Cruel and Unusual - serialised novel EXCLUSIVE to Steemit Part 11

Exclusive for Steemit - serialisation of Cruel and Unusual – my second novel

Episodes:
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The man smiled and Jack was struck by how great the resemblance was between his remembered uncle and his newly discovered cousin.

“Will you come for a drink with me, cousin? I am afraid that I cannot offer a proper wake for my mother, for the only ones attending will be her immediate family. I sadly never traced the remains of my father’s family for I never knew him. I believe he died in military action in India.”

“Of course. It would be a pleasure.”

“Oh but I am forgetting,” Jack said. “The other members of my mother’s family are also your family. My mother and your father were brother and sister. Come, you must meet our grandparents.”

Jack took hold of his cousin’s arm and began to guide him in the direction of the other mourners.

“I am certain that they are as unaware of your existence as I was.” Jack stopped pulling on David’s arm because David had not made a move to go with him.

Jack at last let go of David’s arm and instead, looked him straight in the eye as he spoke the thinly veiled accusation. “Come, cousin.”

David waited a moment, seeming to weigh up Jack and his intentions. “Yes Jack, very clever. You obviously know. I suppose that your mother told you the truth of it. On her deathbed was it?”

Jack just stood facing David, silent as the grave in which he had just watched his mother’s coffin being placed. His face set as stone, waiting at last, for the truth.

“If you still wish to go for a drink and a proper talk, I can recommend my club; it is but a short hackney cab journey from here.” David said.

“I would prefer my club if you wouldn’t mind. I think that I would perhaps feel a little more secure there.”

David grew angry then, yet his voice was kept under control and he spoke with a calmness that chilled Jack.

“I mean you no harm Jack, but indeed if I did intend harm upon your person, you would not be safe in the middle of Great Scotland Yard.”

David’s eyes glowed for a second and Jack saw a visage that he could only hope he had imagined, a face which filled him with terror for a split second.

“Yes, I believe you.”

At the shock apparent on Jack‘s face, David realised that he knew nothing of the truth after all, he had been fishing and had almost reeled him in.

“On second thoughts, Jack, I believe that you do not know the truth after all. Amelia kept her word, she took my - our - secret to her grave. So on that note, son, I will take your leave. Do not try to find me. It would prove dangerous for you.”

He held up his hand to prevent Jack from voicing the comment that was on his lips.

“That was not a threat. I would not harm you, but others of my kind would and if you did succeed in discovering any of us, you would not survive long enough to make use of the information. I have already told you more than it is safe for you to know. Goodbye Jack. I loved your mother, I still do, but this was her choice, goodbye, son.”

Before Jack had chance to react, David was gone. He did not disappear in a cloud of smoke, he moved, but he was so swift that Jack could not have even told which direction he had taken.

As the weeks passed, Jack grew angry. He thought back to the graveside conversation often and wrote down what he remembered, not only about the conversation, but of the whole day.

His father was David, he knew that already, but on meeting him, he now knew that his own father was younger in appearance than he was. He had passed himself off as his own son with great success.

Going over and over the transcript of the conversation, a few phrases continued to bother him. “Others of my kind”. Jack shuddered as he recalled the transformation that David’s face had performed.

Jack did not need his extensive medical training to know that it was purely supernatural and was not physically possible for a human to transform in that way.

That could only mean that David was not human, yet, Jack countered, he had appeared human. In this case, could it mean that he himself was at least some part of whatever this new species was? David was his father; he had called him ‘son’ - of course he was partially of the same species.

“This was her choice” was the other phrase that bothered Jack. What exactly did that mean? It was her choice for what, to produce a semi-species?

No, he could not imagine his mother experimenting like that. What then? He forced himself to recall his last evening in the old house, before he had been sent away to boarding school. They had argued, his mother and David. He remembered being cradled in his mother’s arms and she told David to go home. He did as she said and left but in the night, he had returned, taken Jack from his mother’s bed, wrapped him in a blanket and then he had given him to a man - the carriage driver. Yet there was someone else, another person who had stayed inside the carriage and taken Jack’s drowsy form and made him comfortable so that he would go back to sleep. Jack tried hard to remember, but he had been a child and half-asleep.

What choice would she have made? For David to go - that was certain - but never to make contact again? David never had made contact so that question was answered.

Jack sat many a night wondering, pondering the puzzle that he had set himself. He never felt that he had solved the mystery of his mother’s choice. He resolved to put away these thoughts and questions that were torturing his mind and distracting him. Jack went back to the hospital and threw himself into his work and studies.

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