JOURNAL OF DEREK RAYNESat, 5 April - Chipote
Dad told me to divorce myself from my emotions. I shall try to do so now, so that I can sort this out and have it make sense in my own mind. However, I find that I cannot yet write of last night.
I found a photo in Father�s sepulchre notebook - of me and him in the mountains - three years ago in Yosemite. It was a happy time. We had fun. I remember a high meadow there that was so covered by some sort of bluish-purple flower that it looked like a lake. I never knew he kept that photo. Perhaps he loved me more than I thought, but just didn�t know how to tell me. One never suspects that one�s parents might be uncertain or frightened. If I make it out of here, I shall try to be more diligent in my studies. He told me I had no focus, that I try to go in all directions at once. He�s right. My mind does go in all directions at once. I want to learn it all - I want to learn to fly, I want to visit every country in the world, I want to know science and history. I want to read the Encyclopedia Britannica - all 23 volumes - cover to cover, and the Bible (all versions, in their original languages), the Talmud, the Koran in Arabic, the Bhagavad-Gita, and the Tao of Lao Tzu. I want to be able to play Chopin, Mozart, and Beethoven from memory. I want to know the names of all the stars and be able to pick out all the constellations. Dad always said that we would raft down the Colorado River - just like they did a hundred years ago. I�ll do that. That�s what I must focus upon, if no help comes and I have to get out of here by myself. If I fail, Father will never get home, and there will be two more empty niches in the tomb with plaques that read �dedicated to the memory of.�
~~~~~
Dear God, I still have his blood on my hands. I didn�t realise until the daylight came. It�s under my nails and all around them. His blood is on my sweatshirt and jacket, too. The world now seems a million times larger and a zillion times emptier. What do I do without my dad?
I finally went back just before dawn. The torch had burned out. I could only see as far as the light of my own flame. I got half way down the tunnel and almost couldn�t go any further, but somehow did, step by step. At each step I imagined the sight of his body and that the demon was devouring it while it awaited my return.
When I finally saw him lying there all alone, it seemed as though he had shrunk into a frail old man. Rigor mortis was setting in. It was very hard for me to compose his body, but I did it. Then I washed the blood and dirt from his face and hands, and I combed his hair. I didn�t cry. I wonder if he�d be proud of me now. It�s not that I�m controlling my tears. It�s that they are not there.
I tried to get his precept�s ring back onto his finger. He seems naked without it, but it was no use. I thought to put it in his pocket, but found that, despite what it represents, I couldn�t part with it. I feel that as long as I have it with me, he will be with me. I placed it on the string with the sepulchre�s key, which is around my neck. I took his wallet in case I need money, but left his passport. I shall make a cross from a couple of boards and nail the passport to it, so that if anyone should come, they will know who lies there.
Using old mining tools that had been left behind to rust, I managed to dig a shallow grave - only about a metre deep. I�ve hit such hard ground that I fear it is rock. I shall rest a while, then go collect as many stones as I can find to finish my sad job. I almost can�t bear the thought of leaving him all alone out here.
~~~~~
I cannot sleep. Every time I doze the horrors fill my dreams and I awaken with a scream in my throat. I am tired and my hands are blistered, but I must finish my task. Then I must deal with the sepulchre. It�s noon and no one has come.
~~~~~
6 p.m.
I placed Father in his sleeping bag, then into his cold bed. I said the Lord�s Prayer and the 23rd Psalm, then sang �Amazing Grace� and made an attempt at �Ave Maria,� his favourite. A cairn of stones and a cross now rest atop his grave. How lonely he must be, lying up there in the dark, cold ground.
I dragged the sepulchre to one of the mine shafts that seemed bottomless. When I dropped a stone in, it took it a very long time to hit the water. I have no idea how deep it might really be. I hope it goes all the way to hell. I shone the torch down there, but never saw the water. I pushed the unholy thing in. It made a big splash. I would have used the dynamite to collapse the shaft as well, but I didn�t know how the blasting caps worked, so with a rope I managed to pull down some timbers and cause a slight rock fall without killing myself. It is enough to cover what really happened and to account for my statement in Dad�s journal. Perhaps it is better that I couldn�t use the dynamite. They would have been able to tell that there was an explosion.
