Каарон Уоррен - The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror 2018 Edition

Most people born prior to 1980 have at least heard of the inseparable duo, Toshi Ryoko and Howard Campbell (erstwhile academic favorites of every male-oriented pop magazine in existence). Renowned for death-defying expeditions, gauche stunts, and outré theories in their heyday; less celebrated of late. The naturalists retired (voluntarily mothballed, as Beasley put it) to a quaintly decrepit New England farm. Ryoko in his wheelchair, Campbell stooped to push. The inseparable duo as drawn by some virtuoso graphic artist; say Mike Mignola or Patch Zircher.

Prior to our first meeting, I did my homework and read the news stories (which traced back into the early ’80s), watched myriad videos, and listened to radio programs devoted to their exploits (the public exploits; turns out the pair really and truly deserved the “mad scientist” appellation). Iconoclasts and apostates to the hilt. Neither man would go quietly to a nursing home. These two were fated for an exotic demise: they’d vanish in the Bermuda Triangle, or into the Amazon rainforest and leave behind a ravaged campsite, cryptic research notes scattered, a cursed Neolithic medallion dangling from a bush; or, an unmarked government van would whisk them to a black site for a final debriefing.

We got along swimmingly. Didn’t mean I’d be a cheerful pawn in their schemes.

“The Shadow of Death slides across the floor,” Dr. Campbell said, and nodded at his shoe in a sliver of sunlight.

“The Shadow of Death!” Dr. Ryoko struggled to light a cigarette. His palsy tremors came and went.

“Soon it will crawl onto us and dig in the spurs. Time yet…”

“…a few years yet. We can do some good.”

“ You can do some good, Jessica. Help us hold back the darkness.”

What they wanted wasn’t difficult. Hazardous to my health, yes, but not difficult. Some rich lady possessed a formula; a cure for a deadly strain of avian flu, or a recipe to weaponize the virus, nobody could be sure which. Campbell handed me an envelope full of notes and photographs and that’s how I came to acquaint myself with the legend of Averna Spencer—AKA the Bird Lady of the Adirondacks, AKA (my addition) the Cuckoo Killer. She’d briefly made a public splash on nightly news programs when they profiled her participation in the emergent wingsuit craze during the late 1990s. As one of the few women rich enough and ballsy enough to leap off cliffs and sail like a flying squirrel, she’d represented a curiosity.

Averna kicked it old school, pre-Information Age—nothing left to chance in a computer database, otherwise Ryoko and Campbell would’ve enlisted a hacker and done the job by remote. She kept the formula locked in a safe at her residence; a cliff-side mansion-slash-fortified stronghold amid thousands of acres of wilderness. The aforementioned master villain’s lair. Called it the Aerie.

The broad owned more land than Ted Turner in his Montana heyday with Jane Fonda and the Atlanta Braves. Closest road lay twenty miles southeast. Traffic came and went via a helicopter pad. Power derived from generators, turbines, and solar panels. Security? Ex-military goons provided by Black Dog; armed drones; bloodhounds and German shepherds. Land mines. The wilderness and its many teeth waited for scraps.

How did the doctors score this information? Dr. Ryoko claimed a contact on the inside. A spy in the house of love. While this shadowy individual didn’t possess direct access to the formula, the person had provided a detailed description of the item and the combination to the safe where it currently resided.

My natural skepticism asserted itself. Setting aside reservations regarding the veracity of the alleged spy, why in the hell would Averna Spencer, noted recluse, grant me an audience?

“Never fear, we’ll arrange it,” Dr. Ryoko said. “You are the mistress of inevitability. The opener of the way. Occult forces magnetize to you.”

“Spencer delights in taking things apart. Unbreakable individuals are her weakness.” Dr. Campbell actually rubbed his hands when he said this.

“Oh, goodie,” I said.

“If she isn’t familiar with your résumé as a survivor of massacres and slayer of maniacs, we’ll enlighten her. She won’t be able to resist. You’re a blue-ribbon prize.”

“Nice as that sounds, I’d prefer to live a while yet.”

Ryoko said, “The universe built you to destroy human predators as it built the mongoose to destroy serpents.”

“Dang, as a little girl I adored Kipling’s tales to the max.”

I inquired at length as to what they meant by occult forces and got nowhere fast. Slick as politicians dodging press questions, they relentlessly pivoted to the matter of Averna Spencer and her formula.

Charisma, resourcefulness, and grit notwithstanding, Mission Impossible wasn’t my bag. The doctors hung in there with the hard sell. Dr. Campbell said I owed it to the missing persons and their distraught families. Dr. Ryoko insisted I bore a patriotic duty to obtain the formula from Spencer. Heaven help us if the avian flu developed into a more lethal strain.

This dragged on.

“What’s your decision?” Dr. Campbell tried on a hopeful, earnest smile. “Will you help us avert a global catastrophe?”

“Pass.”

“You’re a born meddler,” Dr. Ryoko said. “Consider the stakes—mass extinction of multiple species…”

“Not for all the chickens in the world.” I actually meant, sweeten the pot, you cheap sonsofbitches. They sweetened the pot.

Dr. Campbell said, “Twenty-thousand. Cash. Our entire rainy-day fund.”

“Tempting, but no thanks.”

The doctors exchanged a glance I’ll take to my grave.

“We’ll tell you what really happened to your mother,” Dr. Ryoko said.

Ding-ding-ding. Winner.

The Aughts exacted a hell of a toll on the Mace family. It felt personal between us and the universe.

Mom took a permanent vacation to parts unknown.

My brother, Elwood, stepped on a landmine. Elwood was “technically” the eldest of my fellow brood—he’d plopped onto the hospital sheets about forty-five minutes before me back in 1980. We didn’t share the Corsican Twins psychic bond as romanticized by pop lit. Elwood and I had barely acknowledged, much less dwelled on, the fact we were twins. I was shocked as anyone to get the bad news from Afghanistan.

Jackson Bane, love of my life, went down with his fishing boat.

Dad followed suit in a separate accident on the Bering.

A bunch of friends and colleagues got murdered by the Eagle Talon Ripper. The Ripper almost did me in as well, hence the scar on my neck. Melodrama galore.

Hindsight: Mom’s final disappearance began the unholy countdown sequence. Unlike the many other instances where Lucius slapped Dad and hit the road for a week or a month, she didn’t return. Didn’t call, didn’t write, didn’t leave a hint where she’d gone and after a couple of years, her fate gradually became the stuff of legends.

Flash forward the better part of a decade. When the mad doctors offered to solve the nagging mystery of Mom’s vanishing act, my instincts were to skip the whole middle part where I went off on a fool’s errand into the den of a sadistic murderer. Quicker and more reliable to extract their information with a sharp stick.

Beasley presented a major obstacle. He watched over Campbell and Ryoko with zeal. The adorable brute exhibited a ruthless streak when it came to protecting the codgers. His bulging biceps and handiness with gun, knife, and hobnail boot, gave me pause.

It’s seldom wise to tackle an irresistible force of nature head-on. I played it coy.

He implored me to forget the mission and slip away into the night. No amount of money was worth the risk, he adored me, et cetera. I informed him the old bastards had made me an offer I couldn’t refuse—and then refused to tell him what the offer entailed. I asked if he’d ever met a woman named Lucius, real slick like. He shrugged and said yeah, she’d blown into camp a few years back, consulted with the doctors, then departed on an evening breeze.