by Sam Wiebe
“He scares you,” Freddie said.
“Know what? Least I can admit it.”
“I’m not afraid of anyone.”
“Sure you’re not.”
“I seen worse killers,” Freddie said.
“Like your friend Nichulls?” Cody snorted. “That’s not tough. That’s psycho.”
“You don’t know anything,” Freddie said.
When Freddie left and Cody was leading me back to the basement, Cody said, “Thinks being chummy with a serial killer makes him hot shit. Terry only keeps him around as a favour.”
“To who?” I asked.
“Nichulls. They were all friends, back in the day. Amount of time they spent out at the Law Courts, or the clubhouse, you’d think they were family. Giving Freddie a job is Terry’s way of looking after his friend.”
“Or paying him back,” I said.
“Paying him back for what?”
“Keeping quiet. Taking the blame.”
Cody shook his head. “Terry’s no serial killer. He does what he has to. He doesn’t get anything out of it.”
“Maybe he’s a facilitator,” I said.
“A what?”
“A middle man. Someone does murder, someone else owns a junkyard, he puts them in touch.”
“You’re lucky he didn’t hear you,” Cody said. “He’s not a middle anything. Terry’s at the top.”
“Everyone answers to someone,” I said.
My guards had different habits and ways of doing their job. Cody was lax, talkative. He forgot procedure and ordered me along. He was bored easily and the novelty of guard duty quickly wore off. Often, if he took me to the outhouse, he wouldn’t bother to bind me. Freddie stayed mute and stuck to the rules. If I took too long he’d knock on the walls of the shed. He kept his knife out.
Cody was ignorant of what Freddie and I knew: once Rhodes had the diary, once I wasn’t of use to him, he wouldn’t hesitate to kill me. Which meant sooner or later I’d have to escape.
—
The evening of the third day, long after the sun ducked down, I knocked on the basement door. Cody always answered those calls during the night. He’d be groggy and cut every corner he could to get back to bed. He was also roughly my size, and wore comfortable-looking shoes.
I had my shirt on inside out, to look like I’d just woken up. I had two pairs of socks on. My flannel was draped around me. I’d pocketed the pills and Everett’s cigarettes, though neither seemed of immediate use.
I knocked incessantly, loudly. Cody didn’t come to the door. I thought no one would. When I finally heard the bolt slide back, it was Freddie, squinting and cross.
“Washroom,” I said.
“Wait for the morning.”
“I need to go now.”
“Wait.”
“It won’t wait,” I said. “You can’t serve grease and plastic every meal and expect me to hold it.”
Freddie sighed and shut the door in my face. A moment later he reopened it with his shoes on, the zap straps in hand. His knife stuck out from his belt. I’d drawn the wrong guard. Already my plan was showing its seams.
He led me outside across the cold earth and slit the straps on my wrists. I waited for him to slit the ankle straps. He didn’t move.
“I need leverage on this one,” I said.
“Leverage?”
I mimed squatting, trying to spread my feet apart and being stifled by the ankle straps. He smirked and cut them. I entered the outhouse and heard him affix the padlock.
I was five minutes. As I flushed I lifted the porcelain lid off the water tank, delicately, so the grinding sound of removing it was lost beneath the evacuation of water. I worked the lid up under the back of my shirt, so it was partly tucked into my jeans. The lid felt cold and slimy. I put the flannel over it.
Freddie rapped on the side of the shed. I slid open the door, killing the light. I stepped out.
I held my hands out obnoxiously, as if telling him which limbs to bind first. Instead, he crouched and began threading a strap between the two fastened around my ankles.
I put my hands on my head and looked resigned. When his eyes dropped to focus on his task, I scrunched up the flannel so I could get my fingers on the edge of the lid.
Shifting my weight slightly caused Freddie to drop the strap. He looked up briefly to shake his head and then back down. It was dark and he was feeling his way.
