Meekings - Ravens and Writing Desks: A Metaphysical Fantasy

Ravens and Writing Desks

a Metaphysical Fantasy

By

Chris Meekings

Omnium Gatherum

Los Angeles

Ravens and Writing Desks

Copyright 2016 Chris Meekings

ISBN-13: 978-0692692813

ISBN-10: 0692692819

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author and publisher omniumgatherumedia.com.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

First Edition

If a question has no answer is it still a question?

Chapter 1 Lucy Gayle

Are you ready, little girl?

Ready for the hardship,

Ready for the quest?

From the verse How it was Done

By the Wizard Bechet,

Year After Ice 21045

Is that what I think it is? Well, that is unusual, thought Lucy, as the face in the window winked at her. She sank lower into the mountainous bubbles of her bath and tried to go back to reading. Placing the book up in front of her eyes, she attempted to hide, but she knew it was still there, looking.

Lucy sighed and reread page eighty-seven for the fourth time. Below her, she could hear her mother clanging pots in the kitchen, in an effort to tidy up before she served dinner.

Lucy peered over the top of the book; the face was still there.

It winked.

She tried to glower at it, but it stoically remained, unimpressed by the mental daggers she threw at it.

Its not normal for faces to appear in the glass of first-floor windows, she thought.

She would have put it down to her own tiredness if it wasnt for the fact that she really hadnt done very much. She had even given up Girl Guides because she wanted to focus on her exams. This had caused an argument as her mother had been very disappointed in that decision.

This wasnt the first time shed seen the face. It had been in the flower beds outside, in the static on the television and, most alarmingly, in her mashed potato at last nights dinner.

It wasnt even a nice face. Its eyes leered at her. Its not a human face, she thought. Its nose, eyes, chin and cheekbones were all too sharp to be a person. Moreover, human faces tended not to appear in the frosted glass of bathroom windows. Well, if they did appear, they tended to be followed by shouts of Hey you! What are you doing at that bathroom window? But, if it wasnt human, then what was it, and more importantly, what did it want with Lucy Gayle?

What do you want? she said in a voice she hoped didnt show fear.

Lucy.

Her name wasnt exactly spoken. She felt the word, rather than heard it. It was in the rustling of the leaves outside and the drip of the tap. The voice had the quality of nails being drawn across a blackboard.

Go away. Things like you are not real, she said and turned the page of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe . Shed found that a commanding voice and upright attitude normally dealt with things she didnt understandat least that was what her Guide leader always did, and it seemed to work for her.

Lucy, the face whispered, again.

Im not listening, she said. Things do not live in windows. Im imagining you. Youre probably just indigestiona poorly digested bit of broccoli or a blob of mustard.

I aint a blob of mustard! the face squeaked in a Cockney accent, with its mouth this time.

You arent scaring me, she said, coldly, Nothing with a high squeaky Cockney voice, talking about going down the dog and duck, is frightening.

Lucy, the tap and light fitting rattled, but she had the face on the ropes.

Its not going to work. Youve ruined the mystery now.

Curses! the face exclaimed.

Now, what is it, you want? she asked, but the face had gone. The window contained nothing but glass.

That worried her. She didnt think hallucinations usually went away when bidden. However, that line of reasoning led to awkward questions, and she really didnt need questions about imaginary faces in windowsnot during exam season, not whilst she was only thirteen, and certainly not just before dinner.

Lucy, her mother said, up the stairs, come on, Lucybelle. Your dinner is getting cold.

Coming, Mum, she replied.

She let the name Lucybelle slide. That was her fathers special name for her. Now, he was gone, and her mother was using it. That hurt, but she couldnt bring conversations around to addressing problems. She didnt have conversations with her mother, not anymore.

She placed her bookmark into the book. Then she carefully slid the book across the bathroom floor to keep it from getting damaged. She clambered out of the bath and made sure to turn her back to the window as she dried off.

~

Lucy found it hard to sleep that night. The face kept reappearing on the edge of her dreams. When she finally slept, the face was there asking questions. She couldnt remember the questions once she woke up; however, she thought, you never could remember dreams, not clearly anyway.

There was one thing she did recollect. The face had spoken to her, just before dawn, saying, Remember this, Lucy, when you wake up, even if you forget all the rest I have told you. Remember that I am the door.

I am the door? What did that mean? Doors were not windows, or faces, for that matter. Unless it was eyes in faces, which were windows into the soul. Shed read that somewhere. Lucy read a lot, mainly books about science. She didnt really like story books, but she was working her way through many of the classics like Alice in Wonderland and all the Narnia books.

She did this at her mothers insistence. Kimberly Gayle was a great reader with many recommendations, and reading was a passion her daughter shared with her. Lucy could normally be found in the library during break time at school. Perhaps, she mused, her constant reading caused her lack of friends.

~

The next day Lucys mother, who was still Mrs. Kimberly Gayle despite the lack of husband, dropped Lucy off at the school gates as normal. Shed wished Lucy a good day in the slightly dreary detached way she always did.

Lucy hurried from the car and walked through the wrought-iron gates of Saint Julias School. She clutched her books across her chest as if forming armour against the worldan armour of knowledge against the jibes and name calling she suffered every day.

The halls were packed with students, most older than she. This was her second year at Saint Julias School, and although she was no longer one of the, newbies as the senior students called them, she was only a second year and, therefore, not much better.

It wasnt the older students taunting that got to her, it was her classmates constant staring and smirking. The distasteful way they looked at her when she put her hand up in class to answer a question. The disgusted way they looked at her when she was invariably correct. She was always the last person anyone sat next to in class. She had to eat her lunch outside on a bench, even in the worst weather, because no one would make room for her in the canteen. The others would brush their hands across her shoulder and run, with the hand outstretched, as if infected, crying Gayles fleas, Gayles fleas! as if it were some sort of game.

Things like that led to her lying awake in her bed, a few precious moments before her alarm sounded, seriously questioning whether to go and tell her mother she was too sick to go to school that day.