The Influence

by Bentley Little

  “That’s what I thought, too.”

  “How long’s it gonna take you to get here?”

  “I’ll be there tomorrow.”

  “Where are you?”

  “San Diego.”

  “Hell, I made that run in six.”

  Ross smiled. “I need to stop somewhere first. I’ll be there in the morning.”

  “Get here as quick as you can,” McDaniels’ said.

  Ross had called in sick today, and, luckily for him, it was a Friday. Which meant he had the weekend. It was flaky, calling in sick on the first week of a new job, especially with the possibility of layoffs looming, but if he could get back by Monday, he knew he could sell this as a legitimate illness. Since he was a healthy guy who seldom if ever actually got sick, this would probably be his only absence for a long time, and after several months of good work, any doubts that might be raised by this aberration would be put to rest.

  Ross left a note for Jill, in case she came back. He didn’t expect her to return, but on the off chance that she did, he let her know where he was going and told her to stay in San Diego.

  He drove to Phoenix, arriving just before nightfall. He’d skipped lunch and was starving, but before getting something to eat, he headed over to his brother’s house, parking in the driveway next to Rick’s leased Acura. Maybe he should have called first, but that would have involved argument and negotiation, and Ross thought it better to just show up and speak to his brother directly.

  He rang the bell, hoping Rick would answer and not his wife. He got lucky. “Hey,” Ross said as his brother opened the door.

  A look of confusion passed over Rick’s face. “What are you doing here?”

  “I came to see you.”

  “About what?” Rick crowded the doorway, apparently afraid that Ross might try to sneak into the house.

  “How’s Dad?”

  “He’s home. Doing okay, I guess. Mom fell the other day, tripped over something in the garage and broke her hip.”

  “Jesus! Why didn’t anyone call me?”

  Rick shrugged, and Ross wanted to hit him, but he knew that it wasn’t really his brother’s fault. Or wasn’t all his brother’s fault.

  He decided to stick to the script. “Listen, I need to talk to Kevin.”

  Rick was instantly suspicious. “Kevin? What for?”

  “I just need to ask him something. Where is he?”

  “I’ll give you his phone number, but I can’t—”

  “That’s fine,” Ross said. “What is it?” He already had his phone out. He typed in the number as his brother recited it, then immediately walked away, back toward the car, leaving Rick standing confusedly in the doorway.

  “What are you—”

  Ross closed the door behind him, cutting his brother off as he put the car into gear and backed out of the driveway. Pretending to drive away, he stopped and parked halfway down the block, using the number he’d been given to call his nephew, hoping that Kevin would answer.

  He did.

  “Kevin,” Ross said. “This is Uncle Ross.”

  “Hey,” the boy said suspiciously.

  He didn’t want to jump right in. “Thanks for telling your dad to call me about Grandpa. I appreciate it.”

  “Yeah, well, I thought it was wrong the way they were treating you. You should hear what they say behind your back.”

  “I know, I know. And, like I said, I appreciate it. But…I was wondering if we could get together. I sort of need to talk to you about something.”

  “You can tell me now.”

  “I’d rather do it in person. Where do you live? I could come over right now if you’re free.”

  The suspicion was back. “What’s this about?”

  “I’d rather not tell you over the phone.”

  He was about to play his ace and remind Kevin that he was the one who had bailed him out in Austin, who had paid for his dad’s plane ticket out to Texas and sprung for a good portion of the fees for the lawyer who had gotten him off the arson charge. But Kevin must have been thinking the same thing, because suddenly he said, “Okay. I’ll tell you how to get here.”

  Ross rummaged through his glove compartment for a pen and a scrap of paper, finally writing down his nephew’s address and directions to the apartment on the back of an Auto Club map. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” he said.

  He was there in ten.

  On the whole, Ross tried not to be too judgmental, but as he pulled up to Kevin’s apartment complex on a trash-strewn street and saw broken overturned chairs on the dead lawn in front of the building, he thought that if he ever had a son, he would never let him live in a dump like this. Locking his car, Ross walked up to Apartment A, which, luckily, was on the first floor, and knocked on the door.

