Crypsis

An aging cattleman struggles with the usual hardships of winter... and with one entirely new.

Transcript

[Darker Pastures Theme - Intro]

NARRATOR

Episode Forty-Six: Crypsis.

(Sounds of cattle herd)

NARRATOR

Leaning against the lee side of his silver Dodge pickup, Dale Nicholsen observes the cattle, sighing with relief as he lights up a Marlboro. The sky above is grey and bleak, and the wind curls cruelly out of the north. It has been three solid days of hauling the herd from his pastureland to the cornstalks he rents from his neighbors, the Sykes, for overwinter feeding. Now that the last of them is moved, he feels he can finally, finally take a moment to breathe.

He scratches his eyebrow with his thumb, cigarette dangling between his forefingers as he thinks of the two boys who have long since moved away, one to California and the other to New York. There is no rancor in him, knowing that the days when an independent cattleman could reliably make a good living are long past, and yet he misses his children. He misses the days they used to spend together, and the rapport between all three of them, the long conversations that could keep them all up far too late into the night.

And, he cannot lie, he misses having their help too. Once, the work would not have left him so spent, but the decades have piled up on him like the December snow and ice that weights the bent and broken cornstalks. Thinking of how many more weeks of short days and freezing temperatures lie before him, the prospect of chopping ice in the water tanks daily and hauling untold loads expensive alfalfa hay to supplement the dry stalks, the sense of relief he felt moments before begins to fade.

The cigarette burns down to the filter, and he tosses it to the ground, grinds it under his boot heel.

God, I’m tired, he thinks, longing for a nap.

As he clambers into the pickup cab, he gives his herd a final look over, and freezes. Something moves into the nearest clump of mingled Herefords and Red Angus, something of a totally different coloration – a ratty grey, the fur long and matted. Though he once had Charolais lines in his herd that might throw that sort of coat color, he long since culled them. And there was something about the motion that was not at all like the rolling, powerful gait of a cow – something decidedly more lean and furtive.

Yet, staring through the window limned at the edges with frost, he sees nothing at all of the sort. Lighting up another cigarette, he shakes his head, knowing how easily the brain can misinterpret what the eyes convey – especially when it is overwrought.

Though he still has work left to do, he decides to treat himself to an early end to his day. He fires the pickup engine and drives away from the cornfield, thinking longingly of his warm house and comfortable recliner before the television.

[Short pause]

NARRATOR

He jerks awake to the sound of a slamming door, his wife Vera coming home from her clerk job at the county courthouse. She looks disapprovingly at the television, turned to ESPN, but makes no comment on it. Instead, she says that Bowen Sykes flagged her down on her way home to tell her that it looked like a stray had gotten in with Dale’s herd.

Fully awake now and despairing of his nap, Dale asks if he mentioned what kind of stray, or if Bowen had any idea where it came from. Vera shrugs and says that’s all Bowen told her.

Well, shit, Dale grumbles, stowing the recliner footrest and sitting up straight, having to work himself to rising from the chair. Not for the first time, he considers that maybe he’s getting too old for the work, for these long winters, and that maybe he should sell off the herd. Yet the cattle and the land they pasture on have been in his family for three generations now, and he has tended them all his life. Without them, he doesn’t know who he’d be, or how he’d fill his days, and he imagines becoming the old man his wife seems to see, rotting away on his recliner, glazed eyes fixed on the vapid stream of noise and light from the TV screen.

He struggles into the overalls, coat, work gloves, and boots from which he so recently shrugged free, dreading to once more brave the bitter wind and funereal weather. Briefly he considers letting it go until tomorrow, since he will have to check their water anyway, but that glimpse of something grey still needles him – especially the possibility that he might have already solved this problem if he had just looked a little harder before calling it quits.

So out he goes, into the dreary December, to a thankless and unwanted task.

Yet when he reaches the cornfield, he sees no sign of anything amiss. Dropping the electric fence gate and driving slowly down the denuded rows, amongst the placidly foraging cows, he scrutinizes the herd, mentally cataloguing each bovine face and ear tag number.

After passing through the herd twice without finding anything, he brings the pickup to a stop and sits there, idling. He casts his gaze over the rest of the field, trying to catch sight of anything that might have taken shelter farther from where the herd has gathered, but even driving across the field and around the circle, he sees no sign of any stray.

Scratching at his grey stubble, he frowns, saying aloud to himself, Well, what the hell?

Not knowing what else to do, he turns around and drive back toward the field entrance, groaning with the effort of getting in and out of the high cab to open and close the gate. Then he turns toward the Sykes place on the other side of the field, driving through the encircling spruce windbreak and stopping in the drive outside their chicken wire yard fence.

Bowen comes out to greet him, asking with an easy smile if he found the stray. Laughing nervously, Dale replies that he did not, probing the farmer about exactly what the beast looked like. Bowen spits a bit of chewing tobacco into a pile of snow, and says it was a grey and ratty looking thing, and he was pretty sure Dale didn’t have any critter like that.

