Where Serpents Lie

Seven

Hypok slept until almost midnight. Then he sat up and swung his feet over the bed, straightened his back and breathed deeply. He pulled a burgundy-colored robe over him and let it fall past his waist as he stood and slid his feet into his slippers. He tied the robe sash in a double knot, snug up against his stomach. At the bedroom window he stood erect, each hand in a robe pocket, feet together, head cocked just a little to the right, and stared through the darkness. Same thing he always saw: sycamores dense and high and lit faintly by a neighbor’s patio light, the thick black power line sagging upward toward its pole on the street behind his, part of the rooftop belonging to the rose-crazed old jackoff who lived next door, the guest quarters at the far end of his own backyard dark now but the guests inside certainly astir just like he was.

Things start moving early in spring when the moon’s down, he thought, like tonight, part of nature’s way, what keeps us all fed.

He went to the kitchen and made coffee. Extra strong, to stand up to the milk and kahlua and tequila he added to it — just a wave of each bottle really — to get him off to a firm start. With a big steaming mug in his hand he went into his workroom and turned on the overhead fluorescents. They were arranged on the ceiling in two rows of three long bulbs each, and bathed the room in cool white light. More like moonlight than daylight, he thought.

First, get the mail and check with the Friendlies on the Web. He booted up and keyed to the PlaNet provider software, listened to the modem as it dialed and made contact, saw the standard PlaNet junk fill the screen as he fingered past it to get his e-mail. He leaned his elbows on the desk and lowered his head to his hands for comfort. Odd to feel the new smooth face, he thought, and the new short white hair is odd too. The new me. He read his mail:

Eat crap, PlaNet. Hypok keyed out of his mailbox and into a private chat room of the Midnight Ramblers, people who shared his interest in youth activities. He got the weekly chat schedule on Mondays from the boring home page for Fawnskin, a resort area up in the mountains of Southern California. First he’d scroll past the weather and fish catches, the precipitation and rental availability, all the way back to the local news items, which contained the coded live chat schedule if you knew where to look for it and how to read it. Then he’d know where and when to lurk the Ramblers. They met three different days of each week, at the changing, prearranged times. Midnight and the middle of the day were popular. If they weren’t careful the server monitors would shut them down, might even call in the cops. Hypok had gotten to know a handful of the Ramblers, and considered them his Friendlies. Talked to them in person, seen them face to face. Let them help him sometimes. Risky but profitable.

He lurked.

E-Rection: True, but that still doesn’t explain why so many of us are chatting here, unloved and unoccupied. Isn’t there something new and clever we can think of?

O-Ring: Why not finance a set of custom works from some artistic friend? We can pool our resources.

Rod & Real: Too expensive, that’s why.

Lancer: I stand by my opinion that the public outdoor shower is the most cost effective way to acquire wood. We lucky enough to live in temperate climes can enjoy the youthful siren song May through October. How to chop it is the problem.

E-Rection: The day of the overcoat is over.

Lancer: Especially in August.

O-Ring: Give me pix any day. Privacy and dignity.

E-Rection: And reusable.

Hypok followed the conversation and drank his coffee. He was tempted to jump in and offer up some custom images, or just some reworkings, but no use sounding eager. He would let them stew, get hotter, drive the value up. For now, the freelance dating service work was paying well and keeping him as busy as he wanted to be. Plus, what went down with Chet and his group was going to spread the heat everywhere. Let it cool. Be cool. Lie low. Create.

