Drift (Don’t… #8)

Chapter 37 NO SAVING GRACE

Jan sat forward in his chair. “What? Wait. Farland ? Who did he touch? Grace or Drift?” Anger ran under his skin. “And how does that fit in with Drift not remembering hitting you?”

West messed with the arm of the cinema chair almost as if unravelling any stitching to the leather would give her the meaning to why hell’s gate stood open.

“Grace,” she said eventually. “Farland raped Grace.”

Jesus. How old? How old back then? Drift was eight, that made Ava… ten. Jan rubbed at his head. Fuck.

“Oh, that right there…” said West, drawing his attention, and such a hard smile came. “Don’t. Don’t ever be bloody fooled by her.”

“Ten years old, West. Just ten.”

“Don’t lecture me on minors. I look out for some who have been so badly torn apart, they tear into their own skin just so it hurts in ways they can control. But with Ava…” West said flatly. “Some kids are just born… wrong. And Farland, he fucked up. He messed with a bitch who was just coming into her own.”

Martin tapped a finger at the kitchen table almost as if to focus Drift. “Grace. How did it start. How did it end?”

Drift tensed his jaw, flatlining all feeling. “Does it really matter? It happened, that’s all.”

“Yeah,” Martin said evenly. “Inciting incidents always will matter. So tell me.”

Drift frowned. “Farland came out of her bedroom as I tried to get a glass of milk one night. Nothing unusual in that, only he paused, just standing there. Despite the cold of the landing, the sweat coating his body and his heavy breath was at odds with how tired the night felt, and the air around him felt… wrong. Not black-eyed wrong that I see in Ava’s eyes… in here, just… dirty, sick.”

He focused back down on fussing Neffi.

“Farland said nothing, just got me my milk and went off to his room, so I slipped into Grace’s.” Didn’t matter how far the distance he tried to force between mind and body, it still hurt. But he knew, he damn well knew it had hurt Grace so much more no matter how she walked as though she owned the world now. And that was the whole issue. He’d seen her when hurt had registered in such young eyes. “She’d been abandoned in a flat to start with, so the one-year-old in her who’d been left alone always met everyone with arms wide open and this warm smile, almost as if she was too scared to show anything but happiness. She did the same with me as she’d always done: arms open, a smile to come cuddle up in bed with her like any normal night.”

Drift stopped, trying to distance from the anger. “Sweat stung the air: Farland’s, and something—” He wrinkled his nose. “Something I didn’t understand, not fully that night. And Grace? She was naked, half in, half out the covers, as if he’d just lazily tossed them back on her after he got out of the bed. That same sweat touched her, like moonlight touching ice, and it offered the same disjointed coldness that Farland’s sweat had, only hers was like a frozen pond with steam rising off it before the heat cracked it and broke it apart. And Grace… even if she didn’t know it, she was close to breaking. I just didn’t understand in what way.” He twisted the phone in his hand. “I was eight years old, her the big sister who put most things right in my world with a cuddle, and I was used to getting in bed with her and holding on. But it felt wrong then. So I didn’t. I sat by her until sleep settled in, how it started to twist her body beneath the covers as she fought something off. I told her we’d run. I didn’t care where, just that we’d run far, fast, and bloody wide in the morning.”

Martin frowned. “Only she didn’t, did she?”

“No,” Drift said quietly. “She didn’t run. Not until a few weeks later, when she’d moulded home to fit her needs.”

Martin eased forward in his chair. “Strange word choice: moulded. How?”

Drift looked away. “Pips,” he muttered. “Apples or pears for parents, we all grow in shit.” He snorted. “But it’s always the ones who stay in the shit despite knowing the stench is rotten that kill me.” He shook it off and looked at Martin. “But it’s the ones who stay in the sickness and twist it into their own kind of sickness that scare the fucking shit out of me more. That… they’re a rare damn breed.”

“Oh….” Martin cocked a brow. “When she followed you two weeks later… that was the first time you saw black in anyone’s eyes.”

