Chapter One of SHADE FRIGHT

 

My boyfriend drives a dump truck.

     I know — it’s not the most glamorous job in the world, but one does crave some measure of predictability when life spins wildly out of control — like a when a car hits a patch of black ice or worse, when everything you’ve ever known or loved simply vanishes.

     I mean, how do you cope with that?

     You wake up one morning, you kiss the man you intended to marry and discuss what to make supper, only to find the apartment picked clean when you arrive home from work. A snapshot of him standing next to his precious BMW and a pile of ripped up wedding invitations that were supposed to go out in the mail are scattered across the living room floor. There are three stalks of celery in the fridge and a can of tomato soup in the cupboard. The only reminder of what you thought was a functional relationship is the stack of unpaid bills in both your names that he neatly piled on the toilet seat so you wouldn’t miss them.

     My therapist has strongly suggested that I learn how to “be alone”, lest I condemn myself to continued failed relationships and a referral to a psychiatrist, because nobody, absolutely nobody, experiences breakups on the scale that I do.

     Dave Webber drives a dump truck, and he’s seemingly found the elusive balance we strive for in life. You know the one — it has something to do with total job satisfaction and the sense that you’ve carried out something meaningful when you punch the clock at the end of the day. When Dave isn’t working, he’s an avid reader, a home improvement enthusiast, and he’s recently taken up photography, because he believes that Chapters needs a good coffee table book with glossy photographs showing the history of dump trucks over the past sixty years. Who knew?

     All my girlfriends believe I’m crazy to have fallen for a dump truck driver, but after half a dozen failed relationships with well-paid professionals such as lawyers or oil industry analysts, I’ve learned avoid men in expensive business suits. They can’t be trusted.

     Before Dave, I had always looked down on blue-collar types. I assumed that tradesmen were beer chugging sexists who aspired to scratching their testicles while watching Monday Night Football with their cronies. We met after he had delivered a load of gravel for the new driveway that Dad was laying for the fifth-wheel he’d just brought home from Gerry’s RV World. Mom and I were sitting on the terrace, watching what Mom refers to as “man’s work” — she’s a traditionalist that way. The last thing I expected was to see a truck driver with a gunslinger mustache and a white t-shirt with the words, “Get in touch with your inner Mozart” emblazoned across the front in gold letters. My ears pricked up when I heard Die Entführung aus dem Serail pouring from the cab of his truck, and he sang along as he measured the area of Dad’s driveway with some kind of roller doo-dad.

     That I love the opera is no secret, and it’s the main reason I decided to strike up a conversation with this strange man as he began poking at the pile of gravel with a steel-toed boot.

     “Okay, I’ll bite,” I shouted, as I sauntered over. “I can name three people in the entire city of Calgary who know the words to even one Mozart composition.”

     “Mozart is life-affirming,” he shouted back, as he reached for the shovel conveniently stowed on the side of his dump truck. “Kind of surprising when you consider that he lived hard and died young.”

     “What do you mean?”

     “The guy was a party machine,” he said, as he wiped the sweat from his brow with a gloved hand. “He was the late-1700’s equivalent of a rock star — you know, extreme living, debauchery, and women aplenty. He managed to pump out over six hundred compositions and still found time to get married and father six children.”

     My jaw dropped — perhaps the gods were playing a cruel joke on me.

      Every man I’d ever been involved with had to be dragged kicking and screaming to a performance of the Calgary Opera, and the last one liked to make farting sounds to amuse himself twenty minutes into La clemenza di Tito. Naturally, I just had to ask the strange man now standing shirtless on a pile of topsoil for a date.

     “There’s a performance at the Jack Singer next week; would you like to go?” I blurted out in a voice that sounded embarrassingly close to a squeak. Dave stuck his shovel into the pile of dirt and wiped his brow with a dirty forearm.

     “Hmmmm, not sure on that — you mean, like a date?” he asked.

     “Yeah — sure, a date,” I bleated.

     “I dunno — I mean, I think that going out with a client’s daughter might be bad for business.”

     “I’ll buy you dinner!” I gushed, astonished that I was asking someone out for a date, because role-reversal had never been my strong suit. Dave leaned on his shovel while I handed him my business card. He held it up to shade his eyes from the midmorning sun and examined it for a second.

     “Valerie Stevens, huh?” he said, cocking his right eyebrow. I watched the corners of his mustache curl up into an amused smile, and it was at this point that I began wondering just how desperate I looked.

      “That’s me,” I said, trying hard not to sound like a complete imbecile.

 “What’s with the pentagram next to the Government of Canada logo? Don’t tell me — the civil service has taken up devil worship!” he chuckled.

     “Nope,” I said, my normal voice returning. “It’s a long story, and that’s what first dates are for, right?”

     He shrugged his shoulders and stuffed my business card into his back pocket, then wiped his brow again.

