Chapter 8: Night: Kendra and the Dragon’s Staircase | Fathers (Scenes 6-8)

Fathers (Scenes 6-8)

6

Since Roy Dolan was her only legal guardian, Kendra had to wait for his shift to end in the early evening at around 6:00 p.m. So Kendra had been talking to some of the officers on duty near the reception area, asking them if they had any weird cases they could tell her while she waited for her stepfather, and they readily obliged her. She would visit the Police Station a few times a week just to listen to their stories, and they have grown accustomed to her company in the slower hours of their shifts when the hectic workload of the afternoon wound down into tedium and boredom. So they told her some of their more interesting cases from their line of work, from funny ones and tragic ones to the sometimes downright scary ones.

One of her regular veteran storytellers, Officer Todd Curvan, had an abnormal amount of strange cases under his belt. He leaned onto the reception desk, where Kendra had been sitting next to the receptionist for company, and told her about a moving staircase that would appear at odd hours during the night. Every now and then, they would receive phone calls from witnesses who were unfortunate enough to see it outside their homes.

In particular, he remembered this one time when he and his partner got called in to investigate a staircase sighting near the Lucky Valley neighborhood on the northernmost outskirts of Larkington. He said they had found a kid standing on the top step of the stairs.

On overhearing, other officers walked over and listened.

Todd said, "Okay, this is how it went down when we got there. We pulled up next to the curb, and we saw the mother running up to our patrol car, and she was screaming that her kid had climbed up those stairs. You should've seen her. She was freaking out.

"So I tried calming her down, while my partner went up ahead in the family's back yard to call it in. Heard him screaming his ass off the next moment. I hightailed my ass over there, and guess what I saw. A dragon, the kind you'd see from a Chinese temple or something like that, and it was flying real low above the ground. I'd say around twenty to thirty feet, just snaking around above the family's backyard."

"That must've been a really big backyard," Kendra said.

"Heck yeah, it was. Their backyard was on the edge of the Sharps Valley Sand Dunes, and when we saw that flying dragon overhead, we nearly lost our minds. I thought we were in some dream world or something, 'cause it was still in broad daylight. Then I noticed the kid, a small toddler, reaching up towards the dragon at the top of the stairs, and the dragon started snaking its way closer to the house, so I ran to the stairs and up the steps and was about to snatch the kid when I saw the kid starting the levitate from the top landing just as the dragon was going to swoop down over the top steps, and that's when I shat myself.

"I charged up the steps, two at a time, and lunged at the kid and caught him just as the dragon swooped down over the top landing. I literally felt the breeze of the thing passing just a few feet above my head as I crouched down on the top step with the kid in my arms.

"Then I looked up at the dragon and saw it disappear into the sky above the sand dunes, and that's the last I saw of that thing. I checked on the kid to see if he was all right, and guess what?"

"What?" Kendra said, leaning forward on the edge of her seat, wrapped up in the story. "What happened?"

"The kid was asleep. Wasn't scared. Wasn't crying. He was asleep the whole time."

"You mean, sleepwalking?"

"Yeah," Officer Todd said. "Turns out, the kid was a narcoleptic, so he was prone to daytime sleepwalking, but that doesn't explain what my partner and I saw that time. I mean, I've heard of stairs in the woods and all that jazz from my park ranger buddies out west, but I've never seen anything else like that in my career. Stuff like that just doesn't happen to us city cops, but there are always exceptions, and you’ve just listened in on one of them. I didn't enter that dragon detail in the statement, though. Otherwise, I'd have been sent off to the looney bin years ago. The information was suppressed, but you never forget that kind of thing. I've got it all locked up in here," he added, pointing to the side of his temple, "right up here where no skeptic's bullshit about hoaxes will muddy it all up."

That's when Kendra noticed his yang sanpaku eyes and wondered about his mental health, but she didn't voice her concern. She didn't want to offend one of her most colorful storytellers.

7

Roy Dolan finally clocked out of his shift after turning in his paperwork on the Cairns case to Inspector Dunham, still stinging from the superintendent barging into the room and dishing out a hard-nosed reprimand that garnered a sympathetic look from Inspector Dunham as Roy tried to his best to refrain from punching the superintendent in the face. As such, he left the inspector’s office and entered the lobby area with his shoulders slumped and his morale drained.

