Phase Shift

Phase Shift

Elise Abram

In the draft copy of this book, my students
noted that two pages they viewed as important were missing:
Acknowledgements and About the Author. As I hope this is the final
copy, I have included them here so as not to disappoint. I would
like to thank Frances Stocker, Noreen Burton, Smadar Lorie, Shilpa
Raikar and Freidele Soban, members of the book club I frequented
for many years, for their support, encouragement, and editing
suggestions, but most of all for providing me with a network of
writers who grew to be cherished friends. Thanks also to colleagues
Elizabeth Kippers and Michele Straka for reading drafts of Phase
Shift and offering their honest opinions and editing services.
Thank you to my husband who encouraged me to write in medias other
than my psyche, to my mother who begged to be my first customer, to
my brother and his family for helping to celebrate my successes and
downplay my defeats. Last but not least, thank you to my children.
Thank you to my son for reading my first novel and insisting that
it was amazing, and to my daughters—when one of my novels goes
viral, I vow I will have more Twitter followers than the two of you
put together.

I am laying in the dark listening to my
husband's raspy almost-snore, unable to sleep. To keep myself
occupied, I try to remember when I first knew I wanted to be an
archaeologist.

After seeing the first Indiana Jones movie
as a teenager, perhaps? No, Indy merely served to bolster my
interest in the field. The real turning point came while watching a
documentary called "In Search of Noah's Ark" when I was no more
than twelve, back in the time before the super cinemas. It was
then, I knew. Wood decomposed to nothing but dark shadows in the
soil, aerial photographs of well-fed vegetation, and measurements
approximating those in The Bible—I still shudder in awe at the
thought of it.

My first real taste of archaeology was in
the middle of a conservation area almost an hour's drive north of
the city: dark soil dampening trouser knees and buttocks, dirt
rammed under fingernails, blowing out a peppering of dust mixed
with snot on the Kleenex—man! I was hooked.

A few years later I was near graduation and
looking toward grad school. Dr. Richardson, the head of the
Archaeology department, offered to be my faculty advisor and I
accepted without hesitation. He assigned me a site, the remains of
a carriage house behind a restored clapboard house, built nearly
two centuries ago. The planning, supervision, excavation and
analysis of the site over two years' time would earn me my Master's
degree.

My assistants and I arrived at the house, to
find Dr. Richardson sitting on the stoop reading
Scientific
American,
an issue featuring an article about a cache of
Peruvian mummies. Dr. Richardson is a forensic anthropologist. That
means he gets off on dead people and figuring out how they died. He
works extensively with the police, to give them clues as to what
decomposed bodies and skeletons might have looked like while they
were still living and breathing.

We approached the stoop and he stood to
greet us. I had to crane my neck and shield my eyes from the sun in
order to meet his gaze. He smiled at me, said hello and squeezed my
shoulder. My stomach lurched. Dr. Richardson is what we used to
call "a hunk". The first time my mother met him she called him "a
dreamboat" and said she wouldn't throw him out of her bed for
eating crackers. The way things turned out, that comment was so
many different levels of wrong.

The house was converted to a living museum
sometime in the late eighties. The side entrance, added on around
the same time, smelled of new carpet and fresh paint. Pictures of
the house in various stages of disrepair and renovation hung on the
walls like windows into the past. Dr. Richardson gave us the grand
tour: men's parlor, women's sitting room, dining room, upstairs
ballroom, and nurseries. A narrow staircase took us up to the third
floor servants' quarters.

Back downstairs, Dr. Richardson showed us
the kitchen. The walls were of unfinished wood made dark by soot.
At the centre of one wall was the original hearth, complete with
bake ovens. A single wooden table stood in the middle of the room,
deeply scarred through use and over time, and in the far corner,
the kitchen pantry, converted to a small storage-cum-utility closet
after the restorations. Near the ceiling Dr. Richardson pointed to
a series of wallpaper layers. He recited each occupation and era by
rote and I was in awe of him.

He finished his lecture and ushered us out
of our cramped quarters. I chanced a glance up at him and he smiled
at me. A perfect three-toed crow's foot appeared to frame the outer
edge of each of his eyes. The solitary, unshaded light bulb that
dimly lit the room shone in his dark eyes—a girl could get lost in
those eyes. I blushed, embarrassed at the lust I felt for him at
that moment, chastising myself for falling for my faculty advisor.
But then I reminded myself that Dr. Richardson was a good sixteen
years' my senior, and everyone knew he was seeing Suzanne Pascoe,
the Egyptologist. Dr. Richardson was safe, like a movie star. Like
a movie star, he was unattainable, and consequently, not entirely
real. I told myself the crush would pass, and it eventually
did.

