The Gone World

by Tom Sweterlitsch

  “Twelve ships, deployed from the late seventies until about 1989. Before my time. Three of the ships are still commissioned.”

  “Aries, Cancer, Taurus,” said O’Connor. “The other nine ships never returned, hundreds of lives presumed lost. Catastrophic. And the Taurus—”

  “The Taurus discovered Terminus,” Moss said. “They were the first.” She had studied crime-scene photographs of the USS Taurus. The ship had launched in late 1986 but returned from a far-future IFT with a depleted crew, only a few survivors, the inside of their ship covered in crude pictures of dead men and warnings written in their own blood.

  “Patrick Mursult is listed as missing in action because he was a sailor aboard the USS Libra,” said O’Connor. “The Libra is assumed lost, Shannon.”

  Lost to Deep Waters, but appearing now. “How is that possible?” she asked. Moss had observed NSC launches, had seen ships launch to Deep Waters and return within a second, nearly instantaneous—the ships merely shimmered even though the crew might have sailed galaxies and lived for several years within that time. An uncanny sensation to see a man board a ship one moment as a young man and disembark the next moment grown to retirement age. Occasionally, however, an NSC ship launched but never returned—it would simply blink out of existence altogether. Those ships that blinked were assumed lost, irretrievably. They were either torn apart by debris or cast into a burning sun or devoured by a black hole, or more likely suffered a mechanical failure that had proved catastrophic or one of any other ruins—but the ships never returned and they never appeared in another location. If a ship blinked out, then the ship was lost and the crew dead, listed as missing in action only because their bodies would never be recovered. “If Libra was lost, then Patrick Mursult shouldn’t exist,” she said. “Or he was never on Libra. Maybe he’s a deserter? Or never made his assignment?”

  “We need to account for Libra, we need to account for Mursult,” said O’Connor. “That’s why you were called in. We need to apprehend Patrick Mursult, find out his story.”

  “Brock says the guy’s been living off the grid, everything in his wife’s name except for a few counterfeit IDs, a fake driver’s license,” said Moss. “We have witnesses who know Mursult personally—I don’t think we’re dealing with a false identity, or anything like that. He’s been living here in Canonsburg, right out in plain sight.”

  “No one’s been looking for him,” said O’Connor. “As far as anyone knew, Patrick Mursult blinked along with everyone else on Libra. You can hide a long time when no one’s looking.”

  “We have a lot of people looking for him now.”

  “Shannon,” said O’Connor, “Special Agent Brock mentioned you have a personal connection to the crime scene—”

  “Fine—I’m fine,” said Moss. “A childhood friend lived there. And the crime scene was horrific last night, but I’m all right.”

  “I can offer you more agents, if you think you’ll need the help,” said O’Connor.

  “I’m handling it,” she said, thinking of Jessica Mursult, the body gouged. Courtney Gimm’s bedroom, where Moss had dreamed of ditching Canonsburg. No one would ever leave that room. “I’m fine,” she said again. “I’m focused on Patrick Mursult.”

  “What’s your take on this?” he asked.

  She thought of the woman’s hand gloved in blood, the missing nails. “Right now this seems like a domestic situation,” said Moss. “I think we’ll find Mursult before too long—we have his face all over the news. Whatever his military situation, whatever the complications concerning Libra, you know as well as I do that this probably comes down to a question of money, or maybe an affair. Something quick and brutal but common. He took their fingernails—I don’t know why. Let’s consider more agents when we take him into custody. You should know that the missing girl’s a looker.”

  “I saw the Amber Alert,” said O’Connor.

  “I’d only expect media interest to grow once Marian’s picture makes the rounds,” she said, knowing that media scrutiny was anathema to NSC. “Won’t be too long before someone starts asking about Mursult, who he is.”

  “We’re already on it,” said O’Connor. “FBI has been cooperative. Our directors have been talking—we have a memorandum of agreement on this investigation. They have the manpower to handle the media inquiries, lead the search for Marian.”

  “They’re having a press conference right now,” said Moss, thinking that her mother might very well be watching. Damn, she thought—her mother a gossipy hawk for local misery, news stories of maimed animals, house fires, familial slayings. I should call her. Her mother would remember Cricketwood Court—all those afternoons dropping her daughter off at her best friend’s house. Once Moss hung up with O’Connor, she dialed her mother’s number. The line rang twice before clicking to the answering machine.

