Three Years with the Rat (23 page)

His face changes. He'd been in wonder or maybe even a little impressed, but at the sound of my sister's name he goes rigid. He stands.

“She's in there,” he says and points deeper into the woods. “Where my parents' old house would be, if we were on our side.”

Something about his tone lingers after he's finished.

“But?” I ask.

“But things are complicated with Grace.”

“No shit. Let's go.” I start to walk north, away from the shore.

“No.” His voice is firm enough that I turn to face him. He hasn't moved from the fire. “You won't like what you find in there. It's better to let her come to us. She visits regularly, in one form or another.”

“There isn't time for that.” I can feel a breeze coming off the lake now that I'm standing away from the fire. I pull my coat closed.

“Really,” he says, “time is the one thing we have plenty of here.”

His words are starting to sound like excuses, rationalizations. There's a nervous edge to his voice.

“John. Why haven't you just gone in there, gotten her, and brought her back?”

And then there is a horrible, endless screech of pain coming from the direction of the shore. I have heard this sound once before, in John and Grace's apartment. It is the sound of a scared rat. The hunter is here.

“Jesus Christ,” I say. “It's hurting Buddy. It's here.”

A flash of recognition passes across John's face. “You were followed here. Through the box.”

I nod. My ears are waiting for the sound of shuffled leaves and twigs, a thing walking through the forest.

“You need to go,” John says. “Right now.”

“All right, let's go.”

“No.” He pinches his face, frustrated. “Look. I can't. I can't get through. For some reason, the entrances don't work for me. I know the dead end is out there but I can't use it. Nothing works for me. I'm stuck. I've been stuck here for so long.”

Right to the bitter end, he's keeping things from me. I say, “At least hide from that thing.”

“He isn't interested in me. Only you.”

I hop from one foot to the other, trying to warm up my legs.

“How do you know?”

“Because I used to have one following me.” He sets his jaw. “If you're going to find Grace, now is the time. I'll stall him, misdirect him.”

There's another screech, this one closer. “Get Buddy to safety if you can. And be ready to leave when I get back.”

John points into the woods. “Run!”

It takes only a few seconds before I'm out of the fire's glow. The woods are so dark that I'm reminded of the sensation in the box. The flashlight illuminates the ten feet of dirt in front of me and no more.

I run down the path as fast as I can. My legs are the last part of my body in half-decent condition. I work them hard. After five or ten minutes my hairs stand on end and I can feel eyes in the trees. Then whispers.

Hi, little brother.

This part is so tedious.

I've been waiting for you.

“Grace?” I shine the light into the woods and see only trees.

Keep going. I'll see you there.

“Grace, quit fucking around. It's time to go.”

Get in there, you worthless little shit.

I stumble forward. The path curves a little and abruptly ends. I'm not sure what to do so I keep moving forward, weaving between the trees. My head swims with physical exhaustion and lack of sleep. My eyelids close and open slowly and it feels as if they leave a coat of slime behind. I take a few more steps.

The world comes alive with artificial light. I didn't see the transition but now the trees in front of me are sparse and short, and behind me what had been forest is now just dirt and mud. Before me is a street light, the back of a diamond-shaped sign, the paved dead end of a road. I take a few more steps.

And after two long years I see Grace, standing casually and chatting with another woman whose back is turned to me. Grace is in profile, her mess of hair tied back and her clothes dirty. She shares a quiet laugh with the woman.

“Grace,” I say.

Both women turn to me. Both are unmistakably my sister.

I look carefully into the suburbs. There is a sea of people around the houses, sitting, standing, talking, resting, watching me. Every person I can see is Grace. All of them.

“Oh Jesus,” I say. I feel sick.

The two women in front of me turn to each other.

“Oh,” one says. “I guess it's my turn. You've done it already?”

“Obviously.” The other nods. “Go easy on him.”

The first Grace walks up to me as if nothing at all were the matter. I am concentrating on standing. She smiles and punches me on the arm.

“Took you long enough,” she says.

We walk down the suburban street. We pass small clusters of my sister talking among themselves. Occasionally they look up from their conversation and smile but none are surprised at the sight of me. Nor are they surprised by my awkward walk or the peeled skin on my hands. Grace leads me to the porch of one house and motions for me to sit. The glow of the electric light is eerie, and the neighbourhood doesn't look quite as it did the time I was here previously. It is an overcast night.

When she sits next to me, I ask, “What is this place? Did we—are we back on the other side?”

She shakes her head. “Think of it like standing in a doorway. A little stretch of time that connects one side to the other, repeating
over and over. A loop. We're not exactly inside or outside.”

“And when are you from?” I ask. “When was the last time you were on our side?”

“Shouldn't you know that?” She stares into space for a moment, working through her thoughts, and it comes to her. “So I go back after this. I've crossed multiple times. How many?”

“At least three,” I say. “First, after family dinner in November, 2006. Then in the middle of the night, early December, 2006. Then again a week or two later.”

I don't tell her about seeing her the last time, just after Christmas. Something about that last time nags at me.

“November was a trial run,” she says. “An accident, really. I didn't get all the way through the entrance, just looped for a while and that was amazing enough. Came right back out at the exact same time I'd entered. This time, I crossed all the way through, explored a bit of the forest and shore. No sign of the locals yet.”

I don't tell her about seeing Officer 2510, about the so-called facilities on Toronto Island, about the fact that they're not local at all.

“Then I stumbled on this place. It's the same geography as where I crossed, but a different time. A totally different entrance, I suppose. When was it that you crossed through the dead end?”

“I didn't,” I tell her. “I used the box.”

She looks utterly perplexed.

