by Laird Barron
"Right on," Mr. Cook said, idly adjusting his silvery ascot. He licked his lips at Mrs. Cook as she snapped shut the compact.
"Besides the Serpent Intaglio, I'm unaware of any geoglyphs in this region. Even if these geoglyphs of yours exist…Comanche, Arapahoe, Kickapoo, Kaw… None of them were terraformers on the scale you suggest." Dr. Christou was rubbing his skull again. A red splotch grew livid on his brow.
"Not the new tribes," Mrs. Cook said. "Rather the civilizations that ruled here when this continent was still fused to Asia."
"Back, back, back," Mr. Cook said. "Only two continents in those days. Plus the polar caps. A wee bit before our time, admittedly."
Lancaster surfaced from his own disjointed thoughts and began to process the exchange. Cold bright recollection smashed through his mind, a dousing of ice water, although he only experienced the visceral epiphany in the abstract, unable to comprehend the nature of its import. He said with practiced and patently false calmness, "Mr. Rawat, how did you come to learn of the Roache property? Someone brought it to your attention. Your investors, or someone in your employ? You have a department devoted to mergers and acquisitions."
Ms. Diamond casually dug an elbow into Lancaster's ribs. Mr. Rawat opened one eye. "Byron and Francine. They prepared a prospectus."
"Byron and I were vacationing in Portugal," Mrs. Cook said. "The three of us happened to stay at the same hotel. One thing led to another, and another…"
"We became fast friends," Mr. Rawat said.
"Bosom buddies," Mr. Cook said, staring directly and unblinkingly at Lancaster. What had Ms. Diamond called him? Mr. Howell from Gilligan's Island. Yeah, there was an uncanny resemblance here in the shifty gloom.
Lancaster glanced from the Cooks to Dr. Christou. "Last night, who started that conversation about monsters?" He knew even before anyone answered that his assumption Mr. Rawat or Dr. Christou chose the topic was in error. They'd merely carried it along. He remembered kissing Mrs. Cook's hand the previous evening, its repellent flavor of sweet, rotting fruit and underlying acridness. She'd been inside his mind before that, though, been inside all of their heads, that was her power. Even now her likeness floated in his waking mind, whispering to him how it was, how it would be. A river of blood, the sucking of living marrow-
Mrs. Cook's bright smile widened. "Monsters fascinate me to no end." She leaned forward and grasped Dr. Christou's thigh as if propositioning a would-be lover. "We've read all of your books, Doctor."
"We've come a long way for this," Mr. Cook said. "There are some friends we'd like to introduce to you."
Dr. Christou's face slackened. He made an inarticulate sound from the back of his throat. Finally, he mastered himself and said to Lancaster, "Do you understand what's happening? My god, Lancaster. Tell me you understand."
Lancaster hesitated and Mrs. Cook cackled, head thrown back, throat muscles bunching.
Mr. Cook glanced out the window, then at his watch. "Oh, my. They're waiting. I almost dared not hope…On with the show." He loosened his tie.
The limo slowed and halted at a lonely four-way crossroads overseen by a traffic light dangling from a wire. The light burned red. A sedan was parked at an odd angle in the approaching right-hand lane, hazards flashing. A man and a woman dressed in evening clothes stood nearby, blank and stolid, awaiting rescue, perhaps. Lancaster squinted; the couple seemed familiar. As the limo began to roll forward through the intersection, Ms. Diamond said, "My god." She pressed the intercom button and ordered Ms. Valens to pull over.
"Wait, don't do it," Dr. Christou said with the affect of a man heavily medicated; a man who'd chosen to give warning in afterthought when it was far too late.
"It's them." Ms. Diamond was already on her way out of the car and briskly walking toward the other motorists. Her heels clacked on the asphalt.
"What's going on?" Mr. Rawat said, annoyed.
"Who are those people?" Kara said. Her face was sleepy and swollen.
Mr. Cook reached up and killed the dome light. From the shadows he said, "Victoria's parents. They burned alive in a car crash. 1985. She has lived alone for so long."
"Uh-uh," Kara said. "That's Casey Jean Laufenburg and her brother Lloyd. I went to high school with those guys."
"Did they burn in a car accident too?" Dr. Christou said.
