American Elsewhere - By Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,3

closer than before. It makes him uncomfortable, or perhaps it is the ionized taste that seems to hover in the air around the top of the mesa. It is a Wrong place. Not the Wrongest, God knows that’s so, but still deeply Wrong.

Dee eyes the surrounding cedars and ponderosa pines nervously. “I don’t see it,” he says over the babbling of the hooded man.

“Don’t worry about that,” says Zimmerman. “It’ll come when it’s called. Just set him down beside the falls.”

They do so, gently laying their captive down on the rock. Zimmerman nods at them to back away, and he reaches out and pulls off the burlap sack.

A kindly, plump face looks up at them from underneath a messy mop of gray hair. His eyes are green and crinkled at the edges, and his cheekbones have a happy red tint. It is the face of a bureaucrat, an English teacher, a counselor, a man used to the shuffling and filing of papers. Yet there is a hardness to his eyes that unnerves Norris, as if there is something swimming in their depths that does not belong there.

“There is nothing you can do to me,” the man says. “It is not allowed. I cannot understand what you are attempting, but it is useless.”

“Get back a little bit,” says Zimmerman to his two companions. “Now.” Dee and Norris take a few steps back, still watching.

“Have you gone mad?” asks their captive. “Is that it? Guns and knives and ropes are mere ephemera here, chaff on the wind. Why would you disturb our waters? Why would you deny yourself peace?”

“Shut up,” says Zimmerman. He kneels, takes out a small penknife, and begins to cut at the tape and the string on the small wooden box.

“Have you not heard a word I said?” asks their captive. “Can you not listen to me for one moment? Do you not even understand what it is you do?”

The box is now open. Zimmerman stares at its contents, swallows, and places the penknife aside. “Understanding isn’t my job,” he says hoarsely. Then he picks up the box with both gloved hands, moving gingerly so as not to disturb what is within, and brings it over to where their captive lies.

“You cannot kill me,” says the bound man. “You cannot touch me. You cannot even harm me.”

Zimmerman licks his lips and swallows again. “You’re right,” he says. “We can’t.” And he tips the contents of the box over onto the bound man.

Something very small and white and oval comes tumbling out. At first it looks like an egg, but as it rolls across the man’s chest and comes to a stop before his face it becomes clear that it is not. Its surface is rough like sandpaper, and it has two large, hollow eyes, a short, snarling snout with two sharp incisors, and many smaller, more delicate teeth behind those. It is a tiny rodent skull, lacking its jawbone, and this gives it the queer impression of being frozen mid-scream.

The bound man stares at the tiny skull on his chest. For the first time his serene confidence breaks: he blinks, confused, and looks up at his captors. “W-what is this?” he asks weakly. “What have you done?”

Zimmerman does not answer. He turns and says, “Come on! Now!” Then all three of them sprint over the rocky slopes to the chain-link fence, arms pinwheeling when they misstep.

“What have you done to me?” calls the bound man after them, but he gets no answer.

When they reach the fence they pull open one of the holes and help each other through. “Is that it?” asks Norris. “Is it done?”

Before Zimmerman can answer a yellow light flares to life in the trees beside the waterfall. The three men look back, and each is forced to squint even though the source of the light remains hidden. The light seems to shiver strangely, as if the beam is interrupted by many dancing moths, and the way the light filters through the glade gives it the look of a leaning rib cage.

In between two of the tallest pines is what looks like a man, standing erect, hands stiff at its sides. Norris cannot remember its being there before; it is as if this newcomer has appeared out of nowhere, and with its appearance there is a new scent to the air, an odor of shit and rotting straw and putrefaction. Norris’s eyes water at the barest whiff of it. The figure stares down at the bound