

Deathbed

a novella by

Jason McIntyre

Smashword Edition

Published by &

Copyright © 2017 Jason McIntyre

Fiction titles by Jason McIntyre:

On The Gathering Storm

Shed

Thalo Blue

Bled

Black Light of Day

Walkout

Nights Gone By

The Devil's Right Hand

Dread

We Can Make It If We Run

Mercy and the Cat

Kill The Lights

Zed

Learn more about the author and his work at:

www.theFarthestReaches.com

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. Thank you for respecting the work of this author.

"Evil is also not anything small or close to home, and not the worst; otherwise one could grow accustomed to it."

- Jacob Grimm

"Nothing has changed since Little Red Riding Hood faced the big bad wolf."

- Alfred Hitchcock

"You don't feed nightingales on fairy tales"

\- Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Dovetail Cove

July 14, 1971

Part I

The Grand Tapestry

1.

Farrah Birkhead pedalled along the bike path so fast and so hard it turned to a grey-green blur beneath her feet and alongside her. And to the world, she was just a blur of orange cycle shorts and a white sleeveless top. No helmets, right Farrah? Helmets were for sissies.

At twelve-and-a-half, Farrah was already starting to stretch out. No boobs yet. Her friend, Jamie, was starting to get some but they were still nubs, nothing to brag about—even though she did to Farrah who was still as flat as they both were at summer camp last year. At twelve-and-a-half, Farrah Birkhead didn't have the grace to avoid clarifying her age if you made the mistake of saying she was only twelve. At twelve-and-a-half, Farrah Birkhead didn't have the bosom of a thirteen- or fourteen-year-old. But at twelve-and-a-half, she had enough self-awareness to recognize it would arrive. As would the problems that accompany burgeoning womanhood for all young ladies.

Tanned legs, arms and neck, Farrah had her hair up in a messy pony. Too many strands were lost and victims of the wind now, what her Mom called 'whispies'. But the air felt good. It was hot, but not as hot as it had been out on Main Street for the annual street market. Dad had let her go on her own for the first time because he had some things to take care of at the office. And mom, well, that's complicated. Mom was off island the last while.

But Farrah was desperate to go. "I just know I'll find something great!" she'd said to her dad. "Please oh please? Jamie will be there and I won't talk to anyone." And by anyone, Farrah meant tourists. Off-island folks. Not that she cared one whit whether someone was local or not—people are people, a phrase she remembered from a Sunday school teacher she had liked an awful lot.

But it was Dad's point of view. "Tourists," he'd said more often than not. "They can be...weird." He'd told her some horror stories about different things that had happened through the years. And she was sure he'd sanitized them all in different ways, just for her. One of them, he'd sometimes remind her, in as gentle a way as he could, had lost their dog camping up past the main beach. That dog-less family had boarded the ferry for home anyway, no poochie in their Chevy's backseat. Well, that poor beagle, emaciated and scared, was the one that had wandered right into the generous backyard where Farrah, about four at the time, was playing with her dollies.

"It's like they send their brains on vacation when they go on vacation," Dad often said. "They don't think. Most people have trouble with that, the best of times. But off-islanders are the worst."

But he'd let her go to the market. With the stipulation she'd be home by five p.m. at the very latest. She'd gotten her way by making sure to guilt her dad into it. "Gran and me always used to go. But she can't anymore."

It was five (or six) minutes past so that's why she was pedalling with mad fury through the trails south of town, down to where the Birkhead's little half-acre was. Douglas Birkhead's job was recession-proof—not like the vast majority of islanders who weren't in a trade related to tourism (or related to Chris Banatyne, the island patriarch).

Doug Birkhead was chief of Police of the island town known as Dovetail Cove.

2.

The reason Farrah was five (or six) minutes late was simple. As she'd foretold, she found something great. The market was a three-day event that had waned in popularity. It got smaller each year. Farmers from up north brought their goods to try and catch direct customers. Artisans from Oregon, Washington State and the lower mainland of British Columbia, trundled over on the ferry to try and sell overpriced handmade trinkets and pottery. The odd novelist sat and signed copies of his vanity press book about his upbringing in the dirty thirties.

Zeke, a municipal employee, would saunter around in the sun, stop to tilt his hat back and watch the shoppers while he gave his sweaty brow a wipe, then start up again, stabbing the odd styrofoam cup in the gutter with his trash stick.

Dab Saum, owner of the Highlander Cafe, would send his waitress du jour, Tina or Helen, out with trays of iced tea on the hot days at a quarter apiece—or steaming coffee on the rainy ones. And the cycle of styrofoam for Zeke to stab up and put in the trash would begin again.

Usually, there were one or two booths run by junk dealers. In the case of Farrah's find, it was a woman with round John Lennon sun glasses and long white hair. She wasn't selling vitamin potions or elixirs, though she called to mind that kind of fairy tale, where perhaps Farrah would buy some magic beans and they'd sprout something nefarious by morning.

Out across the closed street, sellers were packing up. A radio was playing "Beyond the Sea" by Bobby Darin. The touchy signal for a mainland station was blessing the market this morning and Bobby's tinny croon carried across the street to this woman's booth. Through her half-tinted lenses, she eyed Farrah with the black eyes of a witch.

No, Farrah wasn't interested in potions or beans. She loved old things. She was a kind of archaeologist of modern artifacts. Cameras, cash registers and typewriters piqued her, but she usually couldn't afford them. She was twelve-and-a-half, after all. And what did a twelve-year-old need with a thirty-year-old Olivetti missing the letter 'T'?

Farrah's interest had lain in a black tin box with no name on its cover.

"It was most likely someone's snuff tin," the Lennon Lady said as Farrah turned it upside down and felt its contents shift. "Or pipe and tobacco. It's my mystery box. Tell you the truth, I don't even have the key for it."

Farrah, who'd told a fib to Dad about Jamie being with her at the market, squinted against the late afternoon sun and looked disbelievingly at the old witch. A fibber could spot another fibber, that's what Farrah's granny had told her. She stopped just short of blurting her thoughts to the Lennon Lady, which were, simply, curtly: "I don't believe you."

As if reading her mind, the old woman with the white hair down her back in a straight, simple ponytail that ended in a tie-dyed rag with a bulky knot, said, "Alright, alright. I have the key. But here's the deal—"

She produced a small silver key, as if by magic. She held it out as if it was indeed a small vial of haunted elixir, one that would solve, say, all of Dad's problems.

Farrah, who was sucking a giant Gobstopper in one swollen cheek, shifted it to the other side. Her lips had a touch of blue dye on them. She said nothing. She wasn't going to be pushed around by this gypsy junk seller. She was better at dickering than this woman knew. To keep quiet was the utmost in owning a negotiation. Another tidbit of wisdom from her old granny.

"Deal is this," Lennon said. "You can have the box for free." Then she leaned in and sneered. "The key will cost you ten dollars."

Farrah puckered her lips. She put her hand on her hip, cocking it to the side like she'd seen her mother do when Mr. Harlow, the grocer, was trying to sell her a cut of meat that wasn't exactly what Mom wanted. To the junk gypsy, Farrah said. "I could drop it off the north bridge on a big boulder and have it open in two seconds." She made to leave—with the box under her arm.

Without missing a beat, the Lennon woman said, "Okay. Five dollars for the key."

Farrah stopped. She looked back and shifted the gobstopper to the other cheek again.

"I gotta be home in ten minutes," she said to the gypsy who reminded her of the skinny dude on her dad's Beatles record album jackets—but wearing a bad Halloween wig. "Or my dad's gonna roast me on a spit. I have fifty cents left."

Defeated, hot, and likely tired after a day in the sun out on Main Street in some little one-horse town she'd never visit again in her waning years, the gypsy woman in the round John Lennon glasses put out her hand and said, "Fine. Fifty cents."

3.

It was nine minutes past five when a huffing Farrah dropped her bike on the gravel driveway and pulled the black tin box out from under the book straps on the rack over her back tire.

She ran flat-out to the back door and bounded in. Dad was in the kitchen and the smell of spices and meat hit her. "Farrah," he said, without looking up from the food he was getting ready.

She knew the tone. "I know, Dad. Ten minutes late. I know, I know."

He didn't push it. And she noted that he didn't push it. The two of them reached a truce about this one without a single shot being fired. They were getting better at this.

That's the way Farrah liked it. Since Mom had gone to the mainland, she and her dad had reached a kind of shorthand with each other. Surprisingly, it was working well between them.

With her prize, Farrah flopped on the couch in the big room conjoined to the kitchen. This was a fairly new house but was stacked with stuff everywhere. Corners and tables and bookcases bulged with all manner of things. The place looked like the junk dealer's booth but way worse, maybe what the gypsy junk dealers's own house looked like, wherever she lived.

"Go wash up," Doug said, still not looking up from what he was doing at the kitchen counter.

Farrah gave a pfft sound. "Dad, come on, I want to look at what I got. 'Sides, you're not even ready. The meat hasn't even hit the pan yet. Why aren't we barbecuing? It's hot out."

Ignoring her question, he said, "You need to set the table. And before you can do that, you need to clear your junk off the table."

"In a minute," Farrah said, leaning forward and setting the black tin on the crowded coffee table. She turned it once to get a look for any stickers or engraving. Nothing obvious. It wasn't junk, not to Farrah.

"Not 'in a minute'," Farrah," Doug said. "Or we'll be having a bigger conversation about the ten minutes. I'm still the boss here."

Farrah let out a drawn grunt of exasperation. In the Sunday funnies it would have been an Ugggh. "Mom wouldn't call it junk."

"Well," Doug said, wishing he hadn't acknowledged it. But he'd already started speaking. He needed to say something. "Mom's not here."

No, she sure wasn't. And with each passing day, with only her father's one-sided way of looking at things, Farrah was painfully aware of her mother's absence. Not just for things like going to the market or making dinner but in understanding Farrah.

She got up from the old leather couch and trudged away towards the hall with slumped shoulders and sagging head. Her messy hair was mostly all out of her ponytail now and the elastic was ready to drop off and get lost in the rug. Doug thought she looked like his wife at the moment, and that rubbed him crossways when two or three years ago, it would have made his chest heavy with a picture-perfect, Norman Rockwell feeling.

"Soap, young lady," he added, giving a sprinkle of salt to the wound of being the boss—the only boss—in the Birkhead house these days.

Like a lightbulb popping on over her head, she perked up. She turned, dashed back to the coffee table and plucked the black tin from the precarious stack of magazines and old TV Guides.

She dashed down the hall. Doug called after her, a fear that he'd lost this skirmish in his voice. "I want this table set in five minutes, Littlest Lady!" He realized how much he sounded like his own father and let out a breath when he heard the bathroom door's lock click audibly from the dark hallway.

When she didn't respond, he shouted. "Farrah!"

From down the hall and behind the door he heard her: "Littlest Ladies need privacy!"

That was something she'd learned from Mom. When you confronted a man with it being a women's issue—or one of privacy—he couldn't say a word crosswise back. He just had to cool his heels until you were ready to emerge. Farrah missed her mom.

4.

The Lennon Lady had been more than a junk dealer. Farrah had seen lots of those. This one had given her a card that said, Blue River Estate Dealer, Sales and Salvage. Those ones were the best, because often there were some really neat and tragically undervalued treasures in their collection. And sometimes you could get what they called a 'lot' for a few bucks and come up with something inside that the dealer had overlooked or, simply, not researched properly.

Frankly, her own house had become a bit of a junk heap the last couple of years. It had creeped up and she really couldn't remember any turning point when it went from being an average ordinary house to one that was on a watch-list of homes in need of a condemning certification.

She'd learned bargain hunting from her mother. But here was Farrah, ready to add another box of junk to her own little room at the end of the hall.

It didn't matter to her right now. The "Estate Dealer" in the tinted Lennon glasses had called this one her mystery box. Farrah had learned from her Mom to play it cool so she'd never let on. But her heart had jumped and she'd started to sweat even more when the junk dealer had called it that. The idea that there could be a banded stack of—what were they called?—bearer bonds in the tin, got her all tingly. Maybe it held someone's last will and testament. Maybe it was a stash of someone's Alice in Wonderland drugs, goof pills that her dad had told her tourists would sometimes bring over on the ferry.

There was nothing that Farrah liked better than a mystery. It wasn't the idea that there would be countless riches in the mystery box—though that would be a great lot of fun. No, it was that the mystery box might hold something even more interesting.

It might hold someone's story.

5.

After dinner—and Doug did barbecue the steaks, by the way—Farrah went to her room. Doug called after her. "I'm heading out. I'll check in on Gran before I head home. I want you in bed around nine or so." She didn't answer. Knowing it was useless, he shouted one last detail. "I want the kitchen cleaned. I'll check before I go to bed."

Still nothing from Farrah. She had closed her door and tuned Dad out.

Dad gave up—for now. But from behind her closed door, she heard him put on one of his records. It was Otis Redding and he was singing about coming out to the Frisco Bay from Georgia. Two thousand miles, he sang. And nothing ever changes.

Farrah knew the song. Knew that Dad put records on when he was worried about something. It wasn't her he was worried about, not this time.

But even still, the echoing sound of the record player through the house was a comfort. Maybe worry was wrong. Dad put music on when he left in the evenings too. It was like leaving a shadow of himself in the house when he went to work. That was the comfort for Farrah. That, even mad at her, Dad was still thinking of her.

Letting the song fade away from the forefront, she set the black tin on her bed, rubbed her mouth with the back of her hand in an anticipatory gesture, and surveyed the lightly scuffed paint on the metal. She got on her knees at the edge of the bed and smoothed out the bedspread on either side.

From the pocket of her orange cycling shorts, she pulled out the little silver key she'd paid fifty cents for. Like it was sacred, she rubbed it and then put it in the little matching clasp. She turned it, licking her lips.

The clutch popped and she was able to lift the black lid from the black base effortlessly. Inside was a treasure trove—and a smell—one of old metal and musty cardboard. Inside were other smaller metal canisters. There was one with Rexall Quick Bands in flaking red paint on a rusted white tin. A second Rexall tin was smaller and round. It held a healing salve once upon a time. Another was a snuff tin proclaiming Copenhagen Satisfies in deep embossing. It was the most rusted of them all. Another said Summers Electrics—Farrah had no idea what that would have contained. Maybe blades for some kind of ancient hair trimmer? A beautifully-designed red and yellow one stated it was for Prince Albert Crimp Cut Pipe Tobacco and showed a rather astute looking man with a curly moustache and long beard on its front. Two identical tins—one for ladies' cigarettes was a turquoise shade and showed a black cat with its back up in a hump and its tail curling seductively. Those were called Black Cat Virginia Cigarettes and touted themselves as Extra Mild - Superfine Quality. The other tin was for Player's Navy Cut and sported what looked like an old postage stamp but might have been the price tag. It was long and bent over the joint where the lid of the tin would have met the base. It said 50c. Farrah gave a pfft! sound at that. She'd spent the same on the whole damn thing and she bet every last one of these canisters was filled with the same thing: bubkiss.

The tin that was the biggest—and in the best condition—was one in baby blue called Old Chum Virginia Flake Cut. It had a nice design with curlicue letters that Farrah liked quite a lot. Still, she felt a bit of disappointment at the lot. She told herself, Ah, well, not every find can be a real humdinger. That was another of Gran's phrases: humdinger. She climbed up on the bed and laid her head down on her pillow. It was hot in here.

At a distance, she heard her dad call out one final goodbye over the volume of the record player. He was heading back to town, back to his office, back to work. She knew he was important, maybe one of the most important men in town. But Farrah spent a lot of time alone—particularly over summer holidays, and particularly since Mom had left. Mom hadn't really moved out. Her stuff was all here. But she was gone nonetheless. And long distance calls to the mainland were expensive. They'd only talked a handful of times.

The front door slammed and in a couple of minutes, Farrah heard her dad's police cruiser start and drive off down the lane before braking at the end and then fading off to blend in with the noises of the early evening: birds, and wind in the trees, a bit of the distant surf and a gull crying somewhere.

