Pluto's Ghost

by Sheree Fitch

  p

  Truthfully, I don’t know how long I was out cold. Maybe it was only seconds, but when I came to, opera voices screamed at me from the stereo system, stuck on some kind of loop. There was blood on my hands, my side hurt, and I heard a small, weak, seductive voice. Close eyes. Sleep. Close eyes. Sleep. Heavy, dark, sleep. Close eyes. Then there was another voice—urgent and strong. No. Don’t. Eyes open. Awake. STAY AWAKE.

  Curling up in the cold would mean the deep-freeze. For good. I reached for my backpack, dug for my flashlight and rolled over on my side. When I opened the car door I made a nasty discovery. The car teetered sideways on a ledge. I’d crash-landed at the lip of a gorge and if I’d stepped from the driver’s side, I would have been a goner walking on nothing but air.

  There must have been a river, somewhere far below, because I heard the rush of water under ice like in the creek back home but louder, faster. I inched across the front seat and when I opened the passenger door the car shifted. I side-rolled out, stood up just in time to see the car plummet downwards. Then there was nothing but a white hush. Evergreens dusted with snow; trees like those pictures of trees in Christmas cards, the kind with sparkle on them. I used to try to eat the damn stuff when I was little.

  At that moment I wished I was a kid again, out for a sleigh ride with my father maybe, or snowshoeing in the woods, something we’d done a lot of together once. Or out collecting sap for syrup. I was thirsty. I stuck out my tongue to taste the fir smell of the air and the whiteness. I scanned the woods and tried to get my bearings. Water trickled down my face, mixed with blood.

  Hell, I could have died right there in the middle of nowhere, plunged to my death—my body not found for months. Maybe years. It happened. People had accidents deep in the woods and bodies got swept away in the currents of rivers. This wasn’t the way I planned on going out.

  I jumped up and down, kicked up my knees and started marching, like those funny little guys in the Chinese army. I scrubbed snow across my face, shook my cheeks, said blaaaaaaaaaaah brrrruddblhhh. My backpack was heavier than ever but I tramped on, sometimes sinking knee-deep in the snow.

  Scaling the bank was slow work. I clutched at branches for leverage. Doing good, bro, I told myself, do not do not do not look down, and then halfway up I slipped. Closed my eyes tight then, I did, and I yelled, and waited for death by bashing my brains out on the boulder I knew had my name on it.

  q

  The fall was like a toboggan ride that seemed to go on forever until my coat snagged on a stump. After I untangled myself, I started the uphill climb again. By the time I hoisted myself over the bank and onto the main road I was damn near worn out. Desperate. Aching all over.

  A snow-covered lump stopped me in my tracks. I’d hit a coyote, and it was dead all right. Mouth open, eyes filled with frozen blood, staring up at me in accusation. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to,” I said. Branches snapped behind me. I looked around and thought I saw a circle of gleaming eyes in the woods and yeah, I pretty much stopped breathing there for a spell. Coyotes had attacked and killed a man just last year around here. When I blinked again, the gleam was gone. Snow flurries swirled and the wind picked up. Pulling on my ski mask and the hood of my coat over that, I did something weird next. I admit that. It wasn’t planned or nothing. (I mean, anything. Sometimes, even when I’m watching my words, I just sneak up on myself.) Like what I did next. It was an idea that took hold before I even thought it.

  I hoisted the dead coyote over my shoulders. Just as I figured, the animal was so heavy my legs almost let go. The coyote was warm. I needed warm right then and no big deal, or maybe real big deal, I learned that night on the damn lonely road that the instinct to survive is a real thing. Not a head thing, not a heart thing, but a thing that comes from some place so low and deep in your gut you know you must have been connected to those guys way back when, those grunters who lived in caves. Or maybe even the mothers, the ones who knew how to wrap babies up tight, swaddle them, keep them alive. Instinct. Just my Jake Upshore explanation for why that night I wore a bloody dead coyote like a scarf. I wanted to live. Instinct in a snowstorm.

  By this time my toes were beyond numb and my legs like wooden stilts. I was wondering if I should stop and burrow a place for myself in the snow, use that dead coyote for a blanket, when I heard a car.

  I wasn’t about to take any chances and so I heaved the coyote down and beat it back into the bush. Even in the blizzard I was afraid of leaving tracks. Headlights closed in. It was a police car, and when the car stopped, my heart did, too. Still, I stayed where I was, hunkering down as the beam of a flashlight examined the coyote and then, like airport search lights, just missed me on several go-rounds. “Anybody there? Theretherethere?” Derucci’s voice. He called out again and I heard another car door. Another voice. A familiar voice, but I couldn’t figure out who it belonged to. A wicked wind blew up. I still think that storm saved me just then. They both slammed back into the car and drove off in the direction of Poplar Hills, tires squeaking on the snow. I stayed where I was for a long time, and when I figured it was safe, I tramped out of the woods. The coyote was gone. Gone? I walked on but couldn’t see the road. I was about ready to drop when around the next bend light glowed through the dark.

  r

  There are some people, like my dad, who say they can hear God simply by looking at the stars or listening to the leaves tremble in the poplar trees in summer. Not me, as I’ve confessed, but as I tramped on towards that light, I don’t mind admitting I was muttering something like “If there’s a God somewhere can I get out of the jeezlus cold?” My half-assed prayers were answered. The light led to a locked shed.

