Carl and Annalisa were already
at the cabin in Lake Arrowhead when Richard arrived. Richard didn’t say any of the beautiful
things he imagined he might when he saw her standing in the entry way behind
Carl.
“You need to shower! Get in the shower! It probably won’t do any good but get in the
shower and stay there a couple of hours…” Richard said with authority.
“You look like hell,” Annalisa
repaid the insult.
“You haven’t seen each other
for weeks and this is how you talk?”
Carl slammed the door in Richard’s face.
“He hasn’t really slept since
the last time he saw you. We better go easy on him,” Carl whispered to
Annalisa.
“Open the door!” Richard’s voice was strained.
“I’m sorry.
Auditions for Edward Albee’s new play are three houses down,” Carl
shouted through the door.
“You call that going easy,”
Annalisa remarked.
“He’s being rude. I don’t smell anything,” Carl whispered. They
heard a crash on the porch.
Richard was flat on his back
surrounded by clay pots of geraniums. A
flower box had broken.
“Put me in the shower. I’m telling you, Doc put peyote in the suntan
oil. Even if you didn’t use it, the
stream was full of it. Annalisa, we have
to wash off as much as we can. It’s time
released. We could be crazy for days,”
“How do you know if it’s
affecting you?” Annalisa asked.
“I wasn’t sure until now. I was trying to get the geraniums to shut
up. When Carl said, ‘Edward Albee’, they
started singing, ‘Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf….”
“Let’s go to the hot tub!” Carl
suggested.
“You too, Carl?” Richard cried out.
“We swam out to the raft today to
cool off. I let Carl use the oil. Doc said it would keep evil spirits away,”
Annalisa confessed.
“To the hot tub!” Carl cried
out.
“And stew in the stuff? No, Carl, that is a bad idea,” Richard
argued.
They showered until there was
no more hot water. Carl made
spaghetti. Richard found the bottle of
suntan oil and placed it in his satchel until he could figure a way to dispose
of it. They discussed how the photo and
posters had changed. Richard’s photo of
Annalisa had turned into a photo of a squirrel and the HAMLET posters reverted
back to the photo of Richard with the skull and Annalisa in the wings with the man
standing behind her. Carl pointed out
that these things had happened before they were exposed to the peyote oil.
Annalisa tried to serve the
spaghetti. She dumped the entire
contents of the pot onto Richard’s plate.
Carl and Annalisa scooted their chairs up against Richard’s and the three
of them silently ate from his plate.
“We should go straight to bed
after dinner,” Richard said with spaghetti sauce dribbling down his chin and
onto his shirt. “We’ll sleep through the
worst of it and everything will be fine.”
“Before we turn in I suggest we
retire to the library to crack the safe I found this afternoon,” Carl
suggested.
Richard raised his eyebrows.
Carl squinted. “Not to steal
anything. I just want to see if you can
open it with your ears.”
Richard could hear the tumblers
clacking like typewriter keys. He peered
inside the safe and looked as if he’d seen the devil himself.
“Get your things. We’re leaving NOW,” Richard slammed the safe
shut and pulled back as if he was about to be launched from a slingshot.
“Richard, what’s in
there?” Carl begged.
“We have to leave now. No
amount of magic suntan oil that can protect us from what is in that safe,” Richard
pulled Annalisa to the door. As they
stepped onto the porch there was a rumble in the fireplace. Acorns began to pour out of the
fireplace. They didn’t stay to
watch. The gravel under their feet
didn’t sound like it had earlier. Carl’s
headlights revealed the gravel was gone and the driveway was now paved with
acorns.
~ To Be Continued ~
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