Stories Index |
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Fable |
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San Ramon, California
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Mt. Diablo Wisdom Center |
A hand-written personal note was on the flip side, “Thanks for last night. Now it’s your turn! D. K.”
Okay, so what the hell is that supposed to mean? And thanks for what?
Only one way to find out. So I loaded Peter into a taxi for the airport, along with a lame excuse for staying behind, and headed out for some unknown address along a thirty-mile stretch of road I’ve never been on in my life.
It started out easy enough—Crow Canyon Road to Blackhawk Road. Somewhere along Blackhawk Road I encountered the first sign, just a tiny thing, at the side of the road—Only Fifteen Miles to Mt. Diablo Wisdom Center.
So I’m on the right path. A couple miles later there’s another sign, a little larger than the previous one, “Only Thirteen Miles to Mt. Diablo Wisdom Center.” I passed another one a little later with an updated mileage, and something new—Turn Left at Mt. Diablo Scenic Blvd.
I followed the directions, easy because every two miles there was another sign, and continued on Mt. Diablo Scenic Blvd. This wound around for maybe three more miles until it reached the entrance to Mt. Diablo State Park. There was a gate and a kiosk, and a five-dollar entrance fee. A very attractive, blonde park ranger-type greeted me as I pulled up to pay. She gave me a parking pass and a nice smile.
“Careful on the road,” she said. “It winds around and narrows as you go up.”
“Thanks for the tip.”
“Sure. On a clear day, you can see Oakland from the summit.”
“Sounds good.” I was about to pull away when I had a thought. “How far to the Wisdom Center?” I asked.
She frowned and said, “Wisdom Center?”
I handed her Diane K.’s business card. “It’s somewhere on this road. Just wondering where, exactly.”
She studied the card for just a moment and then handed it back with a funny kind of expression on her face, like maybe she thought I was hitting on her. “Sorry. Never heard of it. There are no businesses in the park, only a couple of ranches, oh yeah, and a baseball field, between here and Blackhawk.”
“That’s funny. Then what about all those signs?”
“What signs.” She backed away from my car a little.
“Along the road, every two miles or so. Only nine more miles to Mt. Diablo Wisdom Center, that sort of thing.”
“That is funny,” she says, backing away a little more. “I’ve lived around here all my life and never noticed anything like that.”
Rochester General – Week Two
“Okay, okay. Hold on a minute.”
I stop reading in mid-sentence. “Problem?”
“Question.”
“Shoot.”
“Fact or fantasy?”
“I don’t follow.”
“I’ll rephrase. Is the story a recounting of actual events, or a fictionalized account of actual events, or is it just fantasy?”
“Oh, I get it.” I think for a moment. “I don’t get it.”
“The road signs. Are they real or something only you can see?”
Now I get it. She thinks I’m off my nut. “Of course they’re real. What, you think I was hallucinating ?”
“No, I was just noticing a pattern.”
“What pattern? It’s a story for Christ’s sake. I’m not insane. Having a nervous breakdown doesn’t make you insane, does it? Of course it doesn’t and remember, I’m here voluntarily—to relax and recuperate.”
“Of course you are.”
“So don’t give me that you’re a dangerous lunatic bit.”
“Don, lunatic isn’t a medical term. No one is saying you’re insane.”
“Well that’s the implication. Doctor!”
She looks at me the way she always does when I say something she thinks is sheer idiocy—her eyes narrow, and her mouth puckers up as if she were sucking on a sour toothpick.
“Okay, I’ll bite. What pattern?”
“You, or your character, have sensory experiences that are apparently beyond the grasp of others.”
“You mean I see stuff no one else does, right?”
“That’s an oversimplification, but essentially, yes.”
“Fine. Now we’re getting somewhere. Mind if I continue?”
She glances down at her watch. I can practically read her mind—another half hour of this drivel. But she flashes a cute doctor smile and says, “Yes, please.”
San Ramon, California
“How strange. Maybe it’s some kind of gag?”
The park ranger’s face broke out into a million little smiles. “That must be it,” she said. “Someone is seriously yanking your chain.”
