In
1957, Theodore Swanson was living the life. Unlike most academics and
archaeologists, who are forced to discuss their past work and the work of other
great scientists past with bratty and disinterested college students in old,
dusty lecture halls in the forgotten parts of college campuses, he had just
found himself moving to the dusty and forgotten parts of the world outside of Clovis,
New Mexico, which is where he would try to figure out what was buried deep beneath
the soil of the Land of Enchantment during a time long, long ago.
Driving
across the barren American Southwest from Dallas, Texas, a personal choice that
he had made so that he could slowly condition himself and his wife to the Wild
West and the cowboy culture of this brand new world, Swanson wondered how he
came about the job that had hit him like a lightning bolt from the sky. While
many of his fellow archaeologists were dreaming for trips to the Fertile
Crescent, other members of his professional circle were waxing intellectually
on whether the Leaky’s quest for skulls would pay off in their work in Olduvai
Gorge, Tanzania. However, neither of these scenarios worked for him.
“Piltdown
Man and primate skulls aren’t worth my able-bodied years in the field,
Elizabeth,” Theodore said when he told his wife about New Mexico. “A man of my
stature was meant to live in a civilized way while discovering the answers to
all of the questions never answered, let alone asked.”
Elizabeth
nodded appropriately. She knew better to answer back like his colleagues would
and did.
“But
Teddy, that skull is fourteen to twenty-three million years old. That’s not
some o-rang-uh-tang down the zoo.”
“If
I’m going to dig into the earth, I want a new and unique civilization, not some
foraging gorillas here and there. I want to see the tools and the treasures and
learn about their lives. I want magic and ritual, not some combination of eat,
shite, procreate, kill, and sleep before it repeats.”
“There’s
big money in skulls.”
“It’s
not all about money. It’s about knowledge, and with that, there’s power and
prestige.”
“Maybe
you should have been born in Berlin. You could have followed Hitler on his
archaeological crusades, but you were born an Englishman.”
“What’s
that Nietzsche said about your part of the lot, Terrance? ‘Man does not strive
for happiness; only the Englishman does that.’”
“Go
out and kill the gods, Teddy. Throw your life into your work’s flow. See where
that gets you if you get your wish. You may get out of Cambridge, but you’ll
always be old and crotchety.”
As
his trophy wife, agreeing with him instead of challenging him like this was
pretty much her job. She looked beautiful, held intellectual conversations, and
generally supported her man. Her cooking wasn’t too bad either. What more could
a 1950s man have wanted from life other than to go out in search of adventure?
While
not familiar with New Mexico and its sites, she was familiar with regular
Mexico and its jungles from Theodore’s previous adventure year studying the
Aztecs and the couple of beach getaways that it afforded them when they weren’t
covered in sweat in a thick tropical jungle filled with huge iguanas chasing
them around the archaeological camp.
“So
where will you go then, dear? I know there are digs that you talk about in the
outback of Australia and the jungles of South America. Certainly, you will want
to go somewhere the cannibals and the mosquitos aren’t. That would be so
dreadful.”
“What?
You don’t want to be chased by an iguana?”
“Of
course not,” she laughed. “Though I might want to watch one nibble on your big
toe.”
With
this, he smiled and looked into her eyes as he pulled her close.
“America.
I can hear it calling in my dreams.”
And
it was true; he really could hear it calling. It was like fate intervened when
he received that letter from his Dean.
“I
don’t want this. Are you interested in adding to your CV and getting back out
in the field, Teddy? I’d hate to see you waste your talent at dreary old
Cambridge.”
Theodore
hated to be called Teddy, but it wasn’t as much as he had begun to dread going
into the classroom to teach the aging texts to a youth culture who no longer
felt that the classics had meaning. That said, even going into the classrooms
filled with all of the wannabe Arthur Evans and Gertrude Bell clones wasn’t as
painful as putting up with Dean Arnold Rutherford, who seemed to want to be
Howard Carter, though he didn’t know how to use a shovel.
“Yes,
Arnold. I’ll take that.”
And
he did, and that’s where his new life started. With it, at the end of the term
in May 1957, he was packed up and heading to the New World in search of now
extinct animal bones, ancient tools, and a welcome break from those cloudy
English days. Yes, this journey would allow him to try to understand the
culture that manufactured a unique type of arrowheads t0 accumulate food.
