So, day by day, my life over that year had grown ever more complex. At home I was known as Paul, at school and at the church where I cleaned the candlesticks, I was called Jack. In the privacy of our home, and on our secret trips away, I called Father Paul, ‘Dad.’ This was essential if we were to keep our secret family life together concealed. What a mind-fuck, right? But I thought the lying and the sneaking around was a small price to pay to fill an emptiness that had opened within me since the night we left our father.
It had almost been two years since I had last seen my real dad. I had adapted to my new life, and by now I considered Father Paul, despite the fact he was a Vampyrus and the fucked-up set of circumstances that came with him, to be my dad. I could see this pleased my mother, and in turn, this pleased me. I had also come to believe my mother’s happiness was, in some way, partly my responsibility.
With Father Paul taking an increasing role in my life, my mother would continue to fill my head with a regular diet of tales about my real father. She retold the stories so graphically that I hated the very thought of him. I therefore turned more and more to Father Paul, in an attempt to cleanse myself of my real father. Over the following year, I spent much of my time in my mother’s company. While she had me to herself, she would tell me about my father and her own childhood. I do not know if she sought out similar opportunities with my brother and sisters, but she rarely spoke openly and so graphically about her past when we were all together.
She depicted her own childhood as harsh and severe, living amongst the wolves behind the Fountain of Souls. She told me she had an older brother. I couldn’t remember ever meeting him.
Mother explained how, as she grew up, her brother would often be cruel to her. On occasions he had poured pepper into her eyes, and had tried to make her ill by feeding her poisonous berries that he had found around the lake on the other side of the fountain.
“This was the start of him changing,” she told me. “He was giving into his hatred and letting the Lycanthrope curse take hold of him.
“Where is he now?” I asked, shocked by her story.
“I heard rumours that he had gone to live in the human world. But the curse was upon him.
In the human world he became a killer of children and women. A team of Vampyrus trackers disguised as police officers hunted him down.
They put him on trial in The Hollows before the Elders. His crimes were considered so despicable, that he was sentenced to death by the Elders and Vampyrus.”
As a young boy, I felt it strange to discover that someone in my own family had been hunted down and sentenced to death. It made me think of my father. Would the same happen to him? I wondered. I didn’t know if that would be a good or a bad thing. How would it make me feel?
I had never seen a Lycanthrope, other than my mother in the safe house, attack or harm anyone.
Maybe these Lycanthrope only committed their crimes in the human world and slunk back to the caves to wash away their sins in the Fountains of Souls. Years later, I would discover that this was the case. The red waters of the fountains run upwards towards heaven, as the Elders are believed to be taking back the blood shed by the Lycanthrope, as if absorbing the pain of their victims.
“How did you meet my father?” I asked.
Mother looked back at me, and then brushing my hair from my brow, she said, “I first saw your father as he left the market carrying a sack of meat and vegetables. He was struggling with it, and the bottom of the sack gave way, spilling the food onto the ground. He bent over to gather it up, and in doing so, his trousers ripped up the back, exposing his bottom for all to see.”
I noticed a faint smile on her lips as she remembered this. “I hurried over to help him gather up the raw meat and vegetables. We walked home together and he had introduced himself as Joshua Seth. I was only seventeen at the time and he was fifteen years older. He seemed very nice – pleasant. We saw each other a few times more and he asked me to marry him.
I wasn’t sure that I wanted to, because he seemed so much older than me, so I spoke to my mother about how I felt.”
“What did she say?” I asked.
“She thought a mature man would’ve been ideal for me,” Mother explained, looking into the distance as if remembering that conversation.
“She said that he would be able to support me, and that in time I would grow to love him.”
After the ceremony, my father had taken her to the fountains at the entrance of the caves.
Here, he asked her to wait, while he went into the human world. Mother told me she waited for hours but my father never returned.
“I didn’t see or hear from your father for about six weeks,” she explained. “Then, one afternoon, he showed up again. He explained that he had had difficulties in sorting out accommodation. I wasn’t sure what to think, but he was my husband so I felt duty-bound to go with him. Part of me also felt curious – excited – about living on the other side of the fountain. But that excitement was short-lived,” she said.
“Why, mother?” I asked her.
“Your father moved us into some poky and rather unpleasant human district,” she explained with a grimace. “The flat consisted of two small rooms. I wanted to leave, but just weeks after arriving there, I discovered I was pregnant with Lorre. It was during this time that I saw the first signs that perhaps the curse was taking hold of your father.”
