"You're the monster in the barn?" Lupé squeezed my hand protectively as she sat next to my motel room bed.
"It was an old farmhouse," Dracula said, continuing his story from the chair on the other side of my bed. "The fire department decided the fire was caused by a short in the electrical wiring. Victor was in town at the time. I, of course, was in my coffin, sleeping. By the time the smoke had reached the basement and penetrated my sleeping chamber, there was no way out except through solid walls of flame. I summoned Victor, but I could not wait for his arrival.
"I was badly burned in passing through the flames. I made it outside under my own power. There, my charred flesh was further consumed by the sunlight that my kind seeks so assiduously to avoid."
"According to Bram Stoker," I said, "you were able to go about during the daytime with no difficulties save that your powers were somewhat diminished."
"Bah! That hack? And whom else do you count upon for your research, Mr. Csejthe? Hollywood? Ellstree Studios? Anne Rice?" The outburst seemed more theatrics than actual temper and he returned to his account as if uninterrupted. "I collapsed just outside the barn moments before Victor arrived."
"The New York team was asking questions about a Victor Wren," Lupé murmured.
"Victor is my servitor and liegeman. He has been with me for many years and I have owed my life to him on more than one occasion." He glanced at an ornate pocket watch. "I wonder what is keeping him."
"So, you summoned Chris to the barn when he arrived," Lupé persisted, "and took some of his blood to stay alive?"
"I was fortunate: I was too far in extremis to take nourishment for myself," he said. "Mr. Csejthe came along at just the right moment. Victor was a medical corpsman in Vietnam and, fortunately, was able to jury-rig the necessary materials for a blood transfusion."
"Unfortunately," Mooncloud said from the suddenly open doorway, "it was sloppy." It was getting all too easy for anyone to sneak up on me. "In the process, Chris was partially infected."
"Sorry we're late," Wren said, coming in behind her. "We were delayed en route to the hospital. Traffic was backed up on 69 for miles in both directions. Some old guy was standing out in the middle of the highway, naked as a jaybird, and holding a skunk over his head." He shook his head. "You wouldn't believe what happened next. . . ."
Out of my nightmares and in the light of day, Wren was neither formidable or frightening. Of medium height, he had fair skin and long, carrot-colored hair worn in a ponytail that hung halfway down his back. He looked thirty-something, but a tour in 'Nam meant another decade at the least. Good genes? Or something beyond human norms?
"What do you mean 'partially infected'?" Lupé asked as Mooncloud swung across the room on new crutches.
"Well, we know that Chris is stuck in midtransition. That certain parts of the metamorphosis haven't even begun yet—most noticeably, the development and extended growth of a new set of upper incisors." She lowered herself into a chair and propped her leg, in its new cast, on the edge of my bed. "I've been working on this theory for awhile now, but I can only prove about half of it. For the rest?" She shrugged. "I'd need to get both of you into the government biocontainment labs at USAMRIID. So, I can only tell you what makes sense based on the evidence."
Dracula—or Bassarab—signaled for her to continue.
"We've pretty well established that we're dealing with a mutative virus with recombinant effects on human RNA and DNA. We know that, though there is a baseline effect, the actual range of mutations varies from one individual to the next."
I interrupted: "So there's something in my genetic makeup that is resisting or suppressing a portion of the virus?"
Mooncloud shook her head. "I don't think so. No. Based on the circumstances of your infection, I believe the incompleteness of your transformation is due to the fact that you were not fully infected to begin with."
"Oh," I mused, "kind of like being a little bit pregnant."
"Excuse me, Doctor," our host said, "but, over the centuries, I have taken an interest in diseases of the blood. And, while I do not have a medical degree, I have more than a layman's acquaintance with the subject of viruses." He leaned forward, his face a dissertation on intensity. "One is either infected with a virus or not. A virus may be carried in a dormant phase for months or even years. The effects can be somewhat localized, or the severity of the infection can be graded on some sort of scale . . . but it would be incorrect to say that only part of the virus was at work here."
"Except that it is true," Mooncloud insisted, "if the vampiric condition is the result of a combinant super-virus."
"Super-virus?" someone said. Maybe it was me.
"A virus that is the 'offspring.' " she explained, "of two separate but combinant viruses."
"Wait a minute," I said. "You're saying that the vampire virus is actually the product of two separate viruses—and that these two viruses combine to change the host body to undead status?"
