We've had a very scary and inexplicable episode here at the Hacienda over the last couple of days, involving Adam and Melly and the Sinsley guys, Felix and Peter. It seems to have run its course now, but that too is quite mysterious, leaving us wondering: what just happened? We suspect that it has something to do with whatever is going on in Shamballah, all the way over in the Himalaya Mountains, although as for how that is possible we haven't a clue. Some kind of Yeti mass telepathy? That's our best guess so far, absurd as it is. Anyway, it all seemed very dangerous and dramatic at the time. But I was not present at the start; Elaine and I were away on a little overnight visit to friends in Bellingham when it all began, so let's have those involved relate their own versions of the incident.
We were in our bedroom at the Hacienda, Adam was sleeping soundly beside me, but something disturbed both of us just before dawn. At 5:40 Tuesday morning, the 31st of March, to be exact. My perception of it was suddenly realizing that I was naked in bed with someone I really disliked: a huge, hairy lummox of a creature-- male, but not even an actual human. A hominoid often identified as Bigfoot. I felt a great shame for being there with him. The exact opposite to how I normally feel about him. I may as well admit that it had been an especially erotic evening: especially for me, maybe even having passed out from a super-intense orgasm with the man I love. I know some folks fantasize about our kinda-weird love life, but it isn't always that Addy gets to spend the night with all four of his lovers together, but it had just happened to work out that way this time. Lissandra, Magga, Masnia and myself, all in the same bed with our favorite Bigfoot, all just so in love with that one lucky guy. Everyone had been in the mood, I mean, why not? We're all young and healthy and horny, and after a really good musical session in the studio, being creative, writing and recording a new song, May I Stay With You Tonight? we were all excited in so many ways. So we'd celebrated with an innocent little orgy, even though it was not a full moon and there was no shyøma in the air. Just your plain old everyday sex for fun. But everything changed in an instant as we all woke up in the middle of a horror movie. Like I say, especially for me: I mean, Addy nudged his face against mine and it felt very wet, almost soggy. I'd been sound asleep but I must have recognized the feeling of that same old "slobbering monster" I'd met once before, when Addy had been turned into a dangerous animal by a very malignant syssk. So I began to scream even before my eyes were open, automatically, I guess. Which must have irritated him as never before, because he grabbed me hard enough to hurt, just making me scream all the more. He immediately got uncontrollably horny, rolled his 500+ pound body over on top of me and jammed his big hard thing into tender little me. It was more than rude, a real assault. Lucky for me I was still wet and slippery from our earlier lovemaking, so I wasn't just ripped apart. But this was not lovemaking: this was raw violence and I screamed even louder to say so, although it was almost impossible to catch my breath with all his weight squashing me. Everybody else in that bed-- Lissandra, Masnia and Magga, sat up, awakened by my screams --were instantly aware that something was wrong. The first to react was Magga, lucky for me the strongest; she pressed herself in between Adam and me, lifting his weight off me. Addy tried to ignore her, so she applied her strength, which may be almost equal to his, she's really our Big Mamma. He roared like a frustrated stud and turned his full attention to punching her in the face. Which he should probably not have done: she slugged him back pretty hard. Masnia threw herself across Addy's body to help Magga, so I was able to roll out of bed onto the floor, glad to be breathing again. "What's happening?" Liss asked, completely confused. "Addy's become that slobbering monster again!" I wail, tears all flowing, sobbing, etc. "How can that be?" Liss asked, holding me tight to protect me from the mean monster. "Syssk again," Magga said while bumping and thumping around with Addy, who was now going berserk; howling and spitting, teeth snapping at the air. He was absolutely frightening, just like last time. But she maneuvered him into a full nelson to hold him down: he was stronger, but she was smarter