Hoofing It

              HOOFING IT

                              by

                         David L. Gaskill

“Yeah, right, but what’s the catch?” Professor Darryl Dornblazer says to himself as he spots a large, golden artifact glittering in the woods.

It’s two hours into his annual autumn hike through the vast nature preserve he loves, and he’s gotten off the trail to take a leak. Before he can unzip, though, he’s stunned by what he sees. If real, he can’t wait to take it home.

Protruding from the ground near a large, rotting stump is what appears to be a life-sized golden head with Greek god-like hair and beard. He notes its graceful, rococo curls are aesthetically accented by the moldering leaves that surround it.

“What in god’s name is that?” he says. “Is what I'm seeing a dream or something I ate for lunch?”

Dropping his backpack, he touches the statue’s shiny face. It’s there, all right. So much so that he feels an odd tingle at the point of contact. What the hell?

Looking closer for electric wires or a battery hookup, he sees there’s only the normal nature stuff around. There’s deer crap in pelleted piles nearby and a white streak on the figure’s forehead left by some disrespectful bird. Gray boulders mark one side of the area, along with orangish sumac stalks farther on. A sea of shriveled fern fronds stretches away under an array of mostly bare poplar and white oak trees.

And it’s quiet. Too quiet, as though someone or something is watching him to see what he will do next.

He gently tries to lift the head, but it proves unmovable. And there’s that tingling again. Using a dead branch, he scrapes away some of the pungent leaves from around the artifact to see if there is more of it beneath the surface. There sure is! He finds a thick neck attached to something large—very large.

That’s when he decides to go for help.

“I need to get Tasha out here. With her clairvoyant abilities and my passion for Greek mythology we should be able to get a handle on this mystery.”

Before he leaves, though, he relieves himself in some bushes, then unhooks his trencher tool and digs around the old stump. Fortunately, it’s hollow and its roots are decomposed enough so he can rock it free. He places the stump over the golden object to make it unlikely anyone else will happen upon it, fills in the area atop the head with dead leaves, and places a layer of twigs and leaves in the gouge where the stump had been. Voila! Perfect camouflage!

Before heading back to the trail, he has an odd sensation of annoyance or disapproval in the air. Is that also real? Is the statue objecting to being covered up? The feeling reminds him of the resentment felt by his fellow educators when he was chosen to head the college’s psychology department. The backbiting and often outright hostility at the time made him almost give up his quest for the promotion, until he found himself resorting to similar cutthroat tactics. Why shouldn’t he head the department? he told himself. He was better than the other candidates anway, except for Jody Perkins, who withdrew after a particularly nasty rumor he’d spread about the younger man’s sexuality.

“Screw them all!” he’d said. “You gotta do what you gotta do to get ahead!”

Because the unpleasant memory makes him feel guilty, he brushes it aside and focuses on his next task. Along the rocky path he’d noted three trees in roughly a triangular growth pattern. The professor builds a small, three-stone cairn between them to mark the spot. Also, he notes the mileage on his pedometer.

“I’ll find this place again even if I have to comb the trail from end to end,” he says. “Nobody is going to take this discovery away from me! Nobody!”

                        *****

“Jesus, Darryl, how much farther is it?” Tasha asks. Although the temperature is in the low 60s she’s sweating profusely, and her underarms show the tell-tale half circle of the chronically out of shape. Fortunately, she has a jacket tied around her waist for when she eventually cools down.

“Well, we’re here now,” he says. “See those three trees? That’s where I put my marker.”

He jerks to a stop when he sees the top stone of the cairn is propped neatly on its edge against the other two stones. “Who or what did that?” echoes in his mind. *Is this the ‘catch’ I predicted would probably be the case?”

“What’s wrong, Darryl? Did you see a bear?” Tasha says, looking around with fearful eyes.

“No. No. Everything’s fine,” he says, feeling for his trencher tool in case an unsavory someone, or something, suddenly appears.

Crunching through crackly twigs and leaves they soon reach the site. The stump is where he left it, seemingly untouched. But when he lifts it, the golden head is gone.

“I knew it! It was right here yesterday! Somebody’s taken it! I swear it was here! I did feel someone watching me when I first found it. What the hell.… ”

“What’s that glittery thing over there?” says Tasha, pointing at a spot about 25 feet from where they’re standing.

Sure enough, it’s the polished golden head. Hurrying over, he looks to see if there are any changes. The white bird poop streak is gone, and the blank, metal-cast eyes are the same, although he has the eerie notion they would be looking at him if they had pupils and irises. The statue is buried up to its chin as before.

Tasha, still panting from the five-mile trek, unties her jacket, plops down on a small boulder, and places her chin in her hands.

“I’m already getting some kind of vibrations from this place,” she says.

He notices the rock she’s sitting on isn’t typical. It has a distinctly rectangular shape, like it was formed by stone masons millennia ago. First the statue relocates itself and now this? What the hell is going on? Before he can speculate further, Tasha’s eyes flutter closed, and she begins to speak in a voice very unlike her own. It’s more masculine and exudes a tone of authority.