But
these weren’t just any arrowheads. They were, in fact, the oldest arrowheads
that were found in the United States. They were so old that they offered the
potential to represent a new mode of arrival to America.
In
those dusted-over and forgotten historical periods of long ago, the settlers of
this new land weren’t ungrateful little bastards running from King and Country
to try to start a land of religious freedom while refusing to respect their
superiors with monetary tributes in the form of taxes that made their cross-continental
excursions possible. Rather, these ancestral Americans were hearty people
coming from Asia via a different route than the Siberian food run. Sure, the
theory of an iced over bridge from Siberia to Alaska, which looked like it was
going to become the forty-ninth state of America, was a manly conquest for
hungry bellies and muscular arms poised to hurl tiny weapons through the thick
wool of mammoths. However, as the only entry point to a continent, it just
seemed so… lonely. Here, he wanted to be the guy who helped prove that there
was another way and that even manlier men came through those passages and ocean
ways.
Besides,
if the theories of his fellow European Thor Heyerdahl were correct, there would
have been journeys from the South Pacific as well. Who knows? Maybe there was
also a site down in Chile or Argentina, which was even older than this New
Mexican dig he was about to investigate. If he found reason and data to locate
these voyages and journeys, then he could be the man to unleash archaeologists
up and down the spine of the Rockies and the Andes.
Thoughts like this always made him think and
dream, which is where his mind was as he took the wheel of the 1950 convertible
Chevy Bel Air that he had purchased after arriving in Texas. Despite wearing
his academic PHD crown with pride, there was still something macho and rugged
in this thirty-five year old stodgy British man.
In
Theodore’s mind, which was back in those days of 13,000 years ago, he could
clearly see himself opining about how Clovis culture distinguished itself from
Folsom culture.
“This
was another older Native American society that had dominated much research
study at the time. The major difference is that the Clovis people used a
larger, fluted arrowhead. This weapon wiped out bison, mammoth, camels,
saber-tooth cats, and horses in what would become the American southwest.”
To
these words, he saw the tonsils hanging as the gaping yawns fell over the room.
“You
don’t know what you’re missing,” he would think.
“When
does the opportunity come to venture down into the pyramid’s darkened
labyrinth?” their minds would ask.
When
Theodore first had the chance to explore and learn about these historical
events, he was amazed at the primitive talents and abilities of the men who
struggled for their lives in such a harsh climate. As time went by, he became
enamored with all that the Clovis culture did to survive in the unforgiving
heat of the New Mexican desert.
Many
times, he found himself imagining himself as one of these men, taking on the
big game of this historical world while all the while displaying his rugged
manhood against some monstrous beast that needed to end up in his belly. His
dreams were always better than his written accounts, but this was no matter. He
still had these vivid dreams that he saw every time that he sifted through the
data and stared at the arrowheads, trinkets, and other artifacts.
More
important than the quest for food was the fact that in these dreams, he saw a
plurality of tribes coming together. Some of these men and women looked similar
to one another, but other groups looked more unkempt, wild, and even physically
different than the average group. There were smaller people, some four feet
tall. Others didn’t even look human; they appeared to be so haggard.
Additionally, some of these groups appeared to be traveling from the south
while other groups traveled the Colorado Plateau. The local groups were small,
but the southern groups always traveled in great numbers.
In
the vision that came to him repeatedly over many nights, he remembered hearing
stories of how these things were done. For instance, when his group came to the
area, there were many people that traveled with them as well. This was because
the tribes knew that some people would not make it that far. It would take many
generations and many lives to come to this place. People couldn’t just walk
straight through the deserts and mountains and expect to get there. Along the
way, they would have to hunt for food, and they would need to protect
themselves against the wild savage beasts and the other tribes that they would
be passing to arrive at this same destination.
Here,
it was clear from that first vision he had in 1952 when he was preparing to go
to the Yucatan Jungle, this was a sacred place along the way to where he
eventually needed to be.
Swanson’s
wife Elizabeth understood his love of archaeology and anthropology. She too
shared his love of history, and she even found herself growing to love the
bones he dug up as well. She found herself feeling the same questioning sense
of being when it came to figuring out how all of these bones pieced together
with the genealogical tree that was now referred to as the American Southwest.
