Jack of Tales

Not all memories are sweet. Not all scents are welcome. Not all memories are worth remembering.

Dad’s kitchen smelled of stale beer, dust, and cigarette ash. It was smaller than I remembered, but the cleaners had done a good job tidying it and cleaning it after… after. The lino was still that gross off-white, greenish colour. The blinds were still dyed a deep brown from decades of smoke, the door still didn’t shut properly unless you knew the trick to it (push that bit out and hold the handle down while you close it). The table was still a bit too big for the room, the calendar was still open on June of last year, the clock on the oven still flashed midnight, midnight, midnight. Time had stopped in that place on the day Mum and Dad died.

I think that’s why it felt so unsettling to see Liam there. I hadn’t seen him much since, y’know, since June. Hadn’t seen him much before then either. We were never close, I don’t think he even likes me, I don’t think he ever got over his Dad marrying my Mum.

I mumbled a greeting, embarrassed that I was late. I’m not good with mornings and, well, I didn’t want to be there. I didn’t want to comb through that house. I didn’t want to go back in. All my childhood memories, all the joy of home, had died when Dad did what he did. After I fiddled the door closed I forced a smile, and looked at him.

‘So sorry I’m late, I- what the hell happened to you?’

I hadn’t seen the state of him before, I was distracted by the smell of the kitchen. It brought back school reports and congratulations, hushing boys as I snuck them into my room late at night, coming in from the cold and stamping snow off my boots, slipping on spilled juice in high heels, arguments and reconciliations and decisions and news and a decade and a half of life lived with my strange family in our little house on the edge of town. But I saw the state of him now. I saw the grime smeared on his face and his clothes, the cigarette butt drooping from the side of his mouth, the way he slouched in his seat, the bloodshot eyes and the empty beer bottles on the table.

‘Sit down,’ Liam said, his voice flat. Drained. Emotionless. I’d never heard him speak like that before. He didn’t even look up at me, just kept staring at the tablecloth and the old cat bowl he was using for an ashtray.

‘O- okay,’ I said, dumbly, wondering what I had walked in on. It was barely midday and he was visibly drunk. ‘Liam, what’s wrong?’

‘I got here hours ago,’ he said, opening another beer and pushing it across the table to me, ‘thought I’d start with the attic.’

‘It’s a bit early for me,’ I said, gesturing at the bottle.

‘You’ll want it, Kat.’

‘Alright, what’s going on?’ I tried to sound authoritative, irritated, sensible. It sometimes worked on him, though I don’t know why. It must have been helpful when he was in the army, having an instinct to obey orders rather than defy them. I almost envied him.

‘He wasn’t in debt, you know,’ said Liam, ‘Dad wasn’t in debt. Neither was your Mum. They were doing alright. I thought they’d be in debt. People who are in debt do what he did. I’ve been reading about it. A lot.’

I shook my head. I didn’t mean to. He was talking about it again. The worst day of my life. The worst day of our lives. I blinked and saw Mum’s foot poking out from behind the settee in the lounge. I saw the blood. I felt the dread again. I felt the rage. I felt the hate.

And then it passed, as it always did. Each time it got a little bit easier. At first I’d puked every time, I’d puked so often that I’d taken a pregnancy test, just to be sure. It was negative and I was relieved. I’m not ready for that yet.

‘Didn’t see Uncle Don at the funeral, did you?’ He asked. I couldn’t tell whether or not he wanted me to answer, so I did.

‘I haven’t seen him in years. No one has. What are you getting at?’

I was uncomfortable. Fidgeting. The beer was beginning to look more inviting by the minute.

‘Do you remember when Grandad died?’

‘I think so? I was, what, twelve years old? I didn’t really know him. Liam, what’s going on? What’s happening?’

‘Of course you didn’t know him. He wasn’t your Grandad. He was my Grandad.’

