Meg laid her hand on my shoulder and watched the vehicle zoom into the night.

“What was that?”

“God bless me,” I said. “I’m afraid it was the ghost of Christmas Future.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

In college, Sean Pruitt had not only defended various assertions by Drs. Campbell and Ryoko, he’d written a paper about the Campbell-Ryoko documentary The Forest That Eats Men. His paper cited a particular set of tapes he’d designated the Ring of Darkness. These tapes were a series of interviews and lectures the doctors had begun in the 1970s, carried into the new millennium. Adeyemi’s lawyer sent the material to me upon request. Apparently, the tapes were among several boxes of similar files Adeyemi had borrowed from Dr. Alex Pruitt’s collection when they’d enlisted PI Griese to probe Sean’s alleged suicide. There wasn’t any love lost between Adeyemi and Dr. Pruitt, yet they’d set aside their differences and worked together hand in glove. People, including hard-bitten thug cops, had certainly loved Sean.

Some of the Campbell-Ryoko files were stored on outdated technology. Meg dipped into her library resources to finagle an archaic recorder for my use. I fiddled with the settings and got the reels turning. Scratchy and oddly distorted, but sufficiently clear that I discerned Dr. Campbell speaking on his beloved topic, extraterrestrial intelligence and alleged incidents of human abduction:

“—you think it can’t be real, it’s a dream, a hallucination, because of the crudeness. The rusty tools, the chains, medieval contraptions. Filth and stink. This can’t be an advanced species. This can’t be a starfaring race.” This from the mouth of multiple abductees.

Dr. Ryoko’s thoughts on mythology, folklore, and quantum physics:

Seances are not solicitations of mystical beings, nor invitations to the spectral souls. Energy is not destroyed, only reshaped, distributed, or displaced. Astral projection and astral viewing are achieved through a variety of methods and these methods often labor under the trappings of mysticism. Oracular vision is frowned upon by modern religions, unless expressly bestowed by approved sources.

Legends are similar no matter where you wander. Jesus, Allah, Satan, Whiro, Azrael, Kali. The same, all the same. Light and dark. Positive, negative. Two components of reality are responsible for this phenomenon. Component one is mundane: You’ve mapped one brain and stimulated one nervous system; you’ve mapped and stimulated them all. Ike and Mike think alike and everybody is Ike or Mike. Two veers into esoteric territory. Reality is a string of beads. Dissimilar beads occupy different positions, but all are connected. Concepts such as “here” and “there” are modalities, terms of convenience. Heroic figures, monsters, angels, devils are exaggerations upon human characteristics.

I could imagine Gene K’s take on this insane bullshit were he around to compare notes. He would’ve laughed and said, I told you, kid.

■■■

The phone rang at an obscene hour.

“Coleridge, you’re one of the last of a dying breed,” Badja Adeyemi said. “That lone mustang stallion on the bluff, overlooking his herd of mares. Now it’s punk kids.”