The Truth Circle

by Cameron Ayers

  Lamar, who was the only one to keep his composure, albeit just barely, looked over the eight remaining pieces of firewood, trying to calculate how long they would last.

  Ken openly panicked.

  “What the fuck are they?” he said in a fierce whisper, as if he were afraid of offending the things outside. “No creature looks or acts like that. None. What the hell are they?”

  Strangely enough, he seemed to be directing his questions toward Lamar.

  “I don’t know,” Lamar replied. “Some undiscovered species, maybe.”

  “This isn’t the wilds of Madagascar! It’s fucking Pennsylvania!” Ken hissed. “Brand new creatures do not just appear out of nowhere several thousand strong! We’re not talking about some solitary Bigfoot! And with the way they moved … those things are not natural!”

  “Then you can sell your story to The X-Files when we make it out of here,” Lamar replied, growing tired of Ken’s rants.

  “You really think we’re going to make it out of here?” Beverly spoke up, surprising the others. “When the fire dies, those things are going to come in here … and then we’ll die,” she said in a matter-of-fact, oddly detached manner as she picked at her right palm.

  “What if none of this is real?” Coop chimed in, briefly looking up from the picture in his hand. “Maybe we’re all experiencing some mass hallucination.”

  Ken scoffed at the idea.

  “Is this what they taught you at the ashram?” he sneered. “Some metaphysical what-if bullshit you say right after your mantra, like we’re all a figment of someone else’s dream? Fuck that!”

  Lamar coughed politely. Ken caught his subtle warning to ease off the throttle and reluctantly backed down, knowing full well what would happen if he didn’t.

  “Fine, forget I said anything,” Ken muttered in lieu of an apology, like a sulking child.

  “I think Coop means that we’re all stoned out of our minds on peyote or something,” Lamar explained.

  Coop nodded in agreement.

  “Those things John did with the fire didn’t make sense,” Coop said, remembering how the flames danced in rhythm to John’s voice. “He could have sprayed those lava rocks with a mind-altering chemical. We inhale it and start tripping. It could still be the first night and all of us are high.”

  Lamar considered this for a few moments before dismissing the idea.

  “If we were all hallucinating, you wouldn’t be asking these kinds of questions. And I think things would be more dreamlike, more surreal.”

  “This shit isn’t surreal enough for you?” Ken asked.

  Coop’s idea seemed to register with Beverly, who stared dreamily off into space, muttering to herself that it was “all just a dream.”

  Lamar ignored Ken’s smart-ass remark and turned to Gaby, who was still watching the door.

  “Gaby, before, you gave those things a name: ‘igloo,’ or something. What was that?”

  Gaby sighed as if she’d been anticipating the question.

  “It’s a long story,” she said, setting her spear on the ground and turning partially toward the others; enough to see them, but not so far that should couldn’t keep an eye on the door.

  “You got somewhere else to be?” Coop asked grimly.

  “It’ll sound stupid,” she warned.

  “Gaby, stupid is better than nothing,” Lamar pleaded. “And right now, we know nothing about these things.”

  “I saw something like those things once. In a book on Santeria.”

  Ken made a face.

  “You mean voodoo with shrunken heads and shit like that?”

  “It’s a mishmash of African rituals and Catholicism,” Coop answered for her, surprising everyone. “What? I read up on all religions.”

  “Voodoo is more a Creole thing,” Gaby explained. “Santeria is Caribbean. Anyway, my parents practiced it in their native Cuba, and they tried to teach me when I turned 12. I think it was more about heritage than spirituality to them. But heritage or not, I didn’t take to it; by that time, I was more interested in Jonathan Taylor Thomas than some creepy old religion.”

  “Can we skip the Tiger Beat recap and get to the point?” Ken asked impatiently.

  Lamar looked at them both blankly.

  “I understood literally nothing in that exchange.”

  “Count yourself fortunate,” Coop intoned.

  “One of the books dealt with the orisha, the gods of Santeria, and their minions, dark spirits called ajogun,” Gaby continued. “They act kind of like divine enforcers, imposing the orisha’s will on people. The book had illustrations of all the ajogun, and those things out there look just like the illustrations of the iku.”

