Offerings

An embittered and lonely man, whose life lies in shambles and who has fallen fully under the sway of his worst impulses, stumbles upon a terrible secret—and the further into it he delves, the more it threatens to swallow him and all he knows.

***Content warning: This episode deals with themes of alcohol dependency, familial estrangement, and the abduction and exploitation of children. Listener discretion is strongly advised.***

Thank you for listening! If you have any feedback or inquiries regarding the show, please feel free to drop me a line at darkerpasturespodcast@gmail.com.

Transcript

(Mysterious music)

NARRATOR

Episode 13: Offerings.

(Mysterious music continues)

NARRATOR

The crisp black skies, flecked with keen stars beyond counting, stretch illimitably overhead, coy and mysterious. Some of the light that seeps down from those myriad points, which to the earthbound human eye seem little larger than the point of a pin, is perhaps older than humankind itself, from suns and galaxies that have long since died and which are so far distant that the rays of their images still travel through the great void to fall, ghostlike, upon our retinae. As our species acquired language, built cities, devised new ways to murder, to exploit both the world and each other, that light has tumbled through lifeless space, a vacuous message from worlds long past.

To the wonder and terror of this sprawling infinitude, of the thoughts born of its contemplation, Orin is wholly oblivious. Truly, he isn’t given much to thinking deeply at all—not anymore, in the wake of two catastrophic divorces, of his children’s total abrogation of all contact with him, and, the final straw, after being fired the week prior from the local garbage collection company for his drinking and the problems it supposedly caused at work.

It’s not fair, he tells himself, sitting on the pale green plastic lawn chair in front of his rundown trailer house and draining his twenty-first can of Bud Light that day. He tosses it into the rusted-out oil drum beside him to join its many vanquished brethren, and the sound of tinkling and shifting aluminum is a strange relief for Orin. Perhaps, if he were sober, he might reflect that it reminds him, however vaguely, of the half-heard murmur of distant, muffled voices, like the way Deke’s and Harley’s bright voices had drifted down from the rooms upstairs when they played, long ago, in the homely house he had shared with his first wife, Willa. He thinks of the wide eyes of his children at that tender age, and rubs at his temples, reaches down into the open case at his feet to pull out and deftly crack open yet another can. His eyes blur, and he cannot tell if it is the alcohol or some outpouring of shamefully unmanly feeling, so he grinds it away with the back of a hand and then guzzles greedily at the cheap, chilled, golden contents of the fresh can.

The wind gusts from over the open pastures to the west, biting through his tattered flannel jacket and grease-stained quilted work vest. It is far too cold to be sitting outside at this late hour, even with a small fire blazing in the pit before him, but Orin doesn’t care.

He tells himself that he has tried to do right all his years, by his wives, his children, his employers, but that nevertheless they have all abandoned him, thrown him aside like trash. Everyone has. Everyone has misused or slighted him somehow: the grifters in Washington and on Wall Street, the woke namby-pambies that have overrun the country and are rotting it from the inside out, all the illegal immigrants and criminals flooding in from every dark corner of the world, the liberal elitists from the coasts and the whining socialist scum from the cities. They’ve robbed honest working men like him, cheated them of all that is their rightful due.

He pushes away that small, doubtful voice at the back of his mind, the one that whispers to him that maybe, just maybe, the problem is not everyone else—that perhaps he is the problem, and his life is a ruinous expanse because he has lain waste to everything good in it through his own consistently bad choices, that maybe there is some thorough failing in him that he cannot, or will not, see.

Orin drowns the voice in a deluge of alcohol.

Finishing this can, he throws it into the fire, watches the fire sputter and blaze as it too hungrily consumes the foamy alcohol residue, watches the paint of the can deform and darken and the aluminum warp in the heat.

He laughs bitterly, and whispers curses into the night. Reaching down for another drink, he finds the thin cardboard case empty, and tosses it too into the flames in ill-tempered frustration. Rising unsteadily, he goes into the messy trailer house, opens the refrigerator which contains, aside from two full cases of beer, only one raw venison steak which he can’t remember thawing and three eggs that look rather lonely in the dozen-and-a-half carton.

He mutters a string of profanities as he pulls out another twenty-four pack, almost drops it, fumbles to get it open. Finally, he manages to prize forth a new can, his fingers suddenly seeming much more adequate to the task of cracking the tab and bringing the drink to his lips than to any prior.

