The Canal

by Daniel Morris

  Everyone seemed to be looking for a place to hide, trying to avoid some incoming missile. Alan didn't want to acknowledge this. Or the fact that it was Susan who was screaming. And it was getting louder, she was coming into the house. But hey, maybe it was nothing. Maybe she had good news to share, delivered in one long syllable, at maximum pitch and volume.

  She appeared, brandishing her bag of leftovers.

  "It's fucking chicken, Alan!"

  Yes. Yes it was.

  "Where's Eugene!" Susan wanted to know.

  Alan didn't understand. "He's at home, right?" Then he began to realize how absurd that sounded. Eugene was at home? By himself? What, he was hanging out on the couch? Watching the news, reading magazines?

  "Hold on a minute," said Alan.

  Then came Susan's explanation. Eugene was where? In the backyard? Dropped there by accident? Alan felt like he had suddenly appeared mid-movie, completely confused by what was happening.

  Susan latched onto his coat. So unreserved. So emotive. Alan, he didn't want this mess. "We have to find him!" Susan screamed again, her face turning peppermint colors, her breath a bit mature.

  "It's okay," he announced to the room. "It's just...a private matter. My son. In all the commotion, he got left behind. Accidentally. As I understand it. So I'm just, I'm just going to go take a look."

  Sure, it was that easy. This kind of thing, it happened all the time. No big deal. Who couldn't relate?

  "It'll be fine," he told Susan. It'll be fine, Ma'am.

  Vincent stepped in to take his wife from him.

  "Just-- I need a moment," Alan explained again, to everyone watching. Then he went outside, skirting the mess on the lawn, with Womack in pursuit. The transition to night was now complete.

  Alan was rather stunned. His son was out here? In this place of horror and blood? He didn't see Eugene anywhere. And if Eugene was in the yard, then why wasn't he crying? Alan should have heard him by now, someone should have heard something. Because if there were no signs, no trace... Alan refused to complete the thought. His son was here and he was fine. He had to be. Maybe he had even crawled behind the yard, through the fence...

  Alan swept his flashlight beam back and forth at the weeds along the canal. Finally, he did hear something. Not his son, no. It was the churning of water, a hollow, cauldron boil. He remembered what Vincent had said, about the killer or killers using this house, sort of like a base of operations. And if they had a boat, well, from the canal they could enter Zarella's through the backyard, they could also go upriver to the bridge, and they could paddle out to the bay if they wanted without so much as a trace. And what Alan was hearing, it sounded like it could be a paddle maybe, or a just-silenced motor.

  Alan sprinted past the crumbling fence. But the short stretch of ground between the yard and the canal was fraught with brambles and divots. Alan slipped, he almost dropped his flashlight, he was crawling. He fought his way to the canal's shore, hands scraped, gulping for breath. His fingers touched on something soft. On closer inspection, it was a kind of leash, or harness. It was shredded to silk.

  Wait. Could they have just been here, just minutes ago, these murderers? Did they come to use the house, but then see the lights and commotion? They could have watched from this very spot, hidden low in the brush... Oh no. Was that why Alan couldn't find Eugene? Maybe Eugene was no longer here. Maybe Eugene was with them. Oh no. Did they find him? Did they take his son?

  Below, the canal sloshed in its channel, the waves slapping against the bulkhead walls. Splotches of caustic foam bobbled on the water's surface. Not far upriver lay the bridge, frosted in streetlight. And there... He saw something... Something in the river, heading fast towards the bridge. It was too dark to see clearly, all he could make out was something tallowy, rounded like a hump. It didn't look like a boat. And that...that breeze...

  Something landed on him. Something hit his head, touching his neck and shoulders. Alan panicked, swiping at his hair. It was coming faster now, and harder, swarming him. And then he felt the wet. The wet squirmed down to touch his scalp; it struck the left side of his face, splashed on his lips. He heard the noise -- popping leaves, the canal erupting into maraca song, the sound of an infinite hand drumming the earth. He smelled the damp, the urine tang.

  It was raining.

  The clouds had acquired their target. The hatches had opened. Bombs away.

