9 Tales Told in the Dark 4 Read online

  “That I could almost believe,” Theresa said cheerily. “Professor, you’re a great man, but you always act for your own ends. Still, there’s more to it than that.”

  “Entirely correct, my dear,” replied Vorchek. He puffed on his pipe, exhaled, went on, “You three embody characteristics, incorporated within your psyches, which may serve me well, further my schemes of exploration and analysis. Miss Delaney here craves wonder and weirdness; oh, do not make a face, you know you do. Why else would you so charmingly tolerate my companionship these recent years? Our association has allowed you access to many curious cases. I tell you this investigation may constitute the culmination of our efforts together, the ultimate achievement of your dreams. Is not that enough, my dear, for a start?

  “You, Mr. Rucobi, possess the perfect scientist’s mind. You wish to know, despising mystery as an enemy to be defeated by whatever means. Normally you could go far as you are, delving into conventional questions of matter and being. I offer you more: amazing discoveries, life-changing knowledge, the shattering of barriers between thought and actuality. Does that suffice to tantalize you?” Vorchek gave attention again to his pipe.

  “What about me?” shouted Josh, pointing with his cigar like a swollen, threatening finger. “Where do I fit into this rigmarole?”

  Vorchek said, “A big, strong gentleman of your type, Mr. Fentz, may come in handy. There are different kinds of human fuel. If all goes well, you will play your part.” Josh pressed, but the professor had nothing more to say.

  Vorchek and the girl shared one tent, the boys another. This arrangement excited the curiosity of Josh, who delivered a muttered string of crude, insinuating comments to his exhausted tent-mate. “Does she see something in that old coot I don’t?” Eventually, just to shut him up, Aaron deigned to comment. “I wouldn’t put anything past Vorchek,” he conceded. “He’s famous for living by his own rules. That’s true of his work as well. The professor dabbles in subjects shunned by most of his colleagues. Depending on who you talk to, he’s either a genius or a kook, or both. Anyway, don’t be surprised by anything he does. And Theresa’s pretty wild, from what I hear. She’s got tons of money—family money—can do whatever she likes, and she likes hanging around Vorchek. That’s the way it is. You piece together the puzzle as it suits you.” Josh said, “It’s not fair. He ought to give us a crack at her.”

  Annoyed, he produced from his bag a surprisingly large portable radio—“My small unit”—on which he played a raucous station identified by a nasty voiced announcer. This was not an item on the professor’s list of requirements. Aaron put up with that for a wearing while, then demanded silence. Josh shrugged. “Only trying to liven up our holiday.”

  Come the dawn, a minimal breakfast of granola bars, and the march resumed over the saddle into the diminishing chill. To the left hung the barren cliffs of Wilson Mountain, to the right a scrubby, nameless bluff. All semblance of a trail vanished at this point. The party bushwhacked, a slow, tiring process through the exposed, stiff scrub, especially when the heat of day intensified. By late morning the heights had receded behind, exposing to view a seemingly endless, undulating plain of grasslands and scattered pine copses. Considerably to the south distorted sentinels of the famous Red Rock Country of Sedona poked above the far horizon, dark orange fingers of primordial stone, carved from the solidified ooze of an ancient sea bottom. To the north, faintly glimpsed in the shimmering distance, brooded the massive bulk of the San Francisco Peaks, still snow-capped at this season. Vorchek led his folk west, into the void.

  Shortly after lunch they reached the house. Vorchek greeted it casually, saying, “We arrive in good time. I was sure that we were on the right track., though in the absence of close landmarks I must rely on the compass. My first time out I circled for hours before I found it.” His companions took it with less aplomb, for he had told them nothing of any house, nor made mention of anything like scheduled stops. Indeed, that a house should exist out there, however dilapidated its condition, astonished them exceedingly, for the region seemed a place untouched by mankind. Theresa said as much.

  Vorchek responded, “On the contrary, my dear, there are few places on earth that have not felt the tread of man’s heavy foot. A hundred years ago this was farming and cattle country. There were never many settlers, nor did they remain long. This land proved unsuitable for long-term habitation. Treat that as a datum. While we do not tarry long, here we do camp, at the Mathers homestead.”

