William stands in the middle of his apartment, unsure of how much time has elapsed since getting out of the hospital. The place is a mess. William looks around at the cluttered walls, the debris-strewn floor, and books piled in precarious towers.
“You could have been so much more.” The voice that is not Jim Morrison says. “But you had to get wise and ruin your shot.”
“I know what you are planning. I saw it in my dreams in the hospital.” William hears a barking sound that must be laughter erupt in his head.
“And what are we planning, William?”
“The islands are already built. Debt will be weaponized. Those who can’t work it off will be terminated. Individuals with billions of dollars can’t stand the idea of a planet with billions of people with material needs, so billions will die. Peter Thule will lead the purge, carrying on Crowley and Parson’s work. New Cascadia will rise, but only to maintain supply lines to the islands until they have what they need to leave the planet. They know the date when fire will purify the land. They have prepared the moon for their long sleep, then, when the time is right, they will return to Eden on Earth.”
“And you could have helped raise the alarm with songs that would have made you rich and famous, but your skepticism is too evolved. Too bad for you, William.”
“So what happens to me now?”
“You can stay and burn, or run.”
“What?”
“The fire has already started, William. Take a breath.”
William is suddenly aware of smoke creeping from the crack beneath his bedroom door.
“Fuck you, demon, I’m not letting you kill me.”
“Demon is a very antiquated concept, William. It would be more accurate to call us necromancers. We were enlisted long ago for this work.”
William closes his eyes and uses all his will power to break the trance-like state he’s stuck in. The smoke is getting bad, billowing now from the crack. William grabs one of his journals and some clothes and quickly stuffs his bike-bag. William exits the room filling with smoke, fleeing into the brisk Zula night.
*
“You’ve been mentally somewhere else all night.” Tavin’s wife, Maxine, says with a tinge of annoyance. Tavin exacerbates the annoyance by clearly not hearing what she said. “Tavin!”
“What, sorry, I didn’t hear you.” Maxine narrows her eyes, then goes over to the mechanical rocker where the baby is fussing for attention.
“What’s got you so distracted?”
“Remember six years ago when I got obsessed with that long poem I was writing?”
“Um, yeah, you were damn near impossible to talk to, like you’ve been tonight. Please don’t tell me you’re going back to writer mode.”
“I don’t know, I just came across something today that has got me thinking hard on some stuff. I need to let it marinate first.”
“How about you marinate your hands in dish-water while your brain stews?” Maxine suggests in a manner that suggests it’s not really a suggestion.
“Sure, honey, I’ll get right on that.” Tavin says with a wry smile.
Later, with all the responsibilities of domestic life put to bed with the kids, Tavin walks down the hallway to the back kitchen/bedroom space. Since moving into the much more spacious house than his family had previously inhabited, Tavin has luxuriated in the ability to retire to a more remote space away from the maddening chaos of his two boys. Baby girl, the most recent addition, is in her mom’s room at the other end of the long hallway.
Tavin turns on his computer to check his various media accounts. Having once harbored delusions of writing a novel, only the rage of the blogosphere remains.
The long, weird poem Tavin banged away on for a whole year is now six years old and gathering dust in a bottom drawer. No combination of various excerpts from his opus interested any of the small presses. Long poems smack of poetic arrogance. No one wants another Wasteland.
As the computer starts up, Tavin leans over and reaches for the backpack, where the journal waits, occluded from sight. He takes it out.
Hours later he puts it down, shaken to the core.
*
Waking to the sounds of kids getting ready for school downstairs, Tavin looks at his phone and sees that he slept in. Shit, he thinks, scrambling for sweat pants.
The coffee is hot; toast, buttered. The rest is a blur.
Going to work is a welcome distraction from the storm brewing in Tavin’s head. What he saw in the journal can’t be just coincidence. This William Skink character, who the hell is he really? A shudder of foreboding piques Tavin’s nervous system. Something is not right.
At work, in the basement of the shelter where Tavin has an office he barely uses, an email from his contact at the Zula Police Department gets his attention. Something about a fire at a location where Tavin had just taken a discharged patient. Oh shit, Tavin thinks, William Skink!
