The Vanishing

by Bentley Little

  He saw movement out of the corner of his eye to the right, and he whirled in that direction, the lantern hitting his elbow and causing a flash of pain to shoot up his left arm.

  It was one of them.

  A male.

  There were several trees between the monster and himself, but he could see it clearly in a shaft of moonlight, and it could obviously see him. With a wave of clawed hand, the creature created a miniature tree out of nothing, making it sprout up from a pile of dead leaves on the ground and then branch off until it was as high as Marshall’s stomach. Before his eyes, the small tree bloomed, then died, its leaves falling off, its branches and trunk withering to brown stumps that in the end resembled a burned man. The creature grinned at him, a sly, evil grin that he did not understand but that frightened him.

  There were others, he saw. Large dark shapes too far away to be seen, which glinted in scraps of moonlight between the trees and could only be one thing.

  He understood now why these woods had not seemed familiar to him. They had been changed, added to, made into something else. His mother had told him stories of Jack in the Green, a woodland sprite from the Old Country who shepherded through the winter months all things that grew and who was responsible for making plants flower in the spring. He had not believed those stories, but she had, and he wondered if that was what was happening here. Were these creatures responsible for the growth of plants in the new land? They seemed angered by the intrusion of men into their country, and though in his mother’s stories Jack in the Green had coexisted with people, these beings did not seem so benign.

  The dark shapes passed between trees, bushes growing in their wake.

  What were they doing now? What was their plan? Were they attempting to create a forest so thick that Sutter would get lost in it? Were they planning to rescue those of their kind imprisoned in the building? They were here for a reason, but he remembered their attempt on the fort and doubted that they would try such an attack again. Whatever they were, they weren’t dumb.

  He had heard no noise, but the one that had been grinning at him from behind the burnt-man stump must have communicated to its brethren somehow, because in the seconds that had passed, those dark shapes had grown closer. Not close enough to be illuminated by his lantern but close enough for him to make out horns on heads, spines on backs, forked tails.

  The air was suddenly shattered by the explosion of rifle fire, and one of the creatures fell to the ground with a whistling screech. There was the crack of another rifle, and Marshall hit the dirt, pushing the lantern away and lying flat as he stretched his own weapon out in front of him, ready to fire. ‘‘Who’s there?’’ he called.

  ‘‘Who’s there?’’ someone called back.

  More rifles fired and two of the creatures fell screaming to the ground.

  ‘‘James Marshall!’’ he yelled.

  ‘‘Stay where you are!’’

  The grinning creature stopped grinning as watery liquid gushed out from a hole that had suddenly appeared in its head. Within moments, the woods were silent save for the stomping of boots on leaves and the snickering conversation of rough men. The monsters that weren’t dead had fled, and though the forest still seemed strange to him, it no longer seemed threatening.

  Marshall stood. ‘‘Don’t shoot!’’ he called. He saw a group of men heading toward him through the trees.

  ‘‘You really Mr. Marshall?’’ one of the men said. Marshall recognized him as one of the new fellows he’d seen at the fort.

  ‘‘Yes. Who are you?’’

  ‘‘Patrol,’’ he said, and explained that Sutter had commanded them to guard the section of woods around the periphery of what he called his ‘‘storehouse.’’ What he had in there acted as an enticement to those monsters, and it was their charge to not only protect the building but kill as many of the creatures as possible while doing so. The man grinned when he said the word ‘‘store-house,’’and Marshall could tell from his demeanor that the fellow knew exactly what was going on in there.

  He could see in his mind the bare back and buttocks of John Sutter as he consorted with one of those things.

  Was the captain going to share that with these men?

  Let’s fuck it.

  Maybe Sutter had finally found a way to make his fortune. Marshall himself had been tempted initially, and he recalled before the attack on the fort that most of those with him had seemed ready to jump on the shackled female without hesitation. Matthew had already done so and finished by the time they heard the screams of his wife from outside.

  Marshall looked around at the motley collection of fighters before him, knowing that they would gladly pay for some time with one of the females.

  But what of the offspring? What would be done with them? And what of those outside of Sutter’s purview, like the baby in the canyon? Who knew how many of them were out there, fathered by men or monsters out of mothers from both stripes?

  ‘‘Which way back?’’ Marshall said.

  One of the other guards pointed in a direction opposite to the one he would have expected, and Marshall nodded his thanks, setting off. He walked around the dead body of one of the monsters, flowers blooming around the edge of the gut-shot corpse, and wondered if the men were going to take it and the others back to that building and throw them upon the pile—before partaking of one of the chained females.

  He hurried faster, desperate to get out of these woods.

  Reaching his cabin, Marshall started packing his belongings, intending to set out at dawn. He was not only through with John Sutter, he was through with California. He wanted to get far away from this horror as quickly as he possibly could, and he recalled hearing talk of silver strikes in Utah and New Mexico territories that . . .

  No, he thought. He was through chasing riches. It had brought nothing but heartache and death to everyone he knew.

  He didn’t know what he was going to do next. But he did know that he wasn’t going to work for Sutter, wasn’t going to remain here, was going to go to a city where no one knew him and start afresh.