  The house did not invite its guests. It was old, a broken down relic of a two-story structure that appeared ten centuries old rather than one, the sort of ruin an archeologist might happily sift for clues to foreign and forgotten life-ways. The door, the windows, the roof gaped, the bare, sun-baked planks of the walls sagged and tottered. A crumbling granite chimney stood out against the ravages of time. A stand of flanking elms had hidden the site until they were upon it. Aaron asked, “How did it come to be here? Did Mathers hike in like we did, build himself a house?”

  “Nothing like that,” said Vorchek. “Look there,” he added, indicating with a wave of his briefcase. “Very faintly you may discern the trace of the old dirt road which once ran up from Sedona. A difficult ride in the best of times, but horses and wagons made it through. No one has come up that way, I suppose, for ninety years or thereabouts.”

  “Why didn’t we?” cried Josh, who had collapsed with his load on the ominously uneven porch. “We could have come this far in your van, saved us a hell of a lot of trouble.”

  “I entertained that very idea,” Vorchek said with a nod. “That makes sense, does not it? Unfortunately, my research, and personal exploration before you arrived on the scene, ruled out such a convenient option. The last of the pioneers abandoned the road in that former age. It has never been used, much less maintained, since. Back during the ‘30s a rock fall in Dry Creek Canyon (a long ways from here) forever sealed the lane. To open the road again, even to foot traffic, would require a major construction effort, one not in the offing. Therefore, we made do with our scenic shortcut.”

  “We needn’t stop here,” Theresa said. “There’s plenty of daylight left.”

  “This locale is important to me,” explained the professor. “We have entered the zone. Today we commence scientific investigation.”

  They camped in the front yard, if that patch of terrain indistinguishable from its surroundings could be deemed a yard. A placid spring behind the house provided plentiful water for purifying, a worthy reason in itself for halting. While his wards saw to necessities, Vorchek applied himself to setting up his instruments. He took many pictures, of what appeared nothing in particular, using his antique Minolta rig, the old camera and a succession of lenses atop the stout, heavy wooden tripod, deriving long, steady exposures via a remote shutter cable. As to his motives for photographing the site the others received no enlightenment, though they understood the principle he espoused of recording everything. Another machine he produced from his case when the picture-taking was done, and mounted on that same tripod, drew more interest and generated more puzzlement. It was a small, oblong contraption, with many dials and buttons spread across a metal panel, with a tangle of wires feeding in and out of the sides. One cord connected to a largish lithium battery. He fielded few questions. “Readings, my friends,” he said shortly. “I postulate an influence. I must detect it anew, discern its elements and features.”

  Gloom crept about the shaded house by degrees. Amongst the shadows the Mathers homestead looked more somber and desolate still. Josh opined, “This trip is getting old fast. If we don’t stir up some excitement soon I’m going to bolt.” Theresa replied, “Good luck to you, sweetie. I trust your sense of direction is better than mine.” Aaron said, “I can’t wait to hear more about the professor’s machine.”

  Josh fired up again his machine, the radio, derived from it only ear-grating, squawking static. “That’s not right,” he said, turning it off and pushing it away in disgust after fruitless f
iddling.

  While the girl cooked up over the campfire an impromptu goulash from dried beef and equally dry biscuits, Vorchek condescended to illuminate his activities. “I spoke of the zone,” he said. “We have entered the radius of the reach of the vortex, the extent of its measurable power. I refer to the emission of unknown energy. It is neither light, nor heat, nor hard radiation, but something wholly other, something outside the ken of man. Its primary effects are currently elusive. Conventional radio receivers,” he said with a courteous nod to Josh, “will not function here, which I am sure we all consider an extreme pity. For that matter, conventional systems will not detect it. This device is my own creation. With it I may control for normal emissions, screen them out, then sample the residue. Like so.” Vorchek twisted a plastic knob. A needle swung weakly on a meter. An erratic, sluggish clicking chirped from the machine.

  “It sounds like a Geiger counter,” Aaron observed.

  “The principle is the same. Watch and listen.” Vorchek turned the machine about the tripod head. The noise waxed and waned.

