[Darker Pastures Theme - Intro]
NARRATOR
Most dangerous and insidious of all social evils is the fear of one’s neighbors. Self-serving and unscrupulous men have exploited and fed such fires since the dawn of civilization, using it to fuel their ascension into power. But such sentiments, and the movements born of them, are unpredictable, and those who seek to profit by pointing out both easy scapegoats and sinister bogeymen can suddenly find themselves on the receiving end of that suspicion and anger—and perhaps that of a knife, rope, gun, or gas chamber.
If only such horror resided solely within these darker pastures.
[Darker Pastures Theme - Intro - Continues]
NARRATOR
Episode Six: The Bogeymen.
(Sounds of elk bugling)
NARRATOR
Didi knows at once that the bags are wrong. She walks the short route from her house to her job at the grocery mart every day, is altogether too familiar with the cracking, weed-strangled pavement, with the alley choked by diesel fumes and the greasy smell from the bar and grill – and with that chain-link fence.
She knows they shouldn’t be there, those heavy-duty trash bags, rippling blackly in the chill wind. Their weight has slightly distorted the shape of the fence.
She approaches them very cautiously, has to steel herself before touching the one on the right. When she does, she knows at once and without opening it what lies within. That shouldn’t be possible, but she does, and she almost falls as she reels back from it.
She pulls out her phone and shakily dials the police.
(Brief pause)
NARRATOR
The wind comes out of the west, from the sere and frigid mountains, and Clement wishes he’d brought a warmer jacket as he rides out into the pasture. His age is beginning to tell, and he doesn’t handle the cold as well as he once did, feels it settle deep into his bones and joints. Winter hasn’t even truly come, not yet, and he dreads when it does. A light snowfall blankets the shortgrass prairie, barely more than a dusting: a mere taste of what is to come.
Clement rides along the old and weathered barbed-wire fence line, the irregular posts of ancient, greyed timber rising like a ghostly memory of the fence first set in the earth by his grandfather almost a century ago, and repaired and replaced over and over in the long years since.
Clement silently thanks himself that he doesn’t have far to ride, that he had the foresight to winter the cattle in the nearer pasture this year. Pastures must be rotated, so that the herd doesn’t graze the grass to scrub beyond the prairie’s capacity to regenerate, and it doesn’t always work out that they can winter in the nearer range.
Clement thinks suddenly and painfully, as he sometimes does, of his ex-wife, Didi. The end of their marriage had not been ugly or sudden, but had been a long breaking, a slow sundering of hearts and aspirations. But he still feels that old tug in his breastbone when he thinks of her, that dropping sensation in his stomach. And he thinks, also, of the son he never sees or hears from anymore, the cheerful boy that had grown into a young man so full of anger. Clement had never known exactly where that rage had come from, but sometimes, in his bleakest moments, he fears it came from him, some unknown and unlit corner of his soul that he has never dared explore or even countenance.
Frosty, his snowcap Appaloosa, snorts out a long and misty breath, looking away from the fence toward the pasture’s interior and slowing his steps. Clement’s brow furrows. Frosty is a sensible beast, a better friend to Clement than most men have been, and while no horse, cow, or dog thinks like a man or cares about the same things, Clement intuits that Frosty has sensed something out of place.
He urges Frosty in the direction he was looking, or smelling, or listening, and rides carefully over the snow-kissed grass.
As soon as he sees the clear evidence of tire tracks in the dust, grass, and snow, he knows that they are wrong. The knowledge is as brutal and swift as a punch under the ribcage, and it comes even before he sees the fine red speckles, the browned pool, of blood upon the snow – and then the human indentations, like deranged snow angels.
Well, he says slowly. Hell.
Both horse and man are still for a looking moment, gazes fixed upon the scene with all its churning implications. Then, Clement turns back the way he has come and rides until he can get reception on the outmoded flip phone that Didi insisted on giving him in the final years of their marriage. He still only uses it grudgingly, but when he sees the two tiny bars on the cramped screen, he dials and waits in the cold morning.
(Brief pause)
NARRATOR
John wakes and a long, rattling cough tears up out of his lungs.
Well, he thinks. Hell.
