The Arrival, Part 1
DAILY HAMPSHIRE GAZETTE - Four men with ties to an occult group linked to human trafficking and ritual murder were apprehended by State Police yesterday in the Hockanum Meadows and charged with cruelty to animals and environmental crimes. The man were in possession of packets of dried herbs and powders that have been sent for testing, and of "The Libellus Vox Larva", a centuries-old book all copies of which were thought to have been destroyed by the 1930s. Also discovered in the clearing were the mutilated bodies of three of the four goats recently stolen from the Whipotte Farm. A fourth goat could not be located. The men will be arraigned at the Northampton courthouse on Friday.
Along a line of reeds bent in a downpour, from the meadows between the Connecticut River and the City of Northampton, stands unsteadily on thick, slightly cow-hocked hind legs a buck goat. Two horns jut from matted white fur and curve to point back at his prominent shoulder blades. A third, center horn spirals toward the sky in a thick ribbon. He is loosely clad in dark trousers, a white shirt soaked and translucent against the gray fur of his chest, a dark vest and topcoat. A necklace bearing an inscrutable emblem and ruby stone hangs at his chest. His eyes betray bemusement, triumph, and a touch of animal irrationality and volatility. His pointed beard is soaked into an inverted triangle, curled at the end. From the beard drips water and maybe a touch of blood, metallic and brown.
He takes a tentative step, now without trees to lean against for passage. Like a toddler finding his feet for the first time, he lurches headlong, his legs pushing into the earth as he propels himself along a raised path, then leaning back as he descends a grassy hillock down to the cul-de-sac that punctuates Eastern Avenue.
Down to even ground, as the rain lets up from a roar to a whisper, he walks more steadily, only a slight unevenness in his gait to give him away. He reaches the walk, and grins. Then he brays, a wavering tenor shout, his exposed teeth like a set of cracked wooden doors guarding a desecrated church.
He leans briefly on a silver Hyundai Accent, and then puts his upper lip to the antenna. His mouth opens as he takes in information. Then he moves East towards Williams Street.
A car speeds by in the rain, then brakes, shimmying, fish-tailing, coming to a rest with its front wheel up on the curb. One can imagine the driver adjusting his mirror. Then the car bumps down off the curb and speeds away south, tires squealing. The goat yells after it, eyes ablaze, cataracts reflecting the pulsing brake lights. He crosses Williams and continues past a long hedgerow, approaching a long, three-story row house with broad porches, each sharing two doors.
Onto the third porch from the second door limps a man, shabbily attired in a hooded sweatshirt and matted, worn corduroys, torn at the right knee, big white sneakers. The man is bearded, slender, with thick black eyebrows like caterpillars. He propels himself with a knotted, heavy walking stick with a gold handle approximating the body of a crouching panther with sharp teeth bared. The man laboriously descends the stoop, grimacing with each step.
He turns and faces the approaching goat, and he grins. "The agent arrives in the morning," he says. "At the Hotel Northampton."
The goat opens his mouth, his jaw nearly detaching, his mouth a gaping narrow cave. Inside is red and raw, the pink tongue, lined with fine tiny white hairs, vibrating as he cries out. The man's expression, previously one of perverse anticipation, falters. The goat raises one hoof, and the hoof bursts open in a pink cloud, sole and nail crumbling, raining down on the walk, revealing a pallid, prodigiously veined hand with gnarled nails encased in filth. The goat reaches out and grabs the walking stick by its handle, flipping it in the air and catching its tip.
He dashes it across the man's forehead, hard, shearing down a large flap of bloody flesh, baring an expanse of skull-bone. A waterfall of blood pours down the man's face and front as he pinwheels his arms and crumples to the ground, spitting out bloody shrieks. The goat tilts his head inquisitively. "Help me," the goat cries out in a cracked and choked voice. "Don't leave me!"
Then he swings the walking stick sideways with a powerful arm, tearing open the man's cheek and sending teeth flying. The man looks up through all the redness but can't see the cane raised for the final blow. He feels his head come apart. His brains spray out on the grass. The goat pulls the body up by the hood of the sweatshirt and thumps him up the porch and into the dark apartment. The brains blacken with the rain. The blood washes into the grass. The neighborhood is silent again as the rain abates and dusk approaches.
Hours pass, from the apartment comes the sound of flesh tearing, muted screams. Finally, in the glow of the moon, a man stands naked, blood soaked, in the hall, piled at his feet are curved walls of furred flesh, horns and hooves, scattered ribs and broken legs and burst brisket. The slender man steps out of the carrion and enters a small bathroom. A toilet, a tub and shower, a towel hung over the doorknob. Moments later, he stands under the cascading water, blood and fur and bits of flesh swirling in a pink pool at his feet.
