Northwest Passages Read online

  “Are you . . . are you ill, then?” I asked at last, trying to find some explanation at which my mind did not rebel. “Some disease that will claim you?”

  “If you want to put it that way, yes; a disease. If that makes it easier for you.” He reached out and put a hand on my arm. “You have been friendly, and I have not had many that I could call a friend. I thank you, and ask you to do this one thing for me; and, in the end, for all of you.”

  I looked into his eyes, dark as thunderclouds, and recalled our conversation on board the ship following Walker’s death, and for a moment had a vision of something dark and terrible. I thought of the look on Walker’s face—or the thing that I had thought was Walker—when I had seen it the night before. “Will you end up like him?” I asked suddenly, and De Vere seemed to know to what I referred, for he shook his head.

  “No, but if you do not do this then others will,” he said simply. I knew then how I must act. He obviously saw the look of resolution in my face, for he said again, quietly, “Thank you,” then turned and began walking towards the crevasse in the ice.

  I cannot write in detail of what followed in the next few minutes. I remained beside the crevasse, staring blankly down into the depths which now held him, and it was only with considerable effort that I finally roused myself enough to stumble back to the dogs, which had at last quietened. The trip back to camp was a blur of white, and I have no doubt that, when I stumbled down the final stretch of the path, I appeared sufficiently wild-eyed and distraught that my story was accepted without question.

  The Guvnor had a long talk with me this morning when I woke, unrefreshed, from a troubled sleep. He appears satisfied with my answers, and while he did upbraid me slightly for failing to take a third person with us—as is standard on these trips—he agreed that the presence of another would probably have done nothing to help save De Vere.

  Pray God he never finds out the truth.

  15 February: More than a week since De Vere’s death, and I have not seen Walker in that time. Castleton, too, is much improved, and appears well on the way to regaining his full health.

  Subsequent sledge parties have inspected the crevasse, and agree that it was a terrible accident, but one that could not have been avoided. I have not been up on the plateau since my trip with De Vere. My thoughts continually turn to the man whom I left there, and I recall what Cook wrote more than one hundred years ago. He was speaking of this place; but the words could, I think, equally be applied to De Vere: “Doomed by nature never once to feel the warmth of the sun’s rays, but to be buried in everlasting snow and ice.”

  A soft flutter of leaves whispered like a sigh as Emily finished reading. The last traces of day had vanished, leaving behind shadows which pooled at the corners of the room. She sat in silence for some time, her eyes far away; then she closed the journal gently, almost with reverence, and placed it on the table beside her. The writer’s card stared up at her, and she considered it.

  “He would not understand,” she said at last. “And they are all dead; they can neither explain nor defend themselves or their actions.” She looked at her father’s photograph, now blurred in the gathering darkness. “Yet you did not destroy this.” She touched the journal with fingers delicate as a snowflake. “You left it for me to decide, keeping this a secret even from my mother. You must have thought that I would know what to do.”

  Pray God he never finds out the truth.

  She remained in her chair for some moments longer. Then, with an effort, Emily rose from her chair and, picking up the journal, crossed once more to the rosewood desk and its shadows. She placed the journal in its drawer, where it rested beside a pipe which had lain unsmoked for decades. The ceramic cat watched with blank eyes as she turned out the light. In so doing she knocked the card to the floor, where it lay undisturbed.

  THE PALACE

  I

  “What does the night wind say?”

  The voice came from what looked like a pile of rags, half-concealed in a recessed doorway behind him, and Mark almost dropped his cigarette. He had nipped out of the hotel for a quick smoke, and had thought he had the street outside The Palace Hotel to himself. It was past one o’clock, the pubs and hotel bars had disgorged their patrons a half-hour ago, and he had been enjoying the quiet Vancouver night, mild despite the fact that October had set in. He had walked fifty yards or so from the hotel’s main entrance, leaving behind the gleaming stone and glass of the hotel’s frontage, exchanging it for the dirty, shabby row of shops which occupied the rest of the block. That, Mark reflected, was downtown Vancouver for you; it didn’t take long to go from splendour to squalor. All the world in a city block.

  The figure in the doorway moved slightly, and Mark saw that it was Jane, one of the permanent residents of the downtown Vancouver streets. Her lined and weathered face gave no secrets away as to her age, or history, or the circumstances which had brought her here; she simply was, in the same way as the Woodwards building or the Ovaltine Café. He had seen her several times, shuffling along the sidewalk or hunched in a doorway, but it was the first time she had spoken to him, although Mark wondered if she actually was speaking to him, or merely talking to herself. But her eyes, incongruously bright in her dark face, were looking directly at him, as if in expectation of an answer, and she asked again, “What does the night wind say?”

  “I don’t know,” Mark replied. He glanced at the trees planted along the sidewalk of Hastings Street, their leaves still green and, tonight, undisturbed by even a hint of breeze. “I don’t think it’s saying much of anything. Perfect Vancouver night.”

