Worse Angels

by Laird Barron

  “In Japan, oarfish sightings augur ill,” I said. “Upstate New York, it’s rednecks and eels.”

  “Seen any eels lately?”

  “No, but we have a bumper crop of rednecks. And Redlicks.”

  “Are you happy with the change of scenery, the new gig? Domestic bliss?”

  Happy? I was too introspective to ever fall prey to that breed of complacency. Happiness tends to ricochet off me, as should be the case for people of my ilk. Best-case scenario? I’ll die the way Mifune did at the end of Throne of Blood—shouting defiant threats from a balcony while a bunch of disgruntled former comrades turn me into a pincushion. Realistically, it’ll happen on an ice floe or on the tundra in winter. Ravens will pick my bones. A fortune-teller predicted that I’d die in the cold. Nothing I could articulate to Bellow even though, as a fellow traveler, he might understand.

  He saw that I wasn’t going to answer.

  “Changing the subject. Are those Viking rejects planning to kill Lionel?”

  “Kill? Or maim?”

  A biker heaved upright. Tall, heavy, and dangerously embarrassed. He glanced at our table, having seen the three of us wander in as a posse. Calculating the odds, no doubt. I gave him an ice-water stare, held it, and waved with my fingers. He looked at Lionel and the women, back to me and Bellow, and sat.

  “We’d best retrieve Lionel,” Bellow said. “He and his lady friends are on their third round of tequilas. Nothing good happens after the third shot of tequila.”

  I volunteered to ruin Lionel’s evening. He was past walking under his own power by the time I reached him.

  “It’s later than you think,” he said as I lifted him in a fireman’s carry and headed for the door.

  The ladies pouted. The bikers uttered a muted hurrah with jazz hands.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Morning came along in a hurry.

  I showered, dressed for trudging in the woods, trailer parks, and abandoned towns, then splurged for breakfast on my tab in the enormously expensive hotel restaurant. The plan was to head home that afternoon and table the legwork aspect of the investigation until I’d successfully withstood the holidays.

  The boys awaited me at the motel. Decent weather; bright and cold. I presented Bellow a sack of donuts and hot coffee from a chain shop. His eyes were watery and owlish. Otherwise, he was tip-top and raring to charge. Lionel, conversely, looked like he’d toppled off the back of a speeding garbage truck. The motel wall kept him upright until he staggered forward and performed a Chaplin-esque face-plant into the backseat of the SUV.

  “He went to bed in those clothes,” I said.

  “Same clothes, same face,” Lionel said without raising his head from where he’d tucked it between his knees. Two days without shaving and he had the makings of a beard. “Those girls last night. They had an interesting comment about the Jeffers site.”

  “Don’t you puke in here, soldier.” I might have gunned the engine and peeled rubber with slightly more exuberance than exiting the motel lot warranted. “You were blabbing about the case with a pair of barflies? Go on.”

  “Amigo, I was investigating. One of ’em said the collider site gets active after sundown. People see unusual lights and hear odd sounds out there at night.”

  “Patrols,” I said. “Night watchmen doing their rounds.”

  “The girls said there aren’t any night watchmen.” He breathed heavily. “I think we got ourselves a Hardy Boys mystery on our hands. Curse of the Collider.”

  “Lord, he slept in the tub,” Bellow said to me under his breath.

  “Lucky you,” I said. “I’ve fished him out of the toilet as the bubbles were getting smaller.”

  “Today will be a day of suffering,” Lionel said.

  “He happens to himself,” I said to Bellow.

  “I could use a drink,” Lionel said, muffled. “Hair of the dog.”

  “Lionel, there aren’t any fucking drinks left,” I said.

  “Guys. I may have to execute a Technicolor yawn.” He remained in the duck-and-cover position, to my consternation. “Um. What goes down will come up. Curse of the Tequila Shots!”

  I urgently pressed the power window controls.

  * * *

  ■■■

  The fastest route to the colony took me through Morrow Village. The burg was even spookier in broad daylight. Citizens may well have abandoned the area en masse in the ’70s. Then hippies, bikers, and scavengers crept in over the years and occupied the ruins. On the downhill side of town where forest ceded to a stretch of marsh, a crater obliterated the road at an intersection governed by a dead traffic light. Obviously, locals had detoured around the crater since forever—I went jouncing and bouncing over a clearing, at a precarious angle along a deeply rutted hillside, and back onto asphalt. Same as everybody else, apparently.

