Swift to Chase

by Laird Barron

  “Yeah,” the journalist says. “I’m writing a book.”

  “Huh. I kinda thought there might be a movie about what happened at the Estate. A producer called me every now and again, kept saying the studio was ‘this close’ to green-lighting the project. I was gonna make a boatload of cash, and blah, blah, blah. That was, Jesus, twenty years ago.” She exhales a stream of smoke and studies him with a shrewd glint in her eyes. “Maybe I shoulda written a book.”

  “Maybe so,” says the journalist. He notices, at last, a pistol nestled under a pillow on the porch swing. It is within easy reach of her left hand. His research indicates she is a competent shot. The presence of the gun doesn’t make him nervous — he has, in his decade of international correspondence, sat among war chiefs in Northern Pakistan and ridden alongside Taliban fighters in ancient half-tracks seized from Russian armored cavalry divisions. He has visited Palestine and Georgia and seen the streets burn. He thinks this woman would be right at home with the hardest of the hard-bitten warriors he’s interviewed.

  “Life is one freaky coincidence, ain’t it though?” She stares into the woods. Her expression is mysterious. “Julie Vellum died last week. Ticker finally crapped out.”

  “Julie Vellum…” He scans his notes. “Right. She cashed in big time. Author of how many bestselling New Age tracts? Friend of yours?”

  “Nah, I despised the bitch. She’s the last, that’s all. Well, there’s that guy who did psychedelic music for a while. He’s in prison for aggravated homicide. Got involved with a cult and did in some college kids over in Greece. Can’t really count him, huh? I’m getting sentimental in my dotage. Lonely.”

  “Lavender McGee. He’s not in prison. They transferred him to an institution for the criminally insane. He gets day passes if you can believe it.”

  “The fuck is this world coming to? What is it you wanna ask me?”

  “I have one question for you.”

  “Just one?” Her smile is amused, but sharp-honed by a grief that has persisted for more than the latter half of her long life.

  “Just one.” He takes a recorder from his shirt pocket, clicks a button, and sets it on the table between them. “More than one, of course. But this one is the biggie. Are you ready?”

  “Sure, yeah. I’m ready.”

  “Mrs. Goldwood, why are you alive?”

  Wind moves the trees behind the house. A flurry of red and brown leaves funnel across the yard, smack against the cute skirting. A black cloud covers the sun and hangs there. The temperature plummets. Gravel crunches in the lane.

  The dog growls, and is on its feet, head low, mouth open to bare many, many teeth. The fur on its back is standing in a ridge. It is Cerberus’s very own pup.

  “Oh, motherfucker,” says Jessica Mace Goldwood. She’s got the revolver in her hand, hammer cocked. Her eyes blaze with a gunfighter’s fire as she half crouches, elbows in tight, knees wide. “It’s never over with these sonsofbitches.”

  “What’s happening?” The journalist has ducked for cover, hands upraised in the universal sign of surrender. “Jesus H., lady! Don’t shoot me!” He glances over his shoulder and sees a man in the uniform of a popular parcel delivery service slamming the door of a van and roaring away in a cloud of smoking rubber.

  “Aw, don’t fret,” she says. “Me and Atticus just don’t appreciate those delivery guys comin’ around.” The pit bull snarls and throws himself down at her feet. She uncocks the revolver and tucks it into the waistband of her track pants. “So, young man. Where were we?”

  He wipes his face and composes himself. In a hoarse voice he says, “I guess what happened in Alaska doesn’t let go.”

  “Huh? Don’t be silly — I smoked that psycho. I hate visitors. You’re kinda cute, so I made an exception. Besides, you’re gonna pay me for this story, kiddo.”

  He tries for a sip of lemonade and ice rattles in the empty glass. His hand trembles. She pats his arm and takes the glass inside for a refill. Atticus follows on her heel. The journalist draws a breath to steady himself. He switches off the recorder. A ray of sun burns through the clouds and spotlights him while the rest of the world blurs into an impressionistic watercolor. A snowflake drifts down from outer space and freezes to his cheek.

