Clockwork Phoenix: Tales of Beauty and Strangeness

THE OCCULTATION by Laird Barron

In the middle of playing a round of Something Scary they got sidetracked and fucked for a while. After they were done fucking, they lighted cigarettes. Then, they started drinking. Again.

—My God. Look at that, she said. Her mouth sagged a little.

He grunted like he did when he wasn’t listening.

—Hey! I’m creeped out, she said.

—By what? He balanced two shot glasses on his lap and tried to avoid spilling tequila all over the blankets. He’d swiped the tumblers from the honky tonk across the highway where he’d also scored the X that was currently softening their skulls. The motel room was dark, the bed lumpy, and she kept kicking restlessly, and he spilled a bit regardless. He cursed and downed his in one gulp and handed her the other glass, managing not to burn her with the cigarette smoldering between his fingers.

She accepted her drink, took a deep sip and then held the glass loosely so the edge cast a faint, metallic light across her breasts. She exhaled and pointed beyond the foot of the bed to a spot on the wall above the dead television. —That, she said.

—What?

—That! Right there!

—Shit. Okay. He dragged on his cigarette, then poured another shot and strained it through his teeth, stalling. —Pretty weird.

—Yep, pretty weird is right. What is it?

He made a show of squinting into the gloom. —Nothing, probably. You trying to torch the place?

Ashes crumbled from her cigarette and glowed like fallen stars against the sheets. She swept them into her palm then into the now empty glass. —It just freaks me out.

—You’re easily freaked, then.

—No, I’m not. I’m the only girl in my family who watches horror movies. I don’t even cover my eyes for the scary parts.

—Yeah?

—Hell yeah. I don’t spook. I don’t.

—After some consideration I think it’s a shadow.

—That’s not a shadow. It came out when you were doing the story thing.

—See how a little bit of light from the highway comes in under the blinds? Shadows all over the place.

—Nope. I’m telling you, it came out while you were talking.

—Oh, then it’s gotta be a ghost. No other sane explanation. Woooo-ohooooo!

—Shaddup. I need another shot.

—Want this? Couple swallows at the bottom. He sloshed the bottle back and forth.

—Gimme. She snapped her fingers, then grabbed the bottle when he swung it close.

—Wait a sec, we’ll solve this right now. He leaned against her, reaching across their bodies for the bedside lamp.

—No!

—Huh? What’s the matter?

—Don’t do it.

—I’m trying to turn on the light, not cop a feel.

—Go ahead and cop a feel, but leave the light alone, ’kay? She thumped the bottle against his arm until he retreated.

—Whatever. Jesus. Got any more cigs?

She fumbled a pack of cigarettes from the nightstand, lighted one from hers and handed it to him. —Last one, she said, crumpling the pack for emphasis.

He slid toward his edge of the bed and slumped against the headboard and smoked in silence. A semi rumbled past on the interstate and the blinds quivered against the window frame. Outside was scrub and desert. The motel lay embedded in the implacable waste like a lunar module stranded between moon craters.

—Don’t sulk, she said.

—I’m not.

—Like hell.

—I’m not sulking.

—Then what?

—I’m looking at the wall. Maybe you’re right. Maybe it’s something else. Why can’t we turn on the light?

A coyote howled somewhere not too far off. Its cry was answered and redoubled until it finally swelled into a frantic, barking cacophony that moved like a cloud across the black desert. —Holy shit, what’s that? he said.

—Coyotes, she said. Scavenging for damned souls.

—Sounds fucking grandiose for coyotes.

—And what do you know? They’re the favored children of the carrion gods. Grandiosity is their gig.

He laughed, a little strange, a little wild, as if echoing the animal harmony. —So, what are they doing around here? Going through a landfill?

—Maybe you drew them in earlier with your howling.

—Bullshit. They can’t hear that. All the way out in the tumbleweeds?

—Sure they can. Howl again. I dare you.

—If coyotes sound this bad, I’d hate listening to jackals. Or dingoes. Remember that news story, years ago, about the woman on the picnic with her family?

—‘A dingo ate my baby!’ God, that’s awful. But comical in a horrible way.

—It isn’t comical in any way, honey. You’re scaring the children.

—Please. Nobody really knows what happened. The kid’s mom probably offed her, you ask me.

