18) Gods Prayer

18) Gods Prayer

The silence is unbearable.
"I'm sorry." I whisper to nothing and no one. No one responds. No one looks at me. No one looks at anyone.

Fourteen hours later, the car bounces across gravel and grinds to a halt

The numbness of my hand is the first thing I feel, the back of my hand is being pressed against the door and my head rests on my palm, pressing my hand deeper into the material. The darkness that surrounds me is comforting and peaceful. Nothing punctuates the darkness.

I feel my soul shift as Dawn switches the car off and climbs out. She slams the door, places her hands on the roof, and screams. A loud, horrible scream. It ruptures the darkness. She slams her fists into the roof.
"The idiot." She shouts; she leans against the car, "The idiot." She mumbles as she slides down the door and hits the gravel. I slip out the car, Dante stays where he is, staring into space. I walk around to Dawn; I collapse to the floor next to her. I place an arm around her shoulder.
"I'm so sorry." I whisper, tears stream down my face. Without Blue, the word lacks happiness, her annoying jubilance lightened the mood, but now, the mood is dark and dull, like the night sky above, but less beautiful. Dawn leans against me and starts crying, deep sobs.

We stay like that. Dante in the car staring into space. Dawn and me collapsed on the floor, in each other's arms, crying. Without Blue, it seems like the entire world has a hole in it. The entire world and me.

"It wasn't the first time I lost someone. And it’s not the last." I stare at Desk-Head. They sit there, unmoving, like a statue. A fish tank sits behind them. A clock ticks above them, tick-tock, a digital clock sits on the desk, beeping every minute, beep. Beep. Desk-Head takes deep breaths. In, out. Beep beep. In out. Tick-tock. Beep beep. In out. Tick-tock. Beep beep in out tick-tock. Beep beep in out tick-tock beep beep in out tick-tock. It’s a repetitive pattern. Over and over again. The same. Never late, never early. Beep beep. In, out. Tick-tock. Over and over and over and over and over and over again.

The sun starts to rise. It pokes its head over the hill. I finally see where we stopped. I look up at the ginormous building, a grand building, a mansion, a manor, call it what you want, it’s big. Huge windows straddle the even bigger walls. A grand oak door stands prideful in front of me. It reminds me of an old medieval door that you’d see attached to a castle.

I look at it. Bewildered. Confused. Amazed. Scared. Happy. A range of emotions, all ending with, 'The f**k?' It’s a simple question, but my mind has yet to come up with an explanation. Dawn pulls herself away from me; she looks at the building, then at me, noticing my face.
"We own this." She sniffs; she pulls a set of keys from her pocket and unlocks the door.

The inside is exactly like I remember it was. The grand doors lead into an even grander hallway, a fabulous chandelier hangs from the ceiling.

My mind races back to the day I arrived here, in New York, in America. Barely days before all this began. Dante staggers in behind us.

The place is covered in dust. Not just a thin layer, but the type of layer that accumulates over years without being used.
"Since the mall no one's been in here." Dawn says openly, she swings open a set of doors leading to the dining room. I step into it. The last time I had set foot in this house, I had been thirteen. My dad had sat on the chair closest to the door. When I was last here, I’d barely seen the house. The dining room is giant. The dining table to my left, grand oak. A fireplace in the furthest wall, directly in the centre. Couches to my right surrounding a coffee table, looking through a giant window, with long red curtain covered in dust. Bookshelves line the walls from window to door and the fireplace.

The kitchen is exactly as I remembered; I smell the food that Isaac had prepared. I look back into the dining room, Dawn stands on the rim of the fireplace, five metres off the floor, she grabs a brick and pulls it out, exposing a hole behind it, she reaches in and pulls out a pistol. She throws it to the floor, reaches in, pulls out boxes of ammo, another pistol, more ammo, a box, and two sub-machine guns. She leaps down from the fireplace and kicks all the stuff into the middle of the room.

Dawn repeats the process in every single room of the house. All twenty-six. Plus all six bathrooms. Thirty-two rooms in total. Each time she reappears with guns, ammo and a box.

An hour later, every secret stash lays on the floor of the dining room. Sixty-four sub-machine guns, six shotguns, twelve assault rifles, nine snipers, one hundred grenades, sixty smoke grenades, sixty-four pistols, thirty-two boxes, and a s**t ton of ammo.

