As promised, here is part two of "Threads of Destiny", the end of
the story that I started with last Friday. If you're coming into the post not having read part one first, please go back and read it. Enjoy!
---
Violet thought she had prepared herself for whatever James Gormley could tell her, but there was no way anyone could have predicted something like this.
After she had demanded some answers, James took her into the back half of the store by way of a narrow door that Violet couldn't exactly remember seeing before. He wrapped one arm around her shoulders and she thought about shaking it off, but it gave to her some warmth. It suddenly felt very cold in the shop.
The door opened noiselessly onto a large, windowless room. There were stacks and stacks of cardboard boxes and wooden crates stacked to the left and right sides of the room, leaving room for an aisle that led down to the far wall. Violet barely noticed the boxes, any of which, if bumped, could have caused a veritable avalanche. What she noticed was the far wall.
It was covered in a maze of thread.
On the left side of the wall were small metal plates. Attached to the plates were individual pieces of thread of various lengths, some running only a few inches from the plates while others spanned the distance to the other side of the wall. The closer she got to the wall, she became able to see in greater detail. The metal plates numbered in thousands, if not tens of thousands. At the end of some of the threads was a small nail, and the thread was tied around it. Those with nails numbered only a few. The majority simply hung in mid-air, suspended by some supernatural force.
As she approached the wall, she became vaguely aware that James was speaking. She could hear the baritone of his voice, but not the words. She was too focused on reading what was embossed on the plates. There were names, and the true horror began when she recognized some of them.
Especially her own.
A bony hand clamped onto her shoulder, and Violet screamed.
“I'm sorry, my dear!” James said. “I didn't mean to frighten you.”
Violet was speechless, her mind working furiously to try to process what she was seeing. It was then that she saw the wooden pedestal that stood at the end of the aisle leading up to the wall.
“I can explain everything, Violet. You'll just have to remain open minded,” he said, and pulled her shoulders so she faced him. She pulled her eyes reluctantly from the wall and the wooden pedestal.
“Just tell me why my name is up on that wall, and why my husband's name is up there, too.”
“I'll do my best, my dear.” He breathed in deeply, and began.
“I'm one-hundred and eighty-nine years old,” James Gormley said. “I was born in 1822, the only son of a powerful Quinault Indian. My mother died in childbirth, and my father, who was very fluent in the ways of my people, tried to use his magic to bring her back. He failed, but his work produced what you see in front of you right now. While he discovered it too late in his life to save himself or my mother, he found a way to hold off death, even avoid it altogether.
“All the lives of those who live on the land of his people, the land that became incorporated as the town of Sammamish, are controlled by their strands of thread. They never age, they never get sick... and they never die. That is, unless their thread is broken.”
He gestured to the closest thread that was tied to a nail. “That thread belonged to Alexander Stead. He was one-hundred and thirteen years old when his thread was broken in 1956. He was one of my best friends, and I miss him dearly.”
Violet was starting to feel more composed, but was only able to manage a feeble word.
“How?”
John laughed ruefully. “Well, the coroner's report said he died of natural causes due to advanced age. Before his thread broke, he didn't look a day over thirty-five. When I buried him that same afternoon, he was a mass of wrinkles, liver spots, and white hair.”
He must have seen the look of confusion on her face, and clarified. “When one's thread is broken, the person ages very rapidly, as if they're getting caught up to what age they should be. Alexander aged seventy-eight years in a matter of minutes. His heart didn't have a chance.”
He cleared his throat and went on. “Everyone that lives here is frozen at the age they were when their thread was put up on this wall. That's why Mary Hawkins is still pregnant, and while Julie Bolduc still has two-month-old twins. Everyone has the potential to live forever here in Sammamish, and the magic behind their thread keeps them none the wiser.”
Suddenly, Violet couldn't stand the feel of John's hand on her shoulder. She shook it off violently and clutched her arms around herself.
“Any questions?” he asked, a wry smile creeping across his face.
“Just one,” she said, finding her voice. “Why?”
He laughed haughtily. “Why? Why not? To live forever and never age, to never get sick or hurt, to be able to see all the wonders of this world? This is my father's legacy, and I've protected it and kept it running since time out of mind! It's my job!”
“It's not your job to play God!” Violet cried. “You're trapping people here, playing with their futures and their destinies! What if one of Julie Bolduc's twins would grow up to discover the cure for cancer, or if Mary Hawkins would give birth to a child who would establish world peace?”
“Needless what-if's, my dear. If there is never any worry of cancer, why do we need to cure it? The magic behind the threads makes the people of Sammamish very peaceful, so the peace of others is not my concern. Let them fight their wars. We'll continue living for decades longer than anyone else ever has.”
Color was rising into his high cheekbones, and Violet saw for the first time anger on the face of this kindly old shopkeeper.
“Wait,” she said, thinking of something suddenly. “If the threads keep you from getting old, how is it that you have aged?”
John seemed to calm a little at this. “That's the downside of using thread. As it ages, it starts to break down. Here, look at my thread at the top. You'll see.” He gestured to the top of the wall, where a fraying strand of black thread was attached to a plate with “J Gormley” stamped on it. It looked unbelievably fragile. “If a thread weakens, the individual age advances instead of remaining still, but they age at a very slow rate.”