What she didn’t understand was the dreams. They were just so unreal.
“Theodore,
I think that we should keep them between us. You wouldn’t want people to think
you strange would we?”
“Strange?”
he asked. “Of course not.”
And
strange was the best definition of what was going on. At first, she thought her
husband was suffering from some sort of mental illness, but this wasn’t
something that a proper woman, much less anyone, would bring up at that time
and place in society.
Nevertheless,
he was strange.
Theodore
would go into states of mind that she couldn’t grasp, and this led her to
wonder if he was suffering from schizophrenia. However, the truth was that it
was something far greater as he had been having visions of some sort since he
was a small boy. At first, he thought it was an active imagination, and then he
found that these things were having a tendency to become real. The dreams
showed him Elizabeth and the Yucatan. They also showed him a baby that he
figured would be his future son. They predicted the death of his parents, and
they showed him what he could only assume would be a future Great Britain and
America. Additionally, they showed him worlds that had existed previously and
the location of artifacts that he had found in both the Yucatan and his only
other major archaeological dig, which was deep in the heart of Mesopotamia.
What’s
more, they told him that someday, those artifacts that he had recovered in Iraq
would be stolen, but he would be instrumental in bringing them back together.
He had no idea what that meant, but he liked the sound of it.
He
also liked the sound of a place called Blackrock Canyon. There were cliff
dwellings and other undisturbed archaeological relics there. It was clear that
he was meant to go there, but he had no idea where “there” was. When he asked
his colleagues, nobody knew, so he chose not to push the issue, lest he be
thought of as going out of his head.
Over
time, Theodore found himself extensively using hallucinogenic drugs. In the
beginning, he had been introduced to a colleague at Clovis named Davis Samuel,
who was very interested in the more magical and mystical aspects of
anthropology as well as the mind-altering substances of a growing American
countercultural movement. Swanson had started out simply with the use of
marijuana, but as time went by, he gained access to drugs that would completely
alter his consciousness. Some of these were what would now be referred to as
magic mushrooms, while others were substance like yage and peyote. Any time
that the opportunity came to get high on these substances, Davis was always
game. However, there were places that he drew the line, and that was with a substance,
which his Native American companions called Our Lady of Guadalupe. That one was
from Mexico, and it made him go into a deeper and more surreal trance than he
had ever known before. Davis watched him do this, but he didn’t do it himself.
“I’ve
been down that road. That journey is too hard to come back from.”
“More
for me,” Theodore said, and he switched friends and suppliers as he abandoned
all the commonplace hallucinogenic drugs for his new best friend and the things
she could offer.
Our
Lady, which was what Theodore called her, amplified his visions. Just like it
was without them, these visions would also come true, but more so than his
regular dreams, there was more color and incorporation of his conscious self
into the unconscious states of where he was entering.
It
was so new and unique, so unreal, and yet it was so dark and mysterious that he
felt like he was destined to follow it out to a place of complete lucidity.
However, as he journeyed into what he thought would be the new light, he instead
ventured into utter darkness.
Elizabeth
tried to reason with Theodore during these times. They were young and in love, she
said, and she wanted to abandon the American Southwest to go back to Cambridge.
This New Mexico was nothing like Mexico. There were no beaches at all. How she
would have enjoyed the playful quality of the iguanas as compared to the ugly
void that they seemed to be stuck in. As she spoke, her husband listened, but
it was clear that his mind was somewhere else. Only months before, Theodore
might have considered this, but at that moment, he completely balked at the
opportunity. Proving these latest visions real just outweighed anything she
could have proposed.
“I
know you can’t understand this, but there is something fated in the things that
I am seeing. There is a place that I am meant to be. This is only a stepping
stone for me in the same way as it was for the Native American tribes that I am
digging up. I must be here, Elizabeth. I must.”
“I
don’t understand.”
“I
don’t either, but we must give it time and patience. I know I can’t make you
see like I do unless you choose to participate in one of these rituals with
me.”
“No.”
“You’re
so sure?”
“I
have to be. One of us must be based in our right mind. There are things
happening to you. You can’t see them, but I do. I don’t like them. They are
dark, scary, and evil.”
“Maybe
you need a hobby like knitting or crocheting.”
“I
need my husband. I need to see you without “Your” Lady present.”
