by Laird Barron
“—Satanists. Diabolists. Scientologists. Cops found a hooker’s corpse bound to a headboard at the Viking Motel.”
“Lashed to the mast, eh?”
“You said it.”
“Hooker? Wasn’t she a stripper, though? Candy Bunny, Candy Hunny…?”
“Hooker, stripper, I dunno. White scarves, black candles. Blood everywhere. News called it a ritual killing. They’re combing the city for suspects.”
“Well, Tito and Benny were at the Bush Company the other night and I haven’t seen ‘em since…”
“Ha-ha, those cut-ups!”
“I hope not literally.”
“We’re due for some ritual insanity. Been saying it for months.”
“Why are we due?”
“Planet X is aligning with the sun. Its passage messes with gravitational forces, brain chemistry, libidos, et cetera. Like the full moon affects crazies, except dialed to a hundred. Archeologists got cave drawings that show this has been a thing since Neanderthals were stabbing mammoths with sharpened sticks.”
“The malignant influence of the gods.”
“The malignant influence of the Grays.”
“The Grays?”
“Little gray men: messengers of the gods; cattle mutilators; anal probe-ists…”
“They hang around Bethel, eh?”
“No way to keep up with the sheer volume of insanity this state produces. Oh, speaking of brutalized animals, there was the Rabbit Massacre in Wasilla.”
“Pure madness.”
“Dog mutilations. So many doggy murders. I sorta hate dogs, but really, chopping off their paws is too damned far.”
“And on that note…!” Delia stepped backward onto the porch for emphasis.
“On that note. Hint taken, baby doll. Later, sucker.”
A couple separated from the raucous merriment of the party. The door shut behind them and they were alone in the night.
“What’s a Flat Affect Man?” Delia wore a light coat, miniskirt, and heels. She clutched J’s arm as they descended the flagstone steps alongside a treacherously steep driveway. Porchlights guided them partway down the slope.
“Where did you hear that?” Sportscoat, slacks, and high-top tennis shoes for him. Surefooted as a mountain goat. The softness of his face notwithstanding, he had a muscle or two.
“Barry F mentioned it to that heavyset guy in the turtleneck. You were chatting up turtleneck dude’s girlfriend. The chick who was going to burst out of her mohair sweater.”
“I wasn’t flirting. She’s comptroller for the university. Business, always business.”
“Uh-huh. Curse of the Flat Affect Men, is what Barry said.”
“Well, forget what you heard. There are things woman was not meant to know. You’ll just spook yourself.”
She wanted to smack him, but her grip was precarious and she’d had too many drinks to completely trust her balance.
Hillside East was heavily wooded. Murky at high noon and impenetrable come the witching hour. Neighborhoods snaked around ravines and subarctic meadows and copses of deep forest. Cul-de-sacs might host a house or a bear den. But that was Anchorage. A quarter of a million souls sprinkled across seventeen-hundred square miles of slightly suburbanized wilderness. Ice water to the left, mountains to the right, Aurora Borealis weeping radioactive tears. October nights tended to be crisp. Termination dust gleamed upon the Chugach peaks, on its way down like a shroud, creeping ever lower through the trees.
A few more steps and he unlocked the car and helped her inside. He’d parked away from the dozen or so other vehicles that lined the main road on either side of the mailbox. His car was practically an antique. Its dome light worked sporadically. Tonight, nothing. The interior smelled faintly of a mummified animal.
The couple sat in the dark. Waiting.
She regarded the black mass of forest to her right, ignoring his hand on her thigh. Way up the hillside, the house’s main deck projected over a ravine. Bay windows glowed yellow. None of the party sounds reached them in the car. She imagined the turntables gone silent and the piano hitting a lone minor key, over and over. Loneliness born of aching disquiet stole over her. No matter that she shared a car with J nor that sixty people partied hardy a hundred yards away. Her loneliness might well have sprung from J’s very proximity.
After nine months of dating, her lover remained inscrutable.
