X-Files: Trust No One

by Tim Lebbon

  *****

  PENDRAGON GALLERY

  LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

  MONDAY, 8:07 p.m.

  Two waiters strolled through the high-end gallery, holding silver trays with hors d’oeuvres. An audience of aloof men and women in formal attire, dressed to kill or dressed to be uncomfortable, sipped champagne and admired the display. Bernard Lumke, Exclusive Sculpture Exhibition.

  Patrons gathered around a motionless crowd of lifelike, yet disturbing, sculptures: lumpy human figures that sparkled in the harsh fluorescent light, as if fashioned out of clay and mixed with alkaline salts: eight human figures, and one contorted stone coyote. A sculpture of a screaming man pressed stone hands to his head. Another figure had curled up into a fetal position and lay on the floor. One looked like a bearded prospector from a previous century.

  Travis Ashton, well-known art critic—at least in his own mind—worked for two independent freebie newspapers that paid for his columns in copies. He studied the statues as he chatted up a plump young woman wearing a lot of pearls. He stroked his trendy goatee. “I’ve been part of the LA art scene for years, and I’ve never seen anything like this.” He paced around the statue of the screaming man, looking at the realistic expression on his face, the gaping mouth, the stone eyes. “So primal, so eerie, it reminds me of Edvard Munch’s The Scream. But it’s an original take.”

  “Oh, I love it. Bernard Lumke is this week’s genius.” The woman didn’t seem to be flirting with Ashton, but he could always hope. Maybe she had heard of him from his columns. “A splendid display of talent, although not something I’d like in my own yard.”

  Ashton forced himself not to roll his eyes. “I don’t think these were meant to be displayed outside in anyone’s yard.” What was she looking for? Pink flamingos? He bent to regard the suffering stone coyote, wondering how that particular piece fit with the rest of the exhibition. He hadn’t discovered the underlying theme of the exhibition. But, since the young woman was looking at him, he nodded knowingly, as if he understood perfectly well.

  “Lumke lives out in a ghost town in the Mojave somewhere. He’s a recluse,” Ashton explained to the young woman, trying to impress her and hoping she hadn’t read the same brochure on the front reception desk. “His technique is unlike anything the art world has ever seen, and he refuses to tell anyone how he does it.”

  He turned to eye the next statue as much as he was eyeing the woman with too many pearls. No wedding ring, and she had come alone. “I’m going to try to arrange an interview with him,” he announced. “Even if I have to drive all the way out to Death Valley.” An exclusive profile like that would get Ashton a cover in an arts magazine, maybe even one that paid.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Ashton, but my client sees no one—especially not critics.”

  He turned to see a slender, dark-skinned woman with extravagant cornrowed hair. She was stunning—so stunning, in fact, that he forgot about the plump young woman, who wandered off to look at the statue of a hunched-over man who appeared to be retching. “In fact, sometimes he won’t even see me... not that I’m keen to visit Frustration Corners any more than he’s keen to come to LA.” She extended her hand. “I’m Kendra Pendra, and I represent Mr. Lumke’s work. As you can see, our working relationship is solid as a rock.” She smiled, but only slightly.

  Ashton returned her warm laughter, hoping to work his way into Pendra’s good graces. The connection could prove valuable. “When an artist is in such demand, he can afford to be eccentric,” he said. “It enhances the mystique.”

  He doubted she would give him contact information or make any sort of recommendation, but Ashton could figure it out himself. Frustration Corners? It might not be more than a flyspeck on a map. Population... what, twelve? It couldn’t be too difficult to find the sculptor.

  *****

  FURNACE CREEK URGENT CARE/MEDICAL CENTER

  DEATH VALLEY NATIONAL PARK

  TUESDAY, 11:03 a.m.

  Scully parked the rental car in front of the limited Medical Center in Furnace Creek. To reach Death Valley, they had flown from Washington, D.C., into Las Vegas, then driven the desert highways. Scully wasn’t a reckless driver, but the straight roads and the shimmering desert lulled her into believing that 90 mph was the new 60.

