by Michael Rowe
“I don’t know, Uncle Jeremy,” she said. “But it doesn’t matter. He knew I was new in town and he walked me home. He’s younger than me. Twelve, I think.”
“A boy?” Adeline said. “You let a strange boy walk you home?”
“He wasn’t strange, Grandmother. He was really nice.”
“What was his name, Morgan?” Christina said. “I wonder if Jeremy and I know any of his family from when we lived here?”
“It doesn’t matter what his name is,” Adeline said sharply. “Morgan, you are never, ever to let young men you don’t even know walk you home. It’s not done. There’s been enough gossip about this family over the years. I won’t have more of it now, in the new generation. Do I make myself clear?”
“We didn’t do anything, Grandmother,” Morgan said. “We just walked. He was nice. No one else would talk to me, but he did. He walked me all the way home.”
“What was his name, honey?” Christina asked again.
“Finn, Mommy. He said it was short for Finnegan.”
“It doesn’t matter what his name is,” Adeline said. “I won’t have— ”
“You won’t have what, Mother?” Jeremy said. “There’s nothing wrong with Morgan making friends with a local boy. Good Lord, it’s 1972, not 1872.”
All of the colour had left Morgan’s face, rendering it as pale as rice paper. The dark circles beneath her eyes that had been fading of late suddenly developed like bruises in a black-and-white photograph. “Mommy, may I be excused?” she said faintly. “I’m not feeling well.”
“We have not finished dinner, young lady, and I—”
“Yes, sweetheart, you may,” Christina said, cutting Adeline off. She shot her mother-in-law a look of such lethal ferocity that it stopped the older woman in mid-flow. “Why don’t you go and lie down? I’ll come up and see you in a bit. I think your grandmother and Uncle Jeremy and I need to have a grown-up talk.”
Before Adeline could say anything, Morgan pushed her chair back and ran out of the dining room, looking at none of them. They heard the sound of her feet taking the stairs two at a time, then the sound of the bedroom door slamming on the next floor.
“Adeline,” Christina said, struggling to maintain her composure.
“Are you trying to push your granddaughter away? Are you trying to drive her away from you? Because I’ll tell you what, before she came down here, she was crying for her dead father. Would it have been too much to ask for you to leave her alone? If you want to beat me up for my relationship with Jack, by all means, do your worst. But could you do it when Morgan isn’t around? And while you’re at it, could you leave her alone and let her settle in here? She’s fifteen years old! She’s completely innocent of whatever crime you think Jack and I committed, and except for the three of us here, she’s completely alone.”
Adeline narrowed her eyes. “I can see that she didn’t have very much supervision in your home, Christina. But this is not your home.”
She raised her glass of ice water and took a delicate sip. When she put it down again, her dark red lipstick had smudged the rim of the glass, like the mouth of a paper cut. “This is my home,” she said. “And Jeremy’s home. It would also have been my son’s home if you hadn’t taken him away from me and killed him. And here in my home, there are rules. I will not have her running around like a common trollop, cavorting with local boys before she has a chance to even establish a reputation for herself as a Parr.”
“Mother, stop it,” Jeremy pleaded. “Just stop. For the love of Christ.”
“Adeline, she just wants to make friends,” Christina said. “Don’t you understand that? It’s innocent. She’s a young girl and she’s all alone.”
“‘Friends!’” Adeline hissed. “‘Friends like you were with Jack? Friends like Jeremy and that miner’s son, that dirty McKitrick boy? Is that the sort of friends you were referring to? We’ve had enough of the Parrs making friends with the locals in this town!”
Jeremy stood up so abruptly that he knocked his chair back. He picked up his dinner plate and hurled it as hard as it could against the opposite wall. It smashed into shards, leaving a trail of butter and hollandaise that slowly dripped down the wall. He stood there pale and shaking, his hands balled into fists, looking as if he was expending every ounce of restraint he possessed to keep himself from leaping across the table and stabbing his mother to death with one of her own sterling silver dinner knives.
