Max parked the car in front of the white clapboard house where Marilyn lived upstairs. The houses were jammed together with little side yards running like borders between them. There weren’t a lot of trees, but sticker bushes seemed to be in front of every porch. The ugly streetlights on the corners came on making freakish shadows of low-hanging wires that crisscrossed the streets. You could hear basketballs bouncing on concrete now that the rain had stopped and through open windows smell a pungent weekday mix of cabbage and ham or chicken with Lipton onion soup mix and noodles cooking, along with the sounds of the Chicago White Sox game coming over the radios and TV’s.
Marilyn used an old skeleton key to open the door to the duplex, it was a grainy walnut door with a round of glass and a very tired lace curtain stretched over it. The porch light made a little circle on the grey floorboards and Marilyn’s beautiful black wavy hair fell across her face as she opened the door. The contrast between her vibrant lush body barely contained in the red cardigan and black uniform, with the red, red lips and the mean, used-up neighborhood was not lost on Max. He felt almost like he was high again, a really good high where you realize how the sweet and the bitter make life worth living. The stairs were steep that lead up to Marilyn’s door and the hallway was covered in a faded green-grey wallpaper with garlands of yellow flowers. As they came into the hallway a dog barked twice and there was an angry thump from the inside of the door leading to the downstairs apartment. Marilyn bounded up the stairs, “Sssh, Sssh. Rowley, no barking.”
In a flash she had her own door open and she knelt down and buried her face into the dog’s white diamond marking on his chest. Rowley’s eyes were tawny and they looked in a not unfriendly way over Marilyn’s head to Max, sizing him up. She flipped a light on and before Max could come in she had a leash in her hand and had tossed her fake leather handbag on a sofa with a fringed orange cover.
Back on the street with Rowley on the leash they crossed North Street and made their way over to the more graceful homes on West William Street leading to Charlesworth Place. Marilyn liked to pretend that this was really where she lived in Decatur, Illinois. There were elm, oak and pine trees planted here, large lawns with big borders of peony bushes along the red and yellow brick houses and, as you got to Charlesworth Place, a Frank Lloyd Wright home on the corner. Marilyn let Rowley off the leash to scamper in the park-like atmosphere of the grounds of the Charlesworth mansion, a late Victorian brick beauty with a square tower, a sweeping graveled circular drive and beautiful wrought iron streetlights marking the entrance with big white globes of light.
“You ever been here?” asked Marilyn, “It’s me and Rowley’s favorite place except for maybe Fairview Cemetery.”
“You can just go in?” Max asked. “Isn’t it private property?”
“I don’t know. I guess maybe now it’s the University’s but every night after work it’s me and Rowley’s.” The dog, hearing his name, ran up to Marilyn and barked happily, glad to be out of the apartment with the wet grass brushing his ankles and the smell of her in his nostrils along with a satisfying moosh of neighborhood dog pee, broken robin’s egg, and the flowering big magnolia in front of the closed-up house.
“Some people think this place is haunted,” she offered as the moon came out of the clouds just above the top turret of the mansion.
“And you?” Max asked as she whistled for Rowley.
“I’ve seen things here. My mother used to clean house for J.J., the son of the Charlesworth that built this place along with your college. Mother always called him an odd duck. She was right. It was like he was stuck between the centuries, wearing an old fashioned morning jacket and big black bow tie. He collected peculiar things from all over the world and was very particular about them.” She paused biting her lip and then plunged on, “His young wife committed suicide when I was eight.”
“That’s sad.” Max said looking at the big house and thinking you just never knew what went on inside of people’s heads.
“She was found drowned in the goldfish pond only they called it something else, something classy sounding.”
“She drowned in a koi pond?” Max supplied.
