Chapter 11 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.

---

“How long do you intend to keep me here, girlie?” Lester Miller said as he blew Officer Osawa a kiss. Her grip on his elbow tightened a bit as she steered him toward one of the two cells in the Carding police station.

“Huh? Baby Cop, how long?” He leered at her chest. “Will we have time to get to know one another better? Huh?”

Evan Eakins stood by the open cell door, keys in hand. “I thought this would be a good choice for our guest,” he said.

Jennifer’s eyes flicked toward the very large and very inert form flowing over the edges of a cot in the corner. The form burped, and Miller wrinkled his nose. “Oh come on, you’re not going to lock me up with the town drunk, are you?” He bent his head toward the empty cell, the other one of two in Carding’s police station. “What’s wrong with that one?”

“Town drunk?” Evan said. “Actually, we don’t know who he is yet. No I.D. and he fell asleep as soon as he got to the cot. He might be perfectly benign or…”

“…he could be a homicidal maniac,” Jennifer finished. “And that empty cell is reserved for women.”

“But there’s no one in there now.” Miller’s voice rose.

“Hmm, that’s correct. But you never know. The day isn’t over yet,” Evan said as he swung the door shut behind Miller with a satisfying clatter. The large, supine form burped again, more musically this time.

“Oh, come on honey,” Miller chirped at Jennifer, “do me a favor here, okay? I know we got off on the wrong foot. How about I give you an exclusive interview on my show? I’m sure my audience will love to hear how you manhandled me. Come on, please say yes.”

Suddenly, the large form sneezed and farted at the same time, making Miller squeal for mercy and air freshener. Jennifer smiled as she followed Evan out the door. “No, no, you can’t do this to me.” Miller’s squeal rose in pitch. “And where’s my phone? I get to call a lawyer, you know.”

“All in good time,” Jennifer said. “All in good time.”

Carding’s dynamic duo in blue rolled their eyes at one another over the front desk. “How long is the chief planning to let him stew?” she asked quietly. “And what’s going on at the library?” She opened a large envelope, slid Miller’s phone inside, and followed it with the appropriate paperwork.

Evan slid his eyes toward the cells then pulled out his phone to text her. “They think the break-in was staged,” he typed. “Not sure who or why yet.”

Jennifer nodded. “Okay. I’d better get back out there. Do you need anything from me before I go?”

Evan had just opened his mouth to reply when Jaini Haskell—garish purple phone, white boots, and all—appeared in their doorway. She looked, blinked, and then hit record on her phone. “Ahem, ahem. Okay, okay, here we go. Ahem—the Carding police station, such as it is, comes straight out of a 1950s sitcom, complete with,” she hesitated as she scanned the station’s four walls. “Hey, don’t you people have anything quaint in here? I need a hook. You know, something to set the scene, provide local color, something that will draw my listeners in.” Then she examined Evan more closely. “Well, you might do. Yes, you might do very well.”

By this time, Jennifer and Evan had worked together for almost a year, long enough for Jennifer to know that her friend and colleague possessed a remarkably equable temperament. So his outburst of anger caught her completely off-guard.

“Out!” Evan roared, pointing at the exit door. 

But Jaini didn’t pay him any attention. Instead she pushed her phone in Evan’s face, an action accompanied by rapid-fire clicking.

“Get out!” Evan roared again. He put his hand on her phone to block the camera.

“Hey, come on. What’s the deal? You’re cute in a cop-ee kind of way,” Jaini said. “I can get you all sorts of female attention. Or male, if that’s more your thing.”

“Get out!”

Jaini took a step back, adjusted her phone, and hit record. “Well, dear listeners, it seems that the police in Carding are just as unfriendly as the people who live here. Not such a good look for Vermont, now, is it? I’ve been all over New England, and I’ve never encountered such rudeness.”

Spotting the door to the cells, she skipped out of Evan’s reach to dart inside. “I’m in the holding cell area,” she said breathlessly. “So who—or what—are we keeping in here? Oooh, I do believe it’s Miller time.” She started snapping pictures.

“Hey, you can’t do that,” Lester yelled. “This is an invasion of privacy. Hey, cops, get her out of here.”

