The Keepers' Evil

Diary Six: I feel more and more capable each day

Song- Choreomania: Florence + The Machine

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Progression had come slowly, and I had grown impatient. My father had spoken confused words, some that sounded as though they had been guillotined in half by his expectations of what life would suddenly be like when he had returned from his permanent phase of sleepiness. Others seemed to simply resemble a mumble here and there, a shuffle of his feet followed by the vague stare towards my brother's bed that made me truly wonder whether taking the pain from someone was not a permanent heal.

I had reminded myself time and time again, every time that the hour ticked to a new hour and the clock sprung in its place, that it had only been a mere few weeks, that he just needed time to adjust. But I could see it in his eyes that he still felt something in his heart when he looked at me and saw only one of his children. It was only a brief shudder, occasionally a click of his lips as they parted to speak but then their close as he could not find the words. It was like I had simply released the pain but there was still a refilling hole that I couldn't stitch to stop it.

Or maybe I just hadn't taken enough.

His voice had returned, his smile too, when he realised that the sun rose and tapped on the windows to wave him good morning, but perhaps there was more to his person that just his ability to speak and his lips that curled to a smile that I could truly not deduce as false or true. He still looked sad, his heart still unhealed. The questions of my research scratched their nails into my skin when I saw how he still shuffled around on his feet like the axis of his earth was unsteady, when I felt how my student hurt with each late absence to class that resulted from the courage to face his mourning family.

Whilst the glass jars in the basement had remained empty and cold around the heat of the one jar that held my father's most incendiary pain, he had not progressed, he had not returned to himself despite how much I had taken and how strong my magic truly was.

He needed more so I took more, a little each day, never as much as what I had showed the Keepers, but enough that let him feel light, that let him identify himself in his own mind. And when I had done so, woven strands of black around my fingers from his heart and cracked them into my fists, I had allowed them to snake into my skull like I had done accidentally in the Hospital, and the power of purpose was liberatingly powerful.

With every inhale, the world ground against its centre a little slower, but in a way that looked like a regain of complete control, a freedom from chaos and opinions that didn't matter. Power to me, was not power to the Keepers.

Some remained stored, squirming in their containers like trapped spiders or centipedes, yet the basement shelves had become far too small and narrow, even if it had all seemed so large and out of reach as a child. The solution of simply inhaling what I could not store was not good enough for the research it all required, it was not good enough for what I hoped it would all be used for one day.

So I had fled the basement of my home, seeking something larger, better. The value in my research was screaming to the generation that would follow, perhaps even at the thousands of generations into the future, that would house that one soul that was like me, like Percival, that would need me to guide them to what was right and past who was wrong. Fear was compelling, but it was too difficult to ignore written instructions and a pathway to strength.

Dead space was ample opportunity, and there was certainly enough of it in the space underneath my classroom. It was just an empty archway underneath a staircase, room for potential, room for secrets to be kept, and it had not taken long (despite the sneaking around in the darkness of the night) to wave my wand in enough circles to create space underneath the stairs that reminded me of the pretty pillars I had fixed all those years ago with Percival. He had told me I was talented, but I suppose he hadn't thought that I would utilise that skill to hide my research from him.