  The medical facility wasn’t large enough to qualify as a hospital; it served primarily as a trauma center for “stupid tourist injuries”—heatstroke, dehydration, broken bones or sprained ankles from reckless hiking. She doubted this place would have the facilities necessary for performing a full autopsy. The body might have to be moved to a more sophisticated lab in Las Vegas.

  As they walked up to the entrance, she asked, “Are you sure this isn’t some kind of hoax, Mulder?”

  He had a spring in his step, eager to look at the man who had supposedly turned to stone. “Like the Cardiff Giant? In 1869, a farmer in New York claimed to have dug up a petrified prehistoric man ten feet tall. It was exhibited to great crowds, caused quite a sensation—until it was revealed to be a sophisticated fake. A decade before that, a California newspaper published a letter claiming that a prospector in the Sierra Nevada mountains had turned to stone after he drank liquid found inside a geode. The letter turned out to be bogus, too.” He sounded disappointed as he held the door open for her and they entered the air-conditioned facility. “This victim, though, turned to stone in front of a group of witnesses, including a park ranger.”

  A harried-looking man with leathery skin, liver-spotted scalp, and eyebrows like toothbrushes hurried forward to meet them. Mulder’s black jacket and slacks, white shirt, black tie, and Scully’s professional business attire, made them stand out among the usual tourists.

  “Agents Mulder and Scully? I’m the county’s medical examiner, Bryce Adams. We kept the body for your inspection, per Agent Mulder’s request. I have paperwork to complete, and I hope you two can help me fill in the blanks. I’m really stumped on this one.”

  Scully followed him down the hall, all business. “Do you have a morgue?”

  “Don’t need one in this case.” Adams pushed open a set of swinging doors. “You can inspect the victim right here.”

  Scully frowned. “No morgue, in this heat? I hope you didn’t just keep the body out in the open. Deterioration would have—”

  Adams cut her off. “Don’t worry. As you can see, there’s no need for refrigeration.” Inside the examining room, a figure lay on a gurney, stiff and frozen, arms bent and upstretched, back arched. It looked as if it had been carved from a block of stone, the expression frozen at the point of death.

  Scully moved forward, fascinated, with Mulder close beside her. She bent over the man’s head and pulled on a pair of latex gloves so she could touch the skin. “It feels hard, like cement. It’s as if his entire body spontaneously calcified. All the flesh mineralized.”

  From a stainless steel instrument table, Adams picked up a white, caked rectangle, a wallet surrounded by chipped remnants of cloth. “His clothes, his skin, everything was petrified, but we chiseled his wallet free. This, in addition to his vehicle records, identified him as Wilson Beatty, a freelance prospector working for a mineral concern in Tirona, California. Dry Sea Resource Works. A couple of hours from here.”

  She reached out to hold the victim’s splayed, stone fingers, his grasping hand. “It’s like... petrified wood.” She tried to flex the fingers. “The palm is hard and immovable, the muscles frozen, entirely brittle—”

  The stone hand cracked at the wrist, then snapped off. Scully was left holding the broken-off limb, and she looked at the jagged wrist stump to see etch marks of the bones, the blood vessels, everything solid stone.

  “Yesterday, this man was moving. People watched him step out of his Jeep alive, and he collapsed in front of a crowd.” Adams sounded more curious than horrified. “And now he’s solid stone.”

  Scully looked at Mulder, holding the broken stone hand. “Mulder, we’ve got to find out what happened here. If he was contamina
ted somehow, and if other people were exposed...”

  “Right, Scully,” Mulder said. “No sightseeing until tomorrow at least.”

  *****

  DRY SEA RESOURCE WORKS

  TIRONA, CALIFORNIA

  WEDNESDAY, 3:17 p.m.

  The industrial town of Tirona was a festering boil on the landscape, built on the edge of a dry lakebed where the main industry was strip-mining chemical deposits left over when the inland sea evaporated. Railroad tracks ran along one side of the highway, gracing a rundown company town of trailer parks, gas stations, and dreary houses.

