Condemned to Repeat

by Janice Macdonald

  Further along, on 1905 Street, was the middling spooky area, for those of fainter heart. A fortune teller was set up in the fire station, and she must have been good because there was quite a lineup. Bobbing for apples was happening on the main floor of the Masonic Hall, and tours and tales were happening in Firkin House and Rutherford House.

  The interpreters who during the day despaired of people coming in to hear about the “Firkin ghost,” a completely spurious story, were vamping it up this evening, boasting theirs was the only truly haunted building in the Park and that we should all come and feel the vibrations of the dead. While I had no illusions that ghosts were floating among us, it was silly fun to go through the house, which was decorated with jack-o’-lanterns that grinned at us from every conceivable landing and mantle.

  Rutherford House was another thing altogether. I looked for Jasper and his mother, but perhaps she had decided he was too young for the festivities. More than likely, Jasper was too logical to play such inane make-believe. Interpreting history was one thing, but scampering about in the dark looking for walking spirits would seem farcical to a boy of Jasper’s intellect.

  I made a special point to show Steve the upstairs rooms of Rutherford House, in particular the maid’s room, which had been burglarized recently. There were ropes across all the doorways this evening, which was just as well, because the crowds coming through, while not rowdy or obnoxious, were high-spirited and more intent on their own fun than the preservation of artifacts. It was hard in the evening light to even see where the new baseboard had been repainted, and he shrugged as he turned to me. It was hard to show any sort of connection between some vandalism here and a murder at the brick house.

  We had some apple cider and pumpkin muffins at the Henderson Farm House at the end of 1905 Street, then strolled to 1885 Street, which was guarded at our end by a pair of burly gentlemen dressed as a Viking and a Jack Skellington.

  “Beyond here is Horror Hollow, and you enter at your own risk,” intoned the Viking. “No children under the age of sixteen may come through here, unless they are accompanied by their insane, unfeeling parents.”

  I laughed.

  “Good work,” Steve commented. “What do you do if younger kids try to sneak in?”

  Jack Skellington checked around to make sure no one else was within earshot.

  “We eat them,” he grinned.

  Knowing we weren’t going to get a straight answer from these two, who were having too much fun, we held hands and walked through between them. At first, there didn’t seem to be much difference between the two streets, although 1885 had no street lights, a fact which played with the perspective of the length of the street. Not all the buildings were open, but I could hear screams from the Jasper House Hotel (the one Jasper Peacocke had so adamantly explained he was not named for) and could see a line forming to get into the haunted house tour. This had been reviewed on the radio as rivalling Madame Tussaud’s for startling and scary. I wasn’t sure those attributes were actually attractions, but Steve was excited to find out, so we compromised by agreeing to look at the rest of the street before entering the hotel.

  Dodging a zombie bride who appeared from behind McDonald House with blood and gore congealing on her lacy gown, we headed for Lauder’s Bakery, which during the summer sold cookies, cinnamon buns, and bread. It was the best place to be if you loved the smell of sugar and yeast.

  Tonight, it was a different sort of thing on the menu. The Cannibal Café was serving a stew, and in the dim anteroom we snaked through to get to the eventual display, we could see a pile of body parts flung into a heap, supposedly waiting to be added to the stew. I recognized one of the mannequins in the pile from the store across the lane and presumed some of the others came from the costume-making department, a full-time, ongoing production house in the Fort.

  I just about hit the ceiling when one of the body parts moved and reached out to us, moaning. It was a young woman, her eyes made up to emphasize their sockets. Steve reacted by taking a picture. I guess when your profession is to deal with real horror, you don’t get quite so jittery and squeamish by the make-believe.

  A head in the display case opened its eyes and winked at us when we were finally in the bakery proper. After encountering the moving body pile, I wasn’t quite so edgy, so I just winked back. The stew, being stirred by a slender girl in ghoulish makeup and a hair net, was not getting any takers after we’d seen the set-up of human components, but the staff must have been heating something like beef stew nearby because the dry-ice-clouded cauldron smelled appetizing in a terrible, awful way.

  The zombie bride was drifting back in the other direction, and we wandered up and down the street, taking in the costumes of our fellow visitors and those of the crew working the Spooktacular. I figured most of them would be interpreters and volunteers who had grown close during the summer months the way summer camp staffs tended to. This event which was taking place a couple of months into the school year would be a welcome reunion for most of them.

  Volunteer families, like Jasper and his mom, might be involved as well. I could imagine that many of the children who had grown up volunteering at the Park would end up applying to work here during the summertime. Although it was relatively out of the way, transit-speaking, it seemed as if it would be a great place to work when going through school.

  The haunted hotel wasn’t as terrifying as Steve might have hoped, but that was just fine by me. Things jumped out, and people loomed but didn’t touch, which seemed to be the unspoken rule of scaring. Various dioramas of tortured people were set up in the rooms of the hotel, and then a trip down to the basement, where the mad scientist’s lab was set up, capped things off. Trying to get down the stairs in the gloom of the emergency light was probably the scariest bit for me.

  Once we were back out on the street, there was only one more thing to experience: the Fort of Fear. The concept seemed to be that as one moved further and further back in time, things got progressively more frightening.