Adeline sat still, entirely unruffled, her back rigid, not touching the back of her own chair. “That Meissen plate was from your great grandmother Parr’s wedding china,” she said calmly. “It was a service for forty people. The rim of the plate is—was—eighteen-karat gold. I’ll wager the plate you just destroyed with your childish outburst was worth more than the sum either of you have in your bank accounts at the moment.”
“You’re insane,” Christina said to Adeline. “You’re completely insane. No wonder Jack wanted to leave. It wasn’t the town, it was you.”
“We’re leaving,” Jeremy said to Christina. “Get Morgan. We’re going. Now. We’re not spending another minute in this fucking house.”
Adeline said again, “Am I right? How much do you have in your respective bank accounts? Assuming,” she added with a small smile, “that either of you even have bank accounts? Enlighten me, Jeremy, my independently wealthy son. Where will you go?”
“Christina, ! Come on!”
“You would never have come back here, Jeremy, if you had somewhere else to go. Nor you, Christina. You are literally penniless, aren’t you? And you’ve come back here, to me, because there was nowhere else.”
“You bitch,” Jeremy said. “You absolute bloody—”
“If I were you, son, I’d be more careful with my epithets,” Adeline said mildly. “It’s only my love for you as a mother that’s keeping me from using a few of the choice ones that describe men like you.”
“You hate me, don’t you?” Jeremy said, marvelling. “You actually hate me. You wish it had been me who died instead of Jack.”
“No, my dear, I love you,” she replied. “And I do confess that, sometimes, I wish it had been you who died instead of Jack. But the feeling passes.”
Jeremy stumbled blindly out of the dining room. Christina rose from her chair and threw her napkin on the table. She followed Jeremy out into the front hall, leaving Adeline alone. From inside the dining room, Christina heard the tinkling sound of the bell Adeline used to summon Beatrice, and the sound of the door that connected the kitchen and the dining room swing open and shut.
“Jeremy, where are you going?” Christina said.
“Out,” Jeremy said harshly. “Away from here. Home to Toronto. Somewhere . . . I don’t know.”
“You’re too upset to drive. Stay here, calm down. It’s too dangerous.”
“I can’t,” he mumbled. He reached for the pea coat he’d left on the chair next to the sideboard in the hallway. “I need to think. I need to get away. I need a drink. Come with me.”
“I can’t leave Morgan,” Christina said. “I have to stay here with her. Adeline’s right, you know. We have nowhere else to go, at least until one of us has some money. She has us right where she wants us. We have to make it work. Or rather, I have to make it work. Won’t you stay with me so we can talk about this?”
“No, not now,” he said. “I’ll be back in a bit. I need to clear my head. Don’t worry, she’s vented now, she’ll be fine for a while. Even monsters need to rest between monstrosities.” He put his coat on and felt in his pockets for the car keys. “I’ll be back,” he repeated. “Don’t worry.”
“Just . . . well, just drive carefully.” The unspoken thought that passed between them was, Please don’t leave me alone the way Jack did. I can’t go through that again. Neither Morgan nor I could survive it happening twice.
Jeremy hugged her. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”
He held Christina tightly for a moment, then o
pened the front door and walked to his car. As he turned the key in the ignition, he saw her framed in the doorway of the house, silhouetted in the lights of the hallway. Then he turned the car around and headed towards town.
The clatter of gravel against the undercarriage of the car sounded like shots.
Through the windshield of the Chevelle, Jeremy saw the stars in the night sky over Parr’s Landing as though they were underwater, for he was weeping at this final and unalterable proof that his mother not only regretted his existence, as he’d known since he was fifteen, but actively wished him dead, at least if it would bring his brother back from the grave.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Richard Weal heard the distant passage of Jeremy’s car as he crouched on a ledge above Bradley Lake and waited, invisible as any other night predator. He waited with increasing desperation for his secret voice to speak to him again, to give him one last sign that he could follow, but the voice had been silent all day.
