THE TRICKSTER

by Muriel Gray

  He felt it falter. It swirled like mud stirred, and gathered again in a concentration of hatred.

  “Do you know my name?”

  Calvin laughed bitterly and with every nerve in his body telling him not to, turned and looked away again as though the question were of little consequence. “You are nothing.”

  Dark tendrils reached out for him in the moving air and stopped as he’d prayed they would at the invisible barrier that circled the shaman. There was a roar from the thing behind the mask that could, and should, have stopped Calvin’s heart with its sudden volume and ferocity. But he had been prepared for its rage, and had focused his old eyes on a young couple enjoying ice cream and each other’s love at a table far down the restaurant. They heard nothing, for as Calvin was repeating over and over to himself in his terrified brain, it was nothing. The couple laughed at something the young man had said, and the girl put a dab of ice cream on his nose playfully with her spoon. Calvin shut his eyes with that vision sewn onto his lids. The love of the young. The love of life. Life must be allowed to continue. He was surviving. That was what counted.

  When he opened his eyes again, his wife was sitting opposite him.

  She was weeping. “Calvin? Will these never be full of milk?” She was holding her naked breasts out of the buckskin dress that she had always worn covered with a greasy woolen cardigan. Dead, he knew, but back now and imploring him.

  “Look! Look at what I must suffer because you shoot no seed.” She squeezed both breasts and oozing from them came clots of thick, sticky blood. It spurted onto the table, a great wet globule of it landing in his coffee mug with a slopping sound. Then she put her head back and laughed and her hands became like claws, ripping at her breasts until they burst with a thick tearing sound, splattering stinking black ooze over Calvin’s face.

  He swallowed hot bile back in his throat, wrenched his eyes away to the couple with the ice cream and concentrated on their love. The girl was holding her lover’s hand now, stroking the back of it with her delicate fingers. He focused on that act. What would it feel like for the boy? Her hands would be cold from holding the ice cream dish and the boy would enjoy the coolness of it. Yes, he could feel that if he thought hard enough. Soft, cold fingers toying with the hand she loved. Small, well-manicured nails scratching lightly at the skin, fingertips massaging the knuckles.

  “He won’t listen to nothin’ you be sayin’, you old butt-fucker. He fuckin’ hates you.”

  Moses. Slumped over the table with half a face and a mutilated, decomposing body slick with slime, moving quietly with the work of worms.

  Calvin faced it again, his eyes seeing the apparition but his heart concentrating on the pulse of life that meant people would always love other people. That girl’s fingers, they would probably stroke the boy’s face later, savoring every plane of his face, the feel of his rougher skin. Loving him. Longing to be with him, to share their lives and honor their own brief mortal spirits together.

  The half-face leered up at Calvin, losing two green teeth to gravity as it did. They fell on the foul, stained Formica table with a clatter before spinning off onto the floor. The thing cackled with a throat full of phlegm and pus, “Want a heart to love Sam with? Here!”

  He pulled at the ragged shirt and burst open the thin, putrefying flesh beneath it. The bony hand tugged at the strands of cartilage and sinew still attached to the heart and ripped it free. It put the still-beating, blackened organ triumphantly on the table, where it moved on its own like a skinned animal.

  “And how about a pecker to shove up his hole? You wanted to do that bad, huh?” It fumbled beneath the table. Calvin gathered his strength.

  “We laugh at you. All through the centuries. Laughing loud at the thing with no name. No power of its own.”

  It stopped its fumbling and fixed him with a searching black shaft of malice. The air was singing again, and once again Calvin felt fetid tendrils explore the circle around him.

  Slowly, as the shaman watched, Moses gave way to the blond mask. The pale eyes with their whorls of blackness beneath the blue smiled at him. “You should have stayed in the gutter to die in your own vomit. Your useless drunk’s head can’t even guess at how long and slow your death will be here. The agony will seem an age.”

  “I will die with a name. I will have existed. Your death is eternal.”

