by Tim O'Rourke
Without a great deal of talk, and no explanation as to what was going on, Mother got us ready for bed. I was in the top bunk and Rik was on the bottom. Lorre and Kara were in the makeshift beds on the floor with my mother. Once the light was out, I lay awake and tried to make sense of my new surroundings in the darkness. I listened to the sounds this house made during the night, as pipes expanded and the floorboards creaked. But none of these sounds were familiar here. They weren’t the sounds I had grown accustomed to over the last eight years of my life in my own bed at home, behind the fountains. I missed the distant sound of the waters crashing into the rocks like thunder. These new sounds were the sounds of monsters again, shape-changing and dancing in the dark. I used the bowl that Ronnie had handed to me several more times during that first night until my stomach was tight with cramps, and my throat was raw.
The next few days and weeks all seemed to roll into one as we familiarised ourselves with our new surroundings and the situation we now found ourselves in. On that first morning, I remember being woken by the sounds of my sisters getting dressed. I rolled over and looked down at them from my bunk. They were pulling clean clothes from the rubbish sacks and putting them on; gone was the order and normality of wardrobes and cupboards. I spied the rest of the room and looked for our mother amongst the blankets and bedding on the floor. Lorre must have read my searching eyes, as she informed me that Mum was already up and was talking to a lady about something. I noticed Kara had pulled her long, blonde hair into pigtails and I could see her pretty face was ashen. Swinging my legs over the side of the bunk, I dropped to the floor, waking Rik.
Our first morning in that house was fucking awful. I felt totally lost and bewildered. I think all of us felt the same, even Lorre and Kara, who had played such a large part in the previous night’s events. All of us appeared to have this perplexed expression pulled down over our faces.
As we were finishing getting dressed, our mother came into the room and closed the door behind her.
“I’ve spoken to a lady who’s going to sort you out some breakfast. She’s really nice, her name is Elaine.” Mother had a light and jovial tone to her voice, but I wonder if it hadn’t been put on for our benefit. She looked about the room and then at us.
“I’m sorry about this, but it just couldn’t be helped. There was nothing else I could have done. You have your father to thank for this.”
Over the next few years, I would grow very accustomed to that phrase.
“What is this place?” I asked her.
“Somewhere we can all be safe from the wolves,” she replied, as if I should have already known this. “Somewhere we can hide until the people here can find us someplace else to live.”
“But we are wolves, aren’t we?” I persisted. She ignored my question and continued.
“It’s going to be a nightmare for all of us for a while, but I promise it won’t be for long, only until I get things sorted out.”
Everything seemed to be coming at me all at once. I was still trying to absorb the drastic changes that had occurred in the previous twelve hours. I could feel my brain beginning to swell.
She came amongst us and huddled us altogether, as if we were having a halftime meeting, and whispered in an encouraging tone.
“If we all stick together and look out for one another, we’ll do just fine. If we do, your father won’t be able to hurt us anymore.”
Her last comment went off in my brain like a firecracker.
What did she mean, “Your father won’t be able to hurt us anymore. ”? I looked towards Lorre, then Kara, in the hope they could read my puzzled thoughts, but they had their heads tilted towards the floor.
Rik screwed up his face in a grimace. At the age of four, he probably had very little understanding of the situation. I was struggling to make sense of it.
Our mother took both our hands in hers and said, “You’re both going to be very brave.
You’ll understand what’s going on in time and realise it’s for the best.” She then pulled us all together for a team hug. I looked up at my mother, her dark eyes almost black, her thick lips pulled into a nervous smile as she looked back at me.
Linked hand in hand like a chain, my mother led us into a vast room at the front of the house. I immediately noticed the difference compared to my own home. The furniture was mismatched and old, resembling items that had been salvaged from a bin. Thick purple curtains hung at the bay windows and a worn green carpet covered the floor. I thought Lorre would feel at home, as I spied a rocking chair in one corner. Rik and I squeezed into a chair together, and to be close to him felt wonderful. Our arms and legs brushing together made me feel as if we were one. I felt less vulnerable sitting next to him like that. I noticed that he was still clutching badger and I suspected he hadn’t put him down since the night before. To my surprise, Lorre didn’t hijack the rocking chair, but had squeezed into a chair with Kara. The room must have had at least eight chairs in it, but the four of us had managed to cram ourselves into two.
A woman entered the room and our mother introduced us to her in turn, and then announced that this was Elaine.
“Elaine works here. It’s her job to make sure everything runs smoothly,” Mother explained.
Elaine, like the other lady, was tall, pretty, and very pale-looking. I wondered if either of them had ever seen sunlight. She was holding a plate of toast in her hands, which she offered to us. We all took a slice. My stomach still felt bruised from my vomiting the night before, but it still managed to perform tiny somersaults with hunger. The toast must have been prepared some time ago, because as I bit into it, it was cold and the thick layer of butter that was smeared across it had congealed into a yellow mess. Mouthful by tiny mouthful, I forced it down with a grateful smile.
