‘What’s he holding?’ Carl asked in a small voice.
‘Kerosene can,’ Roland muttered. ‘He’s gonna douse the pile.’
‘Maybe he already has,’ I said, as if the distinction were somehow important.
‘Can you smell it?’ Roland asked, glancing at me.
‘What? The kerosene?’
‘No. Mink guts.’
With his words I became conscious of the odour, sweet and faint on the wind.
‘And he’s standing there.’ Roland shook his head. ‘Right beside it.’
‘A fuckin’ weirdo, man.’
Fisk took a sudden step forward, raising one arm. ‘Get outa here!’ he roared.
We stepped back.
‘Get outa here! You goddamn vultures!’
As one we turned and ran. I could think of nothing but escape. My legs pumped wildly, flinging clumps of mud high into the air. Though on the edge of panic, something in the back of my head remained calm, and it sent out a stream of clarity that made the world around me seem all at once brighter, sharper. Lynk moved past on my right, his stick gone – left behind. That detail stayed with me, and I clung to it the way my eyes clung to Lynk’s back as he pulled farther away. He’s panicked, I gasped to myself. Look at him go! With that thought I began to slow, my fear dissolving, laughter overtaking me.
Roland stopped a few paces ahead and turned. Seeing his sudden wide grin, I whooped with laughter. All along I had been carrying my school books under one arm. Now they toppled forward, falling at my feet. Papers skirring out in all directions and then settling down on the mud suddenly seemed to me to be the funniest thing in the world. Tears coursing down my cheeks, I fell to my knees.
Roland did the same a few feet away. I glanced up at him. He pointed. Lynk had almost reached the edge of the forest lining the river. Carl caught up with us then, a broad smile on his face.
Fisk, I saw when I turned, was still standing there at the edge of his field. After a moment he walked over to the mound and began dousing it with kerosene.
‘Lynk’s coming back,’ Roland announced, wiping at his face.
He must have stopped at the treeline; he must have seen us way back here. As he approached I saw the deliberate and not-quite-successful swagger he had assumed. I giggled again, only slightly more subdued than earlier.
‘What’re you guys laughing about?’ Lynk asked as he came up to us. He saw the spilled books and paper and grinned.
We said nothing as we climbed to our feet. Roland helped me gather my muddy homework, and then we resumed our leisurely pace towards the river. We came to the edge of the forest, and as we entered the trail I heard a scuffle behind me and I turned. Carl had been following in my immediate wake when we had crossed the field. But at the trail’s edge Lynk pushed in front of him. I caught only its aftermath, and yet it was at that moment that I was witness to a most surprising display: in one brief flash I saw Carl’s hatred unveiled and directed at Lynk’s back.
‘I told you he was fuckin’ nutso,’ Lynk said behind me.
I shook my head. ‘So what do you want, a gold medal?’
‘Looks like all the ice is gone,’ Roland said.
Over his shoulder I saw the swirling brown surface of the river. The pageantry was over, the spoils gone. It lost much of its magic for me, then.
‘Maybe we should sneak back to Fisk’s farm,’ I ventured, an idea coming to me.
‘What for?’ Lynk demanded.
‘To see if he lights the fire,’ I replied.
‘Yeah.’ Roland nodded thoughtfully. ‘It’s almost dark. We could sneak in.’
‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘It’s barely six o’clock. We still got a half-hour before dinner, right?’
‘We don’t eat till seven,’ Roland said.
‘Great. Let’s go.’
When the two of us headed back up the trail, it didn’t surprise me that Lynk and Carl followed. They were both probably going to miss their suppers – as was I – but the challenge had been made, and it had to be accepted.
III
The barking dogs announced Sten’s return. Taking a seat on the piano bench, Elouise began wiping dust from the instrument’s polished surface. The wood was cool beneath her hands; she thought of tilting back the key-cover and playing a few notes.