“That’s it. It was a big pond. I’ll show you, around the back. C’mon, Rowley.” She called and the dog fell in immediately at her heel. They moved in the moonlight to the rear of the mansion with its big darkened rear porch looking out over a large expanse of lawn in shades of grey illuminated by the moon and the house’s Victorian street lamps. The dog and Marilyn moved with easy familiarity towards the center of the lawn where a large deep hole ringed with stones stood. The koi pond was easily twenty feet wide and even with the bottom layered in leaves and twigs, looked to be seven or eight feet deep. Marilyn could feel the seeping darkness of the Charlesworth mansion strongest there except for the one place inside, the place she never got back to.
“He had it drained when she died,” Marilyn said softly looking down into the pond’s dry stone bottom. “I told you J.J. was odd; his father was a real Bible thumper, but J.J., he had a fascination with what he called the other side of the divine. Went all over the world collecting things that I think it might have disturbed his child bride right into this pond and he changed after that and finally one day just got in the car and drove away. It was one of his theories, as above so below he would say. He used to talk to me especially after Mrs. Charlesworth died. They say the pond will fill back up on its own if…” She broke off.
“If what, Marilyn?” Max asked as Rowley prowled the edge of the dry pond nervously.
There was a pause, and Max felt Marilyn struggling to form the words.
“If the infernity gets too strong,” she finally managed almost in a gasp as she tried to prevent the old memories from rushing back in.
“Infernity? I’m not sure I’ve ever heard that term. And who says?” Max asked carefully, walking around of edges of drained koi pond feeling Marilyn’s mood like one might little quakes on a Richter scale, noticing how the dog was sticking close and sniffing the air.
“ J.J. said. It was one of his words.” Marilyn replied thinking that her mother’s employer didn’t just say it, he predicted it, leaning in close to Marilyn, his voice gruff and eyes intense.
“Do you think that?” Max asked.
“I think the world is a mysterious place. That’s the one thing the Church has right. You just can’t explain everything.”
“No.” Max had to restrain himself for reaching for her then, she was so vulnerable and yet she had a power in her, a magnetic pull.
“Let’s go,” Marilyn said suddenly and they walked briskly back to the front of the place. The trees were rustling in the evening breeze with the three quarters moon throwing sharp shadows on the lawn and everything had an edge to it. As they passed a massive weeping pine Max could almost imagine the young wife’s moans as the wind sawed through the branches. Back behind the house, the koi pond felt the wet trickle begin and rejoiced in a hateful way, fill me full, it whispered to itself, grow a mighty stream, as one thin line of water sprouted like a crack in the old stone floor. Something had come to Decatur at last; the one who grew up on the grounds, she was drawing it close and it was time to get the dark full.
As they got to the edges of the grounds, Marilyn turned to face Max, biting her bottom lip and hair waving in the night breeze. “I want to go back to the Map Room, Max. I can feel something going on, it’s everywhere tonight. We can just bring Rowley with us, right?”
Max didn’t know if it was alright or not, but he didn’t care. Everything felt so real and urgent now. His life was restarting again in the most unlikely of places.
They pulled into the guest parking space in front of the old Arts and Sciences building. Rowley hopped right out of the front seat, Marilyn put the leash on him and led him up to the door like bringing a dog in a building was the most natural thing in the world. The doors were open as a few evening classes were still going on but Max was pretty sure that the Map Room would be deserted
again. In part to keep the familiar anxiety at bay as he broke what he was sure were campus rules against bringing animals into campus buildings, Max pressed Marilyn to tell him about her dream as they climbed the three flights to the Map Room.
“I’ve had it before, but like I said this was the first time I was positive I’d had it.” she said as Rowley pulled ahead of them up the stairs. “It’s more of a nightmare really.”
“Perhaps our last session brought it further up in your consciousness,” murmured Max, glad that Rowley wasn’t a yapper as he heard a class on the second floor letting out with the familiar sounds of thudding student feet, chatter about notes, quizzes and that night’s lecture.
“It’s pretty simple, really. I’m always somewhere I’ve never been but it seems weirdly familiar, like in a train car only an old fashioned kind, or once in a cart, or like last night on a ghostly boat. Anyway, I’m always looking back over my shoulder because something’s coming for me and I’m afraid in the dream that no matter how far I go it’ll keep on coming.”
