The Calling

by Inger Ash Wolfe

  Matthiessen looked sheepish. 'Luckily, things are mainly peaceful hereabouts. This isn't Ottawa, y'know.'

  'Well, whatever, let's get this guy out of here now.'

  'Yes, Ma'am.' He seemed to be happy to leave the room. She turned to Wingate, who was still standing over the bed. Greene had already gone downstairs.

  'So where's the love in this one, Wingate?'

  'Appearances are misleading.'

  'Uh-huh.'

  DC Wingate leaned in closer. 'Do you think the blood's different colours?'

  Hazel looked from where she was. 'Do you?'

  'Arterial and venous blood look different. The oxygen in venous blood makes it look redder. Arterial blood is darker. Compare the blood on his head to the blood on his hands.'

  She looked closely. It did appear as if the blood on Ulmer's hands was brighter. 'It's one for Spere. Mention it to him.' Two officers with a black body bag appeared in the doorway. Hazel ushered them in, and Wingate stood back as they laid the bag beside the body.

  'What do you think he doesn't want us to notice?' he said.

  'Why do you think he's trying to communicate with anyone?'

  'He's trying to make these killings look like something they aren't.'

  One of the baggers started pulling the zipper up. 'One last look?' he asked. Ulmer lay in it stiffly, his chest nearly blue and a line of blood under his skin where it had pooled. It was like a chalk outline in purple.

  'I think we're done here,' said Hazel.

  The officer closed the bag over Ulmer's destroyed head. 'No one asked me,' he said, 'but this guy, whoever did this, was pretty fucking angry. Psycho or not, he wasn't in any kind of control of himself.'

  'I'm pretty sure you're wrong about that,' said DC Wingate.

  They found Greene on the front lawn, sucking on one of Spere's cigarettes. The streetlights had come on since they'd gone into the house. Glowing circles lay over the road. 'Ten years without a smoke,' Greene said, turning the burning ember to himself and staring at it. Spere held out the pack to them and they declined.

  'So, again,' said Hazel, 'the victim opens the door, lets the killer in. Right? No sign of a struggle. The killer probably carries the victim upstairs and puts him in bed. Ulmer lets him.'

  'Maybe these people are signing on for one kind of death, but they're getting another,' said Greene. 'Or getting the one they want, and then the killer is either letting loose because he can, or because he thinks he won't get caught if the murders aren't connectable.'

  'Two violent murders two days apart within three hundred kilometres of each other?'

  'Maybe he knows something about the state of policing in this part of the province,' said Greene. 'Such as it is.' He crushed his cigarette underfoot. 'Christ, they've got two rooks here playing house and writing parking tickets.'

  Hazel cast a glance at Wingate, whose eyes were directed straight into the grass. 'Well, you've got your proximity now, James.'

  'What does that mean?' said Spere.

  'Serial killers,' said Wingate quietly, as if he was in pain, 'they work territories.'

  'So do milkmen,' said Greene. 'Anyway, I'll tell you one thing we do know. If this is the same guy, he's heading east.'

  6

  Wednesday, 17 November, 8:30 a.m.

  Simon climbed out of the river and onto the bank, reaching for a white towel he'd draped over a boulder. The sun in its oblique angle didn't offer much heat, but after he'd towelled off, he stood on the sandy riverside and with his eyes closed faced the light until he could feel it reach inside him and scour what the rushing water could not reach.

  He'd pitched camp near the eastern border of Quebec the previous morning. Here, in these forests, he could replenish some of his supplies, despite the lateness of the season. The eastern provinces were a better source for some of the mosses and lichens he could not find in such abundance out west. Club moss and Asclepias. He scoured the forest floor for seedpods, herbs and fungus. The evening before he'd had the marvellous luck of discovering a cluster of Laetiporus cincinnatus, the mushroom foolishly called 'chicken of the woods' by those who could not liken a food to itself, and although he did not usually eat fungi, he had been losing weight lately from his exertions, and needed to give his stomach something to work on. He'd cooked the huge bracket of mushrooms on an open fire, and delighted in the firm flesh redolent of the forest.

