“I’m back,” he texted, standing atop the Looner Module’s rickety staircase, feeling lost. Don’t want to go inside, he realized, reaching for the door handle. Don’t! He turned round and clattered down the steps onto solid ground, escaping between the camper and the laurel hedge, out onto Esplanade Street.
He stopped there. Sniffed at the moist, cool air. Listened. Squinted at the harsh glare of the street lamp on the corner of Maple. The stars? It troubled him that they were obscured by the ambient spill of light where he stood. Beach? That made sense. He scanned the lay of the land out toward Kin Park, pushed himself in that direction because it felt…
Safe!
A faint phosphorescence glowed in the waves lapping at the boat launch.
From there, looking west, he could see a gleam of moonlight at the brim of the Chemainus Bay escarpment; looking eastward, the blister of dawn seeped into the black velvet of the night sky. He mourned the setting of the moon, the rising of the sun. The one healed with its cool beams; the other burned through the dark fabric of night, revealing a world that held no mysteries, only glaring truths.
His mobile vibrated in his pocket. At first, Buddy wondered what it was, the sensation of it scrabbling at his thigh. Then he realized it was what he’d been afraid of since being dropped at VORLand’s End. He extracted it from his jeans pocket, glanced into its luminescence. ANDREA CLARKSON, it blared in bright Helvetica. Buddy shoved the phone back into his jeans. Slunk down the path from the boat launch onto Kin Beach, then picked his way between the logs and tangles of seaweed washed up on the littoral.
“Ding!” She’d left a message.
A seawall flanked him to the left, the languid lapping of the ocean to his right. No escape. It troubled him, being hemmed in like that, but he continued down the narrow strand anyway, heading for a grove he’d visited once or twice since moving to Chemainus.
Invasive species. He smiled, as a fox might in that inscrutable, feral way of theirs, happy to see and not be seen, padding through the interstices of ‘normal’ consciousness.
Forms emerged in the creep of light that reddened the sky behind him, half-buried shapes protruding out of the sand like crooked, rotting teeth. Under the canopy of his idyllic grove, he found a spot to rest, squatting on the smoothed curve of a cedar log. Damp. Cold. He accepted the discomforts of his new environment, watching the day unfurl from the place he found himself.
He couldn’t say how long he’d been there before he saw the blinking of a light heading down the beach toward him. It was still dark, the welt of dawn intensifying like a boil on the horizon. Weaving in and out of the illuminating cone, a dog. Avi! Andrea was on the hunt, and her best friend was pulling her straight toward him, barking now, snorting in the sand, snuffling at logs, picking up Buddy’s scent. He cringed. For fuck’s sake, go away! he begged. His words had no power, though. No meaning—like the snarl of a cranky old dog roused from its perpetual sleep.
No escape, he remembered. The strand dead ended at a concrete breakwater a few paces farther on.
Except perhaps?
He crept round his log toward the tangled embankment behind him. The sturdy trunks of cedar and maple trees guarded the entrance, their gnarled roots forming a sort of fence, which he clambered over, hoping he was still out of sight and earshot.
Avi barked. “Buddy?” Andrea called out.
He refused to recognize the name. It was no longer his. Wads of ivy grabbed at him, clinging to his legs. He flailed at the clutching vines, thrust himself past their entanglements and tore on, pushing through, over, and into them until he thought he’d penetrated far enough inland. Then he crouched again, twisting round, willing himself to stop panting, fear become a state of mind he belonged to.
A quietus took hold.
“Buddy!” The beam of her flashlight swept the places he’d been, the log where he’d hunkered, his footprints in the sand, leading into the underbrush. “Come on, man, I know you’re here!”
She waited, Buddy waited, Avatar stared straight at him through his shroud of foliage, looking puzzled.
“Okay,” she said after a minute’s silence. “Call me when you can. Please!” She turned and tugged hard to get Avi to follow. Buddy stayed put until he was sure they were gone… completely.
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