Drift frowned. “Yeah,” he said eventually. “Something had… snapped. But I think it started the night I said we’d run.” He fought down sickness in his throat. “In the kitchen next morning….” He shook his head. “Grace, she sat on Farland’s lap, arms wrapped around his neck almost like he’d never touched her. I…” He frowned. “Looking my way, she whispered something in his ear, and blackness… like fucking oil in water swamped her eyes. Even Farland… the look in his startled as he looked sideways at her, possibly more from what Grace had whispered because he looked like he’d just been given the key to hell’s gate….”

Drift fell quiet and let his look fall to Neffi. “Farland got up and called Crank in. The mutt was mine, always there as much as Grace at the end of the school day, but so damn cranky if you went near him when he was hungry. Hence the name Cranky.” His smile lasted only a second. “Crank came in, and Farland grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, then broke it.”

A long slow exhale of breath came from Martin. “Psychopathy emergence,” he said quietly. “Most start with killing animals. But, oh… Grace?” He leaned forward a little. “She showed potential fast lane manipulation, and top-tier with pinpointing a weak, sick mind to do it for her at the young age of ten.”

Drift carried on stroking through Neffi’s fur. “It didn’t really hit home who was doing what back then. But with another tug at Farland’s sleeve off Grace, he took the thick collar chain from around Crank’s neck, and he didn’t stop chain-whipping me until I passed out.”

Martin stilled for a moment, then tapped a finger at the table, and it helped Drift in some small way, almost like the steady heartbeat of a clock that didn’t break pace no matter the fire burning down the home.

“The picture of you in the backyard with Crank…. The one that was circulated after you did manage to run,” Martin said to him. “Did Grace whisper in Farland’s ear then too? It was handed over not to get you to come home, but to warn you to keep running?”

Drift didn’t let his look fall off Martin. “Yeah. But it took far too long for me to figure that out. How it was her warning to stay away until she was done there. Her part of the double tap.” He shook his head a little. “Always… it’s all about the control with Ava. And she was young, so bloody young but learning back then. And she… she wanted Farland house-trained properly, an alibi for all the bad in life that would come her way, where she could go back and be Grace, be seen to go to school, have friends, a home, go on to university, with an option to learn remotely because she took care of her ‘parents’.” He fought down anger. “She goes back home, even now. And Farland, he loves her bastardness. But him and his wife, they took the place of Crank, all chained and let out only long enough to… play.”

Martin tilted his head. “Her part of the double tap you said…” he said quietly. “What was yours? What did you do?”

Drift frowned, then wiped at his mouth. “I couldn’t run, not for a while, days, maybe a week.” He tensed his jaw. “After Farland chain-whipped me, I caught an infection from some of the cuts, and I lost track of time. But Ava… she’d be there in bed with me, that same soft offer of a cuddle….” He looked down at his hands, then rubbed them into his jeans. “And…. just for those moments she was there, she… she made it so didn’t hurt in a whole different way….”

Martin didn’t utter a fucking word, not one, and Drift was so damn glad because too many details were lost to the dirt and fever in his own head.

“That last night.” Drift glanced around the kitchen, how pristine-clean the units were, not a speck of dirt anywhere. “She lay naked next to me, and Farland, he—” Drift cleared his throat. “Farland sat on a chair close by, half hidden in the darkness. Then this whisper came off Grace in my ear. Of being family, of being a part of it, of sharing the love… with everyone….” He shifted awkwardly in his seat, in part needing out through the door, yet stuck in the mud, never able to run free. So what was the point of running now?

“Testing manipulation of her environment,” said Martin. “She wanted to control when he touched, how he touched… you.”

In the cinema suite, Jan couldn’t find any words. He couldn’t process what he’d just heard West say. “Drift,” he stumbled. “What… what the hell happened…? What did he do?”

West stayed quiet, and Jan got a bad feeling… a really, really bad feeling.

