Worse Angels

by Laird Barron

  Danny’s a Horseheads boy. Big-time jock in school back when mullets were popular. Chummy with Sean and Linda. Danny went to their house for dinner a time or two. The Pruitts probably felt pity for him. No family of his own.

  Was it possible that the Pruitts’ marital problems stemmed from an affair between Linda and Danny?

  Shit, never thought of that. Whoa. There was a lot of opportunity. Hate to think they would do Sean that way.

  Anything else?

  Danny hunted on his days off. Sometimes he took Sean along to “butch him up.” Sean bragged he’d eaten raw liver and drank heart’s blood as a rite of bad-assedness. Stupid, if you ask me. Everybody says you don’t eat wild game north of Horseheads without charbroiling that shit. It’s all diseased. Then there was the hard-core partying. Raves and underground stuff. Sean wanted in on some fraternity deal with some of Danny’s high school buddies. Danny wouldn’t talk about the club or whatever in front of me. Valley citizens only.

  I pressed him on that. He hadn’t heard of the Mares of Thrace.

  Guess it all affected Danny’s work. He was in and out of the apartment at bizarre hours; got written up for being late and hungover. Common affliction on a construction crew. Single guys, even older guys, are particularly vulnerable. Wife and kids and a mortgage keep me honest or might’ve been right in there with him, partying hearty. I figured he’d get canned, but it never happened. We teased him that somebody upstairs had his back. Dude was untouchable. The units at the colony were reserved for out-of-town employees, but he scored a room anyhow. Probably because he lived in a tent or under a bridge before the job came along. Yeah, he was a favored son. Can’t say where he is today. Still in Horseheads, I suppose. Might be worth checking with the rednecks. His people, you know?

  A tidbit that stuck with me after the call was Thorpe’s comment that the Pruitts were friendly with Buckhalter, the lonely single guy. June Pruitt’s description of Sean’s “rough” friend “D” corresponded to this emerging portrait. D as in Danny? Any cop will tell you: Charity starts at home. Often, so does trouble. Daniel Buckhalter’s name got a double underline and an asterisk to boot.

  I continued to pressure Sean’s dad, Dr. Alex Pruitt, for a follow-up interview and was rebuffed by a wall of silence. Finally, I left a message stating that perhaps I might catch him at home one evening. This elicited a cryptic email response: You’ve seen King Diomedes’s herd where they frolic. Sean admired and envied them. It would be wise to seek the counsel of Drs. Campbell and Ryoko. Lunatic cults are their specialty. This is the full extent of my knowledge. Don’t contact me further. Yours, Dr. Alexander Pruitt.

  I’d maintained a lifelong fanboy interest in Campbell and Ryoko. Now Sean’s father had suggested the pair might know something. It bore investigation. I added it to the growing pile. Ted called them at a number we had on file to set up an interview. Whoever responded informed her the doctors declined to participate in phone conferences. Should I opt for an in-person visit, we would need to consult our respective calendars as they were busy, busy men. She promised to touch base with them soon.

  * * *

  ■■■

  Last night, a tiger came undetected onto our second raft and abducted a porter. The expedition is well armed with guns and spears. We have retained the services of an expert big-game hunter and guides. Lanterns were lighted. No one heard a disturbance, but we found the man’s sandal and his breeches, which were caught on a nail head. His comrades also discovered a quantity of blood. Several tigers have stalked us from the bank over the past five days. We saw one in the river, swimming behind the raft. Woodcutters wear masks that face backward to frighten the cats from creeping up behind. This strategy doesn’t always succeed. Humans are unwelcome here, except as a source of provender. This place is a reminder of our fragility, our insignificance.

  In the earliest days, man, or the hominids who predated man, rightfully feared the natural world. The darkness that covered the earth, and what dwelled in the darkness; upheavals and floods; the occulted moon and sun. Later, man imposed himself upon the world, and the darkness that encompasses the world, with metal and fire and dogs.

  Man declared himself the chosen of an almighty patron and those earlier fears were subsumed by adoring awe of He who ruled over all creation, and tribalistic antipathy toward nonbelievers. Then science came and over time, whittled down that patron creator. Science peeled away the illusion and showed us how minute, how alone we are in an unimaginably empty universe. Once again, man is afraid. And it is good.

