Dark Secrets (70 page)

“
Were you the only
one killed?”

“
Thankfully, yes.
But, I had established quite a good life for myself; had plenty of
money in the bank, a house, friends—but no will. So, with my
brother and only kin supposedly dead, my estate became ward of the
government, and I had to start all over again.” He laughed; I
covered my mouth. “Talk about learning from your
mistakes.”

“
Well, what good
would mistakes be if you didn’t get to learn from them?” I
shrugged, then looked down at the next headstone in the plot. The
name didn’t match the others though; hers was Deveraux.

“
She was my mother—”
David answered my thought, “—my aunt by blood, but mother by
choice.” He stepped away and drew the dried brown vine hugging the
stone top away, revealing a name and an inscription on the bronze
plate:

Arietta Mary
Deveraux

Beloved Mother and
Aunt.

Lies beneath, sent to
the earth with child in arms.

Safe for eternity in
the embrace of the Lord. 1908.

My skin tightened with
little bumps. “Child?”

“
Yes,” David
whispered. “She died the second the child was born.” He focused on
his toe as he scuffed up a chunk of grass. “We buried them
together.”

“
Nineteen-oh-eight?
So you were only...” I counted in my head for a second.

“
I turned fourteen a
few months after she died,” David said.

I watched the grief
trickle across his brow before he contained it. “After all these
years, you still feel it? You still feel her loss so
strongly?”

He bit his lip. “There
are some things you can never move on from, Ara.”

“
So, she died in
childbirth—like your mother?”

“
No.” The way he said
that, his voice laden with detest, made my blood run
cold.

“
Will you tell me
what happened?” I asked cautiously.

David looked up at me
quickly, then, leaving my words alone behind him, walked over and
sunk down on the grass with his back against her stone—as if he’d
sat there a thousand times before. “You look like her,” he
said.

“
I do?”

He nodded. “Her hair
was long, like yours, but as gold as the sun. And her eyes—” he
closed his, dropping his head as a slight smile lifted his lips,
“—as blue as the ocean. She would have loved you.” He patted the
spot next to him; I sat down, my back against the stone, too, my
legs crossed. “She would have been proud of me to have found such a
sweet girl.”

“
I’m sure she
knows—somehow.” I wanted to take his hand, but there was an air of
tension around him—threatening, like he’d explode if I touched
him.

“
So you believe in
the afterlife—believe they’re watching over us?”

I shrugged. “I guess I
have to. Otherwise it all just feels too final.”

“
It
is
final,” he said coldly, obviously not realising how deep that
hurt. His gaze frosted the distant horizon, his hands tight in his
lap. “Ever since the day she came to retrieve us from the orphanage
after my father passed away, she treated Jason and I as if we were
her own sons.”

“
Why were you in an
orphanage?” I cut in.

“
It was
temporary—while they waited for her to arrive from England.” He
seemed to watch a memory on the grass between his feet. “But we
were treated kindly there.”

“
So, no Oliver Twist
scenario?”

David laughed once.
“No. Nothing like that.”

“
What about your
uncle? Why didn’t he take you?”

“
Set rules,” he
stated.

“
Oh.”
Of course, silly
me.

“
Well, in Arthur’s
defence, when Arietta passed, he managed to have many rules bent in
order to have Jason and I in his charge. It’s never been done
before, or again.”

“
Whose butt did he
kiss?” I joked.

“
The
king’s.”

“
Oh,” I said, and something in the brevity of his words made
my curiosity on
that
subject flee. “So, how did Arietta die?”

He picked up an
orange, star-shaped leaf, scratching the veins with his thumbnail.
“I knew you couldn’t resist asking me that again.”

“
Sorry. You don’t
have to tell me.” I folded my hands into my lap and looked up at
the tree above us; the leaves rustled lightly in the breeze, and
despite this being a place the dead rested, I felt comfortable
here, like it was just some pleasant picnic spot—somewhere to sit
and think about the past.

“
She always wanted
children,” he said out of the blue; I sat still, holding my breath
in case he should change his mind. “She loved my brother and I, but
wanted a daughter. She used to play hopscotch with the little girls
on the sidewalk outside our house.”

“
I love
hopscotch.”

David smiled at me.
“The summer after my father’s passing, Arietta was walking to the
market when a sailor stopped her on the roadside. He asked if she
was okay, and she asked why he would inquire such an odd question
to a stranger who showed no signs of distress. When he said he was
concerned for her pain—since it must have hurt when she fell from
Heaven, she fell completely and unconditionally in love with
him.”

“
Well, he sounds
charming.” I grinned woefully. “In a corny kind of way.”

“
He was charming and
kind. He treated Jason and I as if we were his own sons. Victor
Stronghold was his name, and soon, became Arietta’s. And we were
happy.” He nodded. “Victor took us fishing and camping, taught us
how to play baseball and showed us maps of the world. But happiness
was short lived. They had tried for so long to have a child, and
when the days of waiting for the stork to arrive became years—we
all lost hope.

“
I was nearly
thirteen when Uncle Arthur came to visit. He and my aunt became
close. Victor was called away to duty in the Navy for six months
and—” David scratched his brow, “—when he returned, Arietta was
pregnant.”

“
So it was your
uncle’s baby?” I asked, my eyes wide.

“
Yes. Victor was
devastated and humiliated. He left town for a few months, but
returned later and begged her to stay with him—despite her
indiscretions.”

“
He must have really
loved her.”

“
Apparently. But she
refused—repeatedly. I remember them fighting about it…at
night…while we cowered in our beds, frightened Victor would hurt
our aunt. One night she announced to him that she’d be marrying
Arthur. So he left, and life went on.”

