Jamie was brave during the funeral. He stood next to his friends, all weeping and holding hands. None cried as loudly as Pippa's mother. She still could not be helped. She was down on her knees with so many people's hands touching her shoulders, her back, her face.
Please wake up. Please. Jamie kept wishing Pippa would open her eyes as she lied there in the small casket. Inside with her were flowers and autumn leaves from the forest she had grown up playing in. Jamie wanted to move closer and move some of her hair out of her face, but he couldn't dare himself to get closer to her immobile body.
Jamie couldn't hear what the elder was saying with her mother crying so much. He wished she would stop, but he also understood her sadness. He wondered if she would ever be happy again without her daughter. And Jamie, he wondered how he and his friends would ever smile again with Pippa gone.
He was alone, all alone, though Jack was standing behind him and he still had his sister and close friends. Pippa was the one who could comprehend his emotions. If he tried to explain them to Caleb, Claude, Monty, or even Mary, they weren't understood.
It was a beautiful day as if all was well. The heavens did not care who had left earth or who stayed behind. Sunny, but freezing. Pippa's amber hair caught the morning light. Soon, it would never be kissed by the sun again.
As they buried the tiny coffin below the earth's surface, a flock of birds flew overhead, heading south. Jamie watched them... Was Pippa free now? Was she a bird? Jack had said Pippa's soul would not be far away, but he couldn't feel her anywhere.
Jack's focus turned to the childless woman that was on her knees and wrapped in black funeral clothes. Her hair was almost as red as Pippa's but had started to dull from age. Grief would age her quickly. He wasn't certain she'd ever have children again—she hadn't remarried since her husband died. She couldn't bring herself to love another as she had him. She didn't believe she could ever give her love to another child... Not even if they were her own.
I could be her. Jack somberly mused. That could have been Jamie or Mary in that coffin. He knew the love of a child well... And soon, he would recognize what the difference between a brother's love and a father's was. His hands left the shoulders of his two siblings only so he could cradle the bereft woman. So far, only women had come to her side to kiss her cheeks, stroke her hair, whisper 'stay strong.' Jack was the first man to approach her, carrying equal empathy as all the other mothers around her had.
"Pippa was wonderful." He whispered. "She was lucky to have you."
She wrapped her arms around him and his neck and shoulder were littered with her tears. No, she was lucky to have Pippa. Every parents' reason to live was because of their child. If Pippa had not been born right after her father died, her mother may not have been able to cope.
The children went into the forest and stood in a circle, holding hands. They said a prayer they'd learned in school, hoping that Pippa could hear them and know how much they missed her. Jamie and Mary were among them, but Jamie didn't even mouth the words with them.
Pippa was dead. She couldn't hear them anymore.
...
The night had come.
Jack was in Mary and Jamie's bedroom, waiting for them to fall asleep. He sat in a chair between their beds, both an arm's reach away. He ran his fingers through Mary's hair, wishing he could take away their pain. Jack was experiencing guilt of his own—guilt for feeling lucky that his siblings were all right. He was in the room for half-an-hour, and then he stood up and made sure they were both tucked in their blankets.
All of the lights were out, and the beast was upstairs sleeping. Jack hoped Elsa could make the journey to see him despite the cold weather. He would have to explain why he'd run off so hastily at some point, but there was more he wanted to speak of.
...
"This was your mother's?" Elsa pondered the locket.
"I've never seen her without it, not a day in my life."
Elsa noted the names and dates on the inside; she realized just how precious the item she held was, but then she shook her head. "Why would your father keep this?"
"I don't know. I don't know why he'd hide it either." Actually, Jack did know... He just didn't want to admit it. But ever since he'd found it, so many memories were flooding back to him. His own screams, his wrists bleeding and burning from trying to twist them free from the ropes his father had tied around them. Jack started to unconsciously wring his wrists and Elsa took his hand.
"Jack. I know you always told me your father isn't dangerous," she felt her heart start racing, "then how do you explain these?" She gripped his fingers and noted the ligature marks that had tormented her since she first spotted them.
Jack wrenched his hand away. "Those aren't... He didn't..."
"What are those?" She demanded. "Please, please just tell me the truth! Did you try to hurt yourself?"
"No!" Jack responded. "I got these when I was a kid..." Jack shuddered, the memory played out behind his eyes. "When I was little, I was—I was scared of the dark. My father couldn't stand it. One night, I got so afraid that I ran into my parents' room..."