He said it flatly, without emotion. It wasn’t a boast or a dig, just a clumsy statement of fact. My grandparents had all died before I was born, I’ve never met my father and Mum never talked about him. When she met John it was a whirlwind romance and a shotgun wedding, I was thrust into a new family with no time to think or adjust. But I did remember a death, and the rows that followed, and Uncle Don disappearing from our lives.

‘Liam, you’re going to need to start making sense soon or I’m leaving.’

There was a wobble in my voice. I fought to keep it out, but it was there. That crushing feeling visited again, I saw the blood on the ceiling. For a moment I had the sensation that if I looked to my left I might see Mum’s foot again, peeking out from behind the settee in the living room, unmoving. Still. Forever. I breathed shallow and fast, and barely noticed Liam handing me a paper bag and rubbing my back as I brought myself back to the present.

‘I’m alright,’ I said, ‘I’m not going to be sick.’

‘I’m sorry, Kat.’ The stink of booze and fags on his breath was strong when he was that close to me. ‘I’m all muddled up. I’ll try to explain. You should have a beer. You’ll want it. And I don’t want to be drinking alone.’

He sat down heavily. I heard the scrape of the chair against the floor as it shifted under him.

‘We can do this another day if you want?’ I said, appalled at the pleading tone that had snuck into my voice.

‘There was a big row about Grandad’s will,’ said Liam, ‘and then Don disappeared, and Dad got everything. Do you remember the holiday we went on?’

‘Yes,’ I said. Taken out of school for two weeks. Packing in the night. Getting to the airport before dawn. The Spanish coast and the blazing sun. Ice cream on the beach at Estepona. I remembered it all.

‘I remember it too. I remember Dad crying on the balcony of his hotel room. I remember that he wouldn’t tell me why, that he looked away from me.’

I didn’t speak, let the silence hang in the air. I wanted to know what Liam knew. What had turned him into this drunken mess in the morning. I tried not to think of the blood on the ceiling, Mum’s foot, the gaping hole in her dress, the dripping meat splattered up the wall, the shotgun on the floor by Dad’s pale, cold hand.

‘Did you ever wonder what happened to Uncle Don?’ asked Liam, in that same, flat tone.

‘Of course I did,’ I said, ‘everyone did.’

‘Do you know what this is?’ He said, placing a small silver ring on the table.

‘No.’

‘It’s Don’s. He always wore it. It was in Dad’s bedside drawer. What do you remember about him?’

I thought for a moment.

‘I don’t really remember much about Don. He seemed nice, I suppose? I remember that the police looked for him for weeks. They were always around here, asking questions and-‘

Liam stood up, roared, and shoved the table aside like it was nothing. The noise in that quiet house was a cacophony, a chaos of shattering glass. Cigarette ash leaped from the tumbling ashtray to join the smoke in the air. I found myself suddenly sat before my step-brother with no barrier between us. The comfort of the table was gone and instead the man stood in front of me, half mad, pissed, filthy and as strong as he had ever been. But that wasn’t the worst of it.

Beside him, hidden by the table the whole time, was a steamer trunk. A great chest, around five feet across and four feet deep. It was covered in the filth of the attic, thick with dust and grime. It must have taken enormous effort to bring it down here. My eyes widened, and what had started as a yelp of surprise became a strangle of terror in my throat.

‘The only reason I’m sure we’re not in hell,’ said Liam, suddenly animated, manic, stepping towards me in his filthy jeans and his filthy t-shirt, clenching and unclenching his filthy fists, ‘is that Dad isn’t here.’

‘Oh,’ I said, ‘God…’

I made some noises. I suppose I asked a question, though I don’t know what it was. I was just staring at that box, navy blue and filthy, on the floor of the kitchen beside the upturned table where I’d sat and eaten two meals every day for years of my life. I concentrated, imagined the smell of scorched black toast and black coffee, the breakfast of my teenage years.

