Bestiary cc-2

by Robert Masello

  “Where’d that come from?” Rosalie said, her voice filled with awe.

  “I don’t know,” Carter mumbled. “I’ve never seen anything just show up like that.” Was it the steel plates he’d inserted into the grid? Was it the hoses, making what would normally take weeks of excavation transpire in a matter of hours? His crew had been digging around in the region of the hand, the fingers that Carter had once felt entwined in his own. But they hadn’t expected to see the skull for some time; Carter had figured it was still at least a foot or two down.

  The body must be lying almost horizontally in the tar.

  “What do we do now?” Miranda asked.

  Up above, Carter could see the remaining spectators being herded out of the observation platform; he could also hear some muted protests.

  Claude and Rosalie waited, with Miranda, for orders. And Carter gradually focused his attention again on the blackened skull. He rubbed a clean rag across his forehead to mop the sweat from his eyes; the temperature today was in the eighties, and in the bottom of the pit at least five or ten degrees hotter than that. The surface of the tar looked more fluid than usual; it reminded Carter of the expression used by fishermen to describe a spot where fish were active; they called it “nervous water.” This looked like nervous tar.

  “Let’s keep the suction hoses away from the quadrant,” Carter said. “And start a new bucket for anything you glop out now; we don’t want to lose anything that might turn up, no matter how insignificant it might look.” Carter knew from experience that tiny shards of diseased bone, the pulpy parts of leaves, even insect exoskeletons, could still be found and extricated from the pits. The asphalt, immiscible in water, impregnated everything, staining it black or brown, but protecting all the organic compounds that might have otherwise been leached out and run off by groundwater or replaced during petrifaction. The asphalt, deadly to so many creatures for thousands of years, could also preserve them in a way no other medium could; as a result, the fossils found here, and almost nowhere else, included the auditory ossicles of mammals, the delicate bones of birds, beetle wing covers that retained their iridescent hues. Fossilized wood from the pits looked fresh when it was broken in two, and if you lit it with a match, it would burn.

  The four of them went back to work, under a kind of constrained silence. The nearness of the skull, its empty orbs, its black and grinning teeth, made any kind of conversation feel… disrespectful. Even sacrilegious. Carter had to keep his eyes on the close work in front of him, still struggling to free the hand he had felt days before, and he was nearly succeeding when he heard, off in the distance somewhere, strange sounds that he couldn’t identify.

  First, it was like chains being rattled and shaken.

  Then more shouting, in words that made no sense.

  And then Claude, his eyeglasses glinting in the sunlight as he looked up at the back wall, cried out, “Carter! Look!”

  Carter turned, just as a man — Geronimo, in his buckskin jacket — clambered onto the steel ladder that led down into the pit. He was chanting something — no doubt in some Native American tongue — and swiftly descending the rungs. When he was a few feet from the bottom, he abandoned the ladder altogether and leapt to the wooden boards that ran around the perimeter of the pit. Carter felt them lurch and buckle under his own feet.

  The guy must have been released by the security guards — were they nuts? — and then come back to vault over the rear fence surrounding the enclosure.

  But what was he supposed to do now? Carter jumped to his feet, his hands dripping tar, and shouted, “Get the hell out of here!”

  “No!” the man shouted back. “These are the bones of my people!” He walked stealthily in a pair of moccasins down the wooden catwalk, toward the quadrant where they were working.

  Carter quickly stepped past Miranda to cut him off; Rosalie and Claude stood, in shock, on the other side of the grid. Carter wondered if he should be picking up a weapon of some kind. But what — a bucket of tar?

  “You can’t be down here,” Carter said, hoping to calm him down.

  Geronimo threw his black braid back over his shoulder and lifted his chin in defiance. “You leave,” he said, “all of you. Now!”

  “That’s not going to happen,” Carter said.

  “Yes, it is,” Geronimo said, and for the first time Carter saw what he held in one hand — a hunting knife with a gleaming blade.

  Miranda must have seen it, too, and screamed.

  “Carter, look out!” Claude cried. “He’s armed.”

