“Who has done this?” I screamed into the night. “Who has killed my father? Who has taken him from me?” Then, turning to face the forests, I roared, “Show yourself, you coward, so that I can rip your fucking heart out!”
The only sound I could hear was that of my own heart racing inside of me and the constant lapping of the black waters against the shore.
What was this secret that Father Paul and my mother had kept from me? A secret so dark that it forced them to stop the Vampyrus hunting my father? Wanting to know the truth – desperate to know what that secret had been – I knew that the only person who would tell me the truth was Father Paul. I would tell him I had met my father again and demand he tell me this secret.
I looked back at the shoreline for those cars my dad had kept for me all those years, but they were no longer there. They had gone – washed away by the red waters. With my heart aching with an anger I had not felt before, or even dreamed possible, I set off back through the forest to the home I now shared with Father Paul.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Jack
The house was in darkness. I called to him from the bottom of the stairs. “Dad? Dad?”
It was a name I had grown so accustomed to calling him over the last four or five years, that I couldn’t break the habit, even though my real ‘Dad’ had just died in my arms.
Getting no response, I made my way up to his bedroom. The entire house was in total darkness and I couldn’t hear a sound. I pushed open the door and peered into the gloom. All I could see was his outline sitting in the chair by the window, where I had left him thinking about my mother earlier that day. I crossed the room and fumbled around for the desk lamp. I switched it on and bathed the room in a warm glow. I was shocked to see Father Paul sitting in the exact same position as earlier. I guessed he hadn’t moved from that spot all day, as he sat and longed for my mother. He didn’t look up at me, but continued to stare out of the window into the dark.
It was then I saw the blood. His right hand, wrist and forearm, were colored bright red.
“Dad?” I whispered.
He made no response. His eyelids didn’t even flicker. Slowly, I made my way towards him.
His eyes stared blankly out through the window. I reached out with my hand when someone shouted from behind me.
“Don’t you dare touch him!” the voice commanded.
I span around to see a large man standing in the doorway to the room. He had a mop of thick, dark hair which was turning grey and he was dressed in a police uniform.
“Happy now that my brother has taken his own life?” he roared at me.
“Taken his own life?” I stammered, glancing back at the blood which covered Father Paul’s hand and wrist.
“Slit his own wrists to drain himself of the guilt you and your family have caused him,” the police officer said, charging across the room and grabbing my by the back of my neck. His hands were huge and his fingers dug into my flesh.
“Get off me!” I shouted, trying to pull myself free, but he was just too strong. It was then I saw the blood splashed up the front of his white police shirt.
“You and your evil family did this to my brother!” he roared just inches from my face. “I warned him – begged him – to keep away from you filthy wolves, but he just wouldn’t listen to me.
He loved your mother.”
“It was you who killed him!” I screamed, catching sight of Father Paul’s bleeding wrist. “If only you had helped him. He asked you for help but you turned him away. That’s what broke his heart – not my mother!”
“How dare you!” Father Paul’s brother roared, his face turning white with anger. “My brother was cursed the day he met your mother and the rest of you fucking wolves.”
“He was like a father to me,” I protested.
“He loved me like a son.”
“Words like that are gonna get you killed,”
he hissed. “If I were you, I’d forget you ever met him. Forget he was ever part of your life.”
“I can’t!” I screamed at him.
Then, tightening his grip on the back of my neck, he said, “Is the fact that you and your kind drove my brother to his death not enough? Do you want to destroy his memory, too, by claiming that he loved you like a son?”
“But he did,” I cried.
Then pulling me close so our noses were touching, he breathed into my face and said, “If I ever hear you so much as say one word of this – what has happened here tonight or speak about the relationship you claim my brother had with you and your mother, I will personally rip the tongues from your fucking throats.”
His crystal blue eyes suddenly turned dead black.
“Do I make myself clear, wolf?” he whispered.
“Yes,” I said.
Then, with his hand still locked about my throat, he dragged me from the room and down the stairs. At the front door, he yanked it open, and then threw me like an animal out into the dark and the cold.
“Don’t you ever let me see your mutt face around here again. Fuck off back to the caves where you belong,” he growled, then slammed the door shut in my face.
