Mythos (The Descendants, #1)

by Vrinda Pendred

  * * *

  Itzy tossed her phone on the floor. It made an unhealthy cracking sound, bounced once and landed face down in resignation.

  She stared around her. Her notebook still lay accusingly on the worn wooden desk, waiting for her to read over what had been written - but she was afraid to look.

  Dizzy, she staggered to her bed, the teal flowered duvet neatly set. She made it just in time, put out her hand and fell onto the bed. Her body lay at an odd angle, twisting awkwardly, but she didn’t notice.

  All she could think about was her father.

  The trouble was that Itzy had what her mother had always called an ‘overactive imagination’. Even if she wanted to stop the stories from coming into her head, she wasn’t sure it was possible.

  As she lay there on the bed, it was as if she had been transported into her father’s house in Kent. She’d never been inside it, so she had no idea what it looked like, and yet it was so vivid, she could almost believe the vision was real.

  There he was, sitting at the desk in the room where they found him. He wore a beige long-sleeved t-shirt with some esoteric Matrix-esque pattern on the front. He had always been into strange designs that looked like they should have been stamped into a field out in Somerset. His hair was thick and black, like Itzy’s. He held his head in his hands, the rough fingers pressed against his scalp, his dark eyes closed in thought.

  What was he thinking about? His mistakes, maybe? No wonder he looked so lost, suffocating from repression.

  So that’s what he looked like when he was alone with his memories, Itzy thought, as if the vision were real and not just her imagination. Maybe he was thinking of her, or of her mother. Perhaps he could no longer live with what he’d done to them.

  The mantras repeated in his head:

  It’s my fault they hate me.

  I don’t deserve to be alive.

  He stared at an empty pill bottle on the desk. It was a new bottle and he had swallowed its entire contents, not ten minutes ago. It had been so frighteningly easy to swallow pill after pill after pill…to start the process. And now it was too late to change his mind, whether he liked it or not. Perhaps he could ring the hospital and get his stomach pumped…but no. He had avoided doctors all his life and he wasn’t about to change his habits.

  Just before he finally dropped from the desk and slumped onto the floor. The pen slipped from his hands, and he thought something disappointingly inane, like, Why didn’t I ever get this desk varnished?

  When Evelyn, or maybe their son, finally found him, Stephen Loveguard was gone. There would have been tears, or maybe just shock. Itzy had never known his second family, so she had no idea how they would react.

  His wife would have contacted Gwen -

  who then contacted Itzy -

  and told her there was a note on the desk.

  And it read:

  ‘Don’t let them get my children.’

  TWO

  For a long time, Itzy just lay there. In her mind, stars danced like the constellations printed on the indigo t-shirt she wore. After a while, she no longer felt connected to her body.

  Black streaked the air before her and she marvelled at it, wondering what it meant. She often saw it when she slipped into one of her trances.

  She trained her eyes on the lines, thinking maybe she could bend them with her mind. But they would not be tamed. They grew fatter and fatter, until they filled her vision and she was breathless with fear. She wanted to return to her body and run from the shadowy monster forming before her. But try as she might, she remained untethered from her body, trapped in a waking nightmare.

  Help, she thought, unable to work her vocal chords. Someone help me!

  Out of the black, two faint lights shone through. They gained intensity, breaking apart the darkness and forcing themselves into her view. When they were large enough, she saw they were a pair of grey eyes, somehow comforting in their steel.

  Then she plummeted back into her body at the sound of the front door being opened downstairs. Her heart kicked into angry palpitations, as if she’d been on the verge of an important revelation and then cruelly yanked away from it.

  ‘Itzy?’ her mother called up the stairs a moment later. ‘You home?’

  She couldn’t move. She felt like her whole body had been soaked in glue, holding her to the bed. The sound of her mother’s footsteps climbing up the brief staircase was amplified, like the slow, drawn out pounding of feet in the Godzilla films Ash used to make her watch, when they were going out.

