The Truth Circle

by Cameron Ayers

  “I don’t know how much long I can hold this steady,” Beverly warned, though no one could tell if it was a threat or if she was in earnest.

  “Whet whem win! Whet whem win!” Wade shouted through his gag, bouncing up and down feverishly as he felt his plastic bonds start to give. Coop noticed that Wade was already sitting in the shadows, with the iku swarming all around, and yet they completely ignored him.

  Coop walked carefully around Beverly and pointed his spear at guttural Ken. He and Lamar both pressed forward.

  “Not so close,” guttural Ken warned as the two spearmen converged on him. His eyes raging, guttural Ken grabbed Gaby by the wrist and guided her unwilling hand to the shadows and the congregating iku, which were only inches away.

  “Whet whem win!”

  “Drop your spears or watch her die!” Ken barked.

  Lamar and Ken stood their ground, their weapons aimed at his head.

  Ken pulled Gaby’s hand further from the firelight.

  The shadows were now within three feet of the firepit.

  “Whet whem win! Whet whem win!”

  Gaby shrieked as the tip of her index finger entered the shadows and the waiting iku swarmed it. In the dying light of the embers, Lamar could see the tip of her finger slowly turn black, like Beverly’s skin after her brush with the creatures.

  “Sooo cold!” Gaby stammered, tears of pain streaming down her face. “Sooo cold!”

  The black mark rapidly moved downward and started consuming the webbing between her fingers.

  “Okay, you win!” Lamar shouted as he lowered his spear. “Just let her go!”

  “Whet whem win! Whet whem win! Whet whem win!”

  “Drop it on the ground, or you can pick up what’s left of this cunt with a pair of tweezers!” guttural Ken growled.

  Lamar dropped his spear to the ground, where it landed with a dull thud.

  “Him, too!” guttural Ken demanded, motioning toward Coop.

  The black mark had already consumed half of Gaby’s hand. Her screams of pain and terror were deafening.

  Coop reluctantly dropped his spear and kicked it toward guttural Ken.

  “Whet whem win! Whet whem win! Whet whem win!”

  Instead of pulling Gaby’s darkening digits from the shadows, guttural Ken merely laughed at their capitulation.

  “Did you really think I’d be stupid enough to let any of you live?” he asked mockingly as he raised his knife hand and aimed at Lamar.

  Fifteen feet away, Wade’s persistence was finally rewarded when the last of his plastic bindings snapped. He wrenched his arms free and tore the gag out of his mouth.

  “I’ll let them in! They’ll save you all!” Wade shouted in rapturous delight as he struggled to his feet, blood spewing out of his mutilated thigh as he put his full weight on it. “No more monsters!”

  Everything happened at once. Lamar watched in bewilderment as Wade barreled toward the entrance in slow motion, like he was running through molasses. Coop saw Wade running off to his left and gradually turned to face him, just as guttural Ken, who had been menacing Lamar with the penknife, spun around in response to Wade’s shouting. Lamar watched, fascinated, as guttural Ken’s face gradually changed from leering madman to startled intruder at the side of Wade bolting. In the confusion, his grip on Gaby loosened. Her foot rose up and then came crashing down on his foot, changing his look of astonishment to one of pain. Even over the screeching of the iku, Lamar could hear a bone in guttural Ken’s foot snap. Beverly reacted to the clatter by lazily turning her still juddering head just as Wade barreled down on her, barely even registering her presence as he charged at the door.

  “Letttttt ttttthemmmmm innnnnn!” were Wade’s last words before he collided with Beverly. The collision knocked Wade into the shadows and upended the water pail in Beverly’s lap, sending torrents of water crashing down onto the red-hot coals. The teepee quickly filled with steam and a terrible sizzling noise as the water quenched the flames. Lamar watched as the coals went dark, one by one.

  “Oh, God!” he heard himself cry as the firelight snuffed out and the ikus’ chirping reached a fever pitch.

  He heard more than saw the teeming masses of creatures outside force their way in, desperate to join their brethren for the feasting.

  Lamar heard a scream off to his right that he recognized as Gaby’s. In the dark, he could just make out her outline as the wriggling creatures swarmed her en masse. Her screams were quickly muffled as the iku enveloped her and then cut off two seconds later, replaced with a low choking sound.

  The pulsating, heaving mass of creatures swamping Gaby suddenly exploded with light, transforming into a beam of such dazzling purity and brilliance that it hurt to look at it. The cone of white light extended in a five-foot-wide arc that shot straight into the night sky, passing through the wigwam’s roof with no loss of potency. It was just like the light Gaby had seen pierce the night sky three days earlier, when Wade was still hunting them.

  The radiant beam brilliantly illuminated the wigwam’s interior. An impossible number of squirming black creatures were pouring through the venting hole in the ceiling and slithering over every surface imaginable. While the creatures had always run from other light sources — fire, flashlights, sunlight — this one, brighter than all of the others combined, had no apparent effect on them.

