“Why were you safe from the worst?” asked the fuddled Hyphen-Jones.
“A matter of anatomy,” Smythe said evasively, and left Hyphen-Jones to work it out. “Still, I was too confident, as it happened. The only safe course was to get out of that room and perhaps try to bag it with a long-range exorcism from the landing . . . What I did was to experiment with a little of the consecrated ale left over from making the pentacle. I flicked some at the crawling Thing as it snaked its way toward me, and—well, it must have been peculiarly sensitive. It positively dribbled with rage, and vanished in a burst of ectoplasm.
“I believed the Thing must have withdrawn itself for the night, abandoning its rigid form and returning to the nameless Outer Spheres. Again, I’d fallen into the trap of over-confidence . . . I was still standing there in my fatally gorgeous ensemble when once again that luminous fog filled the air about me and—no, I can’t bring myself to describe what happened then. Certain of the older grimoires recommend that practitioners of the magical arts, black or white, should ritually seal each of the nine orifices of the body as part of the preliminaries. I believe I now know why.”
“My God, you don’t mean—?” said Carruthers, but seemed to lack the vocabulary or inclination to take the sentence further. Hyphen-Jones appeared to be counting under his breath.
“Well, I’ll be buggered,” the Major murmured.
Tersely Smythe explained how, pausing only to waive his fee and advise that Mrs. Pring should sleep henceforth in the cursed room while renting out her own, he’d departed Dash without so much as changing his clothing.
“So my life was transformed by that Thing in the Bedroom,” he concluded gaily. “Now let me tell you of my newest case, one which I was previously reluctant to investigate—the matter of the haunted chamber in the Cafe Royal, where the shade of Oscar Wilde is said to (at the very least) walk . . .”
Borderland by John Brizzolara
John Brizzolara was born in Chicago on December 11, 1950. He grew up in that city, where he read avidly the works of authors ranging from Poe and Lovecraft to Conan Doyle and H.G. Wells to Franklin W. Dixon and Micky Spillane. During the late sixties and early seventies he traveled and recorded with various rock bands— “now defunct and probably best forgotten.” He and his wife, Diane, currently reside in San Diego, California, with their son, Geoffrey Byron. The couple have collaborated on several stories, and Brizzolara has had fiction published in Weird Tales, Whispers, Weirdbook, Isaac Asimov’s, Twilight Zone Magazine, and Amazing. He has left the music business and now pays the bills by tending bar and working in bookstores.
Brizzolara explains that “ ‘Borderland’ was the product of a night I spent last December driving up and down the San Diego/Tijuana border with a U.S. Border Patrol agent in a four wheel drive Ram Charger. I was doing research on a hard-boiled detective novel I’ve written called Wirecutter and it occurred to me that the setting was a fine one for the annual Christmas ghost story Diane and I write for each other to be read on Christmas Eve. (In the M.R. James tradition.)” Brizzolara’s novel has been at one publisher for some months now, and if it’s half as effective as “Borderland,” they’d best be drawing up a contract.
“Kind of spooky,” Sanchez said, just to be saying something. He realized immediately that it sounded wrong; it was a “new guy” kind of thing to say.
The moon was a tiny arc of cold light that illuminated nothing. The early November wind was a muffled shriek outside as it wound through the canyons and over the mesa. It sang with a reedy, plaintive voice as it passed the stand of eucalyptus trees known as the Dillon Treeline. Tumbleweeds flew through the air and launched themselves against the darkened Border Patrol Ram Charger, striking the windshield and the side panels of the van with the sound of fingernails seeking entry.
It was 11:53 p.m. on a Saturday night.
“You’ll get used to it.” Hagen kept turning left and then right in the passenger seat, peering into the blackness at hurtling shadows. “Goddamn tumbleweeds. I keep thinking we got something out there, and it’s just tumbleweeds every time.” Hagen was a heavyset man in his early forties with sideburns that were a little too long for his crew-cut hair. He looked like a man who had spent most of his life in some kind of authority over others, but Sanchez had noticed an extraordinary gentleness about him.
