In Veritas

by C. J. Lavigne

  “I know. Ouro knew.” Santiago drops back into the couch, gazing up at the ceiling as his shoulders sink into the increasingly smeared cushion behind him. “It doesn’t matter. Let them arrest me. A few more weeks and this will be over, one way or another.”

  She sees it, then, at the base of his throat: fear beating in fragile staccato. In the bob of his Adam’s apple, she tastes despair, dry as a tumbleweed. It is perfect. In his breath, she sees through years to a soiled mattress and silence marred by creaking footsteps.

  “Thank y—” Santiago’s shaking words slice the moment and then are cut off, interrupted by Verity’s soft sound of dismay. She is rigid; she fights to maintain the vision, and her hand flies up almost of its own accord, palm out, fingers taut. At Santiago’s widened eyes, she shakes her head—a single, sharp motion—and reaches to brush her fingertips beneath his chin, over the wire of his stubble and down toward his collarbone.

  He almost ruins everything with a single bobbing swallow. Verity focuses intently on the skin visible at the junction of his shirt collar, and the sensation of his throat beneath her finger. It tastes of whispering, of a multitude of voices she cannot quite hear.

  It’s nothing she’s ever done before. She reaches within herself for different shadows—for an angel’s black feathers, spread tattered in the cold, and the last sensation of his light. Then she gives it up—to Santiago and to the memory ghosted beneath his skin, and the razored electricity of a child’s nighttime terrors.

  She breathes lilac and coal.

  She can almost—

  “Vee!” It’s Jacob’s voice from downstairs, muffled through the apartment door. Verity feels it like a slap; her hand flies back as Santiago, startled, jerks away.

  She has lost her focus. The weight of the room crushes down on her. She tastes the couch’s plain fibres, hears Santiago’s hoarse breath in streaks of grey. He cries out, and his joy is too bright, glaring in her eyes. She knows exactly where the writhing darkness has bloomed in the hollow of his throat; she felt it beneath her fingertips, but now she is blinded and deaf, her lungs thick and her ears overwhelmed by the roaring wind of the hardwood floor.

  There’s a flash of spreading orange that’s familiar to her; she swallows furred, narrow strands and knows that Jacob has called her name again.

  There are certain skills that Verity has been mastering since childhood, like the ability to find the flatness of the floor beneath her feet (sweet sugar on the tongue) and push herself up from the couch (a chill like ice cream melting down the back of her knee). She doesn’t speak to Santiago, but instead keeps her chin up and walks the path she knows from memory: four steps from the couch to the hall, six to the upstairs door, where she can fumble for the knob that sounds like a slow gong in a storm. She steps onto the landing, grasps the banister, and slowly descends the stairs. The world rages around her. She gazes at the blur of Jacob’s features and does her best to focus past the taste of the railing against her palm. She can’t tell if there’s still blood on his face. His folded arms are almost lost to the blizzard-blast of the siren that peals anew from the street outside.

  Verity swallows. “Are you ... okay? I can’t—”

  Jacob isn’t listening. “I’ll skip the ‘who is that dude’ question and go with: what just happened outside?”

  His wounded confusion stops Verity a foot from the bottom of the stairs. Her grip is tight on the banister. She is listening very hard.

  She opens her mouth, but syllables struggle and die there.

  “Vee.” There is no retreat in Jacob.

  She says, “Everything is a storm.” She hears the pleading in her own voice.

  “Uh-huh. You don’t get to go hide with this one. First that mess with the river, now—what happened out there?”

  “You saw it.” Verity is blank. “Don’t you—” Her head is pounding. Bludgeoned by the creak of the stair beneath her shoe, she nevertheless descends the final few steps. She means to grasp Jacob’s wrist; she catches at his sleeve instead, off-target, and slides her hand down until she can touch the skin at the base of his thumb. “You saw the wings,” she says.

  Verity is touching him; she wills him to the truth. She blinks hard to focus on his face, and the fall at the corners of his mouth. “I got hit in the head, Vee,” he says quietly. “Is that what you—did you see wings?” Verity thinks he glances up the stairs; he is a haze of static. “Have you even been taking your meds?”

