Excerpt: Harris and the Cardmaker, Between the Ditches

It was a dark and stormy night. I’d been drinking coffee to stay awake, to have some brain power – though really it just made me more jittery. I was expecting a thief in the night and I wasn’t a fan of thieves. I was scared, tired, feeling caught and wishing to be at any other time in my life. I sat, scheming of how to defend myself – but also overcome with memories of safe but boring times that I had loathed. I’d like to be sitting in detention right now. I wouldn’t mind waiting in emergency with a sprained ankle again. I’d rearranged the furniture blocking the windows and hotel room door many times, trying to find the optimal safety, but I knew that he would get in anyway. I considered briefly leaving the door open and the windows open, even taking off the screens and just letting the rain and wind have their way with the curtains and the carpet – really open things up and turn on all the lights, blare the clock radio with some oldies music – have a parking lot party, serve water from the bathroom tap with ice from the ice machine. But this town was all but abandoned and the only guest that would come was already coming, with or without the music and drinks. It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to – you would cry too if it was happening to you. I have seen a lot of MacGyver and also the Myth Busters to know which things not to try, but still it seemed so hopeless. It felt like my whole life was coming to this point – the end point, it felt very pointy indeed. Dread. Dread then dead. My cell phone was out of range, my car felt even more terrifying than the room – you don’t want to be killed just inside the treeline, ten feet from your car on a dark and stormy night one hundred miles from anywhere on the side of the highway – that is a sad gross way to die. Unless you are killed by a bear – man against beast seems so much more natural – being killed by another human, being hunted by another human is the worst thing there is. I was in the process of the worst thing there is. Just as I had that thought I heard a car crunching across the gravel parking lot – its headlights beaming through the snaggy orange curtains that hung perfectly still despite the impending doom. Well, at least there would be no more waiting. Or not much more. I wished right then that I hadn’t parked right in front of my own motel room door. Maybe he would have gone through some of the empty rooms first – delaying my demise. The lights shone onto the wall that housed the small bathroom. There was no shadow that crossed it, no sound of a door opening or slamming, no movement at all. My heart was beating a two-step and I had to take large silent gulps of air to keep myself conscious. For a while I was mesmerized by the light not sure if I should dart right or left. Soon I was sitting under the desk, stupidly – as if this was an earthquake. Time passed – a lot of time, not just that time seemed to be going slowly, but on my watch 20 minutes had past – that is a long time to have adrenaline firing through your varicose veins. I could hear the rain, the wind, the windshield wipers – and I started to wonder if I had just missed the sound of the car door opening. Maybe with all the rain it was drowned out. Maybe he was around the back of the building by now. I looked at the back window. What kind of motel room has so many windows? That corner of the room was dark – darker than usual because of the shadow of the bathroom wall and the brightness of the part of the room that was illuminated by the devil lights. I felt like throwing up. Why was he playing with me? Not that I wanted him to come into the room sooner, but the anticipation was horrendous. I retched into the garbage beside the desk and felt bad for the chamber maid who would have to clean it up. Then I thought, what if while I was making the sounds that it took to bring my bile up the car door had opened and I didn’t hear it. Then I thought, well, the garbage can mess is going to be the least of the mess in this room, and it won’t be the chamber maid that will have to clean it up. I’m such a normal boring person, how could it really be that I was getting killed tonight? It was a complicated time for me. I felt nostalgia over my life and was trying to pull a plan out of my butt and really trying hard not to cry. Sort of half squatting moving sideways around the room like a crabby outfielder I surveyed every inch of the room for signs of the intruder and for ideas. I am not going to lie to you, there was some stress sweat coming from my eyes – but I wasn’t really crying. Finally I decided that I needed to survey the situation. I went up to the door and looked through the peek hole. I could see my car and then a white van with lights on – but no matter how I angled myself I couldn’t see any details of the occupant or even if there was an occupant. I edged my way over to the window and tried to see through the crack at the edge of the curtain without touching the curtain. I couldn’t see anything. I ever so slightly moved the curtain a few millimeters over and could see an outline of the driver and a passenger. Just sitting there. Creepily. Why? What kind of sick people play with someone’s terror like this. They were probably laughing as they talked about how they were going to kill me. At that point the reality of the situation hit me very very hard – I had to get out of this, it would not be over quick and I was going to like whatever they had in store even less than I liked being trapped in that room imagining the worst. When I looked over at the desk and thought about how I had been sitting under it as a sort of defense it reminded me of when I first moved to BC from Manitoba and I was sitting in class and heard what I thought was a fire alarm and all the kids got under their desks and I thought that school in BC was a waste of time if the teachers really believed that in a fire it was a good plan to get under the desk. Of course I was quickly informed that it was an earthquake drill and I realized that I may still have some things to learn and I better stay in school for a few more years. I thought about how you should yell fire if you are being kidnapped in