Tesseracts Fourteen: Strange Canadian Stories

by John Robert Colombo

  The next morning, Genevieve checks that Ben’s shoes are on the right feet. He stands looking up at her waiting. “Okay, you’re good.”

  “Do you have the map?”

  Genevieve nods.

  “I gave it a title. It needs to be called something.”

  Ben grabs his cheeks, agreeing.

  “What is it called? What? What?”

  “Shhh. Outside.”

  Genevieve looks back into the house as the storm door slaps closed behind Ben.

  Ben waits outside, standing in a puddle. He feels dirty water wick up his instep. Genevieve emerges and carefully turns to close the door. She points to the end of the driveway then follows her brother, avoiding the puddle and stepping between the faint shades of his wet footprints.

  “Keep going. Don’t act weird.”

  They reach end of Erie Street and stop. Duntroon sits on top of the Niagara escarpment and from here they can see all of Clearview Township. From Creemore out to Cashtown. The steeples of Stayner and the entire Nottawasaga Bay including the beaches of Tiny Township. The view is sweeping and the perspective so odd that it translates to your eye like wallpaper in a Chinese restaurant. Genevieve turns her back and casts a quick shadow, her head darkens the center of Christian Island some eighty kilometers away. She carefully rolls up the back of her shirt and Ben draws the map off her skin.

  “It’s called ‘The Evil Tour of Duntroon’,” she tells him.

  Ben closes an eye to think. Genevieve watches.

  “Anyway, that’s what it is.”

  Ben’s face falls.

  “It’s mine too. I thought of it.”

  Genevieve remembers.

  “Okay, okay. What do you think?”

  Ben closes his eye again and Genevieve patiently looks at her map.

  “What about Giant Scorpion Attacks?”

  “What about what?”

  “Giant Scorpion Attacks.”

  Genevieve controls herself. Ben holds his chin and stares at the map. He is the decider.

  “Okay. We go with your one. What was it again?”

  “The Evil Tour of Duntroon.”

  Genevieve pulls out a drawing pencil and begins to write the title in block letters at the top.

  Neither child is aware that a man has approached. He has come down from the crest of the high street and is stopped, stooped over them as Genevieve finishes.

  “The Evil Tour of Duntroon.”

  The children jump towards each other as if to pounce on the words written that they have just heard spoken.

  The man laughs and pulls his hat back off his face.

  “Don’t worry! The secret’s safe — is it a secret?”

  Genevieve is too upset to speak. Ben grins and nods. He believes the map’s importance has now begun.

  “Can I see your map?”

  The man’s hand falls open against Genevieve’s arm. She knows him. She has seen him. Not his name, but him. He sits on the stool beside the antique tractors at the fair in October. He sits beside a barrel fire with a yellow dog resting by his feet. At the fair his hat is light colored. He holds the map up close to his face and studies it.

  “The Poo Lady. Hmmm.”

  Genevieve feels fire move around her throat. Ben claps both hands to his mouth. He’s too nervous to actually laugh but he thinks this could be funny.

  “Astounding. I didn’t know children could still see her.”

  Genevieve looks at his face. He is serious. She dislikes being patronized and can tell quickly when that’s happening.

  “It’s an impressive tour. I will never tell a soul. You have my word.”

  He reaches his hand out and after a pause Genevieve takes it and they shake firmly once. The man looks slightly nervous. Surprised.

  “I look forward to seeing it completed.”

  He bows and turns. Ben is suddenly overcome with the sensation that the police will come. He repeats his phone number and address carefully in his head. Genevieve calls after the man.

  “But it is. It is done.”

  The man stops and pauses before turning around. He looks at the children and slowly removes his hat. A long strip of gray wires spring up out of his head and point away from the bay. He takes a step towards them and stops.

  “Okay. You’re done then. It’s a terrific map.”

  Genevieve walks up to him before he can turn to go.

  “No, it’s not. It’s not done. Is it?”

  The man looks down at the girl. His eyes are wide. She has caught him at something.

  “Why isn’t it done?”

  For a moment she thinks the man is going to cry, but breathes deep, accepting a responsibility, and leans in close to speak. There’s something too grown up about him now. Genevieve regrets her question.

  “If your map is complete you must include the rabbit place behind the community center.”

  Genevieve blinks and looks down at her map. Rabbit place?

  “When we were kids the family raised rabbits there. It’s right there.”

  His finger stabs at the map. Genevieve looks back to check for Ben. He hasn’t moved.

  “Why should we? What’s weird about that place?”

  “Evil. Your map is the evil tour. This place is.”

  “Is what?”

  “Is evil.”

  The man scans the street around him and looks out into the bay.

  “Just don’t go there. Just put it on your map.”

  “I WILL go there.”

  “I said don’t. You listen to me.”

  “Then tell me what’s there.”

  The man might yell. He’s drawing himself up to yell.

  “Please, Mister.”

  His shoulders fall in as if something substantial has just escaped from him. He pushes his mouth hard into the back of his hand then speaks in a long single breath.

  “I didn’t see it well myself. But there’s a head on the couch at the top of the stairs.”

