The Anomaly
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2018 by Michael Rutger
Cover design by Brian Lemus. Cover image © Cultura Exclusive/Manuel Sulzer/Getty Images. Cover copyright © 2018 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.
The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
Grand Central Publishing
Hachette Book Group
1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10104
grandcentralpublishing.com
twitter.com/grandcentralpub
First ebook edition: June 2018
Grand Central Publishing is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Grand Central Publishing name and logo is a trademark of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.
The Hachette Speakers Bureau provides a wide range of authors for speaking events. To find out more, go to www.hachettespeakersbureau.com or call (866) 376-6591.
Photograph here © DesertUSA.com. Used by permission.
Names: Rutger, Michael, author.
Title: The anomaly / Michael Rutger.
Description: First edition. | New York: Grand Central Publishing, June 2018.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017053130| ISBN 9781538761854 (hardback) | ISBN
9781478999430 (audio download) | ISBN 9781538761847 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Archaeologists—Fiction. | Suspense fiction. | BISAC: FICTION
/ Suspense. | FICTION / Action & Adventure. | FICTION / Fairy Tales, Folk
Tales, Legends & Mythology.
Classification: LCC PR6069.M5225 A55 2018 | DDC 823/.914—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017053130
ISBNs: 978-1-5387-6185-4 (hardcover), 978-1-5387-6184-7 (ebook)
E3-20180523-NF-DA
Contents
Cover
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Prologue
Part One Chapter 1
Chapter 2
From the files of Nolan Moore:
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
From the files of Nolan Moore:
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
From the files of Nolan Moore:
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
From the files of Nolan Moore:
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
From the files of Nolan Moore:
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Part Two From the files of Nolan Moore:
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
From the files of Nolan Moore:
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
From the files of Nolan Moore:
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Part Three Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
From the files of Nolan Moore:
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
From the files of Nolan Moore:
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
From the files of Nolan Moore:
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Newsletters
For my father,
with love, and with thanks for his
unrelenting belief and support.
What we wish most to know, most desire,
remains unknowable and lies beyond our grasp.
—James Hollis, The Archetypal Imagination
Prologue
He went back.
As he ran, he felt a reverberation under his feet, the shudder of something very heavy landing on the stone floor.
Close by? Impossible to be sure.
He hesitated, almost ready to give up, but some impulse kept him moving forward. “Samuel!” he shouted, voice cracking.
And this time he finally gained a response. A strangled attempt at speech, half-choked with a sob. On the left. Only yards away in the darkness.
“Get the light.”
Maqk—one of only two natives left, the others all dead or deserted or lost—grabbed the candle from the floor and followed George as he felt his way along the wall in the direction of the sound, keeping his rifle in position, trying to hold it steady, though his arms were exhausted and his nerves shot.
There.
In the dying glow of the candle.
Samuel. Slumped on the ground. Something in his hand, which he scratched against the wall. A knife. Blood on the handle. Blood over his shirt and face, too.
“For God’s sake,” George said. “I told you to follow.”
The man didn’t seem to hear. He kept at his bizarre, pointless task.
“We leave now or we die.”
Maqk, too, pleaded with Samuel to move. He got no more of a response.
Another scream, from deep within the cave. A long, fading, and even more horrific sound than the one before, a sound that said whoever made it would not be capable of a noise of any kind for much longer.
Losing patience, on the edge of outright panic, George gestured to Maqk and they lunged forward, each grabbing one of Samuel’s arms. They pulled, tugging him to his feet.
“No!” Samuel shouted. “I must finish it.”
They ignored him, yanking with failing strength, hauling the man back the way they had come. They stumbled together along the corridor, using each dim candle like a rung on a ladder.
Finally they were able to see a faint glow ahead—narrow, dark blue, a sliver of dawn from outside.
But they could hear something, too.
“Go,” Samuel said brokenly. “Just go. Leave me.”
George grabbed the man’s arm tighter and yanked him into something like a run. Maqk kept shoving him from behind—but cried out. A shout, and then a scream.
George glanced around and saw the man suddenly disappear—yanked back into the darkness, eyes and mouth frozen wide.
George and Samuel ran as fast as they could toward the light, putting their souls in the hands of God.
Part One
It’s the loss of the Grail that sets us out
on the Quest, not the finding.
