The Boys from Santa Cruz (32 page)

Asmador opens the cabinet, which encloses a telephone handset wired into a single line that exits through a hole in the bottom of the cabinet before disappearing underground. He slices through the wire above the box with the serrated inner edge of Peter Daniel’s hunting knife, then punctures all four tires on every vehicle save the Cherokee.

Having done what he can to buy himself time to complete the mission, Asmador changes into a night-camo jumpsuit, splotchy blacks and grays with elasticized waist and cuffs, blacks his face and white sneakers, jams all the gear that will fit, including the night-vision goggles, into the backpack, and fills the built-in, hard-walled quiver with an assortment of arrows.

“Wish me luck, Pocket Pal,” he calls to the starlings perched on the telephone wire. From behind him comes the sound of mocking laughter. He turns to see Sammael sitting cross-legged on the roof of the Cherokee, jingling a set of car keys. Asmador reaches for them; the redhead pulls one of his vanishing acts. But to Asmador’s considerable relief, when he peers through the window of the Cherokee, he sees the keys dangling from the ignition; the door, fortunately, is unlocked.

“Thank you,” he calls sheepishly, locking the car and pocketing the keys; not surprisingly, the only response is a burst of disembodied laughter.

The little procession, with Dr. Oliver marching in front and Skip bringing up the rear in the golf cart, followed a dirt trail bordered with spring-green poison oak that led uphill through a transition forest of red aspens, mountain alders, graceful poplars, fragrant-leaved bay laurels, and mossy live oaks so gnarled and ancient they looked almost sentient.

After marching for half an hour, Oliver turned off the main trail at an arrow-shaped wooden signpost pointing the way to something called the Omphalos. The side trail was too narrow for the cart, so Skip abandoned it at the turnoff and limped after the others on foot, down a rocky path that hugged the base of a shaley cliff for a hundred yards or so. Then it took a sharp downhill right turn and opened out onto a perfectly round, enchanted-looking clearing surrounded by a grove of quaking aspens that whispered and shimmered in the faint breeze.

“Welcome to Omphalos, the navel of the world,” Oliver boomed, in a voice that echoed around the clearing. “Let’s see if we can form a circle as perfect as the one nature made here.”

While the others arranged their zafus on the springy, cloverlike ground cover, Skip and Pender discussed the security arrangements. Because there was no vantage point from which Skip could keep a stationary watch, they agreed that he should stay as close to Oliver as possible while Pender kept an eye out for Charlie Mesker from the cover of the trees. “And remember,” Pender added—

“Don’t eat the crouton. Yeah, I know.”

*   *   *

Circles within circles. The pellucid sky; the round earth; the magical clearing; the circle of seekers seated cross-legged, tailor fashion, or in half- or full lotuses as their joints permitted. Oliver jingled his little silver bell and instructed them to listen for the farthest sound. As the throbbing echo of the bell died away, Skip became aware of the papery rustling of aspen leaves, the harsh cawing of crows, and the melodic call of some unseen songbird.

Twice more, Oliver rang the bell; twice more they listened for the farthest sound. Then Oliver led them in the bodhisattva vow: “We dedicate this journey we are about to take…”

“We dedicate this journey we are about to take…”

“To the spiritual advancement…”

“To the spiritual advancement…”

“Of all humanity…”

“Of all humanity…”

“And we pledge never to rest…”

“And we pledge never to rest…”

“Until all sentient beings…”

“Until all sentient beings…”

“Have reached Nirvana…”

“Have reached Nirvana.”

“Svaha!”
Oliver clapped his hands together sharply.

“Svaha!”
Fourteen sets of hands clapped in ragged, imperfect unison, like a firing squad.

After administering the vow, Oliver went around the inside of the circle from trainee to trainee, trailed closely by Steve, bearing a filigreed silver tray, and Candace, whose job it was to set out upon the salver a grape, a crouton, and a fluted paper cup the size of a shot glass, which she refilled at every stop with a draft of clear water from a purple thermos.

One by one, the celebrants ate of the fruit and the grain, then drank
the water—except of course for Pender and Skip, who drank the water and popped down the grape, but surreptitiously palmed the crouton, then tossed it away when no one was looking.

