San Francisco Covens: Crucible

by Manuel Tiger

  I felt the sting of tears at the corner of my eyes, felt my face burning with a blush of anger as I thought of all that, of everything!

  I spun around to wipe at my eyes, composing myself the best way that I could.

  “Henry?” Nicole said from where she stood at the entrance to the jet bridge. “Are you okay?”

  “Peachy keen,” I replied walking by her. “Let’s get in the air or whatever term they use for taking off.”

  VI

  My bedroom could have fit three times over within the jet. The interior was all chrome, polished wood, leather and plush carpeted flooring. There were computer screens built into the back of some of the seats with a tray that could flip over to reveal a keyboard. Further back was a small area to watch TV and then that of a bedroom in the back.

  The seats in the front started out as single seats then further back they became two, side by side, with an arm rest to divide them.

  I took a seat in the middle, put the arm rest down like a wall going up and leaned against the window looking out as I waited for the plane to take off.

  I was suddenly drawn back toward the front of the cabin, arching a brow when Daman appeared. I was surprised. I had thought, and perhaps some part of me had unconsciously prayed, he would not come. He stood there for a moment between the seats looking at me before he passed by the witches that gave him long lingering stares as they had when we were all in the lounge. He took a seat a row up and to the right of me, putting the armrest down as he kicked his feet up and settled in, face turned toward the window.

  The sunlight bathed his face softly making it appear golden, his lashes long and holding the light so that they shone like the tips of spears. I could see the hint of whiskers starting to appear on his cheek and along his jawline.

  I knew what they felt like beneath my fingers on a lazy, rainy Sunday afternoon.

  And over that particular memory, tearing it to a billion pieces like a hundred billion razor blades, was that of the day which changed everything, which revealed his lies and the cold truth in spilled tears and warm blood.

  I looked away and wrapped my arms around myself blocking out that memory.

  “Maybe talking would help.”

  I looked up as Nicole took the seat beside me.

  “I just spoke to the pilot,” she said setting her day satchel on the floor beside her. “At Daman’s suggestion.”

  “Suggestion?” I asked fastening the seat belt across my waist.

  “He believes the plane should land in Mexico City as he has friends there will be more than willing to lend a hand and travel with you all to Mazatlán.”

  I said nothing, but nodded my head.

  “And I myself believe that you need to get it out of your system before you land.”

  “Get what out?”

  “This anger, this hurt,” she said fixing her eyes on me. “I can sense it, feel it boiling within you like a storm, Henry. I only know part of the story, of what you told Alistair. He in turn has only told me fragments. Enough for me to understand the reason for your hate and pain. And what little you allowed me to know before you left New York City.”

  “There’s not much to tell,” I replied. “You all know the important parts, the parts that matter. He and I were once in a relationship. He was not forthcoming about the extent of his relationship status with another, and before going back to that person? He turned me and left me,” I said running a hand through my hair. “I think he hoped that I would have died.”

  “Then tell me the story of you and Daman,” she said. “The entire story. For you need to get it all out Little One.”

  “Why?”

  “Back when I was a hunter for the group I used to be a part of? I worked with others as a team, as a group at times. If any of us had an issue with a team member? We did one of two things.”

  “Which was?”

  “We either settled it in a fight, which I do not suggest that option aboard a plane, or we talked about what it was that was bothering us about the person. It cleared the air, cleared the mind and we were able to do the job that awaited us, to focus on it.”

  She was right, and as much as I wanted to disagree with her? I couldn’t for Heather and Scott were counting on me and I needed to be focusing on them and not the past. I needed to be in the here and now, not back there.

  “We will not be heard,” she said gesturing to the ring she still wore.

  I closed my eyes, drew in a breath and released it as I felt her hand rest atop mine giving it a gentle squeeze.

  And I began to tell her the story of Daman and me.

  The Story of Daman and Henry

  Heaven Falls, Virginia – Late June, 2004

  The one thing I hated about long drives is that they allowed me too much time to think.

  I thought again, for the one hundredth thousand time since leaving Boston, about how bad I had to have screwed up to be sent to some remote part of America in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.

  Heaven Falls, Virginia.

  It had the type of cutesy name that sounded like everyone knew each other’s business, where times haven’t changed since the Civil War and they probably had a yearly Gone with the Wind celebration down Main Street and one’s blood ran red, white and blue.

  I was so going to fit in.

  But you make the mistakes and you gotta accept the consequences.

  And I had screwed up royally.

  This was my last chance, my last attempt to climb myself out of the gutter I had fallen into by my own doing. My last shot at redeeming myself and attaining the heights that I had once been at.

  And maybe I will strike the lottery tomorrow.

  Aunt Jemma would already be chastising me for thinking that way. I could hear her now.

  “No negative thinking, Henry. I didn’t raise you to be that way did I?”

  “No ma’am, you did not,” I said to the empty confines of the car.

