Sombre

  “His lips weren’t sewn to his ear!” Hope corrected.

  Parker laughed cruelly, “not his ear! His nose! Ha! My God that would have been warped looking! Like some crazy Picasso shit!”

  Hope laughed, realizing straight away that she shouldn’t be. “Anyway, his lips weren’t sewn. They were butchered pretty badly though.” She pictured Jerry screaming through his cut-up mouth and remembered the colour of his face.

  “His face was yellow, Parker.”

  The older girl peered up at Hope and her smile had disappeared, “like the yellow we see in our faces?”

  “Yeah,” Hope nodded slowly and screwed the balance of her wrap up in the packaging.

  “Wow … you sure?”

  “It was yellow,” Hope said with more certainty. She knew what she saw.

  There was so much she wanted to share with Parker. But this was all so raw and new. She didn’t want to freak her out and scare her away. Too much of The Hope Kelley Show had never worked for her in the past.

  Parker sat up with a grimace and crossed her legs. “Feel like a sixty-year-old …” She gathered her hair in a bunch then let it fall down her back, “So what are we gonna do, Hope-whatever-your-second-name-is.”

  “Kelley,” Hope said and grinned.

  “Two first names …”

  “Kelley’s spelt with an ‘e’.”

  “Okay. So, I’m not one to just sit on my ass and wonder what’s going to happen next. I like to know what’s going on around me. I am a control freak, Hope. Do you understand?”

  Hope nodded. She liked where this was going.

  “I want you to tell me everything you know about this Halliday. She’s the shit. I want you to spill everything about what you see in Sombre. I need to know because I can’t handle not knowing, okay?”

  “Well I can’t tell you everything right now, lunch is just about over,” Hope said looking at her watch. Clearing her throat, she did her best to stifle a smelly garlic burp; the masticated contents of her wrap battling to make its way down to her stomach. She wondered if the older girl smelt it. She shielded her mouth with her hand just in case.

  Parker pulled her phone from her pocket. “We need to swap numbers. Get your phone …”

  “Oh, it’s at home.”

  “Really?” she gave her a quizzical look, “who does that?”

  “I forget to bring it sometimes,” Hope looked to the ground. She liked to tell herself she enjoyed being ‘off the grid’ – but in reality, it was a little sad, she had a total of four contacts and nothing social on her phone at all.

  Parker’s eyes were wide, “Well, can I just say that’s so-fucking-strange, Hope Kelley spelt with an ‘e’? Anyway, write my number, stick it in your phone and call me tonight. We have heaps to discuss,” the older girl said and reeled off the numbers. She got to her feet.

  Hope quickly grabbed a pen and pad from her bag and used her knee as a table. “Oh, yep got it!” she said breathlessly. She scribbled the number down in a rush.

  The first bell rang to end lunch and Hope quickly got to her feet. She stood next to Parker and smiled awkwardly. Parker gave her a sideways glance and rolled her eyes. “Jesus, you need to learn to chill out around me, Hope. You’re a kickass warrior, remember? Surely a bit of this Sombre crap can rub off on you?” she smiled and nodded to herself. “I’m the gimpy pilot who can’t string a decent sentence together and can’t fly without crashing.”

  Hope didn’t know how to respond. She felt a little giddy, actually.

  The two walked toward their respective classes then parted ways.

  S

  The drive home from school with her father and sister took too long. Dinner couldn’t have finished quick enough. Hope showered and changed into her pajamas. She grabbed her notebook and phone and plonked on the bed with a bounce. Her phone was always charged. It rarely moved from her dressing table. She didn’t use it. Her laptop was less of a strain on her eyes when she wanted to be online. Tapping into contacts, she entered Parker Wright in - name and number - then took a breath.

  “Don’t be such a try-hard, Hope,” she said under her breath. “Call her and be cool for once.” She tapped the number and listened to the dial tone. Chewing her nails, she looked at the clock. 7:46. Respectable time to be calling, she thought.

  Parker picked up. “This you Hope? Wait. I’ll call you back.” The line went dead.

