A Collapse of Horses

by Brian Evenson

  Yaeger’s hardly the most stable of us, he was thinking. What was Orvar doing following him down a corridor while everybody else slept? Where was the man taking him? What had Yaeger done? Who was dead? Why?

  Am I in danger? he wondered.

  Hypoxia, he thought. And then repeated, like a mantra: headache, fatigue, shortness of breath, nausea, elation. Hallucinations? What about paranoia? They were part of it too.

  He shook his head, laughed it off, continued on. Still, he was careful going around the corner, just in case. Yaeger was already at the next turn, waiting. He waved frantically at Orvar and then disappeared around it.

  Right, then right again. He’s taking me in a circle, thought Orvar.

  He began to look around for a weapon. Scooped a length of pipe off the floor, hefted it in his hand. It would do.

  He turned right, expecting to see Yaeger at the next corner. Instead the man stood hesitating at the mouth of the shaft. When he saw Orvar, he just nodded, stared pointedly at the opening.

  When Orvar approached, Yaeger pushed a flashlight at him. “Down there,” he said.

  “Who is it?” he asked.

  But Yaeger just shook his head.

  Orvar hesitated a moment, then took the flashlight. He started down. When he turned and looked back, he could see Yaeger standing there, leaning against the wall of the entrance, waiting, motionless for once.

  He moved forward, throwing the flashbeam just a little way in front of him. There was only rock, slightly discolored from the dust, shiny in some places from some vagaries in the stone or due to the way a drill bit had slipped. As his eyes adjusted, he could see a gleam that solidified to become the curve of the drill. Besides that, it was just the shaft, nothing else, nothing out of the ordinary.

  At least not at first. As he went farther, he began to see a discoloration streaked along the tunnel floor. It was hard to make sense of, initially. But then suddenly he knew it was blood.

  He reached down and ran his fingers through it where it was shiniest. Wet still, but tacky. It had begun to dry. Moving farther into the tunnel, he could see the swath of it curving around the front of the rock drill. There was more and more blood, enough that he was certain that whomever it came from was dead.

  He moved forward on the balls of his feet, pipe raised.

  Halfway around the drill he saw the man’s feet. One foot was still shod, the other bare. They rested at very different angles, as if not belonging to the same body. He went farther and saw the legs, then the man’s gashed chest. He crouched beside the corpse, steadying himself against the drill with one hand. He could smell blood and the rubber of the rock drill’s tire and the dust. All three together were somehow much worse than the smell of blood alone. The man’s throat had been slit ear to ear, the cut very deep and vicious, almost severing the head. The head, too, had been bashed in on one side, beaten until it was pulpy, bits and pieces of bone mingling with the dust. It was hard for Orvar to think of the body as human, though he knew it must be. It took him some time to recognize who it was. Wilkinson.

  He felt himself growing dizzy. He stood and took a few steps back. He closed his eyes. He only opened them upon hearing the soft footsteps behind him. He turned and saw Yaeger there, a dim ghost.

  “Did you kill him?” Orvar asked.

  Yaeger shook his head. His eyes in the darkness looked glassy, vacant. If he did kill him, thought Orvar, why would he have guided me to the body? He would have only done so if he were very clever, or quite mad.

  He cleared his throat. “There’s only one body here,” he said. “But you said ‘they.’”

  Yaeger nodded. He turned and started back up the shaft.

  This time Orvar kept pace. Yaeger did not have to turn and wait and coax him forward. He led him to the end of the shaft and then down the hall, back to the ventilation system. There, he stopped.

  For a moment Orvar didn’t see him. Or, rather, it. Yaeger was not in the right position, had stopped too soon. He stood there, waiting for Yaeger to continue forward, and when he didn’t, he came a little farther forward himself and saw the open access panel, the interior wet with blood.

  He crouched and looked in. The body had been forced clumsily up past the motor housing in such a way that it was clear its back had been broken. The throat was cut again, more jaggedly this time and not as deep. The legs seemed intact, unbroken, and the head had not been beaten. Both the eyes had been cut out. It was, he was pretty sure, Lee, the man’s gaunt face even more gaunt now that the blood had started to pool lower in the body.