“If
that’s how you’ll feel, then I’ll let it go.”
“Please
do so.”
“I
will for you, but this could be something bigger than even I have imagined it
to be. Why not let it stay for a little longer?”
“It
could also be something worse.”
“Perhaps.”
“Then
let it go.”
“Yes,
dear,” he half-heartedly said.
But
he didn’t let it go. Instead, he would casually ask her if she was still sure
that abandoning this psychological research and avoiding this substance was her
answer. Finally, after six months, she said yes, just to shut him up.
The
ritual was held in the middle of the night. No other Americans were there.
Instead, there were the three Native Americans that he had met through Davis
Samuel and a Mexican woman named Maria, who was new to him, but well-acquainted
with the Native Americans. While she was the only woman, it didn’t seem odd or
out of place for her to be there with three strange men. Additionally, even
though she seemed to be significantly younger than the other men, she didn’t
seem out of place with Native American elders.
“Are
you sure this is what you want?” Maria asked Elizabeth. “You look so out of
place in this dance that we are about to do.”
Elizabeth
looked back, stunned.
“Yes,
yes, it is. I want to do this to be close with my husband.”
“You
will never be close with your husband while doing this.”
Elizabeth
once again seemed stunned.
“I
don’t understand.”
“Your
husband has crossed a threshold. It’s a place you wouldn’t be able to know even
if you took Our Lady of Guadalupe.”
“But
she wants to try,” Theodore responded.
The
oldest of the Native Americans looked at the British couple.
“If
she does this ceremony, she will not be close with Guadalupe. She will lose you
altogether as you have lost your soul to it.”
“I’m
perfectly fine and in total control of myself.”
“You
are not, Mr. Swanson. However, we will help you be found again. However, I will
not be responsible for helping to lose your wife.”
“I
will pay you twice the amount to give her this experience,” he said fishing out
a huge wad of money.
“I
will not take your money,” Maria said as Elizabeth met her eyes in a display of
sympathy and gratitude after feeling so lost as she looked around at all of the
ghostly figures, which were looming around the campfire.
“You
already have,” Theodore said.
“Watch
your tone with Maria,” the oldest man said. You must listen to her. She has
spoken. Please take your woman and leave. You are no longer welcome here.”
At
this, Maria threw the money he had paid to his feet.
“But
I don’t understand,” Theodore said while picking up the money.
“Maria
understands. You have become dangerous with your love of this dark substance.
You have seen the future, and you seek to know more that you should, but we
can’t let you do this anymore. It isn’t right,” the man spoke again as his two
companions stood up to move toward Theodore.
“But
I have to find the light again. You brought me here? How can you take it away
from me now?”
“You’re
too lost. Besides, your body would reject it. I can see now how lost you are.
Your eyes are burned out candles. You are a soulless husk,” Maria said as Elizabeth
started shivering at the implications.
“If
that’s how you want it,” Theodore replied. “Then we’ll leave.”
With
that, they both left, and Theodore never mentioned that event or the substance
to Elizabeth again. However, neither of them ever stopped thinking about it,
despite Theodore losing all access to this drug.
NNNN
With
no access to substances, Theodore focused hard on his work to keep his mind off
the dark dreams, which were still prevalent in the darkened recesses of his
head. Sometimes, they were murderous. Other times, they were sexual. Most
times, they held pagan and animistic overtones. On one hand, he liked the movie
in his mind, but on the other hand, it frightened him to think about what the
future was that these images predicted. However, that wasn’t enough to scare
him away from sleep.
For
all of the time that he gave to the archaeology of the region, he gave no time
to Elizabeth except to get her pregnant with his one and only son Earnest, who
would be born in late 1958. Once again, this was an event that seemed to pass
over Theodore, who was very preoccupied in his archaeological work. For all he
had dreamed about these exact moments, he never noticed how they matched up to
the real life experience he was about to have.
For
the next year, Theodore did everything he could to look at each layer of dirt
and its remnants. Clovis was very busy these days, and the workers uncovered more
dirt and rock to find more and more skeletons of these creatures that became
food for the tribes that came to the region in the late Pleistocene. Occasionally, they would even find bones of
these Pre-Columbian peoples. Of course, that was the days before NAGPRA, so it
didn’t raise the eyebrows that some current findings did. Nevertheless, it was
always exciting.
