Prized Possessions

by L. R. Wright

  “Okeydokey,” said Gardiner, firing up the Olds. “Here we go.”

  He could be a good driver when he wanted to, Gardiner. He moved them along smooth as silk, whistling softly to himself.

  “We’re leaving the highway here, going up this here road, it’s looking good, my man, not much civilization up this way—okay, they’re turning off, I’m following, they’re pulling into a driveway here, and I’m keeping right on going, looking over at me, they are, I’m giving them a friendly little wave—”

  “Jesus, don’t,” said Eddie, horrified.

  “—hi, bitches, hi there,” said Gardiner, waving. “Going going going…okay, can’t see them anymore.”

  Eddie hauled himself off the floor and onto the seat. He was panting a little bit, as if he’d been working out.

  “Okay, I’m gonna cruise by one more time, sport,” said Gardiner, getting the car turned around, “to get the lay of the land.”

  They were on a very narrow road with no yellow line down the middle of it. On one side was a thick forest. On the other were some dug-up places where new houses were going to be built. Every so often there was an old house, set in the middle of a huge lot that Eddie figured was probably actually a small farm: most of them had other buildings on them besides the house—barns and henhouses and things. They drove slowly past some more land cleared for building and approached a small white house with big flowering bushes at the front door.

  “That’s her,” said Gardiner, pointing. “That’s the place.” He stopped the car, motor running.

  “Shit, Gardiner, don’t let them see you,” said Eddie, ducking.

  Gardiner had a big smile on his face. “No problem,” he said. “Duck soup.” He turned to Eddie and gave him a playful punch in the shoulder. “Your troubles are nearly over, Ed.” He revved the motor and sped away, laying rubber.

  “Christ, Gardiner,” said Eddie, craning to watch the small white house as it rapidly got smaller and then disappeared.

  “Now we get ourselves some more food,” said Gardiner, “and a six-pack, and we tilt ourselves a couple till it gets dark.”

  They sped down the hill, back onto the highway, and through town, heading south. They picked up hamburgers and french fries at a take-out place, and found the liquor store, where Gardiner sprang for a case of beer. They discovered a logging road and drove along it a couple of miles inland—Gardiner didn’t want to be too close to the ocean. Gardiner turned on the radio and seemed surprised to find the same station coming through that he listened to in Vancouver. He sang along in his twangy voice, and Eddie, so as not to get irritated with the country music, and not to get nervous at the thought of breaking into somebody’s house, which he’d never done before, and which he could just hear Sylvia yelling at him about, drank one beer after another. So did Gardiner.

  When it got dark, Eddie said, “Should we go do it now?”

  Gardiner shook his head. “Gotta wait till they’re asleep.”

  “How long?”

  “I don’t know. What do you think?”

  “I don’t know when bitches go to sleep.”

  “When it’s midnight we’ll drive past the place, see if there are any lights on.”

  When midnight came, they did, and saw no lights.

  But they drove past and waited a while longer, just to be sure. It was getting cold, and they’d run out of beer.

  And then they went back to the small white house. Gardiner switched off the lights before they got there, and turned off the motor too, and the car drifted to a stop a little way past the house, on the other side of the road. For a few minutes nothing happened. Then both doors opened, and Eddie and Gardiner got out.

  44

  THERE WAS A MOON that night, and wind, and the wind tossed trees around, creating shadows to roam in Kathy’s bedroom. She lay sleepless in her single bed, watching the shadows flicker across the wall. The room was so depressing, filled with boxes she’d been too tired to unpack before falling into bed.

  There were altogether too many things to worry about, that was the problem, she thought, turning over, tossing her pillow on the floor. First, she was pretty sure she’d been badly cast in The Hollow. Second, she didn’t like Sechelt—it looked like a very boring place. Third, she missed Melanie. And fourth, she wondered if she shouldn’t have stayed in Vancouver after all and looked for nontheater work that would have paid some real money.

