Transition

by Henry Charles Mishkoff

  And when his laughter has finally died down – after what seems, to Jillian, to be an eternity – his hand once again finds its way to her leg, perhaps even a little further up her thigh than last time.

  “If you don’t keep your fucking hands off me,” Jillian snarls, “you’re going to be swallowing some of your goddamn teeth, bubba.”

  “Wooooo,” Roger says, his hands quivering in front of him in mock terror.

  “Just try it again if you think it’s so funny, you fat fucking tub of lard. Just try it.”

  “Oh, Roger’s just playing, Jill,” Corinne says, indulgently. “He’s harmless. There’s no need to get your panties all in a wad.”

  “Boy,” Roger whines, “your friend sure is uptight, Sunshine. What’s the matter – she on the rag?”

  What a family, Jillian thinks. What a fucked-up goddamn family. No wonder Sunshine’s so weird; it’s a miracle that she’s even halfway normal. And Jesus, whatever led me to agree to spend a night at the ashram? They’re probably all as crazy as bedbugs out there. A whole houseful of fucking loonies.

  This, she thinks gloomily, is going to be one long fucking night.

  Transition

  Book 4: Danger

  Part 2:

  The Surprise

  4.2.1: Sturdivant

  “Jill!” Sunshine whispers. “Jill, wake up!”

  “I’m awake,” Jillian lies, as her head jerks up. “I’m awake, I’m awake.”

  “Come on, I’ll take you up to your room.”

  “I guess maybe I was asleep,” Jillian admits groggily, as she glances around to try to get her bearings. That’s right, she remembers: I’m in the meeting room with fifty other people, and Nathan is up on the stage, sitting on that silly “throne.” Still droning on about something. God, no wonder I nodded off, he’s been up there for hours. Or maybe I didn’t sleep for as long as I thought I did.

  “…and so,” she hears Nathan say, “we must remember that what we call ‘self’ does not exist at all. It’s part of the illusion. It’s a game that we play with ourselves. On one level, we all know that the light of the godhead, the one light, shines within us all. And yet, in order for the game to be a game, we forget who we really are, we pretend to be…”

  No wonder I fell asleep, Jillian thinks. How can these people sit here and listen to this crap?

  But with the exception of Jillian – and Sunshine, who is quietly helping Jillian to her feet – everyone in the room seems to be totally absorbed in what Nathan is saying. Even Sunshine’s parents, Jillian is surprised to note, who sit together on the far side of the room, are listening passively and attentively, occasionally nodding in silent agreement.

  “I’m sorry,” Jillian says, as they leave the room and Sunshine softly closes the double doors behind them. “I didn’t mean any disrespect. I must be more tired than I realized. And the carpet’s so soft…”

  “Oh, no, Jill, don’t be silly. Nobody took it as a sign of disrespect. And Nathan’s not hung up about that kind of thing. He probably wouldn’t even mind if everybody fell asleep.”

  In fact, Jillian thinks, it probably wouldn’t slow him down at all. “I didn’t realize that so many people lived here.”

  “Only twelve of us actually live here,” Sunshine corrects. “Well, thirteen including Nathan, but he doesn’t really live here, if you know what I mean. As much as we’d like to keep him here, we can’t be that selfish. His spirit really belongs to the whole universe.”

  “So who are all those people?”

  “People come from many miles to hear Nathan’s teachings. Especially when there’s a ceremony, like tonight. We have people here from as far away as Maine. This way, Jill.” She leads Jillian, still unsteady with sleep, across the foyer. “You’re staying in the guest room tonight. It’s right up there at the top of the stairs.”

  “Ceremony? It looks more like a lecture to me,” Jillian grouses. And an incredibly boring one at that, she thinks. Maybe everybody will fall asleep, and then we’ll get a chance to test Sunshine’s theory.

  “The ceremony’s later. After the lecture. But it’s only for initiates,” Sunshine adds, apologetically. “I’d love to ask you to join us, but I just can’t. It’s one of the few rules we have around here. Ceremonies are only open to initiates. I’m sorry.”

  Tough break, Jillian thinks. “I thought that only twelve of you were – what did you call it?”

