by Laird Barron
Frontier Death Song
Night descended on Interstate-90 as I crossed over into the Badlands. Real raw weather for October. Snow dusted the asphalt and picnic tables of the deserted rest area. The scene was virginal as death. I parked the Chevy under one of the lamp posts that burned at either end of the lot. A metal building with a canted roof sat low and sleek in the center island, most of its windows dark. Against the black backdrop it reminded me of a crypt or monument to travelers and pioneers lost down through the years. Placards were obscured by shadows and could’ve pronounced warnings or curses, could’ve said anything in any language. Reality was pliable tonight.
I loosed Minerva and watched her trot around the perimeter of the sodium glow. She raised her graying snout and growled softly at the void that surrounded us, poured from us. Her tracks and the infrequent firefly sparks on the road were the only signs of life for miles. Snow was falling thick and those small signs wouldn’t last long. Periodically a semi chugged along the freeway, its running lights tiny and dim. Other than that, this was the Moon. It was back to the previous ice age for us, the end for us. I kind of, sort of, liked the idea that this might be the end, except for the fact sweet, loyal Minerva hadn’t asked for any of it, and my nature, my atavistic shadow, was, as usual, a belligerent sonofabitch. My shadow exhibited the type of primitive stubbornness that causes men to weigh themselves with stones before they jump into the midnight blue, causes them to mix the pills with antifreeze, trade the pistol bullet to the brain for a shotgun barrel in the mouth, to be on the safe side. My shadow didn’t give a shit about odds, or eventualities, or pain, or certain death. It wanted to keep shining.
So, Minerva pissed in the snow and I ticked off the seconds until the ultimate showdown.
My ear was killing me tonight, crackling like a busted radio speaker and ringing with good old tinnitus. The sensation was that of an auger boring through membrane and meat. My back and knee ached. I lost the ear to a virus upon contracting pneumonia in Alaska during a long ago Iditarod. The spine and knee got ruined after I fell off a cliff into the Bering Sea and broke almost everything that was breakable. Resilience was my gift and I’d recovered sufficiently to limp through the remainder of a wasted youth, to fake a hale and hearty demeanor. That shit was surely catching up now at the precipice of the miserable slide into middle age. All those forgotten or ignored wounds blooming in a chorus of ghostly pain, reminders of longstanding debts, reminders that a man can’t always outrun provenance.
I checked my watch and the numbers blurred. I hadn’t slept in way too long, else I never would’ve pulled over between Bumfuck, Egypt and Timbuktu. Since suicide by passivity was off the table, this was an expression of stubbornness on my part, probably. Grim defiance, or the need to reassert my faith in the logical operations of the universe if but for a moment.
What a joke, faith. What a sham, logic.
A hunting horn sounded far out there in the darkness beyond the humps and swales and treeless drumlin that went on basically forever, past the vast hungry prairies that had swallowed so many wagon trains.
Oh, yes. The horn of the Hunt bugling my death song.
Not simply a horn, but one that could easily be imagined as the hollowed relic from a giant, perverted ram with blood-specked foam lathering its muzzle and hellfire beaming from its eyes. A ram that crunched the bones of Saxons for breakfast and brandished a cock the girth of a wagon axle; the kind of brute that tribes sacrificed babies to when crops were bad and mated unfortunate maidens to when the chief needed some special juju on the eve of a war. Its horn was the sort of artifact that stood on end in a petrified coil and would require a brawny Viking raider to lift. Or a demon.
That wail stood my hair on end, slapped me wide awake. It rolled toward the parking lot, swelling like some medieval air raid klaxon. Snowflakes weren’t melting on my cheeks because all the heat, all the blood, went rushing inward. That erstwhile faith in the natural universe, the rational order of reality, wouldn’t be troubling me again anytime soon. Nope.
I whistled for Minerva and she leaped into the truck, riding shotgun. Her hackles were bunched. She barked her fury and terror at the night. Sleep, O blessed sleep, how I longed for thee. No time for that. We had to get gone. The Devil would be there soon.
