Carter Benning parked in front of Beverly’s condo on a Saturday morning. James was still home; he kissed Beverly goodbye, climbed into his Corvette, and drove off. Only then did Beverly acknowledge Carter with a casual wave.
“That was nice,” Carter said once he had reached Bev at the front door. “The reason I tell you when I’m arriving is so I can avoid that.”
“He was just running late. You don’t have to be pissy about it.”
Inside the house, a disturbing new version of his daughter came loping down the stairs. She had too much makeup on, her normally cheery-coloured clothing had been replaced with funereal blacks and grays, and she’d done something weird to her hair — usually thick and bouncy, today it was parted surgically down the middle, the bisected halves clinging to her scalp like wet curtains.
“What the hell happened to you?” Carter asked.
Emma blinked. “What?”
“What do you mean what? You look like a member of the Addam’s Family.”
“I’ve been dressing this way for a month, Dad! If you ever came to see me you’d know that!”
He opened his mouth to retort, but Emma rushed up to him and placed one black nailed finger over his lips.
“Let’s not fight,” she said. She tugged him forward by his shirt sleeve, and Bev closed the door behind them.
“So where are we going?” Em asked.
“Picnic in the park.”
“Really?”
“We don’t have to.”
“No, that’s fine.”
They drove off in the old Chevy Nova. Emma popped in a set of ear buds and stared out the window while Carter focused on the road, silently cursing Bev for not warning him that he would be spending his day with the creepy well girl from The Ring.
He shaded his eyes. The weather report had promised mid-to-high twenties, and he guessed it was already there. Emma stepped out of the car and squinted dispassionately at her surroundings.
The park was bustling. Children crawled over playground equipment like swarming ants; teenagers threw footballs and frisbees in the open field; pedestrians and cyclists streamed along the walking paths.
Carter led Emma to a quiet spot in the shade of a barbecue enclosure and laid a blanket on the ground. He pulled some sandwiches and drinks from a cooler and spread them out.
“Help yourself,” he said, stretching out on his back and balling up his jacket as a pillow.
“What, we’re just going to sit here and eat?”
“Pretty much.”
“Do you care if I duck out in a bit?”
Carter propped himself up. “Listen, Em, maybe your mom is pussy footing around it. I’m not going to. What’s with this transformation of yours?”
“I’m re-inventing myself.”
“Are you still planning on going to vet school?”
“I’m not sure.”
Carter watched the frisbee players for a moment, then said, “You know your mom and I have been saving for years for your schooling. If you’re going to change direction I want to know.”
“I don’t know what my plans are yet, alright? When I figure it out I’ll let you know.”
“Does this have anything to do with James?”
“How could this be about James, Dad? You know, just because you hate him doesn’t mean I have to.”
“That’s not what I meant…”
“I wasn’t going to tell you this, but he’s buying me a car for graduation.”
Carter stared at the frisbee players again because he didn’t want Em to see his face. He and Bev had decided that she would save up for her first car; it was to be her first big lesson in financial responsibility.
“I’m sure your mother and I will talk…”
Emma was getting up.
“Where are you going?”
“To my boyfriend’s. Tell Mom and James I’ll be home before curfew.” She turned and walked away.
Carter let her go. He thought about the inevitable conversation with Bev later, sighed, gathered up the remains of the picnic, and started back.
It was then that he noticed the girl, not thirty feet away. She had chocolate brown eyes and straight blond hair in a bowl cut. She wore a cream-coloured dress with red flowers stitched along the bottom border. She couldn’t have been more than eight.
“Hey,” Carter said.
She didn’t move, didn’t blink.
“Hello,” he tried.
Nothing, so he turned and continued in the direction of the parking lot. He looked back when he reached the playground, but she was already gone.
That evening he sat watching television in his underwear. There was a reality show on featuring grown men and women trying to prove they were smarter than children. The remains of his dinner — a microwaved chicken platter from the corner grocery store — sat half-eaten on the end table.
He’d called Bev, and, as expected, she’d been none too impressed that he had let Emma take off. He had let her complain herself out, then asked if it was okay if he picked Emma up the following weekend.
“As long as she wants you to,” she’d said before hanging up.
He turned the TV off, took his dishes to the sink, and went down the short hallway to his office, really a second bedroom for guests he would never have. He sat at his desk and powered on his computer. His calendar came up, told him he was scheduled to oversee a book signing the following weekend. He wouldn’t be able to do it. He had already missed enough time with Emma, he wasn’t going to bow out again. That might not go down well with his boss but he was planning on leaving Westworld Publishing anyway, as soon as he had a decent alternative. He closed the schedule.
There was a sudden movement in his monitor. He spun around, oddly certain he would be staring at that strange little girl he’d seen at the park.
And for a moment he was. Her big eyes stared into his, and when he looked down he could make out every flower stitched on the edge of her cream coloured dress.
Then she was gone.
He felt his mind grind to a stop. He’d seen her, hadn’t he? Hadn’t he?
“Stress,” he said out loud, his voice shaky. “You didn’t see anything.”
He shut the computer off, went to the kitchen, got a beer out of the fridge. He’d never been a nighttime drinker, but now he swallowed half the can before pouring the rest down the sink because it would be flat by morning. He went to bed, although it was several hours before he slept.
Carter needed someone to talk to so the next day he went to see Adrian.
Adrian ran his own food truck full-time in the summer. Carter called him up and found out he was doing business down in Old Strathcona these days, the same spot they’d met nearly fifteen years earlier, when Carter had been working at an independent publisher’s on Whyte.
It was three o’clock, well past the lunch rush. They sat on a raised cement barrier overlooking Adrian’s food truck so he could jump up and serve customers if need be. Carter had just informed Adrian of his divorce and the failed visit with Emma.
“The thing is, I feel unplugged. I’ve given everything to Bev and Emma over the years, and now that’s just over? What do divorced men do with themselves?”