“Haven't you run into John yet?” I ask. When her eyes go even wider, I say, “He's here, too, by the lake. You'll see him eventually. He built an artificial entrance to find you.”

Two of my sister pass by in quiet conversation. They don't even turn to us.

“How many of you are there?” I ask.

“Just one. Think of it as a closed loop.”

Some of the Grace population wander closer to the dead end, like an audience.

“So all of these are versions of the same you,” I tell her. “You've been them all before.”

“Don't be an idiot,” she says. “I haven't been some of them yet.”

“But you've seen this, what's happening right now between us, before.”

“Of course. I've watched you visit so many times, from so many angles, that I hardly notice each time you get here.” She scratches at her head. “When I arrived, it seemed like there were already thousands of myself here, but that's because this is a finite amount of time that keeps repeating. I was the youngest, subjectively speaking. With every cycle, I find myself a little older, occupying the space that used to be some future version of me. And when I'm the oldest, the ultimate, I'll leave the dead end with you.”

The crowd of my sister huddles around the dead end and shuffles to get a better view. I am watching multiple time points in my sister's life all overlaid in one space on endless repeat. It's staggering. The crowd of Grace starts to murmur.

“What's happening over there?” I ask.

“Oh. You haven't seen this.” She stands up and motions for me to do the same. From this porch we can see clearly to the dead end, about a hundred metres away. She says, “Watch.”

A young boy flies out from behind the dead-end sign. He's puny and looks Asian.

“John,” I say.

“I will this into being,” Grace tells me, proud. “I create the man that gives me access to this place. Don't you think that's impressive?”

The young John runs between houses and crouches, moments away from catching a glimpse of Grace's innumerable presence all around him, close enough to touch him. John will see her silhouettes and it will set everything in motion, steer him toward my sister a few years later, and ensure that Grace finds her way here.

“You used him,” I say.

“Don't be self-righteous. Without this, he and I would have never met. What do they say? ‘It's better to have loved and lost than never loved at all'?”

Something catches young John's eye in the window across the street. He checks his little hiding space but he's blind to Grace all around him. He can see them only in the reflection and so he wanders out into the road and across the street.

I step off the porch and approach John to get a better view. This Grace follows. Young John is standing in the garden and has his face practically pressed into the window. I get within a few feet of him and stop.

“John,” I say. He doesn't react.

“This is my favourite part,” Grace says. “I remember when it was my turn to do this.”

I know what's to happen next. A lone Grace walks into the street, making herself clear and unambiguous to John. The importance of this moment is naked on his face. His life is changed.

Then he vanishes without any pomp. He is simply there one moment and gone the next.

The crowd of Grace gets louder for a moment, almost celebratory, and then dies down.

“What happened?” I ask this version of my sister.

“The cycle just reset,” she says.

Grace is everywhere around us. She is talking to her past and future self. I see nothing but pleased faces from her, some smug, some happy, some calm.

“Why?” I ask. “Why would you want to be alone like this?”

She looks at me carefully. “In all my time here, I have never been in danger, never scared, never tired or hungry or stressed or sad. More importantly, I have never been bored, never been less than completely engaged, never challenged by an inferior opponent. I literally spend days talking things through with myself, playing
devil's advocate, refining my arguments. It's almost pure subjectivity. It's—it's sublime. This is what peace feels like. It's all I've wanted since I was a kid.”

“Since Thornton,” I say.

“This has nothing to do with Thornton.” She scowls. “John. I should have known that asshole would tell you.”

“I figured it out for myself. I wish you would have just trusted me enough to tell me.” I shake my head. “And he isn't an asshole. He's been trying to save you this entire time.”

“Unbelievable,” she says. She laughs once, cruelly. “I never wanted or needed saving. Don't you get it?”

“I get it just fine,” I tell her. “But
you
don't get it. You don't know what happens when you return.”

She stares at me blankly.

I say, “This consumes you. You come back and you're all fucked up, standing near the side of the highway like a—and then a few days later, you run off again, do this looping thing at other entrances, lots of them. God knows how long you spend here. The next time you return to us, after Christmas in 2006, you're even more fucked up. And then shortly after, you're gone forever.” I move away from the houses. “For a while I thought you came back here for good, but now I understand. You really do go out into the woods or who knows where and kill yourself.”

I've silenced her.

I say, “So goddamn it, maybe it's
you
who doesn't get it, for once. Maybe it's you who needs help. Maybe you should trust me.”

There is a quiet moment between us. She looks at me and measures the weight of my words.

From just down the street I hear a man's voice say, “Grace.”

I know what is happening before I see it. I look toward the dead end and there I stand, the me from less than thirty minutes ago,
beside two of my sister. To Grace beside me, I whisper, “I don't want to see this.”

She walks down the street, away from the dead end. I follow her. Somewhere behind me I hear myself say, “Oh Jesus.”

She leads me down John's suburban street and around the corner. As we progress we see more of Grace, so many that it's busier than a night in the downtown core. But more concerning is the state of her, them. The farther we get from the dead end, the wearier these older Graces become, the less she converses with her prior selves. By the time we reach a nearby park, sunken and grassy, she/they sit or lie on their backs with vacant eyes and open mouths. It's like a cemetery, if people didn't bother to bury their dead. A mass grave.

I turn to my guide. “If you know this is going to happen to you, then why do you stay?”

The younger Grace doesn't even look concerned. “Everything meaningful increases your chances of mortality. Fatty foods, alcohol, even rearing children if that's your thing.”

“It's not the same.”

“It is
exactly
the same. It's a cost/benefit analysis. What do I have to spend, and what do I get in return? And in this case, I get exactly what I want.”