In the thin shaft of the flashlight’s beam, he examined the scratches and runnels on his forearms. Even now, some sort of infection or contamination could be racing through his system, poisoning his brain. Raintree wanted his own brand of poison.
The acid was soaked into a tiny square of paper, waiting to form a mushroom cloud in the user’s head. Lysergic acid diethylamide was known to scramble serotonin levels, distort perception, and confound the DEA. Raintree wasn’t a chronic acid head. After a brief love affair with the drug, like most space cadets, he’d found the experience was best when saved for a special occasion.
Like a date with his spirit guide.
He put the dose to his tongue and swallowed. He wouldn’t sleep tonight, though he could probably ramp down on the amphetamine doses and turn up the volume on the Valium. For the next twelve hours, he wouldn’t be able to fully trust his senses. The discipline and self-control that had made him a wrestling champion would be given up to uncertainty, confusion, and a golden, illuminated doorway to the Other.
On an intellectual level, he knew any encounter with a spirit guide would be a hallucination. The goal of a vision quest, as least in the original form, was to push yourself to the limits of endurance, exhaustion, and hunger, then fall into a stupor of delirium. In the twenty-first century, vision quests were chartered field trips run by corporations that provided satellite television, refrigeration, and catered dinners so the customers could experience their inner selves in comfort and style.
Raintree switched off the light and listened. A low moan ran through the dark beyond. The wind. The night breeze finding cracks in the ancient stone.
He was well aware that he might die while tripping. Some LSD users flipped out, developed schizophrenic delusions, and went into psychotic fugues. In such a state, Raintree would be helpless against the attacking creatures. He touched the pitons in his belt and smiled.
Somehow, he didn’t figure it that way.
He recalled the surge of fear, the struggle on the cliff wall, the creature clinging to his back. And his thrusting of the steel spike into the creature’s head.
That was power. That was a vision worth pursuing and celebrating.
The trip of life and death.
Did God have bones?
The wind changed pitch and became a whale’s submarine song.
Salamanders became oil in these mountains.
He wasn’t sure how long he sat in the dark. The blackness pressed against him, snug as SealSkinz. He checked the watch. A quarter after twelve. Half an hour had passed since ingestion. His feet were balloons, his hands were sand. They seeped toward the flashlight.
He flicked it on. He couldn’t tell which way to go. Both directions looked the same, and either could be the throat of Hell.
He sat for another ten minutes. Ten minutes according to the watch. In real time, as marked by his malfeasant synapses, he was still in the Now.
Shit. Maybe tripping wasn’t such a good idea. Vision quests were for the birds, man.
He giggled. Hawks, falcons, and other birds of prey were popular manifestations of the warrior spirit. But since authentic vision quests had been the domain of aspiring warriors, that wasn’t surprising. What Cherokee brave wanted to slink back into camp and report seeing the bluebird of happiness?
That brought another giggle, and his voice sounded much too loud in the stifling space. Echoes were like footsteps on the gritty cavern floor. Like footsteps…
He thumbed the piton and slid it from his belt.
The footsteps were in tune with his breathing, with the beating of his pulse in his ears. His skin itched. He cut the light and listened to the oceanic roar of his lungs. Listened.
In the dark, the Great Spirit came to him. Not as a predator, not as a bat, not as an animal long extinct in the Southern Appalachians, like an elk or red wolf.
No, this was a rabbit. It came up from the cold, clammy darkness with its own luminescence, eyes casting a green, milky light. The thing was blind, because it kept bumping into stones. It paused near Raintree’s feet, sniffing the air with its ears laid back against its neck. Then it parted its lips-showing two sharpened incisors. The bunny faded to gray, then to black, its eyes dousing themselves. The teeth were the last to disappear.
Then Raintree realized he’d been staring at the LED readout on the watch.
The numbers were upside down, disembodied characters floating in the ether. He took a Valium, chewing it so it would race through his stomach lining unencumbered. He checked the watch again. Nearly one o’clock. His shift would be over in less than an hour. He’d let Farrengalli sleep, and then he and Dove could What if Farrengalli had fallen asleep already?
What if the creatures had come into the cave and taken Dove?
He stood, swiveling his head, looking for the lesser darkness that would indicate the mouth of the cave.
That way. Fifty-fifty chance.
He cut the light, but kept it in his left hand, a piton in the right. Ready for anything. Bending, tiptoeing, ears alert for any rustle of wings. A Bugs Bunny cartoon came to mind, the classic episode where Elmer Fudd stopped in his sneaking and told the viewing audience, “Shhh. We-ah hunting wabbits.” Raintree didn’t laugh.
“Follow the light,” preached the New Age sages, those who sold remote-control crystal power for a limited time only, $19.95 plus shipping and handling.
Raintree followed the light, the bluish thread that seemed so small against the oppressive onyx. He expected the beam to be snuffed out at any moment. Behind him, hopping, hopping, hopping. Whiskers whispering. Wabbits walking.
Must be going the wrong way.
He checked the watch again. He’d only been walking for two minutes.
The beam reflected a silver flash on the floor of the cave. Raintree retrieved the wrapper of a granola bar, a ProVentures Plenty, containing whole wheat, oats, and “pure dehydrated cane juice.” The fancy, feel-good name for sugar. Farrengalli was holding out on them. He must have taken all the rations they’d left by the river for the wounded FBI agent.
Raintree played the light behind him, saw no fierce lepine fangs, no menacing, erect ears. He rushed on, sweat breaking out under his arms, soaking his bare chest and shoulders. Even his sense of smell was distorted. The stink of his body resembled rotted roses.
Harsh breathing, whimpers of pain, suppressed grunts. He heard them before he reached the wider opening of the cave’s mouth.
They had been attacked.
While Raintree was on his goofy trip, searching for a Great Spirit who had packed his travois and headed West long ago. He broke into a run, stumbled, fell to his knees, touched the medicine bag as if it were a Catholic’s rosary beads.
Rising, he plunged forward, tossing the light aside, gripping the piton so hard his fingers ached.
He braced himself. If he had wanted a vision, a hell of an opportunity awaited: He imagined the red, ripped flesh, the creatures perched on the bodies of his traveling companions while their heat faded and their blood filled unnatural cavities. He would kill them all, make them pay, use revenge as the Higher Power that had never been strong enough to pull him from the well of addiction. Rage would be his new drug.
Not that he gave a damn about Farrengalli, but Dove didn’t deserve As he entered the gray spill of leaking moonlight, it took his acid-drenched cerebrum a long second, a big stretch of Now, to make sense of what he was seeing.