The Canal (9 page)

Murderer, murderer, murderer... And on he
went, this old Paul. He was becoming a bit hysterical, a bit
wild.

New Paul was rather amused. Murderer, he
teased. Murderer? We are all murderers, old friend. Oh I'm sorry,
did you forget? Did you not realize? That survival is, in and of
itself, a process of murder? Life feeds on life. Life gorges on
itself, it does. The strong prey on the weak. Why, man is the
greatest murderer this world has ever seen. We'll devour a species
to extinction -- and yet, we feel no guilt. We sleep blameless in
our beds, our stomachs full with flesh. But it's the order of
things though, isn't it? We're just following the rules. Its been
ordained, not by us, but by life itself. We're all just part of the
machine.

But, wait, what's that you say? What's that
about man killing man? Oh, you say it's wrong, do you. It's
different. Who says that? The carrion? The flies? The worms? WHAT
DID I TELL YOU, YOU SNIVELING, HIDING, SHIT! EXISTENCE IS NOTHING
BUT APPETITE. AND I, FOR ONE, INTEND TO KEEP THAT APPETITE FED!

Old Paul could keep all his sentimental
yester-year's, all those cried on Polaroids. But what New Paul had,
well, that was something truly special. Something that actually
mattered and was real.

He had his dear friend, the twilight visitor.
Appetite incarnate.

And in spite of New Paul's distaste for the
past, there was one reminiscence that he allowed himself. One
indulgent memory. It was his sole pleasure.

It wasn't a new memory. Although it had taken
place after his family had died, and after New Paul had come to be.
He'd been in the backyard, which at the time still had some
momentum, some green. The sun neared the horizon. A lone cloud
prepared to meet its maker over the Atlantic. Summer. Paul was at
the barbecue. He used to keep the barbecue clean, but now zits of
rust pitted its dome, spider cocoons hung from beneath. Paul had
begun to make a habit of cooking here. He liked being outdoors. He
liked monitoring the decline of his yard. He liked to cook
meat.

Tonight, dinner was a steak of primitive
gristle, the lobes of fat shimmering on the grill. Beside it was a
can of beans, the label already charred away. Paul was watching his
dinner transform in the flames when he heard a noise coming from
the canal. A splash, like chimes. It was probably nothing. Probably
a piece of canal bulkhead falling in.

The new Paul had a respect for the canal that
Old never had. He saw the canal as honest, a place without pretense
or artifice or disguise. It embodied the world's true form, as it
existed beneath the tended lawns and the swept streets and the
billboard lined avenues -- where it was all the time rotting.
Collapse, and nothing else, was the natural state to which all
things tended. And the canal, it embodied that perfectly.

Paul turned to stare at the back of his
property, towards the dead foliage that shielded his yard from the
river. He heard more noise. A crunching this time. The snapping of
dry twigs.

The weeds along the fringe of his yard began
to shake slightly. The wind? Or a stray, perhaps. And then the
weeds parted, ever so hesitantly, and out slithered something pale,
child-like. Delicate arms that were as long and thin as a fishing
poles. And then came the rest, sliding on its stomach.

It was like no kind of insect that Paul had
ever seen. The larger cousin to the sort that crawls into your
mouth while you sleep and then lays eggs in your brain. And it was
coming towards him. Shimmying with a blind urgency that Paul found
fascinating. It didn't use its limbs to crawl; it just slid on them
like skis. Its skin was the color of cottage cheese and it was
slick with canal water. The nose was an electrical socket
positioned exactly between the eyes. It stopped to smell the air --
it would seem that Paul's dinner had attracted attention.

Paul began to regret that he'd never gotten
around to fixing the fence. The bug's head was already sliding
through a large breach in the chain link. Paul wasn't comfortable
with that. He looked for a weapon, just in case...then remembered
the meat fork, hanging from the grill's handle.

The insect wriggled across Teresa's
wild-grown herb patch. In its wake the foliage curled and turned
black. The bug's eyes were blind, white as its own skin, like two
small balloons filled to bursting with milk. A tongue, purple, at
least a foot long, emerged from the mouth to moisten herpe'd lips.
Growths and pustules laced its skin, a whole skyline of tumors
racing up and down its spine.