  “Oh,” she said with a delay and placed the Samsung on the quilt – then proceeded to stare at it while she waited … and waited, she waited and waited, pulled at her fingers and sucked a wet patch on her pajama pant knee.

  Fifteen minutes passed.

  She wondered if she should go to the toilet.

  Then she might miss the call.

  “Jesus, just go Hope!” she chastised herself. Jumping off the bed she ran out of the room leaving her door open. She ran back in, part humming, part snorting some random song that probably wasn’t a song at all. The screen was lit. “Shit!” There was a missed call. She dialed Parker’s number again.

  “Where were you?” the older girl said coolly at the other end.

  “I had to pee. I didn’t know when you were going to call back … I had to,” Hope said trailing off. She shut her eyes and shook her head slowly. Not a strong start.

  “I just had a shower. Now I can relax. Now we talk - you good?” Parker started.

  “Yeah, super good.”

  “Super good? Ha! Well that’s better than just good I suppose. Although that sort of sounded like something my late father would have said.”

  ‘This was going horribly!’

  Hope stammered, “O-Oh, sorry. I didn’t know your dad was dead.”

  “He’s not! Jesus, I wish! He’s an absolute dickhead, though. Cheated on my mum three years back and has been trying to get back in our good books ever since …”

  “Oh.”

  “But seriously Hope Kelley, you need to relax when you’re talking to me. I know you’re younger, but not by much. And personally, I couldn’t give a fuck. This shit we’re going through transcends our ages.”

  ‘My word she swears a lot,’ Hope thought to herself, ‘be cool about it, Hope. Everybody does.’ “Oh, okay. I’ll try.”

  “Good. I need you, remember. Not sure if you even need me. Even my numbskull dream person has worked out that you’re a Gatherer, and pretty kick-ass with it. Now, take a deep breath and let’s begin. Where do you think Sombre has come from?”

  Hope felt a shiver run through her insides. They were about to talk Sombre. To say it was surreal was an understatement. “I really don’t know. I only started going there when I moved to Pento.”

  “We do go there, don’t we? I mean, I know it’s only when we sleep, but it all feels too real, doesn’t it?” Parker said without the usual edge to her tone. “I feel absolutely shot to pieces when I wake up.”

  “Probably because Em Contusion might have been -” Hope joked.

  She got a laugh at the other end of the line. Turning round, she leant back against the wall and relaxed, rubbed her toes together through her bed socks. “Do you ever remember your rite of passage into Sombre?”

  “No, what’s that?”

  “It’s your lead in dream – your rite of passage. You obviously haven’t woken from it yet. I have, once or twice. I think mine are always violent. I can never remember them once I wake from being Halliday, though. From what I can work out, they seem to focus on anything negative in your life and crank the volume up to 100.”

  “Jesus, I’d hate to think what mine are like if they focus on the negatives in my life,” Parker sighed. “Let’s move on. We don’t need to get pulled into that pit this early in our friendship.”

  Hope grinned. This girl was her ‘friend’. She cleared her throat and continued. “Well, Halliday drinks too much at a bar called The Ruptured Spleen. It’s where all the Gatherers drink in between jobs.”

  “Bullshit! Really? You get to go to a bar? Jesus, you lucked out! Ho
w many Gatherers are there do you think?”

  “Geez, lots of them. At least twenty, I’ve never really counted. Halliday’s usually too drunk to notice. I think she sort of has a thing for one of them.”

  “Who?” said Parker well impressed.

  “Dave Bi-Plane … he flies a bi-plane.”

  “Ha! Course he does!” Parker giggled at the end of the line. “So why just you and me? I mean, this is pretty random, let’s be honest; I wouldn’t have given you the time of day had you asked me for it two weeks ago.”

  “Oh, I know! Nobody does!” Hope blurted and regretted it straight away. She’d almost sounded thrilled about it for god’s sake!

  There was a pause at the other end. “You’re a weird girl, Hope Kelley. You know that, right? Likable enough … but you do need to relax a little.”

  Hope sucked her bottom lip. “I think something big is about to happen to Halliday.”

