by J M Thomas
Aeron looked as exhausted as I felt. “Orright, then.”
I wasn’t sure what to ask him as we drove back the way we’d come. The storm had picked up by the time we made it back to the hospital’s parking garage, pelting my windshield.
I pulled into a spot near his motorcycle. The radar on my weather app showed an ugly double wave coming through tonight with tornado watches issued in advance, so the garage at work was going to be where I’d need to sleep tonight. There was no way he could drive that thing in this weather, though. Hopefully, by the time I took Aeron wherever home was, I could find an underground-level parking spot and get some shut-eye.
I parked and we both got out, me out of absent-minded exhaustion, and him… I couldn’t help but ponder what far off land his mind had drifted to.
“Thanks for the ride.” He called over his shoulder as he walked to the hospital.
Was it fatigue or something else? I had no idea. Something was tugging at me to go with him, so I trotted up, matching his pace.
“You don’t ‘ave to follow.” Aeron scowled, crossing his arms as soon as I’d trailed through the glass doors behind him.
“Might as well,” I replied, wondering at how closed-off he’d gotten since we left Lana’s. “I’ve got nothing better to do.”
Five minutes into our exploration, I recognized where we were. This was the hallway where the supply closet was, the one the NICU nurse was living in down here. When we got close, Aeron pointed his index finger at a spot on the floor next to an electrical outlet. “You wait ‘ere. I got business. You can type up some notes or summin’.”
I turned up my nose. “So, you’ll be awhile, and you want me to wait on the floor?”
“You catch on quick.” His jaw twitched, and he left without another word.
Something in his more-grouchy-than-usual demeanor put me off. He wore his feelings on his sleeves, and this felt like a cover attitude for something else. Well, two can play that game. I dutifully pulled my things from their bag, charging my laptop so I could type while I sat in the car later. I silently counted to a hundred after he disappeared into the door, then set everything aside.
Leaving my laptop open so I could dart back to it if someone came around the corner, I sneaked up to peer through the narrow rectangular window in the supply room door. The curtain that had covered the window earlier was drawn back a little , so I could see, but I’d have to be careful.
Marla was still in her scrubs, but she’d brought out the lamp. Her little flute, probably a close cousin to a tin whistle, sat on the broken gurney, which was now made out like a bed. With a reverent bow and gentle wave of her hands, she bent down and opened her little mini fridge, bringing out a small vial of blood. With a tediously slow movement, she poured it into a beaker set on top of the fridge.
“Get on wiv it,” Aeron growled, impatience written all over him.
Tears traced a line down her face as she sat ceremoniously and brought her flute to her lips with a flourish. No sound came from the instrument, at least nothing I could pick up through the door, but her expression was melodic, sweet, and dutiful. This was her lullaby for the little ones, a soundless tune and a sobless cry. How many times had she played like this for them?
The second that whistle left Marla’s lips, Aeron started clearing out the center of the room, stacking boxes and roughly shoving supplies toward the outer walls. His low, irritated, “It’s time,” didn’t seem to put Marla in any rush to come join his efforts.
She nodded reluctantly, muttering something under her breath in his direction.
Time for what?
Rather than helping him move her things around, Marla sat squinting at Aeron in what seemed like defiance, her arms crossed. For someone I’d associated with stepping forward to aid others, she almost seemed to be silently protesting his work.
He pulled the vial he’d bought from Lana’s stuffed animal shop. On top of the fridge, the beaker Marla had poured the blood into stood empty, only a thin wisp of smoke emerging from where the blood had been. So where did it go?
Removing the packaging from around the small bottle, Aeron thrust it in the air over himself and Marla. Muttering something I couldn’t quite make out about “this spell,” Aeron dashed the vial to the floor.
Marla’s heart seemed like it was in just as many pieces on the floor. She broke down, crashing into him like a tidal wave of mourning. Her hands grabbed his jacket in fistfuls as she hit her forehead against his chest, over and over. Her wailing echoed all the way out into the hall.
I’d seen enough. I tiptoed back to my notes, more confused than ever as to what was going on.