  I reached down into the cup holder and drew out of it a pack of smokes. I worked one free with my fingers and brought it up to my lips, rolling it to the other side of my mouth as I found the lighter beneath the radio player. I drove with one hand while I struck the wheel of the lighter till a jet of flame shot up which I dipped the tip of the cigarette into. I sucked slowly and steady, the tip glowing orange as smoke curled up from it then flipped the lighter closed and tossed it into the cup holder beside the pack.

  I depressed a button on the driver side door and the window went down, the smoke instantly snatched and carried away into the bright afternoon sunlight and scent of promised rain.

  I looked further out the window to see that storm clouds were gathering, building and ready to come falling down with their load at any moment.

  As my mother would say, in her cultured Boston accented voice, “God’s getting ready to lay it all down on us with the tears of His angels.”

  I never questioned why it was always tears that she saw the rain as. It could very be the angels pissing. I had heard a boy at the private catholic school I had attended call it that once, angel piss. I made the mistake of repeating it in front of my father who slapped me in the back of the head, saying I was speaking blasphemy.

  I never again used that expression.

  I took a drag off the cigarette, spotting the sign ahead on the side of the road that announced I was four miles out from Heaven Falls.

  I glanced at the clock above the radio. I would be in time for my meeting with the editor of the Heaven Falls Gazette. That should earn me some points at least.

  I had a feeling I would be needing every point I could get. There was no telling if Steven, my former boss, had told my future boss about my slow slide into Fuckupville. Okay, it wasn’t a slow slide. More like breaking the sound barrier slide into Fuckupville.

  “Do you have personal demons?” I asked myself in an over exaggerated happy tone. “Why sure as fuck I do! I have one in every color and shape!”

  It wasn’t and shouldn’t be an excuse
. Most people were able to move on from the trauma of childhood, of their past. I somehow did the opposite and embraced them and allowed them to lead me down, down, down that dark rabbit hole.

  “But second chances, hell, even fucking third and fourth chances are there for a reason right? Right.” I took another drag off the cigarette and exhaled the smoke out the window. I watched as the row of pines and cedar trees with a few magnolias mixed in began to thin out as fields, farms and quaint little farm houses appeared.

  I was now two miles from Heaven Falls according to the next sign that popped up.

  Let us hope I didn’t screw up here either for the bank account was looking pretty anemic. Okay, it was probably on life support.

  I told myself on the drive down that I would do better, that I should do better here for I was intent on making this fresh start my rebirth back into journalism. To again be that sought after writer that had once had articles appearing in Time, Newsweek and The Washington Post, to again be lauded and rewarded for my writing, my reporting.

  “Please let me find that something that will keep me above the water,” I said flicking the cigarette out the window as the town limits sign came into view.

  Willow Lane, Heaven Falls, Virginia

  Heaven Falls was as I had imagined and thought it to be.

  It looked like every southern town one has ever seen in the pages of southern themed magazines, of movies set in the South. It wouldn’t have surprised me to see a movie or television crew filming.

  Buildings of brown and gray stone, which looked to date back to the eighteen hundreds, lined either side of the main street. On the sidewalks people went about their business slipping into the row of stores that ranged from hardware, furniture, boutiques, barbershop and beauty parlor, or a small café named Rosy Red, to name just a few that I saw at first glance.

  In the block size park located in the middle of the town people lounged on benches or sat beneath the towering oak trees while children splashed water from the fountain, which dominated the center of it, their laughter filling the air. Teens drove around in their parent’s cars while rakish teen boys drove supped up trucks with wheels twice the normal size.

  There was a feeling of welcoming, of inviting the stranger passing through to stop for a moment and experience this so called Southern Hospitality.

  It was very different from Boston I surmised. Maybe I would do better here, maybe.

  I came to the four way stop and waited for the light to change, noticing the bank on the other side across from the police station. Both buildings looked to have been modeled after Greek temples with the bank built of red brick with graceful cream colored columns rising up to support the portico while the police station looked to have been built from one solid block of white stone.

  I continued onward and dug the directions I had been given out of my shirt pocket. I slowed my car as I looked at the address and began looking at street signs for Willow Lane.

  The homes I noticed were all antebellum style, or some version of it, ranging from three stories to modest one story homes that held a charm of their own.

  The sidewalks were lined with towering oak trees, their branches spreading outward to one another, meeting nearly in the middle to form a natural canopy over the streets. Here too were children on bikes, shouting hello to neighbors in their yards working in their gardens who greeted back with a wave and returned greeting.

  It was entirely different from where I grew up in Boston.

  Then again, I doubted that any place could be like Back Bay, that affluent neighborhood where the well-heeled, old money, Boston Blue Blood families lived.

  I had grown up in a red brick, three story mansion on Commonwealth Avenue. The house had come into the Sullivan family by way of a smart marriage match back in the eighteen hundreds. Yet the immense house had never felt like home to me and after I had turned thirteen it had ceased being a home. But for my mother it was just another gem in her society crown for the address was the address to have, doubly blessed by being in Back Bay.

