The Trilogy of the Void: The Complete Boxed Set

by Peter Meredith

  When he reached the landing he heard a murmuring from the kitchen. It was odd sounding, like a foreign language, but despite straining, he couldn't make it out. It gave him the creeps and his back muscles danced and twitched. Sweat trickled down his skin, despite the air conditioning.

  Lisa came up behind him and he pointed for her to go on toward the main stairs.

  Her face looked deathly pale in the dim light and he saw the fear in her eyes as she turned and started slowly...too slowly, moving down the hall. She seemed to be taking forever. He stood by Talitha's bedroom door just in case he had to make a distraction and Lisa was only halfway down the hall, when Will heard the first heavy footfall on the backstairs.

  With a start, he turned to go down the hall and was surprised to see Lisa frozen in place midway down it, her face looked stiff with fear. As fast and quietly as he could, he slid down the hall and as he got to Lisa, he gave her a nudge to get her moving.

  "Go," he whispered

  However, she stood immobilized with fright, staring back behind him at the stairs and wouldn't budge, except to tremble, fawnlike. There was no way they would make it to the stairs in time, so in silence he picked her up and stepped into the pitch black family room.

  A second later, he heard the patrolman pause at the landing and Will felt oddly apprehensive. Not just nervous but afraid. He shouldn't have been. If they were caught all that would happen is his Dad would ground him or make him do some extra chores, but for some reason he felt far more afraid than the situation called for.

  He stood there in the dark room with Lisa in his arms. She breathed very shallowly into his neck, and he could feel her body trembling against his. Slowly the tempo of her breathing began to pick up.

  For what felt like an eternity, the security patrolman stood on the landing, listening for them. Why wouldn't he leave? Fearing that the sound of her breathing would give them away, Will pressed Lisa's face firmer into his neck.

  Finally the patrolmen began climbing the back stairs and Will felt the stress drain from him.

  "Go on," he whispered a few seconds later. Above them the patrolman creaked about whispering in that strange language, making the hair on his arms raise. Will didn't want to hear another word of it and hurried Lisa onto the banister of the great stairs.

  They slid down it and escaped out into the night moments later.

  The night air felt suddenly very hot and muggy after the coldness of the dark house, but he was glad for it. The warmth helped to drive away the last of the chill that had settled in his bones. Leading the way, Will slipped through the gloom of the looming shadows of the tall oaks and periodically turned and walked backwards to stare up at the house.

  It was creepy. The house was so dark that it was almost a hole in the surrounding shadows and his body gave a shudder at the sight. It was soon lost from view by the trees and he was glad for that. They reached the end of the Row and cut across the narrow portion of the Green heading home and only then did Will breathe out a huge sigh of relief.

  "I bet that was Skipper. None of the SPs are as slow as him, thank God." He laughed feeling the tension drain away and smiled at Lisa. Skipper was the Island's ancient bow-legged security guard; he had very bad knees and waddled everywhere.

  She smiled a crooked smile back. "That was...you were great, Will. I completely froze. I would've been caught for certain and I was so afraid. I mean, I was petrified. It was weird. I guess in a spooky house at night, even Skipper can be frightening."

  She shook her head and ran her hand across her face. Will reached out to her, their argument of a few minutes earlier completely forgotten by him.

  But not by her.

  "Will, I need to break up with you." He pulled his hand back as if she had tried to bite it. "I'm sorry," she continued. "But I need someone to really and truly love me and you don't. I've been fooling myself now for so long, but I can't do it anymore."

  "What? I do love you. What have you heard? Is there some rumor going around that I don't? Lisa, look at me, I do love you." He felt it then, the love, but he also felt something else he had trouble putting his finger on. Relief? Anger certainly. Frustration? Bewilderment? Maybe all of those at once, but also indignation that she would presume to tell him how he felt.

