Ana Kai Tangat: Tales of the Outer the Other the Damned and the Doomed

Pelan

Acknowledgements

The following people have offered various forms of encouragement, assistance, advice, and inspiration without which this book would not have come to be: John Pelan, friend, mentor, student of the game — Dean Kosko,who’s been down with C. Olson Atcity from the start — Laird Barron, the Opener of the Way — Joseph S. Pulver Sr., who said Noir it up!!!!!!!!! — Alicia Graves, without whom there would be no Gravey — Lesley Wheeler, whose poetry infects all I write — Chris Gavaler, who told me to turn off the CGI — Jeffrey and Ann Vandermeer, who saw something in my Dogme 2011 and gave me my first publishing break — my three children, who are everything to me: Jesse James Douthit- Nicolay, Adrianna Nicolay, and Tyra Nicolay — my mother Constance Nicolay, who should stop reading this book now — Todd and Renee Nicolay — Tracey Van Doren Coble — John Coble — Stephanie Jeremiah — Darlene Eberhart — Kirstyn Eberhart — Neil Van Doren — Lucy Castillo — JayaprakashSatyamurphy — Suresh Subramanian — Shannon Biggs —Mike & Lena Griffin — Anna Tambour — John Langan — Ives Hovanessian & Ted E. Grau — Amalia Kenward--James Brady- -Charles Love--Terry Hunt--Cameron Griffith — Ganesh Rao — Nivedita Ravishankar — Marc Laidlaw — JD Busch — Tony Daniel — Kat Lady Lovecraft Krueger — Simon Strantzas — Nick The Hat Gucker — Denise Brown — Anya Martin — Robin Spriggs — Sergio Rapu — Jut Wynne — Christina Colpitts — Angela Slatter — Jeffrey Thomas — Mark Andresen — Alanna Quinn — Jody Rose — Jeffrey W. Hull — David Kirkwood — my Hometown Angels: Mary Dobies, Sue Denkovic Bennett, Deidre Gallagher, Patricia Frank Ordasi, Christine Boccella Santagelo, and Barbara Tapley — Livia Llewellyn — Justin Montgomery — Lara Busch — Alex Lugo — Michael Abolafia — John M. Braun — Denise Van Buren — Nikki Guerlain — Edward Morris — Nate Pedersen — Mike Davis, for that first big break — John B. Ford — Amy Mullin — Sarah Covert — Cameron Pierce — R. J. Cavender — Kelly Young — Brandi Jording — Scott Gullett — Dori Thompson — Karen Tims — Kathryn Pollnac — Caitlin R. Kiernan — Jordan Krall — Josh Myers — Brian Degrelle — Jason Rolfe — Kate Jonez — Lisa Canavan — KC Focht Musser — Ann Syn Koi — Mara Curry Peterson — Josh Lohmeyer — David Roth — Isaac Cooprider — Doug Adams — Dave Levaris — Curtis Corson — Corville Griner — Stacy Lee LoAlbo — Cody Goodfellow — Wilum Pugmire — S.T. Joshi, for recommending the perfect artist for this book — Dejan Ognjanovic— Tom Lynch — Justin Steele — Sam Cowan — Rick Powell — Victor Fabricatore — S.P. Miskowski — Scott Dwyer — Selena Chambers — Michael Waltz — Dwayne H. Olson — Maria Smith. I am especially grateful for the chance to collaborate with so talented an artist as David Verba, who could not have been more perfectly suited for the job, and whose illustrations for my tales even I find disturbing. Finally, thank you to my publisher Dennis Weiler. He believed in my work from the start, and that has made all the difference. With Fedogan & Bremer this book found its ideal home...

To anyone I’ve forgotten — and I am sure there are more than a few — I’ll make it up to you next time. I swear.

For Mark Kosko—

’Cause it’s all your goddamn fault compadre.

And you know it.

There are other worlds (They have not told you of)

—Sun Ra

...someplace in the scheme of things this world must touch the other.

—Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian

Waking the Titans

Ifirst met Scott Nicolay a few years ago through a mutual acquaintance: author and publisher of dark fantasy, John Pelan. Nicolay was just entering the field at that point, so he hadn’t blipped my radar. I don’t recall precisely how it went down, except that John put us in touch and I feel fortunate that he did so. Pelan is a walking encyclopedia of dark literature. If he recommends a talent, odds are high one should pay heed. So, I paid heed. I struck up an email and occasional phone correspondence with Nicolay. He’s a fascinating person, someone who has lived a full and eventful life. He’s a father and a civic-minded member of his community. He’s read enough to rival even John Pelan. At the time of our introduction, I was working on a novel during the day, so we held our frequent discussions during the witching hour. Everything from politics, to poetry, to rune-casting. These conversations had an effect on me. Ever the curmudgeon, I nonetheless broke character and volunteered to perform a read-through/editing pass of his novella, Ana Kai Tangata. This story convinced me that Pelan had stumbled across a genius in Nicolay, an as-yet unknown writer whose accumulated experiences would soon make a hellacious impact upon the genre community.

Over the past few years I’ve had the keen honor of penning a few of these essays for books of authors I admire. Michael Shea, Richard Gavin, Peter Straub, Livia Llewellyn, Joe Pulver, Karl Edward Wagner, and others. In the genre field, introductions and afterwords are labors of love. You do it to pay homage or to pay it forward. As with the aforementioned names, when the call came in that Scott Nicolay requested I write an intro to his debut book, I dropped what I was doing and got on the case.

It’s always a pleasure and a challenge to find the right words, the right entry point into the collection or novel under discussion. The heart of what I must tell you is this: Scott Nicolay is as good a debut author as I’ve ever read. This collection of weird and horrific tales would be a significant accomplishment for a tenured master of the black arts. That it has been created and put forth by an author in his third or fourth year on the scene is extraordinary. But the truth of it is, for some of us, the best of us, the creation of art isn’t a formula, isn’t a recipe or static measurement. For the rarest of us, art is an erratic process, or a process of endurance. We are not in the presence of a callow and bullish youth, but a man of erudition and experience. Nicolay is one who has seen much, endured much, has undergone prolonged pressure and the result is a diamond among stones.

There is a line in The Bad Outer Space that I find trenchant:

…if you look real hard when there are no clouds, you can see right into space.

It’s a simple line expressing a simple concept because the narrator is a child. Yet, within that kernel of marvelous simplicity, lies everything you need to know about the underlying philosophy of Ana Kai Tangata and indeed the best stories and books of weird and horror literature. We routinely gaze upon the sky and see only that which clutters it. We are blinded by clouds and stars, the clawing canopy of the forest, looming cityscapes and lattices of high tension wires, and murmurations of birds fleeing the earth. Mostly, we fail to pierce the veil, to peer hard enough, to comprehend the immensity of our insignificance. But the real darkness and its attendant cold and vacuum, its vastness, is always there, turning with colossal indifference to us mites and the mote to which we cling.

Circling back to the notion of certain types of art arising from a process of pressure or distillation or denaturing, for me, the parallel in regard to Nicolay’s work is inescapable. He is no wet-behind the ears college graduate. The man has spent years in the academic trenches reading and dissecting the classics. His influences are comforting to a purist such as myself. Cinema has its place; give me Peckinpah and Bergman or give me death. Nonetheless, I’m thrilled to find a writer who doesn’t seek sustenance from lowest-common-denominator-horror— slasher flicks and torture porn—but rather Jean Ray, Angela Carter, Jack Spicer, and Terry Lamsley. He wears these influences openly, like a necklace of ebon death’s heads around his neck. However, influence is only the beginning of the chemical process that has produced this early body of work. Nicolay has consumed the existential brain matter of Thomas Ligotti, breathed deep of the ectoplasmic essence of Robert Chambers, absorbed the psychic resonance of Robert Aickman, and it has changed him. Nicolay does not indulge in pastiche. He incubates influence like a host incubates a virus and gives it new and febrile life. He has become more dangerous in his dreaming thereby. More dangerous and more of an original.

Make no mistake—Nicolay is indeed a menace because he possesses vision and audacity; he understands the fine line between homage and pastiche, how to gaze past the creations of past masters into the deep dark that inspired them. He’s going to creep into your mind and adjust the settings. He’s going to show you…things. Some of these things are dark and disturbing in a way I often feel horror and the weird have forgotten to be. Like slumbering beasts, or cast down and bound titans, the primordial forces dream black dreams in their caverns until once in a hunter’s moon, someone, such as Nicolay, comes along and pokes them with a sharp stick. Chains and yokes them, drags them for a few moments into the searing light of the surface.

