The Mark of the Damned

by Daniel Willcocks

  Even Quinton, whose very existence now anchored around releasing a—

  Hellish

  —creature from the darkest of pits, held a vague belief that he would never be able to bring his mother back. His powers seemed to have worked on everything else but Janet Thompson, the woman who had sat for so long in his father’s chair following his death, that her fetid sweat had begun to seep through her clothes and initiate the growth of mold cultures between the sponge fibers of the cushions.

  “Mom?” Quinton had said apprehensively, sitting on the sofa across from his mother, trying desperately not to cough in the cigarette smoke that hung in the air. The haze stinging his eyes.

  He looked to Sarah for help. “Miss Thompson, I’m pregnant. You’re going to be a grandmother.”

  A flicker of recognition. A small spark of light from the depths of her coal-dark eyes. The kindling that would spark the bonfire of her recovery.

  Now, three weeks later and her face was less waxen and pale. The shadows remained beneath her lower eyelids, clinging like desperate specters fighting their exorcism, yet there was a keenness somewhere in their depths. She had begun to smile, but sparingly. The effort of the maneuver something difficult to recall from the recesses of her shattered mind, but it was there. It was enough.

  “What do you think of this, Jan?” Sarah cooed over the baby items, holding up an array of character-inspired baby-grows. Their trolley was laden with items: dummies, a sterilizer, bottles, baby powder, piles upon piles of clothes. The smile on Sarah’s face was so wide that Quinton wondered if it would rip her in two.

  “Perfect,” Janet replied. In her hands she held a small knitted cardigan, the lapel a different color to the body. Airplanes on the chest instead of buttons.

  Quinton stood by her in silence. He had found it was easier for her to find the words to talk to him rather than force conversation.

  “It’s just like he would have worn,” she said softly. “Can you imagine your father as a baby in something like this? Tuft of hair on his head and wrinkles around his chubby arms.”

  “Yeah, shame they migrated to his forehead in the end,” Quinton chuckled.

  Janet laughed, the sound like a whistle through hollow bone.

  “Do you want it?” She asked hopefully.

  “I think we should probably wait until we know what we’re having. The scan’s not for another few weeks, and the last thing I want is to get mine or Sarah’s hopes up on a gender, or to buy a baby boy everything in pink, or to get a baby girl… well, something like Dad’s cardigan.”

  Janet nodded and reluctantly put the item back. “Remember where this came from. If it’s a boy, he’s going to have the bad dress sense of your father.”

  “I’m glad someone finally said it,” Sarah said, appearing behind them.

  They shared a laugh, working their way around the rest of the store together. Sarah cooing over the infinite number of children’s clothes and accessories. Although they had both said that they didn’t want to get their hopes up on the baby’s sex, Quinton already knew that, for as long as he had known her, Sarah had wanted a little girl to model after herself.

  And, call it intuition, or some unholy power, Quinton had a funny feeling that this baby would be everything that Sarah wanted.

  After managing to place their hands on every item of clothing in the shop, they settled down for a quick lunch in town, then headed back home. Quinton drove them both, not quite trusting his mother behind the wheel, yet. He dropped Sarah off at work and was soon parked up on his mom’s drive, their feet crunching the gravel on the way to the front door.

  Quinton held the door for his mother. Although she had stopped smoking inside the house, a thin haze still lingered. Quinton imagined that the haze would linger for years to come.

  “You are pleased for us, aren’t you Mom?” Quinton reached down to untie his shoes as Janet traipsed inside, a quiet instantly falling over her as she hugged her body and shivered.

  Quinton moved closer to her. “Mom?”

  “I know it sounds crazy,” she said, her lower lip trembling. “But after all those days and nights sat in his chair, I can still feel his presence. I take one step into this house and it’s like he’s still here. Like I can still feel him. Hear him. Smell him.” She turned glassy eyes towards Quinton. “It’s almost as though every fiber of my body expects him to come running down the stairs from that blasted office and greet me. He was always so loud, his footsteps able to bring the house down. But I didn’t care. He’d offer me a coffee and he’d smile and that would be enough.”