  Soon he would be close to the ocean again – it had been nearly two months since he'd left the Pacific on his journey – and he would allow himself the indulgence of fish once he reached the shores of the Atlantic. He ate flesh once a year (secretly, as his brother would not approve), and in the time he'd spent in the wilds outside of Port Hardy, high up on Vancouver Island, he had allowed himself to indulge only during the coho migration, capturing a sow partway to her breeding grounds and eating her raw, bones, eggs and all, on the riverbank. He liked to feel the power of the animal in him at these times, ravishing himself on the blind, unquestioning faith these creatures showed in the cycles of their lives, returning to die where they were born, not conscious of their paths but committed to them, the way the ocean is magnetized to the moon. In the week after these feasts, he could feel their flesh coursing through his, leaping in his blood, tidal.

  He'd passed through to this part of Quebec without stopping. He'd had requests in French from various parts of the province, but despite his grounding in the romantic tongues, his French was poor. Clear communication was of the utmost importance in this endeavour, and he could not risk misspeaking, or failing to understand. So he had ignored all but one request from Quebec, this one from a small town high up on the St Lawrence River called Havre-Saint-Pierre. It had taken him a day and a half to drive through Quebec, keeping to the 117 and the 113 through Chibougamau until the highway brought him back down toward the St Lawrence. He'd had a premonition of being sighted somehow, knowing that his stop in Humber Cottage was perhaps not a wise one: he'd been called to attend to his willing supplicants, not to those in random need, and God knew there were many who would benefit from his ministrations. Still, he was a man on a merciful mission, and if God should send him a child in need of transformation, he could not refuse. He was glad of his opportunities, but he did not want to be stopped before his work was done.

  And his Great Work was nearly complete. There were four men and women at the end of this mighty chain waiting to play their small role in it. How he loved them for their patience, their willingness. He would not fail any of them; had not failed to this point.

  He looked back on his and his brother's years in Port Hardy, and although they seemed at the time to be years of turmoil and doubt, now that time in his life seemed encased in something. Its shape was crystalline, light-catching, and the kernel of himself that had been made by those years glowed within it, something whole. He realized this crystal was his battery: this image of himself, which contained the force of his brother's being, powered him now, allowed him to move forward across the country nearly sleepless and barely provended, a starving, wide-awake prophet. When he came to the end of his path, in Newfoundland less than ten days from now, he would make the final gesture of his quest and that crystal would burst open and spread his light among the stars.

  He prayed beside his tent in the thick forest north of Havre-Saint-Pierre. He laid out his photographs on the flamelit grass, putting them in order, fifteen figures, with four to go. Nineteen in all, the particles of a wholeness that could not be made without these orisons, these petitioners. He thanked the Almighty for allowing him to reach this day.

  He worried that these last men and women might have weakened during their wait. He had already lost two on the way, an elderly man in Canmore, and a woman in Wawa. These he had replaced with the only two people on his waiting list.

  He spent a full day and night in the woods, replenishing his strength and resting. In the days, he ate, bathed and prayed. At night, he could hear the life of the forest around him, creatures aware of his presence,
but not frightened of him, not threatened. He listened to the myriad scurryings around his tent, the sound of a watchful stillness from the branches above him, and he felt contained in it, another animal in a sanctuary of its own making.

  After dressing and taking down his tent, he went into Havre-Saint-Pierre and checked for mail at the main postal station. It was Wednesday, 17 November, at eight o'clock in the morning. He found a letter of confirmation from Mrs Iagnemma, saying that she would like to see him as arranged. But not as arranged, as she stated that her daughter, a Miss Cecilia Iagnemma, would be present to assist him and to give him her support. Simon had been especially careful to choose his hosts from among the many men and women who fit a certain profile. First and foremost, they would live alone. Second, they were to understand that the process they were involved in was to take place in utmost secrecy. It was no secret between himself and his hosts that what they were engaged in was illegal in every lawbook but God's: if he were to be stopped, their participation would be for nothing. Telling anyone about him, or worse, involving anyone else in his plans, was grounds for dissolving the arrangement. Once, at the very beginning (it had been his third appointment), he'd arrived at an apartment and seen two sets of shoes of different sizes on the mat outside the door. He'd simply turned on his heel and left (although he returned later, unannounced and somewhat displeased, and proceeded without ceremony). But now at least Mrs Iagnemma had prepared him. She had not really asked permission, but she had told him honestly what she was planning. It allowed him to consider his options. And given that he had only three more stops after this one, it struck him as wise to go with what was being given him.

