The Protector of Memories (The Veil of Death Book 1)

by D. K. Manning

  “Thank the stars,” Hope whispered in relief at the news that Faith could still see the auras and ghosts.

  And then her heart soared ever further when she heard that Faith was coming to visit her home.

  It had been a few mortal weeks since she had seen either Faith or Charity.

  When they each had stepped out of their frozen state, they had been caught up within a whirl of Earth’s life.

  Charity had found fame & fortune.

  Faith had discovered comfort within the company of ghosts and she – Hope - had found the company of those who loved to live for the endless supply of music, love, song, dance and wine.

  “We have a cause to celebrate.” Hope shouted into the room and was awash with the feeling of relaxation now that the severance was finally over. It was the waiting… she had known the fate that was to befall her, but she did not know when. The severance from the Universe was tortuous enough but being an earthling… yet not really being one - well that was just… cruel.

  Hope laughed aloud and intended to do what she had been instructed to do. “Rejoice!” Hope shouted and collected bottles of wine from the endless supply that she had stored behind the counter, along the walls of the hallway, up the stairs (those that had steps still upon them), in the kitchen, bathroom and other rooms that occupied the floor above her.

  When she had done that, she topped up her own glass of wine and drank it down in one gulp and set about the task of collecting up the latest batch of emotional energies that weighed the heaviest. If I can see the auras then I must still be able to contain them?

  But when Hope reached out and touched the energy of sadness that was accumulating within the room, it fizzled upon impact. “Oh but the joy of all things,” she whispered and held on tight to the edge of the counter at the sight of the acidity created from bitterness eroding that of kindness. Hope tried to touch their energies but these too fizzled and bounced back onto the person who had created them in the first instance.

  “My abilities are equal to that of you all. I am now a real human being.” She said to the man who stood the closest to her.

  “Indeed you are.” He replied and quickly added. “And long may your wine keep flowing.”

  Hope laughed. “That,” she said. “I can still do. I may not be able to absorb your burden of heaviness but I can at least make it bearable for you to carry.”

  “Av another drink Hope!” A woman slurred, “Yorrrr gettin tooo deep.”

  Hope laughed along with her friends. “Forgive me,” she said. “Let us drink the wine and be numbed from the pain that our Mother Earth weighs us down with.”

  The volume of the music was turned up.

  The sound of raucous, drunken singing filled the room.

  The front door opened and Hope watched the mortal she knew to be called, Sam walk into the room and up toward the counter.

  Sam was five feet tall, chubby in build with short spiky hair; dyed in a multitude of colours. The many colours in her hair mirrored the bright and colourful clothing that she always wore as well as the outstandingly beautiful array of colours that her auras were; a walking rainbow.

  “Sam you are a never ending rainbow of colours,” Hope shared. “Drink with me. Let us toast this bizarre and wonderful life that we sorry mortals live in!”

  “Hope…” Sam paused and stared at the red wine that stained her friend’s face but decided not to comment – she does not have the time. “Please,” she pleaded. “Everybody is getting fed up with the constant partying. The noise…” Sam paused, looked around the room and again wondered how anybody could live the way these people do.

  She frowned at the cartons of wine, empty glass bottles, half eaten pizzas, dried up noodles and half eaten chicken that scattered the floor and decided not to think too much as to what else lived among the shadows.

  “Hope…” she raised her voice above the volume of noise, “you promised to keep the noise down. Remember? At the meeting?” She pointed toward the front door. “They are all outside. Residents, business people…” she put her hand upon her chest, “these people are also my friends. They have had enough and quite frankly I don’t blame them. You have tried their patience Hope. The constant partying and boozing is affecting our community. You have got to_.”

  “Sam.” Hope interrupted her friend, “you talk with such seriousness. Be happy. Ask all your friends to come in and experience the joys of life…” Hope made her way around the counter before adding, “… fill their hearts and Souls with laughter, music, wine, love and song.”

  Sam stared at Hope. “Why do you not listen?” She asked. “Why do you not see life for what it really is? You are not responsible for the happiness of the entire human race.” Sam swept her arms around the room, “these people don’t care about you. They are here because you keep them in an endless supply of free wine and food and because of that, our community is suffering.”

  She raised her voice more out of frustration than anger. “These people are not your friends!” and kicked one of the DVD players to get rid of the; ‘boom – boom – boom’ that was invading her eardrums and getting on her nerves.

  Hope held her hands up. “Sam…” she paused to drink some more wine, “I will go outside and speak with them. It has been made known within this very moment that I am officially a creature of the earth. At last, this state of limbo I have been living in has been cast off of my Self.” Hope laughed and looked at Sam before adding, “I am truly a part of this world now.” She squeezed Sam’s shoulder, wiped her face so as to clear away the wine and then stepped out onto the pavement to invite all those who stood outside to come in.

  “Great.” Sam mumbled, “That’ll help.”

  Hope looked upon the faces of the people that stood before her and read the words written upon the banners that they held within their hands.

  ‘Squatters have no rights’.

  ‘Our taxes pay for your dossing’.

  ‘Get a job’.

  ‘Get out of our neighbourhood’.

