The City Still Breathing (12 page)

Slim looks down at his T-shirt. ‘Nope.'

‘You're gonna get sick.'

‘Yeah, I'm real worried about a sore throat right now. How's your side?'

‘Fine.' Heck looks down for the first time. ‘Fuuuck.'

‘What is it?' Slim comes around to the other side of the car, following Heck's stare down to the front tire, brick flat, a square of white and something black sticking out of it. He grabs and pulls. The shine of metal – a switchblade – the square of folded paper coming with it.

‘What's it say?'

He unfolds the paper. Four words, each letter formed very carefully in black ink so there'll be no mistake.
My brother before midnight
.

He gives it to Heck, who reads it and then keeps reading it like some great mystery will come popping out. He fingers the knife, pulling the hasp and the blade jumps back into the handle. Heck looking up at the sound. ‘What're we gonna do?'

He slips the switchblade into his pocket and throws Heck the keys. ‘Spare's in the trunk.'

‘What? I'm not gettin it.' Heck looks to the back of the car. ‘There was a dead guy back there.'

‘Get the fuckin spare, Heck.'

‘And then what? Then we go drive around some more? We can't go back to your place – he knows where you live. He knows your car. You don't wanna go to the cops. So what're we gonna do – wait for him to find us?'

‘We're gonna flip the tire.' He sits down on the hood, looking out at the line of tall naked poplars waving in the wind. The creek below. Back here behind Wembley Public, and he didn't even know that's where he was driving the whole time. ‘And then we're gonna go find that body.'

They slide down the bank by the bridge and follow the trail all the way to the black mouth of the culvert. Heck kicking at the snow and sulking the whole way. ‘This is a bad idea, Slim,' like a broken record.

It's a half-moon of old brick, sagging like busted teeth, holding up the road above them, traffic running over, the water running slow and dark underneath. He gets right up to the edge and spots a small ledge not more than two feet wide running off into the black. Heck at his shoulder, peering past. A warm exhalation of air runs over them.

‘How far does it go?'

‘I dunno.' Slim playing with the flashlight, pushing the button, not getting anything. ‘The creek runs under half the city. They buried it up years ago.'

‘Isn't this where Normando used to bring kids and eat them?'

‘Don't be a wastoid – those're just stories.'

‘Well, there better not be any bats or cannibal hobos in there. I don't got my tetanus shot.'

Slim smacks the flashlight against the edge of the culvert, warm light flickering on, and pulls off the sunglasses. ‘C'mon.'

They shuffle forward, following the beam of the flashlight, playing across the ledge, the concrete walls, the dripping ceiling, the water. Slim's nostrils fill with damp and mould. He takes one look over his shoulder to see the circle of street light receding behind them, shrinking to a penny.

There's a rumbling overhead and Heck jumps forward, almost knocking him in the water. ‘Chill – it's just the cars.'

‘Yeah, sorry, man.'

Slim keeps the light moving across the creek, looking for any sign – a hand, the pale glow of flesh. Reflections off the water making shivering ghosts on the concrete.

The tunnel bends to the left and he steals one last look back – a pinhole of dying light. Two more steps and it's gone.

‘Slim?'

‘Mm.'

‘What're we gonna do if we find it?'

‘Bring it back.'

‘Yeah, cool. Why?'

‘Give it to Milly.'

‘And then he'll stop shooting you.'

‘That's the plan.'

‘Thought you didn't know if it's his brother anyway.'

‘Well … he seems pretty sure.'

The air is getting tighter here, older, and he can feel the ceiling dropping down on them, so close now it forces them to stoop. There's another gust of warm air across his face, like this place is alive, like it's been waiting for them.

‘Y'know what I heard? I heard after he killed his parents he used their bones to make furniture – like chairs and shit.'

‘Stop spitting on my neck.' He remembers Mr. Oliver's history class. Some lecture about the catacombs in Paris. A grainy slide, hundreds of skulls arranged in the pattern of a heart. The light flickers and he slaps it until it comes back strong.

A faint sound is growing, like the snow on a dead
TV
channel, and the ceiling continues to drop. Slim gets down on all fours, swinging the camera to his back. ‘We're gonna have to crawl.'

Heck mumbles something that sounds like
Bad idea
, but grunts along behind him all the same. The light bobs ahead as he crawls – more ledge, more water, stretching on. It makes him dizzy and he concentrates on his watch instead. Bringing him back like it always has, like that one bubble of focus in a photo, everything blurring around it. All the shit he's been through, least he's always had this. Gold plated. Speedmaster – the one the astronauts wore, Van used to say when he let Slim hold it – a moonwatch. The watch reminding him this is who and where you are – you are Slim Slider, you are in some seriously deep shit, but you've got a chance. Find that body.

Heck shrieks and jolts him from behind – making him lose his grip on the flashlight and there it goes, splashing into the water. He reaches for it – too late – the water glowing sick and green as it sinks, sinks, hits the bottom and dies. Darkness.

Heck whimpers behind him. Slim kicks at him. ‘Smooth move, Ex-Lax.'

‘Something touched my leg, man!'

‘Probably just a fuckin rat.'

‘Don't joke, I hate rats – you know I hate fuckin rats, man!'

‘Shut up.'

‘What're we gonna do now?'

He kicks out again. ‘Shut the fuck up.'

The dead
TV
sound has continued to grow – now a
whoosh
ing – and he can feel a warm spray, like spit, on his face. He looks down at his watch – the hands glowing faint in the dark. He shuffles forward again, deeper into the thick dark.

‘Hey – where're you goin?'

