On The Road Back With Jack, Part II
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Jack: My brother had already moved out by the time I became an adult, and since he wasn’t expected to have any children, that responsibility was placed squarely at my feet. My father quickly arranged a presentation, with a multitude of candidates. None of them interested me, which caused a bit of a stir. I had my eyes on a different girl, and since the Carsons hated our guts, she had not been among those presented: Alecia. She was a few years older than me, beautiful, ambitious, social, and with a mind of her own. Memory Lane could prove a rough experience, as it had for my grandmother, but I felt that Alecia had a certain… panache, that would enable her to thrive. A private marriage was soon arranged, a marriage her family never forgave her for. She sacrificed a lot to join our family…
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Jack: Esther had her ears to the ground, and knew about Alecia’s family situation. She did everything to make her feel welcome, and was an eager supporter of her career as a magician, showing up at every performance and promoting Alecia when she hosted her parties. My father knew what it was like to marry into the family, how to make a friend, and to appreciate a performer. He tutored her in logic and charisma, and was probably her closest friend in the household.
Daniel: How did Alecia get along with your grandfather, and your mother?
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Jack: Mickey had degenerated into a depressing, irrelevant figure at this point. My mother… that was complicated. Alecia soon made the mistake of summoning a meal in front of my mother, and got a verbal lashing unlike anything she had ever experienced. My mother was the family cook, having been taught by Brook, a true master of the kitchen. Alecia was told that her ability to summon meals was worse than worthless, it was a skill that could not be taught to new generations, a crutch, whose use was a signal of a dying legacy. She was threatened with eviction, and instructed that every meal should be prepared from the ground up, even using the replicator was forbidden, with nothing but perfect, home-grown ingredients.
Daniel: Was your mother bothered by the fact that she was a Carson?
Jack: No, she never said anything about that, I think it was all about her personality. Alecia never helped out with the horses or with gardening, due to her allergies, which were probably more imagined that real. She was a diva, after all. Every spouse had helped out with the horses in some way, even Esther scattered hay for them sometimes, and my mother resented that Alecia didn’t, often referring to her as “The indoors wife”. I think she felt that Alecia didn’t do enough for the family, but my mother did teach her alchemy, allowing her to take over the role as family alchemist.
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Jack: Having been a successful ghost-hunter, my father became a thief. I vividly remember one morning he came from work… He set up his drums in the hallway, fired up his creative aura and just started banging away at them. He liked making a bit of a ruckus sometimes… It woke me up, and I quickly grabbed the guitar and joined in the jam. Soon, Esther came in from the hot tub, whipped out her portable piano and joined in. Then my mother appeared, and we nagged her to join the jam until she begrudgingly got her bass. It wasn’t the first time the four of us jammed together, but through pure coincidence, my father and Esther’s clothes matched the black & white color of their instruments perfectly, and even my mother and myself were in black clothes. It was so funny… Alecia wasn’t there, she rarely got up before nine o’clock, but soon, Mickey showed up. He couldn’t play an instrument, his clothes didn’t match the black & white scheme, and he stood out like he didn’t belong at all, watching us like we were a bunch of strange aliens.
Jack: He died soon afterwards. Mickey, I mean. Just days later, his sister Symphony passed away, during Esther’s last party, dying in the same house she had been born. I think she had been a guest at almost every one of Esther’s parties, and Esther packed her things and moved into the communal retirement home shortly afterwards. The 3rd generation of Lane’s was gone, and from my perspective, the good times at Memory Lane died with them.
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Jack: Two days before he died, in a fit of senility, Mickey had bought a stallion called Cobalt. He dreamed about training it and racing it to international victories, which was nonsense, given his advanced age, but my mother didn’t want to deny him this last pleasure, even though she knew it was a pipedream. When he died, my mother tasked me with training Cobalt. I was a Horseman, so training it and then selling it would advance my career, but I already had Minotaur to care of. To make matters worse, Esther’s last act before moving out was planting a garden, and since Alecia refused to garden, and neither of my parents had any gardening experience, I was given the responsibility for that too.
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Kiara: You actually had to work?
Jack: Ahem… I had to get up at six in the morning, and I didn’t have…
Kiara: Ooooa… that must have been hard. Living in a huge mansion with all that money and having to get up at six…
Daniel: Give him a break…
Jack: I had no spare time, no life besides the horses and the garden…
Kaira: I thought you had potions. PIP’s, to go all night?
Jack: I wasn’t allowed to use them until I got an international victory. “A taste of reality”, my mother called it, and it was a reality that didn’t give me any time to do what I really wanted: Music. That was my true calling, I was just riding because it was expected of me.