I swung the lid over my shoulders and connected on the back of his head, laying him out. The sound of porcelain hitting bone was loud and strange in the still night.
Freddie moaned softly. I took his knife and slit the straps, dragged him into the outhouse. I was sweating now and my hand throbbed beneath its cast.
His shoes were too small to be of use. He had nothing in his pockets except a key ring, and I couldn’t see any vehicles. I padlocked the shed. I took the straps and ran across the ivy-covered ground toward the edge of the escarpment.
A steep trail cut down to the bottom, heading into the trees. I picked my way carefully. As I reached the bottom I saw the grey curve of an access road, down another steep drop to the left. Beyond it, the small glowing circuit board of the town.
I crossed over a ditch with a trickle of creek water running through it. The foliage became denser, harder to negotiate. The dry leaves and branches made moving silently difficult.
Before me was a steady decline that would lead to the road. The trees thinned out and I’d be visible during much of the way down. If I chose to go right, I’d stay reasonably camouflaged by the trees, but the craggy ground would make it a more arduous descent. Worse, the treeline skirted the town, so if I wanted to head there I’d be running across two kilometres of open field. There was no third option.
I started down, stumbling from tree to tree. The ground seemed boggy and footing was unsure. I fell, planting myself on my back as I slid down unglamorously, catching hold of an exposed twist of root to stop the slide. The next few steps I made were tentative.
I was thinking how stupid all this was. If I’d just given them the diary. It had been foolish to think there was something like justice for someone like Chelsea Loam.
Chelsea.
Maybe it was better never to know. Maybe it was fitting. In a way, the truth lets you close off all the possible answers, the criticism, the questions. Maybe her absence needed to linger over the city of Vancouver, haunting it, rebuking it at every corner for not caring about her, for caring too late.
I saw high beams distant on the road below. I paused on the slope. A Jeep came in view. The engine was unmuffled and as the Jeep idled the driver left it running.
A flashlight played up and down the road and into the bushes nearby, and then up the slope, near me, past me.
I squinted and made out Cody, standing in the roofless Jeep, swinging his flashlight wildly. He held a pistol in his other hand.
He swung the beam to the bushes and stayed focused on that spot. I could almost hear the dialog in his head, arguing whether or not to check it out on foot.
Another set of lights, another Jeep. This one pulled up alongside the first. Cody turned and aimed the light into the other truck before turning it off. Gains was at the wheel.
The two drivers discussed something. I saw Cody point at the bush and Gains say something. Cody sagged. He walked to the bush and poked at it with the barrel of his gun. Gains stood with his arms folded.
Far from where Cody was prodding, I spotted movement. I saw a black bear leave the cover of the bushes and start up the slope. As it cut closer to me I backed up, slipping, sending a shower of dirt and leaves down the slope. Cody stopped and strained his light across the clearing, but missed the bear. He returned to the Jeep.
I pulled myself up and behind the nearest tree. The bear ignored me and lumbered uphill into the brush. Cody drove the first Jeep away. I watched the lights dwindle.
Gains sat in the Jeep with the lights off for a long time. I couldn’t see where he was looking. I heard
him start the engine.
Gains banked the Jeep hard right, the front wheels almost driving into the narrow ditch that separated the slope from the pavement. He backed up the Jeep until the rear fender nudged the guard rail on the opposite side. I heard him race the engine.
The Jeep lurched and peeled rubber and sprang across the road. It cleared the ditch and moved up the slope. Gains steered it between two old bowed trees and only then did he hit the high beams.
Brilliant light bathed the stretch of slope where I hid. The light was blinding and I looked away. When I hazarded a look back the Jeep was empty.
Directly below me I saw Charles Gains haloed by headlights, his vacant eyes trained on me as his body propelled him toward me, at me, up the mountainside.
37
THERE’S A MOMENT before a fight when you learn whether or not it’s going to be your night. You stand in the ring, shuffling your feet to keep up your heart rate. All your training, all the variables you’ve tried to spin in your favour, it’s all behind you. You stare clear through your opponent into the rest of your career. You know.
