by Laird Barron
6.
I wanted to turn around and bolt for home, get back to my beer and cartoons. I headed for Purdon instead. A Mastodon sinking in a tar pit.
Purdon was a failed mill town several hours northeast of San Francisco—victim of the rise of environmentalism in the latter '90s. A mountainous region bracketed by a national park and a reservation. Rural and impoverished as all hell. Plenty of pot plantations, militia compounds and dead mining camps; all of it crisscrossed with a few thousand miles of logging roads slowly being eaten by forest. An easy place to vanish from the planet.
My mind had been switched off for the last hundred miles.
I switched it off because I was tired of thinking about the events at Renfro's house. Tired of considering the implications. It occurred to me, not for the first time, that I had fallen down the rabbit hole and would awaken at any moment. Unfortunately, I had brought a couple of the suspect photos and they remained steadfastly bizarre. Combined with Teddy's, did this not suggest a supernatural force at work?
Thoughts like that are why I shut my mind off.
Better to stick with problems at hand. Problems such as motoring into the sticks looking for a man I had seen in ancient clippings and a jerky movie frame shot three decades prior. A man who was probably a certifiable lunatic if he had owned the Imago Sequence for so many years. Whether he might know the whereabouts of a petrified hominid, or the truth about the disappearance of a thoroughly modern human, no longer seemed important. The only matter of importance was finding a way to kill the nightmares. And if Thornton couldn't help me? Best not to scrutinize that possibility too closely. I could almost taste the cold, oily barrel of my revolver.
I played Renfro's tape. The recording was damaged—portions were garbled, others were missing entirely, comprised of clicking and deep sea warbles. The intelligible segments featured a male lecturer. "—satiation is the natural inclination. One is likely to spend centuries glutting primitive appetites, wreaking havoc on enemies, and so forth. What then? That depends on the personality. Few would seek the godhead, I think. Such a pursuit would require tremendous imagination, determination . . .resources. Provender would be an issue. It is difficult to conceive the acquisition of so much ripe flesh. No, the majority will be content with leisurely hedonism—"
The Chrysler groaned as it climbed. Night paled and the rain slackened into gray drizzle. Big hills, big trees, everything dripping and foggy. Signs grew sparse and the road fell apart. I had to pay attention lest my car be hurled into a ravine.
"—consumption of accelerated brainmatter being one proven catalyst. Immersion in a protyle sink is significantly more efficacious, albeit infinitely more perilous. Best avoided." Laughter. The recording petered to static.
I reached Purdon in time for church. Instead, I filled my tank at the Union 76 next to the defunct lumber mill, washed and changed clothes in the cramped bathroom. At the liquor store I bought a bottle of cheap whiskey. Here was my indemnity from coming nightmares. Then I ate a huge breakfast at the Hardpan Café. The waitress, who might also have been the proprietor, was a shrewd-eyed Russian. There were a lot of Russian immigrants in the area, I discovered. She didn't care for my looks, but she kept my coffee cup level and her thoughts to herself while I stared out the window and plotted my next move.
Not much to see—narrow streets crowded with warped 1920s salt box houses. for lease signs plastered dark windows. A few people, mostly hung-over men, prowled the sidewalks. Everybody appeared to wear flannel and drive dented pickups. Most of the trucks had full gun racks.
I asked the Russian woman about finding a room and was directed to the Pine Valley Motel, which was less lovely than it sounded—unless you were thinking pine box, and then, yeah, that was more accurate, in an esthetic sense. The motel sprawled in a gravel lot at the edge of town, northernmost wing gutted by a recent fire and draped with rust-stained tarps. Mine was the sole car parked in front.
A stoic senior citizen missing two fingers of his right hand took my money and produced the key. His stained ballcap read: PURDON MILL—AN AMERICAN COMPANY! For fun, I asked if he knew anything about Anselm Thornton or the Imago Colony and received a glassy stare as he honked his nose into a handkerchief.
The walls of No. 32 were balsa-thin and the bed creaked ominously, but I didn't see any cockroaches. I counted myself lucky as I cracked the seal on the whiskey. I made it to within a pinky of the bottom before the curtain dropped.
Ants.
