A Friend You Haven't Met: Part Eleven

 

“Well, that takes care of that,” I said shakily. I had hardly been able to breathe until then. I poured the last of the holy water over the blemished spot. There were only a few drops left. “Everybody okay?”

“No. No. Maggie’s not.” Tim walked over slowly to the little pile of earth and grass that was all that remained of her physical form. There were tears in his eyes. “She was my old friend, and I just treated her like … like dirt.” He gave a sobbing laugh. “And even then, she saved my life.” He wiped his nose on his sleeve and folded his hands as if in prayer. “Maggie, I wish … I wish I could do something for the likes of you, but I don’t know what …”

“Well, for a start, you can put my head back on.”

Korm swiveled the flashlight in surprise in the direction of the voice. The beam revealed the severed head of the little mud girl, blinking and smiling in the sudden light, no worse for the wear, apparently.

“What in the hell …” Kassie started, then seemed to give it up in incomprehension. Maybe she had seen too many miracles too quickly to be astounded anymore. She started to move dully, dutifully over to the head.

“No,” Maggie said stubbornly. “It’s got to be Timmy.”

The old friar walked with faltering steps over to the head, and gingerly took it up off the floor. He looked like Hamlet, contemplating Yorick’s skull in wonder. “But how?” he asked.

“I think you’ll find that the likes of Maggie are very hard to kill,” I said with tired satisfaction. “After all, how do you kill an idea? And that’s what she mostly is.”

Tim carried the head over very carefully, as if he were afraid it was going to pop like a balloon, then set it down hesitantly on the jumbled pile. The head seemed to draw it up like it was being sucked through a straw, and the body took form as it touched the head. And then Maggie stood there, as whole and frisky as she’d ever been, and the first thing she did was jump into Timmy’s arms, and then for a wonder he was hugging her back and smiling too.

Korm and Roth gathered around them, slapping Tim’s back and laughing happily at his joy. As I watched them, I was unexpectedly washed over by a wave of weariness, and the flask dropped with a clang out of my hand. Kassie was at my side in an instant, and the girl grabbed my arm and supported me until she could right a fallen chair and ease me down into its grimy seat.

“Take it easy, Gramps,” she said gruffly. “We don’t need any more deaths in here.”

“I’ll be alright,” I panted. “Just tired. I’ve had a … a long day.”

She looked at the others furtively, then lowered her voice intensely.

“Look, you seem to be in charge of this circus. What’s the deal with those apemen and that girl-thing? And don’t try to spin me some shit, because after what I seen today I know they ain’t natural!”

“You are a most perspicacious young lady,” I wheezed in amusement. The others had noticed me sitting and were drawing near in concern. “To explain everything to you at the moment would take longer than I would like to linger in this place.” I smiled up at the company. “Perhaps it would be best if you thought of Roth and Korm here as, well, as just another couple of fellas. If a little uglier than most.”

“Hey!” Korm bleated. Roth guffawed.

“As for Maggie.” I waved my hand. “We all just imagined her.”

Kassie scowled, drawing her black eyebrows down and pouting. Pouting most prettily, I thought. I could tell that she thought of herself as mad, bad, and dangerous, but there was a regular person under all that, that was looking for some kind of meaning. I reached for my wallet.

“Look, I can see you’re a girl with a lot of sand,” I said. I drew a card out from the inner folds. On it was printed the address and number of the Bureau of Shadows. “If you want a lot of answers, you contact these people and make a report. The card’s kind of old, but it should still be good. Go on, take it. When you find out about the Bureau, you might even want to join it. I’d say you’ve got all the qualifications.”

She looked at it, puzzled.

“The DEA?”

“And not the one you’re thinking about, either.” I slapped my hands to my knees, bracing myself. “Oh, you might have heard my name bandied about a bit while we had this little fracas. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t mention it. You can just call me … Grampa.” I rose creaking to my knees. “Okay, boys, gather your stuff, we got to roll.”

“I’d like to say a few prayers here and there as a precaution,” Tim said, and hurried off into the corners, Maggie at his side. Roth went in search of his sword with the aid of Korm and his flashlight. As I picked up my flask, I noticed Kassie was looking down with stricken eyes at the outlined spot on the floor. It was scuffled with new footprints, tape half torn away, and the withered bouquet was nowhere to be seen.

“You know,” I said gently, “Somebody really ought to clean up this place, maybe even see about re-opening it. The only real antidote to darkness is light.”

“I don’t know about that,” she said fiercely. “This is the only place I can be alone and remember. I come out here to think about heavy shit when life gets too much. Heavy shit is real.” She waved her hand dismissively. “Happy stuff just goes flo-o-oating away.”

I shook my head.

“The happy stuff weighs just as much as the heavy shit. But the heavy shit insists on itself, dragging us back; the happy stuff kisses us as it goes flying by, urging us forward.” She looked unconvinced. “If the world was just bad, how do you explain the happy stuff, and why do our instincts call when things go right ‘normal’? Why would we call bad stuff ‘bad’, if it were the only kind of stuff in the world?”

“I dunno. Maybe we’re stupid like that.”

“Think about it.”

She shrugged. She lifted up the card again and squinted at it. I could tell I had handed her a mystery. I hoped it might lead her out into a larger world. I wished it might. One of the reasons I had gone off the radar of the Bureau was that I felt in my bones that there was a big shake up coming, and I wasn’t exactly sure at my age how I’d come out of that storm. But something about how Kassie had handled herself made me think she might have the pluck they needed.

Meanwhile, it was high time we headed out of there before we drew any unwanted attention. Masks had been found and adjusted. We all trooped out after Kassie made sure the coast was clear, and she fixed the lock and chain up again. The last I saw of her was her leaning over the porch railing, looking out after us, the late afternoon sun picking out the gold in her hair into a blazing aureole.

Notes

Bob has indeed had a long day; a day that has been prolonged for over three centuries. He treats Kassie with an old-fashioned deference, the sort of deference that is often mistaken these days for condescension. But he recognizes her strength and suffering; he talks about her ‘sand,’ a term that we might be more familiar with as ‘grit,’ or even ‘true grit.’ Kassie is largely based on one young lady I know, and a little bit on my mother, as I imagine she must have been when she was young.

Bob’s premonition of ‘a big shake up’ was a bit of ground-laying for a story I was working on, an entire novel in fact, that was hinted at in The Day Delphine Disappeared (see elsewhere in the blog). It has not, as of this time, coalesced.

Almost at the end now; only one more section to tie everything up, and this ‘crossover event’ comes to a conclusion as it began, as a Friday Fiction. Hopefully I will start the LOTR posts again next Monday and have a new section of Thrand ready to go on Friday. That’s the plan right now, anyway.