  She returns with a fresh glass of lemonade to find the journalist slumped in the lawn chair. Someone has placed an ancient state trooper’s hat on his head and tilted it so that the man’s face is partially covered. The crown of the hat is matted with dried gore that has, with the passing decades, indelibly stained the fabric. A smooth, vertical slice begins at the hollow of his throat and continues to belt level. His intestines are piled beneath his trendy hiking shoes. His ears lie upon the table. Steam rises from the corpse.

  Atticus growls at the odors of shit and blood.

  Jessica gazes at him in amazement. “Goddamnit, dog. Now you growl. Thanks a heap.” She notices a wet crimson thumbprint on the recorder. She sighs and lights another cigarette and presses PLAY. Comes the static-inflected sound of wind rushing across ice, of snow shushing against tin, of arctic darkness and slow, sliding fog. Fire crackles in the background. These sounds have crept across the span of forty years.

  A voice, garbled and muted by interference, whispers, “Jessica, we need to know. Why are you alive?” Snow and wind fill a long gap. Then, “Did you cut your own throat? Did you? Are you dead, Jessica? Are you dead, or are you playing? How much longer do you think you have?” Nothing but static after that, and the tape ends.

  Intuition tells her that the journalist didn’t file a plan with his network, that he rolled into the boondocks alone, that when he doesn’t arrive at the office on Monday morning it will be a fulfillment of the same pattern he’s followed countless times previously. The universe won’t skip a beat. A man such as he has enemies waiting in the woodwork, ready to wrap him in a carpet and take him far away. It will be a minor unsolved mystery that his colleagues have awaited since his first jaunt into a war torn region in the Middle East.

  She can’t decide whether to call the cops or hide the body, roll the rental car into a ditch somewhere and torch it. Why, yes, Officer, the young fellow was here for a while the other day. Missing? Oh, dear, that’s terrible…

  “Jack?” she says to the hissing leaves. Her hand is at her neck, caressing the scar that defines her existence. “Nate? Are you out there?”

  The sun sets and night is with her again.

  * * *

  Three years, six months, and fifteen days before Dolly Sammerdyke is eviscerated and dropped down a mineshaft, where her bones rest to this very day, she tells her brother Tom she’s moving from Fairbanks to Eagle Talon. She’s got an in with a woman who keeps the books at a shipping company and there’s an opening for an onsite clerk. Tom doesn’t like it. He lived in the village during a stretch in the 1980s when his luck was running bad.

  “Listen, kid. It’s a bum deal.”

  “Not as if I have a better option,” she says.

  “Bad place, sis.”

  “Yeah? What’s bad about it? The people?”

  “Bad people, sure. Bad neighborhood, bad history. Only one place to live in Eagle Talon. Six-floor apartment building. Ginormus old tenement. Dark, drafty, creepy as shit. It’s a culture thing. People there are oddballs and clannish. You’ll hate it.”

  “I’ll call you every week.”

  Dolly calls Tom every week until her death. He doesn’t miss her calls at first because he’s landed a gig as a luthier in Nashville and his new girlfriend, an aspiring country and western musician, commands all of his attention these days.

  * * *

  Did the Final Girl do it? Was it this person here or that one over there? You can only laugh at the preposterousness of such conceits. You can only weep. As the omniscient narrator of some antique fairy tale once declaimed: Fool! Rub your eyes and look again!

  You will never die — nothing does.

  * * *

  From the journal of Nathan E. Custer as tr
anscribed from the original text by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Anchorage:

  I’ve never told anyone the whole truth about Moose Valley, or this recurring dream I’ve suffered in the following years. Probably not a dream; more of a vision. For clarity’s sake, we’ll go with it being a dream. The dream has two parts. The first part is true to life, a memory of events with the tedious details edited from the narrative.

  In the true to life part of the dream, Michael Allen and I are playing dominoes in the dim kitchen of my old place in Moose Valley. I’d seen him standing in the yard, a ghostly shape in the darkness, and had invited him to come out of the weather without thinking to ask why he was lurking.

  It is fall of ’93, around four in the morning. He’s winning, he always wins at these games — pool, checkers, cards, dominoes — although everybody likes him anyway.

  Allen has only been in town a few months. A few years older than me, from back east, also like me. An ex-Army guy, so he’s capable, with an easy smile and a sharp wit. Long hair, but kempt. Keeps to himself for the most part in a one room cottage by the river. He’s passionate about Golden Age comic books and the poetry of James Dickey. I was in the cottage for maybe five minutes once. Dude kept it to a minimum and neat as you please. Gun oil scent, although no guns in view. Yeah.

