CENSUS_What Lurks Beneath

by Marshall Cobb

  Dave realized that the room had gotten quiet and looked up from his notepad to see everyone staring at him.

  The Comptroller slid the mouse back across the table to Dave. “Ready for you to continue.”

  Dave winced—internally—at being caught doodling during a client meeting, but then quickly regrouped, grabbed the mouse, and used it to click back to the primary presentation. He moved forward a couple of slides and used the pointer to circle a large, negative number at the bottom of a spreadsheet chock full of other numbers and totals.

  While his audience stared at the new slide he’d cued up, he tried to re- member the narrative for his report, and all the related details and history that went with it. This kind of thing had come so naturally to him for so many years that he’d taken the ability for granted. As he absently rubbed his temple it occurred to him that everyone’s brain had a tipping point, and perhaps he’d found his.

  “Dave?” asked Mike the Comptroller.

  Dave dropped his gaze to the mouse, then closed his eyes for a moment, trying to will away the pain. His hand controlling the mouse continued its circular motion, though the pattern was now wild, erratic.

  “Dave?” Mike asked again.

  The questioning voice sounded like it had come from a tunnel. A long tunnel that went far beneath the surface. He felt himself being pulled down that tunnel, following the call of his name, until his trance was interrupted by someone touching his hand, now moving the mouse in no pattern at all.

  What Lurks Beneath

  Dave brought his head back up, opened his eyes and took his hand away from the mouse. He smiled reassuringly at the woman who had touched him, but could not remember who she was, or why she was in the meet- ing. His smile did not have the desired effect as she pulled her hand back quickly, and stared at him with a touch of fear in her eyes.

  He looked around the room and saw that she was not alone—everyone in the room was looking at him as if they their next move might be to call an ambulance, or even the police. He tried to regroup and used the mouse to again circle the large negative number.

  “Your shortfall,” he used his chin to try to encourage all involved to look at the screen, and away from him, “is due to the fact that your investment manager for your global aggregate bond index separate account switched their feed, and began reporting gross performance as net performance.”

  Many, if not most of the people around the table, including the woman he couldn’t remember, squinted at the number and then back at Dave. Dave felt like this should’ve been enough information to elicit reasonable follow up questions, but he had apparently lost much of the crowd to concerns over his mental state. He decided to wade in further, again circling the number with the pointer.

  “So this negative number represents the disconnect in the financial re- porting. It’s equivalent to the management fee that was actually applied, which in the case of an account this large, and over two years of erroneous numbers is significant.”

  Mike the Comptroller stared intently at the screen, then again at Dave. “Thanks Dave. This is a great catch.” His eyes narrowed further as he continued to evaluate Dave’s condition. “How on earth did you ever figure this out?”

  Dave smiled, a bit more at ease with the vibe on the room now back on him as the subject matter expert, versus the potential victim of a stroke. He opened his mouth to let his wisdom pour forth, and then realized that he had no memory of how he had found the error.

  221

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: MRI

  The next day, still on his road trip, Dave lay on a long, skinny table in a room that was equally as cold as its lighting, in the back end of the trailer that served as the mobile MRI unit. The air conditioner’s rumble was audible and he fought against the chilled air as he lay uncomfortably perched, protruding from the antiseptic hollow of the MRI scanner.

  He was positioned to enter the machine head-first, which was good, as at least his entire body wouldn’t be confined in the tiny cavity within the machine. Dave had never been a big fan of tight places, and from what he could tell he was going to fit into this machine like a sausage fits into its casing. He gripped the small switch the attendant had given him in his right hand and moved his thumb cautiously over the button on top that would, in the event he declared an emergency, alert the attendant that he needed help.

  He then cautiously flexed his left arm, which still felt cold from the gadolinium injection he’d received a few minutes ago. Going into this he never thought that an MRI would involve a shot, but the nurse had assured him that the injection was needed to help as a contrast agent for the MRI read-outs.

  This was a situation, that he was all-too-aware, was all his own making. That didn’t give him a lot of comfort as the attendant announced over the speakers overhead that she was going to put him into the tube. He

  nodded slightly and mumbled his agreement as the attendant again en- couraged him not to move, and engaged the motor that slid the table he was resting on back into the machine.

  Dave had counted on the fact that a head-first entry would leave him with some ability to see the room, and his feet. As the plastic, curved roof of the tube passed just an inch above the end of his nose he realized that the only thing he was going to be seeing was the tan, dimly lit tube a few inches above his eyes. He fought back the urge to struggle and hit the panic button, and tried to slow his breathing.

  The attendant, who’s name the distracted Dave had forgotten even as it left her lips, now spoke to him via an intercom that seemed to be mounted somewhere inside the machine.

  Wait, didn’t this require speakers, and don’t speakers require magnets?

  How was this OK when they’d made such a big deal out of him not having any metal on his body?

  Did the magnets in the speakers not interfere with the MRI itself ?

  “Mr. Reynolds, are you OK?”

  Having run through the panic-laced list of questions that came to mind, he now heard the attendant.

  “Yes. I’m fine.”

