by Sam Wiebe
The brand carved out of June haunted my thoughts. I searched my shelf for a yellowed plastic binder I hadn’t perused in years, one filled with details from a decade-old criminology class. The early West Coast had bred a different kind of criminal, specializing in vice: Shanghaiing unsuspecting travelers to fill crews, trading in Chinese slaves, Gold Rush scams of every which way and flavor.
I found it, and my fingers tripped over the pages until I reached the familiar passage. A group of Chinese shipbuilders and canners at the Britannia docks in the early 1900s had been some of the first victims. Later ones had included fishermen and cannery workers, Native and white. The murders had largely been ignored by the press at the time, only linked in later years by historians who found the circumstances curious. I remembered it vaguely, it having piqued my interest in class when described as one of BC’s first modern serial killings. The occult-minded of my classmates had been riveted by the circumstances.
I brushed my fingers along a grainy black-and-white photo. The same three parallel lines carved into June decorated the bodies in the photo.
That’s why my mind must have concocted the ghosts, a long-forgotten lecture resurfacing. Murray would have missed it. He hated the occult as much as he hated history. I snapped a picture and texted him: It’s not the boyfriend.
“That’s not what our guys think,” Murray said when I answered his call.
“Mike is a bigoted idiot,” I responded.
He sighed. “He’d vehemently disagree.”
“I know what the brand is.” I filled him in on what I’d discovered, omitting June’s ghost.
“It’s interesting, and I’ll be the first to say it’s suspicious, but all it points to is that the killer is either into the occult or a history buff.”
“Did you see the photo? Those carvings are the same.”
“They’re 120 years apart. And I didn’t hire you to look for a killer. I hired you to tap your old trafficking contacts and see if anyone was offloading a baby.” A slight pause. “Ricky, are you taking your meds?”
My meds. The only way Murray would talk about my condition—writing off my insights as an odd, useful quirk of a broken mind, not unlike the brand on the body. My finger paused over one of the pages, over a photo that stared up at me. The woman in the calico-patterned dress, the same brand on her arm still distinguishable in the grainy image.
“Ricky? You still there?”
“I might have found something, just . . . this isn’t one of my mad goose chases.” I didn’t give him the chance to interrupt me before hanging up the phone, hoping my mind hadn’t tricked me into lying once again.
I stared at the photo and the caption underneath. A cook who’d worked at the cannery, one of the Chinese shipbuilders’ wives—
There was a rap at my balcony window. I turned but there was no one there. I swore and folded the binder back up. I wasn’t that high up . . . it could be a burglar.
“Hello?” I called out. No answer. I swallowed. It’s not real. I searched my drawer for the Risperidone, thinking I never should have quit.
“Ricky?”
Marnie. I breathed a sigh of relief.
She narrowed her eyes at me as I stepped out onto the balcony. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Just the case getting to me,” I settled on. I told her about the brand on June’s shoulder, and the historical connection—more to settle my own thoughts.
The glance she gave me was sharp as I passed her a mug of coffee. “Brands carved into the flesh? Like strips of bacon taken out for a frying pan?”
At the look I gave her she was quick to shake her head. “Just thinking about old stories—stupid ones, but . . .” She shrugged. “Your dead girl with that brand reminds me of one.” She jostled the baby, who was also examining me now. “Ever heard of a wechuge?” She pronounced it way-chu-gay.
I shook my head and her lip twitched as she tsked. “Didn’t suppose you had—but you never know. It’s like a windigo.”
I searched my Risperidone-addled brain. “North American monster. A demon or something, no?”
She half nodded. “A cannibal to be precise, with maybe a little magic thrown in—don’t look at me like that, Ricky. It’s not some mystical insight. I studied First Nations culture and legends as part of my anthropology course in the nineties. Was interested in the stories my grandfather used to tell me.”
Marnie coddled the baby. A bottle appeared from inside her bag, the nib disappearing into the baby’s eager mouth. “Wechuge is the Western, not so psychotic version of the windigo—if there is such a thing as a nicer, nonpsychotic cannibal.”
