"They have everything to wait for," she said. "How do we know they don"t? How do we know anything about them? We don"t even know their names."
"You"re being argumentative," I said.
"No, I"m being realistic," she said.
"And you"re being confrontational, too," I said.
She shook her head. "No," she whispered, then nodded at the black-haired man. "He is." She paused. "They all are."
I managed a brief and unsatisfying glimpse of the creature we supposed was a dog. It awakened Elizabeth and me early in the morning, when the sky had begun to lighten. It sounded as if it were very close to the house, perhaps on the little patch of scrubby lawn that I have tried hard to maintain. I could hear a slight warble in its hoa.r.s.e bark, as if it were attempting song.
"Listen to that," Elizabeth said. "Listen to that," she repeated. "It"s awful."
I looked at her, saw the pale oval of her face in the semi-darkness. "I don"t think it"s awful," I said.
"It"s grisly," she said. "It"s awful," she repeated. "This entire island is awful. These people all around us are awful. They"re sickening and awful, George! Look at them!"
"I have."
"Not in any meaningful way. You"ve looked at them as if they"re merely...lawn ornaments."
"I haven"t!"
"But you have. I know you have. You always have."
"Always? We haven"t been here that long."
"Haven"t we?"
"It only feels that way, Elizabeth."
"We"ve been here since we were children. I know it."
The creature near the house barked again. Its warble was longer this time, more p.r.o.nounced, as if it really were attempting song.
Then what pa.s.ses here for morning came, and when I went to the window, I saw the creature moving off, toward the center of the island. It was larger than a large dog, though it was vaguely the shape of a dog. I saw only its dark silhouette against the gray light, as it moved away from me. When I study it again, with the eye of memory, I don"t believe that it was a dog, however. I believe that it was human, or something trying to be human, or something which may have once been human. I said as much to Elizabeth, while I stood at the window and she lay in bed.
She laughed. It was a joyless noise. "You live for drama," she said. She grimaced. "More precisely, you live for the drama of death. I think you always have."
I didn"t like her laugh. I liked her grimace even less. It made me quite angry. I could feel it in my hands and arms; I could feel it in my ears and my mouth. "d.a.m.n you!" I whispered.
She turned over, as if to go back to sleep. I was certain she hadn"t heard me.
One of the others is a woman I call Joanne. She"s young, pretty, and she wears a black bikini, which fits her well. She sits upright in a two-seat wooden rowboat that has the words "The Arrangement" painted poorly in black on the port bow. Joanne has red hair and green eyes and, unlike so many of the others, she looks happy. I could be wrong, but I"m almost sure there"s the ghost of a smile on her broad, red mouth. She has her hands on the rowboat"s oars, which are at right angles to the rowboat, in the sand which is where the rowboats sits, at the bottom of a dune about a half mile from the house Elizabeth and I share.
Sometimes I speak to Joanne, as I do to many of the others, though I"ve never shared this fact with Elizabeth. "h.e.l.lo, Joanne," I say. "Beautiful name Joanne. I"ve never known anyone with that name, except you." She never responds, of course. I think that I would jump out of my shoes if she did.
Her skin has a pale blue cast. All of the others on the island have that same cast, even Elizabeth, when the gray light catches her correctly. Sometimes I think that it"s simply the quality of light which causes this cast, if were the sun to appear it would cause many changes, not just in the cast of skin. Perhaps the winds would cease. Perhaps the air would grow warm. Perhaps rain would come. And perhaps, when all of these things happened, the others here would begin the slow but inexorable processes which would take them from me, and back to the earth, forever.
I"d miss them. Elizabeth may have been right; in some strange way, I may think of them as ornaments. As bric-a-brac, perhaps. Knickknacks. It"s a grisly idea. But it"s entertaining.
What does one do with a missing wife? More correctly, what can one do with a missing wife? Encounter her living ghost on the stairway? Conjure up memories at bedtime? Prepare tea and scones and leave them on the table always?
But then, I don"t know what I want to do with her, or what I"d do with her if I found her, or if she found me, or if we came across one another on the island, or in that other house.
