by Michael Rowe
“Good girl,” he crooned in his most soothing voice. “Come, Sadie. Good girl. Come here.”
Slowly, she stepped backwards, then turned and skirted the area, giving it a wide berth, trotting over to where he was standing and burrowing between his legs as though pleading for sanctuary. He reached down and stroked her head. The dog shivered violently, panting harshly. As he continued to caress her, the shaking subsided slightly.
What the hell is going on here? Finn wondered. He looked at the spot again. There was nothing unusual about it, certainly nothing he hadn’t seen before on any number of hikes out here by the lake, or indeed anywhere in the vicinity of Parr’s Landing. Curiosity overtook him and he took a step away from Sadie, towards the rocks.
Immediately, behind him, Sadie began to whine. He looked back over his shoulder and said, “Shhhh, Sadie.”
The dog was unconvinced and continued to whimper piteously as though begging him to stay with her, to not walk any farther in that direction, to take her home and away from here.
For Finn’s part, curiosity had overtaken caution. He glanced around him—it was flat land; there nowhere for anything dangerous to be slumbering or hiding. Immediately, he discounted a very short mental checklist of wild animals he might risk provoking into violence by surprising them.
So what the hell was she so scared by?
He stopped abruptly, struck by a sound. Actually, it was not a sound at all, but rather a complete absence of sound. He heard Sadie whining; he heard his own feet crunching in the dead leaves and twigs at his feet. But all around him, there were no dawn sounds of birds twittering, no fluttering of wings above him. Even the wind seemed to have stopped abruptly. It was as though a cone had descended on this area, trapping Finn and his dog but shutting everything else out.
He took three more steps. He realized he was standing directly below the ledged rock wall upon which the Indian paintings thought to be of the Wendigo of St. Barthélemy were etched.
He looked down at the overgrowth between the rock formations. There was a crack of some sort, a hollow-looking fissure in the earth that looked like it might have been the opening to a cave mouth at some point, perhaps hundreds, or even thousands, of years ago. It looked too narrow to be an animal burrow, and he doubted Sadie would have had the reaction she did to a snake.
Finn stamped gingerly on the ground and, finding it solid, stamped again.
He knew that Parr’s Landing, like many former nineteenth-century mining towns, was honeycombed with underground tunnels. Some of the tunnels were so old they could no longer be located on modern surveyor’s maps, and there had always been tales in town of children wandering into the bush, falling through overgrown mine shaft covers. Finn had long suspected the stories were apocryphal, the primary intention being to keep small children close to home. No one he knew could recall a specific instance of it happening to anyone they knew, but it never hurt to be careful.
He leaned down to pull away some of the smaller rocks and fallen detritus of dead leaves and fallen branches, and the curious and entirely illogical thought came to him that he was disturbing a grave.
Reaching out with his right hand to lift away the first branch, he heard a piercing shriek of terror that was almost human erupt directly behind him.
He screamed involuntarily and turned around to see Sadie launching herself in the air, her black body twisting as though trying to catch something in her jaws, something hovering above her head, something that Finn could not see, however wildly he whipped his head back and forth. Again and again Sadie leaped and snapped, twisting her body into an epileptic funnel of black fur and sharp white teeth.
Then she lay prostrate on the ground and howled, peal after banshee peal, till Finn—now badly frightened himself, though still not sure of what—bolted past Sadie towards the trail, shouting at the top of the lungs for her to COME!
The Labrador was on her feet like a gunshot, galloping behind Finn as though pursued. Neither looked back—not until Finn’s lungs felt like they were burning, not until both boy and dog were well within sight of the familiar path that led around the lake, and not until they’d taken the turn that led towards the safety of home.
CHAPTER NINE
Through the windshield of his blue Ford Ranger XLT pickup, Billy Lightning saw the dark-haired boy with the black dog close at his heels tearing out of the woods as though they were being chased by the Devil himself. From the direction the boy was running, Billy knew he’d come from the vicinity of Bradley Lake. Billy felt a snake-strike of sharp dread, but immediately dismissed it as unwarranted.
