Chapter 8—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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Pearl McGregor rarely imbibed more than one glass of wine a day. But she was moving again so one glass to start the day had become two.

“To my last day in this place.” She raised the glass in a toast to herself. “Good riddance. Time to pack the last bits, and I’m outta here.”

One of the last bits was the cardboard box that had followed Pearl around for more than seven years. Its sides and corners had softened so much with age, it was difficult to pick up. From time to time, she’d thought about replacing it, and given the choice Amazon cartons that lined the streets every recycling day, it would have been easy. But in the end, she settled for reinforcing her box’s saggiest spots with generous layers of packing tape because she didn’t like the “Jeff Bozos” company. Besides, a plain box attracted less attention.

She chuckled to herself as she mentally catalogued its contents. Soon, very soon, she would use them to reveal secrets about Timmen Eldritch and the band once known as Calliope.

She wedged herself into her favorite space between the couch and the coffee table, settling her backside on a thick cushion. This spot, this particular spot, had become her safety zone, her nest. But there would be another nest soon. She was returning to Carding, and truth to tell, she’d be glad to see the last of the dilapidated secondhand, second-rate furniture in Mrs. Coburn’s “Rooms for Rent.” Her next stop was a tiny above-an-office apartment owned by Carding’s town dentist, and she figured she’d only have to sell a few bits from the box to pay the rent. 

The Carding apartment was just for starters. Pearl McGregor had plans, big plans, for the money she’d make from selling the treasures in her box, stuff like a condo, a better car, and of course, more shoes than that Jaini Haskell.

She took a deep breath to steady herself for her favorite ritual. First she arranged an arc of feathers on the floor. Then she lit a scented candle (patchouli, of course), and after a bit of chanting, she raised the treasure box’s lid. Her fingers whispered over its contents—scraps of paper covered with bits of song lyrics, smudged charcoal sketches of the members of Calliope, a ragged book of essays by the French surrealist André Breton, two T-shirts worn at Calliope’s infamous Chicago concert, a box of photographs, and two dozen slender notebooks with blue paper covers. 

The notebooks would be the last things Pearl sold, after a big marketing buildup, of course. By that time, anticipation among the Calliope culties would be impossible for social media to ignore. And that would guarantee the highest auction prices ever fetched for rock memorabilia. 

The patchouli in the candles made Pearl’s eyes water but what else could you expect from the Chinese garbage sold at the Dollar Saver store. Fortunately, this was the last time she needed to perform the ritual. The box’s contents were now ready for sale.

“It’s been a long time,” she said. “Seven years. It’s a long time to be ‘missing, presumed dead,’ Timmen.” She grinned. She enjoyed her conversations with Timmen so much more now that he was missing-presumed-dead. “And the first things I’m putting up for sale are your pictures.”

After Pearl put on gloves, she used her fingertips to extract a plastic box of photos from the rest of the memorabilia. The two oldest pictures she had were of Timmen as a baby propped up in his mother’s lap. Then there were family holiday photos, first-day-of-school pictures, and a couple of vacation sequences taken on what looked like Cape Cod. In other words, it was a normal well-documented life up to the age of thirteen when that accident altered the track of Timmen Eldritch’s life forever.

She flipped through the earliest pictures quickly. They were of marginal interest, and she needed more than they were worth. Then she reached the concert photo section.

Using a polishing cloth, Pearl selected a hazy image of Timmen in motion during one of his trances on stage in Toronto. It was from the early days of Calliope, just before Smugs joined the band. “Oh Timmen, if only you knew that you’d be worth so much more dead or alive,” Pearl said. “Or at least missing. Same difference.”

She slid the picture’s cardboard backing out of the frame so she could examine everything closely. The cardboard was disintegrating but she’d been warned about making any substitutions. “Buyers want authenticity in all details,” she parroted.

Gently, very gently, Pearl lifted the photo from the backing before she realized the cardboard couldn’t hold itself together any more. “No—no no no no,” she moaned. “You can’t do this. Not now.”

But it was too late

“Aarrgh! Now what am I going to do? Oh gawd.” Pearl creaked to her feet, cupping the photo and flakes of cardboard in her hands. “Oooh, what am I going to do? What am I going to do?” she wailed as she set the mess on her kitchen counter accompanied by a little puff of dust. 

That’s when she saw it, a slip of paper, creased in half along its length, and covered in line after line of tiny letters. “What the hell?”

She brushed some of the flaking cardboard away and read: “Hi Pearl—I know it was you.”

Pearl shrieked, flicked the paper out of her hand, and then watched as it sailed into the narrow space between the wall and the back of the ancient refrigerator in Mrs. Coburn’s kitchen. “Oh boy,” she breathed.

She circled in place, scanning the apartment with a close eye. Surely she would have noticed something amiss if someone had broken in—a glass in the wrong place, a moved magazine, a drawer left ajar. But there was nothing, nothing at all. Pearl swallowed her panic, trying to think of who could have done this.

“Okay, right, think Pearl, think. You’ve never taken those pictures apart before so someone—anyone—could have put that paper in there at any time, even before…even before. Gawd damn.” She squeezed her eyes shut, willing herself to remember back to when she’d originally filled the box. Could the note have been written by Timmen, playing one last twisted trick on her before he disappeared? It would be just like him.

