Val Hall, page 23
It had been just a list then, lower-case, nothing special or specific. But Eddie had been intrigued enough to do as he had been told, and he had gone and researched that name, that age, that city. He had found a girl that matched the parameters. And within a month Ophelia Orleans, fifteen years old, born in Savannah, had made the headlines, holding a tornado at bay with the power of her mind. Superhero, Third Class – ordinary girl, extraordinary circumstances, manifested gift.
A week after Ophelia, the old man known as The Oracle had come up another name. Three days after that, another. Each time, Eddie was there when the old man woke from a deep sleep in which he Dreamed – and each time he brought out of that dream, like diver retrieving a pearl from the bottom of the ocean, a name of a young person, sometimes just pre-manifestation, sometimes in the immediate aftermath. The future residents of Val Hall. People who needed to know that it existed.
Eddie’s little list began to coalesce into what he now called The List, a folder on his computer containing files on the individuals whom The Oracle had fingered. They were all young – too young for Val Hall. But the time would come. And Eddie kept the records of that future, with the old man known as The Oracle making Eddie’s own present no more than tomorrow’s yesterdays.
They became friends, of a sort. Eddie was always there when the man whom everyone at Val Hall knew as Johnny came out of his Dreaming sleeps, on hand to receive whatever the Dream had brought back. And when Johnny was awake, Eddie found ways to spend time with him; he enjoyed being read to, and Eddie would do that, patiently reading from a book they had chosen together while the old man sat back with closed eyes and listened contentedly. Eddie found it particularly endearing that he seemed to truly love the worst sort of trashy romance novels, and Eddie, as the reader, began to find new heights of talent as he assumed the unlikely personalities of red-haired virginal vixens with names like Scarlett or Emilia or Anastasia being courted by virile broad-shouldered alpha males who answered to Benedict, or Gavin, or (once,, memorably) Leopold, neither of which neither he nor the man he read to resembled in any way. The stories were enjoyed both on their own merits, as potential wish fulfillment, and as a gentle mockery of the tropes of the genre with which they both became increasingly familiar. The names were a part of it, part of the screen, and if Johnny dropped in other names, names from his Dreams, well, those people who didn’t need to know had stopped listening a long time ago.
The List grew. By the time Johnny had been at Val Hall for a handful of years, Eddie’s List had grown to more than thirty names, not one of them older than twenty five at the time of being called out by The Oracle’s Dreams, all out there waiting their turn for Val Hall. And Eddie knew that the Dreams were true because not only did he research each name and make sure that Johnny had been correct in the specific particulars but at least once the name that had been pulled out for The List became active long before the age criteria kicked in. Because Val Hall, while billed as a Retirement Home, also functioned as a sanctuary for the disabled superheroes, third class, whatever their chronological age at the time of their disability. And it was one of these that rose to prove The Oracle’s worth as a prophet and visionary.
“Salim Habib,” Johnny had said. “Aleppo. I think. It is hard to be sure this time. And he will be twenty five when he manifests.”
“When?”
“Hard to say. It is not clear, this one. It could be in a matter of months. It could be years. Not sure.”
By the time Eddie found Salim, he had manifested – he had single handedly prevented a house from collapsing on his own family, and then he went on to hold up other walls before they fell onto helpless children or old people who could not move out of the way quickly enough. It was one of those walls that finally did for him, when he loosed it too soon, and it came down upon himself, breaking both his legs and crushing one foot to the point where it had to be amputated. Val Hall had connections; Eddie, who was doing the work of The List without alerting the Val Hall authorities, brought Salim to their attention through channels – and it was another Val Hall-destined superhero with healing powers who worked as a medic in the warzones of the Middle East who found Salim and extracted him from the battles, bringing him to Val Hall under the disability clause.
The young man was still under thirty when he came to Val Hall, and he was treated as something of a pet by the older residents who reveled in his youth and his – despite the lost foot – energy and enthusiasm. Salim told magnificent stories, to the point that one of the other residents called him Son of Scheherezade, and he kept everyone riveted to serialized tales told over consecutive nights beside the fireplace in the great room of Val Hall.
Eddie and Johnny watched it from the sidelines, together.
“So, it’s all true,” Eddie murmured, watching Salim’s expressive hands help shape the story he was telling. “All of those names.”
“Of course it is true,” said Johnny with some asperity. “I do not lie. I am The Oracle. I contain only truth.”
“Yes, but where did you come from?” Eddie asked, turning to him and smiling gently.
But Johnny would never talk about himself, or his past. Now, as always, he merely smiled enigmatically and lowered those concealing lids over the almond-shaped eyes.
“I have always been here,” he said.
Eddie gazed at him appraisingly. “You have eyes from Asia, the nose of an Arab sheikh, lips from Nubia, skin from an Indian brave, and the build of a Somali long distance runner, the kind that win marathons without breaking a sweat,” he said. “It’s like somebody put you together out of leftover spare parts – you don’t seem to belong to any one world. I know your social worker brought you here because you were living alone in a rented room and got to the stage of needing help with everyday stuff – but where were you before that, Oracle Man? Who are you?”
