Nightmarish Sacrifice (Cardew) (27 page)

             
“Does he know Cardew well?” I wondered while the old woman was taking out a small pad and leafing through it.

             
She hesitated what to answer, but took her time to rewrite the address on a separate piece of paper for me.

             
“I doubt that anyone knows Cardew well,” she summed up, handing the information to me and escorting me to the door as I stood up to leave; her friendly eyes gave me a smile – as heartening as concerned – and then she added, “But... I hope that one day you will be the one who will get to know him for real –”

             
If that was possible at all...

             
Thanking her, I left the house and walked alone into the day which was already growing light.

             
I myself was hoping for the same.

                                          Under no ordinary circumstances would I have opened the door if a stranger was ringing at the insane hour of six o’clock in the morning, but the boy named Preston did.

             
“Can I help you, miss?” he asked – a bit startled but very polite, while I was gaining my first impression of him.

             
Probably a bit shorter than Cardew and rather lean, Preston was as old as us, but his still childish features were making him look so much younger that someone who didn’t know his real age would have easily agreed to bet that the boy standing in front of me was still a few years away from graduation. And – although personally I would never notice Preston if Cardew was in the same room – he definitely was one who could calmly rely on his handsome face to help him in life.

             
I was used to first looking in the eyes of a person before drawing any conclusions about him or her, and so I stared insistently as deeply as I could right inside Preston’s eyes. The feeling this brought about was like eagerly drinking pleasantly warm liquefied milk chocolate on a sun-filled joyous afternoon – their light coppery-brownish hazel colour was serene, bashful, and openly cheerful, and his whole radiance was creating in me the association with an alive plush teddy bear – awkward but charmingly naive and cute in a friendly way.

             
Not to scare him – as an unexpected visit from a pale female ghost-resembling stranger was most probably not on the top of his favourite things to receive first in the morning – I gave him a soft smile, and in the next moment his whole face blushed into rich dark crimson as he embarrassedly looked away.

             
I had to bite my lips not to giggle as that would abash him even more; his hands instinctively rose to smooth his straight light auburn hair which was pointing in all directions in a real mess, and he readjusted the glasses on his face as though he wanted to look more personable.

             
“Hi, are you Preston?” I began kindly as though I was speaking to a child, and he glimpsed shyly at me before nodding and turning his head away again; I couldn’t give up the habit of feeling flattered when someone was staring at me with admiration, and his widely opened eyes quickly shifting away from me were so filled with awe that I was about to burst into quiet laughter of pleasure. “I’d like to speak to you –”

             
“Who is it, Preston?” a middle-aged woman’s voice came to us from the upper floor, and someone’s fast footsteps darted down some stairs; the face of the boy standing in front of me was already so bright scarlet that I got worried about him.

             
His eyes met mine with a voiceless question and my mind was working at full speed, but yet I couldn’t think up a normal explanation for my strange visit and the plea I would make – it wasn’t something I could share with many people, and anyway, I doubted his family would like it that their son was linked to a murderer.

             
“I need to speak to you alone!” I repeated under my breath, gazing at his eyes so insistently he didn’t have the force to look away again. “Please, I need your help! –”

             
Feverish, Preston glanced over his shoulder and gave me a sign to pull back from the door.

             
“Wait for me behind the house!” the boy whispered with decisiveness I hadn’t suspected in him, and – without more explanations – he slammed the door closed right in front of me.

             
I just blinked blankly; someone called his name from the inner part of the house and I heard his voice, already not addressing me, “I’m coming, mum!”

             
“Who was it?” the woman – obviously his mother – asked again, and I hurried to move at such a position in which I wouldn’t be visible from the windows.

             
“A girl I don’t know, she had mistaken the address,” Preston lied rather confidently, which made me smile – although he was easy to blush, he seemed to be far from a saint, too.

             
Or at least, far from a fool.

             
“She must have been very pretty –” his mother supposed, a smile in her voice. “Just look at how red your face is!”

             
“Mum!” the boy protested with embarrassment. “I just –”

             
I walked away not to listen to their talk anymore, as it could make me burst into loud laughter and thus give myself away; there were several lines of trees on the back side of the house and I sat on the ground, leaning on a large oak while waiting for Preston to fulfil his promise.

             
The sharp coldness was roaming freely across the cirrus skies dawning in chilly azure, the frosty beauty of the newborn morning deeply steeping into the tranquil land and gathering inside the numerous fragile drops of icy dew gliding down the blades of emerald grass around me and raining towards the dark frigid soil like drops of fresh and cold, still alive but already dying blood...

