The 37th mandala : a novel (7 page)

"Hey, did you ever know a guy named Elias Mooney?"

Derek stiffened, never for a moment having dreamed that he would hear that name in such surroundings. He had hoped—and fully expected—that he would never hear it again from anyone, ever.

"What?" he said, forcing himself to stay calm.

"Elias Mooney. He was an old shaman out in California, I can't remember the name of the place but I think it was near San Francisco. I corresponded with him a little, till he died a couple years back. Helped me out a lot."

"No," Derek said. "No, I don't think I knew him."

"Yeah, I guess it's pretty ridiculous thinking you would. California's pretty big, huh?"

"Big."

"I just thought, you know, maybe the occult scene out there in Frisco—maybe you all know each other. Can't be that big a circle, right?"

"Bigger than I like."

"It's not like he was a celebrity or anything—just a real helpful guy. He helped me out during a real rough time—and I never even met him, you know? Just through letters and tapes and stuff. I guess he had correspondents all over the world. And .. . this would sound funny to most people, but I bet not to you. We used to meet up in the astral, in dreams. I learned a lot from him then."

I can't believe he's going on about this
, Derek thought. What's he really getting at? Could Elias have mentioned me in their correspondence? Is this some kind of clumsy attempt at blackmail?

He decided to say nothing more, to avoid feeding Renzler's interest. The ploy seemed to work. The kid seemed at a loss for words. Derek wanted to find out exactly what his relationship with Elias had been, but he was afraid to stir up something that had lain quiet for so long. Finally Michael started off on a wild occult tangent, and Derek began to relax.

It was then the car made a terrible grinding sound.

"Holy mother," Michael swore.

"What's wrong?" Lenore said, leaning forward. Michael was jamming frantically at the stick shift, just pushing it around in big loose circles.

"The shift is gone! Hold on!"

He swerved sideways onto the shoulder of the dark road. They went bumping and jouncing over what felt like boulders and fallen tree branches.
This is it
, Derek thought.
This is how it would end. Well, I guess I deserve it
....

They came to a rough halt and the engine died immediately. They sat in the dimming glow of the VW's headlights, facing a thick wall of bare trees and brambles. Michael reached past Derek, pulled a penlight from the glove box, then got out of the car and went around to the back.

Derek looked at Lenore, but she was craning around to peer out the rear window. Finally Michael banged down the engine cover. "Shit," he said, his voice carrying clearly in the icy night.

"What is it?" Lenore called.

"I don't know, I'm no mechanic." He came around to the door and peered in at them. "Mr. Crowe, I hate to ask you this, but ... how soon does your plane leave? Are we cutting it close?"

Derek pushed the button that illuminated the face of his watch. "I've got a couple hours, actually."

"You were just going to sit at the airport?"

"It was preferable to sitting in the auditorium. Is the airport a long way from here?" He imagined hiking down dark country roads carrying his bags for half the night, or dying of exposure, or ending up in a scene out of
Deliverance
.

"Too far to walk, yeah. But just down the road's a diner with a phone. Lenore, I'm gonna go call Tucker, see if he can come help us out. At the very least give Mr. Crowe a ride. Why don't you two just sit here and take it easy, and I'll be back as soon as I can. Tucker's pretty good with cars."

Derek closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead.

"We'll be all right," Lenore said, and Derek felt his spirits rising. Alone with her, he'd be fine indeed. He welcomed the occasion, unexpected as it was. As long as he made his plane on time, what harm could come of it?

"Great." Michael zipped up his jacket, gave them a weak salute, and headed off down the road. For a minute they could see him fading out beyond the headlights, and then he was gone.

"So," Lenore said after a while, "where you from?"

"Originally Los Angeles, but I've lived in San Francisco a few years. How about you?"

"Oh, uh, I grew up in upstate New York—little towns you probably never heard of. Lived in New York City for a long time, before I met Michael and we moved down here."

"So you are a city girl."

"I guess. No. I'm not from anywhere, really. Lived in a lot of different houses when I was a kid. Foster homes and stuff. Bouncing around."

