by Laird Barron
A wolf howled from the north where the forest began.
Then we were inside Beasley’s shack, barring the door behind us. Down, down into the darkness we dove, to the bottom of a blue hole at the bottom of the earth. The wolf howled again. Its pack answered and the Ponderosa pines closed ranks, as Beasley’s mighty arms closed me in.
* * *
A hazy nightlight fumed at the foot of the bunk. Beasley, with a physique straight from a picture book of Norse gods, could’ve wrestled bears, looked as if he’d done so on occasion. Once Beasley and I got going he held back for fear of breaking me, the fool. I wanted to tell him it was only really good once it started to hurt, but I’d gone past the vanishing point and dissolved into another, primal self, the one that doesn’t speak English.
He performed as his swagger advertised, or close enough. Afterward, he lay slick and aglow, perfectly scarred. I asked him if he did any acting, because he radiated mucho charisma. He only smiled boyishly and took a swig from the bottle, took it in like water. I suspected his fate would be to die horribly of cirrhosis, or under the claws of a beast, and young, or to turn fifty and appear as if he’d gone face-first into a wall, haggard as a kerosene-swilling bum. Probably the dying young deal, which meant he’d better get started soon. I kept seeing a bleached skull when I caught him in my peripheral vision.
“Gimme some sweet, sweet nothings,” I said to keep him from nodding off and leaving me alone with my 2 A.M. thoughts, and alone with the howls in the wood.
“Look, doll, I’m a man of action. Sweet talk ain’t my bailiwick.”
“Your wick isn’t going into my bailey again if you don’t humor me.”
“As you say.” He cleared his throat. “How can you be sure you’re here?”
“What, think you were humping your pillow?”
“Sorry, Jess, you started this. Maybe all of it is a projection. Or a computer program. You’re a sexy algorithm looping for eternity.”
We shared a cigarette. Not my brand.
“Kinda smart for a dumb guy,” I said. What I knew of Beasley’s past derived from a few hours over pints—ex Army, ex-footballer, a hunter, a bodyguard, expert driver. Man-at-arms slash valet and satisfied with the role. College had served as a central hub for womanizing, boozing, and playing ball.
“No offense taken, or anything.” He even made petulance sound manly.
“Don’t get riled, handsome. Playing dumb is your protective coloration. It’s how you fool the predators. Most of us are fooled.”
“My protective coloration is a surly disposition and a buffalo gun that’d blast a hole through a concrete bunker.”
“Neither of those require smarts.” I squinted at a movie poster of Robby the Robot carrying unconscious Anne Francis against a backdrop of shooting stars, and another of Lon Chaney Jr. bursting the buttons of his natty white shirt as a devil moon blared through evergreen branches.
“Wait a second. Is that wolfsbane in the pot?”
“Jessica…you’re not a hologram, you’re a dream.” He kneaded my breast. “It had to be the right woman, but I hoped it would be a flake, a bumpkin. I was afraid you’d come here. Ever since I dreamt of you there’s been a dark spot floating in my mind. A mote.”
“Make sense, man!”
“Yeah, it’s wolfsbane.” He rolled away from me, the oldest trick in the book.
* * *
I woke to a little girl screaming her heart out, out in the darkness. Beasley gently clamped his hand over my mouth, his other arm wrapped around my waist. I wasn’t going anywhere unless I took extreme measures. Not so much of a turn-on in this context.
“It’s all right.” He spoke softly and I almost didn’t catch it. “They say an elk screams like a child. Go back to sleep.”
A long time and a lot of silence passed before he let me go.
* * *
Oatmeal and kiwis for breakfast in the commissary. Beasley introduced me around to the early-risers. Hey, everybody, this is Jessica Mace. She’s wandering the earth. Make her feel at home. Damned if I didn’t despite their clannishness. Free food is free food.
Strongman (actually a strongwoman, after a double take), Bearded Lady, Wolf Girl, Poindexter the Geek, the Knife Thrower, Ephandra the Contortionist, and Perkins and Luther— head carpenter and electrician respectively. The Gallows Brothers, Benson and Robert, weren’t on hand. The proprietors had departed on a hush-hush mission, or so Beasley intimated when I asked to meet the gents.
