CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
LeCarre drove us to their house, which was just a few neighborhoods over from mine on Rabbit Hole Avenue. Their home was in much better shape than ours. The yard was maintained and all of the windows were in proper position. The outer walls were a flushed shade of red with green linings. Every time I came over, it made me feel like it was Christmas again.
We went inside. The layout wasn’t too different from the inside of my house. A staircase was the first thing you saw when you entered the door. The living room was to the side of the stairs. It was decked out with a lot of classic looking leather furniture. A sectioned couch took center stage amongst LeCarre’s gentlemen chairs. All of it rested on oak wood floors.
I always wondered how long LeCarre had been working at Dahlgreen. I didn’t think it was possible for him to afford the set up on a teacher’s salary. His extra curricular activities as a Silhouette hardly helped sell his case as a rich man.
“Jessica, you and your brother go upstairs. I need to speak to Alan alone,” he said.
Jessica made a brief protest, but promptly dragged Gerry up the stairs who still had his eyes attached to his video games.
“LeCarre, I—”
LeCarre waved his hand in the air, which sent me sailing into one of his gentlemen chairs. I straightened up quickly.
“Alan, we do not have a lot of time,” he said.
“What are you talking about? All I’ve heard lately is how much time we don’t have. When do the good happy thoughts show up?”
LeCarre pretended like I had not said anything at all, “Lathon was keeping a close eye on your parents.”
“And?”
“They are gone. Lathon said he was following them to their destination. He wouldn’t tell me where they went, but he said he had a lead. I’m thinking of making a trek to London to learn more about the Silhouettes there.”
“Now, you know how it feels.” My insides felt like they had been turned inside out, “What about the memory stone? What am I supposed to do while Lathon is away and you are in London? I want to understand what is going on, but the two of you keep avoiding my questions. My dad, he called himself—,” I stopped my words when LeCarre’s eyes perked up.
“What did he call himself, Alan?” he said. “Tell me now.”
“Adolphus Fletch.”
LeCarre toppled the chair opposite of me to the ground, which shook the floor enough to make their big screen TV above the fireplace wobble. I could already tell that things were not going to be ok.
“Who is Adolphus Fletch?” I asked. LeCarre was still too angry to answer. I asked again, “LeCarre? Who is Adolphus Fletch?
His silvery gaze caught mine, “He promised he would not do this, honestly. I knew I should have checked it before we used it.”
I jumped up from my chair. The picture was beginning to become crystal clear. I said, “Please tell me. I have to know, LeCarre. I’m frightened.”
He motioned for me to sit back down and picked the chair back up to take his own seat. He said, “Draio, like most places, has a government.”
“Right, the high council?”
“In the beginning, there were only Silhouettes on Draio. They ran the high council and oversaw the rest of their people. The population, mostly men, had one job: to create dreams and insert them into the minds of Earth’s people. They developed a machine out of scratch that projected dreams on to a movie screen. It was none too different from the buildings you call IMAX theaters on Earth. Naturally, this allowed them to tap into the minds of billions.
Now, the Silhouettes did not create the dreams on their own. It was a collaborative effort between them and the humans they were influencing. This led to a small number of Silhouettes who were so impressed with some of the dreams they were creating that they petitioned the high council to invite humans to Draio.
The original council consisted of five members: Awduron, Arlun, Actoria, Adolphus, and Diffo. Four of the members disapproved. Care to guess which one agreed?”
“Adolphus? You mean my dad was part of the original high council? How old is he?”
“No. The real Adolphus is long dead. Your father wore his name as a symbol of the resistance. The real Adolphus Fletch approved the entry of humans into Draio.”
“Isn’t that majority rules?”
“The high council only needed one party to approve for their orders to be passed. Humans were officially allowed in to Draio. The original order only allowed humans within an inch of their life to enter in order to preserve the secrecy of their land. Shakespeare was one of the first Second Lifes to be let in. I’ve been told he was an odd sort, attempting to stage the Silhouettes in his productions. Eventually, the Silhouettes grew tired of prancing around under his direction that they let a few more humans into Draio.
