Rage

es solamente uno vato

RAGE

The night rears, and I sag.

It’s all a mad stampede of staring pedestrians, of dueling traffic and crisscrossing helicopters. Headlights fry my eyes, but I’ve got to keep moving.

There’s Oscar, loitering in the half-light between streetlamps. I know he sees me coming: his left eye gleams and drops. He backs against a kitschy restaurant’s gaudily painted wall, feigns nonchalance, casually peers left and right. When he gives that discreet toss of his head I follow him down a short flight of concrete steps leading to the restaurant’s streetside deliveries door. At the bottom a pool of pitch obscures us from the sidewalk above. Oscar glares.

“Remember what I told you, chump? Don’t come shuffling around here like the walking dead. Put on some decent clothes, wash your face and hands--comb your f*****g hair, for Christ’s sake. You’re a total bust, man. So get your funky act together or go score somewheres else.”

“I need a dime,” I mumble, avoiding his eyes. “Just a dime. Just a roll.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. You need a dime, I do the time. Don’t play with me, dog. Make this worth my while.”

My fingers knead the twisted steel handrail. “But it’s like I really need a dime, okay? Because I really need to stay awake.”

Oscar sneers. “What you really need to do, dude, is chill out. Then you really need to realmente clean up your lice-happy self. After that you can let your Holmes hang out in that snarky afeminado espresso bar over there. Don’t forget to say ¡hola! to all the little bareeestas. Or, if you’re really so fagged-out all the time, just cop to the mainstream and start sucking down some of them ‘like totally bitchen’ new energy drinks y’all be jonesing over. Hey? Learn to pace your homeless a*s, or do a boatload of NoDoz. I don’t give a crap. Show me some real green or get the hell off my turf.”

“C’mon, man! This is like a life-or-death thing here. If I fall asleep again I’ll go off again. Okay? And I really, really do not want to hurt anybody else, dig?” I’m talking to a wooden Indian here. “I try my hardest. I do my absolute damnedest to control it. But I can’t stop myself. It’s like my rage…it escapes. It goes off on people.”

“Your rage? S**t, homey. What do you mean, your ‘rage’? Grow a set of cojones, will you?” Oscar isn’t sure whether to shake his head or spit. “You gonna start on me again, like some kinda freaked-out broken record? We all got rage.” He taps his temple. “You keep him up here where he belongs.”

“And I’m telling you, man, it’s way heavier than all that. It’s called random eye movement sleep. I read about it. It happens to everybody, but it has a way of messing with my head when I’m in like really deep, deep sleep. Dig? It gets me up, but it doesn’t wake me up. I mean it only wakes up that primitive side, you know, that darkest part of a man that should never wake up. It makes me furious. And it makes me do things.”

“Makes you do things?” Oscar snaps his fingers in my face. “Who’s awake here, little vato, you or me? Why you gotta come at me all loopy and pinch-eyes instead of like my always together and super-tight clientele? Hey? When my colegas check in they know my street rep’s spotless, and they know my postura gonna be cool, and so when we does our business it’s with brotherly negotiations just as righteous and smooth as my sweet baby’s bum. No freaky space-rap. No stinky rags. And no excuses. Hey? You’re like this hobo spazzdick who’s just begging to be fried. Ain’t a brother on the street can’t see that. So school my ignorant a*s, shaman. ¿Compren--eh, how you white boys say…capiche? Educarme, and I do mean here and I do mean now. Tell me how you gots how you gots. I just gotta know, mi zombi loco--but from the heart this time.” He thrusts forth his chest. “Hey?”

It’s coming up, I swear it’s coming up. My fist burns round and round on the handrail. The bad side of my head begins to throb. “I don’t know how I gots how I gots, man. I only know that it’s been coming on really hard, and I mean really fast. And it’s like I really, really need a goddamned roll, man, like right on the dime, and like right now, because I know if I fall asleep again I’ll really go off again. It’s that simple.”