  Its fury made it careless. For a moment as it roared in Calvin’s face, the diners in the restaurant looked up in alarm. Some of them thought they saw something and some of them didn’t. But for a fraction of a second, the diners in Rib Experience, Main Street, Silver, found themselves like a herd of antelope smelling a lion, and their primeval senses twitched beneath their modern skins.

  It was over before the message reached their conscious brains, and the result was no more than a few butts shifting uneasily in seats, a few anxious glances at something they thought they saw at the table by the window. No riots, no peasants charging the beast with pitchforks. But Calvin cheered internally as his trickery worked. He had frightened it and it had retreated.

  The blond pretender realized its error and composed its human form more carefully as it stared at Calvin for an age, then stood up and left the restaurant calmly, waving to him through the window as it disappeared from view. Its coffee, of course, lay untouched. Calvin felt in his pocket for the dollars he had left and put two down on the table. He had to move, but he could not. His legs felt as though they were filled with nothing more than liquid rubber. Maybe it was right, he should have stayed in the gutter. His head and his heart were bursting, and all Calvin Bitterhand wanted to do was lie down and give up. The ice-cream couple had paid their check and were leaving now, and they walked to the door, arms around each other’s waists. Calvin watched them with dull, clouded eyes. Just before they reached the swinging doors, the boy broke away from his smiling girlfriend as though he realized he’d forgotten something, and approached Calvin’s table with an energetic bound. The old Indian stared at him warily, unable to arm himself against any more trickery. The boy leaned over Calvin’s table and put a hand on his shoulder.

  “Thank you. From everyone.”

  Calvin gaped at the boy, unable to answer or comprehend, until the girl called her partner back with a coquettish wave and they left the diner as they had entered. Laughing and kissing.

  The old shaman put his head into his hands and sobbed with self-pity and shame. He didn’t ask the Eagle for help and guidance and he didn’t want it now. He wanted out of the task. Why couldn’t it let him be? Right now, in the face of a greater darkness than he had ever conceived could be abroad in the world, he couldn’t find that pure place in his heart to accept without question the love of the Spirit. Yet that boy’s hand on his shoulder had made his legs work again, had calmed his dangerously racing heart, and he knew that the boy and the girl would not be hugging on the sidewalk when he left the restaurant. He glanced across to their table and saw through his tears what he knew he would see. The tiny, soft eagle feather below the girl’s chair moved in the draft from the closing door. He had not been alone in here. But he was very, very alone now.

  Gerry opened the door and stared at Craig, then past him at the unmistakable police Crown Vic in the street as though he were seeing a ghost. “But how… I didn’t call you guys yet.”

  Craig tried to piece it together. Why was Gerry Farrel, the head teacher from Silver Junior, answering Katie Hunt’s door? And what the hell was he babbling about?

  “Were you going to call us for something, Mr. Farrel?”

  Gerry was still staring.

  “Well… yes.”

  “Is Mrs. Hunt home?”

  Gerry clued in, and realized it was a coincidence. He ushered Craig inside, embarrassed and flustered. “Sure. I’m sorry, Staff Sergeant. Come in. How are you?”

  “Good. How’s Silver’s youth doing? My last visit turn them into decent citizens?”

  “Nope.”

  “Yeah? Guess it’s up to you, then,
huh?”

  Gerry laughed quickly and nervously, then let his smile evaporate. He put a hand out to Craig’s chest as he moved forward in the hall.

  “We got a big problem here. I know it’s none of my business, but if you’ve come with bad news about Sam, she’s in pretty bad shape. In fact, I don’t know if I should call the doc or not.”

  Craig looked at the closed living-room door and could hear the noises of sobbing and comforting going on.

  “Can I know what this is about?”

  Gerry nodded and led Craig up the lobby to the kitchen. He looked over his shoulder at him, then pushed the door open. Gerry stood to one side and let Craig enter the room, standing behind him as the policeman surveyed the carnage.

  “Who did this?”

  Gerry looked at his feet. “Sam.”

  “And he’s where?” He asked this knowing the answer.

  “Gone. He legged it when they caught him.”