  Lenny Herzog proved a man of his word. He threw open the tall metal gate to Jeffers Colony as I pulled in beside his rattletrap Datsun. I suppose every Datsun in existence was a jalopy by definition.

  “Unit 435.” He stuck his face close to mine and pressed a key into my hand. “One hour, as agreed. Don’t get sticky fingers.” He gave everybody in the car the hairy eyeball, as though he’d slept on the deal and jolted awake consumed with buyer’s remorse.

  I assured him we were only here to snoop and maybe take pictures. Contrary to popular mythology, a PI license doesn’t indemnify one against trespassing, much less B&E. I wasn’t required to observe cop procedures, but neither was I afforded the privileges or authority of a cop. Herzog’s permission was a murky area, although Bellow’s presence mitigated that particular concern.

  “Didn’t people pack their shit when they left?” Lionel said.

  “Oh, there’s treasure to be found here,” Herzog said. “Living units for eighteen hundred employees. Movie theater, post office, grocery store, community center. Swimming pool. The whole kit and caboodle. The camp shut down overnight. Residents had hours to pack valuables and scram. Bosses promised everyone could return later. Didn’t happen. This gate closed and that was that.”

  I envisioned him slinking house to house, picking through abandoned “treasure” like a two-legged coyote.

  “One hour means one hour,” he said.

  Bellow checked the rearview after we passed through the gate.

  “He’s adamant about that one-hour business. What do you suppose happens if we’re late?”

  “We turn into pumpkins.” I estimated how many laws we were breaking and the mandatory minimum sentence range for trespassing on a defunct government facility. It comforted me to have a Fed in the car, for once. Should trouble descend, I’d let Bellow do the fast-talking.

  There’s a threshold upon which artificial ecosystems begin to collapse. The colony had exceeded this demarcation and proceeded to an accelerated state of decay. At a remove, the modular structures presented a sturdy façade. Closer inspection revealed algae stains, water-streaked windows, and bubbled paint. Rust bled through everywhere. Windows were boarded. Herzog diligently mowed the grass and trimmed the juniper hedges. He’d hastily and incompletely scrubbed graffiti from the post office windows—perversions of the Redlick logo. Stick figures were impaled upon the barbed wheel; stick figures roasted in crimson flames. The graffiti was similar to the artwork at the Nameless Field on Vulture Bluff.

  Some street lamps were smashed. Birds decomposed in the gutters. The broken glass and graffiti merely accented the ongoing hostile reclamation of this patch of land. Herzog was fighting a rearguard action that barely tamed the camp’s devolution and reversal into primeval darkness. Yeah, the old Beat writer William Burroughs had been onto something: Nature does not want for evil in the absence of humanity. Organized wickedness is exchanged for the insensate craving of a much greater and no less ruthless organism.

  “Good grief, look at this vandalism,” Bellow
said. “Kids? Disaffected locals who were kicked off the job? That had to be an economic mess.”

  I thought of sullen locals scaling the fence, brandishing cans of spray paint. Then I thought of the group dressed in high school uniforms at the Nameless Field.

  “Not kids.” I slowed the vehicle to walking speed. The sense of being observed came in waves. “It’s a tumor. This camp. The construction zone. The tunnel. Mother Earth is pushing back hard.”

  “There’s a site in the interior of Alaska,” Bellow said. “Macintyre Hill. Similar setup for a mining operation. Abandoned and gone to seed. Heard of it?”

  “No.”

  “I’m surprised.”

  “Alaska is a graveyard of abandoned towns and radar installations. World War Two bunkers honeycomb the Aleutians. I poked around inside one on a hill overlooking Dutch Harbor. Haven’t seen it all.” The late second act of my life was convincing me of that.

