“Oh, Dad, look at you getting spoiled. You’re a lucky man, aren’t you? Look at you all pleased with yourself.”
“It’s all slipping away from him, though. Life is cruel.” The nurse said this to herself, plumping the pillows and patting the old man’s head. “He’s a dear one. Always a smile.”
“He always did have a smile for others,” Mrs. Moffat said. Alvin was surprised to hear the tone of her voice, the bitterness. He felt even closer to her, two people with parents not loving enough.
“I’ll leave you to it then. I see you’ve brought some cakes for him. Any leftovers gratefully received!” the nurse said, patting her fat stomach and smiling.
Mrs. Moffat took a cake and ate it. Her father reached out, “One for me, love, I love a cake.”
“Nothing for you,” she whispered. They sat in silence for ten minutes, a long, drawn-out painful time.
“Tell me about Georgia. How’s my dear little granddaughter?”
“Dead, Dad. Don’t you remember? She was twelve. We’d just celebrated her twelfth birthday, out at a Japanese restaurant but she wouldn’t eat anything. You know what she was like, fussy as anything.”
“You were fussy,” he said, smiling. “Wouldn’t eat your greens no matter how we threatened you.”
“She’s much fussier. It has to be all one colour or she won’t touch it. She chose the restaurant and still she won’t even eat it. You know? The nine of us sitting there, six of her dull little friends, and Mark, and the girls giggling at me as if I’m a fool. They have no idea. They are jealous of how I look, I know that much. She was supposed to walk straight home from school but most days it takes her close to an hour. Gossiping. Dawdling. Me sitting at home worrying about her. They say her father picked up her that day, Dad. Can you imagine? Mark leaving work early to pick her up? That’s what they say happened. They say he drove her to the park and stopped there. I’d never let her go there. Teenagers hang out drinking and smoking, it’s full of glass, full of crap and influence and there’s a bad feeling there. I always felt as if she’d be raped there and I told her that, I terrified her about that place so she’d never go near it. Even the mention of it made her close her eyes so imagine how she felt when her father drove her there.
“They say he first of all made her take her clothes off, and that he cut her with something sharp along her arms and legs. They say he gave her something in a drink, to make her sleepy, but she still felt pain. A lot of pain. He raped her (Why? Why? He got plenty from me and from his girlfriends as if I didn’t know about them) and then he called in the teenagers and they raped her too, and they beat her cut her, they poured things on her and they left her in the toilet to die.”
They were both crying now.
“He wouldn’t. He couldn’t.”
“He did, Dad. All the evidence pointed to him. Every last bit and they looked hard.”
“I wish we knew for sure.”
“I wish we did, too.”
“If we knew for sure I’d spend my last breath to get him.”
Crying open mouthed, they looked very much father and daughter.
Alvin wanted to feel what they felt. He brushed gently against the old man, just to get the feeling. Just to get a voice.
‘”Such an emotional time,” the nurse said as Mrs. Moffat handed over the cakes.
The old man seemed to be empty of anything but grief. While Mrs. Moffat was in the hallway, Alvin, solid in voice alone, said in his ear, “I can help you forget. I can suck out your history and tell it back to you and you won’t even notice.”
“Go for it, son. You do it.” Alvin thought knowing the father would help him know the daughter, and he stepped inside.
It was dark and ragged. A mind unraveling. The granddaughter, Georgia, she was sweet and loving and funny. Safe. She was always safe and trusting because she had never been hurt, never been lost or lonely or discarded. His childhood, that was clearer than anything else. Barefeet, tough as old nails, fingers strong from helping with the dairy cows, his mother calling, “Breakfast” and the smell of bacon and fresh porridge.
The rest was sorrow.
“Alvin?” Mrs. Moffat said, standing in the doorway. “Alvin? From the police station? It’s me, Dana! Dana Moffat! What…are you doing with my father? Where did you come from? You always were a quiet one.”