J lived in a duplex that felt as sterile as an operating room—television, double bed, couch, and a framed poster of the cosmos over the fake fireplace (a faux fireplace in Alaska was almost too much irony for her system). A six-pack in the fridge; a half-empty closet. He consulted for the government, finagling cost-efficient ways to install fiberoptic communications in remote native villages. That’s allegedly what he did when he disappeared for weeks on end. Martinis were his poison, Andy Kaufman his favorite (dead?) entertainer, and electronica his preferred music. His smile wasn’t a reliable indicator of mood or temperament.
Waking from a strange, fragmentary dream, to a proverbial splash of cold water, Delia accepted that the romance was equally illusory.
“What is your job?” she said, experiencing an uncomfortable epiphany of the ilk that plagued heroines in gothic tales and crime dramas. It was unwise for a woman to press a man about his possibly nefarious double life, and yet so it went. Her lips formed the words and out they flew, the skids greased by a liberal quantity of vino.
“Same as it was in April,” he said. “Why?”
“Somebody told me they saw you at the airport buying a ticket to Nome in early September. You were supposed to be in Two Rivers that week.”
“Always wanted to visit Nome. Haunt of late career Wyatt Earp. Instead, I hit Two Rivers and got a lousy mug at the gift shop.”
“Show me the mug when I come over for movie night.”
“Honey pie, sugar lump! Is that doubt I hear in your voice?”
“It is.”
“Fine, you’ve got me red-handed. I shoot walruses and polar bears so wealthy Europeans can play on ivory cribbage boards and strut around in fur bikinis.” He caressed her knee and waited, presumably for a laugh. “C’mon, baby. I’m a square with a square job. Your friend must’ve seen my doppelganger.”
“No. What do you actually do? Like for real.”
“I really consult.” He wore a heavy watch with a metal strap. He pressed harder and the strap dug into her flesh.
“There’s more,” she said. “Right? I’ve tried to make everything add up, and I can’t.”
“Sweetie, just say what’s on your mind.”
“I’m worried. Ever have a moment, smack out of the blue, when you realize you don’t actually know someone? I’m having that moment.”
“Okay. I’m a deep cover Russian agent.”
“Are you?”
“Jeez, you’re paranoid tonight.”
“Or my bullshit detector is finally working.”
“You were hitting it hard in there.” He mimed drinking with his free hand.
“Sure, I was half a glass away from dancing on the piano. Doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”
“Wanna get me on a couch? Wanna meet my mother?”
“People lie to shrinks. Do you even have a mother?”
“I don’t have a shrink. Don’t have a mother.” His hand and the watch strap on his wrist slid back and forth, abrading her skin. “My mother was a…eh, who cares what the supernumerary does? She died. Horribly.”
“J—” Would she be able to pry his hand away? Assuming that failed, could she muster the grit to slap him, or punch him in the family jewels? She hadn’t resorted to violence since decking a middle school classmate who tried to grab her ass on a fieldtrip. Why had she leapt to the worst scenario now? Mom used to warn her about getting into bad situations with sketchy dudes. Mom said of hypothetical date rapists, if shit got real, smile sweetly and gouge the bastard’s eye with a press-on nail.
The phantom piano key in her mind sounded like it belonged in
a 1970s horror flick. How much did I have? Three glasses of red, or four? Don’t let the car start spinning, I might fly into space.
J paused, head tilted as if concentrating upon Delia’s imagined minor key plinking and plinking. He released her and straightened and held his watch close to his eyes. The watch face was not illuminated. Blue gloom masked everything. Blue gloom made his skull misshapen and enormous. Yet the metal of the watch gathered starlight.
“Were you paying attention when I told Barry that Planet X is headed toward our solar system?” he said.
“Yes.” Except…Barry had told J, hadn’t he?
“Fine. I’m gonna lay some news on you, then. You ready for the news?”
She said she was ready for the news.
“Planet X isn’t critical,” he said. “Important, yes. Critical, no. Who cares about a chunk of ice? Not so exciting. Her star is critical. A brown dwarf. It has, in moments of pique that occur every few million years, emitted a burst of highly lethal gamma rays and bombarded hapless worlds many light years distant. Every organism on those planets died instantly. Forget the radiation. She can do other things with her heavenly body. Nemesis Star first swung through the heart of the Oort Cloud eons past. Bye-bye dinosaurs. Nemesis’ last massive gravitational wave intersected the outer fringe of Sol System in the 1970s. Nemesis has an erratic orbit, you see. Earth got the succeeding ripple effect. Brownouts, tidal waves, earthquakes, all them suicides in Japan… A second wave arrived twenty years later. The third and final wave hit several days ago. Its dying edge will splash Earth in, oh, approximately forty-five seconds.”
