Interview interruptus

Henry MacIntosh came back from his interview with a headache. The story should have been easy enough to write: yet another woman victimized in a sex attack in Stanley Park. There had been a string of reported sexual assaults in and around the park over the last few months. Several women had reported a man had groped them as they jogged past, and one woman was grabbed by the wrists by a man who attempted to pull her off a trail and into some bushes. All had fought their attackers and gotten away safe. But this time, it wasn't a youthful jogger and the victim wasn't so lucky.

Henry sighed deeply and took a giant gulp of the lukewarm coffee on his desk. The office brew was awful stuff, but it was either that or spend ten bucks a day on his five-cup habit. With the baby on the way, there were more pressing uses for that fifty bucks a week, or so Penny insisted. No one goes into journalism for the money, but if it wasn't for Penny's salary Henry'd be lucky if he could afford to eat every second day on the lean, and often late, cheques he picked up freelancing. He still wasn't sure how they'd afford the drop in income when she went on maternity leave. Henry was on a temp gig at City Scoop, a new free bi-weekly locally referred to as the Pooper Scoop for its shitty content. He was filling in for a reporter who was herself on mat leave. Penny was hoping the paper would keep him on permanently after the contract was up but Henry was secretly glad there was an end in sight to the daily grind.

Henry set his tape recorder on the borrowed desk. It was made out of laminated particleboard and aging poorly. The thin strips of wood finish were peeling at the corners. When Henry wore knit sweaters they sometimes got caught on the edges, not only catching the yarn and pulling holes in his sleeves but also further destroying the desk's cracking facade. Henry prudently rolled up his sleeves and began reviewing the notes for his story.

Jocasta Smith was found in Stanley Park two days ago, a week after she was reported missing and nearly a month since the date she was believed to have disappeared. The 65-year-old woman appeared to have been sexually assaulted. Witnesses called police when they spotted her emerging naked from the trees, visibly battered and bruised, in the middle of the day.

Henry supposed he could write it that way. But there was so much more to the story.

Police had a suspect in custody, a man she apparently had a date with the day she disappeared, a Mr. Leonardo Oliver. Oliver was in town trying to establish a B.C. arm of his Winnipeg landscaping business. How he and Jocasta met was still a mystery - Jocasta's daughter cut short the interview and herded him out the door as soon as Jocasta started talking about the bear ...

It wasn't that unusual for the timeline in this sort of thing to be a bit fuzzy, Henry supposed, especially when a person wasn't immediately reported missing. As far as he understood, it took three weeks for anyone to suspect something might have happened to the elderly woman. No, what was getting to Henry was Jocasta's tale itself. It was, well, just plain weird.

He plugged headphones into the tape recorder and pressed play.

"... not sure just what it was, just a big dark shadow ..." Jocasta's voice was a bit distorted by the tape, hushed and brittle. Henry stopped the tape, tossed the headphones back on the desk and rewound to the beginning of the interview. There was no way he was going to write in the story that she thought a fucking bear raped her. Henry wasn't about to speculate about a mystery rapist either. There had been no official response to the media on the issue. The police would only say they were investigating, and the doctors that examined Jocasta were, of course, forbidden to discuss what they found.

The blinking cursor in the blank Word document seemed to mock him. Clippy the Office assistant squirmed on the bottom right corner of his screen. Three hours to deadline. The figures in Henry's bobblehead collection stared at him from atop the computer monitor. He tapped each one on its nose, first the emaciated chihuaha, then the Christmas elf, the pig with the maple leaf eyes (Canadian bacon, eh) and finally his three prized Canucks players, Bertuzzi, Naslund and Jovanovski. Creepy little fuckers, he thought, looking at the grinning, nodding gallery.

The tape recorder clicked when it had finished rewinding. Henry donned the headphones. His voice always sounded tinnier and more nasal than he heard it in his head.

"Ms. Smith, I appreciate your being willing to talk with me ..."

"Remember, 10 minutes only," the daughter, Delta snapped. "She's very shaken up. Remember, momma, you don't have to tell him anything you don't want to. Are you sure you want to give this interview?"

Henry remembered thinking the pain in the daughter almost seemed more acute than in the mother. Jocasta, oddly calm, just nodded.

"Thank you Ms. Smith," Henry heard himself say. "So, let's get started. What happened?"

"Well, Leo came over to cook me dinner ..."

