The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All

by Laird Barron

  "You mean to leave Arlen at the tender mercy of… Nay, I'll have none of it."

  "I am sorry. Our duty is clear."

  "Curse you, Mr. Welloc!"

  "Master Scobie, I implore you not to pursue a reckless course-"

  "Bah!" Scobie made a foul gesture and stomped into the predawn gloom.

  Mr. McEvoy said, "The old man is right-we can't just quit on the kid."

  "Damned straight," Mr. Briggs said. "What kind of skunks would we be to abandon a boy while there's still a chance?"

  Dr. Landscomb said, "Well spoken, sirs. However, you can hardly be expected to grasp the, ah, gravity of the situation. I assure you, Arlen is lost. Master Scobie is on a Quixotic mission. He won't find the lad anywhere in Wolfvale. In any event, Mr. McEvoy simply must be treated at a hospital lest his ankle grow worse. I dislike the color of the swelling."

  "Surely, it does no harm to try," Mr. Briggs said.

  "We tempt fate by spending another minute here," Mr. Liam Welloc said. "And to stay after sunset… This is impossible, I'm afraid." The incongruity of the doctor's genteel comport juxtaposed with his apparent dread of the supernatural chilled Luke Honey in a way he wouldn't have deemed possible after his experiences abroad.

  "Tempt fate?" Mr. Briggs said. "Not stay after sunset? What the hell is that supposed to mean, Welloc? Boys, can you make heads or tails of this foolishness?"

  "He means we'd better get ourselves shut of this place," Mr. Williams said.

  "Bloody right," Lord Bullard said. "This is a matter for the authorities."

  Mr. Briggs appeared dumbfounded. "Well don't this beat all. Luke, what do you say?"

  Luke Honey lighted a cigarette. "I think we should get back to the lodge. A dirty shame, but that's how I see it."

  "I don't believe this."

  "Me neither," Mr. McEvoy said. His leg was elevated and his cheeks shone with sweat. His ankle was swaddled in bandages. "Wish I could walk, damn it."

  "You saw what that stag did to the dogs," Lord Bullard said. "There's something unnatural at work and I've had quite enough, thank you." He wiped his eyes and looked at Luke Honey. "You'll answer for Wes. Don't think you won't."

  "Easy there, partner," Mr. Williams said.

  Luke Honey nodded. "Well, Mr. Bullard, I think you may be correct. I'll answer for your friend. That reckoning is a bit farther down the list, but it's on there."

  "This is no time to bicker," said Mr. Liam Welloc. "Apparently we are in agreement-"

  "Not all of us," Mr. Briggs said, glowering.

  "-Since we are in agreement, let's commence packing. We'll sort everything out when we return to the house."

  "What about Scobie?" Mr. Briggs said.

  "Master Scobie can fend for himself," Mr. Liam Welloc said, his bland, conciliatory demeanor firmly in place. "As I said, upon our return we will alert the proper authorities. Sheriff Peckham has some experience in these matters."

  Luke Honey didn't believe the sheriff, or anybody else, would be combing these woods for one raggedy kid anytime soon. The yearly sacrifice had been accomplished. This was the way of the world; this was its beating heart and panting maw. He'd seen such offerings made by tribes in the jungles, just as his own Gaelic kin had once poured wine in the sea and cut the throats of fatted lambs. If one looked back far enough, all men issued from the same wellspring and every last one of them feared the dark as Mr. Liam Welloc and Dr. Landscomb and their constituency in Ransom Hollow surely did. Despite the loathsome nature of their pact, there was nothing shocking about this arrangement. To propitiate the gods, to please one's lord and master was ever the way. That expert killers such as the English and the Texans and, of course, himself, served as provender in this particular iteration of the eternal drama filled Luke Honey's heart with bitter amusement. This wry humor mixed with his increasing dread and rendered him giddy, almost drunken.

  Mr. Wesley's body was laid across the saddle of Luke Honey's horse and the company began the long trudge homeward. The dreary fog persisted, although the rain had given out for the moment.

  "I hope you don't think I'm a coward," Mr. Williams said. He rode beside Luke Honey who was walking at the rear of the group.

  Luke Honey didn't speak. He pulled his collar tight.