  Worse than that, Carter could see that he was utterly unhinged. The look in his eyes was black and fierce and beyond reason; his throat muscles were flexing against a necklace of turquoise stones.

  “Okay,” Carter said, putting up his hands in a placatory gesture, “why don’t we all stop what we’re doing, and go back up top? We don’t need to talk about this down here.”

  Geronimo came one step closer and swung the knife in a broad, flashing arc.

  Carter fell back, bumping into Miranda. “Go to the other side,” Carter said to her over his shoulder. “Go up the stairs to the observation deck.” It was how they usually came and went, on a narrow set of wooden steps. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Claude stooping to a bucket, and Carter said, “No, don’t do anything. Just leave — all of you. Right now.”

  Rosalie was the first to turn and scurry toward the steps, but Claude waited.

  “Just do what I’m telling you,” Carter said.

  Geronimo was getting what he wanted, so far. Some of them were leaving. He stood on the catwalk, one foot on either side of the suction hose, his chest heaving. He kept his eyes on Carter.

  “Miranda,” Carter said, in a low voice, “go around the other side. Get out.”

  “I’ll call the cops,” she said.

  Good idea, he thought. But what was he going to do until then?

  Miranda came out from behind Carter, and Geronimo flicked his gaze her way. It might have been something about her blonde hair, the tight T-shirt and shorts, but something suddenly set him off. His lips curled in an angry snarl.

  “I saw you on the TV — you’re the bitch that started this!”

  He made a move to head her off, and Carter had no choice; he lunged forward, grabbing the hose between Geronimo’s feet and yanking it up. Geronimo teetered back, but immediately regained his balance, slashing at Carter now and catching him on the forearm.

  The sight of the blood, dripping down Carter’s arm and into the black tar, seemed to momentarily rivet him.

  Carter saw the gash, but he felt next to nothing; the blade was so swift and so sharp and his adrenaline was so high.

  But he knew he had to get out of there, fast; Rosalie and Claude were already out, and Miranda was thundering up the steps in her heavy work boots.

  He glanced up at the observation deck, hoping to see a cop or security guard.

  But all he saw was Rosalie’s ashen face, calling out something he couldn’t hear.

  He simply had to make a run for it; he feinted to one side, enough to make Geronimo move a few steps to the other side of the grid separating them, then bolted for the ladder on the back wall. If he could just scale it fast enough…

  But Geronimo was too quick; Carter hadn’t gone more than a few steps when his attacker was on him. Carter had to stop and wheel around. He caught the hand holding the blade, and forced it back.

  “You disgrace my ancestors!”

  Carter pressed him back; the catwalk shuddered under their feet.

  “You’ve got to die!” Geronimo shouted again, the spit flying into Carter’s face.

  They were both struggling to keep their balance on the narrow boards above the tar. Carter didn’t dare let go of his arms; the rage in his eyes boiled like fire.

  And suddenly, the hand with the knife wriggled free. Geronimo smiled — and Carter slugged him so hard he went reeling back, his moccasins scrabbling on the wood. For a second, it seemed as if he w
ould manage to stay upright, but then he tilted back and toppled into the pit with a thick, wet splash.

  The tar spread like a wave to either side, then sloshed back.

  Geronimo hung there, on top, like a leaf on a stream.

  Carter bent double, breathing hard.

  And then the tar bubbled and seethed.

  Geronimo’s eyes went wide as he felt himself starting to sink.

  Carter lifted his wounded forearm to impede the blood flow.

  Geronimo’s legs were out of sight, the black asphalt seeping inexorably over them.

  “I’m sinking!” Geronimo screamed in terror. He started to flail his arms, but the fringe on his buckskin jacket was stuck in the tar.

  He wouldn’t really sink, Carter thought; the tar wasn’t quicksand. It would just do what it always did — entrap the unwary until they simply gave up the struggle.

  “Stop moving,” Carter said.

  “Fuck you!” Geronimo cried.

  “If you stop moving, we’ll get you out.” Or, Carter thought, the fire department will.

