by Keith Rosson
Bleary-eyed and needing to piss, he unzipped his tent and stepped out into a fog that curled along the rising slopes of the mountains, obscured the trunks of the trees. The field lay threaded with tendrils of ground fog. It stilled him. If unicorns were going to be galloping around, he recognized that it would indeed be in a place like this. His talk with Karla the night previous—had she really insisted that the woods were haunted with the ghosts of dead British soldiers?—seemed distant, jarring, too intimate. A conversation he would’ve had while drunk. He took the long walk to one of the greenhouses. Stepping around the corner, he pissed into the grass.
He was sitting on the porch, nervous about going into the house alone that first time, not wanting to be too presumptuous, when Sandoval crawled out of his own tent. He was squinting, his hair flattened on one side. “Morning,” he said. He was wearing a T-shirt and shorts, and for the first time Brian saw clearly the scars that stood out in raised relief against his tan. Like someone had laid out a chemistry assignment all over his arms, his legs. These wending striations of hexagons, circles, squares. All connected. Like a map leading nowhere, circling in on itself.
“Hey,” Brian said, trying not to stare.
After Sandoval dressed they went inside the house; Brian speed-checked the feed of their camera, which of course showed nothing at all save for the moon’s wan illumination moving from one side of the screen to the other. The motion sensors hadn’t been activated at all.
Sandoval frowned down at his monitor, a coffee cup in one hand. “That sucks.”
“Well, first night.”
He nodded. “How’d you sleep?”
Brian thought of telling him about the conversation with Karla, her insistence on the veracity of the álagablettur. And then she walked by on her way to the bathroom, offering them a shy smile. “Good,” he said. “How about you?”
“Man,” Sandoval said, uncurling his arms above his head. “I don’t really feel much when it comes to jet lag, but damn if I didn’t have some crazy dreams.” Brian thought of his own dreams back at the hotel, the cavalcade of old beasts that had hung their hooks in the netting of his sleep.
The children were silent, hunched over bowls of oatmeal at the kitchen island, their hair sleep-knotted and wild. Karla washed dishes at the sink. Sandoval, standing next to the kids in a white T-shirt and jeans, thumbed through the contract, as well as an itinerary that Brian had tentatively drawn up for the next few weeks. Neither Liza nor Gunnar could take their eyes off Sandoval as they wordlessly scooped oatmeal into their mouths. Gunnar cast one last look at his sister, rich but wordless, the salient dialogue of siblings, and then plunged forth. “Mr. Sandoval?”
“Yeah, buddy,” Sandoval said without looking up.
“Did it hurt to get all those lines on you?”
Sandoval put the papers down on the counter. He smiled at the children. “I don’t actually remember, bud.”
Liza squinted at him, still half-asleep. “Was your mom mad when you got them?”
Karla Hauksdóttir laughed down at the frenzy of suds on her hands and Sandoval smiled as well. “No, she wasn’t mad. I was a grown-up.”
Stirring her spoon around in her bowl, Liza considered this. “But you didn’t have to pay for them, did you?”
And all the adults laughed then, laughed loud, and Liza blushed and ducked her head toward her breakfast, clearly pleased.
“No, honey,” Sandoval said, “they didn’t cost me any money.”
•
At the intersection where the driveway met Road Seven, next to the white rocks, a small white school bus opened its doors and the children climbed aboard. Karla was already at work in the greenhouses with her crew of three or four local men, and Brian and Sandoval watched all of the morning’s activity from the porch. When the little school bus had finally crested the rise, heading off to the school in Kjálkabein, Sandoval set his coffee cup on the porch railing and appraised him. “So I don’t want to have to tell you the obvious.”
“You don’t have to,” Brian said.
“Yeah, you say that.”
“I mean it.”
“I think it might just be in my nature,” Sandoval said with a lopsided grin. “Just the kind of guy I am. A perfectionist. A control freak.”
“Well, if you have to do it, go ahead.”