“I don’t know, she seemed sincere enough. I met her in the hotel spa…”
She cuts me off in mid-sentence. “Too much information. Look,” she leans into the window, “just relax and enjoy the view. Okay?”
“Got it. Thanks.”
I left the park entrance and that cute ranger with a sort of sinking feeling. Nothing was adding up—the signs, that Diane K. woman, the business card with the funky message. None of it. I chewed it all over in my mind a hundred times while driving up South Gate Road on the way to the summit, about three and a quarter miles from the south entrance. I had taken a look at the route online at the hotel. Some new site called Google (how long will that be around with a name like Google?)
The road winds around as it climbs, the scenery was spectacular, and the traffic sparse, so I took my time. About a mile into the park I noticed a cloud of dust in my rear-view mirror. A few minutes later the blur condensed into a car, and then finally a black Mustang, a Cobra by the look of it. The driver practically climbed up my ass as I approached a wide turn. It leaped out from behind me as we rounded the turn but didn’t pass. We were on an open stretch of road that looked to be about a quarter mile. I slowed down, hoping the driver would pass, but the driver stayed with me. I slowed down even more. The other car kept pace. The passenger side window came down, the horn blew a few times. I turned, and there was Diane K. with a huge smile on her face, waving at me.
I shouted over, “What do you want?”
She waved back; I don’t think she heard me.
“You’re crazy!” I yelled to her.
No answer. When I turned my attention back to the road, I saw a huge truck cab round the hair-pin turn about an eighth of a mile away. No time to think—the truck was screaming down at us. Diane K. stayed in the left lane, still waving at me as if she hadn’t a care in the world. I yelled something at her and slammed on the brakes. She stayed in the wrong lane as the truck raced toward her. A second later a flash of light and a terrifying crunching sound as the truck slammed head on into Diane K. The Cobra sailed over my head. I came to a stop at the side of the road and watched her car smash nose-first into a guardrail and then vanish over the edge. The truck kept going and was out of sight in a few seconds.
I must have panicked or freaked out, I don’t know. Next thing I remember, is leaning over the guardrail, shouting into the depths below. A dead silence followed, and then a moment later, a woman’s agonized scream.
“I’m coming!” I shouted back and jumped over the rail without thinking. I landed on a bed of gravel, lost my footing, and tumbled down a steep embankment. I can remember hitting rocks and tree limbs as I rolled uncontrollably. Then I hit something large and hard, a boulder or tree. I don’t know, but I lost consciousness.
How long was I out? I had no idea, but it must have been a while. When I finally opened my eyes, all was blackness. I didn’t know if it was night or I was blind. My head pounded; I had no feeling in my left arm. There was a rustle of motion close by, and somewhere out in the darkness, someone was moaning.
“Who’s there?”
My words fell flat in the dead air. I strained against the silence and could hear the smallest sound, a muffled cry for help. I stretched out my arms in the dark and inched my way in the general direction of the noise. My left arm felt like so much dead weight, as if it were someone else’s arm instead of my own.
Another moan, prolonged and clearer. I must be getting close. My eyes were gradually adjusting to the feeble light of a tiny sliver of moon. It was enough to make out some small shapes ahead of me—bushes, trees, and a then a black car flipped over on its top.
“I see you,” I shouted. “I’m almost there.”
A faint voice said, “No. Go back.”
The moon peeked out behind a cloud. I could clearly make out Diane K’s Cobra lying in a dense thicket. I sped up a little. There was a soft rush of motion behind me, like a small animal clawing through the underbrush. I sped up a little more.
“Hang on, almost there.”
“Go back!” her voice sounded stronger, and terrified.
Then several things happened all at once. A sharp, guttural noise, a cross between the growl of a wounded animal and the scream of a madman, pierced the air. It was unlike any sound I’ve ever heard or even imagined, as if the agony of every creature on the planet was somehow channeled to this exact spot. Then a loud crack, like a tree being snapped in two, except it wasn’t a tree. It was my own legs. I screamed and collapsed. The pain was a flash of fire that shot up both legs, through my torso, into my brain and back down again. It was as if something had fired white-hot spikes into my knees. I screamed again and flailed my arms at whatever invisible enemy was out there. More blows came in rapid succession—to my head, arms and body. They kept coming and coming, faster and faster. I felt my sanity fading, and in my delirium I saw myself suspended in a circle of hell, surrounded by half-beast, half-human abominations. The creatures all leaped on top of me, yet over the chaos and noise, I heard Diane K. shrieking in some unknown tongue. It was her voice—terrible and mad—that burned inside my head as I mercifully lost consciousness.