  “Mom, this is Shan,” she said. “Mom, if you’re there, pick up. I’ll swing by the house tonight. Don’t worry too much about the news. We’ll talk soon.”

  Nestor opened the office door with a soft tap.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  Moss flipped her cell phone closed. “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “We have the truck,” he said. “West Virginia state patrol just called it in. Come with me.”

  —

  The red Ram belonged to Elric Fleece, expired license, expired plates, an address somewhere off Barthollow Fork Branch, near Dents Run and Mannington. Local cops seemed to know him, a belligerent drunk they’ve had to chase away from bars, but no arrests—a Vietnam veteran, an unlicensed electrician who worked odd jobs for cash. Nestor drove Moss in an FBI Suburban, skimming past slower traffic on the interstate as shallow Pennsylvania hills gave way to the greater swells of West Virginia. Over an hour’s drive, discussion of Patrick Mursult shifted to personal chatter. Nestor was from southern West Virginia, grew up poor. A freelance photographer a few years before he fell into steadier fingerprint and crime-scene work with the Phoenix, Arizona, police department. Back home to West Virginia when his father was dying. Moss was circumspect in everything she offered of herself—she was drawn to share with Nestor, an attentive listener, but she knew how easily the covers for her life and career could fray.

  “I guess I’m not much of a talker,” she had said.

  “You’re guarded,” said Nestor. “I respect that.”

  They came up on the junction with Barthollow Fork Branch and seemed to leave the world behind, swallowed by woodland. Barthollow Fork Branch tapered as they drove, the tree line butting against the road, reedy trunks, a canopy of branches that choked out light. Moss peered through the veil of woods to houses built far from the road, isolated places. They passed a series of houses propped up on cinder blocks—pastel siding faded and streaked with water damage from rusted gutters. Yards that looked like junk sales. Moss wondered what all these trees sounded like when they swayed. The road was little more than a mud path by the time they crossed a wood-plank bridge that bounded a dry creek bed. Nestor turned down a track that split away from Barthollow Fork, just two strips of dirt through the undergrowth.

  “I can’t really see where I’m going,” he said. Moss felt the SUV’s tires run up against large stones and knots of growth, felt the SUV correct back to the furrows of the path. Branches reached across the road and slapped at the windows.

  “Wait, wait, wait,” said Nestor. “Here we are.”

  A flash of red as he brought them into a clearing—the rear hatch of the Dodge Ram. An older model, something from the eighties, but it fit the description, cherry except where rust had chewed the doors, the Confederate flag just one of dozens of worn and half-peeled stickers. THE SOUTH WILL RISE. A sticker of Calvin taking a piss on a Ford logo. A pistol, THIS TRUCK PROTECTED BY SMITH & WESSON. The gun rack a thing handmade from lumber nailed together, empty of guns but well worn.

  “Look at that,” said Nestor. “What is that?”

  Moss followed where Nestor pointed. “What the fuck,”
she said, climbing from the SUV, spotting the skeletons in the woods. Sculptures. Stag skeletons taken apart and refashioned with wire so they looked like men with antlers, veined with copper. Four of them hung from the trees by their ankles, arms spread wide—upside-down crucifixions. Terminus, she thought. This guy knows the Terminus. The house was ramshackle, the roof sagging in like the place was melting. Moss followed Nestor up the front walk, a series of stone slabs half sunk in mud. A slew of rodents’ bones near the front door—groundhogs and squirrels mostly. Deer skeletons were laid out in the grass to dry in the sun.

  “You think he’s here?” said Moss.

  “I don’t know. The truck’s here,” said Nestor. “He could be taking a walk.”

  “What’s with all the bones?” said Moss.

  Nestor laughed. “Hell, I don’t know—”

  The bright stench of rot hit Moss and Nestor like a rolling wave—death. Moss thought, Marian. She drew her weapon, Nestor did the same. The front door was a flimsy screen over a sheet of plywood, the plywood warped and crawling with flies that leapt buzzing as Moss pushed through. The smell was heavy, seemed to weigh bodily on her—coated her tongue, her sinuses, seemed to grow spongelike in her mouth. Death, wet fur, shit. Her eyes watered.

