Ghosted

by Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall

  My body’s screaming to get hammered, my brain’s swearing at me to get high—but then I’ll be smashed in some alley and you’ll still be God knows where, alone.

  I started out in Regent Park, in Bethany’s old place—broke down the door and there was nothing but a yoga mat, three coffee cups and a lamp with no cord. I went to the women’s shelters, but they won’t tell you anything if you’re a guy. “That bitch is worse than any guy,” I told them (referring to Bethany, not to you). Still they stayed firm.

  I went to the men’s shelters—Seaton House, Jarvis, the Good Shepherd—to talk to the guys, get some info. A pretty young captive in a wheelchair should be noticeable. But nothing. I even went to Sherbourne and talked to the Thursday doctor, but she couldn’t help me and I could see what she was thinking—the same as Sergeant fucking Flowers: “Impressive, Mason. It takes a certain kind of guy to lose his paralyzed girlfriend.” He’s a fucking riot.

  Where the hell are you?

  I went into strip joints and dollar-beer bars, even visited the safe injection site. It’s amazing how many people I know—from the streets, from the Cave. But no one has seen you. I even went to the shantytown down by the docks. They tried to help me out. A little dwarfy guy took me across the tracks to the old rail house, where there was a girl—not you—in a beat-up wheelchair. I gave him ten bucks anyway.

  Dr. Francis finally picked up after the one-hundredth ring—all pissy because it was so late and I’d been calling her so much. In the end she was kind. She made me promise to stay sober until we find you. I’m going to see her tomorrow morning. What the fuck am I supposed to do till then?

  “Write,” she said.

  Are you fucking serious?

  “But do it sober.”

  I don’t feel like writing.

  “Come on, we practised for just such an emergency. You can do it, Mason. Write something for Willy.”

  So that’s what I’m trying to do. I’m trying to write something for you, Willy.

  But it’s like everything’s competing now: a thousand moments banging at the edge of my brain, like they all want to be thought, remembered, written—like this is their one chance to live again. But because they’re all trying at the same time, nothing makes it all the way through—just weird glimpses: my father shaking beneath a tinfoil blanket (he’s just run his first marathon); the spiky shadow of a cactus; my mother taking her glasses off and smiling; a blue dress; sunshine; a scene from the movie Gandhi; a red barn; wind in the trees, horses … I’ve never told you about the good things. I did such a job of forgetting them—and now they’re only fragments, here to bug my brain. I hope that you’re okay.

  Every month I send my mother an email:

  “I love you. I’m okay.”

  Every month for five years: I type those words and I feel sick.

  Because I more than love her, and I never am okay.

  I thought I was okay last week. But now look at me. I just want to get drunk. I just want to get high. I just wish you were here. I need to talk to someone. I need to talk to you—about everything. Writing doesn’t do it. Or, rather, I can’t write. I miss you. I’m worried that you weren’t taken away. I’m worried that you left me. I feel hollowed out. Empty. Scared. Ghosted.

  I more than love you, Willy. And I am never okay.

  80

  “You made it through the night.”

  “Sort of,” said Mason, and paced across her office. “Fucking Bethany. She took the methadone, too. I found this.” He pulled a pink scrunchy out of his pocket. “It was on the floor by the fridge.

  “What are you worried about?” said Dr. Francis. Mason glared at her. “I mean precisely. What are your precise worries?”

  Mason sat down, but his knee kept going. “That she’s hurt,” he said. Dr. Francis said nothing. “That she’s back on the stuff. That she’s scared. That she’ll think that I’m not looking for her. I don’t know … I’m worried about everything.”

  The phone rang. Dr. Francis reached to answer it, and Mason got up again. He walked to the window, turned, then saw Dr. Francis’s face.

  She pressed a button. A voice came out of the speaker.

  “… never at home. I thought he might be there—not that I don’t want to talk to you, doc…. Are you there, Mason?”

  Mason’s breath caught in his throat.

