Weirdo ONE: Wilhelm Wanderlust

For me, a weirdo isn't just an odd person. A weirdo is someone with a radically different, impressively detailed worldview. Someone with an immense, fantastically strange narrative. I've heard a number of outlandish stories over the years, but the one Wilhelm told me stands out in my mind. It's easily one of the most bizarre and disturbing tales I ever heard, though 'tale' isn't the word. Wilhelm's narrative was reportage of a kind, a recounting of events in another world, another time.

I found Wilhelm in the South, no surprise. The American South produces an inordinate number of weirdos, a fact Southerners ought to be proud of. Weirdos are genuises by definition. That means the South produces more geniuses than any other part of the country. Wilhelm didn't contact me directly. His doctor did. An East Indian doctor from Snowdrop, a small town in North Alabama.

I found the Dixie Way motel off the interstate a few miles from Dothan. It was an overcast day in the fall of two thousand and four, gray and cold and a bit wet, nature coming through with a bit of pathetic fallacy for the tale I was about to hear. I drove into the motel lot and saw a pink stucco facade, hacienda style arches. The motel rented rooms by the hour, a hump haven if I ever saw one.

The man at the desk seemed a weirdo in his own right: a fat, red-faced guy with a yellow beard and small, moist blue eyes. He wore a white bunny suit with big floppy ears and held a large mason jar of pickled carrots. He set down the jar when he saw me and reached for a twelve gauge shotgun. You Jackanape? he asked, aiming the gun at my chest. No, I said, I'm Zorn Altheus. I'm here to meet Doctor Trivedi.

He seemed to relax a little. You here to meet Doc Amrish? That's right, I said, he called me here. The man nodded, lowered his gun. Doc's here, he said, he's been waitin on you. A side door opened just then and a small, dapper-looking man walked out. He wore a dark blue suit and brown patent leather shoes and he carried a burled walking stick with a polished brass knob. His beard was trimmed, his graying hair combed back.

The man walked in and paused, scowling at the fat guy in the bunny suit. Dex, he said, have you been threatening this gentleman with your gun? The fat guy's face changed. He looked like a kid caught with his pants down, pecker in hand. It's alright, I said, not a problem. I've had worse. A lot worse. The little man scowled some more. Then he turned, hand proffered. You must be Mister Altheus. I am Doctor Amrish Trivedi. My apologies for meeting you at this disreputable establishment. My patient has chosen to reside here against my wishes.

No apologies needed, I said, it's all the same to me. The doctor nodded. Very well then. Let us proceed without further ado. I followed the doctor into the front lot and around the side of the motel to the back. The back of the motel recalled a pair of unwashed buttocks but I was too keyed up to notice. I tend to get keyed up before meeting weirdos but this was more intense than usual. There was a different vibe here, intimations of something abyssal and alien.

The doctor paused at Door 6 and threw me a look. It was an odd look, something like dread showing there. The door was painted blood red with runes etched on its surface with a blade. The window beside it was blacked over with duct tape. There is a young man in this room, said the doctor low-voiced, a very peculiar young man. He calls himself Wilhelm Wanderlust but I suspect that is a pseudonym.

No one seems to know who he is. He was found by our sheriff two weeks ago. The boy was standing stark naked in the middle of Route 9 at midnight. Completely disoriented of course. It seems to be an extreme and extraordinary case of psychosis but I hesitate to pass judgement. Something very strange is at work here. I will be very frank with you Mr. Altheus. I am afraid for the boy and I am afraid of him. That is why I have allowed him to remain here, away from the care of specialists.

I understand, I said, you called on me because you felt you had nowhere else to turn. The doctor nodded. Precisely. I heard that you have some experience in such matters. That is why I called on you. I am relieved that you are here. It has been difficult for me to handle the boy alone. Not that he is unruly, no, not at all. Quite the opposite. During his stay here he has, on more than one occasion, entered a trancelike state of suspended animation. When it first occurred I thought he had died. But then I detected a pulse, very slow and faint.

In my home country, advanced practitioners of yoga enter a state known as samadhi. During samadhi the beating of the heart slows down or stops altogether. But the boy is not experiencing samadhi as far as I can tell. He insists that his trance states occur when he travels to another world or another time in the future. He claims to inhabit a city called Churchtown. There is a Churchtown not far from here but it bears no resemblance to the city described by him. The boy seems to suffer psychotic episodes that are prolonged and remarkably vivid. But again, one hesitates to pass judgement...

