Journey, p.7
Journey, page 7
Unfortunately, their bodies were hosts to the annelids. After three months they were infested. There were worms dangling and crying from their noses and ears and eyes and mouths. Whenever they moved worms dropped from them. And, when the pain of being eaten alive became unbearable and they were confined to their beds, the worms infested their bedsheets. The noise the worms made was itself agonizing, like the cries of schoolchildren heard from a distance.
After six months, they were both dead. Their corpses were white as marble, but their hands and feet were ash grey. The hair on their bodies was brittle as desiccated pine needles. The nails had fallen from their fingers and toes, and their skin was light as paper. When the pathologists cut into them, millions of worms, exposed to the light, began to cry out.
The bodies of the Thomases were taken out and burned.
The worms themselves also died out. They died when exhumed. And, when the reconstruction of the cemetery was completed they were annihilated, or seemed to be, and it was not possible to conduct any further experiments.
5.
On the eleventh of January this year, all of the windows in the old firehall on Sunnyside cracked. It was a cold and unusually dry night; so dry it was thought the dryness itself had cracked the windows. There were delicate threads of glass, some as long and thin as transparent hairs, scattered over the floor inside the hall. The shards were swept up with hard-bristle brooms, and a dance scheduled for the following night went on as planned.
Martine Beauchamp and her friends attended the dance together, six fourteen-year-old girls accompanied by Madame Florence Gru, Martine’s grandmother. The heat inside the firehall had been turned up to compensate for the cracked windows, so the air in the dance hall was as dry as straw in a drought. The girls took up positions against one of the walls. At the opposite end of the room, the young men stood together.
An older man, perhaps twenty years old, with light-blue eyes and extremely white skin, asked Martine to dance. He asked politely, and Martine’s grandmother gave her permission.
—Mais oui, said Madame Gru. On voit qu’il est cultivé.
And the two of them danced all night, finding that they had much to talk about.
The man’s only indiscretion came when they were about to part for the evening. He put two of his fingers into Martine’s mouth and pressed on her tongue. But Mme. Gru was willing to believe that this had been accidental, or else a new custom with the well-bred. Martine was even more surprised than her grandmother, but not unpleasantly. His fingers had been dry as paper, and her tongue had stuck to them lightly.
The following week there was another dance at the firehall. Martine and her friends went eagerly, dragging Madame Gru with them. And this night was identical to the first. When Mr. Highsmith put up his two fingers to touch her, Martine smiled and opened her mouth slightly. He said good night after they had danced and laughed for hours.
It was on the way home from the dance, as she and her friends talked of everything but Mr. Highsmith, about whom she was too excited to speak, that Martine realized she had forgotten her gloves. The girls and Mme. Gru had already reached the bank of the river. The river was not completely frozen. Near its centre a smooth, black strand of water flowed in the ice and snow. The moon was white in the cloudless sky, and it was as she looked down at her hands that Martine saw that she had forgotten her gloves. Asking her friends to take her grandmother home, she walked back to the firehall alone.
As she neared the building, Martine saw Mr. Highsmith leave. He walked away from her, towards Bank Street, and at the corner he turned towards the canal. Martine followed him, anxious to say good night again, but instead of walking along Echo Drive, Mr. Highsmith cut across the snow-covered driveway and walked to the back of the monastery.
Behind the monastery was a large, stone replica of a church, the size of a small cottage. It had been built to keep the bodies of priests who died. Their remains lay on a bier for two days before burial so that the confrères of the dead could pay their final respects. Mr. Highsmith entered the building directly, and by the time Martine looked in at the window to see what he was doing, Mr. Highsmith had already stripped Father Alfred Bertrand’s corpse of its shroud and he had begun to eat the priest’s body.
Martine put her hand to the window to support herself, and when she did, the window creaked dryly and ice fell around her. Mr. Highsmith looked up, but by then she was already running. The snow on the monastery ground seemed deeper and colder and almost impassable.
