Occultation and Other Stories

by Laird Barron

  This disquiet, this aura of strangeness, permeated the entire northern sector of the range. The patterns were off, the behaviors of fauna uncharacteristic. The other day a hawk fell from the sky, stone dead. He’d seen gophers curled up in the middle of a field, oblivious; a murder of crows had slipped from hidden roosts and followed him for several kilometers as he scouted the surroundings. The birds swooped and circled in utter silence. The preceding CSI team had witnessed even more disturbing things—a pack of coyotes sitting patiently beyond the campsite, and a black bear that watched from the cover of a juniper. After a couple of days stalking them, the bear walked right into camp, grabbed one of the techs by the arm, and tried to drag him away. They shot it and sent its head to the lab. The CSI team decided it must be rabid. No rabies, though. Just a fat and healthy five-year-old boar with devilry on its mind. And that’s why he carried a rifle.

  The canyon wasn’t far. Its jagged walls averaged a height of ten meters. A stream trickled along its floor where squirrels and mice nested in the heavy clusters of brush; numerous bird species, including thrush, gray catbirds, and canyon wren, occupied the mossy crevices above. Red-tail hawks and great horned owls hunted the area.

  He picked his way through the boulders and alder snags. Sunlight was blocked by the narrow walls and overhanging bushes. It was cold. The open range, its long sweeps of baked dirt, seemed a world removed as he traveled farther into the shadows. He carried the rifle in his right hand, against his hip. He would’ve been happier with a shotgun in the brush where matters could escalate in seconds. There was no bear sign—and he’d been most scrupulous in ascertaining that detail. Still, he couldn’t shake his unease. He’d noted it from day one, put it down to heebie-jeebies from the stories in the paper, the briefings and the short film recovered from Site 3. After all that, he went to a bar and drank the better part of a bottle of Maker’s Mark, as if that might obliterate what he’d seen. Site 3 lay a kilometer west where the foothills verged on mountainous. The forensics people referred to the area as The Killing Grounds. The excavation had dragged on for three weeks and the teams only verified the presence of half a dozen bodies. The forensics experts estimated more, probably many more, victims had decomposed beyond detection, much less retrieval. Eleven sites total, but the economy was crashing like the Hindenburg and the state was too broke to keep digging. He thought maybe afraid to keep digging was closer to the truth.

  He’d left a pair of cameras trained on a small pool. There were significant animal signs in the immediate vicinity—they’d captured footage of mice and birds, and a bobcat on its nightly prowl. The bobcat sat there by the water, its eyes shiny and strange, and finally it zeroed in on the second camera, which was fairly well camouflaged, and stared—stared for exactly eleven minutes until the machine clicked off. He could only speculate how long the cat waited in the dark. Then he thought of the bear and tightened his grip on the rifle.

  When he reached the covert, the cameras were missing.

  He arrived home after dark, and she had indeed locked the hatch. He knocked and she let him in anyway. The central space, their work area, was lighted by the warm, mellow glow of three accent lamps she stowed in her luggage. Fluorescent lighting made her edgy—she claimed to have suffered a near breakdown during an expedition into a remote region of the Pyrenees.

  He unpacked the cassettes and piled them on her desk for processing. Processing film was her main task, although as a geologist with specialties in zoology and insect ecology, it likely chafed. As the amount of data to sift was paltry thus far, she spent a portion of her days investigating the immediate environs. She showed him one of a series of jars she’d collected that afternoon.

  —Even the insects are acting weird, she said. She slowly turned the jar, and the wasps slid across its killing floor, wings fluttering. The glass stifled their complaints, a ghostly buzzing.

  —How weird are they?

  —Completely, totally fucked up.

  He considered mentioning the missing cameras. The idea dissolved even as it formed. —How so?

  —Their hive is in the trees south of here. Huge sucker. Cecidostiba semifascia crawling everywhere. On the trees, the bushes, all over the ground. Thousands and thousands. Millions. It’s like a nest of driver ants exploded. None of them fly. Scores were clumping together and dropping to the ground, like ripe apples. So creepy.

  —What the hell is that about? he said.

  —Beats me, man. It only gets screwier.

