Chapter 15 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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Walking across a Vermont field in March is an experience fraught with adventure. In all of the year, it’s the month with the most profound transitions. The earth wrinkles up as it slowly freezes during the first weeks of cold until you’d swear you were walking on cobblestones. But now, with the trees still bare of leaves and the sun flexing its springtime muscles, that same earth relaxes as light caresses its cheeks, warming just enough of its surface to create a thin layer of slick mud on top of the still-frozen stuff.

Like I said, walking across a Vermont field in March is an experience fraught with adventure. That’s why our three walkers—Andy, Matt, and Amos—watched where they stepped because ice lurked in the shadowy places while mud bloomed in the sun.

Needless to say, it was slow going.

“Whoa! Oof!” Matt, walking in the middle, windmilled his arms to keep his balance. “I didn’t see that one. Almost did the splits for the first time in my life. Thanks, Amos.” The older man had grabbed Matt’s elbow just in time.

“I am always glad when we get through March,” Amos said. “It’s a treacherous month.”

“I would bet that that’s a sentiment shared by the whole state of Vermont,” Andy said. He was in the lead. “Now, the so-called Calliope house is somewhere in the middle of those staghorn sumacs just ahead. If you look close, you can just spot the roofline here and there.” He swept his hand to the right. “And if memory serves, the spring is off to our left.”

They veered off their straight path, Andy swinging his head back and forth in search of the circular stone wall built years ago to protect the spring. “It should be just about here.” He stopped to carefully survey the lumps and bumps of tufted grass and last year’s goldenrod. “Amos,” he called, “I am right, aren’t I? Or did I get turned around.”

“No, no, this about where I remember it.”

“Does this part of the field always flood like this?” Matt asked, sweeping his hand back and forth over shallow pools of water standing in the shadows in front of them. A thin, almost transparent layer of frosted ice covered each pool like a lid on a jar. “We used to call that crackle ice when I was a kid because of the way it crunches when you step on it.”

The two older men held their silence for a few moments longer as they searched for the wall that encircled the spring. Andy finally stopped to stare at a single rock just visible in the brown grass. “There,” he said, pointing. “I think that might be it. Slide your feet along as you go. It’s real boggy underfoot.”

They moved along like slow-motion ice skaters, toeing their way forward. “Look over there,” Matt said, his hand tracing a line from the house hidden in the trees to the rock. “Something heavy was driven through here.”

He squatted down to examine the track, an action that Andy and Amos appreciated because squatting had not been on their movement playlist for a long time. Getting down to the ground wasn’t so bad. It was the return to a standing position that was difficult.

“This must have happened before the ground froze last year,” Matt continued. “I can see bits of goldenrod flowers in the track, and that flower’s always gone by Halloween.”

“I think you’re right,” Andy said as he moved toward the house a few steps. “It’s a pretty rugged tire tread so I would guess it was a tractor that was down here.”

“Here! Come here,” Amos yelled, waving his hands over his head. “Come see this.”

The trio stood in stunned silence as they took in Amos’s discovery. The rock circle that had once enclosed the spring had been demolished, its remains tumbled into what remained of the spring itself. They clearly saw the rest of the tractor’s work in a low earthen dam curving back from the ruined spring toward the Calliope house. A corner of the building’s roof was clearly visible through a break in the sumac jungle.

“Well, now we know how the field got flooded,” Matt said.

“But we don’t know why,” Andy said. “Why would someone build what’s essentially a moat around an abandoned house? Is it to keep people out?”

“Or in?” Matt said. “The further we dig into this Calliope business, the stranger and more tangled it becomes.”

He turned toward his companions. “Isn’t there a way to drive up to the house? I can’t see the band members schlepping their instruments and furniture and food across this field, can you?”

“Well, there is something like a cart track that cuts through the woods from the pull-off by the Crow’s Head bridge. It comes down through the woods on the other side of the house,” Andy said. “As far as I know, it was abandoned at the same time as the house. It’s quite overgrown, I imagine, but you could get in that way in some sort of an all-terrain vehicle.”

A sharp crack ripped through the silence, and all three men flinched. “What was that?” Amos whispered.

“I don’t think it was a gun,” Andy said.

“It sounded like the sort of slap noise you get from a screen door that shuts with a spring,” Matt said.

Then they heard an engine start. “I don’t know about you fellas but I’d feel better if we were in that tree-line over there,” Andy said. “I vote we approach the house from that direction.” He pulled his phone from his pocket to see if he could get any reception. In and around Carding, you never knew. “Ah, two bars. I’m calling the police. We have no idea what we’re headed into.”

Still on duty at the station, Evan patched Andy through to the chief of police. “Now don’t you do anything until I get there,” Charlet said. “Things are getting more weird around here by the minute, and I don’t want to lose any sane people. You hear?”

“Understood,” Andy said. Then he turned to the others. “Let’s get to those trees and wait. Charlet should be here in under ten.”

The three of them set off as quickly as mud, water, and ice would allow then stopped under the protection of the trees. The enforced pause gave them a chance to examine the infamous house in detail.

“How many years has it been since Calliope lived here?” Matt asked.

