Occultation and Other Stories

by Laird Barron

  “A short, stubby guy who took six years to graduate,” Glenn said. “Older than us. Balding, but he had this Michael Bolton thing going on. Hair down to his bum. Managed a pizza parlor.”

  “Mean sonofabitch,” Dane said. “He’d get drunked up and pick fights with the frat boys. One of ’em whacked him in the head with a golf club. Just pissed him off.”

  “I remember that.” Glenn chuckled, and licked the salt from his wrist. He downed his tequila. His eyes were bright. “Cops locked him in the tank overnight and slapped him with disorderly conduct.”

  “A real loveable asshole,” Dane said. Glenn said, “He got killed waterskiing a couple years ago. First time out, too. Strapped on a pair of skis and got his neck broken fifteen minutes later. Tried to jump a ramp. Dunno who the hell was driving. All their fault, y’know.”

  “Holy shit,” I said. Glenn patted my hand and shrugged. “Whole thing was moronic. Sorta fit, though. He was gonna go out from a rotten liver, a motorcycle accident, or a prison fight. That’s just how it was with the crazy fool.”

  “Wait, that’s—” Victor closed his mouth. Dane said, “Anyway. This isn’t really a Tommy story per se. We had this other buddy named Max. Ol’ Maximus was a real cocksman and he was cozy with this little rich girl who was going to an all-girl school on the other end of town. A real honey.”

  “Hear, hear,” Glenn raised his glass. “Glittery green eye-shadow, Catholic schoolgirl skirts and thigh-high lace-up boots. Ruff!”

  “Right, right. Becky Rimmer.”

  “You’re kidding,” I said.

  “Her name was Rimmer. Kinda unfortunate. Her folks were out of town and she invited Max over for the weekend, and me, Glenn, Tommy and Vicky latched on. Becky didn’t like it much, but what the hell was she gonna do? So we arrive at the house—and man, it’s posh. A gaming room with a kickass sound system and a stocked bar. We were in seventh heaven. She laid down the ground rules—be careful with the new pool table and hands off Daddy’s scotch. No problem! Max promised.”

  “Becky disappears with Max for some nooky. First thing—Tommy, who’s already high as a kite, decides to shoot some pool. He misses the cue ball and digs a three inch groove in the felt.”

  “And the booze?” I said. Dane pantomimed guzzling from a bottle. “Heh, Thomas had her old man’s supply of Dewar’s in his guts in short order. Pretty quick, Danny boy gets bored and decides to check on Becky and Max who’ve locked themselves in Daddy’s den and are making like wild animals. Tommy gets some tools from the garage and the next thing we know, he’s standing on a stool and drilling a hole in the door to make a peephole. Laughing like a lunatic, sawdust piling on his shoes.”

  Victor said, “Me and Dane dragged him away from the door and gave him some more booze. Things are going okay until there’s a crash from the den and Max starts hollering. Turns out, he was banging the girl on a glass coffee table and at the height of the rumpy pumpy it shattered and she dropped through. They were going at it doggy-style, so she sliced her arms and knees. Nothing serious, but it looked awful. Blood and jizz everywhere.”

  “Yeah,” Dane said. “A scene from one of Takashi Miike’s films. Naturally, we took her to the hospital. The docs gave her some sutures and bandaged her head to toe. Many awkward questions were asked. Max drives her home and the rest of us split. Mom and Dad get back early. Becky’s lying in bed trying to think of a story when she hears her mom in the study go, “Oh. My. God. What is this filth —?” And, as Mommy dearest comes through the door waving her daughter’s soiled undergarments, from downstairs her dad bellows, “WHO THE HELL DRANK MY DEWAR’S?”

  I laughed so hard my side ached. “What did she do?”

  “Girl was a soap opera junkie. She squinted and said in a pitiful whisper, ‘Mommy? Mommy? Is that you?’”

  Glenn bought us another round. Conversation turned to the impending trip. Victor unfolded a sheet of paper and showed us notes he’d made in heavy pencil. On the itinerary was a day hike on Mount Vernon, a tour of the Tacoma Museum of Glass, a leisurely day in the state capital of Olympia, then a blank slate. There’d definitely be a night or two camping on the Peninsula; where was yet to be settled. Victor said, “That leaves us some days to check out the sights. Maybe visit Port Angeles?”

