Dark Company

by Natale Ghent

  Good old Scum Town. It amused her that they called it South Town because it wasn’t a town at all. It was an industrial wasteland on the margins where the city fell away to decay. Another casualty of the crumbling economy. No one went there unless they absolutely had to. And even then, only in daylight. Caddy skimmed the article. It was the third murder in less than two weeks, it said. So why wasn’t it all over the news? Not that murder was extraordinary in South Town. Lots of bodies showed up there. But this was different. This was weird. The victims were all found with their left arms missing—and no other obvious connection. Even stranger was the fact that the arms had apparently been removed with a knife.

  Caddy flapped the paper on to the couch and picked the cigarette butts from the floor, dropping them back in the ashtray. She balanced the tray to the kitchen and dumped the contents into the trash, coating the discarded Styrofoam takeout containers and dirty tissues with a thin grey film. It was a sticky mess and she was considering changing out the bag when she noticed something: a tiny square of white paper, singed at the edges and folded several times. She plucked the paper from the garbage and shook it open, careful not to tear it. There were light pencil marks, barely visible. Holding the paper up to the bulb over the sink she could see it was an address written in her father’s choppy hand. 80 Knox—a South Town address. What were the chances of that? Why would her father want to go there?

  For a while after losing his job he went around the city scavenging scrap—copper pipe torn from abandoned buildings, sheets of metal roofing. He was never comfortable going to South Town. If that’s where he’d spent the night, she had reason to be worried. Was he in trouble? Maybe she should go to 80 Knox, to make sure he was all right. No, she was getting worked up for nothing. It was just a piece of paper with an address. Who knew what it meant? Her father would be back before she got home from school, she told herself. He’d probably stepped out for more booze and cigarettes. Besides, she had a Physics quiz today. She’d already missed two this month when the bad feeling came on before class. She’d missed so much school because of it—sometimes hiding in the girls’ washroom, sometimes crouching in an alleyway. Or not even getting out of bed. Refolding the square of paper, she slid it into a crack between the cupboard and the wall for safekeeping.

  Caddy checked the time. She was going to be late for school—again. Stuffing her feet in her sneakers, she shrugged on her jean jacket and swung her small leather duffle bag over her shoulder. She stepped into the hall, quickly closed the apartment door and then stopped before turning the key in the lock. Maybe she should stay home and wait for her father after all … She thought about this for a moment, decided against it and locked the door.

  Navigating the minefield of garbage on the stairs, Caddy cursed under her breath the entire five flights to the landing, the sound of people arguing and babies crying filtering through closed doors. How she hated this dump of a building. It wouldn’t be bad living on the top floor if only the landlord would fix the elevator. There was no hope of that. It’d been broken for as long as she could remember. Caddy averted her eyes when she passed another tenant in the foyer. She had no interest in knowing anyone else who lived here.

  Outside, the air was sour and the sky heavy with smog. It made it difficult to breathe. Caddy flipped up the collar on her jacket, put on her scowling face and walked beneath the shadow of the tenement buildings. Picking up the pace, she nearly stumbled over a rat as it scurried past her feet. She jumped back with a shout. More than anything, she hated rats. Their twitching noses and sharp yellow teeth. Their ceaseless digging and squeaking and fighting in the walls of her bedroom at night. They were a plague in the city, crawling up through the plumbing, biting babies in their cribs. “Get out of here!” she yelled, kicking a stone. The rat dodged it and vanished down a sewer grate.

  One minute to the bell. Breaking into a trot, Caddy crossed the street and had just reached the curb when she heard the screech of tires against asphalt. There was a sickening thud, followed by the cymbal crash of a bicycle hitting the pavement. Instinctively, Caddy grabbed for her safe stone, clutching it through her shirt as she spun around to see a girl flop helplessly beneath the wheels of an old car. Blood pooled on the ground around her head. There was a heartbeat of perfect silence as Caddy froze, unable to move. She knew the girl pinned under the car. It was Meg Walters, Poe’s girlfriend. Beautiful, grey-eyed Meg, the most popular girl in the school.

