Our faces met and for the first time I could see his hideous yellow jagged teeth glistening in the moonlight.
“No,” I screamed, as I pulled free.
It pounced on me; it’s hot moldy breath slithered inside my nostrils. I choked.
“You will bring me food, or you will pay.”
I swallowed hard. “What food?”
“Meat. Fresh and alive. Go back to the bar and bring the one you stink of.”
An image of Tyra flashed through my mind. It wants to eat a human!
“No!” I wriggled underneath it, looking for an escape.
“You will bring it, or you will suffer!”
Its breath choked me again. I struggled, and as I began to pass out, I agreed.
“Remember,” it said as it let me stumble to my feet, “bring it, or you will suffer.”
I walked slowly out of the lot until I caught my breath, and then broke into a run. I ran as fast as I could away from the downtown core and back to my apartment. Inside I locked the door and headed for the balcony window, when blood started gushing from my nose. A paralyzing pain snaked through my head, making me collapse to the floor. Millions of tiny sharp threads burst through my skull from my denture pulling and tearing the flesh away from my face. I tried to scream but could only choke out wisps of moldy stinking air.
I flipped around on the floor in convulsions of pain and torture, unable to fathom a way of helping myself. From the other room, I heard my lock crackle and fall, hitting the floor with a loud thud. Two sets of footsteps clomped across the old hardwood floor, getting closer and closer. My eyes fluttered and a deep hearty laugh rang out.
The tall creature rubbed its clawed hands together; while the other stepped closer and leaned down to meet my face.
“A favor for a favor,” the denturist said, as I slipped into the darkness.
You’ll notice that small tea-tin you’re holding clinks when you shake it. You won’t find any tealeaves in there, just a chipped human tooth. There are some very strong memories attached to that tooth so consider yourself warned.
David Tocher from Vancouver, British Columbia brought that tin. He appreciates literature that explores both the paranormal and the dark side of human nature as well as writing fiction and playing guitar.
FEATHER CANYON
David Tocher
FOR THE past few months, I have lived with unutterable grief—a sickening mixture of loneliness and pain that ate through my heart. After fighting through nightmares, screaming myself awake, and cold sweats in the darkness, something has finally afforded me peace. Now, I wake up smiling at the shaft of sunlight that pours through my window each morning, the birdsongs in the forest around my property, and the stream’s susurrus behind my house. I guess you could say I’ve learned to move on.
If my strength wavers, or if I ever doubt what really happened, I only need to look out my living room window. Especially at sunrise. I can see Feather Canyon from there and reclaim all hope.
***
One Monday evening in early August, when I was twenty-three, I stopped for my regular after-work beer at JB’s, a Resto-Bar perched on the corner of Johnson and Wharf in Victoria, British Columbia.
JB’s had a bohemian feel to it. The ceiling was high, crisscrossed with exposed beams. Persian rugs and paintings by local artists adorned the brick walls. On each glass-topped table, a candle flickered its warm, golden glow in the shadows. The façade of JB’s was a wide window that looked out at the Johnson Street Bridge.
Your stereotypical artsy types frequented the place. The girls wore Fair Isle dresses, flower-printed smocks, and beaded jewelry. The boys wore tie-dye shirts, and had either dreadlocks or shaggy hair grown to their shoulders. In those days, I’d been working as a drywall laborer. Among this crowd, I stood out with my white T-shirt and jeans, both scuffed with drywall dust and smudges of caulking. But I didn’t mind. The homeliness of the place was preferable to a raucous bar.
JB’s hosted an open stage on Monday evenings. That’s when the local buskers would swarm into the place with acoustic guitars, ready to play fifteen-minute sets for a free glass of beer. After seeing enough open stages here, I’d divided the buskers into two groups—The Old Crocks and The Young Crocks. The Old Crocks played Bob Dylan, Neil Young or Beatles songs. The Young Crocks were a different story but just as bad. They seemed to find twisted pleasure in bludgeoning Pearl Jam and Nirvana songs as their friends cheered them on.
