Desolation (23 page)

The siren never, ever knew of these thoughts. Somehow the boy kept them to himself, where they grew and grumbled, rooted in an unsettled part of his mind.

He always believed that these thoughts were the source of his shadow.

His imagination never had been very strong.

The first page in the album contained a letter. It was a missive of love, dated thirty years before and written from his mother to his father. Cain opened it from where it was folded in on itself and began to read. At first it did not affect him at all. The sentiments seemed trite, the wording clumsy, and the writing itself was spidery and unsure. But a few lines in he suddenly realized exactly what he was seeing, and it hit him hard. His mother had
touched
this letter. This was of his mother's
mind
. He sobbed out loud, uncontrollably, and dropped the book to the floor. It fell open to reveal several pictures, all of them variations on the same pose: his father sitting astride a horse, with a woman who could only be Cain's mother holding its reins. She looked so gorgeous, so alive, that he had no idea how she could have ever been a mystery to him. This was the first time he had ever seen a picture of her—even after his father's death, no trace of her existence had been found in the house—and he felt as though he had known her his whole life.

Tears blurred the image, and Cain wiped at his eyes. The book stared up at him as if innocent,
though it was anything but that. It contained proof of all the lies his father had ever told him. There were images of him and Cain's mother happy together, smiling, looking forward with the future at their fingertips. Somewhere in their sparkling eyes was an idea of Cain, the child they would have in the future, and the limitless potential inherent in that new, small human. He wondered what his mother would have thought of him now. She had died giving birth to him, so Leonard had claimed, but right now Cain had no idea what to believe. His father had always told him that the future was fluid and changeable, but for Cain the past was equally so. Leonard had made it like that. The truth was elusive.

Perhaps in this photograph album Cain would find the skeleton upon which he could flesh out his own history.

He leaned down, still dripping tears, and picked up the book. He closed it so that he could start again at the beginning.

A sudden crashing sound came from outside. Cain started, heart skipping a beat. Something was being smashed on the floor, again and again. It was so violent that he felt the vibrations against his skin, as if the air within the flat shook with each impact. He ran to the door and opened it a crack. Peering across the hall and into the living room, he saw Magenta sitting cross-legged on the floor, hands on her knees, head dipped as if she were asleep. The banging came again, and it was not Magenta. She lifted her head, moved it slightly left and right, rested again.

Cain closed the door, terrified of whatever was causing the ruckus. It stopped and started, stopped again, and by moving around the bedroom he could place where it was coming from: directly above him, from the living room of his flat.

It sounded exactly like the wooden chest being lifted and dropped, again and again.

“Hello, shadow,” Cain said. He was not surprised. He closed his eyes and opened them again, found himself in the same position and situation, bit his lip, finally convincing himself that he was not in any normal dream. Perhaps it was a fugue of madness, but then madness breeds it own reality.

The crashing stopped, as if whatever causing it had heard his voice. Cain smiled and looked up at the ceiling, wondering just how close he was to his past. “You don't want me to see this, do you?” he whispered. There was a high-pitched screech as the chest moved a few inches across the floor.

What am I imagining here?
he thought.
What am I seeing, smelling, hearing? I must be asleep, but my senses work, and it's the strangest dream ever. And in dreams, can I find the truth?
He opened the album at the third page, looked at the photographs of his father as a young man.
There he is, but is this real? Was he really a soldier? Did he have a mustache like that, his hair cut short, his body fit and lean? Or is this only my mad idea of what I could find, were I only to look?

Perhaps madness is the Way, after all.

“Voice?” Cain whispered. “Face? You wouldn't believe the shit I've got myself into here.” The chest was silent, the shadow still once again.

Cain sat back down on the bed and started leafing through the book. He turned each page slowly, not wishing to rush the process of revelation.

Here was his father in the army, posing next to an armored vehicle of some kind. A laughing man stood in the background, and Leonard looked as if he had just told a joke. His eyes held all the humor his face betrayed. Cain had never seen him like this.