  “Initiates? No, the twelve of us who live here are disciples. There are thousands of initiates, all across the country – all around the world, really. Everybody here tonight is an initiate. Everyone but you, that is. It’s a shame that you’re going to have to miss the ceremony, but…”

  “Oh, no, that’s okay,” Jillian says, dismissing Sunshine’s apology magnanimously. “Really. I need to get some sleep, anyway. You oughta get some sleep yourself, Sunshine,” she admonishes. “We’ve got a long flight tomorrow, and the race is only, what, a week from now? Crossing all those time zones can really mess you up. You don’t want to get behind on your sleep.”

  “I’ll get some sleep, Jill. Really, I will. Right after the ceremony.”

  As they cross the spacious foyer to the base of a circular staircase, Jillian notices that this room, like other rooms she saw earlier, is sparsely furnished, almost to the point of being bare. The meeting room, although thickly carpeted, was entirely devoid of furnishings with the sole exception of Nathan’s colorful “throne,” which sat on a raised platform against a long wall.

  The foyer through which they now walk is uncarpeted. A crude, unfinished wooden bench sits by the front door. A small, circular table holds a single unlit candle. A wall poster depicts some kind of strange, humanoid creature with many writhing arms and a glowing halo.

  The snake god, Jillian thinks. Or maybe Nathan in a previous incarnation.

  It’s hard to believe, she muses, that this place used to be as elegant as they say it was.

  Sunshine had given Jillian a thumbnail sketch of the history of the ashram while she was showing her around the grounds earlier in the afternoon. Until about three years ago, the ashram had been an unusually successful working farm, a 400-acre spread complete with several small lakes and even a tiny Japanese garden, a pet project of the farmer’s wife – who also had painstakingly and richly decorated the interior of the roomy Victorian house. But the prosperous couple had been killed in a car wreck, hit head-on by a drunk driver while their Lincoln Town Coupe was stopped at Sturdivant’s only traffic light. The property had been inherited by the couple’s son, a New York stockbroker with a profound distaste for rural living.

  The son had placed the property on the market immediately, but a depressed and steadily worsening economy had made local farmers wary of buying more land. And none of the locals, after ridiculing the couple’s pretensions for years, would have dared to live in the extravagantly appointed house even if they could have afforded to. Since no new people were moving into the area, and since the farm was not especially attractive as an investment property, the son had not found even a single prospect, despite several dramatic reductions in his asking price.

  And so it was just outrageous luck – or so it seemed to Jillian – that the son, seeking to attend a presentation entitled, “Greenmail: The Ultimate Entrepreneurial Adventure,” had stumbled into the wrong NYU lecture hall and had, to his surprise, become completely enraptured with Nathan’s message of freedom from the pointless cycle of greed, acquisition, disillusionment, and despair. The next morning he quit his job, cut off most of his hair, donned a white robe, and transferred all rights in his parents’ property to Nathan.

  He came to his senses in less than a week. Shedding his robes in favor of a more traditional business suit, he reclaimed his position with Morgan Stanley, and his life returned to normal, albeit with much shorter hair. But the real estate transaction, he found to his chagrin, had been legally and irreversibly executed. The farm, which had been in his family for nearly two hundred years, now belo
nged to Nathan.

  “That’s terrible,” Jillian had said.

  “Why?” Sunshine had asked, perplexed. “He wasn’t using it. No one else wanted it. And Nathan needed a place to gather his flock. It was just meant to be this way, Jill. You’d understand that if you’d been around Nathan more. That’s just the way things happen around him.”

  “Hey, this is nice!” Jillian says, as she and Sunshine enter the guest room. She whistles softly in appreciation. “What is it,” she laughs, “you leave all the rooms downstairs shabby so everyone thinks you’ve taken vows of poverty? But upstairs, all the rooms are luxurious?”

  “This is the only room in the house like this, Jill. This is for special guests. We all sleep on futons on the floor.”

  “Sounds charming.” Jillian collapses into the bed. “You mean to tell me you’ve never crept in here for a quick snooze when nobody was looking?”