He’d been so kind and gentle with Lana. But with Marla, he’d dashed a bottle on the ground and only made a grieving, overworked woman cry even harder. There were other ways of helping a woman out of her delusion. He didn’t have to disturb her that badly or be so harsh.
Wait a minute. Where’s my notes? I flipped my notebook to a fresh page and jotted down today’s events, one-by-one. Aeron bought a dispel potion from Lana. No, back up. Leaving here earlier, he’d said it couldn’t go on, something about her going in reverse. But was it her living in a closet or her taking care of the babies that couldn’t continue? Which one was her going backward?
Then, Lana had mentioned that most people aren’t actually haunted, but for five bucks they could be sure. And she charged him fifty for this bottle, ten times what a person would carry to clear ghosts away. After he’d asked for a something percent solution… Come on, think! I could smack myself for not writing down what’d passed between him and Lana earlier.
“To clear a room about this size…” Then why had he broken it on her floor instead of using it? There was a missing piece here, but I had the feeling I was close to figuring out the truth. I didn’t know if I wanted to know badly enough to ask Aeron what he’d clearly not wanted me to witness.
Aeron strode toward me as if nothing had happened at all, but his steps were brisk, determined. Before he could reach the spot where I sat, Marla burst out from her storeroom.
“What am I going to do now, Lyons?” she yelled. “They weren’t ready to leave! How could you?”
He didn’t answer. He didn’t even stop or look back.
“They’re all gone,” she raged, sobbing. “Every one of them! And it’s all your fault! Now I know why the guild wouldn’t have you… you monster! You should’ve stayed gone! How dare you!”
Then it hit me, hard. I realized that Aeron had intentionally gone to Lana’s for this purpose all along. Marla was the one with the Pied Piper charm, the flute she used to play lullabies. Aeron went to the Ward’s to fix something, and boy did he... like a steamroller over a molehill.
I snapped my laptop shut and shoved everything back into my bag. “To clear a room about this size of a hundred souls.” There it was. Lana had been impressed at the number, like something she made was going to be part of something big and exciting. I hoped she never found out what he did with her life’s work, how he used her mist to bring Marla to her knees.
Poor Marla. From her perspective, she’d just played these babies one last lullaby, then he sent them all away and walked out of her life. Whether those babies were real or not, they were real to her. To go from a hundred baby soul friends to shattered glass and an empty room…
I couldn’t even imagine that kind of grief.
Tears welled up in my eyes. He might’ve left her broken and flattened, but I had something I could do. My parents raised me to always leave a place better than when I walked in, and that’s what I’d do here. I quietly spoke a few parting words to the grieving nurse, then made her a promise I hoped I could keep.
Chapter 9 – The Watchers’ Sons
The driving rain on my windshield was the only sound the whole way to Aeron’s apartment. I’d nearly managed to school myself into staying cool in a way that didn’t let him know what I’d seen. Like him looking angry instead of anxious, I could be neutral and professiona
l instead of flying all over him.
“Pull up under ‘at awning. You can park ‘ere for now.” Aeron gestured to a covered spot, which should shield my car from the bead-sized hailstones that were pinging off of my car. I got out of the car when he did, surveying the hailstones that’d collected on my windshield.
He snatched one off the asphalt and held it in his palm. As the roar grew louder, Aeron reached his hand into the gale, then withdrew it. The tiny ice chunks were pea-sized, and growing larger by the second.
Great, there goes my chance to reach the parking garage tonight. I wanted to cuss, but it’d never suited me. I’d usually wait to vent my anger when no one else was around.
“Oh man… is it all right if I park here for a few hours, or do I need a pass?” Already, vehicles were pulling off the roads, emergency flashers blinking as they trolled for shelter.
Aeron narrowed his eyes at the wind blowing everything sideways. “Come on, then.” He flicked his chin in the direction of the wall of apartments.
In an instant, I was transported back to the moment the police found my best friend and returned her to us. It had to be at least five years ago now. Her arms were so thin. A good, stiff breeze would’ve broken her. But that’s because she was broken already; I could see it in her eyes as she looked through me, not at me. She’d been missing for months.
