In Veritas

by C. J. Lavigne

  24

  OTTAWA (March 6, 2014)—Emergency teams have been dispatched to Ottawa from both Toronto and Montréal after an earthquake measuring 6.8 was recorded in the centre of the city last night, rattling buildings and knocking out power in a 20-block radius around south Bank Street.

  While the subsequent power outage is another hit to a city that was without electricity for much of the winter, and authorities have only begun inspecting buildings for damage, most attention is focused on Lansdowne Park, the site of the Between concert located at the epicentre of the quake. Aberdeen Pavilion was badly damaged, though most concertgoers escaped unharmed and many are crediting an “angel” for saving them.

  “Screw the quake,” said Marcus Price, 32, of Kingston. “There was some kind of damn bioweapon in there, or—terrorists, or—I don’t know. People were bleeding from the eyes! First the band almost didn’t show up, then there was this crazy-ass giant snake on stage, and—oh my god, the angel. You didn’t see the angel. If you didn’t see him, you won’t understand.”

  “He was the most beautiful thing,” added Suki Knapton, 21, from Kanata. “They say angels don’t exist. I saw a miracle. I couldn’t breathe, and then he just ... have you ever felt love? I mean real love?”

  Frank Whiteside, 29, says he has given footage from his phone to the police, and will soon be releasing it to news networks. “You’ll understand when you watch. There’s wonder in the world. I went into that concert with a broken collarbone. Now it’s great. He just reached in—like, not reached reached, he—were you there? You have to watch this.”

  Early video from multiple cameras shows a winged human figure flying over a crowd of concert-goers, shortly before the building starts shaking. Multiple people have already reported watching the footage and experiencing an overwhelming feeling of well-being.

  Representatives from The Between could not be reached for comment. Lansdowne Park officials have released....

  WHAT COMES AFTER

  Verity steps quietly through a door that doesn’t exist, into rubble that was once a Victorian pavilion. She feels the way close behind her as she passes.

  She is an odd sight: a nondescript woman with mousy hair and rock dust on her skin, wearing a loose navy coat over bare legs and too-small boots. She’s hardly dressed for winter. Her hands are in her pockets. She has blood smeared down one temple, and even though it’s not hers, her eyes are not quite focused. No one notices her.

  One of the pavilion’s long walls has fallen in, and people with flashlights and blankets are climbing over the wreckage, picking through chunks of broken ice, mashed snow, and a sea of fallen chairs. Curtains are ripped down. The low stage at one end is in shambles, swarmed with uniforms. The roof is open to the sky, where dawn’s cold light is just starting to peek through.

  Verity ducks her head and peers at the floor, picking over and through the mess. She walks by a security guard who gives her a very close look, as though she’s familiar, but she stares at the ground. His eyes are wet with tears. He can’t seem to stop smiling. He doesn’t stop her.

  In the shadow of one wall, Verity closes her eyes and pauses for a long time. Her nostrils flare.

  Outside, the ground is cracked, paving stones heaved up and great swaths of earth erupting along the courtyard. A chasm bisects Bank Street. Emergency vehicles swarm on either side, lights flashing.

  Verity holds her borrowed coat closed with one hand. It smells of birds and hope—and still, somewhere underneath, of stale liquor. She walks carefully through the pavilion’s broken remains, moving with slow deliberation toward the street. She passes two men huddled in a blanket, a girl rocking a child, an ambulance attendant staring at a cell phone and crying. Despite the distant sirens, she hears only hushed whispers, and a hesitant, wondering laughter. There’s dust in the air, and the frost of her breath, but everything feels particularly clear. The city is light on her shoulders.

  “...Vee?”

  Verity turns to see Jacob standing uncertainly on broken stones. His jacket is ripped along one sleeve, and his hair is even more of a mess than usual. In the rising daylight, she can see the cut on his forehead has been stitched and long scabbed over, but it’s going to leave a scar.

  Verity only stands. Jacob stares. Eventually, he ventures, “What happened?”

  Verity looks at him. Her eyes are grey and steady. When he has to look away, she says gently, “I opened a door. I unlocked it, and they went through.”

  Jacob’s Adam’s apple bobs in his throat. “Is....” He hesitates again, then forges onward. “Is she coming back?”

  She answers him as if he were very young: honestly, but with kindness. “I don’t know if she can.”

  Jacob winces. He doesn’t look surprised, though. Instead, he turns to look back at the ruins of the pavilion, then he straightens his shoulders and walks up to Verity, close enough to touch her. He doesn’t actually touch her. “Were those ... is that a dragon?”

  He’s pointing. She doesn’t have to look. She can hear the flapping overhead, prickling just beneath her skin. “Kind of.”

  Jacob swallows again and stands there staring before he looks back down. He rubs his hand over the back of his neck. “Was ... that a real angel?”

  Verity is the one who hesitates. Finally she says, “What is ‘real’? He was Colin. You saw him. They all saw him.” A balding man in a blue down coat wanders slowly by, his thick moustache not enough to obscure the awed, dreaming curve of his smile. Verity watches him pass, then adds, more to herself than anything, “I think that’s what Alan wanted. There’s space for them, now. Possibility. But now they’ve left.”

