The Sick Horror at The Lost and Found (16 page)

Close your eyes and listen. Imagine
you are there and she is thinking of you as she dances. What is she
telling you? Feel a little of how I felt that warm
evening.

I looked out at the trees around the
pool. I could hear the leaves of the banana trees rustling against
the door. Plants with large white bells like hanging heads waved
back and forth. “It’s like they’re waving to you,” Dr. Mike said.
“Beckoning for you to follow them into the unconscious. Like
there’s something there for you -- waiting.”

Dr. Mike poured me more scotch and
that was it. My memories of this night are like the shy glances of
little girl hiding behind the doors, arches and alcoves of my
brain

I woke up in the dead of night with a
bad headache. I looked over and Maria was not in her bed – although
this kind of thing annoyed me, it was not uncommon. There was
nothing in my bathroom medicine chest, so I wandered through the
house. I went upstairs. Dr. Mike’s bedroom door was open, so I went
in quietly. He was not there either. I found some Tylenol and took
it. After putting it back, I noticed something that meant little to
me at the time. A clear vial with the words ‘Essence of
Brugmansia.’ But I was a little more concerned with
Maria.

In the living room, Dr. Mike was
talking quietly with Estrella. I could sense it was personal. My
head still pounded, so I slipped away and passed out again. In the
morning Maria still hadn’t returned. No one knew where she had
gone. The clothes she wore from the previous night were still there
and honestly, I was worried.

I walked down the short way
around the
Arco Iris
loop and had a strange hunch. I walked past another one of
Boquete’s famous gardens,
Mi Jardín es su
Jardín
. It was early. I am not really even
sure if it was open yet to the public. But I did find her there, in
a tiny chapel guarded by the Virgin Mary. She was lying in a small
pew. She was in a daze, staring at a picture of The Last Supper. It
didn’t even seem like she knew it was me when I found her
there.

I sat down in the pew behind her and
gave her a moment. “What happened?” I asked finally.

“
I got caught masturbating
with Grover,” she whispered.

I realized then that she had been
dreaming… she was still dreaming, and maybe sleepwalking since she
left Dr. Mike’s house. I decided not to wake her.

“
It was Grover. My Grover
puppet from Sesame Street. Grover’s nose is really hard see... I
didn’t really know what I was doing. I’d just slip my hand inside
him and he’d talk to me. He’d talk to me down here. I’d bury his
nose as deep as I could get it. Sometimes it went pretty
far.”

“
Who caught you?” I
asked.

She shook her head as if clearing a
thought.

“
Who caught you
masturbating?”

“
My family’s Catholic,” she
muttered. “My father...” she began without finishing.

“
What happened?”

“
Punishment,” she said. She
remained silent for a moment, and then changed the subject. “Never
feel guilt. Never let them make you feel guilt. That is their
power. If they control the right to forgive you, they have even
more power.”

She pointed at the painting. “Look at
Mary Magdalena next to Jesus at The Last Supper. They got it wrong.
Look at the deep red streaks of blood flowing from his crown of
thorns. An open mouth screaming out a muted cry. For what? His eyes
lost in the distance. He sees out over the hills of Golgotha, past
the ruined temple and the hills of Jerusalem and into the future
where maybe someone, one day, might discover and
understand.”

My heart was pounding. I was feeling
claustrophobic in the little chapel. I picked Maria up, put my arm
under her shoulder and slowly walked back to the road. We decided
to walk back to Dr. Mike’s house. Half way up the winding road she
turned to me as if she recognized me for the first time.

“
Matt,” she said. “If you
knew me, really knew me, you wouldn’t want to fuck me
anymore.”

There are variables in a travel.
Sometimes you have to know when to just enjoy the ride or cut your
losses and plan for another day. The weather is a variable. There
are people that are variables. When you have fallen in love with
them, all is cloudy when they oscillate wildly.

Black Alice

By María
Concepción

I grow more powerful in my lucid
dreaming and in my attempt to break the paralysis he seems to have
cast over me. At a certain point, I learned to fly. It allows me to
completely maneuver in my physical surroundings while exploring the
deep corners of my unconscious.