  He was to see the woman in six hours, but however much he disliked deviating from his plans, he would go now. He followed the directions to her house on a hillside beyond the town. It was a humble cabin surrounded by Jack pine, and as he approached it, a thin finger of woodsmoke came from the chimney.

  'I'm early,' he said when she came to the door, and she looked behind him to see if anyone had accompanied him. Seeing no one, she opened the door for him anyway. She was a woman of about sixty, her entire aspect a wash of white: white hair, white terrycloth robe, the skin of her face like onionskin. She bent over to write something down on a pad she was carrying.

  You got my letter?

  'I did. And I've come out to ask you to reconsider,' he said, standing in her hallway, his hat in his hand. He had left his kit in the car. 'I cannot do what you ask of me; there can't be a witness.'

  Mrs Iagnemma gestured for him to come into the house proper. Throat cancer had left her without a larynx or much of her tongue. There was a semipermanent port in the base of her throat where liquid nourishment could be taken. She was a borderline case for him: her disease had violated her so profoundly that her doctors had removed her speaking parts, and she was no longer complete. He'd justified his visit to her by considering that her voice would be raised in a different way than medicine could imagine. Her tonguelessness was prelude to a miracle. But he'd known he was tempting fate by coming to this woman, and his fears had been grounded: she'd broken their agreement and forced him off his schedule. He was not happy. She brought him into the kitchen and put a kettle on to boil. The house was not as tidy as he liked; he would have very little time to clean once she was finished, and he had to ensure he was well out of the area before her daughter arrived at two o'clock. However, if Cecilia Iagnemma showed before he was finished, he'd already decided what he would have to do. Gladys Iagnemma sat across from him at the table and began writing on one of the pads of paper that seemed to litter every flat surface in the house.

  You look as I thought you would.

  'A little severe?'

  Kind, she wrote. She pulled the pad back and continued. I don't want to be alone when this happens. My daughter understands. You will be safe even if she's here.

  'I can't, Gladys. This is a private thing. Between you, me and the Lord. No one else is invited. I'll understand if you don't want to go ahead. I can find someone else.'

  She seemed to collapse into herself a little. From the looks of her, had she lived a little farther away and been his second-last, or last visit, she'd already be dead.

  Okay, she wrote. But I want to write her a note. I'll write it, and then we can start.

  He reached across the table and gripped her writing hand, and she looked up at him and smiled wanly. 'You do that, then,' he said, keeping his expression steady. 'I'll get my things, and you can put down what you want to say.'

  She nodded gratefully and tears fell down her cheeks. She lowered her head and began writing; he saw her write the words My beloved Cecilia, and he left her to it. Out in the car, he opened the hatch and took his bag out. His movements were abrupt.

  He tugged on the fridge door and checked the cable. He had not been pressed for time during any of his visits before now, and he would need the better part of two hours after Mrs Iagnemma gave herself to him to finish up. The arrangement was quite unsatisfactory, and if the daughter showed early, he would have a mess on his hands. He went back into the house and saw the woman crouched over her writing. The kettle was steaming now. Never had he foregone mercy, but if any of his supplicants had earned a rough dispatch, Gladys Iagnemma was the one. 'I must ask you again, Gladys: do you wish to go forward?'

