Creep

by R. M. Greenaway

  “I don’t have a bike,” Dion said again, but less loud and clear, knocked off guard by this stranger’s friendliness.

  “I’ve got a spare.”

  “It’s been a while.”

  “C’mon. It’s like riding a bike.”

  With record-breaking speed, Dion was starting to like Corporal Montgomery. Montgomery’s friendliness seemed real, nothing put-on about it. His stare was direct and full of positive energy. His grin turned his face into a thousand creases and made Dion feel like grinning right back at him.

  Montgomery reached out to shake on it, seal the deal. “You and me, Cal.”

  Dion reached and shook. The wind was beginning to buffet them all, and the trees were shushing ominously. Leith pulled cigarettes from his coat pocket and gave Dion a hard-to-read stare, maybe a warning. Leith didn’t like Dion, didn’t trust him, and was probably expecting trouble, but Dion was feeling too pleased with himself to care. There was nothing to worry about. It was just a field trip with a superior he admired. It was a break from routine.

  Montgomery handed him a note he had scribbled out, an address and phone number. “Meet me at my place tomorrow, eleven a.m. No, make it ten thirty. We’ll have coffee, exchange war stories, and you can meet Lady Victoria.”

  Leith exhaled a gust of smoke and turned to squint at Montgomery. “Meet who?”

  “My fiancée, Tori.” Montgomery was not so much answering Leith as informing Dion. “She’s a real doll,” he said, with a cheery wink. “You’re gonna love her.”

  Seven

  SHADOWLAND

  Corporal Michelin Montgomery had a nice house in the nice neighbourhood of Seymour Heights. Dion left his car in the driveway and followed the footpath to the front door. He wore cold-weather joggers, runners, a grey hoodie over a T-shirt, and his rainproof RCMP jacket. His optimism of last night had waned. He was anxious about this meeting, but resigned. Randall had volunteered his services, and what was done was done. He took a deep breath and rang the bell.

  Corporal Montgomery welcomed him in with the same big grin as last night. Dion could sense the presence of a woman in the home instantly as he walked in. It was the look of the place, boldly decorated, but floral, with a sweetness in the air. And the music, which was too loud for comfort. Big-band kind of stuff.

  “How’re you doing?” Montgomery said.

  “Good.”

  “You look nervous. Don’t be. I won’t bite.”

  “I’m not nervous.” He followed Montgomery down a level into a living room space, where the music got louder. In the middle of the room a twiggy girl waited. Or not a girl, but a woman Dion guessed to be in her mid-twenties. Her cheeks were flushed, and her short blonde hair was coiled by wetness. Workout sweat, judging by her spandex joggers and damp T-shirt. The T-shirt seemed a couple sizes too small. She wore nothing on her feet.

  “Tori, meet Cal,” Montgomery said.

  Her smile was generous, but her handshake was so limp and brief that Dion wondered if she was sick, maybe in a serious way. “So pleased to meet you,” she said, and without a break, she went on nattering at him. She apologized for stinking, but she had just gotten back from a run, then she mentioned this awful weather, her tennis elbow, the sunroom she wanted installed to replace the open back deck, and somehow that led to a new pastry shop she had discovered that was run by Ukrainians and made excellent poppyseed rolls. Which reminded her of the snacks she had prepared — oh my god, what kind of a hostess was she?

  She ran off, promising to be back soon, don’t go away.

  No, she wasn’t sick at all.

  “Isn’t she great?” Montgomery said.

  “She’s, wow, yes, great.”

  They sat in armchairs and talked. Montgomery told Dion about his years in Surrey and his future overseas. “Hate to leave this place,” he said. “Love the North Shore. Love the team here. Great people.” Heading to the Middle East was a complication, but exciting, he said. The house, he explained, was a lease deal. All of his and Tori’s things would have to go into long-term storage. The drawbacks of an exciting career. “But I wouldn’t trade it for the world.”

