Content Warning: violence, child abuse, sexual assault, suicide, and substance abuse.
February 13th, 1934.
In the stifling curtain of night, Tom drained his first spirits in years, hunched over his desk sifting through papers, words blurring in the shaky firelight. His fingers shook, and his hand ensconced the bottle's neck like a butcher's might a fowl's, when silver flashed at him from the fireplace: a poker. He turned back to the file he'd meant to peruse, greeted not by the minute print expected of his work reports, but by flourishing penmanship and a stiff card proposing tea on Friday afternoon from Sir Walter Cunningham: Esteemed Mr. Riddle ... my boundless pleasure to have you with us ... my wife would certainly appreciate Lady Mary's fine company ... indeed, only yesterday did Vivian mention ...
The signature an elegant, coiling affair of endless n's ...
"Hoot!"
Tom swerved and slipped, Bell's Finest still in hand and shattering on the hardwood floor, shards piercing his palm. Cursing, he looked at the window into the wild, gold eyes of a screech owl perched upon the sill, pecking impudently at the glass.
"Shoo!" He got tremulously to his feet and waved at the screeching bird, creature of the nocturne seemingly nonplussed by the blazing fireplace. As he neared it to swat it away, Tom glimpsed a bloody rat dangling from its beak; he froze, captured by cracked brown teeth and filthy grey fur. The poker glowed in his periphery — he'd kicked it into the fire in his haste. The owl was gone from the window when again he looked, and for a moment Tom wondered if it had been there at all.
He crouched by the fire to fish out the poker, its wooden handle warm and calloused against his fingers, decorated with painted cardinals.
It was to be returned to its basket before Tom realised there were papers scattered all over the floor, permits and contracts and certificates alike. Carefully, he gathered them, Mr. Cunningham's dainty script at the top of the stack: why, I'm sure you'll be quite as pleased as I had been to hear of Robert's encounter with the boy on the Tuesday before ...
Robert Cunningham, the name cricked and cracked in Tom's mouth, rendering only a vague effigy of any fine boy of the upper class. Then out of the haze, like the drowned rolling ashore, a cherubic blond boy smiled, eyes of palest blue gleaming like polished marbles — Robbie Cunningham, shaking his hand fleetingly at a Christmas gala Tom had forced himself to attend two years ago, a tiny white bow tie under a pink, cream-smeared chin ...
... most enlightening experience for our families, I believe. With mellow anticipation, I await your attendance, Mr. Riddle and, of course, that of delightful Tom Jr.
Verily yours, assured Sir Walter, followed by his calligraphic signature.
Crouched on the floor and blinking at the letter, it took Tom several moments to remember what he'd been doing and swiftly, he swiped together the remaining papers and put them back atop his desk, Mr. Cunningham's invitation now dotted with blood.
Tom Jr, he thought with numbness, currently asleep in a bedroom a floor down from his own. Tom (after himself), sullen and ever so handsome, caught unawares by reserved Mary's adoring smiles and incessant fussing ... Marvolo (after her father) ... Riddle.
It'd been long since Tom had visited a church, longer still since he had perused the Bible, so as he puzzled over their names (Merope, Morfin, Marvolo) he could not shake the impression that they were Biblical and if not that, then certainly something powerful, a coalescence of incantation and the mortal mundane, branded on his mind and tongue like the Lord's Prayer:
our father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name ...
Bathed in squares of painted moonlight, Tom tottered down the stairs into the living room, careful not to bloody the walls with his glass-encrusted palm. His reflection stared blankly from the glass panes of the liquor cabinet, coiffed hair and tired, marble skin. The bottles crooned to him, yellowing labels and spotless glass, brown, red, and pale gold.
thy kingdom come; thy will be done ...
Without rumination, Tom took one and trudged back upstairs, thinking of the much overdue letter to be composed in his study, of timeless Walter Cunningham and his impish son, of marble pen and raven-feather quill, the scent of perfume and sulphur, gunshots ... but when he opened the door it was not to a crackling fire and coffee brown bookshelves, but a dark room with drawn purple curtains and powder blue rug ...
give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our trespasses ...
In the left corner a soft bed, and in it a small silhouette stirring gently, fast asleep beneath heavy blanket and dying winter breeze. With a clink, Tom put the bottle by the doorway and crept inside ...
With his dark hair splayed across the white pillow and those shrewd eyes shielded from view, Tom Jr seemed ever so angelic in slumber, small hands curled just so on the hem of the blanket, as if it might be snatched away at any moment — the boy was a silent sleeper, breaths light as dandelions, almost unmoving.
and lead us not into temptation ...
A muted streak of moonlight rolled over the soft planes of his face, immersed in some faraway dream, a peace Tom could no longer remember knowing.
Yes, this was the sweet child who'd slithered into his mother's heart, clamouring for her kindness, swathed in glittering gold and warm velvet — Mary, still fraught from losing her son, that proud boy who had never quite returned, slicing her fingers on all of Tom's sharp edges. She'd found a fresher, softer pain now, a thorny rose to Tom's double-edged blade, borne from the same poison and fracture between Merope Gaunt's legs. For Tom knew evil when he saw it, and this snake charming, searing flower was no child at all — but a devil.
And Tom had seen the devil in the flesh, had survived the encounter by an inch, by a hair, hair of the beloved.
but deliver us from evil ...
The poker was cold in his hands. Its prongs gleamed in the pale light of the morning sun, of heaven ... the power, and the glory — he raised it above his head.
for ever and ever ...
"Amen."