Of course I"ve looked everywhere. I"m sure that I"ve found her footprints in the dunes, and it occurs to me that she may have simply walked into the ocean, sick to death of the life that has been provided her here, on this grotesque and lovely island. But I"ve found no evidence of footprints on the ocean side of the dunes, which suggests little, because such footprints would last only half a day or so in this wind.
I"ve called to her, too. But, again, the wind covers much, and I"m all-but certain she cannot hear me.
I think, however, that she has never heard me. She has her gaudy, Technicolor world. And I have my world. So I"ve lost little.
The creature which once may have been human warbled beneath the bedroom window before daylight. There was no hint, in the sound it made, of the bark which heralded its first appearances. Only that warble, which is so close to song, and which is almost soothing in its strange atonality, as if like so many; like myself it is simply trying hard to find its place in a universe that is a friend to no one. And so it warbles off key, in various keys, trying to find the tone which resonates in its miserable gut and heart in the air and earth around it.
I went to the window and peered down at the creature. I couldn"t see its face. I saw a rough texture to the darkness, nothing more. But I believe it was peering back at me. I believe that its eyes, which may have been green, or blue-green, or blue, locked on mine, and that when I spoke to it, it spoke back, though I heard nothing except its atonal warbling.
I am arranging the others as I feel they should have been arranged when I came to this island. I am arranging them as they no doubt want to be arranged, as I would want to be arranged were I in their shoes. But it is no small ch.o.r.e to arrange them. I"m as old or older than any of them, and they offer me no help whatsoever. Of course, I know that they"re beyond helping themselves, or helping me, but when one sees arms, and legs looking fit, and strong backs, one naturally hopes for help.
The arrangement I found for Joanne was simple enough. I sent her off in her rowboat. I pushed the thing out as far as I could into the choppy ocean, perhaps fifty yards, and I let the currents grab her. In no time, she was gone.
And I put the black-haired man back in the tide pool. Face down.
And I"ve put Jane back on her exercise bike, though she seems angry again.
And I"ve put a young man named Henry on his back on a blanket, on a dune near the ocean. I"ve covered his midsection with a towel. He used to be taking a bath in one of the bathrooms in the other house. He used to have one arm up, so he could use a scrub brush (absent) on his back. I didn"t like this. His genitals were huge, all too apparent, blue and ugly.
And one I"ve named Rebecca is writing her first novel here in the dining room of my little house. She"s using an old Remington Rand Noiseless typewriter. Her fingers are poised above the keys, her head is lowered slightly over the platen, and she"s reading what she"s written which is absolutely nothing, to date, and which will remain nothing forever. Rebecca used to be washing dishes at the other house.
I"ve seen Elizabeth as a silhouette against the horizon, at dusk. I"m sure it was Elizabeth. It could have been no one else. She has a distinctive figure. An hourgla.s.s figure. And she walks slowly, gracefully. I saw her from my bedroom window. She was a hundred yards away, walking toward the ocean, over a dune. I called to her, "Elizabeth, what are you doing?"
Then sunlight grabbed her and, in a moment, both she and the sunlight were gone.
It is the first sunlight I"ve seen here.
I must admit that it scares me.
The others do not stay as I"ve arranged them. As if they have minds to command them, and hands that grasp, and legs that can make them walk, they have all gone off into other arrangements the black-suited man is again in his high-backed chair on the dune, and Jane is now washing dishes at the other house, and the man named Henry is fishing, rod and reel poised, and Joanne is sunbathing under a gray sky, and Rebecca is standing just outside the house with an artist"s brush in hand, as if at an easel.
This makes me very angry, very angry. I can feel it in my ears and behind my eyes. These people are at the mercy of the wind"s intentions, the winter"s intentions, my intentions. They are beyond their own intentions. They have no memories, no needs, no wants, no l.u.s.ts. They are organs, flesh, hair, and blood as thick as pudding. They are bric-a-brac, adornments; they serve the ambulatory, they serve me.
The sun made a brief appearance today. It changed the wind and changed the temperature. It is changing the others, too. It"s corrupting them, however slightly. The pale blue cast of their skin is becoming blemished by small irregular patches of white, and green. This is most apparent in those who remain outside.
