The Imago Sequence and Other Stories (29 page)

"Anyhow, the Bruenigs and the Choates had this sort of simmerin' feud through the years—Kaleb kicked the bucket in the '40s, but our families kept fightin'. Property squabbles, mainly. Their pigs caused some problems, came onto our land and destroyed my grandma's garden more than once. The kids on both sides liked to cause trouble, beat hell out of each other whenever they could. I guess the grown men pulled that too. My uncles got in a brawl with some of the Choates at the Lucky Badger; all of 'em were eighty-six'd for life and Uncle Clover did a month in the county lockup for bustin' a guy over the noggin with a chair."

Wallace said, "So, did you ever notice anything unusual going on?"

"You mean, like was the deal with Tyler an isolated incident or were the old rumors all true? Maybe we had a bona fide witch coven next door?" Bruenig shook his head. "There were some strange happenin's, I'll grant. More complicated than witches, though."

"Complicated?"

"That's right, partner. Look at the history, you'll notice a few of the Choates were eggheads. Heck of a deal to be an egghead yet spend your whole life on a farm, isn't it? Buncha friggin' cloistered monks—unnatural. You had Kaleb's son, Morgan, he owned the land until they sold out and he was a recluse, nobody ever saw him, but I heard tell he was an astronomer, wrote a book or somethin'. Then you got Paul Choate—Dr. Creepy, the kids called him; he taught physics at Evergreen in the '70s and did some research for NASA. But he wasn't even the smartest of the litter. We knew at least three more of those guys coulda done the same. Hell, Josh was a genius in school. He just hated class; bored him. Me, I always thought they were contacted by aliens. That's why they all acted so weird."

"You're shitting me," Wallace said.

"No, sir. You gonna sit there and tell me you don't believe in the ETs? This is the twenty-first century, pal. You oughta read Carl Sagan."

"You read Carl Sagan?"

"'Cause I drive a wrecker I'm a dumbass? Read Sagan, there's plenty of funky stuff goin' on in the universe."

"Okay, okay," Wallace said. "Tell me about the aliens."

"Like I said, it goes all the way back to the beginnin', if you pay attention. Within a decade of Kaleb Choate's arrival, folks started reportin' peculiar sightin's. Goat men in the Waddel Creek area, two-headed calves, lights over the Capitol Forest—no airplanes to explain that away. Not then. People saw UFOs floatin' around the Choate fields month after month in 1915 and 1916, right when the action in Europe was gettin' heavy. Some of it's in the papers, some it was recorded by the police department and private citizens, the library. It's a puzzle. You find a piece here and there, pretty quick things take shape. Anyhow, this went on into the '50s and '60s, but by then the entire country was in the middle of the saucer scare, so the authorities assumed mass hysteria. There were still disappearances too, except now it wasn't the Chinese—the Chinese had moseyed to greener pastures by the late '40s. Nope, this was mostly run-of-the-mill, God-fearin' townies. Don't get me wrong, we aren't talking 'bout bus loads. Three or four kids, a couple wives, a game warden and a census taker, some campers. More than our share of bums dropped off the face of the earth, but you know that didn't amount to a hill of beans. These disappearances are spread thin. Like somebody, or somethin' was bein' damn careful not to rouse the natives.

"Of course, as a kid I was all-fired curious 'bout morbid crap, pestered my dad constantly. I pried a little out of him; more I learned Hardy Boys style. Got to tell you, my daddy wouldn't talk 'bout the Choates if he could help it; he'd spit when someone mentioned 'em. Me and my sister got ambitious and dug into the dirty laundry. We even spied on 'em. Mighty funny how often they used to get visitors from town. Rich folks. Suits from the Capitol drove out there. Real odd, considerin' the Choates have always been looked down on as white trash—homegrown eggheads or not. That's what got me thinkin'. That and I saw Morgan and his boys diggin' in their fields at night."

"Mass graves?" Wallace said dryly.

Bruenig barked a wad of phlegm into his basket. "Huh! Better believe it crossed my mind. Told my pappy and his eyes got hard. Seems granddad saw 'em doin' the same thing in
his
day. Near as we could tell they were laying pipe or cable, all across their property. They owned about three thousand acres, so there's miles of it, whatever it is. Then there were the pylons—"

"Pylons. Where'd you see those?" Wallace's interest sharpened.