“Farland, he wasn’t into… boys,” said Drift quietly. “I knew that, she knew it. But she wanted that final break in him.” He shivered. “For all the fever, I went so cold, but he seemed to give in so damn easily. But Ava… she was there on the bed with us. She used his own sickness against him to—”

“Make your hurt stop too, if only for a while, hm?” It came so softly off Martin. “Purely because she was there for you as well and you needed to hide from the hurt just a little longer.”

Drift stilled for a moment then nodded, just the once this time. “All I knew was that Ava’s touch was so damn kinder compared to a chain-whipping.” He frowned, so badly. “And part of me wanted it not to hurt with Ava, to hold on to her again and… and find a different way of not hurting, of not feeling like I’d lost everything I’d known. And that… touching her… it was so fucking wrong. I knew it back then. I damn well know it now.”

“She’s not your sister,” Martin said flatly. “Legal paperwork is just that: paperwork. And she’d schooled you to want her. Ava as well when it came to Farland, but she turned the tables on both of you. Only where Ava’s psychopathy was triggered long before her and Farland touched you…?” He turned his ear to listen. “You did what to Farland? How did the headaches start?”

Drift couldn’t really remember. “I got so mad when he tried to join in and touch both of us. Then… nothing,” he said flatly. “I stumbled away from the bed, stars dancing in my vision from a headache that seemed to bleed in my skull, and the sweat on my body, on hers… Farland’s… Next thing I remember, the nightlight was broken, and Farland had a chunk of skin missing from his scalp… blood running like thick black ink down his face. And Ava… at first Ava sat on the bed, looking so damn scared, then this smile… her smile was so fucking… dark .”

Drift focused stroking on Neffi. “I threw up, maybe at the loose flap of skin on Farland’s scalp, all the trouble I was in for doing it… for touching Grace, at how Grace felt good yet… so dirty on my skin all at the same time. So I ran. And yeah, it was to find safety away from numbers, from people. From Grace because I learned the lesson: how she wouldn’t ever run until she was finished with Farland.”

Quiet came from Martin, then— “And Grace… she followed you eventually. She saw you push away violently from Farland’s sickness, but not hers, and she came after you.”

Neffi’s head shifted on his thigh, and Drift stroked distractedly at the back of her ear. “Yeah, she followed.” He fell quiet for a moment. “Y’know, the streets offer this whole new displacement and dirt, but it felt… clean out there.” He smiled thinly down at Neffi. “I’d had time to grab this football onesie from downstairs, trainers, a coat, but no socks, so for those first few nights, I must have stuck out like a bare arse in a paedophiles’ playpen.” He looked at Martin. “Grant gave me such a sodding clip up the ear for it when I wondered out of Bristol town centre and found the cave he was staying in. I don’t even know how I survived those first few weeks on my own. But I took nothing for granted after that, not even the food Grant offered when he found me. I wouldn’t go near him without him backing off, and it took me a while to see just how much like Crank I’d become, never really taking an offer of a meal without wanting to hurt someone for it. But that was okay, you know?” He snorted a small smile. “Grant came with that same… warning growl my way if I got too close. But it was like he mimicked more than marked his no-go territory. He taught me it was okay to stay safe in my corner and to keep boundaries no matter who growled back, and Grant… he was the fucking scariest out there for a long time.”

He gave a really rough sigh. “But Grant… like Jackson, he was all for looking after the kids. And he followed the breadcrumbs over why I’d ran to the streets. But he only had guesses, assumptions, and my name: Jude Farland. So he went back to Farlands’ one night.”

“He went back for Grace.”

“He came back alone, but Grace turned up a few days later.”

Martin cocked a brow. “She’d followed him.”

“She’d been with him since he’d gone to Farlands, only she’d stayed back in the shadows, watching where he went, who he was with, and I think that… that caught Grant’s attention more, that she’d watched without him knowing she was there. But me and Ava, we were brought up on hide and seek, and sometimes we’d get into neighbours’ houses without them knowing in order to play. We’d always run together. I’d always find her. She’d always find me.”