Come my ninth birthday a few weeks later, I hadn’t seen, spoken to, or had any contact with my father. By now I was wondering if I ever wanted to again. During those first strained few weeks, my mother had been mindful at getting me by herself, either on visits into the local village or on chilly, stormy walks along the beach. On these occasions, mother had seized upon the moment to explain why she had taken us away from our father. I had never spent so long on the other side of the fountain before – in the human world – and I wondered if and when I would ever go back.
“Your father did some terrible things, Jack,” she said. “As you know, our race was cursed many hundreds of years ago by the Elders because of the unspeakable crimes our ancestors committed against women and children. Because of what they did, we have been punished. We have a monster living within each of us – the wolf.
There are some of us who believe that we can have the curse lifted if we choose a different way of living – a peaceful existence, one without killing. I believed that your father felt the same at first. Then, he changed. The wolf inside of him took over. I discovered that he had started to kill.
He had been going beyond the fountain and the forests and murdering humans. I pled with him to stop, fearing he would bring the curse down upon all of us, or be caught for his crimes and bring death upon all of us. But he turned his anger on me and your sisters.”
I felt bewildered and shocked by what she had said. She went on to paint the darkest picture possible of my father, pulling at my senses and leaving me without doubt that he was some vile monster who should be loathed and hated for what he had put her and my sisters through.
“So is that why we have run away?” I asked her.
“Yes,” she nodded, looking down into my upturned face.
“But who are these people you have brought us to live with?”
“They are Vampyrus,” she said, just above a whisper.
I had heard of such creatures before. My father had spoken about them. “But don’t the Vampyrus hunt down and kill the wolves, mother?” I asked her.
“Only the bad wolves,” she half-smiled at me. “Only the killers.”
“Like my father?” I asked, my lips tasting salty from t
he sea air.
“That’s right,” she nodded, her thick, black hair blowing in the wind. “The Vampyrus were just days from catching up with him for his crimes. The Vampyrus are very much like us.
They have managed to fit into human life; they want to live above ground like we want to be free of the caves hidden behind the Fountain of Souls.
So the Vampyrus have small teams who track down the wolves – Lycanthrope – who continue to rape and murder the humans, and then they imprison them in The Hollows. They fear that if the Lycanthrope are left free to murder, it wouldn’t be long before the humans discover that wolves and Vampyrus are living secretly amongst them and they would become the hunted. The Vampyrus will help those Lycanthrope like us who don’t want to kill – who want the curse lifted.
They have offered us a safe place to stay until we are relocated to live peaceful lives without your father.”
“How long will it take, mother?” I asked her, not really liking the house she had taken us to live in. It wasn’t like home at all.
“Not long, Jack,” she whispered, taking me in her arms. Then, holding me close, she forbade me to ever discuss with my sisters what she had told me. According to her, they would feel ashamed and humiliated if they had any idea I knew my father had hurt them. Because of this, I grew to be repulsed by my father. Worse than that, I found myself becoming petrified of him and wishing never to see him again.
Knowingly or unknowingly, my mother was creating invisible but very real barriers between me and my sisters. I felt so much anguish for them but had no way of unleashing it. So I retreated, withdrew and studied them from afar, feeling guilty that I knew their dark secrets but had been muted in any attempt to offer them comfort. This really pissed me off, because Kara and I had once been close. When we were still living at home, we used to collect the petals that had fallen from the flowers that grew along the shores of the lake. Kara would wash out old glass bottles and I would line them up on the grass to dry out. We would then take the petals that we had collected and push them into the empty bottles and add water from the lake and take them back to the caves. Kara had more patience than me, she was quite happy to leave them for several days to stew. I however, would creep out into the yard, unscrew the tops and inhale the sweet smell.
“Jack, you shouldn’t open them yet.
They’re not ready!” she would scold me.
“I just can’t wait to start selling them!
We’ll be rich!” I told her.
It had been Kara’s idea to make a little stall in the passageways and sell our bottles of perfume to passersby. I knew deep down we wouldn’t sell any, as the area we lived in was poor. The people could barely afford to buy food, let alone perfume.
“Jack, if you don’t leave the perfume alone for another few days, we won’t sell any of them as they won’t have any smell.”
Reluctantly, I replaced the lids, but continued to check on them daily when Kara wasn’t around. Kara and I would spend those days waiting for the perfume to ripen, fantasizing about what we would spend our riches on once we had sold them all.
In fact, we made a grand total of ten pence. On the day that Kara felt sure our perfume was ready to hit the market, we placed a blanket on the ground just outside our front shutter. We waited for the rush of customers we had dreamt about, but they must have all been busy that day.
When we had given up all hope of selling any of our perfume, one solitary customer visited our stall. My dad appeared from around the side of the cave, picked up one of the bottles, and dabbed a little of it behind his ears and onto each wrist.
“This smells wonderful!” he told us. “I think I will have a couple of bottles, please.” Kara put two bottles of our perfume into a paper bag and handed them to him.
“How much do I owe you?” he asked.
“They are five pence each,” she informed him.
“A bargain,” he said, handing her the money.
Once he had gone back into the cave, Kara gave me one of the five pence pieces he had given her, and we shut up stall. We then skipped hand in hand down the narrow passageways to the market where we bought ourselves a bag of penny sweets.
