Burnt Black Suns: A Collection of Weird Tales

by Simon Strantzas

  She grinned, revealing a gap along the side of her mouth. Harvey lifted his black coffee from the counter, and then placed the extra napkins she’d given him in his coat pocket. There was nothing more he needed to hear.

  Outside, he lit a cigarette to keep himself busy. Wind blew a tangle of debris across the street. If he didn’t keep occupied, he would remember Emily, and the guilt would roll over him like a crushing wave. When staying home had become unbearable, he returned to Henco Industries, hoping it would be the solution, or at least a distraction from the emptiness, but he soon realized he’d learned to hate his job during his absence. And yet there was nothing for him. All he knew was how to fix things, and they weren’t the sorts of things he could put on a résumé. He couldn’t work a computer, but he could use his hands, and he knew how to hold a gun. Those were enough. Or they had been until Emily’s death.

  He still saw his daughter sometimes, standing in the corner of his basement apartment as he moved from one room to other, or when he was backing his car out of Henco’s underground garage. She stood absolutely still, blaming him for what he’d done. He tried to tell her it wasn’t his fault, but she was dead. And he didn’t believe it anyway.

  The Henco Industries brass wanted the standoff to end. The Six Nations of the Grand River protesters had been there for five months already and showed no desire to leave. Each additional day on the grass of the Douglas Creek lot allowed them to dig in further. “We cannot trust the O.P.P. to help,” Mr. Estouffer said in his stilted Quebecois accent. “All they do is stand around and not get involved. McCarthy, he already speak to the Crown, but they do not move. No one does anything. This is why you must go. Go do what you do best.”

  Mr. Estouffer did not ask about Emily, and Harvey wanted to wrap his big hands around the old man’s fat throat. He resisted. Without the job, there was nothing left to stop the memories.

  “Just do us a favor, Harvey. You don’t push these Indians too much.” The way he said Indians made Harvey’s skin crawl. “We don’t want the news to find you are there.”

  Harvey said nothing. It was the last thing he wanted, as well. He didn’t have the face for television; it was too wide, too rough, too wrinkled. And he couldn’t risk his eyes revealing the truth. He didn’t believe.

  Something about the Six Nations occupation of the site didn’t measure up, which was why the first thing he did before leaving his apartment was put on his overcoat and slip the gun in his left pocket. Not in his right. He did not open the right-hand pocket. Even when he felt the faint tugging of something desperate to be gone.

  His walk from the coffee shop to the edge of the Douglas Creek lot was consciously rambling. He wanted to approach without it being clear where he was headed. The hardest part was passing the mirrored window of the Caledonia Hardware Store, reflecting in his peripheral vision despite the oncoming night. A shadow moved beside him, brushed against him. He wouldn’t acknowledge the manifestation.

  The Six Nations protesters were in a line along the entrance to the Douglas Creek lot, mired in a shouting match with the Caledonia Citizens Alliance—wealthy and bored locals tired of dealing with the constant threat to their property values. One of the natives wore an elaborate costume—part angry bear, part giant spider—that made him tower over his opponents as he danced. If it was meant to intimidate, it worked; the Alliance members cowered when he swung his multiple legs by their heads. Harvey skirted the disturbance and remained invisible.

  “Our land was stolen. We will not leave until it is ours again!”

  “Get out! You aren’t welcome!”

  One hundred years earlier the Six Nations of the Grand River signed a document that sold their land to Henco Industries. Harvey sympathized—Henco was certainly capable of looting the Six Nation ancestors—but he questioned why they were suddenly contesting the sale. Why did they want the land back? And most importantly to Harvey, why had they secretly moved a digger truck past the Argyle Street barricade the previous night?

  With spring still new, the sun had already set by the time he reached the Douglas Creek lot, and Harvey was able to position himself discreetly behind some trees on the edge of the forty hectares without being noticed. The dark cloaked him as he viewed the small tent enclave that was erected when the standoff began. He counted nearly twenty tents—some full-fledged tipis—arranged in a circle, a fire pit burning at the center. But the true face of the protest was along Argyle Street, where the concrete barrier had been erected. It was clear the protesters had no intention of abandoning their cause. If anything, the anger in their voices and their costumed dancing kept them fueled. Their anger belied something more.

