35

Five minutes of studying the Thomas Guide. A hundred and twenty minutes on Freeway 101 north, following through.

Twilight arrived midway through the drive. By the time I reached Santa Barbara the sky was black. I picked up the 154 near Goleta, found the San Marcos pass with little difficulty, and drove through the mountains all the way to Lake Cachuma.

Locating what I was looking for was more of a challenge. This was ranch country, no street signs or lamps or Chamber of Commerce puffery. I overshot the first time, didn’t realize it until I hit the town of Ballard. Reversing direction, I cruised slowly. Despite straining eyes and a heavy foot on the brake, I passed it going the other way, too. But my headlights trapped a wooden sign just long enough for the image to register as I rolled by.

INCENTIVE RANCH

PRIVATE PROPERTY

I cut the lights, backed up, and stuck my head out the car window. Cooler up here. A breeze that smelled of dust and dry grass. The sign was handmade, nailhead letters in pine, swinging gently over a square wooden gate. The gate was low and squat. Horizontal planks in a wooden frame. Maybe five feet high, connected to tongue-and-groove fencing that blocked the entry.

Leaving the engine running, I got out of the Seville and walked to the gate. It yielded a bit when I pushed, but remained shut. After a couple of false starts I found a toehold between two of the planks, hoisted myself up, and ran my hand over the inner side of the gate. Metal latch. Big padlock. The view beyond, barely starlit. Below, a narrow dirt road, passing between what looked to be tall trees. Mountains in the background, sharp and black as a witch’s cap.

Returning to the car, I edged out and drove a hundred yards or so until I found a spot where the shoulder was shaded by trees. Shrubs, really. Scrawny, wind-whipped things that appeared to grow out of the mountainside and hung suspended over the asphalt. Not concealment but maybe just enough camouflage to shield the car from casual discovery.

I parked, locked, walked back to the gate on foot, recovered my toehold, and was over in a wink.

The road was lumpy and pebble-strewn. I lost my footing several times in the darkness and landed on my palms. As I got closer to the tall trees, I picked up a piny scent. My face began to tingle and itch. Unseen bugs feasting on my flesh.

The trees were packed close together but few in number. Within moments I was in unprotected space. Flat space lit gray by a feeble quarter moon. I stopped, listened. Heard the blood sloshing in my ears. Gradually, details asserted themselves.

A stadium-size plot of dirt, planted, in no discernible pattern, with half a dozen trees. Low-voltage spots at some of the trunk bases.

My nose went to work again. Citrus perfume so strong my mouth tasted summer-vacation lemonade. Unimpressed, the bugs stayed with red meat.

I took a cautious step. Ten more, then twenty. Fuzzy white rectangles appeared through the leaves of one of the trees. I walked around the citrus boughs. The rectangles became windows. I knew there had to be a wall behind them and my mind drew one before my eyes actually saw it.

A house. Modest size. Single story, low-pitched roof. Three windows lit but nothing visible through them. Curtained.

The basic California ranch setup. Silent. Pastoral.

So peaceful it made me doubt my hunch. But too many things fit together…

I searched for more details.

Saw the vehicle I was looking for.

To the left of the house was stake-and-post fencing. A corral.

Behind that, outbuildings. I headed toward them, heard the whinny and snort of horses, filled my nose with the mealy aroma of old hay and manure.

The horse sounds grew louder. I located the origin: stables, directly behind the corral. Behind that- twenty yards back- a tall building that appeared windowless. Feed barn. Farther back, to the right, a smaller structure.

Light there, too. One rectangle. Single window.

I moved forward. The horses pawed and whickered. Got louder. Only a few from the sound of it, but what they lacked in numbers they made up in anxiety. I held my breath, continued. Hooves thudded against soft wood; I thought I felt the earth vibrate, but it might have been my legs shaking.

The horses turned up the volume even further, lathering passionately. I heard a creak and a click from the direction of the smallest building. Pressing myself against the corral, I watched a column of light spread across the dirt as the front door to the building swung open. A screen door whistled and someone stepped out.

The horses kept whinnying. One of them let out a throaty, gaseous rumble.

A deep voice shouted, “Shut up!”

Sudden silence.

The shouter stood there for a moment, then went back inside. The light column thinned to a thread but didn’t vanish. I stayed here, listening to the horses panting. Feeling many-legged things tour my hands and face.

Finally the door shut all the way. I slapped at my cheeks, waited several more minutes before moving forward.

Behind the stable walls the horses were whimpering in frustration. I ran past them, kicking up gravel and cursing my leather shoes.

I stopped at the barn door. Sounds- not equine- were coming from the small building. The single window cast a filmy glow on the dust. Sticking close to the barn siding, I inched my way toward the light.

Step by step. The sounds took on tone and form and species.

Human.

A human duet.

One voice talking, another humming. No. Moaning.

I was at the front wall of the small building now, pressing against rough wood but still unable to shape the sounds into words.

Angry tone in the first voice.

Giving orders.

The second voice resisting.

A curious, high-frequency noise, like that of a TV being switched on.

More moans. Louder.

Someone resisting and suffering because of it.

I ran to the window, crouched below the sill until my knees hurt, slowly raised myself and tried to peer through the shades.

Opaque. All I could discern was the barest abstraction of movement- the light-shift of form through space.

The sounds of torment continued from within.

I got to the door, pulled the screen door open, and winced as it creaked.

The sounds continued.

I groped in the darkness for the handle to the inner door.

Rusted knob, loose on its bearings. Metallic jingle. I quieted it by grasping with both hands. Turned slowly. Pushed.

An inch of spy-space. I looked through it, heart speeding. What I saw spurred it faster.

My hand pulled the door open… in.

The room was long and narrow and paneled with fake wormwood the color of cigarette ash. Black linoleum floor. Light from two cheap looking swag lamps on opposite ends. Dry, smoke-flavored heat from a wall unit.

A pair of chipped white barber chairs were bolted to the center of the floor, set three feet apart, in semi-recline.

The first chair was empty. The second contained a woman wearing a hospital gown, tethered at ankles, wrists, waist, and chest by broad leather straps. Patches of hair had been shaved from her head, creating a crude checkerboard. Electrodes were fastened to white scalp-patches and to arms and inner thighs. Wires running from each site merged to a central orange cable that snaked across the floor and ended at a gray metal box, high as a refrigerator, twice as wide. The box was faced with dials and glassed meters. Some of the needles on the meters quivered.

The edge of something stuck out from behind the box. Chrome-shiny, wheeled legs.