  Kathy heard one of her roommates moving around somewhere in the house, sleepless like herself, moving quietly so as not to disturb anyone. It must be Sandy. It wouldn’t occur to Caroline that anything she did could possibly bother anybody.

  Oh, don’t be a bitch, Kathy told herself impatiently, and turned over again.

  There was a thin strip of light around the blind covering the open window. Every so often it widened, as the blind shivered and moved into the room on a puff of wind, then narrowed again, when the wind subsided. There was a faint clattering sound as the slat at the bottom of the blind struck the windowsill.

  Maybe if she went through her problems one at a time, looking at each one clearly, they’d turn out not to be so bad. She knew that worries attracted other worries like magnets, glomming together to create something intolerably heavy, and that when she was able to grab them and deal with them one at a time, life was a lot more manageable. Kathy retrieved her pillow, propped it against the headboard, and leaned back, her arms crossed under her breasts. First, the casting. She was playing Veronica Craye, an actress who was incredibly beautiful and knew it. Kathy winced whenever she thought about it. There was no way she could, believably, play “incredibly beautiful.”

  “Trust me,” the director had said.

  But this was always a problem for Kathy. She hated relinquishing control—though she knew this was an essential part of learning a role. She’d just have to grit her teeth and do it, she thought. Let herself go, make herself try everything Doreen suggested. If it didn’t work, if it turned out that she really had been miscast, this would be quickly obvious to everybody.

  The wind caused the blind to flutter again, and Kathy felt a gust of nighttime caress her face, bringing with it the scent of the lilacs that grew at the front of the house. She’d been very glad to see the lilacs; they reminded her of her parents’ house in Richmond.

  Next, Sechelt. She admitted that it was pretty. But there was absolutely nothing to do here. She punched at her pillow, which was thin and knobbly, and rearranged it behind her head. Of course, she’d only just arrived, just barely met the rest of the company. As soon as they began to know one another, they’d start exploring the town together, and eventually they’d settle on a place—a café, or a bar—that would become “their” place for the remainder of the summer. Kathy’s common sense told her this, and she knew it was true.

  Down the hall the toilet flushed, and she heard the hall floor squeak and the sound of Sandy’s door softly closing. Kathy knew Sandy was lonely in there, although she hadn’t said so. It was the biggest of the bedrooms, with twin beds and two chests of drawers and a huge closet. Sandy and Melanie had been going to share it.

  She groped for the travel alarm clock on her bedside table. One-thirty. Shit. She still wasn’t a bit sleepy, and she had to get up in five hours.

  She lay on her back, hands behind her head. Her mother always said that if you couldn’t sleep you might as well get up and do something. Read, or watch TV, or bake bread or something. Go for a walk, maybe.

  A swath of bright light swept suddenly, unexpectedly, through her room, which was a corner room at the back of the house. Kathy felt for a moment as if she were on a ship that had come too close to a lighthouse—she experienced a strong sense of motion, because of the shifting shadows on her bedroom walls, and the beam of light flashing its warning—but almost immediately she heard the sound of automobile tires and realized that what she’d seen was the headlights of a passing car.

  At least she had transportation. Thank God, she had transportation. If she
got totally fed up with being in this rinkydink town, sharing a house all summer with the same people she lived with the rest of the year, depressed at not doing well enough in the show, she’d hop in her car and get the hell out of here for the day, go back to Vancouver, see her family, get free food and some TLC from her parents.

  It was too depressing to consider her third worry, which was money. There wasn’t a damn thing she could do except plummet deeper and deeper into debt. Maybe when she graduated she’d work for a year at something other than the theater, something that paid well, so she could knock off at least part of her loan real fast.

  Or maybe, she thought, smiling to herself, she’d be lucky. Maybe she’d get some television work, or a film, and make a lot of bucks quick. Who knows? she thought. Anything’s possible.