             
Dew... Cardew...

             
Oh gods, how had this boy managed to get me so insane!?...

             
I hid my face in my hands, exhaled, and forced myself to think of the nothingness itself – otherwise the thoughts about Cardew would seize me again, capture me in their tight – suffocating-tight – embrace, and would squeeze my mind into utter obsessive despair until I literally exploded.

             
The state I managed to drive myself into resembled trance – stillness, silence – emptiness...

             
As if time had stopped...

             
The sound of footsteps was what I had been so insistently waiting for that, when I finally heard it, I took another second to make sure that it was not a play of my too curious imagination; but no – the noise was realistic enough to fuel my hopes, and I secretly glanced into the direction from which it was coming.

             
My dark clothes were merging with the bark of the tree I had leaned on, and Preston couldn’t see me immediately when he walked closer, but I didn’t move, slightly amused by the change of the nuances of red on his face as he was wandering around and wondering if I was still there.

             
“Hey –” he called quietly and timidly, his uncertain intonation tempting me to roar with silent laughter. “Is anybody here? –”

             
“I’m not sure about the others you may expect, but I am here,” I announced loudly just after he walked right past me, and he startled by the sound of my voice a bit more sharply than I had expected, so I added with compassion, “I’m sorry, this was rather rude –”

             
Preston had turned round immediately, and as I stood up and his eyes met mine, his pupils widened again, which made me quickly glimpse downwards to check if I had misplaced a piece of clothing or anything else wrong could be the reason for his staring.

             
Obviously not.

             
Well, I was flattered.

             
“My name is Freya,” I said without reaching to shake his hand for fear that he would faint if I touched him. “And I... I want to speak with you about Cardew.”

             
As I pronounced my beloved’s name, Preston’s features winced uneasily, then he nodded and his eyes blinked nervously as he stared at me, “Do you know him?”

             
“Nobody does, but I am in love with him,” I stated so as to block all the various suggestions his mind could have had for me, and thus to save him the need to blush. “And I want to know what his connection to a girl called Odda has been –”

             
Preston bit into his lips and looked down; that was not too encouraging a beginning.

             
“Odda loved Cardew,” he uttered after a short hesitation. “But... he didn’t love her.”

             
“Don’t say it just to make me feel better,” I attacked mildly, but he shook his head, spreading around his already combed hair.

             
“I’m not. Cardew and I were best friends at that time, I would have known if he had been in love – with her or with anyone else.”

             
“But now you aren’t friends at all?” I shrugged and fixed my eyes on his without showing much mercy. “What happened?”

             
Preston hesitated again, and this time his rational thoughts won the battle against his apparent sympathy for me.

             
“Why should I tell you about him?” he folded his arms on his chest like a stubborn child, although his eyes were compassionate on mine. “How would I know you don’t want to use my words to hurt him?”

             
My lips departed, but no words escaped from between them.

             
I just had nothing to say.

             
How could I prove my love towards Cardew? How would I reassure his former best friend in the goodwill behind my intentions?

             
In no rational way...

             
I should have expected such resistance: it was logical, and, however little I liked it, righteous – if I was in Preston’s position, I would have done it for Cardew, too – indeed, I would have been far more ferocious.

             
“No,” I sighed deeply and shook my head; this time I was the one to look away from Preston’s stare, not the other way round. “No, you can’t trust me.”

             
The boy’s expression turned confused and he intuitively approached me a bit as though that would prevent my tears from falling, but I pulled a step back – I didn’t want to be consoled.

             
Not by him...

             
And I wasn’t playing a role – I was trying to be myself.

             
But the harder I was striving, the more I was realizing that I had probably lost that ‘myself’ somewhere between two perfectly performed roles...

             
Roles I had never played on stage – roles the masks for which I had been hiding behind in reality so as to prevent those I loved from painfully worrying about me, and not to let the ones who loathed me triumph because of my display of weakness – masks of invincible strength when all the emotions in me had been sobbing in hopeless fervent weeping, masks of composure when frustration had been boiling inside me in a little personalized hell ruling me even beyond the point of despair, masks of reality when everything around me had felt like an evil hallucination specially created to mirror an illusionary life I couldn’t reach, to fake the living I would never have...

             
Masks of life...

             
If only I didn’t perceive myself so dead inside when all those oppressive memories were ruthlessly crashing back onto me...