  After much noncommittal mumbling from the three of them, I took the Black Guide from my pocket and thumbed through the section on the Olympic Peninsula. “The Lavender Festival in Sequim is coming up. Port Angeles is close by, and Lake Crescent. Glenn and I stayed at the lodge a few years ago. Gorgeous scenery.”

  “Absolutely,” Glenn said. Victor said, “I hear it’s spooky. The Lady of the Lake murders…”

  “Oh, that was ages ago,” I said, albeit it made me uneasy that I’d recently read a passage in the guide documenting the scandalous tale. Too many coincidences were accumulating for my taste. Dane took the guide and turned it toward the dim lamp hanging above our table. He grinned. “Vicky, look at this!” Victor leaned in and scanned the page. Dane said, “This thing is a kick in the pants. Says there’s a hotel in Centralia where they hold séances once a month. And a…dolmen up a trail on Mystery Mountain.”

  “See,” I said, “we should put Sequim on the calendar. Go visit this dolmen after we see how the lavender jelly gets made.”

  “What’s that, anyhow?” Dane said. “A prehistoric tomb,” Glenn said. “There aren’t any dolmens in this state. Maybe I’m wrong, but it sounds fishy.” He spent an inordinate amount of time cruising Wikipedia. “Up a trail, eh?”

  “About seventeen or eighteen miles up a crappy road, more like. The Kalamov Dolmen and Cavern. There are some campsites. It’s on the edge of a preserve.” Victor stroked his goatee. Dane said, “This is a seriously cool idea. I gotta see it. I gotta.” He poked Victor in the ribs and laughed. “C’mon, baby. This sounds awesome, don’t it?” Victor agreed that it indeed sounded awesome. Glenn promised to arrange for a bed and breakfast in Sequim and to make a few calls regarding the mysterious dolmen. If nothing else, the park seemed as decent a place as any to camp for a night or two. The guide mentioned trout in the mountain streams. I wasn’t much for the sport, but Glenn and Dane had dabbled in fly fishing.

  Once I got the guide back, I studied the entry on the Kalamov Dolmen and its attendant notes in the appendix, which included references to celestial phases and occultation rites. I didn’t know what any of that stuff meant. Nonetheless, we’d have lively anecdotes for future vacation slide shows and a story to tell, I was certain.

  4.

  Glenn and I frequently made love the first year we were together. Not so much later. We were perpetually exhausted because of project deadlines, hostile takeovers at the workplace and, of late, the ever-shrinking newspaper circulation. Glenn had climbed the ladder by dint of overtime and weekends; I still received more commissions than I could shake a stick at. Familiarity took its toll as well.

  Once Dane and Victor arrived, Glenn tried to fuck me every night. That hurt my feelings. I knew he was jealous of Victor—Victor was a flirt and he came on to me in a not too serious way. Glenn laughed it off; however, when the lights dimmed…. He was also a territorial sonofabitch and it aroused him that they were screwing like rabbits down the hall. I tried not to let it bother me too much, although I drew the line at him groping me while dead drunk. That night, after we piled into a cab and finally made it home from The Angry Norseman, I smacked his hands away as he kept grabbing at my zipper. He persisted. I lurched downstairs and crashed on the couch, a maneuver I hadn’t resorted to since our last real argument the year prior.

  There was a special on the History Channel. A crack team of geologists and a film crew were mucking about Spain, exploring caverns and whatnot. My eyelids drooped. I slowly emerged from a doze to hear a man discussing holy rites among the Klallam tribes and other ancient peoples of the Pacific Northwest. He described burial mounds along the Klallam River and the locations of megaliths and dolmens throughout Western Washington. I was confused,
second-guessing Glenn’s assertions that no ancient megaliths or dolmens existed in our state, but the narrator continued: Of particular interest is the Kalamov Cavern site near Mystery Mountain National Park. The Kalamov Dolmen, named after Dr. Boris Kalamov, who discovered it in 1849, is remarkable in its size and antiquity. A relic of the Neolithic Age…three thousand B.C. Perhaps older. A word of caution is in order. There is a dangerous…The monologue faded and someone wailed in pain.

  I lifted my head and the room was full of blue, unfocused light. The television screen skipped, and ghostly figures shifted between bars of static. Soundless because I’d hit the mute button prior to nodding off. Every channel was full of snow and shadow, except for the ones with the black bar saying NO SIGNAL. Unsettled without knowing precisely why, I rubbed my eyes and went to the window. The neighborhood was blanketed in darkness but for a scattering of porch lights. The cityscape was hidden by the canopy of the trees. I hugged myself against an inexplicable chill as I attempted to recall the odd commentary of the dream.