“I was born with too much truth inside,” Johnny said cryptically. “I can’t die until I pour out all that light. That’s what I’m doing, here. And you’re helping. And that young man, there – that’s already one good thing that has come out of it all. It doesn’t matter where it all started, does it?”
“So what do you know about me?” Eddie said. “You once said you’d Dreamed me.”
“I did,” Johnny murmured.
“You said I was the one who needed to listen,” Eddie said, gently persistent. “I’m listening. I am. But what did you Dream about me?”
Johnny gave him a long, languid look out of those liquid black eyes. “I told you,” he said, “I carry the truth. You’re part of the truth. You played one role, once, and then another, and you are where you need to be, and Val Hall needs you. Isn’t that enough?”
“I pick and tidy and stow and help with food and procedures and medications,” Eddie said, grinning. “I’m an orderly. Of course Val Hall needs me. Without the likes of me it would all fall apart, wouldn’t it, now?”
“Yes,” Johnny said, “but not because of what you do. Because of what you are. Not an orderly. Underneath the skin. Folded away.”
Eddie looked at him long, and in silence, but he said no more, and Eddie didn’t pursue it.
They had their secrets, the two of them.
VAL HALL 2012
An origami creature with vast, intricate, fragile wings hung on a corner of Johnny’s bed, like a paper guardian angel; it was the first thing that Johnny saw when his eyes fluttered open. The next thing was the back of a retreating nurse, and the smiling face of Eddie leaning over him on the other side of the bed.
“Are you here...?” Johnny whispered, redundantly, trying to blink his sleep-blurred vision back into focus.
“Always,” Eddie said. “How are you feeling?”
“I...” Something was wrong. Something was different. Johnny frowned, trying to gather his thoughts. He felt... he felt... empty.
He looked up, his eyes suddenly sharpened into a realization, his breath catching a little in his throat.
“What is it?” Eddie asked immediately, observant, concerned.
“Nothing,” Johnny said. “I bring back... nothing. I did not Dream.”
“Maybe this time you just needed the sleep,” Eddie said, his voice gentle.
Johnny shook his head minutely. “No,” he said. “It is not that simple.” He licked his lips, weakly. “I’m thirsty...”
Eddie ducked out of sight and returned with a cup, equipped with a lid and a straw. “Here,” he said, “take a sip. It’s water. I’ll bring you some tea in a minute if you like.”
“No... Water...” Johnny reached for the cup and realized that his hand trembled as he did so, and that he could not control the shake. Eddie folded his fingers gently around the cup, helped him lift his head a little, take a sip, take a swallow. Then he pushed the cup away.
Eddie laid him back down, with care, as though his bones were glass. And in truth he felt it, felt as though his physical body was infinitely fragile, ready to fall into dust at a breath.
“It’s empty,” he said very softly. “I think it’s finally empty. It’s done, and I’m done, and it’s over. Maybe... maybe... there is one more thing hiding in the shadows. One more, but I have to hunt it and find it and catch it and bring it forth. And then I’ll be finished. I’ll have done what I was sent here to do.”
“Do you know what you were sent here to do?” Eddie murmured. “That’s more than most of us are given.”
Johnny said nothing, his eyes resting on the origami angel.
A faint ghost of a smile lifted the edges of Eddie’s mouth.
“The nurse said she wanted your vitals,” he said, his tone light, conversational. “And then if you’re up to it we can get you out of that bed for a bit.”
“Can we go outside?”
“It’s raining,” Eddie said. “It isn’t the time. But maybe we could go out onto the porch for a bit, if you wrap up warm. Sometimes it’s just good to see the rain falling.”
“Yes,” Johnny said faintly. “Yes, I would like to see the rain falling.”
PLACE UNSPECIFIED, YEAR UNKNOWN
The boy wore a fur wrap around his shivering bronze-skinned body, his eyes huge and dark in a face that was angles and planes. The flames of the small fire he sat hunched over, in the back of a rock overhang just too shallow to be called a cave, danced reflected in those eyes as he gazed into that fire, not really seeing it at all. In a waking dream he saw the procession of years as it unfolded into the future, his frail body and his vivid mind a bridge between an origin and a destination, a past and a future, the eternal present, drawing down knowledge from both directions, building it into knowledge, into truth. He was seeing things he had no words to describe, no means to fully comprehend, but yet he accepted them as real, and true, and something that existed once, or existed right now somewhere far from him, or were yet to come. If he had had anyone to describe these things to, they might have called him mad – or perhaps, in the days where that was something that was believed, touched by a god, possessed by a spirit, ridden by something greater and wiser and far more powerful than his own small self.
Words that were meaningless to him came, and laid themselves to rest in the archives of his mind, waiting for the moment when they would be needed, wanted, understood. Words like automobile. And bomb. And computer monitor. And phone. And rocket.
And a house on a hill on an island in an ocean with a west-facing horizon, a house that had a name. Long before it had existed, long before it had been even the first crumb of an idea, The Oracle had known the name of Val Hall and what it was built to do.