  He glares wanting this to sink in. Genevieve takes a step back.

  “There’s a what on a what?

  “A head on a couch. I saw it from half way up the stairs, and that day, three of my friends who did get to the top never came back down.”

  “What happened?”

  “I ran away before I could see. They were missing from that moment on. Other kids too. That summer and the next.”

  Ben is now beside Genevieve. He asks her instead of the man.

  “What kind of head?”

  The man closes his eyes tightly.

  “An old woman’s head, I think. There was no body.”

  Again to his sister.

  “Was she dead?”

  “Actually, no. She wasn’t. It was yelling at us from the couch.”

  The man takes a deep shivery breath, wipes his face then stands straight. He is looking down now and Genevieve can tell that he’s finished playing this game, whatever it is.

  “And so, I told you and that’s that. Put it in your map or don’t.”

  Genevieve feels sharply that there is real meanness in this story. She knows that when strangers try to scare children very bad things are involved.

  Genevieve and Ben watch the man walking quickly down the hill to the long road that rolls over farmland to Stayner.

  From that moment on Genevieve stopped hiding the map. She wasn’t sure what had happened to it but was aware that it had lost something. It had lost its pull. It was something that adults do. They have no sense of proportion, of size. It wasn’t that he was trying to lure the children into a derelict building; to Genevieve, that was garden variety grown-up shenanigans and not her problem. Her problem was that the map had been deformed. An ol
d woman’s head on a couch that somehow removed children from the world — this is more than just a lie. It forced everything else on the map to be true and she wasn’t sure, now that the map had lost its voice, that these things were true. The half baby growing inside the mother. The cherry tree tearing out the lady’s heart. None of it stays together if it isn’t said in a certain way by certain people at a certain time. Genevieve pictures the whale smiling as it rests on the water by the Italian toe. It is its second nature that is sunny and insane and probably twenty miles long.

  Genevieve and Ben play in the park until lunchtime. They don’t speak of the map again. They pretend they are apes for a while, then they walk on the moon and then, and she doesn’t know how or why, they pretend to steal straw from the baby Jesus’ manger. At home Genevieve lays the map on the counter for her mom to find. It will end up on the fridge beside drawings of her stick family beneath the sun.

  Ben scoops up his tomato soup in a spoon too big for his mouth. Genevieve thinks he’s no smarter than a dog. She blows on her soup until it cools then pushes it away.

  “I’m going to my room.”

  Ben turns his heavy spoon and the rash colored soup drops to the table. He is a puppy standing in its water dish. Genevieve leaves him.

  She lies on her bed for an hour looking up at the glow in the dark stars on her ceiling. The room is sunny so the stars are taking light and not giving it. In time she becomes aware of an odd sensation. A shift in the sunlight. A cloud probably passed over the sun, but it triggers a mild panic in her. Genevieve sits up on the edge of her bed. Her shadow waves across the floor as if time has sped up. Something is wrong.

  The map is gone. Genevieve slaps her hand on the counter where she left it.

  “Ben?”

  She calls from the middle of the room.

  “Ben?”

  From the middle of the house.

  “Ben?”

  From the middle of the yard.

  “Ben!”

  The top of the street.

  “Ben!”

  Oh no he didn’t. He didn’t. He didn’t.

  Genevieve dashes to the end of Erie Street and runs through the intersection below the community hall. Gravel trucks and seagulls shred the sky around her. A row of rusted barrels hold back the cherry trees in the alley. A bath tub sits on bare dirt. A Christmas decoration. Rudolph. Santa.

  The house is a frightening face, dark and grinning, but Genevieve doesn’t notice this as she leaps across the porch and trips through the screen door.

  “Ben!”

  A stove in the middle of the sitting room to the right.

  “Ben!”

  A pigeon in the kitchen. A pigeon!

  “Ben!”

  Genevieve stands at the bottom of the stairs. She can’t see the top but knows this is where it happens. Each step is bowed and worn smooth as a shin. Halfway up she can see the top of the couch. Then the arm rests. It sits against the wall below a painting of a boathouse. The cushions are heavy and settled deep and empty. No old lady’s head. No head.

  “Ben!”

  Genevieve stands for a moment listening to silence and leaning in the mote pricked sunlight at the top of the stairs.

  “Help.”

  Ben. Downstairs. Genevieve makes it half way down and stops. It is here. A head hovers eight feet in the air.

  “Help.”

  A head without a body. An old woman’s head. Her eyes are looking and the lips are moving.

  Genevieve folds her hands over her head as she runs beneath it. A blood dancing scream rips through the air as she runs. She is screaming. Ben is screaming. The head is screaming.

  She skids across the ground. Nothing can stop her. She is fleeing death. A monster is screaming at her.

  At the end of the alley she tries to stop. But she is too late and she slams into the side of a pale blue pram and tumbles through its upended wheels. A gravel truck grinds its breaks into the clouds and a long white pupa unravels under Genevieve. The baby’s face is twisted in a cry and it is rust and yellow with spidery veins breaking on its cheeks. The baby throws a small hand up that falls off. Dung bones separate from dung flesh as a thousand curls of fetid air become unbreathable clumps of light.

