Trickster Drift

by Eden Robinson

  “I’m good,” Jared said.

  “Want to see the bug?”

  He was tired but curious. They went down to the basement parkade. Mave’s Volkswagen Beetle had been re-pimped into the colours of the Canucks hockey jersey—blue, green and black. Its logo, a stylized orca, breached on either side, chomping on a broken hockey stick mid-leap. Johnny Canuck, with a giant V on his chest, skated over the hood. The seat covers and steering wheel had additional logos, and two Canucks flags flapped from the rear windows. The new vanity plates read, BLD BLU. Oh, good gravy, Jared thought.

  “Want to take a spin?” Justice said.

  “I don’t think I’m a big-enough Canucks fan for this ride.”

  Justice laughed. Plus, Jared thought, Hank would have conniptions if he knew he was driving Mave’s bug.

  “Did you know Mave legally adopted me?” Justice said.

  Jared turned to look at her. “Yeah?”

  She smiled carefully. “When I was twelve.”

  “Oh. So…she’s your mom?”

  “Yes. Maamaan has her faults, but she has the biggest heart,” Justice said.

  Jared wasn’t sure what to say. He didn’t think he was that easy to read.

  Justice cleared her throat. “Come. The armoire awaits.”

  Since Justice insisted he only help from a distance, Jared held the lobby doors open. Pat and Sponge glared at him as they sweated and grunted to angle half the massive armoire—inlaid with glittering birds and flowers—through the front door. Jared lifted a corner when they started hauling it up the stairs. Hank was supposed to be going to work and was in his security uniform when he joined them. He booted Jared off his corner of the armoire.

  “Get,” Hank said.

  “Safely out of harm’s way,” Justice said.

  “This thing weighs a ton,” Pat said. “Let him help, for fuck’s sake.”

  “Mave will go nuclear if her Jelly Bean gets hurt on our watch,” Hank said. “Get.”

  Jared let go of the armoire and climbed up to the apartment, wedging the door open. He sat on the couch, listening to them shouting instructions at each other, and to the assorted thumps and swearing as they struggled.

  “I think it’s made out of neutronium,” Pat said as they huffed down the hallway.

  “Or your butt,” Sponge said.

  “Ha. Ha ha. You’re so funny I forgot to laugh.”

  “Stop messing around,” Hank said.

  “Yes, Daddy,” the brothers chorused.

  They set it down outside Mave’s door then went downstairs and, after a long time, returned with the other half. Jared sat up to watch them muscle the pieces into Mave’s bedroom and then lay back down on the couch, wondering where the remote was and if Dent would mind a break from the nerdfest.

  “Hold it!” Hank said.

  A nail gun thumped.

  (The world is hard.)

  —holding the nail gun and his mom—tense and jumpy, telling him David was going to never, ever let them go if he didn’t—

  Pop.

  Jared found himself in the apartment hallway. Not all of him, though. He’d left his body on the couch. The hallway light was dark blue. He was cold like he’d just stepped into a freezer. He exhaled, expecting to see a cloud of chilled breath, but there was no cloud because he was having some weird episode, like an epileptic fit. He pushed into the wall, electric zaps hitting him. The mural moved, the painted clouds billowed as a longhouse lowered itself from the sky. The bird men swivelled their heads around as they chewed human body parts. On the other side of the wall the half-bear, half-seal creature roared and chomped through the screaming chiefs. Jared figured he must have fallen asleep and was having an epically weird dream.

  Dent stood over his body on the couch. “Jared? Jared?”

  “Here,” Jared said.

  Dent startled. “Holy crap. Jared. Are you, um, you know…”

  “Dead? No. I just need to get back in my body.”

  “Oh. Well. A little astral projection, then. Well. Well, well, well. Not disconcerting at all.”

  They stared at each other. Dent was fraying. His bathrobe was fuzzier and he had spots where you could see right through him. On the couch, Jared’s body was perfectly still except for his chest rising and falling. His eyes were open but his stare expressionless. Jared sat on his body. Little sparks zapped around the areas where his real body and his dream body touched. He yipped and hopped off. He rubbed his butt.

  “Well?” Dent said.

