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Tracks in the Snow....

Billie Louise Jones

    .....Where there should be no tracks. Ever.
    It was one of our rare East Texas snows. More a sheet than a blanket, it covered Dallas, Mesquite, and the area below. My land, with its bunches of trees and hollows, would hold the snow in pockets for a while. The road was dirt, leading off a blacktop; so no snow machine would come by. It suited me to be inaccessible.
    And it was only because of the snow that I knew he was there.
    I was going out to the shed where I performed my experiments when I saw the tracks. He had trampled around in front of the door trying to get in. Adrenalin shot through me. It had been so many years since I’d had to think of discovery that I was in shock. Not that anyone could break in; the door had three locks. After the door, he had tried the windows, which were boarded over. I followed the tracks around the shed and saw where he had sheltered himself on the south side. His tracks led off toward the tall growth bordering the road. A tramp, a drifter who had somehow strayed so far off the beaten path; that was all. Relief then coursed through me, and I trembled.
    These strong physico-emotional reactions perturbed me. It was necessary for my success that I remain in complete control of myself on another plane than that of the common human feelings.
    I went into the shed and checked on the vats. The first experiment had completely dissolved in the solution and could be discarded. The flesh had fallen off the bones of the second. It would be a few weeks yet before that vat was free. The third experiment had gone into the vat only three nights ago and was still relatively intact. This had been a street person from South Dallas, a young black of tawdry beauty, willing to go anywhere on the promise of free crack cocaine. I perform my experiments only on subjects who will not be missed.
    The laboratory area was tidy. A fresh rubber sheet was already spread across the padded table. I took my saw, drill, scalpels, shackles, and other necessary equipment out of the pan where they soaked in disinfectant and put them away. Because the shed was never wired for electricity, I have a powerful medical lamp and a small generator which I use when I am conducting my experiments. At other times, there is enough light for my purposes from the slits between the boards.
    I went back to the house to organize my notes on the last experiment. The administration of crack cocaine to the subject created a variant response which should be investigated further.
    I feel as if I am on the edge of a breakthrough. I began my experiments years ago in a city known for medical research. However, I realized almost at once that in order to continue my experiments without detection, and thus bureaucratic interference, I would have to seek isolation. This remote, overgrown farm filled my needs. I never sought acquaintance with my neighbors, so I could come and go anonymously.
    Another light snow sifted down overnight. You who live in northern climates would hardly consider this a snowstorm, but it is enough to close up everything down here.
    When I went outside, I was aware of the tracks around the shed, now blurred by last night’s powdery snow. Then an anomaly caught my eye – a sharp track crushed down on top of the powdery snow. I looked more closely. There were clear tracks on top of blurred tracks. It appeared the same boots had made all the tracks.
    He had come back. Why?
    Yesterday, I had gone only to the shed. I needed to look over the entire farm to learn where he had been, what he had seen, whether he was here by chance or for a purpose.
    The holding pen was in a hollow. This was a rusty tin tool shed where the subjects were contained until they were ready for the experiment. Part of the original farm buildings, it had needed only a system of double locks and alarms to be perfect. The snow on the slope had slid overnight, possibly covering tracks. I scouted around, hoping he had gone only to the shed. That would indicate merely a need for shelter, not curiosity. The snowdrift lapped against the door, so I could not discover whether tracks had been left.
    I climbed the hillock. There was a growth of bushes and brambles at the top and some trees just thick enough to catch the snow on their branches. There, right where a man could look down directly at the door, his tracks churned the mud as if he had stood around there for some time. In the cold. He had to have a purpose.
    I saw the tracks leading from the holding pen to the old brick smokehouse. I walked in them quickly. The smoke house was probably the oldest structure on the farm and in perfect working order. I let myself in and fastened all the locks again even before I reached for the flashlight. The hooks where they had hung whole hams and sides of beef hung unused, of course. I flashed the light over the rack of shelves. The brains were all there. The latest one was still grayish, but all the others had smoked to a golden brown hue. I kept all the brains from my experiments in order to test my most recent findings against the earliest.
