The baby was crying loud and thrashing in the cradle, and the kettle was hooting loudly but she remained transfixed with what she was seeing on the TV.
‘Samantha, won’t you respond to that child? What are you doing there?’, her mom called from within the room but she didn’t even respond to that either. ‘Samantha’, the woman called again.
Samantha found herself mouthing Tristan under her breath as if he were somewhere near and she wanted him to respond. ‘The escaped prisoners, however are nowhere to be found. This will go down in history to be one of Dexter’s most important incidences’, Reporter Jenkins said and then turned to the co-host. ‘Do you think this is a bad omen for the country, Shelley?’
There was a low knocking sound on the front door and she instantly ran towards it, still neglecting the child and the kettle that was about to burn. She muttered a prayer and opened the door and she saw what she had prayed to see. Tristan with his black hair and round head was the one she saw, staring into her eyes.
‘Tristan’, she managed to call before her voice went completely flattened with emotion. Tristan got into the house and locked the door behind him. He pulled her towards him and jammed his lips against hers.
His eyebrows stood on end as he kept his tender eyes on her, on her only. He didn’t realise the blackened kettle in the kitchen where they were, either. He cleaned the tears from her cheek. ‘I am sorry. I will never leave you. I never actually did’, he said and he tried not to cry too.
His wife chuckled amidst her tears and hugged him tightly. They wanted to remain like that all day long but they would be interrupted by an old woman’s shout, at least that was better than being interrupted by a burning kitchen.
‘Samantha, won’t you come and give the boy his food. What are you…’, she stopped talking at once when she reached the kitchen and could see someone that looked like her son-in-law in the hall way. She remained there for a minute trying to be sure he was the one and that the cataract affecting her left eye wasn’t the one playing tricks on her.
‘Mummy’, Tristan called and he had that distinctive broad smile on his face.
Her mouth was half-open now and she limped on her cane towards him, wishing she could sprint towards him at once.
‘Oh, look at my boy’, she said and Tristan dropped his head for her to touch as she always did. The rim of her eyes were edged with water. ‘Oh God. I didn’t think I would see you again’, she coughed as she spoke. He was her son as far as she was concerned.
Tristan bent low and hugged the both of them. ‘Let’s go in’, he said.
The first thing that Tristan went to was the cradle at the side of the room where the loud shout of a baby could be heard. Immediately Tristan looked into the cradle, the baby stopped crying.
Tristan gasped as he saw the cute face of his son and now there were no barriers. For the first time in his life, he stretched his hands forward and raised the baby from the cradle to his shoulder.
‘The mosquitoes have been disturbing us for months now. They multiply in the pond at the side there’, the grandma said to Tristan. ‘He never stops crying’
‘Shhh’, Tristan repeated as he moved around the sitting room patting the baby as he calmly rested against his shoulder.
Samantha was back from the kitchen after clearing the kettle mess and was surprised to see their son playing and tapping Tristan’s shoulder with his teeth lightly biting his cloth.
‘It seems mosquitoes aren’t the problem. Andrew has missed you a lot’, she said, beaming.
‘Yes, he has’, Andrew gloated.
‘We all missed you, son. The evenings were boring and I had just seat here, dozing off in the dark with mosquitoes perching around. Hopefully, Andrew would be sleeping. If he is not, no one would be able to sleep as well’, the grandma said.
‘It’s okay. Mosquitoes won’t be a threat no more’, Tristan said.
‘And lest I should forget. You are going to have to tell me four hundred and sixty jokes for all the days you were away’, the grandma added and Tristan looked at her, amazed by how she knew the exact number of days.
Samantha laughed. ‘She has everyday documented on this calendar here. She marked every day that you weren’t here, grumbling and complaining about your absence. She never gave up’
‘I never would have at least until my other eye stops working as well’, she said.
‘I have missed you all too’, Tristan said and dropped his sleepy son back in his cradle. ‘We escaped. Dale came to save us’
‘Oh, I know Dale. That handsome young lad who does tricks with his hand that makes me get suspicious that warlocks actually exist in Dexter Islands’, Grandma deluged.
‘Dale? Really?’, Samantha said. ‘He came to save you? I thought you were in the same cell together’
‘Uhmm. Some of us get banished once in a while. We get lucky and you know, a commissioner could come around or a governor and just bare us of all our sins. And let us go. So, that was how Dale…Dale left’, his cheeks ached as he spoke, and he thought that served him right for such huge lies he just stated.
