by Ross Turner
Johnathan’s face looked almost set in stone as Father Peter’s words washed over him.
“Only you can decide those things.” He continued. “And your decision will, in turn, decide what kind of man you grow up to be.”
The young boy nodded very seriously in reply, gravely even, as the weight of the Vicar’s words sank into his mind.
That was enough now, Father Peter saw quite clearly.
He hadn’t heard exactly what he’d expected from the young boy, but in fact, he’d learned much more.
It gave him plenty to think on at least.
Rising slowly to his feet, the old man motioned for Johnathan to do the same. Looking up briefly, gazing about in the flickering candlelight, Father Peter looked about the stained glass windows set high in the walls for a moment, darkened by the black of the night, wondering exactly what on Earth he was supposed to do about all this.
Should he even do anything?
He didn’t know.
He felt strangely lost amidst everything that was happening, and whatever was going on, it had certainly only just begun.
He hadn’t felt this lost since Emily had come to him all those years ago, in pieces, broken.
And even now, after all this time, he could sense things heading that way once again. They were not only heading that way, but snowballing in fact, gaining speed and momentum unstoppably, and he felt entirely powerless to do anything about it.
The old man looked down at Johnathan for a moment with regret and sorrow painted across his face.
Johnathan looked back, but seemed not to contemplate the danger at hand.
‘How could he know?’ Father Peter thought to himself. ‘He’s caught up right in the middle of this, and he doesn’t even realise…’
“Come, Johnathan.” The anxious Vicar beckoned then. “It’s late. Let’s get you home.”
As if on cue Johnathan yawned a great yawn, feeling drained from his long, eventful day, and nodded eagerly.
By the time Father Peter had led the young boy home however, under the protective cover of darkness, he was no longer keen to get there, for a great weariness had come over him, and he was practically falling asleep as he walked.
Although, Johnathan did briefly realise at one point, that he and Father Peter had barely spoken about the incident with Brock at all, and in fact the whole event seemed to be forgotten, as if lost in the past of so long ago.
He was simply too tired to properly process that epiphany however, and just trudged on towards home, following the strange old man through the darkness.
He was vaguely aware that Father Peter spoke with his parents when they finally reached the house, though he hadn’t the energy to listen to what they were saying, since he practically crawled through the front door.
Eventually, Richard relented and carried the young boy up to his bedroom, depositing him gently in bed, where he immediately fell to sleep.
Both of them were unaware at this point however, that in Richard and Johnathan’s absence, Father Peter was speaking hurriedly and in a hushed whisper to Emily, Johnathan’s mother, and, in a most uncharacteristic manner, his voice shook with fear and anxiety.
Her face paled at his words, though her eyes betrayed confusion also, for what he told her were words she never thought she would hear again.
Chapter Five
For the next few days, in fact, for the next week or so, everything seemed to return to normal, and the world continued to turn just as it had always done. Time passed by uncaring of the trivial pursuits and problems that mankind has an arbitrary and most annoying habit of chasing and following.
Mother Nature doesn’t often turn a blind eye to the petty squabbles of men, instead, She makes absolutely certain to ignore them completely. Were it to be any other way, chaos would undoubtedly ensue.
To place that burden upon herself would be madness.
Other people however, seem to be unable to help themselves.
Self-induced pressure causes carnage.
Maddie and Johnathan walked together beneath the bright blue morning sky, cold and clear and exposed.
Their breath steamed in rolling billows as it hit the cold morning air engulfing them. Johnathan walked slowly and scuffed his feet on the ground, though his body was tense, feeling eyes upon him even before they were so.
His younger sister walked close at his side, not quite touching him, but so near she was almost clinging to his arm as they passed by their neighbour’s stone cottages, topped with thatch and bindings. It wasn’t exactly fear that kept little Maddie so close, but whatever it was wasn’t wholly dissimilar.
Sure enough, within minutes, they saw others also filtering out from between the cottages and meandering their way towards the school. They clumped together into small groups, as if for protection, and eyed Johnathan warily, uncertainty in their eyes.
He glanced between them briefly, though he didn’t look at them as much as he looked through them, for their behaviour not only distanced them from him, but distanced him from them, if there were even a notable difference.
“Is it going to be like this forever now?” Maddie’s voice piped up amidst the morning, reaching Johnathan’s ears with a tone slightly quivering.
“No, don’t worry…” Johnathan replied, as reassuringly as he could, placing his arm gently around his little sister’s shoulders. She wrapped her arms around his body and buried her head against him.
At that moment, Johnathan felt as if comforting Maddie was the most important thing in the world. As if safeguarding her happiness and assuredness was his sole purpose. It was the kind of feeling he would have expected if he ever had children of his own, the young boy thought, in a most bizarre and adult like manner.
Then the pair of them spied Brock in the distance, as the school slowly came into view. Maddie swallowed nervously when she saw him, surrounded as always, but now more than ever, by a gaggle of his followers.
It had been almost a week since the incident, and he had only been back a day or two, having received three broken ribs and a broken arm at the hands of her brother.