  “Spill it.”

  “So, just about nothing fazes Halliday; you may have picked up on that.”

  “She’s kickass.”

  “Ah, yep, she is. But something happened in Sombre last night that made her wet her pants.”

  “Oh no, literally? Poor thing, that’s gross …”

  “No, that was just a figure of speech.”

  “Oh, good … that could have almost ruined her for me.”

  “Anyway, there was an inexplicable chill that just about sucked the life out of her. It was like ice. It seemed to have a life of its own, it was evil and big, I have a feeling it was creepier than anything she had ever felt in Sombre before.” Hope sat up and hugged her knees. “But you know, the frightening thing was that I felt the exact same ice when I woke up.”

  “You’re room went cold?” Parker queried.

  “Aha. I know you wake up feeling just as sore and as zonked as I do, but this was new, this was something else again. Next level.”

  Hope could sense Parker was hanging on her every word. She continued, “I went to a party with my folks on the weekend and there was someone there – he didn’t feel real, you know? He was spying on me through some trees. I tried to confront him, and he vanished.”

  “Oh, fuck! That’s trouble Hope! You were being followed? How come you haven’t mentioned this before?”

  “Well, we’ve only just started talking, haven’t we?”

  “God! You could have led with that, though!” Parker exclaimed, “That’s some next level shit right there! You think there is someone else like you and me?”

  “Maybe.”

  The line went quiet for a moment. Parker came back. “You said Jerry had yellow in his face, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah, he did.”

  “And you’re sure you weren’t imagining it?”

  “His mouth was chopped up, Parker. That’s not a normal beating. Not for a high school student. That would take time. That would take a knife.”

  “It reminds me of something from a gangland-mafia movie or something,” Parker agreed and added, “I’ve seen lots of them. They do that sort of stuff when they want to send a message: chop off a finger or slice an ear. How could Jerry have pissed someone off so bad that that would happen to him? He could be a drug-runner.”

  “Doubt it,” Hope said.

  “I don’t. I don’t put anything past anyone. There are some very secretive bastards in this world, Hope. People are living double lives all the time.”

  “None of that explains the yellow, though,” Hope countered, “That’s got something to do with Sombre. I’m sure of it. I wasn’t imagining that guy who followed me at the party either.”

  “But Sombre is just a dream world, isn’t it? Did I mention that I am a staunch realist in a major fucking way? I don’t even read fiction books … Harry Potter is drivel.”

  “Please don’t have a go at Harry,” Hope said solemnly.

  “I’ve seen a bit of the first film. All three of those characters could do with a foot in their asses. Ha! Cop that Hufflefluff!”

  “So, we won’t be talking books then.”

  “Not if you read that sort of crap.”

  “What do you read?”

  “Not much. When I do, its bio’s and true crime. Reality, Hope,” she yawned and repeated, “reality.”

  Hope shook her head slowly and steered the subject back on track. “When do you think Jerry will be back at school?”

  “In a week I suppose. You would have to give him at least a week for something like that surely.”

  “We need to talk with Jerry. Find out what he saw. Who attacked him,” Hope said not quite believing that it was indeed she speaking these words. This was now a mission. “It could be one of great importance as well.” She finished this thought out loud.

  Parker yawned again, “What? Who’re ya talking to?”

  “Sorry. I was just thinking that it might be pretty important. Will you be able to organise a meeting with him?”

  “Yeah, at least three of his buds have had a thing for me at one time or another. Should be easy.” She yawned again, “Okay, as you can tell, I’m beat. It’s time to go crash another airplane, Hope. Good talk. See you at school tomorrow.”

  The line went dead.

  Hope Kelley and Parker Wright had come together.

  CHAPTER 18

  A Feeling of Utter Dread and Foreboding

  Sleep came slowly to a buzzing Hope. Her mind filled with what it all could possibly mean. Sombre was seeping its way into her waking world. She recalled how adamant Hamish the Mender was that Halliday keep Em Contusion ‘safe.’

  Parker Wright’s Colonel Em Contusion.