As it got closer the insect managed to appear
vaguely human, albeit melted, like a Jonas who'd eaten his way free
from the whale's belly, to emerge half digested, the bile still
sizzling away.

And now Paul could feel the heat. Peals of it
radiated from the creature, blasts of furnace air hotter even than
the barbecue fuming at Paul's stomach. He discreetly moved to
unhook the fork...and as quickly as it was in his grasp, it spun
out of his fingers and fell, clanging on the cement.

The creature immediately bolted sideways, a
blur of mandibles and convulsions. It snuggled along the base of
the nearby wall and then -- and this caused Paul's heartbeat to
veer dangerously up-tempo -- then its mouth snapped open to
tremendous size, a bear-trap filled with glass-edged needles,
poking out of its gums like thorns -- rows of them (three? ten? a
hundred?) descending down its throat. Paul realized that this
creature could have just as quickly scrabbled up his legs and taken
him by the jugular. The thought was frightening, yes. But also, it
was exciting. He wanted to see more.

Paul carefully bent down, never taking his
eyes of the insect, and picked up the meat fork. The bug gurgled in
warning, its mouth spreading impossibly wider, almost folding back
on itself. Paul quickly impaled the steak and flung it at the
creature's open face.

He was rewarded with something truly
wonderful. The insect expertly snatched the meat from the air and
mowed it to slurry with waves of silver teeth. The steak was gone
in seconds. The ulcerous tongue then reemerged to mop juice from
the creatures face. New Paul was in awe. It's terrible, he thought.
And yet he'd never seen anything quite so beautiful. To a man who
had rejected everything, this was a revelation.

The bug hissed, demanding more. It began to
slither closer. Paul watched its conveyor belt of teeth and
wondered what would happen when it reached him.

Paul pointed the fork at the canal. "Go!" he
shouted. His voice sent the bug into a panic. Louder this time:
"GO!" It scrambled backward, and then through the fence, leaving a
trail of shriveled and smoking vegetation. It paused once, to stare
back at him with boiled eyes, and then it disappeared into the
brush. Seconds later Paul heard it fall into the water.

*

Paul still lay on the floor. But he was
smiling now, and feeling slightly better. Happy thoughts: that was
the key. So he started again at the beginning. Him cooking at the
barbecue. The sun nearing the horizon...

He'd lay here for a while to recuperate.
Until twilight, if he had to.

But then, God willing, it would be feeding
time.

>> CHAPTER SEVEN <<

Joe hurried along near empty sidewalks as the
day's temperature began to gain momentum. Those with any sense were
already safely indoors, huddling at the mouths of moaning air
conditioners. But not Joe. He was out tempting the sun on the
hottest day of the year. Chasing his memory, following it to the
last place he had seen his wife alive.

The buildings were getting uglier. The
streets more bleak. He passed the roofless shell of a derelict work
mill, sprouting conveyor belts that dropped off to nowhere at 40
feet. He was getting closer.

There was a corner created by the canal where
it made an almost 90 degree southerly turn in its search for the
sea, where a large maze of old warehouses stood. Most were empty.
Some were not. He eventually came to a building located at the
exact crux where the river changed direction. It got as much
exposure to the canal as a building could get, which was probably
why it was the biggest turd on the block. Five stories of bricks
stacked in mockery. The doorways had been walled over; the windows
too, save for a few on the top floor. The building's entrance
hovered four feet above the ground, the wall beneath showing white
where cement steps had once been. A dangerous looking fire escape
paced back and forth across the building's face.

Emerging from the root of this building, like
a useless toe, was a loading dock that fronted a small lot covered
with pubic patches of weeds. It was fenced in by a gate wound shut
with heavy chain, the lock frozen beneath a scab of rust. The canal
was just out of sight, in its channel. Joe didn't need to look to
know it was there; he was practically magnetized to the place, like
a compass needle always homed in its direction.

The building had looked just as destitute 20
years ago, back when Rose had climbed over the gate and disappeared
from the world. People lived here, although you wouldn't know it.
These same people were the only ones who could now explain why Rose
had shown up at the canal.

All those years ago, Joe hadn't tried to stop
his wife. At least not convincingly. But that wasn't his fault, or
hers -- it had been a raw deal all around.

