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The Coyman Manuscript
Part I: From the Journal of Robert Wilson Coyman
by
JJ Burke |
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miel Walden is my name. At the time of this writing, I live in the city of Pomona, California. The year is 1994; summer is almost here. I do not expect to see the fall. I have become entangled in a waking nightmare, the few visible parts of which suggest an inconceivably monstrous whole. With whatever time remains, I can make no use of myself except to tell my story, to leave a warning more definite than the whispers and inklings that failed to avert my condemnation.
There is little I can do to elucidate the facts as I understand them. Trying to speculate or interpret would only further distort the truth—if there is such a thing as truth in this mess. The vital nature of the menace is virtually unknowable, shrouded with an opacity rivaling that of death; like the event horizon of a black hole, only observable indirectly and from a distance. As one approaches the thing itself, reality loses its meaning. To cross the threshold is to surrender all.
My involvement developed in stages. It began in February, when I collected a roll of pages left for me by an unusual friend named Robert Coyman. It resembled parcels we had exchanged for several months, typically for entertainment purposes. Unrolled, it was obviously something different.
The following entries were mostly handwritten on journal pages that had, at some point, been torn free and arranged in the sequence presented here. Robert’s final statement appeared on the frontmost leaf. |
| January 16, 1994 |
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I had to come back for the book. I can’t tell if they’re on my trail. They could be already tapped in, and I wouldn’t feel it. For that matter, they could be choosing the words I’m writing now.
So what? There’s nothing I can do about that from here.
Emiel—you’re the only one I can trust. You have always been like an uncharted island that only I can find. Many things have gone between us, unspoken and unwritten, but understood. So I’m leaving clues to another hiding place that might interest you. If you understand what I think you understand, we will meet again. Until then, this must be my last deposit in the “drop box.” When the time comes, one of us will find the other. I’ll be looking for you. |
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| —Robert |
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Our “drop box” was an ingenious hiding place approximating a mailbox in size and function. Each of us visited periodically to check its contents. In this way, we corresponded in a fluid, flexible language of droll symbolism, sometimes including small objects, notes, clippings, or the occasional computer file. We plucked from our daily travels such odds and ends as we supposed would articulate our thoughts more effectively than mundane letter-writing.
There he was, then, writing to me, tearing pages from his journal for me. This change in method meant something; our form of communication had previously consisted of hints and guesses, anticipation and intuition. It was clearly not just a game anymore—if it ever had been.
The remaining journal entries are seven years old, far removed from the span of our acquaintance.
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| February 9, 1987 |
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What’s the first thing I should write in this book?
Grumpo says everybody’s point of view is valuable, even mine, so he gave me this fancy leather journal and this pen. He told me once that I don’t speak up when I have something to say.
The pen writes super smooth. It’s heavy and solid. Maybe expensive pens and paper really make handwriting better. This thing is too fancy for some jerk like me to write with. Who am I, anyway?
My name is Robert Wilson Coyman and today I am 16 years old. I was born in Sylmar, California, and my family moved here to Chaparral Heights when I was a baby. Last year we moved again, into a new house on a new street. The whole neighborhood was just built last year on top of the big plateau on the southwest side of town, surrounded by Chaparral Canyon.
When we lived in the older part of town, the plateau was private property. The top was just a big, flat field with trees around the edge. A hundred years ago, this whole area was ranches and orchards. Before that, it was Mexico. Before that, the Spanish sailed in and built their missions on top of the natives who were here since prehistoric times.
I’m in the 11th grade at Chaparral Heights High School. Last week I had to write a report on the history of the natives here in southern California. My history teacher loves to talk about the ends of civilizations. I think he’s some kind of religious nut. He’s always saying how we’re overdue for “The Big One,” the earthquake that’s supposed to sink California into the ocean.
Probably the only interesting thing about me is that I was born during the San Fernando earthquake, in a brand-new hospital that partly collapsed and killed some people. You might think that would be the start of an exciting life, but no. It’s been pretty boring ever since . . . not much to write about.
But this sure is a nice pen. |
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I seem to remember hearing the name Chaparral Heights mentioned from time to time as I’ve lived in southern California. There are more than 80 cities in the greater Los Angeles area, so it’s not unusual for some of their locations to evade the awareness of an area resident. But Chaparral Heights is less than 10 miles to the south of where I live, just on the other side of Chino Hills, bordered on the west by Diamond Bar and Brea, with Carbon Canyon on the east. That’s where it’s always been.