  “This is weird.”

  “Have you done this before?”

  “Yeah. Not willingly. I was being tortured at the time.”

  “Oh. Well. How did you get back in last time?”

  “My neighbour, Mrs. Jaks, kind of guided me back.” He thought of her and the walls shimmered, and then everything blurred and—

  Pop.

  He was in a hospital room. The lights were turned low and machines beeped. Mrs. Jaks lay in the bed, a blanket pulled high on her thin body. Her face was swollen, her skin shiny and tight. A thin nurse was sponging her legs.

  “Mrs. Jaks?” Jared said. He didn’t want to be here. He didn’t want to see this. He wanted—

  Pop.

  He was back in the apartment behind Dent.

  “Dent,” he said.

  Dent spun around. “Not funny!”

  “Sorry,” Jared said. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “Where’d you go?”

  “I don’t know. I thought about Mrs. Jaks and then I was with her in a hospital room.”

  He heard the guys thumping around in Mave’s bedroom, shouting instructions at each other. They sounded like they were underwater. Jared wished he’d gone to the dry dance with Kota. He really had to get some headwork done. If he was going to freak out and hallucinate every time he heard a nail gun, things could get awkward.

  Something hissed like a snake.

  “Uh, Jared? Don’t…disappear,” Dent said. “Okay? It can’t hurt you.”

  A body crawled out of his bedroom. He assumed it was a man because it was bald, with a few straggly hairs on its shiny scalp. He wore some kind of cloth around his privates but was otherwise naked, skin yellowish-white like a halibut belly, like a chain smoker’s fingers. Every bone in his body poked through his skin. The guy shivered, eyes closed, sniffing the floor.

  “What the hell is that?” Jared said, backing up.

  “It’s the thing in your wall,” Dent said.

  It followed him as he backed away and then lunged, and he felt its cold mouth through his socks sucking his toes.

  “Ew,” Jared said, shaking his foot. “Get off me, you freak!”

  “That’s all it does,” Dent said. “Kind of a fetish thing, I think. It drove Edgar nuts trying to get rid of it. That’s when he started painting the walls and putting up wards. That’s what started this little ghostapalooza.”

  “Get it off me!”

  Pop.

  Jared was back in the hallway, in the same spot he’d jumped to before. He heard a hiss, and realized it was the sound of the guy as he slid over the phantom ground. He tried to back into Hank’s apartment but was zapped like he’d run into an electric fence. He yelped.

  Dent poked his head through the apartment door. “We can’t go in there. Some kind of force field.”

  Jared backed down the hallway. The thing slid in and out of the walls, trying to sneak up on him.

  “Stop it!” Jared shouted. “Stop it right now! Stay!”

  “It’s not a dog,” Dent said.

  “Make it stop!”

  Jared pushed his way through the wall and ended up in someone else’s living room. The hiss followed him. He ran through the wall, past a bedroom and into another living room.

  “Jared?” Eliza said. She was wearing her princess dress again.

  The living room was empty except for some toys scattered on the floor. It didn’t look like anyone was living here. Jared noticed Shu was floating near the ceiling,
slowly coming down like a deflating balloon.

  “Crap,” Jared said. His hallucination was getting weirder and weirder.

  “Wait!” Eliza said. “Jared, wait!”

  His feet became stuck to the floor like he’d been glued to the spot. “Something’s after me! I have to go!”

  “Did you die?” Eliza said.

  “I’m sleeping,” Jared said. “This is a dream.”

  “I’m awake,” Eliza said.

  “You’re awake in my dream.”

  “Now you’re being a big silly,” Eliza said.

  The zombie ghost girl tooted her wooden recorder.

  The thing slipped through the door and wiggled across the floor straight for Jared’s toes. The zombie girl’s mouth opened, but in a way mouths shouldn’t open, like her jaw had come unhinged. Her tongue lolled out like a wet carpet. Her teeth were double-rowed like a shark’s.

  The thing paused, half in and half out of the wall.

  “Bad thing. Go home,” Eliza said.

  The thing blurred and then was sucked away, disappearing.

  “Thanks,” Jared said.

  The zombie girl tooted her recorder. She whispered in Eliza’s ear.

