Yuletide Fic! "If It had to Perish Twice" (Cooper/Albert pre-slash) Part I
Here's the first part of the first Yuletide fic I wrote for Amatara, the same lovely reader I got last year. This is, in some thematic ways, a companion piece to the first story I wrote her, 'And The Devil Makes Three', but is set post-series this time and get a bit more into the slashy aspects of this 'ship. Enjoy!
Title: If It had to Perish Twice
Author: Nemo the Everbeing
Rating: PG-13 for general horror, language and some UST
Summary: Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice. From what I’ve tasted of desire, I hold with those that favor fire. But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate to say that ice is also great, and would suffice.
Disclaimer: It all belongs to CBS, David Lynch and Mark Frost. This is my own poor imitation, and I make no money at it. Robert Frost owns my summary.
oOo oOo oOo oOo
“Diane, it is four twenty-two and we are currently driving along Wagonseller Road. If you remember, this is the exact road upon which Thomas Moorley so recently lost his life. He is the latest in a string of suspicious motor vehicle accidents that have occurred between two hills on the way into Prophetstown, Illinois these past two week. Having so many MVAs clustered in a single place over such a short span of time is highly suspicious, Diane, and with the most recent victim having traveled from out of state, the Bureau has been called in to assess the situation.
“The sun sets earlier and earlier this time of year, and is already near the horizon. The countryside around here is really something. The trees have lost their leaves, and there are small patches of frost along the road. Fields stretch out on either side of us as far as the eye can see. I can easily imagine that this is part of the country that feeds the world.
“I hope to reach Prophetstown before that sun sets, Diane, even if we have little chance of visiting the scene of the collision before we lose light. I would at least like to get a feel for the town, and I’ve found that becomes increasingly difficult with reduced visibility.
“I will contact you again when we’re checked into our hotel for the night, Diane. Say hello, Albert. Albert says hello, Diane. This is Special Agent Dale Cooper signing off.”
The Dictaphone clicked off, and half a dozen different forms of birdsong filtered into the car. Albert Rosenfield was sorely tempted to break his pacifist vows and shoot any bird stupid enough to voluntarily remain in Illinois for the winter. What did birds have to do in a Midwestern winter besides sitting on a wire with 33,000 volts running through it singing shrill little ditties, each competing with the next to be louder, higher in pitch, and more discordant? God, but he hated rural life. He sank deeper into the leather seat of their rental 1990 Cadillac Deville, cracked window and lit up. In the face of such omnipresent insipidness, even Cooper couldn’t blame Albert for needing nicotine.
Or maybe he could. “I can’t understand how an educated man such as yourself can inflict the contents of that cigarette on your lungs.”
“Cooper, I go chasing after men who are both armed and dangerous with nothing to defend myself but my principals and a can of Capsicum spray. The risk inherent in a cigarette seems paltry in comparison, don’t you think?”
A slight smile tugged at his lips, but for once Cooper didn’t pipe up. He just drove them further from civilization. They were making their way to Prophetstown, Illinois, after seven hours in the air and two hours’ layover in Detroit, an airport that left Albert with the feeling he needed a shower. When they finally touched down for the last time, they loaded their baggage and briefcases into a rental car with a rattle in its engine and a smell in the heater that made Cooper frown.
Then they drove away from the relative civilization afforded by Chicago, and into No-Man’s Land. Prophetstown had all the potential of being one of those burgs that made Albert remember why he avoided the Bible Belt. He didn’t know what offended the residents’ delicate sensibilities more: that he was a scientist or that he was a Jew. Cooper, with his crazy dreams and mind-body psychic mumbo-jumbo, would need to watch his ass if he didn’t want it burned at the stake.
Albert took another deep, satisfying drag and blew the smoke out into the chill of the waning day. Wagonseller Road flashed by, painted in a pattern of bare branches and a golden sunset. It was nice if you were into that sort of thing. Albert wasn’t; it reminded him how isolated the area was. Cooper probably loved it.
The country highway had a forty-five speed limit, which Cooper met and held. He had always been a stickler for adherence to stupid laws like that. Albert said, “At this rate, we won’t get to Prophetstown until the evening rush hour. If there is an evening rush hour. The last instance of gridlock around here was probably caused by a three-buggy pileup on the way to the county fair.”
“I find gridlock to be a very harmonious experience.”
Albert said what he always said when Cooper indulged his own particular brand of insanity: “Okay” with just enough incomprehension and sarcasm under that one word that he might get an explanation.
Cooper obliged. “All those cars are unified in a desire to go in a single direction.” His smile was brighter than the sun through the leaves. “A mutual will straining for motion.”
Albert rolled his eyes. “And the little old lady at the front of the line whose will is straining much more slowly.”
“Life is more enjoyable with an optimistic mindset.”
“And it’s less frustrating without one.”
Cooper returned his gaze to the landscape without comment or reaction, but the feeling that he was disappointed disconcerted Albert more than he liked to let on. Albert prided himself on never caring about the opinions of others, but Cooper . . . Cooper was different in ways Albert had little desire to confront.
The best way to accept Cooper’s perfect adherence to the speed limit-and to ignore Cooper’s disappointment-was to close his eyes, lean the seat back, and enjoy a few more cigarettes. Albert would have to go without as soon as he reached the morgue or whatever passed for it in Prophetstown. God only knew how long he would have to spend there. He’d talked to the funeral director, and the word ‘antediluvian’ had sprung to mind. Until Albert got to whatever little shop of horrors had been set up for his forensic benefit, Cooper would be drinking in the view and Albert would be getting his nicotine fix.
Complaining about the situation, the weather, and the road conditions were habitual reactions for Albert, who wore his cynicism as other men might wear expensive clothing: with pride and a sense of the untouchable. But truth be told, pre-case car rides weren’t so bad. Cooper was tolerable even in his strangest moods, and a bit of relaxation was nice after the five o’clock redeye from Philly. Albert let his eyes drift shut and tried not to trace the light patterns on the backs of his eyelids.
He raised the cigarette for another drag when Cooper slammed on the brakes.
