The Book of Living and Dying (12 page)

He sat on a rock across from her, bag at his feet. “Do you believe in the spirit world?”

Sarah stared silently back at him. She didn’t know what she believed any more.

“Tonight, you will know for certain,” Michael continued, working the leather bag open. Pulling out four small candles, he placed them at four corners within the circle of stones. He walked in a clockwise direction, pointing his hand in front of himself, then lit the candles, one by one, the faint smell of sulphur hanging in the air as the candle flames winked against the darkness. “I call upon the four elements for protection,” he said, reaching into the bag and pulling out a small pouch also made of leather. He loosened the tie from the top of the bag and began sprinkling some kind of herb before the candles. “Tobacco,” he said, answering her unspoken question. “An offering.” He returned to his stone and pulled a length of white rope from the bag, fixing her with a stern stare. “You must be cleansed before your journey. What sexual encounters have you engaged in?” He held the rope out in his hands.

Sarah giggled. Michael remained expressionless.

“Ummm … real, or imagined?” Sarah asked, trying to match his mood.

“Real.”

“I’ve had … relations with a half-breed,” she said, smiling.

Michael did not respond, but tied a knot in the rope and then looked at her expectantly.

“I slept with Cole Olsen in eleventh grade because I had a dream that he was really good in bed,” Sarah said.

Michael tied another knot.

“He wasn’t,” she added. “I lost my virginity to our family physician. We did it on the examination table.”

Another knot.

“I’m just kidding about that.” Laughing nervously, she cleared her throat, then composed herself and continued. “I lost my virginity to my tenth grade boyfriend …” She hesitated, wondering if she should tell the truth. “It was Peter. Peter Burrows.”

She thought she saw something glimmer in his eyes, something he was trying to suppress. Jealousy, maybe? If it was, he controlled it well. He tied several knots in the rope.

“That’s it. Not very exciting, is it?”

Michael didn’t answer but walked over to one of the candles and held the rope over the flame. The fire tongued greedily at the rope, the fibres curling and burning orange as the flames skipped hungrily up. Michael dropped the rope to the ground in the centre of the circle, where it continued to burn like a snake doused in kerosene. He spoke in an otherworldly voice. “Fire has cleansed you, unhinged your spirit from this mortal coil.” Sitting down on the rock, he produced another small leather pouch and untied it. He pulled out the dried mushroom stalks and handed her a small portion. “Swallow these.”

Sarah put the mushrooms in her mouth, half chewed them and swallowed. They tasted dusty, earthy. Michael did
the same but took more than her, she noticed. Wrapping the leather cord carefully around the top of the pouch, he retied it adeptly and pushed it into his breast pocket. He stood up and pulled her to her feet. “Come on.”

They wove through the trees, the wind picking up, rustling the cedars. Sarah broke off a small branch. Crushing it in her fingers, she released the lemony scent and rubbed it under her nose. “Wait,” she called out to Michael, who had run ahead. “I have something for you.” She thought she saw him stop next to a stand of birch trees in the distance, but he was next to her, gripping her arm.

“Listen,” he said.

She strained to hear. A twig snapped somewhere deep in the woods. There was a soft murmuring. Michael stepped forward and a huge buck exploded from behind a thicket, leaping through the air, white tail flashing. Sarah was sure she saw sparks fly as the deer’s feet touched the ground, a silver trail tracing its path as it fled through the woods. Michael bolted after it, eyes wild, hair streaming.

“Wait for me,” Sarah called. She ran after him, stumbling through the underbrush, tripping over roots. Her legs felt weak, her head spinning. “Wait!” She stopped to catch her breath, the sound of her own breathing so loud she had to put her hands over her ears to stop it. She looked around for Michael. He had left her alone.
Why would he do that?
As she searched through the forest she began seeing John’s face everywhere, in the leaves, in the stones on the ground, in the sky. He was coming to get her. At the brink of panic, she forced herself to count trees, speaking their names.
“Quercus rubra. Quercus alba. Ostrya virginiana. Betulapapyrifera.”

