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Sean
spent the rest of the night
explaining most of his past to Brian,
the parts which he could remember anyway
.
Brian was mostly quiet but Sean didn’t mind too much
, it just felt good to talk to someone who was so keen to listen to him.
All of the worries and ponde
rings he had always harboured over his amnesia poured out of him, and strangely enough he didn’t feel embarrassed like he would if he discussed such a subject with anybody else.
He found that he actually liked Brian a lot; he was easy to get along with, and in a strange way being with him was reassuring.
They talked until the indigo night sky began to fade into a dull, monotone grey and a pinkish glow appeared on the horizon, staining the surrounding clouds a similar hue.

“The sun’s coming up,” Penny was the first to announce cheerfully, sitting up in the grass after a night of star-gazing. She wandered over towards them. “It’s pretty, isn’t it?” she smiled.

“Yeah, it is,” Sean agreed, and for the first time in a
very
long time, he actually felt content.
It was as though an extremely heavy
metaphorical
weight
had been lifted off his shoulders.

“You should go
back now, before Drew wakes up,” Brian said.

“I will. And…thank you, for telling me everything
.” Sean stood up, and was about to walk away, before hesitating. “There was one more thing I wanted to ask you, though, that I didn’t have a chance to.”

“What is it?”

Sean shuffled awkwardly, feeling slightly nervous. “Did you ever meet my father? His name was Jacob Lane. I was
just wondering if he was dead or not
, and he used to live around this area…”

Brian stiffened for a mome
nt
. “Nope, sorry kid,” he shrugged. “Never met him. He’s probably still alive.”

Sean sighed. “Well, that’
s a good thing I guess. Thanks
anyway. Bye.”

It was on the way back to his house, walking along the dimly lit streets, that Sean began to think of his father. It was an odd thing to think ab
out, considering how hard he had tried to repress thoughts concerning the man
.
He couldn’t remember
his father
at all, as he’d left before the
amnesia.
He’d
been cut out of all the family photos. It was his father leaving, as well as his amnesia, that had caused his mother to start drinking. And from then on, everything went downhill.

Truthfully Sean didn’t
even know what
he
looked like, and before he did
n’t especially ca
re. All he knew was his name
, so why should he care? He’d
left their family, and for that Sean
tried to hate
him. It wa
s hard to hate a stranger he’d never met, but sometimes he’d
had dreams where he saw a silhouette of his father’s back walking out of the front door, out of their lives.
Perhaps the reason he liked Brian was because he too understood the betrayal he felt. Brian had done the betraying himself to his own c
hildren, b
ut that was different
.
Brian
had tried to do something noble;
what he thought best at the time
.

N
ow
that
it was very likely that his father was still alive and out there somewhere, Sean couldn’t help but think about him. Why had he left in the first place?
Had he started a new family
? Would he ever come back? The questions and thoughts pummelled against his skull until Sean, with a frustrated sigh, had to force his mind blank and concentrate on thinking about the imminent crap weather instead. Anything except for a pair of familiar blue eyes that Sean somehow
knew
belo
nged to a man he couldn’t remember.

By the time he reached his ro
om, Drew was already wide awake, dressed,
and
sitting on the edge of the bed.
He looked up when Sean ente
red, and there was
apprehension flashing clearly in his eyes.
They were circled by dark bruises, as if he hadn’t slept all night.

“What happened?” Sean asked instinctively, a feeling
of
unease enveloping him, all previous thoughts concerning his father evaporating quickly.
Something was wrong.
He could see it in the tenseness of the boy’s shoulders, the way his back was hunched and the worry etched onto his face.

Drew shot him a single glance, then bit his lip. “It’s Hayden. He’s gone.”

Chapter 13
:
You and your shadow are made the same way

“He’s gone? What do mean he’s
gone
?”

For once, Drew’s normal mask of casual indifference had fallen, to reveal the worry beneath. “He didn’t come back last night. He’s still not back, and no one knows where he is. Your mother’s really worried, she’s going to phone the police if he doesn’
t come back by tonight
.”

Sean blinked, trying to clear his thoughts. So much had happened recently that he had honestly forgotten about his brother, which he now realised was a mistake. “He always comes back by morning,”
he murmured quietly.
“There’s something wrong.”

“No shit,” Drew bit back.

Sean ignored the sarcasm, putting aside his anger momentari
ly. Getting Drew pissed at
him would not help the situation. “Where did he say he was going out last night?” he asked. “You must have been here when he left.”

“He didn’t say,
just walked out the door.”

“Was there
anything different about him?”

“He…h
e had this strange look in his eyes. Like, he wasn’t really seeing anything
except
whatever it was he was thinking about.”

“And you didn’t think to stop him?”

“Like he would h
ave listened to me.” Drew paused
, then continued anxiously: “I…think he might know something, Sean. It worries me, what he would do if he found out.”

“I doubt he would come to that conclusion just because he’s suspicious of you.”

“Maybe,” Drew agreed. “But he could come to a worse one.”

