Sombre Read online

  It all paled in comparison to Sombre.

  This thinking was not going to help her with her leper status, and she knew it; but it couldn’t be helped. Sombre was all encompassing, a greedy beast - swallowing her consciousness and subconsciousness, piece by piece.

  Maybe she would disappear entirely one night.

  Just a crumpled imprint left on her bedsheets.

  Hope Kelley - gone.

  “Oh, how she’ll be missed!” she said under her breath and laughed to herself derisively.

  Looking straight ahead, her exhaustion escalated, she did her best to keep her legs functioning.

  Sombre had chosen her for this. She had been chosen to be Halliday Knight. It wasn’t make-believe – how could it be? It was actually happening to her, night after night. The fact that Sombre was a nightmare world, a place she only went to in her sleep, didn’t make it any less real. Not for her, no sir! She had the exhausted body and mind to prove it.

  Sombre left her feeling odd, looking odd. Looking old. She was a wreck.

  Making her way through a turnstile into the main foyer, she bumped into a tall girl, blond with an athletic build and short skirt. “Sorry,” she mumbled as she peered up.

  “Watch it, freak-zone. Oh Jesus, I’ve been touched!” Her two friends turned and giggled; savage looks in their eyes.

  Hope stood still and waited for them to go. She didn’t have to wait long. There would be no further altercation. They were gone. Girls like that didn’t waste time on someone like Hope Kelley.

  S

  Last period felt like penance. Stuck in a classroom with a flagging air conditioner in the old T building, Hope struggled to stay awake. She sat up front; pole position for the vision impaired - chin resting on her palm, blinking incessantly behind her bullet proof lenses. Her English teacher, Miss Sparrows, read a lengthy trial passage aloud from ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’. As Hope drifted, the words slurred around in her ears, each sentence a lethargic jumble.

  Miss Sparrows finished up and closed the paperback. “So, what was the basis of Atticus’s argument? This was just one of the many thought provoking and era-challenging arguments of that time. Can I have a showing of hands please? Don’t tell me you all nodded off.” Miss Sparrows had a well-practiced, teacher-to-student coolness and she was well respected.

  A few hands went up. Hope’s wasn’t one of them.

  The teacher counted them, “Okay, 1, 2, 3 – 4 … I can see Layne’s hand at the back. Layne, please, share your thoughts.”

  “Well, you know, the man was black, and the colour of his skin shouldn’t have made any difference?” Layne took a shot.

  “Uh, yeah,” Miss Sparrows wrinkled her nose, “not quite what I was after. Good to hear you at least know the basics of ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ – the very basics, Layne – although, I appreciate the participation.”

  Someone made a fizzing sound.

  “Misty, please tell me your thoughts,” she continued on.

  “That Atticus had to have faith that the system would work, and justice would be done?”

  Miss Sparrows turned and strolled back toward the front of the class. “Ah, thank you Misty – that’s a very good point.” The teacher changed tact, “Hope Kelley, would you like to elaborate on Misty’s point? You would have read this book before no doubt?”

  Put on the spot, Hope froze. She sat up straight and cleared her throat.

  “Um, no I haven’t.”

  Hope surprised herself with how sharp her response actually sounded.

  “Okay.”

  The teacher left it.

  Hope instantly felt bad. But why did every teacher think that just because you had the nerd glasses, and had the nerd look, that you would have read every book in the whole friggin library?

  “Sensing a bit of attitude there, Miss,” said the designated class football jock, Joel Frazer from the back. There was some sniggering and a slap of Joel’s hand.

  The bell rang to end the period and the students rose as one.

  “Can I please see you for a moment Hope?” Miss Sparrows said through the thud of footsteps, the sliding of chairs and chatter of the students.

  Hope left her bag half packed and stayed seated as the last of the students disappeared through the door and her teacher pulled a chair over to speak to her.

  “So, hi Hope. I won’t keep you long,” she began, her tone soothing. She frowned, “I’m not used to my students dozing in my classes.”

  “Sorry,” Hope said not realizing she had been so obvious.

  “It’s okay, I forgive, I forget,” she smiled warmly. “Everything okay at home? How are you finding Pento? Big change from where you’re from, I’ll bet. Remind me again where that was?”

