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Ken is halfway up the fault when he finds the altar. It’s about twenty feet off the path, down a shallow slope and nestled in the gap next to a hollowed-out log. It’s barely noticeable at first, just another patch of gray and brown in the miserable paint-by-numbers of the forest’s thick underbrush.
The thing is, Ken has always hated hiking. Before moving to Kamigoe, the closest thing he’d gotten to a hike was the uphill walk back home from middle school— the first middle school, that is, before they moved. If you’d told him even a few years ago that he’d be spending his Saturday hiking 8 miles up the southeast slope of Kamigoe Peak, he’d have… well, he’d’ve believed you, honestly. Ken’s always been a sucker for a good lead.
Not that this lead is especially good either; the idea to watch for UFOs from the ranger watchtower at the top of the mountain was mostly spurred on by Ken realizing that first, there was a ranger watchtower, and second, that Mr. Shrimp had the keys to it.
Even if the trip is a total bust, it won’t be totally wasted time; he’ll at least get to write a blog post about the experience. Maybe he’ll even fluff it up a little— say he saw some flashing lights, heard some weird noises, stuff like that. He does believe in UFOs, he really does, it’s just… well, everyone in the community stretches the truth sometimes. They’re only human. He’s only human, and his readership numbers have been in the trash.
So it is that, as he continues his doomed march through the forest, bemoaning his sore feet and cold hands and sweaty back, Ken’s eye catches on the altar. He does a double take, retraces his steps and squints down the gully. Sure enough, there’s something there— a little assemblage of stones and twigs and cut flowers that is too precise in its arrangement to be anything but fully intentional.
He scrambles down the slope, sets down his backpack and pulls out the little waterproof notebook he uses for field notes. Inspects the arrangement. Up close, it’s now abundantly clear that what he’s seeing is in fact an altar. It’s certainly ceremonial, with all the signs of ritualistic intention that he recognizes from his anthropology textbooks. The entire thing is maybe a meter across, a crudely-made spiral of stones interspersed with the teeth of small mammals— squirrels and the like, as well as sharp canines that could only come from a carnivore. In the center, five deer hooves are stacked to create an interlocking infinity sign.
Ken dutifully sketches the altar in his notebook, but its not until he leans in to snap a photograph that he realizes the hooves still have skin attached to them, flies buzzing around the dried flesh that curls back from the exposed ankle bone underneath. Unsettled, he hurries to take a few more photos before packing up his things again and returning to the hike.
It’s near dark by the time he finally crests the fault ridge and sees the watchtower. It’s small, made of the same dark wood as the surrounding forest, and lofted twenty feet up to overlook the surrounding wilderness. The fault itself cuts across the ridge like a scar, rock shifted and cracked and raised, bare of anything beyond the hardiest vegetation.
Ken flicks on his lantern; the coil is blindingly bright but at least he can see the ground in front of him now. The trail he’d followed to get here was already overgrown, and here it dissolves into the landscape. Even with the watchtower looming overhead, he is struck by a sudden feeling of foreboding. Why did he hike up here? What is he hoping to accomplish, really? It’s pathetic — he’s pathetic, for thinking he’ll ever be able to be who he wants. What he wants.
But—
That’s why he’s here, right?
One post— that’s all it takes.
Holding the lantern forward, he steps carefully forward.
The interior is made up of a single room; it’s barebones, with ranger equipment stacked around the perimeter and huge windows on all four walls. Beyond the single chair in the corner, there’s nothing to indicate that the place is supposed to be inhabited— no plumbing, and certainly no electricity.
Ken sets up his video camera at the south-facing window and pulls the chair by the window. When the sky is dark and the moon is high and bright, he turns on the camera and flicks off his lantern. Beyond the green flicker on the camera, the silence is absolute. The darkness, predatory.
And Ken waits.
The camera blinks.
The darkness yawns.
