by Jeremy Bates
He didn’t feel fear. He had expended all his fear.
He felt only rage. Rage that this creature had invaded his life twice now. Rage that it had killed his family and ruined his childhood. Rage that it had killed Daisy and Tony and maybe the cop back in the cabin. Rage that it had taken Ellie. Rage that it had led him to this inevitable sacrifice.
Rex heard the thing moving toward him. It didn’t make much noise, but without sight, his ears, like his smell, were fine-tuned.
Come on, you fucking bug.
It came. Slowly. It knew he was there, surely. It knew it out-powered him too. So it was probably confused why he wasn’t running away.
Come on.
The savage fury building inside him turned into a bloodlust.
Oh, he wanted it dead. He so wanted it dead.
Before entering the bone chamber, Rex had scavenged a stick of dynamite from one of the several wooden Hercules boxes he had come across. He now held the stick in his left hand. The absorbents and stabilizers were long past their expiry date. The stick was damp with sweated nitroglycerin. Small crystals had formed on its surface.
The dynamite was unstable as hell.
He had been crazy to be carrying it around with him. But when he’d picked it up he’d largely conceded he’d been heading to his death, and when he’d miraculously found Ellie, he’d completely forgotten about it.
He sparked the flint of his Bic lighter. A bluish flame appeared.
The creature, he saw in the anemic light, was only a few feet away from him now.
Sneaky bastard.
Rex touched the flame to the short fuse. It caught with a hiss and burned hungrily toward the blasting cap.
The creature attacked. One of its pincers arced toward his neck.
Rex’s last thought was, Figured you’d go for my gut.
The stick of dynamite dropped from his grip and landed on the earthy ground.
His decapitated head thumped next to it a moment later.
***
Two shafts higher Ellie came to a fork in the tunnels. T-Rex had told her to pick tunnels that went up, so she picked the left one. She was only a few steps into it when an enormous blast shook the mine system. She stumbled forward and landed on all fours. Dirt from the ceiling fell onto her head and shoulders and back.
She couldn’t fathom what had caused the blast—she had a half-formed thought of a waking dragon bellowing fire from its mouth—but she knew it wasn’t a gunshot.
Maybe T-Rex had found a cannon somewhere to shoot the monster with?
She was tempted to turn around and go find him, but he’d told her that her mom was worried sick, and she most likely was. She got worried sick when Ellie went to the cereal aisle in the supermarket without telling her.
Ellie scrambled back to her feet, shook the dirt from her hair, and hurried on.
CHAPTER 23
Constables Stephen Garlund and Karl Dunn had been thirty kilometers north of Whistler-Blackcomb in the town of Pemberton, investigating a report of domestic violence (iced-up junkie who hadn’t slept in days smacking around his subservient girlfriend), and thus they were the northernmost officers on nightshift when the call came over the Motorola two-way radio of multiple homicides on Pavilion Lake.
That had been ninety minutes ago. Now Garlund was navigating the big Chevy Suburban carefully down the shitty road that served the lake, trying to avoid the worst of the bumpy craters. The storm wasn’t making the going any easier.
Garlund had always preferred working a one-man car. He enjoyed the freedom of driving around by himself, eating whatever he wanted, listening to whatever music he wanted, pretty much doing whatever he liked. If a bit of community relations so fancied him, he could talk to business owners or say hi to the folks at the community center without a partner getting impatient with him. If he saw a traffic violation, he could use his discretion to pursue it or not without having to justify his decision. Nevertheless, the winter season at Whistler Blackcomb was kicking off soon. The influx of skiers and snowboarders turned the small mountain community into a den of revelry and boozing, and the powers that be were experimenting with pairing up patrol officers, despite the fact this meant halving the patrol coverage.
Anyway, Garlund couldn’t complain too much. Constable Karl Dunn was a good guy. Bit of a straight arrow, but easy enough to get along with. Curly blond hair, lively blue eyes, and he always seemed to be smiling, even when he was talking about nothing funny.