"Worse. Casey Jean's in retail. It's awful." She gazed at Mr. Rawat imploringly. "Can we please keep going? Why do we have to stop?" She sounded fully awake and afraid.
"Don't you want to say hello to your chums?" Mr. Cook said. "And you, doctor. Aren't you just positively consumed with fascination? This is how it happens. A lonely road at night. You come across someone familiar…an old friend, a brother, a sister, the priest from the neighborhood."
Mrs. Cook said, "It could be anyone, whomever is flitting around your brain. Here's the darkness, the haunted byway. Here in your twilight, you get to be part of the legend."
"That's enough booze for you, Ma'am," Lancaster said with forced cheer. Mrs. Cook released Dr. Christou and grasped Lancaster's forearm in a soft, almost effortless fashion that nonetheless reduced his resistance to that of a bug with a leg stuck on a fly strip. She opened herself and let him see. He was bodiless, weightless, sucked like smoke through a pipe stem toward a massive New England style house. He was drawn inside the house-marble tiles, sweeping staircases, bookcases, paintings-and into the master bedroom, the wardrobe, so cavernous and dim. An older couple were bound together in barbed wire. They dangled from a ceiling hook, their corpses liver-gray and bloodless, unspun hair dragging against the carpet. Eyes glazed, jaws slack. The real Cooks had never even made it out of their home.
The image collapsed and disintegrated and Lancaster reconstituted in the present, Mrs. Cook's, fingers clamped on his arm. He wrenched free and flopped back into his seat, strength drained. He said to Dr. Christou, "I think we've been poisoned." Someone had spiked the liquor, dosed the food with hallucinogens to soften the group, to break them down. Lancaster had read about this, the government experiments on Vietnam soldiers, the spritzing of subways with LSD in the 1970s. Mind control was the name of the game. "Doctor, this may be…" Lancaster shook his head to clear it, trying to decide exactly why an oppositional force would want to drug them. "It's a kidnapping." The motive seemed shockingly obvious-ransom. This carload of rich people tooling along the countryside could represent a payday for a suitably prepared criminal. He pressed the intercom and said, "There's a situation. Something's happening."
The glass whisked down and Dedrick swiveled in his seat. "Yes?"
"I believe we're under attack. Please get Ms. Diamond. Drag her if necessary. Ms. Valens, the minute they're in the vehicle get us the hell out of here."
"Excuse me" Mr. Rawat said, his reserve cracked, a raw nerve of terror exposed in his rapid blinking. Doubtless he'd seen his share of violence back in the homeland and was acutely aware of his vulnerability. "Mr. Lancaster, what do you mean we're under attack? Dedrick?"
Dedrick's stony countenance didn't alter. "Sir, please wait." He made no further comment while exiting the limo and striding toward Ms. Diamond and friends. His right hand was thrust inside his jacket. Mr. Rawat appeared shocked and Kara retrieved a baggie from her purse. She dry-swallowed a handful of parti-colored pills. Surprisingly, in the face of fear she kept quiet.
Lancaster squirmed around until he managed to get a view from the rear window of what was happening outside. He simultaneously opened his cell phone and dialed the Roache security department and requested a detail be dispatched to the location at once. He considered alerting his handler Clack of the situation, except in his experience communication with the NSA office was routed through multiple filters and ultimately reached an answering machine instead of a human being ninety percent of the time. It seemed a bad sign that the Cooks were unconcerned that he'd summoned the cavalry. Something great and terrible was descending upon this merry company of travelers. He said, "Who are you working for?"
"The Russians," Mr. Cook said.
"The Bulgarians," Mrs. Cook said. "The Scythians, the Picts, the Ostrogoths, the wicker-crowned God Kings of Ultima Thule. The Martians."
"Mrs. Cook and I serve the whims of marvelous entities, foolish man," Mr. Cook said. "The ones inhabiting the cracks in the earth, as the doctor is so fond of opining."
That sounded like some kind of terrorist group to Lancaster. "Why here? Why not at the office where there'd be privacy?"
The Cooks exchanged blandly malevolent glances.
Dr. Christou mumbled, "Because we are near a place of power. A blood sacrifice requires a sacred foundation."
"Or a profane foundation," Mrs. Cook said.
"Like sex magic, the journey is half the fun." Mr. Cook's grin shone in the gloom.