  “Jared, Shu says you should get back in your body,” said Eliza, “or the thing in the wall will keep you in the spirit world.”

  “What is it?”

  “A bad spirit.”

  Shu tooted. She held up her hand.

  “She won’t hurt you,” Eliza said.

  Shu’s hand was unexpectedly warm. It had been freezing when she saved him from David. Jared’s feet came unstuck. She led him through the front door, down the hallway back to Mave’s apartment. Eliza followed, locking her apartment door behind her and then tucking her keys in her purse. She skipped down the hallway behind them.

  Mave’s door was still propped open. The painted creatures on the walls of the hall replayed their roles like a GIF, messily devouring people.

  Assorted thumps and more swearing came from Mave’s bedroom. Dent was standing over Jared’s body. He looked up when they came in. He put his hands on his hips. “Oh, for the love of TARDIS. What are they doing here?”

  “Mean old man,” Eliza said.

  Shu opened her mouth in her creepy, unhinged way.

  “Be nice,” Jared said. “Everyone be nice.”

  “He doesn’t like us,” Eliza said.

  “They’re both little nightmares,” Dent said.

  “He hogs the TV.”

  “One can only watch Frozen so many times and remain sane.”

  “Your show is stupid. And you’re stupid, you stupid old poopy head.”

  “Well, your show is romantic drivel.”

  “Enough trash talk,” Jared said. “Can we focus on getting me back in my body? Please?”

  “How did you get out of your body?” Eliza said.

  “I think I’m dreaming,” Jared said.

  The walls shimmered then throbbed. Something hummed like a power line.

  “You’re not dreaming,” Eliza said. “The thing is back through your wall again.”

  “It’s a pest,” Dent said.

  “It’s bad,” Eliza said. “We should call Huey. He’ll take care of it.”

  “Who’s Huey?” Jared said.

  “Fantastic,” Dent said. “Let’s invite all the neighbourhood weirdos in to interrupt my Doctor Who time.”

  “Huey!” Eliza shouted. “Huey, come here!”

  The thumping in Mave’s bedroom stopped. Justice came into the living room.

  “It’s just Eliza!” Justice shouted. She bent down to the little girl. “Does your mother know you’re here?”

  “She’s crying in the shower,” Eliza said. “Daddy’s friends took our furniture. He owes them money.”

  “Oh, poor dears. Do you want to watch Frozen?”

  “Yay!” Eliza said.

  “Noooooo,” Dent said.

  The thing crawled out of the bedroom, creeping along the baseboards.

  “Ew,” Jared said. He tried to hop onto the couch and ended up standing on the ceiling, head pointed to the floor. Shu kicked at it, but it dodged her foot. The thing circled the spot directly below him.

  “Crap,” Jared said.

  “Where did Maamaan move your DVDs?”

  “Jared left his body,” Eliza said. “He’s stuck on the ceiling.”

  “Oh, that’s nice,” Justice said, rummaging through the media cabinet. “Is he playing with your imaginary friend, Sue?”

  “She’s Shu.”

  “Shoe? What kind of shoe is she?”

  Something banged on the window. The thing from the wall skittered sideways, hissing. Jared swallowed. The large red flying head battered itself furiously against the window.

  “Huey!” Eliza said.

  “Hurray, indeed! Here we go!” Justice said, sliding in the DVD.

  “Help,” Jared said.

  Huey flew in the balcony door and chased the thing around the living room. It screeched as Huey bounced off its back, biting its pale skin. It rolled and wriggled, but Huey kept bouncing off it like it was a trampoline. Justice frowned at the remote. The DVD started and Eliza plopped herself in the recliner.

  “I’ll phone your mother and leave a message that you’re here,” Justice said.

  “Hey!” Dent shouted. “Turn it back! Turn it back right now!”

  “Thank you, Justice,” Eliza said sweetly.

  “Don’t wake Jared. No more shouting,” Justice said. “Okay?”

  “Okay,” Eliza said.

  Huey chased the thing back into Jared’s bedroom. Eliza stuck her tongue out at Dent as Justice went back to wrestling the armoire. Jared looked down at his body. He sighed and wished he was on the floor. He wished very hard. Shu floated up to him and played him a song on her recorder.