    Walking back to the house, I reflected that if someone were looking around the farm, I had better go armed at all times. Even drifters could be dangerous.
    He was in the kitchen drinking a cup of coffee from the pot on the stove.
    “I’m Jay. Hey,” he said.
    He put on a broad smile that did not go with his eyes or his manner or anything in the circumstance. Though I sensed danger, I distanced myself from any related emotion and maintained the control which is necessary to my life.
    “You are welcome to coffee,” I said. “And a meal. Then go.”
    “I ate already,” he said; and grinned.
    He seemed to be alluding to something he assumed I knew about.
    I recognized him. This was the blond, dull-looking bubba who hung around the general store on the farm to market road. He had taken to staring at me when I came in for provisions. This was the only reason I noticed him apart from the other loiterers.
    “I value my privacy,” I said pointedly.
    “I know why.”
    I let the silence hang in the air between us. Silence is intimidating; but I refused to be drawn, even so much as to say, What do you mean?
    “People notice things,” he said. “When someone like you lives so far out, people wonder why. People see your car on the road at odd hours. They figger there’s some kind of weird goings on out here.” He then spaced his words distinctly. “I figger you got a life in another dimension that coexists with the present reality dimension most people are in.”
    That this clod could have such a thought, more than the thought itself, astonished me.
    He read my mind. “People know more than you think.”
    “Who are you?” I asked hoarsely.
    His smile drifted all over his face. “I could tell you my name, but that’s not me. There’s a kind of shadow of me from my own other dimension on the news now.”
    My mind went dark. Then intuition streaked aross it. The bodies of teenage boys have been found all across Dallas and Tarrant Counties. The events occurred in different police departments, so it was some time before the police were able to connect certain occurrences according to the nature of the death and proclaim the presence of a serial killer. A new body was recently found in Pleasant Grove. The precise details of the death are being withheld from the public to prevent copycats. However, the police nickname for the killer did get on the news.
    “You’re Charlie Chopper.”
    So then we talked.
    Later I showed him around. It was in my mind that perhaps the loneliness of my life was over, that here was someone who could understand my experiments, possibly even help with my work.
    He looked into the vats.
    “Why not save something to eat later?” he asked.
    A cannibal. I was disappointed. The intellectual nature of my work could not be fully grasped by, let alone shared with, a creature so gross.
    In the holding pen, he examined the bed, the wall shackles, the box, all the other furnishings so very carefully that he ought to be able to duplicate them from memory.
    He looked into every corner of the smokehouse. When I saw him break off a piece of a brain and put it in his mouth, I considered whether or not he should be allowed to leave the farm.
    Walking back to the shed, the scales in my mind tipped this way, then the other. I glanced at him with each shift in my thoughts. He grinned the loose grin that seemed to drift all over his face.
    I secured a tight cover on the vat that was ready for disposal. He helped me load it onto a wooden sledge. We dragged it by ropes to the outhouse. One wall was falling in, it was covered by kudzu; but it was entirely suitable for my purposes.
    I wrestled the empty vat back onto the sledge. A sudden movement crossed the edge of my vision. I turned. He lunged at me with a jagged tree limb. I staggered back and reached for the gun in my coat pocket.
    “I unloaded it in the house,” he said. And laughed. His face, even his grin, had become rigid.
    I pull the trigger repeatedly. I come up empty every time.
    I throw down the gun and run. He is behind me. The tree limb clubs my back.
    We are at the top of a hollow. I lose my balance and fall. I roll down the slope in the snow until I come up against a tree. I struggle to my feet. Pain flashes up from my knee. I go down again.
    “Why....why are you doing this? I am a scientist. I must know.”
    “There can’t be two alphas in one territory.”
    He is half-sliding, half-walking down the slope. He holds the tree limb over his head. His eyes turn to black slits. His face is no longer a dull bubba but a raging fiend.
    How can this be happening to me?

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