Ashes and Entropy

by Laird Barron

  Mrs. Fontenot made no reply to his call, did not move, so he ran over and knelt beside her.

  “Miz Fontenot?” He gently touched her shoulder. “Are you okay?”

  She slowly turned to face him. Her dark face was wet with tears, and her brown eyes stared wide. He’d once seen that same expression on a small boy who’d watched his father cut up his mother with a hatchet.

  “Oh … Detective. So fine of you to visit.” Her voice was as flat as a salt marsh.

  “Did you see what happened?”

  “I saw … I saw ….”

  She started to weep. Deep, wracking, soul-wrenching sobs. People her age who got this upset sometimes had heart attacks or strokes. McGill wondered if he should call for a squad, but he wasn’t sure if she had health insurance. If she didn’t, the ambulance and ER bills might break her. She didn’t seem to be in immediate danger. Maybe she just needed a chance to rest and gather herself?

  “Can you stand up? Let’s get you inside. I’ll make you some tea.”

  He gently helped her up and escorted her back into her house. She stopped crying, but her whole body shook as if she were walking through snow. Shock, definitely. He got her settled in her easy chair, pulled off her boots, and tucked a crocheted green afghan over her legs so she’d stay warm.

  “Thank you, Detective. You’re a kind man. Don’t let nothing tell you otherwise.”

  McGill smiled at her, feeling relieved that she was able to speak, and went into her kitchen to put the kettle on.

  When he returned with a steaming mug of chamomile tea, Mrs. Fontenot was dead.

  The purely practical part of McGill’s mind told him that the EMTs wouldn’t have arrived in time to save her. They just wouldn’t bust the speed limit for a black lady with vague symptoms, not even if a white off-duty cop was calling on her behalf. And that renewed realization – the system he served was horribly flawed – made the mess of sadness, anger and guilt stewing in his skull almost boil over.

  He hadn’t shed a single tear at any of the terrible murder scenes he’d investigated. Nobody wanted an emotional cop. It was not professional, it was not manly, and he would not weep now for this sweet old lady slumped in her favorite chair, even if nobody could possibly see him.

  He would not cry. He would do his job: find out who did this to her. This wasn’t technically murder, but he was sure to his core that whoever took her tree, took her life just the same. He would work this like any other case, and he would solve it, and there would be justice.

  ~

  When McGill arrived at the police station early the next morning, he found his partner Rhett Gradney arguing with Cindy Romero, one of their narcotics detectives.

  “This whole tree thing is stupid, and we shouldn’t waste resources on it.” Gradney looked royally pissed off, which meant he was probably scared. Yep, he was bouncing his left foot. In the five years they’d worked cases together, McGill had learned all Gradney’s tells.

  “How can you say that?” Romero’s eyes were hard coals; her stance told him she was ready to sock him in the jaw. “A dozen people ended up in the hospital yesterday, scared into heart attacks or nervous breakdowns.”

  “At least one landed in the morgue.” McGill felt just as irritated as Romero looked. He stepped past them to fetch his coffee cup from his desk. “My neighbor saw her tree get taken, and she died not five minutes later.”

  Gradney’s face flushed firetruck red. “Goddammit, not you, too. Of all the people here my own damn partner should see how idiotic this whole thing is!”

  “Mrs. Fontenot was a great lady, and she’s gone.” McGill looked his partner square in the eyes. He didn’t want to antagonize him, but he hated it when Gradney tried to pretend that unpleasant things just weren’t happening. Denial was not a useful or admirable trait in a detective. “Maybe whoever took her tree and put a big ol’ hole on her land didn’t mean for her to die, but she’s dead. And if they did mean to do it, that’s aggravated criminal damage to property.”

  “It’s a fucking tree!” Gradney was screaming now, and everyone else in the station had turned to stare. “Trees are everywhere! Why get so scared over losing a damn tree that you have a heart attack? Just fucking plant a new one and move on! And why steal trees? That’s some goddamned cheesy 60s Batman villain shit! None of this makes a lick of sense!”

