The Conduit Chapter 4: Petunia Wept

North Bay 2023: 

 The beam from her Iphone flashlight did little to penetrate the darkness. Lori walked out of her sandal twice before stopping and taking a shaky breath of the cool night air, mirroring the one her father was taking on his small porch at that same moment.  She looked skyward. 

Stars blazed quietly above and she took her usual solace in their presence. Lori searched out the familiar constellations as her heart rate slowed. Under Orion's gaze she felt  her anger seeping from her. Hadn’t she brought the camera to her dad for him to take a look at it? She wanted him to open it up and give it a once over, so why did it feel like he was sticking his picks and tools into her skin when she saw what he was doing? The red fugue that took over her wouldn’t allow logic in, and she stood puzzling over the details. Something flashed across the road in front of her. Ink on a shadow. Her eyes barely perceived it. The forest was suddenly alive with the crashing sound of an animal fleeing from her scent. In seconds it was once more a silent audience to her retreat to the bus stop. Lori squinted. Her mind filled in the holes left in her imagination with nightmare creatures. It spit out an image of teeth sinking into her bare calf, dragging her into darkness. A single, bloody Adidas slide the only evidence the police would find of her. 

Then dad would really be alone. Of course he probably already feels that way after you freaked out. 

Lori shook off the thought. She tightened her grip on the bag holding the camera. There were no wolves this close to the city. It was probably someone’s cat chasing after mice or a bird. And anyway even if she got attacked she could use the Speed Graphic to fight off an animal. Lori gave the bag a few test swings even as a small part of her hated the thought of damaging the antique.

It’s been through enough tonight. 

She swallowed. A wet gulp in silence, She caught sight of the Miligan house. She remembered how the man leered at her. 

Standing on the dark road where street lights didn’t reach it was easy for her mind to warp the events; the stranger contorted into an eight foot tall demon with eyes like embers as it tried to snatch her up and drag her into its hellscape beyond the window. 

Not me, just the camera. She remembered how those eyes bulged when he saw the bag.

Lori shook her head. “It was a guy. Just a guy. Some transient who was just as shocked to see you. That’s why his eyes popped like that” Lori’s whisper was a harsh blade cutting through the silence. “Stop being a little baby and get moving.” 

Lori didn’t move. She was rooted to the spot at the foot of the driveway. A familiar driving pulse to look at the house beat just below her temples. Just as fellow drivers are drawn to look at the mangled metal of a car wreck as they pass by, so too was Lori drawn to stare at the world-worn murder scene where Rita’s life was taken. 

Orange light danced in the forest beyond the house as well as in tiny pin pricks in the basement. She could hear the distant rabble of a bush party. She heard the timeless sound of someone going into a coughing fit before the stench of weed invaded her nostrils. Lori’s cheeks burned. The anger at being shaken from an intimate moment alone simmered beneath the terror that she might run into a drunk college boy. Lori’s heel dragged as she quickened her pace. It let out an ugly scraping sound that she imagined gave away where she was almost instantly. Lori knew what went on at those parties. She scanned the area around her with her cell phone before turning off the light. A girl walking alone at night. What was she thinking? 

Casiopia’s starlight drew Lori on as she counted the seconds. She hadn't seen anyone coming up the long driveway, so she figured she should be safe enough soon. 

Someone stumbled behind her. 

A rock skittered by her feet. Her hand was on her flashlight instantly. She tapped the torch icon and spun around. 

The road was empty. 

God Lori you’re losing it. Why did you leave then, if you’re just going to act like a scared little kid? 

She stared into the darkness for a moment longer before turning her attention ahead of her. She could see the halo of light above the trees that belonged to the gas station where the bus would be waiting. She didn’t have far to go. She shifted the weight of the shopping bag to her other hand and kept moving toward the highway sounds and the blazing lights. 

Behind her a man cleared his throat. 

He sounded close. Closer than anyone should have been able to get without her hearing. Lori forced herself not to run. She tapped the screen with her thumb again and the phone app expanded. She keyed out 9-1-1 on the dial pad and held her phone in front of her as if using the light to navigate past the ferns, puddles, and stray beer cans. 

Behind her, the stranger’s stumbling gait sent another stone rocketing into the brush. Under the nighttime songs of peepers and crickets she could hear laboured breathing. His pace quickened. 

