He waltzed in and headed for the washroom while the frazzled duty nurse dealt with a couple who yelled at each other in French. Canada was too weird.
“Where are you going?” said a fat security guard leaning on a soda machine to his left, thin moustache just covering the top of his lip. “Gotta see the nurse first.”
“I’m not hurt.” The guard’s eyes narrowed. Shit, Malcolm thought, I get the one nightshift guard who’s actually paying attention? Come on brain, don’t pass out yet. “I’m waiting for my brother,” Malcolm said. “Drunk, got in a fight with a telephone pole, hand banged up like mad. I was here two hours ago, but I went for a walk to stay awake. Can I sit and wait for him?”
The guard looked over at the nurse, who was trying to speak French, and it was making the couple angry. “Sit, sit,” she said. “Not like we’re selling tickets, Harold.”
The guard stood aside. “Just checking. Lots of folks coming in town today, treating our city like a toilet, and staining the floor.”
Malcolm ignored the statement. Maybe this donut muncher was a red-coated Mountie, hot on the trail of the circuit. Or maybe he was just a fat and bored retired cop who was stuck working the graveyard shift in a hospital to keep from going stir-crazy of boredom in his golden years. Let him be, and get some Z’s.
Malcolm scanned the room before picking his spot in the full but not overflowing waiting room. The sweet spot was nestled between a gross Jabba the Hutt lady in pink track pants and a flannel shirt, who was oozing out of the seat, and an ancient man in threadbare clothes who wheezed every breath from a head sagging off a thin chicken neck.
Soon as he got comfortable, exhaustion darkened his vision, but he poked a bruise to stay awake and take a quick scan. Was there anything in this room that could hurt him? Anything that might get his ass in the fire?
Not really. It was typical waiting room fare. Lots of weak old people with watery eyes, all with fresh and new bandages on ancient skin. There were some drunk teens in concert shirts and sneakers, heads rolling, mumbling lyrics to themselves, holding bandaged hands, heads and forearms as if they were in dime-store Mummy outfits. Then there was a dead silent mother and a child, the kid’s hand wrapped in thick gauze, the mother holding the kid like he might break, or vanish…
Her eyes caught his. He dropped his gaze to his taped up sneakers, then put the hood up. The darkness was soothing and seductive and, even with the two tons of crazy shit that had smacked his face in the past five hours, sleep was dragging him down a waterfall. It wasn’t safe to pass out anywhere, but it was safer here than elsewhere. Emergency rooms are too busy to give a shit about a kid waiting for a drunk brother getting his hand bandaged. Sleep slid inside his skull like sand. There was a hiss of air escaping something, then of filling a balloon, then another, then another…
Red and blue and white balloons skittered in the sky above the Tri-City carnival, and despite Rob saying it was going to suck he was the first to race into the midway, chasing girls he didn’t know.
“That boy will be the death of me,” Mom said, then gave Malcolm’s hand a pump. They smiled at each other, the overwhelming smell of sweet cotton candy and melting ice cream rich with every breath. “So,” Mom said, “which of these bad boy rides do you want to try first, Slo Mo?”
They stood on yellow grass, heat making the whole world hazy. The midway was filled with mammoth rides of wood and steel with sickening angles and massive loops. And the worst of all of them: the Python, the only coaster Rob would ride. The one he knew Malcolm was scared of. And now he’d run off. If Malcolm dodged it, he’d never hear the end of it. And if he asked Mom to go with him…Rob would never let him forget it.
“So, you want to ride the Python?” She squeezed his hand.
The wooden frame pulsed as if it were really a mammoth beast, part snake, part metal pretzel. A rickety clown car rode on its back, making it hiss. The whole contraption was bigger than an apartment complex and the big drop hill was poking a cloud. Flames burned across the tracks.
“Rob says I’m chicken.” The python flexed, sending ripples across its skin. The little car jumped off the rail, twisted in the air, and crashed back on the track as it barrelled down a steep snake-hill.
