The Children of Old Leech: A Tribute to the Carnivorous Cosmos of Laird Barron (24 page)

As they near the gravel lot, a girl with a black bob shouts. “Bayard Lane! Hey, fucker.” She weaves side to side, blocking Bay from sidestepping to keep up with Petersson. “Don’t fucking go past me.”

He remembers: a long-ago ex, from college weekends visiting Roseburg with Petersson. “Sorry, didn’t recognize you, Rachel. Someone gave us ecstasy.”

“I used to love X. Definitely more fun. “She raises a bottle of lime snow cone syrup. “Had to quit vodka. Now I’m addicted to sugar.” She drinks. “You’re in Portland, right? What do you do in Portland?”

“Nothing.” Bay looks for Petersson.

“Got to have a job, make money. Otherwise why go to college?”

The sky overhead churns, gray-winged outlines against black. Vast gaping mouths.

Bay slips hands into pockets. “I paint a little. It’s just, there’s no money in it.”

“Creativity, that’s awesome, you know I have my radio show, plus drive a cab. I had this idea, broadcast my show from the cab, kind of kill two birds. Also, did you know about my kid? I had this idea I could save on babysitters, take him with me. My fares get a kick out of it, watching me breastfeed, plus the radio audience calling in, wanting to ask him questions, saying are you really driving a cab around Roseburg, carrying your baby?”

“Shit, Rachel,” Bay says. “I forgot you were crazy.”

She smiles. “He’s seventeen now. Not really a baby.”

Bay doesn’t really trust his own math.
Ninety-four? No, ninety-five
?

“I see you figuring. Not yours, not quite. Got kids, Bayard?” She points at his ring. “See you’re married.”

Clouds seethe, emitting sparks. The moon’s potent gravity pulls. Invisible gasses drift.

“Don’t know. Yeah.”

“What’s that mean?” She flashes white teeth. “Tell me something tasty.”

“Yesterday, my wife emptied the house. Took all our stuff, all the money. Her money, really. Didn’t have my own.”

“Wow, truth. I don’t drive a cab, that’s stupid. I wait tables in Riddle Diner.”

Down the hill, a bonfire roars. So huge, Bay wonders if it’s hallucination.

“I need to look for Petersson.”

He breaks away, drifts downhill, carried by a current. He looks back.

Rachel’s eyes change. Black coal pits burn, glowing fire, spewing smoke.

6.

Nearer, Bay decides the fire near the pavilion is real. Several bikers chest-bump and gesture. It seems like posturing, until real fighting starts. Motorcycles circle, revving an overpowering roar.

A burly gray-beard intervenes, embracing one fighter, who pushes him away, then clutching the other. Knives appear. The peacemaker continues, heedless of swinging blades. Others rush in, some trying to keep peace, others bringing the fight. The swarm spills dangerously near the fire.

A biker lobs something sizzling, like a huge firecracker. It explodes. Bare-chested men scramble, fall, hands over ears.

The only sound, bright ringing.

A mirrorshaded Lemmy lookalike staggers, right eye streaming blood.

Knowing he should stay back, Bay approaches. Out of the flames, an arm extends, pulls Bay near. Radiant heat, so intense. Bay pulls back against the sweat-slick hand, breaks free. He runs clear, shirttail smoldering.

A wild-eyed tiger girl, naked body painted orange with black stripes, runs into the fight. Those nearest freeze.

“Stop, you assholes. They’re about to start the firedancing!”

7.

Pavilion loudspeakers emit subtle percussive loops. The bonfire crowd quiets, listening. Sonic layers accumulate, suggestive of impending drama.

Onstage, Minerva Mallard leads the troupe of twelve women and men in loose white shirts and black short tights. They stride barefoot, confident, descend steps and slip through the crowd. They form a uniform line, impossibly near the flames. All are dark-haired, and even the Caucasians are so tanned, the troupe appears uniformly chestnut-skinned.

The dancers follow the music’s lead, building a kinetic, multi-layered churn, a blending of world influences. Sweat glistens, despite seeming effortlessness. All appear ageless, though Minerva is Bay’s age, nearly forty. Movements express natural joy, like a smile of the whole body. The pace quickens.