I gave her a terse smile. “I’m pretty sure Murray won’t go for a cannibalistic First Nations monster as a murder suspect.”
Marnie shook her head. “Never said it was. One of the stories my grandfather told was about a Ukrainian fellow out in Saskatchewan in the early twenties. According to my grandfather, the Ukrainian fellow made a deal with a wechuge spirit to get vengeance on the folks he thought wronged him—farmers, local police, and then a priest, though the priest probably deserved it, even if the others didn’t.”
I shook my head and braced myself as the Chinese woman in calico appeared behind Marnie. She was a faded visage now, barely perceptible if I angled my head the right way so that the sunlight drowned her out. “Completely different from a dead Chinese woman.”
Marnie shrugged. “Wechuge or not, the man was real enough. Caught and hanged him for murder—and worse.” Marnie tsked again. “The wechuge’s price was flesh from the victims. He ate a bit of all of them, strips of flesh, fried up like bacon with his breakfast. Farfetched, but still, my grandfather described those same markings. Three strips carved out of the skin. There’s even a public record. I found it a few years back. And you’re missing my point.”
“Which is?” I did my best to ignore the ghost’s grotesque pantomime of strangling Marnie. The figments of my imagination no longer satisfied with misbehaving, now acting out. I clenched my teeth and forced a smile as Marnie placed the baby back in the stroller, pocketing the bottle and accessories.
“If a crazy Ukrainian man a hundred years ago figured he’d made a deal with a devil to exact mystical vengeance on a whole town through consuming their flesh, who knows what your killer came up with? That’s the thing that doesn’t change about people. They always try to justify their craziness.” Marnie winced as she stood, from sore joints and stiffness. “And on that morbid note, I hope you find the baby.”
“You say that every time.”
She waved over her shoulder. “I mean it every time. And try to take care of yourself. You never do.”
I focused away from the ghost on the baby fussing in the stroller, her bare foot with the dark birthmark kicking free.
I went back inside and checked through the pictures that both Yoshi and Murray had sent me of June. None of my contacts had given me any inclination they’d heard of a baby being moved. It had been a long shot at best. I stopped the scroll of my screen on one of June’s social media images. A birthmark, dark and prominent on the baby’s foot. Very much like Marnie’s granddaughter’s.
My hands shook. It couldn’t be. I’d seen the baby with Marnie before . . . starting the night June had died.
Halving my Risperidone had been a mistake.
But what if it wasn’t? Marnie would understand if I just went to check.
I ran up the steps to her apartment—308 was what she’d told me. I banged on the door three times. “Marnie? Answer the door, it’s important.”
The door swung open before I could knock a fourth. The woman who answered was blond, late thirties or early forties, Caucasian. It took a moment for my mouth to recover.
“Ah, is Marnie here?” I asked.
She stared at me as if I were crazy.
“I’m sorry, I live in the building,” I stammered. “She must have moved out. I’m sorry.” I hated my fluster, I’d had enough practice with this over the years, but when they surpr
ised me . . .
I stumbled back and waved as she closed the door. My heart pounded so hard on the flight of stairs back to my own apartment that I barely noticed turning my lock.
I opened my laptop and entered: Marnie Wallace 1990s. That was the decade Marnie had said she’d graduated in. There she was staring back at me from the screen. Marnie Wallace, Criminology, third year, survived by a daughter. Death, 1997.
I closed the computer, my mouth dry. My memory had conjured her from a case file I’d read. My mind had fooled me. Worse than last time.
Yet I’d seen the baby before I’d seen June’s body, the night before, the stroller creaking down the sidewalk.
It took me two tries to raise the phone to my ear.
“Ricky?” Murray answered on the fourth ring.
“Murray, I’m—” Where to start? I couldn’t get the image of the birthmark out of my mind.
“You don’t sound so good.”
I had to tell him, to say something. “I think I’ve got a lead. On the baby.”
“Won’t do much good, Ricky. We found her in the water an hour ago.”
