The Book of Living and Dying (6 page)

“That’s my secret,” Sarah said, almost in a whisper. “I don’t know who she is … or why she’s there.”

“Or what she is,” he added pointedly.

“You mean a ghost?” She laughed nervously. “I thought you’d think I was crazy if I suggested it.”

He picked up her glass. “Your drink is empty.” He walked from the room, leaving her sitting on the bed.

Sarah rewrapped the photos quickly and pushed them into her knapsack. She looked for Michael and found him standing in front of the sink, ice cube tray in hand. The rest of the house was clean and modest like his room, save for the artifacts that crowded every surface. Masks on walls and stands, a totem pole, weapons, ceremonial garb, feathers, headdresses, dream catchers, beads, jewellery, moccasins, carvings, gloves, photos, bones. His dad’s “museum,” Michael called it. A closet anthropologist.

“What’s he hoping to find?” Sarah asked as she looked at one of the masks.

“A channel to another dimension.”

“Come on.” Sarah turned to look at him and saw that he was serious.

“There are those who believe that the dream world is the real world,” he said. “They believe that this world is an illusion or a trick. My father hopes to pull down the veil between dreams and reality, to open a channel for spirits to break through so that we can communicate.”

“You mean, ghosts …”

“Not just ghosts. Spirit walkers, travellers, guides.”

It all sounded credible when Michael said it, like everyone thought that way. Like it was common knowledge that spirits wandered back and forth between worlds, spending time with the living when they weren’t hanging out with the dead. Standing next to beds, boots glistening with mud. “Isn’t that a strange philosophy for a medical doctor?” she asked. “I mean, isn’t that kind of spiritual voodoo verboten in the scientific community?” She stood in front of an inscrutable red-and-blue face, the eyes striped with white paint like terrible claw marks, the face surrounded in wolf skin, the wolf’s muzzle draped over the forehead with two coal-black braids hanging down. “Who’s this?”

Michael glanced at the mask. “A Cheyenne warrior. The cavalry called them dog soldiers. They were an elite group of the strongest and the bravest in the tribe. They were mean mothers, fighting as rearguards and sacrificial decoys so the rest of the tribe could escape.”

Now it was her turn to look at him with amusement. “Do you always talk like an encyclopedia?”

He shrugged.

Sarah had to laugh. “You know lots of stuff,” she said. “Anyway, it’s you. Dog Soldier. That’s how I’ll think of you
from now on.” She looked around the room. Over every door was some kind of symbol painted on wood.

He followed her gaze. “Hex craft. It’s supposed to protect the house from evil spirits.”

“Sounds like witchcraft.”

“Actually, they’re love charms,” he answered snidely, “designed to beguile young women into submitting to my will.” He dropped ice cubes into the glasses, glugged rum overtop, the ice cracking in protest. Tipping the bottle to his lips, he drank easily, like he did it all the time, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. He turned to her and held the bottle to her lips, the amber fire pouring down her throat until she pushed his hand away at last, rum spilling over her mouth. They emptied their glasses in quick shots, discarded them in the sink and took turns from the bottle instead. Stumbling through the living room, Sarah pulled a blue mask with a lolling scarlet tongue from its stand and held it in front of her face. “I am Fire Water, Magic Tongue. Kiss me or die.”

He took the mask from her and replaced it. He nudged her against the wall, pressing his body into hers. She could feel his breath against her face. The dusky gleam of half-closed eyes, dark lashes glistening, her heart skipping uncontrollably. She wanted him to kiss her, wanted to feel his mouth against hers.

“Come on, I have something to show you,” he said.

Leading her outside, he gestured to the sky where the moon was rising as bloody and monstrous as a vanquished king, its great vermilion face eternally frozen in horrified betrayal. Reflected in his eyes, two miniature red orbs made Michael seem like a demon lover. He held her hand, his warmth, the rum seducing her.

“Someone lit the moon on fire,” he said.

“My brains are full of gum,” she whispered.

He pulled her down the hill, tripping over rocks and tufts of grass, the night swallowing their laughter, the moon gaping. He towed her along behind him, her hand in his, tugging her through the parking lot to the place where the little fair stood, closed, abandoned, prettier in the crimson light, the maze of hydro wires casting shadowy webs over the buildings and the ground.

“What are you doing?” she asked, giggling.