“Okay. Whatever you do, Brian, don’t lose that contract.”
“I won’t, boss.” He was feeling good; for the next few hours, he had a purpose, clear and direct. Much of the previous night’s uncertainty had dissipated with the morning light.
“I’m not kidding. Lose a leg before you lose that thing.”
“There’s the love I was looking for, Mark.”
“If you can’t fax it to my publisher, just scan it and email it to me. I’ll head into town and email it tomorrow.”
They watched each other. Sandoval’s look wasn’t cold, not like the look he’d given Brian the day before, but it was still mercenary enough. Sandoval was wondering, Brian knew, if he should just go himself. But he could also see the restlessness at work inside the man: Sandoval was jittery, squinting, pacing the porch. Smoking cigarettes like a beast. He wanted to get started. He wanted to find this thing. It was possible the man truly was powered by belief.
Finally Sandoval nodded, seemingly satisfied, and picked up his coffee cup again. “Alright. I’ll start checking the perimeter of the farm. We’ll come up with some kind of mapping system when you get back. We’ve got to get the most out of the camera spacing, like you said, so we’re not pissing in the wind for a month, hoping for something in one spot when it could be two feet away. And I want to start talking to people this afternoon. Laying the groundwork, getting our faces out there.”
“Got it.”
“And keep a lookout for a car, yeah? Someone’s got to have a car for sale on this island. Christ.”
“Will do.”
And that was it. Brian, loosed upon the world with a pair of empty duffel bags crisscrossed over his shoulder and the signed contract folded in the inside pocket of his jacket. He notched the soles of his shoes in the pedals of his little bicycle and set off down the driveway, heading down the long road to Kjálkabein.
•
The dog that had chased Sandoval was not on its porch today. He saw two, three, four little villages in their radial spokes off of the main road, little stacks of buildings painted green and red and yellow and orange, nestled beneath the blue-gray eye of the mountains beyond. He thought his brain might crack open for the strangeness and beauty of it. He passed a corrugated shed with a dead pickup on cement blocks out front, the windows gone. He saw tire treads that weaved in and out along the muddy shoulder of Road Seven, and after a while he was in Kjálkabein.
•
The town was like some wonderful embattlement against the environment, he decided, against the drab featureless sky, the slate steel of the sea beyond. All the buildings color-saturated, like a refutation of the elements, the cutting wind, the inevitable long months of snow and ice and darkness. He saw things this time that he’d missed on the way to the farm when they’d used Viktor’s crude map. He saw concrete medians thronged with flowers: clusters of humming yellow jonquils, thumbings of purple wildflowers. Hardy flowers. He saw women in heavy coats as they chatted with coffee cups in their hands and pushed strollers. He saw a man in a shiny tracksuit smoking a cigar and walking a little white dog. The wide smooth streets, the traffic, the sense of compartmentalized efficiency that had always seemed to him distinctly European, even in a small town like this.
He backtracked his way to the Hotel Magnificence, which was easier than he’d thought it would be. Wheeling his bike through the lobby, he was greeted by Viktor, who looked today even more malefic and pale in his black suit. He kept smiling at Brian and smoothing down his mustache, as if he were trying to smooth out the smile itself. “Goo
d morning, my friend!”
“Hey, Viktor. You have a fax machine, don’t you?”
“Já, of course.”
Brian took the contract out of his jacket, careful to remove the paper clip. “Can you please fax this to the number right there, up top? It’s important.”
“International?”
“It’s international, yeah.”
Viktor let out a little chuff of air. The mustache-smoothing kicked up a notch. “It will cost a little more, I’m afraid.”
“I understand. Can you charge it to Mr. Sandoval’s account?”
“No problem, my friend. The bikes are working okay for you?”
Brian smiled, adjusted the duffel bags bandoliered across his chest. “It’s been fun, actually. I don’t know if Mr. Sandoval feels the same, but I’m having a blast.”