  I opened my eyes at the desk in Meg’s spare room. In the absence of guests, we used the room as an office. The Campbell-Ryoko documentary The Forest That Eats Men played on my laptop on a loop. I’d fallen asleep for a long winter’s nap with it muttering in the background.

  Sean Pruitt had worshipped these larger-than-life characters and I empathized. As a teen, I’d seen Campbell and Ryoko in numerous appearances on Nova and Wild America, and occasionally hosting their own specials, delving into lesser-known aspects of the natural world. Their strings of abbreviated titles and honorifics were confounding. They wrote apostate bibles of zoology, biology, anthropology, and several related disciplines.

  Eccentric scientists who’d gotten rock-star famous by operating on the fringe during the wild and woolly ’70s and ’80s, the old boys’ prestige had diminished since their glory days. The duo had been categorically dismissed by the legitimate scientific community, and faded light-years beyond career resuscitation. Mainstream science wasn’t enamored of a pair of Fortean charismatics who dabbled in “exposing” Cold War black ops programs, Hollow Earth civilizations, cryptozoological secrets, or Illuminati conspiracies. Today, Campbell and Ryoko were closing in on ninety; forgotten except for a handful of scholars and the occasional grad student beguiled by fringe theories and VHS documentaries. Not even the History Channel featured them to wax professorial in its guest sound bites about cryptozoology or ancient alien astronauts.

  The current scene occurred at a tropical campsite. Grainy waves of static pulsed through the image of Campbell and Ryoko, hearty middle-aged adventurers in pith helmets and khakis, holding court by a firepit. Dr. Ryoko finished monologuing in response to an innocuous question. No questions were safe from monologues or soliloquies. This was before Campbell had managed to completely drag Ryoko into the mud, academically speaking. It was a work in progress.

  Dr. Campbell smiled urbanely at the camera. He adjusted his glasses.

  With due respect to my esteemed colleague, we are hardly alone. I posit that Earth may merely serve as the body farm of an extraterrestrial civilization. Should that civilization choose to make war on us? The outcome depends upon several factors, but it can be boiled down to this: Are the invading aliens moderately more advanced than us? Ah, then we’ll be eradicated as were the indigenous people of North America and Australia, for example . . . Are the invaders exceedingly advanced? In that case, imagine a family moving into an old, decrepit house infested with ants and wasps. The insect colonies will survive temporarily . . . in the cracks and beneath the ground.

  Certainly, the world is an ordinary place. The supernatural exists in the cracks; it presses in against the biodome that preserves mundane reality. Ineffable mysteries confound our sensibilities. Impact craters in South Africa and Argentina are fascinating examples. Paleolithic tribesmen carved images on the walls of the dikes that were formed by lava after the asteroid hit. Petroglyphs of animals inside the dike structures—

  Dr. Ryoko interrupted, gesturing impatiently.

  Cattle mutilation, extraterrestrial visitors, ancient global conspiracies . . . None of that nonsense exists. Thousands of reports, thousands of misidentifications and hoaxes.

  It merely requires a single verifiable incident to be authenticated, Dr. Campbell said, mild and mannered, unflappable. He’d been around this particular maypole on countless occasions. Laurel to Ryoko’s Hardy
. One and that’s the ball game for the die-hard skeptics.

  Sean would’ve been a tyke at that moment in history. The kid’s later windmill tilting in defense of Campbell and Ryoko might or might not prove relevant. Arguably, these old bastards were the type of kooky anthropologists one might expect to know the details of a cult like the Mares. It slotted perfectly into their Fortean research.

  I clicked the remote and aborted the pseudo-academic tit-for-tat. The screen froze; Dr. Campbell’s glasses reflected the fire, his mouth skinned wide in laughter. Dr. Alex Pruitt had said geography shaped the mind. I couldn’t disagree. Meddling adults shape a child’s mind too. I asked myself what went on in Sean Pruitt’s mind besides hero worship? What manner of demons had lurked there? Would identifying those demons reveal the truth about his fate?