The cigarette flew from Albert’s fingers, and he lurched forward against the locked seatbelt. For a sickening moment he thought they had hit a patch of black ice and they were skidding toward a tree. But then his vision cleared, and everything seemed to fade to slow, precision analysis: violent deceleration, but not so violent as to indicate a collision; country highway made wildlife the most likely cause of Cooper’s actions; pain in his chest indicated bruising, but nothing sharp enough to warrant the suspicion of a cracked or broken rib; his cigarette was well and truly lost to the dull blue mat on the floor.
The car stopped just short of the tree Albert had seen initially. All Albert’s irritation-momentarily supplanted by the need to gather data-flooded back in. He started swearing as soon as the air could get back into his battered lungs, and he ground the cigarette out on the carpeting before he started a fire and rounded out their disaster. The smell of the damn thing scorching the cheap carpet was like engine oil.
“Cooper, what the hell was-” Albert turned to give him a tongue-lashing that would still be smarting when they returned to Philadelphia, but his words trailed off when he saw Cooper’s stricken expression. Albert followed that stare through the windshield. There was nothing there, but that didn’t mean there hadn’t been. His voice wasn’t quite as harsh when he asked, “What the hell was that?”
“Albert,” Cooper said as one hand went to his seatbelt and his eyes didn’t leave the road. He killed the engine. “I think I just hit someone.”
Albert fished his medical bag out from the backseat footwell. He didn’t question what Cooper had said. Jokes of that sort were in poor taste, and Cooper didn’t have an ounce of poor taste in his body. Albert flung the door open and hauled himself out onto a shoulder peppered with gravel, dead weeds, and the barest hint of frost.
They both rounded the front of the car and looked down. Albert expected to see some poor schmuck flattened under the tires, but there was nothing, no one, and more importantly, no sign that anything had been hit. The grille was intact and undented, there was no blood, and there was no indication of violence on the road. Albert felt his temper rise and he retracted what he’d thought before about Cooper and poor taste.
“Really funny, Coop,” Albert said. “If you didn’t want me smoking, you could have just thrown my pack out the window. My sense of humor is healthier than most-a necessity given my particular profession-but I don’t appreciate sanctimonious practical jokers. You could have cracked a rib during that little stunt of yours.”
Cooper didn’t respond. He was gazing at the ground with a stare that could burn holes through concrete. Albert knew that stare. It usually came right before a flash of brilliance or a bout of insanity. Either was possible with Cooper, even more so since Twin Peaks. Many was the night that Albert woke to shouts from the adjoining room in their hotel, and rushed in to find Cooper in the grip of a nightmare terrible enough to make his nose bleed.
On those worst nights, when Cooper wouldn’t wake from the dream and his blood speckled his pillow, Albert could do nothing but hold him as still as possible, put pressure on the bleed, and wait for it to be over. He feared aneurism, stroke or any number of brain traumas, but each time Cooper would eventually settle down. The next morning, he would wake with little to no negative effects. Albert wouldn’t sleep well for the next week.
“I saw it,” Cooper said. He looked up, and those burning eyes made Albert want to back away. Albert held his ground, but had to cross his arms to keep from fidgeting. Cooper went on, “I was driving. A person was standing on the side of the road, almost in the ditch. I couldn’t tell the sex because the person was wrapped in some sort of shapeless brown garment. It jumped in front of the car at the last minute. I saw it.”
Albert frowned. If it had been anyone else, Albert would have said he needed to lay off the acid. But this was Cooper, he of the nutty dreams and nuttier waking visions. The only man on earth who was able to convince Albert that monsters were real, and psychic abilities weren’t just a sham to bilk the uneducated out of their money. Albert looked again. He crouched down and peered under the car. Cooper crouched down too, flashlight in hand, and illuminated the undercarriage.
“I don’t see anything,” Albert said, able to quell all but the slightest hint of irritation. This was Cooper, dammit. If he saw something, then real or not it had to be important.
“Do you think this was one of those . . .” Albert started to say, but didn’t know what to call what Cooper got. ‘Vision’ sounded trite and obvious, but it hadn’t been a dream, and ‘premonition’ seemed too vague.
In the end, Cooper saved Albert from having to choose the least hokey word. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve never had one while I was driving, nor have they ever been so realistic. My mind works in abstraction. It’s how I’ve always known what existed in the physical world and what didn’t.”
His posture was rigid. Albert could imagine how he felt. Getting visions was one thing, and it was a thing with which Cooper had learned to work in a way only he could. Not being able to discern dreams from reality was something very different. It was too easy a slide from there to the padded room, and Albert was again put in mind of those nights when Cooper teetered on the edge of breakdown.
“You’ll be fine,” Albert said, and tried to sound reassuring. He managed gruff, which would have to do.
Cooper straightened and played his flashlight across the scene. The tree they’d almost hit was a gnarled thing, skeletal. Its branches were tipped in frost and there was frost in its cracks. Albert wished he’d brought more than a wool trench coat if the night was going to get cold enough to encourage that sort of freezing.
Cooper frowned at the tree, and then trotted to the side of the car. He dragged his briefcase out of the seat well where it had slid after its introduction to rapid deceleration.
Albert joined him while Cooper hefted the Moorley case report and flipped through the pages. Albert continued to stand by. He refused to be the partner who asked Cooper about his strokes of genius every five minutes. Albert Rosenfield was no one’s Doctor Watson. This was a partnership, and he trusted Cooper to tell him when he came up with an answer. Albert could, in turn, integrate that answer into a larger understanding of the problem. Whatever their current problem was.
Cooper stopped flipping. Albert looked over his shoulder at a collection of crime scene photos showing the twisted wreckage of Thomas Moorley’s new Nissan Sentra. Even without seeing the body Albert had hypotheses about cause of death. A hinge fracture caused by forcible ejection from a motor vehicle was a common enough form of death by misadventure.
Albert scanned the rest of the photograph to see what had caught Cooper’s eye. Then he saw it: the gnarled, distinctive tree in the background.
“Don’t tell me this is where the MVA we’re looking into happened,” Albert said. “Because ghosts don’t cause collisions. Blind corners, leaping deer and rampant idiocy cause collisions. Falling asleep at the wheel causes collisions. Ghosts go bump in the night and aren’t real nineteen times out of twenty. And that one time, they aren’t even ghosts.”