  “So, I take it these iku are bad?” Lamar asked.

  Gaby nodded.

  “How bad?”

  “The iku are the worst of the ajogun; they purify wayward souls, guiding them to Orun.”

  “That doesn’t sound so bad,” Coop sniffed.

  “Orun means ‘heaven,’ because the purification process is always fatal,” Gaby explained quietly. “They’re the embodiment of death.”

  Coop went wide-eyed.

  “Okay, on second thought, not so good.”

  “I don’t know what those things out there are, but if they are the iku, then it’s only matter of time,” Gaby warned.

  “You said you didn’t believe in that mumbo jumbo,” Ken reminded her.

  “I don’t. I didn’t … I don’t know,” Gaby finally admitted. “Until those things appeared, I was an atheist. I thought I had a pretty good handle on life. But after seeing them, I don’t know what to believe.”

  “Did the book say anything about how to stop or appease them?” Lamar asked.

  “Once the iku have selected their targets, they never stop,” Gaby explained. “It doesn’t matter where we run. They can’t be appeased, beaten or bargained with.”

  “Then why haven’t they killed us already?” Lamar pressed.

  Gaby thought a few moments before answering.

  “I’m not really sure. Some ajogun telegraph their intentions in advance, giving their targets time to make amends and get their affairs in order, sort of like a boss giving you 30 days’ notice instead of just summarily firing you. This could be a warning before they actually come to claim us. Or, it could have nothing to do with the iku at all. This could be something else entirely.”

  Ken snorted as he added a log to the fire.

  “This is a waste of time.”

  “If we want to survive, our only chance is to learn about … whatever those things are,” Lamar replied. “I can’t explain what’s out there, so I’ll take all the answers I can get.”

  “You really think some bad juju spirits hitched a ride from Cuba to kill us because we aren’t smoking their cigars or eating enough pulled pork sandwiches?” Ken said with a barking laugh. “We don’t need her bull …” Ken stopped short, catching himself before Lamar had to signal that he was taking things too far again. “Look, all I’m saying is that I’ll stick with real answers,” he started again, slightly more diplomatically. “They fear fire and flashlights hurt them. That’s enough for me.”

  Behind them, Beverly squirmed in discomfort as she picked at the black spot on her palm. No matter what she did, it wouldn’t go away. In fact, it appeared to be growing, and was now the size of a small mole. And her mind, already awash in silent panic, started to produce horrible, destructive visions and fantasies that no amount of self-control could will away.

  “All just a dream,” she tried to assure herself. “All just a dream.”

  * * * * * *

  Lamar checked his binary watch: it was just after six, but you wouldn’t know it from looking through the ventilation hole in the roof of the wigwam. The sky overhead looked just as dark now as it had at midnight. Lamar hoped it was just from the cloud cover. He looked over at his companions, most of whom were sitting glumly around the fire.

  Nobody had slept a wink; none had even tri
ed, given the noisy chirping of the iku all around. Besides, dozing seemed like a lousy way to spend one’s final hours on Earth. Coop, who was sitting on the last unburnt log, shifted uncomfortably from side to side; he hadn’t been able to pee all night, and his bladder was making its displeasure known.

  Gaby, who was constantly scanning the edges of the wigwam for any hint of movement, noticed the canvas begin to bulge several feet to the right of the entrance as the fire burned low.

  “Lamar!” she called out.

  Lamar stoked the embers with his spear and the fire briefly shot back up. The pressure on their fabric fortress immediately let up. Coop stood up and tossed his seat onto the fire.

  “So, that’s it,” Coop said with an air of finality as he pulled the photo from his wallet once more to study it. “We’re going to die.”

  Lamar nodded glumly.

  “It was only a matter of time.”

  “I somehow envisioned death being a lot scarier,” Gaby said reflectively. “Sitting around a fire, waiting for it to fizzle out; it’s a pretty boring way to go.”

