Crash Site, Johan Törnlund (Source)
Whatever you can say about a bartender, you can’t say he hasn’t seen his fair share o’things.
And fifteen years running this place have given me quite the experience and a bit of the creeps, may I say.
But nothing prepares you to see a young kid broken.
Broken by learning some things about life too soon.
It was a hot, dry afternoon at Jesse’s, near the old and proud Mackintosh ranch. I usually lose the count of shots I serve during a day like that. Sweaty, dirty labourers come and go, asking for any kind of refreshment they can get just to keep through a day like that. Younglings who couldn’t last a week beneath the hellish sun of the farms intertwine themselves with old, experienced cowboys that are full of attitude and out of shit. And I gladly serve them both, no questions asked, beyond the usual “What can I get you, Ray?” or “Surely’s a hell out there, Jim”.
That, of course, was until Ryan came, 3 o’clock.
Ryan’s a nice kid, don’t get me wrong. He’s just 22, he’s just a helper down the barn. He usually ends his shift sooner than everyone, so he can sip a shot o’whisky or two or, maybe, court some of the girls who work in the brothel nearby. The matrons down there said he was quite the ladies’ man, talking his way out of every situation, getting his shot at the most beautiful girls that Mariah trained. Stealing them from more mature, expert customers, even the more wealthy ones.
And oh, boy, he loves to lose himself in the outskirts of the farm, near the red hills of Mount Haven. There was always a way to know he was out there, exploring, watching the sky; he returned town happier than a kid in Christmas, and probably more covered in dirt and mud than one. With a big, shining smile on his face.
That afternoon, Ryan just broke through the tavern’s door, breathing heavily, pale like he’s seen the devil at point blank.
Not that anyone saw that but me. Between the heat, the crowd of guys playing poker and drinking themselves to the Promised Land and the pianola playing its tunes, it was fortunate that Ryan’s entrance was quieter than the usual ones he made.
He sat in front of the bar, slowly. His hands, crossed on the table, were trembling.
Ryan’s forehead was filled with drips of cold sweat. Enough to think he might have killed someone, maybe an envious customer from the brothel. Or that he lost one of his usual girls down the mountains.
After serving two other customers and cleaning the sweat out of my own face, I got closer to him.
“Up to your usual antics, Ryan?”, I said.
The kid didn’t answer a thing. It was as if I wasn’t there. He was staring blankly at nowhere.
I took a empty, square glass and gave it a good clean before filling it with fresh water, putting it right in front of him afterwards. The sound of the glass hitting the wood woke him up, if barely.
‘Oh!... hey, Mr. Miles... thanks”
Ryan took the glass of water between his fingers. It made a unsettling, twinkling sound as it trembled while he tried to take a sip from it.
“Is… everything OK, Ryan?”
Ryan feigned a smile.
“Yes, Mr. Miles. I’m just… It’s just it’s hot as hell out there, that’s… that’s it”
Of course I didn’t believe a word.
“Damn if it isn’t. So, what can I get you?”
Ryan almost drinked the whole glass of water, like if nothing happened. But his hands were still too shaky, too lost.
The glass fell through his fingers and hit the bar’s wood, barely avoiding the fall.
He pressed his hands deep against his head, elbows against the table. Soon, he hit his head with the palm of his left hand. Once. Twice.
“Stop… please, stop”
Ryan wasn’t OK at all.
“Hey, kid… What’s going on? Do you need a room?”
Ryan sighed. He tried to let it go, hiding his face between his hands as he slowly breathed to normal again.
“No… No, I’m not OK, Mr. Miles, it’s just… you won’t, you’ll not believe me”
Finally, he cracked. Not that I could just talk with him, full of customers as the tavern were. I served him another glass of cold water, which he promptly drank in a heartbeat.
“Kid, don’t worry. Tell me. I’ve seen my share of life, this side of the bar. It’s not that easy to amaze a bartender, you know.”
Ryan pressed his eyes with the palms of his hands. His knuckles were quite bruised, with slight hints of blood, too dark to know how long it was since the punching. But he definitively fought someone.
“Just give me some whisky. Or rum. I’ll tell you when everyone has left”.
Silently, I accepted Ryan’s conditions. The kid drank nearly three quarters of a bottle, all by himself, as if he was trying to wash his soul away with liquor. His paleness diminished, but he still usually trembled. For an hour or two, I tried to tend the other customers, distracting anyone who could know him from the ranch so nobody would bother him or stress him more than he already was.
Later that afternoon, I would understand that it wasn’t someone he fought or killed, but something.
When everyone at the tavern left, I closed the doors, leaving just enough windows open for the cold air of dusk to pass inside. Ryan was still sitting in the bar, his usual mettle hidden somewhere between gloomy and tired.
I sat in the bar, just leaving a barstool between us.
