Chapter 4: The Skull of Doom, Part 4

EPISODE in the CATTARAUGUS CREEK VALLEY, Continued

July, 2006

EAST OTTO, NY

2

The four plunge into a valley and drive in cave-like darkness. Bumpy, unlit roads surge and drop like roller-coasters and whorl like fingerprints. Foliage crowds the shoulders and makes a tunnel of their course. As they turn onto a small bridge, a pair of sky-blue eyes ten feet off the road shine in their lights and turn eerily to follow them.

As the car finishes its turn, its beams pierce the thin trees onto the bearer of the eyes, and its body-form comes clearer. At first it could seem to be a small bear, but when it stands, its limbs are too rangy. Surely it is a wild canine, but it's too blocky for a wolf or coyote. Its ears droop, and its torso distends as if it has a belly full of curls. It looks like a coal-black Newfoundland.

As if it resents sharing its woods and its gaze can pierce the headlights and window-glass, the uncanny animal stares down the car. Then it dives huffily into the ditch below it. The driver focuses on his task, and no one speaks, as if all are thinking how out of place a domestic dog seems in these wild woods an hour before midnight.

"We're looking for Burning Springs Road," says the driver.

"It would be nice if they had a few signs out," says the young man behind him.

The two women look to their right below them to a gleaming creek, reflecting lights and torches as well as what appears to the glowing, bright orange outlines of a large, classical-style fountain. "That has to be it," says the woman in the front seat.

"Yeah," says the youth in back. "How do we get there?"

In moments, they come to a rickety bridge that leads to a road that seems to head generally to their right. As the driver commences a cautious turn, the headlights catch two big does in thin foliage at the foot of a wooded hill. They don't look startled. In fact, they draw visual bead and study the approaching car as if they can see the occupants. Then they withdraw into the obscurity like alien-planet predators not ready to make their move. Their eyes, like the dog's, were a ghoulish blue.

"They got some funny animals around here," says the Frenchman.

3

The Subaru driver and his dark-haired friend stroll through an expansive grove. Though tidily groomed and mowed like a lawn, it has clumps of mighty trees and must have been hewn from an old-growth forest. It is a playground for artists in light and fire.

A few steady torches are fixed on tables, trees, and posts. Other sources of flame are fitful, gushing up and lapsing like geysers. A moody light source at the back of the grove pitches revolving, generally horizontal beams that shift through the spectrum of hues, dramatically coloring the smoky billows that permeate the space.

A long-haired woman sashays through the tree-shadows in a furry shawl and a top hat to which ram's horns have been attached. Her profile is striking against the red, then lavender, then azure clouds behind her. A beautiful young dark-haired woman parades about in nothing but a black fedora hat and a black lace bikini. A man in a furry cape and tricorn hat wears a broad glowing necklace that spills across his shoulders and breast like a scarf. A sturdy fellow in a long-sleeve T shirt, baggy cargo shorts, and a pork-pie hat emerges from the dimness bearing two double-ended torches like staves or batons. He capers about, enacting a reasonably expert fire-dance to the coos and calls of the milling spectators.

The driver and his friend wind back through the dim grove toward a source of light as compact and unlikely as a portal in a hillside that represents the gates to sunny Faerieland. At fifty feet the scene resolves itself into the gaping door of a contemporary garage with an industrial-style overhead lamp, and electro-tribal music, rousing and incantatory, grows dramatically in volume. Thick trees had shielded the big old farmhouse and muffled the speakers on its upper porch.

Ten twenty- through forty-somethings lounge in the glare outside the garage. Half are dressed casually. The rest are costumed almost as if for Halloween, but with antique clothing, not masks or makeup.

The young French couple rest on a pair of the chairs that ring the garage and sip from plastic cups. They have fallen into conversation with a big young man in a dark T-shirt from which the sleeves have been torn. He has the arms of a lifter or laborer and an unusual hairstyle: head virtually shaved on the sides, with a stout ponytail in back.

The older couple approach them, and the dark-haired woman speaks to the pair in French. A work bench just beside them has become a bar, holding party cups and an array of bottles. A tri-horned crown made of shiny aluminum foil has come to rest here as well. The French girl spots the rude thing - just a ring with three stumpy antennae - reaches to it without rising, and sets it upon her friend's head. He accepts it whimsically, and it becomes him so that people near them notice it and smile or laugh. He steps outside and grins agreeably like a Dionysus against the vacant dark. Cell phones flash.

Two men - one under the the hood of a camel-colored burnoose, the other in antique aviator's goggles - approach the Anglo driver, who, after a word or two, turns to his French friends. "We're going for a little night-ride on their ATV. It could be pretty wild. Coming?"

"I got way too much work to do here," says the burly artist. He and a small young man with bare arms and many tattoos depart and turn into the grove.

The Frenchman sets his crown on the table and speaks softly to the blonde. "Elodee is up for a ride," he says. "I think I'll check things out here a little more."

He takes his former seat. Two men stand nearby in conversation. One lights a large joint and offers it to his comrade. They notice the stranger suddenly alone and gesture toward him.

His welder's goggles perched like a hat, the big artist returns and finds the Frenchman conversing easily in a small group outside the garage. "You're going to miss all the festivities," he calls out, and waves for people to come with him.

He walks his new friend away from the farmhouse and through the grove to its outer edge, where a thin line of tall trees makes a natural fence before the open fields beyond it. There the artist disappears again.