“Albert,” Cooper said, serious and straight-backed. “I can’t lie to you. This is indeed where Thomas Moorley lost his life.” He pointed across the road, and Albert could see the damaged tree and a scrape of pale blue paint across the bark.
Albert crossed the highway and picked his way down into the ditch. He placed his feet carefully in the first hints of frost. It wouldn’t help anything if he went down in a mess of over-long limbs, and broke something useful like an ankle or a wrist or his self-confidence. He pulled sample bags and tweezers out of his medical kit. The locals might or might not have decided to send forensics in, but Albert didn’t trust any of them to know evidence from their ass cheeks. He took scrapings of the paint and pictures of the tire tracks, particularly where the tires had spun against the tree. The foliage was crushed a short distance away, and there was blood splashed at the foot of a dead Dutch elm a short distance off the road. The probability of a hinge fracture went up. There were worse ways to go than the quick death afforded by a severed brain stem.
He took more pictures, and then sampled the blood and the tissue still caught in the rough bark of the tree. “I’ll send these to St. Louis,” he said. “We should have turnaround in two days. One if I light a fire under someone’s ass.”
Cooper gave him a smile and then a hand out of the ditch. Albert brushed himself off, and noticed that some of the blood had still been wet enough to fleck his pants. “Moorley died two days ago, right?” he asked.
“Yes, he did.”
“Dammit,” Albert said. “Look around. There might be a second body, or someone injured.”
They both stepped into the ditch and then searched the area from the standard five-meter distance apart. Albert could see the collision playing out in the small details and from the memory of the photographs in the report. Shattered windshield, but no indication of a second passenger. Luggage only for one, but that wasn’t conclusive. The splash against the tree had to be Moorley’s impact. Given the direction in which Moorley had been ejected, any passenger would have overshot the tree and landed in the undergrowth. Albert made his way through untouched scrub that snagged his trouser legs and burs that clung to his socks. The ground was damp, but the recent freeze prevented his shoes from sinking in the mud.
The passenger, if there was one, might have been thrown as far as twenty feet from the vehicle. Albert kept moving, but the undergrowth continued to appear untouched. Even the spray of glass from the collision didn’t extend so far.
Albert reached the limit of what he estimated to be the range of an average body’s flight. He scanned the area. There was a small path to the north, but it was too narrow to have been made by people. Probably a deer run or something equally woodsy and distasteful. To the south was the road. Albert could see the occasional human castoff lying in the ditch: a few cans, a used condom, and one forlorn child’s shoe. Nothing out of place for a stretch of country highway. No indication of where that fresh blood might have come from.
Albert felt a touch on his arm and turned. Cooper stood next to him. “There was no passenger,” Cooper said.
“It’s unlikely,” Albert conceded, “but I’ve got no better explanation for the fresh blood. Is it some sort of hunting season? Aren’t there restrictions about the proximity to roadways?”
Cooper’s smile would have seemed out of place to anyone who didn’t work in death for a living. Albert had seen MEs play polka when picking up a stiff. “You don’t know?” Cooper asked.
“No, Coop, I don’t care. Contrary to popular belief at the Bureau, I don’t possess an encyclopedic knowledge of every single way someone might die. I have a preference for urban murder. Someone else can memorize hillbilly homicide.”
Cooper’s smile faded as he turned and took in the stretch of highway. “This is where Thomas Moorley died,” he repeated, and Albert knew he was talking about whatever he’d seen when he decided to reacquaint Albert with his seatbelt.
“Look,” Albert said, trying to be the voice of reason. “Let’s not jump to conclusions about the nature of our investigation until we know all the facts. You weren’t exactly sleeping like a baby on the red eye from Philly, and the sunlight through the trees can play tricks on a fatigued optic nerve. Give me the keys. Next time, it’s going to be me slopping something you like all over the passenger seat floor.” Albert held out his hand, and was not going to take ‘no’ for an answer. Cooper didn’t need Albert soft and understanding. He needed Albert sharp and brilliant and clear-headed. He handed over the keys without a fight and they switched places.
As Albert started the car once more, Cooper inspected the butt of Albert’s cigarette on the carpet. “I don’t think we’ll get our deposit back,” he said.
Albert drove on, keeping his eyes to the road and his attention sharp. If they were going to run into any further not-quite-normal unpleasantness, he wanted to see it. He would prefer to photograph it and collect bits of it for evidentiary purposes, but he’d learned to settle for seeing things that made him question the nature of reality. And to hear windy explanations of said things from Cooper over coffee.
They rolled into Prophetstown as the sun was getting low on the horizon. Cooper was staring at it, the dippy moron, with a smile on his face and his eyes squinted just a little as it turned the sky orange. There was a haze settling that diffused the color to gold. Albert ignored the sunset.
“Albert,” Cooper said, “have you noticed something odd about Prophetstown?” He never looked away from the sunset.
“It’s got a name that makes us secular science-types leery?”
“There’s no one out.” Albert looked around and felt a disconcerting jolt as he realized that Cooper was right. There was no one walking the sidewalks, no one standing outside the public buildings. There wasn’t even another car. They were the only people driving the streets, and for a crazy moment Albert wondered if they were the only people living in Prophetstown.
Albert considered the implications. “Even assuming there’s some community activity or a popular church service on a Friday night, there is never unilateral action within a community. There are always dissenters or abstainers. Hell, there are teenagers.”
“I agree, Albert,” Cooper said. “Something is not quite right in Prophetstown.” He glanced over at Albert and his face broke into a wide, cracked smile. “Let’s go to the sheriff’s office and find out what.”
“Whoop-de-do,” Albert muttered, and kept driving.
The sheriff’s office was next to the post office, which was next to a church, which was next to a bar. Albert hoped that Cooper understood the strain of not commenting on that. Albert killed the engine, and the silence of Prophetstown settled around them. Albert stepped out of the car and strained to hear some indication of life. There wasn’t even a breeze. There were no lights on in the windows of any building they could see. Puddles of ice had formed on the sidewalks, but there was no indication of salt or shoveling.
“I have the feeling something larger than we anticipated has happened here,” Cooper said.
