Pursuing Ghosts, Part II - SCP Foundation

This is what I came to see: the altar of a dead god.

Pursuing Ghosts, Part II

By Lt Flops

Published on 05 May 2024

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F.A.Q.

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35

THE LOST GLADE

Pursuing Ghosts

PART II

PREVIOUSLY

Pursuing Ghosts, Part I

Our protagonist has been having a recurring nightmare. For months, she has kept an elaborate dream journal, intent on learning everything she can. The nightmare responds in kind — shifting and growing, ever closer to resolving itself.

Weird enough, right?

One day, when she trespasses the old farmhouse, she discovers a ghostly blue cat made entirely out of light.

What’s better:

Being lost for good reason?

Or no reason at all?

Future Date Unknown

The Hydra's Spine

A magical cat made entirely out of light was, I’d hoped, my sole shocker for the week.

‘Till I came here. That stupid cat is the reason I got stuck in the first place. I caught its look before it skittered through a tight spot. My curiosity pushed me after it, and now, my naïveté pulls me along. And no person is more naïve than she who finds herself stuck in the fossilized corpse of a cosmic creature.

So, I’m off pursuing ghosts (or was it herding cats?). The deeper I search, the more spaces beckon to be searched, the larger the effort I must command to search them. An ixnay on my sanitay.

After wiping my shock from the face of my disorientating surroundings, I revert to base instinct. As the old maxim goes:

“The human body can last three minutes without oxygen,

three days without water,

and three weeks without food.”

Air

This so-called “Hydra’s Spine” has air I can breathe. At least, enough to let me hyperventilate in panic the first hour I got here.

Water

I initially had five plastic bottles packed in my Earth Science toolbag. By day two, only two remained.

This is where I got lucky. That metal outpost with the ancient offices? It saved my life. Concealed behind the room in the back, I found a freshwater filtration reservoir. There’s even basic plumbing that pumps (what I hope is) recycled greywater. Maybe, if I keep within a half-day’s trek of this place at all times, I’ll keep my luck.

Food

This is where I punted preparedness off a cliff. Sure, before leaving home, I had a couple boxes of protein and granola bars stowed in my toolbag. But only a couple. And until this ordeal becomes truly desperate, I’m too worried to indulge. My gut growled a mad one after only the first night.

I’ve never rationed a day in my life. I guess this week is one of firsts. It’ll take sorting the hours from the days and the days from the nights. Completely analog, too. I’m sure I’ll be miserable — especially with nobody but myself keeping me accountable — but it’s Life or Death.

Is it?

Once more, this strange outpost is on my side, except it’s thrown a Hail Mary. Although there are no food stores here, I found in the maps the location of a refuelling station. Here’s the catch: it’s well outside the half-day window I gave myself — assuming its own food stores aren’t empty.

Still, there’s another reason not to stay: this place gives me the creeps. It wasn’t just a research outpost; for whatever research that whoever was conducting, it has a gruesome air.

The backroom leads to a much larger underground level hewn from silty white rock. A dungeon. There, covered with tarps, I find what looks like a throne. From that throne, concentric rings oscillate outward; dancing geometric shapes; faded script from antiquity. All three comprise deep carvings that wound the rockbed. There are phials of muddy umber liquid — and some empty. At the basement wall, behind limestone, I hear uninterrupted humming: the universal call-sign for running mechanical equipment. The kind almost engineered as a decorative acoustic garnishing.

The shifting rock ceases.

It’s silent.

For a time.

Then, booming echoes come all at once, booming from under the world, deeper still than my mind can fathom.

I spend all of a few minutes down here. A few short minutes — and I book it through the inky dark, cross the dingy pit, up the stairs, over the catwalks, all the way out the door, I don’t look back and I keep running.

Those maxims lurch through my head like rivers of lava. Those smarmy, know-it-all maxims. Trivia disguised as deeply held wisdom. You’d think it makes sense inside your head, but out in the real world, things fall apart much more swiftly.

For one, these three figures are expressed with mighty confidence. When thrown into a bona fide survival setting, most city-dwelling folks would immediately lose their cool, and death would rear its beastly head. And neither is any safe bet without proper shelter.

Me? Three days from home, and already I’m stumbling through the wild yonder, guided by hasty planning and no shelter to speak of.

Night Three yawns before me. I make off towards that second outpost — which I’ve circled in blood-red Sharpie. Further along from here, two finger-widths in advance of my destination, I catch the inked-on symbol of a human skull. Unavoidable, unless I take a lengthier, more roundabout route; sacrifice time I don’t have.

I gulp down bated breath and venture ever deeper into God’s tomb.

Thursday, 25 April 2019

Morning

Selkirk

Manitoba, Canada

Finals were a quiet killer. At this point, though, I’ll accept middle-of-the-road B’s — and I’m fairly certain that’s how I’ll finish the semester.