at the moment, his usual high intelligence overwhelmed by a brainless fury. Much of the fury was about being sexually rejected, so now that he was wrestling with Magga he aimed his dakh at her. A very pragmatic lady, Magga hooked her leg around him and with one deft move was mounted atop him, and all plugged in. He suddenly became relatively calm, concentrating on having sex with her instead of me, thank god. Magga could better withstand the unbridled batterings of a horny squatch. In fact, she didn't seem to mind at all; I guess for her it was like being at a kha-rat, which can get pretty rough. Even so, Adam was not being nice and Magga would only take so much shit from any male. When he tried to bite her she slapped him hard enough to rock him. And when he tried to get more violent she sat back and punched him in the solar plexus hard enough to stun him. Masnia took that opportunity to push into the space between them and pry Adam's lids open enough to get a good look into his eyes. She frowned at what she saw, and then with what must have been some kind of magic word; put him into a momentary trance. Addy slumped onto the bed and Magga climbed off him, glad to be relieved of getting-raped duty. Addy may have been calmed, but I wasn't. I was shrieking, "He's got a syssk again? That bastard! How can he do this to me? How can we ever trust him? He's such a horrible monster! Oh, I really hate him" Masnia approached me and held my face steady in her hands and stared into my eyes for a long second, then said: "You've got a syssk again too, Ma-elli-a," "A syssk? Me? No, how can I? You guys cured me." But Liss just backed up Masnia's words. "Mell, you're acting just like you did that first time you were infected. You know: how you were hating Freakfoot whenever you saw him, but how you rilly rilly loved him when he wasn't anywhere near you." I was skeptical, decided to prove it wasn't so. "Hmm, let's see..." looking away from Addy, "... gol yeah, of course I still love him..." Then I turned back to stare at him lying there so peacefully now, "...shit, I hate that fucker!" I buried my face in my hands, "My god, you're right! But how the hell can we just suddenly get re-infected by a syssk? "We don't understand it either. Ma-elli-a. Sorry." Masnia insisted. "It's not just A syssk-- it's the same one you had back then," Liss pointed out, "And Adam too, it's that same old slobbering monster routine. You're both doing a re-run." Masnia continued studying Adam, then says, "This syssk feels like the one used to control my father, Daklakht..." "Yes, of course, it was Daklakht who cursed Addy with it the first time," I reminded her. I may have forgiven him, but I hadn't forgotten. "Yes," Masnia admitted, "Daklakht transferred the infection, but it wasn't exactly his fault. He too was afflicted by a syssk at the time. For years he'd been under the control of the evil Elder Da-starda-hat, who may well be the very most powerful adept at psychic domination in the Nokhon world." "You mean the number-one bad guy Uncle Wallace and them went to the Himalayas to stop?" Liss asks. Both Masnia and Magga bob their heads in affirmation. "Ra, him." "Doesn't look like they got him exactly stopped," Liss remarks sarcastically. "Well, we don't know if it IS him," Magga said, "or even how it could be. Like you say, the Himalayas are very far away." "And so is my father," says Masnia, "so we really have no suspects." "Let me look," Magga said to Masnia, putting her hand on Adam's face to study whatever was going on in his eyes. I have no idea what they think they can see there, his eyes just looked stupid to me. But Addy was not cooperating any more, he jerked his head away and growled like an angry bear, showing his big, sharp, white teeth. Both girls snatched their hands back, wanting to keep their fingers. Me, I'm trying not to stare at my usually-beloved Addy lying there on his bed, because it hurts. I appeal to Magga and Masnia, "Well, you cured us before, can't you just do it again?" "We don't know yet, "Masnia said, "this one's much brighter than any syssk we've ever seen before. It seems the spell has grown stronger and may be too much for just the two of us. Last time you each got a second- or third-hand dose of syssk, this is far more complex, maybe even direct from Da-starda-hat Himself!" "But he's supposed to be over in the Himalayas. How could he affect us here?" I ask. "And rilly, why would he bother?" Liss wonders.
