Weaver’s bony hands threatened Paul’s windpipe, and before he realized what he was doing, Paul fired four times into the man’s face. He had never seen anything like the bloody disintegration of flesh and bone he then witnessed. He had written thousands of descriptions of war violence, but never had he imagined that a person’s body could become so fully alien in less than two seconds. The slight, dead weight on top of him was no longer human. It was meat.
Paul tossed the body (the thing) aside without another thought. He had neither the inclination nor the ability to think, for power was welling within him in a way he had not—could not have—expected. He saw himself as the bubble from the vision he had given Jen. He was growing, changing fundamentally. Around him reality began to thin as if he could see the cogs and coils that ran the universe behind everything. In that moment, he was overcome by the need—the instinctive drive—to smash those gears, to tear the machine apart and watch the horror unfold, whatever that may be. He could see now that Deeny’s ambition was tiny compared to this possibility. He saw, if only for a moment, how Deeny had allowed himself to be blinded by his goal.
There was so much more than murder.
But after a few seconds, the swelling began to fade. He could feel the power moving from him to someone else, probably Deeny. When the swelling strangeness was over, he could remember very little of what he had seen, only that it had been wonderful. Could it be this way every time he took a life?
Could it be better?
He lay panting on the ground next to the corpse. A light had switched on in the trailer nearest to Weaver’s house, and undoubtedly someone would be looking out to investigate. Paul scrambled to his feet, looked back at the dead body once, then ran to where he knew Sean would be meeting him. Sean had been right; Paul could feel exactly where to go.
He saw the Bonneville pull up, and got inside. Before the door had even fully closed Sean tore down the gravel road out of the trailer park like a madman.
Paul fell back into his seat, too occupied by his own thoughts to worry about how Sean was driving or to fasten his seatbelt. It felt good to rest and let someone else focus on taking him away.
Panting, he said, “I did it.”
Sean—eyes bulging, grin threatening to tear his head in two—said, “I know.”
3
As Detective Matthews and Clancy Miller waited for their food, Miller talked about the experience he’d had as a young man in the patch of trees on which the Kenners had later built their dream home. At first he spoke slowly, with great trepidation, but apparently upon seeing that Matthews was actually willing to listen and not just hound him about what it had to do with the investigation at hand he quickly got into a full conversational gait.
He told the story of how his girlfriend Mary had sacrificed herself, and how his friend Robert (his writer friend, he was sure to point out) had assaulted him before disappearing. He paused only once, and only for a moment, when their food came. Even though both men were hungry, neither of them touched their food until he was finished.
“The police looked for Robert everywhere, even put his picture up in post offices, but they were looking in the wrong place,” Miller said, finally forking up some mashed potatoes.
Matthews said, “How do you mean?”
“I mean he wasn’t anywhere. Not anymore. This is what I’m telling you you won’t believe. He was in the trees from then on out. He met up with someone else who’d lived there even longer.”
Matthews sat back, sinking into the booth. He looked down at his burger, which looked delicious but somehow unreal. He had not known what he had expected from the man, but it hadn’t been this. He said, “So, obviously there are some parallels between this story and—”
“It’s no story,” Miller said. “You can look up the police reports from the incident, can’t you?”
“I didn’t mean to imply you were being untruthful. I’m sorry. What I’m saying is, you’re relaying this account because of the similarities between it and the case I’m working on now. Robert was a writer, just like Kenner, and he revealed his murderous tendencies perhaps in relation to those trees. But what are you trying to say, exactly?”
“I’m saying that what’s in those trees brings out the worst in some people.”
“So you think Kenner is the perpetrator here?”
Miller laughed, chewing a cube of steak. “Yeah. Yeah, I do. But it’s even more than that, Detective. I’ll be straightforward with you. I’m saying something supernatural is happening, and I can tell you it’s going to seriously hamper your investigation.”
Matthews ate his burger, and sipped his Diet Coke, and didn’t say anything for a while. Miller let him collect his thoughts and focused on the food before him. What the old man was saying was, of course, entirely impossible… and yet, something about this explanation held the intuition of the talented detective, and so he let his mind run with it. Temporarily, of course.
It did make a certain sort of sense. Hadn’t he been preoccupied with the thought of Kenner, the writer of beautiful books, being able to commit these atrocities? Hadn’t there been something about this case that had struck a painful, uncomfortable nerve with Matthews from the beginning? He had felt from day one that this case was different than anything he had ever dealt with. Even if there was nothing unreal happening here, perhaps Kenner thought there was. That might explain some of the more difficult questions.
“I’m not claiming a belief in anything you’ve implicated so far,” Matthews said.
“Fair enough.”
“But I want to hear more. You said that someone else had lived in this tree patch for a long time before Robert ‘found’ them. What did you mean by that?”
Miller chewed and sighed. “I’m in this far, I guess,” and then said, “Deeny is the one who’s lived there for a long time, and I’ll be darned if I don’t feel a bit sorry for him. Once, there was a little boy in Rockport…”
And with that, Miller told Matthews the most unbelievable tale he had ever heard expressed as fact.