—There’s a great relief. Why do so many parents kill their kids, you think?

—Lots of reasons. Don’t you want to strangle the little fuckers sometimes? Like those shits on the flight when we went to see your parents? What a mistake that was, by the way. That one girl kept kicking my seat so hard my head was bouncing. And her mom….

—Ha! It was fun watching you get so mad, though.

She didn’t answer, but sat rigidly upright. She trembled.

—Honey? He rubbed her back. —What’s the matter?

—Go ahead, she said. Her voice was small.

—Go ahead and what?

—Turn on the light, she said in that small voice. Her cigarette was out and the darkness gathered around them, oily and deep. Faint illumination came through the blinds like light bleeding toward the bottom of a well, a dungeon.

—You turn it on, he said. —You’re right there.

—I can’t move.

—What the hell are you talking about?

—Please. I’m too scared to move, all right? She was whining, borderline hysterical. She enjoyed being frightened, savored the visceral thrill of modulated terror, thus Something Scary, and thus the What If Game (What if a carload of rednecks started following us on a lonely road? What if somebody was sneaking around the house at night? What if I got pregnant?), and thus her compulsion to build the shadow, the discolored blotch of wallpaper, into something sinister. As was often the case with her, a mule’s dose of alcohol combined with sleep deprivation rapidly contributed to the situation getting out of hand.

—Fine. He flopped across her lap and found the lamp chain with his fingertips and yanked. The chain clicked and nothing happened. He tried several times and finally gave up in disgust. Meanwhile, her left hand dug into his shoulder. Her skin was icy.

—Owww, he said, pushing toward his side, happy to get away.

—I knew it. She turned her head so her mouth was closer to his ear and she could kind of whisper. —I knew the light was going to crap out on us. We’re alone in here.

—Well, I hope so. I wouldn’t like to think some big hairy ax murderer was hiding under the bed.

—I already checked. She chuckled weakly and her icy talon found his bicep now, though somewhat less violently. She was almost calm again. —I looked for Anthony Perkins hiding in the bathroom, too.

—Good! Did you scout around for a peephole? The night clerk could be in the next room winding up his camera. Next thing you know, we’re internet porn stars.

—That’d suck. She’d begun to slur. —Man, I hate the desert.

—You also hated Costa Rica, if I recall. Who hates Costa Rica?

—Tarantulas. Centipedes. I hate creepy crawlies.

—Who doesn’t?

—Exactly! Thank you! There’s a species of centipede, Venezuela, somewhere in South America, anyway; it’s as long as your forearm. Eats bats. Knocks them outta the air with its venom-dripping mandibles, and bang! Bat Surprise for dinner.

—You’re super drunk. I thought I had most of the tequila.

—Yep, I’m off my ass. Some cowboy bought me like eight shooters while you were in the bathroom. You were in there forever.

—Come again? he said, scandalized.

—Down, boy. He didn’t grope me. He just plied me with booze on the off chance I’d let him grope me later. No biggie.

—No biggie? No biggie? Was it that stupid looking sonofabitch in the Stetson? The guy who couldn’t stop ogling your tits?

—You’re describing half the bar. Who cares? I gave baby Travolta the slip and ran off with you!

—Awesome.

They lay there for a time, she playing with her lighter, grinding short, weak sparks from the wheel; he listening for the coyote chorus and keeping one eye on the weird blotch of shadow on the wall. Both of them were thinking about the story he’d half told earlier about his uncle Mo who’d done a stint with the Marines and had a weird experience during shore leave in the Philippines; the Something Scary tale that had been so sublimely interrupted.

She said, —Maybe I’m a little intimidated about the Filipino strippers. I can’t pick up a pop bottle with my pussy. Or shoot ping pong balls outta there, either.

—Those girls come highly recommended, he said. —Years of specialized training.

—Sounds like your uncle sure knew his way around Filipino whorehouses.

—Wasn’t just the whorehouses. Those old boys went crazy on shore leave ’cause that far out shit was front and center in just about every bar in town. They were dumbass kids—pretty fortunate nobody got his throat slit. According to Mo, a bunch of the taxi drivers belonged to gangs and they’d cart drunk soldiers into the jungle and rob them.