“Tell me, kid. What happened out there?”
I couldn’t tell how much time passed between he started to talk. But what he told was not exactly what I expected him to tell. Not at all.
“I was in the hills, Mr. Miles. As usual. I was walking, seeing stuff. The blades of dry grass, the wind blowing against the mountain’s slopes. The sun was really hot, but nothing out of the ordinary. At least until I saw a thin pillar of smoke rising from the distance.
I thought that, who knows, maybe the heat started a fire in a bush or something. But as I grew closer, the pillar started to become wider and blacker. Like the smoke from a chimney, and the air started to smell funny. It became clear that the smoke came from the other side of the slope I was currently in, so… I went down there.”
Ryan stayed quiet, as if expecting me to ask him anything regarding his tale.
“Go on.”
After having another sip of whisky from what was left on his glass, he kept talking.
“I crossed the slope, scaling the hill all the way up. I reached the top and… You will not believe me, Mr. Miles, why the hell am I telling you this?”
I sighed.
“You were the one who entered my tavern cold and pale as death, kid. I guess I deserve to know”
A slight reminder of a smile was drawn unto Ryan’s face. He seemed to relax, removing his hat from his head and putting it in the bar table as he asked for another shot.
As I got up and walked to the other side of the bar, he started weaving his tale again.
“I saw… I saw a circular thing, stuck in the face of the mountain. Badly beaten, like if it fell down from the sky, and the smoke was coming from it. The earth below the thing was on fire, lit on a strange, greenish fire. I could barely breathe through all the smoke, but I… I just wanted to see what was in that thing, you know?”
A brave kid, Ryan was.
I just gave him the bottle. Just a glass of booze wasn’t going to be enough for what was next.
“I walked through the sand and the rocks, barely avoiding the fire. When I was just getting near the thing… something happened. That round tin of can had a, I don’t know, a scuttle. And it was opened from the inside, falling to the ground like an iron slab”
He didn’t look like imagining the whole thing. It wasn’t a mirage caused by the heat. The certainty in his voice was slowly growing to be even more fearsome than the tale he was sharing with me.
“What I really don’t get, kid… is why didn’t you came seeking help right when you saw that”
Ryan looked me frantically, his eyes filled with despair.
“I froze on my tracks, Mr. Miles. I… I wanted to come back to town, to search someone, but I wasn’t able to. The darkness inside that hole was… I felt it was calling me.
I started walking again… Very slowly… And then… I can’t tell you this, sir”
I put my right hand on Ryan’s shoulder, seriously doubting who was more afraid of both of us now.
“Just spit it out, kid”
Ryan took a deep, long breath.
“A… a creature fell to the ground, through the whole, Mr. Miles. A horrible, disgusting thing which wasn’t from this world. Couldn’t have been. It was still breathing, trying to support itself on both of his… hands, claws, I don’t know how would I call those things. It had a scaly, dry skin, colored with shades of brown and teal. And it had an awful head, filled with things that seem like whiskers and spiked hair.
I fell to the ground, trying to shut my trap with my mouth so that it didn’t hear me. But it did.
It lifted its face to see me. It had eyes like those of a fly, but with eyelids. And teeth. God, its teeth were so ugly, skittering. Sharp as knives.”
I served myself a glass of whisky, with barely any breath left on my mouth. I only could hear the boy’s tale, nothing less, nothing more.
“That… monster’s back started to bend, like if it was a cat or a feral beast. Preparing itself to pounce and catch me. And he did. He ran, clumsily, but he ran. He jumped on me in a blink.
I don’t know what force took over me, Mr. Miles, but I took a stone from the ground and hurled it to his ugly, mean face. It hit it so hard than it fell meters away from me.
I kept being stuck on the ground, watching that beast’s breath fade away as I started regaining my own. I got back on my feet, taking another stone in my hand. Just to get closer to that thing”
Ryan took his hat from the table, clawing it with his fingers, like he was in pain.
“Go on.”
After an instant that felt like an hour, Ryan rounded up his tale.
“I… I saw it up close. It was dying. And I finished the deed. I mauled it to death with the stone, with my bare hands. And I felt… I felt relieved, Mr. Miles. For an instant. But…”
“But what, kid?”
“… The creature wasn’t dead. Not in that moment. Its claws gnawed into my face, holding my head as its own screeched and opened its eyes fully. Like if it was seeing its own God. And it certainly made me watch Him as well.
I saw the clear, starry night sky, Mr. Miles. I saw the emptiness of space.
I saw a thousand, round things like the one that fell from the sky. Like if they were a tribe. An armada.
And they’re coming, Mr. Miles. They’re coming.”
I was left speechless. Ryan just took his hat and left the tavern, without saying another word.
Suffice to say… Ryan never walked out to Mount Haven anymore afterwards.
And neither did I.
