TEAM ANGST: Day 9, "At the Time of Writing"
Title: At the Time of Writing
Author: loneraven
Team: Angst
Prompt: "Like toothpaste and orange juice - two great tastes that don’t go together at all.”
Pairing(s): F/K
Length: 3200 words
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: None
Summary: Twenty-five pieces of documentary evidence, and something else that happened.
Once you've read the story, please take a moment to vote in the poll below. Ratings go from 1 (low) to 9 (high), so all you need to do is enter a single number in that range into each text entry box. You'll be able to see the Prompt and Team (Genre) information in the header above.
More details about the voting procedure can be found here.
**
(Extract from the journal of Constable Benton Fraser, dated January 7th 1998.)
I dreamed last night of silence. City streets with streetlamps blinking on, off, on and people calling soundlessly to their↑ friends and their lovers, but no replies. And as if to make up for the loss, the lights were brighter, and the people were followed by their shadows, dark, sharp-edged in the intensity of the glare. Ray was with me.
There was no immediate danger, no threat. But in the dream, I thought only of Eliot’s words in the dreamless kingdom: this is the way the world ends, not with a bang but with a whimper.
It was a strange dream - not frightening, but unsettling. I would consult my father, but he has never had any patience with portents and visions despite having spent his life, as I have spent mine, among the Inuit. In any case, I began this day with an unaccustomed headache, and I feel it would not be alleviated by a conversation with my father.
I must truncate this entry prematurely. Constable Turnbull wishes to know if I have any amendments to make to the Consulate’s shopping list.
*
(Message left on answering-machine at the Canadian Consulate, timed at 11am, January 8th 1998.)
[sound of machine bleeping]
“Fraser, sorry for the disrespect to the mother nation and all of that, but where the hell are you? It’s assault and battery up the wazoo and you could fry an egg on Welsh’s forehead. Fraser! Answer the phone!”
“Ray, I’m right behind…”
“Fraser - oh, fuck it, that was my lunch!”
[dog barks]
[receiver replaced violently]
*
(Extract from Constable Renfield Turnbull’s shopping list for the second week of January, 1998.)
whole milk skimmed milk, for Inspector Thatcher
bread
Stilton Edam Wensleydale CHEESE.
sugar
dishwasher soap
ink - black this time, please, Constable. The Inspector dislikes lavender.
lightbulbs
acetaminophen Tylenol
*
(Taken from the database of Rodney’s Books, a small independent bookstore in downtown Chicago, dating from January 12th, 1998. It is unknown if the book was ever collected.)
Page 1 of 1 [http://www.rodney.tbpcontrol.com]
order ref: wholesaler stocked (10.49)
last supplier: [Gardners]
ISBN: 9781595479365
quantity received: 2.
payment on collection
Title: The Interpretation of Dreams
$13.99
Line ref: Mr. B. Fraser
555-2368 [called, got canadian embassy something - misprint?]
Customer Visible Notes: paid. 1 for stk, cust. only wants 1.
Internal Notes: isnt Mr, is constable, comp on fritz cudnt edit. v.v.v. nice.
*
(Sequence of notes stuck to Ray Kowalski’s refrigerator over the second week of January, 1998.)
(January 13th)
To do
-buy new sheets
-buy tea
-buy dog wolf food
-buy vegetables Fraser food
-GET NEW KEY CUT.
(January 14th)
Ray -
milk ran out, got more, is in door
x x x
(January 14th, later)
x x x?
kisses? what are you, 12?
(January 15th)
I can refrain, if you would prefer.
(January 15th, later)
Don’t.
x x x x x x
*
(Letter, dated 16th January. Arrived in Inuvik, NWT, approximately four weeks later.)
Dear Maggie,
It has been a long time since I last wrote. My only excuse that crime, as always, is rife in Chicago. I occasionally yearn for my days chasing loiterers, litterers and old Smoky Joe, whom I used to arrest regularly as clockwork every weekday evening at six. That way he had a night in a nice warm cell, and wasn’t left to the mercy of the elements. Of course at some point I would have found myself running out of crimes to arrest him on suspicion of - at one point I was reduced to holding him as a suspect for poisonings said to have occurred in 1883 - but there had been, as yet, no limit to my powers of invention.
