Chapter 08

Northern Range
Hilltop House

Dirac Family

Jay set the coffee and the bag of doughnuts on top of his car, closed the door carefully and stood with his back pressed against the handle.  He looked at Hilltop House.  It hadn't aged well since he'd last been here, but that had been almost a year ago and the bugs and the weather had been eating at the boards with hungry mouths.

He didn’t want to go in.  It was where Kenley Dirac had been murdered.

Fiona propped her bike against one of the trees.  “It’s okay, it’s empty inside.” 

He'd made fun of Fiona and her sister when they were kids - all the crap and rumors about ghosts.  If the ghost of Kenley Dirac showed up and put him down he wouldn't blame her but regret wasn't worth much.  Here he was with her daughter preparing to enter a haunted house and if he got a chance to apologize, if Dr. Dirac wanted an apology, he'd give her one.

"Don't touch the spider webs," Fiona told him as she pushed the door open and walked in. He hadn't been planning on touching spider webs but he didn't want to walk through one either.

He put the coffee down and walked over to the window overlooking the porch.  There were a lot of spider webs and most of them were big but the whole place was empty and abandoned and full of dust so it wasn't surprising that spiders had set up shop on the walls.

He started to join Fiona across the room toward the old dining table when he looked down at the floor.  The rug was gone and in its place was a stain.  Nobody had scrubbed the floor and the stain was very dark.  He knew what it had to be.

That was where she bled, he thought, sickened. It happened right down there in front of him, and he had almost stepped on it.

"Jay," Fiona said.  She lit a fire in the cold room and stood by it, half in the shadows, facing him.  "Just don't look at it."

He watched her pull out a chair and sit.  Unable to even look at the food, he stood on the other side of the table and fought with his emotion and finally asked, “Why am I here?  What did you have to tell me?” 

She took a sip of coffee and ate half a doughnut.  "My mother and father were working on something together.  Obviously something went wrong.  Before my father disappeared, he said that if he didn't return, we should go get a Lombardo.  He was in a hurry and he didn't explain, and Viv and I weren't sure he even meant our mother was still alive and we've spent all this time trying to understand what he meant.  Finally I decided I didn't want to spend the rest of my life wondering if I could do something, my father seemed to think I could, so I went after you.  If I had to stretch the truth to get you, that wasn't going to stop me.  You are the available Lombardo."

He sat down in one of the dining chairs, confused and stunned. She'd lied to him.  Her mother hadn't left something specific intended for him.  However, even if she thought it was a lie, Kenley Dirac had been involved in a cosmological theory which he'd feared and worried about.

"Look, I do know what she was working on, but I don't know how your dad was involved and I don't know what happened to either of them.  Maybe you didn't understand what he told you, or maybe he was kind of...you know...out of his mind. What am I supposed to do? It sounds like a fantasy trope, like I'm the savior of the world but don't know it yet.  No Lombardo ever tried to save the world.  We usually tear things apart." 

“Yeah, I know.  Have some coffee and doughnuts.” 

 

“I bought them for you.” 

 

"So watch while I eat them."

Exasperated, annoyed and trapped, Jay still tried for a kind voice, something he didn't use and only tried now because he'd lost someone who felt like a mother and understood what she was feeling. “Fiona, for your mother's sake I'm willing to hang around for a while, I mean like today, to see if something happens. You don't have anything to work with except a sentence your father yelled at you while he was running out the door though.  What are you going to do now that I'm here?  Do you have a plan?  Anything more than just watching me?”

She gave him a cool, assessing look.  "You know that my parents were friends with someone you know very well and that's Gabe Lombardo himself.  You also know he disappeared about the same time as my mother so don't bullshit me about that.  Don't give me crap about what I can do either. It's a waste of time. I'm looking for a ghost, for one ghost in particular and I think I can call him because his family had property here, your family, and you know that too. I'm looking for Gabe's father, Don Lombardo, because I hope he can tell me where to find Gabe, and if I find him, I may find my parents.  Maybe you can do whatever it is you're supposed to do if you come with me. That's my plan."

He didn't even bother to respond to that.  Gabe had something to do with everything.  A meteor landed on your car, Gabe had something to do with it.  Your house burned down, give Gabe the credit or the  blame.  You found a bag of diamonds in your wall, Gabe put it there.  Gabe fucked a fairy and had elf kids who probably put more diamonds in the walls.  Old Uncle Don would tell them where everybody was and what Jay was supposed to do about it.

Hell no. As far as he knew the dragons might hang out at the dome indefinitely or go home or he might have imagined them after all.  The girl on the pier probably wasn't an illusion, but so what if she came back, she was a kid, what could she do.  Kenley Dirac was dead.  He couldn't fix that, magic Lombardo power or not and he wasn't going in search of Gabe to find out.  

She let him sit there and glare at her as he struggled with his own plans, or lack of, until she finally said, "Please Jay. I can't sit on the beach at Sandy Point and give up. Neither of my parents wanted that. Please help me."

He thought about it.  She was right about that.  

Kenley Dirac would have wanted him to help her daughter.

There was more than one way to look at this. Maybe he was meant to somehow boost Fiona over the wall between this dimension and the one Kenley opened.  She seemed to want that role, she could do a better job than he could, she had less to lose, and he had nothing better to do today.

"Okay Fiona, let's go find your ghost."