The Truth Circle

by Cameron Ayers

  The bulging appeared higher and higher up the fabric on all sides, no matter which way Lamar trained his light, until Coop looked up and saw movement around the wigwam’s venting hole overhead.

  “Lamar!” he shouted.

  “I’m a little busy!” Lamar replied, gritting his teeth as he tried desperately to keep the iku from going any higher than eye level. He’s already given up on stopping them at any point below, where the canvas walls were bursting at the seams with pressure as the iku tried to force their way inside.

  Coop grabbed Lamar’s flashlight arm and aimed it skyward.

  Blackish squirming shapes clustered around the hole in the ceiling vanished in a puff of smoke, as did several in the lower-lying branches of the denuded pine tree overhead. The iku had climbed the tree as well and were now diving onto the wigwam’s roof.

  Ken lunged for the pull chain that controlled the central flue and yanked it tight, constricting the opening to less than a foot in diameter.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Lamar could see movement in the rafters above. He aimed the light in that direction and caught several iku that had snuck in and were somehow clinging to the ceiling. They were instantly extinguished. He and Coop shared a nervous glance. These things could hang upside down, too.

  “Gaby, give us good news,” Ken begged.

  “This would be so much easier if I could see properly!” she replied snappishly in the dim afterglow of Lamar’s beam. “Ken, get down and blow on the leaves.”

  Ken dropped to his knees and started blowing furiously on the leaves.

  “Gently!” Gaby instructed him. “Don’t spit.”

  The iku were swarming on all possible surfaces now. Lamar’s flashlight barely slowed them down. The bulging of the fabric on all sides was now almost uniform, so it looked like the whole wigwam was one organism breathing, and they were inside it. It was an unsettling thought.

  The flashlight flickered and went out momentarily. Lamar smacked the handle and the flashlight blazed to life once more although it was slightly dimmer.

  “We are going to die,” Coop said urgently.

  “I see an ember!” Ken said excitedly at the base of the firepit. “It’s glowing!”

  The others watched as the ember produced a tiny flame, which flickered and threatened to fade. Everyone held their breath. The flame leapt back up as it started to feast on a dead leaf. Its fiery tendrils reached for another. And then another. Slowly but surely, the flames spread, and the light in the wigwam began to grow.

  Gaby dropped the bow drill and leaned back on her knees, exhausted, as Ken and Coop started feeding the flames more leaves and dried twigs.

  Ken pushed the flaming mass onto the pile of waiting logs in the fireplace before adding more kindling to fuel it. As the flames grew, the pressure on the walls of the wigwam lessened.

  After several agonizing minutes, the flames grew high enough and hot enough for the logs underneath to catch. They now had a proper, sustaining fire.

  “We did it! We really did it!” Ken shouted triumphantly, as the iku began retreating and the canvas walls resumed their former shape.

  Lamar and Coop hugged in celebration as Gaby removed the blood-soaked bandage from her left hand to see how much damage she’d done to it. It was hard to tell in the glow of the firelight, but the laceration appeared to have reopened at either end, with blood trickling out. It didn’t look too bad, all things considered.

  She started rooting through Beverly’s suitcase for garments that could be fashioned into a fresh bandage. She stole an envious glance at Beverly, who was still sleeping peacefully, with no idea how close the group had come to dying. As she picked through the clothing, she winced at the thick, black smoke pouring from the fire.

  Coop and Ken tried to wave the smoke away from their faces as it started to fill the wigwam. The narrow opening in the ceiling wasn’t enough to properly vent the smoke. Lamar’s eyes started to sting and tear up. Beside him, he could hear Coop coughing.

  Gaby dropped Beverly’s suitcase and reached for the pull chain to vent the teepee.

  Ken put his hand up to block her.

  “We have to open the flue,” she insisted between coughs.

  “We can’t risk it,” he insisted, his voice muffled as he pulled his shirt collar over the lower half of his face to keep the smoke at bay. “We don’t know if the fire will stop them from coming in through the hole.”

  “But we’ll suffocate!” Coop shouted hoarsely as the smoke started invading his lungs. He was having trouble seeing through the billowing black cloud.