4
Clare spent days in near-unconscious pain and withdrawal. She did not know how long it had been since she’d last had a hit, and she thought of almost nothing but this fact, when her thoughts were coherent enough to contain words.
Sometimes, her body forced her into full sleep. It was the only time she had rest, but the nightmare memories kept her from true peace. Mitchell would often hold her hand in these dreams, as she stood on the sidewalk and he stood in the street in a blinky, otherworldly haze. Car lights seen as if through wet glass twinkled and swerved all around them, each one unmanned. He wasn’t playing Human Frogger now, he was simply standing there, not bothering anyone, and then the cars would come into the lane where he stood. One would slam into him, shattering his body, tearing him out of Clare’s grasp, but he would not die. Screaming for her help, Mitchell would call out to Clare over and over, expressing a promise of love if—and only if—she succeeded in saving him. All the while he would be hit again and again by this car and that, being thrust further from her as she ran to catch up. His gory, bloody, remains still screaming her name long after he should have been able. The cars did not hit her, though. She could not join him wherever he was going. They carefully slowed around her, or turned onto mysterious side streets with time to spare. She would chase the crumpled body down the apocalyptic city streets for hours, with Mitchell’s begging body always out of reach. This dream, and others, some darker (Uncle Garry’s basement; “little girl, sweet little girl”) stole from her any comfort she might have derived.
When she was awake, a different kind of agony engulfed her, entirely physical. She did not have the presence of mind to wonder which mode of torture she preferred.
She vaguely registered the beings around her, but she saw them all as monsters. Almost all. There was one of the shape-creatures that stood out to her. She felt something from the woman. She did not know she was in the mountains by a lake, although she had be
en aware of that fact when they’d first arrived.
5
Matthews heard all Miller had to say. He listened to the nightmare story of “Deeny’s” childhood. He listened to the account of the four missing children starting in the 90’s (three of which he remembered hearing about at the time). He himself said nothing except to prod the old man or show he was listening or that he understood. At the end of their meal, he thanked Miller, and that was all. The whole time his mind was reeling and racing, desperate and nauseas.
He paid and walked out to his car, waving one last time to Miller as Miller left in his large, old truck. He didn’t get a return wave; Matthews was pretty certain the man was embarrassed about something he had said, even though Miller clearly believed his own story. He understood why Miller hadn’t wanted to speak in front of his ice queen sister.
Matthews lowered his big frame into the driver’s seat and closed the door. He started the engine for the heat but didn’t drive anywhere immediately. The man’s tale, fantastic though it seemed, had disturbed him. He realized, despite all logic and sense, that he believed Miller. And not just because his explanation fit with the bizarre set of facts, but because he felt it was true.
He laced his hands together on the worn, chilly steering wheel and began to pray. “Heavenly Father,” he said, eyes closed, head tipped forward, “Is what this man says true?”
What Matthews then perceived as an answer from God, a little “Yes” resonating out from the center of his mind, changed the entire course of his life.
“You said you knew where they went?” Matthews had asked Miller at the end of their meal.
“Yes,” Miller had said. “They’re up at Kidney Lake, I’m certain of it.”
“How do you know that?”
For a while Miller didn’t say anything. Then: “Are you a religious man, Officer?”
“Yes. I’m Mormon.”
“Me, too. I know they went up there because God wants me to know it. I dreamt it. Does that work for you?”
“Maybe,” Matthews said, sounding like he meant it. “Who do you mean, exactly, when you say ‘they’ went to Kidney Lake?”
“Kenner. Deeny. Kenner’s wife, if she ain’t dead. Whoever else they’ve got with them.”
Miller had looked him in the eye then, hard, as if preparing a stern reprimand. He’d said, “When you go… you should take me with you. This is my show now, too. In fact, it always has been.” And then, the phrase that Matthews was sure had embarrassed him: “I am the guardian of those trees.”
Very soon after that Miller had professed his need to leave, said his sister would be getting suspicious, and that he didn’t want her getting any wind of any of this.
What the old man had not asked, and what Matthews had not offered the answer to was the question, Do you believe me? It had not needed to be spoken. Miller had assumed that Matthews would follow up, that he would actually go to Kidney Lake and investigate based on a tip from a dream, and that was all Miller needed at this point. And Miller assumed correctly, but Matthews wasn’t about to take a frail old man with him, no matter how insistent he might be.
6
Deeny had been meditating in a dark clearing of the forest near camp during Paul’s adventure. At the moment of Kyle Weaver’s untimely demise, Deeny had begun shaking with pleasure. He could almost see the energy flowing from Kyle to Paul to him to the necklace beneath. Death was the juice of a sacred fruit. It seemed too good to be real, but it was real. It was actually happening. Deeny believed this feeling to be more exquisite than any possible physical ecstasy. He had never—and could never—know a woman in a sexual way, but sex meant nothing to him in the light of this power, this murder.
He waited for Paul and Sean patiently.
In his extreme pleasure, he had forgotten the presence he’d felt the night his childhood memories had broken free, and even though he now had the ability to reach out and feel for probing eyes, he did not think to do so. Deeny was too high to think of trouble.
