Just After Sunset

  I took another four shots--which makes a total of nine, another bad number, although slightly better than five--and when I lowered the camera and looked again with my naked eye, I saw the faces, leering and grinning and grunting. Some human, some bestial. And I counted seven stones.

  But when I looked into the viewfinder again, there were eight.

  I started to feel dizzy and scared. I wanted to be out of there before full dark came--away from that field and back on Route 117, with loud rock and roll on the radio. But I couldn't just leave. Something deep inside me--as deep as the instinct that keeps us drawing in breaths and letting them out--insisted on that. I felt that if I left, something terrible would happen, and perhaps not just to me. That sense of thinness swept over me again, as if the world was fragile at this particular place, and one person would be enough to cause an unimaginable cataclysm. If he weren't very, very careful.

  That's when my OCD shit started. I went from stone to stone, touching each one, counting each one, and marking each in its place. I wanted to be gone--desperately wanted to be gone--but I did it and I didn't skimp the job. Because I had to. I knew that the way I know I have to keep breathing if I want to stay alive. By the time I got back to where I'd started, I was trembling and wet with sweat as well as mist and dew. Because touching those stones...it wasn't nice. It caused...ideas. And raised images. Ugly ones. One was of chopping up my ex-wife with an axe and laughing while she screamed and raised her bloody hands to ward off the blows.

  But there were eight. Eight stones in Ackerman's Field. A good number. A safe number. I knew that. And it no longer mattered if I looked at them through the camera's viewfinder or with my naked eyes; after touching them, they were fixed. It was getting darker, the sun was halfway over the horizon (I must have spent twenty minutes or more going around that rough circle, which was maybe forty yards across), but I could see well enough--the air was weirdly clear. I still felt afraid--there was something wrong there, everything screamed it, the very silence of the birds screamed it--but I felt relieved, too. The wrong had been put at least partly right by touching the stones...and looking at them again. Getting their places in the field set into my mind. That was as important as the touching.

  [A pause to think.]

  No, more important. Because it's how we see the world that keeps the darkness beyond the world at bay. Keeps it from pouring through and drowning us. I think all of us might know that, way down deep. So I turned to go, and I was most of the way back to my car--I might even have been touching the doorhandle--when something turned me around again. And that was when I saw.

  [He is silent for a long time. I notice he is trembling. He has broken out in a sweat. It gleams on his forehead like dew.]

  There was something in the middle of the stones. In the middle of the circle they made, either by chance or design. It was black, like the sky in the east, and green like the hay. It was turning very slowly, but it never took its eyes off me. It did have eyes. Sick pink ones. I knew--my rational mind knew--that it was just light in the sky I was seeing, but at the same time I knew it was something more. That something was using that light. Something was using the sunset to see with, and what it was seeing was me.

  [He's crying again. I don't offer him the Kleenex, because I don't want to break the spell. Although I'm not sure I could have offered them in any case, because he's cast a spell over me, too. What he's articulating is a delusion, and part of him knows it--"shadows that looked like faces," etc.--but it's very strong, and strong delusions travel like cold germs on a sneeze.]

  I must have kept backing up. I don't remember doing it; I just remember thinking that I was looking at the head of some grotesque monster from the outer darkness. And thinking that where there was one, there would be more. Eight stones would keep them captive--barely--but if there were only seven, they'd come flooding through from the darkness on the other side of reality and overwhelm the world. For all I knew, I was looking at the least and smallest of them. For all I knew, that flattened snakehead with the pink eyes and what looked like great long quills growing out of its snout was only a baby.

  It saw me looking.

  The fucking thing grinned at me, and its teeth were heads. Living human heads.

  Then I stepped on a dead branch. It snapped with a sound like a firecracker, and the paralysis broke. I don't think it's impossible that that thing floating inside the circle of stones was hypnotizing me, the way a snake is supposed to be able to do with a bird.