  Dion asked how he and Tori had met, and Montgomery exclaimed, “I know, she’s way too good looking for this ugly mug. We met at a fashion show fundraiser in Surrey. She’s a model and was doing the runway bit for the cause, sashaying along in those filmy long sleeves, legs to here. But it was her smile that did it for me. Well, I fell head over heels in love, of course. Hell knows why she looked at me twice. But she did.”

  Tori was back with a loaded coffee tray. She set it down and sat herself on the sofa next to Montgomery. She had changed into skinny black slacks with flared cuffs, platform shoes, and a tiny sweater that looked even more shrunken than the T-shirt. Dion thought he had seen her somewhere, maybe on posters in a mall. He was going to ask her, but she was back in natter mode. “I just had a shower,” she told him, explaining her hair, wet now in a clean way — he caught the sweet strawberry scent from where he sat. “I run every day,” she said, “if only for the endorphins, which have become an absolute addiction. Excuse this gross thing, by the way. Just what I need, right? Cold sore barely hours before a big shoot. It’s slathered in meds right now, because it has absolutely got to be gone by tomorrow. Do you run, too?”

  He couldn’t see the cold sore she was pointing to at the side of her mouth, nor any slathering of medication. She said, “I like to try out the different trails. You could live here all your life and run on a different trail every day. I love the canyon. There’s the Baden-Powell, of course, which is about a million miles long. The Headwaters are great, too. I can’t get enough of this place. Have you lived on the North Shore long? It’s not really new to me, as I used to live across the water. I grew up in Surrey, mostly. That’s where I met Monty. ”

  “My lucky day.” Monty grinned.

  “But I’m glad we’re here now. It’s such an awesome city,” she said. “So diverse. And just steps away, you’re in the middle of nowhere, where it’s like you’re the only person on the planet. You’re in the middle of this amazing primeval forest. I keep thinking I’ll run into a dinosaur around the bend. And the air! It’s so therapeutic. You can just breathe it in, just kind of let go, give yourself to nature. Absorb its power, bring it inside, you know?”

  Dion said he knew what a great place this was, though he was starting to wish he was anywhere but here. The music was skittering wildly, like the orchestra was on drugs. It went loud, louder, loudest, then crashed into silence. Tori cried, “Hoo-wee! Don’t you love this? It’s Gershwin. Incredibly complex, really. Multi-faceted. He’s my latest discovery, and I’m playing him to death, as Monty can attest. Poor Monty. D’you like him, Gershwin?”

  Dion didn’t worry about answering. He had figured out by now how irrelevant he was to this conversation. Now Tori was asking her fiancé if he had remembered to invite their guest to the Halloween party.

  “I did,” Montgomery said. “Last I heard he was undecided.”

  Tori looked amazed and ordered Dion to make up his mind. He told her he probably wouldn’t be able to attend. She flapped a hand at him and cried, “You don’t have to wear a costume, if that’s what you’re afraid of! Or just put on a cowboy hat. You’d look nice in a cowboy hat.”

  She sat in a sexy slouch next to her fiancé, looking like a daughter he’d had too late in life. Sounding like one, too. But even with the age difference, they seemed to fit well enough together. Montgomery was good looking and likely as fit as she was. They were probably so madly in love that age meant nothing.

  She seemed to be waiting for him to answer, for a change, so Dion said, “I’ll try to make it over.”

  “Fabulous!” she cried. “With parties, you know, the bigger, the better — lots of people, all different kinds of interesting new people. Are you married?”

  “No, I’m —”

/>   “Gay!” she shrieked. She laughed, flapped a hand at him. “Just kidding. You’re not gay. I have a gay-guy radar, and you’re not, not that it would matter. Gay guys are the sweetest. There’s tons of them in my line of work. You’re gorgeously quiet and mysterious, by the way. Girlfriend? No? Even better, because there will be scads of beautiful girls for you to meet.”

  “She’ll sort your life out for you, like it or not,” Montgomery said, then stood and stated it was time to get on with the day. Dion silently thanked his lucky stars. Aloud, he told Tori it was really nice meeting her.

  “See you later. Do come by for drinks after.”

  “Thanks. I’ll try.”

  Dion followed Montgomery outside, past a carport sheltering a white Acura four-door, and into a garage that was being used for storage, by the looks of it, boxes stacked on boxes. This was where the bikes were kept.