The fire wall flickers, coloring dancers and watchers red-orange. Even standing back, Bay feels a warm, luminous glow, a sensation of youthful energy and potential he can’t explain. For the first time since Annie’s note, he feels buoyed, capable of imagining a future. Life continues. He may encounter pain, but he’ll survive.

Darkening music, a new dance. The horizon shifts. In the soundscape, crisp metallic ticking snare offsets a black sea. Clouds swirl, darkly churning. The ground rumbles. Flames leap and roar.

Thoughts veer sideways, out of control. What happened to possibility, to hope? Bay sees Annie, laughing. The bastard cinema owner flicks his tongue. Bay wants to kill. From self-pity to hope, sidelong to potent rage. He feels energized, lifted. An inward surge, a brew of anger and lust, propels him nearer the crowd. Strength surges in his muscles, a hot surging wave of testosterone. Vitality, danger. Bay wants to drink it in.

The throng moves in rhythm, rising, falling. Movement is handed off by touch. Each contact conveys from one to next the knowledge and timing of impending shifts.

Minerva’s eyes are fierce, her body sweat-slick. She leads the dancers, pulling white shirts overhead to reveal naked torsos. Every body is tattooed on shoulders, arms or breasts. The tattoos themselves are alive, their flow distinct from the motions of bodies. Ink churns, spreading across hands, rising over faces like a devouring virus. As rhythm conveys from dancer to audience, lines of ink intertwine and extend, travel body to body. The audience nearest the troupe transforms, dark figures swimming outward in a wave of seeping black. Patterns move, carriers oblivious to their infection. The dance intensifies, quickens.

Bay wants to approach. Whatever this is, he’ll surrender, let it take him. He’s willing to forget, to wade in and submerge himself.

As he reaches the crowd’s perimeter, those nearest the fire start to fall. They drop without protest, overcome. The troupe halts, motionless as mannequins, apparently unsurprised. The music continues, slowing. The audience’s movements don’t halt, but diminish with the rhythm. Those upright begin to disperse, sweat-drenched, murmuring satisfaction.

The collapsed are few. An opening widens around them. Others seem not to notice. Dark faceless figures in black hoods descend and drag away five motionless fallen.

Bay remains separate from the crowd, never quite joined.

Music stops. Bay wonders what he saw. Maybe he imagined black ciphers dragging bodies inked with contagion.

From the crowd, someone beckons. Minerva, in the white shirt again. She skips toward him, weightless. Her embrace is damp with the sweat of exertion. Her heart pounds against his chest.

“I’m so glad Petersson brought—” She backs up, pointing. “Oh, Bay, you’re hurt.”

The front of his shirt is cut, blood-soaked. “The fight.”

Minerva pulls his hand. “Come in, I’ll get you something.”

8.

Inside the house, a tranquil oasis. Minerva vanishes into darkness behind the stairwell, returns holding a jar.

“Come up.” She starts upstairs.

One hand pressing his wound, Bay follows into the dark void. Halfway, he bumps into Minerva.

“Hold still,” she says. “I’ll fix you.”

His shirt lifts.

Minerva smears cold, astringent balm. “How’s that feel?”

“No pain,” Bay says.

“There’s always pain.” She turns, resumes climbing. “Old Mallard keeps asking about you.”

The room is a broad, many-windowed hexagon packed with hand-built variants on musical instruments: a horizontal long-stringed harp like an oversized bodiless piano; squares of metal plate hung like gongs; panels of knobs, vacuum tubes and tangled wire.

“Welcome to Attainment.” Old Mallard speaks without looking up from a tray of water-filled glass bowls. Delicately he strokes the rims, sounding vibrations which shimmer high and light.

A Miles Davis lookalike clad only in white tennis shorts perches on a piano stool before a plywood harpsichord beside a stand of DIY electronics, horned speakers and arcane analog circuitry. A microphone cable dead-ends in acid-smelling yellow liquid in a Pyrex dish from which a second cable-end emerges into a mixing board. Tall speakers emanate thrumming drone.

Minerva leads Bay to a pair of Mies van der Rohe lounge chairs. Both sit, listen.

