In Veritas

by C. J. Lavigne

  Verity thinks it’s odd that his fingertips flutter against her skin, until she realizes that his hands are steady and she is trembling. The dog is a snake, she wants to say, and he had a gun, but her throat works and she doesn’t have the words.

  She shakes her head again; her eyes close and she sees only the dancing sparks of her world changing. She lets Jacob envelop her then—his long arms around her, his ragged shirt against her face, his chin very light on the top of her head.

  Flour dusts the kitchen in the afternoon sunlight, golden motes flickering as they drift through the shadows cast by the tree outside the window. Verity and Jacob stand there and breathe; neither sees the dark snake in the branches of the tree, or the golden eyes watching.

  “Nothing is poorer than a truth expressed as it was thought. Committed to writing in such cases, it is not even a bad photograph. Truth wants to be startled abruptly, at one stroke, from her selfimmersion, whether by uproar, music or cries for help.“

  -Walter Benjamin

  3

  Ask around about Santiago, and you’ll find all the answers are different. You’ll hear that he is immortal and that the Ouroboros serves him. You’ll hear that he fought his way to the centre of the world, where the great snake lay gnawing on its endless tail, and that he cowed the creature with a whip of shadow and blood.

  You may hear, also, that he and his slavering beast were birthed of a she-wolf—that they were Romulus and Remus, the brothers twinned.

  Others say that he was a warrior once, and fought in Rome. They claim he tamed a dog in the gladiator pits. Or else it was a snake.

  Maybe he is the sorcerer who calls the darkness home.

  Or perhaps he is the son of Death. He likes that one.

  He likes all of those stories. He made them up himself.

  SANTIAGO

  Stefan Santiago was born in the back of an underfunded clinic, thrust bloody and small into the hands of a sweating nurse’s aide when the ambulance was slow to arrive. The baby came into the world furious and writhing, his face already twisted in a scream.

  His mother Laura was young. She had hard eyes, sculpted hair, and a smile that didn’t forgive. She tried for a few months, and then she showed up on her brother Ignacio’s doorstep and shoved the baby into his uncle’s surprised arms. “I can’t,” she said. “Your turn.”

  Where Laura was hard, Ignacio was chipped at the edges—a lanky, restless man who made an unimpressive living selling pills out of his dresser drawer. He didn’t know what to do with a baby. He would have protested, but his sister was already gone. Instead he stared down at the bundle of blankets, and offered, “Huh.”

  So Santiago grew up in two cramped rooms, surrounded by strangers, cigarette smoke, and the occasional dead rat. He slept on a narrow mattress in the corner of the living room, springs digging at his back. By the time he was three, he had learned to step around the needles on the floor. Long before he was four, he knew when to duck, and when the edge on a man’s raucous laughter meant that he should lock himself in the bathroom and be very quiet. He could open a beer or roll a joint on command—quickly, so as not to anger any big hands. They didn’t swipe at him often—not while his uncle was watching, and he was usually watching, but sometimes he was in the other room.

  Santiago was scrawny for his age. He had a habit of baring his teeth. He was only afraid of three things.

  First was the snake. The snake lived in a worn hardcover book that was one of four in the apartment—the other three were thick and full of tiny type, but the fourth was almost all pictures. A Child’s Guide to Nature, it said on the front; the book was water-stained and the dust jacket was ripped, but the boy Santiago liked to sit with his back to the corner wall and flip through the sticky pages. He looked at lions and jackals and elephants. He liked the pictures of brightly coloured birds.

  The snake’s scales were mottled green and brown, except where it curled over itself and hints of its underside showed black and yellow. It lay swollen on a bed of broad jungle leaves, shining as though freshly excreted. Its tiny dark eyes were watching.

  Santiago knew exactly where the snake was in the book: on a double spread of the sixteenth and seventeenth pages, between the elephant and a river full of crocodiles. Mostly, when he reached the photo of the elephant, its trunk jauntily waving, he made sure to grip the next two pages tightly between his fingers as he flipped, so he would skip the snake entirely and see only the crocodiles and the muddy water. But sometimes, when the noises from the next room were too loud, and he could hear yelling or moaning—or, once, the sharp report of a gun fired into the wall—he would huddle in his corner, open the book, and stare at the snake. He would force himself to brush his fingertips over the too-smooth scales, petting the page, tracing each moist-looking curve, until the apartment was silent and he could slam the book shut.