“Simple?” Oscar backs away melodramatically. “That’s some heavy bullshit, Sleepy. And it’s the same bullshit you ran by me last time, and the time before. You don’t need no more uppers. What you need is a good headshrinker.”

“F**k you.”

“F**k you too, b***h! Don’t you be dissing me! Here I try to give you your props, and all I get back is more grief and promises. So scram! Beat it! ¡Vete a la mierda! Take a hike, puta, and I don’t wanna be seeing you no more. You dig?”

It’s coming up again. Like way, way up. Like bile-boiling. Like lava-pissed. But I’m wrung so thin the very act of framing a retort leaves me clinging to the rail. My pounding head lolls against the wall. Can’t afford to blow it. Not now. “Please. It’s like I’m…um, truly, um…realmente sorry. So just this once?”

Oscar appears to seethe. Finally he says, coldly, “Where’s my dime?”

I stuff my free hand in my trousers pocket, pull out a few crumpled bills and a mess of change. “Eight dollars and thirty-nine cents. It’s all I could scrounge up. I’ll square it with you next time.” In a minute I feel the handful scraped away and the slim foil-wrapped roll take its place.

Oscar gores me with his eyes. “There ain’t gonna be no next time. Now split, fool.”

I conquer the steps one grueling lunge at a time; a strikeout victim again, a frustrated, streetbroken, enfeebled old man. Deep in the well, Oscar curses my ancestors and any descendants to come.

And I’m staggering down the sidewalk, storefront to storefront. Every nerve’s on fire, and it won’t hang, it just won’t hang.

Rip open the roll. Pop the little handful dry.

Seconds later I’m sitting on the curb, knees pressed together, tears squeezing from my eyes. Saliva floods my mouth but I refuse to heave. I swallow again. The bitter, bitter mouthful slowly dissolves and works its way into my bloodstream.

The sound of brakes. A bright light slams into my eyes. The officer’s voice is chilly: “You all right?”

I wince and nod. “Something…” I manage, “something caught in my throat.”

“Do you need medical assistance?”

I shake my head and make a great show of swallowing. “Better,” I say, and open my mouth wide.

The beam breaks from my face, searches the curb and gutter. The light is switched off.

“Move along.”

I stand and raise a grateful hand…stretch and yawn…innocently amble down the walk pretending to window shop…waiting…waiting. Waiting for the uppers to kick in.

There’s a minute--or is it an hour--when I completely lose my train of thought while staring through some miscellaneous window.

And then the night’s all over me. Moonlight spatters and pools…lovers furtively weave their overeager eyes…cafe-bound shoppers, burbling en masse, jollily join in the evening’s refrain. And then there’s…Me! Stupid eyesore freak, stumbling in circles, half asleep, half alive.

Sit down, you f*****g idiot, or fall down, you f*****g idiot.

It’s a dead-end alley lit only by the moon. A shithole for sure, but at least it’s off the grid. Tucked behind a leaning plywood panel is a bed of flattened cardboard, stained by booze and pee and God knows what. A wino’s crash pad. My arms begin to tremble, a white-hot flash cleaves my chest.

And I’m rushing, rushing, rushing. Get down, dickhead, behind the wood and out of sight. Close your eyes or they’ll sizzle right out of your skull. Rest. Ah, please. Only for a minute. Only for a breath.

Just rest.

* * *

There he is, on the move. We’re creeping down an alley in an REM nightmare, one shifting shadow after another. I follow him over a drooping chain-link fence, a fence that, like everything else, fights my every move. Now he’s inching around a building to study the street. I can sense what he’s after. He’s found a man walking alone; a little old man in a nice suit, tapping a silver-knobbed birch cane. His excitement grows with each approaching tap. I can’t reach him, can’t stop him; my limbs are tangled up in some kind of sticky invisible web. I can only howl soundlessly as he grabs the old man and yanks him headfirst into the alley, bashes his skull repeatedly against a cold brick wall, chokes him to death and hurls the body down. He checks for a pulse before frantically rooting through the dead man’s clothes, then leans back on his haunches to examine something important in the fractional glow of streetlamps. He peers all around, his blank eyes squinting when he looks my way. A moment later he drops out of sight, savaging his prize. The background begins to revolve. The periphery dilates and contracts. The curves and angles collapse as the night caves in around us.

