The Guardian's Protector: The Chamber of Souls

by Debbie Kowalczyk

  As the day went on, Alicia continued to look at Tom as if he would bite, in the worst mood ever. As her blatant, adverse reaction bordered on extreme, Amy considered Winston’s comment about him not fitting into the norm.

  Amy could just about cope with strangers having mixed reactions, but if her own family could behave like this towards him, maybe Winston was right. She cursed herself for having the thought. She’d done nothing but think about how she could prove Adaizi wrong and about how she could get out of being controlled by them. She’d thought of quitting her job but gathered if Adaizi had meddled her way into buying the café, what would stop her doing the same at any other place she went?

  One other reason kept her from quitting: Jack. Whether she could tell him anything or not, she’d still have him there in case of emergency. Jack already suspected something wrong between Amy and Winston. Each time she visited, she couldn’t even look at Winston. If Jack put two and two together then so be it, she thought; that wouldn’t be “breaking the rules.”

  As everyone sat for dinner, Luke stood, forehead perspiring, staring at the door like he wanted to escape. His behaviour reminded Amy of a drug addict who needed a fix. Whatever his problem, wherever he wanted to go, it was plain to all he longed to be anywhere but here.

  ‘How did you lose your job then?’ Frank asked Luke, leaving only the sound of scraped cutlery ringing in the air.

  Luke stared into everyone’s prying eyes and looked lost for words. Frank looked at Amy. Amy shrugged; the only thing he’d told her was that it had been a misunderstanding. She was now as interested as everyone else.

  Luke sat in his seat. ‘They said I’d not been in for a few days here and there,’ he began, fingering his scruffy hair, ‘but they obviously made a mistake. Although they did show me the days I didn’t clock in and my workmates also said I’d not been in but I mean…where else could I have been?’

  Everyone looked at each other as if they’d now found the reason for the decline in his appearance and behaviour—insanity!

  ‘How should I know?’ Frank said, breaking the silence.

  ‘You got up and left the house every morning in your work clothes,’ Amy said, confused.

  ‘Exactly,’ Luke said. ‘So I must have been going in, mustn’t I?’

  ‘Has he got dementia now or what?’ Frank asked Amy. Luke sat with a blank expression, as if he had in fact lost his mind. ‘Have you not found another job then yet?’ Frank clicked his fingers in front of Luke.

  ‘No, I…I…’ Luke began, but stopped.

  ‘I…What? Have you been looking?’

  ‘Yes, I’ve been…’ Again he stopped.

  ‘Where?’ Frank shouted.

  ‘Err, I’ve been…’

  ‘Have you actually been looking?’

  ‘Yes.’ Luke looked at Amy as if for help.

  Amy said nothing. She didn’t know how she could help even if she wanted to. She just gaped back at him with the same confused and dumb expression he held. She wondered if Frank’s question was right. Maybe Luke had dementia?

  ‘Why don’t you give Luke a job, Frank?’ Alicia asked tartly. Alicia loved the fact Frank had his own business, the mini super market: Frank’s Discounts. She also loved any chance she could get to gloat about it, or to be someone’s saviour, giving her more chance to use her favourite start to a sentence: ‘If it wasn’t for us…’

  ‘That’s not a bad idea, Ali, yes. You can work for me,’ Frank said as if the matter needed no discussion. ‘In the back warehouse, of course. We can’t have you scaring my customers!’ Frank laughed at his own joke.

  Luke panicked. ‘I don’t…want…’

  Alicia raised her eyebrows with the utmost snobbery. ‘Is stacking shelves beneath you? You! Luke?’

  ‘No…but I was looking for a job that…that…’

  ‘Pays a wage?’ Frank asked. ‘That pays a wage, surely? You can look for the ideal job in the meantime! No excuses, Luke; I’m not having my sister having to go back to work earlier because of you! Be at the store in the morning and I’ll show you what you’ll be doing.’ Frank carried on eating.

  Amy looked down at her plate. She felt grateful for Frank’s protective big brother act but she didn’t thank him for the bullying. In light of his obvious confusion, she pitied Luke. What had happened to him?

  ‘Oh Joan,’ Alicia said, now in high spirits, ‘this gravy is just divine.’ Alicia smirked, making Amy feel enraged. Alicia had a great house, took holidays three times a year and drove top of the range cars, yet she still felt the need to make people feel low.

