"Hello?" I said, peering in the darkness, but I couldn't make 'em out. "Who's there?

"That's the first question, though not the question. Though for the time I've answered, 'not t o be.'"

"Drake?" I could make out that his hair was totally long-- like dreadlocks too.

"Drake's dead."

"Whoah! Drake!" I peered pretty hard, but it was of no use. Nothing could penetrate the veil of night the figure wore, but I recogniz ed the voice.

"A ghost of a ghost of a ghost I am. Or a man without religion."

"What's up? They're sayin'--"

"Shhh-- listen . . ." I listened and I could hear the pounding bass line coming from away off. "Listen to what my generation has to say. . ."

"I didn't mean to disturb. . ."

"I was disturbed when my heritage was desecrated and my grave was robbed."

"Dude! You're alive! A whole lotta people think you committed hary cary."

"To them I have. Do you read Shakespeare?"

"No."

"Then I am but a ghost to you." He laughed. "A ghost I was when I lived in this society in which the rational spirit is denied, and the idea of the moral truth is scoffed at as an ancient pretension which but hinders the entertainment ind ustry and liberal businesses and lawyers, and oppresses the weak and denies fathers and mothers the freedom to destroy that which they conceive."

"Cool people like truth-- some of 'em." It was a stupid thing to say, but like I said it 'cause the sile nce was just too big.

"I became a ghost of a ghost when I wrote the truth; I was crucified on all fronts in this liberal land. For the contemporary rich liberal, the poor liberal, the white liberal, the black liberal, the male liberal and the feminis t all hold as their sacred first principle that the truth does not exist. That is all they have going for them, and they will defend the postmodernists' fundamental axiom to the death. Beware when battling those who do not believe in a truth, for they d o not fight fair, as they do not perceive fairness to exist. For the postmodernist swings a double-edged sword. They swing it one way saying there's no such thing as truth, and then they swing it back, proclaiming their prejudices. Once long ago scienc e empowered the individual, as it allowed the independent thinker to interpret reality by his own senses and create descriptions which reflected reality. But then the most profound description of reality, quantum mechanics, showed that all was based on c hance. Socrates said that he knew nothing, Neitschez proclaimed that God is dead, Ahab perished in his pursuit of the ungraspable phantom of life, and Einstein never found the deterministic theory which he believed was more fundamental than the quantum m echanics his search gave birth to. So to be properly educated these days is to be a moral and intellectual nihilist. The liberals were quick to do away with the vast beauty of Plato's works, the grandeur of the pursuit of Moby Dick, and Einstein's ubiqu itous significance, and declare onto the eighteen-year-old that it has been found out that all pursuits of the truth lead to but one-- that nothing can be known, and thus that the truth does not exist. They teach the student to abandon the search, and t hey crucify those who do, destroying the fundamental source of all that is of use to mankind. And today the secular reductionists memorize and misuse quantum theory, chaos and relativity as tools to proclaim that an objective reality does not exist indep endent of observation. The pernicious materialist bureaucrats who congregate 'neath the veil of darkness afforded by the misapplication of science to the soul use the theories to murder the sole creator of Greatness-- the individual artist. No longer do es it matter what one creates in the academy, but who one knows. Here art is subjugated to politics. And thus the death of the truth seeker and the denial of God. And the diabolical murder of the defender of The Permanent Things-- Uncle Walt. And as t he Permanent Things wither, so too dies eternal love and thus romance. For in this fallen context, where free love prevails, true love is banned. And there is no such thing as free love-- in exchange for it you must become a liberal. I found my corrupt ed self using my sonnets not to exalt, not to inspire enduring romance, but to conquer the hearts and minds of the beautiful. By destroying the virtuous feminine the feminist destroys the noble masculine. The postmodern elite wish for nihilism, the in-b etween, the neither here nor there, for that is where mediocrity and dishonesty may dominate-- wherever standards do not exist. And in this darkened land, void of God's romantic morality, my soul was corrupted when I lost the ability to see feminine inno cence's beauty. I lost the ability to see it not because I grew blind, but because the liberals had destroyed it. The place ten thousand girls will never fill, I call true love, for only one girl will. But I shall blame no others for my actions, for to do so would be to consign myself to slavery and forfeit the natural rights of my God-given freedom. I walk these woods alone. It was I who tempted them and denied them the dignity of uniting the immortal deed with the temporary act. But when we are ta ught that words mean nothing, the immortal deed cannot exist. And so I buried the dervish sonnets. I walk these deep, dark woods seeking redemption. Until we are redeemed, we cannot avenge. Once teachers served as beacons to guide us through the darkn ess, but today their foremost task is to thicken the postmodern fog."

