Before Leonora Wakes Read online

  BEFORE LEONORA WAKES

  by

  Lee Thompson

  Digital EDITION

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  PUBLISHED BY:

  Lee Thompson

  Before Leonora Wakes

  Copyright © 2010 by Lee Thompson/Bloodberry Market

  Digital Edition License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

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  DIVISION MYTHOS:

  Before Leonora Wakes

  Within This Garden Weeping

  The Collected Songs of Sonnelion

  Nursery Rhymes 4 Dead Children

  The Dampness of Mourning

  Iron Butterflies Rust

  As I Embrace My Jagged Edges

  Down Here in the Dark

  http://divisionmythos.com/

  Chapter One

  Red Piccirilli looked at the school behind him, glad he only had another day left. The scent of lilacs and fresh mown grass hung in the air, and a soft breeze caressed his back. He had a lot of plans for summer vacation he wanted to throw into motion once it began. He’d just turned thirteen and life had a glow to it. Thor—who preferred to call himself Pig because of his weight—walked beside him. Red had always thought Pig would evaporate or something by now, he didn’t think an imaginary friend could stay with you once you hit junior high. His world was full of facts now, not imagination, and he had to get used to it, had to grow up.

  Pig elbowed his ribs, and though Red couldn’t feel it, he acted like he did, because it was nice to let his friend think every little thing he said and did was real. Pig snorted and said, “I been thinking.”

  Red slowed as they neared the intersection of M-46 and Blithe Street. A crossing guard stood with a handful of younger kids beside a light pole. Traffic was light, the sun bright, and he felt good, thinking of freedom. He smiled at Pig. “Thinking about what?”

  Pig tugged at the collar of his shirt. “What if I’m not imaginary? What if I’m a ghost?”

  Red shrugged his backpack into place. “Ghosts aren’t real either.” It hurt to say it, hurt to see Pig frown, the pout forming on his thick lips. Pig shrugged too and looked at the sidewalk as Tommy and two other boys walked up behind them. Red was glad that Pig wasn’t real, because he’d watched Tommy pick on Derrick Brick too many times for being chunky.

  Pig said, “I think I am a ghost. I have memories of my family, of Christmas. Then ice, a lake, a loud crack, and screaming.”

  Red didn’t know what to say. Tommy shoved into him; shoulder to backpack. Red lost his footing and almost tripped over his sneakers as he stumbled forward, arms flailing out for something to grab hold of. He caught his balance at the last second, just when he thought his chin would bounce off the concrete. Shaking, he spun around. Tommy said, “Watch where you’re going, runt.” The other two boys—Aaron and Jason—laughed. Both of them stood a head taller than Red, and Tommy stood a head taller than them. His dad was the coach and lots of grownups thought he’d be a star quarterback in a few more years because he had an arm on him. Red wished he’d get cancer and die first, but he doubted his wish would come true.

  Pig said, “Great, the three stooges.”

  Red stood his ground, facing them. He knew that if he backed down, or let them see his fear, they’d just feed off it. Come on, he thought. All you can do is leave me with a few bruises. But if I get a lucky swing in then you’re going to be embarrassed when they ask who gave you a black eye.

  Pig said, “Punch him between the legs.”

  Tommy smirked. He had an angular face. Red always wished he’d been born with a face like that. His was too thin and long, and he knew he was going to look like his father in another ten years. He shook his head. Tommy stepped up until only an arm length separated them. “You think you’re tough, runt?”

  Pig said, “Zang! Boom! Right in the kisser!”

  Red clenched his right hand, tried to keep his knees from shaking, his feet from carrying him to the cross guard. Aaron and Jason both had blunt faces, lots of baby fat, deep set eyes, but muscle already showing on their frames. Red knew that Aaron was one of the best wrestlers in junior high and even some of the freshman gave him high fives. Both of them cracked their knuckles and grinned, and Red thought, What do you get out of this? Why can’t you do something nice for people?

