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Skeleton Key By Rick McGrath The trip north that afternoon was uneventful. The traffic wasn’t bad, even by Toronto standards, and I was able to get the Morgan +8 stretched out as soon as I cleared the ever-expanding city limits. I like to drive with a joint and good sound on the stereo, and this time I brought along a new CD by an underground West Coast band, LS Crude. Heavy rock. Helps to keep the foot down. I made Bracebridge by three o’clock. By three thirty I was in Huntsville. A sharp turn left, almost coming back south, and I was closing in on Tonelin Bluffs, a small town on the windswept shores of Skeleton Lake, an oasis of blue in the timeswept wilds of Canada’s ancient precambrian shield. I was heading to a perfect retreat, a log cabin of generous design built during the 1950s by the navigator of my dad’s aircrew during WW2. Adam was his name, Adam O'Mada. He and the old man met during training school at Medicine Hat in 1942. They shipped to England together, and as luck would have it, Adam ended up being assigned to Dad’s crew. Adam was the navigator, and a damn good one, to hear Dad's stories. Apparently he had what it took to get them to the target and back again: a relentless drive to perfectionism and a sharp, if somewhat superstitious mind. Of course, it was the old man who said Adam was, well, different, and I’m telling you to take that with a cube of salt. Everybody did a lot of crazy things during the war, especially during 1943 and ‘44, when flights over The Happy Valley usually resulted in a few of your squadron buddies going down in flames. Well, the old man’s kite got shot up a few times, but he did his 30 missions without a serious prang. Adam apparently took full credit for their luck, repeating everything that happened on the first mission over the next 29. The theory was if you survived the first, you could keep on going, as long as you didn't break the ritual. So every flight Adam would be the last to the Halifax, and after everybody else had clambered on board, he’d piss on the rear wheel and then climb in and lock the door. As soon as they cleared the Channel he’d throw up. After the war he returned to Ontario, went to school and became a highly successful architect. The fact he never married led to some speculation about his sexual preferences, but everyone who met him was charmed immediately by his pleasant personality, although the trick of the ritual stuck with him and to be his friend, you had to work to his schedule. Adam was now 68, in retirement, and spent his summers enjoying the tranquility of Northern Ontario, in his cabin by the lake, and his winters on an island he owned in the Bahamian archipelago. He and the old man saw a fair amount of each other, mostly at RCAF reunions, and when Dad told him I had left Vancouver to take a job in Toronto he wrote me a kind offer to borrow the use of his northern retreat. Skeleton Key, he called it, because his property was on a small island 50 yards off the shore of Skeleton Lake. Apparently his place in the Bahamas was also an island called Skeleton Quay, and I figured the pirate-like connotations of the word had some kind of ritualistic significance for him. The old man had visited him in the Bahamas a number of times, and had reported it was truly a great place in a magnificent site. The Ontario place was probably a little less spectacular, but I was anxious to cash in on the offer, and as Adam would be returning soon, with Spring getting close and the Maple sap soon running, so it was now or next year to enjoy his generosity. I tapped the letter of introduction in my jacket pocket. The keys were being held at Tonelin Bluff’s only General Store, where the proprietor, Mr. Haliburton, augmented his meagre winter trade by acting as a caretaker for the numerous cottage owners in the area. I stopped in, showed him my letter, got directions, bought some smokes, and headed southwest once again. Ten miles along I saw the sign Skeleton Key outside a large iron gate nestled into a dense growth of northern pine. The island was located at the end of a long dirt road that meandered from the highway down through a mature forest of maples and birch to one of Skeleton Lake’s many inlets. The road ended at a small wharf, but the Lake was still frozen, so I was able to walk the short distance. I knew the cottage was big, but I still pleasantly surprised by its size. Skeleton Key was a complete house, large and well-constructed in a hardwood post and beam style. I got my baggage from the Morgan and struggled across the smooth ice, up a rocky path, down into a narrow depression, and finally up to the back door and into the kitchen. The room was large and cheery, with a bright window over the sink, all the necessary appliances, including a freezer and a microwave, and a wide entrance into the dining area, which was dominated by an antique maple table. The guest bedroom was small and rather more spartan, with a simple bed and dresser, nighttable and reading light. Hmmm. No TV. The window was small and faced south. I dumped my bags, video camera and laptop on the bed. The living room was huge, and its focal point was a gigantic fireplace built from what I assumed to be river rocks, each the size of a breadloaf and weathered into a smooth, tactile finish. Massive beams gave the room an open, airy feeling, and skylights illuminated a selection of quality leather furniture surrounding an expensive-looking Persian carpet. A solid maple door, wider than usual, stood open beside the fireplace. Saving this room for later exploration, I went back into the kitchen to store the groceries I