  Orvar reached out and touched the body’s cheek. It felt waxy. He wasn’t sure what that told him. He reached through the access panel and took hold of the arm, bent it at the elbow. It resisted a little, and once bent stayed in the new position. That, he knew, should tell him something about how long the body had been dead.

  “Aren’t you contaminating the evidence?” asked Yaeger from behind him. It was hard not to flinch.

  “I’m trying to figure out how long he’s been dead,” he said.

  “Ah,” said Yaeger. And then, as Orvar continued to manipulate Lee’s arm, “How long has he been dead?”

  “I don’t know,” Orvar admitted reluctantly. He let go of the arm and worked his head inside the housing. With his face so close to the body, the smell was intense. He shined the flashbeam around, trying to decide if he should drag the body out and get a closer look at it.

  “Is it the same killer?” asked Yaeger.

  “Why wouldn’t it be?” asked Orvar. And then added, “How do you expect me to know?”

  “You’re in charge of security,” said Yaeger simply. “You’re the one who should know.”

  I’m the one who should know, Orvar thought. If that’s the case, then we’re in trouble, because I don’t know anything.

  “Wait here,” he told Yaeger. “I’ll be right back.”

  It took a while for Grimur to open the door. When he did he was wrapped in a blanket, his hair mussed.

  “Do you know what time it is?” asked Grimur, irritated.

  “No,” said Orvar. “Do you?”

  “Not exactly,” Grimur admitted, “but I’m certain that we both should be asleep.”

  “We have a problem,” said Orvar.

  “Besides the ventilator?”

  Orvar nodded. “Two men are dead,” he said.

  “Of what? Suicide?”

  “Someone killed them.”

  For a moment Grimur just stared at him. And then he slowly began to close the door.

  “Wait,” said Orvar, blocking the door with his foot. “Didn’t you hear what I said?”

  “I told you not to tell the men,” said Grimur. “But did you listen? No, you didn’t.”

  “This isn’t my fault,” said Orvar.

  “You’re security,” Grimur said. “It’s your fault.”

  “What should I do?”

  Grimur sighed. “Make sure nobody else gets killed.”

  “But how does that fix anything?” asked Orvar, confused.

  “What’s wrong with you?” asked Grimur. “We’re still days away from running out of oxygen. You should be thinking more clearly.”

  But maybe Grimur was the one not thinking clearly, thought Orvar. “We need to solve the murders,” he said. “They were both obsessed with the dust.”

  “The dust?” said Grimur. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “They thought the dust could think.”

  Grimur shook his head. “That’s ridiculous. How can dust think?”

  “I’m not saying it can,” said Orvar. “I’m just saying what they thought.”

  Grimur sighed, rubbed his face. “Don’t try to solve anything. You’ll just make it worse. You’re not a policeman. You’re just a glorified security guard.”

  Orvar sighed and took his foot out of the door.

  “On the plus side,” said Grimur, “whether my calculations were right or not, now we have plenty of air.” He s
hut the door.

  ...

  Yes, thought Orvar on his way back, there was that. Two people dead meant enough air. They had nothing to worry about now. They would reach the stage where they had headaches perhaps, but surely they would be rescued before they started hallucinating. Or before the worst hallucinations, anyway.

  Sometimes it felt as if he was living through something he had lived through before. What kind of luck did you have to have to twice end up in a situation where there wasn’t enough oxygen to go around? What was wrong with him?

  He was still puzzling out that question when he reached the entrance to the sleeping quarters. Yaeger was waiting there for him.

  “Do you know who did it?” he asked.

  Orvar shook his head. “I thought I told you to wait with Lee.”

  “You need help to sort it all out,” said Yaeger.

  “I’m not supposed to sort it out.”

  Yaeger’s arms suddenly stopped moving. “Why not?”

  “They’ll be here soon,” he said. “When they arrive they’ll have someone trained to do that sort of thing. A proper investigator.”

  “Will they?” asked Yaeger. “In my experience they don’t.”

  Orvar shrugged. “That’s what Grimur claims.”

