He climbed into the cab and waited there for the duration of a cigarette, then got out and walked toward his pickup. His cousin followed in lockstep. From the bed of the truck they lowered two metal ramps, like ladders, and wheeled a shiny black snowmobile down them. With Gervais at the wheel and Alcide riding shotgun behind, they roared off toward the Pond.
Céleste, by this time, was skating back to shore. I was screaming at her through the window, senselessly, when I saw it …
Here we reach the undependable part of the story: my visual memory stubbornly insists that what I saw was a mountain cat. Like the vision I’d had twice before. It’s obviously a protruding rock, I told myself. Or perhaps Kitty, the stuffed cougar from the Cave. Except it seems to be moving, creeping to within a few feet of Céleste. But how can that be? She’s now at least fifty yards away. Are there two Célestes?
I pulled back from the telescope, wiped my eyes with my fists. Shook my head then looked through the lens again. Everything was out of focus, the glass as wavery and distorting as tears. I moved the scope, adjusted the lens, until the two men came into view. Glued one eye shut and the image sharpened, but its colours seemed to be off, too grey, as if from another era.
They had come to a complete stop, on the south shoreline. Bazinet was standing by the sled, staring straight ahead, his body frozen like a hunting dog. He then made a flurry of hand gestures, pointing excitedly at something. He jumped back on and the sled lurched forward. I moved the scope to see what they were after. Céleste, obviously …
But I couldn’t find her. I scanned madly from one side to the other, then back again, slowly. Stopped at that rock again. A light brown boulder … with a tail. It sprung forward and broke into a run, toward the spot—the outcrops of grey and black rock—where I’d just seen Céleste! I moved the scope and saw her, standing by these very rocks—stiff as a statue, as if frozen in fear.
Two shots rang out. After the first the lion continued to run, at full gallop. With the second his knees buckled and he went down. But he got up, his hip a crimson smudge on my canvas, and loped on. With a third shot he was dragging his hind legs along the ice. He stumbled and fell, quivering, trying to push his insides back in with his paw. He wobbled to his feet and staggered on, but soon tripped over his bowels, which were trailing out behind him like tangled red ribbon.
The cousins followed, without firing, until the exhausted animal, puffing and blowing, collapsed by the submarine crags. They circled him twice before stopping. Bazinet aimed the rifle and paused, lips moving, perhaps muttering some mantra, some drum-song of murder, before blasting more shot into the lion’s face. Gervais was hooting and fist-pumping and Bazinet climbing off the snowmobile to inspect his trophy when they went down.
No buckling, no heaving, no warning. The ice opened up like a trapdoor and they went through. Only a few seconds of thrashing, flailing and screaming before they went down, came up, went down, and didn’t come back up. An electric stillness followed, of such force that it seemed to stop time in its tracks.
I blew down the stairs and out the kitchen door, a dizzying parade inside my head, a retinal circus of chessmen and stamps and animals. Along with questions twirling like juggler’s pins afire: What if none of this is real? What if you’re MUCH madder than you thought? Irreclaimably mad. Or wait, maybe you’re not mad at all, maybe, drum roll, you’re DEAD. You died in the bog trying to save a stranger and all this is after-death experience, your voyage through the afterlife. God having a lark with you. Or Lucifer. Or you’ve hallucinated this from beginning to end—your crowning delusion—from your sickbed, deathbed, in Neptune. You’ve never even been to Canada …
I set these questions aside, dropping them at the edge of the Pond, and screamed out Céleste’s name. The voice seemed real. I kicked at the ice, felt my face. I seemed to be in the here and now. My thoughts turned to the reason I was here, now: the plan, and how things had not gone according to said plan. Céleste was to have been the lure, not a providential lion, and her saviour mathematics, cryoscopy, not a leo ex machina. After waving at Bazinet, she was to have hidden behind one of the crags, in a crevice that only a child could fit into. Which is why she’d been starving herself for the last few days. Was she there now? Or had she gone down too? Or was that her gut-shot body lying out on the ice?
