I justified the loss of my guitar by believing it was a sacrifice for my teacher. It leant me hope that I might have the resolve to go all the way down what he warned us was a path of formidable difficulty.
Later, I’d know that this was just the beginning of Karl tightening the screws. Soon he was telling us what to eat. How to sleep. How to breathe.
Karl quoted the Bible. “Many are called, but few are chosen.” It would take me awhile to get just how very few he meant. Though Karl was no more a Christian than a Buddhist or Zoroastrian. He lifted quotes from every faith.
One morning, an hour before lunch, Ethan came to me where I was working and announced in his usual snotty tone that Karl would like to see me. He led me to a little hall at the back of The House off The Kitchen and left me before a solid oak door. It was closed. I stood there, paralyzed by the quandary: Was I supposed to knock, or just walk in? Finally I rapped lightly on the wood, immediately cursing myself for not knocking harder.
A rumbling from inside—a voice? Or the settling of the old house? I opened the door and took a tentative step in.
Three of the walls were paneled in dark lustrous wood. The fourth, opposite where I’d entered and at the back of The House, was bare limestone, the inside of the blue-gray blocks that formed the outer walls. Centered in that wall was a rococo marble fireplace, the mantle suspended on the backs of a pair of groaning slaves who faced the blazing fire. It was the only warm room I’d seen in The House.
The windows to either side of the fireplace were bricked in, the mortar fresh. Karl sat in a leather chair and gestured for me to sit across from him.
He pointed at the mantle with its groaning men. “Previous owner.”
Was that a joke? About us being his slaves? But he never joked. Or did he?
He asked, “What do you want?”
It was not a question I was expecting. I racked my brains—what’s the right answer? What does he want to hear?
“Don’t think. Quick, what do you want?”
“I took drugs one time, LSD, and for a few hours…”
“Cosmic consciousness.”
“I guess. It was amazing.”
“Stay with me, and you’ll experience things a thousand times as wonderful.”
I believed him. I would have believed him if he told me that the sun revolved around the earth, or that he could sprout wings and fly. Why? Because of his presence. It was invisible, but had undeniable substance. It was as potent as one of those drugs they shoot you up with before an operation, that makes you forget that they’re about to cut you open. Forget you’re a suffering human.
He folded his hands and bowed in a blessing, indicating that my audience was over. On impulse I moved to approach him—to shake his hand, silly as that would be, or embrace him.
He didn’t flinch, but something in his manner made me stop cold.
He said, “No man touches me,” and I shrunk from him. I forgot about it moments after floating from that room.
Sometime later I found out its name. Hard to know how I learned it, because by then we weren’t allowed to speak about anything that happened in that house.
I’d been to The Backroom.
I was high leaving my first audience with Karl, but still needed something to seal the deal. Proof.
That came a few weeks later. I’d finished preparing the walls of the Drawing Room and was up on a ladder, scraping old paint from the ceiling. I’d been there for hours, neck bent back and aching. Would I ever get it straight again once I climbed down?
Karl appeared. My insides jumped, yet my hand kept working. You didn’t do anything, or stop doing anything, without being told.
He gave a little smile and tiny gesture of his hand, telling me I could stop. My face flushed. After that it would always happen when he came around.
This time I had good reason to be embarrassed. I’d just been thinking the same thing I had for weeks: What the fuck did all this drudgery—knocking down walls, sanding, painting—have to do with the spiritual practice we had followed Karl here to do?
He moved in close, got right in my face. He didn’t speak, only widened that smile slightly, but that was enough to make my heart leap in expectation—he was about to give me something priceless. How rare an audience this was, for him to concentrate all of his presence on one person rather than the whole group.
When he finally spoke, he answered my question. “I know what you’re thinking.” And I was certain he’d just read my mind.
He showed me his hands, palms up. “With these, we repair this ruin.” He gestured with his arms, indicating The House.
“And as we do so, we repair this.” He pointed toward his body, then mine. “You once were a baby and possessed the wisdom of the universe. You were wiser than I am now. From that time, you’ve been descending.”
He turned on a dime and gave me a withering look that made me go cold inside. “You are a ruin, like this house. Like everyone out there.” He gestured outside The House. “But we are no ordinary carpenters, woodworkers. They only fix a house. We must learn to work with these.” He held out his hands. “And, at the same time, in here.” He pointed to his chest. “Doing the exercises.”
I cringed with guilt. I’d been working for hours and had forgotten to do them. What were they? I knew Karl’s words: “See with your third eye. Feel with your head, think with your heart. Expand your aura to fill the room.” I tried so hard, but his instructions were always inscrutable as Zen koans.
Karl fixed his eyes on mine such that I couldn’t have looked away if my life depended on it. His face, the sensation of breath going in and out became the universe. A sweet lightness poured down from the top of my head, washing every cell clean, repairing, transforming me into a new person.
Karl murmured, “You see? You’re already better. It isn’t so hard.”
I was high for the rest of the day. He’d made me high, fixed me, but what really amazed me was that I believed he’d read my mind.