Looking down at the open black tin by her bruised right leg, Farrah felt a pang of regret. A bit for the fact that there were no plans for a phone call from Mom tonight. Regret that Jamie hadn't come with her to the market today like she'd promised. Regret that Farrah had wasted fifty cents on something that wouldn't have any value unless she held onto it for another twenty-five years. But mostly regret that the story inside the Mystery Box was over so quickly. It had held a story. But a tiny one. All she'd learned is that it had likely belonged to one of the workmen or fishermen that staggered in after a stint on the water and spent their leave flirting with girls (though, thankfully, not usually any as young as Farrah or her friend Jamie) on Main Street or down near the Beacon Street Bar.

It was likely a single guy, Farrah thought. Most of them were. She knew about how DC had some girls older than her who catered to those transient sorts. She didn't know exactly what they did, but Jamie knew and she'd filled in a few of the blanks for Farrah.

So, yeah. That was pretty much it—the whole story of the mystery box's owner in a nutshell. He was a fisher who smoked and chewed. Yeah. Not very exciting.

Feeling deflated, Farrah gave the tin a kick. It went off the edge of the bed and thumped to the carpet. Just another layer of the mess in this house. She rolled over.

She'd hoped there'd have been something she could take to Gran. Something that had much more of a story to it. And maybe she could climb up in Gran's lap like she used to—either in Gran's bed or on the couch in the back sun room—and the two of them could look through the contents of the box together, piecing the life of its owner together like a puzzle.

That's what Farrah had really wanted. That's why she'd parted with her fifty cents this afternoon at the street market. From her father, she'd come honestly by her distrust and tendency towards suspicion. From her mother, she'd inherited a frugal and careful watchfulness and an ability to hone in on a bargain and make sure she was not coming out on the raw side of any transaction.

And from Gran—her Dad's mom—Farrah had learned the joy of a good story.

"We all have a story to tell," Gran had told her when she was just a little girl. "Every man, woman, child and beast has their own, and it's almost always part of a bigger one. Some call it the greatest story ever told. I like to think that might be true. But even if it isn't, it's one big beautiful tapestry—all woven together in colour and the finest thread. It's a joy to watch it weave over and under itself."

She made up her mind then. She'd visit Gran, even if she didn't have a gift, even if today's find hadn't been much of a find after all. Dad had told her that visits with Gran were numbered. To Farrah's thinking, she had to spend as much time with her grandmother as she could this summer—especially as the old woman was one of the few conduits to her own absent mother. Mom's own dad—Farrah's Grandpa Danny—had become a recluse in these last years and wasn't much for company anymore. Hearing any tidbits about her Mom from when Farrah was just a little girl, that had a value for Farrah that she couldn't expertly express with words. But that value was far greater than any old typewriter. She'd spend as much time with Gran as she could.

She wasn't supposed to leave the house when Dad was out—certainly not after dark...but she'd be home before he got to Gran's. Just this once, it would be okay.

6.

On her way out, Farrah decided she'd take the black mystery box with her to Gran's anyway. It wasn't all that exciting, but maybe Gran would be having a good day. Maybe they'd look at it together and something in the tin would spark a memory—and thus a story—from Gran. It couldn't hurt.

She plopped all the old tobacco and snuff tins back in and clasped it shut again. In the crowded living room, she took the needle off the skipping record player and switched it off. She went out the back door and secured the tin back under the book straps at the back. She put her house key under her shirt. It was on a dirty grey shoelace around her neck. She would never leave the door unlocked. And the idea of coming back after dark on her bike without Dad at home did creep her out a bit. She pushed that idea out of her head. She'd put the back light on—she was sure of it—and it would light up the back part of the yard all the way to where the trees started when she got close enough to trip the motion sensor.

It was a pretty fancy gadget, one that her Dad had got through his law enforcement connections on the mainland. Farrah liked it. Mostly. She hated it when she was in bed, waiting for sleep to come, telling herself stories in her head while she tried to simultaneously think drowsy thoughts—and the thing snapped on. Usually it was just the wind, or maybe a squirrel. But she had a vivid imagination. And she usually pictured some crouching beast back there, stumbling out of the thick wood and into the Birkhead Half Acre (as her Dad jokingly called their plot). The creature would be part human and part...something else. It would be dripping some kind of juicy saliva from teeth that were oversized, and closer to an animal's fangs, and it would be dressed in rags.

Brrr. The evening had chilled off a touch now that the sun had dropped. It had to be that, Farrah told herself as she mounted her bike. She pushed the idea of the 'manimal' out her head and considered the idea of getting her bike helmet from the shed. They weren't just for sissies. Or maybe they were, she thought—if sissies worried about getting wigged out in the dark, clipping a tree root with the front bike tire, and doing a bum-over-head flip into the scrub.

No, she decided. I'm fine. Big girls can handle anything. She'd put on her red-hooded sweatshirt that Dad had gotten her from the Space Needle last fall. Good thing.

She flicked on her bike's headlamp and started pedalling, instantly feeling that cool wind off the Pacific tousling her hair and building colour in her cheeks. With the effort of her feet doing the work, the lamp lit up a path out in front of her and she headed off to Gran's.

Despite her initial efforts at giving herself a major case of the heebie jeebies, she took the back lanes and the paths between properties. It was faster by a lot. And besides that, Gran had always told her—when Gran was still healthy enough to pilot her truck, "You learn more about a household when you see it from the back yard."

"Front lanes," Gran said, "are for Sunday morning pleasantries. Front yards are for greeting neighbours over the hedge and serving tea to guests in the good china. But back yards are where the honest truth sits and waits to be told."

Behind Farrah in the darkening press of the woods, the black metal mystery box rattled along with contents that were much heavier than only a few tobacco tins.

7.

By the time Farrah got to Gran's it was full-on dark with no stars, though it was hard to tell whether it was overcast from under the canopy of black afforded by the foliage. Farrah's throbbing headlamp bled into the rays shone by Gran's porch light.

The living room was lit up too and the wide picture window showed all the lamps on. Nurse Anne was in there on the couch and reading a book. When she saw movement at the window she gave a start but realized it was Farrah on her bike and waved at the girl to come on in.

Gran's front door was unlocked.

Coming in and trying to catch some breath, Farrah said, "How's she doing tonight?"

Nurse Anne gave a medium-sized smile. "She's...okay," was her response. Farrah had learned to gauge a lot based on those two things: the size of Anne's smile and the words she chose to describe Gran's state. Medium smile plus 'okay' was code for not terrible, but not great either. That was par for the course the last few weeks.

"Can I go in? I have something to show her." Farrah was carrying her black mystery box.

"Sure," Nurse Anne said with an attitude that was unspoken but said, Can't hurt. "But just peek first. If she's sleeping, don't wake her." Can't hurt, her tone said. Won't help, mind you, but it can't hurt.

Farrah gave a big, wordless nod and kicked off her sandals in a haphazard pile next to Nurse Anne's and a pair of Gran's she likely hadn't worn in a few months.

She went down the short hall—Gran's house was lots smaller than her son's and daughter-in-law's. At Gran's room, she peeked in through the cracked door. Gran was in bed with a layer of three or four of her heaviest afghans and comforters spread over her thin frame. Gran's head was lolled towards the big window. In daytime that window showed her a lovely view of her now overgrown garden. Tonight it was a solid pane of dark chocolate that reminded Farrah of the cooked puddings her mom made on the stovetop. Mixed with the chocolate were little snippets of leaves that bled into the nothingness of the night. Overlaid on top of that was a mirror image of the room, swimming in a faded portrait.

Knowing she shouldn't go in and wake her, Farrah put fingertips on the doorway. Without meaning to—honestly!—the door moved an inch or two. It squeaked on old hinges, likely swollen in the humidity of the night.

Gran turned to look toward the doorway. Her eyes were open—Farrah wasn't sure if they had been since the start—and she crinkled her already wrinkled face. One side was frozen from her paralysis. "Who's there?" she said in a whisper that probably wasn't meant to be one. "I don't have my glasses." Only one half of her mouth moved and she spoke with a new and prominent lisp. One eye was open wider than the other, too. Farrah was never sure if the weak one could see at all anymore. Maybe glasses didn't matter for Gran.

Caught, but feeling some relief that Gran was awake now, Farrah pushed farther into the room. Copying her gran's volume, she said. "It's me, Gran. It's Farrah."

"Eh?" Gran said, cocking her head. She probably didn't have her hearing aid in either.

"It's Farrah," the girl said, much louder as she came right around to the window side of the bed.

As she grew closer and larger, Farrah swam out of fuzziness and into better focus for her grandmother's good eye. "Farrah, dear! Come here, come here!" the old woman said and Farrah did.

She had her black tin with her and set it on her lap. "Gran! Do you want to see what I got today at the market?"

"Was it market day already?" Gran said in her drawl. "Did I miss it?"

Feeling a touch of sadness that Gran had missed it—and that she'd been so ignorant as to mention it—Farrah bowed her head and looked off at the panel of the window. "Yes, Gran," she said, using her silver key to pop the latch on the black tin.

"It's okay, dear," Gran said, giving the girl the lightest pat on the wrist. "I'm past going out. My time for markets is done. Glad you could go on m'behalf."

Gran had reached for her glasses on the night table, which was a jumble of pill bottles, a drinking glass with a yellow bendy straw, and a few water-ringed magazines. There was also an extra roll of intravenous tubing coiled there. Another tube ran under the afghan into Gran's wrist. It sprouted from the far side of the bed (which is why Farrah always came to the window side) and snaked its way up to a couple of drip bags on a rack pushed back against the wall.

With great effort, Gran tried to pull herself up, using only her good side. Farrah saw the struggle and reached to help her, also getting an extra pillow to plump up behind the woman's bony shoulders under her nightshirt. "Thank you," she said. "Could you get Gran some water?"

Farrah did. She'd put her tin of minor treasures aside. She was itching to show them to Gran—even if they weren't that exciting.

After Gran supped from the straw in her drinking glass, she swallowed hard a few times. That looked painful to Farrah as Gran blinked and cringed with each gulp.

"Now then," Gran said. "What did we find?" Farrah liked that. We, as if by osmosis, Gran had come to the market with her. "Any story here?" Gran asked, a bit of unusual bounce in her voice. "Any piece of the tapestry?" Farrah knew exactly what she was talking about. She feared that the tobacco and Rexall salve tins wouldn't be nearly enough—even for an expert like Gran—to craft a meaningful piece of the grand tapestry that Gran liked to talk about.

Farrah went to put Gran's water glass down, and when she did, that shifted the pile of blankets and sent the black tin to the floor. It tumbled open and, with a set of clangs and clatters, the contents spilled out.

Farrah hopped down and knelt to start picking them up. Everything had come out, but what she realized was that not everything really had. The tin was deeper than she'd thought. And the bottom wasn't exactly a false one, but it wasn't made of black tin. It was instead, black cardboard, a bit scuffed just like the outside. When she lifted it at one bent corner, it revealed its other side as a black framing matte, the kind that she'd seen holding some of Gran's childhood photos. It had a few gold trim bands on it, and a typewritten tag at the bottom: Smilovitch Photographers. Inside was a black and white photo of a woman, a child in short pants, a parrot, and a man with a similar haircut and beard to the fellow on the Prince Albert tin.

The photo had settled and the little boy was obscured. Farrah lifted the cover of the matte. The photo shifted inside the cardboard matte to show that the little boy was holding the parrot on one dark arm clad in a thick leather glove that went nearly to his shoulder. The look on the boy's face was peculiar, Farrah thought. Like maybe he wasn't all entirely...there. Hard to explain in that instant. But first impressions, Gran had often said, were nearly always correct.

This all happened in a few seconds, of course. And, by the time the front of the matte lifted and the photo shifted, a second thing slipped out from behind it and drifted into Farrah's lap. This was a rather officious-looking document. In heavy curlicue script, it said, "Record of Incarceration." Under that were a number of typewritten details. The most prominent was the inmate's record number and name. The name was E. H. Oberon. The number was a longish string. Farrah sat and gaped at these new prizes.

And! There were more!

Down under the black matte, there was also an old rusted hunting knife clasped in a tattered hard leatherette sheath. Next to that was a plastic placard with a nameplate in gold embossing. It said, "D.H. Munn - Facilities Supervisor."

And the crème de la crème: A black, leather bound notebook with at least two hundred pages in it. Farrah fanned them and saw that they were filled with the most fine, ornate, manly scrawl in black ink, and a fan of the pages showed nearly the entire book was filled with writing. The smell of the pages was of must and tobacco...and what was that? Old lager? It reminded her of a smell that Gran's husband—Farrah's Granddad—had smelled of when he sat on the front porch of this very house and sipped something fizzy and foamy as the sun went down. Weary, darlin', he'd say to Farrah, who sat at his feet and paged through a hard-back picture book. I'm so weary. She remembered this clearly. She remembered how she didn't see Granddad after that memory. He's gone up to heaven, she remembered her dad telling her.

She held the leather-bound treasure with all its words and looked up at Gran, who was staring down at her with silent interest and, admittedly, a bit of raw anticipation in her wrinkled and twisted face. With her paralysis more prominent than before, Gran asked, "What you got there, kiddo?"

Farrah stood holding the book. "A story," she said, proudly.

8.

Gran had been playing games of wist on a tray with Farrah only two weeks ago. Only two weeks ago, there'd been colour in her cheeks and she was walking to the couch and having a little tea in the morning sun at the dining room table.

Now was a different story. Farrah, even at twelve and a half, could see just exactly how different.

She'd overheard Nurse Anne talking with ol' Doc Sawbones on the phone a few evenings ago. She'd heard phrases like "organs in shutdown" and "jaundiced skin." She'd heard one that stuck her heart like a hat pin. "Not long now."

That's the one that had hurt. Not long now.

Farrah knew how dire those three words were.

Sure, she was selfish and sad that her Mommy wasn't here. But that her gran had reached a spot where the doctor and the nurse agreed on the use of those three words, that was, as Doug Birkhead would say, "Downright shitty." It was the worst.

So now, as Farrah perched back upon the edge of Gran's wadded bed, she gave a thin smile and took Gran's long, bony fingers in her warm little hand. "Gran," she said earnestly, noticing the thinness of the woman's hair and her colourless lips. "Can I read this to you? It looks interesting."

"Oh," Gran said, smiling so much that her eyes involuntarily closed, tilting up and making her look briefly like her old self. "Deary, I'd love that more than I can tell you. Let Gran lay back and you just read until your little voice goes out. If I sleep, you give me a nudge. I don't want to miss a beat."

And then Gran laid back. She didn't close her good eye. And her smile didn't entirely disappear. As Farrah opened the leatherback book to the first page of writing, she thought she heard Gran muttering something. She wasn't sure, but she thought it was "Grand tapestry...grand tapestry...grand tapestry..."

Part II

The Tin Man and the Apprentice

Thursday, August 9., 1956

1.

Police Chief Sorenson asked that I write down everything that I remembered from the day that everyone around here refers to as 'the incident.' I did that, on Seven longhand pages using a yellow legal pad he gave me—well after my hand cramped and my wrist started aching. Hadn't written that much since school. I got in trouble a lot and that meant writing lines on the chalkboard. Chalk was cheaper than ink back then. Nowadays, the kids have so much. Too much, if you ask me. But I don't think there's any point in getting married and having a family. That sort of life would be more trouble than it's worth.

So, yeah, I wrote those Seven longhand pages for the chief. But the real story is much longer than Seven longhand pages. The real story tells it all. I was there on August 9., 1956. The beginning of the end, I'd say, at least for the kingdom of Dovetail Cove, as it was following the war.

Chief Sorenson is old and nearing retirement. My hope is that he's completely washed out to sea—maybe retired and living with his wife down in Florida—long before anything more comes of this. When there's a regime change, it takes sometimes years for the new administration to get up to speed. That's why four-year terms of office for the White House is a damned joke. It takes two and a half just to get the stock room re-ordered and the names on the checks reprinted.