Another image showed his father with a larger group of soldiers, all gathered around a fallen tree trunk, brandishing weapons and with their faces darkened by camouflage paint. His father's eyes were stark white points against his face, piercing, intelligent, filled with a passion that scared Cain because he had never seen it in real life. Not like this, not so pure. The man he had known must have been much reduced by some event in his past.

The next page contained another letter from his mother. It was not a love letter. Time had moved on, and now the two of them were in a comfortable relationship, and she spoke only of news, most of it insignificant. It was a missive written for the sake of it . . . but then the final paragraph made Cain freeze:
Leonard, I have some news I can only tell you face-to-face. I so look forward to Saturday
.

Next page. Cain's parents sat on a cliff-top bench overlooking the sea. Whoever had taken the picture had caught a moment of intense intimacy, one that brought fresh tears to Cain's eyes because he was looking at himself for the first time: his father's hand on his mother's stomach, his mother smiling just over her husband's shoulder, seeing some lost future in the dim distance.

Cain looked across the bedroom at a mirror. He stared into his own eyes and tried to discern a similar future, filled with such hope and potential. But tears seemed to obscure the way, and his pupils were dark and bottomless.

He turned more pages, and the past came at him like a flood of forbidden memories. He had tried to imagine these scenes so often—his parents together, his mother blooming as her stomach grew, the private past that his father would never discuss—that some of them felt like vague memories. It was as if he had dreamed each and every photograph and then forgotten the dreams until now, when the actual images reminded him.

He knew the face of his mother, even though he had never seen her before. So beautiful, so caring, and so naive of what his father would become following her death. Cain knew for sure that there were no such things as ghosts. If there were, his mother would have surely returned to help him by now. He looked around the bedroom just in case. As ever, he was alone.

There were more letters in the album, more photographs, and then Cain saw himself. A small baby, helpless, pink, and wrinkled and staring out at a strange new world with disbelieving, wide-eyed innocence. He looked in the mirror again and his expression now was similar; all except for his eyes, which, instead of innocent, were dark with fear.

His mother was no longer in any of the pictures. His father was there, grim-faced, heavy sacs beneath his eyes, and he seemed to have aged an eternity in the space of one page. His eyes no longer
met the camera lens, and whoever took the pictures seemed to have lost all interest in the subject. Some of them missed part of baby Cain, others cut out most of his father, as if the emotions of loss and grief were affecting the images and distorting what they purported to show. These scenes should be all happiness and smiles, but even the baby seemed to be crying in most of them. Missing the breast, perhaps. Missing the warmth of his mother, lying there while his father cried and did not reach out to touch his newborn son. Maybe a simple hand on the baby's head would have comforted both of them and changed everything that followed. But his father looked too distraught and had never been tactile. Cain had grown up without a single loving hug.

He stared at that picture for a long, long time. It said so much. Most of all, it told him how alone he had always been, from the moment of the birth that killed his mother. His father's face was filled with sadness and hopelessness, but each time Cain looked again his expression seemed to have changed. As the night moved on, and Cain glanced back again and again at the photograph, his father's face showed grief, despair, and rage. Most of all, rage.

The idea that much of what Cain had endured was rooted in his father's anger—his need for some form of revenge—was almost unbearable.

There were no more photographs, no more letters. The rest of the album was blank. He flicked the remaining pages again and again, staring at the blank leaves in the hope that something more may
appear. A sign, perhaps, that his father had loved him. An acknowledgment that his early years had held some semblance of normality. But the pages remained as empty as Cain's memory of those first few years of his life. A few weak thumps came from upstairs, as if the shadow were trying to help. But even darkness sat wrong in Cain's mind, because darkness implied something to hide.