Alvin, made flesh but only just, felt tears, real tears, that she knew who he was.
“Dad?” she said. She stepped forward, stared into the man’s eyes. He smiled, simple, empty.
“What did you do?” she asked Alvin.
“I can steal the history. Know them. I can know the truth.”
“Truth is important,” she said. “But what do you mean?”
“He grew up on a dairy farm. He loved you very much until he sometimes forgets who you are. He cannot believe his granddaughter is dead because those things don’t happen in his family. But he has peace now. He remembers nothing.”
He felt himself fading. “Can I come to see you?” he said before it became too strange.
She nodded. Weeping.
~~~
Alvin couldn’t bear hearing her in pain. She had been kind to him. Noticed him and once she brought him a gift, the small scented candle which he kept on his mantelpiece and had never lit. He always cleaned the arms of the chair before she sat down, made sure everything was nice for her. One time, she’d touched his shoulder, which almost hurt. His family had been so physically distant he hated anything physical now. All of them had sensitive skin but his father made it his mother’s fault.
“Frigid, you are, and your son, too. Pity his poor bride,” he’d say. “You’ll be wearing gloves, I imagine. Won’t ever know the touch of a soft, white thigh.”
~~~
He wanted to talk to Mrs. Moffat again desperately. He had stolen history simply to become flesh before, but this time he took three lives and was so solid he could open doors. Every time he did it, he grew larger. Thicker. He was a tub of gasses and pain, bloated on other people’s history.
He knocked at her front door.
“Oh, you came, Alvin. You said you would and you did. Did you come from work?”
He loved the fact he could smell the fresh-cut flowers on her kitchen bench, and the coffee she brewed.
“I retired.”
“So young?” She smiled at him, offered him coffee, but he didn’t think he had enough flesh.
He knew he had to speak quickly.
“Listen to me,” he said, and he told her what he could do, that he could take her husband’s mind, be sure of his guilt. “I’ll tell you what I tell the police. It will be lost. He will no longer have that history so can’t feel guilty about it,” he said.
“You’ll know for sure? I don’t know if I want that. What would we do?” Her cheeks were flushed.
She seemed unaware of the affect she had on them all. She was one of those people, Alvin thought, who people wanted to be around. He didn’t really know what the difference was between her and his own mother. She was prettier, of course, and she smiled a lot. And she touched people. And she looked them in the eye and blinked, pretty sweet blinks which broke your heart.
“Some of the police think that he should be killed. An accident or something. But I don’t think anyone should die like that.” She shook her head.
“If you were sure of what he’d done, you would feel differently perhaps.”
“I could never be sure. I love him…loved him. But things have changed. I’ve spoken to so many people about the masks we carry. Men like him, they can carry a mask so that even they are convinced. If I knew he did it I’d…”
“You could do it. You could shoot him.”
He felt himself fading, and she looked at him oddly. “Alvin, I…I can see through you.”
“I’ll come back,” he said. He walked to the street, took three more histories and returned to tell her the truth.
“I’m not always flesh, Mrs. Moffat. I am mostly ghost. My
remains are in my house. I don’t want to shock you,” although she seemed barely shocked. “I have to stay around as long as my remains are unburied. But I don’t mind. I like it here. I like helping people. And I’m scared of what comes next. I don’t want to leave here.”
She smiled at him. “You’re a good man. You always were.”
Alvin began to fade.
“You’ll come back soon? Talk about this some more? Come back tomorrow. Or I could come to you.”
Alvin felt a moment of pride to think of his neighbors seeing a woman as beautiful as Mrs. Moffat entering his house. But no. She shouldn’t be seen.
“Don’t park in the street. You can enter through the vacant lot, from the other side.”
“You really are a natural at this,” she said.
“If I can read your husband for his innocence, he’ll be released. But he will no longer know you. He’ll no longer know anything.”
“He doesn’t know anything now.”
