Dead Seth

by Tim O'Rourke

  The sound of the water charging high above me was deafening and I had forgotten how loud it had been. There was a rocky lip jutting out so I climbed onto it and found the slick-looking path that would lead me behind the fountain.

  Again I felt excited, yet scared to be returning to my home – to where I had been born, and I guess, where I truly belonged. On the other side of the water, I found myself in the giant tunnel which spiraled downwards into the caves. I followed the tunnel, and my senses became overwhelmed with all the smells and sounds I had forgotten. I could hear the howls of the wolves, and it made my heart beat fast. I could see the thousands of lights glowing warmly from the caves which stretched out below me. What really told me I was home was the smell of the wax wafting up from the thousands and thousands of candles which had been lit for Candlemas.

  I cleared the path and stepped amongst the caves. The narrow passageways were thriving with life. Lycanthrope – my own kind – not Vampyrus or human, passed on either side of me.

  Some looked as I did, but others meandered about on all fours, in their true Lycanthrope form. Some of the wolves looked truly beautiful, I thought. Not scary, nor like monsters. Their eyes shone brightly in the semi-darkness, their giant tails bristling back and forth.

  I reached the market where I had come on those shopping days with my parents. With a sadness weighing heavy in my heart, I remembered again that my father had believed he had lost his wages. I made my way amongst the stalls. The smell of fresh deer, rabbit, fox, and badger wafting on the air as it was slowly turned over cooking spits.

  “Try some?” one of the market traders said, tearing a lump of meat from a deer he had cooking over a fire. He offered me the raw-looking meat between a pair of fat, greasy fingers.

  “Thank you,” I said, taking it from him. I bit into the succulent meat, its juices running down over my chin. I armed them away and woofed down the meat. I couldn’t remember tasting anything so fine. Why did Lycanthrope want to live amongst the humans? I wondered again.

  Licking my fingers clean, I left the market and made my way to the cave where I had once lived with my father. As I drew nearer, my heart began to race so fast in my chest I thought it might just burst. The passageways and walkways leading to my father’s cave seemed narrower than I had remembered them, smaller somehow.

  Perhaps I had just gone and gotten bigger. With my legs feeling like I was dragging two lumps of lead behind me, I made my way to the cave.

  Standing outside in the shadows, I could see a single light burning from inside. Was my father home? Was he sitting just on the other side of the shutter? Perhaps he had moved on? Maybe someone else now lived there?

  I took the letter from my trouser pocket and looked down at it. Was I doing the right thing?

  Then, that horrific image of Father Paul suffocating in his body bag appeared in front of me, as he desperately tried to tell me something before his mouth filled with plastic. With my hands trembling uncontrollably, I dropped the letter onto the ground, and slid it beneath the shutter to my father’s cave with the tip of my boot.

  I turned and ran and ran and ran. I didn’t stop until I was clear of the fountain, the forest, and the town. I didn’t stop until I was bent forward and gasping for air in the dark outside Father Paul’s back door. Once I had caught my breath, I pushed the door open and stepped inside.

  Father Paul was sitting before the fire and reading a book.

  “Okay?” he asked, peering over the top of it at me.

  “I guess,” I said, and climbed the stairs to my room.

  I didn’t sleep that night. I couldn’t stop wondering if my father had received my letter. I wondered if he was pleased, indifferent, or upset.

  Would he acknowledge it? Would he ignore it?

  Would he come to the lake? Would he welcome me or reject me? I spent the entire night and the next two quietly contemplating every possible outcome.

  The following two evenings I went to the lake and waited on the shore as the sun settled over the forest. When it had gotten so dark that the red waters looked dead and black, I made my way back through the forest and returned to Father Paul’s house. Each night he asked where I had been, and each night I told him I had been out drawing in the country. Not wanting to talk and beginning to wonder if my real father had received my letter, I went to my room.

  I returned to the lake on that third and final evening. I waited at the shore as the red waters lapped at my boots and I was convinced my father had received my letter by now, but didn’t want to make contact. As the sun faded and the moon greedily took its place in the sky, I turned to leave. My heart felt heavy. Then, as I headed back towards the tree line, I heard someone call out.

  “Hello?” the voice said.

  I turned around but couldn’t see anyone.

  “Who’s there?” I said back, scanning the trees.

  Then from the shadows stepped a figure.

  “Who are you?” I whispered, unable to see their face for the shadows of the trees which towered high above.

  “Hello, Jack,” the figure said, stepping into the moonlight. “It’s me, your dad.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Kiera

  “How did it feel to see him again?” I mumbled. It was so difficult to speak now.

  “How did it feel to see your father again?” Jack asked right back, glancing over his shoulder at my father slumped in the chair.

  I thought of the moment I had seen him standing outside in the snow. I’d just wanted to run to him – to be held by him. I knew how Jack must have felt. Why should his feelings be any different than mine had been?

  “It felt good. Didn’t it, Jack?” I whispered over my cracked and broken lips. A fine spray of powder fell away and covered my knees. “It made you feel happy.”