That same voice, just as intense but more controlled, woke me with a simple, “Hey—you there?”
I opened my eyes, realized I was lying flat on my back, and immediately sat up. “Yeah, I think so.” The space around me was open and featureless, as if I were sitting on a table top suspended in empty space except that there were no stars. Diane K. was sitting cross-legged a few feet away. I said, “What happened? There was an accident, right?”
“There was an accident. How do you feel? Any pain?”
“No. Nothing. You?”
“Okay—for now. It won’t last.”
I spring to my feet and look around me. Nothing but Diane K. and I. Whatever surface we’re on seems to extend to infinity in all directions. I felt like a character in an unfinished comic strip. She seemed to read my thoughts. “I know what you mean,” she said.
“So what happened? You were trapped in your car. I was trying to get to you when these freaking bizarre creatures attacked me. What’s up with that?”
“That was pretty messed up.”
“Yeah? Well thanks for the info. Goddamn, did I dream all that?”
“Nope.”
“So where are we? Were we hallucinating, or maybe is this the dream…”
She cut me off. “It’s real enough, just different.”
“You’re a regular encyclopedia, aren’t you? Now tell me something I don’t know.”
She jumped to her feet and looked down at the center of her chest. I looked too, and noticed a fist-sized red stain in the shape of a ring just about where her heart would be. “We don’t have very long,” she said. Her voice seemed vacant and sad.
“For what?”
“They’re holding us someplace deep under the mountain. We’re unconscious, but slowly coming out of it. That will really suck.”
“Great. Who’s they?”
“I don’t have a name. All I can tell you is they’re the bad-ass motherfuckers who show up when you least expect it. Life is just humming along and then blam! Something bad, really bad, rocks your world. Did not see that one coming.”
“But the accident. You drove your car straight into the path of that truck.”
“Didn’t see that one coming either. Shame on me.”
“That’s no answer. Ah! Christ!” A sharp pain ripped into my neck and down my spine. I looked to Diane K. for some kind of explanation, but saw the spot on her chest was wet with blood. Before my eyes it enlarged to a hole you could poke a rolling pin through.
“We’re waking up,” she tells me.
“So now what?”
“I think I can get us out of here, but you’re going to have to trust me.”
She tried to cover up the hole in her chest and the tree branch that seemed to be growing out of it.
“What happened to you?”
“I was impaled in the accident. Forget it. Bad planning—again.” As she talked, a bloody branch grew another foot or so. My head and legs started throbbing with a dull pain. My left arm dropped lifelessly to my side. Diane K. studied the branch, which was growing faster than Pinocchio’s nose. “I’ll be okay. Probably.”
“Sure you will.”
“Forget it, Don. Just follow my…”
Then she disappeared. Vanished, like Samantha on Bewitched. I felt like Darrin with a huge migraine, but yelled out anyway, “Diane? Diane!”
Everything else vanished. I opened my eyes again. Leaning over me was face—at least I thought it was a face—but there were no eyes or nose, only a jagged, gaping maw hissing at me like a pissed off pit viper. The thing was a walking nightmare from a Francis Bacon painting, but a face I recognized from years ago—St. Michael’s School basement, a violent crime, and Father Russell.
I screamed. It screamed back, a sound that reached down my throat and pulled my insides out. More faces appeared, all of them hissing at me as if they were sharing a private joke. If that’s what it was, it must have been hilarious. They waved claw-like appendages over my face, hissing with apparent glee as I shook my head wildly from side to side trying to avoid them. From somewhere close by, Diane K. starting shouting in the creatures’ hideous, guttural tongue. This seemed to agitate our demon captors even more.