‘That’s strange. They let him go and they didn’t let you go. How does that work? You guys were detained wrongfully together for the same crime, right?’, Samantha asked.
‘Huh? I don’t know, Dale just…’, Tristan didn’t want to speak about Boorbunk because there would not be enough time. He just changed the topic.
‘Well, I don’t know how he did it, though. No one waited to ask, everyone went home’, Tristan said. ‘He went with Humphrey. But I guess they fought their way in. We could hear shouts and blasts and we could see smoke as we were held in our cells. We ached to know what was going on outside. That was when Dale came with thousands of other prisoners that he and Humphrey had set free’, he poured himself coffee from coffee jar that was always lying on the table. It was just the same way he had left it, and as he talked to Samantha and her mother, it was like he has just stepped out for few hours and returned. It didn’t feel like a day apart, or a month apart, or a year apart, or four hundred and sixty days apart.
Grandma coughed. ‘What about your friends? Especially Michael. He is my favourite. More fun than you are, I must admit’, she said and coughed again in an attempt to laugh.
Tristan closed his eyes as he gulped down the hot coffee, not sure where to start from about Michael’s death and Pierson’s death or how to answer the million aching whys after that.
He dropped the coffee cup slowly and turned his sombre face at Samantha to Grandma and to Samantha again. ‘Michael and Pierson’, he started and turned his eyes away. ‘They both died in Boorbunk’
Unlike the shrieks of shock and the questions they would pose at him, they just stared at him horror-struck, mouth agape but no sound to make out. Grandma who never looked sorrowful or shocked, even when the doctor had told her that her second eyes might soon be infected with the cataract and render her forever blind, had her eyes bulged out a little and her lips trembling.
‘It is called The Death Toast. It kills. It consumes’, Tristan said, coldly.
It was then that Grandma broke the silence with a loud doleful cough.
Dale got off the bus after six hours of journey. He was probably going to be the last one among all the prisoners to return home.
‘Thank you very much, Humphrey’, he said.
‘Okay. You should have a great time. I am heading home’, Humphrey replied and started the engine.
Okay, Dale would reach his home at least before Humphrey who would still have to drive back home to Western Dairione – Yolyarkshire.
Dale was standing in front of a long motorway that he believed was where he had lived during his childhood. He was dressed in white T-shirt and blue slacks, looking too ordinary for someone who had broken through the most impassable prison in Dexter and was on the watch of the Order of the Quppis. Dale stood still as a statue, watching ahead and looking at the rows of houses at either side of the road.
He shut his eyes and hoped to see something that would make the road seem familiar after all these years and despite the thick dark line blocking him from his memory – amnesia. He didn’t see anything but he heard sounds; the sounds of he and his brothers laughing as they played in their neighbour’s farm, throwing sands at each other until their mother’s voice would stream through and tell them to leave there at once. It came just the same startling way his father’s voice came to him.
He opened his eyes and walked step after step along the side of the road. He stared everywhere, completely mute, completely emotive. He didn’t think he would ever see this place anymore. For some time, he didn’t even remember the place existed. Up until the time when he reached Boorbunk, he never heard voices, he never remembered about his parents, everything just sunk into his brain’s black hole. But it wasn’t completely gone after all.
It was here and he had lived in one of the houses that he was presently working past. The houses were silent, unlike the way Dale thought it would be. He expected evenings in the state filled with children playing all around, even on the roads that cars rarely passed. No cars really existed in Baskers because there was no need for long movements. They moved within their houses and to their beautiful farmlands and gardens, everything was serene then but not like how Dale was seeing it. There were no sounds at all, no faint whispers.
He kept moving past each of the bungalows painted in brown until he reached one that had tall blue flowers peeping over the white-fenced garden. He stopped now and kept his gaze on the flower. Tall blue flower. It stroke too factually in his memory than for it to be just a déjà vu. He went on and knocked the door just beside it. It was probably not loud enough and so he knocked again. There was still no response. Now, it all started to feel eerie as though he was the only one existent in the neighbourhood.
He knocked heavily and now he heard footsteps. Or maybe he just imagined the footsteps.