At the birch trees she stopped. Their smooth white bark glowed like abalone in the moonlight. She suddenly saw
Michael ahead of her, crouching behind some bushes. She moved toward him and hunched over. He grabbed her shirt, pulled her down and pointed at something in the clearing ahead. It was a couple writhing together on the ground, the woman moaning. The deer stood over them, poised, motionless. Sarah could almost see the woman’s face, the man’s back glistening in the dark, his feet capped with socks.
How strange.
Just like the time she’d seen her parents making love, the shame of it. Tramping into their room to find her father on top of her mother, her mother’s face oddly vacant, her father naked except for the blue socks pulled halfway up his calves. The fleeting glimpse of them punctuating his bare legs, the rest of his body exposed, like a clothing store mannequin, before her mother cried out and her father sprang angrily from the bed.

Sarah turned to look at Michael but he was gone. The couple was gone too. Only the deer remained, majestic against a backdrop of stars that pulsated with energy, the moon’s face appearing stark and startled above the tree branches as the clouds lifted. The buck met her gaze, then disappeared without a sound into the trees, and Sarah was immediately overcome with a feeling of great loneliness. Why had everyone forsaken her? Why must she always be alone? Abject sorrow swept over her and would have taken her under if she hadn’t seen the figure step out from behind a large oak tree. It shimmered in the most seductive way, like sunlight under water. Somehow Sarah knew that it was a girl—
the
girl. At once she could see impossible detail, the green cotton thread of the girl’s dress, the shadows of her knees against the fabric. But the face … she could not see the face. The girl beckoned to Sarah, urging her to come closer. Sarah’s heart beat loudly in her chest and then the whole
forest seemed to be beating in sympathy with her heart. She moved toward the girl as in a trance, the pull irresistible, as if she was being drawn by some unseen hand to this image she had known only in photographs. All her teenage musings, all her childish fears would be quelled if only she could reach the girl.

As she stepped forward, she heard another twig snap, thought it must be the deer, then felt a hand grasp her ankle. Michael lay on the ground, stripped to the waist, the lower half of his face now painted black. He had an apple in his hand. He held it up to her.

“Take your clothes off,” he said.

Sarah woke to the sound of the phone ringing. She sat up on one elbow—the pain erupting in her skull—and flopped back down on the bed. The phone rang and rang. Why didn’t her mother answer it? Trying to muffle the sound, she pressed a pillow over her head. It had to be Donna, calling to find out where she was. She would call and call and call. Sarah lay with her head under her pillow, the silence ringing in the brief pauses between telephone sieges, until at last she couldn’t stand it any longer and threw the pillow to one side. Kicking the covers off her legs, she discovered that she was still in her clothes. Had she gone out at all, or simply fallen asleep fully dressed? Sitting with her head in her hands, she struggled to remember her night with Michael. The deer, the couple writhing—
and the girl.
Hadn’t she seen the girl from the photos? She moaned lightly. How had
Michael described it? “A hallucinatory projection stimulated by chemicals and fabricated in the darker recesses of her imagination.” The mushrooms had certainly worked their magic.

Sarah pulled her hands from her face and was shocked to find them smeared with black paint. Standing up to look in the vanity mirror she saw her face painted in the image of a skull. He must have done that. She bared her teeth at the mirror; they looked surprisingly white. The phone began to ring again. “Get lost,” she said as she searched her desk for cream and some tissues and proceeded to remove the paint. It resisted at first but slid off easily once the cream was worked in. After dropping the dirty tissues in wet clumps into the wastebasket, Sarah cleaned her hands as well, drying her palms on the legs of her jeans.

The phone continued to ring. She heard her mother get up at last, heard the bedroom door creak open, footsteps scuffling across the living room to the kitchen. The phone stopped mid ring and there was silence. Sarah listened. Her mother rattled around the kitchen, tap water running, the sound of the coffee maker gurgling. She must have disconnected the phone.

