“What happened next?” I asked, eager to know everything.
“I discovered that racing car on the front step a few weeks later, with a note,” he explained.
“What did it say?” My heart was thumping.
“Joshua asked if I would pass the birthday present to you,” he said. “How could I not? It was your birthday. You were only nine years old. All boys, human or not, would have loved that racing car.”
I thought of that present and how guilty my mother had made me feel for taking it. I pushed those memories away.
“As I learnt more and more about Joshua from your mother,” Father Paul continued, “I placed my report to my brother, stating that we had a rogue Lycanthrope who needed to be hunted down and sent to trial before the Elders.”
I listened to what he had to say as he sat and told me the exact same tales my mother had told me over the years. When he had finished, I looked into his dead, black eyes and said, “Do you believe everything my mother has told you about my father?”
“Yes, I have to,” he said, just above a whisper and looked away again.
Father Paul offered me one of his spare bedrooms, telling me that I could stay for a week or two until my mother came back to her senses.
Then leaning in close to me and placing one hand on my shoulder, he said, “This has to remain a secret. If my brother were to find out you were here, he would cut me – denounce me as his brother.”
“But why?” I asked him. “He’s your brother.”
“He follows the Elders’ laws, as should I,”
he said. “I have sworn to give my life to the teachings of the Elders and one of those is that I help those Lycanthrope who genuinely want the curse lifted. But help is all I am meant to give them.”
“But that’s what you are doing, isn’t it?” I said.
“I mixed with your mother – fell in love with her,” he reminded me. “As you know, my elder brother didn’t approve. To stop him from going straight to the Elders, I had to promise him I would never have anything to do with your mother or any of you again.”
“So why are you helping me now?” I asked him.
Then, pulling me close, he said, “Because I love you as if you were my own son,” he said softly.
“Do you really think your brother would report you to the Elders?” I asked him, hugging him back and enjoying being held by him. It was the first time I could remember in such a long while that someone had shown me any kind of affection.
“My brother wouldn’t want to report me, but if the Elders were ever to find out that he knew what was going on but failed to report me, he would be punished, too,” he explained, gently easing me away from him and looking into my eyes.
“What would your punishment be for breaking the laws of the Elders you vowed to uphold?” I asked him.
“Execution,” he whispered, then left me alone in my room.
I didn’t have any clean underwear or clothes, so Father Paul lent me some of his. I looked odd in his black garments. It wasn’t as if I were planning on going out and I kind of liked wearing all black. Being away from my mother, I was able to step back from the situation I had endured at home. In doing so, I began to feel this overwhelming feeling of confusion. I realised that I knew very little about myself and who I really was. I only knew what I had been told about by my mother, and what I had heard played heavily on my mind. She was also a mystery to me. The problem was, I had no way of substantiating anything that my mother had ever told me. I knew nothing about my father’s side of the family. My mother had told me that both his parents had died.
Although I was very happy to be staying with Father Paul, and I loved the father-son relationship that we shared, I began to feel very lost within myself. My sleep was often troubled with nightmares, filled with the disturbing images my mother had rooted there. I would often sit in front of my bathroom mirror and scrutinise my face. I would look at it from different angles, tilting the mirror from left to right, up and down, to see if in any way I resembled my father, my mother, brother or sisters. At times I believed I saw similarities, and on others, none at all. I would often draw self-portraits and slightly manipulate the curve of my mouth, the shape of my eyes, and the length of my nose. I could let my imagination run wild and I started painting pictures of myself as anything I wanted. I became obsessed with knowing what was inside of me, so I did drawings of me with my flesh peeled back so I could see underneath. I drew myself as monsters, as a Vampyrus, and then a wolf. This fascinated me, and the idea of being able to metamorphose into another person captured my imagination.
Over those few weeks I spent hiding out at Father Paul’s, I continued to be obsessed with the notion of being able to manipulate my appearance so I no longer had to be the confused and self-doubting Jack. I could be whoever –
whatever
– I wanted to be.
However much I tried to change my outward appearance, in my self-portraits, I still felt completely bewildered inside. My upbringing, with all its lies and deceit, the sneaking around and the pretense, had finally taken its toll. I felt very much as if I had been raised in something not dissimilar to a cult environment. I felt totally brainwashed and confused, and the more I attempted to reprogramme myself, the more confused I became inside.
It was during this period that I thought a lot about my real father. As the days passed, I found myself thinking about him and Father Paul. I could hear myself over and over again asking if he believed what my mother had said was true. I remembered how I had lied to him some years ago about my dad – telling him that he had beaten me when he never had. I became ever more consumed with guilt. What if it had all been lies about my father, like I suspected? If it had, it meant a massive injustice had taken place. He had missed out on raising his own children.
Somewhere, deep inside, I began to feel responsible for this and I began to become consumed with guilt. My guilt was twofold. I felt guilty for lying to Father Paul, and I felt guilty that if I truly suspected an injustice had taken place, shouldn’t I do something to put it right?
My guilt began to disturb my sleep and I started to suffer with more gruesome nightmares.
Every night, I would have this reoccurring nightmare about Father Paul. In this dream he was laid out dead on a stone slab in a mortuary that looked as if it were from the 1800s. It was filthy, and archaic surgical tools lay abandoned and bloody on nearby workbenches. He was always zipped shut in a see-through plastic body bag, and I could see him inside. As I slowly moved closer, the bag slowly began to mist up as he started to breathe in and out. I could hear a hideous rasping sound coming from his throat as he desperately tried to suck in mouthfuls of air. As I looked down at him, I would become consumed with panic, realising he wasn’t truly dead, but still alive and suffocating inside the plastic bag. In a frenzy, I would try to unfasten it and set him free. I just couldn’t get it open. He would stare out at me from beneath the plastic, his eyes pleading with me to save him. He would attempt to say something to me, but however hard he tried, as soon as he opened his mouth, he would suck in a mouthful of the body bag, muffling whatever it was he was trying to tell me. It was like he had a secret he wanted to pass before me – something he didn’t want to carry into death with him.