Oh god. Oh Jesus this is where I die. She almost tapped the green call button but stayed her hand. A torrent of panic and self admonishment tainted her thoughts. 

It’s just someone walking. It’s not that late, get over yourself. There are other houses on the street. Great idea Lori, call the cops on someone out walking their dog. 

Then why didn’t they have a light? It wasn’t someone with a dog. She could hear the breathing. It moved from laboured to lecherous. As if it wheezed with a desire to grab her. To cut the shorts off her and pull her into the murky stink of the bog beyond the road. Her sandals flying off and ending up with one of those yellow evidence tags next to them; The Gundam Wing T-shirt a brutal contrast to the orange and yellow leaves around her. 

 Lori could almost see the flash from the police camera as it documented her broken and bruised body stuffed into the culvert. 

“Their blood sings through the conduit, yours will too..” The man’s voice whispered in her ear. 

Lori bolted, a sob hitching in her throat. She took ragged lungfuls of air as she tore toward the last hope for help she had. She tried to scream, Instead she got a breathless wail. She whipped her head around, overcome by the urge to see if her would-be attacker had started running too. She replayed the words whispered in his dry, papery voice. It was impossible how close they were. 

In the darkness behind her, a figure stood. His face was a black circle in the receding light of her phone. He was too thin. Lori’s mind briefly flashed a memory of her naked body in her dorm house mirror. Too-thin arms hanging off an emaciated frame. 

His old clothes seemed to swallow the man’s skeletal frame. She couldn’t see his face, but a slash of white in the darkness told her he was grinning at her.  

Lori burst from the tree lined road into the expanse of the city limits. Signs of society were a mercy she’d taken for granted only hours ago. She banked left toward the Esso station. Cars whizzed by turning from blazing yellow and white lights to uniform red as they drove down the highway. She waited for a break in traffic before launching across the road to where the bus sat idling. Her breath came in deep gasps as she slowed, looking behind her one more time. Her feet stung. Her calves cramped. The camera in its reusable bag felt like an anchor chaining her to the asphalt.

A woman in cleaning scrubs just about collided with her as she exited the bus. Lori wheezed an apology before flashing her student ID to the driver who regarded her with a half lidded nod over his Tim Horton’s coffee. She collapsed into a seat in the back wishing to God she brought her water bottle. The bus didn’t move. The driver stretched. Lori watched the intersection she’d just burst from waiting to see the too-thin man emerge like some spindly spider crawling to the center of its web. She felt relatively safe in the white light of the bus, but she was also fully exposed. If he came out of the road it wouldn’t be hard to place where she’d run to. She glanced at her phone to see how much time had passed and realized she still had emergency services dialed. She glanced at the bus driver. The guy was built like her dad. She doubted he’d stand much of a chance but he was at least some protection from her attacker. 

He never actually attacked you though.

Fuck that! He was going to and you know it. 

Was he even really there, or did you just creep yourself out enough on a dark road to imagine him?

I didn’t Imagine what I saw this afternoon at that house.

Just take a few slow breaths. If you see him, call the cops, if he doesn’t, no reason to say anything to the driver and make him think you’re the crazy one. 

That was a laugh. Here she was having a conversation with herself trying to feel less crazy. She peered out her window. The glass was cool against her hand and head. 

Lori shut her eyes as her breathing returned to a normal rhythm. 

She realized she was drifting when her phone buzzed in her hand, startling her awake. 

Dad texted: 

“Look I’m sorry. I don’t know what I didI guess maybe I misunderstood what you were wanting me to do with that old camera 😅. I just want to make sure you got home safe. Please text me when you can” 

Lori set the bag down on the seat beside her, casting one more glance around the bus before she replied:

“I got to the bus ok. It’s alright, I'm sorry too Dad. I shouldn’t have stormed out like that. It was stupid. I’m just at the Esso now. Waiting for the driver to finish his timmies and get moving again 🙃🙄 I’ll message you when I’m home-home.” 

She watched the three periods appear and disappear three times in rapid succession. Dad was typing, but he was having trouble getting it out. Finally, as he usually did in these moments. Dean Sellers opted for the direct route. 

