97

Introductory Text

I need answers...
The Author's Narrative Part 18 97th Post Posted 8 July 2016 at 01:43:39 EDT Link to original

The back of my neck feels all hot and boggy when I wake up. I hate that. The air conditioner in this motel room makes a lot of noise, but it's just a big show. I close my eyes and hope sleep takes me away somewhere dark and cool, but it doesn't. Reality persists.

I have been tapering off booze for the past few days. It's amazing how timid and jittery I become when the alcohol is oozing its way out of me. I haven't even worked up the nerve to call the motel manager and complain about the air conditioning. To think, I lived for years in this helpless, reclusive state. What a fucking waste. The whole time, I though the alcohol was giving me courage when it was stealing it from me.

I can't drink anymore. I need courage.

I'm down to my last two hundred dollars. I could call good ol' mom and dad and ask them for some help. But what kind of conversation would that be? "Why am I broke? Well, I took some time off work so I could write a book. About what? Oh, you know, tripping acid, Nazis... finger blasting... cats."

No, I'm not going to call ol' mom and dad. I'm not going back to the sober house either. I'm going to get some answers. I'm going to call Shawn.

Shawn shows up at the motel right after he gets off of work. I'm surprised because we had gotten into a lot of little arguments towards the end, and I left on pretty bad terms with him. I'm standing in the parking lot when his black truck pulls up, and my paranoia starts to flare. Maybe he saw the story online and was outraged. Maybe he's been looking for me.

He strides up to me and gives me a quick hug, patting me stiffly on the back. He steps back and squints at the dingy face of the motel. "I know this fucking motel," he says quietly. "Come on, man. Let's get your stuff."

"Get my stuff?"

"You said you're sober, right? I already talked to the house manager. He'll take you back. We got a bed," he says.

"I'm not going back to the house. I asked you to come here because I... I want to know where that warehouse is. The one downtown."

Shawn turns and looks me in the eye. "Why you wanna know about that?

I tell him the story. I tell him about Mother Horse Eyes, the Nazis, the CIA, the LSD, the experiments, most of the stuff that I've told you. I leave out some parts, like the fact that he is in the story. That we are in the story. That all of this in the story right now. He listens to me, but his face darkens. Maybe he thinks I'm crazy or high or full of evil spirits.

"Listen to me," I say, working myself up to deliver my big speech. "I have lived things which are impossible. Which could not have happened. So have you. Those tunnels, those cages, the bones, none of it should exist. But you saw it. I've seen things too. We have to find out what it is. I lived with that monster for a whole summer. I know she's down there. And I want to find her."

Shawn narrows his eyes as he stares at me. "What's down there is the devil, Nick. If you go down there, you won't come back."

"I want to see her. I want to know. Please," I say to him, my voice breaking. "I just want to know why I'm so fucked up."

"You're fucked up because you drink all day. And you got character defects. Like me. And everybody else. That's it."

"Don't you want to know what's going on down there? You're not curious? "

"No."

"It doesn't eat at you? You don't need any answers?"

He shakes his head. "God doesn't promise answers. God gave us all the answers we need in the Bible. That's all we get. I don't ask him what's going to happen in the future. I don't do horoscopes. I don't practice witchcraft. God's not going to come down and give me the answers to everything. All he wants from me is obedience."

"Oh, come on. So we shouldn't try to figure things out? We shouldn't ask questions? That's just some anti-intellectual, anti-science bullshit."

When we were roommates and got into disagreements, he would start quoting the Bible at me, and I would start picking at him with snide intellectual arguments, using as many big words as I could. We're falling back into the same dynamic.

"Anti-science?" he says. "Shit, I'm not saying don't be a scientist. I'm saying don't go into a tunnel with fucking bones on the walls, man."

I find myself laughing at this. He smiles with me.

"For real though, man. It's dangerous," he says, the smile fading

I look out across the crumbling parking lot. Long evening shadows are drawn across the asphalt. "Man, I don't know. I just feel like if I could figure out what happened during that summer, then maybe I wouldn't be so fucked up. I've obsessed about this shit for 25 years or so, and now there's a chance to get some answers.

"Just let it go."

"No. No, there has to be an ending. There has to be some kind of... pay-off."

"Moses and the people wandered the desert for 40 years looking for the promised land. One day the Lord took him up to a mountaintop and showed him all the promised land, and Moses died right there, without ever setting his foot in the land. Do you know what kind of Lord does that?"

"A messed up one," I muttered.

"The Lord knows that we are generations. Man is of few days. Generations might pass before we get any answers. For the last ten years, I've been living like the world might end any day, but I'm not doing that anymore. I have to remember that we know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh. That's why I'm going back to school and all that."

I nod. Through the course of our little debates, I had told him many times that the world wasn't going to end anytime soon. The world was going to go on and on like it always did, in a fucked up and confused state. Maybe some of it rubbed off on him. Maybe some of it should be rubbing off on me now.

"I need answers," I told him. "I've tried just accepting the mystery and whatever, but at this point I just need to know why I'm all fucked up, why I can't stop drinking, why I can't be normal."

"Man, I could tell you where the warehouse is. But what are you going to do when you go down there? What are you going to do when you meet the devil?"

I haven't told him that part of the story. It's a part that I'm not sure I really believe myself.

"I think... I have been given reason to believe... that whatever is down there... I can destroy it."