I would wake, sweating and gasping for breath. My throat was dry and sore, unable to make a sound myself, as if my own voice had been taken from me. Even though it was Father Paul I was dreaming of, it was my dad that I just couldn’t stop thinking about. So it was with a nervous excitement rushing through my entire being that I decided I would try and find him. The first place I would look would be our home in the caves on the other side of the fountain. What would I do? Go up to the front door and just knock? Would he even recognise me? The last time I had seen him, I was an eight-year-old boy. I was now fourteen and turning into a man. I was tall and gangly for my age and I had already started to sprout hair over my chin and cheeks. I wasn’t that fresh-faced little boy anymore.
I sat up in bed, my heart racing, and with a cold sweat making my body shiver, I took up a pencil and some paper. I would write a letter to him and post it under the shutter of the cave where we had once lived together. I wrote the letter, read through it, then ripped it up and started all over again. I did this several times until I had written something I was happy with. This is what I eventually wrote:
Dear Father,
This letter will probably come as a
shock to you, but I have been thinking about
you. Since the night we left home, I have often
thought about you and have never forgotten
you.
I remember you playing with my racing
cars with me. I remember the time you lost that
money. I remember that you liked to paint very
much and I too enjoy painting and drawing, so
in that respect, I must take after you. There are
other good memories that I have of you, but
they are too many to list here.
My life hasn’t always been easy; as I
am sure yours hasn’t either. I have never really
been sure of the reasons that Mother took us
away from you, although she has given her
version of events. Mother and I are not very
close. I hope that this letter is well received by
you and hope that you would like to meet with
me. I haven’t written this letter to cause any
problems for you. My only wish is to get to
know you for myself and to make up for some
of the lost time between us.
If you would like to meet me, I will wait
at sundown on the shore of the great lake by
the Fountain of Souls for the next three days. I
have enclosed a drawing that I have done of
myself just in case you don’t recognise me.
I really hope that you would like to
meet with me and possibly become father and
son again.
Jack.
I placed the letter and my drawing into an envelope and sealed it tightly shut. I got out of bed, dressed, and placing the letter in my back pocket, I left my room. I went downstairs and found Father Paul sitting, staring out of the window. I had discovered him like this more than a few times since I had come to stay. He always had the same gaunt look on his pale face. It was a look of sadness and misery. I knew in my heart that he was longing for my mother. He loved her. He was hoping that she would come and see him, or send some message, even though he would be risking his life if discovered. It hurt me to see him sitting there like that, longing to see my mother. I felt like telling him what she had accused him of but I couldn’t. I couldn’t hurt him. I picked up my rucksack and said goodbye. As I turned to leave, he called after me.
“Jack, where are you going?”
“For a walk,” I lied, and left the house.
Jack
I made my way across town and out into the country towards the forests which surrounded the great lake and hid the Fountain of Souls from the humans. It was cold. I pulled the collar of the long, black coat I had borrowed from Father Paul up about my throat. In the distance, on the brow of a hill, I could see the vast outline of the forest like a shadow on the horizon. I headed towards it.
I couldn’t help but feel nervous as I wondered if I were doing the right thing in going in search of my father. What if the stories my mother had told me about him were true? Couldn’t I be putting myself in danger? The Elders hadn’t believed her, and I knew she had lied about Father Paul. So with those thoughts foremost in my mind, I climbed the hill to the forest. I reached it just as the sun started to fade in the overcast sky. I looked back just once, then turned and stepped into the gaps between the trees. The ground was covered in a carpet of fallen pine needles and they smelt sweet. I walked and walked and remembered the stories I had heard as a boy about the humans who had come into the forest, never to be seen again. Some were believed to have been lost and starved to death. There were other stories though – nightmarish stories that giant wolves roamed the forests and they had been the reasons those humans hadn’t returned.
With a faint smile growing on my lips, I pressed on.
There were so many trees. They stretched for as far as I could see. I hadn’t been in the forest since that night we had raced through them, when my mother had made her escape. The deeper I went, the darker the forest became. The air felt clammy and I lowered the collar of my coat. I peered through the darkness and in the distance, between the trees; I could see something twinkling back at me. I headed towards it. I made my way between the trees and I found myself stepping out onto a small sandy shore. Before lay the great lake. The moon was now up, and it glinted on the surface of the dark water. It was breathtaking. I wondered why so many of my fellow Lycanthrope wanted to leave such a place to live in the human world. To beat the curse, I guessed. As I stepped closer to the lake, I could see that it was blood-red and I remembered how I had been told that it was such a colour because of all the blood shed by my kind. The noise of the water rippling against the shore sounded like a song which played out across the vast lake, disappearing amongst the giant pine trees and spruces which surrounded it on all sides. I looked to my left, and way off in the distance, I could see the fountain racing upwards, carrying the souls of the murdered back up to heaven. I made my way towards it.
The sound of the water charging high above me was deafening and I had forgotten how loud it had been. There was a rocky lip jutting out so I climbed onto it and found the slick-looking path that would lead me behind the fountain.
Again I felt excited, yet scared to be returning to my home – to where I had been born, and I guess, where I truly belonged. On the other side of the water, I found myself in the giant tunnel which spiraled downwards into the caves. I followed the tunnel, and my senses became overwhelmed with all the smells and sounds I had forgotten. I could hear the howls of the wolves, and it made my heart beat fast. I could see the thousands of lights glowing warmly from the caves which stretched out below me. What really told me I was home was the smell of the wax wafting up from the thousands and thousands of candles which had been lit for Candlemas.