Ed felt like his whole brain was vibrating. This was what he had come for. It had to be. He was meant to meet Morrison and give him a warning. The man was going to be one of Kajdas’ next targets—Ed knew this for a fact, no matter how much Tom had denied it. That meant Kajdas would be coming here, and it would be up to Ed to stop him. After doing so much wrong, this would be his chance to do one thing right.
He stood in the rain, staring up at the poster, and the relief that filled him was the best thing he had felt in a long time.
* * *
Sarah threaded her way through the crowd, her umbrella brushing against those of the people who walked past her. Everyone seemed to be headed in the opposite direction, making her wonder vaguely whether they were all walking toward something or away from something. The rain was coming down harder now. She held the umbrella lower and picked up her pace.
She saw him the moment she rounded the corner. He was standing in the rain on the other side of the street, looking up in wonder at something on a wall. Sarah stopped and wiped some rainwater out of her eyes, but he didn’t go away. It was him. His hair was longer, and he had a beard now, but it was him.
Slowly at first, she made her way through the crowd. She fought the throng, pushing her way through with increasing urgency, drawing angry comments from the passersby. She dashed across the busy street, slipping between the bumpers of the slow-moving cars. They honked at her. She let them honk.
By the time she reached the spot, he was gone.
She looked around wildly. He couldn’t have gotten far. Down the street to her left, she saw a dark-haired man with no umbrella walking briskly away. She ran after him, pushing people aside. As she got close, the man looked back over his shoulder. It wasn’t Ed.
Her chest was aching from the sight of him. She walked back up the block, crossed the street, crossed back. He was nowhere to be seen.
Finally she gave up and went back to the place where she’d seen him, already beginning to doubt that he had been there at all. Could it have been someone else who looked like him? No, she was sure of what he’d seen. He was here.
He’d been looking at something on the wall. Sarah raised her umbrella to see what it was.
46
Revival
Saturday was hotter than Canada had any right to be. Ed scratched his beard, annoyed with the itchiness and the sweatiness of the thing. He stood at the edge of a football field, sweating and surveying the chaos around him. The field had been transformed into a concert venue, a massive stage under a blue-and-white striped tent. The stadium was packed full of people. Some sat in the stands, but most were standing on the field in a mass of humanity that made Ed’s head spin with anxiety. Crowds had always made him anxious. The people smoked and perspired and engaged in deep discussions about John Lennon, who, the rumor went, was flying in from England secretly to play on this very stage. Technicians were scurrying about the stage, still readying the sound system and tinkering with lights, making last-minute preparations as the sun crept past its highest point in the sky. A dispute was happening up on the stage: a man holding a camera was arguing with one of the technicians, while another technician kept switching the stadium lights on and off. The noise and heat of the crowd were overwhelming, and Ed very much wished he were somewhere else.
He had arrived early and chosen a spot next to the temporary wood-and-wire fence that kept the audience from swarming the stage. That put him almost close enough to reach out and touch the performers. He hoped he was close enough to speak to them.
Someone important-looking came into view on the other side of the fence, near the stairs that led up the left side of the stage. A bushy-haired man who appeared to be close to Ed’s own age, he wore a purple suit and green shirt and shouted commands to the people who were scrambling to set up the show. When the man in the purple suit shouted, the workers jumped. That made him someone important, so Ed waved to get his attention. If he could make a convincing case for being allowed backstage—
Someone else beat him to it. A tall and solidly built man, dressed entirely in blue and wearing blue sunglasses, elbowed Ed roughly aside and leaned over the fence. “Hey!” he shouted. The man in purple and green, standing only ten or fifteen feet away on the other side, paused in his activities and looked over. “You working here?” the blue man called to him with a slight accent that was difficult to place. Something European. “You know the musicians?”
“I’m the master of ceremonies,” replied the man in the purple suit.
“Excellent,” said the man in blue. “Let me in.”
