Chapter 4 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 “Timmen’s 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.
“Oh great. Mud.” Jaini slowly maneuvered her camper around the puddles left by last night’s rain, looking for a parking spot where she could get out without dirtying her platform shoes. “This can’t be right,” she said aloud. Jaini expressed every one of her thoughts aloud. “But this is where the guy at the gas station said to park.”
Jaini lowered her window to peek at the ground but quickly pulled back when a yellow Jeep went blaring by. “Oh gawd, what am I going to do?” she squeaked. She checked her mirrors as well as her backup camera. The only option she had in the tight space was backing into a puddle large enough to accommodate an incoming tide.
Which she did.
Her hands shook as she turned off the motor. “Well, I guess it’s going to be mud and water,” she said. “But that will add a note of authenticity to the podcast, right?” She reached for her phone and hit record. “Ahem, ahem…yes, well, here we go. Deep breath, Jaini, deep breath. Now begin. Ahem, ahem—Dark trees block the sun even though it’s still early afternoon,” she said in her most ominous voice.
“No, no, that’s not right. Replay, replay. Begin again. Ahem, ahem—Dark trees block the sun even though it’s early in the afternoon,” she repeated, her tone lighter this time. “No, no, no.” She laid her forehead on the steering wheel. “Come on, Jaini, what tone do you want here?” Talking to herself had become her norm since the start of her Mysteries of New England podcast.
She peered up at the sky, now a brilliant blue unbroken by cloud. “Well, that’s my problem, isn’t it? The weather is all wrong. I need gloom to record gloom.” She glared at the bare trees and bushes, still bearing the brown and gray tones of winter.
“Okay, what to do? What to do?” She sighed again. “Well, there is one thing I cannot do and that’s stay in this camper.”
Jaini tottered toward the rear of her home-on-wheels. As she steadied herself on her platform heels, she took a long look out the window toward the woods that swooped downhill away from the road. There was no sign of a path. No sign of a trail. Nothing but dead grass and bedraggled snowbanks.
There was no doubt about it, her social media friends had been right. She was lost and GPS didn’t work in Carding. Jaini had no idea if she was even close to the house where Calliope had lived while they recorded their last—and fatal—album.
“I can’t explain the GPS thing,” Dart-034, one of her FaceBook friends, had explained to her. “No one else seems to get it either. The people in town have WiFi. It’s not great but it does the job well enough. They have cell service. Again, not great but it works. But GPS just doesn’t play well there. You just might have to stop and ask directions from a human being. I wish you luck with that. I’ve heard the townies enjoy sending people-from-away all over hell and back if they’re looking for the old Calliope place.”
“I can talk to people just fine,” Jaini said.
“Right,” Dart-034 replied. “Good luck with that.”
With a grunt, Jaini pushed aside the curtain that hid her carefully curated shoe collection to see if she had any country-style footware. She didn’t own anything like the clodding boots she’d seen on every Vermonter’s feet since she’d arrived from Boston. But she must have something she could use. Really, the way the locals dressed made them look like reality show refugees who get dropped in the wilderness and end up eating crickets. It was downright depressing.
Jaini treated her shoe closet like a museum. She’s never admit it out loud except to herself but it really was her happy place. Every pair had been chosen with care, and each represented a significant event in her life. There were the black knee-high, narrow calf boots (excruciating to wear but sexy with the right dress) that had attracted boyfriend number one. Her bright pink sandals were purchased during a wild spring break in Miami that she never talked about. She didn’t wear her pale fawn Uggs slippers except in her camper because they were too hard to keep clean. But they were part of the collection because she’d found them on sale in Chicago on the same day she met boyfriend number two. And her high-top Doc Martens in muted purple had been a big hit at the Beanpot Awards when she’d won “Best New True Crime Podcast by a woman over 35.”
There was no way any of them would survive contact with mud. But then, way down in the lowest corner of the closet, Jaini spotted the white rain boots that her friend Audrey had given her during a visit to Oregon. She turned them over to see if there was a brand name on the sole but was not surprised to find there wasn’t because Audrey bought shoes anywhere she found them on sale. No standards, that woman. But needs must, and rain boots, no matter the color, would work in mud.
Rat-a-tat-tat. “Hello? Is anyone in there? You can’t park here.” It was a woman’s voice, the kind that was used to being obeyed. Jaini jumped so hard, she hit her head on the corner of her bed.
Bang, bang, bang. “Is anybody here? Don’t make me tow this thing.” The driver’s door popped open, and an older woman in a uniform of blue and gray stuck her head in the camper. “Hey, didn’t you hear me? You can’t park here. The ass of this thing is hanging out in the road, and you’re blocking traffic.”
A loud, demanding horn blared from somewhere nearby, and the woman’s head swiveled in that direction. “Yeah, yeah, keep your shirt on, Gideon. I’m riling her. Can’t you see the license plate? Massachusetts, hardly from around here. How would she know you’re delivering firewood today?” The woman swung her piercing brown eyes back at Jaini. “You’ve got one minute to get out of here before I let Gideon push you out of the way.”
Jaini scrambled forward on her hands and knees, white boots in hand. “Sorry, I was looking for Corvus Lane, and the guy who gave me directions told me to park on the south side of this bridge.”
Charlet Davenport, Carding’s longtime chief of police, hesitated for just a beat before she answered. “Well, you got that wrong. The south side is over there,” she pointed, “and you had better tuck this thing way under those trees, and off this road. I’m going to stop traffic so you can get out, but be quick about it. And no, you can’t park there overnight, okay? If you do, I’ll be back here, and I won’t be friendly like I am now.”
