THE TRICKSTER

by Muriel Gray

  “Not at all. What can I do for you?”

  “Two things, really. Well, one that you can do for me, and the other just to keep you informed.”

  She listened. Craig thought how pretty she was. There was still a mark on the bridge of her nose from her spectacles, and he watched as the creamy flesh of that bump filled itself in again. But her eyes were ringed with black circles, the bagginess beneath them betraying that perhaps Mrs. Hunt wasn’t sleeping so good. He noted that.

  “This is going to sound crazy, but I’m here to ask you about some historical stuff.”

  “Hey. You don’t need to tell me. I can put your mind at rest right now and tell you it’s not true what Mounties used to do with their horses.”

  That had been unnecessary.

  But he laughed and she was relieved to see that he didn’t register her aggression. “No. It’s more up your street, Mrs. Hunt. It’s about the Kinchuinicks.”

  “Oh?”

  Her tone was wary. He tried to look reassuring, to look less like a cop. The radio on his shoulder foiled him as it crackled into life for a second, and he turned it down to a faint buzz with an apologetic glance. “We talked to a man today, I can’t say who for reasons of privacy, but he said there was a Kinchuinick phrase, a rhyme, and I wonder if you’ve heard it?”

  “We have a book full of the things. Let’s hear it.”

  He looked at his shoes. “It’s pretty crude. The guy said that Kinchuinick women used to say it to their boys before they reached puberty. Presumably to prepare them for manhood.”

  She leaned back in her chair and smiled.

  “Oh ho. You think it’s delicate. I wish white women said it to their sons, Staff Sergeant: it should be inscribed in stone above every high school entrance. I know it very well. And I wish I could say it in Siouan, ‘cause it rhymes, you know, but it goes, ‘The Kinchuinick man makes life with his penis but he should live life with his heart.’”

  Craig lit up. He slapped his palms together, then pointed at her with a delighted finger. “That’s it. You know it.”

  “Sure. It’s still in use, far as I know. I think they were trying to teach a primitive form of birth control with it. Fat chance.”

  He sat looking satisfied for a moment as she waited for his next question. It was completely unrelated.

  “Do they use animals in any rituals at all?”

  “Use them? Like how?”

  “I don’t know. Do something with them that results in their death. Anything. Anything ritualistic at all.”

  She gave a bitter laugh. “You sound like those journalists.”

  “What journalists?”

  “You just missed two morons who wanted to speak to Sam about how he was preparing himself against what they seemed to think was an Indian killer. Not very accurate, given that the boy was a white Californian.”

  Craig’s face grew a mask. She noted it and leaned forward.

  “What?”

  “That was the other thing, Mrs. Hunt. I wanted to tell you before you heard it, but seems like I’m way behind here. Daniel Hawk is dead.”

  Her hand gripped the edge of Nicholson’s book. “Dead.”

  It wasn’t a question. She just repeated the word as though it might go away. She didn’t need to ask if he was murdered. Of course he was. That guy. He’d been in her living room. Right there on the sofa. Blood pumping through his veins, air going in and out of his lungs.

  How did you survive?

  I breathed in and out.

  The one that had known Sam back then. Back when he was being tortured. The one that gave away the fact he was called Hunting Wolf.

  Dead.

  Craig shifted his weight, then looked at her with sympathy. “We don’t need to bother you about it, Mrs. Hunt. I’m sure you know, and I apologize for it now, but we had men watching your house. We know it can’t have been your husband.”

  “When did it happen?” She was stunned.

  “Tuesday night. Same night we came around to you. Your husband didn’t leave the house that night, did he?”

  It was meant to be a rhetorical question. He was not asking her, but telling her. But then he saw it. Huge and unmistakable and written in facial letters the size of a house. He tried not to let it show but she saw that he had seen it. It was the lie forming in her eyes and on her lips. Agnes Root had it right. Katie Hunt was a terrible liar. Craig watched her try and fail.

  “That’s right. He didn’t.”