had brought for the weekend stay. It was nearing five-thirty and the day’s light was beginning to wane, so I took advantage of the short twilight to bring in a good supply of wood from the bin beside the back door. The cabin had no basement, therefore no central heat, but each room was equipped with electric heating units along the baseboards. Even though Mr Haliburton had kept the heat on, the living room still felt coolly damp from the ravages of winter - snow still covered all the shade areas on the lot - so I busied myself with the fireplace and soon had a cherry blaze choreographing its dancing light into all corners of the room. I figured the unexplored room to be Adam’s special bachelor hideaway, but even my wildest House & Gardens fantasies could not prepare me for my first visit to Adam’s particular version of the Garden. The room was of above-average size, around 15 by 25 feet, and it was built in a series of terraces which dropped some 20 feet before me, down to a glassed-in sunroom built on rocks beside the lake. Of course, Adam had built the back of the house to follow the contours of the land down to the lake, creating an organic space in which to display his personal treasures. Then you saw it: the telescope. It sat on some kind of platform which was attached to small railway tracks. The tracks moved up to the far window, under it, and out onto the cedar deck. Smart way to get the scope outside. On each terrace, the east and west walls were completely filled with bookcases, each shelf neatly arranged with thousands of books. The high ceiling was completely painted with a mural showing the Milky Way, imbedded in the cool blue of a deep night sky. A rough-hewn country table and another rocky fireplace dominated the middle terrace, and each terrace was dotted with scattered chairs and small cluttered tables, abstractedly grouped. I thought this a wonderful place. It took but a moment to kindle another fire, sit back with a glass of wine and savour these extraordinary surrounding. Books all around, soothing the mind like an intellectual pacifier, underfoot a fine Indian carpet, against one wall the cheery magic of a warm fire, and against the cold wall, the mysterious telescope brooding about light and time, enigmatic in its glassy observatory. Outside, in the moonlight, the platinum birches along the lakeshore ghosted against the blue and grey water, and there, in that intergalactic silence it was easy to look above and find the Crab Nebula, harbour thoughts of infinity, and ponder the great, humbling universe. It was a room you could stay in forever, if you wanted. I felt Adam once wanted that. It was obvious he had built it carefully, slowly, and stocked it shamelessly to satisfy a number of personal cravings. When the fire died, and my wine was gone, I went back to the kitchen, made a light snack, and went to bed with the Northern Lights and ancient glaciers to shape my deep dreams. I awoke the next morning to a muffled pounding sound. It took a few moments, in these new surroundings, to realize it was someone at the door. I shook out the cobwebs, crawled into my jeans, and answered the back door. I recognized Mr Halibuton through the small, leaded window. C’mon in, I said, opening the door. Jeez, it’s cold out there. I quickly shut the door behind him. Mr Haliburton stamped his feet on the rug and emerged from a giant winter jacket. I still wasn’t completely awake, so I decided to play the congenial country host. Cuppa coffee, Mr Haliburton Warm you up. Don’t mind if I do. I started rummaging through the shelves. You’ll find the coffee in that shelf there, beside the fridge. Mr Haliburton had obviously been here before. Thanks. I found the Melitta coffeemaker, spooned in some java, added water and plugged the unit in. Mr Haliburton was now sitting at the table. Checkin up on me, I teased. The clock said eight. Pretty damn early. Well, yes and no. Heard there was a big storm comin in, they can get pretty tough even in March, and I just wanted to make sure you found the place OK. Mr O'Mada don’t want another incident like last winter’s, so you might say I’m checkin up to see you’re OK. There’s always the phone. Isn't one. Ma Bell hasn’t got around to servicing these little islands. The coffee was ready. I found a couple mugs, poured, and sat down at the table with Mr Haliburton. Incident? The shopkeeper slowly poured three heaping spoons of sugar into his mug. He blew over the rim, and took a cautious sip. Hot. But good. He had blazing red cheeks. I noticed the twinkle in his eyes. Yeah, the incident. That’s what Mr O'Mada called it. Don’t know too much about it myself, even though I do know most things in these parts. Lotta cops for a couple days. Down from Huntsville, organized a search party, out looking for missing girl. Paid us, too. Fifty bucks a day. I never met the girl. Heard she was a nice lady, good lookin. Think she was an archytect from Montreal, stayin for the weekend while Mr O'Mada was down south. She just up and went. Nobody never saw her again. At least around here. Funny stuff, cause all her stuff was still here when Mr O'Mada came back, but she had disappeared. Gone like the snow. Cops completely baffled. But there’s nothin new about that. Shit, the corporal’s younger’n my cousin Tim. And you say this, incident, happened last year? Key-rect. Just about this time.? He looked up and to the right. ?In fact, just this time, this weekend, last year.? He took a drink. ?So I figgered I better check up on you. See how you’re doin. Yeah, amazing coincidence, all right. But whaddya figure. She got lost in the snow? Coulda. Bad storms here in March. Die of exposure