I stole Mat’s keys to get what I need
from his car and I go back to El Explorador. I have to take a
chance climbing over the fence. This is the last day of the full
moon. I find the swing seat and take a few of the drops. I spread
my legs and insert the syringe into my vagina. I leave it there as
I fall asleep, looking at my palm.

I am Black Alice and I go down the
dark hole.

I walk past the rioting painters that
gutted the old TV and moved in. They are incestuous exhibitionists,
they multiply, and they bar people from changing the
channel.

There is the sewing machine
that is blackened by years of caked blood.
“
Soy remendidor de corazones rotos . . .
Cómo está el tuyo
?” it taunts.
It knows there is
always a hole in your heart, and that you are always dumping shit
into it, trying to fill it. It offers to repair you. I dump my
bloody underwear. Shekinah’s last attempt to break through… there.
“Fix that fucker.”

I ease out the syringe in full view of
the moon. Mat, we don’t have full synchronicity… now we will. I
bury the blood under the light of the moon.

I fall deeper into the hole-- into the
cave. I see the moon on my hand ignite into the Grail. But I am
still in the garden.

I go to the hanging artwork that
promised God’s greatest miracle. I turn to face what was on the
other side. It is a mirror. I see Shekinah reflected back. I remind
myself that this is a dream, and I am in control. She has a muddy
face and salty white streaks under her eyes. I know then it is
her.

I hear the tick tock tick tock of a
metronome.

The moon burns red, glowing
in the shifting
bajareque
. It licks everything and
leaves a wet stink. Red dancing fire now and crying
blood.

It is Shekinah’s tears falling out of
the mirror, drip, drip, drip, splattering onto the
ground.

I know what will come next and I have
to leave. I can fly now. Usnavy, the real shaman, gave me the wings
to fly, and I fly around Arco Iris to the chapel in Mi Jardín es su
Jardín, along the path of the Holy Goddesses. And I know I will see
them there in the number 13, the ones who held the body of Christ.
The women.

The chapel is in the likeness of a
grotto, similar to the natural cave at The Lost and Found. When I
arrive, they are all waiting for me. Steve is there, standing with
a bloody spear. I see Estrella, with her cup blazing with light.
Usnavy and her polished stone. Mat is wearing a crown and seated on
a throne – he is wounded with blood between his legs. Only Dr. Mike
has no symbol. He has his drum, and he bangs it like he is running
the whole show. I know where I have to go. I take my clothes off
and open my legs on the altar. I know that this is the wedding of
Cana. I heal Mat and we fuck on the altar. Dr. Mike brought the
alabaster jar and afterwards we all drink the Holy Communion. We
smile. We know this is why we have me. When the lost gather… they
are found.

I am ecstatic… I am almost there. Now,
as Tuna says, to partake of communion, to drink from the cup in
reality before the salvation… then I can save the child.

And like a sign, Mat comes in reality.
There is no toothy grin. No fedora. Just Mat, and I am saved. I
save myself, and I will save Shekinah.

I am not alone.

The Holy Grail

By Mathew Hope

The twilight walk back to Dr. Mike’s
house was surreal. María stopped at each statue of the Virgin Mary
and had eyes that seemed to ask for help. At Dr. Mike’s house
everyone was gathered around the kitchen table, staring at
us.

“
Well?” Dr. Mike asked.
“Tell us what you dreamed.”

Maria sat down, looked briefly at her
hand, and then closed her eyes. “I was in the garden of El
Exlorador and saw Shekinah. But before I lost control I flew. I
flew to a cave where I met all of you there. Steve, you were
carrying a spear that was dripping…”

“…
blood.” He finished for
her.

“
And I was carrying a cup,”
Estrella shouted in Spanish. “And Matt, you were sitting on a
throne.”

