The Killing Circle

(me) in the shade.

But even these happy days are not free of ghosts.

The first arrives in the form of a voice. A phone call near midnight that sounds like it’s coming from a bar.

“Patrick?”

“Who is this?”

“It’s Len.”

“Where are you?”

“The Fukhouse.”

“Why?”

“I’m not too sure. I guess it’s got some sentimental value.”

“This is going to sound stupid, but I have to ask,” I say, squeezing my eyes shut against the bedside lamp I click on. “You’re not dead, are you?”

“No,” Len says after a moment’s thought. “I don’t think so.”

“Where have you been?”

“I just kind of left everything behind and rented places all over town. It was pretty screwed up for a while there.”

“It was.”

“They got him now though.”

“Yeah. They got him.”

He sighs into the receiver. A wet-lipped whistle that tells me that until I just confirmed it for him, Len wasn’t sure if it was over or not.

“You know what’s funny?” he goes on. “I was about to say that maybe I can go home now, but I don’t have a clue where that is. My old landlord threw all my books and comics out at my old place.”

“You can always start again.”

“Start what?”

“Collecting.”

“Yeah. Sure.”

In the background, someone smashes what sounds like a shot glass against the wall.

“Busy night down there?”

“It’s okay,” Len says nervously. “Hey, you doing anything right now?”

“I was getting ready for bed, actually.”

“Is it that late? I was going to ask if you wanted to come out and meet me. To celebrate.”

“Not tonight.”

“Another time.”

This seems to be it. But Len lingers, the loneliness travelling down the line like an invisible weight.

“I guess we’re the only ones left,” he says finally.

“What about Angela?”

“You think she could still be alive?”

“No.”

“Neither do I.”

“Well, here’s to us, Len. To the living.”

“To the living,” Len says, sounding less than certain about who that might be.

The other phantom of August isn’t dead either, but might as well be.

I see him walking back from the corner store one afternoon, Sam gripping my thumb with one hand, and screwing a popsicle into his mouth with the other. A father and son holding hands on a neighbourhood street in summertime. One version of freedom.

We’re passing by the punky hair salon on the corner—the place where Ronald Pevencey once cut and coloured—when a black panel van pulls over against the curb twenty feet ahead of us. Although this part of Queen Street has delivery trucks stopping and starting outside throughout the day, something about it draws my attention. Not any detail, but its utter lack of detail: no business name painted on the doors, no stickers, no rear licence plate. Even the black paint is of an age that has dulled its finish to an old chalkboard.

I slow our pace as the distance between us and the van shrinks to a couple of strides. Neither driver nor passenger doors have opened, and the angle of the side mirrors doesn’t let me see who sits up front. But it’s the back of the van that radiates trouble. The two rear windows webbed with dust, along with streaks of something else. Dried smears running from the top of the glass to the bottom. Rain. Or solvent rubbed off of work gloves. Or bare hands split open in an effort to scratch through the glass.

“Why are we stopping, Dad?”

I’m thinking of an answer—It’s such a nice day, I just want to turn around and go home the long way—when I see him. William’s face against the van’s back window.

I pull Sam against me. His popsicle drops to the sidewalk.

Nobody sees William but me.

And even I’m not seeing William. He’s in a solitary confinement cell somewhere, awaiting sentencing. Because there will be no trial. Not now. Not after he pleaded guilty and agreed to sign a written confession just days ago. All that’s left to be determined is how many consecutive life sentences he will serve.

So it’s not William whose lips are stretched into an oval, his tongue pressed white against the glass in a silent scream. But this doesn’t stop me from scuffling backwards to slam my shoulders against the hair salon windows.

This is what terrifies me about the van: not William, but what horrors have taken place within it. The sort of things that would frighten even William. And there’s his face to prove it. Never before showing anything but veiled threat—coal-eyed, beard-shrouded—yet now stretched with panic.

The van spews exhaust. When it clears, William isn’t there. But the wet circle his tongue cleared on the glass still is. Was there to begin with.

With a lurch, the van re-enters the lane of moving traffic. A half-block on, it makes a turn and is gone.

Sam kicks the melted pool of popsicle goo against the wall. Takes my hand to lead me home. He doesn’t ask what I think I saw. He doesn’t have to. As with the bad man who lives in the bedroom closet, if you can just hold on to what you know is real, he can’t hurt you.

29

The summer ends with a string of identically perfect days, as though in apology for its earlier abuses. A lulling, blue-skied week of becalmed downtown traffic and evenings of clear air flavoured by barbecue smoke. All the uncertainties and worries of what has come before—not just for the especially beleaguered Rushes, but for all who wander, grinning, down the city’s streets—are put into more manageable perspectives. Everyone wishing for this to go on forever.

And then, abruptly, it’s Labour Day weekend. Overnight, there’s an autumnal coolness in the air, the leaves trade half their green for gold. Now’s the time. The chalky taste of Back to School days tells us this. If there’s something fun you’ve been meaning to get around to, do it now.

It’s how Sam and I decide to go to the Mustang Drive-in dusk-’til-dawn. The last show of the season at a place Tamara and I used to make the trip to, sneaking in a bottle of white wine under the seat and making out like