Gathering Evidence

by Martin MacInnes

  By now, CI and infant were existing in a different zone of the forest, completely apart from the troop. I continued to follow them, bringing water and biscuits and a tarp roof so I could stay for extended periods, even during the night. I listened out, wary of the predator. Occasionally I heard distant footsteps, the slow, deliberate gait of Alice or Jane leaving their tent. I had to stay close to the mother – the lenses weren’t good enough; the picture wasn’t clear. It was important to find out if the infant spilled anything black from its mouth. The troop remained quiet; in some ways this unnerved me more. It was possible this change signalled not the abandonment of the predator’s interest, but rather another phase in its activity, perhaps leading to an acceleration. Alice was worried. She said I should remain at the camp. I shouldn’t be out alone; it was irresponsible. We didn’t yet know what we were dealing with. Jane came in in support of me. She gave me a look I may have misread as understanding. I wanted to stay near to the mother, and the infant, and I didn’t want to have to return to eat with other people each night.

  My sickness in the morning was more sporadic. I seemed better able to brush off the nausea, able to contain what came out of me, gather the bulk of it directly in a bag. But every time I vomited I felt helpless next to the possibility that what would come out would be black.

  The body was hung on CI’s back again, the small limbs tucked inwards. I kept thinking I had got it wrong, that my attention had been lax and this was a different infant body. It was so small. The body kept falling down, but she never let it stay there. As more of it was lost, the head, pressed in against the mother’s shoulder, became relatively larger, so that it was easy to make the mistake, again, of confusing the motion as positive, as growth. I had the stupid thought of sitting in a train with another train parallel to it and mistaking its motion for my own, of believing – even when you knew it wasn’t true – that something positive was happening.

  As the body became particularly brittle it was only with great effort that she managed to fold and weave the limbs without breaking them. The folding movement – linking and binding the limbs – reminded me of something else, some basic organic process. She stopped offering food. There was now little possibility of recovering traces of anything from its mouth. I continued watching, suppressing challenging thoughts.

  When the rain began, lightly, just before the morning, I panicked. I realised I couldn’t find her. I slipped on the wet roots and fell and hit my face hard. My lip was bleeding on the ground, thumped with increasing force by the new rain. I made myself get up, and I heard a noise above me but behind, in the direction I had come from, and I followed.

  I found her by the water. Her size was different. The infant, the body – tiny skeleton, matted clumps of black hair, sickening illusion in the movement of the worms – had gone, had washed off in the rain, had been carried in the turbid, deafening flow of the stream.

  She finished drinking, climbed the bank, called out – her first call in several days – and a sound came back at her, and then another, and another, and I had lost her somewhere in the trees, thrashing and leaping and playing in her troop again.

  Though none of us articulated it, I thought we shared the feeling that something dangerous had come close to us and had passed. The rains returned in earnest. Nobody expected them to be so prolonged, so powerful. Before we left we’d gone through detailed forecasts at the gates. The season had come suddenly, prematurely. Alice dug trenches around the camp, diverting water – a short-term measure only. A bigger problem, which we’d avoided raising as long as we could, was our ability to get out. Already, in the area immediately to the south, to make any progress at all we had to wade, with the water level at points as high as my knees. Should the rains persist, and the levels continue to rise to the north, exit might become impossible.

  At this stage the work we could do was limited. We were unable to get close to the animals, the water restricting our movements and loudly announcing our presence. We had a single animal still to draw blood from – CI. This was my fault. I had made the decision not to intervene, not to get close, in the days after she let go of her child. The rain had appeared to decline but only briefly, and it soon became clear it was the wrong decision, that we should have tranquillised her while we had the opportunity. Had her daughter died from the same illness as the two others, and was she infected too? Was it an unconnected death? I’d insisted, when I’d returned to the camp after tracking her, that we had no choice; CI’s reintegration with her group was the priority. I didn’t want us doing anything that might jeopardise this. She rejoined her sub-group but relations remained demonstrably fraught, with her conspecifics evidently uncertain of her status. Moving in at this time – shooting CI, incapacitating her briefly, drawing the blood – may, in these exceptional circumstances, have had severe consequences, possibly ostracising her from the group indefinitely. This, in turn, could have a disastrous effect on the health of the group as a whole.