They stood there in awkward silence as the fax machine made its requisite squawks and squeals, and then Viktor handed the contract back, made a little notation to Sandoval’s account on his ancient computer.
Brian carefully put the contract back in his jacket. “Thanks. Also, I wanted to talk about renting or even buying a car, if there’s any way we can make that happen.”
“Okay, sure, sure.”
“I’m gonna go grab the rest of our stuff. We’ll be checking out today.”
“Ah, you’ll be staying at the Hauksdóttir farm. This is wonderful for you, I’m glad.” Viktor’s head bobbed like it was on a string, his grin manic. Brian decided that the kids at the farm were the least odd of the bunch he’d met so far.
He headed up the stairs to Sandoval’s room. The lights in their dusty sconces cast the hallway in a buttery, dim incandescence. His shadow was a hulking, trembling shape on the carpet.
He unlocked the door and stepped into a room full of wreckage. The stink of piss was like a fist in his face.
•
The gear had been savaged. Everything had.
Their EVP recorders had been reduced to a nimbus of plastic shards on the carpet. Husks of cracked plastic on the unmade bed turned out to be the rest of their digital cameras; the tripods had been shattered and tossed in all four corners of the room. The clothes that Sandoval had left overnight—guy had brought a nice wardrobe considering he’d mostly be sleeping outside—had been torn from the closet rod and flung around the room. Shredded. A single jacket dangled from a lone hangar.
The smell of piss was acrid, sharp, practically animal-like. They’d pissed on the carpet, the bed. Sandoval’s clothes. The gear. One dehydrated motherfucker did this, Brian thought, a hand cupping his nose. Good lord. Gingerly, his heart hammering in his chest, he tiptoed through the destruction.
He stepped into Sandoval’s bathroom, a room as rust-stained and moored in sadness as his own had been. Shower, sink, commode. Tiny inset window high up on the wall. In the tub, floating beneath a skin of water, lay a mound of papers. A manuscript. Double-spaced, 12-point type. Legible save for blurred handwritten notes in the margins. His footsteps squeaked on the floor as he bent over to see the title in the upper corner of a page.
Monsters Americana.
Some impulse drove him to touch the water, to watch his fingers break the surface. He plunged his hand into the water and pulled the plug. With a morose gurgle the pages rippled like unsettled animals at the bottom of the tub.
Suddenly he turned, convinced that someone was behind him. Spiders scurried up his spine. He slammed the bathroom door against the wall, sure he’d find someone—the person who’d broken in, or some victim grown blue and cold, someone drowned in the tub and returned to life. Something worse. But there was nothing. The door slammed, reverberated, bounced back at him. He stopped it with his foot, his mouth chalk-dry.
He stepped out of the bathroom and picked up the phone on the nightstand, half expecting it to be dead, but the tone was there. He dialed downstairs. The smell of piss was truly wretched now.
Viktor, brightly: “Já, front desk.”
Brian gave his name and room number in short clipped tones. He felt his panic give way in stitches, like fabric ripping, revealing the anger underneath. He found himself stepping toward it with something like relief. It took him a minute to figure out who the anger was for, and he was a little surprised to find that he actually was furious with the desk clerk of the Hotel Magnificence. “Viktor. You need to get up here, man.”
“Ah, Mr. Schutt, what—” on the other end of the line, Viktor made a sound like he’d just ingested a pool ball—“what can I do for you, friend?”
“Viktor. Get up here. Right now.”
8
Viktor stood in the doorway with the back of his hand pressed against his nose.
Salvaged, random pages of Monster Americana lay drying on top of the bed’s comforter as Brian blotted them with a towel. “I’m just saying, you seem pretty unsurprised.”
“What?”
“You and your nephew,” Brian said, “are the only people that know we’re here. And then this happens.” Unable to look Viktor in the eye, he still managed to say, “It’s a little fucking suspect, is all I’m saying.”