“Good to see you again, Darryl Dornblazer,” it says. “And I’m not talking about yesterday afternoon. As I’ll explain—if you do not flee, that is—we go back a long way. You had important lives here in this region you refer to as the Adirondacks. But back then it was part of a civilization much like Atlantis, and it, too, was destroyed by the hubris that inevitably develops when power and its addictive attributes override the loving mandates of universal consciousness.”

Darryl is stunned by this, but curiosity restrains him, and he decides not to flee.

“Who are you and what do you want?” he manages, although not without shakiness in his voice. He’s distracted for an instant when he catches Tasha shuddering violently before formulating a response. His body imitates her tremors exactly when the golden head suddenly lifts from the soil with a wrenching sound and he finds it attached to the gigantic form of a bull, its massive shoulders at least 10 feet tall.

“I am Mantuora the Meritor,” the figure snorts. “I’m from the Eighth Dimension, working my way up to the Ninth. Many consider me the Minotaur in reverse, with a bull’s body and the head of a human, unlike the murdering monster who allegedly inhabited the labyrinth in ancient Crete and devoured his victims. However, I do not slay willful wanderers like you. I don’t eat them, either. Instead, I reach out and teach them—if they desire to learn.”

Willful wanderer? This rankles a bit, an emotion that rises in Darryl when Mantuora settles unthreateningly on the ground, his legs and giant hooves folded beneath him like a benign bovine in a summer pasture.

Just who the hell does he think he’s dealing with here? he thinks. I’m a fully tenured professor at the top of my game and noted in my field. I’ve written three books on the role of psychology in education and politics, all aimed at improving the human condition.

Tasha frowns, then a sardonic look suffuses her face.

“Yes, yes,” says Mantuora, as though he has heard Dorn’s thoughts. “You’ve been a relatively good boy this time around, but I’m here to admonish you for certain shortcomings and see to your continuing spiritual growth. Otherwise, it’s back into the baby pond for you and returning to Earth for another lifetime after you cross over. But next time you won’t find yourself in such a cushy academic setting.”

This alarms the professor and causes self-doubts to surface. What has he done so wrong that warrants such a heavy-handed paranormal threat?

“That’s what we are about to explore,” the gold-faced bullock answers via Tasha. “We are going to follow some threads of your previous and current existence deep into the labyrinth of your psyche, so that you avoid any future misunderstandings. Whether you continue to grow or not is entirely up to you. That requires certain admissions, though, and breaking down the internal rigidities that hamper your freedom and development. And, by the way, our cute little channel here will remember nothing of what we say. Your privacy is as secure as the best anti-virus company on Earth could guarantee.”

The latter comment intensifies Darryl’s skepticism, what with the army of Internet hackers and scammers operating these days, but since he’s out in the woods with nobody else around, he sighs and decides to see what happens.

“Thread Number One,” Mantuora says, ignoring Darryl’s reservations.

“Because you are steeped in your narrow clinical mindset, you have probably forgotten that karma from a soul’s earlier lives can follow it into a current life. In several past lives you were quite the murderous dude, a stain that has lessened over countless incarnations. In other words, you are raising your spiritual level each time you are reborn. However, as one of Genghis Khan’s key subordinates, you had countless prisoners of war tortured to death, and as a Precinct Captain during the French Revolution you were a false witness who sent many innocent victims to the guillotine. But during the Prussian War, even though you were ordered to do so, you refused to gun down a soldier who had dropped his weapon and raised his arms in surrender, which resulted in you being executed yourself.

“However, as a boy in your current life you took unusual pleasure in pulling the legs off spiders and other insects. And one must not forget the terrible incident with the frog.”

Darryl’s eyes go wide when Mantuora mentions that. He vividly recalls learning a hard lesson about inflicting pain that day, especially since his father spanked him soundly when told what he’d done. After that, he curbed his inclination to cut short the lives of creatures in any form—at least if there was a chance of getting caught.

“Thread Number Two,” Mantuora intones.

“You were quite the handsome young man, weren’t you, in 1840s England? But going around and breaking the hearts of numerous gullible ladies to satisfy your lust was more than unkind. It resulted in one of the ladies being forced into a nunnery and unwanted pregnancies for two, one of whom committed suicide. When you were pursued by outraged parents, you fled to London, hastily enlisted, and went off to sea. Although you felt some guilt about the results of your actions, you had no time for atonement because your repeated defiance of shipboard authority caused you to be keel-hauled and drowned at age 26.”

Darryl gasps at this graphic image. It could explain his occasional fear-filled dreams about drowning and his seemingly irrational avoidance of boats and big, bulging bodies of water.

“Now for Thread Number Three,” Mantuora says with a shake of his golden head.