  After a long moment, he knocked again.

  And again.

  Finally, the door was opened. Kevin stood there, eyes at half-mast, a small smile on his face. “Unc! How’s it going, man?”

  The last time Ross had seen his nephew, Kevin had had short spiky hair dyed an unnatural blond. Now his hair was long and stringy and back to its natural brown. As always, he was wearing faded jeans and a torn t-shirt. Past Kevin, on the couch, a dirty young man of approximately the same age was typing on the keypad of his phone. The apartment smelled so strongly of marijuana that even the air fresheners placed on seemingly every flat surface in the room could not cover up the scent.

  “I need to talk to you alone,” Ross told his nephew.

  “I’m cool,” the roommate said. “Anything you tell him, you can say in front of me. I don’t mind.”

  Ignoring the roommate, Ross pulled his nephew outside and closed the door. He took a deep breath. Here now, faced with explaining the situation, he didn’t know where to begin. “I need a favor,” he said.

  “Anything, dude, anything.”

  He decided just to come out with it. “I need you to start a fire for me.”

  Kevin backed up, suddenly suspicious. “Is this a test? Did my dad put you up to this?”

  “No. It’s legit. And I’m deadly serious.”

  Something in Ross’ tone of voice must have conveyed the truth of his words because Kevin stopped his retreat, squinting at him. “What’s going on?” he asked guardedly.

  “I know this is going to sound crazy,” Ross said. “But bear with me. Just hear me out.” He started from the beginning, with his move to Magdalena to live on his cousin’s ranch. He described what had happened on New Year’s Eve, and the gradually escalating weirdness around the town and the outlying countryside, finally telling of his trip to view the body of the creature in the shed. There were a lot of things he left out, but one thing he emphasized was the way that the creature’s presence had changed everyone’s luck. For good and bad. “People were finding gold and winning the lottery, or their kids disappeared and were found dead. Dave and Lita’s ranch was doing good, then their chickens stopped laying and their bees stopped making honey. Dave had a great relationship with his parents and was in need of cash, and both his parents were killed, leaving him money.”

  “I never saw any of this on the news.”

  “No, you wouldn’t. And that’s part of it, but…” Ross tried to put into words what he was trying to convey. “You know, I’d been out of work for well over a year, no job prospects at all. I’d used up all my money, was thinking of walking away from my condo because I couldn’t make the payments. Then someone bought my condo. And suddenly I had a ton of job offers.

  “The reason I’m telling you this is because I want you to set that creature’s body on fire. I want it destroyed. And, not to offend you or anything, but you were a terrible arsonist. That’s why you got caught. And didn’t even burn anything. Although the attempted arson is probably what got you off. If you had succeeded, you’d probably still be in jail.

  “But what I’m hoping is that your luck will change when you come with me to Magdalena, and you’ll be a great arsonist. You’ll know
exactly what to do and how to set fire to this thing, and when you’re done, there’ll be nothing left but ashes. But even if that doesn’t happen, you’re still the only one I know who knows anything about setting fires, and right now, I think that’s the only way to take this thing out. It was shot out of the sky, dead as a rock, but it started to influence everything around it, and now, apparently, some sort of cocoon has formed around it to protect it while it transforms into something else, like a caterpillar turning into a butterfly. We need to get to it before it becomes whatever it’s becoming. We need to take it out once and for all.”

  “I don’t know why I should believe that,” Kevin said. “But you’re the straightest dude I know. And you bailed me out and were there for me when I needed it, so I owe you, Unc.”

  Ross smiled thinly. “Yes, you do.”

  “Honestly? I don’t think we’re gonna find what you say we’re gonna find out there, but I’ll go with you to check it out. And if it turns out that you need it…I’ll burn something for you. I’ll burn anything you need.”