“What?” she said. “I don’t get it.”
“And it’s okay. This is when they come through is all you need to understand. I’m here to greet them. That’s my real job, baby doll. I’m a greeter. Tonight is an extinction event; AKA: a close encounter of the intimate kind.”
Delia fixated on the first part of his explanation. “Greeter. Like a store greeter?” She thought of the Central Casting grandad characters stationed at the entrance of certain big box stores who bared worn dentures in a permanent rictus.
“Stay. I forgot my jacket.” J (wearing his jacket, no less) exited the car and be-bopped into the night.
Stay. As if she were an obedient mutt. She rubbed her thigh and watched his shadow float along the driveway and meld into the larger darkness. Chills knifed through her. The windows began to fog over with her breath. He’d taken the keys. She couldn’t start the car to get warm or listen to the radio. Or drive away from the scene of the crime.
Delia’s twenty-fifth birthday loomed on the horizon. She had majored in communication with a side of journalism at the University of Alaska Anchorage. She was a culture reporter, covering art and entertainment for the main Anchorage daily paper.
People enjoyed her phone manner. In person, she was persistent and vaguely charming. Apolitical; non-judgmental as a Swiss banker. Daddy had always said not to bother her pretty little head. Daddy was a sexist pig to his dying breath; she heeded the advice anyhow. Half of what interviewees relayed went in one ear and out the other with nary a whistle-stop. No matter; her memory snapped shut on the most errant of facts like the teeth of a steel leghold trap. Memory is an acceptable day-to-day substitute for intellect.
Her older brothers drove an ambulance and worked in construction respectively. Her little sister graduated from Onager High next spring. Little sister didn’t have journalistic aspirations. Sis yelled, Fake news! When gentlemen callers (bikers and punk rockers) loaded her into their chariots and hied into the sunset.
Delia lived in an apartment with two women. She owned a dog named Atticus. Her roommates loved Atticus and took care of him when she couldn’t make it home at a reasonable hour. They joked about stealing him when they eventually moved onward and upward with trophy spouses and corporate employment. I’ll cut a bitch, she always said with a smile, not joking at all.
Should she ring them right then for an emergency extraction? “Emergency” might be a tad extreme, yet It seemed a reasonable plan. Housemate A had left on an impromptu overnighter with her boyfriend. Housemate B’s car was in the shop. Housemate B helpfully suggested that Delia call a taxi, or, if she felt truly threatened, the cops. Housemate B was on record as disliking J.
Am I feeling threatened? Delia pocketed her phone and searched her feelings.
Her ambulance-driving brother (upholding the family tradition of advising Delia to beware a cruel, vicious world) frequently lectured about the hidden dangers surrounding his profession. Firemen and paramedics habitually rushed headlong into dicey situations, exposing themselves to the same risks as police and soldiers, except without guns or backup. Paramedics get jacked up every day. While you’re busy doing CPR on a subject, some street-dwelling motherfucker will shiv you in the kidney and grab your wallet. Only way to survive is to keep your head on a swivel and develop a sixth sense. The hairs on the back of your neck prickle, you better look around real quick.
Words to live by. She touched the nape of her neck. Definitely prickling, definitely goosebumps and not from the chill. She climbed out and made her way into the bushes, clumsier than a prey animal born to the art of disappearing, but with no less alacrity.
She stood behind a large spruce, hand braced against its rough bark. Sap stuck to her palm. It smelled bitter-green. Her thigh stung where a raspberry bush had torn her stocking and drawn blood. A starfield pulsed through ragged holes in the canopy. She knew jack about stars except the vague notion that mostly they radiated old, old light. Stars lived and died and some were devoured by black holes.
Nearby, J whooped, then whistled; shrill and lethal as a raptor tuning a killing song. Happy and swift.