Sean tried not to think about that thought.
“Do you think he’s
been
taken?”

“I
t’s a possibility.”

“We need to find him,” Sean clarified, unwilling to hear any more of the other boy’s dire theories.

“You’ll have to do it yourself,” Drew shrugged. “
I wouldn’t know where to look. And besides, I have to go to school.”

“Can’t you just skip for the day and search for him?”

“I’m trying to
not
rouse suspicion here. A
n
d I would probably just cause more problems by
playing truant.” Drew smiled rather sardonically. “Guess you’re on your own, Sean. Just don’t stray too far, or you’ll only sap your energy quicker.”

Sean narrowed his eyes. “
Do
anything stupid behind my back while I’m gone, and you’re as good as dead.
”

“As if I’m not already,” came the sarcastic reply.

It was an hour later, and
Sean had no idea where to look. Drew
had left for school immediately after their conversation, and would be of no help. So he was on his own, wandering ai
mlessly down unknown roads
, and to make matters worse it had started to drizzle.  He hated it when it
rained;
it only made him wish that he could feel it on his face, drenching his hair, saturating his clothes with cold water.
He shook his head in irritation.
S
top with the sulking,
he reminded himself
, you don’t have time to wallow in angst right now. Think. Think. Think. Where
would be the one place Hayden
would go?

He tried every gothic back alley he could find, the various pubs littered around the town, the park. He even tried an abandoned warehouse that Hayden used to take refuge in sometimes. All the while the drizzle worsened until it was downright pouring, the fat raindrops clattering loudly on the pavement like the gallop of a hundred pairs of hooves. By the time Sean scoured every single public building in the whole area it had started to get dark and the rain had turned to hail. It was near
ing the end of November, and like the golden leaves fading into dull brown autumn was fading into winter.

He was about to give up when he remembered the library. He happened to be passing it and stopped, staring at the decrepit old building in interest. He had skipped over it in his search, but now he wondered if this might be where Hayden had b
een hiding out all day. It was
possible. His brother loved books and devoured literature at a disturbing rate,
five at
a
time usually,
how had he even managed to skip the library? He should have gone there first.
He
ran up the steps, and passed straight through the door into the dusty interior. Two librarians worked at the desk, but otherwi
se there was
no one else.

He
sped past the first blockade of bookshelves, and delved deeper into the columns and walls of novels, navigating tables and desks in the makeshift maze. There was a musty odour in the air that screamed of neglect, and the curt
ains were frayed and moth eaten
. The library was bigger than Sean ever remembered. How long since he’d come here himself? Years, maybe.

He finally found him, and with this came a surge of relief.
Hayden was situated in the furthest corner, right at the back
, slumped in a small chair under a grimy window
.
His face was veiled b
y shadows but even so his over-
bright eye
s stood out, bloodshot from exhaustion
. A book was propped open on his knee and he was bent over it, muttering furiously to himself under his breath. Sean lent in closer, trying to catch what he was saying.

“No, No…this isn’t right. This isn’t what I’m looki
ng for, still not enough.
” Sean
tried to patch the phrases together, but they made no sense. What was he looking for? He bent down to try and see the front cover of the book, and froze. It was an old book, older than he had ever seen with binding that was barely intact, faded text and a worn leather cover. But it was the book’
s title that caught his
attention: ‘On the many different aspects of the human soul’.

Reading over his brother’s shoulder, S
ean couldn
’t help but hold his breath:
Post mortuum
, it said clearly. After death.
Quickly he skimmed through the two page spread, picking out the important parts.

‘There have been those who have said that after the death of the body, the soul can continue to live on for an unknown length of time with no mortal container…it is the belief of the ancient race of the Druids that after death a soul can cross from one to another when the host has been significantly weakened both mentally and physically…a
soul inhabiting a body not of its own may retain some of its original features
.’

Not all of it was relevant, but the bits that were
relevant
were
surprisingly accurate.
How much did Hayden
already
know?
Sean
noticed
two
pile
s
of books on the floor next to the chair, and knew their titles
would all be similar. One pile was drastically smaller than the other and looked like the pile Hayden had already read, while the other unread pile was much larger.
To anyone else they might just seem like stupid m
edieval beliefs, but
Sean knew that his brother was the one
person who would believe them.
Hayden might even work it out. T
hen what?
Surely Hayden would try to save him, right? Hayden was supposed to be his
brother,
there was supposed to be trust between them.

Think. Think. Theories, ideas, ‘what ifs’ flashed through his head. Think. Don’t stop to reflect, or mus
e, or mull over, or consider
. Think. I
t
hadn’t
always been like this, him trying to kee
p Hayden locked out.
T
here was a time when they would talk properly; tell each other things under the cover of darkness. Because t
rust was like hydrogen bonds: coming together and breaking over and over again, reusable, indispensable.
It was still there somewhere, and Sean was so tired of this loneliness. This was his only chance: Drew was not here to witness anything and he would have no proof that Sean had exposed the secret.