Bunkhouse

I open my eyes and it’s pitch-black. That’s truly fucking unnerving.

I take a deep but silent breath and get a quick sense of my surroundings. I’m in a bunk bed. In a bunkhouse. It’s pitch-black because it’s the middle of the night and there are no windows. 

No lights outside. No lights in here, either; this is a small, wooden building, one door, four sets of bunk beds. Eight beds total, five of them occupied, counting me. 

The place smells like piss and sawdust, with generous helpings of horseshit and cowshit. These four guys don’t exactly smell like roses, either; none of them has bathed in at least a week. I don’t imagine I smell all that wonderful, either. 

No lights, no power; I scan around outside, no electrical anything. No cars or trucks. The skies are empty. Dog sleeping in the barn. From the look and condition of the road beyond the barn and ranch house, I’d guess I’ve landed in the very late 19th or very early 20th century. There’s an oil lantern hanging next to the door that supports my guess. 

I’ve dropped into total darkness before, and I hope it’s something I never get used to. It takes a lot to rattle me; I’m basically omniscient and omnipotent, so it’s not like I’m afraid of much – but on the other hand I’m helpless, at the mercy of whoever or whatever bounces me around in time. However powerful I think I am, there’s at least one power in the universe that makes mine laughable. 

All four of my bunkmates are sound asleep. Two are snoring, one loudly enough to rattle every corpse in the graveyard beyond the pasture. 

God, these guys smell. 

There is, in fact, cause for worry. Most of the time, I drop into a place where there are either lots of people, or people who are strangers to each other, or both. This isn’t one of those times. If these guys wake up, I’ll be immediately spotted as someone who doesn’t belong here, and I’m not at all sure how that would play. Better to figure out what I’m going to do, which of them I’m going to do it to, while they’re all still down. 

If there’s such a thing as a creature of the night, I surely am lord of them all.

Whatever I once was, I’ve lived only in the night, tens of thousands of them now, for decades, if not centuries. I stopped counting so long ago that I’ve lost all perspective.

On the one hand, I guess I’m the night’s master, the prince of darkness, more powerful than all of Hell’s devils, history’s most prolific murderer; on the other, I am the night’s prisoner, totally immersed in a brutal, infinite incarceration, serving the longest sentence any living being has ever suffered. 

I stopped being philosophical about it all long ago. I don’t have enough energy left to resent it. 

I do wish I could sleep. I’d like to be reminded what it’s like.  

But then I might dream. Not a good idea. 

To work, then. The big one, sprawled across the bottom of the bunk across from mine, he’s the one who’s loud. Keeps the whole bed to himself, puts his gear on the top bunk. His name is Hunt, and he’s mean as hell. He’s the alpha dog here. 

Against the wall, top and bottom, Frank and Bo. Not as mean as Hunt but not exactly congenial. Frank is a thief; Bo likes to start fights just to relieve his boredom. Both live their lives by the creed Whatever Hunt Says. 

Finally, at the end of the room next to the door, with his own bunk and sleeping on top – paradoxically out of insecurity – is Jimmy. Little guy. Too scrawny, really, for life on a ranch. The other three treat him like a pet, alternately abusing him and including him. The attention makes him feel special. 

I get to work, starting with Hunt, and immediately find that my work is essentially done: the glowing coal in his memory is an incident at the far end of the creek at the edge of the ranch the previous autumn, when the four of them were hunting on their off day and came across a young Cheyenne family from the reservation, let’s see, north of here. That makes this Montana. My buddies here have been through some whiskey, it being their day off and all, and get the bright idea of having some fun with the mother. By the look of her in Hunt’s memory, barely older than Jimmy. Her husband, not much older, though their daughter might be three? Four? 

Hunt has Frank hold a rifle on them while he punches the father a few times to get rid of any courage that might surface, but clocks him so hard at one point that he’s out cold anyway. The little girl is terrified, and Hunt instructs Jimmy to hold onto her so she doesn’t bolt; he then does things to the mother that would inspire the mildest pastor to strangle him with his bare hands. 

But they’re just getting started. At Hunt’s direction, they each take their turn, even Jimmy – and when they’re done, the father comes to, sees what has happened, and charges Hunt in a rage. Hunt tosses him like a bag of seed, picks up the rifle and shoots him as he’s getting up to charge again. The woman, pretty bloodied herself, leaps up and jumps on Hunt’s back, screaming. He throws her off, jabs her in the head with the butt of the rifle, then shoots her, too. 

When he aims at the little girl, Jimmy objects, and Bo sides with Jimmy, but Frank reasons that they have no choice. Even if the county sheriff looks the other way, their boss would fire them all if he found out; he is wisely cautious in his relationship with the Cheyenne. 

They spend the rest of the day hauling the bodies a long way down river, dumping them in an obscure ravine where they’re never found. 

Nothing surprises me anymore. Humanity’s malignance is bottomless. And I’ve long since grown numb to it. These guys, though – if Hell were real, it was made with them in mind. 

Hunt enjoyed it. So did Frank. Bo mostly worried about getting caught. Only Jimmy felt remorse. 

It’s not the first time I’ve dropped into a room where everybody deserves to die – but even Jimmy has it coming. 

I need more, if I’m picking just one. 

I look ahead, with all of them. If nothing changes, Hunt is going to be a husband and father himself a few years from now, and he’s going to kill his wife and son. Frank will accidentally set fire to himself in a hotel, dying and taking a dozen people with him. Bo will be joining the Klan in a few years, and will take up lynching. 

Jimmy has been scared straight. If he lives, it will be an honest life. 

But wait... 

Jimmy is in a car accident twenty years from now, and a child in the other car is killed. I look down the child’s road, and he’d have become a fighter pilot in World War II, taking out a German bomber that would have killed over a hundred Londoners. 

That’s it. 

I slip out of the bunk as quietly as I can, passing the slumbering Jimmy and easing out the door. I cause the dog in the barn to remain asleep when I step inside it to liberate a length of twine from a nail on the wall. I come back to the bunkhouse and loop the twine around the doorlatch, tying it to a hitching post next to the door. 

I wake Jimmy, filling his head with unbearable dread. Fingers crossed, I listen as he strikes a match and lights the lantern. I see it glowing under the door. 

I drop Jimmy in his tracks, giving him a massive stroke. The lantern crashes to the floor, and in five seconds, the place is in flames. 

And they can’t get out. 

Whoever or whatever it is out there that is dragging me through this endless night never lets me take more than one. I can’t take more than one, and I have to take someone. Those are the rules. But I only killed Jimmy; by starting the fire, Jimmy killed the other three. Leave me out of whatever philosophical conundrums emerge from this reasoning; I’m just doing my job. 

Before I slip away, I step back and enjoy the fire. It’s warm. Comfortable...