“Well, they move on my friend. Men are like ants; when our hill gets knocked down, we build another one.” Adrian took a swig from a can of some generic grape soda. “Doesn’t sound like you’re there yet, though. Just give it time. Your ex might be done with you, but your kid isn’t.”
“There’s something else. A little girl keeps following me. I know how crazy that sounds, but I’m not imagining it. I think she’s about eight. I bring it up because I figure kids hang around your truck all the time.”
“They do. I usually try to talk to them. Have you tried talking to her?”
“Sure. I’ve said hi. She doesn’t respond.”
“Next time ask her what she wants. Kids can be weird, but they have their reasons.”
“Yeah, I might try that.”
They talked for a while longer about nothing in particular. Before leaving, Carter promised to stay in touch, although he knew he wouldn’t. He hated his own apathy toward fostering friendships. This one might have been something if he’d ever taken the time.
Adrian went back to the truck to close shop. An elderly woman stood at the counter. She turned slowly and watched him as he padded over. He didn’t hurry because she wasn’t there to order.
He hadn’t found the nerve to tell Carter he was dying. In fact, he hadn’t told anyone. Well, that wasn’t completely true — he’d told his mother, the woman who now stood at his counter. He felt comfortable talking to her because it wasn’t like she would tell anyone, being dead now some twenty years.
He wondered if other terminal cancer patients saw ghosts. He supposed they did. Like him, they probably didn’t talk about it.
He’d seen Carter’s mystery child, so knew his friend wasn’t being totally honest with him. It wasn’t like he could cast stones. She had left alongside Carter, skipping, a darling thing in a cream coloured dress with some sort of red stitching around the bottom.
Stanley Riggs, demolitions boss for C&K Construction, sat in his partially finished basement where he and his wife Cathy had once wiled away their evenings watching movies on the big projector screen. Today he sat by himself, the screen blank.
He was considering phoning his cousin in Ontario for the first time in a decade to ask if he could come and stay a while. He wanted to be around people because he was hearing a voice in his head recently. He almost dialed, then shoved the phone back in his pocket.
It was hard to believe only three weeks ago he’d been excited to surprise Cathy for her birthday. Stanley’s company had been raking in the contracts since its inception, allowing them to buy a summer cottage and a new truck, but he had never bought something big just for her. He could have talked himself out of it — construction had dried up recently, so they didn’t have a lot coming in — but he had a large project on the go, and they had money in the bank. He knew just what to get her, too — that brand new Mazda Miata, cherry red, that sat in a showroom downtown. She had seen it a few months back and had sucked in her breath at the sight. He and Cathy had met in middle-age, their wild days long behind them, but he’d often wondered what it would be like to scoot down the rural roads with her in that sporty thing, the roof down and their hair blowing in the wind. Perhaps they would find some secluded spot to have a picnic. Perhaps they would make love outside like they had that one time years ago.
Cathy had been hiding a secret of her own, and two weeks ago she had beat him to the punch. Her hand written letter had been brief. She’d met someone online. Stan was not to try to find her. In the last line she told him she would always love him, although her typical x’s and o’s were missing.
To add insult to injury, she’d cleaned out their main chequing account. She had always been in charge of their finances; he was notoriously bad with money. They had previously discussed making all of their accounts joint, but that one — the big one — had still been solely under her name.
Now he had a sports car in his garage to remind him of his loss. He planned to sell it, although he was going to take a bath on it since it was technically no longer new.
Today he’d come home to a thin stack of papers in the mail. They were from a lawyer, Mr. James Lawson. Stan had read his fair share of legal documents over the years, and these ones told a story. Two large corporations were disputing ownership of the land upon which Stan’s company was building a large office building — the Minion Building — downtown. There weren’t a lot of details on the dispute, which had just gotten started, but it was clear that Stan’s huge contract was being suspended until everything was settled.
These sorts of things often dragged on for years. His one and only contract was now stalled indefinitely, and he had zero financial reserves. He might be facing bankruptcy before the end of the year.
A band tightened around him. He remembered what his doctor had told him about dealing with a panic attack, took a deep breath, then two, and the band eased off. He looked down at his calloused hands, realized they had been wringing each other without his consent.
He really needed to be around people. He remembered he was going to phone his cousin in Ontario, and his hand went once again to his pocket, but then the voice told him to leave it alone, so he did.
The voice began to speak to him. It had a plan.
Four days after her picnic with her father, Emma walked through the dark with her boyfriend Charlie, toward a small trailer in the back field of an abandoned farmhouse. She was shivering. She’d worn a light shirt and pleather pants, and although it was early summer, the wind carried a bite.
Charlie puffed on his vape. The smoke smelled like cherry cough drops.
“What the hell’s wrong with you, babe?” he said. He wasn’t dressed any warmer than her, but he seemed immune to the shivers.
“I’m cold.”
Charlie uttered a stuttering, high-pitched bark of a laugh.
“Don’t worry, in a few minutes you can have a hit, and then you’ll be warm.”
“No,” Emma said, smiling. She didn’t want to let Charlie down, but she was pretty sure she was never going to smoke with him. Charlie, Trevor, and Russell were making drugs in a fifth-wheeler at the edge of the field. They said it was crystal meth, just like on Breaking Bad, and they even mixed it in a baggie with Kool-Aid powder to make it blue. But given the chefs involved, Emma doubted it was crystal.
They opened the door to the little trailer. A caustic smell wafted out at them.
“Welcome to Casa Crystal”, Trevor croaked around a dangling cigarette.
“Homes,” said Russ.
They were working at the crude wooden bench they’d built for themselves that stretched the length of the gutted trailer. Their instruments weren’t beakers and flasks, but little fires burning in containers made of tin foil under scorched cooking pots. They were both wearing aprons with flowers on them and ratty oven mitts. A thin white fog tinted the air. The place smelled like the chemistry lab at school.
