A girl was found murdered out in the woods last June. Two boys
from her school did it. They burned her body, I don't know why. I guess
to make it harder to catch them. Who does a thing like that? I unfolded
the
Times-Colonist
one morning to see the face of the murdered girl,
heavily made up, hair in an elegant bun. It was obviously a graduation
photo, something taken on a day of great importance. I hated that they'd
used that picture. That they'd taken such a precious moment and linked
it forever to her death. I guess they wanted her at her best, I can understand
that. Jesus. Sometimes it gets so exhausting, reading the news in
the mornings. I laid the paper on the table, set my coffee aside, brought
my brow down to rest against its cool print. The pages smelled faintly of
dust and ink. I was thinking of that girl. I don't know. I don't know.
Mason came in and I raised my face, smiled. He stood on his toes to
reach the cupboard with the cereal, his face straining with the effort.
I watched him get out his blue bowl and his dented spoon, pull a brown
place mat from the drawer. He's a good kid. You forget it sometimes. He
was humming to himself, some tuneless little song, drawing out the last
notes.
And then he sat down beside me, like he belonged nowhere else, and
I wanted to cry.
They ran. In a whorl of streets, alleys, doorways, they ran, and then she saw nothing not her feet not her own hand wiping the dirt from her face. Not the ugly swaddled skull of the barber in that open door. Not the glister of sweat on his arms. She gasped, the sharp edges of masonry scraping her ribboned shirt. The shush of the old man's pale cloth, the cool of Mason's hand in her own. Not her little girl. Oh her little girl. When Mason stumbled she drew him up and his shoes clattered echoing off the pavement. The old man had come to a stop.
What is it? she hissed. The galloping of her own heart. Her son's shallow breaths.
There, Lear whispered. Across the street.
Is it them? Mason asked.
Lear shook his head. I don't think so.
A figure in a long dark coat was picking his way along the sidewalk. He peered down the street both directions then disappeared into a tall apartment complex.
They'll know we're gone by now.
Do you think they'll follow us?
He frowned. I don't know. I doubt it. I guess it depends on what they were going to do.
You mean to us.
I mean to us.
Mason, she grimaced. Get up.
I'm up.
We need to keep going.
I know. She closed her eyes. She closed her eyes and thought of her daughter, buried. Thought of her plunging downward. How she must have awakened choking in blackness. A panic in her. The sharp rubble gouging her cheek and how she must have cried.
Anna Mercia?
She opened her eyes. I'm ready.
Sometimes she imagined her daughter buried alone and sometimes she imagined her with a friend. But always she saw her little girl's knees folded back, the soles of her soft feet atlasing hard a chunk of wall. Her small heart battering in its cavity of blood amid the creaking of her own flesh. The hot webbing of her fingers in the dirt.
And too sometimes she would imagine the strong hands lifting her out, into the blaring light. Away from where she had been. Where she still might be.
They saw no one else for many hours. The doors of the grocers and corner stores they passed had been broken or pried back and the windows smashed in. The old man went from shop to shop peering in and at last he stopped, gave her an anxious glance, slipped inside. He came out looking grim.
Nothing?
It's what I thought. The shelves are empty, everything's already been taken.
I'm starving, Mason said.
She put her hand on the back of his neck. But you found something.
Lear's lips whitened. No.
It is something. What is it.
Her son was rolling an iron cross-hatched bar with the toe of his shoe. Was it dead people?
Lear glanced at the boy and then at her. His grey eyes were dark.
Oh god, she murmured. That's awful. It's been four days.
He nodded and glanced at the sky as if only just noticing it. It's so quiet, he muttered.
It is.
I'm sure there are people around. We just don't see them.
They were walking again. Mason slipping easily ahead, peering into the locked cars as they passed. We shouldn't have let them take our truck, he called back to them.
No.
Or our food.
Mason. Be careful.
Her son gave her a look.
Just then Lear hissed at her and she glanced across at him.
What?
His brows drew down into a dark knot and he gestured ahead, past Mason.