She wondered where Jennifer had gone to now – dinner was only a half-hour away. The thought of eating with only Sten for company filled her with dread. She and her husband had exchanged no more than a dozen words in the last two days. With the seeds freshly planted and the first weeding still a week or so away, Elouise had no reason to leave the house, and Sten seemed to have planted roots on the back porch. When he had climbed into his truck and driven off a short while ago Elouise had rushed to the living-room window, imagining for a brief, terrifying moment that she was seeing the last of him. After a few minutes, however, she realised that the fear was a foolish one. Like her, Sten had nowhere to go.
And now he was back. She continued cleaning the piano, hoping that he would stay outside – at least until dinner. Reaching up, she touched her face as she had already done countless times since morning. Misshapen and oddly smooth – it had now become a mask.
Sten had shattered her dentures with his fist, he had driven the plate to the back of her throat, and she had almost choked to death. It was hard to eat; she could manage only soup and, of course, jam. But already the swelling had passed; its colour had deepened from red to blue and greenish-black, and the pain was only a dull throb now, though her neck was, if anything, stiffer.
The prospect of going to the doctor terrified Elouise. There was no disguising what had happened – the imprint of Sten’s fist was all too evident. Nevertheless, those few times when she had attempted to move her jaw to any great extent had brought excruciating pain, and the sound it made was of two stones grinding against each other. She was fairly certain that Sten had broken her jaw.
She would need to get it looked at sooner or later, she knew. Thoughts of that time terrified her.
‘Dinner ready?’
Sten’s voice behind her snapped her upright on the bench. She took a rattling breath. ‘Thoon,’ she said, not turning around.
‘Good,’ Sten grunted.
Elouise listened to him walk away. Sten had been drinking on and off ever since the accident, but he had never struck her until now; he’d saved his violence for walls, doors, dishes and furniture.
Sten had gone into the kitchen. She heard the hissing snap of a bottle-cap, and sighed. She had hoped that he would have been shaken out of it. If anything, Sten was drinking even more, although only beer – it had been liquor, rye, that had triggered his rage. And he had poured his remaining supply down the sink.
Sten returned to the living room. ‘Leave my supper in the oven, Elly. I’m going out to get some more beer.’
She nodded. Thank God, she muttered to herself. Now I can eat alone.
IV
We moved through the shadowed ditch like raiders. The pewter clouds had pooled just above the western horizon and the setting sun created a streak of orange and red beneath them. Long before we came near enough to Fisk’s farm to see the burning mound we smelled its smoke. And now like shredded black wings the smoke curled down into the ditch around us.
Roland glanced at me from over his shoulder. ‘Hear it?’
I nodded. The fire crackled, hissed, sizzled – combined, it sounded like endless chattering, as if living mink were being burned – burned, but not dying.
‘Let’s get closer,’ I whispered.
We slithered along the inside slope of the ditch, parting the dead grass with our bodies. And then, up ahead, we saw the fire’s glow. We edged up the slope and pulled ourselves over the ridge.
Fifty feet away stood the mound, lit up with white heat from within. The maypole glowed like a spear of fire beside it. Of Fisk there was no sign.
‘That’s not possible,’ Roland rasped.
‘What?’
‘M
eat and bones don’t burn that hot,’ he said, his face pink in the reflected glow.
‘Must’ve put something else in it,’ Lynk whispered. ‘Birch logs or something.’
Slowly, Roland nodded. ‘Yeah, you can sort of see them through all the bones and stuff.’
Even at this distance the heat brushed our faces. Within the mound I could make out leg bones and skulls. On one side I saw a hunched spine burst in a shower of sparks that lifted skyward as if flung by an invisible hand. ‘I’m going closer,’ I said.
‘Are you fuckin’ nutso, man?’ Lynk demanded.
‘Chicken shit.’ I took a moment to sneer at him, then I dragged myself up from the ridge and began creeping towards the mound. There were lights on inside Fisk’s house, but I figured even if he was watching, the fire from the mound would turn the rest of the world black.
At about thirty feet I stopped. It was too hot to crawl any closer. Still, from this distance, I could make out one individual skull, its eye sockets filled with red flames.
I lay there until Roland’s hand closed on my ankle. The skull had long since burned to white ash. Together, we crawled back to where the others waited.
