Missing Chldren

by Gerald Lynch

  He glanced at me. “That was some performance back there, Lorne. Some people say I have a gift. I think I know what that took. Do you even know what you did? You became another —”

  “Hurry! Here! Turn in here!”

  Chapter 20

  I’d not run down a hill since I was a kid. And every time I’d driven past it, running down the green Troutstream Toboggan Hill had persisted as a bounding fantasy of this middle-aged man (okay, Bob: late middle-aged). But in the event, the hill and my legs, they let me down hard: the surface was potted, my legs were rigid poles incapable of absorbing anything and at every jolt the old knock knees felt ready to break backwards. So in the end I ratcheted down sideways like the crazy old man I was becoming.

  Kevin, if dressed as inappropriately in slacks and loafers, was already waiting at the bottom. It felt immediately like there was a sun lamp on the back of my neck. Mosquitoes swarmed our heads and both of us were waving hands like dumb-dumbs signing a mad conversation. I thought of the kids, of sunstroke and West Nile virus and Lyme disease. I thought of Shawn’s allergies, which instantly escalated to images of drowning, mass murder and everything from malaria to a suicide bomb!

  “Where to?” Kevin called, though I was right beside him.

  “I don’t know. I’ve never been down here at the bottom, only watched the kids sledding from the top.” I was breathless, heart pounding in my ears. “My guess is it’s straight on and downward to the stream. In Alice’s slide show the old Dodgson’s Landing looked to be near where the main road crosses. It shouldn’t be too…hey, the brush looks flattened over there!”

  He was ploughing ahead through the drooping waist-high grass. As we neared the break, tracks appeared. We trotted along them. The grade, if not as steep as the hill’s, continued downward far too dangerously for any vehicle, let alone a busload of kids driven by a madwoman. She must have come down the toboggan hill with her foot jammed on the brake — skidded down! My heart slammed.

  I concentrated, switched myself into surgery mode, and only then picked up the whiff of a really bad smell. We were not far from the sewage treatment facility and the breeze was blowing from the northeast.

  Out of the grass and into the brush, we were on the right path. Alice had managed somehow to avoid the more mature growth, but for how long?

  We paused above the bank of the trickling Troutstream, which appeared like a brown vein in the black earth’s fold. The trees grew taller there, but gloomily so, and the broad ravine that had once contained a real river opened in an immense dimness. I was sucking densely humid air. But I stayed on Kevin’s heels when he ran and had to use my hands to keep from bumping into him when he halted again. His shirt was soaked.

  “There it is!”

  I stepped round him and immediately picked out the distant yellow-and-black bus, its red lights winking — tipped headlong into the stream! But no depth of water worth panicking about. I looked at Kevin, his pink-welted face streaming with sweat; he’d taken a lashing for me in taking the lead. He bolted, but I passed him this time. The path close to the stream was packed hard; it may even have been an ancient road to Dodgson’s Landing. Still a good fifty yards from the bus, I made out some movement in the dimness…kids! We picked up the pace and arrived panting like hounds.

  Kevin headed straight for the bus’s open door, calling, “Is anyone in there? Come out with your hands held in front of you, Alice. Is anybody injured?”

  I couldn’t think till I’d found Shawn. I spotted her on the far side of the bus, apart from its eerie activity of lackadaisical children, most younger than she. She was sitting on the ground by the upturned root of what must once have been a massive willow that had fallen across the stream. I slowed my approach so as not to startle her. Her legs were drawn up and crossed at the ankles, her chin was on her knees, and her dandelion hair was a dirty-blonde clump.

  “Shawn?”

  She didn’t look up.

  “Shawn, it’s Dad. Everything’s going to be all right now.”

  She spoke in that hiccupping way of children struggling for control: “She promised we were going to meet Wy. She said he’d be here to meet us with a big-wheel boat and cake and soda and Wei. And no grown-ups, she said.”

  “I know, dear. Miss Pepper-Pottersfield lied to you. She’s a very sick woman. Are you hurt anywhere?”

