Turn and Face the Strange, Chapter Eleven
Oh noez, Bevan is in trouble.
Chapter Eleven
The last days were the meanest
Leanest days of our lives;
You threw me the pieces,
I started the fire.
One thing led to a dead end,
One shot put her away-hey-hey.
Look out on a green world, windows and wives.
No bedroom to run to, no miracle jive,
no conversation….
Then nothing meant nothing,
Ten dollars tore us apart.
On thing led to a dead end,
One shot put her away…
- “One Shot,” David Bowie
The White Duke gets the news first.
It comes to him as soon as he wakes up, instead of at the end of the day, when most of his news arrives. Nathan Bewlay, one who acts as a peace keeper and law man for lack of any other words for him, comes waiting ruefully at Duke’s door when he opens it up. Despite the surprise, his face maintains its sardonic and unimpressed expression.
“Yes, Nathan?”
“Sir, there’s… there’s some interesting news coming in over the night. Ramona Alva down on Crooked Street?” The White Duke nods. Ramona is well known. “A party began yesterday afternoon. Bevan Bewlay was at the party, and was seen walking out of it last night with two Diamond Dogs girls.” One of the White Duke’s nearly nonexistent eyebrows goes up.
“Daring,” is all he says. Nathan is not quite as amused.
“Yes, well.” He shifts uncomfortably. “Sir, the two girls in question were found dead early this morning.” The other transparent eyebrow goes up to join the first.
“Dead?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And where is our Bevan now?”
“He came home shortly before the news was delivered. He has not yet been informed.”
An ironic smile ghosts over Duke Bewlay’s thin white lips. “Not to convict without a trial, Nathan,” he says dryly, “But I imagine he already knows.”
v
Halloween Jack hears about it that morning as well, on the other side of town. He is sprawled asleep in bed in the top floor of The Diamond Tower, boards over the windows blocking out the dawn light and arm flung over his eyes, but when his door bangs open his eye do too, and this posture of sloth snaps immediately into attention, sitting up and focusing his one good eye sharply upon the door.
“What?” he demands, knowing that his reporter would not awaken him except with game changing news. Indeed, the reporter is pale faced despite the effort involved in taking the pulleyed platform up.
“Sir,” he begins.
“Yes, yes, spit it out,” grates Halloween Jack. “What’s going on? What’s happened?”
“Two Dogs are dead, Halloween Jack. Marianne, daughter of Captain Tony, and Grace, sister of Lead Hunter Brendan. They were found dead in an alley on the east side of town.”
“East?” spits Halloween Jack, hoping he has misheard.
“Yes, sir. They were attending a party given by Ramona Alva, a wealthy woman who lives on the east end of Crooked Street-”
“I know of her,” says Halloween Jack impatiently.
“Yes, well… they were seen talking to a… to a Bewlay. They left with him.”
Halloween Jack jumps to his feet. His left eye flashes wildly and desperately. His hands go up to clutch at his tomato red hair. He forces his fingers to relax and runs them backward through it, making it stand up in dirty spikes.
“They know.”
“Or they suspect,” adds his reporter.
“What does the difference matter?” Halloween Jack snaps. He turns around to face the wall. Another hand through his hair, this time laying the spikes down. His shoulders heave in a silent deep breath. The reporter waits. Halloween Jack remains, staring at the wall, breathing deeply. At last, he turns around, and the desperation in his eyes has been replaced by hardness and determination.
“We are going ahead with it.”
The reporter looks deeply surprised. “What? But Halloween Jack, if they know-!”
“Then we will have to do it faster than we had planned,” Halloween Jack growls. “That’s all that means. That is all. We have everything ready. I’m not giving this up. Not now.”
“Jack…”
“No!” he roars. “If they think they’ll stop us with such a slimy show of force, we can do the same to them. We are at no disadvantage. Maybe once we were, but we’re not anymore. We can do this. We can take them down if we need to.”
“Sir! That was never the plan. I don’t think this-”
“It’s the plan now,” Jack snarls. “Now I want to know what Bewlay it was… and I want to know what Bewlays are close enough for us to swat. Find me out both of those things before nightfall.”
“Reachable Bewlays, and the Bewlay that killed them.”
“Before nightfall.”
“Yes, sir.”
Halloween Jack snatches his eye patch from the table, not taking the time to wash his socket, and jerks it onto his head. His breastplate goes in on the way to the empty elevator shaft, and he slides down the steel rope without bothering to don his gloves. The reporter is left alone in Halloween Jack’s flat on the top level of the Tower. He knows with an eerie clarity that if he looked down out of the window, he would see what war looks like.
v
In The Diamond Tower, the terrible news is spreading. Halloween Jack has had Tony and Brendan informed, and although they are assured that recompense is being pursued, and are urged to wait for Halloween Jack to initiate the course of action, it is needless to say that waiting is something they cannot do. Both of them immediately seek out their respective hunting packs and tell the packs their stories. They are meeting up on the street by mid day, despite their normally nocturnal cycle.
