The Color of Evil - The Dark Descent V1 (1991)

by David G. Hartwell (Ed. )

  Peck there only found out about it when the woman called

  him, said her brother’d been four days gone for vacation and

  not rung her once. Without that Peck might not’ve thought

  of Dougherty just from our description, though the photo I

  showed him clinched it, and one would’ve reached him by

  mail soon enough. Well, he’d hardly set it down again when

  a call came through for me. It was Billy Lee. He’d remembered.

  “ When he’d seen Dougherty was the Sunday night three

  days before we found him. Where he’d seen him was the

  Trucker’s Tavern outside the north end of town. The man had

  made a stir by being jolly drunk and latching onto a miner

  who was drinking there, man named Joe Allen, who’d started

  at the mine about two months back. Dougherty kept telling

  him that he wasn’t Joe Allen, but Dougherty’s old buddy

  named Sykes that had worked with him at Con Wood for a

  coon’s age, and what the hell kind of joke was this, come

  have a beer old buddy and tell me why you took off so sudden

  and what the hell you been doing with yourself.

  “ Allen took it laughing. Dougherty’d clap him on the

  shoulder, Alien’d clap him right back and make every kind

  of joke about it, say ‘Give this man another beer, I ’m standing in for a long-lost friend of h is.’ Dougherty was so big and loud and stubborn, Billy Lee was worried about a fight

  starting, and he wasn’t the only one worried. But this Joe

  Allen was a natural good ol’ boy, handled it perfect. We’d

  checked him out weeks back along with everyone else, and

  he was real popular with the other miners. Finally Dougherty

  swore he was going to take him on to another bar to help

  celebrate the vacation Dougherty was starting out on. Joe

  Allen got up grinning, said god damn it, he couldn’t accommodate Dougherty by being this fellow Sykes, but he could sure as hell have a glass with any serious drinking man that

  was treating. He went out with him, and gave everyone a

  wink as he left, to the general satisfaction of the audience.’’

  Craven paused. Dr. Winters met his eyes and knew his

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  thought, two images: the jolly wink that roused the room to

  laughter, and the thing in the tarp aboil with bright blue flies.

  “ It was plain enough for m e.” the sheriff said. “ I told

  Billy Lee to search Allen’s room at the Skettles’ boarding

  house and then go straight to the mine and take him. We

  could fine-polish things once we had him. Since I was already

  in Rakehell, I saw to some of the loose ends before I started

  back. I went with Sheriff Peck down to Con Wood and we

  found a picture of Eddie Sykes in the personnel files. I ’d seen

  Joe Allen often enough, and it was his picture in that file.

  “ We found out Sykes lived alone, was an on-again, off-

  again worker, private in his comings and goings, and hadn’t

  been around for a while. But one of the sawyers there could

  be pretty sure of when Sykes left Rakehell because he’d gone

  to Sykes’ cabin the morning after a big meteor shower they

  had out there about nine weeks back, since some thought the

  shower might have reached the ground, and not far from

  Sykes’ side of the mountain. He wasn’t in that morning, and

  the sawyer hadn’t seen him since.

  “ It looked sewed up. It was sewed up. After all those

  weeks. I was less than a mile out of Bailey, had the pedal

  floored. Full of rage and revenge. I felt . . . like a bullet,

  like I was one big thirty-caliber slug that was going to go

  right through that blood-sucking cannibal, tear the whole truth

  right out of his he'art, enough to hang him a hundred times.

  That was the closest I got. So close that I heard it when it

  all blew to shit.

  “ I sound squirrelly. I know I do. Maybe all this gave me

  something I ’ll never shake off. We had to put together what

  happened. Billy Lee didn’t have my other deputy with him.

  Travis was out with some men on the mountain dragnetting

  around that tree for clues. By luck, he was back at the car

  when Billy Lee was trying to raise him. He said he’d just

  been through Allen’s room and had got something we could

  maybe hold him on. It was a sphere, half again big as a

  basketball, heavy, made of something that wasn’t metal or

  glass but was a little like both. He could half-see into it and

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  it looked to be full of some kind of circuitry and components.

  If someone tried to spring Allen, we could make a theft rap

  out of this thing, or say we suspected it was a bomb. Jesus!

  Anyway, he said it was the only strange thing he found, but

  it was plenty strange. He told Travis to get up to the mine

  for back-up. He’d be there first and should already have Allen

  by the time Travis arrived.

  “ Tierney, the shift boss up there, had an assistant that told

  us the rest. Billy Lee parked behind the offices where the

  men in the yard wouldn’t see the car. He went upstairs to

  arrange the arrest with Tierney. They got half a dozen men

  together. Just as they came out of the building, they saw

  Allen take off running from the squadcar with the sphere

  under his arm.