“So what are these rumors I’m hearing about?” Dunn asked out of the blue.
Garlund glanced at him to see if he was smiling. Sure was. Smiling on the way to the scene of multiple homicides. “What rumors?” he asked, swerving hard to avoid a flooded pothole he saw at the last moment. The windshield wipers beat back and forth hypnotically.
“Heard you bought a house in North Vancouver,” Dunn said.
“Yup,” Garlund said.
“You never told me.”
“Never told anyone. Maybe one or two people.”
“It’s just that I’ve been your partner these past couple weeks, eight hours a day we’re together, and you’re going to be relocating, and you don’t tell me?”
“I never told anyone anything about leaving. Maybe I won’t.”
“Won’t leave? Why’d you buy a house then?”
Garlund shrugged. “I don’t know what I’m going to do with it yet. Maybe rent it out. Maybe move. I don’t know.”
“Hey, you don’t like me that much, that you gotta move away, just ask for a new partner.”
“You are a bit nosey, Hoops.” Hoops was Dunn’s nickname, on account he was decent at playing basketball, especially hitting three-pointers.
“So what is it, Steve? Tired of Whistler? Bored out here?”
“I told you, I haven’t decided if I’m going anywhere.”
“But you’re thinking about it.”
Garlund shrugged again. “I like Whistler. I like my job here. It’s Clara.”
“What about Clara?”
“We’re separating.”
He frowned. “Shit! I didn’t know that.”
“Because I never told you. I haven’t told anyone. So don’t go yapping.”
“Is it…a mutual thing?”
“I suppose so. You got to be young to have a one-sided breakup. When you’re both fifty-two and have kids, you’re too tired to get passionate about it. We just sat down and discussed it. Made sense for both of us. Decided we’d do it when the youngest, Joey, graduates high school in the spring.”
“Oh man, Steve. I didn’t know—I just mean, I’m surprised. You and Clara always seemed fine when I saw you together, you know?”
“We are fine. We’re just not great anymore. We get on each other’s nerves. We annoy each other. Being around someone for long enough, that just happens. You’ll find out.”
The smile returned, proud. “Jenny and me are all good.”
“You’ve been married for how long?”
“Three years.”
“Nothing bugs you about her?”
Dunn thought about it for a few seconds. “Sure, some things.”
“Take all those things and multiply them by ten. And then think about how much they annoy you and multiply that by ten too. Then you’ll probably know what it’s like to live with her in thirty years.”
“Jeez, you’re a fun guy sometimes, Steve. What does Clara do that bugs you so much?”
“There’re a lotta things.”
“Name one.”
“She’s stopped brushing her teeth.”
Dunn laughed, a rapid-fire burst of merriment. “What?”
“Not all the time, Hoops. But she doesn’t do it two or three times a day like she used to. Some days she’ll brush them in the morning, or before bed. Some days she won’t. It’s annoying. How hard is it to brush your teeth?”
“How do you know she doesn’t brush them?”
“I can smell her breath.”
“Maybe s
he just has bad breath?”
“Halitosis? No, she doesn’t have that. Anyway, I can tell when her toothbrush hasn’t been used.”
“How?”
“It’s dry.”
Dunn sounded surprised. “You check her toothbrush?”
“Sometimes. I think sometimes she doesn’t brush her teeth just to piss me off.”
“Jesus, Steve,” Dunn said. “Yeah, maybe you should be getting a divorce after all, if this is where you guys are at. Shit—lookout!”
Garlund saw the child in the middle of the road too. She was lit up ghost-like in the headlights. He hit the brakes. The SUV slammed to a stop.
The little girl remained standing shock-still, her jet-black hair plastered to her head like a helmet, her eyes wide and unblinking. She wore pink jeans and a soaked-through white tee-shirt with the blue Care Bear on it.
Garlund grunted, “Where the fuck did she come from?” He threw open his door and was about to climb out when the girl ran to him instead.