  Harvey took a sip from his coffee and crouched down. He had to focus on the task before him; it was the only way to remain sane. There were not many places the Six Nations protesters could be hiding something as large as a digger truck, which meant it should be fairly easy to find what the protesters were digging for. It had to be the key to the whole affair; Harvey simply needed to figure it out.

  He removed the gun from his pocket and inspected it in the waning moon’s pale light. The gun was loaded should he need it. He laid his hand on his other pocket, feeling the small hard lump that radiated emotional power almost too strong to bear. His head swam with thoughts long held at bay, concealed beneath a sea of Scotch and gin and whiskey, but no matter how he tried, he could not drown the knowledge of what happened, of poor Emily’s broken face as she lay unmoving in the hospital bed, machines filling her lungs, pumping her blood. The sight haunted him, and he cursed himself for not being in the car with her and Donna.

  The police had told him the skid marks showed his ex-wife had swerved to avoid something on the road, but whatever it was had long gone by the time help arrived. Donna was killed instantly, but Emily . . . She had always been more his than his wife’s. Tough and hard as a nut, she glared with his face in miniature. She laughed the way a goose honks, and her arms and legs were sticks that would have one day shaped themselves into something beautiful if she’d lived long enough.

  No, he thought. Keep focused. Don’t fall into the past. Harvey took a deep breath of the chilled air and resumed his watch, waiting for his moment.

  The cigarette between his lips remained his lone companion. The protesters sang and danced in vigil into the night, all while facing down the Caledonia citizens who protested them in turn. Harvey felt something stir in the inky shadows between swaying trees, some force of portentousness or inevitability. Whatever the protesters were planning, it was close to being realized. The sensation was palpable, and he inched his left hand into his pocket and wrapped his fingers around the butt of his gun. He did so without thinking.

  From his vantage point in the dark, flickering flames were all he could see across the Douglas Creek lot, and the fading light played tricks on his eyes. Shadows scurried between him and the enclave of protesters, momentarily blocking his sight. Tiny specks moved through the air like swarms of insects, all converging on the dark woods that occupied the back half of the lot. At the front line the crowd had petered out—the costumes gone, their intimidation complete—though enough protesters remained to man the barricade and ensure the Caledonia Citizens Alliance didn’t dismantle it. Or the O.P.P. cross it. Yet, even with a smaller number, the rows of men and women chanted louder, and their cries brought a nightmarish quality to the cooling night air.

  The Six Nations wanted something, and their anger pushed them forward like animals. Anger fueled by hate and revenge, anger that wanted restitution and reparations for all that Henco had done. Anger that wanted the company to pay. The Six Nations of the Grand River wanted vengeance against those who had robbed them, and those who refused to relinquish their land. All this weighed heavy in the air, so much so that Harvey could almost see it in the dark, the emotions coalescing, suffocating the world beneath. But it was all for naught. Had they simply asked him, he would have explained it. Their mistake was looking for justice. Justice has no balance. If
it did, Harvey would carry nothing in his pockets.

  In the distance, sirens howled. The protesters were looking and pointing at him. No, not at him. Above him. In the night sky the thick plumes of smoke were being drawn toward the Douglas Creek lot, blotting out the stars, and from his position Harvey saw the glow of fires burning on the horizon. The sticky smell of frying electrical equipment clung to his face. Then with a flicker all the lights in the community went out, and the steady hum that lies behind the mechanized world ceased. Only the fires of the protesters remained. The cheer from Argyle Street was loud, and for a brief moment Harvey’s attention was fully in the present.

  There was scuffling around him, the pitch-black making it seem right next to him. He watched, waited until he had an idea of what was going to happen. The cloaked Six Nations protesters screamed, swearing curses into the night, and the red lights of the O.P.P. cruiser lit up, spinning around and around in the void. Then its bright highbeams fought to cut through the sediment-filled air, and the protesters who had been lobbing clods of dirt and rocks scurried away. They were far too distracted to notice Harvey, and he slipped across their makeshift barriers and into the Douglas Creek lot undetected.