—Martin Shaw, The Snowy Tower
The Lord saw that the wickedne
ss
of man was great in the earth,
and that every intention of the thoughts
of his heart was only evil continually.
—Genesis 6:5
Chapter
1
It took six hours to get to the Grand Canyon from LA despite the fact that Ken drives like a crazy person, and by the time we arrived at the hotel it was late afternoon and everyone was very hot and extremely ready to not be in the car anymore. The Kenmobile is a big old Lexus SUV bought in better times, but with five people’s bags and Pierre’s extensive collection of camera and lighting equipment—the majority of which, I’m convinced, is superfluous for any function unrelated to Pierre’s ego—four of us spent the long, hot drive in moderate discomfort. Ken’s insistence on playing loud progressive rock from the 1970s did not make the time pass any faster, though I’ll admit there was an hour of unrelenting desert toward the end when it lent the experience an epic Kodachrome grandeur.
The hotel was twenty miles from the canyon, and pretty new and perfectly okay. Two wings of identical rooms on three floors, open-plan lobby in the middle with a half-decent restaurant and airport-style bar, surrounded by parking lot and desert. Ken defaults to this kind of place—it’s Molly who arranges the bookings, but with anything involving expenditure you can bet he made the judgment call—because they’re cheap and have loyalty programs that feed points back to the company credit card. Ken’s chief skill as a producer/director is to pinch each penny until it begs for mercy. Without this talent the show wouldn’t have made it to the web in the first place, and it was even more crucial now that we had the steely eye of a cable network overseeing every aspect of production, and so I’m grateful, I guess. I’m also glad this kind of crap isn’t my problem, because I’d be hopeless at it—but that doesn’t stop me wishing that, once in a while, we could base operations somewhere with views over something other than asphalt.
We tumbled out of the SUV into the lot and stretched and muttered and burped. The team:
Ken—late fifty-something (and pointlessly evasive on the precise number), paunchy, face like an old pug, thinning black hair. Came over from England way back (quite possibly on the run from the authorities), punched his way up through commercials and music videos and produced a few horror movies in the early ’90s that made some actual money. These days The Anomaly Files is all he does, and he does not stint in making comedic play over how far this shows his star has fallen.
Molly—assistant producer—twenty-eight, confidently attractive in generic Southern California style, destined for better things. Surgically attached to her iPhone, never without a binder, usually smiling in a way that says it really will be better for all concerned if you just do what she says.
Pierre—midtwenties, pointlessly good-looking, our cameraman. I don’t know why he’s called Pierre. He’s not French. His parents aren’t French. He can’t speak French and (I checked) has never even been to France. It’s annoying. Pierre is convinced he’s on the fast track to Hollywood and one night when he’s annoyed me even more than usual I’m going to tell him I’ve been there and it’s not as much fun as it looks. But not yet, as the most annoying thing about Pierre is that he works hard and is genuinely talented, certainly a lot more so than the past-it journeymen who’d normally accept this type of gig. Plus he has rich parents and comes with his own high-end gear and so Ken loves him, insofar as Ken’s capable of loving anyone who isn’t actively handing him either money or a drink.
Finally, a temporary addition to our merry band, a woman I’d met for the first time that morning when the Kenmobile picked her up from a bland little house in Burbank. Mousy, pale, a neohippie type in floaty multilayered clothes with hemp shoes and an ankh necklace. I was still struggling to address her as Feather, though that appeared to be her actual name.
And then yours truly, of course.
But that’s enough about me.
Molly led the way into the hotel and supervised check-in. Ken went first, naturally. Once processed, he told Molly to get his bag sent up to his room and announced that he’d see us all in the bar in an hour—at which point he marched straight over to it, to do an hour’s predrinking. His dedication in this regard is legendary.
Pierre and Feather went next, and wandered off toward the elevators together, Pierre draped in black canvas tech bags. Theoretically he brings them inside to stop people stealing the gear from the car, but I suspect the primary intention is to show off his gym-muscled arms as he hefts them to and fro.
I finally stepped up to the desk next to Molly and smiled at the registration clerk. “Hey, Kim,” I said, reading the name from her badge. “How’s your day?”
She frowned, which was not the desired effect. After a moment, however, it became clear she was trying to place me, and then that she had. “Whoa,” she said. “You’re that guy.”
“That guy?”
“Yes,” she said. “You are. The YouTuber. That archeologist guy. Unsolved mysteries and stuff.”
