He was scared, only that. Terrified. And if someone was there pushing down on him—Tim, with hands of stone, Tim murmuring Don’t fight it, just let go, it’s going to be all right, all right, all right—it meant nothing to him. There was no God—that was the bedrock certainty of everything he knew—but he prayed to Him now, Our Father who art in heaven, the cant of his Catholic youth come back to him till he was staring into the slit eyes of the Devil, some devil, all the devils, and the void that preceded consciousness and would ineluctably snuff it out absorbing him into its pure black nothingness whether his eyes were open or not. Somebody said that he’d been outside, running, that he’d stripped off his jacket and pants and slammed so hard into the inanimate world that there were bruises up and down his legs and a gash just above his right hip that might or might not need bandaging, but he didn’t believe a word of it because when he thought about it very hard, when he really concentrated, he knew he hadn’t been there at all.

Chapter 4

4.

One bad trip, Fitz, don’t let it throw you—it happens to us all. The point is revelation and there’s no promise of that—or that it’ll be all milk and honey either. Read Huxley—you know Huxley? Sometimes it’s heaven, sometimes it’s hell. It just comes in its own way and of its own accord and our job is to be patient and follow it where it wants to lead us.”

Tim was talking as he walked, striding across campus with his arms swinging jubilantly and his hands rising and falling to frame his words. He himself was trying to keep up, trying to make sense of what had happened to him on Saturday night, trying to fit in and stay focused at the same time. “So was it some kind of breakthrough, is that what you think?”

Students milled, assembled, drifted past in groups. They didn’t know anything, couldn’t imagine. Those were real bruises on his legs and this was his mind taking him through the day, sharper and clearer than it had ever been in all his life. It was as if he’d had a tune-up, a mental tune-up, and all his cylinders were firing for the first time. The trees were like people, the people like trees. The sky ached. A voice shouted, “You just wait!” and another shouted back, “I’m still waiting!”