A depressed Homer Styles went on a binge in the Head of the Slug. He spent four days in an Irish whiskey haze before his money ran out and Mavis Sand sent him to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. (Mavis could tell when a man had hit bottom, and she felt no need to pump a dry well.)
Homer found himself in the meeting room of the First National Bank, telling his story. It happened that at that same meeting a young surfer who called himself The Breeze was working off a court-ordered sentence he had earned by drunkenly crashing a ’62 Volkswagen into a police cruiser and promptly puking on the arresting officer’s shoes.
The farmer’s story touched off an entrepreneurial spark in the surfer, and after the meeting The Breeze cornered Homer with a proposition.
“Homer, how would you like to make some heavy bread growing magic mushrooms?”
The next day the farmer and the surfer were hauling bags of manure into the caves, spreading it over the peat, and scattering a completely different type of spore.
According to The Breeze their crop would sell for ten to twenty dollars an ounce instead of the fifty cents a pound that Homer received for his last crop. Homer was enraptured with the possibility of becoming rich. And he would have, if not for the bats.
As the day of their first harvest neared, The Breeze had to take his leave of their plantation to serve the weekend in the county jail (the first of fifty — the judge had not been amused at having barf-covered police shoes presented as evidence in his courtroom). Before he left, The Breeze assured Homer that he would return Monday to help with the drying and marketing of the mushrooms.
In the meantime, the woman who had been bitten during the debacle of the bats, came down with rabies. County animal-control agents were ordered to the caves to destroy the bat colony. When the agents arrived, they found Homer Styles crouched over a tray of psychedelic mushrooms.
The agents offered Homer the option of walking away and leaving the mushrooms, but Homer refused, so they radioed the sheriff. Homer was led away in handcuffs, the animal-control agents left with their pockets filled with mushrooms, and the bats were left alone.
When The Breeze was released on Monday, he found himself in search of a new scam.
A few months later, while incarcerated at the state prison in Lompoc, Homer Styles received a letter from The Breeze. The letter was covered with a fine yellow powder and read: “Sorry about your bust. Hope we can bury the hatchet.”
Homer buried the letter in a shoe box he kept under his bunk and spent the next ten years living in relative luxury on the profits he made from selling psychedelic mushrooms to the other inmates. Homer sampled his crop only once, then swore off mushrooms for life when he hallucinated that he was drowning in a sea of bats.
35
BAD GUYS, GOOD GUYS
Rachel was drawing figures in the dirt of the cave floor with a dagger when she heard something flutter by her ear.
“What was that?”
“A bat,” Catch said. He was invisible.
“We are out of here,” Rachel said. “Take them outside.”
Effrom, Amanda, and Jenny were sitting with their backs against the cave wall, tied hand and foot, and gagged.
“I don’t know why we couldn’t have waited at your cabin,” Catch said.
“I have my reasons. Help me get them outside, now.”
“You’re afraid of bats?” Catch asked.
“No, I just feel that this ritual should take place in the open,” Rachel insisted.
“If you have a problem with bats, you’re going to love it when you see me.”
A quarter mile down the road from the cave, Augustus Brine, Travis, and Gian Hen Gian were waiting for Howard and Robert to arrive.
“Do you think we can pull this off?” Travis asked Brine.
“Why ask me? I know less about this than the two of you. Whether we pull it off depends mostly on your powers of persuasion.”
“Can we go over it again?”
Brine checked his watch. “Let’s wait for Robert and Howard. We still have a few minutes. And I don’t think that it will hurt to be a little late. As far as Catch and Rachel are concerned, you are the only game in town.”
Just then they heard a car down-shifting and turned to see Howard’s old black Jag turning onto the dirt road. Howard parked behind Brine’s truck. He and Robert got out and Robert reached into the backseat and began handing things to Brine and Travis: a camera bag, a heavy-duty tripod, a long aluminum lens case, and finally, a hunting rifle with a scope. Brine did not take the rifle from Robert.
“What’s that for?”
Robert stood up, rifle in hand. “If it looks like it isn’t going to work, we use it to take out Rachel before she gets power over Catch.”
“What will that accomplish?” Brine asked.
“It will keep Travis in control of the demon.”
“No,” Travis said. “One way or another it ends here, but we don’t shoot anyone. We’re here to end the killing, not add to it. Who’s to say that Rachel won’t have more control over Catch than I do?”
“But she doesn’t know what she is getting into. You said that yourself.”
“If she gets power over Catch, he has to tell her, just like he told me. At least I will be free of him.”
“And Jenny will be dead,” Robert spat.
Augustus Brine said, “The rifle stays in the car. We are going to do this on the assumption that it will work, period. Normally I’d say that if anyone wants out, they can go now, but the fact is, we all have to be here for it to work.”
Brine looked around the group. They were waiting. “Well, are we going to do this?”
Robert threw the rifle into the backseat of the car. “Let’s do it, then.”
“Good,” Brine said. “Travis, you have to get them out of the cave and into the open. You have to hold the invocation up long enough for Robert to get a picture, and you have to get the candlesticks back to us, preferably by sending them down the hill with Jenny and the Elliotts.”
“They’ll never go for that. Without the hostages, why should I translate the invocation?”
“Then hold it as a condition. Play it the best you can. Maybe you can get one of them down.”
“If I make the candlesticks a condition, they’ll be suspicious.”
“Shit,” Robert said. “This isn’t going to work. I don’t know why I thought it would.”
Through the whole discussion the Djinn had remained in the background. Now he stepped into the circle. “Give them what they want. Once the woman has control of Catch, they will have no need to be suspicious.”
“But Catch will kill the hostages, and probably all of us,” Travis said.
“Wait a minute,” Robert said. “Where is Rachel’s van?”
“What does that have to do with anything?” Brine said.
“Well, they didn’t walk here with hostages in tow. And the van isn’t parked here. That means that her van must be up by the cave.”
“So?” Travis said.
“So, it means that if we have to storm them, we can go in Gus’s truck. The road must come out of the woods and loop around the hill to the caves. We already have the recorder, so the invocation can be played back fast. Gus can drive up the hill, Travis can throw the candlesticks into the truck, and all Gus has to do is hit the play button.”
They considered it for a moment, then Brine said, “Everyone in the bed of the truck. We park it in the woods as close to the caves as we can without it being seen. It’s the closest thing to a plan that we have.”
On the grassy hill outside the cave Rachel said, “He’s late.”