by Melody Clark
The old man cast him a frail smile. “Now why don’t you return to the party? Let an old codger sit with his memories.”
Edward moved tentatively toward the door. “Is there anything I can bring you? Something you need?”
John Croftdon’s smile expanded. “That’s so like Thomas to ask that. No, I’m as well as I can be, given the circumstances. But please know, Herbert Price is insufferable. The next time he holds forth, you have my permission to haymaker the prat. I’ll smooth things over with your father.”
Eddie couldn’t help but laugh. “Thanks, I’ll remember that.”
“See that you do.”
As Edward walked back through the hallway, he felt like he had stepped out of one reality and into another – and he had the oddest feeling John Croftdon had intimated something to him he couldn’t quite grasp. Through it all, Edward could hear the sounds of young people laughing in the distance, flooding in through an open backdoor. Party games, probably, he deduced.
The roar inside him gradually grew louder – loud enough to cloister the sounds outside.
Eddie stepped into the small storage closet just beyond his room. The boxes he’d received with no last name – the ones from Wendell – collected dust in various stacks. Pulling from his pocket a box cutter he had taken from the supplies cupboard, he stabbed into the top one and sliced it open.
He wasn’t sure what he was looking for – or if he was looking for anything at all.
He removed from the box a number of things – a photograph of Jennifer Bakunin, that he smiled at and set aside for placement in his room, an old coin bank, an orange toy dog he had won at a long ago carnival, and at last something he had forgotten altogether. His “Native American” bracelet. An old remnant of his days in Indian Guides. It made him smile.
All the cloth remnants and beadwork had been supplied by his adopted mother – a mix of fabric from her scrap bag, tied into leather joinings, with some tiny white and blue beads worked into a child’s awkward artistry. He smiled fondly at the bracelet and slipped it into his jacket pocket to be reflected on later.
Next from the box, he withdrew his old medicine bag. Another relic of his Indian Guides days. But it felt like something was inside it.
He opened it and out popped a full pill bottle of reds and whites mixed together. An old stash? But why on earth would he hide it here? More than likely another Wendell head game.
Edward shoved the pill bottle back into the box like an insult. The last thing he saw was a small 5x7 framed photo that had once been in his room. It was of Wendell and Edward. His adopted father stood with him like a champion angler beside the sport fish he had landed. And Edward had been the prize catch of all.
Edward pulled the photo out of the frame. He tore it apart in as many pieces as his hands could manage, until they flittered to the floor like confetti.
He pulled from his pocket his smart phone and texted to one number he had sworn he would never text again. He would do it only once more and then block it from replying.
Wendell, he texted, I wonder if you realize you have created in me your worst enemy.
Then he made himself go back to the party and made a vain pretense of enjoying the day. He kept the bracelet in his pocket for later.
“It’s been a long emotional day. You sure you’re up to this, Eddie?” Andrew asked, as he set up the SAGE2 sequencer for reception. “You know better than most how draining these sessions can be.”
“Yeah, I need this actually,” Edward said. “If you’re okay?”
“I’m fine. Too much cake, beer and Uncle Herb, but I’ll hold up. I think we’re the only ones still awake though. Dad’s sleeping. God knows the lads have crashed, too. Wilsey looked like he could sleep for days. Did you determine a focus object?”
Edward reached into his pocket and pulled out the bracelet he had discovered earlier. “This is something we could use. It was something I wore a lot. I liked it a lot. Of course, it’s a loaded goal, so I’ll be critical of anything I receive. I won’t go in with pattern-seeking mode.”
“As if you could ever be credulous,” Andrew said, grinning.
“Just ask Tad,” Eddie replied, pulling on the SAGE2 cap. He placed the bracelet in the basket they had geared up for objects, to take the place of the second cap. He nodded to Andrew who then pressed the trigger on the sensing unit.
He felt warm. And safe. He saw fuzzy bright lights above him, as he stared into, perhaps, pillars in an unknown structure. He focused in on a tiny hand, which he somehow knew to be his own hand. His face was soon overshadowed by another face.
“I’m genuinely getting something,” Edward said. “It seems to be the same setting as the earlier baby hand flash. It’s my own perception, too. Someone is holding me. A young man. I’m an infant.”
“Focus on the nearest object,” Andrew said. “Bring it into your view.”
Edward focused – the face of the person holding him was young, flushed and perspiring. Eddie tried to read the expression on the young man’s face. Really, he was just a boy. Edward the man could read nothing beyond it – just his own adult appraisal of the basic impressions of an infant.
“I’m only getting the direct images from the infant. I think it’s Dad holding me,” Eddie said. “My God, he’s so young. I mean, I know he was young, but he looks like such a kid –”
“Yeah, he was,” Andrew said.
Hands from outside moved around him, removing him from his father’s arms. As the infant, Edward had grasped something in his fingers. To the adult Edward now, it appeared to be a green and yellow necktie, with a singular row of repeated “w’s” down the center of the tie. As the infant Edward was pulled away from the young father, the baby’s fingers reflexed around the young man’s tie.