He empties it, and then another, and then he can’t remember exactly what follows. His mind and his eyes are blissfully fogged when he realizes he is outside again, that the fire has burnt down almost to embers, that he is not in his chair but lying on the frozen earth beside it.

I could die out here, he thinks vaguely, could pass out and freeze to death—and how long would it take anyone to even notice? And another part of himself says that that’s fine, that nothing matters at all and there is no future, no past, only the drink and the sweet oblivion it promises, that all he needs to do to find the relief he so desperately craves is to just let go.

And Orin does, lets himself drift upon the capricious winds of his own befuddled consciousness. Overhead, the stars wheel slowly in the night sky as the Earth spins in its endless, mindless, cosmic dance.

(Short pause)

NARRATOR

When Orin comes to, he is lying facedown on the carpet floor of the trailer house, just a few feet from the front door, which is not wholly closed. Through the gap of about three inches, the chill wind moans and howls, and the gas furnace is blasting to maintain the thermostat setting.

With a groan, Orin rolls over and kicks at the door with a savage, stomping motion. It takes two attempts to get the door to shut properly. Feeling exhausted by even this minor effort, he crawls to the sagging, stained recliner that is the only furniture in the small living room, and uses it to pull himself up onto his feet.

His stomach roils with nausea and heartburn, and his head feels like it’s about to split open from internal pressure. Stumbling toward the refrigerator, he fishes out a can of beer and downs it, sighing with relief. A little while later, as the discomfort slowly begins to fade, he looks around for his phone, finds it lying on the tiny kitchen table next to a half-eaten hot dog from the day before—or perhaps two days ago, he can’t be sure.

Tapping the screen into life, he ignores the low battery warning and opens Facebook. He had only ever gotten onto social media to interact with his children, but even after they had deleted their profiles, he had kept coming back. It was how he kept in touch, as much as he did, with his relations and his old friends, and since he was fired last Friday, it’s been his only social interaction, discounting the terse exchanges with the gas station attendant during his beer runs into town.

Scrolling through his feed, he sees little of real interest, ignores the post from his crazy cousin Bethanne about recent UFO sightings in the area and tries to ignore the picture of his last ex-wife with a new guy. He thumbs his way down until the headline of a shared article draws his eye—LEFTISTS INDOCTRINATING AND STEALING OUR CHILDREN! Normally, he doesn’t read articles from social media, having little interest in either gossip or genuine news, but the thought of Harley’s and Deke’s estrangement, which had seemed to him to come so suddenly and without explanation, lingers in his mind. Darkly intrigued, he taps the link and begins to read, eyes slowly widening. With each word, his mind seems to grow sharper and more focused, until he feels more awake and aware than he has in weeks. It feels to him like the scriptural scales are slowly falling away from his eyes, that a world that had always seemed inexplicably chaotic and capriciously cruel is slowly rearranging into an even more sinister kind of order, that he is seeing for the first time at the age of fifty-seven that all of the injustice he has lived through can be traced back to a single malign force, which has insinuated itself into every aspect of society.

The battery icon begins to flash, altering him that shutdown is imminent, and with a growl of annoyance he fetches the charger and plugs in the phone, goes back to reading.

He finishes the article, goes back to his feed, follows more links and then begins to search out the new terms and phrases he has learned, delves further and further into this dark, awful web which has always ensnared him, but which he is only now seeing.

(Short pause)

NARRATOR

For the past three days, Orin has spent most of his conscious hours sitting at the cluttered table, sipping his light beer more measuredly now as he scrolls through page after page. He has even scrounged up an old college ruled notebook with a green cover, the paper slightly yellowed with age between the faded blue lines, to jot down notes and try to draw connections between the vast array of new information he is absorbing.

He even manages to eat properly at one point, frying up the eggs and steak, which apparently was not too old, only tasting slightly rancid and never making good on its threat to come back up.

But, even after cutting back a little, he does inevitably find himself reaching his last beer. Tearing himself away from his reading, he emerges from the house for the first time since the night he passed out, gets into his battered, rust-pitted ’97 Ford Ranger, and rolls down the icy gravel roads toward town. When he reaches the gas station and truck stop that sits upon the highway—his preferred stop since it doesn’t require him to venture beyond the town’s outer periphery—the sky is awash in pastel hues of yellow and pink and aquamarine, giving way to deeper blue, as the sun slips under the westward horizon.

