Read Online The 37th mandala : a novel by Marc Laidlaw - Free Book Online
Authors: Marc Laidlaw
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and roared, making conversation all but impossible.
Michael pointed at the steering column, shouting something as he revved the engine. Derek shook his head to indicate that he couldn't hear. The roar smoothed out. Heat oozed up from pipes beneath the seats, warming his legs. He shivered once, violently, and then began to relax.
"I said, you ever notice the symbols on the steering wheel of these old VW bugs? Look at this thing—it's like an old mystic Nazi design. You know about Hitler and the occult, right? This is like the Moon card in the Tarot. A castle on the water, and then these wolves ... real stylized, real simple, to make it really sink in. Doesn't register in the conscious mind, but all your life that symbol cooks away, like some kind of sinister survival from the Third Reich. Like Hitler's still got a grip. I'm kind of glad they don't make these anymore."
"I never noticed," Derek said, wishing there'd been room for him in back. Michael seemed too unstable, a little bit frightening. Even without drugs, someone so manic had to have a bitter, depressive side. Lenore was probably the steady one in their relationship, Michael's touchstone with reality.
He found himself remembering the cold, frail touch of her hand. Wanting to feel it again.
Glancing in the rearview mirror, he saw her eyes glimmering. He looked away quickly, though she hadn't been looking at him. How old was she, exactly? Twenty-five? Was that long enough for the world to drain someone as she appeared to have been drained? No doubt it was. Derek kept glancing at her as the streetlights, flicking past, picked out her eyes.
He saw little distinction between the center of town and the outskirts, where the airport lay. Cinderton was the kind of landlocked place that made him glad he lived in San Francisco, where freezing and hundred-plus temperatures were all but unknown. Cinderton probably spent part of the year locked up in ice, the ground so hard it could chip a shovel, sidewalks filthy with muddy salt and snow that never quite melted till spring, when the potholes came out like flowers in the thaw, to be followed shortly thereafter by unbearable heat pressing down on the land like a steam iron. So he imagined the cycle of seasons; but his actual experience was limited to the temperature climes of California and a few bus trips to Reno where he'd watched the snow from inside a casino. He always wondered what kept people in places like this. Didn't they know the world offered options besides the ones they'd been brought up to expect?
Probably not. Some found release in music, in weirder drugs than alcohol or barbiturates. A few—his current hosts apparently among them—sought escape in a synergistic combination, mixing all of the above with occultism, whose effects were more unpredictable than any drug. The typical young occultist migrated to a big city as soon as he was old enough to hitchhike, drive a car, or buy a one-way bus ticket. The older occultists, late bloomers, were usually simple souls, so near the grave that they had begun to scrutinize the plot with the intensity of a prospective tenant, hoping to find in their future something more rewarding than four windowless walls and a lid that screwed down from the outside.
Michael said, "I can't get over this. I've written you letters; maybe you remember me. Last name's Renzler?"
Derek shook his head. "Sorry, no. Can't count on the publishers to forward mail, unfortunately."
"Huh, yeah, thought maybe it was something like that. Or you get so many letters you can't answer them all."
Close, Derek thought. Countless lunatics wrote to ask his advice—as if he were a psychic Miss Manners. He kept a fat file of absurd letters, scheming someday to publish them all and let the sane mainstream public have a laugh at the expense of his cult following. That would be years from now, when his career had run its course and he could afford to admit his hoax, when that alone would be enough to
Michael pointed at the steering column, shouting something as he revved the engine. Derek shook his head to indicate that he couldn't hear. The roar smoothed out. Heat oozed up from pipes beneath the seats, warming his legs. He shivered once, violently, and then began to relax.
"I said, you ever notice the symbols on the steering wheel of these old VW bugs? Look at this thing—it's like an old mystic Nazi design. You know about Hitler and the occult, right? This is like the Moon card in the Tarot. A castle on the water, and then these wolves ... real stylized, real simple, to make it really sink in. Doesn't register in the conscious mind, but all your life that symbol cooks away, like some kind of sinister survival from the Third Reich. Like Hitler's still got a grip. I'm kind of glad they don't make these anymore."
"I never noticed," Derek said, wishing there'd been room for him in back. Michael seemed too unstable, a little bit frightening. Even without drugs, someone so manic had to have a bitter, depressive side. Lenore was probably the steady one in their relationship, Michael's touchstone with reality.
He found himself remembering the cold, frail touch of her hand. Wanting to feel it again.
Glancing in the rearview mirror, he saw her eyes glimmering. He looked away quickly, though she hadn't been looking at him. How old was she, exactly? Twenty-five? Was that long enough for the world to drain someone as she appeared to have been drained? No doubt it was. Derek kept glancing at her as the streetlights, flicking past, picked out her eyes.
He saw little distinction between the center of town and the outskirts, where the airport lay. Cinderton was the kind of landlocked place that made him glad he lived in San Francisco, where freezing and hundred-plus temperatures were all but unknown. Cinderton probably spent part of the year locked up in ice, the ground so hard it could chip a shovel, sidewalks filthy with muddy salt and snow that never quite melted till spring, when the potholes came out like flowers in the thaw, to be followed shortly thereafter by unbearable heat pressing down on the land like a steam iron. So he imagined the cycle of seasons; but his actual experience was limited to the temperature climes of California and a few bus trips to Reno where he'd watched the snow from inside a casino. He always wondered what kept people in places like this. Didn't they know the world offered options besides the ones they'd been brought up to expect?
Probably not. Some found release in music, in weirder drugs than alcohol or barbiturates. A few—his current hosts apparently among them—sought escape in a synergistic combination, mixing all of the above with occultism, whose effects were more unpredictable than any drug. The typical young occultist migrated to a big city as soon as he was old enough to hitchhike, drive a car, or buy a one-way bus ticket. The older occultists, late bloomers, were usually simple souls, so near the grave that they had begun to scrutinize the plot with the intensity of a prospective tenant, hoping to find in their future something more rewarding than four windowless walls and a lid that screwed down from the outside.
Michael said, "I can't get over this. I've written you letters; maybe you remember me. Last name's Renzler?"
Derek shook his head. "Sorry, no. Can't count on the publishers to forward mail, unfortunately."
"Huh, yeah, thought maybe it was something like that. Or you get so many letters you can't answer them all."
Close, Derek thought. Countless lunatics wrote to ask his advice—as if he were a psychic Miss Manners. He kept a fat file of absurd letters, scheming someday to publish them all and let the sane mainstream public have a laugh at the expense of his cult following. That would be years from now, when his career had run its course and he could afford to admit his hoax, when that alone would be enough to
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