“Finn. Jimmy Finn. James.” I cough, “You’ve got the wrong fucking guy!”
“Not what it says here, boy-o. Age thirty-five. Next of kin, one Barry MacTyre—father—Bensonhall, British Columbia.”
Bensonhall. I twist at the word, hard, and feel something crack in my side. I choke back a sharp breath.
“What did you say?” I bark at him, “Bensonhall? What does that say? Where did you get that? Why are you following me?” I’m straining with everything I have against the straps. All the strength I had this morning, sucked away with whatever put me here.
“Tut-tut-tut, Jimmy!” The orderly pats my head again, absently, without even turning from the clipboard in his hand. “You’re going to attract attention, Jim. You don’t want those doctors getting the wrong idea about your mental state, now do you?”
I tighten up again, yelping as the crack in my side becomes a red-hot knife between the ribs, forcing the air out of me, laying me flat and stiff, breathing slow and shallow.
“That’s a boy. Now,” the orderly leans over me, putting his dark face in close and taking a long sniff running up the length of my face, “Yeah. You’re the one all right. I can smell it in you. It’s right there, under the skin, just dying to get out, ain’t it, Jimmy-boy?” He smiles wide and terrible, a foul stench of stale beer and something fishy wafting out between those broken teeth.
I wince and feel the stab of the blade in my ribs again.
“I guess it won’t hurt none to loosen these straps a little. You’re not going to do something foolish, like try to escape, now are you, Jimmy? Wouldn’t want you to run off on us, now would we? No.”
The orderly stands, slowly and methodically moving from strap to strap, unbuckling me, starting with my chest, then each leg, and finally the arms. He steps carefully away and lets me fumble loose the last wrist strap myself. I sit up slowly, struggling through the cramping pain in my side. I drop my feet to the floor and notice the jagged scar across the outside of my thigh. It looks like an old scar, white and faded, still thick. I know I didn’t have that scar before. I run my hand across it to feel the ridge, make sure it’s real.
“Nothin’ a change and a good hunt won’t fix I reckon, eh?”
He’s already backing toward the door.
“Injury report says you’ve got some broken ribs. They’ll heal up fast too, but they’re gonna slow you down some for now. Jimmy be nimble. Jimmy be quick.”
He winks at me then takes one quick glance over his shoulder, out the tiny window in the dirty white door.
“I’ll just be going now, Jim. You’d be best to do the same. Heard tell of shock therapy. I didn’t think they were allowed to do that anymore in a place like this.” He grins his gap-tooth grin again and tips an invisible hat as he slips into the hallway.
“Get a move on, Jimmy-boy. Go see your ol’ dad. That’s my advice.”
The door flaps in his wake, sending waves of his musk back to haunt me.
THERE’S A PILE of clothes at the foot of the bed. New, and clean, still ripe with the chemical smell of the factory. All my size. Jeans, boxer shorts with the tags still on them, wool socks rolled together, a black t-shirt, a canvas field jacket, a hooded sweatshirt. There’s a wallet in the pocket of the jacket. My wallet. The wallet that I know damn well is sitting on my kitchen counter. I flip through it, looking for somebody else’s cards, somebody else’s ID. Everything is there, everything that proves that I’m Jimmy Finn, thirty-five, five-foot-nine and one-hundred eighty pounds. Everything where it belongs, plus five hundred dollars cash that sure as hell didn’t come from my chronically overdrawn bank account.
The work boots on the bottom of the pile are a size too big, but they’ll do to get me out the door.
I chance a look through the tiny window, only to see the orderly loitering at the end of the hall. He gives me a wave and a bounce of the eyebrows before he reaches behind him and tugs at something on the wall. The quiet is shattered with the wail of a fire alarm. Spigots across the ceiling of the hallway begin to sputter and spray. He waves me after him as he disappears around the corner.
I make one painful step in the clunky boots before remembering the clipboard, roughly tearing the sheets from it and shoving them beneath the new jacket before zipping it up tight and limping out the door.