I had my proof. I was convinced of his divinity. And certain that I would follow him wherever he went, do whatever he told me to do.
Susan, with her religion studies, had the term for it: conversion. I see now that I was ripe for the picking. In the five years since my peak experience on acid, I’d never come close to anything like it. There was a hole in me that nothing could fill. Sex or good dope might sweep me up in their charms for a moment, but I soon was hungry again.
Karl had promised to make me whole. Then he read my mind, proving he had the power to do it. That’s why I waited so long for him to make good on his promise.
Ray looked up from the computer. Lunch had come and gone without him being aware. He’d been far away, upstate and decades in the past, but that wasn’t what had him disconcerted. It was something about what he’d just written. He was hungry but went home and phoned Lorraine from the gallery.
She said, “How’s the writing?”
“That’s why I called.” He told her about Karl reading his mind on the ladder, about Karl’s promise.
“That sounds like Karl. What’s the problem?”
“I wrote what I’ve long believed. And I think I captured how it was. But even as I got it down, there was this weird doubt in the back of my mind. Like I was arguing with myself. By the time I was done…”
“You didn’t quite buy it anymore. Ray. Anybody slaving away for a day on that ladder with no explanation for why would be thinking the same as you: What the hell am I doing up here? Karl didn’t read your mind. But he did read you. Which was easy. He saw how badly you wanted to believe in magic. And so he did a magic trick. Like the con man he was.”
Karl, a conman? “But what about my acid trip and his promise?”
“He asked you what you wanted. You told him. He said he’d give it to you. Anyone could do that. You want a pony? I swear I’ll deliver, stac
k of Bibles. But did he?”
Ray clanked up to the kitchen, rummaged in the fridge as he talked. “No. In all my time with Karl, I never experienced a fraction of that original experience of enlightenment on LSD. I’ve always thought it was my fault, that if I’d just hung in there…”
“You still believe that?”
He sighed. “I don’t know anymore.”
“That’s why you’re freaked out. Some part of you hasn’t let him go. The part of you that still believes. And that belief is finally crumbling.”
All that was in the fridge was a hunk of moldy cheese and stale bread. He cut the mold off. “You mind if I eat while we talk?”
“Not at all, as long as it’s not in silence. That would give me a stomach ache.”
“And wouldn’t be much of a conversation.” They laughed. “You think Karl was like Tom Sawyer, going to all that trouble just to scam us into fixing up his house?”
“No. He was after bigger game. Power.”
“That makes sense. But I still…”
“Everybody wants to believe, Ray.”
“This is tough.”
“I told you it might be. Hang in there. You’re coming closer to the truth. You know what they say. The truth will set you free.”
“I suppose.”
“When are you getting to the good stuff?”
“What good stuff?”
“You know. Because I want to read it.”
“Lorraine.”
She laughed. “Sorry, old habits.”
He got a pint of ice cream from the freezer. There was nothing wrong with it, aside from the fact that it was frozen too hard. He popped it in the microwave for fifteen seconds. He changed the subject. “Listen, I feel terrible bringing it up, but did you …tell anyone I was writing, or that I was asking about Karl?”
“Ray. This isn’t like you, not trusting me. You know how seriously I take my job. I said I’d treat our conversation as privileged, and I did. What aren’t you telling me?”
He took the ice cream from the microwave and ate it from the carton with a tablespoon. “I’m sorry to doubt you. But I’m in some kind of mess here. It’s frankly a little scary.”
“What kind of scary?”
“I’m not getting crazy, if that’s what you mean. No, somebody…oh, fuck it. Somebody found out I’m writing about the group. About Karl. And they want me to stop.”
“How do you know?”
“They threw a brick through my window, followed by threatening emails.”
“Whoa.”
“One of those bricks, that Bodine and I collected.”
“Oh. That can’t be good. Have you been to the police?”
“No. They aren’t going to help. You knew Karl as well as anyone. And you know people. You think Karl could have thrown that brick?”
Half a pint was enough. He took another giant spoonful and reluctantly put the ice cream back in the freezer.
“No. And yes. Throwing a brick is too mundane for him. Plus, he might get those precious hands dirty. But the symbolism is absolutely him.”
“Symbolism?”
“You know, a piece of his house assaulting yours. Returning something you got for him along with a nasty twist of irony. Back in the day, he would have put one of us up to doing it.”
“So someone’s still with him?”
“I can’t see that. But it’s been a long time.”
And, as Bodine said, people change.
At five o’clock, Ray grabbed a Magic Hat beer and headed upstairs. He remembered Lou and emailed him the latest.
Ray’s hour of grace was almost up, along with his second beer, when Liz called.
She said, “I wanted to thank you for the check.”
“Okay.”
“I’m sorry I was a little…harsh asking for it. But I really need the money.”
“You don’t have to explain. Listen, I’m kind of busy.”
“I know what you do at five o’clock. It’s why I called now, to get you in a better mood.”
