by Amy Cross
I don't blame him. If I could forget everything and follow him into insanity, I would gladly go. Also, he has done done something that no-one else has ever done; he has walked through the dead zone that spreads far from Gothos, so he has seen everything that is to come, things that even I don't know. When he returned, he claimed he encounter snow in the void, although few believed him. Perhaps one day I shall join him down here, mad and trapped and unwilling to face the truth. There are worse ways to spend eternity.
No wonder the ghosts do not come down here.
I listen to his ravings for a while, but eventually I tell him that I need his help. He laughs at this, but he seems willing to listen, so I tell him about the Tenderling, about how it sits night after night on Sophie's back, drawing strength from her pain, and about how it spends its days arranging more agony for her, taking forms both desperate and cruel. I tell him that I fear Sophie will die if she is not saved from this creature, and I tell him that Sophie is indeed the girl from the prophecy.
He listens attentively, and when I have finished describing this Tenderling, he asks what I think he can do to help. Tenderlings, he says, take what they want and leave. They cannot be defeated. As he speaks, I realize that the curtains of his madness have parted a little, and his old intelligence is smiling through the gap.
I tell him that although I know he's right, I need to know how to stop this Tenderling without it killing Sophie when it slips away from her body. I tell him that his bargaining position is limited, that I will not release him from this place, that I will not unchain him, and that I will not end his pain. There is absolutely no chance that he can use this opportunity as a chance to escape. But I tell him that if there is anything else I can do for him, anything that will persuade him to help me, I will do it.
He stares at me. It is clear that he has never expected this moment. He has been down here for centuries, mostly alone, and he had obviously given up expecting to ever see another creature. But now that I am down here, his mind is churning with possibilities. It's clear that he's going to try to trick me, or to ask for something that will cause me great pain. I can handle pain, though. I am ready for whatever he demands. In fact, I already know what he wants, and I'm willing to give it to him. I'm willing to trade one life for another.
Finally, he tells me that he can help, but that in return I must bring someone to see him. Then, he says, he will tell me everything. I agree, and he tells me I must come closer so he can deliver the message for me to pass on. Against my better judgment, I step closer and lean in so that he can tell me. I keep just far enough back to be able to move out of the way if he tries anything.
He says something, but I can't make it out.
I ask him to say it again.
He leans in closer.
In a quiet voice, barely able to hide his anger and pain, he whispers a name.
"Vincent."
Sophie
I open my eyes and suddenly it's morning. I hear the heavy sound of my mother stomping past the door to my room, and somewhere in the distance my brother is playing loud war games with his action figures. Once again, I'm exhausted. It's as if I haven't slept at all; worse, it's as if I've been pushing weights in my sleep. I swear, these days I feel more tired when I wake up each morning. I stare at the wall, and it takes me a moment to realize that I wasn't alone last night. My father came to see me! I sit up and look around my room.
There's no-one here.
I stare at the emptiness. The last thing I remember is turning to find my father standing behind me. And then... what happened next? I sit in bed for a moment, trying to remember something, anything. I hadn't seen my father in nearly a year, so I was excited to see him, but... I have no idea why my memory seems to be so vague. And how come he was just standing there in my room? Something about this whole situation feels strange, but the memory is too vivid to have been a dream. He was definitely here.
"Where did Dad go?" I ask a few minutes later, wandering through to the front room in my dressing gown.
"Huh?" my mother asks, not even looking over at me.
"Dad," I say. "Where did he go?"
She still doesn't look over. "Let's see," she says. "He met some dumb little whore and moved off to Los Angeles with her about five years ago. Remember?"
My mother has always been touchy when it comes to talking about my father. Their divorce was, to say the least, a little messy. "Yeah," I say, "but where did he go last night?"
My mother shoves a couple of cookies into her mouth, and then spits crumbs out as she talks with her mouth full. "Dunno," she says. "Why don't you phone him and find out?"
My brother comes through, slamming a toy spaceship onto the floor.
"Did you see where Dad went?" I ask.
He looks up at me. "When's Dad coming?"
"I don't know," I say. "That's what I want to find out."
The phone rings. My mother ignores it, but I grab it and answer, half-expecting it to be my father.
"Hello?" I say.
There's silence on the other end, but I can tell someone is there. All I can make out is a kind of muffled sound. "Hi," says a female voice eventually. "Is that Sophie?"
"Yeah," I say. "Who's this?"
Another pause on the other end. "This is Sharon, in Los Angeles."
"Hi," I say. Sharon's the 'dumb little whore' my father 'ran off with', except she's not dumb, and she's not little, and as far as I know she's not a whore. Then again, I don't really know her very well. "What's up?" I ask.
"Well..." There's another pause, and then I hear a different sound. At first, I can't make it out, but eventually I realize she's crying. The first thing that leaps to my mind is that they must have broken up. I guess that's why he was here last night: he had a big fight with her and he came to see us.
Did we get drunk, to drown his sorrows? Still feeling tired, I run a hand through my hair.