Many years passed along with some highly successful dreams when they invited Mark Twain to Draio in 1910. He convinced the Silhouettes that, if we used the Silhouette’s magic, that we could create new species of creatures. This led to the shape shifters, the nee naws, and the dragons. Twain did it all. He created the schools, the observation decks. He built dormitories in all of the high council members’ honor. This pleased the council so much that they stripped the within death ban that limited the Second Lifes from living in our world and opened it to any human that was creative enough to find a way in.
Artists, writers, warriors, and actors, they all started pouring in. That is when Reese Quinn and Maggie Hoffner found their way. Reese was a writer. Maggie was an actress that eventually learned to be a shifter from the Silhouettes. I remember meeting them for the first time. I had only been alive for twenty seasons. They were wonderful friends, Alan. They truly were.”
The history of Draio swam around in my mind. It sounded so wonderful. I said, “This all sounds amazing, but what happened that destroyed everything?”
LeCarre’s silvery eyes were drenched in tears, “Humans immediately wanted to know more about the power the Silhouettes had. They craved it. Many like your father spent too much time hoping to be taught some of their abilities. One day, a Silhouette took it upon himself to oblige Reese. The Silhouette inserted his being inside of Reese’s head and let your father feel his power. They learned combat together, invisibility, or anything that Reese demanded of him. The high council gained wind of this and forbid the Silhouette to continue his practices. The Silhouette agreed, but we all knew this wasn’t going to work out for Reese.
He had become dependent on the Silhouette’s power like a drug that he desperately needed. The same went for any other Second Life that chose to indulge in the Silhouette’s dealings. The high council locked Reese up along with the—”
“Which Silhouette was it?”
“Lathon,” said LeCarre. “Adolphus Fletch, in his 463rd season, protested the high council’s decision. He begged them to see that the joining of Silhouettes and humans could have endless benefits. Awduron, the leader, disagreed, which led to a battle between the two Silhouettes. Awduron won. Adolphus was thrown out of Draio, leading to his permadeath.”
“That lead to the great war?”
“Precisely. Like most places it has a select margin of people that oppose its government. The Second Lifes had a revolution. When a revolution takes place, there must be a leader. Their leader was Reese Quinn, who led under the name of the one who allowed the Second Lifes to enter Draio in the first place: Adolphus Fletch.”
“What happened then?”
“The bulk of the high council were—” LeCarre swallowed to gather his words, “sent to their permadeaths. They were banished from Draio and, by association, life. The rest of the Silhouettes surrendered and agreed to obey anyone the Second Lifes chose for their high council. ”
The words slipped out, “Darius?”
He stared at me for a moment, “Yes. That was around the time young Darius found his way into Draio. When he was still on Earth, he would dream of Draio and scribble his fi
ndings in his books. When he was recruited to live with us, he practically skyrocketed into power.
Adolphus and Darius took reign over all that remained. They kept Lathon around to maintain the illusion of an equal balance. The Silhouettes had just as many rights as they were accustomed to, but they had to follow human orders and go to the human schools. Imagine Silhouettes having Albert Einstein teaching them science lessons. After the rising, that was now happening. They were no longer allowed to do any dream creation, leading to a century of nightmares.”
I studied LeCarre. I wondered how it made him feel to be in the middle of all of it. He was a Silhouette being ruled by my father. I said, “How did the Silhouettes end up in the cages?”
“That happened after the second rising. The Silhouettes began,” he cleared his throat like he was fighting a painful thought, “kidnapping children, experimenting on them. All the while, they were recruiting the supernatural hybrids like the shifters they had created. They were preparing to start a war to take back their land. Lord Darius learned of the uprising and labeled the shifters as a banned race.”
The Silhouette (Alan Quinn and the Second Lifes) Page 30