I’m sure as hell not waiting around for Rhodes, or any other doctors. No cops. No judges. No court-assistance lawyers.
No electrodes bolted to my head. No walking coma for weeks on end while they poke and prod and explain why I need to be locked away. Why they need to break me more—break me again, and again—so that I can be remade. No thank you. Not Again. Not Ever.
Time to run.
And now I finally have somewhere to run to.
Bensonhall.
12
THE PHONE IS in my apartment. The apartment I have no keys to. The apartment directly above where I had apparently tried to kill someone. The police are probably already looking for me here. The white coats from the hospital too.
I’d made my escape from the hospital easily enough in the panic and confusion of the fire alarm. In new clothes and walking on my own, nobody would have mistaken me for the broken maniac chained up and crippled in that room.
I shuffled out and down the hall, past the policemen hovering nearby, trying to calm down old ladies in hospital gowns, dragging their IV stands toward the exits. I ducked into an alcove and pretended to be drinking from the fountain as Doctor Rhodes hustled by, his bald head flushing red down into his face. He had two orderlies and the two police with him, hustling toward the room I’d just vacated. I limped past the nurse’s station and down the long hall to Emergency, stepping out into a night as clear and fine as I had ever seen.
There was a bum with a cart full of cans passing in the street. I gave him a twenty for the three bucks change to take the bus.
Once I was safely packed into the back corner of the bus, I pulled out the crumpled sheets of paper and, for the very first time in my life, looked at my own past.
Which is why I’m back here, at the scene of my crime. A crime I don’t remember. The reports on the clipboard say I attacked a girl, right here on my own doorstep, chased her into traffic like a rabid dog. Got hit by Checker Cab #336. Driven by a man named Manji. There was a second report attached, about two young men being attacked in the park, mauled by some kind of maniac. One of them facially disfigured. The other one now short a few fingers. Attacked without provocation. That’s what the report said. Just two guys walking in the park at three A.M. I don’t remember any of it. I’ve become some kind of monster.
I need to see Devil.
Clinical Lycanthropy.
Dressed of fur and fierce of tooth.
He’s the only one who might understand. The only one who might help me. Might.
So I need that goddamn phone.
I creep around the back of the building. The cops are there, but they’re busy. There’s two of them, raining down fists on the poor homeless bastard that sleeps in the corner next to the kitchen of the pizza place next door.
I hop the cement wall into the parking lot and wind my way through the cars, finding a spot right next to the door, tucked in front of a blue minivan. I wait.
The cops finish with the bum on the other side of the wall. I hear them laughing and talking in their cruiser. Football. Which of the sixteen-year-old hookers on third they wanted to nail most. Which Disney princess would be hottest in real life? A couple of times, one of them walks past the outer wall and waves a flashlight past in a lazy arc.
Finally the lock clicks, I hear the bar clack against the metal of the door, and somebody steps out, framed by the light from inside. I pop up behind them and dart inside before they even register me. If they thought they saw something, they might have turned back to an empty doorway and momentarily cursed their own paranoia.
In the few hours since my breakout, my ribs have hewn back together. The cramping pain is gone, the throbbing weak
ness in my leg is gone. I’m stronger, faster, more focused than I feel I’ve ever been. I bound up the stairs without losing a breath. Thirty floors running. Not even running. Skipping.
I land at the thirty-third floor and sense them immediately. I can smell them. I realize that cops have a smell. Their own scent. Maybe it’s the oil on their holsters, the plastic in their radios, or the cleaner in their uniforms. I can sniff them out as easily as a black banana, or a tuna sandwich that’s been left out that little bit too long.
There’s two of them. Same as downstairs. They’re hovering at my door. These two are quieter than the bozos in the street and likely better at their job, but I need that phone.
I open the door slowly, carefully, eyeballing them through the gap, trying to calculate how close I can get before they recognize me, or want me to explain myself.
It comes to me in a flash. I walk calmly down the hall, trying not to tense too much, but ready to move if they recognize me. Maybe they have pictures, or a description from Rhodes or the girl they say I attacked.