I had been through Diamond Bar, Chino Hills, Brea, Carbon Canyon and the surrounding localities that fit into the geographic patchwork of my memory. To find Chaparral Heights, I had to consult the index of my Thomas Guide. It was a strange experience, like discovering something about the back of my hand for the first time. |
| September 25, 1987 |
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There has never been anything to do in this town. The closest thing to anything is Arrow Trail Park, and the only reason is the cliffs. The park is on the edge of the plateau, crowded to the southwest corner by all the big houses they built last year. People around here will hassle you for going past the fence, 10–20 feet back from the edge. That says a lot about Chaparral Heights: anything interesting is off-limits. Somebody put up some NO TRESPASSING signs recently, maybe because of the mudslides earlier this year. It’s supposed to rain soon.
Past the fence, from a certain spot, you can see a shallow groove in the dirt. It looks like it runs right off the edge, but it’s an illusion. There’s a path that goes down a slope, then along the wall, around the corner of the plateau. That’s definitely out of the park, because straight up from there is someone’s backyard. The path is tough to follow at a couple of places, but it doesn’t feel too dangerous if you lean on the wall.
Going down the path, with the cliff above your head, you can’t see any buildings or roads or drain pipes or power lines. You can’t even hear any noise from the park. From right there, the canyon probably looks just like it did thousands of years ago. Now people are talking about building a new road through there, plus more houses and strip malls. There won’t be anywhere to go that hasn’t already been trampled.
So there are two dangers beyond the fence: falling off the cliffs, and falling back in time. Maybe the NO TRESPASSING signs are there to protect us, so we don’t know what we’re missing and regret it.
I have to be at school in a few hours . . . |
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If any other acquaintance were to bequeath his fragmented memoirs to me, I doubt that I’d find much cause for careful examination. I would act politely honored, and would diligently flip through them, mostly looking for anything relevant to the circles of my own life. But this was an entirely different situation, charged with energy of a surreal quality. I found myself repeating parts aloud, and lightly penciling underlines throughout.
I felt compelled to conduct my own investigation into the possible significance of what I surmised to be clues in the text. Using the dates of Robert’s journal entries to reference news archives and historic almanacs, I soon became hopelessly caught up in layers of mystery that materialized before me. My initial curiosity swelled in importance until it overshadowed every other personal interest and consumed much more than my free time.
But Robert and I had a unique friendship. We met no more than once, and from that brief encounter we emerged irrevocably bonded by a force I cannot explain. The contents of his journal constitute, if nothing else, evidence of extreme confusion and anxiety. It pains me to imagine his mental state as he lived the experiences he describes in the next series of entries—beginning with these baffling lines, which were scrawled diagonally on an undated page from the journal: |
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| FUN GLUING IGLOO ENOUGH ZULU RULE YEAH WE’RE GONNA LIFT HÄAGEN
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| FIND LOUIE MY GLOW MASK TOOTH YOUR LYING MONOCLE TOBOGGAN |
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| THE IN CLUE HE DIDN’T KNOW MUST FOOL WHO ARE ALL YOU GONE GLYPH JOGGIN’ |
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| September 29, 1987 (page 1 of 3) |
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The last two days have changed my life. Now I know what Grumpo meant in his inscription about one-way doors. Once something is seen, it can never be unseen again.
Monday morning I was walking to school, but I stopped about halfway there. I had a feeling like I forgot something—but I couldn’t imagine what. As I stood there, trying to hear myself think, I heard something else.
Actually it was more physical, like really deep bass from big speakers. I felt it in my guts. I thought it was coming from somewhere behind me, around Arrow Trail Park. I can imitate the feeling now by grumbling in my throat, like a Buddhist monk or something. But I don’t think what I heard came from any kind of vocal chords.
The idea of going to school started to bother me. I had to get closer to the sound, figure out what was making it. For the first time, I would ditch school in order to learn something. I could tell it was going to be an important day.
I think Grumpo would have done the same thing. Since he’s been gone, there’s nobody left to do things his way, to keep up the “classic Coyman spirit.” It’s like that movie Quest for Fire—somebody has to go out and find the magic stuff to stop darkness and coldness from taking over. Grumpo used to do that for us. Maybe now it’s up to me.
