VIII

Y THAT EVENING the fog had thinned to dewy gossamer. Through it cars and vans and trucks stalled all day down through the belly of People Park were directed along the PPT and east on Topside Drive into the IFC Stadium parking lot. Marching alongside the slow-moving traffic the NFLM provided encouragement: Family-friendly entertainment! — Free rides for all! — Better than sitting doing nothing! — Come on you appleheads, let’s have some fun.

With Harry bunkered away at their campsite, the Pooles walked west along Topside Drive, and as they passed the Stadium Kellogg said, There it is, and Pearl said, Yup. Helpers directed them toward the entrance to Island Amusements, over which coloured bulbs twinkled in kinetic patterns, back and forth. High above brooded the Thunder Wheel, a huge blank clockface stripped of the time.

Why are we here? said Gip.

This is where all the kids are going, said Kellogg. Free rides! See, there’s Mummy’s puking one.

Why though, Dad? I can’t help from here. Raven’s gone and I’m the one —

I bet they have flats at the concessions too, guys! What do you say, Annie?

Familiar has to pee.

Familiar or you, Annie?

Same thing. He’s living inside me now.

Kellogg knelt in front of his daughter. Enough of that, eh? It’s getting a little weird.

While Cinecity hosted entertainment for the island’s eighteen-and-overs, Island Amusements’ free entry was attracting families by the hundreds: with the arrival of each Redline train more parents and their children poured down from Amusements Station, the lot reached capacity, to avoid double-parking along Topside Drive the NFLM allowed traffic onto the pasture reserved normally for vendors.

Helpers wielding plastic orange batons directed drivers into a grid. One Helper, face as luminescent as his sticks, screamed, Free today, kids, rides’re free! and in a panicked semaphore ushered the Pooles through the turnstiles onto the midway. Here the night seemed to open up and come alive. Everything glowed and sang and burbled and flashed, the air redolent with caramel and deepfry, beneath which festered the porcine stink of the portable toilets upwind by the treeline.

In a tight, tense voice Kellogg said, Everyone stay close, and took Gip’s hand and, prying it from her purse, Elsie-Anne’s. Pearl drifted alongside, gazing around with astonishment. Everywhere was something: games of chance, the yelps of vendors and hawkers, the booming evil laughter of Broken Hill Haunted House, the Atomic Canyon and Holy Road and Kicking Horse (Love the Horse or leave the Horse, threatened a Helper) rollercoasters whipped and roared and looped to the delighted terrified screams of their riders, over Rocket Falls’ Get shot thru tubes! sign had been posted an apology: SORRY, NOT TIL SUMMER – MGMT.

Daunting queues threaded from every ride, but the two most impressive led to the washrooms and concession stands. These dipped and twisted so circuitously that newcomers assumed positions beside those at the front. You waiting for food or the toilet, a woman asked Kellogg, and he grinned and told her, Neither yet! The woman frowned and was bumped by a man reeling past balancing a tray of ciders and greasy island flats.

Annie wants the bathroom, said Kellogg. Pearl?

She was staring at the Thunder Wheel, its apex lost in the low-hanging clouds.

Pearl? You want to take Annie, or —

No, she said, Gip and I will ride the wheel.

Gip cowered behind his father. The boy’s face was still faintly crimson where she’d smacked him. Pearl reached for him, stroked his cheek with the back of her fingers.

Great idea, said Kellogg. A chance for you two to, you know . . . Gip? Go on, take Mummy’s hand.

The hand that hit me?

Shhh, now, said Kellogg, and nudged him at his mother.

He joined her grudgingly, watching as Kellogg and Elsie-Anne were folded into the crowds, their spot assumed by a teenage couple lugging unwieldy inflatables won at games of chance.

Come on, said Pearl, eyes on the Thunder Wheel, and dragged her son across the midway.

A bored Helper told them, Ride now, you’ll get it solo.

Pearl looked up: every Thundercloud was empty.

No view, explained the operator, clouds’re too low. Still fun to go up though . . . I guess.

Pearl said, Remind me how long the ride is?

Six minutes, fifteen seconds.

Exactly?

Usually each Thundercloud gets less than thirty seconds at the top. But since you guys’ll be alone, I’ll give you five minutes. Quite a while to be up there, eh, kid?

Gip, what do you think, want to ride it with Mummy?

But —

It’ll only take a few minutes. Maybe from way up there you’ll be able to find Raven?

Gip gave her a skeptical look.

Okay, said Pearl, we’ll go.

Congratulations, said the Helper, helped Pearl and Gip board a Thundercloud, buckled them in, and closed the gate behind them.

AT THE BOTTOM of the Slipway Starx and Olpert Bailie sat in the Citywagon facing Crocker Pond. Or the misty enclosure over it. Despite thinning at streetlevel down here in the park the fog had the opaque gloss of a gessoed canvas. This is good, whispered Starx, just how Griggs said. He led Olpert to the car’s rear and opened the trunk: there was the boy, his hood pushed back, gaping at them with one glassy eye.