I pray for cold, and wind, and cloud.
Quite early this morning, I awoke suddenly, without knowing why, made my way downstairs, and saw that the front door was open, that Elizabeth was standing on the front porch looking in at me. I saw her face well, despite the darkness. I think it was illuminated from above by light coming out my bedroom window.
I said, "Elizabeth." It wasn"t a question. I was merely mouthing her name.
She closed her eyes briefly and sighed.
"Elizabeth," I said, "I"m very lonely here. I"m very lonely here. Come inside."
She shook her head slightly, as if the gesture gave her sorrow.
I was half a room away; I did not move toward her.
Eventually, she turned and walked off.
The sun"s brief appearances have grown less and less brief. It rises each day, and it sets. And the others have become corruptible. Skin sloughs off. b.r.e.a.s.t.s wrinkle. Eyes descend.
This makes me very angry. I can feel it everywhere.
And all the while, Elizabeth watches from a distance, on the dunes, at the windows, too. But never here, inside my little house.
I cried to her, this morning, about loneliness, again. I felt foolish and vulnerable, but I babbled and blubbered at her nonetheless, until she simply wasn"t there anymore.
She could not hear me.
She has never heard me.
So I"ve lost little.
But how can I be lonely, now, with the others all about, arranged so prettily in the positions of life, and protected, here inside this little house from the lingering and awful sunlight?
I keep them away from the windows, where the sunlight insinuates itself and causes skin and hands and noses and eyes and necks to decay.
I speak to them. They do not speak back, or change their att.i.tudes of life. I think I would jump out of my shoes if they did.
It"s a bit close here, now, in this small house. I have barely room to sit in my chair. Elbows and b.r.e.a.s.t.s and thighs, knees and feet and chins and hair are arrayed around me like shadows at dusk.
I don"t turn to the windows anymore. The sunlight is there. And I know Elizabeth is there, too, looking in at me, doubtless with pity, always with pity. And the creature which may have once been human is at a different window one shaded from sunlight and it is warbling its atonal song. That song is constant, now. As the wind was. It"s a beautiful song, one I know I"ve always heard, even in childhood, and one which I think I understand, at last.
The Forest.
Laird Barron.
Laird Barron (1970) is an American writer, much of whose critically acclaimed work falls within the horror, noir, and dark fantasy genres. In his fiction, the influence of Lovecraft and Lucius Shepard has been subsumed by his own themes and concerns, creating such potent and original modern takes on the weird tale as "The Forest" (2007). Barron spent his early years in Alaska and moved to Washington in 1994, where he became a certified strength trainer and earned a third degree brown belt in Professor Bradley J. Steiner"s Jen Do Tao system. He has received multiple Shirley Jackson awards for his fiction.
After the drive had grown long and monotonous, Partridge shut his eyes and the woman was waiting. She wore a cold white mask similar to the mask Bengali woodcutters donned when they ventured into the mangrove forests along the coast. The tigers of the forest were stealthy. The tigers hated to be watched; they preferred to sneak up on prey from behind, so natives wore the masks on the backs of their heads as they gathered wood. Sometimes this kept the tigers from dragging them away.
The woman in the cold white mask reached into a wooden box. She lifted a tarantula from the box and held it to her breast like a black carnation. The contrast was as magnificent as a stark Monet if Monet had painted watercolors of emaciated patricians and their pet spiders.
Partridge sat on his high, wooden chair and whimpered in animal terror. In the daydream, he was always very young and powerless. The woman tilted her head. She came near and extended the tarantula in her long, gray hand. "For you," she said. Sometimes she carried herself more like Father and said in a voice of gravel, "Here is the end of fear." Sometimes the tarantula was a hissing c.o.c.kroach of prehistoric girth, or a horned beetle. Sometimes it was a strange, dark flower. Sometimes it was an embryo uncurling to form a miniature adult human that grinned a monkey"s hateful grin.
The woman offered him a black phone. The woman said, "Come say goodbye and good luck. Come quick!" Except the woman did not speak. Toshi"s breathless voice bled through the receiver. The woman in the cold white mask brightened then dimmed like a dying coal or a piece of metal coiling into itself.