Nevertheless,
for all that Theodore was enjoying, Elizabeth wasn’t happy in her life at all.
For one, she didn’t like the distance between them, but she had Earnest to take
care of, so it kept her mind off of some of the things that she was expecting
were starting to occur. She rationalized that in six months, his time here
would be up, and then maybe, they could go back to Cambridge and parlay this
work into better teaching opportunities if there was anything left of his life.
Then,
just like that, things changed. It seemed like the old Theodore was back. He
was kind, loving, and attentive. Everything made so much sense that Elizabeth
took it all for granted. What she didn’t know was that during this time the
dreams stopped. With quiet, restful sleep and a dedication to the purpose of
just working on the site, this kept Theodore far enough away from the dark
world.
But
as all things do, these days ended when in early 1959, he vanished with his archaeological
notebooks and certain artifacts that were recently found at the dig site.
At
the time, he left no note to explain his exodus, but there were clues to another
event that also happened the night after he left: the death of the three Native
Americans. These were the exact same three men who were with the couple when
they were dismissed for denigrating the Our Lady of Guadalupe ritual.
A
few days after Theodore’s vanishing act, their bodies were found in the waters
of the Grulla National Wildlife Refuge, and because they weren’t honorable and
/ or white, they were considered to be a non-issue by the local newspapers who
dutifully reported on their murders until one of these men was also directly
connected to the Blackwater Draw archaeological site.
At
the time, Elizabeth was questioned by local and tribal police about this, but
she didn’t know much about anything that had happened. Why would she? She was a
dainty housewife from a different era. The only name she knew was Maria, which
was also the only name her husband had known her by. Other than his Native
American contact, William “Two Feathers” Harrison, this was a cold trail. Harrison
was the man who worked at the archaeological site, but other than that, most of
the crew at Blackwater Draw knew nothing more about him other than he was
quiet, but hardworking, though he seemed to be mentally slow a lot of the time.
However, he was always “respectful” or “hardworking” in their comments.
The
men at the site and on the reservation knew even less of Maria, who had also
vanished after a feeling of these men’s deaths passed over her. With that
premonition of doom in her soul and clairvoyant visions, she quickly passed
back through the borders of the Rio Grande River and assimilated into the
ghettos of Juarez, just another living ghost in a town full of so many specters
passing through life.
In
the towns of Clovis and Portales, the local communities, the police, and the
academics were all shocked as to what happened with regard to the grisly
strangulations. With that, their eyes turned to the wife of the chief suspect
in the crime. Elizabeth Swanson was embarrassed, and so when there was nothing
left to be done, she took her infant son with her to go back to Cambridge. There,
she remained with her family, living off the academic royalties of her husband
until they dried up and forced her to have to find a way to survive and to
allow her to help support her son through his own academic interests.
As
for the missing archaeologist, he hadn’t left without a trace. Unfortunately,
the person he told of his troubles with the dreams and visions was too young to
comprehend it. Earnest Swanson knew nothing of artifacts, migraines, murderous
thoughts, and ghostly images and visions appearing to him.
“There
is something in me that has changed. I no longer feel like myself, Earnest. Not
that I know anything about who I am anymore or that I ever did, but something
is fighting in me, wrestling with my mind. I can’t explain it, which makes no
sense since I am a PHD, and I have learned so much about human minds, cultures,
history, and experiences and how to express this hermeneutic phenomenology, but
this thing I feel is so foreign, and dare I say it, but it’s evil. It isn’t
something of substance like you and me, but it is something tangible and
powerful. I have seen it. It has touched me, and because of that, I need to
leave you and your mother. I wish I didn’t. I’ve enjoyed these last few weeks,
but this thing inside of me hasn’t felt the same way toward them. This isn’t
about my lack of love for you; rather, it is about your safety as a person. Now
I must obey it, or it will destroy all three of us. This is what happens when
the thing gets up close, stares in your eyes, and marks you for all of
eternity. I hope you forgive me for all that I am about to do.”
And
with that, he gave the baby a kiss on his forehead and was gone.
By
the time that the Blackwater Draw Museum opened in 1969, Theodore Swanson was
officially erased from all contributions to the history of Clovis, something
which also caused his previously-respected works to stop being taken seriously.