"Don't worry," I say. Despite not knowing her, I kind of like Sharon. She seems nice enough, and my father seems happy with her. "I'm sure everything's okay."
"Your father's dead," she says, her voice filled with sobs.
An instant chill hits me. I immediately assume that she's wrong, or she's lying, or she's drunk or something. But still, even hearing those words - 'Your father is dead' - makes me uncomfortable. "Are you okay?" I ask.
"Did you hear me?" she replies.
"Yeah," I say. "But I don't think he is." I wait for her to say something. "Did you two -"
"I'm so sorry," she says. "It was all so sudden, but I know he was planning to arrange to see you guys real soon. You were in his thoughts right to the end. You have to know that. I don't even..." She pauses for a moment. "I wasn't sure if I should call, Sophie, but then I realize, who else would let you know? I'm so sorry to be the one who has to tell you this."
It feels as if the room is spinning a little. I look down at my brother and for the first time I wonder if perhaps somehow this is all true. Could my father have left here last night, headed back to LA and run into some kind of problem? But it can't be true. After all, my mother and brother are just sitting around like nothing's happened at all. None of this makes any sense.
"What are you talking about?" I ask Sharon. "He was here last night."
There's a pause on the other end of the phone. "Honey," she says eventually, "he died last night. The police think it was a mugging. His wallet was missing... I'm so sorry to have to be the one to tell you."
I open my mouth to say something - anything - but I don't know what to tell her. I turn and walk through to my bedroom, with the phone still pressed against my ear. I stare at the empty space in my room. What the hell happened last night?
Patrick
My father is in his study, as usual. I have no idea what he does in there, but it occupies all his time and he is always very careful to ensure that I don't see his papers. It has always been like this. Although he knows I am in the room, he doesn't acknowledge me. Instead, he continues to look at his p
apers, to spread books around and to make notes in the margins. I know what is happening here: he is waiting until he reaches an appropriate moment in his work so that he can tell me that he's ready to talk to me. This is how it has always been between us. Sometimes I regret the way in which our relationship has developed.
Eventually he looks over at me and I understand that this is the signal for me to tell him what has happened, so I explain to him that I have been to the underground chamber and I tell him that I have spoken to the only person who can help me save Sophie. Although I do not state the name of that individual, I know that my father will instantly know who I mean and, as I expected, my father is instantly filled with. He tells me that I'm a fool to ever go down there. He reminds me that we were warned that we would one day be tricked into believing that we would need help, and that we would be tempted to go to that chamber and ask for the assistance of the one person we should never, ever have allowed to live. He says he has always known that it was a mistake not to finish what we started, and he says that I have merely confirmed what he had always suspected.
Eventually, though, he sighs. He knows, deep down, that I had no choice. The arrival of this Tenderling, and its attachment to Sophie, represents a genuine threat to the prophecy as laid out in the Book of Gothos. Tenderlings are tenacious and vicious creatures, and they're not attuned to the deeper rhythms of the world. This creature will continue to bleed Sophie dry every night while she sleeps, unless I can find a way to pull it away. It has been more than a week now since the Tenderling sought her out, probably attracted by my own scent on her skin. Time is running out, and my father knows that there are no other ways to help her.
Getting up from his chair, he pauses for a moment. I can see the fear in his eyes, but he has no choice. He has to face the Lock.
Sophie
We make some phone calls and discover with a sense of mounting horror that it's all true. My father, Anthony David Hart, was killed in Los Angeles. Time of death: between 9pm and midnight on Wednesday. He was supposed to be meeting Sharon for dinner at a restaurant near Beverly Hills. He didn't show up, and she went home, figuring that this wasn't particularly unusual behavior for my father; after all, he does have something of a habit of letting people down. When she realized something was wrong, she was about to call the police when they called her: they'd found my father's body, beaten and battered and with his wallet stolen. He'd been stabbed multiple times, and the attacker had left him to die in the gutter. He had eventually been found by a patrol car that just happened to spot him, but by then it was too late. He was pronounced dead at around 23:30 last night, which is about the time that I thought he came to my room. So did I dream that? I wish I could remember what happened...
My mother is in shock. Sure, my parents were divorced, but she still loved him in her own way. For the first time in years, I actually feel sorry for my mother. I make her a strong coffee and add a shot of whiskey to give it a kick. She sits on the sofa and goes through her address book, phoning up everyone she knows so she can tell them the whole story over and over again. I guess this is how she grieves. After half an hour, she's only through to the 'B' section of the address book, so I decide to remove myself from the room. There are only so many times that I can handle listening to her recite the details over and over again.
My brother is sitting on his bed, reading. He seems to be taking this in its stride. I wondered if he might be too young to really understand the implication of our father's death, but bizarrely he seems to be handling everything really maturely. It's crazy that he's holding up better than my mother and me, but I know that he'll crack eventually. I guess I just have to make sure I'm around him so that when he does need someone to talk to, I'll be here. I tell him to come and find me if he needs me. He just nods, barely looking up from his comic book.
