Occultation and Other Stories

by Laird Barron

  Gasping and sobbing, Katherine shoved him until he rolled over. She frantically looked around, but Mr. Lang was nowhere to be seen. Her chest squeezed so tight her vision twinkled with motes and stars. Then, the urge to pee came over her. She was terrified to walk across the floor and into the pit of darkness that was the bathroom.

  She lay awake, curled tight as a spring until morning light slowly pushed the shadows away and into the corners of the room. By then she’d half convinced herself Mr. Lang’s appearance was that of an apparition. She chuckled wryly: What if Sonny’s pentagram had kept them safe?

  7.

  Good as his word, following breakfast Mr. Prettyman gathered a party, which included Mr. Cockrum and his girlfriend Evelyn Fabini, and squired his guests around the expansive property on foot. The morning was damp. Golden light fell over the leaves and grass. It was a hushed and sacred moment before reaping-time. The world was balanced on the edge of a scythe.

  Mr. Lang, accompanied by a scruffy field hand type, shadowed them. Katherine’s flesh crawled and she endeavored to walk so one or more of her companions blocked Mr. Lang’s view of her backside. On several instances she’d begun to broach the subject of the man’s intrusion into their bedroom, but Sonny ignored her this morning, submerged in one of his moods. He wouldn’t have believed her anyway. She took her fair share of pills and that wasn’t something he let her forget. The accident had destroyed his trust in her judgment, perhaps her rationality.

  Their tour skirted the outlying forest. Katherine, a veteran hiker, was nonetheless impressed with the girth of the trees, the brooding darkness that lurked within their confines. Periodically, well-beaten paths diverged and disappeared into the dripping trees. Mr. Prettyman led them past a tract of stone bungalows and into a cluster of decrepit outbuildings. The distillery was in the middle stages of collapse, its equipment quietly rusting amidst the rye and blackberry brambles. A stream clogged with brush gurgled nearby. He claimed that one of the state’s only functioning windmills, a stone and timber replica of the famous Dutch models, had long dominated the rolling fields. Storms destroyed it decades prior, but its foundation could probably still be located should an intrepid soul assay chopping back mountains of scotch broom and weedy sycamore.

  It had grown hot. She stared into the distance where the tall grass had begun to turn yellow and brown, and felt an urge to fly pell-mell into the field and roll in the grass, to burrow and hide in the soft, damp earth, to stare at the sky through a secret lattice.

  “What’s that?” asked Ms. Fabini, Mr. Cockrum’s pale young mistress. “Over there.”

  Katherine had previously noted a copse of rather deformed oak trees that crowned a low rise in the otherwise flat field. She counted five trees, each heavily entwined in hawthorn bushes to roughly waist height. The thorn bushes made a sort of arched entrance to the hollow interior. Shadows and foliage obscured what appeared to be large pieces of statuary.

  Mr. Prettyman said, “Ah, that would be one of several pagan shrines scattered across this region. They’re no secret, but we keep mention of them to a minimum. The edification of our esteemed guests is one thing. Wouldn’t do to stir up a swarm of crass tourists, on the other hand.”

  “Of course, of course, my good man,” Mr. Cockrum said, to which the rest of the party members added their semi-articulate concurrence.

  “Indian totems?” Mr. Woodruff asked, shading his eyes. “Shall we nip over and take a closer look?”

  “Celtic,” Sonny said.

  “Quite right,” Mr. Prettyman said. “You’ve done your homework. The details are sketchy, but Mr. Welloc and those of his inner circle imported various art objects from Western Europe and installed them in various places—some obvious, others not so. Allegedly, this piece was recovered in Wales.”

  “In other words, robbed from the peasants,” Mr. Cockrum said to his girlfriend from behind his hand.

  They filed into the copse where it was cool and dim.

  “My word,” Mr. Woodruff said.

  The stone effigy of a muscular humanoid with ram horns reared some eight or so feet and canted sharply to one side. It radiated an aura of unspeakable antiquity, its features eroded, its form shaggy with moss that issued from countless fissures. Pieces of broken masonry jutted from the bed of dead leaves at the statue’s foot—the remnants of a marble basin lay shattered and corroded. Even in its ruin, Katherine recognized the sacrificial altar for what it was. Heat and chill cycled through her. Blue sky peeped through a notch in the canopy and it seemed alien.

