“You know,” I said, “my uncle Anton died in this house, in the fire.”
“I didn’t know,” he answered. “I’m sorry. Are you going to be okay to do this?”
I shrugged. “I was only five or six when it happened, I barely knew him. Maybe he’ll pay us a visit.” I stepped back into the hallway, pointed to the oak doors to our left. “What’s behind these? A parlour of some kind?”
Stefan turned the handles, pushed them open. Another humid grey cloud exhaled towards us. Every room was like a new living thing, a moist new mouth to walk into.
“This was the games room,” he said. “It had a pool table, card tables, a bingo setup. For a while they had Sunday brunches here, and afternoon tea with a fortune teller. Funny old guy. Lived in one of the rooms upstairs.”
The funny old guy was my uncle, of course, but I didn’t say anything. Stefan walked over to the next stand of worklights, switched them on. They flickered briefly, then blazed to life. This room was the velvet blue of a twilight sky, bubbling away in places, exposing layers of eggshell blue and pale pink beneath. Stefan’s eyes turned to the front of the room and he gasped. I steeled myself, let my eyes follow his.
Three large panels of plywood covered the luxuriously large bay window at the front of the room. And on the centre panel, about six feet from the floor, someone had nailed a cat.
It was full-grown, if on the scrawny side. Lifeless, thankfully. And it was hanging from its head on a long steel nail which had pierced the soft underside of the jaw, and then the tongue, and then the palate. The nail had been driven up through the skull so that the crown of the head was against the panel of wood. It would have been difficult to get a living cat into this position, so it was likely dead to start with.
“You had the locks changed after the contractor left?” He nodded. “Then someone has found a way in. Maybe one of the workers who was let go. I doubt they’re still here, but we can’t be too careful.”
“But why would somebody do this?” Stefan asked. He was growing paler by the minute, his breath growing faster and shallower. I took him by the arm, led him out to the hallway, sat him down at the foot of the stairs. “I’m all right, I’m all right,” he croaked. He tore the mask from his face, then he reached into his pocket, pulled out an inhaler, huffed once, drew a deep breath—coughed horrendously—then huffed once again. He tossed the mask onto the floor. “These things are useless.”
“Don’t talk, just breathe,” I replied. “It’s not as bad out here.” However, that was less and less true. The air had thickened in just the last few minutes, stirred up once we started opening doors and moving from room to room. I noted a slight chalky-smoky taste and smell, and for a moment I imagined that we were inhaling remains from the fire, perhaps the ashes of those who had died. Stefan may have pictured this as well—his eyes grew wide with panic, he pulled his plaid cotton handkerchief out of his pocket and held it over his mouth and nose, struggled to slow and deepen his breath. “Maybe you should wait in the car. I won’t be long, I promise.”
He nodded and pulled himself up with the stair rail. I put my arm around him, helped him to the front door, opened it. The fresh fall breeze pushed back the dust and soot, lightened the air around us. Stefan pulled down his handkerchief and made his way down the front steps, then to the gate. Still wheezing, he turned to me, nodded, then stepped out the gate and headed to a white minivan across the street. I watched a moment longer, then closed the door, and turned around to face the red oak staircase.
“All right,” I said aloud. “Enough with the distractions. Let’s see what you’re really made of.”
After a closer look at both the games room and the club/lounge area, I put on the dust mask that Stefan gave me and stepped through the heavy plastic that separated the bar from the kitchen area. The dust was thicker here, hanging in the air. Drywall, sawdust, plaster. Even through the mask I could taste it. The appliances and fixtures were all still in place, in shades of avocado and gold, but a fusty old desk was set up in the centre of the room, stacked with ledgers and registry books, contracts and bills and printed-out emails, old blank membership cards, bank statements and cancelled cheques. A cardboard file box, lid on a nearby chair, was half-filled with yellowing receipts. An ashtray overflowed with cigarette butts, brands that hadn’t been sold in years. A door off to the side was helpfully marked BASEMENT. Locked solid.
