hundreds, or even thousands, of years ago. It looked too narrow to be an animal burrow, and he doubted Sadie would have had the reaction she did to a snake.
Finn stamped gingerly on the ground and, finding it solid, stamped again.
He knew that Parr’s Landing, like many former nineteenth-century mining towns, was honeycombed with underground tunnels. Some of the tunnels were so old they could no longer be located on modern surveyor’s maps, and there had always been tales in town of children wandering into the bush, falling through overgrown mine shaft covers. Finn had long suspected the stories were apocryphal, the primary intention being to keep small children close to home. No one he knew could recall a specific instance of it happening to anyone
He leaned down to pull away some of the smaller rocks and fallen detritus of dead leaves and fallen branches, and the curious and entirely illogical thought came to him that he was disturbing a grave.
Reaching out with his right hand to lift away the first branch, he heard a piercing shriek of terror that was almost human erupt directly behind him.
He screamed involuntarily and turned around to see Sadie launching herself in the air, her black body twisting as though trying to catch something in her jaws, something hovering above her head, something that Finn could not see, however wildly he whipped his head back and forth. Again and again Sadie leaped and snapped, twisting her body into an epileptic funnel of black fur and sharp white teeth.
Then she lay prostrate on the ground and howled, peal after banshee peal, till Finn-now badly frightened himself, though still not sure of what-bolted past Sadie towards the trail, shouting at the top of the lungs for her to
The Labrador was on her feet like a gunshot, galloping behind Finn as though pursued. Neither looked back-not until Finn’s lungs felt like they were burning, not until both boy and dog were well within sight of the familiar path that led around the lake, and not until they’d taken the turn that led towards the safety of home.
CHAPTER NINE
Through the windshield of his blue Ford Ranger XLT pickup, Billy Lightning saw the dark- haired boy with the black dog close at his heels tearing out of the woods as though they were being chased by the Devil himself. From the direction the boy was running, Billy knew he’d come from the vicinity of Bradley Lake. Billy felt a snake-strike of sharp dread, but immediately dismissed it as unwarranted.
The boy was probably late for school or something, or for breakfast. He chided himself for living so much in his head that he automatically assumed the worst. On the other hand, if one were going to automatically imagine the worst about anything, especially right about now, Parr’s Landing would be the place.
Billy turned left onto Main Street, then, thinking better of it, took the network of rural roads that allowed him to circle the town at a more leisurely pace. His eyes restlessly scanned the tree line behind the houses he just passed, seeking out the omnipresent boreal forest beyond it that always seemed to be waiting hungrily to grow wild again, perpetually on the verge of reclaiming the land from the settlers who’d forced something never meant to be domestic into subjugation.
Billy couldn’t decide if this restless cruising in the truck was some inherited hunter’s instinct, or if he was just delaying the inevitable, which was walking through the front doors of the police station in Parr’s Landing and telling the constable in charge that something terrible had woken up and was, even now, slouching towards his town.
Police Constable Elliot McKitrick looked up from his paperwork when the tall, broad- shouldered Indian, wearing a leather jacket over a lumberjack shirt tucked into old blue jeans, came through the door. The man’s thick black hair was tied back in a neat ponytail. His features were refined and vaguely ascetic, and the horn-rimmed glasses he wore lent him a scholarly air. He looked anywhere on either side of forty-five. The leather jacket looked expensive and was certainly not from around here.
For Elliot McKitrick, who was not without certain ingrained cultural prejudices when it came to Indians, the authoritative demeanour of the man coming towards him struck him immediately. The man carried himself as though he were accustomed to going where he pleased and being listened to when he spoke. Elliot disliked him instantly.
“Help you, sir?” Elliot asked politely, betraying none of his private assessments.
“Yes,” Billy said. “I’d like to see the officer in charge, please. My name is William Lightning.”
“That would be Sergeant Thomson, Mr. Lightning. He’s currently away from his desk. Is there something I might help you with?”
Billy sighed. “When will he be back? It’s rather important.”
“Couldn’t say, sir. He was on an out-of-town call early this morning in Gyles Point. I suspect he’ll be in later on today. I’d suggest you wait-” Elliot shrugged, indicating the hard-looking wooden bench near the doorway of the station. “-but it might be a while. Perhaps you’d like to tell me what this is all about, or else come back later on today when the sergeant is back at his desk?”
Billy hesitated, as if unsure of how much information to share. “May I ask, have you had any unusual occurrences in the area lately?”
“Unusual, how?” Elliot replied warily. “What do you mean?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Billy said in a neutral voice. “Prowlers, break-ins, anything like that?”
Elliot stiffened. “Sir, that’s not the sort of information we randomly share with just anyone who walks in off the street. Is there a specific reason you’re asking? If there is, I recommend that you tell me right away. This isn’t sounding very good for you from my point of view right now.”
Now it was Billy’s turn to bristle. “I beg your pardon, constable? What do you mean by that, please?”
“Sir,” Elliot said, putting a slight patronizing emphasis on the word “sir” that made Billy seethe inside, “an Indian comes into this detachment office and asks me if we’ve had any break-ins, but won’t tell me why. If there had been any break-ins, I’d have to wonder why you knew about them, and why you were asking about them. As it happens, there haven’t been any, but I’d still like to know why you’re asking.”
“I’ll leave my name,” Billy said coldly. “Please ask Sergeant Thomson to call me when he’s back.” He wrote
“Where are you staying?”
Billy noted that the policeman had omitted the word “sir” this time. “I’m going to check into the Golden Nugget motel,” he said. “On the edge of town, near the road in.”
“I know where the Golden Nugget is, Mr. Lightning. I live in this town.”
“
When he reached the door, Billy turned back. The look he caught in Elliot McKitrick’s eyes before he quickly glanced back down at his paperwork was like a slap across the face. It had been decades since he’d seen that look, or felt the way it was intended to make him feel.
For one vertiginous moment the present fell away and Billy saw himself reflected in the cop’s eyes: a small bronze boy with a crude bowl haircut cut and fearful eyes-one child among fifty other children marching in two flanks through the streets of Sault Ste. Marie, all with the same bowl haircut, dressed in identical woollen jackets the colour of cardinal’s wings flashing crimson in the winter sun.
He let the door of the police station slam behind him as he stepped into the street and crossed over to where his truck was parked. Only when he opened the driver’s side door and stepped up into the seat did he realize he was shaking.
Morgan Parr had awakened at six a.m. in her canopy bed in her new room at Parr House feeling entirely rested for the first time in months. She stretched languorously and wiggled her toes under the yellow silk duvet. She’d glanced out the window and seen that it was still dark outside. Unlike the neon-spackled darkness at home in the city, this northern darkness was absolute and unyielding. She thought perhaps she detected a band of lighter black, not quite yet grey, in the eastern window.
So tired had Morgan been the night before, after the final leg of their journey north, that she’d barely registered her surroundings before falling into a thick sleep. Now, she took the room’s measure slowly, one luxurious detail at