As he parks in the gas station’s wide-open lot, he notices a van with out of county license plates sitting beside the gas pumps, but pays it no further mind. Inside, there is only the gas station attendant and what he takes to be a middle-aged couple, neither of whom he recognizes but who both look very much like locals. As he withdraws a couple of Bud Light cases from the cooler, the doorbell chimes, and a young girl of about six or seven walks in. Orin’s eyes narrow as he notices something off about her movements, almost as though she is sleepwalking or entranced—or drugged, he suddenly realizes. The girl, who has a much darker complexion than anyone else in the gas station and whom Orin assumes is Latina, stops and looks around, her eyes falling first on the sleepy, disinterested attendant and then on Orin himself. As their gazes meet, Orin recognizes at once the emotion in her features, underneath the addled fogginess: silent terror. And from a few aisles over, he sees the couple cease their quiet, easy conversation and suddenly stare at the girl, the man striding over and seizing her arm and speaking in clipped, low tones.

Orin edges closer, trying to overhear, but then the man is pulling the girl out of the gas station and back toward the van. The girl offers no resistance, but Orin thinks, though he cannot be certain in the gathering gloom, that he sees tears begin to stream silently down her cheeks.

Orin hurries over to the counter, tosses down a couple bills without waiting for the attendant to ring him up, overpaying. He ignores the attendant’s startled protests as he gathers up his beer and strides out to his pickup, his attention fixed on the van. A few moments later, the woman also emerges, carrying a case of bottled water and a bag full of what seem to be candy or maybe protein bars. After the van’s headlights come to life and the vehicle rolls out of the lot and onto the highway, Orin follows at what he thinks is a discrete distance, never letting the van get fully out of his line of sight—easy to do in this mostly flat, open landscape. They are driving westward, vaguely in the direction of both the Kansas and the Colorado border.

Orin’s mind races as he follows, simultaneously disgusted and thrilled by the possibility of having stumbled upon a conspiracy of the sort he has spent the last half a week researching. He wonders if he should call the police, but fears bringing any kind of official authority into the matter will alert the sinister powers-that-be and seal both the fate of the girl, and his own. So he only drives, keeping as close to the van’s tail as he dares and regretting that he has no more than a dozen rounds for the .30-06 Ruger American on the rack behind his head. He has only ever used the rifle for hunting deer and coyotes, the former for meat and the latter for pelts, but he reckons it’ll be enough to subdue the man and the woman, it if comes to that.

He wonders, with a little more concern, if it’ll be enough to confront whomever the man and the woman may be meeting down the road.

It comes as a surprise to him when, about forty minutes later and before they near the twin borders, the couple pull off onto a long side road. All this time, Orin has been subconsciously assuming that they are driving to Colorado, perhaps toward Denver or Boulder or Colorado Springs. He’s even toyed with the thought that they would turn north, toward Sturgis, before concluding that the motorcycle rally is just too far-off for that to make sense. That their destination would not only be in-state, but in the middle of the remote and thoroughly rural west of his own state, seems to him almost unthinkable.

He keeps thinking, It couldn’t happen here. Not here. Nothing like this happens here.

But when he sees the large white house on the hilltop, his mind reels at the implications. It is a new construction, and has been the talk of the area for months, which is the only reason Orin recognizes it. It was built by Jake Hickends, a magnate in both agribusiness and in state politics. After four non-consecutive terms in the state legislature and a very narrow loss in a gubernatorial bid, Hickends has withdrawn slightly from politics, but with his extensive connections and wealth, remains very much a regional kingmaker, and rumors have swirled that he may even be open to campaigning at the national level in future.

But having always presented himself as a champion of traditional family values, as a defender of children from the predations of those whom he describes as radicals and perverts, Hickends is decidedly not the sort of man that Orin expected to find at the end of this road.

Orin does not follow them down this road, not at once, but instead pulls off onto the grassy shoulder and kills the pickup engine, watching. The van continues down the long, long drive that leads only to the large pale house which seems almost skeletal under the rising snow moon.

