New Canadian Noir

by Claude Lalumiere

  The organist was scrabbling for something beneath his robes. I quickly put a bullet in his neck before he could draw. O’Shea managed two steps before I shot out its knee-cap.

  I climbed over the worshippers. Isabel’s head was chin to chest. I slapped her face. Her eyes fluttered.

  “You’re too late,” O’Shea said. It’d propped itself up against the organist and was examining its lack of knee. “It’s over. It’s all over now.”

  I pried her eyelids open with my fingertips. She pushed at my hands, moaning.

  “Isabel, stay with me,” I said. My voice was thin, harsh. My one lung pushed harder. “Carmen wants you back. I’m here to take you home. Stay awake.”

  “She’s already dead.”

  I shook her shoulders. “Cora’s waiting for you, Isabel.” Saliva dribbled from her mouth. Her breathing shallowed.

  I stood, reloading Marion as I strode to O’Shea. “Antidote?”

  It shook its head. I plugged the bishop’s other kneecap. It took the violence quietly.

  “Why?”

  It sighed, picking at the new wound. “Because they want this existence. They crave it. They come here begging to be moot. Who am I to deny someone their fondest wish?”

  “How many?”

  “Hundreds. Thousands.” I shot it twice more in the chest.

  “How many have come back?”

  It dismissed the question with a weak wave of its hand.

  “Not that many. After they die, we leave. When we come back, any rebirths are gone, we clean up the leftovers and divide the cash. I give my share to the few bastards I’ve left around. I can at least do that.”

  “Seeking absolution?”

  “Absolution no longer exists. I could tell them this, but it would make no difference. They simply cannot accept the truth of it.”

  “Truth?”

  “That there is nothing beyond this world. No Heaven, no afterlife. No God.” It snorted a laugh. “After all I’ve done, all the people I hurt, I couldn’t even suffer the torments of a hell.”

  I knew it was right. I had experienced the nothing, and returned. I spent years outrunning the dark that awaited me.

  I looked to Isabel. Her breathing had stilled.

  “They’re so jealous,” O’Shea continued. “They think we’re God’s children. Every moot a messiah. It offends them. They can’t bear to be ignored. Not when they’re so deserving. So they seek me out, they make a payment for past sins, and I remove their pain.”

  I sank into a pew and cradled my head in my hands.

  “You fool them,” I said at last, furious. At Isabel. At O’Shea. At me. “No one would willingly do this to themselves.” I fought to get the words out, refusing to believe the fundamental untruth of them.

  O’Shea looked at me, philosophical. “I’m only an instrument. They’re just afraid to do it themselves. I give them a show and help them cross the river.”

  The congregation died as I watched. One by one.

  “Faith doesn’t move mountains, Detective. It just obscures the view.”

  I checked my gun. Three bullets left. Thought things over.

  “I hadn’t heard you’d died,” I said.

  “I was shivved in the yard. Nasty business. After I returned, I played doornail. The prison didn’t want me, so the church dropped me off in Greytown. As I suspected they would. It didn’t take long to find gentlemen willing to fund my new church. Even less time to find clients.”

  “And Nex?”

  “Short for necrophilia. My own little joke.”

  I stared at Isabel. Looked at her life. Wondered what she could have become.

  Thought about Marion. About So and Jo.

  “What now, Detective?”

  I counted my bullets again.

  “You won’t let me go unpunished, will you?”

  I looked to the bishop. Its eyes were pleading.

  “I deserve punishment.”

  I looked back to Isabel.

  “You want to do it.”

  I caressed my scars.

  “End me.”

  One for So.

  “End me! ”

  One for Jo.

  “I’m going to wait,” I decided. “Until something happens.”

  I waited a long time.

  I called Miss Lopez, told her I quit, Isabel’s trail had gone cold. I hung up when she asked for specifics.

  I pass the days now shuffling through Greytown’s streets, gun by my side. Most moots avoid eye contact, lurch to the other side of the street. They’ve heard the stories; even if they haven’t, self-preservation demands the response.

