by Laird Barron
Gloria said, “Percy, want me to show you something? You should see what Terry saw…when you left him alone with us.” She bowed her neck and cupped her face. There came the cracking as of an eggshell; blood oozed through her fingers as she lifted the hemisphere of her face away from its bed. It made a viscid, sucking sound; the sound of bones scraping together through jelly. Something writhed in the hollow. While Pershing was transfixed in sublime horror, Terry slid over and patted his shoulder.
“She’s got a cruel sense of humor. Maybe you better not watch the rest.” He smiled paternally and raised what appeared to be a bouquet of mushrooms, except these were crystalline and twinkled like Christmas lights.
Violet fire lashed Pershing.
11.
In UFO abduction stories, hapless victims are usually paralyzed and then sucked up in a beam of bright light. Pershing was taken through a hole in the sub-basement foundation into darkness so thick and sticky it flowed across his skin. They did use tools on him, and, as the woman predicted, he screamed, although not much came through his lips, which had been sealed with epoxy.
An eternal purple-black night ruled the fleshy coomb of an alien realm. Gargantuan tendrils slithered in the dark, coiling and uncoiling, and the denizens of the underworld arrived in an interminable procession through vermiculate tubes and tunnels, and gathered, chuckling and sighing, in appreciation of his agonies. In the great and abiding darkness, a sea of dead white faces brightened and glimmered like porcelain masks at a grotesque ball. He couldn’t discern their forms, only the luminescent faces, their plastic, drooling joy.
We love you, Percy, the Terry-creature whispered before it rammed a needle into Pershing’s left eye.
12.
His captors dug in his brain for memories and made him relive them. The one they enjoyed best was the day of Pershing’s greatest anguish:
When Terry hadn’t returned to their impromptu campsite after ten minutes, Pershing went looking for him. The rain slashed through the woods, accompanied by gusts that snapped the foliage, caused treetops to clash. He tramped around the spring and saw Terry’s hat pinned and flapping in some bushes. Pershing began to panic. Night came early in the mountains, and if sundown found him alone and isolated… Now he was drenched as well. Hypothermia was a real danger.
He caught movement from the corner of his eye. A figure walked across a small clearing a few yards away and vanished into the underbrush. Pershing’s heart thrilled and he shouted Terry’s name, actually took several steps toward the clearing, then stopped. What if it wasn’t his friend? The gait had seemed wrong. Cripes, what if, what if? What if someone truly was stalking them? Farfetched; the stuff of late-night fright movies. But the primeval ruled in this place. His senses were tuned to a much older frequency than he’d ever encountered. The ape in him, the lizard, hissed warnings until his hackles rose. He lifted a stone from the muck and hefted it, and moved forward.
He tracked a set of muddy footprints into a narrow ravine. Rock outcroppings and brush interlaced to give the ravine a roof. Toadstools and fungi grew in clusters among beds of moss and mold. Water dripped steadily and formed shallow pools of primordial slime. There was Terry’s jacket in a wad; and ten yards further in, his pants and shirt hanging from a dead tree that had uprooted and tumbled down into the gulley. A left hiking shoe had been dropped nearby. The trail ended in a jumble of rocks piled some four or five yards high. A stream, orange and alkaline, dribbled over shale and granite. There was something about this wall of stone that accentuated his fear; this was a timeless grotto, and it radiated an ineffable aura of wickedness, of malign sentience. Pershing stood in its presence, feeling like a Neanderthal with a torch in hand, trembling at the threshold of the lair of a nameless beast.
Two figures in filthy robes stood over a third, mostly naked man, his body caked in mud and leaves. The moment elongated, stretched from its bloom in September 1973 across three and a half decades, embedded like a cyst in Pershing’s brain. The strangers grasped Terry’s ankles with hands so pale they shone in the gloom. They wore deep cowls that hid their faces…yet, in Pershing’s nightmares, that inner darkness squirmed with vile intent.