“As a shady accountant in the early twentieth century, you were paid handsomely for your book-keeping sleight-of-hand and other schemes by several barons of industry and at least one bootlegger. You amassed wealth of your own not only by helping these powerful people, but by hinting at what you could do to them with what you knew about their dealings. Before one of them arranged your own ‘suicide,’ you did manage to help keep your infirm mother out of a nursing home. You provided support for the neighbor woman who came in to care for her even after your mother died.”

Hmm, not all bad in some of those lives. Isn’t there saving grace in that? he wonders. The repeated suicide theme makes him uncomfortable, though. “But what’s coming next?” he thinks with a shudder.

“What’s coming next is Thread Number Four,” Tasha says in her rumbly, male voice.

“This brings us to your current incarnation, Darryl,” Mantuora says, flicking away a fly with his brown, python-thick tail. “I think you can see that your soul has made progress over the centuries, which is good. However, some of your recent actions could set you back—unless you acknowledge them and are willing to correct certain flaws in your ego-dominated personality.”

Ego-dominated? I never thought of myself as being that, he thinks, although I must confess, I’m way better than my colleagues. Most of them aren’t nearly as logical as me and their jealousy irritates me very much. And I guess it didn’t help keep my marriage together to respond to Kate’s chatter about inconsequential daily matters with witty barbs or sarcasm. But can I help it if my intellect soars way above my touchy-feely side?

“Yes, Darryl, you can, but you choose not to.”

“Hey, Mantuora, are you criticizing me here? Don’t you realize that in this dog-eat-dog world you gotta be aggressive about getting ahead and finding ways to get people to do what you want despite their stupid emotional hang-ups? I’ve found being softly sympathetic doesn’t have much effect. Breaking through mental barriers sometimes requires a forceful touch. You know, tough love and all that. For instance, I just tell my students how it is, and too bad if it rubs some of them the wrong way.”

“‘Wrong way’ certainly describes how you used experimental psychology on your toddler son, which, when your wife found out, was the real reason for your divorce, not your caustic comments or self-serving demands in the bedroom.”

Darryl’s eyebrows lift in annoyance.

“Listen, Mantuora, those behavior modifiers were designed to make my son a go-getter and free him from the insecurities that plague most people. I just wanted him to become an achiever and avoid self-doubt and low self-esteem, especially as he grew into his teen years.”

“Yes, but in those teen years the brutal imbalance you caused between his falsely constructed ego and the tender side that he hid from you because he was afraid of your disapproval prompted his suicide, which you still refuse to admit was caused by you.”

There it was again—suicide. And the blame placed on him. Darryl sees red.

“Why don’t you go back to the Hell you came from, you stupid cow?” he says. “Where do you get off accusing me of that? It was Jamie’s peers that intensified his angst, not me! He was snubbed by his classmates because he let them know he was better than them, and that girl who rejected his advances had no business being so snooty, considering her parents didn’t even have the money to dress her properly!”

The bull figure seems taken aback by Darryl’s reaction.

“Did you just call me a stupid cow?” he says. “How dare you! I show up in this uncomfortable forest to give you the past-life insights you need to grow and instead you’re so spiritually constipated you deny the truth about your intellectual bullying and narcissistic manipulations. I’ll show you who’s a stupid cow!”

Darryl’s eyes go wide as Mantuora rears up and plunges across the leaf pack towards him, a look of rage on his face. It’s the first time any change has occurred in his placid, golden countenance, and in terror Darryl wheels around and exercises his earlier option to flee.

Before he can go more than a few steps, though, he feels a tremendous blow to the back of his head, and everything goes black.

                         *****

“Darryl! Darryl!” he hears as consciousness returns. “Don’t die, Darryl! Come back to me! I’m scared out here alone in these woods!”

“Wha—what happened?” he asks as his eyes flick open and he finds Tasha bending over him with tears running down her face. In a panic, he looks around for his bulky assailant, but the creature is nowhere in sight.

“All I know is I was in a trance, and when I woke up, the golden sculpture was gone,” Tasha says. “And you were lying here. I thought you were dead!”

“Ow! Not dead, but I’m really hurting. Check the back of my head, will you? Tell me what you see.”

“Ooh, that looks bad,” she says. “It’s all swollen up under your hair. It has the shape of a giant hoof print.”

“I was afraid of that,” he mutters. Wobbling to his feet, he brushes away leaves and twigs and stoops for his backpack.

“I need a doctor,” he says. “I’m feeling dizzy and nauseous, which means I probably have a concussion. We’ve got a huge hike ahead of us and its gonna get dark in a few hours. At the very least my splitting headache will slow us down.”

Darryl’s psychic assistant just stands there with a blank look on her face, which makes him mad.

“What the hell are you waiting for, Tasha?” he says, pinching her arm. “Grab your stuff and get your fat ass in gear! We gotta get outta here. And I mean now—right now!”

On the other side of reality, Mantuora the Meritor puts the finishing touches on a clammy, frog-pond future for his ancient, petulant friend.