  —Wonderful.

  —When I first started watching, I was repulsed. Recalling them squirming over each other kind of sickens me too. Only thing is—for a few minutes, all that discomfort morphed into…well, fascination. I was—Christ, how do I explain. I was attracted to the scene. Being a passive observer wasn’t enough. Suddenly, I had to participate in the, well, in the whatever thing these insects were doing. Goddamned orgy. I scooped a whole bunch of them into the specimen jars…and then….

  He leaned into the counter. The rhythm of her voice enervated him. He said, —What did you do?

  —Man, I sat down at the edge of their swarm. The fuckers started climbing on me. They found pant openings, cuffs, my collar, and crawled inside, got tangled in my hair. I had to pinch my nose to block them, close my mouth to keep them out.

  —Hmm, he said.

  —I should’ve been stung to death. She pressed her cheek to the jar and tilted it so the wasps seemed to spill over her eye. Her hand shook. —Then, it was getting dark. Cold. They peeled from me, crawled away to their tree, the hive. Some just burrowed into the pine needles. Pretty soon, every last one was gone. The enormity of the situation hit me. I ran the whole way back here.

  He watched her play with the jar until she set it aside and stuck her hands into the pockets of her coat. He said, —I’m going to make myself a sandwich. Want me to open you a can of something?

  —Peanut butter crackers, she said.

  —We’ve Spam, and more Spam.

  —We don’t have peanut butter?

  —You gobbled up the bucket. I don’t think HQ could’ve anticipated your peanut butter fetish.

  —Spam and crackers. There’s another thing.

  —The wasps aren’t enough?

  —I’ve heard knocking on the hatch. Two nights this week. Woke me from a dead sleep. Very soft, kind of tapping. Yeah, probably my imagination. Only problem with that is, I know what knuckles on metal sound like.

  —Okay, he said, rolling his eyes.

  —Oh, yeah? I’m not an idiot.

  —I’ll reserve judgment until we check the perimeter footage. Somebody’s sneaking around, we’ll see.

  They didn’t screw, which initially was a bit of a surprise to him until he heard her vibrator buzzing one night. Their sexual rift was acceptable —some of her kinks unnerved him. So he fiercely masturbated to images of early Playmate-era Shannon Tweed, and fell asleep.

  He dreamed of his fellow scientist sitting lotus style among the torpid wasps. Her jumpsuit was dark with them. The sun hid behind the mountains and stained the sky a rich red that was almost black—the color that wells from a deep wound. The red light spattered her, dripped from her. She began stuffing handfuls of wasps into her mouth.

  He awoke and lay on his cot, overcome by a sense of claustrophobia. Horrors skittered and scuttled at the fringes of his consciousness, feverish impressions that afflicted children with a fear of the dark. He listened to her working on the other side of the thin fabric wall. She clicked steadily at a keyboard and the dim, blue light from her monitor flickered on his ceiling.

  She gasped, and said, —Holy shit. What the fuck.

  He almost rose, almost went into the other room to ask what she’d seen. Another wave of weariness bore down upon him and his eyelids fluttered, and he was gone again, falling into a sea of red.

  In the morning he made good on his promise to troll for suspicious activity on the tapes. There was nothing, of course.

  He darted a mule deer and tag
ged it with a GPS chip. That was the most excitement he’d had since his arrival, and it was short lived. Within hours, the deer traveled deeper into the hills beyond his research radius. He waited three days and then moved the cameras at the den to sector C1, a prairie rife with rabbits and groundhogs. The backbreaking job left him caked in dirt and exhausted. He returned to the module and fixed a huge meal, chewed aspirin, and drank a quart of water. He sprawled on the floor, dressed in shorts, feet propped on a chair.

  She said, —What’s it called when you can’t remember if you dreamed an event, or if it actually happened?

  —Crazy?

  —Yesterday I was lying in the hammock—

  —I saw you’d strung one over there by that fir. Must be nice to have free time. I’ll think of you whenever I’m travois-ing three hundred pounds of shit across the rocks.

  —No, no, I’ll be swinging in my hammock thinking of you, she said. —I made myself a pitcher of pink lemonade. Yummy.