"Dude-- but don't you think you should be telling everyone this? I mean I think it'd be cool for them to hear it. I've sort of heard the same vibes goin' down all over the place. Like people've been talkin' about things. Lots of people in our generation. Things like the truth."

He laughed. "The truth that is taught these days-- that there is none. 'Tis a seductive premise for the scholar whose political ambitions outweig h their intellectual ingenuity. While proclaiming that the truth does not exist will get you a PhD, it will do little good to keep her father from lying to her mother. The grave I buried my sonnets in was too shallow, for a thousand liberal necropheliac s roam this grim land, robed by pretension, their PhD's serving as a license to make their ignorance their arrogance. The vultures descend upon the dead artists and poets, for the dead cannot defend their words. The modern liberal critic is afraid to li ve his own life firsthand, and jealous of those who do and did signify something profound, he must destroy their works so as to level the playing field. So they criticize, anthologize and philosophize, but they do not create. For that is the ultimate po stmodern sin. The liberals twist and distort and mutilate the sacred texts, teaching the children that there is nothing in the ultimate beauty but evil. For the modern liberal has little to lose by eradicating all spiritual beauty and the yearning for t ruth, and everything to gain by replacing it with nihilistic bureaucracy. A witch by the name of Sycorax possesses my sonnets. She who could inspire none of them now has them, and such is the manner of inheritance. And I have her confession of Uncle Wa lt's murder. I took it from you. Sorry I knocked you guys down. Like I wasn't in the mood to hang out or anything."

I realized what he was talkin' about! "Oh yeah-- you nailed the hell out of us, out there-- it was pretty cool." That w as like when he'd tackled us after we'd just gotten out of the PAD meeting with Lionhead and the box and everything! It'd been Drake!

"For even a Sycorax must write the truth, and thus the liberals' sacred secret is that they do not believe their own religion. Know this, that the postmodernist is fundamentally a liar. They know the Truth exists, but they believe that it shouldn't, as in Its context their creations are rendered insignificant. And so they proclaim vengeance upon God. And in the liberal void how easy it is to find oneself seduced by thousand temptations they lay before this generation. It's been out in these woods, beyond this gorge which separates the liberal's kingdom from nature, where I found an Eden conducive to cont emplation. For there's man's natural state, and it's reflected in the beauty of the exalting timber and plummeting cliffs. And now, sitting upon this bridge and gazing down into the unfathomable blackness that all men eventually join, giving up the ghos tly mist of their spirits, I see that which will be for my poetry. Uncle Walt's murder shall be avenged. They shall be returned to rest underground, where 'cross the whole wide world they shall resound. Before Sycorax appends her name to them: killing t hem, skinning them, and placing them in an anthology, in the same manner that a naturalist sanctimoniously snuffs and stuffs the birds that he piously states he loves. Those who claim to protect our freedoms are forever clipping its wings. Some die to c reate, some live to destroy; the latter the aging state does employ. In this darkened world all truths are but will'o'wisps my friend-- phantoms that are but visible to those who walk the fields in the darkest hour, when churchyards yawn. But yet all pe ople harbor a deeply private knowledge of this ghost, and in our natural yearning for and loyalty to the truth, all men are created equal in their love of God. All men yearn for the Truth as they yearn for freedom, for to know the truth is to be set free . But yet the contemporary fashion is to pretend to shun this natural yearning, to stand forth as he who is for utter equality, utter fairness, utter government. The University has become a battlefield where only the greatest promoters of equality can s urvive. The bravest are the forever indecisive, except that their indecision is a cruel, cunning choice. The morally indifferent economists are best suited to win, for they subjugate their better instincts to but money-- there is no truth they admit to, but for the truth by which they gain their perdition. But look! Look closely, and this pretense dissolves. For they are possessed by the ghost of avarice-- the drive to become the best. So then why, in wishing to be superior, do we allow debased, dia bolical, decadent poetry and prose upon the campus? It is because we live in a shadow of yesterday's revelations, whence the fires born of rational thought and science raged 'cross civilization. So welcome the deconstructionists and inferior artists, w ho by their mediocrity claim to be superior to all the Greats, and thus the voices of democracy. But here is the ultimate fallacy which lies in the confusion of politics with art! For the artist is a tyrant. The creator must be a tyrant in order to e nsure that freedom exists. It's a virtue for an artist to be a tyrant, but advice for a politician. For one works with the inanimate-- the other with men. The politician must live their life from the outside in, but the artist must live their life from the inside out. Love of power and knowledge are different things-- there's no such thing as philosopher kings. And thus Sycorax was a fallacy. An artist not because she exalted the peoples' spirits and souls with her decadent words, but because she se rved the contemporary resenting political agenda of the academy by desecrating the peoples' sacred heritage."

