by K W Taylor
The first man chuckled. “The Williams boy graduated back in sixty-four.”
“And that’s the last time they were any good,” the second man replied. He was younger, perhaps in his forties, with short curly hair and a beakish nose. Something about him looked familiar to Cob.
Was he one of the guys who saw it? Did I see his picture in one of the books I read for research?
A man to the left of Beak Nose took a long drag on his cigarette. “You passin’ through town?” he asked, eyes narrowed on Cob. He was younger than the first man, older than the second, with steel-gray hair and horn-rimmed spectacles. “Don’t think I seen you ’round here ’fore.”
“Oh, leave a man in peace, Clement,” Peggy said. She came over to Cob’s side of the counter. “What can I get ya? Got some nice fruit pie these boys are too unrefined to try. Coffee’s fresh, too.”
“Pie sounds fine, ma’am,” Cob replied, trying to affect the hint of Southern accent he heard in the other men’s voices. “And I’ll take some of that coffee, too.”
Peggy slid a black plastic ashtray and a set of silverware wrapped in a paper napkin at him. “Back in a jiff.” She disappeared through the batwing doors separating the kitchen from the counter.
“Clement, you know what they say ’bout curiosity and cats,” Beak Nose said. He turned to Cob. “Gotta apologize for him, sir. My older brother’s a rude one. You’d think we was raised in a barn.”
“You was, Bob,” Clement muttered. “He ain’t my brother. He’s my step-brother, and that step’s a steep one.”
The white-haired man laughed. “Will you two cease? Heaven’s sake, this boy will think everybody in Point Pleasant’s got a terrible sense of humor.”
Cob couldn’t help but join in the white-haired man’s laughter. “Nah, I suspect that isn’t so,” he replied.
“So you don’t know,” Clement said, chuckling. “Ain’t from here. You a salesman?”
This was what he’d been dreading. The cover story seemed flimsy. He didn’t want to use it, but it was in the instructions: Do not deviate from historical accuracy. Stick to the plan. Don’t make the details too hard to remember, but don’t divulge details about your own life, the future, or the agency.
The last few bits were easier. It didn’t seem difficult to not tell people about the future, the agency, or time travel. Remembering everything he’d devised in consultation with Ben Jonson and also not deviating from historical accuracy…that would all be much more difficult, if for no other reason than the fallibility of the human mind. He couldn’t know and remember every little thing, could he?
Have I before? I must have. And if it had gone horribly awry on an earlier trip, they wouldn’t have let me go again.
Cob saw the light bulb swinging on its chain, covered in blood. That couldn’t have been according to plan…
“Henry Condell,” Cob said. He plastered on a grin. “Not in sales, in reporting. Work for a rag over in Raleigh. We’re just starting, don’t even have a masthead yet.”
Was that right? Or was it “mastfront”? What did that even mean? Crap, I’m not fooling them.
Cob’s mind raced, but he maintained his composure. “I, uh, heard there was some local color this way.”
Peggy was back now, carrying a plate of something red and crumbly. “First one’s free,” she said in that honeyed voice. “Especially for those just passin’.”
“Naw, he’s not just on his way somewhere more interesting, Peg. He’s out for the kinda ink that smells of blood.” The white-haired man chortled. “You hear about our celebrity here, Mister Condell?” He jerked a thumb at Bob, whose face turned crimson. “Go on, son. He must be the last man in six counties ain’t heard tell of it.”
“It’s nothing, John,” Bob said, suddenly very interested in ashing his cigarette. “Skip it.”
“My brother’s a goddamn psychic now,” Clement announced.
“Got nothing to do with being psychic,” John said. “It’s like our own personal Sasquatch. You don’t gotta be special to see one of them hairy apes, do ya, Clem?”
“Oh, so I’m not even special now?” Bob’s tone was almost lighthearted, but Cob could see embarrassment in his eyes, and that beak nose was still tinged with the blush of shame. It couldn’t be easy seeing a monster in these parts and having to live it down.