"Ah, a quick study, Mr. Csejthe." Bassarab steepled his fingers and turned back to Mooncloud. "So, you are suggesting that he received one of the two combinant strains through the transfusion. But not the other?"
She nodded.
I waved my arms, nearly dislodging my own IV's. "Wait a minute, wait a minute, here! I don't know a virus from a bacterium but I think I know enough about transfusions. As the donor, I might infect the count—"
"Prince," Bassarab corrected.
"What?"
"I was never a 'count,'" he elaborated, "but in the fevered imaginings of hack writers!"
"—but he shouldn't be able to infect me," I concluded with an apologetic nod to our rescuer.
"It was a messy business," Wren confessed with apparent discomfort.
"Aside from that," his "master" added, "vampire blood has some very unusual properties."
"That's true," Mooncloud seconded. "I've seen tainted blood cultures actually move toward untainted cultures on the same microscope slide—the platelets actually seeming to home in on whole, red cells."
"But are we talking about two separate viruses that work in concert, or two phases of the same virus as it mutates?" I asked.
"The first," Mooncloud said, "I think.
"You see, there are four basic effects of viral infection at the cellular level. Some viruses are endosymbionts, existing in a dormant state in the host cells. Some are cytopathic, killing the cells outright. Hyperplastic viruses act similarly, but they stimulate the host cells to divide before killing them. And then we have the transformative or mutative viruses that stimulate cells to divide in the same manner as hyperplastic viruses but, instead of killing the cells, they recombine with the cells' RNA and/or DNA to produce mutations in cellular growth and reproduction.
"While the final virus is a transformative virus, the two component viruses that combine to produce it are hyperplastic in nature. They survive only a short time outside of a vampiric host as they tend to destroy their host cells and eliminate their own habitat.
"Virus A, let's call it, infects the cells in the bloodstream and as those cells are killed off, they must be replaced with fresh host cells. This is one of the reasons that the transformed body of the vampire requires fresh blood regularly: infusions of living, uninfected, host cells for the virus.
"Virus B," she continued, growing excited as the pieces of evidence were finally falling into place, "is more theoretical as I have never been able to turn up cellular evidence in the lab. I always assumed that it was carried in the bloodstream like Virus A and that the lack of cellular evidence was due to an extremely accelerated gestation cycle: it reverted it to endosymbiotic status, making it impossible to find a few days or even hours after the initial infection.
"That's where I went wrong."
"And how is that, Doctor?" Our host seemed quite intrigued.
"Once Virus A and Virus B combine, they cease to exist within the bloodstream as separate entities. Virus A eventually returns in its separate form but not Virus B. When the super-virus enters its gestation cycle, it produces a new generation of 'A' and 'B' viruses—like a bisexual organism spewing out both eggs and sperm. Virus A settles into the bloodstream, but Virus B goes elsewhere to roost and wait."
"Where?" I demanded, getting a little fed up with her use of dramatic hesitation.
"The saliva?" Lupé guessed.
Mooncloud nodded.
"It's that simple?" I asked, shaking my head. "Because I wasn't bitten but came in contact with infected blood, I'm half a vampire? Then how come—"
"How come there aren't other instances of Virus A being transferred in the same way?" Mooncloud smiled. "It's theoretically possible. But stored blood would be much less likely to host the virus for any extended period of time. And transfusions with vampires, I suspect, are rare indeed."
I tried to image an occasion where a vampire would offer to donate blood. Failed.
Bassarab frowned. "But I have heard of viruses surviving for hundreds, even thousands of years—"
"Some viruses, sir. But the apparent difficulties of creating new vampires—even after repeated exchanges of blood and saliva—suggests that this virus is much less hardy than the host body that is its undead carrier."
"You are speaking of theories here, Doctor," Bassarab reminded her.
"True. But it fits all of the known data and answers a number of questions."
"But," he stroked his chin and turned to look at me, "in theory, then, I should be able to complete Mr. Csejthe's metamorphosis by biting him, now."
"Now hold on here," I said, easing back against the headboard.
"Only with your permission, of course," he added with a smile.
"Theoretically, yes. . . ." Mooncloud turned and looked at me with a speculative look that gave me chills.
"It would certainly go a long way toward proving your theory," Bassarab said.
"Yes. . ."