  Yaeger nodded. “Won’t the evidence be lost by then?”

  “I don’t know,” said Orvar. “Maybe.”

  “There’s a killer here. Right now. What about that?”

  “I’ll keep there from being more killings,” said Orvar. “That’s something I’m supposed to do.”

  Yaeger opened his mouth and then closed it. Finally he opened it again. “Don’t you think,” he said, “that the only way to stop the killings is to catch the killer?”

  The remaining men were huddled inside, talking. When he came in they stopped and then, tentatively, began asking the same questions as Yaeger. Who had done it? Why? How did he plan to catch them? Orvar answered evasively. There was, he realized now, no advantage to suggesting that he would not even try to solve the murders.

  “Shouldn’t we move the bodies?” asked Jansen.

  Orvar shook his head. “Not until they’ve been thoroughly investigated.”

  “When will that be?” asked Jansen.

  Orvar shrugged. “When the ship gets here.”

  “And how do you advise us to avoid being killed?” asked Gordon.

  “Stick together,” Orvar said. “Always be in a group. That’s the only way to be sure to stay alive.”

  V.

  And yet Orvar was one of the first to break with that advice, choosing to patrol the halls alone before returning to bed. What did he hope to find? There was only Grimur plus the five men plus himself—he wasn’t going to suddenly discover a new person he could blame the killings on. No, it had to be one of them. Everyone was a suspect. The only thing he knew was that it wasn’t him.

  Even Yaeger, despite the fact that he’d drawn Orvar’s attention to the murders, could have done it. Showing Orvar the bodies could have been a ploy.

  So, paranoia after all, whether the oxygen was depleting or no. And, of course, to the others he was a suspect. Perhaps they would believe that was why he wasn’t investigating the murders: because he had committed them.

  It would make for a difficult few weeks. But there was nothing to be done. They just had to hold on until they were rescued.

  He reached the shaft, paused, then followed it down, despite knowing what he would see. It was strange to move down past the drill with the body already looming up in his mind before it began to actually appear. He saw at first the spattering of blood, dry now, duller than before. The body was just a little farther in than he remembered. He shone the light on it, regarded it. It looked just like it had before. Why am I here? he wondered. What am I hoping to accomplish?

  He didn’t know. He stared at the body for some time, trying to fix it in his mind. Did that qualify as evidence? Did it preserve anything? Would it be useful to whoever actually did try to solve the crime?

  He didn’t know.

  He examined the other body again too, the way it was crammed up along the housing of the ventilator motor. It must have been hard to get it up there, he thought, must have required a certain amount of strength. Who was strong enough? Again, he didn’t know. Maybe any of them. But maybe not. Likely the crew working in the shaft—they were used to physical labor. Those testing the samples: maybe, maybe not.

  He had to aim the flashlight at just the right angle to get a clear view. Again, he tried to fix the body in his mind. He wasn’t sure what he was accomplishing, but it felt better to be doing something.

  He expected to see Yaeger in the halls but didn’t. He wasn’t in the bunkroom either. Orvar went around a second time but still didn’t find him. Perhaps they just kept on missing one another. Or maybe he was talking to Grimur, or deliberately hiding. Orvar didn’t know what, if anything, he should do to find Yaeger, and so he ended up doing nothing.

  Back in the bunkroom, the remaining men had left their huddle and moved back to their own beds. They were either asleep or pretending to be. He made sure they were all there: Jansen, Lewis, Durham, Gordon. Still no Yaeger.

  Jansen’s eyes were slightly open; Orvar could see them shining in the darkness.

  “Seen Yaeger?” whispered Orvar.

  Jansen propped himself up in his bed, shook his head. “He wasn’t with you?” he whispered.

  Orvar shook his head, drifted back to his own bunk. He stood there for a moment, hesitating, then sat down. He considered his mental pictures of the bodies. Something was troubling him about one of them, but before he could determine what, Jansen was there beside him.

  “Shouldn’t you be out looking for him?” he asked.

  “I’ve already looked,” Orvar said.

  “Did Yaeger do it?”

  “Do what?”