  Myra finally reached the landing and nudged her daughter’s bedroom door open. ‘Itz?’ she tried again.

  She looked tired. She always looked tired. The divorce happened seven years ago, but she’d never really moved on from it.

  She moved across the room and sat on the bed beside her only child. She outstretched one of her long arms and ran her fingers through Itzy’s black hair. It was tangled around her face. ‘Itzy, what’s wrong?’

  Itzy forced herself to sit up. She lifted her knees to her chin and wrapped her arms around her legs, aware her posture probably made her look like a little girl.

  ‘I don’t know how to say this,’ she whispered.

  Her mother’s body stiffened in anticipation. ‘Whatever it is…just tell me.’

  Itzy swallowed. It was so hard, looking at her mother and remembering what she had once been. Before Itzy’s father, Myra had been a strong, proud young woman who walked around town with her head held high and eyes flashing, daring the men to be good enough for her. In those days, she wore funky pseudo-gothic clothing, long flowing black or purple crushed velvet skirts over black bodysuits that hugged her dancer’s figure. She threw her hair - dirty blond, regularly streaked with flashes of deep chestnut - into artistic sculptures and stomped her feet in heeled boots that disappeared under her clothing and drove men to distraction, wishing they could follow where those boots led.

  Then Stephen entered the scene. Too many times Itzy had wondered how they had come together, but her mother had never been willing to tell her. So Itzy had relied on her imagination.

  In that world, they had run into each other at a nightclub, maybe. Perhaps up north, where Stephen came from. Or Brighton, where Myra had grown up. Myra would have been shimmying seductively, looking like a Celtic goddess with her blond hair and heavily lined eyes. Stephen, with his archaeology degree and his fascination with ancient mythology, hadn’t stood a chance. Watching her in that room, as if they were the only two people there, he’d had no choice but to fall in love with her.

  It didn’t matter that he already had Evelyn; after all, they weren’t married.

  At least, that was how it had happened in Itzy’s head.

  ‘Itzy,’ Myra brought her back to the present. She touched her palm to her daughter’s cheek in a rare display of mothering. Real mothering that meant she hadn’t had time to go into the kitchen, yet.

  It encouraged Itzy. Maybe this would be the turning point, the event that would shake her mother into finally moving forward with her life.

  Itzy bit her lip and took the plunge. ‘He’s dead,’ she announced. The words felt like bile in her mouth, and she was suddenly very worried she would be sick.

  Despite everything that had happened, all Stephen had done to them, Myra’s hand flew to her mouth in horror. Her head quivered and she said, ‘No.’

  Itzy inclined her head in dreadful affirmation.

  ‘He - he can’t - how?’

  Itzy stared down at her hands. They were strong and almost masculine. Everything about her seemed to be an echo of her father.

  ‘No, don’t tell me,’ Myra decided. She put her hand on her daughter’s shoulder to steady herself and swallowed hard. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I know you…you need…I need….’

  Itzy didn’t move. How had she been stupid enough to delude herself into thinking anything would change? She knew what her mothe
r needed: a drink.

  That had become her staple answer to all of life’s problems. Sometimes it felt like alcohol had replaced Stephen as Itzy’s second parent. Each day, Myra held it together just long enough to get through work, and then swiftly unravelled once she was home, with an eagerness that revealed the desperation she felt for that oblivion.

  Myra stood, looking drunk even though she wasn’t - yet. She staggered to her feet, giving Itzy time to reflect that her mother didn’t have any of Myra’s grace and elegance anymore, either.

  Then she exited the room without another word, leaving her daughter sitting on the bed, feeling lost. The sound of clattering in the kitchen could soon be heard, bottles being taken out, a glass being filled.

  Then, a glass breaking.

  Followed by hysterical crying.

  The sounds brought Itzy back to one of the few memories she had that were solidly clear. She had been nine. It was late and Itzy had been sleeping, when she was woken by the sound of shrill screaming down the hall, where her parents’ bedroom lay.