Russ turned back to what he’d been doing before Charlie and Emma had entered. He spilled something on the bench. Trevor slapped him upside the head.
“Watch what you’re doing, you fuckin’ dummy!”
Once again, in his apartment, in his underwear, watching television. Carter’s days were bleeding together, just like that movie with Bill Murray and the groundhog. The only difference — tonight he was drunk.
Bill Weidler, editor-in-chief at Westworld and his direct supervisor, had called earlier and told him he had to do the book tour this coming weekend, because they simply had nobody else. Bill was pleasant about it, even apologetic. Carter agreed to do it, hung up, and threw his phone across the room. It bounced off the wall and fell behind the couch.
He had almost quit, right there on the phone. Surely he could find something else to finance his shitty life. Then he could spend more time with Emma. Only he’d called his daughter a few times this week and gotten no answer. He’d called Bev and gotten the same. He’d left messages that nobody answered. So who exactly would he be quitting for?
That wasn’t why he’d bought himself booze tonight and gotten uncustomarily drunk, though. He’d done that because he was still seeing her. Couldn’t stop seeing her. The girl from the park. It was always for a split second from the corner of his eye. At work, as he rounded the water cooler to go to his desk from the washroom; In the grocery store, as he cut through the diaper aisle to get to the till; Just this afternoon, as he walked through a crowd while crossing the street. Adrian had told him to ask her what she wanted, but she was never around long enough for him to ask her anything.
He had a thought.
He shut off the TV, stood up, and promptly listed to the left like a stuttering top, almost tripping over the corner of the coffee table before righting himself. He made his way carefully down the hall, sat down in front of his computer, and fired it up. He had done the same thing the night the little girl had appeared to him in this very room. He stared at the login screen for a minute or so, then suddenly spun in his chair, just as he had that night.
And there she was, her big brown eyes staring into his. This time she didn’t disappear.
He felt light-headed. He took a breath. “Can you talk?”
Nothing. She simply stared.
“What do you want?”
She pointed at his computer monitor. He turned to see that the login screen had been replaced by a video showing a farmer’s field, barbed wire fences, old rusted vehicles sunk in waist-deep grass. There was a little red-and-white fifth wheel camper in the near distance. Two figures walked into frame — a thin boy with long, greasy hair, whom he didn’t recognize, and Emma.
“Can you take me there?” he asked.
The little girl nodded.
“I’m bored,” Emma said. “Why can’t we leave?”
“Chuck,” Trevor said around his cigarette, “do you want to explain to your skank why you’re not leaving?”
“I’m no skank, Trevor,” Emma said. “I happen to be an honours student. You, on the other hand, are probably going to be pumping gas your whole life. If you don’t end up in prison, that is. “
Russell chuckled.
“We’re not going anywhere,” Charlie said, “because I get first hit of the new batch.”
There was a rap at the door. Everyone froze.
“Did your girlfriend rat us out?” Trevor spat.
“No.” Charlie said. “She wouldn’t do that.”
Another quick succession of bangs.
“I know you’re in there! Open this door!”
Emma’s stomach dropped. “Jesus!” she said. “That’s my dad!”
Carter kicked the door in to find four kids staring bug-eyed back at him – three boys and his daughter. Emma screamed. One of the boys – the scrawny one he’d seen in the video – lunged at him. Suddenly he was on his back and this kid who couldn’t weigh more than a hundred and thirty pounds was on top of him and scrabbling for his neck. Carter kneed the kid in the groin. The kid fell to one side.
“Dad, stop it!”
Now Emma was on top of Carter, throwing weak punches. He pushed her off, stumbled to his feet, dragged her outside by the arm.
“What the hell are you doing?” she shouted at him once they were outside. “How did you know I was out here?”
“I didn’t raise you so you could pull this crap.” He’d forgotten he was drunk, but now it caught up with him. He closed his eyes, waited for the spinning to stop, then continued. “You don’t get to throw everything away just because your mom and I couldn’t make things work. Come on, you’re going home.”
“Hey, bro!” It was the boy he’d sacked, bent over and leaning on the fifth wheel’s door, his voice reedy thin. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing with my girlfriend?” He straightened up and started to run toward them.
When the kid was only a few feet away Carter buried a fist in his gut and then descended on him, battering away at his face. Emma screamed; blood flew; a gleaming white tooth disappeared into the grass.
Then the world exploded.
Once, as a child, Carter had been walking ten feet from a set of train tracks when a train had gone by. The sound had swallowed him whole. The vibrations had travelled up his legs and shaken him inside like a rattle. This explosion was louder and more violent. For a split second the night was brighter than day, artificially bright, and Carter had to squint. He stood up, stepped away from the boy on the ground and toward his daughter. She was staring at the trailer, which was now nothing but a burning metal frame. Chunks of debris fell from the sky, some of it on fire.
“Trevor!” she screamed. “Russ!”
When there was no answer she broke into great sobs and started running toward the destroyed trailer. Carter grabbed her. She fought, but he wouldn’t let go. He tried to fish his phone out of his pocket, which was nearly impossible with Emma screaming and kicking. Beside him, the kid he’d beaten up was wheezing and gurgling.
Eventually he managed to get his phone out and call 911.
“Night, Stan.” It was the last guy from the cement pouring crew. He had clocked off afternoon shift and was heading out past Stan’s door.
“Hmm,” Stan said. He had a spreadsheet open with numbers that needed to be validated before week’s end, but he was getting nowhere fast, because he couldn’t focus. He closed the spreadsheet, shut off the computer.
The cement guy’s footfalls echoed down the hall, followed by the familiar screech and slam of the door.
Five minutes later Stan got up, searched for a particular key on a large ring on his belt, opened a desk drawer, and fetched a plain white plastic card. He was the only one on-premise who had one of these. It was the property of Transport Canada, who regulated the industrial storage of dangerous goods.