     “Since I’ve never been asked out by a woman before, I suppose I should say yes — even if you do work for the Prince of Darkness,” he said with a smile. “No need for you to buy me dinner, either — there’s a good pizza place about a block from the Jack Singer, and they make home brew.”

     “Beer and pizza?”

     “Beer, pizza AND opera.”

     “Done,” I announced, turning on my heels and heading back to the terrace. “Call me, and we can make plans.”

     “Yep,” he grunted, as he resumed shoveling the gravel.

     Now, try to understand that my asking him out was the first time in my life I’d ever done something that impulsive in the romance department. If I had a sordid past, which I don’t, I’d say that I’ve always been attracted to guys who seemed intent on generating income and acquiring the best in leather furnishings, home electronics and Lexus products. Dave, on the other hand, drives a Chevrolet Nova that he’s lovingly restored, and his TV still has knobs, believe it or not. His motto is “keep it simple, stupid”, and with my troublesome history of relationship angst, I’m inclined to agree with him.

     The old me, the one who couldn’t make love work to save her life, is a stark contrast to the new me. I’ve found love. Blessed, lasting love. Passionate, hopeful and spirit-enriching love. Sure, we have our occasional tiffs, but Dave is the first man I’ve met who is happy to sit on a park bench and watch the leaves turn in the autumn. We make grilled cheese sandwiches together, and we’re content to watch British drama on PBS each night. I bake and he cooks. I complain and he listens. In fact, we both excel at finding that happy medium which guarantees domestic peace.

     As an added bonus, he doesn’t fear me — a refreshing change. More on that later.

     Neither of us stakes his or her ground, like it’s disputed territory where game-playing is the currency. Jeez, even my Dad likes Dave and isn’t bothered by the fact that my suitor aspires to nothing more than a quiet life and continued employment with the Demarco Construction Company.

     Of course, our careers were not the immediate topic of discussion when we started dating. In truth, Dave Webber learned about my day job quite by accident, after waking up to the whip-snapping sound of a series of bullets slamming into the wall above the headboard, narrowly missing us both. That he soiled the bed sheets was a forgivable sin, since we’d nearly become members of the dearly departed, so I was happily prepared to cut him some slack. I calmly rolled up the dirty linens and stuffed them in the washing machine, then hummed a pleasant melody while I made the bed. Dave gulped down a tumbler of scotch to calm his nerves and then asked me why my condominium was a target of a drive by shooting.

     I told Dave that I collect things.

     I also told him that what I collect can only be described as unconventional, and that it’s a bloody miracle my employer remains discreetly hidden from taxpayers, because I’m worth every penny of the forty percent commission I receive at the time of delivery. Don’t get me wrong — I pay Revenue Canada when I owe them money, and my job is legitimate — I’m a civil servant, for crying out loud! You won’t find my name on the government ledger, but I will disclose that my employer is a division of Government Services and Infrastructure Canada.

     It might be troubling to learn that your tax dollars pay for items that cause drive-by shootings in the middle of the night. Then again, the nature of what I collect justifies the creative accounting by the bigwigs that work for the Finance Minister, and the market for the items I’ve recovered produces roughly three percent of the revenue the government needs to balance the federal budget. When you think about it, I’m actually contributing to lower taxes, in the grand scheme of things.

     Of course, these commodities exist beyond that which most people would consider reasonable. Indeed, my collection straddles the line between reality and the supernatural. When I say supernatural, I’m talking about something more substantive than strange sightings, UFO’s and bleeding staircases — that’s what they want you to believe in.

     Dave takes it all in stride. God, the man is a rock. He didn’t even blink when I dispatched the demon who tried to slit his throat after Dave fell asleep in the bathtub. I captured its essence in a Tupperware container and FedEx’d it to one of the two hundred or so storage facilities that most people believe are grain elevators straddling the U.S. border. Tupperware is absolutely vital in my line of work, by the way.

     Did I mention that Dave has met the Prime Minister, and both are huge fans of the Toronto Maple Leafs?

      The saps.

      I used to think the hotline to my condo was for emergency calls from the Prime Minister’s Office. Imagine my surprise to learn that Canada’s national leader uses it to talk with Dave about the Leaf’s playoff prospects or the score of a hockey game that went to overtime. There’s an amusing photo of both of them in my living room during last year’s play-offs, and from the mischievous grins on their faces, you can tell they’d just consumed a case of beer and two De Niro’s pizza’s between them.

     I don’t have the heart to tell either of them I like the Chicago Blackhawks.

     Some people consider me to be a mystic, but that’s far from the truth. I’ve been accused of witchcraft by a certain fundamentalist neighbor of mine, and while sorcery is listed on my resume, I’m not in the habit of luring young children to my condo in order to bake them in an enchanted oven. I fell into this job quite by accident when I discovered that I possessed the ability to see the preternatural world. There are a handful of people with similar abilities, and part of my job is to locate them, since Government Services and Infrastructure Canada likes to keep track of these things. Don’t ask me why.