  “Nobody’s dying,” Ken insisted, staring into the flames. “We’ll fight our way out, if we have to.”

  “Fight how?” Lamar asked. “What good are spears against … whatever those things are?”

  “We’ll use them as torches then,” Ken declared. “These iku things fear fire, so they should fear portable fire just as much.”

  Coop shook his head sadly.

  “Even if that did work, the torches would burn out before we make it halfway across the floodplain. Face it: we’re stuck here.”

  “There were so many other things I wanted to do with my life,” Gaby said.

  “All of us did,” Coop agreed. “I wanted to learn another language. Maybe Japanese.”

  “I wanted to see the world,” Gaby admitted. “Be an explorer.”

  Ken laughed savagely.

  “We all know what Lamar wanted: to kiss something other than his blow-up doll.”

  Lamar flashed him a dirty look before responding.

  “I’d be happy to tell the others what you wanted, Ken,” he intoned, sending a not-so-subtle reminder that he’d leak Ken’s dirty little secret unless he simmered down.

  But instead of cowing Ken, Lamar’s warning seemed to spark something primal in him. Ken’s eyes flashed in anger as he issued his own warning. “Get off my back already!” he growled in the same guttural voice he’d used to threaten Lamar in the woods before sundown. As before, it reminded Lamar eerily of Wade’s threats against the group. But as menacing as Ken was, Lamar refused to back down.

  “You get off everyone else’s!” Lamar demanded, standing up for emphasis. Ken rose to his full height, and the two stared each other down for several awkward moments. Coop watched this war of wills anxiously, worried that a fight was about to break out. Fortunately, whatever bloodlust had overcome Ken departed just as quickly. He lowered his eyes and sat down with a huff.

  In the awkward silence that followed, Beverly spoke up. She was the only one not beside the fire. Sitting on her sleeping bag, facing away from the others, she appeared to be deep in thought.

  “You’re all so preoccupied with death. Nobody here’s going to die,” she said in an odd, singsong fashion. It was the first time she’d spoken in hours. “None of us are really here. This is a dream. And you can’t die in a dream.”

  “Sure, Bev,” Ken said, humoring her.

  That’s when Coop noticed a glint of steel in her hands. He looked closer, favoring his right eye since looking past the scratches on his left lens was awkward. She appeared to be holding Gaby’s penknife in her left hand, staring at it intently. She must have grabbed it in the earlier confusion.

  “Beverly? What’s the knife for?” he asked, trying to disguise his rising sense of alarm.

  His question caught the attention of others, too, who were now actively paying attention to the older woman for the first time that evening.

  “What? This?” she asked dreamily, still staring hypnotically at the blade.

  Coop extended his hand cautiously.

  “Why don’t you give it over here?” he urged.

  “This can’t hurt anyone,” she said distantly, as though her voice were coming from deep underground. “All it does is wake you up.”

  She turned the blade upward and reared back to plunge the blade into her neck. Ken was on her in a moment, grabbing her knife hand and slamming it to the ground, taking her down with it. Coop dropped his photo and leapt at Beverly, immobilizing her left shoulder. Gaby suddenly appeared from the other side to hold down the right shoulder, all while Ken tried to disarm her.

  “Let me go! Let me go!” Beverly ranted as she thrashed wildly. “This isn’t real!”

  As Beverly flailed, Coop's eye fixated on something seemingly insignificant amid the chaos: a small black spot on the edge of Beverly’s hand, about the size of a penny. Had it always been there?

  “This can’t be real! I want to wake up now! I want to wake up!!!”

  “Lady, you’re going about it the wrong way!” Ken said as he cranked Beverly’s wrist until she gave a cry of pain and the small knife left her grasp. Ken kicked it away toward Lamar, who quickly scooped it up and put it back in Gaby’s bag.

  The others slowly loosened their grips on Beverly. She jerked away and threw herself face-first on her sleeping bag, wailing “It’s not real!” over and over again into the fabric, muffling the sound.

