Occultation and Other Stories

by Laird Barron

  Intestines. Kidneys.

  Ohh, either is delectable.

  And sweetbreads. As long as they’re from a young one.

  Ganglia, for me. Or brain. Scoop it out quivering.

  Enough! Let’s start tonight. We’ll take one from—

  They tittered and their words degenerated into garble, then stopped.

  Shh, shh! Wait!… Someone’s listening.

  Don’t be foolish.

  They are. There’s a spy hanging on our every word.

  How can you tell?

  I can hear them breathing.

  He clapped his hand over his mouth. His hair stood on end.

  I hear you, spy. Which room could you be in? First floor? No, no. The fifth or the sixth.

  His heart labored. What was this?

  We’ll figure it out where you are, dear listener. Pay you a visit. While you sleep. Whoever it was laughed like a child, or someone pretending to be one. You could always come down here where the mome raths outgrabe…. Deep in the bowels of the building, the furnace rumbled to life as it did every four hours to push air circulation through the vents. The hiss muffled the crooning threats, which had ceased altogether a few minutes later when the system shut down.

  Pershing was stunned and nauseated. Kidneys? Sweetbreads? He picked up the phone to punch in 911 before he got hold of his senses. What on earth would he say to the dispatcher? He could guess what they’d tell him: Stop watching so many late night thrillers, Mr. Dennard. He waited, eyeing the vent as if a snake might slither forth, but nothing happened. First the phantom girl, now this. Pretty soon he’d be jumping at his own shadow. First stage dementia, just like dear old Dad. Mom and Uncle Mike put Ernest Dennard in a home for his seventieth birthday. He’d become paranoid and delusional prior to that step. At the home Pop’s faculties degenerated until he didn’t know if he was coming or going. He hallucinated his sons were the ghosts of war buddies and screamed and tried to leap through his window when they visited. Thankfully, long before this turn of events Mom had the foresight to hide the forty-five caliber pistol he kept in the dresser drawer. Allegedly Grandma went through a similar experience with Gramps. Pershing didn’t find his own prospects very cheery.

  But you don’t have dementia yet, and you don’t knock back enough booze to be hallucinating. You heard them, clear as day. Jeezus C., who are they?

  Pershing walked around the apartment and flicked on some lights; he checked his watch and decided getting the hell out for a few hours might be the best remedy for his jangled nerves. He put on a suit—nothing fancy, just a habit he’d acquired from his uncle who’d worked as a professor—and felt hat and left. He managed to catch the last bus going downtown. The bus was an oven; empty except for himself, a pair of teens, and the driver. Even so, it reeked from the day’s accumulation; a miasma of sweat and armpit stench.

  The depot had attracted its customary throng of weary seniors and the younger working poor, and a smattering of fancifully coiffed, tattooed, and pierced students from Evergreen; the former headed home or to the late shift, the latter off to house parties, or bonfires along the inlet beaches. Then there were the human barnacles—a half-dozen toughs decked out in parkas and baggy sports warmup suits despite the crushing heat; the hard, edgy kind who watched everyone else, who appraised the herd. Olympia was by no means a big town, but it hosted more than its share of beatings and stabbings, especially in the northerly quarter inward from the marina and docks. One didn’t hang around the old cannery district at night unless one wanted to get mugged.

  Tonight none of the ruffians paid him any heed. From the depot he quickly walked through several blocks of semi-deserted industrial buildings and warehouses, made a right and continued past darkened sporting goods stores, bookshops, and tattoo parlors until he hooked onto a narrow side lane and reached the subtly lighted wooden shingle of the Manticore Lounge. The Manticore was a hole in the wall that catered to a slightly more reserved set of clientele than was typical of the nightclubs and sports bars on the main thoroughfares. Inside was an oasis of coolness, scents of lemon and beer.

  Weeknights were slow—two young couples occupied tables near the darkened dais that served as a stage for the four-piece band that played on weekends; two beefy gentlemen in tailored suits sat at the bar. Lobbyists in town to siege the legislature; one could tell by their Rolexes and how the soft lighting from the bar made their power haircuts glisten.