“
Wait. So, just to be
clear. Arthur was a vampire then?”

He nodded. “He was. He
planned to change Arietta after the child was born.”

“
Wow.”

David plucked the dry
edges of the leaf in hand and flicked the debris onto the wind.
“The doctor predicted the child would arrive in spring, but the
snow had started to melt and the days turn warm and still, nothing
happened. I stayed home from school for more than a fortnight to
watch over her until, one day, she packed my lunch and sent me out
the door—told me she would be fine.” He rested the back of his head
against the stone. “I remember it all like it was yesterday. So
many things aligned to allow tragedy to upturn our lives that
day.”

“
Like
what?”

“
Uncle Arthur was
running errands on the other side of the Port—a day’s travel by
foot—” He straightened his leg, “—and Jason and I would not be home
until sunset, at the earliest.”

“
So…” I waited, but
he’d obviously continued living the story inside his mind,
forgetting to share. “What happened then?”

“
I—” He rolled his
head sideways to look at me. “I just don’t know if I can talk about
this, Ara. It’s too…” I watched his flat palm smooth circles over
the left side of his chest. “It’s too painful.”

I nodded. “That’s
fine.”

“
But, I—” He sat up
more and reached for my face. “I could show you—if you would let
me.”

“
Show me?”

“
I can share
memories,” he said, his voice trickling with hope. “It’s…it won’t
be very clear, since I haven’t mastered this technique yet, but it
will save me the lengthy monologue.” His lip quirked on one
side.

“
Okay.” I grabbed his
hand, rolling my cheek against it. “Show me.”

“
Close your eyes.” He
shuffled closer and rested his other hand on my cheek. “Try not to
fight it when you see memories that don’t belong to you. Just
watch—like a movie.”

“
Okay,” I
whispered.

A faint image, like a
photo taken on a sunny day then placed in a dark room at a
perpendicular angle, appeared on the backs of my eyelids. I drew a
deep breath and watched the slanted image, kind of squinting a
little, even with my eyes closed.

“
Sorry. I’m not too
good at this.” David’s breath brushed softly against my ear. “Does
it hurt?”

“
No. Is it supposed
to?”

“
No. But it
can.”

“
I’m fine,” I said
and settled back internally to watch the movie.

The evening sky hugged
the ground in the distance, red bleeding into night, and as far as
the eye could see, the undisturbed horizon ran off into hills, tan
roads snaking inward and disappearing among them. The last dregs of
light turned the grass orange where it lined the dirt road under a
boy’s feet. He whistled and waved to his neighbours as he passed,
but in his green eyes, the depths of his worries flared. He walked
with an edge to his step, half hurrying, half skipping, as if to
pretend he felt no concern. But when he looked up to a house at the
end of the street, the open front door seemed to stop his
heart.

Silence seized the
sound of children laughing, dogs barking, and his own quiet
thoughts. I couldn’t understand why, but I could sense something
was off. So could the boy.

Two breaths passed
before the thump of his knapsack hitting the ground brought all
life, all sound, back.

The movie played in
slow motion, making the distance between the picket gate and the
porch steps seem like a hundred yards as he ran, his heels kicking
up clouds of dust behind him. But everything stopped, the colour
draining from the day, shadowing out the warmth as no one greeted
the boy’s call. He stood in the frame of the door, his eyes tracing
the raw pine staircase, the archway to the left, and finally
falling over a table knocked to its side; shattered blue pottery
lay among twelve rose stems, the red petals crumpled and torn,
smudged into the hardwood floors all around his feet.

“
Arietta?” he called
again, expecting to hear her reply. He held his breath, this boy
with gold-brown hair and fair skin, and bravely entered, though he
could feel the grip of tragedy climbing the walls. He toed the edge
of the table, shifting it away, seeing four curled fingers, tipped
red with blood, the rest of the arm slightly hidden by the gate of
the stairs.

“
Aunty?” He ran to
her side, falling to his knees at the sight of her fragile, slender
body, twisted awkwardly, as if she had fallen from something
impossibly high and landed without bones in her body. Stringy
tendrils mocked what was once hair of gold, and as the boy reached
forward and stroked it from her cheek, he turned her face toward
him and let out a shallow, empty cry, falling back on his
heels.

A face unrecognisably
human stared back at him; eyes swollen shut, a deep void where the
other half of her skull should be—her lip torn up to her nose,
several teeth missing.

My heart, which had
been steady the whole time, suddenly beat faster.

The boy got to his
knees again and, swiping tears from his youthful cheeks, lifted the
bodice of her dress and fell heavily upon her blackened belly. He
felt helplessly around the dome of skin, searching for the feel of
life within, and while his body shook from the fear of truth, he
turned his head to read something inscribed on the wall beside him.
The memory blanked out the words, leaving only the feeling that
followed, and I knew they were a passage from the Bible, condemning
infidelity.

David covered the
belly of his aunt and sat up suddenly, his ears pricked, his
shoulders tense, eyes wide. Then, he launched to his feet and
extended his hand toward the door. “Jason. Don’t come
in!”

A boy, an exact copy
of David, stopped dead in the doorway—his boisterous smile slipping
away at the sight of his blood-covered brother.

“
Get Uncle, Jason.
Get Uncle!” David yelled his command, but Jason was already gone.
Swift and graceful, he tore down the street, his lanky limbs
blurring with speed until he disappeared from David’s
sight.

David turned back to
his aunt and fell to his knees, weeping. “I’m so sorry, Aunty. I
should...I should have been here—” His body submitted to grief, but
stopped suddenly as the deathly figure beneath him groaned.
“Aunty!” He held his breath. “Aunty!”