  Jacob asks again, “Is she—are they—coming back?”

  “I don’t know. They might.”

  “How do you know?”

  Verity turns in a careful circle, looking at the cracked buildings and the growing pink light of dawn. Off to the side, she can see a young girl praying. She pauses, then lifts her chin to look up at Jacob once more. Lifting her right hand, she shakes back the worn sleeve and shows him the tiny black snake wrapped around her wrist like a bracelet. It is narrow, curled tightly. It stares at Jacob with golden eyes.

  “We’re not alone,” she says, then offers Jacob her hand. “Let’s go home.”

  Jacob blinks down at her, and, dubiously, at her wrist-snake, which looks back up at him and flicks a forked tongue in challenge.

  Jacob takes Verity’s hand, and she leads him toward the street. She picks her way with great care over the paving stones. They taste like shattered glass.

  “I think,” she tells him, “we should try running a theatre.”

  Should I finish here?

  For now, I mean? What’s left?

  Are you still reading?

  Vee?

  [IMAGE: An old-fashioned typewriter, with a white page half run through it. On the page is typed ‘FIN.’ A small black snake is curled around the typewriter, looking out at the reader.]

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This book would not have happened without years of encouragement and critical support from my writing group: Diana Knapton, Anne Price, and Dan Whiteside. If you like something in here, there’s a good chance they liked it too. Remaining mistakes—factual and otherwise—are mine.

  Elaine Spencer was the first to read the whole draft and be excited—emphatically, repeatedly, as many times as I needed to hear it. She is why this book isn’t buried ten feet deep in the yard.

  Jenna Butler believed in this project so hard. She offered not only vocal and generous enthusiasm, but also copious amounts of professional advice. She heroically put up with my stressing through the submission process, and then she committed to editing the entire manuscript. She is entitled to at least two of my bodily organs.

  Much gratitude also goes to Matt Bowes, Claire Kelly, Isabel Yang, Kate Hargreaves, and the readers at NeWest Press.

  The little girl who wanted to write stories thanks Daryl Bissell.

  The teenager who trie
d thanks Erin Rother.

  For as long as I can remember, Marilla Bain has wanted to know when I would write a novel. Here it is, finally! And thanks for asking.

  I honed a lot of my creative writing skills in the darkest, MUXiest corners of the internet, where some of In Veritas’s character seeds first germinated. I never knew all the names of the writers I encountered there—and I’ve lost some, too—but if you were one of them, I thank you. Shout-outs to Jennifer Andreani, Mike Athey, Tara Atkisson, Gordon Delp, Gina Donahue, Elissa Dukes and Larry Isen, Melanie Edmonds, Amber Fox, Jason Franks, Todd Harper, Angela Hawkes, Andrew Jones, Abby Laughlin, Rob Lipson, Aaron Maracle, Barry McKelvey, Karla Moon, Siobhan Morris, Mark Porter, Caroline Pryde, Erin and Adam Schroeder, Daphne and Gordon Sleigh, and Kelvin Wong. Amy Poon Shibasaki gave me the idea for a synesthetic character. Jason Cline gave us our best and most enduring home. And Theresa “Kate” Campbell, my most imaginary friend, has listened to me mutter about word count more times than I would have thought humanly possible. Thanks!

  Friends who have supported me in myriad ways also include Gwen Larouche and Milks Milks, José Pou and Sarah Picard, Andrea Principe, Dave Principe, Mike Prince, Matt Webber, Nancy Batty and Glenn Russell, Andy Colven, Jackie Cowan, Tera Dahl-Lang, Holly Ellingwood, Jamie Fletcher, Stephanie Gilbert, Reesa Herberth, Kim Horne, Jane MacNeil, Heather Marcovitch and Larry Steinbrenner, Jim and Margaret Martens, Adam Mugford, Adrienne Orr, Elaine and Chris Parker, Val Pérez, Stéphane Perreault, Jamie Prowse-Turner, Susan Richter, Cindy See, and Jennifer Terry.

  I am perennially grateful to—and for—my astonishing family: James and Elizabeth Lavigne, and Erica, Pedro, Elsa, Mila, and Davi Pereira.

  Finally, I’ve thanked coffee in every acknowledgment I’ve ever written. I’m not about to stop now.

  Excerpt from “One-Way Street” from REFLECTIONS: ESSAYS, APHORISMS, AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL WRITINGS by Walter Benjamin, translated from the German by Edmund Jephcott. English translation copyright © 1978 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All Rights Reserved.

  C.J. LAVIGNE was born in Kingston, ON, but grew up all over Canada, from Comox, BC to Barrington Passage, NS. Since 2007, she has divided her time between Ottawa, ON, and Red Deer, AB, where she currently resides and works as a professional communications scholar who writes on television, gaming, and popular culture; at other points in her life, she’s been a barista, tech support supervisor, marketing manager, freelance editor, and—briefly—radio DJ. In Veritas is her first novel and is part of the Nunatak First Fiction Series.