In the First Early Days of My Death

by Catherine Hunter

  Alika did not cry. He didn’t even speak of the catastrophe. But Noni noticed that everything slipped through his fingers these days — teacups, pepper shakers, pencils, keys. He had broken most of the wine glasses in the house. Rosa brought him home-made casseroles and fresh salads, but he barely touched them. He was losing weight, growing pale. The scars on his face stood out more prominently than ever.

  The doctor had explained several times now, in patient detail, that Wendy might never wake up. The respirator was keeping her lungs and heart functioning. Feeding tubes had been attached to nourish the body, but Wendy’s coma, he said, was the deepest he’d ever seen. The possibility of brain damage was high. He suggested gently that the feeding tubes could be removed, if the family decided it was for the best.

  “No,” Alika said.

  It hadn’t rained once since the night I died, and the garden was beginning to shrivel. The only plants thriving were the weeds. I was worried about the vegetables. They were ninety percent water, after all, didn’t Alika know that?

  No, I reminded myself, he didn’t.

  I thought he would miss all the chores I’d performed on a daily basis, but he didn’t seem to notice. He didn’t seem to care about the things I’d left undone. Did he think that the house would tidy itself? That his drawers would fill up with clean socks of their own accord? Objects lay about the house just as I’d left them. The spoons I was going to clean, more tarnished than ever. The open tin of polish. He hadn’t even put the cap back on. He didn’t sleep in our bed anymore. Upstairs, the bed remained unmade, the pillow lying carelessly tossed aside since the morning I’d found that stocking. On the dresser, my music box was still open, the way I’d left it, all my personal items jumbled about in plain view.

  Worst of all, my library books were overdue.

  At first, it had given Evelyn some small satisfaction to look up the love spells in the very library where Wendy worked. Evelyn had despised Wendy from the moment she’d heard about her. The day Alika came home with the books about perennial flowers, he’d talked too much about her, mentioned her name too many times, and Evelyn had gone straight down to the library to take a look for herself. Wendy wasn’t much to look at. Mouse-brown hair and a sunburned nose. An irritating manner — that dumb, breezy way she gabbed with her co-workers, that dippy way she grinned at the little kids. But in a matter of days she had stolen Alika away from Evelyn. Evelyn was no longer welcome at Alika’s house. He was always too “busy” to see her. He told her he didn’t think things were “working out” between them.

  There was a poetic justice in using the computers at Wendy’s branch to steal him back. As she did her research, copying incantations into her notebook, Evelyn kept tabs on Wendy and eavesdropped on her conversations. She knew when Wendy got engaged, when she got married, what Alika had given her for Christmas. She knew all about Wendy, and Wendy had no idea who she was or what she was up to. Or so Evelyn had believed. By the time spring arrived, she was no longer so sure about that.

  It was the garden that finally clued Evelyn in to the truth. There was no way any normal person could grow such a garden in that soil, in this city. As she’d watched the seedlings sprout and rise so quickly toward the sun out of that clay-based muck, she realized that Wendy had some sort of unspeakable power. So that was why Evelyn’s rituals never succeeded. She remembered that once, in the library, when she’d been copying the recipe for a potion from the computer screen, Wendy had walked by, right behind her. At the time, Evelyn had smirked a little. Poor, unsuspecting Wendy! But now she wondered whether Wendy hadn’t been reading over her shoulder. Maybe Wendy had launched a counterspell. Wendy was blocking her. Wendy had enchanted Alika somehow, made him immune to Evelyn’s magic.

  So Evelyn had begun to search the sites for something stronger, something to aim at Wendy, instead of at Alika. That’s how, just this spring, a few short months ago, she’d discovered the binding spells.

  The instructions for the first binding spell were complicated and required a lot of equipment. It took Evelyn a long time to copy the whole thing off the screen, and it took her several days to collect a black candle, black felt, cotton balls, a metre of red ribbon, and the ingredients for the banishing oil, including pepper oil gum, which Evelyn had never heard of before. In the meantime, she resorted to entering the house when Wendy and Alika went out. She needed certain personal items of Wendy’s. And she always left something of her own behind. She became a kind of reverse thief, planting mementos strategically throughout the house. She’d learned from experience that people most desired the things that they had lost, and she wanted to remind Alika that he had lost her.