  “Perfect?” Jane moved forward so that she could look round the edge of the doorway, and her glance moved down the street to where the lights from The Palace’s lobby gleamed softly onto the sidewalk. “No. Not perfect. Not here.” She tapped the side of her head, near her eyes. “I see. Too much.” She shook her head. “Beautiful place. I come here long ago because someone say this city so beautiful. But ugly, too. The night wind knows. Sees beautiful city, with ugly people, sometimes.”

  Mark had moved closer to her, to hear her words better. She was a Native woman—he could see that now—and her voice had a softness, a musicality to it which had not been ground out of her by the life she led, so far from where she must have grown up. He wondered for a moment where that place was, and if she could go back to it.

  As if she had read his thoughts, she said, “No go back. Past is dead place; bad place. Ugly people there too. Ugly people everywhere.” She looked at Mark sadly. “Everywhere,” she emphasised. “Ugly people do ugly things, and cannot fix.”

  “Do they try?” She was like the Ancient Mariner, fixing him with her eye, and he found he wanted to stay and listen.

  “Sometimes.” Jane was silent then, and Mark thought the conversation, such as it was, had ended; but as he started to say he had to get back to work, she said “Some bad things, cannot be fixed. Some things too bad, too hard. Night wind knows, says these things, but people not hear.”

  “I see.” Mark did not know if he saw or not, but his answer satisfied Jane, who was still looking towards the front doors of The Palace. Mark looked that way too, and remembered that he had a job to be doing. “Well, I’ve got to go,” he said somewhat awkwardly, and Jane looked at him for a moment, then nodded.

  “Yes. You go. But watch for ugly people. You watch.”

  “Yes, yes I will.” He hesitated for a moment, then pulled his wallet from his pocket and took out a two-dollar bill. “Here. Have this.” He stretched out his arm, and her hand snaked out to take the money. For a moment her fingers brushed his, and then money and hand had disappeared within the folds of clothing around her, and Mark had turned and started towards the hotel. When he got to the door he looked back, but could see nothing of Jane. He glanced once more at the trees and sky, and shivered slightly as an errant breeze, harbinger of the coming winter, blew down the street. Then he was inside the warmth and radiance of The Palace, and the night
wind was forgotten.

  II

  “Do you believe in ghosts?”

  “What is this, quiz night?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing.” Mark shook his head. “No, I don’t.”

  “Do you believe in vampires?”

  “No.” Relieved at something that put his encounter with Jane out of his mind, he smiled. Sylvia, looking down, didn’t notice.

  “Do you believe in werewolves, mummies, or zombies?”

  “No, no, and yes.”

  “Yes?” Sylvia looked up, startled. Mark’s smile had broadened into a grin, and she grinned back. “Now you’re being silly.”

  “Silly? Me? I’m not the one who started with the Twenty Questions. Anyway, I have seen zombies. So have you; in the morning, when the guests start to check out.” He leaned over the front desk. “What is this, some sort of magazine quiz you’re doing? ‘Are you open to the paranormal’, that kind of thing? Don’t you have work to do?”

  “No, it’s not a quiz, and I am working, actually, in case you hadn’t noticed.” Sylvia held up a stack of registration cards, then resumed sorting through them. “It’s just something I saw on the news the other night; there was this special series they’re doing before Halloween, and they were going around Vancouver and showing all these places that’re supposed to be haunted, and there was this one place in Burnaby that’s an art gallery now but the people who work there keep hearing things, like footsteps in the hallway when no one else is there, and one time this workman put down his hammer or something and walked away, and when he came back it had been moved to the other side of the workbench, but there he was all alone in the building, so no one else could have moved it, and I just thought, you know, I’m glad I work here, because wouldn’t it be creepy to work somewhere like that?”

  Sylvia finished off in a rush, the way she often did, like a car running out of gas. Mark laughed.

  “Some people would say it was really creepy to work graveyard shift.”

  Sylvia frowned. “Well, yeah, I suppose it’s not for everyone. But you like it, don’t you, Raymond?”

  This was directed down the length of the front desk towards where a tall, thin man in hotel uniform—standard male employee issue of light brown suit, white shirt, and cheap burgundy tie—stood, entering figures on a sheet of paper. He looked up and blinked at Mark and Sylvia. “What’s that?”

  “I said, you like working the graveyard shift, don’t you?”

  Raymond considered her thoughtfully for a moment, then shrugged. “It’s a job,” he said finally. “You get used to it after a while.”

  “Not me.” Sylvia shook her head. “Soon as I get enough seniority, wham! I’m outta here, onto afternoons. No more graveyard shift, thanks very much. Let someone else have the fun. What about you, Mark?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. It’s not too bad; like Raymond says, you get used to it after a while. I guess you can get used to anything, if you try. But it’s not up to me. I’m just a Duty Manager; I don’t have seniority like you union guys. I’m here until someone decides it’s time for me to move on to bigger and better things.”

  “Aw, listen to this, ‘I’m just a Duty Manager.’ Poor guy.” Sylvia shuffled the reg cards some more, made a note on one, continued shuffling. “I don’t know how you do it, Raymond,” she said in the night auditor’s direction. “How long have you been doing this? Five years?” She shook her head. “No way I could work graveyard that long. No way.”