  I ignore them. If they are cognizant enough to avoid me, they’re plainly capable of making up their own deteriorating minds.

  Once in a great while, one will get it in its head to take me on. It’ll lumber up to the sidewalk beneath my Greytown apartment window and groan a threat, sometimes heave a brick ineffectually into the air.

  It’s usually the new arrivals. They haven’t figured out yet what it means to be dead. They think me a vigilante. A sheriff no one elected in a town no one wants to live in. I give them a chance to leave me alone. Then I let Marion speak for me.

  Sometimes, they’re older moots, looking for a way out, knowing I’ll provide one. All they’d have to do is ask. But they believe it better to go in a blaze of glory than a mewling plea to end it all.

  To moots, I am the avenging angel now. Or the nightmare of nightmares.

  Same result either way.

  Other days I can’t bring myself to face the grey. I stay in my apartment, waiting out existence, O’Shea’s brain set companionably beside me in its bowl. I fancy I can hear the man within shrieking into the void.

  Neither of us deserves to escape our hells.

  I stare at the wall. Feeling myself slowly rot away. Wishing it were quicker. Glad that it isn’t.

  On the wall in front of me, two photos make up my world.

  Sophia and Josephine: the two I couldn’t save.

  Isabel: the one I did.

  DONNER PARTIES

  Keith Cadieux

  Lewis Keseberg is the name he uses to rent the basement of the rundown rooming house. He leaves an envelope of cash in the mailbox every month, has seen the landlord only once, and either there are no other tenants or they never leave their units.

  To call it an apartment is too generous: two rooms with poured concrete for walls and floor. Squat, splintered windows sit at eye level inside, ground level outside. The sound of tires going past intermingle with other noises: a rattling refrigerator, a steady sewer-filling drip. The floor is slick with water, which runs into a small metal drain.

  He wears a sleeveless white undershirt, worn khaki trousers, and plain white socks. Water squelches out of the fabric and between his toes with each step but he prefers this to the feel of cement on his bare feet. He sports a full beard, a spade, that reaches to his chest. The long whiskers drip down onto the front of his wet clothes.

  His fingertips are pruned and slippery with wet. Loosely, by the handle, he grips a gallon jug filled with water. He paces and stops at the edge of the drain, plants his feet, takes a few deep breaths, and brings the jug to his lips. He tilts his head back and drinks, making loud pulsing sounds as he forces down the liquid. His palate notes hints of copper. His esophagus stings with cold before going numb. His stomach shrieks and distends as it’s forced into holding so much fluid. He tilts too far, and water spills out the sides of his mouth. He loses his focus, coughs, splutters, and has to pull the jug away. There are still a few cups’ worth left in the jug.

  He rests his hands on his sore belly, tries to catch his breath but belches instead. The square, stone room reverberates briefly, then the sound of the burp is overtaken by a rush of water as he vomits fluid onto the floor. He bends forward at the waist, pushes hard on his middle, like squeezing juice from a lemon.

  He dumps out the bit left in the jug. The sound of dripping quickens. He straightens up
and moves over to the side of the room where there is a sink with no counter. He refills the jug at the tap, to the very top.

  He needs fewer breaths this time and brings the container back up to his mouth to drink. And drink. This time he drains the gallon without a hiccup. He doesn’t think he’s spilled any, but he’s too soaked to be sure. He straddles the drain, presses hard and low on his belly, and forces everything out again. He makes a fist around his beard, wrings out the excess.

  This is part of his training. Gorging on water stretches the stomach.

  Set up against the wall opposite the sink is a folding dinette table. The legs wobble on the sloping floor. The table-top is covered with medical and anatomical textbooks, all thick, heavy hardcovers. Some are piled neatly, others opened to specific pages and laid atop each other. He is always careful not to get them wet, but the pages are wavy and moist. The glossy finish of the coloured paper is dulled in straight lines where he has run a damp fingertip along the words, memorizing all the terms and structures and layouts of the stomach, its surrounding muscles, the placement of nearby organs, the distribution of nerve endings, where fat tends to roll over, how deep the stomach lining, the careful coilings of the intestines. He knows this information by heart but reading the words over again is part of the training as well. Part of the ritual.

