MANY PEOPLE IN MUIRE County believed that, if you lived in Talinas long enough, you would inevitably go crazy. They said that, before the town was built, the local indigenous people used the land for ceremonies to communicate with the spirit world. No one was supposed to live there or else they would become part spirit.
“She needs to move out to Alamere” was something people said to suggest that a person was losing her mind, that she should skip town before the spirits fully engulfed her. It was not exactly clear how and why people lost their minds, but it was agreed to be a general hazard of living in the area, like rogue waves or earthquakes.
Berg felt the myth had some credibility. Many of the town’s residents seemed otherworldly. There was Leanne Korver, for example, the local Pilates teacher, who believed in a complex pantheon of gods and was rumored to have stabbed a man in Santa Fe. And there was Greens, the son of Fred Perry, who owned the local hardware store. He refused to wear anything that wasn’t bright green but other than that he was an entirely normal and sociable person. There were the Morrises, who believed they were Venutians and who had, at one time, convinced several other people in town that they were Venutians, too. And there was Woody, whom Berg had seen play guitar at the Tavern, but whom he met for the first time outside the supermarket.
It was Friday and Berg had stopped in to pick up some groceries for the weekend: a six-pack of beer, onions, bacon, some yogurt. He had a headache coming on, but it hadn’t gotten bad yet. After he exited the store, he paused by the entrance to wedge the groceries into his backpack. He had to take the beers out of their package and stuff them individually in the backpack to get everything to fit. As he was doing this, someone called to him. He turned to see Woody, who was standing next to a newspaper rack, holding a blue package of cookies. He was short man, with black eyes and a curved red nose, like a turkey vulture.
“You’re new around here,” he said to Berg. “You want a cookie?”
“Sure,” Berg said, swinging his backpack onto his shoulder.
“I’ve seen you at the Tavern before.”
“Yeah, I remember you,” Berg said.
“Woody Taglione,” he said, holding out the package of cookies to Berg. “You’ll see me around. I work all over town. Do a bit of everything. Ranching, construction, plumbing, diplomacy. By the way, you need a job? I know some guys that are trimming.”
“No, I’ve got a job,” Berg said, taking one of the cookies.
“Oh, okay. You come find me if you’re looking. I live just over the road with my girl. Didn’t grow up here, though. From Brooklyn originally. Greenpoint. Came out west in the ’60s. Then I lived on a beach in Kauai for a few years. It was nice. Made jewelry, did acid about five hundred times. Hey, you wanna see something cool?”
“I guess.”
“I’m not gonna show you unless you really want to see it.”
“I want to see it.”
“Like only if you really, really want to see it,” he said, squinting at Berg.
“I do. I really want to see it,” Berg said. And then he added: “Badly.”
“Okay,” Woody sighed. “If you insist.”
Berg followed Woody down Main Street, backpack full of groceries, headache still there, stalking him, biding its time. They walked along 12, past the gift stores and the diner, and past the hill that had a small cross on it and the sign that said CROSSONAHILL.NET. The sun was a couple hours from setting, the weather still warm, the crickets louder than the frogs. At the point where 12 crossed Sausal Creek, Woody turned off the road and scrambled down a gully toward the water.
“Don’t worry, I’m not going to murder you,” he said. “Woulda done it by now if I was gonna murder you.”
The creek down here was muddy and sluggish, thick with decaying leaves. On its banks were beer cans and candy wrappers and cigarette butts, a few tires and an orange cone. Woody brought Berg over to a manhole.
“I found this the other day when I was following a deer,” he said. “This is probably from when the town was farther north, before the fire in the ’50s.” He opened the manhole and began climbing down its ladder, disappearing into the darkness. “Now,” he called from below, his voice echoing slightly, “once you get to the fifth rung, you’re going to have to leap to the left to avoid falling down this hole that leads to… well, I don’t know where it leads to. Can’t see it. But my point is that you want to jump to the left to avoid it. You got it?”
“I don’t know…”
“Oh, it’s safe. It’s safe, man.”
Berg climbed down the ladder until his hands were on the fifth rung. Directly below him was pitch-blackness but to his left he could see the outline of Woody’s body. He jumped toward Woody and landed with one foot on Woody’s ankle.
“Motherfuck,” he said. “That’s my bad ankle, man.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You know how I hurt this ankle?”
“No.”
“Do you want to know?”
“I guess.”
“I’m not gonna tell you unless you really want to know.”
“I really want to know.”
“Pickup basketball game at the rec center. Ted Burlington went and made a crossover and I fell sideways.”
“That seems pretty common.”
“I didn’t say I’d hurt it in an uncommon way, did I?”
Woody pulled out a flashlight and trundled into the darkness. Berg had to hunch in order to avoid hitting his head on the ceiling but Woody was able to stand straight up. The air smelled like wet cement and garbage and rust. All around were sounds of dripping water, hollow and echoing. Berg could feel his headache getting worse, something about the air pressure or the smells down here. He took a bottle of ibuprofen from his bag and popped several pills, swallowed them without water.
After some time they arrived at a cavernous opening. Through the blackness Berg could make out the shape of several full-size, papier-mâché bodies. They were strung up by wire, hanging from the ceiling, slowly rotating in the air. Woody shined the flashlight on them one by one. Some of the bodies were grimacing and some were smiling. One appeared to be singing opera.
“You and me and whatever freak made these are the only people in the world who know about this,” Woody said.
“I need to get out of here,” Berg said.
“Wait, hang on a second,” Woody said, lighting a cigarette. “Ain’t we gonna drink those beers?”