“Show’s starting, pal. Why don’t you go siddown and watch?”
“You don’t understand. I am Mr. Blue. Take me to John Lennon now.”
The emcee narrowed his eyes at Mr. Blue. He looked him up and down and, without saying another word, motioned to a nearby police officer, who immediately summoned two others. Ten seconds later, Mr. Blue was dragged, kicking and yelling, out of the stadium.
The emcee’s gaze fell on Ed next. Ed, realizing at once that his scruffy appearance would not serve him well in this instance, looked around for an escape route.
“Twigmore?” the emcee said in disbelief. “Is that you?”
Ed’s jaw went slack in utter confusion. “Have we met?”
“I’m Kim Fowley. We met at Terry’s house. Don’t you remember?”
Terry? Ed’s memory of his time before was still somewhat muddy, but a name bubbled to the surface. Fowley. “Terry,” he said. Then it dawned on him. “Melcher!” he cried. “You know Melcher!”
Kim hurried over to the fence and reached over the wooden slats to shake Ed’s hand. “I barely recognized you, man” he said, pumping Ed’s hand vigorously. “What’re you doing all the way out here?”
“Need to talk to Morrison,” Ed replied. He had only a vague memory of meeting Kim before. But at the mention of Melcher’s name, the images from that house in Benedict Canyon flashed before Ed’s eyes, filling him suddenly with overwhelming grief. “Oh, Jesus, I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?”
“Don’t you know? Melcher’s dead.”
Turning white, Fowley clutched at the fence for support, but the flimsy thing swayed under his weight and threatened to collapse under him. “What? When did this happen?”
“Couple weeks ago. I went to his house, and somebody’d killed him. At least, that’s what the cops said, but I didn’t actually―”
“No,” Fowley said slowly, frowning. “That’s not right. I just phoned him the day before yesterday. He sure as hell isn’t dead, unless it happened since then.” Suddenly something dawned on him. “Oh! His old house. No no, he moved out of there. I heard about that. Terrible murder.”
Ed felt a surge of hope. “It wasn’t him?”
Fowley shook his head. “Scared Terry to death to hear about it, though. He’s been terrified ever since that happened. That’s why I called him. Hey, come on around and we’ll talk. I’ll tell the guys to let you in. Wait over there and I’ll be right back, ’kay? I gotta do something real quick.”
Ed went where Fowley indicated, and a surly police officer let him squeeze through a gap at the edge of the fence. Fowley ran up the stairs to the stage, grabbed a microphone, and began to speak into it. His words were complete gibberish to Ed, who was now standing behind the speakers and could only hear the screaming of the crowd. Fowley came back down a moment later, as the first act—a group called Milkwood—went out on stage and began to play. The thud of the drums echoed off of the far stands, making a strange rhythm. “Did you say you’re here to see Morrison?” Fowley said, shouting to be heard over the music.
Ed nodded.
Fowley led him some distance away from the speakers. “Now, Twigmore,” he said once they were away from the worst of the noise, “I’m breaking about a hundred rules here. Why exactly do you need to see him?”
“He’s in danger. Somebody has to warn him.”
“Danger from what?”
“The government.”
Fowley looked Ed in the eye for a long moment. “Terry said that Guru guy thought a lot of you,” he said finally. “Are you putting me on?”
Ed shook his head.
“Well...” Fowley glanced over toward the stage. “I guess it can’t hurt anything to talk to him.”
“We need to keep him away from the crowd,” Ed urged. “When he gets here, you need to tell him―”
“He’s here already.” Fowley pointed toward a spot near one of the metal legs of the big tent. Ed looked where the emcee was pointing, only about a dozen yards away.
The man himself was standing there, looking unremarkable in a t-shirt and jeans. He silently watched the performance on stage, wearing a grim expression. The crew and performers who milled about backstage seemed afraid to come within twenty feet of him.
“Go talk to him yourself,” said Fowley. “Just don’t tell anybody I’m the one who let you in, a’right?”