  As Amy stared into Luke’s eyes, a jet black flash shot out of his pupils and a thick oily substance spread through his eyes, covering the opaque white surrounding them entirely. Then, as quick as the whites had been covered, the substance snapped back inside his pupils and hid behind the iris, swirling and lingering like murky water, clouding the natural gleam to his usual blue pigment. It made Amy jump and as it did her mind jumped too, right back to the conversation with Adaizi.

  Amy could hear her heart beating in her eardrums. It was all she could do not to retch. Although their voices faded into the background, her family, oblivious to the happening, carried on talking.

  ‘Why thank you, Alicia,’ Joan said.

  ‘It is nice!’ Frank added, happy his wife was happy.

  As Thomas began to say something, Luke stood, chest out, shoulders back. ‘I’m leaving!’ he said, shocking everyone with his proactivity. Before anyone could react, he marched down the hall and slammed the front door behind him.

  They turned to Amy for an explanation but, unable to speak or react, she sat in shock, trembling with fear.

  Francesca, who’d been left in the front room with Tom, let out a howl. Alicia ran into the kitchen with a bottle to make her formula, while Frank went to unstrap her.

  ‘Don’t leave my laddo in there on his own,’ Thomas said, following Frank so he could bring Tom to the table as well. The volume of Francesca’s high-pitched screaming brought Amy back into the room. As Thomas passed Tom to Amy, she could see from his expression he found Francesca’s piercing scream nothing but interesting.

  ‘Does Tom still not cry for his bottle?’ Frank asked, trying to comfort Francesca.

  Shaking uncontrollably, it took Amy a moment to answer. ‘No.’

  ‘She always screams the place down until she gets hers…I bet you find this funny, do you, little man?’ Frank asked Tom as he noticed his fascination for her.

  Tom, just able to support himself, had his arms stretched out toward Francesca, his frame wobbling while he tried to support his weight. Frank, clocking what Tom wanted, turned her to face him.

  ‘Is your cousin making a lot of noise?’ Frank asked Tom, then turned to Francesca. ‘Why don’t you stop crying and say hello?’ Tom reached forward and placed his right hand on Francesca’s beetroot-red face and gently stroked her cheek. As he did, light emitted from his palm and Francesca’s cheek glowed softly. Amy let out a yelp, nearly dropping Tom through the shock, and grabbed his hand. As Amy squeezed her hand over his, trying to conceal whatever it was that just happened, she stared at her niece who had now stopped screaming and watched in amazement as her whole face, starting from the place where Tom had touched it, turned from red to white.

  ‘What’s up?’ Frank, who hadn’t noticed, asked Amy.

  Amy couldn’t answer. She stared at Tom, who sat back and smiled at Francesca and, as Francesca caught his eye, she gave a large beaming smile back to him. Confused, Frank turned Francesca back around to face him whilst Tom looked down at his hand, still trapped inside Amy’s.

  Tom’s hand felt ice cold in Amy’s. As her skin began to tingle she turned his hand over, cupping it with her other, to see. To her complete astonishment, hundreds of tiny bubbles of light were running under the surface of his palm. As quickly as she witnessed this phenomenon, they dissipated and Tom’s hand became warm again.

  Amy turned to see if anyone was behind her but
no one else had seen. Amy was alone, staring in disbelief, her head pounding with the stress of both ordeals. Though Tom’s mental and physical development was extraordinary, she hoped he wouldn’t have any ‘extra’ abilities. Tom had been staring intently at his hands for the last few weeks as if willing them to do something, though Amy had disregarded it. As if he’d finally found what he’d been looking for, he now looked at them with satisfaction.

  Amy clasped Tom towards her, a great lump of emotion welling at the back of her throat, and broke into floods of tears. Her family instantly rallied round, her dad rubbing her shoulders, her mum holding her hand.

  ‘Come on now,’ Thomas said. ‘It’s not like you to get upset, especially over a boy!’ Amy wondered what he meant for a moment then realised they thought she was upset about Luke’s behaviour—which was strange, because her dad was right: Amy would never cry over a boy. She used to look at girls in school like they were deranged if they got all soppy and daft over a boy, telling them they shouldn’t be bothered by the things boys would do, especially mundane things like how they didn’t text them when they wanted them to. She didn’t understand why girls could become so emotional over love.