  A tall grey haired man stepped forward. “We want you out,” he hissed. Our businesses… our livelihoods are failing because of you. Go squat somewhere else.”

  An elderly lady now spoke. “You gave us your word Hope_.” But she stopped talking and gawped at the woman. “You’re not Hope.” She spoke over her shoulder. “That’s not the young girl.” The elderly lady continued to stare at the woman’s face and noticing some similarities said. “You must be Hope’s mother?” She quickly added, “You ought to be ashamed of yourself bringing your daughter up like that.”

  Hope smiled at the small group. “My skin may have been aged by our Mother Earth but it is I – Hope - who stands before you. We are all children of the Earth. What is mine is yours. So! Fellow mortals come join with me and let us celebrate what it means to be alive.”

  “You think this is a joke!” The tall grey haired man yelled out in anger.

  The elderly lady added. “Drunken brawls and vandalism is what you bring to this neighbourhood.”

  A man called Nigel said. “Every morning I have to clean the doorstep of my jewellery shop because you lot have puked on it. It’s disgusting!”

  Sarah, Nigel’s wife, added. “We’ve had enough! No more.”

  Sam pushed Hope back into the building, closed the double-doors and leant against them. She pushed her hands through her hair (a habit she often did in times of stress) and was relieved that none of her neighbours were trying to get in. “Strueth,” she said to Hope. “What were you thinking_?”

  But Sam stopped in mid-sentence and stared up at Hope’s face.

  Wrinkles were etched long and deep, tiny lines mapped the skin that was once of a flawless complexion. Her hair was not the colours of auburns and coppery reds, but grey. “Hope…” Sam’s words trailed away as she stared at her friend who looked pale, thin, haggard and gaunt. “What on earth?”

  “Exactly!” Hope interrupted. “I knew you would understand. On Earth we walk and of the Ea
rth we are.” She stepped closer to the mortal named Sam, “You speak with truth Sam. I am not responsible for the energies of Happiness, but I am responsible in keeping bright the energies of hope when your Mother Earth saps that very energy from you_.”

  The room was plunged into darkness.

  Wine bottles exploded and wine erupted all over the place.

  Glass shattered out and across the room and into wood, skin, rotten grapes and moulding cheese.

  The batteries in the music boxes seeped out their acid and the sound of music stopped.

  Singing, laughter and conversation ceased.

  Wine dripped from the counters and onto the floor and soaked into the mildew and gunge on the threadbare carpet.

  “Sod me.” A voice shouted.

  Flames flickered from people’s lighters as they attempted to relight the candles.

  More batteries were added to the music boxes but not all of the machines worked now that the battery acid had leaked into them.

  Hope collected up more bottles of red wine from her supply and dumped them onto the wine sodden counter.

  Within minutes, the room was once more a mixture of laughter, music and noise.

  Sam gawped at her friend and watched as she mingled with everybody in the room and her feelings of concern and frustration turned to annoyance. Why do I bother? Why do I care about someone who is only interested in getting pissed? She rubbed her hands through her hair – she knew why; because I have fallen helplessly in love with this woman called Hope.

  Sam recalled as clear as day the moment when Hope had walked into her book shop a couple of months ago. Within that single moment, a multitude of feelings had soared into Sam’s mind, body and Soul and she experienced something that she had not believed actually existed; love. And since then, she has tried to put reason and rationale to these feelings but it makes not a blind bit of difference. Her heart belongs to this wonderful, beautiful, good natured, kind hearted and, incredibly stubborn, woman who spends her entire days and nights ensuring that everybody is happy_.

  Sam’s thoughts are interrupted by a woman shouting out Hope’s name.

  “Hope! Hope. I’m looking for Hope!”

  “Aren’t we all?” A voice shouted back followed by raucous laughter.

  Sam flinched in annoyance at the worn out joke but smiled when she heard the woman complaining about the state of Hope’s home.

  “Hope it would not harm you if you were to live within cleanliness.” Faith exclaimed as she felt the stickiness underneath her feet.

  “By the stars…” Hope laughed and hugged her sister. “Faith it is good to see you.”

  Faith returned her sister’s embrace before stepping away to talk to the ghosts. “Please. Speak to me one at a time! I only have the boundaries of the mortal mind – your voices are but a scrambled mass of noise to me now!”

  Sam’s heart sank; great somebody else that Hope thinks she should save.

  “Sam.” Hope called. “Meet my sister Faith!”

  Sam’s heart sank deeper. She didn’t even know that Hope had a sister.

  Faith’s phone vibrated in her jacket pocket. She answered it, “I cannot hear you…” she paused and walked over to the doors, opened them and listened again to the voice on the other end. “Yes.” She answered. “Yes. My name is Faith. Yes I know Charity. What! When? Where is she? Yes I’ll…” she paused, looked at Hope. “We will be there.”

  She hung up the phone. “We need to get to a Hospital called St Mary’s. Charity needs us.”

  ∞

  Fifteen minutes later and Sam remained on the pavement’s edge rubbing at her head. She flinched in pain at the bump that was appearing. One of the demonstrators had bashed Sam over the head with his banner as he tried to pull Hope out of the black cab.