  “OK, I’m going to start the first scan now. You’re going to hear a series of pops and other odd noises. It’s all perfectly normal. I’ll check in with you again once the first scan is complete.”

  “OK.”

  Within moments his ears, which had protective plugs inserted, were treated to a low, but powerful humming noise. The humming actually

  relaxed him a little, until it was interrupted by a series of loud pops and clicks that seemed to echo from a great distance.

  Dave stared at the ceiling, trying to ignore the itch that had just devel- oped on his neck, the popping noises all around him, and the fact that he had less than an inch of room between his nose and the roof above him. The attendant had said that the entire process would likely take somewhere between forty and fifty minutes. He wasn’t entirely sure that he could last that long, but he decided that his odds would be better if he tried to think about something besides what was going on around him.

  He closed his eyes and tried to think of something, anything that would distract him. Minus the sound effects, the tube he was in seemed akin to a sensory deprivation chamber of sorts. He had really liked the movie Altered States. It had been thirty or more years since he’d last seen it but the plot involved a professor or scientist (maybe both?) who found himself changing, evolving—or maybe devolving—with every session he put himself through in a sensory deprivation tank. The tank had some kind of solution that suspended William Hurt—or was it John Hurt?— in the dark, closed sphere that set his mind free, even as it trapped his body.

  Dave tried to envision what it would feel like to hang, suspended, while the darkened area around him came to life with colors and visions that he’d created from inside his own brain. He drifted on that train of thought for some time, until he remembered that the movie was not a happy one. Something had gone wrong when things that were imag- ined became real. Mental images became physical changes. A beast of some kind had emerged from the cha
mber at the end and slogged its way down a hallway.

  Slogging… He’d pulled another round of photos from the game camera on the utility pole a couple of days ago. The process had gone a lot quicker with his work laptop, but he knew he needed to keep those worlds seg- regated, so he’d soon buy another laptop for himself—or maybe he could

  get a used one from Mark. He should call Mark. There had been plenty of photos of deer, some shots of a fox and several pics taken at night that featured something lurking just outside of the flash range of the camera. That same kind of lurking presence that was in the tall grass in some daytime shots involving Adam and Marilyn. Not necessarily tangible, and only visible via a faint outline at the fringes of the frame—though in one series of thirty-second delay shots a form seemed to track Adam’s progress across the pasture; the tall grass bending and shifting as it was disturbed in a way that wind could not replicate.

  Disturbed. That’s an uncomfortable word. Was he disturbed? Did he just have an overly active imagination combined with sleep deprivation? Didn’t William/John Hurt’s character end up naked in the zoo after turn- ing into a wolf and eating sheep? How was he going to keep this pace up at work, with no end in sight? Was Marilyn leaving him, or had he already left her? Where would he live? He would never get to see Adam if Marilyn won custody, but how could he have custody when he spent the majority of his life driving around Texas in meetings? Where would Sampson go? Could he and Sampson just move out to the farm? Jesus Christ the farm! What was he going to do with it? Was he crazy? Was something truly wrong with him?

  His headache took this as a cue and flared, sending pain shooting down his arms and legs. He lifted his arm to touch the source of the pain on the side of his head and couldn’t. He tried again and began to flail in the tight space. After quickly finding that he couldn’t move his arms he tried to lift his head, and found himself staring at the rounded roof of the MRI tunnel with a new sore spot on his forehead.

  “Mr. Reynolds! Are you OK? Mr. Reynolds?”

  It took Dave another moment to realize exactly where he was, and how deeply he’d nodded off (or retreated into the depths of his brain). He laid his head back down and tried to relax all the various parts of his anatomy that now hurt.

  “Yes, I’m sorry. I was having a dream.”

  “That happens sometimes. If you’re okay to continue we can, but I’ll need to redo that last test.”

  Dave stared at the tunnel roof above him, already dreading the additional fifteen minutes of this torture he’d just inflicted on himself.

  “Fine. Let’s do it.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY: Legal Work

  The next day, the last of his west Texas road trip, Dave Reynolds, his dress shirt wrinkled from the long day of driving, sat across a large conference table from an overweight man, John Kingsley, who oozed at all the spots where his flesh emerged from his clothing. The fat man’s tie was loose and pulled back at an angle from his throat, as if the contact was painful. Dave understood that thought.

  “Thank you again for agreeing to see me.”

  Kingsley scowled at him. “You paid for an hour of my time, but I’ve already told you that I can’t help you.”

  “I’m not asking you to divulge anything inappropriate.”

  “No, you’re just asking me to break attorney-client privilege.”

  “Your client and his entire immediate family is dead, Mr. Kingsley, and you don’t even work for the public defender’s office anymore.”

  Kingsley opened up both of his chubby hands, palms up, as if he had nothing further to give. “We’re sitting in the conference room of a private law firm that specializes in criminal defense. My work here makes me even more aware of confidentiality issues. Our clients pay us to take their information to the grave,” he pointed upward, “and beyond.”

  Dave held his gaze for an uncomfortably long time. Kingsley shifted a bit in the leather swivel chair, trying to release the heat building up in various places where his body made contact with itself, or the chair.