I�ve forced myself to move down to the miner�s shack. It is rather cozy with its pot-bellied stove, kerosene lamp, table and chairs, and a bed. There were even a couple of cans of beans, which I heated and ate, a Bible, and an old, iron strong box, which I hauled up to the mine to act as a substitute sepulchre. If someone other than myself returns, I know they will look.
I blistered my hands pretty good while digging Dad�s grave. I�ve put ointment on them and bandaged them as best I can. I was a fool for not thinking of gloves, but then I wasn�t really thinking at all. I shall leave in the morning.
~~~~~
Sleep will not come. The visions keep replaying themselves. Perhaps, it is time that I write them. Oh, dear God, how do I write this? Ik ben een Paardelul - such a jerk, but I was right. He should never have tried to do this alone. But he wasn�t alone, was he? I was his backup and I let him down and he�s dead. Did I kill him? I think I did. I distracted him. I was pleading with him to get out of there and he turned his back on the sepulchre to stretch his hand out to me. He was saying, �Come on, take my hand,� when the demon of the sepulchre arose from its prison and grabbed him from behind.
What if I hadn�t been there? Perhaps he would have been facing it head on. He could have done his binding incantations. Without me, maybe he would have been stronger. He ordered me to stay in the car, but I disobeyed. We had been fighting over Latin. I threw his damn parchment out the window. He was so angry I thought that he was going to hit me, but he didn�t. I can�t remember that he ever did more than spank me once or twice. God knows I�ve deserved it, but a look from him usually did the trick. When he was really angry, he�d always walk away. Mother was the one who kept the hairbrush handy.
I�ll never forget the phrase that was part of the binding spell: Te provicio ad abyssum tibi paratum > I banish thee to the abyss for thee prepared. But even that one I don�t get. Expellere or peliere is to banish, and as for abyssum? �Y� is a rarity in Latin - it only shows up in Greek words. In Latin it should be something like �profundum�. It should read: Te expelleo ad tibi profundum paratum.
God! What am I doing? I�m mucking around with Latin that means nothing to me while my father lies in his grave because of me. My last words to him before he went into the mine were �I don�t believe you anymore,� and I was the one who hit him. He grabbed my jacket and I slammed his hand away.
It was my �Sight� that caused it all. I know that now. The guide appeared from nowhere. Father tried to pay him, but he would take nothing. The little girl led him up the stairs to the mine. He left me in the car and ordered me to stay, but I had a flash of something - of Dad being thrown against the mine�s timbers, of them collapsing. Nothing more, but I knew. I jumped out of the car and ran to retrieve the parchment from a puddle. The little girl came running from the mine in terror and disappeared with her father into the darkness. I ran up the stairs to the mine. It seemed like a thousand steps.
When I got there he was kneeling before the sepulchre about to insert the key. He was - I don�t know a word for it - not quite insane, but almost - fanatical, perhaps? His eyes were glassy and wild. His voice had a maniacal edge to it. He said that burying something that powerful was like damming a river with stones. The river finds its way. He needed to know the whole truth. I know that the creature of the sepulchre already had him in its power.
I tried to get the key away from him, but he pushed me away and turned the key. It was then that he seemed to hesitate and ponder. I think he realised what he had done. He stepped around the sepulchre and stretched out his hand to me. His whole face softened for a moment - more like the father I used to know. That�s when he said, �Come on, take my hand.� Then there was a strange sound, at first, like wind in the pines, but it grew as a mist rose behind my father. I tried to warn him even as it seemed to transform into a distorted skeleton. I�m not sure if that�s what the demon really looked like, or if that was simply how my own eyes and mind perceived it. It grasped him and threw him down the shaft into the timbers just as I had foreseen. Why couldn�t I prevent it? I ran to him. He was all bloody. But as soon as I reached him, the thing started to drag him back toward the sepulchre. I tried to hold onto him, but couldn�t. He kept screaming �the key, the key,� but at first I couldn�t understand him. I was too slow. I should have thought of that myself. At last I did understand. I ran for the sepulchre and turned the key. The creature was immediately sucked back into its prison. The silence returned. There was only the sound of the thunder, rain, and Dad�s breathing - his death rattle.
I told him I could get him out of there, but he knew better. He said he was sorry. My God - he told me he was sorry. I�m the one who should be sorry. I am sorry. I let him down.
He took off his precept�s ring and pressed it into my hand. I wanted him to take it back, but he said that the burden was mine now. I don�t want it. I�m not ready.
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