The Hambledown Dream

by Dean Mayes

  Andy flinched at the mention of Sonya’s name.

  “Wait ... she told you?”

  Beck nodded simply.

  “She was bitching about it in the bar yesterday afternoon, making herself heard just a little too much, in my opinion. She reckons you were saying some weird shit. Talking about spirits and past lives. I told her it must’ve been the painkillers.”

  Andy slowly continued painting. For several minutes he was very quiet.

  “You wanna talk about it?” Beck finally asked. “I’ve never heard you mention this Sonya chick before. Who is she?”

  Andy shook his head and kept on painting.

  “She’s nobody,” he scowled. “A figment of my imagination.”

  “Whatever you say, man.”

  Sensing Andy’s discomfort, Beck was prudent enough not to pursue the conversation any further.

  “Well... I think this is a great job, man, Maybe too good a job. Hector may choose to jack up our rent once he sees this.”

  “It wasn’t your mess,” Andy said, inwardly glad for the change of subject. “It was mine - all mine.”

  “Your mess?” Beck said. “You can’t keep blaming yourself for this.”

  Andy laughed bitterly.

  “Seriously,” Beck continued, more forcefully. “You should stop punishing yourself. Look - you wanted to get out of that shit with Vasq. He’ll get bored with you, eventually, and move on.”

  Beck noted a wry smile crease Andy’s lips.

  “What is it?” Beck asked.

  “Oh, I’m sure Vasq will be moved on. Very soon.”

  Andy gestured with a nod to the wall beside the door. Beck turned around and saw, pinned to the door frame, a small business card.

  “DETECTIVE M. SORENSEN - NARCOTICS.”

  The phone number below it had been circled in red pen.

  Beck grinned at Andy.

  “You made the call?”

  Andy nodded.

  “Seems I have a friend amongst the police after all. I took care of it. All of it.”

  ***

  Two squad cars flanking an unmarked van pulled up quietly outside a ruddy clapboard house, catching the attention of an overweight Hispanic youth who sat on the porch playing a Nintendo.

  Instantly he sprang to his feet, feeling for the small bulk strapped down low on his left ankle as several uniformed officers emptied from the squad cars on the street. He panicked and scrambled towards the front door.

  “Stop right where you are!” shouted one of the detectives as he sprinted onto the lawn, weapon drawn.

  The young henchman burst into the kitchen of the house where Emilio Vasq and members of the posse were sitting around a table. Numerous weapons lay on the table top, among beer bottles and ashtrays as well as clear plastic bags containing newly manufactured pills.

  Vasq saw his lackey standing in the doorway with an expression of pure, paralyzing fear.

  “We’re fucked!”

  Before any of them realized what was happening, the house was overrun by police brandishing their weapons menacingly. The stupefied Vasq and his counterparts at the table were caught completely off guard. They had nowhere to go. Within a few minutes, more vehicles had arrived out front. Emilio Vasq was led from the house in handcuffs. He wore a bitter, defiant grin as a gray-suited detective shoved his head down and pushed him into the police car.

  A growing audience of neighbors had gathered in the quiet suburban street as, one by one, other members of the gang were frog-marched from the house and bundled into waiting vans.

  ***

  At the disused Warehouse in the industrial precinct, a trio of police vans burst through a roller door and screamed into the center of the building, followed by a squad of heavily armed and uniformed tactical response officers.

  A group of people sat in the lounge area. One of them, a slick businessman, stood up. He looked with contempt at the police officer who approached him.

  “What is going on here?” he demanded.

  “You’re Victor Varnado?” the officer asked.

  “Yes.”

  “You’re under arrest, sir,” the officer replied as he holstered his weapon and slapped a pair of handcuffs on the businessman. He was the owner of the property upon which the Warehouse stood. He was also Vasq’s financial backer, the man behind the trance parties.

  “On what grounds?” Varnado protested, glancing from the police officers to the group he was with - one of whom was Cassie. She got up from the couch where she had been canoodling with a young man dressed in expensive-looking street wear.

  The police officer didn’t answer. A second officer began reciting his rights. As quickly as Emilio Vasq had been spirited away, Varnado and his associates were cuffed and put into the police vans.

  The officers only briefly considered Cassie and her partner. They did not arrest either, but turned and left without another word. Soon, the Warehouse was empty, except for the stunned couple who sat in the lounge area.

  Cassie watched them go, and a feeling of dread slowly filled her.

  CHAPTER 13

  In a dream Andy finally met the presence: the soul who accompanied him. Curiously, the soul did not reveal his face to Andy. It was tantalizingly just out of reach, blurred by the boundaries of his dream state. But Andy could hear his voice as he spoke, and he had a sense of who this soul was. It was as though Andy were looking in a mirror, seeing himself, yet seeing this stranger.

  This stranger was a friend. He had always been a friend. His name was Denny.

  They walked across a quiet meadow that was filled with the most brilliant red poppies Andy had ever seen. They learned about each other, though there was nothing really to learn, for they were one and the same. Yet Andy had many questions. How had Denny come to be here? Why had he chosen Andy? Why had Denny not gone to that other place where all souls go to find peace?

