I slip on the boxers and T-shirt left in a pile next to the bed and check on Sam. Still asleep. I pull his door shut and shuffle to the top of the stairs. Only the usual peeps and sighs of an old house. Miles off, a low rumble of thunder.
Downstairs, there’s no sign of disturbance. But why would there be? If someone has forced their way into our home with an intent to do us harm, there’d be little point in overturning a side table or shattering the hall mirror along the way. Still, there’s a comfort in seeing Sam’s playground sneakers sitting side by side on the mat, the stack of envelopes on the bottom step ready to be tossed in the mailbox in the morning. What evil could possibly be strong enough to pass these talismans?
At the base of the stairs, I move as quietly as I can toward the living room at the rear of the house. From here, I can see a sliver of the sliding glass doors that open on to the deck. The rain has started, slow and dense as oil. A soft drumming on the roof.
Then the rain turns to silver.
The motion-sensor lights I had put in last week activated by something in the yard. Not the rain (they’re designed to ignore it), or moving branches (there is no wind). Something large enough to be spotted. Moving from one part of the property to the other. Something I can’t see.
I run to the kitchen and pull a pair of scissors from the butcher’s block, hold them out in front of me as I dash to the glass doors. The lights flick off before I get there. Just three seconds of brightness. Why had I told the guy who installed them to set the timer for
I unlock the door and slide it open. Thrust the scissors out first, as though to sink the blades into the body of rain.
Once outside, the downpour instantly seals my T-shirt to my skin. I keep moving on to the deck. At its edge, I come into range of the motion sensors and the floodlights come on. The back yard suddenly ablaze, so that everything—the thirsty lawn, weed-ridden flower beds running along the fence, the leaning garden shed in the back corner—is translated from grey outlines to harsh specifics. Nothing else. Nothing out of place.
Three seconds later, the lights are off. The yard expanded by darkness.
Waving my arm over my head, I activate the sensor again. Everything as it was. The curtain of rainfall. The dim shape of neighbouring houses.
I have done my duty. Two a.m. and all’s well. Time to go back inside, grab a towel and count sheep.
But I don’t.
Absently this time, I lift my arm high, the scissors held skyward. And once more the lights come on.
To show someone standing in the yard.
A man with his back against the far fence, next to the garden shed. His face shielded by the overhanging branches of the neighbour’s willow. Arms loose at his sides. And at the end of those arms, the creased gloves of his hands.
The lights flick off.
There is no way I could swing my arm up again if it weren’t for Sam. My son, asleep in his bed upstairs. Counting on me to keep the bogeyman away. It’s the thought of Sam that turns the lights on.
But the yard is empty. It’s only the same sad square of real estate as before, a neglected garden and shed with cobwebs sprayed over its window. And no one standing by the back fence. If he was here at all, the terrible man who does terrible things is gone.
20
After seeing a ghost reading my book, after my lunch with Angela, after glimpsing a monster in my own back yard, you’d think I’d be packing up and moving me and Sam to a different time zone by now. But the events of the past few days have instead provided the answer to an age-old question: Why do characters in horror movies go back into the haunted house one more time, even when the audience is shouting
And besides, in my case it’s not the house that’s haunted. It’s me.
When I called Petra back she sounded as though she couldn’t remember who I was.
“Patrick Rush,” I said again. “From the writing circle.
“Oh yes. I wonder if you could come around later this afternoon?”
“I wouldn’t mind knowing what this is about.”
“Say five o’clock?”
“Listen, I’m not sure I—”
“Great! See you then!”
And then she hung up.
I know the sound of someone pretending they’re speaking to someone else on the phone (I’m friends with Tim Earheart, after all, surely one of the best multiple-affair managers in contemporary journalism). But what reason would Petra have to conceal my identity from whoever was in the room with her?
Coming out the doors of the Rosedale station I recall my conversation with Ivan in this same place. It makes me wonder if he is still driving trains underground, still writing about his imaginary metamorphosis, still alone. He might well have been behind the controls of the train that brought me here. The thought of it starts a shiver up my back in the hot sunshine. It’s not necessarily the idea of Ivan himself that does it, but that if Angela and now Petra have come looking for me, how far behind could Ivan and Len be? And if these two wait for me down the line, why not William too?
“Patrick?”
I turn around to find Petra jogging in place. Brand-new trainers on her feet. Hair tied back under a Yankees cap.
“I should warn you, I’m not in the greatest shape.”
“Sorry,” she says, and stops hopping. “I usually go for a run around this time, so I figured I’d come meet you here instead of at the house.”
“We’re not going there?”
“It’s best if we don’t.”
She gives me a pleading look, as though it’s possible that I might not only deny her request, but take her forcibly by the arm and drag her home. I’ve seen versions of the expression on Petra’s face before, though not among society divorcees but the bruised faces of women outside the shelters downtown. Women who have been conditioned to be pleading with all men, and to expect the worst anyway.
“Where would you like to go?”
“Down in the ravine. That’s where I run,” she says. “It’s cooler in the shade.”
“And more private.”
“And more private. Yes.”