* * *
Years ago when I raced sled dogs for a living, I knew a fellow named Steven Graham, a disgraced lit professor from the University of Colorado. He’d gotten shitcanned for reasons opaque to my blue collar sensibilities — something to do with privileging contemporary zombie stories over the works of the Russian masters. His past was shrouded in mystery and like a lot people, he’d fled to Alaska to reinvent himself.
Nobody on the racing circuit cared much about any of that. Graham was charming and charismatic in spades. He drank and swore with the best of us, but he’d also get three sheets to the wind and recite a bit of Beowulf in Olde English and he knew the bloodlines of huskies from Balto onward. Strap a pair of snowshoes to that lanky greenhorn bastard and he’d leave even the most hardened back country trapper in the proverbial dust. All the girlies adored him, and so did the cameras. Like Cummings said, he was a hell of a handsome man.
Too good to be true.
Steven Graham got taken by the Hunt while he was running the ‘92 Iditarod. That’s the big winter event where men and women hook a bunch of huskies to sleds and race twelve hundred miles across Alaska from Anchorage to Nome. There’s not much to say about it -- it’s long and grueling and lonely. You’re always crossing a frozen swamp or mushing up an ice-jammed river or trudging over a mountain. It’s dark and cold and mostly devoid of sound or movement but for one’s own breath and the muted panting of the huskies, the jingle and clink of their traces.
Official records have it that Graham, young ex professor and dilettante adventurer, took a wrong turn out on Norton Sound between Koyuk and Elim and went through the ice into the sea. Ka-sploosh. No trace of him or the dogs was found. The Lieutenant Governor attended the funeral. CNN covered it live.
The report was bullshit, of course; I saw what really happened. And because I saw what really happened, because I meddled in the Hunt, there would be hell to pay.
* * *
Broad daylight, maybe an hour prior to sunset, mid-March of ‘92.
All twelve dogs in harness trotted along nicely. The end of the trail in Nome was about two days away. Things hadn’t gone particularly well and I was cruising for a middle of the pack finish and a long, destitute summer of begging corporate sponsors not to drop my underachieving ass. But damn, what a gorgeous day in the arctic with the snowpack curving around me to the horizon, the sky frozen between apple-green and steely blue, the orange ball of the sun dipping below the Earth. The effect was something out of Fantasia. After days of inadequate sleep, I was lulled by the hiss of the sled runners, the rhythmic scrape and slap of dog paws. I dozed at the handlebars and dreamed of Sharon, the warmth of our home, a cup of real coffee, a hot shower, and the down comforter on our bed.
When my team passed through a gap in a mile-long pressure ridge that had heaved the Bering ice to an eight-foot tall parapet, the Hunt had taken down Graham on the other side, maybe twenty yards off the main drag. This I discovered when one of Graham’s huskies loped toward me, free of its traces yet still in harness. The poor critter’s head had been lopped at mid-neck and it zig-zagged several strides and then collapsed in the trail. You’d think my own dogs would’ve spooked. Instead, an atavistic switch was tripped in their doggy brains and they surged forward, yapping and howling.
Several yards to my right so much blood covered the snow I thought I was hallucinating a sunset dripped onto the ice. The scene confused me for a few seconds as my brain locked down and spun in place. The killing ground was a fucking mess like there’d been a mass walrus slaughter committed on the spot. Dead huskies were flung about, intestines looped over berms and piled in loose, steaming coils. Graham himself lay spread-eagle across a blue-white slab of ice repurp
osed as an impromptu sacrificial altar. He was split wide, eyes blank.
The Huntsman had most of the guy’s hide off and was tacking it alongside the carcass as one stretches the skin of a beaver or a bear. Clad in a deerstalker hat surmounted by antlers, a blood-drenched mackinaw coat, canvas breeches, and sealskin boots, the Huntsman stood taller than most men even as he hunched to slice Graham with a large knife of flint or obsidian — I wasn’t quite close enough to discern which.
