Strangers Among Us

by Kelley Armstrong

  “What are you scared of?”

  “The traffic, the road, the fact the lights might change before I make it across. Of even if I make it across, what if the elevators choose today to break down? Or what if there’s a terrorist who’s managed to infiltrate one of the towers and decides to take himself and everyone else to redemption? It happens, you know. You’re up there circling around, while down here there are crazies all over the place.” And one in particular standing immobile at the corner of King and Bay trying to cross the road to work.

  “Last I heard there hadn’t been any terrorist attacks in Canada for some number of years, and even those were isolated incidents perpetrated by disturbed people. So I don’t think the elevators are going to blow up and take out the tower.”

  Disturbed people. She was a disturbed people. “But, what happens if I get stuck in the road when the lights change?”

  “Well, it’s not like motorists are going to gun their engines and run you down because you didn’t make the lights.”

  “But they’ll be angry.”

  “Maybe. Fuck them. Just continue on. And it’s unlikely you’re going to get stuck in the middle of road.”

  “Not unless I freeze.”

  “Have you ever done that?”

  “No.”

  “Well, there you go.”

  “There’s always a first time.”

  “So, what, you’re going to plant yourself in the middle of the crossing just to prove there’s always a first time you won’t make it across the road?”

  Despite herself, she could feel the corner of her mouth twitch in response to his humour. “I’m not that crazy.”

  “You’re not crazy, Sis. Sure, you have issues, problems we both know we need to monitor and work through. But so do lots of people, whether it’s physical or physiological. We’re all gloriously flawed. Show me a perfect person, and I’ll show you a biological android.”

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  “Yeah, maybe nothing. So, your heart palpitating?”

  “Ready to freakin’ jump out of my chest.”

  “Ah, Sis is channelling Alien.”

  She snorted a laugh. “That would freak people out.”

  “Yeah, so let’s work on that, shall we? You’re taking long, slow breaths?”

  She inhaled deeply, let it go. “Yes.”

  “Now go to your safe place.”

  “What? Here?”

  “Sure, why not?”

  “It will look weird.”

  “I’ve got you on SAT right now and you don’t look weird at all. Awesome doo, by the way. When did you decide to shave your head and do tats?”

  She looked up at the sky again, amazed he could zero in on her from so far away. She glanced back down to the streetscape, shuffled over to the bench at the transit stop and eased onto it, aware how weak her legs were, how her hands fluttered like frightened birds.

  “Good move, Sis. Very good. Now, where are you in your head?”

  She closed her eyes. The sounds around her distilled into a susurration, not unlike waves on a cobble beach. Agawa. A moonrise, huge, white, hanging over a promontory that lay darkly like a sleeping giant.

  “Superior,” she said. “Our last summer there.” Before Jack had gone off to university, and she had to navigate the uncharted waters of secondary.

  “That was epic.”

  She heard the wistfulness in his voice, felt it herself. Life had been so simple then. “I will never forget that summer.”

  “Me neither.”

  “Remember how cold the water was?”

  “Bloody nut-cracking.”

  She laughed.

  “And you swam circles around me, and then dragged me out of the water because my lips had turned blue.”

  “Yeah, I did, didn’t I?”

  “Cause we always took care of each other.”

  She nodded, sucked in a breath to still tears.

  “Listen, Sis, you’re gonna feel a lightness in your head in a sec. Don’t freak, okay? It’s just me uploading a modification to your implant.”

  Her eyes flew open, panic slamming through her. Even as she uttered: “Not here, Jack! Please!” she felt a tingling in her head, like a cold itch she couldn’t scratch, and then she was on her feet, gulping air, Jack’s voice crooning gently, “It’s okay, Sis. Honest. You know I’d never do anything to hurt you. Really, you’re gonna love this. Almost done. You with me?”

  “Uh-huh.” And then the sensation stilled, and there was only the sound of wind again as vehicles drove by, of the birds, of other pedestrians chatting either to each other or through their own earpieces. The bus sighed to a stop in front of her, the doors opening, passengers spilling out, sweeping up. “What did you do?”