In the days that followed, Martine avoided company. She told no one what she had seen. To her mother and her grandmother she seemed to be pining for her young man. They encouraged her to go out, and when, a month later, there was a community dance at the firehall, they insisted she attend.
—Vas-y, ma chère, said her mother smiling, et sans chaperon.
—Oui, said Mme. Gru, ce monsieur Highsmith est la politesse même.
Her friends teased her and tried to encourage her, but she hid in their midst until they came to the hall.
Mr. Highsmith approached her immediately, and he was so friendly, Martine believed he had not seen her or heard her at the monastery. As they walked to the dance floor, he took her missing gloves from his suit pocket.
—You must have forgotten these, he said.
—Yes, thank you, Martine answered.
—The last time we saw each other was some time ago, said Mr. Highsmith.
—Yes, said Martine.
—You followed me to the chapel.
—No.
—What was I doing there?
—I don’t know.
Mr. Highsmith put up his two fingers and forced them into her mouth.
—Very well, he said. When you return home tonight you will find your grandmother dead.
And then they danced. Mr. Highsmith held her so close she could not move, and to the people around them they seemed happy. At the end of the night, when she returned home, Martine found her grandmother dead.
In Martine’s bedroom there is a window that looks out on a garden, and beyond the garden, there is a curtain of pine trees. As she looked out the window several weeks later, when her grandmother had been buried for some time, she saw Mr. Highsmith come through the trees. He called out to her.
—How’s your memory, my dear? Did you see me in the chapel that night?
—No, Martine answered.
—Did you see what I was doing?
—No.
—Tut tut, he said. Your mother is dead before sunrise.
She moved away from the window, and she began to cry, but in the morning her mother was dead.
Some time after her mother’s death, Mr. Highsmith knocked at her front door. Martine, alone, opened the door to him, and before she could close it, he put a foot on the threshold.
—And how is your mother? he said, smiling. I was wondering, my little bitch, did you see me in the chapel that night?
—No.
—Did you see what I was doing?
—No.
—Well, said Mr. Highsmith, time is finite. If you do not tell someone, anyone, what it was you saw that night, you will die within a week. But whoever you tell will die.
And he disappeared. And from that moment, Martine began to die slowly, feeling the life pulled out of her as if it were a strand of hair pulled through her fingers. She did not know what to do, but when the pain of dying overcame her, she threw open her bedroom window and shouted out what it was she had seen. She told everything to the garden.
That is how I heard the story.
A curse on anyone who reads this.
Paige Cooper
The Roar
When Dino gets back with the guests it’s dark and the helicopter’s chop has both dogs crying at the door. Loyola stands up from the table to pull bottles from the fridge. The girl on the couch opens her eyes.
“You can go to bed,” Loyola offers.
The girl, hair greased around her face, stays put. Dino brought her home last night.
Loyola follows the dogs out the side door. They fear the rotors about the same as they fear the vacuum: they hackle and moan at the asphalt’s edge while the hired hands dart under the blades. Stein unropes a pair of chamois from the game cage. Heads loll and long black devil horns scrape the paint’s gloss. He carries each in his arms into the hangar’s white light, their beards dripping over his elbow. Inside, Riley’s already hooked a tahr buck over the drain. The guests, disembarked, look on. The bird’s still giving off a swell of fervid heat. Dino won’t winch it the thirty feet into the hangar until season’s end. He’s clambering around inside it collecting firearms and ammunition, headset collaring his neck.
“You should’ve seen the stag,” says the man who paid. He takes a bottle off Loyola’s tray.
“Twelve-pointer,” says his brother. “Broadsided him on a cliff.”
“Prehistoric,” says the wife. Her face is lit and lined by the fluorescents. Upon arrival, she’d exclaimed devoutly through the tour of the main lodge, the cabins, the green rocky pool, every glance out over the valley bowl. Down the trail, she admired the old barn’s rack and ruin. Now she stands on the hangar’s stained cement with sweat on her lip and navy mascara freckling the top of her cheekbone. She flashes wide eyes at Loyola. “Just breathtaking,” she says, “All those creatures out there.”