  Aaron grinned. “Directionality. It’s coming from somewhere out there.” He pointed across the darkening plain.

  “Yes, from a specific location, well defined.”

  “I wonder that you couldn’t reach it before.”

  Josh quipped, “So, are we going to lay claim to a uranium mine and get rich? I’ll put up with a lot for that.”

  Theresa called, “Whatever we find will be, I’ll bet, a lot less lucrative, and a bunch more exciting.”

  Josh sneered, “More exciting than weeds and rocks? Impossible.”

  With her musical voice Theresa rang the bell for dinner. The young folk chowed down with gusto, relishing the calories more than the taste. Vorchek, withdrawn and preoccupied, ate sparingly.

  “We shouldn’t have any difficulty,” Aaron said at one point, “getting to where we’re going and learning what we can. Your detector, Professor, is the best compass we’ve got.”

  “Think you that?” said Vorchek. “That is welcome news, for the standard compass may prove irksome in this land. The influence of the vortex overrides all outside forces to varying degrees. Whatever the difficulties, keep peril in mind. I tell you, son, we have left behind the world as we know it. This is a realm unlike any you have ever conceived.”

  “I’ve seen plenty like it,” Josh scoffed.

  “Tell us about peril, Professor,” Theresa pointedly suggested.

  “Old man Mathers, I believe, would explain more than I,” replied Vorchek, “if he were here to grace us with his practical wisdom. Sadly he is no longer with us, having died long ago, and before his time at that.”

  “Sounds ominous,” Theresa said.

  “His tale is a curious one. Contemporary reports strain credulity. Later claims verge on the legendary. Taken together they indicate a great deal.”

  “Tell us about him, Professor,” said Aaron.

  “Should I? Is this relevant?” Vorchek chuckled. “I think it is; I do believe the late Gerrold Mathers constitutes a classic victim of the power of the vortex.

  “Mr. Mathers, a man of middle age, arrived here with his wife and three children, two of them grown, in 1901, heralding the new century with a fresh start in life as part of the final wave of pioneers to settle what was then the largely empty Arizona Territory. He sought flat, tillable land and a reliable source of water. Here he found that much. He staked his claim, built his house with the help of the elder sons, laid out his fields, purchased some livestock from the ranches around Flagstaff. The Mathers’ came up the old southern route, where the road subsequently went through for a while, they and a handful of other homesteaders. Perhaps Mr. Mathers pushed farther out into the wild than the rest. That seems likely; and likely, also, that it was his undoing.

  “I have in my files a private letter from Mrs. Mathers to her sister in Omaha, dated 1903, complaining about the ‘godless country’ they had chosen to inhabit. What does that mean? I possess a sprinkling of clues. There are from those times references to ‘dark influences,’ occasional disturbing sounds, odd behavior of animals, glimpses of unfamiliar wildlife, recurrences of nagging, inexplicable sickness. There was something, they came to believe, not healthy about the place.

  “In 1905 Mr. Mathers set out on a hunting trip to the west with his oldest son, Theodore. They expected to be gone two days. The father returned five days later, came back alone, told of an accident—Theodore was no more—spoke of an in situ burial. That was the first incident, calamitous though unremarkable on its own, yet the harbinger of much more.

  “Mrs. Mathers (Jeannie was her name), in conversation with a few regional friends from miles away, averred that her husband was not the same man after that. Could one blame him, having lost a beloved son? He grew moody, unnecessarily secretive, prone to unexplained ramblings by night. At whiles he let slip that he visited neighbors on his wanderings, but no one knew to whom he referred, nor could or would he clarify. Apparently he spouted considerable nonsense during that period. So did, it seemed, his young daughter Annie, who claimed to have seen from her window, early one morning, her father returning with no less than her dear brother Theodore. Mr. Mathers entered the house alone, needless to say, nor could he in any way justify the child’s mistake save to posit a dream. In fact he punished her severely, warning her never to spread such stories again. I gather that it was a troubling scene. The wife said later it was the first time she had ever detected cruelty in the nature of her man.