  As Coop was composing himself after the ordeal, Gaby found the photo he was staring at before Beverly’s meltdown. He’d dropped it in the mad scramble to stop her. It was a wallet-sized photo of a blond boy on the cusp of puberty, smiling to the camera with a gap-toothed grin from what looked like a suburban backyard. It was faded and heavily creased as though it had seen a lot of exposure over the years.

  “You dropped this,” she said to Coop, handing it over.

  “Thanks,” he replied with a relieved smile.

  “Handsome boy. What’s his name?”

  “Dylan,” Coop answered as he smoothed out his robes.

  “Does he live with his mom?”

  Coop’s smile faded.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he declared as he stuffed it back into his wallet. “I’ll never see him again.”

  “Whoa, Twinkle Toes is a father?” Ken asked, seemingly impressed. “You’re messing with my worldview!”

  “Can we please talk about something else?” Coop asked in embarrassment.

  In the awkward silence that followed, Ken was the first to register just how quiet things had become.

  “Is it just me, or are those iku thingies getting quieter?” he asked.

  Everyone listened intently. Now that Beverly had finished wailing into her sleeping bag and was content to merely sob into it, they noticed the chirping outside was starting to abate. The distinction was subtle enough that more than one of them questioned whether it was real or merely wishful thinking.

  After about 10 minutes, there could be no doubt; the chirps were decreasing in intensity and number. It was nearly dawn. The low-lying clouds overhead had dissipated, revealing an indigo sky overhead flecked with streaks of light.

  “I think they’re leaving,” Lamar said optimistically, vocalizing what the others would not for fear of jinxing it.

  By the time the stars were fading and the high-flying cirrus clouds were distinguishable from the rapidly brightening sky, the chirping had ceased. Dawn had come.

  Everyone huddled near the entrance. Gaby and Ken wrapped thin strips of cloth around the tips of their spears. If anything went awry, they would stick them in the fire to set them alight.

  “So, who goes first?” Coop asked.

  No one spoke up.

  “I nominate Ken,” Lamar finally said.

  “That sounds good to me,” Gaby chimed in.

  “God, you all are pussies!” Ken intoned with a roll of his eyes.

  He handed his spear to Lamar and steeled himse
lf in front of the door. He pressed his ear against it cautiously but heard nothing. He slowly undid the upper and lower enclosures, took a deep breath and pushed it open.

  Wednesday

  As Ken pushed the wigwam’s creaking door outward, he looked out on a campsite that was unrecognizable. Twilight’s gray dimness revealed a desolate wasteland. The bushes lining the campsite were all withered and naked, their shriveled leaves littering the ground. So too were the trees, which only yesterday had been at peak bloom. Ash was everywhere, spread out across most of the campsite in the now familiar spiral patterns. The only exception was the fenced-in area, where the creatures appeared to have foregone artistry, coating every inch of ground in a thick layer of soot.

  The wigwam had been largely spared the ash treatment, although the bottom foot was caked in the stuff all the way around. The smell — like the aftermath of Burning Man — was overpowering. Billows of steam rising from the ashes helped complete the otherworldly impression.

  “What … in … the … fuck?” Ken intoned.

  The others, who couldn’t see past Ken’s large frame, grew anxious.

  “What do you see?”

  “Are they still out there? Is it safe?”

  Ken answered by stepping out to explore this new, alien landscape. One by one, the others slowly funneled out to examine their new surroundings. Only Coop ignored the bizarre spectacle before him, focusing instead on more basic needs as he made a beeline for the outhouse, clutching his crotch as he ran.

  Beverly was the last to exit the structure, still dabbing her reddened eyes and nursing her left wrist, which bore an ugly bruise from where Ken had yanked it. She looked more confused than shaken by what she saw, as though she had stepped out of one dream and into another one.

  As they looked around, each of them started to register the same odd sensations they’d experienced yesterday in the floodplain: a loss of equilibrium that made every step feel off balance; a tightening in the pit of their stomachs that spawned waves of nausea; and auditory dampening, making all noises muted and voices sound fuzzy, like they were coming from deep underground. Coping with these symptoms only heightened their anxiety and bewilderment.