  * * *

  ■■■

  I cyberstalked the Redlick Group, Zircon Corporation, and the Jeffers Project, among numerous related players. Real estate and chicanery are joined at the hip. Recently, two developers who’d brought foreign investment to an impoverished part of Vermont were accused of fraudulently acquiring hundreds of millions of dollars. The money came from more than six hundred foreign investors hoping to get a special visa through the federal EB-5 program. Lo and behold, several companies affiliated with either Zircon Corporation or the Redlick Group were tangentially involved in the caper. What did the kids say about corporate greed in America? There was no bottom.

  For dessert, I dove deep into the folklore of western New York. Meg’s connections scored me a sheaf of scanned historical documents detailing cult activity and uncanny incidents in the Southern Tier region. I supplemented my anthropology homework with phone calls to several university professors and a handful of authors. Unlike the typical stonewalling, these people were relatively eager to bend my ear once they got warmed up on the topic. Predictably, only the Valley High administration and school librarian rebuffed my inquiries.

  Nobody had much to impart regarding the Mares as such. However, it became apparent that a similar group, or the same group under aliases, had taken root in the Valley during colonial times. Old-world paganism blending with local mysticism and mutating into a different strain. The Mares of Thrace was an evolving society in that every few years it shed its skin and attached to a new thematic identity.

  I uncovered instances of the Mares operating as a youth auxiliary of rebel militias during the War of Independence; a Depression-era youth choir of a charismatic church; a Boy Scout troop; and of late, faux upperclassmen of Valley High circa the 1950s. Rumors of violence swirled in their wake, chiefly assaults and a string of murders and disappearances. Violent crime was low in Horseheads proper, but much more pronounced in neighboring towns, such as Corning. It seemed possible that if the Mares indulged in ritualistic violence, they tended to select victims outside their backyard.

  What use any of this would serve remained to be seen.

  I prepared a report for Adeyemi’s lawyer, omitting my own ethically questionable tactics and definitely not mentioning my speculation about occultism, black ops science experiments, or related conspiracy theories. To summarize, I admitted to possessing truckloads of suspicion and zero evidence to suggest foul play. However, I concurred with June Pruitt that Sean’s death tilted toward the suspicious side. Adeyemi would need to decide whether to continue the investigation after the New Year. If so, he’d be ponying up for hazard pay.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Despite my best efforts at exemplifying the qualities of a taciturn grouch, the forced vacation proved restorative to body and soul. I’d missed my little family while lumbering around Horseheads.

  Christmas Eve dinner was me and Lionel, and Meg and Devlin. After dinner, I watched an animated superhero movie with the kiddo. Devlin leaned into my side and fell asleep while his cartoon played on. It dawned on me that I felt very protective. I carried him to bed, reflecting, as Meg took over to tuck him in, that he’d gotten heavier. Somewhere along the way, I’d segued from “cool uncle” to a father figure. This scared me for reasons I chose not to interrogate.

  Because sensitivity isn’t one of my finest qualities, I asked Lionel why Delia hadn’t accompanied him for dinner. Was our spread too humble for Her Majesty? Was it his face? He said she’d fucked off to Italy on vacation with a guitar player who fronted a famous band none of us listened to. His disinterested tone wasn’t convincing anyone. I felt a twinge of guilt for interrupting his time with the Black Powder ladies.

  Lionel sat on the floor, sorting packages of toys, and scowling. His left arm was in a sling painted with snowflakes and candy canes. Devlin had insisted he wear a red and green elf cap while attending the festivities.

  “Most aggravating part of Christmas is how much of it boils down to some assembly required! Batteries not included!” He’d graduated from rum and Coke to plain rum with corresponding surliness.

  “Let us not forget the five A.M. wake-up call.” Meg glanced at the clock. “Popcorn and a movie, boys?” Bag popcorn and more rum and Cokes incoming.

  Counterintuitively, Christmas is the perfect occasion to revel in the horror genre and forget the horrors of the real world. She put on John Carpenter’s seminal 1978 slasher flick, Halloween. Having seen the film umpteen times, we drank and kibitzed. Michael Myers terrorized the original final girl, Laurie Strode, while Donald Pleasence, in the role of aged Dr. Loomis, plodded the streets of Haddonfield in pursuit of what he termed “pure evil.” I don’t laugh off such melodramatic pronouncements here in the shadow of middle age. The moral core of Halloween resonates, stronger and truer, as decades slide by and the world chases its own tail like Sean Pruitt’s ouroboros tattoo, or the strikingly similar (if one squinted) Mares of Thrace horse skull symbol.