She stands proudly by her collection.
"I think that was all of them." She mumbles. Dante and I stare at her and the pile of weaponry she created. "Help me out." She reaches down, picks up a box, opens it, and tips it on the floor. Money falls to the floor. Stacks of it.
"Holy s**t." Dante says. Holy s**t is right. The stacks are thick. I crouch down and open a box. Six stacks of five-hundred dollar bills each stack containing at least fifty notes. One hundred and fifty thousand from one box.

It takes us a further hour to empty all the boxes and stack them evenly.
"One million and two hundred thousand, Euros." Dawn says counting the Euro pile. "One million and two hundred thousand, Dollars." She moves to the next, "One million and two hundred thousand, Pounds. And finally, One million and two hundred thousand Yen."
"Holy s**t." Dante repeats.
"Four million and eight hundred thousand, in total." Dawn says,
"That's a lot of money." I gasp.
"And that's just one safe house." Dawn beams, being surrounded by weapons and money seems to take her mind off Blue, it takes all our minds off Blue.
"How many are there?"
"In the United States alone, around two hundred and fifty three."
"F*****g hell." Dante says almost inaudible.
"One billion, two hundred and fourteen million, and four hundred thousand. In the US alone." Dawn smiles from ear to ear, "Now that's a lot of money."
"Are there houses all over the world?"
"Yes." Dawn pauses to think, "Around two thousand safe houses in the world, maybe more."
"Holy f*****g s**t." Dante whispers.
"Nine billion and six hundred million. Give or take a few billion" Dawn's smile grows wider.
"Holy s**t." Dante and I gasp in unison.
"How?" I ask.
"Perks of working for an International Organisation that doesn't officially exist. We get to do whatever the hell we want, in whatever country, and most the time we get paid, and if we don't, we just steal their stuff and sell it. Also, the founders of The Children of Eden were all multi-billionaires so they put most of their money into it." Dawn smile fades, "Blue would have loved all these guns."

I stare at the pile of money and guns. It looks staggering. Four million and eight hundred thousand worth of notes sit there. And enough weaponry to take on a small army.
"When we were last here, was all this here?"
"Yes. This safe house has only been used once or twice, so most of this stuff is all original."
"If you own it -"
"How did you get to stay in it?" Dawn finishes, "We rent out most of the bigger safe houses, brings in a profit."
"What if someone found all this?"
"What, do you go around poking at bricks in a fireplace often?" Dawn replies sarcastically.
"No."
"Thought not."

We eat like kings, baked beans for me, tinned tomato soup for Dawn and Dante, and after dinner me and Dawn settle down on the couches in the living room to watch a movie. Dante skulks upstairs, and presumably goes to bed.

Dawn says that the only time the power is turned on, is when the place was being rented out, so we are stuck watching s****y DVD's through her laptop.
"Last time I was here, there was a butler called Isaac?" I ask as the credits to the third film roll.
"We hire them for the time the place is rented. Simple, easy, and clean."
"Oh." I say, as I realise that the story Isaac had told of Lady Virgil was made up, probably on the spot. Dawn notices the look on my face.
"What's wrong?" She asks gently.
"Isaac had told a story about the ghost of Lady Virgil haunting this place." I reply; Dawn lets out a short laugh.
"Lady Virgil used to own this place; she was found hanging from the chandelier the day before we were set to buy it off her. The place fell into the possession of her youngest, Grayson, we were about to buy it from him, but he died, the same way Lady Virgil did. He had no children or heirs, so we just went to the marketer, and were like, 'Yeah we'll buy this.' It was a mess. Took six years longer to get this place then we had expected." She gets up, "Come I’ll show you around."

She leads me into the corridor.
"The dining hall was built as an extension to a house built in eighteen-ten, the corridor was built ten years later along with the lounge. By eighteen-twenty-five, there was the kitchen, the dining room, the cellar, and the lounge. The house fell under new ownership in eighteen-forty and the owner built the second floor." She gestures to the staircase, "This was built in Ireland and brought to here in eighteen-thirty-nine."

