Chapter Twenty
S y l v i a S w a n
The car finally comes to a stop at an abandoned home. The roof leans like it’s beyond its life span and the windows are boarded over. The porch light flickers weakly and the half chimney puffs out heavy clouds of smoke. Alistair looks up at it with curiosity as do I.
How is this place livable?
“I guess this is the place?” He asks and looks down at the address he’d written on the back of his hand.
“I guess,” I respond meekly, not sure but not doubting it either.
I push open the car’s door and the heat inside spills out into the cold air. My heart skips a beat and the reality I’m fixing to face suffocates me.
We both walk up to the door, silent, as if both of us don’t know what to predict. I push multiple overgrown vines out of my way that cover the porch, each one spiraling out of control. The boards below our feet groan announcing us in a way that makes me shift.
When we reach the door, I knock, soft and unsure. Alistair stands beside me protectively, his eyes scanning around us. I knock again when there's no answer but once again my knocks fall on deaf ears.
“He might not be—”
The door creaks open revealing half of a man's eye and one sharp line of mouth. I can see the slight wrinkles on his face and notice he’s about the same age as my father.
“What.” He states rather than asks, his tone sharp and unbothered.
“Uh—” I stutter. “Are you P. Walker?”
He studies me through a narrow gaze as he nods, his eyes bouncing to Alistair next.
“Sure, and who are ya’ll young folk?” I can hear the southern accent in his voice and I hold my hand towards Alistair.
“This is my friend Alistair and I’m Sylvia,” I say.
The silence between us stretches as he observes us. He doesn’t invite us in or pull the door open any more. He just stares at us, expectantly.
“Well, ya best get going before it turns into nightfall." He begins to shut the door and my palm hits it with a loud thump before I realize what I’m doing.
“Wait, please. I need to know what this symbol means,” I beg as I lift the notebook to his eyes.
He abruptly stops and opens the door enough to where I can see the slight sag of his jaw. Dark bags hang under his eyes as if sleep was no longer optional for him. He turns his gaze to the notebook, his eyes widening.
“What symbol, girl?” He squints, acting dumb.
“This one.” My finger points at the three slashes across the front. “Your name appeared in this journal as well as a newspaper clipping I found. You can’t hide from the truth forever, Mr. Walker.”
He grunts with disapproval but nods us inside, pulling the door open wider. The home smells of smoke and mold, dark spots covering the tan wallpaper. It’s warm though, a fire going in the old hearth.
“You shouldn’t be digging in male business, girl,” he replies bluntly as he leads us to the parlor.
“It no longer became male business when they killed my mother.” He glances at me out of the corner of his eye suspiciously and mumbles something incoherent.
Most of the walls are lined in shelves with cracked spined books resting on them—most are bound in leather, others resting naked. I notice one in particular with the same symbol from the notebook I have and my spine tightens with dread.
Please, don’t kill us.
Alistair walks close to me and takes in our surroundings the same way I do. He looks at me, his gaze full of trust and something unreadable. I nod towards the book we pass and his gaze snaps to it before a look of recognition settles on his face.
“Don’t touch anything,” Walker says, his gaze cutting to us as if he knows what we’re thinking.
He sits down in a chair, the leather cracked and the cushions caving in from his weight over time. Alistair and I sit in the matching loveseat across from him.
“Watchu wanna know?” He props his leg up over his knee and leans back, his wrinkles darkening in the yellow candle light.
“I want to know if this is some type of cult and what these symbols mean?” I reply.
He leans up and grabs a book from the coffee table beside him. It’s exactly the same as the one I hold in my hand. He opens it without a second thought and flips through pages of symbols. The same ones that are also in my book.
“It’s not necessarily a cult, dear. It’s darker than that.
We didn’t worship gods, chant to idiots for the world to end, and there’s no salvation.
They believe death is not an ending, it's a threshold. This system they’ve created is studied, approached and crossed until they get what they want,” he says and stops at a page near the back.
My heart sinks and I look at Alistair. We are going up against people who think death is a joke. They don’t feel remorse for anything they’ve done, not in the slightest.
“And these symbols, they’re rituals, places ya don’t want to visit, and graves with no names,” he finishes.
“How do you know about it?” I ask and dry swallow the last bit of saliva I can muster.