That night, somebody new came to JB’s Monday Night Open Stage. A woman sauntered to the microphone stand at the back of the room. Her skin was pale, peppered with freckles on her cheeks and on the backs of her hands. Her shoulder-length blond hair, so drab the candlelight couldn’t give it sheen. Blue, almond-shaped eyes saw the world through a pair of black-framed glasses, Elvis Costello style.
Nobody else took notice of her.
I’ll give her a five, maybe a four, I thought with an internal smirk.
Then, with intricate finger-picking, this woman unleashed a parade of dancing notes that wove together in melodic tapestries. My heart soared with every rising octave and settled with every falling one.
In the candlelight, the flickering interplay of gold and shadow highlighted the outlines of her face. When she turned her head a certain way, I’d see the delicate beauty that hid within her plain features.
I pulled my attention away to see if others were listening. Nobody. The crowd filled the place with chatter, almost drowning out her guitar playing. None of them were here to appreciate music; they were merely interested in socializing, getting attention, and showing off the latest song they’d learned. To my surprise, I felt indignation. What was wrong with them? How hard could it be to shut up and listen, especially when someone who actually had talent was in their midst?
Slowly, my ire faded, giving way to a warm glow of satisfaction. Because the others were oblivious, her beauty and her music became personal to me, secret treasures I had stumbled upon.
When she finished her set, the crowd clapped, but still kept talking. They reminded me of a person who nods and says “Uh-huh” when they’re really ignoring you. She put her guitar in its case, went outside to sit alone on the terrace, and lit a cigarette.
I grabbed my pitcher and mug of beer, stepped outside, and said hello.
She gave me the warmest, most welcoming smile. When she invited me to sit with her at the wrought-iron table, I suddenly felt ashamed of how I had evaluated her earlier.
“You played great up there,” I said. “It’s a shame nobody listened. You blew them all away.”
She crushed her cigarette out in the ashtray. Threads of smoke spiraled up from among tiny sparks. “What do you mean ‘nobody’? You listened.”
I took a sip of my drink. “Okay, then it’s a shame that more people didn’t hear it. What was it you were playing? It sounded beautiful.”
She smiled. “Old Scottish melodies. I transcribed them from fiddle to guitar.”
“Is it safe to assume you’ve got Scots’ blood in ya?”
She winked, then affected a Scottish accent: “Aye, laddie. The name’s Astrid.”
“And I’m Steve.”
From there, we talked about almost everything. And in between talk we laughed—real, friendly, intimate laughter—the kind where you look into each other’s eyes. It was a special moment, where the two of us felt happy with ourselves, with one another, and with the world we were in.
“Wanna get out of here?” she asked. “This place looks nice. But it’s lame.”
As if to prove her point, some longhaired kid started playing an acoustic version of Ozzy Osbourne’s Crazy Train, torturing the poor song until it cried for mercy. I rolled my eyes.
“Yeah,” I replied. “Let’s.”
***
After that night, we met often—for coffee, for dinner, or for beers. But mostly, we’d meet at Ogden Point on Dallas Road and walk to the end of the breakwater and back. Each evening, the setting sun outlined the
mountains along the horizon with a ruddy haze. The ocean’s surface was a molten expanse of golden-pink dapples. Along the beach, shadows of logs and debris lengthened themselves across the sand. When the tide came in, we listened to waves crash upon the shore and the ocean’s lap-and-slosh against the levee.
Every evening, Astrid said the same thing as she pointed toward the ocean, the salty breeze teasing her hair: “Look at the sun-show, Steve! You’ll never see the same patterns again, so enjoy this one while you can.”
Then, she’d giggle and her face would light up with childlike awe. During these moments, I couldn’t help but take her in my arms and hold her tight. Thing is, I marveled at Astrid and longed to see the same thing she did. I guess I just wanted to celebrate the world’s beauty with her.
A year later, Astrid and I married. We moved to the Saanich Peninsula, just north of Victoria. Our place was a white stucco house with a cedar shake roof, the delineation of the property marked by a thick evergreen forest. Behind our house, railroad-tie steps, flanked with a carpet of ferns, led to a stream.