‘The sun’s gone down,’ Roland said. ‘I gotta get home.’
V
Sitting on the concrete pier where gas and diesel were pumped for the yachts, Walter Gribbs watched the sun set. The river had its origin far to the south, but its course here was set on a south-west–north-east axis. This early in the season, the sun – from this vantage point – sank directly behind the river’s waterline, and this was what Walter had come to watch.
It reminded him of sunsets on the sea. The water turned into liquid gold trimmed with red fire; it spread the sun’s gilded coat like a warm blanket, and even the darkness that claimed the rest of the sky seemed somehow benign and salutary.
An old chant he had once heard a mate singing – off the Portuguese coast, he recalled – came back to him. His voice drooping to a growl, Walter sang:
Grume goes the sun,
Heal goes the wound.
Bloom goes the sun,
Bright goes the wound.
He had never asked that mate what it meant. He had never heard of ‘grume’ and so he figured it was just there to rhyme with ‘bloom’. Old wounds, he thought, that was what it was about, old wounds and the way they could come alive years after they had healed.
He had signed up on the trawler Helmquist out of Copenhagen to do a North Sea run then hand the ship over to her new owners in Lisbon. Helmquist’s captain and crew were mostly Danish and they told tales of the sea that seemed to go back to the days of the Vikings. And when they had cleared the English Channel and plunged straight into an unexpected bank of fog, one of the Danes told him about the Ship of Nails. The day it came up from the south, from a spanse of endless fog, would mark the end of the world. Nails pared from all the men who had died the ‘straw death’ – a bloodless death – would be constructed into a ship by the prince of Hell, and it would lead the legions of the damned to the battle at the end of the world.
The sun sank lower. Fire and ice, and blinding clouds. Walter wondered if one day those clouds would part, revealing the Ship of Nails, and at its prow, the prince of Hell.
The sun was gone, the pool of gold turning a deep crimson. A wind sprang up from the south, luffing the surface of the river. Suddenly shivering, Walter climbed to his feet. He stood for a moment, watching the water, his hands on his hips. Then, sighing, he turned about and made his way back up the bank towards his shack.
VI
We hurried through the deepening shadows of the strip of woods separating Fisk’s land from the playground. No one spoke as we emerged on to the playing field. To our left, beyond the swings, stood Louper’s house and kennel, both cast in dull yellow from the lone porch light. Within the kennel the dogs were visible as four black shapes, three gathered around one.
My gaze remained on them as we crossed the playground. There was something odd about one of the dogs, I realised. Then I stopped. The dog in the centre had just risen on its back legs, and it stood there, watching us.
‘Jesus Christ!’ I whispered.
At my words Roland stopped and turned, followed my gaze. ‘Weird,’ he muttered. ‘That’s Old Man Louper in there.’
‘With the dogs,’ Lynk said beside me.
I shook my head. ‘What’s he doin’ inside that cage?’
‘Maybe he’s feeding them,’ Roland suggested.
Lynk pushed past me. ‘Who cares? I gotta get home.’
We began moving again, but I felt shaken. I could’ve sworn I’d seen four dogs in there, not three and a man.
Reaching the road Lynk laughed suddenly. ‘He probably lives in there.’
‘Wonder what he was doing out at Fisk’s?’ I said.
‘Probably ordering a fur coat.’ Lynk turned to grin at me. ‘Dog fur.’
I realised that he was making overtures, but I didn’t trust him. So I didn’t return his grin. I held his gaze for a moment, then turned my attention back to the road.
‘I’ll see you guys later,’ Roland said.
‘Did ya get the homework?’ Lynk asked.
‘Yeah. See ya.’
We nodded and he began making his way up the street. We continued on in the opposite direction.
I glanced at Lynk. ‘What was that about homework?’
‘Roland missed the morning.’ Lynk shrugged. ‘Doctor’s appointment.’ He paused, then: ‘Man, that was some fire!’
I grunted. ‘I’ve seen bigger ones.’
‘Oh yeah? Where?’
‘In the city. I saw a whole apartment block burn down, once.’
