Return of the Trickster Eden Robinson (sight word readers TXT) 📖

saxophone-y jazz replaced the radio host. Georgina in his head was now annoyed that not only had he killed everyone she loved and left her exiled in another universe, he was forcing her to listen to Kenny G.

—

Dusk. His eyes narrowed to slits as the world became shadows. The street lights blinked on. A white cargo van parked beside his truck. Coy wolves underneath their human skins. He put the bottle down on the floor, not sure why he didn’t want to spill any of it when he wasn’t coming back. Three men in black with black baseball caps dropped from the van to surround him.

One of them yanked the driver’s side door open and he slumped out. “For fuck’s sake,” he said. The three dragged him to the van and opened the sliding door. Ghosts milled around. David was there. Why was David there?

They threw him in. The van’s floor was hard. One of them tied his hands behind his back and the ghosts around David paused to look at him. David screamed through his gag. They gagged Jared too, the cloth cutting into his cheeks. Two of the men stayed in the back.

“Get lost!” the one who was the driver said as ghosts filled the cab, making the radio channels surge up and down, loud then quiet then squealing with feedback.

“Turn it off!” one of the guys in the back yelled.

The ride was jerky, as if they were rolling over cobblestones, probably a bad wheel bearing, and then one of the men hauled off and kicked him, and Jared rolled on the hard floor.

“He’s off limits,” the driver snapped.

The ghosts all returned to David, resting their hands on him, pleading silently with their eyes as David screamed until all the muscles in his neck corded.

Murder van, Jared thought. A van to be murdered in.

The man who’d kicked him bent over and hissed, “Your dad died squealing like a fat fucking pig.”

—

The compound was farther than he remembered, a remote lot that used to be a farm before the Tsawwassen ferry terminal was built. A single grey Honda Civic was parked near the entrance. Had the coy wolves all driven to Mave’s apartment when Georgina called them? What had happened to all their vehicles? Were they towed?

Two of the men dragged David past a blue tarp that hung between two trailers. The other man sat with his gun pointed at Jared. A Glock 19. Glocks were cheap and went bang when she wanted, but his mom didn’t really care for pistols; they were a stopgap measure until she got to her rifles. The tarps formed passages between the trailers, and he didn’t remember the route. Cedar had guided him in the time he had come, and Jared had left in a blind panic. The trailers and modular units were probably a maze on purpose, so morons like him would be lost if they accidentally wandered in. The man holding the pistol on him was in his mid-twenties, if coy wolves aged like humans. Did they? His grim expression and his hateful eyes. The coy wolf beneath his skin snarled.

A light clicked on, filling a window with a golden glow. Another light clicked on in another trailer. Jared’s breath began to mist with each exhalation, a pale cloud like a cartoon bubble empty of words. His jacket was too light for the cold. Sobering. The two other men came back, chatting, and then each hooked him under an arm so they could haul him along, his feet trailing on the ground. The man with the gun brought up the rear.

Security floodlights clicked on as they made their way through the compound. The lights clicked off behind them. Hearing something rustle in the darkness, something that didn’t trigger the security lights, they paused. The rain started again, a soft hiss in the puddles, heavy plops on the tarps.

“I don’t smell anything,” the guy with the gun said. “Keep moving.”

Deep in the maze, there was a root cellar with steel doors. The man with a gun opened one heavy side and then the other and there were wooden steps. Jared heard David mumbling through his gag somewhere inside. Dirt walls. Dirt floor. Mr. Jaks had built a root cellar, but it flooded every spring and summer. The men wanted to throw him down the stairs, but Gun Guy said Granny Georgina wouldn’t like it.

They half carried him down. The cellar was lit by a naked bulb. David was in the middle of the floor, in a chair that looked as though it had been an electric chair in the Dark Ages, his wrists bound to the arms with leather straps and his legs duct-taped to the chair legs. Extension cords ran down the dirt walls to a table with a machete, some paring knives, an electric knife, a deep fryer and a stack of paper plates with matching napkins. Right, Jared thought. Georgina and her cannibalistic tendencies. Jared’s memories of being cracked and ripped open, of watching his body eaten. Her enthusiasm for warm, raw flesh. The ghosts finally seemed to notice that David was in trouble. They milled around, confused. David jerked against the restraints. Gun Guy closed the steel doors and locked them and then paused on the bottom step, sniffing. Jared’s cheek rested against the cold dirt.

Gun Guy holstered his gun. He stood over Jared then grabbed a paring knife off the table and cut the gag loose. He slapped Jared’s face.

“Hey,” Gun Guy said. “Sober up.”

One of the other men took off David’s gag and he shouted over and over for help. They laughed, mimicking him. They brought the deep fryer to one side of David’s chair and plugged it into one of the extension cords. Gun Guy grabbed a folding chair and sat near Jared.

“What is he?” Gun Guy said to Jared, pointing his chin at David.

“Dunno,” Jared said.

“Hey, Freak,” Gun Guy said to David. “What are you?”

“He’s been stalking me for months,” Jared said.

“That’s