With my soul feeling as if it had been crushed, I staggered down the hill to the church. I felt lost; bewildered and full of hate. I slipped and tripped in the mud and dirt. I pulled myself up again, howling out loud, for my heart felt as if it had been torn apart. I had lost both of my fathers.
Who did I have now? Who was left for me?
Where would I go? I stumbled into the graveyard, blind with grief, and collapsed behind a gravestone. I curled up into a ball and cradled myself. With my eyes closed, and shivering uncontrollably with the cold, I believed it had been Father Paul’s brother who had killed my father by the lake. My father had been murdered before he’d had the chance to tell me Father Paul’s dark secret. His brother had killed my dad to protect Father Paul’s memory. As I lay there in the dark, I made myself a promise that one day I would kill Father Paul’s brother. I would rip his fucking heart out.
I woke to the sound of voices nearby. It was morning. There was a fine layer of crisp frost covering the ground and me. I peered over the gravestone and could see a gathering of people around the entrance to the church. Some of them I recognised to be other Lycanthrope that Father Paul helped to relocate within the human world.
They spoke in hushed and reverent-like voices.
Then one of them pointed up the hill and an eerie silence fell over the ground. I looked up to see a coffin being carried down the hill, and I knew that Father Paul lay inside. His brother carried the coffin on his shoulder along with five others; all of them were dressed in finely pressed police tunics.
They carried the coffin through the graveyard and into the church. With my heart aching, I crept from my hiding place and snuck into the church. I found an alcove and disappeared into the shadows.
The tiny church was packed with Lycanthrope and others I didn’t recognise. I guessed they must have been Vampyrus who had come to pay their last respects. His brother stood at the very front of the church, one of his huge hands placed on top of Father Paul’s coffin. It was resting on a silver trestle in front of the altar, and it looked too small and narrow for him. I couldn’t picture him lying in there, his eyes closed, wrists bloody and torn. I could only picture him as I remembered him, with that kind smile and twinkle that would so often dance in his eyes.
From my hiding place, I looked around at the other people gathered in the church, and realised I was now just another member of his congregation.
Nobody here knew how much I loved him. No one understood what he had meant to me. Not one of them knew we had been as father and son.
I felt I should have been seated just like everyone, not shoved into the shadows at the back of the church. This really hurt, this was my dad’s funeral and I couldn’t mourn him like a son. I felt as if my grief and hurt was being crushed, suppressed inside of me. I felt like standing up and shouting at the top of my voice and unveiling the truth, telling them everything. What would it matter now? It no longer had to be a secret.
Instead, I hid in the dark and sobbed, trying desperately not to bring any attention to myself.
I thought of all the times he had been kind to me, like the day he bought me those paints. Like all the times he had encouraged me. Remembering what he had meant to me, I just couldn’t stop myself from crying. I placed my hand inside my mouth in an attempt to silence myself. I felt as if I were physically in pain, I felt as if my chest were being crushed. I couldn’t accept the one person I had truly loved, the one person who had always given me so much love, encouragement, and hope was gone. What was I going to do? Where was I going to go? Who was going to show me the way?
In that one instant, I felt as if I had lost everything.
During the service, his brother gave an account of Father Paul's life and a portrayal of what he had been like. The person he described was unrecognisable as the man I loved.
I remained hidden at the back of the church and continued to stifle my heartbreak. As the service came to an end, I got up and quietly slipped out. I crossed the small graveyard in front of the church and stood silently by the trees in the distance. I watched as he was carried out and placed gently into a hole that had been dug into the ground. Several pairs of pale claws reached up out of the hole and carried his coffin down into The Hollows. As the wooden box disappeared from view, I stood by myself, unnoticed by the others, and sobbed beneath the trees.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Jack
I waited for Father Paul’s brother and the others to walk somberly away from the graveyard.
I turned my back on that little church and everything that had gone on there. Where was I to go now? But I knew where I had to go. I had to go home and confront my mother. As I made my way there, the anger and frustration grew ever more focused inside of me. My anger and hatred wavered from Father Paul, his brother, to my own father, then back to my mother again. They were the adults in all of this and the choices they had all made had changed my life forever.
As I reached the outskirts of town, it started to snow. My feet crunched over the soft, white carpet that had fallen before me. It wasn’t the only sound I could hear. The sound of my dad’s dying words seemed to travel on the wind, which had started to blow harder.