Darkheart

The Present: Beginnings & Ends

"Mom--?" Jeremiah stepped timidly through the frame, always uncertain what a door ajar meant. "Is something wrong?"

His father lay in bed, looking an old man now, still as disfigured, just more wrinkled across the uneven skin. He'd been in his early forties when he'd had his accident, no young father, and even after all these years, Jeremiah struggled to look at his cadaverous mangled form. The scars on his Frankensteined flesh were old; the redness was dulled. Still, the vision haunted him, though perhaps even less so than the incomprehension of what, if anything, was going on inside the man's damaged skull.

There'd been moments--not particularly proud moments but there all the same--when Jeremiah had considered that killing his father would be the kinder thing to do. A pillow over the man's face while he slept, a neglected deep bath for him to sink into, a bit of something in his food . . . Jeremiah hated that he'd thought out all the ways he could do it invisibly, kindly, that no one would question. He'd never mentioned his thoughts about killing his father to anyone; no, his mother might've murdered her son if she'd known his notions.Why the woman and her daughters thought that letting the man waste away in his living coffin for years unending was somehow a good thing, Jeremiah struggled to comprehend. There were religious angles to it, of course. His mother was devout, as he'd thought he was, once, and in her eyes only God had the privilege of taking a life. But even before what had happened at the resort fifteen years ago, Jeremiah had known that God had already taken his father's life, and after, he'd been sure that God had nothing to do with absolutely any of it--death or life, fate or free will, the beginnings or the ends of anything at all.

All of it began and ended with the incomprehensible core of darkness beneath the surface.

"I'm fine," his mother replied from behind, startling Jeremiah as she came into the room from the hallway with a tray in her hands. He could've sworn he'd heard her voice from within the room. "Do me a favor, son," the woman continued, not paying him much more than a glance as she set down the tray on a table and fumbled for the button that would raise her husband's mechanical bed so he could sit and ingest whatever food she'd prepared for him. "Since you aren't doing much, I need you to go through your old belongings. There're a few boxes up in the attic, put them there after you moved."

In spite of the fact that she was correct--he had literally nothing to do--Jeremiah frowned. "Really? Why now?"

"I've told you already. The time's come for me to move out of this big old house. The girls rarely visit; I'm surprised you're here at all. And your father and I--well, I won't be able to take care of him much longer. I've been looking into one of those independent living facilities, outside of Detroit." She smiled but at her husband, not her son. "There now, dear. We'll get your lunch. I know you're hungry."

Jeremiah turned away. He'd always hated watching the man eat, whether it'd been Caroline or his mother or one of the twins doing the feeding. He wished he could overcome his revulsion. "Fine. I'll look. I probably don't want any of it, anyway."

"Probably not," he heard his mother sigh once his back was turned, and something in her defeated tone caused him to rub his nose to stifle a sniffle.

Up he went, ascending the wooden stairs in the interior of the house, the large rooms off the lower entryway ballooning in an umbrous flower below him. The second floor was much like the first in its gloom and secrecy, although the landing boasted a rug, which muffled his footfalls. The bedrooms that had used to belong to his sisters, including Caroline's, were closed, and he had no desire to open them. What lay beyond were the bones of his childhood, upon which the dust had settled long ago. He didn't speak to the twins at all, anymore. When he'd first left Port Killdeer, he'd done his best to separate himself from everything that caused him to think of it, and that had included his sisters. He'd made the exception for Caroline, emailing once in a while until she'd died. After that, he'd as much as vanished to the rest of his family.