by S. G Mark
“Jack get down,” Emma whispered harshly.
Jack dropped to his knees alongside Emma, and they both cowered behind the cadaver of a tree that, judging by its civilisations of moss, fungi and ivy, had fallen a long time ago.
“What’s wrong?” Jack whispered anxiously.
Emma kept her gaze over the bough and narrowed her eyes, “Morse code. Can you see it?”
Peering over a wedge of moss, Jack saw the lights flashing in the distance, though he did not know what they meant.
“Surely it’s the others?” Jack suggested optimistically.
“Not necessarily,” Emma said, manoeuvring herself around the tree for a better look, “Dot, dot, dot, dash.”
“Do you know Morse code?”
“Yeah,” she said, “I’m just not entirely sure who is trying to communicate with us.”
“What are they saying?”
“I think they’ve found something. They are wanting us to come over,” she said.
“What’s the problem then?”
“It might be a trap…”
“Seriously? You think - you think the police are up there?” Jack’s tone was more than a little publically hopeful for his liking. Emma raised an eyebrow.
“We go East. If in doubt, never expose your position.”
Crouching and crawling through the undergrowth, Jack followed Emma religiously. Now was not the time to be caught with The Resistance. If he was going to be found, he needed to make sure he appeared entirely innocent. There must be nothing to doubt. After two arrests over terrorism, he was not likely to survive a third. If he were caught here tonight in the company of Emma or anyone else in the terrorist organisation, that would be it: he would be locked up. Any chance of being with Eliza or leading a normal life would be gone.
After a few minutes the flashing lights discontinued. Emma picked up on it much sooner than he did, declaring that they maybe should return to the path as soon as possible.
“Why?” Jack was feigning disinterest, but was certain that being on the path again would secure his freedom. From there, he would be able to judge where his next steps would be, and when he might be able to escape.
“It’s not safe to talk about that here, let’s talk about something else,” Emma said.
“Do you miss home?” it was the first question that came to his mind.
“God yes. But there’s more fresh air here.”
“You come from a city?”
“Yeah,” she said, evading telling which one.
“Why are you here and not a city if you miss it?”
“You see up there,” Emma pointed up at the stars, “That’s why.”
“I don’t get it?” Jack said, peering to try and see where her finger was directing toward.
“It’s beautiful. It’s raw, untampered with - mankind hasn’t reached up there yet to destroy it. It’s innocent to what we’re capable of - and that’s part of the beauty. Those stars are billions of years old, but we don’t see them as they are now - we see them as they were thousands of millions of years ago. They might no longer exist now. Their light may have died, or they may have exploded into a million trillion pieces - and we wouldn’t know it for centuries yet. In their past, we live. I’m trying to ensure that in their present, so are we. I want my children to grow up with me. I want my children never to be too afraid to ask questions, or to wonder why the world is the way it is. I want them to challenge me, to see the world as uniquely as every one of those stars and planets up there see Earth, cos no two stars will see us the same. Isn’t that beautiful?”
Jack found himself looking at Emma as she gleefully stared up at the interstellar canvas.
“That clearing over there - we’ll head for it and lay low for half an hour or so,” Emma ordered, pointing towards a patch of grass dully lit by moonlight through the trees.
Once again they were breaking free from the path and battling bracken to make their way forward. It was only a few metres from the path, but the surrounding trees provided just enough cover for them to remain there unnoticed for the time being. The clearing itself was barely more than three metres in radius and a few boulders served as stools.
Jack sat down on one of them and felt his knees creak. He had not appreciated how physically exhausted he was until now. His muscles groaned and ached and yearned for a hot bath instead of a freezing cold walk on a dark Autumnal night.
“I think we’re fine, I just want to be sure,” Emma reassured him, “Don’t be alarmed - we aren’t about to be pounced on.”
She had misread Jack’s surveying of the area as concern for their safety; in actuality Jack was spying for ways to sneak out unnoticed.
“You really want to be here, don’t you?” Jack asked.
Emma sat down on the opposing rock and nodded, “It’s the only place I can be right now.”
“You were close - you and your brother?”
“The closest,” Emma said, her voice lacerated with grief. “I think… I think what’s hardest is that I don’t even know where his body is. I can’t bury him, I didn’t say goodbye properly because the last time I saw him I just said see you later. There were no last words to say how special he was to me. All those little things that I forgot to say - all the times I never thanked him, or didn’t appreciate him… they’re all gone now, trapped in the past, where there is no see you later.”
“I know how you feel,” the words escaped his lips before he was able to control them.
Emma looked at him inquisitively, “How so?”
He did not particularly want to reveal his deep, throttling guilt, but the pounding hammer within his ribcage beat on and on; and the louder and fiercer it became, the tighter the knots in his throat followed suit. And somewhere the words came, as if from a place as equally dark as the night around them, how dare she be forgotten.
“Jack, are you okay?” Emma asked.
