Monstrous Affections (36 page)

“We thought you must be hungry,” explained Nancy, and Joan
said, “That’s why we came.”

“We can eat on the way,” said Wallace. Taking the sandwich in his
bad hand, he used his good arm to push himself up, and stumbling
barely at all, he headed along the ditch, in the direction of home, of
the dog’s house.

The Waite girls looked at one another; Rupert looked at both of
them.

“We have to get the gun,” said Rupert.

Nancy nodded; Joan shrugged. “Might as well,” she said, and
Rupert felt his heart race.

They walked in a line down the ditch: Wallace first, the Waite sisters
following, first Joan and then Nancy, hanging close. At the back,
Rupert. The ditch was excellent for their purpose, running deeper
as it left the town, so that by the time they were past the business
section and behind houses it was almost a gully. They bent low as
they passed a lady hanging sheets in her back garden. But they
needn’t have; she hummed around a mouthful of clothes-pegs as
though she were alone in the world. When they were past, Nancy
Waite giggled, and Wallace shot a glare back over his shoulder.

“Sorry, Wallace,” said Joan, drawing out his name like it was
“Mother,” and laughing. Rupert laughed too, but he made a point of
keeping it down.

There came a point where the walls were nearly cliffs, huge
round rocks covered in slick moss; long pools of green-slicked water
spread still in the shade of bent willow trees that towered at the
edge, dangled roots in the air above their heads. Somewhere in the
shadows, something splashed.

Had the Waite girls ever been down here? Rupert thought not;
they both stayed quiet as they walked along this section. Because
Rupert had been here before, he knew where they were: just a dozen
yards from the main road to town, maybe a quarter mile from the
concession road that would take him and Wallace home. Where the
dog and its house were.

But the Waites lived in town — on Ruggles Street, in a red brick
house that climbed up two storeys with awnings painted white —
on the other side of town. They were going into strange territory.
Rupert’s territory. Wallace’s. They didn’t become talkative until the
trees spread, and they came back into the hot light of morning.

Nancy slowed, so she and Rupert walked side by side.
“There’s not a dead body there, is there?” She asked the question
as they climbed up a slide of sharp gravel, around a steel culvert
and onto the concession road. Rupert’s breath was hot and dry in
his throat; he had a hard time getting out what should have been a
simple answer.

“I — I didn’t see one,” he said, then — afraid if he said
no, Wallace
made that up,
she and Joan would just leave them and go back to
school — added: “But there could have been.”

“Wallace wouldn’t lie.”

She reached the top just before him, and skipped off to join her
sister, who was walking beside Wallace now. A scent, of soap and
sweat and something else, lingered in his nostrils. Rupert crested
the top and ran to catch up with the three of them.

“It’s not far now,” said Wallace, and that at least was true.

But they dawdled, so it took longer than it should have to reach the
house where the dog lived. By the time they got to the top of the
driveway, there was no getting around it: they were all four truant
now.

Joan peered at the house. It was still, and very bright now that
the sun was high. The front door was a rectangle of perfect black.

“It looks like nobody lives there,” she said. “It looks abandoned.”

“We should just get the gun,” said Rupert. “You remember where
you dropped it?”

Wallace pointed in a general way to the left of the house. “Over
there.”

“Where was the body?” asked Nancy.

“Inside.”

Rupert studied the yard. A breeze came up, carrying a sweet smell
of fresh hay from somewhere beyond this place. It tickled the high
grass. “I saw it fall,” said Rupert finally. He headed up the driveway
a few steps and pointed to a spot. “Maybe here.”

“What about the dog?”

The question barely registered; Rupert couldn’t even say who
asked it. As he moved closer to the house, it seemed as though he
were moving in his own quiet world — as though he were following
a thread of raw instinct, some part of his mind that didn’t think in
words or even pictures, but just compelled. He almost could have
closed his eyes as he stepped off the driveway into the grass, and
kept on his course. Eyes open, eyes closed: the memory of the gun
tumbling through the air just here, just so — landing in this place,
not that or that — was just as vivid one way or the other.