I was ten yards from shore when I saw what looked like her shape and colours—standing upright!—in the distance. Yet at the same time I heard her voice, behind me, from the direction of the cemetery. “Céleste?” Stone silence. I turned. Was she calling from the spirit world?
The voice was shallow and thin, as if it had been worn down by screaming, by torture. I headed toward it, feeling the sweat in both armpits dribbling down my sides. An aura of royal blue came from under the skirt of a big bushy cedar. In a panic I parted its branches and saw a body half-entombed in snow. Dead?
I called out her name. More silence. As I approached I saw movement: her body was shaking. And her eyes were teary, rimmed with red. With her mitten she wiped the fog from her glasses.
I knelt down, threw my arms around her. “Céleste! Thank God. Are you all right, are you—”
She said something strange, in what could have been an ancient tongue—Laurentian?—as she pushed me away. She sat up and began to unlace her skates. They were old and battered, not the new ones I had bought her … Was this really her? Had someone exchanged Célestes on me?
I had a thousand and one questions about what had happened, or not happened, but my mind and mouth were filled with contending sounds and images. “¿Cómo habría podido sucede … Eíδατε … … Penso che stia perdendo … Est-ce que c’était vraiment … Ich brauche einen Arzt …”
She looked at me as if I were delirious, feverish, speaking in tongues. Which I was. Words that only I could hear were vibrating my eardrums, photons carrying images that only I could see were striking the rods and cones of my eyes.
She tilted her head, looked over the top of her glasses. “You all right?”
Killing deer and moose, I now saw, were diminishing pleasures for the likes of Alcide Bazinet—animals like these were a dime a dozen. What they now wanted was the rare specimen, and the rapture that came with taking down one of the last of its kind …
“Nile, are you in there?” She waved her hand by my face.
I wanted to make sense of all this but the neuroacrobatics would not stop, the ghosts would not line up. I tried to speak but my jaw went tight, the words jammed. I closed my eyes, breathed deep, and with an imaginary windshield wiper tried to wipe my mind clear. Back and forth, back and forth. An old trick of mine that worked but seldom. I half-raised my arm. “Present.”
“No you’re not. You’re in that state of yours—when you look like you’re dead and alive at the same time.”
I had trouble hearing her words, as though the air were molasses. What was going on? Nitrogen narcosis, delirium tremens, alcoholic hallucinosis? I took another deep breath, trying to reoxygenize. “What … what were you doing in …”
“Hiding. Now let’s get out of here.” She slipped into her boots, dumped her skates in a mound of snow. “As soon as I get this damn thing off.” She unzippered her parka.
It took me a few seconds to understand what she meant. “No,” I said, stopping her. “Don’t. Leave the vest—”
The sound of engines barged in. We turned, each of us, toward the cemetery. Black snowmobiles, four of them, gunning their engines. And behind them, with gumball spinning, a police cruiser I’d seen before.
A pop inside my brain brought some clarity, the visual equivalent of waterlogged ears unblocking. Sergeants Larose and Viau … “The cavalry’s arrived!”
“It’s no rescue mission. Let’s go.” She led.
“But I know them. And besides, they’ve blocked off—”
“We’re going the other way.”
I shook my head and my neck cracked. “Across the Pond? You know how much the van weighs, with us inside it?”
r /> “To the half-kilo. Go where I tell you and we’ll be fine.”
We cleared off the snow and branches from the van— Céleste slowly and I frenetically—then climbed in. I hit the ignition, which ground and ground but would not catch.
« You are under arrest! » said Sergeant Viau’s magnified voice. « Get out of the vehicle and put your hands in the air! »
As the van fired up, the snowmobiles and their vizored Darth Vaders raced toward us. They caught up to us in seconds, a few feet from the shore, but didn’t fire. They rode patrol style: two outriders a few yards up front, two as a rear guard directly behind, trading paint, playing bumper car.
Céleste pointed the way, which she had marked with small blue fleur-de-lys flags. “Nice and slow,” she said. I didn’t have to ask why since she’d already told me. The weight of the vehicle presses the ice down—as you advance you create a wave motion that can bounce off the shore or islands you’re approaching or leaving, and can cause even thick ice to fail. So the slower the better.