Old Mallard and not-Miles improvise a slow-shifting ambience interspersed with rhythmic bursts verging on jazz. Patterns of insistent repetition underpin chiming drones. The mood tilts into a slant, euphoria fraught with digressions into panic.

Bay’s stomach goes queasy. Nerves jitter. Maybe the pill he took?

“Ecstasy these days,” Old Mallard intones, “mostly amphetamine, I’m afraid.” He steps away from the bowls. The drone continues, sustained in feedback of loops overlapping. He slides a subwoofer across the floor, takes Bay’s hand, places it flat upon the low bass cabinet. “You need to slow down. Feel this.”

Old Mallard drifts away, turning knobs, tweaking circuits, plucking at hacked-together string instruments.

Bay’s teeth ache, a taste like radio static. The bass makes his head wobble as if barely attached. Thoughts split into nonsense, then cohere again. He fears he’s missing time, phasing in and out of reality, or consciousness.

In panic, realizing he’s alone, Bay jolts upright. “Where is she?”

Minerva lies reclining beside him, eyes closed, face pleasantly relaxed.

Bay tries to stand.

Old Mallard approaches. “Stop looking. Close your eyes.”

“You reminded me of The Necks,” Bay says. “They’re an Australian avant—”

“I know them,” Old Mallard says. “They’ve performed in this room.”

Bay wants to express what he imagines to be his own transformation. The walk in the trees, the firedancing, this world of sound. Something within feels loosened. “I need to…” He trails off, urgency extinguished.

“You’ve been imprinted, like lightstruck film.” Old Mallard lifts an eyebrow. “Development awaits… some impetus.”

“Why am I here? Bay asks. “Why not Petersson, or Erik?”

Old Mallard looks to Minerva. “The way is closed by default.”

Minerva’s eyes remain closed. “Even me, Grandfather only accepted me when I returned, already initiated. Many possibilities opened, but that ended things with Petersson.”

At the same moment, both Minerva and Old Mallard turn, looking to a dark corner. There stands a figure, costumed and hooded in black, like those who retrieved the fallen firedancers.

“Soon.” The figure turns, disappears.

Old Mallard stands. “To Lightpulse.”

Bay expects Minerva to guide him downstairs. Old Mallard gives her a look.

“This way.” Minerva leads Bay to another stairway, hidden in darkness.

9.

Lightpulse is smaller than Attainment, glass walls transparent to night. Hexagonal sides merge in steel pillars hung with massive photographs and dark paintings.

“Witkin, that photo. Joel-Peter Witkin.” Bay turns, stops, unable to believe. “That’s… you have a Francis Bacon!”

“Bacon created this,” Old Mallard says calmly, “tormented at his love’s dying.”

Bay scans memory, trying to place the image. It resembles the Black Triptychs, brushwork looser, more organic. “Is that
Misperceptions of Broken Philosophers
?” Immediately he regrets the suggestion. “It’s considered lost.”

“Lost?” Old Mallard shrugs, palms up. “Some may consider it so. Lost to the world of buyable critics, dollar-focused museums. But truly lost?” He points. “It’s right there, on my wall.”

Bay approaches the next pillar, hungry to discover new wonders.

He stops.

In a window seat beyond the reach of halogen spotlights, a cloth-draped human shape reclines.

“Bayard,” Old Mallard asks behind, “have you recently imagined dying?”

“I dreamed….” Bay backs up, turns. “Who is this?”

“Thoughts of death brought you here,” Old Mallard insists. “Tolstoy said, Life is indestructible; it is beyond time and space, therefore death can only change its form, arrest its manifestation in this world.”

Bay returns, scrutinizes the figure. Must be a sculpture. Some art piece, like a full-body death mask. “What did you say?”

“Death.”

“I dreamed falling. The moment before the end extended forever.”

Beneath the drapery, the figure moves.

“You want to postpone death.” Old Mallard steps nearer.

The figure breathes. The head turns, the drapery slips. A woman’s face, chalk white.

“Lightpulse is her favorite place. She chose to remain here tonight. Listening, waiting.”

Bay doesn’t realize he’s reaching to touch the wrinkled face until Old Mallard stops his hand.