He doesn’t want to go to the ex-Army medic that serves as their doctor, to tap into their all-too-limited stockpile of black-market meds, but he thinks the cough sounds serious and he doesn’t really care for the idea of a death from pneumonia, simply because he was too hesitant to get it checked out – a damned-fool stubborn death, as his grandfather might’ve put it.
Rising from the cot, he leaves his cramped quarters and moves through the compound, toward Holliday’s office.
Of course, Holliday isn’t Doc’s real name, any more than John Smith is his. Real names aren’t used here, by mostly unspoken consent. Every man on the compound knows why they are here, and what the price of even a minor slip-up could be.
Doc gives him a thorough examination, asking him questions all the while. Finally, he says that he doesn’t have the resources for a full diagnosis, but mirrors John’s concern and gives him a handful of antibiotics, tells him to come back later for a checkup.
As John rises from the stool, he notices for the first time how tired, how unwell Doc looks himself.
He leaves the little exam room and walks toward the mess hall for breakfast. It’s late, and the kitchen might be closing down already, but he’s hungry and knows he shouldn’t take the meds on an empty stomach.
Today he’s lucky, and manages to get the last of the scrambled eggs and sausage, a bit of lukewarm coffee, and a small bowl of cereal. The mess hall is all but empty today, which is fine by him – he doesn’t much feel like company anyway.
But as he sits to breakfast, he feels a heavy hand clap his shoulder, looks up to find a familiar, fleshy face grinning down at him.
Peter Magnum.
John can hardly stand Peter. Sure, everyone here uses a false moniker, but Peter’s is just too obnoxious, too juvenile, and it is a decent microcosm of the man’s personality.
Peter says that their little message has been found, that it’s on the local news.
John almost chokes on his eggs when Peter says who found it.
(Brief pause)
NARRATOR
One of the victims is a young woman, the other two are men.
The woman takes them a long time to identity, but they guess that she is Cheyenne, possibly Crow. Her presence means that questions of jurisdiction immediately muddle the investigation, especially since her tribal affiliation is unknown. One of the men they identify quickly, a middle-aged civil rights lawyer and activist from Dallas who was reported missing a week ago while he was on a northbound trip, but the other it takes them a little longer to learn much about. He is a teenage boy from Billings, named Javier Estacado.
It is a long time before they identify the woman as Marie Young Wolf, twenty-six years old and with two boys, the youngest barely ten months old. Her family had been looking for her for almost two months prior.
Didi learns all of this from the local news and from gossiping with neighbors and coworkers. She wishes she could just forget about the whole thing, but when she tries to fall asleep, even in quiet waking moments when she is alone, those bags still dance before her eyes, heavy with dark promises.
Over the next few days, she learns that there have been other such discoveries, in the western portion of the state, in Colorado, Kansas, Maine, and Washington. The list keeps growing. Some the bags contain messages; some of them, like hers, contain only the severed heads. But only once does she hear the group everyone suspects mentioned by name, and that only in passing.
No one, news anchor, politician, or law enforcement official, dares to accuse them outright. The threats which are more like promises are too certain and too terrifying.
It’s only when Clement makes his once-a-week trip into town, though, that she learns what happened on their land. She still sometimes thinks of it as their land, even though she has lived in town for the better part of a decade now, their marriage effectually dissolved even longer.
The store is dead when he comes in, giving them a chance to talk when he brings his meager cartload of coffee, milk, potatoes, and canned goods up to the register. Looking at his purchase, Didi worries, as she always does, that he isn’t taking care of himself, worries even more when he asks her to throw in a carton of Marlboros.
Clement, for his part, is concerned for her too, is obviously bothered by the fact that she was the one who found the bags and guessed at their gruesome contents and worries about lingering effects of such a horrific find on her psyche. But she assures him that she is coping, feeling dishonest even as she says it.
Then, he begins to tell her about what his own find that same morning: the site of both the execution, and the subsequent desecration of the bodies.
Clement doesn’t say it, not outright, but she can tell that it weighs heavily upon him that something so sordid happened on his land, that he wonders why they would choose his pastures, of all this big-sky country.
