The Truth Circle

by Cameron Ayers

  “Identishfy this!” she said, slurring her words.

  “Oh, thank God!” Gaby exclaimed, pressing her hand against her chest in relief.

  Beverly staggered toward them, lurching from side to side as she drew closer.

  “Beverly, are you OK?” Lamar asked, concerned about her behavior.

  “Never better,” she replied with a lazy wave of her hand.

  As she staggered closer, the others could see a jug in her hand. The moonshine that had gone missing from the shed. Judging from the lack of sloshing noises it made as she swayed, it must have been nearly empty.

  “She’s drunk,” Coop said contemptuously.

  Beverly laughed, and the reek of her breath confirmed Coop’s suspicions.

  “Ash a skunk!” Beverly chimed in. “You would be too if you faced that maniac and his knife,” she added, apparently forgetting that the others had been right there beside her.

  “Beverly, we were worried sick about you!” Gaby scolded as she drew closer. “We were about to go out looking for you.”

  Beverly held Gaby at arm’s length as she made an odd face.

  “Don’t mention sick,” she said before doubling over and violently expelling her dinner at the others’ feet.

  “Charming,” Ken intoned, stepping back in revulsion. “Madmen and winos at every turn. Let’s clean her up and get her inside.”

  * * * * * *

  Coop pried the jug out of Beverly’s grasp as Lamar and Gaby tried to get her to lie still long enough to remove her shoes and jacket. She was squirming, resisting, like a little child at bedtime.

  “Let’s call it a night, Beverly,” Gaby said as she tried to hold the older woman’s legs still.

  “Pfffhhtt!” Beverly said with a wave of her hand that clipped Lamar in the nose. “I don’t need to sleep. I feel fiiiiine!”

  Coop uncorked the jug and peered inside. As he’d feared, there were only dregs left.

  “That thing was full this morning, wasn’t it?” Lamar asked as he tried to work Beverly’s right arm free from her down jacket.

  Coop nodded.

  “It was strong stuff, too,” he said. “At least 100 proof, maybe more.”

  “How’s she still conscious, then?” Gaby asked as she struggled to unlace Beverly’s boots.

  “No normal person can drink that much,” Coop insisted as he tossed the near-empty jug in the corner and made his way to his own sleeping bag. “It takes years of alcohol abuse to build up that kind of tolerance. I lost a sister to it; toward the end, she was downing a fifth every night.”

  Ken snorted.

  “So now we know what you really are,” he chided Beverly. “Despite all your pretension, you’re just a garden-variety lush.”

  “You know, it all shtarted with Graham, my second husband,” Beverly said as Lamar pushed her head back onto the sleeping bag. “He wash an animal, always … pawing at me,” she said, miming paws with her hands to illustrate the point. “Whenever he was in the mood, I’d insist on a glass of wine first, just to take the edge off.”

  “We do not want to hear about your sex life, granny!” Ken insisted, thoroughly nauseated. Beverly kept right on going.

  “He was gone within a few yearsh, but the wine … Oh, that wine!” she said, rolling her head from side to side as she talked. “A drink before lunch, then two with dinner. I started going on tasting tours every weekend. The guides began to recognize me. Shooooo embarrassing!” she added with a pronounced roll of the “O’s” that sent spittle everywhere.

  “Then a friend introduced me to gin. All the fun of wine, but so … much … fashter. Wine tasting became trips to distilleries. Thingsh got really out of control with my third marriage. Preston, he was so uptight. Shave the whales, my ass! Sanctimonious little prick! It got to the point where I couldn’t even look at him without being squiffed. Speaking of hish little prick …”

  “Can someone please shut her up?” Ken asked loudly.

  Lamar put his hand lightly over her mouth, careful not to cover her nose. Beverly kept right on talking under it.

  “Brewh brer shusht vhbtot gwregh bwersh,” came her muffled voice.

  “Thank you,” Ken said.

  “She’s spitting all over my hand,” Lamar complained.

  “Okay, who wants first shift for guard duty, now that Beverly’s out of the picture?” Ken asked, eager to move on.

