The
ballad of two
Part nine
Dissonance.
/ / /
"A camero?" David Johnston said in confusion. "Sure, my dad always wanted one of those when I was growing up."
"No, my child, not a car." There was a slight edge of amusement around the old man's eyes as he spoke. His weathered skin, already creased with a spider's web of fine lines, crinkled around his still bright green eyes. "I asked about something very different indeed; I asked about the chimera."
"I don't really see what chimeras or cameros has to do with anything Mr …" Mike Silver's voice trailed off has he stood up to face the older man across the table. In so many ways they actually resembled each other. Both were roughly the same height, with their years clearly mapped out across their respective faces. The length of their hair may have been different but they both shared the same distinctive white colour. It was in the eyes, however, where the main difference was most noticeable. While Mike's eyes were rimmed with a dark edge, tiredness very clear within their dark depths, the man who faced him was different. The brightness and clarity of his eyes belied his obvious age but this was not what marked him as different to Mike; it was the depth of pain that was evident within. Pain that he did nothing to hide.
"Red-Eagle. Keme Red-Eagle," the older man repeated, patiently, "but you can call me Shaman if you prefer, most people do."
"What," David Johnston interjected, still obviously confused, "most people prefer calling you the Shaman?"
"No, most people don't prefer calling me the Shaman," came the gentle reply, no hint of an exasperation evident in the old man's tone, "most people simply do call me by that name."
"Why?"
"… because that is what I am." The Shaman's voice trailed off as he blinked twice and rubbed a liver-spotted hand across his eyes. With a sigh he sat down and rested his head in his hands. "Could I possibly have a glass of water?"
With a quick nod of his head towards David Johnston, indicating that he should accede to the request, Mike Silver sat down on the edge of the table.
"Are you ok Mr Red-Eagle?" he asked, after Johnston had left the room.
"I am fine Captain Silver, just tired." The old man looked up at him, with a sigh, and nodded once. "Just very tired."
"You know who I am?" Silver questioned as his lips pursed slightly, whitening under the pressure.
"Well," the Shaman said with a laugh, "your name is on the door after all." The Shaman nodded towards the door, and the bronze nameplate on it, just as David Johnston walked back through a jug of water in one hand and an empty glass in the other. Placing the glass on the table in front of the Shaman, David poured out a measure of the blue-tinted liquid and then placed the jug in front of him.
"… and it helps," the Shaman admitted as he raised the glass to his lips, "that I came looking for you." His eyes half closed as he drained the glass in one measured gulp, his Adam's apple prominently bouncing in his thin neck. With a satisfied sigh he placed the glass on the table in front of him and then folded both hands on the table, calmly, as he looked back and forth between the two men.
"Ok, ok," Mike said quietly, holding up one hand, "let's go back to the start here."
"An excellent place to begin." Acknowledged the Shaman with a smile.
"So, you come here telling us that you are Jay Phoenix's grandfather," Mike stated as the Shaman nodded his acknowledgement, "but give us two riddles."
The Shaman's left eyebrow rose quizzically but before he could reply Mike Silver interjected.
"You told us that there are things linking Jay Phoenix and Ember together," Mike clarified, "which is actually more of a riddle than anything else that you said."
"Even more than that camero … erm … chimera thing?" David Johnston queried.
"You see, "Mike continued, ignoring his detective, "we have been trying for a few weeks to link those two people together but so far we haven't had any success. We found Phoenix's – your grandson's – blood on a razor near Ember's apartment and they are both wrestlers but apart from that we have no evidence to link the two together at all."
"We have what that freak told Joe!" David interjected, his voice rising in visible ire. "He admitted that he kill…"
"Sit down Detective Johnston!" Cutting David off, Mike Silver's inflection was suddenly all business, very different from the way that he had spoken to David when it had just been the two of them in the room.
"But…" David continued. Slapping the table with one outstretched hand, Mike Silver barked out his command again, a note of finality in it.
"I said sit down!"
A strained silence filled the room as the three very different men sat around the table and pointedly ignored each other for a few seconds. Mike and David exchanged a heated glance where no words were needed as the young rookie detective almost visibly wilted under the gaze of the senior officer. The Shaman simply poured himself another glass of water and took a small sip of it.
"If I may interject here, Captain," he asked, softly, "there is no real need to silence your man you know; I can guess what it is that this Embersaid." He took another small sip of the water as both policemen suddenly broke of their silent argument to stare at him.
