by Laird Barron
If I didn’t die, if this isn’t Hell, then what has actually transpired is worse. Always something worse. That first night in the storm does for Moses, his fabulous parka notwithstanding. Maddox may or may not have had life in him. Parker is only strong enough to tow one of us and despite my length, I don’t weigh much. The good cop drags me back to the seashore and we await rescue near the plane’s wreckage. Along the way a diamond-hard sliver of ice or a jagged rock has torn through my overalls and sliced my thigh to the bone. I don’t feel it happen and the blood covers my legs like I’ve a lap full of rubies. We hunker for two days. Parker’s face turns black and his eyes go milky blue. He stays with me a while, and then between buffets from the north wind he’s gone.
The troopers are able to dig Pilot John’s remains from the barbeque pit. They are mystified at the bullet hole in his skull. Bits of glass in there, so the bullet was fired from the ground as he banked the plane for a pass is what they conclude. Helicopter rides, hospital wards, a long white veil over the universe come next. Ice covers the Earth, then recedes and reveals the green. I’ll never walk quite right again. I lose an ear, a leg, all my fingernails, my belief in the rational, my sanity.
Night after night I dream of Ardor and Renfield in his cell with worms, lice, and flies for sustenance. He gibbers and hoots until the Count slips into his cell and maims him, leaves him paralyzed in the shitty rags of his bedding. I follow the camera into his glazed eyeball and come out on the other side inside a cheap motel room in Van Nuys. I’m a fly on the wall during the encounter between Papa Lindstrom and his private dick and Molly Lindstrom. The shouts and the tears are flowing freely when the pimp walks in. Bullets don’t have names on them. The girl and the pimp get bundled into the dick’s Caddy for a long, lonely ride to the landfill.
I don’t have a shred of proof, but the fucking imagery is so vivid, eventually it eats away at me, plagues my waking hours. Lately, I’m convinced that nothing is real, so the unreality of this scenario assumes the same weight as anything else. Conway helps me into the suit I usually wear to funerals and drives me to the Lindstrom estate. I leave him in the car, tell him it won’t be fifteen minutes and then I hobble inside to say the awful things I’ve got say.
Here’s the test. Here’s where I receive validation or comeuppance. Maybe it’ll be both. For a moment I hesitate on the steps while a goon named Larry approaches. It is lush and green and sweetly humid. Not a glacier in sight—
—Lindstrom charges me with the knife brandished. I’m a step ahead of the game. I drop my cane and snatch the cavalry saber from its ornamental wall hooks. Coming in I’d expected mockery, perhaps indignant outrage, the threat of arrest, and certainly the risk of getting roughed up by one of the old man’s goons. Hell, if they’d simply laughed and phoned the funny farm, it wouldn’t have surprised me. What I didn’t account for was how fast the situation escalates into a killing. In retrospect, I can’t blame myself for not entirely buying that the dreams were bona fide. Crazy people believe their own bullshit and so forth.
The snarl, the savage glint in his eyes, this is the murder in L.A. reprised. Man, it’s not as if I’m a fencer, or anything. I make a haphazard swing when he gets close and there goes the knife and two of his fingers under a table. Unfortunately for both of us he doesn’t take a hint. He leans down and retrieves the knife with his left hand and I hobble forward two steps and swipe at him again, both hands wrapped around the hilt. The sword cleaves through his neck without any trouble and his head plops onto the Persian rug and rolls onto its side so those devil-dog eyes are blinking at me.
“Oh, shit,” I say.
The wife doesn’t return and there’s a hell of a mess in the parlor, so I leave. The goon doesn’t intercept me on my way out the door. I do a spot check of my reflection at the car and don’t see any blood on my suit. My hair is mussed and I’m sweating, but that’s me these days. I smile at Conway and tell him to take us home. He doesn’t suspect anything and I retreat into myself with alacrity. My brain wants to shutter the doors and call it a day. I roll down the window and breathe in the smells of grass and leaves.
A cloud swoops in and paces the car. The breeze gains an edge and snow begins to fall. My heart stops. But it’s not snow, it is hail and Conway hits the wipers and in a minute or two we’re through it and gliding beneath glorious blue skies. I place my hand over Conway’s and close my eyes and try not to make that transcendental journey to Alaska, or visualize Lindstrom’s mouth working up a voiceless curse.
