“I saw Arthur again,” Buddy said. “And Gypsy.”
He’d caught up to Harry and Mr. Beasley in Kin Beach Park, Harry sitting on his favourite bench overlooking Stuart Channel, Mr. Beasley snuffling about in the grass at the farthest reaches of his retractable lead.
“Up Nixon Creek, when I was camping.”
“Did you, now?” Harry acknowledged, not shifting his focus from the choppy waters beyond Bird Rock’s miniature lighthouse.
“Thought you’d want to know.”
“I know you and Bernice are still snooping around in my past,” Harry groused.
“She worries about you.”
“Yeah. And that’s why I didn’t go flying off the handle like I sometimes do when she told me not to tell you she’d spilled the beans.”
“About what?”
“About the news reports concerning my missing friends, Arthur and Gypsy… or rather, the lack of any.”
“Oh?”
“Uh-huh.” Harry smiled wryly. “She’s an emotional chess master, my Bernice, but for the right reasons—mostly. She’s got a big heart, that one.”
“So can we bring things more into the open?”
Harry nodded. “I guess it’s now or never, eh?”
Unnerved by Harry’s calm demeanour, Buddy paused, recalibrating. He’d expected heavy going.
“This last vision was different,” Buddy began tentatively.
“How so?”
“Arthur was afraid, and Gypsy’s barking didn’t sound playful. He was frantic.”
“What did you make of that?”
Buddy shrugged. “I lost them before I could figure out what was going on. Couldn’t tell what they were afraid of. But the funny thing is, now I think about it…”
“What?” Harry coaxed.
“They were running toward whatever terrified them, not away from it. Does that make any sense?”
Harry stared. Not judgmentally, but in an almost fatherly way, as if trying to gauge whether or not Buddy was up to a particularly hazardous undertaking. “What’s the one thing you can’t ever escape from, unless you head straight at it?” he said at last.
He waited until he was sure Buddy couldn’t guess at his meaning. “You’re own past,” he confided.
“True enough.”
“Where were you in this latest dream of yours?”
“I think it was somewhere off the E&N Railway. I remember running up into the woods.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Is that where Art and Gypsy went missing?”
“Yup.”
“Can you tell me exactly where it is, Harry?”
“Haven’t been up there in a long while,” Harry frowned. “And I’m not inclined to go back for a visit, even in my imagination. But it’s up between where the railway station used to be and Old Victoria Road. The hermit, Charlie Abbott, made the place his paradise back in the 80s. There’s a trail now, runs up above the tracks, so it’s easy enough to get to.
“From what I hear, his Garden of Eden’s in a sorry state, like the ruins of an ancient city: walls, paths, and such that he built and maintained ’til the day he died, all falling apart.”
“The place has memories for you?” Buddy probed.
“It’s where my happy childhood ended, Buddy. It took a long, long time for me to get over what happened to Art and Gypsy up there. In fact, I never really did get over it. It’s like a guilty secret, buried in your backyard; no matter how hard you try to ignore it or forget it, you just can’t. It’s there, mouldering away, embedded in your thinking flesh.”
“But you weren’t even there, Harry, when it happened! Were you?”
“Doesn’t matter!” Harry grunted. “I should have been there to stop the bastard from doing whatever he did to them two. Should have smashed the prick’s head in with a bolder, or slashed his throat with my knife. I should have been there, Buddy.”
“Okay! Okay!” Buddy consoled. “Take it easy, Harry. Sorry for prying.”
Harry settled, then patted him on the shoulder. “Don’t be,” he said. “They’re my memories, and you’re my official biographer, aren’t you? Keep digging, my friend, because I’ll likely be surprised as you at what you find.
He paused for a second, smiling serenely.
“What?” Buddy coaxed.
“You know, I never went back into that wood until Charlie Abbott took up residence there. I visited him from time to time, first as a Rotarian, then because I just liked being around him and wanted to make sure he was okay. I felt at peace with Charlie, like he knew something about me that didn’t need saying—it just needed to be acknowledged silently, if you know what I mean.”
“That you were wounded?”
“I suppose.” Harry paused again, thoughtful. “You should go visit him and find out for yourself,” he suggested.
“Huh?”
“The Hermit. You should go see him. He’s in Mural #36, just off Willow Street, downtown, in a little alley opposite the Willow Café.”
“By myself, you mean?”
“Yeah! Don’t act so surprised. You have to go on a solo mission some time. Why not now, my son?” he mimed.
Suddenly, Mr. Beasley scrabbled up onto the bench between them, looking from Harry to Buddy, then back again. “Enough of this yakking, huh?” Harry ruffled the dog’s fur. “Time for a treat, eh?”
Mr. Beasley barked.
“Always your best friend,” Buddy laughed.
“No,” Harry corrected. “Mr. Beasley’s my best companion. He doesn’t have what it takes to be a friend, Bud. Companions are easy to get along with; they’re grateful for what you give ‘em, and you’re grateful for what they give back. It’s pure, unadulterated love.
“Friendship? True friendship? It gets way more complicated than that.”
He struggled to his feet, looping Mr. Beasley’s leash around the walker’s handle, then shuffling off toward VORLand’s End. Buddy wanted to walk along beside them and share the thoughtful silence of their slow progress through the park. But he let them go, imagined them toddling into a fading mirage, on a non-existent wall, someplace between here and eternity.
“I love you two,” he thought sadly, turning back to face the sea.
Next: Savaged