  “Here’s my old fave.” Montgomery wheeled out a black Maruishi. “Great bike for the trails, but kind of heavy. Check out this beauty. Just got it.” He invited Dion into the garage to view a featherweight, brushed-gold bicycle on its hook. “I’ve already put a thousand klicks on it. Titanium. It’s like balsa wood, man. But unbreakable.”

  “You’re taking this on the trails? They’ll demolish it.”

  “Oh god, no,” Montgomery said. “This one’s going with me today. My go-to off-roader.” He pulled out a fat-wheeled bicycle with low bars and heavy duty shocks. He and Dion rolled the bikes out to the street, where a minivan sat parked. Montgomery hooked the bikes to a rack at the van’s rear, and a moment later they were on the road to Lynn Valley.

  It was a great day for a bike ride, cool and overcast, but not raining. Conversation came easy and, unlike with Tori, Dion was allowed to get a word in. Better yet, it seemed like a safe conversation that wouldn’t go off the rails and threaten him with questions he couldn’t answer.

  Montgomery reminded him of somebody in some unlikely way, but he couldn’t pinpoint who or why. He was still puzzling over the question and somehow afraid of the answer, when Montgomery took this perfectly safe conversation and rerouted it. “I’m actually glad we got this opportunity to talk,” he said.

  Damn.

  “Yeah, and don’t roll your eyes at me. This is important. I know who you are. I heard about your crash and the shit you’ve had to go through. Many others might have given up on the spot, but you made a comeback. You’ve had your ups and downs, but by all accounts you’re no quitter, and I commend you for that.”

  Dion was flattered that Montgomery would care, but didn’t like being commended for his comeback. Everything about the crash was a lie, and when the truth came out, he would be chucked in jail. He would disappoint everyone. “I’m getting by. I’ve also come to accept that I’m not what I used to be, which is fine. I’m okay.”

  The van pulled up to a red light and idled. “My boss tells me you’re not what you used to be because you’re a defeatist,” Montgomery said.

  Bosko, Dion thought. “Right,” he said. “Which is the same as a quitter.”

  “Bit of a difference there. You’re not living up to your potential, that’s all. Which is a shame. So what are we going to do about it?”

  The light turned green. The boss Montgomery referred, Mike Bosko, was a meddler whom Dion didn’t trust. Leith was another meddler, but easier to take, because he didn’t even try to be nice about it. So now Montgomery was joining in, probably at Bosko’s urging.

  Bosko was dangerous, because he was sharper than he looked. He knew there was something about the crash that didn’t sit right. He was looking for a way to flip Dion over, make him talk, get at the truth from any angle he could. But Dion wasn’t going to flip that easy. “I’ll get by,” he said, slightly tweaking what he’d said earlier, but with a cool finality.

  Montgomery shrugged. “I’ll lay off, but it’s not over.”

  Even with its disappointing start, the day shaped up well. The Sunday traffic was loose knit, and they made good time up to the Headwaters parking lot. James Wong and Ronnie Graham were waiting impatiently by the little museum building that was shut down for the season. The group of four set off for the Mesachee, cycling single file up the soft, dark pathway that rose switchback style into the forest.

  Wong pulled a wheelie and took the lead. Montgomery followed, keeping up effortlessly. Graham dawdled a bit, and Dion fell back, getting accustomed to the Maruishi. Looch — that’s who Montgomery had reminded him of. Which made no sense, as the two men were nothing alike.

  It took some experimenting with the gears and one near crash into the undergrowth before he felt comfortable on the bike, and by now he was alone in the woods. He geared down, stood on the pedals for thrust, and pushed to catch up with the others. It was coming back to him, the burning lungs and the exhilaration. Like riding a bike.

  The trail curved upward, chilly in the shade of cedar and fir. He huffed and puffed and caught up with the group, which had reached its destination: a widening in the path, which was split by a large boulder. The Rock. Bikes abandoned, they were on their feet, and Wong was pointing out to Montgomery where he and Graham had seen the howling creature, then where the creature had fled.