  Turning, I saw a man sitting in the armchair in the corner near the pine shelf that housed a meager selection of my books. A burst of light from the TV screen revealed this wasn’t Glenn or our guests. I was woozily drunk—the topknot, the surly, piggish features, the short, bulky frame, was precisely how I’d envisioned the inimitable Tommy of college lore. He reclined mostly concealed in shadow, but I saw he was naked, one thick leg folded across the other to artfully cover his manhood. His flesh was very pale; the flesh of a creature who’d dwelt in a sunless grotto for ages. He raised a finger to his lips. “I’ve just come to talk,” he said, imparting menace with the over-enunciation of each syllable, hinting that on any other day I’d experience something other than conversation. “Scream, and our buddy Glenn is going to come running. He’ll trip over Vicky’s jacket on the top step and roll down the stairs. It’ll be a mess, trust me.”

  I wiped drool from the corner of my mouth. The horrible vision of Glenn falling, shattering his spine, kept me from yelling. I said, “You’re him.”

  “Call me Tom.”

  “Tom. Can’t be.”

  “Didn’t say I was Tom. I said, call me Tom. Got any hooch? That’s a rhetorical question, by the way.”

  I shuffled to the kitchen and immediately noticed the cellar door ajar by several inches. The way down was via a narrow wooden staircase missing its railing. The cellar itself was small and cramped and mildewed and we never used it. I took a bottle of Stoli from the cupboard. I poured two tall water glasses a finger below the rims and carried them to the living room. In the back of my mind I’d hoped this would break the spell, that I’d snap out of this somnambulant state and find the visitor had evaporated. He hadn’t. Tom accepted the glass and drank half of it in one long gulp. I sat on the couch, elbows on my knees, clasping my own drink with both shaky hands. “Why you? I don’t get it. Why you and not my granny? Or my dad?” He shrugged. I said, “It’s because of that story tonight.”

  “Real double-breasted asshole, wasn’t I?” he said, and laughed. “Your granny and your old man don’t have anything to say to you, I guess. You’re making assumptions about where I come from, anyway. This ain’t like that. See wings on me? Horns?”

  “Maybe An American Werewolf in London made a bigger impression on me than I thought. Next time we meet, your face will be a melted pizza.”

  “Loved that fucking movie. Damn, that nurse was hot. For months I got a boner every time I heard a shower running.”

  “She didn’t do much for me.”

  “I suppose not.”

  “What’s going on here?”

  “I could use a smog. Drinking and smoking go hand and hand. My old man was Black Irish. Like Glenn’s. We Black Irish smoke and drink and beat our wives.” Tommy laughed, grating and nasty.

  “Glenn quit,” I said. “I don’t smoke, either. Sorry.” Tom stared at me through the dark. His eyes glistened in the blue radiance of the TV, brightening, dimming, disappearing with each flicker of the screen. There was a hateful weight in that stare. “Dane smokes,” he said. “So, go ask him for a smog,” I said. He laughed again. “You wouldn’t like what happens.”

  I had another vision, a confused, menacing premonition that sickened me even though I couldn’t see anything but weird, jerky movement in the shadows, and a smash close-up of Dane’s eyes growing too wide. I walked into the kitchen and rummaged in a drawer until I found a pack of Kools that had been squished under the silverware tray since forever. I lighted a cigarette on the burner, returned to Tom and handed it over. He said, “Tastes shitty like a cigarette should.” I had set my glass on the arm of the couch. I drank the rest of the vodka while Tom smoked. A sulfurous stench filled the room. “You play with Ouija boards when you was a kid, Willem?” I nodded. “Sure, in high school. I bought one—Parker Brothers.”

  “Hell, all you need is a piece of construction paper and a glass. They work. Ouija boards. Other things too. Like that book you’ve been dicking with. It completes a circuit.” I snapped my fingers. “I knew it. The book.”

  “Right on, Ace. The book. The Black Guide. You been fucking around with it, haven’t you?”

  “If by fucking around with it, you mean reading it, then yeah. I have.”

  “C’mon, those drawings in the back—you didn’t copy some of them? Maybe scribbled a few of those weird doodads that look like hieroglyphics onto scratch paper. Tried to sound out some of those gobbledygook Latin phrases. You’re a nerd. Course you did.”