Retrieving her pyjama top from the floor, Sarah checked the pocket for the codeine tablets. She found the pills, pushed them into her mouth and swallowed. They stuck in the back of her throat. Not as easy to take as aspirin. Because she didn’t want to risk bumping into her mother in the kitchen to get a glass of water, she swallowed repeatedly, like a frog, until the pills dislodged from her throat, only to lodge a short way down her windpipe. She coughed, her eyes watering, the pressure in her head rising with the effort as she fought to catch her breath. A fleeting image of John
asserted itself along with the suddenly remembered failed ritual. The ash-covered and half-eaten apple still lay on the floor, next to the wine bottle and the gold-and-green beetle. She’d forgotten to bury it. She would do that today. Bury it in the earth, the way the book had told her to do in the first place. She had another idea, too, one she’d gleaned from Michael.

Once the codeine pills had dissolved, Sarah grabbed her binders of photos and flipped to the back, where she kept the pictures of John’s gigs. Dozens of snapshots, some black and white, some colour. John holding the Fender. John singing, the guitar hanging across his hips from its strap. John on stage in Germany. In Chicago. In Toronto. She’d studied the pictures so many times, she knew every line on his face, every expression. Peeling back the acetate, Sarah carefully pried the photos from their pages, stacking them neatly on the bed beside her. She chose several from each time frame. When she was finished, she took an envelope, placed the photos inside and folded it shut, securing it with a paper clip from her desk. Slipping the packet into the side pocket of her knapsack, she included a copy of John’s CD—his only CD—then zipped the pocket shut. Her calculus book peeked out the top of her knapsack. “Oh, no,” she groaned, remembering the test she had to study for. She considered going back to bed but vetoed the idea and decided to take a shower instead to wake herself up.

Her mother was sitting at the kitchen table, her face as grey as ashes. “Bloody phone,” she muttered.

Sarah walked silently past, closing the door to the bathroom before tearing the shower curtain to one side, checking, then searching the cupboard under the sink. She even snapped a towel loudly, convinced the noise would scare
away any marauding spirits. When the steam from the tub filled the bathroom, she wiped the mirror quickly with her hand, just in case John got any ideas. She did it again when she got out of the shower, but found only her own face staring back at her.

Sarah sat in bed with her calculus book on her lap, a glass of water on the milk crate beside her. She’d buried the apple core beneath the locust tree in the yard, once her mother had vacated the kitchen. The dirt still clung stubbornly beneath her fingernails even though she’d washed her hands several times. The rest of the altar she’d simply tossed into a box in her closet, using the towel to wipe the ashes from the floor. Now she was resting in bed, her hands on the pages of her math text. The codeine was taking effect, burnishing the edge off the ragged pain in her head. Rising from the page, the words and numbers began to shift and roll like beach pebbles lapped by water. A tiny red spider appeared at the edge of the book and navigated slowly through the floating letters, across the top of the page and down the spine, disappearing into the cleft. As her head lolled heavily back, the book slipped from Sarah’s hands to one side of the bed.

She was in the forest, the trees breathing all around her, the cries of the woman resonating deep within the soil. She was following the girl, her form a light shape in the distance along the path. They were moving toward the oak tree, its branches slowly swaying. Sarah looked down and saw that
her feet were bare. The rest of her was naked too, her breasts shining like the palest of opals, her skin smooth and glimmering, interrupted only by the dark mound between her legs. She did not feel shame but was amazed at how her feet seemed to skim the ground effortlessly, without breaking a single branch. As she ran, she moved closer and closer to the girl, the girl’s back now a sharp outline against the dusky light of the forest. Reaching out to touch her, Sarah’s fingers barely brushed the cool fabric of the girl’s dress when a hand slipped into her own. It was John’s hand. Glaring at her, he opened his mouth to speak but emitted a high-pitched shriek instead. The shrieking grew louder and louder as Sarah struggled to pull away from him, until she was forced, sputtering and gasping like a drowning swimmer, to the surface of her dream. It was the phone again. Reaching to turn on the light, she knocked the glass of water from the milk crate and sent it splashing to the floor.

Sarah stared at the question on the page. It made her head hurt just to look at it. Why was the man out walking at night in the first place? Next question.