Sombre Page 2

  “Ah, Gavin, eh? You were a frightened one …” she mused.

  She let the Nightmarer’s body slump on the safe spot. His arm flopped down heavy. She realized just how bad the poor gent was. “Ugh … god, you’re a wreck aren’t you!” There was half of a head. The torso was very ripped up and raw. She shuddered. Just moments ago, she was laying on top of that mess.

  She pulled down self-consciously at a flapping piece of her dress, it appeared she had around 50 per cent of it left. Most undignified. In fact, all that remained complete of her attire was made of leather - the sheath and holster belt at her waist and her trusty long black boots. Most of her hair was scorched at the ends.

  “A definite low point for me … oh well,” she looked to her Nightmarer then back to where she had come from, “it will be best to get a wriggle on, murdered policeman, wouldn’t it?” The devil imps hadn’t followed her to this spot yet – her Morphia had scared them sufficiently enough - but she didn’t trust that the monsters wouldn’t find some pluck and come again.

  Trying her utmost to not sound dejected, she called out to Sombre’s skies, “Halliday Knight. I am done. I have the Nightmarer. Could I ask you to bring The Funneling directly to this spot as I am on foot!”

  A few seconds passed. A rectangular shimmer formed in the air before her. Halliday grabbed the collar of the policeman and stepped in. Both were lifted and taken from Denivens Hell.

  Singed hair blowing in the wind gusts of The Funneling’s gaseous passage, Halliday walked with complete indifference of the overwhelming stench of human organics and exhaust-pipe burning smells, dragging the Nightmarer’s corpse toward the double wooden doors to The Office of The Menders. With a sigh, she entered.

  Sapped of energy, Halliday couldn’t be bothered with the usual announcing of her arrival; she had brought nothing worth advertising. With the Nightmarer’s gathered carcass slumped on the floor by her feet, she waited to be noticed. The Office of The Menders was its usual hive of endless activity.

  The room was expansive and unfussy with a floorplan purely for fast service. A large gold clock face adorned the far wall. Wide surgical benches ran up and down the length of the room in a U-shape. Lying on the floor in the rooms centre were piles of silver and gold, Beating Clocks. The heady stench of a myriad of chemicals and ointments invaded the senses. Hardworking men and women, dressed in light blue, blood stained scrubs, attended to a whole host of Sombre’s citizens and new Nightmarers, who were positioned head to foot on the benches. Procedures of every conceivable kind were being performed by the entrusted Menders: resewing of limbs, intricate reconfigurations of re-engineered inner workings; resetting of clocks, readjusting and replacing of all sorts of broken, sliced, chewed, ripped, decapitated and severed body bits. Blood repeatedly splashed onto the floor and was mopped away. Cogs, thread and wire were skillfully replaced and tightened. Flesh was sliced open, bone re-melded and fused with metal, strings and thread. Flatbed trolleys lined the far walls where yet more sheet covered bodies, awaited procedures.

  Halliday was only looking for one Mender. She spotted Hamish, the chief, over near the far wall, hands deep in the chest cavity of a very large beast. She waved tiredly and caught his attention. Frowning, he called to a short girl Mender with black spiky hair. Halliday knew her as Llewellyn - a friendly and very capable sort - who left her own lower leg procedure to another Mender and took over Hamish’s chest invasion with well-practiced aplomb.

  Hamish walked toward Halliday wiping his hands on an alcohol-soaked cloth. His eyes dropped to the sad looking, well eaten, lump on the floor at her feet. Nodding he peered up at her with a look that said it all, “Well, I suppose I should say thanks, Halliday?”

  She answered sheepishly, “yeah, er … you really don’t have to.”

  Hamish eyed the state of her. “Denivens Hell gave you a lot to chew on, didn’t it?”

  She fidgeted with what was left of the bottom of her dress. “The imps were quite a handful.”

  “Well I won’t need to set your clock forward a stroke, that is a bonus I suppose.” He knelt down and turned the deceased policeman over. He checked the Nightmarer. “I have a lot to rebuild here.”

  “It would have been easier and quicker if I could have taken Wilder, but the terrain wasn’t so good for a horse. Flaming hot cookery of a place …” Halliday said trailing off. She wondered where Wilder might be, although, she wasn’t overly concerned. The Machanihorse had a knack for finding her.

