The Mad and the Macabre

November 13th, 2010

Saturday

All mythology is rooted in fact.

Those six words returned again and again to the forefront of Gabriel’s mind as he drove westward along the winding highway, higher into the mountains. Throughout its history, mankind has always sought to explain what it doesn’t understand. Wild stories have been fabricated and deities created to rationalize events that are now easily justified. Thunder was caused by Thor’s hammer, lightning by Zeus’s hand. Sickness was the result of angering the spirits and natural disasters were the vengeance of the gods. While Gabriel didn’t subscribe to the Christian notion of God, he couldn’t help but think the same principles applied. How did man come to be? Why, God birthed him from nothing and set him down in the Garden of Eden, of course. Never mind the irrefutable arguments for evolution. The fall of Sodom and Gomorrah? God did it. Scholars claim to have found the Garden and the remains of both cities. If they had actually existed, then what had truly happened there? And if the mythology of the bible were based in fact, then what had his sister and her friends found in these very mountains?

Gabriel was forced to slow his black Dodge Intrepid as the snow, which until now had only come down in fits and starts, began to fall in earnest. The impregnable walls of ponderosa pines, assorted spruces, and bare aspens sparkled with the recent accumulation, while the scrub oak packed between the trunks remained sheltered beneath the canopy. Each bend in the road granted a brief glimpse of the sharp white peaks in the distance over the treetops. The flakes tumbled sideways across the asphalt on the shifting wind, but had fortunately yet to begin to stick.

He cranked up the radio to drown out his thoughts.

The highway descended into a deep valley, at the bottom of which was a wide river so blue it positively radiated a glacial coldness. Its banks were already buried beneath several inches of snow. Gabriel veered from the pavement onto the widened gravel shoulder just before the bridge that crossed the river, and turned right onto an uneven dirt road designated only by the 432 mile-marker post. The forest closed in from both sides to form a claustrophobic trench. Tire tracks marred the dusting of snow ahead. His car rattled over a long washboard stretch before the road evened out again.

County Road 432 wended around the topography of the mountains for twenty-some miles before it appeared to simply peter out on the map. The cabins were just over fourteen miles from the highway. If he pushed the car past twenty-five miles per hour, he would be there in half an hour. Unconsciously, he eased off the gas.

The river flirted with the road, but remained just out of reach through the trees.

Gabriel switched on the headlights and turned up the windshield wipers, which made the thumping sound of a mechanical heartbeat that accelerated with his own. Between the heat gusting from the dashboard and the oppressive forest, the car was beginning to feel like a coffin. Cracking the window, he welcomed in the crisp wind, which screamed through the valley. He chased away the thought that it was the residual echo of the sound his sister had made with her dying breath.

***

Gabriel recognized the final stretch leading to the cabins as though only days had passed since he was last there. In his mind, he still wandered the forest in circles radiating outward from the small cluster of buildings, his throat on fire from crying Stephanie’s name well past the point where his voice failed him. The sharp pain in his gut intensified as he rounded the final bend and turned down the short drive, which ended in a rough gravel turnaround. There was a ring of pines in the center, between which were several weathered picnic tables. Three cars were already parked in front of the cabins beyond. He pulled around and parked behind Cavenaugh’s red Explorer. More than an inch of snow had already accumulated on its hood and roof, while the two cars parked diagonally in front of it were only beginning to grow a layer of ice.

He sat in the car a moment longer and watched the snowflakes turn to droplets of water on the windshield. His hand shook when he finally reached for the handle and opened the door. After collecting his suitcase and backpack from the rear seat, he headed past the other cars toward the front cabin. The gold Lexus sedan presumably belonged to Kelsey Northcutt, Levi’s father the gastroenterologist, but he didn’t know to whom the forest green Chevy pickup in front of it belonged.

At the foot of the dirt path, Gabriel paused to survey the cabins. They seemed somehow smaller, yet otherwise little had changed. Maybe the dark wood of the exterior had faded slightly, but the fixed green shutters beside the windows still appeared to be a stiff breeze from falling off and there were more shingles missing from the roofs than remained. The painted green doors were chipped and battered, and again he refused to imagine how they might have gotten that way. Thinner branches led from the main path around the sides of the front cabin to the other two, which were set just far enough behind and to the sides of the first to form a small courtyard between them. The yellowed wild grasses showed through the snow in matted clumps. There were no stumps or other evidence of cleared trees, as though the lush forest that encircled the buildings had simply refused to grow there.