  “I’m sinking!” he shouted again, and now Carter could see that the asphalt was indeed more liquid, more agitated, than he had ever seen it. Geronimo’s waist was now submerged — and methane bubbles were rising all around him.

  “Just hang on,” Carter said, looking around for something to throw him.

  The hose. Carter started to drag it over. But it wouldn’t go that far.

  He looked desperately for something else.

  “Get me out!” Geronimo shrieked. The tar was edging up onto his chest. “Get me out of this shit!”

  Carter quickly undid his belt. “Throw your knife away.”

  “I can’t!” Geronimo said. His hand, the knife still clutched in his fist, was coated with tar.

  Carter would have to take the chance. He pulled his belt from the loops, lay down on the catwalk, and flipped the buckle end toward Geronimo’s free hand.

  Geronimo missed it.

  Carter pulled it back, then tossed it again.

  This time, Geronimo was able to snag it, but the tar was up to his shoulders now and showed no sign of stopping.

  “The police are coming!” Miranda called from the top of the stairs.

  “Get me a rope!” Carter shouted.

  “Help me!” Geronimo cried. “Help me!” All the anger had gone out of his eyes now, replaced by mounting fear.

  Carter looped the belt around his hand, and tried to drag Geronimo toward him.

  “Help me,” he said, in nothing but a plea now.

  “I’m trying,” Carter gasped, pulling again. But it was like pulling against a powerful current.

  The tar was up to his neck now, the methane popping in tiny acrid bursts.

  “Hold on,” Carter said.

  But he could tell Geronimo was running out of strength; the tar was too strong, it was sucking him down, down toward the bottom of the pit.

  Like a black tide, it rose up to his chin, then over his lips. Geronimo tilted his face upward, struggling to keep clear. His single black braid hung down in back, most of its length already lost in the mire. His turquoise necklace disappeared. He tried again to raise his arms, but the tar dragged them down.

  “No,” Geronimo sputtered, “no,” as the tar climbed up his face.

  Carter tugged on the belt, but there was no resistance; Geronimo had let go of his end.

  His head began to sink, the tar touching his nose, then his eyes — he stared at Carter with mute incomprehension as the bubbling black asphalt covered his eyes. It was the look of a rabbit caught by a stoat.

  And then it covered his forehead, until all that was left visible was the crest of his head, the black hair shiny and neatly parted in the middle.

  “The cops are here!” Miranda cried, and Carter could hear the crackling of their walkie-talkies and the commotion as they clattered down the wooden steps.

  “Where’s the guy with the knife?” one of them shouted at Carter, just as the tar made one last, irresistible grab. The belt slipped off Carter’s hand, and the top of Geronimo’s head sank swiftly beneath the surface of the pit.

  The tar seethed for a moment, as if digesting its prize, then instantly grew as still, as silent, and as satisfied, as the grave it had just become.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “Jakob,” al-Kalll said, from behind the easel.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “You see where I’ve placed that wheelbarrow?”

  Jakob looked down the line of jacaranda trees, their branches in full purple blossom, to the rustic wheelbarrow artfully positioned at the far end.

  “Could you move that forward, more into the frame of the picture?”

  As Jakob went to do as he was bid, Mohammed sat back in his canvas lawn chair, under the shade of the towering beach umbrella. In the afternoons, he often liked to set up his easel somewhere on his estate — it afforded him so many different views and scenes — and paint, quickly and with as free a hand as he could muster, a watercolor impression. He had a good eye — his art instructor at Harrow had thought he should pursue a career in art — but he did it chiefly to relax, to take his mind off more troubling things, things that might be preying on his mind.

  He was given, as had been all the members of his family, to dark fancies.

  Jakob moved the wheelbarrow a few inches forward, and al-Kalli cried out, “More! More!”

  It was an old wooden barrow that al-Kalli had seen in a plant nursery and purchased, though it hadn’t been for sale. He had immediately spotted its potential.

