Friday, September 4, 2009

Chapter 12 Trisha

Copyright David A. Kearns

“…Some of these creatures were terrible, too hideous to look at, and so long-lived they were banished to the parts of the world where they would exist in a state of near eternal damnation, forced to feed on mankind, whom it hated and guarded with extreme jealousy, stained with the ancient blood-memory that at one time, it too, had been human, had enjoyed the warmth of its mother’s hands caressing its face.
“But the creatures themselves could not make love to replicate themselves; always it needed to come back to Aztlan and beg for help in that regard.
“There were so many at one time, they were sent willingly to clinics in Egyptus for help, but there was none to give, only sacrifice would end their misery, although they tormented many humans there before they accepted their end, and in some cases set themselves up as gods. These torments took on many forms and lasted for years, as revenge against all of mankind for what had been done by a few selfish families of Aztlan and their conspirators, the very sons of Quetzalcoatl.
“Still, one group of these half-breeds, reasonably well off in proportion, intelligence and not quite so hideous, although unpleasant of sight, and plagued with powers of the mind-sound, survived this hellish life, and came back, time and again, to Aztlan and Posaztlan, for the bahk of Gembe and the bahk of mankind to self perpetuate. In exchange for that bahk, it gave the families of the rich and the powerful tools to create wondrous things, sky-ships that floated to the stars and looked down from the heavens on all nations; sky-ships that also plumbed the seas…”
- The Book of Aztlan

July, 2011 7 p.m. Whispering Pines Psychiatric Care Center
I was allowed to sit with Trisha on the back porch of the facility while she smoked her cigarettes. She was only allowed two smokes every four hours. But she thoroughly enjoyed them.
She was given a half hour to talk with me, and not the typical fifteen minutes such a cigarette break would have normally permitted. The facility’s bending of the rules was rather rare. But owing to the fact she had suffered a recent loss, and she would not be released to attend the funeral, they were made to see that this would be good for her.
On the other hand, she was agreeing to give up one of her smoke breaks in the morning to make this happen. It was part of the give and take nature of the facility, which seemed to work: you want something, you take responsibility for the thing you want and the potential commotion it might cause to the entire group that you are being given a privilege, and you agree to pay for it by giving something up.
Her cigarettes and all her possessions were kept under lock and key. She wasn’t allowed any sharp objects in her room. She was given only two hours of television every day; otherwise she was drafting statements about what she had been through, regarding ‘drinking and drugging’ and how she planned to change. Or she was in group, either narcotics anonymous, or alcoholics anonymous, talking about what brought her here.
“How are you doing, sweetheart?” I asked.
She dragged in the sweet nicotine and exhaled.
“It’s okay, Tim. The place isn’t bad. Some of the folks are full of it,” she said.
“How so?”
“They’re bullshitting themselves about how bad they want to stop,” she said.
“And you?”
She smiled and exhaled.
“You know me, I’m always full of shit,” she said.
I wanted to hold her but, there was a prohibition against touching others during this crucial time; sexual touching, chocolate, salacious material, television – these were all considered potential triggers for her addictions. A medical technician sat in a chair leaning against the wall reading People Magazine with an alertness that let you know she really wasn’t reading but scanning the articles while the other eye remained on her patient, Trisha.
If I reached to touch her, even casually, it would end the session and get her into trouble. A privilege or two would be deducted.
“I missed you,” I said.
“Like hell, you never wrote,” she said. “Your emails bounced.”
“Sheila,” I said. “You know how marriage is.”
“I was drunk through most of mine, so, no. As a matter of fact, I don’t,” she said whimsically. She was doing the numbers in her head.
“Yep, not a week went by I wasn’t drunk with Phil. No wonder we fought,” she said with a smile.
“I don’t want to live like that anymore, Tim. And, some of the things I said to your wife, it’s no wonder she didn’t want me near you anymore. I have to accept responsibility for that. I feel like I’ve got a good start on a new life here.”
“And that other stuff?” I asked.