  Technically, it wasn’t really a break and enter because the hinges were rotten and the door almost broke apart in my hands. The place reeked. Mould and mildew. It wasn’t exactly empty either.

  “Hello!” I shouted out. There was this mother of a mewling sound. I swivelled my flashlight around to locate the cat—an ugly, feral-faced thing.

  “Hey there,” I said. “Anybody else home?” I shone my light to the right of the cat and jumped. There was a pile of skulls. Like skeleton skulls. A shitload of them. Whoah. I backed up and then inched towards them. Plastic Hallowe’en skulls. Candles. It took me a minute to figure that out. I won’t repeat what came out of my mouth in the meantime. Then I walked up and down the crooked, narrow aisles, exploring. The smell of old lobster shells and rotten orange peels told me something was rotting. I wheezed and gasped for air. There were stacks of books everywhere: comics, magazines, cheap plastic children’s toys. I imagined evil toy clowns from horror movies attacking me and when I stepped on a rubber duck I yelled so loud they could have heard me all the way to Tatamagouche. The cat reeeeowed.

  If you’ve ever played dominoes you can picture me in the next scene. I fell against a table and the table wobbled. I lunged forward like I was fencing and took a shelving unit down with me. Dishes crashed to the floor, shattering all around me. I covered my face and started laughing. Roared like an insane man. As I scrolled over the list of my crimes in my head, I laughed harder. Setting off a false fire alarm, car theft, driving without a licence, killing an animal (or not?), break and enter, so what’s a little vandalism thrown in? Quite the day. So I was cold and sore and bruised. I was alive. Skye was pregnant. I stopped laughing and then I remembered I wasn’t totally alone.

  I had some reading to do. I found an old lumpy mattress, lit as many skulls as I could find, reached for the diary and tried to find the truth inside. Skye had promised it was there. A lot of truth was there. Word by word by word I read most of the night. I found parts of me in there, too.

  In the Luray Caverns

  is the sym averd for Pluto. I looked it up. It’s going to be our symbol forever. Today he took my hand and we stepped into the darkness, behind the formation called Pluto’s Ghost. He touched me in places I thought forbidden, places I’d never been touched before. Maybe it was years of waiting, of fooling mys
elf and finally being there, but with that long slow kiss, I was gone. We were both breathless and it was like all at once urgent and tender and frantic. Waves of pleasure. Throbbing everywhere. I get hot remembering. We had to stop when the next tour group came along—afraid we’d be discovered. We were still on fire, but we tucked ourselves back in and smoothed down our hair, returned to our class. No one had missed us, not even Shep. They were all too busy tilting their heads this way and that, trying to make sense of the shapes spiking from the walls and ceilings, sprouting from the floors. Mind-boggling otherworldly beauty. I noticed a poem at the entrance to the caverns. It was “Kubla Khan” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. I know that poem because it was on the final exam last year. “A woman wailing for her demon lover.” I never understood that line—but maybe I do now. Jake’s kiss made my lips feel bruised, but it stayed on my lips, and his smell stayed underneath my nose like musky perfume. He’s coming to my room tonight. God, I hope my parents never ever read this diary. Virginia is for lovers. Virginia is where I’m going to lose my virginity.

  Well, I guess I didn’t have to worry I’d be taking advantage of her that night. It seemed she knew more than I did about what was going to happen. Turned out she was as eager as I was. Mind you, I’d had some experience—but not nearly as much as Skye thought. I got embarrassed thinking back, how awkward I was. How shy. I flipped ahead in the binder.

  My parents, out of town. So. After the dance, we met at my place. We made popcorn and started to watch a movie. We didn’t watch for long. We had a bit of a fight. Then we licked butter and salt from each other’s lips—that’s how it started. I think he expected me, like always, to put the brakes on, to say, “No, please don’t. Stop.” But instead I heard myself saying “Please don’t stop.” We weren’t prepared. For once, we didn’t have condoms. Please. God, don’t let me be pregnant.

  s

  Thursday morning. I woke up to the sound of lawnmowers. Well, that’s the best way I know how to describe the sound of three pit bulls in your face. Yep. Snapping jaws, drooling tongues, sabre-like teeth inches away from my nose. Talk about staring death in the face. There it was, a canine combine machine, a three-headed monster dog that could chew you up and spit you out in lots of little itty-bitty pieces. So. A new day. A new nightmare in my face.

  “What the hell—who the hell are you?” shouted a man, somewhere behind the dogs. “Stay, stay.”

  Yeah, “stay,” I wanted to scream out. Just stay the fuck away from me, nice doggies. The dogs froze an inch from my nose, dribbled and growled, but buddy in front of me was even uglier than the dogs. He slammed his fist down beside me over and over, just missing my head every time. He reeked of rum, and his breath could have skinned the bark off every tree in the Amazon rain forest. Teeth black as licorice bits.