  Tommy tilted his chin up in challenge. “Answer me. You think you’re a tough guy? You going to go all crazy one day and bring a gun to school and unload on everyone?” He looked at his friends and nodded, and they moved on either side of Red. “We have to make sure that never happens, runt. We have to let you know your place in the world. What are you going to do when they grab your arms and I hit you?”

  Red let his backpack fall off his shoulder and caught it in his left hand, ready to swing it across his body at Aaron, who he considered the toughest of the three, even if Tommy was sort of their leader. Pig walked through Tommy, smiling at Red as he did it, and Tommy paled and took a step back.

  “See,” Pig said. “If I was imaginary I wouldn’t affect him like that. I must be a ghost.”

  Red was about to answer him but Aaron grabbed his right arm and jerked it behind his back. Tommy’s eyes flickered, darker, as if he’d regained some mental footing. Red tried to hit Aaron with the bag but the kid was stronger and he wrenched Red’s arm up higher, brought him on his tiptoes, brought tears to his eyes as the pain flared inside his brain and spread through his whole body.

  Tommy stepped forward. “You’re a weird little dude. You bring this on yourself. If you were normal, you’d fit in. Think about it.”

  Red saw spittle fly from his mouth and hit Tommy in the face as he said, “You’re jerks, and you’re cowards.”

  Pig laughed. He put his index finger in his mouth and pulled it out and stuck it in Tommy’s ear. The bigger kid jumped and swatted at the side of his face like a swarm of bees had attacked him. Pig said, “You’re crying, Red. You want me to bite this jerk hurting your arm?”

  “I can fight my own battles.”

  Tommy raised his shoulder and wiped it against his ear. “What’d you say?”

  The grip on Red’s wrist slackened. He thought, Aaron’s getting ready to pull a move on me, throw me in a headlock or something.

  He stomped down and back, felt the heel of his shoe dig into the wrestler’s instep, hot breath on his ear, heard Aaron’s cry of pain. Red pulled his arm free and spun, trying to face all three of them, feeling surrounded, waiting for the first punch to land from whatever direction he wasn’t looking. He hated getting hit—the bright light, that sickening feeling in the pit of his stomach, the numbness that followed.

  Pig said, “Dang. You’re making them wonder why you stand up for yourself.”

  “Good.”

  Tommy took a step back. “You’re a freak.” He waved his friends away. “He’s not worth it.” But Aaron glared at him as he limped, his eyes saying, You’re going to pay for stomping on my foot, Runt.

  Red swallowed, saw the crossing guard lead a group of kids across the road. A tall man in a blue coat stood near the corner, fifteen feet away. It was much too warm for a coat. Red wiped sweat out of his eyes and tried to will his heart to slow its stampede as the man in the blue coat looked at his watch and something squirmed beneath the shoulders of the jacket.

  Pig said, “Good job, but those guys are only going to get m
eaner as we get older. So you better get meaner too, or raise your pain threshold. I could teach you karate or something, maybe.” Pig touched his arm. Red didn’t feel it. “What are you looking at?” Red turned, saw Tommy and his goons glancing over their shoulders as they headed back in the direction of the school. Pig waved a hand in front of his face. “Well?”

  Red trembled. His right shoulder burned when he turned back to the intersection. The man in the blue coat smiled at him, flashed a mouthful of silver teeth. He stepped across the street and blue lightning spider-webbed out beneath his boots, glimmering in his wake. It fizzled along the concrete and then disappeared.

  “That guy,” Red said.

  Pig followed his gaze. “Whoa. I didn’t even see him until you pointed him out. And those guys thought you were the freak.” Pig put a hand on his shoulder. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah.” Red rubbed his arm, as far up his back as he could reach. He winced as he pulled his back pack on. “Let’s go.”

  “So, you think I might be a ghost?”

  “What if you were? How would that make things any better?” Red crossed the road and headed east.

  “I don’t know,” Pig said. “Hey, why are you going this way? Your house is that way.” He pointed behind them.

  “I know.”

