by Jeff Seats
The truly weird thing, though, was that he just now noticed a chain-link fence running along one side of the road topped with razor wire, something he should have seen if he hadn't been feeling sorry for himself. Eddie shook his head. Stupid! He thought. How long had he been walking alongside it? What else had he missed? He looked back in the direction he had just come from, and there it was; the fence going as far back as he could see. Turning back and he now saw that the fence continued along next to the road in the direction he was headed in until it disappeared in the distance.
Eddie wondered what was being kept in behind the fence or, for that matter, who or what was being kept out, and why? He chuckled to himself. Jackrabbits, that’s what.
Through the thick wire links, he saw nothing but the same nothing he had been seeing for some time now. Stepping closer he grabbed onto the fence and hung onto it while he tried to see any signs of life on the other side.
A rusted metal sign hung near his left hand, black letters on yellow background. He stepped back to read it: No Trespassing. Dept of Interior, Bureau of Indian Affairs, and in smaller letters at the bottom: RES SITE-ALPHA.
Eddie looked up and down the fence line. He saw the same sign hanging every fifty feet or so, regularly spaced like those old Burma Shave ads on the side of the roads he saw when he was a kid:
DON’T LOOSE
YOUR HEAD
TO GAIN A MINUTE
YOU NEED YOUR HEAD
YOUR BRAINS ARE IN IT
BURMA SHAVE
Eddie took a closer look at the sign, hoping to find a phone number in tiny print somewhere. No such luck with that but he still checked his phone again for a signal. Still no luck there either. Pocketing his phone, Eddie proceeded with the long walk up the road.
Maybe, at least, the fence suggested that he might find some help. At the top of a slight rise, Eddie stopped and looked around hoping that the height might give him some extra help in scouting out the area. He scanned left then right. Nothing, again.
Just as he was about to traipse on he stopped and looked through the fence one more time. Off in the distance, there was a structure. The building was hard to make out, obscured by overgrown scrub but it was there all right; on the other side of the fence topped with razor wire.
He now studied the barrier for a way to get over to the building. The razor wire was intact all along the top for as far as he could see in both directions. The fence was sound, aside from the weathered metal it looked like it was doing a good job of keeping him out. Eddie placed his hands on his hips and backed up to get a better look at the problem.
How in the hell was he going to get past this fence and over to that building? He saw no breaks and climbing was out considering the concertina wire and his physical shape. He slowly thought through all aspects of his dilemma. Well, if going over or through the fence was out maybe he could get under it somehow.
However, from what he saw, the chain appeared to be sunk into the ground leaving no possibility of a gap for him to utilize. He looked back in the direction he had come from and could see no way under either. So all Eddie could do was continue on his current heading and hope he could find an opportunity to get under before venturing too far away from that building. He resumed walking and in relatively short order came upon a dip in the ground along the fence line. Eddie stepped over to the dip. Several tumbleweeds had gathered there and hid the bottom of the fence, but as he pulled the dried branch balls away, he exposed a gap between the bottom of the chain-link and the ground. He smiled at an example of how erosion could be your friend.
The opening looked to be somewhere around nine inches which was large enough for some people to squeeze through but was too narrow for Eddie, even on his best day. He bent over and grabbed the chain-link to see if he could push or pull it to make the opening larger, but nothing moved. He turned and looked around to see if there was anything he could use to help widen the opening. Behind him, across the road, was a jumble of decayed wood from an old structure that had collapsed onto itself and extracted a couple of pieces of wood that looked like strong possibilities to use as excavation tools.
With tools in hand, he knelt down at the fence and began digging to widen the gap. The work was not as easy as one would think. In this desert the ground was hard, compacted from centuries of weather and full of rocks, not at all sandy like the Sahara.
As Eddie slowly dug and scratched his way into the hard ground, his mind began to wander. He thought about Charles Bronson digging his way out of the stalag in The Great Escape. That scene where the tunnel collapsed always gave him chills. Tunnel Rat he was not. With that thought, he pushed the dirt just a bit further away from the opening than was necessary. After about twenty minutes he stopped and studied his work.