He took a series of hallways to a large bay where they kept company trucks and small equipment. There was a hatch in one corner, secured with a deadbolt. The deadbolt had a magnetic card swipe on it.
The hatch led to a small cement room. It had been the first thing built on-site, back when they had needed to demolish several small buildings before starting construction on the new high rise. It was a waterproof, concussion proof storage room for explosives. Only Stan and a few of the managers knew it existed, and only Stan knew that there were still two dozen blocks of C4 in it waiting to be de-commissioned by the proper authorities.
He took a deep breath. The moment he swiped this card an electronic audit would go to a central computer system on the cloud. No plausible deniability once that happened.
He swiped his card and the deadbolt opened with an authoritative crack.
Police and emergency crews swarmed the site. The kid Carter had beaten up was taken away in an ambulance.
Emma was a shaking wreck. Carter wanted to comfort her, but she wouldn’t talk to him, wouldn’t even look at him.
The cops took her home. They handcuffed Carter and led him to a police car. He was told he was being arrested for assault. They read him his rights and asked if he wanted to phone a lawyer. He said no. He was hoping that once he told authorities what had happened he wouldn’t need one.
He spent the night in the drunk tank. Early the next morning, a thick woman in uniform came to tell him he had a phone call.
It was Bill Weidler, calling to say his services at Westworld Publishing were no longer required. Apparently story of his attack on the kid was all over social media, and played into a popular dark narrative online regarding parents being dangerously over-protective of their kids. He, along with crazy violent hockey parents and a few mothers who had recently put contract hits out on their daughters’ enemies, were the new YouTube pariahs.
Carter went back to his cell in a state of shock. He didn’t have any money saved up, and now his reputation was in tatters. How was he going to find another job?
“Little girl,” he said to the air. ” You want to tell me why the fuck you did this to me?”
No answer.
Roughly an hour later a constable showed up, re-cuffed him, and took him to a room furnished with a table and a few plastic chairs that looked like they might have been stolen from a food court.
“I’m Constable Riley,” he said once they were seated. “You sure you don’t want to have a lawyer present?”
“No, that’s alright.”
“Okay then. What brought you to the vicinity of range road one twenty-five and township road eleven at approximately seven thirty-five P.M. last night?”
Carter guessed that was where he’d found Emma. “I’d heard my daughter was out there. I thought she might be in trouble.”
The constable had a yellow sketch pad in front of him. He jotted something down.
“What kind of trouble?”
“Well, I’d heard she had a new boyfriend. I’m recently divorced, so I don’t get to see her much…”
“I know,” the constable said. “Your ex-wife and her… boyfriend? They’re downstairs. They’ve asked to see you after this.”
“Great,” Carter said. “Anyway, I had a hunch that the boyfriend was up to no good, so I followed them out there.”
“Did you know any of the other individuals? Trevor Mathews? Russell Strand? They are the presumed deceased, according to your daughter’s testimony.”
Carter stared at the table. “No. I didn’t even know they would be there.”
“Did you know what they were doing? Why the trailer exploded? Mr. Benning, can you please look at me?”
“I had no idea what they were doing until I got there. I was in the trailer for a few seconds. From the smell I’m guessing drugs.”
“You guess correct.” The constable stared into Carter’s eyes for a few seconds, then asked: “So why did you assault Charlie Granger?”
” I don’t know. Well, that’s not true. My divorce has been a strain on me. I guess I just lost control. I feel terrible. “
Constable Riley closed his sketchpad and leaned closer.
“Mr. Benning, I believe you had the best of intentions going to check on your daughter. I really do. And I can tell by this short conversation that you’re a decent guy, probably a good father. But you took a serious misstep last night. I’ve seen people just like you, good folks, skip right down the path to self-destruction. You need to give that some thought. “
Carter remained silent.
“Alrighty,” Constable Riley said, rising from his chair. “That ends question time. Let’s get you back to your cell.”
The morning Carter was having his discussion with Constable Riley, Stan Riggs was scoping out the downtown offices of Reynold, Smith, and Lawson. His focus was on Lawson, as in James Lawson, the lawyer whose name was on the legal papers he’d received. Reynold and Smith might get tied up in this by the end but Stan didn’t feel bad about that; he didn’t care for lawyers in general.
He pulled the Miata into the front parking lot, backing into a stall. He planned to go inside and get the lay of the land, but now he was nervous, unsure if he even wanted to get out of the car.
“Don’t worry,” a voice whispered in his ear. It was his voice, only different — calm and focused, how he wished he sounded in real life. “You’re psyching yourself out.”
“It’s too exposed,” he said out loud. “I’ll park in the undergound parkade instead.”
“Good idea.”
He headed toward the parkade entrance. The voice was right, he was just playing games with himself. He would go inside and walk the path he planned to follow on the day. Then he would go home, have a few drinks, call the law office, and make an appointment.
But first he would take the Miata for a spin on the highway. He had to admit, it was a fun little machine.
Carter was uncuffed and taken to meet with Bev and James in a white tiled common area where the furniture was bolted to the ground. Emma wasn’t there.
“She’s still in shock about the boys who died,” Bev said. “I don’t think they were that close, but still. She wants to be alone.”
“I’m sure she’s pissed at me,” Carter said. Neither of them argued. He eyed James. “And why are you here?”
Bev began to retort, but James stopped her.
“I’m here as a lawyer, Carter. I heard that you refused legal counsel. That’s not wise. I can offer you my services pro bono.”
“Not necessary,” Carter said.
“You should really reconsider…”
“I would like to speak with Bev. Alone.”
James nodded and left the room.
Bev said, “First off, I want to say that James and I both understand why you want Emma to stay away from Charlie. Neither of us like him.”
“You’re going to apply for adjustment to custody, aren’t you.”
“Just for the time being. Cart, they’re showing Charlie’s beaten up face all over the news. You broke that kid’s jaw. I think you need some time to come to terms with that.”
