Nowhere Land: A Stephan Raszer Investigation (74 page)

    
They kept their eyes forward en route
through the field, joining their voices in a Sufi couplet that Francesca began
to recite as soon as they were amid the budding stems. She had advised them all
to keep to their private thoughts and resist the temptation to scan the
surrounding hills for sharpshooters, lest they provoke suspicion.

    
“What if we fall asleep?” Ruthie had asked.

    
“We won’t,” replied Francesca.

    
“Dorothy did,” Ruthie countered.

    
“Dorothy was dreaming already,” said
Raszer.

    
“Oh, yeah,” said Ruthie. “I always forget
that.”

    
When the sun-warmed breeze from the south
whistled over the field, the fat buds became a percussion ensemble, tapping
against one another en masse and creating a distinct set of pitches—like a
thousand bamboo wind chimes set in motion. Despite the field’s hypnotic
effect—which extended to its absolute quiet when the wind ceased—Raszer
couldn’t help but feel that they were under the gun from every angle. What a
brash thing to do, trespassing the king’s opium field in broad daylight. Yet he
understood what his guides were about and didn’t question it. It was as fools
that Grail seekers had always approached the castle, stepping across the jaws
of dragons.

    
When at last they reached the far side and
ascended once again into the foothills, Raszer felt a certain relief, despite
the clear fact that they were now in the Old Man’s kingdom and the most
dangerous leg of the journey had just begun.

    
The next stretch was the most physically
demanding. The sun was merciless, and sources of fresh water almost
nonexistent. One by one, the aridity of the place got to each of them, striking
Ruthie first with dizziness and a racing heart. Francesca was least affected.
She had a light, bony frame and a Mediterranean constitution, and probably
could have done well shouldering jugs of wine up and down the mountains of
Sicily.

    
“Once the sun is at our backs, the going
will get easier,” said Dante.

    
“If we don’t die first,” said Ruthie.

    
“What’s our ETA?” asked Raszer.

    
“About five,” Francesca replied. “If all
goes well at the crossroads.”

    
To conserve energy and moisture, they
talked little for the next four hours. Even when they stopped at one o’clock to
eat the last of their sheep’s cheese and flatbread, they let the wind and the
harsh cawing of the scavenging birds do the talking for them. They had now
achieved the familiarity that allows for silence.

    
In the emptiness, Raszer discovered that
the poison of despair that had accumulated in his organs over the last hard
year in Los Angeles hadn’t been fully purged; his spiritual autoimmunity
remained weak. Evil, like all pathogens, was opportunistic. It waited for the
chink, the fraying, the crack. It could wait a lifetime for one soul. Raszer
had a sick feeling that the man inside the fortress had been waiting for his.

    
The scavenging birds that circled overhead
only added to the sense that he was walking into a death trap. To the Assyrian
priests, the birds had been known as monk vultures for their bald heads and
cowls of plumage. They were enormous, some with wingspans of nearly eight feet.
You can’t have me
, Raszer called from
inside, but they got to him. Vultures know it’s only a matter of waiting.

    
They
saw no one, nothing with a beating heart, for almost three hours. The
surrounding crags might indeed have been climbing destinations, but the canyons
below looked like every ancient world depiction of hell Raszer had ever seen.
Gehanna. Sodom. The Pit. They’d entered the first world, the first place to
claim a culture, and all around them was evidence that this culture had gone to
dust.

    
They struggled up one last, long grade—more
than three miles at a forty-five-degree angle—before the land leveled out to a
high plateau and they spotted, at what appeared to be about five hundred yards
ahead, a grove of walnut trees, the ground beneath them carpeted in deep green vegetation.
Just ahead of the trees, the path widened into a narrow dirt road that ran
right through the arbor.

    
“There’s a wee tributary,” said Dante. “Dry
in summer, but now there should still be snowmelt. If we’re lucky, we’ll find a
drink.”

    
“And cool off a bit,” added Francesca.

    
“And rest,” Ruthie moaned. “My feet have
blisters on top of blisters.”

    
“Those trees definitely look inviting,”
said Raszer.

    
“Well, keep your eyes on them,” cautioned
Francesca. “This is where—for some people—it begins to happen. Perspective may
start to shift. Reference points change.”

    
Almost as soon as she’d said those words,
Raszer began to notice that there was in fact something slightly wrong with the
picture. Though surrounded by sawtooth peaks, the area was almost perfectly
flat—a natural arena. In the midst of the barrenness, the anomalous grove of
trees and the little green park they sheltered looked as if Magritte had
conceived them. What rendered the scene most surreal was the fact that there
appeared to be nothing beyond the trees. When he looked at them, he looked
straight into them, and neither sky nor mountains beyond were visible through
their leaves. In the intervening space, atoms of blue fell from the heavens
like glitter and reflected the blinding sunlight. Shaykh Adi bounded ahead and
seemed swallowed up by the sparkle. He barked twice and then briefly
disappeared from sight before rematerializing much farther ahead than seemed
possible in the short time that had elapsed.

    
“Did you see that?” Raszer exclaimed. “How
did he do that?”

    
Dante laughed. “It’s no ordinary place.”

    
“And he is no ordinary dog,” added
Francesca.

    
“What the fuck’re you all talking about?”
Ruthie asked.

    
“Just keep your eye on Adi,” Dante replied.