They go first to Joe the metal worker, Joe the Lion, for sharpening of their long cruel sword blades and spear tips. He fills the can on top of his pedal powered whetstone leisurely, as they begin to tell him all at once about the deaths. Tony and Brendan cannot even hear the story again, much less tell it. Tony knocks over a rack of unsharpened blades with a roar of brokenhearted wrath for his sister, and Brendan breaks his hand over his daughter, punching a sheet of metal with his clenched, white knuckled fist as the tale is told.
As it unfolds, Joe sharpens the blades and spear heads faster and faster and more and more slipshod. When he throws each weapon into the hands of its owner, however, none of the hunters seem to notice the hurried, half done job. They are too desperate to spill blood. Joe himself is not thinking of Marianne or Grace, laying in an alley in a bath of their own wet blood, as he pumps the pedal of his whetstone.
He is thinking of his little Wonder.
She has been at his flat more regularly than normal, and that, he knows, should make him glad, not uneasy. It should mean that she is safe, that she is not wandering too far away by day or night. It is good, it is comforting, he is glad, he does not want her wandering far away.
No, he finds himself thinking instead. It is not good. He is not glad. He does not want her wandering away at all. She is his, and he will lose her to no one and nothing.
When the last spear and sword is perfunctorily sharpened, he leaves the whetstone whizzing and dashes toward the Diamond Tower and up three flights of stairs to the flat where he left her that dawn.
She is not there. He did not really expect her to be there. The lack of expectation does not really do anything for this desperate rage that rises from some white hot forge in the pit of his stomach. His own knife is already sharpened, always sharpened, and already with him, stuck in the belt about his waist. Joe thunders back downstairs again and runs out into the street, abandoning his smithy for the pursuit of what belongs to him.
v
Wonder, along with most of the inhabitants of the city who do not live or work in The Diamond Tower, Bewlay Station, or on Crooked Street, has not gotten the news. As soon as Joe went downstairs that morning, she also left, for the Web club where Johnny promised the night before that he would be waiting. She arrives at the club just as the Dog packs come to Joe with their weapons for sharpening. As she comes up to the stage, the rest of the Zeroes are packing up to leave, and Johnny is coming down from the stage to return the sitar to the unconscious man in the corner. He retrieves his bottle of water from the stage, and pours the man’s empty cup on the table full of water for when he comes back to his senses. He turns around from the task and holds out his arms, and Wonder rushes right into them. She feels suddenly that she needs to be held by him, although she is unsure exactly why. He wraps his arms around her and presses his face into her hair, and holds her tightly for quite a long time.
When he finally loosens his arms, she is reluctant to pull away. She remains with her face in his linen clad shoulder, while he strokes her hair with one hand and rubs her shoulder with the thumb of the other.
“Wonder,” he says quietly. She still does not pull away, but only nods against his shoulder in acknowledgement. “Wonder,” he says again, “What do you think the world is missing most of all?”
“Missing?” she repeats, puzzled. He nods, and his chin bumps the top of her head.
“Yes,” he says. “I think we can all agree that the world as it stands is imperfect. What I want to know is, what’s missing? What is just one big thing that could be gifted to this imperfect world and best change it for the good?”
The girl in his arms is silent for a long moment. One thing? Just one thing that would make, the world the best it could be in one stroke? She tries to focus deeply on the question, but she can’t. Her head is too loud for such a heavy, difficult thought, and she cannot make it be quiet no matter how much she tells it that this is important. Finally, she decides that maybe that is her answer, after all.
“I think what is missing from this world,” she says very slowly, “is quiet.”
“Quiet?” he repeats-smiling, but in interest, not in ridicule.
“Yes,” she says. “What the world is missing most of all is quiet. Maybe if we had some of that, we could all think clearly enough to know what the world is missing next most of all.”
He, too, says nothing for a long moment.
“That is a good answer, Wonder,” he says softly. “That is a very good answer, and think that one of the things the world needs is more people who are as wise as you.”
At last the girl lifts her head from the shoulder of her beloved, and looks into his calm brown eyes.
“Johnny?”
“Yes?”
“Something is going to happen, isn’t it?” she asks. “Something big is going to happen very soon, and nothing is ever going to be the same again, is it?”
“It’s already happening,” he answers her quietly. “It could turn out to be good and it could turn out to be bad, it’s hard to tell yet. But you are right-nothing is ever really going to be the same after this. And whether it turns out for good or bad, some people aren’t going to survive it. Some people already haven’t.”
“Are we going to survive it?”