This, I should note, seldom happens. My grin in response was charming, and the accompanying shrug could have been used as a Wikipedia illustration of “self-deprecating.”
“Guilty as charged,” I said. “I am indeed Nolan Moore.”
“Wow. My dad hates your show.”
“Oh. Why?”
“He’s an actual archeologist. Or was. Now he’s a professor at NAU in Flagstaff. He’s real smart. I tend to go with what he thinks.”
“Good for you. Well, I’m sorry he doesn’t like the show. Can I check in now?”
She clattered on her keyboard, peering at the screen. “Actually, I don’t seem to have a reservation under the name Nolan Moore.”
“It’ll be under Roland Barthes.”
“Why?”
“Long story.” Actually, it was a fairly short story. A very successful movie actor I used to go drinking with in a previous life told me that one of the ways he’d made it seem like he was, or might soon be, famous—in the early days—was checking into hotels under an assumed name. For the mystique. Every now and then I experimented with doing the same. This encounter was not the first evidence that it was a really dumb idea, certainly outside Hollywood.
“I’ll need to see ID in that name.”
“I don’t have any.”
She looked up with an unapologetic half smile.
“Molly,” I said, “sort this shit out, would you?”
I stomped back outside to have a cigarette.
Chapter
2
Having showered and tweeted and replied to the few nonasinine comments on the show’s YouTube channel, I spent an unedifying half hour wandering the parking lot, smoking diligently and looking at the view—360 degrees of desert, sporadically enlivened by stunted shrubs; the lights of a gas station twinkling in the distance as dusk settled in. At seven I walked into the hotel bar, ready for refreshment.
Ken was holding court at a center table, Molly on the couch beside him. They stick together like glue while in production, mainly so they can shout “No” in unison every time I suggest some cool unplanned thing we could do. Feather perched on a chair opposite, looking enthusiastic in a nonspecific way. No sign of Pierre yet; presumably he was either in the gym or meditating in his room, two habits he’s mentioned multiple times and for which I have not yet, miraculously, slapped him.
Ken saw me enter and held up two fingers. I glanced at the women but Molly shook her head and Feather merely smiled, not understanding the question. Of course, there was waitress service, but when Ken wants another large vodka he kind of wants it now, and though I’m theoretically the star of this thing, I’m generally the one expediting it. Molly is Ken’s bitch for anything to do with work, but drinks aren’t work, so when it comes to those she’s adamant that she isn’t. The complexity of the interacting hierarchies within a small group is beyond the scope of my tiny mind. I mainly just do what I’m told.
As I waited at the bar I checked out the other patrons. A
few couples making plans for the next day’s excursions to the canyon, a family of four peaceably chowing down on identically vast burgers, a scattering of singletons frowning at their smartphones to prove they totally weren’t lonely and bored—and a trim redhead with a perky ponytail at the other end of the counter, hammering away on a laptop. She favored me with an amused smile and then pointedly looked away. I sternly ignored her while I signed the drinks to my room, so that showed her.
When I got back to the table, Molly was out in the lobby, pacing up and down and barking into her phone. In the run of things she’s unflappably affable, but experience has shown that supply companies who get on her wrong side will come to regret it in profound ways.
“Fuckup with the boat,” Ken said.
“Oh. What?”
“The last bunch of tourists sank it. The issue is under discussion.”
“So I see.”
“You sorted on your bits of shit?”
I spread my hands in a gesture of quiet confidence.
“Okay,” he said patiently. “But really?”
I tapped my temple. “It’s all up here.”
He sighed. “That’s wonderful, mate. But I’m going to suggest to you, not for the first time, that I’d prefer to see it in an actual script.”
“Not how I roll. As you know.”
“Sadly, I do. But remind me why?”
“I’m done with scripts.”
“Plus you’re an arsehole. So there’s that.” He chinked his glass against mine. “Cheers. Here’s to the successful and within-budget hammering of another nail into the coffin of received wisdom and the dastardly agenda of Them.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Feather piped up, with surprising vehemence. She raised her glass and I tapped mine against it.
Pierre arrived in the bar looking annoyingly serene. Ken, Molly, and I waved at him as he approached. Pierre understood this wasn’t a greeting and dutifully changed course toward the bar. I noticed the ponytailed laptop lady glance at him as he arrived, checking out his form in a way I can only describe as “appreciative.”