by Tim McGregor
“What?”
“Wait, no. ‘We have always lived in the Murder House’. That’s what it was called.”
The young man’s eyes widened. “You have a copy of that?”
“I did.” Gantry scratched his head. “Don’t remember what I did with it.”
“That’s the last story Albee wrote before he vanished. The manuscript was found on his desk. He was in the middle of revising it.”
“It’s an odd piece.”
The man leaned in, lowering his voice. “It’s said that he had angered something in that house with that story. And whatever it was, it dragged him straight down into Hell.”
“You’re having me on.”
“That’s the rumour.”
“Excuse me?” Another young man approached them sheepishly. A teenager in black clothes and a t-shirt bearing the words Crypto Death Machine. His eyes fixed squarely on the Englishman. “Are you John Gantry?”
Gantry’s back went up. Trouble. “Who are you?”
“My name’s Noah,” said the boy. “You’re him, aren’t you? Gantry?”
“Nope. You got the wrong bloke, son.” Gantry patted down his pockets for the cigarette pack, the need for one suddenly urgent.
“A-ha! You are John Gantry! I knew it was you.”
“Who?” asked the book seller, looking from the boy to the man sticking a smoke between his teeth.
“Is it true you exorcised a demon from some chick in England?”
Gantry walked away. “Piss off, lad.”
The boy followed. “And that you fought the devil in Oslo? Is it true he carved a sigil into your back, marking you as his property?”
Gantry picked up the pace, lighting up as he went. “Fuck off. I mean it.”
The lad stayed at the Englishman’s heels. “Can you sign my book? Is it true a demon killed your wife?”
The man turned and hurled the boy to the floor. The lad yelped in surprise and whined for help. Gantry slammed his boot against the youngster’s throat. “Stay the fuck away from me, son. If I see you again, I’ll bludgeon what little brains you have with a brick. Do you understand?”
A gurgling sound issued from the boy’s mouth. Gantry took his heel off the lad’s throat and banged out the church door into the night.
39
THE COURT DATE was a blur. The lawyer from Legal Aid Ontario, a tired looking woman named Joan, explained to Billie how the proceedings would unfold. It would be fairly straight-forward since Billie was not contesting the charge, having already admitted to the assault to the police at the time. That was, the lawyer said, her best option. With no criminal record or prior arrests, the judge would most likely go easy on a first offence. A hefty fine and probation.
“That’s it?” Billie asked, sitting in the lawyer’s cramped office. “I’m not going to jail or anything?”
Joan looked at her over her smudgy glasses. “Not unless you do something really stupid in court.”
Billie gathered up the paperwork the woman had given her. “Okay.”
“One thing you could do,” Joan said. “Clean up. Lose the dark clothes.”
Billie looked down at what she was wearing. “What do you suggest?”
“No make-up, no jeans. Dress like you’re going to church. Got it?”
The morning of the court date, Billie rummaged through her closet for the right clothes and checked her appearance in the big mirror. The effect was somewhere between librarian and Sunday school teacher. Joan approved as they waited in the hallway to be called.
The whole thing was over in a flash. Billie felt her heart race as they entered the court room. Her lawyer and the judge spoke quickly, another lawyer across the aisle adding to the discussion. She wondered if Napier was going to be there but he wasn’t, only his lawyer. A headache was fraying her nerves and Billie could barely follow the quick back-and-forth between the three parties. They kept addressing her as Sybil and it wasn’t like anything she had seen on TV and then it was over. Billie stood and the judge doled out her punishment. A five thousand dollar fine, seventy hours of community service and two years probation.
Billie stared at the judge, repeating the sentence to herself but the words seemed abstract and hazy. She flinched when the woman from Legal Aid touched her arm.
“Time to go, Billie,” Joan said. “I have three more of these to get through today.”
“What happens now?”
“Go to the bailiff. They’ll give you the paperwork. Then go home. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
She found a bench out in the atrium and sat down. People stormed past her, chattering into their phones, everyone in a hurry to get somewhere. Billie unfolded the wad of court documents in her hand but she was unable to focus on the dense verbiage, the text blurring before her eyes.
Had she really just been convicted of a crime? It seemed surreal. How was she going to come up with five grand? How long would it take to work through seventy hours of community service? To say nothing of the probation. What did probation even mean?
Underneath all of the nagging questions and the fog numbing her brain was the bitter taste burning in her mouth. She had been convicted of the crime of assault. Yet the man she assaulted had covered up a much more heinous crime, the murder of at least seven women. Aaron Napier was not only free from any charges, he had orchestrated her own conviction. And his father, the late Clarence Napier, had gotten away with murder.
“Billie?” a voice said.
She didn’t look up. There was no need to. She’d know his voice anywhere.
Detective Mockler took a seat on the bench next to her. “Did I miss it?”
“Why are you here?”
“I had to give evidence at a trial,” he said. “I saw your name on today’s docket.”
“Oh.” She brushed a piece of lint from her skirt.
“So what happened?”
Billie sighed. “A fine. Community service. And probation.”
He nodded his head. “Your court date came up awfully fast. Like it got rammed through the system to the front of the line.”
