FAREWELL CRUISE OF THE DREAM SHIP

By Bobby Winslow

Their shore excursion completed, the tourists were tendered back aboard The Mirabilis. Leo comes on deck wearing soft yellow pants, a blue-and-white striped polo shirt, gripping a cane with tripodal rubber-sheathed prongs to forestall slippage on the deck surface. He and Constance take a cruise every year, sometimes twice a year depending on the length of the itinerary. A minimum of two months of each year pass at sea, some years – three years ago they traveled around the world on the QE2 – more than that, but a good average of eight or nine weeks on board a cruise ship since they were married ten years ago. They’ve voyaged everywhere. A favorite is the western Caribbean: the Yucatan, Bogota, the Canal Zone. They’ve circumnavigated South America, traveled up the Iguassu on a four day shore excursion via train and small river craft to the falls before rejoining the ship in Rio, though Constance thought Sao Paulo was hideously overcrowded. They’ve made the Cape Horn passage more times than they can count. Seldom do they bring anything back from these travels other than digital photos and video footage. You would look in vain for wood carvings of the Xingu or fetishes from Haiti in their home. Nothing in the furnishings would tell you they’re world travelers. If they do buy anything in port it’s something small, inexpensive, and immediately given to one of Constance’s friends upon arrival home. Limit onshore buying and onboard purchases to absolute necessities, Leo says. Their cabin cost almost seven grand for this two week voyage and Leo has been complaining about the markup on toothpaste in the shipboard pharmacy: he doesn’t think they brought enough to last all the way back to Port Everglades. Whose responsibility was that? Oversight. When they arrive at Cristobal she can go ashore and buy a tube but they ought to have stocked up before leaving home; one small tube for two people for two weeks was obviously insufficient, the pharmacy wants easily three times the retail price in Miami for the same product, and they have four or five tubes bought in bulk under the vanity at home.

The last two years Leo has had to move with the aid of a cane or walker so all ports are the same to him: he rarely goes ashore now. Seen them all anyways, some more than once. Nor can he accompany his wife to the lounge for postprandial dancing. She’s found dancing more difficult the last couple years too, though she hasn’t admitted this to Leo.

Every cruise ship is the same to him too, no matter what encomium he receives concerning its amenities. He has an eye for rust or corrosion and is quick to detect any slackening in the levels of maintenance, whether they’re seen on the hull or superstructure or the table linen or the glassware. “A rusty tub of a boat” he will tell acquaintances when he’s home and asked if his latest cruise was relaxing and enjoyable. “How much relaxation is possible when you could be going to the bottom of the sea at any moment. Couldn’t sleep. Didn’t want it to sink underneath me and not leave me time to bail out.”

The explanation he gives to these enquirers is that they take these cruises for Constance’s sake, it’s an interest of hers to explore. Not for reasons of cultural anthropology, history, geography; she’s never studied any of these subjects and neither has Leo, formally, who considers all of them to be grounded in idle theorizing, unproductive and unprofitable speculation. “Everyone is always trying to make out at every port you go into that the golden age once existed there until the conquering European destroyed the harmony of the social order. Which may be true, what do I care. A lot of precious romanticizing derived from Rousseau’s concept of the uncivilized noble savage communing with nature, mutually responsive yet free. Bogus.” No matter what providential spin the captain and cruise director offer to explain the motives for plunder, all are valueless. So he has come on deck to see for himself. Before he retired he worked in insurance, first as a claims adjuster, later as an executive, so bargaining is a topic of which he knows much, and he always projects a successful resolution. Of course his wife is no good at bargaining: she either accepts or rejects what is placed before her depending on her prearranged budget, and a souvenir-laden mendicant (here comes one now with an array of scarves) isn’t accustomed to this obduracy. Offer and counteroffer are not part of her natural strategy. All the more reason to be mystified when she steps aboard laden with bags and parcels. Souvenir hunting? She hasn’t remembered the toothpaste either.

“They must have seen you coming,” Leo says as they descend to their cabin. “Who is all this stuff for?” Their cabin, though of a higher grade than the standard outside rooms due to Leo’s need for maneuvering room for his walker, now has its floor space compromised by several large boxes. The wardrobe, which is barely large enough to accommodate their clothing, is now full of packages; the door won’t shut tight and Leo bumps his elbow on the door when coming out of the bathroom. He looks inside the wardrobe while his wife is changing. Spurious antiques and brass work purporting to be hand hammered but in actuality mass produced and not even locally, not even from South or Central America, dyed synthetics the hues of a cockatiel’s plumage. “In the old days,” he remarks, “you could consign this stuff to the ship’s hold as not needed during the voyage, to be offloaded when we reached home. I don’t suppose this tub is equipped with cargo holds, though. It’s all taken up with buffets and dance floors and ten thousand poker machines.”

The longer he gazes at the contents of the wardrobe the more he wonders if she’s lost her mind or agreed to purchase all these things for one of her homebound friends. If they wanted souvenirs or duty-free items, let them pay seven grand and get on the ship, he reasons. No need to make us do your shopping if you’re too improvident to afford to travel. We’re not here to provide the cachet of foreign adventure for others.

Assistance to tourist-based economies, poverty ameliorated by regular influx of wealthy and curious sightseers, has always been their mutual avoidance on these cruises and he is bewildered by what has happened. Neither of them has ever been gullible or given to shows of pitiable charity, a form of impulse buying, gratifying the conscience by spending not because you like what you see but because spending is a means of equalizing economic injustice. She’s trying to effect economic restructuring by purchasing unneeded scarves and jewelry and gimcracks. If equality is to exist the first rule is we have to eradicate individual conscience. The parts cannot exist without the whole. Out of the sum total of contributed assets comes unity. Reapportioned monies eliminate the need for currency as a medium of transaction: if everyone has enough, no one needs to exchange anything. Certainly not consciences for dollars. That’s axiomatic, he thinks. They finish dressing as The Mirabilis clears port; by the time they’re down at dinner the ship is out of sight of land.

In the morning there’s an announcement: they won’t be stopping at the next port due to present conflicts there. A delightful island situated in an estuary of the O---- river, at which they would arrive the next morning, an island neither Constance nor Leo has ever heard of let alone seen advertised in a travel brochure which has been substituted as a port of call. One place is as good as another, Leo mutters at breakfast. Probably not much if it’s an out-of-way destination and seldom visited. Why didn’t they just go on to Cristobal and give us an extra day there? Would someone feel cheated if they skipped this part of the coast altogether? What would happen later on in the cruise, would they call at two ports in the same day to resume the planned itinerary, or would one or more of the later calls be dropped as well? Neither of them have interest in itineraries which take one too far afield: they prefer common tourist amenities, the newer and more accessible the better, so an old obscure place selected for its historical interest as a stopping point for slavers is a definite disappointment. Likely to be poor and underdeveloped and they’d prefer not to see that, remember Sao Paulo? Neither says much the rest of the morning, the atmosphere on board is palpably uneasy, uncertainty caused by deviation from set schedule and an offshore breeze of dredged-up mud and soluble, half-immersed vegetation as the ship heads towards the coast at sixteen knots having induced a nervousness among their fellow passengers. Plenty of sandbars here and not very well channeled or buoyed for the passage of large vessels, certainly nothing as deep-draft as The Mirabilis has been through here in some years; they may ground at any moment and the entire rest of the cruise cancelled.

Their cabin came with a private terrace on which were two deck chairs. Preferable to have a chair where one could observe more than just ocean but the newer cruise ships seem to have done away with those long promenade spaces which had been features of older ships: the only other place to have a deck chair was at poolside, which was a location both too noisy and too warm for Leo even if such an area had not been off limits for his cane or walker. Just below the level of the terrace were the niches into which the lifeboats, mounted on davits like parentheses, were nestled. By looking over the railing one looked down on the gray canvas tarpaulin covering lifeboat number Four. She stepped out on the balcony, slid the door closed, and settled in one of the chairs. Despite the ship’s movement there wasn’t the slightest breeze: the divider at the forward end of the balcony seemed to deflect any air stirred by the ship’s motion. The heat, even with an occluded sun, made her drowsy. After a time she heard the glass door slide open and closed again. Without opening her eyes she heard Leo settle into the other deck chair and after a pause say, “We won’t be going to Cristobal.” “Or crossing the equator,” she added. “This ship doesn’t cross the equator,” Leo said. “You can’t go that far south in the Caribbean.” If this port was not a conventional stopping place, what could they expect to see? Dilapidation. At best, a local market where men sold emeralds out of baskets carried across the Cordilleras and who would, with curved knives, slice off the fingers of anyone who looked at a single jewel. “Well, we won’t go ashore,” she said as comfortingly as possible. “What if we have no choice?” “What do you mean, no choice? Why wouldn’t we be allowed to remain on board if we chose not to take a shore excursion?” “Because that’s not how it works,” Leo answered. She opened her eyes and turned her head to look at him but his deck chair was empty; it was only her own voice saying to her “Why, how is it supposed to work?” and when she waited for an answer there was only the vacant teakwood deck chair with a towel spread over the backrest.

“I thought you’d come outside.”

“Outside? On the balcony? Why would I come outside? One lurch of this barge and over I go. Right over the rail. Nobody’s even notice or stop the ship. Probably in these waters they wouldn’t stop even for an emergency, how long would anyone last? I wouldn’t be caught outside at any cost. What made you think I’d come outside?”

“I thought I heard you open and close the door. You spoke to me.”

That evening at dinner Constance said to the captain “The tendency of celebrities to gain unwanted attention can be a virtue in that others are more apt to perceive the conditions surrounding the celebrity’s misfortune, if only by contrast and comparison.” “Yes, we all have our troubles,” the captain smiled. “Fame is a solid platform from which to be heard,” Constance continued, “only it can vanish.” Leo isn’t at the table; tired from maneuvering about the decks with his cane today, he’s resting in their cabin. “Even if the celebrity finds criticism of his or her actions, at least those actions are fully visible because of the intensity of the spotlight thrown upon them.” Celebrity does not always confer authority, the captain remarks mildly. “Oh no,” Constance agrees. “It merely focuses attention. That’s why we’re visiting this port, isn’t it?” She wants to ask the captain how long he intends to stay in port; none of the port calls made by The Mirabilis so far on this cruise have lasted more than six hours but the notice posted at the cruise director’s office seems to indicate a stay of at least twelve. “That is due to the uncertainty of the tidal flow in that location,” the captain assures her. “The estuary can only be entered or exited during the period of slack tide following the ebb. Otherwise the currents would play the ship—“ He gestures with his hand. “It’s an uncertain area. You will see a great display of seamanship if I can bring her in with no more pilot than two men in a skiff below the bow indicating the course, if you choose not to remain belowdecks.” The captain smiled; this was the way he dealt with engendered expectations. His dreams had also been uneasy. Even if those aboard are free from worry, others will worry about them, in a similar way to how the ship itself, seen at a distance, afloat above a yellow reef like a cloud above shallow seas, drawing up vapor from below its base, is glimpsed by those recently gone ashore. After some time one dreams up a distorted view of the liner, since it cannot be seen as a whole once you are aboard: he has encountered many passengers who, gazing at the high white side of The Mirabilis from a distance, exclaim, “That’s our ship?” The configuration of decks does not accord with the dimensions plotted by the mind’s eye: certain decks magnified, the bow out of proportion, imperator of too many visions: that is the verifiable miracle to those who distrust what they see as larger or smaller than their conception of the same space. And passengers may think this a fiction he retails to reassure them, but he tells his staff the same thing. To engender rest and ease in dimensionless space surmounted by the cockleshell emblem of the cruiseline bolted to the funnel above the sun deck, splurging on relaxation and illimitable niceties. The malcontent kills the ease that would soothe all arrogant malcontention. All direction is our own. Safety of radar above water, sonar to eavesdrop on coral outcroppings and goggle-eyed fish below. The engines thump, the sun strikes sparks off a dozen reflective pools, the hull grinds, the stabilizers fin through bubbles on an even keel, the horns weehoo, the orchestras crash and crescendo, the casinos clink silvery tokens on the deck and we steer through it all, Palinurus. Our enervation, replete despite these sounds, is absolute and unrousable.