  “Right there — stop.” Al-Kalli sat back, studied the composition of the scene one more time — the row of jacaranda trees, the winding flagstone path, the worn-out wheelbarrow placed as if about to be put to use — and nodded his head. He idly rinsed his brush in the Baccarat crystal vase he used for that purpose, dried it, then dabbed it against his palette; it was so hard to get a color that matched the gorgeous purple and lavender, with an undertone of blue, that the blossoms took on at this time of year. Their flowering lasted only a matter of weeks, and al-Kalli wanted to capture it, as well as he could, on his canvas.

  But even as he made a few tentative strokes, a cloud passed overhead, subduing the colors of the scene, and al-Kalli checked his pocket watch. It was four-thirty in the afternoon, and the light was becoming too sharp, too slanting. He’d really have to start again tomorrow.

  “We’ll leave everything just as it is,” he said to Jakob, placing his brush and palette back on the supply table and standing up. But it was a promising arrangement that he would return to tomorrow.

  He wiped his hands on the linen cloths, drained the last of the Boodles gin in the chilled glass, and turned toward the house. Jakob, as usual, was three steps behind him.

  “Why don’t we pay a visit to our guest?” al-Kalli said without turning around.

  Jakob didn’t answer; he knew it wasn’t a question.

  “Perhaps he has some new stories he wishes to share.”

  Al-Kalli skirted the black-bottomed swimming pool, crossed the wide portico behind the main house, and was just about to go inside when he bumped into his son, Mehdi, who was sauntering outside with a towel, emblazoned with the al-Kalli peacock on it, thrown over his arm.

  “Have you done your homework?” Mohammed asked him.

  “If I said yes, would you believe me?”

  “No.”

  “Then what difference does it make?”

  Al-Kalli had to concede the point, but not the actual battle. “Have you done it?”

  “It’s not due till next week; it’s a long report. I have time.”

  Mehdi scooted past before they could go another round. Mohammed loved him with all his heart — he was literally all of his family that he had been able to spirit out of Iraq — but ever since the boy had become a teenager, he had been surly and argumentative, and their relationship had become one of bickering and evasion. Mohammed wondered if that was how it was in al
l families; he wondered if his own parents had felt the same way.

  But there was no one left to ask, was there?

  Al-Kalli led Jakob to the back servant stairs, but left it to him to open the padlocked door. After they had made their way through several storage rooms beneath the house, they came to another sealed door; this was the wine cellar, built in this cool, out-of-the-way spot decades before, by the oil tycoon who had once owned the Castle. He had designed it to hold ten thousand bottles of his finest wine. Al-Kalli had never been much of a wine connoisseur, but now, quite unexpectedly, he’d found a novel and imaginative use for this cellar.

  Jakob flicked on the overhead light — an incongruous chandelier — and the room suddenly sprang from utter blackness into twinkling, bright light. There were indeed a few hundred bottles gathering dust on wooden racks along one wall — after all, al-Kalli did do a fair amount of entertaining — but the most startling feature of the room was the metal stool against the back wall, on which al-Kalli’s guest was seated. His head was thrown back against the concrete, his eyes closed, and a chain, bolted to the wall, shackled his hands. Jakob had gone to a lot of trouble, and asked a lot of odd questions at Home Depot, in order to find out how best to install the bolt and chain.

  “Sleep well, Rafik?” al-Kalli asked, in Arabic. The room reeked from the chemical toilet stashed in the far corner. Beside it lay several plastic bottles of Calistoga water and the remains of a sandwich. His guest didn’t seem to have much of an appetite.

  “You can open your eyes,” al-Kalli said, again in the tongue he had barely used since leaving the Middle East. He was rusty, but it came back well enough.

  Rafik didn’t respond. He was as still as death — though al-Kalli hadn’t decided to bestow that gift on him yet.

  “We’re just here to talk,” al-Kalli went on, in entirely reasonable tones. “To pick up where we left off.” He cocked his head at Jakob, who slapped Rafik on one cheek, and then the other; his head lolled forward, his eyes slowly rolling open.

  “That’s better,” al-Kalli said.

  The prisoner’s face was bruised, and his lip had been split. His black hair hung down over his forehead in limp tendrils.