She told me my father’s behaviour became increasingly peculiar and she witnessed the first signs of his violent temper. He had worked shifts in a nearby factory and earnt little money. Life on the other side of the fountain hadn’t been as easy as perhaps my father had hoped. Mother explained that she was left on her own most evenings as my father worked the night shift. She told me the area they lived in was disgusting and so, too, was their landlord.
“One night, just before going to bed, I heard a tapping at the door,” mother said. “I opened the door to discover the landlord looming there, his huge frame filling the opening. He was a repulsive man, with great big flabby breasts and an enormous gut that hung over the top of his trousers. He was bald, and as always, short of breath.”
“What did he want?” I asked her, feeling sick at the description she had given of this man.
“We were behind with our rent and he wanted to know how I was going to make up the arrears,” Mother said.
“Didn’t you have the money to pay him?”
I asked, eyes wide.
“No, but I knew how he expected me to repay him. I recognised that look he had about him. He pushed me against the wall and pressed himself into me.”
Mother went on to explain how she had squirmed frantically beneath his colossal weight, as he tried to force his tongue into her mouth.
Being only eleven years old, my imagination worked overtime as she continued with her story, and I began to fully understand the enormity of what she was telling me.
“I pushed the landlord off me,” she said.
“I think he was surprised by my strength and the flash of light in my eyes. It had surprised me. I had never felt such anger and disgust before.”
She went on to explain that with a look of fear on his face, the landlord left at once, returning to his own flat on the ground floor. When my father returned home the following morning, my mother was still weeping and upset.
“Your father was the biggest of Lycanthropes,” she said, “but I was soon to discover he had the strength of at least ten men when he let the curse take him. Through my sobs, I told Joshua what had taken place the previous night. His blue eyes had turned cold and grey, then bright, fiery yellow. Before I’d even finished telling my story, Joshua had stormed from our rooms and down the stairs to the landlord’s apartment.”
With my heart racing in my chest, and my mouth wide open, I sat and listened to what she told me next.
“I could hear the sound of crashing and smashing, as your father tore down his door. I can remember hearing an appalling sound as the overweight landlord began to shriek and whine.
Then I could hear more sounds of crashing and banging, and the pitiful sounds of the landlord screaming in pain. I went to the door and looked in horror as your father dragged him back up the stairs to the communal bathroom. I watched in sheer panic as Joshua, now more wolf than man, repeatedly smashed the landlord’s face into the white porcelain toilet bowl until it was splattered scarlet with the man’s blood. Your father then rammed the squealing man’s head down the toilet and screamed at him, ‘ You fucking animal. You think you can try it on with my wife, you fat fuck! I’ve a good mind to kill you!’
I looked at my mother, shocked not only because I’d never heard such words come from her before, but by what she was telling me about my father. She stared down into my wide, open eyes and stunned-looking face. Then leaning close into me, she whispered in my ear, “ Your father then ripped the landlord’s battered head from his shoulders and drank the blood that pumped from his open throat.”
I lurched away from her, terrifying images of my dad killing a fat man and then drinking his blood. I shook my head from side to side, desperate to clear my mind of those pictures. The look of horror on my face didn’t stop my mother from continuing. It was like she was enjoying it somehow.
“You father snarled at me,” she continued, “telling me to fetch some bedding.
Shaking from head to foot, I pulled the blankets from our bed and returned to the bathroom and locked the door. In the short time it had taken me to grab the blankets, Joshua had dragged the landlord’s corpse into the bath. With his claws like a set of knives, he removed the landlord’s arms and legs. He worked feverishly, his eyes bright orange as he sliced the man into pieces. He ordered me to help him wrap the man’s limbs up in the blanket. Even though they had been cut up, the chunks felt heavy and wet with blood in my shaking hands. “I can’t do this,” I cried, but he didn’t listen to me, Jack. Your father made me help him dispose of that body in a piece of nearby wasteland. After, your father howled in some kind of sick delight, and led me back through the forests. Once clear of the human world, he stripped me naked on the shore of the great lake and its red waters. He then tore his clothes free and dragged me in. He washed the blood from me, as I stood crying and shaking in his arms. When he had washed that man’s blood from us, he led me out of the water. I went to put my clothes on again. I couldn’t speak and felt numb with shock.