Disclaimer: "If we shadows have offended, think but this and all is mended,
That you did but slumber'd here while these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme is no more yielding then a dream."
Midsummer's Night Dream
Ab Origine
By: Lady Erised
Prologue: Home
There is a town in New South Wales that looks like someone took it out of a postcard and fleshed it out with feel-good movies of bygone years. In America, they talk of Anytown, USA and if such a thing had been created for this continent it would have been this place. The families that inhabit here have done so for years, have grown up and grown together until they share smiles, eyes and last names. They were older, and comfortable and white. They were decent folks overall too, lest any think otherwise. Predominately Catholic, the town valued family and tradition over other growth and wealth. When Samantha Chambers lost her husband in that accident, the whole community came together to help her out. They were family like that.
Sure, the town was growing and it was painful but the whole country- if not the whole world was growing and since when was growth easy? The little haven was becoming all sorts of colors like Lebanese brown and China yellow and the town's cynicism peered through in a growing police force (though they still had to use their own trucks) and the lumber stores were giving way to Internet cafes. But it was still home.
The town was farmers and commuters. The schools play soccer against one another. The Church holds open dinners and dancers and, regardless of race and religion, you'll get your first kiss in the old Cathedral's Gym if you're really a townsman. Sydney and its crime are as strange and distant as London or New York. Hell, in this place Tamworth is considered showy.
It's a small town. Small towns the world over are all the same; they grow up, grow old and dark. Secrets grow down in small towns, entrench themselves within the folklore and customs and become legend. Rumors stir up the dirt and become truth. Habits become sins that become crime. Crimes become gospel.
This town hides a legend just behind its gates: behind the smiles, eyes and last names, behind the prayers to Saint Peter, and church dances. It became famous for a time because of the legend and the crime that birthed it, because of the story: because of her.
Tamara Duncan. Angel Blue.
It's still mentioned from time to time, by tourist or Goth kid as they pass through the town. The old folks shake their head shamefully and change the subject. The young ones shrug it off as just mythos, another layer in a town so overbearing they can't way to escape. The brave point to the cemetery, and the braver journey there to find the story: to find her. But when she is thought of, like all good ghost stories, Angel Blue is invoked then forgotten. She is tucked away into the corners of the town; visible only to those who know where to look.
The house it started at is still standing for instance. It's an old two-story farmhouse about forty-five minutes from city hall; far enough out to be left alone but still situated near enough to be part of the school bus route when Tamara and the other kids lived there. It's painted pale blue with bright yellow trim. There's an old truck rotting in what use to be garage, and the old wooden fence long since broken down. Windows are cracked from the Goth kids who sneak in there at night on Halloween.
Alethea Harman had bought the house from Tucker Charles in the thirties when he moved to Adelaide. She lived there alone for years and then with her son, then the daughter and the next son. No one really remembered when she started raising the kids, or ever really recalled when they disappeared from her home. The children would just come and go, sometimes they would stay for a month or so, others aged and grew in the town, while some seemed to appear and disappear like water. Alethea just seemed to move on, and cope. The townfolk said it was because she was lonely, those who were kind said she was trying to build the family she never had, those who were not so kind frowned at such a perverse interpretation of family.
They were the same ones who knew that Alethea's son had something to do with Angel Blue. Why else would he have left in such a hurry as he did? Why else did he act so queer when the inspectors came to find him? Why else did he not come home, even when Alethea died and left him the house? No innocent boy would have acted so.
No, after Tamara died, the boy turned quiet and strange. Dark. No one was really surprised when he snuck out that one night, and no one had missed him since. But what they did notice, in that roundabout way all old small towns are aware, was the night the lights at Alethea's house turned on one night and the quiet, silent man who was suddenly living there.
It's a small town and small towns the world over are all the same; they talk. Secrets grow down and bitter in small towns, and rumors and whispers become truth and gospel.
And suddenly Tamara was alive again because Pearse Harman had come home.