* * *

A stinking bed in a starlit, roach-ridden room. A smashed-in pane framing a dirty false dawn. I must have broken in, must have climbed in from the alley. It’s an old abandoned hotel; rat carcasses on the floor, cobwebs in the corners. Just as spooky as spooky can be. But eerily familiar.

Those uppers had to have been cut with something; chalk, maybe, or maybe baking soda. That underhanded son of a b***h Oscar. Still, notwithstanding any personal revulsion for that weaselly creep, I have to give his stuff points for its long-term effects: jaws and fingers are jazzed, teeth grinding for the pulp.

My groping hand chances upon an open matchbook, and in the sudden glare of a struck match a half-memory challenges me. I reach under the bed to retrieve a fancy billfold stuffed fat with cash and credit cards. Twenties, fifties, hundreds. Some “real green”. The driver’s license reveals a distinguished, elderly gentleman smiling pleasantly for the DMV. Just a face in the crowd. But he knows me, and he fears me. As I guiltily pocket the bills my palms begin to sweat, my fingers itch like crazy.

Who the hell am I?

Zoning out. Suffocating. Temple pounding inside and out. Sliding down the wall a foot at a time. Barely conscious, all but unaware of the sky’s gradual lightening. Can’t stay in here. Can’t breathe, can’t think.

Next thing I know I’m rolling on my belly in the alley, groggily scoping for looky-loos. In the distance are scrub-peppered hills growing distinct with the breaking day. They seem to be calling me…why do I feel I’ve been tramping them all my life. The neglected terrain, the field mice, the litter: this whole back-section’s been going to seed for years, but once I’m on the sidewalks I begin passing plenty of small businesses, even some nice homes. There are quaint shops and mom-and-pop retailers that look like they’ve been around for decades. It’s more of a cool little lost community than a big city offshoot. Yet…I don’t exactly feel a stranger here. Faces other than Oscar’s peer in from the rim of my consciousness. I could swear I’ve seen this short row of exclusive chichi establishments before. And the deeper I go, the more intimate it all becomes.

Off to my left reels a wretched, raggedy creature who looks like he just crawled out of a storm drain. Christ, it’s my reflection in a plate glass window. The image is so disturbing I refuse to look again.

A convenience store, security cameras inside and out. A gas station, way too many people hanging around the pumps. A beauty salon, blinds rising to meet the new day.

A 24-hour doughnut shop, only a few lingering customers anticipating the morning rush. I ricochet table-to-table to the counter, nervously thumbing my new wad, and somehow summon the grits to order an extra-large black coffee. The amphetamine must still be circulating: aromas are smothering--the thought of food, of even sampling a pastry, makes me want to pitch into the restroom and puke. Cashier and customers regard me strangely, but is it only my wild appearance? This house brew’s burnt motor oil…got to get it down, got to force it down, got to keep it down. Can’t afford to pass out in plain sight.

On a tabletop covered with crumbs and coffee stains, the local paper’s banner headline screams up at me:

Canyon Killer

Partial memories swirl like falling leaves. A jogger…a wandering bard…a young photographer who strayed just a tad too near. Regrets objectified and suppressed. Feelings bagged and buried. Victims mangled and mutilated.

Anxiety jangles my nervous system in little electric waves…have they found the old man yet…hastily gulp down the scalding coffee. Way too paranoid to order a refill, but sooner or later I’ll have to really hit the caffeine. Anything to keep me going.

Sunlight butters the hilltops as I wobble down the road. Jesus! The morning’s barely begun and I’m already out of it. What makes the worst part of a man sleepwalk? And what makes him crash on his feet? Copters sweep the sapphire-to-gold gradient, their searchlights’ beams jerking this way and that. For one heart-stopping moment the nearest of those lights abruptly swings my way. I pale and turn to stone, caught in imaginary crosshairs.

