“Does it mean anything to you?” Annie asked.
“Not really,” he said. He looked down at the spilled white powder and did not recognize the handwriting, though the words were clear in block print. They made him blink, unsure of what he read.
I don’t want to forget anymore, either.
“Annie,” he said, “I have to go. I’ll call you back.”
He hung up before she could answer and looked at the pen in his hand.
“Imogene,” he told the empty room.
Then Jeremiah loaded his car and turned south on Highway 101, setting his GPS up with the address on the pen. He did not know why; he did not need to know why anymore. And he did not know what he would tell Annie when he called her back but he knew she would tell him that magic was afoot and that he should follow it until he found what he was searching for.
Jeremiah paused as he left town and took in that great looming rock and the waves that pushed against it. He felt something stirring beneath his skin as his mouth flooded with the taste of saltwater.
As he drove, Jeremiah left off the radio because he knew it could not satisfy him. He longed for a song it could never play; he ached for a voice he was made to sing with. And that longing—that aching—was an ocean he could drown in, deep in the dark, beneath a light he could not reach with his rudimentary limbs.
He said the name again in the quiet of the car, only now it was her true name, the one not made for this throat or these ears. And though it sounded like a sob torn from someone lost in despair, for Jeremiah it was a cry of triumph louder than the pounding of his heart, louder than the waves that pummeled Haystack Rock somewhere miles behind him.
SANTA CRUZ: A TRUE STORY
Andy Duncan
Everyone in California knows three things about Santa Cruz: it's very beautiful, it's very fun, and it's very weird. Santa Cruz attracts hippies, tourists, ghost stories, college students, vortexes, and coincidences. To go to Santa Cruz to enter a slightly parallel universe where everything is just slightly askew and perfectly delightful.
Santa Cruz is a beach town in Northern California. Its first residents were the Ohlone people, who lived in small villages as hunters, fisher, and gatherers. The Spanish were interested in the area, and founded a series of missions along the coastline. The Spanish mission system, which introduced diseases and forced the Ohlone to live and work in the missions, virtually destroyed the Ohlone culture. In the 1820s, Mexico gained independence from Spain and assumed control of Santa Cruz. Santa Cruz became an American city in 1850, after the Mexican-American War.
Santa Cruz is, allegedly, home to a multitude of ghosts and supernatural anomalies. Brookdale Lodge is said to be haunted by a little girl who died there. Arana Gulch is haunted by a farmer who was shot and killed in the gulch one night. A White Lady, the ghost of an abused bride, roams the streets of Santa Cruz at night, and the Rispon Mansion is said to house at least three ghosts (a woman, a man, and a dog). The Mystery Spot is a cabin in which the laws of physics seem to be reversed. Tourists visit the site every year to witness bizarre illusions and distortions involving gravity and perspective. Explanations for the Mystery Spot range from the alleged presence of an alien spacecraft buried under the cabin, to a simple optical illusion stemming from the fact that the cabin is tilted.
With all the paranormal activity, it's no surprise that Any Duncan's visit to Santa Cruz was a little unusual. If there's one thing you can expect from Santa Cruz, it's that nothing will happen quite as you suspect.
***
In summer 2013, during a business trip to Southern California, I decided to drive my rental car past Los Angeles to visit friends to the north. The farthest I got was my old classmate Rob, who met me for dinner in his adopted hometown of Santa Cruz.
Though we’d kept in touch, Rob and I hadn’t been in one another’s company for 19 years. We were pleased to find one another exactly the same, or close enough. Rob was, and is, a mystic. He has worked on fishing boats and in slaughterhouses, lived in communes, ingested many mind-expanding substances, religions, philosophies. His is a life of meditative inquiry. You might call him a seeker.
After we roamed one of Rob’s favorite landscapes, Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park, we enjoyed a long, leisurely, drunken dinner in the outdoor garden of The Crepe Place on Soquel Avenue, as Rob talked mostly about the strange forces that kept him tied to Santa Cruz.