fast, then the wolves take care of the remains. Very nice. This sounded like the Perils of Pauline. I offered him a refill. He put up his hands. No, no, gotta get back to town in case the weather socks in. You be careful drivin in that fancy car, now. Don’t get too much traffic up here these days. He got up and started to put on his coat and gloves. One other thing, Mr Haliburton. Yeah? They call this place Skeleton Lake. Any reason for the name? All the other lakes around here have pretty normal names – or Indian names like Boshkung or Skugog. Mr Haliburton looked up from pulling on his galoshes. There was surprise in his dark, deeply set eyes. Dunno. Always been called Skeleton. Some folks think there’s buried treasure around here, that the Lake was discovered by Pirates who came up the Bent River from Muskoka. There’s a lot of rivers that connect Muskoka to Georgian Bay. I had obviously hit upon a topic of interest. Sure you won’t have another coffee? I brought some muffins up from Toronto. I pulled a bag of blueberry muffins from the fridge. I can mike these in 20 seconds. Well, maybe. He paused, then started to take his boots off. I pressed on. Pirates? Seems a little farfetched, doncha think?. I poured him another cup of coffee as the microwave beeped. The muffins were hot and aromatic. I put them on the table. Mr Haliburton sat down again. Yep, I gotta admit Pirates do seem a little remote for this neck of the woods. Now, I can see then burying their treasure on some place close to the ocean, like that island off Nova Scotia where they’re always diggin and findin nothin, but this ain’t close to the West Indies, not close at all, he applied a liberal spread of butter to a hot muffin and bit in with undisguised relish. No, I wouldn’t personally ascribe to the pirate theory, he said with is mouth full, but lots of folks at Tonelin think itid be good for business if we could find some old pirate relics around here. Now I’m not sayin that we’d go and plant some chests or swords or maybe an old map, no, but..., he paused to clear his mouth with a slurp from his mug, but maybe somethin like pirate days during the summer, with a big old galleon on the lake, and all us gettin dressed up... sorta like pirate week, y’know to attract the tourists. We’re a bit off the beaten path up here, y’know. He finished one muffin and reached for another. I held out the plate. Yeah, that might be a good marketing ploy, I said. I’m in advertising myself, with Baker Rubicam in Toronto. We’ve done a few promotions like yours, on a far larger scale, of course. They work OK if you’ve got lots of bucks to sell the idea. Mr Haliburton snorted. A bit of muffin stuck to his nose. Money’s the one thing our town ain’t got a lot of. So pirates probably never visited here. What else could explain anybody calling this perfectly normal lake Skeleton? Mr Haliburton leaned forward, like he was afraid someone would overhear his confession. Probably named the Lake after dinosaur bones. There’s lots around here. Heck, you can see ‘em for yourself on the way home. Just head south around the lake, past Windemere, and there it is... Muskoka Dinosaur Park. Lotta old bones. Went there myself, oh, about thirty years ago, now. He finished the last muffin. OK, son, I gotta get now. Lookit the time. Nine-thirty. My missus is gonna get the cops after me. After Mr Haliburton had left, I cleaned the dishes and wandered into Adam’s study. The sun was brilliant through the glass dome over the telescope, turning the room a soft yellow as the light filtered through the tinted glass. I checked out the telescope, a big, fat Celestron packing an 18-inch reflector with a cassegrain focus, and wondered if the night would be clear so I could take a look. Adam’s log book was on a small table beside the viewing chair. I flipped through to the last entry. September 30, 1989. 2 AM. Cloudless sky. Excellent view of Sagittarius Constellation. Excellent photo of star clusters at the edge of Milky Way. Unusually high incidence of meteor showers. Wolf Comet barely visible beside Saturn at 3:45. Longitude of Perihelion 19° 21 .6, Longitude of Node 206° 29 .1, Inclination 25° 12 .3. Should near AP in six months. I was disappointed that Adam kept these kinds of notes. Brief. Succinct. A nightly shorthand that probably would make sense when condensed into a summer of observations. Still, I was slightly interested in the scientific reality of the entries, and there was the cryptic comment about a comet called The Wolf. I hadn’t heard of it. I decided to try and track it down in the astronomy section of Adam’s well-stocked library. It was nearly noon when I found the reference in Young’s Manual of Astronomy, an antique text published in 1904. The Wolf Comet was named after the German astrophysicist Dr. Max Wolf of Heidelberg. In 1891 Wolf revolutionized the technique of hunting asteroids by mounting a wide-angle camera to his telescope and opening the aperture for two or three hours. Stars remain fixed, but a planet would move appreciably and leave a discernible streak on the exposed negative. In a ten-year period Wolf discovered nearly 300 asteroids in the gap between Mars and Jupiter, the gap where the Solar System’s missing planet should have been. As for Wolf himself, there was little of a personal note, regardless of his discoveries of asteroids, and the solitary small comet which bears his name. He discovered it on July 5, 1898. With a period of 6.33 years, the comet had returned like clockwork for its 15th flyby since Wolf had first found and named it. I was getting hungry, so I gave up my research and went back to the kitchen to make a sandwich and grab a