  Ross didn’t like the way he said that. Not just the words but the tone made him uneasy, and he worried that he might be pushing his nephew back down the wrong path, like a person giving an alcoholic his first drink after a long stretch of sobriety. But he needed Kevin, and this was the only solution he could come up with that seemed like it might have even a slight chance to succeed.

  “I’m heading out tomorrow morning. Do you think you can be ready by six? You don’t have a job or anything you have to go to?”

  “No, dude, I’m cool. But isn’t six a little early?”

  “I’m hoping it’s not a little late.”

  Kevin nodded. “Okay. I’m in. You gonna pick me up here?”

  “Sure.”

  Kevin thought for a moment. “I may need to grab a few things up if we’re gonna do this.”

  “Do you need me to take you there?”

  “No, it’s all right. I have a couple of other…errands to run.” He smiled mysteriously, and Ross had the feeling he didn’t want to know what those “errands” were. “I’ll meet you here in the morning.”

  “Do you need anything from me?” Ross asked. “Matches or anything?”

  Kevin laughed. “Don’t worry, dude. I have it all covered.”

  This might very well be the stupidest thing he’d ever done, Ross thought as he drove out of his nephew’s bad neighborhood toward a nicer area of the Valley where he could find a decent place to stay for the night. But at least he was doing something, and that alone made him feel better. Who was it who said all it took for evil to triumph was for good people to do nothing? He was out of that cycle now, he was acting, and if it turned out that he wasn’t part of the solution, at least he wasn’t part of the problem.

  At the motel, Ross tried for the millionth time to call Jill’s cell phone, receiving only the familiar busy signal. He tried their house, then called her parents, but no one answered in San Diego, and Jill’s mother refused to talk to him and hung up.

  Ross then called McDaniels, unsure if he would answer, unsure if he would still be in town—

  unsure if he would still be alive

  —but the handyman answered the phone on the first ring, almost as though he had been waiting for the call. Ross breathed an inward sight of relief. He explained to McDaniels that he and his nephew Kevin were coming to Magdalena in the morning and that Kevin was an expert in fire and arson. “We’re going to burn that thing up until it’s nothing but ashes, and then we’ll scatter those ashes to the wind. There won’t be a molecule left of it to harm a fly.”

  The other man didn’t sound convinced. “Cameron’s ranch is guarded. There’s no way you’ll be able to get to it. And don’t you think the angel’ll know that you’re comin’ and what you plan to do? If it don’t know already?”

  “I’m trusting my nephew,” Ross said. “Besides, I made it out there before. Jorge even opened the doors and showed it to us. I think…I think maybe it counts on being able to influence or control whoever comes near it, to kind of override the people it comes in contact with.”

  “Well, how you gonna make sure that don’t happen?”

  “Hatred,” Ross said. “That’ll keep me going.”

  “Well, there’s plenty a that to go around.”

  Ross didn’t respond. McDaniels’ questions had him worried. He hated to admit it, but almost none of the handyman’s qualms had occurred to him, and he wondered what else he might be missing. He was going off half-cocked here, not thinking things through, which was totally out of character. He was a planner, a details guy, an almost obsessively logical thinker. He wasn’t someone who just had an idea and, on the spur of the moment, acted on it.

  Maybe the monster did know he was coming.

  And was playing with him.

  “Is your friend still there?” Ross asked. “The sharpshooter?”

  “Far as I know.”

  “We may need him. You think he’d be willing to help us out?”

  McDaniels thought for a moment. “I don’t know, to be honest. We were gonna try and shoot it. But when we got there and saw it, all of us pussied out. Can’t say that won’t happen again.”

  “Do you think you can get him to try?”

  “I’ll give it a shot.” He let out a surprised chuckle. “A shot. That’s kind of a joke, ain’t it?”

  “Yeah,” Ross said.

  By his calculations, driving the maximum speed limit on the highway, ignoring the speed limit once he got on the road to Magdalena, he and Kevin should be there about nine or nine-thirty, ten at the very latest. He and McDaniels made arrangements to meet at the bar downtown, assuming it was safe, and by the side of the road at the edge of town if it was not; the determination to be made by the handyman, who promised to try and convince his friend Hec to come along.

