Riding the Centipede

by Smith, John Claude

  Worse than the non-existent info, the sensation that the wild goose chase had taken a path into a forest without reason or rhyme to guide them left him with the niggling feeling it was all for naught. His instincts immediately told him Marlon Teagarden or Rudolf Chernobyl were not here.

  So, why were they here?

  Rubbing his forehead, the ache in his hand throbbing mightily, Blake informed Jane of the miniscule findings for Rudolf Chernobyl as well as the dwindling faith he had that anything of worth was to be found here, so close to the middle of nowhere, USA.

  All she did was laugh.

  He wondered if she’d gone off the deep end, food for sharks.

  “You lead us to this bleak flatland hell and you expect anything else but laughter?”

  He expected her ire. He expected derision of some sort, at least a mental slap via her slate-gray eyes. Perhaps she was simply delirious and about to kick him off the case and send him back to the smoggy confines of Los Angeles where he’d settle in and brood on life and perseverance and the cheerless answers he might find in a bottle of scotch. Then he’d get another call from another husband or wife in need of confirmation of infidelity, snap some unglamorous couplings, carry on as usual, and push the memory of Marlon and Jane Teagarden and this Russian freak, Rudolf Chernobyl, from his memory banks. He’d be happy to scrub them clean, fill them with a new kind of grime as he spent long nights staring at the ceiling while insomnia torqued his serotonin levels out of whack.

  “There may still be a reason we’re here, Jane.” Though he felt any reasons were out to lunch, snacking on the bare bones of his patience and perhaps sanity.

  “Of course there is. The lovely scenery. The blistering sun. The beaten down feeling that I’ve been taken for a ride when all I want is to find my brother. By the way, would you like me to get the tab for your dinner, too?” Blake watched her dig into her gray purse, pull out a black wallet, reach her hand into it as if reaching into an abyss, and wave a couple platinum charge cards in front of her smirking face. “Another hotel room, perhaps a penthouse suite”—she snorted, the thought of a penthouse suite in this dead end town preposterous—“or perhaps I should just give you a blow job and send you on your—”

  “What the fuck is your problem? I’ve asked for nothing more than what you’ve proposed financially.” Jane dropped the credit cards unceremoniously into her purse, though the smirk remained rigid on her face. “I’m trying to work through the ridiculous path that’s been laid out, from a green limousine to a note dropped in an airport to fucking lizards scratching this town’s name into dirt. I haven’t a clue as to what’s going on, yet I also know…I also know I am a part of this. Whatever this is.”

  Blake felt frustration dig his fingernails into his palms, both hands clenched into fists.

  Leaning into him, her breath minty, trimmed in vodka sipped from a tiny bottle from the plane: “What good does that do us if—” She halted with an abruptness that surprised Blake, a crash-test dummy head-on and body jolting dance with a concrete wall, down-shifting into deep thought, her pupils dilating, focused inward. Reading the message on the cranial wall.

  “What?”

  She put up her hand, swift to silence his verbal intrusion.

  He waited, watching her as she closed her eyes, obviously trying to dredge up something from the gray matter disarray.

  “The green limousine,” she said. “I should have known before we stepped on that plane.”

  “What about the green limousine?”

  “Peter Solon lives in ‘the center of the world,’ as he phrased it in the last interview he ever did, some twenty, twenty-five years ago. ‘The center of the world’”—shaking her head, arranging the recollection—“no, no, ‘The center of this world, America, land of those who erroneously think they are free, and home of the bored, bland, dead souls.’ He mentioned his house. A blue ranch house—”

  “A blue ranch house? A green limousine and now a blue ranch house?”

  “A blue ranch house, the center of the world, as he knew it. A fucking blue ranch house.”

  Blake knew this had to be the reason they were here. He knew his instincts wouldn’t set him totally off the trail or, more precisely…the lizards, the scaly messengers, wouldn’t. They were meant to be here. He was meant to be here.

  “Is that all I have to go on? A blue ranch house, somewhere in this vicinity, which might mean miles in any direction?”

