by Ellen Datlow
“Electricity affords us the illusion of self-sufficiency.”
“Gunpowder and penicillin imbue us with a sense of invincibility. Perpetual light has banished our natural dread of the dark. We’re apes carrying brands of fire.”
“Okay, gents. Since we’re on the subject of apes. We primates share a common ancestor. Which means we share a staggering amount of history. You start dwelling on eons, you have to consider the implications of certain facts.”
Mr. Mercer shook his head as he lit a cigarette. “I can only guess where this is going.”
“Simulation of human features and mannerisms will lead the field into eerie precincts,” Dad said.
“Uh-oh,” Mr. Schrader said. “This sounds suspiciously close to opshay alk-tay.”
“Thank goodness we’re perfecting mechanical arms to handle rivet guns, not androids. Doesn’t get more mundane.”
“Mark it in the book. Heck, the Japanese are already there.”
“Whatever you say, John.”
“Researchers built a robot prototype—a baby with a lifelike face. Focus groups recoiled in disgust. Researchers came back with artificial features. Focus groups oohed and ahhed. Corporate bankrolled the project. We’ll hear plenty in a year or two.”
“Humans are genetically encoded to fear things that look almost like us, but aren’t us.”
“Ever ask yourself why?”
“No, can’t say I’ve dedicated much thought to the subject,” Mr. Mercer said. “So, why are we allegedly fearful of, er, imitations?”
“For the same reason a deer or a fowl will spook if it gets wind of a decoy. Even an animal comprehends that a lure means nothing good.” Dad had mentioned this periodically. Tonight, he didn’t seem to speak to either of his colleagues. He looked directly at me.
“Shop talk!” Mom said with the tone of a referee declaring a foul.
Mrs. Schrader and Mrs. Mercer interrupted their own conversation to boo the men.
“Whoops, sorry!” Mr. Mercer gestured placatingly. “Anyway, how about those Jets?”
Later, somebody suggested we have a game. No takers for charades or trivia. Finally, Mrs. Mercer requested a demonstration of Aunt Vikki’s fabled skills. Close magic, prestidigitation, clairvoyance, or whatever she called it. My aunt demurred. However, the boisterous assembly would brook no refusal and badgered her until she relented.
That mystical evening, performing for a rapt audience against a wilderness backdrop, she was on her game. Seated lotus on a blanket near the fire, she affected trancelike concentration. Speaking in a monotone, she specified the exact change in Mr. Schrader’s pocket, the contents of Mrs. Mercer’s clutch, and the fact that one of the Mercer kids had stolen his sister’s diary. This proved to be the warmup routine.
Mr. Mercer said, “John says you’ve worked with the law to find missing persons.”
“Found a couple.” Her cheeks were flushed, her tone defiant. “Their bodies, at any rate.”
“That plane that went down in the Adirondacks. Can you get a psychic bead on it?”
Aunt Vikki again coyly declined until a chorus of pleas “convinced” her to give it a shot. She swayed in place, hands clasped. “Dirt. Rocks. Running water. Scattered voices. Many miles apart.”
“Guess that makes sense,” Mr. Mercer said to Mr. Schrader. “Wreck is definitely spread across the hills.”
Mrs. Schrader said under her breath to Dad, “Eh, what’s the point? She could say anything she pleases. We’ve no way to prove her claim.” He shooshed her with a familiar pat on the hip. Everybody was ostensibly devout in those days. Mrs. Schrader frequently volunteered at her church and I suspect Aunt Vikki’s occult shenanigans, innocent as they might’ve been, troubled her. The boozing and flirtation less so.
The eldest Mercer girl, Katie, asked if she could divine details of an IBM housewife named Denise Vinson who’d disappeared near Saugerties that spring. Nobody present knew her husband; he was among the faceless legions of electricians who kept the plant humming. He and his wife had probably attended a company buffet or some such. The case made the papers.
“Denise Vinson. Denise Vinson…” Aunt Vikki slipped into her “trance.” Moments dragged on and an almost electric tension built; the hair-raising sensation of an approaching thunderstorm. The adults ceased bantering. Pine branches creaked; an owl hooted. A breeze freshened off the lake, causing water to lap against the dock. Greg and I felt it. His ubiquitous smirk faded, replaced by an expression of dawning wonderment. Then Aunt Vikki went rigid and shrieked. Her cry echoed off the lake and caused birds to dislodge from their roosts in the surrounding trees. Her arms extended, fingers and thumbs together, wrists bent downward. She rocked violently, cupped hands stabbing the air in exaggerated thrusts. Her eyes filled with blood. My thoughts weren’t exactly coherent, but her posture and mannerisms reminded me of a mantis lashing at its prey. Reminded me of something else, too.