This is a big, sprawling treatise of the macabre. Except for a couple of short stories to ameliorate the ever-ratcheting dread, these are lengthy novelettes and novellas, and one, a piece original to this volume, qualifies as a short novel. It is testament to Nicolay’s artistic integrity that he works at what the industry often considers an unpublishable length. Flash fiction and short subjects are the rage here in the 21st Century. Much as I applaud the intersection of literature and the internet, I’m nonetheless dismayed by the prevalent marketing notion that the best length for fiction tops out at 7500 words. I disagree strongly. What the field requires is variety. In addition to short-shorts, it must be seeded with novelettes and novellas and short novels to properly flourish. Thank the dark gods Nicolay is a throwback to masters such as Blackwood and Machen in that regard. One of his greatest virtues as an author is a willingness to allow a tale to develop at a natural pace, to digress where it must digress, to mature like a pearl from a cyst in the belly of an oyster. There is no rush in a Nicolay story. It proceeds through twisting and twining galleries of phantasmagoric imagery to whatever fresh hell awaits at the end of the journey.

And so, we pause now at the threshold of a voyage. At the helm reposes your guide, a man who sees the world a bit differently than the rest of us, a man who is going places, dark, dark places, and he’s taking us along. It will prove a dark odyssey down the great river that winds through our collective subconscious. A river of blood and memory that cores and bores into the bones of cosmic lagerstätten. Possibly, when it is over, you too shall see reality a bit differently. Perhaps you’ll gaze through the azure shell of the sky and see the infinite blackness that awaits.

Laird Barron

Rifton, New York

November 7, 2013

alligators

The dream returned to Russell on Easter: his dad diving, disappearing once more beneath the quarry’s green algal murk, ripples calling wide silent echoes over the surface: O, O, O, loud, louder...fading...flattening to glass as all three kids stood staring openmouthed from the platform, his sisters suddenly yelling for real, not just yelling but flat out screaming: Daddy! Daddy! Daddy! until the pale bulk of his back breached, legs apart, arms out from his sides, everything but the head, the head they never found. And 10 year old Russell screaming now too, crying, thinking, An alligator! An alligator got him! Only there were no alligators in New Jersey. And he didn’t have any sisters. And none of the rest of it ever happened either, except in that dream, the inexplicable nightmare that circled the nocturnal swamp of his subconscious for 26 years, mostly beneath the surface, but always rising to strike again in time.

He sat up in bed and planted his back against the headboard, panting while the lingering images of his father’s headless body in the quarry pit dissipated. His breath came in shallow gasps, and he felt infinitely small and isolated. Wendy slept on beside him, face to the wall. He gripped her left bicep and rocked her gently, calling her name. A slow feline ripple ran the length of her body and she shifted further toward her side of the bed to shake free of his hand. He leaned over and latched onto her again, desperate for human company.

What? she mumbled, awake enough to express the maximum exasperation that one syllable could bear.

I had that nightmare again. The one about my dad.

She turned her head toward him, but the blue glow of the digital clock on his nightstand showed him that her eyes stayed closed. You’re kidding, right? It’s been like two years since the last time. I thought we were finally through with that.

I know, I did too, but it just came back. Bad. I’m kind of freaked out right now. Would you hold me? Please?

Give me a break. I’m trying to sleep. But when he slid down beside her, she flopped her right arm lifelessly over his torso.

Thanks. I just need to feel someone right now.

Yeah, well don’t get too feely. It’s too late for any of that.

He stretched his left arm around her back and wiggled his right beneath the pillows under her neck, then tried to pull her closer. She didn’t resist, but she didn’t cooperate either, forcing him to drag her as dead weight. Only when he had her close enough that her breasts pressed his chest through her nightgown did she expel a sigh of resignation and shift her legs in his direction as well. But only close, not touching.

It’s time for you to see someone like we talked about before. You can’t go on with this forever.

Well, if I had any idea who to go see, I might.

"That’s no excuse. Do some research, ask around, get some recommendations, make an appointment. At least try."