  “Sacramento,” Hope answered and pulled on each of her fingers – Miss Sparrows noticed it. “Everything is good at home as well … I’ve been watching too much T.V. that’s all,” she apologized again, “Sorry.”

  “And your friendship status, how are you going there? It can be hard to find your way at a new school.”

  Hope thought Miss Sparrows already knew the answer to that. She lowered her eyes, “it’s okay.”

  Miss Sparrows got up and put her hands on her hips. “Hmm … anyway, I told you I wouldn’t keep you long. If you ever have a need to talk, come and see me. I know how hard a new school can be. I moved a half dozen times myself when I was growing up.”

  Hope looked her teacher in the eye as she finished gathering her things, “I will, thank you, Miss Sparrows.”

  The teacher smiled. “All good, get to bed early and try and stay awake in class. You are going to give me a complex, my girl!”

  Hope left.

  S

  Sitting on her bed in her pajamas, with half of a badly written science essay on her laptop, Hope yawned while her eyes watered. She couldn’t fight it; she had to sleep. She looked at the time, 11:30. Prolonging it any longer would only make her more zonked tomorrow. She felt a stabbing bolt of anxiety in her gut, as her thoughts went somewhere rather murky.

  What if on this sleep her body and mind couldn’t cope with being Halliday? What if she died tonight? Would Sombre do that to her? It might. It was a pretty bad place.

  The troubling thing was that there was a major part of her that liked being Halliday Knight. Halliday Knight’s existence bettered her own by a long way. Existing as some sort of character from a nightmare world was far more appealing than her own real life. She knew, that psychologically, that wasn’t a good thing. She was probably suffering depression. Was that the reason Sombre had chosen her to be Halliday Knight? A pathetically easy target? A weak and half blind, fifteen-year-old girl with no friends?

  Well and truly pent-up, she shut her eyes and took a long deep breath, then let it seep out slowly, like a leaky valve.

  “Shit … you need some sleep, Hope,” she said miserably and pulled her glasses off.

  Snapping her laptop closed, she slipped it into her school bag.

  Feeling just about as alone as she had ever felt, Hope eased her head onto the pillow and curled up into a ball.

  Lights out …

  CHAPTER 5

  Drinking at The Ruptured SpleeN

  Aunt Sophie’s wedding nightmare, Hope’s rite of passage into Sombre, continued on.

  Her mother, wild eyed, screaming like a savage, stabbed the knife into Hope’s body. It was all very real. Hope could feel everything. Could hear every sickeningly dull strike as the blade plunged and punctured her flesh.

  “How dare you, Hope! You always ruin everything! This is what happens when you don’t stay clean!”

  ‘What? Why? - No! What do you mean?” Hope heard herself shriek as she fought back.

  Her mother laughed at her daughter’s audacity. “You dirty wretch, Hope! That’s right! Fight me!” She stabbed with more fury.

  Hope slapped her mother’s bloody face with more force. Suddenly overcome with the need to maim her, she hit with one open heavy palmed slap after
the other. Evelyn laughed harder, even as Hope overpowered her and she fell to the carpet. Hope stood on the arm holding the knife with one foot; and trod on her mother’s face with the other – a white high heel from her fancy flower girl shoes, sinking into Evelyn Kelley’s eyeball – moosh! With her wailing mother-turned-wild-daughter-killer pinned underfoot, a profusely bleeding Hope stood and watched the rest of the room.

  Relatives continued to run around the chapel in surreal slow motion. Hope counted eight slumped and lifeless bodies along the blood smeared pews. She watched as her sister jumped over them like a psychotic hurdler and dove at her great aunt Louise, slamming her knife into her gaping mouth.

  Finally succumbing to her own wounds, Hope felt herself fall sideways off her mother and land on the burning corpses of the bride and groom. She rolled down and nestled in ghoulishly between the two. Lying on her side, through watery eyes she gazed at Aunt Sophie’s burning hair, at her face, melting and popping away like wax. She was so sorry for it all.

  Her listless, dreaming self knew none of this made sense. It was all just a nightmare, a bad one. Hope’s rite of passage went black.

  S

  “She is such a faithful nag.”

