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From: richh@netcom.com (richh)
Subject: RICHH:  THE SONG
Message-ID: <richhCMsJ34.Gq4@netcom.com>
Followup-To: poster
Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest)
Date: Thu, 17 Mar 1994 03:59:26 GMT
Lines: 249
Xref: bb3.andrew.cmu.edu talk.bizarre:57446 alt.butt.harp:440 alt.prose:1376 rec.arts.prose:1420

     Let me tell you a story.  It's scary.  You've been warned.
     In fact, it's the only time in my life I can remember ever
really *being* scared.  So, naturally, I'd like to share.
     The story involves me and my friend James.  I've talked about
him before.  He was my best friend through high school.  A tall,
too-handsome black kid who could make his tenor sax do backflips
and who could talk us into and out of clubs when we were only
sixteen.  Now I think he's an ambassador's aide or something.  

     We'd heard all through high school about this place in
Central Bucks County.  In a town called Buckingham.  Something
called 'Lower Mountain Road'.  We'd heard that the road goes uphill
but you can take your foot off the gas at the bottom and it'll drag
you up the hill. We were skeptical, needless to say.  Now
Buckingham is a pretty weird place in its own right--bordering on
Pennsylvania Dutch country, it's supposed to be the site for most
of the Satan worship in that area.  Animal sacrifices, blood rites,
lots of weirdness.  Pagan fertility menarche virgin dances.  It
also was a stone's throw from Quakertown, rumored to be the site of
an Illuminati(I kid you not) arsenal.  The whole area was featured
on "Sixty Minutes" some time last March.  
     But James and I, we didn't believe any of it.  So we decided
to check it out one day.  I think we headed up there from school. 
At that time I would have been driving my dad's Plymouth Fury--a
monstrous car that was great to party in.  We picked up a sixpack
somewhere and smoked a bowl or two.  Of the kinda pot that really
got you high.  And we were good to go.
     Only we really have only the vaguest idea of where we're
going.  But we hit the road and headed north, up Swamp Road, past
the Community College and towards Trexlertown, where they built a
velodrome and I saw my first real bicycle race.  
     After about an hour of driving, we're a good two hours from
home.  All the roads seem to run on forever.  The trees all arch
towards each other on both sides of Swamp Road, enclosing it,
protecting, making it impossibly dark after sundown.  And it's
all farmland with nearly no landmarks.  The roads all have dumb
names that just make it worse:  Upper Creamery Road, Lower
Dolington, Midhile Mountainview Lane
     I said , "What the hell is that?  Midhile?!"
     "Isn't that what the Nazis would say...?"
     I laughed.  "No no no--you're thinking of the guy with those
'follies'"
     "No--you're wrong--you're thinking of that faggy magician guy
who works with the tigers in Vegas."
     "Roy?"
      Now it's starting to get dark, dusky...I didn't like it, and
I had no idea where we were.  
     James looks around and says, "Rich, check out the horse and
buggy behind us.'  
     I look into the rear view.  Nothing.  "Huh?"  
     He turned around and looked out the back.  "The fuck.  I just
saw--"  
     "Oh, there it is.  I see em now.  Must've turned off.  A guy
and his daughter.  Check out the footwear on the girl."  
     I looked.  The guy had one of those C. Everett Coop things
going on with his face and the girl was wearing one black boot on
her right foot and one odd-shaped brown one on her left.  
     We drove around for another twenty minutes or so.  
     "Look, I said.  A bar.  Let's stop.  Get directions. 
Something to drink, ok?  
     "Cool."  
     We each took another hit off the bowl and James pulled on this
jacket he had.  James was tall, strong-looking and we were in a
notoriously-prejudiced area.  And he was wearing a Malcolm X jacket
way before Spike Lee even learned how to spell it. The bar was
called the 'Double Eagle Inn', I think.  
     "Nice ambience," said James.  "Early Poe, don't you think?"
     "What do we want?"
     "Amontillado!"
     "When do we want it?"
     "Now!"
     We were so stoned.
     James said, "I swear to God man.  I just saw a sign.  No
shoes, no shirt, no niggers."
     We stumbled in laughing way too loud.