He remembered it all. He'd tried so hard to wipe it from his memory, but the physical evidence of what had happened reminded him daily. His father didn't like that he'd been woken up, and his mother had a cold, so she wasn't up to the task of putting him back to bed. The beast decided to take care of it. He'd 'scare the fear out of him' once and for all.
First, he'd walked Jack outside to the barn where Edvard grabbed some rope.
"Papa, where are we going?" Jack asked nervously. Even then, his instincts tried to warn him. But he was a deer in the headlights. He didn't even object when the beast started to tie his wrists and ankles together so tightly Jack could feel their burn to this day. "Papa! I'm sorry! I'll go back to bed, I promise—"
"Quiet." He said. "You want to see the real dark? I'll show you just what a coward your mother's made you into."
Jack hadn't known what any of that meant. All he registered was 'dark' and he went ballistic, squirming to get free. "Papa! Please!" He started to cry as Edvard carried him to the tool shed. "I'm sorry Papa! I'm scared! Please! I want Mama!" His pleas were ignored and he was placed on the cold floor of the shed as he watched the door closed. Not even a small crevice allowed moonlight to peer in. It was total darkness.
"Papa! Don't go! Don't leave me! Mama! MAMA!"
...
"No...! No—! I don't wanna go..." Jack was on his hands and knees with Elsa kneeling beside him, pleading under his breath as he gasped for air. He'd completely blanked out and didn't realize Elsa had lost him for at least a minute. Just him trying his hardest to breathe as Elsa worried about being able to catch him if he fainted.
This was why he never talked about it. It was bad enough that he had to remember it.
"Jack... Jack, my sweet..." She tried to ease him back into reality and she put the locket back into his hand and closed it. "It's all right. You're safe. You're with me." She nuzzled his cheek. "There's no shed. There's no shed."
The door had opened and it was morning. His mother was hysterical. Jack, meanwhile, had screamed himself to sleep. His own tears were still drying on his face when she came running to him, "My poor baby, I'm so sorry!" She sobbed, but Jack didn't know why she was the one apologizing. She kissed him all over his face and cut him free, "Mommy's here." She hugged him so tight he almost couldn't breathe. "Mommy's going to protect you."
"Jack?"
He turned to his left and saw Elsa's eyes staring straight back into his.
"What did that monster do to you?"
"...It's not about what he did to me." He answered, "It's about what he did to my mother." Jack's throat closed, he couldn't speak it. If he did, then it would be real. He'd been lying to himself for nearly eleven years.
It made sense. Why all of her things were still there, why her departure had occurred without warning, why she'd told Jack that she may have to go somewhere... She knew what her husband might do to her and her children, so she wanted to leave.
But the beast would never let that happen.
Jack had seen it when the beast grabbed his mother by the hair, and all sense of self-control was lost in the boy. He lunged at the beast and dug his nails into his arm. The scrawny child never stood a chance against the Titan-sized being, but it was enough to divert his attention away from his helpless mother.
"Damn you, child!" He bellowed and grasped Jack's face; his paw being big enough to cover it entirely, shoving him into the wall. He couldn't breathe.
"Edvard! Don't! Please! He's my baby!" She was shrieking now, pulling on his nightshirt and ripping into his back with her own nails. Much like Jack, it too awoke a frenzy in her. Her cries had caused the twins to wake up and start sobbing frightfully. She had no time to think of them yet. "He's a child! Please, leave him alone!" She remembered her old ways of soothing him. She tried a different approach, "Darling... Please. Let him go." She tried her hardest to hide the disgust in her voice.
Edvard released Jack, his body stiff with anger. Jack could still feel the sting of his fingers circling his face.
"Jack, honey, go to your room, please." She said, her eyes begging him. Jack couldn't understand why she'd changed her tone—all of the sudden there was a tenderness in her voice like she wanted to please the man who barely looked at her. Jack was shaking as he silently obeyed, head bowed low. It wasn't his own room he went to, he went to check on the twins, who were scared and wailing.
"It's okay." He reached into Jamie's cot and picked him up in his arms, then proceeded to Mary's to hold her tiny hand. "Don't cry. Mama's okay." Jack spent maybe ten or fifteen minutes calming them down. Jamie settled much more quickly than Mary did. Once they were both asleep, he placed Jamie back safely into his cradle and peered out to the hall.
It had been eerily silent, and the boy of eight couldn't put his finger on why... But he just had a feeling that something was still wrong. He felt a burning sensation in the pit of his stomach, one that was telling him to go upstairs and check on his mother, and yet once his feet shuffled him to the stairway, his father appeared.