The robed figures regarded him; one crooked a long, oddly jointed finger. Then the strangers laughed—that sickening, diabolic laughter of a man mimicking a child—and dragged Terry away. Terry lay supine, eyes open, mouth slack, head softly bumping over the slimy rocks, arms trailing, limp, an inverted Jesus hauled toward his gruesome fate. They walked into the shadows, through a sudden fissure in the rocks, and were gone forever.
13.
The one that imitated Terry released him from the rack and towed him, drifting with the ungainly coordination of a punctured float, through a stygian wasteland. This one murmured to him in the fashion of a physician, a historian, a tour guide, the histories and customs of its race. His captor tittered, hideously amused at Pershing’s perception of having been cast into a subterranean hell.
Not hell or any of its pits. You have crossed the axis of time and space by means of technologies that were old when your kind yet oozed in brine. You, sweet man, are in the black forest of cosmic night.
Pershing imagined passing over a colossal reef of flesh and bone, its coils and ridges populated by incalculable numbers of horridly intelligent beings that had flown from their original planets, long since gone cold and dead, and spread implacably across the infinite cosmos. This people traveled in a cloud of seeping darkness. Their living darkness was a cancerous thing, a mindless, organic suspension fluid that protected them from the noxious light of foreign stars and magnified their psychic screams of murder and lust. It was their oxygen and their blood. They suckled upon it, and in turn, it fed upon them.
We eat our children, Terry had said. Immortals have no need for offspring. We’re gourmands, you see; and we do love our sport. We devour the children of every sentient race we metastasize to…we’ve quite enjoyed our visit here. The amenities are exquisite.
He also learned their true forms, while humanoid, were soft and wet and squirming. The human physiognomies they preferred for brief field excursions were organic shells grown in vats, exoskeletons that served as temporary camouflage and insulation from the hostile environments of terrestrial worlds. In their own starless demesne they hopped and crawled and slithered as was traditional.
Without warning, he was dropped from a great height into a body of water that bore him to its surface and buoyed him with its density, its syrupy thickness. He was overcome with the searing stench of rot and sewage. From above, someone grasped his hair and dragged him to an invisible shore.
There came a long, blind crawl through what felt like a tunnel of raw meat, an endless loop of intestine that squeezed him along its tract. He went forward, chivvied by unseen devils who whispered obscenities in his ear and caressed him with pincers and stinging tendrils, who dripped acid on the back of his neck and laughed as he screamed and thrashed in the amniotic soup, the quaking entrails. Eventually, a light appeared and he wormed his way to it, gibbering mindless prayers to whatever gods might be interested.
“It is always hot as hell down here,” Hopkins the custodian said. He perched on a tall box, his grimy coveralls and grimy face lighted by the red glow that flared from the furnace window. “There’s a metaphor for ya. Me stoking the boiler in Hell.”
Pershing realized the custodian had been chatting at him for a while. He was wedged in the corner of the concrete wall. His clothes stuck to him with sweat, the drying juices of a slaughterhouse. He smelled his own rank ammonia odor. Hopkins grinned and struck a match and lighted a cigarette. The brief illumination revealed a nearly done-in bottle of Wild Turkey leaning against his thigh. Pershing croaked and held out his hand. Hopkins chuckled. He jumped down and gave Pershing the bottle.
“Finish it off. I’ve got three more hid in my crib, yonder.” He gestured into the gloom. “Mr. 119, isn’t it? Yeah, Mr. 119. You been to hell, now ain’t you? You’re hurtin’ for certain.”
Pershing drank, choking as the liquor burned away the rust and foulness. He gasped and managed to ask, “What day is it?”
Hopkins held his arm near the furnace grate and checked his watch. “Thursday, 2:15 p.m., and all is well. Not really, but nobody knows the trouble we see, do they?”
Thursday afternoon? He’d been with them for seventy-two hours, give or take. Had anyone noticed? He dropped the bottle and it clinked and rolled away. He gained his feet and followed the sooty wall toward the stairs. Behind him, Hopkins started singing “Black Hole Sun.”
14.
As it happened, he spent the rest of the afternoon and much of the evening in an interrogation room at the police station on Perry Street. When he reached his apartment, he found Superintendent Frame had left a note on the door saying he was to contact the authorities immediately. There were frantic messages from Mel and Wanda on the answering machine wondering where he’d gone, and one from a Detective Klecko politely asking that he report to the precinct as soon as possible.