Jesus! I won’t make it another hour like this. No way; not without chemical assistance. I’ll shrink or I’ll snap or I’ll swoon or I’ll freak. And Oscar’s never out before dark. Even a******s have rhythm.

To my left an old woman sits slumped against a market wall. She raises a languid arm and smiles gummily. What does she want? A face to remember, an ear to bend, a shoulder to cry on? I blow her off until I see a sheriff’s car climbing the hill, then gently slide down beside her, away from the road. She grabs my hand and jabbers her psychedelic whatnot while I blearily peer around her. The car slows before continuing up the road.

My mind refocuses.

“I read you,” she’s saying, gripping my hand with passion. “Sleep. Sleep is your problem.”

I cram a five in her molten Halloween gypsy face. “What do you want, man? Money?”

She snatches the bill like a bullfrog catching a gnat, shoves it in her bra with one claw, takes my paused hand with the other.

“You are hiding,” she drones. “You are on the run.”

“F**k you, lady. Let go of my hand.”

I jack myself to my feet. She’s trying to jack me back down when her eyes shoot open and her jaw drops wide.

“No! It’s you!”

“I. Said. Let. Go!”

Peel myself loose…grope around the market’s side; extremities going numb, brainpan brimming with sleep’s cement…bang down the wall one backbreaking brick at a time, a pointless, festering, pathetic pile of human debris.

Traffic picks up. Pedestrians pop into view. An ambulance shoots past. Ah, Christ--Oscar’s right: I’m a total bust. Shudder to my feet, fall back against the wall, butt-walk my way into a cul-de-sac between buildings…a space behind garbage bins…no, don’t wobble, jerkoff, don’t stop. And don’t close your eyes. Just a space where I can curl up. Just a crushed newspaper pillow to mute that sickeningly pounding spot. Just a flattened box to black out the day.

Stay awake, stay awake, stay awake!

Do not close your eyes!

* * *

He’s slinking ahead, but not so irresistibly this time. I could reach him, if only I could work my way free of this slow-motion spacewalk. He moves like smoke, seeping between obstacles--just a shape, a head and torso propelled by four rapidly firming limbs. Down a broken walkway to a gutted cottage stripped black by wildfire. He’s solidifying: all that heaving, driving haze is fleshing out before my eyes. I lunge to take him by the shoulders, but my forearms slam together just as he reaches the napping old woman. My long wail of protest splinters and fades. Now he has her by the throat. He’s lifting her up the wall and he’s choking her with a feverish, with an almost libidinous savagery. For a single black heartbeat he pauses to look back. And I’m drifting in tight, wrists locked, fingers closing and cramping as the woman’s head bobs and bounces, as her arms slap left and right against the wall. Then with one final, impassioned squeeze, the nosy old witch is silenced.

* * *

Kicked in the lobby’s restroom door. Shaved and hacked off hair by the fistful. A careful combover to cover the scar. A little pomade and a found baseball cap and I look almost human.

Gazing slackly in the glass, I flickeringly remember being up and about earlier, warily feeling out the neighborhood with my hefty new wad. And I pulled it off, even running on automatic pilot. The sporting goods outlet provided pocketed jogging sweats and a pair of top-notch running shoes. Way more important: I bought a pocket-sized high-tech programmable alarm. It’s a b***h to deal with in my present state, but once I figure it out I’ll set it to vibrate at ten-minute intervals.

Again my gnarly reflection is replaced by a single nagging image, an image burned into memory:

Everybody in that store was just STARING at me!

Ah, the scales are falling from my eyes. I’m finally getting the unadulterated picture. That wildly paranoiac event was an oh-so timely newsflash; a wake-up call to my weary white a*s, and the collective view of all these precious, milling, artsy-fartsy gleeps: Monster At Large!