  * * *

  ■■■

  Unit 435 hadn’t fared any better than the rest of the decaying houses. The key stuck in the front door lock and the knob turned grudgingly. Dampness had swollen the door in its frame. The interior was a bland duplex model; living room, kitchenette, bath, and matching coffin bedrooms. Gloomy at midmorning. I flipped the light switch to test the power. Juice flowed, although the globes were chock full of mummified insects and the effect was ghastly and I killed it after several seconds. Desiccated corpses of mice and bats were strewn about. Mold spread in blue-green glaciers across the carpet; it had eaten into the drapes and ceiling tiles.

  “That’s a fuckton of dead rodents.” Lionel played the beam of his flashlight across the floor.

  “Pesticides,” Bellow said. “Can’t you picture the corporate overlords driving through town in trucks, dosing the neighborhood with gas? That’s how they deployed DDT when my parents were little. Children played in that poison.”

  As he spoke, my personal vision of it was a crop duster with a Redlick emblem bombing the town. Another part of my inner self worried that the answer was something entirely worse.

  “My advice is don’t lick your fingers after you touch anything,” I said.

  The long-dead fridge contained a nauseating mess of gray fuzz. Cabinets contained boxes of oatmeal and cereal shredded by mice. One of the bedroom windows had shattered inward. Branches of a dogwood choked by bittersweet vines twisted over the threshold and clutched the bedframe. Water had eroded patches of the ceiling. Moldering magazines, moldering clothes, moldering furniture, mouse shit. A common atmosphere pervades abandoned property that varies by age and particular violence, not dissimilar to the spectrum of aged scotch. Standing among ruins is an eerie reminder of mortality. We are meat and Mother Nature must eat.

  Herzog wasn’t kidding that the residents had vacated in a rush. An occupant must’ve been busy packing when he received the order to vamoose. His suitcase lay sprung on the bed, trailing socks and pants like guts. Nothing sinister happened to the former occupants of Jeffers Colony. Records indicated they’d transferred to other jobs or returned to local unemployment rolls. This wasn’t the scene of a mass disappearance or slaughter, but a snapshot sans context. Even so, it got under my skin. The implication felt unreasonably pointed, unnervingly profound. Yes, yes, these weak fucks escaped on a technicality. The polar caps are melting, bitches. Prehistoric viruses are awakening as permafrost softens into mud. I’m coming, ape. I’m coming and my jaws are wide enough to swallow you whole.

  Lionel studied a torn poster of vintage Cher in a two-piece bathing suit. Mold had warped the beloved superstar into a demonic monstrosity from a medieval woodcut.

  “Friends, what in the blue fuck are we hoping to find here?”

  I hadn’t quite thrown in the towel and Bellow was switched into another mode entirely. He silently and methodically toured the apartment, poking at coagulated laundry and assorted detritus with a busted broom handle. Scratching on a closet door caught his attention. He slid the panel aside and a large possum hissed as it waddled backward into the shadow of its lair.

  “Don’t get any ideas,” I said to Lionel. I moved farther into the apartment and checked the bathroom and a storage closet. The storage area housed a washer-dryer combo. End of the line. Concentrating, I mentally cleared away the current mess, focusing on how the unit appeared during the height of the project. Who, if anyone, surveyed the contents after Sean Pruitt died? To my knowledge, there might not have been an accounting of any kind.

  Lionel was right; nothing had survived. We wouldn’t be able to separate the routines and lives of men from the passage of time. The image was corrupted with no chance to re-create or rehabilitate it. Despite my cynicism, I’d almost begun to hope I was onto something, that perhaps I’d salvage a clue, an incriminating photo or note, or a ghostly phone message. Dust, rust, mold, jettisoned clothing, shredded paper, and tiny animal corpses were the sum and the legacy of those who’d moved on. The meaningful lack of evidence compounded the simple math; the ME and cops had performed their due diligence and correctly concluded a suicide had occurred. Sean Pruitt went to Shaft 40 and jumped to his death.

  Tidy, except for pesky, nagging details. Sean Pruitt had taken a sauna, scraped his nails, anointed his entire body with mineral oil, and dosed himself with a combination of drugs including synthetic peyote. That sounded like a ritual. How had Boss Man described the Mares of Thrace? Pentecostal, minus the Christianity.