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Jack: One day, my mother didn’t arrive at the nectar pavilion to do her race preperations. She used to be there 2-3 hours before the race, but on that day, she didn’t show up. That was completely abnormal, and as time went by, I started worrying that something had happened and I went looking for her. I found her in the alchemy room, where she was slumped in a chair in front of the fireplace, where a book was being burned. I asked her why she was burning the book, and she said it was “all lies”. She refused to look at me, but she seemed to have been crying, and she sounded… desolate. I tried to ask her some questions, but couldn’t get any real answer out of her, she just kept repeating “everything is a lie,” and eventually she told me to get out of the room. After another hour or so, she emerged, and did race Tisiphone, but she was never the same person after that day. Something had pierced every one of her bubbles.
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Daniel: When was this? How many years ago?
Jack: Ahem… It’s so long ago… I…
Daniel: 70 years? 65 years? 60? More, or less?
Jack: It was… a few of years before Jackson was born. He’s pushing 60, right? So… around 65 years ago, I guess.
Daniel: What book was she burning?
Jack: I don’t know. I always assumed she gave the books she wrote about our family’s history to Aria, except “A Different Drum”, which she had given to me prior to this, but… For all I know, she might have burned them all in that fireplace. After that, she wrote nothing but children’s books, but they weren’t really suitable for children at all. They were so dark that most of them were never published.
Daniel: Did Alyssina travel out of town prior to this?
Jack: No. She was never out of town. It was inconceivable for her to leave Tisiphone, even for a single day.
Daniel: If she wanted to conduct some business out of town, who could have acted on her behalf?
Jack: Her twin brother, Trenton. “Thousand Yard Trenton,” Alecia used to call him. If invited to a party, he would always find a way of acting weird, usually standing around with an empty plate in his hand. When Alecia took over the parties from Esther, she stopped inviting him, but he was always at his sister’s beck and call.
Daniel: He’s dead, I presume?
Jack: Yeah…
Celeste: Did your mother start acting differen…
Her purchase of Ralston Heights was indeed the trigger, and he knew exactly what lies Alyssina had discovered. The others had no clue, and he did not intend to enlighten them. But she knew. The leopard who had changed her spots had always known.
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Jack: …be a bit full of himself. At one point, he promised my mother that he would win 3 international racing competitions. He was supposed to ride Cobalt, whom I had trained. However, he didn’t take riding seriously at all, and more often than not, forgot about when the races were scheduled. This went on for some time. Then, having topped out his criminal career, he pranced around in the house, proud as peacock, showing off the golden fox statue to all of us. When he presented the statue to my mother, her reaction was… ahem… different than he expected. She looked at it disdainfully, asking if this was all he had to show for his criminal career: A statue that could only bring benefit to himself. Bickering ensued, and in the end, my mother hurled the statue at him, screaming that he was the worst rider in the history of Sunset Valley, and that his criminal career had been a complete waste of time. The next day, she had me sell Cobalt, putting an end to ending my father’s riding endeavors.
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Jack: With her marriage on a downward spiral, my mother retreated to the bubble she was most familiar with: Riding. Her race preparations expanded to new levels, and now also included ambrosia, a second saltlick, warm up-jumps, being blessed by Tisiphone, and donating to undermine charities. Starting her preparations 5 hours before race time, there was almost something demonic about their detail and intensity. She added a new morning routine as well: At dawn, every single morning, she hit the climbing walls at the Lane Activity Center, in riding gear, doing high intensity climbing for 2-3 hours.
Daniel: The rider should be as fit the horse…
Jack: Yeah… Ahem… I doubt there’s anything to it, but you can’t argue with her results. Cross-country wins poured in, but they didn’t seem to give her much satisfaction. At the time, I put it down to middle age, her marital problems and the pure strain of her racing efforts.
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Jack: With all the trophies piling up... I was adding some myself…
Celeste: How many races did you win?
Jack: 15 internationals. But only four of them were cross-country races, and 10 were easy racing victories.
Daniel: Still, you were a Rider of Legends.
Jack: Yeah, but… it was nothing compared to my mother. Anyway, she wanted to build a trophy room in the basement, but her design called for a centerpiece of some sort. Conveniently, my father’s third career was as a sculptor, so my mother discussed it him, and he promised to make a masterpiece Urn of Franco for the trophy room.
Daniel: He did… Didn’t he? There was an Urn of Franco in that room.