  “A modification that will help, I think. Something I’ve been working on. You’re my first trial subject. Not exactly protocol, but, hey, you fit the profile.” She heard him laugh. “Now, c’mon, Sis. You remember how when we were little, Mom always told me to take your hand when we crossed the street, that it was my responsibility to make sure you arrived safely on the other side?”

  So many roads crossed, Jack holding her hand. So many. Her fingers tingled, and then her palm, and she felt warmth there in her left hand, felt the pressure of a hand, of fingers tightening around hers.

  “So, I’m still going to hold your hand, Sis.”

  She felt fingers squeeze. She looked up sharply at the sky again. “Jack?”

  “Yep, that’s me.”

  “But—”

  “How?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Does it really matter?”

  She looked down at her hand, the way her own fingers curled around his, which weren’t there, but were. “No.”

  “Then, c’mon. Let’s cross the intersection.”

  The lights had changed again, walk, walk, walk droning across King and Bay, and tentatively, her hand in Jack’s, she stepped out into the intersection and walked to the courtyard, the atrium, and into the elevator to work.

  AFTERWORD

  Susan Forest

  As a fourteen-year-old during the Depression, my father tramped the bush and slough country of northern Saskatchewan with his shotgun, to bring home ducks or a partridge to liven up a family dinner that might consist solely of oatmeal or potatoes. But when, years later in the early 1960s, he moved his young family to Calgary, he found his true passion: mountaineering. Before he passed away at the age of 83, he became the first person to climb all the peaks in the Canadian Rockies and the B.C. Interior Ranges over 11,000 feet, and the oldest man to climb Canada’s highest mountain, Mt. Logan—at the age of 71. He was a phenomenal man.

  As you can imagine, growing up with my three siblings was an adventure. I have vivid memories of sleeping in utter silence of an ice cave, of the profound darkness inside a grotto when the carbide lamps are doused, of the addictive adrenaline rush after completing the exposed final traverse of the Unnamed route on Mt. Yamnuska. But such a lifestyle could also be daunting: the watery-gut panic from clinging to the ridge of Mt. Lorette on my first serious climb. Nothing wrong with me or the rock, the weather, or the other climbers: I was simply too frozen with terror to move.

  It was my older brother and sister who introduced my father to rock climbing through an after-school program. My dad was damned if he was going to give his fourteen-year-old twins a ride to the mountains and then sit at the bottom of the climb to wait until they came down at the end of the day. Not after his lifetime of outdoor adventure. And it was my younger sister, spurred on by a wild competitive drive to keep up to the rest of the family, who went on to build a life as one of Canada’s first female park wardens, and to become one of only five Canadian women to earn her full Mountain Guide’s licence in 2001.

  I, on the other hand, married, had children, and subsequently became a single parent. My fear of heights, my lack of fitness, and my personal responsibilities made it easier for me to sit at home dreaming up stories most weekends than to
tramp the mountainsides and experience them. I grew up with every advantage in a close, warm family environment; yet, still, it was hard when my siblings regaled one another with stories of canoeing adventures in the Arctic, of meeting famous mountaineers in backcountry cabins, of unexpectedly riding a slab avalanche in a whiteout. It was hard for me not to feel like a stranger among them.

  Over the years, as I more fully carved out my adult identity, this divide has lessened. But I was surprised to discover that my older brother felt separate from our family because of the forty years he spent raising his family in the north country; that my older sister felt separate because of a life dogged with misadventure; that my younger sister felt separate as the only one of us not to have a Master’s Degree to hang on her wall.

  How ordinary a family I come from. And yet, even so, each of my siblings and I have felt a sense of alienation.

  How profound, then, is the experience of those in our society who do live a more isolated existence? How can we, the majority—dare I say, the ordinary folk of the world?—come to understand the complexity of emotions—the intensity of the loneliness—felt by some of the fringe members of our society?

  The answer is: through fiction.