“It’s corny, Dead Man’s Canyon.” Sanchez put on his gloves and raised the collar on his jacket, watching his breath condense against the starlight. He couldn’t so much as light a cigarette without giving away their position. If there was anyone out there to give it away to, that is. “They really call it that, huh?”
“Yep. The Mexicans call it pretty much the same thing. I guess we got the name from them. I don’t really know.”
“Sounds like kid stuff. The Hardy Boys and the Secret of Dead Man’s Canyon. Something like that.”
“Yeah.” Hagen pointed with his chin at the umbra of shadow, like a huge wound, in the mesa ahead of them. “You can’t see the bottom of that thing from anywhere around. Not unless you get right up to it. There’s a good mile and a half of it, too, between the border and Spring Canyon.” He spat tobacco out the window. “You got bandit activity, rape, a body? I’d say a good seven, eight times outta ten it’s in Dead Man’s.”
Sanchez was still unused to the casualness with which the other agents dealt with the atmosphere of violence and desperation in their job. It was his second week on the patrol along the San Diego/Tijuana border and already he had had rocks thrown at him, been kicked in the crotch, and retrieved the body of a drowned boy from the Tijuana River levy. Now for the first time he was patrolling the Browns Field sector along the Otay Mesa to the east; what the illegals called El Cerro and the agents called the Eastern Front. It was here that the bandits who preyed on the groups of fence-cutters, or alambristas, found business to be the most profitable. Mostly inaccessible, even with four-wheel-drive vehicles, the canyons provided a perfect ambush gallery for their victims and an impossible obstacle course for La Migra, the Border Patrol.
In the past three weeks there had been a rise in incidents along the Eastern Front. One narcotic overdose: the body had been tossed over the fence to the U.S. side from a hotel window. Another boy, shot to death, had been discovered near the microwave dish in the E3 sector—no one knew why, nor would they ever know. And there had been three rapes, one of which was stopped in progress by Border agents; the other two were now statistics in an open file in the prosecution office. As always, people were victimized in one way or another, often by the “coyotes” or the guides themselves, then left to wander the mesa to be arrested by the Patrol. These would be returned to Mexico the next day, destitute and without prospects, but alive. They were the lucky ones. Many found their way into unmarked graves. There was no way of ever really knowing how many.
Hagen, still pivoting his head from side to side and shifting his position to see into the near-total blackness outside the van, picked up the radio microphone from the dashboard. “Ten-twenty-eight here. This is 1028 in sector E4 west of the Dillon Treeline. Anybody got a scope shootin’ this way? It’s blacker’n a banker’s heart out here and we can’t tell the bad guys from the tumbleweed without a program. Over.”
“Ten-twenty-eight, this is 901. That you, Hagen? Over.”
“Yeah, me and Sanchez. You got a scope, Gary? Over.”
“I got the green eye on ya. You boys are all alone. You and the rabbits. Can’t see down into Dead Man’s, but Moody’s Canyon is clear and Behan and Velsor are pickin’ up some good ones in Spring. Over.”
The green eyes were the infrared nightscopes that showed up body heat as a pale patch on a green background. It gave the understaffed Border Patrol a vital edge during the rush hours between dusk and dawn.
“Okay Gary, we’re gonna stay in position for a while. Over.”
“Roger. How’s Sanchez doin’? Over.”
Sanchez leaned into the mike and said, “I’m freezing my huevos off. I can�
�t believe this is California. Uh, over.”
The laughter came over the speaker, lifeless and metallic. “You’ll get your circulation goin’ before too long. At least you’re not gettin’ rocked. Over.”
“I’m goin’ down to take a look, Gary. Swing that eye around every once in a while, will ya? Over.” Hagen poised the mike back over its cradle.
“Got ya covered, 1028. I’m goin’ off in a few minutes, but Dave’s comin’ on. He’ll keep ya company, okay? Over. Out.”
Hagen opened his door and climbed down out of the van. “You wanna take a look around with me?” he invited.
“Sure.” Sanchez lifted his flashlight and his nightstick from the seat. Outside, he felt he was on the surface of some featureless, distant planet.