I figure if this isn’t a dream, the cops will be waiting at the house. And they are.
the worms crawl in,
the worms crawl out. The worms play Pinochle on your snout.
We chanted that at mock funerals when I was a kid. Shoot your sister playing cowboys and Indians and she fell dead, that’s your dirge. The playground bully challenges you to a duel after class, that’s the ditty your friends hummed as the hour of doom approached.
Hadn’t heard the worm song since I was twelve, but it’s coming back into style, thanks to my wrath. I’ve been done a great wrong, you see. Done a great injustice by a man named Monroe. However, I’ve come to think of him as Fortunato. It makes me smile to do so.
He “tricks” me into going on the hiking trip. I’ve always had a hate-hate relationship with the great outdoors. Bad enough I’m stuck working nine to five in the weather; camping is a deal breaker. My feelings don’t matter. He’s as smooth as a magician or a shrink: talks about one thing, shows you one thing, but there’s always another something up his sleeve. He knows his con, short or long. Can’t dazzle ‘em with brilliance, baffle ‘em with bullshit, is his motto. Much as the hand is quicker than the eye, Monroe’s bullshit usually defies my perception of it until after the fact when it’s time to cry.
Phase one of the scam, he invites Ferris and me over to the house for a barbeque. Optimistically, I assume that’s merely a cover to regale us with his latest sexual exploits, and yes, Monroe does chortle over a couple of girlfriends he has squirming on the hook, each completely ignorant of the other. But it turns out that this gloating is actually a pretext to maneuver me into a conversation about Moosehead Park and its fabulous game trails.
So, Elmer, you hunt, right? You lived in the woods when you were a kid. The only way he could know that, since I’ve never mentioned it, is from Ferris. And of course, I correct him. My dad had been the big white hunter in the family; the rest of us were simply dragged along for the ride. Monroe believes in education via osmosis. It isn’t hunting that intrigues him. He is far too much of a wilting flower to lay hands on a rifle, much less put a bullet into the brainpan of some hapless animal. He needs street cred, as it were, wants to butch up his résumé with the ladies, and a brief foray into the swamps of south central Alaska is the cure for what ails him. First rule of disappearing into the wilderness is, always bring a buddy.
We chew some ribs, toss back a few brews, and thus plied with meat and drink I agree to tag along this very next Saturday for an overnight campout. It has to be me. Not a chance any of his colleagues will blow a perfectly good weekend with the shifty motherfucker. Plenty of them will gather for a free feed and trade shop gossip, but that is the extent of it. Dude probably thinks he’s really clever, manipulating his lummox of a pal, albeit pal might be too strong a word.
Joke’s on him. I’m not as dim as I pretend. The trip is exactly what I want. It’s my big chance to settle the score.
Ferris doesn’t say anything. She looks plenty worried. I pretend not to notice. Can’t have her suspecting that I suspect she suspects I know there is something going on between her and Monroe. In that unguarded moment, her expression says she thinks her boyfriend is out of his gourd, putting himself at the mercy of a paranoid husband who can load a six-hundred-pound engine block barehanded. Alas, Monroe’s downfall is his unremitting narcissism. He doesn’t want to get away with snaking my wife, he wants to rub my nose in it.
If Ferris were to get a whiff of my
true mood she’d forbid Monroe’s excursion under no uncertain terms and spoil everything. Although, even in her most febrile visions, it’s doubtful she could imagine I plan to off him in some devious manner and drop the body into a deep, dark pit. One of my flaws is jealousy. Not the biggest of them, either, not that she has the first inkling. We’ve been together since our late twenties. Going on fifteen years, and parts of me remain Terra Incognita to my lovely wife. See, there are some things you should know about me, things I should get out in the open. I won’t, though.
Not until later.
* * *
Ferris worked as an administrative assistant at the high school where Monroe taught English. Fancied himself a poet, did our man Monroe. A skinny, weepy fella who preened as if his scraggly beard made him kin to Redford’s Liver-Eating-Johnson and that his sonnets were worthy of Neruda.