  “So? What gives?”

  The man in the blue coat rounded the corner onto Laramie and disappeared a half a block ahead. Most of the houses down that way were in worse shape than the rest in town. Adults called it the ‘Other Side of the Tracks’ though Red found that confusing because there weren’t any tracks.

  “Are you following that bum?”

  Red wiped hair out of his eyes and slowed as they neared the corner. Trees lined the street. He hid behind one and peeked around it, down the road, eyes roaming up the hill a hundred yards to where the rundown houses thinned and met the woods. The looming oaks and maples, which he loved to climb, hide out, and get away from the world in, called to him in a way he felt more than heard. Red hoped no one was in the tree-fort down by the river again this year. He planned to spend a lot of time there, just reading and thinking, listening to the universe speak, maybe stealing one of his dad’s Playboys and staring until his eyes fell out of his head.

  Pig said, “I don’t think it’s a good idea, us coming over here.”

  “My dad had a friend over here. I remember coming over with him for something, but it was a long time ago.” Red took a deep breath. “There he is.” He saw the man shimmer like a mirage, there one minute, gone the next, reappearing farther up the hill. “What the heck is up with that guy?”

  Pig said, “He walks fast.”

  A woman smoked a cigarette on a sagging porch and blew a plume of gray toward Mr. Blue, head turning to follow his progress.

  “That lady saw him too. I think.”

  Pig grunted. “He gives me the creeps. Let’s go home and play with Maggie.”

  “My sister can’t even see you.”

  “She does. Five-year-olds have the Gift. They don’t lose it until adults train it out of them.”

  Red shook his head. “Where would a guy like that live?” He was walking forward before he realized it, a sheen of sweat on his upper lip that tasted of salt, shirt sticking to his back.

  “Who cares. He’s scary. I want to go back to the house.”

  “And I vote we at least see where he goes. Come on, it’ll be exciting.”

  “You know what a peeping tom is?”

  “Does he live on this side of the tracks?”

  “What tracks?”

  “Pig, you don’t have to come with me if you don’t want to. Go home. Play with Maggie.”

  “What if I’m not imaginary, or a ghost? What if I’m like your guardian angel?”

  “Then it’s your job to protect me.”

  “Right. If I let you go alone and something happens to you, God will be mad and I could lose my wings.”

  Red was about to tell him that he didn’t have any wings, but he knew that Pig was just trying to build the courage to put one foot in front of the other, finding a way to make himself move forward. He said, “You’re the noblest of angels, Sir Thor.”

  “I’m a fat angel, so call me Pig. But I’m still from a warrior class, and I think you’re right, you need some protection on this endeavor.”

  They walked on, a cool breeze against their backs, shadows dancing as sunlight cut through the old trees lining the road. Power lines hummed softly overhead, barely audible. The woman on the porch lit another cigarette and rested a hand on her protruding belly. Red waved at her. She flicked ash onto the steps and stared through the boys.

  Pig said, “I think that’s bad for you, smoking when you’re carrying a baby. I think my mom smoked when she had me inside her.”

  “I thought you were an angel.”

  Pig shrugged and tugged at his collar. “Ghosts become angels if they’re noble enough.”

  Far up the road the pavement ended at a gravel turnaround. Red turned his head left and right as they neared it and noticed that the houses were all behind them. “Where’d he go?”

  “Well, we won’t find him by standing here and asking each other questions.”

  “You’re right, we’ll have to keep an eye out as we go up the other side of the street.” They passed small houses with worn shingles and peeling paint—puke greens, pee-yellows, dirty whites—glancing at doors and windows and yards, hoping to catch a glimpse of Mr. Blue.

  I wonder how a guy like that lives, day to day. Does he work third shift at Wal-Mart, like my old man?

  He couldn’t picture the guy opening boxes and restocking shelves. Not unless he cut them open with his fingernails and threw the products at crying babies. “He seemed to be in a hurry. He was looking at his watch awful hard.”

