Date: Wed, 30 Jun 2004 02:29:10 +0000
From: Kristy Leigh <kristyleigh2001@hotmail.com>
Subject: "A SEASON OF DARKNESS" (Chapter 1, TG)

A SEASON OF DARKNESS

CHAPTER ONE: ARRIVALS

1.

One of the oddest things about change is that you rarely see it coming.

It sort of sidles up to you all silent and unannounced, like the rising
of the sun or the turning of the seasons. For me, it happened on a
bright, cool morning at the beginning of summer; not long after my ninth
birthday. Must've been around the same time my Dad went off to Chicago
with his girlfriend. Mom and I never saw that one coming either. Looking
back, I suppose I shouldn't have been so surprised at what went down
over the next few months; a lot of weird stuff was going on that year.

I was sitting on the front steps of our Fairmont home, listening to the
radio and absently playing with a Whipper-Snapper. A Whipper-Snapper is
one of those toys that fall in and out of fashion; a small blue ping-pong
racket with a black rubber ball attached to it. They have about a dozen
different names; Hip-Zipper or Bee-Bopper or something equally inane, but
you know what I mean. You probably had one yourself when you were a kid.

It must've been about ten in the morning when the Tracker Brothers
moving van pulled up in front of the house next door. I watched their
arrival with considerable interest; the Old Stewart Place had been vacant
for about two years and had half a dozen realty signs decorating the
front yard. My mother secretly hoped it never sold, because you could
never tell what kind of neighbors you were going to get. Guess we were
about to find out.

Anyway, a couple of fat, sweaty guys got out of the truck (the Tracker
Brothers presumably) and started unloading furniture onto the front lawn,
grunting and wheezing with exertion. Leaving the radio on the veranda, I
stood up and walked over to the edge of the yard. Even at my age, I knew
you could tell a lot about people from their possessions. There was a
fence dividing our properties, a low, red-brick wall maybe a foot high. I
stood to one side, casually zocking the Whipper-Snapper up and down. If
the Trackers noticed my presence, they didn't give any indication.

Surveying the chaos, I figured that the new neighbors had at least one
kid -- most probably a girl by the looks of things. Most boys would have
been disappointed to see all the dolls and pandas and bunny-ruggles, but
I was the only kid living up on Fairmont Heights at the time. Most of my
friends lived out in Greendale, way over on the other side of town. Any
change would have been an improvement as far as I was concerned. I sat
down on the fence, glancing back towards my house to make sure Mom
wasn't watching me through the window. I knew she wouldn't like me
annoying the removalists, so I decided to keep a low profile.

The neighbors themselves appeared five minutes later, rolling up the
driveway in a late model ford (a Thunderbird, if I remember correctly).
The doors cracked open and two people got out: a tall, dark haired woman
and a little blond girl I judged to be about the same age as me. I was
too far away to get a close look, although I thought the mother was
probably quite good-looking. As for the daughter, she scooted into the
house carrying an armload of stuffed animals faster than it takes to read
this sentence. The woman walked over to talk to the moving-guys, both of
whom were struggling with an antique European chaise-long, the sort you
see in old Frankenstein movies. A lot of her furniture was like that; all
vintage lamps and statuettes and vases from mysterious lands. I later
found out that that was her job; she used to be an agent for some auction
house in upstate New York.

The morning proceeded for about an hour until the Trackers took a coffee
break (the older sibling kept a thermos in the van), by which time most
of the furniture had been relocated inside. The lawn was still littered
with tea-chests and hampers, but most of the work had been done. The
little girl had spent most of her time darting in and out of the house
collecting toys, books and assorted knick-knacks; now she was ready to
explore her immediate surroundings. Or more precisely, she was ready to
investigate me.

Gingerly mounting the brick fence, she held her arms out for balance and
started walking along the top, pretending she hadn't noticed me. I did
much the same thing, hammering idly away at my paddle-ball until she was
about ten feet away. We both looked up at the same instant, cued by that
obscure sense of timing all children seem to possess. She paused for a
moment, then tight-roped forward a few more steps.

"Hi. I'm Chissie," she informed me, cutting through all the social
protocols without a backward glance.

"Hi, I'm Billy. You're new here." I'd been on an unending quest to
state the obvious for some years now.

"Yeah," she confirmed offhand, "we just moved in this morning."

"Where you from?"

"Longridge Bay."

"Where's that?"

She shrugged her answer; very few nine year-olds can point out their
hometown on a map. That was no big deal, though; I sometimes had trouble
finding my way home from school, so she was probably doing better than
me.

"You live there?" she asked, pointing to our modest little colonial
bluestone.

"Yeah," I nodded, "I live here with my Mom."

"I live with my Mom too," she commented, still working on her balance
(although the fence was only a foot off the ground), "but not my Dad. He
went away a long time ago."

"Where to?" I enquired, surprised that we were both single-parent kids.