  Fiction. Whatever divisions, real or perceived, that separate us, one thing we all have in common is a susceptibility to the power of story. The talented authors collected here have reached deeply into their most haunting memories, their places of creativity and imagination, to bring to the page the lived experience of those who dwell in our cities and towns, our rural and remote communities, just next door to us, but who do so on the far side of what might seem—or be—a gaping divide.

  These stories reveal nuggets of truth about our vital need to connect, the human fear of loneliness and rejection, the barriers to intimacy and support. Their authors have put into words what cannot be put into words: the invisibility of loneliness, the climate of grief, the mind games of war, the companionship of delusion, the community of addiction, the doublethink of a mad society. They gather together an answer to the question, “Who are the strangers among us?”

  We are.

  —Susan Forest, Calgary, 2016

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Susan Forest

  I would like to thank the members of Calgary’s Imaginative Fiction Writers’ Association, particularly members of the Whitefish Retreat Group, for their support; also, to the editors who joined me for dinner at World Fantasy Convention 2014, when this project was in its early stages, for their advice and inspiration; to Lucas Law for inviting me to participate, and whose knowledge and professionalism taught me so much; and finally, to the remarkable authors, whose creative imaginations gave flesh and spirit to this amazing compilation. Thank you.

  Lucas K. Law

  Many thanks go to the following:

  ≈ Susan Forest for jumping on board without hesitation and being awesome throughout this journey;

  ≈ Ellen Datlow for spending the time to discuss the art and business of making an anthology;

  ≈ Samantha M. Beiko for her continuing guidance, a wonderful book cover and interior layout;

  ≈ Clare C. Marshall for bridging laksamedia.com website between readers and writers;

  ≈ Kim E. Mikkelsen and Hilary A. Foulkes for their wisdom and showing me the zest for life whenever I need it most (there is an ‘encore’ act out there—let’s not forget it);

  ≈ Shane Silverberg for his strong belief in me to pursue this dream (instead of being in a rut, stuck somewhere in corporate Canada);

  ≈ Robert J. Sawyer, Julie E. Czerneda, Robert Runté, Alyx Dellamonica, and Derek Künsken for recommending some of the authors for this anthology;

  ≈ The authors who wrote for this anthology with enthusiasm and dedication;

  ≈ Everyone who buys this book and supports social causes (please continue to talk about mental health/illness).

  ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

  Kelley Armstrong is the author of the Cainsville modern gothic series and the Age of Legends YA fantasy trilogy. Past works include Otherworld urban fantasy series, the Darkest Powers & Darkness Rising teen paranormal trilogies, the Nadia Stafford crime trilogy and the co-written Blackwell Pages middle-grade fantasy trilogy. Kelley lives in southwestern Ontario with her family.

  Suzanne Church grew up in Toronto, moved to Waterloo to pursue mathematics, and never left town. Her award-winning fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld, Cicada, On Spec, and her 2014 collection Elements. Her favourite place to write is a lakefront cabin, but she’ll settle for any coffee shop with WiFi and an electrical outlet. Soul Larcenist, book one in the Dagger of Sacrados trilogy set in Ed Greenwood’s Hellmaw Universe, is now available in multiple formats from onderlibrum.com.

  Julie E. Czerneda, Canadian author and editor, has shared her love and curiosity about living things through her science fiction since 1997. A Turn of Light, the first of her Night’s Edge fantasy series from DAW Books, won the 2014 Aurora Award for Best English Novel, with the sequel, A Play of Shadow, winning that award for 2015. Recent publications include the omnibus of her acclaimed near-future SF Species Imperative and Book Two of Night’s Edge, A Play of Shadow. Julie’s back to science fiction, writing the finale to her Clan Chronicles series. November 2015 was the release of Book #1 of Reunification, This Gulf of Time and Stars, with more to come. She was honoured to write the introduction to this anthology, for there is no family untouched by mental illness. We must better understand ourselves. For more about her work, visit czerneda.com

  A. M. Dellamonica has recently moved to Toronto, Canada, after 22 years in Vancouver. In addition to writing, she studies yoga and takes thousands of digital photographs. She is a graduate of Clarion West and teaches writing through the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program. Dellamonica’s first novel, Indigo Springs, won the Sunburst Award for Canadian Literature of the Fantastic. Her book, Child of a Hidden Sea, was released by Tor Books in the summer of 2014; the sequel, A Daughter of No Nation, is available now. She is the author of over thirty short stories in a variety of genres, which can be found on Tor.com, Strange Horizons, Lightspeed and in numerous print magazines and anthologies. Her website is at http://alyxdellamonica.com.