Jaini giggled. “Ooh, my my my. You do look nice behind bars, Lester Miller. It’s very slimming.” She eyeballed him with raised eyebrows and and sneer. “Not that you need slimming.”

As Lester crossed his arms over his chest, Jaini noticed they were hairless. Or maybe the hair was too fine to see. Behind her, she heard the two cops opening and closing doors. They would force her out soon. She took a lot of pride in the number of times she’d been thrown out of police stations. They were considered sweet spots in her podcasts. She stepped closer to the cell door while she still could.

“You put on quite a show back in that grocery store,” she said. “I got the whole thing. You’re trending online as we speak.”

Lester straightened up, tilting his chin just far enough to look down his nose at her. “You are such a pretender,” he said.

“Oh really?”

“Yeah, really,” Lester said. Suddenly a net dropped over Jaini. “Ah, I see your ride has arrived.”

Jaini shrieked. She hated surprises. “Get off of me,” she yelled. “Get off off off me.”

“I told you to get out and I meant it,” Evan said. He headed toward the exit, pulling Jaini behind him.

“Oh please take a picture,” Miller begged. “Pretty please.”

Evan didn’t pause. He knew the net now guiding White Boots out of the building wouldn’t hold for long because it was generally used to capture injured birds, not angry humans. But he figured it would hold long enough.

Jennifer was just outside the police station door with a camera at the ready, and next to her stood Faye Bennett with her phone to her face. “Hey, hey, no you don’t.” Jaini waved her hands but they didn’t get very far. “Stop it.” She dug in her heels, and Evan had to stop so the net wouldn’t tear.

Faye turned around to record the crowd of Calliope culties growing on the sidewalk behind her. “This is better than a circus,” she said to Jennifer.

“Hmph, this is a circus.”

“You’re right.” Faye dropped her camera. “Why am I taking pictures of the lemmings? There’s probably not an original thought among the lot of them.” She scanned the crowd, and decided not to waste any more time on them. “See ya, Jen.”

Faye had just stepped onto the green when a woman carrying groceries moved toward her. “Can you tell me what’s going on over there?” she asked as she jutted her chin toward the police station.

“Oh, it’s one of those Calliope vermin,” Faye said. “I understand the one they’re trying to get out of there has a podcast called New England Mysteries or something like that.”

“Vermin?” Pearl asked, careful to keep her face angled away from Faye. She didn’t think anyone would recognize her but caution had become a way of life for her. She wondered if the center of the hubbub could be Jaini Haskell. They had never been close but their paths had intersected once or twice at the Calliope farmhouse.

“Vermin, yeah, that’s what we call the band’s followers around here,” Faye said. “They’re a pain in the neck.”

“Hmph, I would think people would appreciate the money they bring to town,” Pearl said. 

“Money? What money? I was just in the Coop where a bunch of them were stealing beer, and anything else that wasn’t nailed down. By tonight, the police will be filling our two jail cells with the ones they find trying to sleep and eat and relieve themselves on our green.” Faye warmed to her subject. “They’re a tribe of losers and thieves.” She pocketed her phone. “And the sooner they move on, the better.”

As Faye kicked off from the sidewalk, Pearl edged closer to the nearest sycamore, one of the trees that shaded the green in summer. So she never saw Faye slide behind a pickup in order to take more pictures of the crowd, paying particular attention to Pearl. It struck her as strange that the woman with the groceries was offended by Faye’s use of the word vermin. Why?

For her part, Pearl made an effort to unruffle her feathers after her encounter with the teenager. Who did that little chit think she was, dismissing Calliope’s fans as just so much vermin? She was just a kid, only seventeen or eighteen, right? What did she know?

Then Pearl caught herself in mid-fume, and laughed. Seventeen or eighteen, that’s how old she was when she met Timmen Eldritch. That’s how old she was when he kissed her. A lot can happen at that time of life.

Well, actually, now that she thought about it, the kiss was no big deal. It was more like a damp lip impression on her cheek. In fact, Timmen had never kissed her on the lips, though not for lack of trying on Pearl’s part. Funny, for the longest time, she thought he had kissed her. Such was the power of self-delusion. People would be surprised to know that, in spite of his reputation as a sexual legend, Timmen Eldritch was a remarkably chaste individual.