“That’s what the lawyer said too.” She finally looked at him. “Do you think Napier orchestrated that?”
“He must have. He knows which levers to pull.”
“Any chance you’re going to nail him soon?”
Mockler looked at the marble floor. “No. Not now, not ever.”
“What happened?”
“It’s out of my hands. The case was taken away from me.”
“Can they do that?”
“Yep.”
She slumped forward. “I’m sorry. So what happens now?”
“Nothing,” he said. “The investigation into the murdered women has stalled out completely. There are no tangible ties to Napier. He gets away with it. Again.”
“There’s nothing you can do?”
“I thought about going down to his office with a baseball bat and knocking his head in.” He shrugged. “What do you think?”
“Bit rash,” she said. “I like it but you’d probably be in a world of trouble.”
Detective Odinbeck marched up to the pair on the bench. He looked at Mockler, pointing to the watch on his wrist. “Hey, we gotta go.” Seeing the woman next to him, he said “Hey.”
She gave the older detective a wave.
Mockler gathered up his file and rose. “See you around, Billie,” he said and marched for the elevator.
Odinbeck turned to follow but Billie sprang up. “Detective Odinberg?”
“It’s Odinbeck,” he corrected her. “What is it?”
Billie folded her arms. “Mockler. Is he all right? He doesn’t seem himself.”
“Having a file yanked away from you is tough.”
“Of course,” Billie said.
“Don’t worry. Mockler will be all right.” He turned to leave. “He just needs some sleep.”
Billie looked at him. “Why isn’t he sleeping?”
The detective was already walking away. He called back to
her. “Because the dumb ass is crashing on my couch!”
40
THE WORDS TUMBLED about but they made little sense. She turned them over in her mind like an archaeologist unearthing some bone fragment, examining them from this angle and then that but the meaning behind the words didn’t add up. Detective Mockler was crashing on his partner’s couch.
Why?
Had there been a fight? One so bad that he left the house he shared with his fiancée? Had he stormed out in a rage? Had she kicked him out? What had he done? What could have been so bad that Christina had ejected him from his own home? The questions ran hot, each one tumbling over the next in her mind as she paced from the kitchen to the living room and back again.
His name and number were displayed on the screen of her phone. All she had to do was touch the little call button. She thought of a hundred reasons to call him and a thousand reasons not to. The tug of war in her heart was exhausting.
She stopped. The phone dropped to the couch and she stepped away. If something had changed, he would call. If he wanted to talk, he would dial her number. The phone lay where she had tossed it and the screen went dark no matter how badly she wanted it to ring.
The Half-Boy sat stooped on a chair like a cat, watching her. When she slid to the floor and wrapped her arms over her knees, he dropped down and hobbled to her, his small eyes watching her as if enthralled by her torment.
She flinched when his cold hand touched hers. “I know,” she said. “This is stupid.”
His dark eyes stared at her without blinking, his scarred face as blank as slate and she wondered how much he understood. She didn’t know if they even spoke the same language.
“Why do you stay?”
He snatched his hand away and straightened up, eyes suddenly darting all over the apartment. Leaping onto the arm of the couch, he coiled there, as if ready to bolt.
Billie got to her feet. “What is it?”
His eyes shot to the front door. It thudded, as if hammered from the outside.
She startled. “Who is it?”
No response. Crossing to the door, she checked the peephole. The hallway was empty.
Another thud, shaking the door in its frame. She slid the bolt, locking it.
“What is it?” she asked, turning back to the little ghost. Half-Boy was gone.
The lights flickered, once then twice, before winking out altogether. Darkness swallowed her up.
Noise. A sharp crack from the living room window. Then a thud from the window in the bedroom, then the window over the kitchen sink. Something outside, trying to get in.
A book tumbled off the shelf. The sharp snap of glass cracking in the window pane.
Stumbling through the dark, her foot landed on something hard. A single lamp popped back on and she looked down to see what she had stepped on. The chalkboard. A message scrawled shakily across the black surface.
let us in
The door rattled again, the knob squeaking as it turned this way then that. Billie put her eye to the peephole again.
The dead crowded the hallway. Seven in all. The murdered women from the cellar, gathered at her door like a lynch mob.
Billie jerked back. The dead had followed her home. Why?
The door shook again.
She slid the bolt back and opened the door. The dead women glared at her from the hallway, their eyes rimmed with anger through the milky pupils.
let us in, said one.
Billie shook her head. “You can’t come in here.”
The dead crowded in closer but stayed at the boundary of the door. One of them cast her ghastly eyes down to the floor where a line of salt ran the length of the threshold. The dead wouldn’t cross it. Even the Half-Boy avoided it.
“What do you want?”
Their lips curled back, baring their teeth but none spoke. Billie felt something jostle her knee and when she looked down she saw the Half-Boy. He darted in under her legs and, with one sweep of his hand, he brushed the salt barrier away. His hand burned at its touch, filling the room with the smell of scorched flesh.
“No!”
He darted away. Billie looked up. The women rushed inside.
