The Penance of Leather (Book 1): Ain't No Grave

by S. A. Softley

  I sat up slowly, feeling unusually stiff. I wondered where the hell I was and how I had come to be there. As I sat up, I realized for the first time that I was naked. I didn’t feel cold. I didn’t feel much of anything… except hunger. A hunger like I had never before felt burned in my stomach and all other sensations seemed dull and subdued in comparison. I scratched my face, noticing with alarm that I had grown a thick, greasy beard.

  How long have I been out? I wondered.

  I looked around the room, trying to get my bearings. A cold aluminum table sat in the center of the tiled room. The table was empty and looked to be designed like a shallow sink with a hose hanging overhead and a sloping drain at one end.

  The room had cabinets and counters against the walls, but no other furniture. It was sparse and bare. The only window was the narrow opaque one beside the door. I looked back toward the drawer from which I had emerged. My drawer was part of a larger unit, like an oversized filing cabinet. There were five other drawers; three in a row below mine and two on either side of me.

  The gnawing fear returned to my gut, overthrowing, if only barely, the biting hunger that had occupied the space moments before. I was beginning to piece together where I was and the answer was more disturbing and nightmarish than I could have expected. This place… this shadowy, cold, sterile room was a morgue.

  Three

  I remember little of the hospital. After calling out repeatedly, trying to find someone who could explain what the hell was going on, it became apparent that I was alone. I left quickly. The hallways were dark, lit only with emergency lights and the eerie red glow of exit signs. The lights that still shone appeared dim and weak, as though their batteries had run low. There was no sign of another person, but evidence of panic and disorganization could be seen in the scattered papers and equipment that lay strewn carelessly in the hallways. I tripped on an overturned gurney; white sheets stained with some dark, unidentifiable fluid had tangled in a mass beneath it. In the dim light, everything appeared to be stained with dark blood. I recall seeing black smeared shoeprints slipping up a hallway away from the twisted aluminum frame of the stretcher. I shuddered at the sight. I guessed with feverish uncertainty that somehow or other I had been misplaced and left behind during some emergency evacuation.

  A few years ago a massive wildfire had burned through parts of northern Alberta leaving several towns deserted and empty for weeks. A few of the towns had been burned to the ground. It wasn’t really wildfire season, but it had been known to happen in winter if the conditions were right. The wildfires moved fast and were unpredictable. They could spring up in minutes and, if the weather didn’t cooperate, they could be whipped into a raging fury in no time. Perhaps this was what had happened and maybe in the apparent chaos they had mistakenly identified me as deceased.

  Although there was no pain, I was able to discover the reason for my being in a hospital quite quickly. Under the emergency light just outside the morgue doorway, I discovered a gruesome circular wound on my upper arm. The wound was clean and dry, but a large jagged piece of flesh was missing and the gash was raw and angry looking. It was like looking at someone else’s arm. I couldn’t feel it; there was at most the slightest indication that the injury had been painful, as though the sensation was in memory only. I wondered if I might still be under anaesthetic somehow.

  The details are blurred in my mind, but somehow or other I ended up in an empty street outside the medical centre wearing clothes that I’d picked up somewhere or other in the hospital. Had anyone been there to see I would have looked like a mad scientist: my hair a mess, wearing a set of undersized pink scrubs that I’d found left on a portable bed, dress shoes that were too large for me that I had stumbled across in one of the darkened hallways and a long white lab coat I wrapped myself in to help protect from the cold outside. It was winter, and I’d long since learned how bitter northern winters could be.

  I stood out on the road. The street was empty and the sun was high. It looked to be about noon, maybe a little later. I still found it hard to tell at this time of year, when the sun travelled across a low arc in the southern sky, never rising higher than twenty or thirty degrees above the horizon. The shadows remained long all day and the light retained the weak auburn of dawn or dusk rather than the full spectrum white light of a summer day.

  Cars were still parked in parking lots; there was no indication that the panic that seemed to have gripped the medical centre had spread beyond the front doors. Everything looked normal outside, except that the town was covered in an unnatural stillness and silence. I could hear no cars running, no beeping of trucks reversing, no voices, no slamming of doors; none of the background noise normally associated with civilization. It was clear that the town was not large, but even the smallest towns generate noise, and this looked to be an average sized town. I guessed that five thousand people must have called the town home; based on the number of houses and buildings I could see from my vantage point up on the hospital’s hill.

  I began to feel uneasy. Back then, nothing seemed creepier than a ghost town. We were so used to people being everywhere. Even in the most empty of places there was always a noise, a trail, a vehicle; some evidence of human activity. I walked a short distance out of the fire and ambulance loop onto the street, tripping a little as the toe of my oversized shoe dragged on the curb. Even the scuffing of my shoes seemed unwelcome in the stillness. Looking up and down the road, I couldn’t see movement anywhere.

  “Where the hell am I?” I asked myself out loud. My voice broke the intense silence and seemed to be eaten up by it; consumed in the quiet that had fallen over the world. Sound, it seemed to me, was foreign and conspicuous and I felt an irrational nervousness with each noise I made. Some old instinct within me, an echo of humanity’s wild past, feared whatever predator might investigate the noise I made.