beer. I ate quickly, finished the beer, and decided to take a walk around the property with my video camera. Outside was clear, brilliant, and bone-numbingly cold. The thermometer on the wide porch outside the living room read -22 Celsius, and it would have been worse had there been a wind chill factor. Adam’s property was large and surprisingly dense, even with the winter trees grasping at the sky with their withered old ladies’ arms and frozen black trunks. The house was set in a slight depression between two long outcroppings of the ancient granite shield, and from the broad front lawn the only visible distance was across the frozen face of Skeleton Lake to the flat rocky shore some five miles distant. The place was deserted. And quiet. Very quiet. I walked out to the end of the island and took some footage of the front of the house, slowly panning around to include the broad white expanse of lake. I turned back and walked around the west side of the house. At the back was another large clearing, now covered with a lawn of snow. The raised portion in the middle of the yard was obviously rampant with flowers during the summer, and the clearing was fringed with densely packed birches, barely spread enough to permit easy passage through the silvery trunks. From the outside the observatory dome was even more impressive, and the weak early Spring sun had barely managed to melt the snow on the back of the pyramid, even with the heat from the room leaking through the roof. I moved back to the perimeter of birches and did a slow pan of the cabin’s northern side. From out here I could see Adam’s ingenious method for opening the front two panes of glass to allow the telescope direct access to the stars, and the solid glass walls sliced out into the yard like the prow of some crystal galleon with its compass set for Arcturus. By now the cold was penetrating even my heavy clothes, and I kept shooting as I turned towards the back door. Just as I turned I thought I could see motion in the study out of the corner of my eye, but when I looked again there was nothing. Must be a reflection off the snow, I thought, and tramped through the snow up to the back door. Hellooo, I heard a voice call out just as I was opening the door. I turned and there was a girl, lightly dressed in a ski jacket and slacks, puffing her way up the back path. Hello, I called back. C’mon up, it’s freezing! She joined me on the back porch just as my gloved fingers had fumbled the door open. I held it open for her and she bounced lightly into the kitchen. I followed, feeling bulkily self-conscious. Hang your coat up there, I’ll just be a minute, I said as I quickly shed my overcoat and jacket. I put the video camera on a chair. So, welcome to Skeleton Lake. My name’s Pamela. I live in the cabin right over - well, you can’t see it from here. Hi, I’m Pete. I’m - Just visiting for the weekend in Adam’s Palace. I saw your car last night. We share the same driveway. Yeah, right. So, Pete, how y’doin? Great, Whatta place. You must be freezing. Can I get you a coffee, beer, wine? Joint? She laughed. It was musical like icicles falling in the warm Spring sun. I’m not cold, thermal longjohns under this. But a beer sounds good. So does a joint, she added. Great, I’ll get organized. You know where the living room is? Sure. I’ve been here lots. Wanna hear some music? All right. Gimmie a sec. I pulled a couple Heinekins from the fridge, got a pair of mugs from the freezer and deposited them on the coffee table. I went to the bedroom and returned with a pre-rolled doobie. We sat down opposite each other. I opened the beers, poured, and sat back. She had put my Dram Boogie tape in the deck, and the opening bars to their outrageous cover of Whole Lotta Love started pounding through the room. I spoke up. This is a real friendly place. You’re my second visitor today. Yeah? Yeah. Mr Haliburton woke me up around eight or 8:30. Damned early. I took a swig. Oh, that old fart. What’d he want? Nothin much. Probably just checking up. Ate all my muffins, told me about the woman who went missing last year, and tried to convince me the lake was named by pirates. Christ, what a stupid old jerk. Pirates? That sounds like another Lions Club fantasy. They’d do anything to put this joint on the tourist map. She leaned forward, grabbed the joint, pulled out a lighter and lit up. Yeah, I told him I thought the idea was a little farfetched. He agreed, but then claimed it was because of the dinosaur bones in the area. She laughed merrily, blowing out a thick cloud of smoke. Dinosaur bones? He’s losing his marbles. C’mon. No, that’s what he said.? I took the joint and inhaled deeply. There’s no dinosaur relics around here. Jeez, what these guys will tell a city slicker. So you tell me. Why is this pond called Skeleton Lake? OK, but the reason is so mundane you’ll laugh. Look, I’ll show you. Adam’s got an aerial map around here. She got up and led me into the kitchen. There, on the wall beside the back door was an aerial photo of the Muskoka Lake complex. Here’s Skeleton Lake. Notice anything unusual about it? Well, I looked closer, there’s a lot of little islands running along this section here. Yeah, and? And the Lake is sorta shaped like a body. A fat body. And? She took another toke. Hell, I dunno. The islands are like a skeleton? Bingo, boy. Next time you’re outside take a better look at the rocky ridges. This is precambrian shield country, and all these outcroppings are all striated north-south. The indians thought they looked like ribs, but the injun word for ribs sounds a lot like fuckinup, so the first white settlers renamed ribs to skeleton. I laughed. She handed