"That's cool." Like I was kinda followin' him. It explained a lot of things.

"And are not these empty architects the true racists, play ing upon the fears of the people, trumpeting their differences? The liberal mind can be credited with the civil rights movement, but then they missed racism so much that they reinstituted it. Truly, they have not eyes to perceive the depths of my soul, and so all I am to them is a white male. I need not such shallow judgment. And while maintaining this religious sideshow they're busy patenting the scientific advances made by males, securing government grants to probe all that which is unprobable by sci ence. Because science judged Galileo to be superior to the priests, we've rationalized that the ten commandments were but evolutionary phenomena created by a beast to oppress his fellow beasts-- so we let them fade along with the printed word of which th ey were constructed. And as God fades so too do all of society's moral institutions. Know ye that the problems an ideology creates that same ideology will never solve. For the problem is the bureaucracy that has grown about the ideology, and a bureaucr acy's only interest is self-preservation. And now what children can rebel against their parents when the family does not exist? What student can rebel against school when nothing is taught? Freedom cannot exist without moral responsibility." Drake lau ghed. "Truth cannot exist without God. No knowledge that can be bought is of use to me. It takes either a fool or a dishonest, knifing soul to rise to the helm of these modern day transcript corporations." He laughed. "Today's educational institutio ns are the prophet of truth's executor. Do you hear me?"

"Uh, yeah-- mostly." In a way I did-- it's easier to hear than understand. I just sat there in the silence for awhile. The crickets were firing up again, one by one-- I must've startled them into silence. "I mean Joey thinks you're dead-- she read your poems and stuff. She liked 'em."

"The ones I sent her, but the truth I kept. Made a dagger from those by which she would have wept. Hid them safe, where a horned horse would know, w here once upon a time the horn did grow."

"Dude, I'm only saying a lot of people really dug you it seems, like Windy, and Clay and people. I mean they like respected you."

He laughed. "That might be so, but they did not dig deep. Otherwise th ey would have dug a hole for me."

"It's like there's some type of battle going on. And there's a lot of crazy stuff we're all going through, and you know what's up with it. And it's like you'd be serving it better if you weren't out here. I mean I bet the liberals or whoever want you out here. Like uncivilized and everything. I mean if I could write sonnets I'd--"

He laughed some more-- it wasn't a mean laugh, or like a loud one, or a crazy one, but just a small, quiet one-- "When you follo w your mind into the black, then you turn to find that there is no path back. For once you've danced with the abyss, when you've felt the ultimate truth, then there are none but for it-- when this ultimate paradox inspires laughter in your soul, then the re is no return, my friend. For in seeking the ultimate order the ultimate disorder is found. It happened with Einstein and vengeance 'gainst whimsical quantum theory, as it happened with Ahab and his whale."

No one said anything for a bit, but the silence was like too hideous for me to just sit there saying nothing. "Yeah, but look at all the beauty in Moby Dick. Like you said or something."

"Have you read it?"

"No." I said. "But I'm going to. And I know it must be cool because everyon e's so into it. And like Quantum mechanics. Maybe it does tell us how everything is just but chance and all, but Cliff was telling me how it gave us computers and chemistry, and like a whole lot of medical stuff, and MTV and airplanes."

"But it took away God."

"No." Drake didn't believe it. He was just seeing what I thought. "I think that certain people used it to take away God. But like God is there. I know it because I know it. There's just too much cool stuff and pretty mornings. It's l ike science does science and religion does religion, and all the problems happen when somebody who does neither tries to use one to do the other."