  Hamish stood up, wiped his hands on the rag again and examined her wounds. “Yes, well, there are a few parts of Sombre you won’t be able to take your horse, Halliday. You seem not too bad actually. Some gouges to your chest, a bit of burnt hair. Ointment, cosmetics and a new dress should do you. How were your Other-selves, this mission? Last we met you were being quite vocal about them?”

  “As nasty as they always are. Were they really that much better than me?” She said rolling her eyes. She was sick to death of their judging.

  Hamish gave a short laugh. “Let me see … Cindy’s Halliday, the third Halliday Knight, probably had the best record. She was the smartest. Judy’s Halliday, number two, went through her twelve strokes at a record pace – far too reckless. Number four, Eloise. She was just before you …” he rubbed his chin as he searched his thoughts. “Actually, she was quite good – she brought me some good, clean, not completely dead Nightmarers – but through bad luck, she went through her strokes too fast as well. Sometimes, it is just bad luck in Sombre.”

  “And the first Halliday?”

  She had always wondered what the initial Halliday Knight had been like.

  Hamish grinned, “Well, Liza was the first Halliday. It was all brand new. Lots of trial and error as we learnt about Halliday Knight’s character. A brand-new Gatherer of any sort comes with a lot of weight and expectation. Liza’s Halliday had to create a whole range of reactions, brain function and attitude. You have all shared and built on the personalities she helped establish. She went through her strokes quickly.” He focused his attention back on her, “Sombre will always throw you many a challenge. We as Menders can only hope you’ll be as efficient as possible. This goes for all our Gatherers. This poor clod at our feet isn’t your greatest catch, Halliday. You’ve done better.”

  Two Menders arrived and lifted the policeman onto a trolley, wheeling him to a vacant spot at the wall where he was left.

  “I think we had better get you cleaned up and back into the field,” Hamish guided her by the arm to a spot on the bench next to some awful ongoing procedures. She sat flanked by a decapitated female citizen, (Beating Clock, stroking at nine) and a great pile of butchered body parts, leaking bloody water. She held her nose.

  Dropping the Remington and her sword to the floor, Halliday positioned herself uncomfortably. Desperate not to touch, she crossed her legs, and tried to make her body as small as possible. She eyed the two awaiting procedures with revulsion. “You couldn’t find a girl a nicer seat? This isn’t really my style, Hamish.”

  “Uh, yes … no. We really are inundated at the moment. Take a look around, Halliday. We are beyond capacity. You all get your twelve strokes unfortunately and you all just keep coming back.”

  He sighed, “Anyway, for you, a new dress is in order – sorry, just the one colour.”

  “Oh, ha-ha,” Halliday said of her tiresome garment.

  “It never goes out of fashion, a classic,” Hamish said grinning as he pulled out a large leather surgical roll from a shelf under the bench. Untying the straps, he revealed the varied implements of a Mender: spanners, screwdrivers, scalpels, hammers, rolls of surgical thread, needles, tubes and bottles, spoons, small saws, knives and scissors. Pulling out a tube of ointment, a needle and thread, he began work at the cuts and gouges in Halliday’s chest. His skilled hands worked fast, and he kept Halliday covered, working under and around what was left of her dress. Hamish believed in privacy where it could be helped, which she was always grateful for.

 
“So, you stay at two strokes only, Halliday. Not bad, given you had to engage The Morphia on this mission.”

  “How can you tell?” Halliday said with more than a little shame. Engaging her monstrous self was meant to be her very last option. She had been warned from the outset of this. The Morphia meant she had lost control. It was a rabid killing machine, but no control really meant no control – no regard for self-preservation at all.

  Hamish frowned as he studied her features, “Your jaw, you still have tightness where it extended, and your skin’s dry from where The Morphia cracked it.”

  “I am sorry, Hamish. But you know, I had an imp on my chest! It wanted to bite my face, so I had to bite it first! A girl must do what a girl must do!”

  “Your sword? You have it for a reason.”

  “I dropped it.”

  “The Remington?”

