HEX (5 page)

They said good night and Steve walked out to the back of the property, looking for Fletcher. From the barn came the sound of one of the horses—either Paladin or Nuala—sniffing, a restless sound, yet intimate at the same time. Oddly enough, Steve loved life in Black Spring despite its restrictions. Here in the dark he felt a strong sense of belonging—something that, like so many aspects of the human psyche, couldn't be rationally explained, yet existed nonetheless. Steve was too scientifically minded to believe in something spiritual such as the power of place, but even so, there was a more primitive, intuitive part of him that knew his neighbor was right. This place owned them. And even now, in the lee of the late summer night, you could feel that the place itself belonged to something older. Their house was on the edge of the Black Rock Forest nature reserve, at the foot of Mount Misery. The chain of hills, pushed up by the glaciers in past ice ages and cut out by meltwater, had been exerting an attraction on the people who settled there ever since ancient times. Anyone who dug there would find the remains of settlements and burial grounds from the Munsee and Mohican tribes. Later, when the Dutch and English colonists moved in and drove the River Indians away from this area, the cultivated wilderness retained its character and the hills were used by heathen and pagan cults for their rituals. Steve knew the history … but the connection that historians failed to make was the influence of the place itself. That connection was irrational and only existed if you lived here … and it took hold of you.

Admittedly, it hadn't been easy, those early years.

First came denial, then came anger. The denial ended abruptly when, after seven weeks of disbelief and bewilderment, they booked a monthlong vacation in a splendid Thai bamboo beach bungalow. Steve had thought it might be a good idea for Jocelyn to get away from all the fuss for a while during her pregnancy. Halfway through their first week in Asia they both became depressed, as if an intense, invisible sadness had washed over them from the Gulf of Thailand and was now devouring them from the inside out. It had no origin or direction, yet it was there and it spread like an ink blot. Steve absolutely refused to admit that it could have anything to do with the Council's warning that the length of their vacation was foolish—life threatening, even—until, after less than a week and a half away from home, he began playing with the idea of hanging himself from the bamboo ceiling using the bungalow's bedsheets.

Christ, how long was I standing here?
he had asked himself when he woke from the daydream with a shock. Despite the tropical heat, Steve had goose bumps all over his arms and back. He had been standing there with the linens in his hands. He didn't know what could possibly have possessed him, but the image from behind his own bulging eyes as the sheet cut off the oxygen supply to his brain and the hydrostatic pressure of his cerebrospinal fluid increased had imprinted itself in his mind, vivid and horribly tempting. In the vision, he had still been alive. Looking down, Steve had seen his own dangling feet, and upward, the sea, and behind that—death.
What in God's name was that?
he thought, splashing water on his face.
I wanted to do it. I really wanted to do it
.

Jocelyn had also had a vision. Not of killing herself. She had mated with a donkey, then stuck a carving knife into her belly to cut out the baby.

That same evening they had packed their bags, rebooked their flight, and returned home headlong. As soon as they were back in Black Spring, the profound sadness had slid away from them like a veil of tears, and the world had seemed manageable again.

Never again had it been as bad as it was then. They had carried on intense conversations with Robert Grim and a small group of volunteers from town who had been appointed by the Council, among them Pete VanderMeer. “You'll get used to it,” Pete had said. “I used to think Black Spring was like death row, but now I see it more like a little stable, with a cage door. You're allowed to stick your finger through the bars every now and then, but only to show that you're fattening up nicely.”

When Steve and Jocelyn had realized there was no point in denying the truth, the powerless feeling had slowly turned into depression and a smoldering sense of guilt, which exacerbated the tension in their marriage. But the baby's arrival had brought healing. When Tyler was six months old, Steve let go of his desire to not only understand the situation but also to
change
it, and decided that his move to Black Spring had been a gesture of love. He found a way to move on, but in his heart he bore the scars: Tyler would never grow to become a war correspondent, just as Jocelyn had had to suspend her field research on the Greenland ice caps. Their love was for the desolate and the remote, not for the Hudson Valley sediment. It had broken their hearts, just as every unfulfilled dream breaks the human heart, but that was life. Jocelyn and Matt had learned to love the horses—Matt especially enjoyed riding, and now was in his fifth year of competition—and Tyler had his GoPro and YouTube channel. You adapted, and you made sacrifices. You did it for your children or for love. You did it because of illness or because of an accident. You did it because you had new dreams … and sometimes you did it because of Black Spring.