I don’t know...sometimes I think maybe all I really need is to go back to Jersey, go out to that quarry, you know, confront my fears.

Wendy sighed. "Your fears...we’ve been through this already. I think you just got scared by Peter Pan when you were a kid. That’s where it all comes from, not some slimy old quarry. It’s all some Oedipal thing with your dad as Captain Hook, just a vehicle for your secret resentments against him. And now your childhood fears are keeping you from growing up and me from sleeping. What you need is to see a professional, not some New Age pop psychology stunt, symbolically eating the liver of your enemy."

"Peter Pan? Oh come on, look who’s talking...at least I’m not named after a character from it."

Asshole. She twisted away from him and lay on her back.

He shouldn’t have gone there. He knew how sensitive she was about the name her adoptive parents gave her. "Aw, shi-heart, I’m sorry. It’s just, you know, I’m still shook up from that dream."

Silence. He could see her digital clock through the crook of her neck. He watched the blocky scarlet numbers flick silently from 12:51 to 12:52. 12:53. 12:54. She sighed, then spoke: You know what my Aunt Theresa would say, don’t you? She pronounced aunt to rhyme with font. Most anyone raised on the Rez would’ve said auntie, rhyming with panty. Or shima yázhí.

Theresa Peshlakai was the only significant link Wendy had recovered to her biological family since returning to the Navajo Nation in 1997. Wendy’s biological mother, whereabouts currently unknown, was Theresa’s younger sister. Russ never felt Mrs. Peshlakai was comfortable with the visits of her southern California-raised niece, even though Wendy counted as her daughter under the Diné clan system. But he himself quite liked the elderly woman, who still lived in the old log hooghan her husband had built for her outside Teec Nos Pos before the patient but inevitable cancer of the uranium mines had eaten him from the lungs out. Russell enjoyed the smell of cedar and tallow that pervaded the octagonal structure, and he was happy just to stare up at the interlocking logs of its roof while Wendy badgered the older woman.

I can guess.

She’d say it’s because of all those snakes and lizards you played with when you were a kid.

Which was just what he guessed...Navajos held extensive taboos about most reptiles, especially snakes and green lizards. The latter were said to kill by leaping onto a victim’s head and expelling a deadly stream of toxic urine. Snakes were just all around bad news. One of the more common beliefs was that a pregnant woman would miscarry if she saw snakes eating or fucking.

Not lizards. We didn’t really have any lizards in New Jersey, at least none I ever found. Salamanders, yes. I caught a lot of salamanders back in the day. My dad took us to that quarry to hunt for salamanders.

Wendy shuddered and wriggled away from him. Now his hand under her pillow was directly beneath her neck.

It was just something we did back then, Tommy and me. I wanted to be a herpetologist from the time I was like eight, and Tommy copied anything I did, so our dad would take us both out in the woods to hunt for salamanders and snakes and stuff. We were always tramping around the hills and streams of central Jersey and east Pennsy, flipping over rocks and logs.

Wendy opened her eyes at last, turning her head toward him again but not moving any closer. "That reminds me, you promised to take the girls out to visit their náli this summer. They’ve been asking when they could see her again. And I know she wants to see them." She used the Navajo word for paternal grandparent, náli, one of the few words she’d adopted from the language she had come to Arizona to claim as her birthright. Only she missed the intonations and pronounced it like golly. He did not correct her. He had learned his lesson about such comments long ago. The Diné language had never clicked for her...the tonality, the extended vowels, the voiceless l and its several compounds...she was lost with it all and now deliberately avoided it. But it came easily to Russ, the pronunciation and the basic vocabulary at least. And that disparity was an issue.

What about you? Aren’t you gonna come, too?

You know how it is with me and your mother. The girls don’t need to be around that. Plus it’ll give me a chance to catch up around the house.

His hand under her head was getting numb, despite the two pillows. He twisted it out, and they lay side-by-side without touching, both staring at the ceiling.

I’ll call my mom, find out what are some good dates for her, and then I’ll price some flights. Okay?

You’d better get on it right away. You know how flights just go up the longer you wait.