I feel I may be drifting off the subject. How are things for you? I love the sight of your letters - they remind me that the RCMP is, in places other than this, is an effective organisation and as such, a worthy vocation. And, of course, they remind me of home, and you. Many things remind me of home at present: the particular way a bird curves in flight, the taste of snow in the air. And I dream, too. You know the signs that indicate a season is changing? I dream of the cracks in the ice. I find it hard to explain, especially in writing, but I think you will understand. Something is changing, breaking. Diefenbaker senses it as well.
Ah, I must cut this short. Ray has decided that my existence up to this point has been lacking in some deep and fundamental way due to my never having eaten a pizza with fruit on it. Clearly, he wishes to make my life complete, and who am I to stop him?
Please do forgive me for being such a bad correspondent, and write again soon.
With love,
Ben
*
(Handwritten note, originally left stuck to Constable Fraser’s forehead. Undated, but known to have been written on January 16th, 1998.)
you fell asleep in your pizza, you big freak. see you in the morning.
R
ps - you owe me $6.
*
(Poster, found on lampposts, walls and store windows throughout Chicago during the third week of January, 1998.)
MISSING
[blurred picture of woman in mid-twenties, wearing glasses and smiling]
HAVE YOU SEEN THIS WOMAN? MEREDITH JAMES, MISSING SINCE JANUARY 12TH. CALL 555-0199 WITH ANY INFORMATION.
*
(Internal memo, 27th precinct of the Chicago Police Department. January 20th, 1998.)
TO: Detective R. Vecchio
FROM: :Lieutenant H. Welsh
SUBJECT: The Dominion of Canada
Ray, it’s none of my damn business what you and that goddamn Mountie do so long as you do it where I can’t see it, but when he stops doing perfectly normal things like licking the sidewalk and starts talking to invisible people in my office, it becomes my damn business. You understand me?
*
(Extract from the journal of Constable Benton Fraser, January 21st, 1998.)
Everything is so loud, all of a sudden; sirens blare and the phones are so shrill when they ring and even the sound of Ray breathing, inches from my ear, gets under my skin and makes me long for snow, for silence. The girl is dead. The girl is always dead when we find her. I wish to God I were somewhere else.
I read somewhere that violence, death against the law of nature, it pulls the universe in around it, it makes wrinkles and gaps in how things should be. I worry that things can get in through those gaps. I worry about what I see in the corner of my eye.
I worry that tomorrow someone else will be dead.
*
(Letter from Ray Kowalski to his mother, dated January 21st, 1998.)
Dear Mom,
Sorry I haven’t written in a while, I’ve been tied up with a case. I know, when am I not, but this one’s pretty big. Girls getting grabbed in back alleys, turning up the next morning with their - well, you don’t need to know, actually. Someone goes missing every couple of days, so we’re at it morning and night on this one, every minute’s precious. Fraser hasn’t stopped since the first one went down. I mean, I’m up all the hours he is, but I’ve never seen him so crazy.
I don’t know, I guess it’s hitting him hard, like it is everyone else. He sits there with a look on his face, like he’s listening for something, and then he comes back to himself with a thump, and he looks pale. I’ve been trying to make him get some sleep, just a little, but nothing doing.
Anyway. Sorry I haven’t written, and sorry this is so short, but I figured you’d want to know why I’ve gone so quiet. Longer letter when we’ve nailed the guy.
Love,
Stanley
*
(Internal memo, Canadian Consulate of Chicago. January 23rd, 1998.)
TO: Constable Benton Fraser
FROM: Inspector Meg Thatcher
SUBJECT: On getting your man, and getting some rest
Constable, from all accounts you have done sterling work these last two weeks. My congratulations on a successful arrest. May I suggest that you stand down from duty for a short time? You are fully entitled and, indeed, deserving of a few days’ rest.
May I also bring your attention to the point that this is not, in fact, a suggestion? I shall see you next week.
*
(A slip of paper found inside Constable Fraser’s journal, undated but laid on an entry marked January 21st, 1998.)
Ray, I want to
I need
The man in the cell
I can see every girl he killed.
It’s time to go.
*
(Weather forecast, taken from the Chicago Tribune, January 22nd 1998.)
Tonight... Mostly cloudy with light snow possible through early evening, then clearing overnight. Colder with lows from the higher 20s outlying areas to the lower 30s downtown. West winds 10 mph. Chance of precipitation minimal.
Friday... Mostly bright and breezy. Not as warm. Highs in the lower 30s. West winds 15 to 25 mph.
Saturday… Overcast. Heavy snow. Cold with lows from the 20s outlying areas to the upper 20s downtown. Northwest winds 15 to 25 mph with gusts to around 30 mph.