As he sits, watching the van dwindle into the distance, and then all but disappear when it parks and the lights go dark, an itch seems to settle into his shoulders and the backs of his hands. Galled by inactivity, he restarts his truck and slowly follows, keeping his headlights off and driving as carefully as he can manage. Unable to resist the temptation, he rips open the top case and extracts a beer, opens it with one finger and takes a noisy pull. The itch in his hands, the flutter between his heart and his stomach, dissipates, and his mind settles once more on the hard black barrel of his rifle and its lethal certitude.

I am a gun, he thinks, trying to steel himself. I am a weapon in the hands of the Lord.

Orin is not and has never been devout, but the thought makes him feel grounded and strong, makes him feel eager for whatever confrontation may await him.

But before he is even halfway up the road, the van comes once more to life, begins to come back down the road toward him. Orin begins to feel a slight panic, not knowing how to respond, thinking only of the Ruger and knowing he is still too far from certain to use it. So instead he pulls off onto the side of the road, parks, and gets out, waving his arms at the van as it approaches. The van slows as it draws near, then finally stops, and the driver emerges, frowning. Lit by the backwash of the van headlights, Orin recognizes the man from the gas station, thinks he also sees the woman sitting in the front passenger seat, but can make out no other figures in the van.

Putting on what he hopes is a convincing smile, Orin concocts an explanation that he’s having some kind of mechanical trouble and that his phone is dead, that he is too nervous to drive all the way back to town and risk damaging the pickup irreparably, and that he was hoping to find a phone he might use at the house on the hill. He asks if the driver might let him borrow his cell phone, if it’s not too much trouble.

The man’s eyes are cold as he says that he doesn’t have service at the moment, and Orin wonders if the other man has also recognized him.

Feigning a sheepish smile, Orin says it serves him right for not keeping his phone properly charged. Then he asks, in what he hopes is a casual tone, what brings the couple out here at this time, if they have family that live nearby.

The man hesitates just long enough for Orin to think he won’t respond at all, before saying slowly that they were meeting a family friend, but that he doesn’t seem to be home now and that they can’t reach him, since their cell has no reception.

Orin commiserates, says that it seems like a very long drive to bring the whole family on only to meet disappointment at the end. To this the man responds that it’s just him and his wife, that they have never had any children.

(Threatening music)

NARRATOR

At these words, Orin’s gut lurches, and his mind flashes back to the rifle. He drops his tact, and says coldly that he was sure he saw a little girl with them earlier. The man starts in surprise, then his eyes narrow in aggression, and he says that Orin is mistaken, there have never been any children with them.

Orin observes, in a voice that seems thin and keen as a razor’s edge in the chill night breeze, that it is a little strange for a childless couple to need such an oversized vehicle, for them to take the gas-guzzling van on such a long trip, if it really is just the two of them.

The two men stare at each for a long moment, and a frigid gust tears at their clothes. The woman inside the van shifts, as though she is opening the glove compartment and reaching inside. Orin is about to go for his rifle when the man’s expression suddenly changes, and he laughs aloud, just believably enough to unsettle Orin further.

He says that this is all a very silly misunderstanding, that it’s cold out and that they should all be getting home. And without a further word, the man gets back into his van and drives away, leaving Orin to whatever fate might await him, had his lie about engine trouble been true. As Orin watches it turn back onto the highway, he reconsiders his own final words to the man, and realizes that the van could in fact have held many children other than the girl he saw.

And he does feel very, very cold then.

Reaching into his jeans pocket, he pulls out his phone, just short of fully charged, and dials a number he hasn’t used in a long time, which he desperately hopes he is remembering correctly.

(Short pause)

NARRATOR

When Ben Koenig meets him at the bar, Orin is struck by how his old’s friend voice, gravelly and ponderous, sounds just the same in person as over the phone. And he also notices how much the man has aged in the last decade, how he looks closer to eighty than sixty.

Early retirement from the sheriff’s department seems to have been about as kind to Ben as unemployment has been to him, Orin thinks, and also considers that Ben has one divorce more under his belt. But over the course of their conversation, Ben nurses only the one beer and seems less taut, less strained, than Orin remembers.

When Orin finally gets around to bringing up the reason for their first meeting in more than seven years, though, Ben’s demeanor undergoes a sudden and definite change. His heavy, aged face sheds in an instant its previous sleepy expression and becomes keen, alert. His soft, meandering speech becomes clipped and austerely professional in tone, his questions probing and coming from different angles than Orin expects.