“Deal. It was the damnest thing though. Before I finished with it I saw someone had scratched numbers behind the casing. Thot maybe serial number, took me a minute to remember what they actually were, I haven’t had to navigate with a compass for a long time, but they’re map coordinates. If you still want me involved I can look up the location. Just need to see them again.” 

Lori checked her watch. Quarter to nine. She’d barely been at her dad’s for an hour. Guilt twisted her gut. She stared at the darkness beyond the shoulder of the road. At the front of the bus the driver rolled his neck out and got settled in his seat. Lori stood, texting as she did. 

“How about now? Can you come get me?” She moved toward the door. The driver’s questioning glance reflected in the large mirror above him. 

“Forgot something, sorry.” Lori sputtered. The bus driver snorted out a single humourless laugh and opened the rear door for her. The cool night air made goosebumps race across her damp skin. Her toes felt like ice. Her phone buzzed in her hand. 

“Deal.” 

Lori used the bus shelter for cover as the air brakes squealed at her and the bus roared out of the Esso, building speed to merge with the flow of highway traffic as it headed back toward North Bay. A lonely cloud slid across the sky. Lori kept her finger on the call button for 911, but as time dragged on she was getting less convinced the man was following her. She watched the gas station patrons filling their cars. Some still regarded the world with a glassy, panicked eyes over a medical mask. This was her first semester back on site at the university. Lori had seen the same look on some students who were leery of catching COVID. Lori had worn the look herself before getting vaccinated. 

She realized one of the cars in the station was crawling toward her. Behind the windshield the driver peered left and right. She stepped from the bus shelter and waved. Her dad’s cream coloured Tercel picked up speed as he caught sight of her. 

She flung the camera in and folded into the safety of her dad’s car. The dome light illuminated his assessing eyes above the mess of brown beard hair. He was silent. Dean turned toward the road, reaching for the gear selector in the dimming light from above. He snapped his attention to her once more, reaching up to flick the dome light back on. She looked at herself 

“What?” Lori questioned, her eyes searching for a spider or an open wound. She saw what he did a second before her dad asked 

“Where are your shoes?” 

They drove the road in silence. Dean tried to process what his daughter told him as they pulled out of the gas station.She was lying. Dean worked hard to keep his voice level. He’d gotten his little girl to talk to him, he didn’t want to blow that up in an explosion of anger, but her excuse was just so…dumb. 

“So-” he started “after you left my house you thought you’d jog to the bus, in flip flops?” 

“Yup.” Lori answered. “I’m more out of shape than I realized though.” she fanned her shirt against her body dramatically. She filled the car with the acrid stench that comes from mixing fear with an unwashed body. Beside her Dean watched the laneway as they navigated through trailers with the shifting shadows thrown in the blue glow of televisions. The hulking play structure was silent now as moths collided with one another under the buzzing light it sat under.

Inside his trailer Lori took the sofa while Dean opened the fridge. Condiments rattled of one another as he grabbed a coke and snapped it open sharply. He slurped the foam from his mustache before clearing his throat into one meaty fist. 

“Alright. Look Lor. Get mad at this if you want, but I’m calling bullshit. And further to that I think something's really wrong.” Dean paced  the small space of the living room. Behind him his collection of antiques rattled against one another. He ran a hand down his beard, searching for the words he wanted to say. He looked at his daughter. Had it really been twenty years since she was a toddler, racing around this very room like a tempest? Dean thought it was so hard in those days. The lost sleep, the mood swings, the diaper changes. He’d basically raised her as a single parent, but this, now? He would trade this phase for shitty diapers and a few long nights in a heartbeat.

 On the wall the clock ticked away. Fatigue clouded his thoughts. Anger continued to tug at the edges of his argument. He remembered the bright eyes of his little girl, how she’d laughed as he chased her around the trailer. The anger slithered back into the harder part of his heart, for the moment. He picked both of Lori’s hands in his. 

“You’re– unwell Lori. And I don’t use that word lightly, believe me. But you’re off. Now I need to know. I need to know if this is just you trying to figure out you’re own way in the world, or is this something big, like Doc Spears big. He rubbed his thumbs over his daughters hands encouragingly and tried to give her his most understanding look. Dean prayed that she wouldn’t explode again. If she went off on him like that again it might just break his heart in two. 

