392

Chapter 3
392

Sunday, 10th August
15:30

Panting as the burn from her lungs spread throughout her body, Charlie tried to take in the odd landscape. Bump here, and ditch there, the redhead continued her sprinting pace. The air in Louisiana was unlike anywhere else she’d ever been; it was humid, and heavy on her lungs - and the little midges buzzing throughout the woodland were enough to drive her mad. Ten years ago, she couldn’t even bare to dream about the freedom she had now. She was in a single floor cabin out in the middle of nowhere with her parents and step-sisters. To put herself out there and wish for what she had now was once impossible. It wasn’t the money on tap, or the fact the house was huge, but more that she was able to make her own decisions and was free to choose what she wanted to do without being put down no matter how crazy it seemed.

Charlie remembered the day she’d had enough. Of course, in her long line of ‘had enough’s’, many days seemed the same. Except that day. She loved her parents, as she thought everyone did. No matter what they did, or how they treat you, they were still the ones to literally make you from nothing but their once separate DNA and then bring you into the world after nine months of hardships of puking, back ache, and other horrible stuff only people who love you would go through.

Her parents didn’t have much after moving from America to England when she was three, and she wasn’t their only child. In fact, she was the last of four girls. She can’t say her living conditions were up to standard, but she never starved, went without shoes, and the house was never without heating in winter. So that wasn’t the issue. The issue was the lives her parents were living while four girls under the age of seventeen saw abuse.

She’d always been bright and conscious of what humans are capable of. Too conscious. That day, something small had set her mood off. Honestly, it had been years of ‘small things’, but that day was the last of them, she promised herself that, if nothing else. There was drugs lying about at all times, both of them drank to numb whatever demons they fought within themselves, which inevitably led to the daily kick-offs which resulted in breaking already-broken furniture. Charlie knew it would be worse if they didn’t drink. If they didn’t drink, their words would make sense and actually be hurtful, and they’d even have half a chance at getting into her head.

When she recalls, she pins the deed that made her say ‘enough’ to her eldest step sister. Her most expensive possession - her white leather jacket, which she’d saved for almost a year for after doing people’s English, History, and Shop homework with a little guitar teaching on the side - was missing. She was supposed to be spending the weekend at Rion’s house, and what she needed for the weekend had been taken without her permission. As always, she wanted to look her best, and knowing her friend was well off, she had for once, planned in advance.

She wasn’t like Rion. She’d known that from the moment she saw the blonde blocked by a bunch of chavs at the bathroom thinking they were something special. She knew when their heckles sprung up, and they shoved her. When the pudgy blonde cracked their leader upwards from under her jaw without saying a word despite the audience - That's when. It wasn’t her clothes because everyone wore the same uniform, and she never bragged about which phone she had, or where she lived. In fact, she’d never seen or even heard of the girl talking to any student. There was plenty to hear about the busty blonde mute, though. And Charlie was as deep into the goings on of gossip and the social structure of school as she was the meaning behind every single thing Edgar Allen Poe had ever written - Which was a grand statement all by itself.

From being ten years old and getting her library card, to this present day, there are around a handful of things Charlie likes and dislikes, and everything in between is a ‘subject to alcohol induction’ topic. She is a pretty simple person in terms of how to get along with her. She liked - and always has - dark literature, funny men with great arses, Kawasaki Ninja motorbikes, movies, television shows with plenty of shocking but plausible plot twists, and good food. She hates dolls, sweating, people who can’t handle their alcohol, pretentious people who feel the need to put on airs, and people who are weak in character.

From what she’d found, her and Rion were pretty compatible, at least she didn’t hate any of her favourites, or love any of her hates, and the fact she didn’t even acknowledge the idiots around her made Charlie lust after knowing her. It was nothing sexual, but Charlie had never known of anyone like ‘that girl in 9A who thinks she’s the shit’. Charlie could tell that wasn’t what Rion thought about herself, but beside her name and some dubious rumours about her killing a full grown man with a paper cup during her first year, her being part of a satanic cult that sacrificed their science teacher’s new born, and her living Rosencove Hill, and that she was dropped off in a Lincoln Town Car everyday, there was nothing to go off. Shit, she herself had to walk thirty minutes down country lanes and dodge farmers as she dashes across private fields just so she could get a bus which took another thirty minutes to get to school and then had to do the same thing to back again.