  The second thing he feared was the dog that lived in the alley. The dog wore a spiked collar and was kept behind a chain link fence. It had deep brown-black fur, and perked ears, and pale yellow eyes that stared baleful and wild from the broken wooden crate where it liked to crouch. When Santiago walked to school in the mornings, he had to clutch his bag to his chest. But it didn’t matter how careful he was, or if he walked to the other side of the street. The instant he set a toe on the sidewalk, the dog would lunge, barking, and the fence would rattle against its weight while Santiago ran with his heart in his throat and his skinny legs pumping.

  He tried to toss the dog a sandwich once. The stale bread scattered in the alley, mustard-smeared, and the dog hurled itself so hard against the fence that Santiago thought he saw a chain link snap. He tripped and went sprawling, trying to get away; the knee of his torn pants was sticky crimson all day, and he had no lunch at school. After the final bell rang, he dealt with the four smug boys who followed him—he punched one in the nose, elbowed another in the gut, and bloodied his other knee on the pavement before they ran. Then he came home with his head high, and he tried to stay on the far side of the street, but the dog barked and barked until Santiago dashed past and fled upstairs.

  The third thing that scared him was the dark.

  At night, he would lie on his mattress on the floor and if the apartment were quiet, he would stare up at the blackness and imagine the dog crouching by the front door, or the snake gliding slowly closer across the linoleum. In the darkness, he was not alone, and all the hidden things were breathing. They whispered words he could never quite hear.

  When he was very little, he would cry gasping sobs until his uncle came and turned the light on. Ignacio would bring him a stuffed bear, and if it was a good night, would sit with him until he slept. Ignacio’s fingers were rough but careful in Santiago’s hair; Ignacio smelled of smoke and something else that was decaying and sweet. His uncle’s hips were too sharp to be pillows, but Santiago could weep his fear into the worn cotton of Ignacio’s shirt.

  “They talk at me,” Santiago confessed once, sniffling. “All the shapes on the walls. They move. They want something.”

  “It’s a dream, buddy. You’re a big boy,” Ignacio said, in his low gravel voice. “Don’t listen, and they’ll go away.”

  He was wrong.

  When Santiago was older, the whispering was louder, but the stuffed bear was long gone and he was too proud to cry. He liked the nights when his uncle stayed awake; sometimes a crack of light would escape the other room and spill across the floor so he could see there were no snakes and nothing that slid and gibbered in the night. But when the light went off, he would huddle beneath his blanket, and his legs were wet and his mattress stank.

  He was afraid of nothing else. Not the days when Ignacio stared into space; not the rough cuffs of the men who reeked of liquor and sweat. He was not afraid of thunder, or speeding cars, or the kids who stalked him after class to call him names and kick his shins. Some days his neck was wet with spit balls, but he didn’t care. He kept to himself, and his eyes were flinted. They only dared to follow him in groups.r />
  He liked his uncle’s spiced cologne, and the quiet of the school library, and the tuneless humming of the old man who ran the café downstairs.

  One night when Santiago was already in bed, feeling smug but faintly disquieted about unfinished math homework, a man came to the door with a wad of folded bills. His shoulders were broad and so was his jaw. His skin was smooth as a dolphin. He leaned against the jamb and smiled down at Santiago’s uncle with an expression that Santiago didn’t like.

  Ignacio only looked at the bills with resigned eyes, then jerked his chin. “Other room,” he said. “I try to keep it away from the kid, you know?”

  “Oh, of course.” The stranger watched Santiago and smiled. “And who is this?” Santiago glared back. He didn’t want the man to step inside. The shadows in the corner of the room gurgled and moaned, but no one else seemed to notice.

  “Leave him be.” Ignacio shook his head, but stepped back and let the stranger in. The broad man followed Ignacio to the other room, but his gaze lingered on Santiago, and his broad-lipped smile was rubber pulled over crooked teeth.

  The bedroom door closed.

