Pathos - A Duskwood Fanfiction

Chapter 16

Jake stood on the gravel driveway of the Donfort family home as the afternoon sun pelted down, looking up at its second storey in silence as the cold October wind whispered and shivered all around him. He was watching the lone triangular window that punctuated the front of the house proper on the second floor, a window that he knew better than any other window that he had ever looked at, or out of, previously, having had stared at photos of it for almost two weeks straight.

Its curtains were tightly closed, a gauzy film of something like sheer white tulle almost flush with the window pane as the denser lavender coloured fabric of the drapes lay behind. The house was silent and still, no observable lights on through the open curtains of the downstairs parts of the house, but Jake knew that it was far from empty.

As he continued to look upwards, he heard the crunching of gravel behind him as Alan Bloomgate approached, but he did not remove his gaze from Hannah's bedroom window as the police chief came to a stop beside him.

After a moment, Alan spoke.

"Ready?"

Jake continued to watch in silence for a few beats, and then, without moving his gaze, spoke a single word in reply.

"Yes," he said softly, and kept his eyes on Hannah's window as Alan moved away and up the steps of the porch to press the doorbell to the right of the front door.

The summoning call of the bell was a muted, musical melody as it sang within the depths of the house, and Alan stood silently as he waited. Out of the periphery of his vision, Jake saw the police chief glance over at him as the seconds shifted into minutes, but Jake kept his gaze on the window silently.

Alan then pressed the doorbell once more, and after its gentle sound had died away, issued a sharp rap on the door itself with his knuckles.

"Miss Donfort? It's Alan Bloomgate," the police chief said in that loud but not obnoxious voice that seemed to come standard issue with the uniform that all officers wore; the one that was clear, even, and stern. Jake knew first hand that it could cut through a lot of barriers, that voice. Both physical and emotional. It was remarkably effective, and it was something that he deeply admired about the police chief.

Alan raised his hand to knock again as the house remained silent, but a sudden word from Jake made him pause and look over his shoulder at the other man who had remained rooted to the spot and was still staring upwards.

"Wait," Jake commanded softly, and even though Alan felt a flash of extreme irritation at the sheer balls of the man who was stupifyingly comfortable in ordering a police chief around, he did as he was bid and lowered his hand back down to his side.

And then he heard it. The sound of running feet from inside. He could hear the crashing footfall as someone pounded down the stairs from the second storey to the first, and then in a sudden cacophany of movement the front door was wrenched open and Hannah Donfort flew past him without so much as a glance. She seemed to glide down the porch stairs without seeming to take a single step, and then she had crossed the gravel driveway instantaneously in bare feet to hurtle herself into the waiting arms of her brother.

Alan watched silently as Jake effortlessly absorbed the full weight of his sister as she collapsed into his chest with heaving sobs, the other man seeming to not being staggered an inch by the impact. He watched as Jake wrapped his arms around her tightly, protectively, the other man's face a harrowing tableau of anguish and sorrow as Hannah's keening cries seeped into the cold murmuring of the autumn wind that wound in serpentine spirals around them.

Jake held her to him with an intensity of embrace that made Alan wonder if the other man was afraid that she would fall if he were to hold her any less tightly, and their bodies shook in tandem with the annihilating despair of Hannah's broken weeping. Her breathing was ragged and shallow, and Alan could see her fingers as they clenched into Jake's back, the knuckles white with the strain. Jake seemed to sense the intensifying of her grief as it began to spiral out of control, and Alan watched mutely as the man that had been declared one of the most dangerous threats to national security effortlessly executed one of the most graceful and beautiful de-escalation techniques that he would never again have the privilege to witness.