Burnt Black Suns: A Collection of Weird Tales (6 page)

But he knew it was a lie. It was the end of things, no matter what the disembodied voices told him. The five shrunken men approaching him stealthily on all fours would not return him to civilization, would not return him to health. Dogan and he would be something more to them—sustenance in the cold harshness of the Arctic, pieces of flesh chewed and swallowed, digits shorn until they rained on the snow. These things were much like Wendell, in a way. Much like everyone. They struggled to unearth what they worshipped most, something from a world long ago gone, and if remembered, then only barely and as a fantasy. But it was far more real than Wendell had ever wished.

Those subhuman things were closing in, and there was little else Wendell could do but surrender to them, let them take him away.

Or he could use Gauthier’s gun.

He lifted the weapon and squeezed the trigger. The half-men scattered, but not before he put two of them down. The alien’s appendages flailed madly, and waves of emotion and nausea washed over Wendell. He couldn’t stand, but was eventually able to hit the remaining three as they scrambled for cover. It took no time at all for him to be the last man alive, surrounded by the blood and gore of everyone he knew. Everyone but the mesmerized Dogan.

It was too late for either of them. Even with the half-men dead, Wendell could feel the draw of the flickering creature in the ice, and knew he would be unable to resist much longer. In an act of charity and compassion, he raised the gun to Dogan’s temple and squeezed the trigger. There was a bright flash, and a report that continued to echo over the landscape longer than in his ears. Dogan crumpled, the side of his head vaporized, his misery tangible in the air.

But it was not enough. That thing in the ice, it needed him, needed somebody’s worship on which to feed, and as long as Wendell was alive it would not die.

Wendell put the gun against his own head, the hot barrel searing his flesh, but he could do nothing else. His fingers would not move, locked into place from fear or exhaustion or self-preservation. Or whatever it was that had been fed to him, pulling the flesh on his face tighter. Somehow the handgun fell from his weakened grasp, dropping onto the icy snow and sinking. He reached to reclaim it and toppled forward, collapsing in a heap that left him staring into those giant old milky eyes.

Wendell didn’t know how long he lay in the snow. He was no longer cold, was no longer hungry. He felt safe, as though he might sleep forever. The old one in the ice spoke to him, telling him things about the island’s eonic history, and he listened and watched and waited. Existence moved so slowly Wendell saw the sun finally creep across the sky. No one came for him. No one came to interrupt his communion with the dead god. All he had was what was forever in its milky white stare, while it ate the flesh and muscle and sinew of his body, transforming him into the first of its new earthly congregation.

The teenaged girl on the Tim Hortons night shift had seen it. “They fucking drove it right down Argyle,” she said, her maroon cap askew, shirt unbuttoned one button too many against company code. She wore too much makeup, and it sparkled under the drab lights. Harvey noticed her upper lip was pierced, and she wore a tiny white jewel in it. Emily would never be that age.

“You tell the cops?”

She snorted. “Why the fuck would I tell those stupid fucks? They’ve just been standing around watching the fucking protests without doing anything. Too fucking lazy to care.”

Harvey nodded and tried not to look at her. “Probably. You sure that’s where the digger went?”

“Fuck, yeah. Me and Cheryl went outside and watched them stop singing long enough to move the fucking blocks off the road. Then, as soon as they were done, they fucking moved them back.”

She grinned, revealing a gap along the side of her mouth. Harvey lifted his black coffee from the counter, and then placed the extra napkins she’d given him in his coat pocket. There was nothing more he needed to hear.

Outside, he lit a cigarette to keep himself busy. Wind blew a tangle of debris across the street. If he didn’t keep occupied, he would remember Emily, and the guilt would roll over him like a crushing wave. When staying home had become unbearable, he returned to Henco Industries, hoping it would be the solution, or at least a distraction from the emptiness, but he soon realized he’d learned to hate his job during his absence. And yet there was nothing for him. All he knew was how to fix things, and they weren’t the sorts of things he could put on a résumé. He couldn’t work a computer, but he could use his hands, and he knew how to hold a gun. Those were enough. Or they had been until Emily’s death.