I looked down at the symbol on my
hand, and I too remembered this odd dream – so unlike any dream I
had ever had. The lucid dreams made sense to me. The events at the
blue rock rituals were definitely surreal but can be attributed to
the mushrooms we took. But this betrayed my agnostic world view.
This betrayed all logic and reason, everything I thought I knew
about the world and my existence.

Dr. Mike stood up and almost shouted.
“Do you see what we have done everybody? Our lucid dreaming, shared
in ritual, has tapped into our collective unconscious. We have
bridged the gap together. We have connected
psychically!”

The others giggled over every detail,
trying to see who remembered what. They called it the wedding of
Cana.

I had to leave and clear my head. I
apologized to Maria, and asked Steve to take her home. I don’t know
why, but I needed advice and I didn’t know who to turn to. In the
end, I dropped by an internet café and emailed Patrick, one of the
owners of The Lost and Found.

When I got back to The Lost and Found
that night, no one was there. On the bed I share with Maria was a
note:

Dear Mat,

Maybe you are far from
your unconscious today.

Maybe you see I am
distant.

Mat I am afraid. I am
afraid that if you knew what happened to me you wouldn’t have said
that you loved me. There are things in my unconscious Mat. Dark
things. So dark that they have been repressed into symbols and I am
too afraid to let them out alone. I need friends, Mat. I need you.
I love you.

I am at Tuna’s cave.
Please come.

I guessed from everyone else’s absence
that they would be there as well. I crossed the river in the dark
and already I could hear chanting coming from the cave. Although I
don’t know a stitch of Latin, the chanting was familiar to me. They
had lit torches to light my way. As I approached I could see they
were wearing their ceremonial robes from the ritual at the blue
rock. I didn’t want to take another step. They couldn’t possibly
think to reenact the dream literally?

But there she was, sitting on a rock
inside the cave, naked, legs spread open.

“
You have got to be
fucked!” I shouted. Then I looked at each one of them in the eyes
and repeated myself. “You have all got to be fucked!”

Maria stood up off the rock and walked
toward me. “The Grail, the Sang Real, Royal Blood, is in the ocean
of the unconscious. We seek it with the symbols we have chosen. You
have the crown. In the beginning was the word. Creation begins. The
ultimate secret of the Holy Grail -- the blood and the bloodline.
First Communion, then salvation, and then we can save the
child.”

She reached down and undid the zipper
of my pants and slipped her hand in. I let her do it. Nothing was
moving. At that moment all my desire for her withered and died. But
then I felt a horrible, sharp pain. I keeled over and almost threw
up. She didn’t hit me there… it was like something inside
me.

“
Pour the sun into the
moon. Lead me into the house of Osiris and let me give in to his
hand what is in my hand, to his mouth what is in my mouth, to his
body what is in my body, to his wand what is in my
womb.”

“
I’m done.” I said,
struggling to my feet. “Something is completely fucked here.” And I
turned and walked away, thinking that I would never again return to
The Lost and Found.

Patrick’s Letter to
Matt

By Patrick
McGreer

Dear Matt,

Sorry things are not going well at The
Lost and Found. Where is Steve in all this? I thought you guys are
all best friends.

Listen, I made some calls to some
friends of mine who are very knowledgeable about the area. I also
did a little research on the internet. It is not all good news.
First of all, however, you are not losing your mind when it comes
to the blue rock phenomenon at the petroglyphs in Caldera. All over
the area the stones serve as a kind of treasure map to the
locations of buried Indian gold in the area.

When Christopher Columbus visited
Bocas del Toro in 1502 during his fourth and final New World
voyage, he was so taken by the beauty of the area that he affixed
his name to many sites, including Isla Colón (Columbus Island),
Isla San Cristóbal (Saint Christopher Island) and Bahía de
Almirante (Admiral’s Bay). He found the Ngäbe Indians with large
gold disks around their necks, and, eager not to return to Spain
empty-handed, asked about the gold. But the Indians pointed towards
the high mountains. They pointed to the rugged highland cloud
forests, where The Lost and Found is currently located. The Indians
did not use the gold as currency, but it was very valuable for
ceremonial purposes.