And after he’s paid for his groceries and the conversation winds down, as he’s turning to go, she asks him if he would want any company these next couple evenings. It comes out of her without her foreknowledge, surprising them both. Under his long, silvery moustache, Clement smiles and says he would very much.
(Brief pause)
NARRATOR
Their leader, Topher Columbo, is angry.
John knows this, even though the man is smiling beatifically when they assemble. He knows, because he was one of the first to rally to Columbo’s cause, is familiar with the man’s moods and habits.
And the wider Topher is smiling, the deeper the rage.
Topher begins with all of the usual sermonizing, talking about their grand mission, how they will cleanse this country of parasites and degenerates, make it safe for real Americans once more, says that this is a divine mandate. Then his talk becomes less lofty, and he says that the FBI has gotten involved in the investigation, which was expected, but that he has now also become certain that there are infiltrators in their midst.
A cold, prickling sweat breaks out on John’s neck. He is not a traitor, could never be, but there are reasons that he might be suspected. As Topher’s talk of just retribution turns bloodier, John’s palms feel suddenly slick, his stomach roils.
Peter, sitting beside him, asks if he’s feeling okay. John nods wordlessly, fixes his attention on Topher.
Topher is smiling very wide now. He says that they have nothing to worry about, that God and History are on their side, and that the traitors will be found and punished, the righteous rewarded.
He turns to his right-hand man, Miles Christian, and asks him to lead the group in prayer. Miles, tall and muscular, with short-cropped pale blond hair and beard, ascends to the podium and raises his annotated Bible in his right hand, his sharp Bowie in the other, and intones almost musically the familiar prayer for death and destruction.
And as he bows his head, he wonders if Miles and Topher chose the location of the beheading because of his ties to it, if a trap is being laid for him. Gritting his teeth, he vows inwardly to himself that he will not waver, will give them no cause to question his loyalty or his conviction.
(Brief pause)
NARRATOR
Didi and Clement treat themselves to a nice steak dinner at the bar and grill, then they ride in his battered ’89 Dodge Ram – a truck that should be dead three times over, given its rough usage in this wild, unforgiving country – up toward his house.
Inside, they sit and talk, sipping at their beers. Clement has never been much of a drinker, but he keeps a few cans in his fridge at all times, just in case the occasion arises. Didi is glad for it tonight, glad for the warm, fuzzy feeling that dulls the knife-edge of worry.
Then, during a lull in the pleasant conversation, Clement suddenly says what they have both been thinking, what everyone in town has been thinking since the mutilated heads were found bagged and hanging for a stranger to stumble upon.
He says that it must be the Bogeymen. She starts at the invocation of the name that some are too afraid to utter, that others will claim represents an alarmist fiction spawned by radicals – even when the terrorists sign their own hideous work.
And Didi can see the tears in Clement’s eyes when he says it, this man who never cries, who is all cigarette-harshened monosyllables and silent gestures, who smells of saddle leather and dusty denim, of sunlight and wind on a high hill.
She goes to him, takes him in her arms, holds him as the fear spills out like poisoned blood.
(Brief pause)
NARRATOR
The two men beg and scream, tears and snot and spittle running down their faces and flying from their lips when they speak, dripping from their chins onto the gelid earth. They kneel, hands bound behind their backs, in the center of the circle.
Topher is smiling so very wide now, it seems like the corners of his mouth will split.
He selects two of the men, seemingly at random, for the task. The first is a relative newcomer, who has adopted the moniker of Abe Jefferson, who can’t be past twenty and can barely manage the Shenandoah beard he tries to cultivate.
The second is John.
Miles proffers the knives, smaller hunting blades and not his own oversized Bowie, but the blades are of good quality and very well cared-for.
Miles is better with knives than he is with men.
John and Abe take them, approach the doomed men, put the blades to unprotected throats.
The boy’s cut is hesitant and jerky, and the man before him dies messily and slowly. John takes a deep breath, steadies himself before his own death-stroke, and this traitor bleeds out clean and quickly. As clean and quickly as such things can be done, anyway.
Afterward, John looks up, over the dead men and across the circle, to Miles and Topher. He keeps his gaze steady and flat, and Miles offers him a curt nod of approval. Topher gives him instead a smile, which John is not certain how to interpret this time.