Sonnets, for the love of God.
Ferris started bringing the shit home in a special folder, wanted my “professional” opinion. I’m no expert, I drill wells for a living. But sure, I published a few pieces in lit journals over the years, had one chapbook about blood and vengeance picked up by Pudding House when I was younger and angrier. I read Monroe’s poems, told her what I thought of them, which wasn’t much. Classic poseur artiste. The kind of asshole who upon learning he can’t strum a guitar to any effect minors in poetry or fiction to impress the doe-eyed girls who hang around coffee houses and the bored ones at faculty parties. One of those, I’m writing a book shitheads who isn’t really doing any such thing.
Everybody hates those guys.
Guys who kiss married women on the mouth aren’t too popular either. Even though I was likely the last to know, I’d finally gotten wise at Monroe’s Fourth of July house party. A fateful glimpse of him and Ferris in a window reflection was a splash of cold water for sure. Shielded by an open refrigerator door, both of them leaning in for a beer, and by God, Monroe laid it on her. The door swung closed and they acted casual. Cheeks a bit rosier, laughter a notch too sharp, and that was all. I played the oblivious fool. Wasn’t tough; waves of numbness filled me, that big old local anesthetic of the gods. It was as if the enemy had dropped depth charges. Those bombs sink real deep before detonating. First time I’d ever thought of Ferris as an enemy.
I didn’t fly into a rage or fall into despair. Nah, my reaction was to get chummy with Monroe. I fucked Ferris more often and a lot more vigorously than was my habit. Also, I took some dough from a rainy day account and paid my pal Benny Three-Trees, a dope dealer who moonlighted as a private eye, to tail those lovebirds for two weeks. The results were inconclusive. No motel rendezvous, no illicit humping in their cars, but they did frequently meet for drinks at the tavern on 89 when she told me she was shopping for office supplies or groceries. Practically mugging each other in the photos. The detective offered me a cut-rate package to tap their phones and intercept email communications. I declined, paid him, and sent him on his way. He’d shown me enough. My imagination would do the rest.
Then I took that thumb drive of photos and locked myself in a room and brooded. As my dad would’ve said, I went into the garden and ate worms.
* * *
Moose have learned to steer wide of Moosehead Park. Hunters and redneck locals blast the poor critters the second one pokes its muzzle out of the woodwork. The park isn’t all that park-like; it’s an expanse of marsh and spruce copses in the shadow of the Chugach Mountains that got designated public use. Basically, the feds looked around for the armpit of the great outdoors and said, Fine, peasants. Enjoy! Thanks a lot, Jimmy Carter.
The government hacked a path through it, east to west. Take a step left or right and you’re ass deep in devil’s club or bog water. You would not believe the mosquitoes that rise in black and humming clouds. Spray on the chemicals, layer your clothes, throw netting over that and spray it too for good measure, and you’re still fucked. Those tiny stabbing bastards will find a way to your tender flesh.
I stop by Monroe’s house at dawn, load him and his gear, and then drive us to the trailhead. My truck is the only vehicle in the lot. Camping season is kaput and blood-sucking bug season has begun. This is early fall before the first hard freeze or fresh termination dust on the mountains. Any second now for one or both, however.
Monroe is a willowy fellow of Irish descent, so he slathers his pale skin with sunblock, dons a fancy vest he probably snagged off the rack the night before, and squeezes himself into a high tech pack with a slick neon yellow shell and enough elastic webbing to truss a moose, if we see one. It looks heavy and probably is since he’s stuffed all of the camping gear in there. I carry my meager supplies, including a sixer of suds, in a rucksack. In my offhand I heft a fishing rod. Trout run in the streams yonder and I’ve a mind to hook a couple for dinner if the opportunity arises.
Ominous clouds sludge in from the east as we begin our trek. The plan is to hike a few hours, pitch the tent, and maybe recon the surrounding area. In the morning we’ll head home. Nothing fancy, nor prolonged or grueling. We rest periodically. I slug water from my dented canteen and lover boy pops the top on a wine cooler. The trail winds through barren hills and stands of black spruce. Gloom spreads its wings over the land. The air tastes damp, and yes sir, the mosquitoes and the gnats taste us.