The opening now looked large enough for his spare tire—a.k.a. fat gut—to make it. Eddie got onto his hands and knees started to crawl under the fence. He stuck his head through and, almost immediately, the collar of his jacket got caught on the rough, bottom edge of the chain-link.
He pulled back out and remembered his days in boot camp. Eddie took off his hat and set it to the side and gave the rubber band holding his gray ponytail one more loop making sure that his hair would not get caught up. Then he rolled over onto his back with his face looking up to the sky. Immediately Eddie felt a sharp pain in the middle of his back, sat back up and turned to look for the rock that had just tried to attack him. He brushed his hand along the ground looking for the offending stone. Nothing. Eddie laid back down to try again, and the stone poked at his back even harder. Damn! Fuck! He shot up and tried to spot the boulder that had to be there. This time, when he turned, he felt a tug on the back of his belt and reached to check it out. Oh yeah. Duh! He grabbed the gun he had tucked in there earlier and set it on top of his hat. Feeling stupid he lay down on his back for the third time and slowly shimmied under the fence.
This time, his head and shoulders cleared the ragged metal fingers that reached down to catch his clothing. Then it was his stomach's turn to squeeze through. He sucked it in as if he were showing off during ladies night at the Elks Lodge. With his gut clear of the teeth on the chain-link monster, it was easy to pull his legs and feet through. And then he was on the other side; easy as that. Eddie stood up on his creaky knees and looked through the fence at the road he had just trudged down and then turned towards the building; intent on finding help.
With a long ingrained habit he reached up to adjust his hat, but it wasn’t there. He'd taken it off to dig and set it on the ground next to him, on the other side of the fence along with the gun. He wondered where his brain had gone. He wasn’t going anywhere without his hat or 9mm, so he knelt back down at the gap and reached his arm under the fence. He stretched and reached. He shmushed his face against the sturdy wire and extended his arm as far as he could, willing his fingers to grow just a hair more, and touched the brim of the cap with the very tip of his middle finger. He grunted and pressed his face even more against the fence and felt the hat move just enough for him to snag it with two fingers in a tweezers-like move and pull it closer to him. He grabbed the gun first and brought it under the fence and then repeated the process to rescue the hat.
A bit winded, Eddie stood and tucked his gun back into its home behind his back. He rubbed his face where he could still feel the wire pushing into his skin imagining the diamond patterned red marks that his effort was sure to have left. Then Eddie brushed the hat off and placed it on his head and adjusted his clothes. Now he was ready.
The target of this exertion stood about a hundred or so yards away. It appeared to be an old, weathered storage building or barn. When Eddie got closer to the structure he saw no windows, but at one end was a set of large double doors. One was partially open. Carefully he approached and peered inside. All he could see were dust particles flitting about in the beam of light created by the open door and his cast shadow falling across a planked floor making him look taller and slightly thinner than what reality had est
ablished. Aside from this, the rest of the interior was a yawning dark void.
“He...Hello?” Eddie called out into the barn. There was no response. Eddie called out again a bit louder. ”Hello?” Still nothing. He scratched the back of his head, shrugged and proceeded into the barn following the beam of light on the floor. Inside he announced loudly to the person who obviously was not there, “Um, my bus has run out of gas a few miles back. Got lost somehow.”
Eddie stopped a few feet inside the barn. His body was silhouetted by the early afternoon light as he stood framed in the opening of the door. The interior was too dark for him to see anything. Stepping even further into the barn, he called out again, “Anybody here? I could use a phone. Hello?”
Black, smoke-like, wisps flitted through the air, darker than the darkest corner of the barn. Eddie took another step, then another and a third stopping where the beam of light ended and the impenetrable shadows of the interior began.