He rejoins the circle, a smear of the dead man’s blood coagulating on his finger while he pretends not to mind.
It is only afterward, when the bodies have been disposed of and they have been dismissed for the evening, that he returns to his quarters and washes his hand of the blood, then sits on his cot and begins to shiver uncontrollably as he wonders how many more cleansings there will be, how many more circles of bloodshed.
(Brief pause)
NARRATOR
Didi feels guilty for calling in sick to work early the next morning, but she does it anyway. When her boss tells her she’d better show up or she’ll be out of a job, Didi finds she is actually relieved to say that she guesses she’ll find something else then.
Clement, as always, is impassive afterward, but she thinks she can sense satisfaction radiating from his silent form. He is standing at the window, sipping from a cup of strong black coffee, looking out over the dark prairie as the first ruddy fingers of dawn creep westward.
He is lost in his own thoughts, as he often is.
The silence was, in part, what killed their marriage. But for the first time, Didi has begun to realize that the fault for that was not all with Clement, that she read much into that silence which may not have been there, may only have been the shadowy reflections of her own inner misgivings and dissatisfaction.
The silence this morning does not feel taut, or uncomfortable. This is a silence of mutual understanding.
Clement’s southern pastures border on tribal land – not the reservation proper, but on trust lands. While there are sometimes tensions between the local ranchers and the tribe, Clement has never begrudged the Northern Cheyenne that territory, has always thought it in fact insufficient recompense for more than a century of ill treatment. He is a true conservative, not one of the two-bit fascists or corporate lapdogs that often pass for such now. He believes in conserving, both land and culture, protecting what is worth protecting. That includes the prairie, and the people who live upon it and are a part of it, be they white or brown, Indigenous or immigrant.
Living so close to tribal lands, though, Clement knows what often happens there. He has heard of young women disappearing before, has seen how little is often done in the surrounding community, how little the wider world cares or even notices.
And thinking that he has been made a part of this, that something so ugly and evil was done on the land under his own care, made him feel queasy and uncertain of everything at first. But now, that is slowly turning into searing wrath.
He speaks at last, says to Didi that he’s tired of bloody-minded people and the games they play with the lives of the innocent and the vulnerable. And he’s tired of the self-styled Bogeymen, sick of living in their shadow and waiting to see what ungodly horrors they will next inflict upon the people.
He moves across the room, sets his cup down on the mantle, reaches up and takes down the old Model 1895 Winchester from its rack.
Didi feels a cold sensation as he does this, but she knows nothing she says will stop him, now that a course of action has coalesced in his deliberate mind. And she too, if she’s honest, is sick of living with that ever-present but seldom acknowledged threat that hangs like an immobile, immortal thundercloud over the county, the state, the nation.
(Brief pause)
NARRATOR
Two days, and six more killings, and all of this only in their own cell.
He has heard Doc whisper that there are similar purges happening in the other cells, all across the country. John isn’t sure how Holliday could know that, but then again, he doesn’t really know the man, can’t guess at his contacts on the outside.
The antibiotics haven’t been helping, either. The cough is worse, and he’s developed a low-grade but persistent fever and a constant tremor in his limbs. And whatever he’s got, it seems to be making its way through the compound. Topher actually seems to be affected the worst, but he hasn’t stopped in his leadership duties, instead seems to have thrown himself even more fully into them, if that were possible.
Hence, the flow of blood.
At midday, as they sit to lunch in the little mess hall that isn’t really a mess hall, Topher stands and smacks the table with his spoon. He says that it’s time, that they cannot wait any longer, that the government and the even more shadowy, sinister forces behind it are moving too quickly to stop their glorious crusade.
And he looks directly at John when he says that it’s time to hit the targets in town. John feels like he will pitch forward into the bowl of thin chili before him, and doesn’t know whether it’s the illness, the meds, or Topher’s words that make him feel so faint.
(Brief pause)
NARRATOR
Didi waits at the old timber house, up on Clement’s ranch, with the two nieces and the nephew that often help Clement with the cattle, ever since their son disappeared. None of them want to remain there, but Clement and his sister Lilly insisted.