  “ The whole compound’s fenced in and Tierney’d already

  phoned to have all the gates shut. Allen zigged and zagged

  some but caught on quick to the trap. The sphere slowed him,

  but he still had a good lead. He hesitated a minute and then

  ran straight for the main shaft. A cage was just going down

  with a crew, and he risked every bone in him jumping down

  after it, but he got safe on top. By the time they got to the

  switches, the cage was down to the second level, and Allen

  and the crew had got out. Tierney got it back up. Billy Lee

  ordered the rest back to get weapons and follow, and him

  and Tierney rode the cage right back down. And about two

  minutes later half the god-damned mine blew u p .”

  The sheriff stopped as if cut off, his lips parted to say

  more, his eyes registering for perhaps the hundredth time his

  amazement that there was no more, that the weeks of death

  and mystification ended here, with this split-second recapitulation: more death, more answerless dark, sealing all.

  “ Nate.”

  “ W hat.”

  “ Wrap it up and go to bed. I don’t need your help. You’re

  dead on your feet.”

  “ I ’m not on my feet. And I ’m coming along.”

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  “ Give me a picture of the victims’ position relative to the

  blast. I ’m going to work and you’re going to bed.’’

  The sheriff shook his head absently. “ They’re mining in

  shrinkage stopes. The adits—levels—branch off lateral from

  the vertical shaft. From one level they hollow out overhand

  up to the one above. Scoop out big chambers and let most of

  the broken rock stay inside so they can stand on the heaps to

  cut the ceilings higher. They leave sections of support wall

  between stopes, a
nd those men were buried several stopes in

  from the shaft. The cave-in killed them. The mountain just

  folded them up in their own hill of tailings. No kind of fragments reached them. I ’m dead sure. The only ones they found were of some standard charges that the main blast set off,

  and those didn’t even get close. The big one blew out where

  the adit joined the shaft, right where, and right when Billy

  Lee and Tierney got out of the cage. And there is nothing

  left there, Carl. No sphere, no cage, no Tiemey, no Billy Lee

  Davis. Just rock blown fine as flour.’’

  Dr. Winters nodded and, after a moment, stood up.

  “ Come on, Nate. I ’ve got to get started. I ’ll be lucky to

  have even a few of them done before morning. Drop me off

  and go to sleep, till then at least. You’ll still be there to

  witness most of the work.”

  The sheriff rose, took up the doctor’s suitcase, and led him

  out of the office without a word, concession in his silence.

  The patrol car was behind the building. The doctor saw a

  crueller beauty in the stars than he had an hour before. They

  got in, and Craven swung them out onto the empty street.

  The doctor opened the window and harkened, but the motor’s

  surge drowned out the river sound. Before the thrust of their

  headlights, ranks of old-fashioned parking meters sprouted

  shadows tall across the sidewalks, shadows which shrank and

  were cut down by the lights’ passage. The sheriff said:

  “ All those extra dead. For nothing! Not even to . . . feed

  him! If it was a bomb, and he made it, he’d know how powerful it was. He wouldn’t try some stupid escape stunt with

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  it. And how did he even know the thing was there? We worked

  it out that Allen was just ending a shift, but he wasn’t even

  up out of the ground before Billy Lee’d parked out of sight.”

  ‘‘Let it rest, Nate. I want to hear more, but after you’ve

  slept. I know you. All the photos will be there, and the report

  complete, all the evidence neatly boxed and carefully described. When I ’ve looked things over I ’ll know exactly how to proceed by myself.”

  Bailey had neither hospital nor morgue, and the bodies

  were in a defunct ice-plant on the edge of town. A generator

  had been brought down from the mine, lighting improvised,

  and the refrigeration system reactivated. Dr. Parsons’ office,

  and the tiny examining room that served the sheriff’s station

  in place of a morgue, had furnished this makeshift with all

  the equipment that Dr. Winters would need beyond what he

  carried with him. A quarter-mile outside the main body of

  the town, they drew up to it. Tree-flanked, unneighbored by

  any other structure, it was a double building; the smaller

  half—the office—was illuminated. The bodies would be in the

  big, windowless refrigerator segment. Craven pulled up beside a second squadcar parked near the office door. A short, rake-thin man wearing a large white Stetson got out of the

  car and came over. Craven rolled down his window.

  ‘‘Trav. This here’s Dr. Winters.”

  ‘‘Lo, Nate. Dr. Winters. Everything’s shipshape inside.

  Felt more comfortable out here. Last of those newshounds

  left two hours ago.”

  ‘ ‘They sure do hang on. You take off now, Trav. Get some

  sleep and be back at sunup. What temperature we getting?”

  The pale Stetson, far clearer in the starlight than the

  shadow-face beneath it, wagged dubiously. “ Thirty-six. She

  won’t get lower—some kind of leak.”

  “ That should be cold enough,” the doctor said,.

  Travis drove off and the sheriff unlocked the padlock on

  the office door. Waiting behind him, Dr. Winters heard the

  river again—a cold balm, a whisper of freedom—and over-

  lying this, the stutter and soft snarl of the generator behind

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  the building, a gnawing, remorseless sound that somehow fed

  the obscure anguish which the other soothed. They went in.