Tavin picks up his office phone and dials.
“Hey Glen, it’s Tavin. Please don’t tell me my discharge yesterday turned into a firebug after I dropped him off.”
“No, no, no, arson is not being looked at with this…William Skink is it?”
“Yep, that’s him. He wasn’t much of a conversationalist when I picked him up from the Providence Center, but he seemed too dazed to get himself into too much trouble. Was he injured in the fire?”
“No, that’s the thing. He’s missing.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, and I know you got some unstable admirers already, so I thought I should let you know your business card was pinned to the center of a pretty fucked up collage of images cut out from art magazines.”
“Great.”
“So let us know if you hear from him. It sounds like the property management company will hold his belongings for 30 days in a storage unit, then it gets tossed.”
“Sure thing, Glen, thanks.”
“How many days you got left, Tavin?”
“Too many if this shit gets any weirder. I’ve got his pack and a journal, which I made the mistake of taking a peak at.”
“Let it go, Tavin. This one can be someone else’s problem.”
“Sounds like good advice, thanks Glen.”
“Anytime.”
Tavin hangs up, shaking his head. Just one more reason to get the hell out of this job and, if it was up to just him, the whole damn town.
The Zula Tavin remembers moving to 15 years ago was a bliss-filled playground of discovery for a spoiled shit-heel like himself, getting “educated” at the University as little as possible between binge drinking and drug experimentation.
Somehow, through the haze, Tavin managed to meet Maxine, tie the knot, and make babies. And for years the job at the shelter was exhilarating enough to warrant the risk and shitty pay, but at some point on the front lines of social work one accumulates too much vicarious trauma to continue the futile triage of managing something like homelessness in a super-power nation managing a global empire experiencing slow-motion collapse.
A knock on the door interrupts Tavin’s train of thought. Through the window he sees a familiar face.
“What can I do for you, Tee-Pee?” Tavin says after opening the door.
“Quick talk?”
“Sure, what’s up?”
Tee-Pee shuffles into Tavin’s office, twisting to get his long duffel bag through the doorway. After discarding the bag with an audible huff, Tee-Pee sits down.
“What’s the word on the street, Tee-Pee?”
“Word is you may be looking for someone, and I think I know where he went.”
“Shit, Tee-Pee, you get information quicker than Twitter. Yeah, I’m looking for a guy I helped get out of the hospital yesterday, you know him?”
“Yes, I know him. And I don’t think he’s just some youngster going schizo, although that’s probably what it looks like.”
“And where do you think he went?”
“I think he went up north, to the billionaire buddah garden.”
Tavin chuckles. Tee-Pee is referring to the lavish retreat built by Eleanor Putzrag, heir to the Putzrag fortune.
“What makes you think that’s where he went?”
Instead of replying verbally, Tee-Pee reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a folded brochure, handing it to Tavin.
“Ah, I see.” Tavin looks over the sleek, glossy trifold advertisement to the buddah garden retreat. When he opens it, there’s a message scrawled in black magic marker:
T.P.,
ALL MY STUFF IS EVIL. SHELTER GUY SEEMS OK, NO VOICES IN HIS PRESENCE. TELL HIM I WILL WRITE MORE SOON.
W.S.
“Great, this is just what I need.” Tavin says under his breath.
“Huh?” Tee-Pee says.
“Oh, nothing. I’m just tired is all.”
“Right.” Tee-Pee says.
“You saw his message here, right?” Tavin inquires.
“Sure I did.”
“And you don’t think he’s batshit crazy?”
“Aren’t you homeless professionals supposed to be more…”
“Professional? Usually, but I’m almost done with all that.”
“I heard.”
“See what I mean? Everyone knowing everyone’s business on the streets, but never snitching when meth heads are rolling old homeless guys on the river trail, right? And you can’t be snitches when rapists and murderers are prowling around, right?”
“Right, because we won’t be protected like you upstanding citizens with houses to retreat to if we do.”