Viktor stepped into the room. “What? Us? This is a joke? All of Kjálkabein knows you are here! The American monster hunter with the scars? The writer and his—” and here he scowled and waved his hand to indicate Brian, a gesture that could mean any great number of things. “You ride those bicycles down the whole island! All along the road. Everybody knows who you are!”
“Well, I think we better call the police then.”
Viktor sighed and crossed his arms. He gently closed the door behind him. “You don’t want to call the police, Mr. Schutt.” Brian could see him start to raise his hand to his nose again, and then drop it at his side.
“I think I do, Viktor.”
“Police here, they do nothing for you.”
“I still need to call. This is screwed up. This is a crime.”
“I can offer you a slight refund, okay, a half refund, but the police . . .” He dipped his head and his voice took on a low, conspiratorial tone. “They’re very bad here. They will blame you for the robbery. They’ll say, ‘Why did you leave your room unattended all night and day?’ They will want money to take your case.”
“It wasn’t a robbery, Viktor. They didn’t take anything. They just destroyed shit. They destroyed a manuscript, Viktor. A book. Do you have any idea how much money Mark Sandoval makes on his books? We need to file a police report.” As if in agreement, some last vestige of bathwater gurgled down the drain in the bathroom. Brian looked at Viktor and Viktor looked at the carpet as if deep in thought. He endlessly smoothed those few strands of hair on his scalp with the tips of his fingers.
When he looked up, he said, “I don’t think you will be happy with this idea.”
Brian set another wet sheaf of manuscript on the bed and toed a piece of camera that lay on the carpet like a deceased pet. “Call the cops, Viktor.”
With a hiss of frustration, Viktor spun on a heel. “Fine. I will call from downstairs. Your life is your life. Squander it as you wish.”
•
He was still blotting the manuscript on the bed, placing pages upside down and willing himself not to read them—Sandoval’s unpublished manuscript felt as sacrosanct and private as his own dissertation—when someone knocked on the open door.
“Hello? Is this the right room? Ah, yes it is—the smell is quite strong, isn’t it?”
Cops everywhere were universal. The same sense of reserve, of assessment, of contained willfulness. That same sense of bravado, of implied ownership of a room. Brian had seen enough footage of enough shootings of enough unarmed children to be distrustful of cops; it was only his standard default of politeness—particularly in the face of authority—that led him to walk over and shake the officer’s hand, and he cursed himself as he did it. This one wore a dark uniform,
the sleeves of her coat lined in black and white checkers, and it gave her an air of some clownish utility. Officer of Ska, Agent of Skanking. She was heavy-boned, tall, a copper ponytail hanging behind her cap. Interesting though: No gun. No bulletproof vest. A belt on her hips held cuffs, a flashlight and a short baton, a canister of what Brian assumed was mace or pepper spray. So different, this officer, from the images of militarized cops he was inundated with in the States. “Constable Jónsdóttir,” she said. Her handshake was cool and dry.
“Brian Schutt.”
“Ah. American?” He could see the cop searching his face, the scab on his lip, the shiner around his eye grown purple and green.
“Yep.”
“Well,” she said, looking away from him and eyeing the room, “this is quite the mess here, yes?”
“It is.”
“Does this have anything to do with what happened to your face?”
“No,” Brian said. He waved a hand on front of his features, a magician doing a trick. “This happened in the US. Before I came here.”
“Okay.” Jónsdóttir pulled a notebook and pen from her jacket. “So you weren’t here when the break-in took place.”
“No.”
“The clerk says it was not your room?”
“My boss’s. We’d moved everything here overnight. I came here today to get the rest of our stuff.”
She examined the door, the doorframe. “No trouble with entry. Hmmm. They use actual keys here, not like the electronic key cards?”
“Right,” said Brian.
Jónsdóttir straightened, her eyes roving the ceiling—Brian automatically looked up as well—and then to the window, the bed. She walked into the bathroom, came back out. “The clerk says they urinated on the clothes?”