Histories of the Void Garden, Book 1: Pyre of Dreams (8 page)

Left alone, Charlene
had sat in the dark of her living room. She watched the dust motes,
swirling and spinning their merry dance through the few graying
slats of light which punctuated the darkness. She would pucker her
lips, blowing into the stream, and she would imagine that the
billowing dust was really plumes of smoke, blown by her dead
mother, or father, always there, just out of sight. She wasn’t
religious, but she spoke to them sometimes. Funny that you could
carry a person wholesale in your head, she thought. It was never
really them, but then, who was? You never knew but as much of a
person as they knew of themselves, or at least that’s what her
Daddy had said. Well, he was too young to know. Hadn’t broken forty
when his heart gave out. She watched her mother blow a mote ring
into the light.

There were too
many thoughts, and every time she made to move one of her limbs,
her brain was completely shut down by the overload. Could she feel
it? Her stomach would rumble, or else she would get a twinge of
pain in one of her joints, and she’d be momentarily convinced that
it must be the little creature, but then the feeling would subside
and her thoughts would swing wildly back to her youth, back to the
heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir
to.

Gradually
though, something had changed in her. It was as specific as that;
she knew it wasn’t a process of rationalization, because she didn’t
know where to begin with her thoughts. Something in her changed. It
wasn’t a spasm, a pain, or an uncomfortable movement; it was a
paradigm shift brought on without the effort of deep introverted
thought. In a moment, clarity broke through the din, and it
occurred to her that she had nothing to lose in the scenario she
was faced with. She went about most of her days doing whatever she
could to avoid pain or discomfort. She didn’t have anything, even
something trivial which she looked forward to on a day to day
basis. She had no relatives, or anyone she cared about even enough
to mention them in a letter, let alone a will. A year ago she had
spoken to a weaselly looking man from a small firm of lawyers, and
she had managed to figure out that if she left her worldly
possessions to anyone, she would be doing them a disservice.

By the time
Charlene had realized the sense of relief brought on by
relinquishing the burden of worry, she was already on her feet.

Now there was
only hunger. She had spent the past hour spring cleaning,
experiencing no breathlessness or pain, which she had to admit,
felt pretty damned good at her age. When the hunger hit, it almost
stopped her dead in her tracks. She went to the kitchenette and
started to fix herself a ham sandwich, then thought better of it
and ate the ham on its own, putting the bread back in the
cupboard.

She threw away
the packaging from the ham and as she was bending over, she noticed
a jar of chunky peanut butter on the counter. She undid the lid
ravenously, and taking a spoon from the top drawer beside the sink,
she plunged it deep into the jar, scooping out a good desert spoon
full of peanut butter. She didn’t usually eat peanut butter; her
care worker brought her a jar every week when she visited, and
Charlene hadn’t had the heart to tell the girl she didn’t like it.
Now, she savored the taste and the texture as the convex bowl of
the spoon rested against the roof of her mouth.

She washed the
spoon and dried it on her blouse before returning it to the drawer,
and then she walked back to the den and turned on the television.
She flicked through several channels all displaying depressing news
of the riots and unrest around the world. She finally found a
station which was playing an exercise video created by a now
deceased celebrity fitness instructor. Charlene was curious. It had
been a few years since she’d been able to exercise, although until
her seventy-fifth birthday she had kept up a daily routine of
jumping jacks and stretches. She started to mimic the motions of
the on-screen instructor, reaching her right hand down her thigh
towards her knee, then her left hand to her left knee. She reached
up towards the ceiling fan and arched her back, and she almost fell
over, excruciating pain coursing through her external and internal
abdominal oblique muscles. She didn’t know the names of the muscles
in her lower back, so she collapsed into her armchair cursing her
aching back as a whole.

She lunged
forward in the chair, feeling something move in her stomach, then
again, in her back. She reached her arm behind her and she could
feel a small lump there, moving. She would have been scared, she
would have screamed in fear were it not for the fact that she felt
the pain in her back start to subside almost immediately. She bit
her lip, patted the little lump in her back and sat back carefully,
hoping she wouldn’t squash it. It felt not entirely unlike she was
sitting on a massage chair. The late great instructor urged her to
‘work those muscles,’ and Charlene Osterman directed her thoughts
somewhat guiltily towards the lump in her back, muttering softly,
“Yes, go on, work ‘em.”