  We had deliberately waited until the end to target CI. It had seemed sensible to postpone analysis of the senior matriarch until we had safely gathered blood from all the others, by which stage we’d have established routine practice, far less likely to make mistakes. We couldn’t have foreseen what would happen, the early rains and the broken contact with the gates.

  We continued to disagree over what to do next. I said I wasn’t leaving until we had analysed her; otherwise the whole trip became invalid. We had come this far. Alice accused me of losing my objectivity, said I was too invested in this sub-group, and in CI in particular, that I was being weak and irresponsible. Our priority was our own safety.

  ‘Even if you don’t agree, which would be ludicrous, can’t you see that at this rate we’ll have to leave our things behind, that everything will be lost?’

  ‘Just two more days,’ I said. ‘Give it two more days and if conditions don’t change then I agree we should go back.’

  I could see from the way she stared she didn’t believe me.

  Jane, to our surprise, took my side. Or at least, she didn’t actively support Alice, her passivity endorsing the status quo. She remained in her tent longer every day, her sleeping bag tied up all the way around and behind her head, leaving only the lid of her face uncovered. I wondered briefly whether I shouldn’t be worried about her, but dismissed these thoughts as relatively insignificant.

  It was an unwritten rule, and living at such close quarters it was essential: don’t look into another person’s tent. Give them this privacy at least. And yet I couldn’t help it. Something, I told myself, must have caught my eye. Jane, running through data with Alice, had turned her back and for a second her tent was open right in front of me – both Alice and Jane were looking away, and so I peered in, just for a moment. I saw a thick mass of paper stacked, dozens, even hundreds, of pages. How carefully was it all protected, I wanted to ask her, knowing I couldn’t, knowing how severe the repercussions might be, how a single thing like the admission that I’d looked inside might easily be enough to shatter morale, damage the dynamic irreparably. I could say – I turned and proceeded away from Jane, hearing her zip her tent, though I was sure I’d been discreet – to the group as a whole and not to Jane in particular that we should perhaps review anything that wasn’t stored digitally, but it seemed weak cover. What was more important: that we were able to continue doing our work or that we had legible records of everything when we left?

  Alice was still trying to resume contact with the gates. Jane and I were silently preparing dinner, water running off the tarps above us. Suddenly I heard something strange – remote voices, a cloud of static, yelling. Alice emerged from her tent with her phone aloft.

  ‘They’re coming. We have to take a different route out. They’ll show us the way. They’ll be here the evening after tomorrow. So we might still have time, Shel.’

  She’d kept the call brief to preserve the battery. She relayed the details – the apologies about the masts, astonishment over the storms, th
e excitement about the material we’d been able to gather, deep relief over both our general health and, with exceptions, that of the troop. Bryan would lead us back, Frank and a second ranger accompanying him, directing us and helping with our things. The rain was supposed to break later this evening, with the next few days forecast to be drier; water levels would dip, and in taking the new, longer route out, they should be able to bring us back in without too much difficulty. Forecasts, as we’d learned, weren’t always reliable, but this wasn’t going to dispel our new enthusiasm.

  I walked out uncovered in the rain. Everything was going to be all right. I felt renewed affection for my colleagues, an almost desperate tenderness towards them. I looked forward, tempted almost to tears, to the following weeks, months and even years, the time the three of us would devote to making sense of what we’d gathered here, of what had happened. When I came back into camp and saw Jane, her head bowed, diligently chopping tomatoes, my instinct was to hug her. She heard me, and by the time she’d turned around I’d composed myself.

