Sombre

  The two walked straight through the boundary fence.

  CHAPTER 30

  A Hope Shaped House

  Jerry Cowle had completely transformed.

  Hope and Parker now followed the gawky form of the aviator, Captain Andrew Pfeiffer. The Sombre gatherer ambled through the Alder trees like a phantom, glowing in the foggy gloom. He was taller than Hope remembered from Halliday’s meetings at The Ruptured Spleen. His balding head looked shrunken - like a decorated hard-boiled egg - sitting within the high collar of his brown leather flight jacket. She noticed how bow-legged he walked; as if someone had kneed him hard in the balls.

  “Don’t even ask me what this is all about, Parker. I have no idea.” She rubbed her bare arms and took a quick look back at the very much still intact boundary fence that they had both just walked through, just as Captain Andrew had.

  “I know. Crashing worlds. Things are getting fucked up, friend.” Parker nodded to herself, not taking her eyes from Andrew Pfeiffer. “He looks like an ugly uncle on his way to a fancy-dress party, doesn’t he? Why is he walking like that? Does he ride a horse in Sombre at all?”

  “No, he doesn’t. He flies a balloon.”

  “Yeah, right, you said …” Parker trailed off.

  The Alder trees came to an end and the woody path dipped to a lonely roadside. Jerry Cowle/Captain Andrew Pfeiffer stumbled down into the middle of the road and kept on going. A round orange light shone through the fog like an eclipse as Hope and Parker followed. Hidden by haze, a flat land of nothing rolled out to the left and right of the road. The ticking was getting louder.

  “Where are we? This isn’t Pento, anymore, is it?” Hope said shivering a little. She licked her lips, tasting the air. It was so cold.

  “Captain ‘o’ captain, where the hell are you going,” Parker sung under her breath, then yanked Hope by the lower arm. She pointed ahead, “Keep up Hope. Answers are this way. We’re meant to see this.”

  Hope quickened her step. “Parker, have you stopped to wonder where Jerry is?”

  “No, not really. He’s in our very unappealing friend up ahead of us, isn’t he?”

  “I guess,” Hope answered not sure that Jerry actually was. She wasn’t sure of any of this. Nothing was meant to exist outside of Sombre. Yet this had Sombre’s stamp all over it. They weren’t sleeping, weren’t dreaming – they were both very awake. She poked Parker in the arm to make sure. “And we’re not dead.”

  “No, we’re not,” Parker confirmed giving her a smile and a playful raise of the eyebrows. Hope could see her friend was clearly enjoying herself.

  The road veered left and a single house materialized in the distance, a big black, monolithic shadow. Captain Andrew left the road in an ostrich-like sprint, heading straight for the front doors. The ticking got louder when he entered. There was a distinct thud as the door shut. The ticking softened.

  The orange orb in the sky, dropped down on their approach, aiding light. The residence was now in full view.

  “What the f-!” Parker stood frozen. In a thinner voice she then uttered, “Hope, what is this?”

  “I-I don’t know,” Hope answered pitiably. She stood in awe.

  “But that’s you?” Parker said in a tone that bordered on the accusatory.

  Built with weathered grey wood, the two storied residence was impossibly sculptured. Sloping tiles on either side of a flat-gabled roof top suggested a head. Two large, nautical styled circular windows resembled Hope’s glasses. In line with the second floor, a protruding patio roof supported by C-shaped bracket columns housed the twin doorway; the wide entry was the mouth - a wooden step running the width of the doorway was the chin. Curved, boarded fascia on each side of the entry created cheek-shapes.

  Parker was right. It didn’t take much imagination to see that the house was meant to resemble her. Her being Hope Kelley; the girl who lived the best part of her life in a dreamworld. The girl who up until recently, had not really had a proper friend; actually, epitomized the social leper. The girl who’s waking life sometimes felt so insignificant, she could simply vanish, and no one would notice.

  That girl was now being made a big-deal of. Here sat a house shaped like her! She didn’t know whether she should be frightened or be gushing with pride.

  “It’s like some sort of freaky monument,” Parker said in awe, then added, “no offense.”

  “None taken – it is freaky. Do we go in?” Hope peered up at the disturbing eye-glass shaped windows and felt a need to adjust her own.