  Quinton nodded, unsure what to say. Not sure that words would actually add anything at all.

  “It’s nice going out for the day and looking at the future with you and Sarah. It really is. And, for just a second I think I managed to forget the pain. But then I come back here and…”

  She began to cry, her hand moving slowly to her mouth, lips agape as if she was struggling for air.

  “I know…” Quinton said, holding her tightly. He pulled her head to his chest and stroked her hair, unable to shake off the notion that this must once have been how she consoled him, when he was young and incapable of consoling himself.

  “But the worst part isn’t remembering he’s gone…” she managed. “The worst part are the times when you forget, even for just a second, and then you have to remember again.”

  Quinton guided Janet to the sofa, careful to bypass his father’s armchair so as to prevent her from taking a step backwards from her progress. She had come so far in the last few weeks, and the last thing he wanted was for her to fall back into that pit.

  He switched the TV on and made her a coffee, just like his father used to do. They sat side-by-side as the evening wore on, Quinton making stupid quips about the trash TV programs while his mother cuddled up to him and tried her best to keep herself together.

  As evening turned to night, Janet’s eyes grew heavy. Once, she looked up at Quinton, thoughts swimming in the pools of her eyes.

  He looked at her questioningly.

  “He’d be proud, you know. Your father. You’ve turned into a remarkable man, Quinton. Like him in so many ways. I close my eyes and it’s like he’s here.” She opened her mouth and yawned. “That really is a nice tattoo.”

  The next thing he knew, she was asleep.

  Quinton was left in uncomfortable silence. The TV now timed out and faded to blackness. His mother hadn’t once mentioned his tattoo in all the weeks since it had appeared on his arm and, for a moment, he had almost forgotten that it was there. To think of all the trouble and pain the marks had brought him in those first few days…

  He replayed his mother’s words in his head: ‘You’ve turned into a remarkable man, Quinton. Like him in so many ways. I close my eyes and it’s like he’s here.’

  The tattoo began to prickle, a small sensation of discomfort. Quinton looked up towards the ceiling, imagining his father’s study—his study—on the other side of the plaster.

  You have no idea how alike we truly are, he said, slipping his arm out from beneath his mother’s neck and heading quietly up the stairs.

  4

  “It’s official,” Quinton beamed, unable to believe his luck. He had dreamed of this day for as long as he could remember. “It’s all confirmed. The paperwork has cleared, the moving trucks are sorted, Sarah has packed in her job. We are all systems go!”

  His father leered back at him from across the room, straight-faced. His ghostly form flickering in the harsh lights that ringed the mark on the floor.

  “What are you talking about, son?” His words were measured, his lips barely as something akin to fear flashed across his beetle-black pupils.

  “I wanted it to be a surprise,” Quinton said, his smile fading withering.

  “What’s the surprise?”

  Quinton withdrew a crude printout on a scrunched-up piece of paper. The picture showed a large farmhouse that had been converted into a modern residence complete
with four bedrooms and five bathrooms. Beds of flowers bloomed in reds and yellows and purples, and a concrete fountain sprayed water into a large carp pond out front.

  “Me and Sarah have bought our first place. We’re moving in together.”

  In the hundred or so times that Quinton had imagined this moment since he had fallen in love with Sarah, there had been two scenarios which had never even entered his mind.

  He had pictured his father’s beaming face, his cheeks rosy from the warmth of the house, the excitement travelling through his whole body as they jumped up and down and celebrated, his father grabbing his mother and telling them that they were all off to the Blue Harvester to celebrate. He had imagined having to stave off the numerous family members that chatted at him in tinny voices through the phone as his mother and father rang around friends and families to tell them the great news. He had imagined champagne spraying like Formula One racers, Sarah laughing gleefully beside him, drunken hazy memories in the back yard as the people he loved most gathered around and gave him every bit of love and adoration he’d hoped for.