Luckily for Joe, the bottom of the building's
gate was now crushed inward. He was hoping he could, sort of, roll
in. The gate clawed at his coat as he wriggled under. There was a
bit of embarrassment though at the loading dock, lots of grunting
and animal noises, as he pulled his sagging body up onto the chest
high ledge. Two large loading bays, long since cemented shut,
flanked a central, gray door.

The door opened without struggle. He
carefully slipped through and emerged into a dim, half light. The
heat was worse indoors, trapped, backed into a corner,
unpredictable. The floor was scarred with soot and piles of rubble.
There were some needles here. Broken glass. He smelled urine.

"I don't know you, Charlie."

A man's voice, deep, like it came from the
knees. Off to Joe's left.

"You're gonna come in here, all, uh,
nonchalant? When you ain't even on the schedule?"

Tonk.

The sound came from Joe's own skull as
something small detonated against the left side of his face. He
didn't understand this until afterward, when he was already
kneeling on the floor, one hand touching the welt on his head, the
other grasping a powdery, squarish object -- a piece of brick. A
body fell on top of him, jamming an elbow in his back.

"Appointment only, motherfucker. This is a
place of some serious business!"

Joe's head was yanked back. He felt something
cold and thin against his throat. A knife.

"What now, gingerbread?"

Joe gasped: "Let...go..."

"I'll cut you to the bone."

But Joe's attacker was surprisingly weak, no
stronger than a soft cheese. Joe easily pulled the knife away from
his neck. He reached behind and gripped the terrain of the man's
face. His pinkie slipped inside a mouth. The man tried biting him,
but didn't have any teeth, the buttery gums gnawing and sucking.
Joe worked his thumb into a divot, against something forgiving.
Eye. He pushed hard.

The man shrieked. Joe clumsily spun on his
knees and grabbed the man by the waist. He got lucky, managed to
throw the guy to the floor. Joe felt acutely embarrassed by how
this must look, him painfully winded, huffing like an asthmatic
donkey, his attacker, barely a man, more a rind.

With his best effort, Joe aimed his fist at
the man's face. He went wide, smacking his knuckles on the concrete
floor instead. Joe cried out.

The man shouted, "We ain't open to the
public, motherfu--"

Joe beaned him in the mouth, with his other
hand.

"You, you fucking hit me!"

Joe panted: "I'm the police."

"Ah ha ha, a police motherfuck--"

Bean.

Joe got a look at the man's face. Blood from
his nose was mixed with sweat and beard. Heavy scars toured the
ridges of his cheeks. He wore a wool cap, surprisingly white,
miraculously clean, that was pulled low over his ears. The eye Joe
had jabbed was already starting to swell. Pasty, gaunt, the guy was
a fugitive in his own skin.

"Oh please, Charlie," said the man. "I'm just
an employee. Ah, please, I got a salary."

"If I let you go..." Joe had to stop for a
moment, for some air. "...You gonna come at me again?"

"Have mercy on a minimum wage
motherfucker!"

Joe slammed his fist into the man's gut. His
hand came to rest somewhere far in, against the spine. The man
grimaced and curled into a ball. Joe stood over him, a little
unstable, chest lunging, and slid his hand inside his pocket,
resting it on Alan's gun.

"Get up."

"Piece of shit..." groaned the man. "If you
got business here, cop, state your piece!"

"You gonna cooperate?"

"What the fuck!" The man tried to kick him.
"My time is money, sir! So either make me an offer or take your
business elsewhere!"

"I want you tell me...I want you to tell me
if you've ever seen anyone else around here. Some others. Other
people. ...A woman."

"Aw..." The man started laughing. "Aw shit,
sir. Aw, I get it. I shoulda known. Charlie, all you had to do was
call ahead."

The man rolled onto his hands and knees,
clutching his stomach. He got up slowly.

"I want that knife," said Joe.

"No, you want something else. You want
upstairs. You want the executive privilege." The man wiped blood
from his lips. When he smiled, all Joe could see was purple.

"I shoulda known you," said the man as he
limped into the gloom, dragging one foot behind him. Joe followed
the trailing glow of the man's bouncing, white cap. In the
darkness, Joe thought he could see the outline of a large door. As
they got closer, it was actually a freight elevator. He helped the
man push a metal drum out of the way.