Regardless though, it seemed that yet even still nobody was any the wiser as to how exactly Johnathan had managed to manhandle Brock so. The matter remained a mystery, and Maddie clung yet even more tightly to her brother, knowing without a shadow of a doubt that whatever had happened, he had only been protecting her.
The day passed slowly and anxiously, in much the same way as the days preceding it had done. Lessons were unusually quiet, except for the urgent whisperings rippling rumours.
Children will be children.
Nonetheless, all eyes were upon Johnathan seemingly constantly, and all the while his thoughts were of his little sister. For though he didn’t care what the others thought or said, he knew the whole matter was upsetting her greatly, and he counted the seconds until every break whereupon she would instantly run to him, fighting back tears.
Miss Falcon loomed ominously it seemed at every turn, ready to launch herself at Johnathan the instant he started to cause trouble.
On the contrary though, he and his sister sat in solitude amidst all the other children. It was almost as if someone had placed an invisible barrier around them, forcing all to steer clear, for there was a void twelve feet across that encircled the pair of them, seemingly everywhere they went.
The day’s end couldn’t arrive soon enough, and the second that school was dismissed, Maddie and Johnathan were so swift out of the door that the words had barely even left their teacher’s lips.
Miss Falcon’s steady gaze would follow them out of the door with a mixture of suspicious, confusion, and even slight sympathy pooling behind it.
The journey home was a blur, for they ran the entirety of it, bustling in the front door and racing immediately upstairs.
Had they not been in such a terrible rush, they perhaps would have noticed how eerily quiet the house was.
Usually their mother was busy with housework or cooking o
r some other task. But on this day, she had found nothing to keep her occupied, or at the very least, nothing that could keep her mind occupied, and instead pulled her bedroom door quietly to when she heard her two children return home, wiping the tears from her cheeks as she did so.
She silently closed it and held her breath, doing the best she possibly could to swallow her sobs and hold back more tears, for the last thing she wanted was for her children to see her like this.
As it was though, they had no idea, for they too had worries and upsets that they did not wish to share, and the house remained silent for many more hours that day.
It was late into the night, far later than he would have liked to have been awake, that Johnathan sat cross legged upon the floor, elbows on his knees and chin resting on his hands, staring at his reflection in the mirror, dancing and shimmering by candlelight.
Of course he had not been able to sleep.
How could he?
It was not the rumours or the unrest amongst his peers that was keeping him awake. As much as those things may bother most people, they were of no consequence to him. The thing that plagued the young boy on this night, and indeed had done for those preceding it too, was that even he still didn’t know what had happened.
Somehow he had overcome Brock, which in of itself wasn’t the problem, but rather, the fact that he hadn’t a clue what had come over him, nor where that inhuman strength that he’d felt had come from, burned more and more questions into his mind.
His expression reflected back at him and did little to ease his worry, for it too was filled with concern and confusion.
As the firelight by which the young boy could see danced to and fro, he caught glimpses of himself in a hundred different lights, and sometimes even it seemed as though the person staring back at him wasn’t even him.
The face he studied in his reflection was indeed very similar to his. This face had dark eyes and hair, just the same as Johnathan’s, and his features were much the same shape, its chin well defined and cheek bones high.
But, on the contrary, it carried none of the innocence of the twelve-year-old boy sitting before it, and its features were rugged, ravaged by time, and its eyes were hardened, barraged by God only knows what.
Johnathan sighed deeply, wondering in the near blackness who this stranger was he could see in his reflection, so different and yet so similar to himself all at once.
He was far too tired, far too distracted and far too young to realise the insanity of what he was seeing. Yielding to confusion and uncertainty he decided to succumb to sleep.
Clambering to his feet laboriously and blowing out the candle by which he could see, Johnathan crawled into bed and curled up into a ball in the darkness.
Waiting still in the reflection of the the mirror, the figure Johnathan had seen rose to its full height, its body broad and tall and strong. The expression upon its face now was curious, watching Johnathan as he slept.
It pursed its lips for a second, a look of sorrow and regret crossing its face, restricted and frustrated.
The next day followed much the same pattern as the previous. Maddie and Johnathan tore home as the afternoon wore on into evening, and once again the house was eerily silent.
His sister didn’t notice once again, and she raced straight away up the wooden staircase. Johnathan went to follow, but this time, for some reason, he picked up on the fact that something wasn’t quite right, and paused for a moment.
He stepped cautiously into the kitchen, and then in turn the living room, scanning around for his mother.
She was nowhere to be seen.
He took to the stairs. They creaked warning sirens under his weight as he climbed and he only caught the last moment of movement as his parents’ bedroom door closed as he approached the landing.
The young boy of only twelve years thought little of what he had seen, for in all honesty, he had seen nothing. However, for some reason, he thought of what the figure he had seen in the mirror last night would think, and he knew the familiar stranger would sense that something was wrong.
And so, in turn, Johnathan knew without a shadow of a doubt that there was indeed something amiss.