Suddenly the hissing stopped. All but two of the faces above me disappeared. One pair of claws forced my mouth wide open, nearly cracking my jaw. I tried to struggle, but I was bound to a table or slab. Another face appeared directly over me—Diane K. Her face was ashen, her eyes, burning. She made a facial gesture to the creatures. A claw appeared holding a hairy, black, wriggling monstrosity. If you could re-package insanity as an alien spider, this would be it. Diane K. made a strange grunting noise, gestured in my direction, and then clearly said, “Kill it.”
She vanished from view. One of the creatures dropped the thing onto my chest and held my mouth open as it inched in spasmodic spurts toward my face.
The alien spider, or whatever it was, reached my mouth and placed a tentative appendage on my lower lip. Wave after wave of fear ripped through my body. The thing on my chest just sat there stroking my lips for what seemed an eternity, pushing me to the edge of madness. From behind me, there was some sort of commotion. I heard Diane K. shrieking in that hideous language. The claws holding my mouth opened disappeared. More screaming, and then suddenly, the thing on my chest leapt into the air and onto my face. I felt a sharp pain, like a thousand needles penetrating all at once, and then I must have lost consciousness.
Rochester General – Week Three
Dr. Frank looks up from her reading with a what-the-hell sort of look. I’m not sure if she’s scared or amused, so I ask her, “Pretty creepy, isn’t it?”
She takes off her glasses, tiny, black, rectangular things I hadn’t noticed until just that moment. “It really is. Francis Bacon?”
“Irish painter. Twentieth century. I was thinking Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion. Stuff of nightmares.”
“Not familiar. Can I…” she pauses and puts her glasses back on, her usual prelude to a serious topic.
“Can you what?”
“Sorry. The reference to your past, grade school I assume.”
“Sixth grade.”
“Fiction, or is that something we should explore?”
I wish it were fiction, must have written that line subconsciously. Fact is, I haven’t thought about Sister Theresa and Father Russell since… well, since sixth grade. I remember that afterwards, it was as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Father Russell simply disappeared—reassigned to another parish was the explanation. Same with Sister Theresa. There was no publicity, no trial that I can recall. And then all traces of them just vanished, as if history had erased their memory. Scott and I, his mother, my folks—we never talked about it. And I don’t want to talk about it now.
“I don’t think so.”
“But surely there’s a connection.”
“That was a long time ago. Forget it. ”
“You can’t forget it.”
“Look Dr. Frank, there’s no point in dredging up useless junk from my childhood. Whatever happened—happened and that’s all there is to it.”
“No that’s not all there is to it. A violent crime, Don. It obviously affected you or you wouldn’t have written that line. Avoiding the incident won’t solve anything.”
I jump up and shout at her, trying unsuccessfully to control the tremor in my voice, “Back off, goddamn it. There’s nothing to solve!”
She takes her glasses off again. I take my seat and try not to look at her. She says in a quite voice, meant to reassure I think, “Don these sessions are for your benefit. It’s my job to notice things, to nudge when I think it will help. But I won’t take you anywhere you don’t want to go.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really.”
“All right then. Thanks.”
“No problem. Would you like to continue the story? We still have ten minutes.”
“No. Thanks. Not much more—need to write the ending. Next time?”
“Next time.”
San Ramon, California
I must have been dreaming. A hollow, metallic voice kept repeating the same thing, over and over. All I wanted was the voice to stop, and to go back to sleep. But it got louder, and then other sounds started to creep in—a mechanical beeping, something on wheels, low voices. As the sounds grew in intensity, I became aware of a dull ache. It started in my left arm, and ran down my side and both legs. I tried unsuccessfully to move my legs. They seemed to be suspended or held in place. I told myself I need to open my eyes and I tried, but I had this sudden vision of something black and horrible and squeezed my eyes shut tighter. I felt a shiver of fear, as if I had just awakened from a nightmare. The feeling passed a moment later and a kind voice said, “Don’t try to move just yet. Take it easy.”
My vision was blurry at first. When it cleared I saw a woman in a brightly colored smock wearing a surgical mask. She was holding my wrist and looking at her watch. I asked the obvious question, “Where am I?”