  She looked up then, and her face was covered with streaks. Her voice showed some promising anger: “Stupid Jake was the smart one not to come. I knew you couldn’t have a real boat here. It stinks here!”

  She tilted her head back in that small seizure that begins a sneeze and let fly a good one. Drawing her bare forearm across her nose, she said, “I’m not crying. It’s my allergies.”

  “I know, dear.” I dipped down to touch her cheek and she swung an arm to knock my hand away.

  “You all lied to Bob Browne about everything! Miss Pepper-Pottersfield said so.”

  “Sweetheart, that was diff —”

  “Lorne, over here!”

  Kevin was with one of Debbie’s boys, who had a bad gash across the bridge of his nose, which might be broken. The boy was in shock, he’d been taking the trickling blood into his mouth and gulping.

  “Here,” I said, kneeling and taking his hand, “pinch your nose like this.” I placed his fingers just above the cut, squeezed them there. He winced and commenced wailing, and the noise in that echoing gloom was of a tortured animal.

  I said to Kevin under the noise, “I needed to snap him out of it. But he may have lost too much blood, nose might be broken, we have to get him to CHEO.”

  His brother, Pete, the boy whose asthma attack Bob Browne had relieved, came over and pulled a clean sweat sock from his own backpack. He placed it over his brother’s nose and then replaced the hand. He set his own hand on his brother’s head: “It’s all right, Mickey. Everything’s going to be all right now.” And that settled Mickey.

  I remembered Bob Browne with Pete in the community centre, the Jew’s harp. Pete had learned something and something of Bob lived on in Pete. I said, “Pete, good work with the sock. But your brother’s lost some blood, so I want you to stay here with him and help him keep pressure on that sock, okay?”

  Pete took a deep breath. “No problem. Uh, Dr. Thorpe, is my mom, like, looking for us?”

  “Yes, she’s doing her best, Pete.”

  Remarkably, Mickey’s proved to be the only obvious injury. A quick visual check of the twenty or so kids showed no physical damage, only that eerie stillness symptomatic of shock.

  I cupped Pete’s shoulder: “Pete, how come you’re all just hanging around here? Why didn’t you walk back up to the road? Big guy like you could have found the way back.”

  He didn’t look away from his task. “Miss Pepper-Pottersfield told us to wait. She said she’d be right back, with Wy. She said this was the beginning of the Noble Eightfold Path and we weren’t to move. But that was a big fat lie, wasn’t it?”

  Kevin, who’d been standing beside us, said, “It was. Which way did she go, Pete?”

  “Dunno. Ask Shawn. Can we go home now?”

  “I’m calling for help right now, son.” Kevin picked his cell from his belt and turned away a few steps.

  I looked around, only then really taking in the scene. In the fetid dimness it was like a negative of golden-lighted Shoal Park the other evening: a gloomy anti-playground. In addition to the unnatural sight of a school bus tipped into a stream, the area was littered with backpacks and lunch bags, with here a cap, there a lonely running shoe. Then my adjusting eyes picked out the strange objects, garishly coloured and sparkling: a soiled pink sash, a red cummerbund, the short sceptre topped with emerald ball, the tiny tiara like a crown of bright thorns…all like some lost child’s crumb markers on a trail from no home to nowhere.

  And the stink was overwhelming again. Such could come only from the va
st collection of human waste nearby, a stench so eye-stingingly foul it defied nature.

  Kevin finished up his call: “And Frank, cordon the bus. No one goes in before me, uh, please.” And took in the scene with me.

  I frowned: “There’s something weirdly familiar about this. I don’t mean the regression thing we just did.”

  He said, “Kids waiting, nowhere to go, Our Little Miss. It’s what’s left when children are cheated, abused, abandoned.”

  “But look at Little Pepper’s tiara lying over there. Who’s really to blame for this scene?”

  “Alice Pepper-Pottersfield, that’s who. An accessory to murder now too. Don’t get all sentimental on me, Lorne. But enough talk. We have to move. Will Shawn talk to us?”

  “About Alice? Alice can go to hell. Shawn’s not being put through another thing. She’s coming home with …”

  He was already striding towards her.

