Stones

by William Bell

  Dad was teaching that morning and had already left the house. But, as usual when Mom was off on one of her career-enhancing jaunts, she and Dad had stayed up most of the night talking, drinking wine, putting off the dawn as long as they could. They’d had breakfast together and said their goodbyes before he left for work.

  When she bounced down the stairs that morning in her usual traveling outfit — work shirt, jeans and leather moccasins — she looked more like a senior counsellor on her way to summer camp than a tough-minded journalist. But tough-minded or not, she seemed vulnerable to me, not at all equipped to dig out facts in a dangerous place. She hadn’t left yet and I was already worried.

  I hugged her tightly when the airport service mini-bus came to pick her up. “Be careful, Mom. Don’t do anything dumb.”

  She kissed me and pulled the door open. “Okay, Gramps.”

  2

  Moving day was, to use an oxymoron, a hectic bore. Dad had planned the whole operation like a military campaign. He went to the new house on Brant and I stayed at the old one. The movers loaded up the truck under my eyes and unloaded again under his.

  I packed up my room — or some of it — and stowed my stuff in the van, because I was moving out to the mobile home, which I hadn’t even seen yet. I was looking forward to living alone, but at the same time I was a little scared by the idea of being independent. I was also pretty sad about leaving the house I had grown up in.

  Late in the afternoon, after the movers had driven off with the last load, I drifted from room to empty room, my footsteps echoing hollowly. The walls of the living and dining rooms had light oblongs on them where paintings had hung or furniture had stood against them. Dustballs lurked in corners. In the kitchen, cupboard doors hung open to reveal empty shelves.

  All day I had been putting off this dark moment. My home was to be occupied by strangers. My mother was halfway around the world. My father would be buzzing around, humming cheerily in the house he’d waited years to buy.

  I decided not to leave yet. I phoned Dad and told him my plans, then went out to the van to get the sleeping bag, recalling with a bit of a shiver the last time I had used it. I called out for a pizza, ate it in the family room, sitting on the floor, back against the wall, listening to tapes of old radio shows from Dad’s collection: “The Shadow,” “Inner Sanctum.” Then I went to sleep.

  I dreamed that I woke up with a fire in my belly, fueled by triple cheese and pepperoni — heartburn. At first I thought I had left the tape deck running. I reached over and pushed the power button. But the voices kept on. Voices I knew.

  “Oh, no,” I moaned. “No.”

  Eighty wish, I heard. Eighty wish.

  chapter

  I picked up Raphaella at the end of her street late the next morning after having breakfast with Dad at the new house. He was happy as a kid on Christmas morning.

  “You’re late,” she said as she got into the van.

  “Rough night.”

  “Oh?”

  “A combination of too much pizza and a nightmare.”

  “So you’re quoting Shakespeare to make you feel better.”

  “Ummm …”

  “In Macbeth. The morning after he murdered Duncan and before Macduff and Lennox discovered the body. They’re talking about storms and stuff, and Macbeth, who was half out of his mind with guilt and fear, says, ‘ ’Twas a rough night.’”

  “Oh.”

  “It’s kind of ironic. Understatement. Get it?”

  “Moronic?”

  “Ho, ho. You were also upset about leaving your old house for the last time.”

  Following Raphaella’s train of thought wasn’t always easy. In the short time we’d been together I had grown used to the feeling that sometimes came over me when I was with her — that she could read my mind. Or, to put it more accurately, she could read my feelings. Raphaella was like an antenna for emotions. I told her it was spooky. She said no, it was intuitive, and that people underestimated intuition.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I spent a long time chasing memories from room to room. It’s funny, isn’t it? After all, it’s just a building.”

  “There are buildings and there are buildings,” she said.

  I drove west on Highway 12 where it skirts Orillia to the south. Buses lumbered past in the opposite direction, carrying gamblers to the casino in Rama at ten-thirty in the morning. I turned onto the Old Barrie Road. The sun was directly behind us and we chased our own shadow along the two-lane secondary road.

  Raphaella was wearing loose cotton pants and a T-shirt that said “Global Ecology Not Global Economy.”

  “Do all your T-shirts have captions on them?” I asked.

  She smiled and pulled her hair back, looping an elastic band around it to make a long ponytail.

  “I prefer them to corporation logos. Anyway, want to tell me about the nightmare?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “Okay.”

  We drove in silence. In the distance the slanting sun illuminated the greening fields and the trees blushing with new buds. The road wound in gentle turns through the low hills.

  Raphaella didn’t press me about the dream. She didn’t pry, ever. And she expected the same from me. There was still a lot I didn’t know about her. Like who or where her father was. Where she and her mother had come from — they’d been in Orillia for only three years. Why she had transfered from Park Street Collegiate in the middle of the semester.

  What I did know was that she lived on Couchiching Point in a house on the canal. Her mother preferred to live on the water, Raphaella had said, typically refusing to elaborate. Her mother owned and operated the Demeter health food store in town, where Raphaella worked in her spare time — which she had lots of, because she was a half-time student. That was about it.

