Filaria

ChiZine Publications

For my family growing up, and for my family now.

Thanks to Bob Boyczuk and Peter Watts for their help with the manuscript. Special thanks to Brett Alexander Savory for his editing prowess. Produced with the support of the city of Toronto through the Toronto Arts Council.

Babar finally dropped off to sleep, but his sleep was restless and soon
he dreamed
: He heard a knocking on his door. Tap! Tap! Then a voice said: “It is I, Misfortune, with some of my companions, come to pay you a visit.”

— Jean de Brunhoff,
Babar the King

 

“What,” she’ll say, “no little bones in your mouth? And you have the impertinence to love me? Get out, you wretch, and here’s a kick to help you on your way!”

— Albert Cohen,
Belles du Seigneur

Shotgun, eagle-eyed, Young Phister spotted the power outlet, just ahead, mounted on the wall nearest him. Yet travelling this strange, vaulted hallway with McCreedy, he did not immediately recognize the outlet as such and said nothing as the car trundled toward it, nor as the car passed it, but when he could no longer deny what he was now looking back at, he managed to whistle low and point a long finger over his shoulder; hunched at the wheel, McCreedy could not (or would not) see the receding outlet, even with Phister gesticulating and saying in hushed tones, “There. Right there. Look! McCreedy, I
swear
.”

The type of hall might have been almost familiar but neither man had been down this particular stretch before, despite McCreedy’s assurances over the past few hours that now he knew where they were. Possibly, Phister thought, no man had traversed these halls since genesis. Power outlets were located near old service centres, or sometimes directly under those smooth, glassy portions of the ceiling, forever matte and dark, like trapped rectangles of night. Outside doorways, too, especially ones marked with yellow and black stripes.
Always
on the driver’s side. Located in odd places here? Did that have special meaning, offer clues? Any portent?

Sleeping in the car had been cold and uncomfortable. No food, and water dwindling. Dearth of canteens — full scale or standalone — had been the first sign things would be different.

They’d started out once more when daylights came on. McCreedy had told him all morning they were headed home while Phister grew increasingly sure they were getting more hopelessly lost. Though Phister had no sense of direction. He admitted that. Hallways opened where previously there had been none. Rooms vanished overnight. Walls materialized as he turned his back, shifting positions in the periphery.

Now, seeing the outlet here, on the passenger’s side, in an open stretch of this oddly vaulted hallway, in which no one might ever have set foot, thoughts of chaos and insecurities back home — and in his own mind — managed to bring little comfort.

“McCreedy, I’m telling you, stop if you want to fill this thing.”

Between stained dark lips, opening slowly — for they were sealed with gummy saliva — McCreedy’s wet voice, at last, assenting: “You’re the eyes. I don’t see fuck all but what do I know? Shut you up, we’ll stop.”

So they stopped.

Reversing, a long, smooth arc, brought the wall on Phister’s side closer. Rubber tires crunched lightly over dusty flags.

“There,” Phister said, pointing again. “See?”

Square, black, showing signs of polish through the grey clinging growth and marked down one side with copper script: clearly an outlet. Overgrown, unused for centuries, perhaps, or never, but for all appearances the same as others mounted in more familiar locations, back home.

The car was near exhausted. It had another hour or two left, at most. Phister suspected that old man McCreedy would have kept on driving until the vehicle ran out of juice, then got out and walked, then crawled, claiming until they both collapsed dead that he knew all the while where they were headed, home was just up ahead.

“We’ll reach a junction soon,” he said, as the car idled. “I remember. I was here as a kid. We take a left and come out at an air skirt, down a back hall for a few klicks and emerge in the secondary pipe room. Then home.” Gesturing with a slow sweep of his hand, meant to reassure, but Phister imagined the two of them lost forever. He pictured his own grisly corpse.

In the tiled gutter on the other side of the hall a small creature scurried. Young Phister kept his keen eyes peeled. Some of the older folks said that, like Reena.
Keep them eagle eyes peeled
, she’d say.
You was born with good peepers
. He wished Reena were here with them now. She would know what to do.

McCreedy motioned with his chin but Young Phister was already climbing down to unravel the plug from its stand. Winding the cord around his forearm and fumbling with the plughead against the cool power plate, he felt like a child again, helpless against lurking monsters, waiting in shadows to slash out and take him down, bloody, at the knees. He looked both ways before starting to scrape lichen and the deposits of time from the contacts with a gnawed thumbnail. How far did the world extend anyhow? Hallways and more of these deserted hallways, changing subtly, going on forever?

A mist of sorts lingered over the flags and a dank smell tainted the air, one he had not perceived seated in the car. Light was a little more yellow than he had grown up under, a flickering, sickly glow. Perhaps conduits had broken in the vicinity, long ago. Humidity was cloying and had damaged the ceiling.

“. . . charging . . .”

The car’s whisper startled Phister. The outlet was live, at least. Contact had been made between the plug and the plate. Not many outlets enabled the car to talk —

Phister looked up. He thought he had heard something else, aside from the vehicle’s weak voice. Something out
there
. He took a deep breath.

He tried to stop conjuring threats to his life but as a kid those monsters had filled his cold-sweat dreams. Now, as a man of sixteen, they were hard to shake.

He saw no source of the sound.

He did not hear it again.

The car, meanwhile, had reached sufficient power to address them: “Sirs,” it began, as it always did, when it had these opportunities, “my need of a tune-up and overhaul is
dire
. I implore you to seek the nearest member of MMG. You are — if I may be so bold — grossly abusing a vehicle belonging to the Department of Public Works.

“Are you ill-trained staff? Rogue guests? My i.d. reader seems to have been disabled. Renegades? Or perhaps there’s a problem with your comprehension? Complaints have been logged with my supervisor. I assure you, as soon as network links are restored, you
will
hear about this. If you are staff, your departmental budget will be charged. You will be suspended, pending a hearing. And if you turn out to be guests, you’ll be apprehended, incarcerated, and quite possibly evicted . . .

“Do your parents know where you are?”

With a ghost of a grin Young Phister glanced at McCreedy, but the taciturn expression on the older man’s face — staring forward, jaw thrust from under his mouldy cap — made Phister doubt whether the driver had even heard the car’s rant. Beyond ironic, he thought, to end up like this, with a miserable old man I’ve never liked, hopelessly lost in hostile halls, driving to our mutual demise.

Nausea flickered in the abyss of Phister’s empty stomach, while, on the dashboard, the little battery icon, half-full, flashed steadily.

The car, having said its piece, waited.

McCreedy took some dried moss from an inside pocket of his vest, pushed it into his maw, and chewed. He offered none to Young Phister. The driver was an addict. A damn addict. Phister liked the stuff, sure, but he didn’t have a problem like McCreedy’s: he could stop any time. He watched McCreedy’s mouth moving, watched the old man squint and nod to himself, and mumble. All Phister wanted to hear now was the old man admitting, before they both died, that he, McCreedy, had no clue where they were and never had.