"Farther back on their land. Long time ago a road wound around there—it's overgrown now, but when it was cleared there were these rocks sittin' out in the middle of nowhere. Sorta like that Stonehenge deal, except it was just one or two in each field. Jesse, my sister, counted twenty of 'em scattered 'round. She said they looked like peckers, and I have to admit they did bear a resemblance."

"Any idea who made them?"

"No. I mentioned it to a young geologist fella, worked for the BLM. He got interested, said he was gonna interview the Choates, see if they'd built on tribal grounds. Never heard from him again, though. He was barkin' up the wrong tree anyway. Those rocks are huge; least two tons each. How the Indians supposed to move that kinda load? Otter Creek—
puhlease.
Not in your lifetime. Plus, I never seen rock looked like those pylons. We don't have obsidian 'round here. Naw, those things are ancient and the ETs shipped 'em in from somewhere else. Probably markers, like pyramids and crop circles. Then the Choates come along and use 'em to communicate with the aliens. Help 'em with their cattle mutilations and their abductions. Don't ask me why the aliens need accomplices. No way we'll ever understand what makes a Gray tick."

Wallace turned off the recorder, slipped it in his pocket. "Is that all, Mr. Bruenig? Anything else you want to add that I might find useful?"

"Well, sir, I reckon I don't truly know what that could be. My advice is to steer clear of the Choate place, if you're thinkin' of muckin' 'round that way. You aren't gonna find any arrowheads or souvenirs worth your time. Don't know that I hold with curses, but that land's gotta shadow over it. I sure as hell don't poke my nose around there."

9.

Wallace's favorite was the dead woman on the rocker.

Beth had hated it, said the artist, a local celebrity named Miranda Carson, used too much wax. The sculpture was indeed heavy, it required two burly movers to install it in the gallery. Wallace did not care, he took morbid pleasure in admiring the milky eyes, the tangled strands of real hair the artist collected from her combs. In low light, the wax figure animated, transformed into a young woman, knees drawn to chin, meditating upon the woods behind the house, the peacocks and the other things that lurked. Wallace once loaned the piece, entitled
Remembrance
, to the UW library; brought it home after an earthquake shattered an arm and damaged the torso. Carson had even driven over and performed a hasty repair job. The cracks were still evident, like scars. Macabre and beautiful.

The gallery was populated by a dozen other sculptures, a menagerie orphaned by Beth's departure and Wallace's general disinterest. Wallace wandered among them, cell phone glued to his ear, partially aware of Skip's buzzing baritone. Wallace thought the split in the dead girl's body seemed deeper. More jagged.

"—so Randy and I'll go today. Unless you want to come. Might be what you need."

"Say again?" Wallace allowed himself to be drawn into the cathode. It dawned on him that he had made a serious tactical error in confiding the Bruenig interview to Skip. They had discussed the Choate legend over drinks the prior evening and Wallace more than half-expected his friend to laugh, shake his snowy head and call him a damn fool for chasing his tail. Instead, Skip had kept mum and sat stroking his beard with a grim, thoughtful expression. Now, after a night's sleep, the story had gestated and hatched as a rather dubious scheme to nip Wallace's anxieties at their roots.

"Randy and I'll scope out that property this afternoon. He wants to see that nest you were going on about at the hospital. He said it sounds weird. I told him it's dried up. He refuses to listen, of course."

"Wait-wait." Wallace rubbed his temple. "You plan to go to the barn."

"Uh-hmm, right."

"To what—look at the nest?"

"That's what I've been saying. I'm thinking noon, one o'clock. We'll have dinner at the Oyster House. It's lobster night."

"Lobster night, yeah. Skip?"

"What?"

"Forget about the nest. You're right, it won't be there, they migrate, I think. And the barn's condemnable, man. It's dangerous. Scary people hang around—maybe druggies, I dunno. Bad types." Wallace's hand was slippery. He was afraid he might drop the phone.

"Oh yeah? Well it just so happens I called Lyle Ferguson—your old pal Lyle, remember him? He landed the bid and he says they're planning to commence tearing down the barn and all that sort of thing on Monday or Tuesday. So time is of the essence, as they say."

"Skip—"

"Hey, Wally. I'm driving here. You don't want to come with us?" Skip's voice crackled.

"No. Uh, say hi to Fergie, if you see him."

"Okay, buddy. I'm driving, I gotta go. Call you tomorrow."
Click.

"Uh, huh." Wallace regarded a bust on a plinth. It was the half-finished head of a woman wearing thick lipstick. A crack had begun to divide the plaster face.

