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Twelve years (to the day) after that last day in the mall, Jeremy Wensleydale would release his first album, “Hiraeth”.
“Hiraeth” would become a sleeper hit, with a number of important people whispering about his potential as an up-and-coming metal artist. His heavy use of trap with analogue instruments, and his reliance on number theory and classical elements in his composition set him apart in a crowded field. His voice, not what was expected for a metal artist, but the pure tone of a choir boy, also distinguished Jeremy Wensleydale.
The material of the album was deeply personal, but still universal enough to appeal. And, after nearly every music publication declared the electric guitar dead, Jeremy Wensleydale brought his Gibson back from the grave to scream.
Ostensibly, he sang about a monster of a storm, and a people who never gave up. To mourn a place and time that he could never return to.
His first music video (“Tuesday Mourning”) scored a million hits on YouTube in the first few weeks. It featured him singing in the center court of an abandoned mall--Chez Mall, in fact. Except that the water features flickered fire, scattering light and shadow across his fine-boned, beautiful face.
He told Medium and Vice that the song was about the loss that came from Hurricane Katrina. That it was the feeling that he had on that first Tuesday, his house flooded and his friends gone. The whole world a flat sheet of grey and the future deadly in its uncertainty.
It seemed a safe answer. How could he tell the truth? That the whole album was not about pre-Katrina New Orleans, but about four kids and their semi-grown friends, and that last day at Chez Mall--when they were still innocent and whole?
Nobody would have bought that shit, man.
So Wensleydale stuck to his story and “Hiraeth” was certified gold in digital sales about six weeks after he released it, and “Tuesday Mourning” defined his early career.
That last Monday was still so vivid in his memory. He could still smell it--mall smell and food smell and kid sweat and the green scent of the plants in their planters.
After leaving the Hot Topic, The Them parted ways from Emily Dagon.
How she shimmered in his memory! She wasn’t the first girl that he thought was pretty--far from it. He was a bit more advanced than his friends in that department. He noticed girls (and, eventually, boys) before Adam noticed Anathema. And before Pepper noticed Beelzebub. Before Brian started noticing every girl that crossed his path.
Wensley would realize, in the years after the storm (after Pepper’s family moved to Houston and Brian’s family went to Atlanta and Adam’s dad took a transfer out to friggin’ England), that Emily Dagon was special (in his pantheon of beautiful adults) because she was the first person who ever showed him who he could be.
Wensley’s parents liked him quiet and studious, as much as they might pretend otherwise. Adam, who defined Wensleydale’s existence since preschool, wanted him to be a staid killjoy. That was his position in The Them. The mom friend, even though he was a boy.
Emily Dagon was fierce, and that was something that Wensleydale wanted. The smallest of The Them, bully bait from birth. He wanted fierce. Needed it.
Wensley wasn’t fierce, but he was smart. And smart, he eventually found (in a boarding school of rejects, weirdos, and super-geniuses in northern Louisiana), could be fierce.
Eight years after that Monday at the mall, he sat in a strangely comfortable chair and let a stranger stab his skin and push ink beneath. An eel wrapped around a rose. It was his first and favorite tattoo. He got it to remind him of a girl who loved the dark and dangerous, and fishies and kittens.
That tattoo, and his memory of Emily Dagon, were his reminders that hard and soft, that beauty and the grotesque, that fierce and smart were not enemies. These things could exist as neighbors. That he could be obsessed with numbers and patterns and statistics and he could also make a guitar shriek his pain to the universe.
That he, Jeremy Wensleydale, could be anything in the world.
He had a rose for Emily in his skin, for the dark fish that swam through Chez Mall. For the fierce girl who protected him and his friends.
He remembered watching her walk to the information kiosk, to distract Crowley while The Them slipped past. She crossed beneath the skylights, and the sunlight played on her hair as if she was underwater. Wensleydale wanted to count the freckles across her cheeks, wanted to call her “Goddess” and let her teach him how to be what she was.
She started talking to Crowley (who was the first boy to occupy Wensley’s pantheon of gorgeous adults), and they slipped past on the GAP side of the corridor, towards the Food Court. Crowley laughed at something she said and rolled his head around, like he did sometimes. His eyes, gold and lovely behind their sunglasses, nearly touched Wensleydale.