“We did just discuss conclusions and jumping, right? I didn’t imagine that?”
Cooper turned to him, and then, in the middle of the deserted town with night approaching, he tapped Albert on the side of the nose. Then he walked over toward the sheriff’s station. Albert resolutely ignored any stupid giddy feeling he might have got, shook his head and followed.
The sheriff’s station was unlocked. The receptionist’s desk looked lived-in, with papers scattered or stacked like someone had made a half-assed attempt at organization and then got bored. Albert checked the opened mail and inter-office memoranda. They were all dated two days before. The receptionist could have gotten sick, but that didn’t explain the lack of more recent unopened mail.
Cooper slipped through the divider into the rest of the small station. Albert followed and saw desks laid out, but no one seated at them. He drew a breath to call out, but the silence was pervasive, and for a second his courage faltered. He couldn’t bring himself to break the stillness, so he stared investigating the scene. He’d be damned if he was too cowed by some eerie quiet to do his job.
The computers were all powered down, but one typewriter held what looked like a half-finished report. The nearest desk held a coffee cup with ‘#1 Dad’ printed on its side.
Albert saw that innocuous mug and felt like an idiot for being scared of an empty station. “Nice,” he called out. “What is this, hide-and-seek? I’m not buying it. You called us in, so let’s get to work.”
There was no response.
Cooper approached the desk with the coffee. He looked into the cup. “There’s a thin film on the surface of this coffee.” He dipped a finger in. “It’s ice. The heating must be off.”
“It’s not too cold right now,” Albert said. He went over to the coffee pot still sitting in the percolator. There were brown frost crystals all over the glass. The coffee didn’t swirl when he jostled the pot. “This is frozen too.”
Albert looked for any evidence more helpful than frozen coffee. The computer was off on the desk closest to the percolator, but a folder was open next to the keyboard. “The most recent notes here are dated two days ago, three p.m.”
Cooper took the folder and read the report. “A standard traffic stop. Nothing overtly strange about the report itself.”
“Cooper, there’s nothing ‘overtly strange’ about anything here. This is all archetypical office supplies and personal effects, right down to the ‘#1 Dad’ mug. This is the most ordinary sheriff’s office I’ve ever seen, except for the fact that there are no ordinary people here to fill out their ordinary reports and drink ordinary coffee out of their ordinary mugs. And that makes this ‘very ordinary’ situation potentially extraordinary.” Albert crossed his arms across his chest. “What’s going on here, Cooper? Some sort of mandatory town meeting? Everyone is just that into Jesus? Because if this is a prank, it’s a bit elaborate for the sorts of brain trusts bred in these backwater burgs.”
Cooper was already moving away. He walked until he stood in the center of the room. Then he started turning slowly, taking in a three hundred sixty degree view of the scene. Albert remained where he was. It was moments like this when, although he would never admit to such weakness, he willed Cooper to pull the answers from out of nowhere.
Cooper ended up staring at the ceiling, his head thrown back under a dark neon lamp. It was then that Albert realized that all the lights were off. There was a pale light in the room, but none of the lights were on. He tried to calculate the angle of the setting sun on the windows, hoping to explain the discrepancy.
When Cooper spoke, he addressed the ceiling. “We were called in because of a series of motor vehicle accidents along Wagonseller Road. Those cases may or may not be connected to the apparition I saw on the road. Now we find an empty sheriff’s station, apparently abandoned in the middle of the workday. The coffee has ice in it.”
Albert looked over the room with a professional eye. “Not abandoned; this room shows none of the classic signs of intentional abandonment. No removal of important documentation. No hurry to take personal effects. No mess of any kind.”
Cooper looked down slowly, until he was focused on the door to Sheriff McGee’s private office. “An entire station’s worth of people have gone missing,” he said.
“It’s probable,” Albert said, not yet willing to concede that this wasn’t some sort of elaborate joke at their expense. He’d seen how far some of the local nincompoops would go just to get a rise out of Federal Agents.
Cooper finally acknowledged that he wasn’t the only one standing around in an abandoned sheriff’s station. “How are these things connected, Albert?”
“You’re assuming they are.”
“Two such strange events happening simultaneously yet without any connection strains credulity, doesn’t it?”
“I think we passed ‘strains credulity’ about an hour ago, Coop. About when you started seeing ghosts.”
“Technically it’s a spirit of unknown origins. A person wrapped in brown rags. At least I assume it was a person. It could have been entirely rags.”
“Great. It’s a carwash Cousin It. At least we won’t be alone.” Albert turned to the door. “Come on, Coop. Let’s check the funeral home. If we’re lucky, someone will be there with answers. If not, I’ll see what information I can manage to squeeze out of Moorley.”
Cooper nodded, but he was drifting toward the Sheriff McGee’s office. “Or we can stop and see one more empty room before we go,” Albert muttered, but followed. If the past two years had taught him anything aside from the proper care of a guy with uncontrollable nightmares on the constant verge of a mental collapse, it was to trust Cooper’s instincts.
Cooper opened the door and they heard static. A radio was switched on, but no station came through. The sheriff’s desk was the first space Albert had seen that showed signs of disarray. He could see rips in several reports and interoffice memoranda, and as he drew closer he could see gouge marks in the wood of the desktop. He laid his own hand over them. Evenly spaced. Four gouges not quite as wide as his finger-span. Someone with small hands had ripped into this desk. He pulled his tweezers from his inside jacket pocket and then produced an evidence bag. From the end of one truncated gouge he pulled a single white and red splinter of keratin. Cooper joined him.
“It’s a fragment of fingernail. Proportion suggests a woman, and I’d nominate Sheriff McGee.” Albert followed the gouges to the leather blotter, torn by a jagged fingernail. The scratched lines on the blotter almost formed a pattern. Albert leaned in, and then leaned back in an attempt to bring the scrawl into focus.
“Someone left us a message,” Cooper said.
“No, someone left a message, period. I may think highly of my abilities, but I’m not so assured of my own importance that I believe someone who’s never met me would leave me clues to the mystery.”
Cooper positioned his head about two feet away from the blotter, right where a woman of average height would be if she was sitting behind the desk. His voice was hushed and tight when he read aloud, “Don’t listen when you hear the call.”