the street because people will react to that better than just a scream. And I thought, well, there is no one to scream fire to – even the front desk guy is gone for the night and there are no other “guests” in this hell hole. But, a fire might get some attention. I pulled the chair over to the fire alarm and unscrewed it from the ceiling – hot damn – it was hard wired in. My first thought was to light the bed on fire and use the inferno as a diversion while I jumped out the back window and ran through the woods. But then, that brought me back to the killed on the side of the highway scenario which was ugly. I grabbed the little pack of bathroom matches and a roll of toilet paper and the pukey garbage can and built me a little smoker. I went back to the window to check on the assailants and saw that they were still sitting there, stoic. I went into the bathroom and shut the door so that the light from the fire would not attract attention. The plan was not great, because there was going to have to be a lot of smoke to set the alarm off and I had to remain in the room. I got the fire going and the puke kept it smoky, though stinky. As soon as I thought there was enough fire to have a lot of smoke I covered the top with a towel for about 5 seconds, opened the bathroom door, took the towel off, jumped up on the chair and held the garbage can about a foot from the fire alarm. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. There was so much smoke my eyes were crying now, but not because of the scaredness or the failure, but because of the blasted puke smoke. If I had married Richard Dean Anderson like I wanted to, I would never be in this situation. I cried for my loss. All that was left was hair brained plan b. Light the bed on fire. Ironic really, since I felt that littering was a horrible violation of communal property and that vandalism in any form was the epitome of disrespect and lack of character. But this was life and death. Surely their insurance would cover a life and death situation. I bunched up all the blankets in a loosely bundled pile with the pillows sort of holding up the sides. I put on my shoes and took all nonessentials out of my backpack and strapped it on – even using the chest and waist straps which usually just swung in step unclipped. I pulled my hair back with a bobby pin holding my bangs back so that I could see very clearly and I thought about the run ahead. I had no idea where to go, no idea if it would be closer to run back to the last town or on to the next or just into the woods. I didn’t know who I was up against, maybe they were trackers like in Crocodile Dundee. The thought crossed my mind that if I pooped in the woods and they tasted it they might know just which way I was headed – this made me laugh and take the time to go to the washroom before I lit the fire. Reality was that I couldn’t run around the block without having an artificial asthma attack – how would I convince my chunky body that there was no backing out – you will run for several hours and fast. I just wanted to climb onto the mountain of blankets and pillows and forget the whole thing. Come and kill me – I already have the alter ready. Instead I went to the window to have a last look at the cold blooded killers. They just sat there cool as cucumbers – so chilling. I knelt beside the bed with what was left of the matches – tried to take a deep breath – but the smell of smoke and burnt puke just made me cough and gag. I prayed to have swift feet to get out of there and stay alive. I opened my eyes and lit a match, then the matchbook, then a pillowcase. It was kind of slow at first, a lot of smoke – like I needed more of that – I looked for some paper to help and noticed that there were red and blue lights coming through the orange shroud. I didn’t really want to put the fire out, because I didn’t have any more matches – but the attendance of the police was exciting, if they were police…if they weren’t crooked, small town take part in the torture and death and cover up sort of police. I took the pillow and ran to the bathtub – pulled back the curtain and let it burn in there – burning feathers is worse than burning puke. I looked out the peek hole and saw two officers approaching the van with flashlights with their hands on their guns. I wanted to see better and thought that if they were in cahoots they would probably not approach the van like that, so I pulled back the orange drapery a few inches to have a better look at the scene. To my surprise, with the light of the flashlights I could see that there was nobody in either the drivers or passengers seat. What I had seen was the outline of the seat and the headrest. But the van was still running and the windshield wipers slapping time. I did not have Bobby’s hand in mine. The one officer kept his light on the front seat while the other went around to the back. He was yelling “Put your hands where I can see them. Put your hands where I can see them.” Then his partner moved between me and the van – his shadow huge across the bed alter and my room. He looked through the windshield with his flashlight and then moved around the back. “Open the door. Keep your hands where I can see them. Keep your hands where I can see them. Unlock the door. Un-lock-the-door.” The other officer opened the back door and a conversation which was a little more subdued ensued. Though enthralled with that conversation and straining to hear what was being said the pillow in the bathtub demanded my attention with bellows of black stench. I jumped up and coughed my way into the bathroom – reached for the closest tap and pulled the shower on, ran out of the bathroom, wanted to go through the door but figured that moving the occasional table and two sitting chairs that were precariously wedged between the door and the wall might take more time than I had. I flung the woven orange wonder down the rod and pulled out the broomstick security, slid the window along the rusty pane and forced my weight through the brittle screen – followed by plumes of black smoke that smelled like a burning toenail collection. Soon there was yelling and light in my direction. I was already face down so I put my hands above my head like I had seen on cops.