The chair is unpadded and his butt is starting to hurt. He shifts to one side. The other. Eventually, he pulls out his phone and clicks it on, squinting as his eyes adjust to the bright light before pulling up the browser and selecting the first shortcut, the login page for his blog.
The browser thinks.
He checks reception - one bar. Watches the little bar at the bottom of the page, stuck as it tries to load. Waits. Refreshes the browser. Waits. Closes the browser, opens it again. Selects the login page. Waits.
Finally, a result:
No service.
He clicks off his phone and sets it face down on his lap. The window is cold and the chair is hard, and outside, the darkness waits. No UAPs will come into view tonight; he feels that now with some certainty. It’s just… not right. The conditions, the time, the energy. He’s not believing hard enough. The world has a way of knowing. It watches him, and everyone else, and if he does it right he gets to see things, and record them, and write about them. He becomes special.
That’s why no one reads his blog, after all. He isn’t special. They know. He knows. The world knows.
Ken clicks off the camera and, as the darkness swallows him, paws for the lantern and switches it on. The coil glows, too bright, but it’s still better.
He leans back and closes his eyes.
—
Ken wakens to the smell of smoke. He sits up straight in the chair, sees the fire flickering at his feet, the choking smoke. The lantern— it’s on its side, glass cracked, coil melted as white flame licks out like oil.
He scrambles to his feet, chair clattering behind him, scanning the room for a fire extinguisher-- but the fire is spreading fast, too fast, and suddenly there’s smoke in his lungs and he’s choking. The fire reaches the wall and a stack of ranger maps in the corner bursts into flame, plastic laminate melting as shelves splitter into kindling. There’s no time to pack up his camera, his tripod— to do more than stuff his phone in his pocket and shoulder his unzipped backpack and pull open the door, scramble down the ladder as smoke billows behind him. When he’s a good twenty feet from the building, he finally turns to look— the watchtower glows like a beacon, undulating in orange and ash before the windows blow out and fire leaps and the structure is engulfed in flame.
Numb, he pulls out his phone and swipes to the camera, watches through the screen as the watchtower burns. He takes a step back, and another, and on the third step he trips over something and falls backward, phone falling from his hand as his arms flail. His ankle twists to the side with a crack as he lands hard on his hip.
Pain lances through his leg and he cries out, pulling himself upright. His left foot is twisted at an unnatural angle, surrounded by twigs and stones, bits of bone and clumps of flowers. An altar— like the one he found on the hike up. When did it get here? There was nothing here before, he’s sure of it— but now, under the flickering light of the burning tower, he realizes that he’s surrounded by them— they line the fault, crisscrossing across its exposed flesh like sutures.
Nausea swells and he releases the contents of his stomach, watches as it runs down the rock— acid and bile and flecks of dark skin from the dried fruit that served as his dinner. His phone has fallen down the slope and, tears in his eyes, he drags himself to his one good foot and hobbles down to retrieve it. He waits for a minute to catch his breath, then turns and climbs back up. It’s slow going, but he can barely feel the pain anymore; it’s been replaced by a frantic adrenaline, a certain excitement he hasn’t felt in a long time.
Phone grasped tight, he flips the camera to face himself and presses record.
“This is Ken Takakura, reporting from the southeast face of Kamigoe fault. The time is 11:48 p.m. on August 14th and I’ve— I’ve found something.”
—
It’s mid-morning by the time Ken gets back to his apartment. Kinta is on the couch with his laptop; he looks up when Ken walks in, eyes going wide. “You okay, man?”
“Better than okay,” says Ken. He limps into his bedroom and shuts the door, then plugs in his phone and sits heavily on his bed. His head still throbs but his foot stopped hurting a few hours ago, when he was still trekking down the south face. After a few moments, he musters the courage to take off his hiking boot. The sock underneath is stained dark red and, when he pulls it off too, the foot underneath appears rather mangled. It’s hard to recognize as his foot, like it belongs to someone else and is just attached to him for the time being.