Lori didn’t explode. She didn’t even feel angry. What she did feel was a growing certainty in her dad’s words. He’d never been one to suffer bullshit for very long, and conversations like this were what kept them whole after mom left them. She squeezed his hands before gently slipping from them. She loved her dad, but he always tried to hold her hands when he talked to her like this. Lori didn’t know if he realized how sweaty he could get. She took a breath and started speaking. It was more to herself at first, gathering her thoughts, but as she made progress she became more sure of her wording. 

“I think I, no, I definitely saw something today, something abnormal.” She couldn’t bring herself to use the word paranormal. It was just too cliche. “On the way here. I wasn’t taking pictures. I was at the Miligan place.” Lori paused. It was her turn to wait for the explosion of anger that usually came from her dad when she admitted to exploring that old house.

“Aha.” Dean said. He wasn’t accusing, and it wasn’t a surprise. He’d been keeping her away from that death trap since she was ten. 

“I don’t know, it was something about the place, maybe it was having the camera with me– but it was like I had to see it. It was almost like I had to climb into it, like something was pulling me through the window,” Lori said. Her eyebrows pinched together in a way that made her look like her mother. “Anyway I saw a flash. In the basement. And I thought maybe someone was down there, in trouble you know? So I went to open the window but– but it was stuck. I tried to reef it open. And then I don’t know if there was a sound or, maybe I saw something.” 

Dean leaned closer. His daughter’s voice shrunk to a whisper as she was lost in telling the story. Dean put a hand on her leg. She flinched underneath it but quickly put her hand on top of his before he could withdraw it. He wasn’t sure where this was going, but it clearly impacted Lori. 

“I looked up and. There was a man. Some guy. Everything about him seemed–almost like he was blurry, or in some kind of fog. It swirled around him and–” Lori’s eyes snapped to her father’s then. In them he read the same nightmare fear she would wear as a kid. Dean remembered holding her as she trembled after the dreams that. Plagued her after each visit to that damned place. 

The wind carried a threat of winter through the screen and into the quiet of the apartment. A chill coursed through her 

“He chased me. Tonight. After I left he chased me down the road. It was the same man. I’m sure of it.” 

“Okay honey.” Dean soothed “it’s ok he’s gone.” Dean increased the pressure on his daughter's knee, Staying her progress before she could leap from the couch. Her eyes darted back to the door. 

He stood. Keeping his eye on Lori to make sure she wouldn’t bolt while he plugged the kettle in. She needed something to calm her nerves, and tea had always done it for her in the past. The click of him turning it on was like someone snapping in her face and Lori settled, slightly. Dean came back to the couch and the aroma of lemon and ginger replaced the wet stench of her exertion. Lori nodded thanks and Dean squeezed her shoulder. 

“So what did this guy look like. Could you describe him to the cops?” Dean wracked his brain trying to remember if anyone had been walking down the road when he went to get Lori. He couldn’t remember. 

Lori shook her head. 

“I don’t think it’s like that Dad.” She winced as the tea passed her lips and burned the inside of her mouth. 

“Too hot?” Dean asked. 

“Drank it too fast.” Lori muttered.

“So what then? This guy just wanted to menace you, put a scare into you? It doesn’t make sense RiRi, why wouldn’t you want the cops to nail this guy?” 

“Because I– I don’t think he’s a guy at all. I think maybe he’s some kind of–spirit.” 

“What?” Dean’s voice flattened. “You lost me sweetheart.” 

Lori set her tea down. The ceramic clinked off the glass coffee table as the two met. “When I saw him at the house. He wasn’t looking at me.” Lori’s head moved with agonizing slowness to where the bag sat on the floor between them, now dirt streaked and smeared with a greasy stain. “He was looking at the camera.” she said. She shook her head as if trying to clear it. She rubbed her eye. Thought turned to theory and she began talking it out. 

“When i bought the camera the woman running the shop was acting weird, nervous. At the time i thought she was just camera shy, but thinking back on it she was almost–terrified. She let it go for so cheap. I just assumed I was getting a bargain, but she wanted it gone. Could she have known this, this thing was attached to it? Would P.J do that to someone?” 