He had moved there years before for seasonal work, but had stayed on, for reasons hard to explain to the Chamber of Commerce. Santa Cruz, Rob explained, was a place of mystery. Not in the sense of the Mystery Spot, that famous local tourist trap. No, from the moment he took up residence there, Santa Cruz had announced itself to Rob as a place vibrating with unique energies. It was haunted, of course (that went without saying), but it was on Rob’s wavelength, somehow. Amazing coincidences, Jungian synchronicities, unlikely serendipities, tugged at his sleeve daily in Santa Cruz. Who knew the reason? A Holy Cross, certainly, was inherent in the name, but what more intractable powers had that old Franciscan tasted, back in 1769, in that “good arroyo of running water”, worth naming in his diary? What explanation would have been offered by the Ohlone people, who were there when the Spanish arrived? Ley lines, sacred groves, thin places in the multiverse, some subterranean shard of the ancient Atlantean power source—who could say? Whatever the explanation, Rob said, the effects were real, and would be noticeable even to a hoary old skeptic like me…if I just hung around long enough.
“Sounds as if you’re in the right place, all right,” I blandly told him, mentally crossing off stops on my next-day itinerary. The coastal highway to San Simeon, then inland to Lompoc, and a leg of lamb with Melissa and her family.
By this time we had left the restaurant, it was late at night, and the moon was overhead. It looked full to me, but I realize now, checking the records, that all this happened Friday, June 21, actually two nights before the full in Santa Cruz. Still, the night was very bright, unnervingly so. I drove Rob back in my air-conditioned Yaris to the parking lot north of town where he had left his battered pickup truck.
As Rob and I walked across the dark, nearly empty parking lot, approaching his ancient vehicle that looked as though it had survived many a stoning, and talked about everything and nothing, a patch of darkness in our path rose up, resolved itself, took on form.
While we wondered what we were looking at, what we were approaching, we heard a woman whimpering and sniffling. She was on her hands and knees in front of us, gathering the spilled contents of her purse. No car was near, and the lot otherwise was deserted.
“Are you OK, ma’am?” I asked. I am ashamed to say that I consciously dropped my voice a register, trying to sound less like myself and more like Sam Elliott.
“Son of a bitch knocked me down,” she said. She lurched to her feet and wavered, unsteady. In her heels, she was nearly as tall as me, and she wore a night-on-the-town dress, but we could see nothing of her face.
“Do you need help, ma’am? Should we call the police?”
“Just want to go home,” she said, slurring her words: Jus’ wan’ g’home. She began to walk away, toward the trees at the far edge of the lot.
“Do you have a car?” I asked, not liking the idea of her driving anywhere.
“Got no car,” she replied. “Walking. Just over there.” She didn’t point, but waved her arm toward the dark woods.
The moment I began to write about this, I began to question the details, my own memory. That’s why I looked up the full moon, a page ago. As I recall that conversation in the parking lot, beneath a nearly full moon, the woman and I are doing all the talking. Yet some of this questioning must have been done by Rob, who certainly did not stand there mute. He’s a talkative guy. Probably I attribute our side of the conversation only to me out of egotism, or to assume the blame for the folly that immediately ensued, when in my memory I said:
“Don’t worry, ma’am. I’ll drive you home,
and my friend will follow us.”
Now, little about that was smart. This was a complete stranger, of only a few seconds’ acquaintance, clearly drunk, and I was inviting her into my car, where not only would I be at her mercy—if she were armed, or if she were to attack me bare-handed at close quarters—but where she would be at my mercy, too. Suppose, in her hazy state, she decided that I had abducted her, assaulted her? And what of the absent “son of a bitch”? How far away was he, really? How violently might he react, upon returning to the lot to find “his” woman climbing into a strange man’s car? Or was the whole damsel-in-distress routine a setup for blackmail, or worse? Was he watching us right now, through a high-powered camera lens, or night-vision goggles?
In other words, kids, don’t try this at home.