A large black dog stood with its long tongue loose in its jaws, watching her son. It lifted its snout, turned, studied her and Lear.
Mason, she called sharply.
Her son stopped, peered back.
It's not alone, Lear said quietly.
She felt the skin on the back of her neck prickle. What do you mean?
I saw a different dog following us before. A yellow one.
What do they want?
He gave her a look.
She shook her head. It's only been four days, Arthur. They can't be wild already.
And what do you think they've been eating for four days?
Mason, she called again. Mason. Come here.
Her son wandered back towards her swinging the iron bar. They moved on through the empty streets and after a while she saw a second black dog join the first. The two dogs did not approach, simply moved along loose-limbed and silent in their wake.
Why don't they bark? she asked uneasily. They're so quiet.
Just leave it alone, Lear said. Just walk. As if you know where you're going.
What is it? Mason asked. Is it the dogs?
Yes, honey.
Stop looking back so much, Lear said. Mason. I said stop looking.
Mason swung back around.
They crossed a small parking lot and kicked through the weeds of a closed electronics outlet and turned into the nearest street. It was narrow and cluttered with rubble and the old man swore softly when he saw it and then just stood with one hand on his forehead and stared up the road in each direction. The sun had slid behind a screen of smoke and in its red light his face looked drained and grim.
Where exactly are you leading us? she asked.
Are they still behind us?
Yes, Mason said.
There was rubble in the street where the wall of a warehouse had slewed out over the shells of parked cars and they clambered over chunks of masonry and crushed windshields aching with the exertion. When Anna Mercia paused she could hear the click of claws on stone.
I hear it too, Lear murmured. Just keep going.
The going was slow. Low buildings in disrepair stood close to the road and cast them in darkness, in sudden light, as they passed the gaps where walls once stood. Her boots slid in the loose mortar and gravel and then she was down the hill of rubble and climbing up over a car and ascending another pile.
Mason, she murmured. Mason, honey. Come on.
Then some dark thing slid past at the edge of her vision and she turned.
Arthur, she called out uneasily. Did you see that?
But Lear had passed from sight and she took her son by the wrist and scrambled after him. She could feel eyes boring into her back and when she reached the rise and looked down she saw Lear staring back at her from below. His back pressed up against the fender of a half-buried car.
Then she looked back and saw it. A large yellow dog was watching her. It bared its teeth and loped loosely towards her.
Don't run, Lear called up. Just come very slowly down.
She could feel her son trembling beside her.
A smaller brown dog had materialized to their right. It barked once then studied them with yellow eyes. Two more dogs appeared at their left. She kept her head high and turned her face very slightly to keep the dogs in her line of sight. The yellow dog stopped short and swung its wet snout from side to side as if catching some scent. Then it came again forward along the ridge of the rubble.
Don't do anything, Lear said to them in a calm slow voice. Just come here as if it's nothing. Easy. That's right.
They reached him and he was walking again. She felt a rush of air pass her by and she glanced over and saw the dogs were now level with them and moving alongside them though they did not attack. There were more dogs now and she could not count them all.
Arthur? her son said in a frightened voice. Arthur? There were tears on his cheeks.
Just take it easy, son.
They moved with careful slowness along that street and the dogs moved with them. They did not raise their heads nor did they slacken off and they poured alongside them like a strange dark river. Lear said very softly, There. We'll go in there.
She followed his gaze.
It was an old cinema house and she could see as they approached that the double glass doors had shattered around their metal frames.
How do we keep them out? she said.
He said nothing.
She could feel the hot sides of the dogs now where they bumped against her legs. Her son was crying. The dogs bumped and muscled past, their unwashed fur bristling.
Here, she said. Here we are, honey. Here.
As they slipped under the marquee the dogs stopped as one in the street, stood watching. Their jaws agrin, fangs yellow and mossy. Her son stared back at them from the lobby and he did not move.
Mason, Lear said in a low hard voice. Mason. What are you doing.
Maybe they won't come in, he said. He looked very frightened.
