We Will All Go Down Together (20 page)

Two years’ worth of trauma deferred, all crashing down on me at once. Showing me first-hand, explicitly, how nature abhors a—moral, human, walking—vacuum.

And now it’s later, oh so much, with rain all over my bedroom floor and beads of wood already rising like sodden cicatrices everywhere I dare to look. Rain on my hair, rain in my eyes—only natural, given that the window’s still open. But I can’t stand up, can’t force a step, not even to shut it. I just squat here and listen to my heart, eyes glued to that ectoplasmic husk the shadow left devolving on my bed: a shed skinful of musk and lies, rotting. All that’s left of my lovely double, my literal self-infatuation.

I’ve done the protective circle around myself five times now, at least—in magic marker, in chalk, in my own shit. Tomorrow I think I’ll re-do it in blood, just to get it over with; can’t keep on picking at these ideas forever, without something starting to fester. And we don’t want that, do we?

(
Really.
)

Because the sad truth is this: my wards hold, like they always hold; the circle works, like all my magic works. But what it doesn’t do, even after all my years of sheer, hard, devoted work—all my Craft and study, not to mention practice—

—is
help
.

Once upon a time—when I was drunk, and young, and stupid beyond belief—I cut my shadow, my soul, away from me in some desperate, adolescent bid to separate myself from my own mortality. And since then, I guess I haven’t really been much good for anybody
but
myself. I bound up my weakness and threw it away, not realizing that weakness is what lets you bend under unbearable pressure.

And if you can’t bend . . . you break.

My evil twin,
I hear my own arrogant voice suggest to Carra, mockingly—and with a sudden, stunning surge of self-hatred, I find I want to hunt that voice down and slap it silly. To roll and roar on the floor at my own willfully deluded stupidity.

Half a person,
Franz chimes in, meanwhile, from deeper in my memory’s ugly little gift-box.
And not even the good half.

No. Because
it
was the good half. And me, I, I’m—just—

—all that’s left.

My shadow. The part of me that might have been, if only I’d let it stay. My curdled conscience. Until it touched me, I didn’t remember what it was I’d been so afraid of. But now I can’t think about anything else.

Except . . . how very, very badly, no matter what the cost . . . 

 . . . I want for it to touch me again.

Thinking:
Is this me? Can this possibly be
me
, Jude Hark Chiu-Wai?
Me
?

Me.

Me, and no fucking body else.

Thinking, finally:
But this won’t kill me. Not even this. Much as I might like it to.

And maybe I’ll be a better person for it, a better magician, if I can just make it through the next few nights without killing myself like Jen, or going crazy as Carra. But that’s pretty cold comfort, at best.

Sobbing, retching. All one big weakness—one open, weeping sore. And thinking, helpless:
Carra, oh, Carra. Grandmother Yau. Franz. Ed. Someone.

Any
one.

But I’ve burnt all my boats, funeral-style. And I can’t remember—exactly, yet—just how to swim.

The Wide World converges on me now, dark and sparkling, and I just crouch here beneath it with my hands over my face: weeping, moaning, too paralytic-terrified even to shield myself from its glory. Left all alone at last with the vision and the void—crushed flat, without a hope of reprieve, under the endless weight of a dark and whirling universe.

Ripe and riven. Unforgiven. Caught forever, non-citizen that I am, in that typically Canadian moment right before you start to freeze.

Keeping my sanity, my balance.

Keeping to the straight and Narrow.

Joe Tulugaak saw the storm forming from all the way across the ice, though going just by temperature alone, it should have been much too cold for snow. Yet more evidence that this place was at least as sick as he’d been told, if not more so.

It was February, about 3:30
P.M.
An hour and a half to full dark. Algonquin Bay was frozen stiff enough to take a truck, which was how he’d gotten up here, though not so frozen it could stand you travelling more than fifteen miles an hour. He’d followed the annually cleared ice-fishing strip out to tiny Windigo Island, part of the Manitous, and parked across from where the lights of the Anishnabek First Nations Reserve would come up as the sun dipped down, like a string of slow firecrackers. Then he’d put up his tent, got the generator running, and broken out the chainsaw.