“I know this is going to sound crazy—crazier than normal.” How to convince him? I wetted my lips. “Have you ever heard of something called a windigo?”
More silence, followed by a sigh. “I knew it was too soon to bring you back in.”
He didn’t believe me. My heart pooled into a dark pit. “No, I’m fine.” I ran my hand violently through my hair, longer than I should have let it grow.
“No, you’re not.” His voice was firm. “Just stay there. I’m coming over.”
“Murray, wait. Shit.” He’d hung up. I redialed but there was no answer.
“Don’t feel so bad, Ricky.”
I spun around. Marnie was behind me, holding the infant. This time I could make out their faint translucence.
“You weren’t exactly coming into this with a full deck of cards.” She smiled at me, a glimpse of teeth that were dark, pointed, menacing. She nodded at the binder and laptop. “Was supposed to have a granddaughter but my daughter wasn’t so good with keeping to the straight-and-narrow. Little girl didn’t stand a chance. Died a few days after she was born, a poor sick little thing.”
I tried to speak but words caught in my mouth, dry from the medication.
“Reality is such a strange, fragile thing, isn’t it? And sanity. That’s something I suppose you value, though, Ricky, much like I value my grandchildren.”
June appeared behind Marnie, wielding a kitchen knife that she drove into her back, over and over. It made no difference.
“You can’t be real,” I finally managed.
Marnie arched an eyebrow. “Wouldn’t you like to know? That’s the problem with the sane nowadays, they never believe what’s possible until it’s too late.”
There was a knock on the door. “Ricky?” Murray called.
“You should get that,” Marnie said, but both she and June were standing in my way.
I let the knocking continue. I didn’t plead for my life, didn’t beg. I still wasn’t sure any of it was real.
“You killed them,” I whispered.
She inclined her head and tsked. “Think of me less as a cannibal, more of a carrion cleaner. I take people’s burdens, the ones festering under their skin. June’s unwanted family, this woman’s guilt over not raising a child right, the Ukrainian man’s vengeance for a murder left unpunished. I take their despair.” Her eyes glowed with warmth. “Your madness. I’m not just a killer or a cannibal. I’m a release.”
“Ricky? Open the door!” The knocking continued but I was fixated on Marnie.
“You want your sanity, Ricky? To be free of the ghosts stalking you at every turn?” She nodded to the counter. Right beside the Risperidone was a plastic bag that hadn’t been there before. Something red and raw inside. Three strips of flesh.
“Taken in context, it doesn’t seem like such a steep price to pay.” She nodded to the door where Murray still pleaded. “And time is running out.”
I swallowed. Sanity, something I’d never had, the lack of which had crippled my life. Both June and the calico woman were standing behind Marnie, shaking their fading heads at me.
“Will it hurt?” I asked.
A pointed, toothy smile. “Everything hurts.”
I picked up the bag of June’s flesh.
* * *
The banging continued. Baby on the hip of the younger, stronger body, I answered the door. The madness was still there, but fading into the background of me now.
“I’m still me,” Ricky said out loud.
The voice tasted strange on my mouth.
Yes, of course, I whispered. Now wipe your mouth before you answer the door.
Murray stood in the hallway, angry. His eyes drifted from my new face to the baby. “What the hell?” Confusion, and fear. That was a familiar smell.
Smile, just smile.
“Come on inside,” Ricky said. “I’ll explain everything.”
Stitches
by Don English
Crab Park
No one sees as he wrestles her plastic-wrapped body out of the backseat of his Volvo and carries it down to the beach in Crab Park. He’s sat alone in his car every night at this time for two weeks; he’s confident no dog walkers or drifters or kids smoking a joint under the stars will be around as he lays her body down gently behind a log. He walks close enough to the ocean that when he kneels in the sand the waves lap his knees. The wind blowing in over the water seasons the air, heightens the smell of the still-warm pavement, the sunburned grass, and the overflowing trash bins.
