by S. G Mark
When he was last in this city, he’d only been responsible for one death. Now he’d added a few more notches to that gravestone. Devin, Quentin, Julian, Mike, Phil. There were others, he was sure of that. Jack felt like the epicentre of death, its black tentacles clawing out from his heart.
Cameron Toll Shopping Centre had seen better days from his vantage point through the trees. As he scrambled through the plastic bag infected woodland, he kept a close eye on the road nearby. By some coincidence or ill-fated chance, he had been brought to within a mile of his old house. He hadn’t been prepared for this. On the long journey up, he’d anticipated being dumped off somewhere on the Eastern side of town, near one of the industrial estates. At least he didn’t have to trek across the city, constantly aware of wandering eyes and slyly placed CCTV cameras. But still, though his journey was safer and much shorter, he now lacked the opportunity to attune himself to what was to come.
Brushing through the branches, Jack emerged on the road during an interval of cars. He strode determinedly across and sprinted down the next street, a suburban hideout where no one would catch him loitering. Though his feet carried him forward, he was not sure what he would do when he reached his destination. Knock on the door? What would he say? What was there to say? After all this time? After all the lies he’d put her through, two years of absence in her life and above all, the complete betrayal that he was now a member of The Resistance? Jack had never banked on Eliza falling victim to the media’s impression of the organisation, but neither did he anticipate that she would ever side with The Resistance. At any rate, how could he defend his actions - he was a murderer. He did cause terror.
Inhaling the familiar air, Jack was overcome with nostalgia. He was only a few streets away now, barely more than ten minutes. His crazed excitement imagined bumping into her on the street, or even Maggie spying him from afar. Maggie. If there was one person who would not welcome him back it would be her. What he’d done more than defiled the last chance she’d given him. No more lies, no more secrets. He’d checked them both off the list.
The black lettering of Relugas Road imprinted coldly upon his eyes. He stared at them with both little recognition, and intense familiarity. For hundreds of days he walked past that sign, on his way to work at the little post office. And now he returned as if those memories were stolen from someone else. Perhaps they were, perhaps he could barely call himself Jack anymore, let alone Steven. How many names had he been over the past two years? How many ID cards had he possessed? How many personalities had he become just to hide the one truth? As he padded along the pavement, the houses on either side of him seemed to leer forward at him, as if inspecting his return.
And there it was. Ahead, in the near distance, the shining light of number forty-two. He felt nauseous with both excitement and dread. With every step closer, he knew he couldn’t simply just knock on the front door. A wave of sadness crashed into him and suddenly revealed the foolish man he was. There was no way he could see her, not now; not without risking both their lives. This wasn’t a return, it was a brief visit, a trip down nostalgia lane to remind him just why he’d stayed away in the first place.
The back alleyway loomed, and Jack dove down it. The evening light could barely penetrate over the tall wall on either side of him. The graffiti it used to bear was gone now, scrubbing off some of the brickwork. Where weeds used to grow, little flowers smiled back. Sinking down against the wall, he sighed. He shouldn’t be here. He should never have chased after Alex that night. Had he stayed put he could have explained to Maggie his feelings for her daughter. In time, he would have gotten a job and he’d be able to continue seeing Eliza. He’d have a life again, and the current weight in his chest would never have been conceived. It was a life he’d never be able to live.
Honey blossom christened the air, and he found himself more calm than he’d been in a long while. Eliza was just a few metres away. He turned and looked down the pathway. The back garden gate was so close. It was stupid, the height of idiocy; but all he needed was one glimpse of her.
Rising once more to his feet, he crept along the wall, keeping low. The gate had been repainted. No longer the rusty orange he’d last seen it, it was now chrome black. He pushed it open and felt a wave of sick cumulate inside him. He was in the garden. He was actually in the garden.
Closing the gate behind him gently, he crept into the tall bushes at the back of the garden. From there he could see into the house. Upstairs he saw the little window in his old bedroom. The curtains were drawn, just as they always had been when he lived here. And to its left was Eliza’s bedroom - all too well he’d remembered his last visit in there. How he longed to hold her again, to feel her breasts in his hands, to kiss her deeply and to feel her lightest touch upon his skin.
The garden bench had been removed, replaced by an expensive looking set of four chairs and a little round table. It was almost too ornate for Maggie’s taste. Perhaps Elizabeth, Alex and Eliza’s Auntie, had finally given the family some money. Jack’s sights soon returned to the house. Through the back door he could see into the kitchen. Again, some of it looked completely new - or perhaps just thoroughly cleaned.
He relished in how easy it would be to knock on the door. In seconds she’d come and the welcoming smile he’d give her would envelope him in a warm glow. But he couldn’t. As much as he wanted to, he knew it wouldn’t be worth it. It would put her life in danger, Maggie’s too.
Watching the house with lucid fascination, he anxiously awaited Eliza to come gliding into the kitchen to pile the dishes. Even Maggie would provide some semblance of comfort - to know that Eliza would be not far behind. Excitement gripped him. To remember how beautiful she was paled in comparison to seeing her once more. Even a secret smile, caught from afar, could rekindle aching love for her. She’d never had a chance to say it, he recalled. But he knew she felt the same. There was an unparalleled connection between them.
