The Influence (23 page)

He watched her until the dirt lane curved behind a palo verde tree and she disappeared. 

A few moments later, Lita and Dave returned in the pickup. Ross had a partial erection left over from his unfulfilled hopes, and he pushed it down before walking out to greet them. “So how’d it go?” he asked, though he already had an idea since they were back so early. 

“We sold out pretty quickly,” Dave said, putting the best face on things. 

“It was a nightmare,” Lita told him. “There were hardly any customers, and only about half of the usual sellers were there. Some of the ones who did show up were selling really weird things: pig milk and snake jerky and I don’t know what else. Paul Coburn was there trying to sell balloons! He was just standing by himself next to the tamale lady. He looked like a homeless guy. I don’t think he’s bathed or changed his clothes in a week. He was all dirty and nasty, and he just stood there with his balloons, staring at everyone.” 

“It was pretty creepy,” Dave admitted.  

“Hattie’s daughter just kept repeating this nasty mushroom poem, and someone finally told her to shut up, and Hattie started screaming like Debbie the Pet Lady. It was crazy.” She shook her head. “Even if we
hadn’t
sold out, I think we would’ve left.”  

She grew quiet. 

“What is it?” Ross pressed. 

“Anna Mae and Del came by.” Her voice cracked. “Del was leading
her
around. She didn’t know who we were.” 

“So
she
has Alzheimer’s now?” 

“I think so.” 

“How’s that even possible?” 

“How is
any
of this possible?” Dave sighed. 

“You think it’s that…angel?” 

“What else could it be?” 

“We need to get a look at this thing for ourselves,” Ross said. He nodded at Dave. “Do you think you could get us in there to take a peek?” 

“I don’t know. I could try.” 

“See if you can. We need to know what we’re up against.” 

**** 

Who could they call? Ross wondered as the pickup truck bounced over the uneven road on the way to Cameron Holt’s. Police? Sheriff? FBI? What government agency could they alert to what was happening in Magdalena? And what could they say to make an outsider believe? Because the angel story certainly wouldn’t fly in the real world. 

Ross was in the passenger seat, Dave driving, Lita between them, and he was overwhelmed by the impossibility of getting help from any kind of authority. He was not a hero, not a go-getter, not a take-charge kind of guy. From his school days to his job at Air Research, he’d always been a cog in the machine, far more comfortable completing assignments than giving orders, and the fact that he was investigating this under his own initiative, with the implied intent of subsequent action, made him extremely apprehensive. 

Dave had called Cameron Holt, who said they could come over. But Dave hadn’t been completely forthcoming. He’d offered to deliver eggs to Holt’s ranch since Holt had not shown up to the farmer’s market, even though the dwindling store of untainted eggs was nowhere near large enough to meet the rancher’s usual order. Holt had fallen for the ruse, and now the three of them needed to figure out a way to at least get a look at the “angel.”  

Ross wondered if he could sneak a peek while Dave and Lita were selling the carton of eggs to Holt. If the rancher was distracted, he might be able to spy through a window or a hole in the wall or, if he were really lucky, open the door of the smokehouse and look in. The problem was, he didn’t know if he’d recognize a smokehouse if he saw one, and if there happened to be a bunch of sheds and shacks on the property, he might not be able to find the right building before being caught. 

As it turned out, he didn’t need to worry. 

They approached the house and barn, pulling to a stop before the skeletal remains of three cows that had been arranged in the shape of a triangle. Before them, through the windshield, at least a dozen workers were bowing down in front of a wooden structure that had to be the smokehouse. 

“Jesus,” Dave breathed. “It looks like they’re worshipping it.” 

It did indeed, and that gave Ross an idea. “We’ll pretend that
we’re
worshippers. We’ll say the angel called to us and we came to pay our respects—” 

“Pay our respects?” Lita said. 

“You know what I mean. We came to see it. We’re believers like them…” 

“I don’t know, Rossie.” 

“I think it’s a good idea,” Dave said admiringly. “The only question is: will they believe it? And what’ll they do if they don’t?” 

