Dead Seth

by Tim O'Rourke

  “When your father got into one of his rages, the muscles around his jawline would flex in and out as his teeth changed shape inside his mouth. The hair on his head and arms would begin to bristle up as he fought the urge to change. I knew the signs and I could tell I was going to get another beating.”

  For protection she had turned to the wooden cot before the fireplace where I had been sleeping and plucked me up, pressing me close to her chest, believing the rain of blows that she was expecting wouldn’t fall if she were holding me in her arms. To emphasise the sheer disregard that my father had for me, she said, “He didn’t care one bit that I had you in my arms. He clawed at my face, opening up a large wound that ran from beneath my right eye and down over my chin. I was terrified, Jack. I fell backwards on to the floor. I managed to roll on top of you to protect you.”

  I listened with a morbid curiosity as she pulled me close and slipped her arm around my shoulders. “He then repeatedly kicked me, spat on me, and dragged me around the room by my hair.”

  As I snuggled up close to her, I asked, “What did you do? How did you get away?”

  “I somehow managed to claw myself free from him and I ran from the cave. I remember running barefoot, clutching you in my arms.”

  As we sat on the sea wall, my head rested against her chest, she described how clots of blood had gushed from her nose and mouth, leaving a red coloured trail of her escape between the caves.

  “I got clear of the fountain and ran all night until I found a small hollow between the roots of some ancient tree in the forest. As you know, a Lycanthrope can heal from injuries far quicker than any human, but I was a real mess, Jack. For the best part of a week, I hid with you in that forest, feeding us with wild rabbit and hare that I managed to hunt down.”

  “What did you do when you were feeling better?” I asked.

  “I had to go home – back to your father,”

  she said.

  “But why?”

  “Because of your sisters,” she explained.

  “I couldn’t leave them with him.”

  “Didn’t you tell anyone?” I asked her.

  “Who was there to tell?” she said. “I have no living family, apart from a brother, and he is as bad as your father. He has well and truly given into the curse. My mother is dead and my father is…well, he doesn’t want to know me. And what would’ve been the point in going to the human authorities? What was I going to tell them – that I was living with a murderous werewolf?”

  I looked at my mother’s face and tried to picture what she must have looked like after my father had beaten her bloody. She was thirty-three years old, with a soft, olive coloured complexion.

  Her eyes were such a dark brown in colour that it was often impossible to make out her pupils. She had a very defined cupid’s bow, and her lips were full in shape. To me, my mother was beautiful, and I hated the thought of my father destroying that beauty.

  I thought about that story for a long time and it wasn’t the only story she told me. As time passed, the stories grew worse and more sickening until my dreams were haunted by them.

  It was with little wonder that when Blackcoat Father Paul, the cleric for the Vampyrus church, arrived with a birthday present from my dad, I was racked with shame for accepting it. I had been introduced to Father Paul about a year before the night we had left my father. He was what the Vampyrus called the Blackcoat. He was a religious man. As far as I could understand, the Vampyrus didn’t worship the man named Jesus, but four Elders. It was they who the Vampyrus believed would be their eventual saviors, and after death, lead them to an eternal life. I don’t believe my mother had any real knowledge of this faith – or religion.

  Father Paul appeared to be a very gentle man. He was tall and thin, with black hair which was swept into a parting. Like the other Vampyrus I had seen since leaving my father’s house, his skin was soap white. His eyes were blue, but on some days they could look dark grey, almost black. Father Paul's lips were thin but they lit up his face with a boyish glow when he laughed or grinned. I think the name Blackcoat, came from the black clothes he wore. His shirts and trousers were jet-black, just like the long cloak he wore fastened about his shoulders with a silver chain. I could remember two occasions seeing this Blackcoat visit our cave when my father had been at work. On both occasions my mother, just like our visit to the safe house, had forbidden me or my brother to say anything to my father. So I hadn’t.

  As I sat at the end of my bunk bed in the safe house, and he handed me an oblong shaped parcel, I wondered if he hadn’t been in some way responsible for helping my mother escape from my father.

  “It’s a present from your father,” he said.

  “Have you caught him?” I gasped, my heart missing a beat.

  “No,” he said, looking at me as he handed the parcel over. “That was left behind at the place he was hunted to. Your father managed to escape before the trackers reached him. All that was left was this parcel with a note asking that it be given to you on your birthday.”

  “Should I have it?” I asked, looking up into his blue eyes.

  “It’s not for me to decide,” he said softly.

  “I am just the messenger. Why should you be deprived of a gift on your birthday? You have done nothing wrong.”

  I took the gift and turned it over and over, looking from my mother to Father Paul and then back at the present. Slowly, I removed the wrapping paper in strips, revealing bit by bit the treasure hiding inside. What a treasure it was. A shiny, new toy racing car. My face shone with joy as a smile of sheer pleasure exploded across it. I looked up at my mother who gave me half a smile, and then looked across the room at Father Paul.

  “Do you want to keep it?” he asked me, and even he looked delighted at the sight of my joy.

