Damage

by Shea, Stephen

  He walked towards the front step and noticed that the window on the screen door was broken. He squinted, feeling slightly disturbed. When he got closer he saw that the window wasn't broken, it was just a weird reflection from the sunlight. He walked up the steps.

  The door opened with a whine. Rand stuck his head inside. "Bumpa? Are you home?"

  There was no answer. Rand's heart quickened a beat and the feeling that something terribly wrong had happened, an accident, a horror, crept up from the back of his mind. He stepped in, let the door close behind him.

  "Bumpa?" he said again.

  Something creaked, but whether it was a door, or the house shifting, Rand couldn't tell. He breathed in and listened closely for a moment before letting his breath out. He walked slowly forward, wanting to leave the house, to flee.

  Bumpa came around the corner. "Are you back again?"

  Rand jumped, startled, knocking the phone off its table.

  Bumpa smiled and snorted. "That's what you get for sneaking around your grandpa's house." He paused. "What are you out here for? You don't want food do you?"

  "I came for a visit," Rand said, still breathless. "God, I need a chair." He staggered into the living room and sat down.

  "I really did scare you. I didn't think I was that ugly." He smiled. "I'll get you something to drink. Water or Rye?"

  "Water," Rand said.

  Bumpa shrugged. "Not what I would've chosen," he said then he disappeared into the kitchen. Rand heard the water running. He had his breath now and he felt calm again. He looked at his hand, saw that it was shaking. Everything's just getting to me too much, he thought. I need a break.

  Bumpa came back with a glass of water. He handed it to Rand and sat down in his chair. "Feeling better?" he asked.

  Rand nodded. "Scared me," he said.

  "Well it's good to be scared sometimes. Makes you feel alive." He patted Rand's knee. "You up to going outside? I've got something to show you. Something I've been working on."

  "Yeah," Rand answered and they went through the house and out the back door. The back yard was clean, the grass still short and the trees hemmed. Everything neat except for the center of the yard. At the center was a huge tree stump covered with a blanket. Chips of wood lay helter-skelter around it.

  Bumpa and Rand walked up to the stump. "Ta-da!" Bumpa said as he pulled the blanket off. Beneath the blanket was the torso of a man carved in intricate detail from the belly button, to the round nipples, to the long hair. The statue's eyes were blank, its face solemn and it was looking down at the ground. "It's the trunk of a tree that was hit by lightning," Bumpa explained. "I pulled it out with the tractor and some chains and brought it here. I call it man contemplating life. Or his balls. I'm not sure which."

  Rand could see black marks around the head of the statue, where the lightning had struck the wood and burst it apart. He was impressed by every detail, the curls in the hair, the round of the ears. He felt genuinely sad staring at the statue and he could not place his finger on the reason why.

  They walked back towards the house and sat at the wooden bench in the yard. Rand stared at the statue for awhile. Thor, Bumpa's dog, came around the corner of the house, walking slowly. He sat down on his haunches and watched them solemnly. A guardian.

  "How's life?" Bumpa asked.

  "Fine," Rand answered. "I've been a little tired, lately. But everything's been fine." Rand felt like he was betraying himself. Hadn't he come out here to talk to Bumpa? And here he was trying to point him off the path.

  "Tired? From what?"

  "Just things, I guess...no, it's more than that." Rand let out his breath. "Kari and I aren't getting along—we never seem to get along—and I just feel bad about it. It's my fault. I get mad at her, I hurt her for no reason at all. I take things out on her. I mean, I must be evil or something, all the things I do to her for no reason. And she's always so good to me."

  Bumpa nodded. "She's a good woman," he said.

  "But why do I do things like that? She's stuck with me through so much. When Mom and Dad died I think sometimes I would have fallen apart without Kari. But I always end up hurting her."

  "Is this the first time you realized how you treat her?"

  "Yes," Rand said, then, "no. I guess I've always acted this way towards her. I always felt before that no matter what I did I could heal it later. But now I don't feel that way anymore. It's like Kari and I have reached this wall and if I don't change everything will end."