"Really, you don't want to know the who, how, and why," Mrs. Cook said. "Alas, you will, and soon. We procure and thus persist."
"Yes, we persist. Until the heat death of the universe."
"Procure," Dr. Christou said in a monotone. His flesh seemed to be in the process of deliquescing. Blood beaded on his forehead, squeezed in fattening droplets from the pores and rolled down his cheeks. Blood leaked from the corners of his eyes. Blood trickled from his sleeve cuffs and dripped in his lap. "Procure, what do you procure?"
Lancaster recoiled from the doctor. He had visions of anthrax, a vial of the Ebola virus, or one of a million other plagues synthesized in military labs the world over, and one of those plagues secreted in a handbag, a golf bag, wherever, now dosed into the food, the water, the wine, this virulent nastiness eating Dr. Christou alive. On a more fundamental level, he understood Christou's affliction wasn't any plague, manmade or otherwise, but the manifestation of something far worse.
"My goodness, doctor, they are eager for your humor to draw it at this distance," Mr. Cook said, gleeful as a child who'd won a prize. He pretended to pout. "I was promised a taste. Gluttons!"
"Go on, sweetie," Mrs. Cook said. "There is more than enough to spare."
Mr. Rawat said, "My friend, my friend, you're hurt!" He extended his hand, hesitated upon thinking better of the gesture.
The Cooks laughed, synchronized. A quantity of Dr. Christou's blood was drawn in gravity-defying rivulets from where it pooled on the seat, first to the floorboard, then vertically against the window where it formed globules and rotated as if suspended in zero gravity. Mr. Cook craned his neck and sucked the globules into the corner of his mouth. "If ambrosia tastes so sweet upon a mortal tongue, how our patrons must crave it as that which sustains them!"
There was a thunderclap outside and a flash of fire. Ms. Diamond ran toward them. Her left high heel sheared and she did a swan dive onto the road. Dedrick also sprinted for the limo, moving with the grace and agility of a linebacker. He hurdled the fallen woman and blasted another round by twisting and aiming from under his armpit. Lancaster couldn't see the gun, but it had an impressive muzzle flash.
The mystery couple pursued on hands and knees, clothes shredded to reveal slick, cancerous flesh illuminated in the red glare of the traffic light. Their true forms unfolded and extended. The pair approached in a segmented, wormlike motion, and the reason why was due to their joining at hip and shoulder. Their faces had collapsed into seething pits; blowtorch nozzles seen front on, except spouting jets of pure black flame. In that moment Lancaster realized what had been leeching Dr. Christou from afar and he became nauseated.
As this disfigured conglomeration encroached upon Ms. Diamond, she convulsed in a pantomime of making a snow angel against the pavement. A heavy, wine-dark vapor trail boiled from her, and was siphoned into the funnel maws of the monstrous couple. She withered and charred. The others crawled atop and covered her completely.
The passenger compartment filled with the sour odor of feces. Mr. Rawat screamed and when Kara realized what was happening outside she screamed too. The gun cracked twice more, then Dedrick was in the front seat and bellowing for Ms. Valens to drive, drive, drive! and the chauffeur floored it while Dedrick's door was still open.
Lancaster didn't have the wits to react to the knife that appeared in Mr. Cook's hand. He gaped dumfounded while Mr. Cook nonchalantly reached out over his seatback and grasped Ms. Valens's hair and sliced her throat neat as could be. However, Dedrick continued to prove quite the man of action. He reached across Ms. Valens's soon to be corpse and took the wheel and kept the vehicle pointed down the centerline as he poked his large bore magnum pistol through the partition and fired. The bullet entered Mr. Cook's temple and punched a paper mache hole out the opposite side of his head. The report stunned and deafened Lancaster who raised his arms defensively against the splash. A chunk of bone and hair caromed from the ceiling, splatted against Dr. Christou's jacket breast and clung like a displaced toupee. Now blood was everywhere-fizzing from Dr. Christou, misting the window in gruesome condensation, spurting from the chauffer's carotid artery, gushing from Mr. Cook's dashed skull, filling Lancaster's mouth, his nostrils, everywhere, everywhere.