He heard the grumble of tires on gravel from the distance behind him and suddenly noticed that it was the only sound he heard over the soft patter of his tread on the snow. Even the wind, it seemed, couldn’t reach them on that isolated patch of earth.

The front door opened and Cavenaugh stepped out onto the wood-plank porch. Firelight flickered behind him through the slots of the wood-burning stove.

“Glad you were able to make it,” Cavenaugh said. He smiled, but it was obviously forced.

Gabriel nodded and continued up the path. He ascended the warped stairs and passed Cavenaugh without making eye contact. The warmth pulled him into the small room, where he set his bags to the right of the door beside the others. There was barely enough room for a threadbare couch and a small end table with a kerosene lantern around the potbellied stove. He could see the lumpy, stripped mattress through the bedroom door directly to the left of the fire, and an avocado Formica countertop beside a rust-stained sink without faucets through the door to the right. Until now he had forgotten he would again have to become accustomed to using the outhouse and the hand pump for the well water.

Cavenaugh rested a hand on his shoulder and he nearly jumped.

“We’re just waiting for Maura Aragon now,” Cavenaugh said. “The former Maura Evans.”

“Chase’s sister,” Gabriel said.

“The only one who won’t be represented here is Nathan Dillinger. His family feels that finding his femur was more than enough to answer their lingering questions. They just asked that they be notified if we come across any more of his remains.”

Gabriel nodded once. He couldn’t blame them for not wanting to learn the details of how their loving son could have been separated from his right leg. The mere knowledge that he had must have been painful enough.

“We’re setting ourselves up in the same rooms where our siblings—or son, in Kelsey’s case—stayed,” Cavenaugh said. “That means the two of us are bunking in the northern cabin with Jess MacAuley. She’s dropping off her bags over there now. We figured she could sleep on the couch and you and I could share the bed. Just no spooning.”

Cavenaugh laughed. Gabriel tried to at least smile, but he didn’t have it in him. He had known how difficult it would be to return here, yet he had been completely unprepared. It felt as though all of the air were being sucked from the room. A dull ache radiated outward from his head into every bone in his body.

“Might as well run your stuff over there before the storm gets much worse,” Cavenaugh said. “We’re all meeting back here as soon as we’re through.”

Gabriel grabbed his bags, walked through the kitchen, and exited the back door. He veered left and passed the outhouse, which was now nearly overgrown by scrub oak. Smoke billowed from the aluminum cap on the roof of the cabin. He was nearly to the back door when movement from the edge of the forest to the right caught his eye, but when he turned, he saw only a cluster of ponderosa pines and the maze of trunks beyond leading into the shadows.

He set his bags by the back door beneath the overhanging roof, and walked toward the tree line. Nothing moved, not even ground squirrels darting across the detritus from one mouth of their burrow to the next.

In his mind, he envisioned a younger version of himself stumbling blindly through the wilderness, shouting for his sister, dirt thickening the trails of tears on his cheeks to mud. He had hoped never to feel that helpless again, and yet here he stood now.

Gabriel was just about to head back to the cabin when he noticed a series of tracks in the fresh snow. They looked like those of a small dog, or more likely, a fox. Now that he really thought about it, he might have seen a flash of orange darting out of sight into the forest.

He watched for any sign of movement for another minute before returning to the cabin to unpack his belongings.

***

Half an hour later they were all assembled in the front cabin, where they shared an awkward silence over a pot of strong coffee. In the time it had taken Gabriel to unpack his belongings, Cavenaugh had converted the main room into a kind of command center. Satellite images were tacked to the walls, overlaid with grids marking latitude and longitude in minutes and superimposed with topographical maps. There had to be twenty of them in all, and surely covered every inch of the National Forest. The corner of the room was filled with stacks of equipment Gabriel had never seen before. There were electrical boxes reminiscent of the components of a stereo tower, coils of coaxial cable, and what appeared to be two fancy metal detectors.

Gabriel hovered in front of them, away from the others. He paced from one wall to the next and back again. The coffee only seemed to amplify his nervous energy. He wished someone would crack a window despite the storm. It was starting to feel like a gym locker room in there.