  “Beldon!” I called.

  He crouched beside her. “Shawn, where’d Miss Pepper-Pottersfield go?”

  I was happy and hurt to see her smile weakly at him.

  “She said she was going to get Wy.”

  “Yes, dear,” he said. “But where, which way did she go? Back up to the road? Along the creek? Which way? Point.”

  “It stinks down here.” She made her stinky face, then tipped back her head and let fly another sneeze.

  Kevin looked up at me: “What is that smell?”

  “We’re not far from the sewage treatment facility, the wind’s from the north and the air would be trapped down here.”

  He turned back to Shawn. “Shawn, just point in the direction …”

  And she was crying, at last, in that childlike gulping way. She unselfconsciously wiped her nose with the bottom of her pink T-shirt with the big embossed red geranium. Done, she smoothed the shirt.

  Her eyes bugged a bit, like she was remembering something horrifying. Even her face pulled forward. “She was like a zombie at first! Then I was, like, I want to go home ’cause it smells like shit down here! She just went crazy when she heard that. She started throwing our things all over. She wouldn’t stop. She was, like, Wy will never come for us because we’re bad! She wouldn’t listen to anything. She was all —”

  Kevin had slapped her lightly and her hand went to her cheek as her wide green eyes found mine. She jumped up and wrapped her arms around my waist, as she had the other night at the caterwauling in the park. I cupped her head against my chest, she didn’t resist.

  I nodded once at Kevin: “It’s all right, sweetheart. All of you are all right now and we’re going home. Detective Beldon was just helping you get control of yourself. Sometimes people have to hurt like that to help.”

  What heals can hurt, what hurts can heal. And I knew we were cured, just like that. The rest would be recuperation.

  Her sniffling soon slowed against me. Her voice was muffled, again hiccuppy: “I screamed it stank, and she stank too. And we all cried we wanted to go home. She wouldn’t listen. She tried to make us wear these kiddie costumes for some stupid parade or something. But nobody would, and she was, like, Wy will hate us because we’re such bad children. And I was, like, you’re full of…of shit, and she smelled like shit! That made her go really mental. She smashed Mickey Carswell on the nose with a stupid wand or something and the blood just spouted out of him like magic!”

  I felt her hot breathing lessen on my sternum.

  “Shawn, can you tell Detective Beldon which way Miss Pepper-Pottersfield went? I know she’s been bad, but she’s very sick and she needs help. Will you, please, love?”

  She removed her left arm and pointed northward along the stream: “That way. She told everyone to wait and she’d try to convince Wy to come play with us. Then she just took off.” She wrapped me again. “Did I make her sick, daddy?”

  I didn’t mind Beldon watching my face, but I was relieved Shawn didn’t look up. My throat hurt like I imagine post-intubation must feel.

  “No, love, you did nothing wrong. Miss Pepper-Pottersfield is mentally ill. She can’t help herself, sort of like Jake, only bad.”

  She removed her head a touch, said thoughtfully, “What’s wrong with her?”

  Even in that mucky atmosphere I felt a chill where her face had pressed my centre. “I don’t… Somebody hurt her, really badly, and a lot, starting when she was a very little girl.”

  She pulled back farther and looked up at me: “Was it a no-feeling thing?”

  Her school’s code for sexual abuse.

  “Yes.”

  She wrinkled her nose at me: “You smell all pukey.”

  Kevin said, “We have to go, Lorne.”

  “What? Me? No way. You go. I’m staying right where I am. We’re going home. We can’t leave these kids alone again. Are you out of your f — …mind?”

  “No, Lorne. I need you with me. Listen… Hear those sirens? They’ll be here in a minute. The children are all right for a while with big kids like Shawn and Pete here. Come with me. That’s a police order, and I’m not joking.”

  I heard the sirens, which suddenly booped to silence.

  He said, “I told them to cut the sirens when they turned off Walton. Frank Thu’s leading them, no one better. Now, let’s go!”

  I still wouldn’t move. Shawn detached and stood away from me, looked at my face and sputtered a small laugh. She said, “It’s okay, Dad. I’m okay. Pete an’ me’ll look after the little kids till the police get here.”