—Enough about the whores and thieving taxi drivers. Get to the scary part. If there’s anything more disturbing than Marines slobbering on bottles some whore has been waving around with her cooch, I wanna hear it.

—More disturbing? Uncle Mo told me one about these three guys in Nam who snuck into a leper colony to get some ass. Back then, I guess the locals put the immediate family in the colony whether they were infected or not, so the fellows figured there had to be some prime tail up for grabs.

—Ick! Moving on….

—Okay, R&R in Manila. Mo and Lurch, a corpsman from his platoon, were whooping it up big time; they’d been drinking three days straight. Barhopping, y’know, and eventually a couple party girls latched onto them and they all headed back to this shack by the docks the guys were renting. A rickety sonofagun, third floor, sorta hanging out over the water. Long story short, Mo’s in the bedroom and the girl is smoking his pole. His mind wanders and he happens to look out the window. Across the way, through the window of this other crappy house, there’s a naked Filipino broad getting her muffin dusted by some GI. Talk about symmetry, eh? It’s raining like a cow pissing on a flat rock and a sash is whacking around in the wind, cutting off the view every few seconds. The broad grins over at Uncle Mo and she reaches up and covers her ears. Then she just lifts her head off her shoulders. Mo’s standing there, straddle-legged and slack jawed and the woman’s head keeps on grinning at him and her lips start moving. She’s laughing at him. He notices there’s something coming out of her neck, like a beak, or who the fuck knows what, ’cause the shade is flapping, see. Meanwhile the other grunt is going to town on her pussy, oblivious to the fact this freak is tucking her head under her arm like a bowling ball.

—And then?

—Then nothing. End of story. Mo and the stripper went back to the main room and drank some more and blazed the night away. He came to forty-eight hours later when his platoon sergeant dumped a bucket of water on his head and kicked his ass back to the ship for the clap inspection.

—Clap inspection?

—After shore leave all the grunts had to drop their pants so an NCO could check them for VD. Heh-heh.

—What a crock of shit, she said. —That’s not even scary.

—Sorry. I made the last part up. The part about Mo getting a BJ while the hooker and the other dude were getting busy across the way was true. I think. Uncle Mo lies about stuff, so you never really know.

She groaned in disgust. —Where’d you even get the idea?

—I dunno. Popped into my head while I was lying there. Figured it would get a rise outta you. He laughed and poked her arm, dropped his hand to her leg.

She pushed his hand aside. —Now that that’s over. Check this out: I found something odd earlier, she said. —A bible.

—Lots of motels have bibles lying around, he said. —And Jack Chick tracts. He was studying the shadow again. —You know, that thing does resemble an insect. Thought it had wings earlier, but I dunno. Can’t see shit in here. Wait a minute… It’s a water stain. This rat hole leaks like a sieve, betcha anything.

—The bathroom wall is rotten. I was sitting on the toilet and felt a cool breeze. I could stick my fingers outside. Freezing out there.

—Peephole, he said. —For the desert cannibals. There’s an abandoned atomic testing range a few dunes over. History Channel did a documentary on them. So I hear.

—I dunno about that, but what I do know is something poisonous coulda crawled in any old time and made a nest, could be waiting to lay eggs in our ears when we fall asleep. If that’s the case, I gotta tell you, twenty bucks a night seems like a rip-off.

He chuckled.

—Why are you laughing? she said.

—Earlier, I was pissing and noticed something a bit fucked up.

—I think you might have an enlarged prostate.

—The hell are you going on about?

—Frequent urination is a sign of an enlarged prostate. Don’t you watch infomercials? They could save your life.

—Anyway. I’m taking one of my apparently frequent pisses, when I notice there’s no toilet paper. Like the gentleman I am, I find another roll in the cabinet and get ready to put it on the hanger rod. All for you, snookums.

—You are a gentleman, she said.

—Yeah, I raised the seat and everything. I pulled the rod out and set it aside. Unfortunately, I dropped the toilet paper and it went flying out the door and I had to chase it down, wadding the unspooled paper as I went. Man, you could trace pictures with that stuff. It’s like one-ply.

—The moral of the story is, shut the door when taking a piss.