“Recurring dreams are often clues about our inner state or even past lives, although I don’t how much credence the Catholic Church would give that,” he said with a smile as he opened the door to the Map Room, which was empty. Rowley went right in and jumped on one of the cracked green leather chairs as Max turned on the library table lamp. “When we came here before you pointed out places that you had gone, do you remember that?” Max asked.
Marilyn bit her lip and pulled down the map of Siam. “I remember this map, I been thinking about it and it keeps haunting me. I know it’s Thailand but I keep thinking of it as Siam.”
Max pulled the other maps shut so it was the only one in the room. Marilyn had curled up in the other leather chair next to Rowley and he was licking her hand because he felt she was little a nervous and it helped her.
“I want you to imagine that you are a vessel slowly being filled with beautiful clear fluid. This fluid relaxes everything in you. Imagine it in your toes, and then flowing up your calves, into your pelvic area, it feels so good, now it’s in your chest, now at your throat and up to the top of your head,” Max said, slowing down his breathing, “You can breathe easier and every cell in your body is full of this beautiful clear liquid. This is a good place to talk, a safe place, and I am only interested in helping you to understand yourself in a deeper way and to connect more fully with the Divine in yourself. Let’s breathe now ten times nice and slow.”
They did and soon Max’s voice had taken on the rain-coming-down quality and even the watchful Rowley rested his head onto his chest. Marilyn felt the day fall away from her as the Map Room began to swim and she was falling, falling, falling into another state that might have been sleep but now her slippers seemed useless and clumsy to her and she slipped them off. Her toes felt a cool damp stone beneath them and when she looked up she could see a pathway lined with torches. She was leaning out a stone doorway looking down the path watching for someone, a crimson robe floated above her toes, no, not her toes, the woman Marilyn wasn’t this body. The name came into the mind-state of Khandar, the novice monk, he was looking out the temple with his heart in his mouth. Golden statues of seated Buddhas were placed along the path, it was a place of beauty and serenity but it didn’t feel serene, it felt disturbed and threatened. The Buddhas’ eyes were calm but it was dhalamasara.
Marilyn’s face had slipped into a pose of intense concentration even though her eyes were closed. “Have you ever lived anywhere else before?” Max asked.
Marilyn said after a long moment, “The soul has many homes.” He was a monk. True, a novice, Khandar reminded himself, but trained to be mindful, as he strained to see a form moving up the path. The man in the map room didn’t know what was out there.
Max inhaled a little sharply then but kept his voice low and easy. He needed to keep his scholarly distance, he reminded himself. She could be making it up in an effort to please him for all he knew. It didn’t feel like that, but it was entirely possible. Max walked up to the outdated brown and crimson map of the Kingdom of Siam. “Here for instance?”
“Ayutthaya,” she whispered, “The golden city.”
“In Ayutthaya,” Max repeated, opening his notebook, anticipation tightening his chest. He was sure the new institute’s founder Dr. Wendell, as an archeologist, would know about this golden city. But how did Marilyn know about it, he wondered, if it wasn’t a past life regression, she would have to be pretty well read, unless of course it was all fiction.
“I must be quiet, he’s out there now.” Marilyn’s voice had changed timbre and all the laughing notes were gone.
“He who pursues you?” Max used the phrase as she had used it in the previous session as Marilyn made the Buddhist hand mudra he had seen before, the Karana, used to cast out demons.
Khandar knew he should have told the master of his fears before it had come to this, him hiding in the temple, with one of his fellow novices crushed under Satta’s feet and all because the novice had questioned the demon disguised as an elephant trainer. It wasn’t an accident no matter what it looked like. Khandar knew. But the demon held him as if under a spell. There was a secret thrill to it that was nearly indescribable and made his limbs ache. The man in the map room wouldn’t understand how tempting it was to think yourself able to attract the attentions of one such as this. But for some reason he wanted to try to make the man understand, as he had failed so miserably in so many ways to honor his monastery.