  I cupped her head and quickly kissed her right cheek, where Kevin and I had slapped her. “I love you, sweetheart.” She smiled at me, the way her mother does, indulgently.

  Kevin was gone ahead of me already, jogging now to conserve energy.

  I came alongside: “What the hell do you need me for again? Are you that hopeless?”

  Unaffected, he picked up the pace. “I don’t know what condition we’ll find her in, but I suspect she’s going to have to be talked to, and you can help there. She knows you and you are a doctor, Lorne. Good God, if this smell gets any worse, I’m gonna puke!”

  I breathed through my mouth, hustling to keep up. He was right about the stink, but at least I was no longer bothered by the bit of vomit on my chest.

  The remains of the old river road narrowed to a path crowded on the right by scrub growth and on the left by the diminished stream. Troutstream had shrunk to a couple of yards as it trickled over tree roots and rocks, past a shiny shopping cart, the remains of corrugated cardboard beer cases, one turned-down rubber boot, and a toilet with tank and seat intact, gleaming white in the dimness like a Halloween prank.

  The path suddenly narrowed further, Kevin stopped dead, and I bumped into him. He reached to the ground and turned with a pink cardigan hanging from his forefinger like some gentle pelt.

  “Alice’s,” I said.

  His face was soaked. “She’s been living in that bus in the community centre, you know.”

  Panting, I tasted salt. “How did she get that bus down there without killing everybody?”

  “It’s not the first time either, those tracks weren’t worn today.”

  It hit me: “The allergic reaction, this is where she took Shawn Sunday! Ragweed up top and all sorts of mould down here.” And more: “That’s the school bus I’d parked beside at the museum! What were we thinking? A school bus on a Sunday! Remember your sniffer dog refusing to leave the spot?”

  That spurred him and he was off again.

  The woods thinned and opened up and he arrived at the St. Joseph’s Boulevard overpass just ahead of me. It was unnoticeable as a bridge when crossed above and only a five-foot-diameter concrete tunnel below. Two scuffed black shoes, pumps, were set neatly at the passage’s entrance.

  He moved to take off but I grabbed a fistful of his shirt. “Why is Alice accessory to Bob Browne’s murder?”
>
  “She must have convinced the Slasher that she was in love with him and he was in love with her.”

  He tried to pull away but I held tightly. “Yeah, I know that, but that doesn’t make her accessory to murder.”

  “Okay, quickly. Mad Alice didn’t want Bob around any longer, no doubt because he knew about the child abductions and was threatening to inform us. So she used the Slasher, was likely riling him up with stories about Bob being her lover — I think we know her talents for deception and turning people against each other — and the stupid bugger cut Bob Browne’s throat in a jealous rage. But for now, this is all guesswork. Who was the real Alice? Who knows? The woman was all actress, all alters. The real Alice died as a toddler in those bad movies we sat through. But, Lorne, I need you to forget your feelings for Bob Browne and talk sympathetically to the Alice we find. Can you do that?”

  “I doubt it. I hate her.”

  “We gotta go!”

  He pulled away from me and scooted through the concrete tunnel, crouching low and zigzagging up and down its sides to avoid the small stream of water. I followed, out the other side into blinding brightness, then through more tapering brush, until we broke into an open field.

  The stinking wind was now freer from the north, and rotten though the air was, it was at least cooler. The sky was darkened now by funereal grey clouds, while distantly a solid black line of storm advanced southeast like a sliding lid to inter the summer’s last heat wave.

  We took off running through a badly rutted field like desert (my ankles would pay the price in swollen pain). Our destination was the grey-and-maroon complex of the low-lying sewage treatment facility about a half-kilometre away, which waited like the epicentre of a stinking world, drawing us on.

  We met no security at the first shed, of course: who would want to break into a sewage treatment plant? We just walked in the first exit door we found at the back corner — and into a blinding environment of near-suffocating stench. The air was a gritty miasma and we stood and stared and blinked strenuously till our pupils adjusted to the crepuscular atmosphere.