He squinted his eyes and peered into the dark interior. Eddie couldn’t see a darned thing, but he could feel something. The skin on his face and hands felt like he had stepped through cobwebs as the ebony wisps brushed against his cheeks and moved through his pony-tail. He brushed at his face and hair to wipe away the sticky silk and shivered at the thought of how large the spider was whose home he had just disturbed. The black tendrils continue to dance around and encircle Eddie. They split apart and then converged coming to rest right in front of him.
Peering more intently into the dark expanse of the barn, Eddie thought that he was beginning to see forms in the dark interior: a ladder against the wall, an oil drum and perhaps a stack of tires. With his eyes finally adjusting to the dark, Eddie now saw the black tendrils dancing around him. He watched, amazed, as the shadowy wisps split apart, wiggled around and then converged coming to rest right in front of him and merge into a black, formless shadow. Then the apparition began to materialize into a large, dark shape of a human body. The Shadow Man!
“What the hell...?” Eddie reached for the Beretta and pointed it at the Shadow Man. “Stay back.” He almost pleaded, backing up towards the open door.
The figure remained motionless.
“I, I won’t hesitate to use this if I have to...”
The Shadow Man took a step towards Eddie but stopped at the line delineating the wedge of sunlight from the dark gloom of the barn.
“Seriously. Move again and I will shoot.” Eddie’s was close to panic. The gun was shaking in his hand.
The Shadow Man began to solidify and take on weight and definition. As Eddie watched in frightened, amazed, curiosity, a human began to emerge before his eyes. It only took an instant. Now standing in front of Eddie was a handsome man with strawberry-blond hair and pale skin, but his eyes; his eyes were ivory white with pupils so black as to be a gateway to hell itself.
Eddie continued to back up to the door keeping his eye on the Shadow Man. The man didn’t advance beyond the dark shadows, but Eddie could feel his eyes fixed on him. Then he heard a voice coming from inside his head. “I can help you.” The sound of the voice was so calm and soothing that it unnerved Eddie. He fired his gun once, a miss and the bullet buried itself into the floor harmlessly.
The Shadow Man did not move nor flinch. Eddie could feel the man inside of his brain searching, probing. He fired again. This time, it was a direct hit to the chest and the man’s body jerked with the impact, yet he still stood.
Eddie fired again and again with the same result.
“Relax Edward. You are already mine.”
The voice filled his head. He had to make him stop. Eddie fired more shots into the Shadow Man. Blam! Blam! Blam! Five bullets into the man’s chest, nothing fazed him. “Shit!”
Eddie threw the gun at his tormentor. It missed and skidded off into the dark. He turned to flee but something was wrong. He was frozen, unable to move. He could feel the Shadow Man reaching into him controlling his very core. Eddie’s body was no longer his. Then he heard that voice in his head again. “You are mine. Do not fight. Fighting makes it painful, and I do not wish to cause you pain. I only want your blood.”
Eyes open wide with terror Eddie tried to move, to run for the door, but he was held where he stood. “You will now walk to me into the dark,” the voice instructed, and his legs began to move. “Yes, come to me.”
Like an automaton, Eddie walked the few feet towards the Shadow Man. When he stepped out of the light and into the dark, the Shadow Man dissolved back into wisp-like black tendrils and enveloped Eddie. The sticky silken threads attached to Eddie’s body forming a type of cocoon around his torso which then lifted him up into the rafters. The bus driver’s hat fell to the floor as he was still vainly struggling to get free.
Eddie's kicking feet flashed through the wedge of light that streamed through the door as he tried to save himself. Gradually his resistance slowed and then all motion stopped; the fight had ended, and Eddie's body hung limp; red liquid oozed down onto his black shoes and into the upside down Cascade Stage Lines hat which now served as a basin for his dripping blood.
—— INVESTITURE ——
CRAIG WRIGHT AND Ben Saunders paused by a door. Both men wore dark gray business suits, one darker than the other. Their skin tones took on an unhealthy, green tinge due to the cool-white fluorescent tubes used to light the hallway they where they were standing; voices echoed off the hard surfaces of the flat white cinder block walls and institutional green linoleum tile floor. The door had a sign screwed into the surface. Lecture Hall. Both men wore dark gray business suits, one darker than the other.
