Occultation and Other Stories

by Laird Barron

  Late Friday afternoon, the six of them loaded food, extra clothes, and sleeping bags into two cars and headed for the hills. It was an hour’s drive that wound from Olympia through the nearby pastureland of the Waddell Valley toward the Black Hills. Elgin paced them as they climbed a series of gravel and dirt access roads into the high country. Even after all these years, Pershing was impressed by how quickly the trappings of civilization were erased as the forest closed in. Few people came this far—mainly hunters and hikers passing through. Several logging camps were located in the region, but none within earshot.

  Elgin’s cabin lay at the end of an overgrown track atop a ridge. Below, the valley spread in a misty gulf. At night, Olympia’s skyline burned orange in the middle distance. No phone, no television, no electricity. Water came from a hand pump. There was an outhouse in the woods behind the cabin. While everyone else unpacked the cars, Pershing and Mel fetched wood from the shed and made a big fire in the pit near the porch, and a second fire in the massive stone hearth inside the cabin. By then it was dark.

  Wanda and Gina turned the tables on the men and demonstrated their superior barbequing skills. Everyone ate hot dogs and drank Löwenbräu and avoided gloomy conversation until Sarah commented that Elgin’s cabin would be “a great place to wait out the apocalypse” and received nervous chuckles in response.

  Pershing smiled to cover the prickle along the back of his neck. He stared into the night and wondered what kind of apocalypse a kid like Sarah imagined when she used that word. Probably she visualized the polar icecaps melting, or the world as a desert. Pershing’s generation had lived in fear of the Reds, nuclear holocaust, and being invaded by little green men from Mars.

  Wind sighed in the trees and sent a swirl of sparks tumbling skyward. He trembled. I hate the woods. Who thought the day would come? Star fields twinkled across the millions of light years. He didn’t like the looks of them either. Wanda patted his arm and laid her head against his shoulder while Elgin told an old story about the time he and his college dorm mates replaced the school flag with a pair of giant pink bloomers.

  Pershing didn’t find the story amusing this time. The laughter sounded canned and made him consider the artificiality of the entire situation, man’s supposed mastery of nature and darkness. Beyond this feeble bubble of light yawned a chasm. He’d drunk more than his share these past few days; had helped himself to Wanda’s Valium. None of these measures did the trick of allowing him to forget where he’d gone or what he’d seen; it hadn’t convinced him that his worst memories were the products of nightmare. Wanda’s touch repulsed him, confined him. He wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed and hide beneath the covers until everything bad went away.

  It grew chilly and the bonfire died to coals. The others drifted off to sleep. The cabin had two bedrooms—Elgin claimed one, and as the married couple, Mel and Gina were awarded the second. Pershing and Wanda settled for an air mattress near the fireplace. When the last of the beer was gone, he extricated himself from her and rose to stretch. “I’m going inside,” he said. She smiled and said she’d be along soon. She wanted to watch the stars a bit longer.

  Pershing stripped to his boxers and lay on the air mattress. He pulled the blanket to his chin and stared at the rafters. His skin was clammy and it itched fiercely. Sharp, throbbing pains radiated from his knees and shoulders. Tears formed in the corners of his eyes. He remembered the day he’d talked to Mark Ordbecker, the incredible heat, young Eric’s terrified expression as he skulked behind his father. Little pitchers and big ears. The boy heard the voices crooning from below, hadn’t he?

  A purple ring of light flickered on the rough-hewn beam directly overhead. It pulsed and blurred with each thud of his heart. The ring shivered like water and changed. His face was damp, but not from tears, not from sweat. He felt his knuckle joints split, the skin and meat popping and peeling like an overripe banana. What had Terry said about eating the young and immortality?

  How does our species propagate, you may ask. Cultural assimilation, my friend. We chop out the things that make you lesser life forms weak and then pump you full of love. You’ll be part of the family soon; you’ll understand everything.

  A mental switch clicked and he smiled at the memory of creeping into Eric’s room and plucking him from his bed; later, the child’s hands fluttering, nerveless, the approving croaks and cries of his new kin. He shuddered in ecstasy and burst crude seams in a dozen places. He threw off the blanket and stood, swaying, drunk with revelation. His flesh was a chrysalis, leaking gore.