I put my hand on it, just under the sign, fingertips first then the whole of my palm, and waited. Drew and released a breath. Silent. The whole room was silent, in fact, and rather forlorn. Kitchens were frequent warm spots for residual energies, but not this one.
I looked towards a darkened room off to the side that I assumed would be a pantry, and was startled to see a figure standing there, face half in shadow, staring back at me.
“Hello?” I asked, remembering the cat. I stepped forward—and he did as well—and then I flashed my phone at him and the screen’s brightness shone back into my eyes. It was a full-length mirror, attached to the farthest wall. Jesus Christ, Ivan, you know your own reflection. I peered into the little room and saw that it had been fashioned into a small dressing area with an arborite makeup table and a metal garment rack replete with plastic, wooden, and wire hangers. I tried to imagine Ethel Merman in here, and couldn’t. More likely she took over one of the rooms above and made a loud and boisterous entrance down the stairs.
I stepped back and looked again at the mirror, touched it. Clouded with dust and icy cold. I did know my own reflection, dammit, and the person in the mirror with the face half in shadow—that person had not been me.
Somewhere above me, something fell to the floor, rolled a little ways, came to a stop. Then silence. I see I’m being taken on a little tour. I shrugged, stepped through the sheeting and made my way to the red oak staircase.
“Hello?” I called. “Is someone there?” No one who could answer would, of course, but I found the sound of my own voice reassuring somehow. I started upward and realized that the second floor was also sealed off with plastic and tape, right at the very top stair. Beyond it was a wall of darkness. If there was another stand of worklights up there, I would have to hunt around for it.
My memories of my Uncle Anton were vague and contradictory. I always knew him to be loving and attentive, unlike many of my uncles and aunts—but my most vivid memory was of him shouting at someone (My mother? Their sister?) in Polish or Russian or Ukrainian. Someone was crying, her face hidden—because of the shouting? Or was the shouting because of the crying? Another figure was near, a stranger I think, someone we saw only once. He saw me standing in the doorway, looked across the room at me, and I was instantly afraid.
I remember also that my uncle always carried a deck of cards, and would perform tricks for me—guessing the number, the colour, the suit, and sometimes the face. Or I would take a card from his hand and put it down on the table in front of me, and he would pull the same card from his pocket and reveal that the card on the table had changed. Sometimes he would make me guess the card that he held in his hand, and I would get it right eight, nine, ten times in a row and he would pretend to be amazed.
And I remember his last visit, the last time I saw him, when he came out to the yard where I was playing and sat with me. He said that he was going to be leaving but that he would see me again when he could. He died two nights later. If he knew there would be a fire, why didn’t he avoid it or prevent it? Why didn’t he save himself?
I felt around for a slit in the sheeting, slipped through it, and headed to the left, pointing the light from my phone screen onto the floor until I found the farthest wall, clad in oak panelling. Above the chair rail was a large blackboard, originally used by the patrons to list their room numbers and sexual come-ons. Now, in a childish hand, the words DIE AIDS FUCKERS were scrawled like a shriek.
I stepped on something, looked down. A small stick of white chalk. This is what I had heard dropping and rolling on the floor earlier. I bent down to pick it
up, but then thought better of it and pulled my hand away.
I continued along the far wall, shining my phone from side to side, until I found an electrical outlet, a coil of extension cord, and then the steel tripod of the light stand. I felt around for the switch, snapped it on. Buzzing bright white light everywhere—and greyish white plaster dust everywhere as well.
Nearly all of the original walls on this level had been knocked down but the heavy wooden support posts and beams remained intact. In amongst them, a warren of smaller rooms had been constructed out of drywall and plywood, fitted with plain doors and plain knobs and brassy adhesive room numbers—201, 203, 205 and so on, with the even numbers presumably at the far side of the floor. Some effort had been made to demolish 215, 217 and 219: the doors had been removed and stacked against the far right wall, some of the drywall had been sawn through and disassembled, the frames pulled apart and stacked like cordwood, but the work had stopped abruptly. Room 215 was still half-together—the front wall torn away, the door lying off to one side. A rotted, hollowed-out tooth in a lifeless smile.
