Histories of the Void Garden, Book 1: Pyre of Dreams (9 page)

“Well now,
there’s a thing!” She watched the young girl’s mouth, forgetting
herself, admiring her bloom of youth. Then she looked away, lured
by the siren’s call from the living room. Another long dead fitness
instructor beckoned for her to join.

West booked a 9pm
flight from La Guardia to Ronald Reagan Washington National,
traveling under the name of Anthony Statham. He traveled light,
carrying only a small case containing his forged credentials, and
he arrived at check-in with enough time to relax while enjoying an
hour of meandering, and people watching at the departure gate. The
flight wasn’t fully booked so he was able to enjoy the short
journey with the luxury of two seats to himself.

In Washington,
West took a taxi from the airport into downtown D.C. and asked the
driver to drop him at the Willard Hotel on Pennsylvania. The
Willard wasn’t close to David Beach’s home, but it was a short walk
from a private parking deck which housed one of West’s cars. He
checked into the hotel, made his way to his room, lay on the bed,
and closed his eyes, allowing the past to flood his mind.

At five in the
morning, West checked out, walked the two blocks to 14th Street NW,
and keyed into the parking garage. West had made a habit of keeping
a couple of car to hand in most major cities. Licensing, taxes, tag
renewals, roadworthy tests and other such administrative headaches
had made this particular habit almost impossible until he had found
a small company based out of Iowa who were happy to take care of
those intricacies on his behalf. It was a vulnerability of sorts,
but it was a minor consideration for the luxury it afforded
him.

He pulled a key
out of his pocket and hammered it into the awkward old lock of his
69 Mustang Boss, resting his case in the passenger’s seat. He had
built the Boss’s engine himself, hand machining parts rather than
3d printing; however, the engine was sufficiently powerful that
designing and fabricating specialized tires for the car had also
been a necessity.

Every time he
heard the deep throaty roar, it brought a smile to West’s face, but
the streets of D.C made him feel like a caged animal. He drove up
New York Avenue, heading toward 34th Street and pulled into a small
housing development, coming to a stop one block from the Beach’s
house in Brentwood at five thirty.

It was a
pleasant neighborhood, with tree lined streets and houses built in
a modest variety of styles. West climbed out of the car quietly,
closing the door with a gentle push. No longer the caged beast, now
he scanned his surroundings for possible threats. Not many things
could pose a real threat to West, but not many, was too many, and
that thought was never far from his mind. He walked toward David
Beach’s house slowly, stopping beside a large oak tree. He leaned
against the tree and stood silently watching the cars in front of
the house. There should be something there, some movement, some
indication …

He was only
standing there for a few minutes when he heard the low rumble of a
van’s engine as it pulled around the corner. The advertising decals
on the van boasted the “Best cleaning service in Maryland” and West
wasn’t surprised to see the van roll past him and park on the
opposite side of the street, fifteen yards from the Beach’s home.
He was even less surprised to see two men of average stature exit
the front cab of the van, both glancing furtively about the street,
both paying particular attention to the cream sided double garaged
three bed townhouse. The two men climbed into the back cab of the
van and closed the door behind them.

Stephanie couldn’t
sleep, which was always the case if she was awoken by the first
light of day. She would pull the blankets about her head, leaving a
little tunnel to the outside world so she could breathe, and she’d
lie with her eyes closed, concentrating as hard as she could on not
thinking about anything. It never worked. Once she’d accepted that
she wasn’t going back to sleep, the morning seemed to open up in a
vast array of possibilities, and usually, overwhelmed by choice,
Stephanie would resort to the familiar.

She was part
way through this ritual, pulling the first breaths of outside air
through her blanket snorkel, when she heard coughing from the next
room. Brow wrinkled with determination, she climbed carefully out
of her bed, tiptoed to the bedroom door, and pulling the brass
handle down slowly, she whipped the door open in a smooth motion,
making sure she didn’t slam the door handle into the wall. She took
wide steps past her dad’s bedroom door, determined not to wake him.
Her Aunt Hannah’s door was an altogether trickier affair, usually
booby trapped with clothes hanging on noisy hangers on the back of
her door, but Stephanie was ready for this, and only opened the
door far enough that she could squeeze through the gap, but not so
far as to bump the jangling clothes against the tall dresser behind
the door.