  Meg, who loved critical dissection, had afforded the film’s premise some thought since our last Christmas screening.

  “When Michael Myers, aka the Shape, kills the German shepherd, you realize he’s overqualified for the babysitter massacre. He’s hell on wheels and slaughters everyone who crosses his path, yet a young girl and an old man ultimately defeat him. Why is that? To understand, we must examine the two most important members of the dramatis personae. Old man Loomis is a stand-in for Van Helsing of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. He uses his .38 snub as a crucifix against the ultimate plodding unkillable monster, which is Count Dracula minus the gothic style and barely repressed sexuality. Michael Myers’s sexuality manifests as hatred for those he catches coupling, and an inchoate desire for Laurie Strode that he can only act upon through violence. Slasher logic: If you use that pussy outside of marriage, or if you use that pussy for your own pleasure, I will stab you with my steely, metaphorical cock.” Note that she repeatedly jabbed my tender biceps to emphasize this last point.

  “Stabbing is fucking by other means. I digress. Only Dr. Loomis and the Final Girl have power over the demonic figure. Whether the Shape is an agent of Satan or a similarly aligned god of darkness makes no difference. Loomis/Van Helsing is an emissary of the Church and thus God’s chosen warrior; Laurie Strode/Mina Harker is pure, virginal, and protected by the mantle of divinity. Only these two can effectively thwart or harm the Shape because both are instruments of God. The end.”

  “Damn, girl,” Lionel said. He was pretty far into the bag. “I didn’t know you got religion. That’s weirdly hot.”

  “I didn’t get religion. I know why it’s catching, though.” She winked. “On a related topic, I find it interesting that nuns are obsessed with, yet highly resistant to, phallic imagery.”

  “I hope we can give that subject the attention it deserves next Christmas,” I said.

  Later, Meg and I were in bed. Since phallic nuns and serial killers were on my mind, I told her Bellow’s story about the orchard owner who murdered itinerants and how the creep grinned as the cops carted him to prison. Told her that the killer had been genial and well-spoken. I explained the horror of hi
s capriciousness, his convivial affect.

  “It means nothing when a predatory sociopath speaks.” Meg knelt on my thighs as she slipped off her nightgown. She was a silhouette, except for where the nightlight hit the wing of hair breaking over the curve of her shoulder. “What you have is a non-reciprocal pattern of noise designed solely to lull or deceive. Mimicry is the whole deal. A predatory sociopath’s mouth is emitting sounds about the weather, the stock market, a bad day at the job. It’s asking questions designed to disarm, to cultivate a bond: Can you help me? Do you have the time? I seem to be lost. We’re the same. Trust me.”

  She slid her body along mine. It was slightly disconcerting because I couldn’t see her face, but felt the heat of her breath, tasted its liquor sweetness when she kissed my lips.

  “They aren’t thinking of those questions, not even as the necessary mental articulations of a ruse. Their minds are compartmentalized; there’s minimal overlap between thoughts and words. What they’re thinking is how to sell you that junk car, screw you out of your life savings, or how to kill you and taxidermy the corpse.”

  “Let me repeat the immortal words of Lionel Robard: Damn, girl. This isn’t the sexy talk a man expects on Christmas Eve.”

  She stroked my hair. Her hands were strong, like the rest of her.

  “Do you want to come with me to the Rail Trail tomorrow?” I said.

  “Tomorrow’s Christmas. You haven’t a snowball’s chance in hell of setting foot outside.”

  “The day after?”

  “How about I come with you right now?” she said. “The future will take care of itself.”

  * * *

  ■■■

  The dreaded wake-up call didn’t sound until six-thirty A.M. Devlin was just old enough to think diving onto the bed (like he’d done last year) was babyish. He yelled into the bedroom on his way to the tree. I expressed surprise we’d gotten the extra time. Meg whispered in my ear that the cough syrup had done its job well. From the living room, Lionel’s snores were cut short by his moan of anguish. Minerva barked her throaty bark, caught up in the excitement that visits a household but once per year.