Stonefish

by Scott R. Jones

  Accompanying the article was a nice old-school half-toned black and white photo of Gregor, fresh-faced and grinning, hefting a chunk of plaster in his arms. There was the track, looking for all the world like a child’s drawing of a footprint, huge and blocky with evenly spaced and similarly sized toes.

  Slow news day in Watts was my first thought upon finding the article. That, and the clear fact that Dermot Huffnagel was a name upon which I could scarcely improve. Then I recalled that things were different then. People liked this stuff before the noönet. Bigfoot, lake monsters, the chupacabra, Mothman. All of them, small morsels of outer weirdness, kept at a safe distance on the far edge of the public awareness. The high strange. Something to make the banal horror of the everyday bearable. Then we all got into each other’s heads and found weirdness we could be comfortable with. Holy men and psych men had been telling us for centuries that yes, yes, we were all the same beneath the skin, in our heart of hearts, all chillens of the living god or gods, and so it was, so it was.

  That’s the feeling when you in the noönet.

  Before all that, though. Before all that you had the distracting wars, and the political posturing on whatever issue mattered the least, and the manufactured star systems spinning, sequined, sexual. The rats, racing, racing. And if you weren’t wired that way, if genocide and environmental collapse and social disorder and celebrity fuckfests didn’t float your boat, there was always the fringe stuff. There were the aliens. There was the Bloop. There were reptilians and Mongolian death worms, Men in Black and a serpent in every lake. The fucked-up-if-true facts, the wild and woolly and wondrous. There was always sasquatch.

  The young Gregor Makarios had sasquatch, up there in the Cascades. Young Gregor had sasquatch in his backyard and on the brain.

  I write this with some significance, because after the noönet came up and the planet got that feeling, reports of the paranormal type all but disappeared from the collective consciousness. Certainly it was no longer even the kind of thing you’d see on a slow news day. Even something legitimately strange, like, say, the Numpty, barely registered as something to worry about, because you could know, instantly, that professionals were on it, watching and learning from it, making their plans, doing their experiments. Did our tolerance for bullshit vanish? I’m not sure. I’m not sure we didn’t trade one type of weirdness for another, turning from the outside to the inside. The sense that the weirdness within our own skulls, verified on the daily by the lived experience of that profound connection with your friends, neighbours, random strangers. Granted, that connection was severely mediated, with all that the word implies, but still. Still, it was enough.

  The UFO trackers had faded away. The amateur marine biologists and the armchair cryptozoologists, too. No more monsters, no more monster investigators. Quaint anachronisms all. So long, Dermot Huffnagel and Company. The sasquatch retreated to the depths of the black woods, the mountain the cave the dwindling glacier, leaving nothing for their hunters to hunt. It was the end of a bizarre era in human knowledge gathering.

  It’s out there, somewhere, the world champion of hide and seek. It’s got to mean something.

  To think that Gregor Makarios—futurist, entrepreneur, visionary, head of Phraxos Development, purveyor of wonders, ex-husband to EDM chanteuse and provocateur Krimes, seemingly permanent resident of the bleeding edge—was once this gullible kid? That alone was a story.

  Who else knew this about Makarios, I wondered. Who else knew of his brief, secret career as a teenage sasquatch hunter. Greg Mallory, Cascadian Cryptozoologist. Probably no one. Could he have forgotten this? The look in his eyes in the photograph. The fever and yearning I’d come to know so well, that was there, I wasn’t folding it in from the future. Can a man just drop an obsession, no matter how blinkered and off-putting it is? Can a man forget his first time being written up for the local rag? No more than he can forget his mother, in my experience.

  Which meant he left the article to be found. Buried, sure, beneath layered strata of garbage data and mouldering pennysaver platitudes and mountain community calendars, but there it was. There it was.

  I knew then that I was on to him. On to something, at any rate. A terrible hunch was growing in me, damp and bristly.

  It’s got to mean something.

