Hidden in the Blood: A Novel of the Terribly Acronymed Detective Club (Book 5)

Chapter Three: Al, Fall, 1968?

"Father, Son and Holy Ghost, let's see which belly can hold the most." 

Doctor Yelland muttered this nonsense prayer while he idly flicked two-year-old Alistair Mackenzie's little uncircumcised penis. He was too young to remember what the purpose of the prayer or the flicking was; he was at the doctor's office, so maybe it was all part of a physical exam to see how he was growing. Mom was always concerned about his size and whether he was growing fast enough.

"Do you think that would be considered sexual molestation today?" Present day Al asked the ghost of his father as he sat next to him on the park bench along the trail in Glenbrook Ravine. He and his father never visited this place together while he was alive, so he didn't know why he was here with him now, reviewing this film clip of his early life playing in front of them where a tree covered slope would normally have been. All he knew was that it had something to do with Al having been here very recently.

His father sat on his left. On his right stood a tower of rocks that seemed to defy the laws of physics, being an inverted pyramid with the smallest rock holding up larger rocks sitting on top of it. He was deathly afraid of the tower falling over, as some brilliant kid had probably built it in a fit of inspiration and he didn't want to be the killjoy who destroyed their creation, so he kept very, very still in case a sudden vibration sent the whole thing toppling. 

He didn't actually remember coming to sit on this bench in the first place; he was sure his weight on the wood frame of the bench would have shifted it enough to have done the job of knocking over the tower already. He didn't remember his father sitting either. Suddenly they were just there.

Maybe this was just a dream. Dreams, in his experience, progressed this way, where you were just cast into a situation with no explanation, but it seemed to make perfect sense while you were in it. He'd woken from a particularly vivid one a couple of years ago, and it had been memorable because a panicked phone call from Rachel had roused him, and he'd woken to find himself in bed, with Lauren, naked. That one confluence of events had changed everything, for him and for everyone in the Lawrence Street Detective Club, and he wasn't sure it was entirely for the better.

He didn't know where the others were. He vaguely remembered they were all here with him not too long ago, in this ravine, looking for something. Oh well, his father was here, and he needed to chat with him. It had been more than ten years since Dad died, and they had a lot of catching up to do.

Dad watched the penis-flicking scene again and frowned. "I'm not entirely sure," he said. "Back when it happened, the definition of improper touching was narrower, and doctors had near god-like influence over their patients, so that they rarely challenged their practices. I imagine your mother thought he was just playing innocently with you, but were she to witness it today she might bring a complaint. At the very least, I'm seeing this as an act of aggression, like a cat playing with a mouse until it tired of the game and ate it. He's bored and resentful for having to give a check-up to a perfectly healthy boy when he has a long line of patients waiting who need him more than you do. Your mother was a little overprotective of you, because you were her one and only."

"I see something rather different," said a voice to his right.

Al turned and saw Mister Rogers standing there in his red cardigan and sneakers. Odd, Al didn't remember the man having such a deep and aggressive voice. "You must be a ghost, too," he said. "You died not long after my father did."

"On the contrary," Mister Rogers said, "I'm a friend of your wife's. I tried to discourage her from getting together with you, but she didn't listen, and now look at the misery you've caused."

Al stared at the man, and something clicked in his head. "Wait a minute," he said. "You're not Sam, are you?"

Sam nodded.