His gorge rises but he pushes it back down, then picks up a pillowcase from the pile of clean laundry and drapes it gently over his foot so he doesn’t have to look at it anymore. He stands up carefully and holds his leg forward so as to keep the pillowcase in place, then hops to his desk to grab his laptop. When he’s hopping back to the bed, the pillowcase falls off. Irritated, he picks it up and drapes it over his foot again.
The words flow out easily as he begins to write, more easily than ever before. As he describes his night on the mountain, the fire, the altars, it’s as if he’s still there— as if the smoke still lingers in his lungs, the fault still stretches beyond the horizon, the little piles of rock and bone still glow in the light of the fire, still surround him as though he too is a part of some greater plan. There’s no leap of the imagination, no trawling of memory, just him and the page and his fingers racing across the keyboard, a conduit for what he saw.
Ken’s almost done with his post when Kinta cracks open the door. “Ken,” he says, “I think you need to go to the hospital.”
“No,” says Ken.
“At least drink some water.” Kinta hands him a cup and he chugs down the water; his throat is so dry that it makes him cough.
“Thanks,” says Ken. “Could you leave? I’m writing a blog post.”
“What’s wrong with your foot?”
“Nothing.”
Kinta stares at him, then lifts the pillowcase off of Ken’s foot. He shrieks and drops it. “I’m calling an ambulance,” he says.
“Don’t! Look, I just want to post this, then I’ll go to the hospital.”
“That’s fucked up, man.”
“You weren’t there,” says Ken. “I saw something, Kinta. I have to let the people know. I have to— I gotta show them, you know?”
“What people?” snaps Kinta. “You gotta stop with this blog thing, okay? It isn’t healthy for you.”
The words hit him like a punch to the gut. “I have to show them,” he repeats. Then he says, “I don’t have money for an ambulance.”
“Yes you do, you’re on the same health plan as me.”
“I’m really fine.”
“Your ankle bone is sticking out.”
“No it’s not. Look,” says Ken, “I’m about to post. Give me twenty minutes. Then I’ll go to the hospital.”
Kinta gives him a long look, then he says, “Fine. Twenty minutes.”
He shuts the door without Ken having to ask.
—
Ken never ends up going to the hospital. Instead, he puts his laptop in his backpack and ties the pillowcase around his foot with a rubber band so it won’t fall off. Then, when Kinta is in the bathroom, he hops as fast as he can to the front door and leaves the apartment.
The bus stop is only a block away but it takes him almost a half hour to get there. The bus driver gives him an odd look when he hops up the steps. “You okay, son?”
“Better than okay,” he says, grinning. He feels am immense sense of relief now that his blog is updated. It’s incredible, really. He’s different now— he’s seen things. He has proof.
Mr. Shrimp’s cafe is full of people when he gets there. It always is around this time, especially on the weekend. It’s no matter, though— all Ken needs is wifi. He can sit on the ground if he needs to.
(He does— on the far wall, next to the trashcan, where he lets his leg rest on the windowsill and pulls out his laptop.)
“You can’t sit there,” says a voice. He looks up to see Mr. Shrimp’s manager, Rokuro, holding a dust pan.
“Oh,” says Ken. “Okay.” He closes his laptop and pulls himself to his feet. Foot. “Sorry.”
“Your foot is dripping,” states Rokuro. Sure enough, the pillowcase is soaked through with blood and has left a smear on the floor. “Please leave. I don’t have time for a biohazard incident today.”
“You and me both!” Ken jokes. Then he frowns, because he suddenly feels quite odd. Something is wrong, but he’s not sure what. Why is he here? What is he—
“I have a date tonight,” Rokuro is explaining. “The Ambassador will be displeased if I am late. That is why I do not want a biohazard incident.”
“Okay,” says Ken. Then he says, “I don’t feel good.” It’s the truth.
“Would you like me to call an ambulance?”
