by Tim O'Rourke
“Just like the Lycanthrope did before the Elders cursed our race,” she explained, “your father crept into a human home. Lycanthropes can’t just take a human baby. It has to be given away by the baby’s mother. So just like our ancestors, he transfixed the mother with his stare and she unknowingly handed her baby over to him.
He raced back to the caves with the baby in his arms. On seeing the baby, I knew at once why Joshua had taken it. I begged him to return the baby, knowing there would be no redemption for him once he had killed the baby. He couldn’t contain his murderous lust and the curse which now possessed him, so he killed the baby.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. It felt as if the bedroom walls were closing in on me.
As if my head were being crushed in a vice.
Sickeningly, she continued, either oblivious to or simply not caring about the distress her account was causing me and my sister.
“He kept the remains for another week or so, hidden in a bucket at the back of the cave. I begged him to take the baby away, to bury it somewhere. If it should be discovered, I would be blamed just as much as he.”
I heard Kara begin to sob and I covered my ears with my hands. Mother insisted I remove them as she thought it was important I understood what my father was really like. She continued and I closed my eyes. If I had to hear her, I didn’t want to see her. Uncaringly, she persisted, “Your father was an artist just like you, Jack. Perhaps that’s where you get it from?”
I closed my eyes tighter still.
“He painted a picture of the bucket and its contents. He drew a picture of a clock without any hands. This he told me was meant to show the baby lost in time.”
With my eyes closed, I could picture this terrible scene and I snapped them open. Kara had turned away from my mother and was now sitting with her back to her. I could see her shoulders shaking as she continued to cry. Even though Kara and I were both visibly distressed, our mother continued, claiming eventually he smuggled the decomposed body back to the woods and buried it in a shallow grave. To hear this story made me truly understand how evil the Lycanthrope – my own race – and my own father could be. No wonder the Vampyrus hunted us down and killed us. Did we deserve any more than that?
Bewilderingly, my mother stated in her heart she knew that the baby was with the Elders now, and it blamed her as much as Joshua for its death. What she asked next I found really creepy – sick.
“That child is watching me because of what your father did,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. “Will you pray and ask the Elders and that child to forgive me?”
She pulled both of us close to her and embraced us. I sat there numbly as she apologised for upsetting us, but went on to add she thought we should know what our father was really like.
To be honest, I didn’t want to know.
Could I really have a father who was capable of doing such wicked and barbaric things?
Did he really murder that baby? Was it watching my mother with the Elders? All of these questions terrified me.
Chapter Seventeen
Jack
For my 13th birthday, Father Paul gave me a small bag of tools and a foldaway workbench. Apart from the drawing and painting, I had shown a flair for woodwork at school. My father had been a carpenter, so when Father Paul asked what I would like for my birthday, I asked for some carpentry tools.
My mother ignored me for the best part of a week after that, only speaking to me when Father Paul was at home. Once he had gone, the frost would reappear and I would be left alone. On occasions, I longed to tell Father Paul what she was like towards me when he wasn’t around. I could see how fond he was of my mother and she appeared to be fond of him. It worried me that if I told him, he might confront her about it. This in turn would leave me to face my mother’s wrath, or even worse, Father Paul might have distanced himself from her and I didn’t want to lose him from my life.
The next time Mother spent any real time with me, she took me out and bought a small rosebush. She got me to plant it in the backyard for her.
“Why the roses?” I asked her. She had never shown any interest in growing flowers before.
“It’s in remembrance to that poor child your father murdered,” she said.
“Oh?” I said, my flesh turning cold.
“From now on it’s your job to tend to it.
God forbid you let that plant die!” she warned me and went back into the house.
That summer we crammed ourselves into Father Paul’s beat-up old truck. Father Paul’s brother owned a cottage in Wales, so he took us there for a secret two-week break. His brother’s holiday cottage was a long way up a winding road, which became narrower and narrower until the bracken on either side scratched the side of the old truck.
The cottage sat back from a steep cliff edge and at night, as I lay silently in bed, I could hear the sounds of the waves booming against the rocks below. The house had three bedrooms, one of which I shared with my brother. My sisters shared another, and Father Paul and my mother shared the third. It was the first time I’d realised they had ever shared a room together. This didn’t seem out of the ordinary to me until one morning, I walked into their bedroom unannounced. Here I discovered them curled up in bed together, wrapped in each other’s arms. I remember them looking up at me as I walked in. My mother pulled the sheets up beneath her chin, and Father Paul shooed me away with a flick of his hand. I left the room, shutting the door behind me, the warnings that it was forbidden by the Elders for a Vampyrus and Lycanthrope to mix screaming around inside my head. Neither my mother or Father Paul had said anything to me. Neither of them looked concerned that they were breaking the laws of the Elders. They had just been lying there together, holding each other as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
It shocked me at first to see my mother lying there with her face nestled against his bare chest. Not because he was a Blackcoat and a Vampyrus, but because the last person I had seen her sharing a bed with had been my father.
