“Okay,” Paul said, beginning to feel pleased at the DVD quality of his subconscious, “this is pretty good.”
Silhouetted against the beam ahead was a low, squarish outline, and then the flashlights from behind illuminated a scruffy little golf cart, a two seater without an awning, its white side panels dinged and smudged. Out of the dark the hands of pale men guided Paul up onto the passenger seat. Bob Wier squeezed next to him, his knees spread wide around the little steering wheel. He turned the ignition, and the little cart vibrated to life. He switched on the cart’s headlights and stepped on the accelerator, and the cart whirred forward, its fat little tires crunching against the track. Paul looked back to see the pale men standing in a bunch, all of them watching him go, their flashlight beams lancing in every direction. On a sudden whim he stood up in the cart and waved to them with the back of his hand, like departing royalty.
“My good and faithful subjects,” he trilled, in a queenly falsetto. “God bless you all.”
Bob Wier grabbed him by the belt and hauled him back into his seat, just before Paul could be brained by a low hanging rock.
“I just want to say,” said Paul, “that this is the best dream I’ve ever had.”
“Listen, Paul.” Bob Wier’s face was in the dark, while ahead of them the creamy peaks and scallops of the cavern walls glided through the headlamps. “You need to prepare yourself for what’s about to happen.”
“Oh, alright.” Paul settled back in the narrow little seat, feeling more effervescent by the minute. “I’ll play along.”
“They’re going to demand a sacrifice from you tonight.” Bob Wier grimly maneuvered through the dark with both hands on the wheel.
“It’s a kind of hazing, right?” said Paul, blithely. “You guys are going to paddle me or something.”
“It’s the hardest thing you’ll ever do.” Bob Wier’s expression was unreadable in the dark. “Take your wife, your only wife, whom you love, and offer her as a burnt offering.”
“What?” said Paul. “What’d you say?” The buzz of the golf cart reverberated off the cave walls. “What book of the Bible is that?”
“The Book of Bob,” said Bob Wier.
“Well, it’s not funny,” said Paul. “I don’t want it in my dream.”
“I offered her up, thinking, you know, at the last minute the angel of the Lord would intervene.” Bob’s voice was barely audible over the whirr of the motor and the crunch of the tires. “But He didn’t come. God let me down, Paul.” Bob Wier choked and looked away. Paul glanced at him, but all he saw was Bob’s silhouette against the glow of the headlights.
“But then, to be fair,” Bob Wier said, “I’m no Abraham.”
After that they rode in silence, and Paul crossed his arms and sulked. The cart passed several turnoffs and branchings of the cavern, and Bob Wier always took the widest path. The damp breeze blew stronger in their faces, and the walls moved farther back from the pathway, so that much of the time the dim little headlamps illuminated only the pebbled surface of the wide path, with nothing but darkness beyond. This is getting boring, Paul thought, and after a glance at Bob Wier to make sure he wasn’t watching, Paul surreptitiously pinched himself in the thigh, trying to wake himself up. I’d rather be watching Born Free, Paul thought, than riding a golf cart into hell with Bob Wier.
But then he saw a glow up ahead, an illuminated patch of rock beyond the headlights, and Bob lifted his foot from the accelerator and let the cart’s motor grind down to a stop just before a curve. A steady light shone from around the bend, and Bob switched off the ignition and stepped out of the cart, gesturing in the dim light for Paul to follow. Around the curve Paul found himself in the upper reaches of an enormous natural amphitheater, where a rubbled floor descended to meet the sloping ceiling at a narrow point far below. The room was thickly forested with dripping stalactites hung from above and soapy bulges of flowstone below. Some of these formations had joined in the middle, forming slender, gray-green columns, smooth and knotted like long strands of nerve tissue. A mellow light came from all around, from bulbs set in nooks and crannies and linked by loops of fat cable.
Bob Wier led Paul down a narrow path that wound between the columns and the stalactites, and Paul had the feeling that he was walking through the strings and lumps and tissues of somebody’s brain. My brain, he decided. That’s where I am. I’m dreaming of a journey to the center of my own head. He laughed aloud with delight. This dream was turning out to be a concatenation of every subterranean narrative he’d ever read or seen, from highbrow to lowbrow and every brow in between, a Mixmastering of Dante and Jules Verne, of Tom Sawyer and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, of the Mines of Moria and the Hall of the Mountain King. He looked up and was well pleased with the fecundity of his subconscious. The ceiling was forested with pale, almost translucent soda straws, and seamed with small stalactites like jagged mountain ranges seen from above. To either side, in niches like private boxes at the farther reaches of the amphitheater, the formations were growing together like connective tissue, and out of these crannies the pale faces of homeless guys watched Paul. He thought he heard a steady murmuring; it wasn’t the usual—“Are we not men?”—but something else that he couldn’t make out.
The air was cooler as they descended but more humid, and Paul thought he smelled something other than the dank air of the cave, something that reached to the back of his nostrils. But he couldn’t place it, and he mopped his forehead and flung the sweat away from his fingertips. Bob Wier had sweated a wide streak down the back of his polo shirt, and he seemed to be gasping even more than the exertion demanded. They had reached the lowest circle of the amphitheater, where a passage led to an even brighter chamber beyond. The wind was coming from that narrow gap, and Paul thought gleefully, what next? Trolls? Dinosaurs? A Balrog? The circle of panders, seducers, and flatterers?
“Hey, Bob,” said Paul. “Mind if I call you Virgil?”
Bob Wier stopped and glanced with wide-eyed anxiety back up the slope. Paul turned too, to see several pale men with flashlights trooping down the path from above — How’d they get here so fast? Paul wondered, then thought, fuck it, don’t ask, it’s a dream — while others filtered out of the crannies, stepping carefully down the slope around the soapy bulges of stalagmites. Their murmuring was getting louder, but Paul still couldn’t make out what they were saying. He turned to go forward again, but Bob Wier held him back with a hand on his shoulder and fixed him with an intent gaze. He lifted his hand from Paul’s shoulder and turned it palm up, offering Paul the ignition key of the golf cart.
“Take it,” he said in a low, urgent voice. “Take it and go back the way we came. It’s not too late for you.”
“Maybe Virgil’s too formal,” Paul said, still determined to get into the spirit of things. “How ’bout just ‘Virge’?”
“I beg you,” breathed Bob Wier, his eyes filling with tears, “in the name of Christ Jesus, go back now. I’m going to hell, but you still have a choice.” He essayed a trembling smile. “ ‘Work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you.’ ” He swallowed hard and said, “Philippians, chapter two, verses twelveand thirteen.”
Paul’s smile faded, and his next remark—“Don’t be a buzz-kill, Bob”—faded on his lips. He glanced down at the key in Bob Wier’s trembling palm, but then it was too late, as the gathering tide of pale men reached the bottom of the path.