  “I couldn’t reach it!” She’d had enough. Her hands gripped the bench, hard. She shot him a look and gave him a mouthful. “Now listen here man! I gave you my best and that will do you! Are we finished? Where’s my dress … I need a bleeding drink!”

  With well-practiced tolerance of her short fuse, Hamish tapped his finger on the glass of her Beating Clock. He kept his tone even, “Let me remind you, Halliday. You only have twelve strokes. You’re on two. Ten left. They will go quick.”

  “I know! I have heard all of this before! Must you be as tiresome as my Other-selves, Hamish! What a burden all of this is sometimes!”

  Hamish studied her face, “we are almost done. Please stand up and turn around.” With a huff, she did as she was asked. He ran a solution through her golden hair, fingers light and confident, starting from the scalp combing through to the tips.

  “Halliday, I just ask you to take care …” he paused. With a sigh he continued on, “I have been holding onto this information. but I think it would be best to tell you this sooner rather than later. Hope’s Halliday, you have a higher calling here in Sombre … something unprecedented, something far greater than any Halliday Knight has ever had to exist for.”

  “What do you mean a higher calling?” More than a mite curious, she turned to face him.

  “Turn back round, please Halliday.”

  Raising an eyebrow, she did as she was told and listened.

  Hamish continued on as he slipped a comb through her revitalized locks, “keep still please.”

  “Now, no other Gatherer has ever had this type of calling … I’m sure you’ll be happy to know no other Halliday has ever had it either.”

  “What is it?”

  He ignored her. “The importance of what’s to come for you can’t be understated, it will need to be taken seriously,” he pulled down on her hair for the last time, “You’re done.”

  He began spraying down his implements with cleaning solution.

  She turned with an agitated flick of her hair and stood with hands on hips. He had ruffled her. Now he was showing her indifference. “Oh no you won’t be leaving me hanging, man! So, what is it! Spill the bloody beans!”

  Hamish shrugged, “I don’t love clichés Halliday, but I will have to use one now.” With a blank expression, he looked her straight in the eyes, “All will be revealed in good time, Halliday Knight. All in good time. Just try and stay safe. That is all I ask for now.”

  S

  Hope woke with a gasp.

  CHAPTER 4

  The Drudgery of the Waking World

  Staring up at the ceiling, Hope rubbed at her chest through her nightie. She was so sore. Any normal person would have thought they were on the verge of some almighty chest infection. But the pain was straight from Sombre. Hope knew it. Halliday Knight had been clawed and gouged by devil imps and then mended by Hamish the Mender. And she, Hope Kelley, was to feel a version of it. Why? She had no idea. Was she meant to gain something from experiencing some of Halliday’s pain in the nightmare world? Apparently so.

  Incidences while dreaming were well documented. There were so many examples: manic thrashing around in sleep, near death experiences through lucid dreaming, of people actually dying from dreams of falling from great heights and inevitably hitting the bottom.

  Sombre was something else again. To say every dream was a ‘vivid’ one, didn’t do it justice at all. No one dreamt like this, she was sure of it. This was so very different than anything she had read about. When she slept, she was in Sombre. She was Halliday Knight – Hope’s Halliday, version five – fifth in line.

  Exhausted, chest still aching she stood on stiff legs and rode the sickly wave of dizziness. She felt like a fifteen-year-old going on fifty-five. Reaching for her water bottle, she flipped the lid and gulped it down. Feeling a little better, she took a deep breath and coughed.

  “Hmm, best get to it, Hope,” she sighed and grabbed her glasses from her desk. She changed for school: jeans, a white t-shirt and a peach coloured cardigan. Peach might just help the pale complexion. She looked at herself in the mirror on the wardrobe door; hair up or hair out? She held a makeshift ponytail and could have sworn the pimple paddock had harvested, bearing more fruit overnight, red splotchy things on a ghostly pale canvass. “Great look,” she muttered and grabbed her compact. She dabbed concealer on the worst of the spots. Deciding hair out would be best; she ran a brush through it and gave it a shake and tousle.