Freakfoot was getting rilly belligerent and nasty again, Masnia's spell had kept him pretty quiet for most of an hour, but it wore off and she couldn't fool him into looking into her eyes again. He had caught on to that trick; there was still some kind of animal smarts going on in his fucked-up brain, altho mostly he was out of control. Good thing Pokey and Maki had joined us, they brought a heavy-duty tow-rope from the barn, so we just managed to tie Adam up while he was still relaxed, because now he was acting like a wild animal again; thrashing and roaring and biting at anyone who came near. Gotta admit, good ol' Freakfoot was scaring me plenty. Not even Magga was willing to try to calm him down with sex, it was obviously just too dangerous. And I sure wasn't offering to, even tho I rilly love the guy-- when he's normal. "Last time he was like this he tried to bite my nose off:" Mel reminiscing the good old days. Maki asked What are we were we going to do now? She and Pokey had been sleeping downstairs in the house because the month of March is still too cold for their teepee, so they'd heard the ruckus. Art and Elaine were off in Seattle so it was just us youngsters home at the Hacienda Magga said that a group exorcism might work, and that we had a couple of initiates from Aket staying out at the Refugee Camp who were studying to be Sha-haka. Masnia asked if they had any training in psychic techniques. Magga said she didn't know and it didn't matter much since she and Masnia would have to be taking the lead anyway. Mel asked if we rilly needed to get Addy all the way out to the Camp, indicating our cute little quarter-ton of Bigfoot wiggling and grunting and trying to wrestle free of his ropes. Extra-thick ropes, but still, Freakfoot is a rilly powerful guy, and if he got hysterical enough... Magga and Masnia agreed that dragging Freakfoot all the way out to the Cap would be way too difficult, so Masnia offered to run out and bring help here. Altho we still needed to get him outside and in the open. Magga tried to carry him, putting her hands on Adam's ropes to lift and swing him up and over her shoulder. But Freakfoot was not about to cooperate. He thrashed and kicked and roared, making it just about impossible to be lifted. Magga had to give up on doing it alone. One could see that she was considering punching him again; only rilly hard this time. Let me try, I suggested, figuring it was my turn to be useful. I sat beside Adam and put my hand on his big hairy leg. He snapped at me, but Magga had a firm grip on his hairy head, so he couldn't bite me. I tried my best not to cringe away; remaining calm and cool was my plan. As always. "Hey, Freakfoot. Look, you're acting all crazy and fucked up, but we want to fix that, so you’ll be nice again. But to do that we need to get you outside to meet with some friends. We all love you, you know..." Adam shrieked into my face, that infamous and incredibly loud Bigfoot howl. It hurt: I had to cover my ears. Then I pretended to relax again. "...wow, what a voice you have, Freakfoot. Last night you were using your voice to sing a song. Gets me to thinking: last time you got all syssked-out like this, you had a mantra that helped you remember who you rilly are. How about this new song? May I Stay With You Tonight? Could that be a new mantra for you?" Adam looked at me, his mouth open, slobbering a bit. Not intelligently, but for just a moment not ferocious. I repeated the title of the song. Addy nodded, a little. I held out my open hand as a signal to Mel, who understood and snatched up Adam's guitar over by the desk and passed it to me. The fret board was too big for my delicately feminine non-squatch hands, but I knew which strings to finger one note at a time, being the band's bass player, after all. So I got the melody close enough and sang:
The night outside blows dark and cold. --Mel joined, in a very nice harmony
Beyond your window I see no light --Masnia joined as well, Pokey and Maki too
And I am com-fort-able, it's hard to go; --Magga hummed the tune, did a few dance steps
May I Stay With You To-night? --raggedly, weakly, Adam tried to sing along
May I Stay With You To-night? --everyone together, stronger