Hannah woke with the
smell of strawberry lip-gloss, wafted into her face by the labored
breathing of Stephanie, who had either been running laps, or had
been trying really hard not to breathe.

“Spiff, I’m
really sorry, but if the big fat hand hasn’t made it past six, I’m
going to have to kill you.”

“There’s no big
fat hand.”

“You know what
I mean.”

Stephanie
pressed the button to wake up her aunt’s phone on the bedside
table, and saw that it was a little before twenty till six. She
buried her face in the pillow, and mumbled something.

Hannah nudged
her shoulder gently, “What did you say?”

Scared eyes
peaked out from the safety of the pillow, “Aww shish kebab,”

Hannah gasped,
“Stephanie Beach!”

“I said shish
kebab!”

“You know what
it means. What time is it anyway?”

Stephanie
checked again, “It’s five twenty-seven, and plus forty-two
seconds.”

Hannah groaned
and pulled the blanket over her face, “Run away little girl!”

Stephanie
jumped out of bed and ran out of the room as delicately as she
could. Muscle memory kicking in as she reached the hallway, she
skipped over several squeaky floorboards so as not to wake her dad,
then crept downstairs, using the banisters to take the weight out
of her steps. She ran through the kitchen into the den, and issued
the command, “TV on, volume mute.” It had taken her a while to get
used to the correct inflection to use with voice commands, despite
her dad’s insistence that it worked perfectly, there was definitely
a knack. She lay on the floor, waving her hand listlessly in the
air in front of her, conducting her own symphony of colors and
shapes until she found what she was looking for. She made a
beckoning motion with her fingers, the conductor asking for that
little bit more from the timpani drums, the volume raising on the
TV, as the rolling deeps of the ocean, and the tattered French flag
filled the screen. Stephanie leaned back on her elbows, ready to
sink into:

“1815, Twenty
six years after the start of the French Revolution …”

Before the
string section was able to strike up its first note, Stephanie’s
attention was torn from the screen by the sound of a car pulling up
outside. She heard a car door slam shut, and she ran over to the
couch so that she could stand on the cushions, leaning over the
back of the couch, watching the street through the large front
window. She pried open the blinds, trying to make out which of
their neighbors was returning from work at this early hour, but a
little way down the street, she caught sight of a man standing
under a tree. He was quite motionless, just staring at the back of
that same cleaning truck she’d seen outside of the house this past
couple of weeks. She watched as he shifted his weight, pushing off
from the tree, long slow steps through the shadows, the sound of
the waves and the symphony orchestra crashing about him, his
movements fell oddly into syncopation with the yells of the slaves.
Stephanie smiled at the coincidence, then suddenly, as Jean Valjean
sung the first notes of his song, the man turned to face her,
looking at her, even through the blinds, she was sure of it. From
behind her, Jean Valjean sang his warning to her, “Look down,” and
she did, breathing rapidly, shivers running down her spine as she
allowed herself to get carried away with the serendipity, listening
to the words of the song, ‘look down, you’re here until you die.”
She gasped, sucking her bottom lip. She was too young to die.

“TV mute!” she
grabbed a couch cushion, and bravely peaked through the blinds
again, but now the man was gone. When the phone rang, she mashed
her face into the cushion and screamed a little.

West placed his phone
back in his pocket and tapped the side of the van with an open
palm. When no response came from within, he leaned his back against
the van, and crouched, curling his fingers under the van’s sill. He
lifted the van slowly, cleanly, just far enough that he could hear
things tumble about inside, then he bent his knees, touching the
tires to the floor, so very gently. West had expected the FBI, and
it had cost him very little time, and only a couple of thousand
dollars, to ensure that he was the only person with a working cell
phone. It was almost disappointing that the agents didn’t call for
back up. The doors didn’t burst open in a flurry of motion. The
side paneling of the van didn’t erupt in a thousand smoking metal
flowers while agents with itchy trigger fingers fired blindly.