The storm came up like a puff of breath, a sky-wide exhalation. A second later, it grew fiercely specific: conical, then convex, a wavering funnel guttering over the trail’s pale blue road towards him, erasing everything in its path. If the mica-glitter white expanse stretched out all around him had been dust, he’d have definitely been inclined to call something like that a devil.

As it was, Joe shrugged, and zipped his parka up further. He reached for the tent-flap zipper, prepared to hunker down and let it pass by, blow itself out; snow was already piled four feet high on Windigo’s beach, so that’d form a nice breakwall for it to dash itself to pieces on. Besides, even if it did (for its own mysterious reasons) choose to stick around, it wasn’t like the kit he’d packed for this trip didn’t include a shovel.

That was when he saw her.

The girl, just a
girl
, maybe fifteen at most . . . slim and knock-kneed, too underdressed for any version of winter. She came wandering out of the storm’s heart with her head hung low and her hair in her eyes, face a distant white-blue smudge, body wrapped in nothing but differentially shaded yet equally thin layers of black, like she thought she was jaunting down Queen Street West on an empty Sunday afternoon: took a wrong turn at Siren or Suspect Video, and kept right on going. Had her hands up inside her sleeves, which looked like they might already be stiffened shut over gloveless blue-nailed hands. Her shoes moved too slow to kick up the crust, snagging enough to make her stumble, with a sound like tearing cheesecloth.

Something so out of place, especially here, took him aback enough he had a long heartbeat’s worth of trouble trying to figure out what to do—until she fell forward on her face, and stayed there, as the storm swept over her. Which meant the moment for sitting back and mulling things out was probably pretty much over.

Man, I
really
don’t have time for this,
he caught himself thinking, anyhow. But: that wasn’t exactly true, was it? Considering how long what he’d been called in to deal with had been going on, before the Rez elders finally decided they might as well pool their bingo money and get on the horn . . . or how long things like this usually
took
to deal with, one way or another, even after he’d officially taken the job. . . . 

Nope. Guess not.

Joe sighed, lowered his head so the parka’s hood would meet the wind peak-first, and started to shoulder his way into the storm.

Once in his arms, the girl hefted like a doll, like she weighed almost nothing. Maybe stupid made you float.

He could feel the chill of her right through his parka’s sleeves.
Might lose that nose,
he thought, looking down at it: purple to the nostrils, touched at the tip with black. Like she’d dressed up as a greasepaint skull for Hallowe’en.

Had a smell to her too, in close quarters; that was the second thing he noticed.

Inside, he quickly found the radio the elders had given him, and thumbed it on. Nothing but static wash. He checked her pulse-points, which seemed slow, yet strong. Then recoiled in surprise when he ran his hands down further and found her clothes already dry, as though baked from within: a steady desert heat beat outwards in all directions, desiccated. He couldn’t figure its source.

The girl moved slightly, moaning, and Joe saw her nose was already looking a hell of a lot better than it should, given the circumstances. Still couldn’t identify that smell, though.

Joe watched her until the black boiled itself off and the right kind of colour was back in her face, ’til the purple turned mauve, then pale, then rose. She was even smaller than she’d seemed at first glance, boned like a bird, with dark hair and rolled-back eyes that were probably some variation on dark, too. A tiny fold lifted the skin at both corners, semi-epicanthic. Might be they were even related, somehow—she could have a bit of the Blood in her, diluted by a few centuries of getting spread around. Not a full Breed, maybe, but one of those Torontonian gumbo mixes: one from column “A,” two from column “B,” with column “C” kept squarely reserved for “who the fuck knows, or cares?”

Whatever she is,
he thought,
she’s different.

The only other person he’d ever seen heal like that was his Grandmother, and even she’d needed help.

When the girl had relaxed enough to be mobile, Joe spread his back-up parka out on the floor and rolled her into it, shrugging her arms through the sleeves like she was a woman-sized rag doll. If and when she stood up, its hem would probably hide both her knees. Hard not to handle her all wrong, doing it; he’d have to apologize for that later on, if she didn’t turn out brain-damaged.

