The Summer Is Ended and We Are Not Yet Saved (14 page)

Martin dropped his own knife and ran.

In his office, Father Tony changed into his regular clothes. He folded the wet, bloodied black shirt and pants neatly and set them on the chair with the other bloody garments. He carefully laid the bloody priest’s collar beside the others. Then he tided the office up a bit. But he didn’t clean up Melissa’s blood. The blood had to stay. It was everywhere, like someone had thrown a bloody tantrum.

“Goodnight, Comet,” he said to Melissa’s lifeless body, and he turned out the office light. Then he went down the hall and down the stairs. He took the stairs two at a time, stopping at the landing between floors, where Joan lay slumped against the wall and Adrian’s head sat staring into the corner.

“Goodnight Cupid,” he said to Joan. “Goodnight Donner,” he told Adrian. He stopped beside Adrian’s head and gave it one last gentle kick. It rolled down the stairs and Father Tony smiled. Some people went their whole lives without getting to do that.

In the dining hall he opened the door to the basement and yelled down, “Goodnight Blitzen. Goodnight Dasher and Dancer! Goodnight, goodnight!”

He locked the front door to the main building behind himself as he left. Then he walked up the driveway to the priest’s cabin, where his car was parked. He hummed quietly and cheerfully to himself as he went. Then he got in his car and drove home to his wife and children, who were asleep. He climbed into bed with his wife, and in the morning he made his children breakfast.

When the police came for Tony, they found his wife setting the table for an early lunch. The family was having chicken fingers and French fries. She set out the ketchup and the salt and the pepper. The children were playing in the back yard, shrieking with laughter, and she liked how peaceful everything felt.

And then there were men with guns everywhere. In the kitchen, in the backyard. Then snatching the children up into their arms, smashing in windows, kicking over tables, storming up the stairs, yelling, “Clear!” after every door they kicked in.

“Where is your husband?” one of the police officers demanded.

“Tony?” his wife said, shocked. “He just went to get some milk.”

They found Tony at the store, a carton of milk set on the counter in front of him. The police cruisers screeched into the corner store’s parking lot, and the clerk looked up. Tony put a five-dollar bill on the counter between them.

“Keep the change,” Tony said.

Then the police were on him, screaming a bunch of conflicting orders that he could barely make out. Their faces were flushed red and they were all shouting. They shoved him facedown on the ground and handcuffed him behind his back, driving their knees into his spine. One of the policemen spat on him. They pulled him to his feet and started reading him his rights, but Tony just kept shaking his head.

“Wait, wait, wait,” he said, and everyone stopped to listen. “This is about those children I murdered, isn’t it?” He laughed. “Listen,” he said. “If you spare the axe, you spoil the child.”

The police spent the whole morning photographing the camp. They had a list of the campers and it was very difficult matching names to the bodies they found, or to the parts of the bodies. The counsellors were easier, because in Tony’s office they found photocopies of their ID cards, along with the background checks.

Eventually they had to ask the parents to provide photographs, and then they had to ask the parents to come in to verify the identities in person. Every one of the parents wanted to believe that their child had gotten away. It was all over the news now, and everyone knew that the girl, Courtney, had lived. It gave them hope. But nobody else had survived. And the police took turns giving the parents the news, trying to console them, and telling them that they probably didn’t want to know exactly how each camper had died.

Father Tony pulled Martin by the hair, dragging the boy toward the beach and the sound of waves. The air smelled like salt and the moon looked lovely up above the ocean. Martin fought, but the harder he fought, the more it felt like his hair was being torn out of his head. He grabbed at Tony’s hands, and tried to hold on.

The water was cold and they didn’t go out very deep before Tony stopped and let go of Martin’s hair. Tony looked around and let out a sigh.

“Look at this,” Tony said. “I’m not trying to be funny, but it makes you glad to be alive, doesn’t it? Take a minute, Martin, enjoy it.”

Martin sat in the water with the waves coming up almost to his shoulders and then rolling past him. Every wave seemed to lift him up, just a little, and carry him back away from Tony, toward land.

“Okay,” Tony said, and he took hold of Martin’s head again and forced him down under the water. He put all his weight into it, driving Martin’s face into the sand and rocks of the beach. The salt stung inside Martin’s nose, but he couldn’t struggle with Tony on him. He thought about his mother coming home to an empty apartment and he couldn’t help it, he took a deep lungful of water. It felt terrifying. He couldn’t stop. He breathed in salt water and the stirred-up sand filled his lungs.

Above him, it sounded like Tony was singing something again and he could hear the waves, too, sort of, but it was all fading. He thought about his mother’s face, smiling, and he held that picture in his mind for the rest of his life.

Martin,

My apartment here in Toronto is right above a dumpling place, in Chinatown. Already I’ve seen cockroaches scurrying from the light every time I enter a room. I can hear them whispering when they think I’m asleep. They don’t know what to do with me. For now they appear content to wait and see how I behave. If they need to, I have no doubt they will kill me without hesitation. I’ve started leaving more crumbs and food out on the counter at night, a shameless attempt to purchase their friendship.

There’s a garbage worker strike, and so the city smells worse than ever. It is the worst time for me to have moved here, and Chinatown is the worst part of the city to have chosen, but it is still better than Halifax. And, eventually those garbage men will go back to work, won’t they? Or has the government already decided to leave the city to rot, to fill it with garbage, higher and higher until the whole of the metropolitan Toronto area is an open-air dump?

When you come home from camp, we can make an adventure of it. We’ll build ourselves protective suits of thick fabric, defence against the roaming gangs of giant mutated rats. Or we can join them, if you’d like. I’ve always felt more comfortable among rats than among people. We can live in the dark alleys and in the muck beneath the streets. During the day you’ll dress in your human clothes and go to school, and I’ll head off to work on a movie or a commercial. Then at night we will throw our disguises down an open manhole and we will be wild and dangerous and we will be together.

Love,

Your mother.

JOEY COMEAU is best known for writing the text of the webcomic
A Softer World
, and for his novels
Lockpick Pornography
and
Overqualified
.

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