stepped around the cement leg of the freeway, her freckled face brown from the sun. She saw him kneeling in the shade and came running forward. "Did you bring everything you need?" she asked.

  "This is it," he said, slapping the book against his thigh, then holding it up for her to see. She put out her hands and touched it lightly, almost reverently. The cover was dark, washed-out blue, and showed a pair of gaping eyes floating in mist. Hypnosis in an Instant!—by Quinn Selkirk, the author of Quick Clairvoyance! and ESP—1,2,3! She started to look into the book, but she must have sensed that she was encroaching on Derek's territory. The secrets were his alone to impart; he had the knowledge, and she dare not try to take it for herself. Besides, he knew that the whole idea of being hypnotized frightened her—she didn't really want to get too close to the book. Closing it squeamishly, she delivered it back into his tense and waiting fingers.

  "Are you ready?" he asked.

  May bit her lip ferociously, squinting at him, half scowling and half smiling. As always when he was alone with her, his mind seemed to run slightly out of sync with his body. Part of him was adrift in a delirium, blissfully drinking in every detail of her face, her round cheeks, her long dark hair brushed back from her even darker eyes. Everything about May was perfect; she had seemed to him the embodiment of perfection from the moment she moved into the trailer park. The better he'd gotten to know her, the more his love for her had intensified, and the more perfect she seemed. Now she looked up at him hesitantly and his heart felt as if it were going to burst. She put out her hand and locked fingers with him, pulling close, gazing up at him so soulfully that he couldn't think of anything but her eyes, the sweet smell of her, the dusty warmth of her hair.

  "You—you're sure it's all right?" she said.

  "Yes." He put his hands on her bare tanned arms, squeezed. "You talked to Mike and Dinah didn't you? They said it's safe, didn't they?"

  She nodded, pressing up against him, shivering. "Mike said it was really fun. He said you made him think he was shrinking down like a bug, and he could crawl around between the grass blades and explore. Dinah said you made her see flying saucers come down from the sky and land right in the middle of the highway!" She laughed, clapping her hands to her mouth. "Did you really do that?"

  "Yes. I can make you see anything."

  "But you can't make me ... do anything? Nothing I don't want, I mean?"

  "Oh, May...." He caught her hands again and put his arm around her. "May, that's totally wrong, everything they told you in church. The subconscious is nothing to be scared of. No one can make you do something you don't want to do. All I do when I hypnotize you is guide you—I show you how to hypnotize yourself. Maybe if there's something you want to do but you've always been afraid to try, then under hypnosis maybe you'll be able to do it. But you'd never do anything you don't want."

  "Well ..." He'd seen the battle in her eyes; they'd talked about all this before. But she needed extra reassurance the other kids in the trailer park didn't. She'd been brainwashed from an early age by her church.

  May and her parents were Christian Scientists, part of a little congregation in Glenrock. Derek had read lots of books about the afterlife and telepathy and dream interpretation, and when May first starte
d telling him about her religion, he was very interested. It didn't sound like the usual boring church stuff. The Christian Scientists believed in faith healing and the power of prayer; they wouldn't let doctors come near them. He was amazed when he learned that May had never received a single vaccination shot.

  For days he asked her constantly about the church. He would have done anything to be with her every minute of every day, so when she invited him to come to Sunday school with her, he happily accepted. To prepare him, and because she didn't know where the church stood on poltergeists and telekinesis, she lent him her copies of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, whose pages were cluttered with little jangling metal markers and underlined in pale-blue chalk. It didn't take him long to find passages about hypnosis, mesmerism, and animal magnetism. Mary Baker Eddy, the church founder, went on about them at length, and with great vehemence.

  Derek considered himself an expert in hypnosis. He had studied the Selkirk book until he knew the inductions almost by heart. He had looked at several other scientific manuals in the adult sections of the Glenrock Public Library. At one time or another, he had hypnotized all the kids in the park—all except May, that is—without complication, and to everyone's great enjoyment.