No reason why a swap-out for a new police chief would be any different. And that would mean any official investigation they open would stall out pretty quick. Most of the people involved might have left the island by then. Or they'd have new jobs. Or they'd have cloudy memories. Or bought memories.

Oh sure, the plant might limp along—but it won't be the same. It'll have a skeleton crew compared to the heyday when I was Facilities Manager there. It might even make enough power to sell back on the mainland. They laid those cables down at the bottom of the ocean, built up the short-run rail lines and integrated the cartage system for overseas. They kept this under wraps and had the thing float a while longer.

But it wouldn't be near as good without me. Nope. Dennis H. Munn had things running like a well-oiled machine.

Does it matter to me? Not really anymore.

But I'm going to put every detail down here in this book. For my own peace of mind, and to ensure that nothing gets clouded by time, distance, or the almighty dollar. I intend to lock it up and keep the key with me, so no one gets any ideas.

I have a feeling this book will come in handy.

2.

August First began as a cloudless Thursday. I left my place a'quarter past nine. I was pretty keen to get in before the electrician arrived. I supposed I'd gotten into the habit of coming in late and leaving early. But when you have the place as well organized as I did, it didn't much matter. My guys knew who buttered their bread and covered for me, if it was ever needed. It rarely was. That's the good thing about having a boss that's elected and has most of his constituents off-island.

My other supervisor—the one who was in-house—he was the problem. Technically, we were at the same level, though he was in charge. I hated him. And that's putting it mildly.

But as long as he left me be, I never looked for him and he didn't bother to seek me out. I just didn't want the gate guys calling him to let the electrician in if I wasn't there yet. Pain in the ass for him to come all the way out of the dungeon, as we called it, just to let the electrician in and show him where he needed to be.

I'd surely hear about it later. And I wanted to avoid that.

So that's why I was bushy-tailed and sipping my coffee a little after nine as I walked briskly out across the main lot. I had a pretty cushy deal, I admit. Government contract, right? So, nine a.m. was early for me. I was usually out of there by three in the afternoon, too. I was one of the smart ones, though. I knew how good off I was.

So I get there and Jimmy—he's one of the good guys at the gate—I stand around with him and there comes the electrician in his truck, cruising in a cloud of his own dust.

"I got this, Jimmy," I told him. "Pop the gate, kay?" Jimmy did. I was his senior by quite a bit and he knew to finish up the shit-talk about his weekend when it was time for work.

The metal gates swung open and the van pulled up to me. The electrician rolled down his window. "Morning," he said. He took a swig of coffee from his mug. "You in Facilities?"

"I am," I told him. I didn't bother with my name. I figured a guy like him should know the name of a guy like me. Without me, there is no him. "And who's this?" I said it leaning forward and making a show of noticing his passenger.

The boy in the passenger's chair of the electrician's van leaned forward and gave a casual wave. He looked like he might be about nine or ten. I was bad with guessing ages though. Add to that, I hated kids and didn't pay them much mind. "Sean's my boy," the electrician said. "He's starting his apprenticeship with me."

From over in his jump seat, the kid piped up. "Learning all Dad's tricks of the trade," he said. His voice hadn't cracked yet. It had a bit of a girlish lilt. With longer hair, he might pass for one.

"Don't care whether he's learning to whistle Dixie," I told the electrician. "He's not coming into my facility. He's not on the list and he ain't cleared."

Without missing a beat, the electrician took another swig of his coffee. It looked hot and black and strong. Steam poured out into his face. "Make room, okay?" he said and started putting his vehicle into gear after handing his mug to the boy.

"For what?" I said, taking a step back.

"For me to turn around. There's no space unless I go in through the gate and come back out—"

"Turn around?" I said. I was getting irritated. It was too early in the morning for shit show shenanigans. Usually it was Drumheller giving me this kind of guff.

"Yuh," the electrician said. He was so casual. It was pissing me off.

"Well, where in Sam Hell you going?"

He looked at me—glared at me. "You don't want Sean here, then you don't want me. I got plenty of work, Mister. I'm going home. I'll have another job lined up by noon."

I laid into him. I think in my other report, I left a lot of this out. But I want to remember it right. This guy was being a real prick. I said, "Now you listen here—"

But he cut me off. He said, "No, you listen here. I don't have time for this. My son is learning the business. So I need to do my business. If you have me hired, then you have him hired. Otherwise, I'm gone."

He started ahead, letting his foot off the brake. "Watch your toes," he said, snide-like. "I'd hate to crush 'em."

"Wait, wait, wait," I said. Drumheller needed the panel upgraded. He'd been after me for two weeks and, finally, he'd relinquished and let me get an electrician not on the approved list. We needed to follow government rules for this kind of stuff. But I had my budget, and if I could get things done under that budget, I could spend the money on...other things, if you catch my drift. I had a million creative account numbers.

But anyway, I made sure we didn't have anyone on the approved list available for this job. I waited just long enough so's Drumheller's need for the panel was dire enough that he cleared me to get a local. I got this electrician on the list. But I needed the work done. There was, quite literally, no one else that wouldn't need a ferry ride and another forty-eight hours for a criminal record check.

"You letting Sean in with me?" he said.

"I am," I told him. "But I'm pissed about this. You never said anything on the phone about bringing a minor in here. We haven't had time to clear him—"

"He's a kid," the electrician said with that well, duh tone that people get when they think they know better.

"I know, I know," but if he so much as lifts a staple-puller from someone's desk, it's my ass in a sling. And then it's yours. You're vouching for him."

"Fine," the electrician said.

"Pull ahead, park up there," I said, motioning to the place where a few stalls were filled with cars and trucks. "We walk from there. We'll need to go to the security office and get him a badge. You'll both be signing waivers and non-disclosure agreements."

He pulled ahead. I didn't know if he was carrying his air of knowing better with him. But I felt like I'd been bettered. I didn't like it.

He got out. The kid, Sean, he got out of his side and started unloading tool kits and boxes from the back of the van. He unfolded a nice-sized hand-cart and started stacking things up. It was chilly. The boy only had a jean jacket but he was working quick for his Dad who took more sips of his coffee and then tossed the last mouthful into a patch of weeds.

They made no effort to come over to me. That pissed me off too. Finally, I caught the senior electrician's eye and gave him a stiff wave. He started over to then.

"Name's Ketwood," he said. "Island Electrical. You met Sean." The boy nodded. He was pushing the hand cart and was a couple paces behind.

"Well, Sam," I said, turning. "I'm D.H. Munn. You can call me, Mr. Munn. Office is this way—"

"Well then," he said. "You can call me Ketwood," he shouldered a drill kit and a length of cabling to lighten his kid's load considerably. "My friends call me Sam. And we ain't friends."

3.

I got them processed. Jimmy's boss, a guy name of Edmond, did it pretty quick. Ketwood had his boy sign a copy of everything. He looked up at me as he watched the kid put his sloppy John Hancock on that last one and said, "You know none of this is legal, right? He's nine, ten in a month. He's not allowed to sign any kind of legal document."

"Gotta make sure he doesn't tell any of his kiddy friends about anything he might happen to glance at while he's on the premises," I told Ketwood.

Ketwood just rolled his eyes. I looked at Edmond, who shrugged as if to say, Bastard's got a point here.

"Where's this panel?" Ketwood asked. "Let's get to it."

"In the dungeon," I said. "Down in the tunnels." I said it for effect. But Ketwood and his boy didn't flinch. Neither cared. I guess this was just a job. They didn't bow before me or my mighty power plant. That pissed me off too.

4.

I got the Ketwoods settled at the panel after we took the elevator down to level Seven.

At the station, every level from the ground floor up was named by a military alphabet. Alpha, Beta, Charlie, and so on. Going down in the elevator took you on a numerical trip. I'd been down as far as ten but I knew there were more levels. It bugged me that the facilities manager didn't have security clearance for the whole shebang. One day, I'd figure out a way to see it all. I'd figure out a way to go all the way to the bottom.

Since I was down as far as Seven, I thought I'd get started on another little project. I needed something to make me feel better after the piss poor meet-up with this Ketwood feller. Usually, the guys I got on out here were forever grateful. Usually, they kissed the ground I pissed on. Not this guy. He had no intention of being hired back. He knew I needed him for this bit of work and he knew I wasn't about to send him packing until it was done.

So the Ketwood feller and his boy had brought the new electrical panel down with us to Seven.

I stood at the doorway of the utility closet—one of fifteen or sixteen in the whole facility. The letter sections above ground were pretty small next to the rest. One reactor, one cooling tower, plus all the stuff that went with them. I was the facilities manager, but the reactor was mainly looked after by a crew that reported over my head. I could throw my weight around but, for the most part, I didn't. I was no engineer, no scientist. I trusted that they wouldn't blow us up. And I cashed my pay checks every second week.

I kept them in hot water. I kept the halls clean and the exits clear. I made sure the bulbs were changed and I had a staff to do it.

Thing was, the below-ground levels of the facility were the most interesting part.

The power station on the island was built for a bunch of reasons. One, to test out the viability of a small, cheap design. I think the cooks in the kitchen wanted to see if they could plop these cookie-cutter reactors down all over the mainland and bring power wherever they could truck or rail in the raw material. The island was a microcosm experiment for a lot of things. And nicely contained should anything ever go south. We even had our model train set up to bring in our raw uranium from the south mine, a place by the name of Caterwaul. I'd never been down that far but a guy name of Frank Moort had his crew ran the rail line out of there. It either came our way to drop off the yellow cake (we processed it downstairs before use in the reactor, but I'll get to that) or they rode it out of town to the old terminal where it went off island. I suspect our government agency was selling it overseas at quite the profit. I have wondered how much of it was going to come back our way—through the skies, bolted inside missile heads.

Two, the station was built because there was already a much bigger project going on under the island. It had started some time after the First World War but really got cooking after Korea and the Second World War. There were bunkers all over the island. And this station was built directly over the biggest one. In fact, when the reactor was built up to what it was at its pinnacle, it had been integrated with the underground workstations and a whole new layer of modern modules had been constructed down there. I didn't know the half of what was there. But I knew that the experiments down there needed a heck of a lot of power. And we were generating it upstairs.

Ketwood let out a sigh as he surveyed the other two panels in the big utility room. He held a small flashlight in one hand and used a current tester to trace the lines. "What is it?" his boy, Sean, asked him, blowing his curly red hair out of his eyes and trying to look as serious as his dad.

"Well," Ketwood Senior said. "Let's use this as our first lesson for the day. When you look at this, what do you see?"

Sean thought for a second as he surveyed the mishmash of electrical lines then at me over in the doorway. "Looks like a total mess to me," the boy said to his pop. Not like he was scared he'd see the back of his father's hand, but that his pop wouldn't like to hear it.

Ketwood ruffled the boy's bright curls. He seemed like the type of man who was, surprisingly, patient to the ends of the earth with his kid. That bugged me. Kids should be hidden away until they're at least old enough to warm a coochie.

"Right, Son," Ketwood said. I could see the little tilt of his smile, even from a few feet away. He bent down and opened the lid on one of the tool kits they'd brought. He was hunting for something.

"Dad?" the boy said.

"Uh-huh?" Ketwood said.

"Who would have done this so...so...ass-backwards?"

Ketwood fought a laugh. Clearly, that was a term the boy had gleaned from him. Then Ketwood looked over at me. "Government workers," he said. "Contractors paid twice an honest wage for shit work. That's who."

He got back up from his crouch with a crack of one knee and an audible creak of his overused hinges.

"Are we gonna be able to...work with it?" the kid asked.

Ketwood started his screwdriver on one of the breakers. "Sure will, Son. Munn?"

"Uh-huh," I said.

"This is gonna take more time than I said it would. Now that I see it for the rat's nest it is. Do I have your approval for three more hours?"

I stood silent for a moment. Truth was, we had all the budget in the world for this. When Drumheller made a request, it usually didn't matter what it cost. Drumheller, he was above me. I hated it, but Drumheller had clearance to go all the way to the bottom. "Sure thing," I said of the extra three hours. "But you'll still be done today? You brought everything you need?" I didn't feel like getting into it with this pissant and his kid. I just wanted the job done and Drumheller off of me about it.

"For sure," Ketwood said. "Finish up later today. Tickidee-boo."

I remember thinking how that phrase, tickidee-boo, it didn't suit a man like Ketwood. He was a black-and-white kind of guy. He didn't make small talk. Any mention of the weather was incidental with a man like Sam Ketwood. He was patronizing me. I remember thinking that if he pushed it further, I would have to flag it for him. He would do well to pay me my due—after he finished with the panel.

"All right, then," I said, turning to go. "I've got some things to do. I'll let you to it. You have your walkie-talkie there. I'm on channel eleven if you need anything. Don't wander off, m'kay?"

"Won't," Ketwood said, straining to get a set of screws loosened while his boy aimed a torch for him. He didn't look back at me.

As I headed down to the elevator, I heard Sean Ketwood ask his father one more question.

"Dad? How're we gonna get all this done? It's such a stew."

And his dad said, I kid you not, "Sometimes a man's gotta make chocolate pudding out of last night's shit."

5.

I took the main elevator down to ten. That's where Drumheller's office was. Nine times out of ten he was doing work on the levels below—stuff that I wasn't, as they say, privy to. He was here today. His desk and credenza wore their usual piles of papers, folders and books. He was at his desk staring into the tube of what looked like a medium sized black and white set. I couldn't see the screen.

He looked up at me when I cleared my throat at the door.

"Doctor," I said to his one visible eye. The rest of him was in a hunch and hidden behind his piles and that weird mystery box of his.

"Munn," he said. I could hear disdain in his voice. I didn't have a hoity-toity title. He'd made me feel like shit for it before, and he never called me Facilities Manager Munn. He and I had gotten into words a time or two and, on one occasion, he'd even said aloud how he couldn't believe a rat like me—with only a grade eight education—was granted the clearance (and the salary) I had.

Dr. Drumheller had no respect for me. That was clear.

And he knew I had little for him as well. Even less on this day.

"Can I help you with something, Munn?" he asked. "I have work."

I stepped in, clutching my own file folder. "Only be a tick," I said. "One quick thing and then I'll let you alone."

He stood, straightening his white lab coat and pushing his spectacles up his nose. He was a rather distinguished man. The world, I'd learned, makes way for good talkers. Drumheller, despite his beakers and his test tubes (or whatever kind of science he did), was a good talker. He spun enough stories to get enough money and that propelled him up the ladder.

Scratch what I wrote a moment ago. It's not that I had little respect for him. I actually had a lot—for what he'd accomplished in roughly the same number of years on God's green earth as me. I just didn't like him. He thought himself better than the rest of us. And that made me want to punch him hard enough to knock his shiny white teeth out of his mouth and his shiny, clean spectacles off his face.

I tossed the file folder down on the pile of haphazard papers and materials on the doctor's desk. "Here," I said. "You may wish to peruse this as we talk."

I liked using big words when I was talking to someone like Drumheller. It brought me to their level.

"Have you got the electrician working on Seven this morning?" he asked, a bit exasperated. I only nodded. He reached for the folder. I was impressed that it hadn't slid off. "What is this?" he asked. "More expenses for the electrical upgrades?"

He opened it. It wasn't expenses. The contents of the folder had nothing to do with Drumheller's work. Or the plant's. It had nothing to do with anything that he and I had ever exchanged.

"Remember when you called me out in front of my staff?" I asked, circling around to the side of the desk so I could catch a simultaneous glimpse of the insides of the folder while still seeing Drumheller's reaction. "You asked me how much education I really had. You were right. I'm no smarty pants. Grade eight was all I could get until my Dad needed me to run the farm. He'd gotten sick. So me, his oldest boy, I had to step up to the plate. But, you know what, Doctor? It got me thinking. It got me wondering about a smarty-pants who asks questions about other people's schooling."

I saw Drumheller's cheeks and forehead going pale as he thumbed through the few pieces in the folder. He still hadn't looked back at me.

"I wondered about who was asking the question. So I decided to ask some questions of my own. I have friends at that university you said you attended. Or, rather, I have friends who can look into that sort of stuff. For a price. And that price isn't nearly as high as you think it is."