  “Exactly like the painting,” Sonny said, his voice hushed.

  “It’s…ghastly,” Ms. Fabini said, white-gloved hand fluttering near her mouth as she stared in awe and horror at the statue’s prodigious endowment.

  “Oh, honey, control yourself.” Cockrum squatted to examine the base of the statue, which had sunk to its calves in the dark earth. Sonny joined him, dusting here and there in a fruitless search for an inscription. From Kat’s vantage, their heads obscured the Goat Lord’s genitals. It struck her as a disquieting tableaux and without thinking, she raised her camera and snapped a picture an instant before they rose, dusting off their hands.

  Katherine toed the ashes of a small fire pit, stirred sand and charred bits of bone. She said to Mr. Prettyman, “Who comes here? Besides your guests.”

  “Only guests. No one else is permitted access to the property.” Mr. Prettyman stood beside her. He’d tied his long, white hair in a ponytail. It matched the severity of his expression. “There are those who pay for the privilege of borrowing the shrine. They hold services, observe vigils.”

  “You find it distasteful,” she said.

  He laughed coldly. “I understand the will to madness that is faith.”

  “You say they imported this from Wales.”

  “Yes, from a ruined temple.”

  “But, isn’t this a pagan god. It resembles—”

  “Old Nick. Of course. Don’t you suppose The Prince of Darkness transcends religion? The true Man of a Thousand Faces. He’s everywhere, no matter what one may call him.”

  “Or nowhere,” she said.

  “Ah. You have a scientific mind.”

  “What’s left of it. Not much room for superstition.”

  “He doesn’t require much,” Mr. Prettyman said. “A fly will lay eggs on the smallest morsel.”

  8.

  They lay in bed in the darkness of their small Pasadena home. He spooned her, his arm across her shoulder. The weight of his arm used to be a comfort; now it frightened her somehow. She knew he was awake because he wasn’t snoring. A fan revolved somewhere above them. The room broiled. Her skin was cold and slick. She trembled.

  Katherine?

  She held her breath, waiting for his hand to slide from her breast to her belly, to push her legs apart and begin stroking her pussy. This was how it started, if it started at all. The hairs on her neck stood and she felt sick, flush with precognition that sent a wave of queasiness through her.

  Did you do it on purpose? His whisper came low and harsh. It might’ve been the voice of a perfect stranger.

  She cried then. Her entire body shook, wracked with shame and grief and guilty terror. His hand fell from her and he began to snore.

  9.

  It wasn’t a bad week. Sonny drank more than usual, which worried her at first. This seemed to improve his mood, however. Between his daylong excursions into the countryside and midnight sessions poring over the archaic tomes by candlelight in the far corner of the suite, he was utterly preoccupied. He acted euphoric, which was his custom when approaching the solution to some particularly thorny problem. He kissed her gently in the morning before his departure, and when they shared dinners on the deck overlooking the valley, he was absentminded, yet sweet. She warmed to her independence, lounging with a book in the shade of the yard trees, walking the grounds as she pleased, hopping rides with Mr. Cockrum and Ms. Fabini for daytrips into town.

  One late morning, she
and Ms. Fabini contrived to ditch Mr. Cockrum when he nipped into the Haymaker Tavern to slum with the plebeians. The women explored, although there wasn’t much to see after one had taken in the Main Street shops and the museum. The abbreviated center of town lay cupped by gently rising hillsides. Industry was relegated to the eastern edge, beyond the deep, quick waters of Belson creek, where dwelt the junkyards, auto shops, tattoo parlors, taverns, and the brewery, a monument which had been installed shortly after the end of Prohibition. Most everything else had withered on the vine over the years, leaving a series of darkened warehouses, the shuttered bulk of an old mill, and a defunct textile factory. These last loomed in steadfast isolation like headstones.

  Ms. Fabini spotted a decent antique shop and they spent an hour browsing through Depression-era furniture and bric-a-brac. Katherine had wandered into a cluttered aisle in a gloomy corner of the shop when she came across several framed photographs taken in the late 1800s. Most were bubbled and faded, but one stood in stark contrast, albeit yellow at the edges. A group of men in greatcoats and dusters stood around a wagon freighted with hay. The farmers were stoic as per the custom of pioneer America; even the youngest of them wore a thick, handlebar mustache. A blot of discoloration caught her glance. A person lay in the shadows beneath the wagon axle and leered between wheel spokes at the photographer, at her. She recognized the face.