But when he saw old Todd Curvan surrounded by other cops and his perennial listener, Kendra, Roy walked up to the reception desk and said, "Still telling your tall tales, eh, Todd?"

"Not tall tales," Todd said. "True tales. There's a difference."

"I'll take your word for it," he said, smiling at the idiocy of it all. "Come on, Kendra. Time to go."

"Already?" Kendra said, raising her arms up in a stretch and getting up from her chair.

"What, you wanna stay and listen to 'tall tales' all night?"

"Hey, it's true tales," Todd reiterated. "True tales!"

"You show me evidence of one of those true tales, and I'll believe you," he said. "Otherwise, try 'em on someone else."

"Well, at least Kendra seems to like them!"

"She's a bit impressionable, but I'll make sure to straighten that out soon."

Kendra pouted. "Really, you could be a little bit nicer."

But Todd wasn't going to let that go so easily. He added, "She's right, you know. Maybe you could use a bit of straightening out yourself, old son. It'll do wonders for you."

At that, his fellow officer cronies chuckled and sniggered at Roy’s expense, making Kendra gape at the innuendo and look up at Roy, who smiled and nodded his head and eyed his older colleague, “Now you’ve done it.”

But Todd waved his warning away, saying, "Sorry, Kendra. It just slipped out."

But Kendra was a snark when she wanted to be, especially when Roy was the one backing her. In fact, neither of them were the type of individuals to leave things hanging like that, so Kendra said, "Geez. Wonder what else 'slipped out.' You might want to check on it soon.”

“Might I suggest Viagra?” Roy added. “It helps.”

The reaction was immediate.

The cops who overheard Kendra's legendary comeback said, "Oooooooh," and began laughing their heads off, saying that they can't believe old Todd Curvan got double-punked by a stepdaughter and stepfather duo.

All the while, Todd feigned misery and defeat, burying his face in his hands in a mock-show of utter humiliation brought upon him. To this, stepdaughter and stepfather waved them goodbye and exited the Police Station, leaving them still laughing their heads off.

Now it was back to the old routine, with the added weight of Kendra’s part in the misadventure at the Rancaster district looming over their heads. So it was a quiet and tense ride home, filled with all kinds of thoughts running through their heads, but Roy had other plans.

Instead of taking the usual route back home, he took a detour through the downtown area of Woodley Place and said, "Wanna go eat out tonight?"

Kendra just sat there on the passenger's seat, staring at him in silence. "Really? Treating me to dinner after everything I put you through?"

"Yeah," he said. "I mean, you're still grounded, but I feel kinda bad for exploding on you earlier. Shouldn't have done that, especially in front of your friends. What do you say?" Kendra paused on his offer, till Roy glanced her way and noticed her cheeks turning red and said, “Yes, Kendra, it’s a date.”

Kendra looked away, blushing even more and making Roy smirk at her expense, and said, "Let's go to the Dragon Buffet. Haven't been there since my father died."

The mention of her father's death made Roy pause for some moments, turning his smirk into a frown. After three years, Roy was still trying to get used to the idea of being a stepfather, after years of being a bachelor, so he was at a loss for words.

They stayed silent for the rest of the ride, till they turned into a half-filled parking lot and pulled into one of the parking spaces outside the Dragon Buffet.

Roy Dolan parked the car, removed his seatbelt, and opened the driver’s side door.

Kendra said from her seat, "Roy."

He paused in his seat and met her gaze and felt his heart rate picking up. Kendra rarely ever called him by his first name.

“What is it?” he said.

"You don't have to be exactly like my father," she said and placed her hand on top of his over the stick shift. "You're a good man the way you are. You don't have to change anything, if you don't want to."

8

Roy grabbed a ticket from the hostess up front, while Kendra slouched at the edge of the waiting booth, her fingers laced together over her stomach, and her butt near the edge of the leather cushions. She had her legs crossed for modesty, one ankle over the other in a semi-relaxed position, because she saw a 'No Man-Spreading' sign over the back wall of the receptionist's counter.

But beyond these petty things, she was thinking.