“Sorry, Tee-Pee, I know, it’s just getting to me.”
“I heard you got attacked behind the Mission last week.”
“Yeah, and he didn’t spend one fucking hour in jail, unlike the old guy in jail for not paying his fine for sitting where he wasn’t supposed to sit downtown. Fucking Zula.”
“I hear you.” Tee-Pee says.
“Right, so this loony William is up north meditating with the billionaire buddah peddler and I have his evil belongings in my truck. Wonderful.” Tavin exhales sharply.
“Glad to help.” Tee-Pee says.
“You have always helped, seriously, Tee-Pee, thank you. I really appreciate it.”
Tee-Pee nods silently, then grabs his bag and exits the office. Tavin sits in his chair for a bit, wondering what to do next. Leave it alone, he thinks. But he knows he won’t.
*
After being tugged a dozen different directions in the remaining hours of his work day, as is the nature of working poverty triage, Tavin shuts himself tight in the cab of his truck.
Fuck it, Tavin thinks, why not? A little road trip would be nice. I’m sure Max will understand. Buddah garden, here I come.
Tavin pulls away from the parking lot, trying to leave work behind him. The therapist had suggested visualizing putting the stress of work into a box or pocket or something, then doing things consciously upon returning home to signal transition. Tavin puts a pungent load in his glass piece instead before activating the music device. Therapy.
Shuffle’s random selection—Staring at the Sun, by TV on the Radio—has Tavin’s fingers doing the tap-tap-tap on the steering wheel as he zips into traffic onto Broadway, toward the interstate. Before careening at high speed toward Starlee, the little town on the edge of the rez where the Buddah garden begins, Tavin knows he needs to put in the call.
“Are you going to be late?” Maxine asks immediately upon answering the call, kid chaos very audible in the background. Uh oh, Tavin thinks. Not good. “I’m, um, not coming home tonight.”
Long pause.
“Are you kidding me?”
“I know I know I know, and this is why I’m not going to be doing this job. Soon, babe.”
“What are you doing? Do I even want to know?”
“It’s nothing like that, Max. The guy I transported from the hospital yesterday had an apartment that started on fire, then he flew the coop. It might be helpful if I found him before the police.”
“Was it arson or something?”
“No, but I think I may have made an impression on this guy. I have to follow up on this, I’m sorry.”
“Ok, fine.”
Click.
*
After gassing up, Tavin beelines for Starlee, music blaring. Nothing better than driving fast and listening to music to alleviate the burden of watching the madness of late-stage capitalism go terminal.
Inevitably Tavin’s mind wanders as the scenery peels off, revealing mountains behind more mountains. The state of affairs with the election looming is beyond crazy, Tavin thinks. With Ronald Rump free-styling rhetorical firecrackers like a child without adult supervision on the 4th of July, and Mallory Minton brazenly ignoring the growing disdain over her well-documented corruption and possible felonious mishandling of classified documents, who knows what will come next.
The damn blog, Tavin suddenly thinks, why even bother? How many lost hours wasted staring at a screen, arranging a collage of links, quotes and commentary maybe a dozen people read with any regularity. It seems futile, Tavin thinks despairingly, as he climbs Clevero Hill.
As Tavin’s train of thought slowly derails, he becomes aware of the music. When the Music’s Over, by The Doors.
Cancel my subscription to the resurrection
Send my credentials to the house of detention
I’ve got some friends inside…
Tavin suddenly gets a chill.
Last week Tavin came across a blog by a guy named Dave McGowan about the dark heart of the hippie dream. He devoured the weird connections between the musical gurus of the 60’s counter-culture and the intelligence network entangling America’s social fabric in drugs and paranoia. Though Tavin has read up on the evil perpetrated by the CIA, this twist is edgy and new, and, for Tavin, even more unsettling because it involves music he loves from a time period he thought he understood.