  —There you were, lying naked in your hammock—

  —Sure, why not? There I was, sipping lemonade, watching the clouds, and someone called my name. I almost peed myself. Probably for the best I don’t pack heat—I’d have blasted the living crap outta some bushes.

  —If you thought the bushes were talking to you, I think we should analyze the lemonade.

  —I’m telling you, somebody stage-whispered my name from behind a juniper. Heard it clear as can be. I sort of froze, not quite accepting the situation. Of course it occurred to me you were playing one of your practical jokes. I also knew in the next instant it wasn’t. This was way different. It didn’t sound friendly, either. Whoever it was snickered.

  —Are you kidding? You thought it was me? I’m hurt.

  —For a second or two. Who else? Don’t get your nose out of joint.

  —It’s a common phenomenon, the phantom voice. That’s your subconscious looking for attention. Happened to me a lot when I got rummy, scrunched into a blind or tree stand. Get tired enough, you see and hear things that aren’t there.

  —But, I’m not tired.

  —Yeah, however, we are isolated. Like I said, the mind gets bored and plays games. Don’t sweat it too much.

  She said, —I had another dream last night.

  —A wet one?

  —Don’t be nasty. Yeah, okay, maybe. The other one—not so nice. It was sunset. Just about the most hideous redness covered everything. Made my eyes hurt. The light seeped from the sky, cracks in the earth, until I couldn’t see anything but shadows and blurry outlines of figures. People sort of appeared and gathered around me. Maybe they weren’t human.

  —It being a dream, he said.

  —My God, you are a jerk. I hate smug guys.

  —If you were a model you could file that under turnoffs: smug guys!

  —I was a model.

  —Really?

  —No. My sister was, though. I’m way better looking than her.

  —Meh, you’re all right. Your teeth are too big.

  —Jerk, jerk, jerk! Why did I say yes to this stupid assignment?

  —The obvious answer would be…

  —Grow up. We had a thing and so what? I bet you’ve humped a half-dozen sleazy little bitches since we called it quits.

  —At least.

  —At least?

  —I lost count after ten.

  —That’s a hell of a lot of money to blow on whores, so to speak. Besides, you’re a liar. I doubt half your stories come close to the dreary, mundane truth. The man, the myth. I call bullshit.

  He laughed. —Tell me more about your dream, he said in a thick accent. —Vas your mudder involved?

  —No. I didn’t recognize anyone. I was terrified, so I ran. The red light blinded me and I tripped and fell into a pit. Kept falling and falling until the sky became a pinhole, and finally not even that.

  —Is that when you woke?

  —I don’t think I ever did, she said. —Everything went black. Like the movies.

  He limped across a plain that stretched beneath a wide, carnivorous sky. He’d run a great distance and was on his last legs; his breath was ragged, his boots crunched on gravel. Red light flooded the horizon. This was the light of a thin atmosphere, Martian light. He stumbled upon a cluster of low, earthen mounds. The mounds were brown and covered in fine, white dust. He thought this might be a native burial ground, a sacred place, and that had to be the cause of his fear. He’d trespassed and the spirits were furious, the spirits were going to punish him.

  He realized his mistake soon enough when he came to a crater. Someone had stuck a shovel in the nearby pile of fresh dirt. At the bottom of the pit were arranged scores of plastic tarps, each wrapped around an object the size and shape of a human form. Among these forms were ruined bicycles, discarded coats, hats, and backpacks. Dresses, bits of costume jewelry, handbags, and wallets.

  She said, —Psst! I wasn’t being straight with you earlier.

  The bloody light of the sky winked out of existence. His sleeping cubicle was pitch black. He shuddered at the sound of her breathing nearby. His chest hurt and he massaged his ribs, thinking, here came the heart attack that felled his father, and his father’s father, and several uncles, hardy woodsmen all. Like them, he smoked and drank too much. Like them, he suffered night terrors.

  —I did hear a voice, she said, her mouth centimeters from his own. —Not a phantom voice, either. Whoever it was, whatever I heard, it whispered my name. Then it asked me where you were. Where’s your friend? Where’s your friend? Where’s your friend?