  That first binding spell hadn’t worked at all. Everything had gone wrong. Evelyn couldn’t obtain any of Wendy’s fingernail clippings because, though she had access to the house, and could probably find nail clippings in the trash, she was afraid of collecting Alika’s by mistake. So she settled for wisps of hair from Wendy’s hairbrush, easily identifiable because of the colour. And instead of pepper oil gum, whatever that was, she used black pepper, chewed-up bubblegum, and a little canola oil. It made a disgusting mixture, and Evelyn could hear Mark laughing at her outside the window as she tried to stir it with a teaspoon. But she didn’t allow him to deter her. The June moon was nearly full, and she had to act quickly.

  When she had everything assembled, she followed the instructions for making the potion, being cautious while mixing the oils, because the instructions warned that they were volatile. Then she fashioned the felt and cotton poppet that would represent Wendy, stuffed it with the recommended herbs, and sewed it up. She carved Wendy’s name into the candle with a thumbtack, anointed the poppet with the binding oil mixture, and began the difficult, somewhat hazardous, ritual, trying not to lose her place as she read aloud from her notebook.

  “I bind thee from doing me harm,” she said, tying the red ribbon around the poppet’s feet. “I bind thee from interfering with my life and my love.” She wrapped the arms and the head and finally the entire body of the poppet, so it looked like a little red mummy. The spell went on for several verses, and she had a hard time reading the words while keeping an eye on the candle, trying not to let the flame get too close to the poppet doused in volatile oils.

  When at last she’d recited every verse, she held the mummy up to the mirror and visualized all of Wendy’s negative energy being reflected back at her. Then she blew out the candle, bundled it together with the poppet in a paper bag, and left the apartment. She carried the package down to the end of the street and buried it on the grounds of the abandoned abattoir.

  But it didn’t work. If anything, Wendy’s power over Alika only increased. It seemed Wendy had created some sort of force field around him, so that Evelyn couldn’t arrange to run into him anymore. In mid-August, Wendy took holidays from the library, so that Evelyn was blocked from the house. Then Wendy changed the message on the answering machine so that Evelyn didn’t even have the pleasure anymore of hearing Alika’s recorded voice before she hung up. Nothing appeared to be binding Wendy from doing Evelyn harm.

  Evelyn knew that it must be her own fault. She was an amateur, and the ritual was too advanced for her. Probably the substitution of hair for fingernail clippings had ruined it. Or Evelyn had copied it wrong, skipped some of the words by mistake. Or maybe she hadn’t buried the poppet far enough away. She resolved to find some other method, something simple and powerful, something not even a loser like herself could screw up.

  The mayor was nervous. He understood fully the significance of the newspaper clippings Louise gave him. Or at least he understood that the judge would understand. On the surface, there were no connections linking the items together. They were published articles, articles anyone might have in his possession, about acquittals and suspended sentences. But the mayor knew how these things worked. A story lurked beneath the surface, a pattern that the judge would recognize. The pattern was a hidden threat — sent by whom?

  Louis
e was silent on that point. It was just a little research she’d done, she said. Something she hoped might help the project along. Her behaviour was worrisome, and the mayor tried not to dwell on it. Who had she been talking to? He could ask her, press her on the matter, but it was better if he didn’t know. He had learned long ago that the key to staying in power was not knowing things and, with Louise’s help, he’d become an expert at it.

  Still, he felt he was in over his head. He’d never blackmailed a judge before. He was unsure about the protocol. How should he approach the topic? Jovially, over a glass of whiskey at the Club? Should he make a few jokes about the injunction, man to man, then slip him the envelope of clippings? Hope he’d get the message?

