His contemplation was cut short by the shadow hovering near the end of the tent furthest in the woods. Its arms seemed long and massive, and it was impossible to determine if it was a person or an animal hunched by the tent’s edge. Was it the protester he had seen earlier, still dressed in his horrible costume? Harvey took a step toward it, then another, and it did not move. With each advancement the shadow receded, and when Harvey dared lift his Maglite to reveal what it was the figure disappeared into the folds of the night as though it had never been there. It left behind a flap of rough canvas torn loose from the tent. Harvey checked his vicinity to ensure he was alone, then hazarded a peek beneath the tent. There was nothing but dark emptiness; a void without bottom. Harvey heard his dead daughter, Emily, cry out for him, but to his horror those cries were stifled. He knew she wasn’t there, that it was simply his guilt haunting him, but he could not deny the specter’s commands. Harvey slipped beneath the loose section of heavy canvas and found a deep pit waiting, one so dark his flashlight would not penetrate it. He scratched his head and knelt down, then swung his legs over the precipice until they dangled into the dark expanse. Slowly, he pushed himself farther until gravity took hold. It was then he realized there was no ground beneath the canvas. He fell, plummeting into nothing, and feared he would never stop. When he finally hit bottom, the ground was softer than grass, and turning on his flashlight he saw he had dropped no more than six feet into the earth; yet the trench stretched out as far as his flashlight beam carried, farther than it had appeared on the surface. The wind howled through the torn tarp above.
The Six Nations had been excavating something, and it seemed to be more than a single thing judging by the size of the hole. Harvey felt claustrophobic pressure from above and shone the light to determine how much headroom he really had. It was close, but there was enough space to stand. What struck him, though, was that the frame holding the canvas aloft was made of long branches standing in a row down into the darkness, bent together and tied at the top to make a series of small arches. Bizarrely, they appeared dead black under his light. He touched one and his hand came away wet and sticky with an oil-like reddish substance, though it smelled more metallic than that. Perhaps it was the air he smelled, air like that before a storm, charged with electricity. Or maybe the winds had changed, and the hydro station fire had penetrated further into the Douglas Creek land. He wiped his fingers on one of the Tim Hortons napkins he’d stashed in his pocket, then shone his Maglite along the ground. He could see the remnants in the dirt of some structure that had been buried there before, the frame of what looked like a small building. The protesters must have been trying to unearth it. What was so important, he wondered. Was it some archaeological discovery? Something of their ancestors there that they didn’t want claimed by the province? It looked like a sort of dwelling, but the geometry of the place was all wrong; the angles seemed too obtuse to bear without being driven mad. He still couldn’t tell where the door must have been—there was no evidence of the building ever having one, not unless it was carved in the hide of the tent above.
There was something else, something other than the lack of doors or windows in a place that was clearly once home to too many. In the dirt at his feet, small objects screamed like tiny shiny gems. They caught his eye, and he bent down to pick one up. They looked like teeth, sharp canine teeth of a large predator, and mixed in with them were long black claws, curved and thick. They were spread across the dirt floor, and Harvey was confident they hadn’t been unearthed but instead left there recently, as though part of some strange ceremony. That would explain the foulness in the air—rituals and customs performed, tying the natives to the earth and its creatures. Maybe the protesters were trying to ward off Henco and the destruction it might bring, or instead punish it for what it had already done. Henco deserved it. Deserved punishment for its actions, deserved it as much as he did when Harvey saw his daughter’s face staring at him, her eyes dark and soulless and unforgiving. The guilt overwhelmed him, made him angry, and everything around him shook. Dirt trickled down the walls of the hole, and somewhere closer than possible he heard himself panting like an animal. When he managed to calm himself, he found his fist clenched, and opening it saw that the sharp tooth had bitten through his skin. He threw it to the ground and rubbed the wound on his pant leg, then raised the flashlight high.