Hold on, Starx said and went off somewhere. Olpert didn’t know where to look — not at the boy, that waxy cycloptic stare, not at the fog, who knew what horrors might appear within it. So he looked up through the hazy ceiling at the darkening sky, the moon nudging into view.

Starx returned pushing a wheelbarrow lined with a tarp and bags of salt. He set the wheelbarrow down, tore the bags open, dumped the salt into the barrow. Then he brought Olpert around to the trunk, reached in, and took a sneakered foot in each hand.

Get his top half, he instructed. We’ll wrap him up, the salt will weigh the body down.

The boy was heavier than he looked, his head lolled against Olpert’s chest, the jaw clacked open, Olpert staggered and dropped his end. The kid’s skull knocked off the pavement with a dull, nutty sound.

What the fug, Bailie, hissed Starx, and all the way across town sitting on the motionless train at Blackacres Station, with Rupe sleeping in her lap, Cora looked up sharply. Something hitched in her throat. What was happening out there in the dusk?

Starx scooped up the body, folded him into the wheelbarrow, arms and legs sagging over the sides, and bound him in the tarp. As he was manoeuvred toward the pond one of the boy’s shoes jostled loose, which Olpert fetched and, cradling like a magic lamp, brought to Starx at the end of the launch.

The boy’s unshod foot dangled, a hole in his sock revealed a rosy coin of heel, and all the way across town the stabbing in Cora’s throat went twisting down into her chest. She gazed out over the roofs of Blackacres to the wall of skyscrapers downtown. Into the twilight appeared the night’s first few stars, and in the moon’s pale light down in the empty pit of People Park Starx said, Help me here, and Olpert tucked the shoe under his arm and took Calum’s feet, the spot of exposed skin clammy to the touch.

Got him? said Starx.

It’s because he doesn’t wear shoelaces, said Olpert.

What?

That’s why his shoe fell off. Olpert nodded toward it, wedged in his armpit. See?

Out in the Zone the moon painted everything silver. Rupe moaned in his sleep, and in his face Cora saw his brother’s face, and her heart felt ravaged by little scrabbling fishhooks. The downtown office towers struck her as dominoes, she imagined them toppling, one felling the next until they were rubble.

Starx said, On three. Olpert nodded. One, said Starx, and as two butchers with a side of meat they rocked the boy, salt sprinkling from the tarp. Cora shivered. Two, said Starx, the body swung pendulously out over Crocker Pond, and back. Rupe woke and said, Ma, are you crying? And Starx yelled, Three.

The body flew. The tarp unfurled. Salt scattered, arms and legs flailed, and everything disappeared into the mist.

There was no splash.

What the fug? said Starx. He toed the water: frozen solid.

Olpert still held the boy’s shoe. He looked from it to Starx.

He’s on top of the ice out there somewhere, said Starx, squinting.

The fog was without depth, a wall of white.

Starx took the shoe from Olpert, knelt, and slid it along the surface. For a second or two it swished over the ice — then vanished, went quiet.

Cora said, No, I’m okay. She petted Rupe’s hair, eased his head down to her lap. Go back to sleep, we’ll find your brother tomorrow.

The mist domed Crocker Pond. Everything was silent.

Fug it, Starx said. Ice has got to melt sometime. There’s salt out there too, right.

Olpert peered into the fog. Shouldn’t we go out there?

But Starx was on the horn with Griggs: Good lookin out, it’s done. What now?

And now? said Griggs. And now, Starx, B-Squad must disappear.

WITH THE WAXY white stick Sam marked two bright flecks on the door of the microwave. (Its clock too was locked at 9:00.) He pressed his forehead against the plastic, lined up his eyes: a match. Next were the holes. With his ducktaped hand Sam guided the drillbit into the door — a grinding sound, a smell of burning plastic, crumbly twists twirled onto the floor. Sam blew out the dust: two eyes stared back.

Next, putty. Sam pinched a grey gob out of the container and sculpted a half-inch volcano shape over the left hole, leaving the top open, and then the right, smoothing the ridges. He put his face up to them, the putty nestled perfectly into his eyesockets, he stared into the oven’s shadowy inside and moulded the two little mounds tighter, it was vital that no light or heat escape, or any air get in, and he smeared the putty onto his cheeks and up to his eyebrows, along the bridge of his nose on both sides.

He felt for the power dial. Found it. Paused. Okay, he said.

Sam breathed in with a great chest-filling gulp, and out, and thought of Adine’s face after the explosion: that raw pulpy mess, that death mask, that mask of blood.