Although I was close to Kara, Lorre and I hadn’t been so close. I don’t know if this was due to the age gap between us, but she tended to be a bit of a bitch.
Although I had always been tall for my age, I was still too short in height to be able to open the kitchen shutter back home, so when I was in need of a drink, I was often reliant on my big sister, Lorre, to get one for me. Even if I had managed to get into the kitchen, I couldn’t reach the water pump, let alone crank the handle. Lorre would hoist me up onto her shoulders and carry me towards the kitchen. Just as the kitchen shutter came within my reach, she would pull away before I had managed to get the shutter open.
“Lorre, stop it!” I would moan. She would then head back towards the kitchen, with me bobbing around on her shoulders. Again, just as we reached the kitchen she would turn away.
“Lorre, please! I’m thirsty!”
“It’s not Thursday!” she would say. “It’s Monday!”
This little game of hers would go on and on, until I was so frustrated, I would cry. She would then pour some water into a bowl and tell me to lick it up like a wolf. Panting with thirst, I would get onto all fours, and lap the water out of the bowl like a dog. I don’t know if she did this to be cruel, or that little bit of the wolf inside got the better of her, but she always just took it too far. So I grew up just a little wary of her as a child and so never had the closeness that Kara and I so often shared.
Therefore, because of the love that I had for my sisters, and hearing the stories of what my father had done, I began expressing hatred for my father in front of them. I would exaggerate any chastisement that my father had ever given me, to justify my newfound hate for him and to be like them.
Chapter Four
Kiera
Jack got up from his seat and went to the window. He stood with his back to me. I looked across the room at my father. He sat forward, like a black shadow. He didn’t move. He was either asleep, unconscious, or…no, I wouldn’t let myself think that. I looked quickly at Jack who still had his back to me, as he looked thoughtfully out of the window at the snow which continued to fall.
I stole a quick glance down at the floor and at the tiny pile of dust. It had grown a little, but not much. The skin across my face had now begun to tighten. It felt as if I was wearing one of those face packs. Instead of feeling hot, my skin felt stone-cold. I didn’t know how much longer Jack was prepared to carry on talking for. I hoped a little longer. Not just because I needed more time to become a statue, but because I was surprised by what he was telling me. It was like he was giving his confession somehow – unburdening his soul. As I sat and listened, I found it hard to picture him as a boy. He must have been one once, right? We had all been children. To look at him standing before the window, the reflection of his hideously gaunt face reflected back in the glass, I found it almost impossible to picture him sitting on his mother’s lap as an eight-year-old as she told him that his father was a killer. How would any eight-year-old deal with something like that? I wondered. I had found it difficult enough reconciling the fact my mother was a Vampyrus and a killer, and I had been much older than eight when I had to confront that truth. What must that have done to him?
I pushed those thoughts away – right out of my head. I knew I mustn’t be drawn into Jack’s story. I had to focus, stay calm, so I was ready to save my father and Potter when the time came. Jack might have been an eight-year-old boy once, but not anymore. He had become a twisted and brutal killer. I stared again across the dimly-lit room at my father to remind myself of that fact.
Jack stepped away from the window. With his back to me, he went across the room to my father.
Taking a handful of his hair in his fist, Jack yanked back my father’s head.
“Still alive,” he said, over his shoulder at me. Then he added,
with a wry smile, “Can I tempt you with something to eat?”
I looked away, back at the pile of dust on the floor beneath my chair. Jack let go of my father’s head, and I heard an audible crack as his chin slammed into his chest. My father groaned in pain.
“Whoops,” Jack said, wincing at the sound.
Knowing I had to entice Jack away from my father before he peeled any more flesh from him, I said, “How did you deal with that anger, Jack?”
He looked at me, a little bemused, his head to one side.
“How did you feel knowing that your father had hurt your sisters real bad, but you couldn’t do anything to help them?”
“Helpless,” he said, with a smile. “Just how you feel now, knowing that you can’t help the ones you love.”
I glanced at my father, then back at Seth.
“It made you feel angry, didn’t it? Did it rattle the monster’s cage inside of you?”
“Just like yours is rattling now,” he said, taking his seat in front of me again.
“What else did your mother tell you?” I asked, wanting him to get back to his story, to take his mind off the room, and what I was planning.
“She told me a lot more,” he smiled, but it wasn’t a sneer or a happy smile – it was a grimace, like he had just tasted something really bad.
“What did she tell you?” I asked him, slowly turning my wrists in their chains fastened behind me.
With the light fading in his eyes again, like he was slipping into some kind of dream, Jack said, “It was a weekday, and I hadn’t attended school for some time, not since the night we had fled my father…
Chapter Five
Jack
…Mother said it was too dangerous to attend the local school, as my father would be lying in wait to steal us away from her. On this particular day, she had left Lorre in charge of Kara and Rik at the safe house, and had led me down to the beach. It was still early February and bitterly cold. As we walked along the sea wall, she relayed to me an incident that had occurred between her and my father, just after I had been born. Mother recalled it had been as cold as the wind that whipped around us now. She told me my father had been in a furious rage about something, she couldn’t quite remember what, but his face had been white and livid and his eyes had shone bright yellow with anger.
