In the First Early Days of My Death (12 page)

Worst of all, my library books were overdue.

At first, it had given Evelyn some small satisfaction to look up the love spells in the very library where Wendy worked. Evelyn had despised Wendy from the moment she'd heard about her. The day Alika came home with the books about perennial flowers, he'd talked too much about her, mentioned her name too many times, and Evelyn had gone straight down to the library to take a look for herself. Wendy wasn't much to look at. Mouse-brown hair and a sunburned nose. An irritating manner — that dumb, breezy way she gabbed with her co-workers, that dippy way she grinned at the little kids. But in a matter of days she had stolen Alika away from Evelyn. Evelyn was no longer welcome at Alika's house. He was always too “busy” to see her. He told her he didn't think things were “working out” between them.

There was a poetic justice in using the computers at Wendy's branch to steal him back. As she did her research, copying incantations into her notebook, Evelyn kept tabs on Wendy and eavesdropped on her conversations. She knew when Wendy got engaged, when she got married, what Alika had given her for Christmas. She knew all about Wendy, and Wendy had no idea who she was or what she was up to. Or so Evelyn had believed. By the time spring arrived, she was no longer so sure about that.

It was the garden that finally clued Evelyn in to the truth. There was no way any normal person could grow such a garden in that soil, in this city. As she'd watched the seedlings sprout and rise so quickly toward the sun out of that clay-based muck, she realized that Wendy had some sort of unspeakable power. So
that
was why Evelyn's rituals never succeeded. She remembered that once, in the library, when she'd been copying the recipe for a potion from the computer screen, Wendy had walked by, right behind her. At the time, Evelyn had smirked a little. Poor, unsuspecting Wendy! But now she wondered whether Wendy hadn't been reading over her shoulder. Maybe Wendy had launched a counterspell. Wendy was blocking her. Wendy had enchanted Alika somehow, made him immune to Evelyn's magic.

So Evelyn had begun to search the sites for something stronger, something to aim at Wendy, instead of at Alika. That's how, just this spring, a few short months ago, she'd discovered the binding spells.

The instructions for the first binding spell were complicated and required a lot of equipment. It took Evelyn a long time to copy the whole thing off the screen, and it took her several days to collect a black candle, black felt, cotton balls, a metre of red ribbon, and the ingredients for the banishing oil, including pepper oil gum, which Evelyn had never heard of before. In the meantime, she resorted to entering the house when Wendy and Alika went out. She needed certain personal items of Wendy's. And she always left something of her own behind. She became a kind of reverse thief, planting mementos strategically throughout the house. She'd learned from experience that people most desired the things that they had lost, and she wanted to remind Alika that he had lost her.

That first binding spell hadn't worked at all. Everything had gone wrong. Evelyn couldn't obtain any of Wendy's fingernail clippings because, though she had access to the house, and could probably find nail clippings in the trash, she was afraid of collecting Alika's by mistake. So she settled for wisps of hair from Wendy's hairbrush, easily identifiable because of the colour. And instead of pepper oil gum, whatever that was, she used black pepper, chewed-up bubblegum, and a little canola oil. It made a disgusting mixture, and Evelyn could hear Mark laughing at her outside the window as she tried to stir it with a teaspoon. But she didn't allow him to deter her. The June moon was nearly full, and she had to act quickly.

When she had everything assembled, she followed the instructions for making the potion, being cautious while mixing the oils, because the instructions warned that they were volatile. Then she fashioned the felt and cotton poppet that would represent Wendy, stuffed it with the recommended herbs, and sewed it up. She carved Wendy's name into the candle with a thumbtack, anointed the poppet with the binding oil mixture, and began the difficult, somewhat hazardous, ritual, trying not to lose her place as she read aloud from her notebook.

“I bind thee from doing me harm,” she said, tying the red ribbon around the poppet's feet. “I bind thee from interfering with my life and my love.” She wrapped the arms and the head and finally the entire body of the poppet, so it looked like a little red mummy. The spell went on for several verses, and she had a hard time reading the words while keeping an eye on the candle, trying not to let the flame get too close to the poppet doused in volatile oils.

When at last she'd recited every verse, she held the mummy up to the mirror and visualized all of Wendy's negative energy being reflected back at her. Then she blew out the candle, bundled it together with the poppet in a paper bag, and left the apartment. She carried the package down to the end of the street and buried it on the grounds of the abandoned abattoir.