  A man in a tin-coloured suit stepped calmly from the car, straightened his tie and walked away as though nothing had happened. And then a boy began shouting.

  “Someone’s been hit!”

  In an instant, hundreds of students poured into the street. Caddy pushed against the crush, panic taking over. She couldn’t stand witness to another car accident, ever—not after her mother. She was only ten years old when it happened, strapped in the back seat of the car. Her mother never wore a seatbelt. It made her feel claustrophobic, she said.

  Searching for a way through the crowd, Caddy caught a glimpse of Poe reading a book at the top of the school stairs, as absorbed and earnest as ever. Even now, with students rushing and shouting everywhere, he didn’t look up from the page. He was another one like her father. Always chasing some arcane bit of knowledge. He had no idea Meg Walters was lying beneath the wheels of a car. His Meg Walters.

  Should she call out to him? Let him know what had happened? She didn’t want to be the one to deliver such awful news. Not to him. It wasn’t as if they were friends. They’d never really talked much, despite sharing three classes. Yet there had always been something between them, something unspoken. She was intrigued by him—maybe because he reminded her of her father, or because he was more handsome than she was willing to admit, she didn’t know. She would catch him looking at her in class sometimes, and she would look back, like they shared some kind of secret, though neither of them had done anything about it. He was Meg’s, and Caddy would never get in the way of that, even if she had the chance.

  Poe raised his head and their eyes locked. They held each other’s gaze for what felt like an eternity before sirens pierced the fabric of city noise and a cry rose above the crowd.

  “It’s Meg!” someone shouted. “Meg’s been hit!”

  Poe dropped his book and flew down the stairs, his normally cool face lit with disbelief. Was it Meg? he seemed to be asking her. Caddy tried to speak but the crowd surged, forcing them apart.

  She couldn’t go to school now. It was all so unbelievably awful. Freeing herself from the mob of students, Caddy escaped down an alley and joined the morning rush on Main Street. People shoved past. Some wore face masks, protecting themselves from germs. Others hunkered against walls, holding signs begging for food, money, work. The usual crowd of noodle vendors and tables of sun-faded junk cluttered the sidewalk. On the sides and tops of buildings, billboards loomed, advertising the giant C logo of the Company and all its benefits. Someone had defaced one with red spray paint—The Company Giveth and the Company Taketh Away. The sign was already being replaced with a new one.

  Caddy shouldered her way through the stream of people for several blocks, stopping to catch her breath in the shelter of a storefront. She leaned against the window, hands shaking. “Please, not now,” she said, praying the bad feeling wouldn’t come.

  After several minutes, her heartbeat softened, but her mind whirled around Poe. His girlfriend was trapped under the wheels of a car, probably dead. She wouldn’t wish that pain on anyone. She checked her hands. They were fluttering around like injured birds. She thought to hide in the doorway for a while longer, wait for her hands to settle down, but then the store owner rushed out.

  “Junkie! Get out of here!”

  The guy came flapping at her, waving a small wooden bat. Caddy sidestepped him and pushed back into the fray.

  Morning traffic had slowed to an angry crawl. Cyclists whizzed past, exchanging heated shouts with drivers. She moved through the crowd, ignoring the cries of barkers haw
king everything from defunct gas masks to ineffective water purifiers. On one corner, a small group of protesters chanted slogans demanding change. Good luck, Caddy thought. Stuffing her hands in her jacket pockets, she willed her mind to go blank. It was no use. Seeing Meg like that had hit her, hard. She couldn’t stop the images rolling through her brain—of Meg, of her mother. She should have stayed to help Meg. That’s what a better person would have done. But she couldn’t face it. She wasn’t strong enough. She needed to find her father, to make sure he was okay. What was his connection to South Town?