And when they have finished talking, Orin having emptied four bottles while Ben’s one still sits unfinished, the former deputy says that, while he thinks that Orin’s intuition is spot-on, as of yet they have nothing actionable. Orin begins to protest, but Ben gently silences him in a voice more authoritative than Orin is used to hearing.

Ben says that, for now, they should continue to monitor the Hickends house and all incoming and outgoing traffic, as unobtrusively as possible. And if, indeed, they do find something actionable, they should take their concerns at once to an appropriate legal authority.

Once more, Orin begins to protest that there is no reason to believe the authorities are not already in the pocket of whatever organization is behind the taking and peddling of children. Ben’s brow furrows at this, and he says that he doesn’t believe in that sort of tinfoil-hat bullshit, that something criminal may very well be happening here and that it may also very well involve powerful and influential people, but that that is no excuse for blatant vigilantism.

Orin swallows his disagreement, reflecting that Ben has far more relevant knowledge and experience than he does, and that he needs his old friend’s cooperation. He slowly agrees that they will bring it to law enforcement, when they find something, hoping that he sounds earnest when he says it.

Ben nods, once, and then they begin to lay their plans.

(Short pause)

NARRATOR

It is surprising to Ben that a man with as much influence and means as Jake Hickends has so little security on his property. There are always a few people in or near the house, and he thinks from observing them that some are armed professionals, but there seem to be no real defenses established around the house’s perimeter, other than a few motion-triggered floodlights, three surveillance cameras, and a standard alarm system.

Ben is surprised by this, but also thankful. Perhaps it is complacency, or arrogance, but whatever it is, it is decidedly a blessing to the two men who have undertaken this investigation.

It is Orin who sets up the hunting blind, under the cover of darkness, hidden amongst the tall prairie grass and a sparse stand of blue spruces about a third of a mile from the house. The distance is too great for any sound to reliably carry, but well within range of their binoculars, and giving them a good vantage of both the house and the road.

The blind is too small for both men to comfortably occupy it at once, and it makes more sense anyway for them to take surveillance in shifts, communicating periodically via text message.

Ben drinks only coffee during this time, and is relieved that Orin too seems to lay off the drinking, at least while he takes his shift. Walking the mile to where they park their vehicles, in a sheltered hollow between two hills where an old homestead once stood, makes Ben feel healthier and stronger with each passing day, and less like the fattened and idle old man he has so long seen himself to be.

He tries not to think how, despite the things he said that night in the bar to Orin, almost everything they are doing lies outside the boundaries of law, qualifies as trespassing and invasion of privacy, possibly even stalking. Ben tries not to think what it says about him that he is so ready to overlook his own transgressions.

It’s two days after the blind went up and they began their vigil that the other van arrives. Orin is on watch when it happens, and he affirms clearly in his laconic texts that it is a different van than the one he first saw. Ben sits staring at his phone between messages, intensely craving the cigarettes that he gave up years ago and trying in vain to alleviate that craving with sips of strong coffee.

About fifteen minutes pass before Orin texts back that more than a half dozen children were in the van, that they were all taken into the house. Herded is the word he uses, and the image this conjures into Ben’s mind is so clear and so unpleasant that he shakes his head as though trying to physically dispel it. The van leaves without the reappearance of the children.

Orin asks how much more they can need, and Ben perceives his friend’s bitterness and impatience even through the emotionless text on his screen. Reluctantly, Ben replies that they still don’t know enough, not yet, and that they must keep watch for at least a few more days.

Orin types back a one-word acknowledgement, which Ben is not sure how to take.

Ben is on shift when the semi arrives, two days later, witnesses firsthand the dozens of children that are unloaded, and indeed herded, like livestock into the massive house. Even in what is essentially a prefabricated mansion, Ben has a hard time imagining where they can be housing so many children—at least humanely. But then, he reasons grimly, human traffickers aren’t really known for their humaneness.

The wind is in the right direction that day, and Ben puts to use the sound amplifier he picked up for birdwatching during retirement, tries to glean any snippets of conversation from the men around the place. In all the time since they began their surveillance, neither he nor Orin has caught any sight of Hickends, only the men presumably in his employ, and once, a woman they thought might be his wife or daughter, but really could have been anyone.

