by Ian Rogers
“She was my ex-Algebra teacher. I feel the need to have that stated for the record.”
“The record? You’re not on trial, Soelle.”
“Really? You could’ve fooled me.”
“You said the Haxanpaxan did it.”
“That’s right.”
“But there is no Haxanpaxan.”
“I wish you would stop saying that. It makes him very angry.”
“Was the Haxanpaxan angry at Mrs. O’Reilly?”
“No. I guess you could say he was angry on my behalf.”
“And that’s why he burned down her house.”
“I don’t control the Haxanpaxan, Toby. He knew I was upset, and I guess he just took it out on her.”
“Well, that’s just . . . just . . .”
“Aces?”
“No, Soelle, it isn’t aces. It’s the exact opposite of aces.”
I got a phone call from the guy who owned the convenience store. He said Soelle was loitering around outside, and if I didn’t come down and collect her, he was going to call the police. I realized this was the guy who started all the witch talk. He sounded terrified. As I got in the car and drove over, I wondered how he got our phone number.
Soelle wasn’t there when I pulled into the strip mall. I parked and went around back to where the dumpsters were. I found her writing on the brick wall with a piece of pink chalk. She was drawing squares, one next to the other, one stacked on top of another.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“What does it look like?”
“It looks like you’re tagging the back of the store.”
“Tagging? Oh, Toby, you’re so street.” She snickered and kept on drawing. “And it’s not graffiti. It’ll wash off in the rain.”
“Then what are you doing?”
“Testing a theory,” she said vaguely.
She drew one final square, then walked back to where I was standing. She handed me the piece of chalk and walked further back, toward the screen of trees between the plaza and the lake. She stopped on the grassy verge, turned around, and suddenly ran full-tilt at the wall. I started to call out, but she sped past me, arms pumping, brow furrowed in concentration.
At the last moment, she leaped into the air, throwing her legs out in front of her like a long-jumper, and landed on the wall.
And stuck to it.
She stood frozen there, in a half-crouch, on the wall. Then, slowly, she began to stand up straight . . . or rather, sideways. She was standing in the middle of the first square she had drawn. She hesitated a moment, then hopped sideways and landed on the next one. I tilted my head, trying to watch her, but it was disorienting. It was one thing to see her defying gravity by sticking to the wall, but it was quite another to watch her hop up and down in a sidelong fashion. It was like watching someone walking up the crazy stairs in an M.C. Escher print.
It wasn’t until Soelle reached the final square and turned around and hopped back that I realized what she was doing.
Playing hopscotch.
Things quieted down a bit after that.
Soelle didn’t do anything too weird, and there were no unusual occurrences in town. It was a textbook Silver Falls summer: hot, quiet, and uneventful.
September arrived and the kids went back to school. October came and the leaves started changing colour. Everything was still quiet. I started to think maybe it was just a phase Soelle had gone through. Like puberty or something. I thought about getting her back into school, or at least helping to get her high-school equivalency. On the one hand I was surprised I hadn’t received a summons from juvenile court. On the other it was just another example of how removed Soelle was from everyday life.
I had asked Soelle what she wanted to do with her life, and she told me her first priority was to find those last two aces. I told Soelle we’d have to work on that, but until then maybe she’d like to help me rake the leaves.
I told her to get started while I went down to the hardware store to buy some paper leaf bags. As I was coming out of the store, I happened to look across the street at the people lounging around in Orchard Park. They were all looking up at the sky. I went over to see what was going on. I tried to follow their collective stare, but I couldn’t see anything. Then I saw it, something small and dark floating high above the trees. It looked like a black balloon. Everyone was talking in low, excited voices, some of them pointing. An old man holding a bag of bread crumbs he had been using to feed the pigeons was shaking his head and saying, “It ain’t right. No sir, it ain’t right at all.”
Whatever it was, it started to come down closer to the ground. It bounced back up, then came down again, lower this time, and I could make out what it was.
Soelle.
She was wearing a black dress and black shoes (part of her witch’s wardrobe, I assumed). As I watched her descend lower, one of the shoes slipped off her foot and fell into the park fountain with a splash.
“Heads up!” she called down in a giggling voice.
“Soelle!” I shouted. “Come down from there!”
I felt absurd saying those words. Like I was only asking her to come down off the roof.
“Are you kidding?” she hollered back. “Do you know how long it took me to get up here? I’ve been working on this for weeks!”
“Get down right now!”
“Don’t be such a drag.” She swung around in a lazy turn and started coming down lower. She brushed the top of one of the tall elms and called out: “Oh, wow!”
“Be careful!”
She came floating down to the ground, looking like a gothy version of Mary Poppins (sans umbrella). The people in the park ran away, some of them screaming.
“This can only end well,” I said, watching them scatter.
Soelle waved a dismissive hand. “They’re just jealous,” she said. “Forget them. Look what I found at the top of that tree!”
She passed it to me.
The ace of spades.
The van showed up the day after the levitation incident.