“Took a shot, anyway,” the man says. “Went down most of that bluff on his feet. Spent an hour tracking him.”
“Who knows,” says the brother.
“Bad luck,” says Loyola.
“We couldn’t get down to the bottom,” says the wife. “The cliff.”
“Couldn’t see a fucking thing.” The man’s shrivelled smirk. That red stag’s an easy twelve hundred pounds. Antlers thick as ankles. Loyola remembers him. She’s not a small woman, but if she stood at his feet and embraced his neck she wouldn’t reach his withers. Her fingertips spread wouldn’t span the tines of his crown. No trophy for a shot like that, all the glory’s in the fall.
Dino blinks all the bird’s little lights off, and carries an armful of slick black branches to the cage at the back of the hangar. He doesn’t look at her as he passes. He replaces each rifle into its cradle, slides drawers around, bolts the lock.
Riley’s already got the tahr half-naked, hide draping his knees. The paying man wants to do the chamois, so Dino hands him a skinner. Forelegs snap wet like live wood at the ankle. The pelts peel bloodlessly. Fat greases their hands. Loyola twists her own bottle.
“Never seen deer so huge,” says the wife. This wife, who spent four hours in a helicopter with three men and an arsenal. She’s had twenty years of this. She married a man who took her to the shooting range on their first date. She likes the soft muzzles so much she wants them in her home: clear eyes overlooking dark wood and grey slate.
“Biggest in the world,” Loyola agrees around her bottle’s lip. Her teeth, set in the ridges of the glass. The tray cocked against her right hip.
Out in the yard, the dogs writhe around each other at the lit periphery. They aren’t begging. Dino instructs the tourists without instructing them. They’re experienced. They know how to slice a body hung from the anklebones so the offal balloons from the incision like a fawn’s head. The organs slide over themselves to the cement. The drain runs. Dino has the discreet authority of a butler, the woolly presence of an uncle, and the guests don’t notice his corrections. Riley finds the stereo and smudges a button with a finger to clatter the steel walls with guitar noise.
The wife is watching close enough that when the men laugh she laughs. Loyola hovers back in the open air. She’ll have to get more beer. A smoky breeze sneaks down through the scrub pines from the peaks. The girl’s emerged from the lodge. She steps like she’s passing through an herb garden in those battered boots Dino brought her home in. Her hair might be alive. When she got out of the jeep she was wrapped in a scabby fur. Dino said, “You don’t want this,” and peeled it from her shoulders as she twisted away. She pauses out past the dogs and their switching shadows. The hooked game jerk and spin under the lights. The heads hacksawed, lined up on the tool gurney like they might want to watch. The girl cranes.
Loyola crosses the yard, tray dangling, and the girl lets her approach. Loyola does not touch the bare shoulders as she says, “Go to bed. Honestly.”
“Don’t you hunt elk?”
“Whatever the license is for.”
“That’s what they wanted, though, right?”
“Bad shot,” says Loyola.
The room they installed her in last night is just a few knocks down from Loyola’s own door. These are extra rooms, upstairs, barely used because the guests all prefer the privacy of the cabins. There’s a black iron queen with a blue quilt and a slit-eyed bobcat treed over the mantel. Last night Loyola gave the girl a nightgown, a toothbrush, and pointed out the white towels in the en suite. This morning, when she found the girl in the kitchen before dawn, she handed over spare clothes.
The quilt is rumpled in circles as if one of the dogs napped in the centre of the compass rose. The girl goes straight to the window. In the white light of the hangar’s mouth, the men stand like fangs.