  There is one book that doesn’t fit with the others. A thin paperback, popular history rather than a textbook. He reads and rereads familiar words, savouring a favourite texture: When they asked him why he had not eaten the ox legs, he replied, “They have not as good a flavour.” He closes this book first and sets it at one end of the table. He closes the others one by one and sets them in a neat stack on the floor in the corner. The table now cleared, he steps over to the noisy fridge, the bone-metal rattle louder with the door open, and takes out a glass punch bowl filled with fresh stewing beef. He sets the bowl on the dinette table and pulls over a kitchen chair from against the far wall. He peels back the plastic wrap and eats the small cubes of cold meat. Eating is part of the training, too. The pieces are slippery and slide easily down the throat, thanks to a recipe of his own – sugar, corn starch, a touch of water – that makes the liquid viscous and slick, though admittedly it doesn’t do much for the flavour. With pinched fingers he lifts out and eats each morsel one at a time without chewing. Chewing slows everything down and the whole point is to consume as much as quickly as possible. He won’t eat again until tomorrow night.

  He stands, rinses the bowl, and leaves it in the sink. He wipes his mouth and face with a handful of tap water. At the other end of the basement is the empty bedroom. A separate outfit hangs neatly from wooden hangers over the doorknob, expensive shoes set atop an empty cardboard box, so as to be off the ground. He undresses, tosses the wet clothes in the corner, and puts on the good, clean clothes. He turns out the lights, the raspy breath of the fridge still louder than the elegant clack of his footsteps. He locks the door behind him, the sound of the key against the tumblers like cracking soup bones.

  The next night is dry and cold, but he enjoys the walk. The smells are crisp, his steps slow. Sunrise is still a few hours away. In one hand he swings a metal lunchbox, the kind he imagines construction workers eat from, up high on the girders. He smells the sauced, salty smoke of food vendors. His stomach growls.

  He walks deep into downtown, crosses through an outdoor parking lot. He kicks a walnut-sized rock ahead of him for a few strides. The skip of the stone and his footsteps are the only sounds. His hands are cold; he puts them in his pockets, walks with his head high against the chilled breeze.

  He stops in front of a long and low-roofed brick building. There is a FOR SALE sign in the window. No phone number is written on it. The power lines overhead buzz, as though coursing with honeybees. It is darker here than the rest of the block. He steps to a nearby lamppost, glass crunching under his shoes, and looks up as he sits on the curb. He lets his gaze rise slowly like steam to the top of the pole where the bulb is broken. He breathes deep, enjoying the scent of the air, the taste of anticipation. His stomach rumbles again.

  He hears shambling feet, soles never lifted off the ground, and rusty shopping-cart wheels. A shuffle and squeak. A greasy man makes his way up the road. Keseberg stays sitting, enjoying his quiet moment, but the man walks straight to him, hand outstretched. He has glassy eyes, like washed and polished apples.

  “Spare change?” the man says.

  Keseberg admires the man’s beard a moment, almost as long as his except grimy and riddled with grey. He gets up to take a five-dollar bill from his pocket and hands it over. “Nice beard,” he says. “How do you keep your food out of it?”

  There is no answer. The man continues up the block as though never interrupted. Keseberg stands in the same spot and turns to watch him go. The man reaches the end of the street, wheels around, and wanders back the way he has just come. The money now tucked away, hand outstretched again, eyes empty of recognition.

  “Any change, sir?” the man says. It’s Keseberg who doesn’t respond this time. The man is unperturbed and moves to the far end of the block and turns onto the next street. Once he’s out of sight, Keseberg slips into the old building.

  Inside is a dark and unswept staircase leading down, though the lights in the room at the bottom are on. He takes the steps slowly and has to lean his head to one side to avoid hitting the angled ceiling. The lower level sprawls into a broad, open space. More than a hundred people, by rough estimate, mill and murmur about. They stand in small groups, huddle around support beams. Everyone whispers, a few chuckle nervously – a mixture of contained excitement and morbid curiosity simmering all around, bubbling at the edges.