  Terry and Gloria watched him from the doorways of the bedrooms—naked and ghostly, and smiling like devils. Behind them, the rooms were silent. He looked at their bodies, contemptuous that anyone could be fooled for two seconds by these distorted forms, or by his own.

  Then he was outside under the cold, cold stars.

  Wanda huddled in her shawl, wan and small in the firelight. Finally she noticed him, tilting her head so she could meet his eyes. “Sweetie, are you waiting for me?” She gave him a concerned smile. The recent days of worry and doubt had deepened the lines of her brow. “Good Lord—are you naked?”

  He regarded her from the shadows, speechless as his mouth filled with blood. He touched his face, probing a moist seam just beneath the hairline; a fissure, a fleshy zipper. Near his elbow, Terry said, “The first time, it’s easier if you just snatch it off.”

  Pershing gripped the flap of skin. He swept his hand down and ripped away all the frailties of humanity.

  --30--

  You know how this is going to end.

  —What? He woke, although it was only a slight shift between states of consciousness, an emergence from a lucid dream state. His eyes were already open and focused on a flickering panel. In his ears, rapidly ascending to inaudible decibels, Dracula’s organ music, the wheedling peep of a theremin, now the gentle hiss of air through the vents.

  —Yes? she said. She didn’t look up from the exposed circuit board on her lap. She gripped a soldering gun like a real weapon. Her hatred wasn’t fixed upon him at the moment.

  —What did you say?

  —I didn’t say anything.

  —I thought—

  —Let’s see. An hour ago I asked for a caliper. Had to get it myself.

  —An hour?

  She set aside the soldering gun and waved her hand to disperse the coils of rising smoke. —Forty-eight minutes and change. Sorry.

  —You are not. He said this under his breath.

  —Excuse me?

  All six security feeds went dark. He toggled switches, then tapped the nearest screen with his ring, as if that made any sense.

  —Problem? she said.

  —I’ve lost all video.

  —Ooo-weee-ooo, she said in a sinister voice. —Starring Keith David and Jessica Lange: In a world gone mad, two scientists spend a month in the badlands, haunted by the Ghost of Christmas Past—

  —Laugh now. He smacked the screen again. —You’re no Jessica Lange, honey-pie. Me, I’m Sidney Poitier. Except badass.

  —Poitier was badass. You’re more like Poitier if he were scary-looking.

  Feed One remained down, but the others revived in sequence. Feed Two displayed a keyhole perspective of the southeastern quadrant—a sloping field of short, dry grass and scrub brush wavering in the breeze. Feed Three, a vista of pebbly ground and small boulders, Four through Six, a line of trees. Feed One would’ve revealed the module, their little habitat itself. But the monitor was still dead. It bothered him that Feed One wouldn’t work and he kept flipping the switch. Slow-moving clouds passed over the translucent dome and reflected a diamond pattern of shadows on the control boards, the fabric of his coat sleeves.

  —Funny thing, she said. —I dreamed this would happen. A couple of nights ago.

  —Dreamed what? Flip, flip, flip.

  —The video monitors went on the fritz. You screwed them up, somehow.

  —Did I spill a glass of scotch into the works
?

  Now she did look at him. —Tell me you smuggled in a bottle of single malt.

  —In fact, I did. We’ll save it for a special occasion. Anyway, I meant that Tommy Billings and his love of booze might’ve been responsible for the Siberian debacle.

  —You’re kidding, she said.

  —Listen, this is good. I’m surprised you haven’t heard. The team was partying at three o’clock in the morning and TB got a little crazy and dumped a full glass of liquor into some circuitry. It started an electrical fire and whoom! The site went up like a torch.

  —Color me dubious. That’s too convenient.

  —Less titillating than the espionage rumors, alas.

  —Who told you?

  —I don’t recall. And I was sworn to secrecy.

  —The jerk was probably drinking vodka. What with it being a joint project with the Russians. That adds a nice touch of verisimilitude, don’t you think?