West refreshed the
browser window on his tablet and saw that there was still no
response to his message to shadowcab73. He picked up the phone and
paced the floor, mentally preparing himself for Stephanie Beach,
determined that she would not best him again. Having routed the
call through several voice over I.P. services, he heard the ring
tone and managed to confine his amusement to a smile when he heard
the girl’s well-rehearsed welcome message, “This is the Beach
residence, Stephanie speaking, how may I help you?”

“Hi Stephanie,
I’m so glad I got through to the right person.” West affected the
most amiable tone of voice he could muster, “My name’s Tony Statham
and I’m delighted to inform you that you’ve won a very special
prize from Manermanam Games.” West offered a silent prayer, wishing
that the child would try and repeat the company name, but there was
nothing but the sound of slightly nasal breathing, then faint
whisper before Stephanie Beach finally responded excitedly, “I
have?”

West winced a
little, disarmed by the sound of Stephanie’s unassuming excitement,
but he continued, “You have. You’ve been selected as the lucky
winner of our on-line supermarket sweep.” West listened calmly to
Stephanie’s gleeful exclamation, her hurried repetition of the
news, presumably to her father. West hoped that this wouldn’t blow
his window of opportunity, but then he heard her excited breath on
the other end of the line, and took his cue to talk again, “I just
need to talk to your father for a couple of minutes so we can give
him all the details you’ll need to claim your prize.”

West leaned
against the wall and smiled inwardly, listening to the muffled pops
and clicks as Stephanie handed the phone to her father, “David
Beach speaking, and listen bud, before you even begin your spiel,
let me tell you, I’ve had it up to here with guys like you calling
at the most inappropriate times, preying on people’s good
nature,”

“Mr Beach, it’s
important that you don’t hang up the phone.”

“Oh sure it is,
we’ve won another fantastic grand prize that I never signed up for
huh? You should be ashamed of yourself, getting a little girl’s
hopes up like that. What do I have to do this time? Come down to
the Motel 6 and listen to you wax lyrical about a set of miracle
knives?”

West closed his
eyes and he sighed, David’s tirade still brewing in his ear. He
thought he perceived a momentary lull, and was about to start
talking when Beach kicked off again, “Oh, please say it’s a time
share in the middle of some uninhabitable hell hole, I was just
saying how much I needed one of those. Honest to God man, you’re
all I fucking need today, you know that? I’m at my whit’s end with
shits, and backstabbing…” The sound became muffled, “Honestly Han,
I’m just sick of it … I left the room…” West could hear a woman’s
voice on the other end of the line, calm, patient, then David’s
response, “Okay, I’m sorry, I’ll take it out back.”

Again, West
tried to seize this opportunity, “Mr Beach, I really must speak to
you, it’s about…”

“Screw you
buddy. You guys just don’t know when to let the fuck up do you? You
don’t know when the button’s been pushed do you? Well you pushed it
man. Is that what you were waiting to hear? You pushed the button
and it’s not going to be un-pushed. You want to talk to me? Man up
and come to the fucking house if my daughter’s won this grand
prize, okay? Just pick up your sorry ass and make the effort
instead of butting in to my evening, prick.”

The line went
dead.

West slumped
into the comfort of his leather sofa and lay back. It wasn’t as if
he had any real time invested in David Beach, but the FBI were
putting all of their eggs into that basket case. He got up from the
sofa and sat at the desk, glaring at the dejected phone, wishing it
all manner of ill will. He shook his head in disgust, allowing his
eyes to drift to the screen of his tablet. He knew David Beach
wasn’t being held for questioning and he also knew that things
weren’t likely to change by the morning. Even over an encrypted
line, what had he expected to accomplish in the course of a single
phone call? Beach was right … He just needed to get up off his ass,
and make the effort.

It took David a while
to calm down. He paced the flagstones of the back yard, not walking
as far as the screen door to the den, because he didn’t want Hannah
or Stephanie to see him so worked up. Eventually, he stepped back
into the kitchen and made himself a coffee, sipping slowly,
breathing meditatively.

Stephanie
pouted, and then growled when David explained that she hadn’t
really won a competition. She wasn’t convinced by his explanation
that there was no such thing as a ‘free lunch,’ even after he had
elaborated on this, offering up that the free lunch was a metaphor.
After some coaxing, she had eventually curled up beside Hannah on
the couch, and had started to read aloud from
Les
Misérables
, much to Hannah’s dismay. Hannah was impressed,
perhaps even a little jealous that Stephanie’s interest in the book
hadn’t waned, but as she was studying for her masters in history,
she struggled to contain her desire to complain about the lack of
historicity. She was surprised when she heard Stephanie read aloud
the singular thought that she herself repeated ad infinitum.