  "Will, stop it! I don't think you know what love is. Maybe I don't either. But I do know that it isn't temporary—it's supposed to last. And I can tell you don't feel the same way I do." He started to protest, but she cut him off. "Will, do you want to spend the rest of your life with me?"

  He paused looking astonished. "I'm seventeen, damn it! How do I know who I'm supposed to spend the rest of my life with! You're asking for the impossible. I do love you, but I'm still a kid."

  Lisa had been walking this whole time but stopped. "I sometimes think you love me as much as I love you and that's what has kept me going. But if you really do love me...then you're holding something back." She started to cry, the tears making the green of her eyes stand out, even in the dark. "When you're truly in love, Will, you never ever think about it ending. You want it to last for always."

  "Wait! Lisa, you're making a mistake, I love you. But I don't know. I... I...you're asking too much." Will's mind swirled with everything she had said, and he was having trouble thinking clearly. He had never asked himself whether he wanted to spend his life with Lisa; he was still trying to figure out if he truly loved her. He didn't know even then for sure, but he knew he didn't want to lose her, he never wanted that.

  She shook her head at him. "You're the one who's asking too much! I have given you all of my love, I've not held anything back. I only have one thing left to give, but it's not going to go to some scared momma's boy. You want to have sex with me, but when you're done, I'll be thrown out like yesterday's trash!"

  "That's not true at all; I actually think it'll bring us closer together. Lisa, I don't want to lose you." Her tears were starting to affect him—he was hurting her, and it was the last thing he wanted to do.

  Lisa sniffed hugely and said, "I'm as close to you as I'll ever get. But you never tell me you love me, unless I say it first. You don't love me. You really like me and that's great, I guess, but..." she stopped and looked up at him and he saw the misery in her eyes. He was doing this to her—hurting her and he felt a desperate need to make it right.

  "What can I do to fix this?" he asked.

  "Be honest with yourself," she said quietly. "We've been together for nearly a year and you don't even like to talk about love. You seem freaked out about it. Look, if you haven't figured out if you love me by now, it means there's nothing to figure out." She stopped for a moment, wiped her eyes, and then looked at him with determination. "Will, I can take it. I've known for a while that you don't love me. Here's your chance to walk away without being the bad guy. I know you see my tears and want to fix this, but you can't, not without giving everything you have to me. The feeling you have right now, right this second, is...is pity, not love. It's time to be honest with yourself and with me."

  Was she right? She was certainly right about the pity; he felt her pain keenly and was willing to say or do anything to end it. But was she right about the rest? Will needed time to sort this out.

  "I don't know what to say or do. I need some time," he started to say, but Lisa interrupted.

  "No, it's time you started being a man. You were a man up in that house. I need you to be a man now and come clean. Just tell me the truth, not what you think will stop my tears, but the truth, deep down."

  Right then she seemed so mature and Will felt like a stupid kid who didn't know what he wanted; his greatest feeling at the moment was confusion.

  Lisa seemed to sense this and said, "I know this came out of the blue for you, but tell me, what you were feeling earlier tonight when I mentioned Soul Mates? You seemed to cringe."

  Will cringed again. He remembered exactly what he had thought, Inmates, and he certainly wouldn't tell her that, it would just hurt her more. Maybe she was right, maybe h
e should tell her how confused he was.

  "I don't know what to say," he whispered. "I think I love you, but I feel like a kid still and it just seems so big. I've never been in love before and I don't know. I don't know what I'm feeling or what I'm supposed to feel."

  Her tears became huge and raced down her face.

  "Ok, ok you're being honest...good. But...you don't know after a year, you don't know. Goodbye Will. I love you, but I...I...can't be in a relationship where I'm the only one in love." She tried to smile through her tears. "Good bye."

  She walked away.

  Chapter 5

  M-Day

  June 2, 1980

  1

  Gayle was finally lying in her bed. She turned her head and saw that William had a lot of room on his side. "What a bed hog," she thought and then smiled, she had plenty of room also. For the first time in fourteen months, she was back in her bed.