She turned on her right side as if to signal the end of the conversation. He considered sliding over and trying to spoon, but dreaded her familiar clipped and unequivocal response: Go back to your side. I’m trying to sleep. He stared into the ceiling’s flat, inverted pool, remembering when they met, years ago and just yesterday, two first year teachers at Window Rock High School, come together from opposite sides of the country and united by their youth and what he at least thought was a common fascination with Navajo culture. United now by two daughters and a common bank account. He thought of when he first saw her one August day on playground duty, how the

high desert sun glanced off her black hair like a mirror, the litheness of her youthful pre-pregnancy figure. When sleep swallowed him again at last, the nightmare did not return. But then it never came more than once per night, even when it came every night for weeks at a time.

* * * *

As much as he dreaded it, Russ actually did call his mom the next week, got some dates in June and booked the flights. He even called her back to confirm and make detailed arrangements. The first call actually went well. That was probably because he’d surprised her. He remembered what the old-timers said about encountering a rattlesnake on the trail: first guy wakes it, second guy pisses it off, third guy gets bit. But Dolores Fenster was ready to pounce by the second call.

So why isn’t your little Indian maid coming? Is there trouble in the teepee? War in the wigwam?

Jesus, Mom! What the hell is wrong with you?

Well, at least you still remember the name of Our Savior, even if you profane it. I thought maybe you’d forgotten it now that you’ve got yourself some red religion.

He stared at his cell, lost for a response. She was wrong about so many things—first of all, Navajos didn’t live in teepees. Or wigwams. But then there was that grain of truth: things weren’t going well. It was like the bullies in high school: they instinctively knew how to construct their attacks around some actual vulnerability. They were predators who could sense weakness the way a shark smelled blood in the water. Only this was his own mother...

Just drop it, Mom, okay? And please don’t talk that way in front of Darlene and Stephanie when we’re out there.

It’s your life, son. I’ve learned by now that you won’t listen to my advice anyway.

He refused to take the bait. He would only find himself in a quagmire.

Whatever, Mom. You know I love you. Let’s leave it at that, okay. We’ll see you in June.

I love you too, son...despite your poor choices.

He heard her sigh, followed by the clunky sound as she hung up her land line. He groaned at the silent black rectangle in his hand. Maybe it was best Wendy wasn’t coming.

* * * *

April passed, then May. Day after day Russ bore witness to the futile pleas of students who failed to pass one or more sections of the AIMS, yet still hoped to walk at graduation with their peers. Most had already ordered caps and gowns, announcements and invitations—even booked reception halls in Page or Flagstaff—and those costs were non-refundable. He knew from years past that the School Board would hide behind policy and refuse even to hear their requests, so he consoled the students as best he could, struggled to calm angry parents, and crossed his fingers he didn’t say anything careless that someone would misrepresent to higher-ups. This year, at least, no one had. So far. He wished he could tell the students that graduation and their entry into the new and unforgiving world beyond was nothing to look forward to.

The Thursday before Grad Week was particularly grueling. 17 students were scheduled not to walk, and all but two of those showed up in his office that day. By seventh hour he was completely burnt, but he anticipated at least a brief reprieve, as this block was reserved for senior electives, and even now few students willingly missed those.

Russ leaned back in his battered swivel chair and peeked through his open office door. No students waited in the three gray chairs lined up outside. He rocked forward and gripped the flat center drawer of his desk, drew it halfway out, wincing at the inevitable metallic squeal. The drawer was stuffed with papers, most of which he would probably never look at again. Holding the drawer in his right hand, he slid his left beneath the dense layer of old memos, student schedules, meeting agendas, and broken, forgotten bric-a-brac and extracted the magazine that lay face down at the bottom. After a last glance outside, he placed it flat on the desk and flipped quickly to page 42. The pages fell open on their own to that well-thumbed spot, to an entry entitled: THE WATCHUNG PIT OF SACRIFICE. He began reading, though by now he knew it almost by heart:

LOCATED HIGH IN THE WATCHUNG MOUNTAINS BETWEEN DEEP BROOK AND UNDERBRIDGE, the Upper Stavros Pit came to our attention via occasional WNJ contributor Alex Lugo. We were skeptical at first: How could such a site exist less than half an hour’s drive and hike from Rt. 22? It sounded way too creepy to be so accessible. But WNJ followed the directions and there it was. Sorry Alex for doubting you.