No point in making this an epic: At last we reach a patch of dry ground on a hill and set camp. Tent, fire pit, the works. Monroe asks about bears, and he asks about them a lot. I’m not too worried as they tend to be fat and complacent this close to winter. Spring, when the beasts emerge lean and starved, is the dangerous time.
I tell Monroe that dearie-me, we’d best be on guard against those man-eaters. I instruct him to keep trash and scraps in a sealed container to minimize ursine temptation, which is a sound idea, but fun to watch him perform as he casts worried glances into the underbrush. I scan the horizon and judge that indeed a storm is approaching, although the weather forecast has made no such mention.
I grab my fishing rod and tell him to fall in.
“Fishing? In this weather?” He cups his hand to catch the first raindrops.
“Morning is better. But it’s okay. A little rain won’t keep them from biting.”
His expression is glum as he zips his fancy yellow pastel slicker that matches the glaring yellow backpack shell. The idea of hooking a fish doubtless hurts his tender feelings. I try not to sneer while thinking that Ferris had certainly gone the whole nine yards to find my opposite.
The map indicates a creek within a mile or so and I wade into the bushes, hapless Monroe on my heel. The possibility of a fresh trout fillet appeals. It amuses me to let branches whip back at his face and hear his muffled exclamations. I chuckle and think of the skinning knife strapped to my hip. It’s the journey, not the destination, right?
I almost trip headlong into the hole. Monroe saves me. He snatches my belt as I teeter on the crumbling brink, and yanks me back. Faster reflexes than I’d have guessed. He has to use his entire bodyweight, and thus counterbalanced, we fall awkwardly among the alder and devil’s club.
“What the hell is that?” he says.
“A hole in the ground,” I say. Thorns in my shin, rain trickling down my neck, mosquitoes drilling every available surface, all conspire to provoke my ire. I’m wrong. This is more than a sinkhole, or an animal burrow, or anything of nature. Upturned clay rings the pit. Water seeps gray and orange from its rude walls.
“You know, it looks like a grave.” He gains his feet and peers into the hole. “Oh, man. Somebody dug this thing not too long ago.”
“It’s not a grave. The shape is fubar.”
“Yeah? That a rule? Gotta be six by six on the nose? Maybe they were in a hurry. Digging around big rocks. I’m telling you.”
“Maybe a retarded hillbilly dug it.”
Sarcastic as I might be, he has it right. This is a grave, albeit an oblong, off-kilter grave, six or seven feet deep and freshly dug. It doesn’t matter that the shape is wrong; the hole ra
diates unmistakable purpose the way an empty slaughterhouse or jail cell radiates unmistakable purpose. I don’t see a shovel or tracks. The latter bothers me. Should be tracks in the wet dirt. Should be more dirt. Should be broken branches. Something; anything. I’m not a tracker. Yet, the consistency of the clay, the wisps of steam, convince me that the mysterious digger did the deed and left within the past hour or two.
“Man, what do you think?” Monroe says with less worry and more eagerness than I like.
“I think we should mind our own business and get back to camp. Call it a day.”
“Hold on.” He swats away a cloud of mosquitoes. “I’m curious. Aren’t you?”
“No, Monroe, not really. Either it’s a grave, or it’s not. If not, then who gives a shit? If it is, then presumably someone will be along presently to dump a corpse. I’d prefer to be elsewhere.” I don’t wait around to hold a debate. Hell with fishing. Nightfall looms and I want to put distance between us and that site. The need to get away is overpowering.
We make it back to base without incident. I feel Monroe’s sulky gaze the whole way. I consider pulling stakes. The idea of folding the tent is unappetizing and impractical. Blundering through the forest in darkness is how tinhorns and Cheechakos wind up with busted legs or lost for a week. No thanks. I light a fire and boil water for the MREs I brought. Keep my trusty .9mm pistol handy, too. Rain starts pissing down for real. We huddle under a makeshift canopy of spruce boughs and a tarp. Blind and deaf, and choking on campfire smoke.
Isn’t until after supper and a third brew that I realize I’ve forgotten about my half-assed plan to kill my little buddy.