  Nobody answered. Gaby was going through her bag for a change of clothes while Coop was sitting on his sleeping bag, staring wistfully at a wallet-sized photo.

  “Coop, stop looking at your mini-issue of Playgirl,” Ken said to get his attention. “Are you up for taking first shift?”

  “No way,” Coop said, stowing the photo in his wallet once more. “I’m not taking it on just because she got liquored up.”

  Lamar finally couldn’t take it and removed his hand to wipe off all the spittle. Beverly’s babbling suddenly filled the wigwam.

  “So after the crash, I shee the judge,” she said. “Biiiig stern look on his fat face. He says: ‘Twenty-eight days at Life Rescue Rehab or one week of Mystic Tours.’ And I couldn’t do another stint with those Bible-thumping rehabbers. What would you do? I ashk you, what would you do?”

  Ken immediately rounded on Lamar.

  “What gives?” he asked. “I thought you were handling her.”

  “I have a low tolerance for drool,” Lamar said as he wiped his hand on the outside of his sleeping bag.

  Ken shook his head.

  “Can you handle guard duty?”

  “After everything today, I can barely keep my eyes open,” Lamar said. “I’d fall asleep as soon as I stepped outside.”

  “Everybody hatesh me,” Beverly bitterly declared. “My daughter won’t return my calls. My friends don’t visit anymore. Even you all don’t want me around. You all think I’m useless, don’t you?”

  “No argument here,” Ken intoned.

  “Hey!” Beverly exclaimed, pointing a finger skyward. “I’ll remember that.”

  “I doubt you’ll remember much of anything when you wake up,” Gaby joked.

  “She may not wake up at all,” Coop cautioned quietly as he settled into his sleeping bag. “There’s a real chance she has alcohol poisoning.”

  “Are you people talking about me?” Beverly asked, indignant in the way only a confused drunk can be. “Come shay that stuff to my face.”

  “Not without a bag of breath mints, first,” Ken muttered. “How about you, Gaby? Think you’re up for first shift?”

  Before Gaby could reply, Beverly gave a cryptic chortle.

  “You want her to protect us?” Beverly laughed, her eyes closed as she thrashed in her sleeping bag in the throes of exaggerated laughter. “Oh, that’s richhhh! Looks like I know something you don’t.”

  Ken rolled his eyes.

  “Enlighten us, oh pickled one,” Ken said sardonically.

  “She can’t even protect hershelf,” Beverly said. “She lets her boyfriend beat her. Don’t believe me? Her body ish one giant bruise! That’s why she always covers up.”

  Beverly started cackling to herself as Ken, Lamar and Coop stared in silent disbelief. The older woman’s laughter slowly faded away as she began to nod off. The others looked at Gaby, who turned scarlet with outrage and mortal embarrassment. She opened and closed her mouth several times, struggling to form the right words.

  “You … bitch!” she finally exploded, balling her fists and charging toward Beverly.

  “No way, Jose-ella!” Ken said, jumping between them with his arms outstretched. “I don’t have a lot of rules about violence, but hitting a sleeping drunk is not cool.”

  Gaby seethed for several seconds, her lower lip quivering as she struggled to maintain control, before turning on her heels and stalking wordlessly out of the wigwam.

  Coop lay back in his sleeping bag.

  “I guess Gaby’s taking first watch.”

  Lamar slipped on his headphones and tuned out the world
. For several minutes, the only sound in the wigwam was Beverly’s light snoring. Coop finally broke the silence.

  “Is it just me, or are the crickets getting louder?”

  “What crickets? Ken asked, mildly irritated, as he’d just closed his eyes.

  “Listen.”

  Ken strained to hear. He finally picked up a faint chirping sound in the distance.

  “I hear something, but it’s not crickets,” Ken said.

  “How do you know?” Coop challenged him.

  “Because it’s mid-October. Crickets die after the first freeze.”

  “Then what’s that noise?”

  “Dunno,” Ken said with a shrug of indifference as he rolled onto his side and closed his eyes. “But it’s not crickets.”

