Slave: The Ghost of Cambria - Book Two

Chapter Seven

He couldn't remember exactly when it happened, but one morning Valon realized there were people in his house. The silence of his world came to an end, and for the first time years, he could clearly recall that he was alive.

Workmen arrived frequently and hammered down the missing floorboards his father had never finished. On the walls, they installed panels of intricately constructed wainscoting, which they stained with dark oil and polished to a marvelous shine. On the ceiling, they enhanced the ornamental beams to delineate downstairs rooms, always darkening the wood to gleaming molasses. They inlaid ornate tin and copper tiles, sculpted lovingly to glimmer in the light.

The work reminded Valon of his grandfather's house in northern California. This was the style his father had tried to recreate before dying, to mirror the home dad had grown up in. But Valon didn't want to think of that. Recalling the memories was still too difficult to venture far in his mind. Aligning the fragments into a cohesive thought was exhausting. All the young man wanted to do now was watch the changes being made to his father's house.

Valon didn't speak to them, the men who walked through his home each day. He simply walked through the house observing what they did, absorbed in each brushstroke of paint or metal screw turned.

It was an accident when he'd moved a small glass figurine, reaching to it merely to feel its texture. He couldn't remember being able to move things with his touch, but Valon had seen his hand stir the small object on the shelf where it stood. He was so excited by the porcelain sculpture of a bashful Japanese geisha that he waved at it in manic determination, but he couldn't make it move again.

What had he done the first time? Valon tried in vain to recreate the unintended flick of his wrist that had affected the smiling woman. And then, he saw the figurine move again. The young man hadn't touched it with his hand, but instead, he'd concentrated his thoughts, imagining it move ...right before it did.

Again, Valon focused, imagining the little painted lady sliding forward, and like that, the geisha fell from the shelf and landed on the hardwood floor to shatter into many pieces.

It was at this very moment that Valon first noticed her.

A woman with red hair walked up beside him and stared down at the floor in frustration. She knelt down to carefully pick up the small pieces that had once been the bashful white-faced geisha standing gracefully in her crimson kimono. The red-haired woman tried to reassemble the pieces, but she quickly gave up the impossible task with a huff. Instead, she carried them to a nearby trashcan into which she resentfully chucked them.

A telephone rang, pulling the woman from her resentful stare, and she walked to the living room to sit down on the armchair beside it. She lifted the green plastic handset from its base, ending the terrible clanging sound it made.

"Good afternoon?" said the woman. "Oh, hello, dear. No, I've just finished unpacking, more or less."

Valon looked around the living room to realize that the house was no longer filled with workmen or their tools and materials. Instead, the house was completed and filled with furniture. Chairs and tables of various types, an old dark green velvet sofa, large oriental rugs, and a large television set sitting in the corner. On the tables and the walls were picture frames of various makes and sizes. In many, the red-haired woman stood beside a tall man with dark brown skin and a gleaming smile. He was very handsome, this man, well-built and dressed impeccably in each photo. The man was her husband, Valon thought, a belief supported by a large picture of them standing together in a church, the woman's red hair contrasting against the white of her satin gown.

"If you'd called me a minute earlier," she continued, "I might've been a little happier. I just broke my favorite figurine. Yes, that one - little Kaori. I don't know, she just fell off the shelf and shattered. I must've placed her too close the edge. Yes, I doubt I'll find another as lovely."