Farther into the remains of the excavated building, he was surprised by what the Six Nations had unearthed—a series of wooden structures like tables, or possibly bunks. He let his light crawl to the top and for a moment was jarred. What he thought had been a large animal sleeping in filth was in fact a pelt covered in soil. He picked up the edge and saw another beneath, less dirty, and another beneath that. He had no explanation for their presence. Disturbing them, though, released a meaty smell into the air, a sour medley of musk and decayed flesh that stifled his breath until it wheezed from his lungs. Sounds emanated around him, strange distortions possible only in the absence of light. Harvey felt his hand taken by another, smaller hand, and swung his flashlight quickly, but it was not fast enough. Everything looked different, however, as though shifted in the dark then returned before the light struck it. He shook his head. He did not like what he was witnessing. There was something wrong in that underground room, something that he wasn’t seeing but knew was there. He pointed the Maglite at the bent branches overhead, searching for evidence he was being watched. He felt a strange set of eyes intently following his every move, but again if they were there in the dark they were gone before the light found them. The sound of his raincoat rubbing against itself was overwhelming, as was the crunch of his shoes on the tiny bones underfoot. He had to get out of that pit and off the Douglas Creek grounds. He’d been there so long he was hearing chanting when there was no way he could. It was stuck in his head, repeating over and over again.
He strode to the spot he had descended from and realized the drop was further than he’d thought. He wasn’t tall or young enough simply to pull himself out. He considered climbing the bent branches, but even if they might support his weight there was no way he was going to touch them. He tried jumping half-heartedly, but only succeeded in raining further dirt down on himself. He was in a predicament, and he had few options. He couldn’t allow himself to be discovered by the protesters, but when he tried to think his way through, all he could see was Emily’s face staring at him smugly, all he could hear was the sound of her respirator gasping. Maybe if he tried climbing on the wooden structure at the rear of the pit, pushed aside the fur pelts, and stood on the wooden frame, he could get enough height to escape.
He staggered back across the mud floor, his panting echoing close to his ear, the damp seeping through the soles of his shoes, and found the half-buried frame. But before he could climb he was stunned by the revelation of the Maglite. The bunks were empty, the fur gone. He shone the flashlight quickly, scoured the ground, found nothing but dirt. Even the tiny teeth had vanished, the claws, the bones. It made no sense. He raised the Maglite and aimed it across the walls of the underground room, and when it finally discovered the furs it did not stop. It did not want to stop. Yet Harvey returned the circle of light to the pelts of dirt-filled fur that hung from the farthest corner of the pit. He took a step closer, willing his eyes to focus, willing everything to make sense. He took another step and the world around him started to shift, his reality warping as time slowed.
His every sense became hyperaware: the sound of panting he mistook for his own; the smell of thick musk and foul breath; the taste of bitterness; the sight of darkness swirling around him and becoming solid; the feel of his dead daughter’s pendant crushed in the palm of his sweating hand. The fur hanging in front of him, the fur he had seen minutes before on the other side of the room, started to move without aid. Then in the light across the room glittered too many eyes opening, flashed too many rows of razor-sharp canine teeth. But what mesmerized Harvey most was the debilitating wave of guilt that washed over him, froze his li
mbs in place until a rumbling growl shook him. He stepped back and instinctively put his hand in his pocket. Shadows moved around the creature like limbs, too many to count. He took another step back into the wall of the pit, and the shock jarred the flashlight from his hand. As it hit the soft ground there was the glint of something lunging toward him, and his gun was in his hand and firing before the utter darkness swallowed him whole. Six flashes in the dark, then no more. At some point he dropped Emily’s pendant.