  It was clear what had happened even without the announcements and police megaphones: the Six Nations protesters had blown up a hydro substation, knocking the power out across Caledonia, and it would take hours, if not days, to fix. Until morning, the land at Douglas Creek would be cast in pitch-darkness, hiding the movement of all below in its heavy drape.

  As he moved across the grass, he kept one hand in his left pocket, his squat fingers wrapped around the butt of his gun. The atmosphere was turbid, radiating dislike and mistrust, but there was something else too; something musky and meaty, like a large animal wandering in the darkness. The shadows moved everywhere around him, and he squeezed his gun tighter for comfort where none was to be had.

  The skirmish at the Argyle Street barricade was heating up—police orders shouted through megaphones and screaming protesters trying to avoid being seen. More sirens sounded in the distance, the cavalry coming to even the odds, and Harvey wondered where the peaceful protest had gone. It was always the same in the dark. Nothing remained real. Not the hopes of a robbed people, nor the safety of a man’s only child. It was only in the dark when a broken doll’s face made any sense. It was punishment. Plain and simple. And the punishment that was meted out on him would be meted out on the rest of Henco if the Six Nations had their way. At least, that’s what their chanting had transformed into. A call to arms. In the acrid smoke of the burning substation, voices were calling out into the dark, not stopping as the burning air irritated their eyes and lungs, compounding tempers. They were on the verge of something, and even in the blinding darkness it was clear that something would be ugly.

  His grey trench coat rasped quietly as he walked. He had with him a small Maglite flashlight, but he knew better than to use it. It would betray his presence, and he’d been betrayed enough in the preceding months. Betrayed by an ex-wife who stole his daughter away in the night to put her in the hospital, betrayed by doctors who could do nothing to save her except pretend there was a chance she might one day reawaken, betrayed by a company that would keep him away from his child instead of letting him hold her safe in his arms. All these betrayals added, compounded, weighed on him, and in his blinding sorrow they betrayed him one time further, and walked him unknowingly into the middle of the protesters’ enclave.

  He stopped in his tracks when he saw the smoldering embers of their fire, still red and leaping into the air before vanishing. The commotion of Argyle Street was faint in the distance, but there was talk from within the darkened tents, all in a language too ancient for him to understand. The words were monotone, hummed rather than spoken, and a sole singsong voice rose and sank in waves from within one of the tents—so deep it rattled in his chest. A breeze blew across his face, bringing with it leaves and dirt, and he turned his face and closed his lids. The sound of the swaying grasses was everywhere, like whispers surrounding him, or like the faint rasp of air pushed through the lungs of a dead girl. When he opened his eyes, the chanting had stopped, but in front of him, bare feet in the dying fire, was a broken Emily, staring. Circling her neck was the pendant he carried in his right-hand pocket.

  “Emily,” he whispered in a sputter.

  She bared her bloodied teeth at him. And was gone.

  Blood crashed through his head, through his face, through his dry throat, and the sound was deafening. He smelled disinfectant. It seemed impossible, yet the air was suddenly full of it, and it was all Harvey could do to keep himself upright. He did not enjoy the hallucination, the reminder of what he’d done, and bit against his palm until it bled to break its lock on him. When the world righted itself and his senses once more became his own, they were like raw nerves, and he had to rest until the nausea they induced subsided. He wished not for the first time since returning that he was at a bar instead of where he was, a bottle in hand to keep the guilt from ripping him apart.

  Harvey slipped out of the circle of tents and further into the darkness. If the digger was anywhere, it would be there, discreetly hidden from the world outside. The echo of his movements rippled faintly off the tree trunks that dotted the lot’s back hectares. He slowed as he approached them, unsure where the trees were in the night, and calculated the risk insignificant enough to pull the small Maglite from his pocket. A twist of its end and a narrow beam of light bore a tiny hole into the nothingness. It shouldn’t have been enough to alert anyone, but he slipped a hand in his pocket and removed his gun nonetheless. Then he slid forward among the trees.