He still saw his daughter sometimes, standing in the corner of his basement apartment as he moved from one room to other, or when he was backing his car out of Henco’s underground garage. She stood absolutely still, blaming him for what he’d done. He tried to tell her it wasn’t his fault, but she was dead. And he didn’t believe it anyway.

The Henco Industries brass wanted the standoff to end. The Six Nations of the Grand River protesters had been there for five months already and showed no desire to leave. Each additional day on the grass of the Douglas Creek lot allowed them to dig in further. “We cannot trust the O.P.P. to help,” Mr. Estouffer said in his stilted Quebecois accent. “All they do is stand around and not get involved. McCarthy, he already speak to the Crown, but they do not move. No one does anything. This is why you must go. Go do what you do best.”

Mr. Estouffer did not ask about Emily, and Harvey wanted to wrap his big hands around the old man’s fat throat. He resisted. Without the job, there was nothing left to stop the memories.

“Just do us a favor, Harvey. You don’t push these Indians too much.” The way he said
Indians
made Harvey’s skin crawl. “We don’t want the news to find you are there.”

Harvey said nothing. It was the last thing he wanted, as well. He didn’t have the face for television; it was too wide, too rough, too wrinkled. And he couldn’t risk his eyes revealing the truth. He didn’t believe.

Something about the Six Nations occupation of the site didn’t measure up, which was why the first thing he did before leaving his apartment was put on his overcoat and slip the gun in his left pocket. Not in his right. He did not open the right-hand pocket. Even when he felt the faint tugging of something desperate to be gone.

His walk from the coffee shop to the edge of the Douglas Creek lot was consciously rambling. He wanted to approach without it being clear where he was headed. The hardest part was passing the mirrored window of the Caledonia Hardware Store, reflecting in his peripheral vision despite the oncoming night. A shadow moved beside him, brushed against him. He wouldn’t acknowledge the manifestation.

The Six Nations protesters were in a line along the entrance to the Douglas Creek lot, mired in a shouting match with the Caledonia Citizens Alliance—wealthy and bored locals tired of dealing with the constant threat to their property values. One of the natives wore an elaborate costume—part angry bear, part giant spider—that made him tower over his opponents as he danced. If it was meant to intimidate, it worked; the Alliance members cowered when he swung his multiple legs by their heads. Harvey skirted the disturbance and remained invisible.

“Our land was stolen. We will not leave until it is ours again!”

“Get out! You aren’t welcome!”

One hundred years earlier the Six Nations of the Grand River signed a document that sold their land to Henco Industries. Harvey sympathized—Henco was certainly capable of looting the Six Nation ancestors—but he questioned why they were suddenly contesting the sale. Why did they want the land back? And most importantly to Harvey, why had they secretly moved a digger truck past the Argyle Street barricade the previous night?

With spring still new, the sun had already set by the time he reached the Douglas Creek lot, and Harvey was able to position himself discreetly behind some trees on the edge of the forty hectares without being noticed. The dark cloaked him as he viewed the small tent enclave that was erected when the standoff began. He counted nearly twenty tents—some full-fledged tipis—arranged in a circle, a fire pit burning at the center. But the true face of the protest was along Argyle Street, where the concrete barrier had been erected. It was clear the protesters had no intention of abandoning their cause. If anything, the anger in their voices and their costumed dancing kept them fueled. Their anger belied something more.

Harvey took a sip from his coffee and crouched down. He had to focus on the task before him; it was the only way to remain sane. There were not many places the Six Nations protesters could be hiding something as large as a digger truck, which meant it should be fairly easy to find what the protesters were digging for. It had to be the key to the whole affair; Harvey simply needed to figure it out.

He removed the gun from his pocket and inspected it in the waning moon’s pale light. The gun was loaded should he need it. He laid his hand on his other pocket, feeling the small hard lump that radiated emotional power almost too strong to bear. His head swam with thoughts long held at bay, concealed beneath a sea of Scotch and gin and whiskey, but no matter how he tried, he could not drown the knowledge of what happened, of poor Emily’s broken face as she lay unmoving in the hospital bed, machines filling her lungs, pumping her blood. The sight haunted him, and he cursed himself for not being in the car with her and Donna.