me the stub of the joint. I took one last toke. You’re pretty funny. I like that. T’wernt nuthin, she said. We went back to the living room. Why doncha make a fire. It’s a little chilly in here? Good idea, I said. There was still wood left over from last night, and soon I had a cheery blazer going. I just love a fire. You can stare at it forever. And keep warm at the same time. Poor man's TV. So, how do you know Adam. You’re not one of his boyfriends, are you? Boyfriends? Hell, no, I’ve never even met the guy. Nah, he and the old man were war buddies together. I told her the story of his pre-flight rituals. He hasn’t changed one bit. Whaddya mean? He’s always doing weird stuff around here in the summer. Same thing, every night, regular like clockwork. For instance? Well, there’s the telescope, you’ve seen that? Yeah, great machine. Old Adam sleeps all day, gets up around six, fiddles around for hours with that big bookcase, and then plays with the telescope from about midnight to I don’t know when. Every night. Without fail. How do you know all this? Pete, everybody around here knows about Adam’s crazy schedule. It’s part of the regular gossip, that and his boyfriends from Montreal. Girlfriends. Boyfriends, man, he’s as gay as they come. What about the girl who went missing last year? That was no girl, that was one of his boys. Longhaired boys. But Mr Haliburton - Don’t know shit. He’s as straight as they come. Adam’s a rich guy, and that counts for something out here. Hally either don’t know, or was bullshittin you. Crazy. The guy did disappear, though. No trace whatsoever. But that’s easy to do during Spring thaw. Haliburton said it happened this time last year. That ice looks thick enough to me. Oh yeah, it’s safe enough here at the shoreline. Water’s pretty shallow out to this island. But out there?, she waved her arm out the front window, ?out there it gets treacherous. You can’t trust this lake, there are spots where warm currents from local geothermal cracks in the shield’s crust weaken the ice so it won’t support a human’s weight. OK, thanks for the tip. No problem. You city boys gotta be careful out here in the sticks. She looked at her watch. God, it’s after one. I gotta go and pick up my mother at the hairdressers. Big bridge party tonight. Yeah, OK, I’ve got some stuff to do, too. Like what? I’m writing a book. Groovy. What about? Man’s inhumanity to man. No, seriously, it’s a collection of impressions about Toronto. I’ve only been here, oh, almost two years. Yeah? Where ya from? Vancouver. Beautiful city. Been there once. For Expo. Love those mountains, jeez, you could ski all day. You a skier? Fanatic. Get to Whistler? No, I was there during the summer. Got a few friends who have gone, though. Say it’s tops. You ski? Nah, I’m a copywriter. Work for an ad agency. We don’t believe in exercise. That’s why I golf. Stupid game. Easier’n falling off a mountain. Forget it. She was at the back door, putting on her jacket. Thanks for the beer. And the dope. Don’t get much of that good stuff up here. I’ll see you later. Drop by tomorrow. I’m leaving around three. We’ll do lunch. Is that Toronto talk? I laughed. Yeah, guess it is. Altho I usually say ‘Can’t today. Too busy. Put it in the mail’. OK, Pete, take it easy. And watch out for the wolves. She laughed and left. I took my video camera off the kitchen table, put it in the bedroom, and went to the study. Had Paula been the reflection in the window? All was quiet. I looked around, went over to the telescope, but could see nothing. The only thing amiss was a book which had fallen from the west bookcase - don’t ask me how, ‘cause I didn’t look there when I was researching the Wolf Comet - I picked it up and put it on the oak table. Everything else seemed just as I had left it, so I decided to get out my computer and do a little work on my novel while the sun was still relatively high overhead. This time I set up in the living room, plugging in at the coffee table in front of the couch, and turned on my Compaq portable. It was some time later when my stomach brought me out of my writer’s reverie. I looked at my watch and was surprised to find it was already 5:30. I hit the computer’s Save function key and stretched as the Compaq crunched the new text from RAM to the built-in hard drive. I checked the files before shutting down to DOS. Christ, 38K of copy. About 12 pages. A good session, and I felt drained and relaxed from the creative surge. A little food would get the blood sugar going, but first some music on Adam’s incredible sound system. I went to his well-stocked CD library, mostly classical stuff, and selected Pachobel’s Canon from a fairly esoteric collection of romantic music. I loaded the player and flicked the system on with the Bang & Olaufson controller. The room was filled with the husky opening notes of Pachelbel’s best-known work, and I headed to the kitchen for food. I wandered back into the living room with a bottle of wine, a plate of liver pate, a basket filled with crusty rolls, and a small bottle of sweet baby gherkins. The music swirled around me as I ate and walked around the room, checking out Adam’s art and books, bringing me full circle to the video setup in the room’s southeastern corner. The TV was a large screen, high rez Sony, with a topline Sony VCR and a shelf full of recorded tapes. Maybe a movie tonight, I thought to myself, as I scanned the spines in Adam’s collection. No flicks, mostly business stuff, obviously tapes of the buildings Adam had designed. I pulled one down marked simply 9/1/88 and fed it into the VCR. The tape opened with a fairly long shot of Adam at his telescope. He was making some