Related stories:

• Jocasta awakes
• Prosser meets the police
• Delta Smith
• Keith Prosser

A girl named Sparrow

I sat nervously at the table, nursing a latté and admiring her honey-coloured hair. Her eyes sparkled tentatively, hesitant freckles dotting the bridge of her nose.

It was an hour before I realised, she spoke without pause, seeming not even to draw breath. Those eyes, that nose – they were the only shy things about her.

“Everyone keeps talking about this ‘SkyTrain.’ I was like, ‘I haven’t seen it, and I drive,’ you know, like, ‘where is it? I see the sky, sure, like, but y’know, where’s this train you speak of, dude?’”

It was like those Tibetan throat singers who chant continually, using mystical, alternative breath control to keep a constant, droning tone for 30 minutes.

“I turned off the stove, you know, like totally turned it off, and everything, and went to watch this completely hilarious show on TV, that I like never miss, and by the time the show was like, half-finished, the fire alarm went off, and I was like, ‘what is that?’ You know, totally ‘Am I hearing something?’ because we’ve like never had like a practice drill or anything, so I went downstairs, totally to the street corner and everything and I was utterly freezing for like an hour before the fire department decided it was time they came and like wouldn’t let us back in until around like four a.m. or something like that and they like asked to speak to me, like, oh my god, I was like, ‘Like I’d date a fireman,’ y’know, and my roommate was like, ‘Like a fireman would date you,’ and she’s such a bitch sometimes, and like it was hilarious, you know, cos the cookies kept cooking even though the oven was totally off, you know?”

Constant, droning tone.

Like bagpipes.

“Spooky, don’tcha think?”

It had been so long since I’d been invited to take part in the conversation, I’d forgotten how to speak altogether. My larynx had devolved into a vestigial organ, without use or purpose. Teams of scientists had formed committees, written papers and wasted millions in government grants trying to establish the biological function of what remained of my voice box. The sternocleidomastoid muscles – the ones that wrap forward from the base of the jaw to the front of the sternum – had atrophied so dramatically that moving my head from side to side took both hands and nearly all of my effort.

At one point, what had once been my vocal cords had become little more than nerve ganglia – they inflamed and threatened to burst; a top ear, nose and throat surgeon had to be flown in from Bavaria to perform the tricky operation, cleverly transposed from a text book appendectomy. Through weeks of intense physiotherapy, however, I’d learned to communicate using a complex system of hand gestures, clicking noises and knuckle cracking; while I’d waited several lifetimes for her question, she didn’t have to wait long for a response.

Click crick wave, snappity crack clap.

“That’s so sweet!”

Shake click.

“That reminds me of this vacuum cleaner I had a while back, like, so worthless, you know...”

And that, Sparrow, is how I met your mother.

Jocasta awakes

I woke up naked, shivering on a mass of sodden leaves, a giant yellow slug oozing over the ground right next to my face. I lay on my side, knees tucked up to my chest, hands folded over my heart. My nipples were stiff with cold, my skin covered in goosebumps. My limbs felt like hard plastic, like the dolls I played with as a child whose arms and legs would crack if you tried to force them to bend. I ached all over.

The slug oozed closer to my face. Disgust urged me to sit up, and I heaved my stiff old body up onto my knees. I immediately wished I had heaved more gently. The dizziness nearly made me fall back down, but I put a clumsy hand out just in time, nearly squishing the banana slug. Suddenly I had a vivid picture in my head of slug guts squishing out from under my palm. I vomited on the slug.

My head was pounding, but I forced myself to stand up. I saw beetles and wood bugs crawl among the leaves where I had slept. I combed my tangled hair with icy fingers, shaking loose ants and bits of plants. I wondered when I let down my hair.

I looked down at my body, streaked with dirt, plant stains and blood from dozens of shallow cuts. I wondered what happened to my clothes.

My brain felt as though it was moving at the pace of that slug.

Blackberry bushes ringed the glade. From the looks of some of the cuts, I guessed I must have blundered through sometime the night before.

I tried to remember how I came to be there, but my scattered memories were pearls from a broken necklace. I despaired of ever stringing them back together.

Sizzling scallops in a pan; Leo seared them before adding them to the seafood fettucine. An old family recipe, he said. He cooked me dinner, even did the dishes before pouring us each a second glass of red wine. We talked about feeling lonely, about missing family that's far away.