  —Sure, why not? We’ll never know. None of them are around anymore. They froze pretty quick.

  —If there was no one left to tell the tale…. she said.

  He said, —…then how come we have the legend of the Manitou? Boy follows stag up a mountain—

  She said, —…boy discovers stag ain’t no stag. That’s easy—it’s a story. As in a bedtime story. Just like TB killing everybody with a glass of hooch. Although.

  —Yeah?

  —Accepting the hearsay as true for a moment, if Tommy really did something like that, it might’ve been on purpose.

  —Where do you get that?

  —I met him once at a cocktail party. Doctor Toshi Ryoko and the boys had just gotten back from Japan—the Devil Sea thing, I think—and the department threw them a shindig.

  —Oh. I wasn’t invited.

  —I’m shocked! You’re such a people person!

  —You think Tommy was working for another team?

  —Sure, why not? He struck me as the type.

  —The type?

  —Yeah, you know, an asshole. He was a farm boy who made good.

  —No call to hack on farm boys. They’re the backbone of this great union.

  — Give me a break. Those days are history. One driver on a machine does it all. It’ll be robots in a few years. Steelworkers are where it’s at.

  —I’m sure, I’m sure. “Allentown” was a mighty sexy song. So why do you think ill of the late, lamented Tommy Billings? Did you catch him exchanging passwords with an FSB operative by the punch bowl?

  —No, it was just subtle things. TB stumbled around all night with a bottle in his fist, dopey as a cow. He was too stupid to be true…he had a shifty glint in his eyes. Toshi loved him. Toshi collects guys like that. These days he’s got this Aussie goon named Beasley to carry his spears. Ex-rugby star, or something. Ugly, but sort of beautiful too. I know a girl in the Denver office who balled him. She was pretty high on the whole experience.

  —Toshi. You’re on a first name basis with him? Cozy. Got a key to his chateau, do you? No wonder you’re on the fast track.

  —Don’t be jealous. I don’t think Toshi likes girls. He’s married to the media frenzy, and busting the chops of all those academic enemies he’s made.

  —Jealous? I’m so far beyond all that, you don’t even know. Since they’d broken it off after the job in the Sierras, he’d said this very thing to himself so many times it had become a fact.

  —Getting your money’s worth out of your therapist?

  He laughed again. It was growing harder not to match her naked antipathy, and it had only been eighteen days. Twenty, if one counted the flight from Seattle to Yakima and the interminable briefing, then the ninety-minute chopper transport into the hills. He said, —She keeps the top two buttons of her blouse undone. I cannot complain.

  —Liar. You’ve been watching those straight-to-video flicks starring Shannon Tweed. You poor lonely bastard.

  —I’m going to retrieve the footage at B5 and B6. He stood and stretched, and opened the gun cabinet. He checked the action on the rifle, a sleek 7mm with a Leopold scope, and slung it over his shoulder. —Be back in a jiffy.

  —Do try to return before dark, or I won’t let you in.

  —I’ll hustle. Gonna be chilly tonight.

  She wasn’t listening.

  The module was a hemisphere nestled in a clearing among sagebrush and junipers. It was constructed of composite plastic with viewports of thick, shatterproof glass, and segregated into several compartments. The module was designed to function as a self-sufficient habitat, sturdy enough to withstand vast temperature swings and powerful winds that howled out of the northwest from the high desert. Lights and surveillance equipment were powered by a pair of generators and, because this was an inordinately sunny part of the state, a battery of solar panels. Thus, all the comforts of home: TV, microwave dinners, solitaire on the sadly outdated computer, even very brief showers. A thousand gallons of water sat in storage. The chemical toilets were designed to separate solid and liquid waste. Garbage was incinerated, composted in the tiny hydroponics cubicle, or packaged to be shipped home during resupply. This was a minor, but long-term operation. The pair would stay for six months conducting field work, then rotate with the next team.

  He shut the entry hatch. He wore a camouflage jumpsuit with a heavy belt. On the belt: canteen, knife, walkie-talkie, and a pouch containing waterproof matches, a screw-on flashlight, a compass, antivenin, and trail mix. In his left hand he carried a rucksack containing batteries and tapes for the remote cameras.