  “Marian?” she called out.

  The air was alive, humming—flies bumped against her, Nestor with her. A dim front room. A carpet of animal pelts covered the walls, striped raccoon hides, the slate gray of squirrel, groundhog browns—the realization lit that she was looking at a mural made of fur, of vales and hollows, the skin of white rabbits as snow-capped peaks. Mountains—a mural of mountains made of fur.

  “Marian?” she called out, the rot-infused air pouring into her lungs as she breathed. A fly crawled across her lips—she flinched, blew it aside. She feared them, feared what the flies might mean—feared discovering Marian’s body. Not here, not here—

  “FBI,” said Nestor. “Federal agents.”

  Moss moved through into the adjoining room, gun leveled—a larger room with a corner kitchen and a television with foil-wrapped rabbit ears. Family Feud. Nazi flags draped the walls and were stapled to the ceiling. Black flags, SS in white bolts. Emerald flags with white stags’ heads, antlers cradling swastikas. Lunatic, she thought—but she was scared, like she’d found the gateway to Hell. Mountain Dew and Pabst empties covered the floor, writhing with black ants.

  “Here,” said Nestor. “Over here.”

  A hall extended to the back rooms of the house, a hall lined with mismatched mirrors hung in a random scatter. Something on the hall floor was wrapped in garbage bags, a body, the plastic so thick with slivers of white maggots and flies it looked as though the bag crawled. Nestor wrapped his hand in his sleeve, pulled at the plastic—Moss expecting Marian’s pale face, but the face was covered in black fur, toothless red gums, its black eyes like glass marbles.

  “Jesus,” said Nestor, jumping back. “What is that? A fucking bear?”

  Moss continued down the mirrored hall, her image a multitude of reflections. What is this place?—but on some level Moss understood the design, on some level recognition bloomed. The mirrors in the hall, her reflections—something about this place tugged at her memory, and she thought of snowy climes, hiking through drifts in her orange space suit, so cold the wind was sharded with ice. She passed a bathroom, then a bedroom—a mattress on the floor, a duffel bag at the foot of the bed. She followed the mirrors to the back bedroom, the master, and when she looked inside, she heard herself scream.

  The man had hanged himself from a tree made of bones—a sculpture of a tree, bones and iron and copper wire, the walls and ceiling of the room paneled with mirrors so the hanged man’s reflection was an endless recursion. He dangled from skeletal branches, his face bloated, his tongue a purple bulge. Obese, his great white body wriggling with flies. Moss stepped closer, her weapon leveled but her hands shaking, and saw herself reflected with the dead man. This place was a representation—she was overwhelmed with the sensation of returning—the mirrored hall and the bone tree in the mirrored room uncovered memories Moss had worked to diminish over the years, the memory of her crucifixion, the roar of the black river beneath her. These rooms, however, were like a prodding finger. She remembered ice, remembered the air around her shimmering like a panoply of mirrors. She had seen the tree when she was in the Terminus, a tree the color of blanched bones, infinitely repeated. Fleece had reconstructed the scene as if he’d pulled the landscape from her mind.

  “Let’s go,” said Nestor, putting his hands on her shoulders, leading her from the room. “Marian’s not here. Let’s go.”

  —

  The Brooke County sheriff blocked off the property at Barthollow Fork Branch, barred access until the FBI Mobile Crime Unit arrived. They pulled the body of the decomposed black bear from the house and dragged it to the woods before cutting down Elric Fleece, an operation for several men because of the corpse’s girth. The bear had been disassembled—skinned, boned, the organs removed. The technicians documented Fleece’s residence like a crime scene, but the opinion spread quickly that his death was suicide, that he’d been hanging from the bone tree at least a full day, if not longer. Moss watched the men carry Fleece’s sheet-wrapped body on a gurney, load it into the back of an ambulance for transport to Charleston for the autopsy. Everywhere I look will be turned to ice, she thought, and it was almost as if she could feel the ice encroaching from some future time. She walked the edges of Fleece’s property, out into the woods, where she followed a path that led to the four skeletons hung from branches by their ankles. They had been crafted with horrific ingenuity—the copper wire wrapping the deer bones hinting at veins and musculature. How had he known about the Terminus, the hanged men? Moss imagined Patrick Mursult haunted by the future death of the world, whispering his visions to Fleece—or maybe Fleece had seen for himself, maybe he was another sailor aboard Libra appearing now, an apparition. NSC sailors suffered a high rate of suicide. Moss had observed several autopsies of men who had hanged themselves or cut open their own wrists, or who had ended their lives with a self-inflicted gunshot wound, broken men who couldn’t readjust to the creeping pace of normal time. O’Connor would be able to verify if Fleece was NSC, but Moss felt increasingly certain here was another sailor whose record would read “missing in action.” She heard footsteps—Nestor tromping through the underbrush, coming for her.