“Well, I know someone was back and forth from here for a couple of years after the band broke up,” Amos said. “Or at least I assumed that someone was here because there were lights on once in a while. I figured it was local kids messing around.”

“Lights?” Andy asked. “Were they like flashlights in the windows or candles maybe?”

Amos stared at his friend. “Huh, I never thought about that before. It was regular house lights, and I was so used to seeing them here when folks were living in the house, I never stopped to think that someone had to be paying for the electricity in order for that to be so.”

“Can you remember the last time you saw them?” Matt asked.

Amos thought about that for a minute then he asked: “Andy, how many years have we been doing the holiday tree trimming parties?”

“Seven. This year will be the eighth.”

“The last time I saw lights over here was the first year of that party,” Amos said. “I remember noticing them when I was locking up after everyone left my house.”

They jumped when a police siren announced Charlet Davenport’s arrival. “Let’s go,” Matt said. “I don’t know about you but my list of questions just keeps getting longer and longer, and I’d like some answers for a change.”

They found Charlet banging on the front door, loudly demanding to be let in. She nodded at the trio as she reached for the door knob. “Hello,” she bellowed. “This is Charlet Davenport, Carding’s chief of police. I’m inviting myself in.”

The interior of the house was all in shadow except for the low light struggling through the open door. Charlet turned on her flashlight. Matt and Andy lit up their phones. Amos flipped on the light switch.

“What in the hell is this?” Charlet muttered. The whole first floor was wide open except for a half dozen lally columns supporting the carrying beams for the second floor. The walls that had once separated the kitchen from the living room and a bedroom had been crudely cut away. All of the windows were covered by an assortment of boards, probably from the destroyed walls. The floor was bare of rug and carpet. 

The place smelled of wet paint, a fact neatly explained by the colorful canvases covering a long makeshift table of plywood and sawhorses. Each painting featured a dragon, some red, some blue, some fierce, some cowering in fear or wretched with grief. Matt touched a finger to the red lips of an open-mouthed beast. “It’s still tacky to the touch,” he said, “so they haven’t been sitting here that long. Acrylic paint dries fast.” He pointed to a dishpan full of plastic tubes.

Andy pointed at one painting’s lower right hand corner. “Look at the signature.”

“Timmen Eldritch,” Charlet said. “What in the hell is going on here?”

A crunch of tires in the front yard stirred them all. Charlet sprinted for the front door, Matt close behind her. An oversized black pickup with a cap was making a tight turn at speed. Charlet ran toward it, shouting for the driver to stop. But he gunned the engine, barely missed a tree, skidded in the mud, and then rocked side to side out of sight. But not before Matt snapped a picture of the truck’s license plate.

“Gotcha,” he said, handing his phone to Charlet who was already calling the state police for backup.

Figuring he wasn’t needed in the yard, Andy turned back into the house. “Come take a look at this,” Amos said beckoning Andy toward the back wall of what had once been the kitchen. Completed canvases, five deep, leaned against the doorless cabinets.

The painting at the front of each pile was of an open-mouthed dragon, its red tongue reaching out toward the viewer. As Andy watched, Amos flipped through the remaining paintings in the closest stack, each of them different from the others.

“This is some sort of a production line, a factory,” Andy said.

“Yep. The question is—who’s doing them? Is Eldritch still alive, and making money by selling copies of the paintings he made when Calliope was still together? Or are these all copies by someone else?” Amos asked. He pointed to the far end of the table. “There’s all kinds of packing material down there, boxes and paper and tape, as well as a pile of labels. Someone’s sending this stuff all over the country.”

Andy glanced at the stairway leading to the second floor. “Shall we check up there?”

“I thought you would never ask.”

The stairs creaked and snapped as they ascended. Amos found another light switch, and they stood together staring at an array of computers, monitors, printers, and a projector. Andy turned the projector on, and a line drawing of the red-mouthed dragon appeared on the wall. 

“Whoever is doing this would not need Eldritch,” Andy said, getting close enough to examine the drawing’s details. “Look, there are slides here where you can place a canvas, turn on the projector, and trace the image. Then all you have to do is color  in the spaces. I imagine you’d get pretty good at it after a while.”

“Andy?” Charlet called from downstairs. “Are you two up there?”

“Yes. Come up. You’ve got to see this. Someone’s been churning out copies of Timmen Eldritch’s art.”

Matt appeared first. “Huh, just like downstairs,” he said, pointing to the boarded-up windows.

“What the hell?” Charlet muttered. 

Andy pointed at the projector and the line drawing of the dragon on the wall. “This is how they’re making multiples. Amos found a stack of labels downstairs with addresses to places all over the country. It’s a con, a fraud. Whoever is behind this has a vested interest in keeping Calliope’s fans believing Timmen Eldritch is still alive. And conspiracy theories are the internet’s bread and butter so I’d say it’s been pretty easy to fool a lot of people.”

“So this is why the vermin keep coming back to Carding. Somebody has a vested interest in keeping them stirred up,” Charlet said. “And those podcast posers, you have to wonder if they are part of this.” She shook her head. “This is above my pay grade, thank goodness. Keeping the vermin under control is hard enough. The attorney general’s office is gonna love this one.”

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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