Her tongue distended as she babbled like a Charismatic. She covered her face and doubled over. Nobody said anything until she straightened to regard us.
“Geez, Vikki!” Mr. Mercer nodded toward his pop-eyed children. “I mean, geez Louise!”
“What’s the fuss?” She glanced around, dazed.
Mom, in a display of rare concern, asked what she’d seen. Aunt Vikki shrugged and said she’d glimpsed the inside of her eyelids. Why was everybody carrying on? Dad lurked to one side of the barbeque pit. His glasses were brimmed with the soft glow of the coals. I couldn’t decipher his expression.
Mood dampened, the families said their goodnights and drifted off to bed. Mom, tight on highballs, compared Aunt Vikki’s alleged powers of clairvoyance to those of the famous Edgar Cayce. This clash occurred in the wee hours after the others retired to their cabins. Awakened by raised voices, I hid in shadows atop the stairs to the loft, eavesdropping like it was my job.
“Cayce was as full of shit as a Christmas goose.” Aunt Vikki’s simmering antipathy boiled over. “Con man. Charlatan. Huckster.” Her eyes were bloodshot and stained from burst capillaries. Though she doggedly claimed not to recall the episode earlier that evening, its lingering effects were evident.
“Vikki,” Dad said in the placating tone he deployed against disgruntled subordinates. “Barbara didn’t mean any harm. Right, honey?”
“Sure, I did… not.” From my vantage I saw Mom perched near the cold hearth, glass in hand. The drunker she got, the cattier she got. She drank plenty at Lake Terror.
Aunt Vikki loomed in her beehive-do and platform shoes. “Don’t ever speak of me and that… that fraud in the same breath. Cayce’s dead and good riddance to him. I’m the real McCoy.”
“Is that a fact? Then, let’s skip the rest of this campout and head for Vegas.” Mom tried to hide her sardonic smile with the glass.
“Ladies, it’s late,” Dad said. “I sure hope our conversation isn’t keeping the small fry awake.”
His not-so-subtle cue to skedaddle back to my cot left me pondering who was the psychic—Aunt Vikki or Dad? Maybe he can see in the dark, was my last conscious thought. It made me giggle, albeit nervously.
* * *
Greg jumped me and Billy Mercer as we walked along the trail behind the cabins. Billy and I were closest in age. Alas, we had next to nothing in common and didn’t prefer one another’s company.
Those were the breaks, as the youth used to say. The path forked at a spring before winding ever deeper into the woods. To our left, the path climbed a steep hill through a notch in a stand of shaggy black pine. Mom, the poet among us, referred to it as the Black Gap. Our parents forbade us to drink from the spring, citing mosquito larvae. Predictably, we disregarded their command and slurped double handfuls of cool water at the first opportunity. As I drank, Greg crept upon me like an Apache.
He clamped my neck in a grip born of neighborhood lawnmowing to earn extra bucks for gas and date-night burgers. “Boo!” He’d simultaneously smacked Billy on the back of his head. The boy yelped and
tripped over his own feet trying to flee. Thus, round one of Tiptoe went to my insufferably smirking brother. Ever merciless in that oh-so-special cruelty the eldest impose upon their weaker siblings, I nonetheless detected a sharper, savage inflection to his demeanor of late. I zipped a rock past his ear from a safe distance—not that one could ever be sure—and beat a hasty retreat into the woods. Greg flipped us the bird and kept going without a backward glance.
The reason this incident is notable? Billy Mercer complained to the adults. Dad pulled me aside for an account, which I grudgingly provided—nobody respects a tattletale. Dad’s smirk was even nastier than Greg’s. Head on a swivel, if you want to keep it, kiddo. He put his arm around my brother’s shoulders and they shared a laugh. Three days in, and those two spent much of it together, hiking the forest and floating around the lake. The stab of jealousy hurt worse than Greg squeezing my neck.