* * *
—
Dino drives the guests out the next morning, the jeep loaded with racks and meat. Loyola finds the wife’s shampoo and conditioner in the first cabin’s steam shower. They smell like flowers she doesn’t recognize, invasive exotics, but they’re not so expensive the woman will call and ask for them to be mailed. Loyola can take them back to her room. They’re for redheads and she’s redhaired, though not like the wife with her layers and shades.
She sprays every surface with disinfectant. They left condom wrappers on the bedside table, the wastebasket a foot away. The paying man was smiling as she refilled his coffee four times this morning, and as he thanked her for her hospitality in the drive. She drags the bed sheets off the mattress, has to crawl across the king’s width to pluck the fitted corners up. His smell hides in the linen like a body in a blind. Chemical cedar. The wife’s copper filaments wire the pillowcases like the remains of a gutted radio. Loyola does not seek out the spots where they soaked the sheets through, but still, she can smell what they left rising from the bale in her arms.
The only thing she finds in the brother’s cabin is a tip in American singles. She pockets them. This far into the season they’re still in the red, and the couple thousand from these three will splinter fast. In the lodge, she pushes the sheets into the laundry, pours bleach, and goes to the kitchen to stack half a dozen roast beef sandwiches.
Now the sun’s up, soaking the mountaintops and green-heating the trees. The helicopter gleams on its pat of asphalt. The paint scratches have been polished away. She finds Riley under the hooks in the hangar, sluicing the concrete. He’s too lazy to scrub. The air in here is cool with silt, paint, old meat. He throttles the water before taking a sandwich. He eats it with unwashed hands, the creases in his knuckles dark.
“You seen Stein?” she asks.
“Barn, maybe.”
The dogs follow the roast beef on her plate. Down the switchblade trail, dried hot with rusted juniper and pinesap, to the barn. Come upon it from above and it’s a hag’s house: steep-pitched, stitches of paint on the leeside. There’s a paddock where she and Dino used to keep the horses when they ran the place by saddle. But it wasn’t a barn originally. At some point, Dino’s forebears lived inside. Dino’s been saying they should buy a few auction-block nags. He says he misses the whickering at night. But Dino thinks money shows up as soon as you’ve spent it.
She ducks into the dust-pit paddock and as she nears the unlatched doors Stein slides out.
“Morning.” He’s a skinny kid, short, the tip of a tattoo starting under his left ear. He’s not breathing right. She looks at his greasy lips and guesses where the girl is.
He takes two sandwiches, one in each hand.
She says, “Riley’s got that west gate yet.”
Stein nods as he works his snake throat. Nods and swallows. Keeps nodding, swallowing.
The doors creak and the girl joins them. Her eyes flick to the trees, the paddock corners, the sharp ears of the dogs, Loyola. She’s wearing Loyola’s dress: blue with white flowers, pearly-buttoned. Those boots, haydusted now, predictably.
“Morning,” she smiles.
Stein closes his eyes against them both, chewing.
Loyola has never seen him embarrassed. She tips the last of the sandwiches towards the girl. “Roast beef.”
The sandwich is opened like a book. The girl eats one slice of bread while looking down at the old dog, who supplicates forward on his elbows. The younger dog crouches likewise, at an hour-hand angle but just back. The girl tilts her hand, and the meat and cheese hit the ground, slick as livers in the pine needles. The girl eats the other slice of bread—margarine, lettuce. The dogs stare, arrested in half-launch. The old one’s saliva jewels the dust six inches from the meat.
Loyola scratches her forehead, sweeps crumbs from the plate. The dogs don’t blink, watching the girl’s eyes for release.
Stein swallows one last time, wipes his hands on his pockets. “That’s cruel,” he says. Then he crosses the paddock, hoofs the bluff’s hairpins up to the hangar. The girl turns her face to track him. The old dog passes a twitch to the younger one.
“Blow away in a stiff wind,” Loyola says.
“I like them like that.”
Loyola snorts.
“All wrist and ankle.” The girl rocks to her toes, swings her arms to stretch, and follows him.