  Where am I, I wondered again, silently this time, the voice inside my head seeming almost as loud and out of place as my speaking voice had been. The sign in front of the medical centre read M.F. Wozdac Healthcare Centre - Tall Pines Health Region. I had no clue where the Tall Pines Health Region was.

  I tried to think back to how I got here. There was the flight, the sick man, and then… nothing. I could remember nothing else.

  “Think!” I demanded of my brain in a hoarse whisper. I spoke aloud almost in an effort to prove to myself that there was nothing to fear; that my fears were irrational. “There’s got to be something else. What else happened?”

  “Alright,” I replied, trying to take the panicked edge out of my breath “the sick man died, I was moving seats… I remember a pain in my arm, probably the reason I have that wound. And there was the pilot. The pilot announced that we were going to make an emergency landing somewhere… I can’t remember where…”

  There was no sense, I realized, taking a deep breath, in worrying too much about it. I decided I would find someone soon or at the very least would find a road sign somewhere. The whole town couldn’t be deserted. There was no sign of a wild fire. No thick smoke or burning smell. It seemed more likely there had been some other problem at the medical centre; a gas leak or something, and people nearby had been evacuated.

  “But where are the emergency crews?” I asked myself, again voicing the question aloud.

  I decided that the only way I could find any answers would be to explore the town. I set off down the road; heading north toward what looked to be the downtown area – at least it was as much of a downtown as you’d expect to find in a place this size.

  The medical center stood at the southern edge of the town toward the top of a broad sloping hill. The incline of the slope was gentle and long. As I peered around, trying to get some bearing, it seemed to me less likely that the medical center stood atop a hill and more likely that the town itself had been built into a low indent in a broad plain. On all sides of the town, there seemed to be shallow sloping land that lead at last to whiteness so flat and empty that it could only be a large fro
zen lake. The town itself sat upon the edges of the lake within the sloping valley floor carved by receding glacial water.

  As I made my way down the long slope into the valley toward what I thought was the centre of town, I passed by several buildings, all of which looked as deserted and empty as the hospital. I was able to learn that I was in the town of Lac d’Hiver, which was the name listed on many of the buildings and businesses. The name rang a bell from the flight. I was certain that Lac d’Hiver was the name of the airport the pilot had announced would be our emergency destination. At least now I knew where I was… roughly.

  Lac d’Hiver was about halfway between the northern oilfields where I worked and Edmonton, the capitol city of the province, several hours drive to the south. I’d never been to Lac d’Hiver, but I remembered seeing it on maps and one of the guys I worked with had grown up there. From what I’d heard, it was what you could almost call a resort town, as far as it was possible for a town so far north to be a resort. The town sat on the shores of the lake that shared its name, one of the larger lakes in the area, and was surrounded on three sides by nature parks and wildlife preserves.

  Many people from nearby towns and cities had summer cottages up here. They headed north, like me, to get away from the crowds and the cities. The population probably dropped by half or more during the winter. In winter, most people preferred the crowds and financial opportunity of the cities to the dark and the cold of the northern wilderness. I still didn’t know exactly where Lac d’Hiver was or what the distance and land was like between it and the next major town, but it was a start.

  The town was filled with low brick buildings. Most had flat roofs and stood two stories or less. The streets were wide and reasonably well kept. Several of the storefronts had faux western-style facades, playing on the Wild West and gold rush mythology of the area. Dust blew in the wind and if it hadn’t been for the crusty snow cover, tumbleweed might have blown through with it. It certainly would not have looked out of place. I knocked on many doors and windows and called out hesitantly now and then, but the town remained silent and still and seemed abandoned. Apprehension grew in me with each empty building I passed.

  I came by a small shop called Val’s Diner and stopped. My stomach still burned with a hunger unlike any I’d felt. I walked up to the windows and peered in. Everything inside was dark. Nothing moved. The inside of the diner had most likely experienced its last remodelling in the late seventies based on the yellow peeling wall paper and the orange and yellow flower-print curtains that hung in the window. The green vinyl on the bar stools and booth benches was cracked and torn, exposing the grey mesh of threads beneath. I rapped on the glass and shouted, but everything remained still. There was no one around. I wasn’t yet desperate enough to try getting in, for all I knew the whole town might return in moments and I’d be left trying to explain why I had broken into a closed diner.

  I turned back to the road and was about to carry on when I spotted something I hadn’t noticed before. In the distance rose a single thick plume of black smoke. Round it circled a dozen or more black birds. It was hard to tell in the distance, but they appeared to be large crows and ravens, gliding gracefully in the air. They looked to me like black angels bringing messages of death and warning of the road ahead. Though I couldn’t say why, I was filled with a sense of dread and unease.

  Despite this, I was drawn to the black tower of smoke. I felt it would hold answers. Maybe, I thought to myself, that’s where the emergency crews would be, fighting some blaze while the town’s people were moved off to a safe location. Perhaps it was a chemical fire or a location with hazardous material. I recalled hearing about a horrible train wreck in Quebec a few years ago that had all but destroyed a town because hazardous material had exploded violently. Perhaps this had been a similar incident; or perhaps they were simply taking every precaution.