  At this point Kathy heard something. But it was a sound not immediately identifiable—a foreign sound, unconnected to anything she was thinking about. And so she ignored it. Her brain, preoccupied with worrying, absently stashed it away somewhere: Kathy could consider the nature and significance of this sound later, if necessary; assuming, of course, that she could remember, later, just where in her brain she’d put it.

  She looked again at her clock and, to her dismay, saw that only seven minutes had passed. She was going to have to get up and do something, all right.

  Baking bread seemed a bit much. And she didn’t want to go for a walk, because that would mean getting dressed, and probably by the time she’d gotten dressed she’d be tired, and then she’d just have to get undressed again. But that’s what she wanted, right? To feel tired? Tired enough to sleep…

  She wondered what was on TV. Some old series, probably. Maybe an old movie or two.

  Now she was hungry. Christ, she said to herself. This was getting ridiculous.

  Down the hall she heard the floor squeak again, and Sandy’s door opening.

  Fuck this, thought Kathy, and she flung back her covers. She’d drag Sandy into the kitchen and they’d make themselves a snack and then go watch TV and so what if she didn’t get any sleep the whole fucking night…

  She was halfway to the door when the world exploded.

  The next minutes passed like a dream in which flight is imperative but fleeing is impossible. Kathy moved as if swimming through a sea of molasses. She turned, aimed herself at the open bedroom window, and propelled herself through it to the hard-packed ground below. It felt to her as though she’d bounced, lightly, like a feather, but later she saw that she’d skinned both her knees. Kathy the feather strained across the grass toward the forest, weightless, insubstantial, blown by small desultory puffs of a careless breeze, moving with agonizing slowness—but when she touched the trunk of the first tree, the world snapped back into its proper rhythm, and Kathy, released, ran.

  She pelted through the forest, barefoot, sobbing, her hands flung out in front of her to catch branches before they whipped at her face. She stumbled, fell, scrambled to her feet, ran, fell again, staggered up again, ran again. And she heard him behind her, and maybe she imagined this, but it made her run harder, and faster, and finally she erupted from the woods onto the highway.

  It was sleek and black, and the yellow line down the center was garish in the moonlight. The wind tossed restlessly in the trees and sent bits of woodland skittering across the road. There wasn’t a car in sight. Nor a building, either.

  Kathy stood on the highway, panting, looking from left to right, trying not to listen to the sounds in the forest behind her. And when a car did finally appear, from the left, she flattened herself in the ditch and gripped the weeds that grew there; she felt the soft flesh of dandelions dying in her hands. As the car drew closer, she forced herself to peer over the shoulder of the road. It was an RCMP patrol car. Kathy struggled to her feet and began screaming.

  45

  THE WHITE CAT had one hazel eye and one blue one. He sat in the sun on the narrow stone walk that led to the small white house, and cleaned himself; his tongue had backward-curving spines like the teeth of a comb. The sun warmed him while he licked—industriously; thoroughly. When it was time to do his face and ears, he licked the inner surfaces of his forepaws and used them as a washcloth.

  The cat had been outside for several hours now; he had been frightened from his customary sleeping place on the living room sofa and had fled outdoors to find shelter in a woodshed at the bottom of the yard. He’d emerged just when the sky was beginning to lighten, when a silver sheen hung over the world and the dew was thick on the grass.

  The cat had crept back to the house when he saw signs of activity there. From within the screen of lilac bushes by the front door, he had observed several people coming and going; none was familiar, so he had backed away, to groom himself in the sun.

  Now he sidled along the walk and peered through the doorway. After a moment’s hesitation, he edged around the open door and into the house.

  There were two men at the end of the hall, with their backs to the front door. One was standing, the other was kneeling. They were looking down at the floor. The cat padded near and tried to see around the kneeling man, but couldn’t.

  He slid into the nearest of the bedrooms, where one of the blinds was still down, outlined thinly in sunlight. But the other blind had been raised, and the sun had burst through, falling upon another man, who was crouched beside the bed.