  He was right. I’d copied a diagram of a solar eclipse and its related alchemical symbols into my moleskin journal with the heavy enamel pen my younger brother bought me back when we were still talking. I’d also made dozens of curlicue doodles of the broken circle on the cover. There was something ominously compelling about that ring—it struck a chord on what I could only describe as an atavistic level. It spoke to my inner hominid and the hominid screeched and capered its distress. “What if I did? Did I do something wrong?” My voice was flat and metallic in my ears. I sounded strident and absurd. He said, “Remember the Golden Rules. Action equals reaction. The Crack that runs through everything stares into you. Big fish eats little fish. Night’s agents watch you, ape.”

  “Yeah? Why are you here? Why are you warning me and not your chums. Their idea to use the book for sightseeing, not mine.”

  “I’m not here to warn anybody. I’m here to give you a good ol’ mindfucking, among other things. Think you found the book by accident? There are no accidents around here. Time is a ring. Everything and everyone gets squished under the wheel.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Then you, my friend, are an idiot. And friend, keep going the way you’re going and maybe a friend will slice your heart from your chest and take a bite out of it like a Washington’s Best in the name of The First Power. That’s how friends are.”

  “This is an idiotic imaginary conversation,” I said. There wasn’t anything imaginary, however, about the searing alcohol in my burps, or the fact my head was wobbling, nor the flutter-flutter of my heart. “Shoo, fly, shoo.”

  Tom didn’t answer. The cherry of his cigarette dulled and blackened. A split second before his shape merged with the darkness, it changed. The room became cold. A woman said, There are frightful things. I couldn’t tell where the whisper originated. I finally gathered the courage to switch on the lamp and I was alone.

  Sleep was impossible. I made a cup of coffee and crept into my office and ran a search on the Kalamov Cavern, the Kalamov Dolmen, and Dr. Kalamov himself. There wasn’t a record of a dolmen of any kind in Washington. Boris Kalamov turned out to be no doctor at all, but a rather smarmy eighteenth-century charlatan who faked his academic credentials in order to bolster extraordinary claims made in his series of faux scholarly books regarding naturalism and the occult. The good doctor’s fraudulent escapades came to a sad end thanks to French justice—he was convicted of some cryptic act of pagan barbarism and confined to a Par
isian asylum for the remainder of his years. As to whether any of Dr. Kalamov’s treatises mentioned a cavern or dolmen on the Olympic Peninsula, I’d likely never know as all were long out of print. However, Mystery Mountain National Park was indeed where the Black Guide indicated, and open for business until mid October.

  Glenn scrambled eggs for breakfast. He didn’t comment on my absence from bed. I spent enough late nights at the computer he scarcely noticed anymore. He was hung over—all of us were. Pale sunlight streamed through the window and illuminated our chalky faces as we sat at the kitchen table and sipped orange juice and picked at scrambled eggs. The whiteness of Glenn’s cheeks, the raccoon-dark circles of his blank eyes, startled me. My own hands shone, for a moment, gnarled, and black-veined, as if from tremendous age. I gulped a whole glass of juice, coughing a bit, and when I looked again I saw it was only an illusion. I’d seen it before, watching Glenn sleep with the light illuminating him in such a way that his future self, the wrinkled senior citizen, was forecast.

  5.

  Glenn’s Land Rover was a rattletrap, sky-blue hulk. He’d driven the rig exactly four times since purchasing it at an estate sale in Wenatchee some years prior. Normally, we tooled around in his Saab or rode the bus. The Land Rover had bench seats wide enough to host a football team, a huge cargo bed, and smelled of mold, rust, and cigarette smoke. “Hurray,” Victor said when Glenn backed it out of the garage. “Let’s get this safari started!”

  September was unseasonably warm. The Land Rover lacked modern amenities including a CD player and air conditioning. I sat in back with the window rolled down. Everybody wore off-the-rack Hawaiian shirts (a gag dreamed up by Dane) and sunglasses—designer shades for my companions; for me, a cheapo set I’d gotten at an airport gift shop. I also strapped on a pair of steel-toed boots as I usually did when away from home. One never knew when one might need to stomp a mugger or other nefarious type. Victor wore a digital camera on a strap around his neck. While drinking one night, he’d confided parlaying his access (through Dane’s position) to the Broncos’ sideline into almost twenty-five-hundred close-up pictures of the cheerleaders in action. He was toying with the notion of auctioning the album on the underground channels of the internet. I thought there were already plenty of candid cheerleader shots floating around the internet; then what did I know?