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Authors: Marc Laidlaw

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The Orchid Eater (22 page)

BOOK: The Orchid Eater
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The
storefront pulsed with light. He saw with a delayed shock of understanding that
the window above the hedge was not a window at all but an aquarium. Inside the
tank, gray mannequins were swimming. They twitched toward Edgar in the cold
glare of the streetlight, burlap fingers raking the dingy broth for sustenance.
They would soon move directly into the light. Any moment now, he would see
their faces.

“Edgar!” he
screamed.

Edgar
stooped over Mad-Dog, whispering. As he turned around, blindly nodding toward
the sound of his name, Mike saw that Edgar’s face had vanished. The eyeless,
mouthless head had the texture of stretched canvas, but somehow it managed to
grin. Mike struggled to free himself from the press of bodies.

“Open your
eyes,” said a girl.

He hadn’t
known they were shut. He blinked and light streamed in. He saw Edgar helping
Mad-Dog to his feet on the sidewalk. The window was only a dress-shop window.
The mannequins were simply and elegantly mannequins. They could never be
anything else.

He looked
over at the girl beside him. Deep brown eyes; a round white face with high
cheekbones; pale hair pulled back from her high forehead, held in a bandanna
tied off like a gypsy kerchief. His heart leaped with love, as if he had known
her—desired her—forever.

“You’re
okay,” she said.

Then the
door slammed shut again, and the van took off.

It wasn’t as
dark in the van now. The air was full of lingering shapes—tumbling emeralds,
complicated jewels, intricate pieces like interlocking light-flecks in a
kaleidoscope. Leafy vines dripped down from a rainforest canopy. His body felt
as if it were made of wind, fit with wings to carry him over the streets. But
at the same time, he was one of a pack of wolves, all of them chattering and
growling wolf-talk in a dark den. Wolf-monkeys. Was there any such thing?
There was now.
Somehow he
had landed among them; he was a changeling among adopted siblings. Best of
all, he had a beautiful sister he adored, one who loved him completely. Even
now she was licking his throat, purring against him, clasping his paws with her
own.

“Hey,”
Howard said, his voice slurred and blurry. “The dark, it’s something you get
used to when you’re staring at the door like I’m a little kid and the light in
the palace is coming from so far away. . . . 

“Man,
Howie,” Kurtis said. “That is really deep.”

And Howard
began to weep piteously. “You got no right, asshole! I was talking to Craig!”

“Sh, shush,”
said his wolf-girl sweetheart, and then she tore away from him, a painful
separation that left him rocking in the rocking dark. As he heard her
whispering to Howard, a vast and vicious rage began to grow inside him, or else
revealed its immensity for the first time. It was as if he had merely peeled
away a tiny shred of the protective leaden outer coating, allowing an evil
radioactivity to seep out. Her voice, so gentle, seemed the essence of
femininity, calm, comforting. Anger burned through him and destroyed itself,
leaving ashes, desperation, loneliness. How could he rage against such beauty?
Deserted, he would crumple here and die. He would make not a sound of protest
or complaint. He would die gladly having kissed her only once—but he had never
kissed her except in a dream, and his misery knew no limits. It filled the
empty reaches his rage had eaten into him for eons.

It was a
form of resurrection when her fine cool hands returned. “He’s been having a
hard time,” she confided. “I guess his best friend died recently.”

“Mine too,”
Mike whispered, not knowing himself exactly what he meant, but she squeezed him
anyway and it was as though she had never left—as if she had been faithful
forever. Her embrace promised a secret world of pleasure leading out of this
world like a flower-stalk soaring up from the mundane worm-tunneled soil and
blooming elsewhere, in a diamond realm. He didn’t know or care if his eyes were
closed or open now. He reached for her and felt her flow into him, as though
they had been twinned together always, one body, one soul.

And yet,
there was something new here. They might have been soulmates for eternity, but
one crucial connection had never been made. It was a purely physical
thing—unbearably so. He became suddenly and painfully aware of his dick, an
adamant wand shoved into a pocket, gouging him insistently, bringing him down
from the dizzy heights. His balls ached from the nearness of fulfillment,
release.

Had she felt
it, he suddenly wondered, nudging or prodding her? How could she not have? And
who was she anyway? He didn’t care, as long as
It
could finally happen. His rite of
manhood; his initiation. Had it come to him finally, here and now? If so, he
was willing to accept it even in the crowded van, where it was dark enough to
forget everything else.

Then she
drew away from him.

“Where are
you going?”

“Goin’
nowhere, man,” someone answered—but not her.

“Where—?” He
reached for her, but she was gone. He had repelled her for some reason, so she
had left him. just like that. And not for just
any
reason. His dick had done
it. Beyond his control, like an outright enemy—traitor!—it had reared up and
threatened or disgusted her.

“Don’t be
scared,” she whispered in his ear. “I’m here, love.”

But how
could she be here when he couldn’t feel her? She had been beside him, and now
she was gone. Arms he thought he’d put around her were wrapped instead around
himself.

He gulped at
rational thought like a dolphin breaching for air, and then the descent began,
the depth-sounding.