“’She must be a
big girl now; she is seven years old; she is quite a young lady; I
call her Cosette, but her name is really Euphrasie …’”

Yes, Hannah
thought to herself, she is seven years old, don’t be such a
bitch.

David stretched
out on the floor of the den and stared blankly at the screen of his
laptop. The sound of the air conditioner was enough to distract him
from the dulcet tones of his daughter’s reading, but there was
still too much noise in his head to really pay attention to any of
the websites he visited. After clicking idly through a few tech and
entertainment sites, David finally succumbed to the inevitable and
logged on to reddit. He read the most recent messages several times
over, and the noise seemed gradually to die away, till all he could
hear was his heart pounding in his chest.

[–]ThaneOfTheVoid
 1 point 2 hours ago

I would like to
offer my assistance, and I can only hope that you are not too
stubborn to accept it. I’m well versed in the circumstances
surrounding your case.
Edit: By the way, your phone manner is dreadful.

Charlene woke up
slumped over in her armchair, breathing in through her teeth
ruefully, anticipating the pain in her lower back, and across the
arch of her shoulders. The pain didn’t come. She felt relaxed and
refreshed, which was unusual. Hesitantly at first, she pressed her
hands into the arms of the chair, pushing her weight forward, then
she stood up and stretched, reaching her hands up over her head. No
discomfort. “Son of a bitch,” she whispered, licking her lips,
running her fingertips down the base of the spine as she arched her
back.

She walked to
the bathroom and turned on both taps at the sink below the vanity
unit. She bent her head over the ceramic sink, and cupped both of
her hands under the pooling water, splashing a little on her face.
She blinked a couple of times, splashed again, then she stood up
and looked at herself in the mirrored door of the vanity.

Her eyes were
still foggy with sleep, so she bent over again, repeating the
exercise of splashing her eyes, but this time she took care to rub
her eyes gently with the warm water, running the pads of her
fingers along her eyelids. She stood once more and looked at her
reflection. She squinted and leaned closer to the mirror. She
looked at the tube of toothpaste which lay next to the cold water
tap on the sink and she read the ingredients. “Son of a bitch!” she
declared, dropping the toothpaste tube into the sink.

She lifted her
eyes to her reflection and smiled, but the corners of her mouth
fell, nose wrinkled in bemusement as she examined her face more
closely. There were lines there, sure enough, where there had been
lines for many years; creases at the edges of her eyes which ran
down towards her cheeks, and more creases by the edges of her
mouth, little tributaries running their course toward her chin;
however, all of these lines seemed to have softened by degrees.
Something more than this though, which sent shivers down her spine;
it wasn’t really her face, not the face she’d grown accustomed to,
nor the face she’d grown up with. She was looking at her mother,
and as she exhaled and the mirror steamed with her breath, the
illusion was complete.

She wiped the
condensation from the mirror with her forearm and leaned in,
examining her eyes closely. The irises were not hers, not her own
near-mahogany brown eyes. Now she saw her mother’s eyes; green with
flecks of brown; staring at her, blinking with her, looking to the
sides suspiciously. The particular slant of her eyelids, the depth
of the crease over her eyes and the arch of her eyebrows was wrong.
Everything was beautiful; yes, her mother had been beautiful, but
everything was so completely wrong. Her nose; the arch more
pronounced, her nostrils thinner, the creases of her cheeks bore
deeper grooves from a life more full of laughter. All wrong. Then,
by degrees, as she stared at her lips, Cupid’s bow arched as it was
notched with her tongue, and there, the bow grew deeper, her lips
filling out. Her lips, not her mother’s. The arch of her nose
rippled, and she could hear it as much as she could see the change,
like water dislodging from her ear, the crackling sound of the
cartilage moving. The irises of her eyes began to be shot through
with dark beams, each one filling out the strands of green, blue,
and gray; subtle flecks all now lost in dark lakes of umber. Her
eyes. No, not the eyes she’d grown accustomed to, settled for,
bemoaned, but accepted. These were the eyes she’d grown up with.
The crow’s feet, gone; carrion of age given flight by this fearsome
transformation. Laugh lines no more, for the woman who stared back
at her meant business.