About a month later, Astrid began work on a flowerbed in our front lawn. I helped her gather rocks from the stream to make a circular border. After I’d cradled a pile of rocks to my chest, huffed my way up the steps, crossed the grassy property to the front lawn, and finally dropped them to the ground, Astrid shook her head disapprovingly.
“What? Didn’t you say you wanted help?”
She patted the air with her hand in a cool-down-and-let-meexplain gesture. “The rocks all look the same—their shape, their colors, their sizes. It’s no good.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Because, Steve, the rocks in the stream don’t follow a uniform pattern. And look at the forest—” she gestured to the evergreens around our property. “—and ask yourself if nature presents its flowers and greenery in straight lines. Pick as many different kinds of rocks as possible.”
That was my Astrid. She liked a wildflower look. She avoided straight lines and planted her flowers in clumps. To her, nature’s beauty was found in its irregularity, and she sought to reflect this with everything she did.
In the bed’s center, she planted the larger flowers: astilbes and bleeding hearts. Around them, she planted the smaller ones: begonias, primroses, and lady’s mantles. And for a touch of greenery, hostas.
“I think I’m gonna name my garden,” she said one day.
“Yeah? What’s it gonna be?”
With her trowel, she patted the soil where she’d just planted primroses, and answered, “‘Feather Canyon.’”
My eyebrow rose. “But it’s not a canyon. It’s a flowerbed. Why would you call it that?”
“Why does everything have to have a reason with you? Think for a second, Steve. Say the words out loud to yourself. How does ‘Feather Canyon’ sound?”
I shrugged, then did as she requested. “Sounds nice, actually.”
“Well there you go,” she answered in a know-it-all tone. “It’s called Feather Canyon just because it sounds nice.”
As each day passed, Astrid tended her Feather Canyon with an increasing intensity—she’d skip dinners to finish weeding, she’d work until there were blisters on her hands, she’d wake up hours before me and work through the sunrise. Her preoccupation began to concern me, but I held my peace.
***
One night, after she fell asleep in my arms, Astrid tossed and turned her way out of them, waking me up. She moaned, kicked her feet, and thrashed her head. She swiped her hands frantically over her body as if she were brushing off serpents or insects. I patted her shoulder. Astrid opened her eyes and shot me a heavy-lidded stare.
“The hell’s wrong with you, Steve? It’s three in the morning.”
“What’s wrong with me? You’re the one having a fit in your sleep.”
“I’m fine. Let me rest.”
“You sure? What were you dreaming about?”
“I said I’m fine.”
She turned to her side. I watched her fall back asleep, wondering how it was possible for her to have no recollection of a nightmare that disturbing.
Then, there was the night she went sleepwalking. I awoke in the darkness to the sound of objects falling over. She was clumsily trying to drape a sheet over the dresser mirror, which hung opposite the foot of the bed. Her efforts caused a lamp, some books, and a framed photograph of us to clatter to the floor.
“Astrid? What’s going on?”
No reply. She continued her attempt to cover the looking glass. I crawled out of bed and walked over to her, my hand extended, ready to place it on her shoulder. She turned and stared at me. I took a step back, feeling my stomach roll. It was as if someone had replaced her real eyes with a doll’s; they were all glassy and no one was home.
“They’re coming to kill us,” she confided. Her voice had that cutesy, higher pitched tone of a little girl who still pronounces consonants loosely. That meant she sounded something more like: Thew comin to keew us.
My heart beat hard and slowly in my throat.
“Our world is theirs. You can’t see them, but they’re here.” (Ow urld is deres. Yoo can’t see dem, buh dey heewuh)
“Astrid. Who’s here? Who can’t we see?”
She blurted out two syllables: “Thayne-too.”
Gripping her forearms, I gently shook her. “Wake up, Astrid. Come on, hun.”
