“Shh, Jimmy.” She hushed me quickly, pulling me to her chest, her nightgown sticky with sweat. “Now back to bed with you, love.” She started up the stairs with me.
“But, Mamma,” I whispered, pulling at her damp hair tenderly, “I had another nightmare about Daddy… can I sleep with you?”
“No, love. Not tonight.” Her voice was hard… guilty.
But I had seen him, standing by the doorway. He was well dressed, better than most of the men my mother had allowed entrance into our home since the death of my father several months ago. He was younger than them too.
She set me down on my small bed, kissing my forehead. I stared in to her beautiful eyes. Her face had once been beautiful too, before grief and malnourishment had stolen it. No one would hire her, no one needed weak women to work for them. The fishing season had been bad and so many of the sailor’s had taken to factory work instead, leaving the widows jobless.
“Goodnight, Jimmy. Don’t come downstairs again, alright?”
I buried my head into the pillow, hoping she wouldn’t see me cry.
***
“Good morning!”
I stared at the young man seated at our table, eating our food.
“Mamma?” I turned to her for answers and was surprised to see the warmth in her eyes as she smiled down at me.
“This is Charles, Jimmy. He’ll be staying with us for a while.”
“Why?” I asked in horror, watching as he wolfed down the food as if he were some sort of god over us and had such rights. My stomach hadn’t been full in so long I hardly remembered what it felt like. Mother had been careful with our money once Daddy had died, and though we weren’t yet beggars, we often went hungry.
“Think of him… as an older brother, Jimmy. He has nowhere to go, and so will be staying here.”
I nodded submissively, this wasn’t right. The men that visited my mother had always left long before I arose the next morning. Why was this one different?
“I’m off then!” Charles piped, all chipper as he rose and approached my mother. “I’ll be back before dark.”
I looked away as he embraced my mother, wondering at the blush that spread across her cheeks.
***
Charles did come back that night, and the next. But nights turned into weeks and weeks turned into months. And after a year had passed, my mother’s infatuation with the lad seemed to all but have waned. I often heard them quarreling together, it was always about money. For some reason Charles had taken it upon himself to deplete my mother’s savings, leaving us broke. He never did pay her a single penny of what he owed her.
The night he finally left, he beat her. When I went in to her in the morning, I found her dabbing her face with makeup. She wore her church dress, the one with the long sleeves.
“Mamma? Is he gone?”
She nodded, chewing on her lip. “Yes,” she breathed, the tears heavy on her breath. “He’s gone, baby.”
***
Two months later the ugly man from the bank came. My mother tried to reason with him, she offered him all she had left to offer. But Charles had stripped us of our precious money, and the bank had to be paid.
Later that month, my mother packed up our few belongings and we moved out near the seaside, to live with my aunt.
“Why do we have to leave, Mamma?” I asked, watching the small estate our father had worked so hard to provide for us disappear through the back window of the carriage.
“The magistrate…he’s not a tolerant man, Jimmy… we couldn’t make the payments any longer.” She leaned close to me, making sure I held her gaze.
“Promise me, Jimmy that you will never gamble… you can never win.”
I nodded. “I promise, Mamma.”
That was the last time she ever said my name. She said Charles’s quite often from that point on, but never mine. Granted there was often much cussing involved. I became convinced that not only had Charles stolen our money, and our lives, but that he had also stolen my mother’s sanity. Oh why had she ever fallen for his charming, innocent elegance? He had been well-dressed, seemingly sophisticated. He had promised her money. And yet it had all been a lie.
My Aunt was gentle with her as she plummeted into her own reality, leaving us all far behind. And nothing could stop her.
It was in late spring of the following year and I had just started school, when my Aunt came and brought me home early one day.
“You’re mother is very sick, Jimmy.”
“I know.” I nodded sadly. She had been overcome with the fever since Christmas, but had been pulling through fine. “But she’ll be better soon, right?”
“Jimmy,” My aunt watched me closely, as the buggy jostled beneath us. “You’re mother is dying. I’ve brought you home to say your good-bys.”
