The announcement that we would be boarding in five minutes broke through my thoughts, scattered them. I had gained a little more, however. If I could just remember some of the details and some of the people involved…
Had the announcement served as a cue for the neurosis brigade to make its entrance, stage-left? Nothing had changed, but everything had changed. The pressure was back. A before-the-storm feeling, a feeling of imminent doom, was crowding in around me again. I could feel my grip on rational thought-processes loosening…
But I’d been through it once and had survived. And this would be the last time. I swore that I would board no matter what. I rehearsed all of my defenses. I coiled into the fluctuating systems which surrounded me, into the flight display unit, working my way to the control tower, passing through its ever-changing batteries of data, weaving flight and weather information as on a great bright loom…
The boarding announcement came. When I rose and faced the tunnel, displaying my boarding pass to the attendant, there was a wavering, a darkening. I stared into a dank and shadowy cave, serpentine forms writhing upon its walls.
With my remaining objectivity, I estimated fifty paces to its turning, saw that there was no one before me, closed my eyes, extended my left hand to the side and counted them off, concentrating the while on the counting, the walking…
Fifty!
I opened my eyes then, saw that I was almost there and ran. I took the turn, passed into a larger, longer version of the death-wagon, and begged a steward to show me to my seat.
“Forgot my glasses,” I whined. “Can’t read the numbers…”
He was sympathetic, even if he did develop a third eye, orange skin and green hair on the way back to 10A, a window seat
I strapped in, kicked my bag under the seat before me and huddled, trembling. The murmuring voices all about me seemed part of a sinister conspiracy, directed toward myself. I cursed, I prayed, and finally I coiled again, remaining a part of the plane’s systems until we were airborne.
But distractions would come. It was a long flight.
I heard the steward ask me whether I wanted a drink. I told him to bring me a double Scotch and passed him the money, intentionally not looking at him. In doing so, however, I glanced toward the window.
There was no window. It was all open air, as I had somehow known it would be. Stormclouds boiled beneath us. We were riding in a long, wide, open cart, and before us, tossing their curled horns and blowing fire, a thunder-black team of demonic horses dragged us toward a distant mountainpeak—Brocken, I knew—where fires flashed and a giant shadow swayed in the sky, tiny figures dancing below it…
And my fellow passengers—ugly, malevolent, bats darting about them, black cats in their laps, a prevalence of handmade brooms. We were headed for a witches’ sabbath, and of course I knew who was to be the sacrifice…
My drink arrived—a sickly yellow-green in color, with drops of an oily substance floating on its surface.
I took it and closed my eyes. I sniffed it. It was Scotch. I took a large swallow and coughed. It was Scotch.
It warmed my belly like an explosion. I kept my eyes closed. I told myself that I was aboard an airplane headed for Philadelphia. I reached out and touched the cold glass of the window. I felt the back of the seat before me. Silently, I recited what I could remember of the Gettysburg Address. I listened to the flight computer for a time. I thought of Cora…
Yes, Cora. I’m coming. They’re not going to stop me that easily—just a few demons, ghouls, assorted monsters. I know I’m making them up just to keep the trip interesting, to square my mental and emotional accounts. I’m not going crazy. The next time you see me, I’ll be eminently rational as a result. I look upon all of this as cathartic, a beneficial working-out of everything that’s been bothering me at the most basic levels. I’m not going crazy. Honestly, Cora, I can’t be going crazy at this point, can I? It would be the ultimate in irony to gain so much—you, my own identity—and then to blow it all by going off the deep end. No, I have to believe that all of this is serving a higher end—rationality. It must, it must…
I took another drink. Better. A little bit better now. Whatever was there hadn’t hurt me so far. And wasn’t the coven relaxing with drinks of its own now, anyway? Sigh, BelPatri. When did you give up smoking? It seems that you used to…
And then the hand was tipped, and I knew that I had been had.
“Would you care for a snack, sir?”
Automatically, I opened my eyes as I replied in the negative. The steward was still monstrous, but my gaze went past him, out, down, into the open temple of columns, blocks, statuary above which we were passing, where youths played flutes and maidens danced. And there, in its midst, upon a kind of altar between flaming braziers, two gray old women were dismembering a child with their bare hands, tearing at it, crushing the bones in their jaws, blood streaming from their mouths. They became aware of my gaze. They turned and shook their fists. It was horrible, yet it was also familiar. It was—“ ‘Snow’,” I said aloud. “ ‘Snow’! God damn you! I remember!” It was Hans Castorp’s dream in the chapter titled “Snow” in Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain—which I had read in a Lit. course back in college, which I had mentioned to Ann, discovering that she, too, had read the book. We had spent an entire evening discussing the significance of that scene, of the merging of the Apollonian and Dionysiac, the Classical and the formless, intellect and emotion-She knew what an impression it had made upon me once. I took a deep breath. I smelled lilies of the valley. The aroma had been with me all along, subliminal, overwhelmed by the sensory assaults.
My dear Ann, I said silently, if you are capable of hearing what I am thinking right now—screw you! You slipped up on that one. I know what you’re doing. I know where you’re coming from. It’s not good enough.
The view below me wavered, grew insubstantial. I was sitting in an airplane, with normal people. I was not going crazy, my psyche was not turning itself inside-out. She was somehow projecting hallucinations at me. But that was all that they were—all shadow and no substance.
Minutes later, they returned. We were being attacked by super-fast pterodactyls which tore pieces out of the wings. I regarded them coldly for a time and then closed my eyes again. They were still distracting, and I wanted to think about important matters, like what I was going to say to my former employers when I reached their headquarters.
Chapter 6
nd came down, as the man said.
The sea-green Ouroboros serpent which had wrapped itself around the plane faded as we entered the landing pattern. We swept in, touched down perfectly and taxied to our gate with no delays.
As I emerged from the tunnel, this one uncluttered with horrors, an airline agent—a short, dark-haired stock character in a crisp uniform—approached me.
“Mr. BelPatri?”
“Yes.”
“Donald BelPatri?”
“Right.”
“Would you come this way, please?”
I took a couple of steps with him, out of the traffic. Then, “Where are you taking me?” I asked.
“The VIP lounge, sir.”
“Now why would you want to do that?”
“There is a gentleman there, waiting to see you.”
“And who might that be?”
“I don’t know his name, sir.”
“Well…” I said. “Let’s go and find out.”
I walked with him for a time. We finally turned up a short corridor. He opened the door and showed me in.
There were four people in the lounge, three men and a woman. Two of the men were flunkies, I could see that right away—large, young and athletic-looking, with open-necked shirts under light jackets; clean-cut; bodyguard types. They were standing behind the older, jovial-seeming, white-haired man who sat at a table, facing me. He wore a dark, well-tailored jacket, white shirt, somber necktie. There was a bottle of mineral water on the table, and the three of them held glasses of clear, sparkling liquid. Not so the woman. She held a big, wicked-looking drink in an old-fashioned glass. She was seated at the man’s right. Arresting features and complexion—quadroon, I’d say—with very bleached hair. Somewhere around forty. Had on a pretty yellow blouse with ruffles, a strand of dark beads about her neck. Stouter now than I remembered her, I saw, as she rose along with the man, to greet me. Her name was Marie—Marie Melstrand—I knew, as suddenly as I could recall having known her before. I couldn’t remember much else about her, though. Both of them smiled at me.