  Alan shouted his son's name, tossing it into the empty. He willed the child to respond. He willed his vision to penetrate the dark; he demanded to see, to have control over the world, over fate. That was all he wanted really. Control. And to know everything. The why especially. Why? Why this? And he felt that in the contracted hum of his muscles, in the clench of his fists, that it was going to work.

  And for a second, it did. Lightning cracked the sky in two, capturing the world in photograph. The canal shone ultra-white, alive with the spawning frenzy of raindrops, reflecting in a silverware flash. He could see everything, every possible detail. He saw...what possibly?

  He didn't know what he saw. It was emerging from the canal, by the bridge, wriggling into a sewer outlet. Where were his squatters? Where was his googly-eyed maniac? What the hell was this? This thing with leprous skin, inflamed and boiling, luminous in the x-ray light. This pestilent turtle or, perhaps, pickle. It was blasphemous. Demonic. Deformed. Spouting canal water through chapped gills. Two heads. Nine tails. Grinning from fifty mouths. And clutched in its scythe-like, black-freckled claws, hefted above its head, or fin, or distended hernia, or outsize polyp, was his wailing child, Eugene.

  Just as quickly, it disappeared. The canal, the lightning, his son. That...thing. Night popped back into place while the rain resumed its monotonous chorus, plastering Alan's face with its cold slobber.

  Demolition sounded in the heavens. Thunder, the chronic laggard with its too-loud excuses. Or maybe it was the bulkhead walls breaking, the channel widening huge and overrunning both shores, taking Alan, the house, the street, his life -- a massive, sliding, splintered wreckage -- and swallowing it down this toilet, this canal.

  Control? Alan decided then that there was no such thing. We are all prey to the whims of nature, chance, violence, and anyone or anything who'd care to have a go or take a whack -- the black-jacketed teenager, the brute psychopath, the precariously balanced boulder; it was open season on us, the collective, and Alan, the specific.

  Womack finally caught up. "Jesus, Alan."

  "They went in the canal," Alan said blandly.

  "Y-your kid?"

  "My kid. And...and someone else."

  What to call the thing he'd seen, that scarecrow of organ meats, with pustules, long and skinny like antlers? Abomination? Devil?

  "The killer," said Alan, his voice turning shrill. "That monster has my son!"

  "In a raft or something? We'll get the harbor guys, they can't get far--"

  "In the water. In it!"

  Womack's flashlight showed the canal gleaming like a bronzed turd. The sewer ducts were gagging on stink and runoff. There was no sign of Eugene or anyone else.

  "In the canal? Jesus." A vicious wind blew the skirt of Womack's poncho above his head. "Did you get a look at this guy? ...Alan? Do you hear me?"

  Alan was...he was...feeling a bit ragged. What to do? He'd been confronted with the uncategorizable. Something escaped from hell, or seeped from a long ago world. For all Alan thought he knew, he suddenly seemed to know nothing at all.

  Alan was already fumbling back toward the house. A posse of cops -- the bobbing caps, the rain slicks, the flushed, serious faces -- was streaming toward him. And soaring at the forefront, somehow elevated, somehow more visible, was Lieutenant Bleecker.

  Alan couldn't possibly tell anyone what he'd actually seen. There was no way to even begin that sentence. Oh, hey guys, get this -- a terrifying creature with a hemorrhoid for a face just kidnapped my only child. Wild, right?

  Meanwhile, not a single drop of rain seemed to find Bleecker's
person. His hair was still fluffy and light. The man could have brought with him the sound of courting birds, or the gentle burble of a mountain brook, and Alan wouldn't have been surprised.

  Alan felt the eyes dissecting him. Eyes like needles. It was like staring down a pair of scissors.

  "Explain," Bleecker said simply, obviously.

  Alan moved his mouth, but there weren't any words.

  Womack stepped in. "They nabbed Alan's kid. The sonofabitch is in the canal. We need guys all along the river!"

  Bleecker quickly turned to his entourage and made a lasso motion, the fingernails of his hand sparkling like small torches. The patrolmen started fanning efficiently across the yard.

  "Maybe you sit this one out, D'Angelo."

  "--A terrifying creature with a hemorrhoid for a face just kidnapped my only child."

  Bleecker thought about that. "I know it seems bad, Alan. You've had a rough go. Let cooler heads prevail here. We'll get your kid and nail this asshole." Bleecker folded his arms, warping rain directly into Alan's face.