  She pushed what she was doing aside and wrote Yes, then pulled the unfinished letter back toward her. 'You can consider yourself fortunate that I'm willing to go through with this at all,' he said. The kettle whistled and Simon lifted it off the element and raised it over Mrs Iagnemma's head. She'd turned at the sound of the water boiling and lifted her eyes upward in time to witness the stream of boiling water coming down over her. In panic, she ducked forward and Simon poured the steaming liquid into the woman's white hair and down the back of her neck. Her scalp went instantly livid, as if a nest of eels had burst to life on her head, and Mrs Iagnemma reared up and flew over the back of her chair. She hit the floor with a bang – he could hear the hoarse susurrations emanating from her broken mouth – and he kicked her over onto her back and held her down against the cupboards with a foot on her chest. He poured the water over the port at the base of her throat. 'Do you know what an agreement is, Gladys?' She writhed beneath his foot, a pink, steaming foam cascading out of her mouth and nostrils. Within a minute, she was dead. The flesh around the circular port was cooked to a translucent pink.

  He was going to need ice now if he was going to get his work done. He replaced the kettle on the stovetop and struggled to get Mrs Iagnemma's body back into the chair. Her eyes were still open and would not close: the thin muscles already hardening. There was a single tray of ice in the freezer, and he cracked and freed the twelve cubes from it and packed five of them into her mouth. The heat there began to melt the ice instantly, and he replaced the shrinking cubes with fresh ones until he could feel her jaw begin to stiffen. He scrabbled around in his kit and took out a piece of paper and consulted it. Her mouth was already rounded a little: he put his thumb behind her lower teeth and drew her jaw downward. Cool water coursed over his knuckles. Her jaw wanted to spring up, but he held it firmly until the muscles in her mandible accommodated him. With his other hand, he pushed the stub of her tongue back and upward in her mouth. He could feel the muscles firming up beneath his hands, as if he were sculpting her, and indeed he was, he was changing her at the moment of her death into a work of art.

  It took ninety minutes, but at last she stayed in the position he'd placed her in. He photographed her with the Polaroid and waited to see her face emerge from the vague darkness within the white frame, her frightened, egg-white eyes drifting through the fog toward him. Fixed now, forever, in his gaze.

  Back in the car, after quickly cleaning up and drawing her blood, he keyed the lock on the little bar fridge and opened its door. He'd lined one of the shelves with camphor pucks to mask the smell – even refrigerated, blood began to reek after a while. Just the same, he'd learned not to hold his br
eath: the priest does not look away at the moment of supreme sacrifice. He brought out one of the jars, opened it, and filled his nose and lungs with the scent of decay. He dipped his chalice into it. He took the cup into the house, where Mrs Iagnemma sat in permanent peace, and he tipped the contents of the chalice over her burned head. 'I bless you,' he said to her. Black, brackish blood coated her face and slowly trickled down the front of her terrycloth robe. 'You are in the choir now, Gladys Iagnemma, welcome.'

  He swept her letter to her daughter from the tabletop and quickly searched the house for his letters to her. He had instructed all of his hosts to keep his correspondence in one place, where he could retrieve it at the end, and here, in this house, as in all the others, he found the letters just where he had told Mrs Iagnemma to keep them: in a small box in a clothing drawer in her room, weighted with a long, rough black stone on its top. With the bundle of paper, he got back into the car and continued driving east.

  7

  Monday, 15 November, 7:30 a.m.

  Hazel Micallef stared into her All-Bran. It stared back. Resigned, she picked up her spoon and began eating. Food for horses, she thought. Her mother sat across from her in her petit-point-adorned housedress, her short grey hair sticking up from sleep. It was seven-thirty in the morning under grey November clouds. Hazel wanted to go back to bed.

  'Do you think you're losing weight?' said her mother.

  'I'm losing sleep.'

  'I think you are.' She went back to her paper. The Toronto Star. After a moment, she said, 'So this other man – you're certain he was killed by the same guy?'

  'I'm not certain of anything, Mother. All we know is that we have two bodies within three hundred kilometres of each other. And up here, that's a pattern.'

  Her mother held up the front section of the Star. 'Down there, it's a weekend.'

  'Ray thinks he's travelling. The killer. West to east.'