“Did Emma say she didn’t want to see me, or was that your decision?”
Bev stared at her hands.
“Okay,” he said. He had nothing more to say, so he waved at the guard, who escorted him back to his cell.
He was released on his own recognizance the next day. He was told not to go anywhere for a while, at least until any forthcoming assault charges were dealt with. He was amenable to that.
Where was he going to go?
Adrian called a week later.
“I saw you on the news, and figured you needed some time. Listen, I don’t care about what happened. We don’t even have to talk about it.”
“Thanks,” Carter said. “I appreciate that.” And he did.
“You shouldn’t be alone,” Adrian said. “Why don’t you come and stay with me for a while?”
“No, no, I’m fine.”
“I insist,” Adrian said. “Listen, my bachelor lifestyle is not as glamorous as I make out. I could use the company.”
So Carter let his apartment go and moved into a spare room in Adrian’s tenth-floor apartment suite. Adrian’s place was freshly renovated, and filled with expensive leather furniture of the kind only a bachelor with no kids or pets could get away with.
Carter looked for work in earnest, but he wasn’t getting any calls back. He avoided going online, but he knew anyone who Googled his name would get a very unflattering impression of him.
Eventually he sold his car for five hundred bucks, so now he was limited to pounding the pavement on foot or by bus. He’d used public transit a lot in his younger years, but now, sitting next to people who looked like they might be listening to voices in their heads, he wondered how he had ever stood it.
Jobless and starting to feel like a leach, he eventually left of his own accord, despite Adrian’s protests. He still had some money in the bank. He was just having a stroke of bad luck. Things would turn around.
He moved into a cheap motel that smelled like spilled beer and cigarettes. Loud domestic squabbles played through the walls almost every night.
The subpoena for his assault on Charlie Granger arrived one day in the form of a short, smiling gentleman wearing a light grey suit. A few weeks later, Carter entered a guilty plea on the charge of Assault and Battery. He was ordered to pay Charlie’s medical fees and was put on a monthly payment schedule with the court. The joke was on them, because his own legal bills had drained his account.
He hadn’t heard from Emma or Bev in nearly two months. He was too ashamed of his current situation to call them.
He left the motel for good on a Friday afternoon, spending the last of his pocket change on a coffee and a doughnut from the Tim Horton’s across the street.
It was still warm, nearing the end of August. He spent the rest of the afternoon meandering downtown, window shopping and trying to convince himself that everything would be alright. It felt good to be around smiling middle-class people going about their lives. His tribe. As night fell, he wandered over the High Level bridge to the university area where he imagined it was safer after dark.
After a struggle of dignity, which he lost due to exhaustion, he curled up on a park bench and lapsed into a troublesome sleep.
It was the night before the end of the world, and Stan was treating himself.
He’d eaten anything he wanted all day. Cathy had kept him on a strict low-salt, low-fat diet, doctor’s orders. No more. He’d eaten a McDonald’s full pancake platter for breakfast, a triple burger with cheese and large fries and shake from Fatburger for lunch, and a steak dinner at Von’s for dinner, paired with a hundred dollar bottle of red wine that he’d polished off at the table.
He’d gone to the strippers afterward, something he hadn’t done since he was a kid. The girls were younger than he remembered. He’d felt like a pervert at first, until he realized a good portion of the patrons were his age or older.
Now he was back in his basement watching an old porn tape on the projector. This was the last remaining VHS from a much larger collection he’d gotten rid of when he’d met Cathy. He had stashed this one in the bottom of his toolbox. It was so old that the ladies still had all their pubic hair.
Half a dozen empty cans of Bud littered the coffee table.
He had taped a picture of Cathy below the projector screen, a shot from almost ten years ago, when they had been in Hawaii at a luau.
“So long, Cath,” he said, tipping his beer, slosing a little on the carpet. “Hope you and your fuckin’ Casanova friend have a good life together.”
“You’re better off without her,” the voice in his head said.
He was surprised to feel a tear slide down his cheek. It wasn’t sadness. Not exactly. He was feeling equal parts anger and nostalgia, a heady mixture close to righteousness.
He had started the day with reservations, but he no longer had any doubts.
Carter woke with leaves in his hair. Apparently the evening had been windy. He sat up and worked his hands through his mane.
In front of his bench sat a few quarters and a loonie in a little pile. Jesus Christ. He considered leaving it there, then thought again and scooped it up. He needed a morning coffee.
On the way to the Timmy’s he stopped in front of a shop with a large glass front that acted as a half decent mirror. He looked at himself. His greying hair shot off in a half dozen different directions. The patchy beard that he usually shaved off every morning was on display.
He would find a place to clean up, maybe sneak into the shower at a public pool or something. Then, as soon as he had a few extra bucks, he would buy a razor and shave. He was not going to let himself slide. He was going to get back on his feet.
Timmy’s was busy. As he stood in line, he tried to ignore the feeling that people were staring at him. He got his coffee and doughnut and headed outside to find a place to sit.
That was when he saw his old car drive past and park in a lot across the street. It was his car, no mistaking. The crumple in the back fender gave it away. What were the odds?
The car’s rear passenger door opened. Someone stepped out.
Clark jerked, spilling his coffee all over the sidewalk. A couple walking by gave him a nasty look and a wide berth.
The guy who’d gotten out of the car was big, definitely not the stringy teenage who had bought the car. This guy had blackwork tats down both arms, and a buzzcut. There was no mistaking: this was Trevor Clarke, deceased in a trailer explosion. Carter hadn’t gotten a great look the day of the explosion, but he’d seen shots of Clarke and his buddy Russell Black online. Trevor stood in the sunshine, his legs planted wide, his beefy arms crossed over his chest.
Someone else slid out of the open door: a lanky kid with long-hair, wearing an acid-dyed shirt. He leaned against the car. This was Russell Black, also deceased.