She slept uneasily. During the night she was awakened by the bellow of the ship’s horn: one long blast that seemed to go on for an eternity followed by three shorter blasts at longer intervals. Naturally after that sound she was too excited to sleep at all, only she knew she must have fallen asleep eventually because suddenly it was light and she thought a searchlight or the beam of a lighthouse had fallen across the ship. The entire ship seemed to be listing: her bed was canted to one side and no matter how she lay she felt unable to remain level. “There must be some sort of emergency,” she said to Leo.

“What do you mean?”

“There was a searchlight. And the ship’s horn was blowing. I heard it. What was it to mean? A distress signal?”

Leo convinced her to remain in bed. As soon as she was certain he had fallen asleep again she left the bed and, without even drawing on anything over her nightgown, she slid open the door to the balcony and went out to see if in fact the ship was making a great arc in the sea, and beheld two lights, a red and a green, below and a short distance from the side of the ship, moving slowly ahead of The Mirabilis itself. The red and green lights blinked slowly on and off as they moved. “Why don’t they turn their lights on?” But the liner’s lights also were not illuminated: the decks were dark below her, the big electrically-lit steel letters spelling out the ship’s name looming above on the sun deck were dark too. “Maybe we are receiving an escort into port. Maybe they had to pick up a pilot.” “Pilot, nothing,” Leo muttered. “They don’t employ pilots to take ships in and out of port these days. It’s accomplished with global positioning technology.” Marker buoys? But they appeared to be moving ahead of the ship. “You’re making it up,” Leo said to her. Although she was sure he had been sleeping when she went out on the balcony he sounded wide awake whereas she spoke in a dreamy monotone. “There must be some sort of emergency,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“That searchlight. And the ship’s horn was blowing. I heard it. What was it to mean? A distress signal?”

By the morning the water around the ship had changed sometime overnight to a yellowish-green but there was no island, no estuary in sight. Perhaps she might have welcomed this change in hue as a sign they were nearing land except for the oppressive air, a miasma like that of decomposition and desuetude. “Don’t you smell it?” she asked Leo.

“What?”

“The smell. From the river, the estuary: it must be stagnant, a pool of everything washed down from the hills.”

How could this immensity be navigated on a starless, moonless night such as they had the night before? “They have sonar. Radar. Everything,” Leo said. “They see things we can’t even see. Porpoises below the stabilizing fins. Flights of birds flying above the mast. I’m hungry. Hadn’t we better get something to eat? They still feed you aboard this barge, I imagine.” “But we just ate.” “Nonsense. I haven’t had anything since dinner Tuesday night when you spoke to the captain.”

By midafternoon they had still not arrived, though the ship still appeared to be moving, quite slowly now, as they were in a channel which revealed itself to contain many sandbars, each coming into view as a pale yellow crescent before slowly plunging out of sight, so they must have been near the mouth of the river: the course kept shifting and naturally neither the captain nor any of the officers could be spared from the bridge to come down to one of the six dining rooms for cocktails. After the cancellation of that event Constance began to lose track of time completely. In the morning she’d expected the usual program listing daily activities to be slipped under the door, but there had been none before or after breakfast: neither had a basket of fresh fruit and soaps been placed on the table by the balcony doors, as had been the custom on previous days. Nothing. “They’re hoarding it for themselves,” Leo said.

Not a ship, a vessel of any kind, was in sight, nothing but an overcast, still sky which might be concealing anything at horizon level. She would not have been surprised if the clouds had separated to reveal a volcanic cone roaring out of banana plantations into a tropic sky, or a waterfall such as superstitious mariners believed existed at the edge of the sea. A complete calm prevailed: the only waves were those moving outward from the ship’s hull. The color of the sea was such that if the sun had come out it would have shone like burnished brass, a glare to envelop everything. At breakfast the only advice she received was to eat a banana. “For the potassium. The humidity.” She tried to encourage Leo to eat a banana but he refused. The other passengers seemed listless, bored by the blank sky and yellowish-green water and the oily smell given off. The air inside the ship was cooler than that outside, but not much cooler, not as cool as on previous days of the cruise, and the stagnant smell pervaded every lounge and ballroom as did the humidity. Suddenly there was a rumbling sound; a shudder passed along the keel of the ship from bow to stern, the champagne glasses in pyramids behind the bar tinkled, the etched glass panels of the room rattled, the heads of gladioli in cutglass vases on each table trembled, even the light emitted by the glass sconces on the walls flickered.



That this grandiose luxe glittering adjacent to crumbly reefs and marl frankly presents a tempting prize is unmistakable. If the inequality is not balanced the ship will never find her way off the sand but inevitably be hurled against reefs which will scatter orchestras and gladioli and slot machines and feather boas and buffets into the waves and coral and darting tropical fish and wary barracuda, to be picked up piecemeal from the skiffs of salvagers. This calamity won’t solve any economic problems, to be sure, nor will it convey prosperity to the population of this segment of coastal estuary, mainly fishermen: the ship is symbol, not fact, of notorious riches, and as symbol can convey only what illusions may be brought to bear upon its cargo. Even if The Mirabilis were seized, where could she be taken? No suitable deep-water harbor, no port facilities capable of succoring a ninety-thousand ton hull full of elderly passengers, crystal champagne glasses in pyramids, glass walled atria a hundred feet high, dancers in the dome-gilded lounge, harlequinades of laden buffet tables, plenitude, surfeit upon surfeit. Why, the ship would never be taken anyplace by anyone who gazed, unknowingly, upon this richness, even in the name of fair economic distribution. Free from all guilt of a subjugated past, free from all obligation. Suppose she were to be sailed to the destination of each passenger’s whim, for there existed on board provisions enough, it would be an idealist’s cruise, not a voyage after plunder.

Leo, however, drafts a different proposal. First, so as not to be mistaken as representative of the Gloria Mundi, he paraphrases Marx in saying that the heap of capitalists are by nature reactionary and avoid charitable obligations. “I do not mind giving but I will not be subject to coercion involving charity. It’s unjust and an affront to one’s conscience. Charity is better left as an attribute of free will. Second: the means does not equal the end. Pastry cooks, sous-chefs, garnishers, ice-swan sculptors, sommeliers have needs which drown out the needs of these local salvager-pirates. Do they consider life aboard to be a paradise? That none of us worked to attain this leisure and some of us aren’t even enthralled by its prospects? Nothing is paradise which alleges to be paradisiacal: this tub is no benefactor and balm to injustices, no portal to forgetful ease. Splurging to excess is a flimsy excuse for a paradise anyways. On what do these people expect to found a balanced economy? Fish? Oil reserves? Emeralds mined from the mountains? The straw handbags of elderly women? We’re not being unjust in asking for assistance so as to proceed and it is not our exploitative greed which has cast us on this sandbar. Last: equable sharing of misfortune by any other system than individual responsibility is never democratic and troubles the dreams of many people. That’s it.”

The sky was still the same disquieting flat gray but the smell was no longer that of oil or swamps or mountains full of emeralds and jaguars’ teeth or even an attar of roses but the old bony brine of salt-baked beaches on which anything could be cast up and she knew she had slept despite the oppressive air. She looked down at the water, which was now more brown than yellow, as it swirled past the white hull of the ship. It flowed past without radiating outward in waves from the hull, without any whiteness of foam, exactly as if the ship was dead in the water, perhaps even anchored. We’ve run aground, she thought. We’re not even moving! She looked at the other bed. “Leo! Leo!” She looked over the rail and instead of the gray tarpaulin snugly grommetted over lifeboat number Four there was no tarpaulin: not even a lifeboat: the davits were empty, a single cable swung slowly to and fro against the hull. She held the rail and tried to look aft to see if other lifeboats remained in position, but the partition granting privacy to the next terrace aft interfered with her view and she could determine nothing. Then she heard a squeak, as of a wooden drawer being opened in humid weather. “Ridiculous, ridiculous,” Leo was saying. At first she couldn’t tell if he was speaking to her or to someone at the cabin door, or merely to himself. “We shouldn’t have to. We didn’t request to come here. In fact we’d have been perfectly contented if you’d sailed completely by.” She looked inside and he met her gaze. “Don’t be concerned. They’re on the other side of the ship.” She tried to determine if the movement of the water alongside the shell plating was due to the forward motion of the ship or the current of the unseen river which, by all reasonable calculations, must have its mouth lying dead ahead, flowing past the immobile hull. We’ve been aground the whole time, that’s what those lights I saw last night must have been and why the entire ship felt tilted: we’re aground on some sandbar no one knew was there because the channel isn’t normally used by cruise ships of this size, the keel is resting on mud, and where would we go, if the hull suddenly began to vibrate furiously from the effort to detach ourselves from this embedded ooze so the crystal-stemmed glasses of ice water and the etched glass peacocks of the dining rooms and ten million bottles of merlot and Riesling began to clink and shudder at the boiling water thrust up at the ship’s high, white stern, squared like that of a conquistador’s galleon, scrolled with golden lights twinkling and flashing in coded sequence, even if we got off here, it wouldn’t surprise her if the makers in Mexico of tourist accoutrements had never even considered anyone would touch at this port to send a souvenir from where they were going now and so had not even supplied a single one.

THE THRESHOLD

By John Hood


Ms. Raines tugged the steering wheel of the silver Lexus gently to the right and slid around a white cargo van with the word Budget emblazoned on it in big vinyl letters, which was turning left onto the Rhinecliff bridge. She stomped firmly on the go pedal and smiled with inward satisfaction at the sucking sound of increased fuel consumption as the thirsty carbs of the big vee six gulped fuel and the late model sedan leaped through the moonlit intersection.

Budget, she thought. Suckers.

Anybody who would rent a van from a company called Budget would have to be a loser by definition, she conjectured; I mean, we know you’re a loser by the fact that you’re renting a cargo van with“do it yourself” stamped all over it, but why advertise your insufficient means and remove any shadow of a doubt, jackass? Okay, admitted, she was driving a rental sedan, but that was business, and it didn’t have “short on cash” stencilled on the door panels. In the unlikely event she had ever needed to rent a cargo van, she figured she would have looked for one from the "slumming for the fun of it” or “wanted to see how the other half lives out of abject curiosity” rental agency, just so people would know she wasn’t a bottom feeder.

Ms. Raines braked slightly as the shocks absorbed a stiff jolt from a bump in the road. The Lexus bounced a bit, then steadied as she continued north up 199 towards route 9G at a better than ample speed. She swerved a bit around a cyclist. Stupid kid, she thought. Dumb ass college kids on bicycles out at night on back roads. She knew she was close to Herald College, a big liberal arts school that consisted of a rambling series of 1880s farmhouses and brownstones and a selection of more recent buildings tucked into the woods on the east side of the Hudson. If you didn’t know it was there you would never guess at its presence. You could hardly tell the boys from the girls at these places, she thought; same clothes, same blackberries and mp3's, same candy-ass politics. These little prima donnas were in for a shock when they got to the real world, alright, but then again she figured there were enough of their ilk around to sustain their cosy fantasies.

“Still, we don’t want to kill one of them, do we Sheila...” she muttered.

Not especially since those two Vodka Martinis from the late meeting in Poughkeepsie would still register. She eased off on the gas a bit. (Attagirl Sheila...take it easy.)

Sheila Raines it in, she thought. Ha ha ha. (Mrs. Raines didn’t raise any stupid children...)

