Anarchy (50 page)

The boy was retreating down the hill toward the water, the demon striding after him, still talking, it seemed, though at a distance there was no difference between its voice and the whisper of the blaze. Goose had been backing unwillingly away, but now she set herself up the hill, looking again for any hint of the outline of the station. She remembered Jennifer staring mutely from the floor of the cell there, at the beginning. She remembered reading the file, thinking about the girl's refusal to speak.
The spirit that gave her a voice.
She thought of Jennifer up in the bedroom of her house on the night of 1 December, shouting “crazy stuff.” Who wouldn't listen to her now? Forget about the lawyers and doctors and cops and her useless drunken mother, forget about the voices down phones and on Skype and broadcast by satellite from studios in Toronto or New York; hers was the language they needed.

She found the station, and the path between the hydrangea bushes, and the invisible back door. She went in and found the mask, the one thing her hands had clasped and recognized in the darkness.

“Mum?”

She held still, the carved wood in her arms.

“Is that you? I can't see.”

A younger child's voice, English accented (needless to say), with a spiky uncertainty to it.

“Hey,” Goose said. “It's Horace, isn't it?”

“Who the hell's there?”

“I'm . . . no one. Doesn't matter.”

“Where's Mum? You better not be a burglar.”

“You're not at home, Horace. You've come a long way.”

“Can't you turn a flipping light on?”

“No,” she said. “I'm afraid I can't.”

“Who is this? You're an American.”

“Actually I'm . . . not.”

“You the one who was calling, then?”

“Not me.”

“Someone was calling. I heard it. Where are we? Where's Mum?”

“I tried to call your mother. The phones stopped working, though. This is Canada.”

“Canada like in Canada? That top bit of America?”

“Uh-huh.”

“What am I doing in Canada? That's ridiculous.”

“I couldn't tell you. I guess maybe it's like you said, someone called you.” She thought of the hospital report: Jennifer slipping out of bed when no one was looking and murmuring, swaying, dancing. “You're okay. A friend of mine's been looking after you. He's—”
This is for you, Jonas,
she thought; a valedictory thought. “He's good people.”

“Is that him with you?”

“Nah. He went out.”

“So who's that?” Something bumped. “Ow. Where are you? Where's the lights?”

“There's no one else here. There's no lights either. Power's off.”

“There is, I heard him. I got sharp ears.” More bumping: something got knocked over. “What's all”—he said it
wossall
—“this stuff ?”

Now Goose heard it too, and smelled and tasted it at the same time: it crept over every ambient sense like the first subsonic tremor of an earthquake. Her arms and hands vibrated with it.

“Maybe you should stay put a little bit,” she said. “Jonas'll be back to help you.”

“Help me what? I don't need help.”

“I found you, you know.” Fog, and a slumped body alone on an island in the sea. “Me and Jonas got you safe. I guess if it hadn't been for those guys when I was out in the kayak I might not have known. So that's one thing I did right, huh?”

The bumping had stopped.

“You're mental,” Horace said, warily.

“It's okay.” The other voice in the room rose to a deep, swift-slow hum, at rest yet full of immense power. It had a rough singing tone, but it went on rising, with no need to draw breath. “I have to take this now.”

“Take what? Are you stealing stuff ?”

“You take care, Horace. They thought you were lost, you know? Nothing's lost, I guess. Just went missing for a while.” The sound was swelling around her, too much for Jonas's cluttered front room to contain. She went out again, still holding the mask. It too had gone missing, she supposed, and perhaps was now back where it belonged. She had a memory as brief as a heartbeat: she'd gone to the museum in Victoria once and looked at a case full of masks, and she remembered thinking how odd their silence was. All those things with great mouths, beaks and jaws and muzzles—something about the way the old First Nations people carved them made them look as if they were all mouth—lined up there not saying a word, like they'd been in the middle of a sentence and simultaneously forgotten what they were saying. Forgotten for however many hundred years.

Not forever, though.