  10.

  Katherine went for a stroll along the grounds in the afternoon. She reached the second gate and kept walking, kept treading the path until she’d come to the bungalows, all of them locked, drapes drawn tight; a cluster of family tombs.

  Mr. Lang reclined in a wicker chair on the grass. He set a bottle of beer on the table near his elbow. “Hello,” he said. His smile was insolent.

  She hesitated, then walked directly to his chair and stood nearly looming over him, fists set into her hips. “What do you want?”

  “I live here.”

  “This one?” She gestured.

  “The Goat’s Head Bungalow,” he said. His face was a dark moon. “Thinking of dropping in for a beer later?”

  “No, Mr. Leng—”

  “Lang. Call me Derek.”

  “I want you to stay far away from us, Mr. Lang. I don’t like you.”

  Mr. Lang raised an eyebrow and took a pull from his beer. “Yesterday your husband went into the country to a farm I told him about. He bought himself a cute little nanny goat. Pure, virginal white. Paid me a hundred bucks to help him smuggle the critter onto the property. We took the goat to that shrine in the field. Man, that’s one nasty dagger your husband’s got. Said he picked it up in India from some real live cultist types. Some screws rattling around in there, you ask me.”

  She stared, dumbfounded. He’s not lying. Sweet baby Jesus, he’s not lying.

  “I charged him an extra c-note to dump the goat in the woods. I’ve done it before for a few other wackos—usually cats and rabbits, but hey.”

  “Screw you. Jesus, you’re insane. You’d best stay clear of us.” She hoped she sounded brave. She wanted to vomit. Goddamn you, Sonny.

  “If you say so. I’m not the one slaughtering farm animals to get his kicks.”

  “I should march right into Mr. Prettyman’s office and tell him what kind of psycho he’s turned loose on the public.”

  “Should you?”

  “Yeah. We’ll see how smug you are when you’re sent packing.”

  “And I should be reporting your husband.”

  That stopped her in her tracks. “About what? The goat? Go to hell. We’re leaving on Monday. Frankly, it suits me if we blow this freak circus a couple of days early.”

  Mr. Lang’s smile faded. He said with mock gravity, “Interesting hobby he’s got, hiking in the hills, digging up things that don’t belong to him. Probably thinks he hit the mother lode. I could just shoot him. The sheriff would thank me.”

  “What? No. Sonny doesn’t… He takes notes for his articles. Sketches, sometimes. That’s it.” Her guts felt like they were sliding toward her shoes.

  “That’s it? That’s all?”

  “Yeah. Just sketches.” She bit her lip until sparks shot through her vision and her eyes watered.

  “Oh.” He nodded as if her explanation was eminently reasonable. “You’re a funny one, Mrs. Reynolds. Give me these come-hither looks all week, and now you get coy.”

  “You’re deluded. Frankly, I can’t believe you dare to threaten my husband. Mr. Prettyman will—”

  “I know you,” Mr. Lang said. “I check all the guests. That’s my hobby.”

  She breathed heavily, her lungs thick as wet cotton. “You’re a peeping Tom, too.”

  “You were in the papers. The Associated Press. You’re kind of famous, Mrs. R.”

  “What’s wrong with you?”

  “With me? With me, you ask.” He chuckled, a soft wheeze that originated from the depths of him. “They let you walk. We’re so sympathetic these days. Throw your baby off a bridge and everybody gives you a hug and sends get well cards. So, Kat. Are you well? Those doctors fix your poor brain? Do those plainclothes detectives still follow you around, watching to see what ‘that crazy Reynolds woman’ is going to do next?”

  She gagged on her tongue, choked when she tried to speak.

  “Okay, darling. I’m not completely heartless. A cool grand, I forget to mention your hubby’s hijinks to the good sheriff. Hell, bring it over personally and I’ll take half in trade.”

  Her arm swung wide, as if connected to someone else, and her fist crashed into his mouth. He slumped, arms hanging slack, as she stumbled backward. Blood dribbled over his chin. His sides shook and that wheezing laughter followed her as she lifted her skirt and fled.

