Andrew Pyper - The Guardians

For the first time, I notice it's dark in the room. The only ilumination coming from the monitor's screen and what orange street light finds its way through the window.

But as I reach to switch on Ben's Ken Dryden lamp, Randy grabs my wrist.

"We're not here. Remember?" he says.

"So we're just going to sit in the dark?"

"I'l hold your hand if you want."

"You are holding my hand." "Oh."

I slide down to the floor and crawl over to the beanbag chair in the corner. From here, I can see the Thurman house's chimney, but little else. The fog has thinned somewhat over the last hour, and has turned to an indecisive drizzle, its droplets swaying and looping in their descent and, at times, even returning skyward.

"I saw Todd Flanagan today," Randy says.

"Yeah?"

"At the Wal-Mart."

"And you pushing a shopping cart with a baby monitor in it?"

"As a matter of fact, yes."

"How was he?"

"Not good. He was two minutes into our conversation in the vacuum cleaner aisle before he figured out who the hel I was."

"Poor bastard."

"He asked after you."

"What'd he say?"

"Can't remember exactly."

"Bulshit."

"Okay. He said it was realy sad to see you al shaky and Parkinson's and whatnot, especialy when you could have been the best winger the Guardians ever had."

"It's not half as sad as what he's going through."

Does fog make a sound? If it does, it whispers against Ben's window.

"Randy?"

"Yo."

"You think she could stil be alive?"

"I dunno, boss."

"But what do you think?"

"Wel, let me ask you this: Do the missing ever come back?"

"Sometimes. If they just ran away. Or if they wanted to be lost."

"Then those ones weren't realy missing to begin with."

Over the next couple of hours the night grows stil, both outside the McAuliffe house and within it. Betty must be asleep, as we haven't heard any creaks from the floorboards below since shortly after I came up. She has the right idea. It is only sporadic conversation between Randy and me—as wel as changing shifts watching the monitor screen—that keeps the two of us awake.

"Coffee?" Randy asks at one point.

"Is that what you carried up here an hour ago?"

"I got a Thermos at Wal-Mart today too. State of the art."

"Am I going splits on that with you too?"

"If you wouldn't mind."

Randy pours us each coffee in the little plastic camping cups that came with the Thermos. The steam rising and reshaping itself like a phantom against his face.

"I have this theory," he says, sipping his coffee and grimacing at his instantly burnt tongue. "I may have told you about it already. I cal it the Asshole Quotient.

Remember?"

"Vaguely," I lie.

"It's kind of a natural law of human behaviour. A way of explaining why people just do shit things to other people for no reason. Unpredictable things."

"Assholes."

"Exactly. And I used to believe that no matter where you go, 20 per cent of the people you come in contact with are going to turn out to be assholes. You wouldn't know that's what they are, not at first, but they would always appear in a ratio of one to five."

"Sounds about right."

"No, it's not right. I was off"

"Twenty per cent is too high?"

"Too low. Over the last few years I've come to realize the number's closer to something like 30 or 40 per cent. Maybe it's an even fifty-fifty."

"You think things are getting that bad?"

"They were always that bad. It just takes until you're our age to see it."

"What evidence are you working from here?"

"Okay. Consider how most people have fewer friends the older they get. Why? You learn that the numbers are against you, that life isn't just going to be this hilarious succession of new and fascinating people to share whatever new and fascinating stage of your journey you find yourself at. It's why guys like us always end up looking back al the time. It's the only way you've got of beating the odds."

"Old friends."

"You got it."

"I have a question," I say, burning my tongue on my coffee just as Randy had a minute ago. "How do you know you haven't been wrong the whole time?"

"Wrong how?"

"About me, say. I'm as old a friend as you've got. But what if I'm not one of the good 50 per cent, but the bad 50 per cent?"

"I don't know, Trev," he says, saddened by the question itself. "I guess if I'm wrong about you, it's quittin' time."

Randy leans his elbows on his knees, sits forward in his chair to bring himself within whisper distance of me. "You think he would have done it? If it wasn't for us?"

"Who?"

"The coach. Do you think he would have kiled himself if we hadn't—?"

"Yes," I interrupt. "It's what he deserved."

"What about us? What do we deserve?"

"This."

"A night in Ben's room?"

"Along with al the other nights of the past twenty-four years."

I'm wondering if this is remotely true, if we've even begun to understand the nature of the cruel and unusual punishments stil to come our way, when the baby monitor bleats. An animal's cry of warning.

"The fuck was that?" Randy says.

"Your machine."

"Realy? The motion sensor?"

"What other part of it would make a sound like that?"

"You think I actualy read the owner's manual?" Randy stands and appears about to approach, but doesn't. "Anything?"

I stare at the screen. "Nothing."

"I'm not hearing anything on the mike either."

"Might he a glitch," I say. "Like when you put a new battery in a smoke detector and it beeps before you press the test button."

"That's never happened to me."

"Have you ever lived anywhere long enough that you had to replace a smoke detector battery?"

"Tel you the truth, I'm not sure I've ever lived somewhere that had a smoke detector."

Randy sits next to me on the edge of the bed. Between us, the monitor rests on top of the sheets, showing only the dark celar, a hissing stilness coming out of the speaker. I turn the volume up ful. A louder nothing.

After a time, Randy goes to the window. Peers down at the street. Places his forehead against the glass. "Ben thought he was looking for ghosts up here, didn't he?"

"I suppose he did."

"You ever wonder if he was the one who was dead al that time?"

"Ben only died last week, Randy."

"No. It was a long time before that. He died the first time he went in there."

Something in Randy's tone tels me he's referring not to the day we discovered Heather Langham but to the time when we were eight. When Ben learned of his father's accident that wasn't an accident and ran to the darkest place he knew.

"People can get over things," I say. "It just happens that Ben wasn't able to."

"You think he's the only one?"

It seems that Randy may be about to cry. Or maybe it's me. Either way, they are sounds I realy don't want to hear. But just as I'm searching my memory for the distraction of a filthy joke, the one Randy likes about the midget pianist going into a bar, he slaps his hands against the window.

"The fuck?" he says.

"What is it?"

"Someone's there."

Randy starts down the attic stairs.

"Randy! Wait!"

"Stay here. Watch the monitor. Trust me, I'm not planning on going inside."

Then he's gone. I hobble to the window in time to see him cross the street and disappear into the shadows at the side of the house.

I have little choice but to do as I'm told and watch the screen. Five minutes—ten? twenty-five?—of studying the greenish empty celar.

And then something's happening. Or it has been happening since the motion sensor was triggered, and I am only noticing it now.

Breathing.

Long intakes and exhalations, wet clicks in the throat. Something alive yet invisible. The screen reveals nothing. Nothing except the outline of shadow that slides over the floor. A human shape elongated by the angle of available light, so that it appears gaunt and long-fingered.