Cavenaugh stood in the doorway to the kitchen. He waited for all of them to absorb their new surroundings. Gabriel couldn’t believe the amount of time and money Cavenaugh must have invested into the project. Now that he really thought about it, no one had asked him to contribute a single cent. His first thought was that Kelsey must have financed everything, but one glance confirmed that he was every bit as awed as the rest of them. He sat on the arm of the couch, attired in the newest and trendiest winter gear from L.L. Bean: a navy blue ski jacket, black snow pants, and furry Sorel boots. His pale gray hair had thinned over the last year, but he had taken such good care of himself that it was impossible to pinpoint his age at a guess. The fire reflected from the wire-framed glasses perched on his aqualine nose as he surveyed the room. Will Farnham slouched on the couch beside him, a stark contrast to Kelsey. He wore an old flannel shirt, dirty carpenter jeans, and Wolverine boots that betrayed the steel inserts over the toes. Long johns peered out over his collar and from his pant legs. He had a thick black beard and a shaved head, and brown eyes that appeared to track a little too slowly. Maura Aragon sat beside him, nervously tapping her feet and doing her best to avoid making direct eye contact with anyone. Her long black hair hung over a face which would have been unmemorable were it not for her crystal-blue eyes. She wore a heavy, knitted sweater featuring teddy bears and hearts, jeans that clung to her wide hips and thighs, and padded boots with faux fur lining the tops. Jess MacAuley leaned on the wall behind them by the front door, sandy blonde hair pulled into a ponytail. She had wide blue eyes, a slender face, and plump lips. Even without makeup she was striking. Her azure sweater brought out her irises, and her faded Levi’s traced her long legs into waterproof hunting boots. She and Gabriel had already exchanged clipped formalities in their cabin while they unpacked, but he had yet to speak with any of the others.

“All right,” Cavenaugh finally said. “I assume none of you need introductions. So let’s just get started. First off, thank you all for dropping everything in your lives back home to come here. I can only imagine the kind of sacrifices you’ve had to make to do so. With any luck, we won’t have to make this pilgrimage again, and this will be the last time any of us see this place or each other ever again.”

“Where did you get all of this?” Kelsey asked, gesturing around the room.

“The maps came directly from NASA’s Terra satellite. I had them blown up and printed. The originals are still on my laptop, which allows digital manipulation and zoom capabilities. They were generated just under a year ago, so they aren’t one hundred percent precise, but they’re the best available.”

“They must have cost a fortune,” Kelsey said.

Cavenaugh offered a weak smile and sighed before continuing. The firelight made his eyes appear recessed into darkness and highlighted wrinkles Gabriel hadn’t noticed previously. “Behind Gabriel over there are two GPR—ground-penetrating radar—machines capable of detecting remains buried up to fifteen meters beneath the ground under optimal conditions, and our communications and analysis equipment, all of which are on loan from the Denver Police Department.” He turned to Gabriel. “I trust you were able to secure an electron microscope.”

Gabriel nodded and tried not to imagine what the university would do to him if they found out he had borrowed it. Granted, it was an older model he had procured from storage, but he was still going to keep it in the trunk of his car until he absolutely needed to use it for fear someone might break it.

“Excellent,” Cavenaugh said. “So what we need to—”

“What is the deal with the microscope and the germs?” Will interrupted. “I don’t understand what you were saying about those germs on Nathan’s leg bone. How is that supposed to help us find out what happened to them?”

“Gabriel?” Cavenaugh said.

In a heartbeat, all eyes in the room were upon him. He took a final slug from his coffee and set aside the mug. Cavenaugh had prepared him for this eventuality, and had cautioned him that there was one key piece of information he intended to withhold in order to convince the others to join them. Specifically, he made no mention of the similarities between the bacteria found on Nathan’s femur and their fossilized twins on the Mars meteorite. Gabriel still wondered why the evidence techs at the Rocky Mountain Regional Computer Forensics Laboratory, the FBI forensics lab that shared resources with the local police, weren’t tearing apart the hills in search of the almost mythological extremophile.

Gabriel cleared his throat and began. His gaze wandered restlessly around the room as he spoke.

“The organisms they found on Nathan’s femur bear an uncanny resemblance to a kind of extremophile called haloarchaea, which has several unique characteristics we feel could help us isolate the region where the mountain lion encountered the bone. Extremophile is the name given to microorganisms that require extreme environmental conditions to thrive. In the case of haloarchaea, they need at least a ten percent salt concentration in water to survive, preferably more, which implies that we’re looking for a small body of saltwater or a solar saltern.”