I walk right past the officers and knock on 3312. It’s around the corner and out of their sight line. I hear the old man fumbling and straightening things, putting himself in order. I hear the TV click and the electronic moaning stop.
“Vas ist das?” he yells. “Vas ist you want?”
He’s plodding to the door, sock feet on carpet, old steps, soft and unsure.
“Vas?” he hollers through the peephole. I back away from the door, against the adjacent wall, away from the peephole.
I hear him patter away, and I knock again, sliding up against the wall once more.
“Who ze fuck ist das?” He’s screaming now. I hear the cops mumbling to themselves behind me, wondering what the problem is.
I wait, then knock one more time. This time I duck out of his eyeline and across the hall, behind the giant fake palm by the elevator. 3312 explodes into the hallway, screaming in German.
“Scheisskopf! Vas ist Das? I vill cream your asses!”
The cops come running. 3312 sees them coming and screeches like a Great Owl, slamming the door in their faces. I reach behind me and hit the button for the elevator, as the cops are banging on 3312’s door, demanding he let them in. Contempt of Cop. Works every time. The more he refuses them, the more furious they get. The elevator hits, dings, and I pop out of my hiding spot as if nothing could possibly be amiss. I smile cordially as I pass, dropping my head as any of us would do, avoiding the maelstrom—letting the officers do their job. They’ve already forgotten me from the hallway, and I walk past completely unremarked.
I’m hoping, and I’m right, that they’ve already been in my apartment and didn’t bother locking up. The hallway cops have doubtless used my bathroom, been through my medicine cabinet, raided my fridge. I’m likely missing change from the big jar by the bed. The car keys are sitting in the middle of the table, instead of lost between couch cushions or placed haphazard on a shelf full of paperback novels.
I only need the phone.
It’s still packed up, under the bed, cast aside like an empty box, and they’ve assumed exactly that.
I take one look around, cataloguing a lifetime of possessions, realizing that none of this shit is mine.
Some other guy. A broken guy. That strange, crazy asshole with the miserable life.
That’s who lived here. That asshole, Jimmy Finn.
Not me. Not the monster who tears people apart and eats little girls in the street.
I’M BACK OUT and down the stairs, listening with some small amount of contentment as the officers say, “What do we have here, Fritz?” and “I suppose these videos don’t belong to you, huh?”
“Sieg Heil, Schweinhund,” I whisper as I bounce down the stairs, tearing the box open with my teeth.
I walk right past the two cops in the alley. I flip up my hood and hustle down the alley as if I’m late for work. They’re busy arguing about the best sauce for an Arby’s roast beef sandwich.
The little pigs don’t notice the Big Bad Wolf.
13
DEVIL IS ALREADY waiting outside Lee Ho Fook’s when I jog up a half hour later. The sleek black car is sitting silently in the side parking lot, the little chrome demon on the hood reflecting the streetlight like a beacon. Devil is lit from inside the black depths of that cosmic Challenger by the blue glow of his cell phone. I knock on the window. He doesn’t look at me, just holds up his first finger, I’ll be right with you, and finishes his call.
Devil rolls down the window and inspects me with a cool eye.
“Christ!”
I smile, and it comes shooting up through my body, fed by that warm lantern light, deep inside. I feel it there, growing. Except I’m not dreaming anymore. I’m actually feeling happy to see him.
“It looks worse than it is.”
“You still look like shit, Jim. Like ten pounds busting out of a five pound bag.”
“Let’s eat. I’m fucking starving.”
I’m already seated and sipping at water by the time Devil saunters through the door, casting a subtly cautious eye to all four corners of the room before joining me in the booth at the back.
We used to come here when we were kids—teenagers—hiding out from the world behind these red silk tapestries and chintzy zodiac statues, all the worst clichés of oriental culture, and the best damn ginger beef in town—something that wasn’t even Chinese.
Devil motions for me to get up and switch sides with him. He wants his back to the wall and his eyes on the door. He’s that kind of smart.
