They got hitched at the Two Hearts Wedding Chapel on Stanley Avenue and settled into the house I’d grow up in. My father was promoted to assistant manager. Mom got a job with the Children’s Aid Society…then she missed her period, peed on a stick and up popped the “+” sign. After some tears and a frank discussion they decided to keep me.
People say a hellion can go one of two ways upon the birth of a child. One, the responsibility wrecks him and he reverts to his shit-disturbing ways. Two, he separates so completely from his old self that it’s impossible to believe he could ever have been so wild.
My father split that particular atom. Most days he was the second type of man, but every so often…
One night I stirred from sleep at three in the morning and crept downstairs to see my mother sitting stock-still on the chesterfield. A taxi pulled into the driveway. The front window flooded with headlamp-glow, illuminating her in her housecoat.
My father staggered out of the cab with blood gleaming on his knuckles. He stumbled in, smelling like he’d toppled into a vat of sour mash. Mom met him squarely in the hallway. A sharp snak! as her open palm laced his cheek.
“I’m sorry, Cece,” my father said. “My brothers, John and Al and Jeff…just a few beers but…Jesus.”
He shook his head and snorted, a sound of sheer disgust.
“My hands have gone soft counting other people’s money, Cece. It wells up. It hurts. Physically, in my bones. It wells and wells and it wells—”
“You better quit all this, Sam. Goddamn it, I mean it.”
The pleading went out of him then. Snuffed like a trembling flame.
“Okay, Cecilia. I will, I will.”
Fatherhood steadily changed my dad. It wasn’t that the iron was ripped out of his spine. Rather, that same iron was reallocated to other parts of him where it could do more good. He quit hard liquor. Cut off his drinking legs, as they say around town. By the time I hit ten he’d stopped coming home bloody-knuckled. And he never even taught me how to throw a punch.
iii.
This city is haunted by ghosts.
Uncle C used to say this, though not to scare me. He’d say it with a cocked eyebrow and an inscrutable smile, a merry jester beckoning me to embark on a grand adventure.
Uncle C was my mother’s older brother, though you’d never guess it. Mom was pragmatic, clear-sighted. Ever since I’d known him, Uncle C had been a dreamer. He was an expert in lore of unspecified worth, a believer in things that went bump in the night, a self-professed seer between the worlds of the living and the dead. He was a conspiracy theorist of the highest order, and, as a result, just about the best uncle a boy like me could ask for.
He was incredibly tall, or so he seemed back then. (I realize now that, at six foot three, he was not quite the fairytale giant who exists in my memory.) He moved awkwardly, as though threads were attached to his limbs, trailing up to a novice puppeteer. He claimed this was the result of his nerves failing to stretch down to his toes and fingertips. This, his further claim went, was a common affliction of the Watusi tribesmen in Africa, who were so tall that their heads brushed the branches of the baobab trees. The Watusis were poor warriors, unable to hurl a spear accurately, and were frequently carried off into the veldt by enterprising tigers. His long horse-like face was prematurely seamed—he would have been in his late thirties that summer—his green eyes set in a fine net of wrinkles. His hair had turned bone-white before I was born and he wore it past his shoulders. With that hair and his elongated limbs and joints that bulged like knots in a rope, he reminded me of the gnarled cypress trees that thrive in Floridian swamps.
Odd duck. That was my father’s term for the Uncle Cs of this world. And my uncle was weird, but not in a threatening way. He didn’t collect his urine in Mason jars or dress his cats in sailor outfits and have them re-enact HMS Pinafore or waltz around his living room with an old mannequin torso he picked up at the city dump. Uncle C was harmless, as I’ve found to be the case with most odd ducks. As far as I was concerned, there was nothing wrong with being an odd duck. I figured some people have edges that don’t allow them to slot neatly into the holes society expects them to fit into, that was all.
My uncle owned a shop, the Occultorium, at the top of Clifton Hill. The name was spelled out in Gothic lettering on the marquee, while below, in elegant script, the slogan:
Investigating the dark cubbyholes of otherworldly experience…
Uncle C insisted on that dot-dot-dot at the end, even though he knew it threw off the marquee’s alignment and made the whole thing look a bit sloppy. “The dot-dot-dot is key,” he told me. “The dot-dot-dot means there’s so much more, yes? Without the dot-dot-dot, how could we invoke”—his hands performed a whimsical arabesque—“the mysteries of infinity?”
