Doctor Who_ Wonderland - Mark Chadbourn [6]
'That's okay. I don't blame you for doubting. I'm going to find him.'
The bongo player's wild drumming ended suddenly. The whole room fell silent for the briefest instant, until some woman screamed and then everyone rushed towards the windows, talking at once. Ben was the first to get through the crowd, but Polly and I were close behind. The woman who screamed was pointing through the window into the night: all we could see was mist.
'The Magic Mouse.' Her voice was like broken glass.
Ben was at her side. 'What happened?'
She turned to look at the table where I'd seen the Mouse before. 'He was sitting there ... just looking around. And then he started to fade away.
Somebody laughed. The woman shook her head furiously. 'It's true! I could see right through his face ... see that picture on the wall there!' She was shaking. Ben helped her to a seat in an old-fashioned, gentlemanly way. The woman covered her face and spoke through her hands. 'I thought it was a flashback. But it was real. It wasn't like he was glass ... more like he was made of light. I think I saw colours ... beautiful colours ...' She drifted for a few seconds, then jumped up and looked back outside fearfully. 'He freaked out. The Mouse – freaking out! It never happens! And he ran outside, over there, and ...' She snapped her fingers. 'Poof! Gone ... vanished. Just like that.'
Everywhere went quiet again. What she had said sounded ludicrous, but no one was laughing now.
'Blue Moonbeams.' It was a guy next to me in a camouflage jacket with a peace symbol drawn on the back.
'What?' I said.
He looked at me anxiously, then decided I was okay. 'Blue Moonbeams. It's a batch of bad acid that's all over the place. The tab's got a blue crescent moon on it.'
'She doesn't look like she's tripping.'
'Not her.' He grew uncomfortable. 'I've not seen it, but everybody's talking about it. Jack Stimson from the Oracle was down here researching a story about it. A lot of kids dropped Blue Moonbeams and disappeared. So they say.'
'Disappeared like she said? Like, for real?'
It was a question too far in the paranoid Haight. The guy pushed his way through the crowd like I was a cop.
'Blimey, this is a weird place.' Ben hadn't heard my conversation.
'Oh, Ben, you're such a square. It's just very colourful.' Polly wasn't
fazed by what had happened; I don't know if she even believed it. She turned to me and said, 'Shall we start asking around about Denny?'
She was surprised when I shook my head, but an uneasy feeling was growing on me. 'I want to go to the Oracle.'
The optimism of those bright times has faded, along with my youth. Now I'm older and lonelier, and locked away in this big, old house perched on the edge of nowhere, the world looks colder and harsher. The events of that bleak January made me a different person – scared, introspective, cynical and, most of all, sad. I lost so much so quickly, snatched away from me at a time when we were all on the cusp of a bright future. Even after so many years have trundled by, it still doesn't seem fair.
Death and darkness and terror, the antithesis of what Haight-Ashbury had to offer.
From my window, the New England countryside rolls away into the lowering night. There are a few lights dotted here and there, amid the sea of darkness. The worst thing about being a poet (failed) is that you know a metaphor when you see one. I've put as many miles as I can between San Francisco and me without actually leaving the country, and it still doesn't feel like it's far enough. Maybe I should go to England, like I always planned. Maybe I should just keep running.
Here in the house there's no escape. There are ghosts everywhere, dreams I had, people I knew; one in particular.
Sometimes I think back and wonder if it all would have turned out differently if I hadn't been there in Dealey Plaza on that warm afternoon in November. I can still remember the smell of hotdogs and asphalt, petrol