His heart lurched. A shadow from within the house. Trembling, Jack held on to the branches to steady himself. A wicked smile reaped across his face. This was it. Eliza was coming. He could see the shadow of her head stretch like film around the kitchen wall. And then, his stomach twisted into knots, the shadow moved farther in, the tip of her long, beautiful hair cascading into sight first.
Eliza. Those perfect eyes illuminated his soul. She smiled, vacantly to herself it seemed, and Jack was filled with an immeasurable pleasure. His eyes traced her gorgeously grown up face, lacing down the neckline of her pretty floral dress until…
Nausea struck like lightening. He could reason with his eyes, but he could not fault what they saw. Eliza, the beautiful centre of his vision, was pregnant.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Jack’s mind was mashed. For a foolish second he was transported right back to the day he left her and miscalculated. In all these long years of fighting, of constantly battling his demons to try and create some justice in the world, for himself; a redemption path in which she was the prize… never in a million years did he ever contemplate she would find someone else.
Her bump was six, maybe seven months. Tears streamed down his eyes as he watched her make a cup of tea in the mug he used to always have. All those deaths suddenly seemed so worthless, so tainted by his own stupidity. Everything Jack had been fighting for was more than lost; it had never been his.
Crushed with tears, he crashed backwards against the fence, releasing the branches he’d clutched so eagerly in his hands. But the bush had moved too quickly and before Jack could resign himself to depression, panic flooded through him. Through the window, Eliza had stopped pouring the kettle and was staring right where he had been. She appeared as if frozen, her eyes not parting with the moving bush.
Had she seen him? A small part of him wished she had. Seconds later, she was back to preparing her tea - Jack’s brief infliction upon her life but a bird taking off, or a mouse scurrying in the dirt. Jack watched through streaming eyes as she left the kitchen, cradling her
mug of tea. He could have screamed and he nearly did, had he not reasoned with himself.
What was he to do now? His future had just been snatched from him. The last two years seemed like a lie. One long betrayal that had finally been grandly revealed. Leaning back against the fence, he knew he needed to leave before anyone saw him. But despite how painful the last few minutes were, he couldn’t; not now, not now that he was so close. Everything in his brain was shouting at him to go, but this was where his heart belonged.
Did Alex know? Was this why he had told him not to come back? Was it a deception out of kindness? After all this time, Alex knew his sister would never wait for him and he just wanted to spare his friend the pain. He should never have come here. The fight to survive had all but drained from him. And yet now that he had, he could not leave.
Evening melted into night. The sky blended with the stars; the moon shone out a silver flame. Eliza had not returned to the kitchen. Outside in the dark, he felt more isolated than he had been in the first few days at headquarters, or in the hours after killing Julian. He wished he could call Alex for answers, but ultimately the only person capable of giving him the ones he wanted was Eliza.
Jack stared at the empty kitchen and anger filled him like water. He could leave right now and turn his back on this betrayal, or he could stay and stare at a home he was no longer part of. Somehow, anger wasn’t enough a reason to go. But he couldn’t sit in the dirt all night. He had to do something.
Finding his feet, Jack knew what he was about to do was dangerous and life threatening and that it defied all the sacrifices that his friends, even strangers, had made to get him here, to keep him alive. But for two years the only thing anchoring him to life was Eliza and right now he needed to be closer to her. He needed to breath the same air as her, to touch the same things that she had touched.
Pressed against the kitchen window, he drank the images of a thousand dinners shared at that dining table; all the mother-daughter arguments and the long night that the three of them had spent anxiously waiting for Alex to come home after the attack on Princess Street Gardens. Peering through the pane, it like was looking at an alternative universe where he’d never lived, and had never been a part of this wonderful family.
As he leaned in further to catch a better view, his foot slipped slightly, and the sound of metal scratching against stone caught his ear. He looked down and poking out from underneath his foot was the jagged edge of a key.
The idea manifested itself in his head before he could think clearly. Picking up the key, he slipped it into the lock and turned it, quietly. Acid delight: the door opened at the gentlest of pushes.
A warm rush of familiarity swallowed him. He was home. The kitchen door was wide open, but the hallway, dully lit by stray moonlight, was vacant. Still, he needed to be quiet and he feared even his own breath my betray him.
The dishes were still piled up at the sink. Maggie must be out as she would never stand for that. Jack brushed against the worktop, hearing echoes of another argument filter through his library of memories. Maybe he’d blocked them out, but he had more memories of living here than he had of his own childhood home. The fun he’d had under this roof. He had stopped pretending to be Jack Blackwood and instead had just become him. Steven Lennox was a bad dream he’d kept to himself, a nightmare that, despite never leaving him, he could bury as if dead.