For Jack, the beast's eyes were always dead and black like a shark's. In this case, something in them looked like he'd been numbed. Where was his mother?
"Jackson." He took him by the shoulders with hands of iron and dragged the boy roughly into his room. "Stay here." Jack couldn't bring himself to ask what was happening. "Turn and face the wall." He didn't question him, he just did it. "Don't move." He was backing out of the room, but Jack still felt him watching. "Count to two-hundred."
Jack started to count in his head, but then the beast said more firmly, "Count!"
Jack, fighting tears, began, "One... Two... Three... Four..." The door behind him shut and, like a dog performing tricks, went on with his master's orders, "Five... Six... Seven..." The tears started creeping down his cheeks as the numbers got higher and higher, he was too afraid to stop even when he was sure the beast had gone to bed.
By the time he got to two-hundred, Jack's mother would no longer be in his life.
The words strangling him, choking on the pain, Jack finally said it out loud, confessing to himself what had truly happened. "My father killed my mother. Then he threw her body in the fjord."
...
It was so cold outside that there was already frost on the ground. Jack's breath steamed across the air as he approached his abode.
Elsa was almost too afraid to let Jack return to his home once he revealed to her the anguished truth, but he reminded her it was not his life he was concerned about. How could he have gone this long letting his siblings live under the same roof as that monster? Perhaps it was the same reason their own mother had let them do so; denial. Plain and simple.
Crossing paths with the shed again made his scars itch, but all Jack cared about now was making sure the creature remained as far away from his siblings as possible. He would be their shield until he had enough money to leave. He owed them no explanation—he was the adult, they were the children. They would listen.
Jack took care in keeping quiet as he snuck in through the front door and locked it behind him. He shrugged off his shawl and thought about how he would check on his siblings before retiring to bed. Before he even hung up his shawl on the coat rack, a voice made his entire body shake with panic.
"Where were you?" The beast, in total darkness, was sitting on the chair. What was he doing up? For how long did he know Jack was gone?
These questions raced across Jack's mind as his breath quickened. He stammered, trying not to look like a deer in the headlights. He wouldn't dare reveal Elsa; her life was as precious as Jamie's and Mary's, as well as the life she now carried. A life he'd burdened her with.
"I—Outside—I—I heard a dog. I had to make sure it didn't take one of the goats." His voice was trembling, but that could easily be blamed on the cold. It was evident that the beast didn't believe him. Jack was never a convincing liar; he could act like nothing was wrong for everyone else, but the beast teased out his true emotions every time.
The beast then pushed something forward with his foot, something Jack couldn't make out until he held out his lantern over it—the basket his mother had woven years ago. "When I went out hunting, I found this near the river. It's definitely ours... Animals were still picking at the apples when I found it. Why was it up there, Jackson?"
Jack choked. What excuse could he say that made sense?
"Something tells me you were up by the river again tonight." He rose from his seat and made Jack feel smaller than he ever had in his life.
"N–no! Dad, I only go there to get water." Finally, something rational came out of his mouth! "I left it there on accident when I was bringing some home. It was a stupid mistake, and I'm sorry." He was cut off mid-apology by the beast's palm swinging across his face.
"Liar." He growled and swung at the other cheek. With each slap, Jack felt his desire to do to him what he'd done to his mother. To slash him open and gut him like a rabbit. To be rid of the last reminders of her... That would mean he might someday try to take Jamie and Mary too. "Tell me! What are you out there doing?" He barked.
"Nothing. I just go for walks sometimes." Jack realized he was slowly being backed up against the wall. He'd have nowhere to run by the time the beast decided he was done listening to his excuses.
"Are you trying to run like your mother did? You think you're worth anything outside of this shithole?"
"I'd never run away. Never." That was the truth. He could never leave without Jamie and Mary. He hoped this brawl would be a quiet one so that they stayed asleep.
"Every time I see you, I see her face. I see someone so ungrateful for what I've done for them."
At this point, Jack would say anything to get him out of his face. Tonight, he had no fight in him; all his energy had been spent on coming to terms with what the monster had done. "I am grateful." That only made the creature leer in disgust. Once again, he was a reminder of the woman who dared to defy him and see him weak. Jack would never be a man in his eyes; every inch of his body was her.
Jack even had the same scared eyes she did the night he...
The beast grabbed Jack by the neck and pressed him against the wall so tight Jack was certain he'd felt his bones cracking. "You fucking bitch!"
"Stop!"