    
Now, a second strange thing occurred.
Shaykh Adi kept trotting toward the trees—that is, his four legs appeared to be
in locomotion—but did not seem to be bringing him any closer. His size didn’t
change relative to the grove, but remained exactly the same, as if he were
trotting on a treadmill. Nor did the trees loom any larger or come into focus,
despite the fact that the group had closed another hundred yards; their leaves
and branches remained a vivid but impressionistic blur, like a photo taken with
a very long lens.

    
Raszer felt himself draw back suddenly.

    
“What is it?” asked Francesca.

    
“That was weird,” he said. “For a second
there, I thought I was looking at a movie screen. Everything went kind of
flat.” He pivoted around, surveying the mountains and the path behind them.
“Okay . . . now I’m back in it, only I can’t seem to find myself.”

    
He paused. “I mean . . . I can’t find . . .
where I’m looking from.”

    
“Can I have whatever drugs he’s taking?”
Ruthie said.

    
“Just watch the trees and the dog at the
same time,” he said. “You’ll see what I mean. It’s like one of those Magic Eye
puzzles you have to look at in a certain way.” He turned to Dante. “How far are
those trees? I would’ve said a third of a mile five minutes ago, but they don’t
look any closer—”

    
“Wow,” Ruthie said suddenly, shielding her
eyes. “It’s really blue here. How the hell did it get so blue?”

    
“Feels like we’re in the sky, right?” said
Dante. “Or like the sky is in us.”

    
Raszer stopped. “Now what . . . or who . .
. is that?”

    
A small figure had emerged from the grove and
stood in the middle of the road, the color of its form only a shade off from
that of the trees. Shaykh Adi evanesced from the dazzling blue again, all four
legs in accelerated motion, and now did seem to be closing the distance to the
mysterious personage. The old dog was running.

    
“He sees a friend,” said Francesca.

    
“Is it a mirage?” asked Raszer.

    
“Not unless Adi sees the same mirage you
do,” said Dante. “Which is unlikely.”

    
Raszer began to walk again, then stumbled
and stopped, extending his arms for balance. “Whoa! Shit!” he called out.

    
“What?” Ruthie asked. “What’s goin’ on?”

    
“Something’s off with my equilibrium,” he
answered. “I was moving forward, but it felt for a second like I was going
backward.” He cocked an eyebrow in Francesca’s direction. “Is this it?” he
asked. “Is this what you meant by a shift in perspective?”

    
 
“It’s the beginning of it,” she affirmed. “It
will take some getting used to. When I was in university, I took a class about
the language of cinema. One day we studied this thing they called the Hitchcock
zoom. It was a camera effect he used a lot. He’d pull the camera back while he
was zooming the lens in. It made people sick to their stomachs, totally threw
them. Do you know the effect?”

    
“Yeah. That’s not a bad analogy,” Raszer said,
feeling his way forward. “Only this effect is happening behind my eyes, not in
front of them.” He looked ahead; the small figure had assumed the proportions
of a man. Or a woman—he couldn’t be sure. It was of small stature and seemed to
have a lot of hair. Maybe a beard. The impression of camouflage grew stronger;
the person’s color was nearly indistinguishable from the color of the foliage.

    
“Now tell me that isn’t someone we need to
worry about,” Raszer said.

    
“Adi doesn’t think so,” Francesca replied.

    
“Whoever he is,” said Dante, “he’s king of
the grove.”

    
Raszer felt a tingle up his spine.

    
“Do we have to kill him to get past?”

    
“Who is both turtle and hare?” Dante asked.
“And shows pilgrims the way in darkest night?”

    
The figure began to move toward them, and
at the same time, Ruthie broke into a sprint. From the cloud of dust she left
behind, Raszer heard her shout, “Shams!”

    
He looked at each of his companions in
turn.

    
“There are more things in heaven and earth
. . . ” said Francesca.

    
“Khezr can assume any form he wants to,”
said Dante.

    
 
“So
can the Devil,” Francesca cautioned. “Go slowly.”

    
Ruthie called out once more and opened her
arms, but she now seemed to be stuck in temporal quicksand, just as Adi had
been minutes before. If not for its unsettling weirdness, it might have been
funny: the cartoon character locked in a digital loop. Raszer slowed his pace
and kept watch—he didn’t want to miss a millisecond. Steadily, the green figure
that might or might not be some evocation of Shams of Taos—a magical servitor
summoned by their morning prayer—approached Ruthie and passed right through
her.

    
Or, rather, Ruthie passed through him.

    
She dropped to her knees in the dust and
began to sob. The man walked a few steps farther, close enough that Raszer was
able to gauge his height and bearing as indeed being like Shams’.

    
Then he vanished. Just like that.

    
Raszer increased his pace, wanting to get
to Ruthie. His three guides were a few steps behind. It was only the sense and
scent of a presence on his immediate right that made him turn, and when he did,
he shouted instinctively with alarm.

    
“Say,
rafiq
,”
Shams incarnate said calmly. “How goes the journey?”

    
“Jesus,” said Raszer, and looked to make
sure the others could see what he saw.

    
“Hardly,” said Shams. “But now I know what
the poor fucker went through. Do you always bring trouble when you travel?”

    
“Not intentionally. What happened back in
Taos . . . God, I—”

    
“Don’t mention it, Padre. The hurt’s gone.
I’m fuckin’ free.
Moksha
. Liberation.
Not that I don’t miss the carnality sometimes. But there are compensations.
Like finding out who I’ve been all along.”

    
The rest of the party caught up, and Shaykh
Adi returned and began to lick Shams’ hand. They walked five abreast toward
Ruthie, who remained on her knees and watched their approach wide-eyed, like
some tree creature from the dark green grove that opened beyond her like a cave
entrance.