Crash Gordon and the Mysteries of Kingsburg (86 page)

“Nearly all of the remote-viewers at SRI International and in Project GRILL FLAME have seen UFOs hovering over Nike missile bases, flitting around Top Secret military installations, and trailing after nuclear submarines,” Lloyd says. “But there was never anything they could do about it until recently. Now someone like Gordon can zero in on the UFO occupants at their level on the astral-material continuum and bring them down to a fully materialized state, where they’re vulnerable. Then it’s simply a matter of choking off their air supply with an asthma attack, or rendering them incapacitated with a massive case of Montezuma’s Revenge–which I understand is none too pleasant for the equally-afflicted psychic warrior inside the isolation tank…. The UFO subsequently crashes and a special Air Force team flies out to pick up the remains.”

“That’s harsh,” says Gordon, shaking his head.

“What’s harsh?” D.H. asks him. “Crashing a UFO and killing a bunch of dinky gray ass-probing aliens, or having to float around in an isolation tank filled up with your own liquefied poo?”

“It’s not all that much worse than my uncle seeing snakes and shitting his pants with shaman’s juice,” Jimmy says merrily.

As Jimmy, Skip, and D.H. laugh in the backseat, Lloyd turns to Gordon and says to him in confidence: “I’ve been meaning to ask you, Gordon… did something similar happen with your father?”

“My dad? What do you mean?”

“Your father’s plane crash. You weren’t mad at him, were you?”

A heavy invisible weight descends along Gordon’s arms and shoulders. It feels just like the lead blanket that Doctor Smiley’s assistants covered him with after he’d been laid out on the X-ray table. As he recalls the circumstances of his father’s plane crash, Gordon thinks,
Was I mad at my Dad that day?

Sure…
he answers himself,
but I remember forgiving him.

“It’s possible you might have triggered your psychic killer alter without even realizing it. It could have happened subconsciously.”

Did I? Was I that angry? Just because he called me asinine? And a jackass. And an ass-cheeked ding-a-ling. And then he went flying with Mike instead of me….

The heaviness descends along Gordon’s legs and inches up the back of his spine, toward his brain. He tries to lift his hands, but he finds they’ve been magnetically melded to his knees.

“I didn’t mean to insinuate anything,” Lloyd backpedals. “I just thought that if you knew how your father, in a sense, traded a piece of your soul to Arnie Andersen in exchange for a cut of Arnie’s business, well… let’s just say it made
me
see red, when I found out what Project MONARCH had done to you and Jimmy.”

But I loved my dad! (I think…).

“Arnie was my good friend, but now I doubt I’ll ever speak to him again.”

My dad traded me to Arnie Andersen? How did I know that? Or did I? Whatever it was that happened that day–oh man, I was pissed!

“Gordon? Is something wrong?”

Gordon’s entire body is shuddering in the same way that his father’s old green Pinto used to shudder whenever it was pushed past the legal speed limit. Convulsing like the first big trout he hooked at Dinkey Creek, Gordon swims through the air into Lloyd’s flabby arms, compromising his steering. Lloyd tries to push him away, but Gordon’s upper torso is too heavy. He’s already sunk deep into the abyss of narcolepsy.

The Bentley is making a sweeping left turn along a high ocean cliff as all of this is happening. It hits the guardrail –

– and glances off. Lloyd regains control of the steering wheel and stops the car.

SAFE….

“Shit! What happened?” Jimmy asks. He hops up and slides over and down the smooth back of the Bentley’s trunk to get out and inspect the damage.

Lloyd gets out, too. He goes around to the front of the car to take a look at the right fender. He squats, then announces: “It’s a bit crumpled, but drive-able.”

“Did Gordon pass out?” D.H. asks.

“Two down,” Skip says, patting Twinker, still slumped in his lap. “Only one more to go.”

“Jimmy, what’s it gonna take to set you off?” D.H. yells good-naturedly, looking at him through the windshield.

Jimmy’s eyes widen in horror, as do Lloyd’s. An instant later, the inside of the windshield goes white with the reflection of otherworldly headlights.

D.H. and Skip turn around in the backseat just in time to see a black, early-sixties Lincoln Continental furiously bearing down on them.

EPILOGUE

I
guess you’d call that a cliffhanger… although when the Men in Black rammed into Lloyd’s Bentley they sent it through the guardrail and over the cliff with no hanging whatsoever. Skip and D.H. were rocked by the horrid jolt of the collision, then they saw the sky tilt and felt a rapidly accelerating momentum as the Bentley plummeted toward the sea. A sensation beyond even panic blazed through them as the wind roared in their ears and their butts drifted free of the Bentley’s backseat. They knew they were about to die.

Skip hung on tight to Twinker, while D.H. grabbed the headrest in front of him, where Gordon remained slumped, dreaming away. Time seemed to telescope and slow way down. Then, with a crinkley pop–like bubble wrap being torn off a package–Skip and D.H. found themselves floating outside their bodies. An instant later, the Bentley smashed below them into the cradle formed by two gnarled, rust-colored boulders jutting above the foaming waves.

