by Laird Barron
The old men glanced up from their documents and squinted at him. Toshi shook his head and sucked his teeth. Campbell pointed at the ceiling. “She’s in her room. Packing. It’s Sunday night,” he said. “You should go see her.”
“She has to leave,” Toshi said.
Partridge turned and left. He made his way up the great central staircase and tried a number of doors that let into dusty rooms with painters cloths draping the furniture. Light leaked from the jamb of one door and he went in without knocking.
“I’ve been waiting,” Nadine said. Her room was smaller and more feminine than the Garden Room. She sat lotus on a poster bed. She wore a simple yellow sun dress and her hair in a knot. Her face was dented with exhaustion. “I got scared you might not come to say goodbye.”
Partridge did not see any suitcases. A mostly empty bottle of pain medication sat on the night stand beside her wedding ring and a silver locket she had inherited from her great grandmother. He picked up the locket and let it spill through his fingers, back and forth between his hands.
“It’s very late,” she said. Her voice was not tired like her face. Her voice was steady and full of conviction. “Take me for a walk.”
“Where?” He said.
“In the fields. One more walk in the fields.”
He was afraid as he had been afraid when the moths came over him and against the windows. He was afraid as he had been when he pulled her from the water all those years ago and then lay in his hammock bunk dreaming and dreaming of the crocodiles and the bottomless depths warm as the recesses of his own body and she had shuddered against him, entwined with him and inextricably linked with him. He did not wish to leave the house, not at night. He said, “Sure. If you want to.”
She climbed from the bed and took his hand. They walked down the stairs and through the quiet house. They left the house and the spectral yard and walked through a gate into the field and then farther into heavier and heavier shadows.
Partridge let Nadine lead. He stepped gingerly. He was mostly night blind and his head ached. Wet grass rubbed his thighs. He was soaked right away. A chipped edge of the ivory moon bit through the moving clouds. There were a few stars. They came to a shallow depression where the grass had been trampled or had sunk beneath the surface. Something in his memory twitched and a terrible cold knot formed in his stomach. He whined in his throat, uncomprehendingly, like a dog.
She hesitated in the depression and pulled her pale dress over her head. She tossed the dress away and stood naked and half-hidden in the fog and darkness. He did not need to see her, he had memorized everything. She slipped into the circle of his arms and he embraced her without thinking. She leaned up and kissed him. Her mouth was dry and hot. “Come on,” she muttered against his lips. “Come on.” Her hands were sinewy as talons and very strong. She grasped his hair and drew him against her and they slowly folded into the moist earth. The soft earth was disfigured with their writhing and a deep, resonant vibration traveled through it and into them where it yammered through their blood and bones. She kissed him fiercely, viciously, and locked her thighs over his hips and squeezed until he gasped and kissed her back. She did not relinquish her fistful of his hair and she did not close her eyes. He stared into them and saw a ghost of a girl he knew and his own gaunt reflection which he did not know at all. They were sinking.
Nadine stopped sucking at him and turned her head against the black dirt and toward the high, shivering grass. There was no breeze and the night lay dead and still. The grass sighed and muffled an approaching sound that struck Partridge as the thrum of fluorescent lights or high-voltage current through a wire or, as it came swiftly closer, the clatter of pebbles rolling over slate. Nadine tightened her grip and looked at him with a sublime combination of glassy terror and exultation. She said, “Rich—”
The grass shook violently beneath a vast, invisible hand and a tide of chirring and burring and click-clacking blackness poured into the depression from far-flung expanses of lost pasture and haunted wilderness, from the moist abyssal womb that opens beneath everything, everywhere. The cacophony was a murderous tectonic snarl out of Pandemonium, Gehenna and Hell; the slaughterhouse gnash and whicker and serrated wail of legion bloodthirsty drills and meat-hungry saw teeth. The ebony breaker crashed over them and buried them and swallowed their screams before their screams began.
After the blackness ebbed and receded and was finally gone, it became quiet. At last the frogs tentatively groaned and the crickets warmed by degrees to their songs of loneliness and sorrow. The moon slipped into the moat around the Earth.