It worked, more or less. Some kind of dim intelligence back in his eyes, but obviously just in passing. I spoke quickly but calmly, almost like I knew what I was doing. "Freakfoot, you're being driven crazy by a syssk, we need to carry you downstairs and outside to cure you. Let us do that, please." Adam looked into my eyes, frowned, shook all over then gasped, and for a second I could see that he was my good ol' Freakfoot again. He nodded to me and squashed his eyes closed for the effort it would take to control himself for a minute. "Let's go," I commanded in my bossiest voice. Magga plucked Adam up from his bed, I won't say like he weighed nothing, but she managed. Then she tossed him over her shoulder in a fireman's carry, whisked him down the stairs, and across the living room floor (which creaked under the 900-pound weight of two wookies on one set of bigfeet). Straight on out to the lawn, where she dumped him just as he was beginning to squirm and growl again, his limited ration of self-control all used up. Our fastest runner, Masnia rushed out to the Refugee Camp to get help. There were twelve Nokhons staying there at this time, four newcomers. It was still before dawn but they had all heard Adam's one piercing Bigfoot Howl and wondered what was going on. Squatches don't live by any kind of clock except nature, so they were awake. Masnia asked if any of them were adept at syssk management, but no one started bragging about how expert they were. They all came back with her to help anyway. So fourteen Nokhons squatted in a ring around Freakfoot, who was lying on the grass, still bound and still dangerously psychotic, his short little bout of clarity expired. Besides Magga and Masnia, the most adept practitioners of psychic techniques were Dabronat and Malasna, Masnia's parents. Neither of them had ever finished their Sha-haka training at Aket, due to legal improprieties concerning Atli, but their practical knowledge was pretty good. The Nokhons started chanting, as led by Magga. At first it seemed to be calming Adam, but then he just got wilder and nastier again. Dabronat put his hand on Adam's brow, more to control the head-bashing than to calm him. They were at that until the sun finally came up about 8 o'clock with no improvement. Everyone agreed that this was an especially poisonous syssk. Nokhons are pretty much immune to cold; it was a clear but frosty morning and they were naked-- except for being all hairy, of course. Mel and I had to go in and get another layer or two of winter clothes. There was rilly nothing we could do anyway, this was all Nokhon magic. Of course, Mel was syssk-infected too, but her programming was a tad more subtle than going ballistic like Freakfoot, so we could wait to deal with her problem until his got fixed. We decided to eat breakfast: getting freaked out sure makes you hungry.
Maki and I were awakened by a Bigfoot howl just upstairs from the guest room we were staying in. It had to be Adam, but I'd never heard him let it loose in the house before. It's a pretty disturbing sound: loud, shrill and alarming, usually used in moments of emergency or danger. So I rolled out of bed shouting "Stay here!" to Maki, just in case it was dangerous, and ran upstairs. The door to Adam's room was closed and I knew he was with all four girl friends, so I did stop to knock, just in case the howl was announcing a 5-person orgasm or something innocent like that. The door was ripped open by Melly, who was naked just like everyone else in the room (actually, me too, us having all just sprung out of bed). "Pokey, there's a heavy truck-tow rope out in the barn," she shouted, "We need it QUICK!" I caught a glimpse of Adam struggling against being held down by Magga and Mania, his face all madness-distorted and foaming at the mouth. I didn't need an explanation; I'd seen this situation before, knew at once that he'd been possessed by yet another syssk. I was downstairs in two jumps. Maki peeked out at me on the way by, I just shouted, "Out to the barn! I might need help!" And ran outside, still naked, no shoes. It's cold in Winter-time and it wasn't nice that the barn is about fifty-some yards away from the house, but when you've got a dangerous emergency... well, you hurry. As mentioned, I'd seen Adam like that once before. Inside the barn wasn't quite as cold, although bare feet on concrete still hurt. At least I knew where the tow-rope was, neatly coiled and hanging on the wall. I pulled it down-- and grunted-- the fucker was heavy, but I started dragging it toward the open door. Maki came running in, wearing a coat and slippers, if nothing else, and she had a set for me too. Smarter than me, that girl. Better insulated against winter we took the heavy tow-rope between us and ran-stumbled back to the house. Lucky for us, Masnia had managed to stun Adam with some Atli-technique her daddy Daklakht had taught her. Magga took the rope-- it wasn't even heavy for her, but she was completely unfamiliar with sailor's knots or effective loops (because they're skesk). Lucky I had been a Cub Scout when younger (redskin version, on the reservation, big on knots). So we got him hog-tied, then hopped back and hoped it would hold a pumped-up Adam burning pure Bigfoot adrenalin. It was a thick rope and I'd doubled the wraps, and then Magga cinched up the knots much tighter than I ever could. Should hold, for a while, at least.