  “Oh-we-o-so-fucking-do! Jerry has! Well, the dorky aviator version! C’mon.”

  The older girl grabbed her by the arm and marched her toward the doorway. Wearing a grin that Hope found a bit savage given the circumstances, Parker grabbed the two copper doorknobs and turned.

  Parker and Hope entered the Hope shaped house.

  S

  Hope Kelley lived in the now.

  She had never been that big on recalling the past. She found there was never much point. Her past was generally filled with indifference and instability and acceptance of that indifference and instability.

  The Kelley’s had always been the family on the move – seemingly forever uprooting and moving to new destinations. Health&Co started from nothing. When her father had to chase more business, he chased it like a hungry dog (albeit a well-dressed one, always). Her mother, rode her beau’s curtails, trusting the path he was on implicitly. She would package up the two Kelley girls with barefaced, smiley indifference. Any sort of life Hope and Kate may have had on the go at the time would be gone.

  Hope learned to live in the now. The Kelley’s lack of foundation as a family never made her sad, just numb.

  So, what she was faced with now was a curiosity, to say the least.

  “Jesus, this is a head-spin, eh? You were a cute little mutha. That is meant to be you, yeah?” Parker said with her arms folded. “If I wasn’t so used to this sort of bizarre shit now, I’d swear I’d been drugged.”

  Hope couldn’t respond. She could only try to process what she was seeing.

  She and Parker both stood on an entry landing of weathered, hardwood floorboards. The first floor of the house was just one room, twenty feet wide; just the one set of stairs to the left and what appeared to be one implausibly long, airy hallway. If there was an end to the hallway, Hope couldn’t see it. Dim, yellow-lit wall lamps intermittently flickered in the small portion where she and Parker stood. Beyond this point, all lights were off. The ticking was incessant.

  A few feet from the landing, a dark-haired baby dressed in a pink jumpsuit lay on a change table. She peddled her legs in the air and grizzled; pulled a foot toward her mouth, let go of it, then grizzled some more.

  “Do you think that baby’s meant to be me?” Hope mouthed to Parker.

  “Well, it’s not me. I had hair as white as rice noodles when I was younger,” Parker said and added, “and we are standing in your house. One can only assume.”

  A small circle of crumbling yellow flame appeared in the dark hall.

  Hope gasped as she heard a familiar song start from somewhere within the house. Beautiful strains of Mama Cass’s, ‘Dream a Little Dream of Me’ filled the air.

  A younger, paler version of her mother materialized out of the gloom. Her blond hair was tied up in a messy bun. She was dressed in slobby home gear; sweatpants and slippers. Butting her cigarette out in an ashtray, Evelyn Kelley walked toward the change table, picked baby Hope up and took a whiff of her bottom. She then popped her on the floor with a buttoned-vested, no-pant-wearing teddy bear.

  Baby Hope rolled onto her front and tried to commando-crawl in the direction of her mother, who had walked off into the gloom, lighting up another smoke. A fridge materialized, Evelyn flung the door open and pulled out a bottle of beer. Shutting it with her shoulder, she cracked the top off her bottle with an opener.

  She began to sway. She flung her head back and sung drunkenly at the top of her voice to ‘Dream a Little D
ream of Me’,

  ‘Stars shining bright above you

  Night breezes seem to whisper “I love you”

  Birds singing in the sycamore trees

  Dream a little dream of me’

  ‘Say nighty-night and kiss me

  Just hold me tight and tell me you’ll miss me

  While I’m alone and blue as can be

  Dream a little dream if me’

  She then disappeared. Baby Hope was left on the floor.

  “Real nice … but I won’t judge, my mother wasn’t much better,” Parker said.

  “She loved this song. Gee, I don’t remember her ever being like that? Ever.” Hope said feeling more than a bit exposed in front of her new friend.

  Materializing from the dark, a two-year-old version of Hope then came sliding in on her knees. She wore shorts, a thin cardigan and lime coloured gumboots. She was playing with a Sesame Street school bus along the floor. Big Bird’s yellow head popped up and down through the roof as tiny Hope pushed and made strange sucking noises with her mouth. She had a saliva rash on her chin. Her glasses were strapped around her head like swimming goggles.