It was a good question. Some of the men were pretty rough looking, and more than a few of them had tools clutched in their hands, tools that could easily double as weapons. What if
it,
the thing in the shed, told the worshippers that they were frauds? How would the men react? 

Ross realized how completely he had bought into the idea that this dead body, this corpse of a creature that had been shot out of the sky, possessed some sort of sentience, and the frightening thing was that he knew Lita and Dave had, too. The entire town had. 

“So what do we do?” Lita was whispering. 

“Get out,” Ross said. “We’ll play it by ear.” He didn’t like the fact that none of the kneeling men had turned to look at them. They had to have heard the pickup driving up and stopping. At least one of them should have evinced some curiosity about who had arrived.  

And where was Holt? The rancher should have come out to meet them, but so far there was no sign of him. 

They got out of the cab and closed the doors, walking around the dead cattle and into the yard. Ross looked around, checking the corral and the open door of the barn for signs of other people. The lack of response by those bowing down before the smokehouse worried him, and he had the feeling that his “We’re-worshippers-too” speech wouldn’t go over too well. They might try just walking up to the building, but he was pretty sure they’d be attacked if they did. 

“
Over here
.” 

The three of them turned at the sound of the voice. It was Cameron Holt, and he was standing on the porch of the house. His clothes were wrinkled, as though he’d slept in them, and the salt-and-pepper stubble on his face indicated that he hadn’t shaved for several days. Ross caught Dave’s look and silently registered his own shock at the rancher’s appearance. 

“Where’s m’ eggs?” Holt growled. 

“In the truck,” Dave said. “Hold on.” 

Turning to watch him head back to the pickup, Ross saw that the workers who’d been kneeling on the ground had stood and were now facing their direction. A chill touched his spine. This would be the part in a horror movie where they were either taken prisoner or killed.  

One of the men separated himself from the pack and walked over. Ross recognized him as the man who’d accompanied Holt to the farmer’s market. 

“Ola, Jorge,” Lita said. 

He nodded at her, unsmiling, but did not respond as he stopped at the edge of the porch. 

Dave returned with a flat of two dozen eggs, all they could scrounge from their dwindling stores. “Six dollars,” he said, walking up to the porch.  

Jorge took the eggs while Holt took out his wallet. “Jesus H,” the rancher said. “That’s all you got?” 

Dave nodded. “I’m afraid so.” 

“And the three of you drove all the way out here for a lousy six bucks?” 

Lita stepped up. “Actually,” she said, “We heard about the…angel, and we were wondering if we could see it.” She gestured toward the smokehouse. 

“No,” Holt said, not meeting her eyes as he handed Dave six ones. 

“I just thought—”  

“You got your money. Now get off my property,” the rancher said angrily. 

Jorge shook his head. “No. They may look.” 

Holt seemed to flinch, and, for a brief second, actually looked frightened. Then he waved a disgusted hand toward the smokehouse. “Fine. Let ’em look.” It had not been his decision, but he pretended that it was, and Ross realized that the relationship between employer and employee was not what it initially appeared. 

Jorge handed Holt the eggs, then gestured for the three of them to follow him. They walked across the hard dirt toward the smokehouse, the other ranch hands parting to make way. He expected the foreman to let them peek through a small window or a knothole in one of the boards, but instead he pulled a key from his pocket and unlocked the door to the shed, pulling it open. Behind them, Ross could feel the other workers leaning forward for a better view. 

The interior of the smokehouse was dark, and for the first few seconds, they could see nothing. Then the door was opened wider, letting in light, and the contours of the square room became visible. Aside from what looked like a series of clotheslines strung crossways four to five feet above the floor, everything had been shoved against the far wall: a table, a butcher block and what looked like an air-conditioning unit but was obviously the device used to create smoke for the drying of meat. 

In the center of the room lay the creature. 

The monster. 