Sheila Raines over everything was more the way she liked to think of it; and she liked the fact that she had lots of money and some power, and that she was going to get more of same. As a rising star junior executive from a plastics firm that had one of the largest footprints in the New York state area, a great deal more money and influence were hers for the taking, she knew,
provided she had the cojonés to go after it and not worry too much about the bleeding bodies she left in her wake, as far as her business rivals were concerned. But she didn’t want to fuck up her game with troublesome charges stemming from a traffic accident.

She had actually decided a long time ago that she would be ready to commit murder to further her own interests, and she knew she was smart enough to get away with it. All you had to do was establish a rock solid alibi, and then make sure there was no body, and no murder weapon to be found. True, it was difficult to avoid contaminating a crime scene with DNA evidence, but in the absence of a weapon and a body, a conviction would be very difficult with a good defence lawyer, especially in the event of a personal business relationship with the victim...

But this wasn’t one of those times, and she didn’t need a DUI or vehicular manslaughter conviction to spoil her plans. These college kids were just about ready to leave the school for summer recess, but just now they were still all over the area doing whatever the hell college kids do, so she’d best watch it. Anyway, Christ knew what the hell were they doing biking around the roads at this hour? She glanced at the digital clock on the dash. It was well past midnight. Didn’t they have to get to bed? Study or something? What the fuck?

What the fuck...that was what she had thought when her secretary had informed her by phone that there had been a mix up in the scheduling of the Poughkeepsie meeting and they had needed to reschedule for an evening get together at a restaurant. She recalled with a curious pleasure the verbal whipping she had given the girl for her part in the “mix-up". Sheila had sensed that she was crying as she nervously stammered her apologies. Good. Maybe that’ll teach the foolish little bitch to be more efficient.

Sheila Raines all over everybody. (Damn her secretary anyway!)

_________________________

Sheila was growing very fatigued.

It would be such a god damn waste of time to stop for the night, but she figured it would be crazy to go on much further. She grudgingly resolved to stop at the next likely spot and get a room.

She continued up 9G, dimly remembering that she had to go north about another ten or fifteen miles before the woods thinned out on either side of the dark road. There was a little town there, on the other side of the toll bridge, where she thought she remembered seeing a small and somewhat shitty motel. Right now it didn’t much matter to her if it were as shitty as hell. She was starting to drift and badly wanted to get off the road.

Besides, Sheila was becoming uncomfortably aware that an involuntary picture of her dead brother was forming in her mind. She tried to shake him off, but he just kept hanging there in front of her. Jesus, what a bastard he had been to her when they were small. He had really liked to scare her, really seemed to get a fucking kick out of it.

Suddenly she was in the middle of a full fledged sense memory;

It’s late summer and the air is hot and humid. She is back in her parents house in Rochester and they are out for the evening-no-they are away overnight, and she is alone with her brother. She is thinly dressed in a little t-shirt and her underpants. Donald has tied her to a chair in the middle of the basement with one of those stretchy pink plastic skipping ropes. It hurts her hands; she knows the pink of the skipping rope will have turned whiter where it is stretched around her thin little wrists but she can’t see this in the dark, she just knows it. She could get out of the knots, she thinks, but she is afraid to move because he has turned out all the lights and is slowly circling her in the darkness making terrifying soft throaty wailing noises. He is calling her name in a weird quavering voice...

“Sheila...Sheee-la...SHEEE-LAAH...”

She is weeping now, terrified and furious and filled with hate, hate for her horrible mean brother, and her stupid pig-eyed mother and her filthy drunken father, and she cries out in spite of her fear

“no...no...stop it Donald, please stop it, I’m scared...”

Her tears streaming down her cheeks now. She is shaking with fright and rage and misery, and she can hear the warm August wind making a high rushing sound in the tall leafy boughs of the enormous trees outside the house. She has the ghastly idea that something is coming in from the night to devour her brother, and she will be left alone in the blackness, half naked and tied to the chair.

“SHEEEE-LAAH!” her brother wails.

Sheila shook her head and rubbed her tired, tear stained eyes with one hand as she steered the Lexus with the other. The memory dream was gone, but her brother still swam in the air just outside the front windshield. He appeared to be trying to speak to her, but it seemed as if it was an effort for him to achieve audible volume; eventually she began to hear his familiar voice moaning in that old frightening way he had...

“Sheeilaah...don’t stop...Sheila...don’t stop the car...keep on driving Sheeilaah...”

Sheila saw a red sphere glowing inside her dead brothers head. It was a traffic light. It didn’t register for a second, then she stomped on the brakes hard and the car skidded to a halt, rubber whining on the dry pavement. She watched in horrified fascination as her brothers image sped away and up into the night, a terrible beseeching look on his pale features, his wails echoing in the night air.

“Fuck you, Donald...fuck you.” She thought as she waited for the light to turn green. When it did, she gunned the motor and started over the toll bridge. She pulled up at the toll booth and flashed her express pass. The guy in the booth grimaced out at her, his face looming out of the darkness, caught in a beam of light.

“You OK, lady? You look like you seen a ghost...” He rattled. She realized there were beads of perspiration running down her forehead and she was clutching the steering wheel in a death grip

“I’m fine.” she barked curtly and stepped on the gas.

_________________________

A sign saying “Welcome to Cottingham...stay for awhile” swam past in the darkness. She was just a mile or so northwest of the turnoff for the thruway.

Cottingham, New York; there wasn’t much to it. An Ultramar gas bar, a generic looking diner, a clutch of distressed houses around the crossroads, one or two rusty light industrials, that was pretty much it. Nobody around, nothing going on. She saw a dim orange glow ahead about a quarter mile and made for it. She was pretty sure this was where she had remembered noting the location of a (shitty) motel. Rolling up to the amber lights, her memory was confirmed, there was an old motel on the east side of the road.

The Wayside motel, Cottingham New York, looked like it had seen better days. Or maybe not. Maybe it had always been a mouldy rat hole with threadbare grass coloured carpeting on the cement walkways lining the front facade. Looked like about thirty units, with a dingy little office on the north side. There was a mom and pop Italian restaurant next door, closed for the night. Too bad, thought Sheila; she could have used some pasta and meat sauce, it might have helped to alleviate the severe headache she was working on. Just as well. It was too late to eat...she just wanted to go to sleep, wake up early and get the hell out of here.

Sheila got out of the Lexus and walked slowly and a little unsteadily at first, over to the office. She pushed open the door and went inside. The air was stale and the odour of mould and cleaning fluids assailed her, making her feel nauseated. What a dump. She crisply smacked a bell on the counter, and after a bit the night guy emerged from a back room. He had an unpleasant face; sort of Germanic looking in a regular folks kind of way but with pale blotchy skin and eyelids that looked too tight, no eyebrows, thin lips and a pointy beak. She found herself strangely repulsed by his appearance, his peculiarly nasty physicality. He had a name tag; “Jim”.
The creepy dude gave her an appraising look and licked his lips. She smiled coldly. Sheila liked to think of herself as kind of a young Sybil Sheppard type; she was a million miles out of this losers league, but she arched her back and thrust out her hip just to tease him a little. Just give him a little look at what he’s never gonna get, make him sweat a bit.

“Evening Ma’am.” He offered.
“I’d like a room for tonight...how much?” said Sheila, her expression cool.
“Guess you’re in luck. Got one left, room 3. It’s around the back. It’s $66 for the night. Check out is 11 a.m. We can give you a wake up call, if you like?”
“No, that won’t be necessary.” Sheila gave him money and he handed her the key. She turned and began to slowly walk out to the car, swaying her hips just a little.
“There’s ice and a pop machine in the hall, miss.” he called after her.
“Ma’am?” He called again, his tone questioning. She turned and looked back at him.
“Yes...?”
“There’s another motel about quarter mile down on the other side...” he began. She raised her eyebrows incredulously.
“So?”
“It’s just...well, some people don’t like number 3 is all, miss...we’ve had some, uh, complaints in the past...concerning number 3." She threw her head back and laughed.
“What, is it haunted?” She couldn’t believe he was giving her this shit.
“We’ve had some complaints. Some people just don’t like number 3, is all...I just feel it’s fair to let you know there’s been complaints before, and...” She cut him short, her expression now icy.
“Look, Jimbo, I’m not expecting the Ritz, so do me a favour and spare me the local colour...I’m a little too tired for that crap, alright?”

She turned on her heal and strode to the Lexus, ignoring his reply.

Sheila guided the car around a tightly curved driveway on the south end of the building leading to the rear of the motel, and pulled into the spot in front of #3. There was a tall stand of trees at the west side of the parking lot, screening the motel from the Hudson. Nobody in the other units was making any sound, and the place was pretty dark, save for a few lights over some of the doorways. She took her overnight case from the passenger side seat and went to open the unit door.

The key turned easily in the lock and she swung open the door and felt for a light switch. Finding one, she flicked it and a soft glow lit up a dresser with a mirror and a TV set. The room was small and neat, and smelled a good deal cleaner than the office, which was more than she had expected. She stepped inside and threw her bag down, flipped another switch. A fixture came on over the two queen size beds. There was a night stand, and next to the bed on the wall enclosing the bathroom there hung a large motel style painting, sort of a “Sunrise at Malibu” type of thing. The curtains over the wide picture window facing the parking lot were tightly drawn. The room was cool.

Sheila slid her dress down over her thighs and let it drop to the floor, stripped off her underwear and drew a bath, let it fill while she arranged her things. When the tub was ready, she slipped into the water and closed her eyes, just let it all go away for a bit. She began to sink into a dreamy state almost immediately, and she went with it, just letting a series of colours wash through her mind. Sleep overcame her.

She woke with a start, water splashing onto the floor, disturbing images of a violent dream still flashing in her head; images of her brothers tortured pleading face, a lurid purple landscape, the motel night man, his face a grinning mask and an overwhelming sense of something, some bestial monstrosity stalking her. She felt sick, her head aching and spinning, waves of nausea coursing through her. What the hell, she had only had two martinis. She hadn’t eaten anything unusual, hadn't eaten anything at all actually...

(maybe that was the problem?)

No. Ridiculous. Hunger never made her feel like this. She realized the water had gone very cold, much colder than the air in the room and she was shivering hard. She lurched to her feet and as she moved toward the bathroom door, grabbing a scanty bath towel, she became aware of a sickly cast of pale coloured light suffusing the larger part of the motel room.

Sheila stumbled through the bathroom door into the bedroom. The room seemed to spin and dip giddily around her and she had the momentary idea that maybe the night guy had somehow slipped her some kind of drug. She heard a weird clangorous noise behind the window, an unearthly humming, ringing sound.

(What the fuck was going on around here? What the fuck is this shit?)

She moved to the bed and fell down onto it, and as her head rolled over drunkenly she saw the painting and a shocked scream issued from her throat. Where “Sunrise at Malibu” had previously hung, another much different painting was now suspended. It was oriented vertically, unlike the horizontal format of the generic beach scene, and its dimensions were much larger, much too large for the wall space. The painting seemed to generate its own weird light, and the image that light revealed would have been entirely appropriate to a really high end horror magazine, but in the context of the cheap motel room seemed completely inappropriate and terrifying. It showed some kind of a monster or demon, with long writhing tentacles that had a sickening oily sheen. The tattooed skull was grotesquely crowned with enormous shiny black horns and the huge jaws were wide open revealing a row of cruel fangs. It was magnificently painted. How the hell had it come to be here?

Sheila was losing her grip very quickly as she contemplated what kind of weird sick fucker would have come in and placed that bloody thing on the wall as she dozed in the tub just behind the partition. She struggled upright and reached for the phone. The fucking creep in the office. This must be his idea of a (totally fucked up) joke. She would let him know that his ass was in a sling. She grabbed the phone and put the receiver to her ear. The phone made weird ringing humming sounds, but she couldn’t get a dial tone.

The television set flickered on.