  Santiago lay quietly, knuckles white and blanket tucked, and waited for his uncle to finish with the man. He knew the pattern: Ignacio would unlock the dresser drawer. It would open and close, then there would be a murmur of voices. The stranger would leave and Ignacio would have money for groceries. Sometimes it would take longer, or they would come out and sit on the couch with beer and rolling papers, but Santiago couldn’t think that Ignacio liked this man.

  The drawer opened and closed.

  The shadows were whispering. Santiago was good at ignoring them. He was a big boy now.

  There was an exchange of voices.

  Then there came a barrage of meaty sounds, pounding and wet. Santiago heard his uncle cry out once, and then again; there was a new note in Ignacio’s voice, one that swooped high and then choked off in a strange, low gurgle.

  Santiago stared at the smoke-yellowed ceiling, clutching the blanket to his chest. He wondered if he should do something—he imagined himself getting up and pacing to the doorway. He imagined his knock.

  Tio, are you okay?

  He could take the baseball bat from behind the front door. He could charge through.

  With a thrill, he imagined how the dog’s teeth might rip at the stranger’s throat, if it were there.

  He thought of the snake, and how it would wind up the stranger’s legs and choke him.

  The sound of breathing came harsh and desperate from the other room, loud enough to be heard through the door. Santiago didn’t think it was his uncle.

  He heard something hit the wall with enough force to rattle the kitchen cupboards.

  He tasted copper where he’d bitten his lip. His eyes were wide open and the light was on, but black streaks swirled across his vision; he thought he saw shapes, the dog’s ears or the snake’s sliding tail or the edges of sharp teeth. The darkness whined higher; past it, Santiago could still hear the breathing, faster and faster. He imagined it coming closer. He imagined the snake’s cold eyes and the sinuous ribbon of its tongue.

  The stranger in the next room grunted.

  There was silence.

  Santiago stared at the plain wood of the bedroom door and couldn’t decide if it was worse not to hear anything at all. He kept his own breathing soft and careful. Air caught in an unwilling sob, somewhere deep; he willed it back. He didn’t dare to twitch.

  A spring creaked.

  The bedroom door opened just a crack; the air that wafted out smelled like the toilet had backed up again, or like someone had been sick. Santiago saw the stranger’s hand extend—itself very much like a snake—and trip the light switch with one deliberate finger. There was blood on the hand, and on the cuff of the man’s suit.

  The lights went out.

  Santiago could not hear any footsteps across the floor. He could hear only the urgently gibbering darkness.

  The boy yanked the blanket over his head, squirming down to the mattress. He couldn’t keep the sob from escaping; he jammed the blanket between his teeth, and it was a rank fuzziness on his tongue. He tasted cotton and his own saliva. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t open his eyes. The shadows were roiling, their voices like spitting oil. A greater blackness loomed over him and he knew the man was standing there.

  A rough hand closed on his ankle. Its fingers were sticky and hot.

  There was no sound from the bedroom. The air was motionless.

  The man jerked Santiago backward, off the mattress and onto the floor. The blanket tangled; it was no protection against the impact that slammed Santiago’s shoulder. His teeth closed hard on the flannel corner and he gagged on a sudden rise of bile in his throat.

  His eyes flew open and he saw only the dark.

  He had never been more afraid.

  Something inside of him cracked open. All of the darkness poured in, filling him to bursting. He thought of the dog, and the snake; he thought of all the horrors in the night, all the things that scared him the most, and he willed them all upon the stranger with the meaty hands. When a boot crunched against his side, he didn’t feel it; he took that agony and he channelled it into terrified hate. The shadows were screaming at him, and for once he screamed back—a young boy, conjuring the worst thing he could imagine and shoving it straight at the stranger’s chest.

  Santiago called all his fears into being, and they answered.

  It was as though he’d split himself in two.

  He saw, as if from a distance, the stranger’s grinning face, bloated as a slug. He cowered into a ball, arms raising to ward off the descent of the boot.

  He was a boy and he was something else. He was the night taking form. He was a demon called. He leapt.

  He scrunched his eyes shut.

  He shut his eyes, but he could still see. He closed his jaws around the soft white neck; he tasted hot blood. His jump knocked the man away from the seizing boy on the floor and he ripped at quivering flesh.

