And now, there are fallen leaves and cold rains and stabbing winds and frosty mornings and yet nothing has changed. It is as if we are cast in epoxy, plastic, in an eternal summer. The unfettered march of time rusts our bones and there is not a thing that could be done. It must be from fear, and it is not the fear of some future unknown. Something else entirely.
We are in mourning of a lost dawn.
Over the days of that sudden realization, it occurs to me that it is not a fear of the future, but it is the fear of a sunken past that can reanimate and re-emerge from the depths. Much like nightmares of zombies.
I tell her my musings and she confirms my suspicions. Something had happened many moons ago and I cannot remember a thing. There was a lost summer - a summer of a sleepy and dazed haze.
She gives me a folder she had been hiding. I mean, she was not hiding it, but it was obvious that she would not bring it forth on her own. When I read the files and newspaper clippings, she stepped out of the apartment for a few hours. Her excuse was that she wanted to see her friends and to go out shopping and get their hair and nails did. Done.
Believable excuse. She had not done that in a while and it was something that was in order. But she could not bear to see my reaction and she needed me to think it through. She has her own thoughts and plans, but her emotion would have swayed mine. She wanted me to have independence.
In the folder, there are missing persons reports. A few unsolved murders. Accidental deaths with no investigations. They were bad men. But they were important men. Clear connections between them. A few religious folks claimed it was divine justice and that it was a good thing because these men were inflicted with demonic possession, if not they were demons themselves.
And the thing is - there was a clear beginning and end. A timeframe that coincided with my vanishing act. She included a few bloodwork reports and it was shown that that were traces of classified psychoactive substances. Next generation memory-erasing drugs. And given my background, there was only one conclusion that could be drawn.
Despite this induced memory loss, I do remember who I met the day before I went missing. He had been a good buddy during university and we went to the agency together. I had met with him and our old boxing coach. Henry. Henry… Marlowe, I believe.
I look through the folder for any references to Lucky Lazarus and Henry. It is a good sign that there is no reference to them or to their aliases. Then I search them through a few databases. A surprise that I still have access. They are alive and well, but they’re living a quiet life. I cannot tell if that is by reward or by punishment. Lucky lives on the lake and carries out his days at a burger joint. Henry works at an used bookshop at place in the starving artist part of town.