  Sam now wondered what the demonstrators would have done to Hope had they succeeded in dragging her into the mass of bodies. She ‘tutted’ in disgust at the mentality of people when they become a mob and kicking a pebble off of the pavement’s edge, another thought occurred to her; will I see Hope again_?

  “Ou!” she shouted and turned to confront whoever it was that had just pushed her off of the pavement but continued to step back until she was in the middle of the road.

  The demonstrators were barging their way into the building and dragging out the drunken squatters.

  DVD players, terracotta vats and barrels were being thrown out of the doors and onto the street.

  Sam backed off even further.

  People, who were not being forcibly dragged out, came running out. Their arms were filled with as much wine as they could carry. Police sirens rang out in the distance and she decided to return to the safety of her book shop which was up the road and on the next corner.

  As Sam walked past the other local businesses, she collected up broken glass and wine cartons from the pavement and dumped them into the metal bin that she kept outside her book shop for such occasions.

  She unlocked the shop’s door, pushed it open and flipped the sign to ‘open’.

  The book shop had a large glass frontage and to take advantage of the natural lighting, Sam had placed some second-hand, battered up arm chairs and a long, wooden coffee table next to the window so that people could sit down and enjoy their experience of reading. Wooden book shelving – oak - ran the height and length of the three walls and six feet high book shelving took up most of the book shop’s floor space.

  Sam had a wooden counter toward the back of the shop and behind this she had a fridge, kettle and an assortment of mugs. She put the kettle on, lit up a cigarette (an act of defiance at being told that she could not smoke in her own book shop) and blew out puffs of smoke rings into the air. This action triggered a memory of her maternal Nan who was always puffing on her long, thin, brown cigarettes.

  “Me and you Nan,” she whispered.

  Sam’s mother, who was only sixteen years old when she had had Sam, upped and left… no note, nothing. It had left a mark on Sam and she grew up blaming the world and everybody in it. She was always running away, bunking off of school, getting expelled, drinking, thieving - anything bad and she would do it.

  “Strueth,” Sam whispered at the memory of her younger self. She had done anything to ensure that nobody liked her because she had worked out in her young mind that that would ultimately lead to abandonment. But when Sam was seventeen, she was told that her Nan had cancer and that was when she realised that the world owed her nothing and she owed her Nan everything. Sam never left her Nan’s side from that time onwards. On the ‘good’ days, Sam worked in the book shop alongside her Nan. On the ‘bad’ days she sat with her Nan and read to her all manner of stories. Seven years her Nan had battled with the cancer but in the end it had killed her.

  Her Nan’s death had occurred fourteen years ago and Sam now thirty- eight years old looked around the book shop that she had inherited and realised that her life and her memories were sealed within the shelving, the books, the furniture and décor. This was Sam’s home and always would be.

  She drank another coffee, smoked two more cigarettes and twelve minutes later concentrated her attentions onto what had happened to Hope.

  “Faith, Hope and Charity,” Sam muttered and twiddled with the short spiky strands of her hair as she glanced over at her desk calendar; 1st of April. No! Hope wouldn’t do that? Would she? Sam put her head into her hands; she can cope with unrequited love but not this. Is it just one big April fool’s day joke? With me the biggest fool of all? Can I say enough is enough and walk away? But if I walk away… that would feel so wrong. Being with Hope feels right. It is as if I tread the very pathway that I should be treading_

  “Aaah!” Sam yelled out into the shop – her thoughts were driving her crazy.

  Tears sprung to her eyes, she wiped them away in frustration. This is all that I do nowadays… cry and as if to confirm this, her tears surfaced again as Sam recollected what Sarah and Nigel – the owners of the jewellery shop next door - had said
to her yesterday; ‘The woman’s a waste of space. You’ll get hurt. She’s only after your money.’

  Sam wiped her tears away.

  “What do they know?” She questioned aloud and wished that they didn’t judge Hope so quickly… so harshly. If they bothered to get to know her then they would discover that beneath the drunkenness, Hope was a very intelligent, insightful, compassionate and selfless person.

  Sam groaned at the memory of how that went down and began to wonder why she even put up with them. They always pushed home the fact they were her friends and yet they were by far the cruellest.

  Using work as a distraction, she started to log the books that had been donated to her earlier on that morning. She was halfway through the stack when she read: The Claiming of the Children – and realised that she had twenty copies of this particular book.

  Sam read the back cover;

  ‘… The Claiming of the Children is crafted and created to those of you who are bound to mortality. If you are the rightful owner of this book then within its words you will discover your true identity and from where you originate from’.

  Realising that Hope would love this sort of story, Sam looked for an author’s name and when she couldn’t see one she looked for a publisher’s name. Flicking through the book’s pages she realised that there was no reference to a publisher, copyright, ISBN or price? There was nothing but the story itself.

  She opened the book and read the first sentence and then the next… and the next.

  Chapter 5

  1st day of April within her time of afternoon

  Nurse Low looked up the moment she heard the sound of running footsteps and watched the two women as they approached the desk.

  The woman with the unusual shot of white running through her hair started to speak but ignoring her completely, Nurse Low concentrated her attentions on the woman who was clearly drunk.

  Faith waited.