  I felt unspeakable relief, not only because of the confirmation of our exit and our renewed contact with the outside world, but because we’d almost certainly have the opportunity to analyse CI and thus complete our survey. Alice produced the last of her bottle, and under the tarp, listening to the noise decline until it was no longer rain itself we heard but water falling secondarily, dripping from the trees above us as the birds shook the branches, we watched the silent, flickering sheet lightning, heard the last distant calls of the troop that night, and savoured the first feelings of satisfaction, completion, the feeling all of this, at last, was coming to an end.

  XXIII

  When he woke he noticed a change: a quiet, a sense of stillness, a difference in the air, the light. He felt hungry. He pulled open the curtain, and he froze – the fog, overnight, had disappeared. He put his face to the glass. The fields stretched on beyond the driveway. He heard the chatter of the jackdaws in the trees. He opened the window, realising he hadn’t done this simple thing in so long. Sunlight entered the house in thick, stunning shafts. He could see a distance of hundreds of metres over the fields. He watched the farmer attaching something to a piece of industrial machinery. And on the far west of the field he saw a figure walking slowly, with some difficulty, moving in an interrupted, stumbling manner, finally making his way to the small patch of trees. The scene, through the window, in the dramatic and unfamiliar light, framed like a painting, appeared almost too vivid to be real. He waited, watching the trees, expecting the figure to emerge through the other side at any moment, but he didn’t. After several minutes, moving back from the window, he descended the stairs.

  Entering the vestibule, he saw the mould wasn’t nearly as bad as he remembered. He opened the door. He went to his car, unlocked it and looked inside. There were small patches of blood on the front passenger seat only. He remembered a more dramatic blood spill glimpsed through the dark and the fog, and with only the faint light of the torch to see by. He shifted away from the thought, unsettled by the memory not only of the fear but of the sense of a collapse of logic, a barren, abject resistance and hopelessness. He would get a bowl of water, some soap, a sponge and begin on the car seat, which shouldn’t take long. Then he would start on the wet areas of the house, the sinks, the bathroom, leaving the windows and doors open for the sun, the fresher air, the sounds of the outside. He kept stopping, smiling, involuntarily closing his eyes, enjoying the sun’s radiation on his body. Leaving the car doors open, he went back inside, lifting the phone from the countertop. Without thinking, his hand flowed over the screen and the colour lightened, the phone unlocked. He waited several moments, feeling an almost unbearable sense of anticipation. He almost laughed when he heard the familiar tone registering renewed network connection. Quickly, without thinking, he typed in the number and waited while the long tone repeated.

  It took several minutes for the switchboard operator to put him through. While his call was held, he removed the phone from his ear and looked down at it. The object was warm in his grip; he enjoyed lifting it and feeling its unusual heft, the compressed weight inside, the impression of a dense system of nested layers. The line clicked. ‘First of all,’ the receptionist said, ‘your name?’

  ‘John Harper.’ There was a pause on the line. He heard the keyboard tapping.

  ‘Can you confirm this was the name you gave when you were admitted to the hospital?’

  He supplied both his date of birth and the date he’d visited the hospital. He was confident, he told her, the date was correct, though there remained a chance he was off by a day or two.

  She apologised. They had been having some systems problems recently and some of their data was inaccessible.

  ‘Ah, here we are,’ she said at last. ‘We had a different spelling. Okay. I’m sorry, let me see. What was that?’

  ‘My doctor – that’s what I was phoning about. I don’t want to make an issue of it – I’m not comfortable with him any more, that’s why I’m calling directly. I want to find out when I can come in for more tests.’ He thought back to yesterday, his refusal to invite the doctor in, the last he’d seen of him as he backed away from the door, out of the vestibule. Though he had kept his eyes trained on the silhouette, he’d failed to notice the point it disappeared; there was no transition, no sound either while the doctor stepped down from the steps to the gravel driveway.