He left the computer on so he could lurk later, but he rolled his office chair away from the little desk and positioned himself in front of the work station. The table was a handsome right-angled expanse of two-by-six pine planks held up by sawhorses that took up almost an entire wall of the workroom and part of the adjacent wall. The planks were thick and he’d alternated the grain and inlaid them with strips of dark red cherry and run the dowels in every four inches for strength and planed and sanded the whole thing to the smoothness of a pearl before shellacking then buffing it to a shine not of this world. The wood made him think of the bridge of a great luxury yacht; the technology on top of the wood made him think of the flight deck of a jetliner. He felt great sitting here, important, like the captain of a Spanish galleon or maybe a spaceship. Hypok looked at his powerful 129-meg Mac with the latest Adobe Photoshop, his Pivot 1700 Portrait monitor; his Epsons, his Stylus Pro XL scanner, his 200-meg SyQuest for image storage, his 2000-meg NuDesign backup unit, two film recorders, the video editor, his video and still cameras, his digital cameras, his light table and big desk blotter where he sometimes roughed things out in sketch form the old-fashioned way — with a pencil.

Ah.

He fired up the Mac and told the SyQuest to present the image bank of his latest project: a modernization of some classic Dutch stuff of the early part of the century. It was all black and white and the backgrounds were indistinct, plus the girls themselves had a dated, frankly hokey look to them no matter what they were doing. It was the kind of stuff you could pull off the Web any day of the week, the kind of bread-and-butter images the p’philes started out with, before they got educated in the kinds of things they could get from people like him. He’d spent the last week coloring everything, then brightening up the backgrounds and inserting some modern touches — a digital clock in one, a stereo CD system with bookshelf speakers in another, a personal computer in still another. He’d updated what little clothing the models were wearing. Small things, but they brought the images out of the twenties and thirties and into the nineties very convincingly. Then he had started replacing the girls’ faces with those of models in magazines, but none of them really looked right. So today he would start creating his own from scratch, give to each of these little angels a face that today’s man would just look at and drool over. Innocent enough, and all just for a buck, Hypok thought: he could sell these as originals by the time he got done with them, and it was one-tenth the work of getting a true original. And about one one-hundredth the risk.

He chose a Photoshop brush of narrow gauge and started sketching. Brain to hand. Eye to brain to hand. Someone young. Someone healthy. Someone innocent of sin but instinctively knowledgeable. The girl next door, the little niece you haven’t seen in two years, your best friend’s daughter. But something extra about her, something in her that understands. Something that desires. Eve as a girl, before God and Adam tamed the fun out of her. Leave it to a snake to find the opening.

When Hypok contemplated an image like this his mind wandered, because every decision he made about her was based somewhere in his own history and it was impossible to separate himself from himself when he was working from scratch, inventing, reaching deep inside to find his own rib. It was such a difficult bone to locate.

So as he began to create this girl from himself, he wondered solemnly at the selfless thing he was, at his many names and many homes and many appearances, at his corelessness, at the nothing that he often seemed to be. By birth: Eugene Earl Vonn, a name given to him by his mother, whom he hated, in keeping with her latest marriage to one Everett Vonn. He came to hate Everett, too, who was stupid enough not only to marry Wanda Grantley (her fourth of five such promises) but to believe the boy born eight months later was his own son.

As he drew the new girl, he thought of the sorry tale of his genesis, told to him years later when he was nine by his real father, one Michael Hypok, former itinerant roughneck, seducer of women, alcoholic and methamphetamine freak who skipped out in a big way — as Eugene feared he would — shortly after young Eugene had finally tracked his father down. It had taken him a month just to find him. But Michael had left him with three things: the truth of Eugene’s nativity; a wallet containing two dollars, a driver’s license and a tattered Social Security card; and a clot of blood that he blasted onto his son’s shirtfront at the moment of his convulsive overdose of a death.

Hypok studied the image taking form before him and ruminated again on the death of his father and the true beginning of himself. Sometimes you had to reiterate the same history to make sure it was still true. And it was still true. The name, money and identification had begun a new life for him. Especially the name. He thought back to when he used the lighter fluid to ignite the damp and reeking sleeping bag in which his father lay, hitchhiking the eleven hours back to the hated Wanda, and never telling a soul about any of it. It was the beginning of his secret self. He was born with the flame. He had changed. He had shed. He was new — a process that thrilled him in a way he had never been thrilled before.