"You what?" Mike asked, his composure slipping slightly.
"He probably said that he killed my grandson." The statement was made with no emotion at all, as if the Shaman was simply commenting on the weather, but the impact of his words belied the calmness of their delivery. David Johnston leapt to his feet while Mike Sliver leant across the table, his eyes widening.
"How the Hell did you know that?" Johnston asked, and then winced as Silver turned his gaze upon the young man once more.
"I didn't actually 'know' it," the Shaman admitted with a small smile, "at least not until you just confirmed it for me my dear boy." David Johnston's' face fell and he had the good grace to flush in embarrassment. Mike Silver, on the other hand, simply steepled his hands in front of his body and leant forward again.
"Ok Mr Red-Eagle," Mike almost growled and David couldn't help noticing the similarity in tone between the Captain and the suspended Joey Russo, "I have had enough of the riddles, so why not just get right to the point?"
"The point is, Captain," the Shaman stated simply as he stared directly into the dark eyes of the man across the table from him, "that the reason why you can find nothing to link the 'murder' of my grandson to Ember is simply that there was no murder …"
Mike Silver's fingertips whitened as they pressed harder against each other and he ignored David Johnston's sharp intake of breath. He didn't need to glance across at the younger man to know that his face would be a mask of confusion, just as he didn't need to keep staring into the deep jade pools that were the Shaman's eyes to know that he was telling the truth. He may not know what was going on, but the simple fact of the matter was that nothing had made sense to him since the start of this case. Nothing, that is, apart from the simple statement from the Shaman himself. Even so the Shaman's next words rocked him back and brought confusion crashing down around his ears.
"… in fact there is no Ember either."
/ / /
The straps bit into his ankles and wrists, constraining his body and holding his tightly in their leather embrace.
He was strong, stronger even than his tightly muscled body looked, but no matter how hard he tried he couldn't lift himself more than an inch from the cot on which he rested.
Flopping back onto the sweat drenched sheets he glanced around the room, as much as the neck restraint would allow, for what could have been the hundredth – or thousandth – time that day and saw that nothing had changed.
A small cabinet rested a few feet away from the bed, the lamp on it affording the room with the only illumination. Shadows played all around the room itself, burgeoning out of the deeper darkness left behind by the cheap bulb as they danced macabrely every time he moved.
On the other side of the bed stood an array of machines, silent and dark. He remembered, barely, when he had first awoken in the room to see their screens filled with moving lines of light, to hear their whines and buzzes but that seemed like so long ago. Like a lifetime ago. At that time the room had also been filed with other people, moving around in a haze of half-remembered pain and drug induced confusion. His body had been free, then, and he was able to do whatever he had wanted; whatever he had needed. When the nurse – blue eyes and dyed blonde hair he recalled – had tried to take his mask from him, what he had needed to do, what he had been able to do was simple.
He had lashed out.
The sound of her jaw breaking as his foot connected with her small, pretty face had been satisfying and the people in the room had stopped what they were doing for a brief instant. He had taken that instant to slide from the bed and to his feet, intending to run towards the door and make his escape. He didn't actually know, at that time, what he was escaping from, but he knew that if the people in the room wanted him to stay so that they could take it from him he would do anything to stop them.
However, it was his body that ended up stopping him.
As his feet connected with the floor he tried to propel himself away from the bed, away from the people, but he wasn't able to. It felt like he was mired in mud, that he was trying to run through molasses, and after only two steps he felt his knees buckling. As he collapsed to the ground his hands went to the sharp pain, that had only just began to register in his mind, centred around his side and the last thing that he had seen as the men crowded around him was the blood that stained his palm.
When next he had awoken he had felt calm and, while still aching, a quick feel of his side had allowed his fingers to trace the raised line of a stitched wound. It was then that it had come back to him.
The coffee house.
The two detectives.
The sap from hispast with the gun.
The shot itself – deafening – and the fact that the detective … the fat one … has tried to push him out of the way.
Tried and failed.
The bullet, he knew, had hit him in the side.
His fingers continued tracing his own form, delicately and gently, and he realised that apart from the stitched wound in his side he was unhurt. It was only when his fingers reached his face that his breathing became shallow and fast; panicked. Flesh met flesh, skin met skin, and it was then that he knew that it was missing.
His mask was gone.
Glancing at his body he felt his gorge rise as he saw the tanned and healthy skin gleaming across muscles that were clearly visible.