  Caddy walked to where the crowds thinned and the streets emptied, past buildings with boarded-up windows and lonely alleys strewn with litter. After a long while she found herself standing in front of the South Town tunnel, its dark throat wavering in the heat. Its walls were tagged with graffiti. She peered inside, covering her nose with her hand against the stink of urine and diesel fuel. Between the piers were the tattered blankets and flattened boxes of a hobo squat. This place had bad intentions written all over it, she thought. It was the perfect place for someone like the One-Armed Bandit to hide. Pulling her necklace from beneath her collar, Caddy rubbed the green stone between her thumb and fingers as she considered the tunnel. Was her father somewhere on the other side? It frightened her to think about it. At least her hands had stopped shaking. She should turn around and go back, wait for her father at home. That was the sensible thing to do. That’s what he would want.

  Caddy held her breath and stepped into the tunnel. A flock of pigeons burst from the shadows, winging over her head. She ducked and began walking, singing her shining song in her head, the sound of her footsteps chasing her as she went. There were whispers and muffled moans around her. The high-pitched wails of a woman echoed off the walls. Or was it a baby? Halfway through the tunnel, Caddy was sure another set of footsteps joined hers. Too scared to look, she ran the last twenty feet and burst into the safety of the sunlight, whipping around to face whatever was following her.

  The tunnel’s black mouth yawned back at her. There was no one there—no one she could see. Caddy stared into the darkness, taking several steps away from the tunnel before feeling brave enough to turn around. When she did, she saw a crosshatch of train tracks running in every direction. There were no signposts or indicators of any kind. There was nothing to see except thin tornados of dust whirling over sequins of broken glass, and a small forest of cold smokestacks standing among the abandoned warehouses. What did she really expect to find here? Her father was probably home, safe in bed. But she’d come this far …

  Choosing a random direction, Caddy wandered toward the warehouses and discovered that there were hundreds of them. And they all looked the same. Alley after alley. Where was 80 Knox in all of this? She stopped to look around. What could her father possibly be doing in such a desolate place? “This is stupid,” she said aloud.

  Caddy continued to explore and eventually found a name scrawled in faded blue paint on the broken concrete at her feet. Wilson. This was hopeful. She kept going and discovered the names Brydon, Cherry and Stanfield. And then, finally, Knox.

  The alley was dotted with Dumpsters and windblown trash. There was an unnerving silence. Caddy looked over her shoulder to be sure she hadn’t been followed. She didn’t want to be the next one-armed body in the news. Pulling her keys from her pocket, she laced them between her fingers and made a fist. If nothing else I’ll put up a good fight, she thought.

  Keys poised, Caddy skulked along Knox searching for numbers. After several hundred feet, it was clear there were none. Now what? Start again from the beginning? Count the doors until she got to 80? She realized she had no way of knowing the increments, or which side of the alley was even and which odd. So she kept going, her sneakers crunching over gravel, until she saw something that made her stop. Beside a Dumpster at the end of the alley, two men looked back at her. They were dressed alike, in tin-grey suits, white shirts and black shoes—just like the man who’d hit Meg.

  The hair stood on the back of her neck. The men blocked the alley. Caddy clenched the keys in her hand. Turning slowly, she walked in the other direction. The men followed. She could hear their dress shoes stepping in unison over the gravel. Her first impulse was to run. She forced herself to remain calm and casually pick up the pace. The men matched her speed. Caddy broke into a trot and the men trotted too. The second this happened, she bolted, arms pumping, sneakers flying over the ground. She was nearly to the street when two more men in identical grey suits appeared, cutting off the exit.

  Caddy skidded and tripped, falling back on her hands, bits of broken glass stabbing her skin. She struggled to get up and someone grabbed her collar, yanking her to one side and pulling her back down. She screamed, kicking wildly as she was dragged like a rag doll across the alley and into the shadows, her hips and sneakers thumping over the metal lip of a threshold into a room. The door slammed shut, taking the light.

  “Let me go!” she screamed.

  A sweaty hand that smelled of woodsmoke clamped over her mouth. Caddy bit down, hard. The man grunted, shaking her by the collar. She yelled, more frantic than before.

  “Shut up,” he growled in her ear.

  Hoisting her onto his hip, the man carried her through the dark. Caddy stabbed at him with her keys. He slapped them from her hand. She clawed and punched, the man taking her deeper and deeper along a tunnel toward a glimmer of light. When they got closer, she saw that the light framed a door. The man heaved against it and they entered a room lit by a single candle. He dropped her, pounding and hollering, to the ground and locked the door.