  Finding the last known reported sasquatch sighting was the work of a literal moment. The year was 2059, the same year Gregor Makarios had disappeared. I had a date, some names, a couple inches of column from yet another local rag, a weak collection of clickbaiting social media posts complete with commentary that was equal parts excitable and ignorant, a blurry pic of another kid’s doodle of a footprint embedded in the muck of a bad trail, and a slightly less blurry one of two men in rough outdoor clothing, reflective jackets and thick wool work shirts in unassuming plaids, clearly staged against a backdrop of black woods, a limp line of chain link fencing holding the vegetation in casual check. One of the men was holding a plaster cast of the track while the other pointed off into the distance, presumably in the direction of the incident.

  NEW MASSET MEN ENCOUNTER LEGEND read the column headline. New Masset was a town on the northern island of Haida Gwaii, in the far northwestern reaches of the Cascadia bloc. If Gregor had travelled there, would he have talked with these guys? Just three monster-hunting bros shooting the shit? Briefly hopeful of connecting a dot or two, I cross-referenced the names of the men against available records and, sure enough, both had died within the last decade. Such was my luck.

  It was a start, though. Not a great one, but a place to go in the real world. Ten minutes later, I had a go-ahead from Wilder and a promise of a budget once he’d run my plans past New Heretic accounting.

  “Don’t expect much, Secord,” he said. “But I’ll do what I can. Jesus, Bigfoot? Seriously?”

  “A childhood obsession, yeah.” I briefly debated giving Wilder the run-down on my research, attempt to explain where I was going with this, then thought better of it. Bare bones was what Ky liked, until you had more than bare bones. “From before Makarios was, well, Makarios. Greg Mallory.”

  “Mallory? What, he change his name?”

  “Mother’s name.”

  “Ah. I had a great uncle said he shot at a chupacabra once.”

  “Yeah? Did he kill it?”

  “Fucked if I know, kid, the guy’s brain was bad cheese from Alzheimer’s as long as I knew him. Anyway, moving on, you go dig around, enjoy the area, I hear it’s nine kinds of gorgeous. And bring me back a story, if you can.”

  If I could. Wilder was already a thousand miles away.

  And like that, I was off.

  ***

  The crèche were not happy with my news. Duhren and Ceri grumbled about it but didn’t actually say much, but then, as tertiaries they rarely did. My primaries, Sam and Inga, were responsible for bringing the concerns of the crèche to me personally, and they took that responsibility seriously.

  “It’s three thousand kilometres from here, Den,” Sam said that evening over dinner. I’d arrived home a few hours before, announced my travel plans, and retreated to my room to pack. There had been an invite to a chatroom a moment later, hastily deleted, followed by a text from Inga.

  sorry about that, talk later?

  She signed it with a kiss emoji. I didn’t mind the passive aggression. They’d need to talk about it without me first, but of course they’d want me to know they were doing it.

  “Three thousand, Den. That’s a long way.”

  “An hour in the loop up to YVR, Sam. Maybe ninety minutes in the air to Haida Gwaii. I could literally commute.”

  “But you won’t, will you,” Inga put in.

  “Well, no. No, I won’t be doing that. Best to stay for a bit, get to know the locals, see who knows what. I’ll need my actual feet on the ground at some point.”

  Ceri was smiling, and the kids grinned in response. There were times when it seemed they had no eyes for anyone but her. “Our Den, beating bushes for a story.
Real bushes, with leaves and everything. It’s too perfect.”

  “It’s just the job, love.”

  “Cascadia, Den,” muttered Duhren. “It’s not the bushes getting beaten I’m worried about. All the white supremacist groups migrated there after that...thing. Well, that series of things.”

  “Only to the southern zones, man. Oregon, mostly. Their ranches and compounds. My skin won’t be an issue on Haida Gwaii. There’s some indigenous there that are darker than me.”

  “And this is for, what, again? Monsters?” Inga, who had sent and deleted the invite earlier. Inga, who did this kind of thing all the time. I’d uploaded my itinerary and goal summary to the crèche the moment they were ready; she, and everyone, knew why I was travelling. I mean, they had the bare bones of it, anyway. Bare bones for all.