  Denny was unsure of the answers to those questions. Little of what had happened had been of his own volition. He was an involuntary participant in his journeys: the journey before, when he had battled cancer, and the journey now - this place beyond the pain, beyond the tragedy, beyond the loss.

  Denny had never wanted to die. He never wanted to leave Sonya, and so he fought the illness hard until all that was left was his indestructible spirit. Even in death, he had refused to accept his mortality - refused to accept that he could be lost from Sonya forever. It wasn’t his time. He had watched Andy; the trauma of his self-destructiveness, the alienation from his father and the brilliance of his gift. Denny supposed that, somehow, a decision had been made by someone: a decision that Andy was worthy of redemption, and thus he was chosen to become a vessel within whom Denny could live on.

  Andy recalled the shame of his own journey, one signposted by weakness and cowardice. The experience in the trauma room had enabled him to look upon his own wretchedness and rebel against it. Somewhere inside Andy was the seed of a proud young man. It had always been there. Andy just needed the means to nurture that seed and grow it beyond the things that had kept him shackled. He had cast off his avarice. In its place was the potential for a new beginning.

  As they sat down together by a brook underneath a weeping willow, they talked about their mutual love of the guitar and the potent influence music had been in both their lives. They strummed together under the peaceful shade of the willow tree, sharing their music, enriching each other with the sounds of the strings.

  And as Andy continued his conversation, he suddenly realized Denny was no longer beside him. Setting the guitar down he searched around for him, worried that he had gone so abruptly. He felt an incredible sadness. But it was then replaced by an enveloping warmth. Denny wasn’t gone. Andy could sense him close by.

  Beside him.

  Within him.

  Separate individuals had become singular. Andy breathed deeply and felt himself being infused with Denny’s soul.

  And with that symbiosis came a new sense, a new feeling. It was a longing for home
, that place by the sea that he knew so well. It was also a longing for her, for Sonya - a longing to hold her again, to kiss her lips and to tell her that he loved her.

  Andy knew that he had to find her.

  ***

  Andy sat at a computer terminal in the library of the Conservatory, staring at the screen, the cursor blinking in the input field of the search engine as if it were waiting patiently for him. The library was quiet, much more so than he had anticipated. Not that he had ever spent much time in here. It was a novelty that he’d had to book time for the computer he sat at. With his laptop well beyond repair and the likelihood that he would never see his stolen money again, Andy had few options.

  Andy adjusted the garish baseball cap he wore, conscious of the bandage underneath it. He had gingerly tested his affected eye this morning and found it to be functional, but he couldn’t tolerate looking through it for any more than a few minutes at a time. He had replaced the dressing on his cheek with something a little less ostentatious and found the look more natural.

  The dream still lingered at the corners of his consciousness - the conversation with Denny, the reverie they had shared. He had awoken this morning with a single focused thought. The morning’s classes seemed to take forever, and he had found it difficult to concentrate - so eager was he to get to the library. Now that he was here, however, he was unsure of how to proceed.

  All he had to go on were the disparate memories and flashes of insight from that other life which had now become his own. What was clear to him were his memories of Sonya and his burgeoning knowledge of Denny. They were two names, and only first names, at that. There must be thousands of similar Dennys and Sonyas on the planet. There was also the affinity he felt for Australia - a country so remote from Chicago that it might as well be Mars. He had the tattered magazine ad beside him now, but there was nothing more significant to it than its description of the Sapphire Coast.

  “Let’s start there, then,” he reasoned silently.

  Pulling his attention to the screen, Andy’s fingers hovered over the keys, wiggling hesitantly. Then he typed into the search field “Sapphire Coast, NSW.”

  Results flashed up almost immediately: thousands upon thousands of pages devoted to this faraway place on the other side of the world.

  There were detailed descriptions of tranquil rural countryside, robust agricultural economies tied to a popular tourist industry that offered wine, cheese making, gourmet dining and fresh seafood. There were images of verdant hills and lush meadows sprinkled with dairy cows next to a majestic coastline with pristine white beaches and gentle waves washing up on the sand from an azure sea. There were fishing boats that plied the water searching for the culinary delights of the ocean: oysters, mussels and prawns. There were picture-perfect villages inhabited by carefree locals like a scene out of Gilmore Girls, where friends and families mingled, and shopkeepers and business people ran trendy cafes, quaint boutiques and successful tourism enterprises. Children played with family pets, swam in the sea and roamed free in lush countryside. It was idyllic and appealing.

  But none of it touched off anything in particular in Andy. It was all very pleasant, but ultimately boring. He cradled his chin in one hand as he tapped the keys with the other, scanning through the various websites, image galleries and streaming videos.

  He was getting nowhere.

  His gaze drifted down to the magazine ad beside him. Andy picked it up and gazed at it, trying to recall what it was about it that had struck him when he first saw it. The image of the coastline here on the page was so familiar to him. It was what he had seen in his dreams - but what about it was so significant? He scanned the text, searching until his eyes fell across some small print near the bottom of the page: “Photography by R. Broadbent, Hambledown, NSW.”

  Hambledown!