  “So that’s how all you blind little fuckers kept your glasses on? Right. Makes sense,” Parker said.

  Hope watched her miniature selves rooting around on the hard wood floor and wondered what in the hell was going on? What was Sombre trying to show her? That she used to be a baby?

  Her mother returned from the dark again; this time she had no cigarette or beer in hand. The baby-bump in her belly showed that she was pregnant with Kate. Her eyes were filled with tears, she had the sniffles. Evelyn Kelly looked down contemplatively at toddler Hope. She wiped her eyes and cheeks with a tissue that she pulled from the pocket of her sweatpants.

  “Jesus, she looks sad, Hope,” Parker said, “hormonal as hell … where was your father?”

  “Working,” she answered without pause. Hope looked on with a hardness that was well practiced, the Kelley concrete resolve.

  Her mother’s phone rang, its little blue screen lit up, she walked off into the dark and answered it.

  Another, slightly older Hope came rolling into the room, kneeling on a thin red skateboard. Hope guessed she was around four. Her glasses were way too big for her head; her hair was tied back in a ponytail. She was wearing shorts and pink gumboots. The skateboard stopped and she pushed off again with her right foot.

  “My god, I looked like a crazy person,” Hope said shaking her head.

  “What’s with the gumboot fetish?”

  “My mother couldn’t get me out of them.”

  Like a knife strike, a wild scream cut through the strains of Mama Cass’s soothing ‘night birds’ and whispered, ‘I love you s’.

  “Fuck! What was that!” Parker grabbed Hope by her arm.

  Hope stumbled forward as the same bolt of pain she felt at the hospital flashed across her temple. She couldn’t speak, the pain was unbearable. Her tongue felt fat in her mouth. She gulped and tried clearing her throat; choked down a wave of nausea. Shutting her eyes tight, she breathed deeply and tried to gain composure. She then opened them again - just in time to see her four-year-old self speed unnaturally across the floor on the skateboard, hit the wall and wipe out. Her little body smashed to pieces like globe-glass.

  Baby Hope began shaking as if she were being electrocuted. Liquid ran on the floor under her body. Toddler Hope suddenly got tired and dropped to her side next to her Big Bird’s bus.

  “Shit!’ Parker dragged Hope back toward the door. “We gotta run, Hope! This is all sorts of wrong! We shouldn’t have come. No, this was bad by me! You shouldn’t always listen to me! No sir … I’m too fucking gung-ho all the time!” Parker tried the twin door handles. “Ho! And that’d be right wouldn’t it! Locked! Ass-hole!”

  Another scream, an unhinged, banshee-like wail started in the dark hall and came at them fast in the form of a sprinting, wild eyed, Evelyn Kelley. Like a fast Running-Back, Hope’s mother bent down, gathered baby Hope by a leg and flung her straight at Hope and Parker. Hope’s former baby self hit her square in the face and exploded like an over ripe tomato; ectoplasmic blood spatter filled Hope’s glasses with red.

  “Jesus!” Hope yelled and wrenched her glasses off her face.

  She turned to a shell-shocked Parker, who stood open-mouthed and appalled, neck and torso-covered in baby gore. “Crazy, fucking bitch! Sorry. But she is!”

  On her knees, Evelyn Kelley laughed madly and slapped the floor with both hands. Hope knew she was looking at the hate-filled mother from her rite of passage nightmare.

  Sombre wanted her to see her this way. Why?

  Hope looked back pleadingly at her friend as if she had been caught telling a lie. The biggest. As if this house was revealing the true ugliness of her life. But it wasn’t true! None of it was!

  “Parker?”

  “What?” Parker answered. “This is so fucked up! But it’s not real!”

  Crawling on her knees, both coughing and laughing, Evelyn Kelley slammed her hand down on the back leg of Hope’s suddenly listless, two-year-old self. She stood, holding her child upside down like a ragdoll.

  With a tired-looking back swing, she threw toddler Hope back into the darkness and walked in after her. Her laughter turned into pissed-off-sounding yelling; yelling along with Mama Cass.

  ‘SAY nighty-night and KISS ME!

  JUST hold me tight and TELL me you’ll miss ME!