"No!" Lupé snarled. The hair on her forearms was standing up, and she was positively bristling.
"My, my, I am impressed," Bassarab remarked mildly. "Even though you are not fully transformed, you command great loyalty in your servitors."
"Mr. Csejthe has no servitors here," Mooncloud said icily.
He smiled. "You are joking. You would have me believe—what?—that you are in charge of this mission?"
I leaned over and murmured to Lupé: "Define this for me—are we witnessing an exhibition of misogyny, racism, or some kind of multispecies/class superiority prejudice thing?"
She still bristled, but I saw the hint of a smile and a little of the tension seemed to ease from her trembling frame.
There was more of a smile on Dr. Mooncloud's face as she steepled her fingers and bit back. "Mr. Bassarab—or Vlad Tepes or Count Dracula or whoever you claim to be—I think the fact that we are allies," she smiled more broadly, "and you are certainly in need of allies these days, entitles us to a little more courtesy on your part."
While all of this was going on I was shaking off my emotional lethargy. My black pit of forgetfulness was unsealed now, and ugly memories were starting to crawl out.
"Allies? How dare you!" Bassarab was standing now, his long, pale features white with anger. "I am the Drakul, Voivode of Walachia and Warlord of the Transylvanian Unity! It was I who time and time again beat back the numberless hordes of Mongols, Turks, and Hungarians, winning victory after victory against insurmountable odds! My name is synonymous with terror, I have outlived my foes and their progeny even unto their great-great-grandchildren! I wield powers and forces that are unknown and unthinkable to mere mortals! I am deathless! To my enemies I am Death!"
"And yet," Mooncloud interrupted, "you are on the run from a carful of thugs."
"I have my reasons for my present actions. I owe you no explanations. I owe you nothing—except for Mr. Csejthe, whose blood-bond—"
"You owe me my wife and my little girl, you son-of-a-bitch!" I was halfway across the length of the bed of a sudden, IVs popping from my arm and whipping about the room. "I want them back! I want my life back!"
Lupé caught me, held me back. Had I not already been seriously weakened, even her lycanthropic strength would not have been able to restrain me.
"But you can't!" I panted. "They're dead and there's nothing you can do to bring them back!" I strained against Lupé's grasp. "So what good is your fucking blood bond to me . . . or. . ." To my own horror I sagged in her arms and began to weep.
The old vampire seemed to rise off the floor, spreading his cape wide like the unfolding wings of a great, ancient bat. "As Warlord I slew tens of thousands of my people's enemies. As voivode of the unliving and, later, as Doman of the New York demesne, I personally took hundreds more, thousands through the actions of those whom I made dark immortals. Blood is spilled, Mr. Csejthe, among the innocent as well as the guilty. I cannot feel an obligation to a victim each time I must feed. I owe nothing to any mortal, save Victor here, and he is well compensated for his service.
"But you and I, Christopher Csejthe, share a blood-bond for our life-forces have been mingled. And, according to the code that our society has adopted from necessity, I must take responsibility for you until such time that you are fully assimilated.
"And I am sorry for the loss of your wife and child: it was needless and served no purpose."
"But that happened after the blood-bond was forged," Mooncloud pounced, "so you are not without responsibility in the matter!"
Bassarab turned on her with a scowl. "Will you play the barracks lawyer with me, Doctor? Very well, let us split hairs and strain at gnats! If Mr. Csejthe is not truly wampyr, not fully undead, is the blood-bond fully in effect? If he is still mortal, then I owe him nothing and may do with him as pleases me!"
"Yeah?" I struggled to get past Lupé's arms and my tears and was only half successful. "Come on! Float your candy-vampire-ass over here and take your best shot! We'll settle all debts right here and now!"
"Shut! Up!" Mooncloud yelled at me. "It was an accident, Chris! There is nothing that any of us here can do that will bring them back! And you!" she continued, rounding on Bassarab. "If you would pretend to be Vlad Drakul Bassarab, called Dracula, it would serve your little masquerade to remember than the Voivode of Walachia was a man of honor! Further victimizing this man will not serve his memory or help your cause! What we must do, here and now, is forge an alliance that will prove mutually beneficial, insure our mutual victory, and bring death and vengeance down upon our enemies! To accomplish that we must begin with a truce and a modicum of mutual respect!"