“So why didn’t you tell Grant what had gone down back at Farlands? And I mean all of it? How Ava wasn’t… stable?”

“None of us are fucking stable,” he said quietly, and Drift looked at him, his knee tapping lightly under the table. “Even Grant had his weirdness over damn pigeons.”

Martin searched his look. “Because you missed her touch as well as her, and part of you was… glad to see her?”

Drift straightened in his chair a little. “I missed not feeling the hurt and the bone-deep cold of the streets when it came to not holding my sister. There’s a difference.” He rubbed a palm hard into his head. Christ, he hoped there was. “But a better part of me just wanted her away from Farland.” He snorted. “It still does. That maybe if I’d gotten her away from Farland, she’d somehow be okay…” He shook his head. “But I hated her too, so damn much. In those early days with Grant, her stay away from me said she knew. And, dammit, she changed around Grant, I swear to God she did for a while. We didn’t talk for months, but she’d sort any equipment I needed for feeding, and I started to do the same for her. I didn’t want her caught and sent back to Farland, and with West coming in a few months later, it was like being away from Farland took away the poison.”

“Only it hadn’t.”

Drift shook his head. “It started small, y’know. Feeds arranged that took West out of the playing field and kept her ‘safe’ back with Jackson, so it was just me and her. We’d break into homes, and she stand staring down at kids in their beds, then steal the toys they held on to under the covers. Then she’d slip them into their parents’ bed. At first I thought it was her way with dealing, with coping, and the toy was somehow her, desperately looking for the right kind of hold from a parent. But then one night she carried one young boy into his dad’s room, and put him in bed together. Then she winked my way before climbing in the far side, her finger against lips almost an offer from a mother that we be quiet as she… she rested the boy’s hand between the dad’s thighs.”

Drift briefly closed his eyes. “I dragged her out, but her brushes of body against mine came with such a… fucked-up smile that said—”

“She liked you being there, getting angry as you watched?”

Drift wiped a hand over his face, the need to bolt eating into him. “She likes the loss of control I have when she always holds on to hers, nothing more. She fucks with my head, and it has this… this poisonous effect on my body because there are times when I damn well, when—” He stopped that there. “I don’t know who I hate more for it. Me for allowing it, her for being fucked up by Farland and doing it, or Farland for triggering just how twisted her head and touch can go.”

“It’s purely a self-gratifying cover with the Farlands,” said Martin. “An alibi, where she can use ‘Grace’ to hide what Ava is doing.”

“That pissed me off the most,” Drift said over to him. “I wanted her away from all of his poison, so to see her….” He stopped that anger there. “She was late back to Grant’s base spot one morning, so I followed her to find out why.” He snorted. “I was ten, her just twelve, and I found Farland on the doorstep of our house, all smiles and lowering his look away from her, as if she denied him the right to look until she allowed otherwise. So after he followed her in, all sweat, and heat, and scent, I waited until she left… then burnt his fucking home down.”

Martin stayed quiet for a moment. “Only Farland got a brand-new house for it, and Ava, she still kept going back because she knew you’d follow.”

Drift fell quiet for a moment. “Each time through the years even when she turned Night-walker, I’d catch her glance back over her shoulder to see if I was following, and I swear that darkness and smile was only there to see if I’d burn through more homes for her.”

“And that part of you that wanted her away from it all, you would have done, hmm? But so too for that darker part of you, how Ava had schooled you to only find release from it with her.”

Drift pushed the phone over to Martin. “Not My Job Anymore,” he said eventually. “She can’t be. Her sickness is too deep, so is mine, and…?” He shrugged. “Her life maybe could… should have been so different if she’d been dealt a better hand. And I wish, I wish to God it had been so different for her: not all psychopath’s kill, but…” He looked at the phone. “West. She sees it all, gets caught up in it, and I’m so damn scared I’ll lose her because of the dirt on mine and Ava’s skin neither of us can shake.”