  This part of his life was done.

  Twenty-seven

  Follow the money, Wilson had said.

  Research was—had been?—the man’s watchword, whereas Brian was more of an interviewer. Which was why they’d made such a good team, even if they hadn’t actually collaborated on anything. But with the background information provided by Phillip Emmons and with Carrie helping him, he was sure he’d be able to piece together a pretty accurate picture of what was going on.

  This morning, the two of them had split up. She’d gone to the main branch of the San Francisco Public Library and he’d headed over to the Office of Public Records, each of them attempting to trace back the family roots of Tom Lowry, Bill Devine, Stephen Stewart, Wesley Fields and Lew Haskell, to look for any indication of personal or business dealings between them and, not incidentally, search for any evidence of unusual encounters or incidents the families may have had in the past.

  Brian didn’t know how she was faring, but he had struck gold.

  Literally.

  All of the families—all of them—had made their initial money in gold. They’d since diversified and many of them had gone on to make their fortunes in businesses entirely unrelated, but the founders of the dynasties had been forty-niners, and the grubstakes for future generations had been collected in the rivers and diggings of the Sierra gold fields. It was a connection that could not be coincidence, and it implied that those original prospectors had all met with something in the California back-country that continued to exert its destructive influence on their descendants today.

  Phillip Emmons had said that those monsters encountered by Lewis and Clark were known to have mated with humans, and the more Brian thought about it, the more likely that seemed. He didn’t buy the writer’s theory that the creatures had disguised themselves and somehow infiltrated American society. It seemed far more logical that they had interbred with people and it was
the descendants of those unions that were now flipping out and becoming violent, and that, if pure creatures did still exist, they lived outside of society, in those areas of vanishing wilderness far away from cities and towns.

  Like the section of clear-cut forest that had been restored to its former glory.

  Brian also looked for his own last name in the papers and microfiche through which he dug. After the meeting with Emmons last night, he’d been forced to confront the reasons for his growing obsession with this story, and of course, no matter which thought path he took, it always came down to one thing: his dad.

  He wanted to find his father.

  Even if his old man was a killer.

  STOP ME. The words of the note he had found were never very far from his conscious thoughts, and though they were an admission of guilt, they also revealed a desire to change, to escape, to . . . stop. That wouldn’t be enough for the law, but it might be enough for him, and in his more optimistic fantasies, his dad ended up incarcerated while he visited him on weekends and the two of them reconnected.

  He hadn’t called his mom or his sister in several days, and the obligatory conversations with his editor had been evasive at best. He was using his job as a pretext for conducting a private investigation, and though he had enough information to write several articles, Emmons had been right: The Times wouldn’t publish the real story. Or at least not all of it.

  He wasn’t here for his family, though, or his job. He was here for himself. And if that meant burning bridges, then he needed some gasoline and matches because he wasn’t about to let anything stand between himself and his goal.

  They met for lunch at Carrie’s house, a pleasant bungalow on the edge of a historic district. She provided iced tea while he picked up some tacos, and they ate in the well-lit kitchen while, outside, neighborhood children played tag in the street, their excited, happy voices an ironic counterpoint to their own grim discussion indoors.

  Carrie went first, and her findings pretty much mirrored his own. She hadn’t been able to trace genealogies as cleanly, but she’d found several articles about gruesome murders in the past that had been committed by members of so-called high society. Probably the same articles Wilson had discovered. ‘‘What we should do,’’ she suggested, ‘‘is see if any of their descendants are around today. Those are the ones we should be watching. Maybe we could even give the police a heads-up.

  ‘‘It’s in their blood,’’ she conjectured. ‘‘We might not know what triggers it, but like Huntington’s Chorea, it’s a time bomb waiting to go off.’’

  ‘‘It’s worth a try,’’ Brian admitted.

  She’d also found reference to ‘‘Indian gold demons’’ in the index of a self-published biography of John Sutter that she’d happened upon by chance while looking for another book that had been checked out. There were no actual descriptions of the demons, but mention was made of them mating with miners desperate for female contact. Pursuing that thread, she had found two other books that alluded to such congress, and like him, she had come to the conclusion that it was the offspring of these unions . . . and their offspring . . . and their offspring . . . that were the perpetrators of violence over the decades.

  But did that explain everything?

  They both agreed that the genetic component had validity, but science and magic did not sit well together, and they each concurred that what was going on went far beyond anything biology could account for.

  ‘‘Money’s involved, too,’’ Brian said, and he described what he’d found at the Office of Public Records, including the fact that it was not only tremendous wealth but the original source of that wealth that they all had in common. ‘‘There was a study published a year or two ago that said the presence of money changes people. Even playing Monopoly or seeing pictures of money made test subjects feel more self-sufficient and thus behave more antisocially. Who’s to say that the vast amounts of money possessed by these men and their families didn’t contribute to what happened or have some influence on their behavior?’’

  Carrie leaned over the kitchen table. ‘‘We’re tiptoeing around the most important thing.’’

  ‘‘What’s that?’’

  ‘‘Everything’s happening at once.’’

  He looked at her.