  He soon discovered that Mary Baker Eddy was full of misconceptions about hypnosis; her opinions were tantamount to superstition. She believed under hypnosis the subject surrendered his will, falling totally under the power of the hypnotist. She thought the hypnotist enslaved his subject through the use of magical passes. This might have been understandable in Mary Eddy's case. At the time she was writing, so-called mesmerists had traveled the country performing in side shows, using hypnosis for stunts and entertainment, playing on the primitive fears of their rustic audience. She had been deluded by wild, vaudevillian hype.

  But so much time had passed! Hypnosis was a science now. There was no such thing as animal magnetism. Trances were induced not by mesmeric passes but by guided relaxation. Dentists, psychiatrists, and doctors used hypnosis regularly. It was safe. It was scientific. There was no reason in the world for modern Christian Scientists to hold onto Mary Baker Eddy's antiquated misconceptions, when hypnosis was so safe and practical that even a twelve-year-old could master it!

  By the time Sunday came around, Derek was ready with his arguments. His mother let out the cuffs of his one good suit, teasing him gently about going to church for the sake of a girl when he had never shown interest before. May's parents pulled up in their big black Mercury—fat with fins and gleaming chrome, but slow and somehow stately. May's parents were quiet and pleasant but rather starved looking, like apple dolls carved too thin and dried too long. They had lived in the desert for many years before moving here. Derek had never seen May's father wearing anything except a white shirt, black slacks, thin black tie, and hard black shoes. Her mother dressed simply; her only accessory was a black pillbox hat with a veil. They said very little on the drive into Glenrock. He sat nervously in the back seat, regretting he had come, until May quietly took his hand and gave him a smile that made everything all right.

  The Sunday school teacher, by contrast, was plump and quick and merry. After the sermon, she took Derek by the hand and led him downstairs to one of a half-dozen big round tables where children were gathering in groups with other teachers.

  She introduced Derek all around, and May blushed when the teacher said that Derek was her special friend, and wasn't it wonderful that she had brought Derek along to church? The teacher opened to the first passage they'd been assigned to study, but as soon as she asked if there were any questions, Derek politely put up his hand.

  "Oh, Derek how wonderful. What do you want to ask?"

  "Something about hypnosis."

  "Well, that wasn't part of the assignment, but—well, you're our guest today, so go right ahead. Does everyone understand what Derek's talking about?"

  The other children nodded with huge eyes; under the table May squeezed Derek's hand. He cleared his throat and stood up.

  "Mary Baker Eddy has it all wrong," he said.

  The teacher nodded politely, as if she hadn't heard him, then cocked her head. "Maybe you could tell us what you mean by that," she said, still very pleasant because he was after all a guest and she was just naturally a very nice lady.

  "I know a lot about it," he said. "I mean—I've done it myself."

  "Have you now?"

  "And I've studied it, and it's not at all what she says. It's scientific. It's nothing to be afraid of."

  "That's very interesting, Derek. I'm not sure the other children here have studied the passages about hypnosis; it's a little grown-up for them."

  "I have," said a girl at the table.

  "It's animal magnetism!" a boy said giddily.

  The fearful thrill in their voices told Derek they had perused those sections most eagerly of all.

  "Only God should control your soul," said another girl, turning livid eyes on Derek. "Hypnosis is evil."

  "Now, Lisa, Derek is our guest—"

  "What is animal magnetism?"

  "They can turn you into a bar of iron and walk all over you!"

  "It's like when a snake sees a bird and the bird gets hypnotized—"

  "I heard about one guy who thought he was a dog—"

  "Children ..."

  "—and it stands there staring until the snake eats it."

  "—and whenever you said 'Here, boy!' he'd get down on all fours and start barking!"

  "Children, that's enough now."

  "Evil," said the girl again, still glaring at Derek.

