by Hal Johnson
The last thing I noticed about Myron’s makeshift escape pod, as it raced down the river, was that in death Mignon Emanuel reclaimed the aura she had lost in life. I could feel the presence of her corpse behind me as it sailed downstream, and out of range.
X. The West Coast
The man who will wantonly kill a poor brute for sport will think little of murdering a fellow-creature. Now, boys, we have but one chance left—the Diamond Cave.
R. M. Ballantyne, The Coral Island
1.
I will never really be certain of what happened next. I didn’t see Myron again, and although Alice did, it was only for a short while, and she didn’t get the details. Certainly he escaped. I escaped, too, and my pursuit across the desert by Benson (which included a thrilling scene of two naked men climbing the reservoir’s control station and more than three carjackings) was harrowing enough to fill a chapter of its own. Let us assume Myron’s was equally exciting.
His next actions can only be pieced together in retrospect, and after much research. He had no money, nothing but the meager contents of his duffle bag. He was covered in the guts of a bear. He looked like Myron. Everything was against him.
It appears from eyewitness accounts that he probably worked in a carnival in or around Medford, Oregon. He had almost certainly read Toby Tyler: or, Ten Weeks with a Circus, and the idea doubtless appealed to him. But how he found his way to Oregon in the first place is more speculative. There were sightings at a cockfight in Redding, California, and at a UFO convention in Susanville. Several witnesses insisted they saw Myron collecting tickets at a wax museum in Lovelock, Nevada, which is frankly pretty far out of his way, and their testimony may be discounted by the incredulous.
However he got there, it was almost May before Myron reached Portland. He came in on foot, with the sun rising directly behind him. His clothes were tattered; a huge backpack was on his back. A scarf draped loosely around his face concealed his features. The town was just waking up. Myron climbed the stairs to the Broadway Bridge, its passenger walkway separated from the whizzing cars by a low metal fence. Portland is the crown jewel in the kingdom of vagabonds, and by vagabonds I mean nothing more romantic than homeless drug addicts and the mentally ill. On the bridge, Myron was just one itinerant among many, for here several dozen had decided to spend the night. Each of them had a huge backpack, and they were sleepily getting up to face the day. And then, as Myron watched, they began to jump up and run, run toward him. He was jostled back and forth by the crowd until he got thrown against the railing, and, gazing through the bars down at the Willamette River below, he held his place in relative comfort while the human tide passed. And when they had passed, and he looked ahead on the bridge, he saw what everyone had been running from. There was an Indian man, his rags and his enormous backpack no different from anyone else’s, except that he had in his hands a bow. A quiver of arrows was attached to his belt, the cap off and dangling from a string. One arrow he had already nocked, and it glowed with an eerie bluish light. It was not one of the Nine Unknown Men, but it was an employee of the Nine Unknown Men, and he knew just enough of things to be dangerous. Dantaghata.
The only witnesses to the following events, except for Myron and his nemesis, were those few beggars who had huffed too much paint the night before to be able to stand this morning. These are not the most creditable of witnesses, and yet by triangulating their stories we may be able to reach something close to a true account of the events of that morning. Surely it is plausible that at the moment Myron sighed and said, “Look. Look. I’m sorry I beat you.”
“You didn’t beat me, moron,” the Indian man spat out. “You beat my brother.”
“Your bother?”
“My twin brother. Did you think I was chasing you across the country just because I lost some silly game to you? You really are stupid.”
“Your twin brother?” Myron said. “You mean you’re not Dantaghata?”
“Of course I’m Dantaghata, you nitwit. Who else could I be? My brother died in the West Village, gunned down thanks to your monkeyshines.”
Myron was beginning to get a little flustered from the constant stream of insults. “You’re after me because you think I killed your brother? I didn’t even kill him.”
“Try to listen to what I say, you ugly retard,” Dantaghata said. “I didn’t say you killed him, just that you caused him to die. You lured him to his death, and so it’s your fault.”
“I didn’t even know he was dead! Why aren’t you going after the Illuminati?”
“You must think I’m crazy. Attack the Illuminati? Are you trying to kill me? They’re the Illuminati!”
“They were at the conference you busted up. Why didn’t you go after them then?”
For a moment Dantaghata’s face became a mask of absolute terror. “They were there?” he managed to stammer out. But he shrugged it off. “That’s all in the past. I’ve tracked you from coast to coast, and I’ve brought with me the Pashupatastra.” He flexed his bow, and the arrow’s blue light flared and dimmed. “When this arrow strikes, it unmakes not only this universe, but also the next two universes to be created in the future. Lord Rama disdained to use it, but I am not about to be talked out of things as easily, you stain.”
Myron looked to his right and left for an avenue of escape. The fence along both sides would not have been much of an obstacle to anyone, say, five feet tall. The only way Myron could go was straight back, which didn’t seem like a good idea.
“I really don’t want to die,” Myron said.
“Boo hoo hoo. We don’t always get what we want.”
“Are you sure it’s a good idea to unmake the whole universe just to get me?”
“Am I sure? Are you kidding? Of course I’m sure!”
Myron probably looked sad at that moment.