  “Kill them,” said Jansen. “Lee and Wilkinson.”

  “Yaeger?” said Orvar, surprised. “No, I don’t think so.”

  “He has an alibi?”

  “An alibi? No, not exactly.”

  “Then you can’t rule him out?”

  “No,” said Orvar, slowly. “I can’t rule him out. To be honest, I can’t rule anybody out.”

  “Not even me?”

  “Not even you.”

  “I didn’t do it,” said Jansen.

  “Go to sleep, Jansen,” said Orvar.

  “If I do,” asked Jansen, “how do I know I’m going to wake up alive?”

  The air felt close, too tight in Orvar’s throat. In the dark he listened to the sound of his own breathing, imagining his lungs filling with dust. Perhaps Yaeger was the killer. Or perhaps it was one of the others. Or perhaps, somehow, the dust itself. He had a vague sense of being on the verge of choking. Falling asleep felt a little like drowning.

  VI.

  He awoke feeling he had heard something but was not quite sure what. His head ached, flaring a bright line of pain. Some of the others were stirring as well. Gordon’s bed was empty.

  He sat up and pulled his boots on.

  “What is it?” asked one of the dark shapes around him. Jansen, probably.

  “I don’t know,” said Orvar. “I thought I heard something.”

  “Wait,” said Lewis, a little panicked. “We’ll come with you.”

  But he was already in the hall. A noise, a loud one: that was what had woken him up. Unless he’d dreamed it.

  Out in the hall, he began to faintly smell cordite. So, not a dream. He made his way down the hall in one direction until he realized the smell seemed to be growing fainter, then he backtracked. The others were now clustered in the doorway.

  “What is it?” Jansen asked again.

  “Gunshot,” he said simply, then kept going.

  Gordon or Yaeger, he thought. Those were the only options. All the others had been in the bunkroom. Either Yaeger shooting Gordon or Gordon killing Yaeger. Or one or the other of them killing Grimur.

&nb
sp; He took a turn and threaded his way through a stack of boxes. Had they been arranged like that before? He was already past when he realized what he’d glimpsed and went back. There, stuffed upright in the middle, was a body. Its face was pushed against the wall; he couldn’t see clearly who it was.

  “Hello?” he heard a voice call from down the hall. “Who’s there?”

  He pulled himself back behind a box, heart pounding. “Gordon?” he called out. “Is that you?”

  “Orvar?” said the voice. “Is that you?”

  He heard the sound of approaching footsteps. He tensed, waiting.

  “I thought I heard a shot,” said the voice, closer now. “Where are you? It’s me. Grimur.”

  And yes, he realized, it was Grimur—he should have recognized the voice right away. He stepped out to meet him.

  “Did you fire a shot?” asked Grimur.

  “Somebody did,” said Orvar.

  “It wasn’t you? You’re the only one with a gun.”

  Orvar shook his head. “My gun’s gone missing,” he said.

  Grimur frowned. “Some security officer you are,” he said. “Who has it?”

  “I don’t know,” Orvar admitted. “Yaeger, probably. Unless that’s Yaeger there.” He gestured between the boxes where the body was. “If so, then it’d be Gordon.”

  Grimur came closer, squinted. “Shit,” he said. “Is that a corpse?”

  Instead of answering, Orvar started moving boxes. For a moment the corpse balanced there, leaning against the wall, then it slowly spun and toppled, fell to the floor. There was no gun in the gap, despite the blood spatter against the wall. Definitely not a suicide.

  “That’s Gordon,” said Grimur.

  “Then Yaeger has my gun,” said Orvar.

  “How the hell did you let Yaeger get hold of your gun?”

  “He took it, somehow. Without me realizing,” said Orvar.

  “Why are you brushing your arms like that?” asked Grimur.

  “What?” said Orvar. Surprised, he looked down at his moving hands. “It’s this goddamn dust. It sticks to everything,” he said. “It’s like it’s alive.”

  Grimur shook his head. “It’s just dust,” he said.

  “How do you know?” asked Orvar. His voice was getting louder. He was helpless to stop it. “How can you be sure it’s not doing something to us?”