Worse Angels

by Laird Barron

  I couldn’t imagine, not really.

  “Huh, you’re saying that instead of cordoning off the area for all time, Redlick and allies eagerly built a research complex with a giant hunk of radioactive space metal in the basement.” I pondered this for several moments before moving on. “Have you gone caving in the Valley?”

  The question amused him.

  “Have I beheld the cosmic spearhead or the broken ring with my own eyes? Dear God, no. Twenty-five years ago, I sold Gerald Redlick a journal and a map that were originally the property of a collector of antiquarian rarities. The journal detailed an expedition undertaken in the summer of 1798. A small company of professional explorers were alerted by the natives of a cave system that ran beneath the Valley. Twelve went in; three returned, including the leader. He claimed the others were ‘swallowed by the void.’ A likely euphemism for falling into a pit. The addled survivors had contracted a plague. They repeated ‘the rule of nine’ over and over as their flesh blackened and their teeth and hair fell out. Their stories end as medical curiosities in a cadaver laboratory.

  “Redlick became interested in the journal. Displaying an abundance of caution, his forebears gave those caverns a wide berth. Gerald Redlick is cut from a different bolt of cloth. Incidentally, the Horseheads system possesses similarities to caverns beneath Anvil Mountain in eastern New York. Anvil Mountain is a secret maintained by the Labrador family. I’m sure that the relative proximity of these systems and their unusual properties is the result of a dramatic event—a meteor shower over a vast swath of what is now New York State during a prehistoric era.”

  “And you got your mitts on this journal how?” I said.

  “The usual way. We’ve forged many connections among the disenfranchised and the discredited searchers after truth. I burned a small fortune and all of my influence amassing an archive of documents stuffed into several warehouses and storage facilities.”

  I glanced at the blurred photographs, the glass cases of parchments and arcane instruments. Among these latter, a ceramic-handled tuning fork leaned next to a shot of Nikola Tesla at a podium.

  “The academic community’s garbage was an industrialist cabal’s treasure,” I said. “Those moldy old-monied families recognized you were the real deal.”

  “As did the government, in happier times. A contraction of communal imagination has disempowered the American spirit of exploration. China and India are embarking for the moon. Our gaze has turned inward. It is the age of the industrialist entrepreneur who bankrolls private voyages into space, deep-sea surveys, spiritual and scientific research. We may have cause to celebrate. We are more likely to rue this evolutionary phase.”

  “Our dreams are dead as the distant twinkling stars,” I said. “Mandibole and a man named Foote used the term ‘kaleidoscope’ in reference to the Jeffers Project.”

  Dr. Ryoko stirred from dormancy. He clacked his whiteboard and clumsily drew an infinity symbol.

  “The Kaleidoscope is a theoretical quantum engine,” Dr. Campbell said. “A figure of speech, really. The concept refers to a subatomic filter to bridge concrete and abstract reality. A figurative telescope that, in addition to seeing through time, could peer into multiple realities.”

  Trapper of dreams and god-particles, Dr. Ryoko wrote.

  “Oh,” I said. “Sean couldn’t resist attaching himself to the project.”

  “It was the fulfillment of dreams he’d suppressed after college and his ongoing depression,” Dr. Campbell said.

  Dr. Ryoko thrust his chin like a snapping turtle poking his head out of his shell, glowered at Dr. Campbell, and tapped the whiteboard image.

  “Those tabloid news articles that the Hadron Collider posed a threat to humanity?” Dr. Campbell waited for me to nod. “It might create black holes and parallel dimensions, or destroy the fabric of space-time?”

  “Apparently, the scientists were wrong,” I said. “Humanity is alive and not swallowed by a black hole.”

  “The Jeffers Project was meant to fulfill one or more of those doomsday scenarios,” Dr. Campbell said.

  “Where did you hear this?”

  “Gerald Redlick. When we were younger, he mistook my distaste for aspects of civilization as tacit approval of his extremist views. An unctuous man. He deceived everyone involved with the Jeffers Project.”