  "My mama raised me as a God fearin' boy. There's real evil, Mr. Honey. Not that existential crap, either. Last night, I felt somethin' I ain't felt before. Scared me spitless." When Luke Honey didn't answer, Mr. Williams leaned over and said in a low voice, "People got killed in that grove, not just animals. Couldn't you feel it coming off that idol like a draft in a slaughter yard? I ain't afraid of much, but Bullard's right. This ain't natural and that kid is a goner."

  "Who are you trying to convince?" Luke Honey said, although the question was more than a little self referential. "The hunt is over. Go back to Texas and dream away the winter. There's always next year."

  "No, not for me. My uncle made that mistake. Next year, I'll go to British Colombia. Or Alaska. Damned if I know, but I know it won't be Ransom Hollow." Mr. Williams clicked his tongue and spurred his mount ahead to rejoin the group.

  Later, the company halted for a brief time to rest the animals and allow the men to stretch their legs. The liquor was gone and tempers short. When they remounted, Luke Honey remained seated on a mossy boulder, smoking his last cigarette. His companions rode on, heads down and dispirited, and failed to notice his absence. They disappeared around a sharp bend.

  Luke Honey finished his cigarette. The sun slowly ate through the clouds and its pale light shone in the gaps of the foliage. He turned his back and walked deeper into the woods, into the darkness.

  ***

  The shrieks of the mastiffs came and went all day, and so too the phantom bellows of men, the muffled blasts of their weapons. Luke Honey resisted the urge to cover his ears, to break and flee. Occasionally, Scobie hollered from an indeterminate distance. Luke Honey thought the old man's cries sounded more substantial, more of the mortal realm, and he attempted to orient himself in their direction. He walked on, clutching his rifle.

  Night came and he was lost in the endless forest.

  A light glimmered to his left, sifting down through the black gallery to illuminate a figure who stood as if upon a stage. Mr. Wesley regarded him, hat clasped to his navel in both hands, hair slick and shining. His face was white. A black stain spread across the breast of his white shirt. He removed a pair of objects from inside his hat and with an insolent flourish tossed them into the bushes short of Luke Honey. Dr. Landscomb stepped into view and took Mr. Wesley by the elbow and drew him into the shadows. The ray of light blinked out of existence.

  The objects were pale and glistening and as Luke Honey approached them, his heart beat faster. He leaned close to inspect them and recoiled, his courage finally buckling in the presence of such monstrous events.

  Luke Honey blindly shoved his way through low hanging branches and spiky undergrowth. His clothes were torn, the flesh of his hands and face scratched and bleeding. A rifle fired several yards away. He staggered and shielded his eyes from the muzzle flash and a large animal blundered past him, squealing and roaring. Then it was gone and Scobie came tearing in pursuit and almost tripped over him. The old man swung a battered lantern. He gawked at Luke Honey in the flat yellow glare.

  Scobie's expression was wild and caked in dirt. His face was nicked and bloody. He panted like a dog. He held his rifle in his left hand, its bore centered on Luke Honey's middle. In a gasping voice, he said, "I see you, Bill."

  "It's me, Luke Honey."

  "What's your business here?"

  "I came to help you find the boy." He dared not speak of what he'd so recently discovered, an abomination that once revealed was certain to drive the huntsman into raving madness. At this range Scobie's ancient single shot rifle would cut Luke Honey in twain.

  "Arlen's gone. He's gone." Scobie lowered the weapon, his arm quivering in exhaustion.

  "You don't believe that." Luke Honey
said with a steadiness born of staring down savage predators, of waiting to pull the trigger that would drop them at his feet, of facing certain death with a coldness of mind inherent to the borderline mad. The terror remained, ready to sweep him away.

  "I'm worn to the bone. There's nothing left in me." Scobie seemed to

  wither, to shrink into himself in despair.

  "The stag is wounded," Luke Honey said. "I think you hit it again, judging from the racket."

  "It don't matter. You can't kill a thing like that." Scobie's eyes glittered with tears. "This is the devil's preserve, Mr. Honey. Every acre. You should've gone with the masters, got yourself away. We stayed too long and we're done for. He only pretends to run. He'll end the game and come for us soon."

  "I had a bad feeling about Landscomb and Welloc."

  "Forget those idiots. They're as much at the mercy of Hell as anyone else in Ransom Hollow."

  "Got anything to drink?" Luke Honey said.