Sheila felt herself go limp with dread as the image on the TV screen resolved. It featured the character from the painting. He seemed to be leading some kind of a dance. A hoard of smaller but similiar creatures cavorted around the horned grotesque. They danced and gyrated obscenely in a wasted landscape amidst huge bonfires fed with what could only be cadavers.

Sheila, still naked, dropped the towel and sprang for the door. She grabbed the knob and yanked, pulled, pounded on the door. It wouldn’t budge. This situation was rapidly losing it’s appeal to her, and she gave another desperate attempt to wrench open the unyielding portal of the spinning, hideously coloured motel room.

Room 3 at the Wayside.

Ask for it by number. You’ll fucking love it...hah ha ha hah...
She shrieked with laughter as she thought of night guy Jim’s words.
“We’ve had some complaints...”

ha ha fucking ha.

If someone had somehow tried to do a number on her, she conceded that they had done a hell of a good job. The horror DVD coming on by itself had been a great touch. This was just a hell of a set up, that had to be it. she calmed herself a little and went towards the TV.

It was unplugged.

Sheila clutched her head in her hands and rocked back and forth on her feet. The phone was off the receiver, and it was playing a stereo version of the sound scape coming from outside, in a high, thin, tinny tone. She turned slowly and went to the window. She clutched at the dark heavy drapes and thrust them open, half knowing what she would see.

She screamed again despite this awareness, a shrill desperate scream devolving into drawn out broken sobs. Outside the window where the Hudson river should have flowed behind a tall dark green stand of woods, there stretched a vast ochre and ash coloured landscape, a barren blasted heath with a sickening coppery green sky. The horrid charnel plain seemed to undulate and give forth with a discordant nauseating music, a sort of ringing hum. In the distance, many miles away a gibbering crowd of oily blackish things advanced over the charred ground, moving inexorably towards the motel window.

The phone rang. It had somehow hung itself up. She laughed at this as she picked up the receiver. It was Jimbo, the night guy. He spoke to her in a disagreeable nasal whine.

“I guess they’re coming for ya...sorry Ma’am...it ain’t nothing personal. They’ve been trying to get through for years, maybe for always, I don’t know. Anyway, we found out from others a long time ago that if we sort of...feed someone to them...uh...every now and then...it sort of seems to keep ‘em at bay...”

He coughed, as though he was embarrassed.

Sheila somehow realized in the small still functioning part of her mind that it was useless to scream threats of retribution. She dropped the phone down on the hook and reached for her night bag, pulled out her make up kit and went slowly into the bathroom. She applied make up to her face, selecting a particularly alluring shade of red for her lips, and then went to the bed and stretched out, naked, upon it and waited for them to come and take her.

THE ROAD AWAY FROM SUMMER

By John Hood


The sky was washed with lazy pastel colours and the muted scent of earth and the perfume of wildflowers and grass filled the cool still air. He turned to look back to the west at the pale rays of the midafternoon sun. They silhouetted a tall stand of evergreen against the backdrop of the waning day. Evening waited in the wings while a blackbird sang. Pale purples and mauves and cool thin blues swam unconcernedly amid the insubstantial cloud scape evolving slowly in the upper atmosphere.

Warmth from the heat of day still rose from the dusty gravel. His mind was quiet as he idled along the road. He gently kicked at the stones and scrubbed his feet in the dry dust. The last rain had fallen days ago and the road was bone dry but the forest on either side was still moist and damp and verdant. The woods murmured gently, whispering about silent black pools of clear fragrant water and juniper and grotesque formations of granite mantled with soft cool moss. The woods stretched back into the unimaginable distance to the south. There was no reason at all why they should not go on forever. To the west and north, there were tall trees and giant spines of fantastic rock, and then the lake; the wide cold shining lake.

A frog hopped erratically across the wide track. There was no one to disturb it. He watched the little animal as it disappeared into the brush on the far side. There was nothing to do but watch the little speckled green creature. He couldn’t go back the way he had come, he knew. Nothing to do but amble along.

The summer people were gone; handsome golden haired young men and the lovely young women with their tanned delicious flesh. The happy carefree revellers who sported effervescently in the sunshine and dove like nubile otters from the rocks into the refreshing blue green waters of the lake to emerge with smiling faces full of milk white teeth. Who reclined in relaxed postures in the crevices of the giant cradle of rock...and who played noisy games and rushed to and fro in powerful boats. They were all gone away now. The lake retreated back to a primaeval silence, the gentle waters lapping at silent empty shores. A few lights glistened on the waters edge at night, but no sound issued from the dwellings they weakly illuminated. Even many of the birds had gone away, although a secretive loon ducked beneath the water and swam rapidly to the west, emerging far out of sight in the middle of the vast body of water.

Sometimes at night amid the darkened timber an old and solitary woman sat alone in an isolated cottage, gazing out at the water.

For now, it was still day, although the sun sank lower in the sky. Far away across the lake, an enormous Heron with a glistening trout in his beak stretched his wide wings and lifted into a wan violet hemisphere pregnant with emptiness, flew with muscular wing beats marking time in a haunting cadence above the cold dark water to alight in the creek mouth several miles to the south, settling in a nest strewn with the bones of fish. No one witnessed its flight.

He picked up a sharp stone and sent it spinning into the woods. Crisp cracking noises echoed briefly then were gone.

The boy was gone, some time now, grown and gone away south behind the endless trees. Far behind the damp still woods. He remembered when they too had splashed in the sun sparkled water and curled up on the warm lichen painted rock or walked the heat scented sidewalk in the village miles away, enjoyed the cold sweetness of soft ice cream or the pleasure of rich food. He knew that the trees ended somewhere down beyond the back of the forest but that he could never go down there to find the boy. All that remained was to walk along the quiet road into the cooling air of the incipient evening.

Of course, the woman was gone too. Once in a mossy clearing of the ageless forest she had offered him her sleek lovely sinuousness while birds flitted and insects hummed their industry. She had indulged him in her fragrant opalescent tender body, her white lustrous skin taut and intoxicating under the warm summer sun, leaving no secret denied, no intimacy withheld. He drank of her crimson mouth and tasted her winy flavour, their lips exploring each others youthful voluptuousness with gentle passion.

The memory of it danced before him like a diaphanous tapestry, suffused with deep rich colour but as insubstantial as a rainbow. He reached out to grasp the almost palpable sensation. Overhead a circling hawk uttered a shrill cry and the memory took flight like a startled doe.

He knew less of where she had gone, but all the more fully that she was beyond recovery. He could barely remember how and when their confederation had been possible. It was as a dream from another lifetime, a memory plucked from someone else's store of recollection, hardly his own to preserve anymore. He stood for a moment and buried his face in his sympathetic hands, shuddered with grief. What death could possibly be more cruel, he thought, than the death of kindly disposition? Passions life span was by definition brief, like a beautiful exotically scented flower that blooms radiantly and expires as suddenly as it was birthed, but surely compassion was ageless? To endure the murder of gentle concern by the indifference of wicked circumstance seemed an injury to grievous to sustain. Nature offered him no alternative to sustaining it.

He shrugged, feigning an insouciant attitude, and resumed his walking.

Just ahead, the road dipped into a cool shady little declivity and swung around to the northwest, graciously yielding to a fantastic spur of anamorphic rock studded with spiny saplings of birch. At this juncture, another, narrower road led away into the deepening shadows of the forest.

He knew that road. It led to a place in the forest that had once been a summer camp for children. Log huts laid down on the sodden forest floor, on the leeward slope of a heavily wooded ridge had provided a point of departure for his youthful imagination to travel to terrifying places. A large empty building which had served as a meeting lodge stood in a clearing, Years ago when as a child he had wandered there alone, frightened and fascinated, deep in some flight of fancy, it already seemed as though it had been abandoned so long that no one knew or cared of its existence anymore. He had no wish to go down that road. He knew now that there were phantoms lurking there, best left undisturbed.

The lengthening shadows slowly stretched out their tendrils on the road ahead of him.

He followed the swing of the road around to the left and picked up his pace a bit. Here the tall trees penned in the roadway even closer; the road described a series of serpentine undulations. Long, smooth, massive humps of granite rose up on either side looking like so many stone whales rising from a leafy green sea. It was curious how tangible the big openness of the lake was behind the timber to his left, and how much he could feel the density of the woods on the other side; it seemed he could feel it as much as know it. A few hundred yards ahead the road swung hard to the left and the forest receded briefly to the east. He could see this open space at the end of a canyon of green. The scale and shape of the landscape was imprinted on his memory.

He passed a pool of water filled with vegetation. Frogs hopped off the banks into the green soup and poked up their heads. The ribbon of sky widened above him as the timber let back across a boggy field to the east, and climbed like a green regiment up the gigantic granite staircase of a rocky promontory to the west.

He turned to look at the rock cliff. He felt the useless impulse to fling himself at it, to struggle through the impenetrable brush, ascend the fiendishly difficult slope and stand atop it. He wished to see the lake from that vantage point, but knew that it was an impossibility. Once as a child he had attempted the ascent and very nearly come to grief in a seemingly bottomless pool of brackish ooze at the foot of the rocks. He craned his head upwards to gaze into the heavens. He wished to be lifted up, to rise up over the trees and hang weightless in the gently moving air. The empathetic sky seemed to salve him with pale gentle grey mauve light. He could have fallen to the ground alone to rest, wept quietly for a while.

He continued up the rising ground to the north.

He climbed the slope and hung poised on the apex of a solid ridge of stone, a screen of high timber to the left, and an empty darkened dwelling overlooking the low marshy terrain to the east, then crossed over and stood at the entrance to a little valley with pleasant meadows on either side. He remembered this as a place of long dry yellow grass waving in a sultry breeze and baking heat, shimmering dryly in the relentless noon sun of a day long passed. His brother had climbed a tree and fallen from the lower boughs. The deep grass below had concealed a hidden danger; brutal shards of broken glass had leapt out and cruelly lacerated his brothers right hand. The fresh blood flowed liberally, spattering the uncaring dust. He had felt the sting of the wound himself and gaped with horror at the whitening contused edges of the livid gash.

The stoic older boy had bound his hand in a cheerful old bandana, and they had gone on their way. The tree still stood like a lonely sentinel.

He passed from the haunted little valley and continued by rippling meadows of tall grass, the forest gradually closing in around him once more. The land dropped gently away again, into a darkening thicket where the road described another series of snaking curves past an ancient gate of trees and a fence that marked an obscure boundary whose meaning had vanished long ago. On the other side the woods closed in still tighter and formed a lattice of boughs overhead, faintly admitting enough light to throw a lace of dappled shadows upon the ground. The surrounding landscape was drowned and swampy. To the left, an open body of water that was too large and deep to be a pond and yet not quite a small lake trended back into the woods to terminate at a sheer smooth rock face some sixty feet high. Drowned dead timber and cattails, marsh plants lent an eerie atmosphere to the mysterious profound pool.

Across to the right, yet another road branched back into a choking wood. A narrow rocky difficult track led back deep into the forest to a tragic haunted clearing. Long ago a sunburnt house with wooden sides weathered a petrified silver grey had stood there in a waving sea of parched tall grass amid the shoals of weirdly smooth curvilinear rock carved by a receding glacier. The forlorn structure was a shell; its exterior deceptively intact, while the treacherous interior was a decaying mess of jumbled debris, its plaster and lathe skeleton laid bare. The empty windows had brooded mutely at an unknown sequence of abandoned dreams and aspirations. The house had stood empty long, long before he knew of its existence, and now it was gone, disappeared into the shallow tentative soil that lined the rock, nurturing seedlings. The hopeless farm which had yielded only stones was gone back, reclaimed by the forest. As far as he knew, no one still living, besides himself, was aware or cared of its former existence. He was certain that he had not dreamed it, however. An abject windmill, rusted to a brilliant burnt orange hue, had once stood like the watchtower of a salient bastion on a heart rendingly ambitious foundation of fieldstones; the disc of its metal blades had sung like an orange emblem against the deep blue complimentary sky. It too was gone.