Dean heard the pain in his daughter’s last question, but she’d lost him a few turns back. He was slowly crafting what he was going to say in the morning when he called Dr. Spears’ office. It couldn’t hurt, she wasn’t as suicidal, and that was a start, but as open minded as Dean was, he  couldn’t believe his daughter was actually seeing ghosts. . 

“Lori. Honey. Are you really telling me you saw a ghost at that stupid house, then it chased you to the bus tonight?” 

It was his tone, he knew it as he spoke, but her slumped shoulders confirmed it. She edged away from him, turning her attention to her tea, but not before Dean saw the stricken look his words caused.  

She took a sip. Gulped into the quiet. Then turned her attention to the camera that sat between his can of Coke and her white ceramic mug. 

He doesn't get it, and he never has. Why did I even come back here? He thinks i’m stupid, worse, he thinks i’m nuts. He’s going to call the doctor and have me locked up. He’s never been anything bt cruel to me. 

These were familiar thoughts, and she’d walked out of the darkness they brought with them only months ago. Cool air rolled in through her nose and settled in her chest as she inhaled trying to centre herself. In the fleeting anxiety brought on by them, she became aware that they were whispered in a voice not her own. She furrowed her brow. Then who’s had they been? 

“Alright.” Dean said. His voice slow and measured. “I’m on your team honey, okay? I want you to remember that as time goes on. I want us to tackle this problem, I really do, but Lori I don’t know anything about this. It sounds like you went through something today, and you think it’s tied to this old camera, but I also know we try to attach meaning to things sometimes even if it’s not there. Point is it’s late, we’re fried, and you need sleep. In the morning when we both have a clear head we will be able to chalk all this up to midterm stress. I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me to try and figure this thing out. You said you took a picture with it already? Maybe I can get that, see if this thing even works. I will wake you up the second it develops, if it develops.”

Lori wanted to protest, she wanted to oppose everything her dad said. She especially wanted to call out the way he eyed her like a caged tiger trained for the circus. But she knew it was useless. She’d argued with him before when he was like this. He would stonewall her until dawn. It wouldn’t be the first time.  

“Wake me up the second you get anything from the picture.” 

Dean just nodded and rose to get another coke. “I won’t tell you anything unless you promise to get in bed right now.” 

“Fine dad, I got it.” As she walked to her room it was Lori’s turn to make the antiques in the TV cabinet quake.  

###

She woke to the gurgle of the coffee maker. It churned and bubbled as it spit more dark brown liquid into the pot. Dean strolled aimlessly around the kitchen fidgeting with knick knacks on the windowsill before drifting to the couch. The camera was back in the bag, the bag was at the door. Dean couldn’t look at them. He could barely bring himself to point his daughters accusingly stare at the five-by-seven square sitting face down on the coffee table.  

Her sandals sat one beside the other in a growing beam of golden morning light. “I washed them off.” he called from the couch. His voice hoarse, as if the sandman missed his eyes in the night and hit his throat instead. Except Dean Sellers hadn’t slept a wink. He rose. Walking around the couch he got a mug that had been sitting beside the coffee maker and refiled it. It had taken most of the night to read up on how to remove the photo tray from the side of the camera and work slowly and diligently in the small dark room he’d converted the hall closet into. Dean watched the sun paint the eastern sky in blazes of orange and pink. He bit a finger nail. Slurped coffee from his moustache. Started for the table, then moved toward the couch before his eyes fell once more on the picture and he settled for the table instead.  Dean ground a knuckle into his eye as he watched his daughter charge into the living room. Her eyes bounced from the table to his, wide with anger. 

“Don’t.” Dean snapped. Lori stopped short. His voice, instead of the hard brick wall he’d put up whenever he was trying to make his word final, was sunken and wet. She realized he was fighting a lump in his throat. Tears brimmed the glazed crimson of his eyes as they rolled around the trailer searching for anything besides his daughter’s. 

“Hey, woah.” Lori’s voice was cotton soft as she rushed to her dad’s side. Her thin fingers did their best to squeeze comfort into his meaty shoulder through his grey T-shirt. Dean sucked back a breath and coughed. He sniffled again. Shaking his head slightly before nodding toward the now silent coffee maker. 

“Get a cup,” he said thickly, “before it gets burnt.” He handed her his mug. 