  There was silence for a moment. Craig picked up a leather glove from his lap and turned it over in his hands.

  “So. The animals. Anything spring to mind?”

  He watched as she gathered up the pieces of herself. She lifted up her spectacles and put them on clumsily, as if to make herself more scholarly, or perhaps to try and put a barrier between her eyes and his.

  “Animals?”

  She cleared her throat of an imaginary obstruction. Buying time. Craig had seen it often in liars.

  “ ‘Um, no. They would never do anything to hurt animals. They worshiped many of them as deities. In fact, when they killed for food they would spend days praying for the soul of the creature they’d eaten. No. I can’t think of anything that would make them hurt animals in a ritual way.”

  Craig nodded, trying to make her continue. Only really now, so he could watch her face and see how soon she could wipe off that big telltale fib.

  She continued, wriggling under the pincer of his gaze. “Certainly they thought that animals could be their spirit guides. I’m sure you know that’s a very strong part of their religion even today. And some shamans believed they could shape-shift into animals to go unseen. But that’s about it, really.”

  “Shape-shift? You mean, possess the animals?”

  “Well, borrow them for a while. They’re very strong on that. They say it’s only the most evil of spirits who possess without permission. The Kinchuinick shape-shifter asks the animal first. It’s a long ceremony. They have respect, these people.” She laughed nervously. Craig seemed interested.

  “And they still believe they can move about as animals?”

  “Shamans, yes. Not so much believe. They take it for granted. They can also transport themselves, their physical bodies as humans, that is, across incredible distances. You’ll find the religion of the Australian Aborigine is similar in this belief. In fact, there was documented evidence that an Aboriginal man was familiar with the craters and valleys on the moon and described them in detail to an anthropologist about ten years before the first moon landing. Well, Kinchuinick shamans are the same. They claim they can move around like that. After praying and fasting, of course.”

  She was calmer now. Enjoying the escape of a subject she was an authority on. A safe place to hide from whatever was going on in her mind.

  “And so who are these shamans?”

  “Usually the chief, but sometimes just a medicine man or woman. It’s a respected position in the band, and it’s usually passed down, father to son, mother to daughter, whatever.”

  “Is it horseshit?”

  She raised an eyebrow and tried to look amused. She was still far from being amused. This was show. “Please!”

  “Come on. You know what I mean.”

  “You’re being a science bigot, Staff Sergeant. Modern medicine has a hell of a lot to learn from Indian herbal cures and hands-on healing. Some skeptics who’ve come to it have been amazed at the results. We have two papers here written by a guy from Calgary University who catalogs some incredible things, if you’re interested. Firsthand reports and observations. It’s academic, not speculative.”

  “So you believe it?”

  “I don’t disbelieve it.”

  “Can Mr. Hunt shape-shift?” He tried a smile with the question. He got the first visible sign from her that everything was far from good. Her voice was acid.

  “What do you think?”

  He held up his hands. “Hey. Joke. I was just asking.”

  “My husba
nd is not a shaman. He doesn’t shake rattles or spread herbs around the TV to make the Flames win the Stanley Cup. He’s a manual groomer. He shovels snow.”

  Craig waved his hands again to say he knew that.

  “Why are you interested, may I ask?”

  Craig licked his lips. “Daniel got me interested. It’s just kind of my way of dealing with his death, showing respect, I suppose. To find out more.” His turn to lie. He was better at it. Much better. She didn’t see him struggle under the guilt of it.

  “Do you want the papers I mentioned?”

  She was cold now, an ice queen offering knowledge.

  “Sure. That would be great if it’s no trouble.”

  “No trouble. They’re here.”

  She got up and went to the metal filing cabinet, and after some hissing with folders pulled out a bunch of paper tied together at the top with short string and metal binders. She handed it to him. Lots of close print and annotations. It looked like dull stuff.

  “I hope you find it interesting.”

  “Thank you. I’ll bring it straight back.”

  “No hurry.”