Near bedtime, we set up tents in the backyard, a few feet past the badminton net and horseshoe pit. The plan was for the boys to sleep under the stars (and among the swarming mosquitos). Mrs. Schrader protested weakly that maybe this was risky, what with the bears. Mr. Schrader and Mr. Mercer promised to take watches on the porch.
Odin stayed with me; that would be the best alarm in the world. No critter would get within a hundred yards without that dog raising holy hell. And thus it went: Odin, Billy Mercer, a Schrader boy, and me in one tent, and the rest of them in the other. We chatted for a bit. Chitchat waned; I tucked into my sleeping bag, poring over an issue of Mad Magazine by flashlight until I got sleepy.
I woke to utter darkness. Odin panted near my face, growling softly. I lay at the entrance. Groggy and unsure of whether the dog had scented a deer or a bear, I instinctively clicked on my trusty flashlight, opened the flap, and shone it into the trees—ready to yell if I spotted danger. Nothing to corroborate Odin’s anxious grumbles. Scruffy grass, bushes, and the shapeless mass of the forest. He eventually settled. I slept and dreamed two vivid dreams. The first was of Aunt Vikki spotlighted against a void. Her eyes bulged as she rocked and gesticulated, muttering. Dream logic prevailing, I understood her garbled words: Eeny! Meany! Miny! Moe!
In the second, I floated; a disembodied spirit gazing down. Barely revealed by a glimmer of porchlight, Dad crawled from under a bush and lay on his side next to the tent. He reached through the flap. His arm moved, stroking.
These dreams were forgotten by breakfast. The incident only returned to me many years later; a nightmare within a nightmare.
* * *
Over blueberry pancakes, Dad casually asked whether I’d care to go fishing. At an age where a kid selfishly treasured an appointment on his father’s calendar, I filled a canteen and slung my trusty Nikon F around my neck and hustled after him to the dock. Unlike the starter camera I’d long outgrown, the Nikon was expensive and I treated it with proper reverence. Film rolls were costly as well. Manual labor, supplemented by a generous allowance and a bit of wheedling, paid the freight. Mom, a stalwart supporter of the arts, chipped in extra.
She encouraged me to submit my work to newspaper and magazine contests, in vain. Back then, the hobby was strictly personal. I wasn’t inclined to share my vision with the world just yet, although I secretly dreamed big dreams—namely, riding the savannah with the crew of Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom.
The sun hadn’t cleared the trees as we pushed away from the dock. Dad paddled. I faced him, clicking shots of the receding cabins and birds rising and falling from the lake and into the sky. He set aside his paddle and the canoe kept on gliding across the dark water.
“This is where we’re gonna fish?” I said.
“No fishing today.” After a pause, he said, “I’m more a fisher of men.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Time to begin reflecting on what kind of man you are.”
“Dad, I’m twelve.” I inherited my smart-Alec lip from Mom.
“That’s why I don’t expect you to decide today. Merely think on it.” He could see I wasn’t quite getting it. “Ever since you showed an interest in photography, I had a hunch…” He cupped his hands and blew into the notch between his thumbs. Took him a couple of tries to perfect an eerie, fluting whistle that rebounded off the lake and nearby hills. He lowered his hands and looked at me. “I planned to wait until next year to have this conversation. Aunt Vikki’s… outburst has me thinking sooner is better. Sorry if she frightened you.”
“Why did she fly off the handle? Are her eyes okay?” I hoped to sound unflappable.
“Her eyes are fine. It’s my fault. The Vinson woman was too close to home. Anyhow, your aunt is staying with us because she can’t live alone. She’s fragile. Emotionally.”
“Vikki’s crazy?”
“No. Well, maybe. She’s different and she needs her family.”
“She and Mom hate each other.”
“They fight. That doesn’t mean they hate each other. Do you hate your brother? Wait, don’t answer that.” He dipped his paddle into the water. “What’s my job at the plant?”
“You build—”
“Design.”
“You design robots.”
“I’m a mechanical engineer specializing in robotic devices and systems. It’s not quite as dramatic as it sounds. How do you suppose I landed that position?”
“Well, you went to school—”
“No, son. I majored in sociology. Any expertise I have in engineering I’ve learned on the fly or by studying at night.”
“Oh.” Confused by the turn in our conversation, I fiddled with my camera.
“Want to know the truth?”