The Occultorium was small and cramped, every square foot packed with arcana. Its walls were painted matte black, which gave the sanctum a hazy aspect even in broad daylight. The shelves displayed books with titles like A Voodoo Doll Spell Book, Practical Demonology, They Exist! and Witch Hunting Made Easy. The glass-topped display cases held tarot card decks, Ouija boards, build-it-yourself voodoo doll kits, curse amulets, anti-curse amulets, silver skulls, all-seeing eyes, puzzle boxes, dowsing rods, jars of “Nightmare Jam” (“Ingredients: milk, cream, Hendrick’s gin, 1 follicle of virgin’s hair”), ritual chalices encrusted with gaudy rhinestones, and one-of-a-kind objects with unspeakable backstories.
“So that’s really a shard of rock from Stonehenge?” a customer might ask.
“Its authenticity is irreproachable,” my uncle would intone. “It was smuggled out by an outcast Druid at great peril to his everlasting soul.”
To me it looked an awful lot like the schist found in great abundance in the quarry three blocks from Uncle C’s house.
A stuffed raven loomed over the cash register. My uncle had glued an unlit cigarette in the crook of its beak, which he felt gave it a suitably “rock ’n’ roll” look. Uncle C would stand beneath the raven’s spread wingspan, long arms draped on the countertop in mimicry of the bird. Foreboding body language aside, in both dress and demeanour Uncle C did not match his merchandise. He favoured acid-washed jeans and garish tie-dye shirts bought by the dozen from the silkscreen joint two storefronts down.
The shop did poorly. Tourists were keen on T-shirts emblazoned with goofy slogans, saltwater taffy, junk trinkets and fudge. They were less enthused about six-packs of garlic-infused vampire stakes or a copy of The Necronomicon signed by famed Satanist Anton Szandor LaVey. They’d wander in with a camera slung around their necks and a streak of zinc oxide down their noses, hoping to find a magic kit or maybe some Mexican jumping beans. Instead they got a shop full of bizarre items presided over by a man who looked like a Grateful Dead roadie.
“Oh,” they’d often say while grappling with the shop’s strange wares. And then: “Oh.”
After which, they’d leave.
If a customer should linger, Uncle C would say, “What is your pleasure, seeker? Look carefully. Something might just”—here he would dab the air in front of his face with the tip of one elongated finger—“call out to you.”
He’d cheerfully extol the properties of mandrake root—which is said to scream when pulled from the ground—or lemon verbena, an ingredient in curse sachets that also happened to make a heavenly poultry rub. His sales pitches rarely hit pay dirt. On those rare occasions when someone did the unthinkable and bought something, my uncle would wrap the item with great care, place it in a black Mylar bag and press it to the customer’s chest with the words, “Be well, and may your purchase serve you faithfully on your journey.” These customers left his shop intoxicated, elated and a bit spooked.
The Occultorium was also overrun with kids in search of drugs. Lexington Galbraith, who owned the neighbouring video emporium, had a sideline as a purveyor of pot to local high-schoolers. The students figured if a video store sold dime bags of skunky pot, the Occultorium must sell some trippy pharmaceuticals. Wormwood
LSD, maybe? But while my uncle held a relaxed view on drugs—“Whatever gives you that extrasensory edge, Jake, my boy”—he never sold them.
“You hear about the guy who took too much blotter acid and had a lifelong trip?” he asked me once. “The cops were outside his door, coming to bust him, so he ate his whole stash. Now he thinks he’s a glass of orange juice. He’s in the nuthatch, bug-eyed and shivering, terrified someone’s coming to drink him.”
Uncle C cracked a bottle of Yoo-Hoo, took a deep swallow, levelled his eyes on me.
“And that, Jake, is why you shouldn’t do drugs.”
A beat.
“Probably shouldn’t.”
A red rotary phone sat in the back room of the Occultorium. It had no finger wheel, meaning it couldn’t make outgoing calls. Calls could only come in, and they did with regular frequency. Whenever the phone rang, the red light on its casing flashing moodily, my uncle would hustle into the backroom, close the door, pick up the receiver and intone, “The line is secure. You are in safe hands. Now speak.”