“He was probably a peeping Tom,” Pearl thought. “Wouldn’t be surprised at all if he watched me and Smugs when we got together.

She shivered, a chill running down her arm. “Oh Jeez, the ice cream,” she muttered, hoisting her bags higher. Just as she turned to go, the commotion at the police station kicked into a higher gear. And then there she was, resplendent in hair streaked with blue, too-tight pants, and a pair of mud-spattered white boots. It was little Jaini Haskell in the flesh.

Pearl eased behind the tree again, and took careful note of the podcaster. Jaini had had no real experience with Calliope. None of the band members favored young teens except for Timmen, and he just played with them like a cat with a mouse. “The young ones only get you into trouble,” Calliope’s drummer, Oliver Quigley, used to say. “And they really don’t know what they’re doing in bed. I like women who can teach me something.”

In spite of her caution, Pearl leaned forward to catch any stray words uttered by either of the cops or Jaini. But there was nothing of any use. Once he got Jaini completely out of the station, Evan lifted the net off of the podcaster, leaving her surprised that she was free. Pearl choked off a laugh. She’d seen that type of net once before, and back then, it was in the hands of a dog catcher. 

Now it was the cop’s turn to gesture, and it was easy enough for everyone watching to interpret his vehement sign language. Jaini was being warned off, and the culties couldn’t get enough, taking pictures and video as fast as they could. Pearl took advantage of the distraction to scoot across the street toward the entrance to her new apartment, maneuvering her phone out of her pocket with two fingers. 

“Hey Gusto, it’s Pearl. I think you’d better call me. Jaini Haskell is here in Carding. Things may move faster than we thought.”

Still hidden by the pickup, Faye watched the grocery woman disappear into the back of the dentist’s office.

“Curiouser and curiouser,” she murmured. On a hunch, she did a search on her phone for a website dedicated to Calliope with pictures taken in Carding. The number of images was sparse in spite of the notoriety of the band at the time. Faye recognized places more than people—the library, the bandstand on the green, the post office before it was painted gray, the bridge over the Crow’s Head Falls, and what she assumed was the farmhouse where Calliope once lived. 

Funny, Faye thought, I can’t remember ever seeing that house. She knew it was close to the Falls bridge, and imagined it must be a moldy wreck by now. 

Might be interesting to take a look, she told herself. Maybe Suzanna would go with me. She thought about that for a moment. Suzanna’s mother, Allison Owen, had fallen in with Calliope when she was just about Faye’s age, with disastrous consequences. So Suzanna was understandably touchy about the subject.

In all the years they’d been friends, Faye needed only one hand to count the number of times Suzanna had talked about her mother. She’d chatter away about her Carding family—her Uncle Ted and his wife Paula, and her grandfather Robert—and it was obvious how much she cared about them. In fact, it was safe to say that she idolized her grandfather. He was the reason why Suzanna skied. Heck, Robert Owen was the reason why just about everyone in Carding skied. 

Robert was doing poorly now, and Suzanna spent every minute she could with him, as if trying to absorb the elderly man’s essence before he died. 

And it’s been too long since I’ve visited him, Faye thought. Shame on me. She hit speed dial for her mother.

“Hey Faye, where are you?” Diana asked when she answered the phone. Faye heard the clatter of pots in the background. It was cleanup time in the Crow Town Bakery.

“On the green watching the cultie action. People seem to think that they’re such a colorful bunch but I think they’re kinda sad, actually.”

“Sad? How so?”

“Well, it’s been…what? Almost ten years since Calliope blew up, and seven years since that lead singer disappeared or died or whatever he did. The band didn’t record that many albums, and yet there’s still people who are obsessed with the whole Calliope/Timmen Eldritch thing,” Faye said. “It just strikes me as kinda sad and pathetic. I mean, isn’t there more to life than attachment to a band that nobody really understood at the time anyway?”

“Maybe that’s why people are attached,” Diana said. “They didn’t understand it, and they’re trying to figure it out. But I see your point. So are you headed home or somewhere else?”

“I’m going over to Suzanna’s to check on our skiing equipment one more time. And check on her grandfather. I haven’t talked to Mr. Owen in a while.” Faye sighed. “He’s such a good guy.”

Diana smiled. “Yes he is. Give Robert my love, won’t you?”

---

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