  Rough mountains butted up against the sparkling white lakebed. A large factory rested on the flat expanse, complete with belching smoke stacks and chain link fences. Giant extractor machinery crawled along the alkaline flats, ripping up the top layers of powdered chemicals.

  “Lovely place, Mulder,” Scully said, as he drove into town. “Death Valley is a garden spot by comparison.”

  He headed toward the fenced gate of the large chemical plant. “Let’s not drink the water.”

  A big metal sign identified the place as Dry Sea Resource Works, with a cheerful logo and the slogan “Chemicals Are Our Best Friends” right next to No Trespassing and Do Not Enter signs. He stopped at the guard kiosk in front of the chain-link gate and rolled down his window. “We’re here to see Mr. Hancock.”

  The guard checked on his clipboard, scowled. Their business attire and professional appearance made them look like aliens to him in this heat.

  “We have an appointment,” Scully added.

  The guard found their names, checked them off on his clipboard, and gave them a pass for the dashboard of their car. “As long as you’re not some of those Save the Desert! protesters.” He snorted. “Look around you—we’re already way past saving.”

  Once past the guard shack, Mulder drove toward a ramshackle complex of trailers that formed an administration building. The temporary buildings had obviously been there a very long time.

  “Let’s see what Beatty’s supervisor can tell us,” Scully said, “but he didn’t actually work in Tirona. He was a mineral rights scout who ranged far and wide across BLM lands and unclaimed territory.”

  Mulder parked the car. “Then we need to find out exactly where he went looking. He must have kept a log.”

  A desiccated-looking receptionist let them into the offices of Mr. Hancock, the company supervisor, who greeted them with a smile and a well-lotioned hand. He looked far too young for the position; Mulder doubted the man would last long out here. Everyone else on site seemed to be dusty, dried up, and old beyond their years.

  “Mr. Beatty’s death was quite shocking to us, Agents Mulder and Scully. I’m happy to help however I can. We don’t know how to explain it.”

  “We’ll need some information, sir,” Scully said. “It’s important that we find out where Mr. Beatty explored and what he might have encountered.”

  Hancock already had a manila folder ready for them. “Wilson was an independent sort, wandered all over the desert and took samples. But he always kept good records—an important part of the job. You know how many stories there are about lost mines and fabulous veins of gold that nobody can find again? Or big uranium strikes.”

  “Uranium?” Scully said.

  “Different times. There was quite a boom in the 1950s, but now all those spots are marked as environmental hazards. Fortunately, there’ll always be a good market for dry chemicals such as potash and borax. One hundred percent natural, deposited by Nature herself.” He smiled. “When the ancient seas evaporated, rich layers of minerals filled the area... some lying right out in the open, like the dry lakebed here, but Mr. Beatty was always hunting for more obscure deposits. Something special.”

  Mulder slid the medical examiner’s photo of Beatty’s petrified body lying on an examination table, arms akimbo, like a scarecrow made of stone. “Looks like he found something special, Mr. Hancock. Agent Scully and I will try to retrace his path, if you can provide us with his records.”

  Hancock nodded, all smiles. “Wilson covered a lot of miles around the area—California, Nevada. Borders aren’t very clear out in the wilderness. Wilson often logged time on the old Jeep roads, exploring possible valuable deposits.”

  “He made his way to Furnace Creek,” Scully said. “He must have been inside Death Valley National Park.”

  Hancock shrugged. “Technically, he wasn’t supposed to be inside the park boundaries, but he could’ve driven a long way to get to Furnace Creek. There aren’t many medical facilities around. If he felt the fossilization coming on and made a beeline...”

  Hancock directed them to a large map on the office wall, which was studded with red stickpins. “This shows all of Wilson’s primary stops. In order to secure the mineral rights in unexploited regions, we need to have exact documentation, after which we file all the appropriate forms.” The supervisor’s brow furrowed, and he surreptitiously plucked one of the map pins just inside the boundary of Death Valley National Park and moved it back across the border. “Of course, we’re careful to remain outside all protected areas as the law requires.”