I shared a picnic with a woman who was the composite of several women, all of them attractive, all of them wanton yet motherly, like the new Betty Crocker. She spoke words that held no weight and so fluttered away on the breeze with a vapor trail of pollen. Our feast was laid upon the requisite checkerboard blanket beneath a flowering tree with the grass and the sun and all that. With all that and the chirping birds and the painfully blue sky and the goddamned ants; I didn't notice the ants until the woman held a slice of bread to my lips and as I opened my mouth to accept the bread I saw an ant trapped in the honey. Too late, my mouth closed and I swallowed and I looked down and beheld them everywhere upon the checker cloth, these ants. Formicating. I rose up, a behemoth enraged, and trampled them in shallow puffs of dust. They died in their numbers, complaining in small voices as their works were conculcated—their wagon trains and caravans, their miniature Hippodromes and coliseums, their monuments and toy superstructures, all crashed, all toppled, all ablaze. I threw my head back to bellow curses and noticed the sun had become a pinhole. The hole openedopendopened—
Open.
I stared at the ceiling and realized that I now slept with my eyes wide and glazed. Marbles, the last of my marbles.
Shadows flowed swiftly along the decrepit wallpaper of No. 32, shrinking from the muzzy glare of the sun as it wallowed behind clouds. The thermostat was set at body temperature and the room steamed. I didn't recall waking to do that. I had slept for eighteen hours. Eighteen hours! It was a bloody miracle! I dressed, avoiding the mirror.
There were various stratagems available, a couple of them clever. I wasn't feeling clever, though. In fact, my skull felt like a pot of mush.
I flashed a snapshot of Teddy at the locals, finally got a bite from the mechanic at the gas station. He remembered Teddy from the previous September—Heavy guy, yeah; drivin' a foreign car, passin' through. North, I suppose, 'cause he asked where Little Egypt was. We get that a lot. Tourists want to fool around the mines. Ain't shit-all left, though. I checked his brakes—these roads are hell on brakes. He paid cash.
No surprises, the jigsaw was taking its form.
I measured the dwindling girth of my money clip and dealt a portion of it to Rod, the pimply badger of a clerk at the post office. It went down smoothly after I told him I was working for a family who believed their baby girl had joined a cult. Oh, this sweaty, mutton-chopped fellow became a regular Samaritan once the folding green was in his pocket. He came across with the goods—names and descriptions of the people who regularly accessed Thornton's box. He'd never seen Thornton, didn't know much about him and didn't want to. The Imago Colony? Zip. Thornton's group numbered about forty, although who knew?—what with tourist season and the influx of visitors come spring. They occupied mining claims somewhere on Little Egypt; kept to themselves. Mormons, or some shit. Weird folk, but nobody had heard about them causing trouble before. He let me look at a topographical map that showed Little Egypt was, in fact, a sizeable chunk of real estate. Thornton's camp could be any one of a dozen claims scattered throughout the area. I slipped him another fifty bucks to keep mum about our conversation.
Satisfied, I retreated to the Hardpan Café, which commanded an unobstructed view of the post office. I settled in to wait for my hippie friends to make the scene. The Russian lady was overjoyed.
Thornton's people arrived on Thursday. Two rough men dressed in greatcoats; they drove around town in a clanking two-ton truck with a canvas top. A military surplus vehicle capable of serious off-road travel
. The U.S. Army star was mud-splattered.
I compared them to my list. One, a redhead, was a nobody. The other man was middling sized, with a dented forehead, pebbly eyes and a long beard that would've made Fidel Castro jealous. Roy Fulcher, larger and uglier than life. Still playing henchman to Thornton in the new century. Loyal as a dog; how sweet.
If any of the locals tipped the men that I had been asking about their operation, it was not evident. They nonchalantly gathered supplies while I lurked in the background. Toward evening Fulcher pointed the truck north and rumbled off with a load of dry goods, fuel, and mail. I trailed.
Eventually, the truck turned onto a gravel road. A bullet-raddled sign read: little egypt rd. The metal pole was bent nearly double, victim of unknown violence. Rough country here; patches of concrete-hard snow gleamed under scraggly trees. In a few miles gravel gave way to a mud track and the ruts were too deep for the Chrysler. I pulled over, shouldered a satchel I'd bought at the Purdon Thrifty Saver and started walking, carefully picking my way as twilight grew moss and the stars glittered like caltrops. As the air cooled, mist cloaked the branches and brambles.