  “Detective Gradney.” Police Chief Sammons glared at him from his office doorway. “You seem stressed, son. You need to take the day off?”

  “No, sir.” Gradney’s blush deepened, spread. His scalp looked like a tomato under his short blond buzzcut.

  “Then use your goddamn inside voice.” Sammons looked like he was trying to set him on fire with his mind.

  Gradney averted his gaze. “Yes, sir.”

  “Chief.” Romero crisply stepped forward and stood at parade rest. “Is there a plan for how to pursue this tree situation?”

  Seeming mildly annoyed at her question, Sammons glanced from her to McGill to Gradney.

  “There is no specific plan at present.” His reply was calm and slow. “A few minutes ago, I spoke with the mayor, and he’s inclined to treat this as a serial vandalism incident. The newspapers are framing this as the work of pranksters. We’re going along with that for now, until we figure out what in the name of little green men is really happening here. No sense in making people panic.”

  McGill wanted to tell them all that it wasn’t just the trees; Mrs. Fontenot had seen something terrible that broke her heart. He was willing to bet solid money that everyone in the hospital had seen it, too. But saying that out loud might make him look like a lunatic.

  So instead, he nodded at Sammons and said, “Panic kills, sir. Nobody here wants that.”

  He realized Romero was giving him a hard sideways stare, and when he met her gaze, she shrugged as if to say, Sorry, buddy, I tried, but you’re on your own.

  ~

  As the day went on, the police station buzzed with scorn and disbelief over the trees. McGill decided to keep his investigation to himself, but every disparaging remark reinforced his resolve to pursue it. He started taking late lunch breaks to patrol neighborhoods with big old oaks, elms, walnuts, pecans, birches, magnolias and ashes.

  By Thursday, he’d identified a definite pattern. Each day at 4pm, someone or something would scoop up a half-dozen trees from various nearby locations. And then five minutes after that, the town due west would get hit. And then a little while later, the next town over. The phenomenon was global, it seemed, and followed perhaps not the sun, but certainly the turn of the Earth.

  People were dying. Property was destroyed. The whole town was pocked with craters. This was clear. And yet, authority figures and talking heads still weren’t taking it very seriously. News reports and official announcements remained sparse and dismissive; even the tabloid shows that usually exploited any possible reason to scare their audiences were avoiding the subject. McGill still felt echoes of his own disorientation and his mind’s initial refusal to see his own tree’s abduction. He knew why reporters and cops and mayors were doing all that hand-waving. They had to pretend that this incomprehensible display of power wasn’t any big deal, or the fabric of order holding the town together might fall apart.

  People needed to know that their lives were governed by predictable forces. The law mattered because it mapped order and safety onto the chaos of human interactions. Justice wasn’t just a matter of punishing the guilty; citizens needed to see that people would genuinely get what they deserved. People who worked hard and behaved decently would get to have beach vacations and nice houses with comfortable porches shaded by big pecan trees and friendly neighbors who made sublime pies. Those who didn’t had to change their ways. And if they wouldn’t change, well, they had to be removed so they couldn’t hurt decent folk. McGill never felt good when he heard that petty criminals he’d busted got killed in prison, but he refused to feel badly about sending them away. Crimes had to have consequences. They had to.r />
  So, even though the brass wouldn’t admit a serious crime was even happening, McGill started taking late lunch breaks at 3:45 to patrol neighborhoods with big old trees. He hoped to spot an abduction, or at least find a witness who could provide some solid details. Suffering a nervous breakdown was not a concern of his. The gruesome violence he’d seen and smelled was stuff they’d never put in scary movies. There were things that even eager gorehounds turned away from, and McGill had gazed upon them with clear eyes. His mind was sound.

  He drove with his windows down so he could better hear a telltale bang! And a strange thing happened. A couple of minutes before an incident, the air took on an electric vibration, and he shivered as if someone was dancing on his grave. The weird frissons got stronger the closer he was to an abduction site.