“I do human interest stories. Don’t have one in particular I’m chasing,” Cob lied. “But, sir, you saw a creature, did you?”
Bob shook his head. “Naw. And I don’t wanna be in papers neither. Sorry, man, but I’m just sick of talking.”
“Maybe Lyla don’t feel similar, brother,” Clement said.
Bob shot him a hard glare before turning back to Cob. “Don’t go talking to my wife without me, Mister Condell.” He studied each man in turn. The air grew heavy. Bob took a long sip of coffee.
“If you keep my name and hers outta things,” Bob finally said, “we’ll give you the scoop.”
~
“I wanna go out there,” Cob said.
“To TNT? Man, no,” Bob said with a shake of his head. “Nobody’s been going out there, not after what we saw.”
“It’s too dangerous,” Lyla agreed. She was a slight woman with a long nose not unlike her husband’s.
Even the people out here look like birds. Maybe I’m chasing a giant owl that inbreeds with the population.
“Look, I know you folks don’t know me from Adam, but this is a story and I gotta chase it,” Cob insisted. “I’m a journalist, after all.” His mouth felt awkward around the cover story lies. “Now, if you won’t drive me, can you tell me where to rent a car?”
Bob agreed to drop him at a place nearby renting moving vans by the hour, and it would have to do. “Sunday and all,” Bob explained. “Sundays, a feller can’t get so much as a glass of beer or a decent steak or nothin’, let alone a car.”
“That’ll be fine, sir.”
Cob walked the remaining few feet, studying the hastily sketched map of what Bob Scornbury called “The TNT area.”
“Used to make bombs for the war,” Bob explained.
Cob wanted to tell him such details were unnecessary. He’d studied up on the former site of the West Virginia Ordinance Works, as it was there most sightings of the Mothman originated. One theory he kept stumbling across in his research postulated the creature resulted from old chemical leakage, causing mutation in local fauna. Decades after the sightings ceased, environmental protection entities found contaminants in the water supply seeping from the area, and they went into containment and cleanup mode soon after.
Probably exposing myself to ten types of carcinogens.
Cob approached the storefront. The stenciled letters in the window read ZANE’S MOVING AND STORAGE and confirmed beneath that “we rent vans.”
The man behind the counter—presumably Zane—looked up as Cob entered. “Help ya?” He looked enough like John, the diner denizen, that Cob wondered if they were brothers.
“Need a van,” Cob replied. “Got cash.”
“How long?” The man eyed Cob up and down.
Cob itched to get to the site before dark and no longer felt like talking. He dropped cash on the counter, hoping his money did the explaining for him.
“Pleasure doin’ business with ya, sir.” Worn green bills made Zane warm up to a man. He slid a set of keys across the counter. “White vee-dub in space thirteen out back. Bring it back full by ten.”
Cob smiled and touched his right index finger to his hairline in a little salute.
The “white vee-dub” turned out to be a split-front microbus, the first import Cob saw all day, and he whistled when he saw it. It was dirty, sure, but it was a classic, bringing to mind ancient episodes of whimsical 1970s-era family sitcoms. If he didn’t have to return the thing, Cob would’ve liked nothing more than to clean it up and paint giant red daisies all over it.
Cob climbed in behind the wheel, noting the rear seats were gone to allow renters to haul furn
iture. A rusty dolly covered with a pale blue felt blanket sat near the back door. He turned the ignition, disappointed to see that the horizon had grown dark and the first hint of the moon shone.
The roads to the TNT area didn’t have much in the way of streetlights, and the few Cob did see flickered, their glow sodium-pink and weak. Fortunately the van’s headlights were bright enough that between them and the moonlight, Cob managed fine.
He glanced down at the map for an instant, knowing he was coming up on the area, only to shriek when he looked back up. Right in the middle of the road was a furry shape and two pinpoints of red several feet above it.
Cob slammed on his brakes and threw the van into park. His breath was gone, and he felt a surge of panic rise up in his chest.