“Okay.” I feared with all the power of my child’s imagination that he would reveal that his real name was Vladimir, a deep cover mole sent by the Russians. It’s difficult to properly emphasize the underlying paranoia wrought by the Cold War on our collective national psyche. My brother and I spied on our neighbors, profiling them as possible Red agents. We’d frequently convinced ourselves that half the neighborhood was sending clandestine reports to a numbers station.
“I bullshitted the hiring committee,” Dad said. He seldom cursed around Mom; more so Greg. Now I’d entered his hallowed circle of confidence. “That’s how I acquired my position. If you understand what makes people tick, you can always get what you want. Oops, here we are.” Silt scraped the hull as he nosed the canoe onto the shore. We disembarked and walked through some bushes to a path that circled the entire lake. I knew this since our families made the entire circuit at least once per vacation.
Dad yawned, twisting his torso around with a contortionist’s knack. He doubled his left hand against his forearm; then the right.
His joints popped. This wasn’t the same as my brother cracking his knuckles, which he often did to annoy me. No, it sounded more like a butcher snapping the bones of a chicken carcass. He sighed in evident relief. “Son, I can’t tell you what a living bitch it is to maintain acceptable posture every damned minute of the day. Speaking of wanting things. You want great pictures of predators, right?” I agreed, sure, that was the idea. He hunched so our heads were closer. “Prey animals are easy to stalk. They’re prey. They exist to be hunted and eaten. Predators are tougher. I can teach you. I’ve been working with your brother for years. Getting him ready for the jungle.”
“The jungle?” I said, hearing and reacting to the latter part of his statement while ignoring the former. “You mean Vietnam?” There was a curse word. “But he promised Mom—”
“Greg’s going to volunteer for the Marines. Don’t worry. He’s a natural. He’s like me.” He stopped and laid his hand on my shoulder. Heavy and full of suppressed power. “I can count on your discretion not to tell your mother. Can’t I?”
Sons and fathers have differences. Nonetheless, I’d always felt safe around mine. Sure, he was awkward and socially off-putting. Sure, he ran hot and cold. Sure, he made lame jokes and could be painfully distant. People joke that engineers are socially maladjusted; there�
��s some truth to that cliché. Foibles notwithstanding, I didn’t doubt his love or intentions. Yet, in that moment, I became hyper aware of the size of his hand—of him, in general—and the chirping birds, and that we were alone here in the trees on the opposite shore of the lake. Awareness of his physical grotesqueness hit me in a wave of revulsion. From my child’s unvarnished perspective, his features transcended mere homeliness. Since he’d stretched, his stance and expression had altered. Spade-faced and gangling, toothy and hunched, yet tall and deceptively agile. A carnivore had slipped on Dad’s sporting goods department ensemble and lured me into the woods. Let’s go to Grandma’s house!
Such a witless, childish fantasy. The spit dried in my mouth anyhow. Desperate to change the subject, perhaps to show deference the way a wolf pup does to an alpha, I said, “I didn’t mean to call Aunt Vikki crazy.”
Dad blinked behind those enormous, horn-rimmed glasses. “It would be a mistake to classify aberrant psychology as proof of disorder.” He registered my blank expression. “Charles Addams said—”
“Who’s that?”
“A cartoonist. He said, ‘What is normal for the spider is chaos for the fly.’ He was correct. The world is divided between spiders and flies.” He studied me intently, searching for something, then shook himself and straightened. His hand dropped away from my shoulder. Such a large hand, such a long arm. “C’mon. Let’s stroll a bit. If we’re quiet, we might surprise a woodland critter.”
* * *
We strolled.
Contrary to his stated intention of moving quietly to surprise our quarry, Dad initiated a nonstop monologue. He got onto the subject of physical comedy and acting. “Boris Karloff is a master,” he said. “And Lon Chaney Jr. The werewolf guy?”
“Yeah, Dad.” I’d recovered a bit after that moment of irrational panic. The world felt right again under my feet.
“Chaney’s facility with physiognomic transformation? Truly remarkable. Unparalleled, considering his disadvantages. Faking— it’s difficult.” One aspect I learned to appreciate about my old man’s character was the fact he didn’t dumb down his language. Granted, he’d speak slower depending upon the audience. However, he used big words if big words were appropriate. My deskside dictionary and thesaurus were dogeared as all get-out.