The Anomaly

by Michael Rutger

  I didn’t write the email to Ken.

  And that night I did not dream at all.

  Chapter

  57

  A couple of days later Ken and I were sitting across a table in the courtyard of #ColdBruise, a dumbass new hipster bar/restaurant in Santa Monica. We both agreed it was even more annoying than the previous dumbass hipster joint it had replaced, but it had a nice terrace and included a wide range of alcohol among its wares and so it was good enough for me. For now—though I knew the effect was bound to wear off as the injuries and memories faded—pretty much anywhere was good enough.

  I’d called Ken as soon as I got back to my apartment and told him about the meeting I’d had with the man on the promenade. We’d discussed what it might have meant, and whether we had any reason to trust him.

  Our holding conclusion was probably yes.

  We’d discussed it further over lunch without changing that position. We’d talked about many things and were not yet done. When Ken got back from visiting the john for about the fifth time, he looked serious. “Here’s a thing, though. Yesterday I discovered that entire section of the canyon has been declared off-limits, for the foreseeable future, due to ‘seismic activity.’”

  “The balls dropping could have triggered a response.”

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  “What? You think the Foundation got the area closed?”

  “It’s not out of the question. And here’s something else.”

  He put a sheet of paper in front of me. A printout from a well-known website specializing in offbeat news, describing how the battered remains of a strange creature had been found in the canyon. Except it turned out to be an exceptionally convincing model, lost by a film crew who’d allegedly been shooting a sci-fi/horror movie in a cavern nearby.

  “Bullshit,” I said. “They planted that. You know damned well that the things we saw weren’t special effects.”

  “Of course I do, mate. But this is out there now. Anything we say is going to be laughed at. And here’s another thing: I sent them an email last night.”

  “Who? This website?”

  “No. The Palinhem Foundation.”

  “Why, Ken? Why would you do that? Did we not agree that we’d keep our heads down?”

  “We did. But after a couple of drinks I thought to myself—and this is a direct quote—‘Shit on that.’ I’m not spending the rest of my life looking over my shoulder, wondering if someone’s going to creep up on me in the night and bash my head in. Okay, the guy you met seemed to push back that possibility. But I’d like a little more confidence.”

  I’d had the same thought, but hadn’t done anything about it. “So?”

  “So I dropped them a line. I said the Kincaid Cavern expedition was a bust, sorry, we didn’t find anything.”

  “And?”

  “Wasn’t expecting anything fast, because I sent it after office hours. But just before midnight I get a reply. From some bloke I’ve never dealt with before. Saying never mind, it happens. But as a result of internal budgeting changes, they are no longer able to sponsor the show.”

  “No shit. So what do we do now?”

  He shrugged. “I dunno. I’m taking the wife to Palm Springs this weekend. When I get back, you and I should talk. Pretty sure we can scrape together enough for another season on YouTube.”

  “But do we even have a team left? How’s Molly?”

  “She’s all right,” Ken said. “I saw her again yesterday. She’s still got a thousand-yard-stare thing going on, but a lot less than last time. She’ll be back to the Moll we know and love before long, don’t you worry.”

  “I hope so.”

  “I know it. With the interpersonal skills for which I do not receive anything like enough credit, I even talked to her about the thing. Asked if she was dealing with it okay.”

  “What thing? There’s a lot that could encompass.”

  Ken glanced around. Though the courtyard wasn’t crowded—it was midafternoon, and we’d been there awhile, sampling the place’s many craft beers in strictly alphabetical order—he dropped his voice. “The thing involving her and the great big knife, you tool.”

  “Oh.”

  “I told her that she’d had no choice. That she shouldn’t blame herself.”

  “And?”

  “She looked me in the eye and said she hadn’t lost a wink of sleep over it. That she’d killed the monster in the dark and that was that. Mean anything to you?”

  “Maybe,” I said.

  “All right, well, whatever. She’s fine, basically. Or will be. She sends her love—though it looked more like ‘guarded affection’ to me, with a hint of revulsion—and said to tell you that she’s found you a replacement shirt. So, yeah—I’d say she’s still on board.”

  “What about Pierre?”

  “Talked to him again this morning. He needed minor surgery on that shoulder, and he’s still depressed about his disk drives.”

  “They’re definitely screwed?”

  “Yeah. His backpack wound up in the river, didn’t it. Plus apparently half of the drives had got flattened at some earlier point, so…Sorry, mate. We’ve got none of it. Not a single frame. Evidence-wise, none of it ever happened.”

  “What about Pierre himself?”

  “He sounded okay but…quiet.”

  “Dylan,” I said. “We did it together.”

  “Yeah, and I blew half the head off a…We’ve all of us had a very unusual time. Which, from a legal point of view, it’s preferable no one ever knows about, even if the evidence has been removed, as that guy implied.”

  “It’s not just that.”

  “I know, mate. I am not immune to guilt. Or nightmares.”

  “I’ve been back and forth over it in the last couple days,” I said. “Bottom line is Feather and Dylan drove the play, and it came down to us or them. I’m glad it was us.”

  “Very much my take on the situation.”

  “Gemma, on the other hand…”

  “Ah, well, there’s another thing I need to tell you. She’s different. And her people need to know. So…I did something.”