Meanwhile, the Huntsman’s wolf pack ranged among the butchered huskies. These wolves were black, and gaunt as cadavers; their narrow eyes glinted, reflecting the snow, the changeable heavens. When several of them reared on hind legs to study me, I decided they weren’t wolves at all. Some wore olden leather and caps with splintered nubs of horn; others were garbed in the remnants of military fatigues and camouflage jackets of various styles, gore encrusted and ingrown to the creatures’ hides. They grinned at me and their mouths were very, very wide.
Nothing brave in what I did, or at least tried to do. My befuddled intellect was still processing the carnage when I sank the hook and tethered the team, left them baying frantically in the middle of the trail. I wasn’t thinking of a damned thing as I walked stiff-legged toward the Hunt and the in-progress evisceration of my comrade. Most mushers carried firearms on the trail. There were moose to contend with and frankly, a gun is pretty much basic equipment in any case. We toted rifles or pistols like folks in the Lower-48 carry cell phones and wallets. Mine was a .357 I stowed inside my anorak to keep the cylinder from freezing into a solid lump. The revolver was in my hand and it jumped twice and I don’t recall the booms. No sound, only fire. The closest pair of dog men flipped over and a small part of my mind celebrated that at least the fuckers could be hurt, it wasn’t like the legends or the movies; no silver required, lead worked fine.
The Huntsman whirled when I was nearly upon him, and Jesus help me I glimpsed his face. That’s probably why my hair went white. I squeezed the trigger three more times, emptied the gun and even as the bullets smacked him, I had the sense of shooting into an abyss — absolute hopeless, soul-draining futility. The Huntsman swayed, humungous knife raised. The blade was flint, by the way.
Worst part was, Graham blinked and looked right at me and I saw his skinned hand twitch. How he could be alive in that condition was no more or less fantastical than anything else, I suppose. Even so, even so. I still get a sick feeling in my stomach when I recall that image.
Apparently, the gods of the north had seen enough. Wind roared around us and everything went white and I was alone. Hurricane force gusts knocked me off my feet and I barely managed to crawl to the team, almost missed them, in fact. Visibility was maybe six feet. Easily, easily could’ve kept going into the featureless maelstrom until I found the lip at the edge of a bottomless gulf of open water and joined Graham, wherever he’d gone.
That storm pinned the dogs and me to Norton Sound for three days. Gusts of seventy knots. Wind chill in excess of negative one hundred degrees Fahrenheit. You wouldn’t understand how cold that is. I can’t describe it. It’s like trying to explain how far away Alpha Centauri is from Earth in highway miles. The brain isn’t equipped. Froze my right hand and foot. Froze my face so that it hardened into a black and blue mask. Froze my dick. Didn’t lose anything important, but man, there are few agonies equal to thawing a frostbitten extremity.
I actually managed to cripple across the finish line. Suffering through the aftermath of physical therapy and counseling, the memory of what I’d seen out there was wiped clean from my mind with the efficacy of a kid tipping an Etch A Sketch and giving it a shake. Seven or eight years passed before the horrible event came back to haunt me and by then it was too late to say anything, too late to be certain whether it had happened or if I’d gone around the bend.
* * *
Snow drifted both lanes and the wind buffeted the Chevy, and goddamn, but I was reliving that blizzard of ’92. The fuel gauge needle fell into the red and I drove another half hour, creeping along in four wheel hi. Radio reception was poor and I’d settled for a static-filled broadcast of ‘80s rock. Hall & Oates, The Police, a block of Sade and Blue Oyster Cult, all that music our parents hated when we were bopping along in mullets.
“Godzilla” cut in and out during the drum solo and a distorted animal growl that had nothing to do with heavy metal issued from the speakers. My name snarled over and over to the metronome of the wipers.
A truck stop glittered on the horizon of the next off ramp. Exhausted, frazzled, pissed, and afraid, I pulled alongside the pumps and got fuel. Then I hooked Minerva to a leash and brought her inside with me. I patted her head as we went through the door, and wished that I possessed more of her canine equanimity in the face of the unknown.
She curled at my boots while I drank a quart of awful coffee and ate a New York steak with all the trimmings. The waitress didn’t say anything about my bringing a pit bull to the table. Maybe the folks in Dakota were hip to that sort of thing. Didn’t matter; I’d gotten the little card that proved Minerva was a service dog and of vital importance should I experience an “episode” of depression or mania.