  “What do you mean? That was long ago, that interview, such a strange interview. The only one he’d ever given, actually. A diatribe against humanity, nothing more. Barely any mention of his two books, his literature. He was old then. Angry. Defeated. I can’t imagine he’s still alive. I can’t imagine…”

  “I need to find out if he is. There’s a reason we are here. He may have answers pertinent to finding Marlon. At the very least, the blue ranch house might have answers.”

  “I’ll get us a rental and—”

  “No. I’ll get a rental and I will go out and find the blue ranch house. Talk to Solon if he’s still alive. But if not, there may be something for me to find there, anyway.”

  “You can’t go alone.”

  “Can’t? Look,” he said, his hands on her shoulders, his determination holding her steady. “I am somehow a part of this. Trust my instincts. I know I need to do this alone. I will be back as soon as possible. There’s a Hilton nearby. Stay in the lobby, the bar, and if I run late, get a room. Wait for me. I can’t say how I know this is the only way to do this, but I know it is.”

  Blake continued to stare into her eyes, felt her body lighten, as if a weight had been lifted. Felt her give in. Her exhaustion was overwhelming. The life drained and he held her closer, lending her some of his strength to get on the shuttle and get to the hotel. He stroked her hair, ran his fingers through it. She did not stop him, not that it was a precursor to anything beyond compassion.

  (He remembered Claire’s downy soft hair…)

  As he walked her to the shuttle, he said, “See you soon.”

  It was more for him than for her, as he wanted nothing to do with Peter Solon and whatever messed up mindset or devious secrets he might have, but knew it was the only path, now narrowing, he could take.

  He spent the next ninety minutes baking in the car, the path unspooling outward from the airport. Jane and he had checked a ratty phone book hanging from a long dysfunctional pay phone along a wall in the airport for Solon’s address, expecting to find nothing and meeting with their first success of this venture. Now, Blake pulled over to the side of a long strip of asphalt nudging dirt and yielding nothing but monotonous soft ocher fields as far as the eye and imagination could see. It felt as though it was scrubbing him bland.

  The warm water tasted like metal and dirt, satisfying not in the least. He wiped his brow and rotated clockwise, taking it all in, looking for something beyond the fields and ground-hugging ranch houses. The houses all seemed as vacant as the fields littered with the occasional tractor and broken down automobile turned to rust.

  He peered into the deep blue, the sky so vast it swallowed all thought, adding to the monotony that surrounded him. Telephone poles stood crooked, cutting a path through the fields, their hides weathered by the elements. Cables strung out between them sagged and swayed sounding like the flapping wings of Pterodactyls as the hot breeze beat them unmercifully, before simmering down to a hum. The murmur of voices in transit, but never stopping out here. Down where he was, edge of a field that dulled senses and sight, the feral electricity of insects and phantoms and lost souls brought a chill to his soul; the one barely hanging on…

  What was he doing here? Enough weird shit had already been shown to him, why continue? Avoiding anything more like the plague would seem the logical path. There would be no good end to this, but, then again, there was never going to be a good end to any of this. We were here, then we were gone, and for all but a few, those who trickled through clenched fists with purpose, what was the use? />
  Endurance? (Always endurance. The pin pulled from the hand grenade, waiting…)

  As Blake got back into the car, a vulture landed in front of the vehicle, shrugged in a very human way, and lifted lazily back into the sky.

  Time to tell Jane this was all a mistake, Solon or no Solon, being here in God’s bleak country. Staring at the godforsaken land, wondering about life, death, and the conspiracy between both, their dreary conspiracy wasn’t working anymore.

  Blake turned the ignition and started on his way. He meandered a little ways more, knowing he would turn around and head back soon, but not wanting to hear any of it from Jane or any of it from his weary thoughts, drifting. No cars for miles. Silos again, still in the distance, but closer than before.

  Perseverance? (Perseverance slipped a leg into the canvas sack of the three-legged race.)