The beast let go of Jack and turned around. The noise had woken up the twins.
"Go back to bed!" Jack cried without thinking, but it earned him another slap.
"You think you're their father, don't you?" Hissed Edvard. Jack dared to look him in the eyes, something that could only be described as paternal fury burning brightly in them.
"Don't!" Jamie was coming closer, but Mary tried to hold him back. "Dad, please don't be mad at Jack!"
This was all wrong! They should've stayed asleep! Jack was too afraid of what the beast would do if he tried to approach the children, so he watched as Edvard looked at his young son with interest. "Did either of you know your brother's been sneaking out?"
Jamie looked at Jack and Jack looked at Jamie. The boy knew better than to tell; he wouldn't betray his trust like that.
But the silent exchange sent rage firing through the beast's blood. "Look at me, boy." He said. Mary was cowering at the doorway of her bedroom, knowing better than to provoke the situation further. All Jack wanted was to hold them both in his arms and keep them protected. Jamie gazed in his father's general direction and listened to the repeated question. "Did you have any knowledge of this?"
Jamie shook his head.
"Really?"
Jamie firmly nodded. He would never tell on Jack, ever. Jack was trying to catch his breath; his ribs were going to crush his lungs.
But the games were over.
Edvard let his gaze run across Jack's face, so stiff with terror, then down to the boy. He didn't try to veil his hatred as he grabbed the collar of Jamie's shirt.
"NO!" Jack's voice bounced against the walls of their home, one that had been peaceful and silent just moments before. "NO! JAMIE!" He tried to reach for him, but the beast held him back. Jamie did all he could to push himself away; this was the first time he'd ever seen tears in Jack's eyes.
"Papa! Don't!" Mary came running from her hiding spot and pulled Jamie free. The twins held each other closely; they had been together since they were in the womb, and it would always be that way.
Jack grabbed his father's arms to keep him from pursuing them further. To the twins' surprise, Jack was not afraid, but angry. "You stay away from them you son of a BITCH!" Tears were streaking down his face as he watched all he'd worked for unravel—he wanted to protect them! Even with adrenaline, the beast was much stronger than Jack and he grabbed his face the same way he had that very night. Things were knocked over as they wrestled in the dark until they were both rolling to try and gain the upper hand.
The twins were shrieking, terrified for their brother.
"Jack!"
"STOP IT!"
"GET OFF OF HIM!"
The battle ended up exactly as it realistically would, with the beast pinning down his much smaller prey. He had both hands around Jack's neck again and he didn't hold back as he squeezed, locking all the air out as Jack wriggled and squirmed to escape.
"You want to breathe, boy?" He taunted. The mask was broken now; Edvard let it show that he was enjoying this. "Do you? You're gonna have to try harder than that!"
Jack's vision was going spotty when there was a loud scream and he could breathe again. He rolled onto his side, gulping the air. But when he got a hold of himself, he saw what true horror looked like. Mary. Jamie. They were both attacking the beast. Mary was yanking his hair and Jamie was biting his hand so hard that he drew blood.
Jack was too dizzy to make it to them fast enough, so once the beast threw them both off, they rushed not to protect themselves, but Jack. Mary and Jamie held each other's arms and created a barrier to keep the beast away; they were kneeling in front of their brother, shaking and crying.
"You're animals! That's what you all are! ANIMALS!" Screamed Edvard, but the twins were unmoved. They would not leave their brother. Jack took both their shoulders and held them to his chest. None of them said a word, but all of their eyes looked right back into Edvard's.
Yes, they dared to challenge him. The beast would never forgive that they'd overpowered him. His hand was still bleeding as he straightened out his clothes and hair with a rude curse, closing the crack in his mask. He said directly to Jack, eyes narrow with loathing, "I'm going to get my hand taken care of, I'll say it's an animal bite... You have one hour. I want you gone."
"No!" Mary sobbed and threw herself around Jack.
"I mean it." Snarled Edvard. "I never want to see your face again. I should've made that bitch take you with her."
At that, Jack glared defiantly; he couldn't fool him anymore. The beast stormed out of the den, slamming the door behind him. Jack could see that it had started snowing outside when he did.
"Jack! Don't go!" Mary soaked Jack's sleeve with her tears, "Don't go!" She cried so hard she couldn't breathe.
Jamie was holding onto Jack's hand; he gripped his fingers so tightly that he was close to cutting off circulation. "You're not gonna leave us, are you?" Jack could see it in both of his siblings; they were scared.
That's when he decided: no more.
"Like Hell I am."