‘I found it in the attic,’ said Liam, inhaling his snot with a noisy slurp. There were tears on his face. He had looked like that once years ago, when he was fifteen years old and the cat had died. ‘It was buried under a pile of old crap and a broken sled. When I moved it there was a sound like something wrapped in plastic. It smells really bad close up. It’s heavy. And I think that stain by the lock is blood.’

I was still holding the beer and took a long, deep mouthful. It’s strange how, in times of stress, your mind does away with a lot of its functions. I felt like I was flashing from moment to moment, like the clock on the oven. Midnight. Midnight. Midnight.

‘Have you opened it?’ I asked, not knowing what else to say. My throat was dry.

‘No,’ he said, his voice hoarse.

‘Well then, should… shouldn’t we?’

‘I don’t know.’

I looked at him, confused. He continued.

‘I don’t, look, I don’t, I don’t know. I don’t know. He’s a murderer already isn’t he? And he’s dead. He killed himself and he… and he killed your Mum. He killed Mum. I don’t know what to do.’

I looked at Liam and he was still like a child. A boy with a heart shuddering in anguish. He was a difficult teenager. So was I. Maybe everyone is. I saw again the bloody mass of offal where Dad’s head should have been, felt the stillness and the silence in that muggy, humid room, felt Mum’s dead eyes staring blankly at me. My stomach lurched, and once again I found myself pleading silently to make it all different. Make it so that they were alive, so that Mum would come strolling through the door and put the kettle on and ask what all the mess was about. Make it so Dad was sat watching the rugby in the next room. Make it so that someone else found them. So that someone else had to see those things.

‘Do you think Uncle Don’s in there?’ I asked, staring at the chest.

Liam shrugged.

And then I caught the scent of his aftershave, the same one Dad used. I’m in school. My face is pushed against the metal handrail on the footbridge on the way home, I’m feeling Derek Wilson holding the back of my neck, feeling his other hand pulling at my trousers. I’m not screaming, not yet, but I’m getting ready. I’m nearly there. My fists are clenched. I’m scared. When I hear the shouting I’m about as terrified and as relieved as I’ve ever been. I see Dad storm up to him, listen to Derek saying ‘what? What?’ in that defiant, sneering tone. Derek is fourteen years old, and Dad is thirty-nine, and Dad doesn’t care. Dad is silent as he punches Derek so hard in the face that his feet leave the floor. I run to Dad, wrap my arms around him, feel him breathe and tremble with rage. Dad doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t know how to react. His arms come up, slowly, and return the embrace. I hear Derek scramble away, sobbing, and Dad and I stay where we are, on the footbridge in the woods, the dappled sunlight shining on my tears as he smooths my hair.

Years later we are in a theme park in France. I am sat between Mum and Dad on a rollercoaster as my stomach lurches with the g-force. They are laughing beside me, glancing at each other as we rush through the air. I hear them both scream with fear and joy as the landscape rushes past us. When we disembark they speak excitedly to each other, they forget that I’m there and go to join the queue for the ride again. They give me money and tell me to go and enjoy myself for a while, that they’ll find me, I glance back and see them kissing with a passion I had never seen between them before.

Do we open it? Do we? He’s done the worst thing he could ever do. What if there’s something in there? What if there isn’t, and we’ll always know we thought there was? What if the scent of death billows out like some black miasma and floods the house and curses us forever? Do I want that? To build a new memory on a scent full of rot? To spend the rest of my days, when I walk along a forest path and come across some dead thing or catch a whiff of compost on the air, shuddering in the terror of a new, vile memory and all the misery it brings?

Do I need to know?

Do I want to know?

Does it matter?

‘Should we open it? What do we do?’ Liam asked.

‘I don’t know.’

He was in my arms. At some point I had sat on the floor, beside him in the filth. I breathed, staring at the morning sunlight glowing on the blinds. Liam lifted his head.

‘I miss them so much.’

‘I know,’ I said, ‘I miss them too.’