The boy was probably late for school or something, or for breakfast. He chided himself for living so much in his head that he automatically assumed the worst. On the other hand, if one were going to automatically imagine the worst about anything, especially right about now, Parr’s Landing would be the place.
Billy turned left onto Main Street, then, thinking better of it, took the network of rural roads that allowed him to circle the town at a more leisurely pace. His eyes restlessly scanned the tree line behind the houses he just passed, seeking out the omnipresent boreal forest beyond it that always seemed to be waiting hungrily to grow wild again, perpetually on the verge of reclaiming the land from the settlers who’d forced something never meant to be domestic into subjugation.
Billy couldn’t decide if this restless cruising in the truck was some inherited hunter’s instinct, or if he was just delaying the inevitable, which was walking through the front doors of the police station in Parr’s Landing and telling the constable in charge that something terrible had woken up and was, even now, slouching towards his town.
Police Constable Elliot McKitrick looked up from his paperwork when the tall, broad-shouldered Indian, wearing a leather jacket over a lumberjack shirt tucked into old blue jeans, came through the door. The man’s thick black hair was tied back in a neat ponytail. His features were refined and vaguely ascetic, and the horn-rimmed glasses he wore lent him a scholarly air. He looked anywhere on either side of forty-five. The leather jacket looked expensive and was certainly not from around here.
For Elliot McKitrick, who was not without certain ingrained cultural prejudices when it came to Indians, the authoritative demeanour of the man coming towards him struck him immediately. The man carried himself as though he were accustomed to going where he pleased and being listened to when he spoke. Elliot disliked him instantly.
“Help you, sir?” Elliot asked politely, betraying none of his private assessments.
“Yes,” Billy said. “I’d like to see the officer in charge, please. My name is William Lightning.”
“That would be Sergeant Thomson, Mr. Lightning. He’s currently away from his desk. Is there something I might help you with?”
Billy sighed. “When will he be back? It’s rather important.”
“Couldn’t say, sir. He was on an out-of-town call early this morning in Gyles Point. I suspect he’ll be in later on today. I’d suggest you wait—” Elliot shrugged, indicating the hard-looking wooden bench near the doorway of the station. “—but it might be a while. Perhaps you’d like to tell me what this is all about, or else come back later on today when the sergeant is back at his desk?”
Billy hesitated, as if unsure of how much information to share. “May I ask, have you had any unusual occurrences in the area lately?”
“Unusual, how?” Elliot replied warily. “What do you mean?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Billy said in a neutral voice. “Prowlers, break-ins, anything like that?”
Elliot stiffened. “Sir, that’s not the sort of information we randomly share with just anyone who walks in off the street. Is there a specific reason you’re asking? If there is, I recommend that you tell me right away. This isn’t sounding very good for you from my point of view right now.”
Now it was Billy’s turn to bristle. “I beg your pardon, constable? What do you mean by that, please?”
“Sir,” Elliot said,
putting a slight patronizing emphasis on the word “sir” that made Billy seethe inside, “an Indian comes into this detachment office and asks me if we’ve had any break-ins, but won’t tell me why. If there had been any break-ins, I’d have to wonder why you knew about them, and why you were asking about them. As it happens, there haven’t been any, but I’d still like to know why you’re asking.”
“I’ll leave my name,” Billy said coldly. “Please ask Sergeant Thomson to call me when he’s back.” He wrote William Lightning on a pad of blotter paper and handed it to McKitrick.
“Where are you staying?”
Billy noted that the policeman had omitted the word “sir” this time. “I’m going to check into the Golden Nugget motel,” he said. “On the edge of town, near the road in.”
“I know where the Golden Nugget is, Mr. Lightning. I live in this town.”
“Dr. Lightning, Constable—” Billy squinted at Elliot’s nametag. “— McKitrick. Please have Sergeant Thomson call me. I drove all night to get here, so I’m going to rest for a few hours. Please have him call sometime after twelve noon.”