  "Kari loves you," Bumpa said, "I've seen the way she looks at you. But she's strong and she loves herself too. She's not dumb enough to stay with you forever if you don't change. I think you see that and maybe that's what scares you, the fact that you have to change. Or you'll lose her."

  Rand nodded. "That makes sense," he said.

  Bumpa set his hand on Rand's shoulder. "You just gotta ride it out. Make it all happen. You know I used to hurt Emma, too, when I came back from the war, but she straightened me out in a hurry."

  Rand felt small then, but warm, as if a warmth was spreading out from Bumpa's hand. He liked hearing about his grandmother, he liked stories about the past. And he would change, he felt it now, a new, real resolve burning in him. He would change. They sat that way for a time, then Bumpa withdrew his hand.

  "Did you hear about Simon Eslard?"

  "No," Rand answered and he felt that prickly fright that accompanied questions like that.

  "Some kids found him this morning in the playground's bathroom. He was murdered. Brutally murdered if the stories can be believed. Gord called me today and told me about it. It was on the news too. They think perhaps that serial killer has found his way here."

  "To Kinniwaw?"

  "Why not? He has to go somewhere."

  They were quiet for a moment. Rand had known Simon Eslard only to see him, so he wasn't hit with a sudden feeling of loss, but he was offended by the fact that the murder was so close to home and so soon after Boris's death. He had moved, in the last few days, from a world of rationality and safeness, into a world where nothing was really known.

  "Do you know what else happened?" Bumpa was speaking softly now, and Rand had to struggle to hear. "And this affected me even more than Simon's death. I saw a ghost."

  Rand's eyes widened.

  "I don't know what you believe, Rand, but when you live as long as I have and felt as many things as I have, you start to believe in things." He stopped for a moment, his face lost in concentration. "I went out last night for a walk with Thor, you know where I go, down by the old farm buildings and the creek. Well I had just turned the corner where the path goes into the trees, the place where Emma and I put a bench. I was thinking of Emma, I remember, and I looked up and she was sitting there on the bench. Both Thor and I froze. Then Thor's tail began to wag and he walked ahead to greet her. She knelt down and held Thor's head and she was there, Rand, solid as ever, there. She spoke to Thor but I couldn't hear anything. She gave Thor a final hug and stood and looked at me. She looked really happy and sad too, as if she had been crying for a long time. She gestured to me, opening her arms, and again she spoke, but I couldn't hear what she was saying. I just stood there dumbfounded. She stepped towards me and she became clearer and I could almost hear her voice. I caught the smell of her hair, the way she used to smell. She moved even closer, her arms open wide, shaking her head, trying desperately to say something to me. Her tears were real, Rand, they were falling off her face onto the ground."

  ""Emma," I said at last and she shook her head a final time, smiled sadly and started to ripple and she faded away. Bumpa breathed in. "And that was it. She was gone. I've felt her presence before, just before something bad was going to happen, like the time I rolled the truck. But I'd never felt her this strong, had never seen her. She was trying to warn me, Rand, I'm sure of that. She was trying to warn me, but I'm not sure of what." He stopped again. "These murders aren't going to stop. I think something bad has settled here and whatever it is isn't going to go a
way."

  Rand sat silently through all this. He had thought of ghosts before and had never really dismissed them as not existing, but had also never admitted that they did. He had dealt with them on a theoretical level: perhaps they exist, perhaps they don't. But hearing Bumpa go on as if they were real, frightened him, tugged at the foundations of the secure place in his mind that believed everything was explainable.

  "I have a theory," Bumpa said. "Remember when I told you I could see things but not as clearly as I used to? Well in the last few days everything's become a little more focussed. It's like the air around Kinniwaw is charged. And the charge just keeps getting stronger and stronger. These murders are all part of whatever's happening. I can feel it deep in my guts. They're building up to something. And I don't think I'm the only one to see anything, I think others have too. Which of course leads me to you, have you seen anything?"