The nuts and bolts of it are this. As Drumheller looked through the folder I'd given him, I laid out what he and I both knew. "You got this posting predicated on a number of well-managed lies, Doctor. Oh, you got your education, but not from the Ivy League where your certificate says you did. I talked on the phone with the guy who made that piece of paper. I also talked to the records clerk who made some of the other papers go away. Trouble is, they didn't all disappear. Not everyone's as dishonest as you. And there's always a file drawer somewhere."

Still, the good doctor didn't respond. He stared down at the open folder, looking at a copy of a birth certificate—his. "That's yours. Not sure if you remember it. But after you had your trouble with the law, you had that feller make you a new one. Problem is, the new one had a different name.

"Doctor, I'm sure you realize what an offence it is to lie to your government about your previous incarceration when they do a record check for your security clearance.

"And I'm sure you fully understand how valuable information like this is...and what someone like yourself would pay to keep it...safe."

Part III

Somewhere Beyond the Sea

1971

1.

Farrah stopped reading. Her eyes were wide, staring down at the pages. She thought she might look just the same as that Doctor Drumheller had looked when he'd seen the copy of his incarceration record, his original birth certificate and the other papers that Farrah had in her black tin box. She realized she was clutching the black journal like its cover might turn to wings and bring it to flight. Her fingers had left small, sweaty dimples on the pages.

She looked over at Gran. The old woman's eyes were both closed now. Her head was back on the mound of pillows propped behind her sallow and spindly form. She looked incredibly small. The cold of the room was deep and impenetrable.

From behind her, a voice: "Farrah?"

Farrah turned. It was Nurse Anne. "Let's let her sleep, okay?"

Farrah hopped off the bed and started gathering the papers and boxes back into the black tin. "Okay," she said like a girl half her age who'd just been told to tidy up her colouring before dinner.

She had hoped that the story would keep Gran interested, would keep her listening, maybe even perk her up some. She had hoped it might prompt Gran to tell one of her own stories.

Now, sullen—and not just for what she was learning about that awful man, Munn, in the journal—but most especially for Gran's continued failure of her health—Farrah followed Nurse Anne out into the hallway.

The nurse got Farrah settled at Gran's kitchen table with a stack of cookies, a glass of milk and some crayons. Farrah didn't bother telling Nurse Anne that she was far beyond the age when cookies and crayons could heal everything a Bandaid couldn't. Much too old, now; Farrah had seen things.

Instead, she just looked through the contents of her mystery box, thinking about how she'd gotten it from the old grey-haired junk dealer, about how that man in the story had tried to get the better of the other man in the story.

She was thinking about all this and then decided that, as much as she wanted to keep reading, she'd wait. She'd wait for Gran to wake up and read it to her. They'd experience this tale together.

Nurse Anne was in with her now, taking temperature and blood pressure while Gran dozed. Then she came back to the kitchen and made a phone call.

"You calling my dad?" Farrah asked, sheepish, as Nurse Anne reached the receiver from its cradle.

"Uh-huh," Anne said looking up the number on a sheet magnetized to Gran's old fridge.

"Don't tell him I'm here, okay?" Farrah said.

Anne gave a little smile. "I won't," she said as she started dialing. "But you need to skedaddle pretty soon. I don't know if your gran is going to be in the mood for visiting more tonight. She might sleep on through til morning."

"Kay," Farrah said and hung her head, fingering the corners of Drumheller's phony university degree.

Farrah fiddled with the sheets of old, yellowed paper. Another piece of the Munn and Drumheller puzzle revealed itself. One of the pages was stuck to a second. The one underneath was a badly faded newspaper clipping from the Island Press. Farrah was pretty sure Dovetail Cove didn't have its own newspaper anymore. A gent by the name of Barstow used to run it but now he did a coupon circular for the grocery stores (one that Rod Davies, the postman would hand out on his route). Barstow also coordinated ads in the mainland papers for all the B&Bs and the ferry to keep tourists flowing to the island during the summer months. He was old and round, that Barstow feller, liked to look at the ladies. And he smoked cigars. The only reason Farrah remembered him is that he'd started to look at Farrah the way he looked at other women when they were down on Main—the way he used to look at Farrah's mom. She could picture him out front of his office, leaning on a potted plant and chewing the nub of a little browny-grey thing and stinking of that smoke as he leered in the direction of tourists or townies. Farrah hated that smell.

Farrah realized she'd gone to dreamland. She was very far away, just as far as the story in the black book really was, despite how close it felt when she read Munn's words.

She looked down at the faded newspaper clipping. It was torn out, not cut. And it was dated the 11th of August, 1956. Weekend Edition, it touted. The headline was a light grey now and it said, Plant Incident Prompts Inquiry.

Nurse Anne had left the kitchen. Behind her, the spiralled telephone cord bobbed against the fridge and the corner of the wall. Farrah came back to the present. She had made a conscious effort to be quiet. If Anne didn't betray her and tell her dad that she was here, then she wouldn't pipe up and give herself away. No sense getting into trouble for being out if she didn't have to. She'd go in a few minutes anyway. If Gran was resting, she might as well get home before Dad.

Into the receiver, Nurse Anne was saying, "...Multiple strokes..." and then she was saying something about, "...weak heart..." and "...difficulty catching breath..." Those ominous phrases were a lot like Can't hurt. These ones were similar and, obviously more specific. They all meant the same thing: we can't make anything any better, so why bother trying?

Nurse Anne said goodbye to Farrah's father and came back around the corner to hang up the phone.

"Can I see Gran?" Farrah asked. She didn't ask if Dad was coming to see Gran. She knew the answer to that question.

Nurse Anne was distracted. "Hmm? Oh. Farrah, just give me a minute, okay? I'm going to give Gran a little something to help her with any pain she's having. I'll call you in when I'm done. M'kay?"

Farrah said nothing, only watched the nurse go to the counter and paw through the enormous stash of medical supplies. She took a vial and a syringe with her and disappeared back down the hall.

With the sight of that syringe, Farrah decided she was staying. She didn't care if she got in trouble with Dad. She was staying and she was going to see Gran again tonight, even if Gran only woke up for a few minutes before whatever was in that syringe did its work.

Against Nurse Anne's instructions, Farrah followed her down the dark hall and stood at the cracked door, again clutching the black journal as though it might escape. A sliver of light from Gran's lamp spilled out on her. She brought one eye to bear on the tiny bar of movement inside. Nurse Anne moved in front of the doorway, her back to Farrah. Then she leaned down with her back to the door. She saw Gran's bare old liver-spotted arm with hanging skin. There was a rubber tube tied at its bend. The long steel prick of the needle went in like a dull knife cutting into a stick of butter fetched from the deep freezer. Nurse Anne struggled to poke through into a vein. If she'd looked up, she might have seen Farrah in the tiny mouth of the doorway, reflected in the nighttime world of Gran's big window. But the nurse was concentrating. She said something quietly to Gran and Farrah heard Gran give out a low moan of response.

This was not good, Farrah decided. This was not good at all. This was Can't hurt but in a big way. Nurse Anne wasn't hurting Gran, Farrah knew that. There was no one more gentle to care for Gran than this nurse. But just the same, this was a kind of 'going through the motions' that accomplished nothing for Farrah's Gran. She was about to push the door open when she heard Gran's voice. Not strident, but not a whisper either.

"Farrah, dear. I know you're there. Come in and tell me the rest...before Gran goes to sleep."

Part IV

The King and the Lion

1956

1.

This day was getting better.

When Doctor Drumheller finally looked up from the file folder and met my eyes, he had big gobs of wet in his. I was feeling so satisfied that I nearly let out a gale of laughter. But I held it in. I needed to keep calm. I needed to keep ownership of this situation.

"Who else knows about this?" he asked me quietly.

"Just me," I said. I was trying to keep the haughtiness out of my voice, but I couldn't help but let some seep in. "Me and my guy on the mainland who gathered up these documents. Wasn't expensive. Wasn't cheap neither. But I'm sure you're going to compensate me nicely. Otherwise, you'll be looking for a new position. I'm sure there aren't a lot of research projects like this one out there. And most are government, I'd presume. You piss that employer off, you'll be in a bread line before you'll be asked back to the party for a dance."

Drumheller swallowed. Those gobs of water in his eyes clung there. He didn't let them fall yet.

Finally, he said. "How much?"

Smug, I said, "How much what?"

Giving me a little eye roll that said, Just how dumb are you?, the doctor asked. "How much to keep this inside my office. To keep noses out of it? It's not what you think."

"Oh, I'm sure it's not. But it doesn't matter what I think. It's what I can prove. And that folder there has a lot of proof in it."

Drumheller cleared his throat. He spoke a bit louder now, but those tears still didn't fall. His eyes were turning pink in behind them. "...and I presume these are not the only copies?"

"You presume correct," I said. There was a company out of Oregon that used some damned thing called an electrofax—it cost me a bundle but it made copies much closer to an original than a mimeograph. It was expensive but I looked at it as an investment. I gently closed the folder of electrofax copies in his hands and then took the shut folder from him. He only stood like a statue. "I want you to stew on it some," I said. I turned to go, leaving him there in pristine silence. "We'll discuss our price in a day or so," I said.

Drumheller said nothing. I could feel his stillness, even with my back to him. This is what real strength feels like. The great and powerful Oz had come out from behind his curtain. And I couldn't be more tickled. Not only was I witness to the beginning of his fall, but I was also the cause.

As I left, I didn't look back, but I'd bet my eye teeth he let those tears go.

2.

I stopped for coffee with Jimmy, the gate guard. He was a lot younger than me, but he listened to my bullshit and was right to; I could have him fired if he didn't give me my due.

The blue morning had vamoosed. Clouded now, it looked like rain and there was an awful, salt-smelling wind coming off the ocean. It bugged me when it came this far inland. I hated the smell. The plant was as close to the middle of the island as you could get—at least east to west. There was a big north part of the island I'd never seen. Story was, this whole island had been claimed by a Sardinian king three or four hundred years back. King Victor Amadeus I, Duke of Savoy and King of Cyprus.

He did kingly things, this feller. He liked to hunt big game so he had animals brought over on these big ships—least that's what the men down at the watering holes on Beacon told me. He built a nature preserve up northeast way and got teams to till the earth to the northwest.

His idea had been to build a village for his staff, roughly where the town of Dovetail Cove had eventually sprouted up. That was at the lower end of the mouth of the biggest cove. Northeast of that—right about where the plant now stood, that was going to be his gated palace. A big thing that fed from the creek before it branched off and headed north. And this was only going to be his seasonal place, mind you. He was still on whatever throne he held and he was still in his prime. More battles to fight, I guess.

He had a good mind, that king, whoever he was. I liked his style.

He had it all figured out, King Victor Amadeus, had his ducks in a row you might say. So it goes, the king brought everything they might need. Seeds and livestock, building tools and families. But his vision was a little too complete. He brought everything needed for a full-functioning society, hint-hint, wink-wink, if you catch my drift. And if he hadn't brought a cadre of harlots with him, he might have built his empire to the sky. At least one of those single women brought a case of syphilis, the Beacon crew told me, but I don't know how much of the story was fogged by either the passage of time or too many Scotch and ice.

Victor's men succumbed to those poison ladies, as they were called, and his workforce was decimated. And, of course, he fell too. Despite his lady in waiting, ol' Victor couldn't let his work-a-day men have all those pretty women to himself, so he died around fifty years of age, I believe.

Rumour has it from the locals that the foundation stones of his castle were uncovered when it was time to start digging the tunnels and the multitudinous caverns and underground levels of the plant. Not sure how anyone knows this, since it was all done by off-island contractors who left once their cheques cleared. Plus, a lot of the labyrinth was built after the first war, before it was even moved over to this nuclear model. Who knows, right? That Scotch might be watered down but you get enough of it in the warm bellies of an unhappy gaggle of men and they'll spin yarn faster than their housewives.

Now, my tenure on King Victor's Isle was short so far, but I had similar aspirations as Ol' Crotchfire Vic, a name the boys on Beacon had given him. I was going to be king and once I got my crown, I wasn't going to get sloppy. I wouldn't fall for the efforts of some hussy.

No, I wasn't born and bred on the island either, had only been here about five years. I took the job because it offered something they called 'hazard pay'. I'd been sweeping floors out at a penitentiary in Kingston, Ontario, when the posting came up. From one King's Town to another. Ha!

It was a huge leap in pay and I'd be the boss, but I had to do a physical hoop-jump, a pretty laboured psychological test, and a series of record checks. I'd never been in trouble with the law—not like Drumheller had in his previous life—but I was nervous just the same. I'd been bragging up and down the strip in Kingston and, boy, I'd a had to eat a toilet bowl of crow if someone else had taken the job out here instead. Hoo-boy, if I'd'a turned up to work on that Monday morning, shuffling my feet and making excuses, it would have been one sour pucker-face for me to wear, I tell you.

But that didn't happen. I was a bit dumbfounded. But I guess it was my seniority, my hoop-jumping, my whatever and whoever. They gave me the position and I had two weeks to pack and get over here after I basically signed my life away. My J. Hancock went onto all kinds of legal documents and waivers. Did I mention, the pay was incredible?

But Kingston, that's where my connections came from. That's how I got the intel on Drumheller's prison time. Once I knew that Drumheller hadn't been his real name, I knew there was a reason. There would have to be. Women take a new name when they get married. Men don't, so he'd either gotten one pregnant, dodged a draft for the war, or got himself in trouble with some law or another.

Finding any record of the first two might have been impossible, and since I knew administrators in the prison system, I started there—and got lucky. It was my sweepstakes win, I guess you could say.

Changing a man's name, that was a small scandal when you're as high up as Drumheller. But changing it in order to hide your university and, in particular, your criminal past—now, that's a downright scandal. I knew that he knew.

He'd pay and he'd pay handsomely. A guy like Drumheller isn't dumb enough to let a cat like that out.

My point here is, just like King Victor, I was going to get to use this thing with Drumheller to gain an even loftier position. I didn't just have money in mind. This was only the start.

It's a good thing for a man to know what he wants. To name it and go right out and get it. What did I want? I wanted what that king wanted. And I didn't want to lose my head over a broad and forfeit my ticket to the top. I had a want for prestige. Not just with this branch of government and in looking after the plant, but here on the island. I wanted my own little fiefdom. I was on my way up. But it was all set to crumble. And, I didn't know it when I left Jimmy under the first few drops of cold rain, but it was going to start crumbling today.

3.

I felt pretty good—despite the coming rain. I'd wanted nothing more than to kick off early tomorrow afternoon and get me a couple juicy steaks, some lobster tails, and a couple cold ones for an afternoon with the Chicago All Stars game. I didn't have a lady in those days—I wasn't as stupid as King Victor. A buddy was coming over—Ethan, a welder who worked at the dockyards. Figured if I fattened him up (and boozed him up) he'd be more liable to do me a favour. I'd been after him to do some soldering on the frame of a '55 Caddy Eldorado I'd bought. It was pretty beat up after some Daddy's boy had wrapped it around a tree on the mainland but I felt a proper king should drive a Cadillac. And it was the one I could afford.

I went back inside, brushed the few drops from my shoulders and my hair, checked in at the desk, and headed down in the service elevator to Seven where I'd left Ketwood and his boy at the new panel. Tomorrow was the game and the lobster tails. I supposed I could put in one regular-sized day. Wouldn't matter. If the weather stayed shit by then, no steak on the back deck. No All Stars game in the evening air with my set hauled out and an extension cord back through the kitchen window. And no welding work on the Caddy.

I sighed and the elevator doors slid open to show me the corridor of Seven's main trunk. I followed it to the utility room. Empty.

Jesus H., the Ketwood idiot and his boy could be anywhere. My heart started thumping and I felt sweat hit my forehead. I shouldn't have left them. Or, at the very least, I should have checked on them before coffee with Jimmy out at the security gate.