She was lifted clean off her feet, hurtled along by their hands and slammed hard against the wall. Their rage gave them strength, their ghostly hands pinning her flat to the wall.
you lied
She tried to kick but the dead pressed up against her even more. “Get off of me!”
you said you would help
She felt her strength drain out of her. Her energy or chi or soul, she didn’t know what but it hemorrhaged out of her, leaving her weak and lightheaded. The dead women shimmered, growing more solid before her eyes.
you lied
you made it worse
The crime against them. The injustice of it. They wanted revenge. They wanted to be heard. Their hands were cold and their touch leeched the warmth out of Billie’s flesh.
“I tried,” Billie sputtered. “It’s not up to me.”
not right
“I’m sorry,” she gasped. “What do you want me to do?”
She was thrown to the floor. The television popped to life before her. The local news.
“…city officials have decided to demolish the building once the investigation is concluded…”
The video footage showed the exterior of the abandoned building on Essex Street. The site where the women had been hidden away. The voice of the news anchor carried on. “One official said that it would be wrong to allow the structure to be sold and re-purposed, given its tragic history.”
The screen popped and went dark.
Billie felt herself going numb. The old warehouse was to be bulldozed, its shameful history buried.
Something nestled in close to her. Cold lips brushed against her ear, like a lover whispering sweet things.
fix this
“How?”
The pressure on her back eased off. The icy grip on her skin dissipated. When she finally looked up, the apartment was empty but new words had been scratched onto the chalkboard.
bring him to us
~
The chill ran straight to her bones. Billie shivered on the floor with her knees tucked into her chest, unable to warm up. The dead had chilled her to the core, leaving her drained and numb. Something dark billowed through the air, landing in a heap at her feet. A blanket from the sofa. She looked up.
Half-Boy was coiled on the back of the couch watching her like a vulture waiting for its prey to die.
Billie pulled the blanket around her shoulders. “Why did you do that?”
The legless ghost raised his hand, turning the palm up. The skin was charred black from where he had swept aside the salt seal that protected the apartment. The stink of burnt flesh was everywhere.
“Why did you let them in?” she demanded. “I thought you were on my side.”
His features shifted, tilting slightly from blank to contemptuous.
She rubbed at the pain in her wrist. The flesh was bruised from the fingerprints of the dead, like a bracelet of purple around the bone, and it stung like frostbite. The women had also sported bruises, each one bearing a necklace of purpled flesh around her throat. She wondered if the dead were marking her as their own, a cattle brand burned into her flesh.
The Half-Boy dragged his carcass across the boards to an object lying flat on the far side of the room. With an air of disgust, he flung it spinning across the floor until it bumped into her toes.
The chalkboard she had bought for him. The last words of the dead scratched out in white chalk; bring him to us.
She pushed it away. “I can’t.”
He charged forward like a bull and, for a moment, she thought he was going to hurt her. He snatched up the board and banged on it with his fist.
“How?” she snapped. “How am I supposed to do that?”
Gathering up a broken piece of chalk, he stabbed and bashed at the chalkboard with it but all that appeared w
ere random strokes of white, whatever message he’d intended was indecipherable.
“I don’t understand.”
He flung the board away and stomped away in his peculiar legless trot and vanished into a darkened corner.
Billie let her forehead rest against her knee. After a moment, she began to rock back and forth.
41
THE FREEWHEEL OF the bicycle clicked away as she pedalled along Aberdeen and turned onto Ravenscliffe. The avenue was dense with big trees that canopied the pavement below, each house bigger and grander than the next. She squinted up at the homes trying to read the house numbers. Finding Aaron Napier’s home address had taken a few moments of configuring his name into a search engine until she found what she was looking for. A mock Tudor mansion nestled up in the old money neighbourhood of Durand.
The house was big and it was old, its mullioned windows and jettied facade set well back from the street behind an iron fence. A security camera kept watch at the gate and another monitored the grounds before the front entrance. A sconced light beckoned under the pillared porch.
The place was a fortress. Between the locked gate and multiple security cameras, Billie knew there was no way she was getting inside on her own. It wasn’t like she had a plan. She had pulled on a pair of sneakers and laced them up tight, in case she needed to run. That was as far as she had gotten with any plan. It was just a reconnaissance pass at any rate. She had simply wanted to see where Napier lived.
She needed to lure Aaron Napier out or get inside somehow. Even if she could accomplish either one, Billie still wasn’t sure how to proceed. If she reached out to the dead women, would they come to her? They wanted the man brought to them. She had no idea how to accomplish that. She dismounted and leaned the bike against the trunk of a black oak. Glancing up and down the street to make sure she wasn’t seen, she approached the gates and studied the gables and half-timbering behind the iron barricade. Lofty and imposing, the house spoke of old wealth and generational privilege. The bastion of a plutocrat. The ornate details of the masonry and the trim work caught her eye. Stone gargoyles flanked the roof and elaborate symbols were carved into the masonry of the archway. The chiseled motif of an eye inside a hand was repeated throughout the facade. A talisman against evil spirits? Were these symbols coincidence or was the guilty party protecting his home from the vengeance of the dead?