by Bryan Smith
Jason directed a cringing look of silent apology at the tour guide, shrugged, and followed his friends out the door. He held a hand to his brow to shield his eyes against the glare of the sun as he approached them. His friends had donned sunglasses as soon as they’d stepped out into the sunlight, but he’d left his own pair behind at the hotel. George had one of Karla’s cigarettes wedged into a corner of his mouth, and she was holding the flame of her Zippo to its tip to light it for him. Jason had known George for a long time, going back to middle school. He’d never smoked at all until hooking up with Karla about a year ago, but now he indulged on a regular basis. She had a habit of taking two cigarettes from her pack and passing one to him without asking if he wanted one. Jason had a feeling George just went along with it because he thought his girlfriend would disapprove if he didn’t. And Jason kind of idolized Karla. In private conversation with Jason, he often called her “the coolest chick I’ve ever fucking met.”
Jason didn’t much care for the smoking, but he could understand.
He kind of idolized Karla, too.
And now he felt a bit awestruck at the sight of her. Dressed like she was while standing outside one of the most storied music venues in the world, she looked like a rock star who had arrived early for a gig. With his shaggy dark hair, black clothes, and lanky good looks, George could pass as one of her bandmates. Unlike his girlfriend, however, the guy couldn’t play a lick of music. His singing voice wasn’t such hot shit, either. He did have that same effortlessly cool 70s rocker look, though. This sometimes made Jason feel a little lacking by comparison. He was just an ordinary, kind of nerdy-looking guy. The kind of guy a wild child like Karla would never go for, or so one would think. A tiny hint of a smirk dimpled one side of her mouth when she glanced his way and caught him staring at her.
He glanced away from her just as the door to the tour bus hissed open again, allowing one more passenger to disembark. A skinny young guy in a tie-dyed shirt and raggedy jeans grinned and waved when he saw them. He had fair skin and what Jason thought of as lazy, heavy-lidded eyes. They were the eyes of a dedicated weed-smoker. He also had long blond dreads.
The tour bus pulled away from them, turned about in a wide circle, and drove out of the Shantyman’s parking lot, leaving the four of them alone there. Aside from the unoccupied car parked by the entrance, there was no indication of any other human presence in the other area. Though he would have had difficulty articulating why in that moment, this made Jason feel uneasy.
“Hey, yo,” the hippie kid said, calling out to them with a big, goofy grin on his face. “There room for one more at this party?”
Jason winced at the sound of the guy’s voice. He always found that lethargic stoner drawl irritating. So many of those guys sounded just like that. But that wasn’t the real reason for his instinctive dislike of the interloper. He’d heard this particular obnoxious stoner voice several times already. This was the annoying guy who’d spoken up several times from the back of the bus.
He looked at his friends and mouthed the word “no” as emphatically as he could manage. They were both looking right at him as he did this. There was no doubt they understood what he was trying to silently communicate. George gave a slight nod of understanding, and Jason knew his old buddy was on board with his desire to send the guy on his way.
Karla, however, had other ideas.
“Sure, pal. So long as we can have some of whatever you’ve been smoking.”
The stoner’s grin got bigger and goofier. He hooked his thumbs under the green straps of a backpack and tugged at them. “Absolutely. Got plenty to go around. Got some magic mushrooms, too, if you’re interested. Really potent shit, yo.”
Karla laughed. “We’ll keep that in mind for later, maybe. Meanwhile, break out the fucking weed.”
The guy removed the backpack, unzipped a side pocket, and took out a baggie filled with an ample supply of the green stuff. Also stuffed inside the baggie was a glass pipe. He took out the pipe, tamped some weed into the bowl, and fired it up, after which he took a big hit and held the smoke in as he held the pipe out for whoever wanted to hit it next.
Karla flipped her half-smoked cigarette away and snagged it from him, held the flame of her Zippo to the bowl, and took a big hit of her own. She then passed the pipe to George, who took a more modest hit before offering it to Jason.
Jason declined with a wave of his hand. “Not interested.”
George shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
He and Karla took turns taking additional hits before passing the pipe back to the hippie kid at his request. The kid pinched another nug out of the baggie and refilled the bowl. He sparked it up again with the plastic gas station lighter he’d used before, put the pipe to his lips, and inhaled deeply.
Karla coughed a couple times and made a face. “I feel a little weird. Not high exactly. Just weird. Like my head’s inside a glass box or something, disconnected from my body and the rest of the world. There’s something not right about your weed, man. I’ve got this chemical taste in my mouth.” Her features shifted, conveying anger as she grabbed hold of Jason to keep from toppling over. “Jesus. It’s laced with something fucked-up, isn’t it? Industrial solvents or some shit. Pesticide, maybe.”
The hippie kid laughed as he took the pipe away from his mouth. “Nothing so mundane as that. This is my own special blend, though. Designed to induce a certain pliable state of mind. Open to suggestion. Some of the ingredients are what you might consider . . . exotic.”
Karla took a lurching step sideways, dragging George along with her. They took another awkward step together before simultaneously dropping to their knees. Karla looked at Jason. Her mouth moved, but no words emerged. There was a look of pleading in her eyes. She wanted help with something, but he had no clue what manner of assistance she needed. In another moment, she and George fell over and lay motionless on the ground.
Jason gasped in shock. “Fuck!”
The hippie kid laughed again and took another long drag from the pipe, his puffed-out cheeks turning red as held the smoke in for an extended period. In the grip of a mounting panic, Jason grabbed hold of the guy by an arm and roughly spun him about so they were facing each other.
“What have you done to them, asshole!?” He snatched the pipe from the kid’s hands and squinted at the bowl. At a glance, the partially charred substance inside it looked no different from regular weed, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. He held the bowl to his face and sniffed. The odor did seem off in a way that was hard to pinpoint. “You better not have poisoned them, motherfucker.”
The kid opened his mouth and expelled a pungent cloud of smoke directly into Jason’s face. Some of the smoke went up his nostrils while more of it went straight into his open mouth. He relinquished his grip on the kid’s arm as he gagged and took a staggering step backward. At once he detected that chemical taste Karla had described. It made the inside of his mouth feel like it was coated in a fine layer of liquid metal. The sensation was horrifying and he felt an instinctive, all-consuming need to rid his body of it as soon as possible. He gagged again and bent over at the waist as he repeatedly spat phlegm at the parking lot asphalt. No amount of this relieved the strange sensations plaguing him.
He dropped to his knees and in another moment toppled over and rolled onto his back with a groan. The hippie kid came closer and knelt next to him with the same blissed-out smile as before, but there was something in the set of his features that hadn’t been there originally. Something sinister. There was also something not quite right in the texture of his skin. The longer he stared at the kid, the more that skin didn’t look real at all. It looked kind of fake, like stretchable plastic. He had the feeling that if he could lift his hand and reach out to the guy, he would be able to peel back that phony outer layer of pseudo-flesh and reveal the true horror beneath.
But he didn’t have the strength for that.
He was still conscious, though. Unlike his friends, he was still
able to groan and squirm around minutely on the ground. He supposed he’d gotten a weaker dose of whatever had crippled them because he hadn’t drawn the smoke directly into his lungs via the pipe. The hippie kid with the fake-looking skin blew another cloud of smoke into his face, causing him to cough and gag yet again.
The kid shook blond dreadlocks out of his face and grinned. “You’re right, you know. About the diluted effect of the second-hand smoke. No worries, though. You’ll get the necessary dose soon enough.”
That this creature could read minds didn’t even rank among the top five most scary things about it, as far as Jason was concerned. This thing masquerading as a hippie kid wasn’t even human. It was some kind of monster or demon. And it had targeted him and his friends for reasons he couldn’t even begin to fathom.
He coughed so hard it made his lungs hurt. “Wh-what . . . are you?”