He had had Pride check into Bruenig's story about the BLM geologist and the monoliths. The geologist was named Chuck Doolittle and he abruptly quit his post six years ago, dropped everything and departed the state of Washington, although nobody at the department had a handle on where he might have emigrated. As for the so-called monoliths, the bureau disavowed knowledge of any such structures and while the former Choate property did overlap tribal grounds, it had long ago been legally ceded to the county. No mystery at all.

The only hitch, insomuch as Pride was concerned, was the fact certain records pertaining to the Choate farm were missing from the county clerk's office. According to a truncated file index, the Choate folder once contained numerous photos of unidentified geological formations, or possibly manmade constructs of unknown origin. The series began in 1927, the latter photographs being dated as late as 1971. Pride located eight black-and-white pictures taken in 1954 through 1959 that displayed some boulders and indistinct earth heaves akin to the Mima Mounds. Unfortunately, the remainder of the series, some ninety-eight photos, was missing and unaccounted for since an office fire at the old courthouse in '79.

Wallace went into Helen's suite, waited near the door while Cecil massaged Helen's cramped thigh muscles. Kate had arrived early. The burly nurse dabbed Helen's brow with a wash cloth and murmured encouragement. Helen's fish-black eyes rolled with blindness and fear. There was nothing of comprehension or sanity in them and the cleft in her forehead and cheek was livid as a gangrenous brand. She howled and howled without inflection, the flat repeating utterance of an institutionalized mind.

Wallace limped upstairs to his office, turned up the radio. His hip throbbed fiercely; sympathy pangs. His hand itched with fading scabs. What had happened to him that night in the alley behind the Marlin? What was happening now? He found some Quaaludes in a drawer, chased them with a healthy belt of JD and put his head down in his arms, a kindergartner again.

10.

Wallace was standing in Skip's dining room. Wallace's feet were nailed down with railroad spikes.

"Why'd you let them go?" Delaney asked. He slouched against a cabinet and smoked a cigarette.

Watery light washed out the details. Randy's prosthesis shined upon the table, plastic fingers blooming in a vase. A two-inch crack separated the fancy tiled ceiling. There was movement inside. Squirming.

Skip swaggered from the kitchen and plunged oversized hands into a bowl of limp, yellow noodles. He drew forth a clump, steaming and dripping, plopped it on his head as a wig. Grinned the wacky grin of a five-year-old stoned out of his gourd on cough syrup.

"Why are you doing that?" Wallace tried to modulate his voice; his voice was scratchy, was traitorously shrill.

Skip drooled and capered, shook fistfuls of noodles like pompoms.

Wallace said, "Where's Randy? Skip, is Randy here?"

"Nope."

"Where is he?"

"With the god of the barn-b-barn—b-barn barn barn barn!"

"Skip, where's Randy?"

"In the barn with Bay-el, Bay-el, Bay-el. Playing a game." Skip hummed a ditty to his noodles, cast Wallace a sidelong glance of infinite slyness. "Snufalupagus LOVES raw spaghetti. No sauce, no way! I pretend it's worms. Worms get big, Wallace. You wouldn't believe how big some worms get. Worms crawl inside your guts and make babies. They crawl up your nose, your ears, into your mouth. If somebody grinds you into itty-bitty pieces and a worm eats you, it'll know all the stuff you did." He lowered his voice. "They can crawl up your butt and make ya do the hula dance and jabber like Margie Thatcher on crank!"

"Where's Randy?"

"Playing sock puppets." Skip began ramming noodles down his throat. "He's Kermit de Frog!"

"Should've stopped them, Boss. Now they've stirred up the wasps' nest. You're fucked." Delaney stubbed his cigarette and walked through the wall.

Wallace awoke in darkness, fearful and disoriented. He had drunkenly migrated to his bedroom at some fuzzy period and burrowed into the covers. He remembered long, narrow corridors, bloody nebulas splattered against leaded glass and Kirlian figures scorched into the walls: skeletal fragments of clawing hands and gaping mouths.

Wallace
, Helen said. She was there with him in the room, wedged high in the corner of the walls where they joined the ceiling. She gleamed white as bone and her eyes and mouth and the crack in her face were black as the pits between the stars.
There's a hole you can't fill,
she said.

Wallace screamed in his throat, a mangled, pathetic cry. The clouds moved across the moon and reshaped the shadows on the wall and Helen was not hanging there with her black black eyes, her covetous mouth, or the stygian worm that fed on her face. There were only moonbeams and the reflections of branches like skinned fingers against the plaster.