And as though responding to Cooper’s voice, the radio static cleared to one continuous, ringing note with undertones and overtones, like a bell in that split-second of being rung.
Part II
Part III
Title: If It had to Perish Twice
Author: Nemo the Everbeing
Rating: PG-13 for general horror, language and some UST
Summary: Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice. From what I’ve tasted of desire, I hold with those that favor fire. But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate to say that ice is also great, and would suffice.
Disclaimer: It all belongs to CBS, David Lynch and Mark Frost. This is my own poor imitation, and I make no money at it. Robert Frost owns my summary.
oOo oOo oOo oOo
“Diane, it is four twenty-two and we are currently driving along Wagonseller Road. If you remember, this is the exact road upon which Thomas Moorley so recently lost his life. He is the latest in a string of suspicious motor vehicle accidents that have occurred between two hills on the way into Prophetstown, Illinois these past two week. Having so many MVAs clustered in a single place over such a short span of time is highly suspicious, Diane, and with the most recent victim having traveled from out of state, the Bureau has been called in to assess the situation.
“The sun sets earlier and earlier this time of year, and is already near the horizon. The countryside around here is really something. The trees have lost their leaves, and there are small patches of frost along the road. Fields stretch out on either side of us as far as the eye can see. I can easily imagine that this is part of the country that feeds the world.
“I hope to reach Prophetstown before that sun sets, Diane, even if we have little chance of visiting the scene of the collision before we lose light. I would at least like to get a feel for the town, and I’ve found that becomes increasingly difficult with reduced visibility.
“I will contact you again when we’re checked into our hotel for the night, Diane. Say hello, Albert. Albert says hello, Diane. This is Special Agent Dale Cooper signing off.”
The Dictaphone clicked off, and half a dozen different forms of birdsong filtered into the car. Albert Rosenfield was sorely tempted to break his pacifist vows and shoot any bird stupid enough to voluntarily remain in Illinois for the winter. What did birds have to do in a Midwestern winter besides sitting on a wire with 33,000 volts running through it singing shrill little ditties, each competing with the next to be louder, higher in pitch, and more discordant? God, but he hated rural life. He sank deeper into the leather seat of their rental 1990 Cadillac Deville, cracked window and lit up. In the face of such omnipresent insipidness, even Cooper couldn’t blame Albert for needing nicotine.
Or maybe he could. “I can’t understand how an educated man such as yourself can inflict the contents of that cigarette on your lungs.”
“Cooper, I go chasing after men who are both armed and dangerous with nothing to defend myself but my principals and a can of Capsicum spray. The risk inherent in a cigarette seems paltry in comparison, don’t you think?”
A slight smile tugged at his lips, but for once Cooper didn’t pipe up. He just drove them further from civilization. They were making their way to Prophetstown, Illinois, after seven hours in the air and two hours’ layover in Detroit, an airport that left Albert with the feeling he needed a shower. When they finally touched down for the last time, they loaded their baggage and briefcases into a rental car with a rattle in its engine and a smell in the heater that made Cooper frown.
Then they drove away from the relative civilization afforded by Chicago, and into No-Man’s Land. Prophetstown had all the potential of being one of those burgs that made Albert remember why he avoided the Bible Belt. He didn’t know what offended the residents’ delicate sensibilities more: that he was a scientist or that he was a Jew. Cooper, with his crazy dreams and mind-body psychic mumbo-jumbo, would need to watch his ass if he didn’t want it burned at the stake.
Albert took another deep, satisfying drag and blew the smoke out into the chill of the waning day. Wagonseller Road flashed by, painted in a pattern of bare branches and a golden sunset. It was nice if you were into that sort of thing. Albert wasn’t; it reminded him how isolated the area was. Cooper probably loved it.
The country highway had a forty-five speed limit, which Cooper met and held. He had always been a stickler for adherence to stupid laws like that. Albert said, “At this rate, we won’t get to Prophetstown until the evening rush hour. If there is an evening rush hour. The last instance of gridlock around here was probably caused by a three-buggy pileup on the way to the county fair.”
“I find gridlock to be a very harmonious experience.”
Albert said what he always said when Cooper indulged his own particular brand of insanity: “Okay” with just enough incomprehension and sarcasm under that one word that he might get an explanation.
Cooper obliged. “All those cars are unified in a desire to go in a single direction.” His smile was brighter than the sun through the leaves. “A mutual will straining for motion.”
Albert rolled his eyes. “And the little old lady at the front of the line whose will is straining much more slowly.”
“Life is more enjoyable with an optimistic mindset.”
“And it’s less frustrating without one.”
Cooper returned his gaze to the landscape without comment or reaction, but the feeling that he was disappointed disconcerted Albert more than he liked to let on. Albert prided himself on never caring about the opinions of others, but Cooper . . . Cooper was different in ways Albert had little desire to confront.
The best way to accept Cooper’s perfect adherence to the speed limit-and to ignore Cooper’s disappointment-was to close his eyes, lean the seat back, and enjoy a few more cigarettes. Albert would have to go without as soon as he reached the morgue or whatever passed for it in Prophetstown. God only knew how long he would have to spend there. He’d talked to the funeral director, and the word ‘antediluvian’ had sprung to mind. Until Albert got to whatever little shop of horrors had been set up for his forensic benefit, Cooper would be drinking in the view and Albert would be getting his nicotine fix.
Complaining about the situation, the weather, and the road conditions were habitual reactions for Albert, who wore his cynicism as other men might wear expensive clothing: with pride and a sense of the untouchable. But truth be told, pre-case car rides weren’t so bad. Cooper was tolerable even in his strangest moods, and a bit of relaxation was nice after the five o’clock redeye from Philly. Albert let his eyes drift shut and tried not to trace the light patterns on the backs of his eyelids.
He raised the cigarette for another drag when Cooper slammed on the brakes.
The cigarette flew from Albert’s fingers, and he lurched forward against the locked seatbelt. For a sickening moment he thought they had hit a patch of black ice and they were skidding toward a tree. But then his vision cleared, and everything seemed to fade to slow, precision analysis: violent deceleration, but not so violent as to indicate a collision; country highway made wildlife the most likely cause of Cooper’s actions; pain in his chest indicated bruising, but nothing sharp enough to warrant the suspicion of a cracked or broken rib; his cigarette was well and truly lost to the dull blue mat on the floor.