7
Captain Jeffs was Paul Kenner’s most famous character. He had appeared in three of Paul’s five novels so far, once only as a cameo, and Paul had planned to give him his biggest role yet in Scott’s Anaconda, a novel which was to be largely about Jeffs. Paul had created other memorable characters, of course: the strangely contemplative Barnabus Young from Manpower for example, or the conscripted young black protagonist Edward Fitch and Edward’s sister Isabella from Soldier, Black. But critics and general readers alike all seemed to agree; there was no one quite like Captain Christopher Jeffs. Perhaps this was because Paul himself felt closer to Jeffs than any of his other characters. At times, he had even felt—in longer sessions of writing—that Jeffs was almost like a real person, a friend to share concern for, someone whom understood Paul in some way, someone whom Paul understood intimately.
Jeffs was in Paul’s first book, Vicksburg, which had at first garnered much more praise than hard sales, and had been featured in all but one of Paul’s works. In Manpower Jeffs made only a cameo, but it proved to be a notable one. At the time Jeffs was still a First Lieutenant, but the actions that would earn him his advancement were just around the proverbial corner. The following is an excerpt from the book:
A man entered the cabin, the makeshift war room. Tall and lean, but with a stiff assurance of movements that promised power despite the slightness of his body. His hair was prematurely peppered with gray, a common ailment of the war’s officers. But his mustache had the look of vitality.
Smith said, “You must be Jeffs.”
“I am,” the man said. He sat behind the desk as if it were his own. His steepled hands formed a point in front of his face, and he was locked behind a cage of fingers. “You are having trouble here.”
“Nearby,” Smith said. “That’s why they sent you, I imagine.”
“Aye.”
During his year as a soldier, Smith had not been officially promoted, but his unusually close proximity to various officers had made him privy to their moods and temperament. Jeffs brooded over the map, searching it intensly. Jeffs looked like a madman as he scanned the paper facsimile of the area. His eyes flew about, but the rest of his body was still as stone. How he could be taking anything in that way, Smith didn’t know, but by the accounts he’d heard, Smith knew this was a man you wanted on your side of the fighting field.
They were all fighting a war, but Smith thought he recognized two at play with Jeffs. The war without, and a war, perhaps even nastier, within the confines of his own heart. Jeffs gave the impression of semi-omniscience, but what did it mean when one who saw all frowned in consternation as Jeffs was doing now? Nothing good, certainly.
Jeffs spoke, breaking into the silence like a clumsy thief, “I’ll tell you what you and your men will need to do.”
“Tell me. I’ll relay any message.”
“You may not want to relay this one at all.”
Smith said, “What do you mean? What do we need to do?”
Finally Jeffs’ eyes slowed. Then stopped. Not landing on anything in particular. Without the smallest movement of the body, Jeffs’ pupils met the gaze of the soldier, Smith, the impromptu leader of his small band, all of them scarcely older than schoolchildren. He said, “If we are to have any success at all tomorrow, you and yours will be our tool. And what you will need to do is sacrifice yourselves for the good of this campaign. Almost all of you will die.”
Smith waited for some other assurance, some alternate idea to come from Jeffs, but it was clear that he meant to say no more. At least, nothing of hope. Jeffs quickly offered some specific orders, orders that would in fact put Smith and his group in grave danger, and left. Without his commanding presence, the room felt as hollow as the home of a new widow.
And Smith knew he would obey. You didn’t say no to someone like that.
8
Just as Paul and Sean were returning to camp to talk with Deeny about the murder of Kyle Weaver, Clancy Miller was lying down for wh
at he thought would be the last good night’s sleep he would ever have.
The hyper-white pillow of his sister’s guest room shown like a glowing stone in the faint light of the outside streetlamp. It was cool on his cheek, and made him feel young for a moment.
In the morning he was planning to rise early, drive from Snyderville to Matthews’ office in Summit County, and fly with the officer up to the mountains, to Kidney Lake. Miller knew he himself would not take no for an answer, and he did not expect to return from the mountains at all unless it was in a body bag.
He thought he had resigned himself to this death long ago. After all, he was the guardian of the forest, whether it sounded hokey or not, and this had always been his destiny. But just before tipping into the realm of sleep, Miller realized that he did not want to die. This surprised him. At best, he had ten years left in him, probably less. And what did he want that time for? Who would he spend it with? What would he do? This death should have seemed honorable and good to him now, but still the sadness came, and his old man tears began to spot the white, white pillow his sister had owned for twenty years, but which had never been used.
In a depth of a dark grief the likes of which Miller could never remember having felt before, he finally drifted off to sleep, halfway through a prayer for comfort and strength.
†
When he woke he found himself kneeling in a white room, at the base of a clean white altar very much like the ones found in Mormon temples. He realized quickly that he wasn’t awake at all, but to call the experience a dream did no justice to the specificity and strength of the feeling he had. He believed he was, in some sense, actually at this mysterious white altar.
Had he ever married, he would have knelt at one of these altars with his bride, and they would have been sealed together forever, a marriage meant to carry their intertwining to the next life and beyond, into the eternities. Still, though he had not wed, he was familiar with the low, bench-like shape.
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