The creature smiled. “I am The Traveler. Time is an illusion. Did you know that? I could explain it to you, but there’s no time. Hah-hah. Anyway, she wanted you, you know. That girl. It’s true. I looked into her mind and saw it. She wanted you to fuck her, but you didn’t have the guts to go for it.” He glanced at the girl’s unconscious form. “Such a shame, really. To let down a girl that pretty.” He grinned as his gaze returned to Jason. “Your problem, Jason, is that you’re too much of a good guy. You’d never betray a friend’s trust. What you don’t know is George killed that kitten of yours that went missing a few years back. Such a cruel and petty act. There was no real reason for it. Other than pure malice, that is. Dear, sweet George has a hidden inner darkness. Guess he was never really worthy of your blind loyalty, huh?”
Tears misted Jason’s eyes. “Why . . . are you doing this?”
The creature chuckled, a sound that made Jason think of the tour guide’s distorted voice crackling through the speakers in the bus. “Because I can. Because it amuses me. Your friends are not dead, by the way. Quite the contrary. I’m sending each of you on separate journeys through the timestream, all in some way connected to that building over there. The girl asked about the night Johnny Kilgore killed himself. Well, she’s about to witness the event firsthand.”
Jason sniffled as his vision began to blur. “This is . . . crazy. Can’t be real.”
“Oh, but it is.” The creature inhaled deeply from the glass pipe, held the smoke in for a moment, and then expelled it into Jason’s face. “Did you know that the Stooges played a show here fifty years ago tonight? It’s true. It was the day after their first album was released. Little known historical fact, several members of the Manson family were in attendance that night. This was three days before the infamous Tate-LaBianca murders. The raw violence and energy in the protopunk music they heard that night had a galvanizing effect on some of them. It’s too bad ol’ Charlie wasn’t there. The experience might have elevated his game, made him an even more effective sower of chaos and dread.”
Jason coughed. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. And none of that sounds true.”
The creature laughed. “The timestream consists of an inestimable number of interweaving strands. Along some of those strands, what I’ve told you is demonstrably false. Along others, it is the absolute truth. As you’re about to find out.”
The plastic baggie full of that toxic weed was in the thing’s hands again. Now he scooped out a handful of it and forced it into Jason’s mouth. Jason gagged and spat some of it back out, but the creature clamped a strong hand tightly around his jaw, closing his mouth and forcing him to swallow the weed. A short time later, he experienced something similar to the sensation Karla had described. His head felt separate from his body, somehow heavy and weightless at the same time.
The brilliant blue hue drained out of the sky above within seconds.
Darkness engulfed him.
An indeterminate period of incognizance ensued, during which he drifted in a formless black void. It was as if he barely even existed anymore.
As if nothing existed.
Then, abruptly, awareness returned in the form of the driving backbeat of a distantly familiar tune. That rhythm was one he knew well, but an overwhelming sense of disorientation prevented him from identifying it right away. He heard other sounds, as well. Raised voices struggling to be heard over the amplified music. The hoots and hollers of a cheering audience.
He opened his eyes and saw that he was right up front inside the Shantyman, watching a primal rock band barrel its way through a song he now recognized as “1969”, a track from the self-titled debut album by the Stooges. Leading the band was the young Iggy Pop, a frenetic whirlwind of manic energy.
I’m not really seeing this, Jason thought. I’m not really here. This is power of suggestion bullshit. A drug-induced hallucination. That’s all.
He stood there swaying mindlessly to the beat a moment longer, feeling the heavy thrum of the rhythm section in his body. The floor seemed to vibrate beneath his feet. The bodies of others in the audience jostled against him. He detected the acrid scent of pot permeating the smoke-filled air.
Sure feels real, though.
The apparent reality of it all was suddenly too much. He spun away from the stage and began to push his way through the tight press of bodies. The closeness of those bodies and thickness of the smoke was oppressive, made him feel like he was suffocating. He needed to get out of the club, out into the clean night air. The press of bodies became less oppressive, less dense, as he neared the bar at the back of the club. This allowed him to take a longer look at the people around him. They looked strange, not right for the audience at a punk show. There was a lot of long, greasy hair. A lot of hippie garb and regalia. Headbands, peace symbol buttons, and so forth. Then it hit him. The audience didn’t look right to him because this was the time before punk, when the Stooges were just the newest stage in the ongoing evolution of rock.
