Chapter 3: Hardly Siblings

In a way, I'm glad things happen as they did. I'm not proud of how I treated Sebastian or going along with my family's treatment of him, but there's not a living being on this earth that's as relieved as I am that William was never given the opportunity to become a demon. He would've given the devil a run for his money!

William grew up to hate Sebastian more than our parents did. At four years old, he was ordering him around like a slave. At seven, he was engaging in the ruthless beatings given by my father. He didn't even know what Sebastian's name was for several years, and even when he learned his name, he still only addressed him as "freak" or "monster".

I don't think it helped that William and I would often gang up on him. Beating him became a daily occurrence, you could almost call it a game. During the days when it rained, he'd make him sleep outside. When it would snow, he threw him into the frozen river. He got off on hurting Sebastian more than I did, but I'd often stand by and laugh or throw stones at him while he just took it.

What I never understood was why Sebastian put up with the abuse. There was nothing to keep him from running away. Our doors and windows were never locked, and we didn't own a dog that could track him down if he did. Even with our father beating him, mother yelling at and harassing him, and William and I joining in simply for our own amusement, Sebastian never fought back or ran away. I don't think he even hated us for it. I think in his mind, we were still his family and all he had.

But when I stopped and actually tried to look at him, I could see what our actions were doing to him. The countless times William and I would beat him awake in the middle of the night had turned Sebastian into an insomniac. With each day that passed, the circles around his eyes became darker. Our father beat him more frequently for either not doing his chores or not doing them right, which I can say didn't help him in the long run. The constant abuse made him shaky and jumpy, and it didn't take long before simply walking past the door to his bedroom was enough to startle him awake.

"You're such a scaredy-cat!" William would tease him, "the only monster that's in this house is you!"

Sebastian almost never said anything back to him aside from "yes" or "sorry" .

The meals we had deprived him of had left Sebastian thin and with barely enough muscle to allow him to stand and move about. I didn't realize this until one day I saw him changing out of his shirt and I could count most of the vertebrae in his spine and every rib of his rib cage. How did he have the strength to do his chores? How did he avoid freezing to death in the winter? When William would throw him into the river, how did he manage to crawl out without a scrap of fat to keep him warm or afloat?

Despite having so many questions, I didn't treat him any better. I was an arrogant teenager and the only thing I was concerned about was myself. My own priorities came before all else, including my family.

Sebastian wasn't the only one I treated coldly. My relationships with the rest of my family suffered too. I rarely acknowledged my mother and only obeyed my father's rules when it was convenient for me; the rules that didn't concern Sebastian, anyhow. While William was my baby brother and I tried to look out for him, the biggest role I played in his life was being another person he could beat on Sebastan with. I could already tell that he was strong and independent. Even at the age of six, he was working overtime in the fields - and actually enjoyed it - and carried himself like he owned the place. If our father ever chose to kick him out, he could easily build his own cabin in the woods and stand on his own two feet. I hardly had an influence on him, so whether or not I was included in his life didn't matter to him at all.

I think there was only one time where the three of us came together as kids and actually got along. Nobody got beat up and nobody acted stuck up. We had all noticed at this time that mother and father were spending a lot of time out of the house. With father, we understood because he worked, but mother always stayed at home. The only time when she was out was when she would go to town to buy more food and supplies. But to be gone every day with father made us feel a little bit suspicious.

When they slipped out of the house again for the third day in a row, the three of us followed them. They traveled along a path of the nearby woods, one that led into a small clearing beside the river. We sent Sebastian ahead to spy on them and report back to us when he had a grasp of what they were doing. William and I figured that they were just going down to the river to fish, but it gave us a little bit of a rush to be following them when they wouldn't tell us where they were actually going.

Sebastian was gone for well over ten minutes. At first, we worried that our parents had seen him and they were beating him ruthlessly for following and spying on them. We were about to turn back and assume the worst, when we heard footsteps coming from the trail ahead and Sebastian jogged back towards us.

"Well? What did you see?" William asked.

"Nothing," Sebastian replied, "they were just talking to someone."

"Who?" I asked, "Was it someone that we know?"

"Maybe. I don't know."

That's right. Sebastian wouldn't know if we knew them or not. We rarely had visitors, and when we did, he was forced to stay in his room until they left.

"It sounded like they were talking to a man that was in his fifties, maybe," he continued, "They were talking about some kind of a deal."

"They were probably trading some of our old stuff for clothes and blankets," I said, "it's getting colder out and we don't have the money to buy new ones."

While it didn't explain why they were going into the woods every day, it was logical enough of an explanation for the three of us to turn around and go home.

For the first and the last time, it seemed, we went home as brothers.