  * * * * * *

  Pain-Pressure-Urgency-Awake

  Beverly opened her eyes reluctantly. Every muscle in her body ached. Her head felt like it had been invaded by hordes of angry Black Friday shoppers, all of them shoving, pushing and screaming for attention.

  The wigwam was pitch-black. It was still night. She could hear the rhythmic inhalations and exhalations of the others fast asleep in the teepee.

  She woozily raised herself up to one arm and immediately felt herself overwhelmed by four sensations, each more acute than the last. Her hazy thought process told her she was still drunk, something she would have welcomed if not for the difficulty it presented in handling the other sensations. She also awoke to a nasty crick in her neck from passing out with her head at an angle and her neck unsupported. She reflexively reached up to massage her neck, a motion that alerted her to a more serious concern: the bile roiling her stomach urgently needed to be released. But the most pressing message came from her bladder, which was screaming at her for release.

  Beverly couldn’t sit up without immediately peeing her pants and vomiting all over herself, so she rolled out of her unzipped sleeping bag and pushed upward with unsteady hands and feet until she was in a crouching position. She rose cautiously, trying to find her balance, and then lurched toward the entrance, nearly tripping over Ken in the process. She found herself outside in the moonlight staring at the fencing surrounding the teepee.

  While she welcomed the option for something to lean on while staggering to the bathroom, she couldn’t understand why someone had replaced the camp with a fence. She looked off to her right and saw Gaby curled up into a ball against the fence, a blanket wrapped around her to stave off the night’s chill. Why on earth was she sleeping out here? Beverly felt a pang of regret as she looked at Gaby, though she didn’t quite understand it.

  Her other needs were more urgent, so Beverly shook the cobwebs out of her head and stumbled her way toward the gap in the fence.

  The camp was still there, although it looked strange in the moonlight, like someone had strategically rearranged portions of it. She just hoped no one had moved the outhouses. She headed in what she guessed was the right direction and trusted to luck.

  Beverly quickly found herself on the outskirts of the camp. Someone had replaced the outhouses with the shower. How rude! She was just about to complain when she saw something at her feet twinkle in the moonlight. She bent over to look but leaned forward too far, nearly falling over in the process. She struggled to make sense out of what she was seeing as her head swayed to and fro. After a moment’s examination she concluded that it was a wooden board, with the twinkling coming from four exposed nails in it. How careless of her companions! That could hurt someone. She made a mental note to give the others a firm talking to when she returned.

  Beverly woozily sidestepped the plank and blundered her way into the forest.

  The air was cold on her face as she lurched forward in search of the missing outhouse. The forest was filled with an incessant chirping sound all around. The crickets must certainly be busy tonight. Beverly stopped in front of an old oak tree and looked around, trying to get her bearings. She didn’t recognize anything in the dark. She wasn’t even certain which way the camp was. The fear that thought sparked tightened her gut, which was the final straw for her poor stomach. The pressure on it became overwhelming, and she leaned against the tree for support as she vomited up the last remnants of dinner.

  She felt slightly better when she was done, although her throat burned and her stomach ached from the exertion. The relief only heightened her sense of bladder pressure. Looking desperately around, she didn’t see the missing outhouse, but did find some waist-high bushes that would do. She staggered toward them, squirming with discomfort and holding her crotch as she did so. She found a suitable spot, lowered her jeans, crouched down and let nature do its work.

  The feeling of release was overwhelming, causing her to sigh with relief. The pressure on her bladder slowly subsided and Beverly started to feel more herself again. After wiping with some nearby leaves and pulling her jeans back up, Beverly made her best guess at where the camp stood — assuming someone hadn’t moved it along with the outhouses — and stumbled forward, leaning on the many trees lining the route as she went. She noted hazily that the chirping sound was growing louder the further she walked.

  A cloud passed in front of the moon and the light vanished. Beverly blundered forward in the dark, worried she’d catch her foot on an exposed tree root or find another carelessly placed wooden board with nails in it. That would certainly be unpleasant. The ground felt strangely uneven beneath her feet.

  The cloud passed and the moonlight slowly returned. Beverly saw she was walking along the edge of a 20-foot drop into the floodplains, with her left foot only partially on solid ground. No wonder the ground felt uneven! She leaned back and took a few cautious steps away from the precipice. Clearly she’d taken a wrong turn somewhere. Next time, she’d ask for better directions.

