Chapter Sixteen
………………………….
Henri
THE CURSE OF BLOOD & DARKNESS
by
Henri Mercer
I’ve always liked to read.
I can still remember my first book as if it were yesterday.
A boy, who sat in the desk next to me at school, forgot his thick fantasy book as he chucked everything into his backpack the moment the bell rang on Friday afternoon. All the kids bolted toward the weekend. Most of them ran home to families and friends, their days full of adventure and fun.
Me…I didn’t rush.
I hated weekends.
I hated my quiet house and silent mother. I’d amble around the village when the silence got too much and usually ended up at the beach till way past bedtime.
She never grounded me.
Didn’t even care to ask where I’d been when I finally walked through the door.
But all of that changed the day I borrowed that book and took it home.
I vanished into the pages and traded my life for that of a man who didn’t know he was a Seeker. I struggled with some of the English words, my mind slowly trading French for a different language. Even at my snail’s pace, I finished by Monday and returned it to the boy despite wanting very much to keep it. He thanked me profusely for finding it, letting slip that he’d stolen it from his older brother because he’d overheard him saying some woman called a Confessor was hot.
I look back now and see what I missed when I was thirteen.
The strangest pang in my body when he mentioned an older brother. The quickest memory of siblings that felt familiar before vanishing just as quick.
Thanks to him, I found a way to cope with my weekends and spent every hour in the local library from then on. I read every book in The Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind and fell in love with words because they were never silent or cold. They were messy and chaotic, giving me pages full of friends, enemies, lovers, and homes.
Reaching for the ice-cold beer an inconspicuous staff member had left for me on the side table where I wrote in the library, I swallowed a tart mouthful.
Even this short break.
Even this micro-pause where I returned to reality—everything inside me howled and snarled and left me in the eye of the hurricane that hadn’t stopped blowing.
Every time I slipped back into the present, the darkness snatched me quickly.
My skin broke out with chills.
The abyss opened wide inside me.
I felt like I was falling, falling—
Finishing my mouthful, I stretched my fingers back on the keyboard and did my best to sink back into a different time, different place.
I hadn’t wanted this story to become an autobiography, but somehow…all the words I couldn’t say to Ily poured out on the page.
The blackness inside me crushed me into the chair.
Bookshelves towered over me, whispering that perhaps it was the darkness in their pages that’d tainted me. Books full of black magic and dark wizards. Pain and suffering of fantastical and historical characters—
But…the truth blared far too bright.
This endless filth inside me was caused by one thing and one thing only.
Genetics.
A curse that flowed from father to son even though I’d never been around him.
But that isn’t true…
I sighed.
My fingers flew as if possessed, accessing archived memories, the keyboard unlocking far too many flashbacks from my past.
The monster called him Quincy.
I’d met him before.
Spied him as I was dragged through the mansion and past priceless things I wasn’t allowed to touch. The man growled at the young teenager lounging in the doorway. “Scram, you worthless child. I’m busy.”
My ears rang with his barked French, so different to the quietly spoken women in pinafores who brought us food and told us to behave.
Quincy glanced at me, his light green eyes cold and unreadable. “Where are you taking him?”
“To do what you refuse to do.”
“What? Learn the family trade?” His cold voice could’ve cut stone.
“At least he’s willing to sit and watch without trying to scurry away like a terrified rat.”
Quincy sniffed.
It looked as if he’d reply, but with a curl of his upper lip, he pushed off the door, shoved his hands into his jeans pockets, and strolled away.
I watched him go like always.
I kept my eyes on him even as the older man dragged me into a room where a woman hung in the centre with her mouth gagged and wrists bound.
“Sit and learn and maybe I won’t kill you with the rest.” He threw me to the side. I collapsed against a sideboard.
And the same thing that happened each time he came for me played out in awful clarity.
Her every scream. Her every sob. Her every drop of blood.
Little by little, those afternoons contaminated me. Day by day, those horrors found their way into my dreams.
And I did the only thing I could.
I boxed up those days.
I deleted all those nights.
I removed myself from my brothers and sisters in the hope I wouldn’t infect them too…
Exhaling heavily, I glanced up and noticed my beer was gone.
Dusk had fallen.
Another night was coming for me.
Where the hell is Ily?
Every afternoon, she visited Peter and the jewels, and I was grateful.
Grateful for the space to suffer the overwhelming despair and misery that only grew worse.
I couldn’t breathe anymore.
Couldn’t exist without fighting, fighting, always goddamn fighting my true nature whenever she was around.
All those black, awful urges that’d been instilled inside me when I was a kid. All those diabolical traits that I’d smothered and deleted, giving myself amnesia where I forgot the siblings I’d lived with, all so I didn’t have to remember what happened in that room with our mothers.
Tearing my hands through my hair, I trembled.
That amnesia was cracking.
The more the darkness claimed me, the faster my past came back.
It’d been two weeks since Victor left, and I remembered something new every day. The manuscript had become a channelling medium. Snippets of moments when I’d spied my older brother as I was dragged to witness yet another rape now haunted me in my sleep.
I didn’t want to remember.
I didn’t want to be this way.
I didn’t want to lie awake in the dark, gagging on the same darkness inside me.
One night last week, I’d dreamed of bathing in blood. The silky slippery sensation of red, red, red. Instead of waking up and rushing to the bathroom to heave my rotten guts up, I’d been rock fucking hard and moments away from rolling Ily onto her stomach and taking her.
Shit…I’d been close.
So damn close to letting out all the pressuring filth inside me.
I fucking hated myself.
I loathed every thought in my head.
I might’ve been bred by a monster and had him pour his curse into me one day at a time, but I didn’t want it.
I thought I did after playing Ruby Tears.
I thought I could trample on other people’s lives so I could finally be free, but the truth was?
Fuck, the truth was I’d had it right the night I’d tried to end it.
The scar on my leg taunted me to try again.
The hatred inside me spilled out to include my older brother.
I knew now why I hated him so badly. Why he conjured such rage. Why I’d taken such perverse satisfaction in disowning him.
It wasn’t because I’d turned into our father.
It was because I blamed my brother for failing me.
All those days when he’d left me at that creature’s mercy.
All those moments where he turned his back and walked away.
Back then, I was trapped.
Right now, I was trapped.
I couldn’t leave.
I couldn’t stay.
Death truly was the only answer.