The dream hasn’t let up in the slightest. If anything, the past week has brought with it heightened lucidity. I call this the Law of Proportionate Nightmares: for every mentally stimulating day in waking, the more intense my dreaming in turn. If my dreams follow just one dictum, this is it.

Something is beginning to resolve itself near the very end of my dream. No longer just feelings. Not sensations, not vibes. Something with a definite form. A shape. Something I can barely make out before I jolt awake, cold and sweating and alone. I swim beneath my sheets in the gloom of the extreme early morning. I argue with myself over whether I might try for sleep again. Whether I might risk an ever-closer encounter. Whether I might finally know It for certain. Every single time, I talk myself out of it. So what if I don’t know what it is? I can fight it. I have the tenacity. It’s just another hour of missed sleep here, a stronger coffee there. If I need to, I can even pinch myself. But falling back asleep, especially after that? Screw it. If I can set an alarm at night, I can just as easily wait it out.

Keep this up and I’ll never miss class again.

5:18 p.m.

I’m on a bus to town. The trip before last, I picked up some melatonin. Today, I’m grabbing something special for an old friend. Coasting the Selkirk Lift Bridge, I cast a sordid gaze over the Red River like I’m in some antiquated music video.

As the bus turns to finish its route, I speedwalk down Main Street. Northbound bus not twelve minutes out, I zip across an empty lot to the gas station. Out front sits a white step van of the pedophile variety, blocking all view. Inside, I beeline towards the packed peanuts and sunflower seeds and pecans and cashews and dates and make my selection.

Then, I realize they’ve finally restocked the pemmican.

What I call “road-trip” pemmican is nowhere near as good as the “real” thing (or so I have on good authority), but it’s enough for my tastes. Pemmican, a snack thicker than jerky, consists of a strip of dried bison, sweet blueberry, and some spice. This gas bar is the only place in Selkirk to have it in stock, even if it’s once every couple of months.

As I walk out, I almost smack into the side of the still-parked van. A good few blinks bring me back to my senses.

Smacking-range serves a closer look.

A black-and-white logo that reads “Selkirk Carpeting Pristine” adorns the van’s obverse. Strange place for carpet cleaners to advertise their services. The wording is plastered over an icon bearing three spokes. The stylized depiction of some kind of… Axle strut? For a washer, I guess?

When I edge ‘round the front to pass by, the van takes off in a huff of black smoke. I stumble back atop the curb and get the urge to shout something stupid, but instead I squint through the side window.

The driver is leering at me. Or, at least, I swear he is. All-black jumpsuit, black gloves, black cap, and a ghastly glare. I drop my gaze to the pavement and purse my lips.

Minding Selkirk’s tight, two-way bus schedule, I bust it back up Main Street. As I’m sitting on the northbound line, I’ve already forgotten my tight-assed new enemy.

5:45 p.m.

ZZ messaged me. Says he’s already here. That was over half an hour ago.

I dismount at my stop and tiptoe through an almost-marsh drowning the old campground. This time of year, the ice floes carrying downstream to Lake Winnipeg are usually still about, being broken up, bit by bit. In recent years, however, the thaw has come early — and brought floodwaters.

This year, the campsites on the northeastern bank face a slow, rising deluge, cold-as-ice. I don’t mind it. Flooding means most everything is waterlogged, which means less people about, which means peace and quiet. That’s always something to bask in.

The water has taken the riverside walking path and flooded it over; consumed it. I divert paths and chase up the hill, into the woods, and over a snow-and-mud-caked gravel trail to high ground. Finally, through the thicket, I spot it: that large, wooden platform towering over the tributary.

The East Selkirk Lookout.

And someone is sitting up top.

I tiptoe up the stairs. This thing was built when I left high school. It’s been barely two years, and already it’s graffitied to shit. Just as I’ve made my ascent, I catch him from the corner of my eye.

ZZ lounges over an extraordinarily shitty camping stool. One he yoinked from that derelict campsite, no doubt. At six-foot-four, he’s like a grizzly perched on a high chair.

I see he’s stolen a second one for my own behind. I close in for the kill…

He shoots out an arm and waves. “You just missed it.”

I frog-jump over my chosen stool and scoot towards him. “Missed what?”

“Lift Bridge.” In his other hand, he cups an open whisky. He hands over the bottle and points past the railing, grinning sheepishly. “Red River’s gone flooded. Fed’s inspecting the damage. You really would’ve been late if you’d been caught in that.”

I stand on my tip-toes and trace an imagined line from his finger to a point southwest, craning my neck. By some feat of engineering, the middle section of the bridge levitates in mid-air. Powerful counterweights pull a bundle of cords taut and keep everything in suspension.