Bassarab lowered himself back into his chair. He still glowered as he turned to Dr. Mooncloud, but his lips twitched as if fighting a smile and there was a suspicion of respect in his voice as he spoke.
"Perhaps I was wrong about you, madam. I begin to believe that you may indeed be voivode and warlord in your own demesne."
Fifteen hours later we were back in Kansas City buying a new Ford Bronco. With cash.
"Who's Salmon P. Chase?" Lupé asked as she slid behind the steering wheel.
"Who?" I mumbled groggily. The infusion of blood by IV had helped a great deal, but I needed a good day's sleep. It was now eleven a.m. and my biological clock was insisting that it was hours past my bedtime.
"Salmon P. Chase. He wasn't a president. All the others were presidents."
I pushed the felt-brimmed fedora up off my face and adjusted my wraparound sunglasses against the glare of the midday sun outside the Bronco's tinted windows. "What are you talking about?"
"These bills. . . ." She fanned the thick stack of grey-green paper at me.
"Federal reserve notes," I corrected, "not 'bills.' "
"Look here," she continued, pulling individual notes from the stack. "William McKinley on the five-hundred-dollar bill, Grover Cleveland on the thousand. . ."
I yawned. Felt my incisors to see if they'd grown. Nada.
" . . . and here's James Madison on the five-thousand. All presidents."
"Ben Franklin's on the hundred-dollar bill," I said, studying my indistinct reflection in the vanity mirror on the passenger-side visor. Picture Indiana Jones trying to pose as a Secret Service agent. "He's not a president." The sunblock I had slathered on felt like ancient cold cream gone bad and starting to curdle. But . . . so far, so good: I hadn't burst into flame or started crumbling to dust, yet.
"Franklin I know," she retorted. "But this guy on the ten-thousand-dollar bill I never heard of." She turned the key in the ignition and the Bronco's engine growled into a purring idle.
Dr. Mooncloud tapped on my window and I lowered the glass. "Here's a list of the sporting goods dealers that carry crossbows," she said, handing me a list. "Victor and I have the other half of the list, and we'll meet you back at the motel as soon as we're done." She glanced over her shoulder. "Have you tried to call the Doman, yet?"
Lupé nodded. "Twice. Every time I get within ten feet of a telephone, I want to throw up!"
"Mental domination. It's like a post-hypnotic suggestion."
"Damn vampires and their mind control!" Lupé patted my hand. "Present company excepted."
"Well," Mooncloud said, "if you can think of anything else that will help, get it. Any questions?"
"Yeah," I said, jerking my thumb, "Lupé wants to know who Salmon P. Chase was."
The doctor frowned quizzically. "He was a lawyer, politician, and an antislavery leader before the American Civil War—three-term senator, governor of Ohio. Tried to win the Republican candidacy for president twice, and the Democratic candidacy once. He served as Secretary of the Treasury on Lincoln's war cabinet. He was instrumental in establishing a system of national banks that could issue notes as legal tender. Ended up being the fifth—no—sixth chief justice of the Supreme Court." She smiled. "Anything else?"
I shook my head. "Let's get this done so we can get back and get a little shut-eye."
She nodded and headed back over to the Duesenberg where Wren was waiting.
"Still seems a funny choice for a picture on the ten-thousand-dollar bill," Lupé muttered as she shifted gears and headed toward the lot's exit.
"She left out the part about him running against Lincoln," I said, leaning my seat back into a thirty-degree incline and pulling my hat back down over my face. "He put his own face on most of the denominations and the ten-thousand-dollar note as a campaign gimmick. The ten thousand is the sole survivor."
"How—"
"I watch a lot of Jeopardy."
"Jeopardy?"
"Call me old-fashioned and Trebek is fine, but he's not Art Fleming."
"I hate you now." I couldn't see her smile but I could hear it in her voice. "So, do you think he's legit?"
"Alex Trebek?" I grunted.
"Count Dracula. You know: Mr. Death to his many friends and admirers."
"Hmmp. For a servitor, you seem to be lacking the appropriately reverent tone in discussing a member of the Master Race. Particularly the Grand Prince of said race, himself."
"If himself he actually is."
"Does it really matter?"
"Well, it is a pretty incredible story: Dracula as head of the New York demesne. . . ."