I knew something was coming. There was a tension in the air, the kind that reminded me of the wet-battery smell before a powerful thunderstorm.
I was in Soelle’s room changing her sheets. Not that there was any sign she actually slept in her bed those days. I was just going through the motions of a normal life. I was putting on the pillowcases and staring at the spider that built a web outside Soelle’s window every spring. The web it had made this year was bizarre to say the least. It was all over the place, for one. It was coming apart in places and in others the webbing had been spun into strange, almost geometric shapes.
I was watching the spider running madly back and forth when the van pulled up: a white van with no markings on it except a plus sign on the side. Sort of like the Red Cross only black.
A man and a woman got out, both dressed conservatively—the man in a dark suit, the woman in a skirt and jacket ensemble. They looked like Jehovah’s Witnesses. The man was carrying a briefcase, but I didn’t think there were copies of The Watchtower inside.
I reached the front door just as they were knocking on it.
“Hello,” the man said. “My name is Waldo Rand. This is my partner, Leah.” He motioned to the woman behind him without taking his eyes off me. “May we speak with you?”
“About what?”
“You have a sister.” It wasn’t a question. “May we see her?”
I turned my head and looked into the living room. Soelle was sitting on the floor amid a drift of our father’s old National Geographics.
“What for?” she asked gruffly.
“This won’t take very long,” Waldo assured me. “And it won’t hurt,” he added to Soelle, who didn’t look convinced. “Just have a seat here.” He gestured to the table in the dining room. Reluctantly Soelle came over and took a seat across from Waldo. His partner, Leah, stood in the doorway, one hand resting on her hip, fingers tapp
ing against a bulge under her jacket.
“Do you have a lot of friends, Soelle?”
Soelle stared at him for a moment before answering. “No. I don’t need any.”
“Not even an imaginary one? Someone only you can see? Do you have one of those?”
“Yesss,” Soelle said slowly.
“Is he or she in this room right now?”
Soelle made an effort of looking all around her, then she shook her head.
“She’s burning hot,” Leah mentioned in a strangely casual voice.
Waldo took out a folded piece of paper, unfolded it, and put it down with a pen in front of Soelle. “Can you draw me a picture of him?”
Soelle stared at the paper, then raised her eyes up to Waldo.
“The Haxanpaxan doesn’t like to be drawn, does he?” he said.
Soelle shook her head.
“Have you ever played with tarot cards?”
“You don’t play with tarot cards.”
“I’ve never seen anyone shift like this before,” Leah said in a low, awe-filled voice. She raised one of her hands toward Soelle, fingers wavering slowly back and forth. “I’m surprised she’s even visible.”
“Leah,” Waldo said curtly. He turned back to Soelle. “Have you ever used tarot cards before?”
“Yes.”
“A girl died,” I mentioned.
“I didn’t kill her! She ran in front of a bus.”
Waldo held up a calming hand. “It’s okay. We’re not here about that.”
“Then why are you here?” Soelle snapped.
“We just have one more question.” Waldo cleared his throat. “Have you ever played . . . Have you ever used a Ouija board?”
“No,” she said emphatically.
Waldo let out a deep breath. He wiped his brow and looked over his shoulder at his partner. She crossed her arms and leaned back against the wall. “Thank God for small favours,” she said.
Waldo stood up and led me into the kitchen.
“May I call you Tobias?”
I nodded.
“Tobias, your sister is . . .”
“Please don’t say special.”
“I was going to say dangerous.”
“That’s awfully . . . frank.”
Waldo frowned. “I’m afraid I don’t know any other way to be.”
“It’s okay,” I told him. “It’s just unexpected. I’ve become sort of used to—”
“Covering up for your sister?” Waldo finished. “Making excuses for her? We know, Tobias. We know all about it.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Soelle is having an adverse effect on reality. She’s out of phase. She’s not supposed to be here. I’m sure you’ve noticed some unusual phenomena while in her presence. People and animals acting strangely, unusual weather, apports . . .”
“Apports?”
“Objects that appear seemingly out of thin air.”
“What kinds of objects?”
Waldo gestured vaguely.
“Like playing cards?” I suggested.
“Sure,” Waldo said. “Small objects usually.”
“Soelle’s been finding playing cards—aces, specifically—around town. She’s become intent on finding them.”
“Aces?” Leah said, coming up behind us.
“Yes,” I said. “She found one under a bridge. Another in a tree—a tree that she was levitating over at the time.”
“Levitation.” Leah’s gaze drifted away for a moment, then came back in force, boring into me. “Has she found them all?”
“No. She’s found three of them so far.”
Leah turned to Waldo and said, “We need to move quickly.”
Waldo cleared his throat and turned to face me.
“Tobias, we have a man in our employ. A psychic. He has the ability to the see future in his dreams. He lives in one of our most remote stations, in Lhasa. That’s in Tibet. The Roof of the World, they call it. We have him there because the high elevation causes people to dream in extremely vivid detail. It makes his ability that much more potent.”
“What does this have to do with Soelle?”