  Mel Clayton and Elgin Bane waved him over to their window booth. Mel, an engineering consultant who favored blue button-up shirts, heavy on the starch, and Elgin, a social worker who dressed in black turtlenecks and wore Buddy Holly-style glasses and sometimes lied to women at parties by pretending to be a beat poet; he even stashed a ratty pack of cloves in his pocket for such occasions. He quoted Kerouac and Ginsberg chapter and verse regardless how many rounds of Johnny Walker he’d put away. Pershing figured his friend’s jaded posturing, his affected cynicism, was influenced by the depressing nature of his job: he dealt with emotional basket cases, battered wives, and abused children sixty to seventy hours a week. What did they say? At the heart of every cynic lurked an idealist. That fit Elgin quite neatly.

  Elgin owned a house in Yelm, and Mel lived on the second floor of the Broadsword—they and Pershing and three or four other guys from the neighborhood got together for drinks at the Manticore or The Red Room at least once a month; more frequently now as the others slipped closer to retirement and as their kids graduated college. Truth be told, he was much closer to these two than he was to his younger brother Carl, who lived in Denver and whom he hadn’t spoken with in several months.

  Every autumn, the three of them, sometimes with their significant others, drove up into the Black Hills outside Olympia to a hunting cabin Elgin’s grandfather owned. None of them hunted; they enjoyed lounging on the rustic porch, roasting marshmallows, and sipping hot rum around the campfire. Pershing relished these excursions—no one ever wanted to go hiking or wander far from the cabin, and thus his suppressed dread of wilderness perils remained quiescent, except for the occasional stab of nervousness when the coyotes barked, or the wind crashed in the trees, or his unease at how perfectly dark the woods became at night.

  Mel bought him a whiskey sour—Mel invariably insisted on covering the tab. It’s you boys or my ex-wife, so drink up! Pershing had never met the infamous Nancy Clayton; she was the inimitable force behind Mel’s unceremonious arrival at the Broadsword fifteen years back, although judging from his flirtatious behavior with the ladies, his ouster was doubtless warranted. Nancy lived in Seattle with her new husband in the Lake Washington townhouse Mel toiled through many a late night and weekend to secure. He’d done better with Regina, his second wife. Regina owned a bakery in Tumwater and she routinely made cookies for Pershing and company. A kindly woman and large-hearted; she’d immediately adopted Mel’s cast of misfit friends and associates.

  After the trio had chatted for a few minutes, griping about the “damnable” weather, mainly, Elgin said, “What’s eating you? You haven’t touched your drink.”

  Pershing winced at eating. He hesitated, then chided himself. What sense to play coy? Obviously he wished to talk about what happened. Why else had he come scuttling in from the dark, tail between his legs? “I…heard something at home earlier tonight. People whispering in the vent. Weird, I know. But it really scared me. The stuff they said…”

  Mel and Elgin exchanged glances. Elgin said, “Like what?”

  Pershing told them. Then he briefly described what Wanda said about the mystery girl. “The other thing that bothers me is…this isn’t the first time. The last couple of weeks I’ve been hearing stuff. Whispers. I wrote those off. Now, I’m not so sure.”

  Mel stared into his glass. Elgin frowned and set his palm against his chin in apparently unconscious imitation of The Thinker. He said, “Hmm. That’s bizarre. Kinda screwed up, in fact. It almost makes me wonder—”

  “—if your place is bugged,” Mel said.
>
  “Bugged?”

  “This from the man with a lifetime subscription to the Fortean Times,” Elgin said. “Damn, but sometimes I think you and Freeman would make a great couple.” Randy Freeman being an old school radical who’d done too much Purple Haze in the ’60s and dialed into the diatribes of a few too many Che Guevara-loving hippie chicks for his own good. He was another of The Red Room set.

  Mel took Elgin’s needling in stride. “Hey, I’m dead serious. Two and two, baby. I’ll lay odds somebody miked Percy’s apartment.”

  “For the love of—” Elgin waved him off, settling into his mode of dismissive impatience. “Who on God’s green earth would do something crazy like that? No-freaking-body, that’s who.”

  “It is a bit farfetched,” Pershing said. “On the other hand, if you’d heard this crap. I dunno.”