Those same empty eyes kept staring into mine. She twisted her way out of my grip and returned to her task until, finally, the entire fabric hid her reflection. Then, she crawled into bed and slept normally.
The next morning, I uncovered the mirror, then told her what she had done. She didn’t remember anything. She promised that if she walked in her sleep again, she’d see a professional. That was the only time something like that ever happened.
***
When Astrid and I had been married a couple years, my boss won the bid for a three-month contract hanging drywall for newly constructed condos in Vancouver. By then, I was no longer a laborer but a drywall installer. I’d decided to work on that contract, but the decision hadn’t come easily. It meant spending three months on the mainland—away from Astrid.
This troubled me for one reason: she was five months pregnant.
When I told her, she assured me she’d be okay. If there were any problems, our friend Heather and her daughter, who lived up the road, were only a phone call away. And besides, what could possibly go wrong? The doctor had told us the baby’s heartbeat was strong, the ultrasound had shown us we had a boy, and the baby’s kicks demonstrated he’d be a feisty one.
So, off I went to the mainland, leaving the idyllic comforts of Saanich for the hustle and bustle of Vancouver. And let me tell you—for us islanders, Vancouver is a city we might like to visit, but not for very long. There’s just something about the place—you can’t even relax without feeling like you’re in motion. It’s a frantic, restless city.
About a week into the job, as I measured a drywall sheet so I could cut and fit it to the ceiling, a police officer stepped into the unfinished condo. His footsteps echoed across the room.
“Are you Mr. Steve Nichols?” he asked.
I hooked the measuring tape to my tool pouch, wiped the white dust from my palms, and crossed my arms over my chest. “Yes, I am. Is there a problem?”
The officer removed his hat and sighed before he spoke. “I regret to inform you that your wife Astrid was found dead in your house this morning.”
“Huh? What?”
As he explained to me how my wife had died, his voice sympathetic, yet professionally detached, numbness shrouded my heart. His words did nothing to me. He may as well have told me about the death of a stranger in Africa.
After the funeral, our friend Heather told me her story. She was the one who’d driven over to our place to see if Astrid wanted to join her and her daughter Katelyn for a shopping trip in Victoria.
Heather said, “The minute I turned into your driveway, Katelyn st
arted crying. I stopped the car and asked her what was wrong. She said ‘Astrid is hurt.’ I tried to calm her down but she wouldn’t stop. ‘Astrid’s hurt bad. Really, really bad.’ That’s what she kept saying.
“I told her Astrid was fine, that she should come with me into the house and see for herself. Katelyn refused. She started screaming and curling into a ball in the passenger seat. I had to cuddle her to calm her down. Steve, she knew. I don’t know how she did, but she knew.
“Then, she said the oddest thing. She whispered it to me. She was afraid that they would get us. The same things that got Astrid. I asked her what ‘they’ were. You wouldn’t believe what she said next. It was the strangest thing.”
I hitched in a raspy breath, my body breaking out in tremors. Actually, I probably could believe.
“Steve, are you okay? You’re white as a sheet.”
“I’m fine, I’m fine. What did Katelyn say?”
She observed me for a moment, then, satisfied that I was really alright, she continued. “It sounded like Than-toe, Than-tay, or…Thayne-too. Something like that.”
***
Obviously, my wife’s death changed me, but not in the ways you’d think. This isn’t the part where I give you some speech about how I became more compassionate, grateful for the little things in life, in touch with my inner-child, or any of that other horseshit.
When I say changed, I mean changed.
Often, I’d have this strong sense that she was in the room. Sometimes, it was so powerful that I’d feel compelled to say something to her and expect a reply. This notion didn’t conform to the system of thought I was accustomed to, so of course I resisted it. The result? Each time, I would collapse into tears and feel a vast emptiness.
I also developed this uncanny foresight.
For instance, one day my phone rang. I not only knew it was my boss, before I answered it, I also knew exactly what he was going to say—that he needed me to finish a job on another site because his other man just got injured (keep in mind, this was all happening in the late nineties, those prehistoric times of landline telephones and modem internet).
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