“Any last words?” Dantaghata said, testing his pull one last time. “Before I kill you, I mean, loser.”
“As a matter of fact . . .”
Witnesses were unable to report with any degree of accuracy, so greatly were they swooning just then, what Myron’s words were, but I feel safe making the assumption that they were in the neighborhood of: “Pax sax sarax . . .”
Dantaghata fell sideways against the railings; then his legs gave way, and he hit the ground. His bow and arrow clattered around him, and his quiver spilled out as well, arrows everywhere. According to one witness, a teenage runaway with high hopes (as they all have) who had ended up six months later addicted to compressed air and half insane (as they all are) on the bridge—but who was fortuitously out of earshot—Myron ran forward immediately to grab the archer’s weapons, but his foot, in his excitement, hit the bow, and it skidded under the railing and over the side of the bridge, to the river below. Myron went to pick up the blue glowing arrow, but none of them were blue and glowing at that moment, and whatever eldritch symbols had been carved in the wood Myron could not read, so as Dantaghata began to stir, he grabbed an arrow at random and ran ahead, past him some space. By the time Dantaghata had struggled to his feet, Myron had fished his own little battered compound bow from his backpack. The arrow, when he nocked it, was comically overlong for the tiny bow.
“What does this arrow do?” he shouted. “Does it unmake creation?”
Dantaghata had struggled to his feet again. He was sweating profusely (the witness reports), and looked horrified. But he was canny enough, his faculties had already returned.
“That’s the suicide arrow,” he said.
But the arrow, at nock, was changing and shifting. Its bronze tip became the head of a snake, which opened its mouth to display long, cruel fangs, and hissed.
This, witnesses agreed, was “trippy.”
“It looks like some kind of snake arrow,” Myron observed.
Dantaghata licked his lips. “The Nagastra. Its poison bite is certain death.”
Myron nodded. That sounded about right.
Dantaghata said, “Put it down before you injure yours
elf, little boy.”
Myron drew back the bow.
“You can’t even hurt me,” Dantaghata said. “I’m like a wheel made meticulously over a month by a craftsman who can make five chariots in a day.”
Myron took careful aim.
“Like a drop of vinegar in a jug of milk, alone I can spoil whole armies.”
“You done?” Myron asked.
“Very well,” Dantaghata said. “As you killed my brother, so shall you kill me. Very well.” And he began to cry.
“Stop it,” Myron said.
Still sobbing. “The burning ground has seen the back of every man. No man has seen its back.”
“Cut it out.”
It is here that I wish I could have spoken to Myron. I would like to know what he was thinking, now that he had his enemy in his sights. Was he thinking about those years when he had had reason to believe that no one wanted to kill him? Was he reviewing the deaths he had seen recently, the violence and the fear that followed him like a hungry dog?
What was the thought process, I want to ask him, that led him to do something as stupid as what he did? “Ah, screw it,” he said, and threw the arrow and bow over the side of the bridge to the river below. The snake head screamed all the way down. “Just leave me alone,” he also said, and turned and walked away. He had gotten maybe thirty feet, when he heard that familiar grating voice behind him calling out.
“I had a second bow in my backpack, tardo.”
Myron turned, and there, indeed, behind him, was Dantaghata, a bow, a slightly different bow, in his hands. The arrow he had drawn back glowed blue. Doubtless, Myron felt so tired.
“Goodbye, universe,” Myron said.
“Shut up, megadouche,” Dantaghata said.
And then he released the arrow.
What happened next there is perfect unanimity on. Dantaghata released the arrow, but the arrow did not move. The arrow stayed in one place, and the bow Dantaghata was holding moved backwards instead. It moved backwards as it straightened out, but then it continued to move backwards, and Dantaghata was moving forward at the same time. In fact, they were both shrinking, or contracting. The bow and Dantaghata’s body moved closer and closer as the arm separating them shortened, and soon the arm was so short that the body and the bow overlapped, and then they crossed, and then they were no more. The arrow stopped glowing, and it clattered to the ground.
The glue sniffers on the bridge were so terrified by this vision that to a man they swore repentance—but were they sober when they swore?
But Myron, Myron just turned away and walked across the bridge.
2.
Myron walked through northwest Portland until he came to an address he had scribbled on a piece of paper, copied from a library’s phone book weeks earlier. The paper was damp and creased, but the number was still legible, and he double-checked: 408. It was the Twenty-Four-Hour Church of Elvis. Next to it was a wooden door, which at first appeared to bear no sign, until Myron noticed the red-tinted window set in it. The glass was in the shape of a flower, quartered—the rose and the cross.
Off to one side an animal that resembled a large red cat, her fur impossibly soft and bright with white and black highlights, was pacing back and forth, waving her striped bushy tail and occasionally making a little jump. She seemed to be trying to catch Myron’s eye. He studiously ignored her, although the back of his neck must have been tingling like crazy, and tested the door—it was unlocked.
The frisking animal darted forward as Myron entered the building, but the door shut in her face. It is therefore on no red panda’s testimony that I base the following account. My source, though reliable, must remain anonymous, for the Rosicrucians are known above all else for being secretive. And unfortunately, I did not get from him all this information until much later.