  Andy felt a bolt of recognition. He reached down and fished through his backpack for a notepad and pencil, whereupon he scribbled down the name of the town. He returned to the search engine and was immediately rewarded with a plethora of results for the small coastal hamlet, a tranquil fishing village situated in the center of the Sapphire Coast region.

  Andy browsed the place that had become their home, the place where Denny and Sonya lived. The peaceful seaside town with its quaint main street, populated by businesses and cafes, shops and services. A butcher, a pharmacist, a garage, a pub, the general store.

  The general store!

  It was where they went for their fresh fruit and vegetables, smaller grocery items that could be purchased conveniently at a moment’s notice rather than having to drive to the supermarket in the next town over. It was where he used to stop on his morning run with the dog to take a break, have a coffee and treat his dog with some slices of sandwich meat the shopkeeper used to cut especially for him. These were vivid recollections. The sounds of the shop, and the conversations with the shopkeeper echoed in his mind. Andy’s pupils dilated; he’d unlocked the door to yet more memories. He noticed a laser printer at the end of this row of terminals, and he began printing out pages of information.

  Andy clicked through more photos of Hambledown’s main street, identifying its post office, local bank branch and a small, seemingly ramshackle cottage that was in serious need of repair. Andy hovered over this image: an old double-fronted cottage with a lopsided sign that hung precariously from a single chain attached to a pole next to a gate.

  “Harold Llewellyn, Barrister,” Andy read.

  Llewellyn.

  “I know that name,” he whispered in amazement.

  Andy scribbled the name down on the page beside him. As he did so, his eye fell across the name Sonya immediately above it. And then he realized...

  “Sonya Llewellyn!”

  That was it! That was her!

  He sat forward and examined the faded image of the house of the former barrister. This was the practice Sonya had hoped to re-open, the practice that her grandfather had run into the ground through a combination of poorly handled legal cases and a love affair with a 12-year-old single malt whiskey. Denny had met him only a handful of times, but Harold Llewellyn was mired in local infamy. Andy smiled, shaking his head, remembering the conversations about the curmudgeonly old piss-pot that used to hang out in the Pub at Hambledown.

  He found himself drifting towards a number of real estate web pages displaying properties for sale in the Hambledown area, as well as properties that had been sold in the recent past. He continued, taking notes of street names, descriptions of the houses that he came across and names of the agents representing them. He was looking for something but couldn’t put his finger on what it was.

  Suddenly, he stopped.

  A description of a property sale about 18 months ago. He looked at an image of a small house overlooking a quiet stretch of beach just outside of the township. “A renovator’s delight”, “A family get-away”, “potential first home” were the descriptions attached to it.

  It was the beach house. Their beach house.

  He clicked on an icon that opened a gallery in a new window. Andy stared at it, hypnotized.

  The beach house was just as he had seen it in his mind. The ruddy weather board that was in desperate need of a coat of paint, the terra cotta tiled roof with green moss growing in patches, the balcony that gave a glorious view across the beach and the bay away to the south where Hambledown was just visible, the overgrown garden with its once beautiful collection of plants and shrubs that just needed to be coaxed back to life from the maelstrom of weeds and glory vine.

  It was the beach house he’d planned to renovate into a chic and modern coastal residence, where they dreamed of a life together, where they would start a family. He was going to set up his studio there, his drafting business. He remembered it all. He had already drawn the plans for it.

  Already drawn the plans.

  Andy remembered the drawing, the lines on a page that came together to form a detailed plan of what they’d hoped to achieve in renovating the old house
. He knew how to draw. Denny had been studying it, at university.

  They had been to university together, he and Sonya. That was how they had met and fallen in love. She was studying law and he was working towards a degree in architecture.

  Andy blinked, absorbing a flurry of new memories now, trying to make sense of them. He saw a large, domed building in a park somewhere close to a city. The Exhibition Building! A bright green tram trundling down the middle of a busy thoroughfare. Swanson Street! A tall spire near a river lit up at night by colorful spotlights. The Yarra River!

  Andy recalled the image of a tram and a spire next to a river on the poster for the Festival that hung in the student lounge. Reaching into his bag, he took out the application form Veldtman had given him. The logo for the Festival stood out on the page.

  Melbourne.

  Andy tapped in a new search query, looking for higher education facilities in the southern Australian metropolis of Melbourne. A list of descriptions came up. He scanned through the listings until his eyes fell on one part-way down the page.

  Melbourne University - Home.

  It was the University where both Sonya and Denny had studied. Melbourne University. As Andy clicked on the link for the University’s website, he remembered.

  He remembered studying hard for his degree, participating in the music society - the perfect outlet for his guitar, playing university cricket in the summer, swimming competitively for the swim team, playing football in the winter, drinking beers with friends at the Uni Bar, the parties and the life. And being in love with Sonya.

  Andy navigated through the website, browsing the courses available for study, the facilities available on-campus, current news and events, images of the campus ground and the student services directory. Then he was drawn to a small icon in the right-hand corner of the page, underneath the student services link.

  REMEMBERING DENNY.

  He rubbed his forehead as he was taken to a new window. It was the Facebook login screen. Andy strained to remember his long-unused password. It was “Lotus.” He logged in. A page loaded.