The hills got steep fast, draining the strength from my legs. My back protested. I shook most of the bottle of aspirin into my mouth to stay on the safe side, and rested frequently. When the track forked, I shined my flashlight to orient on the freshest ruts. It wasn't difficult; it was like following a bulldozer up the mountain. I clicked the light off quickly, hoping to conceal my position, and continued trudging.
I checked my watch to gauge the mileage and discovered it had died at 6:32 p.m. Much later, my legs got too heavy and I slumped under a lonely pine. Clouds snuffed the stars.
7.
The gray light swam as it brightened; rocks and brush solidified all around. Two inches of snow dusted the landscape like the face of a corpse.
My back had seized up. It hurt in a profound way. Like a bitch, as my pop would've said. The aspirin was gone, the whiskey too. It seemed impossible that I would ever stand. But I rose, among a shower of black motes and silvery comets. Rose with the chuffing sob of a steer as it is goaded onto the gangway. Then I hugged my homely little tree, pissed on my boots and trembled with nausea. I needed a drink.
The road curved upward in a series of switchbacks. The snow disintegrated to brown sludge. I staggered along the shoulder, avoiding the quagmire. My feet got wet anyway. I clutched at exposed roots and outcroppings. A bird scolded me.
Cresting a saddle in the hills I gazed upon the flank of a mountain about a quarter mile off. Shacks were scattered beneath the crags—tin roofs bled orange tracks in the snow. The truck Fulcher had driven was parked alongside two battered jeeps near a Quonset hut. Wood smoke coiled above the camp, chugged forth from several stacks. A knot of muddy pigs huddled in a paddock. Nothing else moved.
My glance fell upon a trio of silhouetted formations farther along the mountainside; too far to discern clearly. Pylons? The instant I spotted them a whisper of unease urged me to look elsewhere. To flee, yes. I patted the bulk of the revolver in my pocket and the whispers died away.
I gulped air and wished I'd thought to bring field glasses for this expedition. Keeping to the brush, I swung a wide northwest circle. Drawing closer to the pylons it registered that about a dozen jutted randomly above the stony field. Crows danced atop them, squawking their hideous argot. An unpleasant sensation of primitive familiarity rooted me in my tracks. The objects were made of milled poles planted at angles like king-sized Xs, each twice the height of a man. Symbols were carved into them. Latin? The farthest structure had something caught at its apex—a bundle of rags.
"Marvin!"
I turned. A man in a billowing poncho strode from the direction of the camp. He waved and I waved back automatically. The brush must not have concealed me so well after all. He walked swiftly, a stop-motion figure on grainy film. The haze had a spaghetti-western effect—it made him taller and shorter by turns and cast his face in gloom.
"Mr. Thornton?" I said when he halted before me. God, he was tall. I was no midget and I had to crane my neck at him.
"Welcome to the Pleasure Dome. Glad you could make it. We seldom receive visitors during the winter season." He sounded British and wore an Australian-style drover's hat pulled low over jagged brows and scaly eyes. Potbellied and thick through the hips, yet gangly and muscular the way a well-fed raptor is muscular. His enormous hands hung loosely. A thin-lipped mouth threatened to bisect his broad, sallow face. Lots and lots of stained, crooked teeth were revealed by his huge smile. "It has you, I see. Ticktock go the mitochondria—a nova in bloom. Marvelous, marvelous."
I stared at him and decided he was far too spry for a fellow pushing seventy-five. His movements were quick and powerful. His doll-smooth flesh radiated youthful heat. "Who told you I was coming?" I suspected someone at the Weston Gallery had phoned with the news. Were there phones up here?
Thornton hesitated as if he actually meant to answer the question. "Come back to the house. The ground is unsafe."
"Unsafe, how?"
"Not all the shafts are properly sealed. Holes everywhere. Periodically someone disappears—they come poking around for souvenirs or gold and . . .well one misstep is all it takes. Teenagers, usually. Or tourists."
I nodded in idiot silence, grappling with my instincts—my mind was a cacophony of ghostly exhortations to rap this man's head while we were away from his presumed horde of disciples, to put him on his knees with the gun barrel under his jaw and pry loose the answers to a dozen pertinent questions. I recalled the lumpish shape at the bottom of Renfro's hole, how it shuddered and quaked, and my hand dipped into my pocket—
"How's Jacob, anyway?" Thornton had already turned his back. Maybe he was grinning. His dry, Victorian accent quavered up the register toward that of a crone's.