A bright red vessel passes underneath. It sports a Canadian flag and a placard for Environment Canada. Elsewhere, a lone waterfowl squeals incessantly in the distance.

I wave off his finger, the bridge, and the rest of it. “Oh, but I’m never late.” I grin back, not quite sheepish as devious. Then I steal a swig and just as quickly spit it out. I croak out, between coughs, “Tastes worse than Buckley’s.”

“Works better than Buckley’s.” He looks me up and down as my face is contorted in disgust. “God — you look like you haven’t slept! ” A half-second later and I’m being constricted in a bear hug as he lifts me a foot into the air. “And you hardly weigh a pound!”

Towering well above most everyone else, Zeloszelos “ZZ” Laurent has always been a broad-shouldered kid. I’ve called him my best friend since first grade. Coming from a Métis background, his family have called the Prairies their home for literal centuries.

I wheeze again as he sets me down, which translates to: “Gee, thanks! ” I turn my back, lift up my satchel, and shuffle around for the vacuum-sealed pemmican.

He peeks over my shoulder, expectant.

I elbow him in the side but strike something that pokes out from his worn-down bomber jacket. “Glad to see me?”

ZZ lowers his chin and snorts. “Got you something fruity.” He swings open his jacket to reveal a slim bottle of Malibu.

“Check this out.” I hold up the pemmican like a beaming bar of 24-karat gold. “I hit up the Sev’ on my way up here.

“No shit! Can’t go wrong with ‘road-trip’ style, eh?” He scans the label, grinning. “‘Cept maybe the packaging.”

He hands over the mickey. We make the trade.

“Here’s to the girliest girl I know. Hope you didn’t break a nail climbing up here.”

“Why, thank you, my liege.”

ZZ attempts a faux-curtsy, but his knees buckle and he teeters in place.

“Dudes are s’posed to bow,” I say, pulling at his camping stool.

He decides just then that falling over is entirely in his wheelhouse and finds a seat on the floor.

Our shared giggle-fit carries over the waterfowl and all else.

“So,” he says, “how’ve exams been treating ‘ya?”

“Nasty, brutish, and” — I stretch, yawning — “way longer than they had any right being.”

“Finished, huh? Lucky. I’ve still got two tomorrow.” He lies through his teeth.

I sock him on the shoulder.

He doesn’t budge.

“I finished three today, I’ll have you know.” I wrench open the drink he brought and take a hearty sip. A tropical scene plays out inside my mouth.

He raises an eyebrow. “And you really thought you’d get me juiced up with exams tomorrow?”

“Please, Z. I’ve seen you at a code jam. 48 hours, no sleep? You practically put this stuff in your coffee.” I knock our mickeys together in a way most unceremonious, their contents frothing and splashing about. “I’d be doing you a favour.”

He looks over his drink like it’s from an alien planet. “… Canadian whisky? I wouldn’t put this shit in my coffee. What am I, fifty?”

We shoot the shit for a long while.

“Good thing the campgrounds are pretty much gonna be shut down this year.” He gestures at the river.

“Yeah, I nearly got stuck knee-high in a booter,” I scoff.

“No, that was because you’re short. But hey, there’s a silver lining to everything. Take your shortness, for one. Lots of tricky things to deal with. Real diminutive problems. But you also get more leg room on the bus. Now, try this on for size: park’s a flood, mud for days, gravel all over the field. Townsfolk are clutching pearls. Bunch of pampered tyrants whinging at the mayor’s office over not being able to use a facility that’s not even open yet. And meanwhile, we’re up here, having as much fun as we want. We can shout, scream, make asses out of ourselves, et cetera. And the best part is, nobody can come bitch. Because there’s not a soul in sight.”

“I find myself agreeing with you more and more these days. Must be the free booze.”

“No, the cost for that is spending time with me.” ZZ finally parks himself on his throne, scooting with deliberation to snag the perfect view. “Y’know, I do love living here in Canada’s own South Park. I mean, that perfectly encapsulates the Selkirk spirit, doesn’t it?”

“At least ‘til summertime. Then the blackflies come out in force.” Through spotless trees I spy the boat further downstream. It has long since cleared the Selkirk Bridge on its approach towards Lake Winnipeg. “I’m still ragging on you for being such a South Park Republican, though. That’s never gonna change.”

“It’s all chaff and no wheat coming from you. You’re just lucky I let this petty shit slide. But if you must know, I’ll say I’m closer to a radical republican.”

“I thought you were a Libertarian. Swapped out your yellow flag for a white one? Surprised you got the stains out.”

“A classical libertarian, more like it. And that’s precisely what I mean — all chaff. She can’t even get her metaphors straight.”

We spend a good twenty minutes blabbing on before I remember what I wanted to tell him.