Cain sat there for the rest of the night, nursing the photograph album and wondering why Peter had been so keen for him to see it. Peter had known his father, but he had never mentioned his mother, and this album was mostly about her. Even that last photograph, so indicative of what the future would hold for the poor baby Cain, was most powerful due to her absence.

Had
Peter known her as well? It seemed likely. Whatever secrets he had yet to reveal, however, had been slaughtered by that mad dog.

Cain tried to sleep, but sleep was elusive. Dreams hovered like carrion birds, waiting to sweep in and take him for themselves. His wakefulness kept them at bay.

About four in the morning the birds began their dawn chorus. Cain opened the window so that he could hear better, perhaps discern some meaning in their joyous babble. The singing was wild and loud, as if the birds reveled in this hour when they had the daylit world to themselves, free of humans ruining its beauty with car engines, bustle, and the belief that the world was here to serve them. Birds sang from the front garden, the rooftops, and on the wing, and their celebration of the new day almost
made Cain cry. It made him realize just how insignificant he was. It also scared him; there was understanding in the birds' songs, a comfortable knowledge that humanity had it all wrong.

Perhaps this was a secret that Magenta, Whistler, and the others were aware of.

Cain opened the photograph album to daylight and a picture fell out. He had not seen it before. He could have sworn that he'd checked every page, but still this new picture lay on the floor. He remained seated for a while; he had an inkling of what he was seeing, but to move closer would be to fully reveal the truth. He was not certain he wanted that. He could stand and leave the room now, without looking back. Ignore the picture. But he had an idea that even if he were to do that, he would see it eventually. Magenta would force him to look. Or Sister Josephine would appear naked to him again, in a dream or not, and smile as she explained everything.
Here we are with your father
, she would say.
A long time ago now, but I remember it as if it were yesterday
. And she would tell him why she remembered that time so well, and that was something Cain had no wish to hear.

To see the picture himself would be for the best.

He bent and picked the rectangle of card from the floor, something flat containing such depth. And there they were. His father, young and yet with eyes already shaded by the death of his mother. Gathered around him in a protective group were Whistler, Sister Josephine, George, and a short blond woman with piercing eyes that must have been Magenta. His father's hand rested on
Magenta's shoulder. Apart from his father, all looked exactly as he knew them. No younger, no different, no evidence that time could play with them.
Immortal
, Cain thought, but it was an abstract idea and he did not dwell on it. Did not
believe
it.

He sat back, holding the picture at arm's length lest it bite. He wondered whether Peter had been the photographer.

A door opened and the birds paused in their song. The sound of pan pipes struck up from somewhere, inside or outside Cain could not tell, and the chest in his flat began thumping the floor as if the shadow wished to follow. The birds started singing again and Cain cried out, suddenly afraid of the sounds, hoping that the siren would sing in and silence everything for a few precious seconds with its gift of pain and punishment. But the siren stayed away.

Magenta entered the room, the fresh new Magenta ready for the new fresh day. As she sat on the bed and held him, Cain thought of his father touching her shoulder and staring grimly into the camera.

“I don't understand,” he sobbed, ashamed of his tears but unable to hold them back.

“You will,” she said, hugging him to her. There was nothing familiar or affectionate in the gesture, and it felt awkward, but Cain was thankful all the same. Right then, even though he feared Magenta, he was grateful for the contact.

He cried some more, she rocked him, he glanced up at her face, and she stared away as if distracted.
Suddenly feeling tired, he rested his head against her shoulder and closed his eyes, shutting out the soreness of tears, the sting of revelations from the photograph album. As if to escape the coming day and what it may bring, he slept.

He is in a room he has never seen before. There is no young Cain there this time, it is him as he is now, the new Cain, the explorer Cain discovering his life. This is not a room in his father's house. It has colored pictures on the wall and extravagant furniture. There is a crystal chandelier hanging from the low ceiling. Something nags at him, some troublesome knowledge, but he cannot recall what it is. It remains in the background like a whisper in the night, just beyond the range of hearing.