  In the center of the cone of light was Gaby, her eyes closed like she was in peaceful repose and her face turned upward. She was hovering in the air, two feet off the ground, her arms outstretched as if in prayer. Lamar watched, fascinated, as Gaby’s numerous injuries — the slash to her palm, her scalp wound, the black spot on her hand — all vanished.

  A voice came from the light. It was Gaby’s, but magnified so that it echoed throughout the structure, drowning out the ikus’ cries.

  “I can leave him,” she boomed, her voice projecting an absolute serenity that Lamar had never seen from Gaby before.

  The light slowly faded, and as it did, Gaby’s body descended until it gently came to rest on the ground. Lamar was struck by how peaceful she looked.

  As the light faded, the wigwam plunged once more into darkness. No sooner had the light gone than Lamar heard a shriek of terror from Beverly as the iku swarmed her. Light flooded the chamber again almost immediately as though there were less work involved in transforming her.

  In the light, Lamar could clearly see all of his companions. Coop lay on the ground, five feet to his left, entranced by the light show, his mouth hanging agape. Guttural Ken was cowering away from the display, petrified of the light as he held up his arms to shield his face. Wade seemed delighted by the sight, his smile almost as brilliant as the cone of light. The iku thronged around all of them. Lamar looked down at his feet and saw they were gathering around him, too. He reached blindly for his spear, coming away instead with one of the river stones lining the firepit. His hand closed around it and he held it at the ready, prepared to bash any iku that came near him.

  In the center of the light was Beverly, floating gently in the air, her arms outstretched like Gaby’s had been. It wasn’t the haunted, dying Beverly of recent days, nor even the irritating know-it-all Beverly they’d first met. She looked completely at peace with herself. All of the black marks on her body were gone.

  “I don’t need the bottle,” she thundered.

  Lamar slowly lowered the rock in confusion, trying to make sense of Beverly’s pronouncement over the pounding intensity of his own jackhammering heart.

  One by one, the others followed in the same fashion. Coop was consumed next, his assailants bursting into light as he levitated off the ground, transformed. In the dazzling brilliance surrounding Coop, Lamar could see the iku gathering around Wade’s mutilated thigh, projecting a soft aura of light around it that appeared to be healing it. He happily ran his hands across the creatures, as though he were petting them, with no ill effects.

  “I can forgive myself,” Coop’s voice proclaimed, echoing throughout
the teepee.

  In the fading light surrounding Coop, Lamar could see guttural Ken had located a spear, probably his own, and was swinging it wildly in the air, trying to keep the iku at bay as the light around Coop’s body slowly faded.

  “I’ll kill you all!” guttural Ken snarled as the iku swarmed him in the darkness, his bravado replaced by screams of pain, followed by a sickening thud, and then a long, drawn-out exhalation.

  The light reappeared and Ken was bathed in it, hovering off the dirt floor, eyes closed and arms spread wide. Because of his height, Ken’s head was partially sticking out of the venting hole as the light carried him aloft.

  “I don’t need to live a lie,” he announced before the light slowly faded and he was lowered to the ground.

  Now it was just Lamar and Wade, and the creatures seemed to have no interest in the latter. Lamar took a deep breath and steeled himself as the room went dark. The sounds of happy chirping thundered in his ears, nearly outdone by the shuddering beat of his own pulse.

  The strangest images flitted through his mind. He had heard how people staring down death always reflect on key moments in their lives, but all Lamar saw were images of their first day here in Quehanna as their guide John had lectured them on the truth circle, their coming transformations and the dark path Wade had chosen. John’s words echoed in his mind.

  “This is a journey of enlightenment.”

  “By the end of the week, you

  will be a changed person.”

  “Each of you must face your own truth.”

  “Spiritual rebirth.”

  “Once the circle is formed, a sacred bond develops …

  one that cannot be broken until the truth comes to light.”

  “We call upon the weyekin — the

  spirits of the forest — for their

  assistance in the cleansing to come.”

  “The next time you see these welcome

  posts, you’ll be very different people.”

  “It isn’t the experience that shapes you; it’s the truth.”

  "Discover your true selves.”

  Suddenly, it all made sense: the transformations, Wade’s rants, the missing welcome posts, even the landscape that died and was magically resurrected. The iku weren’t the enemy. They were the catalyst.

  Lamar dropped the rock, closed his eyes and steeled himself for the inevitable.

  The iku swarmed him, and each one’s touch was like the prick of an impossibly cold icicle, thousands of them stabbing him over and over again, freezing him to the core. Lamar opened his mouth to scream, but no words came out. The pain was indescribable, setting every nerve ending aflame as the iku washed over his feet and legs and across his torso. Lamar’s eyes shot open in agony. He saw black marks racing up his limbs and stomach toward his face as the ikus’ venom consumed him from the inside out. He had just enough time to think how much this resembled Beverly’s former condition — but massively accelerated — before the blackness consumed him utterly.