Morning light shone in Harvey’s eye through the hide canopy. He coughed blood. From a muted distance he heard voices yelling at him, shadows moving frantically above. He could see enough to know where he was, what condition he was in. There was blood over his hands and deep scratches on his misshapen arms and legs. One of his eyes stuck as he blinked, and a raised hand revealed half his face numb. He was alive; he wished he weren’t. He stared up at the hide canopy, the protesters moving across the opening torn far wider than before, and he wondered why he was not dead when he so deserved to be. As though in response, Emily appeared beside him, her broken face now mirroring his own, and he remembered. He remembered how hurt she had been, how the grief had overwhelmed him. His only happiness fading away, replaced as he watched by a hunk of breathing meat. Harvey swallowed, his throat dry and caked with blood, remembering that thing that was no longer her lying on the hospital bed, fading away, holding her down. He shook his head, not wanting to remember, but the apparition forged of his guilt would not let him forget. He did what any father would do for the child he loved; he waited until the doctor was gone and he set her free. He unplugged her respirator and waited for death to take her.
But to his horror, death didn’t come.
And the ground at the Douglas Creek lot rumbled once more.
Harvey silently apologized to Emily as she stood before him, tears streaming from his only working eye. He had watched her brain-dead body continue to breathe, felt her heart continue to beat, even while her broken face was as pale as the dead. Bound to the world, unable to move on and unable to return, Harvey’s grief consumed what remained of him at the bottom of that dirt hole, six feet deep.
He remembered little of it. The pillow from under her head in his hand. Leaning down on her crushed face, bones popping softly until she no longer moved, until the hospital machines emitted a single sustained tone. He dropped the pillow in his daze and for the first time saw Emily standing there, staring into his watering eyes, and he knew with cold rationality that he’d made a grievous error. It was not only her anchor with the world he had severed.
But facing her in that pit he felt a calm. The creature that the Six Nations of the Grand River had brought forth to serve their vengeance had found its first victim, and it fed until it was full, sparing the lives of those at Henco who knew no better. They weren’t free of blame; it was only that he had so much more to offer. He laughed, and the action made him cough again. Blood fell to the vibrating ground. He looked up with his one good eye and saw through the torn canopy a large arm of orange metal, and he knew he was right. The scoop lifted above him, blocking out the rising sun, and he turned his head to see Emily standing there beside him, a smile finally on her broken doll’s face. He smiled too, as best he could, and tried to reach his arm out to take her tiny hand, but he was buried by earth before he reached her.
Strong as a Rock
Garrison did not want to go rock climbing, but Rex assured him it was a good idea.
“You’ll have fun, Gar. Trust me. It’ll take your mind off Mom.”
But Garrison didn’t think anything would take his mind off her. The sight of her in that hospital bed, hooked up to wires and tubes, so thin and pale . . . no, he could not forget her. He still missed her every day.
But Rex was right. He needed to start his life again. Emerge from his darkened basement into the world. He just wasn’t sure rock climbing was the answer.
“I don’t know if I’m up to this, Rex. It’s not what I was expecting.”
“Bullshit. You can do it. I have faith in you, bro.”
It was the latest of Rex’s activities, one he had taken up after their mother’s death, but one to which he was particularly drawn. He went through this every few years, discovering a new sport or hobby to occupy his time. For a while it was diving, then hang gliding. He even knit for a few months the year before. But rock climbing was the strangest, at least to Garrison. It had always seemed the sort of activity one does when there’s nothing left to do. Why else scale the side of a rock? Because it’s there? Still, when Rex asked, Garrison acquiesced. Not at first, but soon enough. Somehow, Rex always knew what to say.
The trip to Markham only took a few hours, and it felt as though they had left one reality and entered another. Garrison was not used to the size of things, neither the expanse of forests nor the confined and labyrinthine layout of the town. Both conspired to rob him of a quick method of escape, and their lack of familiarity only heightened his anxiety.
“I think I’m claustrophobic,” he said to Rex as they passed through the small town. They saw few locals, and those they did stared as the two drove by, eyes wide and disconcerting. Rex didn’t seem to notice.
“I think you’re an idiot who’s spent too much time inside the house. You’re not claustrophobic.”