Ken starts to say yes, then pauses. Will he need surgery? If he’s in surgery, he won’t be able to check his blog. What if someone comments? He’ll need to be there to respond. No one’s commented yet, but that’s fine— the post has only been up for a little while. It’ll take time for people to discover it. Read it. Process it. See what he saw. And when they see, he— he’ll need to be there. He has to be there. “No ambulance,” he says.
“Oh,” says Rokuro. “All right.”
But Ken knows it isn’t all right. He knows that Rokuro is gonna tell Mr. Shrimp, and Mr. Shrimp is gonna kick him out for bleeding all over the floor. Already other cafe-goers are staring at him, a small crowd having gathered. One woman is taking a video on her phone. Could it be that she read his blog post? That she’s a fan?
No— no, that’s dumb. That’s a dumb idea, she’s taking a video because he’s bleeding all over the floor and she doesn’t know, none of them know. They haven’t seen what he’s seen, they haven’t fallen into the darkness, into the orange glow, into the black smoke, the bones and rocks, the fault stretched and thick and oozing. And suddenly he’s there again and room is on fire around him, flames licking up the walls, skin melting from faces, skulls bleached white, bones collapsing, rock splitting. Each body, an assemblage.
An altar.
“I gotta pee,” Ken announces, then he puts his head down and stumbles forward— past the crowd, down the hall, and into the single-stalled bathroom, shutting the door behind him.
—
It’s been two hours since Ken updated his blog. No spikes in traffic yet, but Ken knows it’s only a matter of time; he refreshes his browser, again and again, waiting for the moment when the little number changes. It feels important, is the thing: for him to be there when it happens.
They’ve been working on the door for a while now, but Ken’s barricade is holding up. It isn’t much— just a cabinet filled with extra toilet paper and cleaning supplies that he managed to shove, with no small effort, up against the door. It took a while, but he was ready; he knew Mr. Shrimp had the master key to the bathroom, that the lock by itself wouldn’t suffice.
His foot has stopped dripping but is now swollen to twice its size; the swelling creeps up his calf, towards his knee, and though he cannot feel the foot at all the rest of his leg has started to throb with pain. He wonders, in passing, if it will have to be amputated. As much as the idea should scare him— he knows it should scare him— it just doesn’t seem particularly important right now. What is a leg, if not an assemblage of blood and bone and flesh? It being removed from his body does not make its form any less significant. Once it is gone, he can lay it across the fault line. Join it to the sutures. Yes— that’s what he’ll do.
An eye for an eye and a leg for an altar: the idea makes so much sense that he grins, lets out a little whoop of excitement. Perhaps it’s better if he does it now, gets a follow-up post up on his blog before the traffic really starts increasing. That first post was just the teaser, after all; this is when it really starts to get good.
But how to get back to the fault? The second he leaves the bathroom, he will surely be subdued. They’ll strap him down to a stretcher, put him in an ambulance and take him to the hospital. They’ll inject him with sedatives and slice open his leg and snap the bones into place— or maybe they’ll go the opposite route, hack at it with a bone saw until the whole thing is relegated to bio waste and tossed into the incinerator without a second thought. That beautiful assemblage of bones and flesh, skin and tendon, all gone to waste. Reduced to ashes.
Fire can do that. It can reduce anything.
So Ken must not let it happen. He must get to the fault line with his leg intact. He must lay it across the scar, a needlepoint hole in the greater assemblage, slotted just so that when the thread is pulled tight it does not snap. Surely no one will stand in his way, not if they know how important this is. It’s just, they haven’t realized yet. And he feels for them, he really does! Yesterday, he was just as blind.
The commotion outside has quieted. Now, someone is speaking to him through the door.
“Ken,” says Kinta, “please let us in.”
“No.”
“I saw your blog post,” says Kinta.
“You did? Did you like it?”
“We can discuss it if you let me in.”