Turning away from her, he buried his face in his hands, hoping the tears would wash away his remorse and his sins. A little girl laughed in his ear, her eighth birthday party; the giggling was torture. In front of his eyes he saw her, now fifteen, huddled around her friends in the school playground. Uniform and hair running amok, her miserable face read double Chemistry after lunch. If only he had known, if only he had not been so self-involved, she might never have left.
“What’s wrong, what’s happened?” Emma was cowering over him, her hand gently placed on his shoulder. “Please tell me what’s wrong, talking can help?”
Jack shook his head violently, “No it doesn’t.”
“It can. It definitely can,” she reassured him.
Her advice was meaningless to him. She did not know who he was, she did not know what he had done.
“I’m fine, please just leave me be for a bit,” he snapped.
“Clearly you’re not fine,” she burrowed further in, and it was quite plain to him that she was not going to desist until he opened up.
“It’s my fault - is that what you want to hear? It’s my fault she’s dead? Are you happy?” he shouted, not caring who might be listening in.
“Calm down, calm down,” she whispered soothingly, “Who’s dead, what are you talking about?”
“My sister,” he spat, “Dead and I acted like she never existed.”
Emma crawled over to his ankles and sat looking up at him, as if she were a child looking into her father’s inexplicably sad eyes.
“What happened?” she asked softly.
His self control was void, he had not the strength to fight the words spilling from his mouth. For too long they had been buried, and now the revolution was forming inside him - no longer would they accept being denied a voice.
“My sister. She ran away when she was fifteen. No note, no sign of her - no body,” he recited the story as if it were a piece of gossip he had overheard in the supermarket. “My parents fell apart, forgot I even existed or just stopped caring I did. Then one day she came back - and I was so angry with her. Angry
and disgusted but I hid it. I had to. She was a pregnant drug addict - it was unreal. My sister, the academic success, now the family failure. She begged me not to tell my parents she was alive - not until the baby was born at least. And I didn’t. I lied to them. I called them up and we chatted and she was right in front of me the whole time. I didn’t utter a single word to them about her return. They were crippled by her disappearance, and you know what? I enjoyed the power I had. I relished it. Instead of having to deal with their grief, I was the one extending it - the one denying them their chance to move on.”
“Why?” Emma looked horrified.
Jack laughed maniacally, “Why? Because as soon as my sister left, they stopped caring about me. I didn’t exist to them. What love was theirs that they could so easily turn it off, as easily as a bathroom tap? I hated them. As soon as they knew she was alive, they would snap back to normal - they would be proper parents again, not to me but to her? How do you think that made me feel?”
“What happened then? How did she die?”
“She was on heroin when she fell pregnant. After several weeks staying with me and being off it, it seems she couldn’t live without it anymore. Nearly nine months pregnant, she went back for one last hit before the birth or something… I dunno…. she called me in a panic and I drove to meet her. This man had her against her will - I guess he was the father, I don’t know. He was disgusting. All these years she had been living in this filthy place whilst I was subjected to loveless parents?” Jack’s tone was growing bitter, but he stopped himself just in time, “But the child… the child was gone. I drove her home and she told me - she told me it was stillborn. All because of drugs. I went mental. All those years - all those torturous years of being subjected to that deep-rooted lack of love, all those times when I needed a mum or a dad, gone because she wanted a bit of freedom - to sleep around, to do drugs, to get pregnant and kill the child for the sake of getting high? In that second I hated her. And for a fraction of a second I took my eye from the road and the car crashed and she was dead.”
The night was still. Above, the stars twinkled with their own blend of astronomical sadness while down on earth Emma gazed at him sorrowfully. Jack had no words left in him. He was a husk, no longer living, only existing. Every tear he had ever cried, every fragment of him that had felt even a splinter of emotion, was numb.
“Jack, I’m so sorry,” Emma whispered.
“Don’t. It was my own fault. I deserve everything I get for what I did, and believe me life is not done reclaiming its debt.”
“What do you mean?”
For six years I pretended to be someone I’m not. The lie was so cemented into my brain that I nearly forgot it wasn’t real.”
“What do you mean?”
“My parents never accepted the situation. They never forgave me.”
“It was an accident, surely?”
“Yes it was. But they never believed that. It didn’t take more than a second for them to look me in the eye and pass judgement on what happened. So they cut me off, and I disappeared into a new identity. That person is now sitting before you.”
“Jack, you have nothing to hide here.”
“I know,” Jack said, “And that’s why I hate it here. Hiding that part of me is easier than accepting that it actually happened.”
Emma put her hands on his knees and stroked them gently, “I’m glad you could tell me that.”
However, Jack had a polarised opinion. Instead of relief, he felt that his chest had become heavier - revealing the truth had exposed himself too much. Emma knew more than she ought to and what she may do with that information he did not want to discover. He felt as if he were standing in a room encased with mirrors as his own reflection stared indignantly back at him, judgement and accusation scrawled across each face.
More important than anything else, he needed to leave. While he still held some secrets left, he needed to leave before he became too exposed.
