Traces

The wheat field moved with torpid rolls in the wind. As Sacks turned on the rise to greet him, it appeared to be a vast patterned cloak sweeping from his shoulders.

Colt crunched off the road. The charred body, a blackened, brittle exoskeleton, lay foetal between them. He lit a cigarette and glanced back at the barriers and flashing lights.

'A second,' he coughed. 

'That's fucking right.' Sacks slid down the muddy rise, jabbing at his phone. 'I'm glad it looks fucking familiar.'

Colt stooped to squint at the gaping sockets, the peeling bark skin. Everything dulled, stagnated and narrowed to a fine focus.

'Is it a display?' He whispered. 'I've read about this. Rituals, pride - '

'It's a fucking serious problem, that's what it is. Front page yesterday, it'll be fucking hysteria tomorrow. Five miles apart, the middle of fucking nowhere - do you - look, can you get that out my fucking face?'

Colt looked round and exhaled into his craggy features.

*

Face-mask lowered and hair tufting shock-like above his raised goggles, Dowd was tugging on fresh gloves. Through the door behind him, ceramic tiles, glazed concrete blocks, hoses and drains amalgamated around gleaming stainless steel tables.

'I know this is unusual,' he breathed, leaning into Colt as he ushered him in. 'But I need you to see this. You're not going to - you're not going to like it. Not at all.'

Under the sharp glint of surgical lights they stood surveying the two gnarled bodies. Dowd swallowed.

'This - this is the same person.'

Colt stiffened. 'What?'

'Look, I know - I'm not one to... listen, we extracted the DNA from the bone marrow, sequenced the polymorphic regions and ran it through the database. So there's a match, but here's the catch - a match. These, these two people. They're the same person. I mean, of course that wasn't - '

'You're not making any fucking sense.'

Dowd scratched at the tufts above his goggles. He moved to speak again, scratched more, and slid into a shrill, exasperated wheeze. 

'Look. It's, it's genetically identified. That never changes. It's not like I'm - I mean, we've checked, and rechecked, and -'

'Check again.' Colt was already making for the door, head throbbing in the sanitised chill.

*

- ritual displays - 

He lingered on the words, toying with the page edge. His cigarette sent gossamer threads sashaying amongst the washy lamplight. Reaching for the bottle, he poured another two fingers and slugged them back. Shadows laced and diffused around the study and his chin was settling into his chest when an angry vibration scuzzed the desktop.

Scrabbling, Colt pressed the phone to his ear.

'It's one of the markers. A local farm, about two miles down from the second spot. You need to come down here. You need to see this.'

*

The barn was nestled in a copse south of the farmhouse. A loose smattering of stars had been thrown up amongst the inky sky. They blinked through decussated, puzzlebox branches as Colt slipped through the barriers.

A chink in the doorway leaking an angular puddle of light cast Sacks as a burly silhouette. An orange pin-prick crackled in his face.

'You'll need one of these,' he choked, dropping the butt to crush it with his heel and proferring the packet. Colt eased a thin tube out and followed him in, flicking his light.

The barn stretched up to a peaked gambrel roof, locked in place with heavy wooden beams. Clumps of moldy hay littering the floor were collapsed, plague-riddled scarecrows, and sharp links of chicken wire mesh unfolded over lengths of each wall to their left and right. Behind these makeshift screens, dozens of scorched, black bodies were piled.

Colt exhaled. A radio sputtered outside, mingling with the rumble of approaching vehicles.

'You fucking speak, Colt. You fucking speak. I'm not gonna stand here, fucking - two days. Two days, and this is where we are. Have you ever fucking -'

'Don't.' Colt turned and ground the balls of his palms into his eyes. Violent neon spirals unfurled across his vision. It didn't feel like anything. He wasn't feeling anything. He turned back to the interlocking, dusty limbs, stippled with frozen clots. He forced himself to stare at the scabrous, alien faces.

'Mass murder. Fucking mass murder, right under our - how the fuck is this even happening? How many fucking bodies are there here? Colt, you - how the fuck does this match up?'

A cold breeze sent flurries of black granular dust dovetailing over the scraggy hay. The reek of decay and earthweight finality closed around in a sick hermetic seal within which nothing, nothing was fitting together.

'What if they're the same?'

'What?' Sacks had ambled back to the door, and was peering out at the assorted uniforms piling out of flashing cars. Colt drew up close to him.

'What if they're the same person?'

'What the fuck?' Sacks turned and flinched. 'You're fucking reeking. How much have you had? You need to fuck off before these boys get in. Fuck, Colt, how many times have I fucking told you? You're done, you're fucking done tonight. Fuck off, fuck off out my sight.'

Pressing a meaty hand into Colt's back, Sacks directed him towards his car, backing off towards the approaching men as he slumped against the door.

*

A fine rain speckled the windshield as he drove. He dipped the hip flask over his lips and felt the warm brush burn his throat whilst the headlights clove through the sliver of road splitting the sweep of copper fields, a taut zipper in a vast pullover thrown across the world. The rain evolved into thrumming globules, the patter bled into Colt's skull and he pulled over, head throbbing.

Staggering up to the fence separating the field from the road, he tugged his jacket over his cheeks and used the barrier to light a cigarette. People were capable of atrocious things. The scope here, the unimaginable horror... and to choose, now, to mock them with these lurid displays? Brazen, positioned displays. Was it a culmination, a need for it to be over?

Amongst the beaten stalks in the field ahead another small grove stood, stark and solemn. A glimpse of walls between bushy protrusions stirred Colt, and the form of a small hut clarified as he pressed upon the cold fence to look closer. In the downpour the world turned again and he found himself drawn.

