Relics and Runes Anthology

by Heather Marie Adkins

  With her heart tainted by love and mystery, she cannot resist the desire to be in the arms of her lover. For it is only in the Vale that she can feel his touch and live the adventures she has dreamt of.

  1

  Another cycle of the moon has just passed, and it took with it fourteen more people.

  It is a warm breeze, despite the temperature being forty degrees in mid-July, that tip-toes upon the persistent hibernation across the private community of Coral Gardens.

  The white iron gates to Coral Gardens stand tall like sentries guarding some great treasure. Bright and colorful fake coral has been attached to the gates to distinguish it from all the other private driveways and communities. Monstrous hedges line the main road. East Hampton, New York has long been the home to movie stars, the very wealthy, and beach lovers.

  Two black BMWs slow down and then pull up to the gates. A man walks up from the other side. He opens the gates and comes over to the first car. He is a youthful looking man with grey hair. He checks the first driver’s ID and paperwork then moves to the next car to do the same. He walks back behind the gates and waves the cars on. The cars move forward. The gates are promptly locked. The two cars are directed to split up and one goes to the left and the other to the right. Cookie-cutter homes sit perfectly opposite each other. A mixture of weathered shingles and stone. A circular forest breaks the two sides of the road up. It shines eerily and beautifully as the sunlight breaks through the tall trees and beach grass that litters the outer rim. An overhang of red and white roses reaches over from one side of the stone and wood bridge to the next, connecting the two sides of the road.

  The two cars meet up at the end of the road where two homes sit on top of dunes. The sweet, salty smell of the ocean flies back. They are two of three homes that are built differently. They are grand in scale and architecture. Neither home sits directly on the left or right side. More in line with the forest. Getting out of the cars are two families. One with a son and the other with a daughter.

  A few minutes later two giant moving trucks show up.

  The children waste no time in checking out the outside of their new homes. They run around them a few times before climbing the dune to look at the Atlantic Ocean. The waves are breaking hard. It excites the little girl.

  The first house on the left side of the road is one of the three homes that are completely different from the other thirty homes. It’s also the house closest to the gates. The shingles are a weathered white with faded black shutters. The roof has bald patches. But the yard is pristine. A man with grey hair and a youthful face and body comes out the front door. Gordon Peters is the first resident and remains the voice and face of Coral Gardens. He picks up the morning paper and takes a quick look down the road, to the end where the other two different looking homes rest high up on a dune. He hangs his head low, as if ashamed of something. His ragged jeans, wrinkled flannel shirt, worn boots, and grey fisherman’s cap does not fit in with the aesthetic East Hampton wealthy area. He takes off his cap, smacks it against his leg. Dust and dead bugs fly off. He slaps it back onto his head and makes haste for the bridge. It’s the same routine for him every morning. To the bridge promptly at 8 a.m.

  He approaches the circular forest and his right leg twitches. He used to come here to fish with his wife Elaine, who passed away two years ago from a mysterious illness. As much as this place means something to him, he wishes it would burn down. He’d drive the bulldozer to tear it down. He stops halfway on the bridge. The residents from both sides of the road are coming. Some wear perfect pressed clothing, others are in their pyjamas, and some are wearing winter clothing. All of them have different expressions that tell their own little tales. They gather around him like a flock of sheep.

  “Seven people are dead. Seven people are missing. Who has done this?”

  No answer.

  “That’s fourteen people. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe that leaves us with fifty people left, including myself.”

  Again no response.

  “Too long I’ve been watching but not really watching. It has to end.” He realizes he’s been talking mostly to himself, for not a single resident has looked at him while he spoke just now, not a single person is incline to help the poor guy stop whatever madness he is enduring.

  He turns from them, feeling more ashamed than before. Usually the guilty step forward and the people can move on. Now they have become secretive. “Those people, the new people, are responsible for this. I warned Jack Horthin about letting more people into the community. No one listens to the old man.” With nothing more to say, since no one else is talking, he walks away.

  Gordon enters his house with a drawn out look. He hates that he has been delegated to lead them. To be the one that has to address them about their wrong doings or crazy nights. Every week is the same thing. He comes out to meet them every morning and the events from the night before are discussed. Well, at least three weeks out of the four are discussed. He is lucky enough to be exempt from the affects that the cycles have on everyone else. He is prevented from interacting with those who are affected as well. He goes over to the refrigerator and takes out a pitcher of lemonade. He fills a glass and then sits down at the dining table to look over his stamp collection. The wall next to him is full of decades of movie posters, advertisements, and bumper stickers. All overlapping each other. He puts down his stamp collection and walks over to the glass cabinet full of spyglasses. He takes out one and sets it down on the dining table. It’s a pretty brass and light oak piece. He grabs a hand towel from the drawer in the kitchen and wets it. He sits and starts wiping down the spyglass. He rubs his eyes. A tired look comes over them. He catches his reflection in the spyglass. He flaps the sagging skin against his firmer skin. Tiny age spots pop up like crazy teenage acne. He wipes down the spyglass over and over until his eyes start to close.