  The floodplain looked magical in the moonlight. Instead of the usual trees, scrub plants and grasses, Beverly instead paused to marvel at something new that had swept the floodplain. A black, teeming mass that seemed to absorb rather than reflect the moonlight blanketed the floodplain in darkness, blotting out any signs of plant or animal life. The heaving blob of unlight extended as far as Beverly could see, seething and rolling like the sea in a storm. More unnervingly, the center of the giant mass expanded and contracted at regular intervals, almost like it was breathing. On the periphery, it undulated in a chaotic dance of conflict as it lashed the base of the overlook with its inky tendrils as though it were trying to topple the plateau. Beverly knelt down and saw the bands of darkness nearest the edge leaping in the air, dozens at a time, as though they were desperate to meet her.

  Out of curiosity, Beverly snapped a branch from the tree she was leaning against and tossed it into the floodplain. It sailed through the air, spinning end over end. When the branch reached the black ooze, the substance immediately parted before it like the Red Sea, leaving the branch to land on a small rock outcropping with a ringing clank. The mass swirled around the stick, its tendrils testing the branch, prodding it cautiously. Each of them was small, no larger than a ferret, but they were closer in shape to a gerbil, rounded and blob-like, with no visible appendages. They seemed to move by wriggling, undulating their torsos to and fro. And they all seemed to move independently, even as they collectively surged and swelled. Confident that the branch posed no threat, the inky darkness once again consumed the rock outcropping and the branch with it.

  That’s when it dawned on Beverly that this black mass wasn’t a single object. It was some kind of swarm, like an ant colony; one numbering in the billions. Beverly watched them undulate a little longer before staggering her way back to camp. Her final thought before passing out was that she had to locate the nearest payphone and call National Geographic to report her amazing discovery.

  Tuesday

  Lamar tightened the last screw on the C.B.’s outer chassis with the pocket knife before setting it aside to admire his handiwork.

  The C.B. looked more or less normal, except the side panel that would normally house the bat
teries had been removed and now dangled free, connected to the unit’s base by a tangled mess of wires and coiled cable, giving it the appearance of a mutant appendage. Nestled within the center of the panel was the battery cell that he’d scavenged from Coop’s ankle monitor, fastened to a cannibalized circuit board by plastic wrap and four multipronged transistors. The battery contacts for the C.B. had been removed from their housings, bent into more-or-less rounded shapes and mounted onto the top and bottom of the power cell.

  The only part of the unit Lamar had left alone was the retractable antenna, which was bent so badly that he feared trying to straighten it would snap it clean off.

  Lamar placed the device and its odd appendage on one of the log stools surrounding the firepit and nervously looked over at Coop and Ken, who were standing just to his right and watching intently. Lamar said a silent prayer and tried the volume knob.

  After several excruciating seconds, a low-frequency hum emanated from the box, and the transmission window on the faceplate flickered on. The needle measuring signal strength started to slowly climb.

  “It’s working!” Lamar exclaimed in an awed whisper. “It’s really working!”

  Ken and Coop both leaned in, eager to see the ancient device in action. Several yards behind them, Gaby was quietly washing yesterday’s clothes in one of the pails. She stole occasional glances over at the others, curious about their success with the device, but said nothing. In fact, Gaby had been avoiding them all morning. Anytime her eyes met theirs, she would instantly look away. All of them understood, even Ken. After last night’s humiliation at Beverly’s hands, Gaby was deeply uncomfortable around anyone who knew her terrible secret. Lamar and Coop had agreed to give her as much time and space as she needed, an approach that Ken seemed to have picked up instinctively.

  As the trio looked with wonder at the functional C.B., Ken leaned forward and rapped appreciatively on the top of the unit, as if congratulating it for working after all these years. The transmission window light suddenly flickered again and went dark. The humming noise disappeared, and the needle dropped down to 0. Coop gave him an ugly glance and was about to upbraid him when the device flickered back to life just as suddenly as it had died, only to peter out again after 20 seconds.