Mom sucked the last of her iced tea from the wax cup, dark red lipstick staining the white skin. “Prove him wrong, Slo Mo.” She let go but he gripped on. “Oh no. I’m not going on there with a full belly, I’ll pee myself. Go on, my little cub. You’re big enough to show your brother there’s nothing to fear.” The sun was directly above her head. When Malcolm looked up there was only hair and a darkness. He let go. “That’s my boy. Go on now. Go.”
And he did. He cut through the line of giants and passed the grumpy man with the long ruler who gave him a stink eye before telling him to take a seat in the little car. The iron bar snapped down and punched his gut. Breathless, he held it tight as the car shot like a bullet up the Python’s back, climbing into the blue sky high above the carnival. Malcolm looked down, guts full of rabid butterflies, but doing it. He looked down to see her, and even from the summit of the python’s hill, Mom was clear in his eye. Walking away. To the washroom.
And something followed from behind.
It walked with the rhythm of a two-legged spider. A carney with a grey face strolled from a midway dart game, long fingers almost trailing the ground, face uglier than a thousand crushed skulls. Lips black and wet, he had one massive cheek stuffed with tobacco. Black drips ran down his jutting chin and on to his janitor uniform. The grey-faced man breathed in hard, exposing slick, grey teeth in a sickening smile…then followed her. Everything moved slow…
“Mom?” Malcolm tore at the iron bar as the car kept taking him further and farther away. “Mom!”
The dripping, grey-faced man followed her into the crowd. Balloons blocked their path but Malcolm saw something in the grey-faced man’s hands.
A long, rusty dart. Popping balloons.
“Mom!”
The higher he climbed, the smaller the crowd became. He fought against the iron bar, but his hands had become iron taffy and he was stuck worse than gum in his own hair. The faceless kids in the car next to him laughed.
“Baby wants his mommy.”
“What a chickenshit.”
“Give the ba-ba a bottle!”
“Mom!” He struggled, but his skin was glued. The car chugged higher until all he could see was a sea of red balloons in the sky and the rotten sound of them popping so loud his ears screamed.
“Help! Mom, don’t go—”
The rickety car burned down the python’s back. The snake turned and faced it with a hiss, then opened its jagged black lips in a sickly grey grin, with a mountain of chew stuffed into one cheek.
“Stop, stop—Mom!”
POP!
“Hey!” came a cold voice like a slap of ice. A hand gripped his shoulder and a dozen rotten faces came to him: Milkwood, Rip, Rob, Mom—he struggled but was shoved back down. “Knock that yelling off. This isn’t the nut house.” The haggard desk nurse looked down, hands leaving his shoulders. “When did you sign in?”
Malcolm shook off the fear and sweat, kept the hood down. Go, man, this is a bad scene, get your shit together and leave. “I think I’m okay,” he said, stood. Every limb was starch stiff, and the day smacked his senses. Outside, warm, pink sunlight filled the spaces between the levels of the parking lot across the street.
“Weren’t you waiting on someone?” said the nurse. She was wearing a long brown coat over her white uniform. It looked warm. Bet she’s heading home.
Malcolm shook his head. “Oh, yeah. My brother. I guess he left. Better go home and find him.”
He tripped over his own foot. Thick veined hands caught him and he grunted as shivers of pain traced every nerve on his skin. She put him down in the chair, and that’s when Malcolm noticed the waiting room was near empty. “I think you should stay. Where are you parents?”
He forced himself not to blink and see th
e grey-faced man behind his lids. “Gone.”
“Both of them?”
“Never knew my Dad. Mom…” his lip flinched. “She’s gone, too.”
The nurse kneeled, and face-to-face she looked even older. But her face was strong and hard to dodge. “I know you don’t have a brother here. You needed a place to rest. It’s all right. I won’t turn you over to our watchdog. But I think you should see our doctor. You look like you haven’t had a good meal and a soft bed for a long while.”
Malcolm squirmed. “I’m fine.”
“Do I look like an idiot?” For a nurse, she had a pretty good don’t-fuck-with-me stare. “We have a doctor who can give you a quick look.”
“Don’t have money.”
“Won’t cost anything.”
“I gotta run, I’m not from around here.”
“That’s okay, too.”