“There’s no saltwater in Colorado,” Will said.

“That’s not exactly true. There are specifically no bodies of water one might consider similar to seawater or that of the Great Salt Lake, but these mountains are rife with mineral springs with high contents of naturally recurring salts like sodium chloride, carbonate, and sulfate, and additional carbonate salts from calcium, magnesium, potassium, and lithium. If you’ve ever been to the hot springs in Glenwood or Idaho Springs, you know what I’m talking about.”

“So if we can find this hot spring, we should theoretically find this microorganism,” Jess said from the back. “And that should confine our search enough to presumably locate the remainder of Nathan’s body, and hopefully our family members as well.”

“Exactly,” Cavenaugh said. “Of course, that theory is predicated upon the assumption that Nathan’s femur wasn’t moved from another location to begin with. If it had simply been discarded there by someone or some other creature like a bear, then it may just be a wild goose chase.”

“There’s another interesting fact about haloarchaea we suspect may apply to this microorganism. They have an inordinately high concentration of carotenoid pigments for protection from ultraviolet rays, which cause them to take on a reddish or rust-colored hue. If we find our spring, we should know it right away.”

“And from there,” Cavenaugh said, nodding toward the equipment behind Gabriel, “the real work begins.”

☼☼☼

They had spent the afternoon learning how to use the equipment. The GPR had taken some serious practice, but by the time dinner rolled around, they all had a pretty decent understanding of the various signals on the readout and were at least able to recognize the differences between ice, packed dirt, and various rocks. Human remains would be a different animal entirely, but there were no test subjects available. They could only hope they would be able to identify them when the moment of truth arrived.

After a meal of boiled hot dogs and baked beans, during which conversation had been sporadic at best, they had decided to retire early and gather again before sunrise to formulate their plans. They were all eager to begin, but the storm had intensified to the point that the blowing flakes obscured even the major landmarks. The first thing they were going to need to do was study the satellite images in hopes of finding the hot spring, and then make notes of the clues in the bible verses that might have led their missing family members to it. For now, Gabriel was content to allow the day to end. Granted, they had accomplished nothing, but simply being there in the cabins again had taken a physical and emotional toll on all of them.

Gabriel closed the outhouse door and threw the hood of his jacket up over his head to shield it from the onslaught of snow on the shifting wind. If for nothing else, he was thankful the flies had died off for the season. He had horrible memories of the buzzing sound and the tapping of insect bodies against his bare rear end. As he trudged through the accumulation, he tried not to wonder what the coming day would bring.

He was nearly to the back door of his cabin when he noticed a figure standing at the edge of the forest, staring off into the trees. At the sound of his approach, the figure turned and gave him a halfhearted wave. He was able to see just enough to identify Jess by her profile.

“This wasn’t what I had in mind,” she said.

“What’s that?”

She wrapped her arms around her chest and walked toward him.

“The snow,” she said. “It was in the fifties when I left Denver. I nearly didn’t pack all of my winter gear.”

“This is definitely going to make our search more challenging.”

Silence hung between them for a long moment. Gabriel was just about to excuse himself when she finally spoke.

“What aren’t you telling us?”

“What do you mean?”

“Earlier, when you were talking about the bacteria they found on Nathan’s bone, you said they were ‘similar to’ haloarchaea, ‘like’ haloarchaea.”

Gabriel nodded.

“You never once said this microorganism was haloarchaea.”

“I don’t know where you’re going with this,” he said, but it was obvious.

“I’ve been thinking about this all afternoon, and I can only come up with two options: either you don’t know what kind of bacteria they found, or you’re just not telling us.”

Gabriel didn’t know how to proceed. He had promised Cavenaugh he wouldn’t mention their theory about the origin of the microorganism, but he had only done so because they agreed the others might not join them if they did so prior to arrival. Now that everyone was here, though…

“This is hard enough on all of us as it is,” Jess said. “We don’t need secrets between us to make it worse.” She took his hand and looked directly into his eyes. “I lost my sister here, too.”

He took a deep breath and glanced back over his shoulder toward the cabin. Before he consciously made a decision to do so, he started to talk.