Just as true — true as any other memory,
like the silk touch of
golden skin in the early, cool hours of a late-August Sunday . . .

. . . the hard impact of fist in gut . . .

. . . the hot memory of accusation . . .

. . . the trajectory of a gun, set loose from sweat-slicked hand — through
sky —

— to dirt.

The gun lay nested in the grass at his feet. Rupert let his breath
out and bent down — behind him, someone said: “You found it?” —
and wrapped his fingers around the barrel. He lifted it first, like
a hammer or an axe, then took the handle in his other hand —
wonderingly put his finger through the trigger guard — and turned
around.

The three of them stood close together — Wallace next to Joan,
who held his arm. Nancy, clutching Joan’s skirt hem. The gun was
heavy, and big for his hands — but finally, words returned to him,
and he thought:

I could almost hit him. Miss the sisters. But hit him. Almost.

“I’ve got it,” said Rupert, and lifted the gun above his head.
Wallace nodded, and held out his hand: “Give it here.”

Rupert took a breath, and looked at Wallace. “Not yet,” he said.

Wallace looked back at Rupert. “What do you mean? Come on.”

Rupert shook his head. “You said there was a body in there,” he
said. “I want to see.” He beckoned with the gun and turned away
from them, to face the house.

“What about the dog?” said a Waite sister — which one, Rupert
could not say. He took hold of the gun by its stock, holding it in both
hands and climbed the steps to the porch.

The house consumed Rupert.

That was how it looked to Wallace, watching from the property’s
edge with the Waite sisters at his side. The brilliant morning sunlight
shone off the roof of the house, making dark shade under the eaves
of the porch. Rupert stepped beneath them, and he faded in shadow.
One step further, and he vanished into the black.

“What about the dog?” said Joan Waite.

“It’s got to be there,” said Wallace, and Nancy said, “I don’t hear
anything.”

The house was indeed silent. Wallace thought this strange. There
should be barking and shouting — a gunshot, maybe, as Rupert tried
to shoot the thing coming at him in the dark sitting room, up from
the cellar . . .

What was Rupert getting up to in there? Wallace held his hurt
arm close to him. He thought about the other door . . . across the hall
from his room at the house . . .

Rupert had stepped through that one too, just as sure of
himself.

“That house looks haunted,” said Nancy, finally.

“Is there really a body?” asked Joan.

“Wallace saw it,” said Nancy.

“I saw it,” said Wallace, but he didn’t look at either of them as
he spoke. Wallace had not seen a body when he looked through the
door of that house — not then, not the day before either. He thought
he might have seen something. But as he thought about it, the thing
he saw twisted and bent into all sorts of things.

“Rupert’s really brave,” said Nancy, “to go in there by himself.”

“Not that brave,” said Wallace.

“He fought you,” said Joan. “Even though you’re stronger.”

Wallace looked at both of them now — first Joan, then Nancy —
and he tried to make a fist using his hurt arm, but the fingers
wouldn’t close. Joan had a little smile; Nancy was shading her eyes
with her hands as she peered at the quiet house.

“He touches girls when they’re sleeping,” Wallace said. “How
brave is that?”

Nancy’s hand came down and she looked at Wallace. Joan’s smile
broadened and she laughed, and her voice went high. “He
what
?” she
asked.

“That’s why we fought.”

“Who — ”

“My sister.”

“Helen?”

“She’s really pretty.”

“Helen.”

“When?”

“Last Saturday of the summer,” said Wallace. “I let him sleep over
at my house. We talked about stuff and went to sleep. And in the
middle of the night — when he thinks I’m asleep — he gets up from
the floor and sneaks out the door into the hall. So I followed him.
He went across the hall to my sister’s room. And that’s where I found
him.”

“Touching her?” Joan’s voice stayed high, but her smile turned
into a grimace, and Nancy said: “Ewww!”

“Yeah,” said Wallace. “She was sleeping. He put his hands all
over her leg. All up and down. While she
slept
.” Wallace paused, and
looked at each Waite girl in turn.

“He likes you two, you know. Can’t decide which one he likes
best.”

“Eww!” said Joan, and Nancy’s eyes went wide.