“What do you want to know, that I still think about it?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“Of course I do, but, I’m beginning to understand something, Tim. And it’s something you guys, all of you, need to know and understand,” she said.
“What?”
She leaned in so only I would hear her; “You can’t win. Whatever they are, whatever they’re doing, they’ve already won. Live with it, deal with it, then forget it. Otherwise, you’ll end up dead or crazy. Look at Ryan for examples. Hell look at me,” she said.
“Why?”
She raised her hands like a teacher amazed at a student’s stupid question.
“There is no other way to deal with it without losing your mind. They won’t let you do anything but that. They play hardball and they play for keeps. You can either forget, or lose your mind and die. That’s it.”
“What happened to you Trish, specifically?” I asked.
“You mean, how did I get here? Drinking and drugging. Just ask the counselors,” she said.
“No. What set you off? I heard you were all past this sort of thing,” I said.
“You know what set us off,” she said accusingly.
“Us?”
“Ryan and I, Timmy. Damn it all, don’t play stupid,” she said.
“There are blank spots in the memories, Trish. I swear to God. Half of it, I can’t remember, the other half, I do, but it’s jumbled. When I am able to sustain a memory for a minute or two it all comes flooding back, then it’s too much. I either pass out or get sick. And I have time lapses, big chunks of it – gone. I’m sorry, baby, but I am a goddamn mess,” I said.
“You always were a baby boy. And you’re drinking too much, I would imagine, just like I was,” she said.
“Yeah, yes I am,” I admitted.
“ Timmy, you used to say that pot suited their purposes; made your mind go soft so they could use and discredit you. Do you recall those talks?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Well you don’t think they use alcohol against us too?” she asked.
I had no answer, only a question. “Are you telling these counselors here about all of it? Everything you think? Things we went through?”
She had a quick answer; “Are you out of your mind? They’d never let me out. Back to your question, what set me off was Ryan.”
“How?”
“Ryan began to have these eruptions as he called them, just like the ones you’re having. The only person on earth he could talk to was me. And since I started working for Jay again, he called, we began meeting at the Oasis, and South Beach Willie’s and…”
“And one thing led to another again,” I said.
“And one thing led to another, again,” she said.
“And Debra found out,” I continued.
“Yes and I felt horrible and to deal with the pain.... But what people don’t understand is that Ryan and I shared something that not many people on this earth have ever had, Tim, and you weren’t around…”
“Oh so he was better than me?” I asked in mock wounded pride.
“No, I’m being serious and you’re hearing me sidewise, Tim. Because what I am saying scares you so bad you don’t want to remember.”
“What?”
“I repeat, Ryan and I shared something that not many people on this earth ever have,” she said, reaching for my hand. She held it closely and both of us looked over at her keeper who was deeply engrossed now in an article in People.
“And if you think back, Tim. You’re going to remember….”
The alcove began fade to darkness around me and soon, I was gone.

July 2, 1981
“Does anyone know where Ryan and Trisha are?” I asked as they lifted me off of the ground. I had collapsed for some reason at the side of the road.
“Second time he’s asked that,” Dave said. “Do you think he hit his head or something? C’mon, Tim. Stay with us man, stop fading out on us.”
“Dude, what year is it?” I asked.
“Uh-oh,” Chuck said. “You’re right. He must have hit his head on something.”
“Hey Timmy, where in hell did you get this gun, man?” Smokey asked. “It’s still warm. Did you shoot at them?”
“Them…?” I asked.
“Them,” Smokey said.
“Aren’t we missing a funeral somewhere?” I asked.
“He’s out of it, again,” Dave said. “Tim, stop passing out, man!”
I said; “I’m feeling sick.”
“There you go, boy. Get it all out of your system,” Chuck said comforting me, and slapping me on my bowed back.
“I’m feeling a little queasy myself,” Chuck said.
“You’re standing right over his puke, it’s no wonder,” Smokey shot back.
“No, I’m feeling it too,” Dave said.
“What the hell is that?” Chuck said, and now everyone was feeling it.