“How do you know?” Garrison asked, feeling for his pulse in case somehow he would be able to diagnose himself. “Or maybe agoraphobic?”
Rex let out a sigh and then tried to change the subject.
“You’ll be fine once we get into Downe Park and start our climb. You’ll be amazed at how good it makes you feel. It always recharges. Look, above those trees. You can just see the edge of the rocks peeking through.”
Garrison could see them, but he could feel them as well, feel them glaring at him through the branches. He swallowed, his head woozy. It had been the same when their mother died; he could see what was coming and knew it brought nothing but pain. His fingers icy, his jaw slack, he stared at the rock formation and wondered what it might want from him. Then he stopped and shook his head. They were rocks; they couldn’t want anything. Surely not to see him plummet to his death.
If the rocks did want Garrison, they did not tip their hand when the brothers arrived. Instead, the sun was beaming in a deep cloudless sky, lighting the walls of red rock until they no longer looked real. Garrison felt so far removed from his normal life he could no longer remember it, and though he knew the idea should be exhilarating, he found it the opposite. He was terrified by what was laid out before him.
“Perfect weather,” Rex said, and then inhaled deep and released the breath with something more akin to a satisfied call-to-arms than to an exhale. It only further jangled Garrison’s nerves. “I’ll pop the trunk, bro, so we can get the gear out.”
They laid everything on the ground at the foot of a rocky face. While Rex worked to check they had all they would need, Garrison looked at the sun, the light cascading down as though the red rocks were seeping blood. Garrison knew it was no more than a forty-foot climb, but from where he stood those forty feet seemed to stretch upward forever.
“So . . . all this equipment. It’s supposed to hold us, right? Has it ever broken on you? Maybe when you were halfway up or something? I saw this movie once—”
“I told you not to worry, Gar. I’ll be going first. All you need to do is put your hands and feet where I put mine and follow my lead. I’ll tell you when it’s time to move or not. The day is absolutely gorgeous and perfect for this. I couldn’t have asked for it to be better to take you up your first time. If you trust me, we’ll be fine. You do trust me, right?”
Did he? Did he trust his older brother, the stronger, smarter of the two? The one he had never in all their years seen shaken or cry, even when their mother died? The most solid rock he knew? Did Garrison trust him?
“Of course I trust you,” Garrison said. “But still, the ropes—”
“Enough with the ropes. I already checked them, Gar.”
>
“I know. But can you check them again? Just to make sure?”
Rex picked up the first set of ropes in front of him. He pulled at both ends while he looked straight at Garrison, making sure it was clear how pointless the exercise was. Garrison didn’t feel any more assured.
“I know you’re probably tired of explaining, but tell me again exactly how we’re doing this.”
“What? The climb?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll start. You follow.”
“No, I mean what’s the path exactly.” He squinted upward and pointed with a palsied hand. “That way? Along those rocks? What’s the plan?”
“The plan is to follow me, Gar. Jesus, relax, will you? I’m not going to let you—” Rex hesitated, but Garrison knew exactly what he meant to say.
“Die? You mean like Mom?” Garrison’s heart was beating so hard it sounded like someone slowly knocking at a giant wooden door.
“You know what I mean. You’ll be fine. Just do what I tell you. Now come here and let me help you put your harness on.”
Garrison held his arms out as his brother slipped the harness over his body, just as he’d helped Garrison get dressed when the two of them were younger. There was something reassuring about it, being in the hands of Rex, someone so sure of everything. Annoying, but reassuring.
After pulling the straps tight and double-checking them, then checking once more at Garrison’s insistence, Rex linked the two of them together with the safety wire. “This is your lifeline,” he said. “Think of it as an umbilical cord. It’s what’s going to keep you alive. Make sure it does not get tangled.”
That thought was terrifying. Garrison looked around in desperation and saw something worse.
“Where is everybody? Shouldn’t there be more people here? What if we need help?”
Burnt Black Suns: A Collection of Weird Tales Page 6