He knew that he would go there some day. He knew that his death waited there. It was a gentle death, a good death, a death that would be made easy by people who were there to care for him and to help him, but a death nonetheless. The boy knew that. The old man that he would become could have screamed and fought when they came to get him, when they told him where he was going – because he knew, as they did not, that he was going there to die, that he would never leave that place again. But the boy knew, and accepted, and so did the old man, when the time came. Everything died, in the end. And The Oracle had already lived for more years than he knew how to count, by the time he came home to Val Hall. More years than he would ever allow the people of Val Hall to know were lying upon him.
He didn’t know why Val Hall was important. Not back by that fire, when he was a boy. Nor even when he first set foot on the ferry to the island, on the way to his final destination. But he knew when he got there, when he saw the orderly with the wise, gentle eyes. The orderly who was so much more and was content to let others believe that he was so much less. The man who carried his own secrets. The man who would not tell The Oracle’s secrets, if The Oracle did not speak of his own. They could work together. And working together... they would build a future in which Val Hall would continue to exist, to help people like themselves, the people who had reached the ends of their ropes, and give those people a place where they could land, and stay whole, and survive with energy and dignity and a certain amount of power right until the suns of their lives finally set for the last time.
The final sanctuary. The harbor where the ships gathered when it was time to drop anchor for the last time.
Some people would land here more than once, perhaps – a first perch, to rest on, and then gather strength to spread their wings and try and fly again; Val Hall’s current Director had risen from the ranks of its residents, had come to Val Hall broken and almost catatonic and – as the records had it – had found a way through it, and past it, and then picked up responsibilities in the organization until he rose to Supervisor, and then Director. It was entirely possible that at the end of his shift at the tiller he would one day return to this place, as a resident once more, and receive the same care he was now in a position to offer others. It was possible, Johnny thought, gazing at Salim telling his story, that the young man would recover from the loss of that shattered leg and would go back into the world to continue telling his own story – it did not seem finished yet, not by a long shot. But Val Hall was there to catch him when he was falling, and Val Hall had been there to help him find his way back – and Val Hall would be there, his tomorrow’s yesterday, come round again in days to come, for him if he needed it again when the load became too heavy. Val Hall was there to honor the debts its people were owed by those whom they had helped, people they had rescued from falling bricks, or whirlwinds, or villains, or people whom they had just made happy in some way.
The boy wrapped in furs, who did not know where he came from or how old he was or where he was going, knew that a place called Val Hall would be waiting for him one day.
VAL HALL 2012
“I don’t know how old I am,” Johnny said, sitting in a wheelchair with a quilted rug over his lap, staring out across the porch railing into the misty distance through the veil of drizzle.
Eddie, leaning on that railing, turned his head to look at him.
“I’m probably hundreds of years old,” Eddie said, quite conversationally. “I mean, I remember lifetimes...”
“Oh, I know,” the old man said, and a conspiratorial grin creased the ancient face. “I’ve always known what you are.”
“Thanks for not telling on me,” Eddie said.
“You did the same for me,” Johnny said, still smiling. “We – our kind – you and I – we aren’t exactly a fit for this place, are we?”
“In one sense,” Eddie said equably. “In another sense we belong here just as much as anyone else under that roof. Just as much as Salim does. All of us have a little slice of Superhero, Third Class, lodged somewhere in us, don’t we?”
“In some of us, it doesn’t wake,” Johnny murmured. “In some of us, too much wakes too soon. In some, the wrong thing wakes at the wrong time – or it’s just something on top of a greater thing, and it gets lost in the shuffle... what sort of creature am I, then?”
“You’re one of the old ones,” Eddie said. “One of the Ancients, who still walks amongst us. You’ve always been awake. It’s just that – when you’re you – sometimes it’s hard to tell when you are walking in reality or in dream. Your problem, O Oracle, is that it is all the same truth to you. And sometimes it’s difficult to know if your eyes are open or closed.”
“But it’s all true,” the old man insisted. “Be it memory, or dream.”
“Tomorrow’s yesterdays,” Eddie said softly. “And yet it’s always now. Always today.”
Johnny sighed, and Eddie was attentive at once.
“Are you all right? Are you cold? Is this too much? Is there something you need?”
“I think,” Johnny said, oddly conscious of that boy who still lived deep inside the withered old body which he now wore, “that it is time for me to sleep again. I feel a Dream coming. Will you be there when I wake?”
“Always,” Eddie said, rising to his feet and helping the old man stand. “Always.”
The One About One More Time (2018)
It was one of those rare November days that dawned perfect and stayed that way – especially after more than a week of dreary grey drizzle that had kept them all cooped up indoors staring out of rain-smeared windows into a blurry wet world. All that was apparently forgotten as the brittle November sunshine brought out brightness, and smiles, and people who (admittedly with shawls and coats on over their inside clothes) spilled out onto the lawn which sloped down to the sea below Val Hall.
Susan Vickery, born Susan Small, had not followed them onto the grass – her balance was iffy, and even a cane probably wouldn’t help on the uneven ground and still slippery grass – but she too was smiling as she sat safely on a rocking chair on the veranda, a crochet afghan tucked around her knees, and looked out at the others milling about in the sun.
“You okay, Mrs. Vick? Anything I can get you?”