With no outlet to make money by publishing, Theodore was considered dead broke
and in an imminent state of having to come up for air.
However,
he was still buried deep beneath the eyes that were on alert for him anywhere
that he might turn up. Sure, he was still on the radar of Interpol, the FBI,
and MI6 as well as other agencies like Mossad, but even the best minds of the
criminal justice world didn’t have the slightest idea where he was or what he
was doing.
For
most bookish archaeologists, even one as ruggedly handsome as Theodore Swanson,
it would seem impossible to think that his life in 1955, the year he accepted
the job at Blackwater Draw, could ever become so interesting infamous as to
warrant the legal and espionage attention that he was receiving, but with his
finding of that ancient skull that he came to unearth, he came to realize that
he was in completely different waters with the real behind the scenes power
players.
Especially
when the skull didn’t look human.
This
skull existed in one of his Our Lady of Guadalupe visions. Amazingly enough, it
ended up being exactly where the dream told him it would be. It wasn’t like
this surprised him since he had many dreams of the future come true before, but
this clairvoyant reality unleashed something different in him.
In
that vision, he walked to the place where the skull was located, and the thing
with the horns and bony evil face handed him the shovel to commence his
excavation. Instantly, he did as he was told, quietly and carefully shifting
the dirt away until he saw the bones. Then, he grew more meticulous as he
finished pulling it out of the ground. When he was done, he stared into the
monstrous form’s eye sockets. With a smile on his face, he closed his eyes and
thought about what the discovery would mean. With a beaming smile on his face,
he opened his eyes to see the wendigo in front of him. Its snarl immediately
scared Theodore as he shifted back, but he couldn’t escape. Instead, the thing
pounced on top of him and got inches from his face. As it breathed and drooled
on him, Theodore screamed himself awake from his dream.
“Are
you all right, dear?” Elizabeth asked, obviously fearing for her husband’s
life.
“Uhh…”
Theodore
looked at himself and saw bloody scratch marks all over his chest and felt wet
from saliva on his face and chest.
“What
happened, Theodore?”
Silence
filled the room, but nothing could disguise how something awful just happened.
“Why
don’t you take a hot shower and clean yourself off? Get into some new clothes
or something,” Elizabeth told her husband. “It’s clear you’ve been working
really hard. I know you haven’t slept well in ages, but this is something
really different. I’m worried about you.”
“Yes,
I am, too. So yeah… yes, dear, I’ll definitely do that” he answered, doing what
he was told and came back talking about other things.
However,
even with the warmth of the shower, it was impossible for him to escape all of
this that had transpired in his dream. At first, he thought this feeling coming
over him was just like the intense congestion from a seasonal allergy, but then
he came to wonder if he, like those men at King Tutankhamen’s tomb, has
descended upon some curse since this thing inside of him was getting worse and
carrying with it more intense symptoms. Was he Lord Carnarvon about to die from
his own mosquito bite?
Initially,
upon finding the skull in real life, he stood proud, but shocked. Holding the
skull up to the first light of day, he realized that he was always meant to see
the skull and to be its rightful owner. This thrilled him, but the “curse”
feelings he was enduring from the skull, the dream, and the awakening worried
him senseless. Then came the voice in his head, the one that told him to leave
the area and to kill all those who knew about his dreams and his work. This
scared him senseless. As the monstrous form’s omnipotent hold crushed his mind,
he had no choice but to obey it, and so he walked away from Earnest and went
off to kill the Native Americans who had supplied him with Our Lady of
Guadalupe in the first place.
This
initial act of beying the voices saved his family while condemning him to a
permanent life of pain. Nevertheless, it wasn’t all bad since the creature
allowed him to gain fuel for more clairvoyant visions when he ransacked their
possessions to find more of the drug.
There
was a part of him that hated having to kill at all. Nothing he could think of
could salve his mind of the guilt he felt over the blood he had shed. Then, the
voice from the skull rationalized the situational ethics of the moment to him.
“These
Native Americans harmed you. We both knew you couldn’t kill your wife, your
son, and your fellow archaeologists either. Friends and family, you called
them, but really, they would have killed you for a chance to be rich and famous
if it meant that the opportunity was only for them and not for you. You did
what you had to do. You killed these Indians for me, and you were rewarded with
your life’s blood. You longed for it so badly. Now take some of their life
force from them and see the future clearly for the first time in your life.”
