A Catalogue of Grey Buttons

In the concrete veins beneath a frozen city, two boys hide from a man who might not be real, only to find a piece of him left behind.

The rubber soles of Bobby’s boots made a panicked squeaking noise with every turn. Vic, older and longer of limb, was a few paces ahead, his own breathing a ragged tear in the quiet air of the underground. He risked a look back. The long, straight corridor behind them was empty, a tube of beige tiles and harsh fluorescent light. Empty, but it didn't feel empty. The feeling of being watched was a physical thing, a cold spot between his shoulder blades that had nothing to do with the December draught leaking from a ventilation shaft above.

“Vic, wait up!” Bobby’s voice was a pinched whisper, swallowed by the tunnel.

Vic didn’t stop but slowed enough for his brother to catch up, grabbing the sleeve of Bobby’s parka. “This way. Now.”

He pulled them around a corner, past the darkened windows of a shuttered print shop and a travel agency with sun-faded posters of beaches that looked like another planet. They skidded to a halt in front of a bank of vending machines, their lights buzzing, their contents—rows of crisps and chocolate bars—looking ridiculously normal.

“In here,” Vic hissed, pointing to the narrow gap between the machines and the wall. It was dark, layered with the kind of dust that never gets disturbed.

“It smells like old pop in there,” Bobby complained, but his protest was half-hearted. He was already squeezing himself into the space.

Vic followed, his backpack snagging for a second on a metal bracket. He wrenched it free and crouched beside Bobby, the back of his head brushing against dusty cables. The world shrank to a vertical slice of the main concourse, visible through the gap. They were hidden. For now.

Their breathing was loud in the confined space. Bobby’s chest rose and fell like a frightened bird’s. Vic pressed a finger to his lips, even though they were already silent. He watched the slice of hallway. A woman in a business suit walked by, talking on her phone. A cleaner pushed a wide, rumbling floor polisher in the opposite direction. Normal life. No one in a long, grey coat. No one walking too slowly, too deliberately.

“Did you see his face?” Bobby finally asked, his voice barely audible over the hum of the drink machine’s cooler.

“No,” Vic said. It was the truth. He’d only seen the coat. A heavy wool coat, the colour of a winter sky just before a storm. And the man’s posture. Straight, still. He’d been standing by the pillar near the library entrance, and he hadn’t been looking at anything at all, which was somehow worse than if he had been looking right at them.

“I think he had a hat,” Bobby offered. “A grey one. To match.”

“He didn’t have a hat,” Vic corrected automatically. “You’re just making that up.”

“Am not. It was a fuzzy hat. Like Grandma’s cat.”

Vic ignored him, his eyes fixed on the sliver of visible corridor. Every passerby was a potential threat until they passed. A man in a dark coat made his heart jump, but the man was laughing with a friend and carrying a shopping bag. Not him. The man they saw didn't seem like he ever laughed.

---

Time stretched and became sticky. Five minutes felt like an hour. The vending machine beside Vic’s head shuddered to life, its compressor kicking in with a loud groan that made both boys flinch. The smell of dust and spilled sugar was thick in Vic’s nostrils.

He knew, logically, that they were probably being stupid. Kids who’d eaten too much candy from their advent calendars. It was just a man. Downtown Winnipeg was full of men in winter coats. But his brain couldn't shake the image of the stillness. The way the man stood was wrong. People didn't stand like that unless they were waiting for something specific. Or someone.

“Maybe he was a spy,” Bobby whispered, his imagination firing up now that the immediate terror had faded into a dull thrum of anxiety. “Like in that movie. He’s waiting for a secret drop. We saw him, so now he has to… eliminate us.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Vic mumbled, but the word ‘eliminate’ hung in the air. “He’s not a spy. He’s just… a guy.”

“A creepy guy. His shoes were too shiny. Did you see them? Super shiny. Who has shiny shoes in the winter? They’d get wrecked by the salt.”

Vic hadn’t noticed the shoes. He’d only seen the coat. The coat and the unnerving stillness. It was Bobby who noticed details. Vic noticed feelings. And the feeling he’d gotten from the man in the grey coat was that of a door left open to a very cold, very dark room.

He pressed his cheek against the cool metal of the machine. He could hear the faint clinking of coins and the whir of a spiral inside as someone on the other side bought a snack. The simple, mechanical sound was a comfort. It was a sound from the real world, their world. Not the quiet, watchful world the grey man seemed to occupy.

