Enter, Night

Billy smelled something inside the rink that made his stomach twist inside him. It was a smell that brought back a memory from St. Rita’s with horrible vividness. It was the smell of rotten pork.

There had been a sausage plant inside the school. All the boys had been forced to work in it at one point or another, manufacturing pork sausage that the priests would sell locally to earn extra money for the school. The priests told the boys their labour was pleasing in the sight of God, and might help redeem them from their fallen Indian state. There was no question of paying the boys, the priests explained, since the Indian children were already subsisting on the charity of the Canadian public and the Church.

Occasionally the pork went bad and had to be thrown out when it was too far gone even to feed to the children.

Fuck, that awful stench, Billy thought, covering his face in the crook of his arm and gagging. But the smell, putrescent though it was, was the smell of active decay. It had no place out here in a charred hockey arena on a snowswept northern Ontario road on the edge of dusk where nothing lived.

Billy felt his foot strike something soft. He shone the light on the ground.

Dave Thomson, still wearing his uniform, lay at Billy’s feet, curled up in a foetal position, eyes closed, apparently fast asleep.

Billy played his light along Thomson’s face and neck, stifling a scream with difficulty. The wounds to Thomson’s throat had been mortal ones: the flesh had been grated away from his jugular area, the flaps of skin hanging like a string of maggots from two ghastly, jagged holes. There was no way Thomson-anyone-could have survived those wounds.

But ghastlier still was the suppleness and rosy texture of the rest of his skin-face, neck, even his hands. It glowed with vitality. When Billy shone the light at just the right angle, he could see the red veins beneath the surface.

To Thomson’s left, Elliot McKitrick slept, nude, his limbs lewdly entwined with those of a blonde woman in a stained pink top and blue jeans.

Billy backed away carefully. As he did, he saw the shadows of still other bodies in similar states of repose, as though the dark arena was some sort of dormitory, or a nest. Billy counted-what, fifteen? Twenty? No, closer to thirty bodies or more scattered around the arena, all of them assuming Thomson’s same restful posture. There were men with the rough, rawboned faces and hands of miners. He saw children lying against the burned boards, arms and legs askew in the way children sleep, some still wearing pyjamas as though they had been plucked out of their beds as they slept. There were women, some nude, some wearing nightgowns, some dressed in bloodstained parkas-not heavy parkas, but just the right temperature for a walk on northern Ontario night on the death-edge of autumn.

Billy’s flashlight picked out the bodies of a man and woman in their early thirties. His body was broken and his face was charred with an ugly cinderous scar that was vaguely cruciform in shape. The woman’s body was curled against the man’s body. Her head lay on his chest in a loving, wifely aspect. Cruel new teeth protruded and lay against her lower lip, lending a vaguely lupine mien to an otherwise loving and maternal face that Billy could easily picture comforting a boy grieving for his lost dog, for Billy had no doubt at all that he’d found Finn’s parents.

Not possible, thought the anthropologist. There are no scientific or material grounds for any of this. Not possible. I refuse to accept this scientific impossibility. I am a tenured university professor. I teach legends and myths. I don’t believe them.

But another voice, colder and infinitely more realistic said: Look around you. Finn was right.

Something swayed above him in the shadows and Billy shone his light towards the roof of the arena. The yellow beam caught a familiar face, a face he had not seen for twenty years almost, but one whose contours and hollows he would be able to pick out of any police lineup, in spite of the wild long hair and the matted red beard-no, not a red beard. Just red.

The body hung from its toes by a broken beam as though he weighed nothing more than a handful of bad dreams, scrawny arms folded across its chest as though it were cold.

“Richard,” Billy whispered. “What the hell?”

Then Weal opened his shining dark red eyes and dropped from the ceiling with balletic grace that struck Billy as beautiful. “Hello, Billy,” he said, opening his arms. “Welcome back.”

Billy said, “You killed my father, you crazy fuck.”

“Yes,” Weal said, winking. “I did. He didn’t put up much of a fight. He was old and frightened. Phenius Osborne was weak. I wanted to use the knives on him, but I didn’t have enough time. Luckily for him, he gave me what I needed. His papers. The book he was writing about the history of St. Barthelemy. I just needed the pages that showed me where to find the Master and how to wake him. And I did wake him. And now,” Weal said, “I’m a god.” He covered his mouth with his fingers and giggled-a horrible, mirthless squealing that made Billy think of nails being dragged across a china dinner plate. “He was a bit of a coward, wasn’t he, your father? He wouldn’t have made a very good Jesuit martyr. No tolerance for pain.” Weal paused, grinning. “How’s your tolerance for pain, Billy? Shall we find out?”

Billy swung the crowbar as hard as he could at Weal’s head. His skull cracked open in a red grapefruit whoomph!, spraying blood and brain matter against the standing beams. Weal’s body pitched backwards on the ground, jerking spasmodically.

Then he sat up and Billy watched the skull reform atop his neck, bones miraculously reassembling themselves, flesh layering upon flesh.

Even his hair is growing back, Billy noted with awe, feeling around in the dark around him for something-anything-to use as a weapon for when this fucking bastard dead thing had decided to finish growing fully back together, which Billy already knew was imminent. His groping hands found something that felt like a charred shovel. Thank God! Billy thought. It’s about time things started going my way here. As Billy raised it to swing at Weal’s body, the weight of the blade of the shovel snapped the wooden handle in two. The blade fell uselessly to the ground, leaving Billy holding a broken pole.

“Jesus fucking Christ!” Billy shouted. “Son of a bitch!”

Fully restored, Weal rose to a predatory crouch. “Now you’re going to die,” he said. “No one is going to miss another dead Indian. At least when I’m finished with you, you’ll have served some useful purpose, as food.”

At the exact moment Weal leaped for his throat, Billy thrust the shovel handle in front of him, plunging it into Weal’s chest as hard as he could.

The skin of Weal’s torso split as easily as had his skull, but this time there was no reforming flesh or miraculously healing bone. Weal shrieked-a high, undulating trill that Billy felt move through the air like electricity. Weal fell back against the rink boards, writhing like a harpooned fish.

Billy picked up the flashlight and shone it at Weal’s body. Black blood gushed from the chest wound, slowing to a trickle as the thrashing stopped and he lay still.

In the shadows beyond the flashlight’s reach, Billy heard the shivering and twitching of the sleeping bodies around him begin to stir and wake.

Oh fuck, he thought. He looked around wildly for another shard of unburned wood to use as a weapon. He still had the crowbar, but he’d already seen how useful that had been against these things.

Without thinking, he reached over and pulled the broken shovel handle out of Weal’s chest. It came out surprisingly easily. He turned away from the body. Using the flashlight’s beam to pick his way through the debris, Billy retraced his way towards the entrance.

By his reckoning, he had almost reached the front of the building when he heard the unmistakable sound of a board being accidentally kicked.

Billy swung the flashlight in the direction of the sound, but there was nothing. He broke into a run. Then he tripped, landing heavily and painfully on the ground, the air driven out of him. The flashlight pinwheeled into the air. It landed with a clatter a few feet away, the light extinguished.

Dark-blind and gasping for breath, Billy crawled in the dirt, feeling around for the shovel handle.

There it is! he thought, the relief bringing him to the verge of pissing himself. Thank God. His fingers closed around the shaft.

From above him, he felt rather than saw the arm that reached down and plucked the shaft of wood out of his grip and tossed it away. Billy heard it land, but he couldn’t gauge where.