  *****

  DEATH VALLEY NATIONAL PARK

  THURSDAY, 10:14 a.m.

  The next morning, in the passenger seat, Scully unfolded the maps Mr. Hancock had given them, looking at all the off-road places Wilson Beatty had explored and logged.

  Mulder had worked long into the night to consolidate the data points, marking 23 spots with a yellow highlighter. “These are the general areas where missing persons have been reported over the past several years. I think we may have found Death Valley’s version of the Bermuda Triangle. A place called Frustration Corners. And Beatty explored that area, too.”

  “I wouldn’t put too much stock in the missing persons reports, Mulder. It’s called Death Valley for a reason. A huge park that gets over a million visitors each year, and a lot of them do careless things.” She flipped through the folders, seeing nothing unusual. “Families on vacation come out to see the scenery and they’re totally unprepared for the desert back country. People get lost out here and are never found. There’s no mystery... it’s just human error.”

  “That might explain most of them,” Mulder said, “but probably not all.”

  Now they drove off into the desert, following “roads” that were little more than gray dotted lines on the map. And a tiny dot. “Frustration Corners. Is that a real town?”

  “Probably not much of one,” Mulder said as he took his turn driving. “The only notable resident in the area, maybe the only resident, is an artist—a sculptor, actually—named Bernard Lumke. Probably the only person in fifty miles. Artistic solitude. Inspiration—and cheap rent. If Wilson Beatty was prospecting out here, maybe they crossed paths. It’s worth checking out.”

  He turned down an unmarked road, bouncing around potholes, attempting to dodge rocks and often failing. “Not much traffic out here.”

  “Or much pavement either.”

  They toiled past abandoned metal shacks, switchbacking past mining ruins and rusty and indefinable equipment. Steel cables sprawled like dead snakes across the rocks. They came upon empty trailers, abandoned homes—a dusty dump that was more of a ghost town than an active metropolis. A skeletal old windmill hung motionless in the sunlight as if hoping for a breeze. A shotgun-pocked sign announced that they had arrived in Frustration Corners. The utter silence was matched only by the intense heat.

  Leaving the car parked in the ghost town, they walked among the creaking rusted buildings, finding the lone cabin that appeared to be inhabited; at least the windows were unbroken. On stilts at roof level, a large white plastic water tank stood tall enough to provide water pressure, filled by an occasional truck.

  In front of the home was a bizarre garden of oddball sculptures constructed of scrap metal, old glass bottles, broken mirrors, automotive parts, telephone pole insulators, pieces held together by chains or rusty hinges. Mulder winced.


  Scully frowned. “No wonder he hides his work out here in the middle of nowhere—where it belongs.”

  Among the odd junk contraptions, though, they discovered a different kind of statue, a lumpy human figure like a weathered old medicine man. Its feet were just stumps, as if it had been chiseled from a larger platform and propped in the middle of the sculpture garden.

  Mulder leaned closer to the odd statue that looked entirely out of place among the kitschy junk sculptures. “Doesn’t this remind you of something we just saw?”

  The door to one of the old barns flung open and a man strode out, carrying a shotgun. “Who the hell are you and what are you doing out here? This is private property.”

  Scully froze. No time to reach for her weapon. “I thought this was a town. It’s on the map.”

  “A private town.”

  “You must be Bernard Lumke,” Mulder said. “We’re big fans of your work.”

  Scully slowly reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out her badge. “We are Federal Agents, sir, investigating the death of a man who may have passed through here. He worked for a mineral exploitation company as a prospector and explorer.”

  Lumke advanced, still holding the shotgun. “Lots of prospectors came through here over the centuries, but I don’t care about any of them. Just want to be left alone to do my work.” He glanced at the Rube-Goldberg junk sculptures. “Unless you’ve come to buy?”

  “Sorry, no room in my apartment,” Mulder said.

  “The man’s name was Wilson Beatty. He worked for the Dry Sea Resource Works.” Scully cautiously slid her business card into a gap in one of the rusty sculptures. “Please give us a call if you remember anything.”

  Mulder added, “Or if you get phone service.”