  “Probably got a wife who gives him a hard time if he’s not home when he said he’d be.”

  “Maybe. I don’t think every family is like mine though. And it’s not like that anymore anyway.” Red scanned the houses, but Pig had irritated him now. He hated how Pig thought he knew how the world worked. And he’s not even part of it. Not really.

  Pig stopped. Red stopped too. “What?”

  Pig snorted and wiped his hands on his pants as if he was sweating too. “The only reason it’s not like that anymore is because they work different shifts. He’s sleeping when she comes home and she’s sleeping when he gets in.”

  “Let’s focus on finding this guy. I don’t care if you’re right or wrong.”

  “I do.”

  “So what?”

  They kicked loose stones in the gravel turnaround. Red wanted him to drop it. And that was one of the bad things about an imaginary friend he thought. They don’t shut up. They always have to talk your ear off.

  He said, “I wonder why they never paved the turnaround like they did the rest of the road.”

  “Maybe they ran out of money. That happens.”

  “Yeah. I hope we find this guy.”

  “If it makes you happy, it makes me happy.”

  Red wanted to believe that but sometimes he felt like Pig was trying to live life through him. They walked up the street, back the way they’d come, no sidewalk here, just cracked, graying asphalt. Red felt Pig move in closer. “Give me some space, will you? Walk on your own feet.”

  Pig laughed. “But it’s easier if you carry me.”

  Red laughed too. Then he saw Mr. Blue.

  They ducked behind the hedgerow that separated Mr. Blue’s yard from the next.

  “Did he see us?” Red’s pack felt heavy on his back. He pulled it off as they crawled beneath the overgrown shrubs, and laid it next to him.

  Pig whispered, “We were laughing when we saw him, so he must have seen us.”

  Red propped himself up on his elbows to peer over Mr. Blue’s uncut lawn. The tall man strode across the yard, toward a shed in the back. It was similar to the one Red’s dad kept their old riding mower in, and he suspected the weirdo wa
s headed to get his mower out. Mr. Blue looked both ways and his gaze rested on the hedges for a moment, right where Red and Pig lay. Red held his breath and thought: Go on, do whatever you’re doing. No one’s watching you.

  Mr. Blue nodded, as if he’d heard the thought and mistaken it for his own. He turned to the lock on the door and ran his fingers over the metal.

  Pig whispered, “It was a mistake coming down here.”

  “Shh.”

  Mr. Blue pulled the padlock off and slipped it in his coat pocket. The hinges of the door creaked and Red saw a flash of metal cage—what looked like a dog kennel—and something pale moved inside it. He could picture a guy like that starving a dog, just to hear it whine. But the thing inside wasn’t a dog, he realized. Fingers rose inside the cage and grabbed the horizontal bars. Mr. Blue grabbed the door and began to pull it shut.

  A girl raised her head, her hair as white as winter, a dirty heart-shaped face framing a partially open mouth. Her eyes met his. The door closed.

  “Oh God.” Red let out a held breath. “He’s got a girl in there.”

  “I didn’t see a girl.”

  Red turned onto his side. Pig had his chin in the soil, eyes half closed. “You have to look over the grass. Prop yourself up. You’ll see her when he comes out.”

  “No. I don’t want to.”

  He wanted to ask Pig if he was scared, and how he could be. Gooseflesh rose on Pig’s freckled forearms. Red looked back to the shed, frightened as well, more so since Pig was. Nothing normal could hurt Thor.

  Thor doesn’t get scared. He’s a god.

  Pig rolled over, onto his back, and looked up through the bushes at the blue sky. “Okay, I saw a girl.”

  Red sighed and wiped sweat out of his eyes, trying to will Mr. Blue out of the shed, away from the girl and whatever he was doing to her. “We should call the police.”

  Pig closed his hands over his chest. “What if it’s not a girl in there though? What if the cops look and she’s gone? You know how mad that would make this guy?” Pig grabbed a twig and broke it in half. “That’d be our necks. You don’t mess with things like that guy.”