“Oh gawd, what else did he write? Oh gawd oh gawd oh gawd.” Pearl forced her fingers into the space between the fridge and wall, pushing with all her might. The gap did widen but not enough. She peered deep into the shadow, inhaling a vast amount of dust in the process. The sneeze that followed hurt.

“Damn. Whew.” She steadied herself against the sink, wiping her face with a paper towel while listening for the familiar tap-thump-tap of her landlady, Mrs. Coburn. Technically, it was Pearl’s apartment for another three hours but Mrs. Coburn did not possess what anyone would call a patient nature. She’d made it quite plain that she’d look kindly on the early departure of her tenant.

Fortunately, the apartment house was quiet.

“Flashlight, flashlight,” Pearl muttered, yanking her phone from her sweatshirt pocket. Its beam was a bit wobbly but it was enough to see the wisp of paper coyly cuddled in the coils of the fridge. It was just out of reach, of course.

“Tongs, tongs.” Pearl rifled through the kitchen drawers looking for the wooden tongs she used to retrieve bagels from the toaster. Tongs in hand, she jammed her arm into the narrow space behind the refrigerator, scratching her wrist and breaking a nail in the process.

“Come on,” she panted as she pushed harder. “Come to Mama.”

And then she had it, just barely. But barely had always counted enough for Pearl. The triumphant arm that emerged was filthy, and she’d have to redo her manicure. But she had the errant slip of paper, and that had been the whole point of the exercise.

She smoothed it out carefully on the counter, turned on the light, and then read: Hi Pearl— I know it’s you. I know what you stole when you thought I wasn’t looking. You’re going to sell it, aren’t you? Make a profit off of the band, eh? Just remember—you may not see me but I will be watching, and I will know what you sell and where. And then, when you think you’ve gotten away with it, I’ll expose you for the thief you are.

“Hmph, who the hell do you think you are?” Pearl huffed. She read and re-read the words, trying to figure out who had written them. The letters were minuscule so she was pretty sure it wasn’t Timmen. She’d copied his handwriting enough to know that. And it wasn’t Calliope’s drummer either. Oliver had never liked her but Oliver was dead so it didn’t matter if it was him.

In fact, Pearl had flown out to California on an overdrawn bank account just to make sure Oliver was no longer among the living. It still bugged her that no one had paid her any attention at the funeral, not even Allison Owen. She could have at least said hello. Especially after all Pearl had done for her.

She examined the note as she thought about Allison, or Alli-O as she was known during her short-lived television career. Calliope had been a four-member band. There was Timmen Eldritch, of course, the lead singer and songwriter. Oliver Quigley played drums and everything else percussive. Nicholas Kelvey—silent Nick—played bass and just about anything else with strings. And then there was Smugs Gallagher on lead or rhythm guitar as needed. 

With Oliver being dead and Timmen missing for almost seven years, that left only Nick and Smugs. She doubted the note was written by Nick. He’d hermited himself away on a farm in Maine years ago, and actively discouraged any discussion of Calliope. Rumor had it that he had become quite proficient with a slingshot which he used freely on anyone foolish enough to trespass on his farm. Several Calliope culties had bruises to prove it.

Besides, Nick had big scrawly handwriting.

So that left Smugs, the last man to join the band. He’d been good-looking in a smarmy kind of way back in the day. And he had talent, no question about that. He and Timmen had gone to the same college, and dropped out together. Once Smugs showed up, he and Timmen became the core of Calliope.

When Pearl waved at him during Oliver’s funeral, Smugs had looked right through her. She’d lost track of him since then but she had no doubt he’d turn up when it came time to declare Timmen officially dead. And Pearl knew he was definitely capable of putting that note in the picture frame. But to what end? Smugs never did anything that didn’t have a dollar sign attached to it.

At that moment, Pearl’s musings were interrupted by the sound of Mrs. Coburn unlocking the back door to the house. She jumped to attention, folded the paper in her wallet, snuffed out her ritual candle then tumbled the pictures into her treasure box. She reached the apartment door just before her landlady knocked.

“Mrs. Coburn, hello,” she said, carefully blocking the landlady’s view. “I’m just packing up some last bits then I’m going to do a final vacuuming. I should have the keys to you in an hour.”

The older woman pruned up her face until all of its wrinkles came together in a tight circle around her mouth. “Cutting it kind of close, aren’t you Pearl? I have another tenant ready to move in, you know.”

“I’m sure you do, Mrs. Coburn. A place like this would never stay empty for long” Pearl said.

“Yes, well, just make sure it’s good and clean,” the old woman snapped.

“I’ll leave it just like I found it, you can be sure of that.”

Mrs. Coburn’s shaggy white eyebrows slowly rose to the midpoint of the woman’s forehead as she tried to make out exactly what Pearl meant. But then they fell back to their normal position when she realized that arguing would only delay the girl’s leaving. “Hmph, see that you do.” 

As soon as the landlady shuffled off, Pearl snapped on the vacuum cleaner before doing a last reconnaissance of the apartment. It was still running when she locked the door behind her.

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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