Andrew Pyper - The Guardians

[10]

By the time Randy and I walk to Ben's house from the Old London it's later than I'd thought, and my exhaustion from the evening's revelations, as wel as the wine, prevents me from asking myself the one question that should have been asked before Randy disappeared around the corner of Caledonia and Church, leaving me standing on the McAuliffes' front porch, key in hand: Where am I going to sleep?

Al day I'd meant to tel Mrs. McAuliffe that, while I appreciated her hospitality, I couldn't accept her invitation to stay overnight in her son's room. Her dead son's room. But whether I was distracted by my tasks as executor or couldn't bring myself to disappoint the poor woman, I hadn't gotten around to it. Now it would be plainly wrong to scuff after Randy and get my old room back at the Queen's. Betty would be expecting me for breakfast in the morning, had likely gone out earlier to buy the makings for her specialties—raisin bread French toast and fruit salad. Indeed, she may wel stil be awake in her darkened room, awaiting the sound of my steps up the stairs.

I open the door and swiftly close it again once I'm in. A silent oath made with myself: if I am actualy going to spend the night in this place, I cannot afford even the briefest glimpse of the house across the street. In fact, it might be a better idea to not go upstairs at al, and simply crumple onto the sofa in the living room. I'm on my way toward it, checking the chairs for a blanket, when I'm stopped by a sound that comes from the kitchen.

A scratch, or the rustle of plastic. The sort of thing that could be confused with a breath from one's own chest.

From the halway, I can see part of the kitchen. Nobody stands there, knife in hand, as I half expect. There is nothing but the play of moonlight over the cupboards, moving around the tree branches in the September photo on the calendar pinned to the wal.

I'm partway to the kitchen entrance when a chunk of shadow breaks away and tiptoes over the linoleum. A large mouse—or smal rat—that, upon spotting me, races behind the fridge, its tail audibly scratching across an edge of drywal.

For a second, the silence suggests we're both working through the same thought.

What the hell was that ?

The sheets in Ben's bed have been freshly washed and made even since I sat on them earlier in the day. Betty wants me to feel welcome. And I do. Or at least, I'm grateful for being able to pul the covers up to my chin so that the boy-smels of Ben's room are partialy masked by fabric softener.

Sleep, I have found, is like a woman you'd like to speak to across a crowded room: the harder you wish it to come to you, the more often it turns away. So it is that I am left awake and wishing, staring up at something awful (the beam that Ben looped his rope over) in order to avoid looking at something even more awful (the Thurman house, whose roof would be clearly visible if I turned my head on the pilow). Did Ben fight this same fight himself these past years? Was he forced to consider every knot and crack in the wood that would eventualy hold him thrashing in mid-air?

It is these questions that lead me into sleep. Into a dream that carries me down the stairs and across Caledonia Street to lie on the cold ground beneath the hedgerow the runs along the Thurman property line. Staring up at the side windows of the house, the glass a blackboard with fuckt finger-drawn in its dust.

It starts with a woman.

Standing up from where she had been lying on the living- room floor out of sight below the sil. A woman who places her palms against the glass. And with this touch, I can see she is naked, and young, and not alone.

Another figure calmly approaches from behind her. Male, his identity concealed by the dark, though his form visible enough for me to see that he is naked as wel.

He stands there, appreciating the ful display of her body. For a moment, I feel sure he is about to eat her.

His hands cup her breasts as he enters her. With a jolt, her own hands flail against the window. Fingernail screeches.

They're real .

But they're not. This is a dream. And no matter how convincing, there remains a thread that tethers their performance to the imagination. It's this understanding that alows them to continue without my trying to get in the way, or desperately swimming up toward consciousness. It is a dream, and therefore harmless.

Yet the dark figure who works away at the long-haired woman seems more than capable of harm. Harm is al there is to him. It looks like sex, this thing he's doing, but it's not. There is no explicit violence, no shouted threats—it may wel be mutualy voluntary what the two of them do. But for him, it has nothing to do with wanting her, or even with the pleasure of her body. He wishes only to disgrace.

I'm expecting the male figure to reveal himself to me first, but instead it's the woman. Lifting her chin and throwing her hair aside.

Not Tina Uxbridge's face, or Heather Langham's. It's Tracey Flanagan's.

Her eyes emptied of the humour they conveyed in life. But otherwise unquestionably her. Mouth open in a soundless moan. Her breasts capped by nipples turned purple in the way of freezer-burned meat.

For some reason I assume it is the coach standing behind her. It is more than an assumption—the anticipation of him showing himself to me, the ta-dah! moment that is the waking trigger to every nightmare, is so certain I am already recaling his face from memory, so that when he appears, I won't be wholy surprised. It will be the coach. Released from the celar to carry out this perversity, this pairing of the apparently living with the probably dead.

But I am wrong in this too.

I am already scrabbling out from under the branches when the boy leans to the side to reveal his face over Tracey Flanagan's shoulder. Enflamed, gloating. He is more interested in me than whatever mark he means to leave on Tracey.

Hey there, old man. It's been a while .

The boy's lips don't move, but I can hear him nonetheless.

You want a piece of this? Come inside .

It's his voice that prompts me to move. To get up and run away. But I'm not sixteen, as I thought I was. This isn't the past but the present, and I am a man with a degenerative disease, fighting to get to my feet. Three times I try, and each time I am stricken with a seizure that brings me down. Al I manage to do is rol closer to the window, so that Tracey and the boy loom over me.

Look at you, the boy says as I claw at the house's brick, his voice free of sympathy, of any feeling at al . You're falling apart, brother. Ever think of just cashing out? Keep little Ben company ?

My hand manages to grip a dead vine that has webbed itself up the wal. It alows me to get to my knees. Then, with a lunge, to my feet. Instead of waiting to see if I can maintain my balance, I try to run to the street, but the motion only crumples me onto the ground once more. Eyes fixed on the boy's.

Poor Trev. I'm not sure you could manage this if I pulled your fly down for you and pointed you in the right direction .

The boy laughs. Then he thrusts against Tracey a final time before holding himself inside her, his knuckles gripped white to her hips, his shoulders shuddering with the spite of his release.

I was right about breakfast.

By the time I make it downstairs, Mrs. McAuliffe is in the kitchen, bathrobed and slippered, eggy bread in the pan and a bowl of fruit on the table. At the sound of me entering (my fingernails dig into the doorframe for balance), the old woman lights up.

"Sleep wel?" she asks, returning her attention to the stove to flip the slices.

"It's a good mattress."