There is some history here: The Pit operated from 1949-1954 as an adjunct to the main Stavros Quarry, which remains in business today at the foot of the Watchungs on Rt. 22. Stavros Quarry specializes in asphalt and gravel, but the Upper Stavros Pit produced a fine-grained red sandstone that was used in building facades and countertops. The sandstone business provided a prosperous sideline for the Stavros Brothers until 1954, when quarrymen unexpectedly breached the floor of the Pit and opened access to a subterranean lake. Dark, freezing water immediately poured in, flooding the Pit and drowning two workers. Their bodies were never recovered.

The Stavros Brothers briefly considered plans to plug the breach and pump out the water, but it soon became apparent that so large a section of the Pit’s floor had collapsed into the lake that it would be impossible to seal the opening, and the site was abandoned.

In 1963 the Underbridge Township Department of Public Works purchased the land from the Stavros Brothers with the goal of turning the Pit into a reservoir, but they scrapped this plan, supposedly after conducting a chemical analysis of the water. The results of that analysis have never been published, and township employees now claim that the report was never on file. Management of the Pit eventually passed to the Sewer Utility Division, which considered using it for graywater disposal, but that plan was also scrapped, ironically enough for fear of contaminating the aquifer.

By the mid-1980s the story spread locally that a Satanist cult was using the Pit for human sacrifices. According to this story, the lake was bottomless, and bodies thrown into the Pit never surfaced.

There was more, mostly an uneventful account of a visit the author and his two friends made to the site, punctuated with readers’ claims to have seen torchlit processions crossing the ridge at night. And there were several photos of the flat, dead surface of the lake. He examined the photo at the top of the first page instead. It showed a portion of the raw rock wall along the Pit’s upper edge. Bent trees and dense underbrush retreated into the woods above. Someone had spraypainted UR MEAT on the cliff just beneath the edge. The letters were tall and spindly, and the more Russ looked at the U, the more it looked like a Y instead. The T in MEAT was an inverted cross. Or a dagger. The focus of Russ’ obsession with this photo was not the words, however, but the crude outline of a long, thickly-toothed reptilian jaw several feet to the right of the letters. Like an alligator’s jaw...only there were no alligators in New Jersey. This graffiti had not been there when his dad had taken Tommy and him to the quarry in the early ’80s.

Russ shuddered, even though he already knew the photo well. Whoever had sprayed the letters must have hung over the edge of the Pit with someone else holding his ankles. Obsessed cultist or joking stoner, the artist had taken an awful risk. Russ could not help thinking of his father’s final flailing dive in the dream.

The story of the waters from the underground lake flooding the Pit also resonated for him. He could not help thinking of Tééhoołtsódii, the Big Water Monster of the Navajo Emergence story that drove people from the lower worlds with floods.

What you got there? The voice startled him. He looked up from the photo to the young woman who stood watching him: lean, long-legged, perfect obsidian hair in a pageboy bob.

He crushed the magazine tight to his chest and forced a smile. Cassandra Manygoats leaned against his doorframe, arms folded over her high, firm breasts. He tried to fix his eyes on hers: two dark pools in which he longed to lose himself, but he could not meet her gaze for long without flinching. Cass was all that Wendy was not: Navajo but raised on the Rez, Princeton educated and at ease in either culture—and either language. A former Miss Western Navajo Agency, she supposedly won her title by singing a Navajo song while butchering a sheep in the Traditional Talent Contest. Still single and hot as hell at 26. And oh, those legs. Not to mention that ass! If she were older/he were younger, if they had met each other before he settled for Wendy...

He knew this was Cassandra’s prep hour—it was the common prep for the entire Language Arts department—all three of them—but then he knew her schedule forward and back, had stopped by her room on one bullshit premise or another more often than he could count (well, 37 times this school year), but this was the first time she ever visited his office. He had no worries about Wendy interrupting. She would be immersed in Pre-Calc this hour.

Hey Cassie...Cassandra, how you doing? What’s up?

She nodded toward the magazine and laughed. Did I catch you with your porn? His heart skittered.