  Then again, Amy had never been in love. Not even now. She liked Luke, really liked him, but Amy could never say she knew what love meant, especially if it meant you cry and get all daft. Maybe that’s why Amy had just stuck with Jack as her best friend; boys were less emotional.

  ‘Yes, but,’ Joan interrupted, ‘they’ve got a baby now and, well, I’ve never seen Luke be rude like that before.’

  ‘I didn’t think he’d dare!’ Frank said. ‘But he’s not worth your tears, Amy. You’re tougher than that!’

  Amy nodded and faked a smile, thankful that they thought Luke’s behaviour was the reason for her meltdown. If they knew the real reason for her upset, that it may be true that Tom was magical, or that it may also be true that Luke was influenced by some dark force, they wouldn’t have a clue what to do. For that matter, even with what she just witnessed and whether or not she believed in the supposed light and dark forces, neither did Amy.

  CHAPTER 5

  THE MEETING

  The event played so heavily on Amy’s mind that she could see Luke’s blackened eyes whenever she closed her own. She watched him like a predator whenever he was around—which he wasn’t much of late—trying to see if it would happen again. He wouldn’t tell her where he had been when he’d been gone for days at a time, which gave her a good excuse to make him to sleep on the couch whenever he was home.

  She knew if she saw his eyes blacken again she could shout Adaizi’s name, but after two weeks of sleeping with one eye open in case he crept back into bed, and despite the baseball bat by the side of it, she told herself she’d imagined Luke’s eyes turning black.

  Tom was a different matter. She couldn’t get away from his strange behaviour as easily. Uninterested in the toys that hung in front of his bouncer chair, he sat, staring at his hands, flicking his fingers with a concentrated look.

  ‘Tom’s a silly sausage!’ she shouted, to distract him. It worked every time; he screamed with delight each time she emphasised the word ‘sausage’. When Amy spoke to him he fixated on her mouth and tried to move his own.

  It was the day of her first meeting at her local baby clinic. Amy had received a letter from her general practitioner telling her she should have Tom’s weight monitored. As she entered, most of the mums, sitting in wicker chairs in front of a large table, turned to look at her. Amy smiled at a few she recognised from the café. Behind the table, which held two large weighing scales, stood a woman in her late fifties with short, blonde hair.

  ‘Please undress your child on the changing table,’ she said, pointing to a table to her right, ‘then bring him here to be weighed.’ Amy smiled, placed Tom on the mat, undressed him, then carried him over. ‘I’ve not seen you before,’ said the nurse, as she placed Tom in the scales. ‘You’ve left it a long time for your first visit, haven’t you?’

  ‘Sorry,’ Amy said, feeling uncomfortable. ‘I was only just told.’

  ‘He’s a bit underweight, I think. How old is he?’ Amy knew if anything, Tom was overweight; he was huge compared to Francesca.

  ‘He’s seven weeks,’ Amy said.

  ‘Seven months, yes, I thought so. He’s a lot underweight,’ she said, lifting Tom out of the cold scales and passing him back to Amy.

  ‘Seven weeks old,’ Amy corrected.

  ‘Very funny,’ she said, then laughed.

  ‘What do you mean, very funny?’ Amy asked, placing Tom on her hip, one arm around his waist to support him.

  ‘Well, I know he doesn’t quite look seven months old,’ she said haughtily, pointing her finger at him like he was a criminal, ‘but I’m telling you he certainly isn’t seven weeks!’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘His size. The fact that he’s supporting himself. In my professional opinion, this boy is around four to five months old.’ She gave Amy a look like she had proved her a liar.

  ‘He’s seven weeks,’ Amy insisted.

  The lady looked at Tom, who’d been moving his head from her to Amy like he was at a tennis match, and her face hardened. ‘He certainly is not…’ she began again, but another nurse came over with Tom’s medical records and the pair of them began conferring.

  Amy could feel the eyes of the mothers behind her and turned to give some of them a shy shrug. The woman opened the records and, as she read Tom’s date of birth, her eyebrows joined into one across her forehead.

  ‘I don’t believe it. I am ever so…’ She looked at Tom and back to the records and was clearly astonished. ‘…Sorry.’

  ‘That’s okay,’ Amy said, although she didn’t feel like being polite. ‘So is he overweight now?’