  Katie held the door open for him while she was on her feet, and he stood up, grateful to be released.

  “Thanks for your help, Mrs. Hunt. Sorry to bring more bad news.” He shook her hand. Katie nodded and shut the door after him.

  She’d lied. He was out that night, and not for a walk around the block. Unless going around the block took a couple of hours. Was she going to be the last person to know what was happening with her husband?

  Jesus Christ, she was spending all her waking hours swinging from hope and love to mistrust and insanity. It was eating her up like a cancer and she put her hands to her face in pain.

  And for the hundredth time she told herself it was unthinkable. Completely and utterly impossible. Sam was not a killer. She loved him. She knew him. Did she? Until last night had she known that the man she loved had been forged on an anvil of torture and darkness? Had she known that her son would fear his father for some unknown transgression that was neither discussed nor explained?

  Impossible? Well, who knows? Maybe she’d like to tell Craig McGee that anything was possible.

  43

  The pipes made soft ticking noises as they cooled down. The central heating had gone off. Sam opened his eyes and his head worked out that the noise meant he had overslept. Katie was gone. He focused blearily on the digital clock on her bedside table and groaned. Eleven-fifteen. That wasn’t late. That was ridiculous. The house was big and empty and silent, and as he started to feel that they’d all cheated him, sneaking out like that and leaving him to oversleep, he remembered last night.

  Had it been a dream? His hand went to his throat where the amulet had always hung, and he touched the naked flesh. No. It hadn’t been a dream. He had told her about his sick little life, and before she’d joined him in bed last night he’d ripped the cursed thing off and flung it under the bed with contempt, just as he seemed to be tossing away his life in all this madness.

  For one fleeting, unbearable moment his world fell from him like a chair kicked away from under a hanging man. Had she left him? He’d told her it all, well, nearly all. And although she had listened with sympathy and love she had acted weird in bed. His hand moved from his throat to his shoulder where the scar from her bite was scabbed over now in a crusty black line, and he closed his eyes in a prayer that she was coming home tonight.

  He ached for the touch and the smell of Katie, the sight of her streaky blond hair mussed up over her face and those dreamy, half-awake eyes full of love and desire. She was at work. She hadn’t woken him. He suddenly felt deeply lonely.

  He sighed and put his arm behind his head and tried to take comfort from the warmth of the bed. His face was still scratched from the fall yesterday, and he fingered those scabs too. Seemed like everything hurt him these days, cut him and left its mark. But he knew he’d been lucky. He’d been skiing faster than he’d ever skied in his life, pointing his skis straight down the fall line like a downhill racer, schussing rather than skiing, blind with panic and fear.

  Now he lay in his warm bed in the darkened room, looking at the irregular patch of gray daylight on the ceiling that was filtering through the curtains, and knowing that outside would be two cops looking up at the bedroom window, wondering why those curtains were still drawn.

  “Warning! Warning! Danger!”

  The voice of the TV robot.

  Sam sat up with the terror of complete bewilderment in his racing heart, eyes boggling at the source of the voice. A tall figure, in the gloom, sitting on Katie’s cane chair by the wardrobe. It laughed. A deep, throaty sound that was like a drunk coughing on bile. And the voice. This time trilling and mocking, imitating a woman’s like a burlesque player.

  “Did it make you shit your pants this time? Huh?”

  Sam could see it now. The face in the crowd again. It was here. In his own bedroom, sitting on the chair laughing at him with those blue eyes that were so poorly drawn, the pink mouth that was so inexpertly realized. At least to Sam. For he could see the machinations behind the pretend skin, and his body and soul were paralyzed with fear in the face of it. It moved its mouth again, although the speech seemed driven from elsewhere.

  “Smells like it from here. But then, who could mistake the stench of Kinchuinick vermin?”

  The house. Was it empty? Sam’s mind raced, praying that the children and Katie were gone as he’d assumed. The face in the crowd caught his thought as though he’d tossed a ball.

  From the next room there was a wail.