On the inside of her left forearm he found a scratched-on word, letters straggly and puffed like a brand: SINNER. On both wrists and the inside of one leg, meanwhile, more scar tissue—deliberate, no practice cuts, over and over again. Though her skin seemed paper-thin, the results had keloided high, furling in on themselves: pale silk knots in neat little rows, all tied far too tight for comfort.

How much pain would you have to be in to want to let it out like that?

(
And why wouldn’t just the one time—or two, or three—be enough?
)

Joe shook his head a few times, to clear it, and started rustling up some chow.

When the girl finally opened her eyes, he was boiling tea in a gramophone-horn billy that guy from Trois-Rivières had made him, one time; that old Norwegian, the guy with troll trouble. Happened so quiet it took him a bit by surprise, especially when he suddenly turned around to find her watching him. Plus, it turned out her eyes weren’t dark, after all: they were yellow instead, squarish pupils slanted ever-so-slightly outwards, like a goat’s. And when the light from the fire fell into them, it never came back out.

“Hey,” he said. “My name’s Joe.”

She cleared her throat, tongue so dry he could hear it click against the roof of her mouth. Took a long breath. And replied—

“. . . Judy. . . .”

He nodded. He’d found her wallet in a hip pocket, spread it out to dry on the sleeping-bag—her student ID was uppermost, but well past expiry date. Its thumbnail photo showed a pretty kid smiling wide with her hair up in two rainbow-scrunchie pigtails; didn’t look too much like her, anymore.

(Not least ’cause
that
girl’s eyes were brown.)

“Yoo-det-ah Kiss,” he read, carefully, sounding it out. “Middle name—is that Ildiko? Same as Drew Barrymore’s Mom?”

She nodded, wincing. And added, a bit louder, but still hoarse:

“You say it . . . ‘Keesh.’ Like . . . the food.”

“Well, all right, then. I’ll try and remember.”

After that, there was a minute or so of silence, cut with ambient noise; whining wind, the fire’s spurt and crackle. He’d pinned the tent’s interior flap up to reveal its built-in “window” an hour or so ago, just in case anybody came looking for her before dark. But all he could see through the zippered transparency was snow guttering back and forth while the hole he’d cut in the ice gaped open, a breathing mouth, waiting patiently to have its say on the matter.

He looked her up and down again, not seeing anything new. “What I can’t understand, though,” he said, at last, “is why you’re not dead.”

She lay still for a while, so motionless he thought she might’ve gone back to sleep. Then:

“Me . . . either,” she whispered, at last. And he knew she was crying.

Then she turned away quickly, curling in on herself with both hands over her eyes, like the dim and fading light hurt too much to look at anymore, all of a sudden; good damage control, if she’d just been a little faster. But even as she did, he saw (in that one split second) how her tears smoked against her own skin when they came down—like they were acid, but without the tracks which would naturally follow. Like they were gasoline.

Like they were. . . .

. . . 
hot
.

Once he was reasonably certain Judy Kiss probably wouldn’t be waking up again ’til dawn, Joe gathered her wallet and stepped back outside, next to the hole. The snow had dissipated, and the vast black sky above was hung with what most city folks would consider a frightening array of usually invisible stars. It made Joe homesick, but only mildly so, because from where he stood he could still see the Rez lights blurring annoyingly at its outer edges, an irritant on the universe’s wide-angle lens.

Using his Grandmother’s bone knife, Joe cleared a space on the ice and set the wallet down. Then he worked the much-folded newsprint clipping he’d found under Judy’s Toronto Transit Commission Metropass free and spread it open on top of the frozen leather, anchoring it at either corner with two small Baffin Island beach-stones. Slightly water-warped, the upper part read—

Metro Bite, January 15, 2002

THREE YEARS LATER:

“EXORCISM GIRL” WINS CASE, DAMAGES

Today, after a lengthy civil case, a Metro Toronto judge granted “exorcism girl” Judeta Kiss’s petition to become an emancipated minor. The court also awarded her $50,000 in damages claimed against her own parents, because Judeta’s counsel was able to prove that Bela and Gorgo Kiss kept their then 13-year-old daughter tied to a chair for three days, while two Catholic priests performed a physically gruelling ritual meant to free her from demonic possession.