The shape was dark, taller than the top of the van, and the pinpoints of red light were roughly where the creature—if it was, indeed, a creature—would have had its eyes. Cob opened the van door, careful not to scare the thing, and as he did he heard a wet flap and rustle, as of a heavy mop moving from bucket to floor. A pair of huge wings, membranous to the point of being almost transparent was silhouetted in the van’s high beams. It was like looking through the ear of a housecat and seeing tiny veins here and there, only these veins were gray instead of reddish, which led Cob to wonder what sort of blood coursed through this being.
If any.
The face was indistinct, just a dark mass with the red, red eyes. So red…too red, Cob noticed, as if they were tiny laser pointers. And it wasn’t, as some of his research suggested, that they were being reflected in his headlights and casting back a reddish tint, the sort of eyes seen on opossums or even raccoons or albino squirrels. No, these eyes were actually producing light, little beams cutting through and leaving dots of red bouncing back on the VW’s windshield.
Dammit. Why don’t I have a camera?
Because that was evidence. Because this wasn’t about evidence but the experience. Experience gone unrecorded even by his own brain. Cob felt a mixture of sorrow and panic, a fluttery pain rushing through his chest.
There was a rumbling off behind the creature, like another vehicle approaching from the direction of the abandoned Works site. Cob glanced beyond the thing and, even though he thought he was keeping it in his peripheral vision, when he refocused his attention back on it, it was gone.
The mop sound came again, farther away, and Cob imagined the flap of huge batwings. Nearby, an animal shrieked, a bloodcurdling sound unlike any animal in pain Cob ever heard. Something about it sounded almost as if a child were being tortured.
With an exhale, Cob fell back against the driver’s side headlight of the van. He sank down a little so his butt hugged the edge of the front bumper, and he felt a distinct urge to weep.
No, come back. Let me see you again.
He scanned the skies, searching for any sign of the thing.
Nothing.
And so, after willing his breathing to calm, Cob trundled back into the van and pulled it deeper into the TNT area. He came to a spot off the road and turned the headlights off.
The distant vehicle noise sounded again, and Cob got out of the van. No car, no truck, nothing.
Nothing? It’s fall, but it’s not winter. There’s nothing nothing, not just no Mothman or other car. Where’s the breeze? Where’s the crickets or birds or even a dog in the distance?
There were several low granite tunnel entrances across a field littered with rusting equipment parts, and from one of the tunnel entrances there came a groaning sound, like ancient metal being moved on seldom-used hinges. The groaning turned to a squeak and then a squeal, and then a different figure emerged into the moonlight. It wasn’t the Mothman; it was smaller, though still taller than Cob himself.
Cob blinked, and somehow the van’s headlights were back on, the figure now standing right in front of him instead of being several feet away.
His skin was fish pale, and he wore round spectacles with dark lenses. His nose reminded Cob of Bob Scornbury, but it was longer, thinner, even more beaklike and hawkish. And he was thinner all over, cadaverously so, in fact. Still, the combination of height, slenderness, and pallor was striking, as was the fact that the man wore a suit identical to Cob’s own.
“You scared me,” Cob said, hoping the man was at best a Point Pleasant resident out monster-hunting and at worst was another of Ben Jonson’s clients, perhaps from earlier than Cob or later, but it would explain the generic attire.
No, it’s not all generic. Those glasses aren’t something you’d see now or even in the twenty-second century, not really, and why would someone wear them at night?
“Did I?”
Cob heard the man’s words, but didn’t see his mouth move. He drew back, pressing himself closer against the van. “Who are you, mister? Whatcha doin’ out here?”
“Whatcha doin’ out here?”
It was Cob’s voice coming back to his ears, and again the man’s mouth wasn’t moving.
The mop sound. Cob felt woozy. He slumped down to the ground, where he clutched the grass and vomited.
When he lifted his head, the slender man was gone.
Of course. That’s how this works. Nausea. Men in black—not all of whom are me, apparently—and this fucking place. All bunkers and dangerous chemicals and…
And the Mothman. He’d seen it. He had seen it. Even if he never saw it again, never got to figure out what it was, Rupert Cob got to see the actual Mothman live and in person, a cryptid whose last recorded sighting was a century before his own birth.
