His name was Kelok Fenton, and he was the father of only one son.
Only one. Like that somehow diminished the impact of having a child, like that somehow meant the little black haired, blue eyed baby failed to take his breath away. He took the baby from the nurse, gently cradling the newborn in his arms. He was a big baby, strong and healthy, with a puff of black hair and a wide toothless smile. Kelok leaned down to press a small kiss to the baby's forehead, holding him close as if at any moment the nurse might take his son away. There were certainly nurses still wary of a man in the delivery room, but they'd let him in, and that was what counted in the end. He only tore his eyes away to look at the body of his wife.
Her pale, still form on the hospital bed made tears well up in his dark seal brown eyes. It didn't help their son had her blue eyes, even if he'd gotten Kelok's black hair. His skin was inbetween their two skintones, a perfect blend. He'd hoped for something like that, but he'd pictured them buying a house together, raising their little one in some small town here in California, and living blissfully with each other. She would watch the children while he went out ghost hunting. Now he didn't know what he would do.
But he would do what he could. His tribe was tight knit and his work placed him in a position of respect despite his mixed race status. He could feasibly find someone to watch over the son as he worked. He had to support this new life, this precious amazing person he could scarcely believe he'd taken part in making. He gingerly pressed his son to his chest and shoulder, hearing his son sigh contentedly. The future was so uncertain, yet in this moment he couldn't feel any hopelessness. A determination he'd never known before welled up in Kelok, like when he was on a ghost hunt, like when he was in total darkness trying to sense the energy of the area, in danger and unafraid.
"What are you going to name him?" a nurse asked softly. She was young and still had a sense of wonder at babies, and her smile was kind and without judgment despite him being a Native and a man in the delivery room.
He glanced back at the long cold body of his wife, Jacqueline. His smile was marred with tears. "Jack. Jack Nelin Fenton."
By the time Jack was four, life had settled into an odd routine.
Kelok's sister Leyes looked after Jack as Kelok worked on ghost hunts. He was gone for a week or two and back for a week or two, and Jack always rushed up on sturdy legs to meet him. Leyes accused Kelok of spoiling him, to which Kelok freely admitted he did. He bought Jack any sweet food he wanted, took him wherever he wanted to go, told him every legend of the Yurok tribe with great enthusiasm just to see Jack's eyes light up. He loved his son, he lived for him, and he didn't want to leave him. He only did so to help make the world safer for people, for their children, for their futures. If something happened to Jack he would break down on the spot. When he got news of ghosts in places of any population, he pictured the children and parents.
So he left again and again, and Leyes had to put up with Jack running around the town annoying the Yurok population by trying to get everybody to talk about ghosts. He was doted on by the elders, of course; he was an attentive child when stories came up. He had lots of friends since he could be rough and tumble with kids twice his age, and by the time he was eight he was perfectly content with the world as he knew it. He loved the life he had, the father and aunt who watched over him, the Yurok he spoke and the people who tolerated his endless thirst for knowledge of the supernatural.
Life was a parade of language, stories, books on ghosts, fudge, ice cream, hot days spent with his friends swimming in the river, and constant talking his father's ear off, which was met with gentle smiles and soft ruffling of his hair.
Then, when he was ten, everything changed.
Ghost hunting wasn't paying the bills anymore.
Demonology was. It wasn't the safest field, it was dangerous, playing with fire and asking to get burnt. But what father wouldn't burn for his son? He delved into the darkness with reckless abandon. The levels of insidious, nightmarish things out there was greater than he ever imagined. If he was honest with himself, it scared him. But he could no more turn from it than he could turn from Jack. He bought books, he did field work, he saw things that defied either language he knew, he came home with scars and shaking hands, and Jack saw his father begin to slowly fade like a candle lit for too long into the night. His black hair was streaked with white and he tried to keep his son away from the paranormal with sudden, almost insane fervor.
One night when his son was twelve Kelok took Jack's collection of ghost hunting books and threw them into the fire, over his son's protests. He whirled on the boy and grabbed his wrist hard enough to leave a ring of purpling bruises the next day, a father's bracelet. His black-brown eyes were alight with something dark and unfathomable, something pained and determined and rolling over them in waves, energy raw and thick like fog.
"You," his father said firmly, "Will never be like me, Jack Fenton. Promise me."
"I can't," Jack choked out.
Something broke in his father's eyes, in his face. He released his son from his grip, got his coat, and simply walked out the door, wordless and soundless as the ghosts he once hunted. That was how Jack came to live with his aunt Leyes permanently. The night was etched into his mind like carvings into a tombstone. There was a finality in the departure, a pain that went on and on, and Jack was just old enough to understand that this time, his father wasn't coming back.
Life went on, but there was a Kelok sized hole in it now that could not be filled.
Jack was nearly sixteen when his father came back with the kind of money that would make it so that he never worked again.
His hair was white, his upper body was a mess of claw marks and scars new, faded, every shade of angry red and faded pink, and his hands were burnt and unfeeling. He pulled Jack to him and whispered apologies, begged forgiveness to a son who had never hated him, and after the kind of crying neither man would admit to, Jack helped his father limp back to his old bedroom, where he collapsed and slept for three days straight, motionless as a corpse, shaking no matter how many blankets were put on top of him. When he woke he set up his traditional Yurok altar and began staying in his room for hours at a time in front of it. More than once Jack came home to his father blessing the house or cleansing it or washing the outside in a strange mixture he claimed repelled demons. The house smelled of smoke, sage, odd herbs and salt.
Kelok began to drift further and further away, and Jack tried to reel him back in. They went out for fudge, they went to movies, they went to tribe meetings together, but people avoided his father now. They knew something was wrong that could not be fixed. Eventually Kelok retreated from the world to write demonology books, cautionary tales and manuals, the kind of things he forbade his son to read. He was famous in the paranormal world. No one in that world knew he slowly faded away into a thin, frail wisp of a man who could barely leave the house, who obsessed over his son's future and poured all his money into Jack's college fund.
When he found out Jack had taken up Paranormal Studies as a major, Kelok simply laid down before his altar and never woke up, and Jack plastered a happy-go-lucky mask on his face to keep the unspeakable guilt at bay. It remained a false persona until he met a redhead named Maddie who had theories about how contact with ghosts could affect someone psychologically. Maybe they were true, maybe they weren't.
But it gave Jack something to blame, something to hate, and hate he did.