  There was a sound like something smashing, and then the night went ominously silent. The room spun around Itzy as she drew the covers over her head, as though there were monsters waiting for her on her bed and she couldn’t bear to see them.

  But the monsters weren’t in her room - they were in the room down the hall and they all had a name: Stephen Loveguard. Her father had become the most terrifying creature Itzy could imagine.

  Footsteps pounded down their staircase and then out the front door. The door was flung open, and then slammed shut so heavily that it made the house shake. Stephen had left.

  But what had happened to her mother?

  Itzy didn’t realise it, but the next thing she did was very brave. She was trembling all over, her vision assaulted by images of her mother lying dead in her room, and yet Itzy found herself climbing out of bed, out of the safety of her room, and creeping down the darkened hallway.

  The door had been left open, as if Stephen had wanted her to see.

  Myra Loveguard lay on the floor, a shattered lamp beside her and pieces of it embedded in her temple. Her eyes were closed, like she was sleeping.

  The air flew out of Itzy’s lungs. It felt like shadowy hands were reaching out to grab her. She spun around in a circle, trying to catch them. If she faced them, they couldn’t get her; if she turned her back to them, they could. Such was the logic of her nine-year-old mind.

  Then, miraculously, she saw Myra was breathing - and Itzy rang 999.

  By the time Stephen had returned, there were police, and Myra was being taken to Accident & Emergency. She would be alright, they said. Physically, at least.

  Stephen feigned ignorance of what had happened.

  ‘I was out on a walk,’ he excused himself with frightening sincerity, as though he’d forgotten what he’d done. ‘I’m not a very good sleeper. She must have had an accident.’

  Itzy had wanted to scream - to throw herself at the feet of the policemen and say, Can’t you see what a liar he is? Can’t you see what he’s done? But something stopped her.

  Because Stephen was still her father, and that carried the sort of weight that makes children keep such secrets, even while they’re losing themselves inside.

  Later, it had just been Itzy and her father, sitting in her room. He behaved protectively of her, despite what he’d just done. Was it possible he didn’t even know?

  Neither of them bothered to switch on the lights. Itzy tucked her knees against her chest and held herself closely. She pressed herself against the wall that bordered her bed in an effort to get as far away from her father as she could.

  And yet, hadn’t some part of her wanted him to hug her and tell her it would all be alright, too? Hadn’t she also wanted him to say how much he loved her, and that he was proud of her for saving her mother?

  But he didn’t. Instead, he sighed and let his head droop so he was staring down at his fidgeting hands. The darkness made his hair - grown out in those days - look even blacker than it was, like he was hooded in shadow.

  Then he said it.

  ‘I’m sorry, Itzy. I just…I don’t love your mother anymore.’

  Her heart stopped beating. Why was he saying this? And why was he telling her, of all people? Was this the way divorces happened? She’d always entertained the mad notion that somehow her parents would work out their problems one day and things would get better. The idea of severance had never crossed her young mind.

  They remained that way a long time. Itzy didn’t know where the time went or how it managed to pass so swiftly. She disappeared into the silence, escaping inside herself like she often did.

  An hour later, he got up to go. He looked like he couldn’t remember what he’d come to see her about. Outside, she could hear the birds starting to sing.

  Oh yes, it had been spring. It was meant to be a happy season.

  Myra returned home the following day. Stephen drove to the hospital to pick her up, as if she’d merely been away for a routine operation, nothing to do with him, not at all.

  By the time they got back to the house, they were laughing together like friends. Stephen was especially affectionate with her, touching her hair with a look of longing and adoration on his face. But the bandages on Myra’s forehead couldn’t be ignored - not by Itzy, at least. She was left wondering how her father could carry on the way he was, after what he’d confessed to her the night before.

  Their marriage went on for another year, in that manner. A month would go by without incident, and Itzy allowed herself to think perhaps Stephen really had changed.

  Then she would wake up to the screaming again and know that, in a way, she was just like her mother. They were both fooling themselves if they thought the violence would ever stop.

  That was when she had written the story.