Purposely shifting back, Tavin again wonders: why keep trying; why keep patching on band-aids like he has been doing for 7 years at the shelter? The blog was supposed to be an artistic outlet, but instead turned into a compulsion of documenting the dark reality of American imperialism—an evil, malign force draining tax dollars for a global war it cannot win.
What have I accomplished? Tavin thinks as the scenery outside rolls by. I work inside this beast of a system, get chewed up, scream about the madness of it all, and what happens? More studies to come up with more plans that describe great solutions, if only there was the money. But there’s never the money. They can ALWAYS find $25,000 for some ugly public art for a fucking dog park, but they can’t find money to pay for drug treatment.
The experiences Tavin has had over the years slowly transformed his bleeding heart into a more cynical libertarian muscle with a pounding disdain for the liberal elitists who keep parachuting in to this in-land mountain utopia; a utopia where tens of millions of dollars goes toward new parks and open space bonds while the impoverished, the elderly, the mentally ill and the addicted cycle through hospitals, jails and nursing homes.
And now these same elitists are trying to push Mallory Minton on a population grown weary of liberal platitudes over social wedge issues designed to distract voters from the collusion of wealth and power that totally corrupts every political creature, regardless of political affiliation.
Fuck that noise, Tavin thinks.
Realizing he’s getting close, Tavin consults his phone for more specific directions. I’m not a detective, Tavin reminds himself, trying to dispel his growing nervousness. But the strange journal wasn’t the kind of personal artifact Tavin could just ignore.
Ignoring shit, wouldn’t that be nice? Tavin hears Maxine’s frustrated voice in his head. You don’t have any problem ignoring the kids to check your goddamn phone all the time, she would say. Has said. Will say again. Fuck.
Tavin’s phone talks him through the final stretch. The road is bumpy. Suddenly it dips, and the wooded surroundings of the last two miles breaks into an open field. An immense rock outcropping provides a stunning backdrop to the low, sleek retreat structure built in what appears to be a closely fit encirclement around the jagged rock formation jutting dramatically across the horizon line.
Wow, Tavin thinks. This wasn’t cheap.
There is no place Tavin can see to park. A footpath leads to the retreat, but the road continues on, so Tavin keeps driving. It winds to the left and eventually comes to the other side of the rock formation, where seven large circles topped with rust-red gravel appear.
Tavin parks. Outside, the wind is blowing hard in powerful gusts. Circular stone footsteps lead to the rock formation. As Tavin gets closer, he can see a feint rectangular outline in the rock.
Not until Tavin gets right up close is the door really discernible. It’s made of some composite material that has the same texture of the rock, and the coloring makes it blend in almost seamlessly.
Suddenly the rectangular shape pushes out as an unseen motor whirrs into action. Tavin takes a quick step back as what appears to be a large section of the rock inches forward. When the motor stops, Tavin walks around to the right of the protruding shape pushed out of the rock and sees the real door. A glass panel slides open. After a slight hesitation, Tavin walks in.
Inside the walls drip with water. The water disappears into grates that line the edge of the floor. Holes in the ceiling look like core samplings cut through the stone and seem to be letting in real sunlight.
There is a low, sleek glass table, three minimalist chairs, and what appears to be a receptionist desk made of stone that blends almost too neatly into the wall. Tavin takes a seat in the chair farthest from the desk.
Beyond the desk a curtain rustles a bit before being parted by a tall woman dressed in a dark-red, rough looking gown slashed by a shoulder-to-hip piece of bright golden fabric.
“May I help you?” The woman asks with a perfectly polite smile.
“Yes, I’m here to see a patient currently residing here, his name is William Skink.”
“Are you a member of his family?”
“Not unless you consider all humans as one big family.” Tavin exclaims with a slight smile. Unfortunately Tavin’s New Age humor does not have the desired effect. The woman simply stares at him until Tavin continues. “No, I’m not family, but I have personal items that he will probably want.”
“I’m sorry, no material possessions from a patient’s former life are necessary here. We provide the basic essentials for survival while working on establishing a healthy spiritual foundation to promote recovery. If you would like to leave a note, I will consult with William’s care team so we can determine when he is ready to receive correspondences from the outside world.”