We rode not along the smooth tracks left by snowmobiles, but along rough patches of snow. “We’re … getting near the hole,” I reminded Céleste. Was a double suicide part of the plan?
“Keep going,” she croaked, teeth chattering.
I took off my parka, steering with my knees, and despite her protests wrapped it around her. It covered her from head to toe, but didn’t stop her from shaking. Was she shaking from the fall-ins? Or from the killing of the Puma concolor, the fracturing of its fearful symmetry?
Two of the snowmobiles, the ones riding my bumper, stopped as we neared the killing field. Blood was splattered over the ice and welling out of the cat’s flank and snout. It was a young animal, not yet full grown. Were its parents nearby? A single track of blood ran down its cheek, as if it were weeping even in death.
I was chilled down to the bones of my hands, nearly crippled from a swat of cold nerves. “Don’t look,” I said, turning to Céleste. But it was too late—she was already following my gaze.
“Don’t look at what?”
I looked at her face—it registered no surprise, no shock, no horror—then back over my shoulder, at the cougar. There was nothing there, no body, no tracks, nothing but a black-and-tan rock protruding from the water, a craggy rectangle the size and rough shape of a lion in winter … Had the cat gone through the ice too? I could not unsee what I saw.
The other sleds continued on to the far side of the Pond, circling so as not to telegraph their intention, which was likely to set up a roadblock. But they too stopped, then reversed directions when they saw their comrades shouting and waving at them and pointing at the edge of the hole, at something snagged on a shard of ice: Gervais’s red-white-and-blue cap.
Seconds later, possibly minutes, they congregated in a four-sled powwow, then peeled off, one by one, back toward the church. We lumbered on, to the one place no one would follow us: the watery grave. It was Bible black, as dark as outer space, the ice around it “rotten,” mushy, pockmarked with browns, bronzes, rusts. We came to within ten yards of it, five yards of it, onto a magic carpet of clear blue-green, and the ice held.
Near the hole, tied to a stake in the ice, was … Céleste. Or rather, her twin. Standing like a scarecrow but a fuller version, a high-definition version, like one of those trompe l’oeil mannequins found in art installations. Wearing a Joan of Arc wig and wire-frame glasses and Céleste’s blue ski jacket and pants. And skates, brand-new ones that looked familiar. Size 6-1/2. I looked to my right, at the real Céleste, then back at the clay-faced decoy.
The real Céleste threw open her door and climbed out onto the ice. She was walking straight toward the hole! Onto the water, like Christ!
“Céleste! Don’t! Get away from there! Please. Don’t … jump!”
On the chapped lip of the crater, which somehow held her weight, she pulled down her double from its stake. Then tossed it, head-first, into the black void. It floated, semi-submerged, for several seconds before being dragged down by its ski-pole skeleton and steel-bladed feet.
The next thing I remember is the solid ground of a clearing on the far shore. Remnants of an unused road, said Céleste, which someone had tried to clear with a bulldozer until someone else told him to stop. It was snow-covered but had wide ridges and furrows that the van’s tires were able to grip. A mile or so on, the trees closing in, we passed a crumbling cinder-block foundation for a house that was never built.
“Where does this lead?” I asked. To a freeway? The interstate?”
“We don’t call them freeways in Canada. Or interstates either. It goes to Lac St-Nicolas. We should be there in twenty minutes.”
“Twenty minutes Canadian?”
She looked at the dash clock and speedometer. “Or longer. You should have a calendar in here, speed you’re going.”
I couldn’t go any faster. It was murderous terrain, up and down gullies, over fallen logs and branches. Twice the van sunk to the back bumpers in black mudholes that lay under the deceptive snow. The studded tires spun as though in oil. A Caterpillar, I was sure, couldn’t have pulled us out, von Guericke’s vacuum principle being what it is, but each time we prised the truck out with logs as levers and branches as mats, I lunging, Céleste rocking the wallowing vehicle as the wheels spun out gouts of cold mud. Much of it onto me.
