THE WAY IT WENT DOWN: RETIREMENT

There was something in there with us. That’s the only real way to put it. Something was there but wasn’t, and it crept inside us all and we didn’t even notice. And we took it with us, and it’s still inside. Waiting. In me.  

The mound was broken open by people we never identified, and the room in it certainly wasn’t native American. Only in this line of work could this pass for a dull version of the same old story. 

And fuck, we weren’t even there for that, we just went there because it sounded like something that could be connected to the case. So, then, of course, it became the case. We all did.  

The room inside the mound was from before. Grant would go on-and-on about it. Pre-American culture. A race of giants. Cannibals that feared the sun. Whatever. We didn’t see any of that. Just weird geometric pots. Walls painted in red and grey mud filled with dancing elongated stick figures. In the center, the mark. There’s nothing to describe really. It’s like a hole in my mind. I can see everything around it, but not the mark. Even if I traced the outline from my memory, what was left somehow wouldn’t be right.  

I’d guess if we looked for the vandals that busted it open, we could pick them out because of their strange, violent deaths on the new moons since then. Something like that gets reported. Something like that gets pictures. I’m sure the group is on it, anyway. Not my problem. 

I’ve got other problems. 

Like, how on the first new moon, it took Lacey. On the second, it got Grant. And then on the third when we were waiting for it, it came for Mike. Through Mike. I don’t ever want to see anything like that again. 

I don’t want to become that. Please?  

Ten days left. Only me now. 

The group stepped in. Four guys rolled me out in a FBI car to a nameless office park outside of D.C. Lots of questions. Two exams at a VA hospital. Lots of meetings. Questions about the mound. About the symbols. Photos of teenagers I had never seen. Crime scene photographs that looked like someone had detonated a stick of dynamite inside of someone in a trailer kitchen. A word, Tulpa, coming up, again and again. The slow shift from participant to test subject. And last, a fat, old man burning sage and drawing symbols on me with blood. I had to sit in that for 12 hours. Then, the briefing. 

The last briefing.

We had all heard about him, certainly. First, as a rumor. Later, more like a promise. No names, of course. Hell, he probably doesn’t have one anymore. He was smaller than I thought he would be. Older. Wore a rig, fatigues and thin, silver, glasses. 

The director. 

He came in, sat down and opened with:

“Relax,” and his voice was like a ribbon of color in the grey room. 

“Here’s where we’re at…” 

There wasn’t any cure that they knew. They had access to a symbol they thought might contain whatever came out…of me on the new moon, but they were unsure what good that would do. The physical changes to the host were likely irreversible. 

Oh, that didn’t surprise me, sir, I said. I had seen Mike at the end. I had helped him get there. 

The choice, he said, was mine. There was no real safe out. They would wait it out with me and make sure I didn’t…continue as that thing, or they would give me a shot and burn my body before the new moon. They’d do anything I’d want except let me walk.

“But I think I already know what you’ll want…” 

“How would you know that, sir?”

“Because I know what I’d want.”

He knew about my kid and Randall. He knew about the house and the mortgage. He knew about the divorce and the insurance. 

First, he said, there would be a legit job to get me out of state. Travel was key. Insurance paid out double for a death on the job. Then, an accident. The group would take care of that. It would be fast. I wouldn’t know when it was coming. It had to look real, after all.

All the money would go to Krissy, they’d make certain of it. I had his word. Everything he said, I had to admit, sounded pretty good considering I’d be dead at the end of it. I had had some time to wrap my head around it, after all. OK. I said. OK.

I can’t go home. I don’t want to risk it. I can’t be near her. On the phone last night I almost told her, but all I said was:

“Good night my muffin. I love you.”

And Krissy, her mind already far away said, “good night mom. Love.”

I love you, Krissy. 

I love you.

Four days left now. I’m in Oklahoma. Driving to the hotel in the rent-a-car and the meeting is at 3:00. In the rearview the black car that’s been tailing me from the airport creeps ahead, pacing me. Trying to overtake me.  

Any minute now.

I love you, Krissy.

Any minute now.

I love-