The driver’s door opened, and the mystery girl came skipping around the front of the car, her cream dress rippling in the breeze.
Carter was on the run before he knew it, his coffee and doughnut forgotten. He weaved around people on the sidewalk, bounced off a few of them. People yelled at him to look where he was going.
He looked back as he ran. Trevor and Russ were after him all right, running full-tilt, their fit young bodies throwing them relentlessly forward. There was no way he was going to outrun them. Worse, they didn’t have to dodge pedestrians – like mirages, they were passing right through them. Trevor performed what should have been a spectactular side-check on a white-haired old woman going in the opposite direction, only there was no collision because his side dispersed as if it were so much coloured fog, only to pull back into a solid form once the woman had passed. Everyone acted as if the running boys weren’t there.
Because they aren’t, Carter thought.
The little girl rode piggy-back atop Trevor Clarke’s shoulders. She was smiling like a child at a parade.
Carter pushed himself. He should have been looking forward, but he was unable to peel his eyes from the horror coming up behind him. He ran full-tilt into something fleshy and unmoving. He bounced off, landing painfully.
“Holy cow!” a young passer-by exclaimed. “You okay, old man? What happened?”
Carter didn’t answer. He was too focused on what had stopped him. Trevor Clarke stood before him, as tall and solid as a brick wall. The girl was laughing silently, as if she were a television on mute. Russ, beside his mate, was also laughing, first throwing his head back, then buckling forward, hands on hips.
Of course, Carter thought. They’re ghosts. They can appear wherever they want. The chase was nothing but a game to them.
Carter was on his knees, trying to recapture the air that had been knocked out of him, when Trevor squatted, reached out, and put his big hands around Carter’s throat; he might have been so much fog before, but now his grip was solid. He began to squeeze. Carter tried to resist, but his hands slipped through Trevor’s arms as if they weren’t there. The world was turning grey around the edges as Carter struggled for breath.
“What’s going on?” the passer-by asked. “Are you choking on something? Should I call 911?”
Trevor let go just as bright dots were drowning out Carter’s vision. The world swam back into view. Carter coughed and sputtered.
“No,” he said, his voice a harsh whisper. “I’m okay.” The passer-by gave him an uncertain look and went on his way.
“Okay,” Carter said to Trevor. “I get it. You can hurt me. What do you want?”
He was driving his old car across the High Level Bridge, toward downtown. He had stolen it back; that thought, the absurdity of it, rattled in his skull. Who does such a thing? A mad man, that’s who. Surely the scrawny kid who owned it had come back to the parking lot by now, found an empty spot where he’d left his car, and called the cops.
It was morning rush hour. Traffic was barely moving. He stared at the LRT as it zoomed over its own bridge, packed with students going to the university. It all seemed so damn normal.
He didn’t want to look at his passengers – the two boys in the back, the girl beside him. They were figments of his imagination.
“You aren’t real,” he announced. “Figments of my imagination!” This was more for his own peace of mind; the spirits had no response.
“All I’ve ever wanted to do was make sure Emma grew up right,” he said. He was speaking to the little girl, though he didn’t look at her. “Is that too much to ask? Then you come along and fuck everything up.
“I just wish you would tell me what you want. If you told me, maybe I could help.”
Still no response.
“It’s not fair. You know, a year ago I had a pretty normal life. I knew how things were going to go for the next five years, and it was good.” He remembered the fights he and Bev had engaged in back then. “Okay, not all good. But at least I had it under control. But this…” He had to stop for a moment because he was tearing up. He wasn’t a crier. What the hell was happening to him? “This is out of control. I don’t want to end up like one of those guys I see living on street benches, their lives nothing but a disjointed dream…” More crying. Christ. He wiped at his eyes.
Traffic began to move. He made it across the bridge. The little girl pointed for him to turn west on 104th avenue, then north on 124th. He was starting to get an idea of where they were headed, and he hoped like hell that he was wrong.
Emma and her mom were in James’s office. He had invited them for lunch. It was a PD day, so Emma was off school, and her mom, a substitute teacher, had the day as well.
“Just need to file a few things,” James said, not taking his eyes off his computer, “then I’m free to go.”
Emma had never been in James’s office before. She was snooping, checking out the books (all lawyer stuff, blech) and the knick-knacks — a gold pen on a stand, a model of a sports car, other relics of James’s life up to now. Bored, she started wandering aimlessly through the room. She was staring out the window when she saw a familiar car pull into the parking lot below.
“Dad’s here! I just saw his car!”
Her mom stared at her. “You sure?”
“It was his Nova, Mom. It had the crumpled back fender and everything.”
“Almost done here…” James said.
But Emma was already gone.
Appointment day found Stan sitting in the Miata, frustrated with his own perspiration. It wasn’t even hot out. He was calm. So why was he sweating so much? He pulled a hanky from his pocket and wiped at his lip, his forehead.
He was in the underground parkade, in a dark corner of an empty floor. In the dim light he could see the glock in his lap. He lifted it, felt it’s heft. His hand began to shake. He steadied it with the other one.
He’d thought early on of just showing up and shooting, but that would have been wrong. He wanted to talk to Lawson first. He had things he needed to say.
He opened his door, rose from the car, tucked the gun into the front of his pants. The guy who’d sold it to him had told him never to carry it like that — you were likely to blast your own cock off, he’d said. Stan no longer cared about such things. It felt comfortable there, and it would be easy enough to get to when the time came.
An engine roared above him. Somebody making their way down the levels of the parkade.
No worries, he told himself. Keep walking. It’s just someone coming to park, and you’re just a guy going to an appointment.
The car came around the corner. Instead of slowing down, it sped up, careening toward him, the sound deafening.
In the final seconds before the collision, Stan saw everything. The driver looked terrified. There was a little girl in the passenger seat beside him, her eyes barely bobbing over the dashboard. Two young men sat in the back seat, apparently unmoved by the drama unfolding around them.