  The cat crept to the other side of the bed, away from the man. He saw the limp arm that dangled over the edge of the mattress, and swatted it with his paw. This attracted the attention of the man, who said, “Get out of here,” and made a swift, threatening gesture.

  The cat loped away to seek refuge in the living room, where he leaped silently onto the sofa, then the sofa back, and then the open shelving that held books and knickknacks and plants in pots. He stood on his hind legs and reached up, stretching, to sharpen his claws on the heavy cedar from which the bookcase was constructed. Then he sat, front paws close together, and he curled his tail around his body and yawned. Unblinking, he watched the doorway. None of the voices he heard was yet familiar.

  A few minutes later, he descended from the bookcase and ambled out of the living room, across the hall, and into the kitchen. He lapped some water from one of his dishes and sniffed at the other, which was empty. He went to the doorway and peeked around in time to see the kneeling man stand up.

  The cat edged out of the kitchen and slithered along the wall until he got to the inert shape on the floor. Delicately, he sniffed the outflung arm and the large wet spot on the wooden floor.

  “Beat it,” said one of the men.

  The cat ran into one of the other bedrooms and sprang onto the empty, rumpled bed and then onto the windowsill. He sat there in the wide-open window, holding his face into the warm, fragrance-laden breeze. Then he leapt down and returned to the kitchen, to sniff again at his food dish.

  “You hungry, cat?” said Alberg, as he entered the room. The cat uttered a creaky meow. Alberg opened cupboards, hooking his ballpoint pen behind the chrome pulls, until he found a box of dry food. He poured some into the cat’s dish.

  Sanducci came into the kitchen. “The hospital says you can talk to her now, Staff.”

  “You okay?” said Alberg. Sanducci’s olive skin had an alarming layer of white beneath it.

  “Yeah. I’m okay.” He hesitated. “Her name’s Kathy.”

  “Kathy,” Alberg repeated. He looked closely at the corporal. “You better come with me, Sanducci.” They went into the hall. “Alex. Are you finished?”

  The doctor leaned, dizzy, against the wall. “Yeah. Jesus.”

  Alberg went out onto the porch and gestured to the ambulance attendants waiting by their vehicle. When they reached him he said, “There’s one at the end of the hall and one in the first bedroom.”

  He stood on the porch, looking toward the small crowd of people that had gathered on the street in front of the house. It was a relief to get out into the fresh air. He had turned his eyes into a camera; but the
re was nothing he could do about his other senses, and he was sick from the smell of blood.

  “You want to go now, Staff?” said Sanducci.

  Alberg glanced back down the hall and quickly away, into the living room. He saw blossoms filling a vase that had been set upon a wooden table; branches of deep-pink flowers whose petals had begun to fall, scattering themselves over the tabletop and upon the floor.

  “Yeah,” said Alberg. He put a hand on Sanducci’s shoulder. “Let’s go talk to Kathy.”

  46

  ALL EDDIE COULD think of was that they were going to get up, the two of them, what was left of them, all red and dripping, and come after him and Gardiner. He wasn’t afraid of the cops, or the girl that got away; he was only afraid of the dead girls. He could see them getting onto their dead feet, wobbly and shaken, with blood on their faces, blood on their chests, big chunks of flesh gone, accusation in their eyes. Already he could see this. He’d barely turned away from the open window the girl had gone through when he saw it. Staring down at the one lying dead in the hallway, he’d seen it even in her stillness, her blood-spattered inertness. Even as he saw that she would never move again, he saw her begin to move—to stand; to raise a hand; to point. He leapt over her and ran down the hall after Gardiner, who was already halfway to the car.

  Gardiner scuttled across the lawn, across the road, and it looked to Eddie like Gardiner’s legs had suddenly become too long for him to manipulate. He was covering ground fast, though, clutching at it, pulling it toward him—like a spider skittering or a person swimming. Eddie was moving fast too. He got to the car just as Gardiner cranked up the motor; he flung himself inside and slammed the door shut.