  “That’s zealots for you,” I said. “Always agitating for doomsday. Always laying in canned goods for Armageddon.”

  “Which is why the Redlicks proposed naming the collider after a poet who preferred animals and the natural world to the industry and mores of mankind. Robinson Jeffers was a self-designated anti-humanist.”

  A hell of a poet, Dr. Ryoko wrote. Correct about everything.

  “The Redlicks and their allies don’t refer to the potentialities of global chaos as a ‘scenario,’” Dr. Campbell said. “They consider such an outcome to be a prophecy of salvation.”

  Dr. Ryoko scrawled the collider.

  Broken ring is their altar.

  “Do you mean they pray to it?”

  “I fear it prays to them,” Dr. Campbell said.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  We adjourned for a short break. Beasley wheeled in refreshments; finger sandwiches, cheese platter, and ginger ale.

  Get on w/it, Dr. Ryoko wrote. He didn’t sample the delicious sandwiches or the tepid ginger ale. Evidently, he received nourishment via a feeding tube in his stomach. His dark eyes reinforced the impatience of his words.

  “Sean’s death was dismissed as a suicide.” I nodded deferentially. “Feels wrong, but I can’t rule it out entirely. Murder? Well, there’s a hundred reasons to kill a man. I’m interested in two.”

  Nobody in the room expressed a bit of surprise.

  Not a suicide? Dr. Ryoko wrote.

  Dr. Campbell stubbed his cigarette into a ceramic ashtray. He shook his head at Beasley, who’d taken a step forward, cigarette box in hand.

  “To echo my colleague—not suicide? Your theory?”

  “Logic says depression overwhelmed him,” I said. “Screw logic. Nothing is logical about this case. My gut and every other part insist Sean was murdered. The insurance payout complicates a simple premise: Some assholes thought a black magic ceremony would benefit a construction project. As you alluded, the collider was more like a temple in their twisted view. I don’t see how I can take this to the authorities or give Sean’s family closure. My theory falls under the category of preposterous in the mundane universe.”

  “You are perfectly correct.” Dr. Campbell looked at his friend as he spoke to me. “There can’t be a happy outcome. Justice will not be done. Sean was an innocent. An uncommon trait among adults. His sense of wonder grappled with profound cynicism and depression. He embraced the ineffable and the numinous. Lamentably, it embraced him as well.” The old man gestured. “The boy was an artist with a crayon. Despite our many peregrinations, I kept his drawings among my treasured possessions. Would you care to see them?”

  “Jesus God, no,” I said.

  Why come here? Dr. Ryoko wrote.

  “Because a man doesn’t know what he doesn’t know,” I said. “What I’ve seen, what you’ve graciously shared, goes into the mill.” I touched my temple. “The stone is already grinding.”

  “Excellent,” Dr. Campbell said. “I hope speaking with us has helped crystallize your thoughts.”

  “The Gordian knot is looser. Do you gentlemen happen to be in contact with Linda Flanagan?”

  “Dear Linda. Poor woman withdrew into seclusion.”

  Find her! Dr. Ryoko wrote. The nurse came and wheeled him to his afternoon therapy session.

  Dr. Campbell watched his friend go.

  “I can’t disagree with Toshi. Linda was at Sean’s side during his long decline. I wouldn’t guess her to possess a traitorous bone in her body.”

  �
�People often surprise you,” I said.

  “In the worst possible manner. Do find her.”

  Dr. Campbell and I retired to the kitchen. He smoked three more cigarettes and regaled me with anecdotes of Sean’s ham-fisted attempts to woo Linda. As the last cigarette burned toward the filter, he set it aside and took my hand and studied my palm.

  “Doc, a lot of things bother me,” I said as he turned my hand this way and that. “One nags me more than the rest. Why would Redlick, why would anyone, want to create a doomsday device?”