He stripped his ruined clothes and stared at his soft, wrinkled body in the mirror. There were no marks, but the memory of unspeakable indignities caused his hands to shake, his gorge to rise. Recalling the savagery and pain visited upon him, it was inconceivable his skin, albeit soiled with dirt and unidentifiable stains, showed no bruises or blemishes. He showered in water so hot it nearly scalded him. Finally, he dressed in a fresh suit and fixed a drink. Halfway through the glass he dialed the police and told his name to the lady who answered and that he’d be coming in shortly. He called Wanda’s house and left a message informing her of his situation.
The station was largely deserted. An officer on the opposite side of bulletproof glass recorded his information and asked him to take a seat. Pershing slumped in a plastic chair near a pair of soda machines. There were a few empty desks and cubicles in a large room to his left. Periodically a uniformed officer passed by and gave him an uninterested glance.
Eventually, Detective Klecko appeared and shook his hand and ushered him into a small office. The office was papered with memos and photographs of wanted criminals. Brown water stains marred the ceiling tiles and the room smelled moldy. Detective Klecko poured orange soda into a Styrofoam cup and gave it to Pershing and left the can on the edge of the desk. The detective was a large man, with a bushy mustache and powerful hands. He dressed in a white shirt and black suspenders, and his bulk caused the swivel chair to wobble precariously. He smiled broadly and asked if it was all right to turn on a tape recorder—Pershing wasn’t being charged, wasn’t a suspect, this was just department policy.
They exchanged pleasantries regarding the cooler weather, the Seattle Mariners’ disappointing season, and how the city police department was woefully understaffed due to the recession, and segued right into questions about Pershing’s tenancy at the Broadsword. How long had he lived there? Who did he know? Who were his friends? Was he friendly with the Ordbeckers, their children? Especially little Eric. Eric was missing, and Mr. Dennard could you please tell me where you’ve been the last three days?
Pershing couldn’t. He sat across from the detective and stared at the recorder and sweated. At last he said, “I drink. I blacked out.”
Detective Klecko said, “Really? That might come as a surprise to your friends. They described you as a moderate drinker.”
“I’m not saying I’m a lush, only that I down a bit more in private than anybody knows. I hit it pretty hard Monday night and sort of recovered this afternoon.”
“That happen often?”
“No.”
Detective Klecko nodded and scribbled on a notepad. “Did you happen to see Eric Ordbecker on Monday…before you became inebriated?”
“No, sir. I spent the day in my apartment. You can talk to Melvin Clayton. He lives in 23. We had dinner about five p.m. or so.”
The phone on the desk rang. Detective Klecko shut off the recorder and listened, then told whoever was on the other end the interview was almost concluded. “Your wife, Wanda. She’s waiting outside. We’ll be done in a minute.”
“Oh, she’s not my wife—”
Detective Klecko started the recorder again. “Continuing interview with Mr. Pershing Dennard…. So, Mr. Dennard, you claim not to have seen Eric Ordbecker on Monday, September 24? When was the last time you did see Eric?”
“I’m not claiming anything. I didn’t see the kid that day. Last time I saw him? I don’t know—two weeks ago, maybe. I was talking to his dad. Let me tell you, you’re questioning the wrong person. Don’t you have the reports we’ve made about weirdoes sneaking around the building? You should be chatting them up. The weirdoes, I mean.”
“Well, let’s not worry about them. Let’s talk about you a bit more, shall we?”
And so it went for another two hours. Finally, the detective killed the recorder and thanked him for his cooperation. He didn’t think there would be any more questions. Wanda met Pershing in the reception area. She wore one of her serious work dresses and no glasses; her eyes were puffy from crying. Wrestling with his irritation at seeing her before he’d prepared his explanations, he hugged her and inhaled the perfume in her hair. He noted how dark the station had become. Illumination came from the vending machines and a reading lamp at the desk sergeant’s post. The sergeant himself was absent.