He listens for a long time, hearing nothing meaningful. But then, he overhears very clearly in a conversation between one of the men from the property and the truck driver the words he has been both hoping and dreading to hear: make the exchange tonight. The wind shifts direction then, and Ben is unable to catch anything else meaningful, but what he heard is enough to make his innards tingle.

Orin doesn’t respond to his texts, and Ben begins to fear that maybe the man has been drinking after all, is lying passed out in his wreck of a trailer house. He gets no response to his following messages either, and is grinding his teeth in frustration and worry when Orin’s head pops into the blind.

So, when we going in? he asks.

Ben tries to think of a response to dissuade his friend from rash action, but what comes out of his mouth is, Tonight.

(Short pause)

NARRATOR

Unlike the vans, the truck never departs, and both men have a guess as to why that might be. Their hunch is confirmed when, just after sunset, Ben watches the children being loaded back into the trailer, more than had initially been unloaded.

He sends the brief text he had already typed out then to Orin. The truck and two black SUVs roll out of the driveway and down the road, toward the highway.

A few moments later, Orin’s pickup pulls out from behind the spruce windbreak, headlights off, moving toward the road and then trailing the small convoy. And with that, Ben emerges from the blind and begins the race back to his old Jeep in its sheltered hiding place.

Orin follows them out onto the highway, dialing Ben’s number and turning on the speaker, feeding his friend directions as he drives. It is almost too much for Orin, who has never been good at dividing his attention, and he is worrying about how long this will continue when the truck and the SUVs turn off onto a narrow trail road, out into the wide, rolling pastureland. Orin stares in disbelief, knowing that the trail road can lead only out into dark, unpeopled country.

Still, he shrugs, it means fewer directions. He conveys the last to Ben, who he can hear huffing on the other end of the line, and follows the truck.

The terrain grows rougher as they go, the tall grass of the prairie hills broken only by an occasional sandy blowout or by lines of barbed wire fence. Riding over the rough pastures, the crude trail road, Orin wonders who this land belongs to, if Hickends has bought all of it for just this purpose.

The truck and SUVs disappear over a hill, and Orin races to regain sight of them. As he crests the rise, he finds himself looking down into a small valley, gouged into the earth long ago by the slow but inevitable power of water and wind.

Below, the vehicles have parked in a rough semicircle. Feeling exposed, Orin throws the truck into reverse and pulls away from the hilltop, parks it out of sight. Then he explains the situation to Ben, takes his rifle from the rack and loads it, slips out of the pickup and creeps back up the hill, keeping low to the ground.

Night has now fallen completely, but the bright moon and stars cast enough light for Orin to make his way without trouble, and the still blazing lights of the vehicles below allow him to see much of the movement by Hickends’s men. One of the men is now openly carrying a handgun, and three of the others have opened the back of the truck and are forcefully herding the children out into the cold prairie night, making them gather in a tight circle between the vehicles.

Watching, Orin curses, wondering where the buyers will come from, realizing that the only road is likely the one on which they all drove in. Nervous apprehension prickles coldly at the nape of his neck, but he shakes it away and peers through his rifle scope at one of the men. He looks like a college kid, in trendy jeans and a pale blue polo shirt, with a goatee that looks totally out of place on his boyish face. The man looks, Orin thinks painfully, younger than his son Deke.

That is when Orin hears the rumble of an approaching engine behind him, then the crunchy whisper of tires on sandy soil and parched grass. In a few moments, Ben’s voice drifts softly out of the darkness behind him, asking him if the men are still there.

Orin affirms that they are, continues to watch the spectacle unfolding below. Ben says that he is going to move about twenty feet to the left, to get a different vantage but still be within easy earshot. Offering a terse, muted acknowledgement, Orin listens as the other man’s cautious footfalls recede into the night.

All of the children have now been removed from the truck and stand, shivering, in a close bunch. Some of them are dressed in only pajamas—none of them are adequately dressed against the winter. Something red seems to blossom behind his eyelids, and he thinks of what horrors these children must have seen, what others are still planned for them.

And, as he struggles to keep his finger off the trigger, to refrain from shooting these men who treat children like cattle, a great shadow swells in the sky, blotting out the stars and the moon. Orin frowns, looking up at it and trying, at first, to place it into the rational framework of a cloud, and realizing that it cannot be. Its appearance was too sudden, its shape is too regular. And then he sees small lights blinking all across its surface, white and red and blue. The colors of the flag, he thinks inanely. But what hovers above them is nothing of this country, or of this world.