  “Hey, are you okay?” he asked. “You disappeared out here.”

  “Collecting my thoughts,” she said. “You ever see anything like this before?”

  Nestor’s forehead rippled as if the question had been a stone tossed into the lake of his thought. “That room reminded me of something my dad used to talk about,” said Nestor. “This recurring dream he called the ‘eternal forest.’ Come on, let’s get away from these statues—or whatever they are.”

  They walked together along the path, through the shallow woods back toward Fleece’s house. “What dream?” she asked.

  “We lived in Twilight, this little coal town. My dad worked the mines, always had dreams he was in the dark,” said Nestor. “So he wakes up in the night screaming—I hear him get up, and he comes into my room, sits on my bed, and looks at me. I was nine or something, just hoping he would think I was asleep, but he was drunk, and he says he was caught in a cave-in and he couldn’t get out through the mine, so he crawled deeper until the mine ended and he came out into a forest. He tells me about the trees like they were there in my room, like he could touch them.”

  “The eternal forest,” said Moss.

  “There are doors in the trees,” said Nestor. “And when he opened a door and stepped through, he stepped into a whole new forest. He said he was lost, and he asked me to find him. I told him I would and waited until whatever dream had a hold of him started to clear and he left my bedroom. He went to the bathroom, and I heard him back down the hall. I heard him start to snore and knew he was asleep. I never went back to sleep.”

&n
bsp; “You were nine?” asked Moss, imagining the child, imagining his father.

  “Sometimes he talked about this dream like it was a place you could go to, like it wasn’t a dream at all, so when I saw those mirrors . . .”

  She wanted to unburden herself, but she said, “Don’t think about Fleece’s bullshit. You don’t want this in your head.”

  She steeled herself before reentering the house. Even though the immediate sources of putrefaction had been removed, the other odors remained: the fur walls, the festering garbage bins. The techs had pulled cardboard boxes from Fleece’s front closet. Moss wore latex gloves, picked through the contents. She found an album of yellowed photographs, of Vietnam—pictures of PBRs, the four-man river patrol boats called swift boats. Mekong and Rung Sat, labels in blue ballpoint. Navy, in Vietnam—a connection to Mursult, she thought. She wondered if Mursult and Fleece had served together. Matchboxes filled with dead spiders, beetles, one of the other techs discovered a pillowcase stuffed with dead birds. Filth, she thought. His “art” covered the walls, not only the large mural made of animal hides but framed pictures, photographs he had doctored. Two hung in the bathroom. A still image from the Zapruder film, the moment Kennedy was struck by the second bullet, his face fleshy pink and opened outward, like his face was a door with a hinge. Fleece had painted a halo around Kennedy, oxidized brownish blood radiating from the president’s head. In the other picture, he’d painted seven halos over a photograph of the Challenger—the explosion puff a burst of cloud and shuttle pieces in curlicues of smoke, odd trajectories.

  “We found something,” said Nestor. “Over here.”

  Nestor had been working in the smaller of the two bedrooms, a relatively clean room—the mattress on the floor had been made, the sheets and comforter tucked tightly at the corners. The largest of Fleece’s doctored photographs hung here—she recognized an enlarged photograph of Fleece’s Vietnam swift boat, but it had been coated with crescent-shaped nail clippings and the nails and claws of animals. A plumb line of sorrow dropped through her—she thought of the fingers of the Mursult family, their fingernails removed. The picture was labeled, This is the Ship of Nails that will Carry the Bodies of the Dead.