*

Brushing from the soggy wheat, Colt stepped into the grove and paced up to the hut door. The small shed itself was worn and weather-beaten, and seemed to be sliding by degrees entirely to the right. Tugging at the opening, he eased in.

Standing in the dark, tight space, he dragged a hand across his dripping features and stepped forward, kicking a large box on the floor.

Shuffling back, he rustled for his phone and sent a timid yellow wash over the wooden base. It was a battery. A heavy 24-volt crate, dull red and dust-flecked. He swung the phone around. The floor was packed with them, linked by a maze of wires.

In the corner, an upright silver coffin throbbed with a bassy, static hum.

Colt sniffed in the gloom. The rain drilled at the roof. I should call this in, he thought. Stepping gingerly between the batteries, he manoeuvred himself in front of the metallic box. Soupy crackling and whispered atonal droning merged with the downpour outside. He held his hand up to the steel frame, felt himself jerked forward, and for a sickening second it was as if his entire body was vibrating and spasming apart in a seismic hallucinatory rattle. He tripped back, drooling webs of spittle, and ran for the door.

*

Tiny needles were lancing through his nervous system, and his hands trembled as he rammed the shed door open again. The sudden light was a diaphanous rush and he shook his head against the sharp ringing. The fields fell away in crisp gold sprays on either side, and he lurched towards the road, swinging over the fence.

When he made it to the car he vomited. Pulling himself away from the paste on the gravel, he peered towards a rise in the track further ahead. There was another white car, still and vacant, fifty metres away.

That's my car, he thought. It's not dark. It's daytime.

Spitting a final yellow noose, he looked through the window of his car and breathed, stung by the waver in his chest. He paced several yards up the road, ducking to approach the second car as if it were a crippled predator. He spun and re-checked his licence plate, engrained in his mind. He twisted back.

That's my car. 

Amongst the flaxen shimmer, something black materialised in the edge of his vision. He ran towards the burnt body, curled in the rustling grass near the new car. Three crows burst from the dancing stalks across the fence, arcing towards the sky.

*

Kneeling down to peer at the smouldering carcass, Colt balked again. His foot slipped as he turned away and scudded into a shrivelled slip of card wrapped in dewy grass. He reached for it, and black dust crumbled away in his hand. It was a scorched police badge.

'You've disposed of the original.'

Lumbering up, Colt veered against the fence. His legs felt like jelly. The wind hissed glacial frequencies undercut with distant rumbles. Amongst the wet wheat, a large man in ratty overalls stood scratching his wispy beard.

'This is my time,' he said. His voice was deep, gravelly. The wind pushed a ripple across the stalks and he folded his arms across his chest. 'You should go now.'

Colt fingered the handgun at his belt, and nodded towards the body in the grass. 'What the fuck is this? What's going on?' 

The man dipped his head and broke a slender stalk, twisting it in his fingers. His voice cut sonorous rolls over the pastoral expanse.

'You were there. Before you used my machine. You were there. I can't sustain them. I haven't figured out how to sustain the originals. For every journey, there is a second. There has to be.'

Colt shivered in a strong gust. He saw a flicker of the cold glint of the autopsy room. 

This is the same person. It's genetically identified. It never changes. 

He realised that, absurdly, his eyes were welling up.

'This car...' he choked.

The man shrugged his broad shoulders. 'Things that have moved are bound to overlap. Some part of forwards has to share space with some part of backwards. There are temporal parts.'
 
Colt probed the frontstrap of the gun again. His head smarted with the absorption, severe cracks in a frost-coated window pane. Common sense seemed to have dissipated the moment he stepped up to the silver coffin. The fundamental spine that said: people are capable of doing the most atrocious things. And justifying it to themselves.

He snapped the revolver upright, swaying on the muddy rise.

'You're a killer.'

'As much as you are.'

The man padded forward and clamped the fence wire. 'You were there five hours ago. That's what's left. I told you. I can't sustain the originals. I've had many journeys. This is my time, here. You should go now.'

Colt caressed the trigger. His eyes traced the thick arms, the wiry patches of hair scuffed around the jaws. Questions were massing in confused blocks.

'Why were they so far apart?' He spat. 'Why were there two, now, lying about? This has clearly been -'

'I told you. I told you, I can't control their expiries. You move, you use the machine, the original expires. I don't know how long they last before they... burn out. I try to be clean. I clean up when I return. I respect this.'

'This is bullshit.' Colt felt his feet mushing beneath him. 'You're a fucking monster.'

'I honour my originals through my work,' breathed the man. 'I am the eye that sees through the mist.' 

His trunk arm lashed out.

*

The cold wiring of the fence sank into Colt's cheek. He dropped into the dew, rolled, and staggered up. The man was a thick hump ploughing through the wheat. Pulling himself over the divide, he ducked down and ran, focusing on the shadow wavering amongst the stalks.

This is my time.

He cracked a shot into the swaying curtain. The shadow disappeared. Everything moved in abstract slides; the brush of yellow canvas punctured by the sporadic, lumbering icon ahead.

Colt shimmied through the remaining reeds and stumbled into the grove in time to see the shed door slam shut. He raced for it. His fingers gripped the handle, and he was stung by a flurry of static vibration. The shack seemed to flump in release, coils of smoke seeping from its wooden slats.

Clinging the revolver to his chest, Colt eased around the door and took in the smouldering silver coffin. Backing away from pluming smoke-threads, he tripped on a humming battery, scrambling outside in time to see a black figure standing statuesque amongst the wheat waves.

In a beat, it dropped to the ground.

Batting away stalks, he closed in on the charred corpse. He sank to his knees as feathers of black dust wreathed around the wizened form. 

Webby cirrus clouds were strained across the skyline and hours, days, years away, a stocky man in overalls stood gasping for breath in a sea of golden wheat.

* * *