“How about I write him a poem?” William asks. The woman stares back, blankly. “Ok, a note then. Can I mail it here? I’m not quite sure what to say yet, I’ll have to give it some thought.”
“Yes, here is a card with our mailing address.” Tavin takes the card. “Thank you.”
Walking back to his car, Tavin can’t shake a feeling that something isn’t right.
*
I tried to visit you, William, but they said you hadn’t stabilized yet, and that I should leave a note. Well, here it is. I don’t know if you remember me helping you get out of the hospital, but before you took off I tried to find you because the hospital gave me your backpack. I wanted to get your belongings back to you, but the woman I talked to refused to take it, so I still have it.
I have to make a confession. I looked at your journal with the poems and ink drawings and collages and I must admit I was blown away. I was looking for clues to where you disappeared to, so I didn’t intend to violate your privacy, but after I opened your journal I had an overwhelming feeling that all this has happened before, more than just déjà-vu.
I don’t know if they will let you write me back, but if you are so inclined, let me know what you would like me to do with your stuff. I can keep it until you’re ready to have it, or if there is someone else I could turn it over to, please let me know.
I know how strange this must sound to have someone you don’t know writing you like this. I can’t explain it, but I think I am supposed to help you somehow. I also write poetry, William, but a few years ago, after an intense year pouring myself into writing a long, long poem, the muse left me high and dry and I haven’t written anything since. The structure of the poem is an appeal to “poet William”, which you can appreciate is a rather disorienting coincidence for me after running across your material. I picked that name because of all the poets named William: William Shakespeare, William Blake, William Butler Yeats, William Carlos Williams, William Stafford—so many amazing poets I figured there had to be something to the name, some strange resonance over time amongst the William-set of poets that has made such an impression on me over the years.
Anyway, I’m sure this is enough to digest for right now, so I’ll promptly shut up and await further instruction.
Yours truly (do they even say that even more in the 21st century?)
Tavin McPhearson
Tavin seals the envelope and puts it in a postal drop box outside the main office in Killaspell. What did I just do, Tavin thinks.
*
A few weeks later, at work, Tavin gets his response, delivered by Tee-Pee.
“Here you go, white savior homeless outreach guy.” Tee-Pee says with great ceremony as he hands Tavin the letter. “I got this in my PO Box. It’s for you.”
“Oh, thank you.” Tavin says, taking the letter.
“You’re not getting involved with those kooks up there are you?” Tee-Pee asks, point blank. “There’s all kinds of rumors on the rez about what they’re up to.”
“Yeah, like what?” Tavin asks.
“Water.” Tee-Pee says. “The Dragon is thirsty, I guess.” Tee-Pee shrugs his shoulders, then exits without another word.
Tavin opens the letter. It’s hand written on lined paper that appears to have been ripped out of a journal or notebook.
*
TM-
I wasn’t supposed to see your letter, but I did. There is a guy on the landscaping crew from the reservation who got it to me. He knows there’s bad magick here, so he’s helping me reach out to you.
I’m being used to communicate with something called the Counsel of the Nine. I don’t remember much from the sessions, but it has something to do with the songs I was writing. They realized I am a conduit so they “plugged me in” to this dark place where I open and pass their messages through.
I was already picking up their shadowy conniving, but now I’m beginning to understand what PKD meant when he said the empire never ended.
Somehow song vibrations are an actual threat to these final stages of their long work. Where they are keeping me, I can’t sing, but you can, Tavin. And that’s what I need you to do.
Listen, Ronald Rump is going to win the election and it’s going to start a new phase that will lead to a significant reduction of the global population. America is going to experience a controlled demolition and the only autonomous zone will be a region called New Cascadia.
You have the eyes to see. You have the resources to create. Prepare to sing.
And prepare to bury knowledge until it’s ready to be discovered.
One more thing, and this is important. All my books are being kept in a storage unit operated by Lambolt, the property management company. Those books are very, very important. Please help me by getting them and keeping them safe.
Thank you.
-WS