  "You don't understand," said Alan.

  Bleecker sighed. He looked upward, wearily, as if to count every single gob of water. Such was his burden. "I do understand, Alan," he said finally, words coming from his unwet face, through undrenched lips. There probably wasn't even any spit in his mouth. Fluid was too much of a small time game. Bleecker was all about the meat, the real business.

  "Life, children -- they're a miracle, D'Angelo. At the end of the day that stuff's water into wine. Life's what matters. Life's what lasts. Guys like us, we understand that. And we understand it's worth fighting for. So I know what you must be feeling."

  In spite of himself, Alan laughed. Pathetically, to be sure. But let Bleecker see that thing in the canal, let him see his son in its clutches and still talk about miracles and life and...and what the hell was Bleecker's point, anyway? Alan hadn't understood a single word. He shaded his eyes with his hand as if to block the sun. He didn't want to look at Bleecker anymore. He couldn't look at Bleecker anymore.

  He peeked just long enough to see the Lieutenant frowning to the bottom of his very poreless chin. "I'm beginning to sense that you're not the man I thought you were," said Bleecker, with a contempt usually saved for only the lowest forms of life, your spiders and your serpents.

  Something in Bleecker then perceptibly shifted, rearranged. Alan sensed that he was somehow being deleted from the man's field of vision, rendered invisible, a ghost. "You're done," said Bleecker. "We'll get your kid back, but we're gonna do it without you, D'Ang--, D'--" He couldn't say Alan's name. He'd already forgotten it. "You," he said finally. "You, you're finished."

  Bleecker didn't wait for an answer. He spun on his heels and started purposefully back toward the house. Alan watched him leave. Alan, out on the edge, out in space.

  But Alan didn't care. And he definitely wasn't finished. Because he already knew what had to be done. It was obvious, actually -- the answer had been there this entire time. Only now, Alan was ready to believe. Because when it came to the canal, there had only ever been one place to go. There had only ever been one person to talk to.

  The Wizard of Weak. The Master of Mud. The King of the Canal.

  Joseph Lombardi.

  >> CHAPTER FIFTEEN <<

  Nobody home. Joe moved his lips as if he were actually saying the words. He watched Alan through the rain-blurred window -- Alan was a shadow on the sidewalk, pacing in between hoops of streetlight. Roaring at him.

  Nobody home. It was true. Joe Lombardi wasn't there. Joe Lombardi, the real Joe Lombardi, he had never made it out of the canal. Only his silhouette had. A withered percentage. A coward.

  Joe fitted the blinds back into place. He crossed the darkened room and returned to his post at the kitchen table. Tobacco flakes and rolling papers awaited. Not to worry about Alan. Alan would leave...

  Joe's home, even when he had shared it with Rose, was never much. And it was even less much now. Zilch much, negative much -- barely a notch better than a mineshaft or a quicksand patch. The cigarettes didn't help. He'd been smoking them at the rate of a machine gun. Chewed butts littered the floor -- his carpet was a morning veld issuing steam, there were small fires in places. If his lungs hadn't crapped out earlier in a burp of ash, the stubs would have risen hip high by now. Above him the ceiling was lost under a layer of smog with gray, lumpy skin. Light bulbs shimmered from within like ghostly will-o'-the wisps.

  And from the street, Alan barked, "Old man!"

  Joe felt scorched. Incinerated. Nothing but crematorium crumbs, remains too incidental to make the urn, getting swept behind the oven instead. And it wasn't just because of the Enterprise. And it wasn't just its slime, its fetid mouth, the fangs, endless and sharp and bleeding and blood and the tongue. No, there were worse things than that, worse things than monsters -- it had told him a secret; it had explained a thing.

  It seemed to Joe that the more you knew, the keener your capacity to suffer became. For instance, would drowning be so bad if you didn't understand it? If you didn't know about breathing and water, or about the combined histories of panic and terror? It'd probably seem more remarkable than tragic -- have a swim, explore, doze.

  Knowing at least explained some things. He now knew why Rose had reappeared. He knew what it was she'd come to see, what it was she'd wanted to get closer to. Not that it helped. Not that it didn't make anything less horrible.