  “I’ve only slept in this room once,” Sunshine says softly. “Just once.”

  And it seems to Jillian that Sunshine shudders slightly, as if she’s been stabbed by a sudden, penetrating chill.

  4.2.2: Sturdivant

  Devil worship. That’s what it is, she decides. Devil worship. Some kind of mystical cult. That’s why they’re all dancing around in those bizarre costumes, chanting incomprehensible phrases in a hypnotic, sing-song cadence.

  The “ceremony,” Sunshine called it. Open only to “initiates.”

  More like a coven.

  Open only to witches.

  They probably want some kind of blood sacrifice, she thinks. Probably me. That’s why Sunshine shuddered. It wasn’t just my imagination, she was trying to warn me. But she couldn’t say anything, because they’ll kill her if she does. Or maybe she’s under some kind of spell, a drug-induced trance, and she couldn’t say anything even if she wanted to.

  Or maybe she’s in on it. Maybe she planned the whole thing. Maybe she’s the ringleader. Maybe the whole publicity tour was a setup to get me here for some kind of ritualistic bloodletting. Maybe she even arranged my injury so she could set up the tour…

  But now the scene has changed, and, to Jillian’s relief, it isn’t devil worship after all. Now they look like some kind of Indians, and they’re doing some kind of tribal dance around a small fire. And somehow, they don’t look very threatening anymore. Boy, talk about letting your imagination get the best of you! And I guess we’re not in the meeting room; they wouldn’t build a fire in the house, would they? They wouldn’t risk burning everything down just for some dumb ceremony, would they?

  But witches or Indians or whatever they are, their chant continues, a low, insistent drone, rising and falling, now indistinct, as though coming from a great distance, now clear and forceful as if it’s nearby, but always compelling, mysterious, rhythmic, hypnotic, going on and on and on and…

  And when she wakes up, she’s confused, almost dizzy for a minute, blinking her eyes as if she half expects to see in the flesh the celebrants who had danced through her dreams. But even in the dim light that filters into the room from the hallway, she can see that she’s alone in the room.

  All is peaceful.

  Except for the chanting.

  She shakes her head sharply, as if perhaps she can make the low drone subside. It takes her a few moments to realize that the noise, though faint, is very real.

  What is that noise?

  And then she remembers.

  The ceremony.

  Jesus, she thinks, can’t they do their dumb ceremony more quietly? How am I supposed to get any sleep with all of that damn noise?

  Annoyed, she rolls over so that she’s on her side, facing away from the door, and pulls the covers over her head. But the chanting, only slightly muffled, continues to filter through to her ears.

  “Damn it,” she mutters. Groping blindly, she locates the second pillow and presses it over her head. But the drone goes on, softly rising and falling.

  I can’t be hearing it through the damn pillows, can I? I mean, it wasn’t really even that loud to begin with. It must all be in my head.

  But wherever it is, it’s not going away.

  “Aw, shit,” she says, disgusted. She flings a pillow across the room. It bounces off a dresser, rattling what sounds like some delicate items on the dresser’s surface before thudding softly to the floor.

  Oh hell, she thinks, now why did I do that? I hope I didn’t break anything.

  Sitting up, she dangles her feet over the side of the bed. Funny, she thinks, it doesn’t sound any louder now than it did when I had my head stuffed under the pillows.

  How long are they going to keep this up? And what time is it, anyway?

  Shuffling sleepily over to the dresser, she inspects the objects on its surface. In the dim light, she has to pick up each one and bring it close to her face in order to figure out what it is.

  First, there’s a ceramic statuette of a small, fat man, perhaps three inches high. Buddha? It’s lighter than it looks, probably hollow. An incense burner?

  Next, a tiny glass figurine lies on its side. I must have knocked this one over, she thinks; it’s a wonder it didn’t break. This one is more difficult to identify. It’s not much more than an inch long, and it’s hard to see its features in the dim light. Some kind of figure with its arms clasped over its head. A ballerina, perhaps?