This phone—he called it the “Bat Phone”—brought spectacular news. Over the years Uncle C had cultivated a network of mystics and paranoiacs and those who saw the world at a different skew. Crackpots who strung eight deadbolts down their doors, drank only deionized water and refused medical X-rays. My father archly referred to them as “Card-carrying members of the Tinfoil-Hat Brigade.” The fact of the Bat Phone, and its callers, also gave my father the clearance to refer to the Occultorium as “the Bermuda Triangle, where common sense vanished without a trace.” My father could fire off the zingers when it came to Uncle C—and when it came to the store, my mother couldn’t argue with him.
The Bat Phone connected my uncle to an underground network called “Those Who Know the TRUTH.” Every few days a fresh nugget would filter in over the line.
“No!” Uncle C would say. “Can this be corroborated? Of course, not by the press. They’re in cahoots. What about the Watcher…and Henkel…both of them?” He’d feverishly scratch notes in a spiral-bound notebook. “Huh. This story might have legs.”
One afternoon while my uncle was in the storage room I flipped through his notebook of Bat Phone findings.
Blood-chilling accident at Shreveport circus…performing dwarf bounces off trampoline and into the mouth of an underfed hippo. Swallowed him like a peanut. Verifiable? Carnie cover-up?
Celebrity tattle: Cher Bono had bottom ribs surgically removed to look more supple.
News from the Watcher: Venomous snakes lurk in ball pits at fast-food restaurants…
Update from Dark Heshie: El Chupacabra sightings as far north as Jefferson City, Missouri. Questionable veracity: climate wouldn’t seem to suit the Mexican demon’s poisonous blood. In light of recent items, beginning to think Dark Heshie is NOT a credible source.
After one of his intel-gathering sessions, my uncle would work the cramp out of his writing hand and say, “Jake, swear to keep this secret?”
I’d nod dutifully, only to have my uncle disclose something quite hideous, such as, “Let’s just say that a certain fast-food chain will soon be legally prohibited from using the word ‘chicken’ in their name. Why? Because, Jake, my boy, they’re not frying chickens anymore. My sources tell me the chain hired a geneticist to engineer a creature that provides all the benefits of a chicken with none of the waste. No feathers to pluck, no feet, no beak, not even a head to lop off. The geneticist tinkered with the DNA helix and created a GMO: genetically modified organism. Nothing but a big lump of skin, all oversized breasts and juicy drumsticks. Instead of a head there’s just a sucking, fluttering pink hole.”
Drinking in my expression of abject horror, he’d press on, “I know, I know! What kind of a life…? These pitiable creatures are housed in giant warehouses, stacked up in cages like toy blocks, kept alive by intravenous tubes pumping a nutrient-rich slurry.” His voice dropped to a gravedigger’s whisper. “It’s not chicken.”
While Uncle C would’ve nursed his beliefs without any outside support, he did have one leery listener other than myself: his neighbouring store-owner, Lexington Galbraith. If a blind, three-legged racehorse named “Next Stop: Glue Factory” were racing down at the Fort Erie track, you can bet Lex Galbraith would’ve bet his life savings on the nose of that nag. This misguidance was reflected in his appearance: at forty, Lex looked to be pushing sixty. He was short and stooped, with a hangdog expression. The cloud of depression enrobing him was supported by his attire; he favoured black turtlenecks even in summertime, giving him the look of a dour mime.
One thing Lex did have going for him for many years was his thriving video shop. It was the eighties, and home video was king. But, Lex being Lex, he made a crucial miscalculation.
“Betamax is the wave of the future,” he told my uncle.
“I don’t know, Lex. If it was the best, wouldn’t they have called it, hmm, Alphamax?”
“Don’t be a fool, Cal. It’s merely a name. They’re smaller than VHS cassettes, with superior sound and sharper definition. A Ferrari to VHS’s Yugo.”
He changed the name of his shop from Lex’s Video Hideaway to So Beta! to reflect his conviction. By the time my twelfth summer rolled around, tumbleweeds were drifting through the aisles of So Beta!
“Beta is better. You want to know the problem?” Lex lamented. “People are stupid.”