In addition to claiming that he was the Count—excuse me, Prince—Dracula, our host had told us that he had ruled the New York demesne for over a century. Eventually, he explained, he had grown tired of the responsibilities: the intrigues, plots, the infighting. One of the factions had become involved with organized crime, opening a Pandora's box that even the self-styled Prince of Darkness found distasteful. There had been attempts on his life (or unlife, if you prefer) even by his own kind—the ancient tradition of advancement by assassination.
There had finally come a day, he'd explained, when he had grown weary of the games and decided to live free, once more.
Of course, one doesn't "retire" from a vampire enclave any more than one retires from certain covert governmental agencies or the Mafia. Especially if you are the Vlad Dracula.
"And so I had to disappear," he'd told me on the long, night drive back up to Kansas City. "I planned it very carefully, liquidating selected assets that had been accumulated over the centuries, preparing a dozen different safe-houses with sheltered networks of investments and income, hoarding equipment and supplies, building false identities and essentially creating a secret demesne for myself that would be as invisible to the other underground enclaves as they were to the world of mortals.
"And so, I reasoned, where would one look for the Voivode of Walachia, the Prince of Darkness, the king of the wampyr? London? Paris? Monaco? One of the world's great cities with a never-ending night life and millions of human cattle to hunt and hide among?
"Ah. Maybe someday. . . .
"But for awhile—and what are a few years when one has lived for centuries, may live for millennia?—it made sense to lie low and regroup where no one would think to look for the legendary Dracula.
"Kansas."
Now one might think that Count Dracula would stand out in the cornfields of Kansas like Liberace at a black tie and tails affair.
Especially since Liberace is no longer among the living.
But as Blowfeld once said to 007: "If I destroy Kansas, Mr. Bond, it will be two years before the rest of the world would notice that it's missing."
Well, it's not really quite that bad: hardly anyone really believes that Eisenhower is still president and a few of us have heard rumors that we might be putting a man into space almost any year now. But Kansas still provides the opportunity to drop out of the cultural and social mainstream if one so wishes, and neighbors tend to mind their own business. There are farmhouses adrift on vast tracts of fenced land where God-knows-what has gone on for generations. Don't get me wrong; Kansas is full of good-hearted, friendly, and even wonderfully wise and talented folk. . .
. . . but there are certain lonely dirt roads that you should hope to never run across by day and God help you should you run out of gas by night. The southeast corner of the Sunflower State has more than its share of tales murmured around campfires at night—stories of drifters and hitchhikers and pits and hungers and abandoned houses that weren't quite empty. . . . Away from the gatherings in the cities and towns, a man's privacy is respected and certainly never challenged without risk.
Bassarab had chosen carefully. And it had almost worked.
But some ancient wiring in an old Kansas farmhouse had nearly done what time and armies and assassins could not. And, even though he had survived the fire, there was something in the aftermath—a fireman's story, a hospital record, a police report, a newspaper article—that had been enough to flag the hunters back in New York. The privacy screen of eighty acres of fenced pasture land had failed.
When Mooncloud and Garou had turned up in Pittsburg, Kansas, it was to rope a stray and solve a medical mystery. New York's retrieval team had had a different agenda: I was their best clue to finding Dracula.
But now the hunters had become the hunted.
"Yes," I said to Lupé, "I think he actually is who he claims to be." I smiled, picking up the huge roll of bills from between the seats. "But, as I was saying before, it really wouldn't matter. He's providing us with everything we need to finish this mission and he solved the big mystery about my own circumstances and condition." I looked out the window. "And maybe given me a few ideas of my own. . . ."
The crossbows were easy.
We found a dealer who carried the Barnett International line from England. We started with six Trident models with single-hand pistol grips. Their forty-five-pound draw had an effective range of forty-five feet and would hurl a bolt approximately one hundred and twenty-two feet per second.
We then selected four Ranger models with a one-hundred-fifty-pound draw and a bolt speed of two-hundred and thirty feet per second.
Lupé was comparing the Desert Storm model for its additional ten yards of range and ten feet per second bolt speed when I noticed a unique-looking rifle with a spear protruding from the muzzle.
"It's an Air Bow," the dealer explained, noting my interest. "Uses liquid carbon dioxide or compressed air as a propellant and has a muzzle velocity of two-hundred and twenty FPS. There's a fishing attachment that puts fifty feet of seventy-pound braided line onto a barrel-mounting reel and attaches to a special fishing arrow. And you can get a twelve-gram quick-change unit that will give you extra shots and make changing your propellant bottles quick and easy."