Leo's eyes, dark mirrors gleaming in the candlelight. I half-expected to catch my reflection in his gaze. For no reason I can say, he reminded me of my ex-husband just then, though Leo's shoulders are narrow and Richard's are broad, though Leo is short for a man and Richard so tall he had to double over to kiss me.

I didn't want to leave without washing the wine glasses. We'll do them later, he told me.

Outside, a balmy night, too warm for early spring. I looked up at the full moon. It seemed to dominate the sky. I thought then, as I always do, that the sky looks strange with so few stars. I pleaded with Leo to take me someplace where the sky wouldn't seem so empty.

We wandered through the shadowed city. Hungry eyes stared at us from nests of salvaged blankets in alleys and under awnings. One feral man staggered past Leo and me on the sidewalk, muttering curses. Leo put his arm around me. I felt safe.

Walking past Lost Lagoon. A skunk watched us from the edge of the pond as we entered the woods. Inside it was black. I stumbled over every root and rock, but Leo was surefooted. He held me steady and led me through the path.

Deep among the trees I was blind, but Leo's warm, thick fingers were a comforting pressure on my arm. He kissed me among the pines. It had been a long time for me, but my body listed towards his just as it did for Richard when we were young.

Suddenly I was alone. I called out for Leo but he didn't answer. I heard twigs snap underfoot, somewhere to my left. I tried to follow the sound, but I tripped over the uneven ground and my ears played tricks on me. I started to sob. A big black shadow appeared before me.

"Leo?" I whimpered. "Is that you?"

I heard a low growl and I ran.

---

Related stories:

• Prosser meets the police
• Delta Smith
• Keith Prosser

A Family Emerges: Mark, Gurpreet and Rajah Ashworth

Lee mentioned he was going back at the end of his schooling when they first moved in together. He liked Canada, but after being a student for the 6 years before and with another 2 remaining, he missed his parents and older brother. It wasn’t as though Mark had no notice when he packed his boxes. And there certainly wasn’t a custody battle to be won.

Mark had saved up nicely by having a roommate while working full time as a roofer. As one of six children in his family, he wasn’t interested in ever living on his own. The silences of the first few nights in which Lee had class or volunteered drove him to wander the streets until Lee was scheduled for return. Mark was certain that Lee’s sudden desire to get a golden lab puppy was not a selfish act. Mark only needed to be convinced as to why Lee’s dislike of dogs vanished so quickly.

When the young pup arrived, they had settled on the name Stalin until Mark’s then-girlfriend insisted that the puppy was far too affectionate and loved for such a violent name. Instead, she began calling him Rajah and the name stuck. Not only did Rajah create excuses for Mark when he was tired of being alone, but also ensured that there was no “alone”.

Mark spent the months after Lee’s announcement that he was graduating at the end of spring looking for another person to move into the ground floor of the house he lived in, only minutes from the school. After repeated failed attempts to get someone to move in at the beginning of the summer, he realized that the only person he wanted to live with was his girlfriend. She wouldn’t be available in the month and a half’s notice he was ready to offer her.

Her family would want marriage before she moved out; and ideally not with Mark. Mark had some rough spots when he and Gurpreet were first dating. He went out of his way to please her parents, but it wasn’t ever enough. She and her parents came to a deal in which she could see Mark, but not talk about him to her sisters unless it was about “just a friend”. It was an arrangement that she appreciated, but Mark protested. Gurpreet won out in the end and Mark was restricted from affection with her in her house.

The proposal was brief and over a coffee on Sunday morning. There would be an elopement with a Marriage Commissioner when he had a spot available in the week. Lee and Jill were to be present as witnesses. She still wanted the full wedding in a year’s time and that only her family was to know of the technical marriage.

With her parents unable to undo what was done, the fact that it was done to appease them and the excitement of the eldest daughter getting married, the blazing anger only lasted the weeks in which Gurpreet prepared for moving out.

To her confused sisters, it looked as if she eloped to a good friend.

Admin note

A few people have expressed concerns about keeping track of who's doing what in terms of story threads. I've made a post (now linked from the sidebar, along with Troy's character chart and plot convergence) where we can leave a comment "claiming" a character or plot thread we're working on right now.

This method okay with everyone? If it's not working after a bit we can try something else, but I want to try and keep the main blog page story-focused as much as possible.