As for my uncle’s convictions about global conspiracies and forbidden lore, on the one hand Lex exhibited benevolent tolerance towards those views—“I guess it’s conceivable, Cal, in the sense that almost anything is”—while on the other hand manifesting total disbelief in them—“…but let me be perfectly clear in saying that I find your theories to be ratbag insane.”
It gradually struck me that Lex savoured his role as the skeptical counterbalance. When Uncle C brought up the newest tidbit to come in via the Bat Phone, Lex would cock a Spockian eyebrow. “Open your mouth, Cal.”
“Why?”
“I need to check for a bobber. You swallowed that one hook, line, and sinker.”
* * *
—
One afternoon early in that summer, I was eavesdropping as Uncle C and Lex discussed possible UFO activity in connection with a spate of crop circles in Kansas. Lex had just stepped out when a boy about my age entered the shop so silently that the bell above the door barely tinkled. He moved down the shelves with a forward hunch, seeking, curious. He wore pegged blue jeans, a plain white T-shirt and a baseball cap.
My uncle said, “Calvin Sharpe at your service. How may I help you?”
The boy glanced up sharply. “Billy Yellowbird,” he said. “I’m here because my setsuné just died.”
“Nice to meet you, young Master Yellowbird,” Uncle C said. “I’m sorry to hear about your grandmother.”
It never failed to amaze me, the things my uncle knew—including, apparently, a smattering of what I later learned was Dene.
“My shop specializes in occult items, Billy. I’m not sure I have what you’re seeking. What do you believe you’re looking for?”
Billy worked his tongue nervously between his molars, then said: “I wondered if you did one of those things where you talk to dead people.”
“A seance? Hmm, well yes, I don’t do them myself but I could put you in touch with the right people. Can I ask, isn’t there someone you could talk to instead of a spirit medium?”
“They are all up north still. We just moved here.”
Uncle C beckoned to Billy. “Come around those shelves so we can talk face to face.”
The raven’s grand wingspan cast a shadow over Billy’s face. My uncle set his elbows on the counter and rested his chin in his cupped palms, gazing at the new boy in town, eye to eye.
“Would you like to dream of your grandmother? Would that help?”
Billy said, “I don’t remember my dreams anymore.”
“Few of us do,” Uncle C said. “But I know a recipe. The elixir of dreams. I can mix it with a few of
these items.”
He gestured to a shelf holding glass jars stoppered with flat corks the size of saucers. Their contents were inked on faded labels: Toad Flax, Blood Meal, Jacklebeet, Powdered Snakeskin.
“I’ll put it in a tea bag,” he went on. “At night, put on a kettle and pour boiling water over it. Wait for it to cool, then drink it all. It’ll taste ghastly.”
Billy said, “And then?”
“If it works—it doesn’t always—it will open your dreaming channels. Galvanize your subconscious circuitry and invite your grandmother to make contact. You would dream her into existence again, just for a while, to say a proper goodbye.”
Billy patted his pockets. “I’ll have to owe you.”
“First elixir’s on the house. If it works, you may pony up for the next one.”
The deal consummated, Uncle C took down jars and doled out ingredients with a tapered spoon tipped with a satyr’s horn. He set allotments of powder on a square of parchment, tsking to himself when he laid down too much, “Butterfingers, Calvin.”
Billy and I observed, rapt, until “Blast! I’m out of tea bags. What a cock-up.” A light came into my uncle’s eyes. “I may have some in the basement…hold the phone, back in a trice.”
He hustled into the recesses of the shop. I heard the trap door open, then his feet thud on the stairs leading to the basement. Billy and I stood at the counter while my uncle shoved boxes around below us.
We waited in uneasy silence until a sound travelled up the basement steps. To this day, I have a hard time describing it. Kind of a strangled moan.
Had Uncle Calvin hurt himself? Was he having a cardiac episode? My fifth-grade French teacher, Monsieur Levesque, had one near the end of the school year. He’d collapsed in the teachers’ lounge and rumour had it his lit cigarette burnt a hole through the little alligator on his Lacoste shirt.
“Uncle C?”
When he didn’t answer, I said to Billy, “I’ll go check. You can stay up here.”
The Saturday Night Ghost Club: A Novel Page 3
