“Departures” is a supernatural thriller and love story published as a serial novel with new episodes dropping every Tuesday morning. Anyone can read or listen for free. Paid subscribers gain early access to new episodes. Watch the trailer or visit the table of contents to browse all the published episodes.
Previously…
In the last episode, June returned home from her visit to the doctor to confront Wild about the news of her death he had withheld. After, she packed her bags and went to stay with her parents, leaving Wild devastated and alone. He drank until he passed out. Worried when he didn’t respond to her calls, Eileen showed up, seeking to comfort him but instead found that her feelings for him only made things more complicated.
“Do you remember when you left me? I didn’t know it was possible to hurt like that. I couldn’t breathe.”
Wild wasn’t used to the sound of his empty room. His voice reverberated across the planes of empty bookshelves, bare walls, and floor in the room with no windows except for the one open to the sky. There were boxes stacked around the perimeter of the study just as there had been all those years ago on that first night he brought June here.
From the empty chair beside him, June didn’t answer. He closed his eyes and tried to picture her there. With the passing of every day, week, year, and decade, she had faded, and he had replaced her cell by cell in his imagination because he didn’t like to look at pictures. Photographs isolated and contained something that couldn’t be contained. June couldn’t fit in a five-by-seven frame and whenever he saw her in one, it flattened and diminished his memory of her. There was no boundary in his mind that divided his consciousness from June’s. She expanded like the horizon on the open sea.
Even though a few months had passed since they left the jungle, the residue of the ayahuasca continued to expand and render its strange architecture below the surface of his mind. June had revealed herself to him during his trip and in that revelation, he understood the inadequacy of the simulation he had created. Closing his eyes, he went back to that place, and she was there. As she hovered in the liminal space projected by his memory, he tried to fill in all the years of laughter and heart break that would have stamped crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes and drawn deep creases around her smile as they had his. But it was no good. She would be forever young, his poor simulation of her.
Somewhere beyond the walls of his apartment and the walls of the old theater, the thumping sound of bass rumbled down Peachtree Road. He imagined it was one of those three-wheeled motorcycles tricked out with lights like a carnival ride as it cruised, a sleek predator prowling in search of a mate. He had the faintest flicker of what that once felt like– the urgency and purpose of it.
He opened his eyes and stared at the boxes. Tomorrow, movers would come and pack them into a truck. The boxes that contained the artifacts from a life half lived would go into an apartment across town, a carriage house that sat across the driveway from Millie’s home in an old-money neighborhood near Emory. It wasn’t his plan. He was far beyond making plans, but then his whole life had been an endless series of reactions. Though he had accepted his fate and never been one to wallow in self-pity, this most recent blow was testing his resolve.
Gerry, who had always been spiteful and competitive had not suddenly become a better man, changed by the knowledge that he only had a handful of weeks left. While the maneuver for the Thorne Family Foundation to become the marquee sponsor of the old Century theater had seemingly been a PR strategy to celebrate the fifty-year anniversary since the renovation that saved it from ruin, Wild saw his brother-in-law’s fingerprints all over it. When there was a knock on his door early on a Monday morning two months earlier, he hadn’t been surprised to see the theater manager. The rooms above the old theater were going to be converted into a workshop space for musicians, singers, and dancers passing through to hold master classes for talented and underprivileged kids in the community.
He was given sixty days and $50,000 to relocate. Millie hadn’t seen it coming and hadn’t been informed until the deal was done. She was furious but ultimately unable to do anything in light of the fact that she was quietly working her scheme to flatten the old machine and turn it into a progressive organization. To make a stand to keep her beloved uncle’s private rooms above the theater instead of opening them up to the community would not play well. So, she had insisted Wild move in with her. She was disappointed when he was neither angry at being kicked out of his home or enthusiastic about moving into her carriage house. Don’t you feel anything anymore? she had asked him.
The answer was no. Since they had returned from the Amazon, his capacity for feeling had both expanded and collapsed. While his psychedelic journey had uncovered a deeper connection to everything and everyone around him, it had also completely dissolved his personal stake in any of it. Wild was so deep in thought that he didn’t realize someone was knocking at the door. He strained to get up, his back stiff from sitting too long. He wasn’t expecting anyone. Maybe it was someone from the crew who was playing the theater that night. It wasn’t uncommon for people to get lost looking for the dressing rooms. When he opened the door and saw Eileen, he could hardly speak.
“Hello, Wild.” She smiled and it seemed she had barely aged at all. “It’s good to see you.”
She was dressed in an elegant, form-fitting pantsuit and looked every bit the title she held at Thorne. He suddenly felt self-conscious in his faded, twenty-year-old jeans and flannel shirt with a hole in the elbow. She stepped into the room and wrapped her arms around him. Time collapsed on itself as it sometimes did and Wild felt stirred by the citrus scent of her perfume and the strength of her embrace. Aging had worn down his ability to contain his emotions and any kind of human contact could flood him because it was so rare. It wasn’t uncommon for him to go months without being touched. A part of him believed this was self-determined, a way to defend against the visions, but the truth was he was old and most old people lived without regular human touch. Still, this embrace felt wholly different than any in recent memory.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, his voice a raspy croak.
“I wanted to see you, to see this place before I missed my chance. I’m sorry I didn’t reach out sooner, but I’ve only known for a couple of weeks and things have been crazy. I’m sure Millie keeps you up on things.”
She walked into the main room and looked around. She frowned as she took in the empty shelves. He suddenly realized, he couldn’t see it in his mind. The date she would die, always a footnote just below his experience of taking her in, was gone. She turned to him.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Yes, yes. I’m sorry, I just wasn’t expecting you. It’s good to see you.” He turned toward the kitchen. “I’d offer you something, but everything’s packed up. I could make a cup of tea, or I have some of that fizzy water…”
“No, I don’t need anything. I just wanted to drop by.”