  He pockets my last eleven dollars with a shrug and an apologetic grin. Says, Thanks for the game, and pulls on his orange sock cap and stands. I turn away to grab a beer from the icebox, hair of the dog that bit me, and the bullet passes through my skull above my ear and I’m on the floor, facedown. He squeezes the trigger again and I hear the hammer snap, a dud in the chamber. Or he hadn’t reloaded from slaughtering the Haden family across the street. We’ll never know. Anyway, I’m unblinking, unresponsive, paralyzed, so he leaves me for dead. The front door slams and sunlight creeps across the tiles and makes the spreading blood shiny.

  The second part of the dream is a fantasy cobbled and spliced from real events. I have a disembodied view of everything that happens next.

  Allen slips down to the launch and steals a rubber raft. He lets the flow carry him downstream. He’s packed sandwiches and beer, and has a small picnic. God, it’s a beautiful day. The mountain peaks are white with fresh snow, but the lower elevations are yet green and gold. The air is brisk, only hinting at the bitter chill to come. A beaver circles the raft, occasionally slapping the water with its tail. The crack is like a gunshot. Allen scans the eggshell-blue sky from behind a pair of tinted aviator glasses.

  The current gradually picks up as it approaches a stretch of falls and rapids. A black dot detaches from the sun and drops toward the earth. Allen unlimbers the 30.06 bolt action rifle he’s stowed under a blanket. His balance is uncertain and the first round pings harmlessly through the fuselage of the police chopper. He ejects the empty and sights again, cool as the ice on the mountains, and this will be a kill shot. The SWAT sniper is a hair quicker and Allen is knocked from the raft. He plunges into the water and sinks instantly. The raft zips over the falls and is demolished.

  A sad, tragic case closes.

  The fact is, Allen survives for a few minutes. He is a tough, passionless piece of work, a few cells short of Homo sapiens status, and that helps him experience a brutal and agonizing last few moments on the mortal plane. He is sucked into a vortex and wedged under and between some rocks where he eventually drowns. This is a remote and dangerous area. The cops never recover the body.

  Small fish nibble away his fingers, then his face, then the rest of it.

  Andy Kaufman Creeping through the Trees

  Autumn, 1998

  Senior year of high school isn’t the best of times. It is totally the other way. And how shall I count the ways? Cancer is eating my father alive. He’s got six months, a year, it’s anybody’s guess. How many of those days will be worth a damn? He’s sort of a tough-as-shoe-leather guy and I bet he’ll make it hard on himself, on us all. Both our dogs, Little Egypt and Odysseus, bit the dust from old age during summer vacation. Not enough drama? The last week of August I almost kill myself on the new trampoline. Okay, technically, I fly off the trampoline and do a half-gainer into the side of our house. Instant KO.

  Why does this even happen (and why me)? Solution: The Universe is a real bitch. Sometimes she smirks and gives you what you want. My heart’s desire is a full-sized trampoline to practice cheer moves on. Well done, cosmos, you perverse whoremaster. A neighbor lost his job way up north in the Prudhoe Bay oil fields and put basically everything he owned out on the lawn at fire-sale prices. The neighbor kids cried when we loaded the trampoline into the bed of our truck. Flash forward twenty-four hours and it’s me singing the blues.

  I get cocky and bounce hard near the edge and Kaboing! Thank Satan the rhododendron bush cushions the impact. Also, thank you, dearly departed Anton LaVey, our Lord and Savior, I am alone for this debacle. None of the other girls bear witness to my humiliation. Dad has passed out drunk earlier than usual and doesn’t hear the thud or the shattering china. Also kinda bad, though. I lie stunned for a few seconds, then angry yellow jackets swarm from their nest in the bushes and sting the ever-loving hell out of me.

  Neck brace, knee brace, swollen face. The knee is the worst, although sharing Renee Zellweger’s squinty pout for a week is not to be envied. The sorry result of my misery? One of my rivals (probably trailer park queen Reyline Showalter) will lead the cheer squad when our boys pillage their way to state again. Grr! Is it too petty of me to hope the team suffers a rash of injuries and misses the playoffs?