“You don’t want anyone walking in here and recognizing your face anyways.”
I quietly acquiesce, happy to just be out of whatever dark force had been holding me down.
“I’ve been looking into all this shit you’re dealing with. Werewolf lore? There’s some interesting shit out there. Every culture has werewolf legends, from the ancient Greeks to the Chinese.”
I’m uncomfortable at the mention of the word. Werewolf. Is that what I think I am? Is that what kind of beast is inside of me?
Devil continues as if I’m not even in the room. That motormouth know-it-all thing he’s been doing since we were kids. He’s just going to keep talking, telling me everything. He’s a walking live-performance PBS documentary on every single damn topic you can imagine.
“You’d be Irish, right? Finn? Whatever parts of you aren’t wolf parts.” Devil laughs at his own jokes when he’s in this zone of his.
“Are you asking if I’ve got wolfman nards? Like that fucking movie you loved in grade seven?”
“Monster Squad. No. I’m trying to explain your fucking cultural history to you, if you’ll listen for two seconds instead of being all hairy about your situation.”
“Jesus.”
“No, Saint Patrick.” Devil smiles. “The legend is that Saint Patrick, when converting the Gaelic and Viking hordes in Ireland around fifteen hundred years ago . . .”
“Did they have green beer and get fucked up every March?” I’m being sarcastic, trying to piss him off. A big part of me doesn’t want to hear it. I don’t need a history lesson right now. I need an answer to what’s happening to me.
“No, idiot.” He reaches across and slaps my head. “Pay attention.”
If it was anyone but Devil Deville, I’d be tempted to swing back.
“Saint Patrick . . .” He pauses to make sure he has my attention. “Saint Patrick was there to convert heathens to Christianity. When the tribes of Ireland refused to listen, booed him off the stage, as it were, he cursed them to turn into baying wolves. Cursed to actually physically transform into animals. Crazy, right?”
I’m still not getting it.
“And your poem,” he continues. “There’s another ancient Irish legend about King Airitech, who had three daughters who turned into wolves at Samhain . . .”
“Sa-who?”
“Halloween. They turned into wolves on Halloween, does it matter? They were fucking werewolves. The
se two warriors lured them out with their harp-playing, then speared all three to keep them from eating the sheep.”
I feel myself pale. The blood falls out of me like a waterfall.
The maidens of the moon.
Monsters murdered by heroes.
The conversation stalls as the old man that runs the place comes over to take our orders. Once we’ve pointed at a half-dozen numbers on the list, he takes his leave, and Devil launches right back into his lesson.
“You remember Bowmont Livingston? Big native kid from high school?”
There was only one big native kid that I remembered, and he’d been a miserable bully. I remember Devil knocking his lights out by ramming his head into the goalposts in the field behind the junior high.
“You mean Larry? Big, fat, sloppy Larry? Didn’t he call your mother a cunt?”
“Yeah. A long time ago. He’s changed since then.” Devil gives me a look. “People change, Jimmy. You’ve changed . . . since yesterday. Try to respect that.” He keeps those sharp eyes on me, wary, careful.
He’s not wrong. I nod my acceptance.
Devil chews on a straw. “Livingston is an Anthropology professor at U of A now. Specializes in Ktunaxa folklore.”
I chuckle at the name. Devil shoots a warning straight through me. I guess if Devil could turn out to be the Pablo Escobar of Southern Alberta, and I could turn out to be an escaped lunatic, anything was possible. It’s just that the other two weren’t as surprising as Fat Larry becoming a papered scholar. A papered scholar named Doctor Livingston. I keep my surprise to myself, and my mouth shut.
“I asked Bowmont—Larry—about this Bensonhall place. He says the Ktunaxa . . .”
“What the fuck is a Ktunaxa?”
Devil sighs. Still lonely as the smartest dude in the room.
“Ktunaxa. Kootenay tribe. From the Kootenay area of the Rocky Mountains?”
My face must be a shiny blank slate. Devil shakes his head and continues.
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