Scott Nicholson - The Gorge

Nice.

In the temperate bowels of the cave, Raintree had perched the penlight on a rock shelf. Here, the cave angled down and the walls were worn smooth, as if the channel had once carried water. The rock contained striations of crystal that caught and reflected the battery-powered light. Other layers in the granite revealed sandstone, a crumbling, chalk-white rock, and even a vein of coal. But Raintree wasn’t here for a geology class. He’d already taken that one in college, the easy three-hour credit known around campus as “Rocks for Jocks.”

He’d gone at least a hundred yards, at one point squeezing through a narrow crevice that had filled him with claustrophobia. But now he was alone to seek the Spirit Guide.

Raintree thought the inner search should be conducted in the forest, at the primal moment of first light, when the nocturnal creatures shut their eyes and gave way to the day shift. But that was cheating. Many species of animals could be found in the forest, and it would be difficult to know which one was the chosen spirit. Raintree’s vision quest would follow a hard path, so that when the good medicine came, he would know it for what it was.

But first things first.

He rummaged in the medicine bag and came out with three vials. The oxycodone was half gone, but he still had a good palmful left. Enough to put a damper on his central nervous system, though probably not enough to kill him.

He had four amphetamines left, Black Beauties, strong enough to make his dark hair stand on end. The third vial contained diazepam, better known under the trade name Valium. About a dozen of those were left if he really needed sleep and tranquility.

Under perfect conditions, he would time his medication so he would ease between moods. Oxy in the morning to numb the edges, then a Black Beauty for a midday pick-me-up, then Valium to blend the afternoon into a smooth concoction. From there, the choices were nearly limitless. Well, actually, they were quite limited, but the choice between a balls-tingling, eyelid-quivering speed buzz and a thick-tongued ride down the Oxy Highway seemed like a no-lose opportunity.

But this was a special circumstance. The painkillers kept his muscles from screaming at their overtaxed state, and the Valium allowed his mind to entertain images of the Raven Mockers without succumbing to a fit of fear. He’d held off on the speed, figuring he’d need it in the morning to make it to the top of Attacoa, the stone chimney the white settlers called Babel Tower. But there was one special ingredient that spiced the stew of his vision quest.

He pinched down into the medicine bag and came up with a piece of tinfoil. Some Southwestern tribes had used peyote, belladonna, jimson weed, tobacco, or hemp blossoms in their spiritual ceremonies.

Raintree figured the Cherokee vision quest needed a serious upgrade. He pulled out the one-thousand-microgram dose of Mr. Natural LSD, concocted in a Berkeley lab by a bald, bearded professor. The acid manufacturer had been a client in one of Raintree’s fitness gyms, and when the man had pulled a muscle doing dead lifts, Raintree offered him half an oxycodone tablet. The man traded for four, giving up an eighth of an ounce of sensimilla bud in return. A lasting and mutually rewarding friendship was born, with Raintree having a dozen doctors writing pill prescriptions and the professor cranking out an alphabet soup of illegal substances.

A tiny, sane part of Raintree’s mind, the one where the pills hadn’t shorted out the circuits, knew this was no time for an acid trip. But it was shouted down by the other part, the seeking part, the unhappy and selfish part. The part that had wanted this trip in the first place.

He wished the cave harbored an underground spring, because the speed, the climb, and the assault had made him thirsty. But the cave, at least this far down into the mountain, was only moist, where water seeped between layers of stone and didn’t collect enough for drinking.

He unwrapped the foil and raised the dose of acid to his mouth. He paused, wondering what sort of ritual was required. A tribal chant, an improvised parody of old ghost dances, or maybe a paean to the buffalo spirit.

The Cherokee, who lived in houses and had a written language at the time of their forced removal from the Southern Appalachians, would have been better off as savages. All the written word had done was allow contracts between the tribe and the U.S. government. Those promises were as broken as their spirits on a thousand-mile walk where disease, famine, and exhaustion took them by the hundreds. No wonder many of the Cherokee had abandoned their Great Spirit, left it behind in the territory now owned by the White Man. They deserved each other.

In the thin shaft of the flashlight’s beam, he examined the scratches and runnels on his forearms. Even now, some sort of infection or contamination could be racing through his system, poisoning his brain. Raintree wanted his own brand of poison.

The acid was soaked into a tiny square of paper, waiting to form a mushroom cloud in the user’s head. Lysergic acid diethylamide was known to scramble serotonin levels, distort perception, and confound the DEA. Raintree wasn’t a chronic acid head. After a brief love affair with the drug, like most space cadets, he’d found the experience was best when saved for a special occasion.

Like a date with his spirit guide.

He put the dose to his tongue and swallowed. He wouldn’t sleep tonight, though he could probably ramp down on the amphetamine doses and turn up the volume on the Valium. For the next twelve hours, he wouldn’t be able to fully trust his senses. The discipline and self-control that had made him a wrestling champion would be given up to uncertainty, confusion, and a golden, illuminated doorway to the Other.

On an intellectual level, he knew any encounter with a spirit guide would be a hallucination. The goal of a vision quest, as least in the original form, was to push yourself to the limits of endurance, exhaustion, and hunger, then fall into a stupor of delirium. In the twenty-first century, vision quests were chartered field trips run by corporations that provided satellite television, refrigeration, and catered dinners so the customers could experience their inner selves in comfort and style.

Raintree switched off the light and listened. A low moan ran through the dark beyond. The wind. The night breeze finding cracks in the ancient stone.

He was well aware that he might die while tripping. Some LSD users flipped out, developed schizophrenic delusions, and went into psychotic fugues. In such a state, Raintree would be helpless against the attacking creatures. He touched the pitons in his belt and smiled.

Somehow, he didn’t figure it that way.

He recalled the surge of fear, the struggle on the cliff wall, the creature clinging to his back. And his thrusting of the steel spike into the creature’s head.

That was power. That was a vision worth pursuing and celebrating.

The trip of life and death.

Did God have bones?

The wind changed pitch and became a whale’s submarine song.

Salamanders became oil in these mountains.

He wasn’t sure how long he sat in the dark. The blackness pressed against him, snug as SealSkinz. He checked the watch. A quarter after twelve. Half an hour had passed since ingestion. His feet were balloons, his hands were sand. They seeped toward the flashlight.

He flicked it on. He couldn’t tell which way to go. Both directions looked the same, and either could be the throat of Hell.

He sat for another ten minutes. Ten minutes according to the watch. In real time, as marked by his malfeasant synapses, he was still in the Now.

Shit. Maybe tripping wasn’t such a good idea. Vision quests were for the birds, man.