He looked around, evaluating his options. Then, Wensleydale grabbed Adam and shoved him hard into the Insta-Photo booth. Pepper and Brian saw what Wensley saw and piled in after Adam. Wensleydale launched himself in last, thrusting the curtain closed and avoiding Crowley at the very last second.
“Crowley,” he explained to Adam, breathing hard.
“He looked?” Adam asked.
“Yeah.”
“Did he see us?”
“He probably saw someone get in the photobooth.”
“Better take some pictures, then,” Pepper said.
“Uh, yeah. If he doesn’t see flashing lights, he has to come over here,” Brian said.
“Make sure nobody’s smooching,” Pepper added.
“I don’t think he’s worried about kissing,” Wensley said as he slipped two crisp dollar bills into the slot.
“Let’s make some memories!” Adam laughed.
And they did. They mugged for the camera, and they laughed, jostling around each other. Posing, flexing, making faces.
“D’you need your inhaler?” Adam asked, when the photobooth flashed its last. Wensley was still breathing heavily.
“No, I’m okay,” he said. “Let me check on Crowley.”
Wensleydale slipped his head out of the booth, and saw that Crowley was working on his wreath again. The sun gleamed in his long, scarlet hair. Beautiful as he was, Wensley was happy to see his eyes pointed down and not out, at them.
“The coast is clear,” he said.
“Excellent,” Adam replied.
And they slipped out of the booth. Wensleydale took the strip of printed pictures, folded them, and slipped them in his jean pocket.
Years later, Jeremy Wensleydale put that same strip of printed pictures (of him and his friends cutting up in a photobooth) in the liner notes for “Hiraeth”. It’s how he got back in touch with Brian, then Pepper, and eventually Adam.
But on that day, they slipped past center court and Crowley, past the Pacific Sun (which was playing Alien Ant Farm’s cover of “Smooth Criminal”), and into the neon light of the Food Court.
Wensleydale’s eyes went straight to Emily Dagon at the Fish Shack, ordering lunch for herself and Beelzebub.
“Hungry?” Adam asked, misinterpreting Wensley’s interest.
Or maybe not. Adam was sharp. Maybe the most astute of all of them.
“I guess,” Wensley said.
“Kinda,” Pepper added. “But not really.”
“After Temple o’ Toys and Anathema’s?” Adam suggested.
“Yeah,” Brian said. “I could do pizza, then.”
“Split it with you,” Pepper said, and Brian nodded. “What’re you gonna get, Adam?”
The Them turned their sneakers left and headed towards the North Gate of Chez Mall. Adam, as always took the lead, but he turned around and walked backwards, trusting his friends to guide him as he spoke.
“Chicken basket, probably,” Adam said. “You want Fish Shack, Wensley?”
“Maybe,” Wensley replied. “Haven’t decided.”
Adam nodded, and then changed the subject. “Hey, I think the Temple’s got a Wii,” he said.
“No way,” Pepper replied.
“Way! Total way! Nintendo sent some out early, and I think Temple o’ Toys got one.”
“That would be epic,” Brian said. “A whole new bunch of games for Pepper to absolutely waste ALL of us at.”
“Your six,” Wensleydale said, sotto, to Adam. “It’s him.”
Adam looked over his shoulder. “Ugh. Him.”
He wheeled around, readying himself for an enemy that never attacked. Instead, Sandalphon wiggled his fingers in greeting. He was carrying the hook that the Gap used to reach things that were high up. But he waved with his free hand.
Adam returned his wave warily, and the others followed suit.
Adam did not like Sandalphon DiAngelo. At first, Wensleydale thought that his friend might have some latent prejudice against mentally handicapped people, but that wasn’t in his character at all. Adam was nice to the popcorn vendor, and she had Down’s Syndrome. He was nice to the brain-injured veteran that worked in their school cafeteria.
It bothered Wensleydale enough for him to pay attention to Sandalphon. Eventually, he realized that Adam’s distaste for Sandalphon was earned.
There was something wrong with the guy, and it wasn’t because Sandalphon got shaken as an infant.
He was...too alert. For weird things. And nobody thought it was an accident that he kept ending up in the Hot Topic, asking Beelzebub for hugs. Wensleydale had read all of his mom’s books on childhood development when he was little, but he went back to them. He paid special attention to anything having to do with Shaken Baby Syndrome.