‘Anyone get killed?’
‘Yeah,’ I lied. ‘Lots.’
‘Did you see the bodies?’
I nodded.
‘What’d they look like?’
I sneered at him. ‘Bodies. What else would they look like?’
‘All black and crisp, eh?’
‘’Course.’
‘Just like those mink.’
I suddenly felt sick. They would’ve looked just like those mink. Bones bursting and veins popping, skulls with eyes of fire.
‘Did somebody start it?’
I glanced at him. ‘Start what?’
‘The fire. Did somebody light it on purpose?’
I shrugged. ‘Don’t know.’
Lynk grinned. ‘I once started a forest fire,’ he said. ‘Down near the beaver lodge. But it rained, and the firemen came and put it out. I bet if they hadn’t come and it hadn’t rained, it would’ve burned for miles.’
I stared at him briefly, then looked away. ‘You’re a fucking idiot, Lynk.’ We had reached my driveway and so without another word I turned into it and left them.
VII
When the world had ceased its wild, warped dance, returning to more familiar rhythms, and when the trees surrounding the ruins had retracted their claws, Jennifer led her two friends out of the homestead clearing.
No one spoke; their throats were tight and dry. The occasional hallucination still flashed through Jennifer, normalcy twisting and sliding into something else: for a moment it seemed that the shadows scattered in all directions and that the road beneath her feet dissolved into black mud, but, smiling, she rode it out. There was a sea within her, but the waves that had tossed her high into the air, that had run her through cavorting channels for what seemed an eternity, were now growing calm. She felt their tranquillity flowing down her arms and legs, felt a sudden, deep conviction that she was able to fly, the next moment sadly dismissed it.
‘You look weird, Jenny,’ Barb said, giggling.
Jennifer sighed, then glanced at her two friends. ‘You two feel able to walk home?’
‘Sure,’ Barb said, reaching up to twist her curls but missing. She groped for a second, then dropped her hand and shrugged. ‘It’s not far.’
‘Sandy?’ Jennifer asked.
‘Huh?’ Sandy turned, a
slightly wild look in her eyes. ‘Home? Oh yeah, sure.’
Jennifer nodded. ‘Okay, see ya later, then.’
She stood for a moment, watching them walk up the road, then turned and made her way towards her house. The sky was still playfully spinning threads of colour before her eyes. It had been an incredible trip. For a time there she had been seeing through Barb’s eyes, and Sandy’s; and she was pretty certain that they had shared thoughts – she remembered poems, full of strange rhymes and odd inflections, lines they had each spoken in turn, often using words they had never heard before.
The road seemed to be getting narrower as she approached the first of the two sharp bends that would bring her around to her house. She held out her arms on either side for balance, slowing her pace.
Shadows crept close on all sides, and Jennifer felt a tremor of fear. As she reached the bend she looked up and gasped. Ahead, at the very edge of darkness, stood three figures. It was a moment before she recognised two of them. Lynk and Carl. Both were facing the third boy. The new kid, a disembodied voice informed her. She nodded. He spoke a reply to something Lynk said, then turned and entered the driveway. He hadn’t seen her.
Jennifer gasped again, then blinked and shook her head. For a brief moment she had seen large black wings on the shoulders of all three of them. But now they were gone, and so was the new boy.
Lynk and Carl approached. She watched as the sky above them reached down threads of colour and brushed the tops of their heads. Green for Carl, red for Lynk. The threads withdrew and suddenly the two boys were walking past her.
‘Hi,’ she said uncertainly.
Lynk nodded and Carl mumbled, ‘Hi, Jennifer.’
‘Was that the new kid?’ she asked.
‘Yeah,’ Lynk muttered, not stopping.
‘What’s his name, Carl?’
‘Owen Brand,’ Carl replied, hurrying after Lynk.
‘A third thread went down the driveway,’ Jennifer said.
Lynk and Carl stopped and looked at her. ‘What?’ they asked in unison.
‘A third thread,’ she explained. ‘It went in after him. It was white.’
‘How come you’re holding your arms out like that?’ Lynk asked.