  “Oh, hell.” Elgin took a sip of his drink, patently incredulous.

  “Jeez, guys—I’m not saying Homeland Security wired it for sound… maybe another tenant is playing games. People do wacko things.”

  “No forced entry.” Pershing pointed at Mel. “And don’t even say it might be Wanda. I’ll have to slug you.”

  “Nah, Wanda’s not sneaky. Who else has got a key?”

  Elgin said, “The super would have one. I mean, if you’re determined to go there, then that’s the most reasonable suspect. Gotta tell you, though—you’re going to feel like how Mel looks when it turns out to be television noise—which is to say, an idiot.”

  “Ha, ha. Question is, what to do?”

  “Elgin’s right. Let’s not make a bigger deal of this than it is… I got spooked.”

  “And the light of reason shines through. I’m going to the head.” Elgin stood and made his way across the room and disappeared around a big potted fern.

  Pershing said, “Do you mind if I sleep on your couch? If I’m not intruding, that is.”

  Mel smiled. “No problem. Gina doesn’t care. Just be warned she goes to work at four in the morning, so she’ll be stumbling around the apartment.” He glanced over to make certain Elgin was still safely out of sight. “Tomorrow I’ll come up and help you scope your pad. A while back Freeman introduced me to a guy in Tacoma who runs one of those spy shops with the mini-cameras and microphones. I’ll get some tools and we’ll see what’s what.”

  After another round Elgin drove them back to the Broadsword. Just before he pulled away, he stuck his head out the window and called, “Don’t do anything crazy.”

  “Which one of us is he talking to?” Mel said, glaring over his shoulder.

  “I’m talking to both of you,” Elgin said. He gunned the engine and zipped into the night.

  5.

  Regina had already gone to bed. Mel tiptoed around his darkened apartment getting a blanket and a pillow for Pershing, cursing softly as he bumped into furniture. Two box fans blasted, but the room was muggy as a greenhouse. Once the sleeping arrangements were made, he got a six-pack of Heineken from the refrigerator and handed one to Pershing. They kicked back and watched a repeat of the Mariners game with the volume turned most of the way down. The seventh-inning stretch did Mel in. His face had a droopy, hangdog quality that meant he was loaded and ready to crash. He said goodnight and sneaked unsteadily toward the bedroom.

  Pershing watched the rest of the game, too lethargic to reach for the remote. Eventually he killed the television and lay on the couch, sweat molding his clothes to him like a second skin. His heart felt sluggish. A night light in the kitchen cast ghostly radiance upon the wall, illuminating bits of Regina’s Ansel Adams prints, the glittery mica eyes of her menagerie of animal figurines on the mantel. Despite his misery, he fell asleep right away.

  A woman gasped in pleasure. That brought him up from the depths. The cry repeated, muffled by the wall of Mel and Gina’s bedroom. He stared at the ceiling, mortified, thinking that Mel certainly was one hell of a randy bastard after he got a few drinks under his belt. Then someone whispered, perhaps five feet to his left where the light didn’t penetrate. The voice chanted: This old man, this old man…

  The syrupy tone wicked away the heat as if he’d fallen into a cold, black lake. He sat upright so quickly pains sparked in his neck and back. His only consolation lay in the recognition of the slight echoing quality, which suggested the person was elsewhere. Whistling emanated from the shadows, its falsetto muted by the background noise. He clumsily sprang from the couch, his fear transformed to a more useful sense of anger, and crab-walked until he reached the proper vent. “Hey, jerk!” he said, placing his face within kissing distance of the grill. “I’m gonna break your knees with my baseball bat if you don’t shut your damn mouth!” His bravado was thin—he did keep a Louisville slugger, signed by Ken Griffey Jr., no less, in the bedroom closet in case a burglar broke in at night. Whether he’d be able to break anyone’s knees was open to question.

  The whistling broke off mid-tune. Silence followed. Pershing listened so hard his skull ached. He said to himself with grudging satisfaction, “That’s right, creepos, you better stuff a sock in it.” His sense of accomplishment was marred by the creeping dread that the reason his tormentors (or was it Mel’s since this was his place?) had desisted was because they even now prowled the stairwells and halls of the old building, patiently searching for him.