“Last time we spoke, you accused me of being drunk. Make up your mind.” Ray finished the beer and tossed it in the trashcan.
“Ray, Ray. I don’t want to end things on this bad note. I’m sorry about when I saw you.”
“Why?”
“It was a mistake. Sleeping with you.”
He hung up on her.
Fucking Liz. He stomped downstairs for a third beer. The post-acid jag of virtue that had him kicking the hard stuff stopped him on the stairs. And he made another post-trip resolution: to exorcise the remains of Liz’s ghost from his house. She had her money, which meant it was as much his as hers.
He marched over and kicked the bedroom door open. There was no scent of Liz’s ghost, let alone their last sex, thank God. Just a little must.
Spring cleaning. He tore off the sheets and put on new ones. Opened a window and let in the breeze along with street sounds. He vacuumed and dusted, then lay on the bed and forced a smile. This is my bed now.
He climbed upstairs and played some guitar. He wasn’t getting a stack of Marshalls—not if he wanted to keep living in Hudson—but the feeble plink-plink of unamplified guitar wasn’t doing it for him. They had headphones now with all kinds of awesome guitar sounds. He went online and ordered a pair.
Ray went out and treated himself to takeout sushi. He ate it up on the couch—the kitchen seemed empty at night. He was wishing he’d asked for extra ginger when he remembered the conversation with Joan Telford.
He called Bodine.
“How’s the writing going?”
“It’s going. Finally.”
“So what’s up?”
Ray explained about the manila envelope. As he did, Susan’s widower’s voice came to him: I have no idea. He told Bodine.
“You’re thinking these two things might be connected.”
“What, that the husband knew about the envelope? That he sent it?”
“No. That there was something going on. Her coworker caught one part of the elephant, and the husband another. Neither knew what they had, but they both suspected they had something.”
“What?”
“I need to think on it.” He hung up.
Ray slumped back on the couch and stared out at the night. He tried to picture Susan opening the envelope, then shredding what? Ray couldn’t even imagine the Susan he knew in a cubicle in some office, let alone using a shredder. And her husband saying I have no idea. Ray didn’t quite remember the conversation. Maybe the guy really just had no idea. Like Ray.
Bodine called. “I have an idea.”
Ray laughed. “Good thing someone does.”
“Huh?”
“Never mind.” He picked up the Telecaster, squeezed the phone between shoulder and ear, and started doing scales.
Bodine asked, “Susan died around Saugerties?”
“Yeah. I thought for a moment she might have come up to see me, then changed her mind. She must have had business in Albany.”
“What if she was coming back from …Karl’s? It’s the same direction.”
“So’s Montreal. And Buffalo. The fucking North Pole. You said you were sure he isn’t there anymore.”
“Not in The House. There’s no electricity there. But maybe he’s living in the area.”
“What are you saying? Why would she suddenly go see him after all those years?”
“Who said it was suddenly? How do you know she ever left?”
“Come on, man, she was married. With two kids. Karl’s deal was no correspondence course. She was going up all those years, and her husband never knew? He’s a lunk, maybe, but jeez.”
“So it was suddenly. She decides to join up again. The manila envelope was an invitation. She sees who it’s from and gets rid of it, beca
use nobody in her current scene knows about that part of her life.”
“That makes sense. What about that thing with the husband, him saying he had no idea?”
“Maybe he suspected something was up. This is all speculation. I need more data points.” He hung up.
Susan. Now that Ray was into The House he could write about her there. He was tired but got the laptop out.
When I arrived home from the last Nightcrawlers tour, I told Susan about the meeting with Karl. She immediately wanted to meet him. I asked Ethan, and he put me off. “There will be a time for that.” Susan kept pushing, and a few weeks later I asked Ethan again. He pursed his lips. “I suppose you didn’t hear me before. There will be a time for that. Don’t ask again.”
But a few days later he came to me. “The person you mentioned who is interested? She can come. Once.”
The week after she did, Karl came up to me. As usual, he got right to the point. “I like your wife. She has something you will never have.”
What? I obsessed about it. It must have to do with her passion. If anyone was ever a True Believer, it was Susan.
After that, she came to every meeting and always sat in the front row of cushions. When Karl let us ask questions, hers was always the first. Teacher’s pet. But I was also pleased. I’d looked up to Susan in spiritual matters and felt proud to have brought her to The House. Her true home.
It had been a bad idea writing about Susan now. He’d turned over this new leaf, banished Liz’s ghost from his house, moved back into the bedroom. His bedroom, in his house. He wasn’t ready for the rest of the Susan story. He might never be. He closed the laptop and went to bed downstairs for the first time in months.
Ray’s hands woke him the next morning. They were twitching, ready to write. But as he danced impatiently waiting for the toaster to bing, he remembered the conversation with Lorraine. He’d told her about the brick. Its violent arrival had somehow gotten buried by the writing and speculation about Susan.
That stuff was ephemeral.
The brick was real.
Never Speak: A Mystery Thriller (The Murderous Arts Series) Page 13