Dead Seth (3 page)

“That’s right,” she nodded, her thick, black hair blowing in the wind. “The Vampyrus were just days from catching up with him for his crimes. The Vampyrus are very much like us.

They have managed to fit into human life; they want to live above ground like we want to be free of the caves hidden behind the Fountain of Souls.

So the Vampyrus have small teams who track down the wolves – Lycanthrope – who continue to rape and murder the humans, and then they imprison them in The Hollows. They fear that if the Lycanthrope are left free to murder, it wouldn’t be long before the humans discover that wolves and Vampyrus are living secretly amongst them and they would become the hunted. The Vampyrus will help those Lycanthrope like us who don’t want to kill – who want the curse lifted.

They have offered us a safe place to stay until we are relocated to live peaceful lives without your father.”

“How long will it take, mother?” I asked her, not really liking the house she had taken us to live in. It wasn’t like home at all.

“Not long, Jack,” she whispered, taking me in her arms. Then, holding me close, she forbade me to ever discuss with my sisters what she had told me. According to her, they would feel ashamed and humiliated if they had any idea I knew my father had hurt them. Because of this, I grew to be repulsed by my father. Worse than that, I found myself becoming petrified of him and wishing never to see him again.

Knowingly or unknowingly, my mother was creating invisible but very real barriers between me and my sisters. I felt so much anguish for them but had no way of unleashing it. So I retreated, withdrew and studied them from afar, feeling guilty that I knew their dark secrets but had been muted in any attempt to offer them comfort. This really pissed me off, because Kara and I had once been close. When we were still living at home, we used to collect the petals that had fallen from the flowers that grew along the shores of the lake. Kara would wash out old glass bottles and I would line them up on the grass to dry out. We would then take the petals that we had collected and push them into the empty bottles and add water from the lake and take them back to the caves. Kara had more patience than me, she was quite happy to leave them for several days to stew. I however, would creep out into the yard, unscrew the tops and inhale the sweet smell.

“Jack, you shouldn’t open them yet.

They’re not ready!” she would scold me.

“I just can’t wait to start selling them!

We’ll be rich!” I told her.

It had been Kara’s idea to make a little stall in the passageways and sell our bottles of perfume to passersby. I knew deep down we wouldn’t sell any, as the area we lived in was poor. The people could barely afford to buy food, let alone perfume.

“Jack, if you don’t leave the perfume alone for another few days, we won’t sell any of them as they won’t have any smell.”

Reluctantly, I replaced the lids, but continued to check on them daily when Kara wasn’t around. Kara and I would spend those days waiting for the perfume to ripen, fantasizing about what we would spend our riches on once we had sold them all.

In fact, we made a grand total of ten pence. On the day that Kara felt sure our perfume was ready to hit the market, we placed a blanket on the ground just outside our front shutter. We waited for the rush of customers we had dreamt about, but they must have all been busy that day.

When we had given up all hope of selling any of our perfume, one solitary customer visited our stall. My dad appeared from around the side of the cave, picked up one of the bottles, and dabbed a little of it behind his ears and onto each wrist.

“This smells wonderful!” he told us. “I think I will have a couple of bottles, please.” Kara put two bottles of our perfume into a paper bag and handed them to him.

“How much do I owe you?” he asked.

“They are five pence each,” she informed him.

“A bargain,” he said, handing her the money.

Once he had gone back into the cave, Kara gave me one of the five pence pieces he had given her, and we shut up stall. We then skipped hand in hand down the narrow passageways to the market where we bought ourselves a bag of penny sweets.

Although I was close to Kara, Lorre and I hadn’t been so close. I don’t know if this was due to the age gap between us, but she tended to be a bit of a bitch.

Although I had always been tall for my age, I was still too short in height to be able to open the kitchen shutter back home, so when I was in need of a drink, I was often reliant on my big sister, Lorre, to get one for me. Even if I had managed to get into the kitchen, I couldn’t reach the water pump, let alone crank the handle. Lorre would hoist me up onto her shoulders and carry me towards the kitchen. Just as the kitchen shutter came within my reach, she would pull away before I had managed to get the shutter open.

“Lorre, stop it!” I would moan. She would then head back towards the kitchen, with me bobbing around on her shoulders. Again, just as we reached the kitchen she would turn away.

“Lorre, please! I’m thirsty!”