“Are you a policeman?” she asked, looking at his uniform. He was dressed in his open-collar patrol jacket and dark blue trousers with gold strapping. His peaked cap was on the laptop next to him.
“I am,” he said. “What are you doing out in this weather? Nevermind that, get in, quickly, you’re going to catch your death.” He opened the back door for her, helped her up onto the plastic seat, and gave her his jacket to drape around her shoulders like a cape. When he returned behind the wheel, he cranked up the heat in the cab, then turned to study her through the wire mesh. She held the jacket closed at her neck. Her lips were blue, and she appeared to be shivering.
“What’s your name?” Dunn asked her in a friendly voice.
“Ellie,” she said.
“Did you get lost somehow, Ellie?”
“Sort of,” she said.
“Sort of?” Garlund said, a bit too roughly.
The girl, Ellie, looked like she might cry. “I just want to find my mom. I want to go home.”
Garlund couldn’t imagine there being many families on the lake in October, and he made the logical connection. “Are you Rex Chapman’s kid?”
Her face brightened. “You know T-Rex?”
“No. But we got a call from him.”
“He’s not my dad. He’s my mom’s boyfriend.”
“He said there’s been some trouble out here?”
The girl nodded but didn’t say anything more.
“There been trouble?” Garlund pressed.
“Yes,” she said, looking at her lap.
“Some people been hurt?”
She nodded. “A policeman. He got cut in the stomach.” She pointed to her belly.
The Chief of Police of Lillooet, Paul Harris, Garlund presumed. The man had been policing when Garlund was still a boy. They’d met on a few occasions, and Garlund had nothing bad to say about him.
“Who cut him?” Garlund asked.
“The Mosquito Man,” the girl said.
He blinked. “Who?”
“He’s a monster. He took me to his cave. He wanted to eat me.”
Garlund and Dunn exchanged glances.
“What did he look like?” Dunn asked, still using his friendly kid voice.
“Like a mosquito!”
“He was wearing a mask?”
“No! He was a real mosquito. But big, like you.”
Garlund and Dunn swapped another glance.
“I think we better get to this cabin,” Dunn said.
Garlund nodded, faced forward, and put the Chevy Tabitha in Drive.
Dunn continued questioning the girl. “So who’s at your cabin right now, Ellie?”
“It’s not mine,” she said. “It’s T-Rex’s.”
“Is he at the cabin?”
“No, he was in the cave with me.” Her voice faltered. “He stayed back to fight the Mosquito Man. But he said he was going to meet up again.”
“Your mom is there then?”
“Yes, and she’s worried sick I’m gone.”
“Because you ran away?”
“No! I told you! The Mosquita Man took me. I was looking under my bed for my chippymunk, and the monster kidnapped me. It jumped through the window and ran into the woods.”
“This is serious business, Ellie,” Dunn said, adopting a slightly stricter tone. “It’s not time for make-believe.”
“I’m not lying or pretending! I’m telling the truth! I promise!”
“Is the policeman at the cabin?” Garlund asked, glancing in the rearview mirror, but unable to see the girl.
“Yes, my mom’s taking care of him.”
“Is anyone else there?” Dunn asked.
“Just Bobby.”
“Who’s Bobby?”
“His dad is T-Rex. We’re the same age but we’re not friends. Why are these seats so hard?”
“So we can clean them if anybody gets sick back there.”
“I’m not going to be sick.”
“That’s good.”
“Are we almost there?”
“There’s a light ahead,” Garlund said. “Must be it.”
He turned up a gravel driveway and parked at the end of it.
“Ellie,” he said, “you’re going to have to sit here for a minute while we go see who’s inside.”
“But I want to see my mommy!”
“You stay here with her, Hoops. I’ll go have a quick look.”
Dunn nodded.
Clapping his cap on his head, Garlund got out of the SUV and hurried through the rain to the cabin. He unholstered his Smith and Wesson and eased open the door and peeked inside. In the soft glow of multiple candles he found Paul Harris lying on the floor, his craggy face gaunt and pale. He clasped a sheet to his bloodied gut.