  As he listened to the uncertain rhythm of Alice’s typing, Felix felt a twinge of jealousy, all the more painful because he knew it was irrational. He tried to concentrate on the newspaper spread out before him. Just as he’d predicted, all the letters in today’s paper were breathless endorsements of the exciting attractions of the casino. A two-page spread revealed the architect’s plans for the new luxury complex, with its skylights and swimming pools and its four-storey arches, like the arches of a Gothic cathedral, that soon would dominate the cityscape. The banality of it all was staggering. Felix felt a wave of nausea pass through him. He folded the paper neatly and carried it into his backyard, where he tossed it into the recycling box.

  He stood for a few minutes listening to the rustle of the poplar leaves in the heat. The neighbourhood was quiet, summer languor heavy in the air, hovering low across the yards and gardens, stifling sound. He thought about his neighbour, Wendy Li, and her garden and her fall, and the fact that he still didn’t know what had happened to her. Felix and Paul were keeping her file open, but they had no leads.

  Restless, he returned to the house and dialled the hospital’s information desk to check on Wendy’s condition. No change. What if she never woke up? He pictured Wendy lying a few short blocks away, her memory locked inside her, and felt helpless.

  He walked down the hall to Alice’s room and stood outside her closed door, his knuckles raised to knock. The sound of her typing no longer soothed him. He pictured her fingers as she kneaded the keys, moulding her paper lover into being. He’d seen the way she stacked the pages after she completed each chapter. She held the bundle vertically, tapping the edges of the paper into place, until they were flush. Then she’d lay the new chapter tenderly on top of the growing pile and run her freckled hand across the surface, as if it were a bedsheet she was smoothing.

  Felix was beginning to think of the white paper as the surface of a deep lake into which his wife was falling. Far below, a wavering image was forming, a liquid husband who floated among the weeds, holding his arms up toward the light, toward the air, toward Alice, coaxing her to grasp his hand. He was strong, and his voice, made thick by the water, called out for the one who had created him.

  I was getting fed up with Detective Felix. He was letting himself be sidetracked by every minor detail that crossed his path, while the truth was staring him in the face. All he had to do was return to Evelyn’s apartment, perform the most minimal search, and he’d find the evidence he needed. He’d see the photograph of Alika, and he’d surely find the — well, the murder weapon — whatever it was. I was lost, there, as I didn’t know how she’d killed me. Whacked me on the head, most likely. Or maybe she had stabbed me. It was hard to tell. The whole event was clouded over in my memory.

  I watched while Felix cooked dinner. He was making curry. From scratch. As if he had all the time in the world. Well, you don’t, I wanted to scream. A horrible thought struck me. What if Evelyn got away with it? What if she wormed herself back into Alika’s life and took my place? It was too terrible to imagine.

  Felix, oblivious to this possibility, chopped up everything with excruciating care — onions and garlic and carrots and cauliflower and a big zucchini that looked awfully familiar. What was the matter with him? He had work to do, and instead he was forever cooking dinner and reading newspapers — he was a newspaper addict, this guy–and mooning after his wife. He heated olive oil in a pan and sautéed the onions with the garlic. Then he sprinkled cayenne pepper into a bowl of yogurt and stirred it up. When that cayenne-flavoured yogurt hit the frying pan, a rapturous, pungent aroma suffused the air, and a fierce hunger cut through me.

  I felt very keenly all the things that I’d lost. All I had left was my dream of revenge on Evelyn, and now that seemed to be evaporating, too. Here I was, the victim of a gross travesty, the wronged party in a fatal love triangle, and nothing was being done about it. Was it possible that justice was merely an earthly thing? Nothing more than another possession, like a book to read or a bowl of vegetable curry? Would I be forced to surrender it, too, along with everything else?

  Evelyn’s boss telephoned to see if she was feeling better, and she said she was. He sounded sincerely concerned and remarked on the early onset of flu season this year. Evelyn hadn’t caught the flu, of course, but she was feeling better. She hadn’t seen or heard from that detective again. He seemed to have forgotten all about her. Like her boss, he must have believed her lies.

