Chapter Eighteen

Jack

Just after Christmas, just before my fourteenth birthday, my mother disappeared for several days. She didn’t say goodbye, or leave any note as to where she had gone. Curious to know if Father Paul knew her whereabouts, I trudged through the snow to his church, but he wasn’t around either. I wondered if they were together.

Kara was very close to mother, and since Lorre had left home too, she was very upset during this time, and at night she would often sit at the end of my bed and cry.

“I hope Mum is okay,” she sobbed.

I put my arm around her and pulled her tight. Although Kara and I had been close as children, since leaving our father, we had sadly grown apart. To cuddle her like this conjured up wonderful memories of us making perfume together as children.

“Mum will be ok, I’m sure of it,” I told her.

“I know she’s mad, but I still don’t want anything bad to happen to her,” she cried.

I was taken aback by what she had just said, so I probed further. “What do you mean ‘mad’?” I asked her.

“Some of the things she says and does,”

Kara sobbed.

“Like what?” I knew very well what she meant, but I wanted her to say it.

“She can be very cruel sometimes, but I don’t think she means it. It’s just her way,” Kara sniffed.

I was so surprised at hearing Kara talk like this about our mother. I remembered how we had both shared that awful account our mother had relayed to us about our father killing that human baby. I was desperate to find out what Kara had thought about it. I wanted to know if she too shared the nightmares I had had since that day. I believed this was my chance to raise the subject with her.

“You know that story Mum told us about Father murdering that baby? I keep having nightmares about it. Do you?” I pulled her tight and could smell the clean fragrance of her freshly washed hair.

“Sometimes,” she said, her head buried against my shoulder.

“Do you believe it’s true?” I dared to ask.

“It must be, or why would she tell us?”

Kara said, looking at me with her red-rimmed eyes.

“I can’t understand why she told us, truth or not. What purpose did it serve, other than to upset us?” I asked her.

“And that’s what I mean, Jack, when I say she’s mad.”

Then to my surprise, just when I thought Kara and me could open up together and maybe rekindle some of that closeness we had once shared, she got up and left my room. Momentarily, I was in two minds whether I should follow her and attempt to pursue our conversation, but I guessed she wasn’t ready to talk anymore. Kara was sixteen at the time, nearly three years older than me, but on this occasion, as I had sat and comforted her, I felt as if I was the elder. Nik was just eight at the time, and the fact that my mother had seemingly vanished didn’t bother him at all.

He sat on the rug in the living room playing with his toys.

When Mother came home from wherever she had been, she was very upset. Father Paul was at her side.

“Kathy, try not to get yourself too upset,”

he assured her. I could tell by the tremor in his own voice that he was also very distraught. Kara was sitting numbly on the sofa and didn’t say a word.

“What’s wrong?” I asked as I sat on the edge of the sofa.

Through her sobs, I just managed to decipher what my mother had to say.

“The Elders didn’t believe me! They chose to believe your father instead.”

Confused, I asked, “What? My father has been captured by the Vampyrus? What does that mean?”

My mother just sat and buried her face in her hands, so Father Paul answered for her.

“Joshua handed himself in to my brother and his team just over a week ago,” he said, and I noticed how he called him Joshua rather than my father.

“Why did he hand himself in?” I asked, my heart racing at hearing this news.

“He has spent the last few years gathering evidence to prove his innocence,” Father Paul explained. “The Elders didn’t believe the accusations your mother made about Joshua. He denied it all.” Father Paul looked ashen and his voice sounded scared as he continued, “The Elders have set Joshua free.”

My mother continued to sit and sob as she left Father Paul the difficult task of revealing the court’s decision to us.

“What evidence did my father have?” I asked, standing up and looking down at my mother. “You told me that he beat you. That he beat my sisters. That he was a murderer. Why didn’t the Elders believe you?” I needed the answer to this question. She had managed to convince me of my father’s murderous behaviour, why hadn’t the Elders believed her?

Without looking at me she said, “Your father is very clever. He managed to twist everything.” Through her continued sobs, she explained.

It became clear that my mother and Father Paul had both been in The Hollows giving evidence to the Elders over the last seven days.

Evidence for whatever reason, the Elders hadn’t believed.