  I nodded, not daring to say the word “yes”

  as I could sense my mother’s disapproval. Father Paul then asked if I had a message he could take back to my father, should the trackers catch up with him. This time, I replied by shaking my head.

  Father Paul climbed from the bed and left the room with my mother. As soon as I was alone, I ran my fingers over the car, spinning the wheels with my fingertips. I turned it over and over in my hands and studied every inch of my new toy. My mind was instantly thrown back to happier memories of being at home and playing cars on the rug in front of the fire with my dad.

  The sound of my mother throwing open the door as she charged in pulled me out of the past. She slammed the door shut behind her and stood with her back to it, glaring at me and my birthday present, which lay in my hands.

  “How could you?” she barked in disbelief.

  “After everything your father has done! Haven’t I told you? Don’t you care?”

  Without thinking, I let the toy racing car slip from my fingers and onto the bed. I felt like a thief disregarding the item he had just been caught stealing. She moved away from the door and took a few steps towards me and began to holler again.

  “I just don’t believe you, child! How can you accept that from him? After all that he has done!”

  “I’m sorry, Mother,” I whispered.

  “Sorry, you’re not sorry!” she yelled at me, her brown eyes flashing orange, then yellow.

  I moved away from the new toy, desperate to disown it, as I edged my way up the bed. I apologised again but this seemed to enrage her further. She angrily told me it wasn’t her I had to apologise to, but my sisters. Again, she went on about how my sisters had suffered at the hands of my father. On these occasions, she always emphasised the phrase ‘ Your Father’, as if he were my sole responsibility. She drummed into me how I had let my sisters down, and how ashamed she was of me.

  I reached forward and picked up my birthday present and held it out towards her.

  “I’m sorry, Mother. Go on, take it. I didn’t really want it anyway.”

  In a stubborn and sulky tone, she snarled, “Keep it!”

  “Please, mother, take it from me,�
� I pleaded.

  “The harm’s already been done,” she growled at me.

  Again, I held it out and beseeched her to take it from me. I was desperate for her to relieve me of its burden. Without speaking, she took it from me with two fingers, as if she were removing some disease-ridden carcass that she didn’t want to sully herself with. She forced the car back into its box, crossed the room, and placed it high out of reach. That was the last time I touched that racing car, and when I looked up for it a few days later, it had vanished altogether.

  Spring came, and with it, a break in the monotony of living in the safe house. I still hadn’t been to school since my mother had run away from my father, neither had my younger brother or elder sisters. We did have schools in the caves, not really like the human ones, but the children gathered each day for lessons, where we were taught to read and write, learn numbers, science, and everything else we would need if we should ever decide to live secret lives amongst the humans. Some believed our education was better than the humans. It had to be if we were to get jobs amongst them and study in their colleges and universities. The Blackcoat Father Paul was a regular visitor to the safe house. He would come and speak to some of the families hiding there, waiting to be relocated by the Vampyrus so they could start secret new lives amongst the humans.

  He wouldn’t preach as such, but he would talk about his faith and belief in the Elders. He always seemed to be happy and whatever the other people seeking sanctuary at the safe house thought of him, they seemed to take some comfort from his visits.

  One spring morning, Father Paul arrived early and took me, my brother, sisters, and our mother out for the day. He drove a rickety old truck, which was blue with flashes of orange rust around the wheel arches and bumpers. Me and my younger brother, Rik were so excited to be away from the boredom of that house. Sure we played in the grounds, all day long if allowed, but often I would look up at the high stone walls and black iron gates and feel imprisoned somehow. I knew I couldn’t leave whenever I wanted, so I guess I was a prisoner in a strange way.

  Father Paul drove us along the coast to the city, and as I stared wide-eyed out of the truck’s windows, I absorbed all these places that I had never seen before. There were buildings so tall that they seemed to touch the sky. Every street seemed packed with people, and I stared up at all their different coloured faces. We walked for miles that day, and I wasn’t bored once. Then the best thing ever happened; we passed a big grey building with huge white pillars outside.

  “What’s inside there?” I asked, pulling on the sleeve of his black shirt.

  “It’s an art gallery,” he smiled down at me. He must have seen my blank expression as he added, “It’s full of paintings.”

  “Can we take a look?” I asked.

  “Sure,” he said, glancing up at my mother.

  I will never forget the hour we spent looking at all the pictures hanging from the big flat walls. There were paintings of people that looked so real I thought they were going to reach out and touch me. There were pictures of places I had never seen before. They were so good I felt that I could step into them and go exploring. I remember thinking that it was like a building full of magic windows, looking out onto worlds and people so beautiful that you just had to peer through them. I knew then that I wanted to be an artist. I wanted to paint pictures like the ones I had seen hanging in that gallery.

  Father Paul took me back again to that gallery, a week or two later, and again it was like walking into a place of magic. The second visit had been the first time I had seen Father Paul out of his usual black garments. He was dressed in a crisp blue cotton shirt, which he wore open at the throat, and a pair of grey flannel trousers. Out of his dead black attire and wandering the streets of the city with four children and my mother, to the passing person on the street, we must have looked like any ordinary family enjoying a day out.