  To the right, color invaded his vision, leaking like a broken pen, staining fingers, paper, and intentions.

  A blue house, long and lean.

  A blue ranch house.

  He slowly rolled up to a signpost at the intersection of an asphalt and a dirt road. “Broken” something.

  Half the sign was torn off, or maybe the sign was simply a statement as to the present condition. The uninviting road, barely that, seemed rarely used. Stones settled in his path leading deep into the ocher ocean and to the blue ranch house, and perhaps answers.

  Or possibly more questions. (Always more questions, it came with the private eye territory.)

  He steered the car, rocking slowly as he did, toward the blue ranch house. Up close it looked more desolate than anything he’d seen so far. There was no way anybody lived here. Solon was old anyway. Blake wondered if anybody ever made it way out here and, if not, if he would discover the decaying body of Solon. A rare feast for the insects amid this banquet-starved desolation.

  He turned the car around and parked a ways from the house, a necessary caution. Being out here any longer than he needed to be did not rate high on his “to do” list, even if, by dumb luck or wicked karma Solon was still alive.

  The slats on the porch were termite-riddled and splintered. He had to do a minefield cha-cha just to make it to the door. Blue paint dusted everything, a shade of teal that might have been stronger once, but now, sun bleached it of its vibrancy. Even though it had obviously been a while since the last touch up, layers and layers of the same blue paint feebly clung to the wood. It was proof there never was potency, the blue here from the beginning lacked inspiration.

  Before knocking, Blake leaned into the windows at each side of the door. The door might once have been sturdy, but it had been stripped of its strength by time, eroded by the elements, just like everything he saw out here. The thin curtains to each side, unmatched: the one on the left, off-white, with dandelions and sunflowers; the one to the right, faded orange decorated with thin insect figures with hats and baskets mocking the hustle-bustle of humanity—something he knew never happened out here—allowed him a view of the interior.

  He twitched, noticing a quirky, scratchy sound, like electricity gone to rot—what a strange thought. Though strange thoughts and stranger revelations seemed the norm these days. He felt it as much as heard it, something that ate the ever-present humming, like the teeth of a saw attempting to cut into metal, but so low only dogs and the unlucky individuals with hyper-sensitive hearing could even perceive it. He opened his mouth, cracking his jaw with a loud pop.

  To the left stood a wooden frame for a sofa, mismatched pillows piled in disarray upon it. A table that looked like the cousin to the sofa. Everything looked bone naked. Two doors, one opened and one closed. The open door led to darkness the measure of which Blake thought of as complete. As if light, natural or artificial, never had graced the room. That was it, sparse teetering on non-existent. To the right, a large bookshelf dominated the room, books stuffed every which way onto the shelves, tumbling to stacks on the floor. The lone bookshelf unworthy of the onslaught. To the right of the bookshelf, was a tiny desk on thin legs with an old typewriter on it, accompanied by an uncomfortable looking wooden chair. Another room, door open, showed the remnants of a kitchen, no curtains over the window above the sink. Even from outside, Blake could make out dishes piled on a table, a broken mug on the floor.

  As he focused, he noticed roaches and moths crawl and flutter about. They drew his eye to the picture frames above the desk, to the right and left of the entrance to the kitchen. All of them empty. Though this could be anybody’s house, something about the contents of this house made his instincts sing. This had to be Peter Solon’s home.

  No matter the strong possibility Peter Solon was no longer of this earth, Blake knocked.

  The sounds in his ears, picking at his eardrums as an ant picks at a dead beetle, amplified, then ebbed.

  He knew something had acknowledged his intrusion. Again, this was instinct cranked to Spinal Tap’s ludicrous eleven. He knew somebody was here.

  He knocked again, and then placed his hand on the door handle. Something brushed against his pinky. He pulled away swiftly, only to watch an insect that might have been a cockroach but might not have been, what with the discomfiting pale hue to its carapace; then again, carapace seemed negligible. It was more like skin, this strange insect’s outer coating. Like a snipped finger with legs.