  “Yes,” he nodded slowly, as if savoring that memory.

  “Aren’t those feelings better than the ones of hate you feel?” I croaked. I still believed that he could be saved. I felt sure of it. That little boy he had once been was still inside him.

  “Hate is good,” he smiled back at me.

  “Hate got me this far.”

  “It hasn’t got you anywhere,” I mumbled.

  “It hasn’t got the curse lifted, and that’s what you want.” I stopped to suck air into my solid lungs.

  “If you didn’t want to stop hating, then you wouldn’t have wanted the curse lifted so badly.

  We are only here now because you blame me for not having the curse lifted. You are only punishing me and my father like this because you saw your chance of feeling that happiness again – the happiness you felt when seeing your father again, snatched away in The Hollows. If that happiness meant nothing to you…”

  “Stop it!” Jack roared, jumping to his feet.

  If I could have flinched, I would have done so. I was almost solid now – turned to stone like a statue. The chains clinked loosely now around my wrists where I had been wearing the stone away. But they weren’t loose enough. I slowly tried to twist them some more.

  “I might have felt happiness at that moment – but I have never known happiness since,” he spat at me. His eyes burnt in his face, and spit swung from his lips.

  I looked at him, and could see that he wasn’t angry, but sad – as if grieving.

  “How I wished I had never sent that letter,” he cried. “That letter led to that meeting, which led to the truth.”

  “But the truth is good, isn’t it?” I murmured, trying to turn my wrists as fast as I could behind me.

  “Is it?” he spat. “The truth led to my pain – to my misery – and will lead to yours, too.”

  “I’m not to blame for your curse not being lifted,” I tried to scream at him, but it came out sounding breathless and garbled. “Neither is my father.”

  I wanted to reason with him. I wanted him to stop this so I didn’t have to kill him.

  “You are to blame!” he breathed into my face, and I could see tears running down his fac
e.

  “You cursed me, Kiera Hudson, and in return, I will curse you.”

  I turned my wrists again, but it was becoming harder and harder to do so. I needed more time. I needed to keep him talking, focused on his past, and not what was happening in this room.

  “Tell me how this is my fault,” I mumbled, the lines around my mouth and nose now cracking open. “You said that letter changed everything – it led you to the truth. It was your choice to write that letter, not mine.”

  Jack stepped away from me, and taking his seat again, he dabbed away the tears on his cheeks with his screwed-up bandana. Then looking straight at me he said, “I can see by the state of your cracking flesh that you don’t have long, and I really would like to explain how the truth became my curse. Then you will choose between Potter and your father. Only then will you really understand how the truth can become a curse.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Jack

  My father stepped away from the trees and stood before me on the shore. The sound of the tide lapping against the sand, and the light of the moon shining through a bank of cloud behind him made the scene feel hypnotic in some way.

  Even so, my heart pounded in my ears and my legs felt weak. To suddenly see my father again made me feel overjoyed, but also filled me with some trepidation. Whatever the outcome of this meeting, there was no going back now.

  The tales my mother had implanted inside me swarmed about my brain like a hive of angry bees. In my heart, I was convinced everything she had ever told me about him had been part of an elaborate fabrication. I knew my mission was to find out what my father was truly like, and in doing so, I hoped I might also come to understand my mother. To say I was nervous was an understatement. The ice-cold hand returned and my stomach was in knots. In my head I’d wondered if my dad would recognise me or if I would recognise him. I hadn’t seen him since I was eight, but he was just as I had remembered him to be.

  “Hi, Jack!” he beamed.

  It was like he couldn’t take his eyes off me. He came towards me and appeared to be studying my face intently. I could sense his nervousness, and when I looked at him, I could see his eyes were red and watery. He took me in his arms and I hugged him back. I expected it to feel strange to be hugging my father after all those years, but it didn’t. I was surprised at how natural it felt.

  “You don’t know how long I’ve dreamt of this moment,” he said softly.

  “Me too, Dad,” I whispered back.

  Although hugging him hadn’t felt uncomfortable, I did, however, feel somewhat odd as I referred to him as ‘Dad.’ I had spent so many years calling Father Paul ‘Dad’ and loving him as a father, that referring to an almost complete stranger in that fashion made me feel uncomfortable. It almost felt like a betrayal to Father Paul, who had, for so many years, loved me like a son.

  “How’s Rik?” he said, taking his arms from my shoulder and staring at me again. It was like he couldn’t believe I was standing before him.

  “We call him Nik now,” I told him.

  “How come?” he asked.

  “It was Mum’s idea, she thought that you wouldn’t be able to find us if we all changed our names,” I tried to explain.

  “Oh, okay,” he half-smiled, seemingly not too surprised by this news. “Let’s sit down. We have a lot of catching up to do.”

  We sat next to each other on the shore, with the red waters of the lake sloshing over the sand and pebbles. At first there was a long silence as we both stared out across the lake. There was so much for us to say, but it was like neither of us knew where to start.