  The preparations had been thoughtful and complete. “ You

  can wheel ’em out of the fridge on this and do the examining

  in here,” the sheriff said, indicating a table and a gurney.

  “ You should find all the gear you need on this big table here,

  and you can write up your reports on that desk. The phone’s

  not hooked up—there’s a pay phone at the last gas station if

  you have to call m e.”

  The doctor nodded, checking over the material on the larger

  table: scalpels, post-mortem and cartilage knives, intestine scissors, rib shears, forceps, probes, mallet and chisels, a blade saw and electric bone saw, scale, jars for specimens, needles

  and suture, sterilizer, gloves. . . . Beside this array were a few

  boxes and envelopes with descriptive sheets attached, containing the photographs and such evidentiary objects as had been found associated with the bodies.

  “ Excellent, ” he muttered.

  “ The overhead light’s fluorescent, full spectrum or whatever they call it. Better for colors. There’s a pint of decent bourbon in that top desk drawer. Ready to look at ’em?”

  “ Yes.”

  The sheriff unbarred and slid back the big metal door to

  the refrigeration chamber. Icy, tainted air boiled out of the

  doorway. The light within was dimmer than that provided in

  the office—a yellow gloom wherein ten oblong heaps lay on

  trestles.

  The two stood silent for a time, their stillness a kind of

  unpremeditated homage paid the eternal mystery at its threshold. As if the cold room were in fact a shrine, the doctor found a peculiar awe in the row of veiled forms. The awful

  unison of their dying, the titan’s grave that had been made

  for them, conferred on them a stem authority, Death’s chosen

  Ones. His stomach hurt, and he found he had his hand pressed

  to his abdomen. He glanced at Craven and was relieved to

  see that his friend, staring wearily at the bodies, had missed

  the gesture.

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  “ Nate. Help me uncover them.”

  Starting at opposite ends of the row, they stripped the tarps

  off and piled them in a comer. Both were brusque now, not

  pausing over the revelation of the swelled, pulpy faces—most

  three-lipped with the gaseous burgeoning of their tongues—

  and the fat, livid hands sprouting from the filthy sleeves. But

  at one of the bodies Craven stopped. The doctor saw him

  look, and his mouth twist. Then he flung the tarp on the heap

  and moved to the next trestle.

  When they came out Dr. Winters took out the bottle and

  glasses Craven had put in the desk, and they had a drink

  together. The sheriff made as if he would speak, but shook

  his head and sighed.

  “ I will get some sleep, Carl. I ’m getting crazy thoughts

  with this thing.” The doctor wanted to ask those thoughts.

  Instead he laid a hand on his friend’s shoulder.

  “ Go home, Sheriff Craven. Take off the badge and lie

  down. The dead won’t run off on you. We’ll all still be here

  in the morning.”

  When the sound of the patrol car faded, the doctor stood
>
  listening to the generator’s growl and the silence of the dead,

  resurgent now. Both the sound and the silence seemed to

  mock him. The after-echo of his last words made him uneasy.

  He said to his cancer:

  ‘ ‘What about it, dear colleague? We will still be here tomorrow? All of us? ’ ’

  He smiled, but felt an odd discomfort, as if he had ventured a jest in company and roused a hostile silence. He went to the refrigerator door, rolled it back, and viewed the corpses

  in their ordered rank, with their strange tribunal air. ‘ ‘What,

  sirs?” he muttered. “ Do you judge me? Just who is to examine whom tonight, if I may ask? ’ ’

  He went back to the office, where his first step was to

  examine the photographs made by the sheriff, in order to see

  how the dead had lain at their uncovering. The earth had

  seized them with terrible suddenness. Some crouched, some

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  partly stood, others sprawled in crazy, free-fall postures. Each

  successive photo showed more of the jumble as the shovels

  continued their work between shots. The doctor studied them

  closely, noting the identifications inked on the bodies as they

  came completely into view.

  One man, Robert Willet, had died some yards from the

  main cluster. It appeared he had just straggled into the stope

  from the adit at the moment of the explosion. He should thus

  have received, more directly than any of the others, the

  shockwaves of the blast. If bomb fragments were to be found

  in any of the corpses, Mr. Willet’s seemed likeliest to contain

  them. Dr. Winters pulled on a pair of surgical gloves.

  He lay at one end of the line of trestles. He wore a thermal

  shirt and overalls that were strikingly new beneath the filth

  of burial. Their tough fabrics jarred with that of his fle sh -

  blue, swollen, seeming easily tom or burst, like ripe fruit. In

  life Willet had grease-combed hair. Now it was a sculpture

  of dust, spikes and whorls shaped by the head’s last grindings

  against the mountain that clenched it.

  Rigor had come and gone—Willet rolled laxly onto the

  gumey. As the doctor wheeled him past the others, he felt a

  slight self-consciousness. The sense of some judgment flowing from the dead assembly—unlike most such vagrant emotional embellishments of experience—had an odd tenacity in him. This stubborn unease began to irritate him with himself,