The car stopped just short of the tree Albert had seen initially. All Albert’s irritation-momentarily supplanted by the need to gather data-flooded back in. He started swearing as soon as the air could get back into his battered lungs, and he ground the cigarette out on the carpeting before he started a fire and rounded out their disaster. The smell of the damn thing scorching the cheap carpet was like engine oil.
“Cooper, what the hell was-” Albert turned to give him a tongue-lashing that would still be smarting when they returned to Philadelphia, but his words trailed off when he saw Cooper’s stricken expression. Albert followed that stare through the windshield. There was nothing there, but that didn’t mean there hadn’t been. His voice wasn’t quite as harsh when he asked, “What the hell was that?”
“Albert,” Cooper said as one hand went to his seatbelt and his eyes didn’t leave the road. He killed the engine. “I think I just hit someone.”
Albert fished his medical bag out from the backseat footwell. He didn’t question what Cooper had said. Jokes of that sort were in poor taste, and Cooper didn’t have an ounce of poor taste in his body. Albert flung the door open and hauled himself out onto a shoulder peppered with gravel, dead weeds, and the barest hint of frost.
They both rounded the front of the car and looked down. Albert expected to see some poor schmuck flattened under the tires, but there was nothing, no one, and more importantly, no sign that anything had been hit. The grille was intact and undented, there was no blood, and there was no indication of violence on the road. Albert felt his temper rise and he retracted what he’d thought before about Cooper and poor taste.
“Really funny, Coop,” Albert said. “If you didn’t want me smoking, you could have just thrown my pack out the window. My sense of humor is healthier than most-a necessity given my particular profession-but I don’t appreciate sanctimonious practical jokers. You could have cracked a rib during that little stunt of yours.”
Cooper didn’t respond. He was gazing at the ground with a stare that could burn holes through concrete. Albert knew that stare. It usually came right before a flash of brilliance or a bout of insanity. Either was possible with Cooper, even more so since Twin Peaks. Many was the night that Albert woke to shouts from the adjoining room in their hotel, and rushed in to find Cooper in the grip of a nightmare terrible enough to make his nose bleed.
On those worst nights, when Cooper wouldn’t wake from the dream and his blood speckled his pillow, Albert could do nothing but hold him as still as possible, put pressure on the bleed, and wait for it to be over. He feared aneurism, stroke or any number of brain traumas, but each time Cooper would eventually settle down. The next morning, he would wake with little to no negative effects. Albert wouldn’t sleep well for the next week.
“I saw it,” Cooper said. He looked up, and those burning eyes made Albert want to back away. Albert held his ground, but had to cross his arms to keep from fidgeting. Cooper went on, “I was driving. A person was standing on the side of the road, almost in the ditch. I couldn’t tell the sex because the person was wrapped in some sort of shapeless brown garment. It jumped in front of the car at the last minute. I saw it.”
Albert frowned. If it had been anyone else, Albert would have said he needed to lay off the acid. But this was Cooper, he of the nutty dreams and nuttier waking visions. The only man on earth who was able to convince Albert that monsters were real, and psychic abilities weren’t just a sham to bilk the uneducated out of their money. Albert looked again. He crouched down and peered under the car. Cooper crouched down too, flashlight in hand, and illuminated the undercarriage.
“I don’t see anything,” Albert said, able to quell all but the slightest hint of irritation. This was Cooper, dammit. If he saw something, then real or not it had to be important.
“Do you think this was one of those . . .” Albert started to say, but didn’t know what to call what Cooper got. ‘Vision’ sounded trite and obvious, but it hadn’t been a dream, and ‘premonition’ seemed too vague.
In the end, Cooper saved Albert from having to choose the least hokey word. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve never had one while I was driving, nor have they ever been so realistic. My mind works in abstraction. It’s how I’ve always known what existed in the physical world and what didn’t.”
His posture was rigid. Albert could imagine how he felt. Getting visions was one thing, and it was a thing with which Cooper had learned to work in a way only he could. Not being able to discern dreams from reality was something very different. It was too easy a slide from there to the padded room, and Albert was again put in mind of those nights when Cooper teetered on the edge of breakdown.
“You’ll be fine,” Albert said, and tried to sound reassuring. He managed gruff, which would have to do.
Cooper straightened and played his flashlight across the scene. The tree they’d almost hit was a gnarled thing, skeletal. Its branches were tipped in frost and there was frost in its cracks. Albert wished he’d brought more than a wool trench coat if the night was going to get cold enough to encourage that sort of freezing.
Cooper frowned at the tree, and then trotted to the side of the car. He dragged his briefcase out of the seat well where it had slid after its introduction to rapid deceleration.
Albert joined him while Cooper hefted the Moorley case report and flipped through the pages. Albert continued to stand by. He refused to be the partner who asked Cooper about his strokes of genius every five minutes. Albert Rosenfield was no one’s Doctor Watson. This was a partnership, and he trusted Cooper to tell him when he came up with an answer. Albert could, in turn, integrate that answer into a larger understanding of the problem. Whatever their current problem was.
Cooper stopped flipping. Albert looked over his shoulder at a collection of crime scene photos showing the twisted wreckage of Thomas Moorley’s new Nissan Sentra. Even without seeing the body Albert had hypotheses about cause of death. A hinge fracture caused by forcible ejection from a motor vehicle was a common enough form of death by misadventure.
Albert scanned the rest of the photograph to see what had caught Cooper’s eye. Then he saw it: the gnarled, distinctive tree in the background.
“Don’t tell me this is where the MVA we’re looking into happened,” Albert said. “Because ghosts don’t cause collisions. Blind corners, leaping deer and rampant idiocy cause collisions. Falling asleep at the wheel causes collisions. Ghosts go bump in the night and aren’t real nineteen times out of twenty. And that one time, they aren’t even ghosts.”
“Albert,” Cooper said, serious and straight-backed. “I can’t lie to you. This is indeed where Thomas Moorley lost his life.” He pointed across the road, and Albert could see the damaged tree and a scrape of pale blue paint across the bark.