  Raymond gave a small polite smile which almost reached his eyes before flickering out. He shrugged again. “You get used to it,” he repeated. “I have, anyway. It’s quiet. Usually.” He bent back down to his sheet of figures.

  Where some people would have taken his final word as an insult, Sylvia picked up on the fact that it was just Raymond’s way, and that no insult had been intended. She was quick, and bright; wasted, really, on the graveyard shift, Mark thought. If she’d started at the beginning of the summer she’d have soon moved on to better hours, but she had been hired after the busy season had ended, when several of the temporary summer staff—students, mostly—had left, and would now be stuck on graveyards until someone higher up the pecking order moved on. She would have most of her work done by the time update started at around 3.30, and would then settle in by the switchboard, reading, until early morning checkouts began. The job itself wasn’t bad; just the hours. Unless you were a bat, or a vampire.

  “So what was the verdict on this haunted art gallery? Any idea who’s doing the haunting? Or is it just some story the news guys worked up to give people a scare?”

  “Well, they’re not sure; I mean, I don’t think anyone’s really seen anything, but then I guess that isn’t surprising, ’cause if you could see ghosts—if they’re real—then I guess they’d be all misty and everything and half the time you wouldn’t even know you’d seen one, but they think it’s the woman who used to own the place, who’s angry because her husband didn’t leave the house to the right people when she died, or something like that, and now she’s not happy.”

  “So she moves hammers around?”

  “I guess there’s not much else she can do, when you think about it. I mean, if she wanted something, and her husband didn’t do it for her after she died, then I guess she’d be kinda upset, but since he’s dead it wouldn’t really be fair to go after other people, innocent people, I mean, who didn’t have anything to do with it; she’d want to get back at him, and so now all she can really do is scare folks a bit, remind them of what happened so she won’t be forgotten. And isn’t that all ghosts can do to you? Scare you? It’s not like they can shoot you or attack you or anything, just kind of stand around and moan.”

  There was a muttered curse from the other end of the desk, and Mark and Sylvia both turned. Raymond was tearing a strip of paper from the adding machine he had been working on, and they watched him ball it up and throw it in the garbage can beside him. Mark could tell, from Raymond’s posture, that he knew he had attracted their attention but was determined not to look at them, and when he glanced at Sylvia he saw that she realised it as well. She shrugged slightly, as if to say “Takes all kinds,” but before she could say anything they heard the switchboard ring, and she went to answer the phone. The graveyard shift was a lean machine, as Danny, the night bellman, said: apart from him and the three behind the desk, the only other staff member was Bob, the elderly security guard who was probably out prowling the parking garage, making sure no drunks were bedding down in the stairwells.

  Mark continued to watch Raymond, who was now punching—somewhat ostentatiously, Mark thought—the buttons on the adding machine, in an “I don’t know about you but someone around here has got to work” kind of way. Raymond was a nice guy, and a hard worker, and certainly knew his job—five years doing the same thing in the same place tended to do that to you—but on the serious side, which was what five years of graveyard shift would certainly do to you. Their paycheques reminded them every two weeks that “Ours is a service industry”, but Mark was sometimes thankful that night audit involved little direct contact with the guests.

  The sound of heavy doors closing echoed through the lobby, and moments later Giovanni appeared round the corner from the direction of the hotel’s lobby bar, a dark, wood-panelled space which looked out onto Hastings Street. It had been a fixture in the hotel for years, a place where people went to do some serious drinking; anyone who wanted drinks with mildly salacious names, or with paper umbrellas stuck in them, usually ended up in the lounge on the top floor, with its views over downtown, and live jazz on weekends. The King’s Arms, with its doors onto the street, attracted a somewhat rougher clientele, but Giovanni—known to all as Joe—had presided over it for more than two decades, and was known to run a tight ship. More than one unruly drunk, mistaking Joe’s affable manner for weakness, had found himself quickly, and effectively, disabused of this notion.

  On this night Joe was all smiles as he tosse
d a packet of credit card slips and bills onto the counter in front of Raymond. “Here you go,” he said. “All finished and closed up.”

  “Any trouble tonight?” Mark asked.

  “No, everyone was pretty quiet. Slow night.”

  “So I can go clear the machine, then?” said Raymond.

  “Go right ahead, my friend.”

  Mark passed Raymond the keys, and the auditor put down his pen and hurried out from behind the desk. Mark and Joe watched him as he crossed the lobby and went round the corner. Joe shook his head.

  “Weird guy,” he said. “Harmless, I guess, but weird.”

  Mark was about to ask what he meant when Sylvia came back out from the switchboard.

  “Some people from England, asking about reserving a room for Expo,” she said, shaking her head. “Second call like that I’ve had this week. And Expo’s not until 1986!”

  Mark smiled. “Some people like to plan ahead,” he said. “Besides, two years’ll go faster than you know it. They’re probably smart to book this far ahead; I think a lot of people are going to want to come to Expo, and Vancouver’s pretty short on hotel space for a big city.”

  Sylvia rolled her eyes. “Yeah, maybe. But if I plan a vacation two weeks ahead I think I’m taking a long-term view.”

  “Remind me not to plan any vacations with you.”