He’d seen her waiting on the sidewalk on Hastings Street and there was room enough for him to pull over right in front of her, like it was meant to be. He’d leaned over to lower his passenger window and asked her if she did Greek. He’d heard that on TV once and thought it sounded good.
“Nope, I took French in school for a bit but I dropped it. I know a bit of Spanish. Chinga tu madre.”
She was trying to be funny and he didn’t want her to be funny. He had to deal with enough women trying to be funny whenever he went on the Internet. For a minute he was angry and thought about driving away, but she looked too perfect in the short skirt and the jean shirt tied under her breasts. She leaned into the window looking impatient.
“Are you supposed to be lost? Should I pretend to give you directions or something? No one gives a shit. Thirty bucks and I’ll take you where you need to go.”
“Thirty is too much. Twenty bucks. For mouth stuff.”
“Twenty-five for mouth stuff.”
He unlocked the door in a hurry and told her to get in. She was beautiful; he didn’t like that she tried to be funny, but she was beautiful. Confident too, she took one look back over her shoulder before she got in the car and then sat with her arms crossed, glaring a hole in his windshield. He decided to break the silence.
“What’s your name?”
“Pilot.”
“That’s a funny name, did your parents want you to fly?”
“You’d have to ask them.”
He wanted her to smile a little. He thought the look on her face would be better later if she smiled. “I don’t know much French or Spanish. But I learned a lot of Japanese in high school.”
“So you didn’t need the subtitles on the cartoons, right?”
He blushed a little. “Right! That’s exactly right. My favorite was—”
She clicked her tongue against her back teeth. “We’re not doing small talk unless you’re paying me more, sport.”
She looked different to him then, more like the girls at work. Another reality TV watcher. He was looking for a genuine connection with someone who liked substantial things, things out of the ordinary. A girl who lit up when she saw you, listened to you, had a laugh that coated you like butter. Not someone who looked at you funny in an elevator when you told them their hair smelled nice. He nosed his car into an alley between a warehouse loft
space and the chain-link fence that separated it from the railway tracks. It was always deserted there. They sat for a minute listening to the engine ticking and he waited for her to reach into her purse for condoms before he grabbed her by the throat.
* * *
Pilot Cassidy is lined up to get into a concert at the Astoria and is amusing herself by eavesdropping on the two women behind her in line. The sound from the bar leaking out into the street is brutal, but the women are drunk and loud and Pilot can’t help but overhear. One of them had met a guy though Craigslist who was willing to exchange a six-pack of beer for a hand job, any kind of beer, and so she’d done it and would totally do it again.
“Weren’t you afraid he was going to murder you or something?”
“Nah, he wanted to meet in Dude Chilling Park, daylight and everything. It took about five minutes, max. Didn’t even get any on me. I told him in advance what kind of beer I wanted and he had it right there in the trunk of his car.”
“You went with him to the trunk of his car? You are so stupid!”
“Bitch, I shared that beer with you!”
Pilot lies on her mattress after the show, the room lit only by her phone. She makes herself scroll through pictures of the night first—a sea of raised hands obscuring the shitty opening band, a bloody-nosed selfie taken in the bathroom mirror after someone threw an elbow back and hit her, one of her roommates barfing with scary accuracy into a pint glass—before opening Craigslist and cruising Men Seeking Women. She answers the first one that seems weird, offers the most money, and doesn’t get specific about what her body looks like.
Rob messages bright and early the next day, tells Pilot he hasn’t had many replies so far, and she blinks through her hangover and tells him that she doesn’t imagine vaguely worded ads involving punishment has ladies beating down his door. He seems quiet, rich, and boring, and he likes it when Pilot tells him she isn’t scared of anything. He sends Pilot a series of wardrobe ideas, tells her not to wear underwear (followed by a wink emoji that curls Pilot’s lip), what corner to stand on, and what he’ll be driving.
* * *
He struggles to keep the plastic wrapped around her. He wasn’t sure if he should buy it all in the same place so he went across the city to multiple dollar stores to buy shower curtains that he stapled together. His hands tremble as he tries to tear off strips of the duct tape.