When you see a glimpse of doubt, a sag of a shoulder, or someone so eager to hurt you they forget their training, the rest of the night plays out like a dance, ending inevitably with the cut over the eyebrow, the flurry that guarantees you a lead on points, or rarely, the other man knocked flat on his ass.
And when you look over and see only your own best-intentioned failure reflected back at you—there’s no loneliness like that. Like you’ve been cut from the herd and staked out as a sacrifice to a god that no longer exists. The rest of the night is a pointless bloodletting, an attempt to reconcile your safety with your pride.
Watching Gains sprint toward me, I realized what so unnerved Cody and others about him. Gains had never experienced that sense of defeat. He’d never confronted the part of himself that was weak and yielding. He’d never had to.
In that split-second I weighed my options and took stock of my position. I was exhausted and malnourished. My hand hurt. I had a knife.
Gains seemed unarmed. He was in peak shape and ready for this. He could have signalled Cody to join him, and maybe he did, but I had a feeling he’d chosen this confrontation.
I could retreat back up the hill and head across the trail, keeping to the forest and bypassing the town. I might get somewhere. Or I could make a stand, with the altitude and a blade my only advantages over strength and skill and will and experience. Pointless fight or pointless flight. I headed up the slope back toward the forest.
It was like running up sand. In places it was easier to go bent over, using my hands. I told myself not to check over my shoulder until I’d reached the top, but I did. Gains had closed some of the distance between us.
At the top I went through the nearest bush, trampling over and through it, brambles whipping my face. The ground dropped and I saw water pour from a culvert. I looked behind me, saw Gains. Closer now. The bastard didn’t even seem winded.
No path now, straight through unending brush. Between sweat and the branches and the darkness I could see nothing. Every branch that scraped my neck was Gains clutching me.
I broke through the bushes. I could see in front of me, at eye level, the steeples of treetops. The bushes and treeline ended within two strides of a cliff that led down to rock and forest.
I broke left, skirting the edge, looking for a way down that didn’t involve a plummet.
A kilometre along, the cliff dipped. I saw a line of chain link inscribed over the mossy rock. Here was a man-made buildup of stones, propping up this section of cliff face so erosion and time wouldn’t rain it down on the road below.
The road. Not an access road but a multiple lane strip of blacktop. I paused and tried to still my pulse so I could listen for Gains. Instead I heard water.
I kept close to the hip-level fence as I skirted the edge, continuing left. In front of me and below, the drop-off became sharper as the road hewed closer to the cliff face. There was a stream on the other side of the road, moving in the same direction I was.
The break I was looking for came where the cliff receded. It hadn’t done so naturally. The stream widened far below, and the road had been squeezed. Part of the cliff had been blasted to add more flat space for widening the blacktop. The rubble had been piled up in a steep but descendable slope of boulders and smaller stones, netted over to prevent a rockslide. I could get down there. Not easily. Not with Gains above. But maybe fast enough to make it down before Gains noticed my direction had changed.
I climbed over the fence and sat on the cliff edge, and finally worked up the courage to push off.
I fell about six feet, my good hand scraping the rock wall. I landed at the beginning of the slope, on hard-packed dirt that rattled my jaw and sent a sting of numbness down my leg. I slid down to the first rock and held myself there, feeling it sway precariously as I shifted my weight. If I fucked up now I’d ride the whole pile down. If I survived that, every creature on the mountain would know my location.
I picked a boulder a short distance below me that looked solidly embedded in the cliff. I delicately transferred my weight, moving diagonally, in case any of the stones I upset decided to show their appreciation by tumbling down after. Silently I picked my way down the scree.
From the boulder, I lowered myself onto a stretch of midsized stones. There were no footholds, none that lasted. The entire slope seemed to shift and rearrange itself as I made my way down. Without warning everything around me dropped. The stones bounded happily to pelt the larger rocks below.