“He came under the guise of being able to train elephants to do the most delicate maneuvers as well as prepare them for battle. It was a tradition before the Water Festival for our monastery to open our doors to anyone who wanted to be one with us and Buddha’s elephants. He filled so many of our needs as the fear of war with the Burmese was mounting every day and he was so confident and sure of his training that of course we wanted him to stay.” Max saw Marilyn shake her head, and lean forward, her face strained, but this was unlike any hypnotic session he had ever had. Could he be witnessing a full-blown past life regression unfold in front of him? In any case the person she was channeling wasn’t Marilyn.
There on the path, he moved like a tiger slipping between the shadows. He was hunting for him, the foolish novice, Khandar. “But he quickly proved his worth to my master and the head of our monastery. He was a fighter, with a discipline and strength we never had seen before. He was humble, modest even, and cast himself as our monastery’s protector. Afraid of nothing not even death.” Marilyn’s voice was low and the words seemed to slip out of her lips in a stealthy way as if she was afraid of what she was saying.
Max nodded encouragingly. “What did he want?”
Marilyn sighed deeply and grimaced. “From the very beginning he seemed to single me out. Even when I began to suspect, I didn’t want to believe it.” The female in the chair was his reincarnation from another realm, the young monk knew that, but he was still afraid for her, and himself. He wrapped his robe tightly around his slim body and crouched down on his haunches behind the stone altar where the day’s offerings lay in golden bowls.
Max watched as Marilyn tucked herself in a tight ball. “What didn’t you want to believe?” asked Max, wishing now he had a tape recorder.
“That I had seen him before. That I knew what he was.” Khandar sucked in his breath sharply and exhaled the lion’s breath of a yogic breath cycle, to stop himself from running out onto the path to the stranger who had bewitched him. Just to get it over with. He was sure only his death would stop the monster. Khandar held his hands still in the mudra, hoping it would protect him. Would his pursuer would pass by the temple and go to their usual meeting spot by the elephant baths or would he sense him here?
“That he was a demon? You are making the Karana mudra,” Max prompted, his voice just a smidgen too excited. Rowley looked up curiously at Marilyn, cocking his head to one side as he considered his mistress. She didn’t smell quite right to him, he sniffed deeply. She was afraid inside somewh
ere and Rowley looked around the room for what the threat might be, steeling himself to make a move to defend her
“I was flattered at first that he even noticed one as lowly as myself, the novice monk Khandar. He would ride on the elephants around our grounds like a god but he would always insist that I lead him. He told me that I was part of something that had started a long time ago and that he needed me to complete things. He called me the source. He said I had something that he needed and I could lift a curse and make him more powerful than ever before. The other monks began to notice the changes in me but the demon that pursued me was relentless. I fear he is a perversion of nature.” The man in the map room couldn’t help him now. The pursuer was getting closer and soon he would come into the temple and Khandar would be robbed of any future reincarnation and he would become less than a water beetle, he would not even have the divine matter of a stone. The pursuer was hunting his soul and would take it unless he found some way to escape. The thought exploded in his brain. Even as the woman sat in the chair he was scrambling underneath the altar. There was a secret door in the floor. He had heard the other monks whispering about it. It led to a passageway out of the city in case of an attack by the Burmese. As his hands grasped the lip of the stone that covered the entrance to the underground escape tunnel below, he was struck with a sense that something had been hidden beneath another altar in another time. But there was no time to think only time to move.
Marilyn stopped suddenly and put her hand over her heart. “I had to get away as I began to fear for more than my life,” breathed Marilyn, whose pupils widened and swallowed her irises as she staggered up from her chair, “Is he coming now?” A long wooden pointer rolled seemingly on its own accord out of its holder, spun once, and began to float across the room, as if held by an invisible hand. Rowley jumped down and began to bark wildly at the door. The pointer, Max noticed with a chill was vibrating in the middle of the map of the United States, dead center on Decatur, Illinois.
Decatur Page 7