Monkey Beach (31 page)

I went over to Pooch’s house and his gran answered the door. She smiled when she saw me and her gold tooth glittered when she asked if I had eaten. I said yes, but she gave me cookies anyway and sat me at the table
while she went to get Pooch. His oldest brother was sleeping on the couch in front of the TV. He’d been caught doing another B & E in town and was going to be shipped down to Vancouver to go to an experimental camp for young offenders. Pooch was pretty happy about it because his brother always took his allowance. The floors were old wooden planks that squeaked when Pooch came upstairs. He sat opposite me and rubbed his eyes. “God,” he said. “What time is it?”

“Almost four.”

“You want to go to Cheese’s?”

I was still mad at Cheese, but he’d already said he was sorry a couple of times and he hadn’t brought up the subject of either Frank or our dating. As Pooch and I walked over to his place, the weather was a mix of muggy sunshine and rain, as if it couldn’t decide what it wanted to do so it kept switching back and forth.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Cheese said, pushing me back outside when I knocked on the door. “You’re dripping all over the rug. Mom’s gonna throw a hairy.”

Cheese’s mom didn’t want us at her house either, so after a short stay in the porch, we were left to wandering. The sun came out, and the wind picked up. As it was a Saturday afternoon, Frank said there was going to be a party at one of the deserted houses up the hill. Until they tore it down, it was a party palace.

“Fucking cool,” Cheese said.

The clouds began to break apart. The tilt of the sunlight showed me it was getting late.

Julie was already at the party and she and Frank started making out in a corner. Someone had a tinny little boom box going that squeaked if the singing
got too loud. The rooms of the house were lit with flashlights and candles. I squinted to see if there was anyone I knew around. It was mostly older kids, who were busy gabbing.

“Shit,” Pooch said, ducking behind me.

His brother had already spotted him. He casually walked up to us and said, “Hey, little bro. You know the drill. You can walk out or get tossed out.”

“Come on,” Pooch whined. “I’m fourteen fucking years old.”

“Out. Now.” His brother grinned at me and lifted his hands. “You, I ain’t even touching. I heard you took on some Neo-Nazis.”

I snorted. “Nah. Bunch of weenie assholes acting tough.”

“That’s not fair!” Pooch said as his brother caught him by the collar. Pooch gave a halfhearted kick and then went quietly.

I hung around, but was starting to get bored and was thinking of going home to talk to Tab. I’d been avoiding Aunt Trudy all day, but I missed Tab.

“Hey,” Cheese said, emerging from the shadows, holding out a beer to me. “No hard feelings?”

I didn’t really like beer, but I took a sip to show I wasn’t mad any more.

He started complaining about his mother taking away his guitar. She’d found some pot in his room and he was supposed to be grounded, but he’d snuck out. Then he looked around and said, “Kind of a boring party.”

“Yeah.”

“You staying?” he said.

“For a bit. Where …” I stopped, dizzy for a moment. I lost what I was going to say.

“How you doing?”

“Tired. Woke up too early, I guess.”

“See you tomorrow?”

“Yeah. See you.”

He went back the way he’d come, chatting to some other people. I headed for the front door, walked down the slanted steps, holding on to the rail. I’d had a bad ear infection once, and every time I had stood up, I felt the way I was feeling right now.

The long blank spots start then. Chunks of memory are gone. I have a piece of it where I’m halfway down a hill, but I can’t figure out if I wanted to go up the hill or down it. The bushes moved, and I was fuzzily alarmed. The next piece I have, I’m lying on the ground and I can’t see the sky because of the tree branches. I’m cold and someone is breathing over me. The last piece is pain between my legs, and a body on top of me, panting. We’re moving together as if we were lovers, and the rocks and twigs are digging into my back. I open my mouth and a hand covers it. I can’t see the face. It has the feeling of a dream, as if it didn’t happen to me. I remember fighting sleep, thinking I had to stay awake, but I couldn’t.

“Lisa?” Tab whispered as I tried to sneak into my room.

“Shh,” I said. “What time is it?”

“Two-thirty. Don’t worry. I covered for you. Your parents think you’ve been here all night.”

I felt my way to the bed and sat down. I heard the blankets rustle. Tab leaned in close and I flinched.

“What happened?” she said.

I couldn’t think of anything. I didn’t want to talk about it. I wanted to crawl into bed and sleep, but now that I was awake I felt like throwing up. My temples throbbed and my mouth was dry. I ached.

“You got your period?” Tab said. “I’ll get you a hot-water bottle. That always helps me.”

While she was downstairs, the little man appeared on my dresser like he used to. Tab had left the door open and by the hallway light, I could see him clearly. He dropped to the floor and stared at me. His eyes were red-brown. His eyebrows were mossy green. His face was different this time, was grey-brown and dry like cedar bark. Ants skittered between the cracks in his skin.