When he reached the door, Billy turned back. The look he caught in Elliot McKitrick’s eyes before he quickly glanced back down at his paperwork was like a slap across the face. It had been decades since he’d seen that look, or felt the way it was intended to make him feel.
For one vertiginous moment the present fell away and Billy saw himself reflected in the cop’s eyes: a small bronze boy with a crude bowl haircut cut and fearful eyes—one child among fifty other children marching in two flanks through the streets of Sault Ste. Marie, all with the same bowl haircut, dressed in identical woollen jackets the colour of cardinal’s wings flashing crimson in the winter sun.
He let the door of the police station slam behind him as he stepped into the street and crossed over to where his truck was parked. Only when he opened the driver’s side door and stepped up into the seat did he realize he was shaking.
Morgan Parr had awakened at six a.m. in her canopy bed in her new room at Parr House feeling entirely rested for the first time in months. She stretched languorously and wiggled her toes under the yellow silk duvet. She’d glanced out the window and seen that it was still dark outside. Unlike the neon-spackled darkness at home in the city, this northern darkness was absolute and unyielding. She thought perhaps she detected a band of lighter black, not quite yet grey, in the eastern window.
So tired had Morgan been the night before, after the final leg of their journey north, that she’d barely registered her surroundings before falling into a thick sleep. Now, she took the room’s measure slowly, one luxurious detail at a time.
There was a delicate scent of lavender and violet wafting from the eighteenth-century yellow-rose-flowered Meissen hard-paste porcelain bowl of potpourri sitting on the mirrored dresser on the wall adjacent to the bed. Morgan had never seen or smelled potpourri before and was charmed by the mix of dried flowers and lavender seeds. The walls themselves were smoky cream, the windows framed with heavy yellow velvet curtains. On the walls hung a variety of oil paintings— some Canadian wilderness scenes that featured Lake Superior and the surrounding shield, a scattering of English watercolours of gardens and seascapes. There was also an oil portrait of a young girl who, even then, had the features of the adult Adeline Parr, but without the hardness Morgan had seen in her grandmother’s face last night. The portrait, she realized, was of Adeline at roughly the same age Morgan was now.
Morgan discovered that the room had an adjoining bathroom. ( My own bathroom! she’d thought delightedly, stamping her feet on the thick cream carpet of the bedroom in a little dance of girlish euphoria.) She’d splashed her face with cold water in the sink, and then turned on the shower. Under the hot spray, she’d washed her hair, sluicing away the grime and sweat of the long car ride.
After towelling off and dabbing some Johnson’s baby lotion on her face, Morgan combed her damp hair with a wide-toothed comb and dressed in a clean pair of jeans and a soft blue sweater. She looked at her Timex. It was seven o’clock.
Checking her image in the mirror over her dresser one last time, she smiled at her reflection, well pleased with what she saw there. She took a deep breath, then headed downstairs for breakfast with her grandmother.
When Morgan entered the dining room, her mother and Jeremy were already seated. They were looking down at their plates. Jeremy’s face was red and Morgan’s mother was furiously buttering a piece of toast. The tension in the air lay like a miasma over the table. The only person who seemed unaffected by it was Adeline, who looked up from her gold-rimmed breakfast plate and smiled pleasantly at her granddaughter.
“Good morning, dear,” Adeline said. “Did you sleep well?”
“Yes, Grandmother.” Morgan looked inquisitively at her mother and her uncle, then back to Adeline. “Thank you.”
“You’ll find breakfast laid out on the sideboard over there,” Adeline said, indicating the gleaming silver-domed platters on the sideboard’s surface. “Beatrice will be removing them and clearing the table promptly at seven forty-five, so I advise you to select what you wish to eat and begin. You don’t want to be late for your first day in your new school.”
Morgan looked around. “Who’s Beatrice?”
“Beatrice has been with this family for most of her working life. Her husband, James, is our driver, and he will be driving you to school this morning shortly after you’re finished with breakfast. There will be forms to fill out, I’m sure. You don’t want to start off on the wrong foot.”