Slowly, as if dreaming, Ed walked over to where Morrison stood. The singer gave no sign that he knew or cared that Ed was there. Sparse applause sounded from the audience as Milkwood finished their first song, but Morrison still stood unmoving next to the tent support. Ed stood next to him for a long time before he got up the nerve to say something.
“Mr. Morrison,” he said timidly. Clearing his throat, he said a little louder, “Can I talk to you?”
Morrison turned and gazed at him. “I was wondering when you’d show up,” he said thoughtfully.
Ed hesitated, unsure what to make of that. “My name is Ed,” he said uncertainly.
“I’m Jim.”
“I know.” Ed scratched his beard. No sense in beating around the bush. “I think some men are planning to attack you tonight. You need to go somewhere safe, away from the crowd.”
Morrison slowly nodded his head. “You’re shorter than I thought you’d be.”
“You know who I am?”
“Somebody told me you’d come looking for me. That was a long time ago. I was starting to think it was all in my head.”
“Was it Indians?”
A smile crept onto Morrison’s face. “Yeah. Indians.”
“For me it’s a gnome. Listen—you’re on a list of people the FBI want to... you know. You’re third on that list. They’re the ones who killed Bobby Kennedy, and they’re going to go after you soon, maybe tonight. You have to get out of here. Don’t go up on that stage.”
“Go back a minute,” Morrison said. “You say I’m third on their list? Who’s first?”
“I forget. Hendrix, maybe.”
Morrison seemed faintly offended by this, as though being on a list of the government’s most wanted men was not quite as bothersome as not being first on that list. “They hassled me over a problem I had in Miami a few months back. Asked me a bunch of questions and let me go. If the sons of bitches wanted to kill me, they could’ve done it then.”
“That was the regular FBI. The guys I’m dealing with, they’re different. I don’t think they’re playing on the same team as the ones that arrested you.”
Morrison gave Ed a quizzical look. Bo Diddley walked past, smiling and tipping an imaginary hat to Ed and Jim as he passed. Morrison shook his head, laughing to himself, and said, “Bo Diddley. How about that?” Then he turned back to Ed. “These people all paid money to hear some music. I’m going up on that stage tonight.”
“But if―”
“Look, Ed, if somebody wants to kill me, they’ll do it. Maybe here, maybe in an alley out back of a bar somewhere. I’ve been half dead for a long time anyway. Tonight, I’m going up on that stage and giving those people what they paid for. And then some.”
“You don’t understand. I was supposed to come here and warn you. I was told in a dream that I had to come here, it was very important.” Everything had led up to this. Why wouldn’t the man listen to him?
“I don’t know what to tell you. Maybe I don’t care if they get me or not.”
“It’s not just about you. It’s―” He tried to figure out how to explain it all. Orc and Urizen, Blake’s prophecy, the dream that had led him here. But he couldn’t afford to have Morrison thinking he was a nut. “It’s important to the world that you survive. I wouldn’t have been sent here to warn you otherwise.”
Morrison fixed him with his gaze. “You’re worried about all that Blake stuff.”
Ed nodded, unsure whether Morrison was making fun of him. “You know about Blake?”
“Don’t worry about all that stuff.”
“But―”
Morrison smiled, as if at his own private joke, and shook his head. “Don’t worry about it. If there’s something you really need to do, you’ll figure it out. Or maybe you won’t. If you get caught up in trying to do what some old poet wanted you to do, or what everybody else wants from you, you’ll never end up doing anything.”
“But people could die,” said Ed. “People have already started dying.”
“Then stop them.”
“I don’t know how.”
“Well,” said Morrison, “I can’t help you with that. Like I said, you’ll figure something out. As for me, I’m going to sing some songs tonight, and they can kill me if they want to.”