*
(Taken from the records of the Cook County Hospital Department of Emergency Medicine, January 24th, 1998. List of items found in possession of unidentified white male, brought in hypothermic at approximately 11.45pm.)
-two keys on solid metal ring;
-three nickels;
-folded piece of paper, words made illegible by water;
-hat.
*
(Message left on answering-machine of Detective Ray Kowalski, January 25th, 1998, at 2.03 am.)
“Ray! Ray, it’s Dewey, wake up! Ray! Ray - oh, fuck, Kowalski, get down here now…”
(N.B. This is the only occasion upon which the name “Kowalski”, in reference to the detective, is committed to tape.)
*
(Recording made on January 26th, 1998, used in service of emergency court order on that same date, subsequently authorised by Assistant State’s Attorney Kowalski. Translation provided later by Constable Maggie Mackenzie, RCMP.)
(N.B. The following, which otherwise purports to be an accurate rendering, is not a direct transcript of Constable Fraser’s speech. Whilst fluent and unbroken in flow, the original fluctuated between English, Acadian French and two Inuit languages, Tsimshian and Inuvialuktun.)
“Water.”
[long pause]
“Water is… I read once that all the water on earth is as old as the universe, that it was a by-product of the formation of stars. I always thought it extraordinary, miraculous. The human body is ninety percent water. All life began in solution.
“I’ve told you this before. I won’t tell you again. No, Dad, stop talking like that. I’m - God, no, that is not what’s happening! What is it? Would all of you be so kind as to tell me who you are and what you’re doing in here?”
[answering voices, none clearly audible]
“Winds can be wet here. They bring water with them. Like a gift. Have you ever tasted ice? It’s cold, but more than that, it’s heartless; you cannot reason with ice. You will never hold back a glacier, you will never live through a storm. You can’t fight it. Water moulds to a human body. Water gives life, and it takes it away, takes you back.
“I didn’t. No, I didn’t, no. I couldn’t have - where’s Ray? What have you - Ray? Diefenbaker? Ray?”
[sound of glass breaking]
“I just wanted to go home, Ray, that’s all! I wasn’t… leaving…”
[wolf howls]
“Ray!”
[loud thud]
[silence]
*
(Prescription issued January 25th, 1998, edited later. Smudged as though by water.)
Name: Benton Fraser
Address: Canadian Consulate c/o R. Vecchio, 27th Precinct CPD
Rx 5mg haloperidol, si. op. sit.
[signature illegible]
*
(Statement taken from Detective Ray Kowalski, January 26th 1998. Extract from transcript.)
“What do you think happened? I left him… no, I didn’t leave him! Jesus fuck, what is it with you people and your fucking italics! I left him, like you do when you tell someone you’ll see them later? I was done with my reports, he wasn’t, I was dead tired, he wasn’t. I left him. I said goodbye, I said I’d see him back at home, don’t stay too late.
“And then I went, and I went to sleep, and next thing I know I got a phone call, and cops don’t call you at three in the morning to give you good news.
“No, of course I didn’t see it coming. People who see this sort of thing coming, they don’t let them come, know what I’m saying? If I’d known - but I didn’t know. No one knew.
[pause; inaudible voice]
“Well, yeah.”
[longer pause; sound of chair scraping; click of lighter]
“There was that. Maggie said - well, I don’t know, maybe it’s a crazy Mountie thing or a crazy brother-and-sister thing or just, just a crazy thing. Maggie said on tape that she’d seen - yes, she was willing to do that for him. Course she was. When it comes down to it, she doesn’t give a Royal Canadian fuck about anything except keeping Fraser safe. Yeah, she and I do have a lot in common.
“Yeah, that’s not the way it is, between me and her. Like you don’t know, anyway. Me and her, we’re like toothpaste and orange juice - two great tastes that don’t go together at all.
“So she tells them that she saw, uh, things. Goddamn it, she saw ghosts. One ghost. She saw it too, and he’s not - well, he’s not whatever they’ve been saying he is. And I want to believe that, I really do.”
[pause; voice becomes nearly inaudible]
“But Diefenbaker - sorry, yeah, Dief’s a wolf. Half-wolf, sort of belongs to Fraser. Dief pulled him out a lake once before, too. Yeah, he saved his life. More’n once.
“If I’d been there….
“But I wasn’t.”