He is about to move toward Ben, needing to talk through this impossibility despite not knowing what he will say or ask the other man, when there are sudden shouts from the valley below, and then the night erupts with the sharp cracks of a pistol, and the louder sound of a rifle in answer. One of the men below crumples, and then Orin is shooting too. He gets off three shots before one of the shadowy suited men in his sights falls awkwardly, and is aiming at the man that seems far too young when the night is split once more—this time, from above.

Light, cold and blinding and terrible, pours like liquid fire from the bottom of the massive skyborne vessel, making Orin’s tightly closed eyes ache and causing the blood to thunder in his veins, his heart to feel on the edge of bursting. When the light recedes, and whether that is seconds or minutes before he is able to open his eyes again, he cannot say. But when he does, the children are gone from the valley, and the massive craft has also vanished from the patch of sky where it had soundlessly hovered above them.

One of the men, rising from where he had hidden in the grass, runs toward an SUV, clambers inside, and drives wildly back toward the road, heedlessly passing by Orin in his urgent flight.

Three more men lie still upon the earth below, dimly lit by the diffusion of the headlights.

Cautiously, Orin moves in the direction Ben went earlier. At almost exactly twenty feet, he finds his friend lying on his side, groaning faintly, as a tiny pool of blood spreads in the sandy soil beneath him. Nearby lies his discarded AR-15.

Orin swears and fumbles for something from which to fashion a bandage, when Ben looks up at him and tells him to go to the children.

Orin hesitates, hardly willing to speak the truth of what has happened, but finally he manages to say that the children are gone. Ben looks at him flatly for a long moment, and Orin cannot tell if the other man has understood him, then finally the former deputy tells him to go make sure.

Orin does.

He descends the slope warily, rifle held at the ready should there be any sign of threat. One of the men sprawled across the hood of the remaining SUV is missing an eye, blood trickling from the back of his ruined skull. Another lies facedown in the dust, his limbs bent at too awkward an angle for him to be yet living. But the third man stirs feebly upon the grass, his costly suit shirt darkened by a spreading stain.

Kneeling beside him, Orin asks where the children are, what will be done to them.

The man, wheezing, says that he doesn’t know, that maybe they dissect them, experiment with them, torture them, eat them, use them as playthings – and he says that it doesn’t matter. From the labored sound of the man’s breathing, Orin knows the bullet ruptured and collapsed at least one lung, that without prompt treatment, the man doesn’t have much hope.

Orin asks him how he could do such a thing, how he could be a part of something so monstrous.

The suit laughs weakly, and asks how he could do anything else. And then he says, smiling with contempt through his pain, that Orin and that everyone like him were all happy enough to ignore it for years, to explain it away, to turn it into a distant problem or a wrap it up in a neat, comfortable conspiracy theory, as long as it was only slavery and perversion of this world and as long as it didn’t affect them. You all pretend to be so good, so righteous, he says, but it is so easy for you to turn away when you don’t like what you see, when it would require real sacrifice.

Orin opens his mouth, but does not speak. The man chuckles wetly.

He asks if Orin knows what inconceivably vast knowledge and power it must take, to be able to traverse the black cosmic gulfs between stars, if he has any idea of the true magnitude of such an undertaking. And if they can do this, the man continues, surely they can kill a planet, or even single out one crude, self-destructive species like humanity for extinction. They are truly like gods compared to us, the man says starkly, and like gods, cannot be understood or opposed, but only potentially appeased.

Orin tries to recite the Lord’s Prayer, but cannot remember the words, feels nothing as he reaches for them, feels nothing but the deep chill of the night, and another, still deeper.

In the face of all of that, the suited man continues faintly, a few children here and there are a vanishingly small sacrifice. And a completely necessary one.

Orin looks down at the nameless man for a long moment, and then slowly says that it was not his sacrifice to make.

The man in the suit gives a long, splattering cough, and lies still, unconscious and slipping slowly away into death. Feeling sullied by the blood he’s spilled despite being unable to summon any pity for the dying man, Orin makes no move to help him, stands, and gazes up at the bright stars in the dark, dark sky.