Albert crossed the highway and picked his way down into the ditch. He placed his feet carefully in the first hints of frost. It wouldn’t help anything if he went down in a mess of over-long limbs, and broke something useful like an ankle or a wrist or his self-confidence. He pulled sample bags and tweezers out of his medical kit. The locals might or might not have decided to send forensics in, but Albert didn’t trust any of them to know evidence from their ass cheeks. He took scrapings of the paint and pictures of the tire tracks, particularly where the tires had spun against the tree. The foliage was crushed a short distance away, and there was blood splashed at the foot of a dead Dutch elm a short distance off the road. The probability of a hinge fracture went up. There were worse ways to go than the quick death afforded by a severed brain stem.
He took more pictures, and then sampled the blood and the tissue still caught in the rough bark of the tree. “I’ll send these to St. Louis,” he said. “We should have turnaround in two days. One if I light a fire under someone’s ass.”
Cooper gave him a smile and then a hand out of the ditch. Albert brushed himself off, and noticed that some of the blood had still been wet enough to fleck his pants. “Moorley died two days ago, right?” he asked.
“Yes, he did.”
“Dammit,” Albert said. “Look around. There might be a second body, or someone injured.”
They both stepped into the ditch and then searched the area from the standard five-meter distance apart. Albert could see the collision playing out in the small details and from the memory of the photographs in the report. Shattered windshield, but no indication of a second passenger. Luggage only for one, but that wasn’t conclusive. The splash against the tree had to be Moorley’s impact. Given the direction in which Moorley had been ejected, any passenger would have overshot the tree and landed in the undergrowth. Albert made his way through untouched scrub that snagged his trouser legs and burs that clung to his socks. The ground was damp, but the recent freeze prevented his shoes from sinking in the mud.
The passenger, if there was one, might have been thrown as far as twenty feet from the vehicle. Albert kept moving, but the undergrowth continued to appear untouched. Even the spray of glass from the collision didn’t extend so far.
Albert reached the limit of what he estimated to be the range of an average body’s flight. He scanned the area. There was a small path to the north, but it was too narrow to have been made by people. Probably a deer run or something equally woodsy and distasteful. To the south was the road. Albert could see the occasional human castoff lying in the ditch: a few cans, a used condom, and one forlorn child’s shoe. Nothing out of place for a stretch of country highway. No indication of where that fresh blood might have come from.
Albert felt a touch on his arm and turned. Cooper stood next to him. “There was no passenger,” Cooper said.
“It’s unlikely,” Albert conceded, “but I’ve got no better explanation for the fresh blood. Is it some sort of hunting season? Aren’t there restrictions about the proximity to roadways?”
Cooper’s smile would have seemed out of place to anyone who didn’t work in death for a living. Albert had seen MEs play polka when picking up a stiff. “You don’t know?” Cooper asked.
“No, Coop, I don’t care. Contrary to popular belief at the Bureau, I don’t possess an encyclopedic knowledge of every single way someone might die. I have a preference for urban murder. Someone else can memorize hillbilly homicide.”
Cooper’s smile faded as he turned and took in the stretch of highway. “This is where Thomas Moorley died,” he repeated, and Albert knew he was talking about whatever he’d seen when he decided to reacquaint Albert with his seatbelt.
“Look,” Albert said, trying to be the voice of reason. “Let’s not jump to conclusions about the nature of our investigation until we know all the facts. You weren’t exactly sleeping like a baby on the red eye from Philly, and the sunlight through the trees can play tricks on a fatigued optic nerve. Give me the keys. Next time, it’s going to be me slopping something you like all over the passenger seat floor.” Albert held out his hand, and was not going to take ‘no’ for an answer. Cooper didn’t need Albert soft and understanding. He needed Albert sharp and brilliant and clear-headed. He handed over the keys without a fight and they switched places.
As Albert started the car once more, Cooper inspected the butt of Albert’s cigarette on the carpet. “I don’t think we’ll get our deposit back,” he said.
Albert drove on, keeping his eyes to the road and his attention sharp. If they were going to run into any further not-quite-normal unpleasantness, he wanted to see it. He would prefer to photograph it and collect bits of it for evidentiary purposes, but he’d learned to settle for seeing things that made him question the nature of reality. And to hear windy explanations of said things from Cooper over coffee.
They rolled into Prophetstown as the sun was getting low on the horizon. Cooper was staring at it, the dippy moron, with a smile on his face and his eyes squinted just a little as it turned the sky orange. There was a haze settling that diffused the color to gold. Albert ignored the sunset.
“Albert,” Cooper said, “have you noticed something odd about Prophetstown?” He never looked away from the sunset.
“It’s got a name that makes us secular science-types leery?”
“There’s no one out.” Albert looked around and felt a disconcerting jolt as he realized that Cooper was right. There was no one walking the sidewalks, no one standing outside the public buildings. There wasn’t even another car. They were the only people driving the streets, and for a crazy moment Albert wondered if they were the only people living in Prophetstown.
Albert considered the implications. “Even assuming there’s some community activity or a popular church service on a Friday night, there is never unilateral action within a community. There are always dissenters or abstainers. Hell, there are teenagers.”
“I agree, Albert,” Cooper said. “Something is not quite right in Prophetstown.” He glanced over at Albert and his face broke into a wide, cracked smile. “Let’s go to the sheriff’s office and find out what.”
“Whoop-de-do,” Albert muttered, and kept driving.
The sheriff’s office was next to the post office, which was next to a church, which was next to a bar. Albert hoped that Cooper understood the strain of not commenting on that. Albert killed the engine, and the silence of Prophetstown settled around them. Albert stepped out of the car and strained to hear some indication of life. There wasn’t even a breeze. There were no lights on in the windows of any building they could see. Puddles of ice had formed on the sidewalks, but there was no indication of salt or shoveling.
“I have the feeling something larger than we anticipated has happened here,” Cooper said.
“We did just discuss conclusions and jumping, right? I didn’t imagine that?”
Cooper turned to him, and then, in the middle of the deserted town with night approaching, he tapped Albert on the side of the nose. Then he walked over toward the sheriff’s station. Albert resolutely ignored any stupid giddy feeling he might have got, shook his head and followed.