*
(Note sent, through various channels that cannot be revealed at this or any other juncture, to the man known as Armando Langoustini from the man known as Ray Vecchio. Undated, but most likely sent in first week of February, 1998.)
red squirrel lost his nuts
*
(Extract from the journal of Constable Maggie Mackenzie, dated February 10th, 1998.)
Ben is standing against an army of ghosts.
After the shock of his existence had abated somewhat, it became a source of grief that my own brother should be a stranger to me. We have met twice - once in Chicago, once for a short visit in Canada - but truthfully, Ben comes most alive in his letters. His handwriting is ornate and ornamented, as though he casts off the utilitarian cast of his life in his loving, lush use of words.
But it’s here, now, that it becomes clear to me that he and I stand and fall together, we have the same blood, the same landscape of ice and sky in our bones; we were both raised in the unforgiving places where our rituals, our blood ties, are all that make us human against the elements. A storm is never cruel, my mother used to say. The summer has no quality of mercy. The seasons exist without us, and only we exist to feel.
And I have seen ghosts walk, and storms break, but never like this.
*
(February 14th, 1998. In a quiet room, with low lights. Hasty, circumspect, soft, longing, grieving. Unrecorded.)
A kiss.
*
(Letter sent February 16th, 1998.)
Dear Maggie,
I’ve been trying to call. All I get is static, and angry Mounties shouting at me for wasting police time or whatever, so I figure you must be out on patrol or the phone is fritzed or something. Anyway, I got Fraser back. Thought you’d want to know. Took a bit of work, but I did it in the end. He’s not violent, he’s never committed a crime - sort of, anyway, they told me he ripped a page out of a library book and was pretty cut up about it - he’s not under suspicion of a crime, so, the way I see it, they wouldn’t get a warrant, so they don’t get to keep him.
Yeah, so he’s living with me now. It’s what we were planning before, you know? It’s not like that, I mean not like it was, but it’s still better than the other place. Fraser seems to like it, anyway. He’s still seeing the things, I think. Keeps looking around people and behind people instead of at them. Still doesn’t talk much, and he scared the hell out of a shrink the other day. Would have been funny - hell, no, it was funny, a little. In the morbid kind of way. He was doing that thing he does where it’s only a tiny smile but you hope he’s busting a gut inside. It was nice to see.
I think he misses the north, though. And you, too. I do my best, but I’m glad I’ve got Dief too, to keep an eye on him. He wants to go down by the lake sometime, but I’m not too keen. I don’t think he’d do it again - but I’m not keen.
Still, we’re okay, me and Fraser. He’s still him, still licking things and getting antsy about library books. You should come down to visit again. He misses you, and so do I, of course.
With love,
Ray
*
(J. Gaddis, E. Li, “Visions of Snow: An Unusual Case of Delusion”, in The American Journal of Psychiatry, 155:12, 1998. Excerpts.)
“Ghosts.” It was one of the few sentences he ever addressed directly at me. “Everyone has them.”
Patient X, a 36-year-old white male, began suffering delusions earlier in the year. He has never been satisfactorily diagnosed; the exact nature of his disorder is, at the time of writing, under dispute. In many encounters, he comes across as lucid and high-functioning, if taciturn…
…[H]is chosen method of communication with me is through writing… he speaks, but generally only to his partner, whom he has lived with since being released…
…such a claim is not uncommon in the literature. X’s hallucinations, such as they are, follow in the wake of people… behind me, he wrote: “There is a young girl, with a red bow in her hair…”
(N.B. In an additional paragraph, removed before publication, Gaddis writes about his daughter, who died, aged six, in a traffic accident in 1992.)
*
(Extract from the journal of Constable Benton Fraser, dated 1st April 1998.)
Maggie is followed by a man in work clothes and heavy boots, such as they wear in the north; her husband, I presume, as I never met the man. Lieutenant Welsh is followed by his father, an unruly, angry apparition. Francesca Vecchio sees herself in the mirror as an old woman, wrinkled and unloved.
Diefenbaker misses the north. Sometimes I see, out of the corner of my eye, the snow dripping from his fur, the lights of the aurora reflecting over and over in his eyes. He was never my wolf; I never laid claim to him. He has taken responsibility for me, now.
Ray has no need of a ghost. He has me.
*
(A scrap of paper torn from a book, held in clenched fist. Smudged and torn, almost illegible from constant handling. December 31st, 1999.)