And it’s then that he hears her, then sees her: the sole child who was not taken, who sits huddled and small in the icy grass. It is the girl he saw in the gas station, whom he’d assumed was Latina. But as he moves toward her, asks her gently if she’s alright, she breathily murmurs, as though entranced, something that to Orin’s ears sounds like chabdi ghissein.

Arabic, Orin thinks, and for a moment, ugly feelings and assumptions stir within him. But looking at the small girl, she looks only like a child to him, the same terrified and traumatized child he had seen on his last beer run.

Taking off his jacket, he throws it around her, feels a twinge of guilt when she startles under that touch.

Come with me, he says slowly, hoping she will understand him. Safe, he adds.

She seems to understand, the tone if not the words themselves, and takes to her feet uncertainly, follows him back up the hill. He tells her not to look at the dead men as they pass, but she doesn’t seem able to focus on much of anything.

When they reach Ben, the man has hauled himself up into a sitting position, and looks much worse for it. He looks at the girl, tries to smile, and asks her what her name might be.

Orin says that he thinks she’s Arab, that she doesn’t seem to speak English. The girl repeats the same phrase she’d uttered when Orin first found her below, and Ben frowns thoughtfully.

That’s not Arabic, that’s German, he says slowly. She saw… them.

The two men look up, while the girl repeats the phrase a third and final time.

Ich hab die gesehen.

After a moment, Orin tells his friend that they have to get him up, have to get him to the hospital. Ben mumbles something incoherent, and slumps forward. Orin tries to lift him, but the larger man’s weight is slack, too much for Orin to manage on his own.

Help me, he says hopelessly to the girl, not really expecting a response. But to his surprise, she does, trying to shift the man though it is clearly far beyond her.

When finally Orin tells her to stop, that it’s too late, his hands come away dark and tacky with Ben’s blood. The former deputy’s eyes are open, staring sightlessly at the wide heavens. And, looking down at his friend, Orin thinks with uncharacteristic insight how, in these last hours, his friend has become the man he always wished to be, but never could in the realities of daily life and work: a man on a truly and clearly righteous mission. Orin thinks, what a tragedy that is, that the world we’ve built for ourselves entraps us so completely, makes us wholly a part of its soulless machinery.

Once more, he follows his friend’s gaze upward, and wonders if, somewhere out there, the children will find a better home than the one that they left, will find kinder-hearted caretakers than the ones they once trusted, who offered them like meat on a platter, not even knowing what favor, if any, was bought with that offering.

Orin will never know. But he grasps desperately at that hope, even as it seems to slip away from his mind. As he tries to mentally calculate the stars, as he considers that some of them are not truly stars, but entire galaxies, his mind swims, and he is aware as he never has been before of how small he is, how utterly powerless.

Somewhere out in that darkness, men whose hearts are full of colder mathematics than his look up at those same stars. One of them, perhaps, bears the name of Jake Hickends, but there must be many more, whose names and identities Orin can never guess. And farther away still, minds fundamentally inscrutable drift on solar winds toward unknown and unguessable destinations, impossibly distant and forever beyond his meager reach.

The rifle falls from Orin’s hands as he sinks to his knees in the dust, crushed by the weight of infinite space. The girl beside him gently tugs at his arm, touching him gingerly and hesitantly as though his flesh might burn her, and he looks at her, weeping. He tries a final time to pray for guidance, for any sign of what he should do next, but finds within him only a terrible yearning for the golden, heady, Lethean taste of beer, that first obliviating kiss of foam upon his tongue.

Speaking for the first time in only faintly accented English, the girl murmurs that they will return, her voice as softly, dreadfully incontrovertible as the infinite, lightless gaps between the stars overhead.

(Mysterious, dark music)

[Darker Pastures Theme - Intro]

Story, narration, editing, musical arrangement, and production by Lars Mollevand. A special thank you to Destiny Sturdivant, without whose constant encouragement and guidance, this podcast may very well never have materialized. And thank you to all my friends and family who have supported me in this undertaking.

I hope you have enjoyed the first season of Darker Pastures. For the sake of maintaining episode quality, and also of preserving my thin façade of sanity, the show will be on temporary hiatus, returning in the second half of 2023. Rest assured, we will meet again… in darker pastures.

[Darker Pastures Theme – Intro continues]