Mrs. Cook ended Dedrick's heroics. She grasped the barrel and jerked and the gun exploded again, shattering the rear window. She made her other hand into a claw and gently raked drab, blue-painted nails across his face. One of his eyes burst and deflated, and the meat of his cheeks and jaw came unstitched as if kissed by a serrated saw blade and his face more or less peeled away like a decal. The man dropped the gun and pitched backward and out of view.
More blood. More blood. More screaming. It was chaos. The limousine left the road, bounced into the ditch and plowed a ragged line through a wheat field. The occupants were violently tossed about, except for Mrs. Cook who sat serene as a padishah on her palanquin.
The car ground to a halt. The passenger door opposite Lancaster opened and Mr. Blaylock stood there in an evening suit. He said to Mrs. Cook, "Chop chop, my dear. Dark is wasting." He bowed and was gone.
Mr. Cook's dagger had flown from his hand and lodged in the plush fabric of the seat between Lancaster and Dr. Christou. Lancaster caught his balance and snatched the knife, and it was heavy and cruelly curved and fit his hand most murderously. He stabbed it like an ice pick just beneath Mrs. Cook's breast. the blade crunched through muscle and bone and slid in to the hilt where it stuck tight. He tried to climb through the broken rear window. She cackled and clutched his ankle and yanked him to her as a mother retrieving her belligerent child. She kissed him and life drained from his limbs and he was paralyzed, yet completely aware. Completely aware for the hours that followed in the dark and desolate wheat field.
***
When it was over.
It would never be over. Lancaster knew that most intimately.
But when it was over for the moment, he walked to the lights on the road, pushed through the rough stalks, occasionally staggering as his shoe caught on a furrow. Police car lights. Fire truck lights. The blue-white spotlights of low-cruising helicopters. The swinging and crisscrossing flashlight beams of the cops trolling the ditches. Roache had pulled out the stops.
He walked deep into the dragnet before somebody noticed that a civilian, pale as death in a blood-soaked suit, wandered amongst them.
The police whisked him directly to a hospital. Physically he was adequate-bumps and bruises and missing the tip of his tongue. Rather hale, all considered. The shrink who interviewed him wasn't convinced of Lancaster's mental stability and prescribed pills and a return visit. The police questioning didn't prove particularly grueling; nothing like the cop shows. Even Roache was eerily sympathetic. Company reps debriefed him regarding the car accident and promptly deposited a merit bonus in his bank account and arranged a vacation in the Bahamas. He didn't protest, didn't say much beyond responses to direct questions and these were flat, unaffected and ambiguous. He shuffled off to the islands, blank.
Following an afternoon that was one long stream of poolside martinis and blazing sun, Lancaster stumbled back to his hotel room and saw a man lounging in the overstuffed armchair by the bed.
"Hi, I'm Agent Clack, National Security Agency. We've chatted a few times on the phone." Agent Clack propped his feet on the coffee table. He smoked a cigarette. Gauloises.
The irony wasn't lost on Lancaster. "What are you, a college sophomore?" He walked to the bar and poured a vodka, pausing to gesture if his guest wanted one.
Agent Clack waved him off. Indeed, a young man-thirty tops. Pretty enough to model for a men's catalogue, he styled his wiry black hair into an impressive afro. He dressed the part of a tourist; a flower print shirt, cheap camera slung around his neck, khaki shorts and open toe sandals. Lithe and well-built as a dancer, danger oozed from him, aw, shucks demeanor notwithstanding. "They like 'em young at HQ. But I assure you, my qualifications are impeccable. Had to snuff three dudes to get the job, kinda like James Bond. Jack Bauer is a pussy compared to yours truly. You're in good hands. Enough about me. How you holding up?"
"Am I being charged?"
"You responsible for the massacre? My bosses don't think so. Neither do I. We're looking for answers, is all."
Lancaster shrugged and drank his vodka. "Did you find them?" He looked through the window when he asked, staring past the brilliant canopy of umbrella-shaded tables in the courtyard to the blue water that went on and on. "I told the cops where. The best I could remember. It was dark."
"Yeah, we found the victims. Still hunting the murderers. They seem to have evaporated." Agent Clack took a computer memory stick from his shirt pocket. "There are hundreds of pics on here. Satellite, aerial, plenty of close-ups of the action, well, the aftermath, in the field. It's classified, but… Wanna see?"