  Scobie hung the lantern from a branch and handed Luke Honey a canteen made of cured animal skin. The canteen was full of sweet, bitter whiskey. The men took a couple of swigs and rested there by the flickering illumination of the sooty old lamp. Luke Honey built a fire. They ate jerky and warmed themselves as the dank night closed in ever more tightly.

  Much later, Scobie said, "It used to be worse. My grandsire claimed some of the more devout folk would drag girls from their homes and cut out their innards on them stone tablets you'll find under a tree here or there." His wizened face crinkled into a horridly mournful smile. "An' my mother, she whispered that when she was a babe, Black Bill was known to creep through the yards of honest folk while they slept. She heard his nails tap-tapping on their cottage door one night."

  Luke Honey closed his eyes. He thought again of Arlen's pitiful, small hands severed at the wrists and discarded in the brush, a pair of soft, dripping flowers. He heard his companion rise stealthily and creep away from camp. He slept and awakened to the old man kneeling at his side. Scobie's face was hidden in shadow. Luke Honey smelled the oily steel of a knife near his own neck. The man reeked of murderous intent. He wondered where Scobie had been, what he had done.

  Scobie spoke softly, "I don't know what to do. I'm a man of God."

  "Yet here we are. Look who you serve."

  "No, Mr. Honey. The hunt goes on an' I don't matter none. You're presence ain't my doing. You bought your ticket. I come because somebody's got to stand up. Somebody's got to put a bullet in the demon."

  "The price you've paid seems steep as hell, codger."

  Scobie nodded. He remained quiet for a while. At last he said, "Come, boy. You must come with me now. He's waiting for us. He whispered to me from the dark, made a pact with me he'd take one of us in return for Arlen. I promised him you, God help me. It's a vile oath and I'm ashamed."

  "Oh, Scobie." Luke Honey's belly twisted and churned. "You know how these things turn out. You poor, damned fool."

  "Please. Don't make me beg you, Mr. Honey. Don't make me. Do what's right for that innocent boy. I know the Lord's in your heart."

  Luke Honey reached for Scobie's arm, and patted it. "You're right about one thing. God help you."

  They went. There was a clearing, its bed layered with muck and spoiled leaves. Unholy symbols were gouged into the trees; brands so old they'd fossilized. It was a killing ground of antiquity and Scobie had prepared it well. He'd improvised several torches to light the shallow basin with a ghastly, reddish glare.

  Scobie took several steps and uttered an inarticulate cry, a glottal exclamation held over from his ancestors. He half turned to beckon and his face was transformed by shock when Luke Honey smashed the butt of his rifle into his hip, and sent him stumbling into the middle of the clearing.

  Luke Honey's eyes blurred with grief, and Michael's shade materialized there, his trusting smile disintegrating into bewilderment, then inertness. The cruelness of the memory drained Luke Honey of his fear. He said with dispassion, "My hell is to testify. Don't you understand? He doesn't want me. He took me years ago."

  Brush snapped. The stag shambled forth from the outer darkness. It loomed above Scobie, its fur rank and steaming. Black blood oozed from gashes along its flanks. Beneath a great jagged crown of antlers its eyes were black, its teeth yellow and broken. Scobie fell to his knees, palms raised in supplication. The stag nuzzled his matted hair and its long tongue lapped at the muddy tears and the streaks of drying blood upon the man's upturned face. Its muzzle unhinged. The teeth closed and there was a sound like a ripe cabbage cracking apart.

  Luke Honey slumped against the bole of the oak, the rifle a dead, useless weight across his knees, and watched.

  THE REDFIELD GIRLS

  1

  Every autumn for a decade, several of the Redfield Girls, a close knit sorority of veteran teachers from Redfield Memorial Middle School in Olympia, gathered for a minor road trip along the hinterlands of the Pacific Northwest. Traditionally, they rented a house in a rural, picturesque locale, such as the San Juan Islands or Cannon Beach, or Astoria, and settled in for a last long weekend of cribbage, books, and wine before their students came rushing into the halls, flushed and wild from summer vacation. Bernice Barber; Karla Gott; Dixie Thiess; and Li-Hua Ming comprised the core of the Redfield Girls. Li-Hua served as the school psychiatrist, and Karla and Dixie taught English-Karla was a staunch, card bearing member of the Dead White Guys Club, while Dixie preferred Neruda and Borges. Their frequent arguments were excruciating or exquisite depending on how many glasses of merlot they'd downed. Both of them considered Bernice, the lone science teacher and devourer of clearance sale textbooks, a borderline stick in the mud. They meant this with great affection.