The sheriff’s station was unlocked. The receptionist’s desk looked lived-in, with papers scattered or stacked like someone had made a half-assed attempt at organization and then got bored. Albert checked the opened mail and inter-office memoranda. They were all dated two days before. The receptionist could have gotten sick, but that didn’t explain the lack of more recent unopened mail.
Cooper slipped through the divider into the rest of the small station. Albert followed and saw desks laid out, but no one seated at them. He drew a breath to call out, but the silence was pervasive, and for a second his courage faltered. He couldn’t bring himself to break the stillness, so he stared investigating the scene. He’d be damned if he was too cowed by some eerie quiet to do his job.
The computers were all powered down, but one typewriter held what looked like a half-finished report. The nearest desk held a coffee cup with ‘#1 Dad’ printed on its side.
Albert saw that innocuous mug and felt like an idiot for being scared of an empty station. “Nice,” he called out. “What is this, hide-and-seek? I’m not buying it. You called us in, so let’s get to work.”
There was no response.
Cooper approached the desk with the coffee. He looked into the cup. “There’s a thin film on the surface of this coffee.” He dipped a finger in. “It’s ice. The heating must be off.”
“It’s not too cold right now,” Albert said. He went over to the coffee pot still sitting in the percolator. There were brown frost crystals all over the glass. The coffee didn’t swirl when he jostled the pot. “This is frozen too.”
Albert looked for any evidence more helpful than frozen coffee. The computer was off on the desk closest to the percolator, but a folder was open next to the keyboard. “The most recent notes here are dated two days ago, three p.m.”
Cooper took the folder and read the report. “A standard traffic stop. Nothing overtly strange about the report itself.”
“Cooper, there’s nothing ‘overtly strange’ about anything here. This is all archetypical office supplies and personal effects, right down to the ‘#1 Dad’ mug. This is the most ordinary sheriff’s office I’ve ever seen, except for the fact that there are no ordinary people here to fill out their ordinary reports and drink ordinary coffee out of their ordinary mugs. And that makes this ‘very ordinary’ situation potentially extraordinary.” Albert crossed his arms across his chest. “What’s going on here, Cooper? Some sort of mandatory town meeting? Everyone is just that into Jesus? Because if this is a prank, it’s a bit elaborate for the sorts of brain trusts bred in these backwater burgs.”
Cooper was already moving away. He walked until he stood in the center of the room. Then he started turning slowly, taking in a three hundred sixty degree view of the scene. Albert remained where he was. It was moments like this when, although he would never admit to such weakness, he willed Cooper to pull the answers from out of nowhere.
Cooper ended up staring at the ceiling, his head thrown back under a dark neon lamp. It was then that Albert realized that all the lights were off. There was a pale light in the room, but none of the lights were on. He tried to calculate the angle of the setting sun on the windows, hoping to explain the discrepancy.
When Cooper spoke, he addressed the ceiling. “We were called in because of a series of motor vehicle accidents along Wagonseller Road. Those cases may or may not be connected to the apparition I saw on the road. Now we find an empty sheriff’s station, apparently abandoned in the middle of the workday. The coffee has ice in it.”
Albert looked over the room with a professional eye. “Not abandoned; this room shows none of the classic signs of intentional abandonment. No removal of important documentation. No hurry to take personal effects. No mess of any kind.”
Cooper looked down slowly, until he was focused on the door to Sheriff McGee’s private office. “An entire station’s worth of people have gone missing,” he said.
“It’s probable,” Albert said, not yet willing to concede that this wasn’t some sort of elaborate joke at their expense. He’d seen how far some of the local nincompoops would go just to get a rise out of Federal Agents.
Cooper finally acknowledged that he wasn’t the only one standing around in an abandoned sheriff’s station. “How are these things connected, Albert?”
“You’re assuming they are.”
“Two such strange events happening simultaneously yet without any connection strains credulity, doesn’t it?”
“I think we passed ‘strains credulity’ about an hour ago, Coop. About when you started seeing ghosts.”
“Technically it’s a spirit of unknown origins. A person wrapped in brown rags. At least I assume it was a person. It could have been entirely rags.”
“Great. It’s a carwash Cousin It. At least we won’t be alone.” Albert turned to the door. “Come on, Coop. Let’s check the funeral home. If we’re lucky, someone will be there with answers. If not, I’ll see what information I can manage to squeeze out of Moorley.”
Cooper nodded, but he was drifting toward the Sheriff McGee’s office. “Or we can stop and see one more empty room before we go,” Albert muttered, but followed. If the past two years had taught him anything aside from the proper care of a guy with uncontrollable nightmares on the constant verge of a mental collapse, it was to trust Cooper’s instincts.
Cooper opened the door and they heard static. A radio was switched on, but no station came through. The sheriff’s desk was the first space Albert had seen that showed signs of disarray. He could see rips in several reports and interoffice memoranda, and as he drew closer he could see gouge marks in the wood of the desktop. He laid his own hand over them. Evenly spaced. Four gouges not quite as wide as his finger-span. Someone with small hands had ripped into this desk. He pulled his tweezers from his inside jacket pocket and then produced an evidence bag. From the end of one truncated gouge he pulled a single white and red splinter of keratin. Cooper joined him.
“It’s a fragment of fingernail. Proportion suggests a woman, and I’d nominate Sheriff McGee.” Albert followed the gouges to the leather blotter, torn by a jagged fingernail. The scratched lines on the blotter almost formed a pattern. Albert leaned in, and then leaned back in an attempt to bring the scrawl into focus.
“Someone left us a message,” Cooper said.
“No, someone left a message, period. I may think highly of my abilities, but I’m not so assured of my own importance that I believe someone who’s never met me would leave me clues to the mystery.”
Cooper positioned his head about two feet away from the blotter, right where a woman of average height would be if she was sitting behind the desk. His voice was hushed and tight when he read aloud, “Don’t listen when you hear the call.”
And as though responding to Cooper’s voice, the radio static cleared to one continuous, ringing note with undertones and overtones, like a bell in that split-second of being rung.
Part II
Part III