He remembered another building. An immense barn. As a child the barns appearance to him had seemed more desultory, more decrepit than the dry spare house. Its moss tinged siding fell away in places to reveal the interior of the structure. It had stood apart from the house, closer to the encircling forest and seemed damper, more decayed. He recalled the shocking epiphany that was the product of his childish curiosity. He had entered the rotting structure, half conscious of the danger in doing so, foolishly intrepid. He had explored the various chambers within; their earlier functional quality obscured by an aura of menace. Coming from the back of the building towards the great barn door, he had noticed that many of the massive floor boards were gone, revealing a dim frightening space of uncertain dimension underneath. His gaze fell on a large form of unexpected texture wedged luridly under the flooring. At first the form had no meaning, but then lightning flashed from the clear blue sky and his mind screamed silently in shock and dismay. The mummified corpse of a horse, the skull festooned with thin strips of dried leathery skin, the teeth bared in a hideous grin, the dank empty sockets glaring accusingly at him, lay in an impossible position under the flooring. He froze in horror.

He had the horrid idea that there might be other livid ghoul horses rising out of the crumbling floor behind him, but was afraid to turn and look for fear that the nightmare thing before him would spring up and bar his exit. He took a sudden step and the floorboard sprang rottenly beneath his tread. He had the ghastly notion that he would be pitched forward and fall with his face next to the gruesome unclean monstrosity, that he would become entangled with the angry rotten remnant, unable to escape, locked in a sickening embrace. He made a mad dash for the opening and burst out into the sunlight shuddering with horror. At a safe distance he turned on an island of stone in the grassy sea and sank to his knees wringing his hands, to stare back at the wretched barn. His mind was repelled by the seemingly unlikely aspect of the discovery; who would leave an animal in such a situation? It felt like an obscenity. He couldn’t conceive of circumstances which would allow for it. Only years later did it occur to him that possibly the animal, grazing, had wandered into the trap of the building long after its abandonment and come to grief unknown and unfound. He knew of certain farms in the district whose animals might have had free reign here. The memory of this unwelcome discovery taunted him. All traces were gone now, he knew, the rotting barn and it’s disturbing occupant collapsed into the thin soil.

He hastened on.

He turned north and headed briskly along into the deepening evening. The purple grey sky stretched limitlessly away, a striated pattern of vast feathery veins of thin cloud superimposed against it in great gently curving arcs ten miles above the cooling earth. He stopped briefly to gaze at the black silently moving water in the creek, looking down from the bridge into the little chasm where the old mill had stood many years ago. Cold white cascades flooded across the sharp stones to the west and then slowed in a whirling pool to flow away through the trees and fields to the lake .

He moved on angrily.

Presently he came to the place where the gravel road, wider now, debouched onto the blacktop at a tee junction. The houses on the side of the road where quiet, empty. Childrens toys littered the ample lawns and driveways, but there was no other sign of life. The ancient rusty grey barn on the right stood against the slowly darkening grey sky, brooding, alone. He pulled his jacket tighter around him as the last warmth of the day, rising from the pavement, retreated before a chilling gust rising in the northwest. The suggestion of autumn was unmistakable and mournful. A rusty yellow and black road sign indicating the terminus, pocked with bullet marks, vibrated in the freshening breeze. The sound of the wind rose, keening along the lonely road.

He began to hike along the shoulder of the rural route, past fields and another, smaller swampy lake to the south that sung quietly with the sound of marsh life but betrayed evidence of no human presence. He took less notice of his surroundings now, but seemed more intent on keeping a pace. The road wended past dark still houses and around a sharp banked curve to the north where a single large tree had stood to mark the entrance to another old country road. The tree had been cut down some years ago, with the curious and unwelcome effect that the familiar corner had seemed drained of identity, as if its singular oneness had somehow been diminished.

The topography here was studded with sturdy ridges of rock, and his legs ached from climbing a succession of sharp little rises. He could see the village crowning the crest of the last, largest ridge to the north, set down in a little forest of shade trees like a miles long green and brick red ship moored in an endless sea of amber fields. He wearily bested the last long slow ascent and slowed his pace again as he entered the leafy corridor that led north up to the main crossroads in town. Stately old homes of brick and wood with rambling verandahs and widows walks stood on either side of the wide street. They were uniformly quiet, devoid of the evidence of habitation.

The highway that ran away east and west provided the main street of the little village, intersected at the main crossroads with the north and south route he had come up on. He approached the crossroads now, and looked up at the traffic light that hung above the four way stop, swinging and rocking in the cold steady stream of wind out of the northwest.

Its signals flicked maddeningly slowly in a hypnotizing rhythm from green to amber to red. There were no cars, no drivers to be guided by the admonishing coloured lamps.

He looked briefly at the splendid old town hall, then across to the grocery store, which was closed up and dark inside. He peered down the main street and thought he saw a pickup truck pull away and head out of town to the east, away and gone. The old chip truck stood closed up next to the little park with the stone monument. No one was around. The wind gusted lustily down the main street, sweeping up clouds of dust.

He turned to the west and headed out of town on the lonely highway.

He knew that a dozen or so miles along this road there was another town, a lovely spot where a rising church steeple stood like a signpost at the end of another long slender seductively beautiful lake. A busy marina and several other charming attractions would draw crowds of holiday makers in the high summer, but now the place would be quiet, somnolent, the season ended.

It might seem now as though a thousand years could pass before the warmth would return, the carefree happy people would come back to the sun dappled waters and pleasant streets and cosy restaurants and inns. Further to the west, after the snug comfort of the town, the ground rose higher and the landscape became sour and sullen, almost threatening. There was a great wide tract that seemed unloved, the low impenetrable tangle of ground cover and unkempt evergreens stretching back of the road along the top of a crest of unforgiving granite ridges into the endless north. It seemed as though it was a region that people only hurriedly passed through on their way to another more salubrious destination. It was impossible to surmise what ghosts might inhabit this painful forsaken landscape.

Here, however, the countryside still seemed cultivated if desolate. The sky was a deep mauve now. He walked along the gently curving highway, gazing down the slopes to the south at the fields and stands of timber. He looked up as the wind whistled. Enormous black crows perched on the swaying lines. One of them took flight with a hoarse cackle and flew north with powerful sweeps of its glistening inky wings. He followed its flight as the great black bird went away over a cornfield to the west.

The black iron gate hung a little ways open on rusty hinges.

The iron gate marked the entrance to a lonely little plot of ground. The little quiet place was bounded on the north and west by tall fields of late corn and a stand of trees to the east delineated the boundary to the next lot. Silent stones stood in a forlorn little company in the small humble burial ground. He pushed open the black wrought iron gate and went down the barley discernible track that marked the centre of the graveyard. Over in the back corner of the quiet place, to the northwest, nestled by a fence in the crook of the two bordering cornfields there was a stone, smaller than the rest and with idiosyncratic markings by the hand of its carver, that made it distinct from the others.

He paused for a moment and turned to look back at the crows on the wire. They were gone.

Then he knew that this road would always be his, and his alone. He would keep coming back to this place. He sank to his knees and fell forward onto the damp turf. He pressed his face to the soil and his tears mingled with the dew. He did not know what had become of his sisters; he could not remember his mother, and this stone marked the place where the ashes of his father and his only brother lay beneath the cold clay.

HENNEPIN'S DIARY

By John Hood


Robert Roy McInnes had French ancestry on his mother's side, and he took some pleasure and pride in his Gallic heritage; but he did not know a great deal about his mother’s ancestors, although he had often heard her allude to colourful family characters in her background when she was still living.

It did not therefore come as a complete surprise to him when a legal letter arrived in the mail one Tuesday in July, informing him of the death of his great uncle Louis Hennepin, that the deceased had a french name. His great uncle Louis was, he vaguely remembered, the brother of his maternal grandmother and though he had never met the man, he had a mental image of him derived from a vast collection of yellowed and sepia toned family snapshots, featuring women in stylish outfits, and a succession of magnificent vintage automobiles. The letter stated that his great uncle Hennepin had been 94 years old when he passed. What was something of a surprise to McInnes was that he was the legal next of kin.

McInnes sipped Tea. The letter informed him in legalese that he had inherited his uncle's house and some not at all undesirable property on the east side of the town of Pembroke, Ontario. Furthermore, he was the executor of the estate. The letter stipulated that he must contact his uncle's legal representatives at their Toronto office to confirm these matters and obtain the key to the house, and that it would be advisable to travel to Pembroke as soon a possible to examine the building.

McInnes left Toronto early the next Friday in a rental from Thrifty. He made the trip at a relatively leisurely pace, enjoying the summer scenery, the air conditioning keeping him cool and comfortable. He drifted into an agreeable reflective state as he drove along, imagining his great uncle's life and speculating what he might find in the house. By around 6:00 p.m. he was within fourty miles of his destination when the pleasant weather broke, and the sky grew dark and turned an eerie leaden green colour, presaging one of those sudden summer storms. A tumultuous rainfall began to beat violently on the roof of the sedan, and before much longer the rain was pouring down so heavily as to reduce visibility to virtual zero. McInnes hunched over the wheel, peering past the rapidly flicking wipers into the grey-out, slowing enough to keep the vehicle on the unfamiliar road but uncomfortably mindful of the possibility of getting hit from behind. The sky deepened in shade to an acid copper green that was unearthly and somewhat frightening; the vehicle was now being buffeted by high winds that had the sedan changing lanes without any driver input and which threatened to send it careening into the ditch. Presently however the heavens assumed a somewhat less threatening cast and although a hard rain continued to fall the winds decreased in intensity sufficiently to ease his concern a little.

McInnes continued through the deluge. By the time he reached the turn off, the rain had stopped falling more or less completely and twilight had suffused the dripping landscape with a strangely ominous character. The heat of summer had not been dissipated by the sudden violent storm and the wet fields surrounding his uncle’s property had begun to steam and were already half concealed in a misty haze. He came down the leafy drive to the house and pulled the car to stop near the porch of the old Victorian building. His uncle’s place was a considerable distance from town, and he was quite alone as he stepped from the vehicle. He thought to call out to confirm this, but felt an odd inclination not to do so; in any case it was fairly obvious that no one was around.

It was impossible to deny to himself that under the present circumstances the house assumed a distinctly foreboding atmosphere. It was a beautiful building, clearly built sometime around the 1870s made of brick with a rambling veranda and with gables and casements in a high Victorian style, but even a cursory examination revealed the house had decayed significantly. The darkened windows took on a haunting aspect in the grey solitary half light, and he shivered involuntarily despite the warm clammy air. McInnes felt a sudden impulse to get back in the car and leave the place with its secrets undisturbed, never to return, but he was a practical man, and had no intention of passing on his inheritance because of a momentary case of nerves. He laughed to himself as he looked through a screen of boughs to the right and noticed that the house was situated adjacent to a small rural burial ground, with bleached white stones jutting at odd angles from the damp mossy ground. He looked to the left of the drive and saw misty open fields, backed by a thick woodlot. The place had character, there was no doubt of it.

Taking his bag from the vehicle, he strode resolutely to the porch and climbed the steps. All was quiet as he peered in the gathering gloom through a window into the shadowy interior of the house. Taking the key from his pocket, he inserted it into the door lock and swung the heavy old wooden door open on its hinges. Predictably, they whined in protest, making a sound which though expected was none the less haunting. McInnes stood for a moment in the oppressive damp heat of the evening and looked into the darkened interior of the structure.

He stepped through the lintel and entered the house.

