The Guardians (27 page)

    "How
did you know?"

    "Because
she was speaking."

    "What
did she say?"

    "
I
have to go home. I have to go home. I have to go home
."

    "Then?"

    "I
hit her again."

    At
that, the coach glanced over to the spot we'd buried her. It must have been a
lucky guess, because you couldn't tell what we'd done just by looking. Unless you
could hear her struggling to get out from beneath the soil. For a moment, maybe
we all heard it.

    "It's
like I told Benji. You have to guard against places like this. Against people
like me," he said, and turned away from Heather's grave to face us. He
was, as far as I could tell, the real coach again. "That's what's really
dangerous, what'll surprise you. The things that have nothing inside."

    A
noise from upstairs. Heavy thuds, as though someone was kicking the mud off his
shoes. I remember the coach closing his eyes, chin raised, as though in
anticipation of the first strains of a musical performance.

    It is
impossible to describe what came next.

    Not
music. Music's opposite. A noise in which I could discern the slide of a heavy
piece of furniture slamming up against a doorframe. An animal grunt. A child's
howl of pain.

    Then
silence again. The cellar's perfect, entombed darkness.

    "Nobody
knows we're here," I said.

    The
coach grinned. "Too late for that."

    "Keep
him quiet," I said to Ben. "I'll go up and see."

    I
started away, but Ben's flashlight spilled through my legs. When I turned, he
was right behind me.

    "Don't
go."

    "I'm
not leaving you behind, Ben. I'm just going to see what's up there."

    "Maybe
we should leave."

    "We
will."

    "So
let's do it
now."

    "Not
yet."

    "Why?"

    And
then I said something I don't remember thinking, though once it was past my
lips it had the familiarity of a long-held belief.

    "Because
there might be something in here we can't let out."

    I
started up the cellar stairs, the flashlight held at arm's length in front of
me as though its beam was a rope I clung to, pulling me higher. Ahead, the door
I thought we'd closed was ajar, a half-foot band of moonlight running from the
kitchen floor up the doorframe to the ceiling. It felt like it had taken me a
full minute—and maybe it had—to travel the thirty feet from where I'd stood
with Ben to where I was now, partway up the narrow steps. I was being pulled
higher by the light, and then I wasn't.

    
This
way,
the voice said.

    A
darkness swept across the moonlit gap.

    A
blink of movement so swift it took shape as a human figure in my mind only
after it was gone.

    I
leapt up the remaining steps in two strides, elbowed the door wide. The kitchen
was empty. But there was the smell the boy left behind. Something mossy and
fungal, like the first breath that came up from the well behind my parents'
cabin when we lifted its metal seal at the beginning of the season.

    There
was a scratching I assumed was the soles of my boots dragging over the floor.
But I wasn't moving.

    To my
left was the main hallway that led to the front door. And halfway along, the
boy walked off, dragging his hand over the curled flaps of wallpaper.

    
You
can taste it already, can't you
?

    That's
when I puked. An instant torrent splashing over the linoleum and burning a hole
at the back of my throat.

    
Takes
a while to find your sea legs. But you're gonna like it, Trev. Promise
.

    The
boy reached the base of the main stairs. Paused to place a hand on the
banister.

    I
went after him. But what was intended as a charge of attack ended up as an
off-balance lunge, palms out to catch a doorframe or coat hook to keep me from
falling. Speeding faster toward the boy even as I tried to pull myself to a
stop.

    I
expected him to disappear, but he didn't. As the distance between us shortened
he only became clearer, larger.
He looks like me,
I thought again. And
then, distinctly, nonsensically:
Me with all the hope drained out.

    The
streetlight that came through the stained glass over the front door coloured
him in murky orange and blue. It shaded the dimples at the corners of his mouth
and revealed the pimples on his forehead, each casting a tiny shadow that
doubled the thickness of his skin, a leather hood fitted over the real face
beneath it. A face that looked nothing like the one I swung my fist toward.

    The
brilliant white flash of pain, flaring up my arm. My eyes open to the
paint-peeled front door. My cheek against the wood I'd just delivered a punch
to.

    Come.

    I
swung around to face the boy, but he was already on his way up to the second
floor, shrinking into the dark.

    The
party's upstairs.

    Why did
I follow? In a rush, dropping the flashlight as I went?

    I
wanted to hurt him, to kill him again and again until he stayed dead.

    I
wanted to see what he wanted me to see.

    When
the boy reached the landing I threw myself at his back, waiting to feel only
the cold air of the hallway, the not-thereness of the space he occupied.
Instead, I felt him.

    The
wool of his shirt. The heat of his body. Fever sweat.

    More
than this was the shattering glimpse of his pain. Wordless, thoughtless, soundless.
But it let me see something. An image I recognize now as a version of that
Edvard Munch painting of the figure on a pier, mouth agape, the very landscape
distorted by torment. Touching the boy was like touching the inside of a
scream.