Just so--the fog lifts: while I’ve been wrestling with my own demon this geeky little community’s been quietly freaking out. And now their big bad bogeyman’s out of the bottle. It’s in the air, man; in the sweat marks on the doorknobs, in the half-prints on the floors: that panicky vibe bawls from every newsrack, leaks from every local’s lips, burns in every crossing guard’s eyes. There are warnings taped to windows, sketches tacked to walls. How long before the whole place is just crawling with cops. How long before it’s all feds and vigilantes.

How long before they find the old lady’s body.

* * *

Late afternoon.

I’ve been stepping in it all day: falling out on benches, cussing out shopping carts, freezing up in crosswalks.

This stupid alarm’s got a mind of its own. It goes off when I least expect it, razzing my every attempt at programming with its every ironclad algorithm. It’s constantly redirecting me to functions I could give a good long holy crap about, using visuals jerkily mimed on its little integrated screen by some retarded ex-librarian or other. But at least it’s kept me from keeling over in public. And now it’s coming on dusk.

I’ve got to end this ride tonight.

I’ve got to OD while I’m able.

I’ve got to put myself out of my own misery before I really blow it and the whole f*****g thing starts all over.

I’ll buy out that scurvy snake Oscar. My whole begging wad, man, every ripped off dollar of it, for just one long, electric, bitter white rush into night.

* * *

This time that savvy eye glints rather than gleams.

Oscar, sitting insolently on the steps’ thigh-high safety wall, wags his head sardonically as I shamble up, windmilling my arms for balance. He gets to his feet assertively and moves to block the entrance.

“Are you deaf? Didn’t I say you wasn’t to come around here no more? Now split.”

“This is different.” I peel down my waistband to reveal an arsenal of flattened hundreds and fifties. “I want quantity this time.”

“What did I just say, a*****e?” Oscar shows his silver caps. “I told you to split. We don’t do business no more. You ain’t welcome, you ain’t wanted. I don’t know you, punk.”

From my tensing jewels comes an antediluvian call for malice, sweet malice. Whatever that line is people aren’t supposed to cross, the prick’s definitely stepped over it this time. Without considering the likely consequences I get right in his face.

“And f**k you, b***h! Why do you have to be such a dick all the time? And why can’t you get it through your fat f*****g head--this is no casual pop-and-go! I want it all, man! I may be nothing more than a piece of s**t and a nuisance to you, but I’m a complete menace to the rest of the world. And, whether you do get it or not, I’m not gonna let it happen again! So why don’t you just do us both a favor, punk, and do not stand in my way!” I brush him aside and begin making my way down.

“You keep going down them steps, boy, and you sure as hell ain’t gonna be coming back up. You hear me?”

I whirl and climb, my rage rising with me. But even this brief surge of passion leaves me giddy and spent. “Please.” I miserably embrace that low running protective wall. “Please, man, please.”

A loud burr comes from my left front pocket. We both see the fabric vibrating.

Immediately Oscar is a live wire. “What’s that!” A hand finds his back pocket and I hear the characteristic click of a switchblade. “You’re one dead narc, m**********r.”

“No, no, no, man! It’s just an alarm. I’m still learning to program it. I keep trying to tell you--I can’t let myself fall asleep!”

“Back off.”

I feel the blade’s tip poking my belly.

“Please. I swear, just this once.”

“I said back off! And I don’t wanna be seeing you no more. If I catch you on my street again I’ll kill you.”

I clumsily backpedal down the sidewalk, turning in time to see a police cruiser nosing around the corner, recovering in time to force a believable shuffling jog. That familiar beam lights me up before swinging onto Oscar, now stargazing serenely on the gaily painted little wall. At the corner I pause to glance back. Oscar is talking jocularly with the officers, who haven’t left their car. It’s obvious they’re sifting for something bigger than pissant dealers.

Fumbling, faltering, feeling my way. Edging into a blind corridor between buildings, crumpling behind a clutter of trash cans. Even as I’m massaging my screaming temple two official vehicles momentarily probe the scene with their spots. The helicopters, as always combing the hills, are beginning to comb the town.

