Histories of the Void Garden, Book 1: Pyre of Dreams by Damian Huntley Page A

David. You’re being devoured
already, and you didn’t even notice the mouth closing behind you.
You didn’t see the light emptying out of your world. Your sister
compared you to Lee Harvey Oswald, and in some respects, the
comparison is an apt one, because there was a very single minded
attention to that man; however, he was found and arrested quickly,
and murdered in plain view of the whole world. You’ve been
questioned and monitored, and yet your name hasn’t come up once in
the news, not because of your role within the government, but
because they don’t know whether or not you were involved. They
don’t know David. Do you understand how important that is?”
    David couldn’t
speak. He was embarrassed to admit to himself that he didn’t really
understand, certainly not in that moment. He was too afraid to jump
up from the swing seat, even though everything in him said that
this was exactly what he should do. The voice went on, soft Doppler
of doom, waves of insanity drowning out David’s capacity for
reason, “I had thought at first that perhaps this was all part of
Tiernan’s grand plan. Beyond De Somnio Mirifico, we can not know
his designs for the world. It has become increasingly obvious that
you represent an unknown quantity for them, something that lies
beyond the scope of any plans of theirs. You are in grave
danger.”
    David felt the
man’s hands on the small of his back, slowing the motion of the
swing, but still pushing him, “I need you to do something for me,
but before I ask it of you, I need you to understand that death is
everywhere about you now. They will kill you without question or
hesitation, and what is more, they will kill everyone you hold
dear, and their wrath will not be born of malice, but of ignorance.
In the van out front, Agents Carmichael and McMahon are not dead
and it’s only a matter of time before they wake. Upon waking, their
actions will be swift and unyielding, so you must steel yourself
against questions of morality, or hesitations of the heart. They
will murder you, they will murder your daughter, and they will
erase every piece of evidence that you were ever part of this
world. Do you understand me?”
    A dry,
crackling wheeze escaped David’s throat, and he nodded.
    West smiled,
“Good. Now David, you know of the cliffs at Calvert, the ones that
overlook the Chesapeake Bay?”
    And David
listened, while West’s hands pushed him deeper into the belly of
the beast.
     

CHAPTER SIX
Calvert
Cliffs
     
    Charlene was awake
with the sound of the first birds. She hadn’t been woken by the
morning chorus for the longest time and it brought a smile to her
face. She had slept above the covers, the unbearable heat of the
eiderdown making it impossible to fall into a heavy sleep. She sat
up and stretched her arms and felt a dull, but pleasant ache
running through the muscles in her shoulders and upper back. She
swung her legs over the side of her Edwardian four post bed and
felt the deep pile of the rug against the balls of her feet and her
toes.
    Her parents,
both of them had visited her dreams, and as the memory returned to
her, she felt a moment’s melancholy. She had spent the night
weaving in and out of events throughout her life, in a way that she
hadn’t experienced in years, and now that she was awake, it seemed
almost sad to have to come away from all those cherished memories,
even if experienced in that surreal mist of sleep.
    She relaxed her
shoulders, lowering her hands slowly, pausing to look at them, and
she was fascinated and shaken by what she saw. She pulled her legs
back onto the bed, and lay face down staring at her hands and arms
up close, marveling at the millions of intricate changes that had
been wrought through the night. She had grown familiar with the
pits and valleys of veins and tendons over the years, the little
whorls and wrinkles, the liver spots and calluses. She had worked
eight years in a munitions plant, hands yellowing with oxides