“No…” it came out as a defeated whisper. My dear sweet mother was all I had left in this world.
“Go on now.”
At my aunt’s urging, I left her seated in the buggy, making my way down the small shell-encrusted path that led to the cottage my aunt had so graciously allowed us to reside in.
“Mamma?” The house felt too quiet. I hurried to her room, surprised to see her lying peacefully across the bed. As she turned to look at me, her eyes were peaceful, gone of the pain they had borne the past few months. “Oh, Mamma!”
I rushed to her side and she grasped my hand gently.
“Jimmy.” I stared in shock as she whispered my name, our eyes meeting at last. “Promise me something.”
“Anything!” I urged. My mother couldn’t be dying. The fever had broken and she was at last sane. I felt hope filling my young heart.
"Find him…”
I stared at her questioningly, the sharp note of hatred ringing in her voice foreign to me.
“Bind him. Tie him to a pole and break his fingers to splinters. Drag him to a hole until he wakes up naked, clawing at the ceiling of his grave!"
I stared at her cold face, her blank eyes. She had spent her last breath, buying revenge.
***
I dropped out of school when I was eight, and ran away from my aunt. I was able to make it on my own, running with the other homeless boys, like rats through the street. We worked for a young overlord who fed and clothed us, training us in the art of pickpockets. The ragged band of urchins was my family. And it was the perfect place for the seed of hate Charles had planted that night so long ago, to fester and grow.
When I turned sixteen, the overlord kicked me out. As men, we were to distrustful looking and our chances at getting caught and setting the police on him rose. But it was the only way I knew to survive. After struggling as a loner for only a few months, I stole from the wrong man. He was an aristocrat, and a well known one. He would have beaten me to death if not for the old monk who had happened to be present. He had paid the man, before helping me to my feet and leading me away.
“My name is Nathan.” He had a kind, trusting voice.
“Jim,” I replied.
He brought me back to the monastery where I was promptly groomed and fed. They gave me the option of leaving or staying to work for them, and so I obliged. They put me to work, cleaning and re-arranging the Vestry, a small room attached to the church where they housed their sacred objects. After a few weeks of me being there, Nathan approached me after my chores were done for the day.
“I’ve been watching you, lad,” he wheezed.
“And?” I complied. “I haven’t stolen nothing, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“Not in the least.” He smiled. “But I have seen something inside you, Jim… something has taken root here.” He pressed his fist to my chest and I stopped, staring down into his sad eyes. “Hatred in the mother of all things evil, Jim. It must be abolished. You are a good person, don’t let it destroy you.”
I nodded.
“Will you attend the morning session with my brethren?” he asked cautiously. I nodded again.
“Of course. You saved my life, and you have given me employment. I will attend,” I obliged.
Nathan seemed quite pleased and left me to my thoughts. But as I watched him go, I knew I would never, not even for a second in these hallowed walls, turn my thoughts from those of revenge.
**
At the priory, I grew and l learned, and always: I watched. I was searching for Charles. I had little to go on, but I knew that one day I would find him.
I was twenty, and working on sanding the pews in the main confessional hall, when I saw a sorry looking sailor stumbling along.
The confessional was one of the many places I used to inform myself of recent goings on, and so, as Father James welcomed the salt-encrusted man into the small chamber, I stealthily moved towards it. I listened in, quickly learning that this man was a whaler, from a ship named the Calibira, and that he had returned to the shore drunk, and now felt awful about his exploits. I couldn’t help but chuckle as he described the lively-hood the night of his stupor.
After James had spoken with him for a short while, I was about to leave, when the submissive tone the Whaler had used, vanished.
“Aye, my sins are forgiven me, but my Captain... Now there is a man who’s dammed to hell.” He sighed wearily, when James started off about “judge not thy brother”.
“It’s not me who will be judging him!” The Whaler refuted. “The Captain Charles Grim, aye, he’ll be judged by the devil himself. That man couldn’t leave a woman alone if his life depended on it.”