  What he hadn’t expected was for his father to be receiving the news as some kind of etheric spirit, flayed and torn to shreds, his body impossibly somehow holding itself together.

  Nor had he ever considered that his father might not share in his happiness. That he would stare out from beneath the dark canopy of his brow, a storm cloud settling across his face as his fists shook beside him in something that might have been rage but could just as easily have been fear.

  “Son, you can’t—”

  “I know, I know, I might’ve gotten a little bit excited and bought something larger than we need. But, with one child on the way, who says there’s not going to be another? And another? Sarah always wanted more than one kid, and it just seems to make sense to be prepared—”

  “Quinton Iain Thompson,” his father boomed, eyes aflame.

  Quinton’s breath caught as a wave of heat billowed at him.

  His father’s voice quietened, a mere dry murmur. So much so that Quinton had to reluctantly lean forward to hear again. “Did you not listen to the terms of the contract which binds us to our task? You think life is to be as easy as that? That you have been set up to live your life in frivolity without consideration of your contracted servitude?”

  Quinton didn’t recognize the man talking to him now. Those weren’t his words coming from his mouth.

  “No…” Quinton said, hurt in his eyes. How could his father possibly believe that he had neglected his duties? “No, that’s not it at all. Of course, I’ve not forgotten. This room, here,” he pointed at a picture of a mahogany-decorated study, complete with a view of the backyard, “that one’s for work. The same way you have this office for yours, I’ll have this room for mine. Sarah will be none-the-wiser. It’ll be fine.”

  Quinton’s father looked suddenly afraid. He shook his head, eyes threatening to spill tears. “That’s not how this works, son,” he said through gritted teeth. “The agreement can empower you, help you manipulate the world to your benefit. But you can’t just traipse off and move to wherever you want. This is where the work must happen. This is where the doorway is kept.”

  Realization began to dawn on Quinton’s face. A flush of anger. His tattoo burned as the doorway beneath him flared to life, the beams beginning to warp and bend inwards to reveal the void beneath.

  “You’re telling me that I’m trapped here?” Quinton managed. “Trapped in this shitty excuse for a town, because I’m tied to whatever the fuck kind of hell—

  hell

  —beast lives in this hole?”

  “I thought you understood,” his father replied. “You can have everything you ever wanted. You’ve got your child on the way. You’ve got more money than you need. You can do everything you’ve ever wanted…”

  “As long as it’s here. As long as I obey and strap myself to this shitty town.” Quinton’s eyes darkened. He felt the presence of the creature below, could see the pinprick lamps of its eyes staring up at him. He wasn’t sure if he was imagining it, but he thought he could see a wicked grin carved in flame in the darkness.

  “And if I refuse?” Quinton asked.

  Now there was real fear in his father’s eyes. His head shook violently from left to right. “No, son. You can’t… You couldn’t even begin to imagine… Please… Consider the choice you’d be making…”

  Before Quinton had a chance to respond, the creature latched onto his ribcage, the hook tightening once more. His tattoo flared with discomfort as She began to climb. Each day the connection had grown stronger, each day the creature had crawled higher while Quinton clung to the floor on all fours, fingers gripping the edge of the pit, fighting against the weight that threatened to pull him down, down into the void beneath.

  As the creature scrambled and growled, Quinton craned his head to look up at his father…

  But the ghost was gone.

  5

  A lot of things began to change after that day. Quinton still returned to his father’s study each night ready to connect to Her and inch ever closer to her goal, but the conversation between him and his father was stiff. Strained. Occasionally his father would broach the subject, but Quinton would avoid any answers that would either confirm or deny his thoughts.