Masnia had run to the Refugee Camp and come back with a whole football team of Nokhons. So we had the manpower to keep Adam under control. I hoped. Upon inspecting Adam, looking into his eyes, smelling his armpits, everyone agreed that he was under the influence of a poisonous syssk, but nobody could say where it came from. Masnia was insisting that it was one of Da-starda-hat's conjurations, but she had no explanation for how our favorite Bad Guy could have infected Adam all the way over from the Himalaya Mountains; it shouldn't be possible. One of the newcomer Nokhons reported that there were two White Men with noiskillers creeping around the Bakhl project, where new squatch-style huts were being built. Dabronat offered to go check it out. We didn't need to say "be careful", the mere mention of guns was enough. Not much later Dabronat came back with two white guys in tow; everything seemed to be under control. As they got closer I could see that those two men were Felix and Peter Sinsley, so I relaxed and said to the other Nokhons, "It's okay, they're friends." But one of the newcomers asked, "Then why are they bearing noisekillers?" That was a good question, I double-checked, confirmed that-- yeah --they each carried a rifle. They both know that Nokhons are afraid of guns and that it's not polite to bring them around. But Dabronat was close behind them and obviously had control of the situation. Until he didn't. Everything seemed fine until Felix got close enough to see that it was Adam tied up and lying on the grass with all these Nokhons squatting around him. Then he suddenly went crazy: shouted and aimed his rifle at Adam and fired off a shot. He might have hit him too, if Peter hadn't been so fast to bash his father's rifle upward with his own. Then Dabronat stepped in, grabbed both rifles and tossed them far away. At that point, suddenly noticing Felix, Adam also went even more crazy: looked like he wanted to rip Felix Sinsley apart with his teeth. He strained at the ropes, shook off every Nokhon holding him down and fixated on breaking that thick tow-rope with sheer muscle power. I heard Masnia say, "Oh-oh, I think he's pulling up haka now!" That corresponds somewhat to chi or ki in human Aikido or Kundalini Yoga. It's the earth-energy disciples of Atli draw up from the earth when they need an extra boost of strength, but it takes training and discipline to make it work. I know Adam can do it if he meditates, but he shouldn't have been able focus while all frenzied like that. We all saw the threads of the rope beginning to pop, snapping one after another. It wouldn't be long... Dabronat acted fast: grabbing both Sinsleys and whisking them out of Adam's sight, then sending them off and running before he broke loose. Good thing they had a car parked out on Old Pipe Line Road, we could hear it revving up just as Adam snapped the last threads of that rope and started running after them. But they got away. Just. The Nokhons were ready to go running after him on foot, but I thought we'd do better with some good old NokhSo skesk: the Band Bus, since we could load it up with squatches and get ahead of him. As Liss pointed out, Adam was doing a re-run of last year's syssk-attack, so we figured he was headed for the Sinsley's house in Monroe once again. We'd been surprised to see the Sinsley guys show up at the Hacienda with rifles, and even more surprised when Felix tried to shoot Adam. But up to just that moment we had been discussing how or why both Adam's and Melly's old used syssks had come back to haunt us, so it wasn't too far a reach to explain Felix’ radical behavior: he was re-infected too. It didn't matter that we were all best buds with the Sinsleys now, they had been the original target and probably were again. Adam wasn't thinking or deciding any of this, he was a slave to whatever evil command that Da-starda-hat asshole had inflicted upon him. It was only logical that the Sinsleys were slaves too, they'd both been infected before. We were just lucky that Peter had gone against it somehow and saved Adam's life. We figured on needing some muscle with us to take on Adam in his crazy-guy phase, and lucky for us we had a whole bunch: I drove our Band Bus into Monroe with a full load of 10 male Nokhons, all those brave enough to risk riding in our obviously evil skesk-contraption, but also heavy enough to slow us down considerably. That's about 2½ tons of muscle, but we'd probably need it. Before we left, Melly called ahead to warn Sarah Sinsley that trouble was brewing. Sarah said that both Felix and Peter had left the house very early in the morning without saying where they were going. She could see that they had taken some rifles and bullets from the gun case, so had assumed that they had gone on a hunting trip, even though she knew it wasn't season for anything just now. She was upset that they hadn't said anything to her. It had seemed so unlike them both. Melly told her she'd better leave the house right now and Sarah said she was already on her way. Her car was gone by the time we arrived and Felix's GTO too, so we parked and waited outside the empty house. Some of the neighbors waved to