So I turned back across Morning Ridge Road. About a minute later I was looking at the softball field, picnic tables and tennis courts by the parking lot of Arrow Trail Park. Beyond that is a grassy area where kids play soccer, and then the high chain-link fence with NO TRESPASSING signs, and finally the cliffs. That’s where I was going, of course.
About halfway there, I realized I wasn’t hearing the sound anymore. I tried to listen, or feel for it, but got nothing. Maybe it had already done its job, bringing me this far. I’d be lying if I said I had any clue about what was going on.
I looked up just in time to stop from walking into the fence. I seemed to be losing track of myself, forgetting little pieces of time. Whatever this weird trance was, I wasn’t doing it on purpose.
I got around the fence in the usual way, and spotted the path down into the canyon. One look over my shoulder to see if anyone was watching, then I started down.
It happened again.
No time seemed to have passed, but I found myself standing at the bottom of the path, already on the canyon floor. The short hike down the cliffs had totally slipped my memory. I checked my watch, and saw that it was half an hour later than I thought it was.
I had left for school on time, same as other students from my neighborhood. I didn’t feel like I had been standing there for 30 minutes. But why would it take me that long to come down the path? Before that, the gap in my mind from the middle of the park to the fence. Where did the time go? |
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| September 29, 1987 (page 2 of 3) |
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So there I was on the canyon floor, staring up at the cliffs, wondering. From down there, you can see that the plateau is some kind of oddity. None of the other hills are flat on top, or so steep on the sides. Normally, formations like this have layers in the rock that show how it was all laid down over millions of years. But this plateau is just one solid piece, like it was all stirred in a cement mixer and poured into a giant mold.
Just as I was about to start walking, the sound came back. But when I tried to focus on it, I lost it. It was almost teasing me, staying just out of reach. Like when a little speck of something drifts across your eyeball—the more you follow it, the more it jumps around.
My head started hurting. I got the same frustrated feeling as before, like I was forgetting something, only now I was being punished for it. The pain got worse, so I tried to relax all the muscles in my head, closing my eyes and covering my ears. But the pressure kept building, and I thought blood might shoot out of my nose at any second. I felt something like popcorn popping in my sinuses, followed by a big pop in my ears. And suddenly I wasn’t there anymore.
This time, I found myself in a place I didn’t know at all. Very dark, very quiet, very still. The air was thick, and it had a taste like bad pancake syrup. My eyes tried to adjust, but couldn’t find any light whatsoever. Under my feet was a weird material, like a combination of stone and wax. It was cold and hard, but the surface had a rubbery texture, like you could dig your nails into it. It made me realize that I wasn’t wearing shoes. I wasn’t wearing anything.
For a minute I panicked. This had gone too far. First I was hearing noises and ditching school, and now I was naked in who-knows-where. If I ever got out of here and told someone about it, they would think I was on drugs.
Whatever I had been daydreaming about adventure, it drained out of me at that moment. I would have rather been sitting in chemistry class, moving my pen around so the teacher wouldn’t know I was two-thirds asleep. I wanted to know what time it was, to know which part of my safe, daily routine I could have been doing.
I adjusted my feet, trying to steady myself, and felt stickiness on the ground. When I bent down and poked a couple of fingers at it, there was a flash of light, and I thought I saw a tall object in the corner of my eye. That startled me, so I stood up straight—too fast, I guess, because I got lightheaded for a minute.
The stuff on my fingertips felt like tree sap mixed with baby oil. It was definitely what caused the sweet-stale smell. I wasn’t feeling adventurous enough to try tasting it. Not anymore. All I wanted was to get back to where I came from.
That’s when I discovered that I was surrounded by obstacles, and I could hardly take a step without losing my balance. I tripped over something and banged my elbow on something else, and whatever the things were, I couldn’t locate them again. |
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| September 29, 1987 (page 3 of 3) |
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“Hello!?” I yelled out, wondering if I was anywhere on earth. I tried that a few more times, and included a “Help!” just in case. There wasn’t any echo.
There was something vertical to my right, the only goal I could think of. I tried lifting my knees, keeping all my weight on the back foot until the other one found a solid place to step.
Before long, my right foot slipped down a trick slope, and into a funnel-shaped hole. My toes jammed together into a point and my knee buckled. My hands slapped down as I fell—and they both landed flat, on a big, wide, level surface. I felt my pupils shrink from a pale turquoise light that suddenly surrounded me.