Christina looked sharply at Adeline. “I’ll drive Morgan to school this morning, Adeline. I was sure I made that clear earlier.”
“Out of the question,” Adeline replied. Her tone was peremptory and dismissive. “Morgan will be fine on her own. She’s fifteen. She doesn’t need mollycoddling, and frankly I’d like her to have the advantage of starting school with a minimum of gossip to deal with about—well, about recent life events.”
“Jesus, Mother.” Jeremy looked disgusted.
“Are you referring to her father’s death?” Christina said, hearing a certain shrillness in her own tone that was entirely alien to her. “Or are you referring to the fact that her uncle doesn’t love women? Or that her mother has brought her back to this town she swore she’d never even think of again because she had no other way of providing for her? Which ‘recent events’ are you referring to, Adeline? Which ‘recent events’ should stop me from driving my daughter to school this morning?”
“How you—”
“Mom, maybe Grandmother is right,” Morgan interrupted. She looked beseechingly at her mother, as though imploring her to concede, if only just this once, for the sake of peace. “I’ll be fine. I’ll tell you all about it this afternoon when I get home.”
Christina recognized at once that her daughter was trying to avert a scene between herself and Adeline, and she was momentarily chagrined that she’d allowed Adeline to draw her into yet another power struggle so soon. She was particularly struck by Adeline’s willingness to fight in front of Morgan, consequences be damned. This was not going to be easy, living here with this woman. She took no prisoners. No wonder both her sons had fled as soon as they were possibly able.
“All right, Morgan. If you’re sure.”
“Of course she’s sure, Christina,” Adeline interrupted, her voice once again the creamy matriarch’s voice, the one that brooked no dissent from staff or other inferiors. “For heaven’s sake. She’s fifteen years old. Morgan will do very well. She can meet her teachers and make some new friends without her mother hanging off her like an old secondhand winter coat.” Adeline laughed softly at her own joke. “Besides, Christina, you and I have a great deal to do this morning, a great deal to discuss. You also, Jeremy.”
“I don’t know what you think we have to discuss, Mother. I’m going out for a drive today. I don’t intend to be back until dinnertime. I’ve been away a long while, and I’m going to explore s
ome old haunts. It’s going to be a beautiful day, according to the radio, and I’m going to look at the leaves.”
“Yes, and why don’t you go visit some of your old friends from school, son,” Adeline said cruelly. “You have so many. I’m sure they’d be happy to see you back in town.”
Jeremy’s laugh was forced, but defiant. “Maybe I will at that, Mother. Maybe I will.”
“I think I’ll join you, Jeremy,” Christina said, surprising herself with her own defiance. She guessed that Adeline was unlikely to be able to retaliate against both her and Jeremy’s defiance, at least not right away— and frankly the notion of being trapped in Parr House all day with this woman was more than she could bear right now. “I’d like to look at the leaves, too. Shall we pack a lunch and make a day of it, Jeremy?”
“Young woman, you are not on holiday,” Adeline snapped at Christina. “I’ll have you remember that while you are under my roof.”
Adeline looked across the table at her granddaughter, pale and staring at her plate, not eating her breakfast. Her mouth tightened in frustration, realizing she’d been outmanoeuvred into choosing between causing a disruptive scene in front of Morgan, or letting it go. Adeline had no compunctions about chastising either the common strumpet who had killed her eldest son, or her youngest son, the depraved invert disgrace to his name, but she was intent on winning Morgan to her side. She was shrewd enough to realize that this was not the way to do it.
“Very well, Christina,” Adeline said, her voice as sweet as frozen sugar water. “You two go out and reacquaint yourselves with the town. Perhaps it’s a good idea after your drive. It won’t hurt you to see how far you are from Toronto, both geographically and otherwise. It would be a mistake to think otherwise, as I’m sure you’ll remember after a day out driving around. And Jeremy is quite correct. I also heard on the radio how lovely the weather is going to be today. Just be back by dinner. It gets dark very quickly out here and the night comes down fast. You don’t want to get lost.”