She turned and walked towards the pedestal. John had turned his back to her, surveying the piles of boxes and crates that crowded the room. Inside the pedestal under a glass panel was a pair of antique sewing scissors. The gears in her mind started turning.
“I bet I know what these are for,” she said quietly, and lifted the glass panel. She picked up the scissors, which were surprisingly heavy, but rested comfortably in her hand.
John spun around, and knocked over a box containing sheaves of paper. “No!”
With the scissors open, their sharp edges gleaming even in the dim light of this back room and seemingly hungry to bite into something, Violet Isabelle Kramer approached the wall.
“You don't want to do that, Violet,” John said steadily.
“Give me one good reason not to.”
“I have plenty. Mary Hawkins? If you cut her thread now, she would advance through the last trimester of her pregnancy in seconds. Her unborn child would grow to the size of a two-year-old before it even left the womb, and the act of such forceful and unnatural childbirth would certainly rip her apart.
“Julie Bolduc's twins would become adults in their late twenties with the minds of infants, and while they might survive, if they were being driven home by their mother, she would most likely die of multiple organ failure and cause a major accident.”
Violet began to understand that John was right. Cutting the threads to give the people of this town a normal life might actually result in killing them. Some of these people had been under the magic of the threads for decades. There would be no escape for them until their own threads started to fray with extreme age. But her's and Osgood's...
“I imagine you're thinking of cutting your own thread. You are, aren't you?” John walked slowly towards her, his feet creaking on the wooden floor. “Very unwise, my dear.”
“Why? It's only been a year and a half. I can take a few wrinkles and a few pounds.”
“Yes, but who knows what rapid age progression will do to the brain? Perhaps something benign will form, but perhaps it will be malignant. Is it worth the risk?” His voice was calm and convincing, but Violet stood strong.
“What really happened to Alexander Stead?” she asked.
This visibly threw him, and he rocked back on his feet as if he had been slapped. John looked down at his feet and mumbled something.
“I'm sorry, what was that?” Violet asked.
“I said I cut his thread!” John roared, spittle flying from his lips. “He found out about the threads and was going to go public with it. I couldn't let that happen, I just couldn't! The land of my people would become tainted and overrun with those seeking everlasting life, and my father's life work would be for nothing.”
“Screw your father's life work, John. These are people's lives you are playing with!” She opened the scissors with an audible snick sound, and held them out to the wall. John was taken aback for a moment, and then tried to stop her.
Violet shoved him back with her shoulder as he advanced, and when he was off balance she kicked him in the stomach. He tumbled back into the stacks of boxes and was soon covered by them. When he struggled to free himself, more boxes fell down.
With John otherwise occupied, Violet searched for her name and Osgood's name on the wall. She had the blades of the scissors around the two threads by the time John managed to free himself. She tried to sever the threads, but it was like trying to cut through steel. She bore down with both hands on the handles of the scissors, and just as John grabbed her shoulders and wrenched her away, the threads snapped.
She felt something like a brisk wind rush out of her lungs as she fell back. Her heart skipped a few beats like a misfiring engine, but then evened out and continued beating, thudding heavily in her ears as boxes and crates fell around her. She remained still, and only started to pick herself up off the floor when she felt John struggling to move beneath her.
Gaining her feet, she turned around and faced him. She pushed away the initial worry about his health and well-being, realizing that she was facing the man who was literally pulling the strings behind the entire town.
“You've been in control long enough, John Gormley. I think it's time you carried on.” She bent and picked up the scissors from where they had landed when she fell. They thrummed in her hand, and the feeling of ultimate power flashed through her. Caught up in this revelation, she barely saw John jump up from the floor with agility that she wouldn't have thought he could have possessed. He hit the hand that held the scissors, and they flew up in the air.
With her eidetic memory, Violet remembered what happened next in slow motion. The scissors spun in the air as they came close to the wall. Their upward momentum carried them up to the top of the wall, and one of the hungry blades came down on a thread. This particular thread had been up there for so long it had started to deteriorate.
It was attached to the metal plate stamped with “J Gormley”.
The thread broke with a twang. Violet whipped her head around to look at John, and there was a moment frozen in her memory where she saw pure fear on his face. He was finally facing death, after almost two centuries.
Then, he simply went to dust. Violet thought she saw his skin turn translucent and that there was a moment where there was nothing but a skeleton standing in front of her, but before she had much time to blink, all that remained of John Gormley was a pile of dust.
Violet caught her breath, tucked the scissors into the back pocket of her jeans, and walked out of Someone Else's Treasure for the second to last time.
Three months later, Violet found herself standing in front of the town in front of Sammamish's only antique shop. She told them of what she had found out, and at first there was an uproar. When she finally managed to get them all to settle down, she told them something else.
“You all have a choice to control your own destiny from this day forward, as you should have been able to ever since you came to this place.” She held up the antique sewing scissors, and they glinted meanly, hungrily in the afternoon sun. “What will you choose?”
At that, she fell silent and walked through the open doors of the antique shop, ready to pass on the gift of life, life with an end, to those that should choose it.
---
Happy Monday, folks.