  While I’m alone and blue as can BE!

  Dream a little dream of me …’

  Savage thunder crashed through the music and the ticking; an aural barrage, shaking the foundations of the house. Heavy rain poured down throughout the hall.

  The orange sky orb that had guided her and Parker to the house was back; dramatically illuminating the black coated figure of Ether in the darkness. A submissive Captain Andrew Pfeiffer was on the floor. Ether rammed his blade into the airman’s shoulder. Andrew’s howl of pain rang out with the deafening thunder. Andrew Pfeiffer was Jerry Cowle. Jerry Cowle was Andrew Pfeiffer.

  He was about to be executed.

  S

  The driving in-house rain cleared Hope’s head.

  She felt a gust at her back.

  She turned. The front doors were wide open. Was the house testing her morality? She now had a way out. It wanted her to take it. She eyed the knife wielding maniac in the hall. She took another look at the exit; then at Parker. Sombre was playing a game with them both. Or was it just her?

  She looked to Parker. “We can’t go.”

  Parker shook her head, eyeing the exit longingly, “I know, we get Jerry and then we go … but the creepy fucker has a knife! What do we do? What if we die?”

  “We chance it! We have to, Parker! Jerry will die!” She turned, Ether stabbed Captain Andrew again, this time further down and in a slicing motion, to the left side of the abdomen. Ether was going to kill the Sombre airman slowly.

  Drenched hair stuck to her cheeks, Parker licked her lips, “then we just run at him …”

  “… and we’ll see what happens,” Hope finished for her.

  Hope turned and faced what was now inevitable. “We go.”

  Running into the driving rain, Hope led the attack. She jumped from the landing with Parker at her boot heels; charging into the dark with eyes only for Ether.

  She screamed.

  Parker screamed as well - adding a nasty barrage of abuse about his lack of manhood for good measure.

  Splashing through what felt like at least two feet of water, Hope lost her footing and fell, ploughing into the ghoul’s side. Parker either jumped or fell over the top of her, she couldn’t tell, screamed a “MOTHERFUCKER!!!!!!” and hit Ether with open arms in a tackle. Parker was flung off as Ether toppled over; his blade left in Captain Andrew’s shoulder.

  The attack was woefully executed but seemed to be enough.

  Hope was on Ether; she felt a scrawny chest of protruding ribs under his raincoat as she rec
overed and scrambled up his long frame on her hands and knees. What was she was going to do to complete her attack? Scratch his eyes out? Sock him one on the nose? She hadn’t a clue. Drawing level with the ghoul’s face she saw that he was smiling. Black eyes peering into her own.

  “Hope Kelley, welcome!”

  With the raspy greeting came a transformation – a facial reconstruction. Under the wet, greasy licks of fringe, Ether had made a change, it had taken on Hope’s face. She looked directly into the eyes of her replica.

  Ether rolled Hope’s eyes to the back of Hope’s head and licked Hope’s lips. He hissed. “Wake up, Hope Kelley! Wake up or die a thousand deaths! It’s all for you. Only you! Time! Time will eat your existence!”

  Ether grabbed the back of her head and wrenched her in close – nose to nose.

  She felt her own lips tasting her own skin; her own open mouth breathing deathly cold air as her face was sucked. She wanted to cry out loud, but she couldn’t.

  She couldn’t move.

  The violation was so dominate, so personal.

  So final.

  A hurricane wind blew violently through the front door.

  As if made of nothing more than dust fragments, Ether eroded from underneath her, and blew away.

  Suddenly everything was dust.

  Everything blew away.

  Blinding daylight returned.

  Jerry Cowle hadn’t.

  CHAPTER 31

  Loew Avion

  “So, when are we going to meet this Parker girl?” Hope’s mother topped up her wine and gave her a deliberate raise of the eyebrows. “You’re skipping school with her. Catching lifts home in her brothers car! Not thrilled with that at all.”

  The school had rung her mother reporting Hope’s truancy. When she hadn’t turned up to third period, Centurion had responded as if there had been a prison break. An annoyed Evelyn Kelley had come home from the salon early. She had been waiting for Hope; and had seen her guiltily squeeze out of Josh’s two door silver Mustang.

  “She’s older than you. Where does she live?”