The doctor turned, rapped the door with his knuckles. There was no response. The doctor knocked once more, then turned the knob and entered. I stepped in after him. At first I thought the room was on fire but it wasn't. It was full of incense smoke. The smell of jasmine was strong but not strong enough to kill the stench of stale food and vomit. There were two single beds with cans and cartons littered around. A pale, emaciated figure lay on one of the beds, apparently naked under a sheet. The TV was on, the screen snowed over with static, the sound cut down to a soft hiss.

He looked like a heroin addict in his late teens, a kid with smooth dark hair, a gaunt, parchment-pale face and eyes with dilated pupils, though 'dilated' doesn't quite cut it. Those pupils seemed to fill his eye-sockets, saucer shapes sheened iridescent. I figured the kid had to be in one of his trances but he wasn't. He spoke without turning, his voice surprisingly strong and even. Sit down, he said, sit down and listen. You can record me if you want but don't talk.

I stared down at him, my flesh in slow crawl. You know who I am, I said, don't you. The kid blinked, but didn't turn. I know things you wouldn't believe. Things you can't begin to imagine. Now sit down, pull out your little tape machine and hit the record button. I'm going to tell you what happened last Friday in Churchtown. I'm going to tell you what my fellow disciples and I did for the Meister. All you need to do is listen. If you talk, it's over. I'll leave and I'll never come back.

The doctor was already seated on the other bed. I sat beside him, pulled out the tape machine from my knapsack, hit the record button and waited. The kid was silent for a minute, motionless on his bed. It was like looking at wax dummy, a consumptive corpse in replica. He didn't blink and I couldn't tell if he was breathing. My name is Wilhelm Wanderlust, he began all of a sudden, and I'm not from around here. There's no point asking me who I am or where I come from. My answers won't make any sense to you.

All I can tell you is what we did last weekend for the Meister. What I and Trotjohn and Monk and Wald did for our Meister, Buford Aloysius Howell, Lord Baron of Pain. We wandered in sacrifice and that's what I'm going to tell you about. It was that time of year and we wandered in sacrifice extracting and storing the elixir, and when we had enough we approached the Meister on bended knee and he accepted our sacrificial offering and that's what I aim to speak of. Know that this is precious testimony, words birthed in the torment of sacrifice. Know and listen and understand. So let it begin.

It took him three hours to get done. Or maybe it took a lot longer, there was no way to tell. I sat mesmerized, lost in a poisonous swirl of sound and image. The kid's words flowed clear and without pause, his voice unflagging. No one stirred as I recall, not the doctor, not Wilhelm, not myself. I had the distinct impression the words were echoing in my head via direct transmission, the kid's lips not seeming to move. And I was with him while it lasted. In his world, living his nightmare. He talked like it was happening now, in the present. He'd said it was from the weekend but he spoke like he was there once more, living it in eternal recurrence.

That's what it was in truth. An endlessly recurring nightmare. The kid was living through nightmare events occurring in ceaseless iteration, or so it seemed to me. His narrative was, nevertheless, coherent for the most part, with very little of the fracture and derangement that characterizes your average REM trip or psychotic episode. And I understood, as I listened, why the doctor had expressed doubt and fear. Something strange at work, he had said. But it was more than just strange. It was profoundly disconcerting. Or better yet, terrifying.

The kid finished at last and fell silent, staring at the dead TV screen. No one moved or spoke. I noticed my tape machine wasn't running anymore, no surprise. It'd stopped hours before and I'd been in no position to flip the tape over or replace it. We remained seated for what seemed like a long time, no sound but the hiss of TV static. It was the doctor who broke the spell. We must leave now Mr. Altheus, he said rising. Wilhelm must rest. He is suffering from exhaustion. I noticed then that the kid had his eyes closed, his breath gone slow and ragged.

I got out of there as fast as I could. I had the overwhelming urge to run and keep running but there was Doc Amrish to think of. The man seemed more in need of help than his patient. I agreed to meet the doctor at his clinic over the weekend but we never did meet. He called a day later with news. Wilhelm has disappeared without a trace, he said. The sheriff is conducting a search with help from local residents. Don't bother, I said, you won't find him. You seem rather sure of yourself Mr. Altheus, the doctor said. I AM sure, I said. The kid is back where he belongs. Roaming the hell-scape of Churchtown.