     The inn was a big, brick monstrosity.  There were a couple
pool tables and a bar at the other end.  There were only a few
people at the bar, but they just couldn't get over the likes of us,
especially the two at the end who looked like those women look in
Shakespeare's Sister, only they were blonde and really ugly.  James
was quite a sight in there.  Across the bar, this guy with one of
those faces that looked like a claymore mine exploded in front of
it is giving James looks.  We ordered and were brought a couple
mugs of something nasty and James asked the Wilhem Defoe guy if
he'd ever heard of 'Lower Mountain Road.'
     "Oh yeah, says the guy.  You wanna go up Jericho Mountain.  
     I look at James and James says, "Of course.  Jericho
Mountain." 
     Guy went on.  "There's a song on the mountain tonight."  The
Shakespeare Sisters women were whispering to each
other and the one had her hand on the other's shoulder, giving it
a real friendly squeeze.  The James Woods guy saw that our
attention had shifted and said, "Oh, don't mind them.  They've been
like that since they were seven.  No one can make heads or what of
them." 
     James took out a coin and flipped it.  "Heads or what," he
said, "Call it in the air."
     "What?"  
     "'Damn!" and he handed me the quarter.  
     Defoe guy said, 'I can tell you how to get to Jericho
Mountain.  But you boys don't wanna be there past oh, too late or
so, and it's getting on about reckonin' to soon now, so why don't
I just show you myself?'  We looked at each other, dumbfounded,
tried in vain to parse what he'd said, paid for our beers, and
walked out with the guy.  
     "Hi.  I'm Rich."  
     "James."  "
     "Deac."
     Back in the car, we finally get a good look at Deac.  He's not
real big at all, but he's wiry and his neck and forearms were
really well-muscled, as if his job were wringing things out until
they were bone dry.  And he was evil, no other way about it.  He
smelled evil, his eyes were dark and narrow and his jeans fit
really well.  I guess he was somewhere around late twenties or
early fifties and probably had a daughter.  He got in the back and
we closed up and I said, 'Where to?'
     "'Left up here.  Then just go."  
     We pulled on to another one of those roads where like the
trees all seem to grow inward and make the road into a kind of
tunnel shroudy thing.  Well, it wasn't completely dark out yet but
because of these trees it was pitch black on that stupid road. 
James went to put in a tape.  
     "No music," said Deac, and he actually reached over and pulled
James' arm back.  We just looked at each other but figured it was
some kind of Amish thing.  The trees ended but the road just went
on and on.  We'd see the horse and buggy types from time to time,
but they always seemed far off, and were tough to get a good luck
at.  I saw a young boy with that strange brown boot on his left
foot and a black one on his right.  He was chasing some kind of
squirrel, but he had an odd gait and the squirrel easily got away. 
It was starting to get chilly.  I turned up the heat in the car.
Deac cracked his window.  
     "So how do we get back to 413 from here, Deac?" asked James,
as we were instructed to make yet another turn, this time onto a
road with no sign...
     "'Oh, I'll get you back, don't you worry."  We looked at each
other and we were pretty sure that the two of us could take him if
we had to, but we weren't positive.  We'd been driving for hours. 
It was well after eleven and we hadn't told anyone where we were
and it was a school night so we figured we were in pretty deep shit
anyhow  so what the hey.  All of a sudden, Deac sat up real
straight and said, "Okay, you see that wagon wheel thing?  You're
gonna make a right, a left, then a right.  Then we'll be on Lower
Mountain Road.  Then it will flyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy..."
     I pulled onto the road and we started moving.  It was
another of those tree-shrouded roads, dotted on each side by these
mostly gutted-out farmhouses and barns.  We were building up speed,
doing about thirty on the narrow road, when I said, "Um, James, my
foot's not on the accelerator.'  
     "No way."  I put the car in neutral and we kept picking up
speed.  I swear to God.  It was the weirdest thing.  And it scared
me shitless.  Deac's laughing didn't help.  
     "Ain't that some wild shit?  This road fucks people up.  Haw
haw."
     James looked at me and mouthed 'Haw haw'.
     Deac said, "At the crazy tree up ahead pull over."
     I did, and Deac said, "I'll be right back."  He let himself
out and walked with that same odd gait that the kid had, up towards
a small red shack.  I hadn't noticed his walk at the bar.