“Ohhh, shoot! We’ve gotta meet up again before you leave for Toronto! Early next week, maybe? I’ll take you out to the Marine Museum. They’re still running that expo on the centennial of the General Strike in the ‘Peg. We all know how gung ho you get about direct actions.”

“Oh, right. I never told you.”

I shoot him a searing glare.

“I’ll be, uh, flying out a week ahead of schedule. As in, tomorrow. I’ve told you about my granddad, yeah?”

I put down my rum but otherwise stay silent.

“He’s still hanging on — but for how long? … Anyway, the rest of my folks are flying out from Vancouver.”

We exchange a flicker of looks, a candle flame waning in a spasmodic spell. I imagine my face and his must give off the same sentiment — remorse — but for entirely different reasons.

ZZ’s tone takes on a guilt-ridden hue. “I really meant to take you out to Bronze Boot sometime. But I guess things’ve just been a whirlwind these past couple months. Truth is, I’ve been studying my butt off. Doubly so for exams. I’m the only one in my family to go to university. You know that. Look.” He rests his right hand on my shoulder. “I know how much that museum means to you—”

“I don’t give a shit about some kiddish boat museum, Z! I just wanted to spend time with you!”

My shift in demeanour from zero to one-hundred shocks him. His arm slides off with a jolt. He lets it fall without resistance and gapes at the sky, then closes his eyes.

I slump in my seat for a few beats, feeling miserable. “God, I’m so stupid. I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry. It’s just… It’s not your fault. That wasn’t fair. To you.”

The spring sky sheds its blue and submits to bands of peach, pink, and purple. For a while, we sit still, side-by-side but on different planets. Maybe we ought to grab a bite; at least spend the last couple of hours with our bellies full.

Eventually, he breaks the bout of silence. “So, you end up killing your old name?” He avoids making eye contact; I must be all scowls.

“Huh?”

“Didja find something new to call yourself? You know what I mean. I’m still not good with the lingo.”

I shake my head.

“Whatever you end up choosing, it’ll be gorgeous. I’d bet on it.”

I hazard a slight warm smirk. “Aw. Thanks, Z.” I loosen the strap on my satchel and pull it up over my head. “Um, here, lemme show you what I—”

But he isn’t finished. “Remember when we were kids, and we had to deal with those neverending water boil advisories? All because of those shitty feeders in the old wells? Wasn’t that the pits?”. TRANSLATION Didn’t that suck?

“Oh. Yeah. They really took their sweet time with those upgrades, or whatever. ‘Hey kids, by next summer you’ll be able to leech public water right out of our subsidized modern sanitation system!’”

“I swear we heard that same line six years in a row.”

“God, I remember when they closed down the water fountain at Happy Thought. I think we started calling it, like, the ‘Sludge Altar’, or something like that.”

“Can you even begin to imagine how much plastic that tiny school wasted?”

“It was, what — a few cases of lukewarm, bottled water, every single day for an entire friggin’ decade?”

He nudges me square in the ribs. “So that’s what’s been keeping you up so late. I know, you’re one of those ‘save the water’ types,” he says, pumping his chest twice with his fist and raising it into the air.

My eyes widen.

I haven’t told him about the Lost Glade yet, have I? Outing myself as an insane person is certainly lower on the list of things I want my best friend discovering, right before breaking contact for four months.

I must be staring at a fixed point for some time when ZZ waves a hand in front of my face.

“We should dip,” he says, before turning away. “I know I’ve got the fuckin’ munchies.”

I quickly unzip my satchel and feel around for the hidden compartment sewn into its bottom, then fish out what I’m looking for. “Check it.” I shake a small prescription packet in front of his face, pills clattering noisily. It’s emblazoned with a pink swirl and a label slapped on, signed courtesy of the clinic at the Irina Borisov Health Centre. “Informed consent, bitches!”

It takes a moment for things to click inside his head. “No. Way. Titty sprinkles? Let’s get that shit, girl!” ZZ shoots up like a cannon and sets dynamite to the late-afternoon quietude.

A long, jubilant shriek carries over the tributary.

Future Date Unknown

The Hydra's Spine

… And that was the last good moment I’ve had all week.

It takes several hours of treading across this dull and dead expanse to see any progress. Just as well, I arrive at the first stop on my journey: the skull pictogram. Before I’m even within eyeshot of the main attraction, my entire body fills with the sensation that I must not be alone.

This unique transect of cave leading up to the skull requires that I climb a fairly steep embankment. As with the rocky rise underfoot, the spinal column arches low overhead, nearly kissing its spelaean counterpart (shut up, I’m a geology student). It’s low enough to grip, so I use it to my advantage, steadying my ascent.

The climb proves delicate. My palms become slick with sweat. I catch ripples within a light fog that rolls down the hill. The higher I find myself, the heavier it becomes. Yet still, I climb.