  His eyes watered. He put his hand over his mouth to stifle a sob, shocked at the power of his compulsion to scream. He couldn’t remember if his dream was only a dream, or the reenactment of something he’d witnessed and immediately repressed. His father shot several people in Vietnam and said that he couldn’t always separate his nightmares from things that really happened. She didn’t say anything else and exhaustion descended like a club and smashed him into unconsciousness.

  He climbed a ridge and stood in the shade of an oak. Its leaves were broad and dusty. Near the toe of his left boot was a snare of barb wire still attached to a post. Ants boiled from the rotten core of the wood. He removed his hat and hung it on a branch. Flies buzzed, drawn to the moisture. He sipped canteen water and scratched the deep itch at the center of his skull. The longer he watched the ants, the more intensely his brain itched.

  He unsnapped the protective covers of his field glasses and used one hand to cup them to his eyes. Below the ridge, a basin spread for a half-kilometer to the foot of the mountains. Washboard ruts, decayed remnants of several abandoned roads, zigzagged through scrub and rocks. A stream ambled its crooked way toward the lowlands. His map designated this area as the infamous Site 3. The original ranchers lived to the extreme southern extents of the property—their homes nearest the city were converted to low-income housing, or bulldozed for school soccer fields and parks. After the last of the ranchers’ lines died off in 1965, the cattle and horses were auctioned and the vast acreage returned swiftly to wilderness. The Family hadn’t arrived until 1969 or 1970 and their presence wouldn’t have altered much. The shacks they’d squatted in had long since fallen apart, and they’d moved from place to place, migrating like nomads across the property in a pair of antiquated school buses.

  —Oh, the places we’ll go, he said, lowering the glasses.

  —Eh? What are you on about? she said.

  He didn’t recall dialing her on the cell, but there the phone was pressed to his ear, and her sounding belligerent on the other end. —I’m looking at Site 3. Nice place to build a house, raise some kids. A tad on the dry side.

  —A tad on the creepy side, you mean. Seems like you’re the one with idle hands now. Shouldn’t you be staking out a coyote den, or sniffing deer droppings?

  —I’m munching on some at this very moment, he said. —Did I mention my great-great-great grandfather rode with Kit Carson? Why’d you call? Everything okay?


  —You called me, silly. Yeah, I’m going through the tapes. There’s not much on them. Three, count ’em, three freakin’ coyotes in B5 and B6. No further visuals on the bobcat, and not a single bear. Did you scare all the animals?

  —You sure are ornery today.

  —I’m ornery every day; you’re too busy playing Boy Scout to notice, is all.

  —Ri-i-ght—I’m tramping through the woods while you’re barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen. How’s supper coming?

  —Spam and beans. You’ll get it cold if you don’t take a shower, buster.

  He touched the post and a few ants scurried onto his fingers. —Don’t get rid of the packing jelly.

  —Ugh. You like the Spam afterbirth? I can’t believe I let you kiss me on the mouth.

  —Spam placenta, if you please. He raised the binoculars. A brown shape separated from the cover of sage and trotted across open ground. The coyote was a scrawny specimen. —Fuck. Maybe there is a rabies outbreak.

  —The ones on tape are definitely off. You gotta take a look. My theory is rabies, or a man-made agent. Something toxic. Hunters might’ve poisoned the water. There’s a bounty on coyote heads in this region.

  —We’ve lived here, what, a month? You spot any hunters? Nobody’s coming this far into the boonies to bag a few coyotes.

  —There’s another possibility. Government isn’t above testing its latest bio weapons on animal populations. The risk to humans is low. The Army could’ve dosed the area five, ten years ago. Now we’re here checking on their work, all unwitting like.

  —Thanks for brightening my day, sunshine.

  —My advice is, don’t drink the water.

  —Got it.

  —Super. Back to the horrors. She broke the connection.

  He slipped the phone into his pocket and shook his wrists, flinging ants into oblivion. His lips were cracked. Thick, coarse stubble covered his jaw. He kept forgetting to shave. Personal hygiene was the first thing to go when he settled into the bush. Animals could smell chemical products all too readily. Gun oil was trouble enough.