Beasley’s request notwithstanding, I received the hairy eyeball from the company. Nobody said two words to me except for Earl, the Illustrated Man. Earl repeatedly inquired where oh where on my delectable body I might be inked. Answer: nowhere, jerk. I kind of hoped Beasley would bust his jaw too, but it didn’t happen. Several children lurked on the periphery. The oldest, an adolescent girl; the youngest, a grubby boy maybe a year or two out of diapers. They gawped at me from a safe distance, until their minder, a matronly lass named Rocky, swept them away with brisk efficiency.
After breakfast, Beasley escorted me on a tour of the environs. I tasted snow. A lot of the stuff covered the mountain peaks.
“This doesn’t jibe,” I said. “Are you hiding from the law, or what?”
We’d moseyed a distance from the encampment. He wore a battered Australian drover’s hat, light jacket, workpants, and lace-up boots. He also carried a big-ass hunting rifle slung over his shoulder. Double-barrels, very serious.
“Whatever happens, don’t get scared.”
“Scared of what? And, too late.”
“Of nothing. I’m not on the lam, by the way. Vacation.” He knelt and traced flattened grass with his entire hand. We were surrounded by an ocean of it, tall and white, dying.
“How everybody spoke to you, you’ve been here a while.”
“Ten months next week.”
“Ten months! Sounds more and more like you’re on work release.”
He laughed. Nice white teeth. Considering the battered condition of his face, it was a small miracle he’d kept most of them.
“I live back east. My regular employers are having a disagreement.”
“Dare I ask what they do?”
“Big brains. Quantum physics, exobiology, anthropology. They’re famous, infamous, one of those things. A pair of mad scientist types. They’d love to build a time machine or a doomsday device for the kicks.”
“Sounds like wacky fun. I could use a spin in a time machine, for sure.”
“Backward or forward?”
I shrugged, bored.
“Sorry your bosses are trying to kill each other. Family feuds are the worst.”
“It’s all the shooting that made me nervous.” He turned away and scanned the ground again.
“What’s the argument about?”
“The ethics of temporal collocation of sapient organisms.”
“No shit?”
“I shit you not. Mainly, they’re at each other’s throat about a dog.”
“Oh, I get that. I’d kill over a good dog.”
“Hmm. This one sure as hell is. Or it will be, after they build it.”
“Build it? Are we talking about a robot?”
“A cyborg. It—he—is a war machine. Weapons contractor is financing the project. My bosses are making history. Rex has a positronic brain. First of its kind, and Toshi and Howard are fighting over the ethics. Look, stick around a few days, we’ll fly to the compound, I’ll show you. Easier that way.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Man, I wish Rex was online. We’d make short work of…” He cleared his throat and stood. “Be seven or eight years before the prototype is even in alpha phase. Gonna have to do this the old-fashioned way.”
“Do what the old-fashioned way? Aren’t you on vacation?”
“So to speak. Personal business. I traveled with this carnival as a kid. Ran away from a bad scene at home. The Gallows took me in, gave me a job, made sure I got an education. They’re my uncles and they�
��re in trouble.”
“A debt of honor. How sweet.” Sweet like rat poison. Daddy the Marine had taught us kids a whole lot about honor. Honor had put him and my eldest brother into early graves. Can’t say I have much use for the sentiment.
“I didn’t pick you out of that bar simply because you’re a looker,” Beasley said. “You’re something special.”
“Huh, that’s some heavy duty charm you’re laying down.”
“Yeah, it’s exhausting. I’ll stop.”
“Since you’ve already had your way, I’m steeling myself for the worst.”
“The Gallows Carnival is cursed. I’ve come to put things in order.”
“Wait, what? A curse?”
“Right.”
“Like voodoo, desecrated Indian burial grounds kind of curse?”
He pointed to a splotch of maroon on the grass.
“Stay tuned.”
I decided to give Twenty Questions a break. I stuffed my hands into my pockets and tagged along as he inspected a rusty overgrown fence. Soon, he found a break in the wire. A black funnel bored through a copse of pine trees, juniper, and nettles. The hole had obviously formed by the crush of a massive body wallowing its way through the tangle.
