Histories of the Void Garden, Book 1: Pyre of Dreams (15 page)

Charlene
grabbed the menu and looked at the number five.

“Gavin, do you
think perhaps we should start again?”

The whites of
his eyes showing, Gavin nodded, performing a circular motion with
his right shoulder and tapping the pad nervously.

West clapped
his hands together, “Gavin, good man, just ask them to cook up one
of everything. I’ll pay for them all, and you can run along outside
and drum up some interest, how does that sound?”

“I’ll have to
check with my manager.”

West nodded,
passing both menus back to the boy. He leaned towards Charlene
conspiratorially, pointing his bread knife at Gavin, “Management
material written all over him that one, you mark my words.” The two
of them sat, watching the silent drama play out between the boy and
his manager, then Gavin scampered back to their table, blushing,
bottom lip trembling, “Mr O’Keefe would like to extend his
gratitude.”

West waved at
the man who stood by the bar. The manager returned the gesture with
a hearty smile.

West placed his
hand on Gavin’s, palming him a bill roll which he imagined would be
sufficient to cover the meal, “And Gavin, I’ll take two pints of
the pale ale, and …” he looked at Charlene expectantly.

“Oh,” She
chuckled, “Just bring us one of everything, and we’ll see how we
manage eh?”

West grinned
widely. Touché.

“So West,” Charlene
began, emphasizing his name caustically, “what am I?”

West leaned
back into the leather padded seat, crossing his hands behind his
head, “Is there something different about you?” He squinted,
feigning confusion. When Charlene failed to respond to his
attempted levity he started to answer her question,” There are a
thousand names for what you are becoming.”

Charlene rolled
her bottom lip backwards and forwards between her teeth, and
tutted, “I’m not going to accept any more vagueness or avoidance Mr
Yestler. I’m willing to concede that so far, I’m not disappointed
with the result of your little experiment, but that good will only
stretches so far. I want to know what’s going on.”

West shrugged,
“I’m not being vague, not deliberately at least. There is a myriad
of specific terms used throughout the different cultures of the
world, each describing a learned behavior, a physical trait, a
specific eccentricity of muscle memory. Some of these terms were
arrived at over centuries of observation, while others were more or
less representative of the desperate scrabble of a frightened
people attempting to put a name to their nightmares.” He smiled
politely and leaned away from the table as Gavin returned with a
tray full of drinks and two bowls, one containing olives, the other
spilling over with bread. Gavin set the tray down on the table and
wandered off before West or Charlene had a chance to comment.

West picked up
his pale ale and sipped the white froth, then returned the glass to
the table, holding it between his hands. Charlene opted for a clear
glass, which turned out to be lemonade. She sipped through a straw,
wagging a finger in the air in front of West as she swallowed.
Gulping, and a little out of breath, she launched in with a quiet
but angry whisper, “I mean it mister, if you don’t start making
sense of all this for me, I’m going to walk out of this place and
forget I ever met you.”

“Charlene,
there is too much, even if we sat and ate two of everything on the
menu, and talked into the wee hours of the morning, we wouldn’t
scratch the surface of describing what it is you are becoming. Not
really. You want a simple all-encompassing word, or phrase, then
you are Leechborn, Leechkith, a Child of the Delvers, Dannum’s
seed, a daughter of the blood of the river Dannum, Blood Thief,
Ever-Hunger, Blood-Brood, spawn of Antrusca. Those are but a
handful of the terms used in the Anglicized modern vernacular to
describe generally, any individual who has become host to the
leeches. If I dip my toes in the waters of specificity, describing
one such as yourself … that is, one who was not born of Allim, then
you would be termed a progeny of the void, Chosen of the
Second-Kingdom, Freeblood, Hated of Pretchis, Ahken’s folly,
Blood-Bastard, Seeded Second-Realmer.”

Charlene blew
bubbles into her lemonade, then returned the glass to the table and
moved on to a beer. She was starting to appreciate what he had
meant. She’d managed to retain almost nothing of what West had
said, but a couple of words had stood out in her mind. She nodded,
kissing the side of the cool glass, feeling the condensation on her
lip, then she tipped her head back and drank the glass dry, gasping
as she came up for air.

