Chapter Two of The Half Life of Dragons

by Sonja Hakala

PREVIOUSLY IN THE HALF LIFE OF DRAGONS: It’s been seven years since Timmen Eldritch, lead singer of the mystical rock band Calliope, disappeared. To this day, most people believe he died. But there are enough conspiracy theories swirling online to keep his ardent cult members hopeful of “Timmens’ return .”

Eldritch and Calliope recorded their last album in an old farmhouse in Carding, Vermont so the town has become a reluctant mecca for Calliope culties, as they call themselves. They’ve already started to gather, and no one in Carding is happy about it. 

You can catch up on previous chapters of this novel in progress here.

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Everything whispered in the hospice center—the nurses’ shoes, the food cart, visitors passing one another in the halls. More quiet than quiet, Ruth Goodwin thought as she dropped the book she was reading into her lap. Then she leaned forward to give her friend’s unmoving hand a very gentle squeeze. “I’m still here, Barbara,” she said. “Still here.” There was no way of knowing if that tidbit of news mattered at all to the woman lying on her side on the bed, her body barely a ripple under the blue quilt that covered her.

Barbara Bentsen was now still and oh-so quiet but she had once carved loops on the ice of Half Moon Lake in winter, her hair streaming away from her laughing face. And she’d danced with the same abandon. She’d eventually married the young man who worked at the lake as a summer lifeguard, and together they’d created two sons and a daughter, and a home in Carding, Vermont. Now the husband was gone, the daughter, too, and Barbara knew it was time to follow them.

The door to Room 7 whispered open a bit, and Ruth’s own child, Sarah, stepped inside. She smiled at her Mom then checked the monitor recording Barbara’s heartbeats. Ruth tapped the watch on her wrist to ask silently “how much time?” Sarah held up one finger then two then shrugged. Death kept its own schedule.

“Has she spoken at all?” Sarah asked.

“No, not since she asked about Ashley’s book, whatever that is,” Ruth said as she stood, pushing her hands into the small of her back. Sarah heard a slight snap, and Ruth rolled her eyes at the sounds of her aging body. 

“Listening to my back is like listening to ice crack on the pond,” she said. “How are the boys doing?’ No matter how old they were, Barbara’s two sons—Matthew and Josh—would always be “the boys” to Ruth.

“I think they ate something,” Sarah said, “and are taking showers at the moment. They should be back in a few minutes.”

Ruth nodded as she walked toward the windows. Vermont’s winter was cracking open like an egg, its March winds restlessly hunting one another across the field that separated the hospice center from the woods beyond. Every time Ruth looked outside, the weather had changed again from spits of rain to a sleety dance against the glass to blinks of sun among the scudding clouds. The restlessness would prevail for a few weeks more before spring finally settled in with snow drops and narcissus and rivulets carving their way through the icy remains of what people had shoveled out of their way back in January.

The door whispered wider, and Barbara’s oldest son stepped into the room, water droplets still clinging to his hair. “How’s Mom doing?” he asked.

Sarah shook her head. “No real change. She’s comfortable and that’s the best we can hope for at this point.”

“Okay, yeah.” He looked around the room, at the chart, at the monitor, at the art on the walls, to the window. “I guess I don’t know what to do with myself.”

Just then, Barbara stirred, inhaled sharply then let the air back out of her lungs in a long, long sigh that circled up to the ceiling. Son number two arrived at that moment, and the brothers pulled chairs close to the bed. “Mom?” Matthew whispered, tears pooling in his eyes.

“We love you, Mom,” Josh added.

Barbara sighed again and then all was still. Ruth looked over at her daughter, and the two of them stepped out of the room. “Thanks for being our vigil volunteer, Mom,” Sarah said. “I could not get Matt or Josh to take a break until you got here.”

“Sure, sure, glad to help.” Together they watched dark gray clouds wrestle one another overhead. “You know, when she was young—well, when both of us were young—Barbara was one of the funniest people you ever wanted to meet. I know our teachers loved her even when Barb took over their classes with her clowning. She was irresistible.”

“Huh, I always remember her as serious,” Sarah said. “Nice but serious. I wonder what changed.”

“Losing her daughter, I’d say. Ashley was so much like her Mom.” Ruth sighed. “She disappeared for a while when she was in her late teens, and it took Barbara and her husband Doug some time and persuasion to get her back to Carding. Things changed after that.”

Sarah’s face puckered into a question mark. “This story is ringing a bell but I can’t quite remember why.”

“Calliope,” Ruth said.

“Oh yeah, that band that lived in Carding for a while. They were supposed to be living in some sort of commune, right?” 

“Supposed to be but they never quite made it to the ‘everybody loves everybody’ stage,” Ruth said. “Ashley got mixed up with them just as everything fell apart, and supposedly she was still in touch with that lead singer, that Timmen Eldritch, when he disappeared a few years ago. We were all relieved that she was back in Carding.”

“Did she ever talk about what happened?” Sarah asked.

“Not really. She told her Mom and Dad that she was too ashamed to talk about it,” Ruth shrugged. “Supposedly she left some sort of a journal behind when she died a few years back, but no one knows anything about it. Maybe that’s what Barbara was referring to, Ashley’s book.”

“The daughter died of cancer, right?”

“Yeah. It was really sad. She was still in her thirties,” Ruth said.