He sifted aimlessly through his hockey bag, wrinkling his nose in disgust at the sour smell that drifted up from it. He had to admit, his hockey bag was starting to stink of blood, old hair, and bits of rotted carrion, but as he had been travelling alone for the most part, the aesthetics hadn’t been much of a priority for obvious reasons. The knives hadn’t been properly cleaned since before Gyles Point, and while he’d rinsed them off as best he could in the sink at the cottage, they had assumed a bronzy-red patina. The hammers were greasy and slick to the touch but, testing the sharp points of them, he didn’t doubt that they could still do the job for which they had been designed—and even a few jobs for which they had not. But he doubted, at this point, that he would have much need for them.
Not after tonight. Not ever again. He would have his teeth. Weal’s muscles were cramped and sore from having spent the previous night sleeping outdoors and he was chilled to the bone. And hungry. The sun had been a warming balm for the brief time he’d been able to experience it this afternoon, and he cursed the stupid cop from town who had interrupted his exploration of Spirit Rock and forced him to crouch in the cold shadows for hours afterwards.
That cop will be the next one to die, Weal swore to himself. He’s going to die for making me so uncomfortable today. And I’m going to make it hurt, too. I’m going to make it hurt a lot.
He closed his eyes and listened for the voice, but it was silent. He felt a momentary flare of panic. His first thought was that his friend was angry at him for wasting another day, for not finding him and rescuing him. But he forced himself to calm down. He rarely heard the voice when he was upset, or when his mind was clouded with other thoughts, or worry, or panic. He mustn’t panic, now more than ever, when he was so close to achieving his—their—goal.
“Tell me where you are,” Weal whined. He lowered himself onto his knees in an aspect of prayer and folded his hands like a child. Tears of frustration welled up in his eyes and ran down his filth-caked face. “I know you’re here, Father,” he sobbed, closing his eyes. “I can feel you. I know this is the place. I know you’re here. Give me a sign. Show me. Please . . . ? Let tonight be the night. I beg you, Father. Give me just one more sign. Please.”
And then the images came to him, redoubled in force and clarity, stronger than ever before, violent and terrifying and euphoric. The strength of them knocked him backwards and he lay on the cold ground in violent convulsion. His jaws worked, and he bit his tongue, tasted his own blood in his throat before it ran pinkly from his mouth, mixing with his slobber, staining his stubbled chin. Weal’s eyes rolled back in his head, and all was darkness, except that it was a brilliant darkness, and he could see more clearly than he ever had in his life.
He saw Spirit Rock and he saw Bradley Lake, but they were different, surrounded by a denser, darker, greener forest, a bluer, clearer sunset sky. The air was pungent, wilder and more savagely northern than it had been that afternoon, or at any other time in his lifetime. He knew, without knowing how, that it was not his lifetime, that it was some other time altogether. He felt the weight of centuries hurtling around him like supernovas, and he knew that the weight would crush his soul to powder if it weren’t for the protection of his friend’s voice that he wore like armour in this waking dream of shredded time.
He found himself standing at the opening of a cave, not the place where his body lay shaking on the ground. He glanced around dumbly in the sunset light and saw great piles of smoking ash heaped around the opening of the cave.
He smelled the stink of burning flesh suddenly over the wild scent of the forest as the wind came up and began to scatter the ash across the cliffs. Some of it blew into his face, burning his eyes and catching acridly in his throat.
Something happened here, he thought. Something marvellous and terrible, something not of this earth. Something beautiful.
Weal looked around dumbly. I’m dreaming. I’m not here. This is not happening. I fell asleep outside on the ledge on Spirit Rock. Or I’m having an episode because I threw my pills away in Toronto, and I have to wake up. There’s work to do. I have to wake up!
But his eyes burned and his mouth tasted like cinder and he felt the ground, solid and real. He felt the cold north wind that carried the stinking soot that smelled like burned meat. He felt the press of sharp stones through the worn soles of his boots.
Weal looked questioningly at the mouth of the cave, but before he could ask, he knew what the answer would be. It came and he followed it into the cave, and was swallowed whole by the shimmering visions.
He woke up underground, shivering, disoriented, and smelling of piss and shit. He was no longer cold, in fact his body pulsed with heat as though his veins were shot full of hot lead.