Gene Vonn. Michael Hypok. David Webb. David Lumsden. Who was he, really? Well, it wasn’t that simple. His only hard rules were these: he would never be Gene Vonn again because he hated the source of that being; and he would never speak out loud the essential name Michael Hypok because it was his secret name, his secret self, his unspeakable and authentic center. Those rules aside, you just became whoever you needed to be for people you met. Same for the government, DMV, banks, merchants, service providers, neighbors. Everyone. Changeable, obscured, multifaceted, occult. And the documentation if you needed it was a snap for someone who had a valid Social Security number and who could build a young Eve from the marrow of his own secret rib.

Two hours and four stout tequilas later he had a beautiful little creation on the screen before him. Just her face now, disembodied completely from any body, as well as from any rules and laws governing her behavior. A girlish face, with a bit of plumpness around the dimples. The eyes just a little older than the rest of her, and a sense of carnal wisdom in them. Mouth open wide. Somewhat like his older sisters, Collette and Valeen, might have looked not long after he was born. Collie and Valee, his craven mavens. He saved the image and shrunk it down to fit one of the Dutch girls. Using the Blur command under the Filter heading, he gave her just a bit of dreamy distance. Click. He integrated the colors. He used the Sharpen button to strengthen the jaw and lip lines. Click. Then he used Pixilate to even out the grain of the whole image before he enlarged it, Despeckled the pixels just a little, then took it back down to a 5 by 7. Click.

Not bad.

Not bad at all.

Fifty bucks times however many copies he could sell before they got into general circulation on the Web. Fifty, maybe seventy-five. Then, they were worthless.

One down, ten to go.

Time to get cracking on the next Eve, he thought. He stared at the screen and rubbed his fingers over his new, whiskerless cheeks. He felt weary but nervous; spent but eager. Like he always did when a shed was coming on.

Sunrise began. He turned off his machines, then the fluorescent lights and poured a generous tequila as a nightcap. He locked the workroom door and padded in his slippers down the hall, past the kitchen and through the door to the backyard. Under the dark canopy of sycamores unsullied by stars he stood and listened, then let himself into the guest cottage. Incandescent twilight welcomed him. He shut the door and breathed deeply the scent of sawdust and serpent and fresh water. The cages lined two of the walls, each now lit by a UVA black heat bulb that cast a soft lunar glow into the room. Blue, almost silver.

The vipers looked as they always did, stoic and resentful. The cobras moved efficiently. Hard to believe the male ophiophagus is eighteen feet long now, Hypok thought. The harmless little colubrids were shy as usual, looking at him from beneath water dishes or decorative rocks as he passed their glass like a general inspecting ranks. Cute little soldiers, he thought: jewels. He stepped closer to look at the big Crotalus horridas horridus he’d collected in northeastern Texas many springs ago. About this time of year, he thought. What a severe beauty: gold and olive, black and pearl, like old leaves on rich soil, countless epochs of genetic mystery engraved on its skin. Five feet long and bigger around than his arm. Don’t tread on me.

He stepped back and looked at the whole wall of cages at once, unfocusing his gaze to include them all. What would happen to them if he let them go? He’d thought about it a lot lately, in the last few weeks. Not that he didn’t care for them. Not that he didn’t admire and even like them. But the idea of releasing them was part of something larger that was growing inside, and Hypok knew that when you grew inside you got bigger on the outside too, and had to shed your skin off to make room for the new, fortified thing you became. And once something started growing inside you it always kept on growing. It might go away for a while, but it always came back. Like... well. Once, just last week, he’d packed up all his snakes but one and driven them in his van out to Caspers Wilderness Park to set them free. But he’d just circled the remote parking area, then skedaddled on home, relieved that he could find no convincing reason to go through with it. It would be like letting little parts of your body go free.

But now, as he stood here contemplating all the cages and all the moving bodies within them, he told himself again — just as he had at the park — that to free them would be an act of deepest respect and love, the greatest thing he could ever offer these beautifully made, unthinking little machines. And every time he added to his collection he imagined the day he would set the new specimen free, didn’t he? Yes. Those were the best reasons he could come up with, though they hadn’t been good enough at the park and they weren’t good enough now. He knew they weren’t good enough.

