Shya Scanlon - The Guild of Saint Cooper

There was a moment of silence — stunned silence, I thought — before the crowd erupted into a round of applause dwarfing the first in both volume and length, and I decided to slip back out the door and wait for it to end. I looked for the edge of the compound, where the true forest began. Two gray squirrels chased each other around the trunk of a nearby tree. A woodpecker could be heard rattling away. It was truly a beautiful place, I had to admit, and despite what I’d have to endure over the next two days, despite the bafflingly long-winded, infuriatingly vague, embarrassingly condescending tarot-card platitudes I’d just sat through, I knew I wouldn’t mind walks in those woods.

“Blake?”

I turned at the sound of Blake’s voice and was surprised to find her with Bobby Graves. She looked like a child beside this mountain of a man, and stepped aside as he reached out his big sweaty paw to shake my hand.

“I’ve been looking forward to meeting you since your agent called. I want to assure you that you’ll receive absolutely no interference from me. Snoop around! Take your notes! It’s an honor to be able to provide the canvas for a fellow artist to do his work.”

Here he stopped and beamed at me.

“My agent?”

“Dale, is it? This was a week ago.”

I looked at Blake, who avoided my eyes. “Right,” I said. “I’m glad he called. I’ll just be observing, you know, but…”

“Of course, I hope you’ll take the opportunity to do the courses.”

I nodded.

People began leaving the building, and soon Graves was surrounded by devotees. He grinned as if to say, hey, it comes with the territory of being a cult leader, and spun off into the eddies of urgent need.

Once we were alone, Blake said she was certain Graves had his dates wrong. Yes, Cooper called to reserve a bed and to make sure I’d be given the freedom to roam, and perhaps it may have even been before I agreed — not because he knew I’d agree, but because he had to get my name in, should I choose — but it was certainly not a week ago. We hadn’t even met a week ago!

Which was my point exactly.

Kent emerged from a nearby group of people, his expression a confession that he’d overheard our exchange. He stood for a moment without speaking, and in that moment we all turned our backs on the group of acolytes and gazed west through the trees, into the slowly setting sun.

“So,” he whispered, “do you guys want to go see the lights?”

THAT EVENING WE’D GATHERED around a fire pit and suffered through interminable testimonies of epiphany and personal transformation from those who’d attended the retreat before, and it hadn’t been until well into the night that we felt able to slip away unnoticed. Except we were noticed — joined, in fact, by a dozen other people who, as we crept through the woods just outside of camp, overtook us and fell into the growing single-file line snaking through the woods. We hadn’t been given much information about the excursion, but I’d thought it would be a good excuse to poke around on the property’s edge — if caught by Tidemark, or even Weyerhaeuser, we could come off like clueless stoners.

As we snuck through the pines, our faces caught intermittent moonbeams, glowed momentarily, and then disappeared like fat fireflies. My brother’s, shown now and then in profile ahead of me, wore a concentration I almost envied, his brow knit and jaw set, and I was amused by my own relief at learning that instead of getting caught up in a cult, he was just out chasing aliens. Who could blame someone for being tempted to find out for himself what all the media attention was about? Never mind the absence of credible firsthand witnesses — all that was obscured by the froth of anticipation, the greedy, compulsive push for a scoop. The way we were left to our own interpretations laid bare the prime directive of our hearts — were we cynical, optimistic? Were we scared? Intolerant? Apathetic? This last was clearly not the case, and the line of us hummed with expectation. Twice I tried to get Kent’s attention, to ask if he knew anything about our destination or what he’d been promised, but he only shushed me and told me to keep moving.

It was thirty minutes outside of camp when we finally saw a light in the distance, and a tall, lanky man who’d taken the lead held up his hand as he came to a stop. He pulled out his own flashlight, then turned it on and off in short bursts. The light ahead went off, then back on, then off again and stayed that way. We moved toward the now-dark spot slowly, carefully, and could soon make out a figure standing before the unearthed root ball of a massive fallen tree. He was an older man with close-cropped hair and a headlamp. He’d been the first person we encountered earlier that day, the man who’d waved us into our parking space.

“I’m George Washington,” he said, “and I’ll be your guide.”

There was a snicker from someone in our group, and he looked angrily into the dark.

“Something funny you want to share?” he asked. “No? Good. I put an ad in the paper because I think people have the right to know what’s going on. But if you don’t have respect for the mission, you can turn right on around and skedaddle.”

Skedaddle? Was this a test? The group remained silent if not respectful, and when he was satisfied with our acquiescence he went on to explain that we’d be marching on for roughly a mile until we came to a place, and that the place we would come to was owned by Weyerhaeuser, and that Weyerhaeuser guarded it with extreme prejudice.

“You could be shot,” he said plainly.

This caused a stir, and after some argument and complaint — frankly reasonable, I thought — about not having been told this from the beginning, half the group peeled off and started heading back. Blake held my hand and looked at me strangely, curiously, but did not pull, did not turn away.

I leaned in and whispered, “Do you think this has anything to do with the trafficking?”

Kent remained standing right up front beside Washington. Was I being irresponsible by letting this continue? Absolutely. But I thought I should gauge the danger for myself before insisting we leave. Surely the man was being histrionic. Whatever lit thing he’d found — A grow lab? A landing strip? Dressed Christmas trees? — it couldn’t be important enough to kill for.

I marveled at my own composure as we continued walking. It wasn’t disbelief, really. Not entirely. Even if he was entirely full of shit, there was plenty of reason to be wary of George Washington. But somehow my interaction with Dale Cooper had inured me to the anxiety I might normally be feeling. He seemed to be an inoculation against the strange, despite his own deep strangeness. I felt not numb or complacent but disembodied. My toes began to tingle.

When we finally arrived at the site, there was nothing there — only forest in all directions, as there had been for thirty minutes of difficult travel. I was tired, my calves hurt, and I’d run into something sharp with my face. So when George Washington began to speak again, his hushed, anxious tone grated. I sighed sharply, and almost instantly he grabbed my arm, just tight enough to lead me to his side, where he explained to the small group that I’d volunteered to go first. It was entirely unclear where there was to “go,” but when he pointed toward a particularly dense stand of trees I walked slowly but unafraid. There did not seem to be anything odd about the trees — I could see between them, where moonlight fell just as it fell around me, painting the needle-strewn ground with a thin, pale coat. I stopped a couple feet away and turned back. Washington waved me on. I took one step, then another, as though sneaking up to scare someone, but it wasn’t until I was inches away that I saw anything unusual.