  ‘‘Doesn’t it seem to you that it’s all coming to a boiling point? I mean the timing of everything: those children like Juan, those rich men suddenly snapping and going on killing sprees, that forest that popped up out of nowhere. They’re all happening now. It’s like it’s all leading up to something . . . big.’’

  Brian nodded slowly. ‘‘Boiling point. That’s exactly what Wilson said. And, yeah, I’ve felt it, too.’’ He took a drink of his iced tea. ‘‘The question is, what is it building toward? What is the big event?’’

  ‘‘I’ve been thinking about that,’’ she said. ‘‘Something Phillip Emmons said last night stuck with me: ‘They slaughtered invaders in order to preserve and defend the vanishing wilderness in which they lived. It was a protective measure.’ When I was doing my research at the library this morning, I looked at everything through that lens, and I have to admit, it made a kind of weird sense. What if whoever—or whatever—is left of this dying breed is trying to fight back, retake the land that was stolen from them, come out from whatever small corner of the wilderness they’ve been pushed into and strike against the now dominant species that stole their spot on the food chain: us?’’

  He looked at her skeptically. ‘‘So we’re involved in some kind of ecological horror story?’’

  ‘‘I don’t think it’s a coincidence that that forest grew back the day—the day—after the last stand of old growth trees was cut down.

  ‘‘Not only that,’’ she added. ‘‘Besides their money, what do Lew and Stephen Stewart and all of those other men have in common? Oil, gas, construction, development, real estate. They all make money off the land, through its exploitation or the theft of its natural resources. Sure some of them give back and do good and try to help others, but that’s only because deep inside they feel guilty and know they’ve done wrong.’’

  ‘‘So what are you saying? That they’re killing their families and committing suicide in order to stop themselves from drilling for oil or building more homes? That’s pretty ridiculous.’’

  ‘‘Is there anything about this that isn’t ridiculous?’’

  ‘‘Yeah, but liberal guilt turning millionaires into murderers? Come on.’’

  ‘‘Okay,’’ she said. ‘‘Forget that part. But just look at what’s happening from an objective standpoint. Doesn’t it seem like they’re fighting for their own, trying to reclaim their land? When cities expand and encroach on wilderness areas, the animals that live there are either removed or exterminated, forced to coexist or, as is usually the case, pushed even farther out into whatever open country remains. Why should this be any different? Besides, the defense and pursuit of land has caused even more wars than religion.’’

  ‘‘So we’re at war?’’

  ‘‘Aren’t we?’’

  His cell phone rang, and Brian picked it up, looking down at the displayed number. It was an LA call, but he didn’t recognize who it was from. Still, he decided to take it, and answered on the fourth ring. ‘‘Hello?’’

  ‘‘Brian? Brian Howells?’’

  ‘‘Yes,’’ he said cautiously.

  ‘‘This is Lisa LaMunyon!’’ The linguist’s voice sounded excited. ‘‘I’ve done it! I’ve cracked the code!’’

  Brian’s palm was sweating, and he switched the phone to his other hand so it wouldn’t slip out. Instead of excitement, he was filled with dread. ‘‘So what do the messages say?’’

  ‘‘They’re all over the map. What do you want me to start with? Your father’s?’’

  ‘‘Wait. Let me write this down.’’ Brian mimed writing a message on the table, and Carrie grabbed a pen and notepad from the counter next to her wall phone. ‘‘Go ahead,’’ he said.
>
  ‘‘I’ve put these in chronological order. The first letter from your father is to your mother. It addresses her as ‘Bitch,’ then says, ‘I love her more than I loved you. I love her body. I love everything about her. I love sex. But I cannot love the children. I love our children. Give them back to me. I do not want to do this anymore.’ ’’

  Brian was silent, not knowing what to say. He felt as though he’d been punched in the stomach.

  ‘‘I know it doesn’t make much sense. None of them do, really. But the translation’s accurate.’’

  Brian reread the words he had written down.

  ‘‘Do you want me to go on?’’ the professor asked.

  ‘‘Yes,’’ he managed to get out.

  ‘‘The second letter. ‘Bitch,’ again. ‘I am going back. I do not want to go back. The children must be with me. All will be gone. All will be gone.’ He repeats that eight times.’’

  ‘‘What about the other messages?’’ Brian asked quietly. ‘‘The ones from the crime scenes, the ones written on the walls?’’

  ‘‘Here’s where it gets really interesting,’’ the linguist said. ‘‘These ones are . . . Wait a minute.’’ She paused, mumbled something incoherent. ‘‘Oh my God, I never noticed this before. But seeing them all written down like this in front of me . . .’’ Brian heard her sharp intake of breath. ‘‘They’re all different parts of the same message. They’re directions to someplace.’’

  ‘‘Where? Read them to me.’’

  ‘‘The Black Mountain.’’

  Brian felt suddenly cold. He recalled the dream he’d had in his mother’s house, in which he’d been walking down a winding yellow brick road, like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, toward a black mountain crawling with huge white slugs. From somewhere deep within the mountain he had heard his father’s screams.

  ‘‘I don’t have these pages identified, so I can’t tell you which is which—’’