When I lived in Dollarton, I remember hearing on the news about the mystery of severed body parts washing ashore on the north side of the Burrard Inlet. Almost always, it was a foot still encased in a shoe—perhaps because the shoe acted as a flotation device, preserving and carrying it to the shore. It felt like something out of a macabre dream.

Malcolm Lowry once lived in a squatter’s shack on the beach near the community of Dollarton. But by the time I arrived, Dollarton had long been subsumed by North Vancouver. I rented a dreary basement suite there, with bad plumbing and damp walls. The landlord, though, was kind and seemed to develop a fondness for my brother and me, who were sharing the place at the time. While we were living with him, he went on a trip to Kenya with his wife. He’d told me once that he had grown up there. When he returned, he brought me a gift—an inexpensive-looking stone elephant.

Sometimes I look at this stone elephant and feel a sense of inexplicable terror. Does it hold the soul of another man? Sometimes I feel as if I’m compelled to carry it to the peak of Mount Everest and discharge its sacred contents into the wind. I remember the last time I saw the man who gave it to me. I was explaining to him that my brother and I were moving out. We’d had enough of the plumbing issues, though I didn’t tell him this directly—it didn’t matter since we were leaving anyway. But as I spoke, I felt something in him leap out and cling to me with a death grip, as if some part of him refused to let go.

His death now follows me like my own shadow. He didn’t want to let go, so he hitched a ride.

How shall I rid myself of this enchantment? This talisman is a death in disguise. Your death, you surmise. If the stone is broken, where will the soul reside? Who will be left holding it when it shatters? Someone is going to have to let go of your hand after you die. Someone else, not you, will watch you die. Someone will find a part of your body washed up on the shore, just like those feet in shoes.