Earlier in the trial, Mr. and Mrs. Kiss testified they began to suspect Judeta might be possessed after she became unable to sleep, had extreme mood-swings, acted out sexually, displayed sudden bursts of self-destructive violence, and used uncharacteristic profanity. Typical teenaged behaviour or the Devil Inside? For most Torontonians, the choice would be clear. But just like in the classic 1973 horror film, the Kisses’ next step was not to get Judeta therapy, but to call in . . . the exorcist.

Jesuit priests Father Cillian Frye and Father Akinwale Oja visited the Kiss home to observe Judeta before applying to the Toronto archdiocese for permission to perform an exorcism. Although the archbishop’s office refused his request, Father Oja’s own testimony—given under duress—revealed that Father Frye later lied to the Kisses, telling them (and Father Oja) that his request had been approved.

Said Mr. Justice Colin Simonetta: “Though I believe Mr. and Mrs. Kiss sincerely felt they were acting in their daughter’s best interests, I nevertheless consider this entire episode a bizarre case of child abuse . . . one of the worst, and oddest, it’s been my displeasure. . . .”

The rest was mush, with select phrases poking up here and there, doling out bursts of fresh information: “. . . 
Frye was unable to take the . . . complete psychological break. Committed
. . . .” “. . . 
meant no harm,” Oja told reporters. “Judy understands our intent . . . free her from Satan’s dominion with Christ’s help and power
. . . .” And: “. . . 
Q.C., admits Judeta Kiss’s exact whereabouts are presently
. . . .”

(Unknown?)

Uh huh. In Toronto, anyways.

Joe sat back on his heels. “So,” he said, out loud. “Blackrobe messiness. Typical.”

After which he waited a moment, head cocked, but heard no immediate answer. So he reached inside his parka pocket for his bag instead, shaking Grandmother’s bones out on the ice beside him—actually two bones (one refined into a broken needle, the other cracked for marrow), three teeth (all human, all from different people’s jaws) and a two-inch piece of narwhal tusk carved in the shape of a pecking crow, to be exact. The bones fell in a spray, counterclockwise, with the tusk just touching the hole’s wide-stretched lip.

Joe nodded, and bent down to retrieve it. “
Nukum
,” he murmured into the darkness. “Do you see me?”

The hole sighed, almost inaudibly.

From the hollow of his skull, his Grandmother’s voice emerged, thin as an Ontario mosquito’s hum: a thing of the land around them, tied to place yet unstuck in time—perfectly normal in its own season, but utterly impossible here, in his.

I do, Joe.

“This girl in my tent,
Nukum
, do you see her?”

Yes. I do.

“She has a hurt. Can we heal it?”

No, Joe.

“No?”

That’ll heal on its own. If it can.

Joe leaned back, squatting low, hands braced against his thighs.
Damn blackrobes
, he thought. And was surprised to hear her respond, even though he hadn’t spoken; the fabric really
must
be wearing thin in these parts. Maybe if he looked up right now that wouldn’t be Orion and the Bears above him at all, or whatever the Anishnabek had called them before the whites came and ate everybody else’s language, then sicked it back up as their own. Maybe it’d be
Tshishtashkumuku
’s vivid skies instead, Northern Lights flickering horizon to horizon like gaslight ghosts, while the
Mishpateu
lowered in above him as huge, sick clouds, sniffing for human meat.

Joe realized the wind had started up once more, without him noticing. It played a low note across the tusk-crow’s half-open beak, as his Grandmother’s dead voice told him—

You can’t blame the blackrobes here, Joe. They don’t see things the way we do, so sometimes that makes them wrong—and where we come from, they’re wrong about almost everything. But sometimes—