As the slope’s lip comes within reach, I scan left-to-right. There’s something on the far side. I don’t let it distract me, but it looks to be a structure built into the wall. Man-made.

One more step.

The next chamber looms in my surroundings. With the mystique-giving fog intervening on the mighty space, it’s impossible to receive the whole scene at once. Zigzagged scorch marks run upon cleaved crust, streaking and scouring across geological time: a dance of death. In every direction the riddled ground slopes navellike towards a centre obscured.

I’m not quite willing to push my way through the heaviest throng of fog, flashlight be damned, so I shoot for the chamber’s right-most flank where its lavish cloak is spread more thinly. Echoing footsteps knock back from a distant wall I can’t see. I trace a careful path in the blind. Nevertheless, every “ping” created by sediments underfoot pierces the soundless veil.

Natural fog intermixes with disturbed dust. It comes as no surprise, then, that I’m hacking up a storm. I hold my shirt to my mouth and keep going.

I stop within a couple dozen paces of my destination: the man-made structure. But now, taking in the fine details, the structure no longer screams “man-made” as it did in my peripherals. In the back of my head, too, the part of me that fancies herself a know-it-all student of geology is, perhaps for the first time, not sure if it’s a “structure”, either.

Unlike its crag-faced neighbours, the wall surface here is smooth, and polished to a translucent green-gray sheen. Its facade evokes the image of an exposed nuclear bunker, but rendered in great organic flourishes. Monolithic arcs begin high off the ground, curve out dramatically from the wall, and feed into the cave floor. Each arc must be taller than the outpost I came from (the part left standing, that is) by two-and-a-half times, and spaced apart by at least that length. The arrangement of alien protrusions continues along into the deep fog and out of sight.

It’s impossible to make out who (or what) put this here. The map indicates nothing like this, and it’s in stark contrast to everywhere else I’ve been.

Stranger still, I notice a section further along that has clearly collapsed. I squat at a low angle to snag a good look at the damage from under the foggy tapestry. On the face of one broken arc, right about where I’d expect some sort of skeletal superstructure to stick out, the interior is hollow instead. The face itself has been smoothened out, as though even its sabotage were meticulously designed. Several arcs are complemented by a fallen beam — longer and thicker than any single one — and crumpled, pin-like columns. Even in their damaged states, each of them still carries that same luster.

Behind this mess of dysfunctional supports, I spy a darkened pocket recessed into the rock. Is that the front door?

Let’s not get carried away; I’m on a time-limit.

I feel plenty more sure of myself back here, so I decide to move into the fog from along the wall.

I quickly regret this decision. Directly in my path, a maw-like crevasse in the earth stretches from the wall towards somewhere approximating the chamber’s centre. I avert my eyes as though avoiding looking at the Sun.

Having exhausted all other options, I move with penetrating focus into the wide open space, now wary of the ground on top of everything else.

… A human skull meant “keep away”, didn’t it?

Hold that thought.

I find myself face-to-face with a towering grim visage. A monstrous skull, twenty metres to a side, dwarfs the ancient structure with ease. At once masked by fog, it rears its grisly head and scares me utterly shitless.

Everything is laid out in fours of perfect symmetry. Its face bears four cavernous eye sockets, each with four smaller satellite sockets that riddle the diagonal axes. Gargantuan quadruplicate mouthparts rip across facial bone towards unsettling outer extremes. Four sets of Cheshire mandibles are shunted ever-so-slightly open, enough to expose row upon crowded row of pincer-like fangs, crowned with four piercing tusks.

Behind the skull, a jagged exoskeleton assuming a scolopendrine body plan snakes into the fog and past my sight.

Theophage: God-Eater.

This is what I came to see: the altar of a dead god.

Except, that’d be ridiculous.

I’ve never felt satisfied putting stock in a higher power. The divine is, by definition, something that us pesky mortals have no way of making contact with. Anyone with the self-importance to want or seek out such a thing for themself was clearly the last person we should trust to do so. The same goes for anyone who would claim divinity, or even suggest they were its special representative. Besides, that’s been the byway for scamsters ever since the first ones barged their way out of a swamp while foisting their muddy wares.

As for all those old myths of “righteous domination” and “natural supremacy” that stem from gestures to a divine being: if an absolute god were truly out there, in the beyond, wouldn’t its existence validate those deeply held prejudices? Wouldn’t it justify treating outsiders as being inferior to the ones who were “chosen”? If divinely ordained power were real, and its laws favoured the few above the many, how could we ever possibly thwart it? And if we never could, then why seek its favour?

A dead god, on the other hand, speaks to something else entirely. Let’s say we accept that there is an immensely powerful being with unparalleled influence over the fabric of space and time. Let’s say it’s every bit as mortal as we are.