The work was about returning to nothing. And as Sam stood there ready to rewind everything, staring into darkness, he wondered when it was over what he would see. Even darkness was itself something — nothing would be like space, in space it was always night. But no, night was something. Nothing was what you couldn’t see. Nothing was the space behind your head — if there was no space, if you had no head.

OLPERT FOLLOWED his partner into the boathouse, the wood splintered where the big man had shouldered the deadbolt through the doorframe. Starx groped in the dark for a lightswitch, flicked it on: the room was a jumble of nautical equipment, life preservers and flutterboards and oars and paddles and various small watercraft — rowboats, canoes, kayaks, pedalboats in stacks. It smelled of sawdust and mould.

Starx came at him with a pair of denim jumpsuits. Griggs said to get disguises, he said, handing one to Olpert. Starx’s uniform fell to the floor in a heap of khaki. He had nothing on underneath. Olpert was transfixed: so much man stood before him, everything so broad and fleshy and thick. Wrestling that massive body into the jumpsuit seemed equivalent to squeezing a ham inside a sandwich bag. In the end the pants clingwrapped his calves and the top flopped at his waist.

You too, candynuts, Starx grunted, we can’t be in uniform for when they ship us out tomorrow. Don’t look so forlorn, pal! Just a little break, a little holiday, till this all blows over. I need a different shirt though, maybe there’s a lost and found here or something . . .

Starx wandered off and reappeared in a maroon Lady Y’s Back-2-Back Champs T-shirt, which fit him as a tubetop. Not ideal, he said, but better than —

Olpert was gone.

Bailie?

Starx stuck his head out the door, looked left, right, up the hill: mist, mist, more mist.

Bailie? Starx’s voice rang out over the common.

And then, to the north, he saw movement — a figure flitting down the path from Street’s Milk & Things. Starx nearly called out, but it wasn’t Olpert.

This person was small, a child, a tubby little guy in a red cap who descended with purpose at a light gallop. He reached the bottom of the hill, paused, transfixed by the cloudy bubble over Crocker Pond — waiting, maybe, for a sign.

GRIGGS.

Walters? said Griggs, chair-wheeling beside Noodles before the Orchard Parkway monitor.

And Reed, he’s down in the truck. Cathedral Circus is cleared. Only business with anyone in it was Loopy’s — she was in there, crying, but we sent her to the pub. Reed gave her a fivespot, told her to get a cider on us. Everything’s ready.

We see that. We’ve got cameras on the street and — he flicked channels — garden.

I’m up on the roof. Of the Grand Saloon. With the chopper. It’s clearing down on the street but still foggy as shet up here.

And you’re sure he hasn’t returned to his suite?

Raven? No, no way. We’ve had men in there all day. I mean, he didn’t have any luggage or anything like that but —

Fine. Is everything set?

Yeah, pretty much. The chopper’s rigged and ready to go. Hitch looks good, should be a breeze.

Good lookin out.

So do we go ahead? With the um, demobilization?

It’s going to land in that little parkette, correct? To the north of the Hotel?

If Reed guns it, it should, yes. Provided the chains hold.

They’d better hold!

They’ll hold, they’ll hold.

Griggs lowered the walkie-talkie. Noodles had wheeled away from the monitors to a corner of the control room. Feet up, he massaged his temples, a soothsayer conjuring a vision, eyes closed. Griggs hit TALK: You’re sure no one’s going to come through there?

No chance.

Okay, I guess we’re good to go then.

We’re good to go?

We’re watching, Walters, keep in mind.

So should we go ahead?

For fug’s sake, said Griggs, yes, go ahead.

Good lookin out, said Walters. Talk in a bit.

From the pickup’s trailerhitch a towline lifted and disappeared two storeys up the Grand Saloon Hotel into what was either sinking clouds or rising fog. A thumbs-up flashed out of the driverside window, the engine rattled to life, and for a moment nothing happened. Then Griggs’ walkie-talkie crackled. Okay, all set, said Walters, here we go.

The pickup’s engine roared, the tailpipe belched exhaust in a sooty plume, the towline snapped taut, twanging.

It’s moving, yelled Walters, the chopper’s moving, it’s dragging it to the edge!

The pickup inched forward, the chain trembled.

It’s about to go over, said Walters. Griggs, are you there?

I’m here, said Griggs. Noodles and I are watching.

The pickup strained, the towline flexed, Walters screamed, It’s going over!

The chain went slack. The pickup, released, went tearing up the road. Griggs waited for the crash as the illustrationist’s helicopter fell groaning over the side, plummeted six storeys, humbled to earth as an elephant to its knees.

Instead the towline came whipping out of the fog and thrashed in the Grand Saloon’s parkette. No chopper followed. Noodles opened his eyes. Blinked. Did not nod.

Walters?

Griggs, it’s done!

No. Nothing came over.

What?

The towline came loose. Ask Reed, when he returns from his joyride.

Wait — Griggs? No way, I saw it go over. What?