But it didn't work. If anything, Wendy's power over Alika only increased. It seemed Wendy had created some sort of force field around him, so that Evelyn couldn't arrange to run into him anymore. In mid-August, Wendy took holidays from the library, so that Evelyn was blocked from the house. Then Wendy changed the message on the answering machine so that Evelyn didn't even have the pleasure anymore of hearing Alika's recorded voice before she hung up. Nothing appeared to be binding Wendy from doing Evelyn harm.

Evelyn knew that it must be her own fault. She was an amateur, and the ritual was too advanced for her. Probably the substitution of hair for fingernail clippings had ruined it. Or Evelyn had copied it wrong, skipped some of the words by mistake. Or maybe she hadn't buried the poppet far enough away. She resolved to find some other method, something simple and powerful, something not even a loser like herself could screw up.

The mayor was nervous. He understood fully the significance of the newspaper clippings Louise gave him. Or at least he understood that the judge would understand. On the surface, there were no connections linking the items together. They were published articles, articles anyone might have in his possession, about acquittals and suspended sentences. But the mayor knew how these things worked. A story lurked beneath the surface, a pattern that the judge would recognize. The pattern was a hidden threat — sent by whom?

Louise was silent on that point. It was just a little research she'd done, she said. Something she hoped might help the project along. Her behaviour was worrisome, and the mayor tried not to dwell on it. Who had she been talking to? He could ask her, press her on the matter, but it was better if he didn't know. He had learned long ago that the key to staying in power was not knowing things and, with Louise's help, he'd become an expert at it.

Still, he felt he was in over his head. He'd never blackmailed a judge before. He was unsure about the protocol. How should he approach the topic? Jovially, over a glass of whiskey at the Club? Should he make a few jokes about the injunction, man to man, then slip him the envelope of clippings? Hope he'd get the message?

As he listened to the uncertain rhythm of Alice's typing, Felix felt a twinge of jealousy, all the more painful because he knew it was irrational. He tried to concentrate on the newspaper spread out before him. Just as he'd predicted, all the letters in today's paper were breathless endorsements of the exciting attractions of the casino. A two-page spread revealed the architect's plans for the new luxury complex, with its skylights and swimming pools and its four-storey arches, like the arches of a Gothic cathedral, that soon would dominate the cityscape. The banality of it all was staggering. Felix felt a wave of nausea pass through him. He folded the paper neatly and carried it into his backyard, where he tossed it into the recycling box.

He stood for a few minutes listening to the rustle of the poplar leaves in the heat. The neighbourhood was quiet, summer languor heavy in the air, hovering low across the yards and gardens, stifling sound. He thought about his neighbour, Wendy Li, and her garden and her fall, and the fact that he still didn't know what had happened to her. Felix and Paul were keeping her file open, but they had no leads.

Restless, he returned to the house and dialled the hospital's information desk to check on Wendy's condition. No change. What if she never woke up? He pictured Wendy lying a few short blocks away, her memory locked inside her, and felt helpless.

He walked down the hall to Alice's room and stood outside her closed door, his knuckles raised to knock. The sound of her typing no longer soothed him. He pictured her fingers as she kneaded the keys, moulding her paper lover into being. He'd seen the way she stacked the pages after she completed each chapter. She held the bundle vertically, tapping the edges of the paper into place, until they were flush. Then she'd lay the new chapter tenderly on top of the growing pile and run her freckled hand across the surface, as if it were a bedsheet she was smoothing.

Felix was beginning to think of the white paper as the surface of a deep lake into which his wife was falling. Far below, a wavering image was forming, a liquid husband who floated among the weeds, holding his arms up toward the light, toward the air, toward Alice, coaxing her to grasp his hand. He was strong, and his voice, made thick by the water, called out for the one who had created him.

I was getting fed up with Detective Felix. He was letting himself be sidetracked by every minor detail that crossed his path, while the truth was staring him in the face. All he had to do was return to Evelyn's apartment, perform the most minimal search, and he'd find the evidence he needed. He'd see the photograph of Alika, and he'd surely find the — well, the murder weapon — whatever it was. I was lost, there, as I didn't know how she'd killed me. Whacked me on the head, most likely. Or maybe she had stabbed me. It was hard to tell. The whole event was clouded over in my memory.