  Verity bites her lip. She thinks she tastes blood. She knows she feels Jacob disengaging from her grip, and that might taste like blood.

  “I can’t—” she begins again, helplessly (I can’t see; I can’t breathe; can we talk about this later), but Jacob has already pulled away.

  “Take her. Just—be gentle. She’s sick.”

  Verity doesn’t understand, but then tall figures are emerging from the archway that leads to Jacob’s office. A scratched police badge rings in her ears. She makes out creased uniforms. Someone grasps her firmly by the upper arm.

  “This way, ma’am. Okay, you two take point upstairs. Remember, we don’t know if the guy’s armed.”

  Verity wants to protest, but they are pulling her; she stumbles over the hallway rug, then hits the door frame with her shoulder before she is outside and the city roars around her.

  Daylight shrieks.

  The flash of police lights scrapes across her skin.

  Buildings melt into bodies slide into the metal of the cuff someone clicks around her wrist. They are kind; they bind her arms in front. It’s the last thing Verity registers before the world swallows her and she can’t tell the pavement from the sky.

  Inside, she is screaming.

  Did I get this right?

  no

  What’s wrong? What can I fix?

  i cant read it its a wall of black the words are always wrong when there are no words turn the page turun the page turn teh paage t

  [IMAGE: More a doodle, like a page ripped from a sketchbook. Ink blots are running together as shadows regroup into the form of a stylized black dog.]

  21

  OTTAWA (March 4, 2014)—Amidst the recent tumult in Canada’s capital, residents are still managing to find enthusiasm for The Between, set to play the Aberdeen Pavilion at Lansdowne Park tomorrow night. Buzz has been growing around the reclusive band, perhaps precisely because it is so reclusive; ask three fans how many members the group has, and get three different answers.

  The Between does not have a website. Its albums are out of print—unavailable at retailers, pirate sites, and even the city’s only remaining used music store.

  “People have been asking for weeks,” said Navid Qadir of Elgin Vinyl and Collectibles. “We don’t have any, though. That’s a band’s band. Heard they were huge in the Boston clubs back in the day. I think it was Boston. Chicago? I’m surprised they’re at Lansdowne. It’s a pretty mainstream venue.”

  “There’ve been some logistical challenges,” admitted Lacey Cardiff, the Lansdowne Park event manager. “They’re an unorthodox group. But all the contracts are in place, and we’re very much looking forward to hosting the show. Ticket sales are good. People are curious.”

  “They’re absolutely one of my favourites.” Janet Gunn, 23, a Carleton University student, was one of a group already setting up camp on the sidewalk outside the venue. “People will tell you they’re impossible to find or whatever, but not for real music fans. I mean, yeah, they’re kind of obscure, but I was into them ages ago. It’s kind of a shame they’re playing such a public show. I never thought they’d be sellouts.”

  MARCH

  Verity learned to parse the world when she was very young. It was a skill she built up slowly and with stubborn dedication, before she ever had words to explain that the bars of her crib were crying, or the carpet tasted like oranges.

  It took her a long time to recognize what oranges tasted like.

  Now she finds herself back at the heart of the maelstrom; the world is a wicked s
torm that rips at her skin and forces itself into her lungs. She cannot swallow; she cannot hear; she cannot see. Or rather, she tastes and hears and sees everything. It is as though she is three years old again, and everything around her is attacking.

  She tries to curl into a ball; she can’t tell whether or not she succeeds. She has the impression that someone is talking to her. Multiple voices are sweet and sour between her teeth, but the words puddle away. A few times, she thinks someone is touching her, or the ground is flat beneath her feet, but these sensations fade before she can grasp them.

  She tastes Jacob on her tongue, then he’s gone again.

  Her head hurts.

  She knows she should be alarmed, but the shapes of her thoughts scatter. She can only endure for whatever time passes before the storm subsides to a steadier wash of waves. Sensation grows more predictable: the scent of pine needles, the taste of smoking rubber, the feel of something oily and slick across her skin.

  She remembers her father turning on a television, opening a book. His mouth was implacable. You need to learn. You’ll thank me someday.