“What is
Dannum?”

West smiled,
“Dannum was the first king of Allim, my home country.”

“And Pretchis?
Who’s that?”

West’s smile
faltered, “Pretchis was the reigning king when my country fell to
ruin.”

Charlene
noticed that Gavin was returning to the table, accompanied by two
other waiters, each of the three lanky teenagers carrying their own
tray with several pizzas a piece. They pulled a table closer to the
seated couple, laying the pizzas out in a circle.

Gavin leaned
casually against the table, “Can I bring you anything else? Black
pepper? Parmesan?”

West nodded,
“Sure, sure, and Gavin, remember what I said. Throw the doors open,
invite people in, and just keep the food coming.”

It didn’t take long
for the restaurant to fill up around them, and Charlene quickly
found herself absorbed in the bizarre tapestry of conversation that
unfolded around her. She was bewildered, suddenly aware that she
was able to concentrate on the things that West had mentioned,
replaying them in her head, yet at the same time she could discern
the separate conversational strands of thirty other people. She
picked up a couple of slices of pepperoni pizza, and she ate them
slowly, closing her eyes, simply allowing her brain to wade through
the whirls and eddies in the vibrant sea of dialogs, both internal
and external.

When she opened
her eyes, and reached for another slice, she noticed that West was
just sitting, watching her, not paying any attention to the room
around them.

“Do you want me
to go on?”

Charlene shook
her head, holding out her hand as she swallowed a mouthful of
peppers and cheese. She wiped her mouth with a napkin, and took a
swig from another glass of beer, “Why did you leave me?”

He wasn’t sure
why he hadn’t anticipated that question, and now that he was
confronted with it, West wondered why she hadn’t asked sooner. It
still felt awkward to say it, even though he knew he had been
absolutely right in his actions. He looked at the table, at the
damp rings that had been left by those glasses which were in play,
“Charlene, you were a child. I mean no disrespect to the girl that
you were, but you know. I mean to say, you’ve lived enough to know
that any relationship that we could have had would …” He looked up
from the table and realized that Charlene’s body was rocking with
silent laugher.

“I’m
eighty-five years old, you ninny. I understand well enough. I meant
yesterday … What was so important that you had to leave me
yesterday.”

West pinched
the skin of his forehead between his thumb and fingers, frustrated
with his own arrogance. Of course she understood. “There’s a man
named David Beach. He’s a governmental peon, and he has become
entangled in the investigation into the assassination of President
Tiernan.”

Charlene
glanced around the room, trying to put faces to some of the
conversations she could hear. She rolled her hand in the air,
indicating to West that he should keep talking, but she had become
more interested in what Shauna was telling her mother. Who was
Shauna? By the front window, under the impotent neon sign, Charlene
saw lips that synchronized with the conversation, a strawberry
blond, freckled teenager, pouring her heart out to a mother who was
almost perversely callous, and nonchalant. While West rattled on
about this Washington peon, Shauna cried, trying with everything in
her to explain to her mother, that what she was experiencing was
normal, that it didn’t mean she was a freak, that it wasn’t a
phase, wasn’t a choice, wasn’t wrong. Charlene turned her head
back, watched West’s lips, and heard Shauna’s voice, this teenager,
on the brink of an apocalyptic change in her relationship with her
mother. When his lips stopped moving, Charlene’s mind went about
untangling the cascading cacophony of West’s words. Beach couldn’t
have committed the assassination, couldn’t have been involved, he
was low hanging fruit. There had been something else, something
that had almost pulled her interest back from Shauna’s emotional
renaissance. FBI men, a van, cleaning service …

Charlene pushed
back from the table, mouth wide, her voice a rapid whisper, “You
killed them?”

David was relieved
when the taxi pulled into his neighborhood. He paid, tipping
generously, then climbed out of the car and immediately collapsed
onto the sidewalk, clutching his leg. The driver’s window slid down
with a mechanical whir, “You okay?”