  This was Bernice's year to choose their destination and she chose a rustic cabin on the shores of Lake Crescent on the Olympic Peninsula. The cabin belonged to the Bigfish Lodge and was situated a half mile from the main road in a stand of firs. There was no electricity, or indoor plumbing, although the building itself was rather comfortable and spacious and the caretakers kept the woodshed stocked. The man on the phone told her a lot of celebrities had stayed there-Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Elizabeth Taylor, and at least one of the Kennedys. Even some mobsters and their molls.

  Truth be told, Dixie nagged her into picking the lake. Left to her own devices, she would've happily settled for another weekend at Ocean Shores or Seaside. Dixie was having none of it: ever fascinated with the Port Angeles and the Sequim Valley, she pushed and pushed, and Bernice finally gave in. Her family homesteaded in the area during the 1920s, although most of them had scattered on the wind long since. She'd lived in Olympia since childhood, but Dad and Mom brought them up to the lake for a visit during the height of every summer. They pitched a tent at a campsite in the nearby park, and fished and swam in the lake. Dad barbequed and told ghost stories, because that's what one did when one spent a long, lonely night near the water. Bernice and her husband Elmer made a half dozen day trips over the years; none, however, since he passed away. Lately though, she thought of the lake often. She woke in a sweat, dreams vanishing like quicksilver.

  The night before the Redfield Girls were to leave on the trip, there was a storm. She was startled by loud knocking on the front door. She hesitated to answer, and briefly lamented not adopting another big dog for protection after her black Lab Norman died. Living alone on a piece of wooded property outside of town, she seldom received random visitors-and certainly not in the wee hours. A familiar voice shouted her name. Her teenage niece Lourdes Blanchard had flown in unannounced from Paris.

  Bernice ushered Lourdes inside, doing her best to conceal her annoyance. She enjoyed kids well enough. However, she jealously coveted those few weeks of freedom between summer and fall, and more importantly, her relationship with Lourdes was cool. The girl was bright and possessed a wry wit. Definitely not a prized combination in anyone under thirty.

  Bernice suspected trouble at home. Her sister Nancy denied it during the livid,
yet surreptitious phone call Bernice made after she'd tucked the girl into bed. Everything was fine, absolutely super-why was she asking? Lourdes saved a bit of money and decided to hop the international flight from Paris to Washington State, determined to embark upon a fandango of sorts. What was a mother to do? The child was stubborn as a mule-just like her favorite Auntie.

  "Well, you could've warned me," for starters, Bernice said. "Good God, Nance, I'm leaving with the Redfield Girls tomorrow-"

  Nancy laughed as the connection crackled. "See, that's perfect. She's been clamoring to go with you on one of your little adventures. Sis? Sis? I'm losing the connection. Have fun-"

  She was left clutching a dead phone. The timing was bizarre and seemed too eerie for coincidence. She'd had awful dreams several nights running; now, here was Lourdes on her doorstep, soaked to the bone, thunder and lightning at her back. It was almost as bad as the gothic horror novels Bernice had been reading to put herself to sleep. She couldn't very well send Lourdes packing, nor with any conscience leave her sitting at the house. So, she gritted her teeth into a Miss America smile and said, "Guess what, kid? We're going to the mountains."

  2

  The group arrived at the lake in late afternoon. Somehow, they'd managed to jam themselves, and all their luggage, into Dixie's rusted out Subaru. The car was a hundred thousand miles past its expiration date and plastered with stickers like FREE TIBET, KILL YOUR TV, and VISUALIZE WHIRLED PEAS. They stopped at the lodge and picked up the cabin key and a complimentary fruit basket. From there it was a ten minute drive through the woods to the cabin itself. While the others finished unpacking, Bernice slipped outside to sneak a cigarette. To her chagrin, Lourdes was waiting, elbows on the rail. Her niece was rapidly becoming a bad penny. Annoyingly, the other women didn't seem to mind her crashing the party. Perhaps their empty nests made them maudlin for the company of children.