Something prompted all of us to look up at the same time.
A gigantic triangle of night sky shifted above us. White lights came on at the corners and the triangle moved off to the east enveloping itself in a mist that formed on its leading edge before blending in with the sky which shimmered and pulsated as the craft passed, as if through some sort of invisibility interface.
“Hey!” someone shouted.
I looked north on A1A and there was the creature in his robe of silver.
“That dude must be seven feet tall,” Chuck said.
An energy ball appeared and knocked us all down again and in an instant, the creature, the craft, and the energy ball had all evaporated.
“Jesus, I wish he would quit doing that,” Chuck said getting up slowly.
“I just want to know why,” Dave said struggling to his own feet.
“Because he can, and to show us that he can,” I said.
“Just to fuck with us?” Dave asked.
“Just to fuck with us. For the pure hell of it,” I said. “Fuckin’ Elvis-cape wearing asshole.”
Smokey laughed; “Elvis… that’s pretty good.”
“So, these things, are like mean and shit,” Dave concluded, as if he had solved a riddle.
“Oh? You think so, Finkles?” I asked.
“No. That’s not what I mean, I mean, they’re mean! They play jokes… they get pissed if you spy on them.”
“Did you see the way he shook his finger at me on the beach?” I asked.
“They get really pissed if you play AC/DC,” Smokey added.
“Yeah, I noticed that too,” I said.
“Now, who does all that sound like to you?” Dave asked.
“Sounds like my older brothers,” Smokey said.
And all of us looked at Smokey. He had said something truly wise which wasn’t like him. We didn’t know what it meant but we did know it was significant somehow. It resonated with us.
“Hold on. Where’s the gun?” I asked.
“The what?”
“The thirty-eight, Myles’s brother handed me? Where is it?” I asked.
“Where’s Myles?” Chuck asked.
“Didn’t he go with his brother?” Dave said.
“No, Hank was screaming for him,” I said.
“So he’s missing with Trisha and Ryan,” I said.
“No, Myles was with Hank. He told me to get those bastards, for what they had done to his brother,” Smokey said.
“No, guys, that’s not the way I remember it. Hank was screaming for us to kill those things for having taken his brother, or something like that,” I said.
“Taken his brother? They took him, Timmy?” Dave said.
“I don’t know. I…guess I sort of thought they did,” I said.
“When, when did you think that?” Chuck asked.
I had to sit down. What I was about to say would not make any sense but I had to say it. I did so posing it as a question. “The first time this happened?”
“He’s not making any sense again,” Chuck said.
“Come on guys we need to start for home,” Ryan said. “We’re not going to make it before 3 a.m. if we don’t.”
He had been standing behind us, somehow.
All of us turned around slowly.
“Rye? Where the hell you been, man?” Chuck asked.
“I don’t know. Around I guess?” he said.
“Oh shit. They took and brought him back,” Chuck said. “Rye! What was it like man?!”
“That is so bonus!” Smokey marveled.
“Did they?” Ryan asked sleepily. He had been crying as well.
“Rye, I want you to think very carefully. Where’s Trisha?” I asked.
He winced. Not good.
“I dunno know man. It wasn’t…” he said with a guilty sigh. “It wasn’t ….my fault.”
“What wasn’t your fault, Rye? What happened to her?” I asked.
“Timmy, I….”
I grabbed him by the shoulders. “Look man. I want you to think very carefully. I want you to tell us what happened to Trisha, Rye. You hear me?”
“Timmy, c’mon. Ease off. The dude don’t know,” Chuck said.
“No, the dude does goddamned know and he’s going to fucking tell me or I’m gonna kill his ass,” I said, taking Ryan around the collar.
I moved my grip to his throat and I wouldn’t let go. I wanted to know what happened to Trisha but somewhere in the back of my mind I already did know what happened to her and my anger grew.
“Tell me what happened or I’ll fucking kill you!”
“Back off Timmy,” Chuck warned.