Partridge opened his eyes and rested his brow against window gla.s.s. He was alone with the driver. The bus trawled through a night forest. Black trees dripped with fog. The narrow black road crumbled from decades of neglect. Sometimes poor houses and fences stood among the weeds and the ferns and mutely suggested many more were lost in the dark. Wilderness had arisen to reclaim its possessions.
Royals hunted in woods like these. He snapped on the overhead lamp and then opened his briefcase. Stags, wild boar, witches. Convicts. The briefcase was nearly empty. He had tossed in some traveler"s checks, a paperback novel and his address book. No cell phone, although he left a note for his lawyer and a recorded message at Kyla"s place in Malibu warning them it might be a few days, perhaps a week, that there probably was not even phone service where he was going. Carry on, carry on. He had hopped a redeye jet to Boston and once there eschewed the convenience of renting a car or hiring a chauffeur and limo. He chose instead the relative anonymity of ma.s.s transit. The appeal of traveling incognito overwhelmed his normally staid sensibilities. Here was the first adventure he had undertaken in ages. The solitude presented an opportunity to compose his thoughts his excuses, more likely.
He"d cheerfully abandoned the usual host of unresolved items and potential brushfires that went with the territory a possible trip to the Andes if a certain Famous Director"s film got green-lighted and if the Famous Director"s drunken a.s.sertion to a.s.sorted executive producers and hangers-on over barbecued ribs and flaming daiquiris at the Monarch Grille that Richard Jefferson Partridge was the only man for the job meant a blessed thing. There were several smaller opportunities, namely an L.A. doc.u.mentary about a powerhouse high school basketball team that recently graced the cover of Sports Ill.u.s.trated, unless the doc.u.mentary guy, a Cannes Film Festival sweetheart, decided to try to bring down the Governor of California instead, as he had threatened to do time and again, a pet crusade of his with the elections coming that fall, and then the director would surely use his politically savvy compatriot, the cinematographer from France. He"d also been approached regarding a proposed doc.u.mentary about prisoners and guards at San Quentin. Certainly there were other, lesser engagements he"d lost track of, these doubtless scribbled on memo pads in his home office.
He knew he should hire a reliable secretary. He promised himself to do just that every year. It was hard. He missed Jean. She"d had a lazy eye and a droll wit; made bad coffee and kept sand-filled frogs and fake petunias on her desk. Jean left him for Universal Studios and then slammed into a reef in Maui learning to surf with her new boss. The idea of writing the want-ad, of sorting the applications and conducting the interviews and finally letting the new person, the stranger, sit where Jean had sat and handle his papers, summoned a mosquito"s thrum in the bones behind Partridge"s ear.
These details would surely keep despite what hysterics might come in the meanwhile. Better, much better, not to endure the buzzing and whining and the imprecations and demands that he return at once on pain of immediate career death, over a dicey relay. He had not packed a camera, either. He was on vacation. His mind would store what his eye could catch and that was all.
The light was poor. Partridge held the address book close to his face. He had scribbled the directions from margin to margin and drawn a crude map with arrows and lopsided boxes and jotted the initials of the principles: Dr. Toshi Ryoko; Dr. Howard Campbell; Beasley; and Nadine. Of course, Nadine she snapped her fingers and here he came at a loyal trot. There were no mileposts on the road to confirm the impression that his destination was near. The weight in his belly sufficed. It was a fat stone grown from a pebble.
Partridge"s instincts did not fail him. A few minutes before dawn, the forest receded and they entered Warrenburgh. Warrenburgh was a loveless hamlet of crabbed New England shop fronts and angular plank and shingle houses with tall, thin doors and oily windows. Streetlights glowed along Main Street with black gaps like a broken pearl necklace. The street itself was buckled and rutted by poorly tarred cracks that caused sections to cohere uneasily as interleaved ice floes. The sea loomed near and heavy and palpable beneath a layer of rolling gloom.