  Lamar was awash in a sea of pain. He registered sickness, rage, fear, despair and unimaginable suffering, all at once. He could hear a gurgling noise as his lungs shriveled up and failed. Some dim part of his fading consciousness registered that he was dying. He wondered if this was what the others had experienced before the last vestiges of his mind slipped their mortal bonds.

  Nothing.

  Emptiness.

  An all-consuming void of darkness, with nothing to see or interact with; not even the ground to orient him.

  Something.

  A tiny, flickering pinprick of light.

  It spread and gradually pushed back the void.

  Warmth.

  Flesh.

  A heartbeat.

  The light grew stronger, more confident, becoming the purest, brightest light imaginable.

  Lamar suddenly found himself floating in the middle of it, bathed in its warm glow as it radiated not only luminosity but also peace and tranquility. Lamar felt a joy welling up inside that he had never known. After so many years wasted in avoiding human contact, hiding his true self behind a computer screen and a hacker persona, he simply had no comparison for this sensation. His heart was so full he thought it would burst.

  His mouth opened and words escaped his lips, impossibly potent and serene.

  “I am equal to the task,” he heard himself utter before the light slowly faded and gently deposited him to the ground. Lamar laid his head in the dirt and slipped into a sleep deeper and more blissful than he had ever known.

  Friday

  Gaby opened her eyes slowly. It was late morning. A single beam from the overhead sun filtered through the teepee’s venting hole, projecting a soft, diffuse aura of light across the firepit. She could see that the pine tree overhanging the wigwam was growing fresh needles after losing them all to the blight. Melodious chirping alerted her to the presence of birds nearby.

  Gaby tried to orient herself and realized she was flat on her back. She raised her head and looked around the wigwam. The place was in shambles, with clothes and prone bodies scattered everywhere. She felt panic well up inside her until she saw their chests were rising and falling in rhythmic patterns. They weren’t dead; they were fast asleep.

  She turned her head and saw Ken lying beside her. He opened his eyes and smiled at her. Not a vicious smirk or fake grin masking cruelty, but a warm and inviting smile of genuine empathy. She reciprocated. It felt good.

  All the animosity, all the distrust, all the ugliness that had passed between the two had been washed away by the iku in a matter of seconds. Gaby knew he wasn’t the same man who had attacked her, who had threatened her life. Both of them were changed, complete.

  Ken reached out his hand to her. She accepted it without hesitation and squeezed his fingers lightly, enjoying the tenderness and the sense of belonging, something that would have been unfathomable scarcely 24 hours ago.

  Neither spoke a word, but their eyes radiated the same indefinable sensation: wholeness.

  They heard a noise behind them. Ken raised himself up on his elbow and craned his neck to see. It was Lamar, slowly stirring. Beside him was Wade, beaming with delight. The makeshift tourniquet that Coop had fashioned had been discarded. His thigh looked untouched, as though last night’s madness had never even happened.

  “Told you,” Wade said with a quiet twang and soft smile. “No more monsters.”

  A distant hum broke their reverie. It sounded like a motor. All of them looked around for the source of the noise, until it became clear that it was coming from outside. After another minute or so the sound was unmistakable. It was accompanied by a crunching noise, like tires on dirt. A vehicle was approaching.

  Lamar sat up and looked questioningly at the others, who were just as confused as he was.

  The motor sputtered and died just outside the campsite. They heard a door slam and the sound of feet approaching the wigwam.

  Coop and Beverly stirred at the noise, while the others looked to the door, pensively. Gaby wondered if she should try and bar it.

  The feet stopped just outside the wigwam. Suddenly, the door opened and light flooded the small enclosure, blinding the group.

  Gaby winced and turned her head away while Coop shielded his eyes from the brightness. A shape knelt down in front of the door, blotting out much of the light.

  It took a moment for everyone’s eyes to adjust from the blinding light to the darkness once more. As they did, the person kneeling before them gradually came into focus: reddish skin, weathered features, long, flowing silver hair. After a moment, they realized they were staring at the wrinkled visage of John Lightfoot.

  There was the smallest hint of a smile on his face, and that irrepressible twinkle in his eyes was as bright as ever.

  “So,” he asked matter-of-factly as he scanned the confused faces in the wigwam. “How was it?”

  Aug. 21, 2015 — Aug. 15, 2019

  About the Author

  Cameron Ayers is a day-journa
list and night-author who lives, works, and — on the rare occasions he has time — plays in the greater D.C. region. This is his first novel.

  He can be reached by email (cameronayerswriter@gmail.com), on Twitter (@cameronayerswr1) or by opening the window and shouting reeaaalllly loudly.