  Craig turned back to Gerry, his eyes steady and emotionless. “Who’s they?”

  “Katie and Billy. He was standing over the dog with the shovel in his hand.”

  Craig nodded as if that happened all the time. “I really need to see Mrs. Hunt now.”

  “Like I said…”

  “Mr. Farrel.”

  “I’ll tell her you’re here first.”

  Gerry left to convey the news and Craig turned again to the remains of the dog. He walked forward to the edge of the gore and looked carefully at the mess. Looked like nobody had touched anything. The shovel was lying where it had been dropped beside the refrigerator, and the carcass lay ripped open on its back, its head clearly split open by the blade of the shovel. But the belly was torn. Craig noted that. Torn away in huge ragged chunks, and what was left of the dog’s jaws appeared to contain some of the guts. Did Sam manage to do that with a shovel?

  There was a noise behind him, and Katie, held up by Gerry’s wife, greeted him in the doorway with a shape made by her lips. She was rough, all right. Her eyes were barely visible, lost in the puffy mess that crying had left, and her face had somehow grown older, gray in pallor, less full in the cheek. He could see why Farrel was talking about medical help. She looked like she was going to keel over.

  Craig gestured to the hall behind them. “Let’s get out of here. Please.” He steered them back toward the living room and Katie sat down heavily on the sofa with Ann. Craig sat in the chair opposite. He looked up at Gerry. “Can we be alone for a while?”

  Ann looked at Katie. The wrecked woman nodded her consent. “Yeah. Could you check Billy’s still asleep? He might wake suddenly if that sleeping pill wears off. I don’t want him alone.”

  Ann squeezed Katie’s hunched shoulder and got up. “Sure. Call us when you’re through.” She threw Gerry a look and he followed her lead. They left the room quietly, and Craig waited until he heard them climb the stairs and open a door.

  Katie Hunt looked at Craig through her red-rimmed slits of eyes. The cop-hating ice maiden had gone. She looked relieved he was there.

  “He’s good with a shovel, don’t you think?”

  “Want to tell me what happened?”

  “What you saw.”

  “You burst in and found him doing that?”

  “He’d already done it. Bart was dead.” She wrestled a sob back. Her shoulders shook.

  “Why did he kill Bart?”

  Katie crossed her arms, which had been limp by her sides, and hugged herself tight. She just shook her head, gulping, unable to speak. Craig leaned forward and clasped his hands over both knees. “Mrs. Hunt…”

  She looked up at him like a little girl.

  “Katie.” He softened his voice. “Katie. The officer from Edmonton in charge of this investigation has issued a warrant for your husband’s arrest.”

  “For this?” Katie was confused.

  “For murder. Three more people died this afternoon. Staff Sergeant Becker believes your husband can help with inquiries.”

  She stared at him with pleading eyes, begging him silently to say it was a mistake. He returned her gaze steadily.

  Katie closed her eyes and let the tears seep from under the lids. She lay her head back on the sofa and bit her bottom lip. Craig waited. There was silence for a long time, broken only by her labored breathing and the gasps she made when a sob racked her frame. Then she opened her eyes and looked at the ceiling. “You know he wasn’t home the night your man was killed? The man that was here.”

  “Yes.”

  She looked across at him, almost lazily. “How did you know?”

  “I saw you were lying when I asked you.”

  She nodded as if that were fair and obvious, and looked back at the ceiling again. Her tears were still falling, although she had wrestled control of her voice. “And you all think it’s him.”

  “Mrs.… Katie, I came here to warn you about Sam’s arrest, but also to talk to you about some other stuff. Stuff that might seem a little crazy.”

  “You don’t think my husband being a killer is crazy enough for me?”

  “For sure.” Craig gestured vaguely at the kitchen.

  She sat forward and wiped her nose on her hand. Katie’s eyes were growing fierce with something. “Give me the crazy stuff, Staff Sergeant.”

  He tried to smooth the frown off his brow. “Craig.”

  “OK, Craig. I need to know what you’re thinking. There’s nothing you can throw at me that’ll be wilder than this.”