  Following those new instincts led him to be on Willowbrook Avenue right as a tree was taken. There was the bang! loud as a stun grenade. He turned to see a green blur shooting straight up into the sky from a nearby yard. For the first time, he realized the trees were whisked away so damn fast they broke the sound barrier.

  The sheer improbability of it made his mind reel, but he saw a blue-uniformed postman staring down into the fresh crater, his mail bag slumped at his feet, and McGill’s instincts took over.

  “Sir, did you see what just happened?” he called as he pulled over.

  The postman slowly turned toward him, and began to laugh. He was medium height, wiry, and looked like his folks might be Vietnamese. From the anguished expression on his face, McGill figured he was going to burst into tears at any moment.

  The detective got out of his car and slowly approached. “Sir, are you all right?”

  “I … I wanted to see,” the postman gasped between giggles. “I just couldn’t not try to see, you know?”

  McGill nodded. “I want to see, too. Can you tell me what you saw?”

  “Don’t do it, man. You don’t want to know. He’s … he’s gonna run out. And then everything is fucked.” He started weeping, and looked a gnat’s breath away from completely losing it. “Just … go back to your family. Take that trip to Six Flags the kids have been bugging you about.”

  “I don’t have a family. I just have my job.” McGill didn’t have a good read on whether he was dangerous or not. He did not want to be one of those cops who shot down an innocent person because of their own cowardice. He knew the department would back him if the kill was even slightly justified, but he didn’t think he could look himself in the mirror ever again if he killed someone who’d needed his help. “I need to find out what’s going on. Can you help me understand this?”

  The postman shook his head. Tears and snot flowed down his face. “Go to Vegas, then. Anything but this. Anything.”

  McGill reflexively stepped back and dropped his hand to his belt holster as the man reached into his pocket and pulled out a box cutter. “Easy, there.”

  “Sorry. I can’t help anyone.” The postman clicked the blade open and plunged it into his own neck. His punctured carotid artery spurted an impressive gout of blood that splattered on McGill’s shoes. A second later, he fell to his knees on the grass.

  The detective was about to step forward to try to put some compression on the wound when his entire body rashed in goosebumps and all the hairs rose on his neck and arms. The frisson was more powerful than ever. A tree nearby was about to go. He scanned the street and saw an oak that had to be a hundred years old in the front yard of a pink house. Yes.

  McGill turned away from the dying postman and sprinted across the street toward the oak. The trunk was as thick as a car and the limbs creaked low under their own weight. Its hard leaves rattled in the breeze. This was the 30-pound trophy bass of trees. He felt a consuming excitement he hadn’t experienced since the night they’d closed in on the Savetier Killer who’d been murdering cops and security guards across the state.

  He felt alive in a way that he hadn’t in years.

  Just as he got within a few feet of the spreading canopy, it happened. His ears popped from the pressure change as something like a huge invisible punch rammed down from the sky, and then the bang! made him feel as if a 300-pound linebacker had body-slammed him. But he kept his feet, and as he saw the green blur he leaped forward, looking skyward.

  And he saw into the hole in the sky.

  The vertigo he’d felt before was nothing compared to what he felt now as his mind and vision were dragged in the wake of the tree, hurtling billions of miles into the far reaches of outer space, a distance so vast and cold that no one could ever reach it using human technology.

  And in that moment, he witnessed a scene with perfect clarity. A swollen red sun larger than most star systems cast a sullen crimson glare across its galaxy. And silhouetted against that sun was an old god, curled like a deformed, tumorous fetus the size of Jupiter. The thing was more grotesque than a million bloody crime scenes. It was more twisted than the worst dreams of the most debased psychopath. McGill couldn’t bring himself to behold it entirely; he could at best focus on a patch of scabrous scales here, a planet-sized claw there. He was sure that if he tried to see it wholly his brain would melt.

  The abhorrent god slept in death in the harsh radiation, and yet it was not truly dead, and could never die. Orbiting around the cosmic monstrosity were hundreds of thousands of trees. Some were already desiccated, scorched husks, but some keened silently as they both burned and froze in that terrible airless space.