“I was part of it.” He takes a sip of his coffee beside him. “A long time ago.”
“Why, how did you benefit from being a part of something so vile?” I ask, my hands curling at my sides.
“Back then it wasn’t like how it is now. We didn’t murder people, we actually helped the world, you could’ve called us vigilantes,” he murmurs.
I can feel the shame seeping off of him, but also the fear that it’s too much to bear and speak aloud. I don’t feel sorry for him but I do feel remorse for invading his past.
I stand up and point to the symbol that’s burned in my memory, the one from my father’s study.
“What does this mean?” I ask, taking the topic back to the symbols.
He looks at it for a moment, trying to pinpoint in his memory what it means. He takes a slow sip of his coffee and looks up at me.
“It was a reminder of who you belonged to. It made you remember to come back, whether dead or alive,” he answers truthfully.
My hands shake as I pull back and sit down. My father was a member or maybe he still is.
“It’s ok, Sylvia. We don’t know for sure.” Alistair wraps a hand around my shoulder and pulls me to him.
Tears break the surface and my heart speeds up. If he was a member it’s a possibility he killed her, buried her before she could find out the truth.
“Did an older lady named Sylvesta Swan come and see you?” My voice cracks and I wipe a tear with my sleeve.
“She did, you look just like ‘er now that you say that. She had such a rare beauty, I’d never forget ‘er.” He nods, agreeing to his own statement.
“She was my mother,” I admit. “Did my father, Jason Swan, know about this group?”
My foot taps the wood floors as I await his answer. He looks at me, probably the same way he looked at her, with recognition.
“Yeah,” he admits. “Your mother said he’s alive?”
I hesitate. “Yeah, he is.”
His eyebrows lift and fall. “If he’s still breathing he got out before it became bad. I remember how smart he was.”
“Yeah but he killed my mother,” I snap.
He squints at me like he wants to say something but doesn’t.
He just turns to the fire. We sit in silence for a while.
I sniffle until my nose stops running and Alistair rubs my back in comforting circles.
I wipe the dried tears on my cheeks till they turn red and put the notebook in Amos' carrier. He hasn’t made a noise since we’ve been here.
He’s curled up with his head tucked into his paws.
“Yer father disappeared 22 years ago, I’m assuming that’s when he had you?” Walker breaks the silence.
“I guess so,” I say and he nods.
“He did the right thing, I just wish yer mother wouldn’t have been snooping, or you either miss.” He takes a sip from his cup.
“Thanks for your concern but it's not necessary,” I whisper.
I wish she hadn’t been snooping either but what this group is doing is wrong. Morally she couldn’t accept that and neither can I. Somewhere along the way her mission became just as important to me.
“Thank you for your time,” I say as I stand.
He stands up and grabs a stack of papers off the bookshelves.
“Take these here with ya. They’ll decode that journal ya got.” He passes the stack to me and I whisper another thank you before Alistair and I head out the door.
“Be safe, girl, don’t let yer father’s past corrupt him,” he calls as we walk to the car. I can hear something in his voice that sounds broken, like his family abandoned him after knowing about his past.
“I guess let's start decoding." Alistair chuckles as he drives.
“Hopefully it’s easier than it looks.” I sigh.
It’s dark, around nine at night when we pull up to my home. The porch light is more symbolic than useful, the yellow light barely lightening the porch. I can hear the high pitched clicks of the bats surrounding us, hiding away in the trees to get some rest.
Alistair yawns in the driver's seat and I stretch before I grab Amos' carrier. He snores and I lightly shift him on my shoulder. I grab my satchel from the back seat and walk up to the front door. As I unlock it, Alistair walks behind me, shuffling in his spot.
“Are you ok?” He asks softly.
I push inside the warm capacity of my home and place Amos on the floor before unzipping his carrier.
“Yeah,” I answer but it’s a lie.
I assumed he had something to do with this cult and my mother’s death, but to know the truth feels worse.
It’s not an assumption any more, it's a fact.
I look at the dark roads behind him and hesitate. “Would you like to stay? My father’s not home and it’s pretty late.”
He looks at me for a second before smiling. “Sure. Do you have a phone I could use to call my mothers?”
“Of course, it’s not cordless though.” I walk him over to the red cord phone on the kitchen table. “I haven’t used it in God knows how long, but my father does.”