The whispers from that day on all said they were surprised it was her, not me. Hailey was too smart to make that kind of mistake, but Celeste… Celeste would follow a strange man to her doom.
And here I was, having to choose whether to weather the storm in my car or follow Aeron into his apartment. I had to decide now, before the wind picked up further. Spend the night in my car that wasn’t surrounded by the protective walls of the parking garage or follow Aeron into his home. He had pulled his jacket over his head and was fishing for his keys as he jogged through the hailstorm toward his apartment door.
I caught my breath, eyes wide with uncertainty. “I dunno… uh…”
He pivoted on his heel and marched back to me, eyes flashing with offense and arms wide with exasperation. “If I wanted aught to befall you, I ‘ad all day! If my word inn’t enough, maybe ‘at will be.”
After another glance at me, he softened his tone. “Right. It’s up to you. Sleep in your car, or I’ve got a spot in ‘ere. You’ll ‘ave it all to yourself, I promise. I won’t do you ‘arm.” He flipped the jacket up over his head again, then pulled his keys free and headed back up the stairs to his apartment door.
Stop being such a scaredy cat, ya ninny. He’s right… if he wanted to hurt me, he could’ve already. I grabbed my pillow and blanket, hesitating one last time, but I found myself believing him... but not my own judgement. I put my pillow over my head and used my blanket to protect my face.
Thunder rattled my car windows as I followed him, years of warnings from old women ringing in my head. A massive gust of wind slapped me with tiny balls of hail and thick droplets of rain.
“Sorry, I’ve just…” I choked back my embarrassment. “I’ve never done this before.” And didn’t imagine I’d ever be staying over at a strange man’s house, not after what happened to Hailey, and not after all this necro stuff today. I really am as stupid as they thought I was.
“And ‘ere I was finking it’s just me.” Aeron unlocked the plain, white-painted door, then ducked inside the unit, leaving me standing in the doorway. “Uh, let me just... tidy a bit.”
I smiled as he picked up a pile of dirty laundry and took it off toward the kitchen. Having the option to stay in the doorway was nice enough in theory, but the raging storm outside drove me to seek shelter and shut us in before the rain soaked the entryway.
The little apartment was an open-concept studio setup. The only door off the main room was to the bathroom. A fabric-upholstered armchair, which looked like it was on its fourth owner, and a cheap futon created separation between the yellowed kitchenette and the tiny living room. I imagined there might be a coffee table underneath the pile of stuff between the futon and a deep windowsill.
“You can sleep ‘ere.” He patted the corner of the futon, then brushed crumbs off of it onto the floor. “I’ll take the chair.”
“Are you sure?” I asked, not thrilled that I’d be swiping his only sleeping accommodations. “I can sleep in the chair so you don’t have to give up your bed.”
He ignored me completely, already on the move again. I followed him toward the kitchen half of the tiny place. He had a washer and dryer hooked up on the back wall of the kitchen, opposite the sink.
For being tiny, it was a full kitchen, with a wrought iron patio table and one chair pushed all the way against the wall. The other chair sat next to the only spot on the tiny table that wasn’t covered with unsorted mail.
Aeron grabbed a couple wrapped burgers from a brown paper sack in the freezer, then heated them up in the microwave. From a second sack, he drew a handful of droopy, oversized fries, deposited them on a tin baking tray, then shoved them into the toaster oven.
“Is there anything I can help with?” I felt like a leftover brick as I shifted my weight between my feet, standing useless in the middle of the floor.
“Get a glass from in ‘ere.” He pointed to the cabinet. “Ice ‘alfway, Scotch the rest of the way. And one for you, if you like.” He turned his back on me and busied himself starting the washer and rattling dryer, then hung up his jacket on the tension rod above the washer and dryer. I got the feeling, as I surveyed the near-empty cabinet, that the hampers I’d spotted on top of the dryer and that one rod were his entire closet space in this itty bitty apartment.