It seems like a reasonable enough offer; Ken hops off the toilet and drags himself to the door. He positions his shoulder on the side of the cabinet and is about to shove when a thought occurs to him. “Did you actually read my blog post, Kinta?”
There’s a pause, then Kinta says, “I saw it, Ken.”
Ken frowns. “What was your favorite part?”
“Ken, you need to let us in.”
He hops back to the toilet and tries to sit down but his leg doesn’t want to bend; the swelling has now traveled up past his knee and is nearing the mid-thigh. Leaning forward, he slings one arm underneath the thigh so it’s wedged in his elbow, then slams his other hand down hard on the shin; the leg bends with a sharp crack. The pain makes him vomit a little in his mouth; he spits yellow bile to the side, watches it splatter across the linoleum like paint across a canvas. It, too, is an assemblage of sorts.
Maybe that’s the issue— he needs a more visual medium than a blog. A Bootube channel, maybe— yes, that feels right. The paranormal community hasn’t made the transition to video like other online groups have, but who’s to say they can’t? He could be a trend setter.
“Kinta,” he calls through the door, “do you know anything about video editing?”
“What?”
“Do you know anything about video editing?” he repeats, louder. “I’m thinking of starting a Bootube channel.”
There’s the sound of hushed voices, a rapid discussion, then Kinta says: “That’s a great idea, Ken. Why don’t you come out so we can talk about it?”
“Why are you lying to me?”
“I’m not.”
“You are,” says Ken. “I know you didn’t read my blog post.”
“There was nothing to read!” Kinta snaps. “Ken, there was nothing to— look, I’m worried about you, okay? You need help!”
“What I need,” Ken says, “is a roommate that’s actually gonna support me. Who believes in me.” He can hear his voice rising but it sounds a long way away, like he’s buried under layers of rock, wedged in the endless crack of the fault line. It stretches endlessly across the mountain face, past the horizon, up into the dome of the sky where it reaches an apex and plummets back down again. The ultimate reference point, against which all else is just a mote.
His leg, a needlepoint hole.
And oh— he’s already there, isn’t he?
His leg is now swollen round like a plum, the skin mottled with purple-ridged veins. He traces them, watching in awe as the surface pulses against his fingertips. Pride fills him— because this is his, an assemblage formed from his bones and flesh, his body, his being. All that is left now is to release it into the world. No— to birth it. There’s sadness in it, but more than anything there is joy.
Is this how mothers feel, after carrying their baby for so long within them? They, too, must alter their own assemblages. A pattern, multiplied. It’s a wonderful thing, but even wonderful things can hurt.
Heavy footsteps sound past the door and someone yells at him to back away. He digs his fingers deep into his leg, harder and harder until finally it pops; fluid spurts out like water from a pressurized hose and the puncture points strain until they, too, burst wide. It’s easy to find the bone, white as it is once he peels back the layers of muscle and fascia. When he scrapes it with his fingernail it gives easily, soft as chalk.
Yes— this will do well for a first video on his Bootube channel. He tries to open the camera on his phone but his hands are wet and the phone slips from his grasp just as he hits ‘record’; he fumbles for it but it’s too late, it’s already fallen into his leg pit. He watches as tendons wrap around the screen and pull it deeper, wedge it sideways underneath his femur so it’s completely out of sight.
What would happen if he reached in after it? He can’t say he isn’t curious.
There’s a loud bang and the cabinet shifts. Another bang and it stutters, wood splintering around the battering ram. Now hands are reaching through the hole— oh god, they’re here and there’s no time. The fault sings, orogenic vibrations that make his eyes swell in their sockets, his stomach expand within the cavity of his abdomen, acid sharp against calcite ribs. He plunges his forehead down into the leg pit just as the door bursts open and even though they reach for him, grab at his skin, he knows that they’re too late.
As the flesh closes in over his head, he sees the black reflection of his phone screen.
A red light.
Thank goodness— it’s still recording.