“Forget the coffee for a second Dad what–” 

“Please Lor–please. Just get us some coffee.” 

“Are you staying up then?”

“Oh fuck.” Dean managed a sticky bark of sarcastic laughter. “I don’t think I’ll sleep again.” He ground his palms into his eyes to crush the tears from them. His honking blow into a kleenex joined the sound of coffee being poured. Lori moved her seat from the head of the table to the space beside Dean. She held the steaming mug of coffee in both hands and crossed her legs beneath her. Dean stared forward. When he turned his head toward her,  Lori leaned forward. 

Dean sniffled. He gulped his coffee. “Who was this woman? The one you took the photo of?” 

“P.J? She owned the store. It’s off Cassells, P.J’s Treasure Hunt. I was so excited in finding the camera I snapped it in the moment, why Dad? What’s she got to do with this?” Her question brought a fresh seepage of tears from eyes squeezed shut. Dean only shook his head violently from side to side. 

“I wanted to burn it.” his voice squeaked out of him. “I wanted to burn it but I thought it would be some cruel act of karma on me, on us. But I don’t know what else to do with it. I can’t get her out of here.” He prodded his temple with one finger.

“Burn what, the picture?” Lori stood. In three strides she was at the coffee table. Behind her Dean rocketed from his chair but made no move to stop her. She had to see it. That’s why he hadn’t burned it. His daughter had to see the photo. It was the only way the news story would make sense. Dean watched Lori reach for the photo with the hollow eyed shame of a parent who, as much as he wanted to, couldn’t keep his child from the jaws of danger. 

The photo depicted PJ’s store interior much as Lori remembered it. The counter had the glass front and all the valuables in it. The shelving behind her stored odds and ends that came with owning a second hand store. It wasn’t until about halfway up her torso the picture detoured from memory. P.J’s clothing was singed, then completely burned off revealing puckered skin that shone in monochrome. Her headband appeared grafted to the skull bone. flesh that hung in odd lumps off the blackened bones of her jawline. She peered out of the photo. One socket was completely black. The other had a jelly-like goo puddled in it. It was the way it spilled down her cheek, as if Petunia wept, that broke the photo’s hold on Lori. She retreated a step, dropping the photo. A tear coursed down her cheek, only then alerting her she’d started crying too. Father and daughter shared the look of  survived trauma.  It was that look from his child, so adult in its knowledge of the world’s cruelty, that finally broke Dean. He stood and wrapped his daughter in his arms. Their sorrow dampened the majesty of the sunrise.  

When Lori’s sobs began to subside. She uttered the phrase he’d been preparing for. “Why does she look like that?” 

Dean picked up his phone, keyed in the password, and showed her the screen. “I don’t know hun, but it gets stranger.” 

It was a newspaper article dated yesterday. ‘Local business owner perishes in bizarre accident.” Lori read aloud. Her eyes scanned the details of the article that highlighted PJ’s death. Attributing  it to an anomaly with the gas line leading to her apartment. Donations to the humane society could be made in lieu of flowers. 

She looked to her father as he took the phone back and placed it in his pocket. Her thoughts were chaos. “Did I-?” 

“No.” The stone returned to Dean’s voice as he wiped the tears from Lori’s face with his thumbs. “You didn’t. This is an accident, some awful coincidence.” 

“She knew. She had to know, why else would she be that nervous after I took her picture?”

Dean stared out the window at the other trailers that were slowly coming to life with the sounds of kids hollering and the smell of bacon cooking. He suddenly snapped his attention back to Lori, “who else did you take a picture of? Dean wracked his memory of the night before trying to think if she’d turned the camera on him. 

“No one. I swear” Lori said, panic throwing her voice several octaves higher. 

Dean settled back in his seat. He sat a few minutes longer before pushing away from the table and shuffling toward the kitchen counter. He dumped the dregs of coffee from the pot and began immediately washing it. He dropped it in the suds and they engulfed it in their orange scented foam. He gripped the sides of the sink, rolling out his shoulders and stretching his back. When he turned to his daughter his eyes were haunted. 

“Who else has owned that thing?” 

“How many pictures are out there?” Lori answered. Her mind raced. She saw P.J again. The way the one socket peered out of the photo at Lori. She brought out her phone, opening a web browser “What were those map coordinates?”