“I don’t know,” he says gently, not breaking her gaze. She looks down, at the collar of his shirt, and then back up into his eyes.
“Johnny, my… my name isn’t Wonder. I realized that just yesterday.” Johnny does not act surprised. He only smiles softly at her, encouraging her to continue, so she does.
“It’s Hermione. Or it was. I think I had a life before all this. I mean, I know I did, I must have, right? But I don’t remember it, and it never occurred to me before. I remember… I remember the story that Joe tells me. I remember it happening, so I know it isn’t just a story. But who was I before that? I had a name, Johnny. People called me ‘Hermione.’” She is speaking faster now, not quite frantic because Johnny has his arms around her and so nothing can be truly terrible. It’s just a little bit upsetting, yes, but it’s good too, it is good to remember who she is. “I don’t know who called me that. My family? Did I have a family?”
“Yes,” he says.
“Yes,” she echoes. “Yes, I must have, mustn’t I? But I don’t remember them. They’re probably gone. Almost everyone’s family is gone.” And for the very first time in her life, Hermione cries for a lost past that she cannot remember; both of the world, and of her own. She cries softly, tears more of long last peace rather than tumult, and the boy from Freecloud Mountain strokes her hair.
The peace is interrupted suddenly by Arthur’s harsh voice croaking from across the room.
“Ay mate! John! Know how I told you your woman’s bloke would show up some day? I think that day’s come.” His voice is not one of languid smugness, as might be expected, but has instead a tone of distinct urgency. Both Johnny and Hermione look up at his words. “Dog coming this way, a big guy, and he looks angry. If you want to live to paw your Diamond lovely again, you had best beat it, and fast!” Hermione looks quickly back at Johnny, and grabs his hands to squeeze them.
“Go!” she hisses. “It’s probably Joe. Go! I will come back as soon as I can, but it might be a while.” Johnny nods, and runs out the back exit without another word.
“And if anyone chooses to mention this to aforementioned approaching sweatin’ Dog,” broadcasts Arthur, “I will personally twist his head from his sweatin’ neck.” His warning is needless; nobody in attendance at the club has any desire to endanger the quiet, magical sitar player of the night sets. Hermione sits down at one of the tables littered in abandoned cups, and leans her chin in her hand, as though she has been sitting there since she arrived.
Sure enough, it is Joe who crashes in. He has been tracking his Wonder like a hound since this morning, sticking his head in every club on the way. His face is pale with the two awful red smudges in his cheeks, and his chest is heaving from his labored breath. He sees her the instant he steps into the club, as though his sense of her location is so honed that he knows what table she is sitting at before he even sees the room.
“Wonder!” he barks, and her head jerks up as though she were not expecting his arrival.
“Joe?” she says in a startled, half-asleep voice. He crosses the room in five or six long strides and although she has already begun to stand when he reaches her, he seizes her upper arms and pulls her up roughly the rest of the way.
“Wonder, what are you doing here? What are you doing all the way out here? Don’t you know it’s dangerous? Don’t you know what could happen to you?” he demands. His eyes are so, so wild, and Hermione is frightened of him.
“I saw you just this morning!” she pleads. “I came back and saw you just this morning Joe, I did. I’m fine, nothing’s happened to me, I’m fine, I’m not even on the bad side of town, Joe! Don’t shake me, please stop shaking me, please, Joe…”
He stops shaking her, because he was not aware that he had begun, but he does not release her arms, and his fingers are tight and clench hard over the old bruise from the last time that he chased her down.
“It doesn’t matter that I saw you this morning,” he snarls. “Something could have happened to you all the same between then and now! You should not be away from me, my little Wonder, you should not ever be away from me! Do you know what could happen to you? Why were you all the way out here?”
“I- I like this c-club,” she stammers, tears beginning to form in her eyes. “I like the b-band. Joe, don’t squeeze so, you’re hurting me. Joe… Joe!” she shouts and cries, but he will not listen.
“You know what happened last night while you were listening to your band? Do you? Two girls were murdered last night. Their throats were cut straight through and they were left in an alley in their own blood! They were Diamond Dog girls, you stupid chit! Marianne, and Grace, and it could have been you, it could have been you with your head hanging off the back of your neck and me out there looking for the filthy Bewlay that did it!” he roars. “You’re never leaving me again! You’re coming home right now and you’re never leaving me again.”
His fingers on her arms hurt so much, but he only lets one go, and by the other he drags her from the Web. Molly stands by Arthur, and clutches at his elbow for reassurance, and they both watch as the angry Dog leaves with his claimed property. Neither of them know much outside of their own small world of music and drink and drugs and each other, but even they can feel it. Both of them wish they knew what it is they feel, but neither says anything for fear of frightening the other. Outside, the sun slowly rises in the sky.