Overhearing the conversation as Nik played on the rug, he looked at my mother and said, “Can I see my dad now?”

I doubted if Nik would even have recognised him if he had passed him in the street, as he had been only four the night we had fled the caves.

Hearing this, my mother fled from the room, Father Paul close behind her. Neither me nor Nik got an answer to our questions. Not just yet, anyhow. We ate in silence that night, as the news of what had transpired at Elders’ court slowly sank in. I felt a little guilty, as deep inside me, down in the basement, I felt the slightest tingling of excitement at the prospect of seeing my father again. The smallest shoots of curiosity sprung up in the shadows of that basement and they grew evermore wild as they searched desperately for the light.

After Father Paul left that night, in a somewhat sombre and thoughtful mood, I lay in bed with that feeling of excitement. I couldn’t quite explain it, but it began to slowly consume me.

I felt guilty for feeling it, but however hard I tried, it just wouldn’t go away. I thought of all the hideous stories my mother had told me about my father, but the feelings of excitement and curiosity just wouldn’t go.

Over the next few days, the thought of seeing my father obsessed me. I pictured myself going back to the caves we had left some years ago. In my head it hadn’t changed, everything was exactly as we had left it. I tried to picture my father; I hadn’t seen him in all that time. I could remember what he looked like, his fair hair, hazel-yellow eyes and small build, but whenever I closed my eyes to picture him, his image became distorted around the edges. However much I fantasized about meeting him again, I suspected if my mother had anything to do with it, I never would.

A few nights later my suspicions were proved right, as she said to Kara, Nik, and me, “We’re going to have to run away again.”

Chapter Nineteen

Jack

The plan was this: Father Paul was going to leave the Blackcoats and run away. We were then going to move into his brother’s holiday home in Wales.

“We’ll be able to start a new life together,” he assured us.

“Nobody will ever find us,” Mother added excitedly. I knew she was talking about my father.

I asked my mother about Lorre and whether she would be coming with us. She then explained, although we hadn’t seen Lorre in months, she had received letters from my sister.

Apparently Lorre had managed to make herself a life amongst the humans and was training to be a nurse in the city.

As Father Paul had little money of his own, and he didn’t own the house up on the hill from the church, he was going to go and confess to his brother that he had fallen in love with my mother, a Lycanthrope, and ask if they could live in his remote little cottage in Wales, as he intended to leave the priesthood.

The icy hand that had taken hold of my tummy all those years began to squeeze again.

This time around, I had a greater understanding of what was going on and what we were being asked to do. However much Father Paul protested his love for my mother, I knew she just wanted to put yet more distance between us and our father.

Over the next couple of weeks, the situation at home continued as normal. Kara stayed at home with my mother. Nik and I continued to attend school, Father Paul still visited most evenings, and the planned escape wasn‘t discussed. Even though I was fourteen now, and had a better grasp of the situation, I still felt disjointed and insecure. Each time I went to bed, I wondered if it would be my last night in my home.

Would we leave in the middle of the night again?

Would it be as frenzied and as hectic as before? If so, how much notice would I be given? Would I be expected to leave everything behind again? As I lay in bed at night, I would look around my room and make a mental list of the items I would snatch up and grab if it came to us fleeing in a matter of moments again. As days rolled into weeks, I slowly began to take my most treasured possessions and place them in a small pile by my bedroom door. There wasn’t much, just my paintings, along with the water colour paints and brushes that Father Paul had bought me. On top of these I sat my toy bear, which I had bought from the caves with me. I was prepared.

Mother started to fill my head with her stories about my father again. Her voice would be cold, yet her eyes would blaze as if on fire. I had seen this look too many times before and I knew it was a sign that another tale about my father was coming.

I wished she would stop these stories, they made me feel sick. She could probably see the look of despair in my eyes and would add, “I’m just telling you for your own good. I think you have a right to know what your father is really like before you go deciding whether you want to see him or not.”

From the years of stories she had bombarded me with about my father, I had a pretty good idea of what he had been like. So the days slipped by, and I became ever more apprehensive. Were we staying? Were we going?

If so, when?

Then, when I least expected it, the news came – and with it a change in my mother that would affect me more than I could ever have imagined.