The boy and the drowned thing were gone, or at least there was no torchlight and no other lights either. She found Jennifer by the soft gasping noises the girl made as she crouched in the street, though how she could hear anything over the yawning moan of the mask she didn't know. She smelled the sea again, foam and kelp and salt. It no longer revolted her. She put the mask in Jennifer's hands, or thought she did. It was too dark to know for sure.

Everything fell silent.

Then there was a single crack of thunder. Lightning splintered the dark, a white wound ripped from the zenith to the reflecting surface of the inlet. In its instant of shocking brilliance Goose saw a silhouette standing in front of her, upright: the girl with her head transformed. From the face of the mask came a cry as huge and fierce as the sky's.

It began to rain. Not the kind of storm rain the thunder had briefly promised, but Pacific rain, a sweetly irresistible drenching, the kind that feels as if it could go on forever. Within moments it had made the town its instrument. Gutters dripped and spilled, skylights thrummed, every surface answered to the gentle percussion. The darkness had come alive. The blaze at its center wilted visibly as Goose turned to look. Its noise was swamped. Instead of a hard-edged, blood-colored divide between burning light and utter shadow, the town had become an equal sea of quiet music, streets and buildings and sidewalks and foliage and the handful of vehicles that hadn't yet been pressed into evacuation service all whispering their different presences by the different ways they testified to the unseen rainfall. There were voices everywhere. Everything had found its mouth.

Séverine,
said one of them, close to her, deep, strong, calm. Goose saw the masked face turned in her direction.
Be on your way now.

“I don't actually know where I go next,” she said.

Then follow me.

“Which one are you?” Though she knew, really. The voice was in front of her on the road. She recognized it, in a way. It was the thing that had been missing, the thing she'd been looking for. It was the voice that hadn't been in the cell in the station, and hadn't been in the reams and megabytes of Jennifer's file, the voice that was absent from those places: the voice that knew the answers to crazy things, that had nothing to say to all the wrong questions. Jennifer's other voice.

Song of the killer whale clan,
it said, suddenly huge, surging.
Speaking for the house that won't be emptied. For the people who won't run away. Who's listening?
It became a bellow like the aftermath of thunder; it echoed between the houses.
Who's going to live here? Who's going to learn how to live in this house?
It moved away. Goose followed as if magnetized. She couldn't actually see where she was going, but it didn't seem to matter. The voice was as good as a beacon.
There's roofs and hearths. Who hasn't forgotten? Who's not afraid?
A set of headlights appeared in the near distance, coming into town along the main road. They swept over the small rise by the
welcome to alice, b.c.
sign and angled straight toward her, turning the rain white and opaque and lighting up the silhouette that marched in front. Goose saw the outline of Jennifer's sweatshirt and pants, and on top of them the great swelling ridges and fins of the mask, all now completely alive. It moved as if swimming through the air, ducking, turning, while the body it rode swayed and spun. The fire ahead was already almost gone. A ruined house and its half-ruined neighbor glowed dully at their outer edges, no more than that. The headlights picked out a few other people. Some ducked away and disappeared when they saw what was coming, others stayed where they were, frozen, Goose supposed, by sheer disbelief, or perhaps standing still to listen. Between English words the mask sang in its own almost-dead language.
Run away if you want to. Find somewhere else to go. Everything's looking for its own house.

The song took over. If anything it was growing louder all the time. An angry note came into it.
Where's the ghost? Where's the bad spirit?
They were near what had been the heart of the blaze now. A motorcycle lay flat in the road, trapping a prone body by the legs; the body wasn't moving. Someone shouted something and ran uphill out of the light. The approaching car stopped with an audible screech. Its engine cut out, restarted with a frantic roar, and it began to reverse away.
Come out,
the voice roared.
Time to face the music, monster. You got no house here. You been turned away.
The transformed girl came to a halt by the smoking shell. Goose halted too. The mask turned to face the glow and leaned forward as if snatching prey.
Come out!

The song stopped, and for a few moments the only sound was the poly­phony of rain. The headlights swerved away in a jerky arc and turned back out of town. Someone else beating a retreat.

“Goose?”