He rose alone, black on black, from the muck and walked back in shambling steps to the house.
Partridge sat rigid and upright at the scarred table in the blue-gray gloom of the kitchen. Through the one grimy window above the sink, the predawn sky glowed the hue of gun metal. His eyes glistened and caught that feeble light and held it fast like the eyes of a carp in its market bed of ice. His black face dripped onto his white shirt which was also black. His black hands lay motionless on the table. He stank of copper and urine and shit. Water leaked in fat drops from the stainless steel gooseneck tap. A grandfather clock ticked and tocked from the hall and counted down the seconds of the revolutions of the Earth. The house settled and groaned fitfully, a guilty pensioner caught fast in dreams.
Toshi materialized in the crooked shadows near the stove. His face was masked by the shadows. He said in a low, hoarse voice that suggested a quantity of alcohol and tears, “Occasionally one of us, a volunteer, is permitted to cross over, to relinquish his or her flesh to the appetites of the colony and exist among them in a state of pure consciousness. That’s how it’s always been. These volunteers become the interpreters, the facilitators of communication between our species. They become undying repositories of our civilization…a civilization that shall become ancient history one day very soon.”
Partridge said nothing.
Toshi said in his hoarse, mournful voice, “She’ll never truly die. She’ll be with them until this place is a frozen graveyard orbiting a cinder. It is an honor. Yet she waited. She wanted to say goodbye in person.”
Partridge said nothing. The sun floated to the black rim of the horizon. The sun hung crimson and boiling and a shaft of bloody light passed through the window and bathed his hand.
“Oh!” Toshi said and his mouth was invisible, but his eyes were bright and wet in the gathering light. “Can you imagine gazing upon constellations a hundred million years from this dawn? Can you imagine the wonder of gazing upon those constellations from a hundred million eyes? Oh, imagine it, my boy…”
Partridge stood and went wordlessly, ponderously, to the window and lingered there a moment, his mud-caked face afire with the bloody radiance of a dying star. He drank in the slumbering fields, the distant fog-wreathed forests, as if he might never look upon any of it again. He reached up and pulled the shade down tight against the sill and it was dark.
Occultation
In the middle of playing a round of Something Scary they got sidetracked and fucked for a while. After they were done fucking, they lighted cigarettes. Then, they started drinking. Again.
—My God. Look at that, she said.
He grunted like he did when he wasn’t listening.
—Hey! I’m creeped out, she said.
—By what? He balanced two shot glasses on his lap and tried to avoid spilling tequila all over the blankets. He’d swiped the tumblers from the honky-tonk across the highway where he’d also scored the X that was currently softening their skulls. The motel room was dark, the bed lumpy, and she kept kicking restlessly, and he spilled a bit regardless. He cursed and downed his in one gulp and handed her the other glass, managing not to burn her with the cigarette smoldering between his fingers.
She accepted her drink, took a deep sip and then held the glass loosely so the edge cast a faint, metallic light across her breasts. She exhaled and pointed beyond the foot of the bed to a spot on the wall abo
ve the dead television. —That, she said.
—What?
—That! Right there!
—Shit. Okay. He dragged on his cigarette, then poured another shot and strained it through his teeth, stalling. —Pretty weird.
—Yep, pretty weird is right. What is it?
He made a show of squinting into the gloom. —Nothing, probably. You trying to torch the place?
Ashes crumbled from her cigarette and glowed like fallen stars against the sheets. She swept them into her palm, then into the now empty glass. —It just freaks me out.
—You’re easily freaked, then.
—No, I’m not. I’m the only girl in my family who watches horror movies. I don’t even cover my eyes for the scary parts.
—Yeah?
—Hell yeah. I don’t spook. I don’t.
—After some consideration I think it’s a shadow.
—That’s not a shadow. It came out when you were doing the story thing.
—See how a little bit of light from the highway comes in under the blinds? Shadows all over the place.
—Nope. I’m telling you, it came out while you were talking.
—Oh, then it’s gotta be a ghost. No other sane explanation. Wooooo-hooooo!