  “Come the following week and, while Mr. Mathers was about by night, Annie slipped out or was otherwise made away with; whichever, she was never seen again alive, or in any fashion under clear-cut circumstances. What do I mean by that? Another month passed, and the surviving son, Thomas, awakened near midnight to the sounds of activity in the pigpen. He collected his shotgun, went out to investigate, observed in the darkness two men making off with the animals. He tried a long shot at them. By the brief glare of the blast he thought he recognized his father, and for a horrified instant the other. Mortified, he rushed forward, terrified by what he might have done, only he did not approach too near. Suddenly, for reasons I can not fathom from the accounts, he convinced himself that it was not his father, nor—mark this!—any human being at all. Thomas would not afterward explain, but mention of those intruders caused him to shudder in later years. Well, Mr. Mathers returned in the morning, claimed ignorance, announced that the horses were missing as well. Except for an enclosure of a couple dozen chickens, that fairly cleaned them out.

  “It was the next year—1907 this was—that Mrs. Mathers and Thomas vacated the residence and abandoned Mr. Mathers to his own devices. Now, I must admit that something is left out of this part of the story. You must conjecture, based on what happened before and after. The lady justified her decision, with her son’s full support, by pleading fear for her life at the hands of her husband. She advanced no specific cause or overt acts, instead alluding vaguely to the gentleman’s ‘crazy talk’ and subtle hints of incipient frightfulness. She came to believe in the end that Mr. Mathers was—or that he believed himself to be—possessed by evil spirits lurking in that still wild country. Indeed, the expected flood of settlers never materialized, and several had left by then, an intriguing development. Mr. Mathers, apparently, had concluded that older, furtive denizens haunted that land; that they had initiated contact with him; that he cooperated with them, or was directed by them, toward the furtherance of unknown designs. From out of the west they came, or called him to the west, as they saw fit, delegating mysterious tasks.

  “On what those might be the records keep silence. Mr. Mathers wished the members of his family to join him in his duties—one, he said obscurely, had already done so—and via subjection to the powers of the land they would realize a strange fulfillment of ‘ultimate possibilities.’ For the lady of the house this was quite enough. She would not, then or ever, accuse him of insanity. On the contrary, she earnestly averred that he was n
o longer himself, mentally or physically, that he was another entity masquerading as her husband. An odd conceit, that.”

  Dinner over, the stars winking, Vorchek knocked out the ashes from his pipe against a stone before refilling. He said, “There is little more to tell, though what remains savors even more of the grotesque. Mr. Mathers, left alone among the dead dreams of his house, lost contact with the outside world. He became a hermit, a recluse, for the short remaining span of his days. You see, during that final year here disappearances occurred among the folk who lived somewhat closer to Sedona, a new settlement then. People vanished by night, lone travelers mainly, with one case of a male child being removed from his bedroom. The people demanded action. The sheriff intervened. Questions were raised about that dreadful man who kept to himself, primarily by choice, partly because his wild discourse disconcerted all who met him.

  “In May of 1908 a delegation called on him. The sheriff led it, and they went armed, so call it a posse. Struck by the declining state of the farm, the utter absence of livestock (even the chickens were now gone), and the abysmally unkempt aspect of the owner, they demanded an interview, plied him with questions, sought answers. Mr. Mathers seemed amused by their attention, admitted that he knew a thing or two of what brought them, courteously requested a moment to make himself presentable before submitting to their demands. Then he went inside and killed himself with his shotgun.

  “A search of the house and the surrounding land revealed all, at least all that interested those men. They found bodies in various stages of decomposition, fragmentation, or completeness, the corpses of the missing locals, and that of Annie, too. Each was fearsomely mutilated, and certain items discovered within the kitchen established what Mr. Mathers had done to the remains. Have you guessed this? He butchered and ate of them.

  “Just another lurid tale, you may say, of the vanished frontier. I ask you to ponder these elements: the spirits or beings from the west, the mental changes or aberrations, Annie’s supposed dream. I can fit these data into a coherent account, one that opens the way to unimaginable vistas. Before long, all of you may gaze upon that view. What will you see, how will you react? That is a matter of no trifling importance.”