"I don't know. Canada, I think."

"Mine's in Chicago." We spoke with the unselfconscious curiosity of
very young children, communicating nore through looks and glances than
anything else. I think that's where it all began, in those quiet moments
between each sentence. We talked and we listened, and somehow, in the
brief pauses punctuating our words, our lives had become inextricably
linked. Of course, neither of us could have realized that at the time. At
the end of the day, we were just two kids chattering away in the warm
June sunshine.

About the only thing I really noticed was how pretty Chrissie was -- much
prettier than any of the girls I knew from school. She had the delicate
bone structure and milky complexion of a new born infant. I think her
most captivating feature was her eyes. They were a pale shade of violet
I'd never seen before -- violet ringed with turquoise, if you can
believe that. Whenever they caught the sun, they seemed to glitter with
some strange purple light, though that was probably my imagination.

"Do you have any brothers or sisters?" she enquired, pirouetting around
on her right foot. Her little pink sun-frock ballooned out around her
thighs as she turned.

"No, I don't," I answered, thinking she probably studied ballet or
something. She reminded me of a music-box dancer.

"Me neither," she said, patting her skirt down, then added: "my Daddy
left when I was really little," by way of explanation.

I thought of mentioning that my father only ran off two months before,
but decided I didn't want to talk about it. Instead, I returned my
attention to the paddle-ball, whocking it towards the grass in short,
elastic loops.

"What's that?" Chrissie demanded, spinning anti-clockwise this time.

"It's a Whipper-Snapper. I got it for my birthday." I gave the ball an
extra hard zock, stretching the string out to around three feet.
Chrissie's eyes widened as if she'd never seen one before. The ball
streaked out half a dozen times before I dropped the pace back to more
normal parameters.

"Can I have a try?" Chrissie asked.

"Yeah, sure," I shrugged. Chrissie jumped off the wall and her dress
ballooned up again, this time around her waist. I stood up and handed her
the paddle, talking her through the intricacies of holding the grip.
Chrissie nodded along for a few seconds, then started zocking away like a
world class champion. My mouth flopped open in astonishment: it had taken
me nearly two months to perfect my technique, practicing every day since
my father flew the coop.

"You've done this before," I gaped in near disbelief.

"No, this is my first time," she corrected, literally beaming with
pleasure. She turned her shimmering, purple eyes in my direction, and
somehow, I knew she was telling me the truth.

2.

In the weeks that followed, I would discover that Chrissie was something
of a prodigy. She could pick up new skills in the blink of an eye and
usually without any practice whatsoever. Mastering the paddle-ball in a
matter of seconds was probably the least of her abilities, though it sure
impressed the hell out of me. At times, I found it downright spooky, but
on that lazy summer morning at the beginning of June, it was the
proverbial mystery of the ages. I never had the opportunity to ask her
about it, however. Just at that second, Chrissie's mother appeared on
the front veranda and called out to her.

Both of us turned towards the voice, Chrissie a fraction of a second
earlier than me (and without losing her rhythm for so much as a second).
The woman standing at the top of the steps was tall and willow-thin with
jet black hair slicing down the left side of her face. She was wearing a
plain blue house dress that somehow rippled against her figure like
liquid silk. She looked to be in her late twenties, though at that
distance I couldn't be sure.

"That your Mom?" I asked, squinting for focus.

"Yeah," Chrissie confirmed, taking me by the hand and tugging me
towards the house, "come over and say hi." We set off across the lawn,
dodging between miscellaneous crates and packing cartons. I was suddenly
a little shy of meeting her, knowing she was probably incredibly busy
with everything. If I'd been a few years older, I would have made some
excuse and come back in a day or two, but I was still too young for such
complex social rituals. Needless to say, I had nothing to worry about.
Chrissie dragged me to the foot of the steps, and her mother came down to
meet us.

And my jaw dropped for the second time that day.

Chrissie's mom was the most beautiful woman I've ever seen in my life.
There's simply no other way to describe her. It wasn't conventional
beauty, like you see in fashion magazines or TV shows. No, it was much
more subtle than that, sort of like the tones of a Renaissance painting
or the scales of a classical aria. I stared at her with a child's
unaffected wonder, and she rewarded me with a smile that could have
shamed the sun.

"Who's this?" she asked, touching my face with her luminous gaze. I
felt my heart stall in mid-beat.

"Momma, this is Billy," Chrissie said, indicating me with a sweep of
her hand, "he's my new friend."

"Well, pleased to meet you, Billy. My name's Evelyn Rinehart. My
friends call me Eve."

"Hi, Mrs. Rinehart," I managed after an incredibly long pause, "I'm
Billy Campbell. I live next door." More of my unending crusade to
pinpoint the obvious. It never occurred to me to call Eve by her first
name (even if it had, my mother wouldn't have stood for it). The social
niceties being concluded, Chrissie grabbed my hand and pulled me a few
steps closer.