“You don’t know what’s hidden in a man.”
“What if you find out he’s guilty?”
“What do you think?”
“If he’s guilty, I would hate him to death. I would hate him more than any human being.”
“Then we will decide once I know.” Alvin did not tell her what else motivated him, that perhaps, if he understood her husband, knew the man she loved, that he could imitate him.
~~~
Alvin knew that Mrs. Moffat wanted him to go ahead, but perhaps she didn’t want the responsibility. So early on Monday, he visited the jail. He would surprise her with the information.
Her husband was a popular man. People said gracious. No matter how hard anyone pushed, he didn’t answer. “Who killed her then? Who killed your daughter?” but the question only made him quieter.
He was a silver-haired man. His voice was gentle, but the newspapers said they saw a glint in his eye. In jail he seemed reasonably well respected. He shared all he had, helped the others, had no testosterone, unattractive and too old for them to want to rape. Alvin looked forward to stealing his history, understanding him. Because this was the man Mrs. Moffat loved.
Alvin had no substance as he moved closer, but still the man turned on Alvin’s approach. Alvin stepped into him and stole his history.
The newest stuff was the freshest and that hurt; jail time, cold and frightening. A few good men, most of them okay, most of them believing him and that felt good, he wasn’t used to that. Hunger; that hunger when you can’t feed yourself, you have to eat what’s given whether you like it or not. A constant ache inside; Alvin hadn’t felt this before but he realized it was loss, an empty space where a child should go. Then worse than that. A darkness, a torturous sadness, terrible grief, but what was missing was guilt. No guilt about daughter’s death. No violence. Nothing but grief. Not even any knowledge of who had killed her. There was Mrs. Moffat with her pretty face but harder, just a little bit harder in this man’s history but who isn’t, who doesn’t get sharper when you know them better, who isn’t more layered than first viewing?
The man was innocent.
Alvin thought, They planted evidence. That’s what they do.
The man sat on his bed, staring at the wall. A small smile on his face; relief, perhaps. Emptiness being greater than grief. Alvin was too solid to move through the door and he squatted in the corner, terrified. He hadn’t thought of this, that he would be locked up. He didn’t want to learn the histories of the other prisoners. He didn’t want to know that stuff; there with all the child molesters.
~~~
Alvin felt a strange tugging, and he smelt something like dirt. He wanted to race to find Mrs. Moffat, at the old people’s home, or at her home, but this was like a magnet, drawing him, dragging him home. As he approached he stole the history of a motorist, stopped with a broken car. Made substance and head full of math, recriminations, two cute kids and a memory of peppermint ice-cream, Alvin physically opened his own front door.
The first thing he noticed was that his remains were gone. And that the scented candle was lit.
He touched the dark stain on the carpet where he had rested. The tug pulled him harder, into the backyard, and there was Mrs. Moffat, spading dirt into a hole.
He felt blurry, very blurry.
She looked up as he approached.
“Not much of you,” she said. “In spirit nor in bone. I thought I would help you move on, now we know the truth.”
“I don’t want to move on,” he said. “I’m happy.” But he wasn’t happy, now. Knowing the truth. “He didn’t do it. Your husband is innocent. He’s as sad as you are.”
“Is he? And does he think he knows who did kill our dear little precious?” She spat these last words. Kept on spading dirt.
“Please, please stop burying me.”
“No, Alvin. It’s time for you to go. Your truth and my truth don’t really match. And the only two people who know me well enough have been wiped clean.”
She stamped down on his grave and began a short prayer.
Alvin reached for her but he had little strength to take much. Just a deep, irrational hatred for her husband. A sense of victory at her mother’s death. And the smell of blood and the terrified begging of her trusting young daughter.
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The Gaze Dogs of Nine Waterfall
Rare dog breeds; people will kill for them. I’ve seen it. One stark-nosed curly hair terrier, over-doped and past all use. One ripped-off buyer, one cheating seller. I was just the go-between for that job. I shrank up small into the corner, squeezed my eyes shut, folded my ears over like a Puffin Dog, to keep the dust out.