us, interested in a flock of sasquatches hanging out in their neighborhood, which I found kind of amusing, considering the last time we'd been through this. See, now everybody knows that the Sinsleys are active in the NNP and that they rub elbows with squatches all the time, no big deal any more, it's an accepted fact. But last year we had to sneak Dagrolyt to and from this same house because any other Bigfoot than Adam was supposed to be top secret. It turned into a long wait. Hours. We wondered and worried about where Adam had gone in his dangerously frantic state. Mel and Liss had been too scared to come with us but they called my cell phone every 10 minutes. I couldn't blame them: we were all afraid that Adam was going to kill someone. Which he didn't, by the way. Actually, it seems he was outsmarting the worst of his own stupidness because once he'd definitely lost the Sinsley's trail on the Freeway, he ran into some woods to avoid people and stayed hidden for hours. It was almost 3:00 in the afternoon when he finally arrived at the Sinsley's house: the same one he had trashed the year before, since rebuilt and repaired. Guess he was programmed to do a repeat performance. Still messy at the mouth a little bit, he was the worn-out version of a perfect Monster Bigfoot, a winded mountain of semi-raging muscle and hair. Actually, I'd never seen him winded before, not even after the Seattle Marathon. He was more or less staggering. Later he told me he'd been charging full speed up and down the Cascade Mountains trying to outrun the stinging in his brain. We were watching from the bus, most of the guys were amused. It was obvious that Adam wanted to come at the house like an unstoppable juggernaut, crashing through the walls, never mind doors or windows, yearning to destroy his enemy inside. But he was dragging his feet and four male Nokhons had no problem intercepting him, or holding his arms and legs so that I could jump in front of him without getting trampled. I was waving my arms and shouting in both English and Nokhon languages. Adam was in the final dregs of berserker mode, limply trying to struggle against four males just as big and strong as him, but not as weary. He couldn’t overpower or escape them, his fit of rage fizzled out. It took a moment for him to focus in on whatever this little punk Indian brave (me) was shouting at him: "They're not here, Adam! Felix and Peter are not here!" The words finally got through to him. His rage popped like a bubble now that there was no one to spend it on. His berserker-self must have realized that his assigned mission was now kaput. He rocked on his feet, sighed, squatted to rest. Clearly calm now, the four buck squatches released him and stepped back. "Well," Adam seemed confused, but finally recognized me, "Pokey? Okay, so where ARE they?" "Dunno. Might have gone out to kill you. Or maybe someone else. There are some nasty old syssks buzzzing around right now, Kemo Sabe." "Wait. What? Hey, Pokey, why are we at the Sinsley's house right now?"
I don't have any clear memory of while I was Melly's "slobbering brute", which is fine, I think they'd be pretty embarrassing. But I can remember that it hurt: a horrible stinging in my brain. I'm going to have to learn some kind of Sha-haka defense against syssks next time I'm studying at Aket, it's unacceptable that something can just take over my mind like that. Even after the stinging stopped and I could think again, I was still being controlled from somewhere else. Everyone suspects Da-starda-hat in Shamballah, that his psychic/telepathic abilities have somehow became enhanced and are much more powerful than ever before. I wasn't hearing his voice or seeing visual instructions, but somehow intuited what I was supposed to do and was compelled to obey. The same seemed to be so for Melly and the Sinsley guys. We were all obeying some kind of directive without knowing who was directing or what the objective was. Typical syssk-determined behavior. Pokey had come to the Sinsley's house to stop me from attacking them. When I learned that they weren't even home, all the drive went out of my rampage. They had a brace of Nokhon guys to wrestle me down, which fortunately turned out to be unnecessary, since I'd somehow gotten over the homicidal part of my madness. It was like a switch had been flipped and suddenly I had a new set of orders which I didn't understand any more than the first set. Now I felt that I had to go somewhere up in the Cascade Mountains, even though I'd spent most of the day running and climbing up and down them to burn up my murderous rage and keep myself from hurting anyone. But before setting out I borrowed Pokey's cell phone to call Melly, vaguely remembering that she had been afraid of my "slobbering brute" persona once again. But she was relieved to hear from me and glad to hear that I was more or less normal again. "Actually, I'm not," I had to admit; "now I seem to be compelled to go up into the mountains and do something, although I've got no idea what." "That's weird," she said, "so am I. At least I'm feeling this intense impulse to be walking somewhere right now, even though I don't know where to, but