This is
this is the way
is the way the world ends
with a whimper
**
THIS POLL IS NOW CLOSED. ANY FURTHER VOTES WILL NOT BE COUNTED.
Poll Vote for this story
Author: loneraven
Team: Angst
Prompt: "Like toothpaste and orange juice - two great tastes that don’t go together at all.”
Pairing(s): F/K
Length: 3200 words
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: None
Summary: Twenty-five pieces of documentary evidence, and something else that happened.
Once you've read the story, please take a moment to vote in the poll below. Ratings go from 1 (low) to 9 (high), so all you need to do is enter a single number in that range into each text entry box. You'll be able to see the Prompt and Team (Genre) information in the header above.
More details about the voting procedure can be found here.
**
(Extract from the journal of Constable Benton Fraser, dated January 7th 1998.)
I dreamed last night of silence. City streets with streetlamps blinking on, off, on and people calling soundlessly to their↑ friends and their lovers, but no replies. And as if to make up for the loss, the lights were brighter, and the people were followed by their shadows, dark, sharp-edged in the intensity of the glare. Ray was with me.
There was no immediate danger, no threat. But in the dream, I thought only of Eliot’s words in the dreamless kingdom: this is the way the world ends, not with a bang but with a whimper.
It was a strange dream - not frightening, but unsettling. I would consult my father, but he has never had any patience with portents and visions despite having spent his life, as I have spent mine, among the Inuit. In any case, I began this day with an unaccustomed headache, and I feel it would not be alleviated by a conversation with my father.
I must truncate this entry prematurely. Constable Turnbull wishes to know if I have any amendments to make to the Consulate’s shopping list.
*
(Message left on answering-machine at the Canadian Consulate, timed at 11am, January 8th 1998.)
[sound of machine bleeping]
“Fraser, sorry for the disrespect to the mother nation and all of that, but where the hell are you? It’s assault and battery up the wazoo and you could fry an egg on Welsh’s forehead. Fraser! Answer the phone!”
“Ray, I’m right behind…”
“Fraser - oh, fuck it, that was my lunch!”
[dog barks]
[receiver replaced violently]
*
(Extract from Constable Renfield Turnbull’s shopping list for the second week of January, 1998.)
whole milk skimmed milk, for Inspector Thatcher
bread
Stilton Edam Wensleydale CHEESE.
sugar
dishwasher soap
ink - black this time, please, Constable. The Inspector dislikes lavender.
lightbulbs
acetaminophen Tylenol
*
(Taken from the database of Rodney’s Books, a small independent bookstore in downtown Chicago, dating from January 12th, 1998. It is unknown if the book was ever collected.)
Page 1 of 1 [http://www.rodney.tbpcontrol.com]
order ref: wholesaler stocked (10.49)
last supplier: [Gardners]
ISBN: 9781595479365
quantity received: 2.
payment on collection
Title: The Interpretation of Dreams
$13.99
Line ref: Mr. B. Fraser
555-2368 [called, got canadian embassy something - misprint?]
Customer Visible Notes: paid. 1 for stk, cust. only wants 1.
Internal Notes: isnt Mr, is constable, comp on fritz cudnt edit. v.v.v. nice.
*
(Sequence of notes stuck to Ray Kowalski’s refrigerator over the second week of January, 1998.)
(January 13th)
To do
-buy new sheets
-buy tea
-buy dog wolf food
-buy vegetables Fraser food
-GET NEW KEY CUT.
(January 14th)
Ray -
milk ran out, got more, is in door
x x x
(January 14th, later)
x x x?
kisses? what are you, 12?
(January 15th)
I can refrain, if you would prefer.
(January 15th, later)
Don’t.
x x x x x x
*
(Letter, dated 16th January. Arrived in Inuvik, NWT, approximately four weeks later.)
Dear Maggie,
It has been a long time since I last wrote. My only excuse that crime, as always, is rife in Chicago. I occasionally yearn for my days chasing loiterers, litterers and old Smoky Joe, whom I used to arrest regularly as clockwork every weekday evening at six. That way he had a night in a nice warm cell, and wasn’t left to the mercy of the elements. Of course at some point I would have found myself running out of crimes to arrest him on suspicion of - at one point I was reduced to holding him as a suspect for poisonings said to have occurred in 1883 - but there had been, as yet, no limit to my powers of invention.