  I was curious, but I didn’t press things. If she wanted me to know she’d tell me, I’d learned. If she didn’t, there was no way to pry anything out of her. That was okay with me. I was in love with her, not her family or her background.

  “So, where’s this trailer park, anyway?” Raphaella asked.

  “Do you mind?” I said in a mock British accent. “One doesn’t say trailer park. One says mobile home estate.” Then, in my normal voice, “It’s on the Third Concession Line.”

  “Ah, yes,” Raphaella intoned. “An enviable address indeed. Just past the bustling metropolis of Edgar, I believe.”

  I laughed. As she spoke, we were passing through Edgar, a four-corner nowhere village with one store.

  “That’s the Third Concession up ahead,” I pointed out. “We go left.”

  A lone building at the crossroads came into view.

  “We’ll, I’ll be —”

  It looked different in bright spring sunshine. The large windows were trimmed in white that contrasted sharply with the dark plank walls. The lilac bush by the door was in bud. When I turned off the paved road onto the gravel concession line, I saw the stone and mortar structure. The one I had crashed into.

  “Yup, that’s it, all right,” I said to myself.

  “Why are we stopping?” Raphaella asked. “And what’s what?”

  “That’s the church where I spent the night last March. Remember? I told you about getting trapped there in the blizzard.” I hadn’t told her about the dream. “Let’s take a look,” I said.

  We crossed the road. Sure enough, the stones were chipped and there were faint traces of blue paint on the mortar.

  “It’s some kind of monument,” Raphaella said, her voice uneasy. “Look.”

  On the side opposite the one I’d hit was a bronze plaque that told us that the African Methodist Church had been built in 1849. Below the notation was a list of those “who worshipped and are buried here.”

  “African?” I said. “I don’t get it.”

  Rural Ontario was a long way from Africa. And you could count the black families in the area on one hand.

  I looked around. “There aren’t any gravestone
s. So where are the graves?”

  Around the church, the grounds were grass-covered. About thirty yards away was a forest of maple trees.

  “I guess the grassy part is the cemetery. Come on,” I suggested. “Let’s look inside.”

  “Maybe I’ll wait in the van,” Raphaella said quietly.

  “Just a quick look, then we’ll go.”

  I soon regretted my decision. Like dampness from cold stone, the church gave off an atmosphere of dread that I could feel on my skin and in my bones. Determined not to give in to my uneasiness, I pushed on. It’s a sunny spring day, I told myself. Birds are chirping in the trees. This isn’t Castle Dracula.

  I led Raphaella along the side of the church and looked in the windows, recalling the fright I had had that night when I had thought I’d seen a man watching me. Inside, the place appeared as I had left it. The benches that had been my bed stood before the stove.

  “Look,” I said to Raphaella, “you can see where the original logs have been covered with siding. And there’s —”

  Her face was ashen, and she held her hands at her waist, fingers interlocked, knuckles white.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “There are spirits here,” she whispered, her eyes wide.

  “What? How do —?”

  “Something bad happened around here somewhere. Something evil. Garnet, please, let’s go.”

  She clutched my arm as we walked back to the van. Which of us was more scared I didn’t know.

  chapter

  The mobile home park was about five hundred yards down the road on the left, almost hidden from view by a row of tall cedars. I drove under an arch with “Silverwood Estates” printed across a rising-sun motif and followed a winding blacktop track, slowing for the speed bumps, until I came to an egg-yellow modular unit with a sign saying “Office” nailed to a deck post. I got a set of keys and Roy Weeks’s handwritten instructions from the mailbox and we drove farther into the estate, looking for unit 99. I missed it the first time by.

  “That’s it,” Raphaella pointed. “The one back there by itself, against the trees.”

  I reversed the van and drove up a dirt track to my new abode, a “single-wide” mobile home, pea green with white trim around the windows and door. A satellite dish sat on the roof. A wooden deck ran the length of the trailer. On three sides a lawn enveloped last year’s flower gardens. We sat in the van, looking the place over. It would be private, and pretty quiet, I guessed, tucked up against the forest, separated from the other units.

  Inside, it was bright, clean and almost new. The door opened into a little living room. Then there was a galley kitchen, bathroom and shower, and a good-sized bedroom at the back. Perfect.

  I stowed my gear in the bedroom. A window looked out across a small patio to where a barbecue stood under a plastic tarp.

  “Nice, eh?” I said to Raphaella from the bedroom.

  She was leaning against the countertop. “Yeah, great.”

  Her face was still a little drawn, her voice edged with uncertainty. “How far away is that church?” she asked.

  “About half a mile. There’s a forest between here and there.”

  “Good.”

  I returned to the van and brought in the four bags of groceries we’d picked up in town. Raphaella was opening windows when I came in.

  We listened to music and talked for a while, arguing good-naturedly about whose CDs to play. Most of mine were either classical or jazz from twenty or thirty years ago. Raphaella had pop and — ugh — show tunes.

  “As long as I don’t have to listen to the WME,” I complained, and Raphaella threw a dish towel at me.