"I'll take the rifle and the quick-change unit," I said, "but I don't think I'll need the fishing stuff." I tried to imagine reeling in a vampire once I had nailed him. Ugh.
"As you wish. Is there anything else I can help you with?"
I nodded. "I notice all bolts and quarrels are primarily aluminum or plastic. Do you have any wooden ones?"
"A few. But I think you'll find the aluminum ones perform just as well and hold up a lot better—especially with repeated use out in the field."
"Oh," I said casually, Lupé watching me like a hawk, "I prefer wood. Especially ash, if you have any."
He shook his head. "No ash. But I can call a couple of places in town that specialize for archery tournaments."
While he did that, I picked out a couple of Splatmaster Rapide Semi-Automatic paint pistols, a Spartan Paintball rifle, twelve tubes of paintballs, and five dozen CO2 cartridges. "What do you think you're doing?" Lupé hissed as I dumped our additional purchases on the counter.
"Trust me," I said, as the shopkeeper came back with an address.
"They may be able to help you with ash dowels for your bolts," he said. "Will there be anything else?"
"Well, we'd like carrying cases and four belt-mounted quivers. . . ."
Lupé grinned wolfishly and leaned across the counter. "And we'd like all of these outfitted with your best hunting scopes."
Two hours later we were ready to head south, loaded down with two additional compound bows, seventy-three ash dowels, six fletching kits, five hypodermic syringes, four bottles of solvent, two bicycle tire repair kits, five knapsacks, four handbags, and two dozen small glass bottles.
"Pull over," I said.
Lupé looked up at the cathedral as she parked at the curb. "You don't need to do this," she said. "Taj already has it on her list."
"I want to try something and if it works, we're going to need more." I opened the door and stepped out onto the curb. "This shouldn't take long."
The sunlight seemed to hit me with a palpable force and I felt vaguely nauseated as I climbed the stone-blocked steps that stretched across the front of the church. At the top I hesitated, realizing that I hadn't really spent enough time thinking this one out.
For openers: did the "welcome" sign constitute an invitation to cross the threshold, to enter? Of course it did—but in terms of a personal invitation? To a vampire? Or half a vampire? Maybe a halfway invitation was sufficient for a halfway undead person.
Or did I really require an invitation at all?
What would Freud say?
Never mind that: what would the pope say?
I took a deep breath and reached for the door. My real discomfort in entering, I decided, had nothing to do with vampire lore and possibly being in a state of damnation. It had to do with the simple fact that I was Protestant.
Though I had certain Catholic friends who would delight in pointing out that there is no real difference between being damned for eternity or being Protestant, my main concern was that I didn't know my way around a Catholic church. Fortunately, the object of my quest was not far from the entryway: the marble font containing water consecrated for ceremonial use.
It should have been easy: the coast was clear, no one was around. But now it occurred to me that there was no way for me to dip the bottles into the basin of holy water without getting my fingers wet. And I hadn't thought to buy gloves.
I am not Catholic, so holy water is not part of my belief system, I told myself. Furthermore, I am a rational man: I know that there is no scientific principle to support holy water having any different qualities than regular water. I know that it cannot harm me. . . .
Yeah, right, answered the other half of the Csejthe stream-of-consciousness debate team, just like you rationally know that vampires don't exist.
But there's a scientific principle involved in creating vampires. . . .
Maybe, but can you explain werewolves, Binky?
This was getting me nowhere. Very gingerly, I dipped the tip of my little finger into the basin of holy water. No pain, no smoke, no bubbling froth, no dissolving flesh.
As quickly as I could, I filled four bottles and made my escape.
"Now where?" Lupé asked as I climbed back into the passenger seat.
"Another Catholic church," I said, swapping full bottles for empties. "I figure we'll need to hit five more cathedrals or kidnap a priest."
"Wonderful."
As we spent the next hour collecting aqua sacra, I was troubled by the question of why it didn't affect me. Was it because I wasn't a believing, practicing member of the Catholic faith? Or because I was not yet fully transformed into an undead creature and wholly damned? Perhaps it was because, as a rational man, I was immune to the superstitious influence and power of my subconscious mind?
Or maybe this stuff just wasn't all it was cracked up to be. . . .