  She’d been lying when she said she couldn’t remember her activities the night of August twenty-first. It was true she’d been home that evening, but she remembered exactly what she’d been doing. It was the day after she’d found the new binding spell. When she first came across it, on a new magic web site, she’d been delighted. It was elegant and clean. She had all the necessary materials right in her apartment, and she resolved to cast the spell right away. But back at home, she had second thoughts. Even though the spell seemed simple, she didn’t want to take any chances. She would practise, test it out on someone else first. Now, who else was sapping her energy? Who was else was harassing her, refusing to leave her alone, making her life miserable?

  She drew a picture of a mosquito on a piece of paper, copying it from her old biology textbook. She folded the paper three times, tied it up with black thread, and put it in an old marmalade jar full of water. She repeated the words of the spell, which were eloquently sparse and easy to remember, even a little silly: “Do as I please, stay there and freeze.” Then she put the marmalade jar in the freezer compartment of her fridge.

  That very night, the fogging trucks drove down her back lane and up her front street, spraying the neighbourhood with insecticide. In the morning, Evelyn had a dry, sore throat and a headache. But when she stood outside and offered her bare arms up to be bitten, only one mosquito appeared. It flew toward her, weaving wildly as though drunk, then fell dead at her feet. There was not another one in sight. The courtyard outside her apartment block was mosquito-free.

  When she opened the freezer again, she saw that the ice had expanded, cracking the glass. She wrapped the broken jar in newspaper and threw it in the garbage. Searching among her cupboards, she found a plastic yogurt cup with a lid. She planned to use it that very night, when the timing would be most fortuitous. That evening, August twenty-first, a full moon would rise, lending its womanly powers to any spell cast beneath its light. Evelyn hurried home from her late shift at the convenience store. She lit a few candles, just to set the right atmosphere, get herself into the mood. Then she ripped a scrap of paper from her notebook and wrote Wendy’s name on it carefully, in blue ink. She placed the scrap in the yogurt cup, filled it with water and snapped on the lid. At midnight, she recited the magic sentence as she placed it in the freezer behind the vanilla ice cream. Take that!

  5

  Before Completion

  At night, while the world of the living slept, I could hear the dead whispering, calling me, coaxing me toward them. At these times, I took shelter in the library. I feared their siren songs, feared my own despair, the great temptation to surrender. And books were the only refuge I had ever known from such strange longings.

  I’d always wanted to be all alone in the library at night, and now I could be. During the bustle of the day, surroun
ded by books that I didn’t have time to read, I’d often imagined sneaking in after hours, stealing the luxury of time. I had time now, in abundance.

  The dark rows of shelves were beautiful under the dim night lighting, as I’d always imagined they would be, tall monuments, like rows of gravestones in a cemetery. I’d always thought that if I could get in at night, I’d finally have a chance to explore the library thoroughly, to browse through history, biography, cookbooks, atlases. But now that I was here, I found myself drawn back to the children’s section, to the bulletin board that should have been changed last week, to my own desk, my unfinished paperwork.

  I saw all the tasks that needed to be done. The unshelved volumes in the back room, where no child could ever find them. A box of shiny new animal books that hadn’t yet been catalogued. A forgotten stack of paperbacks about the weather, left over from the display we’d made in spring, when we studied the wind and made those kites.

  I wandered into the fiction section. My favourite shelf was the one with the Children’s Classics, the hardcover collection. The broad spines of the books were blue, green, deep chocolate brown, and ruby red, the titles stamped in golden, Gothic script: Treasure Island, Alice in Wonderland, Heidi, Anne of Green Gables, Peter Pan.

  Peter Pan! I would have given anything to open that volume and look at the watercolour illustrations, read that story again. To get past the covers to those thick, creamy pages, those letters, words. Sometimes I thought this was the very worst part of it all. The saddest. The least bearable.

  When Noni drove Alika home from the hospital that evening, Evelyn was standing in the shadow of the lilac bush. As she watched him emerge from his sister’s car, she stepped behind the branches, so that Noni wouldn’t see her. Noni hated Evelyn. It must have been Noni who’d told that detective about her. Evelyn had been terrified for days, but now that she’d calmed down, she reasoned that Noni had probably sent the detective to her door just to harass her. He probably didn’t suspect her at all. He hadn’t even looked in her freezer. She was starting to relax. She was going to get away with it. She could barely believe her own power.