  “Just tracking down a possible lead. Wilder wants me to find Makarios. This is where the story is taking me, so, gotta go. Inga, it’s all in the summary.”

  “Fine, okay, but I like to hear from you, yes? You are barely home these days, and I want to see your eyes when you say it.”

  I looked her in the eyes, and in doing so looked them all in their eyes. Looked myself in the eyes, even. We were a crèche and this was how it was.

  That feeling when you in the noönet.

  “I won’t be long. It’s for the job. I’ll stay safe.”

  Sam grunted. “Not much connectivity up there.”

  “There’s some,” I said. “New Masset. Where I’ll be staying.”

  Sam looked pained and pulled his fingers through his beard. “Yeah, I dipped in there for a bit. It’s like a...what did they used to call ’em? A ghost town.” His anxiety was really flaring up. “A ghost town, Den. They’re hardly there.”

  “But they are there, Sam. For work and so on. Like me.”

  “Can’t imagine what anyone does up there.” Duhren, ever practical. I was glad he spoke up, finally. Ceri took his left hand, folded it into hers.

  “Environmental studies. Right, Den?” she said.

  “Mostly. Threat assessment. Cultural rehabilitation and historical work also. There have been people there for ten thousand years plus, so it’s not like they’re just going to give up on the place because of a few tsunamis.”

  Inga sighed and started clearing the table, while Duhren rounded up the kids for bed. They both kissed me as they passed; Duhren the top of my head, and Inga on the cheek. I felt a flush of misplaced guilt, then a breath of anger. This was my job, after all. I pushed it all down and away, for the sake of peace.

  “The dahl was amazing, Inga,” I offered.

  “Don’t drown, please.”

  “I’ll stay dry. And thanks.”

  Only Ceri and Sam remained seated, but it was clear from her posture and closed eyes that she’d taken a call and was currently with a client in a chatroom. Sam cleared his throat, his usual weather warning. I braced myself.

  “We’re all worried. We know how you get when you leave.”

  “I know.”

  Sam sighed and pushed his chair back from the table. In the next second he was beside me. I half-turned in my chair and he took my face in his hands.

  “Try not to hurt us again, Den.”

  “Jesus, Sam.”

  “The crèche is important, Den. You know this. Just...I don’t think Inga could handle it, and the kids...”

  “Damn it, Sam, could you not.” He leaned in and placed a kiss on my mouth, let it linger a half-second longer than I was comfortable with. When he was done, I had to resist pulling away from his hands.

  “We’ve been over this before and I really don’t think this is the time...”

  “Just keep us in the clear, love.” Sam moved to the hallway, turned to me. “All right?”

  “In the clear. Sure.”

  I sulked at the table for a few minutes. I loved them all, my family. Knew them like I knew myself. The need for constant transparency grated on me, though, and always had. I found that drive strangely perverse. In my darker meditations I would wonder what the point of it was. Why hurt someone if they knew you would? Was it even a hurt if they signed off on it ahead of time.

  I will hurt them, though, won’t I, Gregor? Or you will, through me. A profound hurt. The cable, or the pistol. Stains on the wall, either way.

  Ceri shook herself and came back to the dining room, ran her small fingers through her hair. Her cheeks were flushed. “Hey,” she said. “What did I miss?”

  “Not much. Sam gave me a bit of the talk.”

  “Aww, that’s hard. Was the old bear rough on you?”

  “No more than usual.” I reached across the table for Ceri’s half-empty wine glass. She didn’t object, so I downed it. “You weren’t gone long.”

  “Easy client.”

  “Professional service.”

  “There’s that, granted. Speaking of!” Ceri bounced from her chair, grabbed my hand. “I could use you for a bit.” She led me off to her room. I was already a little drunk and I hadn’t the heart to say no.

  ***

  Three thousand kilometres, Sam had said. Three thousand, as if these numbers still meant something. And I, flippant as ever, had countered with an hour. An hour in the loop, as if that had meaning. A dream of distance destroyed in the quiet hum of a pod in a tube: Tusk’s last great arteries across the continent, connecting a series of failing organs. At the stations, you can almost hear the death rattle of empire as the pods slow and shuttle in their locks, before disgorging onto their platforms passengers and freight in gasps of pressurized air.