‘Hello, who is there? I mean no harm. Open the door’, Dale said. He saw someone crouched silently, try to see who the person outside was through the keyhole. There was no sound again until some moments later when he could hear a key creaking and the bolts drawn and the handle struggling to open. The door opened and a very old face stuck out of the half-open door. Like the time he had seen the flower, he froze yet again at his sight. Only that now, the reaction was mutual, more arresting on the face of the old man. He recognised Dale immediately.
The old man had lived in the house opposite Dale’s family house. Since his father was a soldier and didn’t own a farm, Dale and his siblings had spent half of everyday on the old man’s farm, working with wheat and throwing sand at themselves when no one was watching. It was only on his wheat farm that the tall weed grew from.
‘Oh my God. I don’t…Oh my dear God’, the old man cried as he fell across the shoulder of Dale and hugged him. ‘Reece. Oh Reece. Madea, come see Reece’, he shouted into the house.
A slender woman rushed out, unbelieving of her husband’s proclamation. ‘Reece?’, she hugged him too and started crying when she saw his face.
‘Let’s go in. Let’s go in. My boy is back’, the man said and held the wrist of Dale to follow him into the house.
‘Sit down there, boy’, he said to Dale. ‘It’s been twelve years that I last saw you’
Dale’s eyes were unblinking as he stared at the man, wishing he could recognise him but there was nothing coming to him.
‘Or your brothers or your father or your awesome mother’, he said and sniffed. ‘It was just like yesterday. We were in our houses when we heard those gunshots repeatedly. Oh God’
His wife was in the same mood, sobbing with her mind tuned to that bleak afternoon, more than a decade ago.
‘I was in the farm with your brothers Taylor and Lampard and Vince, taking them on their first ride on my tractor. Then, I heard those gunshots. They were so many and so near. I didn’t see Vince and Lampard anymore despite the fact that I told them to wait’
Dale looked around the room they were in. The walls were made of red bricks, they were two firehouses, two dimming bulbs which did a little good since the windows were kept completely shut which would have rendered the room utterly dark. There was no other thing in the room except a rugged cemented ground, many short wooden stools and an air of angst in the room.
‘But Taylor, your direct older brother stayed and he is the only one who has remained with me since’, he said and it was then that someone else came into the room. Dale looked up and in this case, the blood bond defeated his obliviousness. He jumped up and it was his turn to cry. His brother had grown, far taller than Dale for someone only two years than him. They had the same straight face with a pointed jaw and dark eyes. Both of them had shared the same bed with their other two brothers occupying the other bed in the room. It was a two-roomed bungalow.
It was dinner time, they all sat around a giant dining table with six chairs. Dale sat opposite Lampard and they were still discussing even though Dale didn’t quite flow with the conversation. He had forgotten almost all the things that Lampard was talking about, that they both used to enjoy. Madea came along, filling the empty plates of everyone with rice and spicy, hot stew.
‘Sorry, we don’t eat meat here’, Madea’s husband said to Dale. They were vegans and Lampard had gotten used to it after about fifteen years of leaving with them.
‘The first time we saw you was on the newspaper’, the man said. ‘You and some other men. You were arrested for killing the minister’, the sound of his spoon knocking on the ceramic plate was rough. ‘It made me cry and it made Madea cry too. For two reasons, that you were actually still alive and that when we thought we found you, we actually lost you finally. You could not hurt a fly, we all knew that. And there were so many protests everywhere in your town that made me a little hopeful but you seemed to locked up for life’
Dale had a sober face on, piling his spoon through his food and pouring it off again, thinking sadly as he heard the man whose name was Darius speak.
‘Until we found you again on the newspaper with a mask on your face as an ex-prisoner who had broken into the prison and saved about ten thousand men. I wouldn’t know which shocked me more, whether it was the news or seeing you today’
‘Dale’, Lampard mentioned. Dale looked at him. ‘That’s what they called you. They said your name was Dale Eagan’
‘I forgot everything. They knocked me out and I got saved by a new set of people, a new family. They named me Dale’. There was a long pause after that. ‘What’s my real name?’, he said with his eyes fixed on Lampard.
‘Reece, that’s what we called you’, Madea said before anyone could talk. ‘Reece Bailey’
It sounded very strange to Dale, he couldn’t believe that he had once been called that name. ‘But from now on, we will call you Dale Eagan’, Lampard said and Dale smiled back.