Once inside, McInnes again laughed inwardly over his previous jittery state of mind, for although the interior of the august old manse seemed a made to order setting for a ghost story, the tall lead traced windows admitting a spooky light onto antique furniture shrouded against the encroaching dust, with a few lights switched on it was clear that it was, after all, a house and nothing more. He busied himself with a little tidying and put food he had carried with him into an aging but functional refrigerator in the spacious kitchen at the back of the ground floor.

Then, with his bag in hand he mounted the staircase to the second story to seek an appropriate place to bed down for the night. He looked into what must have been his uncle’s room at the front overlooking the drive, but dismissed the idea of using it; he had no desire to sleep in the dead man's bed, and instead selected a room at the back with a twin casement window letting onto the now dark fields to the east. He sat for a moment on the window case and looked out into the still, close night, impressed with the solemnity and quietness of the place, then opened his bag on a table at the foot of the bed. He arranged his things, turned back the bed and repaired to the kitchen to prepare a small meal. After his supper he inspected the ground floor, noting the contents of the building, and the condition of its furnishings. It was immediately evident to him that his uncle's house contained some antique furniture that was of significant value. An upright piano stood in the parlour. There were filled book shelves and clothes and a considerable amount of minutiae. It was clear that disposing of the estate would involve some substantial effort.

The hours drew on, and he presently grew fatigued and climbed the stairs again. He showered and made ready to retire, but as he did so his previous assurance drained from him. He was filled with a tremendous sense of isolation and dread, and again was ceased with the impulse to leave the old house and drive away as fast as he possibly could. Oppressed by this mood, he tossed restively for what seemed like hours before sleep overcame him.

Some time after midnight he was awakened by the sound of something scratching at the bedroom door. He started upright in the bed and peered into the center of the moonlit room. Suddenly the door pushed open and he was terrified to observe the entry of a large wolf like dog. He sprang to his feet instantly in horror, but inexplicably he felt immediately aware that the animal meant him no harm; rather, it whined beseechingly and seemed to be seeking his aid. He could see that it was a Husky or Malamute, something like a sled dog. The agitated and strangely familiar animal began to trot in circles in the middle of the room, whining and yelping. He became aware of an unpleasant taste in his mouth, and he was overcome with a dreadful dizzying apprehension. He put his fingers to his face and was stricken with terror as he realized his mouth was slick with blood.

All at once he was gripped with an irresistible desire to look out the window. He was consumed with the idea that something was coming out of the woods to the east and crossing the fields towards the old dark house. The dog began to bark madly. He felt as though he would go insane if he did not see the thing that was, he was now certain, looming across the furrows towards the house, but his feet were rooted to the spot on which he stood and he was unable to force himself to cross to the window. His feet felt warm, then hot, then as though they were on fire, and he let out a tortured shriek.

McInnes awoke with a sudden shout.

A nightmare...It had been a hideous nightmare.

He arose from the bed and went to the bathroom to gulp water. His face in the mirror appeared ghostly white, and his hands were shaking violently. There was no blood.

He laughed nervously. Good heavens. Distinctly unpleasant, he thought to himself. Evidently the unusual circumstances of this trip had placed him in a very impressionable frame of mind. No wonder; but he was a grown man. He had experienced nightmares before, and would do so again, no doubt. He hoped that he would not experience another one like that tonight, or for a long time.

_________________________

Morning had arrived. Although he did not feel particularly well rested, the night terrors receded with the shadows and the day broke fair and clear. McInnes took his breakfast and then attended to his task of inventorying the contents of the estate. By mid afternoon he had a good accounting of all the large pieces on the upper storeys. He had made a count of all the volumes in the library, and he had made notes about any of the books that suggested rarity or extraordinary value.

There remained only the task of surveying the contents of the basement. He felt distinctly ill at ease upon consideration of this duty. He puttered about for a further half hour then realized he was procrastinating, cursed himself for his foolishness, and stepped to the cellar door. The old wooden door was solid, and he noted that the door handle was mounted in an old square iron hardware, very much the charming antique. Armed with a flashlight he had located in a cupboard in the kitchen, he turned the knob and gently pushed open the cellar door.

The smell of earth, mold and dry rot rose up to his nostrils. He spied an ancient looking switch and snapped it on. A dim glow from a 40 watt bulb illuminated the raw earth floor at the foot of the stairs, and he began to step down the worn wooden staircase with a legacy of repeated passages worn onto the treads. When he reached the foot of the stairs he saw that the entire basement was one large space except for a small cell at the back of the house. The dim light thrown by the dusty old failing bulb revealed that the cellar apparently contained little of value. There were a few old garden tools in varying condition (one or two of which might have some interest to a collector) some decaying scraps of horse harness, old paint cans and the usual assortment of aging poisons and junk; not much to speak of.

Only the little cell at the back remained to investigate. McInnes moved with some half conscious reluctance away from his line of retreat up the stairs towards the little chamber. The floor seemed to slant upward at this point and he experienced a momentary sensation of vertigo. He thrust his face into the confines of the musty little enclosure at the back, bent over and shouldered his way inside.

He felt the clammy wall for a light switch and finding none snapped on the flashlight. As if aimed purposefully, its beam immediately fell on an antique looking trunk with rusty padlock. Responding to some instinct, he swung the light around the ceiling of the room and was rewarded for his effort when the flashlight beam revealed an old key on a large ring hanging from a hook on one of the solid old joists. McInnes felt unwilling to stoop here in the damp dark and fiddle with the old chest but he felt strangely compelled to investigate its contents immediately, so after spiriting the old key into his pocket, he grasped the leather handle nearest to him and began to pull the thing across the earthen floor into the larger chamber.

The rotten old leather tore into after a few pulls.

Reluctantly, brushing cobwebs aside, he positioned himself on the far side of the chest and began to push. Eager and curious, but fearing to break the old key in the lock, he climbed to the kitchen, and returned momentarily with a can of WD-40 he had noticed earlier in a cupboard. He sprayed some of the fluid into the padlock and inserted the old key into the antique bit of hardware. He turned the key gingerly and the lock fell open. With an overwhelming sense of anticipation he slowly lifted the lid of the solid old coffer; it swung over on its long unused hinges and he was again assailed by the aroma of damp and decay. He peered into the box and saw lying inside a small leather bound portfolio of apparently considerable antiquity. He lifted the curious article gently out of the old box and carried it with caution up to the kitchen. Spreading some newspaper he found on the table he carefully laid the ancient book down, and essayed a sort of curatorial triage. He tenderly brushed away lose dirt and dust and some flakes of mold and when he had cleared the debris away, he cautiously opened the fragile volume and began to examine its pages.

It was a diary.

Not of his great uncle, but evidently by an ancestor of a much earlier era. The hand penned pages revealed that its author had been one Jaques Normand Duluth Hennepin, evidently a trapper, and the date 1758 was inscribed at the beginning of the entries. He could hardly believe his eyes. Moreover, the diary was in fairly good condition despite his great uncle's bizarre choice of storage place.

_________________________

“Fine...that’s wonderful...I’m really looking forward to reading it. Yes...Uh Huh...Yes...that’s great. I’ll be down this afternoon to pick it up...thanks so much!”

McInnes placed the phone back on its cradle. Outside snow was falling gently through the pale morning light. Four months had elapsed since his discovery in the Hennepin house. He had in that time concluded terms of an agreement with the reference library for the purchase of the antique diary of his great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather on his mother’s side. The events recorded in the diary had taken place nine generations back into history; it still boggled him to consider it. One of the terms of the agreement had been that he would be provided with a transcript of the translation immediately on its completion. The diary had been subjected to a painstaking procedure by the library experts in order to preserve its integrity, before it could be translated. McInnes was beside himself with excitement to read the text; he had been unable to decipher more than a tiny amount of it before hurrying back to Toronto with his treasure. The library assistant who he had just spoken with had instructed him that the head translator had asked to be notified when he came in to pick up the transcript. Apparently she wished to have a few words with him.

_________________________

McInnes stood at the reception area for special collections. He could have stepped over to the railing and looked down into the shell like rising structure of the library, watched the people moving around, but he stood next to the desk, waiting.

Before long, she came out.

“Mr. McInnes?” She extended a slim, elegant hand.

“I’m Vera Collins. I’m very pleased to meet you. We haven’t spoken before now...As you know, everyone here is absolutely delighted about the purchase...it’s...very exciting”

She seemed to be choosing her words carefully. He noticed she wore a curious expression. She slid a large Manila envelope across the desk to him.

“Here is your copy of the transcript...I wonder if perhaps you’d like to step in here for a moment?”

She indicated a closed reading room back of the desk. They entered the glassed in chamber and she closed the door. The busy hum of the library was cancelled and the air was heavy with silence.

“I’m very pleased...” he started to say, and checked himself. His voice was too loud.

“Please sit down Mr. McInnes. I haven’t had the opportunity to speak to you firsthand about this remarkable find...You had no idea that it was in your uncle’s possession when you found it, is that right? She seemed pained. There was a look of urgency on her face.

“That’s right Ms. Collins...I didn’t know my great uncle at all, really...”

“And no one in your family had ever spoken of it?” She seemed incredulous. He nodded

“That’s right...is there something wrong, Ms. Collins?”

She hesitated, She seemed about to say something, then apparently thought better of it.

“Your ancestor was born in Normandy in 1732, we know he arrived in Canada in 1748...Mr. McInnes, we found a document inside relating to the text...composed by Jaques Hennepin's wife. We know that he had a wife and six year old son at the time the diary was made. They were living with his brother’s family in Acadia...I think that you should read the diary, and then read the supplementary document...”

He started to say something, but she cut him off

I...I must go now. Thank you Mr. McInnes...”

She stoop up, smoothed her grey wool skirt and shook his hand briskly, and was out the door and gone before he could react to her odd behaviour.

_________________________

Evening. A cup of hot Earl Grey. Outside a bitter November wind howled, but in here it could only be heard faintly. The other errands of the day disposed of, McInnes finally sat in his study with the transcript, the room darkened but with a good reading light focused over the desk. With eager fingers, he opened the envelope containing the transcript. Another slightly smaller envelope fell onto the desk. It bore a marking identifying it as the supplementary material by Hennepin's wife that the head translator had spoken of. He was about to open it when he remembered her instructions. He placed it back on the desk.

He began to read.

The Diary of Jaqués Normand Duluthe Hennepin begun 12 October, the Year of Our Lord 1758

October 12
My Dear Madelaine: I found this little volume yesterday in my stores and remembered that I wanted to make a record of my sojourn for you...better late than never...when I present this diary to you we will be wealthy with the profits of this my present expedition. Our little Georges will want for nothing upon my return. Already I have reaped a good harvest of furs. My trap lines yield bountifully still and I will continue my efforts for a while yet. Before too much longer we shall be together again. The dogs are always hungry. The air is cold and sharp, and everywhere the colours of autumn make a beautiful display.

October 13
Today I took a beautiful fox and several beaver pelts. All is well. we shall be rich dear one. Perhaps the fox will be for you, love

October 14
Fortune did not smile so well upon me today my love.

October 15
A party of Ojibway came by the cabin today. They advised me to break camp and head for the winter hunting grounds. I traded with them a little. They gave me beaver in return for powder, ball and glass beads. A good supplement to my takings of the day.

October 17
A wonderful day, dearest. Many beaver and muskrat, and some otter. I shot a bear and have skinned him. Another few days and I will leave the cabin to return to you and Georges...

October 19
Awoke yesterday to find the cabin snowed in completely. It has been snowing hard for two days. A surprise early season storm. I fear conditions will make it impossible to leave the cabin as I had planned. I have taken the decision to winter in the cabin, or wait for a thaw that will allow me to travel safely. I have taken stock and should have plenty to last the duration of the season. I have an ample supply of powder and ammunition, a good deal of pemmican, and some salt fish. I have a sack of flour and lard. I even have some chocolate, various other sundries, I will be fine with what I can hunt and I have my auger to fish through the ice. As you know I have wintered in the cabin before. It is secure...