“It’s not a sickness,” Martin said quietly. “It’s phobia indoctrination that started with Ava,” he said eventually. “Being left alone saw Grace’s damage start long before Farland came on the scene. Then the paedophilic element ruling him continued with the same behaviour modification, how he knew she was terrified of being left alone. So he instilled a them versus everyone else snake pit. He told her she could be taken away, and when you said run, it became her reality, and everything he said was proven right. You’re right with how that was a trigger point for her psychopathy. So she looks to control every aspect of life now, especially Farland, but more so you.” Martin tipped his head at Drift. “Farland’s mistake was trying it on with a young, emerging fast-lane psychopath, where you, you stumbled unknowingly into her head and path. Her natural instinct is to dominate and control any and all threat to her.”

Martin pushed the phone back at him. “So she isn’t the problem here. You can’t control a psychopath, not fully,” he said flatly. “So you’re the problem.”

Drift eased back in his chair.

“The worst kind of asylum comes without walls and borders,” Martin said quietly, “where the lunatics run with you no matter how fast you run, no matter how far the distance you try and put between them.” He tapped his head. “Both Grace and Farland played indoctrination with you, locking you away in here too much, so that the only peace you think you find is in Ava’s touch. But it’s an illusion. The main concern here is with how you couldn’t remember smacking that nightlight over Farland’s skull. How Ava saw your… potential for uncontrolled aggression, only with her as the watcher.”

Drift stiffened. “What the fuck do you mean?”

The blackness in Martin’s eyes filtered in so very slowly. “I missed it back in the hall: you said it back there: details in the name: you Drift by name. But from forgotten details to headaches, you… drift by nature too.”

Drift stiffened, so badly. How… how in the hell had he worked that out?

Martin frowned. “From her reaction on your first aggressive absence, though, it was new to you and her.” He fell so quiet. “That was your first one, and—oh, oh now this is something else. You only have the genetic disposition… the potential for seizures.” He tapped the table, and that was to focus Drift now. “Tell me, did any more absences creep in when you were with Grant?”

Drift creased his face. “One, maybe two.”

“Before or after Ava joined you?”

“After.”

Martin smiled and eased back. “And it made sure Grant sent Ava out with you to keep an eye on you, hm?”

Something under Drift’s skin started to crawl.

“And then low and behold,” said Martin, “after Ava turned Night-walker, someone turned up at Jackson’s and offered you meds to control your seizures, right? Because they’d started to get worse after Ava left, maybe when one of Ava’s planted themselves in there.” Martin looked him up and down. “And they certainly got worse afterwards, enough to keep you running from crew to crew. So think it over, boy,” he said as he leaned forward. “You’re damn smart, but Ava screws with your heat levels and head. Why? It’s never just for kicks with her. What is she playing Blind man’s buff over when it comes to control ground and her environment?”

“Ava….” Jan said flatly as he sat next to West. “She knew Drift was prone to seizures.” Fuck. He knew where Martin would go with this if Drift was talking to him, and he leaned in close to West. “Jackson, does he keep track of Drift’s absences, maybe records them before and after his medication has been taken?”

West shifted uncomfortably, maybe starting to get an ill scratching at the back of her scalp too. “Yeah, he always has,” she said eventually. “He gives them to our Doc that comes by every so often… Doc Whitlock. Lilliana. She was the one to formally diagnose Drift with the seizures after watching a clip. She prescribes drugs for all the kids, earning big money on the side off Jackson for it.” She frowned. “But Jackson only allows her to prescribe. He trusts no one, so we steal what meds she says we need. Drift’s never missed a dose.”

Jan hadn’t heard anyone list any meds similar to Jack’s when they’d looked in Drift’s backpack, but maybe that was because Jack was an adult. The medication names would be different for youngsters, right? Or maybe they could only take the medication for minors when they stole from the pharmacies? So where…? “He has the meds with him here?”

“Yes,” said West. “He always takes them with him no matter the feeding job or shift to crew.”

“Where?”