‘Where did Vince and Taylor go?’, he asked Darius.
‘Taylor? He was chasing the truck that you were in, trying to save you. They shot him twice’, Darius replied with a distressed look like it was his head that was shot.
‘Vince? What happened to him?’, Dale wished he hadn’t known how Taylor died because it only increased a sickening form of rage in him.
‘Vince was also chasing the truck that had you in it. He was the one who cried home to tell us about Taylor’s casualty. That day, Taylor, Ginny and Andre got killed’, the former and the latter being Dale’s mother and father respectively. Vince stayed in the house with us, crying endlessly until that night, he disappeared and we never heard of him since then.
‘Vince was always like father’, Lampard said. ‘He told me that day as we both mourned that we should both run away and find you and avenge our parent but I didn’t even reply. I…I didn’t think he was really going to do such. I think that’s why he left. We would never know where he would be now’
‘I guess we all had Dad’s spirit in us. He made me return to Dexter, to you. He made me free those people, he made me dare to do it in the first place and there was one last thing that I will do in his honour!’, Dale uttered, mentioning the last part of the statement with a firm tone. He swung the dining chair backwards and got up.
‘Reece?’, Darius called.
‘Where are you going, Dale?’, Lampard asked.
‘You think it’s okay to stay indoors all day. Didn’t we all love it playing in the fields? We could have been normal kids who didn’t have to see our parents’ blood flowing across the room. Father tried to make us as happy as we could be but we couldn’t but as long as I live, I will do what I must to stop all these deaths. Taylor was innocent and nothing should have happened to him in the first place. It’s time the people of Dexter had repose and there is no more waiting. We’ve waited enough’, he stormed out of the place snatching a Dexter Call Newspaper as he left.
Madea gasped in devastation when he slammed the door behind him, not sure where he was headed to.
It was 7pm, just two nights after the raid and Dale could still feel the occasional sting of the stitches in his chest where bullets had once been. He walked past all the houses on the street. The night was grave, just like his mind. All the houses looked dead because they had to be; no lights on and no windows opened and no one who wished to preserve his life for a long time would step out. And that was the way they wanted it? he thought. Someone had to drive through it no matter how murky the highway was going to be and he saw a skinny, dull-faced, amnesic magician whose name was Reece Bailey behind the wheels.
The address on the Dexter Call newspaper read Cident Street which was about a kilometre from Toltaire Road, where he had just left. He soon reached the place and Dexter Call’s building was the one up ahead, taller than the rest of the miniature bungalows that Dexter was made up of. It’s shield logo was shining up ahead at the peak with the motto too: ‘The truth must not be misjudged’, but of course that wasn’t it truly.
That was after dozens of their offices had been bombed and hundreds of their journalists had been assassinated for revealing details about the aristocratic Reckdettean leaders or the terrorist group. They suffered the most when Moise Milner, one of their most astute journalists revealed the other name of The Order of The Quppis as The Blazing Empire and went as far as speculating that their headquarters from which they operated from was The Singalort Forest which was true. As a result, Owen Sawer ordered the bombing of ten Dexter offices in Redtwuft where Moise operated from and sent fifteen Sigma men to his house, killing him and his two sons.
Since then, Dexter Call which was the leading newspaper, radio and TV media in the country learnt to keep their mouth shut because apart from the arrests and sues they regularly got from the government for telling the truth to the public and criticising their poor governance, there was now a real force that were a little too touchy about what the public knew about them and who would take bloodily fierce actions to punish those who were dissipating the knowledge. So, their new motto became: ‘Don’t be clever! Reveal only the obvious things’ because all Dale could see on the papers was the estimated number of deaths per day across the country and more especially, the criticism of the prison breakout with Dale’s face shown boldly on the newspaper cover. As if they didn’t know that it was the right thing, as if they hadn’t written an article titled: ‘Release the innocent ones’, when the Humour Sect were arrested.
They had no choice, not in a country with no freedom of speech and where one’s life had no tangible essence but Dale was marching up there to speak without a nuance of fear in him. Yet again, the covers of the newspapers and the morning news would show him disclosing every dark corner and at least, given the blinded citizens to see the light. As he stood outside the media house, he looked at it and gave a deep sigh before walking in.