"Jacob." It seemed to be getting darker by the second in that desolate valley.
"The fellow who sent you to break my legs and whatnot. He misses his uncle. Kidding, kidding. Do you miss Teddy? Does anyone? It would be decent."
"You know Jacob?"
"Not really. His uncle and I were friends, once. Teddy lived on the edge of my circle. I never gathered the impression he spoke of me to anyone . . .uninitiated. Jacob would not suit my purposes."
"I'm here to find out what happened to Teddy."
"Truly? I supposed you came because of the Sequence."
"See, I'm kind of stuck on the chicken or the egg theory. I'll take whatever I can get. So give."
"Teddy vanished. A boating accident, wasn't it?"
"After visiting you."
"Teddy was a big boy. Big enough for both of us. Remove your hand from the gun, Marvin. Harm me and you'll never get what you came for."
My lungs burned. "Harm you. There's no reason. Is there?"
"For some men, there is always a reason. It's what you do well, hurting. You're a terrier. I know everything about you, Marvin. I smell meanness cooking in your blood. The blood on your hands. I ask, do you want blood from me, or knowledge? Here is a crossroads."
"I want to know about the photographs. I need to understand what's happening to me." I said this simply, even humbly. I removed my hand from the revolver.
"It's not only happening to you. It's happening to everyone, everywhere. You're tuned in to the correct frequency, and therein lies the difference." Thornton twisted his oversized head to regard me without shifting his shoulders. His face was milky. A face of unwholesome flexibility; and yes, his grin fetched to mind sickles and horns. "Let's amble—we'll do lunch, we'll chat. I'll show you my gallery. It's an amazing gallery. I'll show you Imago. You'll enjoy it, Marvin. You'll sleep again. Sleep without nightmares." He was walking before he finished, beckoning with a casual twitch of his hand. His oilskin poncho slithered in his wake not unlike a tail.
I followed on wooden legs. Crows argued behind us.
The Quonset hut was so old its floor was a sunken mass of caramelized wood and dirt. An arch in t
he rear opened to darkness. Moth-eaten banners of curiously medieval design hung from the rafters, casting fluttery shadows upon the long table where I mechanically chewed a ham sandwich and drank a sour beer that Roy Fulcher had fetched. Thornton had departed, promising a swift return. He asked Fulcher to attend my needs.
Light oozed through window glass that sagged and pooled at the bottom of rotten frames. Crates made pyramids against the walls, alongside boxes, barrels and stacks of curling newspapers. Homey.
Fulcher watched me eat. His features were vulpine and his lank beard was stained yellow-brown around the mouth. He smelled ripe. Farther off, a group of fellow colonists played at a ping-pong table. They cast sly glances our way and chuckled with suppressed brutality. Four men, two women, ages indeterminate. They were scrawny, haggard and unwashed. Several more came and went, shuffling. Zombies but for a merry spark in their eyes, satisfied smirks.
I said, "Here's the million-dollar question—where's the caveman buried?"
"Caveman? I don't think there's a caveman." Fulcher's was an earthy accent, a nasal drawl that smacked of coal mines and tarpaper shanties.
"All this trouble and no caveman?"
"Sorry."
"It's okay. Jacob will get over it," I said. "I don't suppose you'll tell me where Ammon took the Imago Sequence? That won't hurt anything, if there's no caveman."
Fulcher leaned in. "Take a spoon and dig a hole in your chest. That's where he made his pictures."
I pushed my plate aside. I wiped my lips with a dingy cloth towel. I stared at him, long and steadily. I said, "If you won't talk about Ammon, tell me about your colony. Love what you've done with the place. What do you guys do for fun in these parts?" I'd cultivated a talent for reading people, weighing them at a glance, separating shepherds from sheep. It was nothing special; a basic survival technique—but it came up dry now. These people confounded my expectations. Was I in a commune or a militia compound? Were these hippie cultists, leftwing anarchists, or something else? I gave one of the more brazen ping-pong players— the redhead from town—a hard look. Fulcher had called him Clint. Clint's grin vanished and he concentrated on his game. Human, at least.