I felt my foot hit something solid. I paused, considering how to get the rest of me down onto the zeppelin-sized boulder below, short of triggering a rockslide.
I inched down, feeling along with my heels, using my hands to keep myself spread over as much of the surface as possible. I wished I’d been able to keep awake during physics. Distribution of mass and kinetics were vague concepts. I resolved that when I made it out I’d buy some books, maybe take a night course.
My other foot touched down on the zeppelin and the rocks below me chose that moment to move. I slid and found myself straddling the large boulder. I scrambled over that and dropped down, this time using my arms. I landed on sharp stones that jabbed through the socks. A walk down those and a feeble leap over the ditch and my feet touched the still-warm pavement.
Looking back up, with the moonlight behind me, the entire slope gleamed like a jeweller’s idea of heaven.
—
Follow the river, follow the road. It was the most direct way to the town. It was also over manicured ground that left no cover. It was where I’d look for me, if I was them.
Still, it was tempting. I started that way and only stopped when I saw the twin slash of headlights approaching.
The forest continued on the other side of the river. The riverbank was black stone, moss-covered and shiny. The thought of plunging into cold rushing water and wading across was unappealing. My feet stung and I was already chilled.
From my earlier vantage point above the cliff, I’d noticed a spot maybe two kilometres back where the water flow hadn’t been as fierce, and the banks seemed easier to negotiate. I could cross there, elude the high beams, throw off Gains if he was still following me, and use the tree cover to creep near the town by daybreak.
It sounded good. Or it sounded as stupid as anything else I could think of. I started that way, keeping off the road despite my feet’s strong preference for smooth ground.
It was a fearful place, the wild, even this artificially straightened, paved and preserved swath of second-growth forest. The night seemed capable of spewing forth anything.
Seeing darkness stretch on in every direction, seeing it take the forms of liquid and air, seeing animals with a kinship to night that you would never have—you could feel the impulse that campfires and trading posts sprang from, villages, nations. Civilization was cowardice made tangible, a graffiti the fearful used to overwrite the truth. The fleeti
ng feeling I’d felt looking across Vancouver Harbour, that this would someday all end—this, the darkness, was what would replace it.
I trudged across the rock toward a place to ford the river, thinking of what meal I’d have when I made it home. A well-done end cut of prime rib from the Keg, marbled and charred on the edges. Baked potato with every artery-clogging topping. Or maybe a curry from Vij’s. Bangers and colcannon from the Johnnie Fox with a nice fat-headed pint of Black and Tan. A slice of butter cake from Notte’s and a London Fog.
I thought of women I wished I’d slept with, or slept with again, starting with my fifth-grade teacher and working my way back to Shay.
She hadn’t been in my thoughts much these last few days. Maybe I didn’t know how to think of her.
I know she’d enjoyed those same moments I had—lying together in bed, strolling through the Night Market in Chinatown, all the couple things happy people take for granted. Maybe they’d scared her. There was a comfort in having nothing that could be taken away from you. To suddenly be thrust into a world of fragile moments, enjoyable but out of your control, could drive someone to madness waiting for the drop.
I know Chelsea feared not being loved. I believe Shay feared the opposite.
The rush of water lessened as I moved upstream along the bank. Ahead, two tributaries converged, which accounted for the speed of the river. Above that the ground flattened out and crossing would be easier.
There was a blind corner ahead where the road wound around an outcropping of cliff while the river travelled on. Before I broke away from the road, I looked back to check for headlights. I couldn’t see any.
38
AS BEST AS I CAN FIGURE, Gains came out of the brush at the cliff edge, same as I had. There were two directions to go, and it’s possible he took the wrong way. It’s also possible he stuck to the forest for cover.
Whatever the case, he’d lost me. If he’d been tracking someone in his right mind, Gains might have assumed the cliff continued, sheer, and that I’d backtracked. He’d underestimated my fortitude, or overestimated my common sense.