adjustments and ignoring the camera altogether. Then I heard a man’s voice asking him how to zoom the lens. Adam looked up, and walked to the camera. I could hear him explaining something, then the scene jumped forward, framing the telescope and the seat beside it. Adam walked back into the picture, sat down at the telescope, made a few minor adjustments, and started talking in an artificially loud voice. What I’m going to do tonight is link the video camera to the telescope. My purpose is to recreate the technique developed by Max Wolf to discover those asteroids and small comets overlooked by the large observatories. I’ll shut down the Celestron’s computerized autodrive and leave the tape running at slow speed from midnight to 3 AM. Like Wolf discovered, any small object, given a long enough exposure time, will show up as a line of light against the stars, which, because of their distance, show no relative motion. The tape will then be digitized, fed into a computer, and any motion, even the slightest, will be recognized by a custom program I’ve developed. There was the usual zipping sound as the camera was turned off, and the picture was almost immediately replaced by a static shot of the night sky. “Good”, I said to myself, “let’s settle in for three hours of star-studded television.” I jabbed the stop button, rewound the tape, and replaced it in its sleeve. I decided to check out the tape I had shot that day, so I retrieved my camera, popped the tape, and loaded it in the VCR. It started off with the long pans of the front yard, and the whiteness of the scene was shockingly pure in the now-dark living room. “Good, good, nice pan there.” I liked to critique my hand-held technique. “What’s that?” The right edge of the frame was fluctuating between crystal clear and slightly fogged. “Jeez, my breath. It’s so fuckin cold my breath is rolling up around the lens.” I laughed. The frame had moved to the rocky escarpment to the left of the house, and then the picture started to characteristically jump as I moved forward with the tape still rolling. The scene looked like one of the bad home movies the old man used to take with his 8mm. I laughed again. The handheld technique was now hot in ad circles, especially for beer commercials. I refilled my wine glass, killing the bottle, and lurched with the picture around to the back of the cabin. Another slow pan of now-familiar landscape, a close-up of the observatory’s servo motors, and then back to the house, and there it was again, on the screen, a slight flickering in the study. I rewound and ran it forward at half speed. Just a flicker, nothing solid. I rewound again, and inched the tape forward frame by frame. “Too bad this sucker doesn’t have zoom capabilities”, I thought to myself after not being able to make out the fuzzed image for the tenth time. “Christ, this is right out of fuckin Blow Up.” It was true, the odd flicker could be almost anything you wanted it to be. A hand with a gun coming out of the trees. But no body on the ground. And shit, if I was going to be David Hemmings, where the hell was Vanessa Redgrave? I pulled the cassette, flicked off the TV, and went back into the study. The red book was still on the table. Nothing had changed. I could see where Adam and his unknown assistant had set up the camera on its tripod to do the intro for the sky taping. It was pitch black outside. And getting cool inside. I felt a little woozy after the wine, so I decided to hit the sack early and get up early. Tomorrow was Sunday, and it was time to head back to the Big Smoke. Sunday morning I felt slightly hung over. It didn’t seem likely that Paula was going to drop her drawers at lunch, at our second meeting, if she came over, so I decided to get rid of some of the hangover with a fast refreshing shower. The bathroom was small, but the shower water was hot. Very hot. I let it run on my chest and stomach until the temperature was just right, then I put my hand over the back of my neck and turned into the flow. I removed my hand, and felt the familiar tingle move over my scalp. Bliss. My mind faded back to the scene in the back yard and then I could actually see into the study, and there before the bookcases was a young woman, dark hair, tight nightgown, reaching for a book, no, holding a book... I arched my head back slightly into the shower water... I’m zooming in closer, she doesn’t see me, I’m on her face, she turns to look and she’s a wolf, she’s got a wolf face and I can feel wolves in the birches behind me, no, I’m a wolf with wolves in the forest in the deep snow and we’re running, we can smell the blood, we’re in a frenzy of hunger and bloodlust and it's closer now, closer, and I can see her breath in the frozen air and the deep blue of water and night sky with the Milky Way and the frozen cold, cold all around and light above, coming through the ice and I’m clawing upward, trying to get out of my clothes and below it's golden, sparking like doubloons at the bottom of a Bahamian bay, and then the water turns neutral on my neck, and the rush of the present comes back like a dream, and I turn to face the spray and reach for the soap to clean the dream away. Thirty minutes later I’m lounging on cushions in front of a roaring fire in the living room, with Steely Dan booming on the stereo and a truly gigantic bowl of cereal in my hand. I finished the bowl, got out of my nightgown and into my shirt and jeans, and found myself back in the study, checking out Adam’s incredible collection. His bookcases filled in the west and east walls of the room, with architecture and astronomy taking up most of the east wall. The west wall was a real hodgepodge