Elaine, like the other lady, was tall, pretty, and very pale-looking. I wondered if either of them had ever seen sunlight. She was holding a plate of toast in her hands, which she offered to us. We all took a slice. My stomach still felt bruised from my vomiting the night before, but it still managed to perform tiny somersaults with hunger. The toast must have been prepared some time ago, because as I bit into it, it was cold and the thick layer of butter that was smeared across it had congealed into a yellow mess. Mouthful by tiny mouthful, I forced it down with a grateful smile.
Come my ninth birthday a few weeks later, I hadn’t seen, spoken to, or had any contact with my father. By now I was wondering if I ever wanted to again. During those first strained few weeks, my mother had been mindful at getting me by herself, either on visits into the local village or on chilly, stormy walks along the beach. On these occasions, mother had seized upon the moment to explain why she had taken us away from our father. I had never spent so long on the other side of the fountain before – in the human world – and I wondered if and when I would ever go back.
“Your father did some terrible things, Jack,” she said. “As you know, our race was cursed many hundreds of years ago by the Elders because of the unspeakable crimes our ancestors committed against women and children. Because of what they did, we have been punished. We have a monster living within each of us – the wolf.
There are some of us who believe that we can have the curse lifted if we choose a different way of living – a peaceful existence, one without killing. I believed that your father felt the same at first. Then, he changed. The wolf inside of him took over. I discovered that he had started to kill.
He had been going beyond the fountain and the forests and murdering humans. I pled with him to stop, fearing he would bring the curse down upon all of us, or be caught for his crimes and bring death upon all of us. But he turned his anger on me and your sisters.”
I felt bewildered and shocked by what she had said. She went on to paint the darkest picture possible of my father, pulling at my senses and leaving me without doubt that he was some vile monster who should be loathed and hated for what he had put her and my sisters through.
“So is that why we have run away?” I asked her.
“Yes,” she nodded, looking down into my upturned face.
“But who are these people you have brought us to live with?”
“They are Vampyrus,” she said, just above a whisper.
I had heard of such creatures before. My father had spoken about them. “But don’t the Vampyrus hunt down and kill the wolves, mother?” I asked her.
“Only the bad wolves,” she half-smiled at me. “Only the killers.”
“Like my father?” I asked, my lips tasting salty from the sea air.
“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.
Chapter Four
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?