  "He is not," said May, clutching Derek's hand harder now. "You don't know anything about it."

  "Please, May, Samantha, settle down. I think we'd better get back to our lesson plan, if that's all right with you." She gave Derek a big smile. "Now if you'd like to put together a presentation on hypnosis, we'd be glad to hear what you have to say. It sounds very interesting."

  He had expected more argument from her. Flustered, he could only nod. He had been hoping to impress May with his arguments, but instead the teacher had avoided an argument altogether; she seemed all too willing to listen, at the proper time.

  After the meeting, he expected some repercussion—perhaps the teacher would take May's parents aside and whisper about him—but nothing of the sort transpired. They bundled back into the car, Derek carrying a handful of literature for church youth. He read articles about faith healing, including one about a boy who'd gotten a terrible haircut and prayed to God to fix it and make everything better; but in fact what happened was God helped the boy be at peace with his haircut, which was a more economical solution than magically transforming the hair itself. Even so, Derek was disappointed to learn that the "miracles" of Christian Science were really rather prosaic.

  But if his debate on the truth about hypnosis had lacked a climax, it had at least impressed and intrigued May, who began to question him about what the hypnotic state was like—a question he couldn't answer, since no one had ever been able to hypnotize Derek himself. He'd let other kids in the trailer park read the inductions from the book, playing the part of hypnotist, but Derek was not susceptible to suggestion. He wanted desperately to go into trances, to have the wild mental adventures he dreamed up for the other kids, but no. He was always the one in control, the wide-awake logical one, concocting dreams but never involved in them. He was able to put himself into mild self-hypnotic states, where he felt adrift and sleepy, but it wasn't the same as delivering yourself into the hands of a guide.

  For weeks May hinted, shyly, that she might like to be hypnotized. They ghosted around the trailer park together, holding hands in the warm evenings, seeking shade in the hot afternoons—often settling down beneath the unfinished freeway to look out over the hot valley, the trailers, the traffic. And one day, recently, they had kissed—tentative, gentle kisses that made Derek feel as if his insides were melting and his skin were tingling all over and he just wanted to somehow pull May inside
him or climb into her skin with her, to be closer than their bodies allowed. And that was when, looking at him through slit lids, May had whispered for the first time, "I want you to hypnotize me. ..."

  "I do want it," she said now. "I'm ready."

  He took her by the hand and brought her over to the towel he'd spread out. She sat with her back to the cool cement of the pylon, and he sat down facing her. They were completely alone on the hillside that seemed to blur up into the empty beige sky, the trailer park and the highway all hidden from view. The immense gray bulk of the freeway seemed to float weightless overhead. He could hear bees and the wind rustling scrub and the distant hum of traffic, but all that would help May go under.

  "Close your eyes," he said.

  She gave him a smile and a sly look, then did as he said. When he began speaking, telling her to relax, the smile continued to flicker about her lips. Then there came a moment when he saw her let go, and the nervous smile washed away, and she took a deep, sighing breath and seemed to sag a little. May was in a trance.

  Next he told her that her right arm was growing lighter than air, floating up like a helium balloon. May's rose from her lap, drifting up until it was level with her face. When he told her the arm had turned to lead, it fell as abruptly as a metal weight, crashing down on her legs. Now the arm was completely numb, lacking all sensation. He scooted next to her and pinched the back of her hand so hard it left nailmarks in the skin. She didn't flinch.

  Derek didn't know quite where to go from here. He crouched next to her, listening to the throbbing of insects in the heat, the warm murmur of the wind, feeling suddenly alone and afraid—as if May were no longer here. Waiting for inspiration, he took her hand and stroked it softly, smoothing away the white crescents left by his nails.

  "May," he whispered, "can you hear me?"

  She nodded very slowly.

  He leaned close to her ear, as if to whisper a secret that even she shouldn't hear. And indeed it was a secret, something he had never dared tell her:

  "I love you," he said.