He wasn't sure how to respond to that. With regrets?

"You think you could hypnotize someone like me?" she said abruptly.

Derek laughed, taken by surprise. "Hypnotize you? Why?"

"I don't know, just to see what it's like. I've always wondered."

Derek winced. "I suppose I could," he said. "Some people are resistant. Children, soldiers, people used to taking orders—they can be very good subjects. But I have a feeling you're the independent type."

She smiled. "You do, huh? How about Ms. A? What type was she?"

"Well—also very independent, but I believe the mandalas must have been stronger. They had a use for her, and they might have made her more susceptible to hypnosis."

"Could you do me?" she said.

"Right now, you mean?"

"Sure. While Michael's gone. We're gonna be here awhile. Just try. No pressure if it doesn't work. I'm curious."

"I don't know," he said.

"Maybe the mandalas will come through me," she said, mischievously now, and he felt certain she was mocking him, that all this was an elaborate tease. "Maybe there's something else they want to say to you."

"I don't—I'm not sure that's such a good idea."

She made a disappointed sound, and he could see the beginnings of a pout. She reached across the seat, then, and turned out the headlights.

"Good idea," he said.

"I feel like I know you," she said in the dark, in a hushed voice. "How could that be?"

"I—I don't know. Do you really?"

"As soon as I saw you up there tonight, I just sort of felt this click."

Derek cast his eyes down the road, half expecting to see Michael coming up from the total darkness. Lenore's mouth was right beside his ear.

"What does that mean?" she said.

"I don't know. Maybe you recognized me from my book."

"It wasn't that. I felt like I had to talk to you. Like, you'd understand me."

"Talk about what?" he said.

"Don't you ever want to talk to someone who doesn't know you? Someone who's not involved in all your problems?"

"I think we all feel that way sometimes."

"It's because you've looked into all these things, with the counseling you've done, the hypnotherapy and all—I could use some advice. God knows I could probably use some therapy too. I need some help quitting drinking, I know that, but that's only part of it. There's things going back—way back—I can't remember how far back. Maybe that's where my problems all started. Maybe you could help me remember, you know? Under hypnosis? Because I can't. There's like this blank area, early in my childhood. I don't remember my mother or any of that. I was already bouncing from home to home by then. I was a troublemaker, I guess you'd say. A difficult child. I want to know—what happened to me? When did the trouble really start?"

"Memories from very early childhood may not be accessible to you, even under hypnosis. The infant brain is separate from the adult's. It stores and processes memory very differently. I'm not so sure I could help you."

"Well," she said, "maybe you're helping me without knowing it. Just talking to you, I feel better. Like I could tell you stuff and you'd understand."

"I'm flattered you feel that way."

"But you still won't hypnotize me."

"Look, Lenore ... I can teach you to do it yourself. How would that be? It's all self-hypnosis anyway. The hypnotist is only a guide."

"But I need a guide!"

"It's nothing to do lightly. It has to be taken slowly, over time. I can't just put you under right now and clear up all your problems. You have a lifetime to deal with. One little session, here and now, might be worse than nothing. I'd have to see you regularly, over time. Maybe there's someone around here who could do it."

"No," she said, slumping back into her seat. "There's nobody."

"I doubt that's true."

"There's nobody, all right?" she yelled. "I know what I need, what I've been looking for, and I never felt it until now, but you're not interested, so just shut the fuck up and leave me alone, all right?"

Lenore reached over the seat, switched on the radio full blast, then got out and paced along the opposite shoulder, smoking a cigarette. Every now and then a car swept past, but no one slowed.

Jesus, Derek thought. That'll teach me.

He sat quietly, deafened by country music. He was tempted to go out to her, but that little teasing dance of codependency frightened him; he already felt snared, involved in something he couldn't stop. Best just to wait here, hold his tongue, let her anger burn itself out. He was hardly the savior type, but he couldn't fault her for unrealistic expectations. He'd set himself up for it, painting himself as the great hypnotherapist when in fact he hadn't used hypnosis (outside of his books) for years. Not since his boyhood, in fact. And in response to that thought, which threatened to propel him into deeper silence, darker reveries, he switched off the radio and opened his door.