No, oh, no way. Not me. He flipped the magazine up quickly so she could see the cover. "WEIRD NJ. It’s a magazine about my home state, about all the ch’íidii and other weird stuff out there. An old friend sent it to me. He did not mention the old friend was an ex, one he’d awakened many times in their college days after the quarry dream. She’d seen the article and sent it to him with a sarcastic note as a bookmark: I can’t believe this place is real, even if your story was bullshit like everything else."

"Yiiyá, ch’íidii!" Then, laughing: Hey, just kidding. I actually remember that mag from my Princeton days. I had this one boyfriend who used to take road trips to visit the places from those stories. I even went with him a couple times, like to that old sewer drain near Clifton they call the Gates of Hell. It was pretty much a waste of time: we tramped around with our flashlights in the smelly water until all the tunnels dead-ended. And that was about it. Nothing really creepy except for all the Satanic graffiti. Another time we looked for Midgettown, but no luck. That was about it.

She paused, dark eyes still fixed on him. He stared at her left elbow. So anyways... She gave the dialect term an ironic lilt— her English was impeccable as her Navajo— Amber says you’re going Out East to Jersey for the summer. Amber Hardaway was Cassandra’s mentor and Darlene’s third grade teacher. A gaunt, chain-smoking Okie, the woman looked as if she might transform at any moment into a gnarled tree trunk. Russ bit down a sarcastic response, and Cassandra continued.

So I was wondering if you might do me a little favor?

Sure! Oh, that was way too eager. Damn.

Well, if it’s not too much trouble, do you think you could bring me back some Taylor Pork Roll.

Seriously?

Seriously. It’s for my family—they’re such Rezzed-out Johns, and they still eat so much Spam. They’ve got to try pork roll. It will change their lives. She laughed again. And I really want to try it with green chile.

OK. I’m game. How much do you want?

As much as you can manage. I hate to ask, but maybe a couple pounds? I know they’ve got it in big rolls. Then hurriedly, as she reached for her wallet: I can pay you.

Hell, don’t worry about it, He said, waving her off, It shouldn’t be that much. If it turns out to be a lot, we can settle up after I get back with the goods.

Awesome. Thanks Russ, you’re the best! She turned to go, began walking away, then did an about face after two steps and spoke again:

Listen: Language Arts and Social Studies are getting together at Tim Mulvaney’s place in the North Housing for a little party tomorrow night. Just us and some friends, but only the Humanities—we didn’t invite anyone from the, you know, Inhumanities. That was her group’s term for Math & Science, Wendy’s department... Number 121. You should come if you can get away from the Dragon Lady. It’ll be fun.

Cool, yeah, thanks. I’ll definitely try. Sure he’d try, but there was no way he was going to slip out past Wendy, no excuse he could concoct that would satisfy her. His trying consisted mostly of swirling various possibilities about in his brain for nearly two days but never coming up with anything even remotely practicable, even after he knew the party had to be underway, his opportunity missed. When he fell asleep at last, past midnight and on into Saturday morning, the dream came almost instantly. It began as it always did: the four of them on the creaking, rusted platform, Russ and the sisters he never had, then their dad suddenly diving all unannounced into the Pit. And it stuck with him almost the whole next week, not departing until Thursday. Each time he awoke from the impossible vision of his father’s floating headless corpse, he bit down his panic and did his best not to wake Wendy. He didn’t want to remind her he hadn’t located a therapist.

Then came Graduation, Memorial Day, and School-out. Russ still hadn’t gotten used to school starting in August and ending in May—somehow the school year was never official for him until Labor Day. He would lie in bed on those September Mondays and wait for the faint tidal shift that always ran through his blood. Only then did the real school year begin.

Cassie Manygoats never returned to his office. After that first brief visit, Russ didn’t see her again except as they passed in the halls and in the crowd at Commencement. The only time they had even a moment for conversation, she commented on her envy for his pending trip and how she wished she could go, then told him to be sure and say hi to Tony Soprano. She punctuated this advice with a lifeless chuckle, and he offered his own stilted laugh in return before hallway traffic drove them in opposite directions.

Immediately after School-out, Wendy shot off to some kind of staff development in Phoenix—something on Math and Science content standards—and left him alone with the girls. They were excited about their trip east, and immediately began packing, which Russ considered a blessing, as he dreaded the usual last-minute scrambling of two prepubescent girls. Who knew what they might forget?