  Verity doesn’t thank him. She does gather herself.

  She begins with the middle finger of her right hand and thinks about tapping it against her palm, just across the ball of her thumb. At first, she cannot be certain she’s successful, but she concentrates on the rhythm of it—taptap, tap, taptaptap. When it comes to her as little bursts of pepper, she ignores the taste; she is seeking touch. Taptap, tap, taptaptap.

  There. She can feel the uncertainty of her own delicate rhythm. That is her right hand.

  With that starting point, she can begin to filter through the morass of her exhausted senses. Something is brushing against the hairs of her forearm, and it sings in her ears, but she can think no, touch and know it’s a blanket or a sheet. There’s something unyielding around her wrist—around both her wrists, but her hands are not together. She is lying on her back.

  Taptap, tap, taptaptap. She knows the pattern. She learned it against a thousand news broadcasts blaring in her room.

  She thinks of feathers and wishes desperately for Colin, knowing that one touch of his hand would banish the throbbing in her brain and settle the air around her into crystal clarity. Instead, she moves her fingers, the rhythm steady. She swallows soap and the lingering scent of palm oil.

  Something abruptly gapes and roars—a door? Verity has the impression of a hand on her shoulder. It doesn’t last. It leaves her spitting pepper again. She sighs and starts over.

  The veins in her eyes are throbbing. She can still see her father’s disapproving face.

  She reclaims the sensation of lying on her back. She knows her arms are bound. Eventually, she can isolate distant beepings and the static of a voice over a poorly configured speaker system. She blinks iron streaks from her eyes, and her vision resolves to square white ceiling tiles and the track of a hanging curtain.

  When she turns her head, she sees an assortment of boxy electronic monitoring devices. The only one blinking measures her heartbeat in silent, irregular flashes. Her pulse has never been steady, but now she can taste it, fluctuating with each throb of her skull.

  There is a needle in the back of Verity’s left hand, from which a line of narrow plastic tubing runs to an IV stand. She doesn’t feel drugged, or at least not with any sensation she recognizes. If anything, it’s the crisply utilitarian sheets of the hospital bed that ring familiar, or the metal bars raised on either side of the narrow mattress.

  She looks down and is resigned to find herself wearing a pale green hospital gown. It is clean but wrinkled, the fabric slightly stiff. Someone has thrown a blanket over her legs; she can feel the worn fabric against her knees and her bare toes, quietly humming. There are balloon-like plastic sheaths inflating and deflating around her calves, intermittently snug. The blanket heaves over them, breathing.

  She is shackled to the bars of her bed. The metal cuffs binding her wrists are padded on the inside. This, too, is familiar; she tugs once, experimentally, and sighs.

  Another indecipherable announcement crackles over hidden speakers. Verity closes her eyes and waits for the pounding in her skull to lessen. If she ignores the cuffs, the bed is almost a pleasant change: there are no creeping shadows and no ice is twisting unnaturally towards her. The hospital walls are mundane; there is no space between and no single-sided door waiting to be opened.

  The doorway from the hall does open, or at least Verity hears a lock click and feels something slither below her collarbone.

  “Hello! We thought you might be with us again soon. We’ve been worried about you.” The nurse who pulls back the curtain is a pleasant-looking woman in her mid-forties, with speckled hair in a trendy asymmetrical cut. She’s wearing scrubs and her smile is apple-warm.

  When Verity doesn’t say anything, the nurse continues, “There’s a police officer standing guard out there. They’ve been keeping an eye on you. You must have been busy.” She approaches the bed, unhooking a penlight from her pocket. “Can you follow this with your eyes for me?”

  “Please don’t.” It’s not a bright light, but Verity turns her face away, averting her eyes from the approaching gleam. Her voice has come out hoarse.

  The nurse hesitates, then clicks the light off and returns it to her pocket.

  Words catch in Verity’s throat. She swallows and manages, “Where are my clothes?”

  “We’ll keep them for you until—I’m not sure what the process is for you. I can check.” The nurse busies herself checking Verity’s cuffs. “Can you tell me your name?”

  “Verity Richards.”