  Outside, Alan had given up on shouting, while inside, Joe's attempt at rolling another cigarette was going poorly. There was a misunderstanding between his brain and fingers -- Joe was rolling a smoke, they were playing piano. The cigarette eventually squiggled from his hands, landing in a stack of other half-formed failures, its tobacco vein exposed. Meanwhile his hands played on. A very avant-garde, jazz type tune.

  The bleat of a car horn came next. The horn was Alan -- no tapping, just a continuous flatline. He also added the siren. Voices were issuing from the surrounding homes -- the neighbors, a chorus of asshole go away.

  Joe had come to the conclusion that he must never leave his apartment. He didn't care about food or fresh air or anything else. In here, the weather was fine. Walls were what you needed, walls at all times, anything to prevent you from mingling with the outdoor elements. Outside was where the bad news was. And Joe couldn't afford to be exposed to the realities of what he now knew.

  The horn stopped. There was arguing, Alan against the block. Then a kind of negotiation. An explanation. The street settled into a moment of calm...and then Joe heard the building's door come unlocked with an electronic rattle. One of the other tenants must have agreed to buzz Alan in. Someone tidy, no doubt -- all those clean types, those washing kinds, they all stuck together.

  Still, Alan would never get inside Joe's apartment. Because you didn't just need walls -- you also needed locks. Lots of them. And ever since yesterday when Joe had rambled home, when he'd been crying -- yes, a grown man, imagine -- and his fingers were crawling all over, and he was tasting blood like he'd been punched but he couldn't remember, didn't remember leaving the top floor exactly, and he was fearing the open air and all the diverging streets and what might come from them. Ever since then, if Joe wasn't rolling cigarettes he was checking the locks. The routine: slide home the chain, throw the deadbolt, latch the knob, test, repeat, and test again. Check once more, just to be sure...be careful not to have them all open at the same time, because something could get in then, some bit of foreign atmosphere, some dangerous piece of information.

  So the door was locked. But Joe got up to check and be sure, then decided to stay there, holding the deadbolt fast and pressing the chain in its slot. In the stairway Alan's ascent was noisy, Joe could hear him rumbling around the banisters, knocking into walls. When he was right outside he yelled Joe's name. He kicked the door. "Joe!"

  The door bucked in its socket. Alan started yelling about a second body under the bridge. But Joe tried not to listen. He wasn't a part of this anymore -- ult
imately it was just too painful. That's what you got for venturing beyond locked doors. Pain. Because where was pleasure? Elusive, it came and went on whims, some frustrating cherub you'd absolutely throttle if given half a chance. But where was pain? Oh man -- pain's sitting on your face. Pain's in your back pocket, it's sharing your cab. You don't have to ask twice; in fact you don't even have to ask. Yank your own hair, stick a pencil in your eye -- see how easy it is to hurt?

  "Nobody home," said Joe. "I'm not here." And he was being honest, not a prank in his heart.

  Then Alan said something about a kid. Joe didn't recall Alan having a son. And even if Joe had known, he'd never wanted to meet it and the invitation had never been extended, or maybe it had, back in the beginning when Alan had first been assigned. Alan repeated the part about his son. But then things took an unfortunate turn. He mentioned the sewer. He mentioned some creature with turpentine skin that dripped yellow rot. Regrettably, Joe knew more about this than Alan did. Like how the creature's throat was seriously bottomless, how it went for miles and that you could see each of these miles in turn until they disappeared, presumably hidden by the curvature of the Earth.

  Alan said it took his son into the sewer and that if Joe didn't open the door, Alan was desperate, and he was liable to act desperately, and Joe wouldn't like what was going to happen, just open the fucking door. His words started coming mismatched and irregular like he'd cobbled them together from unrelated sentences, like those kidnapper's notes that are cut out from a million different magazines. "I (shocked) need (serious) your (tenor) help (ragged)." Help had a sob attached to it that echoed down the stairs.

  Poor Henry, thought Joe. Poor me. Something inevitable was coming, and it was depressing -- he was making a decision...

  History sure loved circles. Big, lazy loops. The old years all got second chances -- the new was just the old in different clothes. Take Joe and Rose. Add one casualty, one firstborn son. Give it 20 years and repeat. And don't forget the canal. Once was never enough for that river. Now it had taken a second child. History and the canal both loved an encore.