  Damn our soon-to-be ex-neighbor and his stupid discount trampoline he bought for his stupid brats. Damn the universe and all its devices, such as gravity, colorectal cancer, and children.

  * * *

  The mound of get-well cards is impressive. So many, many flowers and gift baskets, it becomes tedious to sort them for the contraband. Chocolate! Stuffed toys! Poppers (bless you Benny Three-Trees)! Porno disguised as Cosmopolitan, Girls’ Life, and Seventeen! Rob Zombie and Weezer CDs!

  I’m blonde, taut, and hot. Everybody loves me and everybody else hates me. I know who’s who — pals write, Hey Julie Vellum, Yo, Julie V, get well, babe; meanwhile, fools call me Julie Five, or Stuck-Up Bitch, and say, Too bad you only sprained your neck. It’s vital to know the sides. High school is a cold war no more or less a game than East versus West. Most of the girls, pro or con Julie Vellum, are super smooth and you can’t go by kind words or a friendly smile. If you don’t keep the factions and the alliances straight, you’ll get a knife between the shoulder blades. Been there (middle school), no thanks.

  Human nature; what are you going to do? After my tragic accident and the initial flood of sympathy, even my tightest friends avoid me like I’m Typhoid Mary. A knee brace or an arm cast can be sexy if you work it right. Neck braces, visible swelling, and contusions are totally uncool. Emotionally, I’m not well-equipped to cope, even if my upbringing suggests otherwise.

  Being an only child kinda sucks when it doesn’t totally rock. My shrink (Mom’s idea), an ex-pill dispenser to the stars, says ugly sibling rivalries are transferred to my peers and blown up on the stage and that I should watch my step. She’s right despite her ignominious status as a Beverly Hills refugee — I sharpen these claws on classmates and it’s earned me a bit of a reputation for being a super-bitch. Meanwhile, Grandpa says acting snotty is a cover for weakness and it’s too bad I don’t have a brother to keep me in check. He seldom wears shirt or pants and handily out-drinks Dad, believe it or don’t.

  I take this wise counsel in stride.

  Haters can talk shit all they like, I am not an entitled high school slut cheerleader. I am a regal and voraciously sexual high school cheerleader. Besides, I didn’t actually do the deed until Rocky Eklund, then the backup quarterback, popped my cherry after the team took state last fall. Junior freaking year. Yeesh. Ask Robin Sloan or Indra Norse when they first gave it up. Ask those skanks, Jessica Mace and her cousin Liz Lochinvar. I was
practically a cloistered virgin before the dam broke. Unless we’re counting hand jobs and BJs. In that case, it would be fifth grade and creepy, so let’s not.

  * * *

  A week of school convinces me that I’m in political exile. Woman without a Country. The second tier girls and hangers-on occupy my table in the cafeteria; talk about a come-down. Greetings range from nervous to frosty. Nobody looks me in the eye. Smiling the hard smile Jackie taught, I seriously worry my face will get stress fractures. I read the history of the Borgias during lunch and fantasize about a mass poisoning.

  Rocky has football practice (I’m giving my beau his space; got to provide him political cover until I shed the scaggy collar) and then beers and pool at Mike Zant’s house after Thursday class. Doc won’t let me drive until I can turn my head again.

  I catch a lift with Steely J. We have business anyhow. His ride is a Toyota wagon with Visqueen taped over the rear side windows. Two hundred and thirty thousand miles on the odometer. He keeps the wagon spiffy as a military bunk, oddly enough, and daisy-sweet with a cluster of air fresheners rubber-banded to the rearview. Be that as it may, I spread a handful of cafeteria napkins on the passenger seat. My hunch says a blacklight would paint a very different picture of the environment.

  Steely J resides in the friend camp. He’s in the friend camp for most of us, not to be confused with a buddy or a pal or a member of the crew. Dude is like Australia or Switzerland; up for hijinks and not the teeniest bit judgy. He’s a fixer and you don’t have to like a fixer to love one. Tall, really quiet, although not broody, he-man quiet; closer to a great white shark cruising through the shallows. And white is right — he’s Whitey McWhite cream cheese complexioned. He walks soft, sorta hunched in his lumpy sweaters, buzz cut, black frame glasses, and sneakers for sneaking.