He knew that he was supposed to be pale, was supposed to be without colour but here he was with skin that could only be called 'red'.
A strand of hair fell across his face and the bile that had been racing up through his throat finally reached his mouth and he tasted his own vomit as he stared in abject horror at the locks that gleamed auburn in the reflected light of the room.
He knew that his hair was suppose to be pale – white – was supposed to be without colour.
Sitting up he felt the scream rising in his chest but it was bitten off, choked into silence, as he stared at the wall across from his bed, at the gleaming surface that filled it, completely, instead of bricks and mortar. He knew that his mask was gone, he knew that they had stripped everything of himself while he had been unconscious and left nothing behind; still, when he stared into the mirrored wall he wasn't prepared for what stared back at him.
He was Ember, he knew that, but that wasn't who looked back at him. Instead it was him, instead it was the man that he knew he had killed.
It was Jay Phoenix.
His own vomit coated his body as he leapt from the bed, tearing at the freshly stitched wound but ignoring the trickle of blood that began to flow down his naked torso, and threw himself at the mirror. His lips were drawn back, feral-like, and his fingers formed talons as he thrashed against the metallic surface – fought against the reflection that shouldn't be … couldn't be … and wasn't aware of the small stinging jab in his arm as an unseen medic filled his blood stream with a drug that quickly sent him into unconsciousness.
He barely heard the nurses complain that they had only just got him cleaned up, that they had taken ages to remove the stage makeup from every inch of his body and the dye from his hair. He barely felt them place him back in the bed and close the restraints around his body.
All he felt, as the darkness took him was despair.
Each and every time he awoke he felt the same. If he was alone or if they were there it didn't matter. They didn't listen to him anyway, no matter how much he cajoled, how much he threatened or even how much he begged. They didn't listen. They didn't give him back his mask.
When his screams became too much they turned the lights off and plunged the room into near darkness. All so that he couldn't see the mirror. All so that he couldn't see who stared back at him. Who waited for him.
The straps bit into his ankles and wrists, constraining his body and holding his tightly in their leather embrace. He knew that he couldn't break free; he knew that he wasn't strong enough.
Just as he knew who was waiting for him in the darkness.
/ / /
"He is Jay Phoenix."
For a few seconds the Shaman wasn't sure that his words had been heard, let alone listened to, but as Mike Silver continued to stare at him he realised that the words had indeed been taken in.
Now he wasn't sure if they were being believed.
"I know what you are thinking …" he started to clarify, only to be interrupted as Mike Sliver barked out a coarse laugh.
"Somehow, Mr Red-Eagle," he said with another laugh, "I sincerely doubt it!"
"I can understand that you may be in shock, sir," David Johnston interjected gently, "with your grandson's missing person case becoming a murder case, but I can assure you that Ember is not Jay Phoenix."
"Just how can you 'assure' me of that?" the Shaman asked, pointedly, his eyebrows arching.
"We have traces of both men's DNA and …" Johnston started to explain, but the Shaman interrupted.
"… and they don't match, which brings us right back to where we started, doesn't it?" The Shaman asked his question to both men, looking back and forth between them as he slowly folded his arms and sat back into the chair.
"I told you that there was a reason that there was no link found between the two men, didn't I?" he asked but again didn't wait for an answer. "I also asked you a question; I asked if you knew what a chimera was."
"It is a monster from Greek mythology," Mike Silver admitted in defeat, hoping that by humouring the man he would get to the bottom of whatever it was he thought that he knew. "Part goat, part serpent and part lion if my memory serves me, but I don't understand what that has to do with anything!"
"It has nothing to do with this, Captain Silver," the Shaman admitted as Silver stood up, his patience finally exhausted.
"Ok Mr Red-Eagle, I think that it is time that you left now and let us get on with this case." Mike's voice was clipped as he tried hard to remain polite to the man who he now assumed was borderline senile. He reached down to help the old man to his feet but was amazed as the Shaman's hand clasped over his own and the strength that was there.
"If you had let me finish, Captain," the Shaman said as he held tightly to the captain's hand, "I could have clarified for you that while your knowledge of ancient cultures is admirable it is not the chimera of which I speak."
Mike let go off the Shaman's arm, indicating that he should continue.
"I am talking about the real chimera, Captain," the Shaman said softly, as if pained, "I am talking about why you have two different traces of DNA from one source."
"I am talking about how my grandson – Jay Phoenix – can also be the 'monster' Ember."
/ / /
To be continued