What would this mean?

That it can be killed. Obviously. Does the Pope take holy shits?

But what would it mean for us?

That, for everything we think we know about the universe, what we actually can know is a fraction of a fraction of that whole. And for what vanishingly little we’re certain about, we are loudly and stunningly proud. And yet, as we sit here atop our self-important precipice, hanging over a gaping hole of ignorance, we are unconscious as to what might exist just beyond our fingertips.

Makes me wonder if it’s worth knowing anything at all.

I’ve got the inkling that I’ve barely skimmed the surface stratum of this place. I have only been here for three days. And what are three measly days? Am I seriously convinced that I’ve come across the one revelation that could shock the entire world? Whatever this once was — whether some supreme being, or just a huge (and hideous) centipede — that it wound up in this state bodes well for nobody.

Strangely, though, there is one thing that clashes with everything else. Somebody has come here and propped up those same orb-like lamps that dot every other passageway. This latest grouping is housed inside the segmented trunk of the digested god.

I give the entire complex an apprehensive once-over before dragging my feet towards the centre of the concave dais.

Sure enough, the lamps plot a course through the arthropodic innards. The creature’s entire ossified frame, from chitinous shell to spindly legs, is jet-black with an almost porcelain quality. Orange light backscatters all across; a shimmering brilliance in hazy air.

After a slight bend, the body resolves into a consistent straightaway, and my luck hits shore. Finally. There sits an elongated canvas tent reminiscent of those Haudenosaunee longhouses from social studies class, but with amber camouflage patterns. Military-themed? Blegh. Its tentpoles number in the double-digits with a spread three-to-four metres apart, the entire camp no more than 30 metres across. A far cry from an outpost, but human all the same. The abdomen fits all this with room to spare.

Not my taste in interior design, but I’ll take it.

Near the back, I find a pair of security flaps screening off a vestibule. Both unlatch with ease. I position my flashlight shoulder-high and sneak through.

Set inside are bunk beds lining each wall; racks at the far end; a common area: basic furnishings. I circle old-fashioned folding chairs and tables, many of them toppled or flipped over. What was this — a barracks? Army camp? There are no insignia to speak of. Not that I’d glean much from an emblem, anyhow. Dad served, but it’s not like it got me “hereditary knowledge” or any horseshit like that.

Whoever was here, they left in a hurry.

… No, something doesn’t sit right. Something reeks. I make for the furthest wall. I’ll go through every corner of this godforsaken place if that’s what it takes to find out.

The bunk beds are built from collapsible, lightweight metal, each decked out with a thin box spring and sleeping bag. A few rows down, one sleeping bag appears bulky in the gloom. Huh?

The reek is no stronger here, but ever-present. Pulling at the fabric reveals little. I poke around for the zipper. There it is!

Now, let’s find out what’s in—

The rest unzips under its own weight, spilling its contents. I yelp and leap back.

“What the—?!”

Rotting flesh hangs limply off a grotesque yellow skeleton and hits the ground in wet thunks, bursting apart. It releases a pungent, foul odour, too strong for words. I’d yak my lunch — if I’d eaten lunch.

I book it faster than my brain can tell my legs where to go. What the fuck is this place, a quarantine station? A lure for desperate freaks? Good fucking lord was I mistaken.

The outer shell outside holds back the fog but doesn’t stop me tripping and falling on my ass. I land on a hard, rough platform. I struggle to roll off but succumb instead to pain. Head darting around like an anxious rodent, I find I’ve fallen onto a shipping pallet. It carries a stack of bins made out of cloth, each stamped with…

… The now-familiar icon of three spokes arrayed radially.

I blubber to nobody in particular. “Are you serious? ”

Pain so easily gives way to bitter anger. I kick the bins and send their carcasses flying. I kick ‘till they’re all sullied in the dust. I kick and kick some more for good measure. Whimpering now, I stomp on the nearest one and buck the skid with my combat boots. Tears flowing freely, I crouch in place and scream into my hands.

“Is this what you wanted? You wanted me trapped in here, you dumb fucks? You got your fucking wish! ”

My voice echoes far and wide.

Weakness settles in my knees, and I crumple.

Nothing else in the world moves.

Friday, 26 April

Morning

Downtown Selkirk

Manitoba, Canada

ZZ and I meet at Timmies in Selkirk before parting ways.

“Sooo, how’s this going to work out?” I ask him. We slouch around a table by the back wall, skirting our own little corner. The place is dead, even by the standards of the mid-morning dawdle.

“I was gonna hand something in today, but I decided against it. Emailed my prof instead, just ‘cause I wanted to spend the morning with you.

“Awww.”

“Yeah, yeah, I hear you. Anyway, I’ve gotta swing by my Matante’s later and grab my things.”