The car’s bumper snapped both his femurs. He smashed into the windshield, did a rag doll cartwheel over the car, and landed headfirst on the cement with a meat hammering thud.
Carter woke in a haze of pain. He was alone now, the car silent. There was a large bloody hole in the windshield, and smoke billowed from the ruined front end, cloaking everything in a sooty fog.
He had meant to park, but the little girl had mashed her foot on the accelerator and tugged at the wheel.
He pushed his door open, fell out of the car, picked himself up.
“Stop right there!” someone shouted. There was a security guard by the stairwell, a boy no older than seventeen, brandishing a long black flashlight like a club.
Carter raised his hands. “I’m not armed.”
There was a body on the ground in an enormous puddle of blood. The body of the man he’d hit. A few feet from the body lay a gun.
There were echoing footfalls. Bev, Emma, and James came around the corner.
“Dad!” Emma squeaked, her eyes saucers. “What happened?”
Carter closed his eyes. A moment ago this had been his nightmare. His alone.
“Have you called 911?” James asked the guard.
“Affirmative,” the guard said.
Suddenly, Carter had the sense that someone was watching him from behind. He turned.
The little girl was sitting on the trunk of a red Miata parked in the corner. She was smiling, her cream dress splayed about her like a Christmas tree skirt.
“I think there’s something in the trunk of that car,” Carter said, pointing.
“Don’t move!” the guard shouted.
“I’m going to move,” Carter said.
“Don’t!” the guard screamed, his voice rising an octave. He bounced on the spot but seemed unable to summon any forward momentum.
James wrapped his arms around Bev and Emma and ushered them back up in the direction they’d come. Emma tried to resist, but James whispered something to her, and after a concerned glance at her father she went with him.
“The cops will be here any minute!” the guard screamed.
“Please,” Carter said. “Just let me check the car. It’s important.”
“No! Don’t move!”
Carter ran toward the corpse. The guard yelped, did a sort of jumping jig, and waved his flashlight, but went nowhere. Carter fished the keys from the dead man’s pocket, sprinted to the Miata, opened the trunk. There were stacks of grey clay bars in the trunk, covered with a web of wires. There was an LED display at the center, which read 00:04:15. The final two numbers were counting down the seconds.
Carter doubted there was any way to disarm the bomb. Not in four minutes, at any rate. He’d seen enough episodes of Mythbusters to know what the clay was and what it could do.
“We need to get out of here!” he shouted to the guard.
“Stop!” The guard shouted again, still doing his jig, his eyes so wide they were ringed white.
Carter got into the Miata, started it up. He wasn’t at all surprised to see the little girl beside him. He looked in the rear-view mirror. No boys, just him and her. She put her small hand on his forearm and he felt its warmth.
He pulled out of the parking lot, leaving the spastic guard behind, squealing around the corners of three floors of polished concrete. He passed many astonished faces in vehicles pulling into the parkade, but at this hour nobody was going out but him. He pushed the accelerator too hard when he hit open air, nearly spun out of control, pulled it back. Rush hour traffic had abated; he needed to weave, but he had room. He ran a red light, barely missed a spectacular collision with a blue Honda Accord, saw the frightened, screaming face of the older man behind the wheel. A box truck cut in front of him, forcing him to jump the curb and take out three parking meters before hopping back onto the road. Luckily the sidewalk was empty.
He was heading toward a nearby construction area, future home of a business complex called the Minion Building. He had passed it several times back when he had been looking for work. There had been a write-up in the paper about how construction had been halted over some land dispute. The picture of the site had shown the building’s enormous foundation, the only thing completed before work had been shut down. It was probably going to be underground parking eventually, but in the shot it had looked like an enormous square mouth that might have reached to the center of the earth; even from the camera’s severe angle you couldn’t see the bottom of it. He prayed it would contain the explosion.
Carter had been a planner all his life, never rushing into things. He and Bev had dated for three years before deciding to marry. They had planned to have Emma, and later the three of them had planned for Emma to go to veterinary school. He had always considered it prudent to have a good map of the future.
Now, at this absurdly late moment, he realized that he hadn’t been planning all those years at all. He had been delaying, dragging his feet. Against what? The unknown. The end. We all have the same fear, he thought, when it comes down to it – that our end will come too soon, and, worse, it will make no sense at all.
Now, as the Miata slid sideways through the gravel, he had no intention of delaying. He was terrified the explosion would happen any moment and at the same time he didn’t even know if the bomb was real. He couldn’t take any chances, though. His harried mind saw people walking along the sidewalk less than a half block away, unaware of the unfolding drama. Apartment buildings surrounded the construction site. In a controlled explosion there would have been barriers erected to contain damage. No barriers today. If the massive amount of explosive in the trunk of this car blew here in the open, there would definitely be casualties, quite possibly deaths.
The little girl hugged his arm, her face buried in his side as if she were stealing herself for what was about to happen. She was real, he was sure of this now. Not a figment of his imagination. She was meaning incarnate, proof he was making the right decision. Something was happening here that was bigger than him, and maybe he would never understand it. Maybe it didn’t matter.
“You ready?” he said, his eyes steady on the path ahead as he straightened the car and pointed it like a missile toward the bottomless hole. He felt her tighten her grip. “Here we go.”
The Miata dropped into the abyss like a stone thrown in the ocean. It was roughly halfway to the dark bottom before it tore itself apart, the resulting shrapnel embedding itself deep in the walls. The shockwave bowed the foundation, shattering it, causing wide vertical rips that stretched its full depth. Later a reporter would remark that it looked like Godzilla had pummelled it to pieces.
Some nearby windows shattered. Several car alarms blared. A block away, an elderly woman who was taking her small dog for a walk fell when the ground shook and broke her wrist.
And that was the extent of the damage beyond the smoking pit.