  “We don’t need any more people in Coral Gardens. We have enough trouble. More people means more trouble.” He touches the side of his face again. The skin hangs like strings on a piece of clothing. Tears swell up in his eyes. “Elaine. It’s happening just how you predicted it would.” He almost lets out the tears.

  He more than misses his wife. He wanted to go with her. The day she passed away, he was standing on the bridge. She had said she wanted a flower that only grows inside the forest. It sometimes grows up the side of the bridge, and so he went to fetch it. But as soon as he bent down to pluck it, he felt her die. And what she died from, no one knows. The doctor that visits Coral Gardens is exclusive to the residents here and he could give no cause of death. When Elaine’s body was taken, Gordon never saw where she went. He isn’t sure that she ever left Coral Gardens. He was told to stay inside his house. The other residents never came to offer their condolences, never peeked outside their windows like almost every neighbor does when an ambulance shows up on the road.

  Gordon drops the wet towel. “Elaine.” A memory comes back to him.

  Gordon came into the bedroom and found Elaine sitting against the headboard, her eyes focused on something in the room but he couldn’t tell what.

  “Elaine?”

  “Gordon.”

  He walked over to give her a cup of tea. She couldn’t grip the cup. “Here, I’ll give it to you.” He tipped the cup for her to drink. “You must drink.”

  “It’s open, Gordon.” The fear engulfed her. “There’s no stopping it. The boy will come and he will shatter this land. Oh, God, Gordon, please don’t let it take me. Gordon?”

  He cradled her.

  Gordon picks up the wet towel. He hangs it over the drying rack. He sits back down to look over his stamp collection and clean his spyglass.

  A few homes down from Gordon, a pretty blonde walks out to tend to the weeds that she never got to last year. Abigal Martin knows that her bulbs should have sprung up by now. The weather is not cooperating. Sunny yet cold. Summertime yet wintertime. She gives up after a few tugs of weeds. A younger version of herself peeks out fro
m the bay window. Abbey is sixteen and has a bright and curious face. Abigal dusts off the dirt from her knees and walks inside the house.

  Her husband is reading the morning paper. Abbey is sitting at a chess table. She knocks over a few pieces.

  “Abbey, come help me make breakfast.”

  “I’d rather not, Mother.”

  “I really have to get new gloves. When do you plan to go to town, honey?”

  “I don’t know.” Intent on reading the newspaper, he resides in his own little world.

  Abbey taps on the bay window. “You know none of us know how to play chess. Yet we set this damn thing up every day and it just sits here.”

  “We can take it down.” Abigal makes pancakes. “Another new cycle. I saw Gordon going back home earlier than usual. I will have to find out what happened on the bridge.”

  “I’m surprised you weren’t out there. Everyone else was,” Abbey says.

  “It’s the children that suffer the most. I hate it when it’s our turn to be puppets to the cycle. And what about the newcomers?” She flips the pancakes. Like she is flipping her mind. Something has changed and she is the first to feel it.

  “It’d be nice if you all shared your stories about your experiences, since the ones who can’t participate are locked away in a cave near the lake until the cycle is over. How is that fair to us?” Abbey plays an entire game of chess by herself, defeating herself in under a minute. “I wonder which of them will go through the cycle for the first time. They aren’t exactly on one side of the road. More like directly in the middle.”

  “I thought you said that we couldn’t play chess,” her father asks.

  “I guess I just got lucky.”

  “Serve yourselves.”

  “Mother?”

  She is out the door, heading down the road. Abbey walks over and grabs a pancake. “I’m going to be going through the cycle for the first time and I demand you tell me what to expect.”

  “We don’t talk about it. Those are the rules.”

  “The rules.”

  “It is the only way of life.”

  “At least Mom is trying to break free.”

  “Abigal!” a woman’s voice cries out.

  She checks to see if it’s her daughter. But she disregards that notion for her daughter wouldn’t call her by her first name. Abigal looks around at the people who live on the left side of the road. Wearing tank-tops and shorts. She looks down at her long-sleeved shirt, jeans, and winter boots. “Strange.” She rolls up the sleeves. “It’s warm. Really warm.” She looks at the flowerbeds around the homes. The bulbs have popped through. The flowers have bloomed.

  “Abigal, are you there?”

  “Darma, how are you?” She can’t let on how much she has changed. She can’t show her true thoughts.

  Darma Dogton has those bedroom eyes and hourglass shape that suck men in. Abigal looks down at her own slim frame. She can’t compare.

  “You haven’t finished your weeding. You want me to do it?”

  “I’ll take care of it later.”

  “You nervous about tonight? It’s Mark’s first time too. Just think, only last night our kids were in the cave. Now they will be romping around with each other doing who knows what.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m sure our kids will look after each other.”

  “What about those new families? Will they take part in the cycle?”

  “Good question.”

  “I am going to talk to Gordon.”

  “You missed a very unproductive meeting this morning. Seven people dead and seven people missing. One of them is Jacob Frillis. Mark should feel a little more sad being that he and Jacob were good friends.”

  “I better go.” Abigal heads towards Gordon’s house. She peeks behind and notices Darma talking with some of the other neighbors on the left side. Fear hits her. Is she being talked about?

  Abigal knocks on Gordon’s front door. He answers it with a bandana covering his face.