Sometimes you did it because of Black Spring.

A tawny owl screeched in the woods, startled itself, and fell silent. Steve whistled for the dog once again. He began to feel ill at ease. Superstition, of course, even ludicrous, but on a night like this, when he could feel the power of this place in the dark, it was present nonetheless. He didn't think back on those first years very often. It was all somewhat blurred in his memory; it had that structure of melting snow that dissolves as soon as you squeeze it. He remembered that they had asked themselves whether it was ethical to bring a child into the world in a place like this. Jocelyn had snapped, somewhat caustically, that in times of war and famine children were born under far more difficult circumstances.

After that, they had lived relatively happily for the most part … but the guilt had never entirely gone away.

“Fletcher, come here!” he hissed. Finally Fletcher came pattering out of the darkness and walked up to Steve, not directly, but in an arc, to show that he really hadn't done anything wrong. Steve locked up the stable and followed the dog along the crazy-paved path to the back door.

Silence reigned in the house, quiet with the sounds of sleep. The only light came from Tyler's open bedroom door upstairs. The boy was just coming out of the bathroom when Steve got to the top step. Steve hunkered down like a boxer and Tyler parried deftly, their typical Steve-and-Tyler greeting.

“You ready for tomorrow?”

“Will we ever be?”

Steve smiled. “A regular philosopher. Don't stay up too late, okay?”

“No, I'm about to turn in. G'night, Dad.”

But when Steve went to the bathroom half an hour later there was still light shining through the transom above Tyler's door—the pale radiation from his laptop. He considered saying something, but thought better of it and decided to allow the boy his privacy.

Just before going to sleep he rose from his side of the bed and looked out the window. Jocelyn didn't stir. Their room was at the back of the house and it was too dark outside to distinguish shapes, but somewhere in the night Steve thought he could see the red dot of light from the surveillance cam in the oak at the back of their property. Then it was gone. Perhaps a branch had blown in front of it. It made him think of the burning tip of Pete VanderMeer's cigarette. The screeching tawny owl. The restless sniffing of the horses. Even the light coming from Tyler's room.
They're standing watch,
he thought.
They're all standing watch. Why?

To guard what's theirs.
It was an incoherent thought, but it was followed by another that was much more lucid, a thought that slipped into his weary mind and trickled through with a cold fluidity:
Sometimes you did it because of Black Spring.

He dismissed it and fell asleep.

 

FOUR

THE ENTRY POSTED
the next morning on the website
Open Your Eyes: Preachings from the Witch's Nest
read as follows:

tonight we're gonna do it!! #awesome

#mainstream #omfg #lampposttest

Posted 10:23 a.m. by: Tyler Grant

Obviously, no one in Black Spring read the entry that day. The five people who were aware of the website's existence and who knew the password were all between sixteen and nineteen years of age, and would not in a million years think of visiting the
OYE
website via the town providers.

The website's welcome pop-up read as follows:

OK, here's a warning that you're totally thinking you won't read, just like the I-am-18-or-older bs you click away when you jack off. But this is different: this is a disclaimer you have to memorize word for word, better than the O'Neill Raiders fight song (for the heroes among us) or the Gettysburg Address (for the neonihilists). This warning is
COMPLETE SECRECY
and
NEVER FUCKING EVER LOG IN IN BLACK SPRING
, not even on your iPhone or tablet. Big-time 404 message if you do it anyway, but they can still trace the URL with their keylogger. Only discuss content IRL, not via Skype, not even if there's a cow standing on the cable somewhere between you and HEX. To be clear: we have an Emergency Decree here in BS in which 1) keeping or distributing illegal images of Gramma K. will result in a one-way ticket to Doodletown and 2) leaks are regarded as “a serious threat to municipal public order” and have been dealt with since, like, the Middle Ages with total corporal punishment (“we-have-not-administered-such-punishment-since-1932,” LICGAS*). Take the hint:
WHAT WE'RE DOING IS DANGEROUS
. The only good thing about a town that gets off on indoctrinating the young is that you all know how to keep a secret. I'm trusting you guys. I don't wanna bitch about it, but I check the statcounter every other day so I can see exactly who's logging in and from where. Anyone who breaks the rules will get a lifetime ban from
OYE
without prior warning. And that's before Colton & Co. start their freak show.
STICK TO THE RULES
. That's our ultimate fuck-you to the system!

* like I could give a shit

They stuck to the rules, all right.
OYE
was probably the one online guerrilla movement that only operated in the full light of day: All its users lived in Black Spring and slept in their own beds at night.

But not that night. That night they sneaked out of their rooms, climbing down drainpipes and gutters like warriors in occupied territory, and set off with shovels, rope, a black cloth, and a pair of wire cutters. They weren't what you'd call close friends, not all of them. Of the five who went out that night, Tyler considered only Lawrence VanderMeer from next door and Burak Şayer his real friends—not just the kind you held textathons with until silly o'clock in the morning, but the kind you told stuff to, private stuff. Yet that wasn't the whole story, not if you had no one else to depend on. Born in Black Spring, you knew each other from early on and feared the adults, not your allies.

It was the first night that fall that it rained. Not a summer shower, but a real autumn rain, the kind that seems drowsy and endless. By the time they had completed their mission forty minutes later, they were soaked to the skin. They took each other's hands and Tyler solemnly said, “For science, guys.”

“For science,” Lawrence echoed.

“For science,” Justin Walker and Burak said in chorus.

Jaydon Holst shot them a glance dipped in liquid acid and said, “Up yours, faggots.”

The next morning, with bags under their eyes that hung to their feet, they gathered on the patio of Sue's Highland Diner on the town square—although “square” was probably giving it too much credit. It was more like a gathering of shops and restaurants on Lower Reservoir and Deep Hollow Road surrounding the Little Methodist Church—which they all called Crystal Meth Church on account of the shape of its windows—and the old, sloping Temple Hill Cemetery. There were even those who found “gathering” too strong a word for the feeble excuse for eateries and retail establishments there at the intersection. Among those skeptics were the five boys on the patio at Sue's, lethargically sipping their cappuccinos and lattes, too worn-out to get overly excited about what was coming.

“Don't you kids have to be at school?” Sue asked when she brought them their order. It had stopped raining, but it was chilly, and Sue had had to remove pools of water from the plastic tables and chairs.

“No, the first two periods were cancelled, so they let us out,” said Burak. The others nodded in agreement or squeezed their eyes shut in the pallid sunlight. Burak held a job as a dishwasher at Sue's, which earned them a free first round. After that they usually moved on to Griselda's Butchery & Delicacies on the other side of the square (Griselda was Jaydon's mom), which meant another free first round.

Burak wasn't lying, not entirely. The first two periods really had been cancelled—but no one had let them out.

“We've had an alert, boys,” Sue said.

“I know, ma'am,” Jaydon said amiably, a sure sign for everyone who knew Jaydon Holst to start seeing the word “BEWARE” in huge blinking neon letters. In fact, as Tyler had once remarked to Lawrence, Jaydon was the reason why the word “beware” existed at all, as well as the words “involuntary commitment” and “disaster waiting to happen.” But they all knew his background, so they tried to be sympathetic. “We figured we'd just sit here, so we can help out in case something happens.”

“You're an angel, Jaydon. I'll tell your mom that when I go pick up the bacon this afternoon.” Burak tried his best not to laugh as Sue put an ashtray down in front of him. “Can I get you boys anything else?”