The funeral was packed. Most in attendance hadn’t known Carter Benning at all; they were people who had seen the YouTube video recorded by a bird watcher who happened to live in an apartment adjacent to the Minion Building construction site.
“Nothing but the blue jays today, I’m afraid,” he’d said in the video, sighing. Then: “Wait, what’s this?” He scanned his phone camera to catch the Miata just as it breached the foundation. It looked like a Matchbox car pushed by a child, arching forward just as it dipped out of sight. Moments later the phone picked up an extended, saturated crackle, and the image evolved into blurry nonsense, then settled on a middle-aged man with a wide, square face and a scruffy auburn beard – the birdwatcher himself.
“My lord!” he said. “Let’s go see what that was about!”
The video cut off there; apparently whatever the bird watcher had gone to see had been so absorbing that he’d forgotten to turn his phone back on and record it. This video had garnered around two hundred thousand hits in the week since the explosion.
Besides the lookie-loos at the funeral, there was the media. News reporters had set their cameras up at the back of the church. The funeral director, one Benjamin Tiller, had come to James and Bev to ask if he should tell them to leave. They told him not to bother. Without the media attention, Carter’s funeral would have been all but empty.
A few people from Carter’s past workplace had come — one pencil necked man with round glasses who had introduced himself to James as Bill, and a skinny red-haired girl named Janice. Carter’s cousin, Rhonda Steward, had come from Medicine Hat. She had told James that as far as she knew she was Carter’s only living blood relative for thousands of miles. She thought they shared an uncle in Ontario, but she wasn’t sure he was still alive. Bev had invited some of her family to fill pews, and when James had given her a queer look about it she had explained that everyone on her side had liked Carter well enough. As James had suspected, though, asking people to take time off work to attend the funeral of a man they barely knew and were no longer related to was a stretch; three of them had shown up.
Everyone was seated now. The music began. The funeral director was going to say a few words, and then James was going to give the eulogy.
They had decided that James should deliver the eulogy since he was a professional public speaker. Emma had wanted to do it, but in the end she had been overruled.
“I should be doing the eulogy,” she said now, a strained whisper meant for James and Bev but easily overheard by everyone in their pew. She stood up – she looked lovely in her grey dress, her hair coifed, light make-up – nearly tripped over a few people as she made her way to the center aisle, and clomped out of the church. People stared. Cameras panned.
Bev started to rise. James put a hand on her shoulder.
“Let her go,” he said. “She’ll be back when she’s ready.”
He pulled a Kleenex from a pack in his suit pocket and wiped sweat from his brow. He hated funerals more than most. His last one had been his daughter’s, and he had been a nervous wreck, unable to speak.
He pulled his wallet out of his front pocket and retrieved a photograph that he kept tucked behind his credit cards. Sometimes looking at it calmed his nerves. It was Tara, on her seventh birthday, in front of his ex-wife’s house, on her bike. She wore her birthday gift from her mom, a cream dress with flowers stitched in an inter-locking pattern along the bottom hem. Eight months later she would be dead from glioblastoma, a brain cancer common enough in adults but rare in children. They would bury her in that dress.
The funeral director was wrapping up. James stood up, put the picture away, and made his way to the front podium.
“Today we are here to honour Carter Benning, by all accounts a caring husband and father. I will admit that I didn’t know him very well. I am his ex-wife’s new guy friend, you see, an arrangement that rarely leads to successful male bonding.” A few polite laughs. “But as I’m sure you all know, Carter lost his life in an incredible act of courage and selflessness.” A smatter of clapping. The news cameras made buzzing noises that reminded James of mosquitoes. He tried to ignore them, found he couldn’t. He was sweating again. “He likely saved the lives of numerous strangers. How many, we will never know.”
He paused to dab again at his forehead and take a drink of water. He focused on Bev in the crowd. She was smiling. He saw Emma at the end of the aisle, arms crossed, sulky.
“But today I want…” A lump formed in his throat. His vision blurred. Good god, was he choking up? He took another drink. Cleared his throat. “Today I want to thank Carter, not just for saving those strangers, but for saving me and the two people I care about most in this world. Beverly and Emma Benning.
“Thank you, Carter, from the bottom of my heart. May you rest in peace.”
He had meant to say more, but he needed to sit down. A spattering of applause and some confused looks as he made his way down the center aisle. Ben the funeral director took the podium and thanked James for his kind words.
“Sorry,” he whispered to Bev once he’d taken his seat.
“You were marvelous,” she said.
The burial was small and quiet. Those uninvited to the indoor ceremony had had the good sense not to come to the gravesite.
Emma spoke eloquently about her father, tears streaming from eyes, which gratefully hadn’t been plastered with a thick layer of eyeliner that morning.
The sun shone in a clear blue sky. There was a cooling light breeze. As the casket was lowered into the ground, James reflected on the fact that he was truly the father figure in the family now. He and Bev had had the where is this going conversation, and he had assured her that he was in it for the long haul. They weren’t married yet, but they had plans. So there was no reason Carter’s death should have put any extra pressure on him. But it did, somehow. He felt it, like a physical weight. And he didn’t mind it.
“How about we go get something to eat?” he said afterward, as they walked back to the car.
“I thought you had afternoon meetings?” Bev said.
“I do. I’ll cancel them.”
Bev and Emma both looked at him like he’d lost his mind. James Lawson had never cancelled a client meeting in his life. Not for them, not for anyone.
“What do you say?” he said. “The afternoon is ours.”
“Okay,” Bev said. “You feeling alright?”
“I hope you’re not doing this just to make up for the eulogy thing,” Emma said. “Because I’m pretty much over that already.”
“No,” he said. “Listen, no matter how I’ve been in the past, from now on I’m going to spend quality time with the two of you. You’re my family now.”
Bev hugged him. Emma rolled her eyes and pantomimed gagging.
He was serious. He wasn’t going to take these two ladies for granted anymore, because you never knew how much time you had left.
And life is for the living.