I walked through and among the remaining rooms, peering into each one. Some still had bedframes, mirrors, nightstands, but the mattresses all were gone. One room had hooks in the walls for suspending a sling. Here the hum was more like a hiss, a long sigh, hot breath in my ear and on my neck, moist and heavy and close.
A sign on the back wall stated SAUNA AND SHOWERS and pointed off to the left.
I turned the corner and suddenly the darkness rushed to meet me, to wrap me like a blanket and pull me into its embrace. A man could get lost in here, I thought, and I turned back towards the light, the stairs, and made my way up to the third floor.
My uncle once told my mother a story that I wasn’t supposed to hear, about a drag queen who had performed at the baths. She took a room after her show, stripped out of her clothes and went for a soak in the hot tub, which was located on the third floor deck at the back of the house. She was so tired and the water was so warm, she almost drifted off to sleep, when something round and smooth nudged her leg. She pushed it away with her foot, back into the jets, and then after a moment it bounced back against her again. Some fool brought a ball in here, she thought, and then she gave it one more kick. Up popped the body of an old heavy dead man, hairy and wide-eyed, who had apparently had a heart attack a few hours before. “You could hear her screams up the block,” he said, laughing, and it was hard not to laugh along with him.
I reached the top of the stairs and turned. The rooms here had been fully dismantled and the remains were placed neatly at the side and back of the cavernous space. Parts of the floor were taped out where the hardwood still needed repair. On the left, a fresh new wall and door led out to the reconstructed deck—with no sign of the hot tub, much to my relief. A single window high in the back let in a single stream of moonlight. Whatever presence was up here was either very weak or very still. For the first time I felt as if I was alone.
Suddenly my phone vibrated in my pocket. I pulled it out to find a text flashing. Stefan’s number.
I AM BACK.
Are you feeling better? I replied. No response. I heard a sound behind me. The door to the deck had swung open—I hadn’t closed it properly, or it didn’t fit well in the frame.
Where are you? I typed.Stay downstairs, the air is bad up here.
A pause, and then his answer came through.
I AM WAITING FOR YOU.
I crossed the room and closed the door, firmly this time, and then locked it. I could just imagine a nest of raccoons moving in and wreaking havoc. The phone vibrated again.
I HAVE MISSED YOU, it read. IT WAS HIM YOU KNOW. UP FIRE ESCAPE WITH CAN OF GAS.
Who is this? I typed back.Stefan? Are you okay?
SPILLED IT STAIRS AND DOOR. LIT THE MATCH. HE WAS ONLY 12.
Stefan, what’s going on?
Then:
STEFAN CANT COME TO THE PHONE.
Who is this? I asked.
A moment, and then:
YOU KNOW.
I stared at the words, afraid to admit their meaning. It was true that Stefan would have been twelve, or close to it, in 1997. And he could have had access to the fire escape and the deck, if someone had lowered the ladder for him. The building’s owner for example: his father.
But why? I typed. Insurance money?
MAN IN KITCHEN. YOU REMEMBER.
Then:
NICHNI POLITSIYI
The phone went dead.
Outside the wind rose with a low insistent moan. I saw no one, sensed no one, but still I knew to be cautious. The plaster fog seemed thicker now, and oddly sweet in my mouth despite the mask. I stepped around the tape on the floor, made my way to the window, pulled back the stoppers, and pushed up the sash—a gust of cool clear evening air swept in to greet me—and then suddenly a blue-white face on the other side of the screen, milky eyes, gaping mouth, lolling tongue, and then a burst of blackish fluid as it let out a guttural howl—I jumped back, fell back, struck my head on the floor, and plunged into unconsciousness.
I awoke several hours later to discover I’d put my foot through a damaged part of the floor and had broken my ankle. It was too swollen to stand on, never mind walk. My phone was undamaged as far as I could tell, but it had lost its charge completely. I looked behind to where the stairs were, began dragging myself across the floor towards them, and realized as I did so that much of the dust in the air had cleared. I pulled off the mask, tossed it aside, then turned myself so that I could sit on the stairs and move down step by step. This was more painful than I expected, and I had to twist and turn a bit to keep my bad leg from getting jostled or hung up along the way.