  Tonight, the Fort had been overtaken by zombies, which was sort of the same concept a television horror show took a few years back— just one of the many films that had been shot in the Park, which offered such a nice setting, complete with accurate old-time housing and a lovely lack of power poles and anachronistic elements in the distance. As long as the cameraman didn’t aim across the river at the million-dollar houses perched on the river valley, you could approximate almost any era.

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to be accosted by zombies in a confined area like the Fort. I didn’t much care for the bride on 1885 Street, and she had been rather innocuous in her creepy way. Steve, however, loved zombies, so we held hands and headed through the pitch dark of what was normally the Fort garden and Indian camp, toward the entrance to the Fort.

  The gates were shut, and we had to climb through the trading door cut into the larger wagon door. Torches were flickering in the quadrangle ahead, and I moved a bit more quickly toward them because according to my limited knowledge of their lore, fire was not the zombies’ friend.

  A guide met us at the corner and explained the rules of the game. Zombies had infiltrated the Fort, and we were attempting to round them up and contain them, as our ammunition was very low and we didn’t want loud noises to bring more out of the forest beyond.

  I could have done without him intoning “forest beyond.” Steve grinned.

  We were supposed to wander about the Fort, much as if we were touring it on an ordinary summer day, except that it would be dimly lit, and lumbering gory creatures would possibly jump out at us. If they did, we were to turn toward the quad immediately and let the zombie chase us to the holding pen. Every time we managed to corral a zombie, we would be given a sticker.

  I almost bumped my head trying to get away from one in the lower floor of Rowand House, the chief factor’s impressive house with windows whose glass panes had been brought upriver from the east, suspended in molasses barrels. That was a fact most western Canadi
an kids knew by heart, even if they’d never tasted molasses.

  Steve and I each got a sticker for the first zombie, but only he got one for the one that chased us from the icehouse, around the side of the bachelors’ quarters, because the two of them moved so fast I was left in the dust. I looked inside the long building that had housed the unmarried fur traders and ran into two girls who were nervously giggling and screamed when they saw me, even though I had no blood on me.

  Steve came back, preening with his two stickers, and we set off for the carpenter’s house and the archway through to where the York boats had been built. Two zombies shambled into sight, and we waved at them as if we were manic matadors and then turned and ran, luring them toward the centre of the quad. We each got two stickers and were told that was enough to trade for hot chocolate at the trading window by the entrance to the Fort.

  I had a hunch they had to get us out and disperse their zombies before the next batch of visitors made it as far as the Fort of Fear, but that was fine with me. While the actuality of the zombies and haunted houses and ghouls was not totally terrifying, the concept worked on you incrementally, and it was getting to me to be out in the middle of the dark in the middle of a historic park where there was poor cellphone reception and no escape from the chill in the air and one’s own imagination.

  Steve, ever sensitive to a situation, suggested we head for home. Since the train wasn’t operating, we hitched a ride with a wagon driver, who dropped us off by Egge’s Barn at the far end of 1885 Street, close to Jack Skellington and the Viking. From there we decided to walk back, and with every step we took, things got lighter and sillier and a whole lot easier to take.

  I wondered what it was about our desire to scare ourselves that impels us toward spook shows and amusement park rides and extreme adventure holidays. Here I was, having been a near witness to a murder and had my house broken into and possessions stolen, who in my relatively short lifetime had been shot at, stalked, pushed down a set of stairs, locked in the dark and left for dead, paying to be titillated and terrorized. How crazy was that? Who actively sought out that sort of sensation? Not me. And yet, here I was, dressed all in black, walking with my police pursuer down a gravel road on a chilly fall evening, feeling pretty good about life.

  “That hot chocolate could have gone further,” said Steve, reaching into his pocket for his keyfob, as we approached his car. “Want to grab a bite?”

  “Where? I am not walking into the Diner dressed like this.”

  Steve laughed.

  “Well, I am betting Earls would welcome costumes, this time of year.”

  I shrugged. He was probably right. Earls, especially the one on campus, positioned itself as the party place, but I had a feeling it was a way more happening place back in the day when the Oilers were a winning team. They had gone through several manifestations since the chain had morphed from the old Fullers Restaurants I had known and loved in my youth, sporting huge parrot statues for a time, to the chalkboard-and-chrome minimalism of the present.

  What the heck. Earls it was.

  32

  --

  The woman seating us complimented our costumes and led us to a table by the window across from the Timms Centre. This was just as well—it meant I would be far likelier to order dessert than if we’d been at the other window, facing the diabetes research building. While Steve scoured the menu, I looked around at the crowd. He had been right, there were several other people in some form of costume or other, either on their way to or from a Hallowe’en party. I spotted a penguin, a gypsy, and the twins from the Tintin books at one table, and another couple dressed as Sonny and Cher down the aisle from us. The folks who weren’t in costume seemed a bit nonplussed by our fervour for the season, but it felt pretty good to be on the side of the joiners this time. I adjusted my tuque and ordered mushroom soup and a brownie sundae.

  Steve must have worked up an appetite rounding up all his zombies, because he ordered a steak, baked potato with all the trimmings, and a brownie sundae of his own.

