Chapter 5 #2
“Thanks. We just need to be sure you’re safe before we make plans for everyone else, okay?”
Caspar nodded with another half-hearted shrug.
When Malek turned on the car, another fast kinetic punk song came through the speakers at top volume.
Malek turned it down right away and Caspar was glad.
It was too much, seeing the junk food he’d missed and the grass.
Hearing music that passed him by felt like another blow to his ego.
The seven years he’d been in prison stretched in front of him in a never-ending palette of grey and grey and grey.
He shuddered. Aside from the navy blue car, everything around him was so, so bright, including Malek’s tattooed hand as he clutched the wheel.
Malek pulled out of the rest stop and took the highway. From the signs, Caspar knew they were heading toward Toronto.
“Is that really a good idea?” Caspar asked. “To go to Toronto after all of this?”
“It’s where your safe house is.”
“Really? It’s not… they didn’t put me—”
“Back on Main Street? No. Your family house has been turned into a museum, actually, so we couldn’t put you back there even if we wanted to.”
“What? Oh, shit.” Caspar wanted to retch.
He remembered Anthony coming to him with the papers to sign away his parents’ property.
Caspar had needed the money for his defense bills and commissary, but selling the last bits of his legacy felt like a mistake.
His parents’ house, the place where they’d been killed and where Caspar had been found covered in their blood, was now a museum for the horrors of that night.
He grilled Malek on the details of the tourist trap as much as he could, but even Malek didn’t have many answers.
“I’ve never gone. No time to go to something like that. All I know is that it’s a history museum, more or less, about ghouls and the culture around them. Kind of like the Witch Museum in Salem. There’s history and then there’s myth, folded together in one historic place.”
“Ugh. Sounds terrible,” Caspar said, then added quietly, “and not true.”
“Of course it’s not true. You’re innocent.”
Caspar didn’t respond for a moment. It was nice to hear. Caspar Nassir is innocent. “Why is there a ghoul museum without ghouls?”
“Why is there a witch museum when those ladies and a couple dudes weren’t witches either? People talk. And walls listen. So we make museums.”
“I guess. And I guess I should be used to people knowing everything. Seeing everything, too. That’s how it’s been for years now, anyway.” Caspar blinked back the image of Malek in the shower. At least I’ve seen him naked, too. “Why do they even care, though?”
Malek gave him a pointed look.
“No, I mean, when compared to everyone else. Everything else. I’m boring.”
“How?”
“My parents are dead. It sucks. But I’m true crime, not fantasy. This stuff has never been part of my world.”
Malek was quiet for a moment. “How old were you when the change happened?”
“I’m not a supernatural. There was no sudden puberty stress event.
I’m well over eighteen, and nothing has changed for me.
I’m normal, horribly normal. Well, maybe…
” Caspar blinked, remembering Ms. Patricia’s words about his blood test. Something strange.
Was that true, or a ruse? Both? Caspar didn’t get a chance to ask.
“No, the country. When it changed,” Malek said.
“One day, we went from saying ‘we stand on guard for thee’ to ‘we salute the supernatural and free.’ One day, we went from denying the changes in others to enshrining them in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. One day, there were just supernaturals, and it was normal, and we made laws to protect them. Everyone is still working on it, obviously. The changes are still happening, but they were always here. We have always been here. You know that, right?”
“I do.”
“So…”
“I was young, probably grade six or seven. I remember Anthony and I playing monster in school and the teacher telling us to stop. We sang the new lyrics the next day, I’m pretty sure.”
“And before then?” Malek asked. “Most people had met a supernatural before then.”
“No.”
“No?” Malek seemed utterly perplexed. “Maybe they called it something else. Like, you know, people who were gay were lavender. Some supernaturals were colours. You ever hear or see—”
“No.”
“Really? Even in Toronto?”
“Really. I didn’t. So I guess it makes sense, some kind of karma. Play monster in the school yard and then become one. My childhood house is a museum, though I ain’t even that special. What a world. And I guess I’m living in Scarborough again?”
“Not quite. Downtown Toronto. We’ve got you a small apartment, fully furnished, and from there, you can do what you want.”