But his joy at returning home was muted. No matter how comforting it was to once again be surrounded by these four walls, something had changed and though the kitchen had been updated, Jack knew it wasn’t the new tiling or the fancier wallpaper. He didn’t want to admit it to himself, but at the same time there was no denying it. Key or not, he didn’t belong here. Not anymore.
Forty-two Relugas Road was for a different Jack, a happier Jack. It was no place for a murderer, a liar or a terrorist. The house was blessed with an innocence that Jack no longer had. He didn’t belong here anymore and he should never have come back.
Jack leant over the worktop, staring out at the garden he’d been hiding in for the past hour. He had reached the end of the road, though he was far from his final destination. There was nothing but the open countryside ahead, the dangerous mountain ranges leered into the sky; sharp pinnacles, dramatically decorated with crisp snow as they plunged into the treeline, and submerged into a sea of deepest green. Wild weather swept across the landscape; unpredictable and mightier than anything he’d seen before. The road had been long and arduous, but it had come to an end and Jack knew he had to be grateful to it for getting him where he needed to be.
“Get out of my house,” her voice whispered sharply behind him. “Leave now and I won’t call the CRU.”
The road was a now a speck in the far distance. Sighing, he turned and met her eyes across the dark kitchen.
She was standing in the doorframe, both fragile and fierce. The anger in her eye took a second to falter, stumbling into confusion and hurt.
“Y-you…” she fumbled over her words, “It-it can’t b-be you.”
The stillness around them was taught.
“Hello Eliza,” he said, lip trembling.
“Why are you here?” she asked, and though it was dark, he could see the expression leave her eyes.
Now was not the time to lie to her.
“I arrived about two hours ago,” he said, “How could I not come back here without coming home?”
“This isn’t your home,” she said sharply.
“Eliza,” he said, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I left you. It was never my intention, but Alex-”
“Don’t you fucking say his name. You don’t deserve to say his name.”
“Eliza?” Jack stepped forward, alert to the danger in her voice but unaware of its origin.
She was visibly shaking, tears cascading from her eyes and shining like pearls upon her cheeks.
“You dare fucking say his name,” she raised her voice from a whisper, but nothing more than sob. “After what you did? You dare fucking mention his name!”
“I’m sorry, Eliza! I’m sorry! I wasn’t caught up in all this when I was here, you have to believe me! The Resistance, Quentin, everything - please, believe me… it came after us. I couldn’t return after Alex -”
“Don’t say his fucking name! You bastard! You murderer!” her voice singed the air.
“Eliza,” he spoke softly, “Please. You need to believe me. When I ran out on you that night, I never meant to leave you. But I had to. Alex made me promise, and I’ve kept that up until now, but I haven’t ever stopped thinking about you. You might think I’m a monster, and yes I am a murderer. I’ve killed people - dangerous people. But I did all to keep you safe.”
Through the dark, Eliza glistened with a remote sadness. He had hurt her beyond anything he’d anticipated.
“Please, Eliza,” he continued, “I’ve never stopped loving you.”
“Get out!” she screamed “Get out!”
Thundering footsteps from above followed her yells. A moment later and a figure had appeared at her side, slamming on the light switch.
“Oh my fucking god,” the man said breathlessly, “It’s him, isn’t it? The man who killed your brother?”
Eliza was nodding vigorously.
Jack stood back, defensively, “Alex isn’t dead… I haven’t killed him. He’s alive.”
The man stepped forward, throwing his fists in the air. A gold band shimmered from one hand.
“Eliza, call the CRU,” he said, before addressing Jack, “You’re not going to fucking run away this time.”
“Please, you have to believe me!” Jack was backing away, sidling along to the back door, “He’s alive, Eliza! He’s alive!”
He grasped the handle of the back door. The man was advancing on him. Jack only had seconds, and they were too precious to waste.
“You know where to find me if you want the truth! The time I caught you down here, where you were heading that’s where I’ll be. You know me! I wouldn’t ever harm Ale
x!” he shouted, before buckling low to avoid the man’s swift punch, and tumbling out the backdoor, scrambling to his feet and bursting through the garden gate.
Jack ran like never before. His breath frosted in the air, trailing behind him like a steam train. He knew the route as if he had only been there yesterday. The hospital gates reared out of the darkness; no longer decorated by police tape. He didn’t stop running until he reached the window.
The tall turrets leaned over him, burying him in shadow. Desperate and alone, Jack smothered his hand with his sleeve and smashed the glass, risking the shards to climb through in the comfort of another shelter.
Everything was black and though it creeped him out, the little hairs on the back of his neck had to grin and bear what was to come. This was where he said he would be and this is where he was going to stay, no matter how long it took.
Feeling his way along the wall, he found the stair banister and slowly descended the cold stone steps to the kitchens. Crumbling debris was strewn everywhere. Jack doubted very much if anyone had been here since he last had. Certainly there was no one here now. An opening appeared and Jack blindly walked through it, catching himself on a stray piece of pipe in the middle of the ground. But as soon as he was inside, he knew he was here. Touching his hand lightly along the wall, he found the switch and ignited a glaring overhead light.