I froze, my heart feeling restricted inside my chest. Could it be? The Charles that so long ago, had stripped my mother and her young son of everything they held dear in this world?
It was all I had to go on, but I arose the next morning and without alerting the Monks, I left them forever. I hurried to the docks, only to learn that the Calibira had already set sail at dawn.
“Why is it that you need that ship so badly?” I turned at the quiet voice, desperation written across my face.
“It is the Captain, Sir,” I explained hesitantly, realizing by his attire that he must have been a privateer. The government had had little use for them since the war ended, and since they knew little when it came to fishing, the privateer’s had suffered greatly. “I have come to collect what he owes me…”
“Half,” he stated ruthlessly, his dark eyes greedy. I nodded. I didn’t care what that piece of filth owed me, for he could never repay what he had done.
“If you get me to the Calibira and help me find that man… you can have it all,” I replied.
He nodded. “The name’s Dan.”
And so we set sail on his tired old ship, simply named Betty. I stood on the deck often, waiting for the Calibira to come insight. Many times I felt as if my mother’s spirit was there with me, watching over me as I avenged this wicked deed of Charles Grim. In the whistle of the wind I could almost hear her voice.
“Find him. Bind him. Tie him to a pole and break his fingers to splinters. Drag him to a hole until he wakes up naked, clawing at the ceiling of his grave!"
***
We were at sea for twenty months, shadowing the Calibira from harbor to harbor, never close enough to carry out my revenge. But that fateful night, in the middle of a horrendous downpour, Captain Dan woke me.
“Aye, Jimmy… the Calibira is floundering like a fish in the sea!” he roared. “Tonight we shall have victory!”
I jumped to my feet, hurrying to retrieve my musket. I was horrified to find the salt had started to erode it, so set about cleaning it.
“How soon?” I shouted over the gale.
“Soon! Minutes perhaps!” he replied, the excitement evident in his voice.
I hurried to the deck, peering through the night. The moonlight shone down on the deck of a nearby ship, setting it aglow with an eerie light. Excitement filled me.
“This is it, Mother!” I yelled into the wind, struggling to stand against the bucking of the ship. And then I saw him, Charles Grim. He was standing there, oblivious to me. Time had not been too kind to him, I realized with satisfaction. I lifted my musket. At last my time had come.
Seconds later, the ship rumbled beneath me. I stared as the sea writhed before me, and suddenly the huge jaws of a monstrous beast, rose from the sea, gripping Betty in death. The sky seemed to go black as I heard the captain’s screams and then the sound of splintering wood. The ship shattered as if a mere toy, and I leapt into the frigid water. I could hear the screams of Calibira’s crewmen and I knew that the great beast of a whale had turned to them.
But the whale was here for one reason alone, to feed. And she would not be denied a single scrap of meat. I gasped, as I was thrust underwater, the huge jaws closing around me. I brushed against the beasts teeth, horrified as her maw opened again, and the crewmen rushed in, being crushed alive between her massive fangs. I was hurtled against the whale’s throats, drowning in the water, knowing I would die, when suddenly, it stopped.
I was amazed as I breathed in the sour air, the water rushing from her gills. Body parts swam past me on their own accord. I could see the whales ribbing through her translucent stomach wall, and I stood, turning to take in my surroundings. I stared in horror. Not twenty feet in front of me lay a man, a living breathing man. It was Charles Grim.
I moved towards him, instinct overcoming me as I found the knife tucked in my belt.
“Oh thank goodness!” the man heaved a relieved sigh, pulling a loose finger out of his curly black hair. “I thought I was about to die, back there!”
He fell silent as he met my steady gaze. I neared him, relishing the joy that filled my heart as his eyes glazed over with fear. So he had recognized me. I knelt beside him, leaning in close as I fingered my knife. There was no need to rush, we had time to kill.
“We are two mariners, our ship's sole survivors,” I mused, beckoning towards him mockingly. “So lean in close, and I will whisper the last words you'll ever hear...”
This was the song Mickixoxo gave me:)
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