I go to my room and use my laptop to contact a few people. Shelley isn't online, but Adam is. I get in touch with him and tell him what's happened. He's shocked and tells me he'll be straight over. Closing the laptop, I realize it'll take him at least half an hour to get here. I go to the window and look out. It's still raining; it's been raining almost non-stop for days now.
Is the rain keeping Patrick away? That would be the easiest answer, even if I know it doesn't make sense. The truth is, I haven't seen him for more than a week, and I'm starting to wonder if I've done something wrong. I know we had a sort of disagreement last time I saw him, when I thought for a moment that he'd killed Hamish. After all, he had blood on his hands, but I'm pretty sure he didn't do what I initially thought he'd done. This is the first time it's occurred to me that Patrick has a life beyond skulking around near my window. What does he do when he's not with me? Has he really just abandoned me at the moment when I need him the most? And -
Suddenly a thought strikes me. At first I try to ignore it, but it grows and grows until it's all I can think about. It sounds crazy, but is it really a coincidence that my father has died shortly after I met Patrick. With a mounting sense of horror, I find myself unable to stop wondering if Patrick has something to do with what happened last night in Los Angeles. Did he kill my father?
Patrick
She can't see me, but I can see her. She's at her window again, looking out at the rain. I can tell from the look on her face that she's hoping to see me, but I can't get close to her, so I stay hidden in the darkness.
If I get too close, the Tenderling will panic, and when Tenderlings panic they have a nasty habit of instantly killing their victim before rushing off to find someone else. That's the problem with a Tenderling. They always get what they want, and they have a nasty reputation for killing their victims at the slightest provocation. There are seven billion people on this planet and very few Tenderlings, so they're not exactly short of potential targets. To the creature, Sophie is just a disposable piece of meat.
I just have to bide my time. As long as I don't panic, I still have a chance to save her, but I can't go near her, not at the moment. From the look in her eyes, though, I can tell that something's wrong. As she stands at the window, she starts weeping, and then finally she breaks down in tears. I do not understand why, but I have a strong urge to go over and comfort her. Usually, when someone cries, I prefer to leave them alone, but with Sophie I'm drawn to see if I can help in some way. That, alone, is a sign that the Book of Gothos was correct; there is a bond between us, and it's making me see that she is unlike any other human I have ever met.
Sophie
I don't tell Adam about seeing my father last night. I can't, can I? He'd think I'm cracking up. He already thinks I'm pretty strange, and I don't want him to give up on me completely, so I keep quiet about all of that. Unfortunately, all Adam wants to talk about is how I feel now that I'm, in his words, "half an orphan", and I really don't know what to tell him. I know this might sound weird, but I can't stop thinking about Patrick. I need him to come and see me; I need to ask him about my father. While Adam's here, however, I know that there's no chance Patrick will show up.
"I can't imagine what it's like to lose a parent," Adam says as we share a plate of spaghetti in my room, both of us sitting cross-legged on my bed. "You know you can talk to me, right? Any time, day or night, you can just talk and I'll listen, okay?" He's being kind and considerate. Too kind and considerate, maybe. I know I'm probably being a bitch and I should appreciate him more, but the fact is, there's only one person I really want to talk to right now and he's nowhere to be found. And even if he showed up, he wouldn't be able to talk to me.
"Let's go to sleep," I say eventually, putting my plate down on the floor. "I'm tired."
"Sure," he replies. There's an awkward pause. "Do you want me to stay?"
I stare at him. "Sure," I say, before I really understand what this means. Adam has never spent the night here before, and now I seem to have accidentally invited him into my bed.
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah," I say, heading over to my pajamas on the other side of the room. Suddenly I feel
embarrassed; I want Adam to turn down my offer, but at the same time I don't want to push him away by asking him to leave.
"I guess we should go and say goodnight to your mom," he says.
"If you want."
"I think it'd be considerate," he says.
"Patrick, just do whatever you want, okay?" I don't look at him. Instead, I'm pretending to be looking for a book in the pile by the window.
"What?" he asks.
"I said do whatever you want," I say, turning to him.
"My name's not Patrick," he says.
I stare at him.
"You called me Patrick," he continues, looking confused.
I think about it for a moment. Did I? It's possible. Still, that's definitely not a conversation I want to get into right now. "No I didn't," I say. "I don't know anyone called Patrick."
He keeps staring at me. "It's not the first time," he says eventually. "It's, like, the third time in a week you've done it. I didn't mention anything because it didn't seem important, but three times is a lot. Who's Patrick?"
My mind races for a moment. What do I say to him? "Patrick Lockhart," I stammer. Oh great. This is going to be the worst lie ever. "Sorry," I continue, "my mother's been watching her damn soap operas, I hear the names and... She's been watching Days of Our Lives reruns, and you look a bit like this character Patrick Lockhart, so... That's how that happened. Weird, huh?"