  “Oh good. That sounded like a gasp. I’m glad I caught you then….”

  “Where is she?” said Mason. His voice felt locked inside his head.

  “No, Mason. No questions.”

  Dr. Francis was tapping at her keyboard.

  “In fact, I don’t even have any questions for you…. Earlier, yes—I wanted to know things: like where I might find my notebook, or how you managed to beat me, or how best I could make you suffer… little things like that …”

  Dr. Francis spun the laptop, so Mason could see the screen.

  “Funny thing is, the more time I’ve spent on it—on her I should say—I began to realize something…”

  The red dot was flashing, but not at Bay and Bloor.

  “The satisfaction is never in the answer—it’s always in the asking.”

  It was here at Spadina and College.

  “And with that in mind, I do have one question for you, Mason….”

  Mason spun around, as if Seth might be there—right there in that very room.

  “How does it feel? To know I spent last night with your gimpy girlfriend—and that she’s never screamed so much….”

  “Where the fuck is she!” Mason rushed at the phone. And then he saw the number.

  “No!” shouted Seth. “You do not get to ask any questions…. For one: you didn’t sink a ball. For two: you cheated. And three: well, I’ve got someone else to play with now.”

  Mason moved towards the window.

  “That’s boom, boom …”

  He looked out, across the street.

  “And fucking BOOM!”

  The window of his apartment blew out.

  Mason turned and ran. Through reception, into the hall. He pushed the elevators once, waited two seconds, then dashed into the stairwell. Down six floors. Through the main lobby, the sliding doors, the sidewalk, between parked cars, one lane, two lanes … As he hit the median, before the streetcar tracks, he saw it in the road: the strewn wreckage of his new coffee maker. Something snagged like a fishing line beneath his chin. His feet flew up. He was airborne, looking at the sky.

  If he had to describe the last thing he saw, right before the streetcar hit:

  It looked like an invisible kite.

  Who wants to go to Fire Lake?

  Head out, out to Fire Lake.

  Yeah, who’s going to do it?

  (Repeat)

  THE NINTH

  SAVING GRACE

  81

  Anyone else would be in hell.

  It is dark—just enough light to see the blistered ceiling, ancient steaming pipes, hollow tanks like metal bulls, the flash of a long blade. The sound is both constant and fluctuating—miles away, then suddenly right on top of her, the sound of his breathing. She is used to this kind of dark echoing terror. Part of her has lived inside it almost as long as she remembers. And this noise—the screaming hum, fading in and out—it isn’t so different from the voice in her head. It’s as if her singular world has finally become manifest.

  She is naked, on her back, strapped to a table. It is redundant, she thinks, to tie down the likes of her.

  He has a sword with a dog-faced dragon on the blade. When it cuts into her she sees flashes of light—and part of her begins to long for the blade. A flash. She sees saliva drip from his mouth onto her skin as he leans into it, carving up her flesh. Her own scream is so loud that the rest of the darkness goes quiet.

  She knows her screams excite him, and so she gives it her all. She opens her mouth and howls. She can taste and smell her own blood. It begins to pool beneath her.

  The more he tears her apart, the more she is c
omplete and strong, using everything she’s ever learned. It feels good to know she’s tricked this slobbering, joyful beast and he doesn’t even know it yet. She’s found a way to finally free herself, and hopefully save Mason, too. This thought makes her happiest, and she screams with all her might, because she loves Mason—more than anyone she’s ever known. More than anyone since her father.

  And realizing this—at this flashing bloody moment, she knows this, too:

  He was trying to save her.

  From the fire. From the demons.

  And so he jumped.

  They got a hold of her anyway, of course. But now she has them—or at least this one—right in the palm of her hand, so to speak.

  The right hand gets you in.

  He asks her questions, basking in what he thinks is her pain. But she’s already won. It had been difficult at first: not to flinch when he struck her left side. It took more than mere acting, but she managed it, and then screamed out so painfully when he slashed her right breast, that his joy was overwhelming. And now she’s bluffed him so well that he leaves her left alone.