Clement had deftly manipulated Didi into accepting by pressing the old Stevens Model 311 double-barrel and a box of 12-gauge shells into her hand, telling her to protect the young ones. That had got her, even though she realizes now that the kids, ranging from thirteen to nineteen, are more capable with guns than she is.
Still, she has no choice now. None of them do. They wait.
The first call had come from Gunner Andersen, one of Clement’s ranching neighbors and perhaps his closest friend. Clement’s face had gone very grim during that call, and he had reached again for the rifle that now lay near to hand against the wall.
After that, Clement had begun making calls himself, and from his low, clipped words, Didi had known that the storm was finally breaking.
They left in the late afternoon, Clement and Lily and Gunner, all of them armed and somber. It was about an hour after that the power had gone, but there had been wood and so Didi and the girls had built a flame in the seldom-used fireplace and sat around it, their ears pricked for any sound from outside.
But all they hear is the wind, and the grass, and the occasional sound of a coyote or an elk or the cattle. Once, Didi thinks she perhaps hears a faint, distant boom, but none of the others give any sign of having caught it.
Then, there is the rumble of an approaching engine, and Didi moves to the window to look out on the long, unmaintained road that leads up to the ranch. A light is moving up it, toward the house, and she hisses to the boy and his sisters to get ready.
They crouch behind the couch, the oldest sister producing a revolver from somewhere. Didi doesn’t have much time to notice more or think much about it before the light resolves into a pickup and pulls into the yard.
It’s Clement, and Lilly. Gunner is nowhere to be seen.
Clement walks up to the house, raises his fist to give the agreed-upon knock, but Didi has already left the shotgun behind, thrown wide the door, and wrapped him in a fierce embrace.
Clement murmurs that he’s sorry, and strokes her hair. He says it again, and then says that he thinks it is over, for now.
That for now hangs in the air and mingles with the chill of the late autumn night. Didi nods, not knowing what to say, and leads Clement and Lilly back inside. As they step through the front door, the power returns, and a light blossoms above their heads.
(Brief pause)
NARRATOR
John cannot look up to meet the gaze of the fuming, wide-eyed Topher. The man is choking on his own rage, the sounds coming out his mouth incoherent. He looks like he might actually have some sort of cardiovascular emergency on the spot, his veins bulging and his skin flushed red.
Miles is dead, as are four of the other men. Three more are wounded. Only John and Peter came back unharmed.
Abe is among the dead. John saw his throat shatter when the police opened fire, saw him fall like a dropped garbage bag.
John was on the alpha team, the one which was to hit the fire station and the courthouse. Their operation had been an abysmal failure. The joint force of sheriff’s department men and federal agents had anticipated them, almost as though forewarned. John knows what that revelation will bring from Topher, and has resolved not to mention it if none of the wounded men do.
The bravo team, which Peter had been a part of, had better success. They had knocked out the power lines and the cell tower, but then they had been met on the road by a convoy of locals, farmers and ranchers and a few that Peter swore had come from the reservation, though those weren’t his exact words.
The locals had been well-armed, and prepared. More prepared, apparently, than these men who had been waiting and planning for this day for years.
So John can understand Topher’s rage, even though it terrifies him.
Peter is trying to give some explanation, some excuse, when both he and John realize that Topher has suddenly gone still – not just silent, but stone-still. He is staring at them, his eyes and his grin wider than they have ever seen. There are, John notices now, bloody cracks at the corners of his lips.
Topher says, softly, that they have succeeded, that word has come that the plan has gone better than expected, all across the country. He says that the land is softened now, ripe for cultivation. Both John and Peter frown in confusion. There has been no call, no radio chatter, during the time they first began their respective reports.
And before they can puzzle out any sort of answer, Topher draws his Glock 17 and shoots Peter through the eye. Peter drops straight backward, toppling stiffly like a falling plank, his remaining eye staring wide at the ceiling, his mouth open as though he is about to speak.
Holliday runs into the room, rushes to kneel beside the dead man, panic and confusion plain on his face. He turns to ask something of Topher, but before he can form the question, the Glock erupts four more times, steadily and measured. Doc crumples to the floor, groaning, his elbows and knees shattered by the shots.