Palmer's snoring again. I nudge him, tell
him to roll over, then roll over myself, wedging one hand between
his rib cage and the mattress and one foot arch-deep between his
thighs. He doesn't protest.

Sleep has eluded me this evening. Pretty
soon my bedside alarm will begin to shriek at me, signifying the
start of yet another day. I need a drink. Tea would go down good
right about now. Hot tea with honey and lemon.

In the kitchen I fill the kettle and plug it
in. While I wait for the water to boil, I stroll into the living
room and take a peek out the front window. Two black sedans are
parked on the road, each facing opposite directions, waiting for me
in case I decide to take it on the lam. Inside each car sits a pair
of officers—which officers are out there tonight is anybody's
guess. The possibilities read like a who's who for law enforcement:
CIA, CSIS, OPP... It's funny how quickly things spiral out of your
control: yesterday I was an archaeology professor considering
earning my doctoral degree. Today I am the prime suspect in a
murder investigation.

The kettle begins to boil. I unplug it.
Sometime between eyeing the sedans and thinking about the death I
may have expedited, I've lost my appetite for tea.

I return to bed, drawing my body close to
Palmer's, more for security than warmth. I find solace in the fact
I was right about one thing when I was struggling with that crush
on my faculty advisor all those years ago: Palmer Richardson
is
safe.

Little Samkin Tailorson had always known he
was different and didn't belong. He was paler than most, and
frailer, too. The very air he breathed knew this and refused to
agree with him. On most days, it just seemed too thick, and try as
he might, poor Samkin couldn't get it down fast enough. On those
days, Samkin would gasp and cough until his throat burned and his
eyes turned crimson for the burst blood vessels within.

"Asthma," those in the know might say, but
there were none who were "in the know," for there was no such
ailment as asthma on Samkin's world.

At night, on those particularly bad days,
Samkin would lie awake in bed, listening to the voices of Vina
Tailorsmate and Gilmore Tailor, his parents, confused at the hushed
dialogue which ensued:

Vina: I knew it. I was wary from the
start.

Gilmore: Now, Vina...

Vina: I mean it, Gil, what good are we doing
the boy here?

Gilmore: How can you seriously suggest we
should—

Vina: He should be with people who can help
him. People who know what to do.

Gilmore: (Samkin imagined his father shaking
his head.) I forbid it.

Vina: He has difficulty breathing.
Breathing, Gil. One of these days he'll expire, I swear.

Gilmore: And what would you have me do? (And
then in a voice more hushed than before) I broke the integrity of
The Pact, Vina. Do you know what would happen to me, to us, to our
family, if they found out?

Samkin had no idea of what "integrity" or
"pact" meant, although he'd heard the phrasing before, and with
increased frequency of late.

At night, he dreamt about The Integrity of
the Pact. It was a huge, orange, scaly lizard with bug-green eyes.
It laughed as it fixed its funnel-like proboscis over his lips and
nose and sucked. Sucked and sucked until there was no air left. He
struggled violently to catch his breath. Yet still it continued to
suck. Continued until a strange woman with blue-green eyes, yellow
hair and skin as pale as was his own entered the room, turned on
the lights, and screamed.

Samkin awoke from these dreams gasping for
air, mouth bloody, ringed by the gouges formed as he clawed at the
beast in his sleep. Certain he had screamed, he lay in bed awaiting
one of his parents to arrive and soothe him with soft, cooing
voice—but they never came.

Samkin hated The Integrity of the Pact,
viewed it as the only thing standing between breath and expiration
for him. He dreamed of the day when he could at last find the
strength to rise up and smite the mighty beast, stealing the very
life from it as it breathed him to within inches of losing his
own.

I have been coerced by Palmer to play
Antiques Roadshow at the Royal Ontario Museum tonight in his stead.
Artifact night at the ROM is a time-honoured tradition in which
otherwise respectable people lug their trash, and occasionally the
odd treasure, and go trolling for dough. I hate that I'll have to
spend all night fielding questions about the monetary value of
their stuff. It's like what happens on archaeological sites—someone
always comes around and asks if you've found any gold yet. It's
inevitable. Tell me something, I've always been dying to say, when
you move house how much gold do you leave behind? Instead I smile,
and try to educate them on the fact that archaeology is not about
the money. What's more valuable is the information artifacts give
us about what went on while the site was occupied all those years
ago, regardless of their material of manufacture.