  Rand closed his eyes. "I've been having dreams, a lot of dreams about...well Mom and Dad." He hesitated. "But the one that really bothered me was another dream I had about Conn. He went into this farmhouse and he was killing people, at least I think he was anyway, because I didn't get to see." But I wanted to see. "He came out and went to this place where there was an old fallen down shack. And there Conn sat telling me he caught the lightning and that someone else was coming. And he talked about someone called Swallower and then the dream just kind of ended. I don't know. It's like Conn's doing something bad, that's all."

  "Do you think Conn's really doing the murders?"

  The question scared Rand. He had run it through his head so many times, it was strange to hear it voiced. "I don't know. I mean the Conn I knew in school couldn't have. But in the dream it was real, as if it were something that was really happening. I hadn't seen Conn for months before he came back. I think something bad happened to him in Winnipeg."

  "A lot of bad things have happened to Conn."

  "I know but this one seemed like the final bad thing. I got the feeling that maybe it did something to him. I don't know. Made him more angry."

  "Angry enough to kill for no reason?"

  "I don't know, I can't see him doing a thing like that. I know underneath that smartass exterior there was always a deep anger. but..." He shrugged.

  Bumpa nodded. He sat back in the couch. "He could, Rand," he said. Rand looked up, alarmed by the tone of certainty in Bumpa's voice. Bumpa stared back solemnly. "He could, but let me explain. I brought Conn here one night about two years ago. It was when you were in University and he had come home for a weekend. He had gotten quite drunk, I think, or he was high or something. I saw him there on the street. He had been beaten up and he was just sitting on the steps of the old hall, shivering. So I helped him get to my truck and took him home. I don't think he even knew I was there or where he was. He just babbled and slurred, like a baby learning to talk, except it was all low and to himself. About halfway home he shut up and stared out the window of the truck and I tried to talk to him but he wouldn't answer."

  "When I got home and opened his door, he sat there, frozen. I tried to gently pull him from the truck and he exploded. He hit me on the shoulder and jumped and shoved me away from him. I fell and he stood over me and started to scream. I stood up and he kept yelling and yelling, saying that I'd hurt him and that I'd pay for everything. And there was so much rage in his eyes, Rand, I was scared to approach him, to say anything. Suddenly he stopped, staggered, put his hands to his head and collapsed. I took him into the house and put him on the couch. He woke up in the morning, not remembering how he had come there at all. And he just talked and talked about himself as if he had never told his life story to anyone. He thanked me over and over again for saving him." Bumpa paused. "So what am I saying? When he was yelling at me, I felt the depth of his hatred, the full brunt of it and it was the type that twists the mind. This will sound pessimistic, but there are a lot of people out there who will and can kill. People that you would never suspect. We all can visualize murder. We all dream of getting even with our boss, or parents or whoever, but our social bonds and moral codes hold us back. But there's a few of us who have those restraints eaten away by hatred and pain. I think Conn's one of those people that takes the pain inside him and thrashes it outside."

  "Do you think he killed Boris?"

  Now it was Bumpa's turn to shrug. "I don't know. I'm saying that he has the potential. He also has the potential to become a good person. Those two sides of him have always been at war. I don't think any of us will ever know how much pain he has felt. I don't think he even understands himself."

  They were silent for a time, finally Bumpa leaned forward and got out of his chair. "Why don't we go inside, I'm starving."

  They went inside and had lunch together. They visited late into the afternoon and Bumpa told Rand harmless stories about farming, soothing his state of mind. At about three in the afternoon Rand decided it was time to go home.

  He went out to his car, got in. Bumpa stood on the lawn waving goodbye. Thor stood beside him watching Rand with the serenity of a statue. There was something in the lighting, in the shades, that made the image of Bumpa and Thor stick with Rand, important and strong, like a movie poster or a book cover. He backed up the car, pressed softly on the gas, not wanting the moment to end, and pulled away.