But all these concerns I thought of, with growing trepidation, only once she was in my car. Opening the door for her and gesturing her in, rather grandly, was a total impulse, done with no thought whatsoever. There would be more of that, later.
She got in with no fuss, no argument, and in the brief dome light I saw that her left knee was scraped and bleeding. Her arms and shoulders were bare. She was blonde and lean and looked muscular; I could picture her on a tennis court or golf course. She had a long face and bad teeth. That’s all I registered as I hastened to lock the doors, buckle up and drive out of there. She needed no help buckling up, thank goodness.
Rob was right behind me as our two-vehicle caravan left the parking lot, turning right onto the highway. Moments later, at the first cross street, the woman told me to turn right again. The moment I turned off the highway, I lost Rob.
The highway was visible in my rear mirror only for a few yards, before my passenger had me turn again. In those few moments that the highway was visible to me, and my taillights visible from the highway, no Rob. How could he have missed me? He was only a few yards behind, on a deserted street. It was as if he had driven into a thin place in the cosmos, and been lost to the world. Or maybe he was thinking the same thing, at this moment, of me.
If I were to revisit that neighborhood now, by day, it might look utterly ordinary: cozy, compact, unthreatening. But that night, all my senses on high alert, it was like driving through the Thieves’ District of Lankhmar. The streets were narrow, little more than alleys, and inert automobiles of all eras and states of disrepair jumbled the shoulders. Overgrown hedges and trees raked my car on both sides. The houses of clapboard and shingle were narrow and vertical, many on pilings as along an ocean or riverside, and each seemed somehow aslant, leaning into one another and looming over my car and slumping into the alleys as if embarrassed by their own decay. Our route was level enough, but I was conscious of forested mountainsides now on my left, now on my right, each clustered with houses that clung for purchase on chicken legs. I remember no streetlights, no other moving vehicles, only the glow of small, feral eyes as I turned corner after corner at my passenger’s monotone directions: left, right, right, left, left.
I had no confidence in my navigator. She kept up a murmuring monologue about the son of a bitch who knocked her down, who left her in the parking lot, who thought he knew so goddamn much, but no more information was forthcoming beyond these well-worn cycles. She seemed heedless of where I was taking her, and I soon realized that she gave me a turn instruction only when I asked for one. She then would interrupt herself instantly, only to say “left” or “right,” without looking at anything, then return to the topic of the good-for-nothing son of a bitch who knew so goddamn much. I was sure she was making up the directions as she went along.
Finally I braked just before running head-on into a railroad-tie wall that marked the end of cul-de-sac. I looked at the identical crazy houses to either side. Something made a dash for the underbrush, and a garbage can clattered in sympathy.
“Is one of these your house, ma’am?” I asked.
She flapped her free hand, as if shooing a fly. “No, mine’s over on the other street somewhere.” Her non-free hand reached for me. “You’re cute,” she said.
I half-rose in my seat, hackles on end like a cartoon cat’s. “Oh, no, ma’am,” I said. “That’s not why we’re out here. I’m taking you home, and that’s all. Either you tell me where that is, or you’ll have to get out of this car, right now.”
How I would enforce this gallant threat, I had no idea and have none today. In response she laughed, deeply and fully. “You’re cute,” she repeated. “All right, back up. It’s the next street over.” Her fingernails scuttled across her passenger-side window, click click click. She sounded unimpressed by my chivalry. Probably she had heard such claims before.
As I backed up the car, she continued addressing her remarks to me, as if in her mind I now had displaced the previous son of a bitch. “I like the way you talk,” she said, stretching her vowels in imitation. “Where are you from?”
“South Carolina, originally,” I said, not adding that everyone in South Carolina marvels at my accent, too.
“South Carolina,” she drawled, imitating me again. “Oh, my God, South Carolina. I like the way you talk.” This was her new speech cycle, repeated with small variations during the next few minutes.