The new panel was hung on the back wall. It's powder coating was buffed clean of any oily fingerprints. And their tools were all packed up and gone. Only a small pile of trimmed plastic wire sheathing (in a bunch of colours) lay in a tidy, swept-up pile in the middle of the concrete floor. Dust and little bits of copper trimmings were there too. I guess there was no dustbin in this utility room.

"Goddammit," I said under my breath and to the empty room. They could be anywhere above Seven but below B. Their clearance didn't let them ride the elevators and I hadn't left them with one of the little punch cards the rest of us carried along with our identity cards. But, once you were down, the elevators would take you back up. It was a safety measure, should there be any power issues, a fire or another problem.

Ketwood wasn't just a smart alec, he was a smart pants. Which meant, he would be a bright enough bulb to try the elevator on Six or Five or Four, or any of them on the way up. The elevators were smart enough to keep folks from riding down without a punch card, but not smart enough to keep them from riding only back up to the top.

I immediately reached for the walkie-talkie on my belt. I scanned channels and went right for the one I'd told Ketwood to leave his on. It was my channel so I knew that no one—not even Drumheller or his staff would listen. "Mr. Ketwood," I said into it, doing my best to keep an even keel to my voice and not shout at him, I TOLD YOU TO STAY PUT. I said his name again and again. "Mr. Ketwood, come in, this is Munn. Mr. Ketwood. Mr. Ketwood."

I re-latched the walkie to my belt. "Goddammit," I said again and left.

I didn't run, though. If Drumheller was about, there's no way on God's green earth, I'd let him see I had let something crawl out of my tightly controlled sphere.

I didn't run. But, boy, did I move at a brisk pace.

4.

I found Ketwood up on One. He had stumbled across one of the coffee rooms. I spotted his location by the rolling wagon and tidy pile of toolboxes up next to the doorway in the corridor.

I remember the cold sweat of relief at seeing that stack.

Inside, Ketwood was stirring a cup of coffee for himself. His boy was supping from a paper cone filled from the water cooler. They sat across from each other at one of the big cafeteria-style tables the government likely has in every facility from here to the east coast. The walkie I'd given Ketwood was on the table next to a couple empty packets of sugar.

Intentionally slow, I sauntered over to the table as Ketwood deliberately took no notice of me. I did this to catch my breath. I did this to keep my temper checked. I tapped the walkie's ribbed speaker with my index fingernail. "Channel Eleven," I said. "But you have it turned off."

Ketwood tilted up at me, as if he was just coming awake with a hangover and couldn't care less that anyone was still in bed with him by morning.

"Remember when I said 'Don't wander off'?"

Ketwood leaned back. He reached out and snagged a lit cigarette from the ashtray near his borrowed coffee cup. He took a drag as he pushed himself back from the table, a man who looked like he'd just finished Thanksgiving dinner and was getting ready to pop the button on his trousers.

He said nothing. Just stared at me.

"Fine," I said. "All good. Now then—" I looked around at the boy who stared at me wide-eyed over his paper cone but also saying nothing. "Did you finish up?"

"We did," Sam Ketwood said, again looking out the window towards the road and the security gate where his van sat. "All done and ready to go."

"Good," I said. "That's my boss's coffee mug." He looked unperturbed, only sipped from the mug that said, "I love a man with a PhD" on the side. Only the 'love' was a red heart, now faded from repeated washings. Ketwood's kid piped up. "Oh, Dad," he said.

Ketwood put Drumheller's mug down and looked at the boy.

"I'm pretty sure I left the wire-stripper in the bottom of the panel. Sorry—" the kid said.

"The good one?" Ketwood said.

The boy looked at me then back at his dad. "I-I think so."

Again, I expected that veneer of his to crack and fall away. I expected him to yell at the boy, maybe something about how irresponsible and stupid it was to leave one of their valuable tools behind on a restricted level of a government power facility.

Instead, Ketwood got up slowly. He set the doctor's coffee mug down and then stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray. "Munn?" he asked. "Can you take my son back down to get what he forgot? I don't imagine it would take more than a few minutes. I'm sure he's sorry for the inconvenience." He didn't glare at the boy like this was something they would 'talk' about later. He just looked at me silently, unblinkingly, waiting for me to give an a-okay or a not-on-your-life.

I gave a nod. "Certainly," I said. Again, I was using the formalities that I reserved for talking to people above me. Why I was compelled to use it with this electrician and his kid, I didn't know.

"Come on," I said to the boy. He looked at his old man and scurried in behind me as I left the coffee room and fished in my breast pocket for my punch card.

"Don't dilly-dally," I told him, as if I was piping up for his stupidity where his father should have.

We got into the elevator and no sooner had I inserted my card and selected "7." when Ketwood senior reached his hand in to catch the big steel door of the elevator. I wasn't sure it would hold for him. But it did. He squeezed in with us looking embarrassed.

His son looked at him quizzically.

"You got me thinking—," Ketwood said, folding his hands over his belt buckle as if he was a layman suddenly in the company of a group attending the opera and immediately self-conscious of his coveralls. The door drew shut and the elevator started chugging us down. "—I might have left my good flathead over on the counter. My number 2.."

His son smiled. Ketwood mirrored it. I have to admit, I envied this simple, unnecessary concession between them.

We rode in silence the next few minutes. A normal office building's elevator would take only a couple of minutes to descend Seven floors. These were unusually deep though. Lots of ductwork and cabling between each one. Plus, each floor had fifteen and sixteen foot ceilings. There was a crawl space between Six and Seven. Add to that, this was an industrial elevator and one built to withstand a military attack. The plant was a nuclear facility, after all. Things were slower, bigger, heavier.

As the lights for the floors changed from the number Five to the number Six, I said, "You asked for more time, told me the wiring was a dog's breakfast."

"Mmm," he said. I wasn't sure if he was acknowledging that I'd spoken or if he was acquiescing that I was right: he had used less time than the job needed.

"How come you didn't just nurse your coffee and take an extra three hours' pay?"

The light behind Six went out and Seven went on.

"First," he said. "I called it a rat's nest. Not a dog's breakfast." He squinted his eyes in what looked like a half-smile—but only from his nose up. "Second," he said, "and more importantly...It wouldn't be honest." The rest of his face broke to form the rest of his smile, then he looked over at his boy who returned it with one of his own. But I didn't get the impression he was saying this just because of his ten-year old's ears. Sam Ketwood meant it.

5.

I wish I could say more about how I interpreted that. I wish I could say I felt like I was the kind of man who'd be able to say such a stupid thing with a straight face.

But I didn't have time.

Before the light behind Seven came up, we were halted by a terrible jolt. The elevator, screeched and I could only imagine the sheen of sparks as the brake locked down like a clamping jaw on the cables above us. The Ketwood boy fell to the floor and cried out. His Dad let out a guttural noise (as did I, I'm sure) and fell against the wall.

The overhead lights flickered and went out.

6.

The crackle of my walkie broke the silence but not the darkness. I grabbed it from my belt and pulled it close to my eyes, straining to see the small red indicator light. It illuminated the dial enough to see its chalky numbers against the blackness. I whirled away from channel eleven and went to channel three—our emergency channel.

I did what I usually do when I'm confused. I waited and I listened instead of charging ahead. I've not always done that in my life, but when I have it's usually been more successful than going off all hot-headed. I thought, since Ketwood could do it, why couldn't I?

So, instead of blaring into the thing for help—to tell my people I was stuck in elevator four with a contractor and his kid—that I'd wait to see if there was anyone else broadcasting.

There was a screech, and then a cloud of static and then a voice. "Attention plant staff." It was a male voice, one that I'd heard before but couldn't place. I clicked on the trigger and tried talking, but the voice went ahead with no acknowledgement of me. The walkies could be both broadcast bases and receivers so that one walkie could send out to all the others. It was only used in emergencies or in the case where some mucky-muck from the government on the mainland came for a visit.

"Early this morning," the voice went on, "the south rail entry experienced a spillage. We learned a few moments ago that some of this spillage has reached the lower levels. As a precaution, we have shut down access to the south wings as well as all shafts to and from the lower levels. Personnel should stay put. The fresh air is still functioning and we'll have this lockdown lifted within the hour."

My biggest question was still, Who on God's green earth might be broadcasting this and where was Drumheller? Finally, my answer came, as though the voice suddenly realized any of us on the receiving end would be begging for an answer to this simple question. And if we didn't get it, maybe we wouldn't bother heeding any of its advice.

"This is Franklin W. Moort with Union Rail," he finally revealed. "I'm broadcasting on behalf of Doctor Drumheller and his staff. I repeat. The south and lower levels are in lockdown until we get a minor spill contained. I will broadcast on this channel with any updates."

Broadcasting on behalf of Drumheller? That was odd. Moort was the rail manager. I'd only met him once. But I knew he was pretty high up—and a pencil-pusher as far as I could remember. My second thought was that it must be much more than minor if Drumheller wasn't sending this message himself. He was either scared out of his gourd after our little conversation this morning...or he was down below level Ten and suffering from the lockdown just like the rest of us...or he was somewhere injured. If the train cars were involved—and they likely were, based on having Moort's nose in this—then it's possible this was a really big deal.

I fumbled to clip my walkie back to my belt in the dark, thinking it would be a pain in the ass if I dropped it or left it behind. When it rubbed up against the small torchlight I also had clipped to my belt, I had a small moment of self-chastisement. I pulled it free and clicked it on. It revealed small details inside the elevator. The boy, Sean, I think, he was propped against the back wall and squinted against the light I shone on him. Beside him, with arms propped on his knees, the bigger and older Ketwood shielded his face from me.

"Looks like we'll be in here a while," I said.

Ketwood showed me that he had his own flashlight. "Might as well save your batteries," he said. I followed their lead and slid down my side of the elevator wall to the cold floor.

We sat in silent darkness listening to only the mild hiss of the walkie. I clicked it off and became aware of a new sound. It was the ventilation for the elevator, I decided. I felt a small push of air on my forehead and was relieved that must be it. It was getting hot in here, but not unbearable.

An hour. Jesus H. Whatever Moort's rail crew had done up there, it had been more than a 'minor' spill. That I was sure of. We'd had those before. A few ounces of something gets cast off. Or they discover a stain somewhere and everyone suits up in their haz-mats to cleanse things thoroughly. Those were only twenty or thirty minute jobs.

Thing was, Moort's broadcast said that this happened early this morning. I remembered how empty the building felt. No one in the corridors, no one in the coffee room. If anyone had known about this and my unit hadn't been informed, I'd be madder than a wet hen.

So. Early this morning. I know that the rail lines brought raw materials in at night, more specifically, three and four a.m. Loads of spent materials went out either before or after that. They did it with a skeleton crew to save money but also to minimize contact with the greater population of daytime staff.

But it must be ten or eleven a.m. by now. I couldn't see my watch in the dark and couldn't remember what time I'd gone for coffee with Jamie at the gate. That meant they might have been working on this 'minor' spill for five or six hours by now. Maybe it got worse. Maybe they realized how much worse it really was and that's when they decided on a lockdown.

It was moments like these I realized that I was really far down on the food chain. Truth was, I didn't have Clue One about this incident.

7.

It was much longer than an hour. I checked my watch a few minutes after we'd heard the broadcast. In part because I got easily bored and sitting in the dark on my tingling ass on the floor of the freight elevator was agonizing, even after a few minutes. And in part because I wanted to see how close to an hour this Frank Moort feller could keep this.

I didn't think it would be under an hour. And I was right. I usually am.

It was quarter to eleven when I'd checked and I didn't fuss with my torch again after that. It was ten past one the next time I checked.

And in between, I'm pretty sure I nodded off.

I dreamed that I'd gotten a call in my little hole-in-the wall office on Seven. It was my old boss back in Kingston and he was offering me my old job back. At the same pay I was making out here on Deus Isle. But I was sick and tired of the Drumheller-drama. It was like one of those awful daytime soap operas. Back and forth. Him doing something nasty to me, me returning the favour.

I wasn't sure I had the chops to hold his feet to the fire over the lies he'd told. I had my doubts that it would work as I'd envisioned and getting a chance to slink out and head back to my crew in Kingston was appealing. I was so convinced of my dream's reality, I took the job right quick, with only a little regret that I'd never become the king of the island as I'd planned.

But of course, it was a dream. I woke up in the dark, sweating and panting. Ketwood was saying my name, Munn, hey Munn. Over and over again. I rubbed the back of my forearm against my burning-hot face and it came back slick with sweat.

"What," I finally said, out of breath as though I'd been marathon-running in that dream. In a way, I had been—dashing to get away from here.

"Fan's gone out," Ketwood said with disembodied voice. "Power's out all over I bet."

I fumbled for my torch and unclicked it from my belt. I turned it on and shone it up, searching for the vent's mouth in the ceiling. I really was roasting. And I couldn't feel the push of air I had before. I felt like I was sitting in a pile of my own fetid muck.

I cocked an ear and strained to hear. Silence.

I clicked on the walkie. Only static. I clicked and clicked on the trigger. "Moort," I said into the mic, getting it wet with my own sweaty upper lip. "This is Munn down on Seven. Moort, if you can read me, come in. Come in, Moort."

I tried a few times but only got static in return.

"How's the kid?" I asked and shone my torch over to the Ketwoods. Both of them had pulled off their shirts. Both men were pasty with farmer tans. Ketwood Senior had a hairy paunch, fine tendrils that looked the same colour as his son's mop of hair.

The boy lay fully on his back on the floor of the freight elevator, not moving.

8.

We needed to get out. With no ventilation and no power, the elevator was going nowhere. Ketwood said, "He's breathing but barely."

"We can't sit around and wait for help," I said. I pondered for a moment. "We can't go up..." With my torchlight, I showed Ketwood the ceiling's access hatch next to the motionless ventilation fan. He didn't say anything, I guess waiting for me to explain. "If we're in lockdown, my punch card won't work in any of the doors. We'd be sealed in. Same boat we're in now."

"And if there's no power down here," Ketwood said. "You can bet your boots there won't be any up there. Not yet."

"Uh-huh," I said, thinking and letting the light of my torch flow all over the walls as if it would train on a sign that told me exactly what to do. "Wouldn't even be able to get out of the shaft. Just be hanging there like monkeys. That'd be pretty hard with your boy."

"The door locks don't use power?"

I shook my head but realized he couldn't see my gesture. "Nope. Pneumatic or some such. They work, even without power. Or maybe they have their own batteries."

"So...?" Ketwood asked. "What are our options?"

"We only have one more," I told him in the dark. I pointed my torch down at the floor. "There's a hatch in the floor. Once you get past ten, the access panels don't need punch cards. I guess they made it thinking that if you had clearance for down below, you had clearance for the whole shebang."

"Yeah," Ketwood said. He was rubbing his face like he'd not had sleep in three days and nights. "But then what? We'd be trapped down there. Unless we tunnel to China."

"Not China," I said, getting up to knees with a grunt. I crawled over to the floor hatch and shone my light on the screws to see what type of screwhead they had.

"There are tunnels down there," I said. "But they go to the ocean."

Of course that's the screwdriver Ketwood had left in the utility room. "Flathead," I said.

9.

We used an American dime from Ketwood's leather change purse to open the corner screws in the floor hatch. An immediate rush of air met us when we lifted the panel. But it was no cooler than the air in here. Still, it was a relief. I climbed down first and offered to take the boy when Ketwood handed him down to me.

The boy groaned when I took him over my shoulder. He was a hefty kid, despite his gangly build. I nearly dropped him but got a solid hold on him. He hung over my shoulder like a wet towel. He was breathing but restless.

I was holding my flashlight in my mouth and it followed me as I looked up into the hatch. Ketwood was following me down. He took a perch a little above me on the ladder that was bolted to the inside of the elevator shaft. He reached down and took his son's arms and hoisted him up to keep him at his chest. It looked like no effort for the man who was older than me and in worse shape. I guess you grow into being a father, mentally and physically.

With my new free hand, I took the torch from my mouth to give my jaw a break. "Follow me down," I said. "It's three and a half to Ten. If we can't get in there, we go to the next."