  The Family’s ranch sprawled for thousands of acres under skies that, come sunset, darkened like blood edged in molten gold. Homesteaders grabbed every parcel they could lay hands on during the 1880s when dirt was cheap. Not that it resembled a ranch—nor had it functioned as one since the 1960s when the Family took it over. Cowboys would refer to the vista as rough country, an expanse of rocky steppes, and canyons, and in the near distance, limestone ridges that gradually built into mountains. A coyote behind every bush, a rattlesnake under every rock. At night, the stars shone bright and cold, and he could count the pits and cracks in the moon, it hung so full and yellow.

  Not far south, things were greener, softer; the original settlers raised cattle and horses, once upon a time. Headquarters provided him an assortment of area maps—according to these, a road cut the property in half and connected it to the nearest town, forty-five kilometers south. HQ told him not to worry about ground transportation. Supplies would be brought in by helicopter and, in the event of emergency, he and she would be airlifted to safety.

  He adjusted the timer on his watch and headed northeast, toward the mountains. A horse would’ve been nice—a big, soft-eyed pinto to carry him through this Howard Hawks landscape. At least he’d the smarts to bring an appropriate hat instead of the god-awful baseball caps and sun visors the CSIs wore. The hat was of crumpled, sun-bleached leather and it once belonged to a vaquero who worked in Texas. The vaquero went home to Mexico to be with his wife when she gave birth, and bequeathed him the hat as a token of friendship. It chafed his ears because it was hard as an old leather football left to dry in the mud. He took it off and beat it against his knee, used it to sop the sweat streaming from his face. Once the oils of his flesh got in there, it would loosen and fit his head.

  He walked.

  The coyote den was located amid the root system of a copse of shaggy pines. Its size and elaborateness still surprised him. Generally, coyotes chose to lair among rocks if they couldn’t co-opt the abandoned shelters of other animals. His work here proved a bit more intrusive than he preferred. He’d installed cameras to monitor den entrances. The cameras were encased in waterproof boxes and mounted on trees. After days of zero activity, despite his squirting synthetic musk on nearby bushes, he resorted to inserting a probe into the den—the probe was a flexible tube attached to a braincase. The case was affixed to a wooden stand. He spent hours manipulating the device, mapping the labyrinthine interior via the infrared eye ring. Ultimate
ly, he positioned the eye in a central burrow and programmed the VCR to record at certain intervals throughout a twenty-four-hour cycle.

  The company spared no expense for equipment, and he’d lain awake the past two and a half weeks turning that over in his mind. In his experience, corporations were loath to part with a penny more than circumstances absolutely required—the crappy computer in the module, and the lack of a jeep or four-wheeler, as exhibits A and B. The exception to this rule being the opportunity for great profit, or in the interest of mitigating some potential risk to their reputation. The government wanted people here, had selected his company of all the best North American subcontractors, to perform studies and collect data, but their motives remained unclear. Need to know, they said. It was enough for him to track and film and file the reports. The whole thing was likely on the level. What else could it be, anyway? Nonetheless, he found it simplest to distrust people until proven wrong, a product of spending most of his adulthood dwelling alone in shanties and shacks, of lying motionless in a thousand lonely coverts, spying upon the beasts of the woods.

  He changed the batteries on all of the cameras and swapped out the cassettes. There was still time, so he withdrew the probe and spent an hour navigating it into an entrance on the opposite flank of the den. Then he sat in the shade and drank some water and chewed a handful of trail mix, and wondered why, despite the heat, a chill tightened the muscles in his shoulders and neck. He glanced around with affected casualness. The trees shifted in a mild breeze. A cloud partially occulted the sun.

  Without question, spoor indicated several coyotes lurked in the vicinity. Bizarrely, the tracks didn’t approach the den, but rather circled it, and he envisioned them creeping about the bushes, fearful, yet inexorably drawn and entrapped by simple fascination. This was beyond his twenty years of experience in the wild. Certainly one would expect an extended family to dwell inside such a massive den. He found its desertion, the haunted house quality, disquieting to say the least.