Sacred Ghost-Gods

1

"Table for one?" she asked, a southern drawl slick to her tongue.

Donny shook her head. "Uh, no. I have a couple friends coming, if that'll be all right?"

Blue quirked her head slightly to the right, her eyebrows furrowing modestly. She could hear the absence of the Virginian accent, and she led her to the empty booth near the back by the window. Donny slid over the rufescent leather, sitting close to the outside. Blue handed her the menu she held and went off to get two more. She returned and placed them opposite of the table.

Taking out a guest-check pad and a pen from the front pocket of her apron, Blue asked, "Can I get you anything to drink while you wait?"

Donny didn't want to open the menu, so she asked instead, "Do you have any Coke?"

"Coca-Cola?" Blue confirmed.

She nodded her head.

"We do." She jotted the order down.

"Oh, uh." Blue raised an eyebrow. "Can I get that without any ice, please?"

"No ice?"

"Yes."

Blue wrote it down.

"Will that be all?"

"Uh, yes. Thank you."

She walked away, to another table three seats over, and Donny had the nuance to take out her phone again and message her friend. This was all very badly planned because none of it was planned at all. Going to Nino's was a last minute decision based on hunger and telling the waitress she had friends joining her was just the mendacity of it all.

The message was simple: Come to Nino's Diner. It was sent to a friend she'd been able to keep in contact with since eighth grade, a girl born and raised in Liverpool, England named Evelyn Hardie, who'd decided to come to America with her mother two years heretofore.

Evelyn replied almost immediately: why are you there? if you're hungry just come over

Donny: That's easier said than done. I already told the waitress that I had friends coming.

Evelyn: you plonker

Evelyn: i'll be right over, agnus is coming to

Donny: The more the merrier.

A different waitress had come and given Donny a chilling can of Coke that was already moist with condensation. Where her fingers had gripped around it, there were the exiguous traces of droplets that followed. Her name tag read Cialina R.. In her other hand she held a glass pitcher filled with what Donny presumed was iced tea.

Just as she was about to turn away, Donny looked up from her phone and thanked her. Cialina gave her an earnest smile, quick and tight-lipped, before drying her hands on her apron and drifted to the next booth over to refill a man's glass.

He was a slubber of a man, toiled and sobbed and just downright anything but well-bred as he gave Cialina an insulting comment about the length of her skirt. Donny saw nothing wrong with it, just mid-thigh that revealed just how toned her legs were. Cialina ignored the man and turned around to head behind the counter, where she stopped briefly to trade a few words with Blue.

Donny took a few napkins from the table's chrome napkin dispenser and retrieved a ballpoint pen from her front pocket, a little instrument she always found useful at the most inopportune of times. With a sinistral hand, she drew striated forms limned with her pen on a napkin, the black ink running and clotting together to make three crooked lines that intersected to form a sort of elongated triangle. She sketched four more around it and circled all five of them.

There was a hiss of fresh air from the front door as one or two people entered the restaurant. A waitress--Donny recognized her voice as Blue's--asked them if they'd like to sit inside or out. A girl replied, a thick Scouse accent to her words, that she and her friend were meeting someone. Blue escorted them over to where Donny sat, her head bowed until she heard Evelyn and Agnus sit down across from her.

"Can I get you two anything to drink?" Blue asked, her notepad and pen ready.

"A Coke would be sound, thank youse." Evelyn pronounced Coke, not with the diphthong 'oh' but as a long 'oo' sound, 'would' became 'w-oh-d', 'sound' became 'soon-d', and 'you' sounded like 'use'. It was a complicated accent that Donny couldn't elucidate simply on any given day.

Agnus ordered a tall glass of milk.

While Blue jotted down their orders, her eyebrows furrowed at what Donny had been doodling. It wasn't anything suspicious, nothing to indicate that she truly knew what was being presented, only she'd noticed and that was all Donny registered.

She commented, "Cool drawings," before turning around and heading back to the front counter.

Evelyn eyed Donny, giving her a quizzical what-the-hell-was-that-about look of disgruntlement. "Totally suspicious," she decided. "What do you infer?"

Donny looked back at where Blue had disappeared behind the counter, but she couldn't tell who was who; everything was out of focus, all blurred with smudged features. Being near-sighted and forgetting your glasses sucked to one hundred percent. But she remembered when Blue was up close, a mere foot away, and Donny could easily, not just see, but feel her persona.

"It fluctuated when she saw the lines," she said, "and when she commented on them. So, yes, suspicious. I think she--" But Donny didn't finish her sentence. Blue had come back with a can of Coke for Evelyn and a tall glass of milk for Agnus. When thank yous and smiles were exchanged and Blue had gotten another quick peek at the multi-line sketches and only after she left, did Donny continue: "I think she knows what they are."

"Do you think anyone else knows who might know about the lines?" Evelyn asked this question, but they already knew the answer. They had a secondary source of information who heard from the primary: Agnus.

The two of them turned to pay their acknowledgement towards him. He took a couple long gulps of his milk before choking out an answer that had already been thought.

"Yes," he said, his voice deep and distinct against the cacophony of business that was Nino's at the moment. His gaze suddenly shifted to something past Donny and Evelyn's sight. "Speak of the Devil and doth he appear."

Author's Note: The video at the very top of the chapter is of Megan Hesketh and the way she speaks is an example of Evelyn's accent, Scouse, which is a dialect found primarily in the Metropolitan county of Merseyside, and closely associated with the city of Liverpool.