The other thing I was thinking about is that maybe when we write a story that draws from previous stories we can include permalinks back to the originals at the end of each piece. That way it's easier for people to follow the story threads backwards. What do you think?

Ronnie

Ronnie had never liked the nickname her husband had given her. All her life she'd gone by Veronica, but within a week of dating he'd started calling her "Ronnie" and she was too infatuated with him to say anything. Now, six years since their wedding and eleven months into their trial separation, she still uses the name as a reminder of him. As if it'll bring him back.

She'd moved into the neighbourhood five months ago, as a necessity. Her husband had left her with both the house and the mortgage, and she had been unable to continue payments with her single salary. The bank had forclosed on the mortgage, and she had had to move into a bachelor suite with as much of the furniture as could fit inside. She had gotten rid of the dining set and many of her books, but had kept his leather rocking chair because its smell reminded her of him. Because she could still picture him sitting in it and reading his newspaper, as he had done every evening.

Ronnie felt that his leaving really was only a trial, a trial for her to become a better person. She realized that she hadn't been as good a wife as she could've. So now that she had this free time she busied herself with self-improvement. She took classes on cooking, on sewing, on many of the things she'd seen her mom do as she was growing up. She practiced yoga every day in her apartment, pushing aside the furniture to make room for her mat. She wasn't losing the weight she had wanted to, though, so she started cutting back on food, and the pounds had dropped. She was tired a lot, but she thought it was worth it for when her husband came back to her.

Having lived in her apartment nearly half a year, she still had yet to know her neighbours. The building manager Keith liked her because she paid her rent on time, but because of this he'd never had any reason to call on her and so their conversations were reduced to greetings in the hallway. She smiled at everyone she passed on the street (she had read somewhere that men preferred their wives to be cheerful at all times) but she didn't want to bother them with talk. Mitchell had liked her best when she stayed at home with him, so she'd lost the art of making friends. All of her friends had been his first, and she hadn't heard from them just as she hadn't from him.

The only other person she knew by name in the building was Jill, who had introduced herself when Ronnie first moved in. Ronnie had been polite in return, but she otherwise declined the younger woman's invitation for Irish coffee. Not that Jill didn't seem like a nice person, but Ronnie couldn't understand her. What sort of woman doesn't want a husband? What sort of woman would have muscular arms, and ride around on a motorbike, as if she were a man? Ronnie was well aware of homosexuals, and Jill had declared herself one when they had first met, but still her presence had a negative effect on Ronnie's emotions.

Ronnie refused to admit to herself that it was envy she felt.

The Book

Oak Island, Nova Scotia. April, 1901

The Oak Island Money pit. It lies on one of two islands at the mouth of the Gold and Gapreau rivers, the only place in Nova Scotia where oak trees grow. Some say pirate treasure is buried here; others, the secrets of the Knights Templar and the myth of the Holy Grail, the legendary chalice used by Christ at the Last Supper from which the nectar of everlasting life flows. On April 1, 1397, a Scottish Lord named Henry St. Clair, or Sinclair, of Rosslyn, landed his boat near this place, beating Christopher Columbus to North America by almost 100 years. The Miq’Maq Indians have his legend incorporated into their history; he is known as Glooscap.

"Glooscap was the first,
First and greatest,
To come to our land -
Into Nova Scotia...
When the Master left Ukakumkuk,
Called by the English Newfoundland,
He went to Pictook or Pictou,
Which means the rising of bubbles,
Because at that place the water is
Ever strangely moving,
There he found an Indian Village
A town of a hundred wigwams."

- Frederick Pohl, Prince Henry Sinclair

The men sat in their sweat lodge underneath the Oak trees this evening, pounding on drums and wailing to the Great Spirit in search of a sign. Their Chief, who had taken ill, lay near the heated rocks to the left of the small shelter, which now sheltered the stout Chief and six of the tribal leaders for this evening’s rituals. The moon, full, was obscured by clouds and a dense, chilled fog. Although the sweat lodge contained seven of them, they felt a sudden blast of cold move up and down their bodies as a black bear walked through the door of the makeshift hut. As the bear entered the wigwam, none of the elders felt the remotest sense of alarm. The bear was tremendous; as the light of the fire was glimmerring off of his black coat, the Chief heard these words:

“The child”.

The bear sniffed the dirt below its feet and snorted loudly. Its eyes welled up with rage. Then, without warning, the bear took on a human form.

