Pontypool Changes Everything

Greg feels the whisks of a broom shaking at his insides. The disease is emptying me out; is that what’s happening?

“OK. I’m gonna rock your world now, little buddy.”

Grant turns the wheel and releases the brake, allowing the car to fall down the weeded ramp. He ducks his head, as if the low branches are in the car. The sunlight dries in dark streaks across the windshield.

“Pontypool. Now, Pontypool changes everything.”

A yellow field opens up to the left and Grant pulls up onto a flattened patch of gold. The field is broken here and there by sand dunes that crest through the grass. A picnic table sits just outside the shade of a birch tree at the field’s southern border. Grant takes the binoculars from Greg’s hands.

“We leave everything in the car. C’mon, let’s go.”

The picnic table is cracked and yellow, with tufts of moss capping its saw-cut ends. Grant sits facing away from the tabletop and he slaps the bench beside him. Greg sits down.

“See that bit of ground right there?”

The corner of a small grey shack is visible beyond the birch tree. Along its side is a large rectangle of sod. The grass is cut and maintained, though the strips of green are all different. Some strips newer. Some slightly yellow.

“Know what’s in there?”

Grant hovers his hand out in the direction of the quilted lawn and rolls his fingers in a trill.

“Dead people.”

Greg presses his thumbs hard against the wood. A button to press. I need a Higher Power. He presses the button again.

“Murdered people, Greg.”

Grant is whispering, not so much to avoid being heard as to keep respectful of this place. Greg feels confusion in the pew of the bench. A church? A funeral?

“You know the headline? House of Horrors. Well, that’s one right there.”

Greg looks at the corner of the shack. A white stone foundation. Weathered boards, cupped by the sun, meeting in rough gaps at the edges. Not good. Not good for people. I’m scared.

“In fact, you’ll probably read about this one sometime in the fall. In the meantime, it’s a bit of a wholesale outlet. People are brought here, not by the guy who lives here, but by people who need to do a little intimidating. It’s used by several organizations who don’t even know each other. Who leave, not knowing where they’ve come to. A lot of big business. You want to make sure something goes your way, you just give the right person a tour of the shack and, man, things start going exactly the way you want them to. Some organized crime, of course. Some government. Not always Canadian, either. Some military. This little shack is very busy.”

Grant plucks a shoot from the wet sleeve that holds it in the ground. He sucks on the juice leaking from its slender trunk.

“Yessir. And when it gets a little too crazy, somebody sends in the cops. And, ta-da, they arrest some demented little individual in a House of Horrors. Everything is accounted for. No leftovers. The simple answers. The world needs a little something extra to keep it eager. Something that nobody would ever believe.”

Grant gets up and walks toward the graves. He steps up on the lawn and turns, with his hands on his hips, to face Greg. Greg closes his eyes. Out of the darkness a pair of snapping teeth rush toward him. He opens his eyes and lays his hands on his pounding chest.

“Your buddy Steve and his girlfriend are in there right now. You can’t hear them. It’s soundproof. But I betcha it’s godawful noisy in there right now.”

A blackbird with tiny crimson shoulders falls from a tree and swoops into the light around Grant. He steps away from the shack. He huddles his back and rises to the tips of his toes. He crosses his lips with a finger and holds out an upraised hand to Greg.

Greg hears himself through a broken staccato of words. I’m thinking this is a lie. Grant stops halfway to the picnic table.

“Hey, you alright? You don’t look so good.”

Intimidation. He wants something from me. Why doesn’t he just ask?

18 As Fluids Go, This One’s…