After getting to know the blonde halfway through the year, she found out that only two of those rumours were true: she did live at Rosencove  - the town’s most well-known fancy home - a wild rose covered haunted Renaissance mansion twenty minutes walk away, and a she was dropped off in a Lincoln. However, after an altercation with a group of older boys on their first friend date, she quickly found that it shouldn’t be put past the older girl to have the will to straight up bottle someone, either. Just because she came from money didn't mean that she was the same as the others who did. In fact, she was very different.

And now, three years later, Charlie was supposed to be spending the weekend at the odd girl’s home, but her sister had stolen her jacket.

She had taken the problem to her mother, whom was splayed out on the sofa, smashed out of her mind. Obviously, no words of wisdom came from her. She then asked her father, whom had been working outside. He made a joke about spray-painting one of his old biker jackets white, which had only irritated her more. Hearing the front door slam as if was about to come of its rusted hinge, she rushed inside. She saw her eldest step-sister wearing her item she’d been searching for. When confronted, she brazenly told Charlie to “Stop stressing about it”, before shrugging and trying to go into the room they shared.

Charlie being, well, Charlie, lunged at the older girl and ragged the article right off of her frame. The scrawny girl staggered into the door frame of the bathroom in the tiny hallway which barely had a pace between the starting point, the two bedrooms, bathroom, and the open entrance to the sitting room and front door. The pair commenced an argument, screaming and pushing each other, until her mother kicked the table over and told them to shut up because her head was banging. Of course, this brought their father inside. Pissed off - his default mood - the only man of the house threw his wrench at the wall above his wife. In retaliation, she threw her empty glass back at him. And there went another brawl.

Amongst the screaming a few feet away, just past the wall, Charlie pushed past her half-sister and stormed towards her parent’s room. Taking the battered case from under their bed, and the pistol from the bedside table along with the case of bullets, the redhead returned to her room. Dragging her clothes from the wardrobe without removing the hangers, the teen shook with anger. Or was it panic.

She’d threatened to leave more than a hundred times within the last eighteen months already, but this time she wouldn’t look back. Swiping the contents of her makeshift vanity into the case, along with the few pairs of shoes she owned in her own right, Charlie fought with the zip. With a case in her hand, and her school backpack, and her purse over her shoulder, she checked the time. Lugging the belongings behind her, she was halted at the bedroom door.

Her eldest step-sister stood in the way, shouting about responsibilities, something that made Charlie cough an unintentional laugh. Really, that statement coming from her made her think she was living in a satire play.

The horn of a car outside signalled that Rion was waiting and Charlie tried to push past as not to make her friend wait. The taller girl was pushed back with a string of obscenities. Trying to inch past again without causing another conflict, Charlie told her to move aside. When all she got was a hiss and venomous rebuttal, the redhead used her elbow to make way for herself, unintentionally smacking the older girl’s head into the scratched door frame.

Tightening her grip on her luggage, Charlie knocked past, uncaring about the crying of her supposed sister. A pause halted the parental spat as her father told her to stop and explain where she was going.

With the brief “I’m leaving”, her mother wailed and staggered across the trashed sitting room. She could vaguely hear her father rattling on with himself, but the slurred pleads of her mother who had managed to catch her at the foyer threatened to break her will.

With her hand on the door to stop it from opening, the middle aged woman sobbed. Tears met a vomit stain half scrubbed off her negligee. Twisting around, she rested her back on the door and gripped her daughter’s shoulders.

Every word broke Charlie’s heart, and the look on her mother’s face even more so. Maybe even more than all of that, the fact that despite knowing how smart she was and letting her homely routine continue, she’d still let it get this far and then quit because that family was way past saving.

If it wasn’t for the fact this had happened more than two dozen times already before she went back to the booze and drugs, she may have reconsidered what she was about to do.