  The left hand gets you out.

  “Where is my book?”

  She screams, gasps, then screams again. He digs in deeper. A flash and she sees his face—the ecstatic brutality of a fucked-up child.

  He isn’t so tough.

  For all the talk—how inscrutable, how perceptive the sociopath, how beneficial the lack of empathy—it won’t be beauty that kills the real beast, but lack of imagination. He wanted to carve up the living, most precious side of her—but couldn’t make the necessary leap. The body that moves is not always the one that feels.

  “Where is my book?” he says, cutting into her breast again. She screams and gasps, and finally she tells him.

  And he knows she is telling the truth.

  “How do I get it?” he says. She sobs as if about to pass out. Then he slices downwards, gouging out her nipple. She is wailing, half her body writhing.

  “How do I fucking get it?”

  And finally it comes out of her, like a burst of breath—and both of them go quiet. They turn and look at her hand. It seems, suddenly, like its own entity—clenching against the restraints, blood between the fingers….

  Willy repeats the words. “The right hand gets you in.” Her voice is broken, lost and hollow, and he is sure she is telling the truth. Could a stupider lie ever be told? His joy is overwhelming. He begins to sharpen the blade.

  82

  When Mason came to, he was lying on the floor beside the captain’s bed. It looked like a meteor had crashed through his window. He tried to get up, but the pain stopped him—that, and a hand on his chest. And now Ms. Pac-Man was staring down at him, smiling gravely.

  “Ms. Pac-Man?” he said.

  “Her name is Barbara,” said a voice. It was Dr. Francis. It sounded like she was over by the window. “She carried you up here.”

  Barbara nodded. She’d retrieved the beach towel from where Mason had tossed it by the door—weeks or months ago, he didn’t know. It was tied around her neck once more. She leaned down, her mouth against his ear. “She’s the one,” whispered Barbara, her eyes looking across the room at the doctor. “She eats the ghosts.”

  “Carried me up here …?” called Mason.

  “You were knocked unconscious,” said the doctor’s voice. “She’s very strong.” Barbara smiled again, and it started to come back to him….

  “Oh, Jesus! Willy!” He struggled to his feet. He could see Dr. Francis by the window. He took a step and crumpled.

  “We don’t have time for this,” said Dr. Francis. She walked over to Mason’s new position on the floor and crouched down, holding her laptop. “Look,” she said, “this makes no sense.”

  “What am I looking at?”

  “Nothing,” said Dr. Francis.

  “Where the fuck is Willy?”

  “Listen to me very carefully. The cops’ll be here any minute.” She cocked her head towards the broken window, and only now did he notice the noise—idling sirens, backed-up traffic, a streetcar full of bitching commuters. “We’ve got to figure this out!”

  “Then don’t tell me I’m looking at nothing!”

  “Bay and Bloor,” said Dr. Francis. “The Bay Street subway station. This was the location of the GPS, right? When we thought that Seth was dead.”

  “Okay …”

  “After you saw it that day, then the signal got weaker—the same spot, just weaker, until it was gone. I assumed the trains had run it over. But then today, he shows up and so does the signal. You saw it, right?”

  Mason nodded. “So where is he?”

  “That’s the thing. I was watching the screen while you went after him. But then you collided with that streetcar….”

  “Where the fuck is he!”

  “The last I saw, he was here,” said Dr. Francis pointing at the screen. “Back at Bay and Bloor. But now the signal’s gone again. It doesn’t make any sense….”

  “I know where he is!” said Mason. He jumped to his feet. Barbara caught him as he fell.

  “You’ve got to stop doing that!” said Dr. Francis. “You can’t go anywhere.”

  Mason twisted around and jabbed at the computer screen. “He’s right there,” he said. “But deeper! He’s playing the fucking depths!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The deeper he goes, the weaker the signal? But I know where he is! I’ve got to call Flores!”

