Blackout
Sequel to "Snowblind"
By: Molly Priest
Chapter One
The air was stale.
Around the blank stares of sun-bleached skulls fixed permenantly on a sky devoid of stars and clouds and light- but tasted like black. A million shades of gray spread out on an undulating white sandy land, where wisps of dusty wind circled and spiraled around sparse grass that spread tarry shadows cast from the un-light.
Rotted and moldy pieces of planked wood laid in a heap by a sharp escarpment of slick rock that jutted straight up out of solid sand. From the rocks as far as the horizon were fragments of a great foundation that had once stood in the middle of the wasteland. Shattered masonry, rusted irons and flakes of gold-encrusted spires laid scattered on the sand-half buried and bleached beyond recognition from a sun that had not shined for what seemed ages past.
In the middle of a vast drift that looked as smooth as polished ivory was a single entombed hand. Once forged from some great metal as silver, it now bore the signs of life in the wasteland.
It was a world that had moved past and was lingering in a twilight that was only half an existence. Like a half heartbeat, it was in the limbo between life and death, being and not being. It was a place of nightmares not so much that there was malevolence in the poor old bones and dirty bits of wood and rock, but that it was the promise of what would be in all ages, in all places, in every place where life now thrived there was this seed of the end.
A hush like an intake of breath swept around the sands before the voice began in a solemn and steady tone.
"Why are you here?"
"I don't know. I walked."
"Where did you come from? Where is your home?"
"I live where I stop and stop where I feel ready. Otherwise I walk. I walked here, but it came to me."
"We come to no one anymore, not since the sun faded away and all became still."
There was a silence and a slow wind stirred the loose sand. It spun into a fit, like a whirlwind, and encircled the black shoes that had stood planted for what could have been minutes, hours or days. Time was no longer reliable when everything else had moved on to the end. She shifted her weight and closed her eyes as the sand spattered her face like bits of cut glass.
"You came to me." The one who answered the words of the nothingness moved slightly to see the hint of rail road tracks- or at least a portion of one iron that had been curved into a semi-circle and laid tottering on an edge.
There was a sound like ripping- tearing, something being shredded by powerful hands that went from one end of the horizon to the other. A wind began and the stale air suddenly sucked upwards, throwing her hair over her eyes and making everything very dark.
The sound continued long after there was nothing. And behind it, in the corner of something that had been grand and great- an architectural marvel, a tiny voice whispered: "It can't be."
There was a beer on the counter in front of her and her hands encircled it, running across the moist glass back and forth as though caressing a lover. It was mostly foam and condensation, but she hadn't touched it for fifteen minutes. She had fifteen more according to the sideways clock over the display of bottles and glasses and mugs and ales. In the afternoon Riley's was always quite and subdued, save the boisterous men in the corner watching the game. Raiders and someone else, she couldn't quite tell from where she was sitting.
When the bartender passed her she lifted her tired eyes, faded blue, and managed a pleasant smile. "Do you know the central graveyard?"
He nodded and, wiping his hands began pointing out imaginary streets and landmarks and turns in the air. She watched carefully, biting a cigarette out of the pack she had popped out of her purse. While it was all familiar, like a dream had a few nights prior, she felt blurred and surreal when she nodded a thanks to him and laid a tip on the sticky plastic counter. A driver's licence was entombed beneath the plexi-glass covering, as were pictures from the 70's and 80's of patrons in various stages of inebriation.
She nodded at the college-age men watching the game and a few gave her an extended glance as she pushed open the swinging glass door. A bell chimed overhead as she entered a heat that slapped her in the face. There was reason behind her leaving this place, the summer being not primary but good enough for now. Hoots and hollars from the men echoed long after she'd turned the corner and unlocked the door to her car.
Shortly she was driving down streets with big fraternity and sorority houses that boasted huge signs inviting pledges to attend socials and various theme parties. A few beer cans were left in the gutters and one tired pair of tennis shoes had been left looped over the electrical wires on the corner of Hazel and 3rd.
At the stop light her mind wandered and she turned to look out the passenger window. Downtown ran along the street to her right and she smiled at the sight of flags waving lazily back and forth on lamp posts that lined the lazy streets. Someone had forgotten to take them down since the last Fourth of July... It was already late August, prime time to be prepping for Fall and crisp weather- saying goodbye to the heat at last. Not soon enough for her. By the time the cool came she'd be hundreds of miles to the East enjoying a return to the routine.
A smile flickered across her lips.
"You see that?" Her hand was guided to run along the silvery medallion that was so brilliant it almost blazed right off the faint purple cover of the palm-sized book. She nodded and stared with huge blue eyes at her mother. The embrace around her smelled like cinnamon and faintly like musk. Despite it being just past dusk and growing dim, the heat didn't falter. Even stripped down to halter tops and cut-off shorts and drinking icy lemonade, they still glistened with sweat. "This is a very important book and it's very important you always remember that it's more than just a story. You have to be very brave and strong and smart to read this book, darling."
For a moment she had looked at the book her mom had offered to her and then the fireworks began overhead in an eruption of colorful sparks, smoke and thundering explosions. The book slipped and landed beside them in the damp grass (they had ran through sprinklers earlier), as they gasped at the light show.
Briefly she looked away, into her mother's eyes and saw what peeked through the deep chestnut from time to time. Faint blue, but one so pale it looked almost white when she caught a quick glimpse. The same blue of her eyes, those she had inherited from an unknown father. One she would not question for years to come. Now she was more enthralled with the spirals of white sparkled that cascaded down in a flurry of quick popcorn-like snaps.
"All from those flags," she mused as her car rolled forward to another red light.
But then it happened, the sign out of the corner of her eyes. She clicked off the left turn blinker and swerved her car to the right- towards downtown's menagerie of various trinket stores and overpriced clothing boutiques. Horns blared behind her as she pulled beside a meter and quickly fed it enough change to satisfy for two hours.
"Oh fuck," she breathed out and laid a hand on a poster with a child's smiling face in black and white. Missing, it said in harsh letters.
It wasn't the poster that had caused her alarm, rather it was the blown-up representation of a book she couldn't forget. Her childhood was pockmarked with two stories, both fantastical and somehow also horrible. They were as much of her as were her memories of being kissed, laid, graduation, and... her mother's death. She looked at her watch and again muttered "fuck" under her breath.
Blowing back a strand of strawberry hair she turned away, noting the street sign beside her. "Castle Books... figures," she stated, climbing into her car after another long look at the poster. "How could it happen?" She shook her head, but had no time to ponder the whereabouts of the poster or how it came to exist on the filmy display windows of some free-lance bookstore.
"Nightingale Dreams" it read, and below that in equally bold font: "Recently recovered from private collection. RARE, MUST HAVE. Auction September 12th 10am." She shivered when she thought about it. Her cell phone was against her ear and ringing before she realized she had dialed a number. Someone answered with a 'hello' and she registered the identity with a slowed reaction rate.
"Hey, It's Emily. I found my mom's book and I think I might need some help." Her eyes tracked to the rear-view mirror out of habit. Icy blue framed by black lashes, so different from her mother.
"You mean?"
"Yeah I sure do. I don't know how it ended up where it did, but.... that's it- the mate to 'The Labyrinth.'"
Somewhere something stirred in the land of dust and dark.