  Halliday Knight mused with signature drink in hand – a strong Scotch and Dry. Both she and Dave Bi-Plane, a fellow Gatherer, stood leaning on the balcony of Sombre’s one and only drinking spot; The Ruptured Spleen. Blandly shoe-box shaped with a façade of tinted windows on each side; the bar sat precariously on the peak of The Unexplained Mountain.

  The two Gatherers’ peered down, a long way down, to Halliday’s machanihorse, Wilder. The mare wandered around vehicles, haphazardly parked at the dusty parking lot at the foot of the mountain. For the land Gatherers – Sombre’s expeditiously irregular cars, tension ratioed speed cycles and high-powered speed trucks: for the Gatherers by air - jet stream-receptor air balloons and airships. And Dave’s tan coloured Sopwith Camel - his beloved Bi-Plane.

  Every Halliday always liked every Dave Bi-Plane. The original Dave Bi-Plane came to Sombre without a surname, so the motley conglomerate that was the Gatherer’s, affectionately surnamed him after his transportation. He was a burly fellow, with a kind smile and demeanour to match.

  “A mechanical horse,” Dave pondered scratching his stubbly chin. “Does she ever breakdown? What does she eat?”

  “A Machanihorse, Dave,” Halliday corrected him as she stirred the balance of her drink with a straw, she nodded, “And not a lot, really. Pecks the grasses, drinks from The River occasionally. She is quite chock full of her mechanisms, you know. She needs a tweak from The Menders here and there.”

  Dave raised his thick eyebrows, “Hang on, back up a bit! You are kidding, Halliday Knight! Corpse water from The River! Are you having a lend of me? Why would you let her?”

  Halliday shrugged, “Well, I don’t go out of my way to take her there! But at the times when we have to cross, she stops and has a swig. She is wetting her whistle, I suppose.”

  “Oh, I feel quite ill,” Dave grimaced. He looked down at his empty mug, “And there is nothing better for that than another ale.” He made for the open double balcony doors of The Ruptured Spleen.

  “Would you like another, Miss Halliday?”

  She grinned and crunched on a block of ice. “Yes, I would. Ensure to tell Orty, two decent shots please. That was a little too gingery for me. I need it sharper.”

  Halliday heard an unmistakable roar from below, she looked down and spotted her horse scamper away under a clump of trees. Lucretia St Aimes rode into the clearing on her massive, twin piped eyesore of a motorcycle.

  “And there goes the serenity,” Halliday muttered to herself. Frowning, she turned away and listened as Lucretia revved her metallic beast a few more times in her quite stupid, obligatory bombastic way, before parking.

  Dave returned with the drinks, rolling his eyes, “and the nasty arse cometh, eh? That will ruin a nice evening.” He handed Halliday her glass. “Think I’ll have this and take off early. No point hanging around now.” Dave Bi-Plane was a tolerant man, but he had never been able to suffer through the company of Lucretia St Aimes. He peered down at the parquetry flooring.

  Halliday tried to keep him talking, she too had been enjoying this down time with Dave Bi-Plane - such an agreeable fellow. “Well, you’ll never guess what?”

  He sighed and sipped his lager, “what?”

  She was losing him. He was now eyeing the elevator door of the bar, dreading Lucretia’s entrance.

  Licking her lips, she paused for dramatic effect. “I wasn’t going to mention it, but I, Halliday Knight, have been given a calling. Hamish has said this is so.”

  Dave raised an eyebrow, “Oh? And what do you mean by a ‘calling,’ Halliday? We all have one, don’t we?” He scoffed, “to serve bloody Sombre.”

  “Ah, that is not really a calling, is it. That is a job. And that would be far too pedestrian to be considered a calling, wouldn’t it?”

  She took another sip of her scotch. She thought that the bar-keep, Orty, was a little off his game this evening – the drink definitely needed another shot of one or the other. She continued, “Hamish wouldn’t tell me what it was, though. He can be such a painful clog’ at times. Although, I did wonder if he actually knew what it was himself.”

  Dave shrugged, “He might not have. He receives his orders the same way we all do. He may have been drip-fed a piece of information about you, that’s all … Sounds like it could be interesting though.” Dave chugged the rest of his beer. He placed the mug on a nearby metal tabletop.

  “Anyway, that will give us something to talk about when next we meet, Halliday Knight.” Dave pulled his leather aviator helmet from his bag and slipped it on. Next came the brown tinted goggles.