At
that moment, he did just that and saw a world almost sixty years into the
future.
“This
is where you are going. Pay careful attention. All of this will be coming back
to you before you know it.”
When
the deed was done, he took off to New Orleans, which was where he hid himself
away with a new name and life. This life called itself Earl Carter, and it lost
the English accent of Theodore altogether. Additionally, he took to acting as
American as he could, even growing a big thick beard and working out with
weights as much as he could when he returned from working on the ships and
docks. Not only did this proud British man begin losing his accent and
embracing a culture he never really felt a part of, but he began transitioning
into someone who fearlessly walked the streets with his new identity and
identification to feel comfortable enough to exist as this new individual all
over again.
Over
time, he grew at home as the voices and visions told him he would.
“Live
your life,” the skull said to him. “Forget about Elizabeth. Enjoy the jazz and
the bars. Make yourself comfortable here. Grow strong in body and mind. Never
stop training. If you do that, then the true culture of Bourbon Street world
will be your friend. Besides, you will hear from others soon.”
“Who
are these men?”
“The
first will call himself Marwan.”
“What’s
his real name?”
“It
matters as much as what your real name is. The only thing that matters is
skills. You both have some of the things I need, but neither of you alone have
enough things to win this war.”
And
so it was that in 1975, he met Marwan, who was a muscular, though wiry Haitian
man. He looked to be about thirty five years old at the time, though it was
hard to tell for sure. In addition, Marwan brought his brother with him, but
that man was silent the whole time. Just like Marwan, the brother was strong,
though not as wiry as his sibling. Had Marwan not referred to him as he brother
Theophilus, a name Theodore also assumed was fake, Theodore would have assumed
that he was just hired muscle.
“We
share interests in Our Lady of Guadalupe.”
“What
do you know about ‘Our Lady?’”
“I
know many things, my friend. However, the greater meaning of these things will
be revealed to both of us over time. Just know that I am at this phone number
waiting for you when our friend chooses to speak.”
The
Haitian passed a small piece of paper to him.
“504-555-6270,”
it read.
“I
shall do this, but are you aware of when this will be? I’ve waited over fifteen
years to meet you.”
“Be
patient, my friend,” Theophilus said. “All things come in time.”
“Yes,
but how can I be sure that nothing happens to you?”
“We
should worry more about you, old man. Were it not for this barrel chest that
you possess, we would have thought you were more comfortable sitting in an
office than fighting for this cause,” Theophilus added.
“Just
know that he walks with us. Until he needs us, nothing will happen to us. We
are, how do you say this? Protected,” Marwan explained.
Then
Theophilus spoke.
“We
are also insured against concerns. My sons Jean and Ty are part of this process
as well. Do you have any insurance in how your life will go on after it ceases?”
“I
did.”
“Where
is he?” Marwan asked.
“Somewhere
with his mother.”
Marwan
continued with his line of questioning.
“She
took him from you?”
“No,
I had to leave him there. He gave me choices,” Theodore said, staring at the
skull on an end table across the room. “I did what I needed to do.”
“I
would say that was a tough break, my friend, but He has a way of getting things
back for us.”
“I
would like very much to see Earnest again.”
“One
way or another, we are all here for that future moment.”
“Yes,
I would guess we are.”
And
with that response, Marwan and Theophilus got up.
“It
was nice to meet you, Carter. Hopefully, we will meet again soon,” Marwan
stated.
“If
the fates allow.”
“The
fates have allowed this,” Marwan replied. “Don’t be so pessimistic about them
doing this again. All things will happen as they will.”
At
that, the Haitian men were out the door and gone from the immediate reality of Theodore’s
life.
NNNN
That
night, for the first time in ages, Theodore took a hit of Our Lady of Guadalupe
and the skull spoke to him again as he drifted through a series of visions as
Charles Mingus drifted out to him from his phonograph player.
“Just
wait, my friend. You’ll hear from us again. This next time, you will meet an
American. His name will be Benson. You will help him, and he will help you. He’s
a lot like you could have been. You must instruct him in the art of Our Lady of
Guadalupe. Until then, be patient and wait.”
