Chapter 28 Jacob #2
The snow had stopped, but Brentwell was still a fluffy white blanket, illuminated by strings of fairy lights the council had strung up between street lights. Hands in his pockets, he strolled down the high street and over to Sycamore Park.
Here, most of the lights had been turned off, just a few streetlights illuminated at wide intervals to push the shadows back from the main walking paths.
Jacob followed the main circle that led around the outside of the park, past the Oak Leaf Café, through Big Gerry’s Plaza, past the children’s play area to the south plaza where Pete Markham’s van could be found during the day.
Then into the trees to the duck pond, and then up around again to the theatre square with the library alongside.
He walked slowly, head down, going over every minute of his time with Charlotte, wishing he was with her now.
She had messaged him to say she had got home and to wish him goodnight, but he didn’t think he would be able to sleep even if he did go home.
As he came up to the theatre square, he wondered if he ought to do another circuit, or whether it was best to get home before he froze to death.
He was only just getting over a cold, after all.
At the edge of the theatre square, he looked up, stopping dead in his tracks.
A figure stood halfway across the square, facing him. Little more than a silhouette, he could make out the outline of a top hat, a billowing cape.
James.
Where had he come from? How long had he been watching Jacob? And had he seen Charlotte? Had he seen them together?
James took a couple of steps, leaving no doubt in Jacob’s mind that this was a confrontation that had been planned, one he had no choice but to face.
He thought about how his brother had mocked him, sprayed him with water, and felt a twinge of anger.
When he thought about his mother, how she had nearly died, and the subsequent court case which had nearly broken her spirit, however, his arms began to tingle, his hands to clench into fists.
Perhaps this was the confrontation he needed, after all.
He started walking again, stopping a few paces away from James. His stepbrother’s face was in shadow, but when he tilted his head, Jacob saw the glint in his eyes.
‘We meet again, stepbrother,’ James said.
‘What do you want? Why have you come back here?’
‘You know what I want,’ James said.
‘You want to cause trouble,’ Jacob said. ‘Of all the theatres in all the world, why this one?’
‘Think of it as a homecoming.’
‘I don’t want to think of it as anything.’
‘Come on, Jacob. We’re family. Aren’t you pleased to see me?’
Jacob shook his head. ‘I’m not sure there’s anyone I’d like to see less, other than perhaps Krampus himself.’
‘Careful what you wish for, stepbrother.’ There was a flash of light, seemingly from the sky, and for a split second James’s face lit up into something horrific.
Jacob took a step back, heart racing. Had he seen a mask, some kind of illusion, or was his brother really a monster in disguise, a demon that walked among men?
‘Ten years,’ James said, turning away, peering back across the square towards the town, his cloak billowing out behind him in a wind that seemed to come from nowhere. ‘Ten years since you and your mother’s lies almost ruined what my father died for.’
Jacob frowned, trying to remember. The court case, he was talking about the court case.
It had dragged on for several months, exhausting all of their energy and most of their finances.
In the end it had been settled … the 24th of December.
He remembered now. That year there had been no Christmas.
Julie had been exhausted, taken into hospital after collapsing at home just a couple of hours after the case had finished.
Jacob had spent Christmas Day sitting at her bedside.
‘I have little birds that tweet constantly in my ear,’ James said.
‘I heard what you’re doing. This Christmas …
festival. Ten years on from the Christmas I spent tired, broke and alone, wondering if I still had a career after your lies had derailed it.
You don’t know how much you hurt me, Jacob. All those lies you told in court.’
‘Everything I said was true. Your father ruined us to support you. My mother was working two jobs. Your father sold everything he could, and stole what he couldn’t, and sold that too. And then he nearly killed my mother.’
‘So the lies say.’
‘So the police reports say. So the evidence says!’
‘Lies!’
Jacob took a deep breath. ‘You came out all right. You’re rich. You’re famous. You’re on TV. I work in a café with my aunt. My mother is chronically ill. We lost our family home. And you want my sympathy?’
James spun round, cloak theatrically billowing out behind him again, and Jacob wondered whether the stage act ever ended, whether the stepbrother he had grown up with still existed at all.
‘I rose from the ashes,’ James said. ‘James Steamblack rose from the ashes. But the man I was … the boy … he died that Christmas Eve long ago, broken and alone. And it’s for that boy that I want revenge …
and this year, I will get it. Watch your back, stepbrother. Wherever you go, I’ll be watching you.’