"Mom, can Billy help us move our stuff inside?" she asked, fidgeting
with excitement. Eva regarded her daughter with a just a hint of
amusement.

"Certainly," she nodded indulgently, "if he wants too, that is."

"You wanna?" Chrissie chimed.

"Well, sure," I agreed without paying that much attention to the
question. I was peering up at Eva in a daze, taking in the perfect
contours of her face, the thick, black curtain of her hair. There was no
denying the facial resemblance; mother and daughter shared the same
perfect features, right down to the clipped button nose and the dimples
on either side of the mouth. The same haunting, violet eyes too.

"Come on, then!" Chrissie exclaimed, yanking me up the steps and
breaking the spell. "I'll show you where my my room is!"

We spent the remainder of the morning scampering around the house and
yard without actually doing anything (the Trackers did most of the heavy
lifting, cursing like marines because everything deemed to weigh a
thousand pounds). We were too excited be of any practical use. Exploring
the Old Stewart Place was like discovering some exotic, fairy-tale world.
Every doorway led to a dozen more; there had to be at least a hundred
rooms under its gabled roof. Or so it seems when you're nine years old.

The removalists finished about one in the afternoon. Eve paid them both
an extra twenty for their services, then set about putting the kitchen in
order. Chrissie and I stood on the front lawn, watching the Tracker's
van rumbling off down the road and wondering what to do next. We
couldn't play inside; the house was a chaotic sprawl of unopened boxes,
even Chrissie's attic bedroom.

"You wanna play hide and seek out back?" she suggested, kneeding her
skirt between her fingers like a four year old, almost dancing with
anticipation. I have to admit I was sorely tempted. Like any boy of my
generation, I would have stayed out playing until the sun went down or
the world came to an end, whichever came first. Trouble was, I knew I had
to get going. My mother had been kinda moody since Dad left, and I
wasn't sure how she'd react to me spending so much time with a couple
of total strangers, even if they were our new neighbors.

"No, I better go home now" I explained, hoping I wouldn't hurt her
feelings, "my Mom'll be calling me inside for lunch soon."

"OK," she said, hardly disappointed at all, "you want to play again
tomorrow?"

"Well, sure. There's a playground over on Wentworth Drive, I'll take
you there if you want."

"Good! That'll be fun," she answered, hitting me with that 250 volt
smile she'd inherited from her mother. For a split second, I saw a ghost
of the woman she'd eventually become, and my heart did another
somersault. Then it was gone and she was just Little Chrissie Rinehart,
the girl next door.

"All right then. I'll see you tomorrow morning." I raised a hand to
signal goodbye and started walking towards the brick fence, smiling at
the thought of taking Chrissie to the park tomorrow. We'd had such a
wonderful day together, I was honestly looking forward to seeing her
again.

I'd gotten less than ten steps before she called out to me.

"Billy?"

"Yeah?"

"Want me to get your Whipper-Snapper?"

I paused, looking back over my shoulder at her. We'd left it upstairs in
her bedroom when we came down to wave goodbye to the Trackers.

"It's yours," I said after a micro-second's consideration.

"Really?" Chrissie asked, her expression almost comically surprised.

"Yeah. It's yours. Keep it." Why the hell not? It was a lame excuse
for a birthday present in the first place - even if it was the last thing
my Dad ever gave me. Chrissie, on the other hand, was utterly delighted.
She ran over in a haze of flying skirts, pigtails whipping about in the
slipstream. I braced for impact, thinking she was going to kiss me.

"Thanks, Billy," she trilled, hugging herself in undisguised pleasure,
"you're really nice." That flickering purple light was back in her
eyes again.

"You're welcome," I smiled, more than a trifle embarrassed by her
boundless enthusiasm. Part of me was hoping she really would kiss me -
although I would have blushed the color of a ripe strawberry if she had.

"See you tomorrow then?" she demanded, still hugging herself around the
middle.

"You bet." Nothing short of a mass extinction would have kept me away.

We said goodbye once more and I stepped over to my side of the fence,
glancing back over my shoulder as I walked up to our front door. Chrissie
was spinning across the lawn like a pink tornado, hands lifted to the
skies. I halted on the porch to watch the show, half-expecting her to
lift off the ground and go soaring off over the trees. It was impossible
not to like her.

Giggling at the top of her lungs, she spiraled out of control, falling
over in a tangle of knees and elbows. She lay there staring up at the
sky, panting for breath and happy as a cloud; I stood watching her for a
few more seconds, feeling a warm glow spreading though my midsection. I
had no idea what I'd set in motion that day, no idea what was
approaching or how my world was about to change, but none of that
mattered at the time. All I knew was that I'd made a new friend, someone
sweet and funny and ... well, magical in ways that I couldn't define.

And in the end, that's all that ever matters.


NEXT: Stepping Over.

Let me knowif you thinkI should continued this one.

kristyleigh2001@hotmail.com