  Repetitious music came from Kate’s room down the hall. She had no idea what or who the artist was and had no desire to find out. No doubt it would be the latest, clique-approved bilge Hope always found to be an assault on her eardrums, and intelligence. But that was Kate. Unlike Hope, she knew how to fit in. At a mere 13 years young, she had the smarmy attitude and the look. Kate Kelley was popular. She could talk it, walk it; and if she really had to, pat her head, rub her belly and quote the unwritten teen encyclopedia of accepted behaviours backward.

  Hope never could – and didn’t really want to.

  Week four in a new suburb, the move to Pento so far had been a tough one. Sacramento had been tough as well, but at least she had gotten into her own sort of loner-groove back there. This was the third move for the Kelley’s in a small handful of years. Her father’s firm, Health&Co, was spreading its wings in a good natured, well-meaning bid to take over California. ‘Fast Health - Fast Healthy Drinks/Fast Healthy Meals’ was the company motto. It was working as well. Health&Co was turning over millions.

  Hope didn’t want to be a loner, yet it seemed the closer her family moved to Los Angeles, the more painful the kids her age became. Her mother once told her that she probably had an old-soul, a rare maturity for her age. ‘It might just take a while for other kids to catch up to you, Hope,’ she was assured by her mother; a so very positive bit of chirpiness that the socially popular Evelyn Kelley would bestow when in the mood. It was meant to be a compliment – but it just came off sounding like something she had read in a woman’s magazine, storing it away for the appropriate time to use it on her ‘troubled’ first child.

  Hope knew that her parents loved her. But it felt like a pitied love. Hope was always the worry. Hope was the pale one. Hope had the poor eyesight. Hope should find a good friend.

  Sombre definitely wasn’t aiding her cause. It would help if she wasn’t living another life beside her actual life. Most days she felt like a wasteoid, enduring an existence of endless recovery from one disturbing night’s sleep after another.

  Jarring her from her thoughts, her mother called from the kitchen, “School, girls! We’re now officially running late! Move your butts, grab a snack bar from the fridge, I’ll be in the car.”

  Hope entered the hall and fell in behind her sister. She watched the back of Kate’s perfectly shaped blonde head, noticed the cute twisted braid (that Hope always wondered how she managed to do without help) and took the steps by twos, calves and thighs aching like a bitch.

  Grabbing a Health&Co Fruit, Nut and Carob bar from the fridge, Hope chased Kate through the front door, where her mother was already hitting the horn.

  S
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  “Have a good day, Hope. If I’m running late tonight, start walking and give me a call,” Evelyn Kelley said pulling to the curb in front of Centurion High. “Have you got your phone?”

  “No.”

  “Why?” her mother shook her head, incredulous.

  “Forgot it.”

  “That was silly wasn’t it.”

  “Anyway…” Hope said and got out. Slinging her bag over her shoulder, her muscles pulled, and she had to rub her chest with her palm.

  It was still sore – Halliday sore.

  Her mother noticed this. In a bid to be heard over the Jeep’s car radio, she yelled, “do you need a new bra Hope? We can go shopping if you do.”

  Mortified, Hope rolled her eyes and dropped her hand straight away, “No! Geez! Really, mum?” she looked round at the droves of kids walking the pavement.

  “Just wondering, dear, you girls are growing so quickly,” Evelyn grinned.

  Scrolling through her new followers on Instagram, her sister didn’t even look up at the exchange.

  “Yep, goodbye, see you tonight,” Hope said shortly and shut the door. The Jeep flew down the road, took a right and was gone.

  Pushing her glasses up on her nose, she laboured into the school grounds. Why she was worried about being embarrassed by her mother’s tactless observation of the fit of her bra was anyone’s guess. To say the kids of Centurion High couldn’t have given a shit, was an understatement of the highest order. Most days she was either a ghost, or just the newest strange thing to be sniggered at.

  Next year, her sister would arrive at Centurion’ with her ready-band of followers riding her tail.

  ‘Herding her sheep,’ Hope thought nastily, jealously.

  The morning air broiled, So-Cal in July - humid, without a breath of wind. The heat seemed to drain her of more energy, she took her steps slowly. Kids walked alongside, crossed her path, fist-bumped, chest-bumped, spoke on phones, tapped on phones, waxed lyrically about upcoming parties, why ‘he’s a dick’ and ‘who’s she seeing now?’ The usual fare. She was meant to find it interesting – she just didn’t. How could she?