Chapter 6: The Skull of Doom Part 6

EPISODE in the CATTARAUGUS CREEK VALLEY, Continued

July, 2006

EAST OTTO, NY

6

Free of the tree-canopy and the human distractions, the Frenchman enters a new realm. The night has turned heavy. The crescent moon hangs like a trophy over a mantle, but only the boldest stars pierce through.

He strolls across the field, savoring everything. He paces and stops as if dowsing for earthly energy with nothing but intuition. Once he glances back toward where he has come and spots another refugee too far off to hear anything but a shriek. He watches until the form enters a shadow and is gone.

He reaches the tree line at the farthest point from the human activity and begins to walk along it in a counterclockwise direction. A voice calls from the dimness. "Wondered how long it was going to take you to start exploring."

It is the metal artist, sitting with his back against a broad tree, arms resting on his knees and regarding the night, his face and its blunt nose in a plane of silver.

"Good place to do some meditating," says the Frenchman, joining him.

"More than that," says the artist. "Little farewell ceremony. Got a little something here I don't think you've ever heard of. Take you a long way out. Sometimes where you don't wanna go." He holds up a thin metal container the size of a large coin.

"Why you wanna go there?"

"If you're looking for the next level...The cutting edge..." The artist shrugs. "You have to be ready for what you're going to face. And the trouble is that when you get that far, you start going past it."

"Like past what?"

"Like... Just too heavy."

The pair sit in silence another minute. "You smoke it, you shoot it...?"

The artist rocks back with another lupine grin, showing the rutty teeth. "Skin contact," he says. "All you need. Right... here." He puts his left index to the center of his forehead and makes a tiny circle, then casts both hands to the side as if catching prophecy that falls in raindrops. He passes his item over, and in the glow of his cell phone the Frenchman reads its label: Dermatone, an ointment for protecting the skin of the face. He opens it and sees that the spare substance within is darker than "the frostbite-fighter" he knows from his years of boarding in the Alps. He taps it with an index and finds that it is waxier.

"Gotta keep the cover on," says the American, reaching over. "You can lose it in the air in minutes." His companion looks at him as if he is joking.

"Minutes," he continues. "Just steams right up."

"You just rub it on? That's it?"

"That's it," says the artist. "Just a little. Too strong any other way."

The Frenchman looks at the dab he has on his finger.

"Gotta be the forehead. The third eye." The artist makes the small circle again above his brow. "Looks like you got plenty on there."

The Frenchman looks about as if to say, 'What the Hell?' Then he touches his fingertip to his forehead and applies the daub thoughtfully. He meets the eyes of his comrade with a smile, and then...

7

The world is dark like the glossy screen of a theater. The center shimmers to a staticky grey, and an image like but not identical to the cutout baby of the outdoor event appears. The fire behind it is strange. Behind the grey veil that shrouds it, it's yellower than real fires, and it cascades upward in a repeating cycle, the reverse of a Disney cartoon waterfall.

The baby-form fades quickly out, and into its former space comes the still-veiled image of a group of mostly-white children of about the age of five, milling about a classroom in clothing that would have been typical of the late twentieth century in the West. They appear as if seen through the eyes of one of their classmates.

This scene fades and merges into the sight of a pair of baby-hands reaching up from the cradle toward the ceiling of a room lit brightly by the morning sun.

Something dim and ponderous is approaching from above. It resolves itself into the form of a titanic breast, looming like the prow of a ship or a geological feature. Behind it is the bared chest of a giant woman.

The perspective shifts again as if the observer is being moved, and light shines on the bearer of the breast. It is the dark-haired woman who came with the Frenchman to the event of the fires. She is younger, but it is unmistakably her. Her face slopes back from the breast like the crown of a mountain above a climber.

The scene goes alternately vinyl-black and electric grey. Other images flicker in rapidly, coming from the sides, forms like the demons from famous works of medieval and Renaissance painting. The last image to come into clear sight is a grim and grinning infant like the one that drifts just left of center in Hieronymus Bosch's, "The Last Judgement."

Another short period of darkness follows, and a another image fades in more gradually than any of the others. It is a sculpture made of some light-colored stone, the full-body likeness of a human infant, sitting naturally as if on some flat surface, legs spread, hands on its quads. Surely made by some ancient culture, it lacks genitals like a marionette, but its pose and proportions are very true to life.

Its head is odd. Its forehead is high, and its cranium is suspiciously thin and bulbous. Its face is odd, too. It has thin, Asian-style eyes with an almost feline upturn to the corners, as if it knows more than its years should grant it and it savors keeping the secret. The infant it represents is too young to have developed teeth, but this one's softly-smiling, slightly parted mouth bears two delicate, feline fangs, their points gently touching its bottom lip.

The tone changes again. The statue starts to give the signs of something behind it coming alive, as if its image has been superimposed all along upon a living being doing its best to hold still, even to hide, but failing to avoid giving away the signs of its breathing. At last, the eyes widen, and the creature rolls brown eyes toward the viewer.