“My knee is getting a cramp,” Bobby announced.

“Be quiet.”

“No, for real. It’s like it’s folding the wrong way.” He shifted, bumping against Vic. “What if we’re stuck back here forever? What if they find our skeletons in ten years, all covered in dust and spiderwebs?”

“Then they’ll know you had stupid boots on,” Vic shot back, the familiar rhythm of their bickering a small defence against the fear. “And they’ll say, ‘This kid had a dumb hat, too.’”

“Did not.”

“Did too.”

They fell silent again. Vic found himself cataloguing the sounds of the concourse. The distant ding of an elevator. The squeak of a cart’s wheel. The murmur of conversations, too far away to understand the words. It was a language he knew well, the white noise of the city’s underground. Usually, it was comforting. Today, it felt like a curtain, behind which anything could be hiding.

### The Properties of Concrete

Vic thought about the concrete above them. Metres and metres of it. And above that, the frozen pavement of the street. Cars, buses, people walking with their heads down against the wind, their breath pluming in the frigid air. The city was up there, glittering with Christmas lights, smelling of roasted nuts from the cart by the arena. Down here, it was a different world. A world of recycled air and artificial light, a place that never saw the sun or the snow.

He wondered if the man in the grey coat ever went outside, or if he just walked these tunnels forever. A ghost in the city’s plumbing.

“I think he’s gone,” Bobby said, his voice small. The bravado had leaked out of him, leaving only the tired voice of an eight-year-old who’d been scared and was now just bored of being scared.

Vic peered through the gap again. The foot traffic had thinned. The cleaner and his polishing machine were gone. For the first time in what felt like a lifetime, the corridor was completely, undeniably empty.

“Maybe,” Vic conceded. He didn’t feel convinced, but he was tired of hiding. His own legs were stiff.

“We were just being dumb,” Bobby declared, his confidence returning with a rush. “It was just a guy. A boring old guy in a boring grey coat.”

Vic wanted to believe him. He really did. It was the most likely explanation. He was ten, Bobby was eight. They saw something a little weird, and their brains, full of cartoons and spy movies, had turned it into a monster. That made sense. That was a story that let him leave the dusty space behind the vending machine and go back to the real world.

“Okay,” Vic said, making a decision. “Okay, you’re right. We were being dumb. Let’s go.”

Relief washed over him, so potent it was almost dizzying. The fear had been a heavy weight, and setting it down felt good. He was already thinking about getting a hot chocolate from the place in the Exchange, the one that put extra marshmallows on top.

“I’ll go first,” Bobby said, already wriggling his way out. “To make sure it’s clear. I’m the scout.”

“You’re the scout whose knee was cramping,” Vic reminded him.

Bobby emerged into the main corridor, blinking in the bright fluorescent light. He did a theatrical scan, left and right, then gave Vic a thumbs-up. “Coast is clear, Captain.”

Vic squeezed out after him, brushing dust from his jeans and blinking the spots from his eyes. The concourse looked normal again. Just a hallway. The fear seemed ridiculous now, a memory of a bad dream. He smiled. Bobby smiled back. They had been silly.

They started walking toward the escalators that would take them up to street level, back into the noise and the cold and the snow. Bobby began telling him an elaborate story about how he would have used his secret karate moves on the spy if he’d shown his face. Vic listened, half-paying attention, his mind still enjoying the simple lightness of not being afraid anymore.

He looked down at the floor, at the patterns in the beige tiles, and that’s when he saw it.

It was small and unassuming, lying almost exactly where they had emerged from their hiding spot. A circle of dull grey plastic, with four little holes in the centre. It looked old, the kind of button that comes from a heavy, old-fashioned coat. A thick wool coat.

He stopped. Bobby kept walking for a few steps before he noticed and turned back. “What? You see something?”

Vic didn't answer. He bent down and picked it up. The button was cool against his skin. It felt solid, real. He turned it over in his palm. It was just a button. A perfectly ordinary grey button.

But there was nothing ordinary about it at all. It was proof. Proof that the man hadn’t been a phantom of their imagination. He had been here. Right here. Standing right outside their hiding place, waiting in the silence while they held their breath on the other side of the wall.