Jack: Ahem… Well, he tried. He made one urn, then another, then another, but he couldn’t make a masterpiece, and for my mother, nothing less would suffice. Instead of losing her temper, she actually tried to motivate him: She brought the golden fox statue, which she had previously tossed into a storage room, up to the art studio, together with the best nectar we had. She cooked ambrosia for him, and even sent him to the spa. Nothing helped. One day, my mother came up to the art studio, finding another mediocre urn ready at the sculpting station. It was my father’s 12th attempt. When she came down to the kitchen, she saw my father on the patio. He was dancing and putting on moves as if he didn’t have a worry in the world. That was the end of my mother’s patience.
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Jack: Without Jasen knowing, she had a room built in the basement, and the next day, she got him in there. I don’t know if she lured him or what she did. Once inside the room, he found that he could not open the door. In a voice he described as “full of cold malice”, my mother then informed him that he would remain in that cell until he died, or until he produced a masterpiece urn, whichever came first. That was the only time I truly saw my father lose his temper… Clearly, my mother had gone too far, and I tried to reason with her, but… She never reversed a decision, once she had made it. As it was, my father was in there for less than 24 hours. He moped for a few hours, then got to work, and, at his first attempt in the cell, produced a masterpiece Urn of Franco.
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Jack: To my mother, the fact that he made a masterpiece urn as soon as she locked him in that cell, was a vindication of her actions: It proved that he needed to be pushed if he was to perform at his best. After letting him out, she was ready to resume their relationship as if nothing had happened. My father, understandably, saw it differently, and declared their marriage over, and that he would go to the police. That got my mother going again, of course, and a final row was soon blazing, ending with my father moving out of Memory Lane. During the subsequent proceedings, half a million was transferred to his account, and then their marriage was officially dead. The Urn of Franco got its proud place in the trophy room, as the most costly of all the trophies there: The trophy that had cost a marriage.
Celeste: No wonder he left, she was way out of line…
Kiara: Was she? He failed to deliver, with both the racing and with the urns, whenever he was supposed to something for her.
Celeste: He would have made a masterpiece urn, eventually. What do you think, Jack?
Jack: Ahem… I understand my father. He could be a bit… unfocused, but he didn’t deserve to be treated like that. He was…
Kiara: He was a wimp…
Jack: …a good man, and a hard worker. I think my mother regretted what she did, even if she never said so.
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Jack: In this turmoil, Alecia and I were trying to live out our lives, and not doing very well. For years, it seemed that whenever I had a few moments to spare, she was busy practicing for a performance, and whenever she had time, I was dealing with the horses or the garden. When Jackson was born, Alecia had to carry most of the burden, and she was growing frustrated. My mother insisted that I had to follow the same insane pattern of race preparations that she did, and there was still that darn garden to take care of. With Esther and Jasen gone, Alecia had lost the two best friends she had in the household, and she wasn’t very happy with me not being much around. It didn’t get any better when she claimed that her career was as important as mine, and I responded that she had forgot where she was living.
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Jack: After her marriage collapsed, my mother developed a new habit: Setting fire to the town.
Celeste: What?! No…
Jack: The first night the town burned, was the night after my father moved out. My mother took a bunch of potions with her, and during the night, set fire to the art museum and two nightclubs. Following that, the town burned every time she came 3rd in the cross-country. People soon saw the pattern, and only the bravest souls hit the town on the nights my mother placed 3rd.
Celeste: Didn’t someone stop her?
Jack: Someone tried, but nothing good came of it, only more misery. She had both her brother Trenton and my brother Jack doing cleaning: Handing out cash, intimidating people, blowing stuff up and so on...
Kiara: I guess she couldn’t handle losing…
Jack: That’s what thought, at the time. But I think it was much more than that, and that coming 3rd was just something that made her frustrations boil over. She had bet everything on her marriage, and been so single-mindedly focused on her racing that she now had no friends. She must have felt that was alone, with whatever was eating her. No matter how many fires she created, I think the biggest fires were burning inside her. More than anything, I think her firestarting was a cry for help, so loud and violent that was impossible to understand.
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Jack: Something else that was impossible to understand was her creation of the antechamber, with the forbidden photograph of vampiric Esther, Rashawn, and some woman we had never seen. We didn’t know what that stone said, but Rashawn had been responsible for her grandfather’s death, she had named her horse “murder-avenger” because of that, and she was now…
He couldn’t remember the whole poem on the stone, but the last two lines still stuck with him:
I always remember, when darkness falls,
the purest heart to ever walk these halls.
A new, pure ideal, to replace her grandparents’ marriage, which had now been blackened by the great lie.