Then the breeze shifted and the reek of putrefying flesh almost knocked me down. Beasley handed me his hat and unlimbered his rifle. He carried a flashlight in his left hand. Its beam didn’t cut very far into the darkness.
Motioning for me to stay put, he crouched and moved into the burrow.
“Bad idea, Beasley. Bad, very bad.” Over the stench of death, I whiffed something else, something born of musk, dank fur, sweat, and piss. This was the lair of a ravenous beast, a creature of fang and lust. The combination of scents, the crimson aura of the den, made me dizzy, made my nipples hard and my thighs weak. I slapped myself across the mouth and the sting shocked me out of my little swoon.
Maybe slightly too effective. Every birdcall, every snapped twig caused me to twitch. The shadows in the trees became sinister. I gave serious thought to leaving Beasley there, of strolling back to camp. I’d have coffee with a nip of bourbon and wait to see if he ever returned.
“Jess.” His voice floated from the tunnel, muffled and strange. “Dial 911. Ask for Sheriff Holcomb. Tell him to come right away.”
I made the call. The dispatcher asked the usual questions and said a squad car would be on site shortly. Beasley crawled from the den, shirt torn and stems in his hair. He tossed a man’s severed head on the ground. Dead two or three days at most. The left eye was still intact. Blue as milk. Hours later, I still saw my shadow reflected in it, the beetles and the flies crawling around, unsure where to start.
“Five or six bodies in there,” Beasley said in a hoarse voice. He lighted a cigarette. Reached for his hip flask of whiskey, glanced at the sun, and reconsidered. Then reconsidered again and down the goddamned hatch. “Gonna have to reassemble the pieces to know for sure. Lotta pieces.”
“Cops are on the way.”
I’m not sure if I said it to reassure myself or to warn him there’d be no more axe-murdering on my watch. I ninety-nine percent dismissed the possibility of his involvement in a massacre. My instincts are hellishly sharp when it comes to detecting the evil that lurks in the hearts of men. Beasley had issues. Cold-blooded murder wasn’t one.
The sun inched across the sky. Beasley checked his watch every couple of minutes.
“Did the carnival lose a tiger?” I said. “Or a lion? The neck wound is…chunky. That’s how a big cat might savage its prey.” As if I knew jack shit about big cats or mauled corpses. My mouth pops into gear when I’m nervous.
“The Gallows own three panthers. All accounted for. This ain’t a wild animal attack. This is a whole other thing.”
I couldn’t stop staring at the head, its mouth agape, teeth and tongue clotted in gore. I ran my thumb along the scar on my throat, felt a sympathetic pang, and relived the searing slash of the blade as it sawed on through.
“Here’s the sheriff,” Beasley said. He looked me in the eye, hard. “Be careful.”
“We’re hunting rabbits?” I always try to be brave.
“Don’t get cute with him. He’s not your friend. Take my word.”
I decided to heed his warning. A bad black vibe pushed forward thick as the dust from the cop cars tearing along the road.
* * *
Two Lewis and Clark County police cruisers nosed into the field. Several cops in midnight blue suits and white Stetson hats trudged the rest of the way to us. They patted the guns on their hips. One had a German shepherd on a leash. Poor dog wanted fuck-all to do with the murder scene. He pissed himself and cowered between the legs of his mortified handler, a lantern-jawed gal in mirrored shades.
Beasley shook hands with the sheriff. Two dogs deciding whether to sniff asses or get to tearing each other apart.
Blond-bearded and heavy through shoulders and hips, Sheriff Von Holcomb seemed at least a decade under-seasoned for the post. On the other hand, one glance at the austere panorama and I concluded that finding a taker for the position might mean the electorate couldn’t afford to be too picky.
“Huh, well fuck a duck.” Sheriff Holcomb toed the severed head. He dabbed his mouth with a bright red handkerchief. His deputies took tape measurements and snapped photographs of the crime scene. The unluckiest of them all, a goober with a painfully-large Adam’s apple, got sent into the burrow with a Maglite and a camera.
“Any idea who we’re lookin’ at here?”