  We compromised, alternating hers then mine while we sipped cola (me) or juice (her). By mutual but unstated agreement, we avoided any mention of the church. Mostly, we talked about school, which Raphaella attended “casually,” as she put it, meaning at most two days a week. She knew about the deal I had made with my father.

  “What are you planning to do after graduation?” I asked. “College? University?”

  “Oh, my future was decided before I was born.”

  When she didn’t continue I urged, “Come on. You can’t say something mysterious like that and let it drop. It’s not fair.”

  “I’m supposed to operate a health food store. Like my mother.”

  “You don’t sound too enthusiastic.”

  “And she expects me to follow in her footsteps — she’s big on family history and tradition — and become a midwife.”

  That one threw me. “Is that a, um, profession?”

  “Certainly it is. Midwives are recognized almost everywhere. Lots of women won’t have their babies without one. The irritating thing is, I am interested in the things Mom wants, but it’s not enough. I want to learn more about people, about psychology. I’m interested in why people act the way they do, and why they believe the things they do. Know what I mean?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Mom’s afraid that if I go to university and I’m away from home for a few years, I’ll abandon her big plans for me. She keeps throwing that whole Park Street thing in my face whenever I talk about it.”

  This time, when Raphaella paused, I kept silent. Without my urging, she went on.

  “You probably heard some things about me,” she said.

  “Just gossip. You know how it is.”

  “What did your hear?”

  “Well, something about witches and stuff.”

  “I might have guessed. It was stupid. I did a seminar on the occult for history class — at least, some of it. It’s a vast field. I concentrated on Wicca and Voudon, conjuring, spells, exorcism, stuff like that.”

  She said it casually, as if she was discussing different brands of toothpaste.

  “You know what idiots people can be. After the seminar, rumors started to spread. I was a witch. I was a satanist. I’d find notes taped to my locker or hear remarks in the halls — never to my face, of course. Why would anyone think that because I did research on the occult that I buy into it all? It’s not what people believe that fascinates me, it’s why they believe it.”

  “So you don’t swallow any of it.”

  “I didn’t say that. Anyway, it all got so stupid that I decided to transfer to O. D.”

  “What about your father?” I asked. “Does he go along with your mother?”

  She opened the door a crack, then shut it again. “Don’t have one.”

  “He died?”

  “No.” Her voice tightened, warning me off.

  “Divorce?”

  “No. Hey, didn’t you promise me a gourmet dinner?”

  I let it drop. Maybe Raphaella’s mom had gotten pregnant when she was single and the guy had taken off. That kind of thing wasn’t exactly rare.

  I put water on to boil for pasta and took vegetables from the fridge.

  “I’ll watch,” Raphaella said. “You can teach me how to cook. I can’t boil water without burning it.”

  “Old joke. Old bad joke. You sound like my father.”

  When the water was rolling, I put in the spaghetti. I peeled an onion, squinting against the tears as I chopped it in half and then sliced thin half-moons off each half. Next I cut florets off a stalk of broccoli.

  “Do you like garlic? I forgot to ask.”

  “Yes.”

  “There’s only one rule about cooking with garlic,” I said as Raphaella began to set the table. “You put it in everything.”

  I peeled three fat cloves and chopped them up fine, then grated Parmesan cheese into a small bowl. I put a wide skillet on the stove over a medium heat and when it was hot, poured in olive oil, adding the onion, then the garlic. Immediately, a sweet, savory aroma filled the small kitchen. I tossed the ingredients slowly in the skillet, earning applause from Raphaella. I put in the broccoli, followed a few moments later by the pasta.

  Raphaella stood next to me with her arm around my waist. “You’re frying the spaghetti?”

  “No
t frying,” I said, tossing the ingredients with a pair of tongs. “Sautéing. Only barbarians fry their food.”

  “Oh, excuse me. And what does sauté mean, may I ask?”

  “Don’t be technical.”

  I transferred the pasta to two bowls and put them on the table, and we sat down to eat. It was Raphaella who raised the subject first. “Tell me about that place,” she said.

  “Have you ever been there before?”

  “No. Never heard of it.”

  “You seemed to, well, know something — from the way you reacted, I mean. Your face went pale.”

  “How could my face go pale?” she joked. “No, I’ve never been there. But the aura of the place is almost physical.”

  “And scary.”

  “Terrifying.”

  I nodded. “That makes me feel better. I was beginning to think I was a bit nuts.”

  We ate in silence for a few minutes.

  Then I asked, “Are you bothered by graveyards in general?”

  Raphaella shook her head. “Not in the least.”

  “So it was that place, the African church, in particular.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I’ve got something to tell you.”

  I recounted my nightmare, leaving nothing out. Raphaella reacted as if I’d read her a grocery list. She paid close attention, kept her eyes on me as I talked, but she was completely calm, as if she heard stories like mine every day.

  “And you’ve had this dream again?” she asked when I had finished.

  “Yup. Once at the store and once at home — last night.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Exactly. And it scares the hell out of me. I wake up shaking and gasping for breath.”

  “I like that about you.”

  “Er, what?”

  “That you’re willing to admit you’re scared.”

  “I wish I could say I wasn’t. You said back at the church that there were spirits there. What did you mean? Ghosts?”