Jack: …warning, of some sort. It seemed to be the only possible explanation, but…
Kiara: Did you try talking to her, and like… ask, you know?
Jack: Ahem… I did, and I got a response she often resorted to: A cold look, followed by her changing the subject to something related to riding.
Daniel: When did she decorate the antechamber?
Jack: When Jackson was 3, or maybe 4, I think.
Hm... If Alyssina had tracked down Diane Quintana at that point, Aria had had 10 years to prepare for her role. Plenty of time.
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Kiara: How did your mother react to Jackson and Vance?
Jack: No problems there. She liked kids, and Vance was her favorite. She often read to him when he was young. Even then, Jackson was a bit… ahem… in his own world, and I think she hoped that Vance would become a rider. Alecia and I both actively discouraged that, and tried to steer him in other directions.
Kiara: Why?! It was a riding legacy, a rider was exactly…
Jack: Because someone who was regularly setting fire to the town didn’t seem like a good role model for him.
Kiara: How short-sighted. She was his grandmother, she wouldn’t be around forever, you know.
Jack: We thought her obsession with racing was, at least partly, responsible for…
Kiara: What if she found out that the two of you were sabotaging the thing she cared most about?
Jack: Maybe she did. After a while, it seemed like she… gave up on the kids.
Kiara: And here we are, wondering why she gave it all away to someone who actually cared? Hah... I rest my case…
Daniel: Jack… Go on.
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Jack: Ahem… Yeah… After a while, I was actively looking for a way out, of riding I mean. My mother had set a new benchmark, on an almost impossible level, one which everyone who followed her would be judged by. Having seen firsthand what it cost her to get there, I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want to spend the majority of the rest of my life doing something I didn’t love, neither did I want it for my kids. I had tried… mentioning it to my mother sometimes, that I’d like to something else, but… It wasn’t something she wanted to discuss. She was convinced that I could reach her level, and as she saw it, she was just showing the way, so that others could follow her example. It seemed like her perfectionistic, horse-obsessed mind couldn’t fathom how others might not want to dedicate their life to riding.
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Jack: Then came that afternoon, when I had decided to tell her… I had timed it perfectly: The garden had run its course, and the kids had reached the age where they no longer required constant attention. Tisiphone was just days from becoming old, when my mother would release her into the wild, having no horse to ride. The night before, she had won another cross-country, so I assumed she would be in a good mood. Finally, I would have some freedom, and a life of my own. So… I just told her: I’m quitting my Horseman career, and starting a career in music.
Jack: I remember her eyes…. They narrowed into slits, and she gave me a look as if I had just stabbed her in the back with a knife. Then she asked me: “Really? Then who’s going to race Minotaur?” I explained my reasoning, that she’d ride Minotaur after releasing Tisiphone, and she just shook her head slowly, stating that she’d keep riding Tis. I said that I’d race Minotaur when I could, which wouldn’t be very often, given the work hours in a music career, but she just dismissed that. I refused to back down from my decision, and she looked at me like I disgusted her, and she said: “You were always too weak for this, weren’t you? No real dedication, just like your father. It doesn’t matter, I’ll find someone who’ll race Minotaur.”
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Jack: The very next day, Aria was introduced to us as the resurrected Alexandria Lane. We were instructed to call her Aria, and not tell the kids who she was. Both Alecia and I were shellshocked. The founder… Was she there to judge us? I found that I had been locked out of the horse enclosure, and instead of ducking around the house, I soon spent as much time as I could away from it, embracing my newfound freedom.
Kiara: …and tightly embracing anything with a skirt in the process.
Jack: Ahem… I…
Kiara: Do you know what he did, Celeste?
Celeste: He told me.
Kaira: Did he really? Ooooooa, some honesty from ol’ Jack?!? Four affairs at the same time, while being married, you know. Four!
Daniel: She knows. Let’s get on with it. What was your impression of Aria, and what were she and your mother doing?
Jack: I barely had anything to do with Aria. She started riding when I stopped doing it, so… From my brief encounters with her, she seemed like decent person to me, and she had a positive effect on my mother: When she arrived, my mother immediately stopped her firestarting. I was soon informed by Alecia that the two of them were thick as thieves, doing everything together: Scaling the climbing walls, race preparations, eating, talking… She also read my mother’s books, which neither Alecia nor I had bothered to do. I only read “A Different Drum” after…
Kiara: What?! She wrote how many…
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Pearl strolled through the top deck, sitting down at the office desk behind the piano. She didn’t seem to be using the computer there, it was more like she was listening, daydreaming, or waiting.
Jack: Books weren’t our thing. We didn’t have time to…
Kiara: 39 books, and none of you read a single one. Not one!?