  Finally, my father looked sideways at me and said, “Thank you for making contact with me.

  It was a brave thing for you to do.”

  “Really?” I said, glancing at him.

  “Sure,” he nodded, staring at me again.

  I looked away.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I don’t mean to stare, but I just can’t believe it’s really you. The last time I saw you, you were just eight years old, playing with your toy cars on the rug before the fire.”

  I looked out across the water and remembered that night.

  “That reminds me,” my father suddenly said, reaching into his coat pocket. “You left these behind that night.”

  I turned to look at his hands, and sitting in his open palms were several of the old toy cars I used to play with as a kid.

  “I kept them all these years, Jack,” he said, and I could see tears standing in his eyes.

  “Wherever those Vampyrus hunted me, I kept these with me. But you can have them back now.

  I was keeping them safe for you.”

  Slowly I took them from him and held them in my hands once again. Just like the passageways in the caves, they seemed so much smaller now as they sat in my hands. Looking at him, I said, “Why did Mum really take us away from you that night?”

  “What did she tell you?” he asked back, his sandy-coloured hair blowing back from his brow in the breeze.

  “I want you to tell me,” I said, closing my fingers around the toy cars.

  “Your mum was sick with the curse, Jack,” he said, fixing me with his blue eyes. “Not at first. But it came over her – took hold of her.”

  “But Mother said it was you who gave in to the curse,” I said. “She told me that you killed your landlord.”

  “That was your mother,” he said. “I came home from work and discovered his body in the bath.”

  “She said that you cut him up and disposed of him on a piece of waste ground,” I said, staring into his eyes, looking for any hint that he might be lying to me.

  Then lowering his head as if in shame, he said, “That is true. I did cut that man up and I scattered his remains.” Then looking up at me, he said, “What was I to do? We were living amongst humans. Your mother had murdered one of them.

  They would have come for both of us. I did what I had to, I hid what your mother had done, and we fled back to our home beneath the caves. But that was my curse.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked him, trying to take in what he was telling me.

  “I had that man’s blood on my hands,” he whispered. “I had become her accomplice, and every time I threatened to leave her – to hand her over to the Vampyrus, she would remind me I had helped her dispose of that man. The longer I left reporting her, the guiltier I would look in the Vampyrus’ eyes.”

  “Mother told me you stole a human baby and murdered it,” I said, questioning him as if he were on trial.

  He looked at me, his eyes watery as if holding back his tears. “Jack, I have never harmed a child, human or otherwise. It was your mother who stole the babies and brought them back to the caves.”

  “Babies?” I breathed. “You mean she murdered more than one?”

  “No, just the one that I know of,” he said, breaking my stare again.

  “But you said babies?” I pushed, my heart racing, scared at what he was going to tell me.

  “Lorre and Kara aren’t your sisters,” he breathed, still unable to meet my stare. “They are human babies your mother stole.”

  “I don’t believe you!” I barked, jumping to my feet. “They are my sisters.”

  “I’m so sorry,” my father whispered, getting to his feet and looking at me. “Your mother stole Lorre and Kara from the human world. They are not like us.”

  “But why?” I said, shaking from head to toe so violently that those toy cars fell from my fists and into the sand. “You should have sent them back to their homes – to their mothers.”

  “Sent them back where?” my father said with a shake of his head. “I didn’t know from who or where she had taken them. What was I to do?

  Take them and leave them in the forest? Take them back to the humans and just dump them somewhere? What if I had been caught by the Vampyrus?”

  “You were a coward!” I roared at him.

  “I know,” he said, looking back out across the black waters of the lake. “And that is
my curse, Jack. I am a coward.”

  “Do my sisters know?” I demanded, clenching my fists.

  “No,” he said, shaking his head. “Why should they? They have no memory of being taken. They were raised with us – like a Lycanthrope. They’ll grow up believing that they have beaten the curse.”

  “I think Lorre might know she is different somehow,” I said.

  “What makes you say that?” he asked.

  “She left home on her eighteenth birthday and never came back,” I told him. “I haven’t seen her since.”

  “Maybe she does know then,” my father said softly.

  “What about my little brother – Nik?” I hissed. “Was he stolen, too?”

  “No!” my father said. “And neither were you. Both of you are my sons. Both of you are Lycanthrope.”

  “And what of the baby she murdered?” I asked, my stomach strangled into knots by that ice-cold hand.

  “Your mother stole the baby just like she did Lorre and Kara,” he started to explain. His face looked as if the colour had been sapped from it. “In her haste to get away, your mother believed she had stolen a little girl. But when back in the safety of the caves, she removed the blankets the baby was wrapped in, and realised her mistake.

  The child was male.”

  “So?” I asked.

  “Your mother didn’t like boys,” he said.

  “Apparently as a child she was hurt quite badly by her older brother. She thought all boys were cruel creatures, so she killed…”

  “She told me about her brother,” I cut in.

  “She said he poured pepper in her eyes and tried to poison her with wild berries.”