  Jillian Ambrose-Sullivan, my mother, hosted lavish, much talked about, and written up about, parties in that house nearly every weekend for my father’s friends, for various charities, every major holiday and some she came up with. She was dubbed The Hostess of the Avenue for ten years running by the society pages, which was just another feather in her cap.

  My two older brothers, Thomas IV and Chad, and I were often forced to attend those parties, to make sure we presented the perfect ideal image of Judge Thomas Sullivan III’s family. However, they managed to get out of attending once they graduated high school and went to medical school or into the military. I, by fate of being the surprise my parents had not planned, was forced to attend till I was fifteen.

  I had not only ruined my parent’s plans by making for an odd number of children, although a baby sister was born ten months after me, I also stained the family name when I was outed as gay.

  Which outed me from the family as well.

  It was my aunt Jemma, my mother’s sister, who took me in, raised me and gave me tough love at times when it was needed and a shoulder when I needed one to lean on. She was everything I had always wished my mother could have been but never was.

  The two of us were outcasts, the family members not talked about. I due to being gay and Aunt Jemma because she had been the child of my grandfather’s second marriage and upon his death? My mother and her brothers had made sure Jemma was excluded from any inheritance.

  She didn’t give a fuck that she had been. She was an RN and made good money though there were some months we had to go without, it was the best remaining years of my childhood I ever had. We were two peas in a pod.

  She was there to see me finish high school and there to see me graduate from Boston University with my masters in journalism. I was never happier to see the joy she had in her eyes for me when she saw me receive that diploma.

  It was due to Aunt Jemma that I sought out to be a journalist. She had found a notebook of my stories I had written and encouraged me to keep writing, to not stop. And every morning as she came in from working the night shift at the hospital she would ask me to read to her any story I had written that night before. She would sit at our small kitchen table listening even if she was exhausted from work. She would offer suggestions, changes here and there in the story to make it even better.

  Even when I secured a job at one of Boston’s leading newspapers after graduation, I would call her up and run by her my articles for her advice. Sometimes I just called her to bitch about something and she would listen, offering her wisdom or tell me to settle my ass down and cool off, to think things through before I acted irrationally if something or someone had really pissed me off that particular day.

  She passed a little over a year ago from ovarian cancer. My mother didn’t attend, nor did any of my siblings. Not even a card or flowers. Nothing. It was just me and her nursing friends at her funeral.

  I still missed her as a day didn’t go by that I didn’t think of her or see something that reminded me of her.

  It was her death that started me on my downward spiral coupled with a ghost from my past that I never thought I would see again.

  Though, if I was honest with myself, I had already started going down that spiral before her death.

  My demons tended to rise up from time to time, to take me down paths I would later regret and numb myself with drink and drugs to forget the paths I had taken. Sex was a constant vice and drink my lord and master.

  With Aunt Jemma’s death I was without my anchor, my grounding rod and without someone to tell me I was none of the things my father had told me I was on That Day.

  She had chased away my fears, my self-hate, telling me more than once that God never made mistakes in His creation of people for I was as I was meant to be.

  “And if you don’t believe in God, Henry? Then fuck Him,” she said once. “You are perfect, not a mistake, not a waste. You have never been any of those thi
ngs to me. You are as you were meant to be and I wouldn’t have you any other way.”

  It was for her that I was doing this, attempting a restart, a fourth chance, hoping I could attain again what I had once been.

  “Let’s hope I can find the place so I can get that restart,” I mumbled continuing to read street signs.

  After two miles I finally found Willow Lane on the left hand side of the street. Turning down it I took in the large mansions that lined the street on either side of me. I wondered how many Scarlett O’Haras existed behind those elegant walls tossing hissy fits. Or what families that dwelt within those same walls had dark secrets they hoped to never see the light of day?

  It was easy to imagine such of houses that were shrouded by the ever present majestic oaks that threw them in shadows, and the houses themselves that seemed an entity of its own, infused by the people that lived within, drawing from them like a vampire to sustain it.

  “Maybe one day you write that book you keep promising yourself that you will write,” I mused aloud as I looked down at the slip of paper in my hand. “There,” I said spotting the address a block away.

  I slowed my car and pulled up in front of a neoclassical mansion built of dark red brick that looked brown in the quickly disappearing remaining afternoon sunlight.

  The mansion possessed heavy ornamental detailing, grouped white Iconic columns in the front, intricate cornices and that of a large front gable. A wrap around porch enclosed the entire first floor.

  This grand dame of houses resided on a large rolling lawn that was half a city block in size. I imagined back in the day, before its neighbors had appeared, it once sat majestically alone like a queen on her throne.

  A wrought iron fence surrounded the property with spear shaped points, some covered in climbing ivy. On the other side of the entrance gate was that of a sunken walkway lined with perfectly maintained box hedges. The walkway led up to a large three tiered fountain and continued around it to the front steps. Several twisting oak trees resided to the right and left of the residence and behind it was what looked like work sheds and a smaller house, perhaps the guest house.