“Like get a job?” Caspar laughed. “With what experience?”
“We’re making up a profile for you now. Your death has been faked.”
“Really? Huh. Atticus mentioned that.”
“We wanted to try something else, but faking a death is always the easiest way to get someone out. The legal system has changed tremendously in the past few years, ever since the case with the rogue vampire who was cleared of murder charges. Supernaturals, especially those who did not know or understand their powers, are being cleared left and right, but there’s still some holdover in cases like yours. ”
“Cases like mine? I didn’t do anything. Wrong place, wrong time—”
“We know. We’ve reviewed your file and your testimony from the trial. You only showed up after your parents were murdered. You said early on in your court cases that a demon possessed you, though. Can you tell me a bit about that now?”
Caspar laughed—because it was easier to do than sob. “Oh, that was a long, long time ago.”
“We know. You dropped the story as soon as your lawyer told you to. And there’s really no evidence for it. But it’s there on some transcripts and police reports. So tell me.”
Caspar blinked several times. His head was hurting again.
He shouldn’t have had so much sugar and processed foods after being away from them for so long.
He watched as the trees and cars passed them by on the highway.
Malek didn’t egg him on to speak, and Caspar was relieved.
He’d tried to drop the demon story because Lawrence thought it did more harm than good.
Yelling that a demon possessed him as soon as he set foot on his parents’ property made him appear completely nuts, and that was harder to sell to a jury.
When Caspar’s blood work came back as normal, as well as his psych tests, pleading insanity seemed even more ridiculous.
So he’d pleaded not guilty and went with the wrong place, wrong time defense.
By the time Caspar arrived at his parents’ place, they were already dead, so it was plausible.
But as the trial went on, it became more evident that even Anthony, his best friend, was having a difficult time believing that Caspar didn’t murder Bilal and Lunar Nassir.
“Take your time,” Malek said. “I want to hear this, but I understand it’s hard.”
Caspar fought the urge to tell Malek that he didn’t know fucking anything.
He breathed in deeply several times before he was ready to speak.
“So, okay, I was in my last year of school at the University of Toronto, getting a degree in one stupid subject or another that I thought would get me a real job after graduation.”
“Economics,” Malek provided. “With a minor in chemistry.”
“Suppose you would know.” Caspar’s voice cracked.
“I-I was supposed to come home the next weekend to visit my folks. But I finished a chem lab early and thought, why not take a Greyhound and surprise them? Right? You know, be the good son who didn’t abandon his family for the complete university experience?
I was an idiot. I should have just waited.
” Caspar sighed. He saw the brown door to his family’s house in his mind, along with the blood on the knob he’d ignored.
“My dad painted a lot, so when I got there, I thought the smell of ammonia was just him working. I pushed through it, even though it got stronger and stronger and stronger as I walked inside the house.”
“Ammonia? Are you sure?”
“Yes, positive. Ammonia, like nitrogen and hydrogen. I was in the chem lab way too often, so I could always recognize that smell.”
Malek nodded, but seemed to lodge something away in his brain.
Caspar knew that look. Seen it in too many lawyers and doctors.
A detail for later. He sighed. “Anyway… I get in, see blood that’s blacker than anything, followed by a shimmering.
It’s that shimmering I remember most of all.
It was so bright I had to close my eyes.
My head felt as if it would split in two, and then I blacked out.
I woke up in the back of a squad car covered in blood.
I don’t even know how. I never even saw what the house looked like inside until trial.
Then I realized what a mess it had been. ”
“I’m so sorry.” Malek nodded along, his face stoic. He’d probably seen the crime scene photos, too. “Talk to me about the shimmering.”
“Um. Well. At first I thought that was what had invaded me, or possessed me, or whatever. People kept telling me that I killed my parents, and when I saw myself covered in blood, I figured that if I did it, then a demon had got me. The shimmering was like, I don’t know, part of the experience?
It’s stupid, I know. Nothing possessed me because there was nothing there. ”
“The shimmering is real,” Malek said, but he offered no explanation. “Do you know for a fact you didn’t do it? For sure?”
“No, of course I didn’t do it. Never. I wouldn’t!”
“Of course. I have to ask.”