“Well here, have a seat. I can still offer you a chair.”
When they settled into the chairs and she set down her large designer purse that served as a briefcase, she looked into his eyes. “This must be horrible for you, having to give up this place after all these years.”
He was trying to focus on the conversation but finding it hard. The absence of the secret which had always pulsed just below the surface of his interactions with her was gone and he was distracted. “It’s not so bad. I’ve probably been holed up here long enough.”
“Boots told me stories about your place here above the theater, but I had never seen it for myself.”
“How is Boots?”
Eileen looked away and bit her lip. “I guess Millie didn’t tell you. We’re uh, we’re separated.”
“I’m sorry, I had no idea. He didn’t say anything when I saw him.”
“He wouldn’t. It’s been a long time coming. We’ve been strangers. Maybe we were always strangers. But hey, I didn’t come here to talk about that. I came to check on you. Millie’s been worried.”
“Millie’s always worried. She gets paid handsomely to worry.”
“She says you’re going to live at her place?”
“Yeah, maybe it’s an upgrade. I’m not sure yet.”
“You don’t seem excited.”
“Sorry, I’m just… it’s a lot. You caught me at a weird time.”
“That makes two of us. I’ve moved back into town, at least for the time being. The girls are off at school. Most of my work is here helping Millie with her secret mission.”
“And what do you think about all that?”
“I don’t know exactly. It’s complicated. Your family, and this job have been very good to me.”
She didn’t say more and Wild got the sense that she really didn’t want to talk about it anymore than she wanted to talk about the dissolution of her marriage.
“Where are you living?” he asked.
“It’s nothing special, just a corporate apartment down the street. It's temporary. Everything’s temporary, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, I suppose it is…”
“What is it, Wild? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
He had forgotten how attuned Eileen was. She didn’t miss a thing. He didn’t even entertain the notion that he could bullshit her.
“You remember that thing I have, that ability…”
“Do I remember your death clock? Are you kidding?”
“Well, it’s not there now or at least not with you.”
“How do you mean?”
“I mean, when you hugged me, I didn’t see your date. I’ve always seen it ever since the first time I shook your hand.”
“Really? Well, that must be disorienting. I’m still not sure I believe in all that but that’s beside the point. How do you feel?”
“I’m not sure exactly. I don’t trust it. Things have been a little strange since I got back from the Amazon.”
“Millie told me a little about the trip, but I don’t think she knows that I know about your whole deal.” With this last word, she flashed a smile, her eyes widened, and her slender fingers unfolded into a jazz hands gesture. He had forgotten how much he loved the way she talked with her whole body. “You know, I never asked you when my time was up.”
“No, you never did and now I couldn’t tell you if I wanted to.” That was a lie. He was sure he had written it down in one of the journals.
“I haven’t thought about that day we met in a long time. What you did for me and for Marvin. I owe everything I have to you.”
“No, that’s not true. You owe me nothing. You were always going to have a successful life. I think you’re damn near unstoppable.”
“You’re wrong about that. Fast or slow, I would have killed myself after losing Marvin. I came close in the days after. If you and June hadn’t made me come stay with you and introduced me to Boots….”
Her voice trailed off and they were silent for a moment until the silence was interrupted by the thumping of a kick drum and a subsonic run of notes on a bass guitar as whoever the band was took the stage and picked up their instruments.
“Wow,” she said. “How have you lived for years above that? It’s like having a band of teenagers practicing in your basement except they never grow up and move out.”
“Heh, I guess that’s true. I’ve always liked it. The music’s kept me alive some years. You want to stay and see the show? One night only. Literally, this is your last chance.”
“I’d like that, but I’m hungry. Can we get some food? All I’ve had all day is some yogurt and a granola bar.”
“The band’s onstage. We can raid the greenroom. We might even be able to score some free beers.”
“Nothing tastes as good as free beers.”
“Give me two minutes and we can go down,” he said, getting up to head back into the bedroom.
Eileen stood and wandered over to the rows of boxes, many of them not yet taped shut. There were so many books and exotic objects. Her fingers traced the holes of a dark wooden flute. Wild was such a mystery to her and he always had been. It wasn’t by accident that she had avoided seeing him all these years. There had been many opportunities, but it felt disloyal to her husband, and she was a person who valued loyalty above all else. She had loved Boots, but she realized now or perhaps she was finally able to admit to herself that Boots had been the man offered to her, not the one she wanted.
It was more than just surviving tragic loss that she shared with Wild. She felt drawn to him. It was powerful and magnetic. His curse or gift or whatever it was felt familiar to her. It validated something unseen that she had always denied but secretly felt. Her mother and her aunts, always singing in church and talking of dead loved ones as if they were in the room had been an embarrassment to her but when Marvin died something deep inside her had begun to shift. It had taken decades to turn completely but here she was, back where it all started.
Why had it taken her so long? She knew the answer to that. She had had a whole other life with two daughters to raise. But seeing Wild tonight, she feared she had almost waited too long. He didn’t seem frail exactly, but he was worn thin.
“Okay, you ready?” he asked.
She turned to see him looking dapper in a collarless button-down and sport coat. His long gray hair was pulled back into a bun and something in his face had changed in the few minutes he had been away. He looked younger and lighter somehow, the hollows of his cheeks less pronounced. When he stepped closer, she could see a light in his eyes. They seemed to shine as they did that first time she looked into them. He offered his hand to her, and she took it.
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In the reality show competition for Houze, a revolutionary eco-home, six contestants face a winner-takes-all challenge. Beneath the surface of sustainability, altruism battles greed, turning a hopeful vision into a life and death struggle. Fans of “Nine Perfect Strangers” by Liane Moriarty will love this story.
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