I sniffed out a window, up and out, while the blood was still spilling. It was a lesson to me, early on, to always check the dog myself.
~~~
I called my client on his cell, confirming the details before taking the job.
“Ah, Rosie McDonald! I’ve heard good things about your husband.”
I always have to prove myself. Woman in a man’s world. I say I’m acting for my husband and I tell stories about how awful he is, just for the sympathy.
I’ll bruise my own eye, not with make-up. Show up with an arm in a sling. “Some men don’t like a woman who can do business,” I say. “But he’s good at what he does. An eye for detail. You need that when you’re dealing dogs.”
“I heard that. My friend is the one who was after a Lancashire Large. For his wife.”
I remembered; the man had sent me pictures. Why would he send me pictures?
“He says it was a job well done. So you know what I’m after?”
“You’re after a vampire dog. Very hard to locate. Nocturnal, you know? Skittish with light. My husband will need a lot of equipment.”
“So you’ll catch them in the day when they’re asleep. I don’t care about the money. I want one of those dogs.”
“My husband is curious to know why you’d like one. It helps him in the process.”
“Doesn’t he talk?”
“He’s not good with people. He’s good at plenty, but not people.”
“Anyway, about the dog: thing is, my son’s not well. It’s a blood thing. It’s hard to explain even with a medical degree.”
My ears ring when someone’s lying to me. Even over the phone. I knew he was a doctor; I’d looked him up.
“What’s your son’s name?”
The silence was momentary, but enough to confirm my doubts there was a son. “Raphael,” he said. “Sick little Raphael.” He paused. “And I want to use the dog like a leech. You know? The blood-letting cure.”
“So you just need the one?”
“Could he get more?”
“He could manage three, but your son…”
“Get me three,” he said.
I thought, Clinic. $5,000 each. Clients in the waiting room reading Nature magazine. All ready to have their toxins sucked out by a cute little vampire dog. I decided to double my asking price, right t
here.
~~~
There are dogs rare because of the numbers. Some because of what they are or what they can do.
And some are rare because they are not always seen.
I remember every animal I’ve captured, but not all of my clients. I like to forget them. If I don’t know their faces I can’t remember their expressions or their intent.
The Calalburun. I traveled to Turkey for this puppy. Outside of their birthplace, they don’t thrive, these dogs. There is something about the hunting in Turkey which is good for them. My client wanted this dog because it has a split nose. Entrancing to look at. Like two noses grown together.
The Puffin Dog, or Norwegian Lundehound. These dogs were close to extinction when a dog-lover discovered a group of them on a small island. He bred them up from five, then shared some with an enthusiast in America. Not long after that, the European dogs were wiped out, leaving the American dogs the last remaining.
The American sent a breeding pair and some pups back to Europe, not long before her own dogs were wiped out. From those four there are now about a thousand.
The dogs were bred to hunt puffins. They are so flexible (because they sometimes needed to crawl through caves to hunt) that the back of their head can touch their spine. As a breed, though, they don’t absorb nutrients well, so they die easily and die young. We have a network, the other dealers and I. Our clients want different things at different times so we help each other out. My associate in Europe knew of four Puffin Dogs.
It’s not up to me to ponder why people keep these cripples alive. Animal protection around the world doesn’t like it much; I just heard that the English RSPCA no longer supports Crufts Dog Show because they say there are too many disabled dogs being bred and shown. Dogs like the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, whose skull is too small for its brain. And a lot of boxer dogs are prone to epilepsy, and some bulldogs are unable to mate, or are unable to give birth unassisted.
It’s looks over health. But humans? Same same.
The Basenji is a dog which yodels. My client liked the sound and wanted to be yodeled to. I don’t know how that worked out.
The Gate Theory Page 7