“What are we going to do on Lac St-Nicolas?” I asked, back behind the wheel, wiping my face with slimy, peat-scented gloves.
“My grandmother’s plane is there. I hope.”
“And we’re going to do … what with it?”
She dug into her side pocket and held up a ring of gold keys. “What do you think? If it’s not there, we’ll drive across the lake.”
I paused to think about this. Is madness contagious? “Are you … all right, Céleste? How do you feel about … you know …”
“About what?”
“About what happened.” I didn’t dare spell anything out. The cousins, I was pretty sure, had vanished into a dark hole, as utterly and completely as if the devil had snatched them down to hell by the heels. But had there been a cougar?
“You mean what happened to Baz and Cude? The fall-ins?”
Okay, at least that happened. “Yeah.”
Céleste paused to think about this as we bounced along. A long pause, at least for her. “I feel like … like a fish released into a stream.” She put her hand to her mouth, as if about to throw up. “Or a duck trapped under the ice who’s been set free.” She coughed into her mittens, a barking, brassy cough. Bronchitis? Croup?
“You okay?”
“Or … like I’ve been strapped to a bomb and the last wire’s been cut and the ticking stops.”
An unexpected wind howled through the trees, seemed to push us forward, deeper into the forest. The path grew smoother but narrower, twisting and turning randomly. We wove in and around large boulders and towering pine, spruce, fir. Finally the path disappeared altogether in veins of scrawny saplings—either burnt or drowned—and a copse of elderly crippled maples, trunks knotted and knurled from surviving disease. The old van, snorting and twitching, plodded on.
In the early twilight, everything seemed to have a supernatural clarity: I marvelled at the way every mound of snow, every branch and boulder seemed distinct as if framed in black, as if the entire landscape were a series of paintings executed with superhuman skill. I looked at Céleste and saw, as though in time-lapse photography, the same degree of detail, all the lines present and future in her young and old face …
With a patch of the lake in view, its surface blindingly white, the Vanagon stalled. I ground and pumped, but her heart was dead. If only I’d taken her in for repairs. This will cost us our lives.
“Forget it,” said Céleste, pointing. I squinted, sheltering my eyes from the setting sun. Out on the lake, or perhaps on the shore, was a small blue-and-white craft. A boat, I thought, which would be of no use to us. Beyond that was a small redand-white cottage, candy-striped.
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“Do you have the rifle?” she asked.
I’d forgotten it. A stupendously stupid thing to do. I waited for some words from my father, but no words came. I opened the glovebox, pulled out the plastic .38.
“Does the battery still work?” she asked.
I switched on my left blinker. “Yeah, why?”
“Can you put the flasher and siren on?”
“Yes, but—”
“I know the guy down there. We’ve got to try to … well, distract him, confuse him, throw up some smoke.”
From underneath Céleste’s seat I once again grabbed the portable beacon light. I plugged the wire into the cigarette lighter and set the cherry onto the roof. Then flicked two switches.
“Who is it?”
“Take your coat,” she said as the siren sounded and the red light revolved.
“Keep it, I’m fine.” Adrenalin had numbed me from the cold.
“Take it,” she repeated, her body shaking, her words leaving a vapour trail.
We climbed out of the van and highstepped downhill through thigh-deep snow that was crusted on top. Just punching through it took a lot of strength, so I took small steps so that Céleste could follow in the holes I had left. As we reached the frozen lake I could see a long, snow-free lane bisecting it. At the near end of it was the blue-and-white craft. A headless man in black stood beside it, his top half lost under the opened engine cowling.
It was not a boat, but a plane. With short “skis” under the wheels like flat metal shoes. When the pilot saw us he slammed the cowling shut, tossed a cigarette onto the ice. From under his reaper’s hood he looked toward the blinking van, hesitated a few seconds, then climbed into the cockpit.
“Run!” Céleste rasped. “Don’t let him get away!”
I ran hard, into the teeth of the wind, slip-sliding across the ice, waving the pistol and screaming out battle cries like a backward Indian. My face, I’d almost forgotten, was warpainted with mud. The pilot put his hands in the air.