  Halliday always thought his protective wear made him look like a stubbly faced frog. She smiled and told him as much, “You look like a frogman, Dave.”

  “Yes, I know, Halliday. Thank you. And as usual, I have no comeback.” He waved his gloved hands at her lazily. “Farewell. Do not say hello to Lucretia St. Aimes for me.”

  Without any further ceremony, he turned and left.

  Leaning on the bannister, Halliday took a deep breath - in through the nose, out through the mouth – ‘this was a nice night,’ she thought to herself. Gazing down at the parking lot, she toyed with the idea of awaiting her next job aboard Wilder, let the machanihorse meander around for a bit. Dave Bi-Plane would await his next job from the skies. A Gatherer never had to wait long. The waking world nightmared at such an alarming rate.

  A new job would come to her as an intruding thought. And she would know where instantly. Whether she had been there before or not didn’t matter. Sombre would always guide the way.

  With a misfire and piston stutter from the rotary motor, Dave Bi-Plane’s Bi-Plane started and took off from the parking lot in its unconventional way – straight up like a helicopter. Halliday gave a little wave as it flew past the façade of The Ruptured Spleen. She smiled, she really liked Dave. She didn’t think she loved him, but she did like him. She wondered if Sombre would even allow such a thing as love. It wouldn’t be a very lasting love, she thought to herself; twelve strokes on your Beating Clock and you were gutted, de-clocked and floating in The River. But she did wonder. Maybe it was the drinks, but she felt a little whimsy, a little light and gentle. And dare she admit it, a skerrick of longing.

  Then she heard the laughter coming from within the bar. Savage and confident laughter. Lucretia St Aimes. She sighed and muttered, “That might just ruin it all.”

  She knew she would have to at least acknowledge the incorrigible Gatherer’s presence.

  Lucretia was a similar build to Halliday, tall and strong. They both shared similar skill-sets, handy with weapons and fists – yet, the comparisons ended there. For reasons unbeknownst, Sombre gave Halliday a lightness and Lucretia an obvious darkness.

  Halliday wandered inside the Spleen’ and assessed the room. It h
ad filled out quite a bit from when she had arrived. Smoke filled the air; cigarettes, cigars and old codger tobacco pipes. Truckers, aviators of the ballooning and shipping variety, speed cyclers and drivers intermingled between tables. All drank up and wound down while they could, awaiting the inevitable call – the next job.

  Lucretia’s black leather jacket was hard to miss, emblazoned with silver leather lettering reading ‘Death Witch’. As was the long black hair, black leather pants and boots. She stood at the bar, having demanded the attention of the spiky jet black haired, Recalcitrance Bexley and Captain Andrew Feister, both ballooners.

  Tall glass of a black spirit in hand, she stood with her back to Halliday, and talked at both of the Gatherer’s, who to Halliday, seemed to be part frightened and part obligated. Both nodded with what appeared to be convincing surface interest,

  “They whinge and complain about what we give them … what I give them! If a Nightmarer comes in in bits, then it’s bleeding bits they’ll get! You know what I mean? They’re Mender’s, aren’t they? That’s their job! Fix them! Make them right again! … You hear me, don’t you? Do they want the job done? … You got a smoke for me?”

  For a moment Halliday thought she might be able to slip out unnoticed. It wasn’t to happen.

  “Halliday Knight! Come here and chat with us, you pretty thing!”

  “Nuts,” Halliday muttered under her breath as she feigned a smile Lucretia’s way. It was probably just her slightly tipsy state, but Lucretia looked quite striking this evening. The woman’s dark purple eyes seemed almost bejeweled; her tattooed black lips fuller than the last time they met. Halliday peered down at her Beating Clock and noticed her stroke rate was quite high – she was at eight.

  Lucretia caught her stare and raised her eyebrows, “I see you looking at my chest there Halliday. Yes, I’ve been mended recently. I look wonderful, yes? Of course, not as pretty as you … never as pretty as you.” She snorted and took a long swig of her spirit and swilled it around in her mouth for a while, not taking her eyes from Halliday. For an alarming second or two, Halliday actually thought Lucretia might spit it at her. The woman finally swallowed, “Are you drinking?”