“Rupert Storey ain’t brave.” Wallace winced, and pushed, and his
swollen fingers closed into a fist.

“He’s just a degenerate. He had it coming.”

Rupert pinched his nose, but it didn’t do much good. The stench in
here was foul enough to taste: of piss and shit, and something sweet,
and of smoke.

It was dark. The windows in the front room had blinds drawn
down, and they glowed a sick yellow with the sunlight. There were
three things that could have been the dog — a body — but as Rupert’s
eyes adjusted, he fathomed that none of them were, that he was
pointing the Webley at a rocking chair on its side . . . a barrel . . . a
stuffed sitting chair, now bleeding its straw onto the floor.

And there was a sound. Of breathing.

Rupert uncovered his nose and lifted the Webley with both
hands. The breathing was slow and wheezing. There was no rhythm
to it; each breath was its own task. As Rupert moved further into
the house, it seemed to grow louder, as if the house itself were a
great lung drawing those unsteady breaths. Like Rupert was a bone,
caught in its throat.

There were two rooms at the back of the house — a door on either
side of a woodstove. The first was filled with rags and a broken bed
frame. A pane of its window was broken, but the glass wasn’t cleared.
A cloud of flies tickled against Rupert’s face, and drove him back. He
let them. The breathing was quieter in this room. The cause of it was
in the second room if anywhere.

If the dog was anywhere in here, that’s where he would be.

And as for Wallace’s dead body —

The door was half-open. Rupert stepped around the woodstove,
and pushed it the rest of the way. This room was darker still. There
was a bed underneath the window. Someone was in it.

Rupert stumbled — the floor here was wet with something — and
he gagged. The smell here was terrible — it was like stepping inside
a shallow privy.

The breathing stopped, and there came a hard wet cough.

“Let me stay!”

The voice was reedy and high, straining as though shouting
but not much louder than a whisper. Something in it made Rupert
decide it was a man’s. As he stepped further into the room, his eyes
confirmed it — a long beard like nettles trembled against the pale
light of the blind, as the fellow tried to sit up.

“I won’t be here long,” the man continued. “I ain’t well.”

Rupert kept the gun up, all the same. There were other things in
this room. At the foot of the bed was what looked like a long duffel
bag. On the floor, scattered here and there, were empty cans; along
the windowsill, the silhouette of three more cans.

It was dark on the floor beside the bed. The man looked down
there, and the darkness moved.

“My dog,” said the man. “Jack. Named him after my brother.
Jack’s been on the road with me five year now.” A cough. “He ain’t
doing well either. Came in hurt today.” The man shifted onto his
side. “That a gun you have?”

Rupert squinted. The dog began to resolve itself from the shadow.
It was lying on its side. It was breathing fast and shallow — as he
looked, Rupert could make out the twitching of its rib cage. Its head
was down, and there was a little shine from its eyes — and a bloody
glistening, on the raw side of its head. Where, Rupert was sure, the
rock he’d thrown had hit it this morning.

“You come here to drive me out, boy?”

Rupert looked up at the man, and shook his head.

The man covered his mouth with a shaking hand and coughed.
Now that he was closer, Rupert could see more of him. His hair and
beard were dark, but he looked very old.

“But you got a gun.”

“A Webley,” said Rupert, and the old man nodded.

“That’s a kind of gun,” he said. “You know how to use it?” When
Rupert didn’t answer, the old man said, “Thought not.”

Rupert bent to get a better look at the dog. The floor was covered
with a fair bit of blood. The dog’s fur around its head was matted
with more blood. Its tongue lolled. It looked back at Rupert, and a
soft whimper came out, a sound like a leak in a tire.

“If you ain’t here to drive me out,” said the man, “could you do
me a favour?”

“What?”

“Shoot my dog.” The man in the bed coughed, and made a sound
like a whimper himself. “Jack don’t deserve to suffer, watchin’ over
me like he has.”

Rupert looked at the gun in his hands. It was heavy, and slippery
with sweat. He thought about the noise it would make if it went off.
A noise like that would draw the neighbours, the police. Even if it
didn’t . . . the Captain would see a bullet had been fired.