  She snuggled deeper into the freshly washed sheets, her long brown hair standing out against the stark white of the pillowcase. The sheets had just come out of the drier a few minutes ago and they were still warm. Which was a good thing too, since their new house was always so chilly. It was one of the few things about the place that bothered her.

  On the bright side, it was just another reason to cuddle with her husband. William was a big strapping man at his peak, physically. She loved to lie in his strong arms and never felt safer than at those moments. Restless, she skootched over to him, to steal his heat and thought to herself, "What a day it's been."

  Gayle looked up at the high ceiling and couldn't believe she was so wide-awake; she should be dead to the world.

  Only that day, at long last, had they finally moved out of the Cave, as she thought of their apartment and into the big spacious home on the Row. It had been quite a day and she figured that it was all the excitement and stress of moving that kept her up.

  However, it was a good stress, the first good stress in her life since Alabama.

  Whenever she thought of stress, she reminded herself that it could always be worse; William could be assigned to one of the boats again after all. He loved the boats or cutters as he called them and was never happier than when his boat would head out into a hurricane going to help some idiot with more money than brains.

  She couldn't blame him however, she had known what she was signing on for when she married him. He was a man through and through and had chosen his profession strictly for the adventure. William hated his current position as much as Gayle had hated him on the boats. He worked in logistics for the first district now and the way he put it, he was the: "Officer in Charge of Toilet Paper."

  There was certainly going to be no complaining from her. He was always home in time for dinner and the only night operations were at the Officer's club. Moreover, with the move, he was at least going to be treated like an officer for a change. They were now living in what people referred to as "Officer Country." Their front door opened onto the spacious, park-like setting of the Village Green while their back door went straight to the golf course.

  William snored next to her. He could fall asleep practically in an instant—she envied that trait. Gayle rolled over, again. Maybe she was having trouble sleeping because her children were now so far away from her. Although Katie was close, only in the next room, Talitha was down at the other end of the hall and Willy J was even further. He had chosen the larger room in the attic, the one on the far left.

  Gayle would have chosen the one on the right, since it was brighter and closer to the bathroom. She thought he would likely change his mind in a few weeks, when he finally got over that Lisa and started thinking straight.

  Willy J had been moping around for a week, since his breakup with her and Gayle thought it was about time he found a new girlfriend. Their neighbors, just to the north had a gorgeous raven-haired daughter, who had been practically throwing herself on Willy J. Not that Gayle really approved of a girl acting in such a forward manner, but he should've at least noticed her.

  The girl, Amy Harris, was also pretty. Lisa could only be considered plain looking and Gayle, who had seen her just a couple of times, noted that she never wore makeup even though she really needed to.

  Lying there, she wondered what Willy J saw in her and shuddered at the notion of how easy she must've been. However, the weird part was that she had broken up with him. Did Lisa possibly think she could do better? And the rumors about her mother! Gayle hoped Willy J had never gone into their apartment. According to laundromat gossip, which was usually pretty accurate, the woman was a complete drunk.

  To Gayle the breakup was all for the best and the fact that it happened so close to M-Day she took as a sign that there would be a new beginning for Will.

  2

  M-Day was the code word that Gayle used instead of saying, moving day. Since their move in date had been postponed so many times, she felt saying the words, moving day had jinxed it. The code word also went with the military theme that she had adopted. She wanted the move to go as smoothly as possible and decided to run it like a military operation.

  During the week just prior to M-Day, Gayle put her plans in writing, complete with maps. She assigned duties to each of the family members and her commanding style earned her the nickname, Captain Mom. Everyone would jokingly give her an, "Aye, Aye Captain!" whenever she ordered a new chore for them to do.

  When Katie saw that even her dad was saluting Captain Mom she asked him, "Is a captain bigger than you?"