  Why Parker? She was a random choice to say the least. They were two very different people. Hope liked her; her confidence, even her foul mouth. She could already tell Parker Wright said and did what she wanted.

  To say she had needed a friend was a chronic understatement. Now she had the best kind: one that shared her nightmare world.

  But why on earth was Jerry Cowle coming into her life as well? Was that what was happening? She turned over and over in the covers until she was hot and bothered. Clicking on her bedside light, she slipped on her glasses and picked up the book she had been plodding through for the past year; a well-worn copy of Watchers by Dean Koontz. She knew she should have been picking up To Kill a Mockingbird – but it was in her bag across the room and she couldn’t be bothered getting up. Watchers – was a recommendation from her father. It was good, (she thought the aptly named dog, Einstein, very cool), but over the last month, getting through any book was going to be a struggle. She blinked and focused on the page, and true to form, the words soon got blurry. She drifted off, paperback in hand.

  S

  Sleeping Hope had been afforded a birds-eye view of her nightmare.

  Her death was being paraded. Pale white and bleeding red, her mouth and eyes were stuffed with roses, the rest of her body in bits inside her flower girl dress. Hope’s carcass lay on an old wooden door as she was walked down the middle of the road in strange ceremony, by friends and family alike. They were quiet, and remorseless. Curiously, cars continued up and down the road on either side of the death procession, as if the wedding-party-horde-with-corpse was really nothing but a thing to make a little extra room for. Her makeshift pallbearers; mother at the front left, her father on the right, bared the weight easily with the others - Aunt Katrina, her burly new boyfriend, Tom, falling in just behind; scatty Cousin Bree from her father’s side, a few more friends and colleagues all had a hand hold of the door. Her murderous sister Kate, seemed to have found control of herself – she appeared to be trying to find a way to hoist herself up onto the door to catch a ride – one hand on the shoulder of the groom, Stuart, (who held his new bride’s Sophie’s hand), the other on the edge of the door. It seemed everyone from the chapel had come for the walk. The tail of the wedding party was as long as it was motley; torn, partially burnt and bloodstained dresses and suits hung off and flapped around … Great Uncle Eustis followed riding hi
s motorized scooter.

  The onset of evening brought its shadows as the day was coming to an end.

  The procession continued on down the road.

  S

  The Ruptured Spleen was always a welcome safe haven for Sombre’s Gatherers. The heady combination of alcohol, tobacco smoke, deep fried potatoes (a special with ale) and well-worn Gatherer leather and dirt. With chosen beverage in hand, the bar at the top of The Unexplained Mountain numbed the senses nicely and eased the burden of being a professional crutch for the nightmare world.

  Halliday needed much numbing this night in Sombre. On her third scotch, her lips felt nice and buzzy – anxiety from her earlier ordeal was slowly easing. She had no interest in heading outside to the balcony. She needed to be inside.

  Across the table sat Recalcitrance Bexley, a very level-headed Ballooner Gatherer, and a very level-headed drinker, a rare one; the more the woman drank the more sense she made. She opened and shut a box of matches as she smoked a pencil thin, skinny-cigarette.

  “Sombre throws all sorts of things at us, Halliday. You know this. Don’t be surprised by a bleeding thing! I’m never surprised.” She blew her smoke off to the side.

  Halliday admired Recalcitrance’s deep dark eyes, full of knowing and no nonsense.

  “I do know this, but it chilled me to my core, Recalcitrance! An invader! An infiltrator! A bloody specter … I’m searching for the words.” Halliday swept her blond locks from her face and exhaled. She found her chin with her palm and leant on it.

  “The drink won’t be helping you with that,” the Gatherer said with a knowing grin. She sipped her own vodka and raspberry.

  “A-ha! Well that’s just stating the obvious! You good thing of the air, you!” Halliday smiled gazing at the spiky tips of Recalcitrance’s hair, then at the curious streak of silver just above the woman’s ear. She wondered whether she could go for that kind of look at all. Would Hamish allow it? Her long blond locks were endlessly floppy and got in the way often when she fought.