  I turned and ran. My lens-bag kept smacking my leg, and each smack seemed to be saying Wake up! Wake up! Get out! Get out! I pulled open the door of my 4Runner, and I heard the little bell dinging, the one that means you left your key in the ignition. I thought of some old movie where William Powell and Myrna Loy are at the desk of a fancy hotel and Powell rings the bell for service. Funny what goes through your mind at moments like that, isn't it? There's a gate in our heads, too--that's what I think. One that keeps the insanity in all of us from flooding our intellects. And at critical moments, it swings open and all kinds of weird shit comes flooding through.

  I started the engine. I turned on the radio, turned it up loud, and rock music came roaring out of the speakers. It was The Who, I remember that. And I remember popping on the headlights. When I did, those stones seemed to jump toward me. I almost screamed. But there were eight, I counted them, and eight is safe.

  [There's another long pause here. Almost a full minute.]

  The next thing I remember, I was back on Route 117. I don't know how I got there, if I turned around or backed out. I don't know how long it took me, but The Who song was over and I was listening to The Doors. God help me, it was "Break On Through to the Other Side." I turned the radio off.

  I don't think I can tell you any more, Doc, not today. I'm exhausted.

  [And he looks it.]

  [Next Session]

  I thought the effect the place had had on me would dissipate on the drive home--just a bad moment out in the woods, right?--and surely by the time I was in my own living room, with the lights and TV on, I'd be okay again. But I wasn't. If anything, that feeling of dislocation--of having touched some other universe that was inimical to ours--seemed to be stronger. The conviction remained that I'd seen a face--worse, the suggestion of some huge reptilian body--in that circle of stones. I felt...infected. Infected by the thoughts in my own head. I felt dangerous, too--as if I could summon that thing just by thinking about it too much. And it wouldn't be alone. That whole other cosmos would come spilling through, like vomit through the bottom of a wet paper bag.

  I went around and locked all the doors. Then I was sure that I'd forgotten a couple, so I went around and checked them all again. This time I counted: front door, back door, pantry door, bulkhead door, garage overhead door, back garage door. That was six, and it came to me that six was a good number. Like eight is a good number. They're friendly numbers. Warm. Not cold, like five or...you know, seven. I relaxed a little, but I still went around one last time. Still six. "Six is a fix," I remember saying. After that I thought I'd be able to sleep, but I couldn't. Not even with an Ambien. I kept seeing the setting sun on the Androscoggin, turning it into a red snake. The mist coming out of the hay like tongues. And the thing in the stones. That most of all.

  I got up and counted all the books in my bedroom bookcase. There were ninety-three. That's a bad number, and not just because it's odd. Divide ninety-three by three and you come out with thirty-one: thirteen backwards. So I got a book from the little bookcase in the hall. But ninety-four is only a little better, because nine and four add up to thirteen. There are thirteens everywhere in this world of ours, Doc. You don't know. Anyway, I added six more books to the bedroom case. I had to cram, but I got them in. A hundred is okay. Fine, in fact.

  I was heading back to bed, then started wondering about the hall bookcase. If I'd, you know, robbed Peter to pay Paul. So I counted those, and that was all right: fifty-six. The numbers add to eleven, which is odd but not
the worst odd, and fifty-six divides to twenty-eight--a good number. After that I could sleep. I think I had bad dreams, but I don't remember them.

  Days went by, and my mind kept going back to Ackerman's Field. It was like a shadow had fallen over my life. I was counting lots of things by then, and touching things--to make sure I understood their places in the world, the real world, my world--and I'd started to place things, too. Always even numbers of things, and usually in a circle or on a diagonal line. Because circles and diagonals keep things out.

  Usually, that is. And never permanently. One small accident and fourteen becomes thirteen, or eight becomes seven.