     James said, "We outta here?"
     "Yeah, I think so."  I started to turn the car around, but
somehow Deac was already back, dressed in a pair of bib overalls.
     He had two extra pairs with him.  Perfectly folded.  He said,
"Change."
     We did.
     "You boys are in for a treat.  There's gonna be a song
tonight."
     James and I looked at each other and mouthed, 'A song?'.
     "Head on up," said Deac.  
     I did.  Time had stopped on that hill.  The road went on
forever.  There were no landmarks, just a shack or tree or so every
couple of miles.  A piece of wood on a rope that was some child's
swing.  A charred book that could have been a diary or _Huck Finn_.
There was no clock in the car and neither James nor I had a watch,
but there was no way it should still have been dark out.
     After some time we saw an old red barn about a hundred yards
off the road.  There was a mailbox, but it was too dark to make out
the name on it.  I think one of the letters was an 'E'.
     Deac said, "Stop.  We're here."
     I pulled the car over and shut it off.  We followed Deac up a
drive to the barn.  James did an uncanny imitation of his odd gait,
but would stop every time Deac did something unusual, like make a
clicking sound with the nails of his thumb and forefinger.  
     He stopped us outside the barn.  "You boys know what a 'graven
image' is?"
     "Sure.  It's from the Bible."
     "It's an idol, isn't it?"
     Deac swung open the big red door and led us in.  The barn
seemed much bigger inside than from the outside, almost the size of
a warehouse.  Odd, no-longer-functional farm tools lined the walls
and were strewn treacherously across the floor.  There were no
animals anywhere but the barn still smelled of fresh death.  Deac
had lit a candle and was leading us through the course of rusty
saws and threshing equipment.  
     "You boys ever play with dolls," said Deac.
     We could tell by the way he asked that our answer was
important.
     "Uh, no.  Not really."
     "You wanna see a good doll?" he asked.
     "Um, sure."
     He produced one.  Now I remembered where I'd heard the 'graven
images' bit before, and what it meant to the Amish.  Because of the
law in the Bible against making graven images, their dolls were
featureless, just four limbs and a torso.  No faces or identifying
marks.  They were all nearly identical.
     "You see this doll, boys?"
     We nodded.
     "You don't name this doll.  You don't love this doll.  You can
play with it, sure, but you don't *love* this doll."
     Indeed.  I remembered hearing that sometimes the naughtier
children would draw faces on their dolls, much to their parents'
dismay.  Sometimes they would caricature town idiots, or represent
Biblical characters.
     "A good doll don't cost ya nothing.  A bad one, that can cost
ya."
     "Huh?"
     "Lookee, in here."  Deac opened a black door and we followed
him in.  Hanging from the ceilings were hundreds of little Amish
dolls, each with a face drawn on it.  They each had a name tag as
well.
     "Go on," said Deac.   "Take a look.  The others are coming."
     We heard the sound of people entering the barn and going
upstairs.  
     "There'll be a song soon."
     James said, "Rich," and pointed out the name tag on a
particularly-ugly doll.  Someone had painted a huge penis on it and
it was smoking a pipe.  The name tag read, 'Deac'.
     "Yeah," Deac chuckled.  "That was mine all right.  I don't
remember the song but I remember loving that doll.  A-heh."
     "Come on, it's a girl."
     So it was.  A tiny black-haired girl with haunted eyes was
being led upstairs by the others.  Except for her, they all had
that same bouncy gait.
     James whispered, "What say we bolt."
     "When they're all upstairs."
     "It's dark.  Watch the floor."
     "You can head on up, boys," said Deac.  "They're gonna start
the song soon."  He was handed a doll.  It looked like the little
girl, only with big doe-eyes and fuller, red lips.  It had a name
tag that read 'Margaret'."    
     "Okay, Maggie, up you go."  The girl was lifted onto a large
concrete slab.  She lay back so that her left ankle extended just over 
the edge.  When a woman slid a bucket along the floor into position under 
the girl's foot and a man raised a saw, we knew we'd seen enough.
     As we reached the car we heard the girl sing out in what must
have surely been:  a sweet and beautiful song.

RICHH