  On his way to Kinniwaw a chopper passed over him, the dull thick sound of the rotors penetrated his car, offbeat to the music. The sound and sight of the chopper disturbed Rand. He thought of Conn and he wondered again if Conn was capable of murder. When Rand pulled into town a RCMP officer stopped him and checked his driver's license. The officer stared at him through mirrored glasses, asked him where he lived, then let him go.

  When he got home it was four fifteen. As soon as he opened the door the phone rang. He answered it.

  "Rand!" Kari said, her tone worried, setting Rand on edge.

  "What's wrong?"

  "I've been trying to get a hold of you! It's Tyler, he's O.K. but he hurt himself. His mom phoned me." Then Kari told him what she knew of the disjointed story Helen had related to her. Within minutes Rand was back in his car and on his way to Kari's.

  3.

  The dragon was eating Tyler.

  In the dark pit of his mind, in the place where flesh meant nothing, Tyler was flailing. The dragon had a hold of his hand. The dragon was breathing fire. The dragon had his father's eyes.

  Tyler was lying in bed in the Prince Albert city hospital. But the wonderful thing about the mind was it didn't always stay with the body. It wandered into other realms, dark places behind the eyes.

  The dragon let Tyler go and, clutching his hand, he ran only to be confronted by another dragon, by more fire. It wanted to eat his hand. He knew it.

  "Tyler," a voice whispered from somewhere above him. He backed away from the dragon, looking upward. "Tyler."

  Tyler rose, swimming to the top of his consciousness. The dragon faded, he opened his eyes. His mother was there, crying. "Oh, Tyler," she said, and the words pushed him back. His eyes closed, he sank. Down. Down. Down.

  Into the dragon's world. The dragon was burning him. With blue flame. Tyler tried to understand why he felt so much pain. He had betrayed the dragon. Was that it? Was that why he was in so much pain? Was that why it was so full of rage?

  His mother's image had somehow followed him down, she floated above him in that place, her eyes wide with fear. The dragon raised its head, breathed a column of fire and she disappeared.

  Tyler heard Tanya's voice and he rose up, up into the land of the living. An age had passed. He opened his eyes.

  His mother was still there. Tanya was beside her. Both staring. He blinked twice, each blink an eon. He saw the sheets, his feet below them, realized he was in bed. He glanced slightly left, saw bandages on the end of his left arm. And sank again.

  I only have one hand, he thought, then the dragon welcomed him with fire.

  He opened his eyes a few hours later. His mother was sitting in a chair at the wall. She
got up, came to his right side. "Tyler," she said again. Tyler stared at her. He was slowly becoming aware of his body, though it felt dull. His nose itched, there was a tube inside each nostril. A needle in his right arm. He was alive.

  He closed his eyes, but this time he didn't sink. He stayed lucid, felt pain. His hand ached, dull pain like an after-image of pain. Someone had given him pills at some time, hadn't they? Needles?

  His mother had her hand on his. Tanya was standing beside him again. "It's going to be O.K.," his mother said. "Everything's going to be alright, Tyler," his mother's voice was quavering. "You're strong. Doctor Singh said you'll come out of this just fine."

  Tyler stared dumbly at her. He was trying to remember something, something that he had realized before, a tiny little point. But his memory failed him, his thoughts, drugged, were sluggish. Snails climbing toward the light.

  "What happened?" he asked. It came out "wa hap'n?" His throat felt dry. He coughed.

  "You're going to be alright," his mother repeated. "Doctor Singh said so." She looked quickly at his left hand and Tyler followed her short inadvertent glance. So that was it? he thought. His hand was gone. Is that what all the fuss was about?

  It really wasn't much, when he looked at it. Nothing at all. He had another hand anyway. You might as well go home, Mom. I thought it was something big. And then Tyler closed his eyes and slept.

  Some time later his mother called him and irrationally he thought, I can't come in yet, Mom; I'm not finished the chores. I can't come in. He had a pail in his hand, didn't he?

  Someone came and asked him questions, but he never really woke up for the session. A man in a R.C.M.P. uniform. He closed his eyes to darkness.

  When he opened them again his mother was gone, the room was dark. It was night. Rand and Kari were standing beside him.