His spine tightened. A doctor would mean a social worker and a social worker meant cops and maybe those freaking Mounties and throwing his ass back on a bus to Troy. “No, sorry, I’m okay, I’m good. I’m gone.” He moved quick and pushed his way past the nurse. She yielded the way but got a shoulder for her trouble. His face bunched. God, am I such an asshole? When she stumbled, he gripped her arm and helped her up. “Sorry.”
She stood. “That’s okay. I’ve fought off meth-heads with nothing but a fist and bedpan, you’re small potatoes.” She didn’t smile, though her tone was funny. “But if you want to come back, you ask for Nurse Nancy.” The security guard had waddled toward them. “It’s all right, Walter. Our friend here was deciding if he wanted to wait or go.” She walked to the automatic doors, said goodbye to the younger woman who was now in her chair, and vanished. But the guard was still giving him the hairy eyeball.
Maybe, Malcolm thought, I could rest up here. Just a while longer…
The new nurse fidgeted with a black radio. Crackling gave way to a news update about “two dead Kingston men, found in the Heights outside the Best Bet diner.”
That was all Malcolm needed to hear as he strolled on outside into the bright morning sun. His breath misted. It gave no warmth. Just burned his eyes.
* * *
He kept his hood down, no need to look like a suspect even if he was innocent, especially if the circuit was filling emergency rooms or drunk tanks or morgues. Morning light was bright, the air crisp enough to keep him awake as he walked through sunlight, crunching pavement beneath his sneakers, the tape over the holes collecting new grit with every step.
The city itself was slumbering. Most things were closed, and hunger began to gnaw at his guts. He triple-checked his pocket for the circuit breaker, and the frayed ticket had not moved. The sour taste of stomach juice in his mouth made him so thirty, and then his belly ached as if he’d only had a crumb for three days. Weak and rough, he knew he needed to hold down some food or he’d be useless for the rest of the day.
Kingston’s main drag was called Princess, but it was as far from royalty as Malcolm. Most of the pedestrians were not all that different from those in Troy. A bunch of overweight, working class slobs; thin students with rich clothes, everyone walking up and down Princess with coffee mugs and sunglasses. Not a lot of black people, though. Maybe they all had the good sense to stay away from a country filled with ice, snow, and shitty fringe fights. Princess was long, straight, and uphill heading west, silvery orange in the morning light. At the east end was a river. St. Lawrence, Malcolm recalled from his prep work for the trip. And there was a military college here, too, somewhere. Indeed, there were more folks in green camo gear than police.
Canada is fucking weird, he told himself.
With a bellyache tightening his gut, Malcolm followed his nose until the warm aroma of baked goods had him scouring the breakfast joints already open. He settled on a twenty-four hour coffee joint called Tim Horton’s. Unlike the Best Bet, it was clean, warm without being stifling, and filled with an assortment of flannel and work boot locals, ski-vest rich kids, and various riff-raff from street folk to kids en route to high school and smelling like cheap weed. Didn’t seem to matter who the hell you were, this place would serve you and have you coming back for more.
Malcolm rooted around for change, then took out his notebook. A giant coin fell out but he caught it before it could hit the floor and roll away. It looked like a casino slug made by an Eskimo, complete with a picture of a polar bear etched in the centre on one side, and some lady in a crown on the other.
Milkwood must have shoved this in here, he thought. I told him I wasn’t a charity case…but the idea of using his own stash made him grunt. He used the funky coin to buy two tea biscuits and one small coffee and left them the two pennies they handed back. Hot, crumbly and dry as straw, but with the melted butter and coffee the biscuits felt like he’d added ten fresh pounds of warm flesh to his body. It was heaven—
He blinked and saw Rip being drained of blood in a cold dark alley. His jaw hung open like a punch-drunk palooka, flecks of biscuit huffing out of his mouth.
Holy fucking shit. Milkwood’s a…vampire?
He swallowed the dry mush in his mouth and clamped his lips shut.
The reality hadn’t hit him yet, not hard, but now it was as crazy real as everything else that happened last night. The breathless realization settled in and nailed him to his seat, but he twisted from side to side to keep from falling over. Questions multiplied in his head. How many were there? Were they everywhere? Jesus Fucking Christ, were they in the circuit?