  As Keseberg steps deeper into the room, the crowd moves aside and fills in promptly behind him as he passes, like sauce parting thickly around a spoon. He meets the stares of those who turn to him, looking in their eyes for signs that they recognize him. He wonders how many have seen him eat before, how many know him by name.

  “That’s Lewis Keseberg,” he hears crest over the thrum. He nudges people aside, looking for the source. He sees a youngish-looking woman, her tattooed face close to the ear of a tall male companion who seems a little younger. She points.

  He approaches the pair swiftly, a smile liberally spread across his face. “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure,” he says, leaning forward. The woman looks sheepish and takes a step back and to the side, just enough to put her companion between herself and Keseberg. “Are you fans?” he presses. “Surely not first-timers?” The tall man deepens his furrowed brow and takes his own step back. Both ease their way backward, regaining their anonymity in the crowd. “No need for rudeness,” Keseberg says, and shrugs.

  He makes it to the front of the crowd, beyond which is a serving counter and past that a long-defunct kitchen with dusty and dulled stainless steel surfaces, entirely devoid now of any appliances. As he takes in the full scope of the room – the layout of the open space with the kitchen behind, the neighbourhood around the building – he realizes what this space was normally used for: it’s a soup kitchen. This makes him smile. Tables and chairs have been cleared away to allow more standing room, which is much needed.

  In front of the counter are three wheeled tables, each covered with a clean and pressed sheet. Under the covering, the familiar rising and falling shape signals that everything is in place and ready. The contest will start soon. The fluorescent bulbs overhead have been changed and there are tall halogen work lights at either end of the row.

  Two of the tables are already claimed, their eaters nearby. Keseberg steps behind the one remaining, sets his lunchbox on a nearby tray, and leans back against the counter, hands in pockets. The metal tabletop in front of him is shaped like a deep, oversized cookie sheet with a steep lip all around. Something straight out of a morgue. There is a digital console on the side with a weight readout: 176 lbs.

  He nods to the eater next to him who nods back and takes a similar position at the counte
r. They share a moment of familiarity. “Hello, Armin,” Keseberg says. Armin doesn’t answer but this doesn’t faze either of them. There is a woman hovering at the farthest station but she takes no notice of them.

  There are no nameplates or announcers, only the whispers that linger after the tables and places have been cleared. The phantom rumours of those few witnesses, trying to convince those who haven’t seen and don’t believe such underground events really happen.

  A woman in a tie and round frameless glasses approaches the row of slabs. She snaps on latex gloves and drapes a stethoscope across the back of her neck. She wants the eaters’ attention. Keseberg takes his hands from his pockets and crosses his arms. He leans to one side and says, “You know, the first time I competed, the event doctor actually wore scrubs and a mask.” Armin shows a hint of a smile. “Glad to see it didn’t become a trend,” Keseberg says.

  The event doctor nods to each eater in turn and pulls away the sheets. The whispering crowd catches its breath and holds it. A nude and lightly drugged man lies on each slab. The doctor steps over to the one in front of Keseberg and presses two fingers under the corner of the jaw, below the ear. She pushes her glasses higher up on her nose and watches the man’s chest rise and fall once before moving to the next.

  Keseberg eyes the woman at the far end. “Any word on her?”

  Armin, in the middle, turns to him. “The Red Widow, apparently.”

  Keseberg squints against the light, still looking at the far station. “I’m not sure I like that,” he says.

  A man holding a clipboard and pen steps beside the doctor, who raises one arm, holds her watch at eye level, and exchanges a long glance with him. The whole room watches her. The silence grows frenzied, roiling. She drops her arm, the signal to begin.

  Keseberg opens his lunchbox and takes out two knives. He has refined his tool set to just these. He takes a long moment to look everything over, assess, even though the other two have already rushed to take their first few bites. He will not be pressed into making careless blunders. The sleeper before him is young, dishevelled, but clean. His lips are cracked, one or two sores in the crook of the elbow.