  “Just keep low to the ground,” Ken instructed as he lay flat on the dirt. “Smoke rises.”

  The others looked dubious but followed suit. However, it quickly became apparent that Ken’s solution was anything but, as the smoke cloud sunk lower and lower to the ground. Lamar dry heaved, desperate to expel the smoke from his lungs. All of them were struggling to breathe. Coop had tucked his head into his robes like a turtle. Gaby had wrapped one of Beverly’s Donna Karan sweaters around the lower half of her face like she was the world’s most fashionable bank robber. But nothing worked.

  The wigwam was swimming in front of Gaby’s eyes. She got up on one knee and staggered toward the pull chain.

  “Don’t!” Ken shouted through the haze of smoke. “You’ll kill us all!”

  “We’re already dead if I don’t,” she answered and tugged on the pull chain.

  With a “Whoosh!” the smoke rushed upward and outward as the venting hole opened wide, expelling it into the night sky and replacing it with clean, breathable air. Gaby lowered the sweater and took a deep breath, her throat still burning from consuming so much smoke. Air had never tasted so good.

  Lamar stood up, looking hesitantly toward the rapidly clearing rafters for any signs of the iku. Outside, the iku chirped their disapproval, but did not renew their assault. It appeared the fire was keeping the creatures at bay. Lamar allowed himself to relax a little.

  “Thank … God!” Coop exclaimed, rolling onto his sleeping bag and allowing himself to relax for the first time in what felt like hours, but in reality had been less than 20 minutes. They were safe for now.

  Ken took a drink from the water bucket by his bedroll, sputtering as the lukewarm water triggered a coughing fit in his smoke-ravaged throat.

  He looked disdainfully at Beverly, who was soundly sleeping several feet away, blissfully ignorant of everything that had transpired this evening.

  “Look at her, sleeping peacefully while the rest of us suffer,” he groused.

  “More importantly, why does she look so peaceful?” Lamar remarked. “If not for her arm, you’d never know she was sick. She looked a lot worse earlier.”

  “I noticed that, too,” Gaby added. “When we left the blight this afternoon, she improved. And when we went back on it, she took a turn for the worse.”

  “FYI, we’re in the blight right now,” Ken said with a sad shake of his head.

  “Are we?” Coop posited. “I know it’s all around us, but look at the dirt in here,” he said, scooping up a handful and holding it up to the firelight. It looked richer and darker than the pasty soil outside, though that may have just been the light. “Maybe this truth circle thingy is protected,” he said, his eyes drifting toward the crimson mandala over the entrance.

  He caught a glimpse of Ken’s incredulous expression and quickly wilted.

  “Or something,” he finished weakly.

  “Let’s put a pin in it and get some rest,” Gaby said with a yawn. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m so tired I can’t think straight.”

  Everyone nodded appreciatively. They’d been up for nearly 40 hours straight, and as their fear of imminent death started to recede, a wave of exhaustion consumed all of them. Lamar closed his eyes and started to drift when an unexpected voice called out.

  “Did the signal fire work?”

  Lamar opened his eyes and sat up.

  It was Beverly, grogg
y and confused, but awake and seemingly recovered from her earlier fit of madness. Her eyes looked more lucid than they had all day, suggesting that she was on the mend. But a quick look at her blackened left arm quashed that idea. It had spread all the way to her elbow.

  “She’s back!” Coop exclaimed, rolling off of his sleeping bag for a closer look. The others similarly crowded around Beverly, eyeballing her like she was some freak specimen in a jar.

  “Did it work? Have we been rescued?” Beverly pressed, raising her head slightly.

  “Did what work?” Gaby inquired.

  “My signal fire,” Beverly said, as though the answer were plain. But before the others could answer, she spied the younger woman’s bandaged left hand. “What happened to your hand, Gaby?” Beverly paused to sniff the air. “And why does it smell so smoky in here?”

  Lamar cradled his head in his hands while Ken sat down and started laughing at the question. Neither wanted to recount the craziness of the past 20 minutes.

  “Beverly, we’re back in the teepee,” Gaby said slowly.