     What is the preternatural world?

     It’s part myth and part reality, where magic and turmoil fly in the face of the laws of physics and pure science that we apply to the near world, which is where we live. The preternatural world made up in large part of beings possessing qualities that would take scholars a lifetime to wrap their collective heads around, assuming they’re open to what can only be described as, well, unnatural. It exists within our world, but it’s a place that is rarely seen by near world residents, because we’re too busy sitting in the drive thru at Tim Horton’s or grinding through gridlock on the Deerfoot Trail to notice.

     Here’s an example.

     Have you ever read a newspaper article about a mysterious event? Something that’s inexplicable? Perhaps the headline reads, “Scientists Baffled by Mass Death of Songbirds in the Cariboo”. Conventional resources will try to find a scientific explanation why thousands of songbirds suddenly die for no clear reason. They’ll do air quality tests in the bird’s habitat to look for toxins. Hundreds of bird carcasses will be dissected to find out if they were somehow poisoned. They’ll even research any unexplainable meteorological phenomenon that might have occurred at the same time the birds died. Once conventional science comes up empty-handed, that’s when my phone rings. Within hours, I’m on a plane so I can discover a cause.

      In the case of the dead songbirds, I wasn’t in the back forty for longer than thirty minutes before I spotted what had killed them: A forest imp.

      He wasn’t your average, run-of-the-mill forest imp either. This particular imp was three sheets to the wind as he crouched over a bubbling stew in a cast iron pot, chanting wildly as a murky vapor collected above his head. His incantation supercharged the vapor with gray malice, a little-known dark spell designed to wipe out the source of the sorcerer’s frustration. In this case, it was the songbirds.

     You see, forest imps dislike songbirds for two very critical reasons: songbirds are competition for the various insects that are the primary source of the forest imp diet, and because most imps demand silence in the woodlands. If you’re ever walking through a forest in a provincial park or a national forest, and you happen on a place that is eerily quiet, where you feel like you’re the only person in the known universe, you’re probably in the heart of a forest imp domain. Don’t worry — they’re not known for attacking humans, so long as they respect the silence of the woods.

     Of course, the damage was done, and part of my job description is to act as a broker with the goal of negotiating the way in which this creature of the preternatural world remained unseen. Sometimes I barter information about a predator that might be a direct threat to a specific race of unnatural beings. Other times, I’m forced to resort to my own abilities, which, when applied correctly, can be convincing to a recalcitrant waif or even a river troll, for that matter.

     Yes, trolls exist.

In fact, they are quite common. They don’t normally hang out underneath bridges, as popular Norwegian mythology would suggest, either. Instead, they prefer to live in the many small suburban green spaces within walking distance of middle class neighborhoods, because our disposable society is addicted to fast-food and microwavable meals, and trolls are addicted to our refuse. It’s their crack.

     Ever wake up one morning and find your garbage cans overturned and trash strewn about your neatly manicured lawn? That’s the work of a common troll and not a raccoon.

     I know, these revelations are difficult to imagine — I get that. Still, someone has to do this kind of work, and before I came along, the job of policing the preternatural world and preventing large-scale calamity was left to exorcists and folk sorcerers, who often wound up on the wrong end of a poorly delivered spell. Naturally, they would only succeed in complicating the mess they’d intended to clean up, so really, it’s a wonder humanity survived this long.

      I’m serious.

      In the past one hundred years, we’ve experienced five major “incidents” that had the potential to destroy life as we know it. The reason we can laugh about it nowadays is because most people won’t accept that, for example, the Cuban Missile Crisis happened primarily because Nikita Khrushchev was possessed at the time, and none of Kennedy’s people spoke demon.

     Each morning I wake up and read the personal ads in the Calgary Meteor. I know — I agree it’s a rag, but darn it, they have the best advertisements for inexplicable phenomenon, and Dave (who doesn’t live with me — god, while I adore the guy, I’m just not ready to go shopping for drapes — not yet, anyway) circled a big, bold-lettered advertisement in the Lost and Found section before he went to work:

     LOST - Grain Bin in Hidden Valley. It was here two nights ago. Owner baffled. Anyone with information, please contact me ASAP. E-mail responses only: wheresmystuff@accumail.net.

     “You have my undivided attention, Farmer Bob,” I said, as I sipped my coffee and tore out the ad. I shuffled to my office and logged into Outlook Express, then began typing:

     From: Valerie@mail.org

     To: wheresmystuff@accumail.net

     Subject: Where’s your bin?

     To Whom It May Concern:

     I read your advertisement in the Meteor. Are there any trees surrounding the missing item, and if so, are they devoid of foliage? Feel free to contact me at: 1-888-64-VALERIE. I might be able to help.

     I clicked “send”, and within thirty minutes, my cell phone was ringing.

 

COPYRIGHT ©2009 by Sean Cummings