They will. They will if we don't get these doors blocked.
How do you know?
Get over here Mason, she said angrily. Help us with this.
And then they were dragging a big steel garbage can over to the doors and tilting it over with a crash. Lear hauled across a big chair. A glass popcorn machine screeched over the concrete floor, fell shattering. The dogs did not flinch.
The cinema itself seemed safe enough. The door to the projection booth stood open and Lear made his way up to look around. Anna Mercia followed her son into the dark theatre.
Twin grey shafts of daylight fell through the collapsed ceiling over the screen, low now and deepening yet as the day faded out. She stood at the top of the aisle peering down at the dim rows of seats, the big white screen. There was dust on the shabby seat-backs, rubble in the carpeted aisle. Mason wandered up onto the stage, ducked his head behind the screen. She turned away. A sleeve of newsprint had blown in with the leaves and caught in the armrest of a chair and she plucked it free and smoothed it out.
There's no one here, Lear called down from the booth.
Mason, she said. Stay close to me.
He nodded from the screen.
She swallowed painfully. Thinking of the barber at the roadblock and how unlikely it seemed. She thought she must have been mistaken. When she glanced down at her hands she saw they were trembling. Arthur? she called.
Yes?
Hold on. I'm coming up. Mason, she called.
They made their way back to the lobby and through the broken door and up the narrow stairs to the small projection room. In the corner a slab of the roof had lifted and driven down like a ramp and Lear was sitting on the roof peering down at the street. She left her son in the projection booth and came through and joined him and sat on the tarred roof with her knees drawn up to her chest.
Everything alright? she asked.
That one hasn't moved, he said. He nodded to the lee of the building across the way. A yellow dog crouched with its head turned up the street. Something passed through her, something illicit and wild and furious.
Is it the same one?
He shrugged. I don't see any others. I think we'll be alright in the morning.
The air was colder here. A blue shadow seemed to pass over them where they sat and then it passed on down the street and she glanced quickly at the sky.
Look at this, Lear said. This will cost a fortune to rebuild. We'll be at it for years.
She nodded.
He looked at her, his face drawn tight with regret. I'm sorry this is taking so long, he said.
It's not your fault.
We'll find your daughter tomorrow. It's not too far from here.
She leaned her temple against the low wall. Curled the fingers of her good hand and studied the broken skin. You know what I keep thinking? she said and she was surprised by the anguish in her voice.
He raised his eyes.
Did I or didn't I appreciate it.
He frowned. Well. You're not through it yet.
At the hospital Mason asked me if I thought Kat was alive.
What did you tell him?
I started to say yes and then I couldn't say it.
Well, Lear said. He shuffled his feet.
I can't stop thinking about it. I keep wondering where she is. What she ate last night for dinner. If she's cold. She didn't take a jacket with her to school. I didn't remind her to.
He said nothing.
I should've made her take a jacket.
Lear looked away.
She picked up a loose stone and threw it at the broken wall of a hotel across the street. Shabby curtains billowing in the seedy rooms. It clattered hollow and sad off a sunken drainpipe and the yellow dog lifted its head, peered suspiciously up. She said, I lost her once. Kat. She wasn't even two.
You lost her?
I lost her. I was with my mother in a department store shopping for a snowsuit for her and when I turned around she was gone. She smiled faintly remembering her little daughter quick in her cruel birdlike investigations. In love with a world of her own devising. Leaves and bits of twig in her hair, her dark hands on her darker knees as she squatted in the department store aisle to see beneath their silver cart. Her husky brown corduroy trousers, yellow knit sweater. And her tiny perfect milk teeth. The scent of her skin was like sap and twilight in a dusky hall. Oh lord. How she had run in a frenzy towards the escalator leaving her old mother with their cart, frail and clutching her purse to her breast and peering sadly about. The sightless white mannequins. The branched candelabra of the clothes racks. A harsh fluorescent light shining off the faces of all she passed. I thought somebody had taken her, she said. I nearly died.