—No, that’s not the moral of the story. There’s more. I go back just in time to watch a big-ass spider squeeze itself out of the rod and scurry into the sink. Thing had a body maybe the size of a jawbreaker; red and yellow, and fleshy, like a plum. It was so damned hefty I could see light reflecting in its eyes. Then it took off down the drain. I think it was irate I screwed with its cozy little home. He had a laugh over the scenario.

—For real? she said.

—Oh, yeah.

She thought things over for a bit. —No way in hell I’m going back in there. I’ll pee behind a cactus. A jawbreaker?

—Hand to a stack of bibles, he said, wiping his eyes and visibly working to appear more solemn.

—The bible! She half climbed from bed, groped for the dresser, and after a few anxious moments came back with something heavy and black. She snicked the lighter until its flame revealed the pebbled hide of a small, thick book.

—What kind of bible is that? he said.

—Greek. Byzantine. I dunno, she said. Gilt symbols caught the flame and glistened in convoluted whorls and angular slashes; golden reflections played over the blankets, rippled across the couple’s flesh. The pages were thin as white leaves and covered in script to match the cover design. Many of the pages were defiled by chocolaty fingerprints. The book smelled of cigarette musk and mothballs. It was quite patently old.

—This has got to be a collector’s item. Some poor schlep forgot it here. He turned the book over in his hands, riffling the pages. —No name on it… Finders-keepers.

—Hmm, I dunno….

—Dunno what?

—Whether that’s a good idea.

—Billy will go apeshit over this thing. Besides, I owe him a hundred bucks.

—I don’t care if Billy goes apeshit over antiquarian crap. That’s what antiquarians do, right? You owe me the hundred bucks, anyway, motherfucker.

—Don’t you want to know what it is?

—I already know what it is; it’s a bible.

He shrugged and handed the book over. —Whatever. Do what you want. I don’t care.

—Great! She tossed the book over her shoulder in the general direction of the dresser.

—Man, you really are so wasted.

—Gettin’ my second wind, boy. I’m bored.

—Go to sleep. Then you won’t be bored.

—Can’t sleep. I’m preoccupied with that spider. She’s in those rusty pipes, rubbing her claws together and plotting vengeance. Go kill her, would ya?

—You kiddin’? It’s pitch dark in there—she’d get the drop on me.

—Hmp. I’m chilly. Let’s screw.

—No thanks. I’d just whiskey dick you for half an hour and pass out.

—I see. You won’t kill a predatory bug, but you’ll club our romance like a baby seal. Swell.

—Wah, wah, he said.

It had grown steadily chillier in the room. She idly thumbed the lighter wheel and watched their breath coalesce by intermittent licks of flame. The shadow above the television had become oblong and black as the cranium of a squid. She raised her arm and the shadow seemed to bleed upward and sideways, as if avoiding the feeble nimbus of fire. —Odd. More I think about it, this thing didn’t appear until after you started your story earlier. Then there it was….

—I called the shadow forth. And summoned the coyotes. Go to sleep. He rolled over and faced the opposite wall.

—Hell with this. I need a cig. Honey.

—Don’t honey me. I’m bushed. He pulled a pillow over his head.

—Fine. She flounced from the bed and promptly smacked her shin on the chair that had toppled over from the weight of her jeans and purse. —Ahh! She hopped around, cursing and fuming and finally yanked on her pants and blouse, snatched up her purse and blundered through the door into the night.

It was cold, all right. The stars were out, fierce and prehistoric. The dark matter between them seemed blacker than usual and thick as tar. She hugged herself and clattered along the boardwalk past the blank windows and the cheap doors with descending numbers to the pop and cigarette machines by the manager’s office. No bulbs glowed along the walkway, the office was a deep, dark pit; the neon vacancy sign reared blind and black. Luckily, the vending panels oozed blurry, greenish light to guide her way. Probably the only light for miles. She disliked that thought.

She dug whiskey-soaked dollar bills and a few coins from her purse, started plugging them into the cigarette machine until it clanked and dispensed a pack of Camels. The cold almost drove her scurrying back to the room where her husband doubtless slumbered with dreams of unfiltered cigarettes dancing in his head, but not quite. She cracked the pack and got one going, determined to satisfy her craving and then hide the rest where he’d never find them. Lazy, unchivalrous bastard! Let him forage for his own smokes.