  In early September, my younger daughter visited and commented on how tired I looked. She wanted to know if I was overworking. She also noticed that all the living-room knickknacks--stuff her mom hadn't taken after the divorce--had been placed in what she called "crop circles." She said, "You're getting a little wiggy in your old age, aren't you, Dad?" And that was when I decided I had to go back to Ackerman's Field, this time in full daylight. I thought if I saw it in daylight, saw just a few meaningless rocks standing around in an uncut hayfield, I'd realize how foolish the whole thing was, and my obsessions would blow away like a dandelion puff in a strong breeze. I wanted that. Because counting, touching, and placing--those things are a lot of work. A lot of responsibility.

  On my way, I stopped at the place where I got my pictures developed and saw the ones I'd taken that evening in Ackerman's Field hadn't come out. They were just gray squares, as if they'd been fogged by some strong radiation. That gave me pause, but it didn't stop me. I borrowed a digital camera from one of the guys at the photo shop--that's the one I fried--and drove out to Motton again, and fast. You want to hear something stupid? I felt like a man with a bad case of poison ivy going to the drugstore for a bottle of Calamine Lotion. Because that was what it was like--an itch. Counting and touching and placing could scratch it, but scratching affords only temporary relief at best. It's more likely to spread whatever's causing the itch. What I wanted was a cure. Going back to Ackerman's Field wasn't it, but I didn't know that, did I? Like the man said, we learn by doing. And we learn even more by trying and failing.

  It was a beautiful day, not a cloud in the sky. The leaves were still green, but the air had that brilliant clarity you only get when the seasons change. My ex-wife used to say that early fall days like that are our reward for putting up with the tourists and summer people for three months, standing in line while they use their credit cards to buy beer. I felt good, I remember that. I felt certain I was going to put all the crazy shit to rest. I was listening to a greatest-hits compilation by Queen and thinking how fine Freddie Mercury sounded, how pure. I sang along. I drove over the Androscoggin in Harlow--the water on either side of the old Bale Road Bridge bright enough to knock your eyes out--and I saw a fish jump. It made me laugh out loud. I hadn't laughed like that since the evening in Ackerman's Field, and it sounded so good I did it again.

  Then up over Boy Hill--I bet you know where that is--and past the Serenity Ridge Cemetery. I've taken some good photos in there, although I never put one in a calendar. I came to the dirt byroad not five minutes later. I started to turn in, then jammed on the brakes. Just in time, too. If I'd been any slower, I would have ripped my 4Runner's grille in two. There was a chain across the road, and a new sign hanging from it: ABSOLUTELY NO TRESPASSING.

  Now I could have told myself it was just a coincidence, that the person who owned those woods and that field--not necessarily a guy named Ackerman, but maybe--put up that chain and that sign every fall, to discourage hunters. But deer season doesn't start until November first. Even bird season doesn't start til October. I think someone watches that field. With binocs, maybe, but maybe with some less normal form of sight. Someone knew I'd been there, and that I might be back.

  "Leave it alone, then!" I told myself. "Unless you want to risk getting arrested for trespassing, maybe get your picture in the Castle Rock Call. That would be good for business, wouldn't it?"

  But there was no way I was going to stop, not if there was a chance I could go up to that field, see nothing, and consequently feel better. Because--dig this--at the same time I was telling myself that if someone wanted me off his property I ought to respect that person's wishes, I was counting the letters in that sign and coming out with twenty-three, which is a terrible number, far worse than thirteen. I knew it was crazy to think that way, but I was thinking that way, and some part of me knew it wasn't a bit crazy.

  I stashed my 4Runner in the Serenity Ridge parking lot, then walked back to the dirt road with the borrowed camera slung over my shoulder in its little zippered case. I went around the chain--it was easy--and walked up the road to the field. Turned out I would've had to walk even if the chain hadn't been there, because there were half a dozen trees lying across the road this time, and not just trashwood birches. Five were good-sized pines, and the last one was a mature oak. They hadn't just fallen over, either; those babies had been dropped with a chainsaw. They didn't even slow me down. I climbed over the pines and detoured around the oak. Then I was on the hill climbing to the field. I barely gave the other sign--ACKERMAN'S FIELD, NO HUNTING, KEEP OUT--a glance. I could see the trees drawing back at the crest of the hill, I could see dusty beams of sun shining between the ones nearest the top, and I could see acres and acres of blue sky up there, looking jolly and optimistic. It was midday. There would be no giant riversnake bleeding in the distance, only the Androscoggin I grew up with and have always loved--blue and beautiful, the way ordinary things can be when we see them at their best. I broke into a run. My feeling of crazy optimism lasted all the way to the top, but the minute I saw those stones standing there like fangs, my good feelings fell away. What replaced them was dread and horror.

