The Guardians (20 page)

    "Can't
you hear it?" he said, stepping closer.

    "Hear
what?"

    
"
Don't
lie
."

    And
then he did raise the gun.

    "Sure.
I can hear it too."

    "What
is
it?"

    I
surprised myself by answering instantly Honestly.

    "A
boy."

    "What's
he look like?"

    "Like
you. Like any of us."

    "It
would
like
you to think that."

    "You've
seen it?"

    Carl
appeared to search his memory. "Have you?"

    "Yes."

    "Where?"

    "Upstairs.
The night we found Heather. But it was only me. Me, in the mirror on the
bathroom door."

    "It
wasn't
you," Carl said, his face looming closer. "And it's
not
like us."

    "Maybe
we should—"

    
"It's
not\"

    Carl backed
away. He looked like he had just lost a long and exhausting argument with
himself.

    I
took his hand. A weird thing to do. The kind of thing Carl in particular would
have resisted, taken as an affront to his unshakeable Carlness. But once we
were connected, he held my hand as much as I held his.

    We
let go only once the night opened wide around us outside. Thankful that the
others had already headed home.

    It
should go without saying that I never mentioned the hand-holding part to anyone
ever again. Until today.

    By
the time Randy and I walk to Ben's house from the Old London it's later than
I'd thought, and my exhaustion from the evening's revelations, as well as the
wine, prevents me from asking myself the one question that should have been
asked before Randy disappeared around the corner of Caledonia and Church,
leaving me standing on the McAuliffes' front porch, key in hand:
Where am I
going to sleep?

    All
day I'd meant to tell Mrs. McAuliffe that, while I appreciated her hospitality,
I couldn't accept her invitation to stay overnight in her son's room. Her
dead
son's room. But whether I was distracted by my tasks as executor or
couldn't bring myself to disappoint the poor woman, I hadn't gotten around to
it. Now it would be plainly wrong to scuff after Randy and get my old room back
at the Queen's. Betty would be expecting me for breakfast in the morning, had
likely gone out earlier to buy the makings for her specialties—raisin bread
French toast and fruit salad. Indeed, she may well still be awake in her
darkened room, awaiting the sound of my steps up the stairs.

    I
open the door and swiftly close it again once I'm in. A silent oath made with
myself: if I am actually going to spend the night in this place, I cannot
afford even the briefest glimpse of the house across the street. In fact, it might
be a better idea to not go upstairs at all, and simply crumple onto the sofa in
the living room. I'm on my way toward it, checking the chairs for a blanket,
when I'm stopped by a sound that comes from the kitchen.

    A
scratch, or the rustle of plastic. The sort of thing that could be confused
with a breath from one's own chest.

    From
the hallway, I can see part of the kitchen. Nobody stands there, knife in hand,
as I half expect. There is nothing but the play of moonlight over the
cupboards, moving around the tree branches in the September photo on the
calendar pinned to the wall.

    I'm
partway to the kitchen entrance when a chunk of shadow breaks away and tiptoes
over the linoleum. A large mouse—or small rat—that, upon spotting me, races
behind the fridge, its tail audibly scratching across an edge of drywall.

    For a
second, the silence suggests we're both working through the same thought.

    What
the hell was that
?

    The
sheets in Ben's bed have been freshly washed and made even since I sat on them
earlier in the day. Betty wants me to feel welcome. And I do. Or at least, I'm
grateful for being able to pull the covers up to my chin so that the boy-smells
of Ben's room are partially masked by fabric softener.

    Sleep,
I have found, is like a woman you'd like to speak to across a crowded room: the
harder you wish it to come to you, the more often it turns away. So it is that
I am left awake and wishing, staring up at something awful (the beam that Ben
looped his rope over) in order to avoid looking at something even more awful
(the Thurman house, whose roof would be clearly visible if I turned my head on
the pillow). Did Ben fight this same fight himself these past years? Was he
forced to consider every knot and crack in the wood that would eventually hold
him thrashing in mid-air?

    It is
these questions that lead me into sleep. Into a dream that carries me down the
stairs and across Caledonia Street to lie on the cold ground beneath the hedgerow
the runs along the Thurman property line. Staring up at the side windows of the
house, the glass a blackboard with
fuckt
finger-drawn in its dust.

    It
starts with a woman.

    Standing
up from where she had been lying on the living- room floor out of sight below
the sill. A woman who places her palms against the glass. And with this touch,
I can see she is naked, and young, and not alone.

    Another
figure calmly approaches from behind her. Male, his identity concealed by the
dark, though his form visible enough for me to see that he is naked as well. He
stands there, appreciating the full display of her body. For a moment, I feel
sure he is about to eat her.

    His
hands cup her breasts as he enters her. With a jolt, her own hands flail against
the window. Fingernail screeches.

    
They're
real
.

    But
they're not. This is a dream. And no matter how convincing, there remains a
thread that tethers their performance to the imagination. It's this
understanding that allows them to continue without my trying to get in the way,
or desperately swimming up toward consciousness. It is a dream, and therefore
harmless.