***

Gabriel stared at the exposed wooden planks of the ceiling above. His mind wouldn’t keep quiet long enough for him to sleep. Cavenaugh’s clock ticked monotonously from the other side of the bed, metering the rhythm of his wheezing exhalations. The light from the wood-burning stove in the main room had faded to a weak glow through the open doorway, and if he turned just right, he could see the cloud of his breath. He rolled over and pulled the covers up over his face, primarily to drown out the sounds of the man lying on his back scant inches away in the queen-sized bed. With any luck, Jess was having better luck on the couch.

She had responded to the details of the halophile about as he had expected, as he was sure he would have had their roles been reversed. Had he not seen it with his own eyes, he would have shared her disbelief. They had left the conversation in such a way that he still didn’t know exactly what she thought. Whether the microorganism had once originated on a different planet or not was irrelevant anyway. It was merely a tool to help them locate the bodies. Maybe once he was able to formally close this chapter in his life, he would be able to convince the university to write him a grant to study it in the field. Or perhaps he would be happy enough to never return to these godforsaken mountains again.

There was a scratching sound, faint at first, like a bare branch raking the siding outside the window. But there weren’t any trees within ten feet of the cabin.

He pulled down the covers to better hear. Even over Cavenaugh’s snoring, he could discern it, louder now.

It stopped abruptly.

Gabriel sat up and craned his head to listen. Was there someone outside the cabin trying to get in? His heart was pounding, his breaths coming shallow and fast. He leaned over the side of the bed and grabbed his flashlight from the floor.

Thump.

The hollow sound originated somewhere behind a wall, or possibly under the floorboards. It was hard to tell. He could only be sure he had heard something bump a wooden board in some sort of recess.

A minute passed. Then two. The sound didn’t repeat.

Gabriel climbed out of bed, slipped on his boots, and shrugged into his jacket. He switched on the flashlight and directed it around the room. Nothing. Mustering his courage, he exited the bedroom, passed through the living room and kitchen, and opened the back door. The wind buffeted him with a swarm of snowflakes as he stepped out into the night. He swept the column of light across the glimmering white mat, spotlighting large flakes that cast strange, shifting shadows. Easing along the side of the building where the snow had begun to drift, he continued moving the beam from side to side until he was nearly directly under the window, and stopped.

There were tracks in the snow.

He knelt and examined them. They belonged to some sort of animal for sure. The prints were too deep to clearly see the imprint of the paws, but he could tell it couldn’t have been more than a foot tall based on the uneven sweeping marks the fur on the animal’s belly left atop the snow between the tracks. They probably belonged to the fox he had seen earlier.

The snow had been cleared away from the base of the cabin wall, where there was a small, dark opening between the ground and the siding. He flattened himself to his stomach and shined the light into the hole. Weathered planks, upon which the wooden interior floors were braced, stretched off into the darkness beyond the reach of the flashlight. The ground beneath was bare, leveled dirt. He smelled mildew and turned earth, and underneath, a foul organic stench that suggested something had crawled under there to die.

He pointed the light to the right and caught a flash from twin golden rings. There was a hissing sound and something slashed his cheek. Dropping the flashlight, he rolled away from the hole in time to see a furry orange animal dart across the clearing and disappear into the storm.

“Jesus,” he whispered. He dabbed his left cheek with his fingertips. They came away damp, and only caused the pain from the wounds to intensify. He retrieved the flashlight from the snow and shined it on his hand to confirm what he already knew. His fingers were covered with blood and he could feel it beginning to run down the side of his neck.

Did that thing bite him? All he remembered was the reflection of eyes and a blur of movement. He had barely managed to close his eyes before it struck his cheek.

At least that accounted for what he had heard from inside.

Cautiously, he shined the beam back into the hole, half expecting to see an entire litter of those monsters waiting to tear off the rest of his face. There was only a small burrow worn into the dirt, a shallow cavity filled with short, knobby sticks. He tipped the light down just a touch and gasped.

Those weren’t sticks in that nest.

He took several deep breaths to steady his nerves, reached under the house, and closed his fist around the first object he felt. Rolling away from the hole, he directed the light onto the object balanced on his open palm.

Three small bones, articulated with rotting knots of cartilage. No sign of the flesh remained, and the cortices were scarred by grooves from an animal’s teeth.

There was no mistaking what he held.

It was a human finger.