Negative Space, Mike Robinson [best contemporary novels TXT] 📗

“I promise,” said Patricia from the passenger’s seat, her head bobbing up and down between her phone and the road like a farm bird picking at feed, “that I’m going to shut this off when we get there.”

“We’re already there,” Marcus said. “Part of the ‘there’ is the going.”

Patricia gave a light snort. “Certainly, Master Buddha.”

Marcus had never in his life considered himself a Luddite, but had in recent years taken up the hat quite proudly. Sure, fuddy-duddies had decried the automobile, the radio, the TV. Probably, or, almost certainly, some old prune had blasted the cotton gin and the printing press. But for every ten over-reactive hypochondriacs, there was one real tumor eating away some poor bastard’s brain. And Marcus was not remiss to consider that the Web Culture, compounded by the Phone Culture, represented an actual malignancy that had only begun nibbling away at our minds.

Through the radio wafted a staticy “Stairway to Heaven”, a song stupendously overplayed, though one Marcus had not tired of for twenty years. The highway stretched thin and straight, dipping only slightly. Heavy fog drifted over the canopy, like a great spirit released from the sea, deciding what shape it might next assume.

No cars for a while.

Kind of nice, but also a little unnerving. Paranoia struck Marcus that he was on an endless loop, or that the highway would sail them off into infinity—”the same tree over and over,” Laura had quipped.

They passed a sign. For Marcus it assured him that time had not abandoned them, that people were still expected to travel this road.

ARDELLO CAMPGROUNDS... 5 mi.

TWILIGHT FALLS... 8 mi.

“Only five miles out,” he said, half-consciously.

“I know,” said Patricia, putting her phone in the nearest cup-holder. “Just checked GPS.”

***

They rolled through the campgrounds. So tight and twisting, the roads looked on the map like a bowl of muddy noodles spilled between the woods. They passed a spartan assortment of other campers, their presence betrayed by the pockets of flame snapping and smoking away in the wooded gloom.

Their site was 341, located at the very western end of the grounds. Marcus pulled in and climbed out, smelled the ripe cool air. He craned his head far back, to the point where he nearly experienced vertigo, and stared what seemed like miles up the massive bodies of the redwoods, where fragments of sky lingered like gray nebulae in the cosmos of the canopy.

For a moment, he forgot Patricia. He forgot Laura. For a moment, he forgot himself, becoming no more distinct from the forest than its shadows.

All three of them unloaded the truck. Patricia helped him set up their tent and Laura brought out the coolers, folding chairs, and other food supplies and said, against Marcus’ advice, that she would put up her own tent later. Then all of them went to work on starting the fire, Marcus bringing out a heap of old tax forms and bills and junk mail to add to the kindling.

There was undeniable catharsis in watching the flames shrivel and blacken with such alacrity the things that defined ordinary life. It was as if the elements insisted that he, they, everyone, were better than those things, more permanent and so much bigger.

Much of that evening was phone-less, thankfully, Marcus and family eating hot dogs—Laura cooking Smart Dogs—before making s’mores. Marcus sipped his beer. Only occasionally did the voices of other campers reach them.

“My friend Josh said he saw Bigfoot around here,” Laura said, eyes glazed on her stick’s browning marshmallow. “He said he’s never told anyone. I’m still wondering if I should out him or be a good friend and keep quiet. But not many of my other friends know him.”

“Was he being serious?” Patricia said.

Laura shrugged. The fire popped, coughed embers into the dusk. She retracted her marshmallow and mashed it between two graham crackers and sat down. “I think he was. I can usually tell when he’s fu—uh, messing around.”

Marcus smirked at the expletive near-miss. “Where did he see Bigfoot?”

“I can’t remember. He just said it was in the woods around Twilight Falls.” Laura ran a pinky along her lower lip, scraping off melted chocolate. “I think he was serious. He was like laughing about it but I could tell he was serious, you know? He said it looked more human than anything, but like a big hairy human. And he was all nervous because he read that if you see one you might get cursed.”

Marcus took a swig. “That an Indian legend or something?”

“I think so. Maybe.”

With a sly smile at Patricia, Marcus said, “Well, seems a good thing then that he doesn’t come around that often.”

***

In camping, it always took longer for him to fall asleep, especially on the first night. When Marcus did, though, the rest was so much fuller, meatier, he liked to say, than his thin, linty imitation of sleep in Sacramento.

He lay there in his sleeping bag, Patricia a still lump beside him, purring cute little snores. Outside the tent, night birds and bugs carried on their chorus.

I’m alive, he thought. And I’m here.

Drifting off to sleep, he heard footsteps. His eyes opened.

Crunch.

Then, a bloated moment later: crunch.

He thought maybe it was a deer, slowly grazing its way through the brush.

Yes. A deer. Definitely too heavy and too methodical for any smaller candidate.

Crunch.

Sudden fear struck Marcus, like a dart thrown at his breast.

It’s two-legged.

Though he didn’t know why he thought this. It was all the earlier Bigfoot talk, probably. Damn Laura. Stupid thing, anyway. There was enough to fear in nature without having to invent monsters.

Breathing, it’s breathing.

Faintly, he could hear breath. The footfalls getting closer. They spoke extreme caution in their rhythm, and a hint of investigation.

The fear Marcus felt did not seem confined to him, more like a sphere of sensation that had descended on the place, a collective feeling he now shared.

The moaning started, definitely male, with a deep wet agony behind it. Bewilderment. Crunch. Marcus sat up and tried to peer out the tent’s