  He finally went and poured a glass of water and huddled at the kitchen table until dawn lighted the windows and Gina stumbled in to make coffee.

  6.

  The temperature spiked to one hundred and three degrees by two p.m. the following afternoon. He bought Wanda two dozen roses with a card and chocolates, and arranged to have them delivered to her house. Mission accomplished, he went directly to an air-conditioned coffee shop, found a dark corner, and ordered half a dozen consecutive frozen drinks. That killed time until his rendezvous with Mel at the Broadsword.

  Mel grinned like a mischievous schoolboy when he showed off his fiber-optic snooper cable, a meter for measuring electromagnetic fluctuations, and his battered steel toolbox. Pershing asked if he’d done this before and Mel replied that he’d learned a trick or two in the Navy.

  “Just don’t destroy anything,” Pershing said. At least a dozen times he’d started to tell Mel about the previous night’s visitation, the laughter; after all, if this was occurring in different apartments on separate floors, the scope of such a prank would be improbable. He couldn’t devise a way to break it to his friend and still remain credible, and so kept his peace, miserably observing the operation unfold.

  After lugging the equipment upstairs, Mel spread a dropcloth to protect the hardwood floor and arrayed his various tools with the affected studiousness of a surgeon preparing to perform open-heart surgery. Within five minutes he’d unscrewed the antique brass grillwork plate and was rooting around inside the guts of the duct with a flashlight and a big screwdriver. Next, he took a reading with the voltmeter, then, finding nothing suspicious, made a laborious circuit of the entire apartment, running the meter over the other vents, the molding, and outlets. Pershing supplied him with glasses of lemonade to diffuse his own sense of helplessness.

  Mel switched off the meter, wiped his face and neck with a damp cloth. He gulped the remainder of the pitcher of lemonade and shook his head with disappointment. “Damn. Place is clean. Well, except for some roaches.”

  “I’ll make Frame gas them later. So, nothing, eh? It’s funny acoustics. Or my imagination.”

  “Yeah, could be. Ask your neighbors if they heard anything odd lately.”

  “I dunno. They already gave me the fishy eye after I made the rounds checking on Wanda’s girl. Maybe I should leave it alone for now. See what happens.”

  “That’s fine as long as whatever happens isn’t bad.” Mel packed his tools with a disconsolate expression.

  The phone rang. “I love you, baby,” Wanda said on the other end.

  “Me too,” Pershing said. “I hope you liked the flowers.” Meanwhile, Mel gave him a thumbs up and let himself
out. Wanda asked if he wanted to come over and it was all Pershing could do to sound composed. “It’s a date. I’ll stop and grab a bottle of vino.”

  “No way, Jose; you don’t know Jack about wine. I’ll take care of that—you just bring yourself on over.”

  After they disconnected he said, “Thank God.” Partly because a peace treaty with Wanda was a relief. The other portion, the much larger portion, frankly, was that he could spend the night well away from the Broadsword. Yeah, that’s fine, girly man. How about tomorrow night? How about the one after that?

  For twenty years he’d chewed on the idea of moving; every time the furnace broke in the winter, the cooling system died in the summer, or when the elevators went offline sans explanation from management for weeks on end, he’d joined the crowd of malcontents who wrote letters to the absentee landlord, threatened to call the state, to sue, to breach the rental contract and disappear. Maybe the moment had come to make good on that. Yet in his heart he despaired of escaping; he was a part of the hotel now. It surrounded him like a living tomb.

  7.

  He dreamed that he woke and dressed and returned to the Broadsword. In this dream he was a passenger inside his own body, an automaton following its clockwork track. The apartment smelled stale from days of neglect. Something was wrong, however; off kilter, almost as if it wasn’t his home at all, but a clever re-creation, a stage set. Certain objects assumed hyper-reality, while others submerged into a murky background. The sugar in the glass bowl glowed and dimmed and brightened, like a pulse. Through the window, leaden clouds scraped the tops of buildings and radio antennas vibrated, transmitting a signal that he felt in his skull, his teeth fillings, as a squeal of metal on metal. His nose bled.