He steps out, pulls the towel around him. He regards his face in the mirror. His eyes are odd, each of his pupils a horizontal line in a field of brown, no whites. But he is young, or younger than he was when the FCC had sent their secret department's agents, who had discovered and destroyed WXXT's antenna; and their Sorcerer, who had taken away his voice and his humanity on a dark March night and banished him to a pen with idiot goats who stared and occasionally rammed his flanks with their hard heads.
"I am Ben Stockton," he tells the mirror.
Along a line of reeds bent in a downpour, from the meadows between the Connecticut River and the City of Northampton, stands unsteadily on thick, slightly cow-hocked hind legs a buck goat. Two horns jut from matted white fur and curve to point back at his prominent shoulder blades. A third, center horn spirals toward the sky in a thick ribbon. He is loosely clad in dark trousers, a white shirt soaked and translucent against the gray fur of his chest, a dark vest and topcoat. A necklace bearing an inscrutable emblem and ruby stone hangs at his chest. His eyes betray bemusement, triumph, and a touch of animal irrationality and volatility. His pointed beard is soaked into an inverted triangle, curled at the end. From the beard drips water and maybe a touch of blood, metallic and brown.
He takes a tentative step, now without trees to lean against for passage. Like a toddler finding his feet for the first time, he lurches headlong, his legs pushing into the earth as he propels himself along a raised path, then leaning back as he descends a grassy hillock down to the cul-de-sac that punctuates Eastern Avenue.
Down to even ground, as the rain lets up from a roar to a whisper, he walks more steadily, only a slight unevenness in his gait to give him away. He reaches the walk, and grins. Then he brays, a wavering tenor shout, his exposed teeth like a set of cracked wooden doors guarding a desecrated church.
He leans briefly on a silver Hyundai Accent, and then puts his upper lip to the antenna. His mouth opens as he takes in information. Then he moves East towards Williams Street.
A car speeds by in the rain, then brakes, shimmying, fish-tailing, coming to a rest with its front wheel up on the curb. One can imagine the driver adjusting his mirror. Then the car bumps down off the curb and speeds away south, tires squealing. The goat yells after it, eyes ablaze, cataracts reflecting the pulsing brake lights. He crosses Williams and continues past a long hedgerow, approaching a long, three-story row house with broad porches, each sharing two doors.
Onto the third porch from the second door limps a man, shabbily attired in a hooded sweatshirt and matted, worn corduroys, torn at the right knee, big white sneakers. The man is bearded, slender, with thick black eyebrows like caterpillars. He propels himself with a knotted, heavy walking stick with a gold handle approximating the body of a crouching panther with sharp teeth bared. The man laboriously descends the stoop, grimacing with each step.
He turns and faces the approaching goat, and he grins. "The agent arrives in the morning," he says. "At the Hotel Northampton."
The goat opens his mouth, his jaw nearly detaching, his mouth a gaping narrow cave. Inside is red and raw, the pink tongue, lined with fine tiny white hairs, vibrating as he cries out. The man's expression, previously one of perverse anticipation, falters. The goat raises one hoof, and the hoof bursts open in a pink cloud, sole and nail crumbling, raining down on the walk, revealing a pallid, prodigiously veined hand with gnarled nails encased in filth. The goat reaches out and grabs the walking stick by its handle, flipping it in the air and catching its tip.
He dashes it across the man's forehead, hard, shearing down a large flap of bloody flesh, baring an expanse of skull-bone. A waterfall of blood pours down the man's face and front as he pinwheels his arms and crumples to the ground, spitting out bloody shrieks. The goat tilts his head inquisitively. "Help me," the goat cries out in a cracked and choked voice. "Don't leave me!"
Then he swings the walking stick sideways with a powerful arm, tearing open the man's cheek and sending teeth flying. The man looks up through all the redness but can't see the cane raised for the final blow. He feels his head come apart. His brains spray out on the grass. The goat pulls the body up by the hood of the sweatshirt and thumps him up the porch and into the dark apartment. The brains blacken with the rain. The blood washes into the grass. The neighborhood is silent again as the rain abates and dusk approaches.
Hours pass, from the apartment comes the sound of flesh tearing, muted screams. Finally, in the glow of the moon, a man stands naked, blood soaked, in the hall, piled at his feet are curved walls of furred flesh, horns and hooves, scattered ribs and broken legs and burst brisket. The slender man steps out of the carrion and enters a small bathroom. A toilet, a tub and shower, a towel hung over the doorknob. Moments later, he stands under the cascading water, blood and fur and bits of flesh swirling in a pink pool at his feet.
He steps out, pulls the towel around him. He regards his face in the mirror. His eyes are odd, each of his pupils a horizontal line in a field of brown, no whites. But he is young, or younger than he was when the FCC had sent their secret department's agents, who had discovered and destroyed WXXT's antenna; and their Sorcerer, who had taken away his voice and his humanity on a dark March night and banished him to a pen with idiot goats who stared and occasionally rammed his flanks with their hard heads.
"I am Ben Stockton," he tells the mirror.