I feel I may be drifting off the subject. How are things for you? I love the sight of your letters - they remind me that the RCMP is, in places other than this, is an effective organisation and as such, a worthy vocation. And, of course, they remind me of home, and you. Many things remind me of home at present: the particular way a bird curves in flight, the taste of snow in the air. And I dream, too. You know the signs that indicate a season is changing? I dream of the cracks in the ice. I find it hard to explain, especially in writing, but I think you will understand. Something is changing, breaking. Diefenbaker senses it as well.
Ah, I must cut this short. Ray has decided that my existence up to this point has been lacking in some deep and fundamental way due to my never having eaten a pizza with fruit on it. Clearly, he wishes to make my life complete, and who am I to stop him?
Please do forgive me for being such a bad correspondent, and write again soon.
With love,
Ben
*
(Handwritten note, originally left stuck to Constable Fraser’s forehead. Undated, but known to have been written on January 16th, 1998.)
you fell asleep in your pizza, you big freak. see you in the morning.
R
ps - you owe me $6.
*
(Poster, found on lampposts, walls and store windows throughout Chicago during the third week of January, 1998.)
MISSING
[blurred picture of woman in mid-twenties, wearing glasses and smiling]
HAVE YOU SEEN THIS WOMAN? MEREDITH JAMES, MISSING SINCE JANUARY 12TH. CALL 555-0199 WITH ANY INFORMATION.
*
(Internal memo, 27th precinct of the Chicago Police Department. January 20th, 1998.)
TO: Detective R. Vecchio
FROM: :Lieutenant H. Welsh
SUBJECT: The Dominion of Canada
Ray, it’s none of my damn business what you and that goddamn Mountie do so long as you do it where I can’t see it, but when he stops doing perfectly normal things like licking the sidewalk and starts talking to invisible people in my office, it becomes my damn business. You understand me?
*
(Extract from the journal of Constable Benton Fraser, January 21st, 1998.)
Everything is so loud, all of a sudden; sirens blare and the phones are so shrill when they ring and even the sound of Ray breathing, inches from my ear, gets under my skin and makes me long for snow, for silence. The girl is dead. The girl is always dead when we find her. I wish to God I were somewhere else.
I read somewhere that violence, death against the law of nature, it pulls the universe in around it, it makes wrinkles and gaps in how things should be. I worry that things can get in through those gaps. I worry about what I see in the corner of my eye.
I worry that tomorrow someone else will be dead.
*
(Letter from Ray Kowalski to his mother, dated January 21st, 1998.)
Dear Mom,
Sorry I haven’t written in a while, I’ve been tied up with a case. I know, when am I not, but this one’s pretty big. Girls getting grabbed in back alleys, turning up the next morning with their - well, you don’t need to know, actually. Someone goes missing every couple of days, so we’re at it morning and night on this one, every minute’s precious. Fraser hasn’t stopped since the first one went down. I mean, I’m up all the hours he is, but I’ve never seen him so crazy.
I don’t know, I guess it’s hitting him hard, like it is everyone else. He sits there with a look on his face, like he’s listening for something, and then he comes back to himself with a thump, and he looks pale. I’ve been trying to make him get some sleep, just a little, but nothing doing.
Anyway. Sorry I haven’t written, and sorry this is so short, but I figured you’d want to know why I’ve gone so quiet. Longer letter when we’ve nailed the guy.
Love,
Stanley
*
(Internal memo, Canadian Consulate of Chicago. January 23rd, 1998.)
TO: Constable Benton Fraser
FROM: Inspector Meg Thatcher
SUBJECT: On getting your man, and getting some rest
Constable, from all accounts you have done sterling work these last two weeks. My congratulations on a successful arrest. May I suggest that you stand down from duty for a short time? You are fully entitled and, indeed, deserving of a few days’ rest.
May I also bring your attention to the point that this is not, in fact, a suggestion? I shall see you next week.
*
(A slip of paper found inside Constable Fraser’s journal, undated but laid on an entry marked January 21st, 1998.)
Ray, I want to
I need
The man in the cell
I can see every girl he killed.
It’s time to go.
*
(Weather forecast, taken from the Chicago Tribune, January 22nd 1998.)
Tonight... Mostly cloudy with light snow possible through early evening, then clearing overnight. Colder with lows from the higher 20s outlying areas to the lower 30s downtown. West winds 10 mph. Chance of precipitation minimal.
Friday... Mostly bright and breezy. Not as warm. Highs in the lower 30s. West winds 15 to 25 mph.
Saturday… Overcast. Heavy snow. Cold with lows from the 20s outlying areas to the upper 20s downtown. Northwest winds 15 to 25 mph with gusts to around 30 mph.