Smoke boiled in her lungs; she leaned against a post and exhaled with beatific self-satisfaction, momentarily immune from the chill. The radiance of the vending machines seeped a few yards across the gravel lot, illuminating the hood of her Volkswagen Beetle and a beat to hell pickup she presumed belonged to the night clerk. She was halfway through her second cigarette when she finally detected a foreign shape between the Volkswagen and the pickup. Though mostly cloaked in shadow and impossibly huge, she recognized it as a tortoise. It squatted there, the crown of its shell even with the car window. Its beak and monstrously clawed forepaws were bisected by the wavering edge of illumination. There was a blob of skull perhaps the diameter of a melon, and a moist eye that glimmered yellow.

—Wow, she said. She finished her cigarette. Afraid to move, she lighted another, and that was tricky with her hands shaking so terribly, then she smoked that one too and stared at the giant tortoise staring back at her. She thought, for a moment, she saw its shell dilate and contract, in rhythm with her own surging heart.

The night remained preternaturally quiet there on the edge of the highway, absent the burr of distant engines or blatting horns, or the stark sweep of rushing headlights. The world had descended into a primeval well while she’d been partying in their motel room; it had slipped backward and now the desert truly was an ancient and haunted place. What else would shamble from the wastes of rock and scrub and the far off dunes?

She finished the third cigarette and stuffed the pack in her jeans pocket, and with a great act of will sidled the way she’d come; not turning her back, oh no, simply crabbing sideways, hips brushing doorknobs as she went. The tortoise remained in place, immobile as a boulder. The cosmic black tar began eating a few handfuls of stars here and there, like peanuts.

Once at what she prayed was a safe distance, she moved faster, counting doors, terrified of tripping in the dark, of sprawling on her face, and thus helpless, hearing the sibilant shift and crunch of a massive body sliding across gravel. But she made it to the room without occurrence and locked the door and pressed against it, sobbing and blubbering with exhaustion.

He lay facedown in the middle of the crummy bed, his naked body a pale gray smear in the gloom. She went to him and shook him. He raised his head at a drunken pitch and mumbled incoherencies. He didn’t react to her frantic account of the giant tortoise, her speculation that it might be even now bearing down upon them for a late night snack, that the world might be coming to an end.

—Goddamn it, wake up! she said and smacked his shoulder, hard. Then, as her eyes adjusted, she saw tears on his cheeks, the unnatural luster of his eyes. Not tears; sweat poured from him, smoked from him, it saturated the sheets until they resembled a sloughed cocoon. The muscles of his shoulder flexed and bunched in agonized knots beneath her hand.

—There’s been an incident, he whispered.

She wrapped her arms around her knees and bit her thumb and began to rock ever so slightly. —Baby, I just saw a goddamned turtle the size of a car in the parking lot. What incident are you talking about?

—It wasn’t a water stain. You were right. It’s a worm, like a kind that lived in the Paleozoic. The worm slithered off the wall when you left, made a beeline right over here…. He pushed his face into the sheets and uttered a bark. —Look at the wall.

She looked at the wall. The ominous shadow was gone, melted away, if it had ever been. —What happened? she said.

—The worm crawled up my ass and there it waits. It’s gonna rule the world.

She didn’t know what to say. She cried softly, and bit her thumb, and rocked.

—I’m high, he said. His entire body relaxed and he began to snore.

—Oh, you jerk, she said and cried shamelessly, this time in relief. No more pills with tequila chasers for her. She wiped her nose and curled into a ball against his clammy flank and fell unconscious as if she’d been chloroformed.

When she awakened it was still very dark. They lay spine to spine, her leg draped over his, her arm trailing over the edge and near the carpet. His body twitched against hers the way a person does when they dream of running, flying, being pursued through vast, sunless spaces. She closed her eyes.

He shuddered.

Something hit the floor on the opposite side of the bed with a fleshy thud. Her breath caught and her eyes bulged as she listened to the object slowly roll across the floorboards in a bumpy, lopsided fashion. This was a purposeful, animated movement that bristled every hair on her body. She reached over her shoulder and gripped his arm.

—Psst! Honey! It was like shaking a corpse.

Quietly, muffled by the mattresses, someone under the bed began to laugh.