  Our food came quickly and the service was pleasant, which seemed to be the underlying secret of Earls’ success. After we had chewed over the various elements of the evening, our conversation wound itself back to the break-in at my apartment and the situation at Rutherford House.

  I told Steve about the need to work the following evening at the House.

  “That’s bound to be unnerving, isn’t it?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, how many times have you worked an evening event since the girl got murdered in the guest bath?”

  “You had to put it that way, did you?” My laugh sounded tinny even to me. “I was there last night for the board meeting.”

  “But that wasn’t a working event. I really wonder at the wisdom of running this thing on Hallowe’en.”

  “I think it has something to do with Marni’s worries that the board is going to shut down the special events end of things. She wants the events to show a profit and demonstrate an interest in the House, so that the place can be seen as self-sustaining, meaning the tea house and special events could keep the day-to-day expenses humming along without a big outlay from the province. The less investment required from outside, the more autonomous the House can be.”

  “What do they want autonomy for? Doesn’t being a historic site come with some provisos? Like not being able to upgrade the wiring and all that?”

  “Oh, it’s more complicated than that. Your building can require upkeep that is vital, like a new furnace or weeping tiles or something like that, but grant monies would be targeted to specific items like newel posts or stained glass. If you can demonstrate that the public sees you as an important site, through turnstile counts and money spent, then you have a bit more say in how money is spent and what you do.”

  “So Marni wants that sort of autonomy and the board doesn’t?”

  “No, of course the board wants that sort of success, too. They are just divided on how to achieve it, and what it would look like once achieved. I think there are people on the board who resent people walking around the House, causing wear and tear on the floorboards. They would like to see the place turned into a shrine only very few can visit. Then there are others who just don’t think Marni can pull it off, so they gainsay everything she attempts. There are a few who are solidly on her side—the chair, for instance—so it’s not a complete battle all the time.”

  “And she wants another event so soon after the disastrous one why?”

  “You know, aside from one brutal murder and the disappearance of the magician, that was a pretty good event. Oh god, what am I even saying?”

  Steve chuckled while cutting off a piece of steak.

  “Yeah, the old ‘aside-from’ conundrum. Funny how that sneaks up on you.”

  “Well, if that is the last event ever set in Rutherford House, Marni might as well pack things in now. She has to do something to erase that from people’s minds as their memory of Rutherford House.”

  Steve shrugged. “So what’s up with this event?”

  “All I know is that it’s a Hallowe’en party of some sort, set in period. Marni wants me there as moral support and probably because she needs the extra pair of hands. I will get minimum wage plus food, which is all to the good, since I still have no idea whether or not the board is going to allow my contract to continue. I knew I should have negotiated a stronger kill fee.”

  “Kill fee? Not exactly the sort of thing you want to be saying to a cop.”

  “It’s a freelance term meaning the money owed you if the publisher decides not to go with the piece they’ve commissioned. You need to get compensated in some way for the work you put into the project, so your contract has a set kill fee, or amount they will pay you if they decide to terminate the contract.”

  “Kill, terminate, contract. This just gets better and better.”

  I laughed. “You’re just teasing. I know you’ve heard me use these terms before.”

&n
bsp; “Maybe,” Steve allowed, “but not while you’re dressed like a jewel thief.”

  I had eased into the evening so well that I had half-forgotten my costume. Now that I had my tuque, gloves, and mask off, it seemed more counter-culture than criminous. Steve spent enough time around me in uniform that his costume had just blended into the norm. However, to people seeing us from a distance, we were the perfect Hallowe’ening couple on the town. Thinking about it made me feel good, the way I had felt earlier in the year, when Steve had taken me out for a romantic dinner on Valentine’s Day and we were surrounded by other dining couples. I had felt as if I’d hit my mark, and was feeling the same way tonight. We were doing the right thing at the right time, being on the inside of the situation rather than on the outside looking in.

  Lots of people would probably roll their eyes at my bizarre yearnings to be normal, status quo apple pie, but when you don’t fit tidily into societal boxes most of the time, discovering yourself fitting the bill can provide a tiny thrill.

  Steve was demolishing his dinner while I indulged in my meditation on self-awareness, then signalled for the bill as I pinched up crumbs from the table and dropped them in my empty bowl. Something winked off in the distance, distracting me from what Steve was saying. I peered closer to the window, to avoid the mirror-glare from the lights inside. What had I seen?

  Steve cleared his throat in the time-honoured signal of “pay attention to me, you moron” and repeated himself.

  “So, you ready to go?”

  We had parked in the lane in front of St. Stephen’s College, where Steve had picked me up, and in the dark, the college loomed high and forbidding.

  I stared up at the stained-glass windows, wondering yet again why someone would put such glory in a basketball court. To the left, down one level, a light came on in one of the windows on the fourth floor—one of the sealed-off areas.

  By this time, Steve was at the car, holding the passenger door open. Silently, I pointed to the light in the window, but down low, close to my body, just in case someone was watching us from a darkened window up there. Steve, bless his heart, looked where I was pointing instead of spending useless moments asking me what the heck I was doing.