The real reason was that he had to. You think it. You feel it. You see yourself doing it. Then you have to. To not do it is to deny your nature. Like... well, that again.

Then, oddly, he imagined letting them go and it was a pleasant thought — the right thing to do. It scared him, the way his mind could just flip one way and then another, like a switch. It meant a big change was coming on. Again. Take an Item but let the Item go free. Take another Item but let that Item go free. Get Collie to list the house for sale; then get her to unlist it. Drive to the park to let the snakes go; drive home without letting the snakes go. Black hair; brown hair; blond hair. Beard and mustache; smooth. There was no end to it. He reached into his robe pocket and took two nice big gulps off the flat hard bottle. There.

Then he backed away and turned to face the opposite wall. It was one huge tank, made of floor-to-ceiling panels of half-inch glass, built by Hypok’s own exacting hands. Moloch dozed in the water basin, his massive girth and weight supported by the liquid. When he inhaled, the water level rose perceptibly on the glass. Blue light, moon-silver shadows, moon-silver eyes. Tongue out. Tongue wavers in lunar glow. Tongue in. Moloch, his pride and joy, the diamond of all the jewels in his crown, his co-conspirator, blood brother, ally, friend and namesake. Something he would never let go.

Moloch.

Mike, for short.

Suddenly the silver twilight disappeared, replaced by a bright sunlike shine that cheered the room. The snakes all froze in place, uneasy, threatened by the change that could turn them from hunters into hunted. Hypok stiffened too, pure reflex. He felt suddenly exhausted with the thing growing inside him, with the way he kept changing his mind. Enough now. Enough!

He closed his eyes and willed away the pressure, willed away the indecision. For a while his brain was like jazz, just fizzing along without any pattern. Finally it quieted down so he could hear himself think.

Take the things between blinks just one at a time, he thought.

Be happy with what you have. Better. Better now.

Looking around, he was pleased to see his room, his snakes, his cages. Pleased to see his robe. Pleased that the new timer on his cage light circuit was working so well. Yes, pleased to see all of this. He owned it all, every bit of it. Well, Collette’s name was on the house but he made the payments to her, so that was just a protective technicality. His idea.

He started to feel better. His things anchored him. What you owned and what you created. He considered the new light that filled the room. Thanks to his timer there would now be twelve hours of artificial full-spectrum sunlight, a time for withdrawal and rest. A time for serpent dreams. In light that he created. In time that he owned.

Better.

He walked into the little rear bedroom and opened the lid of his UV chamber. He’d made it himself, from glass panels and a little wood, to fight the agony of his chronic psoriasis, which had afflicted him since boyhood. It was a medically proven fact that sunbaths were good for his condition, so he had created his own sun chamber to lie in, out of the sight of humans. Lamps along the inside of the lid; lamps left and right of him. Pillows for head and feet. Like a coffin with long rods of UV-emitting lights and heat lamps.

He took off his robe and slippers and the bracelet with the little red serpent on it, flipped the switch, put on his sunglasses and climbed in. Easing down into the chamber he could already feel the heat lamps on his skin, already feel the drying sensation of the UV rays on his sores. Sores, he thought: thank my fucking mother again for those. Amusing, however, that the doctors called the patina that grew over the sores, “scale.” I’ll show you scale, he thought. He lay back, lowered the door and looked up through the glass. Must get more Lidex delivered. So much to think about, and the mind never stops.

He lay still, a festering human in a glass tube filled with light. He relaxed and let the light have him, let the pain of the flesh and the pain of the brain waft up out of him like spirits. He wondered where they went. All he knew for sure was that they never went away.

Half an hour later he padded out of the cottage and locked the door behind him, headed for the main house and his bed, where he could catch a few hours of well-deserved hibernation while the new day dawned.