The horn of the car outside pipped again and without another look, the redhead easily pushed the junkie aside. Unflicking the latch, Charlie was met by the vibrant red of the almost unheard of country road. Lugging her possessions along on autopilot mode, she barely realized Rion had come to meet her halfway down the dirt path. Being relieved of her luggage, she made straight for the passenger side of the scuffed Blackbird.

Muffles from her family was soon cut off as she shut the door behind her. In her peripheral vision, she could see her mother being held back by her father, and her sister still yelling and waving her arms in anger. The weight of the trunk shutting was quickly followed by the driver’s door opening, and just as quickly thudding shut.

She remembered that Rion said nothing. She asked no questions, and immediately stubbed the radio off - something which was unheard of for her. She just drove down the narrow tarmac passage, looking straight ahead. For thirty whole minutes, the driver didn’t spare a single glance. It was just that, the sound of the muscle engine and the offset of an autumn patter of the windscreen until they hit the Snake pass of the moors: their usual hideout when shit went tits-up, when it was just the two of them. And then, with the flick of her indicator, Rion pulled over onto a hard-shoulder almost enclosed by a stone wall and rolling hills after it. Plucking her silver tin from the little well beneath the handbrake, she passed over a hand-rolled smoke. Straight away, Charlie could tell it was some strong herbs rolled into a chunky bundle of joy, and instead of sharing a single joint like normal, the blonde lit the stick hanging from her friend’s loose lips.

The car was silent again. Stale skies blurred with the mossy hillside and surrounding stonery that lined the narrow road barely big enough for a car going either way. The confined space soon filled with thick smoke and the scent that always relaxed her caused her guard to drop. Hunching up, Charlie gripped the dashboard and hung her head.

“For the first time, years ago,” Rion rolled down her window a crack. Keeping her eyes on the little patterns formed by the raindrops but not really taking any notice, the driver stared past the windscreen. “you asked me what friends were for. The first time, I told you I believed in Santa Clause more than the ideal of a real friend, and that I’d stopped believing in fairy tales by the time I was six. Around the eighth time you asked, I said ‘For borrowing clothes from’. At the twentieth point, I said ‘For secret keeping’. Now...” Lighting her own joint, Rion leaned her elbow on the edge of her door, her forearm meeting the condensation of the window. Staring out into the growing darkness of the hill-land, she inhaled deeply on the pungent fumes. “What would this be, the hundredth? Two hundredth?” It wasn’t that she was making a point the redhead nagged, it was her own way of saying that she’d listened to every single time she’d asked. But she was purposely being an ass and wouldn’t admit the exact number of times for the sake of comedy and trying to lighten Charlie’s mood, despite her very clearly knowing the count was now at 392. Charlie had asked “What are friends for” in the very purest of forms three hundred and ninety two times in four years. That wasn’t counting the idiom after one of them had gone out of their way to cover the other’s ass. Rion, for the first time, had been asking in a legitimate way.

The point of having a ‘real’ friend truly shows when you could say - and honestly mean - what you felt - without saying a single word. Just knowing without asking for confirmation was more than enough.

A human can, within all reason, live by him or herself. Humans do not die if they do not have a friend. The majority suffer depression and other clinical troubles, but a select few revel in living alone. Hermits, for example, was one exceptional being.

But Charlie hadn’t been asking on a psychological level, about science or anything remotely like that, because she already knew those textbook answers; Nor was she on about drinking-buddy BFF’S. She’d been asking on a kind-of philosophical, more spiritual level, if anything. It probably didn’t even have a name. Human beings had not given a title yet...and were merely unable to understand on a comprehensible level without saying ’it’s just a feeling’. And it was clearly something Charlie gave much thought to, as she sometimes made the face she made only when she was asking that exact question. Which bothered Rion, as Charlie was her friend. Charlie was her friend on every level, even the levels that didn’t have religious or scientific names, as far as Rion was concerned. In fact, without the superficial icons of love hearts on Valentines cards that look nothing like biological hearts at all, or lust for the body, or the chemical binding one feels for a close relative, Rion loved Charlie.