  “We are?” Beverly asked, dejected. “So that means that noise outside …”

  “Is the iku, yes,” Gaby said, finishing Beverly’s sentence for her.

  “What’s the last thing you remember?” Coop asked.

  Beverly sat up slowly and rubbed her aching temples as though that would improve her recollection.

  “Late afternoon. We were in the woods — the real woods, not this blight — when the canteen went missing,” Beverly said, frowning in concentration. “I started to feel sick, and then the next thing I remember, it was dark and I was alone in the woods, building a signal fire. Those little black creatures were there, whispering all these crazy ideas. They tried to stop me, so I fought them off.”

  She shook her head, trying to remember.

  “It all seems so … fragmented,” Beverly continued after a moment. “Almost like a dream. Why did we come back here?”

  Gaby cast a dark look toward Lamar at the mention of being back in camp. Clearly, it was still a sore subject for her.

  “It’s … complicated,” Coop said as delicately as he could. “Who exactly were you trying to signal with that fire?”

  Beverly scrunched her face up like this was the world’s stupidest question.

  “The outside world, obviously! Fires bring firemen, park rangers, state troopers. I was trying to get us rescued!”

  “So your idea of placing a 911 call is burning down the forest with all of us in it?” Ken sneered. “Brilliant plan!”

  “Don’t talk to me like I’m stupid!” Beverly snapped. “We could have taken shelter in an open field or the floodplain.”

  “We would have died of smoke inhalation long before the fire ever reached us,” Lamar said. “Trust us on this one.”

  Beverly considered things quietly.

  “That wasn’t the iku that fought me while I built the signal fire, was it?”

  Gaby shook her head no.

  Realization slowly crept across Beverly’s face.

  “Oh, God,” she exclaimed, tears welling up in the corner of her eyes. “What have I done?”

  “Spare us your self-pity,” Ken said dismissively, looking down his nose at her. “It’s bad enough we had to save your sorry butt, now we have to listen to you whine about it?”

  While his words were cruel, the others had trouble disputing them. Everyone had suffered greatly that day at Beverly’s hands.

  “Look, let’s just get some sleep,” Gaby said, too exhausted to continue the conversation further.

  “Amen to that,” Ken said. “We should all try for some shut-eye, if we can. Who wants first shift?”

  No one spoke up.

  “I nominate Beverly,” Lamar said. “Seeing how she nearly got us all killed.”

  “I nominate you,” Ken replied snidely. “If it weren’t for Lamar, we’d be back home right now.”

  Lamar glared at Ken.

  “You lying sack of …”

  “Let’s put it to a vote,” Coop hastily suggested, anxious to avoid another conflict. “All in favor of Beverly, raise your hands.”

  Lamar and Coop both put their hands up.

  “All in favor of Lamar?”

  Ken’s hand shot up like an express elevator. Beverly raised her hand after a moment. Everyone looked at Gaby. Slowly, reluctantly, she raised her hand.

  “There we have it,” Ken said as he lay back down on his bedroll. “Democracy in action.”

  “Beverly, why don’t you take second shift?” Coop gently suggested. “Lamar, she can relieve you at 3 a.m.”

  “Don’t forget to feed the fire,” Gaby said through a yawn as she lay down.

  “And don’t fall asleep!” Ken sternly warned as he closed his eyes.

  Despite the chattering of the iku and the crackling of the fire, exhaustion quickly sent the other four into dreamland, leaving Lamar alone.

  He sat up on his bedroll and checked his watch: 7:50 p.m. There was no way he’d last another six hours. Already he could feel his eyelids drooping.

  The pop of heated tree sap exploding inside the fire jolted Lamar awake. Several feet away, he could hear Beverly snoring. He rubbed his eyes and glanced at his watch: 8:22 p.m. He tossed another log on the fire and pulled the Walkman from his jacket pocket, hoping that some tunes would keep him awake.

  He slipped on the earphones, cranked the volume and pressed play.

  “Don’t stand! Don’t stand so! Don’t stand so close to me!”