She had a lot to think about, from Mara's angry words to the cop's story of the dragon's staircase. As disparate as they were, they lingered like spells over her mind, creating unconscious associations that would later become the motifs of her dreams. As a lucid dreamer with her dream-diving buddies, Colbie and Celia, she had the more mundane and impressionable dreamscapes, mere vivid snapshots of little details that caught in her mind in waking life and expressed themselves in exacting detail in her dreams. She was the analytical dreamer, the dreamer of minute details and subtle intrusions into the real world, the dream detective, just like her real father had once been. And though she wouldn’t admit it in waking life, she considered herself the dream-diving equivalent of Sherlock Holmes, surpassed only by her real father, Edmund Tellerman, the dream-diving equivalent of Mycroft Holmes.

They waited till they got a table booth near the back end of an aisle of tables filled with other patrons, and both asked the waiter for iced water. Then they got up and took a plate from the plate dispenser near the food aisles, filled their plates full of food, and returned to their booth.

Kendra placed her plate on the table, filled with two cuts of tilapia, and sides of Kung Pao chicken and chow mein noodles and Mongolian beef, with sautéed mushrooms poured over the whole thing. Roy's plate was a more conservative ensemble with a cut of roasted salmon, a generous helping of General Tso's chicken, a side of chow mein noodles, and several bites of sushi on the edge of his plate.

For the first few minutes, they ate in silence, but Kendra soon grew bored. She had finished off one of her cuts of tilapia, so she cut a chunk of the other tilapia with her fork, stabbed it, and waved it in front of Roy, catching his attention.

"Want this?" she said. "I got a little too much on my plate."

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Roy obliged, sliding his plate over, so she could put it on top of his chow mein. "They'll charge you for wasting food."

"I know, I know. That's why I'm having you eat that," she said, before cutting into the other half of her tilapia and eating more chunks. She then took her fork and stabbed a piece of General Tso's chicken right off her stepfather's plate and ate it.

"Hey! I was gonna eat that."

"You're helping me eat that," she said, pointing with her fork at the tilapia he hadn't eaten yet. "So I'll help you eat that," and she stabbed another piece of General Tso's chicken off his plate and ate it.

Roy slid his plate a little closer to his side of the table, then began cutting into his salmon and shoveling forkfuls into his mouth, while eyeing Kendra's fork.

Kendra made another attempt at his plate, this time stabbing at one of his sushi, but Roy was prepared.

He brandished a spoon and fended off her fork like a shield.

But Kendra was quick and wily with her movements, smiling at Roy's struggles to keep up with her fork. She made another feint at his sushi, attracting his spoon and leaving his General Tso's chicken wide open. She then lunged with her fork and stabbed another piece of General Tso's and ate it in triumph.

"Come on, Kendra," Roy said, putting his spoon down onto the napkin beside his plate. "Stop acting like a kid!"

"But I am a kid," she said. She was sniggering her head off right now, smiling up at him, then made another feint with her fork at his plate.

Which had an unintended side effect. She had merely wanted to fake him out again, but instead, he raised his free hand and smacked one of his knuckles on the edge of the table, and his face scrunched up in an agony of pain.

Kendra winced, saying, "Oh my God, I'm so sorry! I didn't mean for that to happen!"

Roy stayed silent for a moment, shaking his hand and opening and closing it to alleviate the pain. "That's it," he said, holding onto his fork like a sword, and sliding his plate sideways away from Kendra's direct line of attack to the farther part of the table, so that their plates formed a diagonal across from each other. "I'll eat here, and you'll eat there. How does that sound?"

"That's not fair," Kendra said. "How am I gonna help you eat?"

"You haven't even eaten your chow mein yet," he said.

"All right, all right, I'll eat," she said, taking up the noodles with her fork, then taking up a spoon and placing it against her fork, then turning her fork against her spoon and swirling her chow mein around her fork like a lollipop.

Roy just stared at her doing it. "How did you learn to do that? I've never seen anyone eat like that." 

"My dad taught me," she said, then put the forkful in her mouth and ate it. "I eat spaghetti like this, too."

The mention of her father made him pause again, and something of a smile pursed his lips, then changed into a slight frown. He said, "He must've taught you a lot of things, didn't he?"

"Yeah, he did," Kendra said, repeating the action of swirling more chow mein onto her fork with a spoon. Then she noticed the expression on his face, so she added, "You don't have to be exactly like my father, Roy. You're good just the way you are."

Her words roused him back into another smile, so he lunged with his fork across the table and stabbed a piece of her Kung Pao chicken from her plate and ate it.

Now it was Kendra's turn to stare, as she gaped in disbelief. "You did not just do that?"