it also seems to be up into the hills. Can we go together?" "You're not afraid to be with me after I became the slobbering brute all over again?" "A little bit, but I'll have to get over it. You're my Addy." "I think I had more control of myself than the first time it happened. I can't remember much of what I was thinking at the time, but it seems that I somehow CHOSE to quit following the Sinsleys and run up into the mountains instead, to deliberately avoid meeting any people I might hurt. I ran around up there all day to burn off any violent energy. When I finally gave in and went to the Sinsley house I was too worn out to do much damage." "You don't sound worn-out now." "I've been pulling up haka since I could think again. It does wonders. I'm not even hungry." Pokey gave me a lift back to the Hacienda in the bus, which was more or less on my way, so there was no emotional conflict as there can be when resisting a syssk. A crowd was gathered, especially after Pokey and I arrived with a bus full of Nokhons. My four girl friends hugged and kissed me... after I assured them that the "slobbering brute" was gone again, that is. He's really unpopular with the ladies. How embarrassing, I’ve got to find out how to stop that from ever happening again. Although I still wasn't quite free of that damned syssk just then. Art and Elaine had come back from their mini-vacation in Vancouver and were shocked to hear about what had gone down. But I had no time to visit, I needed to go somewhere right away. It was hard enough taking the time to put some clothes on. I'd been running around "naked" all day. I assume that any people who might have seen me probably wouldn't realize it was me, since I usually wear something when around civilization, so they'd think they saw some "wild" Sasquatch, not the famous media-star Adam Leroy Forest. Although when I trim my body hair for spring/summer, I always make sure to leave my pubic area extra shaggy, just covering my cute little dakh, so that I'm more or less "decent" by puritanical American standards. But I put on some clothes anyway: my standard red & white checkered shirt (so I don't get shot by some hunter out in the woods) and Elaine-made blue jeans. Now I had a pocket for my cell phone, but I often find that I end up in places where I don't want my location to be traced (like Aket), and since I didn't know where I was going now, I left it at home. Melly had hers anyway. I started up the hill, towards the Mother's Meadow and Refugee Camp, where I heard Melly calling behind me. She came running, still zipping up her coat. "Hey, I'm going with you, don't leave without me." I was still feeling embarrassed about having hurt her that morning (not that I remembered any of it, but Magga told me) and not yet sure it was safe or her to be with me. "It feels like I have to follow you," she said, "just like I had to hate you earlier today. Something or someone is still controlling my emotions." She caught up with me and put her comparatively little hand in mine "So are you hating me now?" I asked. "No, that's over. I love you again, but I'm pretty sure that's just my normal default emotion. What's weird is that I'm going somewhere against my will but I'm not scared shitless. Whatever this is all about, now we seem to be on the same side instead of in opposition." "You know, if I ever get the chance to punish whoever is doing this to you..." "..to US... I know, me too. Do you think it's that evil Elder Da-starda-hat in Shamballah?" "Seems most likely, but who knows? And where are we going right now?" Along the way Melly mentioned that because the Sinsleys seemed also to have been affected by this syssk attack, she’d call Peter's phone to find out if they were okay. He was presently with both his folks and everyone was rather glad to hear that none of us were out to kill each other anymore. Then I surprised myself by informing them that the four of us were now being sent on a common mission to fulfill some unknown ceremonial requirement. Not that I knew what I was talking about, it just came to me. But they had already been feeling it too, an urge to go somewhere without knowing where. When the hills got steeper I put Melly on my shoulders, as we often do, covering distance faster in an easy trot. But I found myself going faster and faster, even when I tried to go slower. I was being driven, just like I had been with my very first syssk encounter, that time when Daklakht had forced me to go back to civilization. I resisted, but ended up obeying. I took Melly up to Candy Bar Hilltop, to where she felt required to stay and climb a tree, evidently to get an overview of the Cascade Mountains. It was a Bald Cypress, a very tall, not-so bushy tree, all branches clustered at the top. I was against her doing that, it was too dangerous, but neither she nor I had any choice about it. She was afraid and with good reason: if she fell from so high up she'd certainly be killed. But she had to stay and I had to go. She asked me to make love with her before I left-- in case it was our last time ever. I wasn't feeling especially horny under those circumstances, but I couldn't deny her. At least she got to come