Butt naked, I crouched on all fours in a circle of glowing blue-green that finally showed me where I was. Sort of. The ground beneath me looked like a gigantic slab of rock cut into puzzle pieces. I looked around, and saw what caught my eye before: a very wide, rough and bumpy column, made of the same stuff as the floor, but chunkier on the surface.
The stone, or whatever it was, was smoky dark but a little bit see-through. Kind of like marble, with wavy veins in it that lit up with that turquoise color. The light didn’t reach very far around me, and I still couldn’t see any walls or anything. There was just the column, big as a sequoia tree, reaching straight up into the blackness.
I stood up to get a better look, and went blind again. Somehow, my feet were no longer on a flat surface. I got dizzy, fell to my knees, and had to support myself with one hand on the floor. Then I could see. Apparently, my senses only worked when I was touching the floor with at least one hand. I picked it up again as a test, and sure enough, the lights went out and the floor changed under my feet. So I went back on all fours, heading for the column like some kind of clumsy werewolf.
The column was like a tower of magnified rock candy, with that dew-like sap all over the sharp edges and polygons pointing out in every direction. As I crawled to the base of it, I saw myself in a reflection.
Keeping one hand on the floor, I reached up with the other and pointed a finger at the column. But my reflection didn’t point back—it just stared out at me.
I couldn’t figure out what I was seeing. My mouth moved, or its mouth moved, saying something I couldn’t hear. Then my hand touched the cool, hard surface . . . |
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| The last few paragraphs showed steadily deteriorating penmanship, as explained by the next day’s continuation—produced with a dot-matrix printer, trimmed and pasted neatly onto both sides of a journal page: |
| September 30, 1987 |
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I had to stop writing last night because I was losing feeling in my fingers. But I have to record the rest of the story before it gets any more muddy in my head. Everything seems back to normal now, and I have had plenty of sleep. The last couple of days are starting to blur like dreams with no consequences.
So where was I? Touching that column with my hand. I can't explain what happened next, but here it is.
Underwater! In the blink of an eye, I found myself underwater. The column was still there in front of me, but somehow the entire place had flooded--instantly. By instinct, I held my breath and looked up. I felt my body heat draining away, and I started to float up off the floor. Everything went dark again, and I panicked. So I yanked my fingers away from the column. The water vanished and I fell a few inches, back onto my knees. My hair and skin were totally dry again. It was the weirdest feeling I've ever had.
Then came the second-weirdest feeling.
"Sit still a minute!" a familiar voice came at me from somewhere. I looked at the column where my reflection had been, but saw only the texture of the angled stone, covered in those weird droplets. I did what I was told and sat still, wondering how I could have heard that particular voice.
Something moved behind me and I gasped. I wanted to turn around, but something touched me in the back of the head before I could move. Whatever touched me, it made me black out... but not in the standard way.
I stayed conscious. I couldn't see or feel anything, except my heart beating. I tried to speak but couldn't make a sound. I wanted to ask who the voice was and what was happening to me. I already had an idea of the answer to the first question. It shouldn't have been possible... like a lot of things that day.
"Can anybody hear me?" I thought, trying to make the words physical. But there was only my pulse. At least that was something constant, and I could focus on it. It felt too fast for a while, then it relaxed.
I was in that perfectly silent place for a long time, it felt like, before anything else happened.
"Crumb Cruncher, is that you?" His voice again.
My reflex was to yell out "Grumpo!" but of course I couldn't. He talked anyway.
"What are you doing here?" His tone was wrong. Annoyed, even. "You should have gone to the ocean! Don't touch anything in that church, and just take the stairs!"
Go to the ocean? What church? What stairs? I felt like I was receiving messages meant for someone else. But he never called anyone else Crumb Cruncher, as far as I know. Grumpo seemed to think I should have known where I was and what I was doing. He didn't even sound happy to cross paths with his only grandson again.
If that actually was Grumpo.
Now I was very uncomfortable. My heart was thumping like crazy, and I thought I would totally lose it before much longer. Then, thankfully, the numbness started to let me go. The popcorn feeling came back to my sinuses, and even though the pressure was painful, I felt an awesome relief. It was the happiest headache of my life, because it meant I wouldn't be staying where I was. Finally my ears popped, and I escaped.
My legs were moving. I was walking, and there was a breeze, and daylight. This was the way home from school. My backpack was on my shoulder and a girl named Marine Ogden was walking next to me. I had no idea why we would walk together. I thought she always got rides.