Dale starts at this description, so like the thing he thought he glimpsed earlier. Slowly, he says that he doesn’t, and that he’s sure Bowen was right, but that it’s not there anymore.

Bowen laughs, says the damn thing must be a real fence-jumping son-of-a-bitch on top of being ugly, and Dale agrees with a chuckle, adding that as long as it doesn’t come back, it worked out as best as could be expected on his end. Thanking Bowen for letting him know, he bids the farmer a good evening and begins the drive home.

As he passes the cornfield again on his way home, he stomps instinctively on the brakes, staring at the thing that gazes at him from the edge of the herd that has gathered around the water tank in the center of the circle. It is taller than the other cattle, but the early December twilight obscures its features enough so that Dale cannot be sure exactly what he is looking at – only that it is too pale, too lean, and too shaggy to be one of his.

Something squirms softly in his innards, some primordial premonition of wrongness. And as he gazes at the grey shape, he has the unsettling feeling that it is somehow aware not only of the pickup, but of him inside of it, in a way that few animals truly are.

Telling himself, not untruthfully, that it is too close to full dark to go romping through the rough and icy field, he continues driving home, grateful that there was no traffic on the road behind him during his sudden and thoughtless stop.

Yes, he thinks, as the lights of home blossom in the dark ahead of him, it can wait until tomorrow.

[Short pause]

NARRATOR

Three days after the first sighting, Dale finds sleep harder and harder to come by. The stray – if stray it is – is never there when he is looking for it, only when he has decided it is gone and he need no longer think of it. And with each sighting, which seem to only come in brief glimpses or at a distance or in bad light, he becomes a little more convinced that what he is looking at it is not a cow at all, but something he cannot name, something that should not be.

It is too lank, too vulpine in its sinister, stealthy grace. And though he never sees the eyes for more than a moment, there is too much malevolent understanding in them. That it is a predator, he feels unaccountably certain, even knowing that there are no predators of that size and shape in the whole country, maybe even the world.

With every day, he finds the necessity of the morning and evening visits more intolerably dreadful. And when he goes to bed late, late at night, it is not only the mystery of what the thing is or what it intends toward him that keeps him awake – it is also the question of why the cattle do not seem to pay it any mind.

On Friday, he sleeps until almost nine, four hours past his customary rising time. His wife is long gone for work, and he does not even bother to get out of bed at once. The necessity of caring for the herd has at last been outweighed by his mounting fear, and he cannot say which prospect terrifies him more – that his sanity is fraying, or that he is truly in the grip of something inexplicable.

(Bleak music)

[Long pause]

NARRATOR

He forces himself out of bed and out of the house over the weekend, unwilling to let Vera see how shattered his nerves truly are, afraid of what she will ask him if she does. Lying has always made his chest hurt with guilt and shame, but he also can imagine the exact look she will give him if he tells her the truth of what he is facing – that look of mingled disbelief and pity.

So instead, he finds work to do around the place, which is never hard on a cattle operation. The wind is bitter, despite the sun and its slow clearing of the last snow, skirling out of the northwest over the dead brown grass and through the bony yellow weeds. By midday, he is aching from cold and exertion, and still he needs to make the daily visit to the rented circle and make sure the herd is not thirsting, has not broken through the electric fence and scattered to the four winds.

Feeling like his heart is sinking down into his stomach, Dale moves toward the Ram, gets inside, and starts up the engine. He is grateful for the warmth of the heater, at least, as he pulls out of the yard and drives down the road toward the circle of cornstalks.

But before he does, he fetches his Ruger rifle and a mostly full box of .223 hollow-point ammunition from the house.

[Short pause]

NARRATOR

Reaching the circle, Dale is thankful only for the fact that it is still fully light outside, meaning that it is likely he will not see the unnamable thing whose reality he still doubts. But when he sees the low clouds scudding out of the northwest, his heart sinks a little further, and he resolves to move quickly through the day’s work.

He drives over the broken cornstalks toward the well at the circle’s center, which fills the thousand-gallon stock tank now rather than the summer irrigation pivots. The ice, as he feared, has thickened over the hole he chopped yesterday. Taking the axe, he sets to work hacking it open again, making it just large enough for the cattle to drink from, but not so large that heat will dissipate from the water beneath too quickly.

By the time he is done, his arms are thoroughly sore, and his heartbeat too quick and unsteady in his chest. Not for the first time, he thinks bitterly about his age, about how now even the little tasks he used to think nothing of have become trials.

As he is thinking this, he looks up, over the herd that has slowly gathered around him, yearning for a drink and for the mineral supplements he has brought. Dale trudges back toward the pickup to stow the axe in the bed, and pull out the bag of mineral and salt, huffing with the effort. A feeling of unease settles over him as he moves to the overturned rubber tub, flips it, and refills it – the ranks of staring cattle feeling inscrutable, even hostile, in a way that they never have before.