  More insects slid up and down the door, the walls, and the cracked windows. Many of them were not like anything he ever had seen before. He wondered if the insects in the mid-west were so much different than those in the west.

  He made sure it was all clear around the door handle and placed his hand on the knob and turned it. The door was unlocked. He pushed and it swung open, creaking as it did. The expected creak, the horror movie creak. Still, it made his hackles bunch and his free hand knot into an aching fist.

  The sound in his ears, not from outside but directly touching his ears, amplified again. He put his fingers to his ears, knowing it was useless. Yet he could not help it.

  As it ebbed, he said, “Hello.” His voice seemed thin, hollow, and did not echo.

  Another open doorway, dead center in the back of the room—strangely out of his vision from either window—led to a darkness that made the darkness to the right almost comforting.

  His stopped breathing; the darkness swelled. He felt as though it would pour out of the rectangle and smite him on the spot. Drag him into that darkness where not even God was welcome.

  One last time, then out of here: “Mr. Solon. Peter Solon.” Parchment inscribed with invisible ink.

  The house moaned and cracked, as if the wood were alive. A sound like nothing Blake had ever heard split through the rumble, like glass being chewed with feverish dedication by teeth made of gravel. Pops and whirrs; amplifier hum after a strummed power chord.

  Then: “Who’s asking?”

  A voice shaped by these obtuse sounds. The voice of Peter Solon.

  Blake stepped past the front door and into the house with a deep breath and a desire to be anywhere but here, in the presence of the man who had created the legend of the green limousine. Solon was the key. He would have to follow through. Even if his courage was on life support.

  Chapter 18 Teagarden

  I know I must get to the end to appreciate the full experience, to shake hands with Burroughs and take the ride of a lifetime. But there’s an increasing unease within each leg of my journey. I just want it done. What more does it require of me to get it done? How many more legs are left?

  Drugs alter the essential machinations of the mind and body. That’s part of the reason I do them: I have never been happy with either. You know this, dear sister. But the Centipede is altering me in confounding ways. I should have expected this, but you know how it is when one locks into a good drug ride? There’s no looking back, just the desire for more. Yet this is not good, there’s the promise of what it will lead to, but where I am now is bad; uneasy.

  My ears are full of chattering sounds. Insects in deep conversations. Cicad
as. Crickets. Others. Others with unpronounceable names and indescribable appearances. And incomprehensible voices.

  Everywhere within my aural scope is like tinfoil being crinkled and stretched and crinkled again. My teeth ache as I listen. A rusty nail etching enamel, pain implants filling the rotting holes.

  No, it’s not listening. It is a cloak over everything, this chattering, this sound that makes my teeth ache and my neck twitch at bad angles and my stomach vibrate with a desire to join in.

  Or not.

  You see, where I am now is not a place that brings anything but uncertainty.

  Where I am physically only magnifies this: a room, a large room. The building is a warehouse, gutted, left to die. The concrete walls are moist. The odor is musky, animal musky, yet tainted with decay and internal rot. It is the aromatic stench of architectural atrophy, of grease and dead skin, of dreams turned to scum and scraped off the rim of a glass of water swarming with primal life, to be swallowed without question. The presence of the odor is alluring in a textural way, yet poison to the system as cramping causes me to buckle over. It reminds me of withdrawal, something I never wanted to experience again. I immediately stick my finger down my throat, attempting to purge, but I fail as nothing comes up. I wonder if this is necessary? My nostrils, like twin mouths, insist I ingest these odors.

  Each leg has altered me in such a way that my senses have been fine-tuned or, no, obviously, my senses are different. You remember my take on the dark frontier and everything I have learned here, right? A response to things being different.

  But until now, I have not had an inkling of how different.

  The Centipede manipulates everything.

  The paradox highlights an essential truth about the life of the traveler of the dark frontier. Like an imbalanced scale, what we want and the results are always in conflict. We tear ourselves down in order to get what we need. Give our all in order to build ourselves back up.