He worked the lock on one of the buildings, more like a trailer, and the door opened with a creak. He drew her into the darkness, her sneakers squeaking on the floor.

“I can’t see.”

He pulled her through. He knew the way. Pushing her into the centre of the room, he cast a spell with butane and she saw herself and him, reflected infinitely in the mirrors, like some crone’s trick.

“My God,” was all she could say.

He conjured a small candle from his pocket, lit it, and a million little flames magically appeared. Taking her hand in his, he used a pen to draw a spiral in blue ink on her palm. “For life,” he said, kissing her at last, his mouth warm and lingering.

T
he curtains billowed languidly in the morning breeze, the window to Sarah’s room still half open, the screen leaning against the wall where she had left it the night before. She’d snuck through the window, not out of fear of her mother, but in honour of him. He was there with her, the smell of him, his hair, his skin, the sound of his voice. Her mind danced like a honeybee when she thought of the night, their reflected images stretching endlessly before them like an augury. She wanted to be with him, wanted to feel his hands against her skin again.

If only she hadn’t drunk so much. She massaged her forehead methodically then reached for the aspirin bottle. She would have to take a double dose today. One for the drink and one for her old friend, the migraine. But she didn’t regret a minute of it. After all, she’d been so out of it she’d managed to climb into bed without thinking about John’s ghost. For that, she was grateful. There had been one moment, though, when she’d thought she saw something move across the threshold of her room. But she hadn’t allowed herself to care. And if it was John, he had thankfully
left her alone. In the comfort of her bed, with the sunlight streaming through the window and the scent of Michael’s skin on her own, she felt she could be hopeful.

Rolling over to reach the aspirin on the milk crate, she hesitated as the floorboards creaked outside her bedroom door. There was a brief pause, then the creaking resumed and receded as her mother finally trundled by, the odour of cigarette smoke attending her like a shadow. Sarah waited for her mother to settle back in to sleep the morning away.

She looked around the room, at the signature of it, the books, posters, clothes and the leaves—lots of leaves everywhere, push-pinned to the corkboard, arranged on top of shelves. There wasn’t room for anything or anyone else. She had made sure of that, filling up all the spaces, arranging it neatly. Like an old widow, she had blocked the world out, living in a house too big for her dwindling emotional income, shutting off rooms in her heart that she could no longer afford to heat. No wonder she’d been seeing things. But then Michael had come. Now the curtains waved invitingly; the breeze slipped through the open window, fingering loose papers and leaves, offering a new order. Wasn’t Michael just like that, entering her life, rearranging things? The strange thing was that she wanted him to, wanted him to sweep the dust from the corners, to shake things loose. She had been holding on so tightly, hadn’t she forgotten why or even how to let go?

The blue ink spiral he had drawn on her hand winked from her palm. “For life,” he had said. And so it seemed to be true, that life had a way of asserting itself, reinventing itself, of taking an unexpected turn and springing up in the most unlikely places—in alleyways, beneath uprooted trees, in the cracks of sidewalks, in the palm of your hand.
So does
death,
she abruptly thought. Touching the spiral with her finger, she flexed her hand to see it jump in and out. John had seemingly broken through to her world. But Michael had thrown the door wide, offering promise like spring rain. And she was amazed at her own thirst.

The breeze lifted a fan of leaves from her dresser, whirled them to the centre of the room and dropped them in a scatter across the blue-and-green cotton rug that covered the trap door leading to the basement. The trap door. It took up most of her room, causing her to keep her bed shoved against the wall by the window and her dresser pushed against the other wall by the door. Little usable space. She hadn’t minded the trap door being in her room before except that she worried it wasn’t stable. Just a piece of plywood dropped into the two-by-four frame, no hinges. Looking at it now, Sarah realized how easy it would be for someone to crawl into her room. All they had to do was break a window in the basement and come up the stairs from inside. It would be best to just nail the door shut. There was no reason to go down there anyway. There were hookups for a washer and dryer, but they weren’t going to get those any time soon. They used the laundromat down the street.

Sarah suddenly noticed the note, folded into a neat little tent card sitting next to her photo.
“Pushover.”
Donna’s handwriting. How had she left it there, and when? “God, Donna!” Sarah said aloud, the bedsprings in the next room answering noisily, then growing silent again. She got up from bed and stuffed her legs into her jeans, the pain pulsing firmly at the back of her eyes. Her black turtleneck caused her hair to jump and spark as she pulled it over her head, making her way from the room.