    The boy
spilled against the far wall. Hands clasped together in his lap in a schoolboy
pose. Amused by the look of horror on my face. But when a door at the end of
the hall squeaked open, the grin slid away. Now he mirrored me with a horror of
his own.

    The
boy turned his head to see. So did I.

    The
bedroom door stood open. Beyond it, so did the bathroom door with the mirror on
the inside. But now the mirror was in pieces over the floor, glinting fragments
of light over the ceiling. This must have been what we heard in the cellar. A
draft that finally nudged the mirror off its hook. The sound of a child's pain
only shattered glass, the grunting animal only the mirror's frame clattering to
the floor.

    Silence.
The too-quiet of having water in your ears. I looked back to the boy, expecting
the same show of fear as before. But he was already facing me. And he was
smiling.

    I
couldn't meet his eyes. So I looked at the open bedroom door.

    
Go
on,
the boy said.

    I
started down the hall. When I was just short of the doorframe, I stopped.
Glanced back. The boy was gone.

    I
closed my eyes. Stepped forward into the room.

    Look
!

    A
chest of drawers against the wall. The only solid thing in an otherwise vacant
room, except for a single bed in the far corner. A mattress black with mould.
Painted flowers on the cracked headboard.

    The
rumble of a snowplow turning onto Caledonia Street. I remember the roar of the
diesel engine as the driver built up speed to make it up the hill. The idea of
someone behind the wheel of the plow—a city employee who probably came to my
dad to complain about the deductions on his paycheque—opened my mouth. To cry
out for him to stop, wait for me to run downstairs. To ask him to take me home.

    Instead,
I stood and watched as the blue rotating light atop the plow played over the
bedroom ceiling. A false dawn that blinked through the windows to show that it
wasn't empty anymore.

    The
boy was there. Standing over a naked body lying face down on the bed. A young
woman. White buttocks glinting. On her skin, the walls, a snaking spray of
blood.

    The
boy raised his head to look directly at me. He looked sad. No, that's not
right: his face was composed in a "sad look," but an inch past this
he was hollow. He was nothing.

    The
boy started toward me. Two more of his long strides and I would choke on his
breath. His hands squeezing the air, readying their grip.

    The
snowplow growled up the slope, and its blue light disappeared behind the
neighbour's line of trees. It wiped away the boy, the body on the bed. Left me
alone again.

    I ran
the length of the hall. Threw myself down the stairs, both hands riding the
railings, pincushioned with slivers as I went.

    Without
the flashlight, I had to trust my memory of the darkness to make it down to the
cellar. I remember descending in flight, a visitor to the underworld who had
been discovered and now sought only to collect the living and find his way back
to the light.

    And
there was a light. Held by the coach, who shone it at Ben on his knees before
him. In the coach's other hand was the gun.

    "How
was it?" the coach asked without looking my way.

    "Don't
hurt him."

    "Never
mind
this,"
he said, dismissively waving the revolver at Ben.
"What did he show you? I bet it was something good."

    "Ben?
It's going to be okay."

    "Sure,
Benji. You'll go home and Mommy will tuck you in across the street from where
you buried the pretty teacher, and she'll tell you how Daddy would've been
proud."

    "How
do you know—?"

    "Benji
told me. Didn't you, Benji?" The coach steadied the revolver. Trained it
six inches from the end of Ben's nose.

    "What
did you tell him, Ben?"

    "Benji's
not saying."

    "Then
you tell me."

    "He
pointed to that mound in the corner and said, 'That's where she is' and knelt
down like a good little altar boy ready for his wafer. 'Forgive me,' he said!
To me! Can you believe that? Seriously. Can you
believe
it?"

    The
coach pressed the end of the gun into Ben's cheek. It pushed his head back.
Allowed the flashlight to show the broad circle over the front of Ben's jeans
where he'd pissed himself.

    "Let
him go and I'll stay here with you."

    "Trevor
the Brave."

    "I'll
tell you what I saw upstairs."

    "Tell
me now."

    "Let
Ben go first."

    "Fine.
I'll stick this up both your asses."

    That's
when I said what I must have thought before but never spoken, or thought of
speaking.

    "You've
never really had a friend, have you, David?"

    The
coach kept his eyes on me for a long time. Because the flashlight blinded me, I
couldn't tell what he was thinking, if anything. But I felt that he wasn't
really considering me at all. He was listening.

    The
flashlight grew brighter as he approached. He was going to put the gun against
my head and blow it off. Then he was going to turn around and do the same thing
to Ben. And then he'd walk out of here with the boy whispering ideas in his
head, and he'd do as he was told.

    But
what he actually did was stop right in front of me. Press the handle of the
revolver into my right hand, the flashlight into the left.

    "I'm
glad he chose you," the coach whispered.

    I
followed him with the light. Watched him walk, hunched, to the post we'd
shackled him to. Ben rose to his feet. Blinked at the coach, then back at me,
before rushing up the cellar stairs. It left me to keep the light on the coach
as he slid his back down the post until he met the floor and stretched his arms
back, offering his wrists to be tied.