Том Светерлич - The Gone World

“I can’t really see where I’m going,” he said. Moss felt the SUV’s tires run up against large stones and knots of growth, felt the SUV correct back to the furrows of the path. Branches reached across the road and slapped at the windows.

“Wait, wait, wait,” said Nestor. “Here we are.”

A flash of red as he brought them into a clearing—the rear hatch of the Dodge Ram. An older model, something from the eighties, but it fit the description, cherry except where rust had chewed the doors, the Confederate flag just one of dozens of worn and half-peeled stickers. THE SOUTH WILL RISE. A sticker of Calvin taking a piss on a Ford logo. A pistol, THIS TRUCK PROTECTED BY SMITH & WESSON. The gun rack a thing handmade from lumber nailed together, empty of guns but well worn.

“Look at that,” said Nestor. “What is that?”

Moss followed where Nestor pointed. “What the fuck,” she said, climbing from the SUV, spotting the skeletons in the woods. Sculptures. Stag skeletons taken apart and refashioned with wire so they looked like men with antlers, veined with copper. Four of them hung from the trees by their ankles, arms spread wide—upside-down crucifixions. Terminus , she thought. This guy knows the Terminus. The house was ramshackle, the roof sagging in like the place was melting. Moss followed Nestor up the front walk, a series of stone slabs half sunk in mud. A slew of rodents’ bones near the front door—groundhogs and squirrels mostly. Deer skeletons were laid out in the grass to dry in the sun.

“You think he’s here?” said Moss.

“I don’t know. The truck’s here,” said Nestor. “He could be taking a walk.”

“What’s with all the bones?” said Moss.

Nestor laughed. “Hell, I don’t know—”

The bright stench of rot hit Moss and Nestor like a rolling wave— death . Moss thought, Marian . She drew her weapon, Nestor did the same. The front door was a flimsy screen over a sheet of plywood, the plywood warped and crawling with flies that leapt buzzing as Moss pushed through. The smell was heavy, seemed to weigh bodily on her—coated her tongue, her sinuses, seemed to grow spongelike in her mouth. Death, wet fur, shit. Her eyes watered.

“Marian?” she called out.

The air was alive, humming—flies bumped against her, Nestor with her. A dim front room. A carpet of animal pelts covered the walls, striped raccoon hides, the slate gray of squirrel, groundhog browns—the realization lit that she was looking at a mural made of fur, of vales and hollows, the skin of white rabbits as snow-capped peaks. Mountains—a mural of mountains made of fur.

“Marian?” she called out, the rot-infused air pouring into her lungs as she breathed. A fly crawled across her lips—she flinched, blew it aside. She feared them, feared what the flies might mean—feared discovering Marian’s body. Not here, not here—

“FBI,” said Nestor. “Federal agents.”

Moss moved through into the adjoining room, gun leveled—a larger room with a corner kitchen and a television with foil-wrapped rabbit ears. Family Feud. Nazi flags draped the walls and were stapled to the ceiling. Black flags, SS in white bolts. Emerald flags with white stags’ heads, antlers cradling swastikas. Lunatic , she thought—but she was scared, like she’d found the gateway to Hell. Mountain Dew and Pabst empties covered the floor, writhing with black ants.

“Here,” said Nestor. “Over here.”

A hall extended to the back rooms of the house, a hall lined with mismatched mirrors hung in a random scatter. Something on the hall floor was wrapped in garbage bags, a body, the plastic so thick with slivers of white maggots and flies it looked as though the bag crawled. Nestor wrapped his hand in his sleeve, pulled at the plastic—Moss expecting Marian’s pale face, but the face was covered in black fur, toothless red gums, its black eyes like glass marbles.

“Jesus,” said Nestor, jumping back. “What is that? A fucking bear?”

Moss continued down the mirrored hall, her image a multitude of reflections. What is this place? —but on some level Moss understood the design, on some level recognition bloomed. The mirrors in the hall, her reflections—something about this place tugged at her memory, and she thought of snowy climes, hiking through drifts in her orange space suit, so cold the wind was sharded with ice. She passed a bathroom, then a bedroom—a mattress on the floor, a duffel bag at the foot of the bed. She followed the mirrors to the back bedroom, the master, and when she looked inside, she heard herself scream.

The man had hanged himself from a tree made of bones—a sculpture of a tree, bones and iron and copper wire, the walls and ceiling of the room paneled with mirrors so the hanged man’s reflection was an endless recursion. He dangled from skeletal branches, his face bloated, his tongue a purple bulge. Obese, his great white body wriggling with flies. Moss stepped closer, her weapon leveled but her hands shaking, and saw herself reflected with the dead man. This place was a representation—she was overwhelmed with the sensation of returning —the mirrored hall and the bone tree in the mirrored room uncovered memories Moss had worked to diminish over the years, the memory of her crucifixion, the roar of the black river beneath her. These rooms, however, were like a prodding finger. She remembered ice, remembered the air around her shimmering like a panoply of mirrors. She had seen the tree when she was in the Terminus, a tree the color of blanched bones, infinitely repeated. Fleece had reconstructed the scene as if he’d pulled the landscape from her mind.

“Let’s go,” said Nestor, putting his hands on her shoulders, leading her from the room. “Marian’s not here. Let’s go.”

The Brooke County sheriff blocked off the property at Barthollow Fork Branch, barred access until the FBI Mobile Crime Unit arrived. They pulled the body of the decomposed black bear from the house and dragged it to the woods before cutting down Elric Fleece, an operation for several men because of the corpse’s girth. The bear had been disassembled—skinned, boned, the organs removed. The technicians documented Fleece’s residence like a crime scene, but the opinion spread quickly that his death was suicide, that he’d been hanging from the bone tree at least a full day, if not longer. Moss watched the men carry Fleece’s sheet-wrapped body on a gurney, load it into the back of an ambulance for transport to Charleston for the autopsy. Everywhere I look will be turned to ice , she thought, and it was almost as if she could feel the ice encroaching from some future time. She walked the edges of Fleece’s property, out into the woods, where she followed a path that led to the four skeletons hung from branches by their ankles. They had been crafted with horrific ingenuity—the copper wire wrapping the deer bones hinting at veins and musculature. How had he known about the Terminus, the hanged men? Moss imagined Patrick Mursult haunted by the future death of the world, whispering his visions to Fleece—or maybe Fleece had seen for himself, maybe he was another sailor aboard Libra appearing now, an apparition. NSC sailors suffered a high rate of suicide. Moss had observed several autopsies of men who had hanged themselves or cut open their own wrists, or who had ended their lives with a self-inflicted gunshot wound, broken men who couldn’t readjust to the creeping pace of normal time. O’Connor would be able to verify if Fleece was NSC, but Moss felt increasingly certain here was another sailor whose record would read “missing in action.” She heard footsteps—Nestor tromping through the underbrush, coming for her.