“Mr. Dennard?” Detective Klecko stood silhouetted in the office doorway, backlit by his flickering computer monitor.
“Yes, Detective?” What now? Here come the cuffs, I bet.
“Thank you again. Don’t worry yourself over…what we discussed. We’ll take care of everything.” His face was hidden, but his eyes gleamed.
The detective’s words didn’t fully hit Pershing until he’d climbed into Wanda’s car and they were driving to Anthony’s, an expensive restaurant near the marina. She declared a couple of glasses of wine and a fancy lobster dinner were called for. Not to celebrate, but to restore some semblance of order, some measure of normalcy. She seemed equally, if not more, shaken than he was. That she hadn’t summoned the courage to demand where he’d been for three days told him everything about her state of mind.
We’ll take care of everything.
15.
Wanda parked in the side lot of a darkened bank and went to withdraw cash from the ATM. Pershing watched her from the car, keeping an eye out for lurking muggers. The thought of dinner made his stomach tighten. He didn’t feel well. His head ached and chills knotted the muscles along his spine. Exhaustion caused his eyelids to droop.
“Know what I ask myself?” Terry whispered from the vent under the dash. “I ask myself why you never told the cops about the two ‘men’ who took me away. In all these years, you’ve not told the whole truth to anyone.”
Pershing put his hand over his mouth. “Jesus!”
“Don’t weasel. Answer the question.”
In a gesture he dimly acknowledged as absurd, he almost broke the lever in his haste to close the vent. “Because they didn’t exist,” he said, more to convince himself. “When the search parties got to me, I was half-dead from exposure, ranting and raving. You got lost. You just got lost and we couldn’t find you.” He wiped his eyes and breathed heavily.
“You think your visit with us was unpleasant? It was a gift. Pull yourself together. We kept the bad parts from you, Percy my boy. For now, at least. No sniveling; it’s unbecoming in a man your age.”
Pershing composed himself sufficiently to say, “That kid! What did you bastards do? Are you trying to hang me? Haven’t I suffered enough to please you sickos?”
“Like I said; you don’t know the first thing about suffering. Your little friend Eric does, though.”
Wanda faced the car, folding money into her wallet. A shadow detached from the bushes at the edge of the building. Terry rose behind her, his bone-white hand spread like a catcher’s mitt above her head. His fingers tapered to needles. He grinned evilly at Pershing, and made a shushing gesture. From the vent by some diabo
lical ventriloquism: “We’ll be around. If you need us. Be good.”
Wanda slung open the door and climbed in. She started the engine and kissed Pershing’s cheek. He scarcely noticed; his attention was riveted upon Terry waving as he melted into the shrubbery.
He didn’t touch a thing at dinner. His nerves were shot—a child cried, a couple bickered with a waiter, and boisterous laughter from a neighboring table set his teeth on edge. The dim lighting was provided by candles in bowls and lamps in sconces. He couldn’t even see his own feet through the shadows when he glanced under the table while Wanda had her head turned. The bottle of wine came in handy. She watched in wordless amazement as he downed several consecutive glasses.
That night his dreams were smooth and black as the void.
16.
The calendar ticked over into October. Elgin proposed a long weekend at his grandfather’s cabin. He’d bring his latest girlfriend, an Evergreen graduate student named Sarah. Mel and Gina, and Pershing and Wanda would round out the expedition. “We all could use a day or two away from the bright lights,” Elgin said. “Drink some booze, play some cards, tell a few tales around the bonfire. It’ll be a hoot.”
Pershing would have happily begged off. He was irritable as a badger. More than ever he wanted to curl into a ball and make his apartment a den, no trespassers allowed. On the other hand, he’d grown twitchier by the day. Shadows spooked him. Being alone spooked him. There’d been no news about the missing child and he constantly waited for the other shoe to drop. The idea of running into Mark Ordbecker gave him acid. He prayed the Ordbeckers had focused their suspicion on the real culprits and would continue to leave him in peace.
Ultimately he consented to the getaway for Wanda’s sake. She’d lit up at the mention of being included on this most sacred of annual events. It made her feel that she’d been accepted as a member of the inner circle.