She loved her mind, and the person she was regardless of how flawed she was. Maybe it was her flaws that made Rion taken by her. Charlie was just as mentally screwed as Rion, if not more, but Charlie was never bogged down by the negative factors put in to her life by other people. She was open to others opinions without being upset, and always gave her own no matter who she was around. She never felt less of herself, even if those she cared about told her she was the worst.

Rion really admired her for that.

Charlie had very strong views on her personal ethics and religions. They weren’t much to the books, but again, personal. She accepted everyone having their own piece, no matter how much it deviated from her own, and still took them seriously without bias. She would listen to stories, no matter how outlandish, and care for the people she loved without being side-tracked by the bad things others said about them. She would never give up on the people or things that meant something to her.

And quickly she found, those are what made Rion love her.

Charlie had many traits and ideals she knew Rion wished she could adhere to. But she never disliked or was angry that the woman would flat-out refuse to actively persue them when anybody was watching. She knew her senior would never say it, but Charlie knew that the blonde was constantly angry with the subjects she wished she could overcome.

Even when she wanted to, sometimes, Rion couldn’t just ‘forgive and forget’, or ‘believe in what I want to’ because she had too many questions to follow her heart blindly, and even more suspicion for people.

Rion exhaled the smoke of her cigarette naturally as the husk of her voice carried. “Now you don’t even need to ask me. I think, to me, friends are the kind of people you don’t need to ask anything of to be given answers. And my answer to you is yes.” Putting her window down a touch more and flicking the roach of her vice out onto the wet tarmac, Rion leaned towards her passenger. Placing her free hand on the mop of thick, crimson hair, the driver facetiously smacked her twice, as if to knock away the heavy air. “You know how bad I am at explaining how I feel, but I can comfortably say I love you, and I would do anything for you. I would be a completely different person for all of the wrong reasons if it wasn’t for you. It’s my turn to repay the friendship you gave me.”

In a long time, a very long time, around twelve years at least, Charlie had not heard the words ‘I love you’ in earnest. Of course, she had the figure of a goddess, so many boys told her those special three words - but none of them meant it the way Rion did. For the first time in a long time, Charlie knew she was wanted.

She will always remember what Rion did for her; she took her from the bad place that she was forced to call her ‘home’; from the dregs of life she had to call her family, the people that were supposed to raise her right, and from the people that should have realized her potential, but never saw her as anything more than a pay-check and a maid.

At first, Charlie was caught up in the thoughts of wanting to say ‘take me back’ to her parents. She was worried for her mother. But she had also been around her mother long enough to know she’d never change, and she couldn’t be around that any longer. Despite her home-life, she was smart, and definitely had a way with people. She would come top of her classes and managed to get along with even the strangest of people - which would explain her friendship with Rion, but if she stayed there, she would never amount to anything. As much as Charlie loved her parents, she couldn’t think of anything which was more of a waste of her life than staying and watching her family implode when she had so much to give.

Charlie had met Rion’s father again that night - she hadn’t known adults like him existed before she met her friend. When she had first met him in’08, she realised where Rion got that strange air. But unlike Rion when she was faced with strangers, he was polite to her and showed her the respect he’d give to any other adult. And without question, he agreed to let her stay at his home for as long as she wanted to stay. The only condition was that he would personally speak to her parents about the arrangement, and nothing more would be said on the matter.

The following day - A Sunday morning so early neither of them were alive enough to comprehend a sentence - he had sent the pair out to buy groceries and holed himself up in his office while he was on the telephone. He never told either of them what he had said, and neither of Charlie’s parents ever got in touch again, except at Christmas and on her birthdays when they sent cards. Both girls found it strange, but Charlie was somewhat glad about it - Like a weight had lifted and she was given a new freedom to put her brain and passions to work. At least this way, she wouldn’t be hounded and guilt-tripped into returning. Or worse, made to feel bad for her choice.

But that left another problem for Charlie’s moral conscience: how the Hell was she ever going to repay this debt. It was all well and good Rion saying heart-warming things like ‘this is what friends are for’, but she wasn’t the one paying for her to live. It was one thing to repay with chores, but that still didn’t make the cash to cover the food she ate, the water she used, or the clothes that were bought for her.