North Vancouver, that same evening:

The bloodline. Few people, save for the Inner Sanctum of the Brotherhood knew about it, and the spring festival of Walpurgisnacht, which fell on April 30 was fast approaching. This night, far away from the events in Oak Island, they gathered in the grotto, a small clearing amongst the old-growth cedars, just a few hundred yards from what is now known as Lynn Canyon. The site was ancient; the trees harnessed the energy of the wind and sea currents and flung it upwards to the stars. A fire roared amongst the stones in the middle of the grotto and thirteen hooded figures surrounded it, each clutching a cedar bough as they hummed in unison. One hooded figure read from a heavy book and then broke into a chant. The rest followed.

Regina, caeli, laetare, alleluia:
Quia quem meruisti portare, alleluia,
Resurrexit sicut dixit, alleluia.
Ora pro nobis Deum, alleluia.

Gaude et laetare, Virgo Maria, alleluia,
Quia surrexit Dominus vere, alleluia.

When they had finished, they had a moment of silence.


The hooded figure who read from the book began to read; this time in English.

“Let us pray.

O God, who gave joy to the world through the resurrection of Thy Son, our Lord Jesus Christ; grant, we beseech Thee, that through His Mother, the Virgin Mary, we may obtain the joys of everlasting life. Through the same Christ our Lord. Amen.”

Regina Caeli. The song was Gregorian, but to the Inner Sanctum it had a dual meaning; that of the Great Queen of the Sky, Isis. The monks were there to dedicate an altar unto the Queen mother and celebrate the birth of their resurrected Savior, the child.

“The woman travails” spoke the figure with the book. “Bring her”.

Two thuggish-looking men who did not care about their anonymity enough to wear their hoods dragged the young girl, sixteen perhaps, towards a stone slab on the North side of the grotto. She would have birthed hours earlier, but the two men had bound her thighs together with leather straps and she groaned in agony, concerned more for the survival of the child than her own life. The men had failed to remember that, during the Inquisition, the binding of a birthing female’s legs together was seen as an excellent form of torture by their order's enemy; the Jesuits.

Back in France, she was of the nobility, and had come to Canada to escape persecution by the Church. She married a man from Montreal in a marriage arranged by her father. The man’s name was Pascal Falcon, who was himself French. Their persecutors had caught up with them in Montreal two years ago and he had moved her to Vancouver to safety.

After they untied the leather lashes binding her legs together the birth was swift; the fact that the child did not cry after being born meant only one thing. After burying the child in the Church graveyard, the Brotherhood disbanded; the book passed hands several times amongst would-be Bretheren who could never understand its secrets and for almost one hundred years lay in a wooden crate somewhere in the back of an elderly woman's attic, mistaken for a hymn book.

Until she found it, two years ago to this day.

Day 122

May 27, 2005
Sunny with light showers in the afternoon

I've finished the puzzle tonight. I also finished the last of the pizza. I'm going to run down to the hobby shop on 6th tomorrow and get another puzzle. I would have a garage sale to get rid of the growing number of puzzles if I could do it elsewhere. Anywhere but here.

I wanted to find home again. This is not it. Mom's not here. I'm not here.

I've been thinking about Lee since running into Mark. He went home after school. I went to Cardigan. Sure, Sandy was good to my mother and I. The Noonans were probably the kindest people I'll ever meet without judging their sincerity. "Uncle" Bradley, while not my uncle, was like the father I was supposed to have. It was a "swell" community. It's hard not to talk as if it weren't 1924 about the people of Cardigan. The place was locked in the past. Everyone knew you.

Coming back west was some sort of attempt to find something that wasn't in Cardigan. Anonymity? I don't have that here either, even though I've tried. Mark is bound to tell everyone that he saw me. I always got the news from Lee, via him, before. I miss the lot, but I'm not ready to talk to anyone. What do I tell them? That my mother killed herself while I was out getting vegetables from the market? That she was a very ill woman, but told no one, not even me? Everyone knew my mom.

I wanted to get my line unlisted, but I'm not sure how much I have to do. I checked superpages and I'm listed. Address, phone, everything. And "E. Brennan" was just another thing we had in common. I couldn't find a way to get it removed from there. And then there is the business with the phone books... if anyone still uses those. I don't even know if I'm in any of them. Why couldn't I have thought of any of this when I was learning how to even get a phone line?

I guess I'm going to go down to 6th tomorrow and get another puzzle.