Flipping the light on in the bathroom, she turned the hot water tap in the sink. After testing the temperature with her hand, she splashed water on her face. Her skin turned red with the heat before she resigned herself to showering instead. It would make her late for school, but no matter. It was Friday. Half the seniors wouldn’t show up for class. They skipped school to drink. They had the shirts to prove it: “FEWD,” for “Forget Education, We’re Drinking.” Not that she ran with that crowd any more. She avoided them; she didn’t want anything to do with their type. Besides, Donna wouldn’t allow it. She had made that quite clear. She hated those pricks with their stupid drinking club, she said—and their stupid matching shirts. She was going to have her own shirt made: “FU2.”

The pipes to the tub rattled and thumped as the water coughed out, brown with rust. They knocked with diminishing frequency, like a dying drummer, until the water finally ran clear. The steam rose up, a genie in the cool air, filling the tub and eventually the room. Sarah stripped down, kicking her jeans with one foot to the corner of the bathroom. Stepping gingerly into the shower, she let the water rush over her, the temperature almost too hot to bear, then freezing. “Don’t use the water!” she yelled into the mist.

There was a light tap on the door. And then another. Sarah depressed the shower lever with her big toe to stop the water so she could hear. Her mother’s thin voice mumbled through the door.
Why does she always mumble?

“What?” Sarah shouted back.

“Telephone. It’s the school.”

Sarah opened the door a crack, clutching a towel around
her. Her mother’s disembodied hand thrust the receiver through.

“Hello …”

An angry voice shouted on the other end. “We won’t tolerate your tardiness any longer. If you insist on thumbing your nose at school policy we have no choice but to expel you.”

“You got me out of the shower, Donna, you jerk!”

Cackling laughter seared through the line, followed by the click and buzz as the phone was disconnected. Sarah tossed the handset back into the kitchen. “Donna’s a stupidjerk!” she wrote in the fog on the mirror, her finger squeaking against the glass. When she was finished writing, she wiped the words away with her palm and found John’s face staring back at her.

Sarah gave a terrified shout, whipping around to face him. The mist hung in the air, drifting languidly across the bathroom toward the gap where the door was ajar. She kicked angrily at the door, letting the steam escape into the kitchen. Whatever ghosts were there had evaporated with the mist.

Turning back to the mirror, she studied the room in its reflection. Her clothes in a heap on the floor, the shower curtain scrunched to one side, the tub vacant. The possibility that she had imagined the whole thing crept into a corner of her consciousness and curled up there. John beside the bed. His reflection in the mirror. It was stress causing these visions, she told herself. Stress, squeezing the synapses in her brain, fabricating phantoms from little more than misdirected chemicals. It could do that so easily, she knew, fracture the eggshell integrity of the mind. And she had been under stress lately—lots of it. More than one person could bear. She covered her face with her hands and hung her head. “Please, God,” she prayed.

The sudden notion that he was somehow still there, watching her, devoured her self-pity in an instant. She wrapped a towel tightly around herself, snapped her clothes from the floor, glanced furtively in the mirror, then trotted quickly to her room, where she dumped her clothes in a bundle at the foot of her bed—though not before checking underneath. Pulling on a clean pair of underwear and her jeans, she unwrapped the towel from around her chest, scrubbed her hair dry, threw on a bra and the black turtleneck from before, swapped the turtleneck for a hooded sweatshirt and put on her jean jacket. After combing her hair until it was straight, she grabbed her green knit toque and pushed her hair up underneath before daring to inspect herself in the round vanity mirror above her dresser. Her grim reflection stared back at her. She spun around sharply to make sure that she was alone, then turned back to the mirror and challenged John to show his face again. “Don’t be a coward,” she said. When he didn’t appear, she grimaced at herself, applied lip gloss and searched her drawer for socks. There was a thin blue pair without holes. She yanked them on quickly, slung her knapsack over one shoulder and her purse over the other. She checked her pockets for money. Ten dollars. Shoving her feet into her sneakers, she popped two aspirins before throwing the bottle into her purse and slamming out of the house toward school. Anything was better than being at home.