  He looked sheepish. I wasn’t sure I’d seen him look that way before. “What did you do, Ken?”

  “Got in touch with the site she worked for.”

  “What?”

  “I was only going to see if I could get contact information. Maybe try to work from that to finding out about a boyfriend, relatives. Someone I could let know, subtly, somehow. I talked to her editor. All she had was an email address and a PayPal account. So after that I hired a bloke I used a few years ago, when a wanker agent was trying to fuck me over about…Never mind, long story for another time.”

  “What kind of bloke?”

  “A private investigator. Told him to dig up whatever he could find about her.”

  “And?”

  “Parents both dead—cancer and a car accident. No brother, sister, other relatives. A few friends, but none of them very close. She was all about her work, one of them said. My guy tracked down her apartment, gained access. Just being thorough.”

  “Christ, Ken.”

  “I know. But there was nothing to see anyway. Tiny place. Clothes, few bits and pieces, couple pictures of what he assumes were her mum and dad. Only other personal thing was a big poster above her desk. Looked old, like she’d had it awhile.”

  “What was it of?”

  “The Earth, from space. Some writing across the bottom, in Sharpie. ‘Make a mark—Love, Dad.’”

  We sat and looked at each other for a while, knowing that because of us, she would not.

  When the next beer was nearly done, Ken glanced at his watch.

  “You supposed to be somewhere?”

  “No,” he said. “But I can’t waste the whole day talking to a wanker like you. Come have a cigarette with me, then I’m going to fuck off home.”

  We stood out on the sidewalk, smoking, withstanding wounded glares from passing health nuts and perfect
people.

  “Any luck with those pictures?”

  “No,” I said. When I checked my phone the day after getting back to Santa Monica, it turned out the only photographs I’d taken inside the complex—of the two sides of the map room—hadn’t come out. Instead of showing the frieze on the ground, there was only a dark, speckled gray fog. “I’ve put them through every piece of software I can find but there’s just nothing there. I don’t think that was a normal kind of light in that room. Far as my phone was concerned, we were in darkness.”

  “Ah well. We know what we know.”

  We did, even if it was going to have to remain a secret. Because we had zero evidence. Because of the warning I’d received. But mainly because of acts we had been forced to undertake in the closing stages, extreme events that bound us in silence. We’d fallen from grace together. It’s a long fall.

  But we knew some things. And I was starting—in notes I was writing straight into a heavily-encrypted website, not even stored locally on my laptop—to join the dots. I’d begun to wonder if the tattered remnants of ancient and anomalously advanced civilizations on Earth might be evidence of previous occasions when there had been a cleansing of life from the planet. I’d considered the idea that the skeletons of greater than human height found in America and other countries—and the way giants crop up in our oldest myths and legends—might be proof of interbreeding between remnants of a population of cleanup beings and the next human line. Because doesn’t it say in Genesis that “there were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them”? Yes, it does. And perhaps I’d even sat on a wall in Venice Beach and had a conversation with a piece of evidence for this.

  The data is not in, and someone, somewhere, does not yet believe it’s time to wipe the board and start again. I don’t know whether that’s because that person or culture still has faith in us, despite the violence in our hearts and the mistakes we seem intent on making, or if they’re working to a subtler agenda than we can begin to comprehend.

  But look at the world, and the state it’s in. I’m not sure we’ve got much time left to prove the worth of the current round of the experiment.

  “So we’ll chat when I get back,” Ken said. “But in the meantime, think about an idea for a replacement episode. I’ve got one, in case it helps. Seen a couple mentions in dodgy forums online to some bunch called the Straw Men.”

  “Who are they?”

  “No idea, mate. No one’s sure if they even exist. But might be worth a look.”

  “Sure,” I said. “I mean, how bad can they be, right?” Then I realized Ken was looking shifty. “What?”

  Over his shoulder I saw someone halfway up the next block, coming toward us.

  “What the hell is she doing here, Ken?”

  “You two are always going to be on the same road,” he said. “I’m just reminding you where the car is.”

  He winked and walked away down the street.

  Kristy came up to within a few feet of me and stopped. She looked poised, beautiful, self-contained—but also nervous. I’m sure I looked the same, except for the first three parts.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Hey.”

  “How was the Alaska thing?”

  “Stupid cold. And we didn’t find much.”

  “Bummer.”

  “Life goes on.”

  “Well, you know what they say. It matters not whether we find. Only that we continue to—”

  “Shut up, Nolan,” she said. “And buy me a drink.”

  We walked together back into the courtyard, and we stayed there for a very long time.

  Acknowledgments

  A huge thank you to my literary agents, Jonny Geller and Jennifer Joel, and Kate Cooper; my editors, Wes Miller and Sophie Orme, and to Miriam Metoui; to Ellen Goldstein-Vein and Lindsay Williams for their efforts and enthusiasm, and to Luke Speed; to Stephen Jones and Adam Simon for friendship and support; to publications and writers like the Fortean Times, Bill Corliss, and Charles Fort, for reminding people how weird the world is, and how little we know, and how much there is still to find out; to Tes and Eleanor; and to Paula and Nate.

  About the Author

  Michael Rutger is a screenwriter whose work has been optioned by major Hollywood studios. He lives in California with his wife and son.

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