  Gemma Files is a former film critic and teacher turned award-winning horror author, best-known for her Hexslinger Series of Weird Westerns (A Book of Tongues, A Rope of Thorns and A Tree of Bones, all from ChiZine Publications). She has also published two collections of short fiction, two chapbooks of speculative poetry and a story cycle (We Will All Go Down Together: Stories of the Five-Family Coven, CZP). Her new novel, Experimental Film, is now available. To learn more, you can check up on her at http://musicatmidnight-gfiles.blogspot.ca, or follow her on Twitter, Tumblr or Livejournal.

  James Alan Gardner got a couple of degrees in Math, then started writing science fiction instead. He has won the Aurora award, the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, and the Asimov’s Readers’ Choice award. He has published eight novels and numerous short stories. In his spare time, he studies rocks and teaches kung fu to kids.

  Bev Geddes is a school based speech/language therapist, harpist and freelance writer. As a writer, pieces have been published professionally and through the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society: Aboriginal Leaders In Conservation project. “Living in Oz” is her first published work of fiction. She has completed writing her first novel and is presently working on a second speculative fiction book.

  Erika Holt resides in Calgary, Alberta, the city where she was born and still loves. Her stories are mostly urban and epic fantasy and have appeared in numerous anthologies including Evolve Two and Tesseracts Fifteen. She has edited speculative fiction of all kinds and is currently an assistant editor of Nightmare Magazine under bestselling and multiple award-nominated editor-in-chief John Joseph Adams. You can find Erika on Twitter at: @erikaholt. She’s also a member of Calgary’s Imaginative Fiction Writers Association and blogs with the Inkpunks.

  Tyler Keevil grew up in Vancouver, Ca
nada, and in his mid-twenties moved to Wales, where he now lives. His short fiction has appeared in a wide range of magazines and anthologies in Britain, Canada, and the U.S. His first two novels,Fireball and The Drive, were both nominated for the Wales Book of the Year and both received the Wales Book of the Year People’s Prize. His story collection, Burrard Inlet, was also nominated for the Wales Book of the Year, as well as the Edge Hill Story Prize, the Frank O’Connor Award, and the Rubery Book Award. One of the stories from the collection, ‘Sealskin’, was awarded the $10,000 Writers’ Trust of Canada Journey Prize. Among other things, Tyler has worked as a tree planter, landscaper, and ice barge deckhand; he is currently a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Gloucestershire.

  Rich Larson was born in West Africa, has studied in Rhode Island and worked in Spain, and at 23 now writes from Edmonton, Alberta. His short work has been nominated for the Theodore Sturgeon and appears in multiple Year’s Best anthologies, as well as in magazines such as Asimov’s, Analog, Clarkesworld, F&SF, Interzone, Strange Horizons, Lightspeed and Apex. Find him at richwlarson.tumblr.com.

  Mahtab Narsimhan was born in Bombay and immigrated to Canada in 1997. Mahtab, in Persian, means Moonlight. Her debut novel in the Tara Trilogy, The Third Eye (Dundurn, 2007), won the Silver Birch Fiction Award in 2009. The Tiffin (DCB, 2011), a middle-grade novel based loosely on the dabbawallas, has received critical acclaim, was shortlisted for many awards, and named one of the five best books for Young People in 2011 by the Quill & Quire. It has been published in the UK, China and Taiwan. Her most recent novel, Mission Mumbai, was published by Scholastic US and Canada in Spring 2016. Mahtab lives in Toronto with her husband, son, and golden retriever. She continues to write, inspired by life, love and the desire to make sense of the world through stories. For more information, please visit her website at www.mahtabnarsimhan.com.