*
(Taken from the records of the Cook County Hospital Department of Emergency Medicine, January 24th, 1998. List of items found in possession of unidentified white male, brought in hypothermic at approximately 11.45pm.)
-two keys on solid metal ring;
-three nickels;
-folded piece of paper, words made illegible by water;
-hat.
*
(Message left on answering-machine of Detective Ray Kowalski, January 25th, 1998, at 2.03 am.)
“Ray! Ray, it’s Dewey, wake up! Ray! Ray - oh, fuck, Kowalski, get down here now…”
(N.B. This is the only occasion upon which the name “Kowalski”, in reference to the detective, is committed to tape.)
*
(Recording made on January 26th, 1998, used in service of emergency court order on that same date, subsequently authorised by Assistant State’s Attorney Kowalski. Translation provided later by Constable Maggie Mackenzie, RCMP.)
(N.B. The following, which otherwise purports to be an accurate rendering, is not a direct transcript of Constable Fraser’s speech. Whilst fluent and unbroken in flow, the original fluctuated between English, Acadian French and two Inuit languages, Tsimshian and Inuvialuktun.)
“Water.”
[long pause]
“Water is… I read once that all the water on earth is as old as the universe, that it was a by-product of the formation of stars. I always thought it extraordinary, miraculous. The human body is ninety percent water. All life began in solution.
“I’ve told you this before. I won’t tell you again. No, Dad, stop talking like that. I’m - God, no, that is not what’s happening! What is it? Would all of you be so kind as to tell me who you are and what you’re doing in here?”
[answering voices, none clearly audible]
“Winds can be wet here. They bring water with them. Like a gift. Have you ever tasted ice? It’s cold, but more than that, it’s heartless; you cannot reason with ice. You will never hold back a glacier, you will never live through a storm. You can’t fight it. Water moulds to a human body. Water gives life, and it takes it away, takes you back.
“I didn’t. No, I didn’t, no. I couldn’t have - where’s Ray? What have you - Ray? Diefenbaker? Ray?”
[sound of glass breaking]
“I just wanted to go home, Ray, that’s all! I wasn’t… leaving…”
[wolf howls]
“Ray!”
[loud thud]
[silence]
*
(Prescription issued January 25th, 1998, edited later. Smudged as though by water.)
Name: Benton Fraser
Address: Canadian Consulate c/o R. Vecchio, 27th Precinct CPD
Rx 5mg haloperidol, si. op. sit.
[signature illegible]
*
(Statement taken from Detective Ray Kowalski, January 26th 1998. Extract from transcript.)
“What do you think happened? I left him… no, I didn’t leave him! Jesus fuck, what is it with you people and your fucking italics! I left him, like you do when you tell someone you’ll see them later? I was done with my reports, he wasn’t, I was dead tired, he wasn’t. I left him. I said goodbye, I said I’d see him back at home, don’t stay too late.
“And then I went, and I went to sleep, and next thing I know I got a phone call, and cops don’t call you at three in the morning to give you good news.
“No, of course I didn’t see it coming. People who see this sort of thing coming, they don’t let them come, know what I’m saying? If I’d known - but I didn’t know. No one knew.
[pause; inaudible voice]
“Well, yeah.”
[longer pause; sound of chair scraping; click of lighter]
“There was that. Maggie said - well, I don’t know, maybe it’s a crazy Mountie thing or a crazy brother-and-sister thing or just, just a crazy thing. Maggie said on tape that she’d seen - yes, she was willing to do that for him. Course she was. When it comes down to it, she doesn’t give a Royal Canadian fuck about anything except keeping Fraser safe. Yeah, she and I do have a lot in common.
“Yeah, that’s not the way it is, between me and her. Like you don’t know, anyway. Me and her, we’re like toothpaste and orange juice - two great tastes that don’t go together at all.
“So she tells them that she saw, uh, things. Goddamn it, she saw ghosts. One ghost. She saw it too, and he’s not - well, he’s not whatever they’ve been saying he is. And I want to believe that, I really do.”
[pause; voice becomes nearly inaudible]
“But Diefenbaker - sorry, yeah, Dief’s a wolf. Half-wolf, sort of belongs to Fraser. Dief pulled him out a lake once before, too. Yeah, he saved his life. More’n once.
“If I’d been there….
“But I wasn’t.”