  “Doomsday with a small d,” Dr. Campbell said. “He is among those who believe apocalypse is inevitable and would prefer to guide the eventual crash. Gerald is also convinced that evidence points toward the arrival of extraterrestrial life in our solar system. Astronomers tracking odd comets and asteroids have publicly speculated regarding that possibility. To put it plainly, he is of the opinion we should shut off the lights and revert to a pre-industrial civilization. The hope being that any aliens would stroll past a darkened house. The Jeffers Collider could be designed to knock out power globally.”

  “Okay,” I said. Badja Adeyemi had said something oblique, but along these lines.

  “There’s more, of course.”

  “Wonderful.”

  “A moment, if you’ll indulge me.” He toddled off and returned with a manila folder sealed with string yoked by fancy clasps. He spread crinkled newspaper clippings on the table. “What do you know about the planet’s magnetic field?”

  “I know it’s generated by superheated iron in the crust of the earth.”

  “Yes, a vast sea of liquid metal creates a magnetic shield that reflects the worst of incoming cosmic radiation. Every so often the magnetic poles reverse. This last occurred in the neighborhood of the Stone Age. The interval before the magnetic field reverses polarity is fraught with peril for life on Earth. Because the magnetic shield is severely weakened during a partial reversal, our ozone is bombarded with cosmic radiation. During the exceedingly rare full reversal, the threat of an extinction-level event rises precipitously. This has occurred and will again.” He patted my hand. “As our wrinkles and scars define us, remnants of an ancient tree in New Zealand serve as an extant recording of epochs of this phenomenon and suggests we are, in fact, overdue for a complete magnetic reversal. We may be experiencing one now.”

  “Why do I get the notion this is bad for reasons other than the obvious?”

  “Unscrupulous individuals are watching, waiting.”

  “The Redlicks,” I said. “Obviously.”

  “The Redlicks and others of their ilk.”

  “I understand that Sean was attracted to your research; the wilder, the better. But what does this have to do with him directly?”

  He raised three fingers.

  “Imprudently wealthy men seek immortality via three primary channels. Replication. Great works. Miracles. The Redlicks have assiduously tracked climate change and the advent of the magnetic field’s reversal, seeking to manipulate the effects for personal gain. Tell me, Isaiah, what would be a logical consequence of the ecosystem’s increased exposure to gamma radiation, for example?”

  “Sickness. Cancer,” I said. “Two-headed babies.”

  “In the natural order of things, those are predictable outcomes,” he said. “Imagine what rich men armed with unlimited resources and advanced science could accomplish were they to harness the powers cosmic. Cross that with faith in supernatural methods. Well. I shudder to think. Gerald Redlick and Tom Mandibole accept heroic myth, including religious texts, as veiled accounts of genetic mutation from lesser breaches of the field. DNA altered by radiation to produce a lineage of wonders and horrors. With this belief as a motive force, we arrive at the creation of cults and cultists whose fervor is maniacal, whose philosophy is impenetrable, whose vision is terrifying.”

  “The Mares of Thrace,” I said. “They’re . . .”

  “Frightful?”

  “What are they? Really. It may sound stupid, but I have to ask. Are they, uh, fully human?”

  “I would assume so.” He smiled in bemusement. “Indoctrination, ritual hypnosis, a unique diet . . . These could lead to aberrant psychology and aberrant physical traits. The Mares are one of numerous cults inhabiting the occulted margins of our rational world. Adherents of ancient rites and beliefs. Feral children of the wood who desire renewed vitality and vigor. Hence the pagan rituals, the rumored suckling of animal blood, the preoccupation with youth. Alas, its members are in thrall to a darker ideology than the petty goal of regeneration. The Mares are merely agents who serve a cabal that venerates the notion of godhead. A cabal that would engineer supermen, angels, devils. The cabal yearns to transcend humanity entirely and introduce a state of being whose very nature relegates Homo sapiens to a servitor species, an expendable resource, a plaything.”

  What does a man say to something supremely insane yet supremely convincing as it rolls like distant thunder in the hindermost regions of his mind?

  “These lines in your palm are like rings in a tree,” he said. “The Redlicks are imbued with power that derives from immense wealth and venerable status. For all that, they’ve misjudged your mettle. You were an unexpected variable. The situation is spinning out of control.”