  Katherine made it to the suite. She leaned over the toilet and dry heaved. Her knuckles bled where she’d sliced them against Mr. Lang’s teeth. Numbly, she washed her hand and pressed a washcloth against the cuts until the bleeding stopped. Christ, what now? What am I going to tell Sonny? Who knew what Sonny would do. He’d probably accuse her of leading the bastard on. Not that he’d say it aloud. His disgusted expression would do the talking. She was the millstone around his neck. Why, oh why don’t you just leave? Why not fuck your secretary, why not run away with one of those nubile coeds who are eager to throw themselves at you? Surely you could knock up one of those bitches and solve all of our problems.

  A better question might be: If she must stay, why not have an affair of her own? Mr. Lang’s bloody grin flickered in her mind and she realized her left hand had drifted to her inner thigh, that her fingers stroked softly, almost imperceptibly. “Oh, my God,” she said, and jerked her hand away. Her face burned.

  She collapsed into a chair near the window. The light shifted to orange. A breeze swirled the leaves of the magnolias. What she saw then, with pitiless clarity, was an overpass, a woman carrying a pink bundle above a stream of headlights. The woman’s face was blank and cold as plaster. The woman opened her arms. “Yes. I think I did it on purpose,” she said to the empty room, and wished she had a gun to put against her head.

  11.

  Sonny stumbled in well after dark. He’d been clambering through hill and dale by the look of him—his hair was mussed, pine needles and leaves clung to his jacket, gathered in the cuffs of his muddy pants. He said hello and began to undress. Katherine still sat in the oversized chair in the gloom. She turned on the lamp so they could see one another. He glanced at her hand without comment and tossed his clothes in a pile near the foot of the bed.

  “Sonny?”

  “Yeah?” He regarded himself in the mirror. “Did you do anything today?”

  “I walked around. Read a bit.” They’d been sharing a couple of the amusing potboilers from the reading shelves in the lodge’s den. Sonny had been pleased to discover titles by Machen and Le Fanu among the dreck.

  “That’s nice.”

  “Find anything?”

  He shook his head. He rubbed his arm where a bruise flowered, dark a
nd angry. “It’s like a jungle. Thorns everywhere. I could spend a whole summer in there with a chainsaw and not find anything. Sheesh.”

  “Oh?”

  He smiled briefly and took off his watch and set it on the dresser.

  “Sonny.”

  “Hmm?”

  “You’re being careful.” When he didn’t answer, she cleared her throat. “No one’s following you, or anything. You’d know, wouldn’t you?”

  “I’m just taking pictures.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  He walked into the bathroom and the shower started.

  12.

  Sonny had tried to summon the Devil once. He’d drawn a complicated pentagram in the basement, lit some candles and slaughtered a stray cat with a ceremonial dagger. Satan was lord of all flesh; pay Him some blood and maybe He’d give them the means to make a child. It was the kind of stunt dumb, oversexed teenagers pulled to impress their friends and scare themselves. Sonny admitted such rituals were essentially powerless; on the other hand, mind over matter—spiritual placebo—was another beast entirely. She’d almost left him then. Only her numb guilt, her essential apathy kept her yoked to him. Later, she stayed because at its worst, their relationship made her a flagellant, made her a worthy penitent.

  It all started innocently enough.

  In high school and college Katherine had played with tarot cards and Ouija boards—the weird roommate with the weirder off-campus-friends syndrome. Drink a bit of wine, take a few hits and the next thing she knew she’d be having an unexpected quasi-lesbian experience, or would find herself smack in the middle of an amateur thaumaturgy session, or, on one infamous Halloween night, a botched séance. When she’d first dated Sonny it came as no surprise he dabbled in native rituals; this was his area of expertise. One didn’t keep a stack of books on the nightstand such as the ubiquitous The Golden Bough, The Key of Solomon, and treatises by Agrippa, Bruno, and Mathers among a host of others, without dipping one’s toe in on occasion. They practiced feng shui after a half-assed fashion; it was all the rage with their post-college associates like so many Westerners’ fleeting dalliances with Buddhism and Kabala. Nothing serious; more a casual pastime akin to some couples’ weekend canasta games. And if Sonny happened to study what he called “hoodoo” to a great degree, that was because his job depended on the research.