* * * *

One afternoon several days before their departure, Russ was washing dishes when nine year old Darlene popped up beside him and tugged on the kitchen towel tucked into his belt: Daddy?

He made a small startled leap away from her. Whoa, honey, you scared me! What do you want?

Daddy, are there really alligators in the sewers in New Jersey?

He let the crusted plate in his hands slip back into the soapy water and cocked his head down at her. Now who told you that, honey?

Mrs. Hardaway. She said to be careful going to the bathroom when we’re there because of the alligators. She said people buy them as pets and flush them down the toilet and they get big eating rats in the sewers. Then they come back up and bite you on the butt when you’re going pee.

Hardaway. That witch. Cassandra practically worshipped her, but the woman had adopted an inexplicable hostility toward both Wendy and Russ. He had a pretty good idea why she would mess with his daughter’s head like that. She had been Stephanie’s teacher two years earlier, fawned over her all year, then made it clear all this year she considered Darlene a grossly inferior student in comparison. That, and she shared a duplex with Cassandra in the housing. She had several times given him the hairy eyeball when she caught him hanging around Cassandra’s classroom. He should complain, try to get her written up, but she would just deny it, blame Darlene. And it would piss Cassie off. He dried his hands on the towel, dropped them on Darlene’s shoulders. That’s just an urban legend, honey, and it’s about New York, not New Jersey.

What’s an urban legend?

It’s like a traditional Navajo story, like a coyote story, only set in the modern world. But it’s not true.

Promise?

Promise.

Pinky swear?

He pinky swore. For Darlene, that settled the matter. She broke contact and scuttled outside to join her sister, whatever they were doing out there. Probably riding bikes around the housing. As long as they stayed within sight of the house. That was the rule. The local Crips and Bloods still contended for turf around the school, so the range of the girls’ activities was greatly circumscribed.

* * * *

At last it was time to go. Wendy returned two days before their scheduled departure, puffed up with subject-area confidence, and grudgingly helped the girls finish packing. When the appointed day arrived, she drove them to Flag and dropped them at the curb outside the hotel where they were to overnight because of the early hour of their first flight. She never left their aging Ford Explorer, just leaned out her window, said, Call me when you get there, okay? Russ got a peck on the cheek, the girls got a wave, and she was gone.

From Flag they flew to Phoenix, from Phoenix to Atlanta, Atlanta to DC, DC to Newark. He was concerned that all the flight changes would be too much for the girls, but they knew the routine from two years earlier and were excited to repeat the ordeal. More excited than Russ for sure. By ATL the girls had taken control of their itinerary, were checking departure monitors, hurrying Russ to each gate in turn.

In Newark, Dolores stood waiting for them just beyond the checkpoint, close to the wall so she could avoid the heterogeneous stream of their fellow travelers. Russ remembered how his dad somehow always managed to sneak all the way to the arrival gate...but that was before 9/11. The girls ran to her right off, nothing but hugs for Náli. She wrapped an arm around each of them but kept her eyes on Russ. When he reached her, he said, Hi, Mom, and leaned across his daughters to peck the cheek she offered.

Once they had all their luggage, Dolores led them to her car, which she had parked for some reason in the open lot far beyond the parking deck, despite the numerous spaces available in the latter. He did not ask why, as he dreaded her explanation, which would likely involve some dire warning in her email about terrorists. Russ was drenched with sweat from the humidity by the time they reached her boxy black Mercedes where it lay baking in the sun before a single stunted acacia.

Half an hour later they pulled into the driveway of the two story suburban home where Russ had lived nearly 23 years. It was strange to him now. He thought of the Henry James story The Jolly Corner, about an American expatriate in Europe who returns to his family home after 30 years abroad to find it haunted by the disfigured ghost of his own alternate, undeparted self. He knew the story well, BA in English...so how had he ended up as a high school counselor? Letting life’s hidden currents carry him along...

Russ regarded the split-level box. It was home, and yet it was not. The shape of the house was the same, but the landscaping and the trees in the yard had changed. Some time after his dad died, his mother slapped on aluminum siding and a fresh paint job. The house he remembered as olive green and white was now two shades of gray. Up and down the block, the neighbors’ houses had undergone similar alterations. Everything the same, everything different. As they walked to the door, he asked his mom about the fate of those