  The truth was, he had a decision to make. Should Quinton hold on tight to the ghost of his father and submit to the will of Her contract, or did he shun the past, leave it all behind and head out on new ventures? Time was whirring by, the date of their move fast approaching, and Sarah could not be more excited. They were on the cusp of change, ready to set out into the wide world beyond Farside and see what was on the back of the looking glass. The baby was growing every day without complaint, and a small bump had begun to show. Sarah’s mother had commented many times on how well Sarah seemed to be carrying the pregnancy, and she had no problems at all in admitting that it had been easier than she had ever imagined. There were no signs of morning sickness, no cramps, no sleepless nights. For all she knew, if it hadn’t been for the bump, she’d have wondered if she was pregnant at all.

  She had even been granted permission to leave her job early, with a bonus sum of cash to help see her on her way, thanks to a little mental persuasion from Quinton and the creature he kept secret from his lover.

  Were it not for the looming uncertainty of what was to come, Quinton would have been happier than he had ever been in his life. Should have been happy. Everything was coming together. The final pieces were in place, and soon he would be waving at Farside in his rear-view mirror, figuring that it had all been some kind of messed up dream.

  The evening before the move rolled around, Quinton was busying in his childhood room. The majority of his items were packed, with a stack of boxes near the door scribbled in fading permanent marker. Items such as: ‘Games’, ‘Books’, and ‘Misc’—for every piece of junk he couldn’t bring himself to throw out due to a sentimental attachment he would never quite understand.

  As he finished sticking down the tape on his final box, his mother appeared in the doorway.

  She was a picture compared to what she had been before. Wearing her favourite blue house dress and her hair tied up in a bun, she looked ten years younger. She had come leaps and strides in digging out of her despair, and now Quinton smiled at her.

  “You look good, Mom. Come for one last motherly talk before I set out into the big wide world?”

  Janet grinned. Out of her and Quinton’s father, she had been the primary caregiver. The rule maker. The enforcer. The shoulder to cry on. The human Google in the days before the internet existed. Neither could count the number of pep talks and the discussions on sexual health, finance, friends, and all the worldly problems they had shared in this room.

  Janet rested her head against the door jamb. “Are you sure about this? You and Sarah. The city. Is this really what you want?”

  Quinton gave his mother a strange look. He chuckled. “It is. Why? Is it n
ot what you want?”

  Janet hesitated. He could tell that there was something on her mind and she just couldn’t find the words. “I just think that sometimes you have to be careful. A lot of change happening so quickly can sometimes be bad for a person, let alone a couple with a baby. You could always live closer to your dear old Mom, you know.”

  Quinton’s face broke into a warm smile. He crossed the room and wrapped his arms around her. “Is that what this is about? Look, I know you’re going to miss me. I’m going to miss you, too. But I can’t stay here forever. I have to spread my wings. Me and Sarah, we’re ready for this. Everything is in place and it’s all we’ve ever wanted.” He took her shoulders in his hands and looked into her eyes. “Honestly, you’ve got nothing to worry about.”

  He turned his attention back to the room, picking up the last stray items from the floor. “You can come and visit anytime you want. I’ll make sure we’ll visit you, too. We wouldn’t want Nana to not see her granddaughter.”

  “Granddaughter?”

  Quinton froze, hunched over, realizing what he’d just said.

  “You’re… you’re having a girl…?” Janet asked, hand moving to her mouth. “I’m having a granddaughter?”

  Quinton faced away from her and screwed his eyes shut. He felt as if he’d just dived into ice water. Aside from the doctors, no one had known the gender of the baby, yet. After much conversation, Quinton and Sarah had deliberately decided to keep the gender a surprise to themselves.

  Not that Quinton didn’t have a very definitive idea of what they were having.

  “Well…” Quinton stammered, turning awkwardly to face her. “I mean… We hope it’s going to be a girl. The doctor’s thought it might be, but they’re not entirely sure. They’re never totally accurate, those scans, are they? One minute you think it’s a girl, the next you realize their dangly bits were just tucked between their legs…”