*
(Note sent, through various channels that cannot be revealed at this or any other juncture, to the man known as Armando Langoustini from the man known as Ray Vecchio. Undated, but most likely sent in first week of February, 1998.)
red squirrel lost his nuts
*
(Extract from the journal of Constable Maggie Mackenzie, dated February 10th, 1998.)
Ben is standing against an army of ghosts.
After the shock of his existence had abated somewhat, it became a source of grief that my own brother should be a stranger to me. We have met twice - once in Chicago, once for a short visit in Canada - but truthfully, Ben comes most alive in his letters. His handwriting is ornate and ornamented, as though he casts off the utilitarian cast of his life in his loving, lush use of words.
But it’s here, now, that it becomes clear to me that he and I stand and fall together, we have the same blood, the same landscape of ice and sky in our bones; we were both raised in the unforgiving places where our rituals, our blood ties, are all that make us human against the elements. A storm is never cruel, my mother used to say. The summer has no quality of mercy. The seasons exist without us, and only we exist to feel.
And I have seen ghosts walk, and storms break, but never like this.
*
(February 14th, 1998. In a quiet room, with low lights. Hasty, circumspect, soft, longing, grieving. Unrecorded.)
A kiss.
*
(Letter sent February 16th, 1998.)
Dear Maggie,
I’ve been trying to call. All I get is static, and angry Mounties shouting at me for wasting police time or whatever, so I figure you must be out on patrol or the phone is fritzed or something. Anyway, I got Fraser back. Thought you’d want to know. Took a bit of work, but I did it in the end. He’s not violent, he’s never committed a crime - sort of, anyway, they told me he ripped a page out of a library book and was pretty cut up about it - he’s not under suspicion of a crime, so, the way I see it, they wouldn’t get a warrant, so they don’t get to keep him.
Yeah, so he’s living with me now. It’s what we were planning before, you know? It’s not like that, I mean not like it was, but it’s still better than the other place. Fraser seems to like it, anyway. He’s still seeing the things, I think. Keeps looking around people and behind people instead of at them. Still doesn’t talk much, and he scared the hell out of a shrink the other day. Would have been funny - hell, no, it was funny, a little. In the morbid kind of way. He was doing that thing he does where it’s only a tiny smile but you hope he’s busting a gut inside. It was nice to see.
I think he misses the north, though. And you, too. I do my best, but I’m glad I’ve got Dief too, to keep an eye on him. He wants to go down by the lake sometime, but I’m not too keen. I don’t think he’d do it again - but I’m not keen.
Still, we’re okay, me and Fraser. He’s still him, still licking things and getting antsy about library books. You should come down to visit again. He misses you, and so do I, of course.
With love,
Ray
*
(J. Gaddis, E. Li, “Visions of Snow: An Unusual Case of Delusion”, in The American Journal of Psychiatry, 155:12, 1998. Excerpts.)
“Ghosts.” It was one of the few sentences he ever addressed directly at me. “Everyone has them.”
Patient X, a 36-year-old white male, began suffering delusions earlier in the year. He has never been satisfactorily diagnosed; the exact nature of his disorder is, at the time of writing, under dispute. In many encounters, he comes across as lucid and high-functioning, if taciturn…
…[H]is chosen method of communication with me is through writing… he speaks, but generally only to his partner, whom he has lived with since being released…
…such a claim is not uncommon in the literature. X’s hallucinations, such as they are, follow in the wake of people… behind me, he wrote: “There is a young girl, with a red bow in her hair…”
(N.B. In an additional paragraph, removed before publication, Gaddis writes about his daughter, who died, aged six, in a traffic accident in 1992.)
*
(Extract from the journal of Constable Benton Fraser, dated 1st April 1998.)
Maggie is followed by a man in work clothes and heavy boots, such as they wear in the north; her husband, I presume, as I never met the man. Lieutenant Welsh is followed by his father, an unruly, angry apparition. Francesca Vecchio sees herself in the mirror as an old woman, wrinkled and unloved.
Diefenbaker misses the north. Sometimes I see, out of the corner of my eye, the snow dripping from his fur, the lights of the aurora reflecting over and over in his eyes. He was never my wolf; I never laid claim to him. He has taken responsibility for me, now.
Ray has no need of a ghost. He has me.
*
(A scrap of paper torn from a book, held in clenched fist. Smudged and torn, almost illegible from constant handling. December 31st, 1999.)
This is
this is the way
is the way the world ends
with a whimper
**
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