  The station in YVR smelled of burnt ozone, sweat, and garbage. Cooling systems, humans, and humans, respectively. No respect. We’re the ape that scorned everything, laughed at all the warnings. There’s an overlaid scent, too, of cedar and salt brine, but artificial. I didn’t know the difference, honestly, but I recall enjoying it.

  I didn’t know the difference, but I would. I would. These nails have been filthy with rainforest mulch, these hands bloody from red and yellow cedar splinters and aromatic with the tarry sap of the golden spruce, Hadwin’s mutant. My skin has been leathered with actual sea salt, sands sick with microorganisms, ocean rot, and constant rain. I got to know the difference. I became the difference, thanks to you, Gregor. You and your deep dives to the depths of what is, the benthic baseline of the simulation.

  In YVR, though, spat from the northern end of the loop to wait for the ship to Haida Gwaii, I didn’t know the difference. Like the rest of my senses, my sense of smell was uneducated, unready. Smell has that hardline to the deep memories. That mine should have been so off didn’t trouble me at the time. Does it now? Again, I am unsure.

  The YVR air platforms were carved into the vertical warrens of the North Shore, sticking out like bleached ribs from the mountainsides, helicopters and drones hovered like flies at a carrion feast. There was an amazing view of the shattered glass and steel archipelagos of Old Vancouver that I didn’t really watch as I waited to board. The announcement came, and as I climbed the gangway to the ship my attention was drawn by the gasps of fellow passengers. I followed the line of pointing fingers to the multiple puffs of yellow vapour issuing from the dead black diamonds of a tilted highrise. Harpoon lines vibrated and glistened grey in the light of the setting sun. Something large and vague rolled in the water as seabirds gathered above. A few tongues clicked in disapproval on the gangway as we continued boarding, but it was the sound of uncomprehending privilege and I became used to ignoring that before I could write.

  I find it difficult to speak of the trip, even now. Even with what I know. In the south, and SoCal specifically, my experience was necessarily mediated and endlessly urban. Entire populations living on the land but not of the land. I could follow the urban philosophers Kraink and Goebbels here, claim CITY as ultraterrestrial virus overrunning its host, but that seems disingenuous now, doesn’t it, Gregor. Naïve, also.

  There are outposts of urbanity in the landscape, but the ones I saw were few, and
ragged. Puckered sores in the earth where extensive warrens put up half-kilometre-wide siphons for gas and heat exchange, trade with the surface, rough entertainments once the sun has set. I imagined Elizabethan bear-baiting. Jugglers with axes, gangs of roving clowns, holographic Punch and Judy shows raining sparks from blown emitters lashed to wooden poles.

  The waters of the Salish Sea were black and violent, the caps of waves in the thin moonlight like floating teeth seen from above, and I was glad to be on the night flight. Noönet flyover tours of the Pacific Northwest had conveyed the scale of the land to me, but not the emotional impact. The earth heaved up from the water as if trying to get away from something, each treetop like the fractal tip of some fairytale Gaian essence straining for sanctuary in space. Gravity seemed provisional here. An afterthought, grudgingly accommodated at the last minute.

  The atmosphere in the ship was filtered, cooled, and probably laced with lithium if the dryness in my mouth was any indication: a necessarily wise choice on the part of the engineers, because I could feel the weight of the air outside like a living thing. It pressed in on the cabin glass, freighted with moisture and hydrocarbons and suffocating intent. With the first lances of heat from the rising sun, all this clear night air would become a dense fog, hiding the surface for hours, days. To walk below was to return to the late Cretaceous, a stumbling, over-heated tour through humidity like a wall of shadows and already tall trees grown monstrous and thick, bark like armour, needles as actual needles, sharp and perfect. It used to rain here, I’d learned. Now the vegetation gamely sequesters what it needs from the soupy air, the ground shifts like porridge. I experienced visions of bodies, small ones, absorbed by walking cedars, silent predatory vines. Leaves like mouths, like black and green funereal wrappings.