“Fuck you, you back off!” I screamed at Chuck. “Rye, tell me what happened to Trisha or I’m gonna find that goddamn gun, see, and I’m gonna fucking shoot you with it. Now where is she, Rye! Where the fuck is she?”
Chuck grabbed me in a full Nelson and hauled me away from Ryan.
“I don’t know where she is Timmy. I don’t know where she is, alright! ….But I think I…”
“You think you what, Ryan? You what?” I shouted.
“ I did it with her! I think I, we just made it, man. Okay! You happy! They made me do it with her. They made us fuck and ….oh my God, then they watched us!”
Ryan fell down, curled up in a ball off the shoulder of the road and began sobbing and screaming as the memory of what had happened came to him in a rush.
“….those bastards watched while I did that, while I did that to my friend. They laughed, Tim. They laughed at us…..I tried to be gentle with her, she kept telling me it was okay. It was alright, that we had to do what they wanted. They wouldn’t let us go, but ….”
It took Dave, Smokey and Chuck to keep me from killing Ryan. I don’t remember all of what came out of my mouth but the curses and screams erupted with such force I could barely speak before I, like Ryan, was also a puddle of tears.
I stared into the palmettos thinking nothing would ever be the same again in my world, and I was right.
Chuck, Dave and Smokey stood off to one side and watched me cry for a while.
Slowly Ryan got up, came over and put a hand on my shoulder and sat down next to me he was still crying and I was too weak with rage at everything to even make a fist.
“She kept asking what you would think of her. More than anything that made her cry, Timmy. She kept asking me to swear not to tell you,” he said.
“Why did you?” I asked, looking at him.
“I couldn’t do that. You’re my best friend. I can’t lie to you, man?”
I nodded and looked into the bushes.
“What do we do? We have to find her, Timmy. We can’t let anything get in the way of that,” he said.
“We can’t find Myles, either,” I said.
“Oh shit,” he said. “Myles was there too. Something’s wrong with him, something bad.”
“Someone’s coming guys!” Dave shouted
The green Ford pick-up eased to a stop beside us.
We looked in the cab to find Trisha between an Indian in his late forties and a nine-year old Indian youth.
“Thank God she’s been found,” Chuck said.
“Trisha, are you alright?” I asked.
She made a half-hearted smile as the rivers of tears dried around her eyes.
I looked at the driver.
“Red?” I asked. “Is that you?”
The man only smiled and said; “I found your girlfriend for you.”
“It is him, Tim. How did you know?” Ryan said.
I shook my head. I didn’t know how I knew the man’s name, nor how he seemed to recognize me. We had never been introduced to my memory.
“You boys best get in the back. There’s some old man and his buddy driving a black LTD cruising around Melbourne Beach looking for you boys; especially you, Ryan. The man says he knows your father.”
We hopped into the back of the Ford.
For the longest time I couldn’t look at Ryan. The truck was heading south on A1A. I didn’t give a damn where to, nor what time it we would get there.
“She told me you were her first, Tim. And, she loves you more than anything or anybody. She said you were sweet to her,” he said finally.
“I wasn’t her first,” I said. “You were.”
“…it’s not what she said,” he offered.
“Let’s not talk about it,” I said.
“You’re being stupid man. She’s alive. That’s what counts,” he said.
“Easy for you to say,” I shot back halfheartedly.
“Look if you think what just happened to us was a good time, you can go fuck yourself, Tim. You can just go fuck yourself,” he said.
We pulled down a dark, tree-lined, sand path somewhere in the south beaches. The path wound around to a battered old camper tucked beneath a canopy of scrub oaks. Off to one side were a couple of ancient shell mounds covered in bushes and scrub.
“This is it,” Red said getting out. “This is where me and the boy hang our hats during the summer time. Plenty of fish, and sometimes we get turtles ...”
Red came over to me and brushed the top of my head with his hand the way an older brother would. I tried to move off toward Ryan and Trisha but he held me back.
“Hold on a second. You’ve had a hell of a night so far, little World Ender. You’re very brave. Now your friend and the little girl need to wash themselves up. They’ve had it worse this night.”