  ‘Yes…I mean…I…err,’ the woman said, fumbling with a chart. ‘Tom’s the largest seven-week-old we’ve had.’ She tried to remain professional, but her face showed how awkward she felt.

  ‘Right,’ Amy said and took Tom back to the changing table to dress him. It was clear some of the mothers were stunned by his age too.

  ‘She’s a know-it-all, that one,’ said a friendly young mum, pushing a pram back and forth.

  ‘It’s fine. I’m Amy, by the way.’

  ‘I’m Kate. Nice to meet you. My son’s seven weeks as well.’ Kate looked inside her pram. ‘He hates it in here. He always screams the place down because of those scales! Are you going to come once a week from now on?’ Kate asked with a hopeful glance.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Amy said, glancing back at the nurse.

  ‘Don’t worry about sour face,’ Kate said. ‘She says my Ethan’s too big for his age as well. She even told me to get him checked out for some kind of ageing disorder! I can’t remember the name of the condition she said now but…she’s a cheeky cow!’ Amy didn’t know how to respond; surely a nurse wouldn’t say that without reason, but Amy gave her an agreeable nod.

  ‘We’re going to a café after here.’ Kate pointed to some other mums. ‘You’re welcome to come along if you like.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Amy said. ‘I will.’

  After placing Tom back into his pram, several mothers set off down the road. Amy smiled when the other mothers glanced her way, but it was only Kate who made the effort to speak to her. As they continued onto the main road, Amy realised it was her café.

  ‘I work here,’ Amy said. Kate looked impressed. The door and window to the shop next door lay flat on the pavement outside, barricaded off for pedestrians to walk around. The sound of hammers echoed from inside.

  As she stepped inside the café, Amy was surprised by the reconstruction. The counter, which normally ran the full length of the café, had been made into two with a walkway in between. On the wall behind was the reason why: a beautiful archway had been situated for customers to walk through. In front of the archway was a small barricade and a ‘no entry’ sign.

  ‘All right?’ Jack asked, stepping over the
barricade, sweat dripping from his dirty forehead.

  ‘As if you weren’t grungy looking enough!’ Amy laughed. ‘Are you clean enough to make some brews?’ Amy whispered, health and safety laws coming to mind.

  ‘Yeah! I’ve only got to wash my hands!’ he said, looking confused. ‘Hey guess what, Amy,’ Jack said, with eagerness. ‘I can have the upstairs for my martial arts gym!’ His face lit with happiness. All he’d ever wanted was his own gym.

  ‘Great,’ Amy said, loathing the fact that Winston had got his claws further into him. She would have continued giving encouragement, but her attention went to a large workman in the shop behind wiping a muscular arm across his forehead to brush his messy locks from his ruggedly handsome face. His white T-shirt, which had become transparent with moisture, clung to his chiselled frame. Oblivious to her, he stood, speaking with Winston.

  In her mind’s eye she watched him dive off a cliff and into a waterfall then envisioned him rising from the deep, blue water with ease, a fizz of white frothy ripples surrounding him as he shook those messy locks. A sexy voice naming the latest aftershave could be added in the background at a later date.

  As the Adonis turned, she noticed a deep, horrific scar running the down the left side of his face, ruining his otherwise perfect skin, and her heart jumped. If it weren’t for the scar he would have been flawless. As she wondered what could possibly have happened to him to create such a terrible deformity, he stopped talking to Winston and met her gaze. His striking, teal-green eyes were gentler than any eyes she’d ever seen, but something in his expression unnerved her. As he gave her a shy, friendly smile, a chill ran through Amy and her skin began to tingle; a sign that something wasn’t right.

  She dropped her gaze and began to blush, confused with herself. She’d never stared at anyone so intently. Even though she could feel his eyes still on her, she couldn’t look back up to meet his gaze. Feeling hot under her skin, she looked up at Jack, who held a smirk.

  ‘He gets that a lot!’ he said.

  ‘Gets what? I thought I knew him,’ she lied. Even though there was an air of familiarity about him, she knew she’d never seen such a fascinating sight. ‘So shut up and get me a coffee!’ Amy took a deep breath, trying to slow the pace of her heart. She took a sideways glance back at the man to see him still smiling at her. This, she concluded, definitely made him strange.