“You’re really hitching it all the way back to Toronto?”

“Dumbass.” He grins stupidly. “We’re getting a ride. Taxi to Winnipeg, YWG.”

I burst into nervous laughter. “That’s the… airport, I’m guessing? Dunno why you insisted on a code-name.”

“Hey, if I get an excuse not to say ‘aeroplane’, I’m taking every opportunity coming my way.” He slurps his coffee a little too boldly, scolds his lips, and jolts back, dribbling some onto the table.

“Yet he says it anyway!” I slide over a stack of serviettes.

“Got any business left at uni?”

I shake my head. “I actually cleared my locker last Friday.”

“And what’s up with that?”

“It’s nothing.”

“Guys at school giving you grief, eh?”

“No, Z, just some stupid shit.” Leaning on my left palm, I idly tap the table, conjuring up percussive nothings from anxious jitters. “I’m a casual agoraphobe, anyhow. I wouldn’t dare fraternize with any of those stuck-up city kids.”

“You’re way too predictable.”

I stare out the window past ZZ, past the salt-encrusted dull grey parking lot, even past the snow mound posing in stalwart defiance of our unseasonably mild April. Far in the distance, I catch an eyesore to beat out all the rest: Selkirk’s new superstore. “Hey, uh, d’you see that thing?”

He turns around fully, blurting out, “Where’m I looking?” He weaves alternately as he does, perplexing a couple as they walk inside. “What am I looking for?”

“You could really use some classes in discreetness.” While his back is turned, I reach over the table and, vulture-like, pick off his unsuspecting potato wedges. “All the way down ‘cross the parking lot. You see it?”

“Oh, that thing? Yeah. Feels like an alien invasion.” He faces me in full ignorance of the deed I did.

“Worse than Target?”

Target is an American big-box retail chain that expanded into Canada starting in 2013. But Target Canada never lasted long. It saw entire shelving units persistently bare of merchandise, staffing perpetually short, and small towns country-wide propitiously colonized — Selkirk included. Hence, the writing was on the wall. Not two years later, all one hundred and thirty-three stores coast-to-coast blinked out of existence like shitty incandescents.

Thank goodness.

ZZ removes his glasses and polishes them with his shirt. “Yeah, no, that was a disaster. But this? Feels like it sprung up overnight. Almost like they’ve been renovating right under our noses for years and we collectively forgot. Can you imagine?”

I exploit his limited eyesight and snag a couple more wedges. “Just like those new churches that’ve been popping up. They look a lot more stunning than this, though.”

“What are they calling it, again? SunCo?”

Now, SunCo Prime, a Québécois chain venturing into the English-speaking provinces, wears the husk of the old Target northwest of town. It has a tripartite logo emblazoned with blue, red, and green. Medium-saturation decals fill practically every square centimeter of the outside. I almost get a headache gawking at the full palette.

“Something like that. You know — like Costco?”

“You mistake me for someone who willingly shops at Costco,” he says. “Boy am I glad I’m ducking out of here before this goes down. Why do we need one, anyhow?”

I shrug. “My dad told me they’ll get, like, three hundred employees, or something. He’s even asked me to put in my résumé.”

“You gonna?”

“Hell no! I would most certainly never dream of contributing to the encroaching retail apocalypse as it sucks in small businesses and burps up abandoned Targets.”

“That’s late-stage capitalism for you.”

“And that’s your trademark optimism.”

We kill time for a little longer, sipping our coffees, nodding along to the Top 40 playlist faintly blaring over the PA, smelling the blackened molts of scorched sandwiches as they burn atop the panini press. But mostly, I struggle to bite back an increasing apprehension. It’s more than clear that ZZ is avoiding a particular Damoclean question as it swings haphazardly over our heads.

“Uh, Z? Hey, listen…”

He looks up from his phone, then wipes away the line of coffee residue tinging his upper lip. “What’s up?”

“When you told me you were leaving, the only way I knew how to take it was… the wrong way.” I shake my head, wincing. “It was selfish, and there’s no excuse.”

“You really don’t want to be here — do you?”

“It’s not about me, Z.” The words I know how to use won’t come out, which doesn’t leave an awful lot of space for the words I don’t know how to use but that I really should. “Forget about me for a second, would you? What matters is your grandpa. It isn’t fair. And now I’m just repeating myself.”

“I don’t know how to break the news in a way that won’t bomb the vibe, so I’ll just drop it.” He tops off the rest of his coffee and sets down the empty cup with a resounding crack to fill the silent air. “His cancer, well, it’s not just any old cancer.”

“Oh?”

“It’s brain cancer. Stage 3, but.” ZZ folds his hands. “He is pretty old.”

“Oh.”

“Yup. So, that’s that.”

“Now I really feel like a royal bitch,” I say. “But I’ve made my decision.”