“This man,” Waldo said, “he’s been dreaming of her. In those dreams, Soelle destroys the planet.”
“She’s not supposed to be here,” Leah muttered.
“Where is she supposed to be?” I said. “Tibet?”
Waldo shook his head. “It’s not important. All you need to know is that she can’t stay here.” He reached out and gave my shoulder a firm but comforting squeeze.
“Tobias, your sister needs to come with us.”
Soelle didn’t put up a fight. In fact, she wanted to go.
“I have to widen my search,” she said. “You understand.”
“Sure,” I said. You could have filled a barn with all the things I didn’t understand at this point.
I offered to help pack her stuff, but Leah said it wasn’t necessary.
“We’ll get her new clothes,” she assured me. “We’ll take care of her.”
Waldo shook my hand and thanked me. I didn’t know for what, but I said “You’re welcome” anyway. Then they stepped outside to let me say good-bye to Soelle.
“Take care of the Haxanpaxan for me,” she said.
“He’s not going with you?”
“Leah says there’s only room for me.”
“Too bad.”
“Yeah, but at least neither of you will be lonely.”
I nodded. “Be good, Soelle.”
She gave me her NutraSweet grin. “I’ll try.” Then she did something she hadn’t done since she was little: she kissed me on the cheek.
Then she was gone.
I watched the van drive away. The plus sign on the side was gone. In its place were three wavy lines. I didn’t know what that meant.
One more thing to add to the list.
After a while I went upstairs. As I was passing Soelle’s room, the door slammed shut. I tried to open it, but it wouldn’t budge.
The door still doesn’t open, and I haven’t been in her room since.
No one ever questioned Soelle’s disappearance. I never called the police, and no one ever came around asking about her. I think it was more than just the town being glad she was gone. Maybe she really didn’t belong here.
I heard from her only once. I got a letter. It was postmarked from a town in Mexico, some place I couldn’t even pronounce. It contained two items. One was a colour photograph of a Mayan pyramid. On the back she had written: I found it, Toby. It was here all along.
The other item was a playing card.
The ace of diamonds.
AUTUMNOLOGY
I never knew his real name. No one did. When I first started delivering his groceries, I told him mine, thinking he would do the same, but he shook his head.
“Names aren’t important,” he said. “Only the work is important. There will be no names between us. You will be ‘the Boy’ and I will be ‘the Professor.’”
I was sixteen at the time and didn’t particularly like being called a boy. But the Professor was so unusual, so different from any adult I’d ever known, that I didn’t give it much thought. Of course now all I can do is think about him.
I started to ask him about his “work,” but he was already gone, out the back door. I watched him walk into the woods—a common sight, I would eventually discover.
Most people thought he was odd from the moment he arrived in town. For one thing, he referred to himself as a “professor of autumnology”—which is where the nicknames came from—and for another he was from “Away,” which is what we say on Cape Breton Island to describe someone who wasn’t born here.
He had moved into an old house on the outskirts of New Waterford. It was probably the best place for him. It made the townfolk comfortable with him in a way they might not have been otherwise. It’s one of the simple truths we live w
ith out here on the East Coast. The clouds are in the sky, the fish are in the sea, and the weirdos are on the edge of town.
People still wondered how he could live out there, with no electricity and no water except what he brought up from the well. I thought about these things too, but mostly I wondered about his “work,” and why it was so important.
And it was important. I could see it in the Professor’s eyes when he spoke to me. I still see that look in my dreams. I feel it burning a hole through me, but I never turn away from it.
It was on a day in November that he showed me the tree.
I had gone out to deliver the week’s groceries, letting myself in through the front door since the Professor wasn’t always around to hear me knocking. If he was home, we’d talk for a little while, usually about the weather. If he wasn’t, I’d stick around for a bit anyway, unpacking the groceries and telling myself I was just being helpful, that I wasn’t being what my mother called a Nosey Ned.
He wasn’t around that day, so I set to restocking the pantry from the two big paper bags I had carried from town. While I was reaching up to put a box of powdered milk on a high shelf, the back door suddenly opened with a loud screech. The box slipped out of my fingers and bonked me a good one on the head. I didn’t feel it, though. I was too busy gaping at the Professor standing in the doorway, his cheeks rosy as polished apples, the breath fuming out of his mouth in great frosty plumes.
“Someone has to see it,” he gasped. “So I know I’m not crazy.”
He did look a bit crazy, I had to admit. His eyes had the thousand-yard stare you sometimes see in fishermen who have spent their entire lives working on the sea. The eyes of someone who is looking at everything and nothing at the same time.
I was reaching down to retrieve the box of powdered milk when he grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the door. I managed to grab my wool cap off the kitchen table, and then we were outside, headed into the woods.
The dead, naked branches of maple and white birch raked at us like long, bony hands, making harsh scraping sounds against our coats, while our feet kicked through ankle-deep drifts of humus, decaying leaves with bright colours long faded. A branch snagged the wool cap out of my hand. I started to turn back for it and was almost pulled off my feet.