  Next, another glass figurine – but when she picks it up, she comes away with only half of it. Oh, damn, she thinks, I’ve broken this one. Oh well, I’ll just have to buy them another one. I hope it didn’t have any kind of special religious significance. They’ve got no business leaving delicate stuff like this lying around, anyway. That’s just asking for trouble.

  Stepping over to the window, she pulls back the curtains and looks out into the night. Across the fields that surround the house, she can dimly see distant branches of tall trees dancing in strange patterns. Clouds blow across the dark canvas of the sky, alternately obscuring and revealing the half-moon that hangs low, near the line of the horizon, illuminating the landscape. Off to the right, down a gently sloping lawn, a lantern, swaying in the wind, reveals hints of the Japanese garden she saw earlier; she can just barely make out the distinctive silhouette of a high, arched bridge that spans a decorative pond.

  And always, ceaselessly irritating, the chanting continues.

  How incredibly inconsiderate of them, she thinks, angrily. How can they be so goddamn selfish? I’m going to be dead tired tomorrow. Maybe I’ll be able to catch a nap on the plane.

  And then: Well, hell. If I’m not going to get any sleep, I might as well go downstairs and see what all the racket’s about.

  But Sunshine said it was private. For “initiates” only. Maybe they don’t want intruders to disturb the sanctity of their ceremony, or some such nonsense.

  But then I don’t much care for religious fanatics disturbing the sanctity of my sleep either. So I guess we’re even.

  Is there a robe or something I can put on? she wonders. But when she glances down, she’s surprised to find that she’s dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. Holy shit, she thinks, I didn’t even get undressed for bed. I must have been really tired. I don’t remember a thing.

  Carefully opening the bedroom door, she peers out into the hallway and tries to remember how the house is laid out. Let’s see, she thinks, there’s a railing straight ahead of me, isn’t there? She stands still for a few moments to let her eyes adjust to the light. After several seconds, she’s able to make out the outlines of the waist-high railing just a few feet away.

  Crossing the hall, she grabs the railing and looks over into the foyer below. Just to her right, the circular staircase winds down into the stark, dim room. Diffused light, which seems to emanate from beneath her, casts an eerie glow on the walls. That light must be coming from the meeting room, she thinks; they must have left the doors open a crack. Or maybe the doors just don’t close very well, maybe some light escapes from between them.

  Well, it’s no wonder I kept hear
ing the damn chanting, the guest room is right above the meeting room. The noise is coming up through the goddamn floor. It doesn’t really even sound a whole lot louder now that I’m out here in the hall. The guest room is probably the worst place to try to sleep in the whole fucking house.

  I hope the floorboards don’t creak, she worries, as she creeps over to the stairs and starts to climb down. Maybe if I stay real close to the banister – isn’t that the way they do it in the movies? And indeed, she does manage to wind her way down the stairway without so much as a whimper of protest from the bare wooden boards.

  With each step, the chanting gets louder and louder. From upstairs, it had seemed fuzzy, amorphous. But as she gets closer and closer to the first floor, the chanting seems to be less and less of a dull drone, the sounds are becoming more distinct. Is it some kind of foreign language? she wonders. Or am I just not close enough yet to make out the words?

  From upstairs, the sound had seemed to be featureless, gently rising and falling, a smooth sound with no sharp edges. But as she reaches the bottom step, she realizes that the sound does have a distinct character, that it’s actually a mixture of sounds that are intricately woven around the primary chant, which seems to be composed of words of one syllable, or perhaps a string of longer words with each syllable equally accented.

  The pace of the chant is uniform, about two words per second, maybe a touch faster. Each word ends in a vowel sound that stretches out all the way to the next word, so that the chant is seamless, unbroken. To Jillian, it sounds something like this:

  …NAAA MAY OH KEE YU NEE AHHH

  MAY OH NEE AH KAY DEE YA MEE OH…

  After every three or four words, other sounds, that had been inaudible from upstairs, pierce the uniformity of the chant like punctuation marks in a run-on sentence. They almost sound like little screams. Is someone getting hurt? Or are those moans? Or groans? Some are shrill enough to be yelps, but they’re muffled, as though the noisemakers are loathe to have their sounds rise above the base level of the chant.