of titles, from philosophical works to the occult to general science to great masters of art and literature. While the books on the east wall were obviously arranged alphabetically according to topic and author, the west wall revealed no apparent structure. Some books were even put in upside down — that is, the publisher’s logo was at the top, rather than at the bottom of the spine. It seemed unusual, knowing that Adam was a fanatic for neatness and a sticker for a place for everything, and everything in its place, but even anal neurotics must have one little area where they can mess without guilt. Still, it seemed out of character, like the obsessive guy in The Odd Couple had let his car fill up with empty pop cans and cigarette packages. It was around 11:30 when I discovered Adam’s work journal. I wanted to have a joint, but a lack of ashtrays in the study was a pretty good sign Adam doesn’t smoke, so rather than getting a dish from the kitchen I got up to check out the drawers in a small writing desk in the corner of the room beside the fireplace. I didn’t find anything suitable, and I was just about to close the drawer when I noticed a small, leatherbound book. It looked interesting so I took it back with me to the kitchen. I decided to have a coffee, so I left the book on the kitchen table and busied myself with the Melitta. I had just turned it on when there was a knock at the door. The top of Paula’s pert face filled the small window. C’mon in, it’s unlocked. Hey, hey, what you say? Have a good night? Good and quiet. Jeez, I was bagged. Flaked out around nine. You? Christ, was I stoned. Been months since I had a real bomber. Mom musta figgered I was drunk, the way I drove back from town. I got home and ate like crazy. Marijuana munchies. Then I took a nap. Then I went out. Had a good time. Coffee. Just makin a fresh pot. Excellent idea. She flopped down in a kitchen chair. ?Here, I brought cha this?. She pulled a yellowed newspaper clipping from her shirt pocket. It’s the missing guy story from The Bluffer. The what? The Bluffer. Oh, the Tonelin Bluff Examiner. Our local weekly. We call it The Bluffer cause it’s mostly full of local business crap. Check the date. She took the paper and folded it out on the table. Be right there. Cream and sugar? Just cream. I poured the coffee, mixed in the cream, and sat down beside her. March 15, 1989. A year ago today. Well, you know what they said to Julius: Beware The Ides. It’s also close to St. Pat’s Day. You Irish? Actually, yes. Although the only word I can do with the heavy brogue is potato: Pah-tahy-tah. Sure and all that... Yeah, you’re really Irish.. Peter O’Reilly. It’s a good, true Irish name. You Catholic? Nah, Agnostic. Then maybe you aren’t gay. Adam only likes Catholic boys. I’m not gay. Nor Catholic. Nor one of Adam’s boys. The only time I’ve ever seen his face was on a tape I screened last night. You looked at Adam’s tapes? Yeah, why? Be careful: wipe your fingerprints off it. Put it back right where you found it. He’s nuts about where everything goes around here. I didn’t fool with it. It was nothing. Three hours of tape of the Milky Way, or something. That’s his fantasy. What? His star. Adam’s Star, he calls it. He claims there’s a lost planet somewhere in the asteroid belt. Looks for it all the time. No kidding. Paula finished her coffee. "That was good. Nothin like a little speed to get the heart pumpin. Mind if I have another? I’ll get it. No, I’m not helpless. Wanta cig? Sure. There’s a saucer over there I’m using as an ashtray. Got it. Another cuppa for you? No, thanks. Paula refilled her mug and sat down again. She noticed the book on the table. Nice cover. It’s Adam’s. Shit, you’re playing with fire. What’s it about? Don’t know yet. It looks like his journal. No shit. Wow, lookit this cover. She had turned the book over. The red leather had a single embossed symbol on it, a mystical symbol like the stuff Jimmy Page used to put on the cover of Led Zeppelin albums. Looked at it yet? No, I just found it in the study. Let’s. She went into the living room and I went to the bedroom to get my dope. She flipped through the pages while I rolled a number. We lit up and sat together on the couch like a couple of conspirators. Most of the entries were unintelligible astronomical calculations, but nearer the end the numbers and drawings were replaced by a series of neatly handwritten entries. Man, don’t architects have great handwriting?, Paula marvelled as we flipped through the pages. Hey, stop there, what’s that? She put the book down and I grabbed it. The date at the top was July 5, 1989. I read The entry out loud. The idea, when it first came, was purely intuitive: I noticed the same arrangement in my studies of the asteroid belt - there is a logic to it, a sort of quantum opportunity for the planet, I’ll call it Adam’s Planet, to regroup from the dust belt. What’d I tell you, Paula looked triumphant. C’mon, let’s go on further. I riffled the pages and stopped. The next entry was dated July 8, 1989. I’m convinced the same quantum forces that ripped apart the planet can be harnessed here on an intellectual level, say with my library. I have begun to think, consciously, about the formal arrangement of all this knowledge. Unlike libraries, with their logical, impotent classifications, I am now convinced that by linking the contents of my books in a specific spatial grid, in a multi-level connection, I could release some as-yet-unknown power. I will begin tonight. The next few entries were essentially the same. The simple rearrangement of his books became the urge to transfix him in its limitations. The idea was patently insane. Adam's