In that strange, detached dilation that comes with such moments, John wonders at how accurately Topher has placed his shots.
He, too, glances up at Topher, who has turned the handgun on him. But Topher doesn’t fire, just looks at him a long, considering moment, then slowly lowers.
Again in that unfamiliar, horridly soft tone, he says that John was riper than expected, that he will soon understand.
And then Topher opens that wide mouth of his, opens it much too far, and something emerges from his mouth. It is a small head, John thinks, but like no head he has ever seen before. It makes him think, simultaneously, of the head of an antlion, of a snake, and of a spider.
It seems to vibrate slightly, and the head twitches from side to side.
Yes, it repeats, in something approximating Topher’s voice. So ready, so ripe. Soon, soon, all will come to fruition.
Then the head withdraws like a tongue back into Topher, and the man is staring down at him again. Without a further word, Topher turns and walks out of the room, down the hall, his rhythmic footfalls receding into the distance.
It’s only in his absence that John notices that Doc’s groans have subsided, that the medic is no longer moving. John turns to look at him, sees another of those insectoid faces peering back at him. The first had been a dark, dull brown, but this one is off-white and looks slightly softer.
Don’t be afraid, it says to him, in what is not a human voice but somehow approximates one. You will soon be free from fear, from pain, from doubt. You will soon be a part of the great hive.
Doc’s ruined body rises, the joints still bleeding, and follows that of Topher.
John speaks aloud a prayer that becomes a question that then becomes a babbling tirade. He asks what is happening, why it is happening, what will become of him. Then he murmurs that he just wants to go home, that he just wants to forget it all.
He remembers riding across the range with his father, remembers his clean, working smell, the way the sunlight falls over the grass. He remembers his mother, who he has for so long blamed for breaking the family and for ruining his life, remembers her smile and her gently keen insight, the sound of her voice when she sang in the mornings, high and clear and somehow both fragile and strong. And he wonders why this was never enough, why he wanted more, why he was so angry that he didn’t get it.
Please, he breathes, looking up at the ceiling. Please, let me take it all back. Let me try again.
There is no answer.
And then, there is something else: the sensation of movement within him. A long, wet cough rips out of him, and when he pulls hand from his mouth, it is spattered with tiny flecks of blood, and with something darker.
That is when he knows that one of the things is inside him too, knows it absolutely. One has been inside Topher from the start, he guesses, slowly gestating, slowly taking control. Perhaps there has been one in all of them, or perhaps only a select few. Perhaps it was the cause of the sickness that ran through the compound, this strange infection, or perhaps the medications they took were disguised seeds or eggs.
Or perhaps, John thinks wildly, it was nothing of the sort. Perhaps their hatred, their rage, manifested within them physically as living monstrosities, eating away at them from the inside until they were more real than the people that had brought them into the world.
And as he thinks this, he feels the nascent being within him, feels its mind touch his own like a maggot’s probing mouthparts. An alien thought is expressed directly into his consciousness, that they are only the vanguard, opening the door for the others to follow. And what comes through next will be so much worse, that John should be glad to cede control, to sleep while the new John wakes.
Reaching for the utility knife at his belt, John wonders if this urge that has seized him is his own, or also comes from the thing inside of him. And, thinking about it, he realizes he doesn’t care, that it has to come out.
He plunges the knife in deep, screams as the hot red blood pours from him and runs over the cold cement floor.
Far away, a rancher and his ex-wife, reconciled, hold each other and quietly pray that someday their son will return to them, for even the briefest of visits. And they pray that the country will heal, that those who hunger for violence and ruin will soon be thwarted. They do not hear the insectile humming that infuses the night air, like a funeral dirge, like the rumble of an opening volcanic fissure. They do not know, not yet, that the time to stop what is coming passed long ago.
(Mournful, then doom-laden music)
[Darker Pastures Theme - Outro]
NARRATOR
Story, narration, editing, and musical arrangement by Lars Mollevand. If you enjoyed today’s story, please rate, review, and share. Thank you for listening. We’ll meet again… in darker pastures.
[Darker Pastures Theme - Outro - Continues]