 We arrive on the second floor, "These became the staff rooms for a bit, until the third floor was built." Dawn says gesturing to the six rooms on the second floor, we continue to the third. “The family rooms remained on the second. The third floor was spare rooms. And the fourth floor was workers.” She says as we step onto the fourth floor. She stops by the closest door.
"How do you know so much about this or do you know this much about all the safe houses?" I ask Dawn, she stares at the door, before opening it.
"This used to be my room." She whispers,
"What?" I stammer.
"After Eden bought it, it was turned into a school for a bit. Then we started renting it out." She leads me into the room, "And this was my room. It was the same. But I had a little piano in that corner." She points to the furthest corner, "That was the only difference."
I stare at her in disbelief. "All the rooms were the same, apart from the little trinkets we all brought from homes, and memories of past lives." Dawn stares emptily into the room, "I remember the day I arrived. How different my life was back then." She sits on the bed and stares out the window that overlooks a pool, and then a forest.  She smiles faintly at me. Dawn pulls out Blue’s box, "This was Blue's, it contains anything and everything from her." She reaches in a pulls out a pencil, engraved on it are the initials, R.G.G, "No one knows what they mean, she died being the only person to know her name. In a way it's beautiful, her name, and only she knows it." She puts the pencil back and pulls out two photos, the first one shows a little girl, barely nine, but almost certainly Blue, she’s surrounded by friends, and wears a football kit. The other is less understandable, "She was like a sister and a daughter to me." The picture shows an older Blue, maybe twelve, and a Dawn, "I was thirteen when she arrived. And since then, we grew inseparable, when she went on a mission, I had to go as well. I hated it at first, pretending to be the sister of this child, pretending to be someone I wasn't, lying to neighbours, faking a life until the mission was done." She frowns, "But I’ve come to like it. Being a sister to Blue became life, in and out of missions, I was her sister, and she was mine." Dawn gets up and leaves.
"Where are you going?" I whisper as she reaches the stairs.
"She needs to be buried."
A simple sentence. But the implications are immense. A thirteen year old, needs burying. A girl who had be like a sister and daughter, needed burying. The sentence catches me off guard, and my head tumbles into the clouds.

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I stand there. Watching. The sun shines brightly, scorching hot in English terms, but barely fifteen degrees. The day is going to be beautiful. It shouldn't be though. It has no right to be beautiful on a day like today. Today, is the darkest day. My soul feels empty, as if someone has burrowed in and hollowed me out. I guess everyone here must feel the same. We’re all here for the same reason. For the same goddamn reason. I wonder what God's doing? Is he watching us? Does he care enough to watch? Does he have a plan? Is this part of his plan? The idea of God had seemed so batshit crazy. Now though, it’s the only explanation. But what God would demand a life? A life of a thirteen year old, what kind of God would demand such a thing? A s**t God. A God who had no right to rule. Despite the beautiful day, everyone around me is depressed. All for some reason, but due to the same thing. Me because she had been my best friend... she was like family... I hadn't even got to say goodbye. For others, like her parents, because she was their daughter. For Max and James, because she had been their best friend. For the priest, because it was his job. For family, because she had been family. She had been family to us all. To me. To Max. To James. To Ellie. She was part of our family, and we, a part of hers. Any other day, and we would have been messing around in the park. Not today, today we watched as her body was lowered into the ground.

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We follow Dawn into the forest. Reaching a small clearing. The bushes around us are wild and big, they surround us on all sides. The grass is barely ankle high. A tree with pink petals stands proudly in the middle of the circle of bushes. It casts its hands into the sky shrouding the clearing with its fingers.
"This was her favourite place." Dawn mumbles, crouching down by the tree, "She would climb up high, and hide from us. I always found her here, by herself, in the tree, watching." She looks at me, "It's only fitting she should be buried here."

Soon, the ground opens up and swallows the small body of Blue. And soon the sun starts to set, casting an orange glow in the clearing.

We stare at the little mound of earth, a small hole left uncovered.
"Blue, was a daughter, of someone somewhere, she never knew them. She found people, like her, unlike her, found friends. She found a family, and a family found her. She wasn't just an order to watch, to keep safe. She wasn't just whatever the mission needed her to be, she was more, she was a teenage girl, who the world took too soon, she was beautiful, she was smart, she was funny and amazing. But most importantly, she was my sister. My daughter, my friend." Dawn places the box in the small hole, "To the God above. To the child below. To the holy spirt and the ones we don’t know. Let Blue pass on safely. Let her reach Heaven. Let her prosper. Let her be the one atop the Ivory Throne." Dawn says.
“Blue." I begin, "I didn't know you very long. I'm sorry. If you see Chloe before I do, tell her thank you, and if you don't, I’ll tell Chloe hi from you."
Dante doesn't say anything, he just watches. Dawn covers the little box.

Dawn heads for the little path out of the clearing.
"Where you going?" I whisper. I look Dawn in the eyes, and for the first time, I see it. The flecks of pink twinkle in the sunlight.
"I'm gonna start a war.” She stops, “You coming?”