“Alfred Fenwood.” Beasley passed the sheriff a bloodied driver’s license. “Don’t know him. Drag the bars, you’ll find Al likes cheap beer and long walks along the highway after dark.”
“We got missing person reports galore over the past three weeks. Hikers, ranch hands, some folks snatched out of parking lots. Lots of wild animal calls, too. Ripped to hell pets, the usual sort of crap.” The sheriff glanced at me slyly, propped his boot on the head like a kid resting on a soccer ball, and slipped off his wedding band and made it disappear.
“Oh, man, are you kidding?” I stepped back and gripped the Ka-Bar under my coat. Come to it, I’d stab a hillbilly psycho, badge or not. My shiny new policy.
“You snuffed the Eagle Talon Ripper,” he said.
“No surprise you’re the lead detective in Timbuktu,” I said. A mistake because his smirk suggested he mistook contempt for flirtation.
“See my girl Friday with the dog?”
“Hard to miss.”
“Know why she wears them mirror shades? My mama was a gorgon. Deputy Cooper thinks some of the evil runs in my blood. She’s afraid to look me in the eye.” He grinned when I didn’t answer. Ogled my scars. “Wow. It’s true, you Alaska broads are tough as leather. Bastard really did slice your throat from ear to ear. Then you rose from the dead and sent him to hell. Amazing. Marcy at dispatch ran your name. It’s flagged, big time. I suppose we’re gonna have to keep tabs on you while you’re visiting our fair state. Mm-mm-mm.
“How you survive something like that, eh? Don’t seem possible. Don’t seem possible, ‘tall. That freak cut you anywhere else?” He actually reached for my collar and I tensed, ready to shorten his fingers by a knuckle or two.
“Von,” Beasley said, saving the day. “We’ve got a situation. Best to focus.”
“Plainly.” Sheriff Holcomb grudgingly lowered his hand. “The Gallows think Injun-ground gonna do the trick when nothing else ever has?”
“This ground represents a full circle. Fifty years, Von.”
“Ain’t sacred. Ain’t holy. It’s elk shit and dirt.”
“Red moon last night.”
“I ain’t blind.”
“We proceed with the plan. Gallows’ orders.”
“Ha! Oh, as if I jump when they yell froggy.”
“Today you do.”
Sheriff Holcomb watched the Shepherd twist himself into a pretzel and snap at his deputy K-9 partner. The cop in mirror shades swore and danced
to avoid losing a hunk of her flesh.
“Things fallin’ to pieces around here,” the sheriff said.
“And you gotta keep a lid on this mess,” Beasley said. “Unless you want the feds on it like flies.”
“Be serious, amigo. The feds won’t figure into this.”
“Fifty year is a high water mark. I assume nothing. Hell could be waiting in the wings.”
“And her?” The sheriff jerked his thumb at me. “Where she fit into your plan?”
“She’s our secret weapon.”
“You mean bait.”
“Same thing.”
“Bait?” I said.
“Secret weapon,” Beasley said.
* * *
“The sight of blood doesn’t faze you,” Beasley said after he got me back to the camp. We sat at a bench while two bearded guys in coveralls loaded boxes onto a trailer.
“Are you kidding? It fazes the shit outta me. Just that I see more than my fair share. I’m building a tolerance, one snake-bite at a time.” I took a slug from Beasley’s flask. Too early in the day, even by my Bohemian standards, but I’d earned it. “Let us recap. There’s a pile of human bodies in yonder animal den. You knew they’d be there. Or, like me, you’re super-duper unflappable.”
“Ain’t a den. It’s a trophy room. We’re not dealing with an animal. Not in the strictest sense of the term. I’m not very cool, either. Scared spitless, honestly.”
“Uh-huh. These murders are revenge-oriented, sex fantasies, rituals, what? Your sheriff pal said something about fifty years…”
“Revenge ritual. The Gallows Curse. Goes back to the fall of 1965. There was an…incident, I suppose you’d say. I’ll have Conway fill you in. He’s our knife thrower. Been with the carnival since the ‘60s.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“A curse?”
“What they call it,” he said.
“Going to stop you right there, big fella. I don’t live in a hut in the Dark Ages.”