  “Ahh!” I yelled. “Gwaaah wahh mahh!”

  “Get up!” he said. “Get the hell UP!” If I wasn’t so terrified, it might have been almost comical. I mean, the man was barking at me to get up and he had me pinned down at the same time. “And I axed you a question, who are you?” By that time Quasimodo had me in a death grip. He pinched my Adam’s apple between his thumb and forefinger. I’m pretty sure my face turned purple. I made these end-of-life gurgling sounds until the guy came to his senses and released his hold. The cat mewled and hissed at me, the dogs kept growling, and polka dots the size and colour of red and black poker chips appeared in front of my eyes. Buddy still gripped my shoulder.

  “I had to get in out of the storm,” I said. “I’ll pay for the damages—just don’t call the police. And can you ease off? I had an accident, man. I’m cold and hurt and—”

  “Police? Are there police looking for you? Great! Just great!” The man’s laugh reminded me of a bad guy in a cheap horror movie.

  Who-ha-ha-ha-ha. The a-hole slapped me on the back.

  “Why didn’t ya say so? I know the feelin’. Looks like you could use something to eat. Name’s Robin. Not because of Batman and Robin—more like Robin the Hood.”

  Robin the Hood shoved the cat into his jacket and motioned me to follow him. The dogs kept growling. “Ah, pussycats really,” said Robin, “when I wants them to be! Follow me!” I stood up, almost keeled over and shuffled behind him.

  “You gotta phone I could use?” I asked as I tramped in the snow after him. “Is there a bus anywhere going into the city? Can you tell me where I am exactly?”

  “Ha,” he said. “Ha.” If there was a joke, it went over my head.

  Robin the Hood wore a green and black lumberjack coat and grey sweats. His bare feet were stuffed in old running shoes, the tongues flapped open, his laces untied. Every step he took, he sank in the snow. His hair was long in back but he was bald on top, and the few greasy strands left looked like they were glued in place. I guess he had some kind of mullet thing going on. “Yur here,” he said and stretched his arms to the sky. Oo-kay, I thought. He’s frickin’ nuts. Scary “hermit in a cabin in the woods” kind of guy. He grabbed my arm and pointed. He grabbed my arm and pointed to a trailer. Smoke rose from a tin chimney. I inhaled the woodsmoke like it was oxygen. Maybe I’d thaw out, I hoped, examining my fingertips. They were numb and looked frostbitten.

  “S’morning I looked out my window to check how high the snowbanks were—quite the squall blew up, eh? And then I seen my shop door bust open—not easy to see in all that snow but I got eyes like a crow’s says the wife. Pauleeene!” he yelled as he tramped in the door, dripping snow. “Ain’t this a bastard of a winter, tho, eh? Paullleeeene!”

  “I’m right here, no need to—well, what we got here?” I nodded hello. The woman had a face sadder and rougher than potatoes in a burlap bag. “Who’s he?” she repeated as I stood there, feeling like dog food. The pit bulls growled, still at my heels.

  “Our sweet little lottery ticket,” Robin replied. “Eggs,” he ordered. “And toast. Think we found ourself a friend.” Pauleeeeene lit a cigarette and blew smoke rings in my direction. I wondered if I’d fallen into some great black hole in the centre of that snowstorm. Fee fi fo fum.

  “Freezing aren’t you?” Pauline said. I nodded. “Here, wrap up in this.” She threw me a blanket that smelled like kitty litter and pulled a chair up to the stove. “And here’s some dry clothes.”

  “Could I use the phone?” I asked. “Nope,” Robin said. “Bathroom?” I said, in my best manners. There was this wild second where I pictured myself escaping through the bathroom window.

  “Cat wants food,” Robin barked at Pauline, taking the cat out of his jacket. “Sure, the bathroom’s down the hallway,” he added to me.

  The hallway was two steps long. I tried my cell. No signal.

  I could hear them and was sure they could hear me as I relieved myself. I freaked out some when I looked in the mirror and took a look at the gash in my forehead. The cut needed cleaning. Stitches, too, from what I could tell. As I filled the sink up with water, I heard them, as clear as if their voices were piped into the room.

  “The boy’ll do,” Robin said.

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Looks like he’s running from something.”

  “Well, if you don’t have a horseshoe up yer arse,” she said. Do for what? I wondered, and reached in my bag for my Swiss Army knife and slipped it in my pocket and went back out.

  “Breakfast?” said Robin.

  A few minutes later, bacon sizzled, coffee brewed, and the cat, after eating, curled up in my lap.

  “I gotta get a move on,” I said. “Can you tell me how to get to Halifax from here? I’ll be hiking it.”

  “Reeelax. You’re not going nowhere,” Robin began. “Unless, hmm, I wonder if you’d be our delivery boy?”

  I felt for my knife. “What do you mean?”

  He leaned forward suddenly, jumped up and held his fingers to his lips. He walked to the window, pushed back the faded flowered curtain and pointed. A police car was rolling up the driveway.