—Shaddup. I need another shot.
—Want this? Couple swallows at the bottom. He sloshed the bottle back and forth.
—Gimme. She snapped her fingers, then grabbed the bottle when he swung it close.
—Wait a sec, we’ll solve this right now. He leaned against her, reaching across their bodies for the bedside lamp.
—No!
—Huh? What’s the matter?
—Don’t do it.
—I’m trying to turn on the light, not cop a feel.
—Go ahead and cop a feel, but leave the light alone, ’kay? She thumped the bottle against his arm until he retreated.
—Whatever. Jesus. Got any more cigs?
She fumbled a pack of cigarettes from the nightstand, lighted one from hers and handed it to him. —Last one, she said, crumpling the pack for emphasis.
He slid toward his edge of the bed and slumped against the headboard and smoked in silence. A semi rumbled past on the interstate and the blinds quivered against the window frame. Outside was scrub and desert. The motel lay embedded in the implacable waste like a lunar module stranded between moon craters.
—Don’t sulk, she said.
—I’m not.
—Like hell.
—I’m not sulking.
—Then what?
—I’m looking at the wall. Maybe you’re right. Maybe it’s something else. Why can’t we turn on the light? A coyote howled somewhere not too far off. Its cry was answered and redoubled until it finally swelled into a frantic, barking cacophony that moved like a cloud across the black desert. —Holy shit, what’s that? he said.
—Coyotes, she said. Scavenging for damned souls.
—Sounds fucking grandiose for coyotes.
—And what do you know? They’re the favored children of the carrion gods. Grandiosity is their gig.
He laughed, a little strange, a little wild, as if echoing the animal harmony. —So, what are they doing around here? Going through a landfill?
—Maybe you drew them in earlier with your howling.
—Bullshit. They can’t hear that. All the way out in the tumbleweeds?
—Sure they can. Howl again. I dare you.
—If coyotes sound this bad, I’d hate listening to jackals. Or dingoes. Remember that news story, years ago, about the woman on the picnic with her family?
—‘A dingo ate my baby!’ God, that’s awful. But comical in a horrible way.
—It isn’t comical in any way, honey. You’re scaring the children.
—Please. Nobody really knows what happened. The kid’s mom probably offed her, you ask me.
—There’s a great relief. Why do so many parents kill their kids, you think?
—Lots of reasons. Don’t you want to strangle the little fuckers sometimes? Like those shits on the flight when we went to see your parents? What a mistake that was, by the way. That one girl kept kicking my seat so hard my head was bouncing. And her mom….
—Ha! It was fun watching you get so mad, though.
She didn’t answer, but sat rigidly upright. She trembled.
—Honey? He rubbed her back. —What’s the matter?
—Go ahead, she said. Her voice was small.
—Go ahead and what?
—Turn on the light, she said in that small voice. Her cigarette was out and the darkness gathered around them, oily and deep. Faint illumination came through the blinds like light bleeding toward the bottom of a well, a dungeon.
—You turn it on, he said. —You’re right there.
—I can’t move.
—What the hell are you talking about?
—Please. I’m too scared to move, all right? She was whining, borderline hysterical. She enjoyed being frightened, savored the visceral thrill of modulated terror, thus Something Scary, and thus the What If Game (What if a carload of rednecks started following us on a lonely road? What if somebody was sneaking around the house at night? What if I got pregnant?), and thus her compulsion to build the shadow, the discolored blotch of wallpaper, into something sinister. As was often the case with her, a mule’s dose of alcohol combined with sleep deprivation rapidly contributed to the situation getting out of hand.
—Fine. He flopped across her lap and found the lamp chain with his fingertips and yanked. The chain clicked and nothing happened. He tried several times and finally gave up in disgust. Meanwhile, her left hand dug into his shoulder. Her skin was icy.
—Owww, he said, pushing toward his side, happy to get away.
—I knew it. She turned her head so her mouth was closer to his ear and she could kind of whisper. —I knew the light was going to crap out on us. We’re alone in here.