confessions were becoming more sporadic now. The next one was dated August 21, 1989. The problem is now beginning to interfere with my work. I wonder if this is the correct path, but when I arrive home I cannot avoid this obsession. Only to walk in the room sets free 10,000 minds, all of whom seem to talk to me at once. Yet within the cacophony I knew I could make out signals, certain frequencies dominating for short periods of time. The thought has occurred to me that it may not be an arrangement of ideas to unlock this puzzle, but rather a more basic, powerful paradigm. Like a certain ordering of publisher’s logos. Or building a map of my Planet using the colours and design of book spines. This guy’s even wonkier than I thought, Paula said. She leaned against my right shoulder and pointed with her finger. Check out where he’s going now. Here’s his entry for September 1, 1989.? I have completed a complex design based on each book’s relative height and width. Again, the results are negative. I feel closer to the truth, however. My resolve has not been broken. The journal continued with an almost Kafkaesque devotion all through the summer of 1989 and into the Fall. Then the tine changed. His handwriting appeared different. I read on, both of us now caught up in the obsession of his ideas. September 15, 1989, 7:45 PM: I think I have broken through the code. The idea occurred to me earlier this week to codify my collection based on classical mathematics. I went to Toronto on Wednesday with my library listed on a computer disk, and after a few hours of computation I have managed to work out a simple pythagorean solution. Tonight, at eight o’clock, I will stand alone in front of the west wall, with a single volume in my hand. There will be one space left in the centre of the bookcase. I will slip the book into its place in history. There was a space, then the writing continued, this time even more childlike: September 15, 9:15PM: I entered the book. It remained in my hand, but everything else in the room disappeared. It was numbingly cold. I pulled the book back. Immediately everything returned. I looked around. Nothing had changed. I looked at my watch. An hour had passed. I put the book down, got out a bottle, and poured myself a drink. What had happened? Nothing. There was nothing. Except 60 lost minutes. Incredible. The equation had worked! It is fantastically exhilarating! But what had happened? I must reconstruct the scene.. I put the book in... and then there was nothing... I pulled the book out... And I’m back here. An hour later. It all seems too dreamlike. Think about it. Try it again. Pretend you’re watching yourself. First, put the book in... but not all the way in! That’s right. Everything disappeared as soon as the book started to fill the gap in the shelf. I didn’t put it in far enough. Paula and I looked at each other and laughed out loud. Too much, man, too much. Crazy ideas. Goes to show you never really know who your neighbours are. Could he get locked up for this? They don’t lock up writers. Yet. I said. Who knows what this stuff is really all about. He’s obviously making it up. Great ideas. I think it’s silly. Hey, you never know what’s silly or not. Yesterday I thought I videotaped somebody in the study but there was nobody there. Really? C’mon, you’re tryin to freak me out. No, for real, I’ve got the tape. Wanta see for yourself? Cool. I got the tape and set up the equipment. I fast forwarded to the point where I thought I saw the flicker. See? See that flicker there? No. I rewound the tape. OK, I’ll play it frame by frame. Look past the glass at the bookcase. Oh, yeah, there. But that was nothing. Tape dropout or whatever they call it. I bought a cheap tape once and half of what I recorded played back wiggley. You can’t say the people were wiggling. No?, I admitted, but this is slightly different. After you left I looked in the study and a book had fallen from the shelf. Not the book? Whaddya mean? I mean the book Adam’s taking about. Let’s look. The book was still on the table. I picked it up. What’s it called? I dunno. It’s in German. Something by Maximilian Wolf. Christ, this is Max Wolf, the guy who first discovered all those fuckin asteroids that Adam’s so nuts about. Asteroids? Sure, Paula, they're Adam’s Planet. Except it’s all broken up. He’s trying to put it back together. You’re crazy, man. This has got to be a put-on. The fuckin pirates of sanity have stolen your mind. Nevertheless, this is the book. Put it back. What? Put it back in the bookcase. Let’s see what happens. I dunno. C’mon, nothing can happen. People don’t disappear. Yeah, OK. Sure. The book was still in my hand. I stood in front of the bookcase. Carefully, I put the book to the slot and pushed it all the way in. It clicked like a key in a lock. I tried to turn to Paula, but my mind froze as the emptiness of space flowed over and through my consciousness. Clearing Saturn's rings, Adam howled closer. © 1991 Rick McGrath SHORT FICTION Pre-Computer Fiction Burnin Love A bookstore owner, crazy photograher and Elvis' mistress on the day The King died... Type: Occult Adman A day at work with an advertising copywriter and his erratic colleagues... Type: Satire Nutshell Two old friends reminsce about the past in a sleazy bar. Then the story unfolds... Type: Existential Jackson Whole A night in the life of a group of zany businessmen... Type: Humour 7th Sun A hitchiker meets a windsurfer on Hwy 1 near Cape Kennedy. Does the strange stone have anything to do with the Challenger explosion? Type: Occult Post-Computer Fiction Possession A hacker discovers an interesting collection of emails. Type: Psychotic