  William, who was busy wrapping dishes in paper towels and then stacking them in a cardboard box the neat way his wife had shown him, looked quizzically at his daughter. "Which captain do you mean?"

  Katie's main job was to keep out of the way and she wasn't very good at it. She looked puzzled at her father's response and said with her little brow furrowed, "Not a witch-captain, a normal one."

  This confused William so much that he stopped wrapping the dishes. "Could you rephrase your question please? Rephrase means ask it again, but in a slightly different way, so I might understand it better." He glanced and saw that his wife was looking at them and went back to work with obvious and exaggerated motions.

  Katie paused and pursed her lips together, thinking about how to ask such a simple question in a different way.

  "Umm, ok. Is a captain bigger?" She stood up on her chair and raised her hand high above her head, to show her daddy what bigger meant. "Or smaller than you?" At this, she placed her tiny hands about two inches apart to show William, that he was apparently mouse-sized.

  William stopped working again and looked at his daughter completely nonplussed.

  Talitha, who'd just entered the tiny kitchen with a cardboard box of her own, tried her best to make things clear, "Some captains are big and some are smaller, ok? Just like some mommies are big, like Mrs. Landon and some are small, like our mommy."

  "I don't mean big and fat," Katie said. Mrs. Landon was the size of a house and had to turn sideways to fit through her apartment door. "I mean big." She then put her hands on her hips and puffed up her tiny chest. Talitha immediately became as bewildered as her father.

  Because the apartment was so minuscule, Gayle could hear and see practically the entire conversation. She started to feel that Katie had created some sort of mental quicksand and that first her husband and now Talitha were being sucked into it. Gayle smirked; she secretly enjoyed watching the two smartest people she knew become dumbfounded by a six-year-old.

  Since the kitchen already held three people and a small box and was thus over-flowing, Gayle stood in the doorway.

  "Congratulations, Katie!" she said with a big smile for her daughter. "You've stumped these two geniuses with your tricky question. I think that means you're the smartest!" Katie returned her smile with an even bigger one. She liked the idea of being the smartest. Gayle then added, "You want to know if a captain can boss around a commander, like your Father and make him do things, right?"

  Katie gave a look of relief. "Yes! That's
it, Mommy."

  "A captain is bigger than a commander...which is why he has to do what I say, because I'm captain of this here crew. Now, he'll get back to work or else I'm going to start cracking the whip!" Gayle said and then with a sly look at her husband, she continued, "And I do have a whip." William smiled right back knowingly, but Talitha grimaced.

  "You two have such polluted minds!" she cried.

  "You have a whip, Mommy?" Katie asked and then started to say, "What's a whi..."

  Gayle cut her off. "Enough questions, Katie. I have an order for you. I need you to go and empty out your old ratty toy box. All of your toys have to go into the brown box that's sitting in your room." Gayle then stood erect and said, "And that's an order Lieutenant Katie, now move!" The little girl dashed by her mother and headed for the room she shared with her sister. "And you two, Commander Chitty Chat and Lieutenant Lazybones. More work and less talk, or you'll be walking the plank!"

  "Are we supposed to be pirates?" Talitha laughed.

  "She's right, honey. We don't use the plank in the Coast Guard. It would be a waste of time, since someone would have to dive right in afterwards and save them." William's tone then became serious, "And you're not supposed to use a whip either. Regulations state, a light spanking should be administered to the rear end..."

  "AHHHH! My ears!" Talitha interrupted. "Will, save me! Mom and dad are being so gross."

  Gayle enjoyed this, but there was a still lot of work to do. "It's seems I'm going to have to separate you two. William, finish with this here box matey and take her down to ye olde storage room. And remember landlubber when you're on my crew, you always have to come back!"

  William snapped to attention and gave her his most formal salute, what he called his Admiral's salute. "Aye, aye Captain!" he said. Gayle returned the salute and went to check on Willy J, who was supposed to be putting his clothes neatly into one of the boxes.