“I
will,” his mind said in the same language this voice spoke in. What else could
he do, disobey his master?
NNNN
Years
later, Theodore would be sitting in the living room of an apartment house
watching television. It was early in the morning, and he couldn’t sleep. On the
channel would be one of those made for television alien programs, and he would
see an image of the grays on the screen in front of him. As his mind connected
this image to the image of the skull that once sat on his end table. After his
visit from the Haitians, he kept it safely packed away in his duffel bag so
that their stares would never be repeated. Until this time, it was stored
safely away, but now, he ran to grab it so that he could bring it back to
compare the two images.
Over
all of these years, Theodore had glanced upon this artifact and reflected how it
had come to look so beautiful, so perfect and well-preserved despite the sun
bleaching in through the rocks and dirt all of these years. This thought
boggled Theodore completely, and it made him want to experience Guadalupe all over
again. Nevertheless, he found himself restraining his desires since there was
only so much of it left, and he needed to wait for Benson to use more.
Sure,
the powder was there, and yes, it still worked, but it was a finite quantity
until he found a way to get more of it. However, maybe if he just took a
little, he could find out who this Benson was and where he was. Then, he could
keep the rest safe until the real time came.
With
this, he prepared it, and he drifted into visions.
Instead
of clarity, he heard a cacophony of sounds. Most of the words were spoken over
the sounds of loud crashing rock music played out on drums and distorted guitars.
The only words he could make out were something to the effect of a lot of
people will die and a place called Awatovi. However, just as he was about to
scream out at the painful migraine coming over him, he drifted off into a haze.
When he awoke, he heard the same singer screaming about the plane crash that Theodore
was now watching. Right in front of him, the New York skyline was collapsing to
the ground. At first, Theodore couldn’t tell if it was part of the vision or a
movie that was playing on television. As he looked at it, he wanted to scream,
but he couldn’t. Instead, he heard the screams of men and women in every different
quadrant of downtown Manhattan as the clouds of smoke, fire, and building
debris engulfed the screen.
Theodore
stopped everything else in time as he froze in place to listen to the words
that the man was singing.
“A
lot of people will die, and we will cry for their loss and our loss and the
sudden end of all of the energy that made them and gave them so much potential
in life. As with all things, sometimes, there are higher powers that determine
the kinetic nature of our lives’ energy. When that happens, we must be aware
that there was nothing we could do to stop the events that have transpired and
that are occurring. So why cry? Why feel a sense of guilt in the complicity of our
responsibilities for the supposed evil of the moment? Instead rejoice because
we are alive and though so many so-called innocent by-standers have suffered so
much pain, we have been chosen to carry on and to be part of the solution. And
though a lot of people die, not everyone will. We shall continue on as we
always have until we are dead, buried and dust in our tombs.”
The
rest of the vision was painful and felt like some kind of a heroin high.
Theodore hated it all, and he just wanted it to end, but it didn’t. Rather, it
seemed to go on forever as he watched clips of bodies jumping out of windows
into the air in some hope of sprouting wings and surviving the horrendous evil
of the moment.
But
none of them did, and in the horror of that moment, Theodore realized that when
his time to escape came, he wouldn’t have wings either.
NNNN
In
another corner of the world, sitting in a dusty office that hadn’t changed
since Margaret Thatcher’s days, Ernest Swanson, who was disobeying his mother
to follow in his father’s archaeological footsteps, would reflect how it seemed
amazing, if not insane, to think that even the heartiest species of “blokes”
would travel roughly 4,000 miles over constant mountains without having an REI
store to outfit the tribe for the adventure.
There
was something very true in that, but in the same way that this was true that it
takes time to move things into place, Earnest Swanson had no idea how important
his father’s steps on this journey were in getting Earnest to accomplish his
own travel plans.
NNNN
When
the right time came, Theodore finally met Benson Villaneuva. What’s more, the
young man had connections to get him Our Lady of Guadalupe. With regard to his
immediate needs, the elder archaeologist could regain his clairvoyant visions. What’s
more, the time would finally arrive, soon, where Theodore would learn what it
meant for “a lot of people to die.” In the meantime, all he had to do was hope
that the young man could deliver on the bargain he would follow through with
later that spring.
But
just like with all of these years since he first ran away, his patience was
never his strong suit.