  “All the bees and none of the honey,” I said. “Doc, if the situation in Horseheads is such a clusterfuck, why did you allow Sean to accept that job at the site? You could’ve steered him away.”

  “Don’t you think we tried? By the time we heard he’d returned to New York, it was practically a fait accompli.”

  “You turned your back?” I said it harshly, hoping to rattle him, to keep him honest, or as honest as he was capable of being.

  The doctor raised his hands in defense.

  “My own influence paled in comparison to the forces that held him in their sway.”

  “Why Shaft 40?” I opened the Jeffers Project schematics on my phone and brandished it accusingly. “Why does X mark that spot?”

  “There is occult significance to the geometry of the collider and its unfinished portion where he died.”

  “What significance?” I said.

  Dr. Campbell touched the map at Shaft 40.

  “This is where the jaws would be if the ouroboros represented a fracture in reality. Sean’s blood poured into that symbolic maw.”

  “Doc, this is more than I bargained on.”

  “Your instinct is to divest yourself of this burden and flee.” He said this with sympathy for my plight. “The Mares killed Sean. Probably to enact a blood ritual to appease the alleged gods of the valley. The scale must be balanced.”

  “Proving it is another matter, Dr. Campbell.”

  “Proving it in a court of law may be impossible. Vengeance doesn’t require proof. It requires the will and the courage to act. I’m too old. June is too good. Alex is a pacifist at heart. Badja lacks the character and is incarcerated, although he might be convinced to strike in other ways were you to provide evidence of murder. I ask, who else but Isaiah Coleridge?”

  I didn’t have a retort handy.

  “For what it’s worth, I’m prepared to ride farther. See where the trail ends.”

  His parting words were sober as a prayer.

  “Light and dark, you are always you,” he said. “The time that came before this time? The time where you stood? The place where you stood? It is a memory. The machinery of fate has brought you forward from darkness into light into darkness. You stand somewhere different now. You must be ready . . . for the terrors to come.”

  That got under my skin. I’d assumed the terrors were already here.

  * * *

  ■■■

  A bigger, badder storm hammered us during the night. Lightning scorched the ocean. Huge waves smashed the shore. Winds came shrieking and we lost power. Flash! Mom sat in the darkness at the foot of
the bed, leather wings partly unfurled. Flash! Achilles prowled beside me, jaws dripping gore. I opened my eyes. Morning light had sneaked into the room. Roof tiles were flung across the lawn and the driveway. Beasley got a chain saw and cleared a palm tree that had fallen outside the main gate.

  I headed south for Sonoma after breakfast. Beasley insisted on tailing me the whole way to the airport in case Mandibole’s henchmen tried anything cute. During the night he’d gone out onto the porch and spotted a car sitting in the drive with its lights off. He went to fetch his rifle. The car eased on down the road.

  Radio news reported that the wet weather and shifting winds were slowly bringing the fires to heel. No sign of the green sedan or the presumed bad guys.

  I landed in Albany in the dark. Lionel idled his Monte Carlo at the curb. He didn’t ask questions. Halfway home, it began to snow.

  PART IV

  RAH, RAH! SIS, BOOM, BAH!

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  March came in like a lamb and I knew what that meant. The roads and the houses were filmed with grit. Fields and lawns lay skinned. Snow gleamed its dirty face among the haggard trees. A man could walk around in a windbreaker during the day before the sun dropped behind the Catskills and frost breathed against window glass.

  I made an ear-numbing amount of calls. One of them was to Adeyemi’s lawyer, who set up a conference call on a “secure” line. I kept the update brief and any conclusions to myself.

  Adeyemi asked what I’d learned, and I said not enough, which was more or less the truth. I had feelers out for Linda Flanagan and Danny Buckhalter. If I heard something, I’d report. Neither of us mentioned extending the retainer. Any further effort on my part would be itemized and passed along to his lawyer. His thinking was obvious: I’d poked around at some risk to my person, chased promising leads that went nowhere except into brick walls. It was the beginning of a slow, awkward breakup.