Ross sucked in his breath. As black as coal and curled into a fetal position, the corpse was rotting. There were holes in its body, not just bullet holes but larger cavities exposed by the pulling away of decaying flesh. Skin seemed to be dripping from the frame, as though made of rubber and melting, but, remarkably, the decomposing body gave off no smell. It was smaller than Ross had expected, only slightly larger than a man, but perhaps that was because, in death, it had shrunk in on itself. The wings, obviously the biggest part of the creature, were folded up and tucked underneath it. The shape of the face, almost triangular, resembled that of an ant, although the wild malevolence of its expression was not one that had ever been found on an insect. The eyes, round, wide open and completely white, were accentuated and made cruel by stark pointed clownlike eyebrows. The mouth, filled with sharp needleteeth, was frozen in a silent scream. Here, too, the skin appeared to be melting, but the effect was to pull the face tauter and exaggerate the characteristics already there. 

Ross stared at the creature. It definitely wasn’t an angel…but his brain was telling him that it was. Which was probably what had happened to all of the people at the New Year’s Eve bash. Fortunately, he was self-aware enough that he
knew
he was being influenced, and that distance and sense of removal allowed him to understand what was happening. He glanced over at Lita and Dave, pretty sure that they were each having a similar experience. The expression on Lita’s face was one of fear.  

Ross focused again on the rotting body in the center of the floor. There was something extremely primitive about the creature. It didn’t look like a dinosaur, although it definitely seemed like something that could have lived at the same time. If that were so, however, where had it been hiding in the millennia since? Why had no one seen it until now?  

And were there any more of them? 

As usual, he had more questions than answers, but the one thing that was incontrovertible was that, even in death, this creature— 

angel 

—was possessed of tremendous power. 

Behind him, he heard the murmured sound of men in prayer. 

And then Jorge closed the door, ending their glimpse of the creature. 

Ross felt like someone just waking from a dream. His thoughts were fuzzy, and it took him several seconds to get his bearings. As rationally minded as he was, he was already running down possible reasons for what he’d experienced: there was a property within the wood that blocked the power exuded by the body as lead did radiation; the creature had to be seen for the effect to work… 

What he could not confront in such a logical manner, at least not yet, was the big question: what was it? 

Lita was the one who spoke for all of them. “Thank you,” she told Jorge. Her tone of voice made it sound as though she were a convert, as though one look at the— 

angel 

—creature had made her want to bow down in front of the smokehouse with the ranch hands. He was pretty sure she didn’t really feel that way—he certainly didn’t—but it was probably a good tack to take if they wanted to get out of there safely. Who knew how those fanatics would react to a dose of reality? 

Jorge nodded solemnly as he locked the door. Cameron Holt was already back in the house, nowhere to be seen, and with Dave leading the way, the three of them walked silently between the rows of workers toward the truck. Ross wondered if Jorge and the others had some expectation of them, if, after looking into the smokehouse, they were supposed to do something to advance the…
angel’s
…cause. But no one said anything to them, and they were allowed to get back into the pickup and drive away. 

Ross heard Lita exhale loudly as they pulled onto the road. He felt the same, a great release of tension, as though he’d been anxiously holding his breath and was only now able to breathe normally.  

“What was
that
?” Dave said. 

“For a moment, even
I
thought it was an angel,” Ross admitted. 

“But there was that whole…
thing
. All those men worshipping it. And Jorge calling the shots instead of Cameron. What the fuck is going on there?” 

“I don’t know,” Lita said quietly. “But it scared me.” 

The same was true for all of them, and they drove the rest of the way in silence. 

Back at the L-Bar D, Lita got out of the truck and went directly into the house. Dave waited a moment before joining her. “How could that dead body in Cameron’s smokehouse affect my chickens and bees over here?” he asked. 

As if in answer, a swarm of bees flew out from one of the white boxes housing the honeycombs and hovered in the air before it, arranging themselves in what looked like a sketchy circle.  

“And who can we call about this?” Dave wondered, echoing Ross’ own thoughts. “I mean, it’s not exactly the jurisdiction of the sheriff or the forest service, and what would they do if they
did
come out to check on it?” He shook his head. “We need to call…what? A witch? A witchdoctor? Who?”