  However we weren’t a family – we weren’t even human. Five of us were wolves and the other a Vampyrus.

  It was a lot of fun and I could see it made my mother very contented. For the first time since leaving my father, she looked happy and I couldn’t ever remember her smiling so much. Over those few weeks, I’d come to learn that being a Blackcoat prevented Father Paul from marrying and having children and a family of his own. He had taken a vow to the Elders that he would spend his life trying to find peace with the Lycanthrope, the Vampyrus, and the humans. I learnt also that he did have an older brother, who had two children. Not having a family himself, I believe Father Paul enjoyed spending time with me, my brother and sisters, and mother. My relationship with Father Paul grew from this point on and secretly I began to see him as a father, even though I was a Lycanthrope and he was a Vampyrus.

  Chapter Six

  Kiera

  “Did you miss your father?” I asked Jack, and I stared through the darkness at my own, as he sat forward, slumped in the chair.

  “Months are like years to a nine-year-old boy,” he said, looking at me. The light had gone out of his eyes, and I could see two black holes in his face. For the first time since meeting this killer, Jack Seth, his voice was softer somehow. I had noticed how controlled he could be while telling his story. While talking about his past, his voice had taken on a calmness which I would have never thought possible of this man – this wolf.

  Jack stood up, his long arms swinging by his sides. He took a lamp from the shadows in the corner of the room behind my father and switched it on. The light from the bulb was weak and cast long, eerie shapes up the walls. I glanced over at the window and the night sky was black. Snow had built up along the window ledge. Looking down at the floor, I dropped my head. Just under the chair where I was chained, I could see that little pile of dust had grown. It looked like the shape of sand that been poured through an hourglass.

  I heard Jack sit back down in front of me and I looked up. My hair hung over my face. He reached out and gently brushed my hair away so we could see each other. Now that he had switched the lamp on, I could see his eyes again, but they still didn’t burn with the rage I had grown used to seeing in them. He looked kind of ancient and it was hard to reconcile the image of this emaciated man sitting before me and the little boy holding the toy racing car at the foot of a bunk bed. “Did you miss the caves – your home?” I asked him.

  “Yes,” he said, looking at me. “Although I had been taken to the world beyond the forests many times before by my mother and father, I had never lived there. At first I felt uncomfortable with it. I didn’t like that big house.”

  “Why not?” I asked him, and I wasn’t trying to string out the conversation to bide myself more time. I sensed that he had come this far with his story and he wasn’t going to stop until he had told me everything. I was now genuinely curious to find out about the monster which lurked inside this man.

  “That house was full of Lycanthrope who believed that by leaving the caves – their homes – they could find better lives living amongst the humans. But the caves were home, right? Can you ever really run away from what you truly are?”

  “I guess not,” I said, a part of me understanding him. I had grown up in a very human world, with my mum and dad, on a normal street, in an average town. That had been my home. But just like Jack, I had a parent – my mum – who wasn’t what I thought her to be. She had been a monster just like Jack’s father had been.

  When my father had died and my mother gone, I had run away to the Ragged Cove – that’s the real reason I had volunteered to take up that posting. But what I truly was – what I truly am – had followed me. It had to; it was inside of me.

  I looked at Jack as he sat before me, his long hands resting on his bony knees. I remembered my own inner conflict when I discovered I was a half-breed. I thought of the turmoil I felt starting a new life living alongside the Vampyrus. I had lost all contact now with humans. My friends were all Vampyrus, as too was the man I was in love with. So looking at Jack, I slowly twisted my wrists in their chains and said, “Did
you find it difficult living amongst the humans?”

  As if thinking about my question, Jack pushed his baseball cap to the back of his head and sat forward in his chair. He sat silently for a moment, then looking up at me, he said, “It was something I had to get used to…

  Chapter Seven

  Jack

  When summer ended, we returned to school. Not to my teachers in the caves. Mother sent Lorre and Kara to the local secondary school, me and Rik to the local junior school. Both were a short bus ride away. I admit I was scared, as I didn’t know anyone. Worse than that, I was keeping this big secret. I got used to keeping secrets. The Blackcoat Father Paul told me and my brother and sisters that the schools had been chosen very carefully for us. Unbeknown to other teaching staff, there was one or two Vampyrus teaching at the schools. We would never know who they were – just like the humans who worked alongside them, but they would be watching out for us. This eased my fear a little, but school wasn’t the same. It wasn’t just because I was learning alongside humans and pretending to be something I wasn’t, I had missed so much education in that year, and I had fallen behind.

  So on my return to school, I had real difficulties in catching up with my schoolwork and was placed in remedial. I spent a lot of time making things out of cardboard boxes, drawing, and painting. In a way I was content with that. I loved to do anything creative and I had decided that when I grew up, I wanted to be an artist and paint pictures like the ones I had seen hanging in that art gallery.