Charlet stepped into the road, her hands raised in the universal signal to stop. “I can only give you a couple of minutes. Don’t waste them.”
“Yes, yes, thank you.” Jaini fell into the driver’s seat, fumbled for the start button, and then eased the camper into drive. At Charlet’s nod, she lumbered out of the puddle and onto the road.
“Drive just past the bridge until you see a wide turnoff. Park there,” Charlet said as she watched Jaini trundle off. Then she waved the clots of cars and trucks onward on their journeys. “Come on, show’s over folks. Come on.”
David Tarkiainen was the last car to ease past Charlet. “What was that all about?” he asked as he lowered his window. “Somebody lost?”
“Yeah,” Charlet said, “some woman looking for Corvus Lane.”
David’s chin jerked up. “Oh really?”
“Yeah, oh really,” Charlet said as she leaned on David’s car. The two of them raised their eyebrows in unison. “It’s starting already. Whatever it is you’ve been working on, you’d better get on with it. I have a hunch we’re going to be inundated with this vermin all the way up to Eldritch’s disappearance day.”
“Yeah, I’m on it, Charlet.” David nodded and raised a hand as he drove off. It had indeed started already, the hunt for the house and recording studio that Timmen Eldritch bought for Calliope, the place where he wrote his most famous songs. The last place he called home before he disappeared.
“Ready? Right,” David whispered as he turned his car toward the library. “Not even close.”
While it’s true that lots of people are averse to conflict, it is fair to say that Jaini Haskell is more averse than most, especially if that conflict is in person. That’s why her breath came so quick and her hands twitched as she moved her camper. The combination of the cop’s raised voice, the blaring truck horns, and the glares from the folks who’d had to stop while she moved had shaken her up. It took several deep breathing cycles—in, out, count to seven, in, out, count to seven—before she felt ready to look at the boots lying on the floor by her feet.
She eyed them with distaste. What was Audrey thinking when she bought them? Their presence added to Jaini’s agitation, and she thought about giving up and just getting out of town. But she’d driven all the way from Boston to very-small-town Vermont to get the Calliope story for her podcast so she couldn’t stop now. It was going to be white boots or nothing.
At least they weren’t brown Vermont-ee things.
She took a long moment to sniff the air before she fully opened the camper’s door, a habit she’d adopted after a rather skunky encounter in Maine. But there was nothing but a damp woodsy smell. “Okay then, a-trekking we will go,” Jaini said as she grabbed her purple phone and bright pink jacket. She spotted faint traces of a narrow road wandering off into the woods. “This must be what the guy at the garage had meant by cart path,” she said.
Feeling a bit like Dorothy in Oz, Jaini set off, one hesitant step at a time, holding her phone flat in front of her mouth.
“Now we begin. Ahem, ahem—The crystallized snow crunches underfoot as I follow the remains of an abandoned road.” Jaini paused her recording. “Is road the right word here? Or should I call it a track? A rutted way or… Ooh, no. Gawd, get off of me. Get off. Get off.”
Jaini danced away from an aged patch of seedy burdock but it was too late. Three of the round heads had already Velcroed themselves to her sleeve. “Get off me.” She grabbed at them which, of course, made everything worse because the orbs fell apart in her hand, hooking themselves into everything they touched.
She swung around, shaking her hands only to step into another burdock that embellished her with a crown of brown seeds. Jaini swatted at them but it was no use. Burdocks are tough plants, impervious to human wants or needs. They’re designed to hitch a ride on everything that passes by—squirrels, deer, coyotes, and house cats as well as the clothing of struggling true crime podcasters. The more Jaini danced, the more the burdock embedded themselves in her clothes.
Across the field from Jaini, Edie Wolfe raised her head from the trail she was following. “Who the heck is that?” she asked her friend.
Annie Crane looked up, shading her eyes. “I have no idea. But I would wager real money that she just found that big patch of burdock.”
The two women watched in silence for a moment while Jaini flapped her arms, shook her hands, and grabbed at her hair. Edie turned away, unsuccessfully stifling a snorting giggle. “Oh it isn’t nice to laugh. Burdock can be so awful.”
“Hey Edie, check out her boots,” Annie stage whispered.
Edie turned back. “White? Really? Well it’s a sure bet that she’s from away. What’s she doing in this field?”
They thought about that for a moment, and then turned as one to look at a tangled mass of staghorn sumac trees. It was impossible to make out the rambling structure hidden by their braided branches. “Isn’t that where…?” Annie asked.
“Yes,” Edie said. “It is.”
“David Tarkiainen’s been doing some research into it…them…Calliope, I mean.”
“So I heard.” Edie shook her head. “I wish he hadn’t.”
“He says we have to be ready,” Annie said. “He believes it will be Carding’s chance to set the record straight.”
Edie glared at the white-booted podcaster. “Is that right? I’m not sure folks like her are interested in hearing the truth, you know what I mean? It might cast doubt on their cherished illusions about a band, a poet-songwriter, and his romantic end.” She sighed. “I was hoping people would forget.”
Annie eyed her friend closely. She was a relative newcomer to town but Edie Wolfe had been born and raised in Carding, Vermont. Her ancestors were among the first European settlers in town, and her father, Danielson, had served three terms as Vermont’s Senator in Washington, D.C. She knew—and suspected—that Edie knew a lot about Calliope’s twisted history, a lot more than she was willing to talk about.
“I think we’d better get going,” Edie said as she poked at the old snow with her ski poles. “There’s not much of this stuff left, and unless we feel like snowshoeing in mud, we’d better get off the trail.”
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
Sonja Hakala 