Wherein a strange man treats my wounds.
While I did not die out in the desert that night, I do not remember well the next few days. I shifted in and out of consciousness. I remember being dunked into icy cold water. I remember my skin burning and something rubbed on my wounds. I remember a sound like pots and pans being banged together, the tinkle of wind chimes, and the howl of the wind.
I remember a man sitting over me, singing something like a Native American song as the acrid scent of incense filled the room. I remember the beat of drums and the somber sound of breath passing through a flute. I remember snakes hissing and crawling up my legs. I remember a pale, blonde woman looking down at me. She reached to touch my face, and I remember the touch was so light that I didn’t even feel it. I remember a laughing, howling man in a mask and a many colored jacket who held the world high up in one hand as he danced under a blanket of stars.
My first real memory was of waking up in bed. I heard the sound of his mortar and pestle before I opened my eyes. He was grinding something as he sat in a chair next to my bed. I had not moved an inch to give any sign of consciousness when he spoke.
“So you’re awake,” he said. He did not look up from what he was doing.
He was old, but I realized I had no idea how old he was. He could have been as young as his forties or as old as his seventies. His skin was a dark brown, turned to human leather by the sun. His arms were sinewy and lean, his fingers threaded with hard, twisting veins like the roots of a tree. His hair was dark but faded, pulled back in a ponytail. He wore no shirt, so I could see that he had no fat on him, yet neither did he have more muscle than he needed. Crow’s feet ringed dark eyes, his nose sharp and his mouth strict.
“Where am I?” I asked sleepily.
“You are in my home,” he said in a voice devoid of mirth.
“How…?” I started to ask.
“You walked out of the wasteland to conveniently fall half dead in front of my house. Minutes earlier or minutes later you would not have been my problem. The wastes would have swallowed you up.”
“I’m sorry…?” I ventured. The way he said it, he almost seemed unhappy I hadn’t died.
“There’ll be time enough to pay debts later,” he said.
I nervously looked around the room. The walls were wooden planks, like a cabin. From the ceiling hung a variety of metal objects. Not quite wind chimes, but things like cowbells, old pots, discarded pieces of machines. When they did strike together, their sound was not a chime, but a hollow clanking.
“What’s your name?” I asked to break the silence.
“You may call me Megistus,” he said.
“Huh. Sounds Greek.”
Silence.
“What is that you’re doing?” I said, watching his mortar and pestle.
“This is a medicinal paste,” he said. “For your snake bite. Most of the venom has left your system. But the snake-spirit still lingers within you.”
“Spirit?” I asked. “I thought I was just bitten by a snake.”
“Out here, nothing is just anything. The rules you are used to do not apply out here.”
“Rules? It’s just science. Scientific laws. They always apply.”
“Science is just another set of rituals dictated by different set of shamans. Within the criss-cross of power lines and electric totems, their rules do apply. But out here, they do not.”
“But clearly they do,” I countered. “There’s still gravity. I don’t go floating out into space.” I paused. “Well, I haven’t yet.”
He chuckled, which should have been the first warm act I had seen him do, but it was cold, very cold. “Just because their rule describes it doesn’t make it theirs.”
I shifted uneasily in the bed. He seemed at best eccentric, at worst mentally unbalanced. However, his demeanor was cold, self-contained. He may be crazy, but he was not the I-suck-at-life variety.
While I thought about my discomfort amongst crazy, I came to another realization. I noticed that under the sheets I was naked.
“What the hell? Where are my clothes?”
“Burned,” he said. “They were tainted and I would not bear their stench within my home.”
“Great, now I’m naked in the middle of the desert with a crazy guy.”
“I could send you back outside,” he said, staring at me with dark, flat eyes.
“What’s your deal?” I asked. “I’m sorry I bled on your house and you had to save my life. Clearly I should have collapsed on your neighbor’s front yard. I’ll try not to do it again.”
“I will work with what is brought to me,” he said, “But that does not mean I have to like what is given.”
“Well, goddamn it,” I said, “are you going to be passive aggressive the whole time? I wonder why you didn’t just let me die.”
“If a dying dog collapses on your doorstep, you do not leave it there. The carcass is inauspicious and the dog will stink. You nurse it back to barely alive and send it on its way.”
“So I’m just a dog to you?”
“No,” he said, looking at me with dark eyes. “I like dogs better.”
His stare made me uncomfortable, so I looked around the room again. I rubbed my arms and felt a cold pain on my left arm. I still had the dark bruise of a handprint. Now it had a pale white border around it, as if someone had outlined it with chalk. I try to rub the white away, but it was under the skin.
“You’ve been marked,” he said, nodding his head towards my arm but not looking up. He had pulled out a brush, not unlike a shaving brush, and was dipping it in the paste. He moved the blanket that covered me, which made me flinch and cover myself. He grabbed the blanket again, more firmly as he stared me down. He moved the blanket so just my snake bite was exposed. I watched as he used the brush to apply the paste on the wound. The pungent odor burned through my nostrils.
“Marked by what?” I asked.
“A powerful spirit.”
“A spirit? The snake spirit?” I asked.
“No, one who has stayed in this world far longer than intended.”
“You mean a ghost,” I said.
“If you like, yes. But such a name underestimates him. You are marked by one who collects souls.”
“But he is dead, right?”
“Out here, life and death are not as divided as you are used to,” he said grimly. “There are many ways to keep living after you have died.” He paused before adding, “And to become filled with death while you still live.”
A chill washed over me then. I chose to fight it off and instead of accepting it, I questioned it. “How is that even possible? Those are two mutually exclusive states.”
Again, the mirthless laugh. “We shall see, we shall see.” He put the brush back into the mortar bowl and stood up. “We are done talking for now. Rest, we have work to do.”
He began to leave, but stopped at the door.
“I did save one of your belongings,” he said, nodding to the table next to the bed.
I looked over to the night table, winced and then looked back to the door. He had already left, closing the door behind him. I heard the click of a lock. I looked back at the table and sighed.
Upon it sat that damn bowler hat.
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