a couple of times, I was too stressed-- obsessed with moving on at once. (I know, if Melly was writing this scene it would fill pages, but I don't consider it a fun scene.) Before leaving I had to help her up to the lowest branches, which were far up a long naked trunk. To do that I grabbed a smaller tree, snapped it off at the base and propped the tip of it into the lowest branches of the cypress, wedged at an angle, so that she would have more branches to climb both up and down, like a ladder. From there she climbed almost all the way to the top, which was quite high up and we both considered extremely risky. She could sit more or less comfortably on some branches up there but had to hug the tree trunk with both arms and legs to keep from falling off. She was required to face north. Neither of us understood the reasoning for our assignments and I couldn't resist going on further alone to my own destination, leaving her pretty much stranded up there. It was a long steep way back down to Monroe for her, but just getting back down from that tree could be the most dangerous part of it all. I told her I'd come back for her... if I could. I ended up on top of Bald Mountain, with a classic view of the Great Pacific Northwest: Puget Sound and Seattle off in the distance. Then I just stood there facing north. Whenever I tried to face any another direction I felt off balance and eventually had to right myself back to North. Somehow I knew it was Magnetic North rather than True North, as if I could sense or almost see the electromagnetic field of the planet Earth. I stood there for hours, unable to leave. I was worried about Melly being all the way up in that tree: assuming she'd been hanging on just as long as I'd been standing, she could become exhausted and fall down. I tried to turn and go back to her, but simply couldn't. I sang some verses from songs I considered mantras, but they didn't help, I was stuck. The sun went down, but the sky lit up with flowing phosphorescent colors; the Aurora Borealis I presumed. Although maybe not; it's very rare that the Northern Lights are visible in Washington State, so I wasn't sure if they were really there or just visible to me under those conditions, a hallucination. I was still stuck, but began to sense a change in my condition: tingling. It felt electric, like I was in the proximity of a strong magnetic field, all the hair on my body standing stiffly on end, rippling in waves. Looked pretty funny. But what I was feeling wasn't funny: I began to hurt all over; my muscles, my teeth, my eyes, and it just kept getting worse. It felt like I might just die. But I was most afraid that the same thing was happening to Melly and she'd fall out of that damned tree. Then I experienced an instant when it seemed to me that I almost understood what was happening, as if I'd received a telepathic glimpse behind the scenes that should allow me to decipher the chain of clues I'd been given, if only I was smart enough. Which I definitely wasn't at that moment, since my brains were being messed with by an evil syssk. As if there was a pattern I ought to be recognizing... But then the pain brought me back to reality, gritting my teeth, wondering how much more of this I could endure. And then quite suddenly --pop!-- it was over. The pain and the electricity just evaporated, as did all the lights in the sky within a blink, and my compulsion to be stuck where I was. I found myself free to turn and start running to help Melly before it was too late. Off I ran, fast as I could. It was dark by then, but we squatches can see well enough to navigate at night. This must have been around 7:00 PM. [good guess, Adam, it was exactly 19:07 Thursday evening in the Pacific Northwest Time Zone. Or 8:52 Friday morning in Shamballah-- Art] By the time I got to Melly she had already climbed down from her tree, but it had obviously been a rough ordeal. All her muscles fatigued from holding on so long, almost falling when the waves of pain had been at the worst, then too weak to swing over to the wedged other tree that should have been her ladder, and finally having to shinny down the long branchless shaft of the cypress tree in the dark, from high enough to be dangerous. Good thing she'd been dressed in thick denim against the cold or she'd have been a bloody mess. Her hands were, and I could see dark handprints on the rough bark of the tree trunk base. Melly really could have died then. I'd come running to rescue her, but would have been too late. Some hero I am. Lucky she's not some frail and helpless damsel in distress. But she was happy to see me-- although she almost couldn't, it being so dark. She'd been lying on the ground, more or less worn out and crying a little when I showed up. I put her up on my shoulders and held her feet so she couldn't fall off, she tried to hug my head but her hugging muscles were all tuckered out. But she and I have a well-practiced routine of running through the woods together, so she knew how to keep her balance. I couldn't run full speed, that would have been too jarring for her, but we were back at the Hacienda before 9 PM.
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