  ‘Hmm. Okay, okay, John, why don’t I call you back on this number in a couple of minutes? I just want to check a couple of things this end first, and I can find out what’s happened. It would be helpful if you could source your own papers too, yes.’

  ‘You’ll call back, soon?’

  ‘In just a couple of minutes, John. And then we can schedule an appointment, okay?’

  He stared at his phone as he ended the call. He couldn’t put it away. The weight seemed to grow with every moment. Images started to flash, the phone vibrated, an audio tone played loudly, repeating. A list of calls and messages. Shel: call after call. His chest thudded. He found the first message, put the phone to his ear, pressed play. It took several seconds to connect, then he heard a rustling sound, raised voices in the background. Someone sobbing. At first he didn’t recognise her.

  ‘John?’ she said. ‘John, are you there? John? Where are you? I need to talk to you. Something terrible has happened.’

  XXIV

  The sound was more distressing for its distance, for the fact the animals were unusually far from us yet their calls still carried with this much force. I woke almost unable to bear it. My stomach was turning. I felt wretched.

  It had come back.

  The shrieking had finished and I remained still, listening, waiting to hear the rain filtering down to the tent. But I heard nothing. No dripping water, no falling foliage, no birds.

  I decided to leave the tent. To my relief, I found no new prints on our site. The troop’s alarm may have had a different cause, unrelated. I looked around, the darkness edging away. Through the canopy I could only just make out the sky. Not long until sunrise. Something tall passed in front of me. I heard a splash, saw in the white glow of my flashlight a shadow slipping through the trees. I waited, held my breath, tensed my chest and heard it thudding. My arms were cold, lightly convulsing. I told myself there was no cause for alarm: the form was upright, bipedal. It wasn’t the animal. I was not in danger. I breathed out, shook my head. I turned slowly and shone my light back on the two tents behind. Both were closed. The temptation again to give in to fear. But no, it could still be Alice or Jane; as a precaution, ever since the prints had appeared, we sealed our tents when we got up during the night. I walked on. I moved my light in a slow arc, signalling my presence, continuing into the trees.

  Finally, a little spooked, I decided to call out. My voice was unrecognisable. Light, wavering, barely above a whisper. ‘Jane? Alice? Are you there?’

  I shone the light again. I knew the last thing I would appreciate, getting up to
relieve myself, was a torch shone onto me while I squatted, but at the same time I thought it important I didn’t turn back.

  My heart beat faster; my mouth was dry. Could I really have seen something else? Was it possible that both my colleagues remained asleep in their tents and I was inadvertently pursuing something unidentified? But the height of the form, the manner of the movement … Had one of the rangers arrived early, travelling overnight? Perhaps the forecast had changed and our exit had become more urgent. But then why hadn’t they called out? Why hadn’t they got in contact first? I was confident what I had seen – its size, its speed – didn’t correspond to an animal. But how reliable was a shadow in the beam of a low flashlight, caught in thick foliage and reflected in the pools? Could I be certain it wasn’t something else? The boar, a leopard, even? Was I certain that something really had been there? The reflection of my light on the water, a snapped branch plunging and splashing – it was enough to create the illusion. Even so, there was no pressing reason to continue walking out alone.

  I had just stopped and was in the process of turning when I felt the temperature drop. I heard what sounded like a popping or sucking noise. I flinched, instinctively reeling from it, and moved backwards rapidly, turning around. Silence. The forest seemed devoid of activity, waiting. I lit a circle around me, then switched off the torch. I peered into the black, the dark swaying leaves, the lightly stirring water. I heard it again, that sucking noise, coming from the ground ahead of me. One, two. One, two. The sound – footsteps in the flooded ground – coming louder, closer to me, though I still made out nothing in the darkness. I went to call but my mouth didn’t respond. I felt something heavy, cold and unfamiliar grip my neck – I sprang back again, dropping my light as I collided with someone directly behind me.