Pull out the alarm…the LED winks cheerily…tentatively set it for ten minutes, and for five-minute repeats thereafter. Back in the pocket. Back on my feet.

Scrabbling at the walls. Kicking through the rubbish, a flutter of Jacksons spiraling in my wake. Hanging from a fire escape ladder, rust breaking off in my fingers. Letting go; first the left hand, then the right. Withering. Wilting.

Slipping like silt as the black earth rushes up to meet me.

* * *

Down the alley and between the parking lots, all the way to the sidewalk--he throws Oscar into a chokehold, ferociously breaks his neck, drags him back the way he came. He drags him right through me. Comes a nagging hum and insistent vibration. My body heaves into a wretched arch; he hurls back his head, throat crooking and apple popping. The racket grows and grows until its components collide behind my eyes. The night begins to quake, the walk to shudder. And I’m being pulled out of sleep’s murk like a fish on a line. The overpowering sound bangs away, shlvers and shimmies, clatters to a close; rapid eye movement is renewed. He hauls Oscar’s body back up that bisecting walk, frantically bashing the forehead on cement as he goes. Another burring of the alarm, somewhere on the line between grogginess and complete insensibility: five minutes have passed; it seems like five seconds. He collapses and recovers, blurs and congeals, repeatedly smashes the face on the ground, against a wall, again on the ground. And I’m gelling in time. My whole frame goes into shock--like teeth-gnashing, toes-curling shock. Like being electrocuted while inhaling to your roots, like sucking it all down until your whole puckering reason for being just blows up in your face--and immediately my heart’s hammering in my skull. He pauses his mauling to look around, a cheetah at the kill. The violent throbbing intensifies; his eyes, two white holes in the night, widen with mine. When my respiration threshold’s breached we simultaneously lurch and explosively exhale. He resumes dragging Oscar down the alley; I push off in pursuit, but my arms grow leaden, even as he becomes weaker and weaker. We’re beginning to stumble and sag. At a third burring he slumps just outside the old hotel’s shattered window, finally forcing himself inside one semi-opaque limb at a time. I draw myself brick by brick along the wall, bellowing in a vacuum as Oscar’s body passes through the frame. Pulling myself into the room is like fighting quicksand. He looks up, tears his nails out of Oscar’s eyes and goes for mine. Just then the alarm shocks us back into alignment. I grab a sheet from the bed, knot it around his neck, and squeeze my way out of slumber. His hands find my eyes, but I have leverage--enough to stand on the bed, enough to loop the sheet around a wall fixture, enough to use my body weight to draw the sheet tight. I sink back down until we’re face to face. And my mouth spews an ugly black mantra while his translucent lips writhe in perfect sync:

Die, you son of a b***h, die. Die, you son of a b***h, die. Die, you son of a b***h.

Die.

* * *

THE CANYON KILLER MURDERS �" THEIR IMPACT AND AFTERMATH

All available data regarding the Canyon Killer Murders point conclusively to derelict Owsley Martin as the sole perpetrator. Martin was a vagabond living since his late teens in the hills of Topanga Canyon, drifting down to the community when he required sustenance: one of those hit-and-run relics of the hippie era now known colloquially as “coyotes”. He was discovered hanged by his own hand in an abandoned hotel off of Deep Ridge. The instrument of his demise was a noose fashioned from a sheet taken off a bed in one of the hotel’s ground-floor bedrooms. The mangled body of a known drug dealer, one Oscar Benecito, was also found in the room, but forensic analyses demonstrate he expired prior to Mr. Martin, and was therefore not a party to the actual hanging. A large sum secured in the waistband of Martin’s sweatpants lends credence to the popular belief that this was a drug deal and robbery gone tragically wrong, an ill-planned event culminating in a spontaneous outburst of unbridled temper and violent remorse. Regardless, armchair conjecture cannot be substantiated. All the underbelly documenters, street-culture enthusiasts, and amateur criminologists must ultimately yield to the only viable conclusion: this once-glamorized incident was really nothing more than a crude murder-suicide.

