The Good Son: Book Two

Prologue

Prologue

Sounds of moaning and groaning slipped through the dark hallway; three o'clock in the morning engulfing the mansion in a thick layer of black ink like a devil's breath. Overgrown shadows clung to the walls. Not a single light was lit, not a single gleam to help as guidance for the blonde child who stumbled in the darkness to see what the sounds were or to find where they were coming from.

The house was giant, not what the boy was used to. It was giant and void of anyone aside from the echoes of sounds somewhere down the hall. He'd wandered from his bedroom that he wasn't fond of and was too short to reach any light-switches in the hallway, if he could even find them to switch. The hallway seemed to grow as he pattered along.

Stumbling on his bare feet and falling, the blonde child stood up again and felt for anything to guide him. His hands pressed against a wall and he kept his small fingers against it, walking with the pitch black plaster.

He knew that it was three in the morning because of the digital clock on his bedroom nightstand. The numbers were bright and blue, glaring. His father wasn't home- he spend most nights at work in the office.

A door to the boy's left muffled the sounds, but he had found it- the echoes haunting the floor. The child didn't want to leave his wall of a guide, but he pushed off of it and stuck his hands out in front of him, waving them through the darkness to find the door. After a small moment, he bumped into it with his outstretched arms.

"Daddy?" he asked, his eyes wide as he tried to adjust to the darkness. "Daddy, are you in here?" He pat his hands against the door and found the doorknob. As he grabbed it, the knob started turning from the other side of the door. Then the door pulled open and someone knelt down in front of the boy. The room was silent, dark as an abyss. The only tell of another human being being near was the sense of a presence in front of the child, the air around the figure suffocating.

"Go back to bed," the person said. The voice that spoke had a foreign tongue. The person grabbed the child by the arm. "Go back to bed," Daniel said.

l.l

"Geil, come back to bed," Geil could hear Marnie call out to him from the bedroom, but he was sick. He spat into the bathroom sink and a shiver ran up his spine, making his whole body shake. He grasped the rim of the sink hard and looked up into the mirror, at his hyperventilation. His heart was uncontrollable, his stomach was cramping, and his face was paler than its natural light tone.

Pale blonde hair cut short to erase his childhood self, yet ruffled and bedridden from tossing in his sleep. Eyes pink and glossy and engulfed in gray sleepiness because the medications did nothing for his restless nights.

Creaking floorboards told Geil that Marnie was coming before he saw her in the mirror; beautiful green eyes paired with tussled long, sand brown hair. She pouted her bottom lip and walked over to Geil, wrapping her arms around his bare shoulders sticky with cold sweat.

"Are you okay?" she asked, her voice almost feminine but missing a pitch. Her breasts perked but not enough for Geil to feel them in a hug. Estrogen only went so far.

Geil took in a deep breath to answer but gagged and wretched into the sink again, breaking Marnie's light grasp of him.

l.l

Marnie was gone by morning, a text of having to drive her brother to school. Geil didn't mind it much, because she was like a creature of the night. A call or text, or a knock at the door, by 7:00 pm or later, but she was always gone before the day. It was a little tragic. He really liked her. Though, he did like being by himself. Breakfast with Medicine, lunch with Mr. Therapist, and dinner with Marnie. Kind of what his life had come to.

Though today, he had other things to do.

To pay his respects, at the cemetery down the road.

He slipped his shoes on and pulled on a jacket, feeling exhausted from his episode last night, but wide awake with the morning sun. He grabbed his keys from the hook by the front door and stepped outside, locking anyone out of the small house he claimed with his inheritance. A tiny house for a single human being, and a safety deposit in the bank for the rest of his inheritance that he didn't really want a part of.

City life outside were kids running passed him for school, or skipping school, or horsing around. Cars honking in the morning traffic and people yelling but he couldn't see who.

He stepped down the steps of the house and down to the sidewalk, where he stepped over cracks until he made it to a flower stand that always sat there; on the way to the cemetery. An old granny sat behind the stand, clipping flower stems ready to sell. She looked up at Geil and smiled, her cheeks wrinkling up to her eyes.

"Hello," she greeted, and Geil offered a kind smile that lacked the emotion.

"A dozen daisies," he said.

"Alright." She took his money and gifted him the flowers, all tied together in a black band. Geil took them and walked on to the cemetery, through the graves to-

"Ah, there you are little baby."

"Why is your hair so long?"

"Have fun, kids." Voices ran through Geil's head to Jack, Jack Mason. His stone was beautiful and shiny, black paint glossy and reflective in the morning light.

Jack Mason, September 9, 1963 - November 12, 2021. Loving Father, Son, Brother, Grandfather, and Friend.

Geil knelt to place the flowers on the edge of the stone, and braced the green grass to sit beside the grave. "Good morning, Dad," he said softly.