These men were agents with the CSC; holding positions in an organization that no one knows exists and wouldn’t believe it if they did. Not even their closest relations could be told what they did so they were required to live dual lives. That meant to the outside world that they appeared to be everyday, ordinary Joes (or Josephines). No complaining about their bosses when they got home, at least not their real bosses.
Craig's mom thought that he worked in a senator's office as a staffer. Not quite the position in which she had pictured him. Not that it was any of her business, but shouldn't he have been promoted or something after all these years? He seems a bit old to be a just a “staffer”. After his stint in the army, she thought he might find something more exciting and interesting, like maybe a job in the State Department, or that he might even join the police; something she could brag about to her friends. Not that she wasn't proud of her boy but after almost getting himself killed in the Mideast shouldn't he cash in on the experience? Was there anything wrong with a parent wanting the best for a child? But she knew her son, and he wasn't the type to get himself noticed.
Growing up being known as the “fat kid” taught Craig how to keep a low profile and not draw attention to himself. Still, he did have friends even though they were the other “losers” in the school and, in spite of it all, managed to have a self-confidence level of about a five on a scale of ten. Which, when you thought about it, was not too bad for someone who would be picked last on a softball team and only then to be the backstop. Oh, how the kids had fun with that joke.
The middle child of three boys, Craig never seemed to fit in with his siblings either.
His oldest brother Tom wasn't a blood brother but adopted by his dad in an earlier marriage and then brought along when he married his mother. For whatever the reasons Tom wore a discontent with his life on his sleeve making it hard for the two to be entirely comfortable with one another though as the years passed an uneasy truce had been established between the two which eventually developed into a kind of brotherly bond.
And his younger brother, Peter, saw that keeping to himself was probably the better part of valor in a household made volatile by Tom's occasional acting out, so he escaped into a world where he had control, playing alone or drawing at his desk or sorting his baseball cards.
The three boys never really found a common bond, and while they all loved each other, they were never cl
ose.
The thing that brought Craig out of his shell was Boy Scouts. There was a great group of fathers connected to his troop who saw his potential and nurtured it, motivating him from one leadership role to the next highest until he became senior patrol leader and was the kid running the entire troop.
The self-confidence he gained after seven years of scouting gave him a portal to look through showing him the path to a place where he had a role other than being a target of ridicule from ignorant bullies. The fat had, by the way, faded from his body during his years in scouts but the scorn he experienced and the lack of self-esteem which he felt as a result never entirely vanished. They languished in the back of his mind and challenged him his entire life. At his most introspective moments, he knew that he overcompensated for these feelings by a gruff, and sometimes, unforgiving approach to others.
When he got out of college, he found that his studies gave him a well-rounded liberal arts education but no clear path to employment. Something about the military seemed to attract him. Within days of getting his BA, Craig enlisted in the army. After basic, he found himself fast-tracked through the ranks as one commander after another saw his potential and kept moving him forward.
Operation Desert Storm was the deal breaker. He came upon the aftermath of the Highway of Death, the six lane ribbon of pavement in the desert leading out of Kuwait to Iraq. Before the defeated Iraqi army fled it plundered Kuwait; commandeering any vehicle they could to haul their spoils and then crowded onto Highway 80 creating a miles-long traffic jamb. The U.S. forces had discovered this retreating horde and initiated an air assault raining death down upon the heads of mostly ignorant and impoverished conscripted soldiers. It had been estimated that as few as several hundred and possibly as many as 10,000 were killed in this shooting gallery. Lieutenant Wright and his unit came across the horrid aftermath of the burned-out hulks of vehicles. He remembered the one charred body of a driver sitting behind the wheel with a look of surprise and then understanding of his fate still visible on his face; frozen in time as if sculpted by the devil. At that moment Craig decided that this probably was not the avenue of service that he thought he was looking for and chose not to re-up.