After Oliver and his two acolytes had themselves partaken of the sacrament, the guru resumed his place in the circle and led the others in a chant,
“Gaté Gaté, Paragaté, Parasamgaté, Bodhi Svaha,”
providing his own simultaneous translation from the Sanskrit.

“
Gaté Gaté:
that means, go on, go on.
Paragaté:
go further.
Parasamgaté:
go even further.
Bodhi:
to enlightenment.
Svaha:
amen, so be it.”

Over and over they chanted the ancient formula—
“Gaté Gaté, Paragaté, Parasamgaté, Bodhi Svaha”
—while dust motes danced in the dappled light, and the trees rustled, and the birds sang, and the sun cast its honeyed glow over the meadow, until eventually time lost meaning and the chant began chanting them.
Gaté Gaté,
whispered the aspen leaves. Go on, go on.

And awaayyy Skip went. After the first few dozen repetitions of the prayer, he began experiencing a euphoric sense of belonging. Looking around the circle, he felt as if he were seeing the others, really
seeing
each of them, or any human being, for that matter, for the first time. Then after a few dozen more repetitions, Skip began playing tricks with their faces. He discovered that if he stared hard enough he could, for instance, turn beaming Oliver, with his bushy beard and broad, benevolent visage, into Aslan, the golden-eyed lion from the Narnia books, or transform the head of the fey, elderly Beryl into one of those wrinkled old Pennsylvania Dutch apple dolls.

But messing around with faces proved to be a dangerous experiment. Somewhere between the zillionth
gaté
and
svaha,
Skip lost the ability to change them back. From then on he could only watch in horror as the features began to shift and change on their own, melting and blurring and eventually sloughing away entirely, until all that remained was the grinning armature of the skull beneath the perishable flesh.

And finally, much too late, it dawned on him that he’d been
dosed. Seriously. With acid, most likely, and plenty of it. Don’t panic, he cautioned himself as the skull-headed creature that had once been Candace beamed across the circle at him. It’s not like you’ve never tripped before.

But something’s different this time…danger…something wicked…this way…

No! Don’t do it, don’t go there, Skip warned himself, closing his eyes and covering his face with his hands. It’s only the acid. That’s what you’re supposed to tell yourself when you start freaking: it’s only the acid.

But there’s something out there!

No! You took some acid and in a few hours everything will be back to normal.

But—

No! Say it: I took some acid…

I took some acid…

And in a few hours…

And in a few hours…

Everything will be back to normal.

Everything will be back to—Aw, fuck it.

Because it didn’t work. In the infinite darkness behind Skip’s eyelids, concepts like
hours
and
normal
were equally meaningless. And there
was
something evil out there, some…some rough beast slouching—

Suddenly, with his eyes still firmly shut, he visualized Asmador, with the head of a vulture and the body of a man, loping through the forest, getting closer, closer…

Hearing someone moaning pitifully, Skip was nearly overcome with compassion. Somebody help him, he thought. Won’t somebody
please
help that poor bastard.

It didn’t take long for Pender to grow bored with the chanting. Nor could he shake the mounting sense of dread that came with sitting in an open clearing, surrounded by a dark forest, hearing God knows what all rustling in the underbrush. He felt like a sacrificial goat tethered to a stake, listening for the tiger’s approach.

Opening his eyes to peek around the circle, he saw that everyone else had their eyes firmly closed, even Skip, whose eyelids were twitching like a dreaming dog’s. He remembered an old joke about the moribund shopkeeper whose family had all gathered around his deathbed.
So who’s watching the store?
was the punch line.

Special Agent E. L. Goddamn Pender, that’s who, he told himself, climbing to his feet. Glancing downward while dusting off the seat of his slacks, he experienced a peculiar sort of Alice-in-Wonderland effect. His Hush Puppies appeared to be much smaller and farther away looking than he was accustomed to, as if his legs had grown absurdly elongated.

It only lasted a second; when he looked again, his lower extremities had resumed their customary proportions. But something still wasn’t right. Time, or his memory, started missing beats, skipping like an old vinyl record. He had no memory, for instance, of leaving the circle or crossing the clearing. But here he was, hiding behind a tree at the edge of the woods.