—Well, I hope so. I wouldn’t like to think some big hairy ax murderer was hiding under the bed.
—I already checked. She chuckled weakly and her icy talon found his bicep now, though somewhat less violently. She was almost calm again. —I looked for Anthony Perkins hiding in the bathroom, too.
—Good! Did you scout around for a peephole? The night clerk could be in the next room winding up his camera. Next thing you know, we’re internet porn stars.
—That’d suck. She’d begun to slur. —Man, I hate the desert.
—You also hated Costa Rica, if I recall. Who hates Costa Rica?
—Tarantulas. Centipedes. I hate creepy crawlies.
—Who doesn’t?
—Exactly! Thank you! There’s a species of centipede, Venezuela, somewhere in South America, anyway; it’s as long as your forearm. Eats bats. Knocks them outta the air with its venom-dripping mandibles, and bang! Bat Surprise for dinner.
—You’re super drunk. I thought I had most of the tequila.
—Yep, I’m off my ass. Some cowboy bought me like eight shooters while you were in the bathroom. You were in there forever.
—Come again? he said, scandalized.
—Down, boy. He didn’t grope me. He just plied me with booze on the off chance I’d let him grope me later. No biggie.
—No biggie? No biggie? Was it that stupid-looking sonofabitch in the Stetson? The guy who couldn’t stop ogling your tits?
—You’re describing half the bar. Who cares? I gave baby Travolta the slip and ran off with you!
—Awesome.
They lay there for a time, she playing with her lighter, grinding short, weak sparks from the wheel; he listening for the coyote chorus and keeping one eye on the weird blotch of shadow on the wall. Both of them were thinking about the story he’d half told earlier about his uncle Mo who’d done a stint with the Marines and had a weird experience during shore leave in the Philippines; the Something Scary tale that had been so sublimely interrupted.
She said, —Maybe I’m a little intimidated about the Filipino strippers. I can�
�t pick up a pop bottle with my pussy. Or shoot ping pong balls outta there, either.
—Those girls come highly recommended, he said. —Years of specialized training.
—Sounds like your uncle sure knew his way around Filipino whorehouses.
—Wasn’t just the whorehouses. Those old boys went crazy on shore leave ’cause that far-out shit was front and center in just about every bar in town. They were dumbass kids—pretty fortunate nobody got his throat slit. According to Mo, a bunch of the taxi drivers belonged to gangs and they’d cart drunk soldiers into the jungle and rob them.
—Enough about the whores and thieving taxi drivers. Get to the scary part. If there’s anything more disturbing than Marines slobbering on bottles some whore has been waving around with her cooch, I wanna hear it.
—More disturbing? Uncle Mo told me one about these three guys in Nam who snuck into a leper colony to get some ass. Back then, I guess the locals put the immediate family in the colony whether they were infected or not, so the fellows figured there had to be some prime tail up for grabs.
—Ick! Moving on….
—Okay, R&R in Manila. Mo, and Lurch, a corpsman from his platoon, were whooping it up big time; they’d been drinking three days straight. Barhopping, y’know, and eventually a couple party girls latched onto them and they all headed back to this shack by the docks the guys were renting. A rickety sonofagun, third floor, sorta hanging out over the water. Long story short, Mo’s in the bedroom and the girl is smoking his pole. His mind wanders and he happens to look out the window. Across the way, through the window of this other crappy house, there’s a naked Filipino broad getting her muffin dusted by some GI. Talk about symmetry, eh? It’s raining like a cow pissing on a flat rock and a sash is whacking around in the wind, cutting off the view every few seconds. The broad grins over at Uncle Mo and she reaches up and covers her ears. Then she just lifts her head off her shoulders. Mo’s standing there, straddle-legged and slack-jawed and the woman’s head keeps on grinning at him and her lips start moving. She’s laughing at him. He notices there’s something coming out of her neck, like a beak, or who the fuck knows what, ’cause the shade is flapping, see. Meanwhile the other grunt is going to town on her pussy, oblivious to the fact this freak is tucking her head under her arm like a bowling ball.