  “Do you know whe—”

  “The hospital. Um. Ottawa General, probably?” Verity sighs. “I don’t know the date,” she adds, before the nurse can ask. “It was ... February.”

  The nurse’s glance is quick, but not entirely surprised. “Done this before, hmm? Okay—” She breaks off, looking back in the direction of the hall as the speaker sputters again. A man’s static voice, tainted with the elusive flutter of butterfly wings, says, “Ward 2, code violet.”

  “Honey, I might have to leave you for a bit.”

  “What’s code violet?”

  The nurse’s thumb is still brushing Verity’s wrist, which is probably why she answers absently, “Power outage. Downstairs. Must’ve blown a fuse.” She takes her hand off the cuffs and shakes her head. “You sit tight. Dr. Webber will be in to evaluate you in a little while. Oh, and it’s March, honey. The fifth. You remember that for next time.”

  The fifth. “Don’t go down there.” Verity says it more urgently than she’d intended. The nurse has kind eyes.

  The woman only shakes her head and smiles again, then walks back out into the hall. She doesn’t pull the curtain back into place. Verity catches a glimpse of broad shoulders in a uniform shirt; the police badge sounds like an echo underwater before the door shuts.

  The flashing machine registers the abrupt pickup in Verity’s heart rate. She tastes metal. There’s a low ringing in her ears.

  She listens intently for the announcement she expects is coming.

  “Ward 4, code violet.”

  She flexes her hands, closing her fingers slowly, feeling the padding shift against her skin. Sudden adrenaline helps push back the low surges of her headache. Her muscles feel like spaghetti. Weeks, she thinks. And, March 5.

  Time seems to stretch, long and slow. All Verity hears is the faint clatter of feet from the hall, punctuated by notes of indistinct conversation and the pinging of machines. She takes a breath and wonders if she is wrong.

  “Ward 6, code violet.”

  Multiple feet pound by outside.

  Verity tugs ineffectually against the cuffs. She is trying not to think about Jacob. She imagines the front steps of the townhouse with an unexpected stab of longing, and remembers too late that the old wooden stairs are cracked and stained with blood.

  “Ward 7, code violet.”

  Verity wonders what w
ard she’s in. She is not very good at being loud, but she clears her throat and says, “Police?”

  Another set of footsteps goes rushing by outside the door.

  Verity swallows. “Police!”

  After a few beats, the door opens and a uniformed officer pokes his head inside. He is too young for his moustache. “What?”

  On the first try, Verity can’t answer. She works her throat to get around the syllables, and the officer almost closes the door again before she speaks. “Don’t.”

  “Don’t what?” His hibiscus doubt floats to block her vision.

  She shakes her head. “Don’t stay. Someone is, um, coming for me. I don’t want you to be hurt.”

  The voice comes over the speaker again, muddled by a burst of static. It has a slightly panicked tone that vibrates across Verity’s lower lip. She can just make out the word ‘violet.’

  The officer smiles, and pats once at his hip. “You don’t worry about me. This gun is loaded.”

  The lights go out. The machines in Verity’s room abruptly stop whirring; the flashing monitor of her heartbeat dies. A sliver of light filters in from a window on the opposite wall from the door, somewhere on the other side of the curtain. Behind the officer, the hallway is black.

  He swears; his right hand rises to depress a button on the radio he wears strapped to his upper chest. It, too, is silent, and he lets his hand drop. He steps inside the room and starts to close the door.

  An instant later, Jihan slides through behind him, as sinuous as Ouroboros, wrapping her arm around the man’s neck and tightening her elbow at his larynx. Flailing to reach behind himself, he grabs frantically at the curtain, half ripping it down. The tearing sound shreds the air in the room before the officer goes limp; when Jihan releases him, he crumples to the floor.

  Jihan’s steel eyes shine jagged, reflecting the light from the window. She’s wearing old jeans and the lavender cardigan again, now stained at the collar, lumpy where it’s buttoned wrong, and shredding where the left sleeve has been pulled nearly loose from the shoulder. Verity’s old, bloody scarf is still tied around her arm, barely a stiff wisp.