Her street actually was three-and-a-half streets over, by my count, but presently she had me stop, and to my great relief she unbuckled without a fuss and opened her door. She got out, swayed a bit, then leaned in to grab her purse, the cleavage of her dress gaping. “Let me shake your hand,” she said, still leaning in, and I did. Hers was a strong, decisive, businesslike handshake, a formal goodbye. In the dome light she seemed both older and younger than I had envisioned. “You’ve been very sweet,” she said, “and I appreciate it. Tell me your name, honey?”
I was flustered into honesty. “My name’s Andy,” I said.
And then something remarkable happened.
Have you seen the movie Junebug? If you have, you’ll remember that Amy Adams plays Ashley, a naïve small-town North Carolinian who has fantasized her whole life about Japan. She meets a sophisticated woman, Madeleine, played by Embeth Davidtz, a visitor from the big city, who is only half paying attention to this local girl who clearly idolizes her. Ashley innocently mentions Japan, whereupon Madeleine replies, as an over-the-shoulder aside, that she grew up in Japan. At that moment, the camera focuses on Amy Adams’s face, as Ashley tries to process this information. Finally she murmurs, “You did not.”
When I said “Andy,” that night in Santa Cruz, the play of expressions across that woman’s face was the same as that on Amy Adams’s face in that scene. Her eyes widened and seemed to recede into her head. The smile and frown lines on her face smoothed away. Her mouth dropped open. Even her hair seemed no longer lank and stringy; it now waved around her much-younger face in an improbably localized breeze. And in the very same throaty voice with which Amy Adams said, “You did not,” this woman said, “It is not.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “That’s my name.” I am ashamed, now, to realize I did not ask hers.
“You are shitting me,” she said.
“No, ma’am,” I said. “Is something wrong?”
She chuckled and said, “Just look at this.” She turned and sat in the passenger’s seat, facing out, away from me. Gathering her hair out of the way, she unfastened the clasp of her dress and unzipped, shrugging forward until her shoulders were bare. A single oblong tattoo covered the width of her back, across both shoulder blades. It was a single four-letter name in Gothic letters against an ornate backdrop of trellised roses:
ANDY
She carried on her back, every waking moment, my name.
“Well, how about that,” I said, lapsing into my late father-in-law’s favorite thing to say when he had nothing to say.
“Yeah, ain’t that the shit?” the woman said, perhaps reciting her own stock family response. She straightened her dress, said, “Good night, hon,” got out of the car and closed the door behind her. I lunged over to immediately lock it and
stayed in position, watching her walk to her front door, find her key with minimal fuss, walk in and close the door behind her. She never looked back.
Now my challenge was finding my way out of this maze. But serendipity having ridden along this far, I decided to trust it a little longer. “I’ll make random turns,” I said aloud, “and assume it’ll come out OK.” I might as well have said, “Trust in the Force, Luke,” but no matter. I turned around, made three unthinking turns—left, right, left—and there was the highway, right in front of me. I had taken twenty minutes to drive into that neighborhood, less than a minute to drive out. That is probably impossible, but it happened.
And at the stop sign, wondering where Rob was (because my phone had no signal, of course), I decided to turn right, on the assumption that Rob awaited me in his truck just the other side of that tall hedge. And when I passed the hedge –
But you’re way ahead of me, I see.
I pulled alongside Rob’s truck as he rolled down his window. “What happened, man?” he cried. “Where have you been?”
“I’ll tell you at your place,” I said. “Just lead the way.”
His place turned out not actually to be in Santa Cruz, not even in the old logging town of Felton to the north, but in the countryside beyond that, at the top of a box canyon, and it was less a house than a repurposed shed in a redwood grove. But in front of Rob’s iron cookstove and his homemade motherboard, I told him the whole detailed story I just have told you.
He indicated throughout no concerns, no surprise. Fingers laced across his belly, eyes half-lidded, he only nodded thoughtfully, radiating peace and contentment.
When I was done, he spread his hands in blessing and said: “I rest my case, man. That shit happens in Santa Cruz all the time.”
Genius Loci Page 15