  Pensive and annoyed, I gripped my squash ball; twenty-five repetitions with the right, thirty with the left because that hand needed all the help it could get, and as I meditated, a question materialized. When crashing with friends in cramped quarters, where does one sleep? With a kind of dazed apprehension, I went to the couch in the living room and pulled out the cushions. Two quarters, a ballpoint pen, and lint. There was a floor vent near the couch. I lifted the grill and spotted a white smudge in the murk. A wadded handkerchief was tucked into the space. The handkerchief contained a wedding band and a bent photo of Sean Pruitt and his wife, Linda. June Pruitt had mentioned the ring was missing and presumed it stolen. A klepto paramedic would’ve made for a simpler explanation. Reality bends in strange directions. The photo was similar to the one she gave me; the couple was younger, less careworn in this version. On the back Sean Pruitt had scribbled, To my darling, Rita: Youth, Looks, and Love Everlasting. The wedding band was inscribed, Darling Sean, Love of My Life, Linda.

  I flipped over the photo. Who the hell was Rita?

  “Oh, come on,” Lionel said upon examining the evidence. “We were almost in the clear. Tell you what, put that thing back and we’ll pretend it doesn’t exist.”

  “Tallyho, boys,” Bellow said as he ambled toward us.

  I pocketed the evidence.

  “It’s a bust.”

  Bellow shrugged and continued to the front door. Lionel made frantic bug eyes at me. I shushed him with a throat-slash motion and followed Bellow.

  A man would only stash his wedding ring on the way to a rendezvous with fate if he didn’t expect to return. That’s a man who anticipated doom; either by his own hand or a helpful push from another. I wasn’t sure how to feel. Dread was in the lead by a nose.

  Sadly, this meant the drive home to the Hudson Valley was on hold for a few hours.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  I don’t travel without tools of the trade: duffel bag containing outdoor clothes (ninja gear, Lionel called this ensemble), dehydrated fruit, canteen, flashlight, matches, first aid kit, two-way radios, et cetera. More pertinently, I’d concealed extracurricular devices in a hollow panel where the rental agency stored the spare tire: Mossberg shotgun, entrenching tool, bolt cutters, hacksaw, plastic ties, coil of rope, duct tape, and so on. I was ready for trouble when I made the command decision to break into the Jeffers Project and have a firsthand look at where Sean Pruitt died.

  Bellow watched Lionel and me plastering mud on the SU
V’s plates. He forestalled my explanation with a curt gesture.

  “The less I know, the less I know. Catch you later.” He paid Herzog fifty bucks to give him a lift into town. Herzog was raking it in, thanks to us tourists. I hoped the old woodsman bargained for an immunity deal. Off they putted in that wired-together pickup. Convenient. To my way of thinking, it was best that Herzog not have any notion as to my plans either.

  Lionel and I zipped over to the north side of the Jeffers Project site, which lay a quarter mile south of the colony. We parked at the north gate, which had once served as a main entry point for the construction teams. An access road ran between the inner and outer fences, circumnavigating the entire track. Lionel didn’t find any evidence of an active camera or alarm. The powers that be probably figured threats of massive fines and imprisonment would deter most trespassers. He cautioned that I should accept his estimation with a grain of salt. It was well within the realm of possibility that a private security company sent random patrols to discourage professional thieves on the prowl for loose equipment, copper wire, and the like. I’d already gotten busy. I snipped the lock with the bolt cutters, shoved aside the gate, and headed the SUV onto the path.

  We endeavored the relatively lengthy drive. At roughly half-mile intervals, dinky modular shacks served as access nodes to the subterranean superstructure. Riding from south to north through tall timber, the numbers painted on the sides of the modulars counted down. Soon, as we crossed into the unfinished sector, the shacks disappeared, replaced by scaffolds and placards in bulldozed lots. Forty-two, forty-one, and forty. Berms of rocks, gravel, and black earth formed a semicircle around a ten-foot-by-ten-foot hole sealed by a sheet of pig iron. Orange ticker tape and VERTICAL DROP signs did their duty. They’d installed a panel hatch in the iron sheet. We cut the locks, and grunting and groaning, lifted it on corroded hinges. Damp odors of spoiled earth and rusting metal wafted from the hole.