  Even on maximum volume, the music couldn’t drown out the sounds of the iku. But it blunted their noise and served as a pleasant distraction, which was all Lamar needed at the moment. He focused on the music and tried desperately to think of anything that didn’t involve monsters or sleep.

  “Please don’t stand … bzzptt! … sooooo … clooooooooooo … bzzptt!”

  He looked at the tape through the clear plastic door of the Walkman and saw the spools had stopped turning. He smacked the battery case a couple of times, but nothing happened. He slipped the headphones off and tossed the unit on his sleeping bag.

  Damn. He wasn’t the only one running on empty tonight.

  * * * * * *

  Gaby came to groggily. The incessant chirping of the iku was louder than ever; their calls were so pervasive, they had invaded her dream.

  Unlike most of her dreams, she recalled this one vividly. Iku-like creatures were chasing her and half a dozen friends through an empty office complex, the group running from room to room as the creatures swarmed under the doors and through the vents to get them. Only, they didn’t look like the inky, mutant slugs she had seen. Instead, they looked like the soot sprites in Spirited Away, with expressive eyes and spindly, spiderlike limbs. But unlike those gentle creatures, these ones had enormous mouths lined with rows of serrated teeth, which they gnashed as they searched for the group. Gaby and the others were making their last stand in a corner office, first barricading the doors and then the ventilation shaft. But the creatures forced their way in en masse and began swarming. However, instead of devouring them with their horrible teeth, the creatures surrounded and enveloped them one at a time. And each time they did, an unearthly glow emanated from the swarming mass before the creatures disappeared, leaving her companions behind. Gaby was a bit fuzzy on what happened next, but at least it wasn’t the gruesome fate they had feared.

  She slowly opened her eyes. The fire had burned low; the only light came from the faint glow of the embers at the base of the fire. The interior of the wigwam was almost completely dark. She could see Lamar beside her, hunched over with his head resting on his knees and his arms curled around his legs. He was fast asleep. Gaby could just make out the glowing LED readout of his watch: 5:46 a.m.

  She rolled over and prepared to go back to sleep when she heard a clattering in the rafters, just barely audible over the furious chirping of the iku. It must be the iku trying to get in. She didn’t blame them. It was so nice and warm in he
re, with …

  The iku were in the wigwam!

  Gaby sat bolt upright. She grabbed her spear and thrust it into the fire, stabbing repeatedly to stoke the embers.

  “Wake up!” she shouted. “Everyone up now!”

  Her stoking produced momentary flames that revealed squirming shapes in the shadows all around. On the periphery, the wigwam’s canvas walls were starting to buckle under the weight of all the iku trying to force their way inside. Gaby grabbed some spare twigs and dead leaves from the pile and tossed them on the fire, which gained new life. The shadows slowly retreated but did not stop squirming.

  The others were roused but did not yet understand the danger they were in. Gaby grabbed the metal canteen from Beverly’s pack and started banging on it with a stick, producing an awful clanging racket that quickly roused the others.

  “What the fuck is your … oh, shit!” Ken cried as he realized what was happening. He grabbed the flashlight and started shining it wildly in every direction. Every shadow it came across revealed hidden iku, which quickly evaporated in the light.

  Lamar awoke to screaming. He uncurled from his ball and fuzzily tried to process what was happening. Everyone was running around. Beverly was screaming something about feeding the fire. He looked up and saw a black, squirming mass of iku hanging from the rafters. In a panic he overturned the pile of firewood, knocking several split logs into the firepit. The firewood rolled on top of the kindling Gaby was using to feed the fire and briefly blotted out the light.

  The creatures in the shadows took advantage of the momentary darkness, closing ranks and pressing inward.

  Gaby shoved one of the logs smothering the fire aside with her spear, creating some space to give the fire the oxygen it so desperately craved. The flames roared back to life, sending the iku retreating to the darkest corners of the teepee.

  Coop, who had taken off his glasses to sleep, put them on to find a pack of iku charging him from the wigwam’s outer ring. He shrieked and ducked his head into his sleeping bag to avoid their touch. His scream alerted Ken, who reflexively pointed the light in his direction. A cluster of iku hovering over Coop’s sleeping bag disappeared in a puff of smoke.