There seemed to be a tug of war – a kind of war of adult hands over him.
Edward the infant heard a cry go out – something shrill, like a dagger of sound stabbing at the air – no, more like multiple sounds torn apart by agony and then welded back together again in despair. It wasn’t the infant crying. That shrill, horrible dagger scream had come from the boy who held him.
Eddie sat up from the chair. To escape the flood of information, he hurled away the baseball cap. It was then he realized he had been crying.
“Fuck,” he whispered, still trying to divest himself of the feelings and images. “That was –” He shook his head.
Andrew stood beside him, staring searchingly up into his face. “For godsakes, what the hell happened?”
“I don’t know,” he coughed out, masking his face with his hands. “God, that was unspeakably dreadful. Terrible. Even that word seems too weak. There aren’t any. Words, I mean. Christ,
I don’t ever want to feel that again.”
Andrew patted his shoulder. “It was a true memory?”
“Oh, yeah, all the conditions met. That didn’t come from me. It was too fucking painful. But I was an infant again. How did that recon come from this bracelet? I made it when I was eight or nine.”
“Maybe it has some association you’re not aware of?”
“Maybe.”
“Is there an identifier you could single out that would help us validate the memory?”
The moving images flickered on rewind through his memory. “I remember Dad was wearing this tie. I wonder if there are any pictures of me from that day.”
“Have you tried your baby book?”
Eddie spun around and grabbed for the baby book again. He quickly leafed through it to an image in front. One of the first ones, a picture of an infant in the arms of a teenaged boy. The boy, clad in a suit, looked to be in the grip of impending doom – something awful about to happen. The boy wore a tie. As faded as the photo was, the picture of the boy showed a tie that definitely appeared flecked with a pattern of different colors.
Edward squinted at the photograph, t
rying to discern more information.
“Do you have a magnifying glass or something?” Eddie asked.
“Yes, of course,” Andrew said, looking for an object that had been slipped into an office tray. He handed it over.
Edward circled the glass over the top of the picture. The detail began to emerge. The tie seemed more brown than green, but the other color was definitely yellow. Down its center, ran a row of chevron symbols in a single column.
Edward met Andrew’s stare. He felt the internal war between the human being he was and the scientist he was. On one hand, he needed to cry – on the other, he stood amazed. A small repeated chevron pattern certainly gave the impression of a w.
“Andrew, it’s the same tie,” Eddie said, with wonder burgeoning in his voice. “That was a genuine memory. A godawful, horrible, genuine memory.”
“It certainly appeared to be. You think we’re onto something?”
“Yes, maybe.” Edward leaned back against the chair. “At what age do babies see colors?”
“Six months, I think,” Andrew said.
“Not that I want to feed into your pathetic fallacy, my bruthas, but that’s a myth,” Tad answered from the door. “Infants are born seeing all colors, they’re just very myopic. Kind of like our Eddie here.”
Edward hurled an empty paper cup in Tad’s direction but inquired with all seriousness, “Can they recognize shapes?”
Tad tossed the paper cup back at him. “Indeed.”
Eddie caught the thrown object, continuing, “But the recognition of the shape had to be by my adult mind. An infant wouldn’t associate the pattern with symbol. So how is that not an artifact of perception?” Eddie folded his arms. “How did I not impress that on the memory?”
“Sounds like something for further inquiry,” Andrew said, patting Edward’s arm. “Are you all right? Because I’m dead knackered.”
Eddie nodded curtly. “Yeah, sure. Thanks for staying up to test with me. Go ahead to bed. Good night.”
“See you two in the morning,” Andrew said.
“Raven’s tomorrow,” Tad reminded.
“As if you would let us forget,” Andrew replied, leaving the room for the rest of the hallway.
Tad laughed in his wake. He gave Eddie an extra moment of quiet. “And if I shuffle off to my room to slumber?”
“I’ll be fine. Go on.”
Tad grasped his shoulder for a moment, as if in solidarity. “Raven’s tomorrow.”
Eddie chuckled. “Yes, I’d heard.”
Chapter Five
Eddie slept little. Every time he shut his eyes and tried to relax, the boy’s scream would echo like a tempest in his head. Even ear buds didn’t mute it. Even the drone of a fan couldn’t drive it away. Blinders hadn’t shut out the overbearing light of the memory. He spent much of the night reading and, when unable to focus, looking up at stars.
He had felt that dagger of pain pass right through his own heart, as if he had suffered the agony himself. How had Thomas survived a grief of that magnitude? Was it even likely for a young boy, probably deeply conflicted at the burdens of early fatherhood, to feel that? Or was Edward merely seeing what he had wanted to see? What he had wanted Thomas to feel? But would he have wanted Thomas to feel something so awful?