“Only bring one of those. Keep one hand free,” Hagen corrected him.
“Oh, yeah.” He followed the other agent to the edge of Dead Man’s Canyon and looked down. It was as if a piece of the earth had fallen away and they were looking into a starless void. At first there was no sound except for the wind and the engine of a small plane in the distance, and then they both heard a dry rustling below them; it might have been someone whispering. “You hear that?” he asked Hagen quietly.
By way of answer, the older agent aimed his flashlight into the canyon and played it briefly over the cholla cactus, the gnarled, hollowed-out bushes known as “hotels” that served as way stations for illegal immigrants on their trek north. The beam found the floor of the canyon and the slight trail that had been worn over the years by illicit traffic. He switched it off quickly. “I don’t see anything.”
“What about that voice? Didn’t you hear that?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I did. I’ll tell you what, partner. I’m goin’ down there. You run up about fifty yards and move down, kind of head ’em off at the pass.”
Sanchez nodded and set off at a trot. A rabbit darted across his path and startled him.
It was a long way from New York, he thought. He had been happy to get the job and the academy was easy enough. The San Diego border sounded pretty exciting, riding the ranges, mending fences, pursuits and arrests. Now that he was here, though, the fantasy had eroded—leaving only the minutiae of routine in an unreal situation. The shabby, hopeless people he apprehended every shift by the dozen saddened him and made him wonder just what kind of a job he was doing after all. The dream of Western Individualism was a fine one and promised—from a distance—to suit him, but in the end he couldn’t relate to the cowboy role, not the way Hagen could with his chewing tobacco and his “head ’em off at the pass, pard” manner. First as a Puerto Rican kid growing up in an Irish neighborhood in the Bronx, then as a city adjuster surrounded by friends who were actors, dancers, or writers, and now trying to pass as a good-old-boy member of the posse in the American Southwest, Sanchez increasingly came to define himself by where he did not belong. His gun slapped against his hip as he ran.
After about fifty yards, he started down slowly. The footing was bad and the cholla punctured his pant legs. Pieces of the cactus broke off and worked their way into his boots. He stopped at intervals to remove them, listening for the sounds they had heard earlier. To his left he could see Hagen swinging his flashlight. On the wind, Hagen’s voice carried down the canyon. In Spanish he shouted, “La Migra! Salgan!”
Suddenly the wind increased and two shadows hurtled past Sanchez running up the embankment. They both wore dark clothing. One, he could see, was a woman, probably an Indian—judging by her serape and braided hair. He turned and shouted, “Hagen! Over here!” and started to labor back up the hill after them. Someone rushed past him from behind; he turned abruptly and landed face down in the cholla. Stifling a cry of pain, he caught a glimpse of white tennis shoes running past him. In his Puerto Rican accent, he called after them, “Alto. No les haremos dano!”
He got to his feet and made it to the top. To the west, silhouetted against the lights of Tijuana and San Ysidro, he could see the figure wearing the tennis shoes dash across the mesa for the relative safety of the next canyon. Sanchez was in good physical shape for a smoker and he closed the distance between them in seconds just as his prey dropped over the ledge of the next depression. Blood, where the cactus had cut him, fell into Sanchez’s eye and he blinked. In another moment he could see, but he had lost the polio. He cursed and turned back toward the Ram Charger.
He froze when he heard Hagen’s scream.
Dropping his nightstick and drawing the .357 from his holster, Sanchez ran toward the sound, shouting, “Hagen! Hagen!” At the edge of the canyon he launched himself downward, taking huge strides, barely keeping his balance, unmindful of the cactus. “Hagen, answer me!” It seemed to take forever to get down. At the bottom he found the trail and ran south until he could hear heavy, ragged breathing and a kind of sobbing. “Hagen, goddamnit!”
“Over here.” The voice was barely in control. “I’m all right.”
“Shine your light so I can find you.”
“I can’t . . . I lost it.”
“What happened?” Sanchez fell into tumbleweeds that had accumulated against the man-made rock break in the trail. He struggled in the weeds for a moment and pulled his Bic lighter and ignited it. The first thing he saw was a crude crucifix set into the top of the pile of rocks he had stumbled against. A grave.