Sandalphon didn’t act like that at all.
He kind of acted like Cartman trying to get into the Special Olympics. (That was the one episode of South Park that Brian convinced him to watch, and it was enough.)
So, The Them walked past Sandalphon, like he was an animal that might bite. They nearly ran the rest of the way to Temple o’ Toys. Wensleydale was breathing very hard (not wheezing, not yet) as he slipped past a giant display for summer toys--wiffle bats and pool noodles--and past the display of blaring electronic toys. As he stepped into the relative safety of Nero’s domain.
Poppy and Nero were behind the counter, and the store was bustling. Mostly, it was kids. Unaccompanied minors, like The Them, but way younger. The store was packed with a bunch of kids whose parents decided that Temple o’ Toys was cheaper than a babysitter, and weren’t aware that Nero liked convincing kids to break toys that their parents would have to purchase.
Wensleydale was pretty sure that Nero’s broken toy scheme was the only thing keeping the Temple in business.
“What’s up, rejects?” Nero asked, as they walked in.
“Suck it, Nero,” Pepper replied. “Do you have the Wii, or not?”
“Baby girl, when are you going to learn that I *always* have the goods?” Nero laughed and ran his fingers through his curly hair. Brown, but sunkissed gold shone in it.
The girl who was working with him rolled her eyes. “Jesus, Nero.” She shoved him, but she was playful. “Look, we’ve only got like three games, and they’re all demos. But Mario Kart looks pretty cool.”
“You’re killing me here, Poppy!” He laughed again. “How am I supposed to be the cool dude if I can only get demos?”
“I think you are very cool,” she said, and kissed his nose. “We should be getting some full games next week. In the meantime, you should see what we just got in for the PS2. Latest Harry Potter.”
“Demo?” Pepper asked.
“Better than nothing,” Poppy said with a shrug.
“We did get the advanced demo for Catwoman,” Nero said.
Pepper smiled. “Alright, you’re cool then.”
Wensleydale glanced out the door, and caught Sandalphon somewhere he did not belong. He watched as Sandalphon walked past the Anathema’s Devices, and unlocked one of the doors that led to the service corridors. He slipped inside, and Wensley nearly said something to Adam, but he stopped.
Warlock walked out of the Sears and into the mall. He was looking behind his back, moving carefully. That was a boy who was fleeing. He’d slipped his mom, and he was moving too quickly for The Them to intercept. He was heading for the information kiosk, Wensley decided. He was going to Crowley.
Wensleydale was about to tell Adam that, but something else stopped him.
A man crossed his line of vision. A tall man. Whip-thin with skin like polished jet and white teeth that were too straight and too sharp-looking.
He met eyes with this stranger, and the world stopped. Seemed to fade away, until all that was left was Wensleydale and the thin man. He almost thought the man reached for him, before the light and the noise of the mall caught up to Wensley.
He knew this stranger, though he had not met him yet. The stranger would haunt him--for years--after that sunny Monday at the mall.
It was like meeting his own shadow, a shadow who stayed in his bones until he bled him out in ink, in synthesized beats, in the strings of his guitar, in a song.
The thin man lived in the second single from “Hiraeth”, entitled “The Shadow of the Stranger.”
But, even then, before the blood began to flow, Wensleydale knew that the man in the black riding leathers spoiled for trouble. That they were connected.
That his friends, the one still wearing his helmet, the petite one in white leathers, and the bombshell in red--that they all meant trouble. Bad trouble. Blood and pain.
Wensleydale was falling into orbital decay with a stranger, with Chez Mall, with a storm, and the future. Wensley felt it move. The whole world shifted, and Wensleydale shifted with it.
In that moment, the first equations that would become “Hiraeth” began to form in his mind. Those equations would run fingers over Wensley’s heartstrings, and the chords that they drew would reverberate through his soul.
Twelve years later, those chords would sing through the corridors of this same mall, abandoned after a storm crippled it and Internet commerce murdered it. That song would blare through the screens, and into the eyes and ears of a million other souls--where it vibrated like the song of the spheres.
All he could hear was his own pulse, until Poppy’s gum snapped, and Wensleydale found himself in the mundane present, shuffling towards the video games and away from the mall corridor which contained the stranger, Sandalphon, and the future.