Then out of the confusion, a burst of clarity.
Asmador,
Pender reminded himself with an effort,
don’t forget Asmador.
From where he crouched in the underbrush, he could see clear across the field to the gap in the trees that marked the trailhead. But what were the odds Charlie “Asmador” Mesker would come waltzing down the path in plain sight?
Slim to none,
as Sheriff Hartung used to say,
and I don’t see no nuns around here.

No, if he’d been smart enough to escape capture thus far,
Mesker would certainly be smart enough to cut off the trail long before he came into sight of the clearing, then circle around and approach the clearing from clover—No, cover! From cover. They don’t even rhyme, those words.
Cover
and
clover.
Lots more songs about clover though.
Roll me over in the clover do it again.
And
I’m looking over a four-leaf clover.
Or, as they used to sing when he was a kid,
I’m looking over my dead dog Rover, Who lies on the bathroom floor. One leg’s broken, the other one’s lame, Dah-dah-dah-dah, He got run over by a railroad train.

Pender’s mind wandered back to 1952 Cortland, he and his gang playing soldiers in the woods, wearing plastic G.I. helmets and gunning down Japs with their Daisy rifles.
Bang! I got you! No, I got you first. Lie down, you’re dead. No, you lie down, you’re—

A crackling in the brush wrenched Pender back to the present.
What’s the
matter
with you?
he asked himself.
Can’t you concentrate on the job at hand for five goddamn minutes without…drifting…

Looking around, he realized suddenly that he could no longer see the clearing. Everywhere he looked, every direction he turned, three hundred and sixty degrees of trees, trees, and more trees, stretching outward to infinity. Pender held his breath, listening, and heard the forest—or was it the universe?—breathing all around him, expanding with every inhale, shrinking with every exhale. When he looked down again, his feet were so tiny and far away he could hardly see them.

And that’s when it occurred to him that he’d been drugged, involuntarily dosed with LSD. Suddenly he was afraid, more afraid than he’d ever been, except for when he’d nearly blinded himself with a firecracker when he was a kid. This was worse, though, because not only was he afraid, he was afraid of
being
afraid.

But you didn’t eat the crouton,
his mind protested.
You never even had it near your mouth.

Which meant what? That Stahl had played him like a Stradivarius. Don’t eat the crouton? Ha! The crouton was a straw man, a red herring. A red straw herring man. Because the LSD was in the
grape or the water—that was the
how
of it. As for the
why,
Pender realized with a sad, sinking sensation that it didn’t really matter.
Stahl, you stupid fuck,
he thought, more in sorrow than in anger.
You stupid, stupid fuck.

The humans are gone. But they haven’t passed him on his way up from the parking lot. Therefore, Asmador reasons, they must have gone in the other direction. And when he hunkers down outside the two-story building and squints up the dirt road, he notices that the surface is scuffed with sneaker and sandal prints, all pointing uphill. And cutting vertically down the center of the road are two lines of tire tracks too thick for bicycles but too close together for an automobile—they must have been left by the golf cart he’d seen Pender driving earlier.

Confident that he’ll be able to hear or scent the humans long before they hear or scent him, Asmador makes no attempt to conceal his presence as he follows their trail up into the forest, his stiflingly hot night-camo jumpsuit unzipped to the waist. Occasionally he practices reaching behind his back, drawing an arrow from the quiver, nocking it, and drawing the bowstring back to his cheek in one slick, effortless motion, without slowing his pace.

He never lets a practice arrow fly, however, because based on the number of footprints he’d seen before the road narrowed and the tracks went single file, there appear to be a whole herd of humans shuffling along ahead of him. If they stay all bunched up, he realizes, he may have need of every arrow in his quiver. But oh, how happy the vultures would be—Asmador hasn’t entirely forgotten about the vultures.

In fact, he is finding it increasingly easy to concentrate his
mind as the day progresses. He hasn’t seen a demon all afternoon, and although things are still kind of squirmy out on the edge of his vision, as if the tree limbs were hung with writhing snakes and worms, when he swivels his head to look directly at them, they turn back into ordinary trees just as meekly as you please.