That was the last holiday I ever shared with Lorre. I believe she had reluctantly come on holiday with us that summer. She was seventeen now, and had her own friends within the small Lycanthrope community living away from the caves. I discovered she was fond of a young male named James, and he lived in the richer part of town. His father had done well to keep the curse at bay, and had successfully managed to find himself a senior position at the bank, working secretly alongside the humans. I believed Lorre had been embarrassed about bringing James back to our home. Although we had the basics, we still only had one room that was carpeted. All the rooms were still battleship grey in colour and hadn’t seen a coat of paint since we had moved in. The furniture was secondhand and shabby-looking. So whenever James came to collect Lorre, she would make sure she was ready well in advance, and would dash out of the house and whisk him away.
It was just before her eighteenth birthday when Lorre had plucked up the courage to bring James home. She had intended to spend the day with him, and then bring him home during the evening. I recall she had specifically taken the time to clean the house and tidy her bedroom so as to make a good impression. However, whilst she was out on her date, my mother had gone around the house and undid all the tidying she had done.
Mother then ransacked Lorre’s bedroom drawers and threw the contents around the room.
Lorre arrived home shortly after, and once she had introduced James to us, they disappeared upstairs to get away from the now untidy home.
Within minutes Lorre was dragging James back down the stairs, and without saying a word, they slipped out of the house.
A couple of weeks later I heard Lorre sobbing from behind her bedroom door. I asked my mother what had upset Lorre so much.
With a wry smile tugging at the corners of her mouth, she said, “James doesn’t want to see Lorre anymore. I don’t know why she’s so bothered, all Lycanthrope males are the same.
They can’t be trusted.”
I don�
�t know if my mother’s behaviour that night was to blame, but on her eighteenth birthday, Lorre left home and I didn’t know where she had gone, or if I would ever see her again.
Although as a child I was never really close to Lorre, I felt a great sense of loss.
Christmas arrived the same month Lorre left, and with it came another huge pile of presents – another warning I guessed – from our father.
Mother had smugly told us only a few days before we wouldn’t be getting anything from him that Christmas, as she had been assured by Father Paul’s brother, who was hunting my father, that he was close to being captured. So when my mother opened the door to find another bunch of present for us and another basket of raw, bloody meat for her, she howled and raked her long claws along the wall in the hallway. Again, the kids at the church got a free pile of presents, and much to my mother’s despair, I think she finally realised my father wasn’t ready to be captured by the Vampyrus just yet.
Chapter Eighteen
Jack
Just after Christmas, just before my fourteenth birthday, my mother disappeared for several days. She didn’t say goodbye, or leave any note as to where she had gone. Curious to know if Father Paul knew her whereabouts, I trudged through the snow to his church, but he wasn’t around either. I wondered if they were together.
Kara was very close to mother, and since Lorre had left home too, she was very upset during this time, and at night she would often sit at the end of my bed and cry.
“I hope Mum is okay,” she sobbed.
I put my arm around her and pulled her tight. Although Kara and I had been close as children, since leaving our father, we had sadly grown apart. To cuddle her like this conjured up wonderful memories of us making perfume together as children.
“Mum will be ok, I’m sure of it,” I told her.
“I know she’s mad, but I still don’t want anything bad to happen to her,” she cried.
I was taken aback by what she had just said, so I probed further. “What do you mean ‘mad’?” I asked her.
“Some of the things she says and does,”
Kara sobbed.
“Like what?” I knew very well what she meant, but I wanted her to say it.
“She can be very cruel sometimes, but I don’t think she means it. It’s just her way,” Kara sniffed.
I was so surprised at hearing Kara talk like this about our mother. I remembered how we had both shared that awful account our mother had relayed to us about our father killing that human baby. I was desperate to find out what Kara had thought about it. I wanted to know if she too shared the nightmares I had had since that day. I believed this was my chance to raise the subject with her.
“You know that story Mum told us about Father murdering that baby? I keep having nightmares about it. Do you?” I pulled her tight and could smell the clean fragrance of her freshly washed hair.
“Sometimes,” she said, her head buried against my shoulder.
“Do you believe it’s true?” I dared to ask.
“It must be, or why would she tell us?”
Kara said, looking at me with her red-rimmed eyes.
“I can’t understand why she told us, truth or not. What purpose did it serve, other than to upset us?” I asked her.
“And that’s what I mean, Jack, when I say she’s mad.”
Then to my surprise, just when I thought Kara and me could open up together and maybe rekindle some of that closeness we had once shared, she got up and left my room. Momentarily, I was in two minds whether I should follow her and attempt to pursue our conversation, but I guessed she wasn’t ready to talk anymore. Kara was sixteen at the time, nearly three years older than me, but on this occasion, as I had sat and comforted her, I felt as if I was the elder. Nik was just eight at the time, and the fact that my mother had seemingly vanished didn’t bother him at all.
He sat on the rug in the living room playing with his toys.
When Mother came home from wherever she had been, she was very upset. Father Paul was at her side.
“Kathy, try not to get yourself too upset,”
he assured her. I could tell by the tremor in his own voice that he was also very distraught. Kara was sitting numbly on the sofa and didn’t say a word.