McInnes read on. A number of entries followed detailing his efforts to dismantle his trap lines in the snow, and his efforts to make a toboggan using components from the drag sledge he was equipped with, and to which he would have harnessed his two huskies. Another entry described his successful efforts to fashion snowshoes. It was clear form the tone of the entries that Hennepin was in a dangerous situation, and in full survival mode.

October 28
Weather conditions are worsening. The snow is much deeper now, and everything is frozen solid. I fear there will be no early thaw. Perhaps in December. Maybe we shall celebrate Christmas together, dearest. I am a little leaner. The dogs don’t appreciate their scanty ration. When I shoot something they will have a little more to eat.

November 2
Tomorrow I will make a foray in search of game with the dogs. I feel out of sorts today...

November 3
Madelaine. dearest Madelaine...I can scarcely describe what happened today... I took the dogs out and we were many miles from the cabin. We were attempting to get a caribou. A terrible storm developed and I became disoriented...The wind was screaming and I couldn’t see more than fifty paces ahead. Then something uncanny...the dogs began to bark like they had taken leave of their senses...Something possessed me...a sort of shrinking terror...I felt as though I would go mad...I had a feeling of hideous dread...something evil...

Then I saw...he appeared in front of me, not more than fifty paces away...just at the limits of visibility. He looked like a man but it can’t have been. He was naked from the waist up....the skin was like...leather...hair long, to the waist and lank, oily. The arms dangled down almost to the ground it seemed and claws...talons. The creature was loping past. It stopped and turned.

For a long moment the hideous creature turned to gape at me...Its horrible mouth was ringed with fangs. I was so terrified I thought I should drop dead upon the ground. One of the dogs, the good old girl, Isabelle, broke traces and rushed at the creature. It turned to her and fixed her with a baleful stare...she just...dropped...as though she had been shot...poor old girl. The general was whining in terror.

Then the thing...the creature...Ah God in his heaven, blessed Madelaine I am trembling as I write this...the thing glared at me and a loathsome expression broke over the accident of a face...as if it were mocking me...dear God...then, oh most horrible...it turned away and went rapidly with an unholy leaping...bounding... nothing human could move that way...

but oh Madelaine...this was perhaps the worst...when it was gone from my sight...the thing made a sound...so hideous...I think that I should have been able to stand it if it were a howl... It was a cackling noise; fearsomely loud...like some perverse imitation of a human utterance..dear God have mercy on me...like a nightmare...

when I regained the power of movement I went to Isabelle with tears streaming from my eyes...she was...shrunken...wasted...like a husk...oh, the ghastly look in the wretched animals eyes. The general and I tried to bury her, but we couldn’t get through the ice...I have burned her...better that way...what kind of abomination was it that I saw? the horror of it...

November 4
I am losing my mind. It knows where we are. I have shot the general...a mercy for him...I am afraid to go outside...

November 5
God has forsaken me. I have barricaded the door. I hear the awful creatures mockery...that cursed cackling. Sometimes near, sometime far...sometimes he scrapes on the door as I lie on the hearth. He is circling the cabin...

(The head translator had recorded that there were a few entries here that were unintelligible. After this the entries were undated.)

I am praying every moment. Dear God have mercy on my soul...I know what the foul thing is...when the natives spoke of him we always laughed at their childish superstitions...but it wasn’t just a story to frighten their little ones...Heaven help me...the natives call him the Wendigo...he’s coming for me even now...


I have removed my clothes. My feet... they are burning. I will open the door to him. Curse the foul demon...Let us embrace...

God forgive me...

McInnes sat for a moment. He reached for the other envelope and opened it. The transcription was short;

This diary of my late husband was brought to me by a party of Ojibway in the late spring of 1759. It was found by them at the trapping cabin he used on the north shore of Lake Superior. They reported to me that they found no trace of my husband, only the diary and his supplies, nothing more. They presented me also with a rich store of furs he had accumulated. His whereabouts remain unknown and his ultimate fate undiscovered. I presume him dead.

Madelaine Hennepin-Spring 1759.

SNOW DAY

By John Hood


Richard stood at the window, looking out at the blowing snow. He was always fascinated by the kind of pale wan light that was now weakly illuminating the room. Conditions outside were approaching white-out, and the windswept snow obscured his view of the garden any further than Max’s orange Ride-em tractor, which stood out against the whitish grey world outside, already half buried.

It was only about five feet from the door.

He checked the little digital alarm clock. 11:27. Fucking 11:27. It could go on like this all day. He could feel the familiar creep of depression, that sinking feeling that often led eventually to a state of mind where taking action or decision making became seriously problematic. He thought of days where he had really struggled with decisions as apparently uncomplicated as “should I make breakfast?” He recalled with a sense of serio-comic horror standing for what seemed like fourty-five minutes in the middle of the room, trying to decide if he should move.

It hadn’t always been like that. His mind drifted back and a picture formed over the study in shades of white and grey outside, of Dolores around the time when they had first met.

Dolores laughing.

God she was pretty. Those eyes flashing and those full lips. Dolores had hair the colour of amber and it shone that way. In those days she liked to wear fairly intense shades of red lipstick. She never looked cheap or brazen, but dammit she was sexy.

A real knockout.
(What had she ever seen in him?)

The image broadens. Dolores is coming out of the reference library and meeting him. She has picked out a book for him. She hands it to him.

“This is right up your street” she is saying. He could hear her voice saying this, but sounding oddly hollow, as if it were coming through a long paper tube, like the kind you’re left with after you finish a roll of Christmas gift wrap. The cadence of the moaning wind outside provided a kind of audio counterpoint.
He notices how lovely her red hair looks against the midsummer green of the campus lawn. She is throwing her head back flirtatiously and sort of half laughing, half chuckling in her throat the way she does, and throwing a sudden right at his gut while she hands him the book with her left.

“Cut it out” He heard himself saying. He mouthed the words.

He looks at the book she has handed him. It is “The Cat in the Hat” by Dr. Suess.
Dissolve. The scene shifts. They are in an Irish pub near the campus, called Fiona’s. It is cozy. She is drinking a pint of some amber fluid.

(Beer?)

It reminds him of the colour of her hair, and he is again struck by how lovely it looks against the rich green fabric of the booth seats. She is really laughing hard now. She has her eyes squeezed shut. She is rocking forward clutching her head and her midsection, just shaking with laughter.

(What were they laughing at, in particular, that was so goddam funny?)

He is experiencing a wave of pure unalloyed desire for her, wanting her so bad he can taste it; desire, and a flooding sense of overwhelming love. He is feeling the urge to take her in his arms and not let her go, to enfold her in his world and to love her as much as he possibly can. He takes a long pull at his pint and his hands are shaking just a little, but not enough for her to notice, and then she is gazing into his eyes and her expression is happy and playful and kind…

Cut. Now it is dark and they are outside together. He is kissing her very passionately on the mouth, and she is no longer laughing. Her eyes are closed and she has a look of urgency and desire on her face. They hold each other tenderly and the embrace is maddeningly exciting.

___________________


An irritating syncopated clanking noise jarred Richard from his daydream. The wind had begun to pick up the lid of the mail box and drop it down again with a series of intermittent metallic sounds. He shook his head, struggling to regain his senses.

(Damn. Fuck it. I’m not gonna do this.)
There were tears welling in his eyes.
(I am not going to fucking do this shit.)

He wiped his face and laughed at himself. So fucking pathetic.

Dolores was enormously attractive and charismatic, but these qualities concealed a terrifying darkness that was the greater part of who she was. He hadn’t consciously accepted this aspect of her personality until they had been married for almost two years. Some of his friends, and his sister, liked to contend that she changed after Max was born, but in retrospect Richard could see that he had inklings of her dark side well before that. In his heart he knew it was there, a frightening reality, but he had pushed this awareness away from his consciousness. He had wanted so badly to love her that he couldn’t or wouldn’t credit his own instincts.

Inklings.

Like the time before they were married when he had come home from the office to pick something up and found her drunk in the apartment in the middle of the day. She claimed that an old friend had surprised her with a visit and they had got talking over beers just for the hell of it. He had made a crack about drinking early and she turned on him with a startling rage, shouting that he should mind his own fucking business. He hadn’t meant anything, was just teasing her and she totally lost it. But she composed herself immediately and the moment passed away so quickly it was easy for him to bury it.

It seemed just as easy to convince himself that they were living the dream, that everything was swell, as they went about preparing for Max’s arrival. She chuckled and beamed as they shopped for baby stuff and they laughed together as they refinished the tiny bedroom next to their own. He remembered pulling her down onto the floor amidst rollers and paint trays and kissing her, fondling her swelling tummy and her delight and wonder as she placed his hand over the spot where the baby was kicking.

And yet, later that week he had been talking to one of the girls from the office who had called with some query. Dolores flew into a rage and screamed that he was probably fucking her. This caught him like a hard punch. It seemed so out of the blue. Not only because he wasn’t fucking anybody except his young wife who he loved deeply (well, not so much fucking now that she was visibly pregnant), but because she had never given him any reason to think her jealous or possessive (or violent) before that moment.

By the time Max was six months old, Richard was beginning to realize that all was not as it should be. He figured it was post partum depression. He would come home from the office to find her sullen and often drunk, poor little Max crying and neglected. She would seem to be fine at one moment and in the next she would be in the grip of something dark and dreadful. Her face would change as if she was someone else, and she would level hysterical accusations of infidelity or homosexuality at him. When he protested or tried to soothe her, she would mock his tone of voice and then laugh in a way that chilled him to the core.

Her pleasant moods became increasingly rare.

Before long it seemed as though the old Dolores had been replaced by a bitter, vulgar bitch who was constantly angry and insanely jealous. He had kept hoping that it was a passing thing; that she was being affected by her post pregnancy body chemistry, but as things grew steadily worse he became concerned for his son’s well being. He took two weeks from work with the intention of getting medical attention for Dolores and keeping an eye on his infant son.

At the suggestion that she visit her doctor she became violently angry, and categorically refused to co-operate. That was the first time she struck him, slapping him so hard in the face that he lost his balance and fell hard. The next week was sharply defined in his memory as a string of violent episodes, screaming and drunken bouts of verbal abuse where she would make hideous suggestions of incest or other foul sexual misconduct. Her contempt for him was paired with a maniacal jealousy of any one or any thing that took his time or attention away from her for even a moment.

At the intervention she screamed and swore that it was a plot (which in a way it was) and that they could all go to hell. She raged as they took her out the front door under restraint, to a waiting ambulance which was to take Dolores to the Monarch Street mental health facility.

Dolores had gone to her temporary new home; they had all said that. Part of him hoped it would be so, but another part of him somehow knew that the woman he had fallen in love with was gone never to return and that for reasons he could not begin to fathom someone else, someone terrifying, had taken her place.

____________________


“As far as we know now, there’s nothing physically wrong with her, Mr. Adamson”

“What do you mean ‘as far as you know now’, Doc?” said Richard.

“Well, there are a number of tests still to be performed, but from what we’ve seen so far it’s a bit of a mystery. We haven’t seen any evidence of the kind of chemical imbalances that we usually associate with this sort of sudden, violent personality change...” Doctor Sifton stood up and walked to the window and looked out at the softly falling snow with his hands knitted behind his back.

“A bit of a mystery?” Richard enquired, a note of incredulity rising in his voice.

The doctor turned to face him, wearing a concerned and sympathetic expression.

“I’m sorry Mr. Adamson, I realize my use of that phrase doesn’t inspire confidence, but frankly it reflects the situation. We’ve ruled out a tumour definitively, and that leaves us with a number of diagnoses that are typical under these circumstances, but as I say, apart from a few tests still to be performed we’ve more or less exhausted the customary range of possibilities. You’ve told us you had no knowledge of Dolores receiving a blow on the head…in any case a trauma sufficiently severe to produce manifestations of this kind would leave physical evidence…a lesion, or scarring, and there is none that we can detect.”

