The Orgone Accumulator : Part Seven

[Hialmar]

The Prologue is found HERE

The preceding chapter is found HERE

 

The Orgone Accumulator : Part Seven

 

John was a city boy, and wasn't familiar with anything wilder, than inner-city well-kept parks. Now, he felt panic rising inside him. 

***

It was a few nights later, and hours earlier he had entered one of the small buses from downtown San Francisco, which would bring them to their destination. For some reason, they had been able to chose between different times of departure. The bus wasn't big enough to allow him to avoid contact. Three of the other participants of the course were whitebread middle class men in their early thirties like himself, but the other four in the bus didn't look like they had much in common: Someone who looked like an elderly accountant, an African-American guy about his own age, who looked like he listened to rap music, a sullen 25 year old dressed in training gear and very worn sneakers, and a man presumably in his early 60s dressed like some sort of folk music singer, wearing denim jeans, a rawhide vest, a cowboy hat and Neo-pagan pendants around his neck.

Another identical mini-bus was already parked in the parking lot by the entrance to some woodland preserve. They were told to leave their luggage in the bus, and walked for about 20 minutes until they arrived at a space with an open fire. It was already dark. Simon, the therapist John had met a few days earlier, sat alone by the fire, still wearing the polo shirt with The Foundation's logo on the chest, and there were no traces of the other participants, which caused suspicions to stir inside John. There were logs around the fire, to sit on. The reddish-yellow light of the fire flickered, and shadows moved over the faces on the other side of the fire. Simon began to tell a story in a slightly sing-song sort of voice:

"Hundreds and hundreds of thousand of years, our ancestors climbed down from the trees and began to catch fish in the rivers. They strode the savannah, searching for game, but remained close to the forest where wild fruits and vegetables satisfied their hunger. The forest was never far away in their life. And as their descendants, hundreds and hundreds of thousand of years later, explored far away lands, far, far away, although they began to build villages, the forest wasn't far away. And as their descendants found plains with wild grains, they built cities in the plains, to cultivate the grains, and they began to become strangers to the forest, and they feared the forest and the beasts therein."

The bus driver, wearing an identical Foundation polo, chimed in, in a similar voice, repeating some of Simon's words, with a hypnotic effect:

"Hundreds and hundreds."

"The forest, the forest."

"Far, far away."

"Plains. Grains."

"The forest, the forest."

"But even the farmers in the plain, cultivating grain, were dependent on the earth and the sun and the moon, and aware of the earth and the sun and the moon, when they cultivated grain in the plain, for hundreds and hundreds of years, and life in the plains was so far similar to life close to the forest. But cities grew, and farmers left their farms and became urban dwellers, and they became strangers to the forest, who feared the forest, strangers to the plain with grain, far, far away from the forest and the plains with the grains, strangers to the earth and the sun and the moon, and strangers to themselves.

"Who are you? Who are you outside your work or study? Who are you outside your family? Who are you outside your hobbies? Who are you outside other people's expectations? Who are you outside your own expectations?"

The bus driver whispered something to the man, who looked like an accountant, and the latter left the circle around the camp fire, and disappeared out in the dark. The flickering light from the fire and the hypnotic sound of the tale about humankind's history caused John to loose his concept of time, but one after one, the participants left the fire, and were sent out in the darkness. John was the fifth to leave the circle. The bus driver whispered:

"You will find your own way to the place where the other participants are gathered. Follow that footpath. Leave the footpath were the torch is lit, find the brook, and follow it downstream."

It took some time for his eyes to adapt to darkness without any electric light and no campfire, but the moonlight actually allowed him to discern the footpath. It might have been ten minutes later, when he found the lit torch and an unwritten wooden sign pointing away from the footpath – pointing out in the unbeaten woods. John left the path, as instructed, stumbling over fallen tree trunks, thin branches hitting him in his face, and underbrush whipping his legs. It was so silent here. None of the sounds ever present in a city. None of the small noises of a house. None of the music usually present in the background. Just the silence of the night, and unknown darkness surrounding him.  It was somewhere at this point of his journey he began to doubt his ability to find his way in the forest at dark, began to doubt his decision to participate in the course at all, and began to doubt himself. He was a city boy, and wasn't familiar with anything wilder, than inner-city well-kept parks. Now, he felt panic rising inside him. For a moment, he imagined a newspaper headline:

"Freelance journalist found dead in Californian forest!"

Were there dangerous animals in Californian forests? He hadn't spent any time on that thought before. Thin branches hit him in his face, and the underbrush whipped his leg. An explosion of black light in his mind caused his entire body to feel electric. The hair on his head, his arms and his leg bristled. He could hear his own heartbeat in his temples and his ears, and his pulse felt tangible in his chest. His saliva tasted more saltier than normal. The darkness played tricks with his retina, and he could see trees and his own arms and hands flash in incomprehensible colours. His panic was a wave now: A powerful, violent wave threatening to take his mind with it and drown his sanity. He experienced the grandeur of the forest at night, and the insignificance of man, the insignificance of himself. Drowning wave of black light. Electrocuted. His hair bristling. Heart pounding. His breathing was different. He became aware of his breathing, and took control of it. He stopped walking aimlessly. He straightened his posture. He experienced the grandeur of the forest at night, and the insignificance of man, the insignificance of himself. This time, he took it in, and relished in the awe.

He took a deep breath.

He adjusted his stance: Stood with his legs wider apart. Felt like a part of the forest now. A part of Nature. He took that feeling in. Whatever beasts that might prowl this forest, there is at least one beast in this forest: Himself – Man, the hunter. Man, the pathfinder.

His breath was normal now, but his hair still bristled in the cool air of the night, and this time it felt delightful, encouraging. He and the forest. Wild. He was wild. He enjoyed feeling wild. Untamed. One with the forest. Moonlight seeped down between the trees. He remembered the position of the Moon when he left the footpath, and he remembered the direction of the roadsign in relation to the Moon.

He followed that angle. If he walked carefully, moonlight would allow him to avoid running into trees or stumbling upon fallen trunks. He lurked in the darkness, and took that feeling in. It was intoxicating. He walked among dry leaves of last year, and then he could hear the sound of running water, presumably the brook he had been told to expect. A minute or two later, he was following the brook. He wasn't aware of for how long he had followed the brook, until a burning torch called for his attention, and he could discern the light from a second campfire above the slope.

He climbed the slope, and there they were: The four participants who had been sent out before him, eight participants presumably from the mini-bus, that had departed earlier than his own, and then there was a big, broad man with a trimmed white beard and shaved head, wearing the polo of The Foundation and black leather trousers. The firelight flickered, and his facial features were hard to discern, but it couldn't be someone else, than the same man in those artful black-and-white photographs from the 80s:

At last, he had found Stud of Dakota. Or Stud of Dakota had found him.

* * *

To be continued.

 

Edited July 2, 2022 by Hialmar
changed a plural S into a genitive S. adjusted the age of a character

[Ozymandias]

Ah, it returns! :)

[Hialmar]

4 hours ago, Ozymandias said:

Ah, it returns!

Several of my unfinished multi-chapter stories brew slowly, for several reasons. My unpredictable medical conditions (alleviated by weight-training) sometimes keep me away from writing, and two of my unfinished stories depend on my ability to understand some of the characters properly. They have assumed lives of their own in a manner, with both personal flaws and virtues, and I have to understand them in order to write about them.