“What’s wrong?” I asked as I sat on the edge of the sofa.
Through her sobs, I just managed to decipher what my mother had to say.
“The Elders didn’t believe me! They chose to believe your father instead.”
Confused, I asked, “What? My father has been captured by the Vampyrus? What does that mean?”
My mother just sat and buried her face in her hands, so Father Paul answered for her.
“Joshua handed himself in to my brother and his team just over a week ago,” he said, and I noticed how he called him Joshua rather than my father.
“Why did he hand himself in?” I asked, my heart racing at hearing this news.
“He has spent the last few years gathering evidence to prove his innocence,” Father Paul explained. “The Elders didn’t believe the accusations your mother made about Joshua. He denied it all.” Father Paul looked ashen and his voice sounded scared as he continued, “The Elders have set Joshua free.”
My mother continued to sit and sob as she left Father Paul the difficult task of revealing the court’s decision to us.
“What evidence did my father have?” I asked, standing up and looking down at my mother. “You told me that he beat you. That he beat my sisters. That he was a murderer. Why didn’t the Elders believe you?” I needed the answer to this question. She had managed to convince me of my father’s murderous behaviour, why hadn’t the Elders believed her?
Without looking at me she said, “Your father is very clever. He managed to twist everything.” Through her continued sobs, she explained.
It became clear that my mother and Father Paul had both been in The Hollows giving evidence to the Elders over the last seven days.
Evidence for whatever reason, the Elders hadn’t believed.
Overhearing the conversation as Nik played on the rug, he looked at my mother and said, “Can I see my dad now?”
I doubted if Nik would even have recognised him if he had passed him in the street, as he had been only four the night we had fled the caves.
Hearing this, my mother fled from the room, Father Paul close behind her. Neither me nor Nik got an answer to our questions. Not just yet, anyhow. We ate in silence that night, as the news of what had transpired at Elders’ court slowly sank in. I felt a little guilty, as deep inside me, down in the basement, I felt the slightest tingling of excitement at the prospect of seeing my father again. The smallest shoots of curiosity sprung up in the shadows of that basement and they grew evermore wild as they searched desperately for the light.
After Father Paul left that night, in a somewhat sombre and thoughtful mood, I lay in bed with that feeling of excitement. I couldn’t quite explain it, but it began to slowly consume me.
I felt guilty for feeling it, but however hard I tried, it just wouldn’t go away. I thought of all the hideous stories my mother had told me about my father, but the feelings of excitement and curiosity just wouldn’t go.
Over the next few days, the thought of seeing my father obsessed me. I pictured myself going back to the caves we had left some years ago. In my head it hadn’t changed, everything was exactly as we had left it. I tried to picture my father; I hadn’t seen him in all that time. I could remember what he looked like, his fair hair, hazel-yellow eyes and small build, but whenever I closed my eyes to picture him, his image became distorted around the edges. However much I fantasized about meeting him again, I suspected if my mother had anything to do with it, I never would.
A few nights later my suspicions were proved right, as she said to Kara, Nik, and me, “We’re going to have to run away again.”
Chapter Nineteen
Jack
The plan was this: Father Paul was going to leave the Blackcoats and ru
n away. We were then going to move into his brother’s holiday home in Wales.
“We’ll be able to start a new life together,” he assured us.
“Nobody will ever find us,” Mother added excitedly. I knew she was talking about my father.
I asked my mother about Lorre and whether she would be coming with us. She then explained, although we hadn’t seen Lorre in months, she had received letters from my sister.
Apparently Lorre had managed to make herself a life amongst the humans and was training to be a nurse in the city.
As Father Paul had little money of his own, and he didn’t own the house up on the hill from the church, he was going to go and confess to his brother that he had fallen in love with my mother, a Lycanthrope, and ask if they could live in his remote little cottage in Wales, as he intended to leave the priesthood.
The icy hand that had taken hold of my tummy all those years began to squeeze again.
This time around, I had a greater understanding of what was going on and what we were being asked to do. However much Father Paul protested his love for my mother, I knew she just wanted to put yet more distance between us and our father.
Over the next couple of weeks, the situation at home continued as normal. Kara stayed at home with my mother. Nik and I continued to attend school, Father Paul still visited most evenings, and the planned escape wasn‘t discussed. Even though I was fourteen now, and had a better grasp of the situation, I still felt disjointed and insecure. Each time I went to bed, I wondered if it would be my last night in my home.
Would we leave in the middle of the night again?
Would it be as frenzied and as hectic as before? If so, how much notice would I be given? Would I be expected to leave everything behind again? As I lay in bed at night, I would look around my room and make a mental list of the items I would snatch up and grab if it came to us fleeing in a matter of moments again. As days rolled into weeks, I slowly began to take my most treasured possessions and place them in a small pile by my bedroom door. There wasn’t much, just my paintings, along with the water colour paints and brushes that Father Paul had bought me. On top of these I sat my toy bear, which I had bought from the caves with me. I was prepared.