Partridge did not like what little he glimpsed of the surroundings. Long ago, his friend Toshi had resided in New Mexico and Southern California, did his best work in Polynesia and the jungles of Central America. The doctor was a creature of warmth and light. Rolling Stone had characterized him as "a rock star among zoologists" and as the "Jacques Cousteau of the jungle", the kind of man who hired mercenaries to guard him, performers to entertain his sun-drenched villa, and filmmakers to doc.u.ment his exploits. This temperate landscape, so cool and provincial, so removed from Partridge"s experience of all things Toshi, seemed to herald a host of unwelcome revelations.
Beasley, longstanding attendant of the eccentric researcher, waited at the station. "Rich! At least you don"t look like the big a.s.shole Variety says you are." He nodded soberly and scooped Partridge up for a brief hug in his powerful arms. This was like being embraced by an earth mover. Beasley had played Australian rules football for a while after he left the Army and before he came to work for Toshi. His nose was squashed and his ears were cauliflowers. He was magnetic and striking as any character actor, nonetheless. "Hey, let me get that." He set Partridge aside and grabbed the luggage the driver had dragged from the innards of the bus. He hoisted the suitcases into the bed of a "56 Ford farm truck. The truck was museum quality. It was fire engine red with a d.i.n.ky American flag on the antenna.
They rumbled inland. Rusty light gradually exposed counterchange shelves of empty fields and canted telephone poles strung together with thick, dipping old-fashioned cables. Ducks pelted from a hollow in the road. The ducks spread themselves in a wavering pattern against the sky.
"Been shooting?" Partridge indicated the .20 gauge softly clattering in the rack behind their heads.
"When T isn"t looking. Yeah, I roam the marshes a bit. You?"
"No."
"Yah?"
"Not in ages. Things get in the way. Life, you know?"
"Oh, well, we"ll go out one day this week. Bag a mallard or two. Raise the dust."
Partridge stared at the moving scenery. Toshi was disinterested in hunting and thought it generally a waste of energy. Nadine detested the sport without reserve. He tasted brackish water, metallic from the canteen. The odor of gun oil and cigarette smoke was strong in the cab. The smell reminded him of hip waders, muddy clay banks and gnats in their biting millions among the reeds. "Okay. Thanks."
"Forget it, man."
They drove in silence until Beasley hooked left onto a dirt road that followed a ridge of brambles and oak trees. On the pa.s.senger side overgrown pastures dwindled into moiling vapors. The road was secured by a heavy iron gate with the usual complement of grimy warning signs. Beasley climbed out and unlocked the gate and swung it aside. Partridge realized that somehow this was the same ruggedly charismatic Beasley, plus a streak of gray in the beard and minus the spring-loaded tension and the whiskey musk. Beasley at peace was an enigma. Maybe he had quit the bottle for good this time around. The thought was not as comforting as it should have been. If this elemental truth Beasley the chronic drunk, the lovable, but damaged brute had ceased to hold, then what else lurked in the wings?
When they had begun to jounce along the washboard lane, Partridge said, "Did T get sick? Somebody I think Frank Ledbetter told me T had some heart problems. Angina."
"Frankie...I haven"t seen him since forever. He still working for Boeing?"
"Lockheed-Martin."
"Yah? Good ol" L&M. Well, no business like war business," Beasley said. "The old boy"s fine. Sure, things were in the s.h.i.tter for a bit after New Guinea, but we all got over it. Water down the sluice." Again, the knowing, sidelong glance. "Don"t worry so much. He misses you. Everybody does, man."
Toshi"s farm was more of a compound lumped in the torso of a great, irregular field. The road terminated in a hard pack lot bordered by a sprawl of sheds and shacks, gutted chicken coops and labyrinthine hog pens fallen to ruin. The main house, a Queen Anne, dominated. The house was a full three stories of spires, gables, spinning iron weatherc.o.c.ks and acres of slate tiles. A monster of a house, yet somehow hunched upon itself. It was brooding and squat and low as a brick and timber mausoleum. The detached garage seemed new. So too the tarp and plastic-sheeted nurseries, the electric fence that part.i.tioned the back forty into quadrants and the military drab shortwave antenna array crowning the A-frame barn. No private security forces were in evidence, no British mercenaries with submachine guns on shoulder slings, nor packs of sleek, bullet-headed attack dogs cruising the property. The golden age had obviously pa.s.sed into twilight.