He was nearby but invisible. She looked toward where the hesitant voice had come from. In the diminishing firelight even the nearest corners and streets were entirely invisible. “Jonas?”

“That really you? Ohh, man—”

The whispered exchange went no farther. Something moved among the embers and silenced them both.

The house had burned down to its timber frame, most of which was now piled in a charred and formless heap that sheltered the last of the fire. One of the upright black beams stirred and began to walk. Ash and sparks marked its passage. The pile settled, flaring, and the straight black thing became a body rather than a piece of the wreckage, going on stumbling black-booted feet. Two undimmed coals were housed in its head. It waded across the sputtering fire, and Goose saw how the scrawny white flesh had blistered, livid with burns and then blackened over with soot. Its waist-length hair smoldered with live sparks. Its clothes were frayed to shreds and its hands had curled into charred talons. The left one was hooked over the ring, whose soft gloss was undamaged and held the light.

Goose heard Jonas say, “What the fuck,” and then the pop of a holster and the unmistakable click and slide of his pistol.

“Don't,” she said, in the same instant that Jonas fired. The demon staggered. Its right arm twitched and went slack below the elbow. Still it came forward. The pistol clicked again.

“Don't!” Goose repeated. “Leave it to Jennifer.”

“That's Jennifer?”

“Watch.”

The demon shambled through a disintegrated doorway and on to the scorched ground of the yard. The soles of its boots had almost burned away. They flapped in the sodden ash like broken wings.

“So you found her after all,” Jonas said quietly, from wherever he was standing. “Had a feeling you would.”

“Mountie always gets her man.”

“You did good, Goose.”

The walking corpse lifted what had once been its left hand. The firelight was fading visibly: the motion was little more than a stirring of different textures of black. Any semblance of air had gone out of its voice. When it spoke it sounded like dead leaves, or a stiff broom sweeping through ashes.

“Silence,” it hissed.

The mask swung its huge blunt prow upward and bellowed.

“We.” The demon's mouth had roasted dry, and it could only make one word at a time. “Banish. You.”

No.
Jennifer began to dance again, just a clumsy-looking shuffle below the waist, and yet it gave the mask a restless energetic motion.
No, you don't. Got no power to make me leave my own house.

“This,” the demon croaked. The ring in its ruined fist gleamed. “Is. Power.”

Open door,
sang the mask.
Letting things come home. Magic don't belong to you. Only thing here out of its place is you, monster. This is where I live. I know the song to sing away bad spirits. You ready to hear it?

There must have been another bystander, at least one other, hidden in the night nearby, because an incongruously cheerful voice shouted, “Yeah!”

You listening?

The same voice whooped, like someone in a hockey crowd watching the start of a fight.

Goose felt the mask turn her way and speak suddenly quietly, closely.
Song's gonna send you on your way too. Got any good-byes to say?

“Bye, Jonas,” she said.

“This is it?”

“Yup.”

“Man.”
Ma-aan
. “I wish it wasn't.”

The mask had begun to chant. The girl's apologetic shuffle gained momentum. Her feet began to drum on the road with the rain.

“Too late for that. Look after Jennifer.”

“Check. Bye, Goose. Hey, what was your real name? I forgot.”

“Me too.”

“Goose, then. Fly north. Summer's coming.”

Jonas was somewhere at her back. She was starting to jog. She settled into the steady motion, relieved. She remembered how running obliterated everything else. Head steady, barely looking, just the pure feeling of going. The song gave her feet a wonderfully easy rhythm.

She glanced behind. The demon had fallen. Over its collapsed body a slender figure knelt: the boy, she saw, the barefoot boy, death's companion. She wondered whether he'd knelt over another fallen body once, out on a deserted island in the middle of the Inside Passage, and whispered words to help send her on her way. Something made his eyes sparkle in the light of the embers. He put his hand out to the burned claw and very gently eased the ring away. After he'd taken it he left his hand there, holding the scarred flesh in a surprisingly tender gesture. He stayed like that, kneeling, holding hands. She looked away again and faced up the dark road. For a few strides it felt as if there was something she might have said to him, but then it (and he, and everything) was gone.