Then one evening, it came up, that dreaded topic that smacked her heart up into her mouth.

“Rion mentioned that you’re interested in folklore and psychology.” The home owner twisted in his seat as an advertisement took over the television screen and his line of sight locked on the redhead.

Charlie was unsure of how to act and so out of habit, even after nine months of living together, she looked to the blonde who just happened to be enthralled with her game of Klondike taking up the full screen of her laptop. “H-Y-Yeah.” She turned to her friend’s father but could barely keep a solid eye-connection.

“I need an assistant whom I can trust. What do you say?”

“Are you joking?” Charlie’s head almost came off her spine as she snapped to look up.

“I’m deadly serious. I’m running a little behind schedule and I know your school work is top notch in all subjects.”

“Besides Languages and higher tier math.”

Alexander laughed at the honesty. “I have a conference on Monday. If you can, I’d like your help this weekend and during the presentation.” And that is literally how Charlie began her studies of fact versus fiction.

Doctor Alexander Wintar was like that in pretty much everything he did and thought - he often pushed aside fancy college references in favour of passion and personality. He was open towards honest, intelligent people above snobs whose parents paid for their professional reviews and bought their way into any academia. Although, even overly honest and strikingly intelligent, his daughter left much to be desired when it came to the professional side of things.

He needed someone specific, and when cornered, Rion had rattled off all of Charlie’s grades, school-social merits, extracurricular awards, and even her capacity for digging up personal dirt and being a ‘bitch for organizing her shit’ in lieu of her own specialities as a means of diverting attention from herself.

His career hung on the line with his next paper - he would either become a third-time genius, or slink back into the mass of countless others that had failed to make a new breakthrough on the connection between psychology and the supernatural, but he didn’t let the fact of having no legitimate qualifications in Parapsychology stop him. He was a prolific psychologist, but to him, being a ‘doctor’ was a fail-safe; his real passion in life was the unknown. His lust in life was mythology and the supernatural. Both writing short fiction and non-fiction pieces hardly sustained his curiosity, and collecting antiques tied to everything from ancient Greek jewels which were apparently from the labyrinth of King Minos, to one of the original copies of the Ars Goetia gave him nothing but a substantial collection of artefacts and a waiting list of fellow fanatics waiting for an invite to one of his popular soirées.

Too young to be a professional, too old to be an amateur, Alexander spent most of his career on the boundary that the majority of people hate. He was always working on something dubious, but when he did release his findings, they always caused a storm - for better, or for worse. He was well known throughout the field of science and general lore across many cultures, and he had many wealthy contacts due to his quick-to-it habits and odd social skills: something he’d passed on to his daughter, and something which was quickly rubbing off on to the newest addition to their family.

However, for such an obscure man, the mundane things in the family’s life were pretty normal - the abnormal, however, were the weirdest of the weird. The girls had come home from school one afternoon and couldn't find the man anywhere. After two days, he emerged from the basement looking dishevelled. He told them he had been reassembling several Di Vinci creatures and had lost track of time before passing out on the kitchen floor. 

Despite a long line of incidents just like that, Alexander had completed his psyche schooling at the top of that year’s graduates before doing a handful of years at a local hospital, but he quickly became bored and switched to freelancing. With his primary occupation being a contract researcher and private shrink, the trio travelled more often than not. Except for that period between 2012 and 2014 - the one where they’d been using different names for unknown reasons when it came to the girls.

It was on the eve of Wednesday, July 1st, 2015 that Alexander had told the two young women living with him that he would be moving. Now, with both of his girls grown into adults, he gave them the option to stay behind in Gwynedd, Wales, or to follow him on yet another adventure. In all honesty, neither had much to stick around for, accept for the accents that drown them wild.

And so, the Wintar family; Alexander, Rion, Charlie, and Rion’s perpetually territorial hound, Nero, began their journey across the Atlantic.

 

Updated:4th Feb 2016 - 17:53