Jack: No, I don’t think so…
Kiara: How utterly unappreciated she must have felt. I suppose you did celebrate her victories at the racetrack, but…
Jack: No... She never did, and I don’t think she wanted us to do it either…
Kiara: Hah… That’s rich… Then, to top it off, the two of you went ahead and moronically chose Jackson as your heir, instead of Vance, and still you’re wondering our legacy was flushed do….
Daniel: Aria arrived long before Jackson was named heir, which makes it irrelevant.
Kiara: Not if the will was changed after Aria arrived. Do we know if that was the case? Hmm? Didn’t think so.
Jack: I don’t think I have much more to add… Some years later, I had to leave, and…
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Kiara: Yeah, I would have loved to see your mother kick you out, but there’s something else you need to clarify. The tent. How did you get it?
Jack: Aria called me, the day she was leaving Memory Lane, the day after the rest of the family had left. She invited me up there, to release Minotaur into the wild. Releasing a unicorn is indescribably sad, but I was grateful nonetheless, as it allowed me to touch him again, after all those decades.
Daniel: How did Aria seem when you met her?
Jack: She had ridden him for as long as I had, and she was sad too. Once it was done, she uncorked a bottle of nectar, and I joined her in three toasts. One to Minotaur, one to Memory Lane, and one to Esther, who had made the nectar. If Esther was her mother, like you claim, that last toast becomes even more meaningful… She said she was sick of the tent, having slept in it for so long, and suggested that I keep it, as a memento of my mother. I accepted. That was it, really…
Kiara: Really… Well, we’ll find out. Time to take you to your new quarters, old man.
Jack: New quar… what?!
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Kiara was on her feet, as quick as a cat, and before Daniel had any time to react, she had grabbed Jack by the neck and was pushing him towards the stairs. Pearl was on her feet too, sliding into position to discourage any attempt of interfering with Kiara’s “abduction” of Jack.
Daniel: What do you think you’re doing?!?
Pearl: He’s staying. Orders from the top, fobbit.
Jack: Let me go home! Linda…
Kiara: Move your feet, slimeball!
Daniel: He’s got days left to live! What’s the point of this?!
Pearl: We’ll keep him alive. He’s our new gardener.
Daniel: You’ll keep him imprisoned here?!
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Pearl: Affirmative. Letting him go is too risky. He knows our location, he's the last person we know who had direct contact with the enemy, and we don’t know if he’s shooting straight or not.
Daniel: The enemy... Bah! Why would he be lying?! He’s got no reason to…
Pearl: After his long exile, his attachment to your family is no more adhesive than soggy duct tape. He’s broke, and ten-ton Linda’s house looked like it could use an upgrade, didn’t it?
Daniel: Was this the plan all along? Have me bring him here, so that you could lock him up?!
Pearl: Bullseye. We needed a gardener, and any intel he might provide.
Daniel: What’s next in your sordid schemes? Are there cells waiting for us too?
Pearl: No.
Daniel: In that case, we’re leaving. This place is beginning to disgust me.
Pearl: I’ll fire up Echo 2 ASAP.
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As the chopper passed over the house and started crossing the sea, Pearl put a song on repeat in their headphones. It was a heavy metal tune, and sounded like something she might use during her workouts. At first, he was too stressed out to pay any real attention to it, but when the song had run its course a couple of times, he started paying attention to the lyrics. Soon, he realized that it wasn’t a song Pearl had chosen at random, it was a song Chloe had instructed her to play, informing him she knew how Alyssina had felt. How she could know, without even hearing Jack’s story, was very eerie, as was the fact that even in their hasty departure, they were still following her choreography.
I cry out for magic
I feel it dancing in the light
It was cold, lost my hold
to the shadows of the night
No sign of the morning coming
You’ve been left on your own
Like a rainbow in the dark
A rainbow in the dark
Do your demons, do they ever let you go?
When you’ve tried, do they hide, deep inside?
Is it someone that you know?
You’re just a picture, you’re an image caught in time
We’re a lie, you and I
We’re words without a rhyme
There’s no sign of the morning coming
You’ve been left on your own
Like a rainbow in the dark
Just a rainbow in the dark
Inspired by the song, he finally understood why the corridor that had given Memory Lane its name had been locked down. It had nothing to do with hiding who Aria was supposed to be. Aria was an almost perfect copy of the photo of Alexandria Lane, and risked nothing by leaving that photo in the open. Alyssina had locked the corridor. To close the book on the great lie that was Alexandria Lane and her Lane legacy.