He sounds well-fucked. Why did her mind leap there? Because his O-face was bestial? Because he loved to squeeze her throat when they fucked? The subconscious always knows best. As did Mama and big brother, apparently.
J’s shadow flitted near the car. His whistle segued to the humming of a nameless, yet familiar tune. Delia shrank against the bole of the tree and heard him open the driver’s door. After a brief pause, he called her name. First, still inside and slightly muffled (did he think she was hiding under a seat cushion?); second, much louder toward the rising slope behind him; last, aimed directly toward her hiding spot. Her residual alcohol buzz evaporated as did most of the spit in her mouth.
“Delia, sweetheart,” he said. “Buttercup, pumpkin, sugar booger. I meant to say earlier how much I adore the fact you didn’t wear makeup tonight. The soap and water look is sexxxxxy! I prefer a girl who doesn’t put on her face when she meets the world. It lights my fire, boy howdy. But now you gotta come here.” His voice thickened at the end. By some trick of the dark, his eyes flared dull-bright crimson. His lambent gaze pulsed for several heartbeats, then faded, and he became a silhouette again. “No?” he said in his regular voice. “Be that way. I hope you brought mad money, because you’re stranded on a lee shore. Should I cruise by your apartment instead? Would your roomies and your dog be pleased to meet me while I’m in this mood? Fuck it, sweetheart. I’ll surprise you.” He laughed, got into the car, and sped away. The red taillights seemed to hang forever; unblinking predatory eyes.
The entire scene felt simultaneously shocking and inevitable.
Of course, she speed-dialed her apartment to warn Housemate B. A robotic voice apologized that the call would not go through. It repeated this apology when she tried the police, her favorite taxi service, and finally, information. Static rose and rose until it roared in her ear and she gave up. She emerged from cover and removed her heels and waited, slightly crouched, to see if J would circle around to catch her in the open. A coyote stalking a ptarmigan. Yeah, that fit her escalating sense of dread—him creeping that ancient car, tongue lolling as he scanned the road for her fleeting shadow.
The cell’s penlight projected a ghostly cone. She followed it up the hill to her nearest chance for sanctuary, the house of Barry F. Ah, dear sweet Barry
F, swinging senior executive of a successful mining company. He wore wire rim glasses and expensive shirts, proclaimed his loathing of physical labor and cold weather (thus, he was assigned to Alaska, naturally), and hosted plenty of semi-formal parties as befitted the persona of a respectable corporate whip hand—which meant prostitutes were referred to as companions and any coke-snorting and pill-popping shenanigans occurred in a discreet guestroom.
Notwithstanding jocular collegiality, Barry and J weren’t longtime friends, weren’t even close; their business orbits intersected and that was the extent of it. J collected acquaintances across a dizzying spectrum. Scoffing at the quality of humanity in general, he rubbed shoulders with gold-plated tycoons and grubby laborers alike. Similar to the spartan furnishings of his apartment, individual relationships were cultivated relative to his needs.
What need do I satisfy? Physical? Emotional? Victim? Delia recalled a talk show wherein the host interviewed women who’d survived encounters with serial killers. One guest, a receptionist, had accompanied a coworker on a camping trip. The “nice guy” wined and dined her, then held a knife to her throat, ready to slash. At the last second, he decided to release her instead. I planned to kill you for three months. Go on, the fear in your eyes is enough. The receptionist boogied and reported the incident. Her camping buddy went to prison for the three murders he’d previously committed in that park. Which was to say, how could a woman ever know what squirmed in the brains of men?
As Delia approached the house, the porchlight and the light streaming through the windows snuffed like blown matches. Muffled laughter and the steady thud of bass also ceased. At moments such as this, what was a humble arts and entertainment reporter to do? Nothing in her quarter century of life, on the Last Frontier notwithstanding, had prepared her for this experience: half-frozen, teeth chattering, absolutely alone.
Darkness smothered the neighborhood. Not a solitary lamp glimmered among the terraced elevations or secluded cul-de-sacs. She looked south and west, down into the bowl of the city proper. From her vantage, it appeared that the entire municipality had gone dark. Anchorage’s skyline should have suffused the heavens with light pollution. More stars instead; a jagged reef of them, low and indifferent. Ice Age constellations that cast glacial shadows over the mountains.