Ed hesitated. The conversation had not gone the way he’d hoped. “Promise me you’ll keep your eyes open. If other people start turning up dead―”
“If that happens, it’s probably too late for me anyway.” His wry grin faded, and he added, “If people start dying, I’ll get the hell outta Dodge. Don’t you worry about me.”
Fowley was waiting for Ed near a stack of amplifiers. “I just told the cops to keep their eyes peeled,” he said. “Is this for real?”
“There might be more than one gunman,” said Ed. “They like to have an extra.”
Fowley nodded an acknowledgement and held up a finger as a group of roadies passed by. “We’ll see if we can take care of it,” he said.
* * *
Back among the audience, Ed continued to watch the people for any behavior that looked out of place. Most of them were hippies, smoking their vegetation and chatting while they listened to the music. A braless woman in a tank top swayed with the beat, arms stretched over her head to reveal generous tufts of dark hair beneath her arms. Further on, a red-haired man in dirty old clothes watched the performance impatiently, smoking a cigarette and looking like he wanted this act to finish up so the important ones could come on.
Hours passed; the show continued, bands playing their sets and leaving the stage with varying amounts of recognition from the crowd. All the while, the tension in the audience seemed to be increasing toward some approaching climax. Ed threaded his way through the crowd and observed, wishing for the hundredth time he hadn’t lost his gun.
* * *
Danny was experiencing the worst headache of his life. He’d been scanning the crowd all day from his chosen spot high in the stands, trying to pick out individual images from the flood of thoughts that screamed past him from the field below. But there were just too many people, all thinking of the most incredibly useless things.
The sun passed below the edge of the bleachers, bringing some relief. It was still hot, but much more comfortable without the sun shining on him. He could feel a sunburn starting to come in on the side of his face. Yet another act left the stage, and another group, introduced by the emcee as Alice Cooper, took their place. That made Danny think of his sister. Concentrating deeply, absorbed in the images broadcast by the people beneath him, he hardly noticed the performances on the stage.
Lizzie came over after a while to see how he was doing. Lizzie, Sarah—whatever her name was. She stood next to him and watched the crowd for any sign of Terwilliger.
What he saw was a whirling blizzard of images so dizzying that watching them made him nauseous. He struggled against the irresistible current, straining to pick out individual thoughts before they whipped past him and were lost. It was like trying to catch one particular snowfla
ke in a raging storm. He had never tried maintaining this level of concentration for so long, and he swore that he never would again. With the whole world moving in slow motion around him, he felt like he’d been doing this for days.
“Is there anything I can do?” Lizzie asked him at last, her voice full of concern.
Still staring at the crowd, Danny wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. “Some water would be good.” Lizzie started to turn back toward the stairs, but Danny grabbed her elbow. Something in the blizzard had caught his attention. He watched the spot at the edge of the field until he saw it again: the face of Blake. Blake had no beard in this image, like the drawing on the playground wall, but it was undoubtedly him. Someone out there knew Blake, and was thinking of him.
“What is it?” Lizzie asked.
Danny got up and walked quickly down the concrete steps. He kept his eyes on the same location until he was among the crowd on the ground. A man with curly red hair and shabby clothes was talking to a young woman with an unusual nose, a woman who was dressed too nicely to fit in. The man had a scar on his upper lip that gave him a sneering look. He spoke directly into her ear while she scanned the crowd and nodded. Danny looked away when she glanced in his direction. He was still at least thirty feet away, and didn’t think she had noticed him watching her.
“What did you see?” Lizzie asked, just now catching up with him.
“Blake,” he told her. Ignoring her quizzical look, he continued to work his way closer to where he had seen the two people. When he spotted them again, they had concluded their conversation and were walking off in opposite directions. “Damn it,” Danny muttered.
Lizzie followed his eyes and saw the girl walking away through the crowd, attracting lascivious stares from hundreds of men as she did so. “I know that chick!” Lizzie exclaimed. “Follow the guy. I’m going after her.” Then she was gone.
Forest of the Mind (The Book of Terwilliger 1) Page 44