The cabinet was empty when I opened it, so I grabbed the sink plug and squirted some dish soap in the shallow reservoir. I had half a dozen glasses washed by the time Aeron finished changing the laundry in the noisy washing machine and returned to the microwave to check on the burgers.
He pulled a face at me as he restarted the microwave. “‘Ey! ‘Low it, Lessie! This is my mess, not yours!”
“There weren’t any clean glasses; now there are some.” I shrugged and flashed him a teasing smile as I reached to set another glass in the cabinet. In doing so, I caught sight of him and nearly dropped the glass.
The open sleeves on his navy athletic tank revealed badly-scarred arms with twisted ribbon and chain tattoos coursing across his muscles toward his shoulders. The ribbons each ended in some kind of sharp implement. A razor and a fishhook were in clear view. I thought some kind of shard might be peeking out near his neck, as well. Each tattoo was raised and embedded in a scar like he’d had them drawn to look hooked into his body through some of his scars.
He was hideous... and beautiful. Those arms, dang.
I recovered as quickly as I could, continuing the washing like I’d just gotten lost in thought, but there was no way he hadn’t noticed. I cleared my throat. “I’m sorry… about whatever hurt you.”
“It’s nuffin’ to worry your little ‘ead over. Don’t you fret.” His smile looked a little sad.
Crack! Boom! Lightning lit up the whole room. Thunder shook the whole apartment building, the sound reverberating through me.
Aeron didn’t seem phased in the slightest. “Come on, we got us a five-star dinner right ‘ere. Chips crispin’ up nicely, burgers, scotch… what more could we want?”
I towel-dried my hands, then Aeron tossed one of the reheated burgers to me. I caught it in both hands. Carefully, I poured his glass of whiskey and a little splash for myself. The strong, oaky smell caught me in the nostrils as I inhaled the fumes over my glass. This was way better stuff than the cheap bottle of Irish creme or amaretto my parents kept around to splash in the coffee on weekends.
True to his word, Aeron plopped into the armchair. He raised his glass as wind whistled against the eaves. “‘Ere’s to the watcher’s sons. May they get stuck in this mess and ‘ave a rotten night of it.” Without waiting for me to acknowledge the strange toast, he tossed back his scotch in one go, then sc
arfed down his burger. He was finished with it in under a minute, as if he’d been training his whole life to eat dinner in the most efficient way possible.
I, on the other hand, hadn’t shared a meal at someone’s house in a good, long while, and planned to savor the experience. Reheated burger wasn’t much in the way of culinary delight. In fact, it was still a little frosty in the middle. But I was a welcomed guest in a kinda-hostile town. That meant a lot to me.
Aeron went back into the kitchen and poured himself a second glass, returning with the tray of fries, which he set atop the pile of stuff on the coffee table for us to share.
It’d been a while since either of us had spoken, but the silence felt comfortable. The only thing I could think of that’d be even better than continuing in this peace was giving into my curiosity about the man sitting across from me.
“So, what do you do for a living?” I asked, figuring I’d start somewhere in the realm of small talk.
“I do security for a couple clubs, rotatin’,” he said around a bite. “There are four of the big ones downtown what all have the same owner. ‘Ere’s a team of us, and we ‘op around weekends.”
That sounded like it suited him perfectly. “Does that mean you’re a bouncer?”
“When I ‘ave to be. Wally like me, some drunk’s gonna still take a swing.” He sent me a sly look.
“You are not small!” I blurted, then pressed my lips together, embarrassment flooding my cheeks as I realized he’d been teasing in that humble brag British way. And I fell for it. “I mean, I suppose I’m not one to talk.”
He let out a wheezing laugh, wide smile revealing uneven teeth as it took up his whole face. “Lessie, if ‘ere’s anyfing I’ve learned in this business, it’s that it’s the little ones you gotta watch out for. ‘Ey’ll take you by surprise every time.” His finger wagged accusingly at me, as if I was the sole individual responsible for these rumors.
“At least you learned it.” I swirled the liquid before taking another tiny sip, wincing in advance of the burn down my throat. “Almost all of us at home are in our twenties, but I still keep having to whoop my youngest brother every once in a while to remind him who’s boss.”