I put my torch back in my mouth and aimed my face downward so I could shine it on each rung of the iron ladder. Wordlessly, Ketwood started down after me. As we went, I grunted against the heat and the effort. I could only imagine how tough it was for Ketwood, hoisting his limp ten-year-old. He didn't complain, only huffed and puffed heavily above me.

We didn't get in at Ten. Nor at Eleven. It was the same story all the way down to the eighteenth floor. The insides of the doors had stencilling in white paint so it was easy to keep track—even if it was disheartening.

In truth, I didn't know there were that many levels. My calves and shoulders were screaming by the time we saw '19' stencilled on the green steel door. I let out an exhale of fatigue and defeat.

Above me, heavily out of breath, Ketwood said, "What now, Munn?" he was more than irritated. I could hear raw anger in his tone.

I gazed up with my torch in my mouth and saw a gleam in his eyes. His boy still clung to him. Maybe he was ready to let go of the rungs and plummet, crushing me from above. Exasperated, I looked down at my own feet. Below them: more ladder, more elevator shaft.

What else could I do? I kept descending.

I got to another steel green door. There were only four of five feet left. This was the very bottom of the shaft, leaving only enough room for the elevator to sit if it was below the bottom floor. This door wasn't like the ones above. It had a big steel bar. I reached out and jarred it. It went sideways with a clunk and the door yawned inward with a rusted bleat and stopped. "Come on," I called up to Ketwood. "I found a way in."

10.

Inside wasn't nearly as dark. More cool air. And damp. It smelled the same as that salty ocean air when the wind blew strongly from the west above ground.

I heard the hum of distant machinery. There were more stencils on the walls with long strings of numbers and letters. The ceiling was low and it was raw rock. It looked like it was carved right into the earth and then covered in a thick, cake-like parging, maybe to keep it from caving in. The sides of the corridor were propped with thin steel beams. Behind me, Ketwood came in, pushing the door further open.

He put his boy down on the damp concrete floor, careful to avoid the puddles. He propped the kid up against the sidewall and plopped down beside him. He eyed the puddles as though he was going to bend down and start lapping them like a hound dog.

"I wouldn't call it exactly fresh," he said, panting. "But it's air. And it's cooler than up there. Nice work." A compliment. From a guy like Ketwood to a guy like me. Wonders never cease, I thought, but didn't say a thing.

I went a little further down the tunnel and realized where the light was coming from. Around a little bend up ahead, I saw a small bulb in the ceiling. I wondered if the distant hum I heard was a separate power source: maybe a generator, or something running off some batteries of some sort. Again, I was struck by how much of a small fish I was in the grand scheme of things. It made me feel insignificant. The fact that I'd only heard about today's incident when the hourly-wage workers did—by walkie!—started to make me angry. But I used my little trick. I waited. And, in a moment or two, I overpowered my unreasonable anger. I needed to get out of this. And then I could use reasonable force to make my unhappiness known to Drumheller.

I looked back. Young Sean Ketwood was sitting more or less upright, blinking and looking around. He needed water, and, hell, it might come down to drinking water from the floor puddles—but for now, he looked a bit better. Though, in truth it was hard to tell in this light.

"Dad?" he asked.

"Yuh," his dad said. He was pulling at the corners of the kid's eyes and looking into them, tilting the boy's head to see if he could get more light aimed at it, maybe see if he could ascertain the kid's colour or if his pupils were dilated. Hell, I didn't know. But he looked like he was checking the kid over.

"Are we gonna get out of here?"

Ketwood laughed a little, a huffy thing. "Course we are. Munn here, he knows this place like the back of his hand." He looked up at me and I gave a bit of a nod and a smile that confirmed Sam Ketwood was not full of shit.

I turned ahead and looked down the dimly lit tunnel, listening to the drip-drip-drip of some distant leak. I could hear the hum a little louder too. Yeah, I knew these tunnels like the back of my hand. That was a rich piece of cake.

I got my walkie out and thumbed the trigger. I turned up the volume a bit and listened to the static. "You rest a minute," I said back to the Ketwoods. "I'm just going to go up a ways and then I'll come right back."

Ketwood gave me a nod and turned his attention back to the boy, who looked fit enough now. Either that or he was tired of getting the once-over from his pop.

I headed around the bend and was welcomed by a bit more cool air and a bit more light. I could see a few bulbs hanging from the ceiling now. Lengths of extension cord ran between them like a daisy-chain. When I was pretty sure I was out of sight from the electrician and his boy, I brought the walkie up to my face. I started going through the channels, pausing on each one and triggering to send out a few words.

"Distress call. This is Facilities Manager Munn. Can anyone hear me?"

I said this a half-dozen times on six different channels—the ones we always used in our day-to-day. I tried the one that the train guy, Franklin Moort, had broadcast on but I got nothing there.

I walked a little farther and did another half-dozen channels with the same drill.

Then I turned and headed back towards the Ketwoods. On the way, I did a second run-through of all the channels again.

Channel eight got me some broken static. I paused there and tried my spiel again. Broken static came back to me and I held the walkie up in the air, closer to the low ceiling, hoping for a clean signal. Surprisingly, that got me better reception and I started to make out choppy, broken words. I started running back towards the Ketwoods and the doorway where we'd come in from the elevator shaft. As I got closer, the choppiness subsided and I could make out real words.

It was a man. Not Franklin Moort. But it was someone responding to me and repeating the same phrase over again. I wasn't exactly sure what he was saying, but I could make out one phrase he kept repeating: "Doctor Drumheller."

Part V

The Wizard

1971

1.

"You know," Gran said, startling her granddaughter. "I used to work in the old power plant..."

Farrah had been reading aloud from the black book and found herself up on the soft bed beside Gran, listening to the old woman's shallow breath whenever she took the odd pause. The story they'd uncovered had intrigued them both. It had offered much more than Farrah had ever imagined when she'd kicked the black tin off her bed and dismissed it as having belonged to some sailor who liked tobacco.

Farrah was surprised Gran was awake. She'd mostly lain silently with her eyes closed, usually a signal to children that they should stay quiet. But tonight was a time for throwing out old ways, for ignoring the rules.

"I thought you were sleeping," Farrah said, putting the book face down on her chest and turning her head to look over at Gran.

Gran smiled a little. "Just resting my eyes, child," she said. It was something her dad said whenever Farrah caught him nodding off in his big chair after dinner. This was mostly back when Mom was still at home. Now, there was always something to do and Dad lived like a possessed man. Always cooking or cleaning something. Always preparing to head back to the office and pore over his files. He hadn't been able to tackle the floor piles Mom had built up over the years, but the basics like the surfaces of tables and chairs had been handled. Were handled, ten times a day, compulsively. Doug Birkhead had even gotten into the act of a weekly vacuuming regimen. Maybe it was his military days coming back to him. Or, maybe it was busy-work to force a feeling of progress. No matter how tall the stack of files seemed. No matter how far away his wife was.

"It's interesting," Farrah said of the journal's contents. "Isn't it?"

"It is," Gran said, out of breath. She reached out and smoothed the cover of the book as if to confirm it was a real thing.

"And you worked there? I had no idea. You never told me. Did you know him? This Munn guy who wrote it?"

"Naw, love," Gran said. "I worked for a cleaning company. We mostly did the little hotels and bed-and-breakfast places up Neckline way. But once in a while, we got a short contract to do the offices and common rooms at the plant—"

Gran swallowed hard, but looked like she was just interrupting herself for a needed rest to her voice, even though she wanted to say more.

"I never went down in those tunnels, but I heard about them. We all heard stories, y'see. Never heard the tales about the old king and his hunting grounds and all the plans he had—that stuff is new to me. You learn something new every day, now don't you, deary?"

Farrah nodded but otherwise kept quiet. She wanted Gran to keep talking. She liked how lucid and aware Gran was right now and didn't want to tamp it down.

"I never did tell you, child," Gran said. "That I worked there. But...something to remember, Farrah—everyone has a story. Everyone. Even your ol' Granny. Keep that in your back pocket. Every single man, woman, child and beast has a tale behind them." She took a sallow, wheezing breath. "And, quite often, there's a fight in that tale. And you, me and the bedpost, we might not know a darn thing about that fight.

"So the stories said the tunnels were built in war time...but that some of them were even older than that. Who knows? Maybe the king used them to smuggle in those hussies of his. That would be interesting, now, wouldn't it?" She smiled and gave Farrah a wink.

Farrah let out the tiniest giggle. She knew what a hussy was—though not specifically, just that there were a couple girls downtown who entertained the working boys from the docks or the fishing boats. They were, she knew, not the sort of women with whom her mom, say, would associate. But they were always nice to Farrah. One of them, she might even say, was friendly to Farrah.

"All kinds of tall tales about the power plant," Gran went on. "I remember them now, just on account of you reading this out loud. Reminds me. And, a'course, all those tall tales come back to you when you're bent over, vacuuming cigarette ash from the carpet under some manager's desk and emptying his butts into the garbage...and suddenly the vacuum goes dead and you're wondering why that is—and in a power plant of all things.

"You didn't flick it off. But someone did. And then you remember the tall tales about those underground tunnels and talk of all those experiments down in those lower levels. Apparently—and this might be the tallest of them—there was this scientist, the head of all of them. And he was managing things. He was doing experiments on the brain. But he was using monkeys and such. Dogs and rats. Even a lion, someone said. Not real people brains, mind you. That wouldn't be right. Not even back then.

"His name, it mighta been Drumheller, can't rightly remember, deary. But there was a bunch. Them stories, they said there were docs doing tests on different kinds of warfare too. Chemical. Electrical. Psychological. All kinds of things.

"But it was the monkey stories that I thought of when I was cleaning the offices in the middle of the night. I half expected to head over to the wall plug and see some big brute of a monkey, all messed up from that doctor's experiments—and he'd spit at me through his fangs, having just unplugged my vacuum.

"But no, I'd just pulled the plug myself. Got carried away and yanked the vacuum too far. Not enough cord and it just went pop—out from the wall. No fangs, no messed up creature with crazy eyes. None of those flying monkeys with wings and little hats. You remember? From the movie?"

Farrah offered a tiny, wide-eyed nod. She was listening intently. She realized her own breathing had started to mirror Gran's shallow kind. She'd propped her head in her hand and her elbow into a yellow-stained pillow.

Nurse Anne was likely out in the living room. She occasionally came back in to check on her patient and, so far, hadn't scolded Farrah for keeping the old woman awake.

Tonight was a time for throwing out old ways, for ignoring the rules.

Gran closed her eyes again. "Keep reading Farrah. Your story here, this one about the boy and his dad and this guy they got stuck with, I want to find out where they get to. It's the only thing keeping me going just now."

Farrah propped herself back up and turned the book over, looking for the place where she'd left off. Just then, a horrible thought struck her at Gran's words.

The only thing keeping me going, Gran had said.

What if that was true? Farrah hoped the story never ran out of pages.

Part VI

The Yellow Brick Road

1956

1.

It was Drumheller, all right.

"If anyone can hear me, this is Doctor Drumheller. Come in please. Come in."

I had to shove my whole arm out into the elevator shaft to get a decent version of the good doctor's signal on the walkie, and even then, it was still filled with static and choppy waves of in-and-out.

I toyed with the notion of not responding. Of leaving Drumheller to his own devices and just switching the channel so I could tell Ketwood that I lost the signal from our mighty leader. But Drumheller's voice had a certain pleading in it. And, in our silence, we had our own desperation. We needed help.

Besides that, just a few feet away and leaning against the tunnel wall were the electrician and his son. I could feel their eyes boring into my back as I hesitated. The second or two that I hesitated, it went on and on. I felt the itch of sweat on my scalp.

Finally, I clicked the trigger. "Come in, Drumheller, I read you," I said. I hoped my exasperation didn't register in my voice. Surely, I'd rolled my eyes at having to acknowledge my least favourite human being during this whole ordeal—whether I needed his help or not. But at least I had my mug pointed out into the base of the elevator shaft and Ketwood couldn't see my look of disgust. One mixed with helplessness.

A pause from Drumheller. Then: "Munn, is that you, over?"

"It's me, over," I said.

A longer pause. Certainly, Drumheller was cursing his own God for letting it be me on the other end of his call.

"Where are you?" he said. Then added, "Over."

"I'm with the electrician," I said. "We got trapped in Freight Four between floors when the power cut out. You know about the seepage? Over."

"Yeah," Drumheller said. He sounded out of breath. "Bastards didn't let me know about it. Heads are gonna roll," he said. He didn't add over. Knowing that the great and powerful Oz hadn't been in the loop about it made me feel a bit better. Some moisture dripped and hit me in the forehead, running right into my eye. I hoped it was condensation and not some cast off from our nuclear facility above. I wiped at it, but not before it started stinging. I squinted against the pain.

"Well," I said with a grimace and trying to balance in the doorway while I held the walkie aloft and wiped at my eye with my sleeve. "We couldn't stay in the elevator. The fresh air went out and we were cooking alive. Made it down to the tunnel under Twenty. You know about that, over?"

"Of course," he said, erasing my good feelings about both of us not being let in on the severity of the train spill.

"What in sam hell did they do? Over."

"Not entirely sure," Drumheller said, clicking through the static. It sounded like he was moving around as he spoke. He was a bit breathless. "You know how rail line B comes right in underground? Right inside for pick ups and unloading?"

"Yes, over," I said.

"Pretty sure, one car derailed."

"A whole car?" I said. "Totally went ass-over-tea-kettle? Over."

"Maybe," Drumheller said.

I slumped my shoulders thinking how much more serious that would be than just a bit of seepage or cast off. I wondered if anyone had been burned. And then I realized it wouldn't be a matter of 'if'—only 'how bad.'

"Where are you, say again, over."

"I'm on Nineteen," Drumheller said. "Just above you. If I can make it to the elevator doors, I should be able to come down to you. Over."

"Should?" I said. "What's the trouble? Over."

"We had a breach of our own," Drumheller said, still breathless, still moving. "The power on all our cages went out. The locks on all the restraints and doors are electronic—" I noted the word, 'cages' but didn't say anything. Drumheller went on. "We had some escaped...subjects. We were...trying to contain them and a lot of my staff are...well...they're dead, Dennis."

I went cold—no easy task in this oven down here. I could feel the colour wash out of me. And not that anyone would have been able to tell, not in the grey light of this pit at the bottom of an elevator shaft.

"Are you..." I started to say, swallowing against the frailty of my own words. "Are you alone, then? Over."

"I think so," he said with hesitation. "No one's answered my calls. I hear breathing and some...noises...so the subjects are still on the level with me. At least some are." As an afterthought, he added, "Over."

I thought for a moment. "If you have no power, you're what? Totally in the dark? Over."

"That's right," he said with what sounded like a crazed smile in his voice. "Shitty day for me. Bad luck, I guess. First your...folder this morning. Now this. Emergency lighting didn't even come up. I'm pawing my way around in the pitch black. Just trying to remember the number of paces to get to the elevator door. And I need to do it before they find me. They can see in the dark, some of them."

This time I didn't wait for him to say, over. "Who?" I asked, feeling my heart beating hard in my chest as I pictured him in the dead black while something else watched. I swallowed and reiterated. "Who's up there with you? Over."

"The animals," he said.

2.

It took a few moments for this to sink in. I looked over at Ketwood who was sitting close to his son. He'd stopped prodding the boy and was looking over at me.

I hit the trigger on my walkie and the red light on it went out. Static turned to silence.

I gave it a smack and then another one. The small round bulb shone red again, but it was faint. It came back halfway through Drumheller saying something else. "—Trying for the elevator doors. If I can get them open, I'll come down to you—"

He broke out again and the walkie went dead. I squeezed the talk-trigger and called into the mic, "Drumheller, you're breaking up. Can you hear me? Over."

I let the trigger go and the red bulb lit again. Once more, Drumheller was talking. "—I went back to my office for a flashlight but couldn't find it. I got something we'll need—"

"What is it?" I asked. "What do you have?"