  “Daaaad! Help me! Please! Dad!”

  Billy. Then the crying of Jess, that high, sweet burbling cry.

  Sam jerked in instinctive response, but the thing was grinning and he knew it was false, knew that his family was not here. It was a poor trick. An obvious one. He remained sitting upright like a gaping fool, naked to the waist, vulnerable and nearly out of his mind. His guest crossed its legs.

  “Harder to find in these modern times, aren’t you? Even though the reek of losers carries across centuries.”

  Sam’s back teeth were grinding.

  “Did you think that you could hide, all you little shits? Hide among white men?” It laughed again. “Oh, but I’ve enjoyed the search. So much misery. Such lost and useless lives. What has become of you, my fine noble people?”

  The laugh again. This time the unmistakable sarcastic, bitter laugh of Moses. Heh, heh, heh. Sam wanted to close his eyes, put his hands over his face and open them to an empty chair, but his senses would not let it happen. There was real danger in the room, and his animal fight-or-flight instinct was in charge. His mind could tell him all he wanted that what he saw and heard was not real, but his body was not prepared to listen. His eyes remained staring and wide, his ears listening to every sound and his body ready to spring. But at what?

  The thing stopped its mockery and there was a flash of anger in its eyes. “Did you think to trick me, perhaps?”

  There was a madness in the tone this time, a childish petulance that was unstable and out of control. It looked at the naked area around Sam’s neck where the amulet had been, and smiled weakly, the anger and something else, something like confusion, hidden again, the composure of a torturer resumed.

  “Well, now, my degenerate son of a drunkard…” It paused as if waiting for a rebuke, then spoke quietly and with satisfaction. “Do you know my name?”

  Sam clutched the sheet, grasping it to remind his paralyzed spirit that he was still alive, that though the world had gone spinning out of control, the rough linen touch of the sheet was a constant. Real. Here. Under his fingers.

  “Do you know my name?”

  No. Not this. Not this madness from the past when sticks and rocks and herbs ruled his intellect. When spirits spoke and the air trembled under Calvin’s outstretched arms. Not that insanity. He would not submit to it again.

  “Do you know my name?”

&
nbsp; Such menace in the quiet voice this time. That undertone of madness. Did it think that his silence was a trick? That to deny this horror, a horror that had been predicted as though it were merely a summer storm by his grandfather and his shaman, was a calculated trick? It was no trick. He wanted no part of it. It was the only way.

  I survive. I breathe in and out. I will not listen. I will not believe.

  “MY NAME!”

  The force of its rage blew him back onto the pillow, and he lay gritting his teeth, his hands over his ears, eyes screwed tightly shut. He knew the thing in the room was changing, that it was abandoning its form for another that Sam could not bear to see. He would not see it. Would not speak to it.

  The air in the room changed its pressure as it was filled with something solidifying. Something massive.

  No. No. He would not. And yet, he could not deny it. He knew its name. Of course he knew its name.

  Eden. Looking at him from his cheap chair.

  “Say them again, boy.”

  “They sound the same.”

  “They ain’t the same. They be different.”

  “Why I need to know them?”

  “ ‘Cause he be clever in one way and real dumb in another. He only ever be rememberin’ his oldest name. You gotta tell him his other names, then he be knowin’ who he is for sure and who you be.”

  “What if I don’t tell him who he is?”

  Eden had laughed.

  “Then he just kill you.”

  The sweat was pouring down Sam’s brow, the sheet beneath his body already damp with the same from his back. The room was full of a roar whose frequency rattled the bed and shook the walls.

  As he fought to keep the sound of the nightmare in his house out of his head, there was no escape from the memory of Eden’s eyes, boring into him, making him listen, making him believe.

  “And he be mighty sorry if he lose you, ‘cause then he have to find someone else help him do his killin’. And that get harder to find the more men goes away from knowin’ what they used to know.”

  Sam, the boy, had been so confident, so sure. “Then I be lettin’ him kill me and everyone be safe.”