  “What are you going to tell him?”

  “He’s not at Bay station. He’s at Lower Bay!”

  She handed him the phone. “What the hell is Lower Bay?”

  “It’s a ghost station.”

  83

  Mason looked up from his hospital bed

  “You look like hell,” said Detective Sergeant Flores.

  “Can I see her?” said Mason.

  “Not now. She’s in surgery.”

  “How bad is she?”

  “Bad,” said Flores. “But for some reason he kept to her right side.”

  “You’re saying she didn’t suffer?”

  Flores walked towards the window. “Are you aware that there was a second victim there—in that ghost station of yours?”

  Not my ghost station.

  “A girl by the name of Bethany Strohl.”

  “Dead?”

  Flores nodded. “She definitely suffered.”

  Mason didn’t know what to do here—in this limbo—this private room with a cop, waiting for Willy to come out from under anaesthesia. He had a separated shoulder, two broken ribs and his ankle was sprained again, but he wished the pain were more intense.

  “Have you caught the guy who did it?”

  Flores looked at him. “We found this at the station,” he said, and pulled a Ziploc bag out of his jacket. “Do you know what it is?”

  “A scalp?” said Mason.

  “That’s right! And do you know who it belongs to?”

  “Seth Handyman?”

  “Who?”

  “Setya Kateva?”

  “This scalp belongs to a man named Larry Weib. He used to work as a counsellor in the Kingston Pen and was recently run over by a subway train.”

  “White,” said Mason.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I knew him as Larry White.”

  “Oh, you did,” said Detective Flores. “I think you’d better tell me about it.”

  And so he did.

  Mason told him about Warren and Willy, Soon, Sissy and Seth. He didn’t mention Chaz or the doctor, the QT Room or the chip in Handyman’s head. But he came clean on everything else. He even confessed to stealing the poet’s daughter’s horse.

  “That’s a helluva story,” said Flores, writing in his notebook.

  Mason just nodded. It was the least he could do—Willy still under the knife—confess and keep confessing.

  “So this Handyman,” said Flores. “He hired you to write a suicide letter?”

  “Ye
s.”

  “But you have no idea where he might be now?”

  Mason thought about it. “Aren’t there more ghost stations? I’m pretty sure there are.”

  Detective Flores wrote something in his book. “Do you own a motorcycle?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Just trying to figure things out. That bar fight you mentioned …”

  “Tony’s Happy Daze Bar and Beer.”

  “Exactly. Was there anybody with you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I took that call. The fish tank was busted.”

  Mason nodded.

  “And do you know where we found those fish?”

  He shook his head.

  “In a motorcycle helmet.” Flores paused. “Just swimming around inside. Now what kind of thug, fleeing a crime scene, would stop and save the fish?”

  “That is weird.”

  Flores flipped his notebook closed.

  “Are you going to arrest me now?”

  “I’m going to look into a few things first. But don’t worry, I know where to find you. Oh, and I take it back …”

  “What’s that?” said Mason.

  “For a guy who’s been thrown from a horse, beat up in a bar and hit by a streetcar, you don’t actually look so bad.”

  “Must be the detox,” said Mason.

  “Right. I forgot about the detox.” Flores turned to go, then stopped. “I hope she pulls through. I really do.”

  84

  It had been a whole day and she was still unconscious—in the ICU, in a room made of windows across from the nurses’ station. There was a blue hospital sheet pulled up to her chin. Mason sat by her bed, scared to move—scared to ask anyone anything. The whole unit was far too quiet.

  He leaned forward and spoke into her ear. “I love you,” he said. “More than you can know.”

  He paused then said, “I’ll kill him. I promise.”

  “There’s a policeman here to see you.” Mason jumped at the voice.

  He saw Detective Flores waiting in the hall behind the nurse. He wondered where the doctor was.

  “Ask him not to arrest me until she wakes up.”