  The Director’s Cut

  Susan Forest

  Night pooled on the bed in a tangle of starlight and shadow and Lasha cried out, “Is he coming? Jim, is he—”

  “Who? Is who coming?”

  “Is he—”

  I fumbled for my glasses. My good ones, the horn rims, were gone from the nightstand. I pulled the wire-rims with the cracked left lens from the drawer.

  “I can’t get out!”

  “Hush—” I worried away at the sheets until Lasha slid free. She trembled, damp in the heat, lingering in some other world, and I gathered her into my arms as if she were a child and vulnerable. As if I were the strong one. “Shhh. Tell me.”

  She folded her angles into me in unfamiliar softness. “There was — a jacket. Made of every fabric — cotton and taffeta and acetate and burlap — hand-sewn with the tiniest stitches. White, all white.” She huddled in my arms. “It was too tight. It — it frightened me.”

  “You came to bed late.” I toyed with a strand of her hair, a curl of crimson that tickled and teased my arm. “You were playing at divination. Your dreams are full of fancy.” Her image, split by the crack in my left lens, overlapped with her solid image in my right.

  “And the sleeves.” Her hair tumbled forward as she rested her head on my shoulder. “Crocheted like a spider web, all sticky paths looping back on one another. But long, too long.”

  “It’s the reefer,” I soothed. “Come. Sleep.”

  But she would not sleep. “It closed with big, square buttons of horn and ivory. And the lining was pure silk, Jim. Nothing softer.” Lasha stretched and wrapped her legs around my waist. “And for standing up to ruthless Suits, nothing harder. Bulletproof at close range.”

  “It’s the wine and the tarot, Lasha. Come. I’ll hold you. Sleep.” Dusk and night trifled with star shimmer, played across the pillows, a wreath of fog. And in the center of the black and gray, Lasha lay back on the bed, her red hair cascading like blood over the rumpled duvet, her arms reaching out.

  “It was a gift.” A tiny wrinkle appeared between her brows and for an instant she became the Lasha I knew, assured and determined. “From you.”

  “It’s the heat.”

  Starlight fell on her hair and bare shoulder, but shadows clung to her face and neck and breasts. She wore an old muscle shirt from somewhere, not mine, that clung to her bony frame. She peered at me from beneath heavy lids. “You never fuck me.”

  “No, Lasha.”

  “But what if I wanted it?”

  “That’s not what we do.”

  The frost light of summer stars stole across her shoulders. “What would you do if I left you?”

  “You’re free, Lasha. No one can hold down Lightning.”

  She stretched her arms restlessly over the edge of the bed and her agitation crept between us. “I’m still trapped here. Why, I wonder?”

  “You love the business.”

  “The business is out there,” she argued. “Hollywood.”

  “You used to think our work was better than that.”

  She lowered her lashes, peering at me through them, inscrutable.

  I softened my voice with temptation. “We film Ophelia tomorrow.”

  She shifted, floating on some other sea, focusing on nothing. “You didn’t stay for the Ouija.”

  “Ophelia needs to be buried. I had a grave to dig.”

  But her spirit had drifted beyond reach, moved on, leaving me trapped in a web of words unsaid.

  “The jacket.” She whispered, a
s if to the stars beyond the skylight. “In my dream. It had a small stain.”

  “Hush.” I lay at her side, draped an arm across her stomach. “The tarot’s tangled your imagination.”

  “A blood stain.”

  A zephyr lifted the gossamer over the window; touched my neck and a shiver scuttled over my skin. “You’ve been reading Washington Irving.” I diverted, distracted, but sleep was banished now from our bed.

  “A devil’s blemish.”

  “You’re still high, Lasha. Come. Sleep.”

  “Do you know what his price is?”

  “Too high. Go to sleep.”

  She nestled into me in the tangle of damp sheets, seeing some dark and distant place within her thoughts. “The collar. The collar I couldn’t see. I could feel it, though. Soft. Oh, so soft, like fur. Like long, luxurious fur.” She tucked herself into me. “I wanted that jacket, Jim, even though it choked me.”

  “It was only a dream.”

  She twisted the covers into a chaste cocoon. “They say…” She yawned, a cat; lazy, eyes closed. “You can call the devil with the Ouija.”

  We made movies in those days. Lasha did everything. She woke at dawn, made lists and organized, calling people, always calling people. We lived upstairs, she and I, intimate as lovers, celibate as eunuchs, in the warehouse where the filming was done, where the fantasies played out. I did nothing but what Lasha told me to do, which was everything. I went for coffee. Answered emails. Painted sets, hung lights, sewed costumes, picked up.

  Mostly, I dressed Lasha. I made her clothes. I styled her hair. Lasha had wonderful hair then, long and kinky and willfully wild. I lived to touch it, smell it, adorn it. I was the only one to work with her hair. She didn’t want the natural look. No, the red was a dye, a lie, different with every mood. “Put more orange in it,” she’d say. “Streaks along the top.” Then she’d lay all the way back in the barber’s chair and give herself up completely to me. “More burgundy. More red.”