He approached his parents’ bedroom slowly and carefully, his movements cautious and wary. Maddie poked her head out onto the landing, wondering why her brother hadn’t immediately followed her upstairs. He motioned for her to go back into her room.
She looked confused, but did as he asked.
Somehow knowing that whatever lay beyond the door, it was not for his sister to see, Johnathan wanted to protect her from it, even as he reached out for the door handle. He froze for a second then, straining his ears as he heard light footsteps from within. Changing his mind, opting for a different tact, he curled his hand into a fist and knocked quietly upon the wooden barricade before him.
For a moment nothing changed, and he wondered if he hadn’t knocked loud enough. But then, sure enough, the sounds of clunking floorboards gave away movement, and within a moment or two his mother, Emily, opened the door.
“Yes dear?” She asked of her young son, smiling comfortingly at him.
Relief washed over Johnathan then, seeing that everything was alright after all. But once again his thoughts turned to the figure he had seen the night before, and that same strange perceptiveness oozed through the young boy.
Suddenly then all at once he saw through his mother’s façade.
Her hands were trembling, only ever so slightly, but still nonetheless it was clear as day. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were puffy and red. She was holding back, and Johnathan felt a horrible wrenching in his chest that cut him so deeply it was all he could do to simply stay standing.
A yearning to reach out and hold his mother overwhelmed him, and his muscles locked and stiffened in a fierce battle between uncountable involuntary movements.
“Are you ok, Johnathan?” Emily asked him again, concern crossing her face.
“Yes.” He replied quickly. Too quickly in fact, and of course she knew that something was wrong, but he continued. “I just didn’t know where you were…”
“Ok…” She replied carefully, her brow furrowing.
The look she saw in her son’s eyes was one that she hadn’t seen for years, and unknowingly it forced a yearning in her chest that had never really left her.
“How was school?” She asked then, disguising her upset as best she could. “Where’s Maddie?”
“I’m here.” Maddie piped up then, having heard the brief and concealed conversation from her room.
“How was your day sweetheart?” Her mother asked her with a smile. Maddie approached with a smile, though the question silenced her, and she didn’t notice that something was so very wrong, Johnathan observed.
“It was okay…” Maddie lied, badly, dropping her gaze.
Their mother smiled understandingly, her eyes compassionate, for she knew things were difficult at the moment, most certainly, for them all.
“Why don’t you take Maddie down the road to see Mister Riley?” Emily suggested to Johnathan then, and immediately Maddie’s eyes brightened.
Mister Riley owned a small sweetshop in the centre of the village, right on the banks of the river. He was a kind, humble old man, and one of the very few adults who seemed not in the least bit phased by the occurrences of late.
Plus, he made the best sweets.
Maddie nodded eagerly and Johnathan sighed inwardly and ruefully agreed. He knew that his mother was only getting rid of them so she could compose herself. Undoubtedly, when they returned she would be downstairs concentrating on the housework and cooking dinner, distracting herself from whatever was wrong so that it did not show quite so obviously.
There was, however, very little Johnathan could do about the matter, and he and Maddie departed immediately to visit Mister Riley, a few pennies from their mother in each hand for sweets of their choice.
Sure enough, an hour or so later, as darkness encroached over Riv
erbrook, Maddie and Johnathan returned home, entering the house to the sound of their mother humming to herself, cleaning, whilst dinner was on the boil.
Johnathan had been spot on with his prediction, it seemed.
He swept through into the kitchen, his eyes everywhere. The pot boiling on the stove whistled in tune with Emily’s humming, and his mother’s clothes were dirtied from where she had been distracting herself by cleaning.
“Ah, Johnathan, sweetheart.” She greeted him with a wide smile. “Lay the table for me please dear.” She requested sweetly. “I’m going to go and clean up.” She said absently then. “Your father will be back soon…”
He obediently went to the drawer next to the stove and pulled out four sets of cutlery, paced over to the large wooden table, rectangular and chipped here and there, and began to lay out their usual places.
Emily disappeared upstairs to change and Johnathan listened to the sound of her creaking footsteps as she disappeared up the stairway.
Suddenly, pain wrenched at his heart then and he felt as if someone had punched him in the chest. He clutched at his small torso with his hand, as if somehow that would make the wrenching agony subside, and gasped desperately for air.
After a few seconds the pain was replaced with terrible worry and a chasm opened up in his stomach, as if the pit of it had just collapsed.
He raced upstairs on swift and silent feet, unheard by all, though his movements felt as though they were not his own.
His parents’ bedroom door was ajar just half an inch, and he could see the quivering shadows of movement pass over the crack between the door and the frame every few seconds.
He would never normally have done what he did then, for he knew it was most certainly not the decent thing to do. But then, in that moment, he wasn’t thinking as his twelve-year-old self, where the world was black and white, he was thinking almost entirely as somebody else, and everything seemed to be a blurry, confusing shade of grey.
In that moment the veil descended over him again, exactly like had happened when he had faced up to Brock, and suddenly, not only his movements, but his thoughts too, were not his own. He felt a burning desire to enter his parent’s room and reach out and place his hand upon his mother’s shoulder.