There was a dreamlike quality about this man. Whenever you came into his orb you felt as if you weren’t really conscious, at least not all the way. He seemed to be aware of more than he was saying, always.
“You know what’s about to happen, don’t you,” I said very calmly.
“And so do you, although you don’t want to admit it to yourself. It’s okay. We have to play it through, little fellow. In order for wisdom to be acquired one must live it,” he said.
“Do you remember telling me that?” he asked. And I shook my head no.
“No matter, you will. Now it’s your time to live it,” he said. “Welcome back.”
“I’ve done this all before, haven’t I?” I asked.
“But this time, you’ll remember it,” he said.
“Is this really happening?” I asked.
“Einstein tells us, little friend, that all the events of the past and the future are all connected, and time is really an illusion. They’re all happening; even the possible events and they are all real. I’m as real as you are, as are your memories of me, as are your memories of events that have never happened yet,” he said.
“I don’t understand, Red.”
“But you will, little man. You will,” he said.






July 2, 2011
I inhaled deeply and looked up into Trisha’s eyes. She was crying.
“I’m so sorry, sweetheart. I am so sorry,” I said.
“You remembered some of it, but not all,” she said letting go of my hand.
“What is happening with us, Trish? What does all this mean, these visions that we’re going through?” I asked.
Trisha leaned around and asked for her second cigarette.
“Some of us have the gift more than others. Ryan figured out that much. When you come in contact with them they can trigger this gift. When they come back around, you get the gift again only more so. And all the things you have forgotten, and all the things they make you forget, all of it comes rushing back,” she said.
“No wonder you guys were losing it,” I said.
“There’s something else,” she said. “They can hear you when you’re thinking about them, so the only defense you have is to not think about them. That was something Ryan didn’t or wouldn’t accept, Tim,” she said.
“Always the warrior,” I said.
“He thought there was a way to fight them, and I suspect, they got tired of it and…” she couldn’t continue.
“And what, Trisha?”
“They killed him for it,” she said.
I shook my head. I wasn’t prepared to believe that totally yet.
“Trisha, Ryan’s mother believes he just got sick of fighting all this stuff anymore,” I said.
“Either way, Tim. They can either kill you outright or make it so bad for you, you kill yourself. Believe me, I have been there. Which is one of the reasons I don’t know if I want my mother to let you guys have that document Ryan sent all of us. This needs to stop,” she said. “Before someone else gets hurt.”
“But he wanted us to know all of it, honey. All of it, good, bad or indifferent. And I think we owe him that much, to know everything he knew,” I said.
“Even if it means someone else gets hurt, Tim? Even if that someone is me, you or god forbid, someone in our family?” she said.
“Please, Trish. Let me at least read it. Ryan wanted me to know it all,” I said.
“Why did he give the last piece to me, then? Explain that to me?” she said.
“…I don’t know. Maybe he wanted to get you and I talking gain. And he knew that if I had to come to you and ask, that would happen,” I concluded.
“He could really be a manipulative bastard when he put his mind to it, couldn’t he, Tim,” she said.
“Yes he could. But always for a good reason,” I said, recalling the amorous relationship between Trisha and a UCF football player Ryan thwarted because he flat-out didn’t like the guy, nor think he had been good for Trisha. He sent the guy numerous letters claiming to be married to her. It was horrible, really but, it worked. The football player, Randy something or other, blew his knee out his rookie year with Jacksonville, turned to gambling, drinking, cocaine and was later arrested for domestic violence. Ryan had been right all along. She laughed at the memory.
“Alright, you win. I’ll call my mother and you can have it,” she said. “Just be careful, Tim. I have a bad feeling about all this.”
“And Tim?” she said.
“Yes?”
“If you remember anything else, anything about you and me, call me,” she said.
“I will,” I said.
I broke the rules with a hug which the proctor at the back door of the facility overlooked.
Walking back to my Ford, I wondered just what she had been talking about.

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