“Are you ok?”
“yes.”
“Is there a fire inside?”
“yes. But I put water on it. The shower is on it.”
“what are you doing, jumping out the window? What is going on here?” Where to start really? What is going on here? It suddenly all seemed so silly.
“Who is that guy in the van?” That was the burning question on my mind.
“Do you recognize the van?”
“I don’t know, who is he?” Now I start crying. My hands are up, my face is jammed up to the cement parking spot marker, my flashlight in the side pocket of my backpack is jabbing into my side and I am just so tired, but sort of feel safe – it just feels like the time to cry. So I cry and cry and cry.
“Miss, what is going on here, here sit up ok?” My arms are as stiff as a board straight up ahead of me like I am superman going to fly somewhere. He takes one of my hands and brings it to my side and turns my shoulder around so that I can sit up. “Now, what is going on here?” I am half sitting in the frame of the screen the other half is bent up and caught on the license plate of my car.
“I don’t really know where to start.” Start with the killer, the fire, the request for his badge and identification? “I thought that man in that van was going to kill me.”
“Kill you? Is there a fire inside Miss? Because there is a lot of smoke.” The officer stands up and focuses his light inside – he is standing in a steady flow of smoke. He crouches back down and speaks into his radio – asking for assistance, asking for a fire truck to the motel. “Did somebody start a fire in your room?” Yes, somebody did.
“Well, I did, sort of by accident.” Well it wasn’t an accident, it was duress – but I just really wanted to be out of there and away from that van.
“By accident? Is this your car Miss?”
“Yes.” That was an easy question. “Who is that man in the van, what is he doing here? I don’t want to be here, I want to get out of here, please save me.” Crying again, like a loser. His eyes were going wide as he looked at me and my state – which I imagine wasn’t too pretty – the window the smoke my backpack.
“Ok. Come here, come to the car.”
“No, I don’t want to go near that man.” I was afraid that if I got near the patrol car the man in the van would be able to see me.
“Miss, there isn’t a man here. Not right now. There isn’t a man in the van – there is a girl in the van, about your age. She said that she was tired and pulled over to sleep for a while because she was too tired to drive anymore. Did she try to get into your room?”
“A girl?”
“Yes, she said that she was trying to make it to Calgary but she just got too tired and felt like she might fall asleep behind the wheel so she pulled over to sleep. Was she trying to harm you in any way?”
“Why did she have her van running and her headlights shining into my room?”
“Well, actually that is how we got the call – there is a ranger that passed by this spot twice within a half an hour because of a breach in the wildlife fence and he noticed that this van was still here with the lights on so he gave us a call. We asked her why her lights were on and she said that she forgot them on – she didn’t want to shut the van off because it is so cold and she wanted to keep the heat on, so she just locked the doors and fell asleep in the back really quickly. She didn’t even think about the lights.”
“Oh. I see.” I could see that the police officer thought that the girl in the van was a bit of a ditz and had caused a lot of concern for her empty headedness and lack of forethought regarding how her actions would affect others. That made me really reluctant to tell my story and really sorry to see the fire truck rolling into the parking lot.
“My Grandma always tells me ‘remember to take your B vitamins.’” I tried to do a voice like hers to lighten the mood. “B’s are good for stress, keeps the paranoia at bay.” The officer’s head suddenly went very heavy and flopped down, along with his shoulders. I felt very sorry that I disappointed him. When he looked back up he had a very mocking smile on his face.
“Come on, get up.” He grabbed me by the arm and lifted me out of the screen frame, under the plumes of smoke and over to the highway side of the parking lot. By the time we got there a patrol SUV pulled up and he opened the back doors and asked me to sit on the back ledge. He jogged over to the firefighters who were climbing in through the window with full gear on. The lights inside went on. I could see the blankets and pillows in a big pile on the bed and soon a chair and a table thrown onto the bed and the door to the room fly open – allowing more smoke to escape. I could see a fire fighter inside open the back curtains and window and his partner come outside with the half burned, smoking, feather breathing pillow. He threw the smoking culprit into the middle of the empty lot, feathers flying everywhere. Like someone had just exposed a huge chicken. It was this event that finally convinced me that gluten could no longer be a part of my life.