Hearing had
become somewhat of a problem for West, but it had its uses, and
right now he could hear two heartbeats, calm and steady, and he
could hear another thing; subtler, more delicate … that unusual
flutter, the silent yearning of a thousand mouths, so desperate to
make their hosts perfect, the perfect machine, the perfect
vessel.

He stepped away
from the van, calmly, backing onto the short grass.

“Can Agents
Carmichael and McMahon come out to play today?” West spoke the
words softly, and in response, he heard the soft clicking of
useless buttons, the tapping of useless screens, "Asspérges me,
Dómine, hyssópo, et mundábor; lavábis me, et super nivem dealbábor,
…” West whispered the words from the rite of extreme unction, and
the response from inside the van was unmistakable. West could taste
it on the air, that heady mix of adrenocorticotropic hormone,
cortisol, and epinephrine … fear, and anger, in almost equal
doses.

The rear door
of the van opened slowly, and the two men stepped out onto the
street, weapons holstered, hands held with palms facing forward at
waist height. This signal, their welcoming of hand to hand combat
was an empty gesture; each of the three men knew there would be no
exchange of gunfire. West didn’t move, offered no countersign, no
genuflection, no kowtow.

“We have no
quarrel.” The man on the right spoke. West recognized him from his
file as agent Carmichael, forty-two years old, single,
Episcopalian, of Irish descent, and a recent transfer from Jersey
to the D.C field office. Except for the fact that he had
transferred from Jersey, none of this was true, of course, but it
added flavor to West’s perception of the man behind which the
monster lurked. West thought of Sun Tzu, know other, know self,
hundred battles without danger. Recently, he’ had to acknowledge
that he was struggling a little with his self-awareness, but by Sun
Tzu’s math, this meant that he should have at least a fifty fifty
chance of coming through this little fracas unscathed.

McMahon raised
his eyes to the morning sky, “Their concerns are not our concerns
friend. Leave us in peace, and go about your business.”

West narrowed
his eyes, and knelt in the grass, watching the two men closely.
“You, the two of you were born of the Void Garden, and so, there is
a possibility that your making was not of your own volition. You
have chosen names which suggest Gaelic ancestry, so perhaps you are
Sentinel of Aífe, or else of Bé Chuille, or possibly you’re Tuatha
Dé Danann? It’s of little consequence … It could be that your
chosen names are merely an affectation. Whatever is true of your
ancestry, on this day, you walk in to battle with unsound
reasoning, a dogmatic and uneducated adhesion to a woefully corrupt
morality, and an entirely misplaced confidence. Their concerns are
the only concern.” West spread his arms to indicate the surrounding
houses. “Their needs are our needs. To carry yourself without
concern for others, you are completely without self. Opinions can
change, and the defects of thought can be untaught, but you have
chosen your side. You were born of the Void Garden, and of your
unmaking, I shall fertilize the Void Garden. I was once her
scourge; I am now her groundsman.” He grinned malevolently, and
lowered his voice, almost to that of a growl, “We’re painting the
roses red.” He watched Carmichael and McMahon’s expressions,
wondering who would be rattled more by his words. McMahon.

West leapt
across the space between them, mouth aiming at no particular
target, but finding a hold on McMahon’s left eye socket, digging in
quite firmly to the curve of bone which formed his left eyebrow. He
wrapped his arms around the man’s neck, swinging his legs to the
left so that McMahon’s neck twisted almost to the point of
snapping. Alarmed by agent McMahon’s screams, and suddenly aware of
the trajectory on which West’s feet seemed to be traveling,
Carmichael stumbled backwards, but his action came too late, and he
felt a sharp blow to the back of his head. His arms flailed at the
air in front of him, hoping to catch the assailant’s legs, but he
was disoriented. By the time he’d managed to work out where the man
had landed, there was already a blur of motion from below, a hand
punching up towards him with disgusting certainty, thrusting into
his rib cage, bending the costal cartilage and shattering his
sternum. Carmichael realized before his head hit the ground that he
couldn’t breathe, and that McMahon would be dead before he could
attempt to come to his aid. He clutched his chest, and allowed his
head to roll to the side as he watched McMahon stumble cautiously
about the grass, body low, legs wide, arms forward.