As the
darkness grew impenetrable, he feared to move, feared his body might betray him
in some mortal fashion. Spiders crept across him, furry tarantulas and
chitinous shiny black widows taking delicate eight-legged steps, brushing his
flesh daintily, extruding their hollow curved fangs to pierce him, poison him,
and suck him dry. If he moved they would sense him in the web. He was trapped
already, wrapped in sticky silk, doomed in the end like any other insect. If he
could only stay still, prolong it—

But no. His
body hummed like a piano wire, taut with repressed screaming. He hurled
himself at the stretched-out moon that hung mockingly in the sky, a pale
parallelogram. The air filled with shouting; birds and bats seized him in their
wings, trying to drag him down, but he clawed his way through them, fighting to
get at the light. Spiral galaxies, bright nebulae, exploding stars—all went
streaming through the light, which from certain angles resembled a windshield.
He had to get out, more than ever now that the spiders had started calling him
by name.

Tenacious
vermin, they dragged him back, threw him down on their carpeted web and sat
upon him. Gulliver among invisible Lilliputians, prone on the floor of a
rumbling cave.

A flash of
light caught his attention, trapped his soul. Hanging in space like Macbeth’s
dagger, blood dripping from a serrated edge, he saw it take on form:

His key.

The lost,
surrendered, stolen key.

Emotions and
images streamed from the key. It was the radiant star that lit up every dread.
He had kept his terror locked away for centuries—all his guilts and
insecurities, his nightmares and doubts; and not only his alone, but those of
all men. Every monster they had chased into the night and shut out beyond the
fortress door was fighting for possession of that key. He had locked that door
himself, as had Beowulf, and with this very key. But it was his no longer. The
monsters needn’t roar and pound at the gate. They owned the key, and no one but
Mike knew it. They were free to come and go as they wished. When they wished.

Soon, they
whispered. Very soon.

The key
dangled before his eyes, but out of reach. The hand that held it poised unseen.
He shut his eyes and saw it still, glimmering like a piece of the moon. It lay
in his palm, beside a knife—a switchblade. He admired the way the moonlight
caught its edges. Like the knife blade, it was silver. And like the knife, it
was a weapon.

He was
moving through a thicket, crouching low, with the key held out ahead of him
like a lantern, or a magnet pulling him along. He smelled sagebrush, sharp and
resinous; he heard footsteps all around him and saw the shadows of companions
from the corners of his eyes. Abruptly the branches fell away and the key lit
up with the full force of the moon. He stood on a hillside, craning up at a
tall narrow house, sliding glass windows and wooden decks precariously stacked.
He had never seen it from quite this angle, by moonlight, but he knew it was his
house. Not a light was on anywhere inside it.

Terror and
panic caught him in full flood, bearing him away through ears, eyes, and mouth.
He was swept toward the key, and reached out as if to tear it from himself, to
steal it from his other hand. But the tide of fear swirled him past and the key
went rushing away, dwindling into darkness behind him. The currents swept him
in the opposite direction. He gave up struggling, stopped swimming, let
himself float facedown, sucking at the black waters, hoping he would drown.

Instead he
washed up on a barren shore. Someone was dragging him into faint light.

Edgar spoke
to him cautiously. “Mike . . . you okay?”

He opened
his eyes, seeing red sparks pulling into distance. Taillights. Dusty’s van was
driving away down a dark street. He looked up at the moon, then down at the
earth. He was sitting on Edgar’s front steps.

“Yeah . . .
you look pretty high.”

Mike’s mouth
felt like a new instrument, not yet broken in. “Wha’ happen?”

“Nothing.
And everything.” Edgar’s grin was wide and knowing. “Know what I mean?”

He felt a
sudden conviction that Edgar had been part of his visions, that Edgar had seen
the key and understood the nature of the creatures that controlled it. Even as
he thought this, Edgar nodded and put a hand on his shoulder.

“Riiiiight.
No fear, okay? Let’s get up. I want to try something while the acid’s still
fresh. We’re past the main rush, but we’ll be flying for a good long while yet.
I should warn you, you might be feeling the effects for a few days, since this
is your first time. We’ll drink some beer later to bring us down; I’ve got B-12
in the house. For now, though, do you feel up to another ESP experiment?”

Mike rose
and stretched, not answering yet. His body felt soft, elastic, as if strong
water currents were rushing along his limbs. He took a deep breath and felt it
spreading through his cells; he could feel carbon molecules snagging on the
oxygen before he exhaled.

“This—I
mean, everything you felt and knew and saw . . . that’s what ESP really is,”
Edgar said, leading them back behind the house. “That’s what I keep trying to
say. It’s weird . . . subtle . . . not like a regular voice talking, like I am
now. It’s people thinking the same things at the same time, so you can never
say one of them thought it and the other picked up on it. It’s more, both of
them pick up on it simultaneously, right? Mutual arising, the Buddhists call
it. Everybody creates reality at the same time, you know?”

Mike nodded.
It made visceral, instinctive sense to him at the moment. He could almost see
Edgar’s words forming illustrations in the air.

He felt very
close to Edgar, who had been with him at the darkest time in the van. Guide and
guardian, he remembered suddenly.

“Who . . .
who was that girl?” he asked as they went around to the back of the house.

“You mean
Kurtis’s girlfriend?”

“No, the
other one.”

“Up with
Dusty, you mean? That’s his old lady, Nancy.”

“No, the
other one.”

“What other
one?”

“The third
one. She was . . . you know . . . with me.”

Edgar looked
at him strangely. “There wasn’t any third one. It was just you.”

Mike gaped
at him. “But I—” How could he describe it? Words were unreliable. “I had my
arms around her. I looked right in her eyes. She touched me and . . . and
kissed my face . . .”

“No way,”
Edgar said with awe in his voice.

“She was
there. She had blond hair in, you know, in a scarf. She was so beautiful. You
had to have seen her.”

BOOK: The Orchid Eater
6.67Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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