This really happened. And no amount of mindwiping, failure to get to the heart of the matter, or creepy intimidating people could take that away from him.
Cob wondered how many times he’d thought similar things, how many times he’d seen—
—“I can put you in the bag, but I gotta chop ya up a little first, you understand, don’tcha, boy?”—
How many times he’d seen something, understood something, experienced something and felt similarly, felt excitement and a soaring sense of pride at being able to witness it, even if sometimes he was too late to—
—“What did you do with her? With Elizabeth?”—
He planted his hands on the van’s bumper and struggled to his feet.
Without thinking, Cob walked toward the tunnel from which the man had emerged. The moon hid behind a cloud, and shadows clung to that part of the TNT area. Even the van’s headlights didn’t quite cut through the gloom this far. Cob stayed quiet, as quiet as he could in dress shoes and loose-fitting trousers that brushed with a swishing sound against every area of taller grass. He felt his tractionless shoes slide out from underneath him as he stepped on a patch of earth that was more mud than dirt, but by tightening his abdomen and holding his arms out like airplane wings, Cob was able to steady himself once more.
He stood at the mouth of the tunnel. It was taller than he’d thought, seeing it from a distance, a black circle cut into concrete that gaped a good fourteen feet from top to bottom. From deep within the tunnel, Cob could almost make out the faint sound of water running.
These don’t go to any kind of river. I’ve seen the maps of these things. They’re supposed to be just bunkers where the explosions were tested. How is there water back there?
Cob stepped toward the middle of the entrance and tried to peer into the blackness. Nothing. Not even the faintest hint of light. It was as if light itself crawled into this tunnel and died—
No, not just died. This place murders light.
— “Is that her name? She’s happier now. She was a bad girl, that one.”—
Light doesn’t want to die here. It doesn’t come here when it feels the end is nigh. It’s dragged here, kicking and screaming and begging for its life. And someone—
— “I’m rooming near the Florentine Gardens. The owner is kind of a creep.”—
Someone drags the light here and beats and tortures and kills it.
Cob’s shoe brushed against something yiel
ding and noxious, something that wouldn’t let go of the black patent leather once it held it. He looked down.
His foot was embedded in the stomach of a dead dog. The clouds parted, moonlight streamed down into the muck and fog to reveal the canine’s face frozen in a rictus scream of terror.
Cob’s own scream—this one audible and real—rose to a high-pitched keening on the night wind.
Tuesday, January 14, 1947, Los Angeles, California, USA
“He’s kind of a creep, but he lets me stay at his joint for practically nothing.”
Elizabeth took a drag of her cigarette. It was Turkish, the paper brown with a gold filter at one end, the cherry glowing darker than a bland old American cigarette would, and the smoke that wafted toward Cob was less a smoke and more a perfume, the smell of incense soap, the combination beautifully apt, given Elizabeth’s exquisite beauty and bearing. She was a princess, Snow White and Rose Red writ large and real and fleshy, and princesses deserved beautiful, exotic things from every corner of the globe. Cob wanted to bury his face in that perfumed glossy hair, to kiss those full lips that he imagined tasted of clove and wine.
Something nagged at his brain, however, even as they sat and laughed and flirted. Something dark and foreboding and…
That creep. The club owner. Elizabeth shouldn’t be renting a room from him. No good would come of it. But why was that? Cob knew it had something to do with who she was, why he knew her even before he knew her, why her name and voice and hair…
“Flower for the lady?” A young man sauntered up to their barstools with a basket of flowers, all sorts, the stems cut short. “She’d look lovely, all that dark hair, with a flower.”
“Oh, please, baby? I’d love that.” Elizabeth crushed out her cigarette and smiled at Cob. Off on the stage, the band laid into a new number, hotter than the last, and the kids got up for a try at the Lindy hop. Skirts swirled, shoes seemed to touch the very sky. Girls squealed as their partners tossed them over broad shoulders and between legs spread wide.