He raised himself on his elbow and looked around groggily. In his hand was the flashlight. He felt around for his hockey bag with his tools, but it was nowhere nearby. He switched on the flashlight and shone the beam in front of him in the darkness. The feeble light played off walls of rock and supporting arches of rotted wood. Somewhere in the distance, he heard the steady sound of water hitting stone and there was a sense of yawning emptiness ahead of him, just out of sight.
Was I asleep? Did I walk in my sleep? This isn’t where I was. Where the fuck am I?
He stood up gingerly, testing the available height of the place in which he found himself. He realized that he could just barely stand without his head grazing the ceiling, or roof, of whatever this place was. He leaned forward and shone the light in front of him, and realized where he was.
He was in a mineshaft. He was underground, God knew how far, in one of the network of abandoned mineshafts that crisscrossed beneath Parr’s Landing.
Weal knew about them because he had read about them, about how the Parr family had stripped this part of northern Ontario underground, blasting tunnels beneath the earth where there had previously only been caves, expanding the natural underground tunnels their mining engineers had found with artificial ones, exploiting them, abandoning them when the veins of gold had been drained dry.
He had walked in his sleep, or whatever state he’d been in, and had fallen down a mineshaft. Weal’s chest tightened and he thought about screaming—screaming louder than he had ever screamed. The sense of being buried alive was instant and dreadful. He dropped the flashlight and flung his arms out, expecting to find himself entombed, but his fingers barely grazed the opposite walls. There was space, blessed space. He took a deep breath and tried to slow his breathing. When he was marginally calmer, he shook his head and tried to think.
If he had fallen down a mineshaft, his legs would be broken, he reasoned, or there would be some other evidence of injury. There was none, so he hadn’t fallen. Check. He could breathe, so there was oxygen. Check. He had light, so he could see. Check. He’d felt something sharp cut into his thigh when he’d leaned to pick up the flashlight. He patted his pocket gingerly and felt the edge of one of his knives in his pocket, blade cutting inwards against flesh where it had sliced through the lining. The f
abric there was sticky and wet, and he realized he was bleeding.
The knife had been in the hockey bag earlier that day, not his pocket. Either he had placed it there himself without thinking, or someone had placed it in his pocket while he’d been unconscious. Weal looked around uneasily, but he knew he was alone—quite alone. Nothing human could live down here in all this darkness, and if anyone were with him down here, he’d have sensed it already. In fact, he would have sensed it immediately.
Then he heard his friend’s voice again. But beneath the sweetness of it this time, he sensed a new urgency and hunger. Weal knew where he was and why he was there. He was protected. He was loved. And he was needed.
Joyfully, Weal began to shuffle through the mineshaft, holding the bobbing flashlight in front of him, feeling his way through the maze of rotted beams and along the rock walls towards the prize waiting for him.
It was ten o’clock at night and Elliot McKitrick was off duty and minding his own business, flirting lazily with Donna Lemieux, the overblown blonde bartender with whom he’d had a brief affair when he was eighteen and she was thirty. He still carried a bit of a torch for Donna, as young men sometimes did when they thought of past conquests, if not loves. Donna realized this and was usually ambivalent, unless she was bored or horny. Tonight, Elliot thought, he might have gotten lucky if he’d wanted to, but he felt dead below the waist. He’d flirted by rote and by habit this evening. She’d picked up on his disinterest and returned it in kind. Nothing personal, as they both knew.
He was nursing his beer in the farthest corner of O’Toole’s when Jeremy Parr walked in looking like crap twice warmed over. Elliot’s heart sank at the sight of him.
Great, Elliot thought. This is the rosiest possible cherry on the shit sundae that this day has been so far.
He lifted the bottle of O’Keefe to his lips and took a long, cold pull of it, wishing he was invisible, wishing the beer was colder, and mostly hating everything about his life at that exact moment. Elliot looked away, vainly praying that Jeremy wouldn’t see him, but Jeremy did see him, and he started to walk over to his table.