    Yet
the dark figure who works away at the long-haired woman seems more than capable
of harm. Harm is all there is to him. It looks like sex, this thing he's doing,
but it's not. There is no explicit violence, no shouted threats—it may well be
mutually voluntary what the two of them do. But for him, it has nothing to do
with wanting her, or even with the pleasure of her body. He wishes only to
disgrace.

    I'm
expecting the male figure to reveal himself to me first, but instead it's the
woman. Lifting her chin and throwing her hair aside.

    Not
Tina Uxbridge's face, or Heather Langham's. It's Tracey Flanagan's.

    Her
eyes emptied of the humour they conveyed in life. But otherwise unquestionably
her. Mouth open in a soundless moan. Her breasts capped by nipples turned
purple in the way of freezer-burned meat.

    For
some reason I assume it is the coach standing behind her. It is more than an
assumption—the anticipation of him showing himself to me, the
ta-dah!
moment that is the waking trigger to every nightmare, is so certain I am
already recalling his face from memory, so that when he appears, I won't be
wholly surprised. It
will
be the coach. Released from the cellar to
carry out this perversity, this pairing of the apparently living with the
probably dead.

    But I
am wrong in this too.

    I am
already scrabbling out from under the branches when the boy leans to the side
to reveal his face over Tracey Flanagan's shoulder. Enflamed, gloating. He is
more interested in me than whatever mark he means to leave on Tracey.

    
Hey
there, old man. It's been a while
.

    The
boy's lips don't move, but I can hear him nonetheless.

    
You
want a piece of this? Come inside
.

    It's
his voice that prompts me to move. To get up and run away. But I'm not sixteen,
as I thought I was. This isn't the past but the present, and I am a man with a
degenerative disease, fighting to get to my feet. Three times I try, and each
time I am stricken with a seizure that brings me down. All I manage to do is
roll closer to the window, so that Tracey and the boy loom over me.

    
Look
at you,
the boy says as I claw at the house's brick, his voice free of
sympathy, of any feeling at all
.
You're falling apart, brother. Ever
think of just cashing out? Keep little Ben company
?

    My
hand manages to grip a dead vine that has webbed itself up the wall. It allows
me to get to my knees. Then, with a lunge, to my feet. Instead of waiting to
see if I can maintain my balance, I try to run to the street, but the motion
only crumples me onto the ground once more. Eyes fixed on the boy's.

    
Poor
Trev. I'm not sure you could manage this if I pulled your fly down for you and
pointed you in the right direction
.

    The
boy laughs. Then he thrusts against Tracey a final time before holding himself
inside her, his knuckles gripped white to her hips, his shoulders shuddering
with the spite of his release.

    I was
right about breakfast.

    By
the time I make it downstairs, Mrs. McAuliffe is in the kitchen, bathrobed and
slippered, eggy bread in the pan and a bowl of fruit on the table. At the sound
of me entering (my fingernails dig into the doorframe for balance), the old woman
lights up.

    "Sleep
well?" she asks, returning her attention to the stove to flip the slices.

    "It's
a good mattress."

    "Posturepedic.
Ben had a bad back."

    "I
didn't know."

    "It
was all the sitting."

    "That'll
do it."

    "I'm
glad to see it's given somebody a good night's rest."

    As I
stagger to the kitchen table I wonder how I could possibly be mistaken for
someone who's had a good night's rest. And then it comes to me that this is
only Betty McAuliffe's wish: that I be comfortable and enjoy her cooking, that
I use the things her son will never use again, that I stay a little longer. She
sees me as well rested and affliction-free because her life with Ben had
trained her in the art of seeing the sunny side, of pushing on as though their
lives were as sane as their neighbours'. We have this in common, Betty and I.
We've both had to work at our normal acts.

    I'm
bending my chin close to the bowl to deliver a wavering spoon of mango to my
mouth when there's a knock at the door. As Betty goes to answer, I'm sure it's
the police. They've finally come for me. The charges may be related to the
present or the past. They've come, and I am ready to go.

    But
it's not the police. It's Randy, now taking the seat across from mine and accepting
Mrs. McAuliffe's offer of a coffee and shortbread.

    "You
look terrible," he says once Betty has excused herself to get dressed.

    "Should
have called before dropping by. I would have made a point of putting my face
on."

    "Don't
bother. I can see your inner beauty."

    "Do
lines like that actually work on your dates?"

    "Acting
has taught me this much, Trev: it's not the line—it's how you sell it."

    Randy
crunches into his shortbread. Crumbs cascading down onto the doily Mrs.
McAuliffe had placed before him.

    "What
are you doing here?" I ask.

    "I'm
your escort."

    "To
the police station? I think I know where it is, thanks."

    "I'd
like to stop somewhere else along the way. You've got to see something."

    "What?"

    "A
website. There's an internet cafe on Downie Street. They've got terminals and
little privacy walls between them so you—"