The police had told him the skid marks showed his ex-wife had swerved to avoid something on the road, but whatever it was had long gone by the time help arrived. Donna was killed instantly, but Emily . . . She had always been more his than his wife’s. Tough and hard as a nut, she glared with his face in miniature. She laughed the way a goose honks, and her arms and legs were sticks that would have one day shaped themselves into something beautiful if she’d lived long enough.

No, he thought. Keep focused. Don’t fall into the past. Harvey took a deep breath of the chilled air and resumed his watch, waiting for his moment.

The cigarette between his lips remained his lone companion. The protesters sang and danced in vigil into the night, all while facing down the Caledonia citizens who protested them in turn. Harvey felt something stir in the inky shadows between swaying trees, some force of portentousness or inevitability. Whatever the protesters were planning, it was close to being realized. The sensation was palpable, and he inched his left hand into his pocket and wrapped his fingers around the butt of his gun. He did so without thinking.

From his vantage point in the dark, flickering flames were all he could see across the Douglas Creek lot, and the fading light played tricks on his eyes. Shadows scurried between him and the enclave of protesters, momentarily blocking his sight. Tiny specks moved through the air like swarms of insects, all converging on the dark woods that occupied the back half of the lot. At the front line the crowd had petered out—the costumes gone, their intimidation complete—though enough protesters remained to man the barricade and ensure the Caledonia Citizens Alliance didn’t dismantle it. Or the O.P.P. cross it. Yet, even with a smaller number, the rows of men and women chanted louder, and their cries brought a nightmarish quality to the cooling night air.

The Six Nations wanted something, and their anger pushed them forward like animals. Anger fueled by hate and revenge, anger that wanted restitution and reparations for all that Henco had done. Anger that wanted the company to pay. The Six Nations of the Grand River wanted vengeance against those who had robbed them, and those who refused to relinquish their land. All this weighed heavy in the air, so much so that Harvey could almost see it in the dark, the emotions coalescing, suffocating the world beneath. But it was all for naught. Had they simply asked him, he would have explained it. Their mistake was looking for justice. Justice has no balance. If it did, Harvey would carry nothing in his pockets.

In the distance, sirens howled. The protesters were looking and pointing at him. No, not at him. Above him. In the night sky the thick plumes of smoke were being drawn toward the Douglas Creek lot, blotting out the stars, and from his position Harvey saw the glow of fires burning on the horizon. The sticky smell of frying electrical equipment clung to his face. Then with a flicker all the lights in the community went out, and the steady hum that lies behind the mechanized world ceased. Only the fires of the protesters remained. The cheer from Argyle Street was loud, and for a brief moment Harvey’s attention was fully in the present.

There was scuffling around him, the pitch-black making it seem right next to him. He watched, waited until he had an idea of what was going to happen. The cloaked Six Nations protesters screamed, swearing curses into the night, and the red lights of the O.P.P. cruiser lit up, spinning around and around in the void. Then its bright highbeams fought to cut through the sediment-filled air, and the protesters who had been lobbing clods of dirt and rocks scurried away. They were far too distracted to notice Harvey, and he slipped across their makeshift barriers and into the Douglas Creek lot undetected.

It was clear what had happened even without the announcements and police megaphones: the Six Nations protesters had blown up a hydro substation, knocking the power out across Caledonia, and it would take hours, if not days, to fix. Until morning, the land at Douglas Creek would be cast in pitch-darkness, hiding the movement of all below in its heavy drape.

As he moved across the grass, he kept one hand in his left pocket, his squat fingers wrapped around the butt of his gun. The atmosphere was turbid, radiating dislike and mistrust, but there was something else too; something musky and meaty, like a large animal wandering in the darkness. The shadows moved everywhere around him, and he squeezed his gun tighter for comfort where none was to be had.