  For a moment Craig McGee wondered what he was doing here. He struggled with what he was going to say next, and yet this woman’s gaze was so earnest, so trusting, he felt that he could share with her this dark thing he’d been harboring.

  “That paper you gave me. Do you believe the stuff in it?”

  She struggled to understand what he meant. This was not what she was expecting. He watched her think and then turn to him, thrown.

  “Some of it. Sure. It was observed quite scientifically by a respected academic.” Her interest had halted her tears, and she sniffed.

  “So you believe in shape-shifting and animal possession?”

  “Why? What is this?”

  He bent his head and looked at the carpet. “They’re going to try and pin these murders on Sam, Katie, and I’m sure they’ll do a good job of making it stick. The strongest thing they have is that he has no alibi for any of the killings. That’s a lot of coincidences.”

  She swallowed, realizing that hers was the last line to her drowning husband and she’d just pulled it from him. Then she thought of Bart, and damned Sam to Hell. “The problem is, it would appear to be impossible for him to have done them. At least, not in any sense we can understand.”

  “I don’t understand at all. What are you talking about?”

  “There are elements to these killings that suggest… that would point to a belief in the supernatural.”

  Katie watched his face for a second to see if there was a joke involved. Not that she imagined he would joke about this. His face was serious and drawn. Katie let out a breath like a diver surfacing. “What do you want me to say here?”

  “Whatever you think.”

  “You’ve lost the place, Craig. Take a holiday.”

  He shook his head. “You’re misunderstanding me, Katie. I’m feeling my way through stuff that may suggest the killer believes in it, not me. I’m forty-one years old. I still know the creak on the stairs is just the cat going to take a crap.”

  Katie Hunt looked at him for a long time and didn’t see a crazy person sitting in her room. She hugged herself again. “Tell me about it.”

  And so he did. He told her about the absence of footprints and the dead animals. He told her about Wilber Stonerider and his tale of the talking bird and rat, and gently he told her the detailed nature of the Indian mutilations.

  “Like the rhyme. Jesus.”

  She was listening like a child, not upset but flabbergasted. He told her everything he could and then he stopped.

  Katie bit h
er lip again and studied his face. “Why are you telling all this stuff to me? I’m his wife. Something in there might let me help him in court.”

  “If he’s the killer, Katie, you’re not going to want to help him. You’re going to want to see him locked away till he rots.”

  The language was wrong, and he regretted it before he’d finished the sentence. The notion of someone she loved being a serial killer snaked a trail of confusion and pain all over her face. She hardened toward Craig McGee like drying clay.

  “What’s this about? What are you telling me? That he’s a fucking wizard?”

  The surreal nature of their conversation suddenly struck Craig like a slap and he blinked. He stood up. “Men will be around real soon to take a statement. Don’t touch the dog, please. If your husband contacts you at all, you’re obliged to pass that information on to us.”

  Katie held him in her gaze. “You do. Don’t you? You think he’s some sort of shaman.”

  “I’m more interested in what he thinks he is.”

  She shook her head and gave a dry, hard laugh. Craig winced. “How’s your son?”

  Katie sobered. “Not good. I gave him half an adult dose of Valium.”

  She was aware that Craig McGee was looking at her questioningly. “Yeah, I know I shouldn’t have. My mom kept the damn things here in the back of the kitchen cabinet to help her sleep. It was all I could think to do. He was hysterical.”

  He nodded. “You know where I am if you need me.”

  She looked small again, and she made a tiny gesture with her hand as if to dismiss the whole visit. Craig made for the door and stopped. “Can I just ask you one small favor?”

  She looked dumbly at him, her eyes freshening with new tears.

  He pulled the yellow paper square from his pocket. “This word. I know it’s Indian.” He held it out to her.

  Katie Hunt looked at it, then back up at the policeman who’d brought so much hurt into her house since his first visit. Her voice was hoarse and weak. “You heard this from Sam?”

  Craig still saw no reason to withhold anything from her. “No. Constable Daniel Hawk wrote it. A note to himself.”