“It’s nothing …
just pins and needles.” David lied, waving the driver off. He
waited for the car to pull out of sight before he attempted to get
up. It took several minutes of limping and hopping before he
rounded the corner onto the home stretch. Hannah’s car was gone.
Panicked, he shuffled into an uncomfortable, lopsided jog, hands
out in front of him as he tried to steady himself. Once he reached
the house, he threw his weight against the front door, fumbling to
get the keys into the lock. He collapsed through the door and
lumped his weight unsteadily against an insubstantial side table
next to the door. Squinting through pain, he balled up his fist
against the hard surface of the table, and realized that his hand
was clutching a note written in Hannah’s angry chicken scratch.

‘David, you
total dick. Spiff with Bleakers. WTF is wrong with you. Late for
Darowiscki again. Dick.’

If the tone
hadn’t been sufficient, David would have known Hannah’s state of
mind merely by the fact that she’d actually gone through the paper
several times with her pen. He shouted for Stephanie, just in case,
then when no reply came, he hobbled up the staircase, one stair at
a time, each one as painful as the last. He sat on the edge of his
bed, grunting and spitting as he pulled off the khaki shorts and
t-shirt, kicking the flip flops across the room in the process.
There was blood on the shorts. Blood on the green ringer too. Not
good, but he knew that he needed to move. He went to the bathroom,
chugged back a couple of Motrin, and Acetaminophen, splashing water
into his mouth, red water dripping from his hand onto the white
porcelain. He stifled a sob, and returned to the bedroom, throwing
a couple of pairs of pants, a couple of tops, some underwear and
socks into a duffel bag, before setting about the terrifying chore
of dressing himself again. Once dressed, he pulled down two
suitcases from on top of his wardrobe, tipped the contents of the
duffel into one, and emptied half of the contents of his wardrobe,
almost filling both.

Donald and Julie
Bleaker weren’t elderly, but they had plunged into their sixties
with unbridled abandon. They now seemed to be in some sort of mad
scramble to pass go, collect their two hundred dollars, and settle
in to a daily routine of sucking boiled sweets while yelling at the
kids in the neighborhood. Every time David spoke to Don nowadays,
Don would adopt a sombre tone of voice, talking with this
condescending assumed wisdom of age. Time and again, Don and Julie
had made it abundantly clear that they didn’t approve of David’s
lifestyle, his parenting skills, or his yard work. It was just who
they were though, and at least their disdain was not reserved
exclusively for those outside of the Bleaker household. Julie would
routinely talk about her husband with caustic sarcasm, pantomiming
to anyone who cared to listen (and many who didn’t) the whispering
of completely audible insults from behind the barrier of her plump
hand, while her husband flushed with dismay and embarrassment.

David pulled
the screen door aside and knocked on the front door with heavy
fist, and heavier heart, but moments later, that weight was lifted
when the front door was flung open by Stephanie. She ran through
the doorway, threw her arms around his back, pressed her head
against his stomach, and yelled, “Daddy, you look terrible.”

David laughed,
grimacing at a pain which coursed through his body, seemingly from
everywhere simultaneously.

“Thanks hon.”
He patted his daughter’s back, his eyes gravitating naturally
towards Don’s stern expression as he arrived in the hallway behind
Stephanie. Miserable prick, thought David, but the words that came
out were more congenial, “And you Don, thank you. I really can’t
thank you enough.”

“Mhmm. Hannah
called the school, gave them some cock and bull story about this
one being ill.”

He nodded his
head towards Stephanie, “Truancy is no laughing matter Dave.” His
eyes flickered, jumping about David’s clothes, his hands, his
mussed up hair, then he continued. “I guess you’ve got a lot on
your plate.” He waited awkwardly for David to talk, then in a
softer tone, he offered, “Look, any time. Stephanie’s no
bother.”

David smiled
appreciatively, and hugged his daughter tighter, “Thanks Don.”

The moment the
door closed on Don Bleaker, David patted Stephanie’s shoulder,
“Pack a back pack honey, we’re going on a road trip.” She glanced
over her shoulder, squinting with dumbfounded glee.

“Where are we
going?”

David thought
about New York, the madness of the assassination, the crowds
crushing in about them.