He looked around him and saw Hagen, his eyes ringed with fear, struggling to free himself from another interlocked mass of tumbleweeds. The flashlight lay to his right. Sanchez picked it up and shone it on his companion. “What the hell happened, man?”
As he helped Hagen from the bed of dried bracken and rock he could see the other man’s eyes darting to either side of him. He was trembling as if suddenly aware of the cold. “Let’s just get out of here, okay?”
They made their way back up the embankment. At the top, they could hear the radio from the van calling into the night. “Ten-twenty-eight, come in. What’s going on, 1028? You read, Hagen? You request assistance?”
Inside the Ram Charger, Sanchez answered the call. “This is 1028. We had something good. They got away. We got fouled up a little. Just some cuts and scrapes, I think. Anybody have a scope on us?”
“This is 901. Dave here. I’ve had the eye on you for the past ten minutes or so. I saw one of you guys come up out of Dead Man’s runnin’ across the mesa chasing something, but I don’t know what the hell it was. I wasn’t getting any hot spots. What were you chasin’, anyway? You’re the only ones out there.”
“You didn’t see them? There were three of them. One of ’em was a woman.”
“Sorry, buddy. Had my eye peeled and all I got was you.”
“Okay. We missed ’em. Forget it. You might want to advise E3 and E2, they might come out somewhere in Spring’s or Moody’s. Over.”
“Roger, you okay?”
“Yeah. Okay. Over.”
Sanchez turned to Hagen. He switched on the instrument lights and in the green glow he could see that Hagen had scratches running down one side of his face as if an animal had clawed him. Other than that he seemed unhurt. The older man held his face in his hands and said softly, “My dear God, I am losing my ever-loving mind.”
“What happened, man? I heard you scream.”
Hagen looked at him. Even in the ghostly light he could see the man was pale. “I can’t tell you, Sanchez. I . . . don’t really know.”
“Tell me. If there’s somebody out there, I wanna know, man. Okay?”
Hagen looked at him and drew in a breath. He seemed to size up his partner or maybe how what he was going to say would sound. After a minute he said, “When I got to the bottom, I saw maybe fifty, a hundred people. Pollos, wirecutters, illegals, men, women, kids. I couldn’t believe it. I’d never seen so many in one place, not since we caught that whole shitload comin’ out of the Flamenco years ago. I didn’t know what to do. There were too many of them. I turned to go back up and radio in when I slipped. I fell right on top of a group of them and then I saw .
. .” He stopped speaking though his jaw continued to work ineffectually. He shook his head and searched the stars for the words.
“What, man? What are you saying?”
His smile was an attempt at reassurance, but seemed instead to be inappropriate and frightening in the dashboard lights. “I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m saying. Forget it.”
“Okay, Hagen. Take it easy.”
Something threw itself against the side of the van with a raking sound like ground glass on slate. The wind picked up its keening. Hagen drew his pistol and then the stars were blotted from the windshield by a shape that pressed itself to the van with a rasping, urgent noise.
“Take it easy, man! It’s a tumbleweed, Hagen. That’s all it is, see. I found you in a bunch of them down there. That’s what scratched you up.” Even as he said it, Sanchez studied the deep grooves on the agent’s cheeks that ran from his temple to his neck and were already beginning to scab over.
“Yeah, tumbleweeds.” Hagen put his gun away. “Look, we gotta go out there again. I’ve gotta see what the hell is going on. You understand? I’ve gotta know. One minute they were there and the next . . . I’ve gotta know if I’m crackin’ up or what.” For the first time Hagen noticed the blood on Sanchez’s face. “What happened to you? Your face is cut up.”
“I fell in the damned cactus. I was chasing three of them. There’s gotta be more. Let’s go, only this time we stay together.”
“Right.” Hagen paused. “Sanchez, you saw ’em, right? You get a good look?”
“I couldn’t see anything except one was a woman, a Yaqui, I think, and one guy was wearing white sneakers.”
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