"Lenore," he said into the sudden quiet.

She stopped pacing. He could see her cigarette flare, then her steps came crunching back to the car.

"What?"

"I'm sorry," he said. "I—I can't tune out a call for help that easily. It's true you need guidance. But I can teach you how to do it yourself, and maybe that will start you on the way."

"Hypnotize me, you mean? You'll do it?"

"One trance. And I'll give you the commands you need to do it to yourself. Then you can—well, explore."

She crouched before him on the roadside, her cigarette dangling between her knees. "Seriously?"

"Sure. Come on, why don't you get in the car?" He stepped out and pulled his seat forward, and she slid past him into the back, arranging herself on the long cushion. Derek returned to his seat and pulled the door closed.

"Don't you have like a pendulum or something?" she asked.

"Don't need it," he said, trying to remember the basic steps. But what was there to it, really? "I'm just going to talk you through some visualizations. The real work you'll be doing yourself. Are you ready? Get comfortable."

"Go," she said.

He began to count backward from one hundred, very slowly. He told her that with every number he counted off, she was falling deeper and deeper asleep. Between the numbers of his count, he told her that she was floating down a long tunnel. He told her that she was becoming lighter and lighter, until she weighed nothing. He told her she was dissolving into the sky, melting away. "Your fingers are melting, melting away. Your arms are melting, melting away. Eighty-eight. Your shoulders melting, melting away." He watched her chest rising and falling softly, her head slumped forward, eyelids trembling, breath steady and slow. "Your chest, melting away." His eyes lay on her breasts for a long while, hardly more than the faintest curve beneath the stiff fabric of her leather jacket. "Eighty-seven."

It took a long time. He was more careful than he had ever been. He instructed her that as she went deeper into the trance, her thoughts would become brighter and sharper. She was asleep but acutely aware. With every breath she went deeper into trance, but that did not mean she lost consciousness. Deeper and deeper, seeing more and more, doors opening before her, paths into her past, into her secrets; he told her that she had the confidence and strength and courage to explore them all, to heal herself completely. Deeper and deeper, deeper and deeper, farther and farther back....

"You can do this to yourself," he told her. "Now that you have come to these places, you can return here anytime simply by willing it. You can recover this mental state at will and make use of it to heal yourself. And every time you induce this state, you will find yourself able to go deeper, faster, than the time before."

Deeper and deeper. Deeper and deeper....

At last he reached zero. How much time had passed? He had lost himself in the study of Lenore, a pale sexual ghost in the backseat. And what now? His voice seemed preternaturally loud, at odds with the mood. She lay there blank, so blank that he could almost see a smile on her lips, could almost hear her invitation.

Stop it
, he told himself.

What now?

She was as deep as he dared take her; deeper than he had ever intended to go. Surely something should be accomplished while she was at this level—some work begun. It occurred to him only then that he had begun to believe his own lies! He hadn't the faintest idea what he was doing; he had no reason, and certainly no right, to take anyone through this process. Not again. The hypnotic method worked because it was a method—purely mechanical. It had nothing to do with him.

"I remember ..." she whispered.

"Yes?" He searched her still face, her closed eyes.

"... you ..."

"Lenore?" He touched her hand, worried. It was time to wake her; he was an idiot to have agreed to this. Who knew what changes, deep within her, he might have set into motion? "Listen, Lenore. Take great care ..."

But she didn't seem to hear him. She was whispering something in a small, distant voice that filled him with fear for no reason he understood. His panic intensified when he heard footsteps outside the car, and an instant later the driver's door flew open. He looked up and saw Michael staring in at him. It was too dark to see much more than the white oval of his face, but a crazy smile seemed to float there.

"Didn't mean to creep up," he said. "Flashlight died on the way back. Tucker's on his way, though. Should be along any minute. Hey, Lenore? You asleep?" He jerked her shoulder roughly and she jerked up with a grunt.