  “Yeah,” Jared said. “That’s nice, Shu. Can you help me down?”

  “You don’t want to go on the floor,” Eliza said. “Or you’d be here already.”

  “Thanks, Yoda,” Dent said. “Now get out of my chair.”

  “It’s not your chair. It’s Aunt Mave’s chair. And you’re dead, so you don’t need a chair.”

  “Wa wa waaaaah,” Dent said. “I hear a big, whiny baby.”

  “Guys,” Jared said.

  “I’m watching Frozen a hundred times. Stand there and rot, you old meanie.”

  Jared jumped, hoping to catch the couch and pull himself back into his body, but the ceiling sucked him back. His hands were so cold he couldn’t feel them anymore. He opened and closed them, trying to get circulation back.

  The flying head rolled upside down so they were looking at each other eye to eye.

  “Hi,” Jared said.

  The head waggled hello.

  “I’m stuck. Can you help me?” Jared said.

  Huey rammed himself into Jared.

  “Ow!”

  But Jared came unglued from the ceiling and fell with a plop all the way through the floor to the apartment below. The old woman who lived there glared at her ceiling. Huey came through it and bounced off him, hitting him with the force of a baseball. Jared snapped awake in his body, feeling his legs and arms tingle back to life. His eyes were so dry, they watered. His heart trip-hammered. He coughed. His big toe was numb.

  “You watch TV all day!” Eliza said.

  “Go home, you brat!” Dent said.

  “Thank you,” Jared whispered to Huey, who hovered above him. He dipped shyly before zipping out the door and disappearing.

  “Must be nice napping while we slave,” Sponge said, peering over the back of the couch.

  “Dude,” Pat said. “Did you know you sleep with your eyes open? It’s so wrong.”

  “Yeah, you freak,” Sponge said. “Close your eyes like a normal person.”

  25

  Jared came home from his Friday night shift and slept despite his brain’s best efforts to tangle itself in knots about his increasingly weird life. He woke to the scent of
coffee and something baking that smelled very honeyed. The painted heads smiled at him as he walked past them. He smiled back, and then realized how bizarre that was, but it seemed rude to do anything else. They liked him and they had been his first warning against the thing in the wall. It couldn’t hurt to be polite.

  Justice had made more breakfast bars. She wore a flowing red pantsuit and heels so high and pointed they could impale a gopher. She cradled her cellphone between her ear and her shoulder. “Morning,” she mouthed, gesturing to the bars.

  “Hey,” Jared said.

  Justice scrolled through her iPad as she listened to a loud voice on the other end of her phone. Jared poured himself a coffee and grabbed a plate for a couple of bars. He sat at the other end of the table and checked his own phone.

  “But if he doesn’t show on Monday, I’m not holding his spot,” Justice said into her phone. “Look, I haven’t seen him in weeks and I have other kids who actually want…”

  Nothing from Sarah or his mom. Crashpad was posting sad emojis and broken hearts along with his undying love for Muriel, who posted pictures of herself with a filter that made her eyes creepy-large and tear-filled.

  Justice windmilled her fingers in a wrap-it-up gesture. “Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Well, you’re the boss, boss. I’ll give you my written notes by Tuesday. Is that all right? Okey-dokey. Bye.” Justice banged the cellphone against her forehead.

  “You okay?” Jared said.

  “Micromanagers,” Justice explained. “I have to leave for the store soon. Could you wrap the breakfast bars when they cool?”

  “Yup.”

  “Maamaan’s arriving at 2 p.m. on Monday. Would you be a dear and pick her up? I said I would, but something’s come up.”

  “Sure.”

  “Fantastic. Flight info is on the calendar. The tank is full. I left some money under the keys for parking.”

  “ ’kay.”

  “You’re so sane,” Justice said. “It’s so wonderful.”

  “You have a really low bar for sanity.”

  She laughed. “Maamaan’s roommates are usually artistic. All right. I’m going to dance off some frustration tonight, so don’t wait up.”

  “Later.”

  She stood and smoothed her pantsuit. “Call if you get in trouble.”