“Did you hear that?” Jack said sharply, his talent for lying growing back like a reptilian limb.
Emma span round, “No?”
“I dunno, maybe I’m just on edge,” he said, as Emma rose to her feet and crossed the clearing to investigate.
“Hang on,” Emma said, kneeling down.
“What is it?” Jack was now genuinely anxious. Had his plan been ill timed?
Standing up he saw Emma peering over a leaf of bracken. Even in the dark he could see the bloodstains.
“Do you think they’re near?” he said, his eyes alert with panic.
Emma shook her head, “Hard to tell.”
“What should we do?”
“Stay here for now,” she said, “I think we should definitely lie low for at least another half hour.”
“Okay,” Jack said resignedly.
“How are you feeling?”
“I think I just want to be left alone for a bit,” he said, backing away from her and retreating to his rock.
Emma nodded politely and sank to her knees to further examine the bracken.
Jack watched silently as she turned over the leaf and patted the ground, no doubt feeling for footprints and to which direction they may have headed. So extremely dedicated to her task was she that she did not notice as Jack slipped slyly from his stone and, crouching, stole sneakily off into the depths of the forest.
His breath muted, his wits guarded, his patience absolute: each step forward thrilled him more than the next. The first hundred yards were the worst as he strained not to bend branch or snap twig, slide across mud or trip over rock. As such, his journey was slow and painful and he knew that at any second he may hear the thunder of footsteps or his name being called out across the night. Time was limited and it was not his friend.
Chapter Six
Ahead, he startled a stoat and it bound across his path in a blind panic. Though breaking his concentration momentarily, it heightened his excitement. Every step forward, every hand’s length further into the distance, into the darkness, was a victory. A glorious victory; delicious and tantalising. At the end of the journey, which had begun but a few hundred steps ago, was Eliza. Rosy cheeked, Eliza. He yearned for her arms, her tender touch and her glossy lips. She was a place called home - a place he had not visited in what felt like years. She was the life of him; the adventure and the game, the danger and the hope - he could not explain it, he could only live it. All these long years without a history to call his own; isolated in his own paranoia and disguised under a pseudonym that he had eventually become, Eliza was the only person to accept him for who he was and for what he had done.
The leaves rustled with applause at his escape. An owl screeched, jeering from the crowd. His escape must now nearly be complete. Soon he would be out into the open - fresh air bracing against his taught and weary skin. Soon he would be home, comforted by the true love of his life. All the angst and torture would be a distance memory. The only way was forward, and he was marching along with the victory procession. The end was nigh and his heart was thumping with celebration. Never again would Alex touch him; never again would he have to shy away from his mistakes, or be shunned for who he was. The conspiracy theories The Resistance had ingrained in his brain would be washed away; his soul would be a blank template, forgiven by Eliza and ready to accept all the good he could do from now on. Never again would he stray from the law. Jack Blackwood was about to be reborn and there was nothing on the planet that could possibly stop him. He was free, he was shredding the skin of Steven Lennox and every second that passed brought that bastard closer to the grave.
Onwards! Onwards into the night. Nothing could stop him now. His bones tingled with anticipation. Reaching into the darkness, he stole back the time that The Resistance had taken from him. Every week, every day, every second of time was being rewritten. As he hurtled along, his confidence rose him to his feet and he began to run - frantic and elated - towards his ultimate goal.
Each footstep thudded against and impressed on the ground. Eve
ry footprint abandoned behind him left a trace of the man he used to be. The leaves brushed passed him, cleansing him, relieving him of the pain he had carried for far too many years. Every mistake he had made was swept away by the breeze against his skin. The memories and angst of Scar were driven from him; the guilt he carried for accepting her gift of freedom weighed him down no more.
The dense forest that whipped against his face thinned and the ground inclined before him. Though his legs were tiring, he could not stop. He was incapable of stopping now - and every hurtling second shed his childhood fears and doubts. The faster he ran, the more he became an adult, no longer anchored by his parent’s mistakes but sailing by his own gust of empowerment.
Nestled high in the sky, the moon shone a sad light upon him, splintered through the trees. The forest was illuminated as if it were encrusted with diamonds. The world, reborn in a sparkle of hope; Jack’s legs ran and ran and did not pay heed to the cramp in his legs. He felt the warm air of civilisation on the tips of his fingers and it glistened in the moonlight. No more hiding. No more secrets. No more misery.
He stopped abruptly. Darkness eluded him; the terrain manipulating his every step. Ahead of him, but a few inches, was a cavernous incline. It was as well his primeval instincts kicked in as had he stopped a second later he might have toppled over and tumbled down the steep slope. Though it was dark he felt imminent danger as if were a solid wall before him. Taking a few deep breaths, he edged sideways. All the while his ears were primed for unexpected noises. Though he was sure he was successful in his escape, he did not want to risk being arrogant quite yet. There were still eight members of The Resistance on the hill, plus the added fear that whoever they were searching for on the hill may not greet him with a friendly smile. He had to be careful.