  There were sounds again: squelching and splattering, a choked cry and a gasp that cut off in a burble. Santiago felt thick wet warmth spray across his arm and his ear. He scrubbed his palm across his face, and blinked. His eyes were beginning to adjust to the dim light that crept around the edges of the grimy kitchen window. The bathroom smell was worse.

  The shadows were silent, but not entirely so: the morass of whispering voices had become just one, and that one was familiar, echoing his own thoughts back to him. He could almost hear them bouncing. Santiago crouched on the mattress and also watched himself crouch. He could see the mop of his hair and the gangliness of his own knobby limbs. He felt suddenly, oddly calm. He looked up at the darkness and the darkness looked back. It had golden eyes and the same sharp ears as the dog downstairs. It stood proudly over the broken body on the linoleum.

  Santiago could see now—better, he thought, than ever before. The shadows didn’t seem so deep. Blood streaked the cracking walls; it stuck to the cheap plaster in gobbets, a great splashing wave that crossed the bedroom doorway and marred the carpet beyond. Santiago saw the curl of his uncle’s hand, lying palm up and still. Ignacio’s long fingers were shattered.

  Something yawned open in Santiago’s chest. He barely had time to puke on the sheets crumpled around him before he felt the darkness rush in there, too. It was soothing. It whispered now with one voice, and the voice was his. It would never leave him.

  He wiped gore and vomit from his lips with the back of his hand, and looked again to the middle of the floor, where the great black beast crouched heaving over the body of its prey. The stranger’s corpse was a mass of so much meat; the thing above it arched its back like a wolf, and writhed its snakelike tail. Its ebon fur was impenetrable to the flickering yellow of the ceiling bulb.

  He was distantly aware of his own fragile form on the mattress. He tasted blood and liked it.

  He looked at the beast.

  He looked back at t
he boy.

  The monster bared its teeth, its golden stare flat and bold.

  Santiago straightened. The monster’s nose came forward as the boy extended his hand.

  Santiago was not afraid anymore.

  [IMAGE: A boy and his dog, making friends in the remains of a battered apartment, next to a mattress on the floor. The boy is wearing a ragged t-shirt and pyjama bottoms. Shadows swirl in the corners, hinting at the shapes of snakes. The dog’s tail is reptilian. The corpse on the floor is mangled beyond recognition, and the walls are sprayed with blood.]

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  4

  Sometimes she dreams she’s killed a man.

  She doesn’t know his name or his face. She doesn’t remember how it happened. She only dreams of the guilt—the frantic secret and the desperate desire to hide the body. In her dreams, no one knows what she’s done, but they will find out in the instant they open the closet door or pick up the bloody towel or notice the knife is missing. Her nights are a blur of turning knobs and the rustle of the bag that holds the corpse. Sometimes, the body is already buried, but she runs through twisting halls with a shovel in her hand, grave mud dropping in clumps.

  Those are the nights she tosses, steals the blankets, cannot rest.

  She doesn’t understand.

  She has never killed anyone. If she did, she wouldn’t lie.

  OCTOBER

  Jacob decides they should try catering, which means Verity comes downstairs one morning to find two sharply pressed black-and-white uniforms hanging from the staircase, and she and Jacob spend two weddings and a bar mitzvah distributing tiny trays of hors d’oeuvres to guests in various stages of slurring. They do not make the hors d’oeuvres themselves. They have learned better than that.

  “Ehn,” is Jacob’s verdict. “Too loud, too sloppy. You didn’t like it, did you? What if we were roadies? I got a call from this guy.”

  Verity is willing to try, but the next day she finds that Jacob has decided he wants to be a guitarist. He buys a red guitar and sits on the staircase plucking at strings; he downloads a tutorial to his computer and stares at the screen, his face lit in glowing blue as his hands fumble over mismatched chords. There is a yellow guitar for Verity if she wants it, but she rests her palm flat on the steel strings and frowns. “Cilantro,” is all she says on the subject. She flicks the smallest string with her fingernail, and the narrow herbed sound makes her blink. She touches Jacob’s cheek and leaves him to it.