FLIPKA

Chapter Eleven, Part One

“I can’t let you go to the police with that theory.” Gnecht hissed, his hands strangling the poor steering wheel. We’d just turned onto the highway, which gave me hope that he did not intend to do away with me and leave my body in a gully for the jackals and creepy crawlies to dine upon. 

“I understand the need to keep your research confidential. But she’s got relatives anxious to know what happened to her.”

“She’s not down in the caves! You’re the only one they allowed to find the caves.”

“Why me?” I ventured. “Why did they let me in?”

“You have epiphysis cerebri.”

“What?”

“Epiphysis cerebri – the third eye. Look.”

He pulled down the visor and invited me to take a gander at my face. Nose, too large. Lips like a bow. Eyes, short-lashed and dark brown, but alas—only two stared back at me, not three.

“I only see two eyes, a misshaped nose, and Kewpie-doll lips. No third eye.”

“See the indentation up and between your brows. Yours is inactive, of course, which is why you had to leave. The inactive epiphysis cerebri is unstable and, instead of producing the harmonious rhythms, can disturb delicate ecosystems. Of course, they can’t tell the difference, which is why you were allowed in but you can’t stay.”

The poor man had been exploring bat caves for too long. “I have heard that bats are extremely sensitive to their environments . . .” 

“Bats? You think I’m talking to the bats? I’m not crazy—it’s you and all the other people like you. Why am I doing this? Why?” He hissed, skidding to a stop on the highway.

The move took me by surprise. Butters, you better cut the sarcasm, I told myself. Proceed as though you’re dealing with someone about to launch himself into a full blown paranoid psychosis. 

“That’s who I assumed you were talking about, the bats. Who else lives down in the caves?” 

“Ha! Wouldn’t you like to know—wouldn’t everybody like to know.”

“I’m sure they would but . . .”

“Get out of the car.”

“What?”

“Get out of the car! I’ve got to get back—I’ve been away too long. They’ll get confused! They’re already upset with me.” 

“You can’t just leave me out here.”

“Don’t treat me as if I’m stupid. I know you’re wired. The Bureau probably knows exactly where we are,” he spat, gazing out into the dark desert. “They’re probably even watching us as we speak!”

“Who? Who’s watching us?”

“Don’t play the innocent with me. It’s the BLM, isn’t it?”

“I promise you—I don’t work for the Bureau of Land Management. There’s no one watching us. No one knows where I am except you—just drive me to the next town at least! You can’t leave someone on the side of this highway at night.”

“Ha—you won’t be alone for long. They’ll come and pick you up, now that they know your cover is blown. Get out now!” He snarled, pushing and kicking me with his boots until I stumbled from the car. “Tell them, better luck next time.”

I stood stunned as he U-turned in front of me and roared back in the direction from which we’d come. I couldn’t move. This couldn’t be happening, I thought. It was a dream or a nightmare. There was not a speck of light on either horizon. Overhead the stars’ icy glare made me feel like the smallest most insignificant, stupidest blob of protoplasm in the universe. Why had I even brought up the subject of the missing counselor? I knew I was dealing with a man with more than a few loose screws. If I’d just kept my big mouth shut, but no, not me. Not Big-Mouthed Fi. 

At first I convinced myself it might not be that dire of a situation. If Dr. Gnecht’s headquarters were at the end of Big Gulch Road then the old man’s store couldn’t be more than four or five miles down the highway. Confidently I set off in what I hoped was the right direction. South. Or was it South? The moon was directly overhead making it difficult to locate the Little Dipper. If only I’d paid more attention in my astronomy classes.

I’d had patients who traveled vast distances, climbed foreboding mountains—all for the experience of complete quiet, that existential moment in which you feel your aloneness and also your connection to the eternal. I’d listened to them as they told me about the sense of awe and revelation they’d felt when all alone under the stars, feeling the vastness of the universe and their own insignificance, and then I had told them I felt the very same way curled up reading a book in the library. Wide-open spaces, abandoned of life, only left me with a sense of dread. Not the ordinary monster-under-the-bed dread but the certainty that there waited beyond this life only timeless emptiness. From a professional standpoint, I had analyzed my agoraphobia forward, backward, and six ways to Sunday. It was guilt. The irrational poltergeist all of us carry for something we did or didn’t do. 

There was only one thing to do. Sing.