  There were seven stones again. Just seven. And in the middle of them--I don't know just how to explain this so you'll understand--there was a faded place. It wasn't like a shadow, exactly, but more like...you know how the blue will fade out of your favorite jeans over time? Especially at stress-points like the knees? It was like that. The color of the hay was washed to a greasy lime color, and instead of blue, the sky above that circle of stones looked grayish. I felt that if I walked in there--and part of me wanted to--I could punch out with one fist and tear right through the fabric of reality. And if I did, something would grab me. Something on the other side. I was sure of it.

  Still, something in me wanted to do it. It wanted to...I don't know...quit the foreplay and get right to the fucking.

  I could see--or thought I could, I'm still not sure about this part--the place where the eighth stone belonged, and I could see that...that fadedness...bulging toward it, trying to get through where the protection of the stones was thin. I was terrified! Because if it got out, every unnamable thing on the other side would be born into our world. The sky would turn black, and it would be full of new stars and insane constellations.

  I unslung the camera, but dropped it on the ground when I tried to unzip the bag it was in. My hands were shaking as if I was having some kind of seizure. I picked up the camera case and unzipped it, and when I looked at the stones again, I saw that the space inside them wasn't just faded anymore. It was turning black. And I could see eyes again. Peering out of the darkness. This time they were yellow, with narrow black pupils. Like cat's eyes. Or snake eyes.

  I tried to lift the camera, but I dropped it again. And when I reached for it, the hay closed over it, and I had to tug it free. No, I had to rip it free. I was on my knees by then, yanking on the strap with both hands. And a breeze started to blow out of the gap where the eighth stone should have been. It blew the hair off my forehead. It stank. It smelled of carrion. I raised the camera to my face, but at first I could see nothing. I thought, It's blinded the camera, it's somehow blinded the camera, and then I remembered it was a digital Nikon, and you have to turn it on. I did that--I heard the beep--but I still could see nothing.

  The breeze was a wind
by then. It sent the hay rippling down the length of the field in big waves of shadow. The smell was worse. And the day was darkening. There wasn't a cloud in the sky, it was pure blue, but the day was darkening, just the same. As if some great invisible planet was eclipsing the sun.

  Something spoke. Not English. Something that sounded like "Cthun, cthun, deeyanna, deyanna." But then...Christ, then it said my name. It said, "Cthun, N., deeyanna, N." I think I screamed, but I'm not sure, because by then the wind had become a gale that was roaring in my ears. I should have screamed. I had every right to scream. Because it knew my name! That grotesque, unnamable thing knew my name. And then...the camera...do you know what I realized?

  [I ask him if he left the lens cap on, and he utters a shrill laugh that runs up my nerves and makes me think of rats scampering over broken glass.]

  Yes! Right! The lens cap! The fucking lens cap! I tore it off and raised the camera to my eye--it's a wonder I didn't drop it again, my hands were shaking so badly, and the hay never would have let it go again, no, never, because the second time it would have been ready. But I didn't drop it, and I could see through the viewfinder, and there were eight stones. Eight. Eight keeps things straight. That darkness was still swirling in the middle, but it was retreating. And the wind blowing around me was diminishing.

  I lowered the camera and there were seven. Something was bulging out of the darkness, something I can't describe to you. I can see it--I see it in my dreams--but there are no words for that kind of blasphemy. A pulsing leather helmet, that's as close as I can get. One with yellow goggles on each side. Only the goggles...I think they were eyes, and I know they were looking at me.