Myron found, inside the door, a dark wooden staircase, going down, at the foot of which stood a tiny, three-foot-tall door with a wooden plaque. It read, in several alphabets and languages, among which Myron recognized Spanish, Hebrew, and something that was probably Chinese—and rather prim English, fortunately—WHOM ARE YOU HERE TO SEE? The bottom few steps were littered with cigarette butts, limp colonic nozzles, and broken glass.
“Um,” Myron said. “The grandmaster of the Rosicrucians?”
The door clicked, then swung half-open, away from him.
Myron pushed it and ducked through—into the most sumptuously gaudy room he had ever seen. Every surface, walls, floor and ceiling, was covered with a glittering mosaic of mirrors. In the corners, fountains and waterfalls trickled water musically through a labyrinth of chimes. And at the far end, atop a dais, blossomed a multicolored throne, its armrests wide and curled, its back branching out like lily petals. And upon the throne sat a man clad head to foot in batik robes. He glowered in uncomfortable silence.
Myron stood there quietly, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot until he could take it no longer. “Excuse me,” he said. “Are you the grandmaster of the Rosicrucians?”
“Fool!” roared the man on the throne. “I am but the slave of his slave!” And leaping to his feet, he gestured with a sweep of his arm toward the wall. Myron’s eyes, adjusting to the chaos and the glistening, could just make out a small door, only three feet high, concealed amid the mosaic. Without another word, he went to it and ducked through.
The room on the far side was even more amazing than the one he had left. Every inch of the walls was gold—huge rectangular panels of gold, framed by golden borders traced with ornate helices of lapis lazuli. The floor was gold, and too precious to step on, so inch-high pedestals of red marble wound like stepping stones around the room. Dozens of golden candelabras of varying heights festooned the room, and the combined strength of their candles, reflected off the golden walls and lit some parts of the room like midday, while leaving in corners and crevices deep shadows. Against one golden wall, atop twelve golden steps, rose a golden throne, with precious stones, jacinth and fire opal and purple amethyst, spelling out strange letters along its back. There, in golden robes, sat a scowling woman, her dark hair braided around a golden crown. She held a golden scepter topped with an enormous orb of black opal.
“I don’t suppose,” Myron said hesitantly, “that you’re the grandmaster of the Rosicrucians?”
“Fool!” she shrieked. “I am but his slave!” She, too, leapt to her feet, her robes billowing around her, and several candles spontaneously extinguished. With the scepter she gestured toward a shadowy corner. Myron stepped uncertainly from marble stepstone to marble stepstone, reached the corner, and felt in the shadows another tiny doorway behind some drapery. It took him some time to rustle the drapery aside and duck through.
And there before him was a small garden. Light, blinding at first, streamed through a glass roof, playing off the flowering plants, rosebushes of various colors hovering over patches of daffodils and black-eyed Susans. Ferns peeped up in between the flowers. In a clearing a man wearing khaki shorts and a plain black T-shirt sat cross-legged on the mossy ground. Arrayed on the ground in front of him were a pair of wavy daggers fashioned together to make pruning shears, a set of jeweler’s scales, and a paperback copy of Sweet and Dismal: The Economics of Boxing.
“Why are all the doorways so small?” Myron asked.
The man was staring off into space. “To teach humility to the supplicants who come, who must crawl through each door on their bellies, as we, incidentally, must to reach these same rooms ourselves. You alone have succeeded in thwarting our system. Congratulations! But this is hardly the question you came all this way to ask.”
“Are you the grandmaster of the Rosicrucians?”
“I am, but this is not the question you want to ask, either.”
“Oh, you’re right,” Myron said. “I guess what I want to ask is, what should I do? Who am I? How can I avoid being killed?”
“If you could boil that down to one question,” the grandmaster said, still staring at something behind Myron, “what would
it be?”
“Who am I?” Myron said. He was in the uncomfortable position of making a statement that was a question, but being so uncertain that he asked the statement like a question.
The grandmaster said, “You have asked the question that all people ask, sooner or later. However, I’m going to give you an answer slightly different from the answer I’d give another. As all three of your questions are really the same question, the answer to all three will be revealed on June twenty-seventh of this year, at approximately eight a.m., on San Clemente Island. Do you know where that is?”
“No.”
“It’s sixty-five miles west of San Diego. On the east side of this island, about south of the midway point of its length, you’ll find a crude shack painted red. Not inside, but outside that shack, everything will be made clear.”
“Everything will be made clear outside this shack?”
“On June twenty-seventh, at approximately eight in the morning.”
“Where again?”
“South of halfway up the east coast of San Clemente Island, sixty-five miles west of San Diego.”
Myron made a mental note of the details. Then he asked, “How do you know this?”
“I have an atlas.”
“No, sorry, I mean,” Myron said, “how do you know all will be revealed?”
“We have the Mason word and second sight. Things for to come we can foretell aright,” the grandmaster said.
“And this is not a trap?” Myron said.
“It is not. But you should go alone.”
Myron shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other.