Garlund knelt next to him. “Chief? You with me?”
Harris opened his eyes but didn’t say anything.
“Who did this?”
“Hello?” a young voice called from somewhere else in the cabin.
“That you Bobby?” Garlund called back.
A pause. “Who are you?”
“I’m a police officer. You just stay up there for the time being, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Paramedics will be here soon,” he told Harris. “I’ll be back.” Outside, he was about to return to the SUV when he spotted a light down by the lake.
Frowning, he waved Dunn over.
The Chevy’s door opened, slammed shut. Dunn dashed through the rain.
“The boy’s inside,” Garlund told him. “Paul Harris too. He looks bad. No other bodies I saw. Bring the girl inside and wait there until backup gets here.”
“What about you?” Dunn asked.
Garlund nodded at the lake—and did a double take. The light was gone.
“I saw a light down there a second ago. A flashlight beam. I’m guessing the mom.”
“Or whoever cut the cop.”
Without replying, Garlund took his flashlight from his duty belt, turned it on, and picked his way down the slope through the trees. The rocky ground was mossy and slippery. At the bottom the wind blowing in off the lake reached gale-like force, sweeping his cap off his head and howling in his ears. A dock jutted over the rough water. Nobody was on it. Nobody along the shore either.
“Hello?” he called, the storm shredding his voice.
There was no reply.
He started along the dock, playing his flashlight over the weathered boards, the dark water—
Ten feet to his right. An arm. Riding the peaks and troughs of the waves.
A head too, black hair fanning around it like a lily pad.
Garlund leapt off the side of the dock. The ice-cold water came to his chest. He splashed toward the body. Reached it, flipped it over. A woman, attractive, her skin fish-belly white.
Garlund dragged her up onto shore, felt for a pulse.
She wasn’t breathing.
He commenced CPR.
CHAPTER 24
Tabitha was in
a gigantic forest surrounded by towering flowers and trees the size of skyscrapers. Both rose dizzyingly into the otherworldly sky, making her feel as tiny as a bug.
No, scratch that, she thought. I am a bug.
She held out her arms to reveal strange black appendages tapering to points. She brushed her face with them, discovering she had globular eyes and a coiled proboscis.
Frantic, she glanced over her shoulder and found a pair of cerulean wings sprouting from her back—and her fear abated with the understanding she was not a mosquito but a butterfly, the latter metamorphosis somehow acceptable.
She didn’t attempt to fly. She didn’t know how. And so she walked on legs identical to her arms. She knew butterflies didn’t walk erect on two legs, and she likely looked ridiculous, but she was moving, and that was all that mattered. She had to find her way out of this forest and get back to the log cabin. She wasn’t sure why exactly, but it seemed very important she accomplish this.
Tabitha came to a huge tented maple leaf the size of a car. Something was beneath it. She could hear a crunch-crunch-crunch. She lifted one side of the leaf and peeked beneath.
A ladybug was sitting on her rear in a very unladybug-like way, munching on a stalk of grass. Black dots spotted glossy red wing covers. A cute black face with white patches on both cheeks looked up and smiled.
“Ellie!” Tabitha exclaimed happily.
“Mommy!”
Tabitha wanted to hug her daughter, but she didn’t think she would be able to get her arms around her dome-shaped body. “What are you doing here?” she asked.
“I don’t know. What are you doing here?”
“I don’t know either,” she admitted.
“Are we dead?” Ellie asked.
Tabitha had not thought of this possibility. “I don’t think so.”
“How do you know?”
“Why would we be dead?”
“Because you killed yourself. You jumped off the dock. Remember?”
Tabitha did remember now, and a coldness stole over her. She recalled the all-encompassing darkness. Not knowing up from down. Water entering her mouth and nose. Her throat contracting. Her eyes straining. Her lungs begging for air. Everything turning yellow, then sharp black, then pungent white, the purest color she had ever seen. Then her body going limp as a drowsy acceptance settled over her.