  I could find those emergency crews, declare my situation and they would take me to the nearest town or hospital or even put me on a bus or flight down to Calgary where I could carry on south for my holiday as I’d promised my mother. As I thought about this, I realized I had no idea where my bags, wallet or passport had ended up. Shouldn’t be a problem, I thought to myself, the airline’ll find it… or the hospital once people are back to work there. In the meantime, at least I could get a cup of coffee, a bowl of soup and a warm blanket from the emergency workers.

  As I walked, I forgot my earlier misgivings about the black smoke and became more certain with each step that I’d find help there; that this whole strange trip would return to normal.

  I turned onto a wide street; Main Street the sign read. One end of Main Street ended at the wide white lake, now frozen until spring. At the other end, just out of sight behind a taller three-story building, was the source of the smoke.

  Main Street was lined with all manner of shops that appealed to the lake-going tourists. On the stylized lampposts, built to look like wrought iron, hung banners with various images, many evoking Western images or First Nations artwork. Empty windows peered out from the non-descript brick fronts. A boardwalk of pinewood was built along many of the shops built close to the lakeshore.

  Out of some strange desire to appeal to society, I felt awkward wandering down the center of a large street and moved onto the boardwalk. The sound of my oversized shoes scuffing, thumping and creaking along the wooden boards seemed out of place in the absolute silence.

  The boardwalk ended as I carried on another block up the Main Street. My shoes were now scraping along pavement and, though still uncomfortably loud, it was preferable to the echoing hollow thump of the boardwalk. I passed by restaurants and shops, a hardware store and a sporting goods shop, moving my stiff limbs progressively more quickly as I came nearer to my destination.

  Each of the shops I passed looked empty and deserted just like Val’s Diner. There were trucks and cars left parked on the street, but nothing that moved or gave any sign that human life was nearby.

  Close now, closer with every step, the smoke rose thickly from a single, wide lot. At first I reckoned a building had burned down and was still smouldering but as I came closer, like a moth lured to a flame, I realized that the smoke was coming from what had simply been a large parking lot and not a building at all. Nothing could have prepared me for what I found there.

  Four

  The smouldering pile in the lot looked at first like garbage. It wasn’t the gutted remains of a building or the leaping flames of a grassfire that had been the source of the smoke, as I’d expected. Instead, it looked as though the whole town had gathered together to pile their old clothes, their trash; their rotten food. It looked as though they had dumped all their refuse in the middle of the lot, soaked it in gasoline and lit it on fire. Thick oily smoke boiled up from the pile.

  I could tell somehow that the air should reek of rot and burning, but it seemed as though my sense of smell had been dulled. Though the air was thick with haze and fumes from the bonfire, I could smell only a hint of it, as though from very far away.

  I looked around. Everything was abandoned. No rescue workers awaited me.

  “Damn,” I growled and held my hand over my nose and mouth, more out of reflex than necessity. The smoke did not bring as much as a cough or a tear to my eyes.

  Out of the corner of my eye, something caught my attention. Something in the pile struck me and I moved closer to investigate. A crow cawed just as it passed above me. I jumped, hissing. I chuckled awkwardly at my own nervousness, glaring at the offending bird.

  Just out of reach, a blackened object stuck out from the pile, crumbling and charred. I squinted, trying to make out what it was about the object that had caught my eye. By time I had identified it, I was far closer than I would have liked.

  “God!” I hissed. The object was unmistakable. A human hand lay sprawled against the pavement, its fingers bent and clutching as though its owner had been grasping at the cold, unforgiving cement, trying to pull itself out even as the pile grew and the
flames consumed it. The hand wore a gold wedding band; a small patch of the ring that hadn’t been scored with charcoal glinted in the daylight. I gaped in horror and shock, my eyes fixed on it.

  I stumbled a few steps backward, tripped over a concrete median and continued pulling myself away from the fire on my hands and knees.

  As I looked back at the heap of trash, it was as though a fog had lifted from my eyes. I could make out all sorts of hideous blackened remains now that my mind had been unblocked at the sight of the hand. Burnt skulls looked out from the fire with empty eyes, legs and arms stuck out coloured like charred meat. I gagged and tried to vomit. Nothing came but a few strings of thick, sour-tasting fluid. I had never imagined anything like this, especially not in the quiet peaceful north of Canada.

  Why? Why had anyone done this? What the hell had happened here?

  I sat for what felt like hours, gazing in shock at the smoke as it steadily climbed in the air, twisting and winding as the breeze caught it and shaped it into a billowing spire. I watched the ash from hundreds of human bodies and their clothes rise into the air and dissipate overhead in a sickly canopy. I simply stopped thinking. My eyes did not focus on anything; I couldn’t bear to take in any more of the horrible scene. The crows overhead became more raucous and bold as the smoke died down, diving in to tear the few remaining strips of unburned flesh from the grotesque mound.