  “We were coming up the trail,” he said, as Dion laid down his bike and joined them. “It was right about here. It saw us and went loping off, up that way.” He pointed.

  Montgomery and Dion looked up the slope of low brush into a vague shadowland atop the ridge. “Now it’s loping,” Montgomery said.

  “Really fast. He was like half wolf.”

  Dion kicked at the brush through which the creature had supposedly run. The terrain was rough, sludgy, and snarled with tree roots and decaying logs. Even in the height of summer, when the ground would have been drier, he couldn’t imagine any human loping through it. Must have been an animal, a large dog gone wild. Just as he had expected, there was nothing to be seen here except more of the same.

  Montgomery was briskly saying to the boys, “Well, we’ll keep this sighting of yours in mind for future reference. In the meantime, if you see anything else of interest, you can let us know. But my advice would be stay out of the woods till further notice, a’right?”

  “No way,” Graham said. “I’d rather die.”

  “What about that reward if you catch ’im?” Wong said.

  “Sure you get a reward. A nice warm sense of accomplishment.”

  As they gathered their bikes for the return trip, Montgomery and James Wong discussed gear shifters at some length, so Dion found himself alone with Ronnie Graham. Graham had less to say than his friend and seemed comfortable speaking freely only while in tandem with Wong. Dion recalled yesterday, the challenge nobody had put to the kid. The howl. He thought about Mike Bosko calling him defeatist and said, “Question for you.”

  Graham, like Dion, didn’t like questions set up like this, with a warning shot. He looked worried, resentful, and chilled. He glanced around Dion, searching for his pal. But Wong was still talking to Montgomery.

  “You didn’t seem so convinced about the howl you guys say you heard. What did you really hear?” Dion asked.

  “We did hear it.” Wong and Montgomery were looking this way. Graham said, almost under his breath, “Yes, there was something in the trees. Right over there. I’m not lying.”

  Montgomery joined them, but Dion halted Wong in his tracks, telling him to stay where he was just for a minute or two.

  “What’s up?” Montgomery asked.

  “Nothing,” Graham said. He was leaning against his bike frame, squeezing the brakes on and off, averting his eyes.

  “He wants to tell us what they saw up here. He didn’t hear a howl,” Dion said.

  “Is that right, Ronnie?” Montgomery said. “You want to say what really happened?”

  Ganged up on, Graham confessed. “It wasn’t blood curdling. It was just some stup
id guy trying to scare us. He howled, but then he coughed, too. We weren’t scared.”

  “Did you see him?”

  “I saw him running away. He stumbled. And howled again just a bit. But it was dark, and he was all black-like. He wasn’t running on all fours, but low, like this.” Abandoning his bike, he bent his knees and leaned into a shuffling run for a few steps. “He was … weird.”

  Graham was flat out lying when he said he hadn’t been scared, Dion thought. Of course he’d been scared. Who wouldn’t be? James Wong had been scared, too, probably, but not scared enough, and he’d had to take the bizarre encounter and make it more spectacular. A tall tale that got taller with each telling.

  “Could you describe this guy at all? Age, height, anything?” Montgomery asked.

  “Just weird,” Graham said. “Hairy.”

  Eight

  MONSTERS

  Since they were in the area, Montgomery swung by the Greer house to check up on progress. He parked behind an Ident van, and Dion stepped out and looked at the quiet neighbourhood. Nothing extraordinary about this block except the yellow crime scene tape over the gate. No signs of shock and horror, no trauma. Trees towered, crows cawed, and there was the gentle hum of distant traffic. Just another day in Lynn Valley.

  He followed Montgomery through the gate and up the path, even into the house itself, which up to now he had seen only from the outside. Montgomery told him to go ahead and take a look around.

  Upstairs, Dion talked to the techs, who were wrapping up loose ends, lifting, photographing, vaccing. The rooms were empty. The design of the place was generous, maybe eccentric, with broad and solid stairs and plenty of odd nooks, large rooms, and high ceilings alternating with low. He thought of his own cramped apartment with its thin walls through which he could hear the mumbling of neighbours and the banging of dishes.