Longtime residents remember Martin as intense and exceedingly antisocial, prone to bizarre behavior and empty nights lost in frenzied soliloquies. According to several locals who had spoken fleetingly with Martin during the two weeks of murders, he had complained of an inability to stay awake, and of a predisposition to act out his most violent fantasies during rapid eye movement sleep, as though, through some kind of weird preternatural dream bifurcation, his unstable innermost being might erupt to commit mayhem on enemies old and new. A number of the above-mentioned witnesses received the distinct impression that Mr. Martin was severely mentally disabled, others that he suffered from sporadic attacks of acute narcolepsy. The state’s autopsy reveals Martin was actually a victim of hypothalamic damage involving the body’s circadian regulator--that aspect which controls the sleep-wake cycle in otherwise healthy beings. Whether or not the hypothalamus is diseased or has suffered injury, rapid eye movement sleep, which normally sets in around an hour after one drifts off, occurs much sooner in those who are sleep-deprived. There is speculation that, had a narcoleptic Martin regularly succumbed to the vagaries of rapid eye movement sleep, the onset in his compromised state would have been nearly instantaneous.

However, serum albumin indicators establish that Martin was not a narcoleptic--that he had, in fact, functioned without measurable sleep for an astonishing fifteen days. Based upon tests performed on subjects awake for even half that duration, the overriding tax on his mind and body must have been incredible, producing psychopathic delusions, highly erratic motor impulses, and a complete inability to differentiate between fancy and reality. Various specialists have published opinions over the years, in both The Lancet and in Nature. Their consensus: Owsley Martin was a man who, paradoxically enough, only dreamt he was asleep.

Although fingerprints, DNA analyses, and hair-and-clothing vestigial evidence prove beyond contest that Owsley Martin was the lone culprit in the Canyon Killer Murders, there were two additional deaths in the community, and three in the abutting canyon, that have been attributed to a so-called Copycat Killer, due to their striking similarity to the Martin slayings. The victims--a hitchhiker, a shopkeeper, a deputy sheriff, a tourist, and a deep canyon squatter--were all murdered and mutilated with Martin’s trademark ferocity, and were forensically determined to have been dispatched, one by one, in a meandering line leading from the community to the hills. Outside of the immediate signs of struggle, no actual physical evidence exists to help cast light on the identity of this mystery figure.

A massive operation was undertaken in Topanga Canyon, with nearly three square miles initially cordoned off as a possible crime scene. Some two hundred squatters were promptly rounded up, cited, and expeditiously expelled through the highly commendable efforts of Los Angeles County Sheriffs and L.A. Firefighters. All were interviewed in depth regarding their impressions of Owsley Martin throughout the decade-plus of his tenure in the hills. The results were so similar as to be considered gospel: an insular and disagreeably gruff man prone to incessant overt self-talk, and to periods of wild profanation followed by bouts of cursing and weeping. Members of a peripatetic commune, the Soul Sunflowers, reported encountering Martin at the bottom of a gorge after he had fractured his skull in an appalling fall. Each claim he had refused their aid and, following recuperation, made frightening advances filled with what one described as sinister and vehement psychobabble.

Over a period of eighteen months the entire area was segregated by conjoined lengths of razor-wire fence, in the locally famous Hands Helping Hands project, a County-funded enterprise that, ironically, provided strong temporary employment for those very evicted squatters.

The Canyon is now an indigenous wildlife sanctuary, rigidly protected by officials and citizens alike. Off limits to all civilians, it is rigorously patrolled by County inspectors and by periodic helicopter runs. No unauthorized person has ever entered the sanctuary.

Yet there are scores of residents, even now shaken by the grisly murders, who whisper of an odd nightly phenomenon. It’s just human nature, of course: urban legends are born in the imagination rather than in fact.

Still these dwellers lock their windows and doors, still they clamor to congressmen and councils, still they swear of a black figure roaming the hills, raving through the night of an invasive slumber, and screaming to the moon of an unknowable, of an insurmountable, of an unimaginable rage.