Roy grinned from ear to ear, saying, "I just did."

He made another attempt at her plate, but she slid her plate closer to herself, saying, "Now who's acting like a kid, hmmmmmm?"

"You're jealous, because I did it while your hands were full," he said and drank from his glass of iced water and placed it between his plate and hers. "Sweet victory, at last."

Again, Kendra gaped at his brazenness, because he was calling the score before the war was over. So, before commencing with another skirmish, she ate the rest of her chow mien and slid her plate over to his side of the table, as if daring Roy to make another attempt at her plate, while she started eating her Mongolian beef and some of her mushrooms.

Roy, on the other hand, kept his plate where it was, and started cutting into his roasted salmon and eating it, while keeping his eyes on Kendra's fork for any sudden movements. After finishing off the salmon, he went to work on Kendra's half of the tilapia on top of his chow mein, then went for his chow mein, and then went for his General Tso's.

Now was the time for eating, but it was a tense stalemate, a temporary truce in which both eaters kept a wary eye on each others' forks. In a few more minutes, they managed to finish their meals without further incident.

Till dessert, that is.

When they got up and took a saucer from the plate dispenser near the fruit and dessert aisles, they filled it with their choice and returned to their booth. Kendra only got a few cubes of jello on her saucer, but Roy got six squares of mocha cake, stacked two pieces high in three tasty groupings.

Kendra gaped, staring at Roy and then at those tasty morsels, and said, "Are you gonna eat all of those?"

"Yes," he said, smiling at her, while brandishing a clean fork and taking off a bite-sized piece of mocha cake. "And I'll eat them, one by one, very slowly in front of you, and you're going—"

"Stop, please, stop," Kendra said, but he didn't stop; he just kept eating the squares of mocha cake slowly and deliberately, chewing and chewing and chewing. "You're cruel, you know that? That is absolutely beyond cruel."

But he kept at it, anyway, smiling and chewing, and shoveling more mocha cake into his mouth, repeating the process like a broken record.

"Ugh! Why are you being so disgusting?" Kendra said. So she ate all of her jello cubes in quick succession, then brandished a fork and threatened to stab one of the mocha squares. "I'll do it, you know. I really will do it!"

"All right, all right," he said, finishing off the fourth mocha square, then pushing the saucer with the two remaining mocha squares towards her. "I've had enough sweets. You can have the rest of them."

So she dug into the fifth mocha square and savored the taste, and was about to dig into the last one, when Roy grabbed the last one from the saucer and proceeded to eat it.

At this, Kendra gaped and covered her mouth in both hands, eyes wide at the sight of her stepfather eating like a baby. "Oh my God, you're disgusting! Stop, stop! Oh my God, you are seriously disgusting!"

When he finished off the cake, Roy looked at Kendra in triumph and smiled.

But Kendra wasn't about to be outdone. Without warning, she grabbed at Roy's hand ("Hey, what are you doing? Don't!") and proceeded to lick his fingers clean of leftover mocha icing.

Heads turned and people stared, and some of the parents tried to block their kids from seeing such a sight, while Roy just sat there as the center of unwanted attention, saying, "It's not what it looks like!"

When Kendra had finished, he pulled away, saying, "Jesus, what the hell was that for?"

Kendra smirked evilly and said, "That's payback for eating the last one."

Roy kept looking around and listening for anybody talking about him, or quite possibly whispering about his relationship with Kendra, but they weren’t making it obvious. So she leaned forward and whispered so only she could hear, saying, "If you haven't noticed, you just made me look like a creep in front of everybody in this place!"

That's when she looked around and saw some of the patrons staring at them and felt self-conscious, saying, "Sorry about that. Guess I got carried away."

"Yeah, you did."

Some moments later, a waiter showed up at their table with the bill, placing it on their table with two fortune cookies.

Roy paid the bill and added a five-dollar tip, while Kendra broke open her fortune cookie and ate all the pieces.

She unfolded the slip of paper and read, "'Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase.'" She leaned back in her seat, mulling those words over in her head, wondering about Officer Todd Curvan's story about the little kid on top of the creepy staircase.

When Roy opened his fortune cookie and read it, he said, "I think this one was meant for you," and handed it to her.

She took it, and read it: "'Mastering yourself is true power.'" She looked up at her stepfather and said, "Ha! Very funny."

Tsuzuku

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