"The ungraspable phantom of the soul resides in words, the seat of our consciousness. And as this gener ation is inundated with technological illusions, the element of the mind that for thousands of years evolved about the printed word, the vital aspect that sought justice, truth, and morality, withers. Studying the atoms of the cells, they have lost the b eauty of the fields, and the meaning of the mind."

"See? That's what I mean. God's out in the fields, in the entirety, where everyone can see Him. And they're looking for him with microscopes. And because they don't find Him with their scientific methods, they tell you he doesn't exist. People miss ya, is what I'm saying. It's that simple."

"How can one miss that which one never knew?" He laughed-- like I got this feeling he'd already heard everything I had to say.

"They knew, in a way. And you knew they knew. Otherwise you would've never written your poems and stuff. I mean not your poems, but like your poetry-- I mean you had an influence or whatever. You like made a difference."

"Every man makes his difference, and in that ev ery man is the same, and so, there is no difference, but for the differences made, but the differences made are nothing, for in the end all men are the same, as they were before they were-- nothing."

"Yeah, but see? You're sounding like a liberal and you know it. Like you might as well have some fun while you're down here-- you know? " I looked down into inky blackness of the gorge-- there was no end to it. The night flowed on into it, perpetually and everything, and out of it floated that smoky mist. "I mean we're all headed that way. In the end you won't be. I don't think you have to worry about it-- I mean to be or not to be is not your choice so much, so there's not much use gettin' distracted with it. If I were you I'd publish the poems- - the dark ones, and the light ones. Or at least the light ones, as we all keep secrets and things. And you should publish everything else too, like your stories. And I'd take the money and buy a Jeep-- just a second-hand Wrangler, or something, and I' d head for the beach somewhere-- the Outer Banks, in one of those little houses. And I'd live there year round. Surf fishin' and stuff. And maybe I'd get married-- you know? If I met a cool chick who liked cool stuff. Yeah." I was getting excited. "The darkness has a hunger that's insatiable. But even when it's after dark out there, and even if they won't let you put up a beacon or anything, there's that thing inside that they'll never take. It's your faith in the True. And the only way you'll e ver lose it is if you give up looking for it in other people. 'Cause you only ever see it reflected in their eyes."

"They've destroyed the literary infrastructure which would have once published the words that exalt. And in this inverted world they publish the words that desecrate."

"I'd get those poems back from Sycorax if I were you, and give 'em to the world before she does. You could do it on the WWW Cliff was sayin'."

"Never." He laughed. "Never in a thousand years would she let my be asts of angels exist-- even caged in an anthology, branded by her name."

"Yeah-- she's gonna publish 'em in her own name. I'm serious." Then I realized I was talking about the dream I'd had! With like the fencing match!

"Dude-- I had this dream . It was some sort of poetic writing thing-- some ceremony. It's what some black lady said. She got up at like these poetic writing awards thing, and told us Sycorax's publishing a book of sonnet things called The After Dark Field Book."

Drake laug hed. "Why do I find myself amazed at simple logic?"

"Yeah-- she was there too. She stood up when they called her, to like congratulate her on her new book. Its gonna be out next month. It like was just a dream--" I shook my head to clear it. It seemed so real. "Yeah, it was." It was pretty freaky. "But it was just a dream."

I could make him out looking down. "Of course, she has turned to the rhyming line, with hopes that my work could make her divine." He laughed. "She wants her name in history to matter, for what she wrote rather than lifting a dagger. The Nobel could not make a writer of her. And she thinks my sonnets can."

"But you like have her manuscript thing-- her confession thing, right? She really killed Uncle Walt, h uh?"

I saw him turn his head to look at me. "Yes."

"Like you know what? You could bust her with that, pretty bad, I bet-- she knows it, I mean. She's wiggin' about it-- I've heard her. And if you like wanted your poems back, like she'd probabl y trade you the manuscript thing for 'em-- "

"Only half."

"Half? Of what?"

"Of the sonnets."

"Where's the other half?"

"Only you know." He laughed.

"Only I know?"

"The messenger has the dagger poems."

"Say what?"