  Ross hung up feeling more anxious than he had before he called. What until this moment he’d considered a pretty good plan was now looking more like a half-assed Hail Mary, and he wished he had more time to flesh out the details. But he thought of Jill, thought of Lita, thought of his Aunt Kate and everyone else whose innocent lives had been ended or overturned as a result of this monster, and he knew that he needed to act now.

  What was it that McDaniels had said?

  I think it’s ready to hatch.

  If he waited any longer, it might be too late, and he saw in his mind Jill’s final painting: that terrible demon standing amidst the smoldering ruins of Magdalena.

  He barely slept that night, and, wanting to get an even earlier start than originally planned, called Kevin at four-thirty in the morning to wake him up. But it turned out that Kevin was already awake for reasons of his own, and Ross picked him up shortly after five. They packed three boxes of mysterious materials in the trunk, grabbed some coffee and donuts from what might have been the last Winchell’s still in existence, and hit the highway, heading south.

  Kevin was a captive audience, and Ross filled him in on more details as they drove. He had several hours to argue his case, and while he realized how fantastical it all seemed, he did not get the impression that his nephew thought he was making it up out of whole cloth. Maybe Kevin didn’t believe all of it, but there was enough detail and specificity that at least some of it seemed to ring true.

  Or Kevin was starting to sense something himself.

  The road had been dirt for awhile now, and ahead on the horizon they could see the tips of the mountains that bordered the southern edge of town. Now that he was nearly there, Ross’ stomach tightened. He had never been so frightened in his life. It wasn’t the quick fright of a movie jump scare or the tension of someone walking into a dark house wondering if something else was in there. No, this was more the dread a convicted man might feel stepping up to the gallows, the unwavering certainty that something horrible was going to happen and that there was nothing that could stop it.

  The car rolled over a rise, and the chimney-shaped mountain, the one wit
h the M on it, became clearly visible. The town below sparkled in the sun, and maybe if a person didn’t know better, all might have seemed perfectly normal. But Ross had been here before, and there were shadows where there should not have been, great swaths of land that looked as though they were recovering from a fire.

  What was that creature? he wondered for the hundredth time. Where had it lived? Did it have a lair? What had it fed on? How had it not been noticed before? There were so many questions left unanswered, questions that would probably never be answered, and his logical brain rebelled against the unresolved chaos of it all.

  He was of the belief that the creature was ancient, had been living on this land for centuries, perhaps millennia. It occurred to him that the monster’s luck had finally run out when it had been accidentally caught in that hail of celebratory bullets, and in a sort of ripple effect, once it had fallen to earth, once its luck had changed, it had started changing the luck of everyone around it.

  Ross half-expected to see other creatures flying above the town—its brethren, waiting for its metamorphosis to complete—but the skies were unnervingly clear as they approached, no birds, no clouds, only endless pale blue.

  Next to him, in the passenger seat, Kevin looked nervous. “Unc. Mind if I spark one up?”

  “No,” Ross said. “I mean, no, don’t do it. Yes, I do mind. I need you clear-headed for this.” He glanced curiously at his nephew. “You don’t…feel any different, do you?” he asked. “I mean, you haven’t been hit with any brilliant new ideas about how to go about this, have you?”

  Kevin smiled tightly. “Not yet.”

  They kept driving.

  Ross slowed the car as they came to the outskirts of the town, looking carefully around for anything amiss. There was no sign of McDaniels—which could be good, could be bad—and, feeling the tension in his arms, he drove past the ruined adobe house where they had picked up Father Ramos on their way out. Ahead, in front of Magdalena’s handful of small businesses, the street was empty.

  No, not quite. In the center of the road stood a grimy little girl, wearing a torn granny dress and a wrinkled yellow blouse covered with dried blood stains. Ross recognized her immediately, and the skin prickled on the back of his neck. It was the girl from the farmer’s market, the daughter of the mushroom seller. He looked around the street, searching for the mom, but saw no sign of her.