‘A bit farther.'

Another whimper. ‘But we can't see nothin.'

‘Wanna go back for your Teddy Ruxpin?'

They squirm on, Slim humming under his breath, losing all sense of distance, time and direction. The culvert seems like years ago already, and they might be a hundred kilometres down to the centre of the earth or just a few dozen feet from the entrance. He realizes he's humming that Rick Wakeman album that always used to give him nightmares. The electronic notes and images of giant glowing mushrooms ringing in the dark.

The stone is coated in slime here, like the diving rocks down at the lake. There's something old about this place, older than the concrete around them. Men on their bellies digging for gold and finding nickel instead. He's heard that the entire downtown has enough ore in it to keep the place going forever, but they'd have to blow it all up to get at it.

The sound is now a thundering and it's close, so close they're almost inside it. Maybe the water drops off here. A pool where things gather – it might be right here. He pushes forward another foot and hits something, hard and stuck. He yells back at Heck, ‘Hold on!'

He runs his hands over the grit of rust and cold metal – iron bars. A grate of some kind blocking their way forward. Stopping them this close. He slams a fist into the bars, but it doesn't give.

The face of his watch glows. Find the body. Find the girl.

Fuck focus.

He squeezes his arm through the bars. Reaching up, trying to find some latch or lock. Nothing. He stretches out, feeling the stone ahead, pressing up against the bars – reaching as far as he can.

Something grabs his hand.

Something out of the thunder, out of the slime, out of the darkness.

He pulls back, his hand slipping loose, scraping through the bars and falling back against Heck. Lifting his camera as he falls, the flash going off. In that split second, that dying moment, he's not sure but he thinks he sees something – pale naked flesh beyond the bars, two globes of light in the flash. Like the eyeshine of an animal in a photograph. Here and gone. Hello, darkness.

He lies back into the warm and soft of Heck. Sinking into the darkness and maybe it's shock but his mind again kicks up Mr. Oliver's lecture – tunnels in the catacombs that were walled up and people left inside. Buried alive.

Just like this. Just enough space to get the whiff of fresh air. Then slam a grate down. Grates on every side of you, burying you into a life before you've had a chance to choose. Give them the time and they'd brick the whole thing up, him and Heck with it.

He realizes he's being pulled back and he fights the entire length of black until they're out in the air again. The cold like a slap across his face. Heck tosses him on the ground and leans over gasping. ‘Are you mental?'

Looking up at the street above, the glow of lampposts like a Lite-Brite board. ‘Didn't you see it?'

‘See what? I couldn't see anything past your ass, man.'

‘It was right there, on the other side of the grate.'

‘What was?'

‘The body!'

‘What? But how would it get through the grate?'

‘I dunno. Maybe there's a hole underwater.'

‘I don't think so, man.'

‘Then maybe there's another way through.'

Heck's face scrunches up. ‘And how would it get there?'

‘Something grabbed me, Heck. I felt it.'

The street light flickers off and then on. They both start to shiver.

‘Like no way, m-m-man.' Heck stammers in the cold. ‘That's not possible.'

Slim looks down and sees the Polaroid still hanging from the lips of the camera. ‘I snapped a picture of it.'

‘Lemme see.' Heck grabs the photo, brings it right to his nose and then relaxes. ‘You dick. I thought you were for real – that's not funny, man.' He chucks the photo at Slim and heads back up the bank to the car.

Slim holding the photo, the bars of the grate lit up by a flash, nothing beyond it but the black secret water no one would see because they brick up anything real and alive.

Back in the Dart, both of them stinking like ditch water. The note on the dash.
My brother before midnight
. And Slim's moonwatch says it's already past eight.

Heck stops chewing his fingernails long enough to spit a few out on the upholstery. ‘No cops.'

‘Nope.'

‘No body.'

‘Nope.'

‘No plan.'

‘Nope.'

‘Totally not cool, man.' Back to chewing his nails.

‘I just need some time.'

‘To what – become bulletproof?'

‘To think.'

‘Okay, well, we can't go to your place and I'm not bringing you over to my house so my parents can get shot at. Oh shit!' He pats his pockets and pulls out two small squares of paper. ‘I totally forgot – my mom got me tickets to see this Victor guy.'

‘Who?'

‘He's a peenist.'

‘A penis?'

‘No, shit for brains, a pee-nist – y'know, like Mozart. Anyway, he's at the Grand – show's already started, but we could catch the second half.'

‘I'm gettin shot at and you wanna go to the theatre?'

‘C'mon – there'll be lots of people around, it'll be safe. And it'll give you time to think … or whatever.' He shoves the tickets at him like he's going to tear them then and there. ‘You got any better ideas?'

The lobby's empty, their footsteps echoing across the granite, scaring a mouse back into a hole gnawed through the thick wood panelling. Slim listens to the door and hears music, so they sneak into the dark theatre. The smell of old popcorn and mothballs.

A spotlight is on a little man in a tuxedo sitting at a giant piano. He's banging away, none of the notes in tune with each other. ‘This guy sucks,' Slim whispers, but then everybody laughs and he wonders what he's not getting.

Some pimply usher he recognizes from the high school makes a big deal out of being all official and taking their tickets, making them wait while he gets his little penlight working. He leads them over ancient carpet down to their seats, right near the front. Heck muttering a thousand
scuse me
s as he wriggles in.

The man onstage stops playing to glare down at them and cracks something about starting over again and everyone yuks it up. Slim feels himself going red like he always does when he's the centre of attention. He leans over to Heck. ‘This was a bad idea.'