And as the large paper bag in his hand runs empty, the soft sigh of the mineral salt’s flow fading in the chill wind, he sees it.

The thing cranes a long, grey neck over the backs of the cattle, pallid eyes like those of a long-dead hyena glaring wildly at him. The long snout bares snaggled, daggerlike fangs, and the tongue that lolls out of it is a sickly wan yellow, oozing thick mucus over the red fur of the six-year-old cow beside it. The cattle mill idly around the creature, somehow even with their keen hearing and smell still not sensing the monstrous presence in their midst.

Dropping the bag and letting the wind toss it fitfully over the cornstalks, Dale backs away slowly, never taking his eyes away from the creature, even when he bumps gently into the pickup’s side. With palsied hands, Dale opens the driver door and reaches for the .223 Ruger rifle inside, then rolls down the door window. Using the open door window as a makeshift gun rest, he cycles the bolt and aims, his mind and limbs tingling with electric fear.

As he peers through the scope, lining up the shot with unprecedented difficulty, the creature begins to nuzzle the cow beside it like a cat, almost affectionately. Then it flashes those awful teeth in an bestial grin, and plunges its face into the poor animal’s side. As the cow begins to thrash, emitting a wild bellow that is far closer to a scream than any sound Dale has ever heard from a cow before, the rest of the cattle at last begin to show awareness of something profoundly wrong in their midst, answering their fellow’s cries in kind and scattering in wild panic.

With the herd broken and the creature now burrowed halfway into its flailing, downed victim, Dale takes a deep breath, centering the crosshairs on the portion of the cow’s ruined flank where he guesses the thing’s head must now be, and squeezes the trigger. The rifle report cracks and rolls over the flat field, drowning out for an instant the sounds of the terrified cattle. Still peering through the scope, he recenters it on the unfortunate six-year-old Hereford, looking for some sign that he has hit his mark. There is no longer any movement aside from the pained wallowing of the mortally wounded animal, and with a mixture of sorrow and rage, he cycles another round into the chamber and fires a merciful killing shot into her skull.

Then he reengages the rifle safety, returns it to its resting place, clambers into the seat and drives to the site of the unnatural killing. He approaches slowly, careful not only not to damage the pickup on the rough uneven rows, but to be sure that there is no longer any movement from the downed cow. Reaching it at last, he takes the rifle and exits the pickup, working the bolt action a third time in cautious dread.

Looking down at the dead animal, still steaming in the cold and one of its hind hooves twitching spasmodically, he freezes. Clearly there is nothing within the eviscerated bovine, but in the blood that cools and pools on the hard cold earth, he perceives the faint hints of a trail. And suddenly the frigid wind has cut through his coat and thick tan coveralls, and he feels keenly the lack of the strength that the years have cruelly sapped from him.

His eyes trace the thin smears of blood that lead away from the corpse, over the bare stalks to the north. There is a stretch of CRP land beyond the edge of the circle – land left undisturbed to allow native grass to grow tall. Though it is hardly possible that anything could cover such distance so quickly without him seeing it, it is the only possible cover in sight.

Casting his eyes mournfully over the herd that has been his life for so many years, he knows with immeasurable sorrow that this is the last winter he will ever tend them.

[Short pause]

NARRATOR

Dale stands at the window, staring out over the countryside as he drinks his morning coffee. Two feelings war within him, one of profound relief, and another of abiding regret. It is not the loss he took, selling off the herd at an odd time of the year, though that was substantial enough to trouble him – it is the sense that he has lost a fundamental part of himself, and irretrievably so, given his age.

But, he thinks, at least he will never have to risk seeing that thing hiding amongst his familiar cattle ever again.

Vera descends the stairs, barely saying good morning before she begins listing the chores that he might take on today, since he no longer has the cattle to tend. Irritated a little by this intrusion into his thoughts, he grudgingly acknowledges a few of them, not really intending to do more than the first two tasks she lists. After a few moments, as she moves into the kitchen to get her own cup of coffee, she falls silent. Then she asks if he’s seen the deer.

Dale moves out into the kitchen and follows her gaze out the smaller window on this side of the house. Sure enough, a small bevy of five whitetail does, an old mother and several of her offspring from the preceding years, stand gathered on the lawn. The oldest doe pauses in the midst of foraging and lifts her head to gaze at the house, as if she can perceive the humans watching her through the walls and the glass of the windows.

Vera lets out a small gasp, dropping her half-filled coffee mug to shatter and spread its dark contents over the kitchen floor. Dale begins to utter a question, but stops as he too sees the lank, grey thing that peers over the doe’s shoulder.

(Disturbing music)

[Darker Pastures Theme - Outro]

NARRATOR

If you enjoyed today’s story, please rate, review, and share. If you’re feeling particularly generous, you can support the show on our Patreon page or at darkerpastures.buzzsprout.com, and unlock special subscriber-only content. Thank you for listening. We’ll meet again… in darker pastures.

[Darker Pastures Theme - Outro - Continues]