”So you’re saying you don’t have a clue what’s going on with her?

“I’m saying that we have pretty much run through the standard range of diagnostic assumptions in cases like Dolores’s, and that we have to start looking at other possibilities that fall outside the range of what we consider to be usual…Your wife wasn’t using drugs as far as you know, Mr. Adamson?”

“No, she didn’t even smoke pot… she didn’t use drugs, Doctor, but what the hell could that have to do with her condition? You’ve seen what she’s like. I know a lot of people who take all kinds of drugs and they never scream like hell and throw things!”

“Well, it could account for a lot, Richard, but I’m inclined to agree. I’m inclined to rule out drug use as a factor because you would have seen evidence of it in your home, and I have faith that you’re being honest with me Mr. Adamson, aren’t you? Because your honesty is required if we're to help your wife.”

“Sure I am, Doc, it just seems absurd. I want you to help her. My little boy needs her” Richard had the desperate feeling. Trying to hold off on the tears.

“Yes of, course, Mr. Adamson. We’re going to continue doing everything we can for her” Doctor Sifton crossed the floor deliberately and reseated himself. His hands came to rest on a number of papers on the desktop, which he pushed gently across towards Richard.

“And in order to do so, we require some…uuhh…some legal permissions from you. Have you sought counsel in regard to this matter, Mr. Adamson?”

“Yes, Doctor…my lawyer has explained everything to me”

“So you understand that in order for us to keep her here legally and continue to treat her we require a…reclassification of her status with us?”

“Yes, I understand that…”

“Very well, then Mr. Adamson, just a moment” The Doctor pressed his intercom button.
“Miss Cordell, will you come in here for a moment please?” The secretary entered the office.

“Miss Cordell, if you’d be so kind, I require you to act as a witness while Mr. Adamson signs these documents.” Richard looked up at the attractive young nurse with a beseeching look on his face. She smiled agreeably. Her hair was a lovely shade of red.

“Certainly, Doctor Sifton.” Richard began to affix his signature to the documents in several places which the Doctor indicated. His hands shook slightly as he did so, but he didn’t think the Doctor or Miss Cordell noticed. When he was finished, the Doctor signed the documents in the places indicated for the presiding physician, and Miss Cordell signed in her capacity as witness.

“It’s quite customary, Mr. Adamson” she said to Richard.

“I frequently act as witness for Doctor Sifton.” This information did little to assuage the feeling of anguish that was gnawing at Richard as he committed his wife. The tempo of the snow falling outside the office window had picked up, and the room had darkened perceptibly as the afternoon wore on. A keening wind had risen and begun to howl around the building.

“Well, for the moment, that’s all there is to be done.” Said Doctor Sifton with some finality as Miss Cordell turned and exited the room. He stood up and extended his hand towards Richard, whose attention was fixed on the grayish white blur of blowing snow outside the office window. There was a rather long moment before Richard realized this gesture signaled the end of the interview. The Doctor’s wristwatch gleamed in the darkening room.

“Yes, that’s all for moment” said Richard and instantly felt the phrase sounded like an idiotic parroting of the Doctor’s speech. He had a sudden genuinely hideous flash of his body with a huge parrot’s head squawking this foolish utterance and he quickly stifled the impulse to laugh out loud. He stood up and grasped the Doctor’s hand, shook it.

“We’ll contact you as soon as we have anything significant, Mr. Adamson. Try to rest, when you can. Are you sleeping well? Do you need something for that?
Richard realized he meant to offer a prescription for sedatives. He shook his head.

“No thank you, Doc, that’s quite alright…I’m sleeping fine, thanks.” He lied. He couldn’t remember the last time he has passed a satisfactory nights sleep. And the nightmares, holy shit; the nightmares he so frequently experienced were so goddamn disturbing as to be entertaining in a horrible kind of way. But he felt sedated enough for the most part. Not rested, but sedated.

“Thanks very much, Doctor Sifton…I’ll see you next time.”

“Yes, and anytime you wish to contact me you may do so at this number.” He handed Richard a card from the holder on the desktop. Richard placed it into his wallet next to an identical one that was already in there. He shook hands with the doctor again and turned to leave the office, struggling with his coat and gloves as he went.

“Good night, Mr. Adamson.” Said Miss Cordell as he passed through the outer office. She was smiling agreeably.

“Good Night” he said and pulled the door shut. The hallway was empty. His footsteps echoed off the walls as he walked down the dim hall, the light from the lamps overhead shining on the highly polished surface of the floor, which had a diamond terrazzo pattern. Back down the hallway in the other direction from which he had come, behind a locked security door there was a ward. He could hear the sound of inmates babbling, laughing…screaming.

Somewhere back in there was Dolores. Was she screaming or laughing? He didn’t know, but this question, posed in his brain, made him feel suddenly as if he himself were a candidate for a lengthy stay at this lovely little resort. He nodded to a black janitor in green work fatigues who polished the long hallway with one of those curiously undulating buffing machines.

He was conscious of the fact that he was quickening his pace as he neared the doors, the red light of the exit sign drawing him like a beacon. He had the sense that the film he was in had been slightly speeded up as he pushed through the doors and thrust his chest out into the welcoming bitter cold of the evening, like a runner sprinting for the finish line and breaking it with his hands upraised in triumph.

There was a stop for the 400 car right out side the main entrance to the hospital

(asylum?)

He took his place in a small queue along with a couple of other rather forlorn looking transit riders. As he waited in the stinging wind for the streetcar to arrive, a curious figure came ambling down the street. He could be heard before he was clearly seen; he was shouting something rhythmically in a cheerful tone of voice.

“Judgment be comin’ judgment be near…Death be coming soon to us all”

The man made this proclamation in a sing-song happy tone that seemed somehow at odds with the thrust of his message. He ran across the street suddenly causing a car to skid slightly as it applied its brakes to avoid him.

“Christ…I guess they let him out a little early” thought Richard, and then regretted his lack of compassion. Anyway, for all he knew the guy was neither mentally ill, but actually on to something. He relaxed his shoulder blades as the guy disappeared down the street.

The headlamps of the 400 car appeared in the gathering darkness. The car glided to a halt and the doors shuddered and swung upon. The little group began to file up the steps into the embryonic warmth of the streetcar. Richard boarded last and moved down the length of the car, his shoes making smacking noises on the wet rubber lined floor. He collapsed into a seat, suddenly fatigued, and rested his head on the cold foggy window glass. Outside, the snow flew and the lights of the bars and stores along Monarch Street threw pale washes of colour through the car window. He allowed to strobe effect of the street lamps to hypnotize him.

____________________


The sharp whine of metal on metal as the streetcar turned from Monarch onto Parkview brought him back to the surface, and Richard flipped open his cell phone and punched the pre-set for his sister Alice. She had taken Max overnight.

“Hi Ali…no, I’m on the streetcar…No…No, they didn’t really have anything definite to tell me. They said she doesn’t have a brain tumour. Well, yes, that’s good of course. Yah very tired. How’s Max? Cheerios? Sure…sure…well, do you think that it would be O.K.? For another day or two? I know…he loves Lisa so much. They had fun? That’s great. Give him a big hug for me…tell him Daddy loves him. Yah. Yes. Thanks Alice, I’ll call you tomorrow”

Richard put the phone back in his coat pocket as they ghosted into Parkview station. He got off the car. He could either wait for the 52 bus or leave the station and walk home. Despite a feeling of utter exhaustion, he opted for the latter and breasted the cold, leaving the station and headed east towards the Forthton Bridge.
The wind howled up from the valley as he crossed the bridge. It was turning into a real blow again. He doubled forward and staggered across to the relative shelter of the other side and started south on Parkview towards his house. At the corner of Parkside east and Forthton he ducked into the Master Donut to grab a hot coffee. There was a TV on the wall and several of the coffee shop types were watching a weather report detailing the ongoing storm with some interest.

“You like a Coffee, Mr.?” The Asian woman behind the counter asked. He nodded as he stamped and brushed snow of his coat.

“Uhm, Yah, medium Regular, O.K.” he replied

“You cold? It very cold! Big storm coming, Yah?” she grinned.

“Looks like it’s already here!” he said. She nodded, smiling, and glanced at the TV.

“One dollar fourty”.

He put coins on the counter and took the hot beverage. He was beginning to sip from it when a murmur from the crew watching the TV caught his attention. He looked up at the screen. The phrase “News Bulletin” was rolling across the screen repeatedly below the image of the announcer.

“…police are searching tonight for the three inmates who escaped several hours ago from the Monarch Street Mental Health Facility. Apparently the absence of the three was not detected until this evening during a room check. Police are as yet uncertain how the three eluded staff members, but stress that they were not in the maximum security wing and were not considered to be dangerous to others. Citizens are nevertheless requested to avoid approaching the three but in the event of sighting any of the escapees to alert the nearest police division and the Monarch Street Mental Health Facility…”

Richard didn’t hear whatever was left of the bulletin. His attention was riveted by the pictures of the three closely shorn escapees; Dolores, unmistakable despite her lack of makeup and military style buzz cut was one of them!

The sudden ring of his cell phone startled him so much that he dropped his coffee, splashing his coat and shoes with the hot liquid. The TV watchers turned to look at him, and they counter lady scowled and went for a mop. He grabbed for his cell and answered it. It was Alice.

“My God, I know…I just saw it! The donut shop…just up the street. I don’t know! How the hell should I know? No, I don’t believe it! I don’t know…I’m going home…I’ll call you from there. I know, me too…I’ll talk to you in a bit.”

Richard headed for the door, ignoring the donut lady’s offer of another coffee. He jogged the half block to Steven Street as quickly as the buffeting winds and slick footing would allow and turned west. His place was 52 Steven, about two hundred yards from the corner and he covered the distance quickly. His mind was racing as he imagined Dolores wandering the streets in her unstable mental condition.

(What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck)

He reached the darkened front porch of his home at #52 and suddenly he stopped. His immediate reaction of concern for his troubled wife had been supplanted by a different sensation, a creeping sense of dread.

The house was dark and still.

He stood for a moment on the bottom step. His instincts began to tick softly like a hot engine cooling. Something wasn’t right, but he couldn’t see immediately what it was. Now cautious, he climbed the front steps slowly and quietly, and then stopped and listened for a few seconds. He heard his own heart pounding as he looked to the right and left of the doorway. Everything seemed to be as it should, the broom standing in its customary position, Max’s orange ride-em tractor in its usual spot on the porch. He took his key from his coat pocket and pushed it into the lock. The sound of the key engaging the tumblers seemed horribly loud.

He twisted the key in the lock and gently swung the door open into the darkened front room.

Stepping gingerly inside, not quite yet understanding in the conscious part of his mind the reason for the total apprehension he was experiencing, he pushed the door closed and turned the deadbolt. He felt in the dark for the light switch and flipped it on, feeling a momentary sense of reassurance. He turned and stood for a second with his back to the door, and his eyes, adjusting to the light, caught a gleam of light from a small shiny object on the counter that separated the living room from the eat in kitchen.

He crossed the floor silently, holding his breath and focused on the shiny little cylinder. He stood with his back to the staircase facing the still darkened kitchen, and picked up the little metallic object.

It was a lipstick.

(Max Factor.)

Suddenly, he understood. Max’s tractor. He reached slowly for the phone but wasn’t surprised to hear there was no dial tone. He also was not surprised to hear the soft padding of feet coming down the carpeted stairway behind him. The phrase the TV announcer had used during the bulletin danced through his mind as he turned slowly, and looked up at the figure descending the staircase, the figure with another gleaming metallic object in her left hand.

“…were not considered to be dangerous to others…”