  The sounds were impossible to pinpoint. Animals moved, making the same heavy scratching he’d heard before. The wind had increased as well, wrapping around the invisible trees outside the Maglite’s periphery, howling and throwing debris. Small rocks and dirt clawed his face as they blew past, scratching lines in his flesh. But those weren’t the only sounds he heard. Beneath them was another, one that chilled his chest and spine more than any late night wind could. It was a sound that still haunted his every waking hour.

  He had been sitting in that waiting room while the machine breathed for Emily; wheezing, in and out, breath forced into her tiny lungs. When the doctor appeared, it was obvious his caring was insincere, and Harvey leapt on his throat in wordless and instant rage. It took two security guards and three orderlies to pull Harvey’s hands from around the doctor’s neck, and the only reason they succeeded was Harvey’s realization that his fury did no good. It was misplaced. Harvey’s ire should have been directed at himself for not being where he belonged, and Henco for sending him there. Despite Harvey’s apologies, the doctor did not return. The one who replaced him spoke with a nervous stammer and wouldn’t stand closer than a few feet away. He told Harvey that Emily would probably never return and asked what he wanted to do. Harvey replied, “Leave,” and then turned away and held his daughter’s tiny hand. The doctor acquiesced, but with obvious concern.

  The trees were like a maze in the dark, but Harvey knew that following them would eventually yield results. Somewhere, in the nothingness, the digger stood waiting for him, a quiet beast with its head curled to its chest but with teeth strong enough to tear rock apart. Harvey moved through the forest as quickly as he could, the small circle of light swinging before him looking for evidence of the truck’s passing. And yet he saw nothing. It was not until he recognized the distant metallic twang of his footsteps’ echo that he finally turned course.

  In the inky darkness his circle of light found a metallic hull painted bright orange. Arms and gears erupted from the device, and it took Harvey a few moments to make sense of the violent clashing of parts. It was the digger, and under the light its giant wheels were sunken in a circle of torn sod and grass. Its scoop was tucked under its long arm like a bird sleeping, and across it was wet mud. It had been used recently, he could tell by its odor. It seemed the girl behind the Tim Hortons coun
ter was right: something else was going on.

  Part of him wished he hadn’t returned to the job so soon; his head wasn’t in the right place to deal with the continuous subterfuge and the front of solidarity the Six Nations were offering, pretending the land was what they wanted when clearly it was something beneath the ground that had their eye. He scanned the flashlight around the digger, looking for a hole, and when that failed he instead looked for the tracks the giant wheels had made in the soft turf. They would lead him to the dig as sure as any trail of breadcrumbs.

  It wasn’t far. Harvey followed the torn ground until the tracks stopped at a long tent stretching one hundred feet yet standing less than three feet tall. Along the edges of the grooves he found footprints overlapping with one another, making strange shapes in the soft soil. Some of the prints he thought might have been made by a child’s bare feet, or perhaps some sort of large animal. He touched the sides of the tent and they felt rough and damp, like an old hide or rough canvas. Something about the spot emitted the faint but pungent odor of some large rodent’s abandoned nest. There was the sound again of footsteps approaching and he flashed the Maglite behind him but found nothing there, not even the face of his dead daughter condemning him for what he was doing.

  He heard crickets chirp, wind rustle trees. The burning electrical fire continued, its smoke wafting over the Douglas Creek lot, its flames licking the horizon. Beneath the clouded sky Harvey circled the tent, looking for an entrance. There had to be one, after all. What was the point of having a tent without any way in or out? Why hide it when the whole structure was hidden to begin with? Or could that be part of the plan? Was it some method of revenge? Had the protesters finally decided to carry out their threats? The administration at Henco did not feel guilt for what they were doing and strongly urged him to feel the same. But it was there nonetheless, and they would all have to deal with it one way or another. Harvey hoped it would be on his own terms, but wondered if the rest of Henco would be so lucky.