Everything in him was leaning toward the simpler explanation – that Eddie had conjured the experience out of his own wishful thinking. Or is that just easier for you to believe, he asked himself.
He managed some sleep and a shower, then wandered with his first sacred cup of coffee down the hallway. He wondered faintly if he’d had enough sleep, when the sweet and humid scent of raw pumpkin reached his nose. It was the morning of 31 October. In the US, that would have been an unsurprising aroma. He had resigned himself to a Halloween devoid of the usual customs, so the smell seemed especially odd.
He rounded a corner to find James and Wilsey at work on the kitchen floor. The tile had been covered with newspaper. The newspaper had been splattered with seed-clinging pumpkin pulp James was ambitiously scraping from the inside of a fair-sized pumpkin. James had pumpkin pulp on his nose. Wilse wore seeds in his hair.
James looked up and displayed their work – an oval-eyed, square-nosed jack-o-lantern with a big round shocked expression.
“It’s a surprise. What do you think?” James asked, with a smile of anticipation.
“I think it’s a fine artistic interpretation of a jack-o-lantern,” Eddie said.
Tad walked up from behind and leaned down to inspect it, too. “In other words, you cocked it up, Jimmy,” he said, taking a drink from a flask. He showed Eddie the white packet of powder from the previous day before pitching it into the trash filled already with pumpkin guts. “He sent you sodium bicarbonate. Baking soda. You’re right, he was playing mind games.”
“That figures,” Edward said.
“Eddie,” James replied, indicating his pumpkin, “is it really so bad?”
“There’s not one right way to carve a pumpkin,” Eddie said firmly.
“But if there was one, it wouldn’t look like that,” Tad said. “The eyes and nose are all supposed to be pyramid shapes. The mouth you cut in with square or jagged teeth. There is very little artistic license when it comes to jack-o-lanterns, little brother. I know, I’ve had to educate myself for my septic son, of whom I have custody all day long.”
“Try not to sound so chuffed about it, Toadface,” James said.
“Wait until you have one of your own,” Tad shot back.
“There’s nothing wrong with your pumpkin, James,” Edward said. “There is a long tradition of pumpkin carving that goes way beyond the traditional patterns. Some of them are great works of art.”
Tad pointed at the pumpkin in question. “Well, that ain’t one of em.”
“Well, forgive me for trying,” James snapped back. “We have never carved one before. We wanted to do something nice for Eddie. You’re the doctor. Despite the fact you smell like an illegal liquor cabinet exploded. Why not grab a scalpel and help?”
“If I did that to a patient, I wouldn’t be a doctor for long,” Tad said. “As for my state, I specifically arranged it so that I would have no patients today, though I do have to dekko a fucking sea of charts, just so I could get ripped as all fuck because my noxious bitch of an ex is off to some stupid adult costume event near the bloody Borders council area. Lucky duck I am, I get custody of my only spawn all evening long.”
“I’m sure Stewie loves that his dad has to get wasted to visit with him,” James shot back.
“If you were cleaner, I’d have vomited on you for that remark,” Tad said, gulping once more from his metal flask before stowing it in his back pocket. He peeled his jacket off the entry settle, and pulled it on before opening the door. “Remember, men, we have the Raven this afternoon. Eddie’s first time. A grand night will be had by all. Later, family.” He saluted the room before leaving.
Eddie looked pitifully over at James and Wilse. “Why does his description worry me?”
“Because it should,” James said, “he manages to embarrass us all every year in some way. It’s the Raven’s annual Edgar Allen Poe-try contest, too. People read heaps of their own godawful Poe-like poems. Tad reads his, drinks too much. It’s never pretty. Plus he made us eat soup with chopsticks last year.”
“Why do you go?” Edward asked. “No, wait a minute, the same reason I am. Because otherwise, you’d have to listen to Tad complain about it.”
James and Wilse nodded in unison. “Of course,” James said.
Eddie nodded. “I have work to do on the script now. By the way, the pumpkin was very thoughtful of you guys.”
“No worries. We aim to bake a pie with the orange sticky, stringy goop, too,” Wilse said.
“Actually, you don’t make a pie with the goop, but with the inside flesh of the pumpkin you’re carving. You can bake the seeds, though. Or
save them to plant for more pumpkins.”
“What do we do with the orange sticky, stringy stuff?” James asked.
Eddie shrugged. “Compost maybe? Art projects? If all else fails, throw it away.”
“How wasteful.”
“Sorry. That’s the extent of my pumpkin gnosticism. Ask Andrew. He’s the family cook. He might know more.”
“He knows nothing,” Andrew said, from the library door. “That’s my standard answer for all such inquiries, or else they’ll subjugate me in thralldom to do their culinary bidding. Besides, Eddie, I have something to show you on the computer.”
“I was going over the logs from the input last night,” Andrew said, reaching for the laser mouse to move the cursor on the overhead screen, “when I saw something interesting. Remember when we started comparing cerebral activity scans with optimum results from SAGE? Years ago?”