“If you couldn’t stop it,” I said, “what good are you?”

His eyes glittered as he watched me.

“Don’t bother coming again,” I said.

He reached out to touch my hair, just for a second, and then he was gone.

“Lisa.”

I couldn’t tell where the voice was coming from. It bounced off the mountains and echoed. The rain started again, drops that bent the leaves and needles in the trees around me. Hairs prickled my arms. I gripped my plastic bag that was filled with the clothes I’d been wearing that night.

“Lisa.” It was fainter, and I wondered if Dad was calling me from the house, and that was what I was hearing.

Something came slithering in my direction, a heavy weight being dragged through the undergrowth somewhere close. In the distance, I heard a crow. It was joined by another crow, and another until it sounded like there were hundreds of crows cawing. Then, as I was near the trail, I heard the same slither. There aren’t many snakes around Kitamaat, just the little green-and-brown garden snakes. They’re shy, though, and you rarely see them, except on the road if a car runs them over. I breathed through my mouth, curious, not moving in case I frightened it.

I waited like that for maybe a minute before it moved again. Soft, clicking sounds came from a bush not more than two metres away from me. I thought, No, it must be a grouse, and I waited for it to thump its chest. The slither came closer, the sound low to the ground. Could be a porcupine, I told myself. Porcupines can move fast, and they do click, but this click was different. I moved slowly towards the bush and pushed them aside.

There was nothing weird about the crab, except that it was up in a bush. It raised its claws, turning around to face me. It was a good-sized Dungess.

I backed away. The crab turned, skittered sideways into a clearing, past a stump towards the trees in the centre. I wasn’t sure if I should follow it or not. The wind shifted and I had to cover my mouth because I smelled the fermented aroma of old meat left in the garbage, of something gone bad in the fridge. On the
other side of the trees, I saw a rusty oil barrel. The crab had stopped beside it, barely ten feet away. I could almost see inside. Six crows sitting on the lip of the barrel lifted into the air as I walked towards them. The smell was strongest there, and normally I would have puked. Instead, I took the lighter fluid out of my jacket pocket and just as I was going to toss my clothes in the barrel, I saw one tiny grey corpse of what was once a kitten, or maybe a puppy, shriveled against the scratched-up side of the barrel.

“Lisa!” a voice said from somewhere inside the forest.

I turned my head. I expected to see a person but there was nothing but trees. The crows launched themselves upward in a flurry of wings. I became aware of whistles, high and piercing. They were in the trees. Some were musical, like flutes. Others played long, continuous shrieks.

“Who are you?” I yelled.

“Guess.”

“Quit screwing around! Who are you?”

A different voice, barely a whisper, said, “We can hurt him for you.”

“Yes,” a chorus of other voices said, “Yes, yes, let us, yes.”

When I said nothing, there was giggling from the trees.

I looked down at my plastic bag. I didn’t want any witnesses. I didn’t want any reminders. For a moment, I thought I saw Cheese at the edge of the clearing, but when I turned my head, it was only a piece of cloth caught in some tree branches.

“Bring us meat,” the first voice whispered. “And we’ll hurt him.”

It’s your overactive imagination, I told myself. No one’s in the trees. You are alone. The voices hissed into silence. I turned the barrel over and the bugs underneath skittered and squirmed away from the rain. The tiny corpse rolled out of the barrel and landed with a thump in the wet grass. I righted the barrel, put my clothes in, squirted them with lighter fluid, then set them on fire. I watched them writhe and shrivel. I wished he would burn. I wished him pain and unending agony. Then I dug a little grave for the dead animal, wiped my hands on my jeans and left.

I tilted my head and my reflection in the bathroom mirror stared back at me quizzically. I couldn’t put my finger on what had changed. Maybe it was because I had bed head. I combed my hair out until the spikes stood straight up again. Maybe it was just fatigue. I’d had strange dreams all night.

“Lisa!” Mom called out from downstairs. “You have company.”

She was at the door, standing between me and Frank. “We’re taking Trudy and Tab to the farmer’s market today, Lisa,” she reminded. “You have five minutes, then I want you to get ready. No dawdling.”

“Okay,” I said. I smiled at Frank. “Hi.”

“Hi,” he said.

“Five minutes,” Mom said as she walked into the kitchen.

“I heard you,” I said. I stepped onto the porch.

Frank studied me as I stood beside him. He walked down the steps and I followed him and we sat on the bottom one. He held out a cigarette for me. I took it. He lit it, then shook out his match. “Cheese told me last night you guys are going out. He said you guys did it.”