  “I read the case. You tried to have him declared mentally incompetent.” “Yes, that’s a matter of public record.”

  “He admitted to the shooting, the chopping up of his victims and the fire.”

  Kingsley shifted again, “Yes, also a matter of public record, and what got him the chair.”

  “It would seem like shooting everyone in your family, chopping some of them up and setting the house on fire with some of them still alive would fit the definition of insanity.”

  Kingsley shifted forward. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed but we live in a law-and-order state. We attempt to try women who drown their own kids as murderers. Doing something awful doesn’t automatically qualify you as mentally challenged.”

  “He was competent?”

  “He confirmed to the psychiatrist that he knew it was wrong—or at least that others would think it wrong. I knew we weren’t going to get him off. It was my job to try every angle to save his life.”

  Dave sat back in his chair, trying to come up with another approach. With Kingsley only agreeing to confirm matters already of public record this did indeed seem like a big waste of time and money—well, mostly money as he was already out here in the hinterlands for a client meeting. He went for a long shot.

  “Did he ever say anything to you about ritual slaying of animals on the property?”

  An odd look came over Kingsley’s face. For just a moment Dave thought he was going to say something, and then that moment passed.

  What Lurks Beneath

  “What about ants? Did he say anything about ants?”

  “Good day Mr. Reynolds. I’ll let you show yourself out.” With no small amount of energy Kingsley pushed himself out of his chair, opened the door and walked out of the room.

  Dave sat in the room for a few moments with his thoughts. Kingsley had reacted to his comment on the animal slayings. Dave didn’t think it was simply a generic reaction to an odd question. There was something else going on that Kingsley wouldn’t discuss.

  231

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE: Extra

  Baggage

  That night Dave pulled up into his driveway back in The Woodlands. The front door of the house flew open and Sampson and Adam raced to greet him—with so much enthusiasm and lack of spatial awareness that Dave had to stomp on the brakes to avoid running them over. He opened his door but quickly hit the lock button to keep Adam from opening the other side. Once Adam and Sampson gained access to a vehicle it was almost impossible to get them out. Adam immediately tried to open the door while Sampson jumped up to try and peer in the window, likely scratching the side of his truck in the process.

  Dave threw the tie he’d already undone from its loose perch around his collar back into the truck, and made a mental note to come out and retrieve all his stuff after dinner. His phone began vibrating in his pocket and, without looking at the display, he opened the door again and pitched the phone in as well. It had been a long day, full of emails, calls and meetings. Whoever it was could wait an hour.

  “Daddy! Look at me!”

  Dave stepped over and peered across the open bed of the truck. Denied entry, Adam had retreated back into the yard and clumsily held a phone in front of him.

  “Smile Daddy!”

  Dave couldn’t resist a smile as he waved at Adam, who was feverishly pushing on the phone. After a couple of small flashes Dave felt some- thing bump him and looked down to see Sampson sitting on his right shoe, delivering a line of drool that trailed down his slacks, which helped to further embed the cloud of yellow dust that followed Sampson wher- ever he went.

  Dave half-petted, half-pushed Sampson away from him as he called out to Adam, “Where’d you get the phone buddy?”

  “It’s Momma’s old one. She said I could have it cuz she got a new one today.”

  Dave grimaced as he continued to push Sampson away in his effort to walk around the truck and join Adam. “I didn’t know she needed a new phone.”<
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  Adam, clueless as to Dave’s feelings on the matter, offered, “Her new one has a better camera and now I can use this one for all of my apps.”

  Dave closed the remaining distance, ruffled Adam’s hair and picked him up to hold him in a bear hug. Sampson, not wanting to be left out, began jumping on Dave and adding to the damage of the slacks until Dave extended a knee and convinced him to relax.

  Adam partially fought the hug in an effort to show Dave his phone, wriggling his small arms up through Dave’s to stick the phone’s screen in his face. “See Daddy, I took your picture.”

  Dave extended his knee again to block another attempted jump from Sampson, then stared at the phone just inches in front of him. Because of Adam’s height, and the fact that Dave was standing on the opposite side of his truck, the only parts of Dave’s body visible in the shot were his waving hand and the top half of his head. The camera work wasn’t what caught Dave’s attention, however. A chill that started at the back

  of his head and ran slowly down the length of his body was in reaction to the dark, murky shape that sat in the bed of the truck. The same dark shape that he’d seen glimpses of on the game cameras at the farm.

  “That’s really good Adam. Let Daddy take another look at that.”

  Dave slowly lowered Adam to the ground and was rewarded with a full lick to the face from Sampson. He didn’t notice the slobber any more than he absorbed the complaints from Adam. “But it’s my phone Daddy! Give it back!”

  Dave mumbled something conciliatory as he gently pulled the phone free and used his finger to swipe the screen. Adam had taken four different pictures in his excitement. The chills passed in favor of nausea as Dave saw the same dark image in all of them. He looked up at his truck, knowing in advance that he would see nothing. The hand holding the phone dropped to his side and Adam greedily wrestled it away.