There were a lot of people at the bar. And a lot of drinks on its crowded surface. At one end sat an unguarded beer that looked like it had just been opened, its contents untouched. He snagged it while no one was watching and hurried out of the club, heaving a breath as he emerged into the warm California evening. The parking lot that had been empty before was full now. Surveying the sea of vehicles, he felt like he’d stumbled upon a vintage car show. He saw Mustangs and VW vans, as well as numerous sedans and sports cars of various makes. There was nary a sign of a Prius or any other modern vehicles.
All real, he thought. I’m really stuck in 1969.
Laughing with tears in his eyes, he took a swig of beer and sat his ass down on the curb. He didn’t know what to do with himself. Accepting the reality of the situation presented a whole new host of problems. He had no connection to anyone in this time. His parents were out there somewhere on the other side of the country, but they were kids. There would be no point in seeking them out. He drank more of the beer as he sat there and thought about it. It all seemed so hopeless. He had no idea how to go about starting a new life in what essentially amounted to a foreign land, a place where he did not officially exist. Not on paper, anyway.
Then he thought about what the thing that called itself The Traveler had said. He was sending Karla back to 1979, to the night Johnny Kilgore of the Sick Motherfuckers killed himself not far from where he now sat. A tiny spark of hope flared to life inside Jason.
All he had to do was somehow survive the next ten years and return to this spot on that infamous date. He knew the details well. He could be right here at the appointed time when Karla arrived. He’d be a decade older than her at that point, but that wasn’t such an insurmountable age difference, was it? He didn’t think so, especially now that he knew about her private feelings for him. She would be thrilled to see him, he was sure of it.
And who knew what might happen then?
A voice spoke from somewhere right behind him: “Hey, cutie.”
He shifted about on the curb and craned his head around, frowning at the familiar face staring down at him. It was a girl. A not u
nattractive one. She was no Karla, but she wasn’t half bad, either. But he knew that face, was sure he’d seen it somewhere before.
He frowned. “Do I know you?”
She smiled. “I don’t think so. We’re just now meeting. My name’s Suzie.”
Then it came to him. Where he’d seen her before. Mostly from black and white photos in the pages of a dogeared old paperback book that had belonged to his father. This was Susan Atkins.
One of the Manson girls.
Before he could say anything else to her, he felt another presence rushing at him from somewhere off to the side. He turned his head around just in time to see another familiar face. This time the name came to him faster. Charles “Tex” Watson, another member of Charlie’s family. He had something in his hands. A burlap sack.
Jason dropped the beer and tried getting to his feet, but a kick from behind sent him tumbling back to the ground. Then Tex and Leslie were on him. The bag was pulled over his head and cinched tight. Others crowded around him then, and he felt multiple sets of hands lifting him off the ground. He tried thrashing his way out of their grip as they carried him across the parking lot, but to no avail. An attempt to cry out for help earned him a hard thump over the head. A short time later, his abductors came to a stop and dumped him inside the spacious trunk of a car.
“Sit tight, cutie,” he heard the one called Suzie say. “We’re just going on a little adventure and wanted some company.”
Jason squirmed around inside the trunk. “Where are you taking me?”
“To the desert. We’ve got this big thing we’re doing soon. Some real Helter Skelter shit. We’re sending out a message to the piggies of the world. One they won’t be able to ignore.”
A man chuckled. Tex, probably. “That’s right, darlin’. But before the main event, we’re gonna practice on this poor son of a bitch.”
The trunk lid slammed shut.
Jason screamed with every bit of lung power he had as the Manson family members piled into the car. He screamed some more as the car’s engine started and kept screaming as the car was steered out of the parking lot and into the city streets.