D.H. observed with an astonishing lack of concern that his body had been decapitated upon impact–guillotined on the Bentley’s shattered windshield.

(D.H.: “Look, Ma: no head!”)

Once you’re on the Other Side, almost all communication happens via telepathy (which I’ll indicate by using parenthesis). I’m sure you’ll figure it out.

(Skip: “What just happened to us?”)

(D.H.: “We just got wasted, obviously.”)

Skip watched, unperturbed, as his body–along with Twinker’s–sunk under the cold green waves and drowned. A few seconds later, Twinker flung herself up from the sea and joined them in the air above the wrecked Bentley.

(Twinker: “¡Hola, guys! Pretty weird, huh?”)

(S.: “Fuckin’ freaky….”) Skip gave Twinker a big astral hug. He was starting to remember situations no less freaky that he’d been in before. This wasn’t his first time being dead.

It wasn’t the first time for any of them. In fact, they’d planned to die that way long before they were even born, knowing that if the three of them died together they’d have a better chance of remembering their lives on Earth–and thus a better chance of helping those they left behind once they crossed to the Other Side.

(T.: “Where’s Gordon?”)

(S.: “He’s still down in the car. I don’t think he’s dead yet. But his body’s pretty banged up. He could show up anytime.”)

(D.H.: “Gordon’s smart enough to heal himself, if he wants to go on living.”)

(T.: “But he has to choose.”) Twinker drifted down to take a closer look at him. (“He’ll do whatever feels right.”)

Gordon’s body was in bad shape. He was curled up under the dash of Lloyd’s Bentley, broken and bleeding all over the place. Waves were slapping around the two rusty boulders, slopping their froth over the smashed car doors. Seawater was pooling on the floorboards, mixing with Gordon’s blood. If he didn’t just bleed out, there was a good chance he’d eventually drown.

(T.: “He’s not in his body right now. I can feel it.”)

(S.: “Maybe he’s still up on the cliff with Jimmy and Lloyd.”)

So they went to find out.

D.H. was doing loop-de-loops on the way up. (D.H.: “God, I forgot how much I love not having a body!”)

(S.: “I kind of liked mine. It seems a shame to just leave it behind like that.”)

(T.: “It’s just food for the little fishies now. Get used to it, stud.”)

Up on the cliff, Lloyd and Jimmy were being forced at gunpoint into the Men in Black’s battered Lincoln. Lloyd was swearing at them: “You Lam imbeciles have no idea who you’re dealing with! If you harm even a single hair on that already traumatized boy’s head, the hammer of cosmic justice will come down and your filthy black suits will be transformed into flaming shrouds!”

(D.H.: “He kind of stole that line from a letter that Hunter S. Thompson once wrote to Tom Wolfe in Italy.”) D.H. had also forgotten how much he loved being omniscient.

(T.: “It’s kind of hard to be original when an interdimensional alien is pointing a gun at you.”) Twinker’s perspective from the Other Side was making her inclined to cut Lloyd some slack. She hovered in the air just a few feet above Lloyd’s head, staring down into the weave of his woeful toupee as he was rudely shoved into the back of the Lincoln. He met her invisible stare with a peevish squint just before the suicide door slammed shut on him.

The stout, triple-chinned Asian-featured man with the bowler hat hustled Jimmy into the backseat on the other side of the car, then he and the emaciated Egyptian-looking man with the Salvador Dali mustache got into the front of the Lincoln and it sped off down the road toward Esalen. D.H., Skip, and Twinker chose not to follow it. A tunnel had opened up alongside the highway and they knew they were supposed to go through it.

At the far end of the tunnel there was a light that grew brighter as Skip, Twinker, and D.H. went inside the tunnel and drifted toward it. The Light seemed to welcome them. It made them feel at peace. It also made them feel more loved–more profoundly, joyfully loved–than they’d ever felt at any point during their lives on Earth.

When they stepped into The Light it was brighter than anything they’d ever seen, but it didn’t hurt their eyes. Other beings of Light gathered around the tunnel’s exit and greeted them. It was like a family reunion without the usual dysfunctional family rivalries and screwed-up psychological undercurrents. There was a joy and gladness that was completely unfaked. After a while (remember: there’s no time on the Other Side–it could have been seconds, it could have been weeks…), Skip, Twinker, and D.H. were led off in separate directions to go have their Life Reviews.

Meanwhile, at the same timeless time in another part of eternity (which is really all just the same time and place, when you get right down to it), Gordon was about to have a Life Review of his own. His would be slightly different, however, because Gordon was in a Divine Coma and it hadn’t been decided yet whether he was going to live or die. So he was in the company of just two very special beings of Light: his daimon and his True Self–or Immortal Twin.