Depression had haunted me since my retirement from mushing, and a friend who worked as counselor at the University of Anchorage suggested that I adopt a shelter puppy and train it as a companion animal. The local police had busted a dog fighting ring and one of the females was pregnant, so Sharon and I eventually picked Minerva from a litter of eleven. A decade later, after my world burned to the ground, career in ashes, wife gone, friends few and far between, Minerva remained steadfast. A man and his dog versus the Outer Dark.
The diner was doing brisk trade. Two burly truckers in company jumpsuits occupied the next booth, but most of the customers were gathered at the counter so they could watch weather reports on TV. Nothing heartening in the reports, either. The storm would definitely delay me by half a day, possibly more. My ardent hope was that I could bull through it and be in the clear by the time I crossed Minnesota tomorrow. I also prayed that the pickup would hang together all the way to Lamprey Isle, New York, my destination at the end of the yellow brick road. My plan was to reach the home of an old friend named Jack Fort, a retired English professor and fellow author. Jack claimed he could help. I had my doubts. The pack and its leader were eternal and relentless. A man could plunk a few, sure. In the end, though, they simply reformed and kept pursuing. The Devil’s smoke demons on the hunt.
Be that as it may, I’d decided to go down swinging and that meant a hell-bent for leather ride into the east. Currently, my worries centered on weather and equipment. The drive from Alaska via the AlCan Highway had been rough and I suspected the old engine was fixing to give up the ghost. I could say the same thing about my heart, my sanity, my luck.
Sure enough. Minerva snarled and bolted from her spot under the table. She crouched beside me, shivering. Foam dribbled from her jaw and her eyes bulged.
Graham strolled in, taller and happier than I remembered. Death agreed with some people. He loomed in Technicolor while reality bleached around him. His long black hair was feathered with snowflakes and the lights hit it at the right angle so he appeared angelic, a movie star pausing for his dramatic close-up. He lugged the ivory hunting horn (indeed a ram’s horn, albeit much more modest than its report); in his left he carried a faded cowboy hat with a crimson and black patch on the crown. He wore the Huntsman’s iceberg-white mackinaw, ceremonial flint knife tucked into his belt so the bone handle jutted in a most phallic statement. He ambled over and slid in across from me. I noticed his sealskin boots left maroon smears on the tiles. I also noticed puffs of steam escaping our mouths as the booth cooled like a meat locker.
I cocked the .357 and braced it across my thigh. “You must not be heralding the great zombie invasion. Lookin’ great, Steve. Not chalk white or anything. The rot must be on the inside.”
He flipped his hair in a Fabio imitation. His trophy necklace of wedding rings, key fob
s, dog tags, driver licenses, and glass eyes clinked and rattled. “Likewise, amigo. You’ve lost weight? Dyed your hair? What?”
“This and that — diet, exercise. Fleeing in terror has the bonus effect of getting a man in shape. Divorce, too. My wife used to fatten me up pretty good. Since she split… You know. TV dinners and Johnnie Walker. I got it going on, huh?” I gripped Minerva’s collar with my free hand. Her growls were deep and ferocious. She strained to lunge over the table, an eighty-pound bowling bowl; rippling muscle and bone crushing jaws and, at the moment, bad intentions. My arm was tired already. Tempting to let my girl fly, but I loved her.
“I’m yanking your chain. You look like crap. When’s the last time you slept? There’s a motel a piece up the trail. Why not get room service, watch a porno, drink some booze and fall into peaceful slumber? You won’t even notice when I slip in there and slice your fucking throat ear to ear.” Graham’s smile widened. It was still him, too. Same guy I’d gotten drunk with at Nome saloons. Same perfect teeth, same easy manner, probably sincere. He’d not intimated any malice regarding his intent to skin me alive and eat my beating heart. This was business, mostly. He inclined his head, as if intercepting my thought. “Not so much business as tradition. The Hunt is a sacred rite. I gave you the head start as a courtesy.”
