When he made it to his room, he couldn’t sleep. Every time his eyes closed, he saw things he didn’t want to see. And when he started to doze, his body jerked awake as if hands were reaching for him.
Sometime in the middle of the night, he woke to pee. Mum wasn’t in her room. He found her downstairs, huddled in a chair, sleeping.
Jackie wandered into the kitchen and paused. Where there had been empty shelves before, tins now stacked three deep. Beans and vegetables and cans of milk. His belly was too sore to eat any of it.
He returned to the den but didn’t enter when he heard a noise. A real wood fire burned in the fireplace. Jackie crept closer, silently watching as his mother placed another log in the flames.
Her face looked sad, and he believed he was to blame. When she sat down, she started to cry. He almost went to her then, but froze when she snapped, “Stop it. What’s done is done.”
She moved to kneel on the floor in front of the table where strange objects scattered across the surface. Her hand shook as she tapped white powder from a small vial onto the table and cut into it with a blade. She carefully scooped the powder onto a spoon and held it over a candle flame, cooking it until it melted into a liquid.
She used a thin tube to extract the liquid from the spoon, then tied a string around her arm. Her skin bulged, and her hand shook as she lifted the tube, pressing it into her flesh. Her eyes closed, and her body melted against the chair.
When she didn’t move for some time, Jackie stepped forward. “Mum?”
“Jackie…” Eyes barely open, her voice drifted across the room. “You’re awake.”
A strange odor tickled his nose. “Are you sick?”
“Mm, I’ll be fine. Just taking some medicine.”
He crept closer as her head lolled back. When she looked up at him, her eyes were different. The large, flat circles in the middle reminded him of fish eyes. The dead kind that watched them whenever they walked past the fish market in town.
“My beautiful boy...” She stretched weakly for him, but he stepped out of reach. “I had to do it, baby... for us.”
“Mummy, please sit up.”
Her eyes opened, staring at him with those dead fish eyes. Tears shimmered against the black where the reflection of the firelight glowed. “What have I done?” She covered her face and screamed. “What have I done?” She bellowed, causing Jackie to take another step back. “I’m sorry!”
He didn’t like seeing her like this but he didn’t know what to do. “Mummy, please get up.” He tried to pull her off the floor, but she was too heavy.
“I did it for us. We have food now, and heat. It wasn’t too bad, was it, to see how the rich live?”
A chill raced up his spine, his brow softening as his face melted from the bone. He stepped back and blinked. Up until then, he didn’t think she knew.
Concern shifted to anger as his breath quickened. “I don’t want to go back there.”
She nodded, sniffling and wiping away more tears. “Never again, baby. I promise. No more... I’ll never let anyone hurt you again.”
Needing that promise more than anything else, he sat beside her and gently rested his head on her arm.
“It was just a dream, Jackie. Just a bad dream.”
But it wasn’t a dream. Even at six, he knew that was a lie. Dreams didn’t hurt after you woke up.
Dreams didn’t leave marks.
Jack opened his eyes just as the Bentley carved through the countryside, where the landscape transformed into sprawling fields that marked the sanctuary he called home. It had been weeks since he’d been back in his own territory, and he was anxious to return to his private space.
The Isles of Kassel created a private refuge for the top one percent. He’d bought his island over a decade ago, but unlike the others, he never allowed outsiders to visit.
The car crested a hill, and Thornfield Manor came into view, delivering an instantaneous sense of relief.
Home.
The house emerged like a cathedral tribute to the Jazz era, excessive in its Art Deco design, but unlike anything he’d ever seen before. Jack had purchased it from a shipping magnate drowning in debt, a man whose father nearly lost the family fortune to gambling before successfully losing everything in the end.
Three stories of pale limestone flanked by twin towers. He loved the way the stained glass caught the sun and popped against the grey sky, crowns decorated with sunburst motifs in gold leaf and geometric order. Parapets pierced the clouds as green copper gutters spiraled elegantly to the ground.