She set my hand down. “Much better. How are you feeling?”
I realized I was in bed. There was something taped to my other wrist; both legs were suspended in some sort of support. From the sounds around me, I seemed to be in a room full of electronic machines. The woman’s question took a moment to register.
“I don’t know. My head hurts.”
“They’ll give you something for the pain.”
“My legs…”
“Can you wiggle your toes?”
“What happened?”
“In a minute. Please, try.”
I did. She seemed pleased. Hard to tell under the mask. “Good. Very good. Any pain?”
“Not there. Just my head.”
“That’s to be expected. You suffered a minor concussion.”
“Concussion? So, was I out of it? How long?”
“About a day. You’re neurologist will be in a while and he can fill you in.”
“I have a neurologist?”
“You do now. But don’t worry. You’re in good hands and you should be out of here in a few days.”
“What about those?” I nodded toward my legs.
“Clean break in both fibula. Should heal in no time. You have a bad sprain in your left arm, some minor contusions. A few stitches in your forehead.”
I feel across my forehead with my good hand. “So where am I?”
“San Ramon Medical Center. You took quite a tumble down a very rocky slope. Do you remember what happened?” She pulls up a chair and sits next to my bed.
“A little. There was a car accident. I remember that, a bad one. Someone I met at the hotel where I was staying. I tried to help, I think. Yeah… She went over the guardrail and down the embankment. I must have leaped before I looked.”
“You’re very lucky. What else?”
“I don’t know. I must have blanked out. Had some crazy dreams—I was in a cave or something and these bizarre creatures were all over me. Damn, that was messed up. Must have been that bump on the head.”
The woman shook her head slowly. “No, Don. It was real enough.” She unfastened the surgical mask. “Just different.”
I should have recognized the voice. “Diane K.? No, it can’t be.”
“Oh, it’s me all right.”
“What do you mean, just different?”
“I mean exactly that.”
“Really? Last time I saw you, you had a tree branch sticking out the center of your chest.”
She removed the mask completely and tossed it aside. Then with the slightest grin she unfastened the first few buttons of her smock. In the center of her chest and slightly to the left was a dark ring of dried blood. She said, “I heal quickly.” It sounded more like an apology than an explanation.
“I don’t get it. I mean, why?”
Diane K. buttoned her smock and stood up. “Think of it as a fable with you and I as characters.”
“But why me?”
She walked to the door and cracked it open. “That’s something you’ll need to find out for yourself.”
Diane K. slipped out and closed the door behind her.
I looked around for something to throw—nothing in an arm’s reach so I settled for a choice remark. “Thanks for the update you crazy bitch.”
Rochester General – Week Four
“The rest you know. I left the hospital on crutches three days later. I thought the whole thing was behind me, but I couldn’t get what happened out of my head. Those creatures—that thing, and Diane K.—they kept popping into my head like bad flashbacks. Nancy tried to help, I think, but by the time my legs were healed, my head was a bio-hazard.”
“And it was Nancy who suggested you take some time off, is that right?” Amanda crosses her legs and hands me back the print out of the story.
“No, you keep it.” She nods and tucks it away somewhere in her desk. “It was Nan’s idea. She had to push a little. It all worked out okay. You’ve been great.”
“Thanks.”
“But I think I need to move on. You know? I’ve already taken too much time off.”
“That’s your choice, of course. But…”
By now, I know Amanda’s style. This is what I call her “hanging but,” the eternal ellipsis where I’m meant to give pause, as they say in therapist-speech. The pun is intentional and in this case—
“There are no buts Amanda.”
She smiles, a tiny but nonetheless delightful smile. She stares off into space for a moment. “Fable. Interesting.”
“How’s that.”
“If I remember my tenth-grade English class, a fable is meant to convey some universal moral truth. So I was just wondering…”
Again with the hanging ellipsis. “What?”
“What I could learn from your little fable.” For the first time in four weeks, she sounds more like a friend than a therapist.
“Well as Diane K. would say, the answer to that is something you’ll need to discover for yourself.”
Copyright © 2010 Donald W. Bacon
09-May-2010