He gripped his bruises to keep his thoughts from flying out in all directions and the dull ache of old bruises steadied his heart some. So what if the world was filled with throw away monsters from shitty movies on Sunday? Wherever they were, they weren’t hanging in the circuit, and if they did, well, they’d be in for a shock if they thought they were the king beast of the jungle. Malcolm had seen the worst shitstains of the human animal in an almost infinite parade of brutality, and it was a thousand times worse than any creature feature. What did a Mummy or a vampire or a werewolf have on watching a strung out circuit fighter, high on crank, elbow a guy’s jaw off its hinges for a bag of coke? Or seeing the lights go out for good when a choke match has no tap-outs. About the only thing that separated the human race from the wild kingdom was clothes and pornography. So let there be monsters, Malcolm thought. Just more food for the fucking blender of life.
He took small sips from his coffee mug, letting the warmth sink into his cold hands, and everything went to pins and needles as if his nerves were waking up from hibernation. As the sensation eased, he accepted that, as far as he was concerned, Milkwood could be the Loch Ness Monster so long as he won the tourney. Malcolm focused on more critical questions, spiking at him out of the dark. Today, he was meeting a circuit Judge for the first time. And this was one he barely knew.
He was an old shoot fighter named Karl Sayers, a boring name for a boring Canadian. Sayers owned the Iron Horse, and his office was likely there. Malcolm did not relish heading back to that bar, though he was glad Rip would be calling in sick for a few days, so the risk was minimal. What sucked the dog’s balls was, Sayers was a notorious night bird, and had a reputation of sawing things off and feeding them to his mutt, Samson, so Malcolm would try his luck in the late afternoon so as not to interrupt his beauty rest.
Once they had Milkwood on the ticket, he’d head to weirdo’s motel. Malcolm recalled the news bulletin on the two dead. Kingston did have a reputation for being a rough town, but two murders in one day the night after the exhibition bout…time to hit the streets like he was a ninja and just not raise a stink with anyone. He’d meet up with Milkwood after the deal was done. And watch his steps.
God, he thought, sucking the last dribble of coffee form the mug, then licking the crumbs from his shirt. I’m really doing this. I’m actually going to make a honey pot out of Rob’s cash. And then what? Hit the road? Get a Private Eye to hunt down whoever stole Mom from them?
Rob’s voice was sharp and jagged in
his head, just like the first time Malcolm had mentioned doing something to find the grey-faced man. “Great idea, Mal, get some former cop in real close and tight with us and see what happens. Probably turn you in the minute you got near and steal all you had on you and no one would believe you so you’d be broke and in juvie so fast you’re neck would snap, and you’d crack under interrogation like a little bitch and I’d be serving a felony charge, so great fucking plan, Sherlock. No fucking way.”
His voice was needle thin. “It doesn’t have to be like that, I mean, you could make the appointment.”
“You backstabber turd, you’d like that, wouldn’t you? Have me tossed aside after everything I’ve done?”
“That’s not what I meant!”
“Should have left your ass at the park. Just left it there. I do not need this shit. Stupid ideas. She dumped us, Mal, she dumped us because she didn’t want us and would rather be chasing some guy who would pay her rent for a blow job and the sooner you get that fact lodged in that stupid head of yours, the better we’ll both be. She was a whore, plain and fucking simple. So knock this shit off!”
A brittle snap shook him back to the moment. What was left of the mug in his hands was nothing but shards dropping to earth, giving birth to more wreckage. A few weary-faced customers looked at him, and some guy in a brown donut jockey uniform sighed and said “Oh brother, better tell Larry to get a mop.”
Shards looked back at him from the freshly-mopped floor. The sharp pieces and busted handle, once upon a time a complete picture, now just broken pieces no one was going to put back together. A single thin coffee drop hung off the edge of the table, gripping for dear life, then let go to splash into the wreckage. Malcolm gripped his sore hands, glad that his skin had not snapped when he’d squeezed the mug to the breaking point…Jesus, he thought, I must have squeezed it pretty damn hard.
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