  It opened one vast, star-pupiled eye and gazed back at McGill. And the detective knew its abyssal mind. The god, in its own way, was lonely. It wanted to surround itself with dying things to comfort itself. Trees took a while to die. But the god was older than the star it orbited, and its need was endless. It would run out of trees. And then it would drag every man, woman, and child up into that faraway red desolation to die in terror and torment in its vile, alien orbit.

  McGill fell backward onto the lawn as the vision released him. He lay there stunned, weeping, his certainties and beliefs a blasted desolation. This was the first time he’d cried in 25 years, and he didn’t care. There was no God but the one he’d witnessed, and it cared nothing for human justice or order or anything else he held dear. The only thing that was real was the certainty of death.

  And the detective could not imagine anything more horrible than being dragged away from Mother Earth to feed that cosmic abomination. It wasn’t just the agony feeling your flesh boil off your bones and your eyeballs rupture in your skull. It wasn’t just the horror of having that monster be the last thing you saw before you died. It was witnessing everything you loved and believed in and had strived for destroyed and mocked by the Universe as you were snuffed out. Billions of people would break and die in that terrible place and there would be no point or greater good or Heaven at the end of it all.

  In that moment, the detective wanted to end himself as the postman had. It would be so easy to draw his revolver, blast his own brains across the grass, and be done with it. He’d die in the warm embrace of Earth. And that was the best anyone could hope for now.

  “No,” McGill whispered to himself. I have a job. People need me.

  “Oh, my goodness.” An elderly white woman with an aluminum cane had emerged from the pink house. She was dressed in a flowered shift and a white shawl. Her slippers were a dingy grey. “Are you okay, sir?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He climbed to his feet. “Thank you for asking.”

  She adjusted her spectacles. “What … what happened to my tree?”

  “Nothing happened to your tree, ma’am. Everything is fine.”

  He drew his revolver and shot her right between the eyes.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am,” he told her bleeding corpse. “But this is the kindest thing I can think to do.”

  He went back to his idling car and headed toward the nearest gun shop. He’d need a whole lot more ammunition for his new work. Someone would stop him, sooner or later. Maybe his partner Gradney would shoot him down. Tha
t wouldn’t be so bad. It was a funeral suit that fit.

  In the meantime, though, he needed to be as kind as he could possibly be.

  THE LEVEE BREAKS

  by Jayaprakash Satyamurthy

  The past is a different country, and besides, the swain was dead. Mostly. For all practical purposes. But past and present were developing an unpleasant habit of overlapping. Trying to keep her timelines straight, Ratna walked down the path that wound between the cottages by the lake, counting down to number 7, right at the corner of a row. The door, once locked and chained, hung open on rusted hinges. She bent under the crossbar, still standing guard, and scuffled into the cottage. Dank inside, dank and dark. Dry leaves blown in by errant winds crunched underfoot. Sound of rats scurrying from her. Damp stains on the walls, furniture rotted and askew. It felt right that this place should be so desolate, so bereft. Ratna smiled to herself. She passed through the living room into the bedroom. The whole bed had collapsed in on itself, the headboard leaning out over the broken-backed bed. Everything was slick, slimy. She opened the door to the bathroom. There, in the tub, a body lay. She stepped closer, eyes adjusting to the dark, to the flickers of spasmodic light filtering in between leaves fluttering on the branches of the trees outside the tiny bathroom window with its glass blinds.

  The bathroom was the driest place in the house – unintended irony – insulated from the creeping damp by the tiles. The large, dark figure in the tub resolved into the form of a slumbering woman, hair a wild grey nest, body swaddled in layers of capriciously assembled, haphazardly secured rags. The sleeping woman sensed something, mumbled and shifted in her sleep. Ratna carefully walked backwards, back into the bedroom. For a moment, she had seen herself falling on the woman with vicious nails and teeth, ripping away the foul bits of cloth, rending the flabby, lined old flesh, letting the old, weak blood spill from this sack of drained dreams and shrivelled hopes.