snatched the letter and gave it a quick re-read, then proceeded to my own desk to retrieve an organizer notebook and micro-cassette recorder. As it was with everything, I located them in the places they normally would be. I checked the tape in the recorder and removed extra ones from a sealed package inside the middle desk drawer, then reverted for the entire package. These necessities now gathered, I shut off the lights and returned to the stairway, hurried across the living room, and exited out the front door.
At last.
Not far out on the walkway, I shifted to return to the upstairs office only once more, grumbling, as I recalled the letter’s mention of the humming of Melony’s typewriter, and of my neglecting to turn it off.
***
It was quiet in Malibu that night as I departed, driving south down Pacific Coast Highway and scaling the oceanside. Gazing alternately upon the stretch of road before me and then at the coast to my right, I felt as though I was embarking on a secret mission to smuggle forty-six years of reason into the heartland of unreasonable chaos. The coast was like an endless welcome mat of uneven wasteland molded into the roadside like adhesive siding, its colossal door open wide to a swollen, black terrain.
As my pale-brown Mustang climbed upon the freeway onramp and proceeded eastward, I found myself facing the emergence of traffic and engulfing city lights. I was too much aware of myself and my impending destiny and drove with all the careful attention of a driver in combat with his own drunkenness. Life was active and bustling around me and I felt unique to a secret, which concerned every aspect of it. I felt profoundly chosen .
I wondered what secrets were carried by the cities and buildings and vehicles around me, by the lives behind them all. The more I wondered about them, the more I wanted to know them and this was how I came across my own secret to begin with.
It was as though I hadn’t enough to wonder about already.
That night, the whole world seemed unknown to me. It was like starting all over again, back to the basics with Discovery 101. Continuing down the freeway and merging onto the Corona Expressway, everything I passed was to me an everlasting and boundless boulevard of doors, each door containing secret upon secret awaiting revelation. That was the way my life had been. That was the way all life around me seemed now. I imagined this was the way one felt while journeying through that infamous tunnel of light on the verge of meeting his maker.
I was now entering Carbon Canyon.
Stretching northward from the Carbon Canyon Reservoir and up through Chino Hills State Park, this was the home of manifold mysteries, each shrouded subtly amidst the innocence and solitude of rural ranch house turf. Stories have trickled downwards from beyond its lofty hills and grasslands like melted snow upon the ears of neighboring communities. To most, these were nothing more than rumors of supernatural mayhem, whimsical accounts of witchcraft and occult rituals in the hours of late night obscurity, of strange greenish mists emitted from alleged government bases, of floating balls of light and vanishing yokels.
Nothing but the finest in Backwoods Town, U.S.A., superstition.
These tales would thrive as long as humanity maintained its imagination. I, however, would just as soon be interested in most of them as I would be exploring the underbellies of rocks in my backyard. It never used to be that way, and fifteen or so years ago one would easily find me in hot pursuit of these less-than-credible countryside flights of fancy. Yet here I was now, in the middle of it all, adding to this trivial folklore the very ingredients necessary to change the course of civilized man.
And goddamn, was I ever hungry.
Under normal conditions, one would not expect this to be the proper time to think about food. I did not wish to be hungry, but I was overcome with the desire to eat as instantly as I had glanced
At last.
Not far out on the walkway, I shifted to return to the upstairs office only once more, grumbling, as I recalled the letter’s mention of the humming of Melony’s typewriter, and of my neglecting to turn it off.
***
It was quiet in Malibu that night as I departed, driving south down Pacific Coast Highway and scaling the oceanside. Gazing alternately upon the stretch of road before me and then at the coast to my right, I felt as though I was embarking on a secret mission to smuggle forty-six years of reason into the heartland of unreasonable chaos. The coast was like an endless welcome mat of uneven wasteland molded into the roadside like adhesive siding, its colossal door open wide to a swollen, black terrain.
As my pale-brown Mustang climbed upon the freeway onramp and proceeded eastward, I found myself facing the emergence of traffic and engulfing city lights. I was too much aware of myself and my impending destiny and drove with all the careful attention of a driver in combat with his own drunkenness. Life was active and bustling around me and I felt unique to a secret, which concerned every aspect of it. I felt profoundly chosen .
I wondered what secrets were carried by the cities and buildings and vehicles around me, by the lives behind them all. The more I wondered about them, the more I wanted to know them and this was how I came across my own secret to begin with.
It was as though I hadn’t enough to wonder about already.
That night, the whole world seemed unknown to me. It was like starting all over again, back to the basics with Discovery 101. Continuing down the freeway and merging onto the Corona Expressway, everything I passed was to me an everlasting and boundless boulevard of doors, each door containing secret upon secret awaiting revelation. That was the way my life had been. That was the way all life around me seemed now. I imagined this was the way one felt while journeying through that infamous tunnel of light on the verge of meeting his maker.
I was now entering Carbon Canyon.
Stretching northward from the Carbon Canyon Reservoir and up through Chino Hills State Park, this was the home of manifold mysteries, each shrouded subtly amidst the innocence and solitude of rural ranch house turf. Stories have trickled downwards from beyond its lofty hills and grasslands like melted snow upon the ears of neighboring communities. To most, these were nothing more than rumors of supernatural mayhem, whimsical accounts of witchcraft and occult rituals in the hours of late night obscurity, of strange greenish mists emitted from alleged government bases, of floating balls of light and vanishing yokels.
Nothing but the finest in Backwoods Town, U.S.A., superstition.
These tales would thrive as long as humanity maintained its imagination. I, however, would just as soon be interested in most of them as I would be exploring the underbellies of rocks in my backyard. It never used to be that way, and fifteen or so years ago one would easily find me in hot pursuit of these less-than-credible countryside flights of fancy. Yet here I was now, in the middle of it all, adding to this trivial folklore the very ingredients necessary to change the course of civilized man.
And goddamn, was I ever hungry.
Under normal conditions, one would not expect this to be the proper time to think about food. I did not wish to be hungry, but I was overcome with the desire to eat as instantly as I had glanced
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