Again, I felt like a stranger, living someone else's life. How could I say anything?
So I just blurted out, "Excuse me, I have to hurry," and ran the three blocks home. I went straight to my room and closed the door behind me.
I sat on the bed for a while, staring at an electrical outlet on the wall. I just wanted to feel time passing, like it used to do. I counted my breaths into the triple digits, and that's all I remember.
Next thing I knew, the streetlight was coming in my window instead of the sun. It was a little after 8:00 p.m. on my clock radio. My parents were home, just doing their own things, not checking on me. They had no idea that anything was going on. Not that I'm complaining... but it was a lonely feeling.
The phone rang in the living room. I heard my dad answering it, and then his footsteps coming to my room. He just tapped the door twice and said Marine Ogden was on the phone, then went back to his seat. I fumbled around for a minute, trying to think of what she had to do with anything. I didn't really know her, or what we might have to talk about. She was just a girl who went to my school.
I opened the door and grabbed the phone up off the carpet. I sat down again and looked at the phone in my hand, like it might give me a hint before I had to talk to Marine.
"Hello?" echoed through the earpiece, my own voice sounded strange to me.
"So?" Her voice was impatient. "I told you what I know. When is it your turn?"
As far as I knew, this was our first conversation. I felt lost all over again, sitting there on the corner of my bed. The bed reminded me of the plateau, and I saw that I was sitting on the southwest corner of the mattress.
"There's something going on at Arrow Trail Park," I told her, as if that would mean something to her. But it didn't. Marine just got more impatient.
"What happened to us working together?" she demanded. "You told me there aren't many people you can talk to. And I told you confidential information, thinking I could trust you with it. Now you act like we're total strangers again."
I tried to explain that her secret was safe because I honestly couldn't remember it. I had questions for her instead, but I started asking in the wrong order.
"What reason did we have for talking in the first place?"
That just made her mad. She hung up on me.
The first thing I should have asked Marine is what day it was. I got up and took the phone back to the living room, and stopped in my tracks when I saw the TV from the hall. My dad was watching Matlock on channel 4. That's a Tuesday night show. I went over by his chair, put the phone back on the table, and looked down at his stack of newspapers. The date was Tuesday, September 29!
From the bottom of the cliffs to Marine Ogden's phone call, I had lost about 36 hours. Did I go to school for two days that I couldn't remember? Did I start some kind of secret pact with a person I never talked to before?
For the first time, I really stopped and considered whether I was losing my mind, and if so, what life might be like from now on. Should I keep pretending that everything is normal, trying to quietly sort it out in my head? Or will my days keep falling apart until I wake up strapped to a bed in some mental hospital? What if this other me--the one that's been going to school and talking to Marine Ogden--what if he does something wrong? |
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So ends the last page consigned to me from Robert’s journal.
I wanted nothing more than to talk to him, to subject him to the litany of gnawing, gibbering questions he had planted in my brain—but I had no way to contact him. We had deliberately established our friendship on a whimsical foundation of unorthodox behavior, and I was now regretting it. If I wanted to know more, I would have to find out for myself.
At California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, I was able to spend a few hours in a computer lab connected to the World Wide Web. I searched for any mention of Chaparral Heights, Arrow Trail Park, and Robert Coyman. My stomach turned as one item appeared in the results: a page from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s logbook entitled “Missing Since 1/16/94.” According to the skillfully brief and uninformative text, Robert was last seen in the vicinity of Arrow Trail Park on the date of his final correspondence to me. He was described as mentally ill.
Also through the Internet, I pieced together a chilling series of what I can only imagine are coincidences—though I fear a tangible connection may later reveal itself. When I ponder the implications, I feel abject helplessness—the absurd, crushing impotence of a mortal in confrontation with the cosmos.
The supreme irony is that my fear only propelled me closer to the thing. After I jotted the following chronology, I could think of only one way to settle the spasmodic unease of my nerves: I had to eliminate what I could from the realm of the unknown. I had to go to Chaparral Heights. |
| Feb. 9, 1971 |
RWC born;
San Fernando earthquake |
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| Sep. 28–29, 1987 |
RWC’s “life-changing” 2 days |
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| Oct. 1, 1987 |
Whittier Narrows earthquake |
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| Jan. 16, 1994 |
RWC disappears |
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| Jan. 17, 1994 |
Northridge earthquake |
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