Demon Box

“That’s where I got all those crazy characters. I was a night aide on a disturbed ward. I turned in all my white suits the moment I had a rough draft done, but I never lost the fascination.”

“Your book must have reaped certain rewards,” he said. “Perhaps you feel some sort of debt toward those crazy people and call it fascination?”

I allowed that it could be a possibility. “But I don’t think it’s the people I’m fascinated by so much as the puzzle. Like what is crazy? What’s making all these people go there? I mean, what an interesting notion this metaphor of yours is, if I’ve got it right—that modern civilization’s angst is mechanical first and mental second?”

“Not angst,” he corrected. “Fear. Of emptiness. Since the Industrial Revolution, civilization is increasingly afraid of running empty.”

He was breathing hard but I knew he wasn’t going to stop for a rest; I only had another couple dozen yards left before we reached his cabin.

“And that this fear,” I pressed on, “has driven us to dream up a kind of broker and install him in our brain so he can increase our accounts by—”

“Minds,” he puffed. “Into the way we think.”

“—minds… by monitoring our incomes and making smart investments? He can’t be any smarter than we are, though; we created him—and that he is the main snake-in-the-grass making people crazy, not all that psychology stuff?”

“That psychology stuff is… like the stuff the Chronicle writes… mostly crap.”

I followed in silence, waiting for him to continue. The wheezing breaths turned into a laugh.

“But, yah, that is my metaphor. You got it right. He is the snake in our grass.”

“And no way to get him out?”

He shook his head.

“What about the way he got in? What would happen if you hypnotized somebody and told them that their dream broker was no more? That he got wind the bank auditors were coming and committed suicide?”

“Bank failure would happen.” He chuckled. “Then panic, then collapse. Today’s somebody has too much invested in that dream.”

We were almost to his cabin. I didn’t know what else to ask.

“We are experimenting,” he went on, “with some hybrid techniques, using some of Hubbard’s Scientology auditors—‘Clears,’ these inquisitors call themselves—in tandem with John Lilly’s Sensory Deprivation. The deprivation tank melts away the subject’s sense of outline. His box. The auditor locates the demon and deprograms him—clears him out, is the theory.”

“Are you clearing any out?”

He shrugged. “With these Scientology schwules who can tell? What about you? We have a tank open all next week. Just how fascinated are you?”

The invitation caught me completely by surprise. Scientologists and deprivation tanks? On the other hand, a respite from the bus hassles and the cop hassles both was appealing. But before I could respond the doctor suddenly held up a hand and stopped. He tilted his hairy ear to listen.

“Do you hear a gang of men? Having an argument?” I listened. When his breathing quieted I heard it. From somewhere beyond the hedge that bordered the cottages arose a garbled hubbub. It did sound like a gang of men arguing, a platoon of soldiers ribbing each other. Or a ball team. I knew what it was, of course, even before I followed the doctor to an opening in the hedge; it was Houlihan, and only one of him.

Against the quiet purple of the Big Sur dawn, the bus was so gaudy it appeared to be in motion. It seemed to be still lurching along even though its motor was off and Houlihan wasn’t in his driver’s seat. He was outside in the parking lot among the twinkling puddles. He had located some more speed, it looked like, and his six-pound single jack. Then he had picked out a nice flat space behind the bus where he could waltz around, toss some hammer, and, all for himself alone and the few fading stars, talk some high-octane shit.

“Unbelievable but you all witnessed the move—one thirtieth of a sec maybe faster! How’s that you skeptical blinkies? for world champion sinews and synapsis. But what? Again? Is this champ never satisfied? It looks like he’s going for the backward double-clutch up and over record! Three, four—count the revolutions—five, six… which end first? In which hand?… eight, nine—either hand, Houlihan, no deliberation—eleven twelve thirteenka-fwamp yehh-h-h…”

Flipping the cumbersome tool over his shoulder, behind his back, between his legs—catching it deftly at the last instant by the tip of the dew-wet handle. Or not catching it, then dancing around it in mock frustration—cursing his ineptness, the slippery handle, the very stars for their distraction.