She looked like… I don't know what she looked like. I didn't really have a comparison. I turned away before she could turn and see me. If she did there would be no leaving this place.
Zandt took only two pictures, then logged the position. 'Okay,' he said quietly. 'Let's get out of here.'
I followed him as he walked away from the woman. I didn't know what I was feeling, wasn't sure what you were supposed to make of such a thing.
I stopped and looked back at her. Something about the way she was positioned was niggling at me.
'Ward, let's move out. It's going to get dark soon.'
I ignored him and walked back to her. Squatted down as close as I felt willing, and looked where she was looking. Her head was tilted slightly forward, as if she was gazing down into the canyon.
I wanted to be back in the car as much as Zandt did. Rooney's Lounge seemed like a good place to be at that moment. Even the Yakima mall, at a pinch. But something compelled me.
It wasn't easy getting into the canyon. I started to go down facing forward, but soon turned around and used my hands. I heard Zandt swear from above, and then start after me, thankfully having the sense to pick a line a good few yards to the side. The rocks he dislodged fell well clear.
When I got to the bottom I couldn't see much at first. The same as up above, only rockier, with a little more vegetation and a few stubby trees. The mist was clearing now, drifting off somewhere else as the sky turned a darker blue.
Then I saw that there was another inlet up ahead, the memory of a smaller stream. I walked up it for a short distance, and was surprised to find it turning into a wider, open area. I was still standing at the entrance to this when Zandt arrived, looking at a bulky shape hidden under an outcrop.
At first it was hard to make out what it was.
Then we saw that it was the corner of a small building, flush up against the side of the canyon.
We got our guns out again.
We approached the building walking a few feet apart. It became clear that it was very old, a functional one-room cabin, pioneer style. It was made from big chunks of wood that had weathered well, still brown in places amongst the grey. Battered planks of more recent vintage had been nailed across the windows from the inside. The door was shut, held by a padlock that didn't look old at all. Someone had gone at the door with an axe or shovel, but not recently. Shapes that looked like letters were visible amongst the scars. I saw something that looked like a big 'R'.
Holding his gun ready, Zandt used his other hand to click a few pictures onto his little machine. The windows. The walls. The door.
Then he pocketed it, and looked at me. I nodded.
I walked straight ahead and kicked the door in and swung the hell back out of the way. Zandt was right behind me, gun held straight out in front of him.
I slipped in and turned full right, getting behind the door. With the windows blocked it was dark but the door gave more than enough light. My scalp tried to crawl backwards off my head.
The cabin was full of dead people.
Three sat in a line on a bench, slumped against the back wall. One was little more than a skeleton, the other two dark and vile. One had no arms; the other's abdomen had burst some time before. Other bodies were gathered in a small deliberate heap on the other side, and at least two more lay along the front wall, heads opposed. The state of these indicated none had died recently. A few had scraps and tangles of skin and jerky-like flesh hanging from scaffolding bones. One skull had the upper half of a plastic doll protruding from a hole in its crown. Dust had turned the doll's hair grey.
As my eyes got used to the gloom, I began to see more and more desiccated body parts: a small, orderly pile against the wall on the left. I moved part of it with my foot, and saw a layer of bones underneath. A thick layer, some of it little more than dust.
We dropped our arms. Nobody here could do us harm.
Zandt cleared his throat. 'Did they do this?'
'The Straw Men? Could be. But some of this has been here a long, long time.'
Zandt wanted to take the cabin apart but one glance told me there was nothing for us to find. If you killed someone in this cabin you could take your time. Plus, I just didn't want to be there. At all. I wanted to be outside. The longer you stood in that place, the more it felt like the cabin was breathing, slowly, a palpable exhalation of rancid air.
I backed out over the threshold. I was less surprised now that some of the wood remained brown. It was as if many, many bad things had been absorbed into the walls, keeping it moist, keeping it alive. Whatever had happened here had taken place over an extended period of time. It had to be the work of more than one person, perhaps even more than one generation. Was it just a place to dump bodies, or was their silent presence, their positioning, supposed to achieve something more nebulous? I thought about the country as a whole, with all its wide, dead spaces. Was this the only one of these?
Zandt came out too, but then he stopped suddenly, and stared at something over my shoulder.
I turned and saw what he was looking at. It was twenty feet away, on the other side of the canyon, positioned where you would see it when you came out of the cabin.
I took a few steps towards it. This body was far more recent. It had not been arranged like the couple up on the plain, but merely thrown on the ground, arms outstretched, legs bent. Something brown had been nailed to his chest, in the centre. It looked like nothing I'd ever seen, but the unnatural emptiness of the man's gaping mouth told me what it was.
When my stomach had stopped retching, I said, 'Is that the guy? Is that Joseph?'
Zandt didn't have to answer.
— «» — «» — «»—
It was a long walk back to the car. We drove in silence, following the Columbia down towards Portland.
At the airport we got flights in different directions. We didn't meet again for another month, by which time everything had changed.
1: Cold Harbours
I do believe
Though I have found them not,
That there may be
Words which are things.
Lord Byron,
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
1
There's never a pull-off when you need one. You're belting along, forest on both sides, making light work of shallow rises and swooping dips, ranks of paper birch framing a series of flicker-lit views so snowy beautiful you can't even see them, and you keep thinking that just around the next bend there must be a place to stop and park but for some reason there isn't. It's a cloudy Tuesday afternoon in mid-January, a fact that has already seemed odd to you, a strange time to be doing what you're doing, and you've got the road to yourself for probably five miles in both directions. You could just dump the car on the side of the road, but that doesn't seem right. Though it's only a rental and you have no attachment to it other than it being the last car you're ever going to drive, you don't want to abandon it. You're not being sentimental. It's not even that you don't want someone to see it, wonder if something untoward is taking place, and come investigating — though you don't. It's just a neatness thing. You want the car to be parked. To be at rest. Right at this moment this seems very important to you, but there's never anywhere to stop. That's the whole problem, you realize, suddenly hot-eyed: that's life in a goddamned nutshell. There's never anywhere to rest, not when you really need it. Sometimes you don't need a vista point. You just want to be able to…
Shit — there's one.
Tom slammed his foot down three seconds late and far too hard. The car skidded thirty feet, back end swinging out gracefully until he came to rest straddling both lanes. He sat for a moment, neck tingling. Through the window came cold air and the sound of a bird cawing with maniacal persistence. Otherwise, silence, thank God. Anyone else on the road and it would have gone badly, which would be ironic as all hell, but again, not something he wanted. He was unpopular enough.