"Tim ber-- are you not a believer yet? Are you so completely faithless in the art of dreaming? Have you not heard the wind's whispers, the thunder's shouts? We are writing the script tonight, my friend." He threw his head back and laughed. "I buried the noble poems deep below; I'll bury the dagger poems in my foe. Is not your final secret society meeting tonight?"

"You know about our--"

"The Jolly Rogers." He laughed. "To honor all those who never get invited."

"Yeah, at midnight. But I don't know what we're gonna--"

"Cancel it. Cancel it and reschedule it for tomorrow night."

"Actually we were like already gonna do that I think, 'cause we've got nothing planned, really. Cliff said something about fencing for Lionhead-- you kno w that unicorn thing Lionhead? We actually took Lionhead one--"

"Well then I shall suggest something. An apocalypse with the Lion Headed horse."

"An apocalypse?" I asked.

"Timber! Did ye not know that our meeting here was written in destin y's pages at the dawn of time? Rehearsed through half of eternity, and then set upon paper two thousand years ago. In Revelations I have read of these things. I saw a star fall unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit. And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of that pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit, and for all it was after dark. The star was the beautiful works of Western Civil ization, the bottomless pit was the empowering nihilistic interpretations the resentniks used to deny God and the True, and the smoke which pores forth is naught but the postmodern fog. And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and s hall desire to die, and death shall flee from them. This was me, when Uncle Walt was murdered and I lost the ability to love a woman. And they had a king over them, which is the angel of the bottomless pit. Cursed Sycorax is the king of Princeton. One woe is past; and behold, there come two woes more hereafter. Uncle Walt lie murdered, and. . . thus I saw the horses in the vision, and the heads of the horses were as the heads of lions; and out of their mouths issued fire and smoke and brimstone. By these three was the third part of men killed, by the fire, and by the smoke, and by the brimstone. And the rest of the men which were not yet killed by these plagues yet repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship devils, and i dols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and of wood: which neither can see, nor hear, nor walk. Neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts. Invite both PAD and The Jolly Rogers t o the secret society ceremonial grounds out yonder." He pointed out beyond the bridge. "Have them fence for Lionhead tomorrow night."

"That's exactly what Cliff was sayin'! Like a grand finale!"

I could see him nodding. The moon was rising a nd I could see his features some. I thought back to a few nights ago when we'd seen the moon rising from the train, and boy, that seemed like ten years ago. "So that would mean that Ryan and Mortimer would be fencing."

"Yeah-- probably Ryan and like Mort. Mort's the only one who knows how to fence in the Princetonians After Dark, we're pretty sure." He stood up. "Tell Sycorax that I'll fence Ryan for the manuscript, once he has beaten Mortimer for Lionhead. I will return her manuscript if he wins , and if I win then I shall regain my poems." He laughed.

"You serious?"

"As serious as the divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will. Ah yes, in good sport, 'neath the final night, poetry and darkness shall fight their fight. She who killed my father, buried him below, forgot that sons their father's paths follow. The witch razed Princeton's land, made it fallow, but her art withers while my truth does grow. Once I saw nothing, but now I do see, that sight's worth nothing w hen the dream shall be. Had I never known darkness, void of light's gleam, I would have never been able to dream." He turned so his face was in total shadow. "We shall see. When is it?"

"Like I think just as it gets dark-- or no, at midnight, like after the Preppy Death show and all."

"And where?"

"Right here. At the ceremonial grounds out there."

"Of course-- symmetry does exist, though it is subtle and runs deep beneath the chaos, but it is there. Yes-- I was born into this world, told by society that there is no God, taught by teachers that there is no reason, educated by educators that there is no purpose, that there is no rationale, that there is no thought, but those who told me and sentenced me to death were mistaken. For div inity can not be denied a man, without him being denied his life. And by this light, Princeton shall now ignite; and my truth shall live beyond this brief light, for though I fall to death, my breath shall know flight. New light is born from the light o f truth's fire, while for others it's a funeral pyre. Let it be." Drake stood up. "Sycorax wishes for equality, let her be equal to man's tragedy. My mentor murdered, I strayed from the path, henceforth I'll serve the Permanent Thing's wrath." And wi th that he crossed over to the far side of the bridge and slipped silently away into the forest. Something in the way he did it reminded me of something, but I couldn't place it.