  MEG

  Meg didn’t see the car that hit her, or hear the crash of metal on concrete as her Schwinn disappeared beneath the tires of the old Buick. She didn’t feel the snap of bone as her arm broke, or the shatter of skull against the street as the Buick bucked to a stop over her lifeless form. The man driving the vehicle put the car in park and left it in the street. He didn’t acknowledge her but simply brushed himself off and vanished down an alley. Within minutes a crowd of students had gathered and the wail of sirens could be heard.

  Meg loitered on the sidewalk, watching the scene unfold. A carefully manicured man stood beside her. His hair was white and styled to perfection. His skin was pale and smooth as porcelain, offset by the silvery grey of his impeccable suit. And his eyes—they were strange. As cold and colourless as ice chips. There was a faint sound around him, like tinkling glass.

  “What happened?” Meg asked.

  The man said nothing, absorbed with the accident. Meg stared at the mangled bicycle and wondered at the absurdity of the girl’s foot sticking out from under the car, bare, exposed, like the dislocated leg of a mannequin. And her arm—it was bent at an impossible angle. There was a shoe in the middle of the road. A blue suede sneaker. Just like mine, Meg thought. Looking down she was surprised to see one of her feet was bare. How had she lost her shoe? She was about to retrieve it, when someone picked it up and carried it off. “Hey!” Meg shouted, but the guy disappeared into the crowd. The police showed up, cordoning off the street to prevent people from getting too close. To one side, an ambulance waited, lights flashing mutely. The attendants crouched near the wreckage as the car was backed away. The girl’s arm flopped, her body rolled to one side, and for a heartbeat Meg thought she was still alive. Then she saw the streak of blood curling in a crimson smile from the girl’s lips.

  “Is she dead?” Meg asked.

  The man in the suit nodded, showing neither sympathy nor concern.

  “Can’t they do anything for her?”

  “It was her time.” His voice was soothing and hypnotic.

  Meg sighed. “She’s so young.”

  A dark-haired boy came rushing onto the scene, wild-eyed and yelling her name. It was her boyfriend, Poe!

  “I’m here, Poe!” Meg called, waving her arms. But he kept throwing himself at the barrier to reach the girl on the road, the police restraining him and pulling him away.
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  “I don’t understand,” Meg said. “Who is she?”

  The man remained silent. She would have to find out for herself.

  No one stopped her as she walked past the police and dipped under the caution tape. One hand on the car, Meg bent down and peered at the body. Beneath the tangled mass of bloodied blond hair was the ashen face of someone she knew. She moved closer, leaning in to get a better look. The girl’s grey eyes stared lifelessly back. And then it struck her. She was the girl beneath the car! Meg reeled to her feet in horror.

  “But why?” she asked the man.

  He smiled, the light flickering across his frozen eyes. “It was your time.”

  There was a brilliant flash and an otherworldly being appeared, a dove held in its hands, its robe furling in an unseen breeze. It was tall with slanted gold eyes and radiant skin the same yellow colour as the light that surrounded it. It was neither male nor female, its robe furling in an unseen wind.

  “Please come with me,” it said.

  Meg turned to gauge the reaction of the man in the suit but was surprised to discover him gone.

  The yellow being gently placed the dove in her hands. “Come,” it said again.

  Meg held the bird, its heart beating against her fingers for several moments before it flew into the air, a staccato flurry of sunshine and shadow. There was a rush of wind and Meg felt herself rising with the dove toward a blinding light.

  Meg woke in an empty white room. Her stomach was knotted tight and a fever gripped her. Pain tore through her body causing her to cry out. Her voice fell flat, dampened by the ethereal acoustics in the room. Too frightened to move, she investigated her surroundings as best she could. She had no idea what had happened to her or where she was. The room was unusual. There was no door and no real walls to speak of, just a cottony-white mist defining the space. But it was a room, of sorts. This she was sure of. It was also clear that she was alone.