As I reached the second floor I noticed that the air had cleared quite a bit there as well. I pushed through the slit in the plastic sheeting and started to bump my way down—only to find Stefan lying face-up on the stairs far below me.
“Stefan?” I called.
He was very still, his face and front were starkly white, as if someone had dumped a bag of flour on him. Step by step I moved down, moved closer, until I was just above him, until I could see that what was covering him was dust, ash and dust, all from the house, and it had filled his mouth and nose and even his ears, until it was spilling out everywhere, until he had choked on it, choked and smothered and died.
I reached over him, picked up his phone, used the tip of his index finger to unlock it. Our last exchange was still on the screen. I deleted our conversation, then switched to the keypad, paused for a moment. Dialled. Clicked over to voicemail.
“Mom?” I said. “I’m okay but I’ve had an accident, at a worksite downtown. I’m using someone else’s phone. Call me back on this number and I’ll tell you where to come get me. And maybe don’t mention this to Dad.”
I hung up—and it abruptly began to ring. Unknown number. Ring and ring. Ring and ring.
“Hello?” I answered.
Silence.
Dial tone.
Then, at the front door, voices rough and urgent, shadows across the pebbled glass. Someone banged their fist repeatedly, rattled the knob, peered inside.
NICHNI POLITSIYI the phone screen flashed. But hadn’t I just erased that?
Then all the worklights snapped off.
Dmitri
This is all so many years in the past, so you must forgive me. I must have been nine years old when the first of the weekly food trucks came to each of the three villages. This was a few years before the great famine, what much later was known as the Holodomor, but even then the crops were beginning to fail and the livestock were struggling. The farms and towns just beyond our region had started to suffer, and the oldest and youngest in every family, in every town, began to sicken and die in greater numbers. It was not unusual for shops to close for days at a time, and for families to have just one meal a day—a few wrinkled potatoes, or a turnip, a half-rotted cabbage, or some beets. At the time, I thought all the villages and towns were visited by trucks prov
iding relief, but I soon learned that, for miles and miles in every direction, our three villages were the only ones being fed.
The trucks were from the Russian army—broad and muscular, loud and angry with metal flaps over the engine that rattled furiously and dusty green tarps fastened tight over the cages that covered the rear beds. Each truck had two armed soldiers in the front and another in the back, all of them gaunt and grave. As the Holomodor grew more severe, more soldiers appeared—two, sometimes three in the back and one atop the roof. I remember once when the food truck came hours late—it had been ambushed on the road just outside of our region, more than a dozen people had been killed. And I remember another time when the truck carried the dead body of a soldier in the back, his face covered with a grimy engine rag. He had been caught with one of our apples in his mouth, and he had been shot on the spot. I glimpsed a dark stain on the cloth, shaped like a faraway country, before my mother pulled me away.
“It is the factory,” she said as she passed a bowl of borscht to my father. “It has to be.” Among the shreds of beets and potatoes and cabbage, chunks of meat nestled like little treasures. Bubbles and swirls of fat glistened on the surface.
“Why does it matter where the food comes from?” my father asked. He plunged his spoon into the bowl, drew out a knot of bone and gristle, set it on a nearby plate.
“I do not want to owe them anything,” she replied, setting a steaming bowl down in front of me.
I watched my father move his spoon through the soup in figure-eights, releasing the steam, and I did the same, taking care not to spill.
“What more could we owe than our lives?” he asked, though it wasn’t really a question. My father had worked at the factory before I was born. He never spoke of it, and I knew not to ask. He raised a spoonful of soup to his lips and blew gently to cool it. Little red spatters flecked the tablecloth. My mother clucked her tongue, took a slice of bread from the cutting board at the centre of the table, dipped it in the sliced cucumbers and vinegar in a nearby serving dish and dabbed it on the tiny stains.
The Bone Mother Page 9