“It’s not
Thursday
!” she would say. “It’s Monday!”

This little game of hers would go on and on, until I was so frustrated, I would cry. She would then pour some water into a bowl and tell me to lick it up like a wolf. Panting with thirst, I would get onto all fours, and lap the water out of the bowl like a dog. I don’t know if she did this to be cruel, or that little bit of the wolf inside got the better of her, but she always just took it too far. So I grew up just a little wary of her as a child and so never had the closeness that Kara and I so often shared.

Therefore, because of the love that I had for my sisters, and hearing the stories of what my father had done, I began expressing hatred for my father in front of them. I would exaggerate any chastisement that my father had ever given me, to justify my newfound hate for him and to be like them.

Kiera

Jack got up from his seat and went to the window. He stood with his back to me. I looked across the room at my father. He sat forward, like a black shadow. He didn’t move. He was either asleep, unconscious, or…no, I wouldn’t let myself think that. I looked quickly at Jack who still had his back to me, as he looked thoughtfully out of the window at the snow which continued to fall.

I stole a quick glance down at the floor and at the tiny pile of dust. It had grown a little, but not much. The skin across my face had now begun to tighten. It felt as if I was wearing one of those face packs. Instead of feeling hot, my skin felt stone-cold. I didn’t know how much longer Jack was prepared to carry on talking for. I hoped a little longer. Not just because I needed more time to become a statue, but because I was surprised by what he was telling me. It was like he was giving his confession somehow – unburdening his soul. As I sat and listened, I found it hard to picture him as a boy. He must have been one once, right? We had all been children. To look at him standing before the window, the reflection of his hideously gaunt face reflected back in the glass, I found it almost impossible to picture him sitting on his mother’s lap as an eight-year-old as she told him that his father was a killer. How would any eight-year-old deal with something like that? I wondered. I had found it difficult enough reconciling the fact my mother was a Vampyrus and a killer, and I had been much older than eight when I had to confront that truth. What must that have done to him?

I pushed those thoughts away – right out of my head. I knew I mustn’t be drawn into Jack’s story. I had to focus, stay calm, so I was ready to save my father and Potter when the time came. Jack might have been an eight-year-old boy once, but not anymore. He had become a twisted and brutal killer. I stared again across the dimly-lit room at my father to remind myself of that fact.

Jack stepped away from the window. With his back to me, he went across the room to my father.

Taking a handful of his hair in his fist, Jack yanked back my father’s head.

“Still alive,” he said, over his shoulder at me. Then he added, with a wry smile, “Can I tempt you with something to eat?”

I looked away, back at the pile of dust on the floor beneath my chair. Jack let go of my father’s head, and I heard an audible crack as his chin slammed into his chest. My father groaned in pain.

“Whoops,” Jack said, wincing at the sound.

Knowing I had to entice Jack away from my father before he peeled any more flesh from him, I said, “How did you deal with that anger, Jack?”

He looked at me, a little bemused, his head to one side.

“How did you feel knowing that your father had hurt your sisters real bad, but you couldn’t do anything to help them?”

“Helpless,” he said, with a smile. “Just how you feel now, knowing that you can’t help the ones you love.”

I glanced at my father, then back at Seth.

“It made you feel angry, didn’t it? Did it rattle the monster’s cage inside of you?”

“Just like yours is rattling now,” he said, taking his seat in front of me again.

“What else did your mother tell you?” I asked, wanting him to get back to his story, to take his mind off the room, and what I was planning.

“She told me a lot more,” he smiled, but it wasn’t a sneer or a happy smile – it was a grimace, like he had just tasted something really bad.

“What did she tell you?” I asked him, slowly turning my wrists in their chains fastened behind me.

With the light fading in his eyes again, like he was slipping into some kind of dream, Jack said, “It was a weekday, and I hadn’t attended school for some time, not since the night we had fled my father…

Jack

…Mother said it was too dangerous to attend the local school, as my father would be lying in wait to steal us away from her. On this particular day, she had left Lorre in charge of Kara and Rik at the safe house, and had led me down to the beach. It was still early February and bitterly cold. As we walked along the sea wall, she relayed to me an incident that had occurred between her and my father, just after I had been born. Mother recalled it had been as cold as the wind that whipped around us now. She told me my father had been in a furious rage about something, she couldn’t quite remember what, but his face had been white and livid and his eyes had shone bright yellow with anger.

“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.