“What’s that?”

“If you’re leaving, so am I.” I burst from my seat out the door, tears catching in my eyes, squeezing them shut in rapid succession, vision bleary.

“C’mon, L, don’t do this!” He blurts out a nickname, significant because it shares the first letter of my deadname parsed phonetically. “Your stuff! Wait up!” But the exit door muffles all sound.

I don’t check if he’s followed. I can’t look him in the face. I make my way around the corner, ‘round a second, and thump against the brick, eyes misty and stinging.

He doesn’t find me for another few minutes.

When he finally does, he lowers my bag to my feet and steps back, crossing his arms. Short, yellowed grass ripples in a soft draft behind him. “That’s it, then? You’ll go off on your lonesome? You know, you’re the only one here who doesn’t” — he searches for a good metaphor — “who doesn’t wear their gotchies on their damn head.”

Despite his imagination, I’m a heapload more stubborn. “Well, maybe all the other ‘good ones’ left, too. That’d explain a shit-tonne about Selkirk. Maybe they all got lonely and — and hell, maybe they joined the friggin’ Mounties. What then?”

“Maybe, maybe.”

“Maybe I’ve got a good enough reason. And anyhow, you’ve always stayed in Toronto over summer break. Meanwhile, I’m trapped here, at the farmer’s market, where everyone is dry as hell, and I hate it. So, what’s the use?”

He looks down. “I’ll tell you what. Let’s just veg for a little while longer. And when the bus comes, I can give you a nice goodbye, and we’ll put this whole thing behind us.”

“I’ll miss you, Z, I’ll really miss you.” I give him a hug.

“You too, L. You too.”

Future Date Unknown

The Hydra's Spine

My eyes scour lazily across the ceiling.

The creepy-crawly with the arched back lines up with the spine in the sky.

It’s funny.

Funny place to die, too.

I would literally never be found.

I should calm down eventually.

Maybe I’ll lie here a bit longer, though.

I’d like to eat, but I’d also like to sleep.

The eternal predicament.

I’m an idiot, aren’t I?

I need to find something to eat.

Fine.

I’ll drop the charade, conscience.

I’d regret napping for a meal, anyhow. Especially next to the cryptkeeper over there.

There are some open supply drops in the general area, but it seems like yet more sleeping bags. I guess it saves me from going back inside that sorry excuse for a tent. There is even a motorized pallet jack sitting here. It’d be a wild steed to ride through this shithole, that’s for sure.

I stand up to roll my shoulders and twist my back, leaving my own cargo on the empty pallet. Then, I retrace my steps to the great green structure.

Awe strikes me the moment I step inside, and it never really goes away. The recessed path cuts a narrow swath from the outside in, feeding into a long hall with high walls. The hallway itself stretches bidirectionally until each end recedes into the distance, much like my view of the creature outside. Every centimetre in here consists of one smooth, contiguous form.

The next room is laid out in a warehouse-sized semicircular plan. The floor inclines steeply towards the back, corkscrews out the sides, and levels off onto a mezzanine behind me. I nearly strain my neck working out the sightlines. Circular platforms fill the floor, beset by raised interlopers in many different configurations, like scattered buoys in a raging ocean. Each platform varies from its neighbour in width and height and sports a pulsating, multicoloured light show with its own kaleidoscopic pattern. I quickly learn I don’t need my flashlight.

My imagination runs amok, picturing strange aliens of every shape and size encircling the platforms. It’s sort of like, instead of a single house of worship with a single, centrally planned altar, there was a place for faiths of every description to congregate, all under one roof.

Climbing to the next level proves trivial. It’s as though the floor’s surface were calibrated to my exact step with perfect grippiness.

Up here, the translucent wall becomes fully transparent. Through a glass-like aperture, I see the invertebrate skeleton poking through light fog.

But that’s not all.

Something unmistakable scurries behind the tent.

I make chase.

There is a whistle that I’ve picked up which always seems to attract cats. C7 to A7, a swift little flourish.

From behind a leg, a bright-blue cat sticks out his see-through head and goes mrrp.

“Are you… real?” Or are you the delirium of some dehydrated cavedweller? I outstretch my hand, palm up. He sizes me up and strolls my way.

“Heard me freaking out back there, didn’tcha?” I rub my knuckles against his ears. I invite the heat of faint embers, the quaint fluorescence, the ethereal-sounding purr. “I know, Buckwheat. I’m sorry. Well, I’m here now.”

I can attest, thankfully, that the sleeping bag is about the softest thing I’ve felt since I got here. As exhaustion sets in, my newfound companion and I curl up together. We can sleep easy now, knowing the armour of a god protects us.

To Be Concluded.

Buckwheat will return.

Pt. I

Pursuing Ghosts

Pt. III