Sarah draped her arm around her mother’s shoulders, and gave Ruth a squeeze. “I need to get back to the room, Mom. Lots to take care of. Sorry I can’t stay and talk. I’ll give you a call tomorrow, okay?”

“Sure, sure,” Ruth said. Suddenly the smell of fresh coffee wandered down the hall in search of her nose, and she raised her head to inhale. “Well, I think I know where I’m headed next.”

Of all the rooms in the hospice center, Ruth loved its trim kitchen best. The windows started close to the floor, and didn’t end until they touched the ceiling. As she entered the room, Ruth spotted a pair of deer meandering along the tree line, their finely shaped ears turning like radar to catch every sound.

“Coffee Ruth?” Evelyn asked. She was one of the center’s regular volunteers. “I just pulled blueberry muffins out of the oven. How about one of those?”

“Sounds perfect.”

“So is your friend gone?” Evelyn asked as she slid a warm muffin and coffee across the counter. 

“Yeah. It was a long night but I’m grateful her sons thought to call me.” Ruth stirred cream into her brew. 

“So it’s true, her sons are here,” a new voice said.

Ruth started then spied a face tucked into a pile of winter clothes on a couch in the furthest corner of the room. She glanced at Evelyn who pursed her mouth up tight as she shook her head. “And who are you?” Ruth challenged.

“Oh, just someone who’s curious.” More of the face appeared along with an uncombed mop of hair and a heavily tattooed hand. “I’ve been here visiting a cousin, and heard someone say that there was a Barbara Bentsen here. Wasn’t her daughter…?”

“Who, exactly, are you visiting?” Evelyn asked. Out of the corner of her eye, Ruth watched Evelyn ease her fingers under the edge of the counter. The clothes pile noticed too.

“Hey, there’s no reason to call security.”

“Then tell me, who—exactly—are you visiting,” Evelyn said as the clothes pile stood up, and turned into a young woman.

“Okay, okay, I’m moving, I’m moving. See?” She raised her hands, open palms turned up to the ceiling. 

At that moment, Sarah stepped into the room, and it was obvious she didn’t like the looks of the clothes pile. “And who are you?” she asked. “I’ve seen you around here for the past two days but I’ve yet to see you in anyone’s room. Who are you here to see?”

“And who let you in?” Evelyn asked. She glanced out the window as one of the medical center’s patrol cars entered the hospice center’s parking lot. The young woman noticed, too.

“Look, there’s no need for that,” she said, pulling her jacket tight around her body. “You’ve made a mistake. I was just here visiting a cousin…”

“Who are you here to visit?” Sarah demanded again as two security guards blocked the kitchen’s doorway.

“You heard the question,” one of the guards said. “I think I’d like to hear your answer.”

The young woman sighed, and pulled her hands out of her pockets. A phone dropped to the floor, and Sarah snatched it up before anyone else could move. “And what, exactly, have you been recording?”

“Okay, okay, look, I’m a journalist, right?” the young woman said. “And I’ve been looking into the life of Ashley Bentsen because she lived at the Calliope house when Timmen Eldritch was there, and it’s been seven years this year since he disappeared, right? And some guy told me her mother was here, in hospice, and I was just following up, okay? I didn’t mean anyone any harm.” 

Ruth thought to herself that the young woman hardly looked ashamed. In fact, there was a hint of a smirk in one corner of her mouth. “Do you think this is some kind of a joke?” she asked. “A dying woman who lost a daughter too young, and you think what? Oh, that’s a party I really want to crash. Intrude on her family. Lurk in the hallway like some sort of ghoul.” Ruth made fists of her hands as she struggled to ease her breathing. “I would bet that you’re anything but a professional journalist. In fact, I bet you’re just another bit of online vermin making sport of other people’s pain.”

“Another? What do you mean, another?” The zipper of the young woman’s jacket got stuck on the way up to her chin. It came apart as she tugged revealing a Calliope T-shirt. “Who else has been here?”

Sarah stepped up to the guards, and handed them the woman’s phone. “I think I’ve deleted whatever she just recorded but I haven’t had time to search for anything else. Would you two mind doing that as you escort her out of the center? And when you get her outside, please get her name and the number on her license plate. She’s going on our watch list.” Then she turned toward Evelyn. “Did you get her picture?”

Evelyn glanced at her phone. “Yep, got a nice, clear shot. It will go well on our bulletin board of undesirables.”

“You can’t do that,” the young woman protested.

“This is a hospital, a place governed by privacy. I’m sure that when you contact the hospital’s administration to complain, they’ll be glad to pass your personal information along to their lawyers,, and you can talk to them,” Sarah said as the two guards closed around the young woman.

As soon as the kitchen door closed, Ruth pulled her phone out and pressed buttons. “Edie? Are you at Barbara’s house?” she asked when her friend answered.

“Yes, Aggie and I are both here. Why?”

“Keep an eye out. Barbara had an unwanted visitor at the hospice center, and her house may be the next target. The Calliope vermin have arrived.”

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Thanks for sharing some of the minutes of your life with me and Carding, Vermont. I hope you’re enjoying The Half Life of Dragons and can visit next week for the latest chapter.

When I reach the end of the tale, the entire book will be available here as an ebook. In the meantime, if you need to catch up or would like to share this adventure with someone else, you can do so by clicking this link.

~ Sonja Hakala