"—Oh God—," Drumheller said. He was really huffing now. "—Oh God, I think one's coming. I think it's the big one. I can see its eyes—" There was a scraping sound mixed in with scuttles and loud thumps. It sounded like he was running and banging into things as he went. "—A map—," he said, but his voice was distant. "—a map to the tunnels—oh Jesus Christ—!" There was a roar that pierced through the speaker of the walkie and turned to an electronic squeal of feedback inside the signal. And then he cut out again.

My walkie went dead. I smacked it with my hand but all the static and squealing—and Drumheller's voice—were gone.

3.

The three of us waited. Ketwood and his son each sat in an excruciating silence while I stood in a stewing, jittery heap of my own. A minute passed. Maybe more. And then I thought I heard some far away noises coming from somewhere above but I could have been mistaken.

In a moment or two, I was sure the noises were real. There was some thumping up above our heads. Then a clanging and some more scraping. I popped my head out into the elevator shaft and pointed my flashlight up. I could see dark shadowy movements quite a ways up.

"Drumheller!" I called. No response. Just more banging and clanging.

And then a roar. It reverberated down the metal and concrete shaft, rattling into my ears and bringing a shiver to my spine. The roar died away like thunder in the distance and I saw two distinct forms in the blackness above me. "Munn!" called a voice from above me.

"It's coming!" And then the dark mass was growing. The end of Drumheller's words extended into a shout. As his elongated shout grew, so did the mass in my weakening flashlight. I ducked back in as I realized it was something descending straight down upon me. My heart thudded and I got back into the tunnel as something brushed past me. It was Drumheller whistling by as a big mass of blurry movement.

He crashed to the hard ground at the bottom of the shaft, just a few feet below the opening to the tunnel.

He cried out. He must have fallen fifteen or sixteen feet straight down. I gathered up my strength of will and peered over the edge. There was Drumheller, dirty, dusty in his lab coat, straining up at me, four feet below the doorway.

His arms reached out and it reminded me of a wanting baby. This powerful man who'd caused me so many problems. I turned my head clear around in the other direction and followed the movement with the shaft of my torch. It went up and I saw another figure there. Only, it wasn't a person. It was massive. And its dark eyes glittered in the light I showed them. My chest heaved and stopped with a hitch. I know that people always use the phrase, speechless. I really was. I couldn't say anything or move an inch. A big, grunting breath came and I smelled an awful smell, like livestock that I remember from boyhood on the farm, but different. The massive shadow was up where Drumheller had been and it was descending on the iron rungs of the ladder. I heard its feet clang and I heard bolts straining against the heavy thing's weight.

I turned back to Drumheller. I could just leave him. Really I could.

I could slam the heavy metal door and that thing up there would take care of him. It wouldn't be my fault. But I'd be rid of him.

I looked back at Ketwood. Both he and his boy were standing now and Ketwood senior was shouting at me. My mind was clouded and I couldn't process the words coming out of his mouth. Everything slowed to a crawl in my vision.

I thought of my folder. All the lies Drumheller had spun to get his lofty position. I reached out and took his forearm and started pulling him up. I couldn't let Drumheller die. I'd been given a sweepstakes ticket and he needed to live to pay it out to me.

Ketwood moved forward in the tight space and helped me haul the doctor out of the tunnel while that thing lumbered ever lower over our heads.

We got Drumheller inside and I shut the big metal door with a whining squawk and a clunk. On this side, it had a thick metal bar that slid down into a set of welded claws.

"Come on," I said, trying hard to not betray the fluttery feeling in my arms and my chest. I was lightheaded.

"I c-can't," Drumheller said with a stutter. "My leg."

Ketwood and I both looked down at the man whose weight we supported. His dress pants were torn and bloody and the white shaft of his broken femur sprouted from the inside of his right thigh just above the knee.

4.

It was more desperate than ever now.

I forgot about the folder with the birth certificate and the incarceration record.

I forgot about the map of the tunnels. I forgot about everything.

"We have to move," Ketwood growled. "Sean! Go out ahead."

Behind the steal door we heard straining metal: the movement of something massive. We also heard its grunting, groaning breath.

As if reading our looks, Drumheller, who was propped between Ketwood and me, said, "He's injured. He's drugged. But he's still coming."

Sean hustled out in front and his dad helped me prop up Drumheller on one foot between us. We rushed, stumbled, then tried it a bit slower until we got a rhythm of step, pause, step, pause.

Behind us, the 'something' rammed the heavy steel door. It waited. It rammed it again.

I couldn't bring myself to even sneak a tiny look back. None of us did. Drumheller knew what that 'something was. We didn't. And we didn't want to know.

We found our rhythm and got going a little faster. The three of us men were panting and sweating as we hauled our stitched bodies down the narrow corridor. I was hotter than ever. But I couldn't think on that just now. The only thing in my mind was that thing back there, making its ruckus, that thing ramming into the doorway with heavy clunking whams. It would break through—whatever it was—and then it would be after us.

"Dad," the boy called. He was only a disembodied voice now. Though we were in a section of tunnel with several overhead lamps, the boy had gone around a bend and we couldn't see him anymore. "Come on, hurry!" he called back to us with a voice that echoed through the hollow.

With a grunt, Ketwood shouted. "Go, Sean, just go. Don't worry about me."

"I can't," the boy called. "I don't know which way to go."

A spark of inspiration. "Do you have the map?" I asked of Drumheller who was hobbling between us and leaning heavily in my direction.

"Breast pocket," he said with a gulp of air.

"No time," Ketwood said, out of breath. "Son," he called. "Take the left side."

"Likely the best—" Drumheller said looking up over the tops of his skewed spectacles. "That's most a-assuredly—" He was spitting out short bits of what he wanted to say as we swept him along. "—the closest approximation—" He was clearly in a lot of pain. "—towards the C-cove—"

When we arrived on the other side of this latest bend we came to a wide section. It didn't branch off to two new tunnels as I'd imagined. It branched off in four new directions. With only a quick falter, we went to the furthest left of them. At its mouth, Ketwood called. "Sean, did you take the furthest left?"

Nothing back from Sean. I could feel Ketwood tense, as though it could traverse through Drumheller like electrical current, then up to the parts of my arms connected to Drumheller.

I could feel our collective pace quicken down into that far tunnel. The floor dipped about three or four feet vertically in about the same number of paces. I banged my head on one of the hanging lamps.

Behind us, the ramming of the beast had ceased.

"Sean!" Ketwood called again. I could hear the panic in his voice now. It had overrode his fatigue.

"Sean—answer me!" Now it was turning to a mix of panic and anger, as though the boy was purposefully toying with his father.

Up ahead, the tunnel kept going lower and finally it spilled out into another wide opening. Two tunnel choices at the far side of one big room. Before I could register anything else, I saw Sean, the Ketwood boy. He was over near the big dark mouth of one. Studying something large and mechanical. "Dad, come 'ere," he said. "Look at this." The boy was enthralled. He'd quickly forgotten about the beast trying to ram its way into the tunnels and hunt us down.

Ketwood's voice took on a scolding tone. "Sean," he said, as he left Drumheller and me and started towards his son. "Didn't you hear me calling?"

Distracted by the man-sized toy before him, Sean Ketwood barely registered his father's admonishment. "No," he said, simply. "I didn't hear a thing." He stood mesmerized before the object. I realized as I took two or three more steps into the big, deep concave that it was a hand-cart sitting on a length of full-sized rail. It was one of those things I'd seen in black and white footage of the cross-country railroads being built. Two men would stand on either side of the pump and teeter-tottered it up and down to propel the cart along a track. The rail beneath the cart was pinned into the rough-hewn floor and meandered out into one of the tunnels.

"That's the line," Drumheller said and swallowed. I looked down at his crooked right leg and that awful bloody stump of his leg bone jutting up at us. "That line will take us clear to the Cove," he said. I don't need to consult the map. I remember."

Sean Ketwood reached out and touched the metal of the pump handle. As if the gesture flicked a switch, a low growl started up. It was heavy and guttural. It reverberated through the hollow cavity. My eyes immediately started to dart in all directions. I felt Drumheller tense against my support.

In the blackness of the tunnel with the twin rail lines, there came a rustle of movement. Two iridescent eyes blinked and then grew larger.

Sean took one furtive step towards the darkness. "What is tha—?" Out from the blackness jumped a small black beast. It was about the same size as the Ketwood boy but hunched and black. I realized it was covered in fur. It came at the boy and I saw the outwardly turned snout of a primate. It was a young ape. Or maybe a gorilla. I wasn't sure since I'd only ever seen one such animal live and up close. That had been a travelling circus.

This young beast was angry and it swung a heavy paw at Sean Ketwood, cracking him right in the side of the head and sending him against the rail cart and down to the dirt and rock floor in a cloud of dust. Ketwood Senior shouted at the animal. But the primate bared its teeth and let out a combination of a hiss and a howling growl at the older man, freezing him in his stance at least ten feet from his son.

Behind us, a new noise.

I half-turned, and even before I made it far enough to see what was there, I already knew. It was the beast that had traversed down into the elevator shaft after Doctor Drumheller. It blew past both of us and galloped to the trio at the dark tunnel in what looked like two or two-and-a-half big strides. It was that large. My guess would have been three-fifty or even four hundred pounds of heavy black muscle and hair. The ground of dirt and pebbles thundered with his weight pounding into it. I saw big yellow-white eyes, bloodshot and angry. I saw a portion of the primate's head shaved with metal plating and wires protruding form scar tissue. I saw an open mouth with dark red gums and tongue and big teeth that reminded me of Drumheller's stark white femur bone. I saw its smooth belly and pectorals in dark grey-like leather. I saw its stiff, wiry shag of hair all over. It looked like the smaller gorilla but it had flecks of silver in its coat. This one was older, bigger, made of muscle and sinew. It was the smaller primate's parent. Its papa.

And right now, it was pissed off and aiming for the people between it and its little one.

Ketwood took a backhand from the gorilla and it scooped up the little Ketwood boy as it made its way to the smaller gorilla. Ketwood plummeted to the ground with a loud crack of his bones against the hard floor. But he was up almost immediately. While Drumheller and I squeezed against one far wall of the cave and stayed mute, Ketwood started shouting like a madman. He was up on his feet and closing in on the beast. He took out his lighter and lit that, waving it at the creature. I saw its eyes fixate on the flickering flame but that lasted for milliseconds. I thought Ketwood was going insane. He waved his arms and closed the gap. The big gorilla turned and roared a blood-curdling wail at him, baring teeth and showing the crisp pink of his mouth and quivering tongue, but Ketwood kept shouting. "Hey! Hey! Mangy Animal! Get gone, you!" stuff like that.

His boy trembled in the arms of the big animal and after another roar, the giant hurled him at Ketwood like a sack of vegetables. Little Ketwood crashed into his father and they both bowled over and rammed against the wall before tumbling in a jumbling heap on the uneven floor.

The big gorilla scooped up its kin and backed off in the direction he'd come: the smaller opening that led up to the multiple tunnels and eventually the elevator shaft. It walked on hind legs, but hunched over and using one set of knuckles to support its heft.

It opened its mouth wide and roared again. Spittle hit me in the face. The sound cut through me like the winter wind off the Pacific when you're out on the ferry. It was so loud, I thought I'd never hear anything else again. But the noise turned to an echo in my ears. The beast retreated after that. It had its boy and it took its leave.

The rest is a bit of a blur, to be honest. I remember trembling as I did the only thing I could think to do. And that was to load Drumheller onto the hand cart and then help Ketwood get his injured boy up there too. Drumheller leaned over with a painful strain and checked the boy's pulse. The kid's eyes were closed but Drumheller gave me a nod that said there was a heartbeat. I know that words were said and exchanged, but I don't recall the gist. I know that Ketwood was limping but he got himself up onto the cart opposite me. We started pumping and the cart eased forward with a squeal on the rusted rails.

We got some speed, and drove the cart out of the big open cave where the electrician had squared off against a giant gorilla to get his son back. We went down deeper underground on the track and were soon gliding along, shooting a spray of sparks up behind us with each change in elevation or bend in the path.

I don't know how long we pumped. I do know I lost track of the overhead lamps we passed, and of the tunnels that birthed alongside us. I do know that we came out in a big cave of red-brown rock. I know that the floor turned to sediment and then to foamy water. And I remember the ache in my arms and my shoulders as I heaved Drumheller off the cart and propped him as we exited the mouth of that low cave.

We came out into the rain and the grim late afternoon. But it was the cove alright. Drumheller collapsed in the wet surf. Sean Ketwood had come conscious and found a place to collapse. His father, Sam Ketwood, trudged four or five steps behind him and fell into the wet muck of the shore.

There he stayed. In a few minutes I went over to him calling his name. "Sam?" I said. "Sam Ketwood?" I rolled him over but there was nothing in his eyes. No sound came from him other than the escape of a final breath. The man was dead. Doc Sawbones would be summoned when we finally got to one of the hotels and called the police Chief and the doc. He would tell us it was a coronary. Short form for a coronary thrombosis. What most people call a heart attack. We wouldn't tell the doc or the chief what we saw in the tunnel—what we'd experienced and what Sam Ketwood had fought off. We'd only say we traversed our way out after the power plant went into lockdown. The scare and the effort of getting his son out of those tunnels had likely been too much for the man's ticker, Doc told us. And that was all he told us.

We got scanned with a Geiger to see how many rads we took and, apparently, I took a lifetime's dose.

Drumheller and I would never speak again, on the advice of my lawyer—and his, I presume. I never cashed in my windfall from the attempt I made at blackmailing the socially-inept wizard. Not sure if he ever walked again, I heard stories this way and that. Some said he didn't. Other said he did. But not without a cane. Some said they caught glimpse of him in a wheelchair on the deck of a ferry one afternoon, likely moving back to the mainland for good. Both of us reached fine settlements with the government department. They were in exchange for our silence. I was told that the gorilla's name was 'King' and he was one of dozens, maybe hundreds of experiments happening down below ground. His offspring was nicknamed 'Prince' and both primates—I was assured of this—had been located and returned to captivity.

The experiments were all shut down. I was assured of this. And the remnants of those experimental dealings were carted off-island before the rest of the plant's activities were wound down a few years later.

The Ketwoods? They both signed waivers that very morning in the security office at the plant. I don't care what his dead dad said, the little boy, signed one too. And he couldn't say a word about what they'd seen. The government had those signatures. There was absolutely no legal recourse for what had happened to them. I think the boy's mother tried down that road. And I think she gave up after she failed a time or two.

Me? I got a piss-bucket of radiation poured on me and that meant a fatter-than-usual paycheck sent to me every other week, but I never worked another day in my life.

I remember all those trivial details, but what I remember most was the look of that silverback gorilla in the dim light of the tunnels. I remember how it went after a threat to its child. What it thought was a threat to its child.

And I remember the failing light in the pouring rain out on the cove's beach. And I remember the icy salt-smelling froth up to my calves as I watched young Sean Ketwood weep over the dead body of his father.

Part VII

Behind The Curtain

1971

1.

There was a postscript at the end. It didn't have anything to do with flying monkeys, cowardly lions or a wizard behind a curtain. It read:

I will place this account in a locked box and ensure that it goes to a person close to me. Should Doctor Drumheller or anyone else involved with the incident at Deus Island Power Plant ever cause me concern, I will always have access to it. Should something happen to me that is, shall we say, unnatural, the reader of this account will know that it most assuredly had to do with either Doctor Drumheller, his politically-appointed superior, or the rads I took on that dreamy-turned-dreary Thursday in August of 1956.

Farrah read it three times but only to herself. It felt like it wasn't really part of the mystery box's story. She had been delighted to find that the story she'd uncovered through her latest adventure to the street market was the best one yet...but by now, the ending had devoured any delight. Now it left her feeling...funny. There was a sadness that lingered now.

In a way, Farrah wished she hadn't bought the key to the mystery box. In a way, she wished she'd never come across the junk dealer with the long grey hair down her back and the tinted John Lennon glasses.

She looked over at Gran in the bed next to her.

"Gran," she whispered. "You awake?" She wondered how much of the ending her Gran had missed. The world out past the tall windows was black and thick. Gran lay still. Farrah quietly got out of bed and gathered up all the contents of the black tin box. She replaced them, closed the lid and crept across the quiet rug to the door.

It had gone cold in Gran's room.

It was likely a half hour or so later when Nurse Anne came back down the dark hall. The house looked the same but it felt different, somehow. Farrah was lacing up her shoes, sitting at the edge of the carpet in the front porch when Anne came and touched her shoulder. She looked up at Anne and just knew.

Anne's face was pained and that confirmed it. There was no mention of Can't hurt. No mention of Won't help. Just silence. Farrah grabbed hold of Nurse Anne as Anne came down to the floor. She buried her face into the woman's bosom and she started to bleat and sob.

Can't hurt, the nurse's tone had said when Farrah wanted to go in and read Gran a story. Won't help, mind you, but it can't hurt.

2.

The bike ride home was windy and cold. Farrah had assured Anne she'd be fine, that there was no need to wait for Dad. She of course had called Doug Birkhead at his office down on Main. The secret was out now—Farrah had snuck out to visit Gran. And it had turned into one last visit with her. Of course, the ignorance of Dad's instruction didn't matter now. He couldn't get angry with Farrah for breaking the rule.

And Farrah didn't care one way or another. She'd been right: tonight was a time for throwing out old ways, for ignoring the rules.

"I don't want to ride home with him," she had shouted at Anne before she left. Anne had been holding out the phone to her so she could talk to her dad, who'd just found out. "He's a liar!" Farrah shouted in frustration. "He made Mom leave!"

Then, quietly, as the tears started to well up, her volume dropped. At twelve-and-a-half, Farrah Birkhead didn't have the grace to stop a childish outburst. But at twelve-and-a-half, she had enough self-awareness to recognize one. "I just—I just need to be by myself. For a while." She plopped down from her Gran's front stoop, picked up her bike and rode away into the woods.

She peddled. And the faster she peddled—up and down the inclines through the trails, brushing against the branches—the faster the cool wind whipped at her.

She dared to look up at the night sky—as if she'd see Gran up there, half-translucent, floating and looking down upon her. It was only the off-white of the moon, illuminating some clouds.

And then there was something else. Birds. Small black birds, circling above her as she peddled in her fury.

It was a few more pumps before Farrah realized they weren't birds. They were either large black bats or smaller brown ones that looked black against the light of the moon. There were, she realized with a moment of panic, hundreds of them. And as she peddled even harder, she realized they were fluttering on the forest path up ahead too. She tried to stop. It was too late. She was engorged in a cloud of them and they started screeching at once. Farrah knew that the story of bats getting entangled in a girl's long hair were just wives' tales, but the feel of their hot bodies and wings flipping and flapping against her cheeks and neck and body—it was revolting. She panicked, tried to jam on her bike brakes, but hit a stiff root on the packed path.

The front wheel turned sideways and over she went, up in the air and careening head-first into a mound of thick, overgrown shrubbery and weeds.

3.

She came conscious, but only briefly. She felt the warm embrace of being carried. Someone was whistling a tune. It was the end of Otis Redding's song, The Dock of the Bay. Thoughts jumbled up like stacked train cars after a derailment. One idea was of the mythical tunnels beneath the power plant and the idea of silverback gorillas hunting people down there. Another was that helmets were for sissies.

Above, the moon had clouded over, but a sliver of it revealed who was toting her along the dark path. It wasn't her dad, Doug Birkhead. It was a man with red hair who looked down upon her with a smile and gleaming eyes. He was the one whistling.

4.

She came conscious yet again. And this time it was more permanent. As she bobbled up to the surface of being awake, she heard that Otis Redding tune, the part with the whistling. But she realized that it was in her head. It was a memory, or a dream, she wasn't sure which. She was on the long couch in the living room among the piles of books and trinkets and files and things that her mother had gathered before her departure.

Above her stood father with a knitted brow of worry and a steaming cup of something—likely the black coffee he drank.

"Before you get mad—"

She heard herself croak these words from a dry throat.

"Don't fuss," her dad said and reached down to keep her from sitting up. She only managed to move an inch or two before her noggin sent a shock of pain reverberating across her skull. She was too young to know a hangover—even Jamie hadn't taken them down that path yet—but it was a pain she would come to associate with a hangover in a few years.

She cringed away from the pain, back down to the throw cushion propped under her head. She brought a couple of fingers to the forehead where she'd been cut open.

"Quite a gash, little girl," her father said, finally sitting at her feet on the far end of the couch. She expected him to get into it about how she'd gone out to see Gran when he'd given specific instructions not to leave the house.

But he didn't. He only sat.

Then it struck her. The memory of Gran. Of Gran being gone.

"I'm sorry," he finally said. "But it's good you were there with her—" He looked over at his daughter and rubbed her calf through the throw blanket he'd covered her in. "—at the last," he said.

Farrah started to cry again. Her eyes filled with tears and she wiped at them.

"I'm sorry, Daddy," Farrah said. She used that childlike word, Daddy, one she hadn't used in years. "I'm sorry that I—I guess I acted like a baby. And you lost your...mom tonight. Is she really gone?"

Doug nodded. He was used to hearing tough news, seeing tough goings-on. Was even getting used to delivering it. Farrah guessed that her father was able to put on a mask when dealing with hard things. He did that now.

"She is," he said and finally looked at her. There was a small jewel in each eye but he blinked them away. "I guess we both know what it's like to have our moms go away. But you know, Farrah. My mom—Gran—she's been sick a while. And it was time for her suffering to end. It's actually...it's better this way. You might not understand that now. But one day, you will."

She sniffled. Normally, she hated when adults pulled that card: you'll understand this one day. You'll understand this when you're older. She didn't flinch at the familiar warning tonight. She didn't want to understand it. Not when she was older. Not ever.

It wasn't 'better' this way. Could never be.

He kept rubbing her legs through the blanket. Eternal patience, Doug Birkhead seemed to have, especially for his little girl.

"You heard what I said?" she asked. "When you were on the phone?" She meant the shouting part, the part when she'd called him a liar and blamed Mom's absence on him.

"I did," he said. Doug remained quiet and calm. It wasn't unusual, but Farrah thought he'd be angry for what she'd done, what she'd said, for being, basically, a huge failure of a daughter. "You know," he said. "I think you're angry. About Gran, about Mom. About me too. Sometimes things bleed together. One piece overlaps another and, pretty soon, we're shouting at something that might not be the real reason for it."

Farrah thought about that for a minute. Then she said, "Jamie says Mom cheated on you. She says that's why you made her leave."

Doug took a sip from his hot mug and leaned back a touch. "Let me tell you a little something about Jamie. She's a smart girl, but she's a bit of a troublemaker. She likes to say things and do things to get a rise out of the adults around her. She might grow out of that and she might not. She might also land herself in hot water one day. Hope not."

He took another sip and seemed to consider his next words carefully. "You don't remember, do you?"

"What?" Farrah said.

"Why Mom left."

Farrah shook her head, no.

"I'm not surprised. Memories can get clouded. I wish I could forget. It was, oh, about three months ago. You had come home from school and you found Mom in the bathtub, you remember that—?"

Again, Farrah shook her head, no. This time it was a fast shake. Her face was turning red, filling with colour where it once was pale from her encounter with the bats and that bad tumble in the woods. Realization was a striking blow.

"That's it, Farrah," he said. "You do remember. At least some of it. You were the one who found her. You kind of went away for a couple of days after that. You talked a bit about all the blood you'd seen but that was it. Just Mom and all that blood in the bathtub..."

Doug didn't look at his little girl in the eyes, only at down at the blanket.

Farrah didn't look at her dad, either. Only at his big, rough hands.

"We got her the help she needed, hon," he said, "but they have special places for people that do things like your mom did to herself. And those kinds of places are on the mainland. She's there. Jamie was wrong. No one cheated. Mom's getting help. Mom will come home. When she's ready."

They sat for a while. In her mind, Farrah could see snippets of what Dad told her. It was true. And she had pushed it away. She had been the one to find mom. She remembered her own screaming. She remembered one bloodied hand trailing out over the side of the white tub and all that blood pooling on the tile.

She shivered.

"Dad," she asked.

"Hmm?" Doug said, looking over his steaming mug at her.

"I'm sorry."

"I know, hon," he said.

"Dad?"

"Yes?"

"Were you on the police in 1956? Here?"

Doug furrowed his brow and smiled. That question came out of nowhere. "No, hon. We didn't even live here then. 1956? Let's see. I hadn't even married your mom yet in '56. Why?"

"No reason. I just—I had this book—did you find my tin?"

"Was it in your backpack?"

"Uh-uh. It would have been strapped to my book thingy. My black tin, you must have seen it. Mighta sprung loose. Out there on the trail." Farrah couldn't remember strapping the tin back under the book straps. It could be anywhere along the path, or still back at Gran's—though she had no interest in going back there. It wasn't that the house would feel spooky, just that it would feel...sad. That house—tonight—felt like the end of things for Farrah. In her heart, it felt like Gran's end was bigger than just the end of one woman's life. It was tied into her mom's problems, it was tied into her dad's, and the biggest deal was that Farrah was now living in a bigger world—one where she was actually aware of adult problems. Gran was right. It's all part of a Grand Tapestry. Everyone has a story. And none of them have a fairy tale ending.

Of the mystery box, Doug said, "We'll look for it in the morning. Sean didn't say a thing about your tin."

"The mystery box was there, Dad, with the book inside." Farrah stopped. "Did you say 'Sean?'" She saw a flash mingled with the blood on the bathroom tile when she'd found Mom. It was red too, but a different shade. It was the bright red hair of the man she thought at first was her dad, picking her up from the forest floor and rescuing her from the bats and the weeds and the packed dirt of the bike trail...while he whistled a tune everyone knew.

"Yeah. Sean Ketwood," Doug said. He got up from the couch and went around to the kitchen counter, sidestepping piles of books and papers and junk. He looked exhausted, like all the fight had finally gone out of Doug Birkhead for the night. His shoulders sagged and his pace was slow. "Lucky for you he was out this way. You tumbled only a few feet from the trail that goes between Lannen Lane and Birch." At the counter, Doug scooped another spoonful of sugar into his coffee and stirred. "He was doing some electrical for the Banatynes up there and heard you howling."

"Sean Ketwood," Farrah said in a whisper, mainly to herself. Then to her dad: "We have to find that book. You're not going to believe what's in it."

"Okay, hon. Listen, don't get up for a bit. I put in a call to ol' Doc Sawbones. I want him to check you out before I let you go to bed. You scared me, little girl. And you got a nasty bump when you went over. Sean said you were babbling about gorillas and bats."

"Kay. I have something to ask the doc, too," Farrah said, her gears turning on everything she'd read in the book. Tonight felt a bit like a faraway dream already and, with each passing moment, it seemed to slip further into a blurry background inside her mind. She tried to latch onto something with her mental grabbers so she could control it.

Thoughts returned to her Gran. And then to her mother. She wondered how long it would be before the phone calls turned to real visits with Mom. And how long before real visits turned to a homecoming.

When he got here with his big leather bag, she'd ask Doc about the summer of 1956. Whether he'd really gone down to the beach to see about Sean Ketwood's dead father in the rain. And whether there had been an investigation into the 'incident' as Munn had labeled it and as the Island Press had called it. She'd ask Sean Ketwood about his time in the tunnels and whether it really happened the way Munn had said it did in his wild journal ramblings.

Being that Farrah was only just twelve-and-a-half, being that she was a girl with a mind for fanciful stories and a troublemaking friend like Jamie, Farrah forgot to ask the Doc when he came by and shone a penlight in her eyes. It was a year or two before she would even run into Sean Ketwood again. And, he, of course, was close to two decades older than her. Kids didn't really talk to adults much and by then, she felt silly approaching him over a child's foolish ideas. They exchanged pleasantries instead.

Farrah moved on to other things in life, and eventually the memories of Dennis Munn's journal and Doctor Drumheller's incarceration record were relegated to the back rooms of her memory, like one of her mom's piles of old treasures that were once full of her presence...but now meaningless.

The mystery box wasn't retrieved, not even when an estate dealer was hired to go through Gran's house and get it ready for sale. Farrah barely thought of the phrase, Grand Tapestry, anymore. In time, she forgot the word altogether, even though she still enjoyed finding stories and pieces of history. The grand tapestry was an idea lost to her childhood memory, but she lived a piece of it, whether she knew it or not.

In the coming months, things became a new sort of normal for Farrah. She got on better with her Dad and even started learning to cook.

But, of course, in Dovetail Cove, there weren't any such things as 'Happily Ever Afters' so this was the next best thing for Farrah Birkhead.

~ fin ~

The Dovetail Cove saga doesn't end here. In BLED, journey to 1972 Frank Moort and Teeny who serves up more than pineapple cheesecake at the Highliner Cafe. In ZED (1975), Tom Mason learns what evil truly looks like. In SHED (1977), we find Simon and Rupert dealing with the trials of a new stepfather. And in DREAD (1978), Mac and Dave McLeod return home to the island and embark on a murder mystery of sorts, revealing even more terrible truths about the island.

*All Dovetail Cove books tie to each other but can be read in any order.

BLED (Dovetail Cove, 1972)

Tina McLeod is on the cusp of a new life. Extraordinary change is rare in her world but this newsflash means she can finally leave her small island town for good. No more pouring coffee for townsfolk in Main Street's greasy spoon, no more living under the weight of her born-again mother. That is, until Frank Moort comes in for his usual lunch and dessert on an ordinary Friday in May.

ZED (Dovetail Cove, 1975)

It's the waning dog days of August, 1975 and Tom Mason's in Dovetail Cove for the last few weeks of his summer job at the group home. His boss and the home's owner is Karen Banatyne, one of the wealthiest folks in town. It seems like she's got it in for Tom; she's the only one standing in his way as he scrimps for a new camera. But Karen has her own problems. A regulatory agency might cut off her funding, plus her hubby hasn't been seen in a few weeks, and she's not saying why. Most ominous of all, it seems as though something's hiding in the hot spring north of the main beach and one of Karen's 'houseguests' is about to come face to face with evil. Tom is too.

SHED (Dovetail Cove, 1977)

Simon and Rupert spend their days playing in the fields out near the old power station but at night, a visitor comes for them. Older brother Simon shoulders the burden of their stepfather Everett and his greedy dominion over their Mama. But the brothers must now stand together to heal the wounds of their real father's departure and brace themselves for a harrowing showdown with Everett.

DREAD (Dovetail Cove, 1978)

Mac and Dave McLeod are thirty-something bachelor brothers, back in the tiny island town of Dovetail Cove after more than a decade away. They're here for a funeral, despite Mac's looming feeling that things aren't quite right in their childhood home, nor anywhere else across town. It doesn't take long for a mysterious visitor at the wake to embroil the McLeod boys and the island doc in a game of whodunit involving one of Police Chief Birkhead's unsolved files. Things get macabre when the boys discover a link to their parents in the mess. And the visitor who starts it all might just be a walking cadaver gone missing out from under the coroner's nose.

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About the Author

Jason McIntyre has lived and worked in varied places across the globe. His writing also meanders from the pastoral to the garish, from the fantastical to the morbid. Vibrant characters and vivid surroundings stay with him and coalesce into novels and stories. Before his time as an editor, writer and communications professional, he spent several years as a graphic designer and commercial artist.

McIntyre's writing has been called noir and sophisticated, styled after the likes of Chuck Palahniuk but with the pacing and mass appeal of Stephen King. The books tackle the family life subject matter of Jonathan Franzen but also eerie discoveries one might find in a Ray Bradbury story or those of Rod Serling.

Jason McIntyre's books include the #1 Kindle Suspense, The Night Walk Men, bestsellers On The Gathering Storm and Shed, plus the multi-layered coming-of-age literary suspense Thalo Blue.

Learn more about the author and his work at:

www.theFarthestReaches.com