  “Gordon? Mr. Peter’s, did you have an accident?”

  He slowly takes down the bandana. She covers her eyes.

  “I’m eighty-nine.”

  “How? What happened?”

  “Come inside.” His face is freckled with age spots and red blotches where skin used to. Parts of the jawline are exposed.

  She comes inside and sits down on a chair in the living room. Gordon locks the front door and sits down on the chair opposite her.

  “Tell me what is happening.”

  “Look how many people we have lost already. Who knows what will happen tonight? I never should have let them come in here.”

  He gets up, goes into the kitchen. Pours lemonade into a glass. His hand trembles on the pitcher’s handle. He steadies it with his other hand, which begins to shake. As he is about to turn around, Abigal is there. She takes the glass from him.

  “Why did you?”

  “Jack Horthin wanted those two homes sold and he was going to take whatever offer he got. I objected and I pleaded for him to change his mind, but money is money to that greedy bastard. Now we have to pay the price.”

  “They are affecting us already.”

  “Yes.”

  “I have felt the change inside me. I don’t want Abbey to see it though. For the first time, I have hope that maybe we can fight against the cycle, finally.”

  He slams his hand down on the dining table. “Don’t ever say that again. Remember what happened last time we tried to fight it?”

  “You see, this is what happens when you try to fight it,” Gordon said.

  The fires burned all the way down the left side of the road, leaving Gordon’s house untouched.

  “I am sorry, everyone,” Abigal said.

  “This will come back onto you one day, Abigal Martin,” Gordon said.

  She remembers it well. It was two cycles ago. “I didn’t mean to cause harm. I thought by keeping Abbey out of the cave that we could somehow defeat this curse.”

  “Do you really want to go through that again? To have to rebuild all those homes again?”

  “I did it for Abbey.” Her body trembles. He hugs her. “Gordon, I’m really afraid. What will become of her? I spared her once already. You know what happens to our side of the road on this week, during the third quarter phase.”

  “Look how the weather is suddenly summer.” He laughs softly to himself. “I remember summer weather. The hot, sweaty summer that you hated but loved at the same time. I remember Elaine and I used to…” He drifts off. He is pulled back by Abigal grabbing his hand. “You remind me of Elaine. Never accepting what is, always suspecting what could be.”

  “I have to get back.” She walks towards the front door. Unlocks it. Pauses. Hovers in the doorway.

  “Goodbye, Abigal.”

  She looks back at him. Her vision must be going. She swears she sees him becoming dimmer. Like he is fading. She walks outside. Takes a deep breath.

  Gordon sits down to his spyglass that he forgot to put away. He looks through it. “I remember Stanley Milton. Had the best vineyard on the island. Then that fire destroyed it all. His wine, his first and only love, and his beautiful home. Gone. You remember that, Elaine?” He straightens up as if someone touched his shoulder. “Yeah, you remember that. Maybe I am being punished after all these years, because I know who set the fire and… they are here.” He touches his shoulder and pats it. “They were creeping up on the vineyard that night. I had went to see that old fountain, the one that attracted so many visitors, but I saw them instead. You remember, Elaine, how I always said that fountain was like a pathway to darkness? I still believe it. I used to take care of that fountain. Took good care of it. I know its secrets and I keep those secrets well. Don’t I, Elaine? The fire isn’t what bothered me that night. It was seeing Stanley wrapped up in his grape vines. They were creeping. They did it.” Looks over his shoulder. “They are here.”

  Abigal comes out of her house later in the afternoon dressed for a jog. It�
��s something she often does to keep her shape and to clear her mind. Her mind is a mess today. She makes it to the gates. She isn’t exactly a prisoner here. People leave, but only certain times of the month and it can’t be for very long. She lightly taps on the bars. “One day.”

  A breeze comes down on her. The smell of herbs and spices. She looks up, over and beyond herself. A crushing feeling comes over her legs. She stretches, thinking it’s just a cramp. Rubs down her legs a few times. She jogs off. She finds herself at the end of the road staring up at the two homes on the dune.

  Doubt, conspiracy, and fear are powerful things. And they all follow each other, making them even more dangerous. She doubts the integrity of this curse. She can’t put her finger on why. She feels like this is some government conspiracy that has everyone locked away in a private community to do experiments on. She fears that if there is no end to this curse, what end shall there be for any of them. She goes right into a full jog back towards her house.

  The wives of the newcomers come out of their homes. The walk down the steps is long. Both are very sophisticated looking wearing white lace summer dresses with tan hats shading their perfect faces. Their frames suggest they are tall and slender.

  “Strange people here.” Melanie O’Kelly is stunning with her dark hair and dark eyes. Her smile inviting.

  “I find them all charming.” Arianna Darsmin has a thick posh British accent. She is half Egyptian and half English. Her dark features with pale skin makes her a sight to behold.

  “But you haven’t met any of them, except that nice gentleman at the gates. Arianna, you are far too trusting.”

  “True.

  They share a laugh.

  “I can’t wait to meet them all.”

  “It’s a blessing to not have them with their dogs peeing all over my flowers. And they don’t appear to be nosey, which is always a good thing.”