Author's Note
Warnings for this chapter: Slight insanity, Sad!Alfred, angst. I promise you this fic will live up to its M rating, eventually. Just give me a few chapters, here. And thanks for the reviews, they make my day :'3 *sniff*
...
It was 'tomorrow'. My mother woke me up at ten, much too early, and I couldn't love her more.
Thanks for letting me stay home. Thanks for not making me walk to school.
I had decided, in the hazy, minute-long world between sleeping and the waking life, that I'd man up and go on the walk she had suggested the night before. After all, my mother would be with me, so it would all be good. Heroes can be defeated alone, after all, but not when they have their sidekick with them.
Another act of sheer stupidity to talk myself into believing that I had hallucinated.
It would work. Oh yes, it definitely would.
I was invincible.
And then I woke up completely, about ten minutes after my mother left the basement. The cold sweat broke out just about the second that I hit the floor, after rolling off the couch. I was used to a bed much larger than a handful of cushions, after all.
But the consequential ache in my tailbone wasn't the top of my priorities, not that morning. Pain, I could deal with. Fear, not so much.
I had talked myself into going on the walk. Talked myself into leaving the safety of my basement. Talked myself—presence of mother or not—into going into the forest, and willingly. And now, of course, I couldn't back down. Even though only I was aware of my decision, giving up and staying home would be accepting defeat.
I had three days. Defeat was not an option, not when I had a mission to complete. A mission which I had lovingly named Operation Fearless.
Badass.
And so, after a morning of nervous snacking and nausea from gorging myself after not eating for three days, the moment arrived when my mother finished her work.
She came downstairs, looking relatively pleased with herself.
"Oh," she said, catching sight of me. "You're up. I was scared you'd fallen asleep after I came downstairs, this morning."
"Nope, quite awake," I said, smiling. A part of me desperately wanted her to have forgotten about the walk.
"So, you up for the walk?"
Fuck.
"Totally," I said, feigning interest.
I figured that I'd go into the forest, with my mother. I'd be nervous as all hell. And then, when we returned home after nothing happened, I would be cured of all fears, and or hallucinations.
Impeccable planning, there.
I grabbed the most badass gear I could find without looking too suspicious. Black leather boots, the leather partially shredded from exposure to salt during the winter. I had been too lazy to use that leather-protecting stuff my mother always talked about, and in any case, I found that the jagged edges and ripped leather made them look all the more badass.
I threw on my bomber jacket, too. The back of it still held the dirt stains from the fall I had taken on Friday, but I loved that jacket more than anything. And, just like Spiderman wasn't a superhero until he put his suit on, the jacket was my sign of awesomeness. It was a requirement on missions as serious as this one.
My mom threw on her boots, too, and a light fall jacket. She excused herself to the washroom before we left, and I took that minute to slip into the kitchen.
I scanned the counter for what I was looking for, and when I didn't see it, I opened the top drawer under the counter. Slowly, so as not to make any noise.
There it was. The kitchen knife.
After gently picking it up and making sure it was the one I wanted (the blade was twice the length of my hand, serrated on one side and as sharp as hell), I slipped it carefully into a make-shift holder on my belt, watching the blade come through on the other side as I slid it in. I then did up my jacket, making sure it hid the knife.
It did.
I returned to the front hall, leaning against the door as I waited for my mother. Sure enough, she came out a few second later, and I smiled at her. She smiled back, completely unaware.
She opened the front door and we both exited the house, a few more seconds of waiting ensuing as she locked the door behind us.
"You look better today," she said. "Can you feel any difference from yesterday?"
"Yeah," I said, slipping my hands into my pockets. "I feel a lot better, actually." I could feel the cold metal of the knife through the thin fabric of my jacket.
It comforted me.
"That's good."
It was.
We quickly made our way down the steps, down the driveway, down the road. I glanced back at our house as the main road came into sight. We turned onto it, and the house disappeared behind a wall of trees.
I caught the sign at the corner of the street, announcing the name of the path we currently followed.
Percival Road.
Pretty name. Not so pretty memories.
Still, my mother was beside me, I was feeling a lot less stressed out, and I had come quite close to convincing myself that the Wendigo I had seen had merely been a figment of my imagination, a sick coincidence played out by some bored gods with a horrible sense of humour.
Well, fuck them, they could look down from the clouds and see Alfred Jones walking, fearless, towards the forest where the hallucination took place.
Fearless.
I repeated the word in my head, each time convincing myself further that this was the right decision.
And anyways, even if the creature did exist (which it didn't), I had no reason to worry about it. I had built a "List of Confidence", as I liked to call it, earlier on that day. When waiting. I went over it in my head as we approached the forest.
One, I had walked in the forest many times before, with my mother, and the beast had never showed its face. Obviously, it only targeted those who were alone.
Two, I had only seen it once (for sure), after years of walking home on that same route, further proving the idea of a hallucination.
And three, when I had seen the beast, it had made no attempts to rip my guts out and/or eat me alive. This meant that I didn't really have to worry about it. The worst it could do would be to stand there and look threatening. No harm done.
And so I entered the forest relatively calmly, the extent of my worrying showing itself by my nails digging into my palms.
My mother kept glancing over at me, checking to see if I was alright. For a moment, I had almost forgotten about my 'sicknesses'. I sent her a reassuring smile. She took my hand in hers and we continued on. Though the action was a bit childish, I didn't resist, thankful for the presence of another human being. Thankful, too, for the small comfort.
A few minutes into the forest, there was a path, one that we followed quite often. Approaching it, I caught sight of a history paper, caught in the branches of a dying bush. Frost had coated its surface, cementing it to the dead limbs.
I had to hold back a laugh as we passed it.
Then we hit the pathway, and everything became that much more familiar, that much safer. I was still holding onto my mother's hand, and she seemed extremely happy that there had been no resistance to her show of affection.
In any case, it wasn't like anyone was going to see us out here.
My mother looked over at me.
"The stream?" she asked.
I nodded, smiling.
'The stream' was a place where we usually ended up when walking through the forest. I had been a constant visitor to it for as long as I could remember, and I could think of nothing as calming and happily nostalgic as the stream. If anything would take off that last bit of worry, that would be it.
We turned right at a fork in the pathway, left at the next one. I knew this path. Right, left, left, straight. Forty minutes to a half-hour rest, before returning home. That was our schedule. It always had been.
I looked over at my mother, continuously glancing over to make sure that she was still there. She seemed happy.
"Thanks for coming with me," she said. Her words were quiet. I realized why.
We had hardly ever walked in this forest, not after Matt disappeared.
"No problem," I said, a vague response to her vague statement. A hero wouldn't bring things up that didn't need to be resurrected. And, as my mother's hero, 'no problem' was all the answer that was necessary.
Her smile widened. It made me happy to see her happy.
We came to the stream after a good half hour of silence. As the weather had gotten colder, a thin layer of ice had formed over its surface. The water still ran underneath. During the winter, the water would freeze completely, and in the summer, there would usually be two or three weeks when the stream would be completely dry.
But the water always came back.
The stream ran through a small open space, empty of trees. Too small for a campsite but large enough for two or three people to sit in with plenty of extra space. What made it nice was the lack of dirt—The Canadian Shield, as Matt used to call it, ran its rocky back open and exposed through the clearing. Perfect to sit on without getting too dirty. And in the summer, the rock would always heat up to a perfect temperature.
I still held memories of Matt and I, laying sprawled out on the rock, hands dangling into the stream and toes kneading into the soft moss at the rock's end.
Now, though, everything was covered in ice or frost, beautiful but so different.
I was glad for it, too. Nostalgia wasn't necessarily a welcome feeling, not when it came on too strongly (which, in my experience, it had the annoying habit of doing).
We sat down on the rock, my mother leaning forwards to trail her gloved fingers across the frostbitten surface of the stream. Sometime she seemed so young. People said that was where I got my immaturity from, but scorn turned to sympathy when Matthew went missing. My mother, of all people, didn't deserve that. Not her.
I debated starting a conversation, but decided against it. Silence, at the moment, seemed to be the best option. Soon enough, though, the silence was broken by the dulled buzz of a cellphone, vibrating in the pocket of my mother's coat.
She pulled it out, flipping it open in her hand to read the caller display. A phone number was muttered under her breath.
"Shit," she said, "I gotta take this. Listen, I'll be a minute away, back on the path, okay?"
"Sure," I said. In reality, being left alone made me panic a little, but I wasn't about to tell her that.
My mother stood up to leave, her fingers playing with the keypad. "Call me if you need anything, okay, sweetheart?"
"Okay," I replied.
I watched my mother disappear into the trees.
The smell of her—vanilla, winter, microwave dinners—faded off into the frigid air.
And... Alone. Well, not quite, considering how close my mother was. But I heard her voice as it trailed off into the distance, caught between the trees.
"Fuck," I muttered, dragging my nails across the ice. "Please not now, please, please."
I waited.
Nothing happened.
For some reason, all the confidence that I had previously held trailed off with the voice of my mother. With her retreating form. With the unwelcome silence.
"Fuck."
I decided that I liked the sound of my own voice.
Actually, I liked the sound of anything—my nails scratching the stream's surface, the sound of a twig snapping in the background. I picked up a fist-sized rock that was lying beside me, raised it into the air and dropped it.
It hit the ground with a welcome thud, bouncing a little.
I picked it up again.
Dropped it again.
I didn't think, I just waited. For my mother to come back. Focused on the sound of nails against ice, rock against rock.
It was official. I was going insane.
Yeah, but anything's better than clawing at your hair and screaming like a madman.
And now I was talking to myself.
After about ten minutes of dropping the rock, my arm started to ache. Not wanting to lose any precious sound, I contented myself with picking up a smaller rock, this one about an arms-length away. I leaned over, reaching for it. My fingers hit it, and it rolled over with a small thunk. A strange pattern seemed to grace the newly exposed side of the rock, but I picked it up anyways, figuring that the marks were just remnants of dirt or moss.
I was wrong.
Scratched into the flat surface was a word, four letters long and heart wrenchingly familiar.
MATT
Below that, the year my brother went missing.
I stared at the rock, dumbstruck. Turned it over in my hand. Ran my finger along the etched-in words.
No. No. Please, God, no, not this.
I put the rock in my pocket, breath catching in my throat and heart beating all too fast. Both being familiar feelings over the past few days. I choked on a sob.
Don't. Cry.
The rock felt smooth and warm after being held, and it fell nicely in my pocket, coming to rest against the blade of the knife, separated by the fabric.
I got up, scanning the area. Taking every rock I could see and brushing the dirt off, running it over in my hands. Looking for that familiar style of writing, smooth and neat and perfect even when etched into rock.
Nothing.
My mind, numb from too many thoughts, told me to sit down. I did. To wait. I did.
My mother came back, cellphone tucked away in her pocket. She eyed me suspiciously, pressed her hand to my forehead.
"You look worse."
I didn't say anything, for fear of breaking down in tears. That, especially in such a nostalgic place, would be very un-heroic. Instead, I stood up, took my mother's hand and let her lead me to the main road. To our street, to our home. Up the steps, seemingly taller than they were before.
By legs ached. My lungs ached.
I went into the basement and closed the door, dinner being the very last thing on my mind. I threw of my jacket and boots and fell onto the couch, letting my body sink into the soft cushions. I could feel the tears sting my face, though I wasn't entirely aware that I was crying.
I fell asleep, the lights still on. The rock was nestled safely in my palm.
Matt, I thought, in a state of semi-awareness. Matt, I'm sorry. I love you. I miss you. I'm sorry.
...
The next day was a blur, the rock sitting all too heavily in my pocket. I was at school. The knife was gone, back in the kitchen.
I didn't take my jacket off once, for fear of misplacing it. Fear of misplacing the rock.
My science teacher approached me at the end of third period, as all the other students filed into the hallway. The bell rang. I stood at his desk.
"You are aware that your science papers were due today, I assume?"
I imagined them, coated in frost, held up by dying branches.
"Alfred, you seemed out of it today. Is something wrong?"
I spoke quietly. "I'm sorry, sir, it's just... this is about the time my brother went missing."
My voice trailed off at the end. How many times had I used that as an excuse? How many times had I said that, not thinking of my brother whatsoever, desperate to skip class and cause trouble? Today, though, the excuse couldn't have been more true.
"Oh," my teacher responded. "Well, I see. I'm sorry. You have until Friday to get that assignment in; no marks will be deducted."
He was awkward. They all were. The conversation, now quite dead, hung limply in the air between us. I nodded to my teacher, exiting the room, trying to hold my tears in.
My brother's name sat in my pocket, weighing it down. It burned in my hand.
...
Truthfully, I don't remember the rest of the day. As was since Friday, I didn't have my binder with me, so I sat quietly in my classes doing the best not to be noticed. And then, as the bell rung to end fifth period, I left the school with a crowd of other kids, heading calmly towards the main road.
In seconds, I was alone. Nobody else lived in this direction, nobody travelled this way—not on foot, anyways. It was fine with me, though. I was no longer afraid of the 'Wendigo' that lived in the forest, only saddened by memories of my brother.
His disappearance was so long ago. Why couldn't I get over it?
I was close to the end of the forest, having already walked for fifteen minutes.
A pile of stones caught my attention.
They were placed in a neat pyramid, stacked atop a paper, which, on closer examination, turned out to be one of the missing pages from my binder. As always, it was covered in frost. As were the rocks. I picked one up.
Nothing. I let out my breath.
The next one; nothing, again. And then the third.
The fourth, though, as I slowly demolished the pyramid, held familiar scratch marks etched into its side.
Remember Me.
Below that, another year, this one two years after my brother went missing.
Fifth, sixth, seventh rocks. Nothing. Tears hit the rocks I held, darkening their gray colour.
The eighth rock, though, held more words; Come find me. The date was earlier, a year after he disappeared.
Finally, the last rock, with the words Miss You etched into its side. The date was three years after he left.
Three rocks, three years